BHS - 7A – Nathan Hochman Sworn In | The Great Grocery Squeeze

Nathan Hochman sworn in as L.A. County DA. The great grocery squeeze leaves communities in a food desert. When a telescope is a national seurity risk. US College closure are expected to soar, fed research says.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listenings camp. I am six forty the bill handles
show on demand on the iHeartRadio. F Maybe I'm really
in the calendar. Yeah, I'm looking at my calendar and
I'm so anxious for Christmas because I'm such a bad Jew.
On that December twenty fourth air of Christmas. Nice, thank you. Okay,

(00:28):
here's what I want to talk about New DA in La.
George Gascon, who I think it's fair to say it's
one of the weirdest, about the weirdest DA LA's ever had,
sweeps into office as this ultra pro defense prosecutor, almost

(00:48):
to the point where you know, where you see a
prosecutor table and a defense table at trials, it's almost
as if they're only the defense table, prosecutors and the
defense lawyers at the same table. So he's sweeps in
the office in the aftermath of George Floyd and the
anti police and the anti prosecutorial movement that came in.

(01:10):
You know, black lives matter, and it's ill, but beyond
just black lives matter, the entire criminal justice system. So
he sweeps into office based on this insane pro defense philosophy,
no more death penalty, small crimes, small misdemeanors, theft that
just you know, vandalism. We're not going to try them

(01:32):
at all. We're not even to prosecute. We're not even
a file charges. And it's just on and on. Where
enhancements for drug for gang membership or heinous crimes off
the table. And one which really pissed me off that
when there was a parole hearing and family members were

(01:54):
asked or were allowed to testify the prole hearings as
to the heinousness of the crime and how they're family
members usually were killed. Prosecutors usually join that. Gascone said,
no prosecutors. Nope, no prosecutors. Well, he lost by twenty points.
Over twenty points. I mean, we knew that George Gascone

(02:14):
was being swept out. So new guy in town, new
sheriff in town. Oh, we got a new sheriff here,
Nathan Hochman, promising to restore justice and balance and says, well,
the DA's office just has lost its way over the
last four years and blew me. A lot of people
agree with that. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who swore Hawkman in former governor,

(02:37):
said that Los Angeles has failed. We need a prosecutor
who is fair, who is not pro not hard ass prosecution,
and hawkman just bringing back the prosecutor's office to a
reasonable position. He's not particularly left wing or right wing.

(02:59):
He is just a reasonable position. That's what we have
to do. Now. At the swearing in ceremony, hundreds of people, prosecutors, cops,
victims' rights organizations were cheering, standing up and cheering. When's

(03:20):
the last time you would ever think a prosecutor would
be standing in a crowd waiting to cheer on a
new DA. That's how much he was hated by the
prosecutor's office. Schwarzenegger blamed Gascogne for a lot of us
for a rise in lawlessness and chaos in La County. Now,

(03:42):
I want to give you a reality check for a moment. Now,
let's look at the stats. Violent and property crimes did
rise twenty nineteen to twenty twenty three, mainly under Gascon's watch,
but that was during the post pandemic crime and hit
other California counties with conservative DA's even harder, and criminologists

(04:05):
are looking at and saying, you know what, the idea
that Gascone or any progressive prosecutor be blamed for the
ebbs and flows of crime trends shouldn't happen. I mean,
maybe it was his influence, but was it primarily his influence?
Was it because of Gascon and his policies? You know,

(04:29):
not necessarily so on mister Greemer crimes hawkman Veau vowed
to bring charges where Gascone didn't, but he is offering diversion,
restitution programs addiction issues. He plans to have prosecutors offer
a choice between prison or an eighteen month intensive rehab program.

(04:51):
And I don't know who's going to pay for that,
because that's always a question. He is going to pursue
death verdicts again, which Gascon took off the table. He'll
only do it in rare cases, which by the way,
is in rare cases anyway. Even when California did have
the death penalty, which it still does, but it was
a moratorium because Gavin Newsom is saying no death penalty.

