Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-17-25_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Dr. Wanjiru Njoya, is a Scholar-in-Residence for the Mises Institute and we talk DEI and the fight for freedom, and how it is connected. Later the Kitchen Table Activist, Karen England, was at the Patriots Conference - big focus on taking back schools!!

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Delight having you here this morning, by the way, plenty of rain. We're about 42 degrees here by the Medford Airport. We're not getting snow, but I'm getting lots of reports of just snow dumping in Josephine County, not necessarily dipping, but we are looking at about a 1400-1500 snow foot level here throughout this morning. And then it will just be turning

mostly to rain and then turning into a drier conditions for tonight and tomorrow. And then we're going to be wetting up again later on Wednesday, just so you know. By the way, the only school delay that we have this morning, two-hour delay on the Three Rivers School District. We're going to be taking our focus into economics here over the next few minutes. I wanted to introduce you to, and I've never had the pleasure of talking to her, Wanjuro Najoya. She is a scholar in residence at the Mises Institute. Great organization. I read a lot about what they do. It's a non-profit organization

that exists to promote teaching and research in the Austrian School of Economics and Individual Freedom. And she is the Walter E. Williams. Remember Walter E. Williams used to fill in for Rush Limbaugh all the time. I always enjoyed some of my favorite Rush Limbaugh episodes were when Walter Williams would fill in. But she's a research fellow there at the Mises Institute, author of Economic Freedom and Social Justice. How are you doing this morning, 1Zero? Pleasure having you on. I'm doing good.

Thanks so much for having me on the show. Yeah. You know, my, by the way, I love the accent. That's a Kenyan accent, right? It is, yes. OK. So you were born in New Jersey but then you ended up growing up in Kenya. Interesting. I did. And I must tell you I don't know much

about Kenya other than there's been, you hear about some stories of grinding poverty now and then. Could you give us some of your experience growing up there? Yes, so my family's from Kenya and my parents were at university in New Jersey when I was born. So I was only little when we went back to Kenya. In terms of the economy there, I think compared to other African countries, it's probably doing relatively well. But in general, and this is something that I've talked about a lot. Are the absence of- free market institutions and robust protection for private

property rights. Humpers economic growth. In fact this is one of the things that I- like to- point out that. Strong property rights and- protecting a contractual freedom these are not optional extras that people can do if they, I don't know, they have some kind of cultural preference for

it. These are prerequisites for economic stability and economic growth. Don't you find it interesting that even in the so-called land of the free, United States of America, one zero, that the right to contract seems to be so often usurped by government intervention. Even here, we have difficulty doing with that. And property rights, we continually find them under attack here, especially in our state of Oregon. I don't know if you're familiar out here on the west coast, but you own your property and so does the state and the county too, along with you.

It's almost like... Absolutely, yeah. It's absolutely incredible. In fact, I think that globally, I mean, America has been one of the key global influences in spreading the idea of private property, but has also now become one of the key influences in spreading this idea that the government has to regulate property. So they say, yes, it's still private, but it's subject to regulation. And they say, well, we have to regulate it because that way we ensure that nobody is hurting other people. But the regulation proceeds to such an extent that actually it's

abolishing private property by stealth. And people often don't realize this until it happens to them. So one of the examples, a recent example I can give is a woman in Virginia who's flying a flag on her own private property in her home, a Confederate battle flag. And somebody complained because they don't light the flag. But here's the thing, it's on her private property and she's been asked by the city

to take it down. Has she sued or is she taking legal action against this? They took legal action against her. She's fighting defense because they said, look, you have to take that down. And the basis of their argument is exactly what we're saying is regulation. They say, well, you know, yes, it's private property, but you know, we can just let people do anything they want on their private property. For example, I don't know if somebody decided to open open a fireworks factory in their

backyard, yes, the city would have something to say about that. Because there would actually be a hazard or danger. Exactly. But you know, no one's ever talking about, hey, stopping the state from preventing a danger or remedying a dangerous situation to public health, safety and welfare. But really regulation ends up being used more to regulate thought, I would dare say, than just about anything else out there. What would you say? It really does, but what's happening now, and I think this is

