Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 06-27-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Still kind of hot and bothered, (maybe overly so) about the refusal for any kind of denial of quorum actions in Salem by Republicans. Later a talk with Adam Kissel, Heritage Foundation Scholar and his book Slacking - A Guide to Ivy League Mis-education

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 www.clouserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Delighted that you were here on Find Your Phone Friday, 770-5633-770KMED. My email is bill at www.billmeyershow.com. We had some interesting conversation this morning. Adam Kissel is going to join me. He's a visiting fellow for higher education at Heritage, and he has written a book,

Slacking, a Guide to Ivy League Miseducation. And he has a different take on this, you know, the communist mayor candidate in New York City. He says it's actually going to be bad for higher education too. So we'll do a little bit of digging into that story. Mr. Outdoors will also be joining me a little bit later this morning after 7 o'clock. It's going to be a hot weekend. What? 90-something tomorrow, close to 100 on Sunday, then back to more normal temperatures with chances of thunderstorms next week. Might be a good weekend at the coast. We'll have to ask Dr., I mean, Mr. Outdoors about that. Tim Keller is going to join me.

I talked with him a number of weeks ago, and he runs a site called US Diabetes Care. He's about just getting people to get the diabetes, get the blood sugar down under control, big part of this. And he's a big fan of Make America Healthy Again, but there is something that RFK Jr. is doing that...well, some people kind of raising a few questions about this. He did a big conference the other day, and he says he wants us all using wearable tech, wearable high-tech devices in order to track health.

Everything from blood sugar to blood pressure, you know, whatever it is. Lots and lots of electronic devices that he wants on us and he thinks it's going to be about, you know, part of the process of getting America healthier again. Now, I don't think any of us are Luddites necessarily this morning. The interesting part about this or maybe the downside of it is that so much of the high tech that we have right now, the wearable tech, even the medical devices are designed to report data. And of course, what is reporting data about all about the technocracy, whether it's the

government monitoring your data for health purposes or your own doctor or your insurer doing something like that. You know, there's an up and a downside to two things. So anyway, we'll have a conversation about that coming up. I think Tim has a pretty good take on it and we'll see just where this goes. We'll also have a Diner 62 quiz and a bunch of other stuff going on here too. Now then, yesterday, the state legislative session cannot end soon enough. I mean, I know I've said this quite often over the last what, two, three months

that this has been going on, but the $11.7 billion transportation tax bill, this is with, you know, raising fees, doing this and the gas tax goes up and all the rest of it, into the passing out of committee in the Oregon State House. And I ended up getting press releases from Christine Drazen, who of course is the caucus leader on the House, and a bunch of other people too. They're all saying, oh man, this is horrible. In fact, this is what Christine Drazen said, tax and spend Salem politicians are determined

to ignore Oregonians, forcing families to pay the largest tax Increase in history when they can barely get by is cruel and Christine Drazen is absolutely right Absolutely, right. I can't disagree with leader Drazen. She's right but you know what they continue to leave out of the You know out of these press releases saying, isn't this horrible what the Democrats are doing to you? The Democrats are all, my gosh, they're bending you over and they're servicing you like a bull services the cow out on the farm, all right? And you're just supposed to take it in, you know, and we're doing everything we can't, except they're not doing everything they can.

And this is the part which never gets mentioned in all of these, oh, look how we're fighting for you. Oh, look what we're doing. And look what they're doing to you is that everything that happened yesterday is happening because the Republicans are still there. And I know I continue to keep banging this cheap gong, gong, gong, gong, over again, because we have Republicans that are going out there and sending out not only, look at what we're doing, oh, we got this gun bill killed, but you did it in exchange for passing

another one, instead of not being there and getting both of them killed. See what I'm getting at? And this is where we have to go. I have it on good authority that there is a state rep though, who was talking to a colleague of mine. And I was thinking about inviting this state rep on because I'm being told that, Bill, you don't understand how this works.

You don't understand the process of this. And you're spreading hate. I was called a hater. I'm just spreading hate about this. I don't hate these state reps that are there on the floor providing quorum. I'm rather disgusted by them, by disgusted by their actions. I don't hate them. It's not something personal. The point being is that at this point in the legislative session, you know, three days left. They have to be done by Sunday night, midnight. I believe that's the constitutionally mandated time that they have to sine die. You'll hear that term sine die. That's the end of it. And they have not wanted to walk out. Now, it's not walking out. It's denying quorum. It's a constitutional power. It's the power that the minority has, that when things get really serious

and you're really getting down to brass tacks and the really bad stuff is coming out and you have a majority party that feels quite proud of itself and that they're able to take you, the Republicans, the opposition party, and service them like the bull does to the bull, or the bull does to the cow rather, you know, like I mentioned, and you're just going to take it good and hard. What are you going to do? What are are you gonna do? Well, you can shut the session down. You stop business. And so every time you get a court voice, court love you babe, but I don't know what you're there for.

