May 9, 2024 • 22 mins
New poll shows majority of Los Angeles voters are considering abandoning the city because housing is too expensive. Amid school crime spike, L.A. campuses need to decide on having school police. The fees creating a disconnect between sticker price and what you actually pay. For fearful riders old and young, L.A’s trains and buses must be safer.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. You are
listening to the Bill Handle Show,and yes it is with the Morning Crew
on a Thursday morning, May ninth. Some of the big stories we are
covering, ah boy, A lotgoing on. President Biden halting some shipments
(00:25):
of US weapons to Israel because ofan invasion partial limited as far as Israel's
concerned of RAFA, the last rankstronghold of Hamas resistance. Representative Marjorie Taylor
Green's in sane motion yesterday to removeSpeaker Mike Johnson, which a lot of
(00:47):
people, most of us didn't thinkit was gonna happen. I said it
wasn't gonna happen. It happened,and she was probably three point fifty nine
against fifty forty three in Johnson's favor. It was overwhelming. And Stormy Daniels
comes back today more more testimony.Yep, it's going to be a stormy,
(01:11):
stormy day. It's going to bevery very good. All right.
Now, I'm going to tell yousomething that is obvious, Okay, but
I want to dive a little bitdeeper because there's a poll that was just
released by UH the LA Times andLos Angeles Business Council Institute. And it
has to do with most young adultsand renters either consider or have considered.
(01:40):
And we're talking about a whole lotof people, a majority, a big
majority, I want to abandoned thecity. They want to get out.
Why. Well, it's it's obvious. The house, the price of housing,
which is described in this report ascrushing, crushing housing costs. Nearly
three quarters of renters and everybody underthirty five have given consideration to moving out
(02:06):
of LA Okay, thirty seven percentof home owners No, twenty six percent
of people sixty five or older.Yeah, so it drops. We go
from three quarters of renters and thoseunder thirty five are ready to go,
thirty seven percent of homeowners are readyto go, twenty six percent of those
(02:29):
over sixty five are ready to go. So what does that mean? The
older you are, the more youare a homeowner, the happier you are
here in Los Angeles. And justthink bye, by the way, Orange
County is the same thing in theInland Empire, same thing Ventura County.
It's basically all the same. It'scost of housing in southern California, and
that is the big one. Andwhy is that? Why are older people
(02:53):
less likely to say I want toget out because they own their homes?
The home that the Persian Palace Icould not afford today, I couldn't afford
it. It's not that complicated.Well look at this. My kids are
the Gee, Dad, I wantto buy a house. Would you buy
(03:15):
one for me? No? Iwon't. But can you think I'm going
to be able to afford it?I go, no, no, you're
not. What is the average todayin La County? The average home nine
hundred and seventy four thousand dollars,or La City, or you know the
houses right down the street in Burbankwe overlook a little housing tract. You
(03:38):
know that's that's a million one.And we're talking about twelve leather square foot
homes too, two bedroom, onebath, a million bucks. Burbank is
a very sought after area. Sotoday to get a home, it's just
a median priced home. Let's sayyou're young, both working, making a
pretty good living. You need twohundred thousand dollars down two hundred grand check
(04:03):
writing money after taxes, savings twohundred thousand dollars, and then you're sitting
on an eight hundred thousand dollars mortgageand considering interest rates today or what six
and a half percent? What areyou paying on an eight hundred thousand dollars
mortgage seven thousand dollars a month?I don't even know. Let me ask,
(04:26):
hey, sirih what what are themonthly payments on an eight hundred thousand
dollars mortgage at six and a halfpercent amortized over thirty years? Do do?
Do? Do? Do? Do? That's a good question. I
should have done this before. AndSiri is moving moving, moving, moving?
Yeah, bitch, she's not answering. Did you just refer to AI
(04:58):
as well? This is not AI? This is my phone, which usually
I go to answers the question,but sometimes I usually use a lot stronger
words than that too when it doesn'thelp me the way I wanted to.
But anyway, it's what six seventhousand dollars for a six a thirty year
mortgage? It's unaffordable and that's whypeople want out older people. Well,
(05:25):
I actually bought a home, myfirst home, when I was in my
twenties, one hundred and fifty yearsago, and I could afford it.
