Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 11-05-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

A Blue Sweep in Blue states...Surprised? Medford passing 15-238, too. Wheels Up Wednesday with Eric Peters - Was election a trump repudiation? Chevy Express Van review, how to keep an older vehicle running well and more.

The Bill Meyer Show podcast is sponsored by Klauser Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausordrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Great to have you here on Wheels Up Wednesday. Yep, he'll be hitting the open road with Eric Peters, assuming that the closeted incoming commie governor of Virginia will permit him to exist that he won't be taxed out of. Yeah, I mean, essentially what has happened yesterday?

No, we know what happened yesterday, and maybe you do too. Are there any real surprises out of what happened that blue communist-leaning states and areas of the country ended up electing blue communist leading leaders of one way or the other? Certainly New York City. New York City, when you have decided for decades now that you will import the third world, are we surprised that you end up getting third world voting patterns? I mean, seriously, is anybody surprised at all? I know I heard the national talk show hosts that were, you know, doing a good game

and trying to get that Chittarelli in and various other things. It's like I kind of thought it was a foregone conclusion that we were going to have a day like last night. And I'm not happy about it, but are you necessarily surprised? I don't know how you could. So we're surprised that a city in which if you were an immigrant, legal or otherwise, and there's probably a lot of otherwise in New York City, you were overwhelmingly in favor of the Democratic Socialist, which is just a nice name for a communist.

That's all. So what do we expect? You import the third world, and the third world gets a toehold. And the Islamic Caliphate gets a toehold now. You get another one here. Oh, by the way, one of the first people to congratulate Mondami, Alex Soros, but there's no connection. No connection whatsoever. And the Soros money continues to leach into the electoral process, along with the fact that, well, people want a free pony.

Speaking of free pony, Medford's going to get its free pony. At least that's how it's looking. The voting is about 600 votes in between the winning. and the losing one, 8,543 people. Or maybe I should say, given that this is Oregon and it's a faith-based vote-by-mail system, 8,543 envelopes had a piece of paper in it that voted yes, and 7,972 envelopes that we hope are connected with actual voters. they voted no.

So it's 51 to 48%, 3%. And it ended up tightening up a little bit. Excuse me, had a little bit of a coffee frog in the throat there. But yeah, it tightened up a little bit from last night. Actually, the margin still ended up being about the same. But yeah, all the no votes started coming in a little bit later. He actually had a bigger winning margin at the 8 o'clock count last night. But measure 15-238, the city of Medford is.

going to, it's going to raise hotel motel taxes on people who come to southern Oregon to visit so that we can build a competition to the existing hotel motels that are having their taxes raise. I guess this is okay. They're kind of looking at this as going to be a rainmaker, like I had mentioned yesterday. I'm not surprised this one either. I made it pretty. I made a clear that I'm not a fan of it, not because I'm not a fan of Medford having good things, but it is such vaporware at this point. And yeah, we promise we're going to do the right thing. No, we promise that you are not going to pay anything more in utility fees.

And what I'm going to say is right now, we are not going to have anything more on our utility fees or our various ways of paying the city of Medford. If everything works out okay and the very pie in the sky or very, shall we say, sunny economic forecasts that come from this end up being true. Maybe this ends up being one of the best things that ever happens to Medford. Maybe we can talk about that this morning. Maybe that is one of the best things. But the issue that I have always had with the city of Medford, Jackson County, Josephine County,

all the rest of it is that we're always looking for something to throw against the wall hoping that we can kickstart an economy that essentially is funded by retiree money and government transfer payments. Because Southern Oregon's real economy ended up vanishing 30, 40 years ago, and it's still a little bit of it is left with timber mining and various extractives. but we have decided that it is morally superior to burn forests and also spend taxpayer money paying professional fire starters to burn the forest rather than actually doing anything useful with them.

And that's kind of where we decided to go. Once it was spotted out time, the dye was cast here in Southern Oregon. And so, you know, why do you think people get so upset when you had this talk about SNAP benefits? oh my gosh what's going to happen with snap benefits go away and and remember it's supposed to be just supplemental but there are a lot of people that that's a big part of their food budget because we have yet to have a truly sustainable organic organic economy here in southern Oregon and so the cities are looking for some way to capture lightning in a bottle I don't blame them I really don't but let us think of about how this is going to, how this might possibly play out. You know, to me, and I've made this claim, what I've always said right from the beginning of this, the absolute weakest part of this entire 15-238, Creekside Quarter, is putting a Eugene Emerald's Stadium in downtown Medford. I think it's going to be a traffic problem, and maybe they'll get that all figured out, but

maybe by that time gasoline will be $12 a gallon by the time it's, it's there, and then we'll all be just breathlessly happy that we'll be able to get on the RVTD, assuming there's anything left of RVTD at this point. I don't mean it's not so cynical, all right, but I'll just go here. Let's just think about it. To me, the ball, the ball stadium is still going to be the weakest part of this entire soup. Is there a possibility that conference rooms and meetings and the ability to attract a little bit of that could revitalize? It's possibility, possibility, even though the conference industry is continuing to shrink. You know, we're building a conference center in meeting rooms at the same time that the business itself tends to be shrinking nationwide.

