Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 03-27-25_THURSDAY _8AM

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

Tom Giovanni, president of Institute for Policy Innovation, and he thinks that the Oregon push for higher road taxes from the folks needs to go in a totally different direction, and we talk about that and there are open phones on Conspiracy T Thursday

The Bill Myers 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. It's 11 minutes after 8. By the way, we will have some open phones on Conspiracy Theory Thursday. It's going to be the last half hour of the show. So believe me, if you want to talk on Conspiracy Theory Thursday, we'll give you a bite. Give me just a few more minutes, okay?

One of the bring on, Tom Giovanetti. He is the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation. It's IPI.org. It's a think tank over in Texas, in the free state of Texas. And Tom, first off, welcome to the program. Great to have you back. It's been a while. Good to have you. Thanks so much. Good morning. Hey, Tom, wanted to talk about something that you wrote about and has to do with how to pay for the roads. And there was a hearing in the federal government the other day about, you know, how to pay for this in the trucking industry. We got to promote the trucking industry. We certainly want to talk a bit about that. But it's also connected with the arguments and the concerns that are happening here in the state of Oregon. Because Oregon wants to chip cars and expand the per-mile charges for electric cars.

And because gas tax is not being charged by them right now, essentially the electric vehicles, the politically favored vehicles, are freeloaders on the road system right now. They pay a little bit more in the registration fee, a little bit more, but not nearly what it takes. And they're also making a claim, which I think is interesting, and we don't have to talk about that right now, but maybe a little bit later after you give me your spiel. But they say that trucks pay too much to run, commercial trucks pay too much to run in the state of Oregon, and that we need to be more equitable. So just keep that in mind as we go through this, all right? And give us your take though on what happened with the feds and then we'll bring it over to California,

if you don't mind. It's an interesting policy bite you put out. Sure. Well, thank you. Well, look, there's a bigger, the bigger topic here is that the gas tax is just an increasingly failing way to pay for transportation. Again, because electric cars don't pay it and because fuel mileage keeps increasing in vehicles. So there's less and less gas tax coming in. There is a sense in which it is not equitable in the sense that electric cars don't really

pay their fair share. Electric cars tend to be a little bit heavier. So in theory, at least, they would put a little bit more stress on the road. Yeah, they put, you know, your typical electric car is about a thousand pounds more than the equivalent gas-powered car. Exactly. And, you know, we have yet to see, for instance, if tires are going to last as long on electric cars as they do on gas-powered cars because of that extra weight too. But so we've got to find some

way, we have to think long-term some way about about finding other ways to pay for transportation other than the gas tax. And so that's the environment here. Now for some people there's also a climate change angle to this discussion, which I reject. I think this discussion should be limited to simply what's the most sensible way to pay for roads. And charging vehicles by the miles that they drive is probably the most efficient and most logical way to do it because it essentially becomes a user fee. The more you drive, the more wear and tear you put on the roads, then the more you pay. The difficulty is that if you're gonna do it,

if you're gonna apply it to everybody, you've gotta do what you just described. You've gotta put chips in cars or other kinds of monitoring devices. And people just have a visceral reaction against that. Now, OREGO is- And I think they're right. Yeah, now I agree.

There is a visceral reaction to that. And you're right, because it is about tracking the populace yet another Tracking of the populace now there is a right now they talk about this in the Oregon story public-private partnership In other words some fascistic, you know form again called or ego or ego Which is the trial that they have been testing here with the the dongle in the car, etc. etc. The problem with this here, Tom, and not only is it tracking you, but ultimately, the dongle in the car, in my opinion, is to be used to put congestion pricing, which is the

wet dream of the United Nations Sustainable Development friendly equitable community a community 15 minute prison cities or the 20 minute freedom cities as they're talking about in the Trump administration ultimately isn't that where they want to take it it's about managing your ability to travel via the cost what say you yeah look look I think once you allow the government to essentially track and monitor your vehicle, you're opening the door towards all kinds of hell, really. Okay. All right. So we agree on that much. Yeah. So I think that's why in my suggestion, it's not really fully fleshed out proposal,

