Bill Meyer Show Podcast - Sponsored by Clouser Drilling www.ClouserDrilling.com - 12-03-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

12-03-25_WEDNESDAY_7AM

The Bill Meyer 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. Here's Bill Meyer. Happy to have you here. A little bit of open phone time on Wheels Up Wednesday. Anything happens to be on your mind, 770-5633-770 KMED. John O'Connor is going to join me a little bit later this morning.

There's a lot of legal stuff I wanted to talk with him about involving what's happening in D.C. and elsewhere. One of the big things out there, one of the big stories I think is really interesting is President Trump saying that he's going to void all of the auto pen. All of the auto pen, pardons and various other things that were done by, well, President Biden's auto pen machine. I just as we can call that because the, of course, the charge, and I think it's a reasonable charge, is that was it really Joe Biden doing it? Probably not from the looks of it. and I mean most of the time Joe Biden unfortunately was going around the world stage looking like you know can I have my pudding now kind of thing unfortunately don't like don't like saying it but you know he was definitely infirm it was four years of mostly

infirmity so who was running it you know people behind the scenes staffers that kind of thing and thousands of pardons and by the way I don't mind the pardon the pardon power I guess it's there for a reason, but when you have staffers, you know, issuing pardons, which is the way it's looking, you know, shouldn't that happen? But what about the legality of it? Because, gosh, you know, if you're, you know, President Trump can go out there and avoid the Biden pardons and other actions on onopan, boy, could you almost extend that then to voiding legislation, something that was signed, an infirm president? I don't know. I'm going to talk with John O'Connor about that in around 20 minutes or so. I think it could be interesting.

Also, the law of war when it comes to the attacks, all the stuff going on with the blowing up of the drugboats. And I wanted to go, and I wanted to go through this again. I am not, I am not someone defending drugboat narco people, all right? I'm just not. I'm just concerned that this is yet another impeachment trap that, of course, I don't know, that the Trump administration may be walking into if or when the Democrats end up taking control. Maybe it doesn't matter. But it just strikes me as a little bit reckless to be doing it this way right now. You know, you want to send a message, send an email.

But, you know, that's just me. And people say, well, you want to kill children on the street. It's like, no, I don't want to kill children on the street. It's not that either. The, of course, you know, then I'll read other people that have interesting. things to say about this, and I'll say the one issue with drugs being illegal, and this does make a certain amount of sense when you hear about this. Now, I used to be a member of the Libertarian Party way back when, and I realized that they were just absolute nonsense when it

comes to a governing principle, okay? So I understand a little bit about how they're thinking on such things. The one thing about drug prohibition is that the government, the government government is always in essence protecting the cartel. They protect the cartel model. And I was rolling that around in my head last night, and I hadn't thought much about that recently. And it sounds somewhat reasonable because would fentanyl be more or less available, were it perfectly legal, you know, to have on the street? Of course, we experimented with that bad social costs. On the other hand, you know, would you be okay with legalized drugs with no welfare state?

You die, you die? I guess, you know, a little bit of Darwinian survival of the fittest. And if you're on fentanyl, apparently you're not the fittest. All right, I guess Brian Kilmead might be okay with that. Remember Brian Kilmeet, he got into some hot water the other day that Fox News host. Because, oh, just kill him, let him die. You know, the homeless, you know, drug addicts and things like that. yeah i'm hoping we could be a little more uh compassion about that uh i'm kind of leaning more and

more to just uh forced commitment of serious drug addicts in order to get them back into the family of man but i don't know there's a case to be made well will bombing the boats really stop the flow of fentanyl into southern oregon when there's all that demand for it from the people that are into this i guess or will it just increase the cost? And will the cartels in Mexico be going, Woohoo! We'll get in touch with our CIA contacts.

