Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 11-07-25_FRIDAY_6AM

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

11-07-25_FRIDAY_6AM

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 Klauserdrilling.com. Here's Bill Meyer. Wonderful to have you here Friday, November 7th. Join the conversation at 7705-633-770 KMED. My email is built at Billmyershow.com. The podcast, Billmeyer Show.com.

We thank the folks at Klauserdrilling for sponsoring that. KMED.com. You can stream it right out of the website. gosh, you can watch the Facebook live, you can, oh yeah, radio 2, 1063, 1059 in Grant's Pass, 993, KBXG, Josephine County, Greater Josephine County, 1067 FM in South Jackson County.

We're everywhere, we're everywhere, and we're happy to have you here too. A lot going on today. We're going to be talking about what happened with Measure 114. That'll be coming up with Kevin Sterrett an hour from now, and he ended up going through the whole thing. I love the way that,

just see if I can find the, yeah, the Rogue Valley Times story on this one. Yeah, I love the way it gets portrayed the Measure 114 appeal in the Supreme Court. It says, Measure 114 case in Oregon's Supreme Court pits gun ownership tradition against public safety concerns.

Oh. So a constitutional right is a gun ownership tradition, kind of like it's a tradition like having like Turkey at Thanksgiving. You know, it's not that big of a just a little bit of a choice or it's the way that some of our families like, you know, a gun ownership tradition against public safety concerns. I'll tell you, the way the media, the mainstream media, or the cartel media, however you want to look at it, the way they portray constitutional rights are quite interesting and how the Second Amendment is the one which is always singled out, singled out for the number one worst treatment. Because could you imagine, could you imagine if they refer to the right to vote as, you know, voter ID case in Oregon's Supreme. Green Court. Pits voting tradition against public corruption or something like that. Could you imagine? And people would just go nuts if they would refer to as the voting right in that respect. But a gun ownership. In fact, we just own gun ownerships because we own guns

just because, well, they're kind of like phallic symbols of male white patriarchal power. You know, I think it's kind of the way a lot of these places have to look at this. But anyway, we'll talk about what the justices were asking because much like the Supreme Court of the United States, you can sometimes kind of see where the judge's decisions or what kind of decisions they may be making, by sometimes by just kind of going through the questions and what ended up being said and what Danny Iiello who is the well Iiello is the attorney for the good guy side

anyway we'll talk with Kevin about that an hour from now about our gun ownership tradition it's like well if you can you know still fire a firearm with a one round magazine could we reduce things to one round and you would still have the right you would still have the Second Amendment right to defend yourself? Yeah.

Okay, I'll tell you what. First thing, you want to do something like that, judges? I would dare say that the judicial, any armed guards around judges that are involved in this decision should also be forced to have one round. One round. You have everyone's like Barty Fife for that old Andy Griffith show. One round, that's all you get. Well, you have the right to defend yourself. What if there are more than one people?

I'm so sorry. Sorry, we're concerned about public safety. Yeah, I always get Ted to get a little irritated by these kind of stories. That's fine. All right. A little bit of political news this morning. I want to make sure you know that Christine Drazen, Senator Christine Drazen's going to be in town. She'll be talking 11 o'clock this morning.

She's running for governor and is putting on an event speaking in front of supporters about her gubernatorial run. Senator Drazen will be at Rogue Lumber, 1187 West McAndrews in Medford. so that'll be happening like I said 11 o'clock if you want to go in there and stop by and it's looking like things are starting to heat up there's more conversation about who may be running against Governor Kotech for next year on the Republican side lament week also is talking about Chris Dudley the former blazer Chris Dudley here and their headline Chris Dudley nearly won the 2010 governor's race he's thinking hard about 2026

and what's interesting about that is that yeah he's the guy that's gotten closer than anybody else. Of course, the celebrity certainly doesn't help, or it doesn't hurt, rather, I would dare say. But leading Oregon Republicans gathering on the first of November for the annual Reagan dinner they were talking about this in the story and all sorts of folks there. Speculation centering on Dudley, 6'11, former Trailblazer Center, ran a strong race in 2010 against Kitsaber. And he only lost by one and a half percentage points. So nobody else got closer than Chris Dudley over the last, what, two, three decades or so. Now, the people around him, I guess, are kind of split.

Some doubt that Dudley would challenge Drazen a skilled legislative leader, and she certainly is that, right? Others are swearing that he's going to enter the race. So this comes under the, we'll just have to see. Now, I spoke earlier this week with a Danielle Bethel, who is a married, and County Commissioner. She's pretty young, though. It sounded pretty good when I talked to her the other day. I liked a lot of what she said.