but in my suggestion, I would say what we should do is we should charge a vehicle miles traveled tax, but only on commercial vehicles, not on privately owned vehicles. And part of the elegance of this is that commercial vehicles already track their mileage and already report it to the government. And they report it for tax purposes too, from what I understand. They do it for tax purposes and they also do it for their own internal accounting purposes, just for depreciation and vehicle maintenance and all of that. So that data is already being gathered and again, in many cases, as you say, it's already

being reported to the government on taxes. So you could implement a commercial vehicle miles traveled tax very easily and simply with with little disturbance to your average driver and with little disturbance frankly to commercial companies to commercial vehicles. How is it how is the way how are they how are the charges that are paid in Oregon right now do you know how do truckers pay that is that you know still at the fuel tax or is it something else that is done? I don't know Oregon specific but we could certainly look into that. But you

mentioned earlier this thing that there's an idea that trucks are paying too much in Oregon. Yes that was another story they're saying that there's not enough equity between that commercial trucks are paying more than private motorists. And that's what they're claiming. They're using the term equity was what I was reading in some of the news coverage of this. And the term equity makes me very suspicious because it's hard for me to imagine every study that's ever been done on this topic by either government studies or privately funded studies suggest that that that trucks, particularly heavy trucks, don't pay anywhere near enough of a share for the

weight for the stress that they put on roads. And this is not a criticism of trucks, this is just the physical reality, something that weighs 45, 85,000 pounds, whatever the case might be, how many trailers. That's where the damage really comes from the roads. That's exactly right. All those grooves you see cut in Interstate 5 or those little saggy parts of the interstate right now aren't caused by people driving their Ford Focus, right? No, that's exactly right. And as I said in my piece, I have nothing against the trucking industry.

I worked my way through college and grad school working in the trucking industry. I mean, the trucking industry is very, very important. But if we're trying to find ways to more properly allocate the cost of building and maintaining our roads, trucks and commercial vehicles is the logical place to start. And the problem is that if you don't exempt just regular old privately owned cars, if you don't exempt just individuals,

you will have an enormous political problem getting this through. And so that's why I think there should really be a bright line there. I don't think they should, I think essentially what we should do Is we should get we should give passenger cars a pass We should give them the freebie on our roads and we should limit the tax to commercial vehicles So you're using it for business. You're actually using the roads then for your fund and profit Then you're going to pay the majority cost then of doing this. Yeah, if it's a commercial vehicle, I mean if you've got an air conditioning maintenance company and you've got a fleet of 12 vans or

whatever that are out there on the roads all day long, you would pay a vehicle mile travel tax. If you're driving a 90,000 pound truck, you would pay the vehicle tax. But if you're hopping in your car to commute back and forth to work or to the grocery store, you would not. And yeah, that violates the principle of equity, but it is a... I don't think equity is a principle. I think the real principle should be who is putting the wear and tear on the road, and they should be the ones who carry the primary burden for paying for it. And we don't want our privacy invaded as individuals. And there is no invasion of privacy if you limit it to commercial vehicles. The one thing I did like about the fuel tax here, Tom, Tom Giovanetti,

Giovanetti once again from the Institute for Policy Innovation, IPI.org, he's with me today. The one thing I did like about the fuel tax, even though I don't like paying it like I don't like paying any tax there, at least it is anonymous. It truly is. All it matters is I buy the gallon of gasoline or diesel, boom, and it sends the 45 cents to the state and the Fed, that sort of thing. Because everything else which is being proposed at this point is a removal of anonymity.

I can't see any help that any way that he can't do that. It's a huge problem in our tax system in general. The requirement that our personal information be submitted or even submitted by someone else on our behalf and we have nothing to say about it. That is a huge problem and you're right that is an advantage of the gas tax. On the other hand, the gas tax violates what I think is the key principle of taxation. What's that? And that is it's a hidden tax. I mean, most people don't even know they pay it. They have no idea how much they pay in the course of a year. Taxes should be transparent. I mean, you should know what you're paying. You should know how much you're paying. Well, they do put stickers on the gas.

