BHS - 7A – How Tim Walz Beat Out Josh Shapiro | California’s HIGH Power Bills

How Tim Walz beat out Josh Shapiro as Harris’ running mate. Why Californians have some of the highest power bills. eterans’ demands for more housing in West L.A. VA campus goes to trial.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty and k I AM six forty. Bill Handle
here on a Wednesday morning, August seventh. Ough, so much
going on today? Oh quick word about my podcast, which
yesterday was dealing with vacations and travel etiquette, what people

(00:25):
are now doing on airplanes and traveling. And I just
went out of my mind because I fly, you fly,
we all fly, and it is there's a whole new
world today. People are slobs. So that's kind of a
fun podcast. Tomorrow the other one drops, and this has
to do with and I talked about this before. If
President Trump becomes president, former President Trump, the first thing,

(00:47):
as he said he's gonna do is pardon, pardon, pardon, pardon.
So there's a segment about presidential pardons, and that drops
tomorrow at nine o'clock. The Bill Handle Show podcast. It's
called on Spotify, iHeartRadio, the iHeartRadio app, Apple, I mean
all of them, The Bill Handle Show podcast. Okay, Now,
yesterday the announcement was made that the Governor of Minnesota,

(01:13):
Tim Walls has and was and accepted the offer of
vice presidential candidate under Kamala Harris and a couple things.
He came out first rally, both of them to the other,
and I don't think anybody disagrees he hit a home run,
especially to a Democratic crowd. He did not sound like
a politician. He was folksy, he was real. The attacking

(01:39):
that he did did not sound like much of an attack.
It was more joshing. And still got his point across
about the detriment of the country that Donald Trump will
bring to the table. I thought he handled it perfectly.
Now it is early days. We had this is one rally,
and do you remember and this is I'm making an analogy,

(02:02):
and I don't want to really compare the two. Sarah
Palin her first couple of days, she came off beautifully.
Everybody was excited. Her first speech was terrific. And guess what,
Obviously she was a complete utter disaster. That's not to
say that Tim Wallas is going to be I don't
believe it at all. Tim Walls has experienced as a

(02:24):
congress person, He's been a two term governor. He is
a background The credentials are absolutely superb. High school teacher,
football coach, just all of it. And so why Tim Walls?
He was He was the dark horse on this. Well,

(02:47):
one of the things Sarah about Kamala Harris, and she's
been the vice president for almost eight years, and she
knows what she wants and a vice president and knows
what that job really is. And for her it's trust
and it's the ability to believe that someone can do
the job and in the event that she goes south,

(03:09):
he can take over. It was rapport All three of
the other all two of the other candidates would have
been fine. Shapiro the front runner, he brings a lot
of baggage to the table, particularly because he's Jewish and
not because he's just Jewish. His position in terms of
the Palestinian demonstrations man it was he makes no bones

(03:33):
about it. He does not like them. He wants to
deal with them very forcefully. And with the Democratic Party today,
which a good part of the super Liberals, a good party,
even the moderates among the party are looking at the
pet Palestinian protests and what's going on in Gaza. They're
not looking at it as super pro Israeli, which has

(03:54):
always been the case. And so there were a bunch
of reasons that it makes It makes sense also with
Shapiro and this is where Kamala Harris was not very happy.
The lobbying that was going on for Shapiro was extraordinary,
way too public, way too much, way too many allies
of Shapiro contacting her campaign and going, this is the guy,

(04:15):
this is the guy, this is the guy. So she
met with all three Mark Kelly of Arizona, Senator Shapiro
of Pennsylvania, governor, and Tim Walls of Minnesota, and that
personal meeting wrapped it up. So now we're going to
see And it turned out I think to be a
great choice because I think he is the perfect offset

(04:38):
for jd. Vance, who is strident, who is fanatic, who
doubled down, who doubles down when he makes a mistake,
and doesn't just try to explain a bad statement. You've
got a folks see guy who we know what his
issues are. Just to give you an idea. He was
on CNN and he was being asked about his liberal stance,

(05:04):
and this was kind. I thought he did it. I
thought he did it well. He was asked about as
liberal record as a governor, and he responded, what a
monster to responding for himself. Kids are eating, having full
bellies so they can go learn and women are making
their own health care decisions, and we're a top five
business state, and we also rank in the top three

(05:26):
of happiness. That is a pretty folksy retort, I tell you.
And he's the one that coined the description of the
Republican ticket. Not as horrific, not as terrible, not as
an attack on democracy. They're just weird, just weird. And

(05:50):
what a great attack without being an attack. Neil and
I talked about it this morning. That is, I think
what we're going to see, the underlying attack is going
to be there. The delivery is going to be folk see,
it's going to be on a level that the average person,

(06:10):
even the non average person understands gets it. Just a nice,
nice guy who is competent, who is there's no question
he's left. He's left, And today you're going to hear
that was the worst choice in the history of the
United States. They couldn't have gotten anybody worse. And then,

