Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 10-01-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: October 1, 2025

10-01-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

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 Klausordrilling.com. Nice cool start. See a little more rain. It's going to be just very fall-like, very fall-like. It's actually kind of nice to feel. I've turned off the sprinklers.

I'm sure that the Medford Water Commission, as they send their bill, and have you noticed that all the utilities, no matter what it is, whether it's Medford Water Commission, whether it is the especially Pacific Power Isn't it interesting how many of them are sort of in nag mode all the time? You know, your house is using a little more water

than like 25% of the rest of your neighbors and if you'd like to find ways to, everything seems to be about, not that I want to waste, not that I want to waste, not that I would advocate wasting, but it's kind of interesting, you know, get that, hey, here's your bill this month, Oh, you're not, you're using a little more power than we are.

Hey, I'm an all-electric house. What do you want? You know, I don't have any natural gas or anything like animal. Why are you using so much power? Talk to a Pacific Power representative and we'll help you. We'll help you. Yeah, probably that cool campaign. Remember we were talking about that?

By the way, I want to get Randall's take. He's going to be on Open for Business a little bit later this morning. and he wrote a really interesting piece he put about on on LinkedIn and he's warning people off of signing up with Pacific Power with that power control system. So I just thought it let you know give you a little foreshadowing. It's actually a really good article. I'm going to have to get that up there, okay? Now then, here in Southern Oregon, what is our latest? Oh, my goodness.

This is one of the weirdest, most dirt baggiest crimes that I have heard. of here for quite some time. And it was an incident involving robbery and first degree assault. This is coming from the Josephine County Sheriff's. This crime happened just before I got off the air yesterday. And it was somebody trying to stick up and rob the Dollar General Store on Merlin Road. Yeah, you're going to rob the dollar store. I mean, this is the first part about it.

I mean, nobody at the dollar store who is working at the dollar store is getting rich doing it. It's a good honest job. Don't get me wrong about this. But the guy goes in there. This guy is accused of going in there. And a 72-year-old guy who's charged with this crime. Mark Warren Widen, first-degree robbery, assault in the first degree, unlawful use of a weapon because he pulled a knife on these people.

And this is what happened. So there's this robbery. They took him into custody. and everybody knew where to find him, hey, is this guy, they found him right away. And the sheriffs say that Mark Whitten approached the counter and advised the employees. He was going to rob him. And so Whitten then pulls out a cup full of muriatic acid. Muriatic acid.

This is nasty stuff. This is the stuff that you'll use to, if I recall correctly, like cleaning concrete, cleaning pools, things like that before you do it. This is nasty stuff. So he takes the acid and he throws it on two of the store employees. Remember, these are dollar store employees, just out there trying to do their job. And so they're burned severely. They have severe chemical burns.

And both the workers said that they tried to flee from Whedon to a nearby store restroom because they wanted to wash off the acid off their skin, right? Now, I don't know if the acid was thrown in their face or not. but then Whitten corners the employees. This is that 72-year-old guy, and the accusation is that he attempted to assault him both with the knife. And then deputies took him into custody, found it be in possession of the myriatic acid and the knife used. So it looks like they probably have them dead banged rights on this one. But yeah, they had the ambulance, rural metro, Oregon State Police all over that,

and Whitten apparently lodged in the Josephine County Jail at this time. what do you think is going on there you know you decide okay if all the places i'm going to rob in josephine county i'm going to go to the dollar store and i'm going to throw acid on the employees at the dollar store now of course there's been no trial yet these are these are all alleged crimes you know josephine county shares though saying hey you know we've got him there he has the knife he has the myriatic acid i guess we'll see where this goes but what do you think is going on in that situation. That is just, boy, that is just bizarre. Bizarre, bizarre, bizarre. All right. What else do we have going on? You know, the text messages came out between Governor

Kotech and President Trump. Yeah, this is about putting the troops over in Portland, try to calm things down. By the way, I've been watching videos from around ICE. You know, ICE has been under siege practically every night. In fact, Most of the trouble seems to happen at nighttime. There have been people doing enough YouTubes that make it clear that, yeah, there is something going on, Antifa types laying siege to ice. But anyway, we have Willamette Week, and they end up having these text messages. Donald Trump and Governor Tita Kotech exchanging sharply worded text messages Sunday morning. the text obtained by Willamette Week show Kotech expressing betrayal.

You broke your promise. That Trump acted without speaking to her. President replied that she'd blown her chance to button down the trouble surrounding the ICE detention center. So Sunday morning, Kotech gets a message from President Trump, Natalie Harp, assistant Natalie Harp, rather. And they report the previous day Trump had posted on social media. He was going to order U.S. troops to war-ravaged Portland. Remember that? Remember that well. Kotech later that day spoke to President Trump and said there was no need to send U.S. troops

and that they should keep talking. Then, a little bit after 8 Sunday morning, text message comes from Trump's assistant. According to the copies of the exchange, Harp had a message to share from the president. Governor, the ice facility in Portland was attacked again last night. In fact, it and other federal buildings are being attacked on a nightly basis. We can't have this. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. So Kotech responded, received.

