Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-04-26_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 4, 2026

03-04-26_WEDNESDAY_7AM

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausur drilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. Hey, it's great to have you here this morning. Happy to take your calls at 7705-633-770 KMED. A couple of the questions I had for you this morning. And we've been very busy for the last couple of days.

Guests and legislative things going on. I haven't had nearly as much time available for some open conversation just because of the way things have worked out here with the breakout of the attack on Iran and all the rest of it. And what is your overall take on it? I was talking about it with Eric Peters, and he was saying that over in his world, but that's more of a libertarian car guy world with their commentariat, that they're feeling a little disillusioned about the president getting involved in a war of choice. polling seems to support that most people who have voted for President Trump are trusting of him at this point, at this point in time. But, you know, how is it a matter of like how long it goes determining the matter of trust? What is your overall take on it?

I want to give you the opportunity to express that because we just haven't had a lot of the open phone time that a lot of times I've had because it's just been so busy with people analyzing what the heck's been going on. and what's been going on in the craziness of Salem. And so I'm happy to give you a few on this one. Do you trust the president and what the president is doing and trying to do at this time? Or will some of it depend on will it be four or five weeks, which is what he's talking about? And if it ends up going longer, if we end up having to go with boots on the ground, then do you start feeling a little bit differently? I'm just looking for you to just give me your hot take.

You've been hearing all the other talking yakers on cable news. And, you know, you got the rah-Ross His Boomba on Fox News. And then you have the, oh, I'm clutching my pearls over on CNN or MS now, Ms. Now, or whatever they call themselves. I forget what it's called. Now I don't watch it. But I'll turn it to you. Okay. And there's another one, another topic.

And this one is not, you know, politically big and deep. But I think it's interesting. I was reading Oregon live this morning. And there was this report from consumers' reports about the survey of three dozen grocery chains here across the United States. And they find that Walmart, the nation's biggest seller of groceries, is not the cheapest. But Costco is. I don't consider that necessarily a fair comparison because Costco, you have to buy, well, you just can't buy a little bit of lettuce. you have to buy 50 pounds of lettuce, that kind of thing.

And so I don't really consider it a grocery store like you could Walmart. But I've never thought that Walmart was particularly competitive with grocery stores, with grocery prices. And I'm still a Sherm's Food for Less Guy. I've been a Sherm's Food for Less guy for a long, long time. But I'm looking for the really nice stuff that I'm a Cartwright's guy, you know? That's kind of where I am. but where do you shop? I'm just kind of curious. What do you like? And I'm amazed at some of the big stores that, you know, that talk about great deals. But I don't see nearly as many great deals. But I see overall, I see a pretty good deal at Sherms. Sharm's course locally owned for the time being. I don't know where it's going to go now that the family is going to sell it. But I've been a Sherms guy for a long, long time. What about you? Tell me where you go. 7705-633. So that's not a hard one. maybe the Iran war is a tougher question, but I'll go to your calls.

Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. This is Minor Dave. Yeah, Dave. What do you think in this morning? Before I get started, I love food for less. Yeah, me too. And I wish we had one down here because really the only place to go is Walmart because the other one is, what is it, Raley's? And they're expensive as that. Yeah.

Oh, so there's a Raley's in Y. Is that where you go for that? I don't go there. I go to Walmart because it's cheaper. You know, if I'm shopping in Wierke, I just soon go to Thunderbird myself. And if I had the money, I buy those two stores. You'd have the minor Dave section of the store, right, for all of your produce. I wanted to talk about John Bolton.

Yeah, yeah, go ahead. you on what Trump's doing. He doesn't like which Trump's doing is because he's going against Bolton's narrative of the British, you know, global order rules-based bullpucky. Yeah, well, Bolton wants boots on the ground, though. It's what he thinks, right? Right. He wants boots on the ground.

He wants nation building. So, you know, the industrial law complex can make. a bunch of money. Yeah, well, President Trump has made it clear he's not a, he does not strike me as a boots on the ground kind of guy. You know, I think he, I think he's trying to thread the needle, really, is what he's doing right now.

