Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-21-26_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: April 21, 2026

04-21-26_TUESDAY_7AM

This hour of the Bill Meyer Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. It's Pebble in your shoe Tuesday. Join in at 77056633-770KMED, the email bill at Billmyershow.com. 7705633. Coming up within about a month or so,

next month, city of Medford is going to be voting on the Option 2A, the Option 2A, which they were talking about last week, ended up talking about that a little bit with City Councilman, Kevin Keating, who came in, and it's been pretty good. I'd have to have him back on, maybe John Quinn, too. I'd be curious to know what they're thinking about this option for downtown Medford, and this has to do with not going back to the three lanes of travel, but having two lanes of travel. And then there would be 40 diagonal parking lanes on the left side of Maine. And I think that's actually useful. Those are useful parking spaces. I think they would be very good for the business places downtown. And then there would still be a bicycle. There would be one bicycle lane, the five

foot wide, standard bicycle lane, not a buffered lane. I know the spandex, the spandex mafia, Genuflex at having, you know, one-third of a lane or a half a lane for every bicyclist that wants to travel around town. I get it. That's their agenda. But so you would have the one five-foot. So let me just lay it out for you. So you got on the left side parking, 40 extra diagonal parking, and that's good.

You're not opening up your doors into a bicyclist like you are right now with the current bollards in the Bufford bike lane nonsense. that they've been doing. So, yeah, 40 extra, and then two lanes of traffic, not three, that they had talked about then, going back to, and then one five-foot bike lane, standard bike lane, and then the parallel parking on the right side of the road. Now, I just want to ask you this morning, would you be okay with that? Because I looked at that option, and I was trying not to be knee-jurkey about it, you know,

just to say, hey, listen, the people said, go back to three lanes. Go back to three lanes, right? I'm thinking, all right, this is actually something that I thought might be better than three lanes. And I want to ask you, if you think that might be better than three lanes, three lanes of traffic, with more parking. Because to me, that's what makes downtown more useful. I know that the whole purpose of the planners has been you either supposed to be walking, riding your bicycle, or you're going to, if you do drive into downtown Medford, you're supposed to go into the parking prisons.

Well, the parking prisons, I call them parking prisons because they're just municipal-looking, you know, brutalist-looking buildings, you know, from the Soviet Union era that we parked cars in, you know, the kind of thing, the parking prisons. A lot of people don't like going to the parking structures. They don't like it, especially don't like it.

You know, when it gets dark in the winter going into those places. There's places for people to hide. It doesn't feel necessarily as safe as being out there on the street. And so I understand where they're coming from on that. And another 40 spaces downtown, I think that's a pretty good compromise. I think that would seem to help out the business community. Makes it a little more convenient for people who are going downtown.

So I don't know. So one question I would have on pebbling your shoe Tuesday, would you look at option 2A as being a betrayal of what people were telling them to do earlier going back to three lanes of travel. Just put it back to the way it was. Or would you be okay with option 2A? I kind of looked at 2A and I was, I'm just giving you my personal opinion thinking it's not the worst thing. And it's like everybody kind of gets a little bit of a half loaf of everything.

You're helping out the bicyclists without completely turning over Main Street to two-way bicycle lanes, buffered and bollards and all the other just nonsense. that the urban planner is foisted upon us. By the way, we're still going to have to pay back the grant stream funding that should have never been taken in the first place to repave downtown. But do you have an opinion on it? I'd love to get your take. 770-3-3-770 K-M-E-D.

They're going to do a vote on it. I think it's May 20th is when they're going to do that. So it's going to be a couple of Medford City Council meetings from now. How would you like to see it done? All right. 7-70-K-M-E-D. I was reading an article in Washington Post last night about the Louisiana murdering father. And that one just gets you in the heart, doesn't it?

You know, when a dad goes out there and murders his entire family, all of his kids, and then he ends up being killed by the police later. And, yeah, this was essentially what's a really, really bad domestic violence thing. and Washington Post is reporting on this. And two days before killing eight children, most of them is owned in a rampage that shocked the country. Shamar Elkins shared on Facebook what looked like a sweet moment. So it took my oldest on a little one on one date, he captioned.

And the doting post gave no clue that the 31-year-old Louisiana Army National Guard vet was on the brink of a mass shooting early Sunday that authorities described as an execution-style attack. The violence took the lives of the children, ages 3 to 11, and left two women, their mothers, multiple bullet wounds in the hospital. I find it interesting that the mothers of old people end up surviving all of this. All their kids are gone. All their kids are gone, and they get to survive.

I mean, it's just incomprehensible, isn't it? I can imagine what, you know, despair you would feel. and the worst mass shooting that we've had in America this year. And Elkins didn't even spare his oldest child. It's like, boy, I'll tell you, that's something when, because really, for me, you know, having two children, it's like I think of my children as a legacy. And I think most people think of as a legacy. And then to have this guy just take it all out. And of course, Washington Post, like all the other media people, they're all going through, well, why?

