Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-16-26_MONDAY_8AM

Episode Date: March 16, 2026

Where Past Meets Present with historian and retired professor of Business Law Dr. Dennis Powers - Profile CHUCK BUTLER of the Bultler Automotive Group, Open for Business-Melisa Mlasko from Futurity first - Free Soc Security and financial class next Tues.

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausurrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. And we have a bit of a pallet cleanser, not just the dad joke of the day, but where past meets point up. I feel like where past meets present. There we go. The coffee gets ahead of me.

I drank a lot of coffee this morning, Dr. Dennis Powers. How are you doing this morning? Welcome, sir. Well, Bill, I have to say with the way that you get up so early, it's even before the roosters are out. Yeah, well, I'm actually feeling okay. It was good conversation. Yeah, well, last week, last week was miserable after the time change.

I'm kind of into the groove now, so I'm sort of used to the time change because, as we all know, it is government's job to set our clocks. If it wasn't full government setting our clocks, the world. world were descended to chaos, doctor. Chaos, I tell you. All right. Now, Chuck Butler is who we're talking about today. Big business, big community leader. Tell us all about it. This is our palac cleanser before we get back to the disgusting news of the day. There's always plenty of that. Oh, absolutely. And Chuck was an incredible person. He actually came up here from Southern California. And in 1976, he acquired Pitchford Sales, which was a real small Ford dealership in town,

where the Stratford Inn now is. And it was tiny, you know, a showroom, two Lou Bays and 13 employees. Now, he had run his father's dealership business in Southern Oregon, had back Southern California. And actually, Bill had graduated from UCLA, played water polo, had a degree in business management. But the key thing that really stood out was that when he was up here, he became immediately working to make this whole region better on different boards. I was lucky enough to serve on both of the boards with Chuck and was able to see the way he handled a lot of different things with a plume. but his business one, because remember we had Lithia that was coming in there with Sid DeBore, and we had a number of other ones. But what Chuck did is that even though he was building up this pitch-forward sales, Bill,

he brought and bought into the Pugéo and Alpha Romeo lines. He went into imports, much cheaper imports. Oh, he did that. Now, Pujo, now, back in the mid-1970s, that was an interesting time to bring in the Pujos, which were always a weird French car. They always were weird, right? They always looked, they were very different, very odd in their styling. Yeah, that's very true. And these lower-priced imports was the niche that he saw.

One of the different things, Bill, that I've seen at the School of Business and being out there in the community over the, let's say 35 years, was that the real smart business people found a niche that wasn't filled by the big companies and went in there. I mean, whether it was theaters or whether it was the way that Lithia did things with the way Chuck Butler did. Now, was Lithia bigger than Chuck Butler at that time? Was that a bigger company? No, not at that time because of the fact they were just building up. But he could see right off the bat, especially it wasn't until 1996 that Sid DeBore, Sid and Karen DeBore, made a really good change, which was the fact they went and went public and got all this equity. Meanwhile, Chuck Butler was going ahead in the lower priced imports because he picked up in the mid-1990s about the same time Hyundai and the Kia line.

And the Kia line, yeah, big on that, Butler Kia, Butler Hyundai, sure. But also what he had done was that he had gone ahead and bought a lot of land to the north of Ashland, right to where you could get onto the freeway, where he had his Butler Ford, and he had a lot of other different car lots on there. But at the same time, he's running his business. I remember talking to Chuck and I asked, you know, what was your secret? secret, you know, to those of us who decided not to take the vow of poverty to teach. And he laughed.

He totally laughed. And he said, well, the thing is, is always treat your employees right, and they'll take it from there. And then I actually, you know, I knew him well enough to where I could kid him. I'd say, you know, Chuck, I never bought a car for you because, you know, my friends in the neighborhood, where he was living at the time before he then moved down. to build this beautiful house out there in the plateau in Ashland, was that he went ahead and I said, you know, go ahead and contribute to Chuck Butler on his fundraising, but don't buy a car from him. And, of course, he laughed because he was a very good businessman. Indeed, he was now, and ran it quite well up until, what, late 2021 when he sold the whole

