Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 05-27-25_TUESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: May 27, 2025

Morning news and headlines and a legislative catchup later with State Sen. Noah Robinson, wildfire map bill held hostage, man, they want all your money!

The Bill Myer Show podcast is sponsored by Clouser Drilling. They've been leading the way in southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at ClouserDrilling.com. I did nothing that I would call outrageous. I didn't do much other than work. Remember, I was telling you, heading into the Memorial Day weekend, that it was going to be mostly just working to try to get some idea and some control on

the jungle. And it's getting there. It's absolutely getting there. Of course, you'd laugh if you saw the Vanagon this morning. The Vanagon is filled to, in fact, I have the Vanagon filled with, it's 20 bags of mulch, 20 pounds or 20 bags of two cubic foot mulch bags. And it has filled the passenger compartment. So the Vanagon, which is always slow, being a 48 horsepower diesel is now even slower

with several hundred pounds of mulch. But it's awfully quiet. It does absorb a lot of the sound of the diesel. There we go. I hope you're doing well this morning. You can join the conversation at 7705633770KMED by email bill at BillMeyersShow.com. We're going to be catching up with State Senator Noah Robinson now that we're going to be heading into the home stretch of the, put it in scary, air quotes, legislative session

as that goes. Of course, cap and trade has now reared its ugly head. We'll have to talk with Noah about this because cap and trade is why the Republicans walked out more than twice over the last few years. It looks like they want to do cap and trade, and of course they would take cap and trade and assign that to transportation. Of course, we'll have you transporting less so we won't have to spend as much on transportation. Yeah, in other words, they just want to slow down the economy.

Boy, Democrats are very, very interesting people. We're going to change the weather by changing your carbon output in Oregon. There's a lot of hubris that is all kind of connected with that, as you can well imagine. We'll talk with Noah about that and what other schemes are up their sleeves and I was kind of wondering if maybe cap and trade, you know, maybe all the gun bills they wouldn't be willing to walk out but is cap and trade something worthy of getting sporty? I don't know. We'll talk with Senator Robinson about that. Former state senator Herman Barachiger we're going to talk with him too about what's going on, including maybe even

taking the kicker. Yeah, a whole bunch of other stuff here too. And on top of that, I was going to say state senator. Yeah, he was a state senator, but he is now a congressman. Congressman Cliff Pence is going to drop by around 830 and he's taking a lot of incoming on the cutting, the supposedly cutting of Medicaid, cutting of the Oregon health plan. And now see, cutting means that you can't be a bum and be on the Oregon health plan. I think that's essentially what's going on here and the Democrats including Ron Wyden who was giving his town hall over the weekend is You know if anybody is forced to actually work and

If they actually have income that they pay for their own insurance that's considered a bad thing in the Ron Wyden world And Ron Wyden of course is against the big beautiful bill of course it wouldn't matter if the cure for cancer was in the big beautiful bill it's because it came from the Republicans and President Trump that you know it's not going to be something that he's real happy about. But yeah we'll have a conversation with with Congress and Pence about it and I don't know you know is is getting fewer people on the program, allowing fewer people on the program, a cut? Or is it just making what the program should have been all

along? Maybe that is something we can talk about. Really what they've done with the Oregon Health Plan is that things are changed. And from what I understand, I think that this was done with the help of former Governor Kitzhab, because Governor Kitzhaber, I think, is able to add and subtract unlike many who are in Salem right now, and realize that the massive increase in Medicaid, which is, remember, every time you hear Medicaid, this is not Medicare, it's Medicaid. When you hear Medicaid, think Oregon Health Plan. That's all it is. That's the only difference. We just call it Oregon Health Plan in the state of Oregon. That's all it is. That's the only difference. We just call it Oregon health plan in the state of Oregon. Is telling someone who is able-bodied and is capable of working,

that they should be working and that they shouldn't get absolutely free health insurance, is that a cut? Maybe that's the first question of the morning, because this is really the argument coming from the Democrats that everyone should absolutely, it doesn't matter if you are a bum, whatever the case might be, if you are able to work and you just don't feel like working, man, I don't feel like working. Sure, everybody else should be paying taxes so that you get free healthcare. Is that the way it should be? Is getting those people to handle more of their own health care expenses like

everybody else has to do that? Now is that an actual cut? Is that a bad thing? That's one question I will toss out to you this morning. Okay, we can talk about it and more at 770-5633. Some of the headlines here locally. At a wildfire in central Oregon, it's growing up to about 2,000 acres, that's the Butte Creek fire in Wasco County, and they responded to that Sunday, just before 3 o'clock on Sunday, KOBI 5 reporting on this one.

Meanwhile, crews from ODF Williams Rural Fire Protection mopping up a fire in Josephine County. That happened just before 10 o'clock yesterday on Memorial Day. Half acre fire and the amount of brush that caught fire on the slope of the train made containing it a little more time consuming, but they're getting a handle on that. Like I'd mentioned, Congressman Cliff Bents is coming in. He's continuing to insist that Republicans are not cutting Medicaid and SNAP, but they do want to increase the standards. We'll talk with him about that, like I said, 8.30 or so this morning.

