October 30, 2024 • 25 mins
Newsom awards city and county of LA, other cities, $380MIL to fight homelessness. RFK Jr. suggests if Trump is elected, he’ll play a significant role in agriculture and health policy. A Kentucky man was wheeled into surgery to harvest his organs… weeks later he left the hospital. Their car is totaled, but they still owe years of payments.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listen Saints KFI AM six forty the Bill Handles
show on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
AM six forty. Bill Handle here a Wednesday morning, October thirtieth,
Dodgers lost, so.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Now it's three games to one and we go again.
It was going to be a sweep, maybe hard to
do some of the stories looking at gas prices falling,
falling first time, but nationally three dollars a gallon under
three dollars a gallon first time since twenty twenty one.
And I think, since I don't have a gasoline powered car,
(00:36):
how much is it in California now to drop below
ten dollars a gallon?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Not yet? Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
There was an event yesterday and it was with Gavin
Newsom was on skid Row downtown La. Gavin Newsom, Karen
Bass was there and Newsom announced that the LA region
will receive three hundred and eight million dollars in state
Battle and State Dollars to Battle Homelessness, part of an
eight hundred and twenty seven million dollars statewide grant that
(01:08):
was announced previously.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
LA County going to get about ninety seven million. The
city is going to receive one hundred and sixty four million.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
By the way, as I looked at all of these grants,
all of this money, they talk about the Los Angeles region,
the San Francisco region. It doesn't mention anything about Orange
County region.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Not a word.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Is it because goose Newsom hates Orange County? I don't know,
because it's conservative, I don't know. But in any case,
there is an Orange County is not a big favorite
with the governor. And some of the award money is
going to go to organizations providing homeless services, and that
is in and of itself an interesting issue because there
(01:49):
has been no accountability, there has been no oversight. Here's
some money, go spend it. And that was I mean,
come on, guys. So now this new grant money is
it comes with strings, and that is accountability, transparency, reporting.
But I have to say something about homeless homelessness. By
the way, we actually I don't know if we've turned
(02:11):
the corner, but in twenty twenty four, the Greater La
Homeless count, which is done every year, found the number
of homeless in the county about the same as the
previous year, seventy five thousand. That's all just seventy five
thousand homeless in La County.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
That's big.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
That's a city.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, and that's just La County.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Now, the number of people living intense vehicles and makeshift
makeshift shelters drop five percent, the people living in interim
housing went up thirteen percent, and the city of La
saw ten point four percent drop an unsheltered homelessness, but
a seventeen percent increase in sheltered homelessness. So you have
to describe what is homeless, and I don't know what
(02:56):
homeless is.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It is a snap shot.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
For example, Well, I'm homeless, I'm living under a bridge,
and the next week I get to couchsurf with a
friend of mine for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Am I homeless? I guess? Unsheltered?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Well yeah, I guess. So it's a lot more complicated
than just you're homeless. And at the same time, and
by the way, everybody wants.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
To help the homeless. Even the most conservative.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Official doesn't wake up in the morning, who is totally
against money for the homeless, doesn't wake up in the
morning and say, now, how many more homeless can we
put on.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
The streets today.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
It's just a question of where the dollars are going.
And I have said this over and over again. Can
we attack homelessness and really get rid of it in
any sizeable way?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yes. First of all, it's gonna be incremental. It's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Little bits and pieces over the next few years. And
the amount of money we have to throw into this
to make it happen is astronomical. It basically has to
be a Manhattan Project approach to getting rid of homelessness.
And are we prepared to do that? Are we prepared
(04:07):
to give up other programs? And then who do we help?
Neil pointed out this morning, how about the people on
the street who are well mentally illed?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
We help them?
Speaker 1 (04:20):
How about those that are drug addicts? Where are they
in the hierarchy? Because someone has to be chosen to
get the first housing. Veterans who are drug addicted have
PTSD and there are a lot of those. Where do
they go? Who gets housing first? It's like a recall.
I get questions on the Saturday show Bill my car
(04:41):
has been recalled and they.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Refuse to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
And I asked, well, how many cars actually been recalled? Oh?
The entire fleet that they manufactured, you know, every Toyota.
Toyota are a rav four from twenty nineteen till today
it's only four a million cars. Someone has to be
number four millionth And that's the same with the homelessness.
(05:07):
Who is taking off the street first? How much money?
And so it's a problem we're going to have. But
the governor yesterday said, yep, we're going to do this. Oh,
by the way, the homeless, you know, in the first
homeless program really instituted under Governor Jerry Brown.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
That's how long we've had a problem. Of course, it's
just exploded.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I mean, you know, seventy five thousand people on the
streets is just beyond comprehension.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And then that leads into another question. Can we get
rid of.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Homelessness without getting affordable housing? Without having affordable housing? Can
we do that? So now where do we spend the
money affordable housing or the homeless issue? Because you can't
do both. You put ten pounds in a five pound bag.
