Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 08-19-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: August 19, 2025

Bill talks with State Rep Dwayne Yunker - Oregon Dept. of Health Services takes tax money for strip club trips? Yep. Former State Sen. Baertschiger reports on Sen. Wyden protests, shutdown of town hall, etc.

The Bill Myers 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 Klausor drilling.com. Bob Shand, right? It's your last name. Yeah, good morning, Bill. It is, Bob. It's pebble in your shoe Tuesday, but actually it's not a pebble.

You have a suggestion after listening to U.S. diabetes care a few minutes ago, right? Yeah. Most of our grocery store supermarkets, we shop primarily at food for most of our shopping, is your vegetables, your proteins, your meat, your cheeses, your eggs, milk, and your breads are all on the outer circle of the store. And then as you go within the store, you get more of the process stuff going on. So if you can do most of your shopping on the outer ring and spend less time on the inner sections of the store, you're going to make better food selections and more basic food

selections. That's a really good suggestion, Bob, and it's true. You can almost call the outer ring the healthy. The whole idea is that any store is hoping that you'll go through the center. The center part is also higher margin, usually, higher profit margin on a lot of those foods, wouldn't you say? Yeah, I agree. So, you know, we try to eat well. You can always whip the world on a full stomach.

You can't do it. Yeah, the other thing about the food, though, it's be really careful to not get snowed under by the, the terms natural and even sometimes organic out there. It doesn't always mean exactly what you think. You'd have to dive into the labels. In fact, now me being 64, I'm having a little trouble with small print. And you know there's a lot of small print on those cans and those packages, right? Do you agree with me?

Oh, yeah. Okay. Definitely. So I'm getting to the point. Maybe I'm going to just carry a magnifying glass with me, extra one to take care of that. But you'll see that, like you're going to the organic section, and they'll say, hey, we have organic corn chips. And you're thinking, wow, this is wonderful. They're going GMO-free corn.

They're going with, and they're going to make this nice and organic. And you're thinking, hey, I'm done then, right? And then you see the oil that they fry it in, cotton seed oil, right? Yeah. Yeah. The best tortillas are made with lard. Yeah, well, lard is actually better. Lard is what the health people say is actually better.

At least it's more of a natural process. Cotton seed oil inflammatory by comparison. So anyway, I look for avocado on a lot of stuff, not that I'm a health ranger of any sort. Yeah. Yeah, too bad they can't make a cold weather avocado. Oh, I like that. I'd be growing those big time, all right?

Hey, appreciate the call. Thanks so much, Bob. Good suggestion. Yeah, good suggestion. Shop the outer perimeter. All right, Hannah, the update is coming up here in just a moment, and it's pebble in your shoe Tuesday. There's a big pebble in the shoe of State Representative Dwayne Yonker about what the Oregon Department of Human Services is doing. Funding Strip Club visits, yay team.

When your neighbor tells you, here's Bill Meyer. State Representative Dwayne Yonker joins me. Dwayne, it's great to have you back, and another day, another brewing, I don't know if you want to call it a scandal, but certainly the appearance of impropriety going on in our. state government. And I was wondering if you could break down what happened here. Apparently, you wrote a letter to Dr. Oz over at the U.S. Center for Medicare, rather, and Medicaid services. And what happened? What did you write the letter about? What's the story? Okay. So we went a letter on three topics, really, but, and we actually just got a response

back this morning saying it's being sent over to Dr. Haas's department. from, because they have liaisons and, you know, people like that stuff. So. Yeah, people have to know people, have to know people, and then they send it up the food chain, right? Yeah. Yeah, we, there is a, you know, all of us have, when you're in this business representative, you've got people that take the complaints or their liaison for contacts, for legislators, so that person has it, and they're afforded over to his office. So it, and we just said that out yesterday, so that's a pretty fast response.

