Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 07-27-26_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

Listener Steve responds on the ONA talk with a hospital experience, George Kramer from Ashland discusses his push to get a vote on the fees, L.A. Detective NILS GREVILLIUS of the Last Lawman - marijuana psychosis and crime and more great conversation.

This hour of the Bill Myers Show podcast is proudly sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. And start saving today. News Talk 1063, KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show. 7 o'clock on KMEDE and KMED HD. 1 Eagle Point Medford, KBXG grants pass.

I just ended up sharing and reading the social media thoughts of State Representative Dwayne Yonker in response to the criticism from the Oregon Nurses Association and how the ONA and the AFT have more or less partnered now. And it's way more than just negotiating wages at working conditions. It's essentially a takeover of the medical and education systems. Really, Wild Sam and Steve is here. Steve, you're in the hospital recently. Did you ever talk to a nurse about that by chance?

I was curious. Yes, I did. I was watching the news, and they were talking about. the fact that I was in Providence and that Providence was losing money. The nurses were nice to me. It was, you know. Hey, that's been my experience, too, dealing with the nurses. I am not criticizing individual nurses, but I'm looking at their parent organization that's

getting them the money, and it concerns me. That's exactly what I asked the nurse. I said, look, the hospital's gone broke, and you guys just got a race. how can you level that out? And she said, well, all I know is I'm making more money than I ever had. At the same time, the hospital was asking the nurses to cover more patients. So it went from four to five to six to eight patients. So if you're in the hospital, you're in a hospital bed, you can't get up.

The beds have alarms on them. And so if you have to go to the bathroom or you have some other thing that you need, you are stuck in bed longer and longer to try to get somebody to come help you, go to the bathroom, or change something, or do whatever needs to be done. Well, there has to be something is going to have to give. If you're not going to get better payout from Oregon Health Authority or from Oregon Health Plan, you know, to take an Oregon Health Plan patient or to take a Medicare patient or whatever kind of a patient, if you're not going to get full price for that, something has to give somewhere, Steve.

I'm just talking about the math has to add up one way or the other. Well, yes, what I was kind of asking the nurse, and she said, well, I don't have any control over that. And at the same time, I got the bill for the hospitalization, and I'm on Medicare, not Medicaid, and they paid about 40% of what was billed. So how did the hospital make up for the other 60%? Do we know? I have no idea. The bills are so confusing. You can't figure them out to begin with. Oh. And so all I did was look at how much they billed and how much Medicare paid, and it was about 40%. Is there a possibility that Oregon hospitals overcharge with the assumption that they're not going to be paid as much?

I have no idea, Bill. I don't know any of that. You know, I'm just trying to survive here, but I can look at things and see if they make sense. And it doesn't, there's no way that the hospital can survive on 40% of what they're billing. Now, maybe they're overbilling to try to, you know, balance things out. I don't know. Yeah, the story has that they overcharge cast patients or people who have private insurance. That's the story, at least. Yeah, well, it's possible. You know, would you look at how many days I was in the hospital and how much they charged?

It doesn't seem unreasonable. but I'm just an old guy trying to survive, you know. Yeah, I know. All right. Steve, I appreciate it. Thank you for the call there. I'll grab another one before news. Hi, K.M.

Hey, Amy D.N.E., good morning. Who's this? This is Minor Dave. Yeah, Dave. I just got an email from the U.S. Pardin office. They need you and Alan DeBore to sign a copy. I forward you on to you. There's some downloads in there where you have to print them out, sign them.

Then you can put them back up. in a PDF and send them back to me and I'll send them to them. Oh, okay. So your pardon may be moving forward, I guess? Well, yeah, it says it's still under review. Okay. But they need signed copies like this. When you're signing it, you're swearing that you're not related to me.

Oh. And by marriage or blood. All right. Last time I checked, I'm not. So last time I checked, I'm not related to you. All right. Well, no, and, you know, we can prove that by surnames. Well, I was thinking about DNA.