Or is this actually taking out the CI drug running because it is well known. Government intelligence has been involved in a lot of drug running for a lot of years. Of course, maybe this is about taking out the competition so the CIA can take it over more. I don't know. I have interesting, a lot of, a lot of questions about this. Maybe we'll kick that around, okay? 770563-770 KMED. This is the Bill Myers Show. Good to have you on. I have some great news if you're looking for a great place to go for the... Visit Pfizerforall.com to learn more. Sponsored by Pfizer. You're hearing the Bill Myers Show on 1063 KMED. Ask your doctor about the shot. Of course. He or she will.

advise it. I guess there's a wonderful financial incentive to do so. I shouldn't be so sarcastic. I can't help myself sometimes through the various medical and societal propaganda. 7705-633-770 KMED. Attorney, former Fed prosecutor, John O'Connor, is going to join me here in a few minutes. We'll talk about some of the other legal things going on. I had a bit of news I wanted to share this morning. and I do have Minor Dave's pardon information up on KMED.com. If you haven't had a chance to do this, if you'd like to see Minor Day to have a pardon, I would like to get a lot of the people from Southern Oregon writing on his behalf. And I have that's up on my show blog today on KMED.com.

Just click the Bill Maher's show and get right to it. I already have it up there right now. So you can get the, you know, kind of the information, the case number and all that kind of stuff. And then just ask for a minor day pardon. I think it would be great. It would be wonderful to see this. Get one of the starfish that have been beached on the beach for a long time, maybe throw them back in the water, okay?

Do a little bit of that. Let's fix what we can from some of the injustice of the great, grand United States in which you are living on fellow land. You will be punished dearly. Yes, we will even garnish your social security benefits. Why? Because we can. And while we're at it, we'll throw you in jail for 30 days. Anyway, interesting stuff going on, all right?

But there's something very pleasant going on. I just wanted to make sure that you knew about. And this is something that my nephew is doing over in Rogue River. Matt and Kendall, my nephew and niece, Matt and his wife, Kendall. they are putting on all I could say is that this is one of those kind of of Christmas light displays

that you can see from outer space now in my family it's like one extreme to another there is my extreme on the other end which is I have my wimpy Christmas my little Christmas bush out by the garage

I put a couple hundred lights on it and that's about it. My Christmas rhododendron. That's all. I don't do any more than that. It's still pretty. I like it. And then there's Matt and Kendall.

Matt goes out there every year, and he puts up thousands upon thousands of lights. Huge displays. Everywhere you go, you can see it from the roads. It's just amazingly beautiful, amazingly festive. I guess they did raise the fence so it didn't bother the neighbors so much. You can imagine. Now, I don't know if he has the stuff that has the music.

I find the most irritating displays of the ones that have the music, the electronic music on the chip. And I'm like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, we are sat as ows. You know, all that kind of stuff. But I don't think they're doing that. But just beautiful lights, it's everywhere. Even with LEDs, I think, when he turns the lights on the power voltage dims in the neighborhood. And this is how you get to it. It's absolutely free.

He does this every year. And it's even bigger this year. You go to Rogue River, downtown off I-5. He doesn't mind me sharing his address, okay? You hang a right on Main Street, maybe a half mile to Ward's Creek Road, okay? Ward's Creek Road, and then in about a mile on that, you turn left on Matney Lane, another left on Burbage, and it's Lily May Lane. Lily May Lane, little subdivision there off the left side of Ward's Creek Road, okay?

it is just absolutely astounding. It takes him days to get it all up there and prepared, and it's absolutely free, and it's just something that makes you smile, whether your kid, kids of all ages, no charge, no nothing like that, just does it for the community. It's a wonderful display.

So that's my nephew over on Lily May Lane, okay? Rogue River. Now I'll get a call saying, I'm his neighbor, and I hate them. I don't know if that's... said or not. Good morning. Hi, this is Bill. Who's this? Good to have you on. Sorry again, Bill. This is minor day, but I've got to give you a little history lesson.

Okay. When we had the opium wars in China, Bill, opium was legal. They still had wars over it, over control, distribution, and sales. So the theory of legalizing it doesn't do us any good because... But I would also say, though, that the government really, in essence, protects the market share of the cartel, too, by making it illegal, too. Yeah, that was done to a coalition, and the United States was part of it with the U.K., well, I don't know what they were called back then or not, because they changed their name so many times.

