November 14, 2024 • 26 mins
A Washington County shifted to a 4-day workweek… What happened? Is this thew future? The new details of LAUSD’s new cellphone policy. Dr. Jim Keany, Co-Director of the Emergency Room at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo, joins The Bill Handel Show for 'Medical News'! Dr. Keany talks with Bill about sitting on the toilet too long, at-home brain stimulation to help depression, and the FDA pulling a popular decongestant.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
KFI AM six forty day, Wednesday, November thirteenth, Bill Handle
here and the Morning Crowd.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
A couple of things going on today.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The President, current President, and President Elect. They're going to
meet for us sit down at the White House. This
is tradition that has occurred every year since eighteen sixty nine.
The only time it was broken was last time in
twenty twenty when President Trump refused to meet with Joe Biden.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And now they're back to normal and.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Joe Biden is in fact hosting President Elect Trump. Also,
federal judge just blocked a Louisiana law requiring the Ten
Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom by twenty
twenty five. And the judge said, ah, come on, really,
there's a thing that's like sort of separation of church
and state.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
So the judge blocked it temporarily on an injunction.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
There's going to be a hearing and it's the state
is going to lose, and then they're going to appeel it,
and hopefully the state is going to lose on appeals when.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It goes to Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Now, let me tell you about a couple Kristen and
Eric Razabek, who happened to be working for San Juan County.
San Juan County bunch of islands up in Washington State
and it's just north of Seattle, and they have a
union and they've been the union's been negotiating raises for
the employees, but the county says, we don't have any money.
(01:30):
We're stout for cash. We can't afford to boost salaries.
And so they sat down union and the county government
sat down and said, Okay, let's try this. How about
a thirty two hour work week. You still get all
your pay, you still get your benefits, but let's see
(01:51):
if you can do this.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
With a thirty two hour week.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Wow, that's impressive. County manager said, there are a lot
of methodis to provide employee benefits. As long as you're
open to different solutions, you might find a different way
of doing things that allows you to keep quote wonderful
talented employees, even it's if it's not a direct pay raise.
By the way, they've done a year of this and
they have looked back to see how this has worked,
(02:18):
and San Juan County is looking at all these positive outcomes, recruiting, retention,
employee happiness, and they don't have to pay the nine
hundred and seventy five thousand dollars if they had met
the union's pay increased demands. Now that doesn't seem a
lot of money, but it's a tiny, tiny little county
(02:40):
where nine hundred and seventy five thousand dollars is a
lot of money to the county. And so the county said,
also the thirty two hour workweek attracted a bunch of
new talent. Applications have spiked eighty five percent. Open positions
are being filled twenty four percent faster, more employe staying
(03:01):
at their job. Separation which is employees either quitting or retiring,
that dropped, I have and eighty four percent said their
work life was the balance was better. And so now
you have departments across San Juan County. They're doing the
same thing, implementing the work week. Some are staggering staffing,
(03:24):
so there's always somebody there.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
One of the things I've often asked for, or it's
been suggested, as we stagger this show where I am
not here Thursday and Friday, but I have a contract
that says, I have to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I'm not gonna Yeah, come on, guys, can we put
it up for a vote?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, that's by popular demand, by the way, you've heard
those commercials by popular demand. Anyway, The reality here is
this stuff works. I've been asking for this all the time.
I want what I wanted to do. And this is
where my partner and I disagreed, and she won on
this one. Is I undred a four day work week,
ten hours per day, still the forty hours ten hours
(04:06):
per day, which I think people would want. So instead
of people taking off on Friday, how many people call
in sick on Friday?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Right? Please?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Well, if you're not working Friday and you're only working
four days a week, does that work? Even with companies
that have tried that, there is a huge increase in satisfaction.
People don't call in sick and they don't leave on
Fridays because if they leave one of.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
The four forty hour weeks four.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Days a week, they've lost twenty five percent of the
work week.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
It just works better and the pace day is the same.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Now we're moving toward a'm if you can do the work.
I've always thought this, if you, if I hire you,
and you have to do a job, and you don't
have to.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Be in the office.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
You're in sales, your support, you're doing whatever, and you
can do it in a limited number of hours.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You know what, God bless you. You produce the work.
I don't care if you work fifteen hours a week.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I'm still going to get rid of the person who
works forty hours a week that doesn't do anything. Now
that's counterintuitive because most companies don't do that. Certainly, county
and federal government and city government doesn't do that. But
you know, I think it works. Certainly, all the experiments
(05:36):
seem to work. You know, that's what happens with police
departments and fire departments, where they'll work a thirty six
or a twenty four hour shift and work two days
a week or several days a month. No one does
not show up unless they're desperately ill.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I just think it works.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And we can use the model of for example, which
used to have a thirty two hour.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Of non work per week, and it worked beautifully.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Now they were unionized and the workforce, I mean it
was so controlled by the unions that it was only
thirty two hours per week.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Someone would show.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Up at ten o'clock at ten oh five, they'd take
the three hour lunch. They would come back work another
twenty minutes, take a break, and you go home after that.