Kind of hard. And as far as I'm concerned, as
long as they're off my street, I'm fine.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
They can live next to you all day long.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
At the Persian Palace, I'd get off the freeway and
then I have to go under the bridge.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
There was an overpass, I have to make a left
and go down the street.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And there was an encampment from one end of the
overpass to the either underneath.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
And it went up one day.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And there our congressmen, and not our congressman, our city
councilman lived in my neighborhood. Let me tell you how
quickly that encampment went down. Also, potholes on my street
were fixed very very quickly. You could call pothole Heaven
and wait forever. Big pothole, someone calls next day fixed.
(06:46):
Here's the takeaway. Live in the neighborhood, your council person
lives in.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
That's always a good thing.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
A little bit of politics, and as I've said this year,
I mean it's exhausted, but they're little bits.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Of entertainment value. Well, there are lots of entertainment value,
one of them being RFK Junior.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And he has said that he's going to have a
significant influence on American agriculture if Donald Trump is elected president,
because he envisions himself as a major player in a
second Trump administration. Now he's an anti vaccine accident activist.
He is an environmentalist, but his definition of environmentalists and
(07:30):
he ran for president as an independent before endorsing Trump,
and he posted a video on social media. We saw
that filmed outside US Department of Agriculture headquarters, and he
said in the video, corporate interests have hijacked the USDA
US Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines to make natural, unprocessed
(07:52):
foods merely an afterthought. That's one reason why seventy percent
of American diet now consists of ultra processed food.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
By the way, Neil, is that a correct figure. I
don't know. Seventy percent of the food we eat is
ultra processed.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I think that's probably a fair.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Okay, fair enough, just asking, and he said, we're going
to change that, all right, that's aspirational, and then he
started listing off the seriacy of policy ideas that actually
run counter to what Trump's Agricultural Department did in his
first administration.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
So he is.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Effectively saying, I'm going to change everything around, and it's
counter to what Trump has said and done. And he
went on to say, when Donald Trump gets me inside
the building I'm standing outside of right now, it won't
be this way anymore. American agriculture will come roaring back.
And so will American health. Now, American health may there's
(08:52):
an argument there, but American agriculture will come roaring back.
American agriculture is doing just fine. I mean, there's nothing
wrong with American agriculture. And the Trump campaign has said
that formal discussions who would serve in the second Trump
administration are quote premature, but Trump did say at rallies
(09:17):
that RFK.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Is someone who could help his administration if he wins.
Trump went on to.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Say, we will make America healthy again. And you know
who's going to do that, r FK Junior. He's got
some good ideas.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Trump said that at a rally.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Now, is that a just a political hit? Of course
it is. I mean everybody just does. They say things
that they oh, yeah, I want this person's going to
help me, and they have no intention of putting anybody
up to help.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Rudy Giuliani, for example.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Who was the hugest advocate of Trump out there, thought
he was going to get a position in the Trump
administration and he was and he Trump had said, I
like this guy, he's a good guy. Well, Rudy gily
got no position in the administration. It was Trump's personal attorney.
Now the pros respect of Kennedy influencing federal policy. Let
(10:03):
me tell you a few people are not very happy
with that one, people who advocate sound science.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
That's a problem.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Kennedy has paid play a pivotal role in spreading false information,
particularly around the world, about vaccines and conspiracy theories about
five G for example, how it can cause cancer, I mean,
some crazy stuff. And he talked about how vaccines are
so dangerous. Now are there people who react to vaccines? Yeah,
(10:35):
point zero zero zero one percent, something insanely small. In
the meantime, the WHO World Health Organization great band by
the way, has said that vaccines, say about five million
deaths every year just vaccines, and the anti vaxx people
(10:55):
are basically nuts. And so here is a political statement
made by Trump. Yep, Kennedy has some great, great ideas,
and he's a good guy, and we're gonna see what
we can do with him. Yes, there may be a place.
And then Kennedy Junior says rfk Junior says, I'm going
(11:16):
to take over the Department of Agriculture. I Am going
to change everything that we deal with and how we
deal it. He's against, for example, insecticides. He's against a
manufactured fertilizer. Well, first of all, farmers will not have
food to sell if it isn't for industrial farming.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
There is nothing left.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
You cannot do it without herbicides and fertilizer on an
industrial level.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
You simply can't. That's the way it works.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I mean, Neil, is there any way to feed America
without those two things organically?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, you know what's interesting.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
If you go the other direction in science and start
making gmo food that is drought resistant, that is bug resistant,
then you have another flip side where people have issues
with that. So to be able to get the amount
of food that you're talking about, you have to do
all of that.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
You have to do different things to pull up.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So here he is telling farmers you're doing it wrong,
and farmers are pretty conservative.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
It seems to be a real contradiction there.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And so here's an RFK junior saying this is what
I'm going to do. Trump says some good ideas. Contrary
to everything Trump stood for in the first administration. You
think he's going to be a negative on industrial farming.
