October 16, 2024 • 27 mins
Wayne Resnick fills in for Bill who is out on vacation. All the reasons housing is expensive. Santa Ana may allow non-citizens to vote. IS social media REALLY causing child depression? Presser today on Menendez Bros.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listenings KPI AM six forty the Bill Handles Show
on demand on the iHeartRadio f.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
But is the Bill Handles Show, and he is back
from vacation on Monday. I'm Wayne Resimek here until nine,
and let's get right into this trying to make sense
of all the myriad of reasons that housing is so
expensive in California, which is why it's such a difficult
problem to solve, and how over time California has moved
(00:35):
farther and farther and farther away from the other states,
not in terms of actual geography, but in terms of
housing affordability.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
If you go back to the late sixties.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
A typical home in California cost four or five times
the average household income, So if you made thirty thousand dollars,
you could get a house for one hundred and twenty
maybe one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now, the average
(01:11):
typical home in California costs more than eleven times.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
You're making more than your.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Parents did in the sixties, but houses cost even more
in comparison to what you're making, and the cost between
California and the rest of the country keeps widening the gap.
The median home here in California is two and a
half times higher than the national median home price. And sure,
(01:40):
they're parts of the country like I don't know, West
Virginia or Alabama or places where where homes are dirt cheap,
but there are other parts of the country where homes
are still expensive as well. And so you can't answer
the question by saying, well, you're comparing California only two
places that have really low housing costs. That's not what's
(02:01):
going on here. So that's why we have much lower
rates of home ownership here in California than in the
rest of the country. And if you are not looking
to buy and you're looking to rent, hey, rents here
are among the highest in the country. Of the ten
most expensive large cities to rent, California has four of them.
(02:27):
We're only one of fifty states, but we have forty
percent of the expensive rental cities. Here's the bad news
is that that's good news because that is actually an
improvement since four years ago. There's so much improvement we
would have to make in the affordability of housing that
(02:49):
we could make what on paper would be unbelievably outsized
unpredictably impressive improved, and it still would be too expensive
for most people to own a home, and still a
(03:09):
massive rent burden for people to rent. And the reason
this is important to try to address is because this
problem of high housing cost affects every aspect of your life.
Where can you live, who can you live with, where
can your kid go to school?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
How long is your commute to work?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The homelessness problem, the poverty problem that we have are
largely connected to the lack of housing affordability. It is
so endemic to everything that makes California suck, quite frankly,
and yet there are so many moving parts that it
(03:58):
seems impossib to actually address right now.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
The only way you really could.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Address it is to get some source of money from
outside the California budget to give everybody hundreds of thousands
of dollars to buy a home or to start affording
whatever apartment they can afford. And even then it might
not be enough because they're not enough housing available. Even
(04:27):
if everybody could afford housing. In fact, that might make
it worse, which is what happened when the interest rates
went down. When the interest rates went down, more people
started trying to buy homes, and you had more demand
and less supply, and housing prices went up. So when
people it's weird. When people can afford it, it's still
(04:50):
too expensive, And when they can't afford it, it's too
expensive because it's not just a matter of cost, it's
a matter of supply. And that's a lot of stuff
to tackle. And I didn't mean to end up on
a bummer note about it, But the sooner we recognize
how big of a bummer it is, maybe the sooner
(05:11):
we can get radical in our thinking and get the
government to get a little more radical in their thinking
and actually do something about it. Today, at one pm
in downtown LA there will be a rally, news conference
type of event. It's not clear precisely what it's gonna be,
(05:31):
but it involves the Menendez brothers and their case and
their efforts to have that case reopened and possibly be
resentenced for the murder of their parents. DA George Gascone
said his office is looking at new information and there
will be almost two dozen family members of the Menendez brothers,
(05:54):
as well as their attorney, Mark Arragos. And I'm told
by KFI executive from Michelle Cube Rosie O'Donnell is.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Set to appear.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I know for a fact that kfi's Michael Monks will
report from there as it happens. And way over there,
Israel is looking at a letter they got from US,
the United States of America, demanding that they let a
lot more humanitarian aid into Gaza in the next thirty
days or else they will be violating United States laws
(06:27):
saying they can't do that, they can't stop the aid
from going in, and that means our military aid to
Israel could be in jeopardy. Now closer to home, in
Santa Ana, on election day, the residents of Santa Anna
who can vote, will be voting on Measure DD double D.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Don't you dare? Neil, Don't you dare? And this is
if it's passed.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It will allow non US citizens to vote in the
municipal elections in the city of Santa Anna, which many
people say, this is very radical thing to do. How
radical is it? And by the way, how radical it
is is not necessarily the same as is it a
good idea or a bad idea?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
How radical is it?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Well, in the United States, non citizens can be allowed
to vote in local elections. Federal law allows for that,
So in that sense, it's not that radical because the
law allows for it. Santa Anna would not be the
first city in the United States to vote to allow
(07:36):
non citizens to vote. San Francisco pasted a law allowing
non citizens to vote in their school board elections. Oakland
also passed that, but it hasn't been implemented yet. In Vermont,
there are three different cities that allow non US citizens
to vote. In Maryland, there are some cities where they
(07:59):
can vote. In fact, in Tacoma Park, Maryland, thirty years ago,
they voted to allow non citizens to vote in their
local elections. Also in DC you can do that now.
