Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 11-12-25_WEDNESDAY_6AM

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

11-12-25_WEDNESDAY_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 Klausurrilling.com. My email is Bill at Billmyershow.com, and we got a lot going on this morning. It's going to be an interesting talk. And the first talk we're going to be having this morning is with Eric Peters, automotive journalist at E.P.O.O.com. Just a great guy.

And one of the things we're going to be digging into is how, just incredibly overpaid your typical automobile executive is, especially it seems like the more money that you're losing, the more of a, I guess the more of your pay is. You know, $20 million, well, stockholders and shareholders are being hosed and they're losing money. It's just, it's really amazing. He'll bring some of those stories and, of course, the latest reviews too.

Now, we're also going to talk with John Bacon. John Bacon is, I've been reading a book of his off and on over the last few weeks, and it's the Gales of November. This is the week, the 50th anniversary, of the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. I was a teenager in Ohio when that wreck happened, 1975, and Gordon Lightfoot's song came out the year after that, and I remember singing along to it, CKLW, big 50,000-W, clear channel out of Canada at that point.

And I swear so many of us, you know, our knowledge about the Great Lakes and what has gone on there, so much of it seemed to have come from the wreck of the Evan Fitzgerald. But it's a fascinating story. There's so much more behind the scenes that has occurred. The families of the 29 men who went down on that ship became fast friends. and it just continues to live on. The legend that tends to grow too. And the story of the men behind it, that is discussed in this book.

Also, the kind of perils that were faced that night, I don't know why it is that that ship has just gone through or stuck in our collective imagination. But it is still just as huge today as it was back when, when I was a kid. I don't know if a lot of it was because of the song, if the song is what ended up doing it. And it was a very unlikely pop hit. You know, if you know the song,

record of the Evan Fitzgerald, I don't know how you could have avoided it in most of your lives. It is, it doesn't have a hook. It doesn't have a refrain. It's the same four chords, and it strums on for five minutes and 58 seconds. and nobody, and I mean nobody, ever thought it was going to be a hit.

And not only did they talk about the ship's men, does John Bacon talk about it, but he also even talks about the studio session when Gordon Lightfoot ended up recording this. And he had been writing that song and trying to prep it for a number of months prior to it. He had read the story in all the wires at that time, the newspapers, and it really struck him. and he had spent a lot of time on the Great Lakes. He was Canadian, of course, but was very familiar with what was going on. And he wanted to honor these people, and he was really concerned that people didn't think that he was just shilling the Edmund Fitzgerald tragedy for profit. And he wanted to tell the story.

And I think maybe that's why the song became so big, in spite of the fact that it has nothing. to do with what a typical pop song is. I'll give you an example of the one that was more of a typical song. They had a ranking of the songs of 1976. The number one song was Tonight's the Night with Rod Stewart, you know, and Britt Eklund cooing along if anybody remembers that song. That was the number one ranked song. The number two was the record the Edmund Fitzgerald.

And even then, nobody thought the record company didn't think anything was ever going to come of this, Gordon Lightfoot didn't really think there was going to be anything about it, but the band that he had ended up knowing, yeah, we have something special. We're telling the story. We're telling the story of honest people doing an honest day's work. And I think maybe that's part of why it was so amazingly a magnetic song and became so big. And the story and the legend of the Edmund Fitzgerald ended up becoming so popular. But we know now more, about how the fits actually went down. And we're going to talk a bit about that

and also some of the exploration, which has happened after that, and why the Evan Fitzgerald probably wouldn't happen today. The technology that we have today is just so superior. I guess one thing that, you know, back in 1975, when you were out of the Great Lakes, you may have got a weather report or two, maybe, before you ended up by taking out your freighter onto Lake Superior or Lake Huron and, you know, all the other ones.

It's, you know, just one or two. And there was no GPS, nothing like that. You had charts. Some of the charts were kind of old. And there was also back then kind of, well, we don't care how bad the storm is. We're going to power through. And that may have had a lot to do with why the Fitz is no longer with us. And 29 men died.

And all these families ended up, you know, suffering from that. But we'll talk with John about it. I thought it was a great book. It's a beautiful book. And I would have to say of all the things I've ever read about the Edmund Fitzgerald, this is definitive. And it talks about the song, too, as sort of the Cota in the end. All right.

18 minutes after six, we'll talk about that and a bunch more. And, of course, happy to take your calls and anything else going on in your news. We'll go over some of the various headlines that are happening. and, yeah, I guess pretty soon we're going to be going out and getting signed up to fight Governor Kotex tax hike. We'll talk about that more coming up. This is the bill. 6-3 KMED.