We're happy about that. So back in July 30th, I was given a call, my office, and about a family here in Grants Pass that has a son that's developedly disabled as an adult. Okay. And he goes to this place called In Compass here in Grants Pass, which is kind of like a daycare for adults with disabilities, you know, to make it easy to understand. And I would imagine a lot of this is funded by men. Medicare or Medicaid dollars, Oregon Health Plan dollars, that kind of thing? Yes, so these are funded by Medicaid dollars for, you know, people with disabilities to fund them. And, you know, they do outings and stuff like that and, you know, try to make these adults of disabilities, you know,

blending in with the community, which is all great, you know. Okay. All right. I get the basics of it. Sure. Yeah. So the family complained about their son, which, you know, he's, you know, he's, not a mental capacity of a regular adult. I believe it's around 10 years old his capacity is, but it doesn't matter. He's below 18 years old, not really an adult body. Yeah, so adult body, but a low-functioning adult, right? That's really what we're talking about at an intellectual capacity, low-level, right?

Yes, yes, and then they took their son to the strip club over in Medford, and I'm like, what? Yeah, and so I tried to dig it into this. My staff and I started digging into this thing and, you know, yes, it's, you know, it's all of them the person-centered services under the Oregon's

Medicaid state plan. So if an individual isn't curious or wants to do something, these groups will go with them and take them to these things. And I'm like,

well, this is Medicaid dollars to go to a strip club. And so I started inquiring with the state Medicaid, and I got back, oh, yes, so they must take them to the strip club. If they want to go to the strip club, there's no asking, whatever, they will take them to the strip club. If they want to go to a gun range, they can go to the gun range, as long as they're, that we're paying these people to take them along with you. And I thought it was just a little bit too much, you know. Well, yeah, so these are taxpayer-subsidized field trips, right, to normal, in other words, normal behavior.

Is the state of Oregon, the Oregon Department of Human Services? Is that, you know, the intermediary on this, ODHS? Yes, they're the intermediate, yeah, organ to put on human services under Medicaid, so, you know, we get Medicaid dollars from the federal government. And then they directed that. I guess my question then, state representative, Younger, Is the Oregon Department of Human Services defending, taking an adult with the intellectual functioning of a 10-year-old to a strip club? As if going to a strip club is a normal human behavior that everyone should emulate? Is that where they're coming from?

What's the thought process here? Yeah, yeah, they're defending. They say they must take them. if that's what the individual wants, they must provide it. Oh. So we're trying to make them, I don't make this up, Bill. We must provide strip clubs for, you know, people with disabilities to make them fit into the society, I guess. I don't get it.

I didn't know that strip clubs were, that we all needed to go with strip clubs. You know, other people might want to go to the museum, but if this kid, or this guy, rather I should say, with the intellectual age of a 10-year-old wants to go to the strip club, off to the strip club, we go. I'm kind of curious, does the ODHS representative with this adult then, do they end up putting the dollar bills into the G-string? I mean, how deep does this go, you know, this kind of activity? I love your question. I didn't ask. Oh. I,

I, I, um, yeah. But these, I mean, these outings have been going on for a while. I've tried to look back in it of the law that was changed that we must, you know,

of course, it's an organ law. It's not a federal law. The organ law, legislators change this law. Several goes back under the codex. I mean, co-text,

you know, ruling here. That may, did you make, do this? I don't know how far they go. And if you go to InCompass's website, they're really defending it. Like, we must do this.

Yeah, what was the name of the company again? What's the name of the company, Dwayne? Incompasses. Incompassing. Encompass. Okay. All right, great. Yeah, they're on their Facebook site.

We have a thing from their Facebook site. And they're just one of several things we sent to Dr. Oz. There was another one that, you know, was on Jeff Eager from, what's this group? The Oregon Roundup, we were paying $2.3 million for alleged gangsters and tempered murderers for Medicaid dollars to that. So that's another... Yeah, that was the guy who was a Trend de Argoa guy, right? Trendi-Agua guy accused of taking a power drill and drilling through a Seattle woman's hands in order to get the pin numbers for the banking account.

