Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 04-30-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

04-30-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. I'm looking forward to talking with John Deaton. He's here. He's a U.S. Marine veteran cancer survivor, father of three daughters, trial attorney, and he also overcame significant challenges to build a pretty darn successful life and advocating for the downtrodden, people that have had it out there. In fact, you have a law firm there, don't you? John, welcome to the program.

Good to have you on. It's great to be with you. Thank you for having me, Bill. Yeah, tell me a bit about your law firm, if you don't mind. This has to do with mesothelioma, those kind of things? Yeah. Yeah, after the Marine Corps, I started a practice. I represent people who get that rare form of cancer around the line of their lung called

mesothelioma, which is only caused by asbestos. So, you know, it's been my privilege of my legal career to represent plumbers and engineers and electricians and mechanics when they were exposed to asbestos. Yeah, what kind of, or what's your website so people can find out more about you? Oh, I appreciate it. It's deatonlawfirm.com. D-E-A-T-O-N is my last name, deatonlawfirm.com. And it says here you're an author. What have you written? Just curious. I wrote a book called Food Stamp Warrior. I've lived in one of the worst neighborhoods in America. You can look it up. It's called Highland Park, Detroit.

They put a sign that said, Internet your own risk. Police do not patrol the area. Single mother on welfare and food stamps. And so it's just overcoming sort of adversity and the embodiment of the American dream and you know going over life's challenges dealing with the cancer diagnosis when I was younger and going over poverty and then there were some really bad things that happened as a child you know in that neighborhood and so I talk about never giving up and you know keep fighting for the life you deserve and if you have talent and combine that with work ethic in this great country of ours,

you can achieve the American dream. You know, it seems that it's worked out pretty well for you, John. It's good to get a chance to meet you here. I wanted to ask you something else since you are an attorney and I've noticed that there has been talk about the forever chemicals. I know your law practice is involved with mesothelioma.

And I've been reading a lot for a number of years now, even trying to get some answers about PFAs, the so-called forever chemicals, which appear to be forever polluting a lot of lands and waterways and things like that. And I'm kind of curious if, as a a trial attorney you have a feeling this may be the next line of civil litigation that they go down because there has not been a lot of control on these forever chemicals, these polyfluorocarbines, you know, the Teflons of the world, you know, that kind of thing. You keep it up on that by chance? I mean, I wouldn't call myself an expert at it, but you know, for the listeners, you know, you're talking about all these skillets that are like have that coating on them, non-stick

coatings and you know that... Yeah, and it's in all sorts of materials, including fire retardant clothing. It's just everywhere you look, you find these PFAS. You do, and it binds in your body and stays forever because they're indestructible chemical bonds and that were synthetically made. And so yes, we don't have enough results, but what will happen is if we determine, if there's enough study that determines there's a signature disease attributed, so like mesothelioma is only caused by asbestos. When that happens, versus lung cancer, which can be caused by cigarettes or other things.

If it's A, the science is able to detect a signature disease that you can directly link to that chemical, then yes, you're looking at sort of the next wave of civil litigation. I know that a lot of times those forever chemicals would concentrate in sewage sludge and effluent. And so a lot of times even here in southern Oregon, they ended up spraying it on some land for fertilizer purposes. And I even asked the DEQ, our environmental quality people here in the state, hey, have you been keeping track of this? And they've never answered me.

I think we know why. I think you're right. But you know, when we have farmers who will spray their crops and then not come out of their house for five days. We might want to look into it a little bit. Yeah, fair enough. Hey, John, I want to switch it over to the big legal news of this week. And this is President Trump the other day with his executive order. And we're a sanctuary state and you live near Boston, right? Is that where you are? I do. I lived in Bolton, Massachusetts, and the mayor of Boston, which is about 40 minutes from me, and then of course the governor of Massachusetts have went on record to basically

say that, come here and we'll protect you. They're not cooperating with ICE. Yep. That's the way we are to Oregon and Massachusetts. As I joke, I call it Trump-y clause. He's making a list, checking it twice, and going to find out who's not helping ICE. And then, boy, things are going to go to hell, right? That's for sure.