I don't know if you can just, you know, in a reasonably semi-free open society, I don't know if you can really, I don't know if you can kill them. of cartel members unless you end up having a dictatorship at home. I don't know. What do you think? Overall. That's possible because in China now, it's the death penalty for dealing opiums in China. They just take you out and they put a 45 round in the back of your head. And then people will say, hey, that's a victory in the war on drugs. If you remember right, in the 1800s, they had a drug called Loderman, which was alcohol-based,

as opium and they you know there's a couple ways they process it I won't get into well the point being though is that no matter what laws and let me tell you we have a huge drug problem we do it doesn't matter what the laws are we have we have never found a way to magically prevent people from wanting to drink or drug themselves to death the people that want to do it and it's there's always been a certain percentage of society to do this so So what is the long-term way of getting out of this unless you're going, well, okay, yeah, you could kill every drug dealer, but then, you know. I got to tell you, look to God, he'll help you. Well, God doesn't belong in Oregon.

Have you listened to what the state legislature does? Even Republicans vote for tampons in the boys' room there, okay? Yeah, I understand. We live in a crazy time. But, you know, poppies are not the only place you can get opium from. And there is a legal way that you can get it. It's called Ginkshire of Lettuce. Yeah, I know.

But I would remind you, though, that even then I remember reading a stat the other day that when we invaded Afghanistan, the production of opium poppies actually went up. Did you read that? I read that the other day. Because that was the CIA operation. They were having Marines. Guard the Poppy Films. And that's what makes me wonder, okay, is President Trump involved in Venezuela right now

because he wants to stop the CIA cartel, or if the CIA is demanding that it gets its cartel monopoly back? I don't know. I can't answer this right now. I can't tell you. Well, my theory is he wants to break it because it's, this is international. It's the globalist. Yeah.

I hope you're right about that. I hope you're right about that. Okay. So that's your second bite, though. You can't do any more, all right? All right. All right. You know, you give me so many good topics that I have a lot of opinions on. We all do. All right. Thanks, Dave. Take care.

7.30. Like I said, Venezuela, the laws, the war of law or the law of war. I think it was Granny that wrote me last night, law of war. It sounds like a bit of a nonsense term to even have the law of war, or kind of like contradicts itself, I guess. 730 at KMED. Venezuela, getting rid of the park. all the rest of it, John O'Connor, the attorney and former federal prosecutor. Great big legal brain. He'll join me next. Hi, this is Bill Meyer, and I'm with Cherise from No Wires Now, your Dish premier local retailer. It's time to switch to DISH.

If you have direct TV or cable TV, call me today to see how I can save you money. Plus, I'll lower your internet and cell phone bills. And those offers in the mail from Dish, you can go through No Wires Now for those. Call me at 541-680-5875. Call Shr- Grow up. Ground Zero. Early evenings at 8 on News Talk 1063, KMED. Hi, I'm Amber Rose with Sisku Pump Service, and I'm on KMED.

All right, couldn't locate John O'Connor for some reason. Sometimes that happens. We'll try to get them on. I do want to focus in on that Venezuela news here at some point. Happy to take your calls, though, too, at 7705-633-770 KMED, the email at Bill at Bill Maher Show.com. Speaking of emails, I want to do some emails of the day here, and with a little break in the action. and that is sponsored by Dr. Steve Nelson at Central Point Family Dentistry. Central Point Family Dentistry.com. It's on. Well, it's right next to the Mazelon Mexican restaurant, Freeman Way, and Central Point.

Great people. And they even have a little kiosk there if you're not a patient. You can buy dental supplies, specialized tools, the water picks, things like that, at his cost. He just wants to make sure that everybody has access to a reasonably priced dental care. And good people. Mandy runs the front desk there In fact, I've got to call her up, get another cleaning in their schedule as I try to save one of my old tofs in the back there, okay?

Email of the day I'm giving out to Michael Grammins and Michael Robby last night and I could almost feel the spit hitting me in a good way because he was just very angry. It was a pebble in your shoe Tuesday talk. He says, hey, Bill, what the hell, Bill? What the hell? This is a quote from him.

said one old man to the other at the scene of a car wreck one night in the 1970s, Sonoma, California. I am like the guy that emailed you because he said he couldn't call the show because of all the F-bombs that he would drop. I just saw Chuck Schumer on television crying about death threats, about death threats, to lawmakers, saying that no citizen, lawmaker, et cetera, should have to live with that. WTF is wrong with his memory. Corsuch and Kavanaugh ring a bell, jackbucket. I should just shoot the television with a shotgun, light my internet unit on fire, and then live in peace. Well, except for the tweakers living nearby with no, no well, no power, no job, etc. May I remind you, Bill, it was still Tuesday, so pebbles are fair game.