illustrated by the example I was discussing, the idea of danger or harm has been so widely construed. So people, you know, I gave the example of a firework factory, the harm that you could cause with that is self-evident. But people now say they're harmed by things that they see, they're harmed by things that they hear, they're harmed by, I mean, we remember during COVID,

people saying, you know, my neighbor went, walked her dog twice a day, and they should only neighbor walked her dog twice a day and they should only be walking the dog once a day. These kinds of ridiculous arguments, which are grounded on the idea that somehow my feeling offended by what other people are doing is causing me harm. And it's on that ground that the government takes upon itself the mandate to regulate what people are doing. So yes, it's a threat to private property and it's everywhere. Dr. Wanjiro Najoya, once again a research fellow for the Mises Institute. You know, you're probably, having grown up in Kenya, you're probably not familiar with, there

was a show back in the 1960s, a television show here in the United States, here, Doctor, that had a character, I think it was Bewitched, and there was the neighbor Gladys Kravitz, who was always a cue, who was always, always spying on the neighbor and whatever they did, and they ended up, you know, trying to report it, get something. It's like we've become a nation of Gladys Kravitz's, I think. I don't know if you're familiar with that reference or not, but... I know, but I know the type. Yeah, somebody somewhere is having a good time. We must stop them. All right? Exactly. Well, you look, though, at how the state gets involved in so many aspects of our life, even with the licensing part of this too, and this is something I've had a great deal of concern about.

I had a colleague of mine who lived in Oregon for quite some time in broadcast and he ended up moving to Tennessee not too long ago, a couple of years back or so. And he and his wife ended up starting this amazing bread baking business. He decided to leave the broadcast industry and start their own business. And they started baking bread in their kitchen and then started selling it locally and then started selling it in the local supermarkets.

And now they've expanded, they've got a business partner, they have a commercial bakery. Now that they're doing all this work and wealth is being generated, people are being hired, and people are loving the bread. I'm thinking, that's the way it's supposed to work. Well, you contrast that with the state of Oregon. You're not allowed to use your private property to do something like that to the same extent.

You have to have a commercial kitchen. You have to have all sorts of permitting or licensing. It's like out on the West Coast especially, whatever is not permitted is required. It seems to be the kind of culture that we're getting to. What do you think about the future for freedom and property rights in such a land as ours? Yeah, the example you gave is a perfect example to illustrate this. So what seems to have happened is that we flipped the premise of liberty and of freedom. And now people start to think you can only do what you specifically have permission to

do. Yes. And, you know, if you want to start a business, you have to call up the city and ask for permission to do that. And then you have to ask for permission for everything you want to do in your business. There was an example in the news the other day of someone who went through all the hoops getting permission to start a small farming business.

So raising chickens and selling eggs and that sort of small scale farming from her, just from her home. It wasn't anything large scale, she was just planning to sell eggs to, you know, the neighbor. But she went through all the hoops to get permission to do this. And finally, when she got the business up and running, the city said, oh, we don't, you're not allowed to sell any of that from your house. We allowed you to run the business, but you're not allowed to sell anything. So if you want people to buy your stuff, you're going to have to pack it up and drive it there.

Her whole business model collapsed because that was never the point. She wasn't trying to set up a transportation business. She was planning to just sell things from her home and the whole, you know, they just killed her business. But they do this even to little girls lemonade stands, where's your license to do this? The whole premise that as free people we should be able to do anything unless it's prohibited has been flipped. And it's now you aren't able to do anything unless you specifically have permission to

do it. That is not liberty. That's living as theft of the state. What do you see as the weather forecast, so to speak, of turning that tide? The one thing I can say in favor of President Trump's administration is that he does appear to want to be, well, take a lighter touch on the administrative state, but I don't even know if that's enough, you know, at this point in time. Could you give us an evaluation of what we might be looking for? You know, is it going to continue to rain and storm

on the business people and people trying to generate real wealth? What do you think? Yes, it is. I think that he's heading in the right direction, but he's nowhere near realizing the scale of the problem. I feel that he tries, I think, to meet people halfway, if I can put it that way. I think the Trump administration has