Good job to good to be in France. It's got
a little tougher since then. There were riots about that.
There were riots when some jobs came up to forty
hours a week. Literally it's oh, by the way, just
(06:41):
a quick aside. This is, of course, me going off
on a tangent. It's very difficult to get hired in
France because no one can get fired in France. You
get hired, it's like a Supreme Court appointment. You're there
forever very difficult to fire or someone It's like a
school teacher at La Unified. You know, hard it is
(07:04):
to fire a teacher years literally years.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I should go to France and become a medical doctor,
you know, just lie and then get hired.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
And so I don't know how to do any of this.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Well, no, I think you can get fired for that,
No way, Jose, Yeah, I think you can get fired
for that. But was one of the few things you
can get fired for. All right, we were just talking
about La Unified school district. I was and I love
talking about what comes out of LAUSD for a couple
of reasons. First of all, it's the second biggest school
district in country, so it's looked at by many many
(07:40):
other school districts.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
And there are a few.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Things unique about LAUSD in terms of the language issue,
how many languages are taught. And I went to LAUSD
and I got my fabulous education at LAUSD through high school,
and then I got a fabulous college education, and then
I got a fabulous law school education, which is why
(08:02):
nobody would ever hire me and I had to go.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Out on my own.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
So LAUSD is kicking in their new cell phone policy.
The board voted to expand the existing technology restrictions and
it's coming back all districts California losses.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
All districts have to.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Ban student smartphones by July twenty twenty six. So LAOSD
went a little bit further. What a shocker at the
meeting that just happened. And the school board doesn't have
to vote on it either. The district official said, this
is final. Now it's up to each individual school to
(08:42):
determine how it's going to be enforced. So here are
the rules. At a minimum, students may not use cell
phones or smart watches or earbuds on campus during school hours,
devices may must be turned off and they have to
be stored somehow. Now students can use their cell phones
(09:06):
their devices before and after school. There are exceptions and
they are listed students who need their phones for, for example,
health based reasons. Monitoring blood sugar is the example that
was given fair enough translation because they don't understand what
the teacher is saying, okay I mean, And that's one
(09:31):
of the issues that LA Unified does. English's second language,
probably has more. LAUSD has more students than any other
school district by a long shot.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
With students that don't speak English, students with disabilities who
use cell phones or other technologies as part of their
IEP programs or their individualized education programs, they're going to
have it.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And schools have to provide.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Students access to their phones in case of emergency. And
that gets interesting because how do you do that when
they're locked up put in a locker.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So this all.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Happens when the students come back from President's Day weekend
in February every school. And what did they come up
with why, Well, they looked at existing research on youth
cell phone and social media use and feedback from parents
and educators, and YadA, YadA, YadA, consultation with unions. I
mean a whole lot of people were involved. Now here's
(10:24):
the problem. There isn't a formal definition of an emergency.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
What's an emergency?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I mean there are examples that were given as an emergency.
For example, if a student has to leave a campus
because of an earthquake, that might constitute an emergency.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What genius came up with that? Really? Thank you?
Speaker 2 (10:49):
If the building is falling down, that may be an emergency.
If a shooter comes in and decides to take out
a classroom, that might.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Be an emergency. The other issues, well, the.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Chair or the chief of school operations, and raised child says,
when all else fails, apply common sense, and there is
in there is the problem. Common sense to one person
is not common sense to another person. What makes common
sense to me does not make common sense to Kneil.
(11:24):
So one of the options is for storing phones, including pouches.
Students put their devices in and their devices are sealed
with a special key.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Do they hold on to it? Do the teachers? No
one knows. Every school has to decide. How about lockers?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
How about an honor system phons, phones and backpacks?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Really what genius came up with that one?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The honor system for students of course, so several options
will be offered by LAUSD.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
There's a seven million dollars allocation for that. So the
schools should begin communicating the policy.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Online, so the students will know the policy by going
online through their smartphones, which they can't look at because
they're locked up, and that's how they're going to know
what the policy is. Yeah, that works out. It's all
very very good. Now what are the exceptions? Well, let's
(12:28):
go what are the not the exceptions the other way around?
Those that are covered Traditional Magnet affiliated charter schools will
have to follow the policy. Unaffiliated charter schools located on
the campus of district run schools expected to follow the policy,
except they have more leeway. For example, they can choose
(12:51):
different products than what the district plans to make available.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
So what the district is saying, you.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Can have pouches, and we're going to tell you what
pouches to have. If you are an unaffiliated school located
on school.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Property, you can decide what pouches you want. Huh.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, by the way, I didn't let my kids have
a cell phone for the longest time, and my kids
they were. They once said, Dad, everybody has a cell
phone at school.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I go, please, come on. Everybody says that everybody has one, Dad,
all my friends have one.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
And so what I did is I call the teacher
and said, can I come in and just ask the
students a question? And a teacher allowed me to. So
I walked in one day and I said, and I
think they were I don't know, eight nine years old.