Meanwhile, Ron Wyden is really upset that anybody wants to do any kind of cut whatsoever, that you should be able to, you should have to be working if you're going to get welfare, if you're able-bodied. What is wrong with that? You know Democrats used to be in favor of that. Anybody remember Bill Clinton? Remember Bill Clinton when there was that that big welfare reform? I know that was back 20-30 years ago. But Bill Clinton is looking more Republican-like every day. All right. Capitre... oh, here is an interesting one over the weekend in Zero Hedge. Zero Hedge had an

interesting headline. Newly declassified intelligence records have revealed what we all knew. The Biden administration labeled Americans who opposed the COVID-19 vaccination and mask mandates as domestic violent extremists. The documents declassified over the weekend by DNI, Tulsi Gabbard, and yeah, DVE, that's what they called, domestic violent extremists. And Katherine Harridge, as a journalist who got some of the records, notes the designation created an articulable purpose for FBI or other government agents to open an assessment of individuals. Former FBI agent telling Katherine Harridge that this is often the first step toward a formal investigation. So, yeah, practically all of us that were even asking any kind of questions about COVID were put on a list at some point,

if you had any kind of reach whatsoever. Yep, those violent extremists believing that COVID vaccines potentially unsafe for young people. And of course, they are still potentially unsafe for young people. Try to get some of the people who took it, though, to talk about it is very difficult. I've mentioned to you several times over the years, how I was trying to get a hold of a woman in Cedarville, California, a young woman in Cedarville,

who back during COVID time, she was 16 years old. You know, maybe I should try, now she's an adult. Her parents wouldn't be able to necessarily run interference on it anymore. But when she was 16, during the depth of COVID, she ended up taking the COVID shot and she was an avid outdoor person and sports person and horse and she rode horses all the time and she was big on that. And she was semi-paralyzed for several months that she was working.

There was a story done in local media, in Reading, Reading television station, did something about it. It got a little bit of attention here in Southern Oregon, mostly me and a couple of other people. But my goodness, never could get any follow up on this. And I called over to the police department in Cedarville and said, hey, is there any way I could talk with the parents? And it's like nobody wanted to come forward. Nobody wanted to talk.

And I don't know if it was one of those situations where nobody wants to admit that safe and effective wasn't safe and effective and to even talk about not being safe and effective well like zero hedge was noting it was released over the weekend that you were a domestic violent or no was it DVE domestic violent extremists that was what they were maybe that was what it was all about. Oh, goodness. 7705633770KMED. Also, speaking of someone who was vaxxed and boosted to the max because he made his fans do this if they were going to watch... If you're going to watch Billy Joel, you're going to watch a Billy Joel show, and I love Billy Joel show, and I love Billy Joel music, I think he's an amazing artist, but he ended up announcing that he canceled all of his 17 upcoming concerts

and he got a diagnosis of normal pressure hydrocephalus, a brain disorder causing hearing, vision, and balance issues. tissues. Now, I'm not saying that it was caused by his totally vaxxed and boost status, but one of the clearly stated side effects of being clearly vaxxed and boosted to the max is one of the side effects being talked about is normal pressure hydrocephalus, that brain disorder. Is there a connection? We don't know. But once again, you could be called a DVE back in the Biden administration for happening to notice such things. Just like the young woman from Cedarville who, I guess, maybe just wants to move forward

and doesn't want to talk about it. But I don't know folks, will anything really stop unless people are willing to come and talk about the damage that they got? Isn't that really what it is? I know there's so many people, so many people have even their identity completely tied into getting vaxxed and boasted and masked and doing everything that the regime was telling people to do. That's what they did, you know. Is it that embarrassing? I had a friend of mine that used to call the program who was telling me a number of months ago that I wouldn't call anymore. And I asked why he wouldn't call and he said, well, you know, I gave you a hard time about

the COVID-19. And by the way, I was kind of a slow adopter of getting into questioning what was going on with the COVID-19 vaccine thing. I really was. I was careful because I was scared like everybody else was in the beginning. I understand how fear can get to us. I understand. And I absolutely have no problem with the people that were being hard on me back because

I could see how you could go either way on it. I really could. And this person was telling me, well, I won't call the show anymore because I've been embarrassed about it. And I said, you know, don't be embarrassed. We called it wrong. It was either way. And, you know, it could have gone either way. Maybe that's why the family in Cedarville wouldn't want to talk about it either. You know, it could have gone either way. Maybe that's why the family in Cedarville wouldn't want to talk about it either. My concern is that if people aren't willing to come forward and talk about the damage that they ended up taking from these mandates, and I know a lot of people who got fired for not taking the mandates in many cases, especially in the medical world, I understand how we got

so sideways with one another and how it was...it's human nature to want to go along with the herd though. That's our challenge, isn't it? It's human nature. We're herd animals. You know, we want to get along. We're social animals. We want to get along with one another. And if someone is thinking, hey, we're really scared. Listen, folks, I remember I had from the Trump administration, first Trump administration, a certificate, I talked to you about this many years ago,

that was saying that they were so concerned that there was going to be the ability to purchase fuel that me being someone who maintained broadcast facilities was given a certificate that would have permitted me that would have permitted me to be out on the roads and purchase vehicle and purchase gasoline and that kind of got real with me it's like wow this could be really, really serious stuff. I remember months at a time when I'd be going to work at 435 in the morning, and I'm like the only one on the road. At least it felt that way sometimes. I remember how scared we were and how much of it was in the unknown. And yeah, we were sold to build of goods by everybody, I think.