They had great hopes for it, but there's less of it happening. I talked about that. Even the people within the conference industry are saying, I don't like saying this, but yeah, we have challenges. Maybe that'll come back. Maybe it's cyclical. that still doesn't make Southern Oregon any more particularly attractive. I mean, do you think that we're going to attract big conferences to a half-billion-dollar development? And I'm sure it'll look pretty.

Don't get me wrong. I have no doubt about that. A droid will probably build it, right, like everything else. The thing is, are there enough attractants to really have people say, hey, can't wait to get that conference? you know, going into Southern Oregon, and we're going to go to the half-million dollar Creekside Quarter, we're going to get that, and there is enough to do outside of that.

That's the question I have. Now, that's not a criticism of Southern Oregon. One of the things that I liked about Southern Oregon, and when I moved here back in the early 1990s, is that it wasn't trying to be Portland. I liked that part about Southern Oregon. I really did. I wasn't worried about that there weren't, you know,

75 art museums and, you know, all the other trappings of a city. And yes, some people would say, well, it really makes it boring. It's just, well, you know, to me, I found other aspects of Southern Oregon, such as the hunting and fishing and being able to go camping out in a beautiful forest, et cetera, et cetera. I like that. I like that, that, you know, a half hour after leaving the city, you could be up in the woods and doing some camping. but that was, you know, for me, kind of small-scale camping, not big economically impactful kind of camping. But that's what I liked about Southern Oregon. I wasn't, oh, gosh, it doesn't have them Nordstroms.

I can't move there, you know, like some people are, you know. But is there enough outside of that to keep a conference center busy? Maybe. Apparently, there is some company behind the scenes. negotiating with the city of metford that wants to do this i have my doubts but you know more power to them and it appears that the voters have approved getting the new pony the creek side quarter going here and kickstarting it my question is though is that the systemic problems affecting southern oregon haven't changed kickstarting an economy that is still dependent largely on

transfer payments largely from the federal government, largely from a federal government that is continuing to go broke. By the way, went up another trillion on the national debt. I think it only took about 40 days, 40 or 50 days to get another trillion dollars added to the national debt. Yeah, it's okay. Yeah, we'll keep those transfer payments going on here. Because we've decided that forests are for burning and not for actual use. And that was a big part of Southern Oregon's economy. And yet, even if we were still in the woods to the extent we were, yeah, it would be a lot more automation that was, you know, that would be taking place in that right now. You wouldn't have the number of people necessarily working into that, but still you'd be getting economic output from the cities or for the cities. And you would also have timber revenue that would be going to the counties, which are no longer going to the counties.

Look at what Joe County, you know, is struggling with right now ever since those times because that was the economy. of Oregon. And now you look at like a city of Grants Pass, you look at a city of Medford, and if we didn't have our transfer payments from the federal government, why would we exist here? That's, I think, the economic question that needs to be addressed with the city fathers, rather than, okay, how can we skim off? Well, okay, let's take a look at the baseball stadium. What's going to happen is that the baseball stadium will end up paying back some of the bond, I guess, through the fees on the hot dogs and the beer

and the various other things and the tickets and the baseball team and all this other stuff. But all we're doing, at least it would seem to me that all we're doing is shifting entertainment dollars. Maybe instead of going to Brit, you're going to the ball game instead. Maybe Brit's a bad choice. I don't know how many baseball fans are there over in Brit.

But all we're doing is shifting entertainment dollars. That's the way it appears this will be. But maybe that is enough. Maybe that is enough to make it work. And now that the voters apparently have spoken, not all the ballots are counted at this point, but it does look like 15-238 will move forward. we're going to have to deal with the hard work of then

making sure that the Medford City Council and the administration here in Southern Oregon sticks to its promises and makes sure and does the best possible project possible with the least amount of public dollars in this and with the least amount of risk to the public dollars okay that's really kind of what I'm getting at I've jokingly referred to even when it comes to water parks.

Like who's the best person to make money with a water park? Well, it's after the first owner goes bankrupt. You know that kind of thing, right? I'm hoping it's not the case with our ball stadium. Maybe we'll find enough uses outside of the season. But it's a symptom. You know, trying to do the Creekside Quarter Development is a symptom of the fact that Southern Oregon has no organic economy or very little organic economy other than, well, we're a retail place because we have no taxes on retail,

so California comes in and buys stuff, and everybody gets federal money coming in and buys stuff. And, ooh, we get this big medical community, but that's to treat sick people, and it's a cost on society, et cetera, et cetera. So it's not the same as what it once was with a more organic. When I talk about organic, I'm not talking about organic farming, even though it's perfectly okay, but I'm talking about actual homegrown economic activity rather than taking dollars from somewhere else and recycling it. But that's just me. It's 626 at KMED, 993 KBXG. Eric Peters joining me here in about 10.

