Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-29-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

04-29-26_WEDNESDAY_6AM

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 Klausurrilling.com. Now more with Bill Meyer. So great to have you here on Wheels Up Wednesday, April 29th. It's going to be a nice day. Maybe a little bit of rain this weekend. That's about it, though.

Eric Peters will be joining me. E.P.anos.com Wheels Up Wednesday. We've got to talk a little bit about an article that I read, which I have not been seeing a lot of reportage on. I think it was in the Wall Street Journal that I caught it the other day, in which the ability for Americans to be able to purchase some of the most popular small cars may be going away. And it may be a decision that Toyota makes. It may be a decision that Hyundai Kia makes. And there was one other car manufacturer that was talking about this too because they're saying,

hey listen, if you're going to tear off us, it has to do with the USMCA, the earlier trade deal. And the car manufacturers are saying, hey, if you're going to tariff us for building these cars, not just in the United States, but also Canada and Mexico. And, you know, the USMCA more or less said that they're supposed to be able to build these. And it's considered practically domestic production. Well, if that's going to be the case, then we're just going to start yanking those less expensive cars and so you'll only you'll only get the more expensive offerings from the toyotas and the and the kias and all that i thought it's interesting it's what they're talking about uh openly uh right now so

anyway we'll have that um you know have that conversation with eric coming up here in just a moment okay all right let me see oh i think we just let me just a second here it's going to try to do the facebook live again and hopefully it will connect all right internet You know, what can I say? All right. So we'll have that coming up here in just a moment. Some of the local headlines of North here, we have that Joseph Dealey. Remember that guy a couple of weeks ago who was charged with, I think it was six counts of sex abuse.

And he is a, well, a Grants Pass school staff member. And he was supposed to be in court yesterday. And he ended up posting bail. So he was released and he'll be back in court sometime in June. But this is the time in which Joe County District. attorney, the deputy district attorney ended up filing some protective orders telling Dealey and his lawyer

not to share any of the sexually explicit evidence with anybody and a no contact order to protect the victim. So we have that story which developed. So Joseph Dealey is free, at least on the street right now, on bail. And

Rogue Valley Times reporting this morning that there's a missing Eagle Point 7th grader and what they're saying, this is Clover McCartney Cole, a 13-year-old, 5-420 pounds, medium-length pink hair. And she was reported missing Monday by her dad. And the teen's phone later found in the front yard, wiped clean.

And they saw Kayla reportedly walking near the downtown fire station around 7.30. And they said that her daughter had been communicating and she believes being groomed by a 51-year-old man who lives in the area who Kayla Cole alleged had been sending inappropriate messages. And so reportedly seen with the grown man and teen boy, this has been released to, or this case has been turned over to Encozy, you know, the National Center for, you know, sexual abuse. You know, we've talked about that sexual exploitation.

I've talked with those people before. I had to get them back on. They're always on the lookout for this. And I've got to tell you the grooming activity that you're hearing more and more about. and the connection with the phone. You can't help but notice that. I pray that she ends up being returned sooner rather than later and in good shape to her parents, okay?

Another story which is going on here is that stories, well, let me go with a couple of Trump stories first, okay? First we had President Trump, of course, he's with King Charles and Queen Camilla, right? And that's all fine. They're doing all the pomp and circumstance, but the important stuff, in my opinion, is still the Iran situation. The president's saying on Tuesday, Iran has just informed us that they are in a state of collapse. They want us to open the Hormuz straight as soon as possible, in other words, end the blockade,

as they try to figure out their leadership situation, which I believe they will be able to do. So it's unclear to what extent that country is collapsing at this point, according to Town Hall and other people analyzing the situation. but it is a thing right now. And the reason I thought this was so interesting to bring this up because of Iran supposedly being in a state of collapse. You know another story which I am hearing, no reporting on at all, the looming energy disaster out here on the West Coast,

not for Oregon necessarily, but for California, just south of the border. It is a fascinating story. and it's being covered by Byron King. And you know how I tell you about often it's a good idea to pay attention to the money people, the people who are investors. And Byron is a natural resources kind of guy. He's the guy that's always out there talking about drilling for oil and or going for gold miners and things like that.

It works with a daily reckoning. So he's an online blogger, and he's always going out and investigating new fines and new companies and where to invest money, et cetera. That's his living. That's what he does. And he has this background in mining and oil and various developments like that. And he put out a piece this morning, actually he's yesterday morning, rather, California nightmare, a looming energy disaster. And they're talking about California state policy and how they're running out of gasoline right now. But it's a very slow, soft kind of quiet deal. Byron King writes, California has maybe six weeks before disaster strikes.

