Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 05-16-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: May 17, 2025

05-16-25_FRIDAY_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 dot com. 11 minutes after six, join the conversation at seven seven oh five six three three. You can talk about what's on your mind. It is Find Your Phone Friday. Seven seven oh five six three three seven seven zero KMED. And by the way, my email is bill at Bill Meyer Show dot com.

I'll get to some more emails of the day a little bit later on. I've been a little light on them. We've been pretty heavy with things going on this week. You've got to get a dad joke of the day or two to lighten things up a little bit later. And I wanted to... The first story I wanted to talk about this morning has to do with an attack that's going to be going on a couple of restaurants. I shared this on Facebook last night and this bothers me. It's about PETA, people for the ethical treatment of animals.

Other people then say yeah people eating tasty animals. That tends to still be the majority and they're going to be taking their hell-on-wheels truck out to a couple of restaurants. And I find it interesting that they don't take it out to the big national chains or anything like that. They take it out to smaller restaurants and individually owned restaurants, which something tells me that maybe that's PETA's thing. You go out there and you embarrass a small individual owner operator or I don't know maybe they don't care maybe they don't care maybe Peter you know approach them but

this was a news release I got for them the other day and I shared it and diners on though I'll just share a little bit of what it says diners on their way to over easy Southern another Medford and Grants Pass eateries that serve pork are in for an earful on Friday when Hell on Wheels, PETA's hyper-realistic pig transport truck that looks like it contains real pigs on their way to slaughter, will bombard them with actual recorded sounds of the animals' panic screams along with a subliminal message every 10 seconds suggesting that people go vegan. So the anguished screams and squeals.

Okay. And they're going to be doing this at Over Easy Southern today at 12 noon. That's at 21 North Bartlett. Has anyone ever gone there? I wasn't even familiar with this particular restaurant, but everyone's telling me that they do pretty good food there. And then in Grants Pass around 5 o'clock they're going to be at Frida's Brunch in Cantina on Southeast 7th, Suite A. So pretty small place. So at 12 noon at over easy Southern, Frida's at 5 o'clock.

Do you think these things move the needle or do they get people more entrenched in, hey, I like me? Now, I agree with the people for the ethical treatment of animals when it comes to the ethical treatment. And I guess what is your definition of ethical treatment? As far as eating meat, yeah, I'm a carnivore. I eat meat. I'm not going to make any bones about it.

Eat plants too. I probably should be eating more plants than I do meat, according to the conventional wisdom, but then I know other people that are on the carnivore diet doing quite well. Who can afford the carnivore diet is what I would dare say, but I digress on this. My point is that I think it's okay to bring attention to animal cruelty. Now is eating animals cruel? Is the actual deceiting of animals cruel? Well, ultimately we're all food for something. It's why they call it the food chain. I think we have a duty to be responsible stewards of our animals.

That's the way I tend to look at it. And that when we do dispatch, when we do eat an animal for food, that we do it humanely and as swiftly and painlessly as possible. And that's all I would say to it. That's kind of my point of view on this. I don't have anything grand and astounding, I guess, to say about this. But I agree with that part of it, but I don't think that getting the human race to go vegan is the way to go. I mean, if you want to go vegan, that's fine. Most of the vegans I've known are not, I mean, well, kind of sallow and not all, but most of them, yeah, you kind of look like a vegan.

You don't look real with it. They're real healthy. Yes, I know. And then other people will say, Bill, I can see you on Facebook. You don't look all that healthy either. But hey, still here, still cooking, still kicking, okay? That being said, do these things work? Would you be willing to go out maybe do these two restaurants and defend them against the attack or do you think that people will be laughing at the

attack? That's one question I would have for you this morning. I'm not a big fan of any kind of organization going out in bullying these small businesses. You know, Freitas, Cantina, you know, they're just trying to make an honest buck and give people some honest food. And I would imagine the same thing with Over Easy Southern on the North Bartlett in Medford. You can talk about that if you want. I get irritated at these kind of bullying things.

Yeah, maybe go out in front of Olive Garden or some other place, go to Outback. Now, I'm not advocating going to Outback, but you don't pick on Outback, right? Or some big, well-advertised kind of chain, although I have to admit they're all individually owned and operated too. Most of them are franchises in one form or another. Go out to McDonald's and have the... Well, of course, McDonald's doesn't serve pork. They're going specifically after pork.

