Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 08-22-25_FRIDAY_7AM

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

08-22-25_FRIDAY_7AM

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. Greg Roberts from Rogue Weather. Rejoins the show. Every Friday we'd like to talk about the outdoors, what's going on there, and where the weather is headed, where the climate is,

the climate for being in the outdoors, and more. That's all sponsored by Oregon Truck and Auto Authority on Airway Drive in Medford. Greg is here from rogueweather.com. Greg, we're going to be certainly taking into a little bit of big, foot news this week that you wanted to talk about, which I think is always, oh, wait a minute. I thought, was that you, Greg? Did we lose you? It's me.

Okay, okay. I don't know what happened there. All of a sudden, it was like listening to the sounds of silence. Okay. All right. Well, I'm glad you called back in. I was ready to go to you. Wait a minute, the line's dead.

Okay. Yeah. Anyway, it's great to have you back here anyway from rogueweather.com. And heat warnings are going on. We got, let's see, I guess, we do have some West Nile and some of the mosquitoes. pools. They did that over at Jackson County Vector. That was announced this week here. Right. But that's pretty standard

for this time of year. We normally get a little bit of West Nile bubbling up through the mosquito pools this time of year, what, late August into September and such. But still just try to avoid the mosquito bites as usual and you'd be doing that anyway. But now, how hot's going to be in for how

long? And is it the hurricane that's still driving this holding and coming up the wind patterns in the United States? What's happening with that right now? No, I'm not going to, I'm not going to blame this on Aaron at all, because Aaron is making good speed, heading actually away from the United States, was just looking to see what the current watch warning situations for Aaron were, and basically it's extreme eastern New

England at this point, some of the barrier islands out there, but the majority of, of the hurricane warning is actually offshore, doesn't touch any part of the, you know, land-populated areas. Yeah, yeah, but at one point, though, Greg, didn't some hurricane activity? Exactly what the model said she would do, and she's curving to the northeast and headed out into the North Atlantic, where once, you know, you get a tropical system out there into the North Atlantic, they usually don't stay tropical. for very long. Some of the forecast maps do show the center of the low for Aaron staying pretty well organized and then moving across the North Atlantic where it becomes an extra-tropical situation, meaning more of a, quote, traditional storm, unquote, and then may even possibly

start impacting the British Isles, if you will, Ireland, the main island itself. There's some potential that it will hold together and get all the way over there. But like I said, once it does, definitely not a tropical system, just a very strong North Atlantic storm. All right, now I'm headed out this weekend for a few days over on coast, Smith River, Brookings, Chekko effect going to be in effect during those days? I just went to go back through that, and typically when we get these kind of high-pressure ridges that build up and give us a lot of heat in the inland valleys, you start seeing a pretty pronounced Chetco effect get going in Brookings and Harbor.

And actually, I was a little shocked looking at the windfields just a few minutes ago. it's not looking like a strong Chetco effect is going to set up in Brookings and Harbor. So while we're going to be well up into the hundreds here, right now it looks like the warmest Brookings is going to get low 70s. Oh, okay, so I'm going to have to put on my winter coat then. Yeah, no, you probably won't have to put on the winter coat. And, you know, pretty typically Del Nort Coast, Curry County Coast, stays warmer. than, say, places like Gold Beach, Coos Bay area, and then moving on up the coast, Winchester Bay, which is very popular for people here in Medford and Grants Pass to head to.

Looking at the temperatures there, it looks like they're definitely going to be seeing 60s. All right. What about fishing conditions? Plush is coming in, bringing the low clouds in in the mornings. But clearing in the afternoon. So if you want to really cool off, I would say Winchester Bay probably going to see cooler conditions for sure than what Brookings on down through Crescent City is going to be seeing over the next, what's just call it, five to six days. All right. When do we cool back down to normal after this?

Thursday. Thursday, okay. Yeah. Thursday we'll be back in the mid-90s here in Medford. that will still be above average, but I think everybody would much rather see a 95-degree high than the 105-degree highs. We've got the potential to see over the next few days, starting with today, actually. All right. Let's dig into some Bigfoot news.

You want to talk about that. And, you know, there are people that call me up, and they just love it when you start digging into this. And there are other people that say, there's a crazy Bigfoot talk, but that's okay. It's Friday. Let's let her hair down a little bit. Tell me what you're saying. Well, maybe more than just a little. I mean, obviously, I've been into this for a while.

