Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 11-18-25_TUESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

11-18-25_TUESDAY_7AM

The Bill Myriss Show podcast is sponsored by Klausur drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for over 50 years. Find out more about them at Klausor drilling.com. 7 o'clock at KMED, KMED, HV1, Eagle Point, Bedford. KBXG grants pass. Hey, coming up after news in the hand of the update, I'd be talking to a fascinating writer that poses the question, what if, you know, if 98% of human history has vanished,

along with the wisdom that we need most today. And Jack Bialik has written this piece called Lost in Time, Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge, in that we know we think that we're always the first people to discover this, whether it's a cataract surgery, batteries, et cetera. And he's going back through earlier, forgotten knowledge, maybe it holds the keys to our future survival. I think it's very thought-provoking.

I'm always happy to do thought-provoking stuff if I can grab them on here. But it is pebble in your shoe Tuesday, and for that we go to Francine, and we're going to have her provoke my thoughts, I guess. Hi, good morning. Good morning, Bill. Hi, Francine. What's up? Oh, you little bell ringer, you.

I can't help it. By the way, that was a lot of fun. It just great. I could tell. I could tell when I talked to you and you were, oh, I'm so busy bell ringing, and you just sounded so happy. Well, no, actually, it smoothed out. It's just that you had called me earlier, and I was just like working my birthday. butt off to get my stuff done so I could get out and ring the bell.

It's like, no, can't talk now. Later. Okay. I know, I know. It sounded like you're having a great time. I was almost tempted to go down there, but I wasn't going to go to bed for just for that. But anyway. All right. What's on your mind here?

I'm pebbling your shoe Tuesday, huh? So all of the Epstein files being withheld after being promised to be put out. And all of a sudden now, oh, okay, we're going to put them out now. I think that there's a possibility that they have been altered and they took time to do it in a way that made it look really good, you know, proper forgeries. So that would be the reason why the House will vote, we'll vote to approve it then. Well, it could be why they withheld them because, okay, we can't let this out. Oh, we can't let that out, you know, or whoever, whatever. I don't have a – I'm not casting, you know, pointing fingers or anything like that, anyone in particular.

just overall, that's a possibility in my mind. Oh, yeah. If you're going to release some, what was it, 25, 26,000 files, I guess I heard about it last talk. Yeah, it takes a while. Yeah, it takes a while to go through and make good forgeries. Okay. Yeah.

I hope you're, I hope that's not the case, but still. Well, it's possible, though, Bill, you know, because, I mean, we have learned over the years, we can't trust anything that comes out of government, really. We really can't. I mean, some things are just obvious. They are what they are, but... I think there's another... I think there's another way of looking at this, though,

and this is a possibility, too, all right? This is a possibility. I'm just going to float this then. That certain people have decided to get their house in order, like Larry Summers. Larry Summers, the former guy from Harvard, who came out and said that he is so ashamed of his dealings with Epstein.

that he is withdrawing from public life. He's going to just, you know, slink away, you know, at this point. And maybe there, maybe this was like giving people time to fall on their sword maybe up till now. Well, yeah, I think that it's possibly a combination of things, you know, to try to give the guilty, you know, or those who may be guilty to some degree, a chance to, to, you know, get everything so it looks good, get the paperwork the way they want it to be. You know, I don't really know.

Yeah, yeah, we don't know at this point. Yeah, you could be. Could be. All right. Now, I have to ask you a question now that you've talked about this, all right? What about how did you learn to read? Because I started the show being irritated at the science, the science of reading. Oh, phonics.

Phonics. Okay. All right. I mean, I still use fun when I'm reading, like, a name of someone from another country that is, like, you know, really. difficult to pronounce and stuff, I use phonics to sound it out, and I'll come up with maybe different possibilities because certain, you know, letters and combinations of letters could have different uses, but that's what I do. So it didn't take a high priest or priestess of the Oregon Education Department,

then Department of Education, to come out with, I have the scrolls, the science of reading. No, and actually, I didn't learn to read an organ. You know, I learned, I first learned to read probably back east, and then I lived in different places around. Well, back in your day, even Oregon knew how to read in those days. Everybody knew how to read back then still, you know. All right. Thank you for the call, Francie, and I appreciate that. Let me check up, catch up on the rest of the Fox News here, and then we're talking about forgotten in time history and what it means for today.

It's all coming up. Attention, Realtors. Here's Bill Meyer. Joining me right now is Jack R. Bialik, and he poses a fascinating, thought-provoking take on history. What if we really don't know as much as we think we know, or we're just working right now to rediscover what we once knew? And I know it sounds really weird, but he has written a book about this. It's called Lost in Time Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge. Jack, it's a pleasure having you on.