This is local elections and school board races in San Francisco.
It's only the school board races. In other cities, it's
(08:21):
any local election would so mayor that kind of thing.
So Santa Anna now wants to set a precedent here
in California to allow non citizens to vote in all
municipal elections. There's about three hundred and ten thousand people
in Santa Anna, plus or minus, and this vote comes
(08:43):
at a very prominent time as to this issue. As
you know, in Congress, Republicans are pushing for this save Act,
the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would require that
you show proof of citizenship just to register to vote,
(09:07):
even though as to federal elections, non citizens can't vote,
So it kind of seems weird.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
But you know what, you registered to vote once.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
You don't separately register for federal elections and local elections.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
It's a single registration.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
And so I suppose, without endorsing this SAVE Act, I
suppose Congress can have something to say about the requirements
the register to vote. I don't know that this is
a great idea, but you know, when you register to vote,
it affects all elections. Now do you know that if
(09:52):
you rewind the United States of America clock back to say,
the late eighteen hundreds into the early nineteen hundreds, about
half of the states in this country allowed non US
citizens to vote in their state elections.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And they had a reason for doing it.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Think about this, because you're about to hear some thinking
that is very different than some of the thinking today.
Back then, a lot of the states said, yes, we'll
let non citizens vote in the state elections because people
are coming to this country and we want them to
come live in our state. We want immigrants to pick
(10:28):
our state. So by letting them vote, they get to
have more of us say, they will feel perhaps more
connected to living in our state, and they will come
live in our state. Back then, there were states that thought,
you know, immigrants.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Are a great thing, and we want them.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And then things changed in the country and you had
a depression, and then you had the Red Scare in
the forties and the fifties, where is Senator Joe McCarty
was running around saying everybody was a communist and held
hearings that people lost their careers because they were members
of the Communist Party or because somebody said that they
were members. And that happened, and that really turned a
(11:08):
lot of the tide in the country against immigration, even
though being a communist and being from another country really
are not necessarily related.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
But anyway, that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
So in nineteen ninety six, the FEDS passed the Legal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Let's see if that
spells anything, fun teerh No, it does not. And that's
the law that says non citizens can vote in non
(11:41):
federal elections if the locality says they can. And that's
why you have these various cities around the country that
have voted for it, and now it's Santa Anna's turn,
and I mean the voters of Santa Anna, it's your
turn to decide if you want that to happen in
your city. Let's get some news from Amy King, and
(12:03):
then I think we're going to finally answer the question
that has been being.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Asked for at least two three years now.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Is social media making our kids more depressed and anxious?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Is it? Let's finally answer that question.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Georgia had their first day of early voting and a
record number of people showed up to vote. Over three
hundred and twenty eight thousand votes were cast. The previous
first day record, this is what's amazing, was one hundred
and thirty six thousand in the last presidential election.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
That's a massive jump in early voting. Now.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Today, at one Downtown LA, almost two dozen family members
of Eric and Lyle Menendez will speak at a news conference.
Their lawyer will be there as well, Mark Garrigos. Michelle
Cube tells me that Rosie O'Donnell is supposed to show
up at this event. Can't be one hundred percent sure
if something specific is going to be announced about their case,
(13:10):
although the DA George Gascon said they are looking at
some new evidence regarding the abuse that the Menenta's brothers
suffered and it could lead to maybe a resentencing hearing
for them. Kfi's Minchael Monks. Let me try and say
his name again properly, Michael Monks. He will be there
(13:31):
to report as it happens. Now, let's just answer the
question right up front.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
It's an easy answer.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
People are trying to make it complicated, but there's an
easy answer to the question.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Is social media.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Causing our children to be more anxious and more depressed?