We've been talking on the show about things I've been doing, but there is one thing that had always been on my radar, which is we know that there is a relationship between coyotes and Bigfoot. And I've actually, I mean, have I watched them, you know, walking around, frolicing together, playing together? No. but I have definitely heard vocalizations between the two back and forth. In fact, that happened on the first Bigfoot encounter I had in my life back in 84 in the Sky Lakes wilderness.

And we've talked about that. I got awakened by a very loud and very close Bigfoot howl and the coyotes were responding to it. And as the Bigfoot doing its howl moved away from us, the coyotes kept responding to the point it eventually got to where we couldn't hear it with our own ears anymore, but we could still hear the coyotes going off responding to it around us. So I've been hearing that, you know, especially since I got into going out and investigating this on my own. And then as wolves became far more prevalent here in the area, it began to occur to me,

well, okay, we know there's something of a relationship there between bigfoots and coyotes. What's the relationship with wolves? Yeah, you can think it's a canine, right? Another canine? Sure. Well, it's a canine, but it's a much different kind of canine, and there wasn't anything I could find out there anywhere to document that. And so I kind of always had that in mind.

will then enter my friend Mark Horbin, who has a wolf dog that is 78% northern timber wolf, the true native wolf to our area, and 22% Malamute. And what you get is an animal, the bulk, the size of a wolf. But, well, he's part dog. And the only way I was ever able to tell just looking at him was the fact that the leg length was shorter, much more dog-like, and he had doggy ears. But other than that, every bit of coloring about him and the size is like, yeah, if I saw that out in the woods, I would think I had seen a wolf, not, you know, a wolf dog.

So I got thinking about, well, maybe we could take APA out. So last week I went up to Grant's Pass and I met with Mark and said, hey, you know, here's my crazy idea. and he didn't think it was crazy. He's like, let's do this. And I'm like, oh, cool. So Wednesday night, we set out with OPA, and the whole thing was purely, you know, science. And people may scoff and start laughing, going, are you kidding? You can't do anything scientific with something that doesn't exist.

Okay, well, you say. But there's thousands of years of documentation from the First Nations peoples that say it definitely exist. And we've got a long history, actually, literally from the time the United States was established as colonies, reports of encounters with Bigfoot showed up immediately in papers. But they didn't call it Bigfoot because nobody called it Bigfoot until 1958, thanks to the newspaper in Eureka, California. They all had different names for the same thing that's being described accurately by eyewitnesses to this day. So you ended up taking up, that's your dog, right?

That's Mark's. Oh, Mark's dog, okay. All right. And so I'm driving my vehicle. They're behind me. We're headed up to a spot that I have had encounters. I mean, literally, I think the first one at this particular spot was 2013. but I've had encounters there for years, most of which revolved on going up there and just sitting and listening and it heard vocalizations.

And then one very memorable time where I'm sitting there just listening to what's going on in the woods, and I look down the road to the south of me and saw the two red eyes standing there in the road looking at me. and I'm like, okay, so I know this is a good spot to be at this time of the year. We were driving in. We hadn't even gotten there yet, and I come around this bend in the road, and there's this straight stretch, and all of a sudden when my headlights lit up that section of the road, there was this big, dark shape on the side of the road that I'm looking and going,

that doesn't look like just trees and shadows, And all of a sudden, I see two yellow kind of amber-looking eyes looking right at me, and then boom, and it was gone. And I slammed on the brakes, and I'm like, whoa, because I'd never had a road cross-sighting. I'd never seen one standing beside the road right up until that minute. And I was like, did I just see that? is I mean, did I imagine something? And we go up the road a little bit, and then there's a wider spot, and I pull over, and we immediately, we get together, and I go, when I slammed on the brakes, and I told Mark and his brother, Chris, exactly what I had seen, they go, you should

have seen Opa. He comes jumping right up into the front. He's trying to go out the window. He was looking to the left. So APA realized that something was up, too. It wasn't just... Exactly. He picked up on it, and I was like, whoa, well, we're standing there talking. Appa comes out of the van they were driving. Chris has him on his lead, and APA is trying to pull him to head in the direction that the big foot would have headed. Now, are you sure this wasn't a bear of some sort or some other large animal? No, absolutely not a bear. so yeah there was no misidentification on that aspect and I told the guys I said man I can't wait to get to where we're actually going to well I we drove the next mile and a half to get to where I wanted to go and we get there we get set up and almost as soon as we got set up and things got quieter meaning we're not slamming doors there's no

