Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 05-07-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

05-07-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

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 Clauser Drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Good morning. It is 11 minutes after six on wheels up Wednesday. Join the conversation 7705633. Wait a minute. Now I know I always start the show using dire straits and heavy fuel. You know, Mark Knoppler, love Mark Knoppler's guitar work,

but we have to switch to a different Mark Knoppler song today in order to honor the passing or the moving along of a bill in the Oregon state legislature. Ladies and gentlemen, cue Mark Knoppler and cannibals. No cannibals no more! No cannibal mountain anymore the way it's looking like. Yes this is the latest one. We just wanted to make sure that you knew that the Oregon State Legislature is working on the really important stuff. I received a press release yesterday. Oregon House passes bill to remove offensive names from Oregon's waterways, valleyways, and more. Today, the House voted to advance

the Dignity in Place Act. This is House Bill 3532, the bill led by Representative Tona Sanchez, a Democrat from Portlandia. This would expedite a multi-decade effort to rename derogatorily named waterways, valleys, roads and more in Oregon, including Squaw Creek in Douglas County. China Man Hat in Josephine County. Oh my goodness, no wonder tourism is down. They had a China Man Hat, you'd have all those Chinese tourists ever go, Yankee boy, I'm not going to Josephine County.

China man hack, we don't like that. Just kidding. It's a bad impetus, I know. Anyway, and oh, but not least here, last but not least, Cannibal Mountain in Lincoln County. So Cannibal Mountain in Lincoln County needs to be renamed. Representative Sanchez continues, Renaming offensive locations in Oregon reflects our shared commitment to mutual respect, historical

truth and creating a welcoming environment for all Oregonians. My hope is that no one has to drive in any wonderful part of the state of Oregon and feel like they don't belong here. Yes, that is Representative Tawna Sanchez's words in her press release as they rename Cannibal Mountain, when they get it to something else, it's Lincoln County will no longer they rename Cannibal Mountain, they get it to something else, it's Lincoln County will no longer have a Cannibal Mountain. My question for you though is that this is all about offending people, so is Sanchez concerned that we're offending cannibals? Is there a Cannibal Political Action

Committee out there that is sending money, kind of like LaMotta did to Shemeah Fagan? Is it something like that? Is there like cannibal inclusion? We have to have cannibal inclusion, like you have to have minor attracted people now welcomed into society. We used to call them perverts. You know, that kind of thing. Is that what's going on here? Is Cannibal Mountain an offensive name? I mean, I'm dead serious about

this. If there were cannibals up there, if there was something like cannibal, like even Dead Indian Road, now known as Dead Indian Memorial Road, was because someone found a dead Indian on the trail at one point. It wasn't because it was celebrating the death of an Indian, but that's the kind of nonsense which passes for legislation in the state of Oregon. Oh no, you have to get rid of it. It has to be dead Indian memorial road. We have to put up like a, oh, you have to put up a, you know, a George. I just forgot George's name. But anyway, you have to put up, you know, whoever, whoever the latest oppressed person was, you have to put up a memorial for them now, whether it's dead Indian, whether it's China Man hat, and I'm sure China Man hat is about a hill

which is looking or shaped like the old Chinese workers hat of the 1800s or so back then. It looks like a China Man's hat up there. See how that's looking up? I'm figuring that's the way this is. So I happen to go and look up, okay, what is the deal with Cannibal Mountain? Given that Tana Sanchez is concerned that we're going to be upsetting cannibals. And by the way, there are cannibals in the United States. It's like a cult. Sometimes they even agree to eat parts of one another. It's kind of really underground, you don't hear much about it.

But I guess we're concerned that the Hannibal Lectors may not visit Lincoln County if we still have a cannibal mountain in Lincoln County. It would hurt tourism. Cannibal Mountain. What is the basis of this? What is the history of it? I took a look this morning, tried to find some, you know, any crack information that I could give you this morning about Cannibal Mountain, and there's a site online by a PhD, ChinookJargon.com. It's about some of the language in the Pacific Northwest, some of it Native American based, etc. Now there's the entry for Cannibal Mountain.

While not directly involving Chinook Wawa, it is a splendid example of careful research among the competing origins known to have been put forth for the name. It says it was sometimes called Canberra Mountain, supposed to be an Indian name meaning saddle, but the search so far has disclosed no such Indian name. We certainly don't know any of these Chinook Wawa words with matching sound and meaning, and I'll wager we won't find an etymology in any other tribal language, no matter how attractive the story may be. The mountain is known locally only as Cannonball, which tells you something. Nobody knows exactly

how Cannonball Mountain became Cannibal on the map, but that's not a very unusual occurrence. So this is someone, this was a doctorate fellow who goes in and looks at how some of these names came to be. So Cannibal Mountain. Will Oregon be a better place with Cannibal Mountain gone? Now the other thing they talk about here as part of this bill, in testimony, former Governor Kate Brown argued that House Bill 3532 is focused much more broadly and will work with the Oregon Historical Society to move forward this important work to make all Oregonians feel represented.