the sense, so for example, they banned DEI. So I think there's a sense that... Do you think that's a positive development? I think it's a great development, but it doesn't go far enough. And I think it's just a good example of this point that they seem to think, whoa, we've banned DEI, that's amazing, we've gone really, really fast, and let's try and defend what we've done so far. Actually, I think they need to be doing much, much more. Banning DEI is not enough because you have so many people devoted to the nostrums of DEI who just repackage it and try to carry on. In other words, it's embedded in the DNA of academia. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. And so I think much, much more, I think it's a good start, but I think much, much more needs to be done. And I always say people need to, this is a message that Walter Williams talked about a lot, Thomas Sowell, and Ron Paul has talked about it a lot as well, that people need to think back to the fundamental basis of liberty and not just looking at DEI. In a way, DEI is a very superficial emanation of the problem, but think deeper into the root of the problem.

For example, do we have freedom of association? Do we have freedom of contract? Why do we allow the government to regulate our interactions with each other? These are the more important questions than just saying, let's ban DI. I wanted to ask you... This is a pointed question regarding freedom of association. Freedom of association is very powerful. You associate with those who you want to work with, common cause.

Isn't a real challenge that we have in the United States, and I think you, having grown up in Kenya, maybe could even observe this, doesn't freedom of association mean nothing unless you have the freedom to not associate? And that seems to be under attack these days. Would you agree? Exactly. Exactly so. Freedom of association means freedom to associate or not associate with whomever you want to. And then when government gets out of this, all we're saying is the government doesn't

tell me whom I must associate with and the government doesn't tell me whom I must not associate with. So this is a very fundamental and basic principle. with and the government didn't tell me whom I must not associate with. So this is the very fundamental and basic principle. Now the way the debate has been framed at the moment, and DEI is a good example of this, people think, oh, we're just debating what kinds of force the government should be using. No, that's not what we should be debating. What kind of club we will beat you with, okay. Would you like to be beaten with a pink club,

a red club, or a blue club? I don't know. Exactly. This is the thing. This is why I was saying it. We should be going to the roots of the problem and saying we need to get back to liberty, back to freedom of association, get back to freedom of contract. So freedom of contract is another good example. That means freedom to hire and fire. That's what freedom of contract means. And so a lot of people don't want freedom of contract because they think, well, I want to get fired. I want to have governments come in and say that no one's allowed to fire me. Right.

You know, that'll be great. I'll make my life much easier if I know I'm safe. Well, this is the problem. You give up your liberty in a context like that because you think that would be of benefit to me. And that erodes liberty. If you're on the business side of it, if you're the employer, suddenly you realize that wasn't such great protection that you just fought for.

Oh yeah. And also, if you are an employer, the inability to fire really makes you look twice before hiring someone too. Exactly. I can think about this. My wife and I visited, by the way, speaking with Dr. Wanjiro Najoya, and she's the Walter E. Williams research fellow for the Mises Institute, M-I-S-E-S, Mises.org. When my wife and I visited France in Paris, it was about 18 years ago, we went to see the

place. We really enjoyed the trip. And the part that we noticed is that the people who were employed, Dr. Ndjoya, were working their tails off. And just, in fact, you could tell that there weren't enough people really working there. And so they were just working and working, people in the cafes and the restaurants. And then I was talking to some people and they said, and they said, the reason for this is that France makes it so difficult to fire people that that you will have businesses almost never choose to hire people or if they do they wait and they wait and they work and they work until they hire someone because they know that whoever they bring in they're practically

stuck with them so they better be a good choice which I thought was interesting they can't get rid of of the of the dead. This is what happens when government gets in the way of your ability to contract one way or the other. Yes, exactly. And then this is when they want to regulate everything that involves contracts in any way. And that's how liberty is eroded. And I think it's really important for people to think about it in that fundamental sense and not just focusing on DEI, because what's DEI? It's just an acronym.

DEI, diversity, equity, inclusiveness. They will come up with a new acronym. They already did. Yeah. Calling it community belonging and opportunity. They'll call it anything. Yeah. Well, in the schools now, they're starting to call it emotional social learning.