Well, I think he's trying to thread the needle. I just think it's, you know, it's weird timing. And you know, the play here is what he's doing to China with taking out Iran, or like I like to say, Persia.

Well, that's what I was talking about the other day I forget who it was, you know, yak and, you know, it may have been John O'Connor, but what has bothered me about this is that I look at the nuclear weapon thing as a false pretext because anything coming out of anything the United States government says, I don't care if it's Biden running it or Trump running it. I consider it a lie until it's proven otherwise. I think you're better off just assuming that whatever we're being force-fed in the media, even if it makes us feel good per se is a lie. I just think we have to look at it this way. I honestly think that it's that they're feeding us the nuclear weapon thing so we go to sleep, but it's really more about squeezing China and squeezing China hard, ultimately. You know, look at what they're doing. They took it out Maduro.

They took out that, you know, that went by the wayside, the war that's going on a time ago. Yeah. And now they've taken out, you know, all the leadership of, of Iran, of Iran. And so I'm looking at, China's going to have a hard time getting oil. All right. That could be. And maybe that's what this is all designed to do. But I don't really think it has much to do with the nuclear weapon, but that's what they just kind of feed us for popular because, oh, oh, you, yellow cake, you know, all that kind of thing. It's like it's the memories of 9-11. I think this is Steve on line two. Steve, Steve, how are you doing this morning? Mr. Greenleaf, Dr.

Greenleaf, great to hear from you. What do you think in this morning, overall? I'm a Sherm's guy myself, and I have been, I've seen you down there a couple of times. I know. In fact, if I'm going to run into you, I almost always run into you at Sherms for whatever reason. That's right. Okay, now as far as American boots on the ground, was it back in 2002 or 2003 when we went into Afghanistan? We were going to let the Afghans chase Osama bin Laden, and he got away. They were going to put American Rangers and Green Berets in there, and they would have had a much better chance of getting that guy. And, of course, if they had gotten him, he'd just been replaced by somebody else

would replace them. But it's boots on the ground. We thought we could bomb Germany into defeat. We wouldn't have to invade. We had to invade anyway. Do you believe that we're going to have to, as John Bolton was talking about the other day? I think we're going to have to.

You think we're going to have to. If you want to do something right, you've got to do it yourself. Does that change the political calculation for the Trump administration, though? Because it's obvious that President Trump is not looking to do that if he can help it. You'd rather not. You'd rather not. And, you know, maybe we can do it with technological stuff. Can we go on to one more subject real fast?

Sure, I'll give any time. You bet. In Israeli, an Israeli F-35 shot down an Iranian plane. over Tehran. Now, the thing about the F-35, a fighter, bomber, or whatever the heck it is, that is the single most expensive military project in world history.

Is it? Even or not. And I don't know the numbers. And during World War II, the atom bomb was not the most expensive project. The Manhattan Project was not most expensive. You're kidding me. It wasn't?

It was the B-29. Because that was a giant effort to get that plane made because it was technologically so advanced. Unfortunately, we landed one in Russia, and that's how they made their – and left it there, and that's how they made their first Buffalo bomber. Now, the B-29, was that the Liberator, the term Liberator? No, the Liberator was the B-24. B-24. The B-29 was a super fortress.

That's the Super Fortress with the big windows all on the front. That's right. Yeah, right. And remote-controlled machine guns, any aircraft machine guns, and if it was pressurized, it could go very high. It had really long range, and it could carry a huge bomb load. And indeed, they needed something huge to drop the atom bomb because they didn't have the suitcase-type bombs in those days. Yeah, they were much, much larger and much heavier for the amount of, uh, pop that they gave in those days.

Yeah. Yeah. Hey. I used to me, somebody said, could, 80, 60 years ago, somebody could, could Russia make a suitcase bomb? Somebody said, you know, they don't have the technology. They said, they don't have the technology to make it. And a bomb, no, they don't have the technology to make a suitcase. You know, we, we down, you know, we, we, we underestimate.

made of them at times. Oh, absolutely. You got that right. Thank you, Dr. Greenleaf. Let me go to next call here. It's open phones here on Wheels Up Wednesday. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hey, Bill, it's Brad. Good morning to you. Morning, Brad. What are you thinking today, huh? So back in the day, back when we had all four kids home and when it was feeding six people every day, three meals a day, we did a lot of shopping at Costco just because of the bulk thing. We're always big supporters of Sherm. And nowadays, now that it's just my wife and I, it's mostly Sherm, so here's a question I have for you to use your investigative magic wand on. Uh-oh.