automotive business. It was a couple of years before he passed away, right? Yeah, it was, but he was on the boards of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Ashton Community Hospital Foundation, Oregon Culture Trust, SOU Foundation, lots of these different things. He was also in real estate development that you can see through town, property management. He bought into CPM and owned that CPM management that he then spun off. But then, basically about four years ago, sold the automotive business to the Kiefer Automotive Group of Eugene. And they had been friends for some time, and Kiefer kept the name. So when we hear, which I just really enjoy, you know, Butler Ford and Butler Kia, which are putting on all of these different promotions, it's a lot of the

owned by this different dealership that really figured quite wisely. Well, yeah, you have a Chuck Butler name. But the Chuck Butler name lives on, essentially, what's going on, even though. Like I said, he passed away, what long illness, 23, though. But what a legacy. It was cancer, and it was in May of 2023. three. But he was really a gentleman who was a good business person. He treated everyone, you know, alike. And really was what he was able to contribute here. And also Southern Oregon

University in Southern Oregon Regional was amazing. All right, very good. And we'll share that story today. And now that we have clinging the palate, let's talk about the dumb news. How about that. We'll do that coming up here just a bit. I shouldn't say it's dumb, but you know, something. But you know, the thing is, is I have to respect you, Bill, because you have to deal with a lot of these breaking news that come out so that we're informed. But then you're doing this five days a week, three hours every day, plus all the hours in terms of setting things up. Ah, yes, finger. Just working my fingers to the bone. You can see it on the Facebook live. All right. But hang on, my friend. We'll go right back.

where past meets present, back to the present here. Got to talk about what's going on with certainly the prosecution of criminals here in southern Oregon and a lot of other stories coming up. Where past meets present, Dr. Dennis Powers, retired professor of business law. Hey, Doc, did you hear about Judge Lawrence Van Dyke in what he ended up talking about on Thursday as the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ended up overruling him? He was the dissent. Did you hear about that story by chance? Yes, yes, I did. And you sent me a copy of the article.

Yeah. Interesting how... It was in my spam folder. Is that where it was? Oh, okay. Gee, no wonder your spam folder was it. Oh, it's coming from Bill. It must be spam. Okay. Oh, it's good. It had this to do with you. It's the fact that, like yourself, I get numbers of different types of spam that come in that just date because they do research.

Yeah. Well, he ended up what Judge Lawrence Van Dyck, and by the way, Van Dyck is the same guy who did that dissent on the magazine ban. Remember that was a couple of years ago? And he took his firearm and did a video with a firearm and explaining, you know, how it was a moronic that the Ninth Circuit court that ruled against him. You know, he was the dissent once again. It says, you know, you can't call these magazines a, you know, not an intubrower. integral or integral part of the firearm.

And he was just demonstrating it. And, of course, people were just losing their mind. I love that picture, Bill, because the fact that there's different guns that he's showing to the uninformed. And the uninformed, of course, his fellow judges, too, I must dare say. Oh, absolutely. That's the Ninth Circuit. And that's unfortunate.

Yeah. But this had to do with him being the dissent, with him. this this Korean day spa, this female spa, in which, and he says, you know, women are supposed to be able to be, you know, be protected from, as he called it, swinging ds, the male sex organ, you know, the crude term, you know, for that. Right. And the thing is he's a Republican or a Democrat. Yeah, and he's telling the truth about this.

And I have to tell you, they are just coming unglued over this and talk, well, you know, it's not good to have this kind of language in a, in a ruling. but he's trying to make the point like, this is what the case is about. And, you know, you hide behind all of this flowery BS language, and yet essentially you're having male sex organs being shoved into a female, into a female spa, you know, the whole transgender thing. He jumped right into it. And can he get into legal trouble for actually being that, shall we say, graphic and truth-telling in a dissent?

Can you get into trouble for that, that sort of thing? Well, you can, although it won't happen, because the fact that when you have the ABA, which is totally radical left, you know, they can go ahead and actually also, he's still a member of a bar. That one could do an investigation. But when you get into it, I cannot even believe the decision. because of the fact that you have, as a traditional Korean, women's only nude spa, and so transgender men can walk in nude with their swinging male genitalia?

