03-11-26_WEDNESDAY_7AM

0:00This hour of the Bill Meyer show podcast is proudly sponsored by Clouzer Drilling. They've been leading the way in Southern Oregon well drilling for more than 50 years. Bite out more about them at Clouzer Drilling dot com. We saturday one of my favorite agricultural brains is on the phone here at a comment. Hello, Gwen R. Shambo. How are you doing over in Phoenix? Good to have you on. Not not too well, Bill. Oh, sorry. What's up? Well, I just, I just got done pulling a dead lamb out of you horrible. Oh, no. But the big item is I'm watching my neighbors pull their trees out of the ground. The pair of trees are coming up and going. I don't know how much it's going to go, but there's a lot of trees on the ground right this morning. Now your neighbors are Harry and David. Harry and David and novice some private owners. I don't know their names, but that orchard 35 acres or so is completely down. Part of the orchard on Royal Crest Road is on the ground.

1:05And you know, it's a pretty permanent item in the orchard industry. If you take your trees out, you better have a big plan coming. Yeah, I would imagine. Well, you know, there is the story. The story is coming out that Harry and David ended up laying off about 100 supervisory employees starting last week. And they talked about the transformation plan. They put it in scary air quotes. I love the corporate speak, but they're saying that they just wasn't enough revenue coming in. And they had to cut costs. That's essentially what they're saying. And it would seem strange, though, to pull your fruit out, given that 1,800 flowers, where are they? Are they thinking about not having Harry and David growing their own fruit anymore? It's a possibility. Now, of course, you've got to remember, they own a lot of trees. Yeah. Most of them are still on the ground. So they may be trimming overhead. But for us, average people here in Southern Oregon, that's a bunch of jobs they're disappearing.

2:06And we've been through this before. And you may want to take a drive through Phoenix, Oregon, where lots of doors are closed and boarded up. So it's kind of adding to a group of issues, and mostly people losing their job. Well, thanks for the observation. I was not aware of the trees coming out, but that does speak to something, doesn't it? Yeah, I think we need to hear from some of the professionals in the pair industry, what they think of this, because I was here and they put these orchards in. These are really expensive orchards. Okay. Thank you, Glenn. And we will look into that. And like I said, I don't know much about trying to find someone who does. Okay. Yeah. All right. Okay. Thank you, Bill. Thanks a bunch. 12 minutes after seven. All right. Now, if you find yourself, well, even if you're not finding yourself under financial strain right now, I'd still recommend you get in touch with the folks over at Skypark because why should you pay

3:08more than you have to for insurance? All right. You got to have insurance. Gotta keep that going. All right. 2615444. Talk with Steve over at Skypark. Skypark.inus.com. He's an independent, works with many different companies, and I have great reports. He's worked great for me, and I know he'll work great for you. Even if he, well, just might not have he can do a good deal. 261544, get a quote today from him. And if you already have the best deal possible, he'll tell you. That's the way it works. He'll say, Hey, I can't beat that, but it wouldn't be great one way. And if he can beat your deal, isn't that great? All right. 26154444 or Skypark.inus.com. That's Skypark Insurance. At Skypark, we make insurance easy. This hour of the Bill Meyer show is sponsored by Glacier Heating and Air, making sense of the heating and air business. Now more with Bill Meyer. Now living out here in a left coast city like Oregon, where we're red or purpley here in the southern part, but still under the control of a,

4:12largely hard left Democratic party. What is the health of the party? I mean, do Democrats want to be normal? Are they as weird as they come off in the state legislative session when we look at some of the, you know, the bills coming out of the state legislature? I mean, what is the typical Democratic voter really looking at or looking like or looking for? Well, it just so happens that Sam Case here, director of external affairs with the Manhattan Institute, Manhattan Institute backcase. And they conducted a poll on such matters. Sam, it's a pleasure having you on. Welcome. Hey, great. Thanks so much for having me. Appreciate being here. So, Sam, tell us about this polling and what you've discovered when it comes to the polarization, the right, the so-called right, the so-called left, Republicans, the squishy middle, the lefties, the independence. What are we finding out these days when you look a little more deeply in it and you talk to them outside of school? What do you say? Yeah. Yeah. So we recently took a big

5:13national survey of Democratic voters. And it was, it was pretty large. It was over 2600 voters. And we had over samples of Hispanics and African-Americans. And basically what we found among the Democratic Party is you can kind of split it into three distinct blocks of voters. You've got these moderate Democrats who make up about just under 50% of the coalition. And these folks are relatively reasonable on a lot of policy. They look more like I would say like my friends and family who are the moderate Democrats, you know, they're not crazy. They're, they're pretty normal. And then you've got these progressive liberals who make up about 37% of the Democratic Party. And these folks are a bit further to the left of these moderate. And then you've got what we're dubbing the woke fringe, which is the 11% of voters. And I think these are probably your blue-haired folks, you know, who are, who are much farther left on, on policy. And kind of one example, we asked a lot of issued questions on this survey on immigration, crime, public safety, DEI. And one of the questions we asked was, you know, do you think that the US has a long history

