Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-09-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Dr. Bonner Cohen from CFACT has a lot to say about the nasty folks going after the drowning Texas girls, later a talk with Kevin Starrett at Oregon Firearms. The truth about the end of the legislative session. No, GOP did not block the transportation bill

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Clauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at clauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. 13 minutes after seven, I want to talk a little bit with Dr. Bonner Cohen. It's a senior policy analyst at CFACT, C-F-A-C-T dot O-R-G is the website. But it actually has a really, well, what does CFACT stand for, doctor? It's great to have you back on. Great to be back, Bill. It stands for Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow. It was created in 1985, so we're celebrating our 40th anniversary. We provide information to the public through our website and through publications and radio, TV, podcast interviews on a whole host of public issues including

geopolitical issues, energy, property rights, efforts by a self-serving government, and that can be the federal government, state government, local government, to impose their will on ordinary people and how to fight back and how to fight back with good information. So check us out. All right, appreciate that and thanks for explaining what the CFACT is all about. First off, I wanted to talk about, of course, what happened with the flooding in Texas and the news coverage is heartbreaking. You know, you have the two sisters that were holding hands. They were found, you know, that they had been holding their hands as they ended

up perishing in the floods and I couldn't help but notice that there is a real floods. And I couldn't help but notice that there is a real undertone, I don't know if it's of bloodthirsty or a kind of a, well these Texans, these Christian girls, they got what they voted for, right? That's kind of what's been going on, right? And you've detected a trend on this of vile politicizing of this tragedy. Yes, I thought of the German word schadenfreude, which means you're thrilled, you're happy with the suffering of others. And in this case, the fact that the girls at these camps were from various Christian churches around central Texas, they would be the ones to perish from a disaster caused by, again, as part of the narrative, climate change, this was these

people getting their just deserts. Now, that's a very vile way of looking at this, but I think it was absolutely predictable because those putting forward this narrative have been systematically lying about various issues, including so-called man-made climate change. And they have been doing that for decades. They have been also quite effective, or at least they were, in getting all sorts of rules and regulations put into place that ostensibly counter man-made climate change but actually do nothing of the sort but rather empower bureaucrats and enrich people trying to pocket taxpayer dollars on what is actually

a scientific hoax. If you add to that the fact that the victims involved here were mostly Christians living in a rural area. It's fairly safe to say that people pushing, on the green left, people pushing this have nothing but contempt for Christians living in rural areas. Then you understand what is really driving them. There's a third element here. Their agenda nationwide and to a certain extent globally is now being rolled back with the Trump administration doing away or phasing out all sorts of goodies that had been handed

out to purveyors of green energy under the Biden administration and even before that. And these people now see that the world in which they lived, in which they thought that they would be able to impose their will on the rest of us, that is now being called in question. So these people are furious and the reaction to the flash floods in Texas is an expression of that. Now from what I understand looking at the history of that particular region, I was just doing some reading the other day that that area of Texas has routinely actually flooded and flooded quite often. Guadalupe River, I think, is what ended up flooding in this

particular case. But it's actually quite a common occurrence, is it not? Oh yes, it is. And it dates back, it can be documented, to these fears going back to when the area was really settled in the mid-19th century. What you have, this is taking place in what's called the Texas Hill Country. Note the word hill. There are lots of hills there. This is an area about 25 miles northwest of San Antonio, which is in south central Texas. Now it's usually an area which doesn't get that much

rainfall because you're getting into West Texas, that's eventually going to take you into the desert southwest where flash floods are common. They're common there because it's a predominantly arid area with real deserts, but when it does get rainfall, the ground there is not porous at all and the water can accumulate very quickly. This is why flash floods are common in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern California. You know, Doctor, when I was a young DJ in 1980, I was living in Barstow and it

was well known that because of the desert area, you know, the water or the ground didn't perk very much. We would have flash floods down there too. You'd have a big rainstorm, thunderstorm would come by even though we didn't get much rain normally during the year and it would dump down and then it was amazing how high the water would go and rush through certain areas. Just astounding. You and our listeners have read that water here rose, the Guadalupe River, 26 feet in the space of 45 minutes. That's absolutely amazing. Tragically, it did so in the middle of the night around 1 15, 1 30, when it was impossible to alert people to what was having particularly the people in the campsites which dot the region. There was

more than one. This is what made evacuating them in a timely fashion next to impossible. The hillsides there are dusty and they sit on top of limestone. So when the water hits those hills, it of course goes downhill. downhill and it goes into the Guadalupe River. These were torrential rainstorms and the river rose very quickly. And as you pointed out, this has been known for some time. It's known as flash flood alley by locals. So any arguments to the effect that this was a reflection of climate change is absolutely ridiculous. This is the climate doing what the climate has been doing for a long, long time. And in this case, of course, tragically, it led to the deaths of what looks like to be north of 150 people.