So any place that sells bacon, right? If you have any bacon, you have any pork, you have pork chops on the menu, you're going to have squealing pigs and PETA's hell on wheels. Effective? Does it work? You think it's changed any minds over the years? What do you think? Because I support them if you want to talk about the ethical treatment of animals, but the ethical treatment of animals doesn't mean that we don't consume animal protein. I just don't see that as a doable thing. As far as I'm looking at it, PETA is probably part of that World Economic Forum type of thing that would just as soon have us eating soy protein all the time. You'll owe nothing,

you will be happy, you'll be in your 15-minute city in downtown Medford and Grants Pass and or Ashland. You won't have to do anywhere and by the way, we'll have your vegan soy burgers ready for you along with maybe genetically grown meat. Yeah, see that would be, that's the next thing that the world improvers are looking to do, getting us eating in vats of cancerous type meat cells. It's kind of weird the way they talk about that, the artificial meat that they've been

talking about. You actually have cells that are designed to reproduce rapidly, which sounds like cancer, but don't worry, eat it. It'll be good for you. That's kind of how I see it, but if you have an opinion, I would be happy to take it. Yay or nay. Maybe you're even vegan. And if you're, that's it.

If you're a vegan, what do you think about this? About PETA coming in there and brow beating and having screaming pig noises with the hell on wheels? 770-5633-770-KMED. Some other news this morning. Suspect in the shooting in Hawthorne Park, he pleads not guilty. William Triplett, a 38-year-old, arraigned yesterday in Jackson County Circuit Court. He's pleading not guilty. He's charged with first degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon, and felon in possession of a firearm.

Oh boy, felon in possession of a firearm. You know, I'll bet if all of those Measure 114 bills and everything else went into effect, the the effect, the alleged criminal William Triplett... well, of course, he's not an alleged criminal. He's already a convicted felon, but somehow he managed to get them. I'm sure that will stop it. I'm sure all the new gun laws will stop it. All right. Captain Bill Simpson was on COBE yesterday. I didn't get a chance to watch it, but I was reading it on their site this morning. No word on Copco road repairs from Siskiyou County. Captain Bill has talked about this, Dave and various other, back when Joel Carpenter was still alive out there, he would call in and talk about how nasty the road was.

COBE writing, despite Siskiyou County's awareness of the damage to a vital roadway for residents, no word on progress of repairs to Copco. And this is just south of the Oregon-California border. NBC5 News was reporting on this one. And residents are saying that the repairs that happened on fall short and road conditions continue to worsen. The road's worse than it's ever been, Bill Simpson tells NBC5 News. They're still running semis full of rock up and down there.

Semis are going speeds that are just, well, there's running people off the road. This is a KRRC work from what I understand that's been going on. KRRC has done all the damage with putting all these trucks in there and blowing up dams and now we're doing habitat restoration, that kind of thing. But the folks who live out there have to put up with bad road. Kind of curious why Siskiyou County has not done anything.

Even Coby said they reached out to Siskiyou County Public Works several times this week to get an update, have not heard back. I wonder if they're just got to hide under the desk, I guess. Twenty after six, other news going on this morning too. We're going to be delving into another problem that some people have some good ideas. I was reading a statistic from Claudia Rowe. Claudia Rowe is joining me after the 6.30 news. She writes in a book that she's done about foster parenting and the foster system that

about one out of every four prison inmates are alumni of the foster system. And we know here in the state of Oregon that the foster system has big, big problems. Lots of abuse has been reported. Children have been lost in it, children have died within the system because of problems within it, and the state of Oregon has had great difficulty getting a real handle on the problem. Well, Claudia writes deeply on such matters. She's been working it for a long, long time, and I'm interested to find out what she thinks could be done to maybe have, in fact she almost calls it a

foster to prison pipeline. Kind of like how other people have been talking about the public school to prison pipeline too. I don't know, maybe it's all kind of connected. We'll talk with her in just a little bit too. We also have Greg Roberts from roguewather.com. Mr. Outdoors. He'll be joining me for the Outdoor Report. And we're also going to talk with Dr. Dennis Powers about the arguments before the Supreme Court yesterday, birthright citizenship, the nationwide injunctions. We're going to get the legal legal take on it from a local perspective here on KMED and 99.3 KPXG.

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of music's future. That's usyourgift.org. Helping dreams take center stage. Hi, I'm Deb with Father and Son Jury and I'm on KMED. Another interesting story, I was reading Daily Courier last night and the lawsuit being filed against Josephine County, there's always lawsuits just flying, it seems like crazy in Josephine County. But American Mineral Research, that's Jay Meredith folks. I've talked with Jay before, off and on over the years here. And they're suing Josephine County for 20 million dollars, 20 million dollars

because there's a 76 acres site that they have wanted to get a mining lease on for some time and the county doubts their ability to be able to do it. And they're talking, you know many many tens and tens of millions of dollars of gold that they think is underneath there and you can imagine with gold at what? $3,200 an ounce it's worth fighting over these days and The alleged the lawsuit alleging though that county has been dragging its feet and the county would then say that maybe they didn't really