6:18of racism and is still a racist country today? Or the US was the racist country in the past, but is no longer racist country? And when you look at the moderate Democrats, 46% of them think the US is still racist, but the other half think the US isn't racist. But among, but among this woke fringe that 11%, almost 70% of them think the US is still a racist country. And so this is the block of voters that is shifting the party leftward, whereas a plurality of Democrats are much more moderate and would like to see more moderate policy. Now, when we talk about a moderate Democrat, is it, would you define them here, Sam, as the moderate Democrat as well? I'm thinking about like, you know, when I was growing up and my family members were Democrats and they were coal miners and steel workers, you know, kind of the lunch box Democrats, or are those Democrats Republicans by comparison to today's moderate Democrats? I'm wondering how things have shifted over time, do we know? Yeah, I think that's a great question. I do think that there has been some realignment

7:19where folks were Democrats and became Republicans, but I think a lot of folks, especially older folks, they don't like to give up their identity tag, you know, they like, they've been Democrats since the 60s and 70s and they'd like to be Democrats today. And you're right that the moderate Democrats, which were folks that self identified as either a moderate Democrat, an independent or an anti-Trump Republican, we put them on the same camp because they were Kamala Harris voters. These folks are older. They had an average age of 53. They're a bit wider. And, you know, yeah, they, they, they diskew older than our woke friends who had an average of 43. So our 11% of crazies were, or the wacky, the wacky folks, they were 10 years younger on average than the moderate Democrats were. Okay, which is, which is a bit of a concern that they coming up generations will just continue to gain more and more power. And I guess that's something to be talking about, isn't it? Yes, it's definitely something to be talking about. And when we looked at the survey, you know, we obviously have the three blocks, but if you look at the over 50 versus the under 50,

8:19like we asked a question on the survey, which was, you know, do you think the Democratic Party should move further to the left or is it fine where it is? And on the over 50 group, only 15% that the Democratic Party should move further to the left, but under 50, 31% that the Democratic Party should move further to the left, you know, older voters, they want the Democratic Party to move towards the center, 44% of over 50 said the party should move towards the center, whereas only 30% of the under 50 said the party should move towards the center. So like, yeah, the younger voters, they really are much more progressive and they want to see the party move leftward. And that's that's part of their ideology, part of their part of their motivation. Yeah, and to your point about this, I'll give you an example out here in the state of Oregon, the entire rest of the world. Sam, by the way, Sam Kay from the Manhattan Institute is with me this morning. The entire world other than Oregon and maybe California and perhaps Washington are starting to step away from the transgender agenda, like the proverbial Georgia mule, you know, that kind of they just say, Hey, this is just nuts. People are getting sued now. And this is just not working out.

9:24We're finding out that mental illness doesn't get, doesn't get cured with surgery. We're finding out all this kind of stuff now. Oregon in the latest legislative session has doubled down on it and putting extreme privacy concerns against this. In fact, you'll get to the point where you can actually traffic children into Oregon and have their genders affirmed with surgery without telling parents. That's essentially what, you know, they're, they're talking about here. And Oregon's on the fringe, I guess, on this isn't it? According to your polling on this? Yeah, I mean, the voters are, and then Democratic Party, the majority of voters are much more reasonable on transgender, like we ask one question on the sports because I think the sports is the big piece of this. Yeah. And we can talk about the gender mutilation of the children as well. We have some data on that. But on specifically on the sports, we ask them, you know, do you believe that athletes under the age of 18 should play with the gender that matches their sex at birth or the one they identify with, right? And when you ask the moderate Democrats that, which you remember, these are a plurality of the party. 47% of Democrats are in the moderate Democrat camp.

10:28Only a quarter of them think that you should play in the sport you identify with the gender that you identify with. But that one fourth is probably pretty noisy these days and controls the field. Yes, yes. And I think you're right that the activists are key here. But what if you look at the woke fringe, this 11%, which are much more likely to be activists voters, people who, you know, call their politicians donate money, show up at rallies, 64% of them think that you should play in the with the gender that you identify with. And you're absolutely right that the activists are the one that's driving this movement. It's these moderate Democrats, right? Like I think about my grandfather who's who's 92 and he's a Democrat and he's been a Democrat since 1946 or whatever it is. Yeah. And he, you know, doesn't believe in the transgender movement, but he also doesn't call his congressman. He doesn't show up at rallies and yell at politicians that they need to do this and that. It's the 26 year old woke ideologue that is talking to their politicians is putting yard signs in their and front of their houses is showing up at rallies is donating money is, you