Yep, that's about it. And it's just nonsense. And he says it's like, you know, there are no adults in the room any longer in the judiciary. And he really lays it out there. but I think there seems to be more news about what he said and the reaction to what he said rather than the actual point of the case, which is what we really need to concentrate on. Yeah, and we're waiting for a Supreme Court decision, but even if that Supreme Court decision comes in,

that states can regulate transgenderism, that it's not a federal issue that would be going back to the Dodd's decision on abortion. But what they are using, though, what they are using, though, is a so-called civil rights law or public accommodation laws to shove this. You know, and so it's, I've got to tell you, the Supremes are going to have to take this down, and it's got to get tamped down. It's got to get tamped down hard.

You know, that you consider this a civil right that, you know, you fake women, you get a chance to force yourself on other biological women. It's just nonsense here, doctor. Well, that also shows the major problem that we have, because in this civil war that we have in this country, which is, you're just seeing it at times in terms of the law, you're seeing it in terms of the way that the far-left radicals are attacking anything that has to do with this country, whether it's Elon Musk with Tesla's or the war or whatever it is. This is really a disappointment because the Supreme Court, my friend, already ruled the fact that in terms of civil rights,

that the title 9, for example, is only on women and not on trans. They've already ruled this. Yeah, well, that doesn't seem to have mattered, though, when it came to Washington state law, you know, their public accommodation law. So I guess it's going to have to wait for, to be appealed, I would imagine. Well, that's true. And you see, you know, Washington is outrageous. You know, I remember some years ago on a book tour,

the director was telling me, and I was going throughout many, many states, they said, keep in mind that when you have the coastal states, they're typically much more liberal. You know, Washington, Oregon, California, go over to Massachusetts, New York, and the rest of the country has common sense. Yeah, indeed. And that's what we're seeing. All right, Doc, before we're going to. we get to the defense attorney issue here in southern Oregon, which is a big deal. I'm sure you'll

have a comment on that. Oh, yeah. When President Trump was asking for help over on the straight-of-horn moves, to me that is an indicator that we're having a few more problems than we anticipated. Is that a fair assessment? I think that's what's going on. When I heard that yesterday this morning, it's just like, eh, it's not going quite as well as they thought. I'm looking at it slightly different because rather than saying that it's much more complex, I'm looking at it in terms of the fact that because of the propaganda that's being waged by Iran in the social media and the way this woke newspapers are totally showing their colors with the out of U.S. owners and their left. bias, that we have all this propaganda coming through, that the war is not being prosecuted well. Well, it is. The problem, the thing is, is that the Navy can only do so much, and they are right now trying to reduce and defang this militaristic radical regime.

Yeah, no, I get that, but, you know, we're told one thing. I, you know, I disagree with you on this, on this a little bit. And here's why. You know, it's like the logistics of this seem to be just all just weird and could have been done better. And I'm not commander. So I mean, so please don't, I don't consider myself any expert on this one. But you're going to go to work in the Persian Gulf and go to war in the Persian Gulf and you don't have the strategic petroleum reserve filled up before you do it. You know, that's... Well, that's... It's a good argument being made, but the reason is, is, oh, Biden went ahead and released all the petroleum that he could.

Hey, I get it, except that it's Trump's watch. Sorry? But, yeah, that's true, but it's Trump's watch. It's Trump's baby, you know, at this point, you know? Yeah, and as we're working together on this, because we really are fleshing out this issue, the counterfeeling is that Trump has only been in for about a year, and all the different things that he's doing is incredible, because we had a senile idiot in there that allowed Obama to run the country. See, that's what people are not making the connections to.

The reason for all this far-left radicalism was that Obama and source were running the country when it was underneath the titular head of Biden. Yeah, but this was a war of choice. And if you're going to do a war of choice, you have your ducks in a row. You already have your preparation to secure the state, the, the, the Strait of Hormuz. And you also have your backup oil to help temper the price shocks. And we only have a few months rather than a lot of months that we could be doing this one. And plus, the oil that we do let loose is not able to flow into the markets as quickly as the 10 to 12.

million barrels a day have been cut out of it. And it just seems to be poor planning, in my opinion, just in my opinion, as an outside observer. That's a good argument, Bill. The other thing is, is that I have a feeling that Trump jumped in to make the decision based on the confirmed intelligence that he could take care of all the leaders where it took us, what, seven years to get Saddam Hussein, he could nail all these at once, and it was brilliant in that sense. You're absolutely right about the fact that we have a electorate that, in a way, is, if you're commuting, you're worried about the price of oil. If you're retired or if you are not, you're not as worried about it.