I could afford it today based onmy income, which by the way,
is pretty good. I make apretty healthy living. I would have a
very hard time buying the Persian Palacebecause of interest rates and how it has
(05:48):
gone up in value, which allof us you know, I just bought
my new house, as you know, right, I can't even tell you
how much money this house costs eighteenmonths ago. And I'm talking about how
much lower it was eighteen months ago. Prices have gone so crazy. Well,
(06:11):
Neil, you're you look at yourhouse. I mean it has exploded
in value. We did good.It's a modest home, but we purchased
it at the right time. Yeah, that's the whole point quite a bit.
Yeah, we did our homework,and yeah today you would have a
much harder time buying your house today. Oh I don't know that we could.
That's exactly the point. Yeah,I don't know that we could,
(06:32):
quite honestly. And so in fact, we were almost double what I wanted
to spend. I was incredibly conservative, and we spent almost double what we
wanted to on it. And yougrow into it, fine, but I
couldn't afford this house. Now.That's the whole point. Today, so
homeowners are far more satisfied than rentersbecause renters, though they're never going to
(06:58):
be able to afford a house here, they're gonna sta renters forever. You
know, people want to own homes. Bill. When we were looking at
getting a you know, vacation slashrental place up in Big Bear when we
started, they were one hundred andfifty thousand dollars to get a place up
there, maybe maybe one hundred andeighty or something. It at least doubled
(07:20):
that in the two years we werethinking about it. You know, it
just it continues to grow crazy,all right. A story about defunding,
dismantling school police. A few yearsago, I went back to my high
school. It must have been tenor fifteen years ago. I went back
to my high school to visit,and I'm going down with one of the
(07:43):
teachers who was about to retire,and we're he was a teacher of mine,
and we're walking down the hall andadministration building. It was Birmingham High
School in Van Eys, which isnow a charter school, and so it's
not a high school anymore the wayI went to high school. And we're
going down the administration the hallway inthe administration building, and I look at
a door which I see before,and there is a plaque and it is
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the seal of the Los Angeles PoliceDepartment, and going, what are you
doing with this? Oh, thisis a substation. We have two police
officers that are assigned to this campuspermanently. This is a high school that
was one of the best high schoolsin the country. There's an Encino which
(08:28):
I transferred into because I didn't livethere, because a friend of mine went
there and I wanted to go there. And it was waite, say,
how can police be here? Ithad gotten that crazy. And then after
George Floyd, then the defund dismantlethe police, and nowhere was it more
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successful than on school campuses. Let'sget rid of police officers. Why.
Well, because it's disheartening, becauseit makes students unco comfortable. Because we
don't want the police. We don'twant a police state, said many parents'
activist groups. Well, guess what, it's making a big, big turnaround,
(09:11):
as it should when my kids wentto school and they went to a
private school, because unfortunately, LaUnified, where I went to school,
has really tanked for all kinds ofreasons, not necessarily the fault of the
administration. Certainly not the fault ofthe teachers, who get a lot of
(09:31):
grief. It's just because the Democrats, demographics have changed and private schools exploded.
So my kids go into a privateschool, a Jewish day school.
Let me tell you, they didn'teven pretend not to have insane security.
I mean crazy security that you couldsee. And I would go there and
(09:54):
talk to the people that ran theschool. We got pretty close to some
of the administrators and I was told, oh, yeah, this is just
the part that you see. Andof course I asked, They go,
we don't tell you, we don'tshare that information. But there is so
much there. Well at public schoolsthere wasn't so much there, and what
(10:16):
there was there was reduced, dismantled, gotten rid of. That has changed
big time as well at should Sothere is a data that's just been reliefed
released. You got school crime up, drug use up, fighting up,
and the Safety Tax Force said,you know what, we have to have
(10:39):
police back and with a vengeance.By the way, the task force was
established by the Board of Education.And there it is right there. They
look at the figures rising fights oncampus, smoking on campus, use of
serious drugs on campus, I meanwhen I was kid going to high school,
(11:01):
just smoking, you'd have to gobehind the last building and smoke a
cigarette, and of course that wasgrounds for expulsion if you smoked and that
was a cigarette. Ooh, weren'twe bad people? Now it's well,
kid gets caught smoking. What happens? Put it out. You can smoke
(11:22):
after class and then you buy onthe internet the fake drugs or that you
think are real, and you popoff and you're dead because of fentanyl poisoning.