lights, headlights, flashlights for getting everything set up. When we went dark, almost as soon as we went dark, Opa is up. His ears are up. He is straining on the lead, and he's looking back in the direction we just came from. Greg, there is, I'm no expert on this. I've read a little bit kind of on the fringes of Bigfoot research and other people that have talked about this. People have been writing me for years, people who have been, and they've called the show, too, people who have been law enforcement folks working in the woods, anybody that seems that is in touch with any kind of rural law enforcement or timber people have told me for years that, oh, yeah, you know, there's something out there. We all know, but they don't like talking about it because of, hey, you're a crazy person kind of the thing.

I think that's lessening these days. There's a little less of that because it becomes too often and with too many smart, sober people doing it, you know, to be able to just dismiss everything out of hand. But I'm wondering, though, when you're talking about dogs and their ears go up, is there any evidence that you were aware of that perhaps Bigfoot vocaling might have an ultrasonic component? I'm just wondering because dogs have higher hearing frequencies than we're capable of hearing as humans. And, yeah, there is evidence of that. And, you know, I've talked to people that have had close range encounters with them, where they have produced what is far more of a scream. And I've had people describe the feeling of, like, it went through my body and rattled off my bones.

Oh. Okay. That's infrasound. Because when they... So that's on the low. side. Oh, that's the low side then, infraside, right? I don't know about the high side. I'm going to talk about the infrasound side because when you do the spectrograph analysis of recordings of these screams, of these howls, that shows, and it's there. And then I've had other people and read

reports of people talking about, quote-unquote, being buzzed, where there wasn't really anything audible that they heard, but they felt this kind of sensation, this kind of like tapping against their body, if you will, as a way to describe it, and then becoming very disoriented. That would be another example of what happens with infrasound, and we actually know the big cats do that now, which helps when they're hunting. So infrasound isn't unknown or not seen elsewhere in the animal kingdom. We know the big cats can do it. We definitely know the crocodilians, crocs and alligators do it.

Elephants do it to help them communicate across longer distances because infrasound will actually travel further. Sure. And when you have the right receptor for it, it helps you communicate over greater distance. So what is your conclusion then from your going out with APA? Documentation of the effect of humans, when a Bigfoot does it, it's out there, it's in the reports, and you start waiting into this. It gets pretty fascinating. But to get back to what happened Wednesday night, because we,

definitely got them coming in, and they were encircling us and checking us out, because I guarantee you, they had never, ever seen a wolf with humans before. And it drew them in. They came in and really wanted to check this out, because this got their attention, because that's not normal. Okay. All right. Hey, Greg, I'm a wolf with humans. Yeah, I know. Greg, I'm a little bit short on time this particular morning, so are you going to be talking about this on your trophy club little live stream that you're doing on Tuesday? I hadn't planned on it necessarily because that gets dictated a lot. What we're going to talk about will be based on who's coming in.

But I am definitely talking about it tomorrow at 3 p.m. at the Butte Falls Library. We're going to do a two-parter there. We're going to start at the library, and then we're going to go about seven miles out of Butte Falls, up the prospect Butte Falls Highway to an area that BFRO, they definitely have one road cross siting posted on their website, but talking to people who are investigators for BFRO, there are six not posted accounts that they have received from people that are either road cross or people had camped in that area and they heard vocalizations.

So we're going to take people out to a spot that there have been multiple reports to the Bigfoot Field Researchers' organization of things that have happened at that location. And the great part is, you

don't have to do any walking to be there, which literally pull right off the highway. There's a BLM road that comes in And then there's this pretty broad area that quite frequently in the hunting seasons, people are camping in it. All right. What time is that going to be going on at Butte Falls Library? We started at 3 o'clock in Butte Falls at the library.

I'm going to be doing a little bit of talking there, and then we're going to take everybody to that location and then continue the talk out there on site. All right, very good. Hey, Greg, I appreciate the update. I'll be off next Friday, but we will see you after that. It'll be a couple of weeks, and I'll be back after Labor Day, after my long summer nap, I guess, if you want to call it that. You'd be well. Your summer siesta. Exactly.