I was reading that story. I hadn't had a chance to talk about it again. I'm glad you brought it up. but he was hanging out at a Lake Oswego house. This was a drug treatment house, kind of like a halfway house for drug addicts, and he was there, and he was there, right? It's where he was. Yeah, yes.

Cops have been there 17 times this house, lots of screaming, things going on. Yeah, we were paying $2.3 million for this place through Medicaid dollars. And again, these are illegals, too. They're all illegals. I know this is what the governor says is Oregon values. I really hate that word now. Organ, organ values. So that was one of my three things.

And then obviously the castration of children that we're using to do it. Now, we're told, though, this is something we're hearing from Governor Kotech and various others within the state control grid structure, that these cuts coming down from, the Trump administration trimming the Medicaid dollars. These are Oregon health dollars are just devastating cuts. And I'm just figuring, though, that you bring up a story like this saying, hey, we're paying for stuff that we really shouldn't. Is that kind of where you're coming from? And what they're calling devastating cuts are actually cutting stuff that maybe we shouldn't be paying for in the first place, like taking an intellectually disadvantaged man to a strip club at taxpayer expense. Is that kind of where you're going?

with this all. That is exactly where I'm going. I mean, we're spending with, again, this is not government money. This is our money, your money, you pay taxes, all your listeners pay taxes. We're spending money on things. That could be changed. We don't need to be spending money on, you know, obviously gang members illegally. We don't need to be spending on strip clubs. We don't need to be changing children. There is lots of cuts we can be doing that should, should be happening, but here in Oregon, our governor and the Democratic Party continues to double down that these are necessities. They don't want to work with the federal government at all and say, yeah, we've found some waste. We can do some trimming.

Yeah. And maybe we shouldn't pay for a guy to go to the strip club or pay for the Venezuelan gangbanger to be in the halfway house for drug addiction, you know, up in the Lake Oswego. Yeah, and he's not a U.S. citizen. I mean, these are illegal people here. Yeah. Criminals. Why, now, is there such a defense of this?

Do you have an opinion on this? I'm asking for you to speculate on this. You bring this up, and then Oregon Department of Human Services is saying, hey, you know, if we don't take the guy to the strip club, this was the statement they made to you, right? If we don't take the guy with the 10-year-old intellectual capability, if we don't take him to the strip club and Medford, then we are at risk for losing our Medicaid dollars, the Oregon Health Plan dollars. That sounds like nonsense to me. And it really does.

Where is there any evidence that not taking the guy to the strip club would be a violation of Medicaid rules? Well, I think there's two different parts there. There's the federal Medicaid rules, and there's the state Medicaid rules, and they're talking about the state Medicaid rules under this. person-centered services, and that we'd be violating the person-service senators, I mean, services that the philosophy, on this reason, the philosophy emphasizes the needs, the goals, and the preferences of each person receiving which support. Rather than focusing solely on support itself,

this includes empowering individuals, and there's independence to choose to have a full range of community experiences that are aligned with their needs, goals, and preferences. Okay. I'm going to give a what if you know and this is the type of story here representative uh younger which kind of uh stirs the imagination are we are we saying then that um organ department of human services defers to the desires of the patient to the extent that if that patient wanted to view kitty porn well we better find some kitty porn otherwise we're going to lose our Medicaid services money. Could it go that far or not?

I don't know. Well, I think Kittiport would be breaking the law because it's illegal to have Kemporn. Oh, okay. But I would say that. Well, okay, could we come up with rules, though? Could we come up with rules that say we will take you to good places to go that we think are nice places to go, not just that it's legal to go?

How about that? How about that? Yeah, I mean... You know, and they take these kids to actual bars, and they play pool and stuff like that. Okay. I'm not trying to stop them from a thing, but I don't see where a strip club is a lifestyle. You know, why are we promoting pornography? Why are we promoting, you know, strippers?

You know, these are not a thing you need to be an adult in Oregon. I'm never, you know, why are we promoting this stuff just because it's least? plus, again, you wouldn't take a 10-year-old to the strip club. And if he has the intellectual capability of a 10-year-old, you're thinking, all right, yeah. And now, one could also say then, is it a good idea? Well, you talked about the gun club or the gun range. There might be an issue involved in taking someone with low intellectual capability to a gun range, too. Couldn't there be?