Yeah, and the death rate going up all the time, a lot of people still missing here. And to politicize this is just like, oh, and especially when I mean, there was a pediatrician that came out there and it was supposedly a children's doctor that ended up getting blown out of her job fired because of just mean-spirited posting about this. I'm thinking, come on, you know. But still, going back to, if we were going to talk about anything, because you're talking about a constructive tomorrow over at C-Fact, right? That's what you do. It would seem to me that if you want to talk about perhaps better warning systems, that's something that I think would be reasonable to do. And now we're starting to find out that... the other

thing that was being said is, well this is because of Trump's Doge cuts and that there was nobody at the National Weather Service or a low amount. And that's not true. They actually had more people on staff then. They had more people. Yeah, they had more people. But they also, in retrospect, they said they called it wrong. They didn't realize what the intensity was going to be of this particular storm that ended up sweeping away these young girls in that camp. That's right. If you go back and you look at the timeline of this, you will see that warnings came from the National Weather Service actually as early as Wednesday. They were stepped up Thursday, but no one could have

imagined, as you pointed out, the intensity of this. If you go back and you look at steps that could have been taken, I think the National Weather Service performed as well as could be expected, actually better than expected under the circumstances. There were local officials in the area who had suggested going back years, in the event that something like this happened, why not have an early warning system, namely sirens, that can go off in the middle of the night. Because yes, if you had your smartphone in front of you, you could tell what was coming in just a few minutes.

But remember, these people were asleep, particularly these young girls in these campsites. They were sound asleep, as were the people who were looking after them. But sirens would have alerted them to get to higher ground immediately. I'm absolutely convinced that had sirens been in place, it would have taken more than one because this is a pretty large area. It would have woken people up. They said, we have to get out of here. Some of them were in tents, but actually most of them were in cabins. But the cabins flooded. We need to get to higher ground now. So it's a simple step like that, then taken until numbers of people would be alive today, who sadly are not. Yeah, it's very akin to what we've done out on the west coast of Oregon with

tsunami warnings is what there was what you know we're talking about here essentially. Exactly. And the thing is, and it's all... Building codes, it depends on what part of the country you're living in, what natural disasters you're you could be facing. In Florida, for instance, which gets its fair share of hurricanes, there's no such thing as building a house out of wood on oceanfront property because it's not going to happen. It happened in the 19th century. Hurricanes came along. Building codes were strengthened.

These are the precautions that can be taken. Also in the west, out where you are, particularly in California, thanks in no small way to poor management of state's natural resources, you have the danger of wildfires. Here, again, precautions can be taken. You can send overgrown forests, you can put up fire breaks and things of that nature. In Tornado Alley, which stretches from Alabama west to central Texas and then north up to, with rare exceptions, not north of about Missouri, they do have occasional sirens because sometimes these things will strike at night and people need to be alerted that there is an imminent threat of real danger and it's a low-cost thing and it's the kind of step that can be

taken again when it's in the middle of the night and no amount of announcements on the radio or TV or on social media is going to have the effect that a siren blast would have. And it's also an amazingly inexpensive, low-tech. It's kind of a low-tech way of doing it. And so often here, Doctor, we have people that are trying to get ever more things shoved into the cell phone or into emergency alerting and this and that and the other. Sometimes you just need a big warning siren that tells people something is up and they're not that expensive. And you just do it that way. And not always having to be a high-tech solution to something like this.

and not always having to be a high-tech solution to something like this. Oh no, no, no, exactly. All right, I really appreciate your take on this. It's a bit off the subject, but it's making the same argument. When people go back and look at the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023, you'll find out that the Israelis were relying on high tech instruments all along their border. What the Hamas people did very cleverly is they disabled those because high tech defenses can be disabled by high tech offenses and vice versa.