Always a good talk on Wheels Up Wednesday. The threat of wildfire. I'm Tony Dusty with Dusty's transmissions, and I'm on KMED. Daniel Bethel, Republican running for... Oregon governor. Yeah, there's more than just Christine Dresen. Hope he will talk with Christine Drazen this week here too. And Danielle's going to join me after 7 o'clock. I'll have to ask her if she has a good psychiatrist. So why would anybody want to run for governor in Oregon? But someone's got to do it. And so she wants to. We'll see where that goes. Okay.

But let me talk with Tom. Tom's a member of the early morning riser commenter club. How you doing this morning, Tom? What are you thinking about the big blue wave? It's not really a surprise, was it? Was there really any surprise on this one? Maybe? Not really. Not really. You know, I have long said that neither the Democrats or the Republicans are offering real solutions for what ills America. And there's a pretty good article on Fox News by a fellow who said that the main reason why people New York voted for Mandani was because they viewed him as being working for fairness. Not so much socialism, but fairness.

But, you know, really, what's going on in this country, you know, the middle class is being gutted. The middle class has been getting hosed for decades, though, Tom. You know, and that's what – and it's the hollowing out, right? That's what you're speaking about. Yeah, exactly. You know, in reality, what needs to happen, we need to have an honest monetary system. We need to abolish the IRS. We need to, you know, in Oregon here, they're squawking about, you know, snap being cut off and what Trump's doing with ICE and so forth.

These are, have you ever thought about how the IRS has basically taken all the lion's share of the tax money giving it to the central government? and then the central government gets to dole it out to the states as they see fit. It's basically ruined federalism, you know, the idea that... And it has weakened, and it is weakened to the states, too. Yeah, you know, our ever-inplating monetary system has been like a slow-growing cancer that's slowly but inexorably gutting out the American middle class and gravitating power towards the central government. We need such a revision in government, and neither is...

Unfortunately, though, that's not the revision. That's not the revolution that I think the Mondamis of the world want to bring in here. The idea is that they wish to inflate it more. And all we're arguing about is how much we're going to inflate it. Like I said, another trillion on the deficit, but, hey, deficits don't matter, you know, that kind of thing. Deficest don't matter, yay. Until they do. This choice of communism on the left and crony capitalism.

You know, people don't know the difference between capitalism and fascism. You know, capitalism degenerates into fascism. Well, capitalism, if it's truly laissez-faire capitalism, there would be no such thing as a bailout, and everything that failed would have failed rather than having been bailed. right now, we have government-managed capitalism, which is not really pure capitalism. None of us in our lifetime has really experienced pure capitalism, Tom, unless maybe in our garage sales, you know, yard sales.

Yeah, willing buyers, willing sellers. That's what I'm getting at. But will we learn, will we learn that you just can't create something out of nothing and call it money and call it wealth and everyone's going to be okay? I don't think we've learned that lesson yet, Tom, okay? I agree with that, and I think we're heading towards, you know, economic crashing. Well, even Donald Trump, to his credit then, he's saying he wants a devalued dollar. Well, he wants a de- Yeah, it's just more of the same.

That's what I mean. The Republicans are not offering a solution. They really need, well, no, no, they're not, maybe not, that's not quite fair. quite fair. I'm going to have what I had to get ready for Eric here just most. I'm going to cut you loose what, maybe talk about this a little bit later. But, you know, what we're doing is talking about less of it. That's all we're arguing about right now. That's right. That's what's going on. Less of what got us here in the first place, Tom. Thank you for your call, okay? 633 at KMED. Your smile is the key to your health and confidence. Did you also know that

research has concluded people have almost as much fear about finding a new dentist as they do about going to the dentist? Hi, I'm Dr. Robert Johnson, and here at Dental Excellence, we value the confidence and trust our patients have in us. My 20 years of experience in thorough training equals comprehensive dental care, from creating that perfect filling or doing that perfect root canal in my dental microscope to restoring a patient's confidence with implant-supported dentures. We can do it all here at Dental Excellence. For those who need, I am highly trained and certified in IV sedation and the art of creating a comfortable, relaxed, stress-free, environment. Are you looking for friendly, compassionate, personal care?

Come and join our excellent dental family. Call 541-779-6-170 today for free consultation. Dental excellence. Dental of excellence, changing lives, one smile at a time. From the KMED News Center, here's what's going on. While the final results in Tuesday's special election won't be known for a few weeks because of legislative tinkering, the early count shows two money measures are ahead. A Medford measure to increase the transient room tax for the Creekside Quarter Project is ahead 54 to 46%.

