Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 10-08-25_WEDNESDAY_8AM

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

10-08-25_WEDNESDAY_8AM

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 Klausorilling.com. I was reading a really interesting post by Juan Carlos Ordonius. Juan Carlos and also Daniel Houser, they were writing over on the Oregon Center for Public Policy, OCPP. Juan Carlos is the communications director there. Juan Carlos, been a while since we talked, but I remember. We may not necessarily agree on everything, but it was a good conversation.

Welcome back to the show. Good to have you on. Yeah, it's great to be back on your show, Bill. Yeah, you ended up putting up, you and your cohort, Daniel, ended up putting up a piece the other day on your site about Starbucks and tax avoidance. And it was under the guise of, hey, you know, Oregon apparently is in, well, having holes blown through the budget. We all know about that, had the special session recently and all the rest of it. but you're saying that a big part of a challenge for the state is corporate tax transparency. It's one of you could define that and explain what's going on and what you believe Starbucks has been up to.

Of course, Starbucks in the news because they're closing a bunch of them here in the state of Oregon. Take it away. Yes. Yeah, so corporate tax transparency means requiring corporations to disclose more information about the profits and taxes that they have here in Oregon. And Starbucks really illustrates the need for greater transparency because a report came out earlier this year showing that Starbucks has basically dodged taxes on about $1.3 billion in profits over the past decade. And it has done so by artificially shifting profits earned in the places where they were earned, where Starbucks retail is a coffee where it sells the espresso's and lattes, right? and has artificially shifted those profits to Switzerland through by using, you know, this clever scheme of using a Swiss subsidiary.

And this is of important, this should be important, should be of interest to Oregonians because Oregon has more Starbucks stores per capita per person than any other state in the U.S. And also, Starbucks does more business in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world. world. And so Oregon, you know, Oregon is probably the place in the world where Starbucks does the most business if you just look at a particular locality. Yeah, we love our, we love our coffee. You have no doubt about that. Okay. What is the, how do they do this? Is this kind of like the way Apple was doing it a number of years ago, the Apple Corporation, shifting everything that was going on to Ireland, if I recall. I don't know if they stopped doing that or not. I haven't really kept track of that story. But I remember the story a few years ago. It's a similar template that a lot of these multinational corporations use. So let me explain what Starbucks does.

So Starbucks has created a Swiss subsidiary, and that subsidiary is the one that buys all the green coffee. So, you know, it buys it from all the coffee producing companies. And then the subsidiary in Switzerland jacks up the price of that coffee, marks it up 18%. and then it, quote-unquote, sells it to other Starbucks subsidiaries, the one that actually roast the coffee and sell it to consumers. So that would include Starbucks subsidiaries that are doing business here in Oregon. So by doing that, it captures 18% of the profits that stay in Switzerland, where they are either not taxed at all or taxed at a very low rate. And by the way, I mean, Switzerland is a landlocked country in the middle of Europe.

And so the coffee beans don't ever make it. This is all just done on paper. Oh, it's a fictional. It's a moving of inventory on computer paper, so to speak. Yes, yes, you know, exactly. You know, and so... Yeah, yeah, our Switzerland thing bought the bought, in scary air quotes, wink, wink, nudge, we bought the green coffees, and now we're going to sell scary air quotes,

wink, wink, nudge, the coffee to you in Oregon, right? Exactly, marked up 18%. Okay. And by the way, the Switzerland, the Swiss subsidiary, it's just, you know, the researchers who did this analysis actually went to see, you know, to knock on the door of this subsidiary. It's just a mailbox. I mean, it's really, you know, kind of a fictional entity by and large.

So it's kind of a sham in a way, but it's actually probably not breaking any laws, actually. This is, as you were saying, this is, and this kind of template of using a subsidiary in a tax haven, a place with no corporate taxes or very little corporate income taxes. And, you know, in the case of Apple, you know, companies like that often transfer intellectual property like a patent to a tax haven and then license the patent to a U.S. subsidiary at a high rate, you know. also in that way, again, artificially transfer profits. Yeah, it's looking at a, you know, it makes the iPhone or whatever it is looking like, oh, gosh, we had to pay so much to this subsidiary for the licensing for this particular technology or whatever. So you can't charge us taxes on that here in the United States, but you're also not able to touch the, you know, where it's been moved to, the sham, you know, the sham location.