Had they simply had an adequate number of war bodies, men with guns, along the border, much of that could have been prevented. So sometimes high tech can take you in the wrong direction and can pose a much, not only a much more expensive so-called solution, but it may not provide the amount of protection that a low-tech thing can do. Indeed. Dr. Bonner Cohen, once again, he's a senior policy analyst at CFAC.org. I really appreciate your take on it. I'm going to link to your great organization. And thanks for having joined the show this morning and kind of putting out.

Well thank you very much for having me. I enjoy it as always. Yeah and putting out a common sense take on what has been politicized very sad but thank you very much doctor. Be well. Okay well thank you. 728 this is KMED you're on 993 KBXG also. For reliable well water services look no further than Siskiyou Pump Service and Rotary Drilling Company. From well drilling and water testing to well pump installations, holding tanks and water filtration. You'll get complete service without juggling multiple contractors and multiple phone calls. Just one call one company one complete trusted solution. You're a partner for well water system installation and maintenance from field to faucet is SisQ Pump Service and Rotary Drilling Company.

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Don't wait. July 31st, we'll be here before you know it. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. 730, Kevin Sterritt joins me here in a few minutes. I'm going to get to the bottom of what really killed that transportation bill. And of course, he being a political animal, even more political than me, I think he has a good take on it. We'll talk with him here in just a few minutes. London and I were talking about an article the other day that a bit of American history that I had never known,

never known, and it involved the Irish in the potato famine and the Choctaw Indian nation of Oklahoma. And I never knew, you know, about this. And it was actually an old article popped up on Washington Post and we were looking through it. And it's funny how you think you know American history and you realize how little you know. And a lot of my adult life has been trying to recover from my government education, that kind of thing. But you go back 170 years ago, the Choctaw Nation was one of many Native American tribes that was forcibly relocated. The Trail of Tears. They were not very wealthy. So they were moved to what was then known as

Indian territory. I'm sure you're somewhat familiar with this disease and starvation, rough winter weather, and at least 4,000 Choctaws. Thousands of other Native Americans ended up passing in this, and I'm sure you're somewhat familiar with that, and have heard enough about that over the years. But something that I did not know is that even after they had been relocated, the story of the Irish potato famine resonated with the Choctaw tribe. And the Choctaw tribe ended up even as poor as they were at that time, over in the new reservation, wherever they were happened to be.

They ended up passing the hat around, so to speak, and they raised $170 at that time in the 1850s. And that $170 was probably the equivalent of, gosh, maybe $5,000 is what it was. And they sent it to relief efforts in Ireland, which had lost more than a million people, an eighth of its population in the potato famine over another, about a decade or so is when that happened, when all the crops were failing and people were starving, just routinely dying of starvation, rough one. And this resonated with the Choctaw Indians,

and they went and raised, like I said, 170 bucks worth about $5,000 today, maybe a little bit more, and they sent it to the Irish. And the Irish never forgot that. And there ended up being this great bond between the Choctaw Nation and the Irish. And so it ended up being repaid a few years ago during the COVID time, in a way. And they've already, they always had kept good contact with one another, with both nations, the Irish people and the Choctaw Nation. And then during COVID time, the Choctaws were under a lot of pressure and a lot of death and disease and problems in their reservation, and they were having great problems. The Irish people ended up passing the hat and sent more than a million dollars,

I think it was about a million and a half dollars, to the Choctaw Nation. And they have special sculptures honoring the Choctaw Nation over in Ireland too. And I just thought that was such an interesting showing the goodness of humanity. You know, this story, never heard about this, but the Irish end up repaying the Choctaws. The Choctaws, of course, were very grateful for the help back at that time. And it was a part of American history that I had never heard, but I thought it was a great story. The Choctaws and the Irish. 170 bucks back then when they were very poor. Although I have to tell you the one thing that I have noticed is that Some of the most generous people I've ever met are those who have been really really poor and have had trouble they get it

