Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 06-20-25_FRIDAY_7AM

Episode Date: June 21, 2025

Greg Roberts has the outdoor and fire report for the day, and State Rep E. Werner Reschke, HD55 from Klamath Falls raises concerns about the big NASTY tax bill the Dems want...HB2025, we talk walkouts and more.

The Bill Meyer 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. Here's Bill Meyer. Florida Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive, a Medford sponsor of the Outdoor Report here. But Greg, listeners send me a note about, shall we say, offensive June teeth cakes. And at first I thought it was fake and at first I thought it was fake

right I thought it was fake yeah because everything today in the media landscape is like blah blah blah blah blah sparks outrage right how many news stories do you see that always have this yada yada yada sparks outrage and I think yeah okay and so there was a talk that that the Kroger company had offensive or disrespectful Juneteenth cake designs. And I think, well, this couldn't be true, right? Now Kroger is Fred Meyer here in Southern Oregon. All right. But Kroger location, it's true, New York Post reporting, Kroger location in Atlanta, Georgia, going viral after a video posted at TikTok shows the cakes that, well, essentially watermelon Juneteenth cakes. What's going on? You can't make it up, right? You can't make this stuff up in the stereotype world, right?

So seriously, was fried chicken the deli special? I don't know. Come on. I don't know. I don't know come on I don't know I don't know but but of course everybody gets excited in everything is offensive these days in one level or another but at first I'm thinking okay certainly they did yeah they did okay well I just that's one of those things that's like and then to find out it was an Atlanta Georgia location I'm like

really no there's no way that can possibly be true, but yet it's being verified. So this, to me, honestly, from a corporate, what are you thinking? Now I'm seeing some conflicting reports here because New York Post is saying we're looking at just lack of creativity in some cases where they just have sloppy stuff put on it like free with the at thing at last on it, just put on a regular cake. And then other people are claiming that there was like a watermelon themed Juneteenth cake too. Now, so maybe this is all, maybe that part of it's fake. I

don't know, but still, Fred Meyer finding it, well not Fred Meyer, but Kroger, the Kroger Corporation finding its tail feathers being singed at the moment because once again, sparking outrage is the most important thing to be focusing on. But of course I laugh if that's true, if they had Juneteenth watermelon cake, I'm going, oh please come on yeah exactly because this isn't one of these new newly fabricated things to provoke whatever in the last 10-15 years I mean this goes back decades long time yeah exactly you know the the old stereotype and I gotta admit you, I watched Kentucky Fried

Chicken. Suddenly, with the focus of their TV ads, the visual, when corporations, I think it was probably about 20 years ago or so, suddenly became very BIPOC aware. They started replacing white people wherever they could and Kentucky Fried Chicken sailed headlong in right into the teeth. Yeah of the old racial stereotype and they replaced white families in their TV ads with black families and at first when I saw those I was like you got to be kidding. Well, you understand Phil, but they don't say Kentucky Fried Chicken any longer. It's just KFC.

So maybe that's how they figured they'd get, it's not a problem. It's just KFC now, that kind of thing. Yep. But I kinda, when that happened, I was like, whoa, and I waited for the huge backlash, and it never happened. Oh, okay.

Not against Kentucky Fried Chicken or KFC or whatever you call it. But I was like, well, now I think that's something Millbrooks would have satirized in a movie. Oh yeah. And they actually did it and got away with it. And it just, it kind of blew my mind. Cause if I was on the marketing and advertising team, I would have been like, Hey, wait, what?

We're going to do what? Oh, no, you're not. Yeah, exactly. All right, well, we'll set that aside, but I just had to let you know that because, like I said, listeners are saying, oh, look at this Juneteenth Watermelon Cake. It's like, all right, yeah, that's not the, someone's going to get fired big time. Okay. Now then, when it comes to sparking outrage, the

only spark I'm kind of worried about though is what is happening with our fire situation. So Mr. Fire First, why don't you tell us about the Applegate? I would imagine the weather change is quite helpful right now. Yeah, from a total firefighting point of view, this is the best weather you could ever hope to see, especially when you're dealing with fires that are mainly grass and brush fires. And it is actually two fires they're working on this morning out in the Applegate. You've got the big one on Upper Applegate Road, 2,000 block. And then yesterday afternoon, even with the cooler temps, we had about a 10-acre fire going just to the

north of Pro Vault, which is off of the Applegate Highway out there in extreme southwestern Josephine County. That fire, with the wind, took off and started running. Well, they had two things in their favor. Number one, they still have a lot of resources literally right there in the area because of the Upper Applegate fire. They rushed everything over there that they could. Even with that, this fire was still able to gain some size, 10 acres, but you know, they did eventually get the upper hand on it by nightfall last night.