And his latest executor, as you were talking about, basically creates that. What about the legality of this? And I know that they're going to take them, in fact I think our Attorney General has already filed or joined in some sort of lawsuit to fight this, but just about anything that Trump has burped out then our Attorney General ends up filing a lawsuit or joining a lawsuit, Dan Rayfield. And a lot of this has to do with the money. And essentially what Trump is talking about is that, hey, if you're not going to support our immigration policy,

we're going to find a way to cut your grant stream funding. And some would wonder, well, can he really do that? And what do you think as a matter of law? Yeah, I think that, well, first let's put it in perspective. And, you know, I'm not a fan of your attorney general, Dan Rayfield. We could get into it another day, but like our attorney general in Massachusetts, she's an Andrea Campbell has filed 11 lawsuits against the Trump administration already. But here's the first thing that we need to know. Barack Obama deported 3 million immigrants, zero injunctions.

George W. Bush and the other presidents, including Clinton, another 10 million, zero injunctions. George W. Bush and the other presidents, including Clinton, another 10 million, zero injunctions. And we're talking about effects of 20 million immigrants. President Trump has deported 100,000, 30 injunctions so far. So you're right, it's in the court system. And this is now a new level. that order basically says that if you interfere in any way, or if you don't become cooperative, we can withhold federal funding. And as long as there is a nexus, if they can tie it to some kind of evidentiary basis, then I think it's going to survive ultimately. But it will go up to the Supreme Court.

That doesn't mean they'll win at the district court level or even, you know, in the circuit court level, but I think the United States Supreme Court, we're gonna see a ruling on whether he can withhold funding, whether it's from Harvard or whether it's from other types of grants because of their lack of cooperating for federal funds. Yeah, you think you'd ever see a day in which a federal judge or a big or a high-level judge would would do something like what Judge Deegan did, or Dugan did the other day, the one who was suspended from Wisconsin? Yeah, I didn't. You know, a judge is supposed to carry out the law.

And what Tom Holman said, he said, listen, you don't have to like what we're doing, and you don't even have to help. But if you interfere, if you harbor or assist and help an illegal evade a lawful deportation, we're going to arrest you and we're going to prosecute you. And we saw that play out. And you know, people in Oregon and in Massachusetts, elected officials are going to be next. If they're going to actually help an illegal immigrant who may have actually, in addition to crossing illegal, have felony convictions in the United States after the

illegal crossing, if you're going to help them evade a lawful federal deportation, we're going to arrest you. And I think we may see an elected official, whether it's a city town mayor or a mayor like Mayor Wu in Boston, I think that's the next step. And listen, it's a lawful deportation. You don't have to like it. But if the federal government has a lawful deportation order, then as an elected leader and as a member of law enforcement, you should assist.

That's my personal opinion. I wanted to ask you about what is a lawful deportation order, because one of the concerns that I've seen up there is that people who came here in the first place never had any authorization to be here, John, the way it's been described. You have no visa, you have no paperwork, you never signed in, you're not supposed to be here, you've just been living here, animating capture all these years. What qualifies as a hearing? Because it's estimated that anywhere from 19 on the low end, I think it's maybe more like 25 million illegal aliens are probably in this country right now. And if you were going to have millions upon millions

of hearings and big court proceedings for everybody, no one ever goes home. Am I right or wrong about that? No, you're right. Listen, I ran for Senate against Elizabeth Warren here in Massachusetts. I went to the border and I learned, and I was there in May of 2024,

and I learned that they were handing in May of 2024 and I learned that they were handing out court dates of 2032, eight years later. I mean, these people aren't going to come back eight weeks later for court, let alone eight years later. And here's the thing that really interferes and why I think the last administration wanted so many to come over and open the door is because in America, if you're on soil, you're entitled to due process, even if you're a non-citizen. Now the question is what you asked.