They understand that and that was a very heart-centered story Like I said, the story actually came out four or five years ago But somehow I missed it in all the drama and I was glad to be able to share it with you This is the Bill Meyer Show. News brought to you by Millett Construction, specializing in foundation repair and replacement. Get on solid ground. Visit MillettConstruction.com. From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on. The fire danger in Jackson and Josephine counties is high as firefighters tackle a number of wildfires around the area. The Neal Creek fire burning near Ashland is 250 acres this morning, burning along the

southbound side of I-5. There are a number of level 2 evacuation notices in the area, with the fire being attacked from the air and ground. Overnight structural protection crews staged throughout the area to provide protection for homes. While I-5 is open, ODOT warns they may close the lane as necessary for firefighting equipment. The Deming Gulch fire south of Jacksonville along Sterling Creek Road has grown to 350 acres. Currently there are no evacuation notices for

the fire. Tuesday evening, air tankers were called in though to protect structures within a half mile of the fire. Yesterday's red flag warning for the local area was rescinded last night but fire danger for Jackson and Josephine counties may increase this weekend as temperatures Saturday through Tuesday are expected to be over 100 degrees. Bill Lundin, KMED. 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 Millett Construction for a no-pressure, thorough inspection of your home's foundation and a no obligation estimate. Visit Millette Construction dot com. Hi this is Bill Meyer and I'm with Charisse from No Wires Now, your Dish Premier local retailer. It's time to switch to Dish. If you have DirecTV or CableTV call me today to see how I can save you money. Plus I'll lower your internet and cell phone bills. And those offers in the mail from Dish, you can go through NoWiresNow for those. Call me at 541-680-5875.

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I'm here for you, but life has a way of getting busy So if you miss a show and you want to catch up or you just have a different schedule Well, that's what my podcasts are for the last three months or so of my shows available for free download and sharing on KMED.com or Bill Meyer show calm podcasts are sponsored by Klaus or drilling They're helping keep you current find out podcasts are sponsored by Klauser drilling. They're helping keep you current. Find out about their services on Klauser drilling.com. If you really want to enjoy your open air spaces, talk to American industrial door. They're an authorized dealer for tier screen systems from porches, patios and gazebos to restaurant seating areas to warehouses.

These custom made motorized screens and vinyl panels are a permanent solution to keep best wind and rain out so you can enjoy outdoor environments in peace. Go see all the possibilities DuraScreen systems have to offer at American Industrial Door with showrooms on Union Avenue and Grants Pass and Crater Lake Avenue north of Vilas Road. Hi, I'm Corey with Patriot Electric and I'm on KMED. When I have Dwight Yoakam in the bumper rotation, I just have to let it play a little bit. National Treasure, okay? It's 738. I don't know, yeah, Kevin Sterick with me from Oregon Firearms Federation. Do you know if Dwight Yoakam is a liberal or what his ideology is? Does he have a bent at all? I like his music though. What do you think? Do you know? No idea. No idea? All right. I know you get it.

You're into weirder kind of country music, aren't you? I'm into stuff with a little less twang, you know. Yeah, I like the twang. I don't mind that because my father, I think, was my late father used to sing all the time. And the twangier the song was, the better. I think he was even though he was Urbane in his heart, he was a hillbilly. Can't help it. You know, and just the way he was. Well, I deeply love hillbillies, but I guess I lean more towards the the folk spectrum. All right. That's a bigger folk spectrum.

You know, I'm talking more like Amanda Platten honeycutters. Oh, okay. Yeah. Stuff like that. Well, me being here in southern Oregon, Kevin, here, I'm just a gap-toothed hillbilly. All of us, we're just gap-toothed hillbillies. We just don't understand how the impolitical people actually are behaving up in the Salem area. Apparently that's the case, yes, because that is definitely the attitude of both the people in power and people who should be in power.

There's no question that you, Don Hillbillies, do not know what's good for you, and by God, we are going to tell you. Yeah, and if you don't appreciate us, we're going to raise our hands and say, you know, if you just elected more of us, we would have no problems. But anyway, I'll digress on this. I wanted to get to the bottom of a very common Republican talking point here, and it has to do with the Transportation Bill. The Transportation Bill ended up going down to defeat last week. Was it last week or the week before? No, week prior, right?