The court voices, the Emily McIntyre, the Kim Wallins, everybody else. If you're there and you're providing the ability for business to move forward, even though yes you are in the minority, your no votes will not kill bad legislation because of the majority, the supermajority Democrats. The one power you have is the ability to throw a wrench in it and stop it. And when leader Drazen is out there saying tax and spend Salem politicians determined to ignore Oregonians and forcing families to pay the largest tax hike in history, forcing them to pay this when they can barely get by as cruel, and you are absolutely right Christine Drazen,

I would shake your hand and say Christine Dra Drazin, you are right, and then I would say, why the hell are you there? You have control of your caucus. You and everybody on that House floor, that's a Republican, could walk out. Now, the walkout is a constitutional power. They call them walkouts, but it's a denial of quorum. You take away the power of the Democrats to continue to move forward. And as I have mentioned before, you're running into the last day or two before you are required to shut down the session. They haven't passed the budgets yet.

And that's the whole deal. You shut it all down, all the other garbage that some of the crazies want to pass stops. And they're likely, by the time you come back in to pass the budgets, in the very end of it, there's not enough time to do all the damage that you want. Yeah, you're not saving everything. You're not getting rid of everything. But you're able to focus the legislature onto what really matters and what is really required, constitutionally required. They have to pass the budgets. That's what they would have to do. All right? And there's no way that you're

going to be penalized for it either because what have we been told? Oh, measure 113, stupidly passed by ignorant voters. I'll say that again. And I know people say, Bill, you're criticizing our democracy. Yeah, our ignorant democracy. Yeah, I'm going to criticize it. All right. I will confess. I fall on my sword over this. But honestly, I think that the Republicans didn't really protest Measure 113 because there is a whole bunch of the non-Conservatives in the Republican caucus that would just as soon see the conservative principled people like, well, like Art Robinson, Art Robinson, how he was not allowed to run for re-election and various other... They want to see those kind of

people out, Dennis Lenticum, right? Now they ended up getting their relatives into office, they ended up replacing them like Noah and let's see, Diane Linthicum, yeah, as an example. That works, but there are other people like Kim Thatcher, they can't run for reelection, who are principled and were part of the denial of quorum, which is a constitutional power. And then you have the squishes in the Republican Party that will say, well, you know, if we stop this stuff, well, they'll just bring it back next year. Yeah, yeah, they probably could. Absolutely. Gun control bills, all the rest. Of course they can bring it back. But the fight is right now.

The fight is right now and you use the tools you have and they have refused both in the Senate and in the House to use the one the one tool they really have because to put out press releases they're saying oh isn't this horrible what the Democrats are doing to you when you being the legislature the Republicans in the legislature are not willing to use all the tools you have to protect your people from the depredations of these Democratic wolves, well, it's rather disingenuous. You know, sit there and talk about, oh, this is horrible, Christine Dreyse, and this is horrible what they're doing to you. And Christine, what have you done to stop that? All right. Even then they were crowing about having stopped House Bill 3076, Christine Drazen and many other Republicans, which was a good thing.

They stopped that. It would have practically killed all the gun stores. It would have made it next to impossible, especially for smaller gun stores and dealers to be able to operate. It would have been gone. Couldn't have worked. Of course it's unconstitutional, but unconstitutional stuff can get passed and then it, you know, takes a long time and millions of dollars to fight something in the courts and even then there's no guarantee you'll win because, well, who appoints the judges in the higher courts in Oregon? Why, that would be the Democrat governors. You know what I'm getting at here. So the point is to stop stuff before it passes, not say, hey we can sue after the fact, right? You know that?