Thank you for your participation, but I don't know how you stay even keeled these days. Don't get me started on the ignorant morons that vote for Teta Kotech. Ah! Michael, that's an email today. Like I said, I can feel the spittle of flecking onto me. Scott Seaford writes from Jacksonville, and he is, in fact, what did he say here? Let me find that. Oh, yeah, this is the one I was talking about.

We were talking about heat. It says, Bill, I'm in the process of upgrading my wood stove to a much more efficient wood heating source. The goal is to not have to use my heat. heat pump at all during the winter. I did not think this was even possible until I found this product. The concept is using masonry thermal mass to slowly release the heat generated from burning wood that could not only heat a single room but an entire home. The company's eco-stove, and it gives me their website, a couple of United States models,

and they're kind of pricey, but the testimonials seem that the eco-stove is their sole heat source. I suggest you spend some time researching this as I have and give me your thoughts. my heat pump is 70% of my electric bill that if I can replace the heat pump used to the winter to heat the entire home with the eco-stove then my decision to install the large solar array on my home becomes that's much more efficient.

Let me know your thoughts. Scott, I will. I'll take a look on something like that. Yeah, I would agree with you on the heating thing. I'm listening to my heating pump going off. It's on most of the night, really, especially. I have an older one, though. You probably have a nice new one knowing you, Scott.

but I have an older one. Mine was put in in 2002, so it's 23 years old. It's still running great. I've replaced the capacitors and everything's fine. But the one thing I have figured out is that you just set it at 68 and forget it. If you change it up and down, then the heat strips go on in the wintertime. Better just to let it run and keep it at 68. The cats, I'm sure, would much prefer that I have it at 72.

Speaking of the cats, though, I wanted to add this on the cats. A lot of people writing me and giving me good suggestions on cat houses, you know, houses to house the feralds, you know, outside. And Punky, the cat that I was telling everybody about last week, he's doing fine. He has figured this out now that our backyard is the place to hang out and maybe spend the winner, I guess, right? So now I'm going to work to not only get expensive kibble for my own cats,

Matt and Charlie, who eats way too much of the kibble. but of course he looks at me and says well you eat a lot why can't I why can't I eat a lot right but now we have Punky in the back Punky gets the not so special kitty and he's the one that got all ripped up

looked like he was ripped up by a coyote and he would keep his distance and every time Lyndon I would go out in the backyard to fill the bowl he would give us hisses it was like hisses and meow meow meow meow meow And he'd just be hissing.

And in the beginning, it was more hissed than not. Now, after a few days of him in the heated cat house, and there are days that he would be in there all day. It may even 50 degrees outside, but he'd be inside on that heating pad all day, healing up. And his tail's starting to look better. It doesn't look like his tail's going to fall off. And he now just gets out and eats and gets back in the house,

maybe wanders around a little bit. I'm hoping he's not getting into neighborhood fights anymore. At some point we might trap him and see if he's I don't think he's fixed. I'd like to fix him to make sure there are no more neighborhood indiscretions. So that's what I'm working on in my particular neighborhood, but

Punky's doing great. And now he just gives me like one hiss just to make him know that hey, you know, you're a big guy. I just want to let you know that I could take you. You know, that kind of thing. But now I get up in the morning and I go out to the

get my coffee and pour my coffee in the thermos and Punky's little house is on a table right by the window. He comes right out and he's looking in there which is the signal to you need to feed me. And so now I have to feed that cat too. So he's doing fine now.

Getting better. I might try to trap him and take into the vet and see what else is going on. Like I said, we can't fix all the problems of the world but we can just try to fix the various the various beached sea stars that we find, you know, just like that old parable, you know, taking the stars on the beach and throwing them back in the water.

I, boy, you can't possibly fix them all. No, yeah, but I can fix this one. You can say that about maybe a homeless person that you meet. You can say that about, you know, all sorts of folks. Like the famous white glove lady that I talked about before, Jeanette Royer, who everyone was helping her in Southern Oregon for a while. until she passed away. Anybody else remember, Jeanette Royer?

