Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 08-11-25_MONDAY_7AM

Episode Date: August 11, 2025

Dr. Carole Lieberman digs into the latest Trump executive order telling the homeless to move out of DC, Richard Emmons at Oregon Eagle Dot Com has more on homeless, article in the latest issue indicates homeless funding is big biz in PDX.

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 Klausurrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Dr. Carol Lieberman, MDMPH, joins the program. We always appreciate her take on America's mental health. Not that we have a collective mental health, but we can certainly comment about things which are going on. I don't know. Dr. Carroll, welcome back. Good to have you on.

Thank you so much. But before we get started, though, best place to find out everything about Dr. Carroll, because you have so many activities, there's your books, there's your podcast, and various other things. Where's the one-stop clearinghouse to find out about everything you do? Well, Twitter, you know, I do rant on Twitter a lot, and my handle is Dr. D. R. Carroll, C-A-R-O-L-E-M-D. And then, of course, terrorist therapist.com is another good one. All right, very good. Hey, doctor, I wanted to bring you on here because yesterday, President Trump ended up putting out an executive order, kind of going beyond the earlier executive order.

There was the executive order that's saying, hey, we want to get the disorder out of city streets. This wants to be, this to be an official federal policy, so to speak. And then yesterday, he ends up doing another, this one based on Washington, D.C., about getting rid of the crime on the streets. and that homeless have to leave Washington, D.C., is essentially what he came up with. Did I pretty much characterize it properly? Yes, yes, yes. Yes. I, you know, it's because someone from who had been working at Doge was with a woman,

and I guess it was late at night, and some hoodlums came, and they tried to attack them. And he protected the woman. He pushed her in the car, and then they beat him up. So this brought this, this incident brought it to Trump's attention even more. So that's, so he's today, in fact, as we speak there is, he's supposed to be coming to a press conference to talk more about this, but, but he hasn't, he's not there yet. But in any case, you know, the thing is, I, first of all, it's very much needed, you know, what is the executive order that he wrote in regards to. the homeless is, you know, thank goodness that somebody is really taking a firmer stand on it. Now, the only thing that could have been done better is the wording of how he said that,

you know, they're going to be going around today and cleaning up the streets from crime. And then I forget, he said something about, and the homeless have to leave. I'm thinking, really? You know, where, well, I mean, he's saying that they are going to take them somewhere, and I'm sure it's going to, I mean, I hope I'm not sure exactly where they're going to be taken. Yeah, you can almost, you can almost already see the Civil Liberties group's lawsuits coming, right? You can almost see it, they're ready to sharpen their sticks, their legal sticks. I don't know.

Well, but the thing is, I mean, there is, hopefully, the thing that's the problem is, the main problem is, started ages ago. when Ronald Reagan closed the state mental hospitals with this idea of helping the patients have the least restrictive environment, meaning empty the hospitals and set up clinics and hope that they find their ways to the clinics. Right. Well, first, but, you know, obviously he did not get good advice from psychiatrists because, you know, we, it was obvious that this wouldn't work. It was good on paper, but the problem is that homeless people are mainly made up of people with

chronic mental illnesses, psychotic mental illnesses, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, and then addict. And when you were discharged them from a hospital where they've been, you know, protected sometimes for years and years, and put them on the street, they are not going to be able to find their way to these clinics frequently enough, like, let's say once a week, which, you know, should be at least that. And there wasn't enough money or for whatever reason. Not all the clinics were built. So it was, you know, a great idea on paper, but it was no way, surely one of,

could have, should have been able to tell beforehand that it wasn't going to work. Well, I've been reading a bit on the history of that because it's very common, you know, that Ronald Reagan was part of that, was one of the executives elected governor of California at that point in charge of doing this. From what I recall, though, that was actually in reaction to legislation that the California legislature had passed. And there was a time in the United States in which we were looking at the mental health systems and the institutions. and I don't know if it had something to do with almost the one flu over the cuckoo nest kind of a kind of thing that they're thinking that everybody that's in a mental institution is being abused and or just being warehoused. I don't know. There's a lot going on there. I mean, I don't want to blame Ronald Reagan, President Reagan, you know, Governor Reagan, whatever he was at the time, you know, put the blame all on him.