Okay. And through, and exactly, exactly. And through that, Oregon is not collecting taxes that it otherwise would, you know. And again, corporate income taxes are part of how we pay for Oregon schools, for, you know, health services for public safety. And so Oregonians are, you know, are not seeing what they ought to be in terms of corporate income tax collections. Now, in this piece, Juan Carlos, Juan Carlos Ordonez, once again, he's the communications director of the Oregon Center for Public Policy, a think tank in the Portland area. And let me see if I could formulate this question then. You have in this article how the share of income tax or the taxes paid to the state of Oregon have actually gone down from corporations or is it the number or just the percentage of it. When you start talking numbers, it's easy to get the cost. confused, but maybe you can help us understand it. Yeah, it's a percentage.

I mean, in, you know, dollar numbers, corporate income tax payments have increased over time, but it's just as a share of, but when you look at the share of all the income taxes collected by the state of Oregon, so we have personal income taxes, the taxes that you and I pay, and that all the listeners pay, and then you have corporate income taxes as well. Personal income tax is way larger. It's like over 80% of all income taxes. by the state. So it's really the big driver of income taxes for the state. Over time, it used to be that the corporate income tax was about over 18%, 18.5% of all the income taxes collected by the state of Oregon. Today, that is down to about 10%. So it's a relative figure. It's

not in total dollars. Yeah. All right. Just kind of curious, could some of this be that Oregon's income tax. In other words, we punch above our weight when it comes to income tax because Oregon has a very high. And also, I would dare say, very regressive state income tax. You get up to 10 percent, pretty close to 10 percent, real fast in this state, don't you? Yeah, well, just to be clear, I think sort of yes, we actually have a progressive income tax in that the highest income folks pay a higher marginal tax rate. But you're right. that it's not very progressive. Well, it's regressive in the respect that it doesn't take long,

it doesn't take long for you working until you get better than maximum rate. It's not like that. It's not like if you're making $25,000 a year, you're paying 2% income tax. No, you're paying the full rate. Yeah, moderate, I agree, the moderate and middle income folks are not too far off from where the highest earning folks are in terms of the highest marginal tax rate that they pay. And that's a problem for sure. Okay, yeah, so we tend to have that. Oregon has traditionally, Juan, now, you might argue with me on this, has not traditionally been all that corporate friendly, and I can't help but wonder if maybe, you know, your, your criticism of what Starbucks is doing is because Oregon is not particularly friendly to this. I think of the corporate, of the corporate activity tax, as an example, takes a percentage off the top of everything. When you talk about corporate taxes, are you included?

the CAT in this research, too? I just want to be fair that we're including all the money coming from that. No, no, this is a good question. No, we are in this analysis and this commentary talking about corporate income taxes, so it does not include the corporate activities tax. No, it doesn't. Okay, all right. Yeah, so... And actually the corporate, but the corporate activities tax, part of the reason why it's necessary, it's because there has been so much corporate tax avoidance on the corporate income tax side. And in fact, you have, when you look at the corporations in Oregon, when you look at their corporate income tax payments, we know that two-thirds of corporations in Oregon pay the corporate minimum tax,

which is a very minimal tax. And if it weren't for the minimum tax, they might be paying zero. Is there a possibility that these corporations truly aren't profitable at this point, like smaller startups and things like that? A lot of times you don't make money, really. Oh, sure. There are some, sure, there are some who are not making money, and in which case they shouldn't pay income taxes. That's perfectly reasonable and understandable. But you have, for example, close to 30 percent of corporations with revenue over $100 million in Oregon that also pay them at home. And so when you look at that, you sort of wonder, how can that be with so much revenue and having no profits? Why? you know, what's going on back there. And it's actually, but, you know, to the larger point where we began, this is why we need corporate tax transparency. And this is what you're pushing for.

