Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-17-26_FRIDAY_8AM

Episode Date: April 18, 2026

Economist Dr. Eric Fruits talks about Portland, the perverse political incentives at the root of its long decay into despair. Open phones, D62 quiz wraps the show.

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausurrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. Proud to bring back one of the greater thinkers in the state of Oregon, and that would be Professor Eric Fruits. Dr. Fruits is an Oregon-based economist, and gosh darn it, he's just good when it comes to economic issues

and where economics meets politics. Would that be a good descriptor of where we find ourselves on your latest post on Substack, Eric? Welcome back to the show. Hey, great to be back. Thanks, Bill. All right. You have a piece out on your substack,

and I love the name of your substack, which is the Oregon Ledger. I was doing a speech a few weeks ago, talking about where people should be getting their news these days. And a lot of the mainstream, you're just not getting a lot of that. If you want to find out what's going on, you have to go to the Substack platform. and you decided to move most of your writing over there.

Was it for that same reason? What's the story? Yeah, and the substack is just a fantastic platform. It probably took me 10 minutes to set the whole thing up. And, you know, it's so much easier than a blog or anything else. And anyone can sign up. It's free. I have no intention of charging for it in near future.

So it's about one post a week, so you won't get spammed. and I try to do stuff that's a little bit more wonky because there's a lot of other stuff that's more polemic, really good stuff, but I wanted to see if I could drill down into the numbers a little bit more. All right. Now, I was just pre-promoting it, and we think about how Portland looks today and how politics is connected with the decay, the economic and moral decay of the city. and you wrote a very thought-provoking piece and it's called Where Are All the Normies? And you're discussing, well, essentially, this is by design. And I would be willing to bet a lot of people would think,

huh, this is by design, you know, what, Portland actually is intentionally designed to be a crap hole, so to speak? I mean, what? Where do you start on something like that? Because Portland wants, and still has sections of beauty. in it, but overall, man, I'll tell you, it's starting to get those stinky lines rising above it, like in the cartoons. Well, I see what you're saying.

Yeah, based on an article I read years ago, and it just popped to my head, and it struck me. It's called the Curly Effect. It's named after a mayor of Boston. His name was Curly. The Curly Effect. The Curly Effect. That is want to make sure people can hear that.

All right. And what this guy did was he was the mayor for four terms, and he had an intentional process of essentially driving out the Anglo-Saxon residents in order to attract or benefit the Irish Catholic people who are as big supporters. And if you look around, you can see this curly effect everywhere, where once politicians get in and they're entrenched, not only do they want to attract more people to them, their side to vote for them. They want to get rid of the people who would vote against them. And if you start looking at the policies in Portland and Oregon more broadly, it seems like an intentional effort to drive out the high-income earners. So if you walk around downtown and you see all the homeless people, you say, well, gosh, don't the politicians see the homeless people like I do, or you see the high tax rates and people are moving out? You say, don't the politicians understand

that they're driving people out of the city? And the thing is the politicians, believe it or not, are smart. do see that. And they know it. And they like it. That's the worst part. They like it because they're driving out the very people who would vote against them. They're driving out the middle class people. They're driving out the right of center and Republican people. What really struck me when I was researching this was in 2006 Republicans were 20 percent of registered voters in Moltenhamie County. Today, it's less than 10 percent. And sure, the parties changed. But part of it is those moderate and right of center people have decided to move on to greener pastures. They have voted with their feet, so to speak.

They voted with their feet, and what that does, voting with your feet in that way, a lot of people who voted the ballot box, it's now dominated, you know, by the left. You know, one of the things that really hit me is in Portland, we went to this new ranked choice voting system, which people say, oh, it brings in more moderate people. Well, we have one third of the city council are proud socialists. They are members of the Democratic Socialists of America. They are actually open about it. They're essentially what, maybe Mom Donnies without the Islam or some of them Islamic too.

I wouldn't be surprised. Well, let's just say that they are out and proud socialists. And if you just look at the raw numbers, right, 10% of the population is Republicans. You would think there would be at least one Republican on city council. I mean, sure, it's a super minority, but there'd be at least one. And you've got now a third of the council is Democratic Socialists. And they have those same policies where they are systematically trying to drive the wealthy and the business owners out of the city, because those are the people who would vote them out of office if there were more of them.