But if we're not willing to talk about how we had it wrong in some cases and had it wrong in other ways, because I've been wrong about stuff too. Some things I've talked about that I ended up being wrong about. It doesn't come to mind right now, but I'm sure someone can remind me. Maybe you want to just forget the stuff that you're wrong about. Maybe you want to just forget the stuff that you're wrong about. But it can happen again if we're not willing to talk about reality. That's all I was getting at here. 7705633, we can talk about that and more. This is the Bill Meyers Show.

If you're on hold, I'll get right to you. This is KMED and 99.3 KBXG, and I appreciate you being here. Short weekday after Memorial Day, but we'll be digging into stuff. Young music talent is everywhere, but opportunity isn't. That's where the Use Your Gift Foundation makes a difference here in Southern Oregon. We mentor young musicians, provide access to a professional recording studio, and create real chances to grow and perform. Every lesson, every session, every stage they step on brings them closer to their dream. You can help make that dream come true.

Go to UseYourGift.org and find out how you can be part of music's future. That's UseYourGift.org. My name is Ariel. I moved to the U.S. at 19. I spoke no English and I struggled finding job opportunities. Everything I have I owe to the Adult Leadership Center and getting my high school diploma at age 22. It was an honor helping you achieve your greatness. Now you're helping others achieve theirs. It inspires me. When you graduate, they graduate. Find free and supportive adult education centers near you

at finishyourdiploma.org. Brought to you by Dollar General Literacy Foundation and the Ad Council. When was the last time you had your well water tested? The EPA recommends that all private wells be tested at least once a year. the Ad Council. state results for bacteria tests and a speedy three to five days for the full reporting that meets all state requirements online at gpwaterlab.com. Independent and serving the Rogue Valley for over 40 years. Hi, I'm Lamont from Orleys and I'm on 106.7 KMED. 627, I appreciate you being here day after Memorial Day. Hope that the Memorial Day was a good situation for you. Solemnly celebrated.

I know that it's not that you want everybody to be sad all day, but it was an important holiday. It is an important holiday. And I must say that I do get irritated when I see everybody say, Happy Memorial Day. It's like saying Happy Funeral Day, Happy Military Funeral Dead Day. But yeah, I get that when we're all conditioned that you know go out and get a mattress right? Of course I'm happy! All right let me go to Jake. Hey Jake how you doing this morning? You have a concern about the guy that what ran over those people after the soccer match right? Yeah I couldn't

find his name. All he said is a white British man, 53 year old. Yeah, a lot of people hurting from that. Yeah, a lot of people. I bet you, I mean, I looked all over the place. I could not find his name. I bet you it has a Mohammed in there somewhere. Well, we don't know and they don't tend to announce names of perpetrators as freely as we do in the United States. That is part of it. They have a different legal system because they have to hide criminals. They're more willing to hide criminals. Here we just hide the mugshots here, Jay. Okay? In Oregon, right? Yeah, I will find out his name eventually. But yeah, I was just like, you know what the media?

Where do you you know the United States? Reporters, you know that can actually leak who his name was or I mean he has an address with his computers Nowadays you can find anybody. Well, except if you're accused of a crime in Great Britain, apparently. Jake, I appreciate hearing from you. Thanks for the call, okay? Let me go to Tom. Hello, Tom, how you doing? Morning. Good morning, Bill. Morning. You know, talking about COVID and so forth, it's just, what a sad situation, but...

By the way, I just wanted to just reiterate how over the weekend they leaked that Tulsi Gabbard ended up putting out, just so people know the context of what we're talking about, that we were considered people who questioned the regime were considered domestic violent extremists in the FBI. Yeah. That's how we were classified. And I would, I go back and I would call our government the violent extremists because what they did resulted

in the deaths of thousands to 10,000s of people. Our government is the radical extremists. It almost seems as if the DVE classification, domestic violent extremists, that they applied to anybody who questioned that COVID response was almost the misdirect. In other words, don't look at where the real crime

is being convicted or committed rather. Absolutely, you know, and the real problem, the real deepest problem is when COVID arrived, I have always have looked upon my government since the Vietnam War as a violent lying extremist. And my assumption from for the last 60 years, if government says anything, I assume it's a lie until proven otherwise. So when COVID arrived, I assume that they, again, another government-sponsored lie.

And I operated from that point of view. And the idea of not quite... I'm just astounded by the level and degree of blind that we were living under. I don't care whether it's the finance. We just... Well, you know, and I'm trying to be charitable. Tom, I'm trying to be charitable about this, though. You think about it. When you have people dying, and you remember the videos coming out of China, which were probably...

