Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 08-05-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

JC Shepard, founder of Wimkin Social Media - big free speech advocate, and we talk the challeneges in the modern culture. Fmr State Senator Baertschiger - why cant Oregon pay for all the stuff it used to from the General Fund, Huh??

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausorrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Uh-oh, I'm in trouble now because Gene called from Wilderville. I said, Gene, I have a guest segment coming up in, and I'll tell you, if you can call me back with your pebble in your shoe, I'll talk with you in a few minutes, and I'm just hoping she doesn't go grumpy on me in the next few. You know, I'm having fun with you, Gene. Okay. It's 11 minutes after he's seven.

Joining me right now is Jason Shepard. He's the founder of Wimkin's social media. Boy, you've had all sorts of IT entrepreneurial things going on for quite some time. One of the talk about the state of the media here. Anyway, Jason, it's a pleasure having you back on. Morning, sir. Thank you so much for having me. It's definitely always a pleasure to be here.

Hey, could you tell us first off about a number of things that you have created? You're trying to do all sorts of bypasses of the Borg, social media, well, that be a fair way of describing what you've done in your company. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting because I know the topic we're going to be talking about today, but it plays right into what we've done. We launched Wimkin social media, which stands for World Must Know Now, in honor of free speech in August of 2020. So technically, we really only had a Trump administration,

for three months before it ended up being outgoing. In January of 21, just basically just four months into our existence, the app stores banned us. We were number one on both Apple and Google Play in terms of, you know, trending and popularity, you know, and ever since, obviously, when the Biden administration got in in January of 21, we were banned. We had, you know, banned by every single advertiser that we could possibly work with at that point in time. And when we actually fought and beat the app stores after about nine months of the legal battle and got inclusion back in, the House Select Committee came in and tried to completely shut us down, blaming us for the alleged insurrection. and, you know, it's not easy to deal with those type of people when they're doing congressional inquiries and getting depositions with people's, you know, in their depositions they're talking about your, you know, your company without having any way to defend such. So it's been an absolute crazy, you know, situation, but this is why we made Wimkin.

This is why we did this because we saw this coming down the line. you know, it's something that we wanted to, we wanted to give a real constitutional platform that actually had features. I mean, we still to this day have way more than X. You can live stream for four hours. You can go live on, you know, any scene directly from your app to break news. You know, these are things that we designed Wimkin and with, obviously, we wanted to have people have the ability to not be censored to have the ability to go live right on scene. And I believe right now, Facebook is the only other platform that offers that. So we did this for the people, and I'm actually proud to announce that within the next 8 to 10 weeks, we should be listed on NASDAQ as a public company.

Interesting. The reason I wanted to ask you about this. Now, I'm streaming live right now on Facebook, godly enough, and that, of course, has been a real challenge, but they get really spicy with you. There are times that, you know, you start talking about the wrong things and magically bad things start to happen to you on Facebook and many other social media. media too. Now, when you were banned back in the day as an insurrectionist, what was the reason given for the app stores not to carry you? Why? So essentially what they were, believe it or not, they went just, they called us violence, which was interesting because we really, we don't support violence in any way, shape, or form.

We actually, anything, we only censor with any pornography, any type of nudity, and any type of post that has a criminal element. So if anybody was organizing against the government, anybody's threatening anybody, we certainly wouldn't have allowed that. But, of course, you know, we were number one in both after. So they came and they said, you know, we were literally violence and allowing violent posts. They didn't like the medical misinformation, which, you know, we allowed people talking about the COVID vaccine. Ah, okay. You know, that's probably, that was probably it more than anything, because I think more people were restricted, threatened, canceled over that, and probably even the January 6th issue, wouldn't you say? Him right down to it? You know what? I definitely believe that as a bulk. Our platform was certainly targeted. I mean, if you go to my personal website, J.C. Shepard.com, I have the letters from Benny Thompson himself, the demand letters that show that they were looking for every person.

piece of information that they thought we might have on every single user. We're talking down to credit card numbers. We're talking down to phone numbers, personal text messages in between users. So they were after us for a completely different ballgame, at least the government was, but no doubt you're 100% correct because you had the 19-year-old YouTube kids probably with purple hair and nose rings and such. Not that there's anything wrong with that. But you have those people in a room somewhere in California running YouTube.

don't have medical degrees saying that, oh, these doctors that are on here, we're going to take their countdown because it's just, you know, our opinion, not even a medical or clinical opinion, trumps theirs. Our narrative is this, and we're not allowing this. Yeah, that reminds me of someone I'll be talking to tomorrow. Dr. John, is it leaky? I forget if it's leaky or leak. But he was one of those doctors who was canceled for his views on the COVID vaccine back in the day.

