Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-02-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

DIgging through the morning news and into Wheels Up Wednesday with Eric Peters, great review on the New Lincoln, happy dependence day, can we ever really OWN our homes? Brake lights on the FRONT of a car? Austrians looking at this, sheesh.

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 Clouser Drilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. So glad you are here. It is Wheels Up Wednesday. Join the conversation 7705633. It's 11 minutes after 6. Wheels Up with Eric Peters.

That'll be coming up here in the next few minutes. He wrote an article about the property tax that I just really got into and I was thinking about this with Independence Day. Independence Day coming up and I can't help but notice how most Americans seem to refer to it as, it's the 4th of July! Kind of like, it's the 5th of May Cinco de Mayo, you know, kind of thing, rather than actually trying to remember what the day actually is. You know, happy Fourth of July. Okay, well, what does the Fourth of July mean?

Well, it's actually Independence Day. And I'm wondering if a lot of the reasons we don't call it as much Independence Day is that there's not a whole lot that we're independent from. What are we actually independent from? You know, even in the Trump administration, yeah, yeah, we're looking forward to a better time, but you know, what is actually uniting us and where can you be free? And what Eric was talking about, I think this is something worth talking about here, as long as you have property tax, especially property tax, probably one of the biggest evils that was ever created because you

can never own your land never own your property you essentially pay it off and then you're still running it from the government for the rest of your life and there always must be income being generated in order to you know pay off your property taxes unless I suppose you were to create yourself or reimagine yourself as a non-profit group and then you could be taken off the tax rolls, right? Maybe that's what wealthy people do, who knows? But we'll have a little talk about that. And he had a great review of the latest Lincoln, very luxurious vehicle, and actually maybe worthy of being called luxury.

You know, a lot of cars are kind of like they've been going for this luxury but sporty and you know, whatever happened just to the really cushy car? Well, I guess this Lincoln really is. Eric will tell you more about that. Top story here in Southern Oregon. Why didn't, I mean, just a... that's not bizarre, it's just... it's... well, I have no doubt that this guy down in California, who they're accusing of having murdered a Josephine County woman back... oh, 1983. 1983. And he's been, you know, running around all

this time. Now, granted, he's been arrested in this cold case story. What a story. 42-year-old cold case homicide, 72-year-old California man. They ended up, along with Josephine County Sheriff's and Chico police, ended up arresting Mark San Frantello in California. And this was about the 1983 disappearance of 27-year-old Teresa Peroni. Now Peroni was last seen with San Frantello in July of 1983 and they were going off into the woods and I guess they never really had enough proof to go after this man at that time. Apparently they found her skull in 1997, a Peroni skull, and it was sent to University

of North Texas. That case was unsolved until it was reopened in 2024, and they confirmed that the remains belonged to Peroni and the new evidence linking San Frantello to the crime. He's now facing a murder charge, extradited to Josephine County. He's 72 years old now. You can't help but think about this. All these years I'm presuming of course I know that in a court of law he'll have to be found guilty. We don't know that he's guilty but

let's say that he is. And for 40-something years he's thinking I got away with it. Maybe not so fast, right? We'll see. I just thought it was a really interesting story. Good work, Josephine County, Sheriff's getting that reopened and working it. It's great to see them put some love on cold cases and get some closure. That East Trail Creek fire that broke out yesterday, they ended up throwing everything at that yesterday and stopped at about 12 acres. Good job there. And 12 acres. So they threw water and retardant at it and pretty good stuff.

Oregon Live reporting that a Chinese national arrested in the state of Oregon. Spying. Yeah. They've arrested this 38-year-old Chinese national living in the Happy Valley. Allegations that he spied for his government, including arranging a money drop at a bowling alley and also enlisting his wife to help. FBI is claiming that Yuan Qian was recruited by another man, working on behalf of China's Ministry of State Security from May 2021 through April of this year. Chen making his first appearance Monday in federal court in Portland,

helped out by a Mandarin interpreter after his arrest Friday on a California warrant. He's accused of helping facilitate a money drop of at least 10 grand, stashing the money in a day-use locker at a bowling alley in Livermore. He's also accused of gathering intelligence about U.S. Navy service members and bases and working to recruit others from within the U.S. military to work for the Chinese security service. This is a big story. You haven't heard much about this though, have you? big story. You haven't heard much about this though, have you? Chan had an alleged accomplice, Ryan Lai, also arrested in Houston. They're each charged with aiding a foreign government. Two men, while in China, are accused of coordinating a big cash payment on behalf