And I guess I'm wondering what is your definition of corporate tax transparency? In other words, would Starbucks, as an example, have to expose the scam of, yeah, yeah, we're, quote, buying all of our green coffee beans from, yeah, Switzerland. Sure we are, you know, that kind of thing, even though the beans never go there. Well, they would have to report, they would have to make certain information public, like how much in profits they generate in Oregon, what their sales, you know, basically what their sales are in Oregon, and how much in income taxes they pay to the states so that we could all see. So when corporations say, as you have said, a lot of them sort of complain about taxes in Oregon, they say they are too high. Well, show us, show us how much you're paying to see if they really are high. because I suspect that when the, when they are revealed, people will see, hmm, maybe they're not that high.

Or if they are high, well, then they can, we know for sure, right? But, you know, unless we have transparency, it's all, you know, it's, you know, the figures that we have that I was mentioning before in terms of the big picture of what's happened over time, they don't show the corporate taxes are high in Oregon. In fact, they show that at least on the corporate income tax side, corporate, it has been, in relative terms, shrinking over time. Is there not a case to be made, though, Juan, that really when we're talking about shrinking, could also be the fact that corporations are leaving the state of Oregon. I'm thinking of Dutch bros, you know, the person who ran Dutch pros, gone. He took it to Arizona.

And then you have the situation where Intel, for all intents and purposes, is hemorrhaging, and also moving a lot out of here, isn't that? Actually, where the headquarters are, because Dutch Bros. are still all over the state. There's continued to do a lot of business in Oregon. So it's not as if they've left the state. The headquarters may have left, but that actually has no impact on corporate income tax collections

where the company is headquartered. So, no, that wouldn't affect any of this analysis. Okay. What about, you know, since we are considered to be not a particularly friendly regulatory state, might that have something to do with the desire to avoid paying taxes? Which, by the way, avoiding paying taxes in the state of Oregon is legal. Evading it, as you say in the article, is not, is not right, is not legal. Well, I mean, the bottom line is that corporations benefit.

more than anyone from the public sector, from the fact that we have a public infrastructure that allows them to do business, that we have an educated workforce, a healthy workforce, that we have roads that allow customers to get to Starbucks stores. Corporations benefit immensely from all the investments that the state makes into the public sector, and so they ought to pay their fair share. And ultimately, making them disclose more tax information is something that Oregonians ought to know. It's something that allows us to, you know, if there are problems with our tax system, and I think we both agree, we may approach it from a different perspective,

but I think we both agree that there's problems with our tax system. Yeah, when you even talk in the article about how, well, look, you know, they're moving this income over to the notorious tax haven, you know, Switzerland, right? And so what goes through my head, and maybe I'm looking at this wrong, Switzerland seems to have a pretty good life over there, and a lot of good business seems to be going on there. And ultimately, I'm thinking, why doesn't Oregon make itself a tax haven too

and just be the Switzerland of the Northwest? And then it would seem that we would end up making more money on greater volume. In other words, you charge less for your taxation, but you make it up in volume. And then we wouldn't be talking about special sessions and bailing out ODOT and things like that. Has that been any thought given to that? That kind of approach?

Actually, there are some U.S. states. There are tax havens, and what that ultimately creates is a race to the bottom, because if everybody tries to be a tax haven, then corporations wouldn't be paying taxes anywhere. Yeah, but it seems to be working for Switzerland is what I'm getting. Why does it work for Switzerland, but it couldn't work for us, I guess, is where I'm coming from.

I think it's historical reasons why Switzerland is a tax haven't. tax haven, you know, and I don't, I'm not an expert in Swiss history, but it's certainly, it's a, it's a peculiar situation with Switzerland that has allowed it to be, become this tax haven. And it is in fact the biggest market for trading commodities. And again, no commodities actually enters Switzerland. It's just all done on paper. And they, you know, probably benefit from some fees that when you incorporate in Switzerland and they make money that way. But, you know, a small country like Switzerland, can become very rich doing this, but if everybody else tries to do it, then there's no benefit. Yeah, but you see, we're a small state. Why not become the Switzerland? We are, I mean, geographically we're large, but population-wise, we're not pretty small in the grand scheme. Well, we couldn't, we couldn't do it within the U.S. because it used to be that you could try to be a tax haven, in a state, you know, in the U.S. be a tax haven, but a lot of, to deal with that tax avoidance within the U.S., basically in Oregon has this law, like many other states