And as if somehow their medical degrees and their virology degrees and their areas of study were somehow insufficient to combat a difference to have a difference of opinion over what was going on in the day, right? And you have the, yes, you have the co-inventor of MRNA talking about vaccinations, but his opinion is certainly not matter. you know, you had doctors like Sherry Tenpenny who were, you know, incredible doctors that literally lost their license to practice at this point in time because it just went against what mainstream media and big tech wanted to put out there. It went against the Biden administration. So, you know, that period was a very dark period in our lives, and that's what we don't want to see ever again. Are we out of the woods at this point, in your opinion, Jason? We are with this administration, yes. But, you know, we'd have.

no idea what's going to happen in 2026 with midterms in 2028. I mean, I firmly believe that Republicans will hold, but you just never know. I mean, the left is good at what they do. They're very good at misinformation campaigns, even though they called us out for, that was their whole thing, misinformation. And we have to cancel your account for this or this. But I think we are. And honestly, I've done a lot of interviews today on this subject, but, you know, I've said this on every interview. If you look at the UK right now, if you look at what they have as the Digital Services Act,

if Hillary Clinton won in 2016, I'm sorry, yeah, it's 2016, and if we had a Harris president right now, obviously we would be worse. We would probably be the worst off country for free speech.

So right now, I totally believe that we are safe. I mean, you're seeing this. It's interesting how USA goes away, but then now all the leftist propaganda. candidates are getting shut down, you know, for monetary reasons. So I think we're really seeing it. I think the fake news is about to be completely dead, and that's really where all this starts, in my opinion. Do you see anything in the Trump administration that might give you pause as far as this? Because I look at any administration, it's just power,

and, you know, we can like the president or dislike a president or whatever it is, but I always look at what happens. I was kind of concerned about all the push of conflating anti-Semitism with disagreeing with what the Israeli government might do. And I know they've been trying to do that. Is that something you deal with over at Wimkin? Yeah, I mean, we've – so we got a lot of people from Gab, which is a – it's known for you being kind of an anti-Semite platform. Yeah, I know.

Well familiar with Gab. I know. I'm not a member of it, but, yeah, we've all heard of it, sure. Yeah, we got about probably 40 or 50,000 of their members that came over. And, you know, realistically, I kind of wasn't ready. for that type of hate. But, you know, it does fall under free speech. But I understand what you're saying. I mean, the threat of locking individuals up because they're, you know, protesting Israel. And, you know, obviously, if you support Palestine, you're basically pro-Hamas. But, you know, that's definitely crossing a line that we have to be very, very careful, you know, to tow the correct way.

Because, you know, there has to be a crime. I mean, there has to be a crime if you're going to do something to, you know, indict somebody or punish somebody in any way. Because everybody in power, I don't think it, I don't think this is a left wing or a right wing thing. Whoever is in power always wants to find some way, ultimately, to restrict narrative that they're not a fan of and promote narratives that they do, control of the message. And this, of course, is what you're fighting, then with a free speech platform. You're always on the bubble, I would imagine, right? Always on the, you have to be watching out, no matter who's there. No doubt about it.

And, you know, hiding under the protections of the American Decency Act, Section 230, you know, as publishers, that's what we dealt with in the four years. I've not seen any leftists at all complain about being censored on any platform, potentially maybe on X a little bit. But, you know, you haven't seen the Trump administration. that he's had time in the first six months, but you've not seen him, in my opinion, weaponize anything, including the administration against, you know, censorship of the left. But that's the thing.

You know, clearly, I know you remember that the FBI had residency in Twitter offices. They were paying millions of dollars a year for access and telling them what to scrub and what not to scrub. You know, there's obviously two Supreme Court case now where, you know, I think Moody is title of one, it was Missouri and Texas, where, you know, those jurisdictions were suing the Biden administration because they were colluding with top big tech officials. I don't think you're seeing that from Trump. I don't think you will see that from Trump. I think, you know, basically the left is toppling right now. And it's starting with the big, you know,

propagandists like Stephen Colbert, which is a huge situation. But I think there's been about seven other relatively, nothing on that magnitude, but, you know, MSNBC shows, CNN, shows that have been canceled, and now the rumor is that CBS warnings is going to shut down. So, again, really interesting when that USA money isn't funneling in that they have to, you know, make changes. Jason Shepard is with me. He's the founder of Wimkin, entrepreneur, rather, and also a free speech advocate. I wanted to touch on something. Speaking of, you know, national media here, since you sort of broached the subject, the FCC chief over the weekend, Brandon Carr ended up, he was on a show. I think he was on Fox News show. and was discussing a desire to shift power away from national programming, national programmers to local broadcasters.

