Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-19-25_WEDNESDAY_8AM

Episode Date: March 19, 2025

03-19-25_WEDNESDAY_8AM

The Bill Myer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at www.clouserdrilling.com. In a world which seems to be controlled by just raving lunatics, sometimes it kind of feels that way. It's great to see some green shoots of some common sense coming through here. I wanted to talk with Melissa Henson, who is Parents Television and Media Council Vice President.

Melissa, great to have you back on, good morning. Good morning, thanks for having me. All right, and of course, when I talk about raving lunatics, I couldn't help but think of our transgendered tortoise, which is running a position within the Oregon Health Authority. You heard about that one, huh?

We couldn't miss that. Yeah, that one made the rounds. Yeah, but we're not really crazy or anything out there in state government. We're not crazy. It's just we're just differently thinking, I guess. But we'll set that aside. But on the good side, there has been an agenda that Parents Television and Media Council has been involved with for quite some time and it appears to be catching fire. We have local school districts that are starting to go more in this direction having, well, getting rid of the digital distractions in the schools. Could you explain a little bit how this has been doing?

And you actually have a white paper out on your site, which you ended up helping put together to help school districts understand really what's going on here with cell phones and the digital distractions out there. Could you go ahead break that down please? Yeah it's really kind of fascinating to watch that school districts across the country are really doing kind of a 180 when it comes to technology in the classroom. You know it wasn't that long ago that a lot of schools were adopting these bring your own device policies

or bring your own tech policies. But I think what they were discovering was that they were opening Pandora's box and they unleashed a tool that they just could not control. And it led to all kinds of problems. You know, we've heard stories in the news about kids doing these TikTok challenges at school and filming themselves for their socials.

We've heard stories about kids using AI tools now to harass peers and even teachers and faculty members. Senator Ted Cruz has introduced a bill called Take It Down, which was inspired by high school-age girls having perfectly innocent photos of themselves manipulated using AI tools to generate fake pornographic images. And then they get shared, don't they? Which is what teenagers will do. Another form of cyber bullying really. Absolutely, absolutely. So it is a terrible problem and it's not helping kids academically. That was the promise that was sold to us as parents is that putting these tools in the classroom would help improve our kids, that would make them competitive on the global

and the global economy, that would help them to be more proficient with computers and technology. But what we're seeing is that it is leading to increased anxiety, depression, suicidal ideation. It's leading to bullying. It's leading to distraction. It's significantly impacted their test scores in a negative way. Their academic outcomes are deteriorating as a result of having these tools in the classroom. Melissa, you know what really struck me? And I knew that the bloom was

coming off, and I'm not a Luddite. I use the cell phones and I'm all over the technology. I couldn't do my job without the technology, okay? I get that. But I knew the bloom was off on this unbridled adulation when you started reading about the high-tech bros And when they would talk about their own policies for their children No cell phones. It was it's amazing how often no cell phones no unsupervised social media interactions things like that. It's like they realize the power or the negative power of these devices and the networks around them even though they've made their billions from it. But how many times have you read it?

It's amazing how many times you read about the high-tech bros keeping their own kids away from this stuff. Fascinating. That's exactly right. Yes, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, both publicly said that they wouldn't allow their kids to have devices at a young age or be on social media. One thing for me and another thing for thee with these tech companies because they were the ones that were pushing for computers in

the classroom, even though there was no data to support the conclusion that it would help kids academically. And they had an influence on this. Well, they had a dog in that fight too because they were selling the computers and or hardware and software that would do this right and I can't tell you how many how many I have a feeling this is still going on in which the only way you're going to learn in the classroom is that boy you better have some kind of an iPad or Chromebook kind of device that's the only way we can do this is that that's happening though, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, it absolutely is. So you know, this is, this is, you know, what we're talking about today is not taking technology out of the classroom, but it is a step in the right direction by making kids put away their phones so they're not carrying the phones around with them all day. And it's amazing to see that in the school districts that have already implemented cell phone bans. They're already seeing better academic outcomes. They're already having fewer disciplinary problems in schools.

And they're already seeing the kids, you know, engaging with one another, for example, during lunch instead of, you know, a table full of kids all staring at their screen. So I would say that for those states that have already implemented these policies, they're already seeing improvement. Now, the state has not imposed it, but we do have individual school districts here in Southern Oregon that have implemented such programs.

