Bill Meyer Guest Info for 9/21 to 9/25/2020

Email Bill Meyer, Podcasts on BillMeyerShow.com

Bill’s Past Shows and commentary at BLOG ARCHIVES.

Bill Meyer’s Facebook page: Facebook.com/BillMeyerShow

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MONDAY 9-21-20 PODCASTS 6AM   7AM   8AM

TUESDAY 9-22-20 PODCASTS 6AM   7AM   8AM

WEDNESDAY 9-23-20 PODCASTS 6AM   7AM   8AM

THURSDAY 9-24-20 PODCASTS 6AM   7AM   8AM

FRIDAY 9/25/20 PODCASTS 6AM   7AM   8AM

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INTERESTING DOCUMENT MAKING THE ROUNDS – A PURPORTED TIMELINE OF THE HAWTHORNE PARK INVASION. This was passed along to me anonymously. Its view of what lead up to the evictions is interesting and thought-provoking, but it is the opinions of whoever wrote it. Given the political tensions, it’s understandable why it’s anonymous. I’m hoping the authors will come forward for an airing of the details.  Eyewitness Hawthorne Park Narrative 09.22.2020 FINAL

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REQUESTED E-MAIL POST – GREENWAY THIEVERY

Bill,

2 wks ago, $2500 in tools were stolen from my work van, parked in front of my business in Central Point. Grainy video footage showed two individuals with flashlights ripping me off between 3 and 4am on Sept. 1st. There were educated guesses as to whodunit, but nothing concrete. I filed a police report, and never expected to see my tools again. Frito Lay had a break in, just up the street…trucks were broken into, chips stolen…all in the same morning.

Then, a devastating week of fires started near the Bear Creek Greenway. My loss paled in comparison to those who lost homes or lives.

This morning, I received a call from Medford PD asking for information…business name, my name, my title…etc. I asked, “Do you have some good news for me?!” He did! They found all of my tools…in a homeless camp, on the Greenway. There were two individuals arrested for looting in Talent and Phoenix that had packed away items at this same location behind Cascade Christian HS, down a ravine along the Creek. I don’t walk the Greenway path, nor do I care to. It’s not a destination for me, but I do know it is for some. Someone out there finds value in what our local media sources call a “park.” What I saw today did not resemble a “park” in any way. I hiked into this camp with the officer to retrieve my stolen items, navigating human waste, blackberry bushes and overgrown brush. There were tents, and outbuilding “tents” housing other presumably stolen items…TV’s, tools, car batteries, gas generators, cables and wiring to power lights…it was a shanty town. Not a camp. There was evidence of a campfire from probably the night before, at the base of some trees. I saw an expensive “green-egg” style BBQ. There was a tarp-walled bathroom, elevated over the creek so one could do their business into a bottomless 5-gallon bucket directly into the water. Two officers escorted me through all of this, helped me get my stuff, photographed it for evidence, and we packed it up the hill back to my truck.

I find it ironic that our community leaders advocate for the homeless camps along the Greenway, ignoring the impact of what a danger they pose to the community from a perspective of fire-hazard. I know you’ve been vocal about this for years. The Greenway isn’t beautiful – it’s a bario. It hides thieves. It makes our community dangerous from the standpoint of fire defense. The solution is to evict the homeless camps, and prescribe burn it out. I’ve seen s to the tune of $300k per year to the tax payer, just to take care of the homeless per status quo. How much did we lose in Phoenix and Talent because this “Park” exists for the ‘good’ of all community members?

Is anyone taking up this cause, to actually clean up the Greenway? The officer asked me today, “If there were a political group that supported getting rid of the Greenway, what would your leaning be?” Law enforcement is frustrated, too. What can we do to solve this problem, and get this Greenway either cleaned up, or GONE?!

Hats off to the Blue in Medford PD – they were just doing their job, but I see it as above and beyond. To get my tools back is more than I ever could have expected. While a small win, the officers I worked with gave a damn all the way through. I couldn’t do their job, not with the patience and professionalism they showed today. To see a fully uniformed officer covered in hitchhiker burs, and sweating from making multiple trips up and down a ravine to help me out? And to get the disrespect we’re seeing across the country – they are only trying to do the right thing in our community. They will always have my respect, and thanks.