Maybe a DNA test would be an order. You could be my lung lost brother for all I know. I got it. I'm having fun with you, Dave. My mom's German and my dad's French Norman, so I don't think you're Scandinavian. All right. Well, I'll tell you what. Send it to me, and I'll get it signed off, and we'll send it to the fence.

I've ordered it to you. All right. I wanted you to the email. All right. Thank you, Dave. Been working really hard. Try to get Minor Day Parton for that living on the, you know, on the mining claim. He got convicted of that several years ago, and I guess he'd done it more than once, apparently.

He's just trying to get his record cleared. I wish they would. I hope President Trump will take a look at that. We will talk more coming up. George Kramer will join me here in just a few minutes. George is working hard to nip the fees in the bud over in the city of Ashland. I think he has a great agenda. and I'm hoping that other city residents will do much the same, but I'll get the latest from him coming up.

Stephen Westfall Roofing is growing. I've often said that when it comes time to your relationship between you and your government, and Mr. X, a friend of mine from East Mepford had often mentioned this, that your silence is your consent. And I'm proud to say that George Kramer, who, of course, is best known as a historic preservationist, he's not staying silent when it comes to the city of Ashland and the increasing fees. This is something I've been talking about in the city of Medford, city of Jacksonville, where I once lived, that things are feeling a little out of control when it comes to feed them, as it were. Feed them or freedom, I guess.

George Kramer joins the show right now. George, pleasure. Welcome. Thank you, Bill. George, you've been working with the city of Ashland and speaking out about working to get a citizen ballot initiative of one form. or another in an election soon where people get a chance to weigh in on the raising of fees here. I know you started that, what was it, late last year, maybe September, October of last year. Wasn't that the case?

Welcome. That's exactly right, yes. We got the petition language approved by the city attorney, and we filed the paperwork that you need to do to gather petition signatures in September. I went before city council in early November and asked them to just put this on the ballot and give people a voice on new fees and taxes on our utility bills. Okay. And I've been calling for this for a long time too, not because I don't think that cities have legitimate reasons to raise fees sometime, but that there appears to be, I don't know, little. thought given to it in some ways? It's like, well, we can't raise property taxes because no one will

vote for them. So we'll just lard it on top of a utility bill. Is that pretty much what's happening in Ashland, too? Well, I agree that cities, you know, costs go up for cities just like they do for the rest of us. Sure. In June of last year, the city raised two existing fees, one for public safety and one for wildfire and created an entirely new fee with a very little public comment to support our park. And all of those are valid expenses. I support all of those things. But the monthly burden of utility fees is incredibly regressive. If you are a single mom living or a senior living in an apartment, you pay the same fee as somebody living in a million dollar house. And I just didn't think the city had given enough thought. It was too easy for them to create that new revenue.

And so we put together this ballot measure to change the charter that would only allow the city to create a fee, to propose a fee, and then the people would have to vote to approve it. And I thought that would require the city to explore other options and to explain why a new fee was really the best or the only way to fund whatever they were trying to fund. And it would just slow the process down. This has been a growing trend in city governments all over Southern Oregon ever since the Jacksonville decision, court decision in the Court of Appeals or Supreme Court, I forget which one it was, but it was a number of years ago, once they started doing this. And my concern has always been that you put a fee like this on something that you absolutely cannot

say no to, and that would be, as an example, in the city of Medford, having sewage, having a sewer connection, or having a water bill. Or I know that I think my sister-in-law in the city of Jacksonville is getting pretty close to $200 a month in fees for our commercial property she has before one drop of water comes out of that faucet. What is it like at Ashland right now with its utility fees? Can you tell us, since you're a resident there? Well, it's a similar situation.

I have people contact me that say that they go out of town for a month or whatever and their bill simply to have a water meter and an electric meter in a city because, of course, in Nashville, the city also owns the electric utility. Yes. You can spend $150 a month simply to have a water meter and a power meter. Wow. And the measure that we've proposed is not related to the actual cost of operating utilities. You know, we buy our power from Bonneville power.