It is a very, very differentkind of animal. If I was
in public school, if my kidswere in public school, I would demand
police. I would demand police withfifty caliber machine guns at the entrances.
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Some kid comes in with a weapon, you mow him down, and then
you find out, well I gotthe wrong guy. Small price to pay
for security. All Right, we'redone. You can tell I'm very pro
police, as you can imagine,not that there are bad police people.
(12:09):
I'm not arguing that there are roadcops. But please don't paint with a
broad brush, because that's just notthe case. All right now, junk
fees and I'm bringing a Neil aboardbecause we have so often talked about junk
fees at restaurants and not so muchat restaurants. They used to put on
(12:30):
three percent. Well, if youuse a credit card, they'll throw out
three actually right now. That isone of the that is one of the
groups of businesses that is getting hitvery hard and one of the reasons this
is become a big deal because ofthese not even gratuity fees, but quality
of life fees that are being puton there. Back to the house fees,
(12:52):
they're under a different bunch of differentnames, and there are additions that
are they will say, hey,this is not gratuity, this is in
addition to and I think you justroll it over into the cost of the
food. Yeah, I mean believeit. It's crazy. Every hotel,
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now, any major brand hotel,thirty five dollars forty dollars resort fee even
what is that? Well, youhave a pool, and we have a
sauna, we have a spa,and we're gonna charge you and I'm not
going to use it doesn't matter.You're paying the resort fee and you don't
know what it's a resort fee untilyou show up. And that it's gotten
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so bad that even President Biden hassaid we're going to do something about this.
It has begot has just gone crazy. Just I don't mind all the
fees in the world, just letme know. Let me know. You
know what parking fees. I've stayedat hotels a handful of times in the
last couple of months, and parkingfees are forty bucks. Now, whether
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you self park or valet, itdoesn't matter, and they don't tell you.
So you're getting a hotel room forlet's say two hundred and twelve dollars.
Wow, that's inexpensive hotel room.Well, yeah, you know this
is no these days. That's wherethat is. And this is where although
I have one great hotel I'm goingto but when I go on vacation,
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I blow out for one great hotelfor a couple of nights and the rest
of them I take my tent withme and go to the campgrounds. But
it is it's completely insane because whatkind of junk fees am I going to
get that I don't even know about. Now, if they print them up
and say, here's the deal,two hundred and twelve dollars, let's say
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plus thirty dollars. Well, let'ssay in a place that would cost forty
dollars, let's say six seven hundreddollars for a room, which is probably
it. You go to Disneyland andthen you're told, okay, so here's
your six hundred dollars, and here'syour resort fee of thirty five dollars,
and here is your parking fee ofthirty five or four forty dollars. And
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let's not forget the special tax onhotels on top of sales tax or whatever,
because that's the easiest way. Peoplewho come into town and stay in
hotels are not voters, so it'seasy to get them. And so before
you know it, your five hundreddollars hotel room is six hundred and fifty
(15:22):
dollars and you don't know it untilyou put your credit card down. That
should be illegal, and hopefully itwill be illegal. Well, that's what
it's moving towards, you know what, Just put it up front. Now,
they're saying, as far as restaurantsare concerned, that they're going to
have to put all of that onthe menu upfront into the price of what
you're paying for and explaining it,because it ends up biting in the ass
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at the very very end when you'redone with your meal, and everything's going
to have to be upfront. AndI think that that's fair, which any
as long as you know. Forexample, I am going to Europe right
this October. I'm going to takea trip. And so I bought my
ticket. All right, fair enough. I upgraded to business class because I
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run my credit card all my business, every bit of business I do.
I run through the credit card,so I get points and so now I'm
in business class and terrific. Andso I bought my ticket and then I'm
told when I said, okay,there's two of us going, and I
want to sit next to next toher, I'm going with Lindsay. And
(16:34):
I was told by travel agent who'sa friend of mine, because travel agents
don't exist anymore. She's a lastwalking travel agent on Earth. She says,
oh, you want to sit nextto her. That's one hundred and
sixty two dollars more per person.What other than that you get your seat
the day of when you board yourflight, you will get your seat.