11:29know, the activists are the one that drive this movement leftward. And those are in the woke fringe during their much more progressive. Is there anything that can be judged from the polling on foreign policy issues right now, right? Now we're involved in a war in Iran. And it seems like everywhere I'm looking, it's kind of mixed, mixed opinions about everywhere I look these days. What do you think? Yeah, I completely agree. I think people are, you know, trying to understand what's happening in Iran and figure out what, you know, what the goals are. But in our poll, we did talk a little bit about Israel because, you know, they're kind of at the center piece of this. And when you look at the Democratic voters, it's actually kind of interesting, you know, I think they should get a little bit of credit for this, you know, 50% of voters on our survey say that Israel has a right to exist. And then you've got kind of this woke fringe where they think Israel's a colonial apartheid state that should be dismantled. And I think, you know, it's this, again, it's this, this smaller subset of Democratic voters that are radical on Israel, are radical on transgender, radical on DEI and race and crime. And they're the loudest voices in

12:32the party and they're shifting party left. Is there anything in the polling which, which talks about, you know, real anti-Semitism because I've been concerned in a country which thrives on free speech and vigorous debate that anti-Semitism has been redefined as disagreeing with what, with what the leaders of Israel want. That's a, and so I don't like that definition of it so far. I think we always need to be able to criticize even our allies. But what say you? Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. I think we should be able to criticize our allies. And we did ask the question specifically on the survey about like anti-Semitism. We asked voters, you know, thinking about, we asked respondents, thinking about people who say or, or identify as anti-Semites, what should we do with them in the party? And only 4% of the respondents say that I am one of those people. So only a very small percent is self-identified as an anti-Semite. And a much larger percent, 44% of Democratic voters said that individuals who identify or say anti-Semitic things are unwelcome and don't represent their views.

13:33I mean, so when you kind of couple that with the Israel taking, you know, you did have a sizable chunk of Democrat voters say Israel is a colonial state and we shouldn't be allies with them and we shouldn't support them. But then on the other side, you know, they, on terms of the actual identifying label of anti-Semitism, they don't support that. If you were to, or could you draw a conclusion on where you see politics in the United States headed, given the changes in the Democratic Party that you're talking about, which sound different from 20 years ago, for sure. Yeah, I think that the Democrats have a reckoning to deal with, you know, they obviously have a voting block. You know, the Democratic Party compared to the Republican Party, right? When you ask voters, do you have a favor, one favor, opinion of the Democratic Party versus the Republican Party? The Democrats have much worse ratings. They, and that's because the voters in their own party dislike their party. And it's reasonable to assume, based on our data and everything we've seen, that it's because more voters in the Democratic Party are moderate than the politicians like in Oregon or in the House in the House of Representatives.

14:35Oh, oh, okay. So I was under the assumption that they were unhappy with the Democratic Party because it wasn't progressive enough. But that's only with the young, the very young side of that. I think it cuts both ways. I think you've got this like half of Democratic voters who are moderate. I think the party's gone too far to the left. And then you've got this like 20 to 30 percent of progressive woke people in the party who think that the Democratic Party is too far to the middle or too far to the right. And so everybody just hates every position. So you've got, you know, you've got Democrats who are trying to attack to the left to win primaries and appease their woke base. And you've got the moderate Democrats who are being attacked from their left like for not being progressive enough. And it's really damaging to their party brand. And they're going to have to figure it out because you have to have a unified party to win general election. Yeah. Of course, it's interesting because you talk about the Democratic candidates tacking left to win the primary. Well, the same thing happens with Republicans too, in which they'll tack hard right or more to the right that'll make me happy for the most part as an example. And then

15:38govern as a squish later on. I think you're completely right. And it's the frustration of mine as well. I'd like to see, you know, traditional, you know, hard-nosed conservatives win primaries, win general elections, and then govern that way as well. Yeah. Indeed. Hey, where can people fight out more about this poll? And because like I said, this was a big poll when you have 2600 in the national poll. That's actually a large number for a specific group out there. It's pretty good numbers. Yeah. So you can find out more at Manhattan.82, which is our website. And then we also have a write-up in our magazine City Journal by Jesse Arm are our president of polling who has done a great write-up on this in the magazine City Journal. Sam Kay, I appreciate the update. And thank you so much. I'm going to check that out and share all we can, okay? Be well. Yeah, thanks so much for having me on. Appreciate it. Thank you. Sam Kay, Director of External Affairs, Manhattan Institute Manhattan.Institute 728. You're on KMED. When it comes time to build your dream home, your top six three KMED. State Senator Noah Robinson. It's going to be in studio. Hopefully my my Facebook camera will be able to capture his great height. It's like the tall guys club, right?