If Bonneville power raises our rates, I understand that the city needs to charge us more for electricity. That is perfectly understandable. And I agree with you like that. If the cost of the actual utility goes up, you can't really do much about that. That's the cost is what the cost is, right? Well, we want clean water and we want safe power. and I just sort of cost of life. What I reacted badly to was the city using its utility monopoly to fund things like parks,

which are great. But they should ask us if we want to pay more money than we already pay to support the park system. Maybe we would say yes, maybe we wouldn't. Right now, four people made that decision, four members of city council. And 30 days later, we all got a new. fee on our bills. And I just don't think that's enough public process. What has the reaction been so far? Because I know that last, I think it was last Monday, you were supposed to have a conversation with the city council and whether they were going

to put this on the ballot. What happened? Well, so as we collected, we collected 500 signatures, which we only needed 1,308, there was a glitch in how we did that. Collecting signatures is really complicated, probably intentionally so. And the county clerk rejected a bunch of our signatures. So I went back to City Council and said, okay, you all voted three to three, and the mayor broke the tie in November of 2025 and told us we needed to demonstrate that there was interest in this. And so we did.

We went out and collected 1,500 signatures. And I asked them to just, for the city to just put it on the ballot in November. And counsel, after a certain amount of discussion, voted five to one to direct staff to do that. Oh, so it is going to happen, though. Yeah. Well, they have to confirm. Staff has to pass a right resolution. Council has to vote on it on August 4th.

But assuming that, you know, everything goes the way it's intended, The city of Ashland agreed that there is interest in the public to vote on this. A couple of counselors said, I'm going to vote against it. I don't think it's a good idea, but I understand that the people have said they want the opportunity to vote on this issue, so we'll put it on the ballot. What was the reasoning given to call it a bad idea? Just curious. Was the counselor forthcoming about that? So they, I think basically it constrains their ability to raise revenue on the fly.

The mayor concurrently, or probably as a result of this whole charter amendment issue, the mayor proposed at that same meeting on, it was on Tuesday of last week, a whole new process around how they propose new fees, specific with more public process. She wants to do surveys and public meetings. and stuff like that. But ultimately, in her view, Mayor Graham's view, is that they take all this public input, then four people still make the decision. I'm a whole lot more comfortable with 50% plus one of the citizens of the voters of Ashland make that decision. I would agree with you. I would agree with you on that, George. I really do. And the idea is my concern has been that it's been

my belief, and it sounds like you may agree to an extent, that I don't know. if we'll in our cities be able to have any control of our budgetary process, really, if city council will just continue to add onto fees that you can't avoid paying. It's one thing if you're choosing to take a service, let's say, and then the fee for that goes up. But yeah, to just put it on there. The other, yeah, go ahead and it sounded like you wanted to respond to that. Well, I would agree.

I think that you said in your opening about how cities have legitimate expenses and that costs go up. Oregon's tax system is sort of artificially constrained in property taxes. Property taxes at least are proportional. If you live in a really big expensive house, you pay more taxes than if you live in a modest home. using fees, which is the option that is left to cities like Ashland, which have maximized their tax revenue under ballot measures 5 and 50, are incredibly regressive. I was the president of the Ashland Community Food Bank for a decade or something, and I know how many people struggle in Ashland despite appearances simply to keep food on their table or a roof over their head. It's an expensive, I mean, frankly, there is. no cheap place to live here in Southern Oregon, but Ashland is particularly expensive. I think we can

all agree on that, George. And food costs go up and gas prices go up and all the rest of it. And so we need to find a way where legitimate city needs don't fall dispercorsaliener people less able to afford them. My concern has been that I wonder sometimes if the cities negotiate their pay, employee pay as tough as they might when they know that there is, you know, well, we'll just raise a fee if there ends up being a problem. You know, the city of Medford ended up raising its public safety fee where I live. And then you read about 7 and 8 percent cost of living or raises and various others going into public employee union pay. And the challenge with that is that the private sector doesn't get anywhere near that. but yet we got to pay the fee.