By mid-June, life as we know it will be in turmoil. California's looming problems will cross state lines into Nevada and Arizona as well to make the unusually hot summer, even hotter, so to speak. And he talks about all the problems that California has, and I'm going to just kind of dance through the article. He says, California is running out of gas, specifically, the state is burning down its gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, and a host of other refined petroleum products. The tanks are going dry, and we're going to be looking at true shortages within a matter of weeks. Now, you might be saying why, right? Because we have all of this oil and natural gas, etc., are able to produce domestically.

It's a self-inflicted wound. Over many decades, California has created an energy mess for itself. It's kind of an energy island kind of approach. A long list of magical thinking, energy challenged, feel-good politicians and bureaucrats have left their fingerprints at the scene of the crime. But he says the main issue, now I could try holding it up to the Facebook Live camera. It's in black and white you wouldn't notice. But he lays out that the oil and gas pipelines, the pipeline network in the United States of America, very little of it. goes through California.

Very few pipelines in and out of California. In fact, we're in better shape in the state of Oregon when it comes to pipeline availability of fuel and gas and oil and natural gas than California is. So California, and a lot of the problems with California, it's not because they hated pipelines, and it's just because of the rugged geography and running pipelines through the mountainous areas

because so much of California, is mountainous. And so they don't have nearly the pipeline network that even we do here at the state of Oregon. We also have a lot of mountains too, but we're in better shape when it comes to the fuel pipelines. Few pipelines go in and out of the state. In California only has a few lines that enter the state at the north and the south. And it's through geography. In southern California, a few pipelines cross in and out of Arizona. So we have that problem that he's talking about. So very little ability to get a lot of fuel from outside of the area into California via the pipeline. Also, the fact that California used to produce more of its own oil, but they have gone

completely against producing their own oil for their own refineries. And there's only about six or seven refineries left in the state of California. And the vast majority of the oil, I would have to say probably three-fourths, 80% of the oil going into California refineries to make the gas and the diesel that they use there come from the Middle East. But you see those Middle East oil tankers, they're coming on 90-day trips. It's a 90-day trip to come from the Middle East, going through the Persian Gulf, going through the Strait of Hormuz, et cetera, 90-day trip. And we're getting ever closer to that 90-day trip ending.

So there's still been oil coming into California right now for its refineries. And California is not producing its own oil, and there's less of oil available from Alaska. And so much of the oil is from the Middle East. And those tankers from the Persian Gulf have been going out to the West Coast, 90-day voyages across the Indian and the Pacific to unload oil. but that has been stopping since February 28th since the Iran war conflict. So California is about to experience an energy nightmare, is what he's saying. Lack of refineries, lack of fuel, and lack of alternatives.

Remember when I was telling you about how it's been very deceptive when you hear this talk about the, when you hear the price of oil is at $95, let's say, and that's high, but it's not as high as it has been. When you look at the spot market price, the market to actually have physical oil delivered to your dock, it's actually been more in the neighborhood sometimes, especially out on the West Coast, at $135, $140, $150 in some cases. When we hear about the price of oil, they're quoting futures markets. Those are investors gambling and what they think is going to be there in the future. But the spot market is what it takes to actually have oil delivered to your reform.

right now. And out in California, it's soon going to be disappearing because the physical supply, which takes 90 days, yeah, 90 days to get from the Middle East across the oceans, and then out to the West Coast. There we go. Now, we have, like I said, here in the state of Oregon, we have our oil or our fuel pipelines. So we'll still have gasoline, but there's less of that going into California, not nearly enough to make up for the fact that the refineries could be running dry and they don't have a lot of alternatives. And then you also have the rules that California Air Resources Board. You have to have the special formulation to be able to sell the gasoline. You just can't buy gasoline from another state and bring it in. It has to be formulated

for the clean air, all the rest of it. So anyway, I thought it was really interesting because I'm hearing nothing about this. Have you? I've not been hearing anything about this. So If we're thinking that $8 diesel down in Crescent City, that it's going to be relieved anytime soon, I don't know. I don't know. And so this could be a real issue for California because, yeah, they always talk about, you know, the wind and solar power and the renewables, but still that does not run the tractors. That does not run the semis going in and out of the state, too. So I just thought just run that buying.

I thought it was pretty interesting stuff and worth keeping an eye on. So that's with Byron King on the morning reckoning. If you wanted to do a search for it on the web, I'll try to post a link to that a little later. 624 at KMED. Mom makes everything a little better. This Mother's Day, let her know. At Grange Co-op, we've got beautiful 10-inch hanging baskets for just $29. Perfect for the mom who loves to garden.

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for all the cars and the trucks and everything else there because their refineries are mostly depending on some Alaska but mostly the Middle East, those West Coast refineries, and there's only six or seven of those left at this point. And very few pipelines able to carry outside supply in there so supply could be really pinched within six weeks. weeks unless this Iran situation is wrapped up and they get the Strait of Hormu's open. So he's keeping an eye on that.