While a five-year local option tax to fund the Rogue River Rural Fire Protection District is leading 52 to 47%. A lawsuit filed it in Oregon federal court claims the Trump administration placed improper holds on promised funding by Congress for emergency management programs. Oregon is suing Homeland Security and Feud. FEMA. They claim the grant money impositions are inappropriate restrictions. In Oregon, those grants pay for staffing at Oregon's Emergency Coordination Center and could lead to significant funding losses for two-thirds of Oregon's counties. Slightly more than half of Oregon health care workers were vaccinated against the flu last year. That's an 11% decline from 2023 and down 36% from 2019. Bill London, KMED. I'm Charles Payne, and this is the Fox Business Report.

private employers added 42,000 new jobs in October as measured by payroll processing company ADP. It's stronger than economists were predicting after jobs were lost in September. Workers are still getting raises. Annual pay rose 4.5% in October. ADP chief economist Nila Richardson says jobs were added in October for the first time since July, but hiring was modest relative to earlier this year. IBM is cutting thousands of jobs as it adapts for artificial intelligence. The Wall Street Journal says the company describes it as a low single-digit percentage of its total workforce.

McDonald's sales increased in the recent quarter, but the company's making less from discounted meals. That's your Fox Business Report. I'm Jenny Koselda, invested in you. The world of VIII. Business moves fast. Stay on top of it with the Fox Business Rundown every Monday and Friday. Fox Business reporters, anchors, and hosts will bring you beneath the stock market speculation and boardroom drama to tell you about the biggest business stories of today. Whether you're on Main Street or Wall Street, Fox Business is invested in you. Listen to the Fox Business Rundown every Monday and Friday at Fox Business Podcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. being delicious, the ketchup is lonely and the burgers are jealous.

Try an order at Diner 62. Two Dogs Fabricating is your exclusive North Star flatbed dealer and installer. But you're welcome to go all Goldilocks on us if it's not just right. Because Two Dogs can add stuff like custom boxes, racks, whatever you need. Or we can fabricate

your own one-of-a-kind custom Two-Dogs Flatbed unique to your industry. We've built custom beds for roofers, builders, masons, electricians. So we bet we can make you say, just right. Come see Two Dogs Fabricating on Brian Way, just off sage road. Visit Two Dogsfab.com. Oregon Truck and Auto Authority is your work truck and van headquarters. Proudly offering Adrian Steel interior shelving packages, partitions, and the best ladder racks in the business.

Integrate a bedslider, decked drawer system to boost your efficiency. Also featuring the largest selection of commercial fiberglass and metal truck canopies from leading manufacturers such as ARE, SmartCaps, Century, and century and more. Come see Oregon Truck and Auto Authority today and take your efficiency to the next level. This is the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Call Bill now. 541-770-5-633. That's 770 KMED. Oh, there we go. I was wondering why I wasn't hearing myself because I didn't put the microphone back on. It's wheels up Wednesday. Eric Peters have rejoined. year. This time on Zoom, I'm getting this Zoom thing figured out at some point. Only five or six

years after the heyday of it. How you doing this morning? Eric, welcome back from EP. Oh, pretty good, Bill. I'm contemplating the worst thing ever, which actually isn't what happened yesterday electorally. Okay. What is even worse than what happened electorally? Because I don't think there are any really surprises except the fact that maybe just the amount of the repudiation, but what are you thinking? Well, I'm talking about the flush-mounted door handle pull. which I'm going to have an article about on the site tomorrow. You may have seen these. Tesla was the one that came out with them first. You know, everything's all very sleek.

You approach the car and the handle pops out from the side of the door. And, you know, that's how you open the door. The problem is it's electrically activated for one thing. So if the electrical system doesn't work, you're not going to get in or, more importantly, out of the car. As, for example, if you happen to drive the thing into a pond or the car drives itself into a pond. So I thought it would be fun to look at that to try to put a smile on an otherwise sad day today. Now, the thing is, there's a lawsuit about those door handles on the electric vehicles, is there not? Yeah, there is.

Yeah, because, you know, again, for the obvious reason, in the sense that it seriously is a safety issue, you know, they've had problems where people have been involved in wrecks. I think that happened with a cyber truck accident a few months back. Right. A bunch of teenagers were out driving a cyber truck. God only knows how teenagers got a $100,000 cyber truck. But they crashed the thing into a telephone pole, it caught on fire, and they couldn't get out because the electrical system was disabled. And so there was no practical way to get out of the car. You know, Tesla does include a manual release.

The problem is if you don't know where it is and, you know, you're not ready to use that thing in an emergency where seconds count before you're going to get burned to death, it's not very helpful. But the federal government has had not much to say about that up to this point, isn't that true? Absolutely. It's just one of those things that slipped by the ump, so to speak. And because Tesla was at one time regarded as the apotheosis of all things cool, a number of other vehicle manufacturers have put these same things on their cars. So it's no longer just Tesla electric cars. I've had a number of cars lately that have this same feature. And it kind of, it annoys me to on another level in that I just see this as an example of gratuitous complexity that at best, imparts a minor convenience. It's not a meaningful improvement, in other words. Is it really that tough to just pull a fixed door handle to get into a car? I don't see that it is. No, but, you know, everything had to have kind of the shiny toy aspect to it. There's always been a little bit of that in the automotive and truck world. Hey, you know, something is really cool. But there's been very a little asking, and you could also say this in biotechnology too when it comes right down

