Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 08-20-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: August 21, 2025

Morning headlines and commentary and right into Wheels Up Wednesday with Eric Peters - the planners want to have even slower speeds? Quite the story, really.

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 Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Welcome to Wheels Up Wednesday. That always means Eric Peters joins me in about a half hour and happy to take your calls to. We'll be talking car reviews. He reviews the latest iteration of the Chevy Tahoe.

And I love the Chevy Tahoe. I've driven some of them over the years. Even the station has one. And it's kind of like the last, the last of an error, the last, well, it's really like the big, the big, the big SUV version of the big sedan we used to have, except very few people buy sedans any longer. It's just not the way that goes. And there's other transportation news out there right now, too, including a plan to change the way that speed limits are calculated in the United States of America. Now, you know, given the gang green and the planning control, the left-wing control of the planning organizations, and everybody talking about climate-friendly, equitable communities, sustainable development, smart growth,

and yet there are people out there who will write that. Well, John 20-Watt is a conspiracy theory. I don't know. United States signed on to it. Back in the day, they just name it different things now. And, of course, it's voluntary. you don't agree to volunteer there are all sorts of problems kind of like agreeing you know not agreeing to pay the mafia the protection racket money you know and then

they volunteer you into a jail cellar or grave i suppose but but i digress but going back to what eric has written really interesting article that popped up there this morning about this plan to change the way that speed limits are calculated because up to now they generally set speed limits by measuring the natural human desire. You know, where do most people, 85, 90s percent of the people, what speed do they want to drive through a particular area? And within reason, we'll make that the standard. Now, we're not going to, we're not going to set the speed limit to the jack rabbits out there, or the jackasses as the case might be, but just the you know the kind of what human nature tells you is a safe speed to go through an area

well they want to change that Eric's going to talk about that and it appears once again to try to encourage people to take RBTD or Josephine County Transit I would imagine that's sort of the big thing I'd be curious to see by the way what ends up happening in this special session this upcoming special session is going to be dealing almost exclusive exclusively with this transportation bill getting transportation funding, and there aren't a lot of details. There are not a lot of details out there like a whole bill out there that we can all look at, because, you know, face it, we're just the tax mules to the state legislature and Governor Kotech apparently. And I was reading this article in Oregon Public Broadcasting today about this. It said with a special session looming in Oregon, specifics remain hazy, and this Labor Day deal.

they want to do all sorts of tax increases. They want to double the payroll tax, which goes to public transit. Now, we know how in Jackson County, Rogue Valley Transit District in September is supposed to be doing a bunch of layoffs or a lot of cutbacks there because a lot of the federal grant stream funding has been cut. Big beautiful bill in recessions and recessions, I should say, R-E-C-I-S-S-I-O-N-S, is a part of that. and they are kind of sock and win when it comes to revenue because if last time I checked, I think, boy, that was about eight, nine years ago when we were doing a lot of RVTD deal, the actual fare box last time I checked, and I have a feeling it's probably even less now. So somebody pays a dollar to get on an RBTD bus. I don't even know what the fare is right now. The actual cost of the bus ride is really 16 to 7.

If you were to actually do it on a per-rider basis, that's just how expensive it is to provide, well, you know, a half-million-dollar electric hybrid buses to go around and pick up a few people. Now, I'm not saying, I am not one of these people that says that there's no need for public transportation. Okay, I get it. There is a need. Not everybody is going to have their own vehicle. not everyone's capable of it. Nobody and everybody can drive. Not everyone's physically able to do such things.

And it's also expensive. You know, we know that. But it is tough to fill that coffer. And so they want to raise taxes on people who are working so that people who can't drive or need public transportation might be able to save some of that. So maybe they're going to try to save and backfill some of that funding. But back to the Oregon Public Broadcasting story. They're saying, with a special session looming in Oregon, specifics remain hazy.

Yeah, because specifics mean that we could criticize it. Democrats envision a quick Labor Day weekend get together. Republicans say they're not on board. And this is the part where I had to chuckle a little bit because they had Republican Minority Leader Christine Drazen and Senate Minority Leader Daniel Bonham, both of them Republicans. They're in this picture of the OPB article saying that they're in no mood to ease the path of a new transportation funding bill from Democrats, so they don't want to make it easy for the Democrats to raise your taxes. They're both saying on the record that there is

absolutely, this is not good for Oregon. These tax hikes are going to be really, really bad, and I would agree with them, but they say they're not going to make it easy. Well, as long as they're there, as long as they provide quorum so that business is able to take place, they're making it easy. That's how I see it at least because otherwise all that happens, what they've been arguing about are some of the rules. With an August 29th special sessions, I'll just take a little bit from this story here.