I'm talking about Trump when he comes in, of course not.
But hey, here's an endorsement of a guy who has
(12:44):
millions of followers, who says, that's my guy.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And how does Donald.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Trump not say, yep, you know there's room, there's room
in my administration, of which there'll be no room. There'll
be no room because Trump does not believe in the craziness.
And I don't think as much as I don't think
Trump would do that good a job, I don't think
he would go against the farmers in this country, both
(13:09):
politically and philosophically.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So here's the takeaway here.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
How do we feed everybody without pesticides, without herbicides.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Two words answer that question, soilent green.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Okay, hate to handle.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
And for those people that don't know soilent green, look
that one up. Great movie, great concept.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Listening to a Handle on the Law every Saturday eight
to eleven o'clock. Neil of course, is heard two to
five on Saturday with the Pork Report. Virtually every week.
I get the question, Bill, I got in a car accident.
My car was totaled, and the insurance company is it's
not replacing my car. I paid twenty five thousand dollars
(14:04):
for it. I still owe twenty thousand. They're only giving
me twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
What do I do? I go, Well, you get to
pay the difference is what you get to do. But
that's not fair. You know my car was destroyed. Well,
you were underwater on the loan.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
The car's value dropped below the car's value dropped below
your loan, which happens if you buy a new car
and you finance it.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
So you have a car that's worth okay, forty thousand dollars,
they're thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Okay, you drive it off the lot.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
That minute, as you pull out of the driveway after
registering the car, it has dropped eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And if the car is totaled right there, what are
you gonna get. You're gonna get the value of.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Your car, which is eight thousand dollars less, and you
still owe the eight thousand dollars. Whoa wait a minute,
Well that's going on more and more, and that's for
a few reasons the decline and used car prices. A
third of the people who finance their cars have neglative equity,
(15:10):
which means the car is worth less.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Than what you owe on it.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
And I mean a lot of people thirty one million
out of the more than one hundred million auto loans
out there are underwater. And that's from the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, And so you have to be very careful
and you know what's going on. Because cars are so
damn expensive, because interest is so high, you now have
(15:35):
loans and it's not uncommon at all. I look at
television ads. You have a loan for seventy two months,
six years. You're borrowing money to buy that car so
you don't have to pay eight hundred dollars a month
in car payments.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
What do you think your car is worth six years
after you buy it? Not much.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
And that's the problem that's going on because, look like
everything else.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
The cost of cars have has exploded.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Repairs, finds, insurance across the board. Cars are insanely expensive.
So how do you keep yourself from going underwater?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
You buy a car for.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Cash, and you don't finance it, or you finance it
for such a short period of time that it retains
its value. It retains its value for the entire period
of time that you're buy that you're driving the car.
Because here's the way insurance companies work, and a lot
of people don't understand that you have a car that
you have a fifteen thousand dollars loan on, and the
(16:46):
car is worth eight thousand dollars. In other words, to
replace that car, you go out on the street and
you pay eight thousand dollars for it. That's all the
insurance company is going to give you the money for
value the car. Now, can you do something about it? Yeah,
you buy gap insurance. What is gap insurance? Well, you
go to your nearest gap store and you walk in
and you say, I'd like some insurance.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Actually, that's that's that's no, that doesn't.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Work that way. You know who changed my view on cars?
Speaker 4 (17:14):
You you You told me to look at my car
as a utility bill and not as an investment, right,
And I've changed the way now it's I think of
it as my gas bill or anything else. I'm if
I'm going to have a car, I'm going to be
paying for it unless I pay cash.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Right. And now I lease my cars. I used to
buy my cars. I lease them, and it's to me
it's like a utility bill.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
You're right, And so you get a new car every
three years and you simply pay for it. Gap insurance.
By the way, you buy that with your auto insurance.
It's a little bit more money, not a huge amount
more money, and gap insurance pays you the difference between
what you owe and replacing the car. You have a
car that you pay twenty five thousand dollars for, you
(18:00):
have a loan, and the car drops in value beneath
the loan. In other words, you owe more money than
the value of the car. Gap insurance pays the difference,
so you can replace your car, wipes out the amount
of money that's owed, so you're back to square. One
problem is is that not enough people either know about it,
(18:20):
not enough people take advantage of it, And in this
day and age.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It is critical they have gap insurance. Really really important
to do it.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
So when I get the question on handle on the
law bill gotten doing a car wreck.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
My car was totaled. I paid forty for it.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
The insurance company is only willing to give me fifteen
for it because it's a few years.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Old, and I owe eighteen. What do I do about
that six thousand dollars? Who do I go to? Who
do I sue?