I mean, there could be an issue with that also. And yet I'm a Second Amendment supporter, but, you know, we're talking about people who are, you know, fully functional, you know, with their firearms, intellectually and otherwise, I guess, right? Is that how you would see that? It is the, I mean, but this is the legislative member. It's okay to have pornographic stuff in the high school library. I mean, that's true. That's the same type of, you know, thinking here is it's okay to have 14-year-old. It's disturbing for adults in the House floor, but 14-year-olds you can provide pornographic stuff to.

Now, this is the same thinking. I know most of us don't think this way, so it's hard for us to put my hat on to think about that. Yeah, well, the thing is, I'm not convinced that if you were to talk with all Democrats or those on the left wing, I know you're a man of the right, you've made no bones about that. But I don't believe it, even if you were to go to a large smattering of the left wing folks in Oregon, that they would think that it's okay. There are some societal judgments, I think, that can healthily be made, especially when you are taking taxpayer dollars to accomplish it.

I mean, this is reminding me almost like an offshoot of that talk last hour with SNAP benefits. I was talking with another guest who was talking about, hey, you know, when you are getting taxpayer dollars, yeah, we have a right or a duty to say that you can't buy junk food with it all the time. And this is kind of a junk food experience that Oregon Department of Human Services is doing with this guy, isn't it, arguably? Same kind of thing. I would agree. And I've actually posted about the same topic. You just had in your last thing about SNAP benefits.

Why are we encouraging to buy Snickers? And I think I looked it up. It's like $16 billion a year we're paying through SNAP benefits for soda. Yeah. You know? We're funding the soda industry through taxpayer dollars. Now, the hidden secret about all of that, though, is that there is a lot of big box stores that make their bank, make their money on the SNAP benefit money train there. And so they tend to stock their stores appropriately.

But I don't want to mix up the issues here. What happens next, though, now that you have reached out to the United States and Dr. Oz for this? What happens now? What are you waiting for? Well, I'll obviously wait for a response there. I would like to, I'm heading to D.C. in November. I'm hoping to maybe testify if possible on issues like this of fraud and waste in Oregon. The abuse is happening here.

There needs to be an oversight of power spending taxpayer dollars. Everywhere I turn around is just the abuses of government with other people's money. And yet we have to go into a special session, August 29th, to massively raise taxes in Oregon, well, because there's no other way we're going to survive otherwise. Well, you're kind of hitting the mail. You know, you and I look at our budget, we budget within our means. In Oregon, we're not doing that. We're just going to go back to the taxpayers and take more money.

and we're not even focusing on the number one thing that I believe our government should be for is safety safety you know law enforcement keeping the streets safe but in Oregon we do the opposite obviously we have tons of homeless we have a decriminalization of laws for you know it's not protecting us Oregon is not protecting citizens it's an enabler for chaos and so you know I'm to keep pressing on these issues of spending taxpayers money wisely. Now, we need safe roads and bridges and whatever else. There should be tons of oversight and not the spending of no accountability or doing a study for millions and millions of dollars. And the thing is, though, if we actually are wiser in the way we spend, we get more, we get more services. We get,

we have the ability to build more roads at lesser cost for, you know, for a great, number of people, and it would seem to me like everybody is a winner on this. Now, maybe state public employee unions aren't real happy about that because maybe you don't need as many state public union, folks. That may be part of driving this, too. Yeah, well, I'm sure I'm not a public union. Yeah, they're probably not contributing a lot of money. All right.

All right. Okay, state representative of Dwayne Younger, keep us in the room on this. It's a really interesting story. And I said, what? We're subsidizing trips to the strip club. I was like, okay, yeah. And I thought that couldn't be true, but yeah, it's true. All right.