And it does seem to be working pretty well. I mean, I can't help but wonder, though, is there a possibility that the biggest problems with cell phone restrictions on government school campuses may be coming from the parents of these children and not the children themselves? Any thoughts on that? What have you discovered? Thank you. 100%. I think you are absolutely spot on with that. And I think a lot of this goes back to the COVID lockdown. Parents got used to having a high degree of control over their kids during the day and having a high degree of awareness of what their kids were doing all the time.

And they're really reluctant to let go of those digital tethers. They wanna be able to call little Susie or little Johnny at 10.30 in the morning and ask what they wanna have for dinner. It doesn't matter that little Susie or little Johnny is 1030 in the morning and ask what they want to have for dinner. It doesn't matter that little Susie or little Johnny is in the middle of an algebra test. And so you're right that the biggest obstacle oftentimes to getting the phones out of classrooms is the parents.

Smartphones in the classroom is the name of this white paper that Parents Television Council has put out smartphones in the classroom, what states are doing to confront these digital distractions. And so the places that have tried it have worked out pretty well, and you're getting better academic performance. This is good. Have there been any downsides to the restrictions though? I want to be honest about this, look at both sides of it. Yeah, I have not seen any reports about negative outcomes. Of course, you know, whenever there's

a school shooting or a situation like that, there's one that happened recently. There were news reports, for example, that it was a second grader that called the police. That was completely not the case at all. And we shouldn't be counting on kids to be the first responders in these emergency situations. Yeah, I've noticed that that seemed to be the big pushback on this is that every kid needs to have the digital distraction device in their pocket so that way if the dirtbag comes in and, God forbid, starts shooting things up, that they'll be able to call it in. That's a bad reason to have the phones everywhere in my opinion. It is. It is. And if we're counting on our seven-year-olds to keep us safe then we're in a really bad place.

Teachers are able to call in those situations and as parents we need to learn how to let go a little bit, let our kids learn how to navigate in the world without constantly checking in on them. Land the helicopter parents a little bit lower altitude, right? Don't hover quite so intently. And I get that. I understand that there was a lot of anxiety, a lot of anxiety in the parenting world, but I think the kids will be okay. I think so. You know, we grew up without our parents being able to reach us 24-7. I think we

probably turned out okay. I'm rather curious, do you know what cell phone policies or distraction policies exist in China schools and other nations of the world? Is there anything that supports what ParentsTV is trying to do with this? Oh yeah, a lot of countries have already implemented bans. 2018 France outlawed cell phone use for children under 15. In 2022, China implemented a nationwide ban for school-age children. So there are other countries that are a bit ahead of us in terms of recognizing the harm

and the negative consequences of giving our kids these distraction tools. Melissa Hanson, once again from Parents Television Council. There was something I was reading this morning, and I know it's on RT, which is Russia Today. But I think that they were, it's not that I hang out there a lot, but I thought it was an interesting story. And I'm wondering if this is going to be the next way of looking at technology and education. They were talking about a pretty big study indicating that people are becoming more stupid because of screening video content.

And I don't know if you've heard about that or not, but it's an interesting study. I have not looked at that study yet. I'll need to look into it. But it would not surprise me in the least. I mean, I know just speaking from my own experience, I feel like, you know, there are a lot of times when I regret ever having made the switch wormhole. I completely forgot what it was that I started out to do. So I would not be at all surprised if that's true. Well, I'll tell you what, maybe we'll have to talk about that.

That'll be your next agenda process. Try to say, hey, can we get back to an actual, maybe printed book, talking and reasoning rather than going to, but of course now they're trying to get you into the AI world, right? Oh, you know, if your kids aren't plugged in with AI, they're just gonna be stupid.

I don't know, we'll see. I'll tell you what, Melissa, I haven't been able to screen these calls. Let's see if they wanted to talk with you and have a comment on this, okay? It's a really interesting conversation we're having here about smartphones in the classroom. Let me go to a line two. Hello, caller. Are you on topic? Did you want to

talk with Melissa Hansen? Go ahead. Yes, yes I am on topic. Okay, good. Let's hear about it. Yeah, this is Francine. Yeah, Francine. Another aspect of the cell phone constant use that we see not just kids but adults is the radiation, the EMFs, all this, you know, they're not healthy to be using them all the time and this is damaging our children as well. I don't think you got into this situation for that particular reason, is that right? Melissa, you're just looking at just the distraction aspect of the devices, right? Right, but your color is absolutely, absolutely spot on with that observation.