Hi, I'm Steve Potter, Body Shop Manager of Lithu, Body, and Paint, and I'm on 106.7, KMED. 20 minutes after 6 on Wheels Up Wednesday. Eric Peters will join me via Zoom here in just a minute. Hey, Cliff, you were wondering about signing up to repeal Governor Kotex taxi. increases, you know, the big ODOT bailout and more, and you were wondering what exactly? Yeah, this is Cliff. I was wondering if there's going to be some local petitioners running around with the petitions to sign in lieu of signing up online on their website. Yes, and you can't do anything right now because what we are waiting for at this moment,

I just want to make sure people understand the process. Monday is when the paperwork was submitted to the Secretary of State's office, and so it has to go through the process first before there is a petition in that there is a approved title. All these other things have to happen next, and we're figuring it's probably going to be by the end of this week that this ends up being approved. But yeah, I know that the local Republican parties, both in Jackson and Josephine County, are going to be all over this. and as soon as this is approved, we will ring the bell very loudly, okay? Okay, so if the Secretary of State doesn't like something in the initiative petition, it could be stalled out further than. I suppose there's always the chance.

There is always the chance that since Governor Brown ended up, Governor Kotech, I always want to call her Brown for some reason. I consider them one of the same, I guess. But Governor Kotech dragged her. feet to do this. Didn't quite take it to the limit, but signed it last Friday. Also didn't tell anybody either, which I also found interesting. Yeah, you don't tell anybody, which, of course, lost some time. Monday, we found out. Monday, they submitted it. And yeah, I suppose that Tobias Reed could play some hinky with it. I don't know if there's any evidence that he's

planning on doing this. We'll find out if we start getting petitions signed by the end of the week, hey, then we'll know there's no hinky, okay? Well, I was watching, I watched the hearing live when she was talking when they were trying to push through the second failed bill before the legislature did a sunny die. And, you know, she's just, you know, sitting right there and saying, you know, I'm laying off X amount of employees. I mean, just, yeah. Oh, yeah, we're just going to make sure that, no, we don't fire the DE.

people, but we'll fire the snowplow drivers, that sort of thing. Right. Yeah. Yeah, that's it. It's just the typical, you know, punishing of southern and eastern Oregon. That's, you know, just what they do, because, well, I guess until we find some way to separate peacefully, that could actually stick, we're in a bad marriage. What can we say, Cliff? All right. I have a good one. It's a bad marriage, and we're supposed to love our wife-beating governor, you know, that equivalent. Well, she does have a wife, so I guess she could be a wife-beater, I suppose. The deplorable Patrick is here.

Hey, Patrick, how are you doing this morning? Welcome. Good morning. Thank you, Bill. Hey, I've spent quite a bit of time on this with documentaries about Edmund Fitzgerald. And one question or one element to this, I hope, comes into the interview this morning. What's that? Did you know that those idiots?

I think one of the major causes of that sinking was they kept saying, hey, you know, this ship will haul more than we thought. And they kept adding to what they would put on it. And I think the most recent addition was 14,000 tons. And that ship then floated lower in the water, allowing it to scrape the bottom of a shoal that was not on the charts. And that's where the trouble started. So what I'm hoping to hear about is the greed of these operators, ship operators, adding so-called probably ill-advisedly to the carrying capacity of that ship.

Yeah, I had read a lot about that, too, prior to this book, and I'll ask John about that. John Bacon is the author's name. And he has done so much research on this because, let's see, I do believe it was rated at first, $14,000,000, and by the way, it's long tons, which are more than just a standard ton that we think of as 2,000 pounds. I think a long tonne's in the neighborhood of, what is it, 2,200 pounds, I think. It's what it is, something in that neighborhood, right?

And, yeah, there was talk that they kept loading more and more and more in it, and the pride of the American side, apparently, wasn't able to handle it in one 100 mile an hour winds, so go figure. Even when you add weight, you're adding it to the center. So that's not like uneven, not like evenly distributed because you got the spar deck at the back and the captain's deck at the front. So I think it was overloaded in the middle. Well, I know that when they discovered the wreck where they finally went down there,

he was broken in two. And some have wondered if it went down, if it, it breached, well, Well, we'll talk with John about this, but other people were wondering if he got caught between a couple of waves, because there were 100 foot, there were like 50-foot waves that day. And you have one that lifts up one end of the ship and a wave that lifts the back end of the ship, and then it's not designed to hold that, and then it buckles and breaks, that kind of thing. But what you're describing, it's unsupported in the middle. Yeah. And so, but the other theory is that it broke in half when it hit the bottom, which Eileen's. toward we'll talk with john we'll talk with john about it and kind of and dig into that

all right with that uh well help out all right thanks so much 770 565 633 770 km ed all right uh let me grab one more quick call hi who's this morning hey bill it's melissa molasco hi melissa how are you good good uh the republican jackson county republican party we're going to be having petition signings on the 22nd, that's a Saturday, from 9 to 3. They're going to be at my office on 516 Crater Lake Avenue, so that's the security first, 516 Creek Lake Avenue from 9 to 3, and then also at our new central headquarters, which is 1-1-2 North Front Street Central Point. Okay, so that's going to be, so the 22nd then is going to be a big, big push for the official. signing, even though we may have some petitions

available prior to that, correct? Correct. It's not this weekend, but it's the following. And then you can also get updates, and it should be posted, too, on our website, which is J-C-O-R-G-O-P. Have you heard any inkling about

or any word from Tobias Reid, since the parties are really looking at making this? The funny thing is I'm surprised that it's just the Republican Party, because this is a bipartisan. artisan hatred, you know, this particular tax. I don't think this is just Republicans against the Democrats this time around, do you? We have no idea what the Democrat Party for Jackson County's doing.

