Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 09-09-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: September 10, 2025

Greg ROberts form Rogue Weather and I talk about 5th Anniversary Almeda Fire, what has been learned, work yet to be done. Former State Sen. Baertschiger - Talk on Pac Power abuses, and the undue tie to government. Why R ratepayers paying 4 infrastructure?

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 Klausurrilling.com. Fifth year anniversary of the Allmeet of Fire. Mr. Outdoors, Greg Roberts from Rovegather.com, joining me right now with how we do a little look back here, what has worked out pretty well, maybe what we could still do better in the future. Greg, good to have you back on.

Welcome, sir. Thanks, Bill. Good to be here. Yeah. Of course, I don't think we necessarily. need to, you know, cover the ground of how bad it was. I think we all remember how bad it was. Man. I was looking back through some of the old videos that I had taken a, had taken going through Phoenix and talent and the, just the massive destruction, the dreams gone and everything

else. And I don't know. I hope we never, ever get a chance to have to see that again around here. That's for sure. But what do you think we've done well? If you were to say like, you know, So if you were to grade response in the five years since, what's some good? What's some bad? Maybe we'll kick that around a little bit here. Just kind of curious how you're seeing this. Well, it's kind of, I mean, there's definitely been huge improvements. A large section of the Greenway have been, they've gone through and they've reduced the fire hazard,

reducing the brush, reducing, you know, the amount of vegetation down in the greenway and big sections of it. that's the first place to start the integrated coordinated responses, which we were seeing before definitely a lot more emphasis placed on that. You know, we will see incidents now, and not just, you know, the wildland fire side of it, even the structure fire side of it, where they will move to dispatching closest available units regardless of whose jurisdiction it is on, for example, big portions of Phoenix, protected by Jackson County Fire District 5. There are portions, especially on the western side of town, that are still within the Medford Fire District, that the closest station in terms of response

time is going to be Station 3 right there on Highland Avenue. That's a bit of a hoof, though. shot, if you will. Yeah, that's a long drive, though, from... Time for response. Hey, hey, Greg, can you hear me okay? Three minutes. Greg, can you hear me okay? All right, I was just...

Yeah, I've been hearing you. Oh, okay, good. All I was just saying is that, you know, that's a long drive, though, Highland to Phoenix. That's a... Yep. That's a long put, as it were. So that part is good, then. We're going to send the firefighters that are closest and ignore more of the district

boundaries. That's a good thing. Okay, so that's good. All right. Which, by the way, also explains why, especially on the northern portion of Medford, in the first initial response to a fire, you're going to see Jackson County Fire District 3 coming out of their Central Point and White City Station to a fire that is in the north side of Medford. And the same is true for Medford fire. They're going to respond first alarm on a structure fire into Central Point out to white.

city from stations four and five good that's great and is there anything else that you think that is still kind of needs improvement perhaps if you were to judge anything in what has happened in the five years since um i mean the bigger thing is you know there's been work done on the greenway uh there continues to be worked done on the greenway you get away from the greenway though and still haven't seen a whole lot of the work that I think needs to be done. And one place in particular, because I was just up there illustrating this for a student from Princeton who's writing a thesis about wildland fire out here in the West, we still have huge portions of those East Hills here in Medford, going up Hillcrest, going up the far end of McAndrews, those

neighborhoods up in there that, especially once you get out past Cherry Lane, and we're talking Upper Hillcrest area, honestly, to me, it looks like a lot of pictures of the before in paradise. And I started mentioning this before we even had Almeda an open chain happen. I started pointing out that, you know, we need to be doing a better job. at creating space along some of our county roads that right now, that if a fire's coming through, unfortunately, we've got too many county roads where there's one way in, one way out, and... Can you give me an example of roads that we know about?