And I walked into class and the teacher said, mister
Handele has a question to ask you. And I said,
and I asked the question of the kids, how many
of you have cell phones? Cause I'm going to prove
(13:51):
to my daughter that not everyone had one. Every hand
went up, every single hand went up. Okay, you get
your cell phones. And cell phones have destroyed have destroyed children.
When kids got hold of cell phones, it was over.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
You know how we used to speak on a cell
phone to cans in a string? Remember that? All right?
It is now time for a.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Medical segment with doctor Jim Keeney Uh brought to you
by Kick Medical Kick Medicine of USC. Together we are
limitless or they're limitless?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Uh with you or we are? Maybe it's you or
them or all of us, we are limitless. Okay, well done, sir,
thank you.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical Officer for Dignity Dignity Saint
Mary Medical Center in Long Beach and board certified e R.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Doctor Jim, Good morning.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Good morning Bill.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
All right?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Uh oh now a quick uh, just a quick disclaimer here,
not a disclaimer per se, but an explanation. What happens
is I get examples or suggestions as to what topics.
And the first one up is you are going to
talk about don't sit on the toilet too long?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Now, of course I would come up with a story
for that.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So I will now share my story and then have
you comment and give me your medical information on this.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And that is when I was.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
A kid and I had all kinds of issues. Just
talk to my psychologists. The one safe place that I
had in my house was the toilet, and I would
go in. And I'm a voracious reader. I read like crazy,
and it's been going on my whole life. So I
would bring in a book and I would sit on
the toilet for two hours. Until I was a teenager,
(15:51):
I had a permanent indention in my ass all the
way around in the.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Shape of a toilet seat.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
So you're telling me two hours virtually every day for
fifteen years is not a good thing.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Right, that is not a good thing. No, Yeah, there's
better places to sit and read.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
And why is this?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I mean, so there's a lot of reasons. And we're
seeing this because people like to scroll right, and it
is a safe place, as you mentioned, where no one's
going to give you a hard time scrolling till your
heart's content. And what happens is in that position you're
squatting down, your rectum is at a position lower than
(16:36):
the rest of your legs. You now have this increased
pressure in the vein, so you're going to increase the
risk of simple things like hemorrhoids. Also, the straining increases
the risk of hemorrhoids. It's just a bad posture. You're
cutting off the circulation in your legs. And you know,
I'm sure plenty of people have gotten up off the
(16:57):
toilet with a dead leg and having trouble. Oh yeah,
because they've cut off the blood flow and the nerve
to their leg.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I get that all the time. The dead leg toilet
seat syndrome. I do, and I never ye're there too
long too. I thought it was just because I wasn't moving,
but I didn't think of the circulation.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Hey, I have a question.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And now that we're talking about poopiosity, which is always
a great fun for me, I'm the most scatological guy
you've ever met. And that is the way the Asians
in many cases do their thing, is they do that
real squat thing where it's so there's just basically a
hole in the toilet and they they're sitting on their haunches.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Is that a healthier way of doing that than the
way we do it?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah? I mean in a lot of ways it could
be because you're not gonna you're gonna have a better
position actually naturally aligning the colon and the rectum. You're
going to have reduced risk of hemorrhoids, and so yeah,
overall it's hygienic, it works better, it's more natural. So
not a bad way to go, all right.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, I have a story about that too.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I was in China once early days, and I went
to an open air toilet and I was doing my
haunching and I was just I just about almost fell over.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
It was just crazy.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It was not comfortable when Okay, I'll tell you that
story at some other point. Okay, now at home brain
stimulation to help depression. Now, are we connecting this with
sitting on the toilet and what you do for stimulation
or that they're.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Not connected, totally unconnected.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Okay, So thank you.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
There's a we've been using transmagnetic stimulation or TMS. You
can get that kind of therapy usually in a psychiatrist's
office where you stimulate portions of the brain for the
purpose of treating mood disorders like depression or anxiety, and
it's been very effective. You know, anywhere from thirty to
(18:59):
forty percent, we'll have remission. Remission meaning that they don't
test positive. They still have symptoms, but they don't test
positive for depression or anxiety at that level, and then
about sixty percent will have significant reduction in their symptoms.
So that's the higher power one. Now what they're talking
about and what they've been using in Europe is this.
(19:20):
Instead of it being magnetic, it's a d C current.