But you're correct. I mean, this is going to affect everybody. So it's something really important. We need to get out there, let her know that this, you know, we can't stand for this. And, you know, I think it's only 100,000 petition signings that we have. have to get or something. It's not a whole lot. Yeah, 100,000 is doable. This is something that we can get. In fact, ideally, if we could do 200,000, then we'll know for sure that it's going to go through and be on the ballot. We could do 200,000. It shouldn't be that big of a deal across

the whole state. So, you know, everybody's organized. We're trying to get it together. And so just want to let you know about those dates. And we can probably send you over a little flyer to or a, you know, headliner so that you can have that in front of people ask. Please do when you get to that, okay? Really do. Okay. All right. Thank you, Bill.

Thank you, Melissa, Melasco. It's 629 at KMED, 993KBXG. That'll be interesting stuff then. All right. Wheels up Wednesday. We're going to dive into that here in just a couple of minutes with Eric Peters at EP Autos. Meanwhile, we're going to have Bill with the latest news there from the KMED News Center here. Okay, let's see.

What else are? Are we talking about anything? Well, we'll catch up on the other news here. We ended up doing talk rather than the headlines, but we'll catch up on the news and keep you there this morning, too. 630 at KMED. From the KMED, New Rule Taxes, Bill London, KMED. 631, and Karen, Josephine County is getting ready to do the signings

for this petition to repeal the taxes too, isn't that right? Yes, that's correct. Tell us what we have going on, what is planned so far. So the note tax or website and their petitioner's team has put together a really great model for collecting signatures here. So we are all in communication. Here in Josephine County, it's expected that we are good to get at least 3,000 signatures, which is absolutely doable. We will have petitions in multiple locations, including the fairgrounds, including mailbox, etc., locations. locations out in Cave Junction, locations out in Williams, that are being set up currently.

So it's absolutely going to be doable. We do ask that everybody go to the no-taxor.com, sign up to register to be a volunteer. If they do that, they're absolutely informed. They're sent out current emails from me, the petitioner, captain here in Josephine County, as well as the team itself about what's going on in locations that they could go and help at or sign in. So both Jackson and Josephine County, you're going to be set up in making this happen. In other words, everyone's in, all hands on day. Everyone's in, and the team is really great.

The deal team has put together a great model, like I said, to keep everybody on task, organized, in place. And this is going to be absolutely doable and it's going to be great. So we're excited to be a part of it. Karen, thank you so much for the update. Glad to know that, all right? And keep us in the room, all right? We'll do. Thank you.

632 at KMED, 993, KBXG. I'm Taylor Riggs, and this is the Fox Business Report. Treasury, secretaries. Programs, skills training, and prep for college and career. If that's my Easter Seals, make it yours. Join us at Easterseals.com. News Talk 1063, KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show.

And we're talking cars. We're talking trucks. We're talking vans. We're talking anything on the open road here. morning. Eric Peters joining me via Zoom from E.P.O.O.S.com. Great site. Eric, welcome to Wheels Up Wednesday. Good having you on, sir. Oh, thanks, Bill. It was good to be here. What are we going to hit today? Well, first thing I wanted to hit here is kind of the corrosion of American capitalism. And maybe we could call it almost end-stage capitalism where there ends up being just, well, people

who are paid millions upon millions upon millions of dollars to fail. And you profile one of them. In one of your articles on EP, it's called It's Good to Be the Boss. Good to be boss. Yeah, the story has to do with the compensation package that has been announced for the CEO of Rivian, who's a guy named R.J. Scarinj. Which sounds like a villain from an E. Randall. Like a villain, like a villain of some sort, sure. Yeah. And the thing that struck me about it is they're going to compensate him, apparently, to the tune of something on the order of $4.5 billion. dollars. And this announcement came just a couple of weeks after the company announced that they're oh so sorry, but they're letting go several hundred of their workers due to declining

demand for Rivian vehicles. So what's wrong with this picture? Like the company is losing money and failing. And yet the CEO of the company is not only being rewarded, he's being rewarded munificently. And this isn't just something that affects the EV manufacturers. The same goes on at General Motors and Ford, where they're presiding over loss of market share, loss of billions because of malinvestment decisions that were made by the CEOs, and yet there are no consequences. And I think that this is potentially socially destructive to a degree that we can't even imagine yet, because we haven't seen what the consequences are. But I think we did get a clue during the recent elections where the Republican candidates were

blown out of the water by double digits in my state, Virginia, in New Jersey, and And also, of course, in New York where Mandami became the new mayor. People are tired of the load of bullstein that they are fed about free markets and capitalism. We don't have that. I wish we did. What we have is a kind of a sick parody of it that rewards these grifters and rent seekers who are never, ever made to suffer any meaningful consequences for their errors and the things that they do wrong. Meanwhile, the rank and file American out there who's just struggling to try to get bills paid

and does his job and hasn't messed anything up, they're the ones who lose their jobs. And you can't keep going down this road. It's a dead-end road. Well, people ended up voting for President Trump because they wanted a, you know, they wanted an end to this kind of stuff. They wanted a fair deal for people who are working. And I don't think that they were really looking for feeding the cronies of D.C. And even also the cronies, if you want to call them, of the artificial intelligence deal and everything else. that's kind of what they're getting right now. And I think that's the real challenge.