of Chinese intelligence. So that's the latest on that. Big beautiful bill ended up getting passed yesterday. Man, was that a squeaker. 51 to 50. Vice President JD Vance had to break the tie. What's in it? I don't know. Other than the fact that I know that illegal alien Medicaid funding is still in there,

yeah. And that was something that the Merck, the Merck who is one of the dimmer bulbs. I couldn't even say that he is dim LED power. He's certainly not incandescent. You can never think about Jeff Merckley as being a big luminary, as the case might be. He was most concerned of all about the Medicare – let's see, what was it? Snap benefit cuts that keep millions of Americans from starving, millions of Oregonians, he said, from starving even though there's only 4.2 million Oregonians to start with. But he was also really big on Medicare, or Medicaid rather, not, it's easy to make that mistake.

Remember Medicaid, I'm just going to translate for you, when Jeff Merkley is talking about how he's so concerned about cuts to Medicaid, cuts to Medicaid, the cuts to Medicaid are really about getting the bums off of Medicaid, the Oregon Health Plan. Now the Democrats still managed in the big beautiful bill to keep a not so beautiful part of it, keeping the illegal alien bums on the on the dole on the state health plan. All right.

And the point being, though, is that what they're calling cuts, what the Democrats are calling cuts, were about adding a work requirement. If you're able-bodied, if you're an able-bodied person, don't have dependent kids at home and all this kind of stuff, and you just want to sit around and hit the bong and do video games or else work under the table someplace, you're going to have to pay for your own health care, which seems pretty reasonable. You should be at least doing something if you are able-bodied rather than just being, you know, hopping into the wagon with the illegal aliens, who I guess will still be on.

I guess this is one of those things where this is why they have the clinics all over Southern Oregon, La Clinica, right? I don't know how much of that... maybe that's it. Maybe that's what part of this is, is keeping the money pile going into the La Clinica type of organizations. I'm not sure about that. I'm just speculating on my part, but boy, they sure were, including Merkley and Wyden, making a lot of noise about this. But it is the, once again, pathological altruism

that goes on and coming out of our Democrats. What can we say? All right, what else do we have going on this morning? Okay, big, beautiful bill passes. Trump says once again that a temporary pass for undocumented migrant farm laborers is in the works. Okay, we will see about that. I'd like to hear a few more details. There are some people in the conservative world not real happy about that. What else? Oh, I like this one. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. This is in the Daily

Signal from the Heritage Foundation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy. This is about LGBTQ roads. I bet you didn't know we had LGBTQ roads, but Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sends a letter yesterday to all 50 state governors, including Governor Kotec, urging them to remove distractions from roads, including divisive and distracting political messaging like rainbow crosswalks. I don't know if we have any of those here. Do we have rainbow crosswalks? I haven't noticed any in Medford or Grants Pass, but that doesn't mean they don't exist someplace. But Duffy's saying that our roads are for safety, not political messages or artwork. Kind of like those Black Lives Matter

crosswalks that we have in Washington, D.C. I remember that, right? And Duffy said this in a statement. He says, today I am calling on governors in every state to ensure that roadways, intersections, and crosswalks are kept free of distractions. Far too many Americans die each year in traffic fatalities to take our eye off the ball. And in this letter, he's asking governors to ensure that their states take part in the Federal Highway Administration's safe arterials for everyone through reliable operations and distraction reducing strategies

or the Safe Roads Initiative. The letter went to the mayor of Washington, D.C. also. Yeah, remember, they had a bunch of those. I know that they had those Licksbiddle left-wing messaging kind of crosswalks going on. And within 60 days each State Department of Transportation will develop a list of arterial segments including intersections with the highest safety operational or compliance concerns that will be addressed by the end of the year. In other words, Sean Duffy is looking for you politically messed up with intersections and he's

making a list and checking it twice and gonna probably pull funding if you're not acting nice so we'll see where that where that ends up going some other news no big surprise here yet another Northeast Oregon sawmill closing laying off 62 it's in pilot rocks gonna close 1st. They ended up notifying the state tomorrow. Sixty-two people laid off. And the Pilot Rock mill closure latest in a series, including closures in Banks, Springfield, Philomath, Toledo, John Day, and Riddle, this according to Oregon Live.