So they are working, finishing mopping up that fire today. Obviously, the effort continues on the upper Applegate fire. But the great news here on both of these is that with what we've got now, we're very likely going to be picking up rain over both fires. Certainly over the course of the next 48 hours we absolutely have much lower temperatures. The low clouds are already in signifying the big surge in humidity that came in. So yeah this is perfect and you throw rain on those things and it absolutely crushes them. And the good news is here in Oregon

right now, every fire that we have of concern, even now up in Lane County and then east of the Cascades, they're all mainly grass and brush fires that this type of weather is absolutely going to put a hammer on them, which is great. And like you had mentioned before, if it were timber fires, those are a little more difficult. A little shower is not going to help on that but with grass fire, very big deal. If we were a different point in the season fire season that is and we got something like this coming in well established fires and timber this would certainly dampen activity this would

allow a much more direct approach on the fire, but timber fire, you know, it suppresses the activity, but it's still going on and it's still burning and it's, you know, burning at a much less intense rate, but in those heavier fuels, in the trees, in the logs, you know, that kind of stuff, the down stuff, yeah, it doesn't put it out. You still have to go in and really engage it. It's just, you're going to have more favorable conditions to do that. The POMAS fire up in Washington state is the first fire established in the timber that I've seen

this year. And the fire command last night put out an update that I shared on rogue weather's Facebook page and they state exactly that. We're going to be getting great favorable weather. They're going to see both rain and snow on that fire. But they said all that's going to do is suppress the activity. It's going to allow us to get more direct, but when this goes through, when we get back to much warmer temps, lower humidities next week, this fire is going to flare up again. And that

is exactly what happens in timber fires. And unfortunately, POMAS is burning exactly where you don't want it in. Really tough, rugged wilderness terrain. It was a lightning start by the way, may as well throw that out right now. But they have been saying once it got through the 24-hour initial attack phase, they were saying this is going to be an extended duration event, which now is Forest Service and BLM speak for this thing's going to burn until the rains come. All right. Hey, Greg, what about the Upper Applegate? Do we know the cause of that yet?

Oh, absolutely. We know it's human. Oh, it is. Well, human. I'm just wondering if they had a specific human like a mowing or... That's what they're working on on the investigation right now. Like last year's Upper Applegate fire, I don't believe this one is malicious, especially considering where point of origin is, because this is right next to a home that was occupied at the time the fire started.

Because like last year's start, which turned out to be somebody mowing dry grass at a point in time in the day when they shouldn't have been. And the moderate fire danger level we're in right now allows people to mow dry, dead grass, weed eat, run chainsaws until 1 p.m. And I have always said, what you should do, think of 1 p.m. As Kind of the ODF language You should plan to shut down at noon and then stand an hour or then stand a fire watch for an hour at least

Making sure you don't have something smoldering, but it's going to take off when the winds hit it Well, that's what happened last year to create the upper Apple gate fire version 2024 and I'm pretty certain that's what we're looking at here for a cause on Upper Applegate version 2025. Because, again, it started at an address that is off the road. Somebody would have to be driving around up there at an occupied home, meaning people were home. They reported the fire at their house. So you start putting all this together. What I'm trying to say for all those people who freak out and claim every fire that starts,

that was not started by lightning is an arson fire, that is definitely not going to be the case here. And by the way, if you believe that, then obviously you must believe every car wreck that happens is because of a drunk driver. Okay, fair enough. Let's move on then. How much rain are we going to get if you were to guesstimate here in the valley? I know that's kind of a... About a four four Medford area, maybe a tenth. A tenth? Let's call it a tenth to 0.15 of an inch. But you jump up in the hills where

terrain can help. Hills. Like the Applegate. Then you've got some potential of getting up around a quarter of an inch. Alright, what about the Illinois Valley? Joe County. Those areas. Yeah, and the grass and brush fire, quarter of an inch, that's a real good rain that will absolutely crush a grass and brush fire.