And he was saying a few weeks ago that he wanted everybody going back to being more in the public interest. And I appreciate that. But then to me, the devil is in the details. Would you agree with me on that, JC, anytime you want to say, well, we want you broadcasting in the public interest. Yep, we always want to do that. how do you define that right is it did you uh did you kind of wonder about that myself not that i think brandon car is a bad guy he's done some good things you know in the past here but what are you thinking no see that that's that's great in terms of you know looking at this with a completely open

mind because the subject we just broached you know i did i said i didn't really see trump pushing back so to speak or giving back with the left game to us for those many years but you know realistically um you got to take a look at that i mean I think it's more or less that, you know, Trump's base is so large, and everyone believes that there's fake news. I mean, we believe pretty much all legacy media is fake news. Let's just throw it out there and be honest. So this is something I believe that Brennan Carr actually does believe. I believe that he understands that so many of us have lost our ability to our reach, you know, with the censorship.

I mean, there was people making their living. Obviously, many, millions we're talking about on YouTube, you know, on TikTok. and they got banned just because of the vaccination issue. They got banned for basically any free speech issue that went against that big tech narrative. And those people lost their voices. You know, we're talking about people that are real influencers, that are real news reporters. And, you know, I like what running cars stated. But you have to walk that, or you've got to walk that line just to make sure that you're not pushing it

and doing what we had, you know, thrust upon us for the four years of the Biden administration. Exactly, because, you know, a tyrant is coming from a different administration. administration is still a tyrant, you know, one way or the other. And I know it's very, you know, it's difficult to resist grabbing, oh, let's use a Lord of the Ring analogy, my precious, you know, you've got the power and this is, and this is tough. And he wanted to have more power in local broadcasting and local media providers, which I admire, I like that aspect. of it, though. But one of the reasons why I think the big networks got so successful is because of the economies of scale when you say that's been part of it, because just saying, hey, we want

you to do more in the local interest, and that's really great, but that doesn't pay for it. You know what I'm getting out here? You know, these days? I do. The economics of it. Indeed. And then, you know, you see, you know, the defunding of NPR and stuff what happened where, you know, now, you know, national public, I forget what their actual, maybe it's called NPC, and I apologize for that. I think it's a corporation for public broadcasting shutting down.

That's it, yes, yep. You know, that is, now that's done. Now all the local stations, which it's pretty interesting, you know, because they do want to localize media, a lot of them that were being funded were absolutely opinion-based only. There was no fact-based, there was really no news reporting. It was pretty much just all anti-Republican or all. all anti-Trump. So it's good to see those people go away, and I think that's going to fare up a lot of, you know, the localized media. And I think truly that it's long overdue.

I mean, again, you just don't want to get into censoring others. Yeah, and that's just it. But is the censoring others taking the money away? That's what the left will say right now about NPR. And Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Well, I'll give you an example of our local newspaper. One of our local newspapers was doing a hand-wringing story about a station on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation, KWSO, and they had been getting a check from the federal government $50,000 a month because they had $600,000 grant each year that they were doing. That's an incredible amount of money for a small town radio station to be taking a check there. And I would imagine that that's going to have a really serious impact on that. But

I guess, you know, if Uncle Sugar can choose to give you the $600,000, it can be taken away, too, I guess. It's the way to look at it. Well, that's the thing. I mean, obviously, we're never, I don't see, I don't see a time when we won't really be as divided as we are right now moving forward, but, you know, we're talking $1.5 billion in taxpayer money. Why would I want to pay for these leftist propaganda stations? Why would you? Why would anybody want to pay for anything that's not truthful media? So I think it's our right. I think it's because it was publicly funded that, you know, it's certainly the best move. And we'll watch the dominoes fall where they will, you know. And I think, again, the legacy media and mainstream media, obviously in big tech

has done an incredible job outing themselves. So I'm all for this. It's just, again, you know, me being a free speech absolutist, I am an absolutist, and I don't want to send to the left. I have... Yeah, you're okay with the cleansing, which is going on then, essentially. Yeah, indeed. I'm definitely, I mean, I want it to be fair for everybody,

and I'll be honest with you, you know, on my Facebook page, which has about 200,000 people, and Facebook doesn't really matter for free speech, but, you know, it does in terms of, you know, what I believe in. And they're like, you know, all of our supporters and people on Wimkin as well, why don't you block the trolls? Why are you letting these trolls here?

Because they have a right to say what they want to say. It's their First Amendment right. And that doesn't change. And so, you know, that's just how I, that's how I live my life, I guess, at this point in time. I mean, I'd never thought that this would be a crusade of mine, so to speak. But, you know, I learned there's no way possible I would have learned what I've learned so far about the government and, you know, how something like that. like those four years we just lived through could truly be because nobody would have ever known.