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I go?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You sue nobody? You pay for it.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
That's what you do. Really have to watch the loan
being more than the value of the car, which is
very difficult to do. By the way, it is not
easy to do because car values they were astronomical. You
could actually make money a couple of years ago on
a car you could buy, You actually could make money.
You would get more money for a car than even
(19:19):
what you paid for it. But that was pandemic land.
Those days are completely gone. So be really, really careful
in buying a car. And you know the cost of cars,
I mean yeah today, you know, I thought I always
did three years when I was buying my car, and
till three years you pay it and it kept pretty
(19:40):
close to the value of the car. But my payments
were reasonable. Today, a three year loan on a car
is seven hundred, eight hundred dollars a month. That's what
a mortgage payment used to be. When houses that were
too bedroom, one bath, six hundred square feet weren't a
(20:02):
million dollars. Look out the window, see all those houses
out there, guys, see those little crackerjack boxes.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Million dollars. It's a world. Now, I'm gonna tell you
a story, and this.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
One I have experienced personally, just experienced it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
And doctor Jim Keeneyh's joining us at the top of
the hour.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
He also has experienced this several times or many times,
and it has to do with.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Harvesting organs and donating organs.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
And there's a story CNN just came out about a
Kentucky man wheeled into surgery to harvest his organs and
it turns out he was alive. Turns out he opened
his eyes and he started thrashing, and they still went
for it, and one of the staffers in ther stopped it.
(21:00):
And boy, let me tell you, there's a lawsuit there.
And it's so aberrational, it's so weird that it's just okay.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Just a great story.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Except if you read the CNN story CNN dot com,
it's not as aberrational as it sounds. They're saying it
happens a lot more than has even reported.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And I have just gone through this.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
There is a one of Lindsay's best friends, she's known
her since high school, had a seizure and was taken
to the hospital and she was brain dead. The seizure
basically killed her, and she was an organ donor, and
they in fact harvested her organs. And in this case, TJ.
(21:46):
Hoover's case, the one that the story is about. He
was brain dead. They did all the tests, and at
the same time they didn't do those kinds of tests
because he was still alive. And how do you make
mistake that? And I'm going to talk to doctor Jim
about it in just a few minutes. Because in the
case of this friend, and I want to use her name,
(22:06):
let's call her Judy, she has the seizure, she goes
to the hospital, paramedics pick her up and they do
CPR and they revive her, and the family is told
when they do the brain scan that there's no brain.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
There's no brain basically there.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
There doesn't seem to be any kind of registration on
the scan, doesn't show any activity. And then the family
start talking about donation. But here's what happens is that
and this is what we experienced because I was there
up close right there, and that is.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
No brain activity.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
And the next day they test again and test again
and test again, and I mean a week of this
to make absolutely sure across the board that in fact,
she was brain dead. And then they talk about donating organs.
And in her case, by the way, the family went
to the organ donation people at the hospital and they
(23:10):
found them, and the organ donor people said, wow, this
never happens. We usually have to go to the family
members and beg for organ donations. And it's what I
didn't know. And this is a stat that came out
in this article. One hundred and seventy million people have
actually signed up to be organ donors and they still
(23:34):
don't have enough because the matching process is so difficult.
I'm gonna ask doctor Jim that question too when we
come back. And so we ended up that's what ended
up happening with Judy. She effectively had died before she
even came into the hospital. The family we were all
(23:54):
told that she's not gonna survive. I mean, there's nothing
there to survive.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
But the week that it took.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
In almost maybe four days to make absolutely sure, I mean,
I've never seen anything like that, And of course she's
on life support the whole time. And it took another
several days to do all of the testing for the match,
because that's on a whole different level than simply being
in the hospital and testing the way normally we are tested.
(24:23):
That was so intricate, and as they're finding the matches etc.
And I look at this and I go, this is
impossible for this to have happened with TJ.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Hoover. I mean just impossible.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
And the hospital, of course, the hospital with their statement.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I love this. Here's their statement.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
The safety of our patients is always our highest priority parentheses,
even if we kill them.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
We work closely with.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Our patients and their families to ensure our patients wishes
for organ donation are followed. Yeah, except why don't we
wait till our family member is dead before we actually
talk about Oregon donation? And the question is does this
really happen or is this just one in a million
(25:09):
and it's just a good story.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
KFIAM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've
been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Catch my Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listen Saints KFI AM six forty the Bill Handles
show on demand on the iHeartRadio f KFI.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
AM six forty. Bill Handle here a Wednesday morning, October thirtieth,
Dodgers lost, so.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
Now it's three games to one and we go again.
It was going to be a sweep, maybe hard to
do some of the stories looking at gas prices falling,
falling first time, but nationally three dollars a gallon under
three dollars a gallon first time since twenty twenty one.
And I think, since I don't have a gasoline powered car,
(00:36):
how much is it in California now to drop below
ten dollars a gallon?