And I thought it was worth mentioning. And Louis, you can weigh in on that too. How you doing, brother, Louis? Oh, that was excellent. I actually called you just before you started on the California situation. You were talking about the Iran war. Yes. Of course, this is all relevant to that.

And I was kind of wondering whether, what you didn't mention Oregon in, you know, having a potential problem at the same time. And so are we a special case? Well, we're not a special case, but we have a pretty good pipeline system bringing the fuel down here. Yeah, we still have to truck it down to southern Oregon. But our pipeline that comes in, I think it ends in Eugene. I guess we still have to truck it over there. There's no talk about there's a pretty rich pipeline network up in Washington State that we're plugged into that would tend to have a pretty good supply.

doesn't mean the price would be good, but still, California just has a problem in which it's a small pipeline network because of the geography. So they've tended to do a lot of refining of their own fuels there. And it's kind of an energy island is what Byron King is talking about and warning that, you know, unless you get those tankers going again. And I didn't realize it took 90 days. So everyone's been living on the West Coast, you know, in California. and to a lesser extent, Arizona and Nevada, they've been living on the oil tanker shipments that have been going on prior to the problems in the Middle East with the Iran War. It takes 90 days.

You had a whole bunch of them coming out to the West Coast. It's a three-month trip, which I didn't know. It took that long. It's amazing. You did an excellent job of explaining that, and I'm going to definitely find that article and read it. And I was listening to something else this morning about the... basically the spokesman for Iran visited Putin.

Did you hear anything about that? No, I did not. I did not. I know that he talked to Putin about wanting to hand over the nuclear material over to Putin. I don't think that's something that the president would necessarily be all that in favor of. I don't know why not. I mean, it would be an off-ramp for him. But here's what came off this morning.

You know who Glenn Dyson is? No, I don't. He's a Norwegian. He's a Norwegian pundit kind of blogger. I don't mean, he interviews everybody from Mearsheimer to... Okay, yeah, just explain what he said, though, okay? But anyway, yeah, what he said, he was talking to Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State during the time of Iraq. And they were talking about what Putin said after meeting the ambassador from Iran.

And Wilkerson said that there's three real diplomats in the world, and one of them is Lobrov. from Russia. One of them is the ambassador that I can't remember his name, I'll be seen here or something like that from Iran. And the third one is, I forgot it right now. But if you watch five minutes of this interview, you would get what I got this morning is a feeling that he said that what Putin said after the meeting was, you know, sort of a veiled message to the United States that if you continue with this war. You can't, don't think that you can continue this war without getting some kind of because Iran has some strong allies and one of them is me.

Putin said this kind of. Yeah, could you send that to me, Louis? I'd like to, I'd like to, I'd like to watch that because I've not read that. Of course, I'm not surprised that that's not necessarily being covered. Could you pop that to me? Email me the link on that, please. All right? And I can, I can do it. And I'll send you the Byron King article. Okay. All right. Great. Wonderful. All right. said really interesting and a game of chicken right now going on out on the on the west coast. All right. So then, let's check the rest of the news here in just a moment.

Wheels up Wednesday. And Vicki, your hold on. I'll get to you here in just a moment. And if you want to talk with Eric 2, 7705633 as Wheels Up Wednesday kicks off next. From phone repair to key fobs to car battery testing and installation. Batteries Plus has music to your ears, baby. We're the experts in charge. KMED News.

Here's what's going on. A Grants Pass school staff member arrested earlier this month for sex abuse crime allegations has posted bail. News Watch 12 reporting Joseph Dealey was supposed to appear in court yesterday afternoon, but posted bail and was released before the hearing. The Joe County Deputy D.E.A. filing protective orders telling Dealey and his attorney to not share any of the sexually explicit evidence in the case, along with a no-contact order to protect the court. victims. A couple of court decisions worth noting this week reversing Oregon judicial decisions and granting wins to the Trump administration. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that police officers can use tear gas and crown control methods outside of the Portland Ice Building. The decisions overruled lower court judges saying that they were wrong to handcuff the government's

ability to counter unlawful behavior. They also added that the months-long blockade of the ice facility and vandalizing federal property are not protected by the First Amendment. NBC5 reports Oregon Department of Transportation says they'll remove or relocate flock automated license plate reading cameras installed near Cave Junction off of 199. The city says it didn't approve or install the cameras. And the state of Oregon plans to file an appeal with the Federal Emergency Management Agency for not granting the state disaster money. This is in connection with the December 2025 atmospheric river rainstorms and flooding cost a lot of damage, especially in the Tillamook County area, even though it's

disaster was declared, FEMA kept its wallet closed. Bill Meyer, KMED News. I'm Taylor Riggs, and this is the Fox Business Report. There are more signs the economy held up in March, despite the Iran conflict and higher energy costs. Durable goods orders for expensive manufactured things rose 8 tenths of a percent in March. It's a larger increase than expected. Housing starts, groundbreakings for new homes, rose 10.8 percent in March, though building permits for new construction. declined. Brinker International Parent of Restaurant Chain Chili's continues to see strong demand from diners. Sales rose in the recent quarter. Health insurer Humana reported a lower profit. The Federal Reserve wraps up its meeting today, probably the last with Jerome Powell as chair.