It's just that he is generally associated with that time. But, yes, part of the problem is that, you know, after once a little over the cuckoo's nest, the public has this impression, and legislators have this impression that that's what these state hospitals were like. Well, I can tell you, as someone who worked, you know, when I was doing my psychiatry residency at Bellevue in New York, part of what I did as chief resident for that year was to, was to be like a consultant to the Manhattan Psychiatric Institute. Manhattan Psychiatric, it was a state hospital in the middle of Manhattan. And I can tell you, so I was sort of in charge of the other of the residents and just kind of

organizing things. And there was no cuckoo's nest there. Then when I got to L.A. for a while, I was a consultant to a state hospital here, Metropolitan State Hospital. Again, no cuckoo's nest. So, you know, that may well have been, you know, a big part of the reason for what they thought was happening in these hospitals. And, yes, I'm not going to say that it didn't happen at any hospitals. You know, some of these state hospitals were better than others.

But it is certainly better than being on the street. It is certainly better to get help, to get treatment, such as it is, as good as it was, you know, to the extent that they did get, if they certainly got medication. medications at least. Maybe they didn't get, depending on the place, maybe they didn't get enough therapy if they should have gotten, but they were kept safe. Dr. Carol Lieberman, MD, with me. Doctor, I'm wondering if what has had happened. Could part of the issue that we're dealing with with mental health now be involved with an emphasis on psychoactive drugs? Because it's maybe an easy. easier or cheaper way of dealing with mental health problems rather than talking about it or talk

therapy. And I can't help it wonder if the system is really concerned because talk therapy, you know, having, you know, professionals actually talking problems through and working through depression with people who have some mental illness issues is pretty expensive. Any thoughts on that? Yes, it is more expensive. than just having some line up, you know, once or twice or three times a day for medication. But it also is not as lasting.

I mean, the point is to get, the way the system is now, first of all, in order to be hospitalized against your will, you even need to be a danger to self, a danger to others, or gravely disabled. And the way the system works now, when people are admitted, under 51-50 or, you know, involuntarily, because they have one or more of these issues. They, in these acute hospitals, they're only able to stay three days. It's a 72-hour hold. And so they give them medication, you know, in those 72 hours, they try to figure out what's

the wrong with them and try to pick the right medication, rush, rush, rush, and then after 72 hours, if the person wants to leave, or even if they don't want to leave, but they don't have any insurance, which, of course, most homeless people don't, but this isn't even just homeless people. This is like people who have families and, you know, maybe have insurance, maybe don't have insurance, maybe have Medicaid or, you know, whatever it is. They generally try to get them out in three days, and there is nothing. It's just a temporary, very temporary, like a day, six, because you need more than this to get people stable. to the point where they can then follow up, you know, with outpatient therapy.

So it's a broken system, not just for the homeless right now, but even if we're just for just all regular people. Just trying to get a mental health treatment for a troubled family member I know can be, I mean, the costs are insane. I know that the Oregon state laws say that psychiatry or mental health treatment is provided or is considered just as key or just as important as a physical, as a physical body, you know, problem, you know, that you're dealing with some, you know, medical condition or is that really filtering, is that really filtering down into the system at this point, or is it still, okay, we only have so much our limited funds, so it's going to be, here are antidepressants, take them, and best of luck, hopefully we don't see you again, you know, with any problem. How does that work? Yes. You know, I know there have been, you used to hear more about this, like that, I mean, there were groups trying to get parity, trying to get same kind of treatment or same kind of funding for mental health as physical illnesses. But to be honest, you know, it was good, they made good sound bites, but I really haven't seen it filter down. And something, you know, something really, of course, mental health, affect physical to health and vice versa.