Well, they put stickers on the gas pump, right? We know that. Yeah, but yeah, but I mean, what would, do you think you could guess within 20% accuracy what you paid last year in gas taxes? I'd have to put some some figures. I'd have to run some figures through my head and then multiply, but I could probably come up with it, but it would take a little bit of work. Sure. Yeah. Well, you know, and I'm not going to go to that much trouble. I think you want, here's what you want to do, I think.

In a tax system, I think in general, you want taxes to be transparent. You want people to know what they're paying. I think you want them to not involve an invasion of privacy, to require as little personal information as possible, and you want to limit government's ability to continue to pile on taxes once you open the door to a particular tax. And so you're right. I think what would end up happening if cars had chips or dongles or whatever in them, I think pretty soon, if you drove a great big heavy truck

or whatever and you were only getting 15 miles a gallon, I think they'd eventually find a way to hit you with the punishment tax because you're not meeting mileage standards. Yeah. It's the climate goals. They would find all kinds of ways to do that. Yeah, the climate goals. The climate goals of the state of Oregon and California. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense though. The other thing with the dongle though is ultimately it gives birth to the congestion pricing, time of use, road thing. And that is now, I know that they've tried doing that in New York City, but that's just the beginning. They want to do it everywhere. The planners, and

by the way, you know Planning.org. Have you ever gone to Planning.org, the American Planners Association? Have you ever gone there? Yeah, it's pretty scary. You want to talk about the snake pit of communism and Marxism and collectivism there. I mean, these people are all true believers and they infest our counties and our cities and our states. This is where they suffer from, okay? They suck from the teeth of this. Congestion pricing is the only thing they know because they want to human engineer traffic via that kind of surveillance. That's exactly right.

What they want to do, what they want is control. What eventually would end up happening here is they'd be using it for traffic control, not just congestion pricing. But for instance, we don't want you to take that little small rural highway street. We want you on the great big freeway. So we're going to charge you less if you're on the freeway and more if you're on the rural road. But then what starts happening is you've got some roads that are federal, you've got some

roads that are state, you've got some roads that are county, and everybody's going to want their cut. And so there's going to be a continual push to raise the various charges because some little town somewhere that's got four roads they've got to maintain, they say, well, we want some of this too. And so you will be closely monitored. You'll be monitored what town you're driving through. Are you in the county or are you in the city? Or are you on a federal road or state road? Or are you on a big road or a small road? I mean this is all going to happen if you open

that door to tracking individual vehicles. Now I don't care if they want to do that to commercial vehicles, and it's not because I'm anti-business as we said already. They already do this. Okay? But I just, there's a terrible, terrible price to be paid for invasion of privacy here, and I just don't think we should even let that door crack open a little bit. Okay. Is there a way to do the weight-mile tax at the pump in a way that would be respectful of individual liberty and privacy rights.

In other words, just an inquiry of the mileage driven and only the mileage driven, not when and where the mileage is driven. What do you think about that? Well, look, I mean, everybody that comes up with a new idea always promises that it won't invade your privacy. They always make promises. Yeah, you're right. Right about promises. What you don't want to do is create the tool. You just don't want to create the tool. That's where the bright line should be drawn. I mean, I have literally read proposals by even in some cases conservative

organizations for a vehicle miles tax that would track individuals. And they literally will say things like, of course, you know, government could not be permitted to do this and so well, okay. Well, then of course government could not be permitted, but it'll do it anyway. I mean, yeah, yeah. I mean, the IRS, you know, the IRS is supposed to protect the privacy of your tax returns too, you know, but they don't. I mean, the Social Security number is not supposed to be used for an identification number, but it is. You don't want to crack the door open because government will come blasting through like a railroad engine. All right. What about the electric vehicle though? Because they are truly the transportation freeloaders du jour right now. They really are. About 5% of the vehicles in the state of Oregon,