Is that when it... But the week was June 27. Yeah, okay, 27 is when they went down. They signed EDIED. It'll be two weeks ago this coming Friday that signed EDIED happened. And I've noticed that the Democrats are blaming Republicans for it, and I see Republicans

taking credit for having killed the transportation bill. But that makes no sense to me, because looking at the numbers, Republicans couldn't kill anything really in the state legislature unless Democrats didn't want it. Now am I right or am I just being a gap-tooth hillbilly and not understanding mathematics, very complex mathematics, in the state legislature? Can you help me understand this more? You know, Bill, you can be both right and a gap-tooth hillbilly. Okay. So that is something to consider, but the numbers are what they are. The Democrats are in control. The far left at Oregon Capitol Chronicle reported that House Republicans voted not to move on a funding bill for the agency talking about this transportation

bill. Well, House Republicans really don't get to do anything of the kind. We also had Kotech saying that the bill died because Republicans wanted to go home. But Republicans don't determine when the legislature stops. So you've got the left-wing media basically saying that you'll die out on the roads because the Republicans voted not to move on a bill, which they have no control over at all. But then the Republicans hop on it and say, we killed the transportation bill. And that can't be true either, is it? The Republicans could not kill anything unless they had Democrats supporting them. Now, they're taking credit for killing something. But the

fact is, is that they just didn't have the votes. The bill, if you look at the history of the bill, the last recorded event in the bill history was that it died in committee. Now, I am assuming that what they're talking about is that Oregon constitution says that every bill, on the day they're voting on it, every bill has to be read in its entirety. So this is a tactic that is occasionally used to stall bills because on every bill, someone will make a motion, almost always a repel, I've only seen Republicans do it, saying, let's suspend those rules so we don't have to read the bill.

So Republicans will often say then, okay, we'll get rid of that rule and we don't have to read the bill. Do that almost all the time. Okay. And in essence, the Republicans are always accelerating the Democrats' agenda because it's a bill after bill after bill, rescue or somebody else will get up and make a motion to suspend the rules so they don't have to read the bill. And once in a while, they will refuse to do that just to slow things down and force the bill to be read. Now the bills are read by machine now, so that even if it's a long bill, this machine reads it at high speed. Everybody gets up and leaves.

If no Republican made a motion to suspend the rules, that doesn't change anything. All it means is that the bill would have had been read. And if the bill had to be read and it took longer, it took longer. But the Democrats are blaming the Republicans for not suspending that rule in the case of the transportation bill? I'm assuming that's what they're referring to. But the way it's reported by the left-wing media is they voted not to move on a funding bill is so misleading. Just like COTEX comments about Republicans wanting to go home.

When the Republicans don't get to make that decision, the Democrats, you know. Well, I wish that the Republicans had made that decision to go home and deny quorum. I would have praised them for that, but that wasn't what happened. Exactly, because it's interesting that all of the Republicans are sending out

these press releases and mass emails, like Drazen and Helford and everyone else saying we killed this bill. Well if you had the power to kill that bill why did you allow a blatantly and obviously unconstitutional gun bill to pass? You know if you have the power to kill bills they say well we killed this bill but and I saw an email from Rick Lewis to a constituent saying well well, we were able to accomplish this long list of things because we were there. And what he was referring to, apparently, in this email was they got to pass the budget, which now gives them all the opportunity to send out emails saying, oh, I got you a million

dollars for this and a million dollars for that. Right, right. It's the same kind of grease like Congress Critters get. And then they get to say, look what we were able to get to you. Yeah, we screwed you with gun bills and a few other things, but this should make you feel better. Yeah, they screwed you with a million things, but they say, well, this is what we accomplished by being there.

And then the other constant rap from these people is there's no point in us leaving because the gun bills will just come back. Well, yes. And the gun bills will come back if you stay. So it's smoke and mirrors and it's all really it's frustrating and disgraceful. And the whole attitude, the institutional philosophy there is that we're just gonna continue to play the game because they don't, just don't believe

that things are bad enough to start saying we have to take these radical steps. And in the meantime, things continue to disintegrate. You know, the gun bill that they passed, you know, if they're taking credit for killing the transportation bill, then they sure as hell better take credit for passing the gun bill But one element of the gun bill says this whole list of devices that are perfectly legal are now going to be banned now That has happened in many cases that different kinds of guns and stuff and then all that stuff is constantly being litigated

But what makes this unusual is that these devices, which they call rapid fire activators, which are lawful to buy, to own at the moment. Yeah, like binary triggers, what forced reset triggers, that sort of thing. All of those things, yeah. They will be illegal to own and there's no recourse. It's a felony to try to dispose of them, and there's no grandfather. Now, I've spoken to five attorneys about this, and every one of them agrees this is unquestionably an unconstitutional taking.