And the easy answer is nobody knows. Nobody knows. Why
don't we know? Here's why we don't know. One, it
used to be that researchers had great access to the
(14:10):
data and information that the social media platforms of the
time had. For example, and this is now, I think
ten years ago, there was a computer scientist at Georgia
Tech and he was on a team that did research
into Instagram and they had access to a lot of
the data and they found that groups that were promoting
(14:36):
I guess disordered eating. So if there was an Instagram
account that was talking about you know, don't eat anything
for three days. They were getting around Instagram's efforts to
block that kind of content, and they could tell that
it was happening because they had access to the data. Now,
(14:58):
social media companies, some of the do not allow any
access to this kind of data, or if they do,
you have to pay a lot of money to get
access to it. So that's one of the reasons why
we cannot tell, because we can't do even the kind
of research that they were doing ten years ago. As
to this question, here's another problem. Social media is over here,
(15:23):
your kid is over there. It's not a one way
pipeline from social media to your kid. This is a
two way street. Does social media affect the mental health
of your kid? Hmm, I don't know. Does the mental
health of your kid affect how and how much they
(15:49):
use social media?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Don't know. We do know though, it goes both ways.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
So the fact that there's some correlation with many children
between higher rates of depression and anxiety and use of
social media, it doesn't tell you which direction.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Is causing it.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Is it because the social media is harming them, or
is it because some kids have issues already and that
leads to them using social media more because here's the
other reason that we can't tell for sure, And there
are all kinds of top quality studies that say social
(16:33):
media helps kids with depression and anxiety, particularly kids who
are perhaps part of a marginalized community, and that there
can be great benefit in making connections through social media,
you know, like outside of your zip code. For every
(16:54):
study that will show social media makes kids mental health worse,
there's a study that will show that social media can
help kids who already have mental health issues and need
some kind of support. Here's another reason I just thought of,
and it has to do with what I just said
about for some kids, social media is actually a support system.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Social media it's different things.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
There's interactive social media, maybe Facebook, and you're posting and
you're sending messages to each other, and you're interacting with
other people that you know or maybe you only know
them online, but you know them, I mean, they're a
known quantity to you. Then there's like purely passive social media,
just sitting there scrolling through TikTok where just you're looking
(17:45):
at stuff, you're not really communicating.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
So there's different kinds of social media.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
In the meantime, as the truth of the matter is
it's impossible to tell for sure. If you're asking the
broad question to social media media mess up kids' minds,
the government is all in on yes it does, and
we're going to do stuff about it. And you're hearing
about age restrictions for using social media, You're hearing about
(18:12):
laws requiring social media platforms to do more to address
things like cyberbullying, et cetera. The government is all in.
You remember the Surgeon in General not too long ago
said the harm from social media is an important public
health crisis that we are having. There's a slew of
(18:33):
legislation in the pipeline specifically based on the premise that
it is the social media companies that are screwing up
our kids' brains, and there is evidence that they are,
but there's also evidence that they're helping. And I guess
what I'm saying is like, you can't answer that question.
You've got to break it down platform by platform at
(18:55):
a minimum, and start looking into is Instagram hurting kids'
mental health?
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Is Facebook? Is Snap? Is TikTok?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And that's just the first thing that you have to
do before you could ever down the road years from
now arrive at any kind of answer to the question.
So in the meantime, so it's all is not hopeless
in the meantime. You know, unless the kid is an
orphan living on the street, there is some kind of
adult in their life, and it's unfortunately sorry parents right
(19:31):
now the responsibility falls on you to try to figure
out how social media use is affecting your kid, and
you've got to be the little government in your house
about regulating its use.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
There was a candidate forum.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And it was at one of the high schools, I believe,
and there was a table that had flyers and material
from the candidates.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
This is what happens.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Well, they started the forum, they're inside talking whatever they're
talking about, and one of the family members of Josh Epstein,
who is running for a second term on the school
district board up there. One of his family members went
out and looked at the table during the forum and
all of the Josh Epstein flyers were gone, but the
(20:25):
two other candidates materials were still there. So they checked
the security footage from the cameras in the lobby and
there on the video is somebody swiping the entire stack
of the Josh Epstein material in walking off and now oh,
(20:46):
ABC seven is reporting that the man who did that
is Keith Iike, who is a member of the La
Canati City Council, who also declined an on camera interview
to eyewitness News, but he did email a response and
he said, Oh, this is interesting because you might say.