Oh, yeah, the face plants on the... The face plants and things like that. Those were amazingly powerful images. Now, I'm not saying that there shouldn't have been more questioning done of that, but nevertheless that was used, was it not? Well I don't question the people who got duped. What I'm questioning is the dupers, the people who were deliberately lying to us, deliberately duping people, deliberately scaremongering. And so, unreasonable, not based on reality. And the big thing to do here at this point is to look at our government and see how far

off the rails it's been. We've been in a, not just Joe Biden's last four years, a better nightmare, but I'm saying that for decades we've just been lied to over and over. I don't care if it's Waco, Ruby Ridge, Vietnam War, the Gulf Wars, lie after lie after lie after lie. You are absolutely more healthy than many by the default position being like, okay, I'm assuming that you're lying, prove me that you're not lying. Essentially, I think that's a great way to be, and we'd all be a lot healthier. And that also includes even what comes out of the Trump administration, okay?

It's still a big bureaucracy, and I think we have to keep that in mind. Thanks for the call, Tom. I want to squeeze one more in here from Francine. Francine, good to hear from you this Tuesday, day after Memorial Day. What's going on? Yeah, hi Bill. Well, I've been watching a show called The Americans. Do you recall that one? Oh yeah, that was the, what was that? The deep implanted couple with their two kids. Yeah, I stopped watching that after a while because it was kind of kind of too gross, sexy, sexuality at times and things like that.

Yeah, but I couldn't ignore that. Okay, yeah, so you got past that. Fine. I mean, there's been a few parts, a few places where I went, ew, you know, but I just can't, I mean, I just finished season five, there's one more season to go. But it's kind of fascinating because what I'm getting from this is not so much propaganda-ish as we would think American propaganda against the Soviet Union. I mean, it feels kind of authentic, including the way the FBI acted, the way they use people. The FBI uses people, the KGB uses people, they destroy lives. they don't care.

They have a goal. That's what they want. They want to achieve it. And just something, you know, when the, when the, with the COVID thing, when that happened where, you know, get your, your shots and if you don't, you're a this and you're a that, blah, blah, blah, you know, it's like, it just kind of rings a bell there. There's that, that, that's that, you know... In other words, our governments in general are, by default, not to be trusted and then guardedly admitted to once you end up getting a little bit

further in, right? Not just automatically obeyed each time. Okay. And those who don't obey are on the list and sometimes worse of course, but at least at that, you know, during that period and with the Soviets and all that, but they do, you know, I don't know. Our government has so many communist leanings as we all have noticed in the past few years. Yeah, in fact, one could be faulted or couldn't be faulted rather, or I guess you could be understood if someone were to say, hey, maybe the Soviets won the Cold War when you look at a lot of the stuff which has been going on these last few years. Appreciate the call as always, Francine.

Thank you very much and we will continue your calls here just a little bit later. Standing by though, State Senator Noah Robinson. We're into the home stretch of this scary, scary legislative session. We'll get the latest on what is up in his world, since he, unfortunately, is thoroughly ensconced into the marble nuthouse for a few more days. At Pressure Point Roofing, your home is our passion. From your initial call to completing your project to standing behind the work we've done, we strive for excellence in every aspect of the job.

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My insurance bills kept rising over the years, so I took Bill's advice and called Steve at Skypark. After a few short phone calls, I'm now saving over 500 bucks a year. I even referred my daughter, too. Skypark is an independent agency with providers like Progressive, Safeco, Foremost and many more. Call Steve for a quote 261-5444 or visit skyparkins.com. At Skypark, we make insurance easy. From the KMED News Center,

here's what's going on. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden told the Jackson County Town Hall Sunday he intends to fight a spending bill that's now in the Senate. He claims the bill cuts federal funding for food aid programs and has new work requirements. He particularly dislikes increased spending on border security, ending a $200 tax on gun suppressors, prohibiting Medicaid money from going to Planned Parenthood and creating new children's savings accounts. Wyden also complained about a shift of 5% of benefit costs and 75% of administrative costs from the federal government to states doling out SNAP benefits. A wildfire burning in central Oregon has grown to 2,000 acres. Firefighters initially responded to the 300 acre Butte Creek fire burning north

of Klarnaw and Wasco County around 245 Sunday. Firefighters are providing structural protection. ODF and Williams Rural Fire Protection District are mopping up a Monday morning brush fire in Josephine County, southeast of Murphy. The cause of the one acre fire is under investigation. Bill London, KMED. Hi, it's John at Wellburn's Weapons. The only thing better than shooting is shooting with a suppressor. Wellburn's is Southern Oregon suppressor headquarters stocking models from silencer code, dead air, griffin armament, rugged, Q, Thunderbeast, and many more. And we can order practically any suppressor on the market. Check in with us for monthly incentives to save on

suppressors too. Come see the suppressor experts. Wellburn's weapons on Crater Lake Highway just south of White City. Access your stored items in comfort. Storage at Exit 24 has climate controlled elevator access units from 5x5 to 10x30 that are warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and always well lit and secure. Visit storage at exit24.com. It's the Bill Meyers Show on KMED. Southern Oregon's place to talk.