Hey, the purpose of the Historical Society, I thought, was to actually represent history as it was. If they called it Cannibal Mountain, fine, it's Cannibal Mountain. Okay, I can understand why people are kind of upset about Squaw and other terms which are derogatory. I get that. But you know what? You're worried about offending cannibals.

That is the state that you live in, that I live in. And I'm just going to mother make it stop. But I'm sure that tourism will explode in Josephine County once Chinaman Hat is erased from history and the map. Chinaman. Every time I hear someone say like, Chinaman, I'm thinking of that old David Carradine, that old David Carradine series, Kung Fu. You can leave when you have snatched these three pebbles from my hand. And then he does it.

Then Master Poe said, how about two out of three? That was the outtake. All right. So there we go. No Chinaman Hat, no Cannibal Mountain, no Squaw Creek, et cetera. And that's what the state of Oregon is concentrating on. Good morning. Hi, who is this?

Welcome. Good morning, Bill. Keith out of Cave Junction. Not there today. Okay. Now, by the way, Keith, can you tell me where Chinaman Hat Mountain is in Josephine County? Do you know where that is? It's probably in the common-optus area. I'm not sure. I'm guessing. But here is a story that that website might be able to prove or disprove. Okay. I years ago heard a story about a location in the Steams Mountains.

And if you blink me, I understand. That was called Four House Meadows. Okay. It was changed. This is the story. It was changed to Naughty Girl Meadows. I do not know if that's true, but it is time to ignore Salem. The thing is, a lot of times names were colorful and it was just kind of representing what was there at the time.

But Naughty Girl Meadows, huh? That was what it was renamed to. You can imagine the locals themselves said, oh now, come on, let's just, it was, the original name was descriptive of what went on. I cannot come up with another China cult. Well, apparently... ...gold canyon, I mean, any number of place names were historic. You cannot change...that's what they're doing. Sorry.

But you see, it's a racing history, isn't it? I mean, I know we can laugh about... I know we can laugh about whorehouse meadows, et cetera, but still, there is a truth to this. There is a truth to this. It is about erasing history, the real history. So what is the Oregon Historical Society about? It appears to be about rewriting history, isn't it? Well, and that's exactly what they have become, because they're a bunch of young people that were taught that we are to be ashamed of our history. And so how to express a shame of something than to ignore change or discredit or any other adjective that you want to add to that comment.

Okay, but hold on here. What about, let's just go back then to Cannibal Mountain, Cannibal Mountain in Lincoln County. Who is the person promoting sensitivity to cannibals? Can you tell me that? Well, if it was cannonball and it got slurred into what you're talking about. This is just another example of playing to ridiculous. I don't know how to answer your question because it's so ridiculous. Keith, I appreciate your call helping me. I just saw this and I... I didn't help you!

Well, no, you didn't help me, but you added more to the fodder here. It's just... Sure. You know, the thing is, this is the classic stuff that the federal government paying for so much crap has enabled the Oregon legislature to sit around, gaze at their navel, and worry about this kind of stuff rather than the fact that the kids can't read. All right don't worry about that. Let's worry well and even if they were reading they wouldn't know how to read Cannibal Mountain. They wouldn't know what that was. How many people can spell cannibal in cursive? How many people can write cursive? Exactly. All right, Keith, thanks for the call. 7705633. Like I said, I know,

I saw this last night. I just, oh, come on. Oh, and by the way, Republican Christine Drazen voted for it too. Thank you, Christine. I'm glad you're keeping your eye on the on higher office. Maybe that's what you have to do if you're going to run for any higher office. If you don't care, if you're like junkyard dog Duane Younger, who we nicknamed the junkyard dog, because he's like Honey Badger, he doesn't care. He doesn't care about these kind of stupid kind of bills. Come on. Or maybe he did vote for it. I don't know. But apparently it is moved on, moving out of committee. So that's just great. Just great. Representative Anessa Hartman, a Democrat from Oregon City, continues in this press release, The next generation shouldn't have to grow up seeing slurs on signs and thinking it's just something they have to live with.

It's long past time we step up, take responsibility, and remove them from our maps and landmarks. So the bill now moves to the Senate. There we go. I don't know, maybe Duane did vote for it, but I do know that Christine Dresden voted for it. Ay yi yi. Once again we know that the Republican Party is there to make sure that the Democrats pass the bills that they love. So here we go.

624 KMED, this is the Bill Nyer Show. Two Dogs Fabricating has a great selection of work trailers. But if you desire a different breed than the puppies in stock, we'll order it at no extra charge. You want a telescopic or scissor hoist on your Iron Bull dump trailer? We'll order that stat. You want a different color of North Star trailer to match your truck?

No problem. Did the size of the Horizon trailer you had in mind just sell? No worries, another one's on the way. So come sniff around and find, or order, your perfect work trailer at Two Dogs Fabricating. Visit twodogsfab.com. Over the last 40 years, a lot of very beautiful homes

have been built in our area and are the souls of our neighborhoods. And at the heart of our homes is lumber. So if you can imagine it, our hearts and souls are influenced by the lumber in our homes. Hughes Lumber has been treating their customers for over 40 years with heart and soul and lumber products that reflect the importance that lumber is to you. Hughes Lumber, with heart and soul and lumber products that reflect the importance that lumber is to you. Use lumber with heart and soul. Hi, I'm Cassie from Clauser Drilling and I'm on KMED.