You know, it just gets renamed. So is this something, this DEI, this whole push here to protect people, you know, this misguided push to push people or to protect people, are we going to have to work through this? Because it's not gone? I can assure you it's not gone. You yourself admit that it is not gone and I don't, in fact, I don't even think it's even resting at this point in time. How would you see it at Mises? It is not gone and many people, if you go on the university websites because you know universities were the forefront of all these DI policies.

And many of them are saying openly that they're waiting to see how the litigation turns out because there are lawsuits. They were planning these lawsuits from the moment that Trump won the election so that the minute they knew he was going to come out with orders like this, so that the minute he came out with the orders, they filed the lawsuits. There are about 100 lawsuits pending against Trump's executive orders at the moment. So many of these universities are saying, look, this is all in litigation. It's in the federal court now.

It's going to go on appeal. It's going to end up in the Supreme Court. So we'll just wait, carry on as we are, and we'll just wait until the Supreme Court decides on the matter. So the parasite class is just taking a wait and see, and we're just going to wait him out, and he's going to be gone, and maybe the old regime takes over and everything's fine again, right? That's the view they're taking, because they know the litigation is going to take years and they think, well, we'll just buy time.

That's the problem and that's why it has to be viewed in a much more fundamental sense than just how can we fight DEI, which is what a lot of people are focused on at the moment. If you don't mind me switching gears here just briefly to economics since that you focus on this so much as part of your writings and your research. What is your overall impression of President Trump's tariff policies? We're still printing you relatively new in it. I know over at Mises they don't tend to be friendly to tariffs in general, but is there any good that might come of this and what may be some of the weaknesses we should be watching out for? So yes, economists in general are opposed to tariffs

because they see it as a form of taxation, a form of price fixing. It's an intervention. I don't think any economists think that it's good to intervene in the economy in this way. That's a trade-off. I think a lot of people have been making this point that when you're in an international market, there have to be trade-offs that also depend on how other people are behaving. Because people say, if you just say, we won't be protectionist at all, and you're in a market with protectionist partners, then you're really just saying,

everyone else will protect their markets and we won't protect ours. Yeah. And you're saying, come rape us, in other words, is what you're saying, that kind of thing. Yeah. So a lot of people are concerned about that and that's a factor. So you're asking, could anything positive come out of this? I think the only hope that people have is that Trump's approach causes other countries to change their behavior. You know, because if they say,

I think what a lot of them are saying is, well, you know, we impose tariffs on him, and if he imposes tariffs on us, we'll just impose more tariffs on him. And then you have the back and forth, the escalation of it. So in some ways, this could be an idea of being a disruptor that ultimately you want the other countries to remove tariffs from our exports then too. Ultimately this could be what's going on then behind the scenes. Exactly. Exactly. And they realized they're not going to win

this battle. You know, they realized that in their own best interest to play fair. That's the hope. That's what we hope would be the outcome of all this. When Dr. Wanjiro Najoya, I appreciate you so much. I have you come back. I love talking to you. And we'll probably delve into some other topics here when it comes to free markets and the economy and so much more. I will link to all your recent articles there too, including how you talk about how free markets promote peaceful cooperation and racial harmony. In other words, let people be people. What a concept. That's the message. I know that's revolutionary thought, right? That you leave people alone, we might be able to figure out some of this stuff, right? Doctor, a pleasure. Great having you on the show. We'll have you back. Be well.

Thanks so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you indeed. 733 at KMED. As the Montana Roofing Crew's best, Lithia, Body and Paint on Bullock Road in Medford. You're hearing the Bill Meyers Show on 1063 KMED. Now Bill wants to hear from you. 541-770-5633. That's 770 KMED normally I would say, yeah, but why don't you just hold the calls just a little bit, maybe another 10, 15 minutes. I wanted to touch in with Karen England. Karen England was at the Weekends Patriots Conference in Josephine County. I really enjoyed being the opening act for that.