And who would finance other people to help get them out of office, too, I would imagine. So you get it filled with a lot of grievance-filled poor people, and that's considered a win politically, from what I understand, in your piece. Well, that's right. And then you bring in the nonprofit industrial complex. And then you get this kind of lather, rinse, repeat process where the governments give the money to the nonprofits, and the nonprofits, you know, use that money to reelect those people and, more importantly, also use their supporters and their staff to campaign for those people. And so then you get this cycle of nonprofits and politicians, right? You know, you've got a third of the city council is socialist,

but you've probably got more than half of city council has been involved at some point substantially in the nonprofit industrial. complex. And I would imagine many of them, for example, would come to mind, would be the homeless industrial complex, those servicing and bringing the needles, the boxes of needles, and the other people bringing the food, and other people, in other words, enabling the pathologies that is helping decay. Portman's civilization. And again, I think some of them see that as a good thing, because if the problems go away, then they don't have a reason to exist, right? If you didn't have homeless people. You wouldn't have the homeless industrial complex. And so they really have a

diminished incentive to reduce homelessness, because if they did that, they would work themselves out of a job. And, you know, if you can keep the gravy train running by electing your own people on the council, and then they can write the checks to your old organization, and then that organization and get you reelected. It's just a recipe for, you know, for perpetual rule. Dr. Eric Fruits with me, and we're talking about his latest substack. He's an economist, and it's where are all the normies? How a century-old political playbook, and we're talking about the curly effect,

is now really taking over Portland. You know, I can't help but see that, to a certain extent, even statewide policy has. has some basis or some grounding in the curly effect, too. And I'm thinking about land use policy. Is that anything you've given some thought to, you know, the way we work it? You think about that, or you wind back the clock, what, maybe 12, 15 years ago, we had an evenly divided legislature, you know, roughly half Republican, half Democratic. It's one of the best sessions ever because they had to actually work together. And now, just a few years later,

you have Republicans are pretty much in a supermind already. And again, the party may have changed. But also part of it also is driving out all the medium-sized businesses, driving out the Republican and moderate voters. People who are independent or wishing to be independent of the Borg, so to speak, for lack of a better term. Right. And then it works its way into other things, like civil society, like members of, like the city club and so forth, they're serving on a commission or a board. In the old days,

you know, you would have the business community actively involved in serving on commissions and boards and involved in civil society, but now those businesses are gone. Those middle managers who did that volunteer work are gone, and now you look at those boards, commissions, and organizations, and they're just dominated by either public employees

or nonprofit members. And so it's really just reached out everywhere. It's not just in Portland. You're right. It's across the state. Well, I wanted to flesh out my thought about this. I'm going to give you an example. I don't know if you've kept up with a controversy we have here in southern Oregon,

in which a developer is wishing to put a large apartment complex, a number of three-story buildings, on the base of Roxanne Peak here in Medford. Very nice eastside neighborhoods. and everybody up there owns their homes for the most part. But state land use policy, I think, is part of this curly effect because state land use policy and, of course, executive orders and climate-friendly equitable community orders and all of this seem to be mandating that you can have your nice peaceful east side neighborhood

or your nice single-family home neighborhood, and we have to be able to just plant a whole bunch of apartment complexes. right in the middle of it because, well, we have to have rental equity. You know, after all, doctor, is that kind of where you're going to, to an extent? I mean, yeah, I mean, I lived in England back in the 80s at the end of Thatcher's era, and Thatcher had this, it's kind of reverse curly effect. She had this program to get people out of public housing and to become homeowners because she thought that getting more homeowners would actually get more members of the

conservative party, right? Right. And so now just look at that in Oregon, home ownership is associated with people who tend to be more conservative. Or else is homeownership white supremacy, you know, the way they're looking at in the DEI world? It could be, right? And so what you really want to make it hard to own a home because those homeowners, you know, the one reason why homeowners become much more conservative is they get the property tax bill. Right. Once you get that priority tax, though, you say, holy cow, I have to work an entire month just to pay this. And all of a sudden you start changing your attitude towards assets. And so there is, I think, intentional, right? It's been part of the land use plan since the 70s to get more people into stack and pack housing and to reduce the number of people in single family homes. And to increase the number of people who well would favor the nonprofit industrial complex, the homeless industrial complex, the food stamp industrial complex, the sure, you know, I'm going to use the, the siren language of the bureaucrat, the services and the resources industrial complex. You know how it gets talked about within. Oh, yeah.