That's the bill is the most important question, which is what does due process look like? And I think what the Trump administration only needs to do is send some more judges down there and you could give a 24 hour notice where you're before a judge, and then you get a deportation. But I think this is the design. When I went to the border, I sat there and just couldn't believe

what I was witnessing, and I walked away saying, this was intentional. They intentionally are allowing this, and I think we're seeing why because once you're here, they want it to take years and years and years. I mean, look, President Trump's deported 100,000, not a million, and there's millions as you described. So they want to tie it up in the court system and eventually probably try to get these folks to amnesty and allow them to be voters

and so that they can retain in power. I really think that- In other words, overload the system is like, well, the clowered pivot system in which you completely overload the system and it collapses under the attack, more or less. That kind of thing? Absolutely. Yeah. Because there, and I think that's why the President Trump administration was using the Enemy Aliens Act of 1798, because there's 3 million cases pending in the regular

immigration court system. And so they're using whatever other laws that they can to get these folks out. But the thing we got to think about is if your first act in America is to avoid our lawful process, then should you be allowed to have the same exact due process that people here legally have? That's the next question. Oh yeah, you consider this John, that the Biden administration let in millions of people, absolutely no due process, no really monitoring of it, no vetting of it, and then we're supposed to then go through millions upon millions of trials or hearings in order to vet them on the way out. It seems like it was

designed to destroy us. Now, this question here is something that I'm reading a lot within the blogosphere, and it's kind of a nuclear option. And it would appear that it could be done constitutionally, but could President Trump, like other presidents have done in the past, suspend the writ of habeas corpus for immigration cases for a certain amount of time? What would you think about that? It's a big deal. No, it is a big deal. And, you know, obviously it would be challenged to go to the Supreme Court rather quickly. And the Supreme Court has, in matters of foreign policy, national emergency immigration has given a lot of deference

to the presidential's authority. So, you know, I think President Trump would need to first declare a state of emergency based on this, the national security risk, which it is, the public safety risk, which it is, and then proceed, you know, under that sort of guise. But I think we'd see it at the Supreme Court probably within 30 days. And, you know, that's a tough one to handicap, to be honest with you. It could probably be a 5-4 ruling one way or the other.

Do you think the Trump administration will win ultimately on its desire? I know this is away from immigration but essentially the Trump administration has been told by courts that well you may be the executive but really judges are in charge of what the executive can do. Do you think that is going to be reined in or nipped somehow if you were handicapping the Supreme Court? How do you think this will play? I think it has to because you can't allow, you know, the last time I checked, the American people did not elect a federal district judge in Rhode Island or a federal district judge

in Maryland or in Washington as the commander in chief as the next president. So I think we're going to ultimately see some kind of limitation where that unless it directly impacts the federal district judge's district, then they do not have the authority to enjoin a national program or even foreign policy of the United States of America. And I think we're going to see some kind of limitations in favor of President Trump. Do you believe that John or the Supreme Court itself, maybe even John Roberts will actually narrow or actually smack down these courts and actually say, hey, listen, come on, keep

this within your jurisdiction rather than doing nationwide or is it going to take some form of law to obtain this? I think they're going to have to come up with, I think they're going to restrict it but allow it that there has to be a credible nexus. So for example, if the district court, a judge in Rhode Island with the smallest jurisdiction in the country, you know, going gonna have to show before he could be allowed to enjoy the president of the United States that it impacts his district specifically. And I think if they allow that Lexis,

Nexus, they won't need legislation because, you know, a year from now, Bill, we're gonna be in midterms election cycle and so I don't think we can wait for legislation to get passed. Speaking of elections, since you already ran against Elizabeth Warren, yes our favorite East Coast Senator, being sarcastic of course, are you going to be entering the political arena again? Well, I don't know yet to be honest. I knew I stepped up against Elizabeth Warren. It was February of 2024. No one was stepping up.

I didn't want to get her a free pass and Massachusetts is very interesting because I got beat by 20 points, but I was the first Republican candidate to get a percent to get over 40% but I was the first Republican candidate for Senate to get over 40% in many, many years. And Massachusetts is actually the second best state President Trump improved over 2020. So there's an undercurrent here. Not suggesting it's flipping red anytime soon, but we might be able to get a shade of purple with us. A poll came out that showed that I could be Ed Markey, who's 80 and been

there since 1978 in Washington, by three to five points. So if I believe there's a path to victory and I have, you know, support of the administration and I think I can raise money, then I'll do it again. John Dayton, once again. John, your website and your law firm and everything else we need to know so people can find out more. Sure. It's Deaton.com. You can follow me on xjoneedeaton1 and my book is Food Stamp Warrior, available on Amazon.