I mean, Bill, if you want to, I would invite you to go read the paperwork that Benny Thompson sent to, you know, basically subpoena us to testify in Congress over January 6th. So it's going to, it would turn your stomach what they thought they were able to do and how they worked the Constitution. And where can you see that? That is at j.c.shepard.com. That's J-C-S-H-E-2-P-E-S-N-P-A-R-D.com, and it's under J-C-S-E-S-Fight there. I think that you will be absolutely astounded at what you will see, and this is something the

government asked for every, I mean, enough to turn over, every piece of information they thought that we had, including credit card numbers, including personal messages in between people, which are encrypted, by the way, and we never had credit card numbers and never would, and they thought they were entitled to this. They also wanted us to not let anyone delete their accounts. So they were trying to affect our business. So it's absolutely, truly incredible when you read it. Okay.

I'm going to put all your information up for Wimkin's social meeting. You've done a lot of other things here too. And how is date on the right? You have an app, an app out there for people who are on the right wing to be able to find love, date on the right. And I would imagine it's a little bit different from the other ones like. like what, Grindr, and there's a bunch of them. How is that working out so far? Just curious.

Well, Grindr is a very different type of app that is actually men for men. Oh, sorry, I didn't know. So I only know because it's... I'm so... I am so knave. Okay. Well, you know what? Honestly, the left can't define what a woman is, so who the heck if they actually know what that means.

But, you know, so I'll be honest with you. You said right wing that it's not what that stands for. it's basically, so the app obviously date on the right, Doder, it's one that doesed, and this is something that it's common sense, you know, because every single thing you do on a mainstream

dating app, like Bumble, like Tinder, there's other ones, obviously, it's all swipe left if you like to come, literally. That's what it all comes down to. And, you know, there's literally, I don't know, 17, 18 pronouns that they use on there.

The, I guess, probably 30 or 40 sexual preferences, this is what you see is so prevalent on every other app. So we created something that's basically common sense. There's two genders. There's, I guess, four sexual preferences. I mean, you don't really state that on there. You just state, I'm here for a man. I'm here for a woman. Right.

You know, you have to verify. We have, you know, facial recognition to make sure that every person is real on this site. there's live streaming so I'm sorry not live streaming there's you can video chat the person that you're talking to for much added safety I can't believe Tinder I can't believe Bumble and those big ones don't offer that because obviously everyone's heard the term catfishing by now and you know you have people that are going to meet people in real life and this is the best way to verify hey I've talked to you on video yeah with the rise of of artificial intelligence what do you think can be done

about the bot infestation in the social media world. Is there anything that can really be done? Because I'm more concerned about the bots more than anything else, that, you know, automatic responses. You have, you know, you put up something about a death that happened in your family, and all of a sudden, here come the bots on social media, saying, oh, here, we can help you, go here. And it's just like automatically, boom, like that.

Is there anything can be done in your view? Yeah, you can do what Wimkin does. I mean, we don't have anywhere near the budget of Facebook. We don't near, or, you know, obviously no one has Elon Musk's budget, but we approve every single user when they sign up. So we're looking at IP address. We're looking, you know, we're forcing them to upload any type of image, so a bot can't do that.

You know, and when we shut these safeguards off, we get about truly, I'd say, probably 30 sign-ups, minute that are bought. So you always have a script that's trying to attack you. Yeah. I've wondered how much of most social media is out there that have the bots. How much of it's real and how much is fake? And I'll bet there's a lot more fake than we think going on. There's no doubt. I mean, honestly, when you probably recall when Musk was buying X, he came out and said more than 50% of what they report as their users are bought. But I'll be honest with you. X still has a massive.

bought problem. I mean, I use that platform very, very rarely, and I probably have maybe put up about 300 tweets in my life. I only went back after Musk bought it. And I have probably a thousand messages that are spam, three times more than what I actually put in terms of content onto the site. So, you know, there's massive amounts of it. Obviously, there's propagandists that are creating accounts. And if you can just do, you know, a cursory stuff. search of one thing, a bot, something you suspect to be a bot account stated in response to your post or, you know, anything. Just run a search on that, and you'll find that same exact phrase, you know, a million

times on X and a million times on Facebook. So they have the absolute ability to do whatever they want with these bots, but they want them there. It creates them advertising revenue, plain and simple. Yeah. It's still traffic. Traffic is traffic, whether it's real or not, but it still counts on the stats, right? That's what we're looking at.

That's exactly right, because every single time, and this goes for every single person that's ever used Facebook, every four to five scrolls, meaning that, you know, while you're scrolling, every four or five posts, you just made them money because they charge per the impression of your ad, meaning how many times it's seen. It doesn't matter about clicks. It doesn't matter about anything. So those bots are driving that traffic. It's showing that impressions, and it's truly fraud.