That's just bad strategy, that sort of thing. Well, now we know that they cut a deal with the Democrats to kill the gun store closing bill 3076, but in exchange they ended up passing 234, Senate Bill 234 out of the House. It was a deal. We now know that it was a deal that was cut. And so instead of killing both of them by denying quorum, they're slicing and dicing and so concealed carry people who are some of the most law-abiding people in the state, the exact people that you don't ever worry about, are told, you

can't walk into this building because, you know, there's a, it can be used for public meetings and, you know, here's the water board meeting, boy, you better not carry concealed in that one because, oh my gosh, that gun will just go off in the public meeting. Yeah, putting in all sorts of patchworks of restrictions on people who don't cause trouble in the first place and if there was trouble they would be capable of helping end the trouble. It's like the Democrats just want more bloodthirsty, gun-free zones, which of course is just target practice for victims, you know, that's what it ends up being, because a criminal will ignore the law in the first place. While the good people

will say, hey, I don't want to be a felon. I don't want my permit taken, and so they'll follow the law. But you know, it's just about making it horrible to exercise your rights here. And the Republicans in the House could have denied it. Now I would add that with this $11.7 billion transportation bill which passed out of committee yesterday, there was one Republican that actually voted for it. Take a while to guess who that is. Oh, you're guessing Rhino Kevin Mannix? Yes, you're right. You win. You win today. Kevin

Mannix is also the one who voted for HR3 last week about the prancing, dancing drag queens that were the black drag queens that needed to be honored. Obviously, Kevin is running for governor again, and so he feels the need to give a deep, tonguey soul kiss to the LGBTQ and every Prague agenda because this is why he's the right kind of Republican to become governor. Now, I know I'm engaging in conjecture about what he's running, but he's acting like a Republican who's thinking, boy, you know, I have to polish up my pervert agenda in order to run for governor.

It seems this way. But again, when everybody writes you and your email boxes fill up like mine do with various Republicans talking about, oh, isn't this horrible what they're doing to us? Just write back or call them back and say, you're there. You are enabling it because you're not using your one constitutional power of denial of quorum. Now it would be harder to do so in the house, I will concede this, because there's more of them. It's like herding cats. If you were to try to deny quorum, I'll bet you could get everyone except Kevin Mannix because reasons, you know. He needs to be there to

back the pervert agendas and the stuff and everything else. So I could run for a responsible governorship, you know, when he takes on Christine Drazen, who will probably run again too. But once again, if you're not going to use every tool, why are you telling us about how bad the Democrats are? We know how bad the Democrats are. I know how bad the Democrats are. It's nothing personal. It's a pretty evil agenda in many cases. They've never seen a tax they don't like. They've never seen a porno book they don't want in schools.

And now they've stopped your school boards from even being able to do anything about that, right? So just remind them that, yeah, you're right, the Democrats are doing bad things, but you knew the Democrats were going to do bad things, and you will not use the one power that you have, especially at the end of the session, to stop as much of it as you can. If you were, then I can say, all right, you at least used every tool you could in order to stop the depredation and the damage against your constituents. But up to this point, they've refused to do so.

It might be easier to do it in the Senate and maybe that will be the case, I don't know. But anyway, the $11.7 billion monstrosity, you know, because we all have to be raped by taxes in order to, you know, because ODOT wants it, right? You know, that kind of thing. Boy, gotta love that. $11.7 billion in tax increases over the next 10 years or so. It will now go to a floor vote, and if the Republicans are there, it will likely pass. Although there are some Democrats that don't necessarily want to vote for this monstrosity either. So, you know, one would think that there might be actually

some Democrats that would breathe a sigh of relief if they didn't have to vote on this, if the Republicans took it away from them. Will they be wise enough to actually use the one tool? I don't know. They haven't shown the gumption and the swine to do so up to this point. And that's disappointing. It's not spreading hate. I'm not hating on these people. But, you know, for everybody talking about, well, if you deny quorum and you walk out, you're not doing your job. Right now, Republicans, you're not doing your job because you're there. You're not doing your real job, which is to protect your people. Because you're there. You're not doing your real job,

which is to protect your people. This is the Bill Maier Show. By the way, not hating, not hating, just an observation. Okay? Are you living with dry AMD? If so, you could be on the road to geographic atrophy, or GA, a condition that leads to retinal cell death and permanent vision loss.

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Restrictions apply. Call for details. Internet and cell phone service not provided by Dish. Ding, ding. Great to see you. Come on in. Hi. Thanks for letting me stay in your guest room. Our pleasure. Right through here. The door sticks a bit. Just turn, lift up a little and give it a good shove. Okay. Thanks.