(06:31):
oh god, do you know what he loved about. I
think it was JD. Vans or who's Donald Trump, who
said the Democratic Party should have let Joe Biden be
the president. The Democratic Party was wrong and immoral, and
a guy who won the primaries not going forward as
if he can't bail out, and the Democrats can't say
we want someone else. Why, Well, because Joe Biden would

(06:54):
have been the worst candidate. Now I think we have
a real battle, real battle on our hands. There was
one before under Biden. And the Republicans are not happy
about this. They are not happy at all. Now, I
just want to spend a moment talking about power bills
here in the US. Right, how about California. Your energy

(07:18):
bills the highest in the country. And as you know,
I downsized and moved into a much smaller house. So
just let me tell you I had a big house.
I mean, there's no question the Persian Palace was a
big house. So my energy bills, which is one of
the reasons I had ten years ago a solar system
put in, because it made all the sense in the world.

(07:40):
My energy bills during the summer when I was running
the air conditioning balls to the wall, hit twelve hundred
dollars a month. That's how much I was paying during
the summer. Okay, that's before these rates went up. This
was over ten years ago. It was twelve hundred dollars
a month. And so here I am. I downsized and
moved into the most and by the way, that Department

(08:04):
of Water and Power is one of the best utilities LA.
I moved into the most expensive utility area in the country.
Thank you. The house is substantially less than half the
square footage that I had, quite a bit less than half.
I was looking at the same or higher energy bills.

(08:26):
You wonder why Sunlucks put a system in the second
I bought the house. And by the way, this isn't
a plug for sunlus but well, actually it is, but
not putting in a solar system in my neighborhood. It's
about eighty percent solar systems. I'm just wondering what the
twenty percent people do? Why is that? Well, welcome to California. California,

(08:48):
what we are is at the forefront of alternative energy.
We are at the forefront of environmental protections, and that
meansan's fossil fuels are off the table. So California goes
out of its way to make sure the fossil fuels
are gone, and which means that we're doing everything we

(09:13):
can on the one hand to help the environment, and
that translates directly into higher utility costs because we still
have the vast amount of energy that's created by fossil fuels,
and when you put it, and by the way, when
we talk about alternative fuels, right, the cost of doing

(09:38):
that is astronomical, far far more than what we're doing
with the fossil fuel is a gas. Gasoline is already
in place, the fossil fuel system, power plants are already
in place, gas stations are already in place. When you
switch to solar, it's all new infrastructure, all of it.

(09:58):
It costs a fortuhie, which means the utilities have to
pay for all of that, which means we have to
pay for all of that. So the legislature is going nuts.
This is a lose lose proposition. Man. This is why
I love not being a legislator. Either way. If you

(10:18):
are an environmentalist legislature and you believe in alternative fuels
and setting up solar panels and even well nukes, that's
off the table now because of Fukushima. Unfortunately, if you
are looking at wind turbine power again that's all infrastructure,
then what you're doing is causing the consumer to pay

(10:39):
a whole lot more, and I mean a whole lot more,
and it's not getting any better either. We are Alternative
energy is going to cost a whole lot more money
for a very long time, and are we willing to
pay the price? Well, certainly, California is California to tell you,

(11:01):
it's a tough place to live when it comes to
the cost of living here. I mean, just across the board,
they ain't nothing cheap about living in California. They're really isn't.
Even the cost of illegal labor is hideously expensive. Those
of us who hire as many illegal migrants as possible
to save money. Illegal migrants in Texas cost less than

(11:25):
half of the illegal migrants coming across the border here.
Ripping off people that work for you is twice as
much money here than it is there. Damn it. The humanity. Okay,
yesterday was travel etiquette because a lot of people I'm

(11:49):
gonna be jumping on an airplane soon and people are
complete utter slobs, and travel is very different today in
your slob and it's just very difficult. So that was
yesterday and tomorrow presidential pardons talk about that because I've
talked so much about if Donald Trump becomes president, the
first thing he's going to do is start issuing pardons
like crazy. So a little bit of history and a
little bit of just fun with that one. All right,

(12:11):
So Tuesdays and Thursdays and all you have to do
is either go to Spotify or the iHeartRadio app or
Apple and you can listen to the podcast the Bill
Handle the Bill Handles Show podcast. Okay, So with that,
do you know what I was going to do the
whole story about AI, which I guess we're going to

(12:32):
do tomorrow, and because I want to take more than
two minutes, so let me just tell you what's going
to be happening at eight thirty. As I said, I'm
going to have a Jim Kini segment, and we're going
to do at eight point fifty a segment, and I'm
going to talk about something that I I'm going to
do something with Jim that I have never done, have

(12:55):
never talked about in all of the years of mydcast career.
And I first opened my mouth behind a microphone in
nineteen eighty five, okay, and I have never done in
all of those years what I'm going to do at
eight fifty. How's that fritise? And that's absolutely true? I

(13:19):
might add absolutely true? Okay, some of the bigger stories
that we're looking at before we move into a veteran's
demand for more housing. And that's a big story because
it's a local story in West la And if you
ever drive in that area, you'll know exactly what I'm
talking about. We have a brand new vice presidential candidate
in Governor Tim Walls of Minnesota that I talked about