I appreciate the take on this. I'm glad you're not doing that and doing your best to tamp it down. Jason Shepard once again, founder of Wimken Social Media. I'll get all your information up there. I definitely want to take a look at the January 6th committee's investigation, everything they were asking for you. It's good to look at that and remember. Jason, thanks so much for the call. Great having you on, okay? Be well. Thank you. Always a pleasure. Thanks. Jason Shepard. 735 at KMED. It's one of the most wonderful times of the year. With the kids swimming and yelling and everyone passing the sunscreen to smear, it's one of the most wonderful times of the year.

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News brought to you by Millette Construction, specializing in foundation repair and replacement. Get on solid ground. Visit milletconstruction.com. From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on. Three more Oregon counties are now under drought declarations, taking the total to five so far this year. Governor Tina Kotech declared emergencies for Douglas Morrow and Union counties following a request from the Oregon Drowt Readiness Council. Oregon State Police are searching for people who illegally took salmon in Jackson County. The fish were stolen from a fish trap at the Coles River fish hatchery and trail.

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Another person has lost $60,000. In the scam, the suspect convinces the victim they're with the federal government and the money is at risk. It's becoming a prevalent scam in the northwest. Bill London, KMED. Millet Construction has been a general contractor for 40 years. For the last 20 years, they've specialized in foundation repair and replacement. If you have sloping floors, cracks and walls, and windows and doors that are hard to open, you have a foundation problem that's only getting worse.

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Overwhelmingly, the answer was a pre-buyers inspection. Investing a little upfront can save you thousands later. Unfortunately, we see a lot of post-buyer inspections when it's often too late. If you're thinking about a new-to-you vehicle, please get a pre-buyer's inspection with us or someone else you trust. Kelly's Automotive Service, where we service your vehicle, but take care of you. I'm Tony Dusty with Dusty's transmissions, and I'm on DMED. 20 before 8, state senator, former state senator, I should say, Herman Beardziger rejoins the program. Now we're messing with it now this morning, Herman.

Welcome back, and I wanted to talk about what has happened to the State General Fund. because everything that I see coming out of Salem right now seems to be about backfilling and paying for stuff that the state of Oregon has already or at least traditionally paid for whether it is parks whether it is you know going and looking at the ocean out there when you go to the coast those sort of things

whether it is fighting wildfire and whether it is you know building roads in freeways doing things like that what do you think in this morning as we find ourselves up against special sessions and closing of colleges and everything else. What's going on? What happened? What do you think?

Well, listen, what they want to do is they want to shift the cost of all these things, the parks, and you name it, just go down. And they want to shift that to fees, and then that frees up more general fund money. And we have a lot of general fund money because we, you know, We're like the eight highest income tax state in the union. Yeah, you get pretty close to 10% very quickly in the state of Oregon, don't you? Oh, yeah. And so they would rather, they want to take that general fund money because think about it's discretionary money.

They can do anything they want with it. And they want to fund things like the Oregon Drought Readiness Council. Do you know what that is? I'm afraid to ask what the Oregon Drought Readiness Council is, but something tells me it is. it is likely a climate change front group. Absolutely. So it's a standing body that reviews drought conditions and recommendation, drought declarations to the governor. It's co-chaired by the Oregon Water Resource Department and the Oregon Office of Emergency Management,

which includes representatives from state agencies with expertise in natural resources, public health, and emergency management. Our council plays a critical role in the state's response to drought and evaluation request, assessing conditions, and advising the governor. So this has been, part of what we're seeing now with the growth of the fee then is about growing the government in general. They can't grow the income tax any longer. So this is why they're now talking about, if you want to go to Harris State Beach Park as an example, just to look at the ocean. We've all done that, right? You just go there, you pull up there. They're going to be putting a $10 permit fee on that.

Now, granted, that permit is good for a year. But still, it was something that, you know, just pulling up to the park and looking at the ocean, was something that never cost you any money, you know, up to this point. Well, if I remember, right, we took some of the Oregon lottery money, which was supposed to be for the school. Yes. And the children, that's why we got the Oregon lottery for the children, and now it's used for everything under the sun. Including conservation easements, right, so we can lock up more land, right?

That kind of thing. Right. So what the deal is is they want to free up more general fund money so they can spend it on their people to keep those votes. A good example is, just look what happened to Nashville here lately. They got a bunch of money for the artsy people over there. Oh, well, we're laying off ODOT employees. We can throw a few million that artsy folks over in Ashland. Oh, it's that the grant for Oregon.

That was the grant for Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Right. Is that what you were talking about? Yeah. Right. Yeah. And by the way, this is the woke group of artists there that are doing a lot of plays that many people have not been real happy with.

So the state is going to subsidize more of that. But that's an example of a friend. I guess if you're a friend of Jeff or a friend of Pam, right? That's what it counted. Right. And then look at the money that they're shoving into NGOs now in the state. That's the new one because then there's, you know, you don't have to audit it or anything. And so they can just, so they're giving out, they're taking our hard-earned money because they're always remember the general fund money, you know where it comes from?