Republican leaders are adamant that they won't make anything easy on the majority party. That includes apparently an insistence that Democrats' transportation funding bill be read on three consecutive days in each chamber. That's a constitutional requirement that is often way, in special sessions. Christine Drazen saying

Oregonians would not want us to expedite tax increases and we won't. And I know that they're going to be putting out, you know, little things like, hey, it's okay, we are fighting for you, fighting for you, right? The thing is, the only difference between Republicans

fighting and Republicans not fighting, if Republicans didn't have any fight at all, the way that the Republicans are putting this out there, then they would weigh these rules and just allow the bills to be rammed through in a day, maybe two

at the most, and then everybody gets to go home and go back to their Labor Day weekend vacation. But the Republican version of getting tough with the Democrats is that we're going to make you read the bills. Okay, so instead of a one or two day session, it'll be a five, six,

seven day session. That's the only difference. Now, if they really wanted to get tough on the Democrats, who are trying to raise taxes, and probably will raise their taxes, just zoom the taxes to the moon in transportation, gas taxes, everything else,

you know, the labor tax, that, you know, the 0.1% would go 0.2%, etc. You know, if they really wanted to get tough, the thing to do is to not provide quorum, and so it doesn't gavel in. But they don't even go there. They don't even go there. They're just thought, boy, we're going to make them give up,

you know, six or, seven days of vacation instead of just one or two. And that's toughness. So I'm just warning you that this idea that there is fight that, oh, wow, you know, we're going to be really tough. We're not going to make it easy on you. But as long as they show up and provide quorum, and they have agreed for what it looks like to provide quorum, both on the House side and on the Democrat, and quorum is a

constitutionally required power. that the minority party has to throw a wrench in the in the work, so to speak. That's what this is all about. We've been talking about this for years. We got the idiot Republicans in Texas shooting their mouth up. They're Democrat. Or those Democrats are running away, running away and hiding. Well, in Texas, we stand here and fight.

Remember, they were denying quorum because they didn't like the redistricting plan, which was going on. Well, that was the only game in town. That was the only ticket that they had to play. That was the only thing they could do. Just like I've been saying, the only real power that Republicans have is to do the same thing like the Texas Democrats did. Not making it easy by saying it's going to be a six-day session instead of a two-day session still means that it's going to be a session and they're going to raise the taxes.

All at the same time, Republicans say, we think that this is a really, really bad bill. And it is a really, really bad bill. The Republicans are absolutely right. But if the Republicans were truly fighting, if both Leader Drazen and Daniel Bonham really didn't want this funding to go through, they would arrange to not provide quorum. And then the Democrats couldn't gavel in, and then they couldn't raise your taxes. That's the reality of it. But apparently there's not a lot of political fight willing to do this.

and I know that, you know, I was talking with Emily McIntyre when is at that event with Pacific Power a couple of weeks ago and she says, Bill, you know that they're going to charge us for absences. You know, for absences if we don't show up, you know, this is the measure 113. And if you hit 10, if you hit 10, you can't run for re-election next time. That's the way that stupid law that was passed by the non-thinking Oregon voter in my opinion in that particular case is looking at

they're going to charge us anyway and I said well it's kind of nonsensical and I mean she agreed with me but she said that you know legislative counsel said that you know if we don't show up to gavel in they're going to charge us absences and I said how can they charge you absences for something which

doesn't exist because if you don't have enough people there to do the quorum to provide quorum for the special session there is no session but the legislative council says which is the bunch of lawyers hired by Tina Kotech, I would imagine, to give you legal opinions. They're saying, oh, no, they can charge you absences.

How can you charge absences? There's never something that existed. You know what I'm getting out of here? It's a weird kind of world. But, needless to say, even if they were charged absences, it's only going to be six or seven days. So what? Okay, so you get six or seven absences on that session.

Fine, you're not there. But that also means they couldn't gabble in and raise taxes. Then Governor Kotech could declare an emergency session, and then they could just do business with anybody who shows up, with a number of people who show up. I suppose you could do that. But at least then, Republicans could really say, yeah, we fought to not raise your taxes. But as long as the Republicans are providing quorum, they're providing the ability for

them to raise taxes, and the taxes will be raised. You can talk about how bad it is. You can talk about how horrible you think it is for Oregon's economy and Oregon's people, you know, actual people laboring on Labor Day weekend, all that kind of stuff. But if you're not doing anything to stop the gaveling end of the session, then you are essentially a tacit enabler of this process. And that's what I'm getting at. And I know that's uncomfortable for many people because, you know,

a lot of Republicans in the state legislature would way prefer to be liked and lauded and, well, they were against us, but they let us come in and raise your taxes anyway. See what we getting that? That sort of thing. And by the way, I call the Republicans, you know, idiots in Texas for, you know, they're talking about the Democrats running away because it's the non-thinking, it's kind of the red meat, stupid voter type of, of Texas. that so many politicians take when they're going against you politically. I didn't agree with the reason why the Texas Democrats wanted to get out, but I understand that's the only game they have to play, just like in Oregon not being there when they're going to raise your taxes

is the only tool they have. That's the only because otherwise you're just showing up to vote now, and you get steamrolled by all the Democrats. That's it. Okay? So you can talk about, Texas, we're brave. We stand here and fight. No, it's a suicide mission. That's stupid.

But, you know, yeah, you know, and then you have the Republicans, you know, in Texas, go, right. And then in Oregon, you have Republicans, you know, like me and others that are saying, yeah, you should walk out. But, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. We have to be there. We've got to stand and fight. Well, you, it's a foregone conclusion. It's stupid. You're bringing your knife to a Democrat gunfight if you show up.