Good. What about the Illinois Valley? They're usually a little rainier than road. Yeah, they're usually wetter, but again, it's kind of this overall component to the storm. We're probably looking far more uniform two-tenths to a quarter of an inch in these areas that sometimes are usually wetter. It's just we're looking at the moisture potential output here. Down here, we're right on the very southern end of this thing dragging through. You don't start seeing half inch, three-quarter inch totals until you're getting way north in Oregon and then

Western Washington. So this is really, it's kind of just that glancing blow and terrain enhancement will factor in a lot, but even then we're on the very end of that flow of moisture and there's just there's not a whole lot to work with, but for June, you know, it's a bit more substantial than we would normally see. Now I'm not going to complain first day of summer a little bit later, okay? Where would you go? What is your outdoor activity to pick this weekend? Probably, it's probably fishing at Wash Creek. Okay. Because the one big drawback and tomorrow is of course the big Blackbird trout derby up at Diamond

Lake. Diamond Lake I have no doubt in my mind. They are definitely going to be seeing snowflakes in the air up there overnight into tomorrow morning, and then probably a repeat on Sunday, although far less potential for snow to accumulate. Now at a Diamond Lake level, Lake of the Woods accumulation, far more likely to be on elevated surfaces, the trees, parked vehicles, grass, less so on the ground. And people, as soon as I started talking about snow at 5,000 feet, everybody freaked out and started going, well what are the paths going to look like? It sparked outrage. Yeah, so it's not a travel

impact thing, but if you're camping, especially if you decide, I'm going to camp in a tent, well, this could wind up being really miserable. Plus, especially Diamond Lake, much more potential to see higher amounts of rain and dust, snow. And then you have this possibility for thunderstorms coming through. The thunderstorms will be isolated. They will definitely be putting down rain so we're not worried about you know fire starts on lightning necessarily. But if you're camping and especially if you're in a tent and a thunderstorm comes up, well that means heavier amounts of rain and some breezy

conditions and it just generally makes it not pleasant at all. So if you're camping, be in like a travel trailer or a camper or something like that. And by the way, don't wear just shorts, okay? Don't have just shorts available. Absolutely not. This is the time, and I've been saying this over on Rogue Weather, if you're doing camping this weekend, you better basically act like winter's going to be here because especially on the higher elevation recreation areas like Diamond Lake, like Fish Lake, Lake of the Woods, Howard Prairie Hyatt, that's exactly what it's going to wind up being.

But now there's an even bigger problem for potential fire start that has nothing to do with lightning and everything to do with, and I'm gonna put it this way, and I don't care if it offends who you are, lazy humans that will build up their campfires and their warming fires, and then they're gonna take off and go home and go, ah, the weather will take care of it, it's so wet and cold. You know, I actually the weather won't. I have to tell you there have been times that that I've back when back when a Daly Creek was open as just normal camping, I would go up there and camp often with my kids. And there were times I would find a campfire still smoldering in there. I couldn't

believe it's like really you just took off and left it there? Yeah, happens all the time. Yeah, I bet you're right about that. And I remember when this radio station group was very actively involved with the Blackbird Derby when it was at Howard Prairie. Yeah. And as the point guy from the stations up there, I pulled up one day and I park in the day use area and I'm looking over in the campground area and I'm going, are you kidding me? And I could see these faint little wisps of smoke coming up, but there was a fire creeping along and it had come out of this campfire ring and it was creeping along and it was probably covering probably about 200 feet. Yeah.