Right on it. Okay, could you give me an example of the roads that we know about and then that you think? I just said it, East Hillcrest, east of Cherry Lane. When you start going up the hill, oh, yeah, it's this nice, beautiful green tunnel to look at, but in a fire situation, it turns into a flaming tunnel of death, which is exactly what happened in Paradise. And so we're not out of the woods, so to speak, no pun intended, on something like that. No, by no stretch. I mean, for all the great work that's getting done through the Firewise program by private parties with their own.

parcels. You look at the counties especially, and they're not living up to it. 60 mile an hour wind event. Fortunately, we don't have too many of those, especially with people setting blazes. And by the way, do you, do you like me, still think of this as having been an arson event that day? Without any question. I know what was. Okay. Good. I didn't know if you have changed over the years, but that part kind of gets downplayed. It absolutely does, and again, you've got to look at who runs Oregon and who they give cover for. For example, you no longer see mugshots of people appearing the way you used to because

so many teachers were getting caught up when they were arresting people in the protest in Eugene and Salem and Portland. and so many of them were teachers, the teachers' union complained to their buddies in Salem, and their buddies in Salem passed laws prohibiting publishing, you know, mugshots. Yeah, it's a bad thing to notice that you have radicals within some of the organizations. Okay, got it. And you do, and then this student from Princeton who came out,

but she told me that her original idea on the paper she was writing was going to be based on terrorists using wildfires as a weapon. And I said, okay, look, obviously five years ago, we had an incredible weather situation happening that based on what we now know about it, it may be another 110 years before the next event like that happens, because we hear 100-year, 500-year event now thrown around so loosely. I think people have forgotten that it should legitimately

mean something and the wind event that fueled the events five years ago definitely is one of those once in 100 year events. We couldn't find anything in the records going back through time and some weather stations have never had that event recorded. Medford was one of those. But when you looked at Portland, when you looked at Seattle, when you looked at Spokane, when you looked at places where weather records go back to the late 1800s. Yeah, there was a similar event in 1872. So that's how rare those wind events were. And I just remember waking up five years ago on September 8, and all my spidey senses as soon as I woke up, I was filled with a very real sense of something bad is going to happen today.

I knew it. Yeah, unfortunately, it did happen here. Now, on the positive side, on the positive side, I think that the county, Jackson County, is much more engaged in informing us on wildfire events and when and where things are happening. And also, something that you and I both complained about a number of years ago was the absolute lack of using the emergency.

alert system in broadcast television and radio and all the rest of it. It's like, I understand that you want people to use the cell phone app. That's great. But, you know, to me, more information getting out is better than no information getting out. And I remember the night of they all meet a fire when the big hit coming and how Internet went down in neighborhoods, cell service going down in neighborhoods because the towers burned. You know, it's like, wow, you know, depending on that kind of wireless, necessarily work all the time. So they're, you know, Jackson County is now, and Josephine

County, too, I might add, are using these, all the tools at their disposal, not just the shiny cell phone app. So I have to give them some kudos on that. Yeah, I do too because, you know, there was never any reason to de-emphasize the emergency alert system. It existed the way that it did and existed well for decades from its inception back in the 1950s, you know, it just, it still is the best way to reach large numbers of people. And, you know, they fell in love with their shiny, wonderful new technology, and they almost wanted to treat EAS as a relic of a bygone era. Well, then they found out straight away how disastrous that idea was.

And I had yesterday message after message from people who saw the anniversary post on Facebook about what was going on five years ago yesterday and still had people telling me if it hadn't been for your information, we wouldn't have known what was going on and what we needed to do. Yeah, because there was nothing coming out of official sources in those days. It was, and I think this is something that has been remedied over at the county and local. level. I think there's a much more consciousness and love being put on keeping everybody informed about things like this. Now, I wanted to ask, I wanted to ask your opinion, though, and something that I've always been concerned about. I look at firefighting capacity in South County, and everybody's plugged into the Medford Water District, and there's a

limitation of what the mains are able to carry. And you remember what happened in Phoenix and talent? You get a few houses burned down. The plumbing melts, you know, a lot of the pex plumbing or the plastic plumbing, and then it's just gushing water, and then there goes your firefighting water, and it's gone. Is there anything we've done about that, in your opinion, as a former firefighter, about that? Well, and then, on top of that, they were trying to crack multiple hydrants at the same time, and it just crashed the entire system. I think at perfect, all you could do. Right away. Yeah.