We'll be talking with Senator Drazen at some point, too. They didn't make a request. We weren't able to make it work this week. But, yeah, she'll be speaking this morning at, once again, Rogue Lumber. 11 o'clock. But could be a three-way race. Maybe Chris Dudley in there, too.

Boy, that would make the debates really interesting, right? because Senator Drazen is, you know, a powerhouse politically, but physically rather diminutive. It will just put it that way. So we have 6'11 next to Senator Grayson. Yeah, I think that I would put, just give her a stepstool or something like that, or maybe dig a pit and then have Dudley stand in the pit just to even things out on the microphone and the camera angle, you know. But still, that would be really something, huh? 770-633-770 KMED.

What else do we have here going on? Department of Justice has been firing judges with immigrant defense backgrounds. Oh, no. How could this be? This is from OPB. Kyra Lillian, who was hired in 2023, was presiding at a courtroom in Concord, California, in July, when she paused the hearing of an immigrant seeking asylum to read an email. I told them that we're not going to have a hearing because I had just been fired, Lillian said, present in the court, a court interpreter, and an attorney for Department of Homeland Security. They asked me if I was joking, but no.

Anampid, who was hired as an immigration judge in 2023 after a career in immigrant defense was sitting on the bench and then fired two-year anniversary. So the Trump administration firing judges that are, well, you know, I can understand this. there is a new sheriff in town and if you had the opportunity to have judges would you want judges who are looking for every potential loophole to keep every illegal alien here as they were when they were immigrant defense attorneys

or would you want to have somebody that's more in line with the administration? But yes, OBB is ringing their hands over that one here too. meanwhile Oregon Live reporting an Oregon man was on the path to citizenship and now he's in ICE detention fighting to stay an Oregon man hopefully he's not like the Maryland man that we were talking about a few months ago

yeah actually this is an issue Hillsboro man facing deportation by ice despite getting now see this is where things go sideways he recently got a work permit and visa eligibility Victor Cruz Gamez, who owns a local home remodeling business. Of course he does. He had just finished another long day.

October 14th, ICE pulls him over, arrests him in downtown Hillsborough, according to family members. ICE apparently looking for another Victor Cruz with a history of drunk driving, according to Cruz Gammez's daughter. Cruz Gammes has no Oregon criminal history except a traffic ticket dismissed, but because Cruz Gammes is unlawfully crucial. crossed the border as a teenager. He was arrested and has remained in ICE custody ever since then. Now, remember, they changed the rules that anybody who is brought in for any kind of illegal immigration crime is that. You basically have to sit. You have to stay and be detained by the court. Remember, they did that. They changed the rules over in the immigration court.

And so they're getting all, you know, upset about this. And I actually, I think they have a point. They have a point here because as far as I'm concerned, if he has the work permit, you would think that you would just say, hey, I have a work permit. It's almost like two parts of the Trump administration's immigration system are at cross purposes and fighting one another. We don't have a final solution for this one yet, but yeah, we have Congressman Bonamichi. It was working hard to get that sorted out. But of course, those are the stories that get reported, you know, the illegal immigrants that murder and run over people and, you know, drunk driving and all the rest of them that, well, that's just a cost of diversity, I guess.

22 minutes after 6-770-5633, you're on the Bill Meyers show. Attention, realtors. When selling a home with a key broadcasting family, because local and family matters. Hi, I'm Matt Stone, owner of Stone Heating and Air, and I'm on 106.3, KMED. 624. Email of the day, sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson, Central Point Family Dentistry, central point family dentistry.com while you wait crowns a possibility they had the in-house lab love it i've used that a couple of times it's like you get your tooth uh all prepped there and then you wait maybe a half hour boom there it is man fits perfectly love it it's your central point family dentistry dot com appointment today all right i'm going to give it an email of the day to paul princett

paul princin writes me says bill another election and the people have spoken Or have they? Especially midterm elections are determined by relatively small numbers of voters as percentage of the population. I truly believe that a citizen should be informed and participate in the political process. Should voting be made mandatory? Not sure. But it does show an indifference to the privilege and right of being a citizen if one does not. You know, Paul, we were talking about that yesterday, especially 28% turnout on a special election, which was by design.

News Watched, 12 people, by the way, came in and asked me a few questions about that. And boy, they committed journalism, too. That was kind of nice. I appreciate that. Daryl, good guy there. But anyway, continuing with Paul's conversation here, in Switzerland, it is the civic duty of every male to serve in the military for a short period to be trained to defend the country. This initial service and annual reserve training is rewarded with a reduced tax rate. I believe that in an analogous way, it would be beneficial for arriving at the true will of the people result of elections to make voting semi-mandatory by instituting a reduction in the rate for those who vote.