Welcome. Well, thank you, Bill. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. I was leafing through your book, going through the PDF here a little while back and just kind of a little bit, as the Brits would say, gobsmacked at some of the stuff, stuff which has been actually going on, that we find evidence of things that, well, let me just start it this way. I think that we always are operating today by assuming that it has never been more advanced than it is right now and we're the only people who have ever had any kind of really cool, great techie knowledge, right? Would you agree with that assumption?

Yeah, absolutely. That is exactly the point. Yeah, great take. And then when you dig into the actual historical record, we find strange little anomalies that, say that we may have had more advanced techniques a lot earlier than we thought and then forgot about them for some reason, right? Isn't that kind of where you got going? And this started from you from a high-tech perspective. Tell me a little bit about yourself first and then we'll dig in. Yeah, yeah. Well, my background is in technology and, you know, kind of dealing a lot

with knowledge and information and how we store it, how we use it. in business and many different facets. So it got me to looking at, you know, it was just kind of a mystery I found hidden in plain sight that, you know, I just watching history shows or reading magazines. You know, I see a vending machine they had in 10 BC in Rome, in ancient Rome. A vending machine, right? Yeah, yeah. The vending machine, hero of Alexandria.

Actually, there's great, he has great drawings of it and, you know, details on how it was made and how it operated. And you would put a coin in to this vending machine and it would dispense holy water at temples. And, you know, we think we have the modern vending machine. There's even a vending machine, a pencil seller that China had in 1046. So vending machines aren't new. You know, they've been around. Yeah, and probably cheating vending machines is not new either. I remember how I always used to be.

You know, what's really interesting is when you look back, I remember I would devour popular science, that magazine back when I was a kid. I subscribed to it, and I would get it every month, and I would start going through it. And I remember Popular Science and Science Digest was another one that I got. and I remember there was one time and they brought up this ancient crystal skull and they haven't I don't believe they've still been able to explain

how it was actually how these were actually formed and I think they were found in South America someplace if I recall correctly and they were so tightly and so finally polished and had working joints on the mandibles and everything else that people were trying to figure out today how could we make these today at that time now that was 50 years ago

I was reading this as a kid, maybe we could do it now without too much problem. But even then, it kind of triggered me thinking like, okay, yeah, how were they able to do it back then when, you know, right now we're going to the moon and we have all this technology? We got phones and televisions and satellites and all the rest of it. And I imagine you kind of came to it the same way. That'd be fair. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That is the exact same kind of thought process that, you know, I came across as well. you know, maybe we don't know everything. And, you know, there's examples right in our face. You know, there's a lot of controversy about those crystal skulls. They still, you know, there's kind of two trains of thought on those, but we don't have any record of how those were made. You know, there's nothing written down. Just like, you know, the great pyramids in Egypt. You know, there's no written records. We have a lot of people that have theorized.

well, they were built this way or that way. And the assumption was that they were building it with, of course, you know, log roll, log rollers, and you had, you know, tens of thousands of slaves doing this, and they were moving this, except that then when you talk to engineers today, they would have difficulty building that right now, wouldn't they? Yeah. Oh, without a doubt. So I did some very simple math. I took 2.3 million stones.

I got 2.3 million stones. there are three tons or more, and they laid those pyramids in 20 years, they say, the experts say. So that means you had to lay a three-ton stone every two minutes, you know, 12 hours a day, 365 days a year for 20 years. I mean, and it has to be perfectly level. How do you do that? You know, how do you do that without a wheel and without any pulleys? They hadn't been invented yet. So how do you do that?

Yeah. Just amazing. And so, in other words, we really don't have answers. We just have good theories of that as an example. Right. All right. Now, I say this as someone who is taking his mother in for cataract surgery. Next Monday.

Now, cataract surgery today is a breeze. You know, it's a pretty cool thing. and I have to say I would not want to go back to this, but cataract surgery, and you bring receipts for all of these things, cataract surgery is really nothing new, is it? No, no, absolutely not. Well, our modern cataract surgery started in the 1700s, and that was before they had any kind of anesthesia. So your cornea of your eye has more nerve endings per square inch.

than any other part of your body. You know, when you get a hair in your eye... Oh, you get something stuck in your eye, it's misery, right? Yeah, yeah, until you get it out of there, it drives you nuts. So what they used to do back in the 1700s, when they did cataract surgeries, they tie you to a chair. Oh, yeah. Yeah, there was a lot of commitment involved

in getting your cataract surgery in those days, wasn't there? Yeah, there was maybe a lot of tears, I don't know. but they did invent eyedrops in the 1800s. They put cocaine eyedrops in there, but to dead in the eye. But we did cataract surgery in 800 BC in ancient India. Shashruda, a famous physician, he knew all kinds of stuff. He did nose surgery. He did treat people for diabetes.