We saw that repeated again in January. in Southern California, for all the issues they talk about, like, well, the reservoirs weren't even full, they kind of bounced right over the top of what was being said that all these hydrants getting cracked, and it helped collapse what water existed in the system. So that was just like five years ago here. So if we're five years later, and you've got those fires in Southern California, and the exact same thing happens, hydrant collapse, the system fails. No, I don't expect that particular circumstance has improved at all here. And to be perfectly honest, I think that would probably be the single most difficult thing

for them to be able to figure out how to fix. Because he had this infrastructure, which is all based around just sharing the water main, the same water main when ideally you would have a separate but equal if you want to term it that you know a separate but equal a line that is fed just for firefighting purposes and it's not it doesn't matter what happens at the home there's going to be pressure on the on the hydrant well that would require putting a secondary system in and the cost on that would be astronomical i mean i look at the cost that's going in with the power companies now putting their service lines in ground instead of above ground. The only reason that has become cost acceptable for the power companies is how much money they've lost in the lawsuits from their equipment starting fires. And so now that cost, it's like, yeah, no, under any other circumstance, we wouldn't even touch it. The same thing's going to be true on trying to create an entirely insulated water supply system just for firefighting.

And, yeah, and when you look again at what happened five years ago, let's not lose sight of the fact that it was driven by a once-in-one-year weather event. Okay. I mean, honestly, if we've got today's weather five years ago, it never happened. That would have been nice if we had that nice moisture. With all the factors that fed it. Yeah. Point well taken.

Hey, Greg, I appreciate to look back. I know you've got to go and play school bus now for your daughter. Yes, I do. Okay. But I always appreciate you keeping us up on those kind of things over at rogueweather.com. All right. Thanks again. You got it, Bill.

Greg Roberts. It is 725 on KMED, the Bill Meyer Show. Thank you for voting my team and I, the best insurance agent and agency in Southern Oregon. The Bill Myers Show is on. News Talk 1063, KMED. 728, some emails of the day, and those are sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson in Central Point Family Dentistry. Central Point family dentistry is next to the Mazadlon Mexican restaurant in Central Point. Nice, spacious, comfortable dental office, but let me tell you, they will not waste your time.

I think just by any time I've had work done crowns and fillings and cleanings and everything else, I just sail in there, and I'm just about ready to sit down and say, Bill, go ahead, come on back. That's the way they roll, really is. central point family dentistry dot com and got a bunch of people writing this morning wanted to share some of it mark ends up weighing in bill i appreciate what you do with the local news and coverage and such but i cannot listen any more to you citing with trump even when he's right the way he does things is wrong and embarrassing thank you mark well mark uh i think i'm pretty even-handed there are a lot of things that president

Trump does that I have agreed with and there are a few things that I have not agreed with to and I've been pretty squeaky about that too. All I would say is that, oh boy, Mark, it's going to be a long next three years for you. Okay. But this two shall pass, I guess, all right? Jason writes me this morning about the Cool Keeper program. We were talking about that last week with Pacific Power, the plan to control the HVACs and the air conditioning compressors.

Bill, I wouldn't want the power controlling, the power company rather, controlling my appliances so much that I refused the smart meter and went off grid. The PPNL customer service person said, if you're worried about what they're doing in California, we're not doing that here yet. Laugh out loud. So listening to your show a few years back, you read a letter from PPL to shareholders in which PPNL said that they would meet future demand for power by conservation. And yes, indeed, that is the plan. for the most part, Jason, conserve ourselves to prosperity. Keith rewrites me, he says, hey, Bill, I was, pardon me, Bill. He said he was wrong yesterday when he first wrote, as he had said that the Forest Service