And there are some GOPers that are starting to make note about this. Hey, you've got to turn back to MAGA and actually what got President Trump elected in the first place when you say. Yeah, they better hurry up and do that. I think it's not a coincidence that Trump the other day dangled a $2,000 check that's supposedly going to be issued to most Americans as their quote-unquote rebate for the tariffs, meaning the taxes that have cost Americans many times that. And people aren't stupid. doesn't buy very much anymore. I cited in the article that I wrote about this subject that if you're paying, say, $200 a month more for groceries for a family, which isn't, I think, a particularly high estimate, you're spending over, say, five years roughly about $12,000 more than you would have about

five years ago. But they're going to give you a $2,000 check maybe, which of course will never even materialize. You know, people understand that these tariffs are costing them money and they're sick of it. They feel like just what you said, that the entire populist, America first, agenda that got Trump elected as being systematically piece by piece, just being chucked in favor of, you know, remember the old saying about no matter who you vote for, you end up with John McCain. And here we are. Well, let's hope that that ends up changing around because there are people who were raising the alarm. I know this. And in fact, there was a guy who I think I'm going to talk with him tomorrow. His name is Ken Raposa. He wrote a piece out there. And, you know,

he's hardcore mega, a Republican is as conservative as they guessed as they get. And it. And And he's, and he was saying something like along the lines of, you know, we're tired of hearing about, you know, how we're going to make China once again stop putting chemicals into fentanyl, you know, for like the third time, you know, how we're going to go to China and make that happen. We're tired of hearing about Ukraine. We're tired of hearing about the Middle East and Israel. You know, we're tired of focusing on this one. You've got to turn it back home. And that hasn't, well, maybe that'll be happening. You never can't tell it.

Well, we'll see. I doubt it. Did you catch the latest news? I'm glad you brought up China. So there was an interview that went out the other day, Trump with Laura Ingram, who was conservative, you know, conservative commentator. And the subject came up of Trump advocating that 600,000 Chinese students be admitted to American colleges and universities.

And he said, and he talked about, he actually said it out loud, you know, the part about, well, you know, the talent's not here. What? Right. Right. And, you know, there are plenty of kids in this country, American kids who have got great grades, great, great SATs. all of that and could absolutely qualify to be admitted to elite universities, but their places

are being taken by people from China and other places. I mean, not saying all of them, but the fact is you introduce that many people into the system, certainly some Americans are going to lose out. That's the bottom line. Well, the other part about it is that colleges love these kind of foreign exchange students because they pay full rate. There's no discount given to any of them, too. That's a big part of it. That's the part about, you know, paying the griff off to the DEI folks over in the university systems, in my opinion. Yeah, yeah, I mean, basically it's all about the money. You know, not for the American people, by the way.

You know, everybody's moaning about how much it costs to go to college, and that's absolutely true. So Trump's solution, not figure out a way to put some pressure on these institutions to lower their costs, but let's prop them up by having 600,000 wealthy Chinese kids come over here who, as you say, can afford to pay full MSRP for their education. So it's to prop up that artificially high price structure and keep college unaffordable for American kids. So these are the things

that the Trump administration has in front of them. So like I said, they're getting pushback on this too. This is not just, you know, people aren't just laying down

and Laura, to her credit, really did lay into that. And I think she was right the way she handled this. So he needs to hear this. He needs to hear this stuff and he needs to hear more of that, okay?

Now, I wanted to talk about your premier article that you put up this morning here and it had to do with, you know, affordability and what Nissan is doing right now. And Nissan has been in big trouble for a long time.