You know, a battery current, low level current from a
nine volt battery that goes across two different areas of
the brain, and it's supposed to work by a similar
mechanism of stimulating the neurons in those areas, and those
do have a benefit. The remission rates there closer to
(19:40):
thirty percent, so not quite as good as TMS. But
TMS is this big bulky you know, expensive equipment that
you have to go to a doctor's office regularly to
get done.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
That's regular electroshock therapy, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
This is this is kind of a I mean, you know,
for fans of modern family, this is kind of like
what Phil invented with the base with a baseball at
and built in electrodes there to scratch your head. So
it works perfectly. It's easy you put it on at home,
and so it seems to show some promise. We'll see
what happens. They're using it in Europe, but it's not
FDA approved in the US yet.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And also real quickly, because I want to get to
a couple of other topics, and that is for depression
and using either hallucinogens or MDMA.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Where are we with that medically, Well, I.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Mean, we'll see what RFK Junior does with that. Right now,
almost everything is not legal, right, so the only thing
that is legal. Is ketamine There's been shown significant benefit
for things like PTSD and depression, chronic pain. So we'll
see where that leads.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
All right.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
RFK Junior coming in as the short list and probably
the new cabinet member the Secretary of Health and Human Services,
which means.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
All of the stuff over basically.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Overlooking and determining what the policy is for the United
States in terms of health. It means you FDA all
of it. What's the buzz out there? And maybe you
can add personally what you think of RFK Junior being
your boss.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
No, I think there's a lot of you know, both concern, excitement, confusion,
all of it out there. I mean personally, you know
there's a few issues, right. Is that if we go
back before the Flexner Report, which was in like nineteen ten,
when Flexner, funded by a Carnegie Foundation, went around all
(21:42):
the medical schools one hundred and fifty five of them
and decided which ones were diploma mills and which ones
were actually teaching evidence based medicine, and a lot of
medical schools were shut down. And since then, you know,
evidence base is really the goal here. Now is evidence
manipulated by corporations and everything else? Absolutely, and that needs
(22:02):
to be looked at when you look at a study.
That's why we can't believe every study that comes across
our desk. So that's the concern is that if RFK
Junior is on one hand, is he going to be
more rigorous, That would be great and maybe ferret out
some of these unnecessary corporate influences that are skewing the
(22:22):
medical data. But when I hear things about like his
vaccine hesitancy, I mean I get it. With COVID vaccine,
that was a new vaccine, it got pushed out very quickly.
They did everything they could to make sure it was safe,
but it was rapidly pushed to the public. But if
we start creating vaccine hesitancy around things that are proven,
(22:42):
you know we can see resurgences like we have of
measles back in the nineteen nineties. We know that when
the rate drops that we see these things come back.
So if I don't want to see polio and measles
come back and cause problems only because somebody like our
FK Junior is causing vaccine hesitancy. When you get mixed messages,
(23:04):
you get this erosion of public trust as well, and
there's already a lack of public trust in the FDA,
the CDC, ANDIH they're all there to try and assess
public risk, which always is a little bit different than
individual risk, which is why you need a doctor to
kind of interpret some of these things for you. But
you know, it's that's my concerns. My concerns are I
(23:25):
got a few. It could be some good things and
some bad things.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, that whole explanation that you gave, and your response
to my question was aeradite, well thought out, very logical.
And if we were to reverse places and you were
here saying, so, Bill, do you have any concerns about
OURFK junior being ahead of Health and Human Services?
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I would say he's a fruit cake.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
That's it. It starts there and it stops there. He's
a conspiracy fairest. Jim.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what. Yeah, So you read between
the lines.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I guess I did.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
How much influence does the head of a JHS have
over the medical world for real?
Speaker 3 (24:15):
I mean, you know, they can have quite a bit
of influence because as they set policy, they can influence
what CMS pays for and covers. They are really public
public trust and public communication is very significant for healthcare,
absolutely significant, because you can you can pay for and
(24:36):
you can recommend all the things you want. But if
people don't trust it, they don't believe in it, then
it's just not going to get used. And we see
that especially with vaccines.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Got it, all right, Jim, as always, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
We haven't talked. You know, I'll call you today because
we haven't talked very much show over the.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Last couple of weeks. All right, all right, yeah, that's right,
you have a job. We'll see you next Wednesday. Thanks
as always.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
All right, guys, we are done another day, another dollar,
well actually another eighty three cents because we work here
at iHeart. Tomorrow morning it starts all over again with
Amy five o'clock wake up call, and we come in,
Neil and I come in and Amy go from six
to nine and as always the obligatory but not very
(25:25):
forceful or not very well intentioned.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Thank you to Cono and An. All right, that's it.
I can't think of anything more. I mean, I think
we're basically done. Boo.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
All right, I'm going to go and actually eat some
more and then take some cough medicine. All right, this
is KFI am six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
KFI AM six forty day, Wednesday, November thirteenth, Bill Handle
here and the Morning Crowd.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
A couple of things going on today.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
The President, current President, and President Elect. They're going to
meet for us sit down at the White House. This
is tradition that has occurred every year since eighteen sixty nine.
The only time it was broken was last time in
twenty twenty when President Trump refused to meet with Joe Biden.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And now they're back to normal and.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Joe Biden is in fact hosting President Elect Trump. Also,
federal judge just blocked a Louisiana law requiring the Ten
Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom by twenty
twenty five. And the judge said, ah, come on, really,
there's a thing that's like sort of separation of church
and state.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
So the judge blocked it temporarily on an injunction.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
There's going to be a hearing and it's the state
is going to lose, and then they're going to appeel it,
and hopefully the state is going to lose on appeals when.