Investments and services. Investments and services. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay. But it's not an investment because an investment usually generates a return. It's just pure spending. It's pure spending. And it's designed to make, especially lower income people, dependent on the state and make it harder for them to get out of poverty.

Because you have this thing, it's called the benefits clip, right? If you make more than a certain amount of money, all of a sudden you lose your Medicaid, you lose your food stamps. You know, you lose your rental vouchers. And so you have a, if you're poor, you kind of have an incentive to stay poor. Oh, yeah, you have a perverse incentive to remain a loser, right? You know, essentially, economic loser. Essentially, you either have to, because if you're low income, right, you have to either be low income or you have to win the lottery, so you leapfrog over that benefit clip. And you can afford to pay more for housing and for food and all that other stuff.

And so for so many people, the system is emiserated to keep them poor and to keep them dependent. And when you're dependent, you've got a nice funnel of people who can keep you in office if you promise to keep those benefits going. Yeah, we're talking about the curly effect. Doctor, can you hang on just a moment? I want to do another quick segment and take some calls. I think people want to ask you questions about this. You are stirring the imagination. Where are all the normies and the curly effect?

We'll continue with Dr. Fruits next on the Bill Meyer show. Don't Portland Southern Oregon. What works for Portland politicians doesn't work here, and I won't let them force it on us. I'm Duane Yunker, your Oregon State representative from Josephine County in Grants Pass. In Salem, Southern Oregon is a minority, and that's why my most important job I have isn't passing more mandates. It's being a strong voice, pumping the brakes on bad legislation. I help leave the fight to protect your right to vote on the gas tax, because politicians shouldn't raise your cost of living without your consent.

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And we've been talking about the curly effect coming from Portland, essentially. But you can see it at work in the entire state here, Doctor. And some people want to talk with you about that. It's almost like a positive feedback loop for, or, I guess, in crappification of a state or of an area? Would that be a fair way of looking at it? Yes. I'm glad you used the preferred term rather than the one that's probably not usable over the air.

Yeah, yeah, I know. In crapification, it stirs the imagination, all right? So let me go to Scott. Scott, you're on with Dr. Fruits. Go ahead. Way in on this, please. Hey, Bill. Oh, hey, doctor, my uncle was an economic, he was a dean, actually, of economics.

But anyway, in Eagle Point, we had a situation where a developer wanted to develop a bunch of stuff on our property. And we just say, hey, we need to put a moratorium on building and just simply do an economic, or not economic, but a environmental impact on it. And it worked. So I don't know why anybody's bitching about anything. Just go do it. Okay, what was that now? You don't want now?

I don't think we should bitch about it. My dad always said if you don't like something, try to fix it. So go put it in the environmental impact statement request. Oh, in other words, you're saying use the tools to, you're talking about fighting development then, right? Well, that part. I mean, if you don't like it, if you're in the neighborhood and you don't want to look at a three-story apartment complex, do something about it. I frankly, Oh, no, I assure you they have, I think you may be misunderstanding.

They did try to do something about it in the city. They did. And the city, by the way, ran the clock out on the 120-day appeal process, and then now it's in circuit court. So, doctor, I'm sorry about that. That's what we were talking about that, development. There's a funny story about that. I actually worked on a case years ago. It resulted at the time it was the largest civil court decision against.

of an Oregon city in history. And it was out in Forest Grove and someone wanted to put in a new subdivision. And it turns out that the mayor himself was opposed to it and personally intervened in trying to stop it because he was agreed that that development would ruin his views of the hills. So, I mean, and that's part of this, the problem with this whole curly effect thing is that once these politicians get in office and have real power, you know, not only are they trying to drive people out, they're trying to stifle development. Sometimes it's just because of their own personal feelings and their own personal preferences rather

than looking out for the voters or the people who elected them. Yeah, well, I get that. Of course, the challenges we're running in with this particular neighborhood, you have a stable, single-family home neighborhood that state policy demands that you, you know, essentially drop in a whole bunch of renters. isn't it? And that seems to be state policy, right? But that, let's be honest, renters will tend to be more demanding of services overall over the long term and probably less resistant to tax hikes and various other things. Could you agree on that? That kind of push.