I spoke for about 20, 25 minutes or so. I'll post the Mike Jones video that he took of that here a little bit later. I'll put that up on KM&E.com and he says, hey Bill, here's your video. Here's your video. Mike, thanks so much. I just wish I enjoyed watching myself on video more. Although I think it was Laura Barth that ended up saying, you know, you actually look better in person than you do on video Which makes me feel really good then about being on video and Facebook live. I Thought that was so funny, but Laura it was great getting a chance to meet you She's one of the big Facebook commenters quite frequently by the way

I just got the Facebook live back active again We had it fail during my conversation with Dr. Najoya just a couple of minutes ago. But anyway, Karen England, a kitchen table activist, and everything about her is trying to get control of our public schools. And you know me, I've talked about this a while, I kind of have given up on the public school systems even though we're forced to pay for it. I don't know if they are reformable, but she is a cautious optimist. And we're going to talk with her about kind of the way she's looking at the lay of this land. We'll have that coming up after news and more on the Bill Meyers Show.

An intelligence solution saves you money. This is Randall and Advait. Provided by Dish. You're hearing the Bill Meyers Show on 1063 KMED. 1984-8. You know, it's great that we have people like Karen Englund around. She's known as the kitchen table activist. By the way, she gave a talk just a couple of days ago at Josephine County at the excellent Patriots Conference. It's good that we have Karen around because she's not as optimistic.

Well, she's more optimistic than I am about the future of public education. There's a part of me that says just burn it down and just to start with a clean sheet of paper. I don't know, maybe you are this way, but it looks like you actually think parents should be able to take back control of this. Wouldn't that be a fair assessment of it? Karen, welcome back to the show. Good to have you on. Well, thank you. And yes, well, here's the thing. My grandkids are even homeschooled and I homeschooled. So that kind of tells you where I come from.

However, 95% of the kids are in public school with our public tax dollars. So as long as that's the situation, then I feel like we have an obligation with our form of government to be in there and to be talking about what our own dollars are doing. And so I believe that we need to be weighing in instead of just handing it over to the left. And so I think we should take back the classroom and it should represent all of us, not just the progressive left. The challenges that we have here in the state of Oregon, and I have no doubt you talked about this, but I ended up mentioning to it, is that when I hear President Trump talking about we're going to shut down the Department of Education, I'm thinking

like, hey, isn't that great? We've had Republicans talking about this, oh, I don't know, 50 years ever since it came up, you know? Ever since Jimmy Carter brought it in, people have been talking about getting rid of the Department of Education, and for good reason. Here it is, now that we're at this time when the state of Oregon, at least reasonable people in Oregon, have been hungering for daddy to show up and crack some heads. At this point, you have the Trump administration saying, well, we're just going to get rid

of the Department of Education and we're going to just turn it back to the state. Well, if you turn it back to the state, essentially you turn it back to the communists that have screwed it so badly in the first place. So how would you suggest that in a blue state with a supermajority democratic control that we deal with this? Well, I will tell you I have a lot of experience because our office is in Sacramento and we're a California-based organization and we've been flipping school boards and especially this last election and they've been flipping red and there is so much that can be done at the local level. So let me say, I totally agree with you. What people need to understand

is that only between 10 and 14% of the money is coming from the federal government. And even if, you know, it doesn't work that they're watching in Washington, D.C., and they see on the lips of TikTok a school that's having a gay flag or, you know, violating some executive order, and they're calling up and saying, stop the funding. What all of these executive orders mean in getting rid of the Department of Education is that it's hand-to-hand combat on the ground with local school boards. And what I think people have been missing, and this is what they've really been empowered

and I think locally as well here in your county, is that school boards have an incredible amount of power and control. Unfortunately, they tend to be an extension of the administration of the school. It's just how things have been. And they don't know the power they have. And so we've got plans to have your school board actually represent the taxpayers and the citizens of the county and not be an extension of the school district. That's really interesting.

I know that there have been some... I don't know if you've read up any of the controversies in the Medford 549C school district, but Superintendent has resigned and is going to take off and doesn't think that it's going to work out real well for him. But there has been one embattled school board member who felt that, and in his thought, he thought that the school board was in essence a rubber stamp for the district. Is this what you're speaking about with a problem with many school boards then? Absolutely.

And I can tell you that it's not uncommon and sometimes the worst people, and I'm an evangelical Christian, sometimes the worst is when you get an evangelical who gets on the school board and then they just start rather stamping to get them to understand that, no, no, no, you're not here to, you're here to represent the community. And the National School Board Association, and I'll look up some quotes from Oregon as well, but the sole purpose of a school board is to represent the community, beliefs, and values, period, and the taxpayers, and to be a watchdog for the taxpayers, that is the role of the school board.