Speaker 1 (01:08):
It goes to Supreme Court.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Now, let me tell you about a couple Kristen and
Eric Razabek, who happened to be working for San Juan County.
San Juan County bunch of islands up in Washington State
and it's just north of Seattle, and they have a
union and they've been the union's been negotiating raises for
the employees, but the county says, we don't have any money.
(01:30):
We're stout for cash. We can't afford to boost salaries.
And so they sat down union and the county government
sat down and said, Okay, let's try this. How about
a thirty two hour work week. You still get all
your pay, you still get your benefits, but let's see
(01:51):
if you can do this.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
With a thirty two hour week.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Wow, that's impressive. County manager said, there are a lot
of methodis to provide employee benefits. As long as you're
open to different solutions, you might find a different way
of doing things that allows you to keep quote wonderful
talented employees, even it's if it's not a direct pay raise.
By the way, they've done a year of this and
they have looked back to see how this has worked,
(02:18):
and San Juan County is looking at all these positive outcomes, recruiting, retention,
employee happiness, and they don't have to pay the nine
hundred and seventy five thousand dollars if they had met
the union's pay increased demands. Now that doesn't seem a
lot of money, but it's a tiny, tiny little county
(02:40):
where nine hundred and seventy five thousand dollars is a
lot of money to the county. And so the county said,
also the thirty two hour workweek attracted a bunch of
new talent. Applications have spiked eighty five percent. Open positions
are being filled twenty four percent faster, more employe staying
(03:01):
at their job. Separation which is employees either quitting or retiring,
that dropped, I have and eighty four percent said their
work life was the balance was better. And so now
you have departments across San Juan County. They're doing the
same thing, implementing the work week. Some are staggering staffing,
(03:24):
so there's always somebody there.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
You know.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
One of the things I've often asked for, or it's
been suggested, as we stagger this show where I am
not here Thursday and Friday, but I have a contract
that says, I have to be here.
Speaker 1 (03:38):
I'm not gonna Yeah, come on, guys, can we put
it up for a vote?
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah, that's by popular demand, by the way, you've heard
those commercials by popular demand. Anyway, The reality here is
this stuff works. I've been asking for this all the time.
I want what I wanted to do. And this is
where my partner and I disagreed, and she won on
this one. Is I undred a four day work week,
ten hours per day, still the forty hours ten hours
(04:06):
per day, which I think people would want. So instead
of people taking off on Friday, how many people call
in sick on Friday?
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Right? Please?
Speaker 2 (04:14):
Well, if you're not working Friday and you're only working
four days a week, does that work? Even with companies
that have tried that, there is a huge increase in satisfaction.
People don't call in sick and they don't leave on
Fridays because if they leave one of.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
The four forty hour weeks four.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
Days a week, they've lost twenty five percent of the
work week.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
It just works better and the pace day is the same.
Speaker 2 (04:48):
Now we're moving toward a'm if you can do the work.
I've always thought this, if you, if I hire you,
and you have to do a job, and you don't
have to.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
Be in the office.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
You're in sales, your support, you're doing whatever, and you
can do it in a limited number of hours.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
You know what, God bless you. You produce the work.
I don't care if you work fifteen hours a week.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I'm still going to get rid of the person who
works forty hours a week that doesn't do anything. Now
that's counterintuitive because most companies don't do that. Certainly, county
and federal government and city government doesn't do that. But
you know, I think it works. Certainly, all the experiments
(05:36):
seem to work. You know, that's what happens with police
departments and fire departments, where they'll work a thirty six
or a twenty four hour shift and work two days
a week or several days a month. No one does
not show up unless they're desperately ill.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
I just think it works.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And we can use the model of for example, which
used to have a thirty two hour.
Speaker 1 (06:04):
Of non work per week, and it worked beautifully.
Speaker 2 (06:08):
Now they were unionized and the workforce, I mean it
was so controlled by the unions that it was only
thirty two hours per week.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Someone would show.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Up at ten o'clock at ten oh five, they'd take
the three hour lunch. They would come back work another
twenty minutes, take a break, and you go home after that.
Good job to good to be in France. It's got
a little tougher since then. There were riots about that.
There were riots when some jobs came up to forty
hours a week. Literally it's oh, by the way, just
(06:41):
a quick aside. This is, of course, me going off
on a tangent. It's very difficult to get hired in
France because no one can get fired in France. You
get hired, it's like a Supreme Court appointment. You're there
forever very difficult to fire or someone It's like a
school teacher at La Unified. You know, hard it is
(07:04):
to fire a teacher years literally years.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
I should go to France and become a medical doctor,
you know, just lie and then get hired.