planted cheat grass for years in areas that they were logging, and he said, no, I was wrong about that. Supposedly, they planted rice grass, non-native, instead of cheap grass. Okay, so there we go. Keith, thanks for the correction. I didn't think that the Forest Service would do the cheat grass, but, you know, never know. Patrick ends up writing about the Philly Karen, the Karen in the Philadelphia, one of the most hated

people in America. You know, remember the one that looks like Elizabeth Warren? Elizabeth Warren, I think my favorite take on that person who took the baseball, went over and demanded the baseball back from, you know, the little kid at the Phillies game. I think the best take on it was this is the face that you see right before they send the avocado toast back. laughed about that but you know also to be fair you know the dad went over and and and chased that ball but you know still you got a middle-aged adult taking the you know going over and demanding the ball back i just did not get that it's like where is our humanity right and patrick says

the karen and philly is just a horrible person and no it has nothing to do with covid it's all about entitlement part of the entitlement society and once you plug into the events in Philly it makes perfect sense all right betty writes me and a really interesting story because we were talking with dr. Carol Lieberman MD a few minutes ago about a lot of mental health issues including transgender issues and you know firearms and all the rest of it and betty says Bill I'm not sure I've ever talked to you about this before but my sister-in-law back in the day was obsessed with Elizabeth Taylor. She slept with her picture under her pillow every night.

She bought every movie magazine that was on the market with a story of her in it. And when she got pregnant, she became even more obsessed with Liz Taylor. She had a three-year-old at the time that she was pregnant, and this child was ready to kill his brother if she had a boy and not a girl, because they were going to name the girl Elizabeth and live happily ever after. Yikes, Betty. Had my brother not stepped in finally, the boy that she had had, finally was raised as a boy, and she settled down and it took a lot of medical help to talk her off the ledge.

In the gender world of today, this mother would have had surgery on that baby boy immediately after birth. I do believe post-partened depression and people raising children of opposite sexes sometimes hormone related by the parent usually the mother doing a hard push to change the kids can't help but notice some of that Betty have you noticed how there is just a whole ton of liberal white women celebrities

liberal white celebrity women who tend to collect adopted children almost like fashion accessories and I think what was it was it Charlie's Theron? Charlie's Theron, doesn't she have both of her children dressed up as both of her boys are being dressed up as girls or opposite sex? Aye, aye, aye.

You know, how is it that all of a sudden, just in your particular family, all of a sudden, the trans gene is coming out, even when they're not related. B, bizarre stuff for sure. 733 at KMED in 993 KBXG. We're going to check news here in. just a moment looking forward to it. Hey, wanted to give you a heads up.

I got one of these the other day. And Jay Austin Company, gold and silver buyers and Ashland and Grants Pass, great people. These are the people that you need to talk to when you're looking at physical gold, physical silver.

Because I ended up getting one of those flyers in the mail the other day. The road shows, they come into town. Hey, we're going to be out of the Jackson County Expo. Hey, come out here and sell the gold to us,

right? And Mark, honestly, and I think Mark is right from Jay Austin when he talks about this you know those fancy road show flyers are expensive and he says that j austin has price tested those shows and j austin the local business the local recognized expert pays more than they do and not only do you get to keep more of your money right here in the local economy and you'll have more of it so if you want to go to the road shows fine go be curious just don't sell out to the very first offer because there's a point there's a point what market

talking about that it costs money to put on those, you know, those big road shows, they advertise it and do all the rest of it. I feel kind of the same way, Mark, not only with Mark over at Jay Austin, but, you know, when they have the hot tub places coming in town, you know, the fly-by-night hot tub places that take over some places. Like, you know, we got some good dealers around here in town. Well, the same thing with physical gold and silver. And if you're looking at that, hey, just go over there.

1632 Ashland Street in Ashland, 6th and G in downtown Grants Pass. Fortune Reserve.com, the local recognized experts, Jay Austen. News brought to you by Millett Construction, specializing in foundation repair and replacement. Get on solid ground. Visit Millet Construction. Owner of Stone Heating and Air, and I'm on 106.3, KMED. Delighted to have former State Senator Herman Beardtiger back on. We just kind of kick around politics and all the rest of it here.