And with addictions, you know, the people are, well, first of all, a lot of times when they have these psychotic disorders, schizophrenia or bipolar, they often will take some kind of drug on the street to try to, or alcohol, to try to get rid of the symptoms like the voices or, you know, the auditory hallucinations, or the visual hallucinations, they may, you know, a substance like that may dull them for a brief time, but it's not a cure for the, in fact, over time it makes it worse. It makes the psychiatric disorder worse. Are we going to be entering a period?

You think that by necessity, even when you see President Trump doing an executive order, hey, we got to take care of the homeless off these streets, and if you're mentally unhealthy, you need to get healthy. We need to find some way. Are we going through a time where you think that maybe the pendulum is swinging back to the re-institutionalizing model that we had that ended up being dismantled in the 1960s and 1970s? Well, I certainly hope so.

I mean, I know that that is going to be a big fight because of what you were saying earlier, the, you know, the civic, civil rights or civic, what is it? Yeah, civil rights lawyers are being, we'll go all over this, right? Exactly. You know, but it's because they, you know, they refuse to understand. how it is so much better for the person. They're trying to protect the liberty or the, you know, civil rights, the freedom of these people.

Do they want to be homeless? Let them be homeless. Well, the truth is I have yet to meet a homeless person who wants to be homeless. I mean, that is just a lie. And, you know, they... Now, I have met homeless people who don't want to follow rules, though. And, you know, and our homeless, I think, because of not wanting to follow rules. I think there is that part of a person.

Well, yes, yes. But first of all, a lot of those people, first of all, they think that the choice is the street or cuckoo's niz. And second of all, they're not in their right mind to be making those choices. You know, it's like a lot of the programs, and that's why I hope that this isn't what's going to happen in Washington, D.C., and I don't know what the plans are at this point. But, you know, I know in California, so much money has been thrown at organizations that are supposed to help the homeless. And not all of these organizations, first of all, are, you know, usually for a lot of them, their executives get paid a ton of money and not so much goes to the homeless. But the reason why it doesn't work besides that, you know, besides.

that there isn't as much money as one might think, I mean, despite billions going to them, is because they, in fact, there was something, I think it was near San Francisco. They had built a nice

area of all these sort of not that expensive, but new, new housing, you know, like little small houses. And spanking, new, what is that, spanking new? Not nice looking, you know, and there was supposed to be some kind of security or whatever.

You know, certainly better, certainly protection from the streets. And yet, they went empty. A lot of them, the majority of them went empty. And the people stayed on the street. Now, why is that? Not because it was more comfortable for them on the street. But, you know, some of them may have tried going to these places. they did try, and then if you don't provide treatment to them along with the roof,

they're going to roam. They're going to hear voices. They're going to, you know, they're not going to be able to, it's not enough. Yeah, and probably rip up the whatever housing was provided. I'm thinking back to Barack Obama, and I think it was misplaced compassion because I know that part of his housing policy during his administration, it was housing first. And this is how we're going to take care of the whole. homeless problem. We get you a house no matter what. We get you into housing, but that doesn't

necessarily make you responsible and functioning enough to be able to just, you know, live within that housing, right? I mean, these are the challenges we find ourselves right now. Right. Exactly. I mean, it's not, you know, how are you going to get food for yourself? They're going to be providing food every day. You have to provide treatment, first of all, and then second of all, find things that they can do, at least some of them, can do for work, even if it's simple things. Because nothing to make money, but just so they can feel good about themselves. They can feel like, you know, like they are getting back into society. So it's not enough to just get them a roof.

I'm looking here at the front page of the Oregon Eagle newspaper I subscribe to, local newspaper. And it has on the front page here, Dr. Carol, I think you can understand where this is coming from, Homeless Incorporated, the most profitable business in the Portland metro area. They're talking about Portland, Oregon, which is famous for its homelessness problems. And they figured out in a study that the typical homeless person ended up receiving $97,000 in aid, in otherwise was spent on homelessness per person last year in 2024. That's an astounding amount of cash, you know, going into that problem. but how much of it is actually filtering and helping the people affected by this.