(05:14):
We're not going to kill anybody while I'm the governor.
But it's only a moratorium. Next governor can institute it,
and so we haven't had an execution. I don't know
fourteen years now the death penalty. Californians want the death penalty.
I had the pleasure, and I use that word selectively,

(05:35):
I had the pleasure of witnessing an execution here in
the state of California, and it was one of the
best days of my life. I thought it was hugely entertaining,
hugely entertaining. Hawkman announced the formation of task forces to
deal with homelessness, fentanyl, human trafficking, organized retail crime, residential burglary,

(05:59):
and hate crimes. And also he's going to clean out
the higher end of the prosecutor's office, which always happens.
New DA comes into town, gets elected, it is his
or her closest advisors, senior people to where the DA was.
I mean, just you bring in your own people and

(06:20):
you fire the ones that followed or believed in the
previous administration, the policies. In this case, everybody who staunchly
believed in what Gascon was doing. People that he promoted gone.
I mean, they're still in the prosecutor's office. They're not
going to be great. Story about Todd Spitzer, who had

(06:44):
someone who was very high up in Rucklehouse's administration when
he was the DA, and it was someone who absolutely
defended the former DA. I mean, just crazy defended him
and was one of this senior prosecutors. I think, if
I remember correctly, was assigned to the intern program dealing

(07:07):
with high school students who wanted to be prosecutors or cops.
Big change and Todd. If I have that wrong, I
know Todd listens, let me know, and I'll correct myself.
I don't want to mention names, but I will correct myself.
I'd say, Nah, Handle, you're wrong like you normally are. Okay,

(07:28):
coming up the Great Grocery Squeeze. Neil has talked about
this food deserts, and we're not talking about a grocery
store in the middle of the Mohave. We're talking about
food deserts where there are no grocery stores in populated areas.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
Today, the Court dives headfirst into the issue of transfer
gen the gender rights. There's a challenge Tennessee's ban on
gender affirming care for miners, and the Court's going to
deal with that. We'll see which way it goes. There's
a legitimate argument there. You know, obviously I'm in favor
of transgender rights across the board, but the argument is

(08:16):
do we want to discriminate or do we want to
outlaw transgender affirming care to miners, transgender affirming care surgeries
to miners? Yeah, think can say no. I think it's
a legitimate argument for sure. All right, let's continue on.

(08:36):
Then I want to go off politics for a while
until we go back to politics coming up at eight
twenty with Donald Trump's newest selection, and I'll talk about that.
So now I want to talk about a story came
out in the Atlantic, and this is the concept of
food deserts and what's a food desert? Americans who live

(08:58):
in low income communities with no access to fresh groceries
and why Well, the consensus is that the population isn't
big enough, stores can't make enough money, and they just
don't have what it takes to attract a supermarket either
too poor, too parsley, too sparsely populated. And the argument

(09:21):
that there is a racist pattern of corporate redlining, which
I don't know how extensive that is. I believe some
of that is true. Rather, when did food deserts rive.
Didn't happen until the nineteen eighties. Before that, small towns,
poor neighborhoods had grocery stores, sometimes even several. The term

(09:42):
food desert was coined in nineteen ninety five by a
task force studying this new phenomenon. For example, let me
give you an example of a food desert. There's a
high poverty, majority black neighborhood in Washington, d c. In
the nineteen sixties, it had more than half a dozen
grows grocery stores. By the nineteen nineties, the number had

(10:05):
dwindled to two. Today none zero. And this is also
going on across rural America. Until the nineteen eighties, almost
every small town in North Dakota had a grocery store,
some had several. Now half of the rural residents of
North Dakota live in a food desert. By the way,

(10:27):
the USDA defines a food desert as a low income
census tract where the nearest grocery store is more than
ten miles away in a rural area, more than one
mile away in a city. Now, I don't know how
many people live more than a mile away from a
grocery store. I do now where I live, and so

(10:51):
I'm in a food desert. And then right outside of
a mile, like one point one miles from my house
is a Gelson, So I am in a food desert.
So there were a bunch of state and federal programs
tried to address food deserts, giving tax break subsidies to