In fact, there are studies that show that blue light, which is the sort of LED light that emanates from computer screens and smartphone screens and iPad screens, is really disruptive to sleep. So even if you don't have the devices on and in your room when you're trying to sleep, even if you were on a computer or an iPad or a phone 30 minutes, an hour before you go to bed, it's still going to cause sleep disruption. That also impacts learning and academic outcomes. Yeah, well we know that the light radiation causes problems with circadian rhythms and of course what Francine's talking about is that maybe

the radio frequency radiation has some influence too. And I would imagine there are some pretty big companies that don't want to look into those things though, right? You know, ooh, oh, that might cause a problem. All right. Although I must say it's amazing how many Congress critters who have a cell phone next to their head all day, how many ended up having strange brain cancers. But we'll set that aside for right now. That will be a Conspiracy Theory Thursday convers conversational, right Melissa? We appreciate it. But thank you so much. I'm going to post this up here on smartphones in the classroom, what states are doing to confront these digital distractions. Do you see anything coming out of a Fed regulation on this or is this still going to be an individual

school district or an individual state, state-by-state kind of deal? Yeah, when it comes to policies on phones in the classroom, that is going to continue to be by locality or by state, I think, for the foreseeable future. I don't see the federal government working toward any kind of national or nationwide legislation to address this issue. But, you know, the states are supposed to be the laboratories of democracy, and I think it's a good idea for different states to try different things to see what works best. All right, very good. Melissa Hanson, Parents Television and Media Council Vice President. Thanks for being on the

show. Good talk as always. Thank you. All right, 827 at KMED, 99.3 KBXG. I'm going to go back to that other caller who was off topic. Maybe he had something interesting going on. Hi, good morning. Who is this again? Hello. This is John Bill. Hey John, what was on your mind here? Thank you. Well, I was calling you from Central Point. Oh, I've been paying property taxes ever since I moved here and you know because I'm a just a disabled person you know I can't work work anymore anything like that and I've been to a few city council meetings. Oh my gosh, they don't want to talk to me at all. Why? Because I'm a disabled worker.

I just asked them, do I have to pay property taxes? Cause my property tax just gone up and up and up here in Central Point. And I mean, it's just getting to be where I'm gonna have to sell or do something, you know, because, you know, anyway, I don't know if I'm eligible for, for, for just say, totally just say, well, I'm just, I don't know if being disabled relieves you of paying property taxes. I do believe that there is a homestead or a possibility that you can not pay your property

taxes for up to two, three years before the state, before the local government. I forget exactly how that works, but a lot of times as you get older, you're not able to pay it. And if you're near the end, near the end of life, okay, well, you don't pay the property taxes, and then it ends up being a lien put on your property after you pass in your

estate I guess. Yeah, well I live here in Oregon. So there's central point here. I don't know if there's central points like this in the whole state of Oregon or not. Hell, I can live up in Washington cheaper than I can here. You can live up in, well they don't have income tax, but they have sales tax. They have high sales tax to take care of a lot of things. You know, I've bought a few cars up there.

You know, I can buy cars up in Washington State cheaper than I can here. Well, a lot of that is government policy, John. Think about, you have 1% corporate activity taxes that the state of Oregon put in there and so you can look at practically every car costing 1% more just because of that alone. Yeah. All right. Feel your pain. I don't know if there's any exemption for being a disabled vet that gets you out of paying property taxes, but we'll see. We'll see about this. I know Christine Drazen had introduced a bill, is crowing about this yesterday, about introducing a bill which would eliminate

property taxes for anybody under the age of, or under anybody making less than $150,000 a year. Well, I'm way under 100,000, let me tell you. Oh, I would imagine so. The thing is though, that's a high bar. I doubt that the Democrats are interested in that kind of relief right now. But point well taken and thank you for the call. This is the Bill Meyers Show. Joel here from Butler Ford and Truck Center and I'll show you something other dealers won't.