22 before 7, State Senator Noel Robinson rejoins the program. Noel, it is great to have you back. We've got, what, about 30 days left before sine die, and it can't come soon enough. Sine die, of course, the final day of the state legislature's session. And welcome back. Good morning. You get three days off right back into the Marble Nuthouse, huh? Exactly. Thank you very much for having me on and yes, I think the sooner the session ends the better. We're kind of worried about what's

happening. What I'm reading now as of late over the weekend especially is that the scary aspect of cap and trade, capping carbon emissions in order to pay for transportation, that seems to be something which is making a return. This is what caused a couple of Republican walkouts back in the Herman Baerchigger days, right? And this was something that was serious. Serious is a heart attack here. And they're honestly bringing it up. And are they bringing it up because they don't think the Republicans could be willing to walk this time? I'm curious that this hurt them last time, Democrats that is. Yes and I hear rumors about this too. I don't think it has to do with them

walking. I think it has to do with funding ODOT. We can't fund ODOT with cap and trade money. This is unethical. All these costs just mount and mount and mount. They want a tax, increased taxes on everything. We don't know what their final tax proposal will be, but I think as far as funding ODOT, we should first be looking at how they're spending their money and why the prices are too high, because you should look at efficiencies

before you talk about just adding more money to the pile. Alright. A lot of money with a lot with very little accountability. So Senator what possibilities of funding ODOT have been floated so far and why is a cap and trade making that return in your opinion? Well the proposals have gone from a tire tax, we're going to tax the tires, we're going to raise all the fees, raise gas taxes, they want a mileage tax, you know, we're going to talk about keeping track of how far your car drives and do a tax on that. Cap and trade, they have some of this in the system, the idea is we're going to tax fuel to try to eliminate it, and then right now the money goes to a nonprofit, which is a liberal organization that will

just distribute it to all their friends. So this is almost the equivalent of the homeless rackets too, or the homeless industrial complex this time. Whatever tax money comes in ends up going to more NGOs. Is that what I'm hearing then? That's right. NGOs, very liberal NGOs. And this is the current plan. Now, the money should not be going to the NGOs. These NGOs are really bad NGOs. It's just horrible. We can go into the details. So that should be eliminated. But you can't just, well, okay, we're going

to put our finger in the pot and get some for ODOT that way. It's just another way of taxing in an unprincipled method. The best tax has always been the gas tax. And I don't like tolling. It's expensive. It's complicated. It's a mess.

People don't like tolling. There's talks about tolling the I-5 bridge, which who knows, estimates are somewhere near $6 to $8 billion for this bridge. Now, by the way, some people are telling me that the I-5 bridge project is functionally dead, and it really doesn't have the votes or support. And yet other people are talking about, yeah, it's moving forward and we have a tolling plan. So what is the truth as far as you know? We just passed a bill last week to authorize tolling on it when they built it. So no, it's not dead. It's the same project that 10 years ago, I think, I don't know how many hundreds of millions,

but a lot of money they spent. Oh, it was like a quarter billion dollars that they spent and nothing happened at that time. It was huge. They didn't even have a drawing after that. And so now, yeah, now definitely the talk is that it's back, they want to toll it, which put a toll on I-5. And because of course the cost is out of sight, if they're starting at six or eight million, who knows what it will be when they're done. I don't see that we need it. And ODOT is under the Abernathy Bridge project, went from a few hundred million to we're getting

800 million or whatever it is now. They just spend huge amounts of money on these projects, and one of the excuses given is, hey, we've got the earthquake hardening. But when you're building a new bridge, it isn't that hard to make it a little more earthquake hardened. But how much money are we going to spend for fear that a giant earthquake will come along, and that piece of infrastructure we care about, they have spent $600 million on the Capitol, and the main

excuse was earthquake quite heartening. Well, if we have to do that to the capital, what about all the other buildings in Oregon? They're all going to fall down? Can we save the capital? I can think of... Well, you know, there are just some buildings that are not supposed to fall down, and believe me, the government building is never supposed to fall down. Isn't that really what we're talking about? It doesn't matter if your house falls down or if your supermarket falls down or if the gas station falls down, but if the government building falls down, that's a tragedy. I guess that must be the logic, the way they tend to work it in Salem.

It's not only the logic, but I didn't actually see the sign, but my brother saw a sign at the Capitol in which they were describing why it was important and they claimed that when the big earthquake happened and everything else was flattened it was important to the Capitol be here to manage the emergency. Okay, in other words we have to have somebody in the Capitol to be able to manage the rubble that they're talking about everybody else being. If the capital stands, I'm suspicious that you can't necessarily get this, putting the building on floating pillars, which they did, getting the residents' frequency of the earthquake right, you know, how is it

isolated from the ground around. That's a very interesting engineering problem that usually could get wrong. So if there's a big earthquake, I'm getting out of the Capitol as possible. Okay, you're not going to ride it out then. No, I don't trust engineering. It's too complicated. It's too big a mess and it's not too much money on it. I don't trust it. That's pretty funny though, that you bring up the the resonant frequencies. Yeah, you're right. It's not as simple as it sounds like just to put a building on floating piers or you know panels you know all that kind of stuff. It's not so simple and then you have to be properly isolated from the ground all around. So Salem would survive, the rest of us could be dead after the big one, but the Capitol

building would still be in existence so everything would be fine, right? Yeah, I can't think of anything worse than to destroy societies and have the control from the Capitol in charge when we're trying to rebuild. I wanted to touch on something else here. State Senator Noah Robinson with me. Noah, what's happened to the fire map repeal? A lot of people are wondering about that. Yes, that's Senate Bill 83.