Why? He made no social media mention of his pending divorce. I guess there was a divorce coming up there. That had been troubling him. The other thing I think we also know is that most men don't get treated well in family court. I can't help but, you know, having experienced some of this, I don't think it would have mattered in my particular divorce. What either of my ex-spouses had done at that time, they were always going to get custody. That's it. It's just the, you know, the magic chromosomonal makeup, that sort of thing. Of course, I wonder if you get divorced today, could you then identify as the opposite sex and then the court, and then family court will treat you better? I'm sorry to make light of that in such a tragic story here, but, but yeah, and they're saying that nobody saw it coming,

even though there had been a domestic violence conviction, and technically, yeah, he wasn't legally allowed to have the guns, but it doesn't seem to matter. You know, that sort of thing. And naturally, they're going to go down mental health. But, you know, the part that always bothers me that they never seem to bring up, but I guess you're talking about a supernatural, but is it okay to say that you can be taken over by demons?

I know that may sound a little bit crazy. I think we always try to put, you know, everything about why something happened on, well, it's just mental health. mental health, mental health. And I just don't know. I've often felt that life in the United States and in this world, especially the last 20 years or so,

seems to have been opening up more and more into a demon beast system of one form or another. You know, it's the dehumanizing of the human population and the shrinking of hearts, you know, that kind of thing. and the opening up, you know, as you let society go more and more crazy, and you're supposed to believe absurdities like men can be women and women can be men, et cetera, et cetera, and that please hand over your children for sexual reassignment surgery. You know, those kind of things. I don't know, I can't help but think of it as sort of a demon bee system.

You ever think that? Is it okay to say that now? or I just marked myself as a nut job. But I'm going, yeah, that's kind of a demon thing. It's the way I'm looking at it, at least. I'm tired of people saying that, well, it's because there wasn't enough antidepressant in Shamar's brain. You know, that's the way that the medical system would tend to look at it.

There weren't enough antidepressants in his system. There weren't enough of SSIs. There weren't enough SSIs in his brain. That's why he did that. I'm just musing a little bit. It's just a tragedy. Just a tragedy. The entire family just wiped out.

And for what? Maybe just because it was there. 18 minutes after 7-7-0-5-633. It's pebble in your shoe Tuesday. What's the pebble in yours? I'd love to talk with you this morning. Hi, good morning. Who's this?

Good morning, Bill. Hey, you really nailed it on the head this morning. How's that? It's demonic activity. It's exactly what it is. It's not a battle of flesh and blood, but a principality is and powers. I want to let you know, and I just ask all your listeners really be holding these women and these parents up. I truly believe that there's no, you know, a lot of people don't know it, but I have a 21-year-old son named Maximus Josiah that I've never seen her health.

There is no pain. There is no greater pain that a person can experience than having their children taken away from them. And you're thinking that this man was facing that from the sounds of it in the divorce court? Well, I'm saying the actual parents, I mean, there's no greater pain. It's just, I know you have children, Bill, so you could, I didn't want you to think about it. Okay, all right. I will. And painful.

Well, you know, and I did it. I mean, I remember, you know, I lost custody of my son. Big battle, big battle 20-something years ago. Oh, I remember. I remember you talking about it. Yeah. And I can't. I have to say you, I have to say that I have to agree with you in that respect.

I hadn't considered that aspect of it. But that was the greatest pain of my entire life, if I had to say up to that point. That was if I had to say that that was as bad as it got. It's a good point. Maybe that's also part of it, but that's the demon beast system, all right? Thanks, Logan. 7705-633. We talk about that or anything else on your mind here, too.

Good morning. KMED. This is Bill. Who's this? Hey, Bill. That's Steve. Hey, Steve. How you doing? Hey, I'm doing all right.

You ask a very good question. And you remember the book by Jordan Peterson called Twelve Rules for Life? Yes. Jordan Peterson is a practicing psychologist. And he, early in his career, he was struggling with why people did. the things that they did. And his conclusion was that life is a chain of events and you can make a bad decision and that decision can multiply over time into a situation where you're completely out of control. It is actually a form of demonic, I don't know, action because it doesn't make any sense,

but it's the result of it's kind of like you tell one lie and you have to tell another lie and you have to tell another lie pretty soon you don't know what truth is so we don't know the actual life story of what happened

with those folks but you have to be positive in your life and take situations head on and not let something pass you by that you could make a difference in but you can't you can't beat your way into submission of the person that you're trying to deal with.