And I was looking back in your record, in your permanent record here, Herman. and I don't recall you ever having stolen a baseball out of the hand of any kid there in a ball game. I don't think you've done that, right? Just want to make sure. Only in Little League. Oh, Little League. Okay. That's all right.

Statue of limitations. I think that's run out by this time. But anyway, you know, we were talking last week about Pacific Power, not you and me, but we were kind of digging into a Pacific Power with this cool device that they want to grab control. of your HVAC compressor and it's all about a kind of well fulfilling the Democratic Party wet dream of just redistributing the shortages you know what I'm getting at here you know we don't we don't want to actually have a whole lot of electrical power so we're going to have Pacific power or at least they would like us to be allowing them to shut the power off to our

cooling and heating systems when need be and you ended up having your own little experience or run-in with Pacific Power the other day? Kind of curious, what happened? Could you tell it, sir? I thought that was really interesting. Well, you know, my run-in with Pacific Power goes back decades, back to when they wanted us all to pay for the removal of the dams. That's how I got into politics and for us to pay for it.

And that, of course, that vote was given by then Senator Jason Atkinson was the vote. that gave the permission to Pacific Power to charge all the rate payers to take out these dams on the Klamath River. An interesting footnote to that is that when Jason gave his, or Senator Atkinson, gave his speech on the floor during the discussion of that bill, he had to declare a conflict of interest as he was a consultant for people. Pacific Power. That certainly raised some eyebrows, and then he did vote yes. And that's when I got into politics because people were so upset over that that I just ran against him and I got elected. Well, and when you look back at the politics that ended up the stinky politics, in my opinion, that got us to the point where the dams were going to be yanked out there, you think

about it if Pacific Power didn't like them so much. It's a liability that they owned. It's their liability. Shouldn't that have been something the investors in the company paid, rather than the right pay? My argument, now fast forward to 2023, that was in the wildfire bill that was under so much discussion. And what that did was give the Public Utility Commission the ability to approve the things that Pacific Power wanted to do to harden the grid against wildfire after, you know,

they lost a billion dollars in lawsuits. But once again, that's Pacific Power's business. That is their infrastructure, right? Right. Exactly. That's their infrastructure. And so now they've come up with some schemes, and their schemes. and their schemes to harden the system, and they're replacing it with all new technology.

Now, you've got to remember this infrastructure is going to be good probably for 100 years going forward. So they're getting a whole new, they're taking out an aged infrastructure and putting in a brand new one, and their shareholders aren't paying for it. The ratepayers are paying for, but yet the shareholders for the next decades to come are going to benefit from it. kind of, it's kind of like a mandated infrastructure replacement at only, and the only people to get hurt by it are the actual rate payers. Now, I know we're the customers who are ultimately going to have to pay the deal, but why wouldn't you take a percent out of the rate of return from... Exactly. Exactly. Even if it were to be a shared kind of thing,

all right, we're going to, we're going to, instead of, I don't know what the rate of return is on Pacific Power, but most of these utilities are about eight, nine, 10 percent return on investment is normally what they get, right? Isn't that usually where they are? And the way I perceive it, and maybe I'm wrong, but I think I'm probably right. It's basically an open checkbook. So there's no accountability. Are we doing this in the most responsible way? I mean, are we doing this the most physically? But if the costs were coming out of the investment side, the investor utility-owned sign of it, they'd probably be paying a little more attention to the crappy politics that has been driving a lot of this. Wouldn't that be the case?