People that get up and go to work every day. That's right. the general fund money comes from, and they're giving it to all the people that support the Democrat Party. Yeah? I guess we're just looking at the ultimate endgame then of a corrupt single-party state, right? Isn't that what we're dealing with?

Absolutely. You know, like this drought readiness thing and a declaration of drop, that's just another, oh, let's scare everybody into panic mode because of climate. change. You know that's what that's about, Bill. And by the way, here's your tax credit for an electric car. Are we still doing those? I imagine we are in Oregon. Oh, it's so much easier to control people that are afraid, and that's what they do. Everything's an emergency. Emergency, emergency, emergency. You know, things happen.

You know, droughts, they pretend like this drought stuff is new. Drows have been forever, and if you look up the definition of drought, it's just when, you don't have what, you know, the average precipitation. So I don't know how they convoluted, how they figure this all out, you know. But everything, drought, drought, drought, drought, drought, drought, it must be climate change. However, droughts have been going on forever. I wanted to touch on something else then. So everything that we're seeing coming out of Salem right now is based on trying to shift additional costs

from what used to be paid out of our income taxes, and there is plenty of money coming from the income taxes, they want that then going to their specialty groups, the people who are supporting Democratic rule in the state of Oregon, Democrat Party rule, I would there say. My question for you then is where is the opposition party? And I'm speaking about our Republicans. You were a state senator.

You understood this. and I contrast with what's going on here in the state of Oregon, Herman, with what is going on in the state of Texas. I look in the state of Texas, and even though I know that the Republicans are in control there, and they have the legislative power to redistrict, the Democrats are taking their quorum power, and they left, and they went to Chicago,

where they're being protected right now. And I'm shaking my head in admiration for the Democrats, That's not that I agree with their agenda, but the fact is they took the power and they used it. And our Republicans are turning over on their back like a scared puppy, I said this earlier, and wetting themselves and working to cooperate. What happened? What happened in the state of Oregon? What I would be interested in knowing is all those Democrats here in Oregon that wanted me arrested and drugged back to the Capitol when we denied quorum.

I wonder, how do they feel about the Democrats in Texas right now? Wouldn't that be interesting to know how they feel about that? That would be an interesting survey. I'll bet this. Well, this is different. This is different. This is about a fight against democracy that Trump is doing. Oh, democracy.

They can't even figure out that we don't live in a democracy. We live in a republic. I know, I know. But they want to make a democracy for sure, though. But in all seriousness, and this is something I've talked to Dwayne. And you know what? Everybody else I hear where? is your fight and I hear it and I'm reading that we have both the Senate and the

House leaders that are negotiating right now with the Democrats to provide quorum so that they can raise the gas taxes and help the Democrats complete their situation of giving more more stuff to the people that they like and transferring more expenses to the people who work for a living again like you've been talking about? Where's the fight? Yeah, I don't know. I just don't know. You have a different set of people in there. I do know. Always remember, Bill, I mean, we did a lot of, we killed a lot of bad legislation when we did that, but it was hard to keep that caucus together. I know it was. It's not an easy job. First, you have to convince them this is what we need to do. And even then,

when we did that, we still had Senator Kadoop that refused to go. But I think the other part about it, though, is that you need leaders who actually believe in using their power. I mean, isn't that part of the issue? Well, yeah. I mean, you have to really, as a caucus leader, you've got to put on your best argument and convince your members that that's what you need to do, you know? So it's definitely a conversation of persuasion, and until you can get it.

to that point, but, you know, you've got too many senators like Brock Smith who believe that they just, oh, you know, I've waited all my life to be senator. I don't, I can't do anything to, you know, to diminish that. I can't, you know. Yeah, but the dim bulbs out on the coast continue to reelect that toad. And there you go. There you go. Now, I don't know him personally. I shouldn't call him a, it's just my opinion, but, you know, but you're right. He did say that. on the record and to me it's like to me you have disqualified yourself you have made it clear that the job of being a senator and having the title of the senator is more important than actually representing the best interests of your people I guess that's what I'm getting at here

and the Democrats don't seem to mind going to the mat at least in Texas they don't mind that and and I admire that it's like where it happened is this is this only an Oregon Republican thing? Or is this a situation where you have lots of Christians that are conservatives that call themselves conservatives? And, well, we have to be nice. We have to reach across the aisle. You know darn well that politics is a dirty knuckle-busting kind of job to do sometimes, isn't it? Isn't that what it's for? And don't you need those kind of people that are willing to do it? Yeah, it's a hard game to play. It's a hard game to play. and you're dealing with a lot of different personalities and a lot of different issues

and you're up against a lot of different pressures. I mean, you know, when I was doing it, you know, the Senate president and the governor was offering all my caucus members, everything under the sun, if they would defect. And so that's hard to combat, Bill. Because I don't have the purse like they do. I can't say, hey, if you deny quorum, I'll make sure you get a million dollars for your district or whatever. I don't, you know, as a caucus leader, you don't have that power. So, you know, but I try to always remember that my base is who elected me.