You and I have been discussing this for quite some time. But I guess there is still going to be a somewhat affordable sedan, at least available. And sedans, of course, have not been very popular for a number of years, but at least you can get some kind of vehicle. What's the story there? Well, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news, I guess, is that Nissan decided not to cancel the Centra, which is one of their more popular models. They're bringing out a heavily updated one for. 2026. I haven't had a chance yet to drive one, but I imagine I will soon. The downside is that apparently

they're at the same time that they're doing that, they're going to stop selling their most affordable model, which is the Versa, which you can still buy right now brand new for about 17.5, I think the base price is. And it is the only new vehicle that you can still buy for less than $20,000. So now the new floor, the new affordable, is roughly about $23,000. That's going to be the base price of the new centra and it jibes with the price of the handful of other small sedans that are out there such as the civic and the corolla so you know we've seen a significant uptick in the cost of even the lowest priced cars by you know several thousand dollars and yeah the new centra is quote unquote nicer than the versa it has a big touch screen yeah and it has you know

it has a better stereo and all of these other things but what good are those things for cash strapped Americans who cannot afford to spend, what, three, four thousand dollars more on a new car than it would have cost them two years ago. All right. Now, 23,000. So 23,000 will be the floor then of affordability in the United States, right? Looks like, yeah. Okay, 23,000. Is that all that bad? And the reason I'm bringing this up is what I looked at as an epitome of affordability in 2010 when I was looking for a car was the very end of the road for the Chrysler P.T. Cruiser. And I bought one, you know, that year to replace it on the one that I'd had. And I paid just under 15, I think, for it at that time. And it was probably about 2 or 3,000 down from MSRP at that time. Now, even adjusted

for inflation, wouldn't that be about 23, 24,000 for today? You know, what we think of as a fair point. That's a fair point. But I think that we are entering an era now of crashing ability for the bulk of the American public to be able to afford even a $23,000. car. There are synergies going on here. You know, we've talked before about the cost of insurance, which is much higher. Yeah, you can't forget about that. Yeah. My insurance is cheap, but a lot of people are not.

That's just it. Yeah. So you have to factor that into the equation. And it ends up being, I can't do that. I can't afford, you know, people are, I'm saying, you know, just speaking extemporaneously here, a person looks at a $23,000 car and thinks, well, maybe I could swing the payments on that. Then they call up their insurance guy and the insurance guy says, well, it's going to cost you

$3,000 a year to cover that car. to get a full comprehensive policy for it. And they're out. They punch out. They pull their core. They can't do it. You know, I maintain that what we desperately need right now in this country to keep the car industry from collapsing in the next couple of years are really affordable cars, meaning cars that you could buy for about $15,000. There's no reason that vehicles like that couldn't be put onto the market other than the government impediments that are in the way. And also the corporations, the American car companies that are still relying on this model of

making more money per vehicle than making money. on volume sales. I think part of it, though, is that they're looking at the rules and regulations as making it clear they're not going to exist in a few years if we keep going this way, so make the money while you can? Could it be something that cynical? I absolutely think it could be something that cynical because this gets us back to what we were talking about at the beginning of the show. At the very highest levels of these car companies, you're talking about people who are looking to maximize, as they put it, shareholder value for the next quarter. That's how they get rewarded. And, you know, they're at the pinnacle of their careers.

They're not moving on to something else. Most of these people, you know, are 50, 60 plus years old, and they're going to punch out soon. So why not punch out with the most golden parachutes you can possibly punch out with? You know, once you've got $20 or $30 million in the bank, you're pretty much set for life. And so are your great, great grandkids. Is there anyone that is talking about making that affordable $15,000 to $16,000 car? Is there anybody talking about it? Because it would seem to me that it would be prime for someone to be able to swoop in and capture.

And it used to be that they would always want to get the young buyers. And so you'd always have an affordable car for young buyers. But, you know, now that young buyers are hurting. We know about that. And so how are you going to do this? Is there any hope on this? Because you're right. That's what's missing out of the lineup right now, truly affordability.

Well, you remember Aptera, there was a startup company that was going to offer sort of an in-between a motorcycle and a car. It was a three-wheeler. Yeah. And they were going to try to sell that thing for a, I forgot with the MSRP, it was something around $12,000. But again, that was something that never came to fruition because probably at the time they were talking about it, leaving aside compliance issues, there really wasn't that much of a market for these low-end cars. This is the paradox.

Like the reason most of the low-end cars are not available now is because we've been living during a time when people are relatively flush and they're willing to assume debt and they're willing to buy one of these things because, oh, I can make the monthly payment. Now they can't make the monthly payment anymore because of what they're paying at the checkout line for groceries. and what they're paying for their utility bills and all of these things. Now, the good news is these vehicles, you know, they're not conceptual. They are available. They're just not available here. There's no reason at all, you know, in terms of just physical things that Toyota or Nissan, all of which sell highly affordable vehicles in other markets could not bring them here

except whether they're willing to do it and particularly whether they are willing to challenge the federal regulatory app rat, which is the biggest impediment to us having access to vehicles like that in this country. All right. Point well taken. article on epiottos.com affordable redefined 770 5633 happy to take your calls for eric too this is the bill mire show 770 5633 welcome to the bill myers show on 106 3 kmED give bill a call at 541 770 5633 that's 770 kmED wheels up wed with eric peters at epiottos dot com taking your calls happy to do that scottes Over an equal point, Scott, you wanted to talk about that car affordability issue.

We're kind of all over that topic this morning. How are you, sir? Yes, Bill and Eric, back when we had a company, a manufacturing company, White City was a plastics company. We had a fellow come in from, he was representative from Kia, and he was a designer, and he was put together companies that would help him with the prototyping. And we would say, hey, the mills are going down. Hey, can we get into manufacturing here, you know? And we started talking about this stuff.