buy into the business plan as I understand it, you know that sort of thing and also that the land was acquired in foreclosure and hence they have to auction it. So I'll be curious to see where this ends up going. The county will have to respond to this ends up going. The county will have to respond to this, I'm sure. But what I would be interested to know is that if they have to put this property up for auction according to other aspects since the property came in on foreclosure, although there is, you know, there is a procedure for mining on county-owned property, no doubt about that. Every county probably does have some some stuff on that, but there's another part that when it comes in on foreclosure that they have to eventually auction it or find some higher use for it. What I would be curious is that if there is that much gold and other minerals up in there, maybe Jay and the folks could find a financial

backer that would just buy the property from the county. I'm just just spitballing out of this. I'm not a legal eagle But we'll see I mean once it goes into court who knows who knows where it's going to go But I think it's an interesting story daily courier has that today Grumpy Jean I don't know. Well, I don't know Jean if you're grumpy today or not, but what's on your mind? How you feeling on this find your phone Friday? I'm not grumpy, or not, but what's on your mind? How you feeling on this find your phone Friday? I'm not grumpy, but has that thing that's going out to the restaurants with Harley's? Oh yeah, yeah, the PETA hell on wheels going out to both a Medford and a Grants Pass restaurant today at noon and five o'clock. And they're going to be blasting the sounds of pig squeals and doing all

sorts of other things, I guess to embarrass them into not serving pork and both of these restaurants of course serve quite a bit of pork, bacon, things like that. Have they ever been around hogs and know how vicious hogs are? The mother will feed the baby but you have to have a wall The mother will feed the baby, but you have to have a wall up that the piglets can get under or the mother will kill and eat the pig. Really? The babies, their own babies. Yes, I'm not really big on pig husbandry or much about that because I've been to the county fairs and I've seen the mother sows feeding the babies just fine without putting

a wall up here Are you sure they'll kill it every time or not? They don't like kill the babies and eat them. Yikes. Or would that be the boars the the father pigs? No, no other will do it too. Mm-hmm. Also they will attack humans If you're feeding a hog, you have to watch them to make sure they don't get to you. And if you have even a scratch that is bleeding, they're really gonna go after you then.

Oh yeah, well, PETA says that they just don't want us eating them, period, no matter one way or the other, whether they can be. Well, according to the Bible, cloven-thven first animals is the only ones that you're allowed to eat and why don't they go out to these research labs that torture animals like who cheese whatever oh well you know that's an interesting question I would figure though that maybe they have it at one

point or another That that sounds like something that they would go out there if you were going to take the dogs remember when that Fauci ended up Doing that experimentation. I remember that and I would have them bitten to death, you know by the insects for research purposes You know that sort of thing really really nice. Yeah What research it was it? How to torture an animal to death? A baby animal to death? Yeah, it does seem that way. But you know the one thing I will say, Gene, and I think we'd all agree though, that we would wish to humanely treat animals, right? And make sure that if we're going

to eat animals that we dispatch them very quickly painlessly and humanely. You'd agree with that I would imagine, right? Well, if you go not hunting, if you can't kill on the first shot, then you don't shoot, period. Alright, point well taken. Not-so-creepy-Jean, appreciate you being on. 770-5633, it's Find Your Phone Friday. Good morning, hi, who's this? Hey Bill, it's David.

David, how you doing this morning? What are you thinking? I think we should do some counter protesters to come talk about other animals and scream at PETA for ignoring cows. Okay, I don't know do they I don't know if they do they actually You know they they get into everyone's face at some point it does it does appear that way No, David just get all frantic and scream with pictures of cows and ask why are you ignoring the cows and just do it to them? Yeah, yeah, why why is it? Why aren't you paying attention? Why is it only the pigs only the pigs you care about today? Right and then it'd be what about the chickens? What about the chickens? And yeah, you have multiple counter protesters. All right, so you say go out to these places and make it happen then, is what you're saying?

Yeah, no, I just think they're just, I mean they're just people that are suffering from some type of disorder. And just to target the two little restaurants like that is bizarre, but I mean they're clearly people that are dealing with bigger problems in their life. They believe in some big cosmic inequality and unfairness, and then they're just stressing out about it. So I would be curious to find out how much funding comes from shadowy groups such as like the Open Society Foundation, the Soros people,

or the World Economics Forum people, the ones that want all of the regular people poor and hungry, but yet happy in their 15-minute city. I'd be curious because that seems to be part of that agenda, but it would have to be. You don't want you eating anything that is actually tasty and protein-like. Well, you know, I mean, I don't eat pork. I don't think pork's good for you. But the problem with PETA is, you know, these are individuals that they want, they feel

so much anger, they need someone to take it out on, and they just, they have their own individual issues with the suspicion that there's a whole bunch of unfair, evil things occurring with these pigs suffering. I mean, obviously carnivore behavior is not quote unquote cruel or unethical. I mean, I think there's a lot of issues with commercial livestock that doesn't respect the dignity of animals. I think that's definitely an issue issues with like commercial livestock that doesn't respect the dignity of animals I think that's definitely an issue. But yeah, and it's okay to and it would be okay to protest that right if you really you think There's some cruelty going on that be okay, right? Yeah, not at the restaurant level