do, that they disregard the subsidiaries to sort of treat all the main corporation and all subsidiaries within the U.S. as one entity for tax purposes so that you avoid this tax profit shifting across subsidiaries. And so you're hoping that's what Oregon will change its way of, and this would be legislatively, I would imagine? Actually, that is actually one, another proposal. Another way to fix the problem with this, with the tax havens worldwide, is for Oregon to say, you know what, we're going to treat all your subsidiaries, not just in the U.S.,

but worldwide as one entity, and we're going to tax the profits that you earned in Oregon. So if 5% of Starbucks sales, just for example, 5% of Starbucks sales worldwide are made in Oregon, we're going to tax 5% of your profits. And that's something that Oregon actually used to do before 1984 or 86. I can't remember exactly. That's still with the law that used to be for Oregon. But it got changed. And if we went back to that, it would be a way to basically take away this maneuver that Starbucks

and many other multinational corporations use. Yeah, because you know what happens with capital and capital money investments. It tends to go wherever it is treated. the best. And apparently with Starbucks trying to avoid it here, it tells me that Oregon doesn't treat it necessarily very well. It's mobile. You know, you can't grab it, I guess, but you're thinking that we can grab it that way, the way we used to run taxation? That would go a long way and helping. But the other one, again, and going back to the point of transparency, once corporations are forced to show where they earn their profits and where they are paying taxes and people

see that disconnect, it puts pressure from consumers from policy makers to fix the problem. And to give you an illustration, Australia has much stronger disclosure laws. They're required to disclose a lot more information on their profits and taxes in Australia. And this has been in place for over a decade. And through that, they've been making reforms to their corporate income tax system and collecting more taxes. In other words, what you're talking about, then, increase the transparency, and you're almost thinking there would be social pressure brought on,

or even customer pressure brought on to. That's, okay, that's an interesting way of looking about that. Juan Carlos Ordonius, I'm talking about this article I'm reading here, on the Oregon Center for Public Policy website, and I think we've got a call or two people who have a question, so we're happy to do this. Hi, good morning. This is Bill, who's this?

Welcome. Good morning, Bill. Alan D. Boer. How are you? I'm doing fine, Alan. Alan, and, of course, a former state senator there. You're on with Juan Carlos. You have a question or comment on this issue.

No, great conversation. I love the dealing with the Starbucks thing, which just closed a very popular store in Ashland. But I did want to point out that most corporations in Oregon are either LLCs or sub-S corps, and they pay the $150 minimum. but the stockholders pay income tax instead of corporate tax. So the corporations itself aren't taxed other than the $150 minimum. But all the profits go directly and they're paid on your income tax statement. So I've been trying to point that out to the state forever and they still don't understand it.

I think one other thing to look at is years ago that Oregon corporations gave up their kicker. and they wanted to go to education to a special fund and look at the amount of the kicker every year, and it'll give you a great percentage of how much that actually is. And now it's not really going to the fund. It's going to general fund for education, which is kind of what the voters didn't pass. So anyway, interesting conversation. Hey, I'm glad you joined in, Senator. I appreciate you your take on that.

Any comment on what Senator DeBore had to say there, Juan? Yeah, I think it's an important distinction to make between, you know, limited liability companies and S corporations. As the senator said, they are taxed at the individual level. The profits are passed to the individual, and they pay the income tax. What I've been talking about in Starbucks is not that. Starbucks is what's called a C corporation, which is treated separately for tax. It's treated as its own entity for tax purposes. So the taxes are paid by the corporation.

Multinational corporations are all of that variety. And the thing is that once you have these, and they are the biggest corporations of the world, the multinational corporations, if these multinational corporations avoid taxes, they don't pay what's due, then what happens here in Oregon is that the mom-and-pop shops, the car repair shops, the beauty salons and whatnot, as well as individuals, the listeners and you and I either go without adequate funding for public services, you know, someone else carries the load or someone else's taxes go up because big corporations are avoiding taxes. All right.