It's kind of to your point a little bit earlier we were talking about this, the money. Well, yes, where did that, what are they counting? I mean, where did that money go to? Well, according to the Joint Office, I'm reading from the article, according to the Joint Office of Homelessness, which oversees the majority of the funds, the money was allocated to housing, safety, and administrative costs. in the Tri-County Portland area, and there are 7,500 people that they overall say are homeless in that by the time you add it all up, there's a lot of money going into it, but I don't

know how much of it is actually direct care kind of help, like what you are advocating, right? It almost sounds like it's reactive care, okay, they're all over the streets, so, okay, here's a couple thousand dollars each for tents and something, and then we'll put them in this particular park area oh now we have to hire security for the park you know what i'm getting at you know those kind of things you can see how all add up over time to a lot of money yes yes i'd really let you know if you should ask for an accounting of where it all went because you know that's a lot of money they could have gotten some therapies for that money if it all went to the homeless you know rather than the administrators or the executives of this organization or organizations now earlier in our talk

Carol Lieberman, you had talked about how, you know, so often we end up dealing with mental health and the homeless by the 72-hour hold, which is not very long. And then everybody hurries up and tries to get something and off you go. How long does it really take, you know, in your experience, to hold someone against their will, to be able to, on average, you know, get to the bottom of what's really bothering them and maybe breaking them of some cycle, and getting them to the point where maybe even they're treatable. I know it's kind of a big, comprehensive question here, but could you tackle it? Well, you know, of course it depends upon every patient is different.

But, you know, I mean, it may take, it takes more than three days to really get, to figure out what medication really need, they need, and to, you know, the specific one, and then to get them, have enough of it in the person's bloodstream, you know, to do anything. Is it a matter of weeks rather than days, months, if you were to overall just on average in your experience? What does it take? Well, I mean, like 30 days would be sort of a number that might probably fit for a lot of people. About a month. Okay.

But, you know, if, I mean, but if that person isn't, it all depends also on what they're set up with for aftercare. If that person is set up in a good situation where they, they know where to go for, you know, they've maybe met the therapist who they're supposed to see outside the hospital, or at least they know where to go, maybe they have someone who brings them there the first time, it needs that kind of a handholding for a lot of these people. And then for some of the people, you know, where the symptoms, especially if they've had these, which many of them have, had these psychiatric disorders for a long time, it takes longer. The longer somebody is psychotic or the more psychotic breaks they have, the more episodes of psychosis, the longer it takes to get them better because that each time it sort of weakens their brain in a sense. And so they need longer and longer times. I mean, you know, in these state hospital, people were there for years. So, I mean, even to say that a month, you know, a month might get them organized enough to be able to understand why they have to keep going when they get out, set up some kind of living situation for them, and make sure that they're able to continue. But, of course, a month is a lot big.

Well, it's 10 times what 72-hour hole would be. Right. Yeah. And this then runs up against the, well, the Western social welfare safety net is running out of other people's money too, right? That's also what we're coming up against at the same time. We have some serious issues to deal with here in society, don't we? Yes. I mean, the thing is, though, in a way, if you worked it out, it probably would be less expensive for taxpayers to bring these people to hospitals, get them treats.

get them, help them to get homes or get them homes, you know, and get them into a situation that they can sustain. In the long run, I think that would be less expensive than, you know, continually having all these criminal problems or, you know, I mean, when they emptied out the mental hospitals, people either went in the street or they went into jail. So really, there's a lot of cost, police cost, and all of that. and clean-up costs, you know, a lot of other costs from having all these tent-town. Dr. Carol Lieberman, MD, with me.

Doctor, I appreciate the take this morning. We have someone hanging on hold. Hopefully they are on topic and had a question for you. But good morning. Are you with Dr. Carroll? You want a question here? Go ahead. Yes, yes.