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And can't guarantee that you're going tosit next to each other. Just won't
guarantee it. One hundred and bythe way, one hundred and sixty two
dollars per person extra just to sitnext to someone, to guarantee your sitting
next to someone. You remember whenyou come aboard and they would put family
members together. Now you pay forit and you're not told. How does
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how much does Lindsey have to payto not sit next to you? Yeah,
well she's well that's where they makethe big bucks. Yeah, that's
true, but it's I mean,it's completely crazy. Oh my gosh,
Bill, that is insane that Ithought it was insane. One hundred and
sixty bucks period, let alone perperson. Yeah well you yeah, go,
yeah, fly to Frankfurt on onehundred and sixty bucks. But it's
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just I was stunned by it.I mean absolutely stunned. And it used
to be you could change your flightand it didn't cost you any money or
relatively little. Now it's hundreds andhundreds of dollars because I changed my flight
changed because it's just really weird.And so if you're going with a child,
do you have to pay one hundredand sixty bucks to sit I think
(18:07):
so, even not an infant,but if it's yeah, I think you
do. They'll try to accommodate youon the flight, But no, I
think you have to pay. Oh, you know what, I'm going to
find that out. You know whatI'm going to find Neil. I'm going
to find that out because I thinkyou do. Yeah, three hundred.
It costs me three hundred and thirtyfive dollars just to guarantee two seats together.
(18:33):
I know you're stunned. You're lookingat it. I'm gobsmack. Yeah,
yeah, And I don't tell youthat until you ask for the seats
together. Isn't that lovely? Allright? Did you know that there was?
And I didn't know this until itcame out in the La Times.
Metro has an Older Adult Transportation Expoin Pasadena every year where they get the
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oldsters together to promote ridership and educatepeople on how to get the most out
of Metro, like how to diebasically. And there was a guy who
went there who was interviewed Will Fernandez, retired teacher and he loves going around
in his the bike, buses andthe trains, and he said, I'm
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scared now what I see on theMetro is completely well, it's out of
control. We have stories about violenceand riders drivers on buses being attacked you
know, that's by the hundreds everyyear. That's not completely operational, that's
not atypical. And we're about tobe hit here with an aging population as
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the entire country is, and peoplethat are old retire don't have as much
money. It's expensive as held yetaround cars are ridiculously expensive, repairs,
gasoline. So you go on themetro and you get and you die and
they kill you. And so likethe story I did with the school police,
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guess what big move to put lotsand lots of cops in those stations
and on the metro trains themselves andon buses. What other choice do you
have? Well, they can goback to the old ways of smoking and
non smoking. They can make sections. It's like, would you like to
sit in the non weapon section thisweek? Oh, yeah, that'd be
(20:30):
great. It's just it's I gotto tell you, we're in a whole
different world, and at the sametime we're in this world. Keep in
mind there are people plenty of activiststhat are saying we don't want police because
we don't want police presence because thenwe look like a police state. I'll
take a police state over the crime. When I was in Brazil, and
(20:52):
this we go back many years agobecause I used to go back to Brazil
on a regular basis when I wasa teenager in my early twenties. The
crime was so bad that the onlyplace people felt safe in in public spaces
were the shopping centers because the shoppingcenters were encircled by army personnel with submachine
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guns, you know the way yousee those automatic weapons that the army people
have. Yeah, that was asafe place, and we're now looking at
us getting there. I mean itis, you know, not somebody.