It's all written down in a book, and he did cataract surgery. Now, the kind of cataract surgery they did back then is different than the kind we do. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't like they're slipping in the nice hard plastic lens to be, right? Yeah, right, right. And about 40% of the people ended up blind anyway. So, you know, we... But then, you know, at that point, having cataracts, that was a blindness sentence anyway, really. You're going to go there.

Sure. No way to get around that. But how do they do the surgery then, you know, more than 2,000 years ago for cancer? cataract surgery? Yeah, well, they had a procedure. They called a couching procedure. And what they would do is take a, it was about a three-inch long piece of bronze metal with a special end on it. And they would push the lens of the eye out of the way. So it would, you know, that's the part of the eye that becomes cloudy. So they would push that out of the way. It was called the couching procedure. And then the person would have clear vision. Now, of course, they wouldn't be able to focus as well, but they would at least

be able to see images and that sort of thing. Interesting. Now, once again, a lot of commitment needed to down or go. But the principles, the basic principles were pretty much in the same. Now, what I get, what I wonder, though, is when you really see some of what happened in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Mesopotamia, rather, there was the back. Baghdad battery, right? What we know as Iraq today, but the Baghdad battery, tell me a little bit about that. These are, like, things they find that you're wondering, okay, what were they using it for at that time? What was it?

Yeah, well, they found 12 of these batteries in Baghdad. They're called Baghdad batteries. They're very famous. And they've been able to make these kind of work by adding, you know, electrolytes like lemon juice and that sort of thing into these containers, and they can generate a little over one volt of electricity. It's essentially an acid battery with a metal in it, right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Now, the question would be, what would you have used a battery for in ancient Mesopotamium, right? Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of thoughts on that. One of them is maybe they just

use them for a simple kind of lighting, maybe, you know, a type of a light bulb or something like that, you know, might be a reasonable kind of a thought. Now, come on, man. Listen, I grew up in Milan, Ohio. That was, Thomas Edison was born there, you know, light bulb, man. Don't tell me they had that Tom was working and sweating in the 1800s, and then all he had to do was go back to Mesopotamia, huh? Or maybe so. I don't know. I don't know, but certainly there's a of these inventions that have been, you know, done over and over again. It's not too far to think that they might have had something like that, or they might have used it for some kind of healing technique, something like that. Or maybe even electroplating something, we don't know.

I mean, there's all sorts of things that could be done, yeah, and maybe healing, yeah, possibly some low-level current. It's funny, we even do that now in our, in our medical practices, at least in some of the alternative medical practices. Anyway, if you're running home speaking to, it's Jack R. B. Aalik. You can find out more about him, j.R.B.aulik.com. I'll get all of his information up right now. We're talking about his book, In Lost in Time, Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge. So your theory on this is that many things that we're using today, we think that we're the first, we're actually done, maybe more crudely, maybe differently.

but some of the basic ideas of many old inventions or were there in ancient times, you're saying? Yes, yeah. Now, why is it that we kind of go through these things where the knowledge gets lost and then maybe we come back and then it gets lost again? I don't know, is it disasters or a war? You know, what do you think goes on?

Because even now, I think all it takes is one big EMP and 98% of the world's knowledge disappears, boom, like that. But how do you see that? Yeah, yeah, that's great. Well, that is the point of the book, is that we keep inventing, and then we lose it, then we reinvent, then we lose it. And could we do this again? Could we do this with our knowledge and our, what we've acquired? And certainly, you know, in the 1850s, there was a Carrington event. Now, a Carrington event is a large, uh, sunspot, you know, electromagnetic pulse from the sun that hit the earth. So when it did this in the 1850s, it electrified all the wires we had. And the only wires we had at that time were telegraph wires. Yeah, the telegraph wires caught on fire, if I recall. Yeah. Yeah. And the stations at the end where the wires were caught on fire. So. And that was a natural occurrence, right? Just a

just a natural, well, the sun burped, essentially, is what happened. Yeah. Right. And we were in the way. Yeah. And you think about the amazingly complex, complex, electronic and high-tech society that we have today, which is also amazingly fragile in front of such natural events, right? It gives you a little pause.