So this idea that, you know, the school board just is buddy-buddy with the administration. Yes, you wanna have a good relationship with them, but they work for you. You tell them what you want them to do. And I can tell you, one of your school boards, it's a 5.0 here in Grants Pass, and the books you have, the pornographic books in your school district, there's absolutely no excuse whatsoever that those books, and I'm talking X-rated books, and I even go to the Facebook

and see, I showed it, and not only is that in your district, but it is currently checked out by a student. Yeah, are those the LGBTQ books that one of them is showing, Fallatio on boys, things like that book? Well, actually, that book you don't have. Oh, good. Okay, there's small favors then because I was sent a copy of that and sent some screenshots of the book of other school districts that would have it. Well, there's that, but there is no, there's one and it's that I brought it up because I actually three years ago testified because Nashville, Tennessee has it. And I testified in the legislature and it's the book that you guys have here. But they're graphic rate themes, graphic.

I mean, you guys have some really, really bad books and there's absolutely no excuse to have them. Your school board should be meeting immediately, getting a policy in place, and getting these books removed. And I will tell you that several, both in Three Rivers and in Grant's Pass, people have been challenging the books,

and the school district is coming back and saying, oh, our committee met, we think these are really good books for the kids. I'm not talking about Charlotte's Web. I'm talking about graphic rape scenes, words I can't even say on the radio repeatedly. Now you know what you hear a lot of times from people, where the left tends to come back on, book bans, book bans.

It's like, wait a minute, nobody's banning books. For a school library in a school district to choose not to buy the book is not the same as banning the book. Absolutely. Do we have Playboy? No. And it's because we do agree there's a line and that is the line. I want to ban the groomers and the porn pushers that think this is okay for 14 year olds. That's what I want to ban and you can still go on Amazon because I do it every day in order to research this stuff and I purchase these books so no one wants to get rid of them. You can go to your county library, you

can go on Amazon if you want to read Smut or have your 14 year old read about graphic rape themes if that's what you want. But our tax dollars need to be paying to educate our children and not to buy this stuff. And that's where we need to start stepping in and saying, nope, not anymore. We're not going to let our kids' hearts and minds be raped with our tax dollars. Karen Englund is the Kitchen Table Activist. You can find out more on the website for her organization, thekitchentableactivist.com, thekitchentableactivist.com.

I'll certainly post all this information and your Facebook page too for that matter. Karen, you mentioned something earlier that kind of piqued my interest, and I was wondering if you could comment on this because you say you're an evangelical Christian, but sometimes some of the worst school boards are evangelical Christians. And I wanted to… I mean, I'm a baby theologian, okay? I'm the wrong guy to have comment on these kind of things, but I'm going to anyway. Is there a possibility that some evangelical Christians are so held under sway by Romans 13 that if a government's doing something well, it must be, well, it's Caesar's business? Is there a little bit of that going on, maybe?

Actually, there might be, and I really probably shouldn't have said that, but I get so fired up. No, but I agree with you because I can observe that in some people in which there's almost a... It's like people know, a Christian knows what the right thing to do is, but they feel uncomfortable. It's kind of like, well, conservative, they're conservative by nature, so they're conservative in their actions and reactions to the evil stuff. Maybe that's it what I'm getting at, okay? Well, I think there's a couple of things that go on, and my husband's actually a Bible teacher at a private school, so as you can tell I'd probably get myself in a lot of trouble in my local community by saying these things. But I think there's

a few things that go on. I think they... we all want to be. But I think there's a few things that go on. I think they, we all want to be liked. I think there's just a thing where, you know, we want to be liked. And there's this impression that if you're standing for truth, you're doing something wrong. And I think that when I'm standing for truth, people are going to get ruffled by it. I understand that, but that's what my calling is. And so, I think a lot of them, they want to be liked. They also sometimes think if they're nice enough, they'll get to share Jesus with them. Well, when you're running for school... Oh, hey, the communist doesn't care. I'm sorry.