That's right. The E.U. with the show. This is the Bill Meyers Show on 1063 KMED. I appreciate you being here. Wheels Up Wednesday. A lot of good conversation going on. I have a pretty heavy duty here. Are there some more emails of the day? Those are sponsored by KMED. Mexican restaurant on Freeman Way in Central Point. And Tony writes to me this morning about the Democrats. Hey, Bill, I saw a meme on Facebook the other day. It kind of explains things. If you could reason with Democrats, then there would be no Democrats. It kind of makes me laugh about that.

Patrick weighing in on the Grants Pass Library book, the kerfuffle with State Representative Dwayne Younger reading the smutty books on the floor of the house and then getting stopped and he's like, hey, I'm trying to make a point here about this. Says, hey Bill, pornographic books in public schools, what's next? Movies like Debbie Does Dallas, maybe even field trips to the adult entertainment establishments. I would imagine there are some in the Oregon Department of Education, Patrick, that may think that this would be good. It would be good to understand the role of the sex worker in our culture today. But in all seriousness though, he continues, what happened to contributing to the delinquency of minors? If the book requires a person to be over 18 to purchase, shouldn't they

have to be over 18 to check out the book from the library? I don't know if you have to be over 18 to check out or to buy that book, Patrick. I don't know if you have to be over 18 to check out or to To buy that book Patrick. I don't I don't know if that's the policy or not. Okay. All right All right, and we have Butch from Gold Hill writes me Bill How do we learn the double secret code that tells us what zone we live in? Ah, this is about the emergency management thing, right Patrick? For years my address has worked certainly Gulls Creek or areas west of I-5 near Gold Hill that would work just fine. How do I know what zone a friend lives in if there's an emergency? More bureaucracy. Well, what you have to do is

go to the Jackson County website and I know you have to go to the website here Butch and then you have to pull up the to the Jackson County website, and I know you have to go to the website here, Butch, and then you have to pull up the map. They have the map there, and then you can find out where your house is and where your friend's house is, and then you can get the zone numbers. Of course, that's one of the problems I've had with the zone numbers. The zone numbers don't relate to anything that is geographically identifiable or relatable. It's really easy for bureaucracy. You know, they like that. And this is something that they're all kind of going with. I'm not a

fan of that. But those are the discussions and the differences I've had with the emergency management world here. And also, Bill, whatever happened to Obama phones? The homeless by choice woman I took in a few weeks ago got one a couple of days after she left. I gave it to her when she returned for a few items I bought her. All the best, Butch and Gold Hill. I don't know what the status is of that. You make me look it up and I'll do my best on that Butch, okay? The Reverend David writes me this morning, hey Bill, you were talking about the Godfather yesterday.

Being of Sicilian descent, I never understood why Italians were so upset about the Godfather yesterday. Being of Sicilian descent, I never understood why Italians were so upset about the making of the Godfather movie. It's about Sicilians, not Italians. Corleone is in Sicily, not Italy. Besides that, Italians don't like Sicilians and Sicilians don't like Italians. Sicily was at one time an independent kingdom, but the meddling of the Pope, it was run by the English, French and Germans and everyone else, and now under the rule of those Italians. Dave. Hey Dave, I appreciate you writing about that. Well, you see, Sicilians and Italians may think they're different, right? And they are different. I'm not saying it's one of the same different regions and definitely different culture, but I think in

most Americans' minds it's one and the same. It's kind of the same. That's wrong, I get it, but I think that's the reality and that could be why. I'm Bill London, KMED News. It's 838. We have Todd in Central Point. Hey Todd, you know what happened to the Obama phones? Go ahead, let me know. Apparently, they're still active. So, a quick story. So, I was down in Palm Springs, and I like going through the thrift stores down there there and there was this suspicious little box in the display. I asked the girl to come over and open it up and she opens it up for me, a pristine,

never used Obama phone. She says, oh, that's an Obama phone. Oh wait, that's not what they called them anymore. Well, how do you know it's an Obama phone though? Is there a specific look to it or a model or what? Does it have the swoosh on it? What is it? So if you go online and it had all the information in the box, it's assurance wireless and anybody

can look that up. And it was very educational. I looked it up online and what the paperwork said. If you're on food stamps, if you're under a certain income level, you can go on and apply. And there's a whole process. You give you part of your Social Security number. Then they verify in the federal government whether or not you're entitled to it. And of course, that came into being during Obama's administration. And it's about, is it an income-based program then? I'm sorry to sound so ignorant about this, I never really looked deeply into it. I didn't think Oregon had them. We were told for