I'll grab one more call here, and I just appreciate you taking the time this morning. It is been good conversation for sure. Hi, good morning. You're on with Bill and Juan Carlos. Good morning. I know, Cliff. Would your guest talk to... Hey, Cliff, could you smack your phone a little bit?

It sounds like you're talking through a computer at the moment. How about now? Yeah, boy. I am so sorry. It's not coming through. Something's wrong with the phone there, buddy. I'm sorry. All right.

Gosh, darn, he probably hung on the line there for quite some time here, too, Juan. Couldn't understand him there. Hey, where can people read this? And what's your website? And I know that essentially you're a progressive policy. think tank. That's really what you're all about at OCP, correct? Yes, we are a, I would, yes, we would describe ourselves as a progressive think tank. We try to improve public policies so that they work better for all Oregonians, especially

low and moderate income Oregonians. And people can find all our work at OCP.org. All right, very good. Now, like I said, I don't always agree with it, but, you know, I was intrigued with this transparency issue of Starbucks and the C class of corporation that you were talking about. So, interesting read, okay, and it's thought provoking it. Thanks for being on the show. I appreciate that

one. I appreciate the time, Bill. All right, be well. It is 838 at KMED, 993 KBXG. Honey, did you know that our garage door is the heaviest moving piece in our home? News Talk 1063 KMED. This is

the Bill Myers Show. We'll break for news here in just a moment and take more of your calls as we wrap up this morning on Wheels Up Wednesday. We have Corey, who wrote me. By the way, my email is Bill at Billmeyer's show.com. Says, Bill, corporations shouldn't pay taxes. It's just another tax on the consumer. Well, it's kind of where Senator DeBore, former Senator DeBore was talking about that essentially ends up, you know, corporate profits end up being paid for by the stockholders, you know, with capital gains,

you know, that sort of thing. Point well taken. Leslie ends up writing me, Bill, Oregon, looking under couch cushions, likes Australia. Yeah, yeah, there's a little bit of that going on. But I've been telling you that we were going to be, you were already, when it comes right down to it, this special session, the special session was looking under the couch cushions. And Oregon has just refused to even try to rein in the spending or find a more efficient way of doing it. And I don't know, but you knew this was going to happen because are you ever going to get some hard progressives to say, you know, let's see if we can do this for less money.

I'd love to see it happen. You know, a felican dream like I always like to say, okay? But we can talk about that. We can talk about other things that are on your mind this morning too. I also have some more reaction to what happened to that conversation we've been having about the ball field, the ball stadium project. And it seems like the general consensus that I'm getting in the email so far is that people are not happy, kind of like what Fred Herman was expressing on Friday's show, not happy about tying all of this, this ability to raise the hotel motel tax, the TLT, is how you'll hear it discussed. They're not happy about doing this for a ball stadium, a $90 million ball, a dollar ball stadium over by Hawthorne Park or on Hawthorne Park. That's the general consensus, but we'll get into some more specifics about this.

Where do you think it would work better? Some people have been suggesting down there than the old Harry and David Field area kind of, you know, doing that. There's land available there. And more than one person has told me that it could be done for a lot less money than $90 million over by Hawthorne. Now, the part that I have not done any more additional research on was that one call of some, I forget who called in on Friday morning show, but it was after Fred Herman, after we hung up with Fred Herman, and saying that the gift of the land to the city of Medford for Hawthorne Park came from the Lions Club and that the terms would not allow them to put the ball field there. the stadium. I haven't been able to figure out if that's really true or not. I can't believe that the city of Medford would have decided to move forward with something like this without having checked that.