Yeah. Yeah, in some ways we're going backwards. You know, we kept information on stone tablets in the past. Those lasted thousands of years. And then what we moved to, you know, papyrus paper, you know, and then we go to magnetic tape. We went to CDs, DVDs. And those only last 30 or 40 years in the pits inside of there will oxidize,

and you'll lose that information. So you have this amazing CD you're thinking could be a record for the future and 200 years from now at rusts, right? Right. Yep, basically. Has there been anybody that's really been talking about truly creating a new kind of, well, the library of Alexandria as an example, which was burned during the sacking, right? Yeah. And you think of all of that past knowledge, which was lost at that point. Does anyone worry about that today or think about that today because the amount of knowledge and data that we have is so much greater,

but everything that it's involved in the high-tech world, silicon, silicon storage, hard disk storage. We don't even want to talk about, you know, that sort of thing. But even the memory storage that we have right now, they have limited lives. In fact, I think even your thumb drive, if you don't plug it in every now and then we'll end up losing its brains over a few years. You know, that kind of thing. Yeah. What do we do about something like that? How do you preserve this so we don't have to maybe rediscover in the future?

What say you? Yeah, well, there are some attempts in different areas. There is the Seed Bank in Norway that they've been saving seeds. They've got over a million seeds in that seed bank. So, I mean, that's an approach to saving knowledge. you know, we have time capsules that people make, but, you know, time capsules are kind of small, and what do you save in there? They're saving a can of Coke or a newspaper or magazine.

I mean, it's not going to be a tremendous amount of information. In fact, you talked about that in the book, in the 1930s, the crypt of civilization at that time sealed, and had 640,000 pages of microfilm, a Donald Duck doll, and a Budweiser can. right now my question will be what will microfilm look like thousands of years from now if at all right yeah yeah and even a bigger problem is will they be able to read it uh i interviewed the curator at the internet museum in san francisco and um he said what they have to do they have these old IBM PCs you know the original ones yes and they all use floppy drives if you remember those.

And he said those become brittle and crack. You can't even buy them anymore. So what they've done is they've printed all the computer programs on paper. Okay, but even paper is not a permanent archive, is it? Yeah, not really. I mean, maybe, you know, you might get hundreds of years out of paper, but it's kind of going backwards, you know, that they're saving information, you know, on paper, which you'd think you'd want to go forward

with it and save it in some longer-lasting. And the other thing, in other ways of whether it's tape or CDs or other things like that, the machinery to actually read what's there doesn't exist, you know, in the future, you know, that sort of thing. And it'd be kind of like, all right, you hand somebody a videotape, okay, when's the last time you saw a videotape player, you know, in your neighborhood? Right? So is there a possibility? We had to go back to stone tablets, stone play tablets to make that happen? No, no, no. Absolutely. But that's the challenge in front of us is how do we save this information for the future?

So when they find a buried iPhone or somebody's phone, they can open it up. They can know how to use it or turn it on. you know, what are they going to be able to do in 500 years? They find one of these buried devices. Could they even figure it out? Yeah, what we think of as just commonplace might be exotic. If they, you know, hey, all of it take is one really good nuclear war, right? You know, around the country and the world here. And then all of a sudden, just a lot of the landfill economy.

Well, people could mine the landfills. That's what they could do. That's where the archaeologists would go, wouldn't they? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And that's what we've done, right? We go and dig up old civilizations and look at what they threw away. Oh, boy, wait until they take up our landfills with all the baby diapers in it. Man, they're going to love that.

I think it's a very thought-provoking book because you have more than three, we're just scratching surface here. You have more than 300 examples of lost history. Maybe even some of this could be useful today, you're thinking, if it was looked at more closely? Yeah. Yeah, I think we could. I think we could make big inroads in finding solutions to some of these problems.

We're smart, you know. What's an example of something that you have discovered from the past that might be useful now? What would you say? Anything come to mind? Just try to think about it a little bit. You know, well, there's plenty of examples of things that we've found that we're, I don't know, don't want to say afraid of, but we're very cautious about, you know, the mausoleum that was built in 210 BC by the first emperor of China, Quinn Shee. He built a mausoleum there. You know,

it's called the Terracotta Warriors, 7,000 statues of warriors, chariots, and that sort of And they used to be painted, if I understand correctly. Yeah, right, right. It covers 538 acres. of, you know, this mausoleum. But here's the interesting thing. The Chinese will not open that mausoleum because they're concerned. It's booby-trapped. And the technology that he had, this emperor had, is amazing. You know, he had swords.

We found swords buried there that are still sharp. They were made with chrome. We didn't start using Chrome until the 1800s in manufacturing. So this guy had figured out things that we've only recently figured out in the last couple hundred years. And what we did is maybe re-figured it out. Yeah. That's kind of where you're going. I find it fascinating.