And one of the biggest problems, of course, is the state of Oregon. And in the city of Medford, not to knock them. They're great. But in White City, it's under county rule. And for some reason, it didn't pencil out for them at the time. But there might be a time now that that would work really well for our area. area. So I'm not sure where Eric is on this or if he knows what's happening in White City right now in manufacturing. Well, I don't know if he would know about White City, but

manufacturing in general. Any idea on that, Eric? What do you say? Manufacturing here. It could happen. It just takes, I think, my opinion, the fundamental thing is to challenge the compliance regime, which has become extreme fanatical and just divorced from any sense of reasonable cost-benefit analysis. You know, they're now chasing these fractional reductions in emissions and these over-the-top safety requirements that have made it essentially impossibly expensive to manufacture anything in this country. And that is why so many things are manufactured elsewhere. Yeah. And that's the big part about it. And that's why probably Kia was talking to your family about that, probably saw that because of the

requirements, it couldn't pencil. And they must have moved that factory somewhere else or took it Do you know if they took it to a different state by chance? Do you know? To another country. Back east seems to be doing pretty darn well, Tennessee, and a couple other ones in manufacturing, you know, imports. Yeah, well, what we're really good at manufacturing in Oregon so far is still wildfire smoke in the summertime because, you know,

a tree is designed to be burned, not to be used for anything. But anyway, I appreciate the call there, Scott. 7705633. Eric, what is your latest review? Let's talk about some of the stuff you've been driving here lately. And you also have to talk about running behind that PT Cruiser for a while because you made me smile with that article up on EP. But I figured you'd like that one. Well, let's address the first one. I had a Kia Carnival to review for a week. And it's interesting to me because I can remember when every other vehicle on the road seemed to be a minivan. You remember those days? Sure do. Sure do. Yep. And then all of a sudden they were gone. Most of the manufacturers no longer have a minivan in their lineup. There are only four, I think, currently on the market, including the carnival. And it's interesting to me because these are very practical, very useful vehicles. That's what made minivans so popular. Well, what happened was crossovers and SUVs sort of ate up that market. And the interesting thing to me about that is that they are less practical. And I'm not slamming crossovers and SUVs, but the fact is that they're just less practical. The thing that makes a minivans so very practical is you've got these dual sliding doors, that completely open up pretty much the entire interior of the car. They're lower to the ground, so they're easier to get into. They're easier to load.

They're just the perfect family vehicle. They're a very practical vehicle, but they have a problem. They look like minivans. And that is why people went for crossovers and SUVs because they don't look like minivans. And a lot of people are hung up on the idea of I don't want to be caught dead driving a minivan. Well, it's kind of like, you know, the guy has the minivan in his testicles have been removed. You know, that's kind of the image on them, right? I think that's what happened.

Exactly right. Yeah. So Kia had this novel idea. They decided that they were going to try to sell a minivan that kind of looks like an SUV. If you look at the profile of the Kia Carnival, you can find my review up on the site, and I've got a lot of pictures there to go with it. From the side, and it looks like it could be an SUV, especially with the doors closed. In fact, it looks like kind of a stretched SUV of some sort, just a little bit like, you know,

more in the passenger and cargo area, but I guess that's purposeful, right? Yeah. And they also tried to make it fun for adults this time, as well as useful for adults who have kids. It's available with a really neat feature. You can get these, they call them lounge seats, and it's basically a pair of completely reclining second row lounge seats. And you can put these huge 14 and a half inch dual LCD monitors, watch your favorite show and cruise on down the road in these things. And it's just the hot ticket for a long road trip for grownups, but it's also great for kids. because, again, unlike the SUV and the crossover with the third row that's essentially only useful for kids and really difficult to get in and out of, this thing's third row.

You know, adults can easily get back there and sit in the thing. So now you've got something that doesn't necessarily look so much like a minivan, but has all of that great practicality and usefulness that you get with a minivan. So, you know, I have no problem with it. But then again, I'm not 30 years old anymore, so your mileage may very. But still, you like it. You like the vehicle as a good handling vehicle. And one other thing about it, and this is a great irony to me, it comes standard with a V6 engine, minivans. Wow.

You know, yeah. Yeah, V6, that's the luxury engine these days, right? Yeah, me, you can pick up a V6 minivan for about $38,000. That's what the carnival starts at. Whereas if you spend nearly $60,000 on a Mercedes E class or a BMW 5, you get a 2.0 liter 4. Oh, okay. Four cylinder. That doesn't exactly scream, does it?