It's like you have no way of working it. I think part of the support for this project, this charter amendment in Ashland, is entirely related to a month after they raised all of our fees in June of July of 2020, five, sorry, July 2025, because they didn't have enough money to pay for this stuff and so they had to raise fees,

a month later they made significant increases to administrative salaries. Yeah. And the public kind of said, well, wait a minute. You just said you didn't have any money to pay for parks and police, but now you've given everybody a 10% raise. How did that happen? And so I think that's why there's a lot of frustration in those funds

because of those two, the coupling of those two things didn't look good. Is this going to be on then you figure on the November, ballot of this year the general election or some other time? That's my understanding, yes. Assuming council votes on August 4th, it will be on the November ballot. Now, the wording of this would not be to actually hold down utility fees, but utility fees for something other than the utility itself. Is that fair assessment of what you're going for? Correct. It's for fees unrelated to the operation of Ashland utilities. And there's a lot of that in all the cities. There are definitely a lot. And then And the other thing, which your listeners may not be aware of, because Ashland owns its electric utility, unlike every other city in southern Oregon, we not only pay increased prices for the cost of the energy we use, but we have what's called an electric user's tax, which means they tax us 25% on the amount of electricity we use, which is a huge number.

So if they raise our rates 3%, which they did a month or two ago, the tax also, the revenue of the tax also goes up. And the electric user's tax goes directly into the general fund. It does not have anything to do with the operation of utility. It's simply a vehicle to collect revenue from the city of Ashland. But still a 25% tax on your power bill? Really? Yeah. Wow.

I call it the Shylock tax. I have suggested to city council that payday loans don't charge that much. George, I appreciate you share your thoughts on that. Hey, that's good news, though. I think this is a positive development, and I'm hoping that residents in other cities will use your action in the city of Ashland as a model to move forward. Well, we'll find out what the people of Ashland think about this in November, and hopefully they'll make a good decision.

All right. Hey, before you take off, though, since you are still a historical preservationist and such, were you involved with the historical society when it came to getting the old Mail Tribune records? Were you involved in that in any way? Just kind of curious. So when my brother was the executive director of S.OHS, he had begun the negotiations with Rosebud Media. And so I was aware of that. and then, but I did not have any direct relation to this actual transfer that finally happened. It's thrilling news.

I'm glad that those records were saved. But I didn't have anything directly to do with it. Yeah, well, I used to be emailing back and forth with Stephen Saslow occasionally, you know, the former owner of Rosebud Media back in the day. And then I don't have an email form any longer, but the part that I'm wondering is that I'm glad that all the microfeas and all the paper records and the pictures are now going to be over at southern Oregon Historical Society. I think that's wonderful.

They're going to be, it's going to take a month to go through all that, you know, just no doubt. Yeah. But what I, okay, go ahead and then I'll ask my final question. Everyone should realize, your viewer should realize that there is an incredible program called the Oregon newspaper digitization project, which is run by the U of O, housed at the UO. It's free, and you can go to that site and search online all of these papers. And so portions of the Mail Tribune are already there. Hopefully this new archive will ultimately end up at the newspaper digitization project also.

It's keyword searchable. It's incredible. You can look up your name and go back to the 1860s to see if anybody, anywhere in the state. It's a great system. Yeah, that is great. The part that I have not been able to find out for sure yet, and I don't know if you have any knowledge of this, is that for a number of years, there were way more Mail Tribunes that were all digital or mostly in the digital realm. And I'm kind of curious whatever happened to the digital stories. Do we know?

I don't know the answer to that. I know that the Mail Tribune started keeping its own digital archive. And I don't know if that got transferred to the UO or not. It would be great if it did. Yeah, I hope so, too. Hey, George, a pleasure, and thanks for joining the show, and good luck on your measure this November. I hope you win. All right. Thanks very much, Bill. Be well.

George Kramer, George Kramer from Ashland. It is 729 at KMED and KBXG. We've heard it all. It's up with you. Paid for by NHTSA. Welcome to the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. 732. Mills Gravilius will join me here in just a few minutes.