Oh, and if it gets a bit warm in here, crack the window. It just needs a little elbow grease too sometimes. Stubborn doors or windows? Call Millette Construction for a no pressure, thorough inspection of your home's foundation and a no obligation estimate. Visit MilletteConstruction.com. Hi, I'm Riley with Rotary Drilling Company and I'm on KMED. Bunch of Supreme Court rulings are expected today including birthright citizenship. The challenge with President Trump's executive order. I will be really interested to see where Rulings are expected today, including birthright citizenship, the challenge with President Trump's executive order. I will be really interested to see where

this goes. What does the 14th Amendment mean? Does the 14th Amendment mean that you're just supposed to allow the third world just to squat and birth brand-new minted citizens and everything has that minty fresh third world feel and I don't know. Especially when you're in a world that has said that, you know, all those minty fresh children that have been birthed here, they're also used to determine who has political power. What could go wrong with such a corrupt system? I don't know. We'll see how that

ends up going. We expect a whole bunch of them coming up this morning. All right. I'll grab a quick call. I know Crazy Jean called a few minutes ago, but I wanted to give it another minute or two a little bit later. But hi, good morning caller. Who's this? Welcome. Hi Bill, it's Vicki from the Applegate. Hey Vicki, quick one here before news. Let's hear it. Okay, well the Republicans that are in a sanctuary state, I feel that are democratically run, are like used card salesmen. You know, they know that they don't want to sell you that lemon but they do it because they want to keep their job and get that commission. That's pretty funny. That's pretty funny.

So everyone who is there, or a lot of people who will refuse to deny Quorum, they're going to try to sell it to you. Look how bad they are instead of, well, why did you not allow this car to be sold in the first place? Right? Right. And because it's a democratic state, the Republicans get in because the people want Republicans. democratic state, the Republicans get in because the people want Republicans, but once they

get in there, they do what they have to do to keep their job, and they go with the flow. But once again, Vicki, see, it's interesting you say they want to keep their job. My point is, though, is what is the job of a state rep or a state senator? The job for them is not the job that we put them in there for. Aha! There we go. There we go. I think that is the takeaway to something like this. Like, you know, David Brock Smith, for example, who was on the record. Now he's a senator from the coast there. I have always, I've always wanted to be a senator. Oh, okay, so you've always wanted to be a senator

only so you can say that you were a senator And then you can pass democratically backed legislation that attacks your people right so now In other words you've you've sold yourself for the so-called job and that's just it. That's the problem It should not be considered a career and that's the that's the downside of all this right now. It shouldn't be a career. Right. And if you look at Republican states that are red, we are not having that kind of problem, because when we put Republicans in there, they're actually Republicans. But I've noticed that if it's a sanctuary state, they're more apt to go with the Democrats than do what we put them in there for. And I have no doubt part of this is they'll think, well you know I've got to go along because we got the

billion dollar Christmas tree bill you know about this in which in which all sorts of grift gets that handed out to every state rep and every senator to an extent. You know the ones that will play ball in order to I don't know you know get a new park in your district or whatever it is, but I'll tell you, it's selling out principles very cheaply. I mean, it's human nature. I get this. And that's why I'm saying it's not a hateful feeling about these individuals.

I understand how much you want to be liked. It's a human desire to be liked in the group. And you'll see the people going there and hugging the opposition that would just as soon see them put into a rail car and sent off to a FEMA camp somewhere. But everybody puts on a good face. Vicki, do you remember, did you ever watch Looney Tunes cartoons when you were a kid? A child? Yes. Okay, so you watch Bugs Bunny. What we're looking at is the equivalent of, there was that one Looney Tune cartoon which

I think is classic and it shows Sam the sheepdog and Ralph the wolf and they show up to work. Yes, I love that. And remember they clock in and then they play act at beating the crap out of each other. You know Sam the sheepdog is trying to protect the sheep from Ralph the wolf and Ralph is out there trying to grab the sheep and everything like that. And then at the end of the day the whistle blows blows, whoo, see you tomorrow, Sam. Thanks, Ralph. Catch you then. And then they're off to have a drink at the bar.

You get the impression there's a bit of that going on. That's exactly what it is. It's like, you use car salesman, you make that sale, and it's like, woohoo, let's go have a drink after work, even though you stole somebody a lemon, and they're not gonna be happy, and they're not gonna wanna come back. there's always somebody to take their place. So you lose one customer You got ten other ones that are gullible enough to buy a lemon. Yeah

Yeah, the only one that has been willing to actually put pedal to the metal and just say hey, you know I'm out of here has been state representative Dwayne Younger and There's a reason why I've nicknamed Dwayne Younger the junkyard dog because he's kind of like the honey badger, doesn't care what the opposition party thinks about him. And we could use a little bit more of that. And I know it's hard, it's probably hard to be like Dwayne. Appreciate the call. Let me grab one more before news. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Good morning Bill, Tom here. Hey, I'm going to kind of ask a question from the, you know, 30,000 foot level, but why do you think that Republicans are having such a hard time selling

themselves to the public? Why is the Republicans and their voters not electing them. Because I don't think they believe their own principles. Many do not believe their own principles. They run on it, but really have no intent of governing that way. They say what they think they need to have to say, and I think this is a human thing, you know, a human nature thing. You say what it think they need to have to say. And I think this is a human thing, a human nature thing. You say what it takes to get elected. I think there are very few that are really willing to go to the mat for the actual principles. The main thing is that I need to be a state senator.