I think it's a very thought-provoking book. It is Lost in Time, Our Forgotten and Vanishing Knowledge, a fascinating book. And I guess you can get this at all the usual suspects, or do you have to go to your website? Where do you go? No. Yep. You can get it, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, your favorite bookstore. It's hardback, paperback, and e-book.

And, yeah, or you can go to my website. I got lost in time. Dot world is a little bit easier to remember. Okay. Or my name, Jack R. Bileck. Jack? Or J.R. Bileck. Oh, it's Bialic.

It's not Bialic. Okay, pardon me. That's good. asked you first, right? I assume there's a, you know, Bialik. Bialik? That's it? Bialik? Yeah. Okay. Jack, pleasure meeting you there. I'd like to have you back sometime because I love talking about these ancient historical aspects that actually have relationship to what we're doing right now. Now, I am not taking my

mother to the clinic that has the, you know, the couching technique for, we're actually going to do the, you know, the modern surgery, but we do that. All right? Good choice. All right. Jack, thanks for the talk. enjoyed that, okay? Enjoyed it. Thank you, Bill. Take care. It is 734 at KMED.

Hi, it's John at Wellburn's Weapons, Southern Oregon Suppressor Headquarters. Come check out our large selection of in-s-service not provided by Dish. News Talk 1063, KMED. You're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. David's in the Bay Area. David, you were listening to my talk with Jack Bielick and his Lost in Time book. And you live in the Bay Area, so that is where the... The Internet Archive is located.

You want to comment on that? You had a thought, about it? Well, yeah, I had run into it maybe 10 or so years ago, and it's a very interesting place. They originally started, of course you know, The Grateful Dead. There were a lot of people that were, you know, acolytes of the Grateful Dead who would travel around to every show, and they would have all of these cassettes of,

Dead shows. And finally, when the Internet got started in the world of CDs and digital, you know, digital compilation and the same material, people started transferring their cassettes to digital, and they wanted a central place to park it. And so some of the original Grateful Dead archives are there. But then they got into other bands, and then they got into speeches, and then they got into photographs. And so this is how it ended up expanding and expanding then, right? Exactly. Well, I have to tell you, I contribute to that Internet archive. I've sent them funding because I think what they're doing is very important work. Very much so. I know. And when I started going there, I was thinking it was only an alternative world kind of thing. But far from it,

you know, the University of Texas and the Louvre Museum. They had Friday afternoon, this was before COVID, they would have Friday afternoon lunches and people from all over the world would come to those lunches. And like I was saying, you'd meet people from this, you know, the Smithsonian or you'd meet them from... It's

amazing what they're doing. My former, thanks for the tip on that one, it makes me want to go back and keep looking at it. My former corporate chief engineer is one of the people deeply involved in that. I don't know if you have ever met him, Kevin Moston in the Bay Area, but

He may be my face. I'm not sure, but yeah, he is all over that, and it's one of his life's passions right now. It's a very interesting, interesting place, but I'm hoping that we can keep this history, especially as we get more and more data all the time. David, I've got to go, but I appreciate your call and your comment, too. Thank you for checking in. And we'll check the news here coming up, which is not in the Internet Archive yet. And then talking a bit of politics.

Herman rejoins me. Day 742. Open enrollment right now going on with Medicare through early December. Got a few, two, three weeks left on that. And if you are turning 65, I will be next week, next year, rather, I should say. And you start getting just peppered with all sorts of people with, hey, talk to me, talk to me, Tom. What I suggest, please, that you talk with Lynn Barton at Sky Park Insurance. Her number is 499-0958. She helps all sorts of KMET, KBXG, listeners with this over at Sky Park Insurance. Sky Park Insurance, of course, the independent insurance agency, and Lynn has joined the family recently, and she's in charge of the Medicare

and the Medicare Advantage and the Medicare supplemental programs and trying to make sure that you understand this. And best of all, it does not cost any more to have Lynn, the expert, working with you on this. Call her up at 499-09-058. 499-9-58. You can also find out more at skypark i n s dot com i'm tony dusty with dusty's transmissions and i'm on km ed former state senator herman baird sugar with us this morning herman welcome back we always talk a little politics and more because there's just nothing good morning i'm just you know worshipping the woodstove this is the time of year that's the first thing you do every morning is worship the woodstove you know darn straight right now i would like to worship at the feet of all those people who have volunteered to sign up