I always enjoy talking with him, L.A. Area Detective. Bob Shan, hello, Bob. What's going on with you? Good morning, Bill. I'm doing wonderful. Can we talk about the Mazda on Wheels Up Wednesday? Sure, we can certainly talk about that, but you got one, huh? Yeah. You listen to Eric? Fine. Yeah. All right, we'll talk about that on Wheels Up Wednesday, but talk to me about your taxes and your fees here, the City of Metford. Okay. The last time the City of Medford raised our fees was for the new fire station.

Now, Ryan Martin presented City Council with five options, all of them pulling money from different pots, of course. to do it. Two of those five options included not raising utility fees. And the council just glossed over those, said, oh, people got to have skin in the game, and they went with one of the other three options that did include raising utility fees. Now, the city council, you know, pretty much dialed this in at a study session, which nobody watches, and the media never reports on, and then the very next week voted on it. And not much, public input, not much knowledge to the public of the fact that they chose. Yeah, we need some input directly in a vote because it's not going to happen any other way. I would agree with

you, and especially as I look at what they could be doing with the ball stadium conversation and things, you know where this could take us. Oh, yeah, especially if they're just going to pull millions of dollars out of urban renewal, you know, without a vote of the people. strictly a vote of the council. The part that astounds me is that they'll pull money out of urban renewal, and they act as if this is free money. Well, it's money that never makes it to the city in the first place, you know? And so where would that get made up, you think? Well, just leave it at that.

Let's talk about your Mazda on Wednesday, okay, Bob? You take care. All right. Now, coming up after news, Nils Gravilius, just a great guy, wonderful, wonderful book. And I can't say enough. In fact, I'm going to do an Amazon review of it here the next day. I've wrapped it up here. I think I have like half a chapter because I skip around a little bit sometimes because I'll go to the beginning of it.

But like I say, it's just wonderful books called The Last Lawman. And we'll talk about that in some other news coming up. Sweetwater sanitation are your experts in the sanitation business with over Twitter. So check back frequently. Put money back in your pocket by visiting my organe deals.com and start saving today. Hi, I'm Jeff with Lithu Body and Paint. And I'm on KMEB. One of my favorite books of 2026, and I've finished it, other than maybe like half a chapter,

I've skipped around like I have just mentioned, because it's just kind of the way I read a book like Nils Grivilius is, The Last Lawman. I'll hold it up to the Facebook Live camera, two stories of a private detective. And many people write, and he said, Bill, who's that guy you were talking to? Really interesting. I said, yeah, I know. Because he's led an interesting life. In fact, I think one of his goals was to live alike like.

a life like Steve McQueen. Wasn't that right, Nils? Welcome back. Well, that's correct. And your audience should know that my mother didn't think too much of that. No. She said to me, I think I was 10, and I had just seen Popillon. And she demanded to know of me because my grades were so bad, what I expected to do with myself.

And I said, I'd like to have a life like a Steve McQueen movie. and she absolutely blew up. She said, not even Steve McQueen has that life. Yeah, I know. Well, you were actually born of a couple of progressive parents, I would dare say, right? Good way to describe them. Yeah, that's correct. My parents were believers in the FDR, LBJ sort of thing. I dare say my father by now, where he's still alive, probably would have changed a bit with the times, having seen the destruction that the Democrats ultimately brought. Your mother, is your mother still with us?

My mother died in 2021 at the height of the COVID fiasco. Oh, okay. I know. It's because I know that I guess you didn't see eye to eye in many ways, certainly politically. And did she ever come to peace or get with peace with your choice of a profession, you know, detective and, you know, being in the military? I died, Bill, my mother said to me, you are the least accomplished male in either lineage of your family. You have absolutely nothing to be proud of. What? Oh, my mother was just one of those women.