Al Logan

Oregon Cabinet Design

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Bill’s Guests for 9/25/20

6:35 Rick Manning from Americans for Limited Government

7:10 Greg Roberts – RogueWeather.com and today’s outdoor report

7:35 Stephen D. Guschov of Pro-English, a group advocating for English as the official government language

Bill’s Guests for 9/23/20

6:35 Eric Peters, Automotive journalist at EPAutos.com – https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2020/09/23/electric-fraudsters/

7:35 Dr. Eric Fruits with the Cascade Policy Institute – A money back guarantee for education? Here’s his op-ed

Achieving Equity: Oregon Students Deserve a Money-Back Guarantee By Eric Fruits. Ph.D. Click here for PDF. On September 21, 2020, Oregon’s Senate heard policy proposals to advance equity in education. Senators seeking the quickest and most effective way to achieve equity during this pandemic should flip the state’s funding model. Instead of funding the public school system, the state should support students directly by providing each student as much as $10,500 from the State School Fund. My fifth grader in Portland Public Schools just got his daily COVID-19 class schedule, and there’s a lot of alone time. On a typical day, he meets with his classroom teacher over Zoom for 75 minutes over the 6.25 hour day. There’s a half-hour “morning meeting,” 30 minutes to go over language arts and social studies, and 15 minutes to discuss math. Nearly three-quarters of the time he’s “in school” he’s actually watching videos posted by his teacher or working on his own. Governor Kate Brown and the school system frequently remind us, “We’re all in this together.” But, if you talk to parents and kids, many feel like they’re all on their own. On their own to find space for their kids to work. On their own to buy the laptops, printers, webcams, microphones, and headphones to support “online learning.” On their own to pay their broadband providers to supply enough bandwidth to support multiple people video conferencing at the same time. On their own to balance their jobs or job hunts with the school’s Zoom-on, Zoom-off daily schedule. When our politicians and policymakers say, “We’re all in this together,” what they’re really saying is, “Tighten your belt and toughen up.” For example, when parents tried to enroll their children in online charter schools with a long history of distance learning, the Oregon Education Association lobbied against lifting an enrollment cap. The union argued even a modest lifting of the cap would deny funding to public school districts. To them, our kids are just numbers fed into a formula that funds the system. Rather than working with existing money, they are demanding even more spending on the public school system. Elizabeth Thiel, the president of Portland’s teachers’ union, says in order for schools to re-open to students, federal and state taxpayers must fund more “investments” in overhauling school ventilation systems, buying personal protective equipment for teachers, and “doubling or more” the number of teachers to allow small group instruction. On average, Oregon school districts receive about $10,500 per student from the State School Fund. If students aren’t getting instruction from their public schools, they should get that money back to receive instruction elsewhere. States like Oklahoma and South Carolina have already taken advantage of similar ideas by reallocating much of their federal stimulus dollars directly to families to help them adapt to this school year. Instead of waiting for DC to deliver more federal money, Oregon must put families first by allowing education dollars to follow children to the school that works best for them—whether that’s a traditional district-run public school, charter school, private school, home school, or learning “pod.” Think of it as a money-back guarantee. If the public school isn’t working for your kids or your family, you should have a right to take that money and spend it where it works with your child’s needs and your family’s schedule. If enough students leave the public system, the smaller class sizes demanded by Ms. Thiel can be achieved without doubling the number of teachers on the public payroll. Direct funding of students reduces inequities in school systems because it allows all students to have access to education alternatives. Almost 60% of public charter school students in the U.S. are Black or Hispanic. Imagine what these families could do with as much as $10,500 per student to spend on educational expenses. If equity is the goal, school choice through direct funding is the surest and quickest path. If your local grocery store doesn’t re-open or can’t keep its shelves stocked, families can take their money elsewhere. So why are families locked into schools that don’t fit their needs? Let’s give a money-back guarantee to every student and their struggling families. Education funding is intended to help children learn, not to entrench the education establishment. Eric Fruits, Ph.D. is Vice President of Research at Cascade Policy Institute, Oregon’s free market public policy research organization. He can be reached at eric@cascadepolicy.org.

 8:10 Ilya Shapiro, Cato’s Director of Constitutional Studies.

Why have appointments to the high court become one of the most explosive features of our system of government? What if something happens to Justice Ginsburg—will we have another brutal nomination process?

Supreme Disorder: Judicial Nominations and the Politics of America’s Highest Court

By Ilya Shapiro – Cato’s Director of Constitutional Studies

Supreme Disorder takes readers inside the unknown history of fiercely partisan judicial nominations and explores reform proposals that could return sobriety to the nomination process.