Yeah. Sounds like our society, though, is somewhat mentally ill. You know, what you're describing this, you know, lie after lie, after lie, right, that you're supposed to believe, right? Going back to Peterson's book? Yes. You know, he was dealing with a woman whose husband had left her, basically, and he was trying to understand what happened. And he made a whole chapter in the book about it because he was saying that you have to stay true to yourself. If you don't do what you know is right and treat people

with fairness that that can own you to the extent that you don't know what is right. Yeah. Have you ever... If you do things for your own benefit. Okay, could you complete that thought? I'm sorry. I spoke over you a little bit. Sorry. Okay. Well, if you do things for your own benefit to the loss of others, then your belief system is centered around you and you don't see the people around you. and that results in mental illness because you don't understand why things happen then. You have no empathy. If you don't feel what other people around you are feeling,

then you're bound to get into a situation completely out of control. Now, doesn't that seem to indicate that narcissism, you're actually almost describing narcissism, aren't you? Yeah, I mean, if you study Christianity, And that is the teaching of Jesus is don't do that. Well, yeah, I get that. But think about how our culture is set up right now. I'm not speaking about just the United States culture, but world culture is set up on social media, right?

Well, social media is a new phenomenon that I don't know if even Jesus anticipated. Yeah, yeah, Jesus would have been sitting there in his phone in doom scrolling, right? Well, the 12 rules for life that Peterson wrote about, you know, the first thing is be true to yourself. Be conscious of the value of yourself and cherish that value by doing what's right. Yeah. Thanks, Steve. I appreciate that. 7705-633.

It's pebble in your shoe Tuesday, but it's also just thinking about this devastated family over in Louisiana, too. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Hey, Dave. What's going on? One's a comment. Carbonity of water, irrigating your crops would be a good thing. Oh, that's going back on the Gregory Wrightstone talk, right? Right. And then now on family annihilators, what they are. They're family annihilators.

They are controlled by their weaknesses in being manipulated into doing things. And so, yes, there are demons. Yes, 40% of American population is under some kind of control of mind control to make them mentally ill. Interesting. I wanted to go back to your... 40% of the population right now are absolutely insane. Okay. Well, that's great, and they vote too.

All right, Dave, I wanted to just go back to your carbonated water thing. I was actually doing some research on that over the break because I knew you had talked about that before. Right. Yeah, they are researching using carbonated water on crops, and the talk is that this can benefit farm crops by giving additional carbon dioxide because it just ends up being absorbed by the roots. makes perfect sense. So when you're talking about the watering of crops with CO2 water, there you go. It's right there. Now, the one thing they do warn, though, is that you don't want to use only carbonated water because excessive use could lead to soil acidification. So you had to be careful.

Right. And you can counteract some of that by to keep it from getting acidic, by adding. line to it. Yeah, to the soil. Yeah, balance it out. So you'd have to just watch the soil chemistry. But yeah, it makes sense. The thing is, though, that I don't know if I wanted to necessarily take my soda stream machine, you know, that has a little CO2. No, no, no, no. I'm not going to go out and start pouring soda stream water on the crops. You need to inject it into the water. You take your water and inject it in and then aerate. All right. Fair enough. Thanks for the call, Dave. I appreciate that. Pepplingishue Tuesday, 770 KMED.

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It's right next to the new Mazelon Mexican restaurant in Central Point. Check him out at Central Point Family Dentistry.com. Call them for an appointment, good people. He's been my dentist and I got, well, at least the teeth he's worked on are good. Actually, most of them are still pretty good, but yeah, it's got a crown back there.

in the back holding holding up the back teeth, trying to preserve those 64-year-old teeth as long as I can. That's what we're doing. A lot of people writing me about the conversation we were having the other day

about of the top gubernatorial GOP candidates, who are you leaning to? Who are you leaning toward? Elaine writes me about Ed Deal says, Ed wants to stop property tax increase for seniors, and he is right to life.

So Elaine is a fan. and Dan says, hey Bill, Ed Deal would get my vote if I still were in Oregon resident. Dudley doesn't have the experience. Drazen has really turned out to be a nothing burger, and Bethel has some great ideas, but doesn't have the backing, rather, to make that happen right now. Bonnie also writes, Bill, I'm torn between Ed Deal and Chris Dudley. Ed, without a doubt, is the most fit for office, but I wonder if he would appeal to enough of moderate voters to beat the cheat.