No. Oh, okay. So we'll give it a thumbs up. That's great. Hey, what about the actual skill of the driver out there? I want to the focus on that here for the final. Oh, yeah. This is the video that I took the other day. You know, I often post these, I call them Clover videos, meaning people who just can't seem to drive even the speed limit and who tend to wander across the double yellow and then overcorrect and go off onto the shoulder with all of their advanced driver assistance technology, apparently not able to correct for that. So the other day I was out driving and I came up behind. a PT cruiser. I know somebody else who owns a PT cruiser. Why, yeah, that would be that would be Bill Meyer. And it was driven by somebody who actually knew how to drive. And it was such a refreshing thing to find myself behind a guy who was driving a little bit faster than the speed limit consistently without the slowing down and speeding up that you see so constantly out there, and who managed to not run over the double yellow or off onto the shoulder. And it was just almost, it was almost like, I don't know, Mana in the desert, to find somebody who could actually drive.

And then the startling thing to me was it was a PT cruiser, because as you know, as the owner of one, when those things were new, they were sort of regarded as sort of a, you know, Mrs. Doubtfire mobile, like the Toyota Prius used to be. Well, and I get that. But they've always been very practical for me, and they were always reasonably priced by the time I started buying in on them. And that's why I bought them. And what has been really helpful, I think the best part of the PT cruiser for our family, has been the relative ease of getting in and out of it with the stadium seating. The stadium seating, I thought, was always a big part of that, where even people in the back, you're sitting up a little higher than the people in front,

and you have good view everywhere you're going. We always like that. Oh, absolutely. And for the size of the car, you know, it was brilliantly put together. Very, very roomy inside. So even though it had a small footprint, I remember driving those things when they were brand new back in the 90s and going to Lowe's and Home Depot for stuff and being able to haul a whole lot of stuff, in that comparatively small vehicle, which I know you've probably done as well.

Yep, sure have. If there was one thing I could have changed about the PT, at least the ones I bought, it would have been a stick shift. But it was getting harder to find the stick shift as time went on. And I have to tell you, the four-speed Chrysler Automatic is a bit doggie, in my opinion. Sure. You're not able to keep it in the power in the power. And I say that's just said, I'll bet you were following a PT cruiser that was a stick shift,

because with a five-speed, you're able to keep it. in the power ban, you know, quite a bit easier, but the automatic, forget about it. You know, you're going up the hill. You're either going to floor it. You're going to have downshift it or downshift it manually. You know, that's, but you know, that's just the way it is. That's just the way that vehicle was. You know, and that brings up something that people might not be aware of. One of the boons of modern car, automatic transmissions that have, you know, six and seven gears is that the gear rate, the gear spacing is tighter. So you get a more responsive transmission. Those old four speeds,

You know, the three of the gears were just forward gears. The fourth was overdrive, and there was a fair spread between each gear. So, you know, as you say, when you pair one of those things with a pretty underpowered engine, they tend to be kind of doggy. Well, and I'm kind of wondering, something else I was going to dig in, since we were starting the show with affordability aspects of this, then you're talking about, you know, the Nissan, how they're going to hang on to the center, right? They're going to keep the center going. I just want to make sure you get the right one.

The Versa is the one that's going to go away. I heard rumor that this is kind of like going right down into that 50-year mortgage thing I was talking about yesterday, but 15-year car loans? Is that what they're floating now to try to work? I've heard about this. I can't understand how the math could conceivably work out because even though modern cars are very durable, by the time they get to be 15 years old, their value is essentially nil. So, you know, when you consider depreciation, people are going to be underwater on that car halfway before they pay it off. and they're going to have every incentive to just dump it. So, I mean, I just can't imagine how it will possibly work.

Yeah. Okay. Now, the 50-year mortgage I was discussing this yesterday, too, and these were attempts to try to fix the symptom of the inflation issue that is still bubbling underneath the economy. This is an example because, I mean, should a house in East Medford cost a half million dollars, you know, just for, you know, for anybody that has a pulse, you know, a half million dollars, should the minimum price of getting a decent car be 35 to 40?

But it's a symptom. It's a symptom of our times, isn't it? Really? It is. And it's also, it also depends on the innumeracy of people. Because as anybody who's ever actually looked at mortgage numbers know, you're paying predominantly interest for the first, however many years, you know, a long time. You're not really chewing down the principle very much. Yeah, so let's pay for your house or your car for the first, you know, 80% of it. You're mostly interest all that time before you start paying down the principal, right? Yeah, so on a 50-year note, you're probably going to be paying three times the actual price of the home just in interest over that time period. And then whoop-de-do, you can celebrate when you're turning 75 or 80.