We'll have you back, Dwayne. You'd be well, okay? Well, thank you, Bill. Oh, yeah. You know, we'll file this under, you can't make this stuff up, all right? This is the Bill Meyer show. BMOWRourkes is Southern Oregon's trusted Voltusk. Yes, I'll have them call you right away.

Your name and number. At Montana Roofing, we don't do everything, but what we do, we do well. Visit montanaroofing services.com. You're here in the Bill Myers Show on what the KMED. 734, we'll be getting to former state senator Herman Berchiger who attended, or at least tried to attend, I guess he must have attended. He took a picture of it.

I shared it yesterday. The town hall for Senator Ron Wyden didn't go real well. Man, before we do that, Tom, you had wanted to ask state rep Dwayne Yonker a question, but I hadn't taken calls as running out of time. What did you want to ask? Let's hear it. Well, you know, so at the end of the month, our glorious governors getting set to bludgeon the Oregonian taxpayers with more taxes. And I wanted to ask, Duane, if there is any movement within the Republican contingent up there,

to really map out all the waste and fraud that's costing Orgonians here. And I'm talking about the billions or millions, whatever, probably billions, that climate change protocols are going to cost us. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a cost to all of that, all those agendas, sure. Oh, the EEI crap, you know, and this thing is what you guys are talking about. Yeah, that's more waste and fraud, kind of side issue, but it's there. But I would like to see a long list of all the absolutely insane crap that the Salem legislature is dumping upon us

and have it really codified, and so they wave it in front of the Democrats. Yeah, in the words, what you're looking for from what it sounds like, Tom, not to put words in your mouth, it almost sounds like you're talking about a doge list in Oregon, essentially, right? Yeah, that sounds good. Yeah, with some, you know, common sense things. Because, you know, this whole climate change crisis is just manipulation and control. It's not about anything based on science. It's just based on, you know, just controlling us to the last aspect of our lives.

And it looks like the Oregon government should really be downsized a huge amount. And as you say, then you have a lot. legitimate services that can be enhanced, like the things that people really need. Yeah, exactly. I'll tell you what, I'll reach out to Dwayne, and maybe somebody within the caucus has done something like that. I'm not aware of any. Doesn't mean it doesn't exist, though, because it may not be sexy, you know, that kind

of thing. But I'll get back to you on that one. Thank you, Tom. And coming up afternoons, we're going to touch in here with former State Senator Berchiger on, like once again, the meeting last night. There was disrupted town hall over at U.S. Senator Ron Wyden. get together. 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.com.

News Talk 1063, KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show. Former state senator, Herman Barrett Shager, back on the program. Herman, always enjoy our weekly talks. You're out of that political system now, but you're still paying attention. into the news, and I appreciate the sage kind of take on the news of the day, that sort of thing. And I understand that you went to Senator Ron Wydenstown Hall, and it didn't work out so well. I was wondering maybe you could set the table of what happened last night. Haven't heard a lot about it yet. Well, I did a count of about 200 people in total.

Tom was there. It was well-intended. If I had to guess, I would say it was probably heavy Democrat. participation. But there were some Republicans there, too. The president of Rogue Community College Mike Weber, I think it's Mike Weber, Weber's last name, President Weber, he gave a very warm introduction to Ron Whiteon. And when the senator got up to speak about after he got done saying, Thank you. We had a group of, I would say, young people, college-age people, it looked like to me,

that were very pro-Gaza and pretty much shut down the meeting with their chanting and walking around with their sight. We also had a couple people that I would say, I don't know if they're Native American, but they obviously were representing the Native American tribes, and they were yelling that white colonialism sold all their land. And that went on for about 20 minutes. People were very irritated by the disruption. You couldn't hear yourself think they were extremely loud, and we're in a gymnasium with a wooden floor.