A comment first. It seems like we need to find out what the problem is. And, you know, we all go for a blood panel, and the doctor's, to review all the information on the blood panel, and then if there's a problem, they immediately see it. It seems to me that all of the people who are on the street who have a problem need to be first diagnosed as to what the problem is and a good place to start might be lack of magnesium, for example, lack of zinc, lack of this, lack of that, which upsets their whole chemical

system. Oh, yes, in other words, some physical ailments that could be then contributing to mental health problem. Is that kind of where you're getting at? Yeah, it might be as simple as getting them to take a vitamin or a supplement of some sort. Okay, let me see. Any thoughts on that, doctor? Well, I mean, I certainly know that lack of certain vitamins or, of course, other kinds of problems can contribute to someone having episodes of illness. But, you know, and there does need to be triage. I don't know if you can do it in the street. You know, I think the triage has to be done in the hospital, but to figure out what diagnosis they have. And yes, you know, maybe some, some blood

tests and so on. But, you know, most of the people have problems that are not as easily fixed as giving them some magnesium, you know, and you can diagnose them. The triage, you know, with a good psychiatrist, it doesn't, it shouldn't take, you know, that long to, to diagnose their psychiatric disorder and kind of know where they should go and about how long it's going to take and, you know, it can be done. All right. Ron, I appreciate the call. Dr. Carol, I appreciate your time here, too.

Dr. Carol Lieberman, MD, MPH, known as America Psychiatrist and the terrorist therapist. I'll get all the information up like we had talked about on KMAD.com. Appreciate the thinking on this this morning. Thank you very much, Doctor. Be well. You're very welcome. All right. It is 735.

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They've been preventing breakdowns and restoring smooth operation for over 40 years. American Industrial Door. Medford and Grants Pass. It's the Bill Meyer Show on KMED, Southern Oregon's place to talk. Richard Evans joins me. He's the publisher and the editor of the Oregon Eagle, Oregon Eagle.com, and my dog in the fight is that I am a subscriber. Richard, it's great to have you back on. Morning, sir. Welcome. Hi, Bill. Good morning to you. Happy Monday. Great feedback. Indeed. And I know you're out running around this morning, but I wanted to grab you for a few minutes because I was talking for the last 20 minutes with Dr. Carol Lieberman, MD, who's a psychiatrist, and we were talking about President Trump's

executive order and essentially saying, hey, the homeless have to get out of D.C. No doubt there are going to be court challenges. You can see it coming. But one of his earlier executive orders had much to do with, hey, we need to get more treatment for the mental illness problems of many within the homeless community. And here it is then on the front page of the Oregon Eagle, which I got in the mail Saturday. It is. Homeless, Inc. the most profitable, quote-unquote, business in the Portland metro area. And one of the stats there was talking about $97,000 spent per homeless person in 2024. And yet, if anything, the problem seems to be getting worse.

Now, Kevin Dahlgren was the author of that. You put it in the paper. What have you been able to grasp from all that? It's great, great peace, really. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, Kevin Dahlgren, he has been working with homeless people as a counselor in other ways for a long time. He's personally spoken like 4,000 or 5,000 homeless people on the streets. And he's a good journalist, too.

What he does, and it's so simple, and I love these type of simple metrics, because, you know, anyone can understand this, that in the greater Portland area, they spent $724 million in 2024. And then if you divide that number by the point in time number, which is when they go out and they count up all the homeless people in, you know, Multnomah County and in Clackamas County and so forth that are part of Portland, they list 7,470 people. So you take $724 million. divided by 7,470 homeless people that they count. So these are their numbers that works out to $97,000 spent per homeless person in 2024.