Right, right, exactly. Now, the interesting thing is, Pacific Power's argument was, is, you know, we're going to go broke if we keep getting sued for a billion dollars, you know, but now come to find out they're in the appellate court and they're trying to overturn it. so if they overturn it one they're not going to have to pay the billion dollars or whatever that huge price tag is and they're getting a whole new infrastructure gee heads we lose tails pacific power wins okay exactly yeah and so i'm just you know i i people need to be aware what's going on and when you pick up your your electric bill and you see a 20 percent increase now you know why and a 20% increase to replace the infrastructure, which is owned by the investors who

invested in the company, the investors should be investing in that infrastructure. And in this particular case, it's Brookshire-Hathaway Energy, which is Warren Buffett. Right, exactly. Yeah. Gee, I guess, don't say that being a big financial guy doesn't have power in the political world, huh? Oh, gosh, they just write checks like crazy. You've got to also remember the reason we have the Public Utility Commission is like for you and me and everybody listening, there's no other place for your power source, so we're stuck. So the Public Utility Commission is supposed to be the overseer to make sure that these huge corporations don't take advantage of us.

But when they, you know, the Public Utility Commission is appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, who do you think they got in there? you know so i people who are going to be favorable the thing is though is that they end up using the public utility commission as a way to not only okay well we'll have a little bit of a control over p uc or public uh or our pacific power pardon me but at the same time we're able then to force feed the carbon you know the carbon neutral or the carbon reduction schemes from the democratic party that's part of it though right right and so last week Bill, we talked about, you know, the ultimate goal. In fact, it was a senator came out and set it in a hearing a few weeks ago that it is one of the drivers behind this transportation

package is to make fuel so expensive that people stop driving or stop driving so much. So now the same thing in the electrical field, hey, let's make it so expensive that people start using less. And if you look at, you know, and this is through my eyes, my vision, if you look at Pacific Power, you're saying, hey, that's pretty sweet. We're going to provide less power and get more money. Because they have a guaranteed rate of return. That is the deal as a public utility. So does Pacific Power care if a kilowatt-watt-weigh? hour of power in the middle of the day might end up costing 30, 35 cents someday? No, because

they're going to make profit on that, no matter what. Well, they actually probably make more profit because they're supplying less energy at higher price. Yeah. So, you know, and you know, you and I talked a little bit, I think one of the things that are going to rise up, and this has happened in Los Angeles, so when they replace these poles with these steel poles, so they're replacing the old wooden poles with new steel pools because they're fire hide. That stuff makes sense, okay? I don't know how much it costs, but I do know it's pretty expensive. Well, yeah, it can't be cheap to replace a wooden pole with steel,

otherwise they would have built them with steel. Right, and I went online and I looked at the contractor that's doing it, and they're starting wages or into $70s an hour. plus the overtime isn't time and a half because it's union it's double time and they are working six days a week so you just, you know, you start

run a calculator a little bit and these guys are, you know, they're hard worker guys. I'm not attacking the employees. I watch and they're hardworking. But it's a lot of money, Bill. It's a lot of money. But I think the thing that's going to arise

is it's interesting when they replace the steel pole, if there's any other utilities hanging on that pole, like cable or telephone or fiber or whatever it is, they just cut it off. So now you have a 48-foot brand-new steel pool, and you have about a 15-foot old pole next to it. It looks idiot. Oh, is that how they do that? Oh.

All right. What is Pacific power not what they don't move the lines when they get a new pole? They do not touch any of the other company's utilities, even though they've been getting paid for those utilities for all these years because they lease the pole to hang their utilities on it from Pacific Power. So Pacific Power has been collecting all this money from these leases. Now it's time to replace the poll, but oh, we're not going to. So now we have these, we have twice as many polls, and it's hideous looking. and they ran into this problem in Los Angeles, and it cost PG&E a lot of money

because they had to go in there and they had to cooperate with the telephone and everything because a lot of those poles were in backyards, you know, and they had to rehang everything and take out the old poles and it's hard to get equipment in there and blah, blah, blah, blah. I see that coming to Oregon because when I'm bumping into people on the street, it's always what are we going to do with all those poles it looks so ugly you know now we got twice as many poles on our street than we did yeah so i think that that's that's coming you know that that kind of

reminds me that there's nothing like uh well well perpetual motion or a never ending uh source of funding then uh utilities that are on the on the poles on those power poles here because i think i mentioned to you that up at nugget bute we have a radio station up there k rwq at the top of Nugge Bute, and, of course, it's on Pacific Power's lines, you know, going up the hill all the way up to the top. And we used to use telephone lines there years ago. For decades, 45 years or so, using telephone lines to do remote controls and everything else. Well, we got rid of that equipment a long time ago, right? And so we have no need for the phone lines any longer up there.