She left a Gaelic will also. She was a criminal lawyer. I'd tell you, to expect a woman like that to have a will, considering she had a few children. Well, let me tell you, she left no will at all, and that's a Gaelic will. In other words, here's a knife, here's a knife. Cut yourself, cut each other to pieces, see if I care. Oh, my gosh. Because, yeah, that's right.

I would imagine it was really quite a dogfight, so to speak. But on the other hand, your book wraps, and I don't want to give away too much of the book. I want people to buy it because, you know, frankly, this kind of book needs to be rewarded with sales. But you talked about dealing with the drug use of your sister. Isn't that right? Yeah, my sister, I have a younger sister who just, she fell into drugs at a young age, and she is my criminal analog bill. She is a survivor.

She is in her late 50s now and still running and gunning in the dope world. And I just don't know what's ever going to become of her. The rest of the family has had to pitch in here and there with various children that she had. And it's a very sad thing. She was the best-looking and the smartest of the three of us, if you can believe that, Bill. Probably not the best-looking anymore after years of drugging and running. It's very sad what became of this. And this happens to pretty much everybody who falls into the drug world.

Yeah. Many families have experienced this, Nils. I wanted to bring it speaking of which to a story which was out in California the other week. of Santa Cruz out in Santa Cruz in that neighborhood, maybe Capitola. I'm not exactly sure where it happened. But there was a stabbing at an elderly, like a beloved artist who had been stabbed out there by a 19-year-old. And it kind of brings the, well, kind of the drug world right to the front pages. I was wanting to explain what your take on this was because there's discussion of marijuana psychosis

in being a state which is legalized marijuana quite happily. This guy was 19 years old suffering from, I'm pretty sure, paranoid schizophrenia arising of high concentrate THC cannabis use. A cannabis has been a scourge in this state, like in Colorado. Like in Oregon, too. Yeah, driving under the influence accidents way up. All the tax revenue, the state people said that they were going to collect on this is not materialized because the gangsters are just illegal. distributing and evading the taxes. It has been a scourge. And this is just an example of it. Now, last year, the same man got arrested for saying that he wanted to do a mass shooting.

And because the, you know, the way the laws are written, somebody says they want to do this, they can't, they can't just indefinitely jail him. We've shut down our mental health system in this state. So finally he gets his wish and gets to stab some poor lady to death. Man. Well, the state people just stand by and let it happen. In my profession, I see this over and over again. People make very specific threats to do something bad. And there's a general threat versus a specific threat. A general threat puts you on notice. Bill Meyer, I'm going to kick your butt. That's a general threat. Yeah, it's a general

threat, not a specific one, but if you said, Bill Meyer, I want to, I'm going to take this knife, and I'm going to cut your throat, ear to ear, et cetera, et cetera. Different story? That kind of thing? Absolutely, yes, and I've had cases like that. I'm going to meet the boss at the time clock at the end of the shift on Friday, and I'm going to gun him down in front of the entire workforce, and then I'm going to go into the parking lot and eat the gun myself. That's a very specific threat, and I saw that. I saw a case like that. And then there's a certain part of the last lawman, by the way. In fact, I'm going to tell you, I think the most interesting, of course, it's all interesting to me,

but one of the more interesting of the chapters are to me when you get into the psychopaths, the psychopaths of the world these days. Some people think that psychopaths have no control over their actions, and therefore they're not responsible for what they do. A psychopath is not psychotic like a schizophrenic. is. The reason the schizophrenic is dangerous is he or she will act on threats that they perceive that don't actually exist. The psychopath, on the other hand, just doesn't care, has no conscience and will kill for a lack of amusement or as a business decision or because you're in the way of them getting something that they want. I put together a pretty good case that I've illustrated

in chapter 19 of the book on Brian Harrington, who was a one-man crime wave in Pasadena, whom I arrested for rape. And then he was in Los Angeles County Jail. He tried to hire the Mexican mafia to kill his victim and her children. He was acquitted of those charges. He served 17 years for rape. It was astounding. I remember that chapter, and you had mentioned that the Mexican mafia had more, had more morals, had more morals. Had more honored than Brian Harrington. Yeah, the Mexican mafia turned him into the sheriff's department. Wow, who would have ever thought, that kind of thing.