It passed unanimously out of the Senate. No opposition that I know of went over to the House. And then in House, they referred it to rule, obviously with the intention of using it as a negotiating chip. The rumor is over wildfire funding. And wildfire funding, of course, is important, but wildfire funding is something

that's just come out of the general pot one of the basic functions of government like police protection other things putting out wildfires critical that should just be paid for the general fund their proposal to take the kicker for it of course republicans don't support that sort of thing now why is it though that uh...

that they don't want to be in general fund? What's the purpose of this? What's the designation of wanting to have some different kind of tax to pay for that? Just an excuse to take more money. Because they say they spent all the money in other ways. But it should just come out of the general fund. session, this question of taking the kicker comes up and there's some worthwhile project that's claimed to be the reason for taking it. And so that's the discussion. They want to take it and invest it and then use the money for funny wildfires, which of course you have to consider inflation. It doesn't cover it all anyway. But I think this is an ethical.

I don't think you should negotiate on it. This is a totally separate matter. Senate Bill 83, the wildfire maps has to be repealed. There's strong support for it. To use it as a negotiated chip is the way things are often done up here in Salem, but it is wrong. I'm not in favor of that. So it's being held, the wildfire repeal then is being held hostage then? It's being held hostage.

It's in rules. The Rules Committee is a committee that doesn't end when the other committees are over. You can't pass with a bill that's out of the policy committees now, but the Rules Committee exists till the end, you know, the inner workings of the Senate. So it's over in rules where they can bring it out any time and pass it off the House floor. That bill we all went over very carefully, it's perfect, it just repeals the wildfire maps and all the regulations associated with them.

It has nothing to do with funding wildfire, it was an important bill and everyone agreed it had to be passed. But they want their wildfire loot, an extra source of revenue for the wire, for fighting, ostensibly for fighting wildfires. But really what it's about then is allowing the legislature then to spend money on the other stuff that they would rather rather than on wildfire, right? That's what we're talking about. And it could be other things too. You don't know what other negotiations are going on. So I consider holding billed hostage to be completely unethical. I don't like that going on. And I hope that they will reconsider and pull that out of rules right away and pass it,

because that should have been passed very early in the session. There was broad agreement within the first few weeks of the session that we had to fix this, worked on it a bit, you know, how things drag on. But we have held everyone in limbo while they're worried about what their insurance rates will be, what the rules will be, whether they will be able to continue to afford living on their property, the whole session. And now at the end, we're suddenly holding it up. This is just wrong. State Senator Noah Robinson, I had Ed who popped me a note here a minute ago saying, could you get Noah to clarify the reference to we as to whether any other Republicans

voted with the Democrats to pass the bad bills that you're seeing, such as this relook at cap and trade or holding the wildfire bill hostage? Do we know? The cap and trade stuff is an odd discussion. I don't know a specific bill tied to it, so I don't know where we are on there. The Republicans were not at all involved in holding 83 hostage. It was done by the Democrats on the committee that should have just put it to a vote and passed it out of committee. Okay. Have there been any other bills that have been pretty important that caused some

problems in which we would have, shall we say, less than fervent support from the... In other words, as some Democrats, or Republicans rather, crossing the aisle and helping the people make things worse, actually. Anything come to mind? Yes, there have been a number of those, and that's a frustrating thing. The tolling bill, we had three Republicans

voting for tolling the I-5 bridge. Okay, so we had three Republicans voting for tolling that. It wouldn't happen to be Kevin Mannix. Was Kevin Mannix one of those? Tom, I'd have to go look at the House vote, but no, in the Senate. There were three in the Senate. Oh, three in the Senate. Okay. Which ones? Out of curiosity, do you recall? It was Senator Starr, Senator Weber, and Senator Nash. What's going on there, you think? It was it was Senator Star, Senator Weber and Senator Nash. What's going on there you think?

Two of them are on the on the Transportation Committee. I don't know. I thought I found very frustrating because we had actually three Democrats vote against it. So because that's a hot. That's a very polarizing topic. Oregonians do not like tolling. Yeah. Couldn't be doing it.

Well, it's... boy, once they start the tolling, something tells me that it will not end with just the I-5 bridge. That's kind of the way I would tend to look at this. Yes, and of course it's been pointed out there's a few obscure bridges... well, I'm not talking obscure, but there's some bridges that have been tolled in the past for construction and are still being tolled, but they're not on main thoroughfares and we don't need to be spreading it. Putting a toll booth on I-5 and then of course there's talk, I've heard talk about going further, tolling other bridges, other projects, maybe tolling other lanes.

They would love to start tolling. You go back east, there's tolling other bridges, other projects, maybe tolling other lanes, they would love to start tolling. If you go back east, there's tolling booths everywhere. It is just the worst way to collect a tax because you have to put in all sorts of equipment regularly. In the east, the roads are designed for it. You get on and off these turnpikes where you even design the services so that you don't have to get off so often.