Very good. John, a pleasure meeting you. Thanks so much. Be well. It's my honor. Have a good day. 730 KMED, KPXG. You're on the Bill Meyer show. Ready to upgrade your roof to a durable, sleek metal option? Look no

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732, Commissioner Ron Smith, Josephine County is going to join me afternoons. I'm looking forward to a talk. Kind of a catch up. Looks like things are smoothing out. I hope so. And maybe we can move forward. Joe County, get behind all the drama and the tumult. Drama and tumult is great if you're watching a television show, but boy with local

politics, you try to keep it in the straight and narrow here. Earlier I was talking about this article, I think it was Vicky Aldous wrote this in the Daily Courier, how everyone's all hissy-fitting over cuts to public land funding because of the sustainable tourism business that has been going on for a long, long time. And they brought up some insane number of billions upon billions of dollars in tourism. Mr. X, who of course is my crack researcher, friend of mine of course, I'll give you this, my dog in the fight, he's a good guy. And he said, Bill, just wanted to let you know that the outdoor recreation numbers that they're talking about is BS. And he brings up a government document.

I think I'm going to put this on today's blog here. Outdoor recreations impact on Oregon's economy was $8.4 billion in 2023, a roughly 8% increase from the prior year. Climate change and natural disasters threaten the future of Oregon's outdoor economy, according to the state's own economic analysis. Wildfires especially are not only dangerous to the immediate population, but wildfires smoke can make recreation unhealthy to engage in throughout the state. Well, once again, this is back to the the policy of don't manage public lands and burn them every summer and then we

wonder, you know, why this happens. But the interesting stat though is that Ed mentions it looks like RVing and boating and fishing are the largest contributors. So it's people who are in there, RVs that are vacationing and boating. And of course, you know, the gang greens hate the boats, right? Well, unless it's a kayak, I guess that's okay. It's human powered, but yeah, boating and fishing

and fishing and boy, they don't want people fishing too much too, just loving the land too much. Hmm. All right. And I appreciate that. By the way, my email is bill at billmeyershow.com. All right. Ed, I appreciate that. By the way, my email is bill at BillMeyersShow.com. Quick catch up on the rest of the news and then we check in with Joe County Commissioner Ron Smith.

If you are provided by DISH. I'm Tony Dusty with Dusty's Transmissions and I'm on KMEB. I'm so glad you're here, 738. Josephine County Commissioner Ron Smith back on the show. Good morning, Ron. Welcome. Well, thank you, Bill. Thank you for having me on the show today. Thank you very much. It's been a really interesting couple of weeks over the Josephine County Commission.

You think interesting is an interesting, well that's an interesting adjective to use. But it has been a bit challenging there and then there was the rather noisy departure of a budget officer there a few days ago, Simon here. And what is going on now? Kind of wanted to get an update and take the temperature of what's happening with the board these days. I was wondering if you could just help us understand what happened, why it happened, and where we're moving forward, I guess. Well, I want to make sure that in this conversation, we talk about the budget process and the duties of the budget officer. But what's going on in Josephine County, we are a board that's doing something I think

most boards of commissioners have not done for a long time, and that's looking out to the future 10, 15 years down the road. And with what's happening, we just had a news item about grants and budgets, people understand our county budget is eighty percent grant driven. And so that any cuts and grants to the state or pass through from the feds is going to severely affect our budget. That's just the reality that we're starting with and how much has

grant stream funding dropped already or has it not dropped at this time? Well, you know, it's hard to tell, Bill, because in this process of budgeting, the commissioners, all they've done so far and what their duties are is we set the rates for the departments. We're either plus or minus one to two, three percent for their budget increase or decrease. And from that point on, the commissioners by state law are not to see that budget until the first budget meeting. So we have no idea as commissioners what's in that budget. Oh, I didn't know that. Yes.