to it, Eric, is that, okay, we can do this. We can do a door in a certain way, but really should we? What is the downside? And that's what doesn't tend to get asked very often. Yeah, I think you're right about that. And I also think it is sort of a function of the fact that we've gotten to a point where there are only incremental improvements within the parameters of the government regulatory apparatus. So how are you going to sell a new car relative to what you were trying to sell last year or a few years ago? Well, you come up with these gadgets. You figure out a way to do something like have a door pole that magically comes out from the side of the door as you approach. And that way you can razzle-dazzle people when they go to the car dealership to look at new cars. Wow,

look at that. I've never seen that before. Meanwhile, the car itself is pretty much the same as it ever was, only a lot more expensive. But it does have this cool little electronic gadget. That kind of raises what you were talking about, one of your lead articles there. Now, today, in the Supreme Court, I'm going to have a legal analyst on tomorrow. We're going to talk about this. But, you know, the Trump tariff lawsuits, you know, the fights against his tariffing authority are going before the Supreme Court today. And it will really be interesting to see where this goes because, you know, I voted for President Trump, but I still don't see where the magic tariffing authority that he's been doing, whether we need it or. or not. I just don't see where this comes from because the main legal argument they're making

is that there's an emergency because we have a trade deficit, except we've had trade deficits for 60 years. Yeah, I mean, if that's an emergency, everything's an emergency. And I think, you know, aside from the issue of tariffs, which are taxes, there's also the chaos. You know, it's not consistent. If Trump had come out and said, okay, we're going to impose tariffs on XYZ and here's why, and then left it at that. But what he does is he comes out with on one day, well, we're going to throw a 100% tariff at the Chinese. And then two days later, he rescinds it. And this has created a completely chaotic environment for business that is causing great pain out there in the economy. It's making it difficult for the manufacturers to make plans and to just do

business. And I think this is one of the reasons, frankly, why there was a double-digit blowout almost in my state in favor of the Democratic challenger for government. You know, people are tired of the chaos. People want calm, stability, and order. And they're not getting it, unfortunately, from Donald Trump. Yeah. Well, and there are ways that he would use the tariff as a cudgel, so to speak. Well, you can remember when, you know, okay, Ottawa puts out, I think it was Ottawa. Wasn't it the province of Ottawa that put out the, the Ronald Reagan ad? Reagan thing. Yeah, they did. Yeah. And because of that, then, because I'm P.O. to you, then we're going to throw another tariff on you. And it's just not the smart way of going to.

about things right now. It's that chaotic thing. But I agree with you that people don't want the chaos at this point. And I would also say that the government shutdown, though, largely. And of course, this makes me wonder, though, that, you know, is it really about Obamacare subsidies this government shutdown? Or was it really about creating the chaos enough to actually help Democrats drag some people over the line, too? It's a possibility, wouldn't you think? Well, I think so. And, you know, even if it wasn't intended, it certainly had that effect, didn't it? And one of the aspects of this that interests me, you know, the whole SNAP slash food stamps thing, it constitutes a picayune percentage of the budget. I think it's not even 1%. And I'm not saying

I'm in favor of food stamps and SNAP and all of that. But the point is we're hemorrhaging money, tossing God only knows how many billions at Ukraine, for example, at Israel, at all these foreign projects. And meanwhile, average people are feeling serious pain, whether they're snapping, or food stamp recipients or just people like you and I trying to buy groceries at the store and were outraged. I'm outraged. I'm tired of seeing money just being shoveled at these boondoggle projects outside the United States. And Trump and the Republican Party just seem indifferent, which is incredible given that he ran on this populist make America first plan. And now all of a sudden we seem to have incarnated the ghost of Dick Cheney with an orange spray tan. Well, maybe the truth of the matter.

is there's not much of a solution available with the empire and the current situation that it is, Eric? I mean, a politically palatable solution right now. Well, that's probably true. You know, one of the great dilemmas in my state at any rate, and I think this is true of some other states as well, but politically the state is dominated by northern Virginia, meaning the counties that surround what I like to call the imperial capital Washington. And just like how Oregon is dominated by the imperial, uh, people around Portland, you know, as homeless and dodgy as they are. But that's the reality.

That's what you're dealing with, right? I grew up there. I lived there for a lot of years. And, you know, the bulk of the economy up there is a government-driven economy. People either work for the government or they tend to work for some company that in some way does business with the government. So their shutdown has affected them in their bottom lines. And bottom line, people vote their bottom line. And, you know, so the upwelling of anti-orange sentiment, Northern Virginia resulted in the election of Abigail Spanberger. It was as, you know, as predictable as Pravda during the Brezhnev years. Yeah. And you now have an attorney general who actually wished his political rival dead, like shooting them, fantasized about shooting them. But what could be wrong with