The government can't just take your stuff and not compensate you. They could take your property, but they have to compensate you for it. In this case, they're just saying, what you've done is lawful, what you own is lawful, now we'll make it a crime, a serious crime to have it. And if you try to say transfer it to somebody who lives in a free state, that's a felony. Yeah, now this is really not all that different legally than let's say that, all right,

we all have butter knives in our, or okay, let's just say chef knives. We all have chef knives in our kitchens these days, right? Most of us have chef knives. We've had chef knives for lawful purposes and the state legislature comes out and says, no, we are banning chef knives. And if you have a chef knife, you are a felon.

If you try to sell your chef knife and you are also committing a serious crime at that point, it's really no different in the grand scheme of things than if they did something like that. And then chefs would say, hey, listen, I paid for these chefs. This is my chef knives. This is my property. I paid for this. You just can't ban something like this after the fact, right? This is what really what we're talking about, isn't it? Well, you know, we've seen all over the country, for example, like in Washington state, they have banned what they're calling the assault weapon.

So they said you can no longer buy these. But they didn't try to take them away from the people who already own them. And this has happened all over the country where they've instituted these bans, as I said, most of which are being fought and litigated, but not saying if whatever you... Okay, in Oregon, Measure 114 said, if you leave the house with a magazine, you're going to jail. But no one said that what you already own will put you in jail and you cannot dispose of it. And these devices, some people have many of them, this is their property.

They purchased it and possessed it lawfully. And now the government says, if you own it, you're going for, you cannot own it. And okay, so what exactly do you do with it? Do you cut it in half? You throw it in the garbage. In any event, your your lawfully possessed property now makes you a criminal. You can't possess it anymore. And by the way, the the item is not committing any crime just by existing. But I'm not doing anything.

You know, if you want to tell me that a type of trigger is really dangerous, well, frankly, Bill, guns are really dangerous. So let's just take all of those away as well. But if it is in fact, and it is in fact, it is an unconstitutional taking. Where is Mike McLean, Wallin? Now, Mike McLean was a judge too, you gotta know. He was a judge, he's an attorney. There's a couple of other people there who were attorneys and none of them decided to bring this up. None of them said, hey, wait a minute, we can't do this.

What they did do is like including Mannix was just in an event and sound, oh, the courts will throw that out. Really? Who's- Well, yeah, the courts will throw that out. Really? Who's- Yeah, the courts don't automatically throw out anything without us having to raise millions of dollars and hire very expensive attorneys, Kevin.

That's the issue here. Exactly. You know, I don't see the Republican caucus funding anything, including the things they promised to fund and lie about. So now it's now up to gun owners again to be a, you know, to be a plaintiff, to raise the money. And all of them said, but what makes this even more ridiculous

is that many of them, so that bill had two elements, banning these devices and saying, concealed handgun license holders will now be banned from all of these places. Many of the Republicans said, oh, we wanted to ban those devices. We just wanted it in a separate bill. So not only were the Republicans saying, we're ignoring the fact that

this is an unlawful taking, but we're actually approving of it. If you had just sent it to us as a standalone legislation, we would have voted to steal the property of Oregonians who committed no crime, done nothing wrong, and probably had voted for Republicans. And this is something that must be addressed at some point, because if they're going to claim that it was their fault, the Republicans' fault, that the transportation bill was killed, then you also have to say yeah, and your presence there also led to the passage of this unconstitutional gun bill, and it's going to cost money to defend, assuming anybody, you know, raises the

money, you know, to do something like this. And this is the reality, but look what we accomplished by being here. And my email box has just been filling up with so many of these patting themselves on the back kind of things that I just couldn't take it any longer. And it- Well, it's really hard. I mean, I got an email, not me,

you know, a mass email from House Rep Jeff Helfridge. And Helfridge actually was raising money during the session, which violates House rules because he wants to run for Senate. He wants Dan Bonham to seat. Dan Bonham can't run because he has kind of an excuse to ask this. But one of Alvrush's emails said, you know, send me money because I'm ready to lead. Wait a minute.