Oh, boy, that was just an echo chamber then, wasn't it? Yeah. So, after about 20 or 30 minutes of that, they just shut it down and asked everybody to leave. I know that Congressman Cliff Bentz has talked about the fact that they're getting to the point where it doesn't want to do those again any longer. I think we're starting to find out why, huh? Yeah, I mean, you know, the freedom of speech comes in all sizes, but, you know, there's a lot. also, you know, we're trying to communicate with our representatives, whether the Republican Democrat, it doesn't matter. And so these types of actions are, it's not helping. It really is

not helping. You know, they, I think they would have been a lot better off attending, let the meeting go on and get a question in and ask the senator, why do you support Israel? Now, you know, the senator is of Jewish faith. I don't know if that has anything to do with it or if he is a target. I don't know that. But I think they would have been more effective, you know, participating in a meeting and asking those questions. And also getting an answer one way or another, whether you like the answer. Yeah, whether you like the answer or not, you know, at least you can find out. My concern about this, though, is Now, let me ask.

Now, you've been a state senator. You've been involved in the political process. Is it illegal to throw people out who are actually disturbing the meeting? I'm not talking about asking an uncomfortable question. But actually, people who are causing a public disturbance at the meeting. And if it is legal to throw them out, why doesn't anybody throw them out? Do you have a thought? Is it about the political optics of it?

I mean, what? No. Well, it's, you know, they, so when you have, when a politician has a town hall, that is a place where people can share their grievances with their politicians. And so doing that, even the way they do it is a, in my opinion, is a form of free speech. You have to be very careful of shutting them down. I think it's rude. But on the other hand, well, I know it's rude. The problem, though, is that it is restructural.

other people's ability to address the government's grievances, their grievances with the government, too. I know that. But when you get in a courtroom and they can prove that their civil rights were violated, you've got a big problem. So it's unfortunate. Well, with their civil rights, okay, hey, if you want to protest, great. You can yell and scream, use your bullhorn, whatever it is, bang your drums, whatever. and do the anti-Ron-Widen dance, you know, all you wish, or the anti-Cliff-Bentz dance all you wish. But you do it outside.

If you want to ask a question and actually, you know, get an answer, then you can come inside. We're talking about just basic decorum here. And I don't under, maybe I'm missing something here. And I'm a big constitutional guy. You have the right to petition your government for redressive grievance. That doesn't mean you can force the government to listen to you. Is it?

No. but, you know, we've had some case long, stuff like that. So it gets pretty complicated. I'm sorry, that's just how it works. Oh, okay. Well, now I, but see, but then here it is. We can then have the Ron Wyden's and the Cliff Benses and the other representatives, the congressmen and senators.

They can then do an online meeting, and I think that's what Cliff did a few weeks ago. He was last coming in. He did an online Zoom meeting, and the thing is they control who's able to ask the questions on an online Zoom meeting. Why can't they control the decorum of a public meeting? It makes no sense to me. Do you understand it's the same thing, just in a different realm, electronic or in person? Well, like I said, when you have a town hall, people can come and they can air their grievances and how they do it. times is it's hard to it's hard to accept but that's just the reality that I will say they were

very they were very well organized a lot of them were masks they all have scripts so this is this was not spontaneous this was well organized but you see as far as I'm concerned they are conspiring to deny everybody else's ability to talk to the senator I'm not disagreeing with you but okay why where's the case law on that you are preventing everyone else else's ability to be able to petition their government. You are restricting it. You are restricting it by making it impossible to ask a question there. Yes, R.

Well, unfortunately, we have some juries in this country that give us some, in my opinion, some bad decisions. Okay. Well, all right. We'll set that aside right now. Yep, yep. What is your conclusion then, you know, on the political realm here, given that? Ron Wyden was essentially attacked by Democrats, wasn't he? Essentially.

Yeah, you know, it's the progressive. It's the progress. I would say most of the people, you know, I'm just guessing, but I'm probably a pretty good, you know, the temperature of rooms pretty good. And I would say that the people there were moderate Democrats. There was probably obviously some that we would say were a little more progressive. but the group, the young people that disrupted the meeting, obviously, were way to the left, you know. So, but that's just how it is.