That's all. And don't try to tell me you're fighting otherwise. Oh, you make them read the bills for three or four days. You know what I'm getting at that sort of thing? What nonsense. What nonsense in the Oregon State Legislature and what constitutes a fight? Yeah, yeah, these are the people who have been saying, the British are coming, the British are coming.

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25 minutes after 6, a beautiful, beautiful morning here in southern Oregon. It's going to be sunny, a little bit of a breeze, 91. We're going to be hot this weekend. I'm going to be out of the coast this weekend, though. The denier are going to head out as I take a few days' vacation. I'll be taking next week completely off and coming back after Labor Day. And hopefully the world doesn't come to it at because the tradition has been, I swear, I go on vacation and things go to hell.

But, you know, if things really do go to hell, We'll come back, okay? That I can make your promise. Other than that, Chris Seagal Show, Stegal Show, rather, will be filling in for me next week, okay? And I appreciate you listening one way or the other catch-up with Chris, and then I'll be back, okay? Tom's here.

Hello, Tom. How you doing? It's on your mind. Well, I must say, from what you just said there, if World War III happens, it's going to be your fault. You understand that. Yeah, it's because you went to Smith River that we're out playing around and looking at the ocean a little bit.

It's my fault, right? Man, I'll tell you, that's a heavy-duty responsibility, Tom. Anyway, it does seem to have happened. You know, our situation here in Oregon is like a boat out at sea that's filling full of water, and there's holes in the bottom of the boat, and furiously thrown the water out and so forth rather than dealing with the holes in the boat. Right. Here in Oregon, the holes in the boat, I'm repeating myself, but I think it bears repeating.

you know, there's so much waste going on. How much is the sanctuary state costing us, all the health care, the prisons, the crimes, and everything? How much is all the COVID mandates and the BS that the Oregon Health Authority is imposing upon us? How much is DEI? You heard from Dwayne, Yonker, how they're literally getting six-figure salaries for pushing DEI. Then you have this whole climate crisis debacle. These things are costing millions upon millions upon millions. Oh, yeah, it costs real money.

Now, for the illegal, you're wondering about for the illegal aliens as an example in various others. I think that federal, let's see, the fair U.S., the Federation for American Immigration Reform people that I've had on off and on over the years, they have estimated, they did a report, I want to say a year or two ago, that illegal immigration, if you add up all the costs, and I'm spitballing, I'd have to, in fact, I'd bring them back on, just to ask them, because maybe they have a new report out on this. They usually crunch the numbers all the time. they estimated that the Oregon cost to illegal immigration is over a billion dollars a year, 1.3 billion, and a lot of this due to the educational cost of illegal immigrants' children and various social services, and there are real costs involved with this. And so that's just one aspect of it.

And then there are probably the other law enforcement costs of these particular policies. and, of course, Oregon is doubling down on the sanctuary state, as you'll be hearing in the news here in just a moment. Governor Kotech says we don't think that we are violating federal law. There's this big duel going on between federal power and state power and jurisdiction right now over such things. So what's going on instead of getting rid of these millions upon now maybe billions, getting rid of all these holes in the books,

vote. Instead, what is she doing? She's doubling down on taxes. And, you know, we have all these companies moving out of Oregon. I mean, it is so mismanaged. Yeah, where are all of these really high-paying corporations going to be going? I mean, because when they take their money and they take their workers, not only are losing population, Oregon is now slated to lose its recently created sixth congressional district because it's a net outflow. So you have the best and the brightest that are taking off, not necessarily. Maybe it's just the most capitalized because the money can go where it's treated better, Tom.

You know that, right? Of course. You know, so this governor and this legislature are so full of BS and just dumping all their mismanagement. And the idea in the face of all this raising taxes when all these other crucial needs are, are just looming in front of this. I mean, that is, I don't know, I've got just kind of... It just defies logic and comes off as totally loony. You know what it comes right now to it,

you're going to be getting a lot of emails and various people, including the Republican caucus. And I don't like throwing the Republican caucuses under the bus, but I have to. They need it. They need it. Yeah, in this case, you know, I understand you're all talking about how horrible this is going to be, how horrible this is, and the tax hikes are going to be bad for the... for the state and they're right it is going to be bad for the state and for the people

okay for the people in this state but if more businesses out exactly but if you care you're not there yeah and i hey you know maybe that's the uh that's the theme we should be using for the next uh you know a week or so before they do this session if you care you're not there if you really care you're not there i mean that's that's the bottom line okay so So, Republicans, if you care, you're not there. If you really care about these tax hikes, you're not going to be there, and you're going to have to force them to declare an emergency session if they feel like doing it. And then they pass it with Democrat votes, and then they own it.

Okay? That's the way I look at it. Well, well said, Bill. Well, I just hope some sanity, somewhere in Oregon, there may be some sanity left, but I haven't seen it yet. It could be. Just go on vacation. You know, everybody wants to go on vacation. It's Labor Day weekend.

Just say, hey, sorry, not available. Got to go. See you later. Thank you, Tom. All right. What strange times we live in here. And, you know, that is what, well, that's one of the big reasons for tucking away physical gold or physical silver currency destruction, a little bit of diversification in your financial world. There are all sorts of good reasons.