(11:12):
supermarkets to go to these areas. That's failed. There are
more now than there were in twenty ten. So what
happened well in the thirties is when things changed. A
and P, which was the biggest supermarket in the country,
was supplanting local grocery stores and what became market dominant

(11:37):
and Congress the investigation said A and P had a
huge advantage that had nothing to do with greater efficiency,
better service, legitimate ways of competing, which is why the
law allowed them to do what they did. A and
P was using its sheer size to pressure suppliers into
giving it preferential treatment over small retails retailers, and the

(12:00):
food manufacturer had no choice. A and P said, you
sell us for a lower price, or we're not buying.
And what are they going to do? So they charge
food manufacturers charge independent grocers more money. Well, Congress in
nineteen thirty six passes the Robinson Patman Act, and what

(12:21):
is that Well, it bars price discrimination. It is illegal
for suppliers to offer president preferential deals for retailers who
demand them, but it does allow businesses to pass along
legitimate savings. For example, if a supermarket or supermarket chain
buys by the truckload, that's going to be less money

(12:46):
they're going to that they're going to be able to
buy that product, those groceries for less money. What this
nineteen thirty six law said is that anybody who buys
buy a truckload has to be allowed to buy it
at the same price. You can't have that kind of discrimination.

(13:09):
So in nineteen fifty four, the eight largest supermarket chains
had twenty five percent of the entire grocery sales. Same
thing in nineteen eighty two. Now it's the three biggest
market chains. So what is going on, Well, it was
in the nineteen eighties when that all went away under

(13:29):
Reagan and this law that was passed disappeared because it
was a regulatory act that the government forced this kind
of non discrimination activity, and Reagan said we can't have
governmental intervention here. Reagan hated bureaucracy. So then it blew

(13:51):
up and now they're in the same position that Walmart
buys at a a ridiculously low price because it buys
by the palette full. It buys by the container, buys
by the shipload and gets great prices. But if I
buy by the shipload the same product, I have to

(14:15):
be able to get the same price. That's what this
act does. And there's a move to bring it back
because the mom and poppers have disappeared. They're just gone.
You know, the seven to eleven is going to be
the seven one hundred and eleven. All right, we're done. See,

(14:36):
I mean that's analysis. Okay, Neil, we've been talking about
that legal analysis, show analysis. You put the ass in analysis.
I do, thank you so much. Okay, here's a question.
When does the telescope become a serious national security risk?
A telescope.

Speaker 2 (14:57):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from a sixty.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
December fourth Hume Day, and a lot of stuff going
on today, as you would think, Oh, just so many
fun fun nominees. And I'm gonna be doing the latest
Tulci Gabbard ahead of National Intelligence. Another beautiful pick, and
I'll be doing that. And the Supreme Court is going

(15:25):
to deal with transgender rights. It's hearing a challenge to
Tennessee's ban on gender affirming care for minors, and we'll
see which way the Court's going to go on that one.
And by the way, both sides have a legitimate argument
on those. Sometimes people are nuts on each side of
an argument. There's one side that's crazy. For example, gay rights, Okay,

(15:50):
we want to stop our next door neighbors who are
gay for marrying. We want to discriminate. That's crazy. Abortion
legitimate argument both sides. You know. I'm on one side
of it, but it's legitimate. So that one also, I
think is legitimate. I'll talk about that over the next
few days, for sure. Now here's a question, and I

(16:12):
saw this article and and pointed this out, and it's
just an interesting question. Not only the question, but the
guy who's involved in the middle of this. It's an
astronomer named Zilky or zilchko iv Che or Ivit del Kay.
He's clearly Croatian of some kind, and he is the

(16:32):
fifty nine year old director of the Vera Reuben Observatory.
The United States is developing this in the Chilean High
Desert and has been for twenty years. It's a billion
dollar telescope and he's being stopped by the government. The
United States government saying, well, we have to change this around.