625. So, Cannibal Mountain will no longer be if House Bill 3532 continues to go through because they're counting on the, we're working on the important stuff in Salem right now. Kids can't read. We got that. Natalie, I don't know where your opinion is going on something like this but I'm happy and glad that you called this morning. Do you want to weigh in on these, you know, impolite names of areas from the past? How you doing this morning? I'm doing good. I just happened to stumble across your radio station and catch this conversation. So what are you thinking? Should we be concerned about the feelings of cannibals by renaming

Cannibal Mountain? That's the one that really got me. It's like, okay, where's the cannibal support group out there concerned about cannibals? What do you think? Yeah, I think you should be concerned about cannibals. No, not really. Oh, okay. I'm calling because the likelihood, and I'm imagining if it has anything to do with representative Tanafanshi that I heard conversation that it was probably an indigenous Chinook name that nobody can pronounce and so they just transferred it to something like cannibal that they could pronounce.

And that happens a lot with indigenous names. And as far as dead Indian memorial goes, I just happen to know the gentleman that tried to have that changed. His name was Dan Griffin and I'm an indigenous woman and we tried the gentleman that tried to have that changed. His name was Stan Griffin, and I'm an Indigenous woman. And we tried for a long time to have that change because we're not really called Indians. Indians are for India, and we're Indigenous peoples. And I just think it's really disrespectful if anybody was dead up there and we called it dead person road. Oh, okay. So if you called it dead indigenous person road, that would have been

okay? No. Okay, wouldn't have been okay. All right. Nothing dead. Nothing dead. You could have called it, you know, beautiful tree stand road or Probably anything but when it starts, you know bringing in the humanity side like you were talking about You were talking about China Manhattan Okay, that also has to do with a lot of oppression of people and it's just plain not kind and it It wasn't my people's history before colonization happened. So to say it's history is just like pretty much a, I would say, a very rude and dysfunctional part of history. But history is rude and dysfunctional. Because humanity is rude and dysfunctional. It doesn't have to stay that way, okay?

It does not have to stay that way. And that is what I'm saying here. Natalie, I appreciate your call. I don't know if I completely agree with you. I see some of your points though. Not the whole thing, but I see part of it, okay? Yes. All right.

Thank you. But still, I'm still not concerned about cannibals By the way, you were talking about the if that was a actual Native American term, you know Or indigenous people term up there according to the doctorate the the doctorate fellow who runs Chinook jargon calm they were not able to connect it with any native term they were not able to connect that and they did lots of research on this one. Okay, did they connect with the tribe though? Did they connect with the indigenous people?

From what I understand, yes, according to ChinookJargon.com, this is something that they are really, really big on and trying to dig into where the words came from and where the names came from. So Cannibal Mountain may have been a bastardization of Cannibal Mountain or maybe Cannonball, you know, who knows, but you know names can come and go. But I still wouldn't be worried about cannibal's feelings. Can we agree on that much if there were really cannibals out there? Can we be concerned about that? Are you scared they're gonna eat you? No, I'm not concerned they're going to eat them. No, I'm saying should we be concerned about their feelings,

though, and inclusiveness? Well, sure, why not? Okay. Okay. All right, I'm not worried about cannibals feeling welcome here because remember, this is also about people should feel welcome when they drive up to areas.

I don't care if cannibals feel welcome here. I really think that at some point on a lot of this we can if we're worried about tourism and people feeling welcome, let's have a welcoming name, you know, but. Okay, so instead of cannibal mountain, it should be in fact, the cannibal mountain could maybe should be tasty human mountain, right? Mountain, maybe should be Tasty Human Mountain, right? No, I'll be cannibal better. All right. Thanks for the call, Natalie. I appreciate that.

Thank you for the call. Thank you for that. Oh, I love it. Hi, good morning. Who's this? This is Bill. This is Minor Dave. Hello, Dave. Hi, good morning. Who's this? This is Bill. This is Minor Dave. Hello, Dave. So since Oregon doesn't control, you know, like four service lands, so they can't change names on plot maps that they don't control. Well, I think Oregon really can. I think they're just going to pull like what President Trump did by renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. Maybe it's just one of those kind of things. The president has the authority to do that for federal lands.

The state doesn't. Last time I heard Gulf of Mexico wasn't American land, but anyway, go ahead. Do we have to change the name from Siskiyou Mountains or Siskiyou County or China Gulch. China Gulch, it was 5,000 Chinese and that Gulch mining gold. Yeah, well, they were here trying to get rich, right? Right, and that's welcoming. Yeah, for all we know though, given the state of trade these days and world affairs, you know, China gulf could be re-owned by the Chinese someday unless we play our cards correctly, but that's a different conversation. Yeah, I understand.