And also, the trend can be your friend, especially when it comes to gold right now. We have central banks that are still buying gold worldwide, hand over foot, and gosh, the supply only goes up maybe one or two percent a year. It's hard to get gold. It's not like the U.S. dollar where you can just print, and then the printer goes, and then trillions of dollars of dollars are created. No, gold has to be dug out of the ground. And then when the gold is dug out of the ground and smelt it and put effort into it, there's a reason why for thousands of years people have used this to protect their wealth. and that's why I suggest you head over to Jay Austin & Company, golden silver buyers at Ashland, 1632 Ashland Street in Ashland,

6th and G in downtown Grants Pass. Good people to get to know. Mark and Andrea and the whole crew are there to help you either sell or buy. FortuneReserve.com is their website. Fortunereserve.com, but better yet, get to know them. They're big supporters of talk radio and liberty here in Southern Oregon. And I appreciate their work, and I hope you do too. Jay Austenbrokers.com, Fortune Reserve.

serve.com. Jay Austin, the recognized experts. From the KMED news. Only 241 a month. The adventure of a lifetime is waiting for you at RV Country in Kalameth Falls. This is Views Talk 1063 KMED. And you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show.

637. I always feel better even if it's a sad song winners. Dwight Yolkham on the bumper rotation. I can't help an American icon. I don't know what his politics are. I don't care. Some days he's got to like the music. But it is Wheels Up Wednesday time. We feels up Wednesday. Eric Peters, and he is the automotive journalist in chief bottle cook and washer

or bottle washer and cooker over at the E.P.O.com. How are you doing this morning, Eric? Great to have you back on from Virginia. Good morning. Oh, good, Bill. Thank you for having me on again. Yeah, wasn't it nice back in the day when entertainers, Elvis used to say, we're just entertainers? Yeah, they would ask him political questions, right, with Elvis. I'm just an entertainer. Thank you. Thank you very much. Well, he understood. He understood. And I suppose now, though, that everybody has to have, life, a life of meaning, meaning that you're out there hunting for the dopamine hit from the clicks and the likes and the shares, you know, that kind of thing. It's just the way it goes.

It's perfectly fine. Eric, it really is. Apparently so. Hey, I wanted to talk about a couple of articles that you just have up on EPATOs that are just absolutely astounding. And the one that I think you just put up there this morning. It wasn't there last night when I went to bed. city limits.

I knew you'd love that one. Yeah, and because we have experienced a bit of this in Southern Oregon with, they're doing everything. Of course, we have these former Governor Brown enforced action plans. What are the executive actions? You know, climate-friendly equitable communities, which is really essentially, we're going to go, agenda 21, good and hard, in some downtown areas. If you want to be able to develop the rest of your city, you're going to have to bend the knee to the agenda.

And part of that is essentially making it less vehicle-friendly. So they've been reducing speed limits and putting cameras, automated cameras, entering, and what used to be 25 miles per hour is now down to a 20 or 18-mile-an-hour crawl, you know, that kind of thing. And then the city fathers wondered, gee, why don't people really like coming downtown anymore? Well, because you ticket us all the time and you make it pretty clear you don't really like us. Okay? That's sort of the way I look at it. But the four – I look at it the same way.

You know, we've seen a complete reversion of what had been the case in the past when city planners and people who were involved in that sort of work did what they could to facilitate movement in and out of the cities because they understood that it was good for commerce. Now it's all about making it very, very difficult, expensive and unpleasant to get into cities. And it's even going to extend beyond that, I think, ultimately. And they do things like they call them road diets. They use these terms that just make me want to grab it. Yeah, listen, Southern Oregon has been festooned with these kind of road diets, and we're all told, well, it's okay. You don't need, well, instead of four lanes, we're going to make two lanes do the same thing. But then we also have bicycle lanes next to it.

It'll put wider sidewalks that don't get used by any or rarely used, but we're going to take out full lanes of travel. Happens all the time down here. Yeah, you know, it's so, gosh, where do you even begin to address some of this stuff? So, okay, the bicycle lane thing, you know, unless you live in Florida, you have winter. So three or four months out of the year, effectively, you're not going to be able to bicycle. And, of course, even in the good weather, bicycling assumes that you're physically capable of doing it. So, you know, it's a really discriminatory policy, isn't it? Well, the other aspect of the bicycling in Southern Oregon, Eric, I just want to let you know, is that we're hilly around here.

We're not flat. Bicycle, doing a lot of bicycling in the city, makes a whole lot of sense when you're, over in Holland, as an example. Everything is flat. You're flat. You're under around a little bit, but there are no hills. This is Oregon. We have hills everywhere around town.

Sure. Everywhere you go. It's just a slap in the face. It's very evident that what they are trying to do again is make it more difficult, more hassle, more expensive for people to get around. They want you to be sitting in your car looking over at the other lane next to you that used to be for cars, but now it's allegedly for a bicycle, but there's nobody using it. You realize that, you know, if that lane had been opened a car,

you probably already be where you had planned to be instead you're sitting there in traffic waiting to get there. Yeah, there is a East McAndrews in Medford, which is over by Providence Hospital. And it used to be two lanes in each direction. And then when you get to a Crater Lake Avenue, they narrow it to one lane in each direction and put the, you know, they did the road diet, and then they use the center turn lane. I can understand why the center turn link would sometimes be nicer than trying to turn across four. Okay, I get that. But what is interesting, though, is to see and notice how often that intersection fails as everybody backs up knowing that it's going into one lane as soon as you go through the light.