Summer siesta before Labor Day. After Labor Day, I'll be back on here. And we will see you then over at Rogue Weather. Thanks again. All right. Make sure you get the tour shirts done. Bill and Linda, the Summer Ciesta. The summer siesta.

Take care, Greg. Greg Roberts. You too. Greg Roberts atrogweather.com. It's 732. So tomorrow at 3 o'clock, Butte Falls Library. That could be an interesting lecture.

Then a little field trip. Little field trip in, well, let's see. Butte Falls, BF, and Bigfoot, right? Butte Falls and Bigfoot seem to be made for one another, really. Two dogs fabricating are fabulous at fabricating what you need to get the road. Hi, this is Lisa, the Hughes Lumber Girl, and I'm on 106.7, KMED. 737.

Glad to have you here. Find your phone Friday. 7705633. Maybe hold the calls. We will have a bunch of open phone topic and calls. After I talk with State Senator Noel Robinson, who is on the road this morning. Hello, Noah. Welcome back to the show. Great having you on. Hi. Thank you. It's great to be on again. Thank you. All right. So a week from today, special session supposed to kick off. And there was talk that there was going to be a one day session. Now it appears that Republicans at this point are holding tight. And they're going to say, nope, we're not going to approve the rules that or waive the rules. So you'll have to read the bills. And I kind of make fun of that kind of like, oh, what a great burden, you know, to put under the Democrats in order to raise taxes. What do you know right now because I see conflicting reports that some say, yep, yep, there's a bill all ready to go. Other people will say there's going to be a hearing starting Monday for some of these bills. What do you know so far, Senator? Well, there's a hearing on Monday scheduled. We don't know what they're going to put forward. There is a draft of a bill that they're putting out, which is a huge tax increases.

they want to raise the gas tax cast six cents a gallon they want to increase a double registration fees you're really registered you know every year you'll pay you'll pay twice as much they want to triple new car registration fees

just raising fees everywhere and then the thing that's I think is most insidious they're worried about electric cars not paying fuel tax and so rather than just you know we don't have very many electric cars yet. We're subsidizing them. But they're going to put in, according to this bill, if this is

what they do, we don't know what they'll do, they're going to put in a program where they have to pay a mileage tax for electric cars. And do you think that's not going to spread to all the cars? Every car is going to have to be tracked. Every mile is going to have to be paid for. Yeah, this is the camel's nose in the tent, so to speak. Is this the, or are they, in other words, are they talking about taking the OREGO trial program, which has been done over the last few years and then mandating it for electric cars or electric cars only and you got to figure that's it so they're going to use the same program they were testing okay that's the chip something something like it and it will be mandatory you'll be able to at least right now pay it's a three hundred and forty

dollar a year fee instead of them keeping track of all your mileage right well we know though that um one of the reasons why states like oregon california everybody else they want to go to the transponder model, not because it's just able to tax electric cars, but isn't it true that it's also being used to socially engineer and charge you more to go into, let's say, a city, for example, during rush hour, because it's tracking where you are via GPS, and it always knows where the car is, and it's by, and they can tax you more for being at a different place at a different time of day, isn't that right? That's exactly where it's likely to go. Of course, they will tell you, hey, we're doing this

with a third party, and the third party is not telling us where you're going. We're not tracking where Americans are going, if you believe that. And you're right. Once you have this program, it will just rise and rise and ride. It will wind up on every car. And it's like tolling. If you go back east, there's toll roads all over. And not only is it a big mess, even with electronics making it a little easier, they have to do all sorts of stuff to the roads. It's very expensive. But the tolls rise and rise to the point where it's just ridiculous. You're paying more for tolls and for fuel. And the roads, for some reason, the toll roads never seem to be in that great shape either.

Yeah, it is interesting. I remember growing up in Pennsylvania and Ohio, we had toll roads, rather. They were the turnpikes, you know, the Ohio turnpike, the Pennsylvania turnpike. And we were told that, well, the reason you're paying these tolls is so these roads are in the best shape at all times, which is arguable. I've been on some of those recently. The toll roads seem to be in the worst shape to me. It just becomes a big way to siphon money out of taxpayers, and once they have the money, they've got a stream of money,

and it really doesn't matter what shape the roads are in. Now, this is all supposedly done, Senator Robinson, because ODOT is in real financial trouble. Is there any effort being made to go through all the books of ODOT to make sure that we're actually spending money on what we need to rather than money that is perhaps a better used elsewhere. What do you think? No, there isn't.