16:44We'll talk with him here in a couple of minutes. Kind of a post-mortem on the legislative session. Big news here in Southern Oregon having to do with layoffs at Harry and David and Brad, you are the way in on the Ag stress here, reflecting Southern Oregon, I guess. Where are you going, huh? Yeah, yeah. Bill, Brad, you're good morning to you. You know that what Glenn Arshambo was talking about has been coming for a long time. So, yeah, you'll remember back in 2000. That was when the water got turned off out of the climate lake for the first time. That was kind of the the initial shop he shot across the bow at that time, right? Bill, it turned off the water to 18,000 farm families. 18,000 farm families. How many that affected? And I did a project. My company was doing some improvements for Harry and David back back in the mid 1990s. And they've been paying attention to this. And farming is really water-dependent. And as you know, we're the midst of water wars. So, I wouldn't be surprised. Harry and David leadership, they're looking at how much risk

17:44there is in farming and Ag stress, the agribusiness stress is far and wide right now. Maybe sometime you can get Greg Addington. Greg Addington runs the Oregon Farm Bureau. Greg could give you a lot more information on this, but people don't realize how close we are to losing an awful lot of American farmers here. You know, I'm going to call up Greg today, and hopefully I can book him on the show tomorrow. I'm going to ask him about this because this is a big deal. And I find it interesting. You know, I had not even considered that when I was looking at the stories and writing the stories about the Harry and David layoffs that you can have 1,800 flowers looking at the political risk of actually growing pairs in southern Oregon because of the war against water. The water, you know, the water wars in which water is not for storing behind dams and not to be used for power or not to be used for agriculture, but is to be used to, well, for fish and for fish only, apparently, is the way they tend to look at it in this state.

18:47And so that's a real political risk, isn't it? Agriculture runs on managed water and managed water requires dams and water distribution systems. And now that the left has successfully removed the dams from the clam, if it's open season on all these other dams, and it's getting a lot of attention in the agricultural community. All right, it's good point. And I'll get in touch with Greg and maybe I can get them on Thursday's show. Okay, thanks for the suggestion. I always appreciate that. By the way, if you want to suggest a guest to the email bill at billmyershow.com and we thank our friends over at clouds are drilling for sponsoring the podcast podcast available on kmed.com and billmyershow.com. Always keep you up on things. State Senator Noah Robinson here. Bring him on in a couple sweet water sanitation. Are your experts in the sanitation business? Be the answer. It's hard to stop a train. Be comfortable calling glacier heating an air called 6640942. Good morning. This is news talk one oh six three K M E D and you're waking up with the billmyershow. And I certainly hope

19:47it is a good morning for you. We're looking for highs today in the low 60s to be hitting the 70s next week. Yeah, I don't think we're going to have that snow as far as that snow in the water back is not going to be happening, right? 738, though, joining me in studio state Senator Noah Robinson, who is well, gracing our presence this morning. And thank you for sitting down so I could fit you in the camera lens. But well, thank you very much. It's always wonderful to be here. And it's you know, it's wonderful to be actually in here in person with you rather than up in Salem. Well, it's always great to have you on one way or the other. And we're past the the session now, this short session. And overall, it's just now, honestly, it was kind of a train wreck, wasn't it? I mean, is there any other way of describing it that a train wreck or maybe some positive here and there or what? Yes, it's always a train wreck. It's it could have been worse. We got a few things that are helpful. But mostly Oregonians lost. We do every session. Yeah. And that's the way that goes though. Any, you know, I noticed that everyone's talking about the various grants and money

20:50coming to various districts, right? And and that and it seems like everybody kind of got something in there this time. Would that be fair? That's I would say that and I really hate this system. We take the money from the district. We send it to Salem and they distribute it back. It's your money. They're just giving it back and giving it back to projects they prefer and you hope and you hope to beg it back, right? That's right. And then it becomes a big political football who got the money back. I it's it's a terrible procedure. The Democrats were because they control it all under pressure from the public and so forth. They were very reasonable action in terms of distributing it more to rural districts this time than otherwise. Yeah. Because last time there was there were some some issues here. Oh, yes. It's very common for the B issues. This time they decided to go a different route. Now in your district, what actually happened? What kind of grants? Well, we've got a gold hill got a project. They have a having a lot of trouble with water. They've got a lot of projects. It's been a huge problem for them. Yeah. So they they they should be able to help do that. There's a spawning park project and grants path. The frustrating things about these is they gave two million to the spawning park project,

21:51which is an important project. Yeah. That's like the pumping station to get the sewage over the hill, I guess. I know, but I've looked at the plans. I mean, they got two million that's going with. I think it's 3.8 million for the project. There's probably $50,000 with equipment there. I mean, the project is not complicated. It's the state. The way the state does these projects, the requirements. I still don't know how you spend four million. I think we're I think you could do it for 200,000 easily. Well, that wouldn't help. It's a four inch pipe. It's a four inch pipe with a sewage pump. It's a sump that six feet in diameter and 16 feet deep. You could buy every piece of equipment that you're going to use on the project brand new to start with and and still I don't know how you spend the money. I've been asking about this, but this is not new. I mean, we spent $24 million on two flower gardens in the capital. This is the way we go. $24 million for two flower gardens. Really? There's two nice flower gardens that court yards around. And I think it's fair on a square footage basis for what they spent on the capital.