By law, once we set the rates as commissioners, we are not allowed to see the budget until the first budget meeting. Why is that? To keep us from influencing the budget. Okay, so the budget committee and its members are the only ones that are supposed to be involved with and influencing the budget? Is that what I'm hearing then? Well, no, the budgeting process, once we set the rates... When you say set the rates, what is setting the rate, Ron? Is that setting the rate of pay or setting the rate of an increase or decrease, let's say? Decreased percentage of increase, one, two, three

percent increase or decrease. All right. So once we set the budgets by law, we cannot see that budget nor can we talk about the budget. So that's the whole duty of the budget officer. The budget officer and the reason Mr. Hare was contracted is because our recent finance director and who would have been the budget officer and has been, took the voluntary early retirement. So we needed to find a budget officer who had experience, and we were all told that he had eight years experience, so we contracted with him to be the budget officer. But people need to understand that the commissioners have no idea what's in the budget. We can't by law.

The first time it's made public is in that first budget meeting when the commissioners and the budget committee, we get delivered the budget message from the budget officer, and then we proceed to hone down that budget and make adjustments and changes to what needs to be done. So you're not involved in the actual process of coming up with the hard numbers, I guess, is what I'm hearing, right? Yeah. No, we don't make those decisions. The only time we're going to decide to make changes to that budget is in the budget meetings

along with three citizens who are on the budget meeting. And this process is totally open to the public. And this is what's so troubling about this piece of paper that's flying around, real or for, I have no clue, I have no knowledge of it. Was this the piece of paper that had the $388,000 compensation in total for Michael Sellers at that point? Is that the one you're talking about?

Yes, yes, and I am, and that has, I have a hard time talking about because there's some legal matters concerning that document. So all I say is that as budget officer, his duty is totally confidential, nothing to be released to the public. And then his job, should he see an abnormally or a bad line item, is to take that to finance, find out what's behind all this, and readjust that draft document to work towards a budget that can be presented to the commissioners and the budget committee. Now, I have to ask though, was Michael in charge of finance at that time?

Was he the one running that? He was, because we needed somebody over that department, but we have a very highly qualified manager managing that office, and she just declined not to be the director at this time. But the process, had he seen this, an anomaly of this line item and concerning who, I don't know because like I said we don't have a privy to the budget. When he's seen this, his job under contract was that take that to the finance director, to the manager of the budget department and justify and rectify and not let that slide through the process. So it was not the way to not handle it in your view then would not be to resign noisily and then release that information to everybody? Well he violated his contract. Okay. He totally violated his contract and his

confidentiality. That should have all stayed in-house and justified any other bad line items that were in that to move forward to a budget that was acceptable to present to the Budget Committee, and then we make the changes to that draft. At best, what that piece of paper is is a draft, just a draft, subject to changes. That line item would have never made it through the budget process. Everybody scrutinizes it. And the one question I got here, and this bothers me quite a bit, why didn't he bring that to my attention? If he's seen something like that,

why didn't he come to the Board of Commissioners and say, we have a problem here? Well, once again though, was he not allowed to come to the Board because, like you said yourself, that the commission cannot influence the budget anyway he would not be prohibited as long as you get specific about the budget he did to say something like I have a problem here we need to dress it but that should have went to the finance department and let them change make those necessary changes and put it to the bottom of what that line item meant. Okay. Can you address anything about the claims that were made also?

And I know everybody has to speak carefully because lawyers are involved, and when lawyers are involved, everybody has to shut up to one extent or another. I get this. But can you tell us anything about... When I talked with Michael Sellers last week, so was you know open about what was going on with him was there ever any negotiation with outside counsel in any form or way for a new contract or a contract for him in any way that you can you speak on this particular matter or not? They can't speak about something that didn't happen I will speak to that issue. Okay. There never speak to that issue.