You're either a citizen and act like one or you are not. Of course, there is much to be worked out for such a scheme like, what about those who are not required to pay tax? Should they get a bonus? Those filing jointly and one does and the other does not. those ineligible to vote like resident aliens like myself. Should there be a box for intentionally left blank for those who have no clue? I sure don't have all the answers, but I want to put the concept on the table as a possible way to arrive at a much higher fidelity of the actual will of the people than the current system allows

for. The current system is very susceptible to manipulations by PACs, NGOs, and the like. Paul. Very good point, Paul. We're going to be talking about that. Citizen Mike Krebs coming on this morning, he wants to flesh out a plan that he has for encouraging actually more voter participation, whether it's a mandatory or otherwise. He wanted to talk about it. He briefly mentioned it yesterday.

He said, come on in. We'll spitball it around. Okay, we'll do that. All right. Let me go to the phones here before news break here. Crazy Gene or not so crazy, Gene. I don't know which one you're going to be. It depends on what you're talking about.

How are you? Well, it does. It depends all on what I'm talking about. But today I'm talking about something I heard on YouTube after you punching the word silver, and it does all the searches. I come up with this little show there that said, debt is our money is debt. So we cannot pay off the debt or there would be no more money for anything.

You are absolutely right about that. That is the system. You, in essence, could never completely pay off the debt. in a credit money system, which is what the United States has. Everything is borrowed into existence. It sounds really weird, doesn't it? Borrowed into existence. It's just weird and it twisted.

We are debtors' slaves, and we cannot stop being so. Well, everything works fine with a debt-based money until it doesn't. So we'll just have to see, huh? Yeah, well, I'd say we maybe are at that time when it doesn't. We'll see about that. The system can keep going, and the markets can be much more insane for a much longer time than one can imagine, okay? And so, and maybe, and maybe it's just like, well, was it the late Dick Cheney, Vice President Cheney, wasn't he the one that came up and said, you know, we're creating our own reality here, but it came to the United States foreign policy, you know? Yeah, we have, that's correct. We are creating our own reality.

Yes, we borrow something into existence out of thin air, and then it's worth something. Yay! Okay, because we say it is. Yeah, well, that's it. You've got to be a positive in your thought about what is worth something. But at least, you know, the island natives, when they went out and used puka shells for money, and there are societies that have done things like at pukes shells. At least they had to go out and work for the puka shells.

I don't know about the borrowing into existence of credit money, but thanks for the call there. Not so crazy, Gene, today, all right. Dave, you ended up having a story. You actually got a little bit of relief from the state of California. I'm astounded, but go ahead and let me know. What happened? Yeah, I got a ticket for not wearing a seatbelt. And when I got the letter in the mail saying it was going to be $149.

but I could file for a hardship if it was a hardship on me. And if I was on SNAP benefit... Okay, so what do they cut you down to? What did they cut down your ticket? They cut me down to 44 bucks. 44 bucks. I could pay online. Okay.

Well, that's... With a fee. Well, I guess, you know, it's so nice to have, you know, a friendly bully with the boot on your neck, and they'll let up a little bit of pressure, let the blood flow back to your head again. There's a bunch of people here that have tried. to avoid that, and instead, you know, they had on there I could plead no contendary or I could plead guilty while I was guilty, so I pled guilty. And probably they'd never seen anybody like me

even though I was online. Well, it comes right down to it though, is that you are yet, you're just going to be trained. You're going to have to get with the safety cult. Say, repeat after me, Dave, safety. Yeah, safety. Safety. And so you need to give up your money because you didn't buy into the safety cult. I just gave them their debt back. Okay.

There you go. Thanks, Dave. I'm glad it worked out there for you, okay? And buckle up next time. By the way, there are people who are complaining about the speed camps downtown again here. And, oh, I almost forgot. about this. I was just going to mention this. What did I do with it? Where? I even have it right here. Dr. Glenn Gamerer reached out to me and yeah, here it is.

Yeah, I did save this. I didn't get this in the right place. People were asking the other day, Bill, whatever happened to the red light camera lawsuit in the city of Medford? And I said, I don't know. We're going to have to talk to Dr. Glenn Gamer about it, reach out to him. Well, his ears were burning and he emailed me. He said, Bill, sorry it's been so long for an update. Anyway, As far as the lawsuit against the city of Medford, we are in the discovery phase and waiting on the city's response. Once we get the discovery materials, we can then file our motion to certify the class action. This is for all the people who got hosed out of hundreds of thousands of not, you know, a million or two dollars of unlawful fines in Glenn and, frankly, my opinion here, too. Remember the, especially the red light camera that used to be over by, what is that, its discount tire now used to be the,

the hometown buffet, you know, out there in that area in South Medford by the Fred Meyer, that area, that light was mistimed, okay, and seemed to be designed to harvest money. Harvest money for a way southern Oregon tax mules, which I guess is the only reason we exist here. But anyway, back to Dr. Gamer. He said, once we get this, after it's filed, there'll be a hearing on the motion, possibly by the end of this year. I'll let everyone know when the next hearing date is. A fun little tidbit bill, Dr. Gamerer says the average number of red light citations from 2017 to 2022 was $1,673 per year at Stewart and Barnett.