It's just very inconvenient. The gas tax has always been the best way to pay for roads and that's what we should do. And then we try to keep the price of that moderate by keeping the cost of the infrastructure down. Now, I agree with you that the gas tax actually is a great way to do it. I also like the anonymity of it. The challenge that you're right into though is that you're now having a growing anonymity of it. The challenge that you're right into though is that you're now having a growing horde of electric cars that aren't paying much of anything and what would you suggest for them? Well the first thing I would do is eliminate their subsidies. You buy an electric car they give you several thousand dollars

because you bought it. So first eliminate that and then second electric cars right now are a little over 2% of the cars in the road. So it's not significant yet and we don't know where this is going. If it rises a lot more, it depends entirely on the technology because right now the electric cars cost twice as the gas cars do. So you can't at some point, it's only going to rise so far. If the technology shifts so that most of the cars are electric, which depends upon better batteries and so forth, we will have to be able to generate the electricity. So that's another discussion. And then we can worry about that then. But right now, 98% of the cars on the

road are either diesel or gas, and I wouldn't worry about it till the problem actually occurs. But right now we can fix the electric problem, just get rid of their subsidies. That covers any fees that we're going to get out of them for several years. One thing I would add though is one of the reasons why I'm sure that especially Democrats and a number of Republicans too I would imagine want to move away from the gas taxes is that ultimately their replacement would be like that OREGO system. The chip in the car, the transponder. This way you have all sorts of social engineering possibilities not just billing you for your your miles

driven in the state of Oregon not just that but also automatic toll deductions and gosh you could see it being used for automatic law enforcement aspects here's your speeding ticket you can see all sorts of things that this technology could be used in wouldn't you figure that's so that's one of the real reasons they want to worry about of course they assure us that it's all anonymous third party will do it and they're just going to figure out the miles you drove oh yeah yeah just like the anonymous third party gives us the the speeding tickets in downtown Medford, right? The red-flags things. Yeah, and that comes to another bill that's really annoying. Me is the stop arm camera bill. I don't know whether you've looked at that. No, no, tell me

about that, please. Well, so it turns out that about every five years, on average, a driver on average, every five years goes past the school bus with a stop arm out. And this adds up to quite a few drop passages every day, but you know it's illegal not only beside the bus but in the opposite direction four lanes over in most cases. So most of these passings are probably safe. So they're gonna put cameras on school buses and ticket drivers. The current fine is $444 a ticket. But what really annoyed me about that, I don't like turning school bus into police cars. There was a bill passed a year ago that actually did this.

But what they're doing this time, they passed a bill to change it so that third party companies could come in, that the tickets, the money from the tickets would be sent to the school district and then be split up among the camera companies, the police, and money from the tickets would be sent to the school district and then be split up among the camera companies, the police, and the school district. So once again, everybody has an incentive to hope that a lot of people break the law. Okay, yeah. That's right. And what makes it worse is that there's a big bus company, Bus Patrol, that was in here lobbying for that bill because they want to make a lot of money out of it.

And they, their contract, they admitted, take a fraction. They don't do it for a flat fee to keep the cameras going. They take a fraction. And I asked them for data, fundamental data, that would show, because they're doing this in other states, that would show whether the program is effective, that would show how dangerous these passings were. They have all this data, and they absolutely refuse. They said it was proprietary.

So we passed the bill off the Senate floor with me explaining that we have no evidence that this will make anything safer. The company is concealing the data. They won't tell us what happened in other states. They're circulating videos showing some dangerous situations children got into, but they won't tell us how many situations those represent. It's obviously cherry-pick data, and as far as I can tell, practically no children are being hit in the entire United States. Estimates and articles are maybe two a year. So will it make the roads safer? The company knows, the company lobbying for it,

knows the answer to that question. But you see, they can sell automated policing of everything with this kind of cherry pick data is what they do. It's a racket. It's like everything else involving lobbying. They will make hundreds of millions of dollars the first few years off of this. It's enormous. And you remember what happened when they started doing red light cameras pretty soon? There were scandals because they were shortening

the yellow light so that more people would get picketed. Yep, there's still a lawsuit active with the city of Medford in South Medford in the light there. Yeah, same thing. Everybody knew. You know, everybody knew. The rackets that get run out of Salem

with the enabling of the red light camera laws and these various other things just astounds me like that. And this is just my opinion not to get off in the weeds on it but you had to figure that in that one particular intersection that was part of this lawsuit that the Medford Chiropractor is trying to move forward here that all of a sudden everybody was was much better at the at the intersections until they were on you know until they were on Barnett Road and then they became horrible drivers all of a sudden. Isn't that fascinating you know the way that worked? It just astounds me. It's amazing you don't want profit incentives for these

sorts of things. I don't like tickets going back to the people writing the tickets. I want the police officers patrolling the areas they think will do our community the most good, not the places they think they can get the most money. Yeah. Do you think there's a good chance of stopping that kind of school bus camera bill or not? It passed. It passed. We got the publicans to vote against it.

But you know, it's health and safety for children. It looks bad. You're voting against something that's supposedly supposed to make children safer, and yet there's no evidence that it will. Yeah, we'll worry about the health and safety of children on the school bus, but at the same time, we couldn't have any kind of oversight on porno books in the school libraries because that's banning books, right? Oh yeah, no, that's right. And we're going to now scare all the children further by teaching them climate change in their classrooms Mm-hmm. Yeah, what could go wrong?