If you look at the actual statistics, crime is down, but where it
used to be. You heard aboutsome crime happening on a bus and a
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Metro station at a school with someonegoing crazy. Now it goes viral because
someone is videoing it on their phone. You cannot do anything anymore without someone
whipping out their phone and putting onrecord. And that's exactly what's happened in
these instances. And the answer isfortunately. I mean, would I like
(22:00):
to spend the money my tax dollarson something else, Yeah, of course,
But look where we're going with this. So get you to Metro's Older
Metro's Older Adult Transportation Expo and theyhave booths you know, for Dennis,
(22:21):
you know who supply teeth and peoplethat. Never mind, I'm going to
go into that. KFI AM sixforty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Bill HandleShow. Catch my Show Monday through Friday,
six am to nine am, andanytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. You are
listening to the Bill Handle Show,and yes it is with the Morning Crew
on a Thursday morning, May ninth. Some of the big stories we are
covering, ah boy, A lotgoing on. President Biden halting some shipments
(00:25):
of US weapons to Israel because ofan invasion partial limited as far as Israel's
concerned of RAFA, the last rankstronghold of Hamas resistance. Representative Marjorie Taylor
Green's in sane motion yesterday to removeSpeaker Mike Johnson, which a lot of
(00:47):
people, most of us didn't thinkit was gonna happen. I said it
wasn't gonna happen. It happened,and she was probably three point fifty nine
against fifty forty three in Johnson's favor. It was overwhelming. And Stormy Daniels
comes back today more more testimony.Yep, it's going to be a stormy,
(01:11):
stormy day. It's going to bevery very good. All right.
Now, I'm going to tell yousomething that is obvious, Okay, but
I want to dive a little bitdeeper because there's a poll that was just
released by UH the LA Times andLos Angeles Business Council Institute. And it
has to do with most young adultsand renters either consider or have considered.
(01:40):
And we're talking about a whole lotof people, a majority, a big
majority, I want to abandoned thecity. They want to get out.
Why. Well, it's it's obvious. The house, the price of housing,
which is described in this report ascrushing, crushing housing costs. Nearly
three quarters of renters and everybody underthirty five have given consideration to moving out
(02:06):
of LA Okay, thirty seven percentof home owners No, twenty six percent
of people sixty five or older.Yeah, so it drops. We go
from three quarters of renters and thoseunder thirty five are ready to go,
thirty seven percent of homeowners are readyto go, twenty six percent of those
(02:29):
over sixty five are ready to go. So what does that mean? The
older you are, the more youare a homeowner, the happier you are
here in Los Angeles. And justthink bye, by the way, Orange
County is the same thing in theInland Empire, same thing Ventura County.
It's basically all the same. It'scost of housing in southern California, and
that is the big one. Andwhy is that? Why are older people
(02:53):
less likely to say I want toget out because they own their homes?
The home that the Persian Palace Icould not afford today, I couldn't afford
it. It's not that complicated.Well look at this. My kids are
the Gee, Dad, I wantto buy a house. Would you buy
(03:15):
one for me? No? Iwon't. But can you think I'm going
to be able to afford it?I go, no, no, you're
not. What is the average todayin La County? The average home nine
hundred and seventy four thousand dollars,or La City, or you know the
houses right down the street in Burbankwe overlook a little housing tract. You
(03:38):
know that's that's a million one.And we're talking about twelve leather square foot
homes too, two bedroom, onebath, a million bucks. Burbank is
a very sought after area. Sotoday to get a home, it's just
a median priced home. Let's sayyou're young, both working, making a
pretty good living. You need twohundred thousand dollars down two hundred grand check
(04:03):
writing money after taxes, savings twohundred thousand dollars, and then you're sitting
on an eight hundred thousand dollars mortgageand considering interest rates today or what six
and a half percent? What areyou paying on an eight hundred thousand dollars
mortgage seven thousand dollars a month?I don't even know. Let me ask,
(04:26):
hey, sirih what what are themonthly payments on an eight hundred thousand
dollars mortgage at six and a halfpercent amortized over thirty years? Do do?
Do? Do? Do? Do? That's a good question. I
should have done this before. AndSiri is moving moving, moving, moving?
Yeah, bitch, she's not answering. Did you just refer to AI
(04:58):
as well? This is not AI? This is my phone, which usually
I go to answers the question,but sometimes I usually use a lot stronger
words than that too when it doesn'thelp me the way I wanted to.
But anyway, it's what six seventhousand dollars for a six a thirty year
mortgage? It's unaffordable and that's whypeople want out older people. Well,
(05:25):
I actually bought a home, myfirst home, when I was in my
twenties, one hundred and fifty yearsago, and I could afford it.