He wasn't leading in the House. He was a House Republican leader and quit because he couldn't handle leading those people. It was, you know, it was absolutely ridiculous to watch, and now all of a sudden he's ready to lead. I think really the disease which is afflicting the Republican caucuses, and the thing, and I know people are going to say, Bill, why are you begging on the Republican caucuses? The reason for this is that I expect better. I expect badness out of the Democratic caucus. The whole idea of voting Republican is that you're getting a more highly principled leader, at least you're hoping. That's what you're going to get here. And we definitely need a higher level of Republican candidate out there because if this is all we're getting to, if all they're going to do is look at their House Rep seat or their

state Senate seat as their job rather than as a calling and their job is to protect their people, I don't know where we go, you know, in the future in this state. Exactly, and the problem is there's an institutional philosophy, not only in the caucus who are the elected people, but in the party, that the answer is to elect more of us irrespective of what we believe, what we're willing to fight for, and what our values are, as long as we identify ourselves as Republicans. As if we had more anti-gun Republicans such as, let's say, Kevin Mannix, for example. You know, if we had more of those just with ours next to their name, that that would improve

the prospect for getting the tyrannical Democratic boot off our necks overall here in Southern Oregon. It's kind of how I'm looking at this. No, it's exactly what they say. And I've had this back and forth with legislators and party people, and they literally say, it doesn't matter what the beliefs are of these people, if we had a Republican majority, we would control the committees and the timing and the gavel and all that. Could you imagine if there were 30 Duane Yunkers in there? What would happen? Yeah, but they also claim, and they'll put this in writing, that once they have the majority,

once they've elected enough squishy, backsliding, left-leaning Republicans, that somehow magically that will give them the ability to convince these people who got elected as squishes, which wouldn't happen, but that's their belief, that they will convince them to start becoming patriotic conservatives. And this is so clearly backwards. If you're successful getting people elected by electing squishy, left-leaning Republicans, you've just taught them that that's the way to win. That's the way to win, yeah, exactly. And these are the big challenges I think the Republican Party in Oregon is facing. And plus, the Republican Party itself, the actual structure at the top,

doesn't seem to be much in a mood to do any kind of disciplining against the squishes. I got an email from the new Republican Party chair saying exactly this, our goal is to elect more Republicans. The long-term strategy is to elect more Republicans, and then we'll convince them all to become conservative. And you know what? There's an awful lot of people in the legislature who weren't there when I started working there. They don't remember that when you know when Oregon firearms was formed

And I'd worked for national gun groups before that But when Oregon firearms was formed the first session that we were active in the legislature was in 1999 Who was in control of both houses the Republicans and it was the Republicans under Kevin Mannix who were pushing gun control bills Which of course he's still doing there There was Jeanette Hamby. There was a whole long list. And I could probably remember most of their names, but all of these Republicans were liberals. Was Len Hannan a liberal? No, down in Ashland as a Senator, do you recall? Say that again? Len Hannan. Remember Len Hannan? Yeah, Len Hannan and, oh gosh, trying to remember a couple of the other ones, but there was Brady Adams and all of these local Republicans.

So electing Republicans did nothing for us. And you know, I got an email yesterday from a legislator saying, well, what do you want us to do? And I think, well, why don't you start standing up for someone? How do you turn this around? Well, you start turning it around by not accepting that there are people like Brian Iverson, who makes hundreds of thousands of dollars attacking conservatives like Noah Robinson. You know, you've got... Yeah, Noah Robinson was one of the rare bright spots, even though I wish he had walked out there when the gun bill was being

voted out. But you know, still a generally principled man man and I appreciate that. A principled guy who was attacked viciously and falsely by a Republican operative who also makes almost a hundred grand a year as the chief of staff for Republican Senator Anderson. And this is accepted, we have a consultant who convinced these people that the way to win is to be a swish. So when Robinson was running, his opponent, as you know, was pretending to live in the district. They created a fake organ... Republicans, Tim Kenope's son and Brian Iverson, created a fake gun organization that consisted of those two guys. I think a lot of people forgot about that. Right? And these are the sort of things we need to remember in a post-legislative session kind of deal because the reform... I'm not

expecting Democrats to get reformed, okay? All right? Democrats are going to do what Democrats do. The reform is needed in our party, in my opinion. Well, precisely. And when I get complaints or people criticize Oregon Firearms for pointing this out about Republicans, I mean, even had Bonham and others have said, well, Starrett's not helping us. Wait a minute. Nobody can address the attacks of your enemies while your own people are screwing you and our own people are screwing us

day after day after day with these excuses. You know, I mean, in this email I got yesterday from this one house rep, he was like defending Drazen. You know, I like Drazen. Wait a minute. Did you ever look at Drazen's voting record? Did you ever look at how she actually legislates? She legislates anti-police, pro-antifa.