Now, there is a pretense. I notice in the bill draft that they are saying we're going to do twice-yearly audits. We're going to, you know, check on them. I'm on the audit committee. I know what that's like. An auditor goes over and says, hey, the book's balance and things seem to be reasonable. But what isn't looked at carefully is exactly. right, the breakdown of cost. Why did the Abernathy Bridge project go from 200 million to 800 million

or more? It doesn't make any sense if you look at the size of the bridge. It just doesn't. And it's all hidden in these fees. I mean, what is it costing, for example, to do environmental impact statements before you do anything? What are the engineers charging to put up a bridge that we've done a zillion bridges around the country? And it just doesn't make sense to spend a $50 million to engineer another one. I mean, it shouldn't be that hard. We know how to build bridges. It's all, this money is going into pockets all over. The prices are too high.

The prices of paving roads are too high. And it's, this needs to be investigated thoroughly, not by some auditors saying, hey, the book's balance. We need to go into it in detail and pass projects and know exactly what's going on before we just hand the beast to more money because they can spend all, all we give them. because it does feel like it's a hurry up and just give ODOT lots of money, but the accountability issue is what is concerning a lot of people. What I'm curious about here, Senator, State Senator Noah Robinson with me on the program, and we're talking about next Friday's start of a special session. How many days are we expected to do or go through at this point?

It's not going to be one day. It's pretty clear, right? No, and it shouldn't be. And I don't like waiving the constitutional requirement anyway at any time. But this is exactly the reason that these constitutional rules are there, which is the Constitution says we can waive. But it's a bad idea because we want the public to have time to look at what's going on. We want reporters to have a look at the bill. Right now we have a draft.

We have no idea what the final version will be. And we want time. We don't want to rush something through one day. so that we're not playing to waive rules that the that's going to have to go through the House and then through the Senate, it could take a week.

And that's what it should take while everyone examines it and look, we should have reporters in there saying hey, wait a second, what are you doing? We're doubling all the registration fees. We're increasing the gas tax. I mean, if we had, if we knew that

ODOT was functioning efficiently and we say, well, the gas tax the fixed amount. Maybe at some point it would have to be raised, but I wouldn't even consider that until we know how the money is spending, because it should be costing less to build roads today than it did 20 years ago as technology improves. And we have, you know, computerized equipment for laying the roads. It should be costing less. Instead, it seems to be costing a lot more. Wouldn't it be fair to say, though, that cost of petroleum products and the actual asphalt might be going up just with

inflationary pressures? I want to be fair about that. But look at the price of oil. The price of oil, I mean, is on an inflation just the basis down from 20 years ago. I mean, everything's going up. Yes, it will go up. But look at the cost of asphalt.

When I look at that, the cost of asphalt in a road project needs to be too smaller fraction, yet it should be the main cost. There is a story in the Willamette week. I don't know if you kept up on that story from the Oregon Journalism Project that they were featuring, and it was a gentleman named Joe Cortright. Did you read that story out there a few days ago? No, I didn't see that.

Yeah, Cortright is one of ODOT's biggest critics, and he's a big budget-crunching kind of guy, has a good mind for the numbers. And they did a really interesting interview there, and what he talked about was that Oregon Department of Transportation is actually deceiving the public when they talk about their budget or the money coming in. And one of the standard pleas for more money is that, you know, we get less money per car than all the other states out here on the West Coast or, you know, in our, than other states. In other words, that we're cash poor and motorists aren't paying enough to be able to do. And there's not enough money.

But the part that they left out of their pleas for more money was that, other states charge huge sales taxes because they're huge sales tax states and they include that that revenue and so that's supposed to say oh gosh we're just crying for because look at california they have put a sales tax on cars right you know that kind of thing yeah there you go of course you know we have we have a sales tax on cars now they sneak this in a few years ago we call it the vehicle privilege tax i think it's a half percent or something right now right a sales tax if you buy a new car. And there's talk about raising it. What they like to do is keep adding all these different kinds of taxes. And then once they've got it, then each one gets raised. And I find it's very

frustrating because the gasoline tax is the most practical way of taxing to build roads. And yet the politicians want to add all these other taxes because they think people won't notice that they make little taxes all over rather than put it in one practical place. That, that proposed program for taxing electric vehicles, starting with electric vehicles per mile, has a clause in it, says that administration costs cannot be more than 10%. 10% to collect mileage fees, and the bureaucrats are going to get 10% off the top because you know it's going to 10%. It's crazy. Why would it, why would it take 10% in cost to collect that tax? Just curious. It wouldn't. And yet I see that in other agencies. Oh, we get