Would you please see if there's something going on administratively with the state of Oregon that's causing all of these research. Like, for instance, we just saw Ray's as bailed out of Phoenix. Now, Phoenix, it just doubled their urban growth boundary a couple of years ago, so we know there's going to be a lot of growth there, and that's a premier location. Why would an established business like Ray's be leaving there without a good reason? Also, in Baker City, Baker City of about 12,000 people, they only had two stores there. They had a Safeway and an Albertson, and the Safeway has just announced their closing. So that whole town is only going to have one grocery store.

Can you please see if there's something going on? Why are these companies leaving? Yeah, I'll do my best. I don't know if I can come up with a good answer or not. It's a very competitive business to start with, and I think I know what happened with Rays, because Rays has always been challenged in some of its markets. It tends to do really well when it's isolated, like SELMA, as an example,

you know, out the Soma area, the Rays out there. where it ends up being a long drive. But look at what happened with Ray's. When Ray's and Phoenix went in, you know, back in the day, there was no Walmart three miles away, right? Right. There was no WinCo even at that point. There was a Kmart back in the day, wasn't there?

You're right. And Bill, but the thing is, and we've all seen this, is we've got all of these old companies, companies that have been in Oregon for decades, they're all leaving. There seems to be, or, there may be something going on in Oregon that explains this. I don't know if it comes all the way down to the grocery store level,

but it just seems odd to me that these companies in otherwise fairly robust markets, obviously when it comes to the Alzeret family. Yeah, it just doesn't make sense is what you're saying. All right. All right, Brett, I'll do what I can. All right. And I'll grab another one here on the open phone segment. Hi, good morning.

And who is this? Hello. Good morning, Bill. This is Bob and Medford. Hi, Bob. Great to hear from me. What's on your mind today? Hey, you know, we do Sherms as our primary, and if they shut down, we'll probably be looking at WinCo, but I want to dovetail back to Sherm's Food for Less. At the City Council study session, when they were talking about the ballpark, they were also talking, you know, a little bit about the conference center. And there was some allusion or alluding to developers looking at building a conference center, not necessarily downtown in the Creek Center. quarter. So if you look at the footprint for Sherms Food for Less and the footprint for that

defunct hotel conference center, you know, between them. Yeah, it used to be the Ramada and I forget what it was before that. Yeah. If I was a developer, I'd be looking at combining those two lots, putting the conference center there because of its proximity to the airport and access to I-5. It would be a much smarter location than going downtown. Let's be, now I know that everything that the council is looking for, though, they're trying to, you know what this is. It's like many other cities. They're trying to tie a pork chop around the downtown area to get people to pay attention to it, right? You get the dog to pay attention. And I think that is part of it. I would say, though, and I've said this, in fact, I want to talk with John Quinn. I talked with

John Quinn at a meeting the other day, and I want to get him in so we can, you know, flesh this out a bit more. But I think that the city of Medford needs to punish people less for wanting to go downtown. Would you agree or not on that? Yeah, and they need something downtown to draw people downtown, and tattoo shops and beauty parlors may not be it. And I don't think a ball stadium is necessarily going to be that attractant that they're talking about. It's a limited niche appeal, in my view. Just it's a whole lot of money coming from every which way but sideways to try to finance it. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Okay. Appreciate the call there, and always appreciated Bob. Bob Shan. It is 730 on KMED, the Bill Meyer Show. Lithia Body. Oregon Thrives. The Bill Myers Show on 1063, KMED. 732.