and that's about it. But they're very heavy, and they tend to be owned by, generally, given how expensive they are, by wealthier people. And yet they're not paying a dime, really. What'd you do with them? Yeah, I think in most states, and I think you mentioned this in Oregon, I think in most states they've tried to compensate for that by charging a higher registration fee or something like that. But that's not a particularly accurate way to do that either. Now you should know I am not one of these conservatives who's against electric cars. I think if you want an electric car and if you want to pay for it and not get a government subsidy, I think that's great. And I'm with you on this, but see, that's the problem. Here, it is politically favored and the taxpayers have been writing hot checks to the electric

vehicle industry for years. OK? Musk and all the rest of them. You have the misfortune of living in a blue state and I have the privilege of living in a deep red state. Very good. That is the problem. a deep red state. So very good. That is the problem. All right. Tom, I appreciate the talk. I'm going to get this posted certainly. It's a policy bite was written by Tom Giovanetti over at Institute for Policy Innovation. He's the president over there. And policy bites, you talk about this called give no truck to trucking. And so you're actually okay with increasing fees on commercial vehicles, ones that are engaged in commerce, right? But you're saying it really should, really should be relaxing on people otherwise, huh? That's exactly right.

All right, Tom, good talk. I appreciate you being on. You take care. We'll have you back. Sure. Thanks a lot. And thanks again. 828 KMED 993 KBXG. You're on the Bill Meyers show and now it is open phone time on conspiracy theory Thursday, a lot of rabbit holes you can go down and we have time now. Hi, this is Cassie from Closar Drilling. Drill Baby Drill is a statement that might conjure

us. 3-3-7-7-0 K-M-E-D. And at this point, the show is not costing you 25% more than last week. President Trump has not, is not enforcing a tariff on talk radio. He hasn't been proposing that yet, and nobody in Congress has yet done this. I'll be curious how this works. I can't imagine that the car dealerships are real thrilled about this if all of a sudden foreign-built vehicles are costing 25% more. What do you think? Talk about that. There's another interesting little wrinkle I was reading on Ashland.News this morning that the Ashland School Board members have approved a resolution authorizing the school district to look...well, they want to do what's called a full faith and credit loan of a maximum

principal amount of $10 million. So they want to borrow $10 million, put it on a credit card essentially, for Ashland's school district to stabilize its budget. And the bonds will not generate obligations of the district, so the district wouldn't be required. In other words, taxpayers wouldn't be technically on the hook of it, and neither the authorization nor issuance of the bonds described in this notice will authorize the district to levy any taxes outside of the normal limitation.

So they want to rebalance their budget, and they want to borrow $10 million in order to rebalance their budget. I think that the way you balance your budget is that you close schools and you lay off teachers and you lean the district down to where it needs to be. Am I wrong about this? It's not that you borrow more money and then we'll try to balance the budget later on. If you have any thoughts on that, it'd be really interesting. I think I understand now why they're talking about building the affordable housing at Ashland High School because it would increase enrollment at the district. Well, if the district is shrinking, this means people are voting for

their feed or else demographic changes in Ashland. So just lean it down. Wouldn't you do that? Just lean out the expenses? Where am I wrong? But of course, I am just a simple man. Let me go to Tom. Tom's in Tallinn, just north of crazy town Ashland. How you doing, Tom? It's on your mind. Well, certainly a talk I was in roughly several times. So I didn't hear it all but although the talk with Tom Giovinetti about the paying for the roads, right?