All right. My dear Dave, thank you for that. Let me go to the next line here as we worry about the feelings of cannibals. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Hello? Going once? Going twice? Gotta go. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Hi. Good morning. There's a beautiful place off the coast of Oahu, a little island, and it's called Chinaman's Hat. It's been Chinaman's Hat forever. In Oahu, really? Yeah, and it has a beautiful history. There's a children's book written about it.

It's wonderful. And nobody takes offense. It's really quite funny. Of all the things to get offended about on names, to me Chinaman's hat, it was sort of, to me, it was like, well, it was shaped most likely like the way the hat that the older Chinese wore. Right. Hard-working, wonderful people. And yeah, they were oppressed and abused in many places. Jacksonville, various other locales here in southern Oregon, we know about that.

Yeah. I mean, everybody's been oppressed at one point or another. But also I did, but I need to write to the legislature. I did not realize that. Because I get really anxious every time I drive down Highway 62. Because White City, oh my god. I think I need to change. I need to we should just change it crack to cracker town. I would feel so much better. Yes, we would be much more welcoming to the indigenous people of our culture. All right. Yeah.

Anyway, but may I say one more thing that I've been meaning to call you about? Yeah, sure. Is that silly? Well, that dangerous fire map ordeal that went through. Can we send our lawyer bill to Jeff Golden? Because we were told that if we had a trust, we had to get a lawyer. So a lot of people got $900 to $1500 bills researching it to get ready for the legislation to pass. So is the state going to reimburse people?

You're very funny. You have a great sense of humor. I'm going to give you a real American salute for having such a great sense of humor about that. But if you want to send the bill to Senator Golden, see what happens if he responds to you. I'm sure there's a magic pot of gold somewhere in the state that will be happy to reimburse your expenses. Okay? Maybe they just won't change the sign names and they can send the money to the lawyers. Alright, there we go. Real American salute. Thanks for the call. Hey, hey, we'll pick this up a little while later. Okay? We have Wheels Up Wednesday. Eric Peters joins me afternoons and that'll be coming up.

This is KMED. Ready to upgrade your roof to a durable, sleek metal option? Look no further than Stephen Westfall Roofing Ink. With our state-of-the-art SnapLock machines, we bring precision and efficiency right to your doorstep. No need to worry about transporting materials, we come directly to your project property. Visit StephenWestfallRoofingInk.com and discover the ease and quality of metal roofing done right. Transform your home with Stephen Westfallroofinginc.com and discover the ease and quality of metal roofing done right. Transform your home with Steven Westfall Roofing Inc.

Call today to get an estimate tomorrow. 541-941-3736, CCB number 250730. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is your tonneau cover source. Tonneau covers are a great way to secure and protect the cargo in your bed from the elements. Styles from truck gear, back industries, under cover and more. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority, your one-stop accessory and protection shop. From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on. The regional water reclamation facility managed by the city of Medford is undergoing a 302 million dollar upgrade. The Spendee project is being undertaken

to comply with DEQ permitting requirements limiting phosphorus and nitrogen discharge into the Rogue River. Project money will come from sewer revenue bonds, a $148 million federal loan, and increases to your sewer bills. The next increase in your bill will come in July with a nearly $2 a month increase. A federal judge ordered the U.S. Department of Education to restore over a billion dollars in school funding. Oregon joined other states in a lawsuit over access to money from the American Rescue Plan Act.

Those funds were supposed to help schools with long-term effects of the pandemic. The judge issued a preliminary injunction while the case moves forward. The Oregon College Savings Plan is giving parents a large incentive to start saving. The new account for newborns or kindergartners bonus is increasing from 25 to 100 bucks since the launch nearly 20,000 families of open accounts. Bill London, KMED. Service is the difference with Sweetwater Sanitation. You're experts for sanitation services and portable restrooms. From pumping septic tanks, grease traps, even holding tanks, Sweetwater Sanitation brings 20 years and two generations of experience

and as a DEQ certified maintenance provider Sweetwater Sanitation can inspect, service, and repair your septic tank which should be pumped every three to five years. Call 541-821-1426 and visit SWSModoc.com Sweetwater Sanitation where service is the difference. Wash Muggy Auto Spa details and protects your prized possessions. Whether that's an RV, a cherished car or truck, where service is the difference. for security and proper lighting to do the job right. Wash Buggy Auto Spa is your detail and paint protection specialist, featuring Cerakote ceramic paint protection products. Visit the washbuggyeautospa.com. Hey honey, you need to read the story

on how the Rogue Valley and River got their name. Oh, is that that new magazine, the Rogue Valley Vibe? Yes, I love it. Rogue Valley Vibe, West Medford edition, has been mailed and is arriving at West Medford Homes filled with local history like the nation's first commercial pear orchard, local places of interest and hard to find outdoor gyms. Look for your East Medford local edition in June.

Central Point, Ashland, Grants Pass and Eagle Point also. Visit roguevalleyvibe.com for digital edition and more information. The Phil Meyers Show on 1063 KMED. Wheels Up Wednesday. By the way, if you want to talk with Eric Peters, have something going on with a vehicle you're wondering about, 7705633770 KMED. Eric Peters, automotive journalist at epautos.com. How are you doing this morning, Eric? Well, oh, I'm at epautos.com.