Speaker 2 (00:41):
Not yet? Okay.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
There was an event yesterday and it was with Gavin
Newsom was on skid Row downtown La. Gavin Newsom, Karen
Bass was there and Newsom announced that the LA region
will receive three hundred and eight million dollars in state
Battle and State Dollars to Battle Homelessness, part of an
eight hundred and twenty seven million dollars statewide grant that
(01:08):
was announced previously.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
LA County going to get about ninety seven million. The
city is going to receive one hundred and sixty four million.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
By the way, as I looked at all of these grants,
all of this money, they talk about the Los Angeles region,
the San Francisco region. It doesn't mention anything about Orange
County region.
Speaker 2 (01:27):
Not a word.
Speaker 1 (01:29):
Is it because goose Newsom hates Orange County? I don't know,
because it's conservative, I don't know. But in any case,
there is an Orange County is not a big favorite
with the governor. And some of the award money is
going to go to organizations providing homeless services, and that
is in and of itself an interesting issue because there
(01:49):
has been no accountability, there has been no oversight. Here's
some money, go spend it. And that was I mean,
come on, guys. So now this new grant money is
it comes with strings, and that is accountability, transparency, reporting.
But I have to say something about homeless homelessness. By
the way, we actually I don't know if we've turned
(02:11):
the corner, but in twenty twenty four, the Greater La
Homeless count, which is done every year, found the number
of homeless in the county about the same as the
previous year, seventy five thousand. That's all just seventy five
thousand homeless in La County.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
That's big.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
That's a city.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Oh yeah, yeah, and that's just La County.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Now, the number of people living intense vehicles and makeshift
makeshift shelters drop five percent, the people living in interim
housing went up thirteen percent, and the city of La
saw ten point four percent drop an unsheltered homelessness, but
a seventeen percent increase in sheltered homelessness. So you have
to describe what is homeless, and I don't know what
(02:56):
homeless is.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
It is a snap shot.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
For example, Well, I'm homeless, I'm living under a bridge,
and the next week I get to couchsurf with a
friend of mine for a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Am I homeless? I guess? Unsheltered?
Speaker 1 (03:11):
Well yeah, I guess. So it's a lot more complicated
than just you're homeless. And at the same time, and
by the way, everybody wants.
Speaker 2 (03:19):
To help the homeless. Even the most conservative.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Official doesn't wake up in the morning, who is totally
against money for the homeless, doesn't wake up in the
morning and say, now, how many more homeless can we
put on.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
The streets today.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
It's just a question of where the dollars are going.
And I have said this over and over again. Can
we attack homelessness and really get rid of it in
any sizeable way?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yes. First of all, it's gonna be incremental. It's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (03:46):
Little bits and pieces over the next few years. And
the amount of money we have to throw into this
to make it happen is astronomical. It basically has to
be a Manhattan Project approach to getting rid of homelessness.
And are we prepared to do that? Are we prepared
(04:07):
to give up other programs? And then who do we help?
Neil pointed out this morning, how about the people on
the street who are well mentally illed?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
We help them?
Speaker 1 (04:20):
How about those that are drug addicts? Where are they
in the hierarchy? Because someone has to be chosen to
get the first housing. Veterans who are drug addicted have
PTSD and there are a lot of those. Where do
they go? Who gets housing first? It's like a recall.
I get questions on the Saturday show Bill my car
(04:41):
has been recalled and they.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Refuse to do it.
Speaker 1 (04:45):
And I asked, well, how many cars actually been recalled? Oh?
The entire fleet that they manufactured, you know, every Toyota.
Toyota are a rav four from twenty nineteen till today
it's only four a million cars. Someone has to be
number four millionth And that's the same with the homelessness.
(05:07):
Who is taking off the street first? How much money?
And so it's a problem we're going to have. But
the governor yesterday said, yep, we're going to do this. Oh,
by the way, the homeless, you know, in the first
homeless program really instituted under Governor Jerry Brown.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
That's how long we've had a problem. Of course, it's
just exploded.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
I mean, you know, seventy five thousand people on the
streets is just beyond comprehension.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And then that leads into another question. Can we get
rid of.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
Homelessness without getting affordable housing? Without having affordable housing? Can
we do that? So now where do we spend the
money affordable housing or the homeless issue? Because you can't
do both. You put ten pounds in a five pound bag.
Kind of hard. And as far as I'm concerned, as
long as they're off my street, I'm fine.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
They can live next to you all day long.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
At the Persian Palace, I'd get off the freeway and
then I have to go under the bridge.
Speaker 2 (06:10):
There was an overpass, I have to make a left
and go down the street.
Speaker 1 (06:13):
And there was an encampment from one end of the
overpass to the either underneath.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
And it went up one day.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
And there our congressmen, and not our congressman, our city
councilman lived in my neighborhood. Let me tell you how
quickly that encampment went down. Also, potholes on my street
were fixed very very quickly. You could call pothole Heaven
and wait forever. Big pothole, someone calls next day fixed.