I finally paid off my home. Yeah, we used to be in a culture that celebrated paying off the car and also celebrated burning the mortgage papers, right? I remember those days. People would do that. They have a little ceremony when I was a kid. Remember them doing that. Yeah, and I don't know how it's going. It's the affordability issue generally because if you're having to pay a monthly mortgage for 50 years,

that means you've got less money available to pay for the utilities and the food. You know, there was a point at which, hey, I paid off my house. Typically did it when you're in your 50s, right? Right, exactly. You know, paying for 30 years. And now all of a sudden you got a lot of money freed up, you know, instead of having to send the mortgage company $2,000 a month, you've got $2,000 more to spend on things like food and utilities. Well, I'm thinking that when we're looking at mortgages, not that I wanted to dig into that,

you know, that tar baby, so to speak. I will do this. One of the reasons why I think we have such expensive real estate right now is because of the intervention of the federal government, because it is Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac buying the mortgages. You know, that's really, you know, where most of the mortgage for the typical American has to go. They buy 30-year mortgages. Now, we're the only country or one of the few countries in the world that does the 30-year

mortgage kind of deal. And most other places around the world don't do that. not a speculative move, you know, buying property like it is here in the United States. And, you know, what would a house be worth if you could only finance it for 10 years or five years? Sure. Like you want to do. I think there's another factor here, too, that's driving this. And that is the absence of real competition or alternatives, meaning, you know, in most parts of the country, there are zoning laws.

So they'll build a development of houses. And they're all pretty much the same house, and they all pretty much sell for about the same. Yeah. And it's not legally permissible to buy a piece of land in that neighborhood. let's say, and put a tiny house on it if you want to, that costs a small percentage of what the, you know, the huge gigantic McMansion costs. They've made that illegal, and that has effectively inflated the prices of everything in a given area. Yeah, raising the cost of entry into something, right, rather than letting somebody get a toehold into the homeowner market. We'll see.

But anyway, I think it's worthy of looking into a lot of great articles up on E.P.O.O.com. I'll grab a quick call here before we take off and see if they wanted the comment. Hi, good morning. Who's this? Welcome. Hey, Bill, it's your friend, Brad. I love these sessions that you have with Eric. Yeah, thank. What does you want to say about this, huh? We got about four minutes before the Zoom kicks out, so go ahead and make a quick one here, okay?

Yeah. So I'd be interested in you're in Eric's review of something that really we don't talk about a lot, which is the extremely high cost of credit and the way our younger people put everything on the credit card. So when you're talking about buying things on time, which you just were, you know, back in the old days, we didn't put everything on the credit card. We'd only use the credit very, very sparingly. Rarely, yeah. And credit was maybe, I'm going to say, on the high side, maybe 14, 15%.

Credit cards are now up in the high 30s. I mean, they're 25, 27%. So we've got a population of kids. They're not just paying finance fees on the car. They're not just paying finance fees. I mean, when they get the car fixed, it goes on the card. When they get the oil changed, it goes on the card. So what do you think?

I mean, is this extremely high cost of credit even more economically disadvantaging our young people? Yeah, well, I know you used to, of course, be in Builders Association here. You know what Dave Ramsey talks about this issue here in which young people are coming to him, Eric, and Brad, and say, and he tells them, it's like, hey, you're driving your house, guys. You're driving your home if you get the drift, okay? Yeah. And thanks for the call, Brad. I'll have Eric close out on this morning. Yeah, the culture has shifted. You know, when I went to college, I was struck by the fact that they had a tents set up, you know, freshman orientation. So I'm 18 years old. And they had a Visa, MasterCard, American Express. They had tents there, you know, trying to get the kids to sign up for a credit card. I decided not to because I just thought about that and said, you know, I don't have any money. I don't even have a job. I mean, I'm in college. I've got a part-time job. I mean, I'm in college. I've got a part-time job. I can't afford a credit card, but the attitude has changed. And as the caller says, you know, kids have been encouraged to buy into this debt without really understanding exactly what they're

buying into. You know, you're talking about 25, even close to 30% interest. And they, you know, they put $1,000 on it and then metastasizes to $5,000. And before you know, they're buried. And, you know, this is catastrophic. Not just financially, it breeds this resentment, which then turns into a desire for some solution, meaning, oh, let's have some. socialism or communism, because that'll cure all of our ills. Yeah, rather than just delivering the, well, the same misery to everyone. Equal misery for all, that kind of thing. All right.

Eric, always appreciate the take on it. And by the way, if you do have a credit card, please don't put your groceries on it. Okay. There are people that have done that. You know, if you're charging your door dash and your groceries right now, you've got to come up with a different way. Unless you're one of those highly disciplined people that pay off every month. And there are people that do that, Eric.

I guess that's fine. Get the rewards, right? But other than that, no, don't carry the balance. E.P.O.com, what's you going to review next week? What's in the driveway, huh? Oh, they just dropped off the new, just updated Nissan Armada, and the Armada was just about the last full-sized SUV that still came standard with a big V8 engine. Well, it's joined the ranks of those that now have a V6 engine that's augmented by a turbo. But the good news is that this relatively small V6 engine, just 3.5 liters, makes substantially more power. and torque than the previously available 5.6V8, and it gets slightly better gas mileage.

So there's some positives there, and I'm going to get into that in my review. All right, looking forward to it. E.P.Otos.com. We'll see you the next Wednesday. Thanks so much, Eric. Thank you, both. This is KMED, KMED, H.D. H.D.1. Eagle Point, Medford, KBXG, Grants, Pass.

We'll catch up with Fox News, hand of the update, and then more of your calls on Wheels Up Wednesday.