And so you have all this conflict that's coming in. Well, and the political aspects of this because, you know, I think the assumption was that this is going to be a quick one and done. I don't think it appears to be as quick as it was going to be, or at least as much as they had hoped. And we're talking about a huge danger that the knees are cut out from underneath President Trump with a bad outturn or turnout in the midterms, if that ends up being bad. That's not good. Yeah, that's true. And part of the problem is that, you know, we do have part of the Republican Party that's allying itself with the far-left radicals because of the fact that they're worried about their keeping power, and that's true. And the key thing here is that for our grandkids, and I could use all the arguments that are being made on the other side, the problem is, as you're pointing out so well,

is that this country, I don't think, has the overall stomach for a war that goes on for six weeks, and they want it over it too. Yeah, I think the country is relatively weary of it, and I don't think they see the need as much as the Trump administration does for this. But that's where the difference of opinion will be on this. So, Doc, before we take off here. Oh, but you're right. Yeah. Grants Pass Daily Courier, a great story over the weekend about,

the attorney shortage. More than 200 cases dismissed in Jackson County criminal cases because of lack of defense attorneys available. Only a couple in Josephine County. So it's mostly affected the Jackson County area here. And of course, D.A. Patrick Green, of course, explaining what's going on. Hey, this is what the Oregon Supreme Court ended up ordering. What is it? 60, 90, what's the rule here? And what's really in play, if you could? Yeah, that's a really topical issue here. The 60-day refers to misdemeanors. The 90-day rule refers to felonies.

The difference between is that if an indictment, if you will, is more than one year in terms of prison than it's a felony. And what this has to do is the right to counsel. as soon as an arrest or a filing is made. But typically it's the filing. So what is happening here is the filing is the one where the different DAs are having to refile. But this is a real ploy by our Salem, far left radicals, because here we have our governor running for re-election. And we see, as you point out so well, about the way that the far left wants to keep its presence with the radicals in Salem with our governor.

And so, you know, they switch on tax increases. Get it in May. Don't let it come when. Yeah, exactly, all that. Yeah. But why is it that we can't hire enough defense attorneys in your world? Because the state is not putting the money in. Okay.

So the point is the state. illegal immigrants and health care. They can do it. All right. Contracts for, for, I actually did that bill when I was in law school. Lots of funny stories at another time about when I was having indigence coming in for legal help because it was part of my coursework that I had to get involved with defense, where I knew that I never wanted to get involved with defending criminals because the way the system was slanted.

But here, they could handle it. It's no different. friend, then what's really terrible is the fact that you don't even detect the bar exam. You can work 600 hours for the ACLU and get a couple of other requirements. And you don't have to study the law and know what the law is about. You can be an attorney. Now, I just want to make sure, though, that I understand correctly that the reason that these 200, more than 200 have been dismissed, these 200 criminal cases, now, they could be refiled. They were dismissed with prejudice. So if there ends up being enough help, they could refile them, correct?

That's the way that works. Yeah, they're being, as you're pointing out, they can always refile because the dismissal is without prejudice. And so what's happening is that it's a refiling type of thing. But here, the state, which really does want to look as they are really soft on crime and soft on illegal immigrants, The way to do it is to say, oh, there's not enough money. We can't get enough attorneys. Yeah. Well, the one thing I went to –

The money, you get them. Yeah, the one thing I wanted to mention to you, though, is that this is about Governor Kotech's priorities of where the money ends up going because I was doing a little bit of research over the weekend. You're right. And it's prompting and such. And there are still in the neighborhood of anywhere from 3 to 500 DEI people that are festooned throughout the Department of Administrative Services. the state of Oregon. And it's estimated that it's anywhere from $100 to $125 million a year that goes to pay these parasites that do nothing, that do nothing that is actually needed

for the health, safe, and security of the state of Oregon. And can you imagine if Governor Kotech were to take that $125 million a year for the DEI parasites and redistribute to that and get some attorneys, defense attorneys hired in the local areas. That's an excellent point, and you're right because it's the fact that they could put the money into different places, but they'd rather put taxes on the rest of us and cover it with this infrastructure bill. And we have a state that has been californicated, and I really respect you and the others that are fighting it, whereas, frankly, I should have taken the job outside of Ashland 40 years ago, but then I would have missed all of the wonderful people I've met,

like yourself, and the ones that I work with, and it would have been a different life, so I'm glad I made the decision for different reasons. Now, we're glad you're here, too. All right, Doc. My pleasure. We'll talk next Monday, okay? You'd be well. Take care.