22:53And I don't think they're any easier harder than the rest of it is $24 million. Wow. I'd like to be a gardener and Salem, you know, for the sounds of it. You can get that. If you can get that, that company got a lot of money on those contracts, but they spent over 600 million on that capital project. And it's just everyone loses sight of the numbers. It's just a huge number. Well, that's just it. You talk about, well, even for most of us, even to try to envision $600 million, you know, $600 million, you know, most of us have no clue what we'd even do with a million dollars, much less 600 million. Or what's the buyennial or the two-year budget that's 60 something billion dollars? Yeah, it's about two year. Yeah, 140. Oh, 140 billion. Yeah. But yeah, but when you start to break it out into 600 million, I was just big because it's out of the range of the numbers people thinking, but you need to figure every centered office, you know, $1.2 million for the little upgrade there, $24 million for the flower garden. Just start looking, $2,500 per square foot. $2,500 bucks a square foot. To renovate. To renovate something it's there.

23:57That's right. That isn't saying that the thing was shut down for seven or eight years, mostly, while they worked on it. Is it because it's like marble floor or something? What is it about that? There's marble up there. But they didn't replace that much. I mean, a lot of it was putting earthquake isolation. Oh, okay. But you see, you know, earthquake, earthquake, what do they call it, earthquake mitigation these days, that's kind of like the new asbestos, isn't it? You know, if all you have to do is just say earthquake and all of a sudden, oh, just start writing hot checks everywhere you go. No, that's exactly right. And that's what it's been used as an excuse to spend vast amounts of money. We, the Abernathy Bridge project, which I think people are aware of, it's up on 205. They're over 800 million on that project. And the original excuse was we need to protect this from earthquakes, battery, you know, the ground to liquefied. We need to put foundations down. That we're going to widen it. Two lines. The bridge cost, I think, was about 150 million built in two years in 68 and 70, 150 million in today's dollars, if you adjust for inflation.

25:01We're over 800 million. And I took, we took my office, we got, tried to get the numbers from ODOT, a lot of stuff. They don't know. Yeah. But the materials, the concrete and steel, that's what bridges are made out of are about 40 million. And if you can look at their labor hours, a lot of which I'm sure were spent on things that didn't need doing at 50 dollars an hour, which is very high for that kind of work, you're still at 140 million. Where's the rest of the money? Wash rents repeat, I think is what you're talking about. Yeah, well, it's just, it's going everywhere. And there's the 47 million on engineering engineering. It's just a bridge. I mean, a big one isn't that harder than a small one. Yeah. Now, no, no, what is your degree end again? Hey, chemistry. Yeah. Okay. Chemistry. All right. Now it's your, your brother is the one that's the engineer, right? That's right. But I like physics. And you know, engineering is just applied physics. It's not hard to understand. All right. Just one of the ass because I mean, you have a bunch of overachievers in your family. Okay. That's right. Now I want to now, I'm going to ask a loaded

26:03question here right now. And the question I have been wondering since the end of the session is what did Republicans get? And the reason I'm bringing this up is that the gun bill, you know, the gun bill house bill 4145, right? That end of the passing the last day, it was gutted and stuffed with Democrats. Democrats gutted and stuffed and took a really anti-gun bill and at least turned it into something tolerable for Republicans and for people who have firearms because it turned it into something good. Democrats had no reason to do this. They could have gotten that passed and there didn't seem to be a lot of effort or a lot of, of, of, of want to walk out any further or deny quorum or maybe there weren't enough. I don't know. There had to be a deal. Do you know what the deal was? Of course. There's a lot of discussions that go on behind closed doors. I'm not fond of the deal making, but at some level,

27:04they do it. I think you'd be better off just shutting things down and just saying, look, we're not going for this. I know you're one of the ones that wanted to deny quorum. We did deny quorum for half a day. That of course puts under pressure. I mean, it's half a day. Yeah. And I can tell you that there were a lot of discussions behind closed doors and part of it was changing that on bill to something we're told to actually a positive thing. So what did they get? Did they get the moving of the tax bill vote? Was that part of the part of the deal? What do you know? See, this, well, that's what you see. I'm not in on a lot of those discussions, actually. What I know, you see, no, it's not part of that club. In other words, he's not a member of the squish club, I guess. I don't know. Well, that's the thing because I wouldn't do it. I mean, but but something but some of it actually was done well in terms of getting rid of things. And on the moving the tax vote, I think we should not have, I think we should have just stayed out on that one. I mean, it's and you realize it's going to be voted down either way. Yes. And moving it up, it does some things that prevents people from it puts it at a date, which was not expected.