(13:42):
at seven o'clock this morning a segment and if you
want to go on demand, just go to the iHeartRadio
app and put in the Bill Handles Show, which is
not the Bill handle Show podcast, which is different. And
so I talked about how he came out yesterday's first
rally with the Vice president and I thought it was
a win for him. Forget about the policies. I mean,

(14:03):
you and I can disagree, and we often do, but
just the way he came off and the win of
who he was and what he's going to do for
the Democratic Party. Also, if you happen to be on
the East Coast or know someone on the East Coast,
send them some school big gear or at least a
historical or two. They're underwater. They're underwater, they're figuring well

(14:25):
when tropical storm Debbie Well, was hurricane actually hit the Carolinas,
there was over two feet of rain. It's now they're
measuring rain by the foot. So the upper seaboard, the
Eastern Seaboard is going to get completely nailed. So and

(14:45):
World War three is about to start. Just waiting for
Iran to attack Israel directly, and one of the Iranian
top hanchos said, they're going to have to wait. That's
part of the punishment. That's why we're not attacking right now.
And that's a page right out of the Israeli playbook,
and that is we are going to retaliate at our

(15:09):
convenience and upon our choice of time. So we've got
plenty plenty coming up now. Something that started, you know,
back in the eighteen eighties. If you ever been to
West la there on Sawtel in Wilship Boulevard is the
Veterans Cemetery. Thousands of graves and of course it's meticulously

(15:30):
killed and it's very sobering. I mean, this are veterans' graves,
very sobering as you go past that when you realize
how many men and in a few cases women who
have served our country are buried there. Across the street
is the Veterans Administration and it is a full campus

(15:52):
and it actually came into being in the eighteen eighties
for the veterans. It was established in eighteen eighties as
a home for Civil War veterans on land donated by
this very wealthy guy, a Senator John P. Jones, and

(16:13):
he owned land going back to his family owned land,
going way way back, and after World War One, the
campus this is buildings and huge amount of ground and
the veterans, the hospital is there in the Wadsworth Theater
and old theater, going back where we have performed and
we have gone to. The campus gradually evolved from institutional

(16:35):
housing to medical care. Four thousand veterans live on the property,
or did in the early twentieth century, and then it
continued and became a medical center and it was considered
a pretty high end did a lot of good work,
and by nineteen sixty two the VA Medical Center there

(16:56):
was the largest in the country six thousand patients forty
five hundred staff. And then in the sixties residential use
declinients and then after the nineteen seventy one Silmar earthquake,
just the hospital building itself was demolished because it was unsafe.
The thousand remaining residents of the Old Soldiers' Home coming

(17:17):
in from eighteen eighty eight, the Old Soldier's Home starting
with Civil War veterans, they were gone, they were evicted.
About half of them went to other VA facilities. The
other half no one knows. So here's what happens. Veterans
who don't have housing have sued have sued the federal

(17:38):
government and saying that was set up for housing, and
you're not putting housing there for us. This has been
going on for a decade and the trial is literally
about to start. And this is after the US District
Judge David o'carter, now David o'carter. O'carter is the federal
judges involved in homelessness. He's walked up and down the

(18:02):
Santa Anna River and made all kinds of pro homeless orders.
I mean, this guy is, let me put it this way,
land developers, the cities don't really like him. He is
the champion of the homeless. Well, he earlier found the
VA had a fiduciary duty to use the three hundred
and eighty eight acre campus primarily for housing in healthcare

(18:25):
for disabled veterans, which means that the legality of leases
that are now in place for sports facilities, oil drilling,
two parking lots run by private concerns that have leases
with the federal government gone gone because it's in violation

(18:52):
of that original lease or the original purpose of it,
and those leases breach the fiduciary duty that the VA
has towards veterans. And I don't know how many people
are going to be upset about that. I'm sure not,
because you're talking about veterans who need housing. And by
the way, a third of the homeless are veterans out there.

(19:15):
And it is heartbreaking. And I've said many, many times,
this is a very poor country to be, a very
tough country to be pour in. It's very easy to
fall into homelessness and it's very difficult to get back
out of it. It is shameful that we have veterans
on the streets. Shameful. Yeah, no, it is. It's because

(19:36):
you know, you don't see this in European countries. The
safety net is far, far greater, particularly in the Scandinavian countries. Man,
you just don't see homeless people on the streets. Just
doesn't exist. And here, of course, are homeless issue, well,
sixty thousand homeless in La County alone, sixty thousand. Those

(19:57):
numbers are so astronomical. They also the almost fi belief,
and it gets even worse when you think about the
veterans who have served our country being homeless, that even
gets worse. So we have a federal piece of land
established in eighteen eighty eight for the purpose of housing veterans,

(20:20):
and it morphed into not only the hospital, which is
great because it is one of the better VA hospitals
out there, but also there's private parking lots there, there's
that theater there, there are sports facilities there, and you know,
it's not easy for a veteran, particularly a double amputee,

(20:45):
to play pickleball. It's just not a good combination. Okay,
we're done. KFIAM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch My
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