And be well, and take care, Bill. Dr. Dennis Power is a retired professor of business law from Southern Oregon University. It's 844. We drive. The Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. It's 848 in change. Open for business now. We have Melissa Malasco, who is in studio here with me.

And Futurity First, right? Hey, Bill. It might help if I hit you turned on there. There we go. Get your microphone turned on. See, remember I was telling you and I have trouble seeing the red lights? Yes, you're colorblind. Red is a difficult challenge for you.

Yeah. Fortunately, though, Melissa, it has a really red sweater and really red, really red, rather, shoes, so I can really tell today. Works out really well. Helves me out. So, Melissa, you've got an event coming up a week from tomorrow, okay? First up, before we get into that event, what is Futurity First all about, please? Futurity First, we're an independent insurance agency,

and then we also have Futurity Retirement Advisors, which is, what we're going to be talking about at the workshop on the 24th. I am a registered investment advisor and a certified financial fiduciary and a financial planner. And so what I do is I help people get ready for retirement. I create cash flows and a full comprehensive financial plan. And I really feel, and actually it's statistics will show that if you start planning early, you're going to have more success in retirement. So we want to do all the different things,

like make sure that you're going to collect Social Security at the right time, how do you harvest the most money out of Social Security, what are your cash flows, the money that you have coming in, what are you having to spend in your assets? So those are all the things that I put together, and you wouldn't believe how many people, after they have their financial plan, have such a weight lifted off their shoulders,

because they're actually able to see how retirement is going to look for them financially. And so having a comprehensive financial plan is extremely important. And one of those pieces is when to elect Social Security. So that's what this seminar is going to be about on Tuesday, March 24th at 530, and that's at the Central Point Park and Rec. The address is 235 South Haskell Street. Yeah, and you did that, you've done them there before too, so this is good to know. So, you know, why is it considered such a big deal of when someone takes Social Security?

Now, I'll be taking Medicare later this year, you know, because I'll be turning 65 and so I'll have to. But you can actually choose then when you actually take the Social Security benefits. Why does it make such a big difference? Well, because over the course of your lifetime, the longer you're going to live, you're going to be, better off, if you're going to live past the age of 82, you're going to be better off to take larger checks and fewer of them than you would be taking smaller checks and more. So if I do a report for a married couple, the difference between electing at age 62 to their full retirement age at 67, it could be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars that they would

not collect if they elect early. And, you know, of course, that's just one piece of the puzzle, taking it a step further and putting that into a financial plan so that you can then see, can I afford to hold off, can I not afford to hold off collecting my benefits? What are my benefits going to look like when I'm 80? What are my expenses going to look like when I'm 80? Of course, we want to make sure that you are not going to run out of money. if legacy is your goal, then we want to be able to position your children to be able to potentially inherit tax-free money. So Roth conversions and doing tax planning strategies to pay taxes now rather than later when we all agree they're going to get higher. Those are all the kind of things that are the most.

You can tell I'm excited about it because I just love doing financial plan. It's like get all excited. Well, the thing is mostly you can just rattle this stuff off, right? That's good. So, by the way, this event, which is going to be a week from tomorrow is what this is going to be. How do you sign up for it first off? And then we'll go on to some of the other questions. So you can either call our office, Futurity First, and we are at 516, Crater Lake Avenue.

Our phone number is area code 541-973-210-E extension 3. I know that's a lot, so it might be easier for you just to go to our website, which is futurityretirement advisers.com. And then there you can sign up for the class. You're welcome to just show up if you'd like, and we can try to have extra packets ready, but it's a good idea to reserve your seat because that room is a little limited. So we want to make sure we have packets for everybody because we really do give you a lot of information to take. comb. Now, you're a certified financial planner. I can just mention. Now, what if somebody says, well, I already have one?