I mean, she voted to change the lyrics of the state song because they contain the words free men. She tweeted how happy she was that Derek Chauvin was convicted in this whole fake George Floyd trial. I know. And we have to remember these things rather than just saying there's an R next to the name. And that is one of my goals here is try to saying

the R next to the name has become somewhat irrelevant in many cases for where they're gone from. It means nothing and maybe it never did mean anything but when when Drazen decided to come back into politics after losing the governor's race, her seat was held by a very conservative Republican. Is that James Heave? Yeah, Heave, yeah.

And when she started running, her whole campaign was we have to to take back our Republican seat. But it was held by a Republican. But you see, it was the wrong kind of Republican. Absolutely. It wasn't the approved Christine Drazen Republican. And on top of that, you know, two weeks before she started, she announced her campaign to run again, she sat down with the Clackamas County Republican leader and told him straight up she was not running again. Then boom, she files to run again. She screws James Heath, who'd been screwed by the caucus anyway, because he just wasn't the approved guy. And this is the leader. This is the person. And I don't know how popular she is amongst the caucus,

but if the Republicans are angry at people like you and I who call out what they're doing, maybe it's time for them to clean house. But the goal is not to create positive policy. The goal is to have the numbers, to have an R on the back of your jersey. And it does not matter how you legislate. If you as Republicans get up and say, yes, we support stealing the property of your jersey and it does not matter how you legislate. If you as Republicans get up and say, yes, we support stealing the property of law-abiding gun owners, I do not give a damn who's in control of the legislature because you are just as bad.

And I know that's a hard pill to swallow for many people. And yet, if we're going to actually move any kind of needle in the state of Oregon, there has to be a cleaning of House or a reform within the Republican Party. Because I assure you, the Democrats don't need reforming. As far as the Democrats are concerned, they're doing just fine. They're doing what they always said they would do. Exactly. they would do. The Democrats, the whole idea, what pushes Democrats, and you know, this is the new Democrats, of course, is the complete destruction of every normal institution in the state. We're going to tax people to death to give it to people who break the law and don't produce anything. In many cases, we're going to do it to reward the unions who put us in office, and we're not even

going to, we're not even going to equiv us in office, and we're not even going to equivocate. Oh yeah, we're not even going to pretend. We're not going to pretend. That's fine. You and I writing letters to them as Republicans is not going to change that, right? The idea is to essentially get people who are going to completely go to the mat against those kind of agendas. And I know that that has been a real tough sell within the Republican caucuses, the state legislature, okay? Kevin, I don't have a lot of more time on this one, but there's a reason why I wanted to keep bringing this up because the excuses are still coming out of the Republicans.

The good people who are there in the House and the Senate really have few friends backing them or really giving them much help. And until we figure that being a Republican is more than just being a squish with an R next to your name, that's not going to change. And that's some soul searching, I think, that needs to be done here in the state of Oregon, at least when it comes to Republican Party politics. That's why, and I know you watch this intently, that's why I have you on about this, because you're a truth teller. Truth tellers are not very popular within the caucus. I get that. All right?

Yeah. Well, thank you, Bill. Yeah. And thank you so much. And oh, by the way, before we take off, do you think that they were threatened yesterday? You know, the people in the press conference in DC about Epstein? I think this is going to get sucked down the memory hole very quickly. If you look at the major news sources, they're already not talking about it, and you have to go to places like Zero Hedge or their alternative sources because there's a lot of powerful people who are making damn sure that this information does not get out. The memo went

out then to everyone. Okay. Got it. Thank you, Kevin. I always appreciate the insight. Good conversation. All right, you take care. Kevin Starr at Oregon Firearms Federation, OregonFirearms.org, kind of focusing strictly on the politics of it this morning. This is KMED, KMED, HT1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants Pass. Get ready, country music fans. Jody Messina is coming to the Bi-Mart Amphitheater for an unforgettable night of hits and...