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There we go. Wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peters is Automotive Journalist here from EP Autos. Eric, great to have you back. Boy, what interesting times I was just talking about how the West Coast, according to Byron King, who's a money guy for Daily Reckoning, talking about how they have about six weeks of fuel left because, and I didn't realize until I looked it up through him,

that 90 days, 90-day trip from the Middle East for that oil to get out to the West Coast refinery. So we are definitely in a game of chicken right now, Eric. How you doing, buddy? It's a shambling disaster, isn't it? Even in my area, I put some gas on one of my vehicles yesterday, and the price jumped almost 20 cents over the course of about a day. It's now about $4.20 here in Southwest Virginia. And that's about a buck 40 more than it was in December, which seems. seems a million years ago, but it's only four months ago. So, you know, on average, people are

paying about a buck 50 now,ish, more for gasoline, which works out to about $22 more for the typical small crossover family type vehicle with a 15-gallon tank. You're paying about $2021 more each time you fill up. So that's about $100 a month. That's about, you know, figuring it out over the course of a year. That's about $1,200. I think it's the largest effective tax increase that we've seen in years. And no wonder Trump's popularity is cratering. Well, and the point is he's going to have to bring this to a close sooner rather than later. I would think politically it's turning into an issue, I think. And I was talking with Steve Bonta from the New American, and he's lived all around the world and pretty good economic analyst. And his thing is, okay, we can sit around and question if it

was wise to do it. At this point, you've got to find a way to, he's actually advocating. You have to wrap this up and get a positive outcome on this. You can't just have the status quo going on because certainly out here on the West Coast they're looking at, you know, a serious, a serious real shortage of fuel. And it's also in combination with California having a small amount of pipelines going in and out of it when it comes to fuel. And that's just because of geography, you know, the rugged mountains. It's just a tougher place to be running the pipelines through. So, you know, the sort of things that I guess we weren't expecting are starting to happen here, Eric, so keep an eye on that, all right, for sure. Well, yeah, you know, I would like nothing better

than to see Trump cut bait, declare a victory, and go back to putting America first. The problem is, I don't think that he's going to be able to do that for a variety of reasons, including his own egotomania. You know, he needs to have a win for himself, no matter what it ends up costing us. That's my opinion on this. I hope I'm wrong. Well, I hope you're wrong on that one, too, right? Now, this is something else which has to do with trade, with trade rules. And this is something you're going to be having spotlight on eP.otos.com. I guess tomorrow, are you going to have the article up on that? Tomorrow's main article, we'll talk about this. And what we're talking about is the elimination, effectively, of any vehicle from this market that has a base price of under

$25,000 on account of the tariffs, which are just taxes. A number of manufacturers have already pulled these vehicles out of the market because it no longer makes sense for them to bring them here because, you know, their main selling point was that they were cheap. You know, a good example is the Hyundai venue. It's currently the least expensive new vehicle that you can buy. Yeah, Hyundai Venue is kind of like a micro SUV of sorts, right? It's just a little crossover. I mean, it's not like a smart car. It's not like preposterously small. It's just a tiny little crossover. You know, something comparable, you know, to it's a little bit larger than a Ford Escape, but it's not that much smaller. Anyway, the point is it's inexpensive. Why is it inexpensive? Because it's made in South Korea.

And, you know, the manufacturing costs in South Korea are considerably less than they are here to such an extent that Hyundai can still ship the thing over here, across the ocean, and absorb those costs and still sell it at a price point that allows them to make money and be competitive. But Trump, in his great wisdom, decided to impose 25% tariffs on vehicles like that. So effectively now they become that much more expensive, and all of a sudden, they're less competitive in the market. Now, the thing is what confused me about this is that I thought that many of these vehicles were part of the USMCA in which they're built built from parts from Mexico. They're built with parts from Canada and they're assembled. And they're claiming, so these were,

this is a 25% tariff that's bypassing USMCA or, or am I misinterpreting this? No, no, no, that's the thing. You know, Trump, ironically enough, I think it was back in 2020. He was an ardent advocate of that. But his recent slew of tariffs negated that. And, you know, the industry is squealing about it, understandably, because so many vehicles are made outside of the United States, including, by the way, the Chevy Tracks. You know, it may be a domestic brand, but the Chevy Tracks is manufactured in Korea. And that's why General Motors is able to sell that vehicle in this country for just a little bit more than the Hyundai venue. Now, to give you some context, and I get into the numbers in the article I'm going to have on the site tomorrow, the Ford Escape, which is made here,

has a base price of about $30,000. Now, granted, it's a little larger, but the main reason it's thousands and thousands of dollars more expensive is because it has to absorb all of the regulatory compliance costs. And the problem with Trump's tariffs, leaving aside that their taxes, is that it does not address the manufacturing regulatory compliance costs making things in this country. So all they do, all these tariffs are doing, is making everything cost more, rather than making things easier to manufacture here. And so you have Toyota and Kia Hyundai and Nissan and others that are saying we are not going to be shipping our least expensive models here.