I'm a state senator. What will happen if I'm not a state senator? Then I have to go back and do something productive. That would be horrible. Anyway, I got to go back and do something productive. That would be horrible. Just anyway I gotta go. Let's pick this up a little bit later okay. I do have a guest segment coming up all right. Okay I definitely have something to say about it. All right you do. You call me. I'll give you another bite of that just a little bit later okay. This is the Bill Meyers show. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is

your tonneau cover source. Tonneau covers are a great way to secure and protect the cargo in your bed from the elements. Styles from truck gear, back industries, undercover and more. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority, your one-stop accessory and protection shop. Hi, this is Bill Meyer. Always appreciate you listening no matter the time. Live 6 to 9 weekdays on 106.3 KMED and 99.3 KBXG. I'm here for you. But life has a way of getting busy.

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bill made it out of the Oregon Joint Transportation Committee last night and heads to a House floor vote today. The bill will initially cost taxpayers about a billion dollars a year extra and then ramps up to 1.6 billion. The previous iteration would have cost taxpayers 2 billion a year. Representative Kevin Mannix was the only Republican to vote in favor. The new bill includes increases to the current gas tax, tripling Oregon's payroll tax, charging EV owners by the mile and other tax and fee increases. It however eliminates the sales tax on new and used vehicle sales. All of Oregon is now under some type of drought designation according to the latest numbers

from the US Drought Monitor. A week ago just 65% of the state was considered overly dry, now it's 100%. If you get a text message on your phone with a pin about a transfer to another provider it's likely a scam. The Oregon Department of Justice has received a number of reports about this and in some cases bank accounts have been accessed the London KMED. Hi this is Paul at Valley Bee Nursery it's time to color up your backyard for summer barbecues and we can help. Pedio planters and select summer flowers are now 20% off. If you need more shade we have that too. Now 20%

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It's got this party train on the road here. Adam Kissell joins me. He's a visiting fellow for higher education reform in the Center for Education Policy at Heritage. Board member of the University of West Florida, Southern Wesleyan University and the National Association of Scholars. He also serves on the America 250 Advisory Council on Civics, History, and America's Future. Graduated of the University of Chicago at Harvard. Boy, I'm starting to feel like an underachiever here. Adam served in the first Trump administration as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Higher Education Programs, lives in Charleston, and his book is Slacking, a Guide to Ivy

League Miseducation. Adam, it is a pleasure having you on. Welcome to the show. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. So, Adam, you are what they would say a man of letters. Would that be a fair assessment from the... That's a big business card you must have here, put all that stuff on it. Maybe it's the LinkedIn.

I went to college in the 90s. I started out in biochem and ended up as an English major. And in the 90s, you could still find a bunch of good courses in American and English literature. Yeah. And we're very... If you look... Yeah. What would it be today? Would it be, you know, exploring whiteness or, you know, those kind of courses? Is that what you get these days? Yeah. So if you get Shakespeare, you get cross-dressing and Shakespeare. You don't get virtue and

ambition and Shakespeare in the same way. Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I wonder if maybe a bit of that is starting to end. We ended up having a leader, one of the people at the top of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival here in Southern Oregon. I don't know if you're familiar with that in Ashland, but it has a big history. And most of the people running OSF have decided, haven't been able to figure out that people want to see good Shakespeare plays, not seeing how many weird groups and interest groups can we put in the roles. And it's kind of the same way in education, isn't it?

Yeah, and it's worse the higher up you go for these legacy elite institutions. They're squandering the legacy prestige that they used to deserve generations ago. Today, the core curriculum, kind of your general education courses, have very, most of them outside the sciences, have very little good content to them. So at Princeton, you could take a whole course just on shoes, or at Penn a course called Decolonizing French Food, or at Yale a course on cocktails and drink culture. Now you don't get to just drink cocktails, but you have to learn how cocktails are tied up with colonialism and imperialism. Those are the kind of courses you get.