I could afford it today based onmy income, which by the way,
is pretty good. I make apretty healthy living. I would have a
very hard time buying the Persian Palacebecause of interest rates and how it has
(05:48):
gone up in value, which allof us you know, I just bought
my new house, as you know, right, I can't even tell you
how much money this house costs eighteenmonths ago. And I'm talking about how
much lower it was eighteen months ago. Prices have gone so crazy. Well,
(06:11):
Neil, you're you look at yourhouse. I mean it has exploded
in value. We did good.It's a modest home, but we purchased
it at the right time. Yeah, that's the whole point quite a bit.
Yeah, we did our homework,and yeah today you would have a
much harder time buying your house today. Oh I don't know that we could.
That's exactly the point. Yeah,I don't know that we could,
(06:32):
quite honestly. And so in fact, we were almost double what I wanted
to spend. I was incredibly conservative, and we spent almost double what we
wanted to on it. And yougrow into it, fine, but I
couldn't afford this house. Now.That's the whole point. Today, so
homeowners are far more satisfied than rentersbecause renters, though they're never going to
(06:58):
be able to afford a house here, they're gonna sta renters forever. You
know, people want to own homes. Bill. When we were looking at
getting a you know, vacation slashrental place up in Big Bear when we
started, they were one hundred andfifty thousand dollars to get a place up
there, maybe maybe one hundred andeighty or something. It at least doubled
(07:20):
that in the two years we werethinking about it. You know, it
just it continues to grow crazy,all right. A story about defunding,
dismantling school police. A few yearsago, I went back to my high
school. It must have been tenor fifteen years ago. I went back
to my high school to visit,and I'm going down with one of the
(07:43):
teachers who was about to retire,and we're he was a teacher of mine,
and we're walking down the hall andadministration building. It was Birmingham High
School in Van Eys, which isnow a charter school, and so it's
not a high school anymore the wayI went to high school. And we're
going down the administration the hallway inthe administration building, and I look at
a door which I see before,and there is a plaque and it is
(08:07):
the seal of the Los Angeles PoliceDepartment, and going, what are you
doing with this? Oh, thisis a substation. We have two police
officers that are assigned to this campuspermanently. This is a high school that
was one of the best high schoolsin the country. There's an Encino which
(08:28):
I transferred into because I didn't livethere, because a friend of mine went
there and I wanted to go there. And it was waite, say,
how can police be here? Ithad gotten that crazy. And then after
George Floyd, then the defund dismantlethe police, and nowhere was it more
(08:48):
successful than on school campuses. Let'sget rid of police officers. Why.
Well, because it's disheartening, becauseit makes students unco comfortable. Because we
don't want the police. We don'twant a police state, said many parents'
activist groups. Well, guess what, it's making a big, big turnaround,
(09:11):
as it should when my kids wentto school and they went to a
private school, because unfortunately, LaUnified, where I went to school,
has really tanked for all kinds ofreasons, not necessarily the fault of the
administration. Certainly not the fault ofthe teachers, who get a lot of
(09:31):
grief. It's just because the Democrats, demographics have changed and private schools exploded.
So my kids go into a privateschool, a Jewish day school.
Let me tell you, they didn'teven pretend not to have insane security.
I mean crazy security that you couldsee. And I would go there and
(09:54):
talk to the people that ran theschool. We got pretty close to some
of the administrators and I was told, oh, yeah, this is just
the part that you see. Andof course I asked, They go,
we don't tell you, we don'tshare that information. But there is so
much there. Well at public schoolsthere wasn't so much there, and what
(10:16):
there was there was reduced, dismantled, gotten rid of. That has changed
big time as well at should Sothere is a data that's just been reliefed
released. You got school crime up, drug use up, fighting up,
and the Safety Tax Force said,you know what, we have to have
(10:39):
police back and with a vengeance.By the way, the task force was
established by the Board of Education.And there it is right there. They
look at the figures rising fights oncampus, smoking on campus, use of
serious drugs on campus, I meanwhen I was kid going to high school,
(11:01):
just smoking, you'd have to gobehind the last building and smoke a
cigarette, and of course that wasgrounds for expulsion if you smoked and that
was a cigarette. Ooh, weren'twe bad people? Now it's well,
kid gets caught smoking. What happens? Put it out. You can smoke
(11:22):
after class and then you buy onthe internet the fake drugs or that you
think are real, and you popoff and you're dead because of fentanyl poisoning.
It is a very, very differentkind of animal. If I was
in public school, if my kidswere in public school, I would demand
police. I would demand police withfifty caliber machine guns at the entrances.