And I got over there and I started feeling the ground and it's all warm. And I walk over to the Marina Lodge, you know what I'm talking about? The whole thing there at Howard Prairie. They have the store in there, the little restaurant you check in for camping. And I go in there and I go,

yeah, you better get your little fire truck over there. You've got a smoldering campfire that's spreading. And they're like, really? And then I go, yeah, you better get your little fire truck over there. You've got a smoldering campfire that's spreading. And they're like, really? And then I go, yeah, really. And so they get over there with their little fire truck and they managed to get that completely handled. But as soon as they started putting water on it, you're hearing, psh, psh,

and then steam starts boiling up. Yeah, it's sneaky. It can be very sneaky. You've talked about that a lot. So here's the deal. If you're gonna go camping, especially this weekend, and you build your campfire up, here's what you absolutely have to do

before you leave to go home. And if you don't wanna do this, go get yourself propane stuff and don't light a fire at all, because you're gonna have to soak it, soak your campfire ring, that entire area, soak it completely, stir it up with a shovel, a rake or a good stout stick. Get that all stirred, douse it again, feel it, see if you can feel any heat, put your hand down into it, see if you can feel any heat. You're gonna repeat that process until you know that thing is dead out. Yep, that's the way to do it. Hey Greg, appreciate the take. You know you keep us

up on RogueWeather.com. You have a great weekend and enjoy yourself at the Derby. We have one more thing you told me yesterday you wanted to hear about. Okay, briefly. I'm almost out of time here. Okay so of course I'm the announcer for the Rogues games and our anthem coordinator reached out to me and she goes we've got John and Bob from the Kingston trio they want to do the anthem on Sunday the 22nd but they'll only do it if they can meet you and I'm like wait what really? And she goes yeah they want to meet you in fact Bob was hoping he could talk to you and he wanted your number.

And so I gave her that and Bob called me. And this just kind of blows my mind because I grew up with the Kingston Trio. Sure. Mom was a fan. My grandmother was a huge fan. My parents and grandparents were fans. Yeah, we all were.

Yeah, so they're going to be performing national anthem and they got to meet their Mr. Outdoors fix, right? Yeah, and Sunday is a double header. So game one is going to begin at 3.30, by the way. We got fireworks tonight. So we're going to have some fun this weekend with Rogue's baseball for sure. All right. Very good. Greg, we'll talk next Friday. Be well, okay? Keep us in the room. Greg Roberts at Rogueweather.com. Outdoor report. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority sponsoring it on Airway Drive in Medford. We're gonna be talking with E. Warner Reschke here, just a little bit. He's concerned about what's going on here with the taxes, the big tax bill, and after news, we'll see if we can dig into that and what could be done to fight it. It's only $1.2 billion. That's all. It's just a little minor thing.

But E. Warner is going to be all over that. We'll talk about it more coming up. Two dogs fabricating are fabulous at Fabricating. This is Randall with Advanced Air and I'm on KMED. Twenty before eight, E. Warner Reschke, State Representative, joins the program. Which district are you in again? Warner, welcome back. I'm in district, good to be with you first, Bill. I'm in district 55, which goes from the Klamath County, California border, follows Highway 97 all the way up to Bend, and then goes around the east side of Bend and up to Crook County. So about 148 miles north to south. I gotta tell you, they don't give you a helicopter to cover all that I don't think do they? No, I do a little bit of

windshield time. All right, I imagine you do. Hey Warner, I wanted to talk about the, well, the big tax increase. You're concerned about this, and it appears that the plan is just to ram everything possible, gun control, tax hike, whatever it is, whatever nonsense agenda we can get through, and do it between now and what's the final day that you can be in session before Sonny and I has to come constitutionally? We're at T minus 9, the 29th at 1159 p.m. is the last possible minute we can be in session so a week from Sunday a week from Sunday that is it it it but chances are and why don't you set the table of where we find ourselves at the moment with these

tax increases sure so I think the big one is the transportation package, as they call it. We just call it the transportation tax. The nonpartisan legislative revenue office came out with an estimate of how much money the current package would raise, and it's $15 five billion dollars over the next ten years which would get the largest tax increase in Oregon's history. And just to give it a little bit of comparison in twenty seventeen we had a transportation bill it raised an estimated five point three billion and the corporate activities tax which is passed in twenty nineteen that cost Oregonians twelve12 billion over 10 years.