(16:53):
He doesn't even know who he's talking to, no idea.
The government is so concerned with security, didn't even know
which agency, and so he's communicating through intermediary intermediaries at
the National Science Foundation. It's like Hamas and Israel negotiating

(17:13):
through Katar. That's what's happening here. One person, several people
who knows. Now, this satellite is on a mountaintop in Chile,
the at Kama Desert, and it's like the James Webb
space telescope of a few years ago. It's going to
be able to see the far edge of the universe,

(17:34):
but the web telescope can only see a tiny fraction
of the sky. The Vera Rubin will be able to
point to and lock onto a big section of the
sky and after thirty seconds share it with everybody. There's
an algorithm in real time. Well, here is the problem,

(17:57):
and that if it's able to grab large sections of
the sky and it's instantly readable by astronomers all over
the world spy satellites, it's going to be able to
see spy satellites and all of a sudden, every astronomer

(18:18):
on the planet can see a spy satellite, and the
United States, in our case, I would say, is a
little bit careful about the Russians knowing where are spy
satellites satellites are specifically. So now comes these negotiations and
spy satellites which can be seen by the vera rubin.

(18:41):
You know, it goes in the opposite direction too, because
big telescopes. For example, during Apollo, potential landing sites on
the Moon were figured out by big telescopes. They inspected
damage panels on Skylab, on the shuttles made in flight
to find out where those tiles had been damaged or not.

(19:03):
They flipped the shuttle over and one of these spy
scot satellites or one of these big telescopes was able
to see literally from the grounds. It's with that kind
of specificity. And so if you have this telescope up
there and here the whole sky, and all of a sudden,

(19:24):
here's a spy satellite. Instantly people can figure out which country,
which model, how big the camera is. And so the
national government, our government is a little bit upset about that.
So here's what they decided to do. And therefore this

(19:44):
is where this astronomer got really interested in this or negotiated.
They negotiated that before it goes to astronomers all over
the world. In real time, it goes to the military.
It's censorship program they have, but it's not really sophisticated.

(20:05):
So you have these sensors who are not particularly astronomers
and brilliant about it, take marking pins and draw across
the image. Now these satellites, this one in particular, we're
talking about tiny little dots to figure out where the
universe is and how far these galaxies are. And all
of a sudden, you have this honking marking pen going

(20:27):
across the screen and he goes, come on, that's kind
of insane. So here is the negotiation up to this point.
Because they haven't finished yet. Okay, we'll get an algorithm,
we'll write it. That then goes to you guys, and
if there is something moving across the sky asteroid doesn't matter,

(20:50):
spacecraft of any kind, and it can tell because it's
a time lapse. If there's anything moving, it goes to
the military to figure out and they have eight nine
days to figure it out, which then goes back to
the astronomers. They know what should not be seen, and
then that information is released. This telescope is as good

(21:14):
as the James Web telescope billion dollars over twenty years.
And as you know, telescopes can read people reading a
newspaper from two hundred miles up. I mean literally the
headlines and you can actually see the stories, so it
can get pretty specific. So that seems to be the
negotiation going on so far. It's just kind of fun.

(21:36):
I like the story of the guy with the marketing pen.
You know, the sensor, you know redacted, whole sections of
the universe redacted.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.

Speaker 1 (21:54):
Pastapon is still going on until the eighth. You can
still donate and we'd love for you to do so,
and you can go to any Wendy's that's still happening. Wendy's.
You donate five bucks and you get coupons for a
lot more than five dollars worth of wendy stuff. Smartan
final go to the counter and donate as you check out,
which I did, and it's up on Instagram at Bill

(22:15):
Handles show. Also, well, the pastathon is gone at the
Anaheim White House, but go to the website if you
would and that's kfiam six to forty dot com slash pastathon.
As of ten o'clock last night, nine hundred and forty
five thousand dollars raised for Katerina's Club and almost eighty

(22:37):
thousand pounds of pasta and sauce. That's forty tons, almost
one hundred thousand dollars over where we were at the
same time last year, and we blew through one point
three million dollars last year to help feed the kids,
and man, without you, it just doesn't happen. We're half
of the total. We're half of the budget of Katerina's Club.