(06:46):
Here's the takeaway. Live in the neighborhood, your council person
lives in.
Speaker 2 (06:52):
That's always a good thing.
Speaker 1 (06:54):
A little bit of politics, and as I've said this year,
I mean it's exhausted, but they're little bits.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Of entertainment value. Well, there are lots of entertainment value,
one of them being RFK Junior.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
And he has said that he's going to have a
significant influence on American agriculture if Donald Trump is elected president,
because he envisions himself as a major player in a
second Trump administration. Now he's an anti vaccine accident activist.
He is an environmentalist, but his definition of environmentalists and
(07:30):
he ran for president as an independent before endorsing Trump,
and he posted a video on social media. We saw
that filmed outside US Department of Agriculture headquarters, and he
said in the video, corporate interests have hijacked the USDA
US Department of Agriculture dietary guidelines to make natural, unprocessed
(07:52):
foods merely an afterthought. That's one reason why seventy percent
of American diet now consists of ultra processed food.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
By the way, Neil, is that a correct figure. I
don't know. Seventy percent of the food we eat is
ultra processed.
Speaker 3 (08:08):
I think that's probably a fair.
Speaker 1 (08:10):
Okay, fair enough, just asking, and he said, we're going
to change that, all right, that's aspirational, and then he
started listing off the seriacy of policy ideas that actually
run counter to what Trump's Agricultural Department did in his
first administration.
Speaker 2 (08:29):
So he is.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Effectively saying, I'm going to change everything around, and it's
counter to what Trump has said and done. And he
went on to say, when Donald Trump gets me inside
the building I'm standing outside of right now, it won't
be this way anymore. American agriculture will come roaring back.
And so will American health. Now, American health may there's
(08:52):
an argument there, but American agriculture will come roaring back.
American agriculture is doing just fine. I mean, there's nothing
wrong with American agriculture. And the Trump campaign has said
that formal discussions who would serve in the second Trump
administration are quote premature, but Trump did say at rallies
(09:17):
that RFK.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
Is someone who could help his administration if he wins.
Trump went on to.
Speaker 1 (09:21):
Say, we will make America healthy again. And you know
who's going to do that, r FK Junior. He's got
some good ideas.
Speaker 2 (09:29):
Trump said that at a rally.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Now, is that a just a political hit? Of course
it is. I mean everybody just does. They say things
that they oh, yeah, I want this person's going to
help me, and they have no intention of putting anybody
up to help.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Rudy Giuliani, for example.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
Who was the hugest advocate of Trump out there, thought
he was going to get a position in the Trump
administration and he was and he Trump had said, I
like this guy, he's a good guy. Well, Rudy gily
got no position in the administration. It was Trump's personal attorney.
Now the pros respect of Kennedy influencing federal policy. Let
(10:03):
me tell you a few people are not very happy
with that one, people who advocate sound science.
Speaker 2 (10:08):
That's a problem.
Speaker 1 (10:11):
Kennedy has paid play a pivotal role in spreading false information,
particularly around the world, about vaccines and conspiracy theories about
five G for example, how it can cause cancer, I mean,
some crazy stuff. And he talked about how vaccines are
so dangerous. Now are there people who react to vaccines? Yeah,
(10:35):
point zero zero zero one percent, something insanely small. In
the meantime, the WHO World Health Organization great band by
the way, has said that vaccines, say about five million
deaths every year just vaccines, and the anti vaxx people
(10:55):
are basically nuts. And so here is a political statement
made by Trump. Yep, Kennedy has some great, great ideas,
and he's a good guy, and we're gonna see what
we can do with him. Yes, there may be a place.
And then Kennedy Junior says rfk Junior says, I'm going
(11:16):
to take over the Department of Agriculture. I Am going
to change everything that we deal with and how we
deal it. He's against, for example, insecticides. He's against a
manufactured fertilizer. Well, first of all, farmers will not have
food to sell if it isn't for industrial farming.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
There is nothing left.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
You cannot do it without herbicides and fertilizer on an
industrial level.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
You simply can't. That's the way it works.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
I mean, Neil, is there any way to feed America
without those two things organically?
Speaker 3 (11:51):
Well, you know what's interesting.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
If you go the other direction in science and start
making gmo food that is drought resistant, that is bug resistant,
then you have another flip side where people have issues
with that. So to be able to get the amount
of food that you're talking about, you have to do
all of that.
Speaker 3 (12:11):
You have to do different things to pull up.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
So here he is telling farmers you're doing it wrong,
and farmers are pretty conservative.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
It seems to be a real contradiction there.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And so here's an RFK junior saying this is what
I'm going to do. Trump says some good ideas. Contrary
to everything Trump stood for in the first administration. You
think he's going to be a negative on industrial farming.