You know, the way you're talking about things, they almost sound like Babylon Bee parodies, but it's for real, correct? Is one of... Yes, right? So when we started the research for this book, two co-authors and I, we expected to find some bad courses, some biased ones, narrow, tendentious,

but things were so much worse than we expected. So at Yale, there's this culture on why are we afraid of the dark. You can meet your humanities requirement with this course called Popstaffism on the Lesbian Presence in Pop Culture. You can at Cornell take this course on Cardi B. Better not to know what her lyrics to actually say. Cardi B, seriously? That disgusting cretin? Oh boy. All I have to do is, I couldn't even read the lyrics for WAP on the radio show without

getting in big trouble. You know how that goes. All right. But there's a college course on her. Okay. All right. That's what your tax dollars are going to subsidize across the Ivy League. This has been growing for a long time and what I'm wondering about here, Adam, what do you think drove it and when did it start kicking in?

There's a part of me that wondered if part of the reason why college has corroded so deeply as the courses you've been talking about, and by the way this is in the Ivy League, these are where the elite leaders are supposedly being minted and getting ready to take their proper status, you know, their station, you know, in life in the United States system, right? And what I'm wondering is, did it start when the push was that everybody had to go to college? And I remember even a former governor came on my show and was like, everybody has to go to college. You're a loser if you don't go to college. But there are really,

probably a limited number of people who are proper for going to college. And I'm wondering if this is where it started though, as a reaction. Fantastic question. I would say three things. One is this huge increase in college access in the 20th century, as you mentioned. So now you have lower standards, even in the Ivy League, you have remedial math now at Harvard for freshmen, and trying to make more of a country club party atmosphere, customer focused, let students self indulge them, their ideas and their passions,

rather than the old classical idea. And so this is the broader second stream, classic versus romantic, right? So Ralph Waldo Emerson, 150 years ago says, hit your wagon to a star, just pursue your passions, take whatever you want. And the old classical model of the best that has been thought and said in the world has been taking a backseat ever since. And then third is what Roger Kimball wrote in 1990 called Tenured Radicals. The faculty are trying to remake American culture in the West tenured radicals, the faculty, are trying to remake American culture in the West away from our core values. Was this an intentional attack on American values or was it something where...

I'm going to do a criticism of the conservative movement. For a long time it appeared to me that the conservative movement was more about, hey, what's that tax break all about rather than what's going on with the culture? And I'm wondering if that was a vacuum that the Marxists were more than happy to fill. Unfortunately, you're right in my estimation as well. We did a good job on social conservatism pretty well overall, And churches and other people of faith kind of left the public square to secularism, and that was a big factor. So on the other side, the socialists were smart and they said, you know what, we can bank on people's grievances all over the culture,

form them into a kind of solidarity and take over the institution, which is what they've spent 100 years doing pretty successfully, especially in higher education. So you look at the faculty and they know what they're doing. They're really smart and they're undermining values on purpose. You know, there's this line that the issue is never the issue. The issue is the socialist revolution. And that's what I think they're about. Adam Kissel with me, his book, is just out is called Slacking, a Guide to Ivy League Miseducation. And the way it works is that you and other people are taking a chapter at a time and going with different universities. And which one did you take on?

So I started with Cornell and the case for Cornell's education being so bad was strong. And I said, you know what, we should do the rest of the Ivy League. And we wrote all eight chapters. I also wrote the one on Columbia, which has a great Western Civ curriculum on paper. And the question is whether it's taught well. And I got two colleagues, Rachel Comber and Madison Doane, to write the other chapters. We souped it up. And by the time we got to the end we said we have a hundred page report. This is actually a book. This should be a book. And Encounter Books published it for us and they put this hilarious cover with Shakespeare blowing a bubble and wearing an earring. Yeah I noticed that. I thought that was a great cover. Great to catch my

teeth. Oh, but you know that would have been perfect for Oregon Shakespeare Festival here in southern Oregon like I just mentioned a moment ago It's like except they would make him black though. That would be the thing is he'd be blowing a bubblegum and he'd be black or you know Maybe he'd be handicapped there'd be something some interest group other than White European white European. You just can't do that. Good point And he probably needs some green hair streaks as well And then then he's all set see you could run the Oregon Shakespeare Festival too, Adam, if you're ever looking for another job after that.