And so you'll look and you'll have, you know, 20. In fact, I counted 20 cars in line yesterday in front of the hospital sitting at the light waiting to go through. They're all in there like a conga line. And likely they won't all get through that one light cycle too. but this is yet another example of making sure that you're not all that comfortable about wanting to go in that area. And I think that's part of the plan, isn't it? Well, it is. And it brings up something interesting.

You know, we're constantly lectured about the need to shave gas or reduce gaseous emissions, right? Well, you know, all these traffic calming and road diet things end up doing is keeping cars on the road for longer, idling. I know. Well, that's why they had the AESS button, though, Eric. Yeah. Automated start stop, right? But it just, it speaks to the fatuity of it. And the article that I posted the other day has to do with this attempt of these urban planners to replace.

There's an arcana, you're familiar with it, but just for the sake of readers, it's called the 85th percentile standard. And it's something that they use to establish what should be roughly the appropriate speed limit by gauging the natural flow of traffic and posting it, you know, in congruence with what the majority of drivers are normally just driving. In other words, go with the flow. Yeah. In other words, speed limits, well, speed limits, in other words, were set by looking at, okay, how do real people react naturally to the conditions? And what's the speed that they feel good at traveling, correct? Yep, exactly. And so what ended up being the case is that for the most part, speed limits were set within 10 or so miles per hour of the speed that most people would normally drive, which is, you know, it's reasonable.

I'm not a big fan of speed limits, but if you've got to have them, at least that's a somewhat reasonable standard. They are seeking to replace that with something that will result in the speed limits being significantly lower. That's why the title of the article, city limits, they're saying that, you know, if you have multiple intersections, if you have driveways and so on, well, that means we have to bring down the speed limit even more with the end goal, ultimately being, and this isn't any kind of an exaggeration, essentially walking speed. This is part of their vision zero agenda, which is kind of like zero COVID. it. You know, they postulate this idea that you can eliminate pedestrian fatalities and accidents by adopting all of these strategies, which even then wouldn't do it. But the point is you posit an unattainable goal and the unattainable goal can be used to impose evermore draconian restrictions on people. Well, it's like air pollution. It's never clean enough, right? So the EPA then has to

go to carbon dioxide, even though carbon dioxide is plant food. We know that. Same kind of thing. It's totally tilted. You know, life is about risk reward, cost benefit. You know, there's always that balance to be made. And a society that is same, you know, tries to adopt a reasonable middle ground between these two poles. Instead, what we've got now is this focus on just completely extreme and unreasonable expectations, regardless of the cost. What is the name of this zero again? What's the policy of this city limit deal? What's it? Well, that's it. It's called City Limits, and there's a graphic that I posted in the article. And you can also see the rest of it. There's a link to the actual site where they talk about how this all, how rolls out and what their basis

is for making these calculations. And you can view it for yourself. And, you know, it's really, it's just, it's more evidence of the broader goal, which is to get people out of cars, get them out of driving and get them into what the government wants, which is government-controlled, centralized transportation, meaning, you know, the bus, the train, or however far you can walk. Eric, what group, you said it's the planners? Is it the National Planning Association? Where is this coming from specifically? Is there one group?

Yes, it's, I can't remember the acronym. I haven't got my computer in front of me right now, but if you read the initial paragraph of the article, it will be in there. It's like the national something or other of city planners, something like that. Okay. And it's an umbrella group that encompasses,

you know, every city just about in this country, has these urban planning people, and it's kind of an aggregate body for all of them at the national level. And so if this group, then, and this group, of course, is not asking us because we're just there to be dictated to by the elite experts, the experts, right, the experts with the planning degrees. Is that a fair assessment? It would be the case, isn't it?

You know, they frame it. They'll use words like community. What was the community of the minority, meaning them? You know, it's always these expert class people, and this goes all the way back to at least Woodrow Wilson and this technocratic idea that you and I and the regular cattle out there we're too dumb to organize our own affairs so we need experts those experts who know better than we do and who will impose it on us and their whole purpose then is to say well the goal is zero pedestrian or zero traffic deaths which is an absolutely unattainable goal unless you just

don't have traffic ultimately right okay right and that's ultimately what they want you know Again, I bring up the zero COVID thing because it was the same thing. You know, if you're going to have zero COVID, well, you might as well just literally chain everybody to their bed and their house and never let anybody out to do anything. Don't give them that idea. Don't tell them. And the next time this comes around, that'll be it next. We have painful little chains to hold you in. Okay.