But maybe the idea that there's still a Hawthorne Park, it's just maybe one-third of the size that it was before, you know, when the Lions Club, maybe if they reduced Hawthorne Park to the size of a postage stamp, but it was still Hawthorne Park to put the sign up, maybe that would qualify. maybe that's the way the illegal eagles are are parsing that right now i don't know but i can't believe that the city of metford would be going to the voters next month to ask for permission if they hadn't daunted the eyes and crossed the tees but if anybody can weigh in on that i'd love to hear from you okay it's uh 843 stephen westfall roofing is growing now proudly serving brookings line for pickup is november 28th welcome to the bill mire show on 1063 kmED give bill a call at 541-770-5633.

That's 7-70 K-M-E-D. Today is my anniversary, my marriage anniversary. Linda and I got married in Jacksonville. It was 21 years ago, 21 years ago. What an amazing time it has been. I feel so blessed to have her in my life and being in her life there too. and we're going to go out for a nice dinner sometime

and maybe have a dirty martini. She may have two. I'll stick it at one. Got to keep it safe. Gotta be safe, right? You know, all that kind of thing. But I think about everything that had happened. And what a time.

What a blessing. And I hope that you have that kind of blessing in your life or have known that in your life like I have. And gosh, I just can't imagine. It's hard for me to remember the time before when you're in such a good marriage. I mean, Linda, being married to Linda is like, it's that soft, welcoming place to land after a hard day. That's kind of what she is. And it's just, I can't say enough good things, but we'll have a good time.

I'll tell you, you know, how that ends up going. It was a really interesting start, though, when we got married. We got married. Like I said, it was October 8th, 24, right? And so we went out, we were going to go out on the coast for a honeymoon. Didn't have a ton of money, you know, back at that time. Well, unbeknownst to us, her mother had suffered a stroke right at our wedding at the end of it, and we didn't know. And so her mother was in the hospital, and they wouldn't call us.

They didn't call us because they're thinking, hey, they just got married. Margaret's in the Margaret's in the hospital and we didn't know it was the next morning that we called in and then found out and then immediately left I think we had stayed at Patrick Creek Lodge

or we were staying at Patrick Creek Lodge at that point we had stayed in in Roche you know the wedding night and then we immediately came back and so no honeymoon for sure and then at that point

He was just worried about whether her mother was going to die. And then it, you know, we moved into the house, into the family house together and took care of her mother. Her mother lived for another two, three years. Lovely woman, Margaret Mounce was just amazing and stayed there for, and to help her father, too, until he ended up passing just around the age of 90, a few years later. But that was a test by fire. Linda had to do so much work. And I know she had help from her sisters, too, but it was really up to Linda.

And you really find out what people are made of in those kind of adversities. And even though it was adversity, we all loved Margaret. Wouldn't have changed a thing of what ended up happening. It was a lot of work for everybody. But it was a work of love. Date 51, back to the phones here. 7705-633-770KMED. Hello, James and Selma.

you've been holding on a little bit? What's on your mind, huh? Yeah, I've been watching the live riots up there in Portland, and I wanted to say in July, Antifa took a stop sign with the pole, and about four guys took it and rammed it through the door of the ice building, that shattered the glass, and they tried to light the place on fire. they've been doing this since when the BLM was marching during the COVID they tried to light the courthouse on fire a lady about 80 years old with a walker poured water on the fire

Antifa took a gallon of white paint and poured it over the lady's head and I was furious there was no no police police weren't allowed to interact and and now Last night, they had furry guys dressed up in furry costumes. They're acting like it's a party, like there's nothing going on, and the police were there, but they're acting like, oh, Antifa's not, no problem, dressed up as furries, and everything is fun, a party atmosphere. but

and all the news channels show nothing going on during the day a guy sitting there playing a guitar well generally speaking there probably isn't a whole lot going on

it's when the sun goes down that things get sporty but the local news stations they don't show that at night they're playing up as nothing's going on the governor goes two miles away for

parade and says Portland's so not but they do a close-up, you look in the background, all the stores are boarded up with plywood with graffiti all over it. Well, wouldn't you think that if the governor really cared about this, or even the mayor of Portland, you take care of the issue of Donald Trump wanting to put troops. You take care of this very easily, all right?