I know he has a busy schedule today. We'll try calling him later. Thanks. Thank you. Trump or the assistant ends up answering back. And then it was shortly after that. A memo comes out from Defense Secretary Pete HECSeth reaching Kotech said that the Trump administration taking command of the National Guard,

200 National Guard troops for 60 days, and taking them away from Atina Kotech control, putting them under the Pentagon's command, in order to protect ICE and other United States government personnel and property. Kotech was displeased. I just received your notice to mobilize the New Oregon National Guard outside my control. I believe this is unlawful and unwarranted. You broke your promise to talk with me.

And then Trump's response came, I notified you to get things in order and you didn't. They attacked our ICE Patriots last night and in other times, if you get your state in order, we don't come in. But everybody knows that Portland has been an unmitigated disaster for years. I won't let this happen in America, President D.J.T. So anyway, that's the story. So Tina, of course, may have a set of big ones, as they say,

when it comes to Oregon politics that many in the state legislature cower before, her political prowess. but I don't know. I think point goes to the Trump administration in this particular one. It's like, hey, I told you, you know, get this under control. All she had to do was just make the order, get in touch with the mayor of Portland, say, get it under control, and then this is done. But she didn't want to get it under control. I think it's pretty obvious, wouldn't you say?

We can talk about that, too. We're going to be talking about a lot of things this morning with Eric Peters, E.P.O.com, wheels up Wednesday. He'll be joining me here in about 10, 15 minutes. Always informative, political, cars, open road. I'm on KMED. 21 minutes after 6. Oh, by the way, since I was going off just having a little fun at Hunter Fibers request, this is a text message I got from Linda yesterday because I was joking or kind of having fun with,

hey, you're the first in your neighborhood to experience micro- trenching. Ooh, I feel so honored that you're going to have micro-trenching to install the Internet fiber everywhere, right? So they got cones up around our neighborhood. and Linda text message to me yesterday, if I have to listen to that micro-trenching much longer, I'm going to have a macro meltdown. And I said, duly noted, you know, it's okay, they'll just get you some flowers or something.

Just kidding, honey. But, yeah, they still have the cones up. I wonder what they're going to do because we have one neighbor that has left their basketball hoop up. And I know, I noticed that there are a lot of, lot of people that seem to leave their their basketball hoops up on the street i wonder if they're going to to knock that out of the way in order to get it in there i think code says you have to uh keep those basketball hoops you know with a water base in them i don't think you can just

leave them in the street can you i don't think so i'm just hoping it just don't knock it over it is no drag it off or something like that so they can do the micro trenching we have priorities the internet you know anyway back to it of the stories dirt baggie story over in josephine county a guy accused of a 72 year old guy accused of throwing muriatic acid burning a couple of dollars store yeah dollar general employees over on merlin road had a knife and yeah he's in jail right now but first of you're you're robbing the dollar store and throwing acid muriatic acid is not something to to mess with pretty nasty stuff they did have to be treated with that vicky you're

You're under the way in on that here, being on the early morning risers club on the Bill Maher's show. Hi. Hi. Yeah. I, you know, I think it's a disgruntled customer because when you go into the dollar store, they shouldn't name it the dollar store anymore because there's stuff in there that's five, eight, you know, dollars. It's not just strictly a dollar.

Oh, is it really? So it's not just like buck and a quarter, so they get bigger stuff, huh? Oh, no, no. I haven't been in the dollar store for quite some time. Usually we go there for cheap Christmas wrapping, you know, things like that. Right. And a lot of their stuff is $1.25, but in fact, I just went in and got a pair of slippers, and they were $5. But they, yeah, they have things, and they're not, maybe at his age, he's thinking everything's a dollar,

and maybe he got up to the register, you know, and they said, okay, $7,2.50, and he was like, what? Well, we don't know what kind of motive was going on in there. you know, I tend to default to, okay, are we looking at someone who maybe is, once again, maybe, you know, part of the concrete can't per community, as it were, and maybe mentally ill and or drug addicted, we don't know. There tends to be a lot of that going around right now that we've talked about, but we don't know at this point. Yeah, he could have been in the war, he could have been, you know, he could be an alcoholic, he could be just, you know. Yeah, but if you're going to hold up the dollar store, you hold up. the dollar store, you don't throw acid on the people for crying out loud, you know? And I think that maybe mentally, like you said, maybe mentally he thought he was back in, you know, some war zone

where he had to like take the cashiers out or whoever he threw it on. Well, there also could be the other part about it left on say, he could be a dirt bag, okay? We don't know yet. Right. And he could just be, you know, some homeless person that's really pissed because he had $1.25 and they're charging him 750. Yeah, don't think it excuses it much, though. Point well taken, I guess we'll have to keep an eye on this one and see what happens at the hearing and the public defender will be assigned and off we go, okay? It's 25 after 6. Tom's here on the early morning risers club and commenter. Hello, Tom. What's on your mind, huh? Go ahead. Well, it's our erstwhile government that doesn't work very well here in Oregon. Last night, I signed a petition to remove her Tina from

office, so just to let people know that that petition's going around. But, you know, I think that... Okay, who's circulating that petition? I'm not familiar with that. It's... I, neither my. I just cited. Someone had a whole clipboard full of these, and I signed it. And, but it looks like the move is around, but, you know, the deeper problem kind of going on here in Oregon, I really think, is we're electing people who are unqualified. qualified for office. They're incompetent. I, for the longest time, been trying to think, are these people evil? Are they stupid? And I think it just kind of boils down to, no, they're well-intentioned like Jeff Golden and Pam Marsh. They have good intention, but there's no connection between their heart and their head. It is a totally heart-based kind of response to problems. And, well, even look at what happened with Tina Kotech, Governor Kotech, and President Trump. President Trump made it very clear, hey, you know, ICE has been attacked again, need you to take care of this, and then she's complaining that he disacted.