(21:07):
The first thing you might say is that's not me.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
I didn't do it.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
But the first thing he says, I guess and this
email is this is a private matter between two people.
I attended last week's for him as a private citizen.
I did take more flyers than I needed. I made
a mistake, Okay, So what he's trying to say is
I wanted to help him out so bad. I took
all his flyers so I could go make sure they
(21:32):
got distributed to the right people. Oh boy, today at
one pm downtown LA we've been telling you there's going
to be a news conference slash the rally of some
kind on behalf of Lyle and Eric Menendez, who were
convicted long ago of murdering their parents and have been
trying recently to get the DA of Los Angeles County,
(21:56):
George Gascon to revisit their case. In the home hoops
that he will recommend a re sentencing hearing. They appear
to be long long past maybe having these convictions completely
thrown out or even getting a new trial at least,
though they would like another hearing before a judge to
have their life sentence revisited. And a lot of their
(22:19):
family members are going to be there, and Michelle Cube,
executive producer of KFI, told me this morning that Rosie
O'Donnell is supposed to be there, their lawyer, Mark Garrigos
is going to be there. We don't know if George
Gascon is going to be there. We don't know if
they're going to announce something specific or if this is
(22:39):
just a public facing attempt to garner more sympathy for
their cause.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
We just don't know yet. It's a little mysterious.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I read somewhere that some of the family members said
they were invited to this event, and the aunt of
the Menena's brothers, Joan Vandermollen, who has been supportive of
them the whole time, told.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Hold on, I'll remember Vanity Fair.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
She told Vanity Fair she was invited by George Gascone.
So we just don't really know what's coming, but I
would imagine something substantive is coming. Now, how can this
even happen legally after all of these years. Well, the
Menendez brothers killed their parents with a shotgun, and nobody
(23:29):
denies that anymore. I think they stopped. Nobody really denied that,
you know, for too much time after it happened. Then
they went to trial and they had a defense, which
was we were getting molested by our father. And they
presented this evidence that they had in testimony to the
jury and the jury could not decide on a verdict,
(23:52):
and so they were not convicted hung the jury miss trial.
A second trial was different because the judge on that
trial said, you cannot present any evidence to the jury
that you were molested. You're not allowed to say it.
You're not allowed to try to prove it. They can't
say it. You their lawyer, Leslie Abramson, you can't say it.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
It's only going to be about they were killed with
a shotgun.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
So that jury convicted them, of course, and they got
life sentences. Now they're serving them. So the abuse component
of the case was always there. Now fast forward to
last year and a letter is found and it is
(24:41):
supposedly Eric Menendez writing to his cousin and saying that
up until eight months before they killed their parents, he
was still being raped by his father. The other piece
of evidence is a statement from Roy Roseo, who used
to be in that the boy band Menudo, who said
(25:04):
he was drugged and raped by Jose Menendez, the Meneta's
brother's father, when he was thirteen or fourteen. So this
is new evidence regarding the abuse and a reason the
lawyers for the Menena's brothers say to reopen the case
and take another look. And back on the third of
this month, Da Gascone said he hadn't made up his
(25:28):
mind yet whether he should try to have a judge
reconsider their life without possibility of parole sentence. He hadn't
made up his mind yet on October third. It's now
October sixteenth, and there's some big event today downtown in
front of the Criminal Courts building, and we don't know
what it's going to be, but we do know that
(25:49):
there is a section in California law Penal Code eleven
seventy two point one where a district attorney is allowed
to consider that someone has suffered pre conviction psychological trauma
or physical abuse, and if they were given a harsh
sentence compared to other similar cases. And if the DA
(26:13):
decides they're not a threat to society now, then they
can do what the Menendez brothers are arguing should happen,
which is go in front of a judge again and
kind of have a do over as to their sentence.
So the good news is KFI news reporter Michael Monks
(26:33):
is going to be at that event today that starts
at one, and that means you will get fast and
excellent updates from him as they happen right here on KFI.