I mean, we've been talking for a number of weeks here, Eric, about why it is that there seem to be so many less expensive vehicles available elsewhere. And some of them, of course, are not going to comply with the safety standards. Okay, we understand that. Maybe something sold in South America. Part of that would be it. But if you're going to throw a 25% tariff on top of that, The challenge that we're getting into is that Detroit and the Big Three automakers, or what was the big three automakers, they don't even want to bother making small affordable cars.

Isn't that the case? They've been focusing on larger SUVs and pickup trucks. Isn't that the case? Oh, absolutely, because what they have, they pivoted to a new, a new demographic. Their main buyer demographic now being people who can afford to spend $50,000 or more, the very high end of the market. So what's happened effectively is that instead of cars being sort of a mass market thing that working in middle income people could afford to buy, they are becoming an exclusive item for the very affluent cohort in this country to buy roughly about 20% or so of the population are carrying the current market. I don't know that that's long term sustainable, certainly not as a mass market. You know, it's just, it's horrific on so many levels, particularly since Trump postures as somebody who wants to make America great again. Well, one way to do that would be to cut through all the stuff that makes it so difficult, if not impossible, to sell people cars that cost $15,000. Is there any way that he could do that, in your opinion, through the regulatory state to modify this somewhat? So, okay, so you don't, all right, you don't want us buying Chevy tracks from South Korea.

Okay, all right, I understand. but you don't have anybody in Detroit interested in building the Chevy tracks here, right? At least I don't think there is. Well, certainly he has never in the past been reluctant to use his executive authority to just decree things. So certainly he could do that, but I think more profoundly, he could make a case to the American people. You know, he could just bring it out there. This is a populist issue that I think would resonate. You call a press conference and say, look, I would like to see Americans able to go to a car dealership,

go to their Chevy store, go to a Hyundai store, wherever, and buy a $15,000 brand new car. Let's make that happen. He could put pressure on Congress to pass laws, to enact the necessary changes, to dramatically dial back all the regulatory rigmarole that makes it, you know, difficult for vehicle manufacturers to offer cars like that in this country. And this is a serious stuff. When you're talking about minimum amount of money able to get any kind of car at 30,000 plus, that's tough.

That's going to be tough for life. of people, wouldn't it be? Yeah, and tough, and I think it's tough on purpose. I think there's a sinister aspect to this. I think this is part of the broader agenda to push most people out of owning a car, ultimately. You know, that thread runs through just about everything you and I talk about every week. Well, of course, it comes through the regulatory apparatchiks in Washington, D.C. I'm talking about the lifers, the ones that don't necessarily care about who is president from time to time, all right? Talking with Eric Peters this morning here, E.P.O.O.com. It's wheels up Wednesday. have other topics we're going to be rolling into also, but if you wanted to ask a question or comment

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Download the free Upside app now to earn cash back every time you buy gas. Use promo code, Champion 25 to get an extra 25 cents per gallon on your first tank. You can cash out any time right to your bank, PayPal, or a gift card for Amazon and other brands. Just download the free Upside app and use promo code champion 25 for a 25 cents per gallon bonus on your first tank that's code champion 25 for a 25 cents per gallon bonus the bill mire show on 106 3 kmED 7705 633 wheels up Wednesday with eric peters talking about the shortage of inexpensive cars that could be coming and the car dealers or the car manufacturers not the dealers the dealers aren't squealing it's the car manufacturers that are and talking about this.

I wanted to go off into the recall world. We ended up getting a recall notice on a pickup truck, a company pickup truck, Eric, and it had to do with, there was like a speed sensor problem that could throw the automatic transmission into low at highway speed. And, of course, that could be a problem, right?

You can see how something like that, what happened and put things into a spin and such. But, boy, I'll tell you, it's nothing like what Honda is facing, and you're bringing that up today, on half a million unexpected deployments. How'd you like to have your airbag just blow up because, right? Don't you love the language that they use?

Unexpected deployments. Unexpected deployments, yeah. Is that, what, are you, a National Guard member being unexpectedly deployed to some over? I mean, it's kind of like you remember the supposedly Japan's emperor Hirohito said something to be effective. The war is proceeding not necessarily to Japan's advantage. You know, without saying we're losing, right? That kind of. Right, exactly.