Which is an incredible number. And I don't know if we have anywhere close to the equivalent in Southern Oregon. I know, you live in the Grants Pass area. And it's been an intractable problem so far trying to work with this. I'm sure we spent a lot, but not nearly that much, do we? No, no, we don't. And what Kevin points out is, like, when he was writing this article, he went out and actually talked to homeless people,

and he said, well, did you know that in 2024 they spent $97,000? How much of that did you see? And obviously, there are homeless people, mostly drug addicts or drug users, at least, and it's like they would give them kind of a blank stare. One of them said that, well, one guy did come by and give me 50, dollars in hot dogs. So, you know, this, this one homeless person got $50 a value out of the $97,000. They're not, and he asked the question, do you see any of these social workers? Nope. I haven't talked to any of them. And that's Kevin Dahlgren's biggest bone of contention

with all of this homeless ink is that you have a lot of people that get that $724 million in their paychecks and in their benefits. But they say, in a cubicle and they never are out actually talking face to face with any homeless people to try to help them or try to understand how did you become homeless so that we can try to prevent homelessness in the future. It's not a boots on the ground approach. Got it. Okay. That is really interesting. Do we have a similar problem in Southern Oregon, in your opinion? I know I'm asking for some conjecture on your part, but given what you've observed. I know I've talked with people over at a gospel rescue mission. I've talked with people involved in

homelessness services like Chad McComis, you know, working to, of course, he's working an angle on elder homeless, which has a different set of metrics than the standard drug addicted homeless, but what do you thinking about that? The numbers are so off because, are you there, Bill? Yes, I am. Yeah, okay, great. Is that, like, for instance, the Grass Pass Gospel Rescue Mission on which I serve on the board. These are round numbers. But if we had a million dollar budget for 2024, if we spent a million dollars and we helped 33 homeless people, then that would be

$3,000 per homeless person. And these are people that get room and board and they get assistance on going out and getting a job and on budgeting. And they have to stay clean. They can't be on any drugs. They can't even smoke cigarettes because we're trying to help them get off of addictive behavior. So the numbers are so far out of whack. So the similar number for Southern Oregon would be to look at, let's say, Jackson County, and you say, well, how much does Jackson County spend on homelessness services? And then how much to say the city of Medford spend on homeless services? You know, and then you would be able to, you know, talk to other cities like Central Point, find out, do you?

spend any money on homelessness services and so forth? And Ashland, you know, what do they spend on homelessness services and then get the point and time number for all the homeless? And then just do that simple math. You know, if you spend a million dollars and you help 100,000 people, well, that's only $10,000 a head. If you only help 10 people, then that's $100,000 per head. And sadly, that's what they're doing up in Portland area.

And it doesn't seem to... And it doesn't seem to necessarily be helping. Now, we've had issues here in which I know that a lot of money, I would venture a guess, though, that a lot of money goes into harm reduction. Would that be a fair conjecture on my part, you know, that a lot of this is not necessarily getting people off the streets, but is helping them maintain the behavior, you know, clean needles, you know, those kind of things.

Does a lot of that still go on? Oh, yeah. It's all of it. It's, you know, it's giving out sleeping bags, you know, and other things, tents and so forth, it's doing the little pallet shelters. It's, you know, setting up the little homeless camps and, you know, the different places where they can go to. And it's, you know, it's just one of these things where it costs so much money and numbers should be going down if you're spending this money. And if the number of homeless people, you know, and this is by their count.

And then the article talks about how sometimes you go through and you count the tents, then you say, well, there's an average of one and a half homeless people per tent. But then that might be right. But then in his experience, you reach some homeless people. They say, no, I have three tents because I have like one tent to sleep in and I have one tent for my stuff. And, you know, and maybe sub lets out another tent. Who knows? but the idea is that if the number of true homeless people is lower than that 7,000 number,

then that means that the cost for homeless person is even higher than $97,000 per year. Richard Emmons with me. He's the publisher and editor of the Oregon Eagle, Oregon Eagle.com, and the premier front page story right now, Homeless Inc., the most profitable business in Portland's metro area. Is there any evidence, given what you've seen going on in the state legislature, Richard, rather, given where we see ourselves, that there is an effort to want to rein this in and actually spend money on homeless to actually truly get them off the street rather than just putting a Band-Aid on it? How do you see it? well in this last legislative session you know as you know the transportation funding was like a really big topic they put some money toward building affordable housing projects you know less than what