Let's get some news from Amy King. And then why
is Gavin Newsom's wrist sore? It's nothing untoward. It's emily friendly,
(27:01):
I promise, and we'll talk about what he's been up
to that involves using his wrist. It's KFI Am six
forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch My
Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listenings KPI AM six forty the Bill Handles Show
on demand on the iHeartRadio f.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
But is the Bill Handles Show, and he is back
from vacation on Monday. I'm Wayne Resimek here until nine,
and let's get right into this trying to make sense
of all the myriad of reasons that housing is so
expensive in California, which is why it's such a difficult
problem to solve, and how over time California has moved
(00:35):
farther and farther and farther away from the other states,
not in terms of actual geography, but in terms of
housing affordability.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
If you go back to the late sixties.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
A typical home in California cost four or five times
the average household income, So if you made thirty thousand dollars,
you could get a house for one hundred and twenty
maybe one hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Now, the average
(01:11):
typical home in California costs more than eleven times.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
You're making more than your.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Parents did in the sixties, but houses cost even more
in comparison to what you're making, and the cost between
California and the rest of the country keeps widening the gap.
The median home here in California is two and a
half times higher than the national median home price. And sure,
(01:40):
they're parts of the country like I don't know, West
Virginia or Alabama or places where where homes are dirt cheap,
but there are other parts of the country where homes
are still expensive as well. And so you can't answer
the question by saying, well, you're comparing California only two
places that have really low housing costs. That's not what's
(02:01):
going on here. So that's why we have much lower
rates of home ownership here in California than in the
rest of the country. And if you are not looking
to buy and you're looking to rent, hey, rents here
are among the highest in the country. Of the ten
most expensive large cities to rent, California has four of them.
(02:27):
We're only one of fifty states, but we have forty
percent of the expensive rental cities. Here's the bad news
is that that's good news because that is actually an
improvement since four years ago. There's so much improvement we
would have to make in the affordability of housing that
(02:49):
we could make what on paper would be unbelievably outsized
unpredictably impressive improved, and it still would be too expensive
for most people to own a home, and still a
(03:09):
massive rent burden for people to rent. And the reason
this is important to try to address is because this
problem of high housing cost affects every aspect of your life.
Where can you live, who can you live with, where
can your kid go to school?
Speaker 3 (03:31):
How long is your commute to work?
Speaker 2 (03:35):
The homelessness problem, the poverty problem that we have are
largely connected to the lack of housing affordability. It is
so endemic to everything that makes California suck, quite frankly,
and yet there are so many moving parts that it
(03:58):
seems impossib to actually address right now.
Speaker 3 (04:03):
The only way you really could.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Address it is to get some source of money from
outside the California budget to give everybody hundreds of thousands
of dollars to buy a home or to start affording
whatever apartment they can afford. And even then it might
not be enough because they're not enough housing available. Even
(04:27):
if everybody could afford housing. In fact, that might make
it worse, which is what happened when the interest rates
went down. When the interest rates went down, more people
started trying to buy homes, and you had more demand
and less supply, and housing prices went up. So when
people it's weird. When people can afford it, it's still
(04:50):
too expensive, And when they can't afford it, it's too
expensive because it's not just a matter of cost, it's
a matter of supply. And that's a lot of stuff
to tackle. And I didn't mean to end up on
a bummer note about it, But the sooner we recognize
how big of a bummer it is, maybe the sooner
(05:11):
we can get radical in our thinking and get the
government to get a little more radical in their thinking
and actually do something about it. Today, at one pm
in downtown LA there will be a rally, news conference
type of event. It's not clear precisely what it's gonna be,
(05:31):
but it involves the Menendez brothers and their case and
their efforts to have that case reopened and possibly be
resentenced for the murder of their parents. DA George Gascone
said his office is looking at new information and there
will be almost two dozen family members of the Menendez brothers,
(05:54):
as well as their attorney, Mark Arragos. And I'm told
by KFI executive from Michelle Cube Rosie O'Donnell is.
Speaker 3 (06:03):
Set to appear.
Speaker 2 (06:04):
I know for a fact that kfi's Michael Monks will
report from there as it happens. And way over there,
Israel is looking at a letter they got from US,
the United States of America, demanding that they let a
lot more humanitarian aid into Gaza in the next thirty
days or else they will be violating United States laws
(06:27):
saying they can't do that, they can't stop the aid
from going in, and that means our military aid to
Israel could be in jeopardy. Now closer to home, in
Santa Ana, on election day, the residents of Santa Anna
who can vote, will be voting on Measure DD double D.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Don't you dare? Neil, Don't you dare? And this is
if it's passed.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
It will allow non US citizens to vote in the
municipal elections in the city of Santa Anna, which many
people say, this is very radical thing to do. How
radical is it? And by the way, how radical it
is is not necessarily the same as is it a
good idea or a bad idea?
Speaker 3 (07:13):
How radical is it?