And some people say, well, you represent everybody. Then why would you say then that, you know, you're a Republican and you're in the Senate right now. Let's look at the state senators and the state reps right now. August 29th, they're going in for a one-day special session, and every Republican could deny quorum to that group of Democrats, and they can't pass the taxes. Now, Republicans will be talking about how, hey, these taxes are bad, these horrible gas taxes at $100 extra dollars to register your car, all these other costs that will be coming through this special session, and they run on keeping the cost of living low.

How can the Republicans, in your view, square their so-called principles with helping the Democrats raise all of our taxes, August 29th? What are you hearing? Have you been hearing anything from your former colleagues? You know, I don't think people are paying that close of attention, Bill. I think there's a small minority of people that actually. follow this stuff. And, you know, we're already at, what, 52 cents a gallon in Oregon? Yeah. 52 cents between the federal and state taxes. And the federal tax, I believe,

is 18. So, you know, the lion's share is Oregon. And you want to raise that. But, you know, that plays into the Democrat environmentalist handbook. I know, but the point is, is that, you know, if Republicans are there, it is a bipartisan tax. You know that. Yes, it is because, you know, it's a special session, and they're in, they are giving quorum, you know, I think I'd play a little more hardball, but, you know, I don't know what's going on within those caucuses, and I do realize if you can't, if you can't get all the people in the caucus to do it, if you got to.

And what happens is you get one or two defectors, and you'll have three. Actually, I can call them defectors. But you get... No, I think defectors. I think defector is the proper term. Let's be honest, that's what's going on there. The Tim Knobs of the world. We know how that worked, you know, when you're...

I understand. You're always going to get that sort of thing. And why should it matter whether the people are paying attention right now? And that's the part that I find irritating, because almost all of these... Republicans run under the guise of we're going to keep your cost of living low and we're going to be against tax increases, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I don't know any of those Republicans that said, you know, I'd like to raise the gas tax and I'd like to put another hundred bucks on your title cost, you know, for registering your

vehicle. I'll recall any of those Republicans. It goes back to the makeup of the caucus. I mean, I will tell you when Tim Canope, you know, when he wouldn't go with us the first time he was going to be our emissary, a self-appointed, of course. I made it clear in a public announcement that he was not representing the caucus. But he was also working really, really hard at getting one more person in the caucus to join him, because if he did, they would have a quorum. And it was really, really difficult, but we pulled it off. And then, if you remember, after Mr.

Kenope realized he couldn't get another member. He finally did join us. Okay. So, because he knew that the consequences from his constituents of him staying behind would not be so good. My concern here is that I'm trying to, you know, help people. I want, I would like to see more Republicans against the Democrats in the state of Oregon legislature to provide balance, to give them and to you know temper the excess the excess of a super majority right just and that's it tempering the excess but it's really hard to suggest voting for republicans when they have power and it doesn't get used the the one thing and i got to tell you i was watching fox news last night and they had one of those uh one of those democrats one of those democrats that was

talking about uh why they denied quorum over in texas they said this is the only parliamentary method that we have to be able to have our constituents heard. And so they told the truth. And that person told the truth. Absolutely right. And yet they shy away from this in Oregon, like a, they back away from it like the proverbial Georgia Mule, backing up, backing up, back and up. What are they afraid of here, Herman? What do you think? What denial of, what denial of quorum does that forces the parties to sit down and negotiate a solution? It absolutely forces them, you know? And that's why, you know, I think it was written into our Constitution and a lot of other constitutions to have quorums just for that. It's for the minority so that you

absolutely have to come up with some sort of agreement. A lot of people disagree with me on that. And then I say, okay, so why is the quorum in our Constitution? It's what's it for that? They don't have an answer. They don't have an answer for you. Well, it's obvious why that's there. It's there to protect the minority. And believe me, with Republicans in the minority, you would think that they would be willing to use this.

And this is why it's getting really, really tough. And I don't know if this is an Oregon Republican Party issue, which is another kettle of stinky fish, you know, at the moment. All right. Final question I would have for you this morning. what do you see as the future of the state university system because I was talking with Dr. Powers yesterday. He said that it wasn't that many years ago that the general fund paid for 70% of what it took to run SOU. And now it's like flipped. It's down to about 30%, 30, 35%. There's another example, you know, they don't.