This is the intersection we're talking about, right? After my May 18th, 2022 municipal court hearing, but before the dismissal of my citation in circuit court, the city secretly increased the timing of the yellow light from 3.5 to 4.8 seconds. We had to wait until the 2025 biennial report to the legislature from the Medford Police Department to learn that if that increased timing had any effect on the generation of revenue. As a result of increasing the yellow light timing by just 1.3 seconds, Dr. Gamer says the average number of red light violations over at Stewart and Barnett plummeted by $561 tickets or $148,000. That's $265 a violation, right?

Dr. Gamerer says there is little doubt that once the lights are timed correctly, 6.3 seconds, the number of citations will drop significantly. For a comparison, the average number of red light tickets at Biddle and McAndrews was 493 during the same period. This is why cities love those photo enforcement cameras mounted on right-hand turns. They generate up to five times the number of citations, then straight through maneuvers. Interesting story. It's Dr. Glenn DeMere, and thank you very much, Doctor,

and he's going to keep us in the room as they get more information. I'm just wondering if the city of Medford will be, end up being forced to pay back and refund these fines. It's kind of like President Trump with the tariffs, right? Well, you have to pay back the tariffs, or maybe will we get discounts on our utility fees or something like that? Well, what if you don't live in Medford? Too bad. Sali, Charlie. Just kidding.

But we'll see. It's still an open question. 34 at KMED. Fontana Roofing keeps rolling. Bingblindness.org. News Talk 1063, KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. Looking forward to a conversation here with Sam Borgie.

He's a finance analyst and researcher at Investors Observers. Pardon me, no S. Investors Observer. That's what I get. All right. 13 years of experience in financial markets, economics, monetary policy, spans the private, non-profit, public sector. You've been everywhere and everywhere. Sam, great to have you back on.

Welcome to the show. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. And by the way, tell us a little bit more about Investors Observer. Yeah, so InVes Observer, we're a financial news publication. You know, we cover everything about the financial markets, about interest rates, about housing. And we also do a lot of reports that look at various aspects of affordability, consumer prices, and how it's affecting Americans' bottom line.

Okay. Speaking of interest rates and all the rest of it, though, everyone's all primed for another interest rate cut, and the, well, the Federal Reserve kind of was noncommittal. At least that was kind of it. Do you think that's real, or is that more or less the typical Federal Reserve is managing the expectations? In other words, talking tough, well, we're just going to turn the printing press on at some point. What do you think? Yeah, that's actually what's happening. I think they don't really have a choice at this point. They have to kind of hedge their bets a little bit, because right now we have a bit of a data blackout. They can't really get, you know, update information on the labor market, especially given the government shutdown. So that's

why they're kind of hedging their bets. But the expectations are still that they're going to be cutting rates in December and then again early next year. For what extent, we'll have to wait and see. But we're clearly at a point now where they're going to be moving in that direction because of the labor market. So still a controversial move because they're cutting interest rates while inflation remains elevated, and that's, you know, economics 101 tells you that's not what you're supposed to do. But there's a lot of pressure on those people to try to, you know, stave off some kind of recession, given the fact that labor market has been rapidly weakening over the past year. Especially with what AI layoffs, numbering in the tens of thousands right now, too.

I guess that, boy, that's really something, you know, the government is all in on AI. Hey, this is a big national security thing. We've got to do big on AI. Meanwhile, the companies that are using it end up reducing headcount in order to do this. And yeah, that's what's happening, Bill. I mean, it's a very strange economy because on one hand, you have GDP is growing. On the other hand, the labor market is weakening. And a lot of economists have been scratching their heads about this. But it looks like a lot of companies are actually implementing AI,

and they're actually having a productivity boost. So they're making more money, and that's kind of feeding into economic growth. but it's also requiring less workers, especially those entry-level people coming out of school, those are the most heavily impacted. So, yeah, it's a bit of a scary time for that. Yeah, should we be taking our severance checks if we had it being laid off because of AI and then just investing it in VINVIDIA and seeing what happens? You know, if you did that, you know, three, four years ago, my God, you would be doing very, very well.