Yeah. So if you probably look at the average, you said five percent of the road... Yeah, five percent of the vehicles registered in the state right now are the EVs. Okay, so who do you think owns them? Well, I'm going to suggest they're rich liberal Democrats who are out to save the planet. More often than not, not all, because sometimes you just buy a car because it's a good deal, right? In fact, Tesla's can be a screaming deal sometimes. It's like a fire sale. Oh yeah, that's a pun. Okay. Yeah, right. Well, anybody that has any brains

would not buy an electric car. You know, you're sitting on a 4,000 pound battery, so you got a huge electromagnetic field you're sitting on. You're basically driving around sitting on top of a battery. And then of course you got all the WiFi stuff. So I think eventually the electric car owners will pass on. So they'll fry their brain cells out? Is that your implication here? There's a lot more in the brain cells. I'm going to project they get cancer. They're

going to have, I know one person, and personally, hormonal disruption going on throughout the whole body and so forth. And so I think they will eventually die off. But I don't think any of these rich liberal Democrats will have any problems with the chip because government is God and if government wants to... Well, the chip for their car would be... No, no, no, hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm just going to jump through this here, cut to the chase. be the... no, no, no, hold on, hold on, hold on. I'm just gonna jump through this here, cut to the chase. Chipping the car is the ultimate for the Democrats. If government is their god, then the chip is a sacrament, kind of like the Holy Communion wafer. That's right, you're getting it. Okay, got it. Thank you, thank you very... you know, Tom, I'm giving you a real American salute. Thank you very much for that, all right? Talk to you a little later.

Let me go to Wild Sam and Steve. He wants to weigh in. Hello, Steve. Take it away, buddy. Take it away, buddy. Okay, so I'm thinking about this deal with the app that was used by the new Trump department. Yes, the Signals app here.

Yeah, Signals app. Okay, so Jim Comey sent some FBI agents in to interview Mike Flynn when the first Trump administration was going on. And he said he sent them in just to trick them. Now let me fast forward to this administration. The CIA has control over a lot of the computer systems in the country. And if you go John Snowden, is it John Snowden? Edward Snowden. Yeah, Edward Snowden. They have a lot of control. They can see a lot of things and do a lot

of things behind the scenes. In fact, I think they erased some files off some reporter's computer and was it Jim Rosen's? Anyway, so... I think that was Cheryl Atkinson, wasn't it? Okay, okay, yes, yes. So the CIA has a lot of behind-the-scenes capabilities that we don't know about. So is there a possibility you think that maybe they put Goldberg on this chat? Well, it's too big a coincidence that that happened. So they put this clickbait out there, this signals app, and they put it on everybody's computer. And of course, they can see what's going on. The CIA

can. So here's a perfect opportunity. All they have to do is just add Goldberg to the deal, to the chat. Because he still hasn't... the national security official still hasn't explained why Goldberg was in the contact to be added in the first place. Have you noticed that? CIA did it, they're not going to say anything. Now the one thing that might happen is if they get Elon Musk's little genius guys involved and they can go back and find out where that came from by tracing the keystrokes or whatever, maybe they could be found out. But according to what we know about the CIA and the capabilities that they have, that's all completely feasible. Okay, good conspiracy. Thanks for making it, Wild Sam and Steve. If you're on hold, I'll be right back with you. Give me a couple of minutes and we'll continue your

Conspiracy Theory Thursday calls on The Bill Meyer Show. The grilled super turkey sandwich is so popular it has its own. It's The Bill Meyer Show on KMED, Southern Oregon's place to talk. I do love Conspiracy Theory Thursday calls in the morning, 770-5633. We can go down any rabbit hole that you wish. And Rich, you wanted to bite on that gas tax, and I was talking to Tom, Joe, and Eddie about that. And the state of Oregon, of course, is just dying for a wait-and-mile tax, and they would like to do it with Oregon, of course course and we're not real fans of that.

But what are you thinking today? Well, my hiccup is like you take a truck that's got 250 gallons of fuel getting five miles per gallon, they don't stop and get fuel in the whole state of Oregon. Yeah, okay. Yeah, that's true. I got a Volkswagen Passat diesel, where I get 700 miles on a tank. We drive to Disneyland, I make it all the way on one tank, so I got to fill up once. But I actually drove like 1,500 miles in California. And so you end up paying...

See, that's the beauty, I suppose, of the weight mile tax, right? You're actually paying the state where you're doing the mileage. The challenge, though, to me at least, is that the only information that if you're going to do a weight mile tax, and I mean the only information is what state you're in. That's the way I would look at that, huh? Yeah, well, and then you got the PUC permit there at Ashland where the trucks have to stop and wait, but I don't think there's anything on 101 over at the coast that does that type of thing. So if you come in that way, you don't pay it.