10% or 8% or whatever it is. It's just that we start with bureaucrats taking huge fees. State Senator Noah Robinson with me today. Going back to court rights story, something else that he also brought here is we're told that all of these bridges have to be replaced, including the I-5 bridge, because they're old and they always talk about seismic issues. And it's true, you know, there are certainly seismic issues out there. but in his opinion as a number cruncher he says seismic issues is the new asbestos you know all you have to do is say asbestos and then you're supposed to panic and run around with your hair on fire and then and then throw whatever money that you may have add something

Getting your knowledge about that, do you think he may have a point like that, because, you know, that you could actually take the I-5 bridge as an example. It's old, but it's still perfectly functional, and work on some additional pylons as an example in the river in order to give it some extra life rather than just tearing it down and starting again. Any thoughts on that? Yes, I completely agree, and I have the same opinion. They've spent, and this is being used all over, not just on bridges, but on building. We spent $600 million renovating the Capitol building, and part of the excuse was, hey, we've got to put it on these rollers so that when the earthquake comes, it's going to float on top of it. And there's two things about that. One, we don't know what a future earthquake will look like.

We have this history. It could be, it's likely to be a couple hundred years before one strike, or it could strike tomorrow. Earthquakes are unpredictable, and their magnitudes are unpredictable. So if we start replacing everything because we think, hey, we want to engineer this a little better, we're spending all this money and maybe the earthquake will be too strong and knock them over anyway. It makes sense on new construction or you're modifying, say you want to improve the I-5 bridge a little bit. I don't think it should be that expensive to add a little bit more bracing and make it a little stronger if you're being reasonable about it. But I completely agree

the seismic issues are being used to, as an excuse, to drive cost up. All right. Now we go to the point of politics here. We had leader Drazen and also Senate leader Daniel Bonham, Senator Daniel Bonham. And they were talking about how horrible these tax increases are going to be for the Oregon citizens. And they're right. They're on the record. They're there on the cover of, uh,

of opb.org the other day. And they were talking, this is just absolutely miserable. And I would agree with them. My question is, if they agree that it's going to be a miserable thing for residents of Oregon and increases, and they're always talking about you don't want to increase taxes on people who are poor, well, the poor people are going to have to pay the gas taxes, poor people are going to have to pay the registration fees and all the other things to do. And then why are Republicans on both sides apparently cooperation?

operating and providing quorum, given that they've all admit that this is bad. And if you all go, the taxes will likely pass, will they not? I mean, you know, help me understand the thinking of the politics behind the scenes here, Senator. Okay, yes. So it requires 18 votes in the Senate to pass. So it takes all of the Democrats, the same thing in the House. I don't know whether the Republicans are.

I think we're united in the Senate. I don't know about the House. So it takes all the Democrats to do it. And yes, I would be quite happy to deny quorum on this issue. I'd be delighted not to be there. Now quorum, just to understand so people understand, denying quorum, quorum is a constitutional requirement that enough people show up in order to do business. You have to have a certain percentage of your people there, right? That's what this is all about.

That is correct. In the Senate, they need 20 members there where they can't do anything, and 18 Democrats doesn't do it. So a couple of Republicans have to be on the floor. They can vote against it, but if they're there, they provide quorum. There is always a political disagreement. You can't deny quorum for everything. It's just not practical. And they're right.