Speaker 1 (07:17):
And so I don't know how to do any of this.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Well, no, I think you can get fired for that,
No way, Jose, Yeah, I think you can get fired
for that. But was one of the few things you
can get fired for. All right, we were just talking
about La Unified school district. I was and I love
talking about what comes out of LAUSD for a couple
of reasons. First of all, it's the second biggest school
district in country, so it's looked at by many many
(07:40):
other school districts.
Speaker 1 (07:41):
And there are a few.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Things unique about LAUSD in terms of the language issue,
how many languages are taught. And I went to LAUSD
and I got my fabulous education at LAUSD through high school,
and then I got a fabulous college education, and then
I got a fabulous law school education, which is why
(08:02):
nobody would ever hire me and I had to go.
Speaker 1 (08:04):
Out on my own.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
So LAUSD is kicking in their new cell phone policy.
The board voted to expand the existing technology restrictions and
it's coming back all districts California losses.
Speaker 1 (08:20):
All districts have to.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
Ban student smartphones by July twenty twenty six. So LAOSD
went a little bit further. What a shocker at the
meeting that just happened. And the school board doesn't have
to vote on it either. The district official said, this
is final. Now it's up to each individual school to
(08:42):
determine how it's going to be enforced. So here are
the rules. At a minimum, students may not use cell
phones or smart watches or earbuds on campus during school hours,
devices may must be turned off and they have to
be stored somehow. Now students can use their cell phones
(09:06):
their devices before and after school. There are exceptions and
they are listed students who need their phones for, for example,
health based reasons. Monitoring blood sugar is the example that
was given fair enough translation because they don't understand what
the teacher is saying, okay I mean, And that's one
(09:31):
of the issues that LA Unified does. English's second language,
probably has more. LAUSD has more students than any other
school district by a long shot.
Speaker 4 (09:40):
With students that don't speak English, students with disabilities who
use cell phones or other technologies as part of their
IEP programs or their individualized education programs, they're going to
have it.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And schools have to provide.
Speaker 2 (09:55):
Students access to their phones in case of emergency. And
that gets interesting because how do you do that when
they're locked up put in a locker.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
So this all.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Happens when the students come back from President's Day weekend
in February every school. And what did they come up
with why, Well, they looked at existing research on youth
cell phone and social media use and feedback from parents
and educators, and YadA, YadA, YadA, consultation with unions. I
mean a whole lot of people were involved. Now here's
(10:24):
the problem. There isn't a formal definition of an emergency.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
What's an emergency?
Speaker 2 (10:33):
I mean there are examples that were given as an emergency.
For example, if a student has to leave a campus
because of an earthquake, that might constitute an emergency.
Speaker 1 (10:45):
What genius came up with that? Really? Thank you?
Speaker 2 (10:49):
If the building is falling down, that may be an emergency.
If a shooter comes in and decides to take out
a classroom, that might.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Be an emergency. The other issues, well, the.
Speaker 2 (11:03):
Chair or the chief of school operations, and raised child says,
when all else fails, apply common sense, and there is
in there is the problem. Common sense to one person
is not common sense to another person. What makes common
sense to me does not make common sense to Kneil.
(11:24):
So one of the options is for storing phones, including pouches.
Students put their devices in and their devices are sealed
with a special key.
Speaker 1 (11:36):
Do they hold on to it? Do the teachers? No
one knows. Every school has to decide. How about lockers?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
How about an honor system phons, phones and backpacks?
Speaker 1 (11:46):
Really what genius came up with that one?
Speaker 2 (11:49):
The honor system for students of course, so several options
will be offered by LAUSD.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
There's a seven million dollars allocation for that. So the
schools should begin communicating the policy.
Speaker 2 (12:06):
Online, so the students will know the policy by going
online through their smartphones, which they can't look at because
they're locked up, and that's how they're going to know
what the policy is. Yeah, that works out. It's all
very very good. Now what are the exceptions? Well, let's
(12:28):
go what are the not the exceptions the other way around?
Those that are covered Traditional Magnet affiliated charter schools will
have to follow the policy. Unaffiliated charter schools located on
the campus of district run schools expected to follow the policy,
except they have more leeway. For example, they can choose
(12:51):
different products than what the district plans to make available.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
So what the district is saying, you.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Can have pouches, and we're going to tell you what
pouches to have. If you are an unaffiliated school located
on school.
Speaker 1 (13:04):
Property, you can decide what pouches you want. Huh.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Well, by the way, I didn't let my kids have
a cell phone for the longest time, and my kids
they were. They once said, Dad, everybody has a cell
phone at school.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
I go, please, come on. Everybody says that everybody has one, Dad,
all my friends have one.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
And so what I did is I call the teacher
and said, can I come in and just ask the
students a question? And a teacher allowed me to. So
I walked in one day and I said, and I
think they were I don't know, eight nine years old.