That's not a bad idea, given that, you know, Nvidia is like the infrastructure layer of the AI. boom. Everybody needs what they produce. So if this AI thing is as big as everybody is saying it is, then NVIDIA is still a really good bet, even though that it just recently had a $5 trillion market cap, which is absolutely absurd in terms of size of a company. Sure. You know, Sam, I was just hearing this morning that NVIDIA popped 12% yesterday, and yet there's a part of me, I don't want to say this is an exact analog, but it's feeling an awful a lot like 1999 in that and that and I know is is AI just a new version of the dot com in which you know you have McDonald's that are saying oh we got to have we got to have some AI thing

every company comes out with something about about AI what do you think yeah I mean look by almost every conceivable metric of valuation we are extremely overvalued the stock market rivaling levels seen during the dot com boom there are certain metrics where we're much bigger than the dot-com boom. So there's obviously a lot of speculation. I do think we are probably in bubble territory. A lot of these AI stocks are what I call price to perfection. Investors are just drinking the Kool-Aid that AI is going to revolutionize the world

the next few years, and the stocks are priced that way. You know what happens when we determine that, you know, maybe AI built up is going to take a little bit longer. Right now, the scale of infrastructure spending on AI does not justify the actual revenue being generated. So are we going to grow into it? Everyone says yes, but we haven't done so yet. So right now, we're kind of walking the fine line in a bubble and, you know, exuberance. I remember back at the time when they first started building out fiber optic internet networks, and, you know, that was considered like the big thing, you know, build it and they will come.

And then everybody that was in early on that kind of thing ended up just losing their shirt on it. And those fiber optic networks, I recall getting up getting settled. sold off together later for pennies on the dollar. But I don't know. AI, though, actually does appear to perform some useful things. But what I'm wondering, though, is if what's driving the market is almost like a circular investment kind of thing in which, well, as an example, well, we need data centers. And so the power companies get investment money.

And then the data centers. And then we have the chip makers that end up getting investment. but it's sort of circular, I don't know, like a positive feedback loop, feeding itself, so to speak, rather than generating income yet at this point. How do you see it? That's exactly what's happening right now. You take a look at the hundreds of billions of dollars that are being committed by these big tech companies. And then, yeah, very basically a circular economy, those with the electricity and utility providers

and the chip makers because all the data, all of the data center providers need the chip makers. And the data center providers need the new electricity. So the circular economy, hopefully there's going to be a lot more growth because of it. Right now we're seeing some efficiency gains, but in terms of overall, you know, economic impact right now, they're building out a lot more than there's actual need for. So will that change? That's the narrative that it will change that we're growing into it. So we'll see.

Sam Barsie with me, and once again, he's with Investors Observer.com. investors observer.com and you've been doing some interesting research stories on what people have been searching for on the internet. Those are always kind of fun where you're kind of gauging what people are thinking about and where they're looking to put their money or what they're thinking about in their culture. And I'm kind of curious what the latest big search analysis are showing when it comes to the investment world and other things going on with money. Sure. So, you know, we've been talking about Individia and Open AI. and AI. Those searches have been

growing over the past year, but they've been outpaced by searches for gold. Americans are rapidly searching for gold prices. They're looking up gold prices. Because obviously gold has absolutely exploded over the past year. We recently equipped 4,000 troy ounce.

I don't know if it's a good thing that people are searching up gold because it usually reflects economic anxiety because a lot of people buy gold during that period of economic anxiety. Yeah, it's kind of a lot. It's kind of that lack of trust. Well, the debasement trade, I think, is also how it gets referred to, right?

Correct. Being called the debasement trade because trust in the dollar has been sinking. The U.S. dollar is actually in the worst performing year in decades. You know, when you measure the U.S. dollar index, the DXY. But it's actually been rallying a bit the last few months, though. And I have a feeling that President Trump doesn't like that because that makes it tougher to get the exports, right? Not a happen. Correct.

So, yeah. The rally, it depends on how it, if it has legs or not, you know, we see a lot of rally on the way down, but the DXY is back above around 100 now, so we'll see if it's going to be like a new wave higher, or are we just going to continue the path that we've been on since January, which, you know, the DXY was around 110 at that point, where now we're around 99.5, so. Are there any geographical differences to, you know, where the gold bugs are or where the AI people are located?

I always find that interesting, too, when you break down the searches. Yeah, so in 24 states especially, we have gold searches that have more than doubled, places like North Carolina, Wyoming, Wisconsin, Washington, and West Virginia. Things like Open AI, for example, are really searching nationwide, but especially in South Carolina and Montana. And interestingly, for NVIDIA, North Dakota is leading that. So it's a bit all over the place, but I think Americans in general are really spiking on the gold. I think there's like a couple dozen states at least where searches for gold price have like literally doubled or more than doubled over the past year.