All right, do you know how trucks pay their tax right now? Because we know that they always have that PUC exempt, which means they're obviously paying it not at the pump. They're paying it differently and it must be through just the road use fees. How do they do that? Is that like an assessment each year? Maybe someone in the trucking industry could tell me. I think they pay an assessment on the miles driven in the state is their idea because a lot of that when they have these bill of ladings they call it that right come across the Oregon border you know you're going to Lake Oswego versus Roseburg okay all right I hear Rich I

appreciate it so so you like the idea of getting away from the gas tax so that way everybody's paying for where they're actually doing the mileage and the road damage right well just like you said someone will get an electric card so So that way everybody's paying for where they're actually doing the mileage and the road damage, right? Well, just like you said someone will get an electric card so they don't have to pay anything I just be in the devil's advocate. I don't know that we're gonna solve Rich rich rich. I have the perfect solution here Remember everyone almost everybody has a smart meter and if you're a rich liberal, you probably have a smart meter, right? On your phone or on your house rather.

On your house rather, I should say. Right. So there you go. When you're paying, your smart meter detects your car, right? They're able to figure out what's actually being used or else maybe you should just have to just charge your electric car with a separate metered account. And then you pay your fuel tax that way. How about that? Yeah, you're right. I just think someone will always kink it. Yeah, you're probably

right about that. Thanks for the call, Rich. Have a great day. I appreciate the call. 7705633. Minor Dave here. Hello, Dave. You wanted to talk about Ashland and what they're talking about doing. $10 million borrowing $10 million, giving the district more time to rebalance the budget. And I don't think you can, I don't know, should we give them more time to balance the budget? I just said if you can't balance the budget and you're not getting more kids and you're not going to get more kids, I would just say you have to close some schools. They've done schools like that before. They closed Bristol School a number of years ago and then lay off teachers and just

make the expenses match the people there. What do you think? Well, if anybody knows about balancing a checkbook, you know that if you borrow money, that goes on the debtor's side as a debt. And then, I guess you could financially say, if we keep that money in the bank and we don't spend it, then it can be on the credit side. So that would even out. But realistically, that's just stretching it out before all of a sudden you have bankruptcy.

No, a government school can't go bankrupt, Minor Dave. Yeah, they can. They've done it in California. And remember what happens is they lose their pension. Their pension gets sucked out and they go on the federal pension insurance and maybe you get 20 or 30 percent on the dollar. Maybe so. All right, Dave. Appreciate the call, as always. Be well. By the way, I just wanted to let you know, if you didn't, I just want to make sure you know, could you let the other people know what happened that Joel ended up passing away over at the Iron Gate a couple of days ago? So why would he pass away from it? I mean he was like in his 70s.

Yeah, you know, he's not a young man. Yeah, we get that. Joel passed away. Let me just see, I wanted to find the text message that I got. It was Ron White that ended up telling me about that, and he's Joel's neighbor down at the Iron Gate. And he just passed away Tuesday evening and don't know about any cause. But at some point, Dave, you know how it goes. Something will get us all at some point, right? It's just the way it is, natural order of things. But I did want you to know. 845 and we have Conspiracy Theory Thursday calls

continuing on the Bill Meyer Show. 770-5633. You got a good one. Let's hear about that. Thanks, Jan. I'm out here on location looking at ARoofingServices.com. 847, I don't know if you're a buyer of gold at 3,000 or over 3,000. I haven't checked the price this morning, but I still am.