How are you doing this morning, Eric? Well, oh, I'm feeling really dandy. Did you hear the chocolate ration is going to be increased to 25 grams? No, I haven't heard about that. What is the master going to be giving us now? Why are we going to be treated so well here? There must be something going on in the news that I'm unaware of. Those who are listening and don't have any clue what I'm talking about, I'm making

a reference to the movie adaptation of Orwell's 1984, and there's a great scene in it where Winston Smith, the lead character, is talking to one of his friends, and his friend is enthusing about how Big Brother has increased the chocolate ration, and they both smile vapidly. Of course, the chocolate ration has actually been decreased, but everybody's got to pretend that things are getting better. And I bring that up as a kind of preliminary to talking about the new, more affordable 2026 Ram Express 1500, which will be a bit less expensive than other iterations of the 2026 Ram 1500, but it's still going to be about $4,000 more expensive than the least expensive

version of the 2025 current model year Ram 1500. And this is considered now to be the affordable truck 40, 45,000 entry price? Yeah. I mean, Stellantis is trying. Caniscus, who's the head of Ram now, he used to be the head of Dodge, is trying because he understands that they're having problems moving the fleet. People aren't buying the 1500s anymore because they're so expensive and also a lot of people

just don't like the new turbo hybrid inline six. But the cost thing is a big thing. So he's trying to figure out a way to make it more affordable. So they're bringing out this express version. The problem is it's still more expensive because everything has gotten more expensive and it's got more expensive because of the devaluation of money on the one hand but on the other hand it's because

even the so-called express which is sources post to be a modern kind of a stripped version still has twenty inch wheels a big lpd touch screen power windows and locks automatic transmission and all those things and that that's why it costs $44,000 to start. Whereas back in the day you could get a basework truck for half that much. I recall that they they used to have them kind of a stripped on me and they would be used for like fleets, things like that. You'd find a you know a strip to $1,500. I would also add that if you look at the size of a $1,500 style or you know a three- 1500 I would also add that if you look at the size of a

1500 style or you know three-quarter ton truck or a half ton truck today versus the size of a half ton truck 15 20 years ago the trucks have just gotten gargantuanly I don't know that's a proper word or not but they just become huge in comparison to what they used to be it's it's it's It's interesting you bring that up. We were out driving yesterday and we rolled up behind an early 2000s model Toyota Tundra. And it was a full size, it is a full size truck. And adjacent to it in the right-hand lane was a late model Ford F-150, which is a current 1500. And the Tundra looked puny. I mean, it looked small looked small it was all lifted and jacked up you could actually reach in and get you'll get it to the bed

but the point is you know it was a reasonably sized vehicle trees afton trucks are really more like the twenty five hundred to thirty five hundreds of ten or fifteen years ago and even the so-called mid-size trucks to get now models like the ford ranger uh... and uh... the gm colorado canyon uh... and it's a Tacoma, they are now about the same size as an early 2000s half-ton truck like the Tundra. Yeah.

I had a friend of mine that had a 1997 Ford F-150 at the time. It was brand new and I was living in Fargo and he was proudly running it around. It was a pretty good-sized pickup truck for its day. But I saw one of those same pickup trucks the other day and it was just like, yes, it looks tiny in comparison to the other vehicles. And what drove this? Is there any talk about why there was such a blimping up of what a pickup truck was supposed to be? Well, there are a lot of factors and curiously one of them has to do with our favorite thing, CAFE, the Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards. They changed them in such a way that it

actually encourages the manufacturers to build these super-sized monsters because then they fall into a slightly less onerous regulatory category in so far as the mandatory miles per gallon thing goes. The other thing, and I kind of blame Ford for this, they started a trend with a super duty look. Remember that when that came out, the super duty thing? Yeah. And then all the other manufacturers thought they had to do the same thing, meaning you know put these gigantic bed walls on it, lift the truck so that it looks like you know people used to in the aftermarket if you had a truck and you were kind of you

know you were wanting to go off-road and that's totally legitimate. You want to go off-road, you lift the truck, you get it no more clearance, great. But they started doing that from the factory and it became a trend. Kind of like putting these 18, 19, 20, 22 inch rims on cars became a trend. So now they're all like that for that reason. Okay. That's what's done it. Now, given the fact that the economy is, I can't say it's weak, but it's sort of teetering

right now. You can kind of feel there's some issues there. Is there a possibility that we might see trucks just to make them more affordable, to truly make them more affordable, shrink back to a more normal size? Any possibility of that, you think? I don't know. I'd like for that to happen. I don't know whether it will. And one of the compounding problems is that, you know, people have gotten so enamored of all these luxury amenities. And even a base trim current year truck will have things that would have been considered luxury options even 15 years ago, certainly 30 years ago.

Yeah. The whole concept that you'd buy the truck and it didn't have carpeting. It was just like a rubber mat that's gone. Right? Yeah. And so now they essentially build one size fits all vehicles. You know, they no longer make the vehicle in a kind of a base form to which you can add things, like an automatic transmission or air conditioning. They just build them all the same down the line, and they maybe have a different stereo,

or they have different upholstery, but fundamentally, they're all the same. And they did that because it reduces their manufacturing costs, which increases their profit margin. So, you know, in order for them to go back to building spec cars, like you go to the dealer, if you remember those days when you would order your car and spec it out the way you wanted it, they're going to have to substantially change their production lines, and that's a big deal.