So, I mean, the gist of it is that there is some softball glitch affecting about half a million Honda Odyssey minivans such that if you hit a pothole, you know, or jangled a vehicle in some way, that it could cause the unexpected deployment. And, you know, I find this fascinating because, you know, they tell us that, oh, airbags are so very safe. And that's why they were mandated and people are forced to buy them. Yeah, no, see, I thought that they had all sorts of, of issues and sensor calibrations to make sure that the airbag never deploys unexpectedly. and it has to have a certain amount of force hitting in a certain direction. Isn't that the case? Yeah, but there's so many pieces. You know, there are multiple sensors, all these wirings and all these other associated parts.

And over time, the stuff deteriorates and maybe something wasn't connected quite right at the factory. Things glitch, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, the thing that bothers me so much about this is that you and me and everybody else were denied the right to weigh costs and benefit for ourselves. Now, you might be able to make a case if airbags were absolutely perfect. In every case, they always provided a benefit. They never caused any harm.

I mean, I still would say we have free agency as adults that we should be able to choose for ourselves. But what happens is these risks are imposed on us. Free-in-move, they're small risks. That doesn't matter. You know, people have been killed and have been hurt by unexpected deployments because they were compelled to buy a vehicle with an airbag. Well, remember during the airbag recalls of the last few years, how, you know, in states, you were not legally allowed to turn off the airbag that could decapitate someone because

it was faulty. They knew that there was a problem with many of them. Absolutely. You know, let's say that I had the freedom to choose to buy a new car without airbags. And then I get into an accident and I'm injured as a result of that, well, that's on me. You know, I decided, I assumed the risk of driving the vehicle without the airbag. Okay, I got hurt. I can live with that because it was a choice I made. Yeah, but you're deciding, but you're claiming to be an adult and you own yourself. And that's not the way it exists in this world here, Eric. At least it seems that way these days. No, no, it doesn't. But like, The thing I wanted to drive in on is that there's something so insufferable about, okay, you're just driving your Honda Odyssey down the road.

You know, you're not, you didn't wreck it, but all of a sudden you hit a pothole and the airbag unexpectedly deploys and it breaks your nose. Maybe it, you know, it lacerates your eye. And that has been imposed on you. And I think that that's a qualitatively different thing than, you know, you have, you know, chosen to assume a risk. And there's some unintended consequence that occurs as a result of that. It's been one of those situations where we as an American people have, have accepted these attacks, these little minor attacks. And of course, it's always been phrased as it's, well, it's for your own good. It's the tyranny for your own good. That's

essentially what the entire regulatory state of America has been about for a long, long time. And I don't know if Americans will finally, you know, stand up at some point, say enough about this. You know, if I can drive around a 1982 Volkswagen safely on the, you know, on the, on the highway here, Eric, and it doesn't have air brake, it doesn't have, I'm sorry, anti-lock brakes, it doesn't have an airbag, it doesn't have multiple point seatbelts and all the rest. If I can drive that around, why can't you purchase something like that right now new? I mean, this whole safety, you know, and, you know, everything we have right now, every car now is fat, heavy, overloaded, and over expensive in many cases compared to what it could be with all the amazing technology of today.

Oh, without doubt. And the thing that worries me is that eventually they're going to going to say that vehicles like your van and my old transam are not safe to be operable on public roads and they'll make it illegal for you to operate it on public roads unless you somehow manage to incorporate all this modern safety tech into it which is you know technically and economically not feasible i see it going there you know people talk about the the so-called slippery slope and the boiling frog there's truth in it you know when all this stuff began 60 years ago with something that seemed trivial at the time oh all cars ought to have sheet belts because sheetbelts are a good thing. Well, you know, we went from just having seatbelts and cars that you didn't have to wear

to where we are now with eye camera monitors that if you look to the left to the right, they're going to shut the car down. Okay. Oh, you're distracted. All right now, you have that. So the cameras, the built-in dash cameras. Now, I mean, I was just reporting on the automated license plate readers that, you know, people are starting to squeak more and more about here. A couple of them are being removed from the cave junction area off of Highway 1.99. But now we're talking about eye monitoring in the car itself. Absolutely. Yeah, you know, I've been trying to warn people about this for a number of years.

You know, I'm in a kind of a unique position in that I get to, you know, get access to new vehicles before most people do. So I tend to see things before most people do. And a few years ago, I began to notice this odd little panel, a little, little protrusion that sticks up on the steering column of the new cars that I was getting to drive. And it looks like it's like a little mini accessory gauge cluster. Like maybe there's some warning lights in that. And I puzzled over it.