(23:00):
By Bruno likes us so much. Okay, something that we've
been talking about a long time that I sort of
personally am involved with, and that is the number of
colleges that close each year. And I've been talking about
it and it's such a concern that the federal government
actually looked at this, and this is the Federal Reserve
Bank of Philadelphia. Because now we want real numbers. Now,

(23:24):
we want science, Now, we want real surveys, because quite
often we come up with stuff that seems to be
but there's no there's no there there without scientific background.
This is now a real report coming up with real
numbers under the worst case scenario, assuming a one time

(23:44):
fifteen percent drop in students, like right now, that's a
demographic cliff. It's called eighty colleges right now would shut
down one hundred thousand students twenty thousand staff members. Now nationally,
that's not a whole big number, but the trend is there.
For a bunch of reasons. Higher education has come under

(24:07):
some serious pressure the last several years. And why are
fewer people going to college? And just a quick aside
my personal involvement. One of the schools that closed was
my law school. Whittier Law School is now defunct. It
is done, it is finished, it is out of business.
If you look at my law degree, and there it

(24:30):
is in a frame that I graduated natsuma kum laudy,
not kum laudy, not well loud, yes, because that was
my law school. So I graduated kumb loud because too loudy. Yes,
And it's just shut down. So my school is one

(24:53):
of those victims. Thank god I graduated law school before
it shut down. Although a lot of people would argue
that why are the number of students way down? We'll
look at this the birth rate is down. We know
that a larger number of students are looking at the
value of a traditional college degree. Tuition has exploded. Borrowing

(25:14):
money from the US government to pay for school has
the highest borrowing costs more than fifteen years. I mean,
it is way way down. And the value of a
college education. Well, I get asked all the time, should
my son go to law school? Should I go to

(25:35):
law school? And I say no, Now you can go
to where I went to school. It's now a parking
lot and check out the school. Is it going to
help you hard to get a job? Now, when you
hear about these one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a
year jobs, are they out there first year? They are?
But you have to go in IVY League school. We

(25:56):
have one in California, Stanford, Although UCLA and SC are
pretty good. We're talking Stanford, UCLA, Yale, Harvard, University of Chicago.
These are schools where if you're at the top, top,
top of the class, you're going to get that kind
of job. The rest of us no. So, for example,

(26:18):
why did I go out on my own because there
wasn't a law firm on earth that would hire me,
that's why, and I was forced to go out and
start my own practice. And unfortunately, there are a lot
of people that are going to school and anesthesiologists. Look

(26:38):
at what anithesiologists make. I once was having a conversation
with an ant caesiologist about school. I mean they walk
into two hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year, three
hundred thousand dollars a year, I mean day one if
their board certified. Yeah, how did they get there? How
long did it take? Where other people are working and
making money. Four years of undergrad four years of med school,

(27:00):
five years of residency, So they're in their mid thirties
before they could even start. Oh, let's talk about the
five hundred thousand dollars student debt they have to come
up with now. Granted, anestesiologists are able to pay that
debt off in about thirty minutes. However, you know, it's
hard to start a family, buy a house when all

(27:21):
of your money is being spent on school and you're
borrowing up to the hilt, and you're starting your career
at thirty five or thirty six. I mean, that's a
tough week to go get.

Speaker 2 (27:33):
A long what you get along with NST geologists because
you both put people to sleep for a living.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
You know. One of the things. I mean, I'll take
a lot of hit on this show. Deal. I don't
mind taking hits, and I usually agree with you putting
people this sleep is not one of them. Basinga yes, Okay,
coming up? Oh the sucking up of Trump? Oh man,

(28:00):
how far is that going? Well, it is moving at
an indescribable pace. I'll do that story with you, and
then another Trump story, another spin which is fascinating, and
then doctor Jim Keeney at the bottom of the hour.
So we still have plenty of show. KFI AM six
forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. You've been listening

(28:21):
to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday,
six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app.