Well, exactly. And that's my point. Then go be a pastor or do something else. Or like my husband, who every time we're on an airplane, I know the talk is coming that he is going to share the gospel. But that is not... You need to act as a Christian on the board and you need to represent Christ, but that does not mean rolling over. It means standing up for truth. And so when you are on that board...

And I just find that they get on and then they want to be liked, and it is just so frustrating that we elect them thinking they're going to go in and make change, and then they just want the superintendent to in seaters to really like them. You know what? Evil isn't going to like good. I mean, when you shine light on darkness, it isn't, you know, a kumbaya moment. Yeah, indeed. Karen England, once again with me, the kitchen table activist. All right, I appreciate you kind of explaining that a little bit. I can almost say some many of the same kind of criticisms of Republicans in Salem, given that it's a majority Democrats. Well, you know, reaching across the aisle. I don't want you to reach across the aisle

at this point. You're dealing with people who are not going to actually do what you wish them to. So you need to be doing everything possible to break things and disrupt what they're trying to do. Well, absolutely. That's why we put them in. We have a certain worldview and a certain philosophy of the role of government and what freedom actually means.

And when we elect you as a Republican, most times, we expect you to articulate those things when you're up in Salem or in Sacramento or Washington, D.C., and actually stand for something. And if blue states right now, if the Republicans aren't reading the glee of what happened in this November election, they're crazy. And the people are with us. The people have had enough of this stuff. They want our country

back. They want limited government. They want to be the parents and not have the schools be the parents of our children. And they need to start articulating it. There's nothing wrong with standing up and articulating your point of view, and you don't need to reach across the aisle. We've already decided they're going down the wrong road. What do you believe, Karen, is the ripest fruit for real reform in public education in a state such as Oregon. Because I know that there was an attempt to put a school freedom or a school choice type of thing.

It didn't go anywhere last time. Certain things may have a greater possibility of getting passed or getting enacted than others. What do you think is some of the ripest fruit out there that someone reforming the schools have? Well, I will tell you a couple of things. If a very strongly written that covered everybody school choice, I think that could make a difference.

But what is being passed like in Tennessee and in Texas right now, what people don't know is when you look at the policy, it's gonna cover 20,000 people and they're buying off the public school with $2,000 per teacher in order to get it passed. And so what's happening is we're growing public school and the people that are getting the vouchers are the people that are already in private school.

So we're not forcing change, which is the point of it, is to force some competition and some change. So I've been a big school choice person. This is probably going to surprise you, but the last year, probably two years, and a lot of this comes from doing some work in California flipping school boards, there is so much power at the local level. To the point where in California we put some policies in place that forced the legislature to go pass the bill that says you can't pass those policies anymore. Now isn't there a... but is that different though in Oregon?

Because what I understand, they passed laws to really strip some power and discretion from our school boards. That's what they want you to think. Yeah. Same thing in California. But there are always things that you can get around it. And sometimes

it's changing a word in a policy, like the state was doing over the...in California, notifying parents if a child is transitioning at school, socially transitioning their gender. Well, the state came in and then they passed a law. So, the two school boards and now Liberty Council out of DC or Liberty Center out of DC, they did the Janus case with Teachers Union. They actually are representing two school districts and they've already won on one of them.

They went in, they tweaked the policy and said, hey, if a student is going to change their record for any reason, official or unofficial, the parent gets to know. That takes care of it. So again, there are some things to be checked. Ah, I like that. You're not specifically saying anything about transitioning or whatever it is. Any record, any record whatsoever gets changed. Exactly. Okay. Official or unofficial. Okay. Because they do these shadow records. And so again,

the state comes in and they pass something that says, oh, you can't do this thing on gender. Okay, fine. We'll just do it on everything. The record. And we won in court. They couldn't, they couldn't appeal it. And so that's what we need to do. But it takes empowering school boards and having them, you know, do it. It just does. And now is the time to do it. It didn't stop on November 4th or 5th, when was our election? So long ago. So many great things have been happening. It didn't stop. Our job just started. This has been a long time coming. And again, I met very nice people. You guys are so

hospitable. I loved it here. Can't wait to come back. But there is no excuse for a 5-0 school board to have some of the books in your library that you have, period. When you say 5-0, you're talking about the five conservatives on it, right? Yep. Okay. I'm going to say Republicans, because there's no...this stuff, most...I will tell you, some of this stuff at school board meetings in California, the progressive will turn and say, is that our school? I'm not okay with that. So essentially what you're talking about then is that people on school boards cannot let themselves be cowed or actually even being afraid of not being liked by everyone. That's our bottom.