a while Oregon did not have them, so we apparently do. It's federal. It's federal. Federal, okay. Yeah, so anybody can look it up. Assurance, wireless, and if you're on food stamps, if you're in public housing, I mean, it's such a broad net. Boy, that qualifies a whole ton of people for a free cell phone, huh? Yeah, I haven't tried to activate it yet. As soon as you turn it on, then it asks for all sorts of information and all like that. I never wanted to do that. But I, so if you need one, I paid eight bucks for it. I'll put it up for auction. Eight bucks? Gosh, I might buy it just to have it for a display piece if nothing else.

How about that? You mind? I'll get it to you. Okay. I'll get it to you. Hey, well thanks for letting me know, Todd. All right, so assurance wireless. That's the, you know, of all the government grift and the various graft and programs and everything else, I never really looked all that deeply into it. It's kind of like, okay, whatever. All right, fine. Here we go.

Well, that shows that you're normal and you don't identify as a turp. Okay. Now, the other thing I was going to ask you then, when you have the Obama phone, does it have like a lot of data so that you can do all of the surfing of the internet and you can go on all the porn sites and everything else, like a good little socialist or what? Unlimited. And you can go on all the porn sites and everything else, like a good little socialist or what? Unlimited. Unlimited? Great. Great. What could go wrong? All right. Good to know. You know, why am I bothering paying? I don't know why I'm bothering paying, all right? Yeah, we'll talk to you later.

Okay. This hour of the Bill Meyers show is sponsored by Fontana Roofing. For roofing gutters and sheet metal services, visit FontanaRoofingServices.com. Hi, I'm Steve Potter, Body Shop Manager of Lithia Body and Paint, and I'm on 106.7 KMED. Hey, it's 8.56. We do have a couple of minutes left here before Mark V. Van Camp and Robbins are going to get rolling in 99.3, the jukebox. I was checking the price this morning of, I just can't believe that I'm seeing these prices on gold and silver. Mr. Silver has joined the party here and they're just partying in the aisles at about $33.50 an ounce. Gold at one point I think hit $30.85 yesterday, $3,000,

and today but that was a peak and then a quick pullback here, but we're still above 3000. We are closing above 3000. That is what has been going on with gold actually fulfilling its thousands worth of years of preserving wealth and being a store of value. And I think that Mr. Gold is looking at this situation right now and going, oh boy, I know Martin Armstrong is saying that war, you know, Armstrong economics, the guy that has Socrates, remember the

guy I interviewed a few months ago here that the computer, he says the computer is screaming war and big-time war. Maybe that's what's driving this. I noticed that Europe is shipping gold into the country right now for storage. Maybe they figured we're going to be okay. I guess maybe they want that war in Ukraine. I don't know. But if you are looking, if you have scrap gold right now, I was talking with Mark Huddo over at J. Austin and Company, gold and silver buyers in Ashland and Grants Pass, by the way 163232 Ashland Street 6th and G in downtown Grants Pass and he says it's just insane what has been going on people are looking at $3,031 an ounce gold and they're they're going everywhere there is no better time for

you to go through what you got going on there and find your scrap gold and he'll buy the scrap gold give you a fair price for it. There are gemstones in it, no problem. He'll buy that too. A lot of other places will not do it, but he will. And maybe if you're like me, and I know I am, I'm looking at $3,000 gold and it's telling me, maybe I don't have enough gold.

You know, that's kind of how I think. No matter how you're looking on either side of this equation, get in touch with Jay Austin, great sponsors and big supporters of Talk Radio. 6th and G in downtown Grants Pass, 1632 Ashland Street in Ashland. Drop by there today and we will have a good, good conversation. I think you'll like the experience. Okay?

All right. We're going to break here for news and then we're going to take off for the rest of Wheels Up Wednesday. I'll get podcasts up here. By the way, the problems we're having on KMED.com, hopefully they will be fixed to sometime today, some certificate thing. And so it says the, you know, the website is unsafe or something like that. We're looking into that and hopefully we'll get it back in live.

And we'll talk more about that tomorrow on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. OK, be well.