Sawmill operators, they claim, have variously attributed the closures to limited worker availability in small towns, rising production costs, and poor forest market conditions. That's the latest from there. A couple of food stories this morning. Well, this one indirectly. The CEO of Market of Choice died over the weekend at his home in Eugene. Rick Wright, Market of Choice, and he's running that for a while. He died Sunday at his home, only 62 years old. They didn't say why or cause of death. But a family-owned company headquartered in Eugene announced his death on Monday, key figure in the company's growth, a market of choice. Meanwhile, 138-year-old grocery store staple chain Del Monte. Del Monte, the green...

Now, that's not... No, Del Monte is not the green giant, right? Jolly green giant, or is it? No, Del Monte. 138 years it's been in existence, canning fruits and vegetables, has filed for bankruptcy, looking for a buyer. And last Thursday they entered Chapter 11. And apparently what's going on here, I'm looking here for some of the reason.

The CEO there says the company has faced challenges intensified by a dynamic macroeconomic environment, notably consumers cutting back on their spending and a growing shift towards spending on private labels. Oh, that's the cheap labels. So instead of buying Del Monte corn, you'll buy the everyday value. You'll do the value label instead. In other words, the consumers are getting sensitive and maybe cracking a

little bit. And you're not going to buy the Del Monte corn or the Del Monte string beans. You're going to buy the Western family. Although I have to tell you, I have noticed a big difference in quality of canned goods. A lot of times those private labels, in other words the cheap store brands, boy they're not good. But you know if you can't afford the bigger brand, I guess you can't afford it. In my opinion, it's just the way that goes. There's more headlines. We'll be kicking more around here in just a minute.

A bit including a brand new blood type has been discovered. Have you heard about that? I only thought we had a few. Turns out we now have 48. I'll share a little bit of that on the way. Hey, you know Cliff Benz, right? From Ontario? Yeah, our congressman. He seems all right. Something's changed with him. What do you mean? He voted to terminate millions of... 7toosold.com. You're hearing the Bill Meyers show on 106.3 KMED. You're hearing the Bill Meyers show on 1063 KMED. Let's flip a coin.

6.30, six a different bumper to get Eric in. Heads Carolina, Tails California, somewhere greener, somewhere warmer. I was thinking about this because Jodi Messina, that's Heads Carolina, Tails California, she's coming to the Jackson County Fair in a couple of weeks. It's gonna be a great show, no doubt. And it just reminds me though of everything about the open road, even in our music, in our culture. A tank of gas, right Eric?

A tank of gas, rather, and we're just going to go... I heard that. It's pretty funny actually. But yeah, I'm thinking of an automated start-stop, right? Anyway, let us continue here. But still, everything about the American culture, the ethos, has been about a tank of gas and freedom and getting on the road, being independent, going someplace. We're very restless people. And I know that, well, those in charge are trying to reduce it and make it as unpleasurable as possible.

I guess this is what they're trying to do and this is what this show is about. Well, they're succeeding. You know, I'm very grateful, by the way, that you didn't play that odious Lee Greenwood song as the bumper to start the show with. No, I'm not a fan of that one. Just, and not that I don't mind blessing the US, it's just that it rings a little hollow sometimes on Independence Day. And I know we're just supposed to be happy and say, Fourth of July, Fourth of July. It's Fourth of July, Eric. It's Fourth of July, right? Right. It's the federal independence day, which is interesting.

Yeah. I rarely hear that word used. It's almost all the Fourth of July. Go out and cook some overpriced bratwurst and contemplate how free you aren't. It's astounding to me. And that's why I wrote the article that I guess we're going to talk about, Dependence Day. Exactly. Dependence Day. And you brought up something which I think is something to work for, and that is the abolition of property taxes. And I know that Ron DeSantis, Governor of Florida, has been talking about this quite openly, and I cheer him on here because one of the aspects of being independent of your local government mob is that you have to be able to control your home, your property,

your business. And as long as you could pay something off, but it doesn't matter, you still have to rent the permission to live in it from the local government or the state government, you're no longer free. The very fact that you have to pay the state or the county or whoever money in order to not be evicted means that effectively, functionally, you are a renter. You don't own your house. And there's another aspect of it that's odious in that, in effect, this is an unrealized capital gains tax. You're not paying tax on what you purchased the house for.