There's some real wokey-brokey going on over in Portland's hospital system, and I'm going to talk with Dr. Maselli from do-no-harm medicine in just a bit because they have filed a lawsuit and they're going after Kaiser Permanente. And Kaiser, of course, very big in the Portland area and also a very big, woke medical system. And we're kind of taking to the weeds, I think it's really interesting the fight which is going on to actually get doctors and nurses just treating people rather than imposing political ideologies on who gets care, depending on the color of your skin. in. This is essentially what they're fighting over it. Do No Harm Medicine. We'll talk about that here in the next few minutes. Okay. 733. Maybe 4 news, I just wanted to give you a quick update here that if you are looking at insurance renewals or maybe you just need to, you know, to get insurance,

whether for a house or your car, RV, business, life, whatever it is you're looking for. Yes, even Medicare because we have, we have Lynn Barton, who is holding that down. You can't to Skypark Insurance. Skypark insurance, Skypark INS.com. Steve Hansy at Skypark, it is an independent insurance agency. He sets this up, works with all sorts of different companies instead of just one company's offering, which gives him great pricing flexibility. If you're getting hosed by one company, maybe a different company could look at you and say, hey, you know, you're a better risk, better rate, here you go, or else we'll even give you more coverage for the same rate. You know, one way or another. I've had that happen with Steve all the time. But all you have to do is just a

Call him, get a quote first. 541-161-544-4-4-4-4-4. 5-1-261-5-44-4. For the Medicare side of things, call Lynn, her number 499-09-58. You can find both those numbers and more information on Skyparkin-s.com. At Skypark, we make insurance easy. There's no championship league for small business. Stephen with Stephen Westwell Riffin-Ean.

And I'm on KMED. I'm just reading the Fox News crawl in front of me and talking about Democrats that are blaming, President Trump for spiking oil and gas prices. And I'm thinking to myself, wait a minute. If you raise gas taxes like Oregon Democrats do, and if you put on anti-carbon taxes and raise the price, that's okay. That's all right.

We're never supposed to complain about that. So why are they complaining right now? I don't know. It's just kind of funny. Oh, oh, oh, they get the money. That's why, right? When they raise the taxes, yeah, I think that's what's going on. Yeah, we'll talk about that here just a little bit.

Dr. Kurt Bisselli joins me, and he is with Do No Harm Medicine. Do No Harm Medicine.org. This is definitely an anti-woke organization in the medical world. Isn't that true, Dr. Thanks, and welcome back to the show. Morning. Pleasure to be here, Bill. Thanks for having me. And what is Dune Hall?

Just give me the basic of the mission of what you're working there. Is it really about anti-wokers? Are there a little bit more to it than just that? I don't want to be too simplistic. Absolutely. We are a organization of over 50,000 members, and those are health care professionals, concerned citizens. Anyone is welcome to join that really wants to get identity politics out of medicine. We want to make sure that quality is the focus of the doctor-patient relationship, and again, not identity politics.

All right. So what has happened is that do no harm, your group, ended up filing a couple of complaints in the Office of Civil Rights. I guess it's not a lawsuit per se, but it is kind of going to that. but you filed against Kaiser Permanente and community care. And Kaiser, of course, big wheel in the Portland area. And this has to do with some sort of race-based care. And I'm wondering if you can explain how it actually works and why you think that this is something that needs to be taken on by you.

Absolutely. So Kaiser and Community Care, as you said, are operating what I would call race-based clinics. Kaiser's is the Black Health and Wellness Center, and that's actually in Portland, Oregon. And for community care in Texas, it's the Black Men's Health Clinic. And they're making clear by the name of the clinic alone that there's an explicit racial preference. And that's not what health care should be about. Health care should be about focusing on the individual.

But what Kaiser is really suggesting is that members of the same racial group, regardless of age, education, economic status, living situation, that they're all alike. And that we should be looking at medical care through this racial lens. And again, that's just wrong. We need to treat people as individuals, as people that are before us and understanding them and their comorbidities and the illnesses that they present to us and what we can do to treat them well. But instead, they're putting this racial lens on it and really ultimately discriminating against those who don't fit within that lens.