He says, listen, I told you to take care of this. And, of course, when the president tells you on Saturday morning, take care of this, that doesn't mean, hey, let's talk about it Sunday, Monday, or Tuesday, in Trump's mind, that means, no, stop the attacks. You know, you're the governor and, you know, get together. and apparently she's more in love with her radicals or the, you know, putting, you know, remember we were talking about that, that religious point of view in which people are putting love on the wrong people? Yes, exactly, the priorities. Yeah, the priority.

Yeah, the priority. Yeah, that our sanctuary state that illegals have more priority than the natives here, so the natives can't get health care and education and all kinds of things. We're being, and again, I think I wrote a petition. to you to have Fair come in and talk about very specific, how much it's costing Oregon to be a sanctuary state. And by the way, I want to let you know, I've reached out to Fair, and I think that they might agree to come on Thursday.

We're looking on. So I do, I actually listen to listeners. I just want to make sure you know that when someone suggests why don't I talk to them, okay? So we do. Yeah, I know that. So that's good. But anyway, about Tina and so forth, what's going on, I think is, sure, well, good intentions, but they're not grounded in reality at all.

They don't have the business experience. They're just, you know, feel good. They come through the government schools. They have no real business, real world experience. Maybe I think Tina is a professional person who's worked in a lot of these. Well, well, she came up through the legislature. came up through the political system. And it's not exactly a great training for life, for real life.

No, it isn't. Not at all. But it's like an echo chamber up there. All these people, they're lawyers. They're a lot of lawyers. There are a lot of professionals, teachers, and so forth. People who have had experience in local government, so forth, but not people who actually run a business and know how the world works. So Trump, being a businessman, tells, hey, we've got a problem here, fix it, or I'm coming in. And she has no clue or anything. Well, in Tina Kotech's world, in her mind, that meant that, oh, it's time to negotiate. No, Trump is saying, no, you're attacking our buildings.

You're allowing it. Fix it. Right? It's very direct. Trump is, say what you will, very direct. Says what he means, means what he says in these kind of manners. And I don't think people like Tina have. have that initiative with him.

She had the capacity to do all kinds of things. But Trump, one thing, just like you say, he takes action. He says, well, this is what's going on. This is what needs to be done. We're doing it. And he says, I'm not going to allow this in the United States of America. And I think it's a perfectly reasonable thing. And you can tell that Trump really does subscribe to that broken window theory

that if you're allowing dirt baggy material or dirt baggy activity to happen, in your cities that you'll get more of it and he's right of course you will okay whatever's tolerated the bottom line to all this we need better candidates for office and we need better voters who are going to actually be able to discern between a uh a feel good uh person who's not grounded in reality versus somebody who knows what they're doing all right man i'll tell you that's a high lift but i appreciate your high standards thanks tom i'll grab another one here before we get into news and then eric peters on wheels up wednesday hi good morning And who's this?

Hello. Hi, this is Brian Weldon. Hey, Mr. Weldon. How are you from Joe County? What's up? I just wanted to comment. If you look at closely at the bottom of that sheriff report, this 72-year-old man at the dollar store, he just did this crime a couple days ago.

And if you look at the bottom of the sheriff report, he was released yesterday. He was? Yes. Released day was September 30. Oh, gosh. Now, wait a minute. No, my problem is. Oh, oh, I see. Okay, now, wait a minute. No, no, hold on here. Hold on.

The crime was done yesterday. Oh, it says release date, September 30th. Oh, no, I think that's the date of the press release. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah. I just thought, why would we be letting this guy go right after he did the crime? I think we're okay in this particular case. I don't see any evidence that he has been let out.

It says Mark Whitten was lodged at the Josephine County Jail on the charges listed above, and that's where it is no more details right now because now it's going on to the DA, et cetera. So the release date is actually the release, the date of the press release. Okay, so there we go. Okay. You're good. Thank you. All right.

Thanks, Brian. 631. Wheels up Wednesday. We're hitting the open road. Gosh, what is the, not the Toyota Tundra, but what's the biggest SUV? Eric's been driving that. Man, it's huge. Man, is it fast? It's faster. It is faster than the muscle cars of my youth. And you get into an SUV now that weighs 6,200 pounds. Boy, that says something, the fact that it weighs 6,200 pounds. But we'll talk about that and a whole bunch more. Coming up. When Italian food sounds good and when doesn't it, the Rogue Valley has been choosing Rosario's Italian restaurants.

You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. And streamed on KMED.com. Eric Peters, Wheels Up Wednesday, Automotive Journalist and Big Brain over at E.P.O.O.S.com. Eric, welcome back. How are things? Well, good, Bill. Thank you for that nice introduction. And my big brain, I guess, depends on how much coffee I've had.