You're paying tax on what some assessor claims it might sell for. And of course you're living in the thing. Most people don't buy a home to sell it. They buy a home because that's where they want to live. Well, now the assessor says that your house is worth twice what you paid for it and you're going to pay the tax on that unrealized capital gains, which is literally forcing people out of their homes, particularly people who are older and just don't have the ability to keep up and who bought the home based on their income and their ability to pay for it. And all of a sudden, it's being outstripped by these rapacious vultures who constantly

shove their hands into your pockets for more and more money. And if you don't have a continuing stream of income, good income, in order to pay that, a lot of times you end up having to give up the home. Exactly. Or else move somewhere else. And I think it's time to recognize this. Now what has been going on here in southern Oregon is that I think that a lot of the governments have realized that the appetite for larger property tax levies is very small.

And they've been getting turned down usually left and right, school bonds, all the rest of it. But what they have done is because of a court decision of a number of years ago, we just turned into fees. So everybody that has a water meter, whatever it is, you get a dinged 50, 60, $100 a month, public safety fees, street fees, all the various sort of things. I understand why they're doing this, but there's a real push to make sure that you have very little control over your cost of living within your neighborhoods Is my opinion. Yep. Yep. And I think as you mentioned it the reason it's getting pushed back now

These things have always been a little obnoxious, but they were sustainable and that most people could afford to pay the tax You know, we grumbled about it, but out what the heck it's time to write that check But it has now gotten to the point where people are facing either paying the stupid tax or not paying their power bill, or not buying food or some other thing. They can't buy basic things anymore that they need badly because they're compelled to pay these taxes all the time. And you know, people are beginning to get alarmed about that, understandably. And I think push is probably going to come to shove in the pretty near future on this business. Now, the question would actually come out of here, if you probably going to come to shove in the pretty near future on this business Now that a question would actually come out of here if you're going to be independent of a property tax if we could be magically

Independent of that and that would be a wonderful thing you own your home you own it free and clear Frankly, I think we should bring back a loyal title to which was the way we do and then they could actually play that Lee Greenwood song and it would actually be something other than a kind of like I don't know poo in your face kind of the thing because you actually would be free in the sense that at least I own my home Yeah, I own my place. I own my home. You can't really touch me here You can't take it away from me because if they can take it away from you if the government if the state can take it Away from you. You really don't own it and our local governments our state governments the state can take it away from you, you really don't own it. And our local governments, our state governments, they can take it. As an example, your income. If they can seize your income, do you really own your income? Which is also like saying, do you own your own labor, your own time on earth that you're

exchanging? Yeah, I mean, the characteristic of a medieval serf was that they were allowed to live on a plot of land by the Lord. It provided that, you know, the Lord wanted them to stay there, and provided they continued to provide the Lord with a portion of the crops that they grew, and things of that nature. And that's why they were serfs by definition, and that's a state that we've been reduced to in this country. You can imagine how free you would feel if you owned your house, and you knew that even if you lose your job, you know, times get tight. Well, I own my house, I'm not going to be living in the street, I have this cushion, I have something to fall back on and that would really resonate

and I think then we could all sing the Lee Greenwood song. Exactly. It's funny that you brought this up because I've joked with people, you know, I have that old Vanagon camper, right, and I still have it, I don't drive it a whole lot, it's still great little vehicle, backup vehicle there. It's my cockroach, you know, vehicle, you know, it'll start with nothing else well after the EMP. But the point being though is I've always joked that well, you know, if everything else failed I still had a place to live in. But that is indicative of the problem in the United States of America that you don't pay your property tax, your home is seized and it is gone and it is sold in

order to pay, well pay the real owners I guess apparently, which is government. It's one of the most regressive taxes of all which to me is interesting because the left is always talking about how much they care about the working class and average people and all of that but I'll use myself as an example. I bought my house for $270,000 20 years ago. I have thus far paid over the past 21, 22 years, nearly 50 pretty taxes. And the taxes here... Okay, now, what did you...

Your phone cut out there. How much do you pay in taxes? I pay, I paid about $50,000 in property taxes so far since I bought this house, and that amounts to about a 20% tax on the purchase price of my house, which is exorbitant, and it doesn't end. But Eric, you got services. You got services in exchange, don't you know? No, but I didn't, and I didn't ask for them. You know, this whole idea that, you know, the service implies it's something you want. If I need a plumber, I call the guy. He comes to my house because I asked him to. He provides the service. I pay him. There's a big difference, a distinction between

that and some quote-unquote service that I didn't ask for, that I don't use, and I don't want to subsidize. All right, we're talking with Eric Peters, EP Autos, and a couple of articles that are kind of going down these themes that we've been discussing. A Dependence Day and Dependence Day Addendum on the property taxes. Good stuff there. I really appreciate it. And it's something to remember here or something to remember going into because you will hear

very little Independence Day talk but a lot of happy Fourth of July. And I can't help but, well, I'll give you a story I was talking about yesterday, Eric. And I look at fireworks as kind of a symptom of people realizing they're not incredibly free. So we want to go blow up a lot of things and have some fun because if you see where I'm getting at here, it's almost like a substitution for the real freedom that our founders had, a real independence and the ability to be able to make your own way. It's a pressure relief valve. It's kind of like a professional sports game.