28:07You shouldn't change the rules afterwards. And it also makes it almost impossible for people to get voters pamphled statements in without paying the, paying the fee. And so there's real legitimate legal problems with it. But in some way, it's more an insult than anything else. They're doing this because they can do it and because they think it will help them with the governor. It's a smack. It's a smack across the face to the voter. Essentially, it's what this is. But, you know, can you confirm that this would that they were almost going to lie down on the 1599? That's the one that moves the vote. Do you think that the Republicans were more open to that if they got the gun bill gutted? I think there's some element of that. Yes. You do. I don't think there's, I don't think it's any direct quid pro quo or anything like that. There's, there's discussions about it. And there's a question of, will we walk out? You know, we did walk out for half a day. We could have walked out more. At that point, actually, I don't think you could have lost your position though. I don't think that matters that much because the legislation is more important in your career. Yeah. Now, the reason I was reading a post from ILO is one of the attorneys,

29:11one of the end, one of the pro gun, you know, attorneys involved in a lot of this stuff. And he was talking about, and to me, this is, to me, it's a clue. And I'm going to run it by you. And it said, words to the effect of when we walk out, we lose seats, which I think is nonsense, given that when the Republicans were showing strength, they all got reelected. You know, when they, when they walked out under Herman and others, and I know that there are prices to pay, but there's a part of me that wonders if there's almost a deal being made here to, to condition us not to get hard on the Republicans, right? No, no, don't get hard on, undoing the lockouts because people, I mentioned they probably weren't getting in touch with, with you folks, weren't they? Saying, you know, deny quorum, use your days off. I mean, yes, we get emails like that all the time. Now you have to realize, but you see what I'm getting at that they're trying to condition we sheepled not to, oh, boy, we don't know if, if even the pro gun people are saying we can't, you know, we can't get hard on

30:13the Republicans. I imagine there are a lot of Republicans, kind of the squishies in the party that would probably be really happy with that, never have to deal with it. Yeah, I think there's some that, some that would, and you realize it takes all of us except one. So it's not as though, it's, if you, if you get just two members of the, in the Senate, and you have the same thing over the house, twice many, but if you, if you two members of the Senate don't want to, you can't. Okay. So this problem is it takes an issue that's unanimous with all of the Republican senators. Was there united or a unanimity, you know, in the Republican caucus in the Senate, when it came time to, you know, maybe walk out over 1599, moving the date or was there not? Well, there was the one day, the one day we walked out, we all left. Yeah, but what happened all those other days because you had nine and a half days that you could have denied and shut down a lot of stuff. Now, I know they could have called a session, maybe they thought a special session, we've been called part of it is simply that you couldn't get 12 and that knowing that we

31:14might get 12 because it wasn't that far off. There were a lot of discussions and things like the gun bill died and I think some of that's related to that. Okay. And then you have to realize with walkouts in general, you can't walk out in every issue. We could, we could, you know, the Republicans get elected and say, okay, we're not going to have any session at all. We're not going to be there. And nobody I think would view that as reasonable. You can't oppose everything on that, which what you do is you oppose the worst thing. And what it does, it's a very, and it's built into our laws. And I don't like, I don't like it that they've made it hard with the change, but it's built into the constitution that allows the minority party on extreme issues to say, that's too far. And the Democrats used to do it. The Republicans have been in the minority, so they do it. It is a very good thing. And it is not good that it has become an issue where, well, are you going to, are you willing to lose your seat over it? Because you should always be willing to lose your seat to improve. That's what you're there for, right? Yeah. But there are, but there are many people in office right now. In fact, you'll even, you know, read posts from them

32:16and talk that in which being the state senator or being the state representative is like the, the goal rather than am I actually protecting the people who I claim to represent? That's, and that's of course always the problem with politicians on both sides. You know, it's having the position is viewed as some grand thing. And it's just their life goal in some ways. We have a problem that Republicans, the Republicans you want in all these offices are not the ones that will run productive people that have, that, you know, the people that have the best judgment, they care more about the businesses that, you know, done something really useful in life, they're less likely to run. What could you say about the political consultant class here? I would imagine that you probably, you know, have some experience in this because, you know, generally, how do I put this? You know, you know, how the joke is in Washington, DC, no matter what Republican you elect, you always end up getting John McCain, right? Yes. You don't have to get it right. That old, that old saying, there's a bit of that sometimes in

33:19the Republican party in the state of Oregon too. No matter, you know, you'll vote for someone, they, they tack to the right when they're running in the, in the primary. And then all of a sudden, you get John McCain and, and squishing later. And so I'm looking at all these people who are running for governor, right? Only people. And any of them, of course, I would think even the ones I don't care for all that much would be a better than Tina Kote. Yeah. But I would imagine that they are advised and advised pretty hard to what try to appeal to Portland. Yes. Is that fair? That is exactly right. And I think that that is the reason we have been losing governor's races for 40 years. And particularly I know the last decade or two, because the advice is always, you need to appeal to the lefties in Portland. You need to appeal. You need to get the, you need to get the Democrats on your side, because we're outnumbered. Well, and get there's, you know, mathematics to back some of that though, that you can't get elected with just Republican faithful. That's correct. But you realize you'll get elected if people believe that you're legitimate,