One of the reasons why we have the property, the tax deduction for mortgage interest is because it was a policy decision decades ago that homeownership was important because it brought stability to neighborhoods and to cities, that when you had people who were living there for a long period time, there was more stability, you would have less crime, you'd have people more invested in their community. And then when you have a community that's full of renters who will be here for a year or two and then move out, they often don't have that same commitment to the community that long-term owners do. Yeah, but official state policy essentially is to create more rental, you know, more

renting rather than more home ownership, which would seem to be designed to create more ultimate dependency. This is the curly effect once again. Yes, that's right. That's right. Yeah, I think the big part of it is to make you not just dependent on that rental housing, possibly subsidized, but also then to make you dependent on public transit, to make you dependent on those other so-called services that the city provide. You know, the one that gets me is in Moulton and McKinney. We have this program called Preschool for All, right? Where it's clear, the evidence is clear.

It's driving wealthy people and high-income earners out of the city. And you think about less than 2% of the population is preschool age. The people who benefit from this program is minuscule. But the pain is spread across everyone. And again, it seems to be almost driven. It's driven to make the preschool-age families dependent on the state, and it's designed to drive the higher-income earners out of Portland. And they're gone.

They're never going to come back. That's the problem. Once you're gone, you're not going to look back and say, oh, you know, you just can't trust them anymore. Well, look what happened here in Southern Oregon. You're well familiar with Kivas Borsma pulling up roots from Southern Oregon. with Dutch pros in moving to Arizona. Same thing. Yeah, and the thing is it doesn't even have to be emotional.

All you have to do is look at the spreadsheets, right? You can make that decision in about a minute. If you look at the spreadsheets and you say, if I move to Arizona, I'm going to save my employees. Are you going to save thousands of dollars a year each? Our company is going to save thousands, maybe millions of dollars. And that's a real compelling argument, especially if you have investors that want you to go out there and make money.

Dr. Eric Fruits with me. He's an economist. Wild Sam and Steve is here. Steve, good to have you on. A question or comment for the doctor. Well, I have a comment, I guess. This thing that you're talking about is more like an amoeba. If you know what an amoeba is, it's an infection you can get from swimming. Get an amoeba into your nasal cavity, and the amoeba starts eating into your brain. brain, and eventually the amoeba gets into your brain, and it keeps multiplying until your brain no longer functions. And what happens is the person dies. Well, in government, what happens is the government can no longer support all the programs and peoples. And I don't know what happens

at that point in time. Oregon is hoping that we'll get a Democrat in as president and that the federal government will come and save them. So they'll just get the amoeba infection. into the federal government. We've got it in California and Montana. It's self-fulfilling failure. Yeah. Thank you for the call there, Steve. What did you think about Steve's take on that one? And where would you say the infection is level? What's the grade, the amoeba, the curly effect amoeba, if you want to interpret that here, doctor? Okay. If you want to talk about it in terms of an amoeba and an infection, I would say that at this point, We've got an infection.

We're running a pretty high fever. The amoeba is creeping toward our brain that hasn't quite gotten there yet. And that's one of the things I have to caution people. I especially hear this among my Republican friends. Well, that's okay. We just need to hit bottom. And once we hit bottom, then we can bounce back up. I've been hearing that for years.

And I've also been hearing many politicians in the Republican Party. We hit bottom. And then people will realize the error of their voting. ways and they will turn to Republicans. And I've never seen any evidence of that happening of you. Well, the problem is it takes about 30 to 40 years to hit bottom and maybe we are halfway in that cycle. Oh, boy. We still have another 15, 20 years ago before we would actually truly hit bottom. And, you know, that's, I guess, the good news. The bad news is that's a really long and painful ride to be on. And you don't want to take that ride. And so you've got to figure out a way,

You know, if you got that amoeba, you've got to figure out a way to get rid of the amoeba and get rid of the infection. You know, and you can look at the curly effect in the government school system, K-122. Governor K-12 talks about the school reforms on science of learning and science of reading, and it's going to take 12 to 15 years. Wait a minute. If your kids going into K-12, he or she doesn't have 12 to 15 years to wait. Isn't that interesting? No, that's right. That's right.

And, you know, that's a whole other topic to talk about because if you look in Oregon and especially in the Portland region, the number of people, kids, under the age of 18, is declining. I mean, it's been negative for quite a few years. So we are losing children in the state. And that's going to ripple through and have so many impacts on things like schools because school funding is tied to enrollment. And so you're going to, we are going to have to close a lot of schools in the state of Oregon. And I think the problem is if you've ever had to deal with, like, school closures, it is one of the most ugly political battles you have ever seen. I think it's the ugliest battles you will ever see is when you have to talk about closing schools because no, everyone says schools need to be closed, but not theirs. Right.