Chris being a moderate might be better situated to beat the corrupt incumbent. Really, anyone but Drazen. She's not a conservative. She's a politician. And thanks, Bonnie. I appreciate the email. Paul writes me this morning, Hey, Bill, during the recent Medford City Council meeting,

an unannounced vote was taken to set aside the previous decision to change the Main Street layout to a more sensible one. It passed with six in favor. two opposed, so no change will be made to this generally disliked traffic layout. But how come the citizen's voice is so often ignored? This being just one example, how is this possible? It's well known that especially the local elections have extremely poor voter turnout, and yet these have an enormous impact on our daily lives. Well-organized groups like indivisible, so can, the teachers union, etc. can muster relatively small numbers compared to the total eligible voters,

but because of poor turnout, they often score a decisive win. So we are governed to a large degree by special interest, not truly by consent of the governed. Many citizens don't bother, to a large degree, to read the fine print of governance or participate. As citizens, I do believe we have certain duties. The most impactful one is the draft, which is currently considered to be reintroduced, but also by paying taxes, et cetera. I believe voting at every election should be the duty of every citizen-eligible. to vote. Compare it to the draft, a minimal effort. Those that wish to forego voting would be assessed

a fee for that privilege of, say, $100 per missed election. I can already hear Bill, but now you're forcing the clueless to vote. True. But now we have a bias to, let's call it, the self-appointed expert class. By having a close to full voter participation, I believe we will get a normal or gossy in distribution of votes that more closely reflects what the citizenry will willingly give their consent to. The oversized influence of the special interest groups and self-appointed experts will thereby be greatly diminished and moved outside of the standard deviation of the statistical bell curve. You know, Paul, that's a very interesting email, and that's kind of going with Mike Krebs. I nicknamed him Citizen Krebs when he was on a few weeks ago, talking about

mandatory voting. And, you know, I'm starting to lean to that. I really am. It's like, you're going to have to make a choice. You pay the fee if you don't do it. I'm starting to be more in favor of that, forcing this rather than, oh, please, oh, please, oh, please, Republicans, get off your behind. Anyway, we'll see about that.

I think we have Jeans here. Hello, Gene. How are you doing this morning? Go ahead. Good. I'm doing okay. Good. But I came up with another point that I was wanting to bring up.

Okay, what's that? Why's the big pebble that I have is you can't get the news on weekends. From the TV because they're busy with their junk. And the radio doesn't seem to have it. Yeah, you're doing mostly national, national things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

But what I want is the weather for Grants Pass for Josephine County. And you can't get it. Like last night, I never did see two weathers for Josephine County. They only had one. And I don't know whether that was supposed to be the day or the night. Okay, well, you know, when I do the weather forecast for the weekend there, I do give it, I will give different forecasts if there's a big difference between Josephine and Jackson County. Like generally speaking, there's more rain in Joe County, especially in Grants Pass, okay, if we're talking about rain.

But usually there's not huge differences, especially in the summertime, you know, as we get in there. We're just talking about a difference of a few degrees at best. But if you're wondering why there's not a lot of news on the weekend, because in smaller towns, it's difficult to make it pay. And, you know, it's the same reason why the newspapers closed. And, you know, there's only a few people on the TV news teams. It's a matter of, well, let's just be honest here, Gene, most of the advertising money was that I think I calculated 80% of local advertising revenue is being controlled by Google right now. And that doesn't leave a lot of room for your local services. But there you go.

You're paying Google. Well, I don't want the Democrat news. I want the weather, and that's it. Yeah, you know, I get that. I appreciate it. All right. Okay, was there anything else here quickly because I'm just running out of time? No.

Well, have a good day then. How about that? Try to have a good day and enjoy the weather, however it comes. Appreciate that. Yeah, it'd be nice. You know, the model. the economic models are different than they were when I was growing up. Well, gosh, even, you know, 40, 45 years ago when you got into it.

And the rise of technology, the rise of automation everywhere, you know, that's just the way it was. AM radio used to be King, too. AM radio, yeah. Remember KMED 18, AM 1440? We ended up taking that away. Times changed, though. And I remember, of course, I listened to AM radio when I was growing up there. But even when I came back to KMED, and that was in 2001, 2001, and we were going through AM radio, a lot of people were saying, well, gosh, AM radio works great.

You know, we loved AM radio, et cetera, et cetera. Well, the ratings didn't actually show that, though. At the very end, it's like you had 90% of the listenership on FM radio and about 10 or 11% of that to AM. Now, KMED was most of that, you know, in those days. but that's just kind of the way it is. Technology marches on. And gosh, the last thing anybody wants to do is hire people. Pesky people, right?

All right. So that's part of it. All right. Greg, check up on the rest of the news here, which I did compile this morning, even if I did record it. And then Herman's going to join me next. Legendary Arms Gun Shop and Trading Post, typically stocks 400 plus quality new and used firearms,

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an affair with a member of her security team, and using government-paid travel for mostly personal reasons. The administration is saying that Chavez-Dariemer had resigned to take a position with the private sector, but not giving any more details. A proposed Trump, A truck stop in East Phoenix is drawing some fire. K-OBI-5 reports a group of residents coming out against the truck stop, which would be located on the northwest corner of Fern Valley and Grove Road. Some saying it would impact air quality, others saying it would duplicate services at an existing truck stop across the street. One resident even saying it would make it more difficult to evacuate the area in event of a wildfire. The city is still gathering public comment on the project and will submit a suggestion to the Planning Commission.