And so it's extraordinarily problematic and unfortunately very much anchored in this belief that black patients need black doctors, which is this idea of racial concordance. and that's just been proven to be so very wrong. It doesn't have an outcome benefit. In fact, if you look at systematic reviews, it shows that there are no outcome benefits from racial concordance, yet this is continuously pushed-forced as this idea of how to rectify any sort of disparities that may exist, when in reality we should be looking at what the comorbidities are,

what the genetics are, what the behavioral factors are. We should be treating people as individuals to get them well, again, not through this racial lens. Now, is Kaiser Permanente doing this under the lens? I want to be fair about this because are they assuming that because people are walking into the clinic and are black, that they are automatically going to be treated as less than first class citizen, I guess, or a second class citizen or below status? Is that the assumption that they're making or is this just box ticking? I mean, how do you see it, what they do?

Yeah, I see it as their way of trying to address purported health disparities. I think what they're looking at is this idea that there are outcomes where Blackstone Fair as well as whites, and I think they're assuming that that correlation is causation, that it must be because of the individual's race. And as a result. Yeah, so somebody comes in and they have a worse, well, let's say a worse heart disease than maybe a white patient right next to him, right? And so the assumption is because that person is black and is treated poorly, so we have to have a separate clinic for that individual, right?

That's the theory at least. And that there's the systemic racism within the system that has sort of conspired against the black individual. And in fact, when we get sort of mired in that, it just totally breaks any sort of trust that that individual would ever have with any doctor of a different skin color. And again, that's not what medicine should be about. medicine should be about treating that individual, focusing on them, and trying to really understand what the ideology is of those disparate outcomes, again, whether it's related to the choices that one makes or the genetics that one has or their comorbidities, the high blood pressure, the other medical illnesses that might be associated with their presentation of the heart

disease that they're coming in with. Dr. Maselli, I'm going to try to play devil's advocate with you, and I love to hear your answer on this, okay? Sure. It's pretty well known, though, that we aren't all alike when we end up presenting to a physician or, you know, going to a clinic, and that there are certain characteristics of different races and ethnicities. Certain ethnicities have a higher risk of ovarian cancer. You know, there are certain genes that will present. You'll have a situation where, well, going back to a black man or a black woman, sickle cell anemia is something which affects very.

them exclusively, from what I understand. And so shouldn't we be actually taking race and ethnicity into account when we are conducting diagnosis and thinking about medical care? And is this not this Center for Black Health and Wellness an attempt to do that? I think there are two different issues there. I think one of the keys is that here we have a center that is calling itself a Black Health and Wellness Center, not necessarily. specific to any disease type and the like and certainly you are correct when

someone comes into us and they're having episode or something that might be consistent with anemia or a disease that might be more likely given their genetic profile we should certainly be mindful of that as we're establishing our differential diagnosis we shouldn't allow it to blind us to what might be but we should certainly allow it to help us provide a piece of information that can help us to treat that person to treat them well and no doubt when we see that whether it's TASX disease and folks who are Jewish or, like you mentioned, there's multiple sclerosis as more common in whites and such.

I mean, those are things that are important for us to take into account as factors. But I think when we here establish a clinic that is just purely based on race, we've taken things to a different level, whereas we're not necessarily allowing it to help us provide diagnostic information in terms of treating that individual, but we're allowing it to actually look at things solely through a racial lens, which again loses sight of the individual that's before us. So it still would have been a problem in your view if Kaiser Permanente had come up with the center for sickle cell anemia health and wellness

because that still would have been essentially a race-based clinic, right? I think that would be different. I think that's the disease-focused, right? Okay. Oh, all right. All right. And by the way, I'm going to make sure I am correct about this. Only blacks get that disease.

Isn't that the case? Isn't that true? It's true given the genetics that are out there. given it was protective actually against malaria. And so hence in a continent such as Africa, where malaria is more prevalent, that sort of ended up in an evolutionary sense. Yeah, it was a great thing to have. It kept you from dying of malaria, very common in that region of the world. But obviously a challenge when malaria is not an issue and obviously causing extreme pain.