What atrocity are we going to talk about this morning? Well, I'll tell you what. Let's talk about the, you know, for once, let's go to the review first, all right? I found this interesting because I was reading your review on the 2025 Toyota Sequoia. And it's about the size of a Sequoia, too, by today's modern standards. And what astounded me is just how freaking big this SUV is now. And it's actually a full-blown SUV. This is not a crossover type, right?

No, it's a real deal U.S. SUV, body on frame, ladder construction, all of that, rear-wheel drive-based, and it is huge. And specifically, it is wide. When you include the mirrors, it's more than a foot wider than a mid-sized car like a Toyota Camry. And one of the dilemmas with that is that lanes aren't that wide in many areas. So you have to be careful. Well, especially after they do the road diets here because we have to, you know, make room for bicycle lanes that no one uses.

Sure. Sure. And, you know, again, you have to just be conscious of what you're driving, more so than you would with a smaller car, because you just don't have that much of a margin for error, as you might with, say, a smaller crossover or a smaller car. This vehicle, according to your review, is competing. I guess its peers would be like the Ford Expedition, you know, that type of thing, right? Yeah, and, of course, the Chevy Tahoe and GMC equivalent.

Yeah, and all of these things, you know, one of the aspects of it, it's a wonderful vehicle, but I was astounded at how expensive they're all becoming. I'm not singling out Toyota because this is just a general thing. The base price is $62,000. Okay, hold on. I just want to make sure just the cost of basic entry is $62,000. Correct. And really start some things. If you go back about, you know, five or six years, these vehicles in that class, full-sized SUVs typically started at around $48,000 or so. So, I mean, it is a substantial increase over the course of the last five years. And I did a little video rant about this in which I elaborated my opinion that I think they're beginning to reach tipping point where they're going to price their own market out of the market. And that is what we've talked about here before in which nobody seems to want to sell a vehicle right now that is truly entry level, or at least there are very few opportunities to do this, someone who just wants basic transportation from A to B.

I mean, I'll give you an example. When I was a kid, 18, leaving home, I bought my dad's company car because they were selling it. 1977, Chevy Impala, right? Nothing fancy. It was kind of like the government style model, no white walls, just hubcaps on it. And air conditioning was the only big option, you know, on at that point. AM radio. That was it.

Crank up windows. Pretty cheap. The interesting thing to me, though, about that vehicle is that that, was a viable family vehicle. You know, you were a single young guy at the time. Yeah. This was a large car, and, you know, it could have easily accommodated five or six people and would have been ideal for a young family with kids. Today, to get a vehicle that can accommodate a family, you really have to spend a portion. There's nothing in, you know, in under the $30,000 range, realistically, that's serviceable as a family vehicle anymore.

So I wonder if there's ever going to be some come to Jesus' moment for the automotive industry, we're just like, okay, maybe we cannot put every vehicle loaded to the Gills, starting at $50,000 or $60,000, and everybody has a pie plate or, you know, a broiler plate, a touchscreen on it and all the rest of it. There has to be another way at some point. Or is the compliance cost of everything just still forcing people just out of this? Is this the plan, I guess? The compliance costs have not been not been addressed, and all of this has been sort of swept under the rug by pushing payments out to now typically six and even seven years. But there's a limit on that. You can't continue to do that because of depreciation. So it's a real

problem. And it brings up a sinister solution, which is this idea, and they talk about this openly, that the manufacturers of cars are no longer going to sell cars. They're going to sell you transportation. In other words, you know, you'll rent a ride rather than own a vehicle. The Johnny Cab kind of society that we've seen in science fiction movies, right? Yeah, exactly. And I got into an article that I just published this morning having to do with Toyota's, they call it the woven city. And essentially, it's a, it's a synonym for the 15-minute Freedom City that you've heard about. This glorious place where you're, you know, you're going to live in this high-tech hive where all your needs are provided for you. You'll live in a nice

little apartment and you won't have to own one of those stinky cars because you can just walk to everything. Oh, all right. Now, you said this was from Toyota? Who was actually pushing this? It was a Toyota official. Wasn't it like the, you know, the big Toyota guy? It's the grandson of the founder, Akiot Toyota. Oh, okay. And, you know, to be fair to Toyota, it's not just them. They're all doing it because I think they understand that we're reaching an inflection point for regard to cars that are becoming unaffordable and not just because of the price of the vehicles themselves.

You and I have talked about the cost of insurance. Insurance is pricing people out of car insurance or our ownership. You know, something like this Sequoia that I've got. This is the one they sent me is almost a $90,000. buy. Can you imagine what the cost to insure that vehicle is? Boy, to insure it for $90,000 in potential damage, and it doesn't take much to total out of vehicle these days. It's probably pretty pricey. Yeah, you know, I would imagine that it probably will cost somebody who has a perfectly clean driving record, great credit scores, all of the things, probably in the neighborhood of

$3,000 a year. You know, I think, I'm just back to that out over six years, you're spending as much on the insurance as people used to spend on a family car. Yeah. And I can't have help but think that this is a part of that plan and when you see them coming out with the the woven city now here in the state of Oregon we've told you about this before it is the climate friendly equitable community which in essence means a stack and pack affordable housing in the downtown section of let's say parts of Medford and it is designed to be you know walkable and by the way there's nothing wrong with a walkable neighborhood I'm not against a walkable neighborhood But when they talk about walkable neighborhood, it's pushing an agenda in which it would be walkable to the exclusion of other forms of transportation, unless you're going to have, you know, bicycle or your skateboard or maybe your e-bike, something like that.