A kitchen fire in a Wilderville home sends two residents. to the hospital with smoke inhalation and burn injuries. News Watch 12 reporting that fire happening Sunday at the 5200 block of Fish Hatchery Road. One person inside had grabbed a garden hose to knock down the fire while firefighters pulled three people to safety. And money challenges in Portland as Mayor Keith Wilson reveals a proposed $8.5 million budget. The city's facing a $160 million shortfall, plans to slash millions from various agencies, parks, police, and services for the homeless, while protecting core city functions. Bill Meyer, KMED News.

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Former state senator, I should say. Herman Bearchiger rejoins the program. Every Tuesday we talk a little bit of politics and such. Herman, you were just telling me during the show, you were kind of concerned what? All the restaurants started to close here. A little bit of that starting to notice. Just black bears will be noticed in Grants Pass the other day.

Well, yeah, but, you know, sit down. Sit down restaurants, I call them, okay? Yeah. Yeah, we've had Denny's, Blackford, and Sherrys. They're all gone. So, you know, it's changing. Things are changing, Bill. I don't know if it's for the better, but they are changing.

Yeah, and certainly changes the point where Medford seems to be like the center of the universe of every restaurant chain imaginable. Seems to be the big thing. And everyone goes, oh, first it was a sign. and everybody gets, they had to get the police cars, you know, to guide everybody in and out. Oh, now it's in and out. And now it's five guys or whatever. Just kind of. Or Dick Palette or whatever, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. But those aren't really, you know, I mean, I don't know what's driving it. Obviously, it's financial. If they were doing well, they would stay in business. So it's obviously financial. So why is it because of the high wages in Oregon? Is it because the family paid leave?

Or is it a combination of all these things? Yeah, I would say combination is probably what you're talking about. I mean, also dare say that the federal government always does its best. And you know this, Herman. They do whatever they can to understate the true rate of inflation in the economy. Because look what they do. They strip out volatile food and energy from the statistics all the time. So you're noticing that you're not able to buy as much or do it.

as much as you did before, but, you know, the government news is all saying, hey, it's only 2% or it's only 3% or we're reaching the federal reserves, a 2% inflation target. Like there's a good level of money debasement that we should always be hitting, right? Can you agree with me on that much the way it works? Well, yeah, and, you know, I was once somebody told me in my travels and in the legislature, the food and energy is out of the equation. And the reason for that is when energy goes up, whether it's fuel or electricity or any kind of energy, it affects everything else, and so that's why it's out because everything else goes up.

Most people don't realize that, and that is a true statement. because everything is moved, all your services and everything that's moved to the shelves is buy energy. Energy is what gets it there. So when energy goes up, it goes up. I know, but to strip that out because you sometimes buy energy directly too. And, you know, to me, just because it is volatile and goes up and down does not mean it shouldn't be part of the statistics. To me, that's government trying to make sure it doesn't. have to pay senior citizens a big true cost of living increase on social security. I think that's part of that, wouldn't you agree?

Oh, yeah, there could be all of that. But if you do think about it, you know, when energy goes up, everything else, so it's reflected in all the other costs. So that's their argument. I'm not saying that I agree with it, but that's the argument. Except they used to have an in there, right? And so everything that they have done, every statistic they take out of the consumer price index is designed to,

shield the real rate of inflation out there, in my opinion. Now, let's be honest here, how much more affordable would life be if we were looking at $2 diesel rather than $6.57 or $8 diesel, depending on where you are out on the coast in California? You know, that kind of thing. That's real money, isn't it? I'll tell you, Bill, another phenomenon that goes on in economics is then when energy, let's say energy goes down. Let's say we shave off $2 a gallon. The stuff's on the shelves in the store, you're not going to see it go down. Not for a while. No.

You know, and that's just, you know, the whole world is always driven by greed. It always has been, and it always will. You know, everybody else is greedy but me. Well, yeah, right. But I always remember that guy in Wall Street. You remember the movie with Michael Douglas. What is he like playing Ivan Boski or playing the part of Ivan Boski? really. Greed is good. Remember? That's what he said. Right. No, it is. Everything is, you know,

everything, just face it. Everything, the world, the economy, everything is driven by greed. I don't care. I don't care if you live in a socialist country, a republic, a democratic country. Everything is driven by greed. Sorry. It's a reality. All right. So now people are greedy for power right now, Herman. I want to shift it over to the political here for a little bit. Okay. Oh, boy. All right. So we're going to have some fun here. And let's go down the lie of the beauty of non-partisanship, because I'll have people that are well-meaning who write me. Bill, you know, if we could only get parties out of the political system, everything would be okay. Non-partisan.