Eric Peters with me, and it's EP Autostalkop. It is a – and the thing – I'm trying to – my mind is racing ahead here at the moment. my apologies here. Here is the issue here when you have these groups such as planning.org, the American Medical Association, the National Education Association, all of these sort of groups, these fraternities, if you want to call it, sometimes their union heads too, for that matter. But ultimately, if they decide that this is where the planning world wants to go, it then sort of seeps into every city and town in the entire.

country isn't that essentially this because this is the accepted the generally accepted well it's kind of like a safe and effective way of moving forward right isn't that isn't that a pretty good working definition of racketeering yeah it is uh well the american medical association same sort of thing well these are our protocols these are our standards for uh for medical providers and of course this is the planners now planners are coming up and it does have a political point of view. There's absolutely a political point of view, and nobody seems to want to admit this, and the cities just lay down for it, or does the state then force you to then obey the standard, so to speak? It's not so much that nobody wants to admit it, it's that

nobody wants to talk about it. You know, people are given this false definition of things, you know, things that are put forward with false premises, this idea that, oh, yeah, We have urban planners. Wait a minute. What does that mean? Who are these people? And how did they get to be in the position of decrying plans? Who elected these people?

Nobody ever asks these questions. It's just like, oh, there they are. I remember Stalin and Mao had lots of urban planners, too. And we will plan to make so much wheat over the next year. And we will plan to make so many tractors. And we will order it so it shall be. So it has ordered so it shall be done. You know, that kind of thing.

Yeah, we hear a lot, particularly from the left, about democracy. And yet, things are very not democratic when it comes to stuff like this. These unelected, unaccountable bureaucracies, you know, a handful of people, a minority of busy bodies, somehow decide that they are going to be large and in charge. And it's worked for astoundingly well. Yeah. Well, people have to get in the face of these organizations. And as far as I'm concerned, if it were up to me and my benevolent dictatorship,

all of these associations are gone, deep-sixth on the first day of my administration. But no one's hired me yet for that, Eric. But I'll be right back. And if people wanted to talk with Eric about a particular car or situation in your world or anything else on your mind involving transportation and politics, we will continue on Wheels Up Wednesday. Eric Peters, E.P.Otos.com, 7705633. The Bill Myers Show is on. News Talk 1063, KMED. Glad you're here for E.P. Autos Wheels Up Wednesday with Eric Peters. And Eric, we have Vicki from the Applegate, who wanted to talk about. about the reduction, the city limits article, and kind of struck a chord with you, Vicki.

Go ahead. You're with Eric. Well, it did because, well, first of all, their excuse was pedestrian fatalities. Then they wanted people to drive slow through Medford, the city, not the city, downtown, because they want more people to buy things downtown. So the slower you go, the more you get to look, but nobody ever stops and buys anything in town. Well, they want to get rid of the parking, too, though. They make that difficult.

You have to be in the parking prison. They used to be on street parking, but they don't like that either, right? Right, and then it's emissions. And like Eric was saying, you're sitting at lights, you're sitting, you're waiting, you're breathing. If you have your windows open, you're breathing all these other vehicles. That's the thing about the Applegate. I have fresh air out here. We don't have like pile-ups, back-ups.

I don't have to. My Kia is barn-shy. I don't know if you know what that means, but when a horse is barn-shy, if it gets within 100 yards of the barn, it's going to the barn. When I get out of Jacksonville, my Kia turns into a thoroughbred. I have no traffic. A lot of times when I drive home, I pass maybe one or two cars. But, you know, the thing is, though, see, you're out in the rural area coming into the big city, you know, that. Oh, my God, I hate it.

Well, that sort of thing, though. Ultimately, though, Eric, isn't the challenge that even someone like Vicky is that the policies are going to keep people out of downtown? Well, yeah, of course, that's the idea. Again, I think the over, the common thread in all of this stuff is that they do not like us, ordinary people, having the ability to drive wherever we want to, whether it's near or far, on our own schedule. They don't like that. They ultimately want to be able to control our movement. And in order for them to be able to do that, they have to get us out of owning and driving our own privately owned cars.

Let me talk with the next line here. Hello, caller. You're on KMED with EP Autos, Eric Peters. Who's this? Hello. Oh, this is Art in the Eagle Point. Hello, Art. Go ahead.

Well, I got a question for Eric on his take on the thinner oils that are recommended for vehicles nowadays. It seems to me I've seen some for 0W20 for cars, and then the same engine in a pickup truck might be a higher viscosity. What's Eric's take on that? What do you say, Eric? Well, you know, the reason that you're seeing all of these 0W oils proliferate everywhere is because they are advantageous to the new car manufacturers in terms of achieving fractional gains per vehicle in gas mileage and emissions reduction that scale up when they have to think about their fleet averages. So that's the chief reason for it. I have discovered in my own world that using these lighter weight oils in older vehicles can be problematic. Now, would I use them

in a modern vehicle that specified them? Probably because modern vehicle engines are extremely finicky about the grade type weight and so on of oil that they use because they have these systems that depend on certain parameters being fulfilled. So it's a tough call. Now, if you're an older one, I found that it's difficult to find 10W40 oil anymore. That's what was specified for my transam, my 76 transam, and I continue to use that because that's what it's supposed to have. And I'm not going to try to use a modern oil that might result in problems in an older vehicle if you use that type of oil.

So, gentlemen from Eagle Point, then answer your question, or did you have a specific vehicle you were talking about? Yeah, it does. It does indeed, but I was wondering about that. since I don't have an older vehicle for 1040, but Eric seems to make sense that the recommendation in the manual is for a LecoZerOW20, then stay with it and hope it's an engine conserving oil as well. Yeah, well, and also change your oil more often than they would probably suggest.