What is that? Well, I figured out what it was one day. when I was doing one of my video monologues holding a camera, and I went back to review it, and I could see the little flashing infrared lights. That's the eye monitor system, that they have been rolling out, and that is going to become mandatory next year,

that constantly scans your face, your eyes, and if the car thinks that you are not, you know, paying full attention if you are distracted, if you're drowsy, you know, ultimately they're just going to shut the car off, or maybe it'll pull itself off to the side of the road. Not kidding. You know, I've got some videos in the art,

that's up on EP autos, people can go look at it and see it for themselves. So really, literally shutting the cars down. So if I am looking left and right too much before I pull out into an intersection, that the car could technically consider that being an unattentive driver or an inattentant driver and then shut it down or set off some bingings and warnings, I mean, what does it actually do? Yeah, well, back in 2020, this was passed under Biden that by 20, okay, of course, Biden. By 2027, which we're not that far away from that, vehicles must have some mechanism for detecting impaired. That was the terminology or distracted driving.

And the method that the manufacturers, the vehicle companies have come up with are these infrared camera things that monitor your eye movements and how you're sitting in the car. And initially, it's just an annoying nagging prompt that you get. Literally, some of them will say, sit up straight. You know, look ahead. They'll yell at you. Oh, my gosh. It's like having the like a first grade school teacher. Yeah, I mean, it's an icon that comes up on the, you know, on the touchscreen that tells you these things.

But what will happen inevitably is that they will then use the electronic controls in the car to throttle back your driving. You and I've talked about it many times. Vehicles that have been made since I don't got to 2010 or even before that all have drive by wire throttle controls. They have transmissions that are controlled electronically, even if you think you're physically pulling on that lever that moves the transmission from park to drive. You're not doing that. The computer's doing that. And the computer can just as easily put the transmission back into park. And it can cause the engine to idle.

Almost all the new cars now have electric assist power steering, controlled electrically, which is controlled by the computer. And they can use that to steer you off out of the shoulder to shut the car down. That's ultimately where all of this is headed. I really encourage people to look into this. All right. Could we actually see this point where the drowsy eye camera ends up being a minority report style pre-crime detector of some sort.

Oh, right? Have you seen it? I had another article that's dubs tales with this about GM's gate monitor. Have you seen that one? No, what's the gate monitor? I must have missed that one. GM filed for a patent for technology that will monitor you as you approach the car. You're not even in the car yet.

And if the system thinks that your gate is off, i.e., you know, you're shambling because maybe you've been drinking too much. Never mind, you might have stubbed your toe or your knee hurts or something like that. that will be taken as evidence that you're impaired and the vehicle will shut you know i'm not kidding me i'm absolutely not kidding it is gotten beyond dystopian and this is real and it's all happening and it's coming together this is not five years from now this is not two years ago from now this is a few months from now that this all is going to come online so let's say that i could have sciatica you know i wake up in the morning and i and i pitched a nerve my lower back let's say right and so my

left leg is hurting because i have sciatica and i don't have it but you know if i did and i'm Stumbling out to my car, and I'm stumbling because of that, the car would then refuse to turn on, right? Correct. Correct. And Ford apparently just filed for a patent that similar type of technology that, you know, if you appear agitated, you know, if the system thinks that you're not in the right frame of mind to be operating a vehicle, it will not allow you to drive the vehicle. Okay. So I'm really agitated because, let's see, my wife is ready to have her baby. And so, come on, come on, let's go, let's go, let's go. And then the car is saying, I'm sorry, you're too excitable to be driving right now. Sorry, Bill. Wow. I mean, it's obvious at this point, it ought to be incandescently obvious that they want to absolutely control you when you're in your car, control you, monitor you, and parent and punish you if you deviate from the norms that they lay down. Well, you're selling a lot of used cars lately here, Eric. Oh, yeah. And that's no joke. You know, I encourage everybody who is creeped out by this as I am to consider going out and buying a pre-tech car, you know, something that was made 2010 or before that doesn't have any of this stuff. Well, so let us then take it to the latest review here. And you term the 2026 Subaru Forrester Wilderness very boring, but boring in a good way, right? Yeah, absolutely. You know, people don't buy Subaru's generally speaking, you know, excepting for the WRX. and the BRZ sports car because they're exciting.

They buy them because they're very practical, very durable, and very tenacious. You know, I live in a mountainous area in Southwest Virginia. People love Subaru's here because, you know, they have the ground clearance and not just, you know, and they all will drive health, but the ground clearance and the suspension articulation to deal with these washed out gravel roads, mud, and all of that. They're wonderful. And this wilderness package kicks that up a little bit with lower gear ratio in the, in the vehicle to give it a little bit more grunt at low speed.

It comes with some nice, you know, geolander, all-train tires, which, by the way, smooth out the ride because they have nice tall sidewalls instead of these, you know, rubberband thin little sidewalls that you see on so many new vehicles. Oh, I know. The ones, especially with big, with big rims, right, especially. They've got flex, you know, which you want, because if you're off road, you know, you hit a, you know, you hit a dip or a big rock, the tire can flex with that and not explode. You know, like the thin sidewall tires often do when you hit a bottle. So a very nice vehicle. And also, it's similar to the package that Subaru offered last year in the Outback, but with a lot less of a price tag, it's about $6,600 less.