You get to go there and bellow like a gorilla and that is your sort of impotent way to release the rage that you have. I don't think it's coincidence that we are in an era now where there's like this rabid sports fanaticism about, yay, I won, because of course we all lose. Yeah, it's the way that you can go out there and blow off testosterone because you can't go out and strangle the people who are your tyrants in your life, right? You can't pull that off, at least not yet. But as it were, yesterday we were talking about how in California,

I don't know if you heard about this story, but in California, for the first time, the Fourth of July, if you want to call it Independence Day or Dependence Day or whatever, they are going to be using drones to find people that are using illegal fireworks. In other words... Well, how surprising. At least you could try to shoot the things down. In my state, you're not even allowed to use any kind of real fireworks, meaning anything that explodes or flies. So all you've got are these pathetic little cones that issue a little feverish spark and you stand there and go,

yay, I'm so free! I understand the public safety aspect of it, but you know, when the people... my next-door neighbor in Jacksonville, I was saying yesterday, would actually go and get the stuff from the reservation because he was a Native American. You go on the reservation and and get the stuff from the reservation because he was a Native American you go on the Reservation and you get the stuff which is legal by federal law But against the state law and he would blow this stuff off and I would just kind of I'm just gonna stay inside The cops never never came or showed up But there was a part of me the people who were into the fireworks even the safe and sane ones and everything else

I understand there's like a little there's that little vestigial rebel which is still in the American culture and the system is trying to beat it out of us all. I really think that's part of it which is why I have mixed emotions about yeah I know here it's tinder dry got to watch watch the fireworks, right? I get that. They play on people's increasingly pathological dread of risk. They'll posit some hypothetical scenario, which of course it could happen. Sure it could happen. Just like they do it with drunk drivers. Oh, there might be a drunk out there. And then what they do is they pathologize that such that everybody is presumed to be a drunk until they... you know, until...

the whole thing is freedom is a little bit messy in the sense that you have to be willing to abide a little bit of risk. That's part of a fun of being free. And that's what Americans have gotten less comfortable with is understanding that freedom actually has some risk entitled to it. It's not always clean. It is a little bit dirty, messy, you know, from time to time. I'm right with you on this. So the cult of safetyism is part of this pathology. And you have to tell me about this latest article up on EP Auto's. Front-facing. Oh yeah, I mean, this is one of those things that makes me just want to run into the woods and stay there for six months.

Okay, folks, you got to hear this story. I'll tell you. Why don't you tell me after the break here, okay? Okay, don't. Yeah, but it's about front-facing brake lights. That, yeah, I'm not kidding. This is something they're actually openly talking about. Details coming up. If you want to talk with Eric, 770-KMED. The following preview has been rated immature for all audiences. Good morning. This is News Talk 1063-MED and you're waking up with the Bill Myers show. Eric Peters, Automotive Journalist and Genius is on the program with me. Once

again, Wheels Up Wednesday. We were talking about Happy Dependents Day and the scourge of property taxes still in our lives and it's difficult to consider ourselves truly free as long as government can take your stuff, take your home, because you don't pay. Paul's in Williams. Paul, you had a comment on that with Eric. Fire away with that. Yeah, I agree so much on this property tax is such a bane on freedom. Why do you pay more money because your house is worth more? You don't get more services. You get the same service as anybody else. That's another issue. And I just wonder if you could comment on that as well. That's interesting. Paul, thanks for the call. You know, Eric, it kind of reminds me

of the way that taxes used to have to be apportioned among the states, right? Yep. Well, the fundamental problem is these decisions are made by a relative handful of people, you know, typically the county supervisors, let's say, and they decide that the town needs a new rec center, something like that, or a more elaborate shelter for the cats and dogs and stuff of that nature. And since they have access, unlimited access to your money, well why not, right? I mean, it's like expecting a kid given the keys to the candy store to just eat one lollipop. Of course they're gonna eat they're gonna clean the place out inevitably.