having that person is AG, huh? Well, yeah, you know, it's most people are at least, I think I'll put it this way, decent people were kind of just appalled by that. But there is so much anger and and resentment out there toward these establishment people that even though he said those things, there are a lot of people out there who sympathize with that, kind of of a piece with the Luigi Mangione thing. People are pissed. And it's appalling to see that they'll, you know, they'll somehow rationalize or justify a murder in the streets. But I get it, you know, I'm not trying to approve it or say that it's the right thing to do. But people were furious about the way these health insurance mafias are screwing everybody over. And I think politically

we're seeing that same thing elaborate in Virginia and also in New Jersey and New York City. Well, we also saw it play out with the Democrats wanting to keep what was left of the government shut down over Obamacare subsidies because the fact of the matter is is that Obamacare is not the Affordable Health Care Act. It is not affordable. Nothing has been done to address the actual affordability and the issues within the health and insurance industry. All we're doing is then talking about how much of a subsidy do you need. And I got to tell you when you have someone that says their health insurance bill is going to go up by $800, $900 a month, you know, out on the West Coast, you know, that's a, that's a serious thing. And, yeah, it'd be great if you weren't

depending on somebody else's largest to pay for your health insurance, but that's the reality where we find ourselves right now, Eric, where people are, or, well, responding to it. They're just looking like what's in it for me, you know? You're 100% right. And it's one of the, it's, it is indicative of the tone deafness of people like Trump, frankly. These are in the billionaire class. What's $800 a month to them? They don't get it. They put people in this position. They didn't do anything to get rid of Obamacare. And to figure out a way to reduce the cost of medical care as opposed to the cost of insurance. I think that that's an important distinction to make. And that's it. That's it. Because all you've noticed is that the health insurance companies still continue to grow massively in value and stock valuations. It's just a never-ending positive feedback loop for them. You know, the people are in trouble. Their stock goes up. okay their stock goes up it's an amazing interesting how that's been working lately yeah and it's an existential threat for a lot of people you know a lot of people are dependent on this as you say and you know

they're facing the prospect of potentially not being able to afford what they have to have in order to get the things that they need as regards the care of their family and that tends to be a motivator you know you can talk all you want to about all of these you know talking points uh that the republicans like to talk about at the end of the day when the rubber hits the road people are going to vote their self-interest and at this point they have a self-interest and at this point they have a interest in, you know, not being dead in the streets without a roof over their heads. And I don't know if they see the value of a tariff, which is raising prices for them. And I guess, and that's, and I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with it.

I'm just talking, talking about that's the reality of how people are going to view this over the coming months. And I'm really kind of concerned because there's a very, well, I don't know what the Supreme Court's going to do. I don't know what the Supreme Court is going to. We're just going to have to see what it does, but there could be additional chaos. I think toning down the chaos would be very helpful right now. And I would agree with you. I think that's the main takeaway of the politics right now. And that article that you have up there is called tariffs don't address compliance.

And, yeah, we can put tariffs on cars to keep a foreign car coming in or being built somewhere else more expensively. But we have done very little, if anything, to reduce the compliance costs so that our home. homegrown manufacturing can actually put out a car that we want to buy at an affordable price, right? That's really what you're at here. Yeah, yeah, I think that's the key point here. That's something that Trump either it hasn't addressed because he's not wanting to or because he doesn't understand it. These tariffs, all they're doing is making the less expensive alternatives that are less expensive because there are lower compliance costs in places like China, Vietnam, and so on. All he's doing with these tariffs is raising the price of everything

by eliminating the lower cost alternative. The problem is compliance. The problem is it's expensive to manufacture things in this country. That's the bottom line. The reason that all of our manufacturing or a lot of it was outsourced to China was because it just got too expensive to make things here. And to really understand this. Think about it.

It ends up being less expensive, not only to make something in a place like China, but to then ship it all the way across the ocean from China to here. And they can still sell it here for less than it costs to manufacture it here. So until those compliance costs are addressed, it's just going to make things more expensive. And when things are more expensive, people can't buy them. And when people don't buy things, it doesn't matter if you manufacture stuff here because ultimately the manufacturer is going to go out of business and there go the jobs.

All right. Talking with Eric Peters, E.P. Autos, and of course, a lot of government is involved in the transportation system right now. That's why, boy, a lot of politics is all just throughout the entire thing, just fingers of influence everywhere we go. So it's a 651 on Wheels Up Wednesday. Eric, I'm going to take a break, and I want to talk about your latest ones. And also, you have an article about how people are keeping cars longer because of this. They need to do this and what you can do to keep some of the older vehicles in better shape for the long haul.

I think it's a pretty good article. So we'll kick that all around. And the latest on the reviews, too. And if you have a question or comments, 7705633 with Eric Peters on KMED. you're here in the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED 7705633 on wheels up Wednesday Eric Peters is on the Zoom call we appreciate you being here hey Eric let's go to Keith Keithson Cave Junction Keith you wanted to ask a question about car part availability go right ahead you're on well good morning gentlemen actually I wanted to comment about the quality of the car parts my 53 year old pickup truck

is finally getting fixed after two sets aheads, one which were domestically remanufactured and junk. The originals were junk. And then three sets of lifters, two of them were assembled somewhere south of the border. And finally, one of them flattened a brand new cam that was not made in America. and we're finally getting my truck back to me after using American-made parts. And this has been 14 months of agony. Wow. And I am just happy to get it back, but wow, is right.