And I walked into class and the teacher said, mister
Handele has a question to ask you. And I said,
and I asked the question of the kids, how many
of you have cell phones? Cause I'm going to prove
(13:51):
to my daughter that not everyone had one. Every hand
went up, every single hand went up. Okay, you get
your cell phones. And cell phones have destroyed have destroyed children.
When kids got hold of cell phones, it was over.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
You know how we used to speak on a cell
phone to cans in a string? Remember that? All right?
It is now time for a.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Medical segment with doctor Jim Keeney Uh brought to you
by Kick Medical Kick Medicine of USC. Together we are
limitless or they're limitless?
Speaker 1 (14:33):
Uh with you or we are? Maybe it's you or
them or all of us, we are limitless. Okay, well done, sir,
thank you.
Speaker 4 (14:44):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (14:44):
Doctor Jim Keeney, chief medical Officer for Dignity Dignity Saint
Mary Medical Center in Long Beach and board certified e R.
Speaker 1 (14:51):
Doctor Jim, Good morning.
Speaker 3 (14:53):
Good morning Bill.
Speaker 1 (14:54):
All right?
Speaker 2 (14:55):
Uh oh now a quick uh, just a quick disclaimer here,
not a disclaimer per se, but an explanation. What happens
is I get examples or suggestions as to what topics.
And the first one up is you are going to
talk about don't sit on the toilet too long?
Speaker 1 (15:12):
Now, of course I would come up with a story
for that.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So I will now share my story and then have
you comment and give me your medical information on this.
Speaker 1 (15:23):
And that is when I was.
Speaker 2 (15:25):
A kid and I had all kinds of issues. Just
talk to my psychologists. The one safe place that I
had in my house was the toilet, and I would
go in. And I'm a voracious reader. I read like crazy,
and it's been going on my whole life. So I
would bring in a book and I would sit on
the toilet for two hours. Until I was a teenager,
(15:51):
I had a permanent indention in my ass all the
way around in the.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
Shape of a toilet seat.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
So you're telling me two hours virtually every day for
fifteen years is not a good thing.
Speaker 3 (16:06):
Right, that is not a good thing. No, Yeah, there's
better places to sit and read.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
And why is this?
Speaker 3 (16:16):
I mean, so there's a lot of reasons. And we're
seeing this because people like to scroll right, and it
is a safe place, as you mentioned, where no one's
going to give you a hard time scrolling till your
heart's content. And what happens is in that position you're
squatting down, your rectum is at a position lower than
(16:36):
the rest of your legs. You now have this increased
pressure in the vein, so you're going to increase the
risk of simple things like hemorrhoids. Also, the straining increases
the risk of hemorrhoids. It's just a bad posture. You're
cutting off the circulation in your legs. And you know,
I'm sure plenty of people have gotten up off the
(16:57):
toilet with a dead leg and having trouble. Oh yeah,
because they've cut off the blood flow and the nerve
to their leg.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
I get that all the time. The dead leg toilet
seat syndrome. I do, and I never ye're there too
long too. I thought it was just because I wasn't moving,
but I didn't think of the circulation.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
Hey, I have a question.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
And now that we're talking about poopiosity, which is always
a great fun for me, I'm the most scatological guy
you've ever met. And that is the way the Asians
in many cases do their thing, is they do that
real squat thing where it's so there's just basically a
hole in the toilet and they they're sitting on their haunches.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
Is that a healthier way of doing that than the
way we do it?
Speaker 3 (17:46):
Yeah? I mean in a lot of ways it could
be because you're not gonna you're gonna have a better
position actually naturally aligning the colon and the rectum. You're
going to have reduced risk of hemorrhoids, and so yeah,
overall it's hygienic, it works better, it's more natural. So
not a bad way to go, all right.
Speaker 1 (18:07):
Yeah, I have a story about that too.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
I was in China once early days, and I went
to an open air toilet and I was doing my
haunching and I was just I just about almost fell over.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
It was just crazy.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
It was not comfortable when Okay, I'll tell you that
story at some other point. Okay, now at home brain
stimulation to help depression. Now, are we connecting this with
sitting on the toilet and what you do for stimulation
or that they're.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Not connected, totally unconnected.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Okay, So thank you.
Speaker 3 (18:38):
There's a we've been using transmagnetic stimulation or TMS. You
can get that kind of therapy usually in a psychiatrist's
office where you stimulate portions of the brain for the
purpose of treating mood disorders like depression or anxiety, and
it's been very effective. You know, anywhere from thirty to
(18:59):
forty percent, we'll have remission. Remission meaning that they don't
test positive. They still have symptoms, but they don't test
positive for depression or anxiety at that level, and then
about sixty percent will have significant reduction in their symptoms.
So that's the higher power one. Now what they're talking
about and what they've been using in Europe is this.
(19:20):
Instead of it being magnetic, it's a d C current.