I'm talking about Trump when he comes in, of course not.
But hey, here's an endorsement of a guy who has
(12:44):
millions of followers, who says, that's my guy.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
And how does Donald.
Speaker 1 (12:49):
Trump not say, yep, you know there's room, there's room
in my administration, of which there'll be no room. There'll
be no room because Trump does not believe in the craziness.
And I don't think as much as I don't think
Trump would do that good a job, I don't think
he would go against the farmers in this country, both
(13:09):
politically and philosophically.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
So here's the takeaway here.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
How do we feed everybody without pesticides, without herbicides.
Speaker 2 (13:21):
Two words answer that question, soilent green.
Speaker 3 (13:28):
Okay, hate to handle.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
And for those people that don't know soilent green, look
that one up. Great movie, great concept.
Speaker 2 (13:40):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Listening to a Handle on the Law every Saturday eight
to eleven o'clock. Neil of course, is heard two to
five on Saturday with the Pork Report. Virtually every week.
I get the question, Bill, I got in a car accident.
My car was totaled, and the insurance company is it's
not replacing my car. I paid twenty five thousand dollars
(14:04):
for it. I still owe twenty thousand. They're only giving
me twelve thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
What do I do? I go, Well, you get to
pay the difference is what you get to do. But
that's not fair. You know my car was destroyed. Well,
you were underwater on the loan.
Speaker 5 (14:21):
The car's value dropped below the car's value dropped below
your loan, which happens if you buy a new car
and you finance it.
Speaker 1 (14:33):
So you have a car that's worth okay, forty thousand dollars,
they're thirty thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
Okay, you drive it off the lot.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
That minute, as you pull out of the driveway after
registering the car, it has dropped eight thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:45):
And if the car is totaled right there, what are
you gonna get. You're gonna get the value of.
Speaker 1 (14:49):
Your car, which is eight thousand dollars less, and you
still owe the eight thousand dollars. Whoa wait a minute,
Well that's going on more and more, and that's for
a few reasons the decline and used car prices. A
third of the people who finance their cars have neglative equity,
(15:10):
which means the car is worth less.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Than what you owe on it.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
And I mean a lot of people thirty one million
out of the more than one hundred million auto loans
out there are underwater. And that's from the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau, And so you have to be very careful
and you know what's going on. Because cars are so
damn expensive, because interest is so high, you now have
(15:35):
loans and it's not uncommon at all. I look at
television ads. You have a loan for seventy two months,
six years. You're borrowing money to buy that car so
you don't have to pay eight hundred dollars a month
in car payments.
Speaker 2 (15:55):
What do you think your car is worth six years
after you buy it? Not much.
Speaker 1 (16:02):
And that's the problem that's going on because, look like
everything else.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
The cost of cars have has exploded.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Repairs, finds, insurance across the board. Cars are insanely expensive.
So how do you keep yourself from going underwater?
Speaker 2 (16:23):
You buy a car for.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
Cash, and you don't finance it, or you finance it
for such a short period of time that it retains
its value. It retains its value for the entire period
of time that you're buy that you're driving the car.
Because here's the way insurance companies work, and a lot
of people don't understand that you have a car that
you have a fifteen thousand dollars loan on, and the
(16:46):
car is worth eight thousand dollars. In other words, to
replace that car, you go out on the street and
you pay eight thousand dollars for it. That's all the
insurance company is going to give you the money for
value the car. Now, can you do something about it? Yeah,
you buy gap insurance. What is gap insurance? Well, you
go to your nearest gap store and you walk in
and you say, I'd like some insurance.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Actually, that's that's that's no, that doesn't.
Speaker 3 (17:10):
Work that way. You know who changed my view on cars?
Speaker 4 (17:14):
You you You told me to look at my car
as a utility bill and not as an investment, right,
And I've changed the way now it's I think of
it as my gas bill or anything else. I'm if
I'm going to have a car, I'm going to be
paying for it unless I pay cash.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
Right. And now I lease my cars. I used to
buy my cars. I lease them, and it's to me
it's like a utility bill.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
That's it.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
You're right, And so you get a new car every
three years and you simply pay for it. Gap insurance.
By the way, you buy that with your auto insurance.
It's a little bit more money, not a huge amount
more money, and gap insurance pays you the difference between
what you owe and replacing the car. You have a
car that you pay twenty five thousand dollars for, you
(18:00):
have a loan, and the car drops in value beneath
the loan. In other words, you owe more money than
the value of the car. Gap insurance pays the difference,
so you can replace your car, wipes out the amount
of money that's owed, so you're back to square. One
problem is is that not enough people either know about it,
(18:20):
not enough people take advantage of it, And in this
day and age.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
It is critical they have gap insurance. Really really important
to do it.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
So when I get the question on handle on the
law bill gotten doing a car wreck.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
My car was totaled. I paid forty for it.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
The insurance company is only willing to give me fifteen
for it because it's a few years.