I'm kind of still a buyer. I was talking about this with Mark Huddo yesterday from J. Austin. He was in studio. It's good talk on where the markets were going. But the big people are buying gold, hand over fish, they don't care what they're paying. And so when you see the big people buying and we little people are selling, well, your mileage may vary. But if you need to liquidate for expenses, hey, sell it. But if you can, I'm just thinking it may be when I'm looking at the

big money buying, maybe it's time to stack a little bit more. Same with silver, but who knows? Your mileage may vary, but where you shouldn't vary is you always head to J. Austin and Company, gold and silver buyers in Ashland and Grants Pass, 1632 Ashland Street and 6th and G. If you are looking for a way to make up some quick cashier right now, yeah, I know, there's always some challenges. Maybe you've got your insurance renewal. Those kind of things, right? But scrap gold, scrap silver, all that stuff, take it to Jay Austin, Mark and Andrea and the crew will take care of

you. I think you'll enjoy that experience. 6th and G in downtown Grants Pass, 1632 Ashland Street, call 482-3715. Ashland, GrantsPass, jaustinbrokers.com and fortunereserve.com. I'm Barclay with American Rancher Garage and I'm on KMED. It's 11 before 9, 770-5633. I always enjoy conspiracy theory Thursday calls. Whatever you're thinking about here, we'll have some emails of the day too before we wrap for the day. Let me go to Jean. Hello Jean, you have been very patiently hanging on and you wanted to talk about the tariffs that are going to be imposed here a little bit. What are you thinking? Yes, tariffs in general. In February I checked with a tire dealer locally. I'm

replacing tires on a motorhome, six tires. Oh boy, that's expensive, isn't it? Yeah, and he gave me the prices printouts of the lowest and then the second one up is the one I chose. Right. And I had my printout and the cost for all six tires was $1,738 eight cents installed. So then it was about three weeks later I called and I said I was ready. I asked about the tires and I was going to come in and have them put on. He had those in stock at the time and then he told me that the tires was going to cost two thousand five hundred and fifty dollars. Holy Oh, wait a minute. You went from like a little over a thousand to over two thousand, right?

$1,738 to $2,550. Okay, so $1,700 to $2,500, right? Yep. Wow. And so I said, well, I saw you and I have the printout that you stated $1,738.98 and he said, well, you know the tariffs and everything. I didn't realize. So did foreign, where did the tires come from? Do you know? Did he say? Well, they're in stock. So what we're going to have happen, the one thing he did do is he did say, if you have the printout with the quoted price, we'll give that price to you.

So thankfully, I got them for the first quoted price. But what is happening is that they have these items in stock and we're paying tariffs on them and they haven't come over with a tariff charge on them. You know, Jean, I know that sounds kind of... Someone needs to be investigating that. Well, that sounds hinky at first, but here is... I'm going to use the example, and this is going to be a very inelegant explanation, okay? So bear with me. I'm just doing this on the fly, kind of a spitballing kind of thing. You know when the gasoline prices go up,

gas prices go up, and even though the gasoline in the tank at the gas station has not just magically been replaced with new gas, but they start charging more for it at that point? I totally understand, but you have tankers coming in weekly or more often than that to refill those gas tanks. Well, the principle, as it has been explained to me, is that whatever the new price is going to be, everything has to be that price because you have to make up enough cash out of your sale of the cheaper gas to be able to buy the more expensive gas, the wholesale cost that you're going to have to do that and I'm wondering if that's

what the tire dealer is doing also, realizing that to replace that $1,700 tire we're going to have to start charging $2,500 for these even though we paid them at the $1,700 rate because to get more tires, we need that cash in the register to be able to buy it. You see what I'm getting at? I understand that, but we're still getting ripped off. You're feeling hosed in other words. Is that what's happening, Jean?

You're feeling hosed? Yeah, it's still money going into their business that they didn't actually pay for. So at the time, they're going to pay taxes on tires that come in and they'll keep charging that higher tax. But thank you. I just wanted to let you know that. Yeah, Jean, I appreciate you calling and with your experience too, because I have a feeling we're going to hear a few more of these. Okay. I really respect the business for actually going with the price that they first quoted

me because I had the printout. All right. Thanks. Thanks for the call there. All righty. Bye bye. So that's Jane's take on tariffs. Boy, that's big.