That includes everything from Florida, Minnesota, South Carolina, Massachusetts, New York, even Hawaii. So lots of, you know, gold is on a lot of people's mind these days. Well, it went parabolic a few, was it a couple of weeks ago? It's when that happened a couple of weeks. You know, it kind of popped up to like 43 something. and that didn't feel real. That felt like just a speculative dive-in. And so it had a pullback.

It pulled back, but it's really kind of stuck at 4,000. It wasn't like it was going to go down 20% or something like Bitcoin did at one point. Yeah, gold is much more stable in that respect. I mean, it has tens of trillions in market caps, So the movements are a bit more kind of, you know, they're not as crazy as something like Bitcoin. But, yeah, we peaked near 4,400 on gold, and I think that the path is still higher. A lot of these big banks are expecting price to continue higher. The crazy thing is that central banks have been really leading the buying the last few years.

Global central banks from, you know, from China to Russia, have been really adding to their gold holdings. And that leads to a lot of, you know, the debasement trade people asking, well, are they really getting out of the U.S. dollar? Is their trust in the U.S. dollar? What do they know that we don't know? they spending so much on gold? Those questions are still left unanswered, but the central banks have been leading the buying spree over the last few years. Sam, I want to ask you about what's going on as far as trade if you have a beat on this one. There was the conversation, the oral arguments in the Supreme Court about President Trump's tariff policies, and is there a wait-and-see kind of look from

the investment world and the various international trading organizations, or do they believe that that it's a fade of complete, that things are going to lighten up on tariffing? Is there any kind of general bead that you can share with us? Do you know? Yeah, I think if you take a look at the stock market and how it's performed really since the April Liberation Day chaos, I think investors are more or less expecting that this thing will get resolved. You know, President Trump is using tariffs as a, or the excessive tariffs as a bargaining chip for negotiation. we recently saw some positive news coming out of China in that respect. So I think investors, we take a look at prices right now,

I think investors are realizing that, you know what, we are in a new era where tariffs are going to be the norm, but they're not going to be anywhere near as severe as some of the ones that were threatened. On the trading side, you talk about, like, short-term algos and stuff, those things have been going haywire every time Trump tweets something. So we had a meltdown in the crypto sector about a month ago, precisely because Trump tweeted something about the trade deal with China, and that caused a cascade of liquidations as a lot of these leverage traders got wiped out. So you will see some

of that. You will see those short-term news items really influence how markets perform in the short-term. But I think if you look at it more broadly, I think people realize that it's just a negotiating chip, and I think that we're going to be seeing more trade deals coming down the pipeline. Boy, isn't that pretty nutty? You know, when you get to the situation where the president, it's reported the president has indigestion today. Sell or buy, right? Kind of thing going on. It's absolutely insane.

And I don't know if it's really the appropriate thing for the commander-in-chief to be doing. You have to be a source of stability, not a source of, you know, chaos, especially on social media. But a lot of these trading algorithms, that's how they trade based on these sorts of things. So these sorts of sentiment changes and indicators. So we have to sit down. We have to really buckle in and just kind of look long-term with our investment so that we don't get bogged down on the short-term movements. Very interesting.

Sam, great job on this one. Great article on the searches and what's going on in the investment world right now. You can find out more about this. Investorsobserver.com. Investorsobserver.com. On K&D.com, I will put up all your information there. And is there anything new that is not being talked about that maybe we should be and you maybe we'll be writing on here in the next few days kind of like the

unspoken financial story out there right now yeah right now there's a lot of things on the labor market things are seem to be a lot worse than than it appears uh we had that massive massive revision to the bureau of labor statistics report earlier this year that basically said oh yeah we over you know we the government over reported the number of jobs being created by like over a million i think that's still rippling through the economy and i don't think that we've we've truly recovered from that. So, yeah, keep track of that. We are kind of analyzing the labor market and what that means, because things aren't looking very good right now. Has it been a problem trying to gauge where things have been because people would say,

well, you know, BLS is shut down, government is shut down, or that part of it is shut down for right now. Does that really make a difference of being able to figure out where it's going labor-wise? Yeah, so usually the, you know, the monthly non-farm payrolls report, which, by the way, now has proven to be very unreliable given the fact that they've had all these massive provisions. But there are other indicators like the ADP payroll report. We'll have Challenger in gray. They report job cuts. And I think in October, we had over 100,000 net job cuts, primarily in tech and in warehousing. So that's all you need to know about where the economy is heading there. We also have some rumblings in the freight sector. You know,