Well, would you figure that's a good idea, Eric? Yes, I was going to bring that up, and thank you for doing that. The manufacturers have gotten into this habit of touting these extreme interventions. for oil changes as a way to tout, hey, you know, you have a lower maintenance cost with this particular vehicle. In some cases, they'll tell you, you can go 10,000 miles in between oil changes. I would never do that, no matter what they say. I know I would have that. If I cared about keeping the car long term. All right, there we go. Thank you for checking in from Eagle Point. Let me grab another call here for

Eric. Hi, this is KMED. Who's this? Welcome. Hey, good morning, guys. Keith out of Cave, Judge. Keith, how you doing? I'll make a comment about the previous callers question. My son's got a 250,000 K-05 Honda CRV. Zero 20 runs great. Don't understand it, but don't touch it. The reason that I called was about depth regulations.

Oh, DEF? You mean for diesel? Diesel exhaust fluid regulations. Were they? initially mandated by the feds or by California long ago. And if so, or whatever the answer is, is it true that the feds are going to go away, have the requirement of death go away and leave California high and dry, whatever that might mean?

Oh, okay. The key to understanding this isn't so much that the federal government or California, for that matter, specifies how to achieve compliance with the regs. What they do is they put forward a standard, a regulation that has to be complied with. And then it's up to the vehicle manufacturers to figure out a way to comply with it. So the vehicle manufacturers, in this case, came up with the DEF and particulate traps and so on as a way to meet the tailpipe exhaust emissions standards that have been put forward by at the federal level and also at the California. California level. So that's basically how that works. So there was no regulation that said you're going to use DEF, which is what urea? I think it is to get. And not per se. Just like, for example, they don't say that, you know, people have to buy EVs or that the EVs have to be manufactured.

They've never done that. What they did say is that, well, it's been repealed now a little bit by Trump or dial back. They did say that corporate average fuel economy standards are going to go up to 50 miles per gallon by model year 2026. Right. You know, the only way you're going to comply with that standard is at the very minimum with a hybrid electric vehicle, if not an outright electric vehicle, because the way they determine compliance. So it's really tricky.

They don't say you have to build electric cars. What they say is you have to build compliant cars. Yeah. So however you get to it is all that matters, however you get to the standard. All right. So it doesn't sound as if Trump is getting rid of DEF necessarily. the manufacturers are still saying that. But for areas, for people who live out in areas that they don't have to do a mission test and things like that,

is it pretty common to knock out the DEF systems? I don't know if you can do that. Yeah, very much so. But you know what? It's almost an academic point because I'm trying to think in terms of just light-duty vehicles, including light-duty trucks, i.e. half-ton trucks. There are almost no diesel left. There's certainly no diesel passenger car.

left as far as I'm aware. Maybe somebody out there will correct me, but I'm pretty sure you cannot buy a diesel engine in a passenger car, and I think there are maybe one or two cases of half-ton trucks that are available with diesels. The handful of diesels that you can still get are generally in the three-quarter ton, in 2,500 series, and up class. So there's just not many of them, you know, not many of them left to choose from, and that's on purpose. It's interesting the way that they change the spin on the vehicles. Did I tell you about the local transit agency for the longest time they had the powered by clean natural gas on the side of the transit buses. Oh, yeah, I remember that.

Okay. Yeah, clean natural gas. And there's still a bunch of those out there now. The funny thing is, is I was next to one the other day, and it says powered by hybrid electric, right? They're making hybrid electric. It's like, ooh, and I'm next to it, and it's a diesel. It's it. It's a diesel with a Prius type of transit or transmission system in it.

That's all, right? Isn't that it? It's all very disingenuous. And, you know, I'm glad you brought up the CNG thing because CNG actually is extremely clean and it's also extremely abundant. And it could be made very practical. You know, I remember back in the 90s, that's how far back this goes, when some of the manufacturers were beginning to think about offering dual fuel vehicles that had both

CNG tanks and gas tanks and that therefore could switch from one to the other. And it was very practical, extremely low emissions, almost nil emissions, and the CNG itself, very low cost, because there's so much of it. And strangely, that went away for some reason. Yeah, well, it didn't fulfill the emissions, the real emissions, which was carbon. Even then, I bet you they were starting to wind up on that kind of thing. I know that one of our generators here at the radio station is powered by propane. And it is, you know, amazingly clean. You look at the oil and the amount of carbon residue in the oil is nothing as contrasted with a regular gas or a diesel, that's for sure. It's true. I've converted my, I have a generator also,

and I've converted it to be a dual fuel setup so I can run it on gasoline or I can run it on a 20 pound propane cylinder. So it's nice to have that additional capacity. And you're absolutely right. When it runs on propane, you know, the spark plugs stay pristine, the oil change intervals increase. It's all like it's a really great idea. And yet it got done away with, just like Volkswagen's diesels, because they were such great ideas. Yeah, they don't want those ideas. They You want the very expensive electric battery idea, I suppose. Hey, we'll grab one more call, and then we'll get into Eric's latest review. Hi, who's this?