There never was, to the best of my knowledge, talking to all the people inside county government that would have been privy to that, to the best of my knowledge, there was no contract, there is no contract. It was never even thought about. Had there been a contract drawn up by an outside attorney, it would have to come back before county legal counsel to be scrutinized and adjusted. Okay, now a friend of mine had mentioned that that would have had to happen anyway, so even

if there had been an outside attorney negotiating a contract, it still would have been going through Wally Hicks, the elected county attorney. Exactly what happened, and we addressed that in our meeting yesterday. Okay, all right, and you said that there are legal issues involved here. What's going on with the legal issue here? What are the claims being that are still going to be hashed out in court or elsewhere? Well, he signed a confidentiality in his contract to be the budget officer. There was a strict

clause in there about confidentiality. Has it been confidential about this? It doesn't appear that way. But... It doesn't appear that way. Yeah. Now is this a civil issue or something else? I really I can't go forward too much with this but there there is an investigation. Okay. all right. Would it be better just to let it go at this point? Well, I think it would, but appears the accusers don't think so.

Okay, so you're not driving that boat or that truck? I personally, I don't know what the truth there is, because I've talked to everybody inside government. There's no contract, there's no observant pay, I personally, I don't know what the truth there is. Cause I've talked to everybody inside government. There's no, there's no con, contract. There's no adjudgment pay. We're talking about a line item on a draft. People that never made it through the budget process. Isn't that crazy?

Who's in charge of the investigation? Our legal counsel has worked about it. So legal, so this is a Wally Hicks issue. Wally Hicks is doing this. Yes. Okay. Right. And will Wally Hicks then bring conclusions to the board?

And is there a time frame on this or what do we know? Well, I really want to, I don't know exactly what's going to happen with that. We just dismissed him as budget offer because of the violation of his contract. Now was this before or after he quit? Well, he resigned and the closest meeting we had was the next day so we let him go. Okay, all right. Okay, so overall, are things getting back on track? How would you evaluate the temperature overall and what comes next for Josephine County? Where do we go?

Well, I do wanna say this. I've been a student of this office for 25 years. I'm well versed on what goes on. Now, when you get inside, there's a lot of nuances that you may not know. So there is a learning curve. you get inside there's a lot of nuances that you may not know so there is a learning curve. What we've looked at and we've kind of looked down the road 10 or 15 years beyond our four-year term share and try to put the county into a position of reducing the overhead, cutting

the waste, and making county get more efficient and responsive to the taxpayers' needs and wishes. That's what we're in the process of doing. I might say that we've made tremendous progress, and this is the privy of the board. It's the only office in the county that can make these kind of adjustments. So we were doing what the taxpayers put us in the office for. Just like at the federal level, we're going to cut the waste, cut the inefficiency, and make county government more streamlined and able to handle the shortfalls coming in the near future.

All right. After my talk with Michael Sellers on Friday, I then have to ask you what is his current status? What's going on there? He is what he always has been, the IT director and the director of emergency management, which I think is a great gift. Those two offices were combined under the previous board, and I they're a perfect fit and that's what his job is. All right, very good. Ron, I appreciate the update. If anything else is going on and you

wanted to let folks know, you're welcome anytime. Okay. Well, thank you for having me on the show, Bill. I hope I cleared up something about the budget process. We set the rates. We don't know what's in the budget until the first budget meeting. Our budget officer viol a confidentiality statement. And that document that's floating around out there, I don't know if that's a cut and paste, if that's a real document. We don't know, but what's contained within that document should have never been publicly disclosed. And I can't really go into what's involved in there, but that was a

confidential financial document that should have never been exposed with the information that's on that thing. All right, thank you, Commissioner. Good to have you on, okay? Be well. Well, thank you, Bill. Have a good day. Ron Smith, Commissioner of Josephine County. It is 7.51 at KMED and 99.3 KPXG. The Outdoor Report is every Friday morning just past 7 7 a.m. on The Bill Meyer Show. The Outdoor Report on KMED and the Jukebox 993 covers recreational opportunities and is powered by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority,