No, I mean what you would do is you would be you would be supporting like local agriculture, you know That's what you would do. But these people are just dealing with a personal problem That is, you know, if their personal hang-up about something in the world they think is unfair and so this it gets back into the whole cycle of forgiveness and acceptance and all this stuff So yeah that you've talked about before David. I always appreciate your call. How are things going in the mechanic world? You fixing cars or not? Hmm. Oh I locked the door. Hopefully nobody can find me today. It's going to be a good day. All right. Thanks, David.

770-5633. It's Find Your Phone Friday. Let me grab another call before news. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hello, Jerry. Hi, Jerry. How are you? I'm well, thank you. I just had a comment regarding the pizza. I didn't hear your whole comment about them, but... Yeah, it has to do with the Hells on Wheels. They're taking the Hells on Wheel wagon. It looks a lot like a pig truck with pigs on the way to the slaughter, and they have...

And they're going to be blasting these restaurants. And it's over easy Southern in Medford in Frida's Bruncheon Cantina in Grants Pass, noon and five o'clock today, they're going to be blasting them with tortured squealing pig sounds and try to shame them into not serving pork, apparently. That's what they're doing. Right. I'd have to explore their issue a little more. Hey, you know what? Even people in the Ashton here, they sell a lot of meat at the Ashton Food Co. and a lot of seafood there too. And anyway, now don't get me wrong, I'm sure they probably buy from reputable people and they believe in that too. I've met vegans before, Bill, who weren't opposed to eating salmon or anything, but they considered themselves vegan. But you know, they could go for the salmon or anything. But they consider themselves vegan, but they could go for the salmon or something, maybe

not the beef or whatever. Yeah, I get it. It almost seems to be that the higher on the perceived consciousness scale, the more sympathy that comes from the vegan world. Is that the way it is? And I guess the dumber or less thinking that something appears to be than the less in need of protection, that kind of thing? Yeah I don't know. Hey you know what if we eat it I think any animal even if we're gonna slaughter it you know I

meant I don't know exactly what they mean by unethical you know maybe they just line them up and shoot them I meant I don't know what they're talking about. So I can't really comment on their point of view. I just say, hey, let them protest if they want to. You know, here's what I will say though. I heard, I just heard this, I never don't know it, but the Indians, the Native Americans, if they killed something, they used to use the whole animal.

True. Well, you couldn't afford to waste it either at a hunter gatherer society. Yeah, and you know, I mean, they probably made jewelry on horns and all sorts of things, but, you know, and I am a work for a company that distributes seafood. And one thing that I've never tried that I'm going to try, because I've heard good things about these, is some halibut collars.

Oh, yeah, I've heard good things about that. You know, when it comes to, when it does come to food, there are things that I do get concerned about. This is just me, and maybe someone thinks I'm a little weird about it, I think it's important to respect the life of the animal, one form or the other, and try to dispatch as humanely as possible. And there's something that has bothered me,

even watching cooking shows on television, because Linda loves that kind of stuff, that's her passion, in which they take live lobsters, shrimp, things like that, and just put them in the pot and then just turn the heat up bit and bit. And they just start sauteing it and just, you know, moving it around. And there's something about that. It always seemed kind of cold. I don't know why, but it just bothers me. I understand your point, Bill. Yes, I understand. I would much prefer, you know, dispatch it, then cook it.

But I guess maybe that doesn't work. But thanks for the call. Hey, I appreciate it. Claudia Rowe is going to join me. And she is digging deeply into the American foster care system. And she wants to reform it. I want to talk with her about the problem and where we go next. From the KMED News Center Center here's what's going on. Ballots have gone out in Jackson County but few have come back. The Jackson

County clerk is reporting low turnout as the May 20th special district election approaches this coming Tuesday. About 9% of registered voters have returned a ballot and at the current rate the total turnout would come in somewhere around 19%. The Oregon Department of Environmental Quality has paused its advanced clean trucks rule and went into effect January 1st requiring truck makers to start building more electric medium and heavy-duty trucks. Currently they're too expensive they don't have enough range and there's not enough infrastructure. DEQ says enforcement of the rule will remain paused through next year. Oregon has set