That was the largest tax up until now, but we're going to beat that. Well, I'd say those who want this transportation bill are going to beat that by going to $15.5 billion. And some of the taxes are so the gas tax goes up about 15 cents, and then in 2029 just gets indexed to inflation which is the worst thing for inflation is to index the tax to it. It's going to be perpetually creating inflation. Yeah well I know it's kind of a dog chasing its tail sort of thing but you could say the same thing about the wages being indexed for inflation too. When you tax wages and when you tax energy, those are the worst things to artificially

raise the price on anything in your economy because of the base of your economy. And so everything else gets inflated. So when you artificially increase both of those, that's how inflation happens, at least at the state level. What part of this... Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. I was going to ask here, Warren, what is the focus of this state transportation bill?

Because most of what to me has passed, or I shouldn't say most, but a lot of what passes for transportation bills are usually agenda-based processes like we're going to promote multimodal which means road diets for regular people and expanded expressways for bicycles and bumways you know in most of the cities. You know what I'm getting at here that sort of thing and I don't want to I don't want to throw everything under the bus here but every time I hear well we have a transportation package there's a lot of it that never seems to involve actually really helping the bulk of people get from point A to point B. I think that the Republican plan which came out back

in April or early May I can't remember it's been a long time, been a long session, but I'll say several weeks ago, that met the goal of stabilizing ODOT, who says there are $1.8 billion in the hole, and if they don't have more money, then they will not be able to paint lines on roads or pave roads or do snow plowing or all the basic services we expect them to do. They won't do that with this budget deficit,

they call it. And so Republicans came up with a plan that reprioritized things and was able to get them through this budget cycle another two years without any tax increases. Democrats instead rolled this thing out to do the same thing. They said, we'll do $2 billion per biennium more in taxes for you to drive your car, to fuel your car, to register your car. There was even a proposal to do a tire tax as well. But I mean, new car sales, used card sales, driver's license renewals go up, registration fees, driver's learning permits, commercial driver's license, motorcycle endorsement, all these things go up. All of them. And so just to drive an Oregon will become prohibitively more expensive as Oregonians are, you know, trying to make ends meet. Yeah, well, I think that's coming from the Democratic side of things that I think they look at that as not a bug but a feature of

the plan. And this is House Bill 2025 we're talking about. Where is it right now in the process at this point? Great question. So House Bill 2025 is in the Joint Transportation Committee, which means it's made up of senators and house members and has to pass both sides of that committee to get out of committee and then come to the house floor and the Senate floor. Uh, right now, uh, we're on a dash 13 amendment and, uh, that's, those are the numbers I just kind of rattled off for you are from that amendment. Um, it, uh, they, they had a meeting scheduled for Wednesday to vote it out. That got cancelled. They had a meeting yesterday to vote it out. That got cancelled. They have a meeting later today to try to vote it out to get it out of committee. And

what they're doing is they don't have the votes. They're twisting arms right now. Oh, that's really interesting. So they don't have, even the Democrats' majority party, don't have unanimity on this one? Really? Correct. Correct. I think there's one or two, I think there's one senator and one house member that aren't happy with it. And the reasons are different. One might be, I can't vote for this tax or I can't vote without knowing all the numbers. And the other one we're not taxing enough there was a proposal for a luxury tax so if you bought a car over $75,000 then you'd pay another 4% on that vehicle to buy it. Okay but let me guess though that they would exclude electric vehicles because those are politically favored. Right well you've got a rebate on those. Oh, okay, all right. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so... But they hit, you know, as the commercial used to say,

but wait, there's more. So today on the House floor we'll be voting to increase the transit lodging tax, which is a tax you pay when you go stay in a hotel in Oregon. And people say, well, that won't affect me until you realize, Oh, I like to go to Sun river or I like to go to the coast or I like to travel up North to visit my, my relatives and, uh, you know, they don't have enough room for me. So I stay in a hotel. So, uh, that's going to be on the floor today and that is going to go for wildlife and wolf deprecation. So it's a tourism tax for something that has very little to do with

tourism. Then we also have coming forward what we call a ZIN tax. So the very popular nicotine pouches aren't taxed yet, but they will be taxed and that money doesn't go to the station or education or study of how these new nicotine pouches Affect your health it will go to help pay for wildfire So this is how crazy it's been Democrats their answer is always raise more revenue and spend more revenue That's how we balance the budget whereas Republicans are saying no, no, we have enough money in the system. If we would not do these Democrat priorities instead of do Oregonian priorities, we have plenty of money.