And so that's, that's the big problem. And it's also symptomatic of a bigger problem in Oregon is that we just are not attracting young, upwardly mobile people, right? People who want to or have families are not coming to Oregon anymore. And by the way, having children, the having of children is also a signal that you have trust in the society that is worthwhile and a great environment to bring your child into. Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, I moved to Oregon in 2002, and I mean, it was always a crazy place, but it was a delightful crazy place. And it's really sad seeing the decline over the 20 years. And I think that's a perspective that I could bring that someone who's like a fifth generation Oregonian doesn't because they've been sitting in the pot so long that they don't know the water's boiling. But I came in and I started to see the water getting hot. And that's, and it's really sad because it didn't have. have to happen. You know, we could have, you know, if we just stopped the clock with whatever we're doing in 2002, Oregon would be booming. It would be the, it would be the envy of the rest of the

country. Kind of like it was even a few years ago when the New York Times couldn't get enough about writing how wonderful Oregon is. Except that Portland, the television show Portlandia became official policy, didn't it? Is that, uh, kind of. But, you know, but, you know, but, funny about Portlandia is, you know, it made fun of Portland, but if you, if you look at it closely, it really was kind of a love letter to Portland. It was like, it's a, it's a quirky, weird city, but it still works. And now that weird isn't working anymore. And that's a, you know, that's, that's a real, that's a real disaster because it's going to take a lot. There's no one thing we can do to fix it. I think that's the real scary thing. I pointed out the other day, it's like if you were

if you were Tina Kotech or the mayor of Portland or anyone and you said, you know, what's one number? What is one fact you could point to and say, wow, Oregon is really, really going gangbusters. It's doing great. You know, just one number. Say, look, if you saw this number, you would say, wow, everything I thought about Oregon is wrong. They are really excelling in this one area. And I can't think of that thing. I don't know what the one thing is. And it's hard, too, for someone like me, because, you know, everyone I know, I'm in my 50s, everyone in my age group is talking about moving. And they always say, once the kids are gone, we're out of here. Right? That's just the recurring thing among people in the 50s. And at what point, though, doctor,

it get to the point where enough of the hosts leave that the parasite has no choice but to die? Or, you know, I know that Steve was talking about the thought that the federal government will end up bailing out Oregon. I don't see that happening, not with the $39 trillion debt, national debt, do you? No, I think it's going to be a problem, right? I think that, you know, looking forward, I think that the Republicans are going to lose at least one house of Congress in the terms. So Congress is not going to do anything for the next two years. And then you got the next presidential election. Who knows who's going to be the next president? Could be a Democrat. Yeah. It would be a Republican. But I bet you then it will still be a divided Congress where

Republicans will probably have one House and Democrats the other. So nothing will get done for those two years. So we've got, I'm predicting we have at least four years of congressional inaction on anything substantive. So don't wait for the government bailout of Oregon, because I don't think it's going to happen in the near future. Have you paid attention to any of the economic plans of the Republicans running against Tina Kotech, or at least hoping to run against Tina Kotech? I've looked at some of them.

I mean, they're all pretty much, they're all very similar. I shouldn't say they're same, but they're all very similar. And I think that Oregonians are actually are blessed this year because I think any of the top three people running right now, Dudley, Drazen, and Teal would be very good and very effective governors. You know, I have a hard time even trying to put a dog in the fight in the primary because they're all so good. and I would not be, even if I decide I have a favorite, I won't be sad if the person's not my favorite, doesn't make it all the way through. Because I think they're all fantastic. They all have their, you know, their pluses and minuses. But, wow, they are all really good.

I think they are all very driven toward trying to improve the state. I'm glad, you know, I'm glad to hear that from an economist's point of view, because my concern is when I watched that debate yesterday, it was so thin gruel because, My challenge is that you don't get a chance to fight Tina Kotech until you fight each other. And there doesn't seem to be much appetite to fight one another to battle for the vote. But that's a different question. That's a different problem. Yeah, yeah. The thing, too, I think a lot of people need to keep in mind is, you know, you've got,

you'll still probably have a Republican super minority in the legislature. But there's so much that the governor can do. I mean, through executive orders, like they can roll back Cape Brown's climate stuff. But the other thing, too, is that power of the veto and the line item veto is just so powerful because just that alone will change the conversation in the legislature. And could put a crimp then, well, it could put a crimp into that nonprofit industrial complex, circular, you know, well, the self-licking ice cream cone, which is really what we have in Salem. Yeah.