Yeah, actually, I've got two friends who are professional mechanics and run their own shops, and I hear stories like this all the time about the sketchiness of reporting. placement and service parts that they get. And these are professional guys, you know, who know the business and, you know, who in past times got good quality parts. But now it's very difficult because of the way the supply chain works. You really don't know unless you do extreme due diligence where the parts you buy ultimately was manufactured. You know, it could have been brought into the country in pieces and put together here. And then they can say it was made in the USA or something along those lines. And it turns out to be crap. And you end up having to buy another set of parts

and try again, as you've had to deal with. Is even having an American-made part, though, a guarantee of goodness, or is that false security, Eric? What is your experience? I think it's false security. I think ultimately now we are stuck in the position of having to figure out which companies, which suppliers are actually reliable, and then keeping abreast of it. Because, you know, a supplier that is a good one today, six months from now, it might have been

bought out by another company. and it's maybe getting its components from somewhere else. So it's like this just drudge you have to do all the time to try to find the best possible quality parts. And fingers crossed, hope that they turn out to be good quality parts. Keith, I wanted to ask you while you're here, what supplier ultimately gave you good ones, do you know? Or was there one?

I am not sure, but what Eric just said is what Robert, my mechanic, I might as well have been talking with Robert. No kidding. Yeah. I mean, he said that the original set of heads, which came from somewhere, I think, in Texas, looked like they had been dragged across a shop floor. They were in horrible shape out of the box. They were rejected.

My original ones had cracks in the valve seats. They were rebuildable, but that was $1,000 a unit, so why not go aftermarket, which went down this rabbit hole, and then the first two sets of lifters would not pump up and remain pumped. And that subsequently flattened the first ham. Yeah, and someone actually on the assembly line approved those going out, right? Because they were all bad. But right at this moment, this last go-around, Robert, my mechanic friend, went a member. American manufactured. I think that's what he said, not made manufacturers. I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

All right. All right. You could ask him. Okay. Hey, I appreciate that. Thanks so much. 770563. You know, Eric, I had an issue with with a replacement drive shafts on my Chrysler that I had put in a little bit ago. And the first set ended up going bad pretty quickly. In fact, I think the other one is actually even going bad once, but one got replaced. What my mechanic was telling me was that we may have to start just going with OEM. Do you agree with that with a lot of these parts? Well, to an extent, but that's not necessarily a guarantee either. Look at the quality control problems that have been afflicting vehicle manufacturers, even formerly blue chip manufacturers such as Toyota, which has had catastrophic problems with their new 3-4V6. Also, Cadillac, you know, I know somebody,

who is a regular contributor to my site, she and her husband went out and bought a brand new Cadillac Escalade, not the EV, the V8 version with a 6.2V8. And within two weeks of owning it, it had a catastrophic engine failure because of a manufacturing defect. I mean, this is a $100,000 brand new premium brand vehicle. So this is systemic we're talking about

throughout with various makers. It's not just one, boy, even Toyota. Wow. Let me grab another call here on Wheels Up Wednesday. Hi, good morning. This is Bill. Who's this? Hey, Bill, it's David.

David, you're on. What's up? Well, you know, it's kind of interesting. I'm generally agree with your other caller, you know, about the parts being imported from overseas and stuff that aren't very good. But let me tell you another story that maybe Eric knows about. You know, a lot of these new cars are coming out, right? And the parts are such poor quality from the factory and made of plastic. Like, for instance, you know, Chrysler's been running hot oil and hot cool it through this plastic pizza Lego brick.

It only lasts a couple years, even in the best scenarios. And so the aftermarket company has gone to China and is making all this stuff out of aluminum. And so what you do now when these cars come in is you have to take all this plastic housing stuff off the car and replace it with the aluminum and metal components from China. So I don't think it's all bad. You know, maybe Eric knows a little bit about that. But, you know, the aftermarket is having to make stuff to fix all this horrible stuff that's coming out of, you know, predominantly American manufacturing. I will concede your point on the plastic. I know on the PT Cruiser, there's a thermostat and radiator cap that's made out of plastic,

and it warps every two years. You've got to replace it every two years. You're right. You know, another example, I did the heater core on my old truck last winter, and the original part is plastic. You know, and ultimately, plastic tends to get riddle over time, particularly when it's subjected to cycling of heat and coal, right? And it would have been much better to have aluminum to use in the, there are transfer tubes that bolt to the heater core that transfer the coolant through the firewall to, you know, to the cooling system. And metal lasts, you know, aluminum and cast iron tend to last pretty much forever short of deliberate abuse, but it's more expensive. And another, it occurs to me, too, that weighs more.