Well, that's just my objection as well. It's not as if this is sort of a natural organic thing that just occurred because it makes sense. It's something that's being pushed, and eventually they're going to try to push us into it. that's my problem with it you know and if you haven't familiarized yourself with what these urban planner types are up to you really ought to you and i do because you know are aware of it because this is our business and you know we do this but the average person has no idea what these little weevils have in mind for us and it really would be good if more people understood what's going on that is a great article it's toyota's woven city and so is that what they're calling it in

japan the woven city woven meaning like it's like a a piece of cloth and it has everything that is needed to cover you. Maybe that's where they're coming from. Yes, even a helpful drone to walk you home and a nice little friendly drone companions for the elderly to keep them company. Oh, but you have to understand that's drony, the friendly surveillance drone. Right. You notice we always do that. They couch it in this kumbaya language to make it seem like it's something appealing. You know, Orwell rift on this a long time ago when you wrote 1984, and, you know, he described Victory Mansion. You know, it sounds like, wow, we're going to live in a really fancy high zoot place. And, of course, it was a slum.

You know, that's what it always ends up being. Is this the, you know, when they talk about surveillance drones, you know, around you. Well, by the way, I don't know if you remember, do you remember the meme about droney, the friendly surveillance drone? Do you remember those memes? I never caught that. Oh, okay. Well, it was some cartoonist did it back in the early 2000s with, you know, during the George Bush administration, the War on Terror. You know, you're either with us or you're against us.

Yep. You know, that kind of thing. And so they had droney, which was one of those predator drones with a friendly face on it. Hi, kids, I'm drony, the friendly surveillance drone. And like the little girl and boy, you're making me scared. I heard that, you know. Wow, that reminds me of John Wayne Gacy dressed up in his clown suit. Yeah.

Yeah, that same sort of thing. Toyota's Woven City. So we have the Woveon City article, which is really something. And also the Toyota Sequoia. The two are not connected except in the name of the corporation that it was. discussing it, I guess. Overall, you liked it, though, but you're getting pretty close to $100,000 when you get these all tricked out. Yeah, it's worth to $100,000. Something else is interesting about it, too. You know, of course, this vehicle features Toyota's new generation

of compliance engine. This huge SUV weighs three tons, has a 3.4-liter V6 engine in it, which would be wholly inadequate for a vehicle that size and weight, but it has two turbos and hybrid augmentation, and the result is 437 horsepower, more than the V8. In fact, that's Sequoia, the way you talked about it, looking at the stats, was faster than most any muscle car that you or I could have had when we were kids. Oh, yeah, zero to 16, about six seconds, high fives. Yeah. Again, three tons, you know, and something that can carry seven to eight people and which is

capable of towing almost 10,000 pounds. Yeah, but at that price, though, $90,000 to $90,000 is so that's Hoy-Paloic car, really. It is, and even at the, you know, even at the entry price point, $62,000, boy, oh, boy, that's a lot of shakles. You know, probably your monthly payment on that is going to be, what do you think, about $800, something like that. Yeah, easily. Yeah, but I guess that is the cost of getting that big and that much capacity.

All right. But still, great car. You liked it. You liked it. You had no problem with it. No, none at all. You know, very nice. That's massaging seats now, too.

Okay. Now, I'm just curious, though, how do you get to the massaging seats? Because I kind of like massaging seats with knobs and things, but what do they do? Yeah. Yeah, interestingly, you know, Toyota is usually excellent with ergonomics. You know, they, even though they have the touch screens and the, cars, they tend to have secondary slash redundant knobs and buttons that you can use by feel by hand to operate various functions. But with regard to the seat heat heaters, for whatever reason,

they decided to integrate that into the big touchscreen. So, you know, first thing you have to do is tap the appropriate menu item, and then you have to tap what kind of massage you want, and then you have to tap it on. It's a three-step process, and you have to be looking at the touchscreen because you just can't do that by feel. I would have preferred it if they had put a button on the side of the seat somewhere that you could just, you know, reach over and touch it, turn the, turn the things on. Are they doing this all with the touch screen because it's cheaper? Of course. Of course.

Okay, so they're getting, okay, now hold on. I just want to understand. All right. You have a close to $90,000 vehicle that they're chipping out and putting, you know, the vibrating seat button on a menu rather than on a button, a $90,000 vehicle, Eric. Yeah, sure. Well, you've got to remember, and when I say cheap, you have to be a little, that you have to dig into that a little bit.

It's cheaper for them. In other words, they can reduce their manufacturing and production costs because these screens are cheaper to buy, and they're, of course, much cheaper to install. I mean, literally, the thing comes down the line, they plug it in, and that's it. As opposed to having to wire and install all of these individual buttons and switches, you know, that's more complicated,

and it adds to the manufacturing process. So this reduces their manufacturing costs, but it doesn't reduce the price to us, so it increases their profit margin and potentially down the road. also, you know, what happens when that thing glitches and goes out on? I can only imagine what it will probably cost you 7, 8, 9, 10 years from now, and that touchscreen just goes dark. Man, I can't help myself.