Yeah. And what I like to say after what I like to say real quick is, right now we can't afford to live here. And with the estate tax being the worst in the nation we can't afford to die here and soon after today we probably won't be able to visit here anymore. It is fascinating to watch this decay of a state legislature action. You know to your point on the estate tax but the corporate activity tax and all the rest of it. You're familiar with Dutch Bros having officially announced that they're often going off to Arizona. And we have very large companies that are just looking at the business climate here. Businesses and money will tend to go where it's treated at least fairly, reasonably. I mean, I don't think people mind some level

of taxation. This is just wild. Meanwhile though, you had Black drag queens on the floor of the House yesterday. You weren't there for that, Phil, right? You weren't on the floor, I think, for that? We were. I was actually in the Senate working a few bills and trying to figure out the budget a little bit. Lucky you.

Lucky you, Warner. Lucky you. Lucky me. I was just, you know,. The timing was just right. So I missed that ordeal. But in my mind, it was really sad. I think we lost all decorum. We became a laughing stock of the nation.

And I mean, as some of my colleagues will say, that activity is fine, but it's not fine on the house floor. So you know, if you take it to where, where, you know, where that stuff happens, okay. But again, that was not the right venue for that activity. And so just just a sad day for Oregon, in my view, well, what do you think is next is it's going to be a house

resolution honoring, I don't know, strippers. I was thinking strippers. And they put the poll out there on the House floor. Yes, that has been talked about, not in seriousness, but every time we jest, that seems to become a reality. Senate Bill 916 is a bill that passed both chambers and I think sounds way to get signed by the governor, which will pay striking workers up to 10 weeks from the unemployment insurance fund. So if you go on strike, you can claim unemployment now. Yeah, yeah. Nothing's worse than having the state unemployment fund, which of course is paid for by employers, so that people can go and fight their boss. I love that, especially public employees.

If you look at how this all plays out, is it will give incredible power to unions to negotiate contracts. They may not strike, but they'll negotiate way higher contracts and bigger contracts than they could ever dream of. And school districts and counties and cities and even the state will have to say, well, we can't sit out a 10-week strike because that's the minimum that it would be. We can't afford, so we relent and we'll give you all the things you want, even though we don't happen in our budget. And guess where government goes to get more

money? You. Yeah, State Representative E. Warner-Ruschke with me. Yeah, I'm sorry. Warner, you know, you're certainly laying out a lot of sticky, wicked problems here that are happening right now in the closing days of the Oregon State Legislature. And I have to go to this because I say this to every legislator that I talk to. Now, you're a Republican, and Republicans mostly oppose these kind of bills. The only tool you have is quorum denial. That is it. It doesn't matter how much you talk with, who was it, who was the guy that was doing

the drag queen story? Travis, state representative? Representative Travis Nelson. Travis Nelson. Doesn't matter how many letters you go over to him and say, Travis, this is not really a good thing to be doing. It doesn't matter. The political power is there.

The only power that you and your fellow Republicans have is to shut the system down and require a focus on the highest priorities rather than everybody's political wet dream. And between gun bills and the tax bills that you're talking about, it's all there. They're throwing it out there. What is happening here? I would think that leader Drazing would be... We're getting to, you know, since ballot measure 113 passed, which allows us nine unexcused absences, if we get a tenth, we are unable to qualify to

run for office again. Yeah, and as of tomorrow, and going into this weekend, because I know representative Dwayne Younger has said he's going to sit out the rest of it because he says all we're doing is providing quorum so that the majority party is able to pretty much run roughshod with its vote there there are several theories I'll give you a few of them but that yeah so we're there and we've kind of waited for this time. We've told that we've been threatening that, you know, you keep doing all this stuff.