Bill’s Guests for 9/22/20

6:35 Chris Chmielenski  Deputy Director, Numbers USA, the nation’s largest grassroots immigration-reduction organization with more than 8 million supporters. Numbers USA provides a civil forum for Americans of all political and ethnic backgrounds to focus on a single issue; the numerical level of U.S. immigration. I talk with Chris about the numbers -how to choose the right number of authorized immigrants in future years, numerical limits on family chain migration, and reducing the numbers of illegal immigrants in the country.

 

7:35 Sen. Baertschiger – The scandal of fire experts being cut out of the public discussion regarding our recent wildfires. 

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Bill’s guests for 9/21/20

7:10 Greg Roberts at Rogue Weather.com

8:10 Dr. Dennis Powers with “Where Past Meets Present” history profile of the Kramer Brothers!

The Kramer Brothers: Ron and George

By Dennis Powers

Ron Kramer was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where at an early age he became fascinated with media technology, building his own stereo and even a tape recorder. In high school, he “picked up the bug” of radio, when he discovered an all classical FM station a short distance from there and would “hang out” after school. He graduated from Baldwin-Wallace University (1966) with dual B.A.’s in speech and history and from Northwestern University (1967) with a M.A. in Radio/Television-Film.

Ron headed to the West Coast, where he was the Assistant Professor of Communication and Supervisor of Broadcasting at Lewis and Clark College in Portland (1967-1974), and the Transcontinental and Regional Radio Director for ABC Radio Networks in Los Angeles (1973-1974).

However, it was his introduction to JPR where his career was made. He was the Executive Director of Jefferson Public Radio headquartered at Southern Oregon State College (now Southern Oregon University) and a Professor from 1974-2012. He took a tiny 10-watt KSOR radio station to build up the Jefferson Public Radio network over the years to where it is one of the largest public radio networks in this country. As he said, “It never ceased to knock me out when I was traveling anywhere in the 70,000 square miles that JPR covers (larger than the state of Pennsylvania) and being able to listen to programming emanating from the humble studios (then) under the SOU Central Hall steps.” 

At the same time, he was undertaking different ventures and responsibilities. He was one of the founders of KDRV/Channel 12 with Dunbar Carpenter investing with him. With years of executive leadership with West Coast Public Radio (Vice President/President), he was Vice President of the Western States Public Radio association (2001-2003) and President (2003 – 2007). Ron then undertook consulting work for a variety of well-known media concerns from 2012 and on throughout the nation concerning broadcast programming and management.

He still found time for different nonprofits, ranging from being on the board of the Rogue Opera Association (1986-1994), Siskiyou Pioneer Sites Foundation (1990-1992), and receiving different awards for his public radio work. He is also now the President of the University Club—and truly stands out.

George Kramer grew up in Los Angeles when the family moved there. Their mother ran a series of modeling schools/talent agency owned and run by a former Goldwyn Girls star, Dorothy Shreve; their father had a variety of entrepreneurial careers.

After earning a B.A. in History from Sonoma State (1981), George worked in the construction/painting and design fields for nine years before returning to school for a Master’s Degree in Historic Preservation from the University of Oregon School of Architecture (1989). In that year, he established Kramer & Company, and over the years, his consulting preservation projects have been from 1930s movie palaces to pioneer log cabins; work on nearly every covered bridge still standing in Oregon; the huge Willamette River bridges in downtown Portland; to writing about the Bonneville Power Administration, Trojan Nuclear Project and the Interstate Highway System in Oregon, among other projects. 

He has received a number of awards: 1992 Preservationist of the Year (Ashland, OR); 2007 Southern Oregon Heritage Award; 2008 Preservationist of the Year (Ashland, OR); numerous design awards including the City of Medford, City of Ashland, Livable Oregon, RestoreOregon DeMuro Award (Sparta Building), Egyptian Theatre, Holly Theatre, and more.

He is an Advisor Emeritus, Oregon Heritage Commission (and former chair); National Trust for Historic Preservation (Advisor Emeritus); National Alliance of Historic Preservation Commissions (former Chair); Ashland Historic Commission Member, and on the Oregon Cultural Trust Board.    

George is today widely recognized as one of the leading historical preservation professionals in Oregon, as Ron is seen as the same level in radio broadcasting and media work.

Sources: Ron Kramer (emails to author, August 20^th, and bio); George Kramer at

George Kramer’s Website and email to author, August 24, 2020.