And, you know, the country is torn apart. In Oregon, Oregon is going backwards so fast that you can't keep up with it. I mean, I was talking to some former senators that I served with and even some Democrats. and we all see it. The spending, you know, Oregon does not have an income problem bill. When you look at how many Oregonians have and how much money the state takes in, it's a spending problem. And we have a governor that is absolutely tone death to anything.

She hasn't said one word about all these companies moving out. She hasn't said one word with the spike in unemployment right now. she has she does she does nothing and and now she's campaigning she's out on the campaign trail for another term and i'm like you know they're we're probably going to lose a congressional seat because people are leaving Oregon maybe governor brown i'm just speculating here maybe governor kotech doesn't mind people leaving Oregon because perhaps it's the right kind of people in her view leaving Oregon and when i say that i'm talking about, I mean, I just know of people anecdotally that have, you know, been friends of

mine, colleagues of mine, but they have been more of the right wing. And they move to states like Idaho, where I have a friend that ended up moving to Tennessee, you know, places like that. Texas, some have moved to Texas. And I'm wondering if this is just part of the grand rejiggering of the political puzzle. And Governor Kotech maybe is okay with people moving out of Oregon, as long as it's Republicans or people who are more to the right moving out. Maybe that's what's going on. Yeah, but you've got to have some sort of economy to generate the money to run the state. And, you know, her solution to everything is just tax more.

This special session coming up, you know, everybody's talking about the transportation. What I'm worried about is the payroll tax increase. Nobody's talking about the payroll tax increase. are they talking about increasing that because that's something which is new and it happened a couple of years ago it was 0.1 percent of payroll is what in other words if someone is paid what is it 10,000 dollars is what it's 10 bucks maybe maybe it's 100 bucks I'll have to do that calculation again right right yeah but I want to double it so you know that's what does the payroll tax have to do with transportation

Why is it always put on the back of the person with the lunch pail that goes to work every day? Because that's where the money is, Herman. You know that. Yeah, but you can't. That's why people are leaving. And remember what I've told you on the show before, Bill? That's why these companies are leaving. It's not so much the taxes on the company. It's the taxes placed on the employees that work at the company. Because it makes it more expensive than to hire everybody. and these are payroll taxes that are paid by the company.

Although the corporate activity tax, you know, taking 1% a 1% bite out of all the money going through a company, that's a big one too, isn't it? Right. Well, 0.01. It's small, but it's big because it's on the gross. It's not on the net. Now, you said 0.01. It's 1% of the gross, right? Yes.

Okay. But it's on the gross, not the net. So if you're selling a product with a really small margin, you can't do it anymore. You just can't do it. And that's one of the reasons why Bymart famously ended up shutting down its pharmacies, because pharmaceuticals, that was a big, big, a lot of cash would go through it, but the profit margin on the pharmacy was not that high, from what I understand. But yet you still had to pay the 1% tax on everything that went through it.

The other thing that, you know, in my discussions with some of my former colleagues, is we're not getting the people that have the skills to understand the economy. When I was in there, we had some pretty smart people, you know, and that understood how everything has to work. And now it's, the state is run on emotion, and it's not run on facts in reality, Bill, that's what has happened since I left. This is, I think, the result of the fact that there are very few business people, I think, that run for public office any longer. At least not as many as once used to be.

It used to be considered that business experience was helpful, so you can understand a balance sheet, income, expenses, where money actually came from, too. It could be. Right. I mean, when I look at the majority leader in the Senate, Jama, an immigrant from Somalia, you can't hardly even understanding his english is so bad and he's he's the highest ranking democrat in the in the senate really huh and he wants to change everything he comes from a failing nation and he wants to change us well if you're looking to make Oregon into a Somalia type third world maybe maybe he's trying to make Somalia great again here in Oregon I guess I don't know I I don't

know the man. So I couldn't say. I, well, I don't like his policies when I can understand him, but I don't know. I want to take this back to the conversation earlier with a state rep Dwayne Younger. Dwayne Yonker was bringing up all this situation, this story, though, which is really interesting about, you know, someone under the charge of the Oregon Department of Human Services is using Medicaid money, that's Oregon Health Plan money, to take a guy to a Medford strip club. And this was part of taking this intellectually disabled man and normalizing somehow behavior,

getting him to be more of a normal person. And this is a symptom, I think, of a larger problem that not only do we have people who don't seem to understand how economies work, but there's no judgment, is there? I mean, everyone's so afraid of making any kind of judgment. judgment that is to say, oh, if he was to go to the strip club, well, you better take him to the strip club or else, or else it's going to be trouble. Isn't that part of our issue,