We may not be there. So those threats have been made over and over again as we get closer and closer to session. The problem with the House walking out denying quorum is you every two years you have 60 races in the Senate you have half so you have 15 races and really only one or two of them are competitive but in the house it's all 60 seats are up for reelection so you're implying then that it's easier to hold together a quorum denial in the Senate is that what you're more or less getting at here and and the quote the penalty is not as great most Most senators, you know,

they're four years, so they can wait a couple. If you was all House members, you're going to have, well, next cycle, we're likely to be below the threshold of denying quorum because winning new races and open seats in swing districts are incredibly hard to do. So, I mean, that's one theory. The other thing, again, we're not against walking out. We're just trying to find the right time to do it or the right bill to do it. And I mean, Senate Bill 243 is coming down, House Bill 3076 is on the platform. And we are very, very aware of that. I used to be in sales, Bill, and when I would go visit a customer

and the customer had everything, my product, they weren't having any problem with the competitor's product. It was working fine, it was not costing them an arm and a leg, they were satisfied. You know how hard it was to sell my product? Really, really hard. But you know my job was then to kind of dig and try to find a point of pain for them

so that they would go, oh yeah I didn't realize, oh oh that's oh yeah that does cost me more money. I didn't realize that. If you can find points of pain in a customer in sales, then you do what we call is twist the knife. You twist the knife and make the pain even worse. And in politics, I'm just going to bring that around. We have not gotten to the point yet where a majority of Oregonians feel the pain. So our job is to stand here and fight, or stand here and make Oregonians wear, stand here and educate Oregonians. And when all this bad stuff passes the finish line, try to kill what we can.

But when this stuff passes the finish line, we then turn around and we twist the knife on Oregonians and say, this is really bad. You want to continue to do this. You want to continue to feel this pain because the way you're voting right now will give you exactly more of the same. And it's sad, it makes my heart break that we have to do that, but so far for the last 20 years Oregonians keep on saying, yes, more please. We don't feel pain yet. Give us more pain, okay. Yeah. And so we're going to, you know,

constitutional republics, the people get what they vote for. They get what they deserve. And in this particular case, Oregonians are getting what they vote for good and hard, for the sounds of it, or at least are about to. Exactly. And so, you know, the fact that this stuff's going through, it's not going through easily. We're fighting, we're standing up, we're making it hard on them. I always like to say, make them make their free throws. Shaquille O'Neal was famous for getting in the middle of the key and turning around and dunking on people, right? He could do that every time.

So what the teams did is they would foul him because he was an awful free throw shooter. So he wouldn't be able to dunk it. They'd make him go to the line and shoot the free throws. And sometimes he made them and it's like, okay, well he made them. And that's what we're doing is we're saying, not a free pass, not an easy pass, no slam dunk for you Democrats.

You have to go to the free throw line and make the free throws. And if you do, okay. And then we'll tell Oregonians what you're doing. State Representative E. Warner Reschke, House District 55, Labrador Falls. And Steve, we'll grab a call for you. Hey, do you have a call or question for, for Representative Reschke, caller? Good morning. Yeah, I just, I'm not a hotel tax. I get it. I'm not a fan of tax either, but on the same hand, I'm a farmer rancher. And those people that are staying in those hotels are the same people who love those wool. And when you say I'm not going to be able to afford to stay in a hotel, well,

that's not true. You're talking about five or six bucks on every transaction for a hotel. So you don't feel like the people who love the wolves should be paying for our support on the deprivation. With that being said, I'm going to be against it because I think there's too much in it. Yeah, well I'm against it because I go out to the coast and frankly, if it were up to me and my benevolent dictatorship, I would be shooting the wolves that are causing problems. But I know that... Well, I agree.

To protect your property. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, we get it. Let me just quickly answer... Sure. I'll answer real quick, Bill. The dirty little secret behind this tax is the funding for wolf deprecation was in the budget from the general fund. Until this tax came along and then they pulled it out to persuade people, oh you

have to vote for the tax if you want funding for wolf deprecation. In other words, every time we're talking about this new tax for wolf deprecation, it was already being paid for, but the majority party wants to expand the tax base so that they can do other things rather than either paying for wolves or paying for, as an example, wildfire fighting, right? Which has always been in the general fund. Okay, all right. Hey, caller, I appreciate that. All right, Representative E. Warner-Reszkiewicz, we appreciate the update here and it sounds like it's going to be an interesting finale here, the final few days of the state legislative session.

It's going to be a rough landing, but we will land the plane. Yeah, it's going to be rough, but we'll land the plane. All right, thank you very much for the update. Take care. Thanks, Bill. Thank you. Shay, before eight o'clock, this is KMED and KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.

At Siskiyou Pump Service and Rotary Drilling Company.