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the whole problems with foster systems for a long time. Came from New York City, now lives in Seattle. And her reporting on racially skewed school discipline for Seattle Times helped to change education laws in Washington State. Her coverage of Latino youth gangs nominated for a Pulitzer is also written for the New York Times, Mother Jones, Amazon Original Stories. In fact, 2018, boy, you've got a lot of awards here, Claudia. Washington State Book Award for the true crime memoir, The Spider and the Fly. Which crime was that, if you don't mind me asking? It was a series of serial murders in upstate New York. Okay, all

right. It wasn't the Green River Killer, which of course I always remember back when I was growing up. I was in Seattle back in the mid to late 80s, so I worked a lot there at KPLZ, KVI, so I have soft spot in my heart for what you're doing there. By the way, you can find out more about Claudia Rowe, ClaudiaRowejournalist.com. You've turned your journalistic eye view onto the foster system. And boy, in Oregon, we've had all sorts of problems in the foster system and boy in Oregon we've had all sorts of problems in the in the foster system children missing children lost children killed and murdered children abused all sorts of issues you're writing about this and more wards of the state the long shadow of American foster care. What do you think and where did you even start on this on this journey. So foster care is enormous, right? You could take a million different angles on

foster care. This particular book looks at the incredible overlap, you could even call it a handoff, from the foster care system to the American prison system, the carceral system. There's data that research that shows over 50% of the kids who age out of foster care, that means you grew up in foster care and you're cut from the system at 18, over 50% end up incarcerated by the time they're 26. That could be including during foster care. It could be in juvie, some kind of experience of incarceration, juvie, county jail, or state prison by 26. That is off the charts. And, you know, fewer than 5% of kids who age

out of foster care ever earn a four-year college degree. So 59% locked up, fewer than 5% higher education completion of a degree, four- year degree, not counting a two year degree. So those numbers just blew me away. And then when I looked a little deeper, I realized those numbers are not a recent trend or a sudden spike. This has been the case for decades, maybe a century. I mean, we've only had foster care for like 125 years. This has been the case certainly for the last four or five decades.

The overlap with incarceration is crazy. And I came to sort of through the six years of doing this book came to view foster care as kind of a gear in the machine, like an unacknowledged engine just pumping kids out into homelessness and incarceration. Was there a way we were able to delve into maybe a root cause of it? Because there's a part of me then would say, okay, someone usually gets into the foster system

because the family was already messed up and dysfunctional. There was some really serious problems, whether it's mental illness or drug addiction or some other pathology going on. Or did the system contribute to breaking the kid further? I guess maybe that's, that's kind of where I'm going is where can we explore this? How can you find out? Right. That's the question. So yes, every kid who is in foster care has experienced some kind of

trauma, though it could be, you know, the trauma of poverty, which isn't technically a reason to be taken into foster care, but as you know, many many kids who are brought into foster care for so-called neglect don't have enough food at home, you know, their parents are homeless or virtually homeless. These are not actually supposed to be reasons to be taken into foster care but it happens all the time. So for whatever reason a kid goes into foster care from some kind of trauma. The system is not set up as a healing system. It's not there to fix kids. It's way more of a way station.

And my reporting, which kind of follows six young people through the system, it doesn't heal kids. And in many cases, it doesn't heal kids and in many cases it makes them worse. Not because of a whole band of abusers who are nested in foster care just waiting for kids to come in. It's not like that. It's the structure of the system itself. So yes, there are individually problematic people in the system, but that's not what

is really happening. So bad foster parents are not that root of the problem that you were looking into then? Correct. It's not the root. The root is a structural, is a structure. The foster care system, as you know, is essentially built on impermanence, right?

Kids move around until either they get adopted, they get reunited with their original biological family, or they go into group homes. I mean, this is pretty much what happens. But, you know, adoptions are problematic too. There are many, many broken adoptions, kids who are adopted out of the foster care system, and then their adoptive families can't deal with it, can't deal with the behaviors that they often bring. Which is indicative of the broken problem that we're dealing with. They're already broken coming out of the system. And many times adoptive parents are not

properly prepared by the state for what they're going to get. So they take the kid back to foster care, which is like a profound rejection, right? You know, for whatever reason to the kid, even if the kid didn't like their adoptive family, still that experience is really shocking to many young kids, their adolescents by this point, usually many of them, including my, you know, I had no idea you could be unadopted, but you can be unadopted. I didn't realize that either, yeah, until you brought it up. I thought it's kind of like, you know, it's like you, you know, you adopt a dog or cat and well, that's it, you know, that's it, he's ours now, you know, that sort of thing. Yeah, well, it's, so this is something that foster care never talks about, but