people on that no tax petition, which is going out there right now. It's amazing. Oh, you know, it is, it is amazing. You know, and I'd like to take the time to thank, you know, Senator Starr and his staff, John Swanson. John Swanson's his chiefest staff. He's working really hard on this. Also, Jason Williams from the Oregon Taxpayers Association. He's, in fact, he just sent me a petition. He has sent me the bill. and he has sent me an envelope that after I get 10 signatures on here, I send it back to him. Now, the thing that people were writing me about yesterday, and some are saying, well, Jackson County seems to be concentrating on a big signature drive day this coming weekend,

and there will be some in Eagle Point. Josephine County has been very proactive in doing this right now. Some people have been asking me, though, why hasn't there, isn't there more live right now in Jackson? and county. It does take volunteers, right? I mean, that's honestly what's going on. And you can't just do it. You do need a little bit of training because you want to make sure that you do it legally, right? Because, you know, having bad signatures or things that aren't done correctly can cause more problems than good right now. That's right. You know, you need to have the bill. You need to have that visible for people to review. And then, you know, you have to make sure you tell

them, are you a registered voter? Yep. You know, all those kind of things. And then after they, after you get a signature sheet signed, then you just read the instructions and where you have to sign and all that stuff and send it in. So, or not sign. And before we move on to, yeah, yeah, Before we move on to other subjects, in Jackson County, folks, if you wanted to volunteer and maybe kick this into higher gear than even before this weekend, call Gary Clark. He is the point person from no-taxor.com. And Gary's number is 541-531-4-1-4-100. You could call him up right now. If you want to volunteer, you want to go out in front of Costco or Sherms or some other place and do this, he'll be happy to have you do that.

and then we'll put you on the list of people that are doing these petitions. But 541, once again, I just lost his number, 541-531-4-1-4-1-4-1-4-1. Okay, so we've done our part about that. Great work so far. Dway Younger is saying that he thinks there's more than 50,000 gathered so far, 50,000 signatures. Oh, I'm very confident they're going to get the signatures, and, you know, that's just part one. and part two will be the big fight. And I already see that the, as President Trump says,

the fake news media is already siding with Kotech and starting to write things. Oh, you know, the roads aren't going to be maintained, and they're going to be closed in the winter and blah, blah, blah, blah. So there are. Now, what this is is just total horse manure. because it's about priority of where they want to put it. Oh, like Diana Anderson, Diana Anderson was talking about yesterday, oh, they'll keep the ODOT planners on there for the gangrene, climate-friendly, equitable community sort of things,

but they'll get rid of the stuff that you really want, and don't be fooled by this. But there's, you know, I used to kind of bring up point, I used to kind of, no, I did bring up point about how we used to ODOT money, because, and I'm not anti-bicycle, I'm not anti-pedestrian, but I'm saying, why are we spending gas tax dollars on bike lanes and sidewalks and all of these kind of things when the people using the bike lanes, the people using the sidewalks did not contribute to those gas tax dollars? Yeah, as far as I'm concerned, bike lanes and sidewalks should be funded locally by by interest groups, frankly.

That's really what you're looking to do. Just some other funding source. Yeah, exactly, not the gas tax. The gas tax was supposed to be for, in other words, the gas tax is supposed to pay for everybody else's transportation needs, too, is what they're trying to make it. Right, and that's not right. I used to scream about that all the time,

but the entire time I served, I was in the minority, so that's how that all went. All right. Now then, I was talking with Dr. Carol Lieberman, earlier this morning about Epstein. Of course, she's not real happy. She's so Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, I'm tired of this, and it's a distraction, et cetera, et cetera.

Well, the house is looking at it this morning. It has had a press conference and saying, oh, yeah, we're going to be totally transparent. And, you know, the fact that it's taken so long to get to this point, though, gives room or gives fuel, I would say, to conspiracy theories, wouldn't you say? Is that realistic, realistic or reasonable? Yes, it does, you know. when I see Senator Wyden has this been pounding.

Oh, the Epstein, Epstein, Epstein, release them. And I'm thinking to myself, you know, be careful what you wish for, Senator. So here's what I think. Epstein was involved in a lot of people, not just political people, a lot of people. So when this gets released, there's going to be all these names that are going to be associated with Epstein. And then how do we know as citizens, how many people, business people, or, you know, just upstanding citizens went to meetings there or went, you know, and didn't partake in any of the other stuff? Yeah, who may be perfectly innocent. And this is the part that we need to reemphasize.

And I think that's also part of why they didn't want to. Certainly there are some high and mighty place that probably have a lot to worry about. I'll concede. Sure, but how about the people, you know, they're going to have their names released, and immediately everybody's going to think, oh, they were down there, yeah. Yeah, just having been there, you're being tarred, right? That's right. And now, you know, it can destroy people's careers.