Now, there was something kind of interesting which has come out this week and I think there is an interesting relationship to education and it has to do with the rise of the communist mayor candidate in New York City. And you have been writing or opining out there that you're thinking that he could be even worse than for the Ivy League and the high and higher education in New York City. And could you break down your thoughts about this particular gentleman? It's amazing. Sure. Yeah. So his last name is Momdani. He's a member of the Democratic Socialists of America, or at least was, probably

still is. And he's part of this story of solidarity around grievances to take over the institutions. So not that I'm any big fan of Columbia these days, but he wants to redistribute wealth, including from rich, prestigious universities like Columbia to the City University of New York. And he hates the idea of merit. So any idea of elitism or elite institutions even in the high school level like the specialized high school aptitude test, he's against that. He would just rather socialize all of the different successful institutions. He wants to create city grocery stores, free public transit, rent control, nationalize the utilities. So we're looking at a pretty damaging

possibility, those kinds of socialist policies in New York City, including in higher ed, where folks like CUNY are going to be pushed into free college on the backs of the taxpayer. Yeah, City University of New York, so free college. And now I guess the point is, the reason why the revolution wants free college is that the college is controlled by people like Mondami, right? And so, or at least people who agree with him. So this is yet an additional path of indoctrination then furthering the revolution. Is that pretty much the way it's hoping to play? They're hoping to play it? Yes. Yes. And since you already can kind of trust these days that the faculty and administration are on your side ideologically, you just need to get a bunch of people in there, get them into

freshman orientation and hear all those conservative values back home. Those were wrong. You've come to CUNY now and we'll teach you what's right and how to understand capitalism and the West is all of these oppressive institutions. And I think that was Obama's idea for getting everybody to college too. It was at least get them into year one, get them socialized into socialism. What role do you think that the government guaranteed loan has played in this revolution here? Huge. So we are distorting the education market by hundreds of billions of dollars a year. We make it easy to go to college. And what that means, again, great job on access,

but it means tons of people who are not suited for college are going anyway, taking five or six years to not graduate. And they took some gender studies courses or some of the courses listed like what we have in our book. And meanwhile, their friends went into the military and are making good money and serving the country or learning a trade. And in two or three years, they're out there being a successful electrician. And all of that economic development is lost because we're pushing people into four-year bachelor's degrees instead of something that they can actually succeed in. Now, Adam, I am not against higher education.

My point is that if there's going to be higher education, higher education has to count and be productive and have a value system that is friendly to actually building a healthy society. All right? I think this is a reasonable request here. We've had decades of cultural rot, which is now in charge here. Where do you even begin?

Because it's one thing for a president to say, OK, I'm going through executive order like President Trump is. We're going to yank your funding because of this anti-Semitic university, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, that sort of thing. But those are kind of one-offs, and the system could completely be a flip back around with a different political leadership. Is there a way you think to actually attack or strike the root of the problem here?

Well, most students are not in the legacy elite institutions, they're in the big public institutions. And that's a huge opportunity for the red states, maybe Oregon's in trouble, but red states at least, and places like Florida and North Carolina have done this. They've said, it's our money, so you're going to have accountability with us. I have a piece that just went up yesterday at a think tank I work for called the Cardinal Institute for West Virginia Policy and make the argument that if you're educating

for freedom, your money needs to be where your mouth is, your curriculum needs to be where your mouth is, and if the faculty won't do it themselves, the legislature may have to step in and make sure that you're getting an education for freedom. And that may not help necessarily in a state like Oregon, which is all in on what you're fighting in the slacking book. In your opinion, is there any way to keep the United States knitted together long term? I know this may be outside of your comfort zone. I work on civics too. Great question. So how do we knit Americans together? And I think it's going back to the first principles that we all have agreed on, which is that we fight, well, hope most of us, some still not in Oregon, but we fight out our battles politically and not with violence.

But if you have essentially a great percentage of the states communist and the other ones kind of semi-communist, because even the red states in many cases, even the red states are still agreeing to tons and tons of socialism. They just don't go all the way. It's kind of like socialism on a slower scale. You know what I'm getting at here? There's very few. The rot's been going here a long time and I think that even Americans have faked themselves

out as to what an education is and what is needed. But the founding principles are, you know, what actually keeps us together at this point. And you having been in civics, this is great. I'd love to get your take on it. Appreciate that. So you're right that living out our principles has been really challenging. But at least coming back to saying what our core principles are, constitutional rights,

civil rights, equality under the law, divided government so that a big majority can't oppress a minority of any kind in the area of rights. These are things that are pretty inspiring and that have helped make the country great. And we can argue over how to make them real and how far away we've fallen from them. But there is something like a civic religion, as some older generations would have said, where you repeat that we're trying to become a more perfect union by being the kind of people who can be self-governing, both with our own moral development and then as a people.