The whole thing is fundamentally premised on the idea that you and I and every other homeowner have an open-ended obligation to give over as much money as they say that we quote-unquote owe. Right. Now then, here in Jackson and Josephine County, the basic county levies are relatively modest as the case might be. Two dollars and a penny in Jackson County, considerably less in Joe County, but there are other levies that have been added on top over the years. But you know what the biggest one is? The biggest expense of all, public education. Of course. I mean government. It's important I think to make that distinction. It's not

public, it's government. The government runs the schools, the government controls the schools. And the government schools perform very poorly, according to the testing. We're like number 45, depending on who you talk with. Yeah, one of the worst, I think one of the most mean-spirited, petty arguments that's used against people like me, who are opposed to this property tax stuff, is that, well, you went to the public schools, too, as if I had any say in the matter when I was 10 years old. Interesting. Something to, well, you went to the public schools too, as if I had any say in the matter when I was 10 years old. Hmm, interesting. Something to, yeah, we didn't have no choice, and since you went to the public school, then

you need to make sure that everybody else goes into the public school. What do you think though, now you're coming at it from a very libertarian point of view, right Eric? We can pretty much agree with this. You call yourself a libertarian car guy. What do you think would be a less impactful, less tyrannical way of funding various services that might need done? You know, roads, sewers, the basic infrastructure of life. Well, how about people pay for what they need? Simple. You know, we pay for roads when we fill up our cars. That's a good

example. Yes. It's a voluntary tax in the sense that you don't have to pay it. You know, we pay for roads when we fill up our cars. That's a good example. It's a voluntary tax in the sense that you don't have to pay it. You know, if you want to own a car and drive, you pay for fuel. When you buy fuel, part of the cost of the fuel is the motor vehicle's fuels tax. In fact, the fuels tax is one of the taxes that I'm least having trouble with, really. I think the gas tax is great. It's not coercive. It's not nobody saying you have to pay it. It's okay, I want to drive. I want to have a nice road. So I don't mind. I have no problem with that.

That's fine. And as far as the education stuff, I get put in this horrible position of people saying, well, you must hate kids. No, I just hate being endlessly responsible for other people's kids. You have kids, it's your obligation to care for them, to feed them and to educate them, not to pawn it off on the government and then expect your neighbors to pay for it. All right. Eric Peters with me this morning talking about Happy Dependence Day. Let me grab another call here. Hello, you're with Eric. Who's this? Morning.

Hey, this is the Lauren Norton Eagle Point. Lauren. I'm in the middle of my walk, but I'm sitting down. Hey, listen, I actually have an automotive question. We haven't done much of that today. Yeah, I know. We were talking about a lot of independent states discussion take it away no i've been listening i've been listening but i i have a two thousand eight saturn view that i've had to the shop now for the fourth time

because of power steering problems and i'm wondering whether eric can help me and all to know uh... the first time course cost me about 800 bucks. The second, third, and now the fourth time, it's free because they say there's some defective parts but you got any clues about that, man? I'd sure appreciate knowing it. So what do they do? What specifically is the problem?

Does it have to do with the power steering hydraulic system or does it have something to do with the linkages? That's a good question. I don't know the answer to that except to say that a friend of mine, a firefighter friend of mine said, Lauren, you got noise under your hood. He lifted it up. He said, your power steering fluid is low. So I took it to my mechanic that I trust explicitly and he said, brother, something's wrong.

The pump's gone. Oh, okay. So they fixed it. The pump is gone. They fixed it and about a week later, I can hardly steer. And just the other day I know what your problem is. pump has gone to fix it and about a week later it's if I can hardly steer and just I think you got I think you got a Chinese Eum replacement power steering pump that probably failed in short order so your your your the solution to your problem is to get a quality replacement power steering pump and then you should

be fine can you even make them around here I mean in the US that's the difficult thing. Yeah. Now, by Eric, if you don't mind me interjecting, who services Saturn right now? Because it was a GM car, but it's been gone for a long time. Who does that? Well, any independent dealer can service it. Certainly a GM dealer could service it. I don't know who you're taking it. Are you taking it to a dealer or to an independent mechanic? No, I'm not taking it to a dealer. They scare me to death. Now, this is the guy I've used for eight, nine years. Trust him,