They can't do that overnight either. When it comes to affordability, there really is a crisis there in the industry. There's no doubt about that. I was reading a financial blog and it was talking about a SUV, a Toyota SUV. It's electric and it looks really nice. It looks like anything else you'd see on the road here in the United States of America. It's $15,000. $15,000. But you can only buy it in China. It's only available in China. Now I would imagine there would probably be more, they'd have to put 25 airbags in it to have it be on the American roads and then it would be turned into a $50,000 electric vehicle.

Is that what would happen? Is that where we are at this point? Yeah, that's a big part of it. Absolutely. Regulatory compliance costs are such that it's essentially impossible from a legal point of view to bring these affordable vehicles into the United States. Now I find it particularly interesting with regard to the whole electrical vehicle thing because we're told there's an existential crisis looming, that you

know if we don't transition as quickly as possible to driving electric vehicles the climate's going to change, the oceans are going to rise, we're going to be flooded, blah blah blah. Well if that's true, if it's that urgent, you would think that the government would do all in its power to increase the availability of very affordable electric vehicles so as to encourage more people to drive them. But it's not doing that, which tells me it's pretty obvious that this whole climate change thing is just a farce and it's an excuse. But still, the Chinese can buy a $15,000 electric vehicle and we cannot. There's nothing close to it.

In fact, and yet, oddly enough, ironically, my PT Cruiser, when I bought it in 2010, that was the final year they made them, it cost $15,000 at that time, which would probably be what, $20,000, $22,000 in today's dollars, maybe a little bit more there. Yeah, it's even worse than that because there are a number of EVs, basic point-to-point city type EVs that you can get in other countries such as China for less than $10,000. Less than 10? Mm-hmm.

All right. Why can't we have that? Why can't we have nice things? Maybe at 15 to 20,000 if we can't make it for 8 or 9,000. I know our cost of labor is too high, our regulatory cost is too high, and what's being done about that? I think maybe that's what you're talking about this other article on EP, what Trump could do to increase gas mileage even. Yeah, you know, one of the easiest things that he could do would be to rescind and whatever you want to whatever term you want to use the federal oxygenated fuels requirement which has been in place since the 70s and back in those days when cars had carburetors their air fuel ratio was basically set at the factory mechanically by adjustment screws and by jets and metering rods and so on and it was kind of an elegant it wasn't very

accurate right you just kind of said it was a little bit of a rise you know yeah you know just assuming certain base base parameters let's do the best that we can anyway the idea was if we'll introduce the so-called oxygen it's typically ethanol into the fuel we can lean out the air fuel mixture by the fuel and that will reduce tailpipe exhaust emissions which it did but the problem is that once you get rid of carburetors and you adopt electronically controlled fuel injection, which has the ability to self-adjust the air-fuel ratio, it negates any of the

emissions benefits of having this oxygenated fuel, except of course to the agribusiness cartels that make a fortune via forcing UNI to use ethanol adulterated gasoline. Oh, Iowa corn farmers in other words, right? Yep. The corn lobby. So, there's one racket that's keeping our fuel and our, keeping our gas mileage down and our fuel costs higher. Yes, the difference is significant and it's worth getting into a little bit.

If you were to put a tank full of 100% gasoline into the typical car, you would discover that you get about 3 to 5% better mileage than you would burning e-ten which is ninety percent gas ten percent you put on that's a significant savings to you a whole lot more significant than significant than the benefits you get for example from automated stop-start technology our favorite thing that shuts the engine off every time the car stops moving and not only that know, you don't have to pay anything more for the vehicle. When you buy a vehicle that has the stop-start technology, you're paying for the hardware. You're also paying potentially down the road more repair costs to save less than one mile per gallon.

But here you have the opportunity, or at least Trump does, to allow people to get 3 to 5% better gas mileage by getting rid of the stupid oxygenated fuels requirement. And this is the kind of common sense you'll find on EPOndoes.com folks. Eric, we'll be right back here. I want to take some listener calls. If anybody wants to talk with Eric, the number here is 770-5633. I had a listener email with you involving the V8 problem that we were talking about last week and what had happened, kind

of an update on that and anything else that people want to talk to Eric about. Happy to get you on KMED and KBXG. Eric Peters, EPOttoes.com, Automotive Journalist. We talk every week with him about what's going on with transportation and politics. Eric, I'm looking at this article, the First Amendment, anti-Semitic. Yeah, HR 867. I wonder if Republicans are going to get intellectually honest on this issue that is trying to conflate

any criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. That bugs me. What is going on here? And it's so cognitively dissonant. You remember before Trump got elected when people on our side withheld their business from say Bud Light because they didn't like the fact that Bud Light was pushing the trans agenda. So they said, you know what, I'm not going to buy your beer anymore. And that to me is a very reasonable and certainly American way of protesting something that you don't agree with by not subsidizing it. Yeah, you get political with me,