Well, if you think about it, right, even the most left-wing Democrat who has the craziest idea may not even try to get that measure introduced because if the governor sends a clear signal, I'm going to veto this if it passes. Then all of a sudden that changes how even how the Democratic caucus works because, you know, they want to get bills passed. And if they know that it's going to get vetoed, that's going to really. really stopped some of their, their worst ideas from getting even, even pushed in. So it'll, it will apply some much needed discipline is really what it will do. Okay. It will. And all it takes is, is the governor just saying, you know, look, Kitzhubber, his reputation

was Dr. No, he had a Republican legislature. He beat, so to a ton of stuff. Totally changed the conversation. And I think that's, I think that would be really useful. I mean, it's sad that the last Republican governor, um, was when Madonna had a number one hit in the 80s, right? Right. Yeah.

He's also the last one with any business experience. All right. The Oregon Ledger is where you can read this. The Oregon Ledger on substack.com. I'll put all the information up. Eric, it's a great piece, and I think your piece has probably done more to explain the current state of not just Portland, but I think a lot of Oregon than many others that I have read.

And I thank you so much for putting some thoughts into that. And thanks so much for, joining the show. We will definitely have you back. Be well. Yeah, my pleasure. Take care. Dr. Eric Fruits, it is 845. This is KMED and KBXG. When your neighbor tells you call Fitzgerald gas services, it's because they know Fitzgerald's delivers value from gas line installation to kitchen ranges, dryers, backyard barbecues, fire pits and generators. Propane and natural gas installations are done professionally,

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Fox News. I'm Teres Crowley. Iran opens the Strait of Hormuz for all commercial vessels. President Trump posting a great and brilliant day for the world. But says the U.S. blockade of Iran's ports will continue until the people. peace deal is complete. Iran was reportedly asking for a ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon as part of its requirements for some type of peace deal with the United States. Now that the president announced that 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon yesterday, the foreign minister of Iran announced

that the street of Ormuz behind me in the distance in the Persian Gulf is declared completely open for the remaining period of the ceasefire. President Trump posting now I received a call from NATO asking if we need help. I told them stay away. Markets soaring. The Dow's been up over a thousand oil sinking. President Trump leaving Las Vegas for Phoenix with an optimistic message for Turning Point USA. America's listening to Fox News. This hour of the Bill Myers Show is sponsored by Fontana Roofing. For roofing gutters and sheet metal services, visit Fontana Roofing Services.com. April marks 47 years of trusted service at Dusty's Transmissions. To celebrate, Dusties is offering a free transfer case service when you schedule a

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11b4.9. All right. We're going to open up the phones here for a couple of minutes, and then I'll tell you what, if I'm going to take two calls, and then we're going to do the Diner 62 real American quiz. So 7705-633 for the real American quiz, okay? It will get you set up with a $20 gift certificate for diner, 62. Oh, it's just lovely food.

We know that. Nathan is here. Nathan, you were listening to my talk with Dr. Eric Fruits here a moment ago, and you wanted to make sure that, hey, we knew that it's not a mistake the Democrats are making right now? What were you thinking about that? Go ahead. Well, if you just look across the country, not even the country, look over the world.

everywhere where these progressives have taken power, they are purposely doing the same legislation everywhere that's destroying the communities. And I would say in America, the people have decided to allow our elected officials to call themselves leaders and holding positions of power. And to me, that talk is an automatic no vote because they are automatically putting themselves above my position, which they're not supposed to do. Okay. Now, to your point, though, about that it's intentional, that's exactly what Dr. Fruits was talking about. He calls it the curly effect, that it is a perverse incentive for political power,

and that the breaking of the systems, the breaking of the culture, the breaking of society, the breaking of the financial underpinnings is intentional because it creates the feedback loop that brings the power, okay? Thanks for the call, Nathan. Good hearing from you. Let me grab Brother Brad. Hello, Brad. How are you? Go ahead.

Hello, Brad. Got a quick question. Sure. You had a guy on a week or two ago that talked about the culture change in California. Mm-hmm. He wrote a book about it. Yeah. And I can't remember who the individual was, and that's why I called.

I'll tell you what. It's a great book, by the way. In fact, I'll give you a copy of it if you'd like. Would you like a copy of it? Brad? Yeah, I'm here. Yeah. Would you like a copy of the book?