It can destroy marriages. It can destroy all kinds of things, you know, just because you're associated with Epstein. Yeah, I could see some wife going, wait a minute, you're told you. But you were on a golf trip. What do you mean? You went to Epstein Island, right? Well, I was on a golf trip. So I think that's what the president has been worried about.

But it's finally gotten to the point where the only thing that's going to put this to bed is to release it. And like I said with Senator Wyden, he could wind up with egg on his face. I'm not saying he was implemented in anything. What I'm saying is good people that he may know, may, who knows whose names are going to come out of this. Well, especially given all the time that he has spent, well, with the folks in New York City, in the New York area, right? Well, yeah, he's been in the Senate for, what, 40 years? Sure. He knows a lot of people, you know.

And a lot of people getting tarred by association, yeah. Yeah. So it may not be that you're mentioned directly, but all your buddies are, right? Right, and then all of a sudden, you know, you just, you know, you get branded guilty by affiliation. Well, it will be interesting to see, needless to say, I imagine weeks and weeks of talk, radio fodder will be coming if they end up voting to release it. We'll see what happens, okay? All right. And then, here's the other thing, Bill.

How do you validate? How do you validate anything? information in there. How do you validate that? A lot of these people are gone, hard to say. And remember, these files are investigation. And so you can have a lot of claims in investigation that actually didn't go anywhere. Isn't that right?

Exactly. Well, you know, what happens if an individual's name comes up and says, I was never there. What hell did that come from? Oh, well, how do you prove, disprove, or do you even try to or what? Yeah, I don't know if we'll be, you know, in relief once these files get out if they do or if we're going to rue the day that it happened. I'm not sure yet. We don't know.

I don't know. But I think it's to the point where it's just we're going to have to go through the meat grinder. And that's the only way to settle the dust on this one. All right. Fair enough. All right. The other thing, City of Medford, you were telling me the other day that you can't believe that the city of Medford voters went for that stadium, 15-2-33. 38, the stadium and the redevelopment program?

Well, yeah, and I listened to the advertisement, and I didn't think it was, I don't know if they were lying. I'm not going to say they were lying, but I think there was a little bit of disguise there when they're saying, oh, this is going to build the ball, you know, this is going to pay for everything. I mean, they don't even have a contractor yet. They don't even have investors yet. You've got to have investors, contractors, this, that, and everything. there's a long road to hole here. And I think that the public was a little bit kind of a used car sales job, you know what I mean?

Oh, I will agree with you on that. The very fact that they put it in a special election also is guaranteed to make sure that not many people are paying attention, unfortunately. The talk radio world was paying attention, but there weren't enough of us apparently to stop it. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I just, I'm just uncomfortable when things happen through that kind of process, you know. But I think it's a long way to go, and you've got to remember, you know, I mean, oh, well, you're not going to pay for it. Somebody else is going to pay for it that doesn't even live in a state of Oregon. Well, I don't know how, you know, that's not a good way to look at things.

Well, there's also another – well, part of that bait and switch, and this is why I criticize this right from the beginning, Herman, is that now they're talking about how the stadium gets built. If it gets built, you know, we still don't know if it's going to happen at this point, but if it gets built, it would most likely be through tax incremental financing. This is like the urban renewal model. And so what they do is that they declare a district around that area that they want to put in the development. and then they take the money that would go into, that would normally go into city coffers from that tax, and they end up using it to build the stadium. So in essence, it is taking money from taxpayers

that would have normally gone for city services, but it goes to different purposes. Isn't that reality, how that works? Yeah. Or, you know, a question I have for somebody that's smarter me, can they bond this thing? So how that works is you say, okay, let's bond this for, let's do 30-year bonds. So any money coming from this lodging tax for the next 30 years goes to pay off the bonds.

So can they bond that and turn around and sell bonds? And then it's bonded by any of those revenues from, you know, maybe that's how they do it, Bill? I don't know. Yeah. As I know, at the end of the day, citizens are paying for this because, you know, well, we always do, Herman. We always do, but you'll be surprised how many people think the government pays. Government pays for nothing.

The only money government has is what is taken from citizens. I know. And then you sell this, and let's say that, okay, that a whole bunch of that tax, that hotel motel tax ends up being then committed for a long time to pay off the stadium, et cetera. You know, you do something like that. That is money that would have normally gone into the city coffers, or at least a good percentage of it could have gone into the city coffers. And then the city ends up running low on money for its normal services.