34:19more than anything else. If they believe that you're there to, to, to, to help the state, if you're there to help the people, people will vote for you. They made disagree with you. And remember, we none of us agree with each other on everything. So when someone's voting for you, it's a question of, do they think that you care that you're actually going to help or are you going to play games? As soon as you start to play the game of, hey, I'm going to be squishy. I'm going to change my view, specifically to get elected and everyone can tell. It doesn't work. You're much better off. And I, just as a matter of honesty, but also as a practicality, just telling the truth, where do you stand on the issues? Don't change your positions to appeal to any party at any time in a primary, general, not, I'd always bothers me on national elections when they're saying, oh, so and so is redefining himself. And we've, the other thing that they use here, I've heard this in, in Oregon campaigns evolved. Yes, that's right. And we've had candidates that have gone one way, then they go to different districts, then they go another way. I mean, all you're doing is you can tell that all they're doing is moving around to try to

35:22appeal to the voters that in ways they think that whatever they're pulling told them would be useful. And I don't think we need that. We need good conservative candidates, but we need good conservative candidates that will tell the exact truth about their positions and won't squish around. Do you think we have any of those running for governor? I, I hope so. The other problem you get into is under a high pressure political campaign, the political consultant class gives very bad advice in Oregon. I mean, uniform, not not all of them, but we've lost, I know we've lost a lot of races to very bad advice. You put a candidate under pressure. I would like to have candidates that would never yield a pressure and take a position they shouldn't, they don't believe in, but it happens. And you have political consultants giving them bad advice. It's just the way it works. State Senator Noah Robinson with me, 754 and we'll be right back with you is very a couple more minutes. Talk a little bit of politics this morning and a bit of the recap of the state legislative session, state Senator Noah Robinson and David's in Phoenix. Hello, David.

36:26Welcome to the show. What's on your mind with Senator Robinson? Yes, good morning, Bill. They can all for being there. Listen, have you had a chance to speak with Bethel and what are your thoughts? People like me out here are really working hard to make sure Christine Dresden is never the governor. So could you come in on that, please? I have, I'm not endorsing candidates in the right. So I want to be careful because I know for sure that all the candidates running would be better than the Democrats, than the Tina Kotech. I mean, Dresden would be fantastic compared to Kotech. Of course, their preferences, but I don't want to look like I'm endorsing one candidate over another at this point. Have you had much chance to talk with that Christine Bethel though? I don't know. I have not talked to Christine Bethel. My, I know my brother has my impression for his very good from what I've seen. I haven't talked to her. Yeah. Are you a Bethel fan? Is that when I'm getting out here, David? That's what I'm voting for, but I'm more important. I will, I'll do everything to

37:29make sure that Christine doesn't get in the governor's mansion. Well, we'll see what happens. This is quite the jungle primary that we have coming up in the Republican party. So we'll see. Thank you, guys. We'll see where it goes. All right, David. Appreciate it. Yeah. And I understand you being in the caucus, you have to be careful. Hey, you let the voters decide those kind of things, right? I'm that's right. A lot of people get in the endorsement game, but I just, I look at the candidates that I know that are running and I know that all of them would be a huge improvement. And I don't want to get into the business of things. Is there any way before you take off your senator? Is there any way to actually regain the short session like what we had into what originally was because it has morphed into, let's cram the tranny surgery in there. And, and by the way, why are they doubling down so much on this one? You know, mommy asking, I mean, major privacy, we can practically traffic the kids here too, Oregon now to get. No, it's not practically. That's what they're doing. That's what they want to do.

38:30They're making it legal so there'll be no legal repercussions against it. It's, that was the purpose of the bill this time. So this is, if they do it, you don't have to worry about the rules from out of state. So why they have gone this far. I don't know. Rational people realized a couple of years ago when this was a huge issue that this was made no sense. I did polling on it. Democrats, I mean, two years ago, Democrats didn't support this. I mean, it's closer. Republicans are overwhelmingly. People, I don't think if changed on the issue, it's just it's become more, more politically correct to say what you think and is obviously bad. Okay. It's obviously bad. But yet, but yet, is there any penalty or political penalty to pee that you think they'll pay for something like this? I don't know. I think at some point, the whole world is shifting on this, on this issue. Everyone's starting to realize this is just totally nuts. So this is swinging back the other direction. And at some point, Oregon will

39:31have to follow, but they're going to be light because they're still doubling down. Okay. Can we get back to the other question though? Can we get this session back to what it's supposed to be supposed to be a short session touching up the budgets? That's what the Democrats were telling everybody why we had to have this and the people stupidly in my opinion went along with this because I had a feeling this was exactly what we were going to get in which they were going to be pushing a lot of votes or a lot of bills, I should say, with very little time to have hearings in public input and all the rest of it. And so, you know, the agenda pushers end up winning today. That's right. And I don't know how we can get back to it. I think you'd find agreement even among the Democrats politicians. You think so? People were exhausted. That session was crazy in terms of the number of issues we were dealing with. I find it bad enough in the long session to the number of issues that are coming up was you want to understand in depth. Now a lot of legislators just vote for stuff because it's a party tells them to, but I don't like making