the governor asked for but you know it's like the 800 pound gorilla is the this notion that our experimentation in legalizing drugs in Oregon and decriminalizing drugs in in Oregon has been an abysmal failure, and that Oregon continues to attract people that want to use and abuse drugs into our cities. And that wasn't dealt with in any major way this legislative session. I know that I was, like I said, reading the article this weekend, and right there on the front page, they have a picture of two addicts, one of them in a wheelchair, and the other one passed out underneath a street sign nodding off, and the harm reduction workers had

delivered supplies to them just a few minutes prior, so they ended up taking their fentanyl apparently or some other opiate and nodded off. And it's kind of a damning picture in some ways. I mean, how are we helping with this kind of behavior, huh? Well, we're really not helping. You know, Kevin Dogran, he has a substack, a truth in the streets, and at the end of the article in the Eagle, we have, you know, the link to that. But he has another article that he wrote that covers how there's a 22-mile trail up in Portland, and it goes through

three counties. It's a beautiful trail that they started in 1903, and they finished building at 1990. But about 2018, it got so bad in one county that, I don't want to, one of the cities up there. The mayor said, we've got a problem because there was a five-mile stretch. And one thing that Kevin Dahlgren did with other people is they spent a month. And they went out and they talked to each homeless person. They said, look, this is a nature trail. This is not for camping. You've got to move on. They'd go back the next day and say, hey, I talked to you yesterday and you're still here. And a lot of those, you know, drug users, homeless people in the camp, they're, you know, intense, they left. They just got tired of being confronted by someone that says, hey, you're really

not supposed to be here doing drugs. You need to move along. And it was that human contact face-to-face, a little bit of accountability. They weren't pushing the mouth. They just said, hey, this isn't for people that are using drugs or living in tents. And this is a public trail. And they moved out. They cleaned it up. It was like a five-mile section of that 22. mile and it goes through the forest and they got rid of like a million pounds of garbage that had been piling up by homeless people so but it takes that face-to-face contact to really make a difference and that's what you know it can be done that way with social workers you know talking to homeless people on the streets it can happen in a

gospel rescue mission that are you know throughout the state of Oregon and it's that human contact, that relationship of person to person to say, you know, I care about you, what you're doing to yourself is very harmful. You know, you're going to end up dead. And if you keep down this path and that there is a better path. And that's been effective for Kevin Dalgren. And he reports on stuff that the Oregonian won't touch. I mean, I'm going off of comments to the article that he writes a story like this. this and people that have lived in Portland for a long time say that, you know, the major media up there, they don't report on it this way.

You imagine not. Before we take off here, and by the way, Richard, thanks for taking a few minutes in your day. The issue of mental health treatment did come up with Dr. Lieberman, the person I spoke with earlier this hour, and saying that, you know, that for many of these people, nothing was going to change until some of those demons that led to the end. addiction are addressed. Is there any evidence in that in that story that that you have on the Oregon Eagle that there may be a case to be made for at least a percentage of the homeless addicted? Well, it's it's definitely something that is spoken about by Kevin Dogren from time

to time. And I'm just leaning on him. He's had other articles in the Oregon Eagle. That's a way that we can be of service is to help get his message out to people across Oregon is that there's a you know there's real questions like does the drug use cause mental illness or does the mental illness end up leading them to using drugs it's both yeah and and some of the drugs today are so nasty they mess with the brain it's just terrible ways and they end up becoming mentally ill and they're really incapable of taking care of themselves or their children or their pets, whatever they happen to be on the streets with. And there is, you know, it's like, it's like Trump's executive order. It's, we're leaning toward going back to the way it would have

been saying the 60s where you had mental institutions where people are, you know, you're going to go there, you're going to go in there, and we're going to do our best to help you straighten out, right? Correct, because the sad reality is that the people that they're not going to help themselves, and if they don't want to be helped, you know, I don't know, this is just pure speculation of my part, but, you know, Oregon is like 98% farmland and timberland, and, you know, Who knows about in Arnie County, they create some giant camp for the drug users that just want to keep using their drugs. I don't know, but I do know that by having Oregon be a safe state to do drugs, that we're attracting and enabling those people so that they can use drugs and really not pay any price or any penalty for it.