Oh, that's a great question. So I am a certified financial fiduciary. And I'm a financial planner. Now, what's the difference between a fiduciary and a planner? A certified financial fiduciary is someone who is a financial planner, but then has

taken it a step further and has a whole bunch more of layers of protection for the consumer to make sure that I'm acting in your best interest. Is that kind of like a super planner then? It's a super planner. All right.

So that's your superpower. I've been doing this for 24 years. And so a long time, so I'm pretty seasoned. But in answer to your question, somebody would say, hey, I already have a financial planner. I already have a financial advisor. My question would be, do you trust your financial advisor enough to get a second opinion? and is your financial advisor a certified financial fiduciary?

Other objections I'll get to not having a financial plan is that people are just too nervous. Like they don't want to see, you know, their cash flows in retirement. And again, going back to what I'd said earlier, it's really great to see it, to understand what your numbers are, what your budget's going to be, how much are you going to be spending when you're 85 and still alive? because we don't want you to run out of money. Well, it's amazing how many people outlive the money. Yes, we want to make sure that doesn't happen. There's also another objective that we're going to, you know, be able to address in this class.

And that's, I'm afraid Social Security is not going to be there for me. Yeah. You know, we have some big political issues coming up. So we're going to discuss, you know, how to solve those. Well, that's why some people would say, well, I'm just going to take it right away. That is true. it is pretty much, you know, political suicide that they, that they, as in our legislation, go ahead and affect the older people. It'll most likely, the changes are going to come down for

the younger groups. You know, the one thing that's really great, I think, about that you talked about having done this 24 years, Melissa, is that what's great about being a planner is that you have seen multiple types of markets. You know, it's, you know, for a while, it was pretty much easy. All you had to do is just say, hey, just throwing in stocks, it'll be fine because you know, every idiot looked smart, you know? Yeah. But it's like what happens when you have the, well, like the great financial problems in 08 and things like that? You've got to, you know, talk with people who have seen both the upsides and the downsides of stocks and investments, right? Yes. And as a registered investment advisor who manages money, what we're doing as a company,

and I have analysts, we have PhD on staff, and what we're doing is we're looking ahead and forecasting for what we believe it looks like is going to be happening in the economy and then positioning our clients appropriately so that, I'll give you a, for instance, we knew in 2021 that we were going to have a problem with bonds and that bonds were going to have that inverse yield curve

and that bonds were going to take, and so we moved, We sold all of our bonds and we bought gold. Wow, that was a great decision because I... I bet you some people thought you were crazy. People, oh, I almost thought I was crazy. But we bought gold. We replaced the bonds with the gold.

We got through 2022, like champs with not that growth. We had losses, but they weren't as substantial as they would have been if we had left everybody in bonds. We made the decision last July that we were. we're going to diversify further rather than just be in complete technology. And so we spread out to other sectors. Yeah, so you weren't just throwing everything 90% in the NVIDIA, right? Yes, correct. That is, that is, I see people who do that.

But so anyways, an actively managed account means that your advisor's looking ahead at forecasts and positioning your account to be able to be prepared for those. All right. Now, I got about a minute left and I turned to a pumpkin. I want to make sure we hit the high point. You got it. You'll be talking about everything like the conventional financial plan, tax strategies, raw conversions, when that might be a good idea, and how to determine when it's the best time

to go into Social Security. I don't know if I'm going to for a while, but I'll maybe have to talk to you about that. But this live workshop is at Central Point Park and Recreation a week from tomorrow at 530. What about an hour and a half, something like that? What would it be? It depends how many questions people have. I can talk, I tend to talk really fast. So, I mean, we could get through it in an hour and 15 minutes.

Well, the price is right for this, though. It's free. It's free. It is free. There's no obligation. And really, my goal in the seminar is to educate you on when to collect Social Security and to understand how they come up with your benefit. All right.

So get signed up today. You can call 541-9-6. 273, 2100, extension three. Again, 541-973, 2100, extension three, Futurity First, and I'll get all that information up on KMED.com. And thank you so much. We got to go. All right. Thank you, Melissa. Thank you. Melissa Molasco.