I just want to pine away for a new manufactured vehicle that would have just great, wonderful, high-quality switches and knobs. If the switcher knob goes bad, you buy it and replace it and pop it in. It's simple. And I mean, the interesting experiment to see what would happen if they did that again. And another point, I think this is really important for people to understand. Those old knobs and switches were discrete, meaning they controlled the specific function. So, you know, if one thing went bad, you didn't lose everything.

But in the case of these touchscreens, they've embedded so many of the controls and functions in that screen. If it goes out, you lose everything that was accessible through the screen. Your stereo, potentially your climate controls, your massaging seats, yada, yada, all of it just doesn't work anymore. All right. We're talking with Eric Peters. E.P.O.O.S.com. still a great review on the 2025 Toyota Sequoia, but of course we can still be irritated about the lack of knobs.

But that's with all of it right now, okay? Hey, if you want to talk with Eric, comment on what we've been discussing or something else, 7705633. Wheels Up Wednesday continues on the Bill Meyers show. Wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peters is back. Epiottos.com. We were talking about the Toyota Sequoia.

Great review on that one. You can read them on EPIados. And Peters here, Peter, you were, well, I guess you, you have an older Toyota or some other vehicle and you were concerned about brake lights or something. Could you explain? A couple of, a couple of them that are the older Toyota's with the parking brake, how you pull it to engage it, and then you twist it and push it in to disengage it. Yeah. But the lights, I've noticed just over the years that a lot of times these and seems to me other ones, the lights don't often go off, even though you've

disengaged the parking brake, and I've had people say, oh, it's just, it's okay, it's disengaged, and yet I've thought, if it's not, you're wasting a lot of energy, just pushing against your brake. Yeah, that sounds to me like a recalcitrant electrical switch. What do you think, Eric? Absolutely. I actually had to deal with that with my old Nissan pickup. There is a little switch.

If you get underneath and look where the brake pedal is, you'll see it. It's typically mounted in something, it's a little plastic thing, and basically what happens when you depress the brake pedal, the light will, obviously, your brake lights or parking lights will come on, and you release and it goes off. When that switch goes bad, the lights stay on all the time, because, you know, it's not, the circuit isn't disconnected. I would bet you dollars to donuts, that's what the problem is. So you're saying that's connected to the actual parking brake that you... Yeah, it probably is. I doubt that you have a mechanical problem. I think you have an electrical problem.

Yeah, now, in his particular case, so now, is it a handle on the dash or is a handle like between the bucket seats in the front, Peter? No, it's on the dash, yeah. It's on the dash. Yeah, I would be willing to that there is some kind of an electrical switch that is supposed to be, you know, when you pull it out, it completes the circuit and turns the light on to indicate that the parking breaks on. And then when you put the handle back in, it's supposed to push that switch. And it may be just something where it's just not being pushed hard enough, right? Wouldn't you think, Eric? Absolutely.

And here's an easy way to just reassure yourself that you don't have a brake problem. Just raise up the rear of the vehicle so that the rear wheels are a little off the ground and see if you can rotate them by hand, you know, with the brake off and, you know, mechanically off. And if you can, obviously, you're not dragging. Uh-huh, uh-huh. Okay. Okay. Yeah, that's a good one.

Yeah. Now, if you're having a situation where the brake light goes on and off as you are pressing the brake pedal, then we could be talking about a master cylinder or a wheel cylinder or something. Yeah, but more than likely, in that case, you would be feeling some sort of a squishiness in the pedal, increased pedal travel, something like that. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, best of luck on that, and I don't think it's anything to panic about it, and with a little bit of elbow grease on that, you can probably forget that.

figured out, Peter, okay? Thanks. You guys are great. I appreciate your show. Hey, glad you enjoy it. Really do. 770-3-770 K-M-E-D. Well, we're having interesting times here in Oregon right now, Eric. No doubt you have heard about this, and President Trump and Governor Tina Kotech are kind of having this argument about the deploying of National Guard troops into Portland. And over the weekend, they were having this argument back and forth and President Trump said, hey, you know, people were allowed to attack the ice building and they're having all these problems. And it's been illegitimate. You know, I've been watching the videos from Portland over the last few days. Every night, it's kind of like siege. And nothing has really been done by the city of Portland or Portland police. It's a very kind of hands off or, you know, just really kind of standing off. And they really, and the thing is, isn't the governor? Aren't the governor? Isn't the mayor? Aren't they? giving President Trump kind of an opening to go there and what problems could we see in the future if we continue to see a lot of this kind of stuff going on? What are you thinking? Well, to me,

the main problem is the normalizing of the presence of soldiers on American streets. I think that's hugely problematic. And related to that is the problem that soldiers are not trained for civilian law enforcement. They are trained to kill the enemy. That's a bad thing to introduce into an area where just ordinary people are living, not an appropriate use of the military. Now, I understand the sympathy, and I get it, you know, the cities in many blue areas are completely out of control, crimes out of control, all of those things are bad things, but that's sort of an neglecting of the proper law enforcement function of the local authorities, and there surely is a better way of dealing with it than slow marching us into martial law. That's how I see it.

Yeah, that's always been, and I think there are a lot of conservative and libertarian types. You know, I'm kind of with you on this. It's like, okay, he made it really clear. He told the governor, all right, you get this cleaned up. Saturday night, he just said, hey, this is being attacked, you know, fix it. And then they chose not to fix it. So, boy. And yet, I'm with you, too.