The white glove lady, she died about 10, 12 years ago. Very, very nice lady. She was living out on the street when it wasn't necessarily cool to do so. But anyway, yeah, we had less of a problem, you know, back at that time, too, so it was easy to take care of him. And Jeanette Royer, I assure you, as the 80-82-year-old was not into the drugs. But I did want to talk about that before I go to the phones. you know how Dave was talking about the opium wars and the drug thing and then we talk about

bombing the drug boats and all the rest of it and yet when I also look at my history we have never been able ever and been able to just pass laws and stop people who want to drink and drug themselves to death from drinking and drugging themselves to death we try you know the war on drugs war on people the war on Whatever the war is is really ended up being a war on the citizenry. The war on terror, yeah, the war on your liberty is what it's been.

That's kind of the way this goes. But that's where we kind of default. Default is, you know, what's the government going to do about this? Let me float this, because I'm not a fan of drug legalization, but there's a part of me that says maybe there is a practical side where you just have to figure there's going to be a

certain, there's going to be a two or three percent of your population. that is just going to do this no matter what. Some will be functional. Most will be not. You know, not functioning is just the way it goes. What about just camps? You know, instead of trying to go there and get housing,

you pass kind of a mass civil commitment law of sorts, and it's outside criminal justice, but, you know, we find you, you're addicted to drugs. You go into the camp, into the drug camp. Now, I know that sounds kind of dangerous in some respects. But society also does have a right to be able to protect itself and keep the undesirable behavior from spreading any more than it already is. I mean, yeah, you go out there and kill every drug boat, Captain, that there might be.

There will probably be some that replace them, or less they'll come in in other, methods. That's just the way it is. This is just the practical reality of it. But I know the government always says if we just kill enough people, well, I suppose if you kill enough people, then, you know, fine. Then, uh, and you just kill every drug dealer you find. Then, yeah, I suppose eventually that is, but then you no longer have a

civil or any, even a semi-free society. But what about drug addicts into drug camps? And that's just it. And I mean, literally like a forced commitment instead of this voluntary aspect. It's like, you're drug addicted. You're not functioning. your freedom is forfeited until you're off that. It would seem to me it be a pretty good incentive not to stay on it, wouldn't you think? And I know it would be expensive.

But on the other hand, it's really expensive to fight the war on drugs, too. And you build up the police state. You're building up the police state, and you're saying, oh, okay, let's bomb every boat out there at international waters. just throw it out there with you 770 OKABD let me grab the phones here good morning hi this is bill bill this is your uh Slovenian cousin okay now if you're going to be a Slovenian cousin you have to give me a little bit of uh you know a little bit of warning oh sorry we have to think about polkas and Frankie Yankovic a little bit of beer a little bit of

Petitza. I think about my grandma Prozac with her old Kirby vacuum cleaner, 6 o'clock on Sunday morning with Bill Sellas, Polka Bandstand on WKPA, New Kensington. She's, and she's cleaned in the house, six in the morning. And then we would have Petitza with a little bit of milk in the morning, too. You know, if you had a Kirby vacuum, it was kind of like having a color TV in the 70s. This was the 60s, though. But, yeah. The Kirby vacuum, I think, if I remember the Kirby vacuum being one of the largest, heaviest, most noisy pieces of home equipment that existed at that time. Very loud, very effective, though. Well, I can remember a friend of mine sold him in one of the demos, he'd go over a rug.

And what we found out later is that they could suck through the floorboards and get out of the basement. I'm sure. Suck material up. I think you've got to be kidding me. But anyway, what did you call for? I caught the tail end of our master of autos, Eric. And did I hear him predict Chrysler evaporating? Yeah.

Did I hear that? Yeah, that's what he talked about. There's only one product left with it right now. And that's the Chrysler, Pacifica, that's the minivan. That's the only product they have right now. God, that is... I understand it, but it's just hard to bit my head around. Well, look at some of the other makes that have disappeared over the years.

Pontiac, of all things. Everybody had a Pontiac when I was growing up, you know? And, you know, it's... For any of us that had a, you know, a thinking perspective. We knew Electric was a disaster just waiting to happen. And you start wondering, though, if electric was designed to be the disaster waiting to happen? Could it be that conspiratorial? Will we be off our rockers to even wonder if that was the whole plan?