I don't think anybody on the hill does use phone lines any longer, those old phone lines. and yet every year, here comes the Bill from Pacific Power. Well, your lines are up there on this. And I said, well, we don't use these anymore. Well, they're still sticking up there unless you go up there and take them down. It's still your problem, which I thought was kind of interesting. Oh, yeah, and that's what it is. So, you know, there's all this.

But I guess the whole point of this, Bill, is at the end of the day, oh, I hate that. But anyway. I know that's saving. I know we use that a lot. I know. Yeah, anyways, what happens is the individual that gets up every morning makes their coffee, jumps in their car, and goes to work, pays for everything. And Oregon is even designing to have more hosing coming, and that's really what we're talking about here. I don't like saying that.

It's true. I mean, think of it. You know, one thing I have noticed is I ask people, have you looked at your pay stub lately. And even my liberal friends, I am surprised, are appalled how much money comes out of their check. I mean, just think, you know, the statewide transportation. Now, what does that pay for? Okay, it comes, it's a deduction out of your paycheck, all right? If you are a working person, they take it out, where does it go?

Well, 55% of it goes to Metro up in Portland, okay? And the rest of it is dispersed around the state. it's so people can ride transportation free so think of that why should i go to work and my hard sweat that i put in to make money why should that be deducted so people can ride transportation free is that just me or is that a good question no i think it's a perfectly good question i think the better question would be at what point will even the progressives or the liberals say I've had enough with this. Well, it is.

You know, you and I've talked about it, but when, and I've done this when I was in the Senate on revenue finance, when you really add up all the money that we pay back to government, either fees or taxes, it is 50 to 60 percent, depend where you are and that even means somebody that only makes $20,000 a year, 50 or 60 percent of that flows back to government. There is an awful lot of friction in the financial gears around here for folks. Well, yeah, and you know what's kind of crazy, Bill, if you really sit and think about it, and maybe I'm weird because I sit in my chair and I think this stuff through, that's not enough. And the reason that's not enough is the federal government, in addition to 60% of our

income going back to government, they've had to borrow $38 trillion. and all the municipalities and states, they've borrowed money. The state of Oregon is bonded, always bonded to the limit. We've bonded. We have obligated our lottery out 27 years. Our credit card in Oregon is maxed out, and you look at municipalities, counties, and cities through bonding or grants pass is a great example. They need a water treatment plant and they don't have any money.

Now, you would think over the last 100 years, somebody would have scratched their head and say, you know, someday we're going to have to replace this water treatment plant. Don't you think we ought to create a fund? Well, you've seen stuff like this in all sorts of Oregon governmental agencies, including public schools. Look at how many public schools that we've talked about here. I remember Medford famously, you know, there is always money or always the ability to go to the taxpayer and plunder them for a new school because the old schools. needs replaced here. While they didn't maintain it for all those years, there never seems to be a budget to maintain the infrastructure

or keep it going. Is it just me? Or a fund that you generate over 50 or 75 years that builds up so that when you get to that point, you have some money to replace it. But if you look at all that ground, and I brought up the debt, national debt clock, but people are in debt, credit card debt, which is the worst.

Credit card debt is the worst. It's the highest it's ever been. I just, I think us folks in the United States, well, and across the planet, there's a lot of countries that are just like us do. I think we've lived a little bit higher than, like my grandpa used to say, I think you're living a little higher on the hog. We've been demanding way too much of government over services, too. And this kind of reminds me. You heard that France's government, as an example, just went through a collapse, is collapsing once again. And it all has to do with debt in trying to find a way to finance the bonds and everything else.