40:34logs without understanding what you're doing. And it's hard to take even a simple issue and make sure that you haven't hurt Oregonians. And of course, when you're in doubt, vote no. But it is difficult to understand these things and depth in the long session. Then you come to the short session. You take a lot of the bills which couldn't get through the long session because there was resistance to them so they didn't get through the long session. We throw them back in the short session and everyone was exhausted after a month trying to chase it. It was hard. And I heard this from Republicans, Democrats. It was hard. Now, of course, a lot of them have their agenda so that they're pushing these things through. But it was supposed to be about budget fixes and emergencies. And it works for budget fixes. In the months, you can do budget fixes. You'd say we need to meet. I think we would have been fine with your special sessions every now and then if we need to fix something, we didn't need this. But it ought to get back to just budget fixes at the very least because this is not what is intended for. We're passing major legislation with almost no chance to consider it. Yeah. Indeed. Final, final question I have for you is SOU gets 15 million dollars

41:40in essentially it's stopgap funding. It's a world of hurt. What do you think is the future of the independent small liberal arts college like an SOU would be? Is it something are we just kind of like whistling around the graveyard? It's going to have to be folded into you of always just being an adjunct campus or what? I think it would I think there would be a tragedy because there's an advantaged independence. I think it would be I think it would be very bad to centralize everything around Oregon state and and University of Oregon, which is the direction they're sort of headed. And I don't think there's any reason to it because what are the what are the efficiencies? What are the savings in doing that? I mean, okay, so we could as one organization, we could have a loss over here while we're making it up over here. What they talk about is collaboration, you know, some classes you could take online, that you can already do. And the university get along relatively well. So I think that's the wrong route to go down. I think we should be looking at what the what the cost drivers are. What's you know, why is it costing so much? No, the fact is

42:42those that they start the same campus, but less enrollment and the expenses as you will know higher. Well, this is an interesting thing because I was disappointed because I'm more interested in the sciences. I think you should if you go to the college, I think you should go to learn something useful. And a lot of people take English degrees, which you learn something interesting, but it's it's worth four years. I mean, there's a real question about this. So I think that the most important things are engineering, science, mathematics, things that you learn something hard. Now, didn't SOU give up a lot of that? They gave up the chemistry degree. They had for, I think over 40 years, an ACS certified chemistry program, which I went through. And it was excellent. I went later went to Caltech for my PhD. And honestly, the chemistry undergraduate degree was better there because they were paying more attention to their students. And you don't need fancy professors at that level. They were doing an excellent job. They gave that up. And I, of course, was talking to the president trying to get them not to. They wouldn't. I talked to the chairman of the department there and everything. There is no reason. It doesn't make sense. So if

43:44enrollment drops, you have, it's supposed you have eight professors teaching different subjects. And enrollment drops in half. And now you can only afford four. In chemistry, I know very well. There's a lot of cross compatibility. If you're teaching organic chemistry, you can teach your organic chemistry. You might prefer to specialize, but you just reduce the faculty to match the number of students. And then you have to take on different roles. It's a little more complicated. It isn't that more complicated. All right. So you're thinking that the move that the changes in SOU are not wise in the long run. I think, no, I think it's, I think it's very unwise to eliminate things like a very good chemistry program in favor of other programs which aren't as useful to the students. Is it kind of a squishy left wing focus on the... Well, it's Ashland, you know. Yeah. That's the problem. And it's been sort of unique over there. They have a wonderful music department. I was... And they have a... And it is an excellent music department. Yeah. They have a wonderful music department. They have a wonderful... They used to have a physics department that was just disappearing when I was there because they didn't have enough students.

44:46Haynes sort of problem. The chairman of the physics department tried to get me to stay on a quarter and get a physics degree too because he wanted another one from us. And I had enough cross courses. I could have done it. But no, it's a tragedy to lose these things. So they had this little unique science thing in math. Mathematics. The same thing. They had a very good math program. And they cut that back. They cut back on their honors program. I think that was a mistake. I think there's... I think... And I know it's considered a liberal arts college. I know that they're not known for their sciences, but they were suburban their sciences. And they're still doing some... They're still coursework. You can still get a degree, but it's not... It's not as good a degree. And then there's the whole idea that we just need a pre-med degree if you're going to medical school. Well, is it a good idea to be teaching medical students the minimum amount of chemistry? It's not a good idea. Two-year degree because that'll get you into medical school. But, you know, the kind of businesses or the kind of degrees that you were talking about just a moment ago, Senator, these are the kind of degrees that are A in demand and B help actually get

45:48things built and made. And that's something that America is really in a short supply of right now. That's right. It is hard to find technical people to do anything. We're in short supply. Those degrees do one thing. They're chemistry degrees useful. I mean, they're water labs that are short of chemists, physics, science, math. Those are all things that we need. We need people doing those things. There are also subjects where you learn to think by doing them. You can take a mathematics degree and say, I don't want to be a mathematician, but you have trained your mind in a way that allows you to be more versatile in other areas. And that's something you lose, because you just the value of those types of degrees to the individual. And then, of course, the society in general is something you can't just put a number on it and say, this is what the job pays. State Senator Noah Robinson, I appreciate you coming in for a few minutes while I will be back any time. Thank you very much.