You destroy the industry by force-feeding the electric? Yeah. I mean, one of your shows you had somebody, maybe it was you, I might have been somebody else, that we're talking about AI and the electric demand that AI was predicted to create. Yeah. It was mind-boggling. And then you put your entire transportation network on the same fragile grid, and you're going to run it on intermittent and chaotic power.

What's always such a thing, eh, Brad? You know, I'll tell you, because you can relate to this. If I didn't have patica and a couple rainiers, I don't know what I do. No, it's not rainier, my friend. Iron City. Okay. It's out from Pittsburgh. It has to be.

Well, and by the way, you don't. pronounce it iron city it's arn city orn city all right oh and i'm personal how's your mom doing with the the i thing with the work she's at that she's doing fine and went in went in for the second i blub on monday over at medical eye center and did the checkup yesterday and so far so good and uh by the way mom it's probably time for you to take the drops if she's listening i just wanted a reminder just in case but it looks it looks pretty good and she's she is getting better now both eyes have been done the left or the right eye rather is been healing a week now and it's a much better the left eye of course is still in the process it's

only been a couple of days but so far so good and she's able to i would say she's probably a 2060 2070 something like that if i were to estimate it it's like you know small print not working that yet but before she was essentially blind with the cataracts it was bizarre how bad it was Wow. All right. Well, you know, the amazing thing on this topic, and I'll let you go, is I'm 71 now, and I might make it that 90s, just the way medical's gone, you know, depending. Will you make it with your mind intact, though?

That's the big question. Well, that, yeah, I'm going to do like Hank Williams and have my brain frozen. I have to tell you, that is the big thing. I don't really want to extend myself if it gets to the point where I just end. up being in a memory care center. And that's been a growing trend. I don't know if you noticed that. No, I understand completely a bit. Thank you for everything you do, buddy. All right. Thank you. I appreciate your listenership there. Another brother, Brad. 753.

Ready to upgrade your roof to a durable sleep? Good morning. This is News Talk 1063, KMED. And you're waking up with the Bill Myers Show. 755, continuing on the emails of the day here. Dale writes me, Bill, I'm really getting tired of many of the politicians as well as many in the media who skewer the truth and have decided to refer to them as all being verbane. To me, they are a poison to the truth of those matters that they speak or write about. They are also pseudo-Americans, Dale of Medford. You know, it's really going on, Dale, I'm glad you brought this up because, and I could say this about right-wing media, the same as the left-wing media. I am it's like everyone is just in their in their bubble we're not even trying to be I'm not saying we like you and me I'm talking about the system doesn't seem to even want to try to be credible if you're left wing media you're just going to do left wing media if you're right wing media as an example doesn't matter what president Trump does you'll sit there and and just praise neither is really helpful right now for us trying to to solve

our problems. Skewering the truth is something on both sides. And like I said, I support President Trump, a lot of what he's been doing. Like I was talking about this, you know, knocking down the benefits for the illegals and things I was mentioning yesterday. But when he goes on his press conference

yesterday, and he says that he inherited the worst inflation ever, and I just wanted to spit my coffee out when I read that. I heard that. I'm going, wait a minute. Don, love you, baby. But I entered the workforce in 1980. I remember what the inflation was like from the Jimmy Carter era in the late 1970s. I remember mortgages in the 18% deal for a while there. And I remember feeling lucky in 1985 that I was

able to buy down an FHA loan to 10.5%. Don't tell me that we've experienced the worst inflation of all time that it was inherited. Yeah, we had a bad inflation. But it was nothing like, nothing like the late 70s into the early 80s. And then Paul Volker, the Fed Chief at that time, ended up raising interest rates to the moon to just bake the inflation out of the economy. And boy, it was rough trying to find a job in 1982. I remember that, graduating high school in 79. And it was a real challenge because people were pulling their horns in.