anyway, so foster care is like inherently about impermanence, moving from home to home. Is that the root of it though? Is that a root of a problem with kids? Yeah, because it has profound effects at a neurological level like brain development. So there's a chapter in the book about brain science and what happens to all humans, every baby when they're born kind of imprints on their caregiver, right? Attaches to their caregiver before they can speak, before they can move, right? Just as a matter of survival. And this bond with the person who's feeding you and caring for you is essential for healthy

brain development. It's not like, oh, mommy, mommy. This is like basic chemical brain development. But for kids in foster care, there is no sort of opportunity for ongoing stable bond. Wow. You know, it's interesting you bring this up, Claudia. It reminds me of those stories I would read about of, you know, you'd see old Soviet Union era orphanages and things where people couldn't afford to have their children. You'd read the stories about how these babies would be born and they would be put into institutions and they weren't picked up and bonded, you know, properly. And they were broken for life in many cases.

Very severe. So we're talking about this on a grand scale in a foster system, maybe a lesser version of it in like in the foster care system. Yeah, exactly. So this sort of, it's not that somebody's a good person or bad person. This is like basic biological setup and it can also be healed. I should say there's not like you're broken and you're broken forever. One of the great things I discovered in reporting this book are ways that this can reverse, can be healed. And it's not by some kind of incredible magic or something, it is literally sustained, stable, trustable, reliable contact with an adult.

Again and again, I saw it, and I was not, believe me, not cherry picking happy cases here, but I saw it in just numerous instances. There's a kid in the book who is in's in New York City, he was sort of in foster care and homeless and carrying his stuff around in a garbage bag in New York City for years. He went through four high schools. On his fourth, he was a gang member, everything, right? His fourth high school, there's this young woman,

she's like 23 years old, she's practically a kid herself and her job is graduation, what is it? Graduation advocate, right? Her job is just get the kids across the finish line. Yeah, drag them. Yeah, yeah, sure. She just worked with this guy for nine months, not some intense thing. She was just the person, you know, he checked into her office, you know, a couple times

a week and she helped him find safe routes to school so that he wouldn't be seen by gang members. She just sort of helped him out with some basics. How do you get to school? Okay, yes, we think we can get you through school. That was it. It turned him around. He did go to college.

He went to community college. He went to the state university. I just saw him earn his PhD, um, like two weeks ago, incredible change from a guy who was in juvie and was gang member and was in foster care and was homeless and, you know, didn't think he would live past 21. He just earned his PhD. Incredible. And that was not some sort of intensive program, you know, it was just one person showing sustained interest and contact.

In other words, someone who gives a damn, right? Yeah. Ultimately. Boy, how do you... That's one of the more heartening parts of an intense book. I imagine so. Claudia Rowe, once again, she's the author of Wards of the State, the Long Shadow of American Foster Care, and of course you're talking about how so many people in prison incarcerated today, just a huge percentage of them coming from a foster care system. Now, this is something that this may be an uncomfortable part. I don't know if you addressed this part in the book or not. Maybe you can help me out. I've known people who have been foster parents and as far as I'm concerned, they're doing

the Lord's work. All right? You know, you're stepping up and you're really doing it. Some people will look at the outside of it and go, ah, you're just doing it for the money. Hey, I don't think you're getting whatever money is coming from the state for the expenses. I don't think it's nearly enough. We're probably in the trouble. But I've known people who have dropped out of the system, Claudia, because of the danger to their own family. And when I bring this up, this is the danger of, he touched me.

You know what I'm getting at here? In which kids know that all you have to do to get ejected out of a foster home is just make a claim that someone touched you or tried to molest you. And knowing that's not true, that sort of thing. But yet I've known people that said, I can't put my own family up at risk to bring them in because of stuff like this in the past and the belief system, the what's been going on. You're never supposed to disbelieve what a kid tells you. Any thoughts on that? Does that, does that hurt the situation? It didn't, it didn't come up in my reporting for this book.

I'm not going to say it never happens. I'm sure that happens, but it's not something I investigated in this book. And frankly, I mean, kids run from their placements. I mean, if they don't want to be at a placement, they just take off. All the time. In fact, we see them in Jackson Josephine County. The reports say missing child. It's just like, oh, OK, I can almost guarantee that this is someone who ran away from foster. And that seems to be it. So, you know, I mean, I think that probably happens more than, you know, some...

I'm not... Look, I totally get what the foster parents you're talking about. I get how that could be a concern. I see how that could happen. What I think happens a lot more is the kid takes off if they don't want to be in a placement. They're they're begging their social worker if their social worker doesn't move them they split. Now in wards of the state you you you talk about the kids like Mary Ann and Mary Mary Ann, I guess, had been arrested for murder by the time she was 16.