That's real money. 1700 to 20 something. All right. I don't know if we, we don't really have any time for more. That's real money. $1,700 to $20 something. All right. I don't know if we don't really have any time for more. Well, maybe if there's a quick call, we can probably do something. I wanted to do some emails of the day. Emails of the day are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson in Central Point Family Dentistry. They're on Freeman Way in Central Point, right next to the Mazatlán Mexican Restaurant.

And if you need some specialized toothbrushes and water picks, I bought a water pick from him, they have a kiosk there that is for these kind of specialty items but he'll sell them to you at no extra charge. It's just his wholesale cost and you get it, he wants to make sure people stay healthy in their teeth and keep their teeth from becoming teeth. Teeth is what happens when your teeth have been pulled and then you have teeth left over, right? I'm going to give an email of the day to Judy Beals. Judy wrote me yesterday and I was kind of, you know, sometimes when you spitball on talk

radio you say something which is, like I had mentioned a moment ago, rather inelegant. And this is what she had to say. Judy Beals writes from Gold Hill, Bill, your comment regarding people who don't have homeowners insurance, homeowners insurance, or idiots, was painting with a broad brush and doesn't sit well with those of us rural folks who have had our long-time insurance canceled because in our case we won't destroy or move long-standing outbuildings. And then you didn't get it when the fellow called in soon after and told you that some people in Jacksonville couldn't get insurance. Idiocy isn't always as cut and dried as you think. Judy, you are absolutely right and I was being inelegant. I wasn't trying to paint the whole thing. This was what I was thinking when I said that.

I'm gonna go a Biden moment. No, in all seriousness, what happened is that there are people I know who have very valuable homes and they cheap out and don't want to have insurance. Well, I don't have a mortgage on it. I don't need to. And the thing is, I think those people are foolish in order to do that because the whole purpose of insurance is to insure against what you can't afford to lose or the loss you can't afford. And there are many people who go bare once they don't have a mortgage. I don't think it's very wise and I think wise is a way to put it. I wasn't speaking about people who

intentionally had it canceled, okay? And I understand that there is a lot of expense to it. But, boy, you know, when it comes to liability, slip and falls on your property, it's better to have it than to not. I know that you have to have it when there is a mortgage and then there are people that find themselves in trouble. And the challenge I have with people that want to have a nice house and then don't want to insure something to it, and then something bad happens, and then they're kind of going, well, what's FEMA going to do to make me whole?

And I'm thinking, okay, what did you do to try to help make yourself whole too? That's all I was getting at, okay? And so apologies for being a little inelegant. All right, all right. There we go. Pat McSeths, squatter solution, tongue-in-cheek. Oh, swap the squatters. Oh, like the the Joe Paggs deal, right? We'll have more emails of the day tomorrow. Email Bill at BillMeyersShow.com. I'll grab another call, see if we can swing one

here before we take off. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Doug in Rogue River. Who's this again? Doug in Rogue River. Oh, hey, Doug. We got about a minute. Can you make a good point on conspiracy theory Thursday? In two sentences, about Jean and her tire situation, I think it might help put it in perspective if she was told she couldn't sell her house for any more than she paid for it. Because you always sell a house, hopefully you have some equity there. You can't sell for what

you bought it for, it wouldn't be fair. So the tire thing, I think, is the same kind of thing. You got to pay what the dealer's replacement cost is. You hit the nail on the head, Bill. Thanks. Yeah. Okay. Well, that's what I was trying to do. And I know it doesn't make people feel good when they see that, but if the wholesale cost of that tire just went up 25% or 50% because of a tariff, the money has to come from someplace. Otherwise, they're going to have to borrow in order to get new inventory. So that is part of it. And nobody's happy about it. Nobody's happy. Just nailed it. Yep. And nobody's happy about it, right? Nobody's happy.

Just the way it goes. But I'll happily talk more about the issues tomorrow with you. Email Bill at BillMeyersShow.com. We'll see you then. Is your health care important to you? Well, Congressman Cliff Bent said, screw your health care. To over 1.4 million