Yeah, how would I get that? Well, I have my review copy. I'll give it to you. How about that? All right? Thank you. Yeah. Yeah, so, Brad, it is California Twilight

and its essays and memories of the end of the Golden State. Mark Ray Kromer is his name. It's an excellent book. And so I'll leave it up front for you under your name, okay? Well, appreciate that. All right. Thank you, Brad.

See? able to solve his problem like that and move the book along to someone who would like to read that. And by the way, it is really a good book. All right, 770563, Diner 62 Real American Quiz. Jump on it. We'll play next. Coastal Farm at the Country Needs. Now through Saturday, April 18th, hurry into your local coastal store to save with our bonus clearance sale.

Find buy two, get one free on clearance apparel and footwear. From head to toe and youngest to oldest, gear up for less. That's right. Get our entire selection of clearance clothing, footwear, and clothing accessories for the whole family for buy two, get one free. Shop at Coastal early for best selection. All savings are while supplies last. Mix and match what you need from tops to bottoms and boots to buckles. You need to see what Coastal has waiting for you on clearance for buy two, get one free only through April 18th.

Plus don't miss this week's spring essential sale. shop and save up to 25% off. Coastal. Just what the country needs. Clearance apparel deals are here for three days only, so head in store today. Hi, it's Megan McPherson with the McPherson Insurance Agency. We are now a 100% independent insurance agency. New name, same great service, with more companies to better serve your families and businesses.

Give us a call at 541-787-4-1-77. Allow us to put our years of experience. experience to work for you. Now with more companies to choose from. The McPherson Insurance Agency. Local, trusted, and now with more options for Southern Oregon. 541-7-8-7-4-17. You're here in the Bill Myers Show on 1063, KMED. All right. Now on the menu at Diner 62, hot open-faced sandwiches. Gotta love that. And Wednesday, meatloaf. Not just meatloaf. Good. love. Yeah. So much more. Diner 62, just south of White City, next to the Chevron station. All righty. Let me go to Citizen CREPS. Hello, Mike, Citizen Krebs, you are first this morning.

Welcome. Oh, boy. Here we go. All right. Citizen Crembs, here we go. Thomas Jefferson, this is Sunday in history, April 19, 1809. Former President Thomas Jefferson writes up a contract for the sale of an indentured servant named John Freeman. to a newly sworn in President James Madison. Yes, this is the slave deal, but this is actually an indentured servant. Indentured servants in the late 1600s to early 1700s were usually impoverished white guys who were British, who resorted to selling themselves into servitude in exchange for room and board, and sometimes they got paid, too.

Relatively few Americans in the late 18th century America became indentured servants, but it is reported that Freeman was an African American who had sold himself to Jefferson as an indentured servant with an agreement to work for him 11 years. He apparently worked as a dining room servant for Jefferson from roughly 1803 to 1809. And the sale covered about six years of remaining service. It's kind of like you're a used car, you know, sell yourself in. And six years left on his 11-year contract that Jefferson had purchased earlier. So the question for the win, citizen grabs, how much did Thomas,

Jefferson sell the indentured servant or slave Freeman to President Madison? What was the selling price for the used person? Oh, God. Okay. This is something that you don't normally read much in India. You don't hear about this every day, do you? No, you don't. So is it A, nothing.

He didn't pay anything for it. B, $32, C, $87, D, $152, or E, $232. What do you say? I'm going to say nothing. You're going to say nothing. Yeah. See, after all that, it didn't work. Good try.

So it wasn't nothing, but it's more than nothing. Let me go to Kathy with a K. Hey, Kathy, how you doing? Hi, I'm fine. All right. How much did he sell the indentured servant to Madison for 32, 87, 152 or 232 bucks? What do you say? $152.

$152. No. Okay. All right. Good try. Let me go to, I think this is Jack. Hey, Jack. How you doing? Good, Bill, you? All right. 32, 87 or 232 bucks? How much did the slave go for? Indentured servant? 232. 32. Survey says. Yes. Jefferson sold the contract of John Freeman to James Madison. $231.81. He had originally bought Freeman for $400 bucks. Hey, 400 bucks, there's a lot of money back in those days. Yeah, really was. But that's the story. Freeman later negotiated his freedom, rather, became a free black resident in D.C.

Was involved with the free black community, marrying Melinda Colbert, a woman formerly who was a slave to Jefferson's daughter. So there we go. Interesting stories. And that's how much a man went for, a used man went for at that time. It was 857.