I mean, folks with sickle cell anemia, I've certainly treated them in the emergency department, and sickle cell crisis is an awful, awful episode of pain for anyone to go through. Yeah, and that's when the blood cells just, they clump up, right? They turn crescent-shaped for that. Exactly, exactly, and just create enormous pain as they're traveling through the bloodstream. Yeah, amazing stuff. All right, so you're filing then with the Office of Civil Rights. What is the ask then of Kaiser Permanente?

And the talk has been that Kaiser Permanente may be, you know, taken over one both of our hospital groups here in southern Oregon. So I think it's worth talking about where they're going with this stuff. Yeah, I think it's important to really make it so that the clinic is clear and open to all people, that it should be a health and wellness center for all. It doesn't need to have racial labels associated with it or such. It really needs to just focus on, again, providing good quality, primary-cared individuals. And that is important. That's important for black individuals as it is for white individuals and Asians and the like. And so I think it's important to not have these sort of discriminatory connotations or such that are clearly there,

but instead to focus on the health and wellness of all comers, all folks who come through. And again, not to sort of take part in this idea of a racial concordance, because the center certainly appears to also justify race-based clinical hiring on this idea that black patients need black doctors. And the reality is that all patients need really highly qualified doctors, and we shouldn't be necessarily limiting doctors. We should be, fostering that trust and helping patients to get the very best that they need from whoever that doctor may be, white, black, Asian, woman, men, whoever it might be just to take care of them. And I think we've got to focus on that part of the care as opposed to getting lost in the idea that one's race is going to better determine who their doctor should be.

Or that if the doctor matches your race, you're going to get better treatment too. I mean, that's kind of interesting. You know, in some ways, the more Kaiser and other groups would do something like that or go down this rabbit hole here, Dr. Maselli, I could see it actually triggering, rather, more reverse racism in some instances because then let's say you go to a clinic and then, okay, there's an African-American doctor, black doctor, right? And you're thinking, oh, you were hired only because you were an African-American doctor, not because you were necessarily the best because, hey, they're wanting to make sure that they

hire a lot of equity hires here. And then could you see it actually having the reverse effect in some ways in which it's terribly, that's terribly unfortunate for that black doctor, right? Yeah, I know. I know. We want folks to be judged by their skill, their judgment, their experience. Yeah, yeah, the doctor comes up and says, hey, I'm here because I was the best at my class, and I'm a great guy. But then he gets overlooked, and then everybody goes down the stereotype. Okay, where is the, where's the Jewish brain surgeon? You know, I'm just, you kind of go. down the, you know, the stereotype world, and that's what happens, you know.

And that's one of the concerns that we have is that this is sort of a return to segregation. And that is not what we want at all. That is a, you know, a terrible part of the history that we've had in this country. And again, no matter who I am, I want the very best from the physician. I want to be able to provide as a physician the very best to whoever that patient is that's before me. and if there's anything that we need in the doctor-patient relationship, it's trust. And the trust that the patient has and knowing that doctor, no matter who they are, has the best interest of the patient in their mind as they're caring for them.

Dr. Kurt Messelli, with Do No Harm Medicine, could you imagine what would happen if Kaiser had set up a center for white health and wellness? Oh, my gosh. It'd be awful, yeah. Yeah, we need health and wellness. Yeah, you would be hearing screams from across the state of Oregon for, sure. I appreciate you bringing this up. So what is your ask then when you go to the Office of Civil Rights? Now, is that a state or a federal office that you're going to? Yeah, to work this? A federal

office, and we're asking them to conduct an investigation and into which they will, you know, be able to elicit more detail and such. And really our concern is that there is a discriminatory process here, that there's actually a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which again says you can't segregate, you can't provide different services, you can't implement, implement racial preferences and also a violation of the Affordable Care Act as well, which has similar type language. And so that's the legal crux of the complaint. The office of the rights will investigate that and determining they will provide and then

hopefully work with Kaiser to correct these wrongs. And again, make sure that the clinic is very clearly a health and wellness center without any qualifications whatsoever, treating all different folks and again providing the best in primary care to the individuals. With all this conversation you hear about Jim Crow or Jim Crow 2.0 coming on a Washington, D.C., in some ways, you know, somebody walks into the clinic and they say, oh, you go to this door because you're this color. Oh, you go to this clinic because you're this color. How is it any different, really?