freight's not doing very well. The freight sector's actually in a recession. And it's not so much just about freight, but what that means about manufacturing and different products that are being produced. So overall, you can take these signs that things are kind of slowing, even though headline GDP still shows growth. So we're trying to navigate why there's these massive divergences, and AI is one of them. A.I. is one of the reasons why we're seeing headline GDP growth, but declines in the labor market. So we're trying to get a handle on that. As a investor guy, do you think it's right that we actually include government spending as part of gross domestic product because it strikes me that that is subject to manipulation. This is money that can either

be created or is forcibly extracted from one person and spent for another. What do you think about that? Exactly. I'm not a big fan at all of government spending data. I mean, when they tax you, they're not really creating economic growth or just redistributing money from one pot to the other. That's not really creating. That's just redistributing and that's just taking from one and putting the other. I think it's all phony. But you know, the reality is in America, and elsewhere in the world, you know, the government spending still accounts for a lion's share of the economic activity. If you take a look at employment, what it's spending on, you know, defense, et cetera. So it's included in there. I don't really think it's really a gauge of the real economy.

I mean, take a look at what happens during recessions. You know, Washington, D.C. is just fine during recessions, right? Everybody's employed. There's no issues. So, yeah, the government sector's a bit insulated, and I don't think that it actually reflects the broader economy for sure. All right, fair enough. Sam Borgia. wants to hear from you. 541-770-5633.

That's 770 KMED. Oh, we hit listener, Paul, was on. We must have lost him somehow. Paul, get back. He wanted to talk about this making voting mandatory or this conversation, finding some way to encourage some kind of greater voter participation.

Well, the way I was kind of looking at this, and I'll talk about this with Citizen Mike Kreb, I think that's going to be his nickname from time to time when he comes in here. Mike's good guy, if you know, Mike. He'll come in here this morning. We'll talk about these efforts to incentivize voting more because they've made it about as easy as it gets. They hardly really check your ID, you know, whatever it is. And gosh, if you do vote illegally, we found out that the state of Oregon won't investigate that

or if they do investigate it. They're not going to do any charges because, gosh, it might look like racism. Like I said, this state's just not. It really is. You can't help it. But who knows? Who knows where this goes? But any, we'll be talking more about that. Also, Kevin Starr will be joining me here in about 10 minutes,

and we're going to be digging into what happened in the Oregon Supreme Court on Measure 114. Very, very important story, okay? Now then, the conversation is still going on about what is next now that the voters, or at least the voting envelopes have said that Measure 15-238 has passed or is on. on its way to passing, and they're going to raise the transient lodging tax from 11% to 13%. And then we're going to use this money then to kickstart the ball stadium and the conference center, the hotel, the hotel, the retail spaces, you know, all that kind of stuff and make that a reality. Now, I don't like, and I made sure to make that clear yesterday, that this may work and may not, okay?

I hope it does because there's a lot of money on the line, and I'm certainly hoping this is the case. But something else I was thinking about last night as I was watching that news story, like I said, News Watch 12 interviewed me about my take on it. And then they had a counselor Nick Carr going back and forth about, oh, yeah, well, we'll get more transparent plans about this, you know, now that the money's passed and everything.

You know, something that just struck me about this is that they're going to raise the, they're going to raise the transient lodging. tax a couple of percent from 11 to 13 percent. But a good portion, I think it may be 40, could be up to 50 percent, about 40 percent of that ends up going to travel Medford. And the thought that struck me last night is, why should travel Medford's budget be going up at all right now based on the possibility of having this whole. big creek side quarter development.

It's not like they have any more work to do, do they? Why should travel Medford get any money? If this is really about making sure that this big development happens, should not travel Medford forego any increases in its budget and make sure that, let's say, that extra $4,000, $600,000 a year that would come out of this that would possibly go to Travel Medford, instead goes into a contingency fund to protect the taxpayers. Because there's nothing to advertise right now.

There's nothing to promote then for Travel Medford involving Creekside because it's going to be a number of years before that comes in. But Travel Medford gets its budget boosted right now. Do you have an opinion about that? To me, maybe you boost Travel Medford's budget once it's actually in existence. and there are more attractions to promote and perhaps advertise for. But as it is right now, isn't this kind of a giveaway for something which hasn't occurred? Money going into the Travel Medford Group.

That doesn't make any sense to me. If this is about trying to kickstart this conference center and the ball stadium, all of that tax should be going to the conference center and the ball stadium purposes. Should it not? Just thought I'd raise it. If the chamber disliked me before, they probably hate me now. But let's say, let's go to the phones. Hi, good morning.