And that's inspiring and can be unifying, especially as we reach America's 250th birthday next July 4th. What do you think would happen—and by the way, I'm talking with Adam Kissel, his book, excellent work here, it's Slacking, A Guide to Ivy League Miseducation, which I'm going to link to all the ways to find out more about this on KMED.com. What do you think would happen if the government grant or the government education loan, the guaranteed government education loan went away? Would that have an effect on these institutions of higher learning? Would they actually focus the mind where, okay, we can't just be a four-year vacation and drunk fast and progressive indoctrination center. We actually have to do something appropriate because it used to be that when you were going

to try to get a college loan from the way it was described to me, you had to go to a banker and convince the banker that what you were doing had try to get a college loan from the way it was described to me, you had to go to a banker and convince the banker that what you were doing had some merit and that you would have the ability to pay it back, pay back the loan for a college loan back in the day. Right, so again we've distorted the higher education market by making it so easy to get a student loan. What my heritage colleagues and I have been proposing is more privatization of the student loan market to have competition, but also to have the bank say, oh, you're going to major in engineering? Happy to give you a loan at a low percentage rate. Oh, you're

going to major in intersectional disability studies at Brown? I'm not sure you're a good bet with our bank. I think that would have a very valuable set of market signals associated with it and colleges would change accordingly and so would students. So we need a lot more privatization. What do you think would happen if some had also proposed that colleges have more of a dog in the fight of making sure that their graduates actually have a reasonable opportunity of employment. Do you think that would work and maybe going after the endowments in some way if they don't? I don't know about endowments, but there are some states that do performance-based funding. Texas, Florida, I think a couple others.

Texas, Florida, I think a couple others. Ohio might be a hundred percent performance-based funding now. And that has, right, so those kinds of skin in the game accountability measures work wonders. And even at the federal level with the One Big Beautiful bill, both the House and the Senate versions have some accountability like that for the return on investment for students, graduates, program by program. You might lose your federal student aid for a particular program if the students aren't doing well and it's kind of your fault as an institution that you didn't teach them well enough where you let them go into a bad field so that will also work wonders once the colleges themselves have to get in on it. Now,

taxing endowment income is a much more challenging question. You know, we just need to be careful about this. You know, if we really believe in the free market, we should try not to confiscate wealth. All right. Adam Kissel, once again, author, co-author of Slacking, or Slacking rather, not stacking, Slacking, a Guide to Ivy League Miseducation. We'll put all the information up there. Pleasure talking with you this morning, Adam. You'll be well. Thanks again. Thanks, Bill. Appreciate it. Seven o'clock. This is KMED, KMED HD1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass.

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which should be pumped every three to five years. Call 541-821-1426 and visit SWSModoc.com. Sweetwater Sanitation, where service is the difference. Hey, you know Cliff Bents, right? From Ontario? Yeah, our congressman. He seems all alright. Something's changed with him. What do you mean? He voted to terminate millions of Americans Medicaid coverage. What does that mean for us? Well, one in three Oregonians depend on the Oregon

Health Plan. Wait, the Oregon Health Plan is Medicaid? Sure is. It covers seniors, people with disabilities, children. Children? Yeah. Medicaid covers seven in ten kids right here in Bence's own district. So who even wins here? Not us. This bill could even close local hospitals and make access to care harder for all of us. So this does nothing to lower our costs or improve health care? Nope. Just gives tax breaks to big tech billionaires. Bence is looking out for them, not us. Guess he really has changed. Call Congressman Bence at 202-225-6730. Tell him to vote no on reckless Medicaid cuts, paid for by our Oregon. Good morning. This is News Talk 1063,

KMED, and you're waking up with the Bill Meyers show. If I were you, if I were me, maybe, I would call Congress and Ben's office and say, hey, Cliff, you're doing a good job. Keep it up. Okay? Just saying. That's my opinion at least. And I did not pay for this message.

It's a couple minutes after seven o'clock. We're going to check town hall news here in just a moment. Mr. Outdoors joins me. The outdoor report. How are things looking? Where do you go? What's gonna be like on the coast? Is the coast clear? And a whole bunch more. And that's all on the way. Then we'll have some open phone time, maybe do another Diner 62 quiz before the top of the hour. And then a conversation about wearables. The Make America Healthy agenda with RFK Jr. You know, they're coming out today with a, or the other day rather, I should say, with a big, big deal about doing wearables.

And is it science, or will it help you be healthier, or will it just enable more of the monitoring and surveillance of Americans? Interesting question. We'll talk with Tim Keller about that.