How is it? From the old segregationists of the past, really. Yeah. And they're pictures of the clinic that we have that are very clearly labeled as the, again, as the Center for Black Health and Wellness. And I think, again, there's any clinic that I'm either working in or coming to as a patient, being open to all patients, welcoming to all of them is extraordinarily critical. And, again, for us as providers to provide the very best to the individual before us and focus on the quality, not the race. Dr. Kurt Micelli, once again, it's do-no-harm Medicine.org.

We appreciate what you're doing there and working to root the wokeness out of the medical care world and just getting people back to good medical care. I think we're pretty supportive of that. Thank you so much for being on the show this morning and telling us more. Take care. Appreciate it. Thanks so much for having me. All right.

Looking forward to find out where this case goes. It is 754 and you are on KMED. When you donate blood. Number one, New York Times best-selling investigative journalists. and author Peter Schweitzer, he's going to join me. His latest book, I bought a copy of it the other day. It's really good. The Invisible Coup,

how American elites and foreign powers use immigration as a weapon. I just started digging into it the other day, and just grabbing for a few. We'll talk with him about that in about 10 minutes. Hey, Matt, how are you doing this morning? What's on your mind, huh? Go ahead. I'm good, Bill.

Well, I called about the downtown thing, but really quick on the whole doctor thing. Yeah. I had a very complicated heart surgery several years ago. My doctor's last name, Paine. Did I care? Nope.

No. He was the Kobe, well, he is, the Kobe Bryant of electrocardiophysiol or whatever he's fantastic. Great. Tremendous success. And I had a very complicated neck surgery years before that. A French Canadian did my surgery. No problem. Did he give you crapes afterwards, you know, in the...

in the hospital cafeteria? I mean, what? Yeah, there were two surgeons that worked on my neck. One was American, one was French-Canadian. But the French-Canadian was just like you hear about French-Canadian. It was like good-cop, bad cop. Oh, okay. All right.

The one doctor was really encouraging, and then the French-Canadian says, no, no, no, he won't be up and around by then. Hey, you know, speaking of Canada, Have you seen any of those either YouTube shorts or I think Facebook shorts with the take on the most interesting man in the world, except it's the most Albertan man in the world? You know, because in Alberta they're trying to break away and, you know, become independent. At least there's a push over there to be independent of Canada, the most Albertan. I didn't, okay, so I don't really know Canada that well. I've never been there.

Actually, my truck, my old truck, mainly if you GMP was manufactured in Canada. Sure. Back in 1982. I don't know anything about it, but I'll tell you, over the last, I don't know, eight months, I'm realizing the Albertans are like the people who leave in eastern and southern Oregon. Yes. They're sort of salt of the earth people. They work for a living.

They just want to be left alone. And look, I don't know what happens in Canada. The guy they've got up there now pretty much tighten the range really quick. Exactly. But I just wanted to bring that up because you're bringing up a French-Canadian. So I don't know if those are a bunch of those are Albertans or not. That's more of Quebec, I would imagine, right? The French Canadians?

Oh, Quebec. 100% Quebec. Yeah. Canadians are, yeah. So I want to just, you know, kind of flesh that matter on the downtown thing. Yeah. So who wants more traffic downtown? Who actually is asking for that?

Well, naturally there would be certain business people would like to see more of that. That's usually what they're hoping to do. There's a lot of empty shop space in downtown Medford right now. But a lot of this also occurred due to COVID. We just had four daughters ended up closing to. It's been a tough go of it. And I don't think the road diets and things that they've done to try to calm the traffic have necessarily helped. People just look at it as being punished by the city.

and it's inconvenient so they don't go. I think that's part of it. So, okay, I mean, I used to go to Medford Saturdays and Sundays for basketball when I was coaching. I was down there for almost the entire year with small breaks. And it seems like there are a lot of industrial areas downtown. Typical, you know, the car wash, you know, other kinds of stuff. But my question is, okay, so if local business wants more traffic downtown,

It's so people will spend money at their shops. Well, yeah. So should the focus be on bringing in a baseball diamond or some sort of entertainment program or whatever to get people to go downtown to spend money at the shops? Is that the point of it? That's the hope of it. And I think just trying to be more of an economic magnet of sorts where there's just more things going on. And, you know, this is something which is, it's just real common. And Medford is not so different from, you know, 10,000 other cities in the United States of America in which, you know, it's nice, but it's not particularly interesting.