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Well, in the United States, non citizens can be allowed
to vote in local elections. Federal law allows for that,
So in that sense, it's not that radical because the
law allows for it. Santa Anna would not be the
first city in the United States to vote to allow
(07:36):
non citizens to vote. San Francisco pasted a law allowing
non citizens to vote in their school board elections. Oakland
also passed that, but it hasn't been implemented yet. In Vermont,
there are three different cities that allow non US citizens
to vote. In Maryland, there are some cities where they
(07:59):
can vote. In fact, in Tacoma Park, Maryland, thirty years ago,
they voted to allow non citizens to vote in their
local elections. Also in DC you can do that now.
This is local elections and school board races in San Francisco.
It's only the school board races. In other cities, it's
(08:21):
any local election would so mayor that kind of thing.
So Santa Anna now wants to set a precedent here
in California to allow non citizens to vote in all
municipal elections. There's about three hundred and ten thousand people
in Santa Anna, plus or minus, and this vote comes
(08:43):
at a very prominent time as to this issue. As
you know, in Congress, Republicans are pushing for this save Act,
the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, which would require that
you show proof of citizenship just to register to vote,
(09:07):
even though as to federal elections, non citizens can't vote,
So it kind of seems weird.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
But you know what, you registered to vote once.
Speaker 2 (09:19):
You don't separately register for federal elections and local elections.
Speaker 3 (09:24):
It's a single registration.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
And so I suppose, without endorsing this SAVE Act, I
suppose Congress can have something to say about the requirements
the register to vote. I don't know that this is
a great idea, but you know, when you register to vote,
it affects all elections. Now do you know that if
(09:52):
you rewind the United States of America clock back to say,
the late eighteen hundreds into the early nineteen hundreds, about
half of the states in this country allowed non US
citizens to vote in their state elections.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
And they had a reason for doing it.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
Think about this, because you're about to hear some thinking
that is very different than some of the thinking today.
Back then, a lot of the states said, yes, we'll
let non citizens vote in the state elections because people
are coming to this country and we want them to
come live in our state. We want immigrants to pick
(10:28):
our state. So by letting them vote, they get to
have more of us say, they will feel perhaps more
connected to living in our state, and they will come
live in our state. Back then, there were states that thought,
you know, immigrants.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
Are a great thing, and we want them.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
And then things changed in the country and you had
a depression, and then you had the Red Scare in
the forties and the fifties, where is Senator Joe McCarty
was running around saying everybody was a communist and held
hearings that people lost their careers because they were members
of the Communist Party or because somebody said that they
were members. And that happened, and that really turned a
(11:08):
lot of the tide in the country against immigration, even
though being a communist and being from another country really
are not necessarily related.
Speaker 3 (11:17):
But anyway, that's what happened.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
So in nineteen ninety six, the FEDS passed the Legal
Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act. Let's see if that
spells anything, fun teerh No, it does not. And that's
the law that says non citizens can vote in non
(11:41):
federal elections if the locality says they can. And that's
why you have these various cities around the country that
have voted for it, and now it's Santa Anna's turn,
and I mean the voters of Santa Anna, it's your
turn to decide if you want that to happen in
your city. Let's get some news from Amy King, and
(12:03):
then I think we're going to finally answer the question
that has been being.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Asked for at least two three years now.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Is social media making our kids more depressed and anxious?
Speaker 3 (12:18):
Is it? Let's finally answer that question.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Georgia had their first day of early voting and a
record number of people showed up to vote. Over three
hundred and twenty eight thousand votes were cast. The previous
first day record, this is what's amazing, was one hundred
and thirty six thousand in the last presidential election.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
That's a massive jump in early voting. Now.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Today, at one Downtown LA, almost two dozen family members
of Eric and Lyle Menendez will speak at a news conference.
Their lawyer will be there as well, Mark Garrigos. Michelle
Cube tells me that Rosie O'Donnell is supposed to show
up at this event. Can't be one hundred percent sure
if something specific is going to be announced about their case,
(13:10):
although the DA George Gascon said they are looking at
some new evidence regarding the abuse that the Menenta's brothers
suffered and it could lead to maybe a resentencing hearing
for them. Kfi's Minchael Monks. Let me try and say
his name again properly, Michael Monks. He will be there
(13:31):
to report as it happens. Now, let's just answer the
question right up front.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
It's an easy answer.
Speaker 2 (13:39):
People are trying to make it complicated, but there's an
easy answer to the question.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
Is social media.
Speaker 2 (13:47):
Causing our children to be more anxious and more depressed?