I can get non-buying with you back. Okay, it makes sense. Sure. So this proposal that was put forth in the House essentially wanted to criminalize anybody who said, you know, I'm not really comfortable with what the government of Israel is doing to uh... to other gaza strip and the people over there i don't like that it makes me uncomfortable so i'm not gonna i'm not going to participate economically by supporting i'm going to withhold my money well this bill would make that into not just a criminal offense but one that is punishable by one million dollars in fines

and up to twenty years in prison and the most egregious thing about it, to my way of thinking, is they're using the same tactic the left uses, which is to impugn the motives of somebody in order to prevent a discussion of the facts. So if you have criticisms of what the government of Israel does, somehow that makes you a hater of people who happen to be Jewish. Who are Jewish, yeah. Yes, this conflating of this argument. And by the way, I'm not saying that I agree with these people arguing about everything. I'm not saying this. But this idea that the land of the free would criminalize and say that you can't disagree. But of course, this is going back to what Thomas Massey was talking about, the Congressman

Massey that said that practically every congressman and senator has a member of the American-Israeli political action committee as a minder to them and then apparently they're trying to get Americans into line and I don't think Americans should be put in line by any foreign government no matter how much of an ally they can be in many ways if England or if London were doing the same thing to me I'd be just as PO'd. Absolutely. Free speech is free speech, and I think it's an important point. If they can criminalize you for disagreeing with what the government of Israel does,

then they can criminalize criticism of the US government. That's where this sort of thing heads. Well, that's kind of what Biden was doing last time in the COVID world Weaponizing everything about the government to all of us who were not agreeing with the science of Mr. Fauci. That kind of thing. Right. You know, facts are facts and the truth can handle facts. It's only things that aren't true that can't stand up to the scrutiny of facts. Alright.

Anyway, good article. It's called The First Amendment is Anti-Semitic, and this is bad, bad policy if this ends up going forward, folks, in my opinion. In my opinion, if I'm allowed to still express an opinion about something like this. Well, hopefully we'll get to share a bunk in the gulag. All right. BMW 5 Series 2025. You test drove that recently.

What did you think? Looks good. Well, I'm kind of sad about the whole thing you know here's a mid mid mid-sized luxury sports sedan that starts very close to $60,000 and you don't quite get as much for your money anymore so you used to for that kind of money the BMW 5 used to always come standard with a six-cylinder engine as its base engine and guess what it comes standard with now? A 3? A 2.0 liter four-cylinder engine. You know the PT Cruiser engine in my economy car so to speak is bigger than that. That's just it and it drives perfectly well. I'm not faulting it on that grounds but it sounds like a

four-cylinder engine and it's kind of depressing to think, at least I would be depressed if I just spent $60,000, very close to it, to drive this prestige brand luxury vehicle that has a 2-liter four-cylinder engine that doesn't make much more power than the 2-liter four-cylinder engines that you find in $26,000 transportation appliance crossovers. So nice car, but as far as you're concerned you're getting less for your money than you did the year before, unfortunately. Yeah, to be fair to BMW, it's not just them. The same thing besets Mercedes. The E-Class, which is the competitor of the five, also comes standard with a two-liter four. So does the equivalent Audi. So do they all. There's this diminishing and cheapening of

everything, even including now the higher-end luxury-badged vehicles, which you used to get more for your money rather than less. And now it seems like you're just spending more money. All right. Now, you do have a really interesting article up on EP that I think is worth talking about. And it had to do with compressed natural gas and how the system seemed to be trying to get away from this. And compressed natural gas is something which I see powering some of our local RVTD transit buses and they would proudly put on the side of the bus for the longest time, powered by clean compressed natural gas. And they're absolutely right. It's an incredibly clean burning fuel but it has been demonized because of

anything else that has carbon in it you know that ridiculous cult that we're that we're trying to vanquish at this point in time but what do you think could be done about the you know expansion of getting that into just normal motor vehicles because one thing that we do make a lot of natural gas in this country and we're continuing to make that even today we don't even have to make it it's just there yeah literally all it has to all that has to be done is to extract it. And the irony is, you know, we're constantly told or lectured about alternatives, right? Alternative energy, this and that.

Well, here's one that actually works, that burns, as you say, very cleanly, that's massively abundant. My understanding is the United States has enough supply for several hundred years. It solves all of the problems with electric vehicles which will i in my opinion remain insoluble until there is some absolutely new technology that comes forward the chief problem being the difficulty in getting one of these batteries recharged in any kind of reasonable amount of time

fifteen to twenty minutes for a partial charges absurd there's no way that ever gonna scale and there's no way it's going to be possible to change that absent some kind of miracle Mr. Fusion type of technology. But you look at natural gas, natural gas, I mean you can have a big tank and it's just like the propane truck that shows up and refills your propane tank, takes a couple minutes, right? I made the point, you know, I've got tanks outside of my house, and they're propane but it's essentially the same thing and it's a 200 gallon tank and the guy comes when