Speaker 2 (18:44):
Old, and I owe eighteen. What do I do about
that six thousand dollars? Who do I go to? Who
do I sue?
Speaker 1 (18:55):
I go?
Speaker 2 (18:55):
You sue nobody? You pay for it.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
That's what you do. Really have to watch the loan
being more than the value of the car, which is
very difficult to do. By the way, it is not
easy to do because car values they were astronomical. You
could actually make money a couple of years ago on
a car you could buy, You actually could make money.
You would get more money for a car than even
(19:19):
what you paid for it. But that was pandemic land.
Those days are completely gone. So be really, really careful
in buying a car. And you know the cost of cars,
I mean yeah today, you know, I thought I always
did three years when I was buying my car, and
till three years you pay it and it kept pretty
(19:40):
close to the value of the car. But my payments
were reasonable. Today, a three year loan on a car
is seven hundred, eight hundred dollars a month. That's what
a mortgage payment used to be. When houses that were
too bedroom, one bath, six hundred square feet weren't a
(20:02):
million dollars. Look out the window, see all those houses
out there, guys, see those little crackerjack boxes.
Speaker 2 (20:12):
Million dollars. It's a world. Now, I'm gonna tell you
a story, and this.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
One I have experienced personally, just experienced it.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
And doctor Jim Keeneyh's joining us at the top of
the hour.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
He also has experienced this several times or many times,
and it has to do with.
Speaker 2 (20:35):
Harvesting organs and donating organs.
Speaker 1 (20:39):
And there's a story CNN just came out about a
Kentucky man wheeled into surgery to harvest his organs and
it turns out he was alive. Turns out he opened
his eyes and he started thrashing, and they still went
for it, and one of the staffers in ther stopped it.
(21:00):
And boy, let me tell you, there's a lawsuit there.
And it's so aberrational, it's so weird that it's just okay.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Just a great story.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
Except if you read the CNN story CNN dot com,
it's not as aberrational as it sounds. They're saying it
happens a lot more than has even reported.
Speaker 2 (21:21):
And I have just gone through this.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
There is a one of Lindsay's best friends, she's known
her since high school, had a seizure and was taken
to the hospital and she was brain dead. The seizure
basically killed her, and she was an organ donor, and
they in fact harvested her organs. And in this case, TJ.
(21:46):
Hoover's case, the one that the story is about. He
was brain dead. They did all the tests, and at
the same time they didn't do those kinds of tests
because he was still alive. And how do you make
mistake that? And I'm going to talk to doctor Jim
about it in just a few minutes. Because in the
case of this friend, and I want to use her name,
(22:06):
let's call her Judy, she has the seizure, she goes
to the hospital, paramedics pick her up and they do
CPR and they revive her, and the family is told
when they do the brain scan that there's no brain.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
There's no brain basically there.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
There doesn't seem to be any kind of registration on
the scan, doesn't show any activity. And then the family
start talking about donation. But here's what happens is that
and this is what we experienced because I was there
up close right there, and that is.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
No brain activity.
Speaker 1 (22:48):
And the next day they test again and test again
and test again, and I mean a week of this
to make absolutely sure across the board that in fact,
she was brain dead. And then they talk about donating organs.
And in her case, by the way, the family went
to the organ donation people at the hospital and they
(23:10):
found them, and the organ donor people said, wow, this
never happens. We usually have to go to the family
members and beg for organ donations. And it's what I
didn't know. And this is a stat that came out
in this article. One hundred and seventy million people have
actually signed up to be organ donors and they still
(23:34):
don't have enough because the matching process is so difficult.
I'm gonna ask doctor Jim that question too when we
come back. And so we ended up that's what ended
up happening with Judy. She effectively had died before she
even came into the hospital. The family we were all
(23:54):
told that she's not gonna survive. I mean, there's nothing
there to survive.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
But the week that it took.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
In almost maybe four days to make absolutely sure, I mean,
I've never seen anything like that, And of course she's
on life support the whole time. And it took another
several days to do all of the testing for the match,
because that's on a whole different level than simply being
in the hospital and testing the way normally we are tested.
(24:23):
That was so intricate, and as they're finding the matches etc.
And I look at this and I go, this is
impossible for this to have happened with TJ.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
Hoover. I mean just impossible.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
And the hospital, of course, the hospital with their statement.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
I love this. Here's their statement.
Speaker 1 (24:42):
The safety of our patients is always our highest priority parentheses,
even if we kill them.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
We work closely with.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Our patients and their families to ensure our patients wishes
for organ donation are followed. Yeah, except why don't we
wait till our family member is dead before we actually
talk about Oregon donation? And the question is does this
really happen or is this just one in a million
(25:09):
and it's just a good story.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
KFIAM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've
been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Catch my Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
The Bill Handel Show News
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