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brand new free Samsung Galaxy with qualifying plan for 35 bucks a month. You get unlimited talk, unlimited text, 15 gigs of data all in America's most dependable 5G network. Just dial pound 250 say the keyword pure talk for your free Samsung Galaxy with qualifying plan pure talk wireless buy Americans for Americans. He described some remarkable thunderstorms and what he had to say after that was very intriguing he claimed crown zero the clouds looked as if they were bubbling up like magma. Looked like the sky was on fire. Or he was awakened to a rumbling noise that shook his house

and was disturbing the neighbor's dog. Ran outside, looked up. What the? Early evenings at eight, ground zero. News Talk 1063 KMED. News Talk 1063 KMED. This is the Bill Meyers Show. 770-5633. Just wanted to give you a heads up, Ben, in just a few minutes. Brad Bennington is gonna join me. He's on Jackson County Planning Commission,

one of the members of that board. And we wanted to talk about this, a couple of things really. First off, how the planning process actually works. And we wondered yesterday, did people realize that when they were talking about this, improving multimodal transportation on highway 62, that in essence, they were going to make

a Tripoli wide sidewalk in order to have the bums and bicycles use it and that we were going to start cramming all this big vehicular truck traffic on Highway 62 into more narrow lanes. There are so many intrusions that are coming at us from planning in so many different ways. And a lot of this is coming down from the state, of course, Highway 62, State Highway. But apparently this was in a meeting, an online meeting. There were like some online meetings and we had an online open house that you could take a look at that and all the rest of it.

And, you know, somehow I missed this one. And we don't notice it until the damage is already done kind of like the bicycle bum ways in downtown Medford and much of this is being crammed down via state policy and climate friendly equitable communities so Brad is willing to come in and talk about it I was watching one of the latest meetings yesterday and Brad was actually bringing up some pretty good points on, hey listen, planning is going all about this because now the latest fascinating deal to, and I'm going to put in scary air quotes, improve Southern Oregon is to revision the Bear Creek Greenway. Now when you hear a largely

left-wing planning, city planning and county planning kind of organization talking about we're going to revision. Does this mean that it makes things easier to use, that it makes it less expensive, that we get the bums out of here? Well no, it tends to be a big re-engineering of society. And Brad has raised some issues. He's just one member of the commission, but they were talking about this,

and he had some very good points. He's gonna join me after the eight o'clock news, and we're gonna be kind of digging into this, all right? We'll have a conversation about that and more. Some emails of the day are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson and Central Point Family Dentistry. Dr. Nelson's place, by the way, is next to the Mazelon Mexican Restaurant in Central Point. Now, well-established practice for anything you need dentally. Just don't take my word for it. Many positive reviews from all over the community. Get your appointment at

centralpointfamilydentistry.com. I think you will really enjoy that experience. Jeff out in Selma says, hey Bill, he's liking it. I just kind of spotted off the other day, you know how it's like Oregon flies with her own wings, the state motto, and I think that's what it is. And I said, well, it seems to be flying with two left wings. It's always in a circle, you know, spinning. to be flying with it with two left wings it's always in a circle spinning and Jeff likes that Bill classic hats t-shirts coffee mugs we should do it hey maybe we should maybe we should I'll get in touch with Brad brother Brad maybe we can come up with she flies with her two with two left wings that could be funny I will have a good talk about that here. Bob Hayworth writes me regarding Highway 62.

Bill, oh it's the swide walk, S-W-I-D-E, walk, the swide walk to nowhere at Highway 62. Skateboard heaven, lots of room for tents and canopies and a never-ending stream of traffic to beg dollars from. Hmm, could be right about that, Bob. Keith weighs in, Bill, how can we survive as a democracy if Trump denies illegal aliens the right to drive commercial driver licenses? You know, trucks, you know, having to speak English, this would be bad. Yeah, I know you're being sarcastic, Keith. I'm right there with you. Reverend David LaBarbera writes, Bill, when I lived in Paradise, California, our county supervisors and city council meetings were always held in the evenings when the common

people could attend. I've always wondered why our county commissioners can't be held in the evenings. Maybe they could at some point. Mike writes me this morning, Bill, who is asking, that is my question, who in the wide world of constituency is asking for Senate Bill 762, Senate Bill 1154, Senate Bill 114, super sidewalks? How do we make them stop? Well, part of that is learning where the attacks come from. And the other part about it is, hey,