they're empty and can refill those two hundred gallon tanks in less than ten minutes a propane car with a 15 or 20 gallon tank could be refueled in the same amount of time that it takes to fill up a gas engines a gas engine vehicles tank and it's a feasible thing because it's just a matter of coming up with the right connections and so on to make it safe and practical for average people to do it and there's another key point you know CNG can be trucked anywhere to a station that happens to be anywhere just like gasoline same thing high voltage

electricity you can't put these fast chargers just anywhere they have to be connected literally physically to a source of electricity and that's why you only find these fast chargers in built up urban areas and alongside highways. Which is why the electrification of rural areas really isn't practical or could happen in any way. So are there laws against the natural gasification or is it just that there's no incentive to do it, unlike writing hot checks, which like Oregon's doing for electric vehicles. Yeah, yeah, that's the main thing.

The government has humongously subsidized the promotion of all this green, meaning electric stuff. And so a lot of people have made a lot of money erecting these boondoggle things. I'll give you an example. In my area, in a supermarket, there's an array of probably eight of these EV fast chargers. And I go to this grocery store pretty much every other day and I

almost never see any EVs sitting there. And you can imagine how much it costs to put these eight high-voltage fast charging outlets there. Yeah, there were eight of them, a fast charger over at Fred Meyer that I went to yesterday. I had to stop in and pick up something. And you know,gers one vehicle that's it yeah done the market would never have have erected these things they only exist because of the government now CNG on the other hand not only is it all the things we've talked about but one of the other things about it that's really cool is that it is ideally suited for big vehicles like big sedans with V8 engines, big SUVs, big trucks, because you know you

can put the tank somewhere and it doesn't take up too much room. And engines that exist can all burn this fuel. You don't have to re-engineer everything. It's a simple conversion process. So it's a really great way to deal with this problem when they talk about out of gas. And it's completely a great solution as far as the emissions thing, if you're talking about anything that's meaningful as opposed to carbon dioxide because the CNG burns so cleanly. Oil change intervals are roughly doubled. You never have to change spark plugs,

all these things. I'll give you an example. I have an example right here at the radio station. We have a backup generator which is on propane. It's not compressed natural gas but very similar, same sort of thing. I'll change the oil once a year and it looks almost like it's new. It's amazing. I just do it because of the water and the spark plugs in it are still the original ones from when the generator was made many years ago. They're perfect. I mean, it's still, it is just, it would be a great solution I think. I like that. Or at least... You know, again, it's still, it is just, it would be a great solution, I think. I like that.

Or at least... Again, it's just another way to dissect the lies about what they're telling people about, oh, the climate is changing. It's just a way to gaslight and get people to accept something that ends up resulting in their diminution and ensurfment. Well, yeah, they want us to be poorer and less mobile is what it is. This is what the system is trying to do and they and of course they try to blame it on the climate. We don't buy it, you don't buy it, and I don't think our listeners are buying it this morning too, Eric. Okay? I hope not. Stay up on all of this at epautos.com. What's the next vehicle you're going to have in the review too?

You know what's coming. Oh, another crossover SUV? Looks like. I think it's a Buick Envision. I shouldn't sound so sad over the air I suppose. We'll have more to talk about I guess next week with regard to that. Oh by the way this is the part I forgot to talk about. Thank you for bringing this up and Todd writes me this morning and said, Bill you and Eric talked about the GM Duramax motor disaster and its possible causes. General Motors has announced that anyone with one of these motors that still runs

must immediately switch from zero W20 oil to zero W40 oil. And just like you were talking, we were kind of wondering about that. The super thin oils didn't provide the adequate stickiness during heavy loads and high heat. And and once again like you had mentioned and criticized super thin oils are about eking out just a fraction of a mile per gallon now look what's happened. Yeah now isn't it great though if you bought one of these vehicles and you've been using the factory spec oil for however many

months or however long it's been that you've owned that vehicle and as a result of that the wear has already happened. So what's going to happen to you know how are they going to fix that? Yeah, well they're going to have to replace it. Hopefully it's still under warranty I guess is what you're hoping for right? I hope they will you know I have a personal you know somebody that I know who went through this and GM did not behave well. It took this person about six months to finally get General Motors to agree to buy back their vehicle, which they no longer wanted, understandably.

Yeah, the fellow on YouTube who does iDoCars, he tore apart one of those engines, one of the affected engines. It's the 2021 to 2024 models of these V8s that you were talking about. And he took it down and it was a warranty replacement and it was a 50,000 mile engine and you looked down at the got the connecting rod bearings were so munched up. They weren't spun yet but they were in such bad condition and that shouldn't have been at 50,000 miles. That's just ridiculous. Particularly with modern vehicles it's absurd. No reason. You know we have had for the last 20

plus years vehicles that with any kind of decent care will routinely go 250,000 miles or more before they begin to consume any meaningful amount of oil and all of a sudden everything's falling apart. Why is that? Yeah. Put the thick oil in like they're saying now. Of course they should have done that in the first place. All right, Eric, keep us up on it.

We'll see you next week and thanks again. All right, be well. Sounds good, Bill. Thank you as always. We'll see you next week and thanks again.