Whoa! I mean, in and out of... Right. That's how I came into the book. Exactly. Yeah. And in and out of adoptive homes, runaway, trafficked, assaulted. And what finally ended up happening with her?

Was she able to find healing at some point? You're talking about needing the foster care assistant to be more of a healer. Right, so Mary Ann did not, what is really ironic about Mary Ann is, so she did commit murder at 16. She did get locked up. Washington State is experimenting with something

that you all in Oregon have been doing for a while. We have, we're kind of new to this keeping youth, minors who have been charged as adults because of the seriousness of their crime, like murder. We now allow some of those young people to stay in a juvenile facility until they're 25. I think you guys have it till 24. This is controversial and it is deeply problematic. It has a reasonable concept behind it. It's just

very difficult to make it work. In Mary Ann's case, she got a chance at this. So she went to a youth facility. She had already been sent to state prison and they were like, okay, we passed this law. You get to try to be in a youth facility. So she's 20 years old and she's in this juvenile facility for four years. I have to say, profound transformation. And not because, this is getting to your question, it was because this was the first place where she had enough food, she wasn't going to be jumped, it was stable, there was a regular adult that she was always going to be checking

in with, her case manager. A sense of semi permanency. Some semi permanency. It's like the transformation that happened there actually shed light really not on the greatness of that system, but on, hey, like it just shows how unstable foster care was when this kid is in lockup, actually is able to sort of stabilize and become thoughtful about herself.

And I mean, of course she was also growing up, which is important to note, by the time she left there, she was 24. But the transformation, which I was very skeptical about was remarkable. Marianne is still locked up, so she based them sent her to prison. Yeah, she has a while to go. Yeah, for sure. So how do you believe, Claudium, that you take a system which is not permanent, it's not really about healing, how would you take the existing system and infuse it, for lack of a better term,

with more of an attempt to heal these pathologies of the kids in the foster system? How do you even go about that? Right, I appreciate the question. So, one of the people in the book, this really smart lawyer named Jennifer Rodriguez in San Francisco, she's a former foster youth herself. Now she works for this legal advocacy group, youth legal advocacy. And she kind of helped me understand that the system is not aligned to healthy brain development, what we were talking about at the beginning of this conversation. The structure of the system does not line up with something that helps kids develop in a sound way. So I wouldn't call it a solution, but an improvement is to emphasize attachment, to retool the system so that it provides more opportunities for kids to have a stable adult to bond with.

So there are a couple of efforts happening nationally toward that, in that direction. One is kinship care, which is a comparatively new practice of looking first to relatives for placement. Many states have been doing this for a while, but the emphasis now is on getting state support, government money, stipends that typically went to strangers, you know, foster parents who were strangers. Now a relative can get licensed to take in their niece, their nephew, their grandkid to be the quote-unquote foster parent or kinship care.

And at least in there, there is a deeper tie than just the institutional tie of a normal. Right. This is somebody who knows the child or knows their family, you know, it's sort of part of their circle, their community. So that's one thing, sort of like acknowledging the importance of connection, bonding, attachment, it really matters. The other thing is sort of toward the same end but from the opposite angle which is working with foster parents. So you know foster parents too are treated kind of like you know like a way station. The kids are gonna get blocked there and they're

gonna get yanked out of there and the foster parent often has very little heads up. Could be hours like hey we're coming by and pick up that kid. You know, they're not exactly treated with great respect either. And so this other effort, which is out of that California group I just mentioned, youth legal advocacy in California, that is sort of looking at better recruitment of foster parents to also allow for the foster parent and the biological parent to have some connection. Like in Florida, for instance, Florida picked up on this and passed a law where the foster parent and the biological parent speak by phone, sometimes on the first night, so that

the foster parent knows the kid's favorite food or their favorite television show, just something so that the child knows, hey, we got you. We're in touch with your mom. We're not enemies. We're all trying to work to get a more stable place for you because we're all caring for you. It's not like some anonymous... Yeah....just pass around. I get that. So mom's in crisis or whatever it is, but still being able to say, all right, she likes this or he likes this and don't try to do this with him because blah, blah, blah, whatever, you know, knows it. And that sounds... Well, we got a lot of work in it, in other words.