Exactly. They need to lead, not follow. They need to lead the school district. That's why they were elected. The entire point of a school board is to represent the local community. That's why you have them. That's why everything isn't decided in Salem. Because they want it to represent the local community. I've interviewed several school board people over the years. They're former school board people here, Karen, and to a number they almost all say the same

thing. We come in there with great plans and you know we're all type A personalities. We're going to grab the bull by the horns and throw the bull over our heads, you know, in public school board, you know, that kind of thing. And then you kind of find yourself up against the bureaucracy and you even find ridiculous rules that you're the school board, you're the parents representative, but you have to make appointments to be able to come and tour the school. Is there any way to get around that kind of stuff in which you have your superintendents of districts acting as if they own the school rather than the school board representing

the parents who pay for it all. Oh, absolutely. I'm actually working. We have several policies that we're going to put forth before Three Rivers and Grants Pass on whether it's booked or other things. You put forth a school district policy and you pass it and it says we can go in. I get that, hey, you need to have an appointment. You can't just show up. Just because you're on the school board, you don't get to boss staff around. I mean, there are some, you know. There's some protocol.

You have to have a chain of command there. Yeah. Absolutely. And so that's all reasonable. But no, the superintendent doesn't get to tell me if I'm a school board member that I have to visit a school or not. Like that's ridiculous. And anyone that's buying into that doesn't understand their real power. And so I'm working with your, you've got a grant,

I'm so excited about the people here because we're just going straight, excuse me, straight to the people and we are going to force the change. And if they don't want, if the school board doesn't want to change policies, then we're going to change the school board. And that's how it's done. All right. Karen Englund, the Kitchentable Activist. Find out more at www.thekitchentableactivist.com. We'll definitely have you back again and stay in touch because you got spunk, kid. All right.

I do have spunk. We appreciate that. I could always use more of that. A pleasure talking to you. Thank you, Karen. You as well. Thanks for having me. Shade before 8 o'clock. This is KMED and KMED. HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.

This is Brent from Holman KMED. It's a minute after 8. Appreciate you being here. We're going to check town hall news in just a moment. Dr. Powers, where Pass meets President, we'll talk about, we're actually talking the next few weeks here about the founding of our various cities here, how they came to be. Today's going to be Jacksonville. Looking forward to getting to the bottom of that. Used to be the county seat and then, oh, the railroad went elsewhere. And boy, that killed things, right? Yeah. A lot of times that's the way it was. It's like not having the

railroad in your town was like not having a broadband internet today. That kind of thing. It's like, oh, we're so sorry for you. You know, that kind of thing. But Dr. Powers will tell us more about that. I also want to pick his brain on this whole concept of judges in inferior federal courts issuing orders telling the president how to discuss international affairs. It astounds me. And yeah yeah this having to do with the trend day Aragwa, the gang members being repatriated. Oh boy. We'll have a talk about that and a whole bunch more along with your calls and opinion. I just appreciate you waking up here. Hey tomorrow morning I'm looking

forward to this. This is going to be a fun one. I've made it clear that one of my all-time favorite movies is still The Godfather. Godfather part one and two. Part three, hmm, that one wasn't all that good. Okay, but part one and two, my favorite movies of all time. That along with the outlaw Josie Wales. I don't know what it is but there's something about that mafia story that just appeals to me. But I'm going to talk with either Mark Seale Nathan King, and they have written a book called Leave the Gun, Take the Cannoli. And it's a story about how they made the movie. There's an interesting backstory about how it almost got trounced and

the various challenges. And it is considered so legendary now. At the time they were kind of like, eh, eh, and we'll see, yeah, okay, it's another mob movie, you know they were kind of like, eh, eh, and we'll see. Okay, it's another mob movie, you know, that kind of thing. But he'll join me tomorrow morning at 630. It'll be a lot of fun.