And the easy answer is nobody knows. Nobody knows. Why
don't we know? Here's why we don't know. One, it
used to be that researchers had great access to the
(14:10):
data and information that the social media platforms of the
time had. For example, and this is now, I think
ten years ago, there was a computer scientist at Georgia
Tech and he was on a team that did research
into Instagram and they had access to a lot of
the data and they found that groups that were promoting
(14:36):
I guess disordered eating. So if there was an Instagram
account that was talking about you know, don't eat anything
for three days. They were getting around Instagram's efforts to
block that kind of content, and they could tell that
it was happening because they had access to the data. Now,
(14:58):
social media companies, some of the do not allow any
access to this kind of data, or if they do,
you have to pay a lot of money to get
access to it. So that's one of the reasons why
we cannot tell, because we can't do even the kind
of research that they were doing ten years ago. As
to this question, here's another problem. Social media is over here,
(15:23):
your kid is over there. It's not a one way
pipeline from social media to your kid. This is a
two way street. Does social media affect the mental health
of your kid? Hmm, I don't know. Does the mental
health of your kid affect how and how much they
(15:49):
use social media?
Speaker 3 (15:53):
Don't know. We do know though, it goes both ways.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
So the fact that there's some correlation with many children
between higher rates of depression and anxiety and use of
social media, it doesn't tell you which direction.
Speaker 3 (16:09):
Is causing it.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Is it because the social media is harming them, or
is it because some kids have issues already and that
leads to them using social media more because here's the
other reason that we can't tell for sure, And there
are all kinds of top quality studies that say social
(16:33):
media helps kids with depression and anxiety, particularly kids who
are perhaps part of a marginalized community, and that there
can be great benefit in making connections through social media,
you know, like outside of your zip code. For every
(16:54):
study that will show social media makes kids mental health worse,
there's a study that will show that social media can
help kids who already have mental health issues and need
some kind of support. Here's another reason I just thought of,
and it has to do with what I just said
about for some kids, social media is actually a support system.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
Social media it's different things.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
There's interactive social media, maybe Facebook, and you're posting and
you're sending messages to each other, and you're interacting with
other people that you know or maybe you only know
them online, but you know them, I mean, they're a
known quantity to you. Then there's like purely passive social media,
just sitting there scrolling through TikTok where just you're looking
(17:45):
at stuff, you're not really communicating.
Speaker 3 (17:47):
So there's different kinds of social media.
Speaker 2 (17:51):
In the meantime, as the truth of the matter is
it's impossible to tell for sure. If you're asking the
broad question to social media media mess up kids' minds,
the government is all in on yes it does, and
we're going to do stuff about it. And you're hearing
about age restrictions for using social media, You're hearing about
(18:12):
laws requiring social media platforms to do more to address
things like cyberbullying, et cetera. The government is all in.
You remember the Surgeon in General not too long ago
said the harm from social media is an important public
health crisis that we are having. There's a slew of
(18:33):
legislation in the pipeline specifically based on the premise that
it is the social media companies that are screwing up
our kids' brains, and there is evidence that they are,
but there's also evidence that they're helping. And I guess
what I'm saying is like, you can't answer that question.
You've got to break it down platform by platform at
(18:55):
a minimum, and start looking into is Instagram hurting kids'
mental health?
Speaker 3 (19:02):
Is Facebook? Is Snap? Is TikTok?
Speaker 2 (19:08):
And that's just the first thing that you have to
do before you could ever down the road years from
now arrive at any kind of answer to the question.
So in the meantime, so it's all is not hopeless
in the meantime. You know, unless the kid is an
orphan living on the street, there is some kind of
adult in their life, and it's unfortunately sorry parents right
(19:31):
now the responsibility falls on you to try to figure
out how social media use is affecting your kid, and
you've got to be the little government in your house
about regulating its use.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
There was a candidate forum.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
And it was at one of the high schools, I believe,
and there was a table that had flyers and material
from the candidates.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
This is what happens.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Well, they started the forum, they're inside talking whatever they're
talking about, and one of the family members of Josh Epstein,
who is running for a second term on the school
district board up there. One of his family members went
out and looked at the table during the forum and
all of the Josh Epstein flyers were gone, but the
(20:25):
two other candidates materials were still there. So they checked
the security footage from the cameras in the lobby and
there on the video is somebody swiping the entire stack
of the Josh Epstein material in walking off and now oh,
(20:46):
ABC seven is reporting that the man who did that
is Keith Iike, who is a member of the La
Canati City Council, who also declined an on camera interview
to eyewitness News, but he did email a response and
he said, Oh, this is interesting because you might say.