And, you know, the manufacturers are so concerned with having to comply with these federal fuel economy requirements. and at the same time the safety requirements that are making vehicles heavier. So how can we reduce the weight a little bit? Well, I mean, it sounds crazy, but even if they can shed a few ounces by getting rid of some metal component and using plastic in its place, they'll do it because it helps them to make an incremental reduction in weight, which helps them with the compliance thing. Yeah, that could be a part of what they're trying to do for right now. Hey, appreciate the call, mechanic, David Mechanic, and always good talking with you.

Hey, Eric, now some things that you can do to maybe keep those higher mileage vehicles going yet, got a great article up on EP autos about that today. Could you touch on that briefly? Yeah, sure. It particularly has to do with catalytic converters. If you own a vehicle that has more than about 150,000 miles are on it, and you have noticed that there is a slight but noticeable reduction in both its performance and its mileage, likelihood is that it may be due to increasing back pressure in one or more of your catalytic converter. If you cut one of those things open, what you'll see is something that looks like a honeycomb. It's a lattice structure, and the exhaust gas flows over that lattice and gets chemically converted

into less harmful compounds. Anyway, there's inevitably soot buildup in there. And over time, that soot buildup increases back pressure. And you get rid of one of those converters. I'm not saying you should do this, just wink, wink, nod, if you were to say cut one off and put a piece of tube in its place, you might notice a significant increase in both gas. mileage and performance at very little cost, especially relative to having to buy one of these new catalytic converters. If you buy an OEM one especially. Okay. Well, of course, we would never

advocate not replacing the catalytic converter. Okay, you didn't hear that from us. Okay. All right. Hey, Eric, Chevy Express, 2025 Chevy Express van. You said it's practically unchanged. Even the front end, I'm looking at it. Yeah, looks like the same one from 10 years ago. But what's your overall impression of this van, huh? Oh, from 10 years ago, it's fundamentally the same thing it was back in 96, if you can believe it. You know, it gave me an interesting point to talk about it and to write about it. They have done very little to it over the course of the past 30-something years. And that's a good thing. If you just want a vehicle the way they used to make them, if you can believe it, this is one of the very few, I think it may be the only new vehicle that you can still get that

doesn't have a touchscreen. Can you imagine that? Yeah. And it still has regular gauges, And it still comes standard with the V6, the latest iteration of GMs 3-4V6, which doesn't have a turbo. It's not hybrid-assisted. And you can get an optional V8. And these are durable, rugged engines that are known to go 250,000, 300,000 miles. You know, it's pretty basic. It comes with two seats, but it's cool because you can configure it any way that you want to. Tradesman will turn it into a vehicle for, you know, an electrician or a plumber.

We'll use it for that purpose. Some people convert it into RVs. you know, or you can just use it to cart stuff around, including people. It's available. You can get four rows of seats if you want, and you can carry up to nine people in it, which is great if you have a big family or if you want to run a little Jitney bus service. Pretty darn, cool. So you like that. And the 2025 Chevy Express that is up,

and they haven't attacked it with the compliance deal, the compliance gods, quite to the same extent, right? Because of its heaviness or largeness? Yeah, well, because it's still technically in the heavy-duty class. It's available is at 2,500 or 3,500, and there's still a less stringent regulatory bar that vehicles in that class have to meet. So it's kind of a way to get around everything that they've done to ruin new vehicles. All right, very good. And what are you reviewing for next week, you know?

Oh, they just dropped it off. While we were talking, I heard the driver come up. It's a minivan. Believe it or not, they still make a few. Really? Yeah, it's the Kia Carnival. Remember when minivans were sort of the go-to suburban vehicle and pretty much every manufacturer had a minivan. sure well they got replaced by crossovers and SUVs not because crossovers and SUVs are functionally superior in fact they're really not because of the layout you know you've got doors instead of sliding doors you've got a higher ride height which makes it more difficult to put things into it but they look not like a minivan right the real problem minivans have had is that they've got that sort of suburban stigma yeah it's the grocery getter mom thing you know that yeah you feel like your life is over oh my god i've got a minivan that's it check me into the old photo

So what's Kia going to do? The one that got dropped off from me is the Kia Carnival, and the name kind of tells you where they're going with it. They're trying to make it fun, and they've done that by doing things like putting reclining back seats as an option in the things. So you have, like, theater seating in this thing, which is really cool. So, you know, you can take it out and watch a movie in the van if you want to. And I'll have more for it up on the site. They just dropped it off today, so I haven't yet gotten anything put up on the site. I'm looking forward to hearing more about that next week.

Eric, thanks so much. Wheels up Wednesday on EP autos, eP.ottos.com, and we appreciate you take, as always, and hopefully you'll be able to survive your closeted communist brand new governor and your bloodthirsty attorney general who fantasizes about killing his enemies. So we'll see where that goes. Good luck. All right. We'll see you, Matt. Thanks, Bill. I appreciate it. Okay. Take care, Eric. This is KMED, KMED, H.D. H.E. Eagle Point, Metford, KBXG grants.