Yeah, so once again here Senator, signing I cannot come soon enough. I'm with the state senator Noah Robinson Caller you've been hanging here for a little bit. Do you have a question for Noah go right ahead? Actually, no, I just wanted to take the time to personally thank Noah just for the job that he does. It's good to have representation that, you know, I don't know if how many people are listening now have actually called to try to reach out to Noah, but he will get back to you. He truly wants what's best for our state, and I just want to thank you, Noah, for doing such a great job and being a man of the people. Thank you. All right. Appreciate that. Thanks for the call. All right. Thank you. That's very kind. Yeah, I was expecting someone to call with a complaint, but all right, there we go. All right. I'm a politician. You think

just being a politician would get you branded as a bad person. Yeah, well, you can't help it sometimes. All right, Senator, anything else that, is there anything we can actually have some influence on with all of this garbage? Because you know what's going to happen in these final 30 days or so. This is when the gun bills will move. This is when the budgets move. This will be when all of it is just thrown at us. And of course, they're going to hold the kicker hostage with the wildfire map repeal, right?

Oh, yeah, they're going gonna hold the repeal hostage, which, yeah. But the best thing I can recommend is for an ordinary citizen is to contact the legislature, email them, call their offices, express your opinions on all these different issues, because they do listen, not always.

Very frequently not always, but they do notice how many calls and emails they get. Isn't it about counting the numbers quite often, that kind of thing? It often is. On some of the really controversial issues where they're doing it for straight political reasons, it's the party agenda, sometimes you can have very little influence, but you can have more influence than you realize. They do look at the number of emails they get, They do look at the phone calls they get, and it does have an influence. I know it does. So definitely contact your legislators and tell them what you think on any issue that's worrying you.

All right. State Senator Noah Robinson, always a pleasure. You got to get back into the session. What, you gavel in at 10 o'clock this morning usually, right? It's 11. Oh, it's 11. Oh, it's 11. Oh, it's a little later. Okay. After the holiday. Okay.

Thanks so much. I appreciate that. Okay. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. All righty. Seven o'clock at KMED.

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Together we can give the next generation of musicians the tools they need to shine. Learn more, get involved, and be inspired. Visit UseYourGift.org and find out how you can be part of music's future That's use your gift org helping dreams take center stage The road gardener not a big fan of spraying for weeds Maybe with one exception if you're dealing with a bunch of difficult to control weeds like Bermuda grass Knock those down with glyphosate, I should say, like round up.

And you could do that spraying, but don't neglect the fact that now you have at least three and possibly even four seasons of weed seeds in that ground wanting to come up. The Rogue Gardener, Saturdays 10 to noon, Sunday morning, Encore at 9, sponsored by Grange Co-op on KMED. This is News Talk 1063 KMED and you're waking up with the Bill Meyers show. I couldn't help but think about that. I'm listening to Stan talk about the weeds and the battle with the weeds at home for me.

Like I said, I have 20 bags of mulch in the Vanigan right now, and it is just filled to the top and I'm creaking around town as I still drive it and I don't know I don't know if even 20 bags of mulch 40 cubic feet of it will be enough for doing what I need to do but we'll see we'll see about that gonna have to get I think I'm gonna have to finally

I have this section of my yard that we nicknamed the graveyard. It's in the corner of my, the back corner of my yard. And the people that had the house before, they had some raised beds in it and then they took the raised beds out when they sold the house to us and they left the ground there. So there was all this fertile soil. And then of course it fertility grew lots of weeds since we're not gardeners, that kind of thing and And of course, I do have a you know a dog, you know one dog a parent's dog You know buried up in the corner. So we nicknamed it the graveyard is what we did

And so at this point I'm thinking that we're gonna have to rototill it under get rid of those things Put the matting down and then put 40 cubic feet of mulch on it. I'll get back to you on it. Like I said, that was what I did all weekend. It was just trying to get weeds in. I was planting some nice bee-friendly plants. We're trying to go more Mediterranean on our plants. Bee-friendly lavender.

Yeah, we planted some more lavender plants and we have some lavender plants in our yard right now that we planted, either it was last year or maybe two years ago that are just so happy in the direct sun. The bees love it. They're so pretty. And best of all, they just spread. When they're happy, when the lavender is happy, they just spread and go nuts. And I'm happy to let them go. I would have the entire yard lavender if I could get away because easy care, a little bit of water and just let it go. And the bees love it. I'm sure the neighborhood bees are real happy about that too. Good stuff. Anyway, we're going to catch up on town hall news here in just a moment. And I think we're

going to have an early edition of the Diner 62 Reel the American Quiz. I'll tell you when to call. Coming up here in the next few minutes we'll also have former state senator Barachick on talking about the way things are looking in the legislature too. And US Congressman Cliff Pence will be popping by about 830. We're going to talk about other things in the big beautiful bill and maybe some response on this, hey, we're cutting SNAP benefits and cutting Oregon health plan. Well, I just think it's about keeping people off of it who maybe shouldn't have been on it in the first place, but I'll talk with Cliff about that and more.