expensive. I said, yeah, I've got his fault. It's not his fault. He just got a not so great replacement part, unfortunately. You know, you had the original one that lasted from the time the car was new all the way to just recently, and then it failed. And then you replaced it, and the part that you got, and this has happened to me, it's happened to Bill, it's happened to pretty much everybody that I know that turns a wrench on a car You know you end up getting the short stick and you get the crappy part and then you have to deal with getting another part All right, Lauren looks at what you're going to have to do is just look for a better quality park for sure have your Mechanic friend help you out on that if you can. It is a 656 and

change on KMED 7705633. Let's get back into some other car news here this morning and I want to get to that Lincoln review. Great review you were talking about the other day and this has to do with brake lights on the front of vehicles are coming. I got it here. Some do-gooder has come up with the idea that things would be so much safer if new cars were required to have brake lights up front so that you could tell if a car approaching you is slowing down and these lights would be green so as to distinguish them from the red brake lights. Do you want to hit your head with a hammer yet? Okay, where is this coming from? Well, a study. It always starts with a study, doesn't it? Emanated from Graz, Austria, from a

university over there that has some eggheads that decided that this was something worth looking into. And inevitably, this is going to be picked up with and run. This always happens by some concerned safety person and the thing I dread the most is that one of the manufacturers are going to say oh boy we got to jump on this and put this on our cars so that we can tout just how safe we are relative to all the other unsafe cars and then before you know it it will be in every car. Green lights on the front to indicate that the driver is braking okay yeah because what we need is more clutter more more glare more distractions out on the road and every car looking like a freaking Christmas tree I mean even school buses now have flashing strobe lights on the roof of the things because

some people apparently can't see this huge yellow thing with with flashing red lights and I find that comes out from the side of it I know I love the old drawing, the old drawing from probably the early 1900s that you have on this with front-facing brake lights because I remember reading in history books that when cars first started going down the road you had to have someone standing out front walking in front of it with a flag to warn everybody off, right? It was Carl Benz specifically, one of the founders of Mercedes-Benz, who took one of his early prototypes out on the road. And mind you, these cars, you know, they barely moved. You know, you could

walk faster than most of these cars, early cars, were driven. And the authorities said, if you're going to put this thing out there, you have to warn the public. You have to make sure people see it's coming. So they required that a guy be walking ahead of the thing waving a red flag to alert everybody that it's coming. And it sounds silly, but I think we're almost back to the point where they're going to require us to have some guy standing in front of the car as we drive waving a red flag. Well, no, turning the green light on and off, I think is what it is. Anyway, Eric, before we take off, though, great review on the latest Lincoln. And it's a crossover, but it's a different kind of crossover, right? Yeah, what I like about it, Lincoln is unashamedly a manufacturer of luxury vehicles, hard stop.

In other words, not luxury, sport vehicles. Somehow everybody decided they had to be just like BMW. BMW was the first brand to combine luxury with sport. They had these high-end cars that were also designed to have great cornering and handling reflexes and all of that, which is fine. But we went from having nice, just soft, plush luxury cars to having these things with tight suspensions and confining seats and all of that. Yeah, everything that... And you feel every bump in it because it's the sports suspension

But yet this is supposedly a luxury car, right? Yeah, this thing it reminds you of the way it used to be you and I can remember the luxury cars It's just wonderfully plush cush soft really nice to be in and of course this thing unlike say the Cadillacs of our youth It's got multi-massaging seats. It's got just this ethereal... You and I rant about touchscreens all the time, but this one has a really interesting one in that it's completely embedded in the dash. Four feet, if you can imagine it.

It spreads out the entire width of the dash, and it's embedded at the base of the windshield. And it's really interesting looking. The whole effect of the car is just very luxurious and I like that about it. The Lincoln Nautilus, and you're giving some thumbs up on it, if you're looking for actual luxury you'll get it. Of course, luxury doesn't come cheap and doesn't have a V6 though or even a V8. Heaven forbid there's a V8, right? You can't do that these days. No, it's got you got your pick of a four-cylinder 2.0 drivetrain or a hybrid. The hybrid only

adds $2,500 to the cost, but the upside is the thing's got like a 600-mile range even without the hybrid on the highway. Wow, that's pretty good. So that's luxurious too, you know, you don't have to constantly think about where am I going to stop to wait for my charge. Yeah, you were telling me though that the hybrid system on this Lincoln Nautilus though only cost 2,500 bucks extra which is very inexpensive compared to a lot of other hybrid systems and it gives you an extra six miles per gallon. That's real. You'll notice that. It is real. You know when you factor it into the payments you know you're buying a vehicle that costs