But your story or your books are filled with stories like that. One that I also found interesting was the one about Vito, Vito, VD. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And how, but bringing it back then to this, to this 19-year-old. with the marijuana psychosis. Do you have any evidence that the West Coast states especially because we're really big on, hey, cannabis is healthy,

don't smoke cigarettes that's bad for you, that'll kill you, but cannabis will make you healthy. I can't hope but notice that culture has declined somewhat over that. Do you think that the left coast states are ready to maybe reconsider? our policies in such matters? We would launch a national SIOP against cannabis like we did against tobacco, starting in about 1990. You remember, they reduced, as of 1989 or 88, 46% of the adult population used tobacco products. Well, it's down to 11% now.

And it's entirely attributable to the SIOP that they launched. It's not the taxes as much as it's the SIOP. the regular ads and not general ads like don't use drugs or this is your mind on drugs. How about testimony people whose lives had been ruined by cannabis use? You're never going to completely eradicate it. But if you reduce its use, particularly in the young, I think that we would be doing something very good for our culture, for our country. Do you think this is a generational issue? I was in the grocery store the other day, and there was, you could tell someone was, you know, the son of the mother.

And the mother who was probably in her 50s had a big 420 t-shirt on and just praising the whole idea of marijuana. And of course, they're stupid. It's called dope for a reason, man. Go ahead. I'm sorry, I interrupted. No, that's okay. The stench just rolled off of her. I'm thinking to myself, you're probably on public assistance.

too on top of this. So when she was in grade school, she was watching Cheech and Chong or something like that and thought it was the coolest, coolest, funniest thing in the world. And she's blind to the fact that she neuted herself professionally and intellectually and everything else emotionally through the use of this noxious, hypnotic that hasn't done anything for us. It's only done something to us as a culture. Would you see no benefit of some of the pain reduction for for cancer patients. Okay, so if you get a, if you get some sort of open-harched surgery, you're going to use fentanyl. It's going to be prescribed by a doctor, isn't it, right?

Yeah. That doesn't mean that I should continue walking around using fentanyl for the rest of my life. Now, the one thing I do know for sure, I think this whole idea of probably, this 19-year-old's probably going to claim some kind of mental illness, right, in the killing of this elderly woman in California? He is going to do that, and the Democrats and the public defender's office are going to do every single thing they can to make it so that he's out of jail within five years. One of my favorite quotes from your book, maybe think of this case. In fact, this is on page 177. A lawyer who believes in the death penalty is more likely to have a true sense of justice.

This is because death itself is often the correct punishment for murder. I do not want a lawyer who has blinded in themselves with an agenda that excludes justice. I really like that. I like that a lot. Well, a homicide merely denotes man-killing man, Bill. Murder's classic definition is the unlawful taking of the life of another with an abandoned and malignant heart. So for that crime, death is often the correct punishment. We don't just execute people to deter them, and it is a deterrent despite whatever balls or cronkite things or whatever, but it is also the appropriate punishment.

Yeah, and Oregon is against this agenda, too, Nils, I'm sorry to say. And here we are in a kind of red, more sensible part of the state, but still the state itself does not have much sense at all. The last lawman, it's a story of not just you growing up and your parents and your mother's interactions with you and all of this and that and but also your experience in Korea, in South Korea. You were there on the DMC there. But it was a lot of case after case after case after case. I'm just kind of curious, you know, at this point in your life, are you still an active detective? Are you still doing this day in and day out? What drives you to make that happen?

Well, Bill, I still have a caseload. I've got clients counting on me just before you and I got on the phone. I was contacted by a man that I've done a lot of work for who had a family member kidnapped 30 years ago in a foreign country, and it took quite a bit of work to get his family member back. And the damage done to that family, he's looking over his shoulder for the rest of his life. So the call that he's sending out to me probably involves something like figuring out if this new person involved in his son's life is a potential threat for a kidnapping.