We're not all that different from even the French. I know President Trump is trying to keep those plates spinning. But 37, 38 trillion, that's not a small amount of money. Hey, before we take off here, I wanted to get, this was a breaking story that came out this morning. I think it was in the, was it in, I think it was in Oregon Live. Yeah, it was in Oregon Live. Oregon Governor has ordered new state buildings to meet seismic standards and mandates upgrades for the older ones here. She's ordered that every new state building, larger than 10,000 square feet in size, meet the absolute strictest earthquake safety standards,

and that the older buildings be upgraded to the maximum current safety standards by 2060. Is this the new asbestos? Is this what this is all about in the state of Oregon, the new asbestos now? Is this what we've got here? It's another excuse to figure out a way to tax you to pay all this. And, you know, look at the capital. The capital, I've been out of the capital for five years, okay? Yeah.

When I was in the Senate, we were discussing, you know, earthquakeing proof that capital and all that. And it was $500 million. And I remember in a hearing once I said, why don't we tear it down and build a new capital? How much would that cost? Yeah, half a billion. That's a, man, that's huge.

And it wasn't much more. Now the cost overruns, and they're still under construction five years later. You can't even go in the building, but the public can't hardly go in the building. I know during this special session, the house chamber was shut down. And they basically jacked up that old building, which is brick and mortar with marble from Italy plastered on the side. That's what it is.

And there's not a lot of steel in it. They took that old building, and they literally jacked it all up and put it on springs. And I'm like, really? So that's like taking your house of cars. and building it on a water bill. Well, that reminds me of back when we had turntables, you know, playing albums, and they would have the free-floating turntable. That's kind of what they're doing with the buildings, right?

Right, and so you're taking this brick-and-mortar building, and you're putting it, I'm just like, but I remember in a hearing, I said, let's tear it down. I thought Senator Courtney was going to take my head off, because that's his beloved capital. And, you know, this is the third capital. know that oh yeah you know i get that but the point the point being here it's like what uh what the governor is saying though is that doesn't matter about all the rest of you schmose in all of your homes your home is going to come down in the big one but you know guess what we the most important people in the world our buildings will be safe herman everywhere we look and you know

my suggestion back then because they said you know continuity government and all that and i says, well, why don't we invest in a facility in eastern Oregon as a backup capital? So we kind of, we just duplicate all the data and stuff that we produce in the capital, and we store that data and everything over in that other place. And so in the event that we have some crazy thing happened, which is, you know, who knows? But we all we have to do is just load up and go over to Bend or Prineville or wherever. And we can be back in business in a week. But that doesn't pay for SEIU.

That's right. Okay. Also remember, Peter Courtney, his district was all of Salem. So anything he could do to create jobs in the Salem area, trust me, he did. He did. Interesting times we find ourselves in, Herman. Hey, appreciate the talk on the power and more. We'll catch you around.

I always enjoy the noodling around on Oregon politics, and there's never a lack. By the way, how long do you think they're going to stay out at this point? Have you heard? You know, I don't know. They don't have the votes in the Senate is the reason that they're staying out. Right. They just, they don't have the votes in the Senate. Gorsuch has got to get back in there, and there's, I think there's a couple others that are a little squeaky, too, because you've got to remember, this $5 billion affects Democrats as much as it affects Republicans. And I think there's some pushbacks and some Democrats, too.

And just like you said, a little earlier in this segment, Democrats are also starting to look at their paychecks and say. And I have, I've had some good conversations with very liberal people that do agree that they feel they're paying too much. I think it's starting to sneak up on it. I hope you're right about that. All right. Former state Senator Herman Barrett-Singer, always a pleasure talking with you. See you next week, okay? Be well.

All right. This is KMED, KMED, H-T-1, Eagle Point, Medford, KBF. XG, Grants Pass on the Bill Meyers' show. I said, on the Bill Myers' show, the audio is not there. Hold on, hold on. Operator error. You know me, I'm colorblind. Is this light on? No, it is not, because I can barely see red. Here we go.

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