54,000 bucks let's say which is I think about the base price of this. You put in another $2,500 it probably works out to what I don't know 20 bucks a month or in the payments so it's it's an inconsequential expense in the grand scheme of things all right great review I highly recommend people take a look at a 2025 Lincoln and Nautilus no problem there hey what's your review for next week after a dependence day weekend well I'm waiting actually for the Toyota Crown Signia to show up. That's sort of the replacement for the Avalon, and we'll

have some interesting things to talk about with regard to that. Really? Okay. What have you heard? What sort of rumors are coming out of that world? I've not even heard of that model, really. Well, it's two, technically. The one they're sending me is a crossover or a wagon. It's somewhere in between. It has that profile profile the crown itself is just a sedan like the avalanche interesting thing about it is that sort of like what what happened to the camry

uh... no more p six for you pro that it's a you know turbo hybrid drivetrain and it's a lot more expensive than it used to be in and my thought is that it's not that it's a not nice car you're now pushing people again average people people, people who are in the working and middle classes, out of owning nice things. You used to be able to get a V6 Avalon for $36,000 and that was less than three years ago. Now to get something equivalent, it's $54,000. Oh, that is a huge, that's not just a little bit of

inflation in there, that's a big one. Now. $10,000. Yeah. So I'll look forward to talking with you about that next week. Now, have you read that? I don't know if you caught that story about China's auto industry, exporting new cars as used. Did you hear about that? You read that?

Yeah, I'm not surprised by that at all. Yeah. Is this trying to get around tariffs and other restrictions or what are they doing that for? I'm just curious, you know? Well, they're doing it for the obvious reason. You know, they're trying to get around tariffs and other restrictions or what are they doing that for? I'm just curious, you know What they're doing it for the obvious reason that you know They're trying to scramble and make as much money on these failing vehicles as they possibly can. Oh Is it a lot of electric vehicles that they're exporting? Yes, exactly. Exactly

Interesting. Hmm. You had another article in there too, which Claims that we're gonna be paying more for our insurance because of all the electric vehicles catching on fire even in the boat like the one that just sank recently. Another one just sank and of course we are. Somebody's got to pay for these losses and now it's not just the actual losses that are particularly relevant it's the potential losses. The insurance companies aren't run by dummies. They know that these EVs present a fire risk. I point out in my article the case of a Mercedes, and I'm pretty sure it was the one they loaned me, that after I got

it and had it for a while, it went up to a dealer. And a dealer up in Northern Virginia loaned it to one of their customers whose car was in for service. And these people parked their car without even plugging it in, in front of their house, it caught fire, burned their house down. So not only was the car a total loss, but the house, which was about a six or seven hundred thousand dollar house, was also a total loss. And this is going to be reflected in the cost of the the premiums that we all pay, even if you and I don't ever own an EV. What will be interesting is to see especially how they age as the electric vehicle marketplace ages and ages and you end up you know having 10, 15, 20 year old EVs

what's happening then at that point we'll have to see I guess. Yeah I think I think actually I predict that we're gonna get to a point where it's gonna be you should get rid of the thing once it's a certain age because the risk of the fire that will have arisen by then just due to wear and tear age all of the things that affect the car is going to be too high to be acceptable and it will probably be uninsurable. If you own one of these things, the company will say, look, if you own this, you can't park it anywhere near your house, so we're going to cancel your property. I could see that.

I could see that happening. You ever hear that, you ever see those shorts on Facebook and or maybe YouTube in which they show these artificial intelligence generated videos that show various cars jumping over a canyon and which ones will survive. Have you ever seen those kind of things? I don't know. I have. Yeah.

All right. Well, I couldn't help but notice I laugh every time they show a Tesla doing a jump over the canyon. Will it survive? Well, invariably it always hits the side of the canyon and catches fire incredibly on the way down with just minor damage even. So every time. So whoever's doing those videos, they're making me laugh inadvertently.

Yep. Yep. All right. Eric, thank you so much. We'll catch you next week. Celebrate Dependents Day. Maybe look for a little more independence in your life. Okay.

We'll see you then. Sounds great, Bill. Thank you. All right. EPautos.com. KMED, KMMED KMED HD1 Eagle Point Medford KBXG Grants Pass. Why pay full price for fireworks when you can get twice the fun for half the price?