They're absolutely right. But our current crop of Republicans appear unwilling to deny quorum for anything, for any particular reason, and that's not good either, I don't think. That's exactly right. And I lean toward, on a tax increase this, big done this way. I think we have a perfectly good reason to say this is not something we should be providing quorum for. So if I had any inkling that we had enough Republicans not to be there, I would not be there. It's a little tough for me. I will probably be there assuming that there's

no effort to deny quorum, and I don't think there is. I'm disappointed in this one. Some of that people can get mad at the Republicans, but some of it is basically where's your threshold, and it's pretty low for a lot of other Republicans, and sometimes they have a reasonable argument, and sometimes they don't. And I disagree at this time. I think we should be denying. If for some reason, Senator, that either the Senate or, now it would be easier to deny quorum in the Senate because there are fewer. And it's like anything else, the more people you throw into the mix, it gets more difficulty, it gets more difficult, rather, to get unity on something like this. It would be easier than the House.

my question, though, is let's say if there's a political rabbit pulled out of a hat and quorum were denied then for this upcoming special session and they didn't have the votes to gavel in could the governor then declare an emergency session or what happens?

What is the process here? I want to make sure that I'm not just spitballing out of my backside here. Okay? I think, I think, based on my understanding of the Constitution, if we didn't show up, couldn't open the session, and the session would end, but I think she can call another one. I don't think it stops her from repeatedly calling them and making a big issue of it. But they cannot pass the bill unless quorum is eventually provided.

And this is very much like the redistricting map issue that the Democrats who ended up denying quorum in Texas were conducting recently, right? Same sort of thing. That's exactly right. I mean, I always find it's very interesting that the Democrats, if we were to deny quorum, would scream about how wrong it is, but they're all heroes if they do it in Texas. Yeah, and in Republicans, and Republicans in Oregon, many of them are quite happy with denial of quorum, and then in Texas, Republicans, those crazy Democrats are running away. They're running away.

They're running away. And I really think that denying quorum is a option that's been given so that if your party thinks that this is extreme, you can do it. It's in the Constitution, we can do it. I don't think it's a rhetoric about walking off on your job. It's just all political retortic. Yeah, yeah, that's what we're dealing with then. So let me then ask, and could denial of quorum be used then to force a concession on the tax

hike bill to make it less onerous? Is there any talk of that? There is, I know of no talk of that. The sort of thing that can happen, and I don't know of any talk about it. serious talk about this either, is what often happens is on the rule suspension, you say, well, give us a concession and we'll waive the rule. I don't like that, because all that does is result in the Democrats proposing something extremely back off a little bit, and then we're all happy, hey, we got some.

And so I just don't like that kind of negotiation, but that does happen. That's more likely to happen than the negotiation over the forum. Well, we only have a draft of the bill so far, Senator Robinson, but like I said, I'm just kind of wondering how this could work in which you say, all right, we don't really like the chipping of the car because, you know, even of the electric vehicles, because you know that what you're going to do is eventually take that and make all vehicles chipped and databaseed and with the GPS tracker on it, et cetera, et cetera, because ultimately the state of Oregon wants to be able to social engineer and charge people more for being in certain places at certain times of day, which means that essentially only wealthy people could afford to be driving in certain areas at certain times. That's the bottom line. Is it not where they want to take it? Maybe that's something that the Republicans could do then to force a, okay, we're not going to go to the chip on the car. What do you think? That is definitely something that should be raised is something that's likely to happen.

And I think even more likely is just simply a raising of the fee and raising of the fee. And I find it very hypocritical. They're pretending that the Democrats will tell you that we need to make everything elected. It costs too much now. but I'm for the free market. I think people should be able to buy electric vehicles that they want, but they shouldn't be subsidized. So right now, we're paying people to buy electric vehicles. Then we're complaining that they're not paying fuel taxes,

and now we want to give them a mileage tax on tap of that. So we're going to give them a subsidy to buy the car and then tax some special for it. And it's just ridiculous. The first thing you do is get rid of the subsidy, because that is wrong. And then let's look and wait and see, because only 2% of the vehicles are electric now and less technology changes.

It's never going to rise that much because they cost too much right now. All right. State Senator Noah Robinson, we appreciate the take on where we're headed. So it's looking like next Friday, there will be likely quorum. There will be the special session. And we are looking for some taxisks. And I figured that the governor would not have called a special session unless she believed that there were enough Democrat votes to pass this.

Would you agree on that? I would agree with that. Last time, Senator Meek, they were mad at Senator Meek. It's one of the Democrats because he objected. And my guess is that he has agreed in some way because otherwise they wouldn't do that. I don't know what sort of deal has been made, but that's a reasonable assumption. All right. When I get back from the Labor Day vacation, I guess we'll still be talking about it.

I'll get in touch with you then. Okay? Thank you so much. Okay. Okay. Thank you.