and yet the problem is so bad that, you know, if you go to a public park, particularly in the big cities, you need to bring your wet wipes, you know, your baby wipes so you can wipe down the tables so that there's no fentanyl dust that, you know, yourself or your children might ingest. Yikes. We made a big push to get rid of secondhand tobacco smoke, and I think we need to have a big push to get rid of, you know, the second-hand opiates.

Yes, the second-hand opiates residue. All right. Richard, it's a great article, OregonEagle.com. Find out more about it. I'm a subscriber to it, and it's Homeless, Inc., the most profitable business in the Portland metro area. It is a sobering, no-put-intended take on this from Kevin Dahlgren. I appreciate you sharing it in the Oregon Eagle, okay? Thank you so much.

Thank you, Bill. Have a great day. Be well. and Richard Emmons is the editor and publisher of that paper, 757. We'll check news here in just a moment, and also Dr. Dennis Powers, where Pass meets present, we're talking about a famous local restaurant here in southern Oregon. A little conversation about that for where Pass meets present, and then into the news of the day for sure. I want to do an email or two of the day.

Those are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson's Central Point Family Dentistry, Central Point Family Dentistry.com. While you weigh crowns, that is a specialty. I know I had one done a couple of weeks ago. I love it. It was like, you know, they took my tooth and ground it down, got it prepped for the crown. And about half an hour later, after it was ground up and baked in their oven and their in-house lab, boom, put it on. Perfect. That's the beauty of what they're able to do now over at Central Point Family Dentistry.com.

Jim writes me this morning. I was talking early about calling my sister Diana on her birthday, Friday. And doing my best to not go into politics, I said, I never talk politics with her. And then she immediately took it over to the, I'm so disappointed in you supporting that pedophile. And that pedophile is trying to, speaking of President Trump, and that, what was the other big one? Oh, yeah. And that he is fighting to strip all the rights from my three children and many LGBTQ. you. Let me put it this way. So we're talking about single mom. And I said, Diane, I don't want to

go here. I do not want to go here. And then finally, I say, hey, love you. Happy birthday, hung up. And it goes there every time. And this is, I don't know if you have people like that in your family or not. Jim writes me about this. Hey, Bill, I heard you talking about your sister. And my daughter went totally crazy when Trump won in 2016. We had always been close. Day after the 2016 election. My phone rang. My daughter. For over 30 minutes, I found out how bad I was because my vote won Trump the election. Fast forward to 2024. Once again, same story. When her or my as bad neighbor starts berating Trump about them losing their rights, he's all the phobics. I ask one question. Can you give me an example? They never can. Then it turns back to how bad I am for voting for Trump. There is no reasoning. with his t d s i tell them you know keep your negativity to yourself you visit me or come on my property uh check your t ds at the line or don't visit my neighbor hasn't visited since trump one in twenty twenty four and my daughter is visiting in a week oh boy jim i uh i get it and

uh i have a feeling you're not the only person dealing with uh these kind of challenges but that's what i'm finding most interesting is that i call up my sister to wish her a happy birthday after she called me on Wednesday on my birthday he wished me a happy birthday and I said Deanie I don't want to go here Deanie was her nickname Diana you know I'm not talking about

politics with you and there's a lot of a lot of weirdness a lot of wound tight I don't know if she only watches MSNBC I don't know I really don't know but that has been my experience as they say KMED KMED HD-H1 Eagle Point Medford

KBXG grants pass town hall news is next and then we have Dr. Dennis Powers where past meets present. We're also going to have a diner 62 real American quiz and that'll be a lot of fun. We held it over from Friday's show. Okay. By the way, another number to keep in mind, 261,

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