You know, a battery current, low level current from a
nine volt battery that goes across two different areas of
the brain, and it's supposed to work by a similar
mechanism of stimulating the neurons in those areas, and those
do have a benefit. The remission rates there closer to
(19:40):
thirty percent, so not quite as good as TMS. But
TMS is this big bulky you know, expensive equipment that
you have to go to a doctor's office regularly to
get done.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
That's regular electroshock therapy, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
This is this is kind of a I mean, you know,
for fans of modern family, this is kind of like
what Phil invented with the base with a baseball at
and built in electrodes there to scratch your head. So
it works perfectly. It's easy you put it on at home,
and so it seems to show some promise. We'll see
what happens. They're using it in Europe, but it's not
FDA approved in the US yet.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And also real quickly, because I want to get to
a couple of other topics, and that is for depression
and using either hallucinogens or MDMA.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Where are we with that medically, Well, I.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Mean, we'll see what RFK Junior does with that. Right now,
almost everything is not legal, right, so the only thing
that is legal. Is ketamine There's been shown significant benefit
for things like PTSD and depression, chronic pain. So we'll
see where that leads.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
All right.
Speaker 2 (20:48):
RFK Junior coming in as the short list and probably
the new cabinet member the Secretary of Health and Human Services,
which means.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
All of the stuff over basically.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Overlooking and determining what the policy is for the United
States in terms of health. It means you FDA all
of it. What's the buzz out there? And maybe you
can add personally what you think of RFK Junior being
your boss.
Speaker 3 (21:21):
No, I think there's a lot of you know, both concern, excitement, confusion,
all of it out there. I mean personally, you know
there's a few issues, right. Is that if we go
back before the Flexner Report, which was in like nineteen ten,
when Flexner, funded by a Carnegie Foundation, went around all
(21:42):
the medical schools one hundred and fifty five of them
and decided which ones were diploma mills and which ones
were actually teaching evidence based medicine, and a lot of
medical schools were shut down. And since then, you know,
evidence base is really the goal here. Now is evidence
manipulated by corporations and everything else? Absolutely, and that needs
(22:02):
to be looked at when you look at a study.
That's why we can't believe every study that comes across
our desk. So that's the concern is that if RFK
Junior is on one hand, is he going to be
more rigorous, That would be great and maybe ferret out
some of these unnecessary corporate influences that are skewing the
(22:22):
medical data. But when I hear things about like his
vaccine hesitancy, I mean I get it. With COVID vaccine,
that was a new vaccine, it got pushed out very quickly.
They did everything they could to make sure it was safe,
but it was rapidly pushed to the public. But if
we start creating vaccine hesitancy around things that are proven,
(22:42):
you know we can see resurgences like we have of
measles back in the nineteen nineties. We know that when
the rate drops that we see these things come back.
So if I don't want to see polio and measles
come back and cause problems only because somebody like our
FK Junior is causing vaccine hesitancy. When you get mixed messages,
(23:04):
you get this erosion of public trust as well, and
there's already a lack of public trust in the FDA,
the CDC, ANDIH they're all there to try and assess
public risk, which always is a little bit different than
individual risk, which is why you need a doctor to
kind of interpret some of these things for you. But
you know, it's that's my concerns. My concerns are I
(23:25):
got a few. It could be some good things and
some bad things.
Speaker 1 (23:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
Yeah, that whole explanation that you gave, and your response
to my question was aeradite, well thought out, very logical.
And if we were to reverse places and you were
here saying, so, Bill, do you have any concerns about
OURFK junior being ahead of Health and Human Services?
Speaker 1 (23:51):
I would say he's a fruit cake.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
That's it. It starts there and it stops there. He's
a conspiracy fairest. Jim.
Speaker 3 (24:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what. Yeah, So you read between
the lines.
Speaker 1 (24:08):
I guess I did.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
How much influence does the head of a JHS have
over the medical world for real?
Speaker 3 (24:15):
I mean, you know, they can have quite a bit
of influence because as they set policy, they can influence
what CMS pays for and covers. They are really public
public trust and public communication is very significant for healthcare,
absolutely significant, because you can you can pay for and
(24:36):
you can recommend all the things you want. But if
people don't trust it, they don't believe in it, then
it's just not going to get used. And we see
that especially with vaccines.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
Got it, all right, Jim, as always, Thank you.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
We haven't talked. You know, I'll call you today because
we haven't talked very much show over the.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Last couple of weeks. All right, all right, yeah, that's right,
you have a job. We'll see you next Wednesday. Thanks
as always.
Speaker 2 (25:03):
All right, guys, we are done another day, another dollar,
well actually another eighty three cents because we work here
at iHeart. Tomorrow morning it starts all over again with
Amy five o'clock wake up call, and we come in,
Neil and I come in and Amy go from six
to nine and as always the obligatory but not very
(25:25):
forceful or not very well intentioned.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Thank you to Cono and An. All right, that's it.
I can't think of anything more. I mean, I think
we're basically done. Boo.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
All right, I'm going to go and actually eat some
more and then take some cough medicine. All right, this
is KFI am six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
The Bill Handel Show News
Popular Podcasts
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by audiochuck Media Company.
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.