Yeah. And I guess the answer is probably yes. The potential always exists. I mean, and if you've been in that position, you're going to look over your shoulder for the rest of your life. Nils, I want to ask you a question about policing because it's clear from the last lawman that you have a lot of praise for the L.A. Police Department, but I have a feeling it's the L.A. Police Department that was, or is it the one that still is? Could you clarify that? I'm going to clarify it this way. The men and women who wear the blue who hit the streets every single day in Metropolitan Los Angeles are a lot like the Portland Bureau of Police. they're willing to risk their lives to protect public safety.

Their pension is on the line every day from the bastards in suits and skirts who tell them what they can do, what they can't do, what's a great case, what you must never prosecute, etc. They are not the problem. It is the people in the suits and skirts that the idiots elect to office are the problem. It's not the men and women doing the work. You had mentioned once that, you know, a lot of times some people, like we civilians, I'm a civilian type there, we get a little bit concerned about the back-the-blue movement or which police cover for one another. But you brought up an issue with, I think it was Tom Hayden. I don't know. Was Tom Hayden talking with the mayor of Los Angeles or Tom Hayden?

Tom Bradley was the mayor of Los Angeles when I was first in the Pinkerton Service. and my boss, Ross Lansini, brought me into the... We were going to discuss something with Mayor Bradley and in the antechamber and we could hear shouting going on.

And Mayor Bradley was chuckling. And it turned out it was Senator Hayden, state Senator Hayden, you know, complaining at him, carping at him about how L.A. police officers

always protected each other when the chips were down. And Mayor Bradley had been a lieutenant on LAPD, and he said to him, Tom, what you don't understand is that police officers who will not protect each other won't protect the citizens of Los Angeles. And I remembered that quote. That's why I brought it up. And I thought that was so illustrative. Would you want to work in a snake pit where the man or woman that you have to push a patrol car around with to deal with the worst situations as someone you cannot trust?

So you have to tolerate then that tribalism in the blue, right? Well, there's always going to be a little bit of tribalism. If somebody wants the real flavor for it, how it used to be, read a Joe Wambow novel, like the New Centuriance, okay? They've gotten away from that just simply because of the way the type of people that they hire now. The suits have steered away from hiring combat veterans of the Navy Army, Marines, etc. and making them cops, they estimated that maybe more violence was done by men who were accustomed to violence. And what they've ultimately, what they're really discovering is that if they hire a feat self-effacing, self-doubting men and women who can't handle themselves in a fight,

when those people get scared in a fight, it goes from unpleasant confrontation to gun battle in seconds. Yeah, going to the gun very quickly rather than, uh, cooling things down or taking command in a different way, physically, perhaps. Well, or maybe using something less than lethal, like a long piece of oak, or some taco sauce in the face and getting proned out and frisked and may just sit on the curb and explain what your major malfunction is. You know, when you look at the Rodney King tape of Rodney King getting wailed on by cops,

it looks unpleasant, and it was unpleasant for Mr. King, right? but that didn't kill him. What killed him was his drug addiction. Nils Gruvilius. It's the last lawman. True story of a private detective. It's a great read. I really loved it.

And Nils, the one thing I would add is that there's only one thing missing from this novel. You know what that is? What's that? Scratch and sniff. Well, this isn't a novel, so of course there's no scratch. No, I meant novel, but I know it's a memoir. It's a better way of putting it, but still... That's okay, Bill.

It's all right, man. That's very funny. That's good. Maybe in my next one, I'll include that. You probably wouldn't want scratch and sniff, given the way you describe some of these roll-ups in many of your cases. But it's a wonderful read, and I appreciate you coming on. I also appreciate your point of view. And we'll have you back. Thanks so much.

Thank you very much, Bill. You stay safe in Southern Oregon. Certainly will. The last lawman, true stories of a private detective. This is the Bill Myers Show, and you're on KMED. When it comes time to build your dream home, your top of the hill masterpiece with style, luxury and fantastic views, you have a partner with Hughes.