You know, everybody wants to be Vegas. But Vegas has its own set of problems. And I've said for years, and this is not a criticism of it, Medford. And to a lesser extent, grants pass, Medford is too large to be charming and too. small to be a big magnificent magnet of business and mecca, you know, entertainment kind of thing. It's kind of the way I've looked at it. I don't know about you. So as long as Medford's been around, you're kind of saying it's like going through puberty.

It's not a child, but it's also not an adult. And it's in this funky place where it's been in for years. And, of course, COVID didn't help. I guess in my brain, because I never really gave this much thought to be honest with you. until, you know, you've been talking about it for a while with this baseball field and all this other stuff, this baseball team. And then it, so I asked myself, okay, if we want entertainment to be a draw for people to come in and spend money, or do we just want more businesses to move in that are like day to day where you have a place that does small manufacturing or other kinds of things, where maybe their business isn't people coming in their front door, they do other things,

their stuff is shipped out to different parts of the state, maybe even different parts of the country. And so you have workers, whatever that number is for business, who come down to the work every day and then maybe they go to lunch or maybe they... Yeah, well, it definitely looks like more the plan is to fill it with, you know, trying to be like Portland. You know what I mean? When I say trying to be like Portland, there's going to be, there's going to be little quirky

shop, it's going to be a little quirky coffee shop, there's going to be a little quirky falafel stand is going to be a little quirky, this, you know, I think that's, that's kind of the overall, you know, plan of what most cities try to do. You know, we're going to manufacture quirky, quirky and attractive for downtown, you know, I think. I could be off base here. So is that a failed business model, I guess? That's the bottom line for me. Is that, as a city, is it a failed business model to, because it almost seems, it's kind of funny because people on the left are always talking about being progressive, right? Yeah.

Is it regressive? It's almost like they want all the trappings, the smartphones and everything of modern-day science, but they're still trying to create a downtown based upon 1950s economics where you had Bob's hardware store, right? Like Happy Day, you had the Cunningham Park. Well, now what they want to do, though, is that they want to create a downtown that is essentially like Gay-Perry, 1898, in which we're, you know, driving around on our little bicycles with our little bells going, Bonjour! Bonjour, Matt.

Okay, so Portland's not even that, by the way. I know. It's not accessible, and, of course, they have little problems, you know, quality. Well, they tend to look at the car as the enemy, okay? They tend to always look at the car that people, you know, get around in as the enemy and something to be made as inconvenient as possible, and that will all come down on our bicycles, and will be in the beautiful walkable space and will be enjoying our European experience.

I think it's kind of where the Greens want to take it. I'm going to say, look, I'm not the be-all-end-all on city planning for sure. That seems like a failed business model. That's not where the country is ever going to be again, but for rare exceptions. We're ever going to have that downtown where you're going to go for a walk with your kids and, you know, the stroller. and you're going to pop into different shops. I don't think that's where people are. And I think COVID might have been the death now.

I think people are more like if I need to go to shop A, I'm just going to go in, go to shop A and get out. I'm not taking my bike. I don't live next to the store. I'm not walking there. I need a way to drive in, as you just pointed out, get what I need from that one boutique, whatever that thing is, and then I'm going to go home.

Well, I would agree that's where people are, but that's not where the climate-friendly, equitable community and the Greens are. They have a better idea of how we're supposed to live rather than the way we actually live. Point well taken, and I appreciate your call as always mad. I've got to go. Peter Schweitzer's going to be calling me here in a couple of minutes, and I want to make sure you got a free line for him, but thank you.

KMED, KMED, HD, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG grants pass. Immigration as a weapon. Peter Schweitzer says, yep, that's what the elites are doing. We'll talk about it coming up.