Good morning. This is James and Selma. Hi, James. I've got a question about like half-ton or three-quarter-ton pickups that are diesel. I can understand like a Peterbill or a big diesel truck leaving their engine running. But in the parking lot, many times they've got the small. pickup and a diesel engine running and it's loud, it's noisy, and it's like, hey, look at me, I've got my diesel pickup truck or whatever. Are they doing it on purpose to show off, or is it my

imagination? Well, some might be, of course. I mean, I can't speak to what individual owners motivations might be. Maybe they also want to keep their air conditioning on. I don't know. Personally, would I do it? No, because it's wasteful and kind of pointless unless you're, you know, leaving your dog in the vehicle and you want the air conditioning to be on. Yeah, so we don't know. We can't look into the hearts of the diesel idlers, James. Right. I just thought maybe it's hard to start up afterwards or some reason.

Okay. All right. Appreciate the call there, James. You know, Eric, on that diesel side thing, I do know that on the side of the economy, when you have a diesel idling because of the nature of diesel in which it only is using enough fuel essentially to keep the engine rolling. If you turn a diesel lot, at least I know with my van again, and you just start it up and just let it idle, it hardly will ever warm up. I mean, it's like you literally have to get going and move it to make it warm up. Unlike a gas engine, which will get hot pretty quickly once you, you know,

start it up in the morning. And I think it may have something to do with the efficiency. And idle at loafing, it's almost like probably sipping fuel at that point in time, unlike the gas motor, maybe, maybe that's what the- That's true. And, you know, the main reason I think that people will buy a diesel engine over a gas engine in a heavy truck particularly is because of the range you get in between stops when you're pulling the load in particular. You know, the diesels are optimal for that kind of work. So, you know, it's nice to be able to just get out on the road and go 400 miles, you know, with six or seven thousand pounds of trailer, hooked to the back of your rig, whereas if you did the same with the gas V8, you'd be stopping a lot more often.

All right. Hey, let's talk about the 2025 Chevy Tahoe. Yeah, that is some pretty good stuff there. I've driven some of the Tahos, and I've always enjoyed that experience. Just kind of big, you're high, it's power. It's kind of like everything that American vehicles used to be. But what's the latest one like, huh? Well, the interesting thing about it to me, and I think we touched.

on it last week, is that, believe it or not, it's the last full-size SUV that still comes standard with a V8 engine. Cool. You know, Chevy's managed to keep the fires burning, so to speak. And the other thing about it is that, in my opinion, full-size SUVs are kind of the evolution of what was once the six-passenger, rear-drive, V8 family wagon or sedan that used to be so common, you know, that was commonly owned by middle and lower-income people, even. And now, of course, those cars don't exist except at the extreme, you know, six-figure level of high-end luxury cars.

And even they are relatively small compared to the big vehicles of the past. So a lot of people who have a family, you know, if you need to be able to carry more than four people plus yourself, five people, you need a bigger vehicle. You need something like the Tahoe that has three rows that can carry seven to eight people and pull a trailer and, you know, is heavy duty and has a V8 and all of those things. Now, the unfortunate thing is that they are also getting expensive. The base Tahoe now is pushing $60,000. Oh. So, yeah, it's nice if you can afford it, but these vehicles, the nice things that Americans used to have are being gradually and systematically taken away from them.

As far as the vehicle here, it's still a V8, you're saying. Now, are they still doing that cylinder deactivation thing that was kind of problematic back in the mid-2000s for that? Or did they get rid of that? Did they do something different? No, it's a compliance feature that they still have. Supposedly, the glitches have been worked out of it. But, yeah, it's something that's unfortunate, like ASS, another of our compliance things that we love so very much that manufacturers have had to resort to it in order to be compliant.

The good news is I think there are ways to turn it off and defeat it with aftermarket tunes and so on. Yeah, I remember when Cadillac first came out with something like, that. I want to say back in the 80s when they had the V8464. V864. And unfortunately, the computer power just wasn't up to the challenge back in those days. They had all sorts of problems with it, and everybody would just disconnect it. And I didn't know if they were doing this with the Tahoe still, or if they've got the glitches out, then fine, right? Nothing wrong with that. It'll give you as many cylinders as you need. What? You know, what they, this is to get back to what we were talking about with oil. The system uses the oiling system

to bleed down lifters on the cylinders that are turned off. And so what often happens is you end up having bowel train-related problems with the system. So, you know, if you get one of these things, it's a good idea to as quickly as you can defeat the thing. It serves no purpose. Yeah, disconnect the multi-cylinder thing or the 8-6-4s thing. Okay, got it. All right. So I'll take that to the bank here.

Other than that, though, pretty good ride, though. Oh, definitely. Absolutely. And we're getting another good one. I think it's going to show up today. I think if I've got my dates correct. I'm getting an F-250 Superduty. Cool.

All right. Another big piece of iron then, and we'll talk with you soon about that. Hey, Eric, could you hang on just a minute? I need to talk to you off here for just a moment, okay? Okay, sure. All right. And find out about this and more. Also, great article that we didn't get a chance to talk about maybe another time,

the remote access car. What could go wrong there? Okay. We'll talk about that in more. E.P.O.com. This is KMED, KMED, H.T.1. Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG. We ran spas.

Firefighters.