I like the way Grants Pass is doing their elections for county commissioners, for example, since that's the biggest example lately, you know, that we can talk about. and nonpartisan, getting those dirty parties and partisan hearts out of the race. Take it away, Herman. I just tossed you the softball. Smack it over the field, okay? Point out to the right field. You're going to hit it over that fence. Where do you go?

Name a democracy on this planet that isn't partisan. There's no such thing. I don't care. Just name one. You'll find there's no such thing. people always are going to gravitate to people who think alike. That's just how it is. So you look what's going on in Josephine County.

We've got these commissioner races coming up. They're nonpartisan. It's so easy, whether you look on social media, the advertisement, or listen to the people directly. The Democrats, the liberals, they're lining up behind their candidates, and the Republicans, the conservatives are lining up behind theirs, but yet it's a no-partisan race. Isn't that amazing? What actually drove Josephine County to go non-partisan in the first place?

Because all we're doing is hiding the partisanship behind, you know, thin veils. It just makes no sense to me, Herman. Just doesn't. Well, the people back there in the 90s that rewrote the charter, you know, they thought, it does sound like a good idea. Okay, we're not partisan. We're all, we're just all trying to do the right thing, Bill. All we have to do is reach across the aisle to our friends that disagree with us,

and they'll see the superiorness of our way of thinking. Well, there's a few times in my political career I reached across the aisle, I got my hands bit off. So, you know, and it's gotten worse. I have to admit, it has gotten worse in the last 20 years since I've been in politics. It's gotten much, it's gotten much more partisan. It really has. And what drives that is how you get elected, you know.

If you're in a district that's very liberal, you're not going to get elected with a conservative idea. And vice versa, if you're in an area that's a very liberal, you're not going to get elected with a conservative idea. And vice versa, if you're in an area that. conservative, you're not going to get elected, you know, with liberal ideas. And when you try to reach across the aisle or you take votes that are contrary to what your base feels, you get beat up. So that's just how it works. You know, I've always told candidates, pay attention.

You have to pay, it is tough. You have to pay attention to your base because they're the ones that elects you. But at the same time, sometimes the base doesn't quite understand what's going on. And you'll take these votes and you'll just get beat to hell, you know? And I remember that happened to me when I was a freshman. Do you remember voter cards? Remember? I mean, not voter cards, driver cards.

Yes. Yeah, I remember that. So these driver cards came out and I was adamantly against, well, actually, it started out for drivers' lives. licenses for undocumented people. Right. Okay? That's what it started out. I was adamantly opposed to that.

But through a lot of conversations and everything, and I was smart enough. I'm going, you know, Brady Adams always told me the first thing you need to know in politics is how to count. And so I'm like, hey, they're going to pass this driver's license for illegal aliens or undocumented, illegal, whatever terminology you want to use. So Chuck Thompson and I, we realized that we do have a problem in the state with people driving with no insurance. And we knew this was going to pass. It was going to pass, Bill. So Chuck and I got in there, and we changed it to driver cards, and we changed it that you cannot use it for ID or for voting for any. anything else. It's kind of like getting a forklift license, you know, to drive a forklift. And we changed it. And so I voted yes for that.

Holy moly, I got that crap beat out of me by my base. Because they were looking at you as, you know, coddling illegal aliens, right? Exactly. Yeah. And what I was trying to do was make a terrible bill a little bit better. And that was a valuable lesson for me. I mean, they, they, they, they don't. They forgave me and everything, but boy, when that first happened, I got beat up bad. Huh.

You know? I kind of forgot about that fight. I know that the voters ended up coming out with a citizen ballot initiative, and they ended up trouncing that, just killing it all. Right. Exactly. So then what I learned a valuable lesson there. Don't take on your base. Okay.

Don't strap them on. It's not a wise thing to do. Okay, so then let me take that then to the vote here. A lot of, including Christine Drazen, Christine Drazen, along with many other Republicans, got suckered into the tampons in the boys' room vote. Remember that a few years ago? I think it was the 2021 legislature.

Sure. All right? Sure. And so what were they, were they harmonized at that point when you talked about how you ended up going for the driver's card at that time? because the only people who voted against that, from what I recall, were a few senators like Kim Thatcher and Lentacom, and there was one more. Oh, yeah, Robinson, State Senator Robinson, and about voting against that. Why was it that all of a sudden the Republican Party just went all in on tampons in the boys' room?

Was it another one of those kind of things where it was making a bad bill better, in your opinion? Do you know? That particular bill had a lot of things in it. It wasn't just a tampon bill. It wasn't, huh? No, but, you know, I mean, there's other bills. Like, there was a bill that made it illegal to post the mugshots of people that are incarcerated in your county jail. That's right.