We got a lot of work. It's what you're telling me. Okay. Yeah, because I think that a lot of times we almost tend to view these kind of foster systems and adoption and everything else as that, well, it's okay. You put in certain amounts of money here and then you hire certain people here and you're going to get certain outcomes like we're all just little automatons and we'll just respond to input, right? It's a little more complex. It's pretty crazy though, the amount of money we're spending on foster care in this country. $30 billion every year,

and the outcomes are prison and homelessness in an enormous number of cases. So we're spending $30 billion to pump out incredibly newly expensive, more social problems. It just seems like... Yeah, yeah, well creating more future problems with more billions of dollars spent trying to fix it after the fact here. Really thought-provoking here, the book is Wards of the State, The Long Shadow of American Foster Care. Claudia Rose, the author, and you can find out more about this. Of course, I'm sure it's

available, it's a Tuesday when it's actually coming out, right? That's when it pops. It publishes available for sale on Tuesday May 20th. I'm very excited. Yeah, claudiarowejournalist.com. Now I haven't been able to clear this call here before Claudia. Someone's been hanging on for a while and usually it's because they were either in foster care or they had a question. So we'll just see if they have something there. Caller, did you want to talk with Claudia? Yeah, it is so just gruntled, Jay. I was adopted and it wasn't much fun. I suffered from anxiety and abandonment, but a little Bible trivia.

Back in Roman times, Paul says that the spirit of adoption, back in Roman times, if you were adopted you could not be rejected, you cannot lose your heritage. You were in it for life. You're in it for life. That's interesting. I don't know if that necessarily works in our system right now, Jay. I don't know if you have any comment on that or not, Claudia, but that's one person's experience adopted out of this all. Well, I mean, it probably it certainly stays in you. Obviously we just talked about you. Legally, you can be unadopted, but the experience of having been adopted surely never leaves you. Yeah, I have great sympathy for

and concern for a lot of these kids, these people, and I look back at my own experience, my own childhood was idyllic. I had intact family, mother and father, yeah, they had their problems and they eventually split later on. But I had that founding love, that root, right? And that's what's so missing within the kids within the foster system that we have, right? Yeah, it has profound impacts on behavior. I mean one of the really interesting things that somebody said to me and it's at the beginning of the book, it was a teacher who said this to me, behavior is a

language. And sometimes really challenging, ugly, or off-putting, frightening behavior, we're going to recoil from it. We're not going to hear what it's saying, but it is a language. And I'm not saying it's easy to decipher that language, but it is telling us something. And just as you said, the lack of stability and bonding that all kids in foster care, almost all kids, experience has real impacts on their behavior. So when we see behavior that is really problematic, I just step back. It's a kid telling you something. They don't know how to speak it in words. They can't. They're a kid. They can't separate it and analyze it and put it in a sentence and say, I'm unhappy about this. Please help me. They can't do it so they'll flip a chair over or worse you know.

Claudia, I don't know if you delve into this. Like I said I just started looking through the book and I want to read more of it for sure. I'm just wondering if you know everything about this is trying to fix situations after damage was already done. Is there any way to get a warning sign that the family's ready to spiral into real problems and breaking the kids and breaking the family up and everything else? I don't know.

I really appreciate that question, Bill. I think that you just hit the heart of it. So in Oregon and nationally, but definitely in Oregon and in Washington state too, the numbers of kids in foster care have gone down in recent years, largely because people are realizing, oh man, the outcomes of this system are not good. So let's keep kids with their families more. So to your point, I mean, red flags are like, a kid comes to school in, you know,

the same clothes every single day or doesn't have enough food at lunchtime. Sometimes in the recent past and probably still today, you know, somebody is gonna make a call, this kid is being neglected and that kid will be removed and taken into foster care. But you could go a different way. You could say, hey, this family is clearly in distress.

Maybe they don't have enough money for food. Maybe they need help getting to, you know, some place that can provide the kids with free clothing or health care or electricity bills. You know, like there are many states, I believe, including Oregon, that are really trying to pump up what you would call like preventative services, right? Like services aimed to keep families together. Yeah, it's a lot more expensive to fix the broken one, you know, really is. Washington state has a really interesting pilot program around housing. Families who have lost kids to foster care or who are about to and are

unstably housed. Washington state is now providing them stipends for stable housing, not in a shelter like a regular apartment In an effort to further stem kids being taken into foster care those kinds of efforts are popping up around the country and they're new and they're risky and Mistakes happen and kids get hurt as you mentioned at the beginning of the top of the show But it is the right way to go It is the right way to go the book is w right way to go. The book is Wards of the State,

The Long Shadow of American Foster Care, and this is coming out on Tuesday. You can find out more at ClaudiaRoeJournalist.com. I will post this on KMED.com on the Bill Meyers Show blog today. Claudia, a pleasure talking with you, and thanks for joining us from Seattle. Thanks so much for having me, Bill,

and I'll be at Powell's on June 2nd, if any of your listeners wanna come out and talk. Powell's in Portland, it's a bit of a drive, bit of a drive here, but you know if we were in Portland we would drop in okay. All right. Thank you Claudia, appreciate that. Yep, bye. Bye bye. Actually we have listenership all up and down the west coast so I know we have some people up by Portland that are listening on stream this morning, so I bet they would. It is six minutes after seven. This is KMED and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.