(21:07):
The first thing you might say is that's not me.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
I didn't do it.
Speaker 2 (21:10):
But the first thing he says, I guess and this
email is this is a private matter between two people.
I attended last week's for him as a private citizen.
I did take more flyers than I needed. I made
a mistake, Okay, So what he's trying to say is
I wanted to help him out so bad. I took
all his flyers so I could go make sure they
(21:32):
got distributed to the right people. Oh boy, today at
one pm downtown LA we've been telling you there's going
to be a news conference slash the rally of some
kind on behalf of Lyle and Eric Menendez, who were
convicted long ago of murdering their parents and have been
trying recently to get the DA of Los Angeles County,
(21:56):
George Gascon to revisit their case. In the home hoops
that he will recommend a re sentencing hearing. They appear
to be long long past maybe having these convictions completely
thrown out or even getting a new trial at least,
though they would like another hearing before a judge to
have their life sentence revisited. And a lot of their
(22:19):
family members are going to be there, and Michelle Cube,
executive producer of KFI, told me this morning that Rosie
O'Donnell is supposed to be there, their lawyer, Mark Garrigos
is going to be there. We don't know if George
Gascon is going to be there. We don't know if
they're going to announce something specific or if this is
(22:39):
just a public facing attempt to garner more sympathy for
their cause.
Speaker 3 (22:45):
We just don't know yet. It's a little mysterious.
Speaker 2 (22:48):
I read somewhere that some of the family members said
they were invited to this event, and the aunt of
the Menena's brothers, Joan Vandermollen, who has been supportive of
them the whole time, told.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
Hold on, I'll remember Vanity Fair.
Speaker 2 (23:07):
She told Vanity Fair she was invited by George Gascone.
So we just don't really know what's coming, but I
would imagine something substantive is coming. Now, how can this
even happen legally after all of these years. Well, the
Menendez brothers killed their parents with a shotgun, and nobody
(23:29):
denies that anymore. I think they stopped. Nobody really denied that,
you know, for too much time after it happened. Then
they went to trial and they had a defense, which
was we were getting molested by our father. And they
presented this evidence that they had in testimony to the
jury and the jury could not decide on a verdict,
(23:52):
and so they were not convicted hung the jury miss trial.
A second trial was different because the judge on that
trial said, you cannot present any evidence to the jury
that you were molested. You're not allowed to say it.
You're not allowed to try to prove it. They can't
say it. You their lawyer, Leslie Abramson, you can't say it.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
It's only going to be about they were killed with
a shotgun.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
So that jury convicted them, of course, and they got
life sentences. Now they're serving them. So the abuse component
of the case was always there. Now fast forward to
last year and a letter is found and it is
(24:41):
supposedly Eric Menendez writing to his cousin and saying that
up until eight months before they killed their parents, he
was still being raped by his father. The other piece
of evidence is a statement from Roy Roseo, who used
to be in that the boy band Menudo, who said
(25:04):
he was drugged and raped by Jose Menendez, the Meneta's
brother's father, when he was thirteen or fourteen. So this
is new evidence regarding the abuse and a reason the
lawyers for the Menena's brothers say to reopen the case
and take another look. And back on the third of
this month, Da Gascone said he hadn't made up his
(25:28):
mind yet whether he should try to have a judge
reconsider their life without possibility of parole sentence. He hadn't
made up his mind yet on October third. It's now
October sixteenth, and there's some big event today downtown in
front of the Criminal Courts building, and we don't know
what it's going to be, but we do know that
(25:49):
there is a section in California law Penal Code eleven
seventy two point one where a district attorney is allowed
to consider that someone has suffered pre conviction psychological trauma
or physical abuse, and if they were given a harsh
sentence compared to other similar cases. And if the DA
(26:13):
decides they're not a threat to society now, then they
can do what the Menendez brothers are arguing should happen,
which is go in front of a judge again and
kind of have a do over as to their sentence.
So the good news is KFI news reporter Michael Monks
(26:33):
is going to be at that event today that starts
at one, and that means you will get fast and
excellent updates from him as they happen right here on KFI.
Let's get some news from Amy King. And then why
is Gavin Newsom's wrist sore? It's nothing untoward. It's emily friendly,
(27:01):
I promise, and we'll talk about what he's been up
to that involves using his wrist. It's KFI Am six
forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch My
Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and
anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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