This is Bill. Who's this? Welcome. Good morning. This is Kathy. Hi, Kathy. What's on your mind, huh? Well, that, what's it called corners, whatever it is.

I was having a really good day the other day, and I decided, hey, let's get irritated. So I called City Hall and found out the boundaries of it, and it's Hawthorne, Maine, Riverside and Jackson. And so I just decided to drive it. This is ridiculous. I mean, so as you drive along, Hawthorne, there's all those big old-growth trees. We need to get the environmentalist on this that are going to come out. And then there's like five houses, Mary's old studio, forage coffee.

Then you turn down Maine, and it's Chip-Bright Studio. and then you get to that historic gray building on the corner that has apartments in it, how are they going to tear down a historic building? Well, is that part of the – is that part of the tear down, though? And by the way, that building used to house KMED back in the day like many decades ago, many decades ago. It was located down there. That's awesome. Yeah.

But then they take out Main Antique Mall, Rackham. And that's just – I don't know what the interior is. And then I tried to get through yesterday on conspiracy theory, but I had my phone on speaker, and when I finally got through, I hit the wrong button. Oh, well, we missed you. So now, all of these places that you have discussed, our businesses, but I guess the point is it's not particularly high dollar business, right? But it's, but they pay property taxes, and who cares about high, I mean, really, is it, are we just becoming Southern California? I mean, I don't get why they don't like open spaces and why they hate trees.

They say they love trees, but I guess only in the forest. Well, because when they're in the forest, you have to understand. When they're in the forest, they are available for burning, because we wouldn't want anything useful to be done with them. You know how that goes. It's Oregon, after all. And then when I looked at where the stadium's going to be, they're going to have to put a stupid net up because Earth,

unless they're planning on having really cruddy teams, because a good hitter will knock out the windshield on a car on the freeway. You know, I hadn't considered that. Maybe they'll have to put a big net on the freeway. They'll probably put it on the freeway instead. Oh, well, of course. And what was the other thing? Anyway, it's just, there's so much open space.

Why? Why? Oh, and then so my conspiracy, why I was calling. So do you think that's why they didn't fix? Because I know this has been in the works for probably a decade, these little meetings. Is that why they don't police Hawthorne Park? So it is, people are saying, get the bummed out. And is that why they didn't rebuild Jackson Pool?

You know, that's a really interesting question, because that was something that I was irritated with all along, because I was very much against the Aquatic Center, not because I didn't want Medford to have nice things, okay? Right. It wasn't that. But it's just that what people were crying out for in many cases were good, clean, community pools. Yes, a place to take their children. Yeah, in their neighborhood. And so they've decided that we're not going to do this.

We're going to close all the other ones. We let the, you know, the Hawthorne Park pool go. We let go of the Jackson Park or the Jackson Pool and all that kind of stuff. That is a great question. I can't answer it, but it's a great theory. isn't it? That's the, yeah, well. You let it go to hell.

You let it get, you let Antifa take it over during the fire times. You let the bums take over, Hawthorne, for the rest of it. Because, well, we want people to be so irritated with it that you are thrilled to have the urban development a half-billion-dollar people come in, right? Yay, a five-story parking garage. Yay! Consolidated. Great point.

Great point. Thanks for making it. That's a great call, okay? Thanks. I hadn't even considered that. what she brought up. That was a good call there. Let me grab another one here before news. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Gregory, take it away. What's up? The ball field. And is that going to be near the Bear Creek? And are they going to pave over the Bear Creek or put some over the River Creek? Like a tunnel?

I think there's going to be a bridge over Bear Creek, a bridge as part of that. I'd have to go back and look at the map, Gregory. But now we're going to get a better idea. I think we'll probably get some more. specifics on this coming up. I can't say right now. Okay. Well, it's interesting. All right. All right. All right. Now, maybe we'll have to have an environmental impact statement, though, if the baseballs then go into the water with that, you know, how many fish might be knocked out, right? There's probably have to be some. That's what I was thinking is like they say in the Bay Area, the kids get in their kayaks and wait for a ball to come out and just freak. Yeah, we'll see what happens. Thanks for the call, Gregory, and we will have the latest Fox News coming up here in just a moment.

Kevin Starrid with an update on what the judges were talking about yesterday in the Oregon Supreme Court. When it comes to Measure 114 and your gun rights are, as the Rogue Valley Times had mentioned in the story, the gun-owning tradition, not a right, but, well, we'll kick that all around. Make-foam clean up a breeze. Okay, a hurricane with echo blowers from Zolznan equipment. The Echo PV-2520 handheld makes leafwork light and easy. Prefer battery? The Echo DPB-25.