All you do is declare a curfew in that neighborhood. Right. You don't even have to bring in the troops, you don't have to bring in Portland police. It is bringing a curfew. It's like, nope, sun goes down early evening, you know, in the daytime fine. Other than that, nope, local residents are allowed there, and that's it. End of problem. Wouldn't that be something that a reasonable politician would do?

That's the Obama's Army, the Democratic's Army is Antifa. and I think we should have the ballpark, have Antifa versus the ICE agents, and I would pay to go to the ballpark and see that. Okay, kind of like a gladiator fight, huh? All right, James. Appreciate the call. Let me grab another call here. Hi, good morning.

This is Bill. Who's this? Hey, Bill. It's David. David. How you been? Oh, I've been amazing. Man, I wanted to call and wish you a happy anniversary, Bill.

I'm so happy that you've been blessed that way. You know, I've never met your wife, but she must be such an amazing person. I just wanted to call and give you on-air warm token of, you know, so many people's appreciation for what you do. You're such an amazing, you know, pillar and leader of this amazing tribal audience you have that's such made up of so many special people. And, you know, I've been listening for 26. I've been listening to you for 20 years now. Wow. And it's just incredible to think about, you know, but we love you so much.

The audience does. and I hope you know that, and I hope your wife knows that as well. That is very kind of you, and I think she does realize that, and I will pass that along. David, it's been such a pleasure hearing from you also. And I'm just kind of curious, in your day job, do you have anything to add on the recall world? I know you're a mechanic and a darn good one, too, for that most. Anything happening in the automotive world we should be knowing about, too, while you happen to be here? I'm just picking your brain.

Oh, man, I don't know. I mean, you know, Bill, I've been moving, um, working out in the woods a lot lately, and I got this, um, Dodge Ram that I drive, and, you know, the consensus among people that work with cars is if you drive one of these new cars and try to use it, like, like a truck, you know, or even like a regular daily driver, you just tear these things up. Everything snapped together with plastic. It's poor quality. The repairs are so expensive if you scratch it, you know, and so hang on to your old vehicles

and just get over what people think about you, you know. Get over that, and that monthly payment, you know, what is wrong. with you? Why do you want to pay $1,000 a month for this porcelain, china, a doll truck you got to drive around town, but you got to worry about scratching it, you know? I'm going to tell you, though, when you were working on Linda's... I remember, though,

when you were working on Linda's Passat a while back, though, I don't know. Was there enough gorilla glue in the world to take care of putting that door panel back together that you... Well, Bill, you know, it's funny, because the newer they get, I look back at your Passat, and I'm like, oh, it really wasn't so bad, you know, and

And, but I'll tell you what, I hope that, I want to tell the audience, the way you guerrilla glued that door handle to that panel, you may be my European adhesive specialist because I have never in my career seen such fine ingenuity as that repair on that door panel. That was top notch. I don't know if it was a whole bottle of gorilla glue, but it was, it was absolutely stellar. I took a picture at it. I remember you said it to me, and it's like, yeah, I fell on my sword. Yeah, I did that a number of years ago. I said, yeah, it was a past repair, but I don't think you owned up to it, but you didn't know I actually appreciated it. I thought it was great. Garilla glue, the mechanics choice. All right. David, thanks. It's great hearing from you. Thanks for the call. I appreciate that. I grab another. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who says? Welcome. Hello. Is it me, Lauren? Yes, it is you, Lauren. Morning. Hey, when he called up to wish you a happy anniversary, I want to do the same. Oh, that's very kind of you. Lauren, it is such a

pleasure talking with you and you know when you have a great when you have a great spouser there's just nothing better there's there's nothing better to to help your life in my opinion and of course that we were those times when we got to be sitting next to you and some some giveaways and we know linda and so congratulations thank you very much great hearing from you Lauren email bill of billmyershow.com tomorrow conspiracy theory Thursday we're going to have a great conversation. And you know, I have never talked about the great screw worm

invasion of the United States. But I got a cow person on that's saying this is a big deal. I've never talked about screw worms. We'll have to talk a little bit about that. No, it's not politicians either. Make phone cleanup a breeze. Okay, a hurricane with echo blowers from Zolzlana Garden equipment.

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