I think there are better uses for National Guard than taking care of dirtbeggy behavior, which should be taken care of by Portland Police Bureau or any other Oregon State Police even here. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and this sets up a potentially very worrisome and dangerous dynamic in that what if in one of these blue urban areas, they declare that we're going to resist the federal authorities. Oh, they've already done that. They have done that. They've done that. I mean, like, shoot back, potentially.

Oh. You know, then you actually have the civil war that everybody seems to be talking about and that nobody wants because it would be a catastrophe for all of us. Hmm. All right. I just think it's something to, I'm hoping that they get this figured out with it. But the best thing that could happen is for them just to enforce the law and stop the hemorrhaging because the people who live there are not happy about what's going on. They're also complaining about the federal helicopters, but I think they're complaining about the Antifa types more at this point in time. Yeah, of course.

I mean, the average person in this country does not like chaos. When wants to be able to walk the streets without getting assaulted, doesn't want their business firebombed. I mean, this transcends party ideology. is most Americans, I would venture to say 85 to 90 percent of us, whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, they don't like that stuff. And so, you know, politically the solution is, hey, we're not going to tolerate this anymore. We don't have to install a police state. We just have to deal with the bad element out there, which constitutes a relative minority of the population.

Yeah, I hope so. Now then, there was another great article I was reading about you about releasing the records, but it wasn't the Epstein records, huh? You know, that's something that, you know, that has been kind of, you know, everywhere we look right now, that's kind of being swept under the rug at the moment here. But what records are being released? It's quite fascinating. Well, yeah, a couple. This is last week.

You know, I woke up and I started scanning the news. It's the first thing I do in the morning, and I saw they're releasing the files. And I thought, oh, wow, they're going to release the files. I read a little further, and my teeth started to ache. It's the Amelia Earhart files. Everybody wants to know what happened to Amelia Earhart. Really? woman who's been dead for nearly a hundred years, the avatrix, who disappeared on one of her flights,

you know, I think in the 30s, I can't remember, and who may or may not have been, you know, doing some kind of clandestine spy work for the military at the time, but it's 90 years ago, you know, and I see this as, you know, while it's historically interesting, it's another one of these, hey, look, a squirrel, uh, diversions to keep everybody from talking about the, these Epstein files. And the Epstein file thing is a serious story, not so much because of the depravity, but because of the possibility, this is my view, that a foreign government had erected a honey trap to catch people who admittedly, you know, they're bad people. They participated in this, but the really bad thing is that potentially a foreign government had acquired blackmail power

over our government and was able to completely direct and manipulate the course of our government via the compromise, as the East Germans used to say, that it held on people, both parties who hold high office. Yeah, both parties who hold high office. And I think that's an interesting deal. And that's why there seems to be an amazing amount of, well, I know that there are some Democrats that have been coming out there now that it's under the Trump administration rather than the Biden administration. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. We need to get this out. We need to get this out. And they were silent as could be during the last administration. So I guess it's whoever's ox you think is going to be gored at this point. But I think it's a bipartisan or ox that they're

trying to cover up. It's very clear they just want this story to go away. And I think that they're hoping that they can continue to put distance between the initial discussion of it and the present time and keep everybody constantly worrying about some other thing, you know, whether it's the Amelia Earhart files or we're about to go to war over in Ukraine again. You know, and it's just, it's, it's very disorienting to constantly have to deal with these look of squirrel moments. You know, there was another squirrel that was released that came out and then disappeared very quickly. And did you see the one in which they were going into the dead bang outer space or unidentified flying object, you know, those UAP sort of situations? There was a hearing about this

a couple of weeks ago, and it just kind of came up and went away in which they're saying, no, we don't know what it is. No, we can't fight it. Well, yeah, we're really kind of concerned about it. And then nothing. It's like it just came and vanished. I thought that was interesting. I don't know if you saw that or not. I did. And, you know, the interesting, interesting thing to me is kind of broad view. It's impossible for us to have a calm, coherent discussion about anything when we're not allowed to have time to suggest the information, process it, analyze it, and come up with reasonable ways to deal with it. It's just they throw something in your lap, like a pile of molten lead. And you're, you know, you're jumping around,

jumping around. You get it off your lap and then they give you another one. You know, and you can't function in an environment like that. It reduces everybody to a state of perpetual panic and anxiety. Yeah, well, no wonder some people just wanting to tune out, not wanting to pay a attention to the news of what's going on. I get that. Of course. I really do. I appreciate the call, as always, Eric. 7705-633. We'll grab another call on wheels up Wednesday before we send Eric off to drive another vehicle and give us a review next week. But hi, who's this? Good morning. Hey, Bill, Stephen Sunny Valley. Hello, Steve. What's up? A couple things about what's going on in Portland. First, the Guard is going to be Native

Oregonians. Second, they're not going to be all over the city. They're going to be right around the federal building. Yes, they are specifically going to be there. It's a very concentrated area. They're not fainting out, and that's good. It's been under siege for over 100 days, and there have been injuries there, and EMT and police will not go in and help the people who are injured because they have been told to stay back because they do not want to violate the sanctuary city policy and get themselves in trouble. So what we have is lawlessness from Antifa, and it is an international organization. They have chapters all around the world, and they have funding, and something has to be done about it. But I would hope that we don't

get normalized to National Guard being on our streets. Would you agree with us on that much? Oh, I definitely would agree with it, but what is the alternative if the elected officials aren't going to keep the peace? And the real victims here are the people. who live in the surrounding neighborhood. There's an apartment right across the street, and they are making noise 24 hours a day for over 100 days. They can't get any sleep. They're banging drums.