And maybe if you're old enough to remember that, well, I sure remember that. K.M.D., good morning. This is Bill. Hi, who's this? Hey, hey, Bill, it's Brad. Good morning to you. Hey, two brads back to back. What's going on? Go ahead. Oh, man. Hey, Paul Volker, there's a blast from the past. I know. So I want to talk you about transportation, but just because you just said this, a lot of people don't know that that period of time that you just talked about,

Oregon had to repeal their usury laws because the banks were charging more than loan charts used to. Oh, no. I didn't know that. I wasn't here that. Yeah. Yeah, Oregon. Oregon actually had the Oregon legislature. We had, we had usury laws on the books, and the legislature actually had to pass a law to repeal the usury laws because the banks were charging more than the usury laws allow. Isn't that crazy? Yeah. Now, my question is, though, is that which politicians got paid off so that usury laws never came back into effect? That's what I like to know, all right? They'll like that. So, Bill, I really, I love the sessions with Eric Peters.

Transportation is a big deal. Sure. So here's some numbers, and I want to know if these numbers sound about right to you. So throw the numbers out there, and I'll tell you what they are. All right. So $2,000, $300,000, $640,000, $345,000. Now, what are those numbers? $2 billion.

$2 billion. That is Portland's TriMet budget. $2 billion. Yeah. $300 million. $300 million is their current operating projected deficit. $300 million. $640,000.

That's the number of people that actually live, that's everybody. That's everybody that lives in Portland. And here's the last number. $345,000. That is what the director of TriMet gets paid. plus benefits to do his job. That's what they get paid to lose that money, huh? Wow.

Yeah. Does that sound, I mean, $2 billion for a town that only has six? That's over $3,000 a year for every man, woman, and child that lives in Portland. Does that sound right to you? Yes, it does sound about right because, well, this is government money, our money, of course. But I'll try to top you with this one. Did you see the Oregonian story yesterday? About 1,900 affordable Portland apartments sit empty while thousands of people.

people need homes. Did you read that one? Do you see that? I did not tell me about it. Okay. All right. They have 1900 publicly subsidized rental units sitting empty all across Portland according to estimates. And what they're finding out, these were all affordable housing that taxpayers were paying extra money for. And the problem is, is that what has been happening is people have been leaving Portland and because people have been leaving Portland other homes have become vacant so rents have been dropping a little bit there

but Portland apparently has kept their affordable publicly subsidized affordable apartments up so high and practically they're also not as nice as the ones in the private sector right and so they've kept their prices high they kept their prices high and the people are saying this is not affordable this is not affordable for me

And so instead of lowering rents, which is what is going on with, you know, the private sector, private sector cutting their rents in some cases, they're keeping them high. And so we have all these empty Section 8 rentals up in the Portland area. It's an amazing story, but only in Portland. I did not know about that story. I did know that Portland some time ago decided to get into the rental property business. So unlike every other city in Oregon, Portland in all their wisdom, some time ago decided that they would get into the rental business. So the other side of that bill is, so the city of Portland owns all these rentals and its commercial property. What has happened to commercial property values in the last 24 months in Portland?

It has plummeted, my friend. So what does that do to the balance books for the city of Portland? That makes it not look so good. It looks worse, my friend. Yeah, wow. Well, they might have a management problem up there, Bill. Yeah, it could be. Dr. Eric Fruits, I don't know if you know him. Used to be with Cascade Policy, but he's an economist out in the Bend area. I invited them on the program tomorrow, and he has written an outstanding piece.

Don't know if you caught that one. But he says that Portland is actually in a state of collapse right now, and it's economic collapse. And when people talk about economic collapse, Brad, economic collapse is not an event. It's a process. It plays out over years and decades. It's like the initial crisis in Detroit, as an example, or in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, you know, near my hometown. The initial crisis, let's say, were like 1980,

but it took like 20, 22 years or so before the collapse had actually completed itself. and we're already in that process. He says Portland is still in the process of collapsing, and it can't be reversed right now. They are, you have such great, yeah. What time is it going to be on tomorrow? I don't want to miss that. Yeah, 7-10.

Dr. Fruits will wake up early. We'll talk with them about that, okay? All right. Yeah, you know that in a recent report that just got published comes out once a year, that of 81 metro markets, Portland is 80th for investors, which means all of the institutional money has left Portland, and it's not coming back.

And what Dr. Fruits is saying, that when you look at history in the process of urban collapse and city collapse, that once it starts, it speeds up and that, if anything, it will continue and speed up,

and there's really no way to save it right now, which I thought was ye. But we'll talk to them about that, 710 tomorrow, okay? We can feel much better about Southern Oregon. A little shot in Freud, right?