But I will tell you, I'm going to search back probably 10 years, maybe 12 years when I was on the education committee. We were looking at predictions of the university system in Oregon, and I think public funding universities are going to have a tough road to hoe in the future for a couple of seasons. One is funding. The other is they just don't have as many people, you know, going to the universities anymore. So it's a demographic, and it's a funding problem. And I don't know if Southern Oregon University or a couple other of those in the universities. the state of Oregon are going to survive this. I really don't know. And I'm going back. We were talking about that 12 years ago, 14 years ago, you know, looking at the projections based on

demographics and funding. So, you know, and so, and I... What was that, Herman? Herman, we just lost you. Complete that thought, and then I'll cut you loose, okay? Are you there? Yeah, yeah, your phone disappeared for a second. So... Oh, I wonder why. I wasn't moving. Anyway, so, you know, I've had discussions with past president, Southern Oregon University,

and we all agree we recognize the challenges of the universities, and it's not just Oregon, it's across the country, because the demographics have shifted so much that we just don't have that many people. So it's probably going to mean that some of the universities are going to go away. They just simply, you know, there's no reason for it. You know, Oregon State University, which is a land grant university, it'll probably stay okay. Yeah. And the University of Oregon are probably, but there's going to be a few of them that are going to struggle and maybe disappear, sadly.

Okay. That's just the reality then. All right. And I'm talking public, universities, not private. All right. Very good. Herman, I appreciate the take. Thank you very much.

And I would still encourage these Republicans should be telling the, uh, the, uh, Democrats, no, we're not going to give you your support to raise taxes. They won't do anything. They won't do anything to audit ODOT and get it efficient and get it back into some semblance of order. The first reaction is just to raise the taxes. And I think that's a dangerous thing for the Republicans to help to help out with the Democrats, don't you? Well, I would like to see the Republicans that sit on Ways and Means Committee to actually give us a low down of where the general fund money is going, you know? I mean, even, you know, Betsy Johnson was a co-chair of that, and she ground on that like crazy. I don't hear anything about ways

and means anymore, and there's Republicans sitting on that committee, and I'd sure like to know how are they spending our money. All right, I'm going to look up the Republicans and see if any of them can talk, you know, about this, okay? There you go. All right. Because my opinion bill it's not an income problem in Oregon it's a it's a spending problem it always is the spending problem Herman we know that it's always ended up being that they expand everything around it and then they want to put a fee box in front of anything you like in the state of Oregon okay I appreciate I appreciate the call all right take care former state senator Herman berchiger at KMED and KMED HD one Eagle Point Medford KBXG ranch pass this is insurance agent a he sells for

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This product is not intended to diagnose, pre-cure, or prevent any disease. It's the Bill Meyer Show on KMED, Southern Oregon's Place to Talk. KMED and KMEDD-HD-1 Eagle Point Method for KBXC grants pass, and Monica is on Pebble in your shoe Tuesday. Hi, Monica. How are you? Hi. Well, my paddle on my shoe kind of goes in with your guys' conversation. On Kobe this morning, they were telling us that over $2 million just went to Shakespeare.

I guess it's good to be a friend of Pam or a friend of Jeff, that kind of thing? Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then there was probably like a million more that went to other arts. By the way, I would remind people that they lost their, or, well, they got rid of their artistic director. I know. The person who was in charge of putting out plays that nobody wanted to go see.

Right. I was really glad about that. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I just thought, I was just the thing. I'm kind of on the run here. But I was just kind of listening in on that, and I'm going, well, there's two million. It could go to something, couldn't it?

Yeah, exactly. There's no need for that to have gone to OSF. Not that I haven't asked to grind against OSF, but it needs to live or die on its ability to attract people to go see the plays. Okay? Right. And that means don't do your DEI. Don't do your woke stuff. Don't go to see how many transgendered amputees you can have playing Richard, okay?

You know, it's just, I don't know if they're doing that yet, but I needed that. Okay. All right. Thanks, Bill. Okay. Speaking of which, not the transgender amputees, but, you know, the fight against that agenda, State Representative Dwayne Yunker is going to join the show here in a few minutes because I find it fascinating that there seems to be very, well, you know,

there's actually some free speech support coming from the liberal Oregonian newspaper, to Dwayne's plight as he's being investigated by the Equity Committee Yeah That's the way it feels sometimes Yeah

Yeah really But the equity committee Well the equity committee Rather is more like the Yeah That's what you put the scary air quotes Like we say We're going to talk with him about that

It's quite interesting And I'm going to ask him why it appears the Republicans are there to help the Democrats raise taxes while they will then go and run for re-election next year, at least some of them, and say, I'm going to protect you from raising taxes. Well, then why would you provide quorum for a special session? It's a good question. Maybe Dwayne can get in on that and other things.