Monday 3/16/26 Bill Meyer Show Guests and Info
Podcasts on www.BillMeyerShow.com
Facebook – www.Facebook.com/billmeyershow
6:35 Paul Runko, Senior Director of Strategic Initiatives at Defending Education, www.DefendingEd.org
Defending Education (DE) has developed a new resource for parents, policymakers, and interested media to track K-12 student walkouts and protests around the country, dating back to 2022.
Each documented event includes the state, school district, school (when it can be identified), and the reason or cause behind the protest. Additionally included is any student club or outside activist nonprofit that has been documented to have led and/or helped to organize the walkout or protest, or in some cases provided material support such as signs and event promotion on social media.
- Number of states: 48 plus District of Columbia
- Number of school districts: 208
- Number of total schools: 463
- Number of school walkout/protests by year:
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- 2022: 21
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- 2023: 11
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- 2024: 13
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- 2025: 46
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- 2026: 307
Click here to view the full resource: https://defendinged.org/investigations/k-12-student-walkout-and-protest-tracker/
7:10. Greg Roberts – Outdoor report from www.RogueWeather.com
8:10 Dr. Dennis Powers
Chuck Butler: Business and Community Leader
By Dennis Powers
A graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles with a degree in business management, Chuck Butler was a partner or owned automobile franchises in Southern California. Deciding that the opportunities were even better with a centering family environment in Southern Oregon, Chuck, his wife Linda, and children moved to Ashland. In 1976, he acquired Pitchford Sales, a small Ford dealership in town on Siskiyou Boulevard (where the Stratford Inn is now). The business had a tiny Ford showroom, two lube bays, and thirteen employees.
From that time on, he showed an ability—which he had to in order to survive, then thrive—to determine where trends and customer taste were heading in the highly competitive Southern Oregon car and truck market. Within three years, he brought in Peugeot and Alpha Romeo lines and moved his headquarters to just outside the Ashland city limits on the complex now on Highway 99 North. He acquired an Acura franchise and in 1988 built its facilities next door.
Knowing that Medford was the center of the regional car market, his next step was to establish a used truck center in 1993; after different locations, he moved this facility in 2001 to Crater Lake Highway. By 2002, his operations in Ashland and Medford were selling 250 cars a month, nearly twenty times the 13 cars sold in his first month at Pitchford Sales.
Chuck decided that he needed to diversify his product lines to include lower-priced imports. The quality of the Korean Hyundai and Kia lines in the mid-1990s were so low with declining sales volumes that Lithia Motors later relinquished these local franchises to Butler. He decided to take the gamble that these products would be improved, feeling also that the repair business would be a solid safety net. He was right.
He opened new Kia and Hyundai dealerships, initially pairing Kia with his Acura Ashland operation and establishing Butler Hyundai in Medford. As sales grew, he relocated Kia to Crater Lake Avenue with Hyundai. Owing to positive quality and warranty changes, the sales of Kia and Hyundai outpaced those of Ford and Acura, as these import brands became equals in the import field. The severe economic decline in 2008 affected everyone’s business—and especially car dealerships. Butler’s operations continued, however, and are again flourishing.
At the same time he was running his business, he spent considerable time volunteering in the community. He has served on the boards of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Ashland Community Hospital Foundation, Oregon Cultural Trust, Southern University Foundation, and others, not to mention the San Francisco Region and Seattle Region Ford Dealers Advertising Association. He also has been in real estate development, property management, and numerous other businesses.
In late 2021, Chuck and Linda Butler announced the sale of their automotive business, effective January of 2022, to Kiefer Automotive Group of Eugene. Kiefer Automotive started in 1994 with a Mazda dealership in Eugene (its headquarters), and the company now owns 14 more dealerships between Oregon, Idaho, and California. The two families, who knew each other for years, were an excellent fit, as Kiefer has been running the Butler business (with its 120 employees) as it was then.
After a long illness, Chuck Butler died on May 21, 2023. To succeed and grow his once small business, he had to visualize markets before they occurred and then navigate with them, as other successful entrepreneurs have done in our Valley. Giving back to his community for years, Chuck Butler will be missed—but his legacy lives on.
Sources: Greg Stiles, “Butler Expands Presence,” Mail Tribune, August 6, 2002; Greg Stiles, “Kia, Hyundai make unlikely titans,” Mail Tribune, August 26, 2011; Jamie Parfitt, “Ashland-based Butler Automotive dealerships sold to Eugene group,” KDRV.com, December 21, 2021; see generally, Butler Automotive Group at https://www.butlerman.com/.
8:35 Melissa Mlasko from Futurity First – Next Tuesday 3/24 at 5:30pm At Central Point Parks 235 S. Haskell Point in Central Point – Melissa is putting on a free seminar about Social Security, when it’s best to retire, methods for financial planning, everything you need to know. Free signup – Drop by Futurity first at 516 Crater Lake Ave, Medford, or call to sign up: