May 27, 2024 • 32 mins
Wayne Resnick hosts this Memorial Day Monday Bill Handel Show. California wants to track your every mile… MPG is bogus. The hush money trial update and it’s a helluva reach. Why we have immigrants again. Shrimp did not kill Red Lobster, but crab legs killed a former CEO’s career.
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Episode Transcript
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You're listening to Bill Handle on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. You want
listening to the Bill Handle Show.Here's Dwayne Resnick f KFI AM six forty
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.It is the Bill Handle Show. He's
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offered Memorial Day. Wayne Residik hereat nine o'clock in for Gary and Shannon
Neil Savedra some of the stories we'refollowing for you at KFI. There is
severe weather across a lot of thecountry, and that weather over this weekend
has left at least nineteen people deadacross four states, hundreds of thousands of
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homes and businesses damaged, hundreds ofthousands of people without power, and over
one hundred and twenty million people stillat risk of severe weather today. Meanwhile,
families of the victims of the UvaldeSchool shooting in Texas have filed the
lawsuit against gun maker Daniel Defense andpublisher of Call of Duty, the video
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game Activision, saying that they areresponsible for encouraging a fascination with assault rifles,
Daniel Defense of course by selling them, and Call of Duty by featuring
them prominently in that video game.All right, let's talk about your car
and how you drive it and whereyou drive it. And this pilot program
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that is starting up that you couldbe a part of if you snap to
it, if you really want toget registered for this pilot program. And
here's an example of the false reputationof California as being the what's the word,
the inventor of crazy ideas. Theremay have been a time when all
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the crazy ideas originated here in California, and that's still a reputation that the
state has, but it's not somuch true anymore. And a lot of
times California is following in the footstepsof other states. And that is what
they're doing with this pilot program fromColtrands, which is to see what would
happen if we had a vehicle milestraveled tax instead of a gas tax.
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So you would sign up and youwould pay some amount of money for every
mile that you drive, but youwould not have to pay gas tax when
you fill up your car. Wedidn't make this up. Oregon was the
first state to do something like this. Amy King may know about that.
I think you pay in Oregon twocents for every mile that you drive and
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you don't pay gas tax. Andthen Virginia, Hawaii, and Utah have
some kind of active program for passengervehicles that measure your miles driven and charge
you based on miles driven. Sohere in California, the way that it
would work is you sign up.It's not clear how much per mile you're
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gonna pay. If you go backand look at the public records about this
program, sometimes people were talking aboutfive cents a mile. Other times they're
talking about two cents a mile.It's very hard to know for sure where
they're gonna settle on how many centsper mile you're gonna have to pay to
drive. But what we do knowfor sure is they got to have a
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way of tracking you. It can'twork if they don't know how many miles.
So there's a couple of ways theycan do it. If your car
has a connected service like on Staror whatever, then you can have them
get the telematics from your car.That way. There's also a plug in
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device that you can put into yourdash and can use us it can use
GPS or not use GPS and keeptrack a different way. Or for the
pilot program, the Honor system,where every month you would just send them
a photo of your odometer. Nowthat's for the pilot program. If this
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ever actually becomes policy for the wholestate, that's not going to be available
because can you imagine somebody in Sacramentohaving to look at possibly a million two
million photos of odometers every month.That'll go away, and the point of
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it being it's one thing to beon the honor system and say I will
show you how many miles I drove. That's not how it's going to work
though. There will be an invasivemonitoring of your driving. Some kind of
transponder will have to be in everycar, and if the state were to
ever fully switch over, you know, the idea here is and in these
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other states that have programs like this, it's voluntary. You can which the
numbers and decide which approach is moreeconomical for you. And I think where
California may take the lead is somedayif they decide that this really works well,
it becomes that that's the way wedo business here. There is no
gas tax anymore, and there iseverybody pays a VMT, at which point
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every car will have some kind ofa transponder in it and they will not
only be able to monitor where you'redriving, and how many miles that you're
driving. They will be able toon the fly adjust how much per mile
you pay depending on how much you'redriving, where you're driving, when you're
driving. So, for example,and this is not a crazy idea at
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all, you sign up for thisprogram and you pay three cents a mile,
but if you go into downtown LaBaby, that's five bucks. Or
if you want to drive on thefour h five between three pm and seven
pm, that's five cents a mile. Anything they can do, and at
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least with the gas tax, theycan raise it. But on any given
day, at any given moment thatyou're filling up your car, you can
know how much you're paying in gastax. This kind of a program and
this level of surveillance allow state todo surge pricing like you see with Uber
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and Lyft, to change it onthe fly. And I, I mean,
I don't drive that much, sofor all I know, this could
be economically contagious to me, ButI think I'd rather pay more in gas
taxes and not have the state knowwhere I'm driving all the time. But
that's that's happening. And you knowit's because as cars become more fuel efficient,
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people use less gas, therefore theypay less in gas taxes. This
is really it's they're floating it nowas hey try and see if you like
it. Maybe there's an advantage foryou. But we know at the end
of the day that the purpose ofit is to replace lost gas tax revenue,
which means it has to be atleast at a minimum economically even for
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you. Otherwise it does not accomplishwhat they need, which is to replace
that gas tax revenue. And knowingthe way the state is, my guess
is it will end up being economicallydisadvantageous to you, that you will end
up paying more under a VMT system. And you know, cars are more
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fuel efficient, getting better MPGs,and there's a movement of foot to not
even use miles per gallon as theway to measure fuel efficiency anymore because people,
I guess we don't understand that it'snot a measure of gas savings.
So here's a little quick quiz beforewe get some news from Aybe King which
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saves more gas. You get acar that gets twenty five miles per gallon
and you replace it with a carthat gets fifty miles to the gallon,
or you have a car that getsten miles to the gallon and you replace
it with a car that gets fifteenmiles per gallon. Well, in surveys,
most people say, oh, ifyou go from twenty five to fifty
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miles per gallon, you're saving waymore gas than if you go from ten
to fifteen. But the fact ofthe matter is you're not. You're saving
less because if you get twenty fivemiles a gallon, then to go one
hundred miles you got to use fourgallons of gas, And if you get
fifty miles to the gallon, yougot to use two gallons of gas,
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so you saved two gallons. Ifyou have a car that gets ten miles
a gallon, you need ten gallonsto go one hundred miles. If it
goes up to fifteen miles a gallon, you need six point six or seven.
You save over three gallons. Youactually save more gas. So there
is a movement a foot to startputting prominently on the cars, not the
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miles per gallon, but something thatthey use in Europe called gphm gallons of
gas per one hundred miles of travel. We'll see if that happens. So
the trial of Donald Trump in NewYork, which is going to get underway
again tomorrow, and they're gonna haveclosing arguments and then the jury will get
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the case to deliberate about whether heis guilty of thirty four felonies because the
charges say he falsified business records toconceal another crime. And the reason I
said before the break there that theprosecutor's shoulders are probably sore is because this
prosecution is one hell of a stretchand a reach, and the case got
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muddled after the judge agreed with theprosecution that even though these charges require that
the jury find that the stuff theydid in the books, the financial entries
that they made in the books,they have to find they were done to
conceal a crime, but they don'thave to agree on what crime. That
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is going to be a problem onan appeal big time. Now. I
can't say to you, oh,it's clearly wrong. The judge is clearly
wrong, the prosecutors are clearly wrong, and the defense attorneys are clearly correct
when they say the jury's got toagree on what crime they were trying to
cover up. And the reason Ican't say that is because there's never been
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a case like this ever, ever, ever before. So it's brand new
territory for everybody. And I wasaround enough federal prosecutions, and this is
not a federal prosecution, it's aNew York state prosecution. But I was
around enough federal prosecutions for twenty eightyears, about six thousand of them,
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to know that there are times totry new legal theories and there are times
not to. And such a highprofile defendant is not the time to try
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out a kicky new idea for howyou can convict somebody. And I think
that it was probably a poorly takenprosecution on the part of New York.
Can I say that it's definitely politicallymotivated and that the DA there Alvin Bragg
just hates Trump and that's why he'sdoing it. He's just trying to get
him anyway he can get him.I can't say that because I don't know
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it's in his head, but Iknow it's not a wise exercise of prosecutorial
discretion. They have him on thirtyfour misdemeanors. You know, it is
a crime to falsify business records allon its own, that's a misdemeanor.
And I think the evidence is arock solid that that happened, that they
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were paying Michael Cohen back for frontinghis money to Stormy Daniels for her to
shut up, and then instead ofsaying it's a reimbursement because he fronted money
for a non disclosure deal, theyput it as, Oh, yes,
he performed legal services for us,and we're paying him for the legal services.
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Fine, that's fine. Thirty fourmisdemeanors is a cakewalk against Donald Trump.
But I guess misdemeanors are not assexy. Misdemeanors are not the legacy
that Alvin Bragg wants to leave.Oh, they've decided that it was done
to conceal a crime. And beforethe trial started, after the charges were
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filed, and before the trial started, and the DA's office was in the
press talking very vaguely about what crimewere they trying to cover up and would
only speak in broad terms about influencingan election. It's election fraud. And
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that's the same kind of vague languagethat the judge used in granting the prosecution's
request that the jury be told thatthey don't have to agree on what the
crime is, they just have toagree. Every one of them has to
agree there was some kind of crimethat they were trying to cover up,
but they don't have to agree onwhat the crime was. And that's because
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they're not that many good choices.In fact, there really aren't any good
choices. Okay. One thing thathas been stated now is this New York
State election loss Section seventeen one fiftytwo. This is obscure. There's never
been a criminal case based on itbefore, and it's a misdemeanor itself,
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but it says it's a misdemeanor iftwo or more people conspire to promote or
prevent the election of any person toa public office by unlawful means. So
you have to commit a crime.See this is the weird part. So
this is like a snake eating itstail. You have to be guilty of
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a crime to influence the election beforeyou can be guilty of violating this election
law. And the problem is what'sthe crime that they committed by trying to
influence the election. It was makinga payment to Stormy Daniels not to tell
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her story. That's never been characterizedas a crime before. Now, because
Michael Cohen pled guilty in a federalcase, he agreed that it was a
crime. Specifically, it was anillegal campaign contribution. I gave one hundred
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and thirty thousand dollars to Stormy Danielsto help Donald Trump. Therefore, that
was like giving one hundred and thirtythousand dollars to Donald Trump for his campaign,
which I would not have been allowedto do so under the Uh oh,
what is that statute called? It'sFECA. We used to say it
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all the time. We would justgo FIICA. But it's like the Federal
Election Something Act, Campaign Act,Federal Election Campaign Act. Under that federal
Act, if you admit that youmade an illegal campaign contribution, well then
you can't fight about that. Youdidn't. So he admitted it. He
decided to agree that it constituted anillegal campaign contribution, and he was prosecuted
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by the FED. So he violatedthis Federal Election Campaign Act as he agreed.
Here's the problem, though, thisis a state case. Federal law
preempts state law. So if they'retrying to say that they violated the New
York election law because it's an illegalcampaign contribution, I don't know that you
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can do that. I don't thinkyou can take a federal law and bring
it into a state prosecution. Sothe bottom line is this. Some jurors
could say, yeah, I thinkhe violated this esoteric New York law about
corruptly influencing an election, and otherjurors could say, well, I don't
think he did. I don't thinkhe violated that law. But I do
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think he violated the Federal Elections Act. I do think he violated that.
Then they can find him guilty.But that's not usually how these things go.
When you're charged with a crime thatrequires the finding of another crime underneath
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it, usually you have to bespecific about what that crime underneath it is.
Here they've decided the jury doesn't haveto So now we got to figure
out what does the jury do.And this would be an excellent reason to
get at least a hung jury.It really would. And even if they
convict, this is a strong appeal. And I say all of this as
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somebody who doesn't like Donald Trump.I'm not looking for reasons to stick up
for Donald Trump. But I'm lookingfor reasons to call a bad overreach of
a prosecution what it is. Whydo we hate immigrants again? What happened?
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I mean, there's been a cyclein this country of hating immigrants,
and then loving immigrants, and thenhating again and loving again. But if
you go back to the mid nineties, a trend in the mid nineties,
there was quite a bit of hatefor immigrants, and then a trend started
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that went on for several decades ofimproving our attitude toward immigrants. Nineteen ninety
four, this is a Pew ResearchCenter poll, sixty three percent of Americans
said immigrants are a burden to thecountry and only thirty one percent said immigrant
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strengthen the country. Now you gothrough the rest of the nineties and into
the two thousands, and you getto twenty nineteen, and the whole thing
flipped. Now sixty two percent ofAmericans believe immigrants are an asset to the
country and only twenty eight percent saythat they're a bird. And here we
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are back again, though, withthe immigrant hate on the rise. So
why, there's a lot of reasonswhy. One reason it's the way politics
and politicians are operating. You mayrecall that when form President Donald Trump announced
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the presidential campaign that he successfully won, one of the very first things the
announcement speech that he made spent alot of time talking about open borders are
destroying the country and immigrants are terribleand all of that stuff. So he
put out a strong message about wherehe stood. Of course, then he
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gets into office and he what doeshe do. He's got to say that
he is helping to solve the problem. And you may remember he announced this
zero tolerance at the border. Yousaw the families being split up and the
children were taken away and kept quitechildren in cages. They would talk about.
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All these images flooded the media andthere was a backlash. You may
have liked it, but nationally therewas a backlash and the Democrats went crazy,
Look what he's doing. It's inhumane. Protests all over the place,
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And this is true. In polling. Public opinion turned against then President Trump
and what he was doing. Immigration, which had not been a top issue
of concern in polls, soared tothe top. But the concern was a
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majority of Americans were saying, welike immigrants. Immigration is a good for
the country. That's why it's ofconcern because this president is ruining it.
And as Trump's presidency continued, thissentiment, this pro immigrant sentiment, continued
to grow. But here we aretoday and it's flipped back again. Public
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centement is taking a turn for thenegative. And it's not just what you
would expect, which is conservatives,you know, don't like immigrants, but
liberals like immigrants. Republicans don't likeit, Democrats like it. No,
no, no, no no.There's a poll that Axios did very recently.
An Axios is a pretty decent,you know, news source, and
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they don't have an axe to grind. Forty two Democrats in this poll said
they would support mass deportations of undocumentedimmigrants. Gallup has run a long term
tracking poll since the sixties, andwe're now in a state where more people
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want to limit immigration than want tokeep it the same. It's again flipped
because Donald Trump came out strong againstimmigration control. Then he did a bunch
of stuff. You know, hedid put his money where his mouth was.
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But people had a really bad reactionand reaction and you could make the
argument that he went too far inthe sense that he actually got people to
get upset that he was being meanto immigrants. Then he loses reelection and
Joe Biden comes in, and whatdoes Joe Biden do. He's the anti
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Trump. Joe Biden comes in andhe says, at a time when most
people in polls are saying we likeimmigration, we don't want them treated this
way. Biden comes in and says, I like immigration, I don't want
them treated this way. We're notgonna build this whole border wall. We're
gonna give new protections to DACA recipients. I've got an immigration reform bill that
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i want Congress to take a lookat. He put as much distance between
himself and Donald Trump as he possiblycould. But what does that do.
You could say, oh, well, that's pandering to the majority. Now.
The problem is it also opens thedoor for the Republicans to turn right
around and go, look what he'sdoing. Open borders are terrible, and
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the political rhetoric gets out there andit starts to influence people. So that's
one of the things. Another thinghas to do with the economy. When
we financially secure, we also feelgood about immigrants and immigration because we have
a very zero sum game idea.You know, if I've got a lot
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of money, I don't really careif come here, But if I'm struggling,
I don't want anybody else come inhere because they're eating into my pie.
There's only so much pie to goaround. So when you had the
Great Recession, same thing happened.Sentiment toward immigrants went down. We had
the pandemic and the inflation, andsame thing. People start to struggle financially,
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their attitude towards immigrants becomes negative.And then you have just the general
law and order policies. You know, we had the pandemic and then there
was like some certain surgeon crime andpeople said, oh my gosh, we're
out of control. We've been talkingabout the smash and grab robberies and the
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stabbings on the metro and people getinto a law and order mindset, and
while they may not specifically be thinkingabout immigration, it becomes part of a
law and order mindset because we dohave laws, and you do want someone
level of order with regard to howimmigration happens in this country. Of course
you do. Every country wants tohave some kind of orderly system. We're
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We're not uniquely mean or weird inthat regard. So when you become concerned
about other things in the area oflaw and order, your attitude about immigration
also becomes more law and order.And that's apparently all the reasons why.
Right now, if you're an immigrantand you want to be applauded as you
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walk down the street, you're gonnahave to wait for the cycle to turn
again, which it will, itabsolutely will, because you know what,
none of those things that I talkedabout here have anything to do with the
immigrants themselves. They're the same.It's all the stuff around it that keeps
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changing and cycling. Red Lobster filingfor bankruptcy. Not just filing for bankruptcy,
but they closed some of their locationsand auctioned off everything at that location
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as one package. And I don'tknow if you saw that in the news
and got on the website to seewhere the closest Red Lobster to you was
closing and liquidating everything. But ifyou really really wanted to, you could
have bought everything inside a particular RedLobster, the furniture, the fryars,
the ovens, the dishware, allof it. And you know, people
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were joking about it, and oh, you did the all you can eat
shrimp, the endless shrimp, andpeople came in, they ate up all
the shrimp, and you lost allthis money and now you're bankrupt. And
it's not that that is a crazyidea. I guess if you keep running
promotions and you lose whose millions ofdollars? They could bankrupt your business.
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But that's not really what happened here, not not even close. What happened.
The story of Red Lobster is thestory of private equity firms coming in
and ruining a business. Red Lobsterused to be owned by Darden, which
I think are the people right there. They have the olive garden. They
sold to some private equity firm calledGolden Gate Capital, and those people turned
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around and I don't really even understandthe nuance of this move that they pulled,
but they came in and they soldthe real estate of the Red Lobsters
to themselves or to a subsidiary.And so now Red Lobsters that used to
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own their buildings had to pay rentto the parent company. And then you
know, now you're in a leadinstead of owning the thing, and you're
an underperforming Red Lobster and you can'tafford the lease. And then they Golden
Gate Capital sold it to a companycalled Thai Union, which is a seafood
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company based in Thailand. They're behindthe Chicken of the Sea Tuna brand,
for example. They took over theywent for the extreme cost cutting, they
didn't really do anything about innovating anything, and then guess what they bought it
And then a couple of years laterthey were like, we don't want to
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be in the restaurant business. Andthat's really what happened to Red Lobster.
Because the fact of the matter isyou may think that All you Can Eat
Shrimp is a bad business decision,but I can assure you, even if
it is, it's not the worstbusiness decision that a seafood restaurant like Red
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Lobster could make. In fact,it's not the worst business decision that a
seafood company like Red Lobster made,because forget the all you can Eat shrimp.
You want to hear about a realdebacle at Red Lobster with All you
Can Eat of something. You haveto go back to two thousand and three
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and a new CEO at Red Lobsternamed Edna Morris. She had just taken
over and she wanted to do something, you know, big, and they
had an all you can Eat snowcrab promotion. Now you can see where
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this is going. At the timethat Edna Morris said we're going to do
all you can Eat snow crab.The price of snow crab was going through
the roof because there were actually quotasthat the US government put into place so
that you know, you didn't runout of snow crab, and there were
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fewer crabs in the market. Theprice of each crab went way up.
You need a ton of snow crablegs to fill up. There's mostly shell.
That did hurt red Lobster big time. They lost almost half a billion
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dollars in their stock session in onetrading session because of the debacle over the
all you can eat snow crab legs. Edna Morris was invited to move on
to other pursuits and she's look,she's not a dummy. This was a
mistake. She's had and has along career in big corporations and she generally
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knows what she's doing and she's fine. But this was a misstep big time.
The all you can eat shrimp wasviewed as a far more economical way
to go with it all you caneat promotion. That's the weird thing about
it. Because they did the allyou can eat snow crab. When somebody
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said, well what about endless shrimp? People said, oh, Yeah,
that's great because why shrimp is lessexpensive, and shrimp has more edible meat
in it than a snow crab legso they cost less and they fill people
up more, and so we're notgoing to lose our shirts on the endless
Shrimp. Now. I think theydid end up losing some money on some
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of these Endless Shrimp promotions, butthat really has almost nothing to do with
why Red Lobster near you is possiblyclosed and cleaned out. This is KFI
AM six forty Live everywhere on theiHeartRadio app. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my showMonday through Friday six am to nine am,
(31:55):
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadioapp
You're listening to Bill Handle on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. You want
listening to the Bill Handle Show.Here's Dwayne Resnick f KFI AM six forty
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.It is the Bill Handle Show. He's
(00:24):
offered Memorial Day. Wayne Residik hereat nine o'clock in for Gary and Shannon
Neil Savedra some of the stories we'refollowing for you at KFI. There is
severe weather across a lot of thecountry, and that weather over this weekend
has left at least nineteen people deadacross four states, hundreds of thousands of
(00:44):
homes and businesses damaged, hundreds ofthousands of people without power, and over
one hundred and twenty million people stillat risk of severe weather today. Meanwhile,
families of the victims of the UvaldeSchool shooting in Texas have filed the
lawsuit against gun maker Daniel Defense andpublisher of Call of Duty, the video
(01:07):
game Activision, saying that they areresponsible for encouraging a fascination with assault rifles,
Daniel Defense of course by selling them, and Call of Duty by featuring
them prominently in that video game.All right, let's talk about your car
and how you drive it and whereyou drive it. And this pilot program
(01:30):
that is starting up that you couldbe a part of if you snap to
it, if you really want toget registered for this pilot program. And
here's an example of the false reputationof California as being the what's the word,
the inventor of crazy ideas. Theremay have been a time when all
(01:53):
the crazy ideas originated here in California, and that's still a reputation that the
state has, but it's not somuch true anymore. And a lot of
times California is following in the footstepsof other states. And that is what
they're doing with this pilot program fromColtrands, which is to see what would
happen if we had a vehicle milestraveled tax instead of a gas tax.
(02:21):
So you would sign up and youwould pay some amount of money for every
mile that you drive, but youwould not have to pay gas tax when
you fill up your car. Wedidn't make this up. Oregon was the
first state to do something like this. Amy King may know about that.
I think you pay in Oregon twocents for every mile that you drive and
(02:43):
you don't pay gas tax. Andthen Virginia, Hawaii, and Utah have
some kind of active program for passengervehicles that measure your miles driven and charge
you based on miles driven. Sohere in California, the way that it
would work is you sign up.It's not clear how much per mile you're
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gonna pay. If you go backand look at the public records about this
program, sometimes people were talking aboutfive cents a mile. Other times they're
talking about two cents a mile.It's very hard to know for sure where
they're gonna settle on how many centsper mile you're gonna have to pay to
drive. But what we do knowfor sure is they got to have a
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way of tracking you. It can'twork if they don't know how many miles.
So there's a couple of ways theycan do it. If your car
has a connected service like on Staror whatever, then you can have them
get the telematics from your car.That way. There's also a plug in
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device that you can put into yourdash and can use us it can use
GPS or not use GPS and keeptrack a different way. Or for the
pilot program, the Honor system,where every month you would just send them
a photo of your odometer. Nowthat's for the pilot program. If this
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ever actually becomes policy for the wholestate, that's not going to be available
because can you imagine somebody in Sacramentohaving to look at possibly a million two
million photos of odometers every month.That'll go away, and the point of
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it being it's one thing to beon the honor system and say I will
show you how many miles I drove. That's not how it's going to work
though. There will be an invasivemonitoring of your driving. Some kind of
transponder will have to be in everycar, and if the state were to
ever fully switch over, you know, the idea here is and in these
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other states that have programs like this, it's voluntary. You can which the
numbers and decide which approach is moreeconomical for you. And I think where
California may take the lead is somedayif they decide that this really works well,
it becomes that that's the way wedo business here. There is no
gas tax anymore, and there iseverybody pays a VMT, at which point
(05:19):
every car will have some kind ofa transponder in it and they will not
only be able to monitor where you'redriving, and how many miles that you're
driving. They will be able toon the fly adjust how much per mile
you pay depending on how much you'redriving, where you're driving, when you're
driving. So, for example,and this is not a crazy idea at
(05:43):
all, you sign up for thisprogram and you pay three cents a mile,
but if you go into downtown LaBaby, that's five bucks. Or
if you want to drive on thefour h five between three pm and seven
pm, that's five cents a mile. Anything they can do, and at
(06:06):
least with the gas tax, theycan raise it. But on any given
day, at any given moment thatyou're filling up your car, you can
know how much you're paying in gastax. This kind of a program and
this level of surveillance allow state todo surge pricing like you see with Uber
(06:28):
and Lyft, to change it onthe fly. And I, I mean,
I don't drive that much, sofor all I know, this could
be economically contagious to me, ButI think I'd rather pay more in gas
taxes and not have the state knowwhere I'm driving all the time. But
that's that's happening. And you knowit's because as cars become more fuel efficient,
(06:55):
people use less gas, therefore theypay less in gas taxes. This
is really it's they're floating it nowas hey try and see if you like
it. Maybe there's an advantage foryou. But we know at the end
of the day that the purpose ofit is to replace lost gas tax revenue,
which means it has to be atleast at a minimum economically even for
(07:23):
you. Otherwise it does not accomplishwhat they need, which is to replace
that gas tax revenue. And knowingthe way the state is, my guess
is it will end up being economicallydisadvantageous to you, that you will end
up paying more under a VMT system. And you know, cars are more
(07:43):
fuel efficient, getting better MPGs,and there's a movement of foot to not
even use miles per gallon as theway to measure fuel efficiency anymore because people,
I guess we don't understand that it'snot a measure of gas savings.
So here's a little quick quiz beforewe get some news from Aybe King which
(08:05):
saves more gas. You get acar that gets twenty five miles per gallon
and you replace it with a carthat gets fifty miles to the gallon,
or you have a car that getsten miles to the gallon and you replace
it with a car that gets fifteenmiles per gallon. Well, in surveys,
most people say, oh, ifyou go from twenty five to fifty
(08:26):
miles per gallon, you're saving waymore gas than if you go from ten
to fifteen. But the fact ofthe matter is you're not. You're saving
less because if you get twenty fivemiles a gallon, then to go one
hundred miles you got to use fourgallons of gas, And if you get
fifty miles to the gallon, yougot to use two gallons of gas,
(08:48):
so you saved two gallons. Ifyou have a car that gets ten miles
a gallon, you need ten gallonsto go one hundred miles. If it
goes up to fifteen miles a gallon, you need six point six or seven.
You save over three gallons. Youactually save more gas. So there
is a movement a foot to startputting prominently on the cars, not the
(09:13):
miles per gallon, but something thatthey use in Europe called gphm gallons of
gas per one hundred miles of travel. We'll see if that happens. So
the trial of Donald Trump in NewYork, which is going to get underway
again tomorrow, and they're gonna haveclosing arguments and then the jury will get
(09:35):
the case to deliberate about whether heis guilty of thirty four felonies because the
charges say he falsified business records toconceal another crime. And the reason I
said before the break there that theprosecutor's shoulders are probably sore is because this
prosecution is one hell of a stretchand a reach, and the case got
(10:01):
muddled after the judge agreed with theprosecution that even though these charges require that
the jury find that the stuff theydid in the books, the financial entries
that they made in the books,they have to find they were done to
conceal a crime, but they don'thave to agree on what crime. That
(10:28):
is going to be a problem onan appeal big time. Now. I
can't say to you, oh,it's clearly wrong. The judge is clearly
wrong, the prosecutors are clearly wrong, and the defense attorneys are clearly correct
when they say the jury's got toagree on what crime they were trying to
cover up. And the reason Ican't say that is because there's never been
(10:50):
a case like this ever, ever, ever before. So it's brand new
territory for everybody. And I wasaround enough federal prosecutions, and this is
not a federal prosecution, it's aNew York state prosecution. But I was
around enough federal prosecutions for twenty eightyears, about six thousand of them,
(11:13):
to know that there are times totry new legal theories and there are times
not to. And such a highprofile defendant is not the time to try
(11:33):
out a kicky new idea for howyou can convict somebody. And I think
that it was probably a poorly takenprosecution on the part of New York.
Can I say that it's definitely politicallymotivated and that the DA there Alvin Bragg
just hates Trump and that's why he'sdoing it. He's just trying to get
him anyway he can get him.I can't say that because I don't know
(11:54):
it's in his head, but Iknow it's not a wise exercise of prosecutorial
discretion. They have him on thirtyfour misdemeanors. You know, it is
a crime to falsify business records allon its own, that's a misdemeanor.
And I think the evidence is arock solid that that happened, that they
(12:22):
were paying Michael Cohen back for frontinghis money to Stormy Daniels for her to
shut up, and then instead ofsaying it's a reimbursement because he fronted money
for a non disclosure deal, theyput it as, Oh, yes,
he performed legal services for us,and we're paying him for the legal services.
(12:43):
Fine, that's fine. Thirty fourmisdemeanors is a cakewalk against Donald Trump.
But I guess misdemeanors are not assexy. Misdemeanors are not the legacy
that Alvin Bragg wants to leave.Oh, they've decided that it was done
to conceal a crime. And beforethe trial started, after the charges were
(13:05):
filed, and before the trial started, and the DA's office was in the
press talking very vaguely about what crimewere they trying to cover up and would
only speak in broad terms about influencingan election. It's election fraud. And
(13:26):
that's the same kind of vague languagethat the judge used in granting the prosecution's
request that the jury be told thatthey don't have to agree on what the
crime is, they just have toagree. Every one of them has to
agree there was some kind of crimethat they were trying to cover up,
but they don't have to agree onwhat the crime was. And that's because
(13:50):
they're not that many good choices.In fact, there really aren't any good
choices. Okay. One thing thathas been stated now is this New York
State election loss Section seventeen one fiftytwo. This is obscure. There's never
been a criminal case based on itbefore, and it's a misdemeanor itself,
(14:11):
but it says it's a misdemeanor iftwo or more people conspire to promote or
prevent the election of any person toa public office by unlawful means. So
you have to commit a crime.See this is the weird part. So
this is like a snake eating itstail. You have to be guilty of
(14:33):
a crime to influence the election beforeyou can be guilty of violating this election
law. And the problem is what'sthe crime that they committed by trying to
influence the election. It was makinga payment to Stormy Daniels not to tell
(14:54):
her story. That's never been characterizedas a crime before. Now, because
Michael Cohen pled guilty in a federalcase, he agreed that it was a
crime. Specifically, it was anillegal campaign contribution. I gave one hundred
(15:18):
and thirty thousand dollars to Stormy Danielsto help Donald Trump. Therefore, that
was like giving one hundred and thirtythousand dollars to Donald Trump for his campaign,
which I would not have been allowedto do so under the Uh oh,
what is that statute called? It'sFECA. We used to say it
(15:41):
all the time. We would justgo FIICA. But it's like the Federal
Election Something Act, Campaign Act,Federal Election Campaign Act. Under that federal
Act, if you admit that youmade an illegal campaign contribution, well then
you can't fight about that. Youdidn't. So he admitted it. He
decided to agree that it constituted anillegal campaign contribution, and he was prosecuted
(16:06):
by the FED. So he violatedthis Federal Election Campaign Act as he agreed.
Here's the problem, though, thisis a state case. Federal law
preempts state law. So if they'retrying to say that they violated the New
York election law because it's an illegalcampaign contribution, I don't know that you
(16:30):
can do that. I don't thinkyou can take a federal law and bring
it into a state prosecution. Sothe bottom line is this. Some jurors
could say, yeah, I thinkhe violated this esoteric New York law about
corruptly influencing an election, and otherjurors could say, well, I don't
think he did. I don't thinkhe violated that law. But I do
(16:51):
think he violated the Federal Elections Act. I do think he violated that.
Then they can find him guilty.But that's not usually how these things go.
When you're charged with a crime thatrequires the finding of another crime underneath
(17:11):
it, usually you have to bespecific about what that crime underneath it is.
Here they've decided the jury doesn't haveto So now we got to figure
out what does the jury do.And this would be an excellent reason to
get at least a hung jury.It really would. And even if they
convict, this is a strong appeal. And I say all of this as
(17:33):
somebody who doesn't like Donald Trump.I'm not looking for reasons to stick up
for Donald Trump. But I'm lookingfor reasons to call a bad overreach of
a prosecution what it is. Whydo we hate immigrants again? What happened?
(17:56):
I mean, there's been a cyclein this country of hating immigrants,
and then loving immigrants, and thenhating again and loving again. But if
you go back to the mid nineties, a trend in the mid nineties,
there was quite a bit of hatefor immigrants, and then a trend started
(18:17):
that went on for several decades ofimproving our attitude toward immigrants. Nineteen ninety
four, this is a Pew ResearchCenter poll, sixty three percent of Americans
said immigrants are a burden to thecountry and only thirty one percent said immigrant
(18:38):
strengthen the country. Now you gothrough the rest of the nineties and into
the two thousands, and you getto twenty nineteen, and the whole thing
flipped. Now sixty two percent ofAmericans believe immigrants are an asset to the
country and only twenty eight percent saythat they're a bird. And here we
(19:03):
are back again, though, withthe immigrant hate on the rise. So
why, there's a lot of reasonswhy. One reason it's the way politics
and politicians are operating. You mayrecall that when form President Donald Trump announced
(19:26):
the presidential campaign that he successfully won, one of the very first things the
announcement speech that he made spent alot of time talking about open borders are
destroying the country and immigrants are terribleand all of that stuff. So he
put out a strong message about wherehe stood. Of course, then he
(19:47):
gets into office and he what doeshe do. He's got to say that
he is helping to solve the problem. And you may remember he announced this
zero tolerance at the border. Yousaw the families being split up and the
children were taken away and kept quitechildren in cages. They would talk about.
(20:11):
All these images flooded the media andthere was a backlash. You may
have liked it, but nationally therewas a backlash and the Democrats went crazy,
Look what he's doing. It's inhumane. Protests all over the place,
(20:33):
And this is true. In polling. Public opinion turned against then President Trump
and what he was doing. Immigration, which had not been a top issue
of concern in polls, soared tothe top. But the concern was a
(20:56):
majority of Americans were saying, welike immigrants. Immigration is a good for
the country. That's why it's ofconcern because this president is ruining it.
And as Trump's presidency continued, thissentiment, this pro immigrant sentiment, continued
to grow. But here we aretoday and it's flipped back again. Public
(21:21):
centement is taking a turn for thenegative. And it's not just what you
would expect, which is conservatives,you know, don't like immigrants, but
liberals like immigrants. Republicans don't likeit, Democrats like it. No,
no, no, no no.There's a poll that Axios did very recently.
An Axios is a pretty decent,you know, news source, and
(21:41):
they don't have an axe to grind. Forty two Democrats in this poll said
they would support mass deportations of undocumentedimmigrants. Gallup has run a long term
tracking poll since the sixties, andwe're now in a state where more people
(22:04):
want to limit immigration than want tokeep it the same. It's again flipped
because Donald Trump came out strong againstimmigration control. Then he did a bunch
of stuff. You know, hedid put his money where his mouth was.
(22:27):
But people had a really bad reactionand reaction and you could make the
argument that he went too far inthe sense that he actually got people to
get upset that he was being meanto immigrants. Then he loses reelection and
Joe Biden comes in, and whatdoes Joe Biden do. He's the anti
(22:48):
Trump. Joe Biden comes in andhe says, at a time when most
people in polls are saying we likeimmigration, we don't want them treated this
way. Biden comes in and says, I like immigration, I don't want
them treated this way. We're notgonna build this whole border wall. We're
gonna give new protections to DACA recipients. I've got an immigration reform bill that
(23:14):
i want Congress to take a lookat. He put as much distance between
himself and Donald Trump as he possiblycould. But what does that do.
You could say, oh, well, that's pandering to the majority. Now.
The problem is it also opens thedoor for the Republicans to turn right
around and go, look what he'sdoing. Open borders are terrible, and
(23:37):
the political rhetoric gets out there andit starts to influence people. So that's
one of the things. Another thinghas to do with the economy. When
we financially secure, we also feelgood about immigrants and immigration because we have
a very zero sum game idea.You know, if I've got a lot
(23:57):
of money, I don't really careif come here, But if I'm struggling,
I don't want anybody else come inhere because they're eating into my pie.
There's only so much pie to goaround. So when you had the
Great Recession, same thing happened.Sentiment toward immigrants went down. We had
the pandemic and the inflation, andsame thing. People start to struggle financially,
(24:22):
their attitude towards immigrants becomes negative.And then you have just the general
law and order policies. You know, we had the pandemic and then there
was like some certain surgeon crime andpeople said, oh my gosh, we're
out of control. We've been talkingabout the smash and grab robberies and the
(24:45):
stabbings on the metro and people getinto a law and order mindset, and
while they may not specifically be thinkingabout immigration, it becomes part of a
law and order mindset because we dohave laws, and you do want someone
level of order with regard to howimmigration happens in this country. Of course
you do. Every country wants tohave some kind of orderly system. We're
(25:11):
We're not uniquely mean or weird inthat regard. So when you become concerned
about other things in the area oflaw and order, your attitude about immigration
also becomes more law and order.And that's apparently all the reasons why.
Right now, if you're an immigrantand you want to be applauded as you
(25:33):
walk down the street, you're gonnahave to wait for the cycle to turn
again, which it will, itabsolutely will, because you know what,
none of those things that I talkedabout here have anything to do with the
immigrants themselves. They're the same.It's all the stuff around it that keeps
(25:56):
changing and cycling. Red Lobster filingfor bankruptcy. Not just filing for bankruptcy,
but they closed some of their locationsand auctioned off everything at that location
(26:18):
as one package. And I don'tknow if you saw that in the news
and got on the website to seewhere the closest Red Lobster to you was
closing and liquidating everything. But ifyou really really wanted to, you could
have bought everything inside a particular RedLobster, the furniture, the fryars,
the ovens, the dishware, allof it. And you know, people
(26:41):
were joking about it, and oh, you did the all you can eat
shrimp, the endless shrimp, andpeople came in, they ate up all
the shrimp, and you lost allthis money and now you're bankrupt. And
it's not that that is a crazyidea. I guess if you keep running
promotions and you lose whose millions ofdollars? They could bankrupt your business.
(27:02):
But that's not really what happened here, not not even close. What happened.
The story of Red Lobster is thestory of private equity firms coming in
and ruining a business. Red Lobsterused to be owned by Darden, which
I think are the people right there. They have the olive garden. They
sold to some private equity firm calledGolden Gate Capital, and those people turned
(27:29):
around and I don't really even understandthe nuance of this move that they pulled,
but they came in and they soldthe real estate of the Red Lobsters
to themselves or to a subsidiary.And so now Red Lobsters that used to
(27:52):
own their buildings had to pay rentto the parent company. And then you
know, now you're in a leadinstead of owning the thing, and you're
an underperforming Red Lobster and you can'tafford the lease. And then they Golden
Gate Capital sold it to a companycalled Thai Union, which is a seafood
(28:12):
company based in Thailand. They're behindthe Chicken of the Sea Tuna brand,
for example. They took over theywent for the extreme cost cutting, they
didn't really do anything about innovating anything, and then guess what they bought it
And then a couple of years laterthey were like, we don't want to
(28:32):
be in the restaurant business. Andthat's really what happened to Red Lobster.
Because the fact of the matter isyou may think that All you Can Eat
Shrimp is a bad business decision,but I can assure you, even if
it is, it's not the worstbusiness decision that a seafood restaurant like Red
(28:57):
Lobster could make. In fact,it's not the worst business decision that a
seafood company like Red Lobster made,because forget the all you can Eat shrimp.
You want to hear about a realdebacle at Red Lobster with All you
Can Eat of something. You haveto go back to two thousand and three
(29:21):
and a new CEO at Red Lobsternamed Edna Morris. She had just taken
over and she wanted to do something, you know, big, and they
had an all you can Eat snowcrab promotion. Now you can see where
(29:41):
this is going. At the timethat Edna Morris said we're going to do
all you can Eat snow crab.The price of snow crab was going through
the roof because there were actually quotasthat the US government put into place so
that you know, you didn't runout of snow crab, and there were
(30:02):
fewer crabs in the market. Theprice of each crab went way up.
You need a ton of snow crablegs to fill up. There's mostly shell.
That did hurt red Lobster big time. They lost almost half a billion
(30:26):
dollars in their stock session in onetrading session because of the debacle over the
all you can eat snow crab legs. Edna Morris was invited to move on
to other pursuits and she's look,she's not a dummy. This was a
mistake. She's had and has along career in big corporations and she generally
(30:51):
knows what she's doing and she's fine. But this was a misstep big time.
The all you can eat shrimp wasviewed as a far more economical way
to go with it all you caneat promotion. That's the weird thing about
it. Because they did the allyou can eat snow crab. When somebody
(31:11):
said, well what about endless shrimp? People said, oh, Yeah,
that's great because why shrimp is lessexpensive, and shrimp has more edible meat
in it than a snow crab legso they cost less and they fill people
up more, and so we're notgoing to lose our shirts on the endless
Shrimp. Now. I think theydid end up losing some money on some
(31:34):
of these Endless Shrimp promotions, butthat really has almost nothing to do with
why Red Lobster near you is possiblyclosed and cleaned out. This is KFI
AM six forty Live everywhere on theiHeartRadio app. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my showMonday through Friday six am to nine am,
(31:55):
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