Hugh, an actual judgment issue? There's no common sense, you know, and DHS Department of Human Services, if there's an agency that needs an absolute overhaul, that's the one. Okay, well, I'm all for this. Now, before we take off here, Herman, then the final question, there was a question that Tom made right before you came on. Listener Tom. And it sounds like what he's talking about, is there a doge-type list of problematic spending here? Wasteful, just insane lack of judgment stuff coming out of the Republican Party. I know it's the minority party, but is there any kind of work on that being done? Well, I know Senator Bonham and Senator McLean or have something like that, but it's just sound,

deaf ears. It really is. It's like I've been trying to say for, I don't know, 20 years, that Oregon doesn't have an income problem. It has a expense problem. It's the other side of the ledger. But to get that out to the voter, for them to understand is just short of impossible bill. It really is. You think the voters wouldn't be interested in knowing? You would think people would be interested in knowing how much money is wasted in this take. Absolutely wasted. And I don't know. Trying to get that to the person that casts a vote to get that information and to say,

hey, if we change a different direction with different leadership, you know, this will start to change. to get that out there and people to understand it, I don't know how, I don't know how to do it, Bill. I've been trying for a long time. I wish there was a better conclusion to this, but, you know, this hour, I mean, you could almost take this hour and say

this is almost a, you know, a laying out of the real challenges that we're facing here as a state, but there doesn't seem to be a lot of care, or a lot of caring about it, right? Is it, and I would, and I would dare say from the, what I've termed, the reach across the aisle, Republicans, too. Would you agree with me on that much?

Doesn't seem to be much of focus on that? Yeah, well, you know, it winds up being just a lot of nice people doing a lot of nice things with other people's money. And they're running out of other people's money to do it all. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely, we're running out. And I'll tell you what, the squeeze that the Trump administration is going to put on Oregon in the next few years.

Katie barred the door, you know, and now they're pushing to get rid of, now one, the bright side is the Trump administration is pushing to get rid of mail-in voting. If they accomplished that, I think balance could be restored in Oregon.

I don't know if Republicans will take over, but I do know that the balance and the legislature, will change. They'll pick up feet. It'll be much closer, like when I was in there. My issue here is that I'm trying to figure out what constitutional authority he has to order a change on mail-in ballots. I agree with mail-in ballots being inherently insecure. There's no chain of custody. We don't force anybody to really prove who they are. We're supposed to examine your signature, et cetera, et cetera. There's all sorts of ways that Hinky could be done,

Okay. And so I'll agree with the president that there is a problem there. I'm still not convinced he has that authority. What's the... I think he has authority because Congress has it. So the state execute the voting, but Congress has the ability for time, way, time, place, and manner. Not necessarily, though, of state elections, of state elections. On federal elections, they have authority, do they not? Yeah, but I, we can see what happens. You know, I mean, it'll be interesting. All right. In other words, Trump's saying when it comes to mail and ballots, hold my beer, right? Even though I.

Yeah. All right. Hey, Herman, I appreciate to talk. Love you back. You'd be well. Well, even, hey, Bill, even if it's just federal elections, that will turn things too. All right. So, yeah.

So I think there's a, I think there's, you. You know, up right, there's some hope. There is some hope. All right. To bring back some balance in Oregon. Thank you, Senator. We'll have you back in a couple of weeks. All right. You'd be well.

All right. Thanks. Former State Senator Herman Barrett-Sigger. KMED, KMED, H.D. H.D. One, Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG grants pass.