(11:48):
Some kid comes in with a weapon, you mow him down, and then
you find out, well I gotthe wrong guy. Small price to pay
for security. All Right, we'redone. You can tell I'm very pro
police, as you can imagine,not that there are bad police people.
(12:09):
I'm not arguing that there are roadcops. But please don't paint with a
broad brush, because that's just notthe case. All right now, junk
fees and I'm bringing a Neil aboardbecause we have so often talked about junk
fees at restaurants and not so muchat restaurants. They used to put on
(12:30):
three percent. Well, if youuse a credit card, they'll throw out
three actually right now. That isone of the that is one of the
groups of businesses that is getting hitvery hard and one of the reasons this
is become a big deal because ofthese not even gratuity fees, but quality
of life fees that are being puton there. Back to the house fees,
(12:52):
they're under a different bunch of differentnames, and there are additions that
are they will say, hey,this is not gratuity, this is in
addition to and I think you justroll it over into the cost of the
food. Yeah, I mean believeit. It's crazy. Every hotel,
(13:13):
now, any major brand hotel,thirty five dollars forty dollars resort fee even
what is that? Well, youhave a pool, and we have a
sauna, we have a spa,and we're gonna charge you and I'm not
going to use it doesn't matter.You're paying the resort fee and you don't
know what it's a resort fee untilyou show up. And that it's gotten
(13:35):
so bad that even President Biden hassaid we're going to do something about this.
It has begot has just gone crazy. Just I don't mind all the
fees in the world, just letme know. Let me know. You
know what parking fees. I've stayedat hotels a handful of times in the
last couple of months, and parkingfees are forty bucks. Now, whether
(13:56):
you self park or valet, itdoesn't matter, and they don't tell you.
So you're getting a hotel room forlet's say two hundred and twelve dollars.
Wow, that's inexpensive hotel room.Well, yeah, you know this
is no these days. That's wherethat is. And this is where although
I have one great hotel I'm goingto but when I go on vacation,
(14:18):
I blow out for one great hotelfor a couple of nights and the rest
of them I take my tent withme and go to the campgrounds. But
it is it's completely insane because whatkind of junk fees am I going to
get that I don't even know about. Now, if they print them up
and say, here's the deal,two hundred and twelve dollars, let's say
(14:39):
plus thirty dollars. Well, let'ssay in a place that would cost forty
dollars, let's say six seven hundreddollars for a room, which is probably
it. You go to Disneyland andthen you're told, okay, so here's
your six hundred dollars, and here'syour resort fee of thirty five dollars,
and here is your parking fee ofthirty five or four forty dollars. And
(15:01):
let's not forget the special tax onhotels on top of sales tax or whatever,
because that's the easiest way. Peoplewho come into town and stay in
hotels are not voters, so it'seasy to get them. And so before
you know it, your five hundreddollars hotel room is six hundred and fifty
(15:22):
dollars and you don't know it untilyou put your credit card down. That
should be illegal, and hopefully itwill be illegal. Well, that's what
it's moving towards, you know what, Just put it up front. Now,
they're saying, as far as restaurantsare concerned, that they're going to
have to put all of that onthe menu upfront into the price of what
you're paying for and explaining it,because it ends up biting in the ass
(15:46):
at the very very end when you'redone with your meal, and everything's going
to have to be upfront. AndI think that that's fair, which any
as long as you know. Forexample, I am going to Europe right
this October. I'm going to takea trip. And so I bought my
ticket. All right, fair enough. I upgraded to business class because I
(16:07):
run my credit card all my business, every bit of business I do.
I run through the credit card,so I get points and so now I'm
in business class and terrific. Andso I bought my ticket and then I'm
told when I said, okay,there's two of us going, and I
want to sit next to next toher, I'm going with Lindsay. And
(16:34):
I was told by travel agent who'sa friend of mine, because travel agents
don't exist anymore. She's a lastwalking travel agent on Earth. She says,
oh, you want to sit nextto her. That's one hundred and
sixty two dollars more per person.What other than that you get your seat
the day of when you board yourflight, you will get your seat.