And they voted for that, too. And I think, you know, Christine has obviously been trying to flower the pathway to governorship. So when she gets in a general election, she can say that she's not one of those hardcore conservatives. And I think that's what she has done. But the thing is, is you always got to get through the primary, and the primary is going to be those hardcore conservatives voting for you. Yes, the hardcore conservatives, they're going to decide one way or the other. So did you, by the way, since we'll take this out of the partisanship, because it's obvious that nonpartisan just means nonsense, you know, as far as. I'm concerned.

No, it's absolutely reduced. All right. Let me take it for a couple of minutes over to last Thursday's debate. And I've been making noise about that because I just didn't think it was a debate. And I'm wondering, why wasn't a debate? Have you heard anything within your contacts? If you're going to call it a debate, I was expecting a little bit to knock down dragout in there. And it was just, it was something that the League of Women voters, the very liberal group, could have run.

and we would have the same announcements, you know, being made that night. What do you think is going on? You know, it was kind of interesting. You know, the debate really didn't show much contrast between the candidates, and that's usually what you have to do to get elected. And it certainly, in my opinion, didn't show much contrast. Why do you suppose that was? I would have thought that, you know, maybe even in statements that there would have been some swinging.

Now, I'm going to ask this a serious question. Is this what happens when you have all of these fancy, maybe they're out-of-state consultants or people, you know, they're saying, oh, no, don't do anything that makes you look mean or anything. What do you think about that? I don't know. You know, I think a lot of, they're also looking at the general election and they're careful about any statements they make now that will be used against them in the general election. Yeah. The challenge, though, is that you're not going to get a chance to be in the general election unless you're able to close the sale in the primary. Well, exactly. And I used to have those discussions with candidates that say, oh, you know, I'm in a district. I'm down by six points. And I got to, you know, I got to be careful what I say. And I says, you also, you've got to get elected in the primary. So, you know, you've got to do both of those things at the same time. You're going to have to walk and chew gum. at the same time.

Yeah. If you had to take a guess right now, do you think any of the candidates, you know, made a good name for themselves that Thursday evening or not? Drazen has the most name recognition, of course, because she ran already. Yeah. Okay. But she lost. So now she's going to say she barely lost.

Well, you barely lost in a three-party race. What do you think is going to happen in a head-to-head race? Yeah, because Betsy Johnson did siphon away some votes back at that time. That was the strategy that you were working back in the day. Yeah, it wasn't enough, but it was, I mean, it was enough. The Johnson phenomenon was enough in June and July and even August, but after August, it just, all the air went out of the balloon. And what I attribute that to is that the Pena Kotech, she got about $30 million,

dollars mostly from outside the state of Oregon. She had, I figured it out, I want to say it was like almost $20. She had $20 to spend on every Democrat voter in the state of Oregon. Holy mackerel. That's a lot of money per voter. Right. And so we just seen it, her siphon them all back. I said she was the $30 million magnet, man.

She just turned on and they all gravitated back. Well, you can figure money will be coming this year too for Tina. Tina will have no trouble with money. Never does. No, no, no, no. And it'll come from outside the state because nationally the Democrats hold the East Coast and the West Coast, and they're going to fight tooth and they'll hang on to that. All right. So you have Christine Drazen, Randy Ford is not going to have that same situation this year here. Darling, I'm sorry, Danielle Bethel, rather. I think, you know, a nice woman and I think a good future candidate. I think it's a little early for her in the mix. That's what I'm thinking, at least, at this point.

You know, it's name recognition. You know, when the average person, you and I talk about politics every day of our lives, the average person doesn't talk about politics at all, and they pick up their ballot, and they go, I've never heard of that name before. And that's all that matters. So Christine still wins on name recognition then. Now we have, like, Chris Dudley and Ed Deal then. What is your evaluation overall?

Chris, I think the problem with Chris is that I think that the Blazer Bloom is off that rose. I think it's been gone a while. That's the one disadvantage, I would think. He does have money, though, at the moment. Yeah, and Chris Dudley, you know, he towers over everybody in height. And so people that see him and everything, I mean, he does stand out. He is a very tall man. And he does have some name recognition.

He does have some, but he has absolutely no political experience. So, you know, I don't know. Even though he got closer than anyone else has gotten to unseating a, a Democrat. Against the different Democrat at a different time. That's true. That's true. Now, of course, that was against John Kitsaber, wasn't it, at that time?

Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's right. And always remember, you know, John Kitsaper, he wasn't a beloved Democrat like Brown and Kotech are. Okay. One, he was a man, and two, you know, he did not. He did not rubber-stamp the Democrat Party. I mean, he had the go places he didn't want to go before.