And the main reason for that is that, unlike the Outback Wilderness, it does not come with the turbocharged 2.4 liter engine. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But the speed of this normally aspirated engine, no turbo charge, I mean, it's adequate power, but it's nothing blistering, right? That kind of thing? Yeah, but it's long haul is what you want. I mean, if you want that, you know, turbo engines have their place.

I've got nothing against them, particularly in performance applications, but being something of a future time-oriented guy and a budget-minded guy, you know, I like a vehicle that I can potentially keep for 15 to 20 years without having to worry about spending $5,000 on a new engine or more. And with the turbo, the odds of something like that having to, and, you know, and the turbo, and having to spend money on that increased because the turbo imparts pressure on the engine. It's under more load all the time. It's a replacement. It's being used as a replacement for displacement, you know, is what it's doing now. And that's part of the compliance deal. So the Subaru Forrester Wilderness, it's not going to be a speed demon or anything like that. But most people don't buy a Subaru Forrester, you know, to be a speed demon, right? They're just looking for good, reliable performance, right?

And it's not a turtle either. You know, we've kind of gotten into this weird, headspace where a vehicle that gets to 60 and eight seconds is somehow considered slow. And that's what we're talking about here. You know, and for the record, that's about two seconds faster to 60 than the last generation Prius was. And eight seconds to 60 is about what my Trans Am did back in the day when it was stock. Yeah. Yeah. My Monte Carlo was about a nine or 10 seconds, zero to 60 back in high school, you know, and that was considered, oh boy, kind of a mussely car, you know, sort of thing. And yeah, we've been spoiled on what we think of as good acceleration, haven't we? Well, we've been manipulated, I think, by the car press, frankly, because they focus on this so much. Most people don't get in their car

and floor it and see how, you know, their drag racing, zero to 60. They just want enough power to pull out on the road to be able to comfortably maintain 75 miles an hour on the highway. And any new vehicle that you buy is more than capable of doing that. Glad to hear this. So you like the 2026 Subaru. It's a little less expensive with the Forrester Wilderness Package, right? About six grand or so. What is it sticker for? Yeah, that's a lot. I mean, in my book, $6,600 less. And I think that, you know, down the road, it's probably going to be the more long-term or reliable vehicle, frankly. The only thing I wish that they, uh, that they would do is to, is to offer a manual transmission in it. Uh, you know, you can't get a manual transmission in any Subaru any longer other than the WRX and the BRZ

sports car. And I think that's a shame. Now, it's a CVT though, right? It is. Yeah. I mean, Subaru, you know, used to have automatics. And Subaru got criticized a lot for its vehicles not having the best gas mileage. And, you know, relatively speaking, they, you know, they were a few miles per gallon below other vehicles in the market. But for compliance reasons, Subaru bended the knee and put the CBT in there, which I think is a shame because, you know, if they still put four, five, six speed automatics in it, those things would probably hold up for 20 years.

CBTs don't have such a great track record. Yeah, well, I would certainly be changing the fluid a lot more. And I have to tell you, the more I'm watching YouTube and other. videos on mechanics tearing down engines that have been blowing up with regularity. And I'm not talking about Subaru. It's like all the manufacturers have been having problems there for a while. You know, if they're talking 7 to 10,000 mile oil change intervals, even from the factory, do not do that. I have to tell you. Listen to them. That seems to be one of the most common. You know, they're saying, oh, you know, you don't have to change the oil on this truck, you know,

for 10,000 miles. Forget about it. And where are, you know, where are the so-called consumer advocates. You know, all of this, this is nothing more than a greasy marketing ploy. They, they'll tell people who don't know any better, oh, it's a low maintenance car. You only have to change the oil every 10,000 miles. Look, it's going to save you some money until their engine blows up prematurely. Yeah. And then, you know, the oil control rings get, get carbonized and stuck and, you know, you're not getting the impurities out of it. Believe me, change oil often, frequent, often, and do it a little bit beyond what the manufacturer is say you're not going to hurt anything. I just think that this is just the one common flaw that we're

seeing in automotive and truck maintenance these days, Eric. I've got 100% agree. You know, I've been doing this a very long time. I've been wrenching a very long time. And my personal rule is twice a year, you know, 5,000 miles twice a year. And it's served me very well over the years. All right, very good. E.P.O.O.S.com, 26, Subaru, Forrester, Wilderness. You can read the whole thing in there. And it's a good review and a whole bunch more. And I appreciate you coming on this morning. Eric. We'll catch you next Wednesday. Thanks. Bill. Thank you for having me. All right. This is KMED and KMED HD One Eagle Point Medford. KBXG,

Grants Pass. Picture this.