They're yelling in megaphone. Yeah, here in our towns, you'd just be arrested and hauled off, and that would be all there was to it, right? Yep, right. And that's how it ought to be. Hey, Tom, I really appreciate that, Steve, but point well taken. And, hi, this is Bill. Good morning.

Who's this? You're on with Eric. Hello? Hi, Bill. Yeah. Okay, I don't know who's there. Whatever it is, the phone is squitching out. I'll put you on hold, and we'll get this figured out.

Eric, what are you going to review for next week? Where are you going to hit the roads in and try to avoid the radar tracks and the automated license plate readers and all the other things? What are you going to do? Well, yeah, the Volkswagen Tiguan is coming, and it's been updated for 2025 because Volkswagen had to fix a problem with its own making. And what do I mean by that? The Tiguan was there a small cock. Over, highly successful, because it was the only German-made model in the segment. It was a bit more upmarket than the models that you could get from the Koreans and the Japanese and the Americans.

But then they came out with the Taos, which you may remember. Yeah. The Taos was very similar to the Tiguan, almost the same size and very comparably equipped, but for significantly less money. So people started buying the Taos instead of the city. That can't be allowed. Well, I mean, it wasn't smart marketing from Volkswagen's point of view. You know, so, I mean, the tiggy is a fine vehicle, but why would you buy it when you can get essentially the same or a very similar thing for about $6,000 less? All right.

Well, I guess we're going to hear all about this one next week then when we next get together. And I think we may have the call figured out. Hi, good morning. Who's this? You're on with Eric. Hi, Bill. Hi, Eric. Hey, Bill.

This is Tim from Merlin. Yeah. And all your discussion about that Toyota, the big monolith is too expensive, it's almost like they don't want to, Toyota doesn't want to. want to make a profit, because if they, and our government won't support that, but I like the Hylux champ, and it's kind of a dream car because there's only 13,000. You guys know all about it, but it's indestructible, and it's a good entry-level vehicle, and you can customize them just about any way, but they won't allow it. I don't know how much Trump has got his finger on the polls with that if he knows about that vehicle.

but it would make America free because everybody would be able to be able to afford it. And the gas mileage is probably pretty good. All the environmental standards are just basically strangling, strangulating the public. And if that can be got around, I'm sure these engines are not dirty. They're usually in Asian countries. They're small congested countries. And I think they do have some standard. but why can't the, you know, our government and administration not see that the people need to travel.

They need to. I know what they want. Well, yeah. Well, in other words, why can't they let us purchase what we wish to purchase rather than what we're permitted to buy? Yeah. Well, a couple of points here. Trump is not really a car person. You know, he's a very rich guy who's probably been chauffered around for the past, what, 25 years probably. I don't think he drives.

I don't think he owns a car. He's not particularly interested in cars. He's a New Yorker. He's a guy from New York City. And so, you know, he just doesn't really know that much and doesn't relate very well to these concerns. Now, why can't we have the highlights? It's not because it pollutes.

It's absurd. And it's not because it's unsafe. It's because it's not compliant. And that's an important distinction. So the thing doesn't have all the airbags that effectively are required in this country. And it might have fractionally higher amounts of certain emissions, but not in any kind of a meaningful sense. But so much of the rest of the world.

world does have the Toyota Highlex, does it not? Of course. You can get that thing just about anywhere else except this country, and I think that that's deliberate. They do not want us to have access to a $13,000 vehicle because, you know, I think the caller's correct. A lot of people would buy it, and it would apply market pressure. You know, the thing we were talking about earlier with how they're, you know, they're just equipping all these vehicles with all these things that have jacked the price up to the point where most people can't afford a car anymore. And, well, they don't have an alternative. Now, if you could go to a Toyota store and choose a $13,000, high lux rather than a $62,000 sequoia, that would apply some pressure on Toyota to figure

out a way to reduce the cost of the sequoia. And it would also apply pressure on the other lines of vehicles, too. And right now there is no pressure being applied, I think, to try to keep any pricing down that I can tell. Nothing. Nope. And you know, the manufacturers know that, and they like it. They want to sell you a heavily contented, that's the word that they use in the business vehicle, because it's more profitable for the manufacturer, it's more profitable for the dealer, and it worked up to the point we're at now where it can't continue to be financed. You know, you just can't get to the point where you have 11, 12-year loans in order to, you know, make a $1,200 monthly payment, a $600 monthly payment. It's just not viable.

All right. Well, this is the kind of stuff which is discussed all the time and a great commentariat group here too at E.P.O.O.com. EPO.S. Eric, always great talking. We'll see you next week and we'll talk about that review and keep up with what's going on. Thanks again. This is KMED and KMED HD-1, Eagle Point, Medford, KVXG Grants Pass. We'll check in here

with Fox News. Also catch up with a hand of the update. We also have some open phone time here. For 95 years, PAR has been the Pacific North