But he was not, he was a type of a Peter Courtney type. He was a, he was more of a Kennedy Democrat. I would agree. I would agree with that evaluation. And in the end, it looked maybe just as corrupt some of the candidates. Well, you know, that whole thing, you know, with his girlfriend. and everything. I mean, the optics weren't good, but what that was all about is John Kitsoper was pushing back about

funding the schools, okay? The schools wanted more and more money, and John said no, and so the teachers union said, okay, bye, bye, John. There's the kill shot, right? Yep, yep, and that's exactly what. And I was told here recently, John Kitshopper is no longer a registered Democrat in the state Oregon. Really? That's what I was told.

Huh. I have to look that up. Somebody that's very close to him. All right. Well, so then we now get to Ed Deal. Ed Deal has been, at least looking at my email box, he's starting to make some noise with listeners. I'm seeing more recognition. And I think the tax, the no-tax Oregon thing certainly helped raise his,

his statewide profile for sure, don't you think? Absolutely. So, yeah, so his little niche is going to be, hey, I'm the guy that's fighting the gas tax for everybody. But again, he doesn't have that much name recognition outside of that and do the voter. Well, the voter out there that doesn't talk about politics when they pick up their ballot, will they connect the thoughts between Ed and his efforts to repeal the gas tax? I don't know. That's going to be the big question here. The other thing is that he's just, at this point, his political experience is just this current term in the legislature, right?

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I, I never met him up until about a month ago and we sat down and we had about an hour long discussion and everything. He is a pretty smart guy and everything, but there's a lot of things he doesn't quite. understand about the political environment. And I guess I can say that about all three of them, even, even Drazen, because some of the stuff she, she's done in politics, I've just shake my, why would you do that, Christine? That's not helping you. But anyways, those are all my opinion. That's okay. Well, that's why I had you on. It's wanted to get your opinion there. And it's, my prediction is, is that you're going to, you're not going to see a runaway candidate in this primary. You're not, huh? It's going to be like, you know, we get someone who,

ends up winning the primary by 3, 4%, that kind of thing? Yeah, yeah, well, maybe a little better than that, but I think the average voter is going to pin that ballot up on the wall and go get a dart and throw at it. Okay. Yeah, I think we're going to see that. So we'll see. Maybe I'm wrong, but that's the way I see it.

I just know that with a couple of weeks before the ballots start dropping, I would hope that they start throwing a few punches at one another to make sure that people really understand where they're coming from and why they would be better than their competing candidates. I mean, that's the way to wrap this, really, isn't it? Well, yeah, it's contrast, contrast. You know, we want to see why would I do the job better, you know, or what are my thoughts? You know, and I've heard candidates say, oh, I'm going to fight property taxes. Well, that's stupid to say that because property taxes are frozen in Oregon.

and they only can go up 3% a year. The reason you see your property tax is going up is because you voted for them to go up with all these crazy levies. Okay? So it's self-imposed, Bill, by the voter. If you're voting for the school levy, it's going to go up. If you're voting for the RBTD or the transit levy,

it's going to go up. If you're voting for the library district, it's going to go up. If you're voting for the law enforcement district or the fire district, it's going to go up, right? Or the college is, whatever. That's right. If you go and look at Lane County, go look at Multnomah County.

Look what the self-imposed taxpayer have done to themselves. And then they say, we live in the most expensive city in the United States. You know, Portland is now the most expensive city to live in surpass New York. And I'm saying that's you've goofballs. That's because you did it yourself. You voted it in. It's always connected. Yeah, Measure 5 and Measure 50 has been around for.

what, 30, almost 40 years. Yeah. And that froze it at 3%. All your property tax was going to go up as 3% a year. And that's all it does. Yeah. And remember, Josephine County, what, still, 85 cents for the basic levy to run the county? 85 cents per thousand?

No, no, it's less than that. 58 cents, maybe, isn't it? Something like that. Yeah, yeah. But you look at your tax bill and just like, well, Jackson County, money's basic tax rate, $2 in a penny. But there's a lot more alerted on top of that. And that's what you need to look at.

Oh, yeah. And in Josephine County, you know, you have your fire districts, your library districts. You've got a one for RCC, then you have a bond for RCC, then you have some more school district stuff in there. And the next thing, you know, you're up there, you know, $4 or $5 pretty fast. But remember, you can't put a price on public safety, Herman. I think it's what the sheriff said. Not too long ago, right? Yeah, but I think that's what, I mean, what's going on in Iran?

I mean, that really is public safety. And I guess we're not putting a price on it because we're spending a hell of a lot of money over there, Bill. Yeah, well, we're borrowing to do that, but that's a conversation for next week, okay? You be well. All right. You take that. Thanks, Herman. Bye-bye.

Former State Senator Herman Berichiger, we always kick around the political boot each week here on the Bill of Meyer show. KMED, KMED, H.D-HD-T-1, Eagle Point Medford, KBXG grants pass, and we'll check Fox News next.