And so then it comes, well, we're going to have to go and raise your fees again, right? That kind of thing. Right. Raise your water bill. Yeah, yeah. But it's not about, it's not because of the state. stadium, right? You know, don't look at that. Don't look at the stadium. That's different. That's being paid for by tourists, right?

Exactly. I see the grants past city council just raised the water rates again because they got to fund the new water treatment plant. And you know what I don't, you know, I just get so frustrated as a person that was vice chair revenue finance. And so, you know, when they built that water treatment plant, how many years ago, 70 or whatever, how come they didn't start a fund? Well, how come somebody didn't say, you know, maybe we ought to start putting a little money into a fund. So 70 years from now, we have enough money to build or remodel the water treatment plant? None of our agencies do that. The schools don't do that either.

You know, it's like everything is like, well, no, we can't save any of the budget, which is coming in right now. No, we can't do that. No, everything has to go into just current expenses. And then when we need something, you go to the voters and raise taxes again. Every time, Herman, every time. Yes, every single time. And, you know, I help manage this little irrigation district that I'm in, and it's a great little irrigation district.

And we have some infrastructure issues because it's 100 years old. And so four or five years ago, I said, hey, let's start, because you can do this in government budgeting. You don't have to spend the money. You just have to identify that it's going to a program. Okay. In other words, you can't just have a bunch of money. You can't have it slushing around yet. You can't do that. And so you identify certain capital projects. So five years ago, the board identified a very big project, over $100,000, which is a huge project for our district. And I'm going to give a report here next week on it. And we're one year away for meeting our goal, and then we can start that project.

Boy, if only all the other government agencies could do that, that'd be great, wouldn't it? Oh, they just got to... I've always said it's a spending problem, not a revenue problem. And, you know, Milton Freeman, he's just my hero. Some people probably roll their eyes. But, you know, he said once, keep your eye on the spending, for it is the true tax. That's the absolute truth. Got to find ourselves in interesting times, that's for sure.

You know, the final thing I would have on this hotel motel tax raise that the voters supposedly voted for the other week, okay, is that we don't know if we're ever going to see that ball stadium. We also don't know if there's going to be that development because, like I said, they're working on it. The negotiations are there, and it may work out just fine. That's fine. The part that irritated me most is that half of that raise of that increase from 11 to 13 percent, one-fourth of that. tax increase goes to travel Medford that's run by the chamber and then the other half of it goes to the city coffers okay so it goes into the city the city council can use it for whatever they need you know that kind of thing but the thing is though is that why would you raise travel

metford's budget right now when there's no development supposedly to promote why would you give them more right now you're getting it you know it could be four five six years before you see anything come from this if at all right what happens if nothing nothing comes from it. Then where does the money go? Yeah, exactly. And what, do we then go back to the normal 70% split where 70% of it goes to Travel Medford and then 30% goes to the city? I don't know. That'll be a really... I didn't read the measure, so I don't know either. Yeah, because normally the hotel motel tax, the traditional split is 70% goes to Travel Medford for promotion of tourism and 30% then goes to the city, to the city.

But, you know, that can be negotiated around, apparently, and they did for this particular deal. But I have no idea what we raise travel Medford's ability to promote tourism right now when there's not going to be any additional tourism attractions. You see what I'm getting at right now? Mm-hmm. You're giving them money before it's even here. So something tells me that's the example of which the good old boys need their cut.

Maybe that's what we're talking about this morning, Herman, ultimately. You know, I just, I'm just, you know, I just, and I'm an observer because I don't have a dog in the fight, but I'm just like, I just don't like the way these types of processes go. I just don't like it. I'm a big fan of private businesses building their own stuff, but I'm silly. I get that. I understand that's a silly way of going about it today. Well, I don't mind using taxpayer dollars to leverage other dollars for, you know, to do things. I'm just the way that. This one went down. I'm just, I just raised an eyebrow bill. All right. Herman, I always appreciate the talk.

Good as always. We'll catch you next Tuesday as we kick around politics around here and elsewhere, okay? Thanks so much. Well, and, you know, let's remind people to go out, and, you know, I think you can call either Republican parties in Jackson or Josephine County, and you can get lined up to sign up. There you go. And I think pretty soon we're going to hit our 100,000 goals as far as I can. They're 150,000 signatures. Let's go for that and show Tina Kotech what we, that we mean business, I guess, ultimately.

Oh, I'll tell you what. She's going to round up all of her unions and her teachers' union and everything else. And here we go. Yeah. All right. The Siren Song of the Public Unions. I can't wait. Yep.

All right, Herman. See you next time. Take care.