(16:57):
And can't guarantee that you're going tosit next to each other. Just won't
guarantee it. One hundred and bythe way, one hundred and sixty two
dollars per person extra just to sitnext to someone, to guarantee your sitting
next to someone. You remember whenyou come aboard and they would put family
members together. Now you pay forit and you're not told. How does
(17:21):
how much does Lindsey have to payto not sit next to you? Yeah,
well she's well that's where they makethe big bucks. Yeah, that's
true, but it's I mean,it's completely crazy. Oh my gosh,
Bill, that is insane that Ithought it was insane. One hundred and
sixty bucks period, let alone perperson. Yeah well you yeah, go,
yeah, fly to Frankfurt on onehundred and sixty bucks. But it's
(17:45):
just I was stunned by it.I mean absolutely stunned. And it used
to be you could change your flightand it didn't cost you any money or
relatively little. Now it's hundreds andhundreds of dollars because I changed my flight
changed because it's just really weird.And so if you're going with a child,
do you have to pay one hundredand sixty bucks to sit I think
(18:07):
so, even not an infant,but if it's yeah, I think you
do. They'll try to accommodate youon the flight, But no, I
think you have to pay. Oh, you know what, I'm going to
find that out. You know whatI'm going to find Neil. I'm going
to find that out because I thinkyou do. Yeah, three hundred.
It costs me three hundred and thirtyfive dollars just to guarantee two seats together.
(18:33):
I know you're stunned. You're lookingat it. I'm gobsmack. Yeah,
yeah, And I don't tell youthat until you ask for the seats
together. Isn't that lovely? Allright? Did you know that there was?
And I didn't know this until itcame out in the La Times.
Metro has an Older Adult Transportation Expoin Pasadena every year where they get the
(19:00):
oldsters together to promote ridership and educatepeople on how to get the most out
of Metro, like how to diebasically. And there was a guy who
went there who was interviewed Will Fernandez, retired teacher and he loves going around
in his the bike, buses andthe trains, and he said, I'm
(19:21):
scared now what I see on theMetro is completely well, it's out of
control. We have stories about violenceand riders drivers on buses being attacked you
know, that's by the hundreds everyyear. That's not completely operational, that's
not atypical. And we're about tobe hit here with an aging population as
(19:45):
the entire country is, and peoplethat are old retire don't have as much
money. It's expensive as held yetaround cars are ridiculously expensive, repairs,
gasoline. So you go on themetro and you get and you die and
they kill you. And so likethe story I did with the school police,
(20:07):
guess what big move to put lotsand lots of cops in those stations
and on the metro trains themselves andon buses. What other choice do you
have? Well, they can goback to the old ways of smoking and
non smoking. They can make sections. It's like, would you like to
sit in the non weapon section thisweek? Oh, yeah, that'd be
(20:30):
great. It's just it's I gotto tell you, we're in a whole
different world, and at the sametime we're in this world. Keep in
mind there are people plenty of activiststhat are saying we don't want police because
we don't want police presence because thenwe look like a police state. I'll
take a police state over the crime. When I was in Brazil, and
(20:52):
this we go back many years agobecause I used to go back to Brazil
on a regular basis when I wasa teenager in my early twenties. The
crime was so bad that the onlyplace people felt safe in in public spaces
were the shopping centers because the shoppingcenters were encircled by army personnel with submachine
(21:17):
guns, you know the way yousee those automatic weapons that the army people
have. Yeah, that was asafe place, and we're now looking at
us getting there. I mean itis, you know, not somebody.
If you look at the actual statistics, crime is down, but where it
used to be. You heard aboutsome crime happening on a bus and a
(21:38):
Metro station at a school with someonegoing crazy. Now it goes viral because
someone is videoing it on their phone. You cannot do anything anymore without someone
whipping out their phone and putting onrecord. And that's exactly what's happened in
these instances. And the answer isfortunately. I mean, would I like
(22:00):
to spend the money my tax dollarson something else, Yeah, of course,
But look where we're going with this. So get you to Metro's Older
Metro's Older Adult Transportation Expo and theyhave booths you know, for Dennis,
(22:21):
you know who supply teeth and peoplethat. Never mind, I'm going to
go into that. KFI AM sixforty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Bill HandleShow. Catch my Show Monday through Friday,
six am to nine am, andanytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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