maybe the Trump administration defunding a lot of Oregon would be helpful. We'd have to concentrate on what really mattered rather than trying to disarm people. Could be at least. Tyler writes me about it. Hey Bill, about the sidewalk on 62, this has actually been going on

for a couple, two, three weeks now. I going to write you about it for Pebble in My Shoe Tuesday. It is really irritating to see the money being wasted on widening the sidewalk and taking traffic lanes away. The only thing I can think of is that after the homeless panhandle and steal from local stores, they have a clear path to go under the overpass to shoot up. I'm also a truck driver that frequently passes by there. Just another reason to not go through there, I guess. Anyway, that's my pebble. I appreciate your writing. Thank you very much, Tyler. Grab a couple of calls here for news and then we'll be talking with Brad Bennington

here in a few minutes. Hi, good morning. Who is this? Welcome. Yeah, good morning, Bill. Jim Rafferty here. Hello, Jim. What's on your mind today, huh? Well, you know, last week you were talking about the deportation of the illegal immigrants. And just the only question I have and maybe you answered it already and that is do their benefits go with them? I don't believe so but I couldn't really say yes or no. I would hope that we're not allowing the SNAP benefits to go back to Mexico or Canada or any other... well of course that probably wouldn't work in Canada. You'd have to have the SNAP

benefit cards. Another comment is you were reading an email talking about being a democracy. Well that person's an error. We are a republic. Yeah, that gets said a lot. We are a representative republic, so the democratic side about it is the democracy. You could say that when we have citizen initiatives and measures put before the voters, that's a pure democracy. That's correct. One vote more than 50% ends up winning the whole story. Thank you, Jim. Good hearing from you. 770-5633, I'll grab another call.

Hi, good morning. Hello? Hey there. This is Devin. Hey Devin, what's on your mind today? Hey, I had a comment about the trucking and drivers having to speak English. What if there's something more to all these truck drivers from the Middle East

infiltrating the trucking system, what if they're planning on shutting it down or if there's little small cell groups in the country? Oh, are you thinking that there is a national security issue there? Now, when you're talking about Middle Eastern, I think, are you speaking about the Sikhs who are in trucking? S-I-K-Hs? Yeah, I guess so. I'm not sure where they'd be from, but... Yeah, not the Middle East, though. Yeah, not Middle East. I know that people look at that as a turban and they automatically think, you know middle east but that's not where they're from from what i understand i know there's

a big big big percentage of of of seeks that have come to drive commercial truck are you a commercial truck driver just curious yeah i hold the pdl all right do Have you ever talked with a lot of these individuals, do they speak English or do they not as a rule? I've ran into a lot that don't. I'm not an over the road per se, I just do local stuff that requires half man CDO. All right. Do you think it's a good idea

to have commercial over the road drivers actually be able to speak and communicate in English? Oh, definitely. Do you hear from the instructions side of things? They're trying to do traffic control and they got contracted out drivers that don't speak English, you know bring in gravel and whatnot. I mean you got language barrier there and you're trying to flag. That could be dangerous.

Yeah, yeah, that could be a safety issue. From what I understand though, the rule always was when you have a commercial drivers license that you're supposed to be able to read and speak English, but the rules have not been enforced. And so that's really what's happening with the executive order. The rules didn't change. They're just going to be enforced now, okay Can't say I have but now you're gonna going to make me look. How about that? Oh, yeah. And it's, I don't know, a little,

but it's a little uneasy for me. You got a guy that looks like Taliban on the back of these trailers and riding. It's like, I don't know what it means. Yeah. I don't know. Well, yeah, I'm not really familiar much with that, but if you were going to have a bunch

of sleeper cells, what better place to hide a bunch of people than in commercial trucking because then you're able to move not just people but also munitions and, shall we say, nefarious goods from place to place. Fair enough? Exactly. They could shut us down real quick if they're in every part of our trucking. All right. Appreciate the call. Thanks for checking in from your side of the trucking world.

This is KMED in KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford. KBXG, Grants Pass.