February 4, 2025 • 25 mins
(February 04,2025)
Businesses close, children skip school for ‘A Day Without Immigrants.’ 2.2BIL gallons of water flowed out of California reservoirs. State Farm seeks emergency rate increase averaging 22% after L.A. fires. Roughly a third of wildfire arsonists are connected to fire service, investigator says.
Businesses close, children skip school for ‘A Day Without Immigrants.’ 2.2BIL gallons of water flowed out of California reservoirs. State Farm seeks emergency rate increase averaging 22% after L.A. fires. Roughly a third of wildfire arsonists are connected to fire service, investigator says.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle. Here. It
is a Tuesday morning, February the fourth, yesterday was and
I think also Sunday was a day without immigrants. Now
I didn't even notice it, and this was a demonstration
(00:24):
to show the United States how valuable immigrants. Read also
illegal immigrants are and I'm of the ilk they are.
You know, without illegal immigrants, without illegal migrants are well,
the agricultural industry would just collapse. It's construction today in
(00:48):
southern California is I don't know what percentages of illegal migrants.
It's huge. And I talked to contractors, I talked to
business people, and it is just very very rough doing business.
Incredibly valuable, more valuable in terms of industry than they
are not now in terms of socially. Do they cost more?
Do they not cost more? And there's arguments all over
(01:09):
the place. Now it is now very tough to be
an illegal immigrant in this country, very very tough, because
we have it was always somewhat difficult, but today under
this new administration and the President ran on the anti
illegal immigrant that was one of his major selling points.
(01:34):
And he got it. I mean, he was able to
get the nerve of America because we as Americans do
not like illegal immigrants, illegal immigration. We don't like it.
We don't think it's fair. The rules aren't being followed
in terms of coming in this country. Oh, they're not
committing any crimes. Well they did. They're living in this
(01:57):
country illegally, which is a crime. See. A lot of
the concept of the pro immigrant the entire movement is
that it should not be a crime to come into
this country. It really is not a crime. That we
should have open borders. Well, welcome to reality. So now
you have millions of people, hopefully millions of people throughout
(02:21):
the country who didn't go to work. A day without immigrants,
all right, and they're trying to analogize it. A day
without immigrants is a day where you don't get work,
where things aren't being done, where somehow our economy stops
to it just shuts down. Well, a day without immigrants
(02:43):
basically came up to be a day without immigrants for
a pretty limited number of businesses. No big deal. I'm
going to shut down the one to one freeway a
couple of days ago. Wait it, good for them, because
that really is going to help their position. Because if
I had any kind of pro illegal immigrant feelings and
(03:07):
I'm sitting there for four hours on the freeway because
of a demonstration, boy, that's going to make me feel
even stronger about being on their side. Also, I'm watching
some video of these demonstrations by the thousands of people
that are demonstrating. I don't see one American flag. Now,
it could be that that's simply the video that the
(03:28):
media outlet is showing, But even the liberal media is
showing these people by the thousands without one American flag.
It's all Mexican flags. It's all Mexican flags. And here's
the question. If you like Mexico so much, go why
are you arguing here? I mean, if you want to
(03:50):
stay in America, at least have the brains to put
up American flags and say we want to be here.
America is where we want to work. America is where
we want to be able to take advantage of the
opportunities which do not exist in Mexico. Mexican flags. What
(04:12):
do they think which pr genius came up with this?
Here's the story. If you remember a bunch of years ago,
there was the million person march, and we're not talking
about the million man march for African Americans. We're talking
about the million person march in favor of Hispanics, illegal Hispanics,
same philosophy. But this was a huge demonstration and it
(04:33):
was all Mexican flags. I mean, among tens of thousands
of people, maybe saw one American flag. And my housekeeper, Maria,
went to that march and I said to her, I says,
I go, Maria, you can do anything you want on
the weekends. This she took off the day without my permission,
(04:55):
you know, without asking can I take the day off?
Which I probably would have given her anyway. And she
went down there and marched, and I said, you ever
do that again on my time, you are fired. And
she looked at me with eyes a little bit bright,
and I said, now, let's have a reality check, Maria.
(05:16):
My kids are in private school, so they're not affected
about as to how many illegal aliens come into this country.
They're not affected at all. Talk about your grandkids who
go to public school, and the schools are not allowed
by law to ask whether someone is legal or not legal,
because every kid who is in the United States is
entitled free public education through high school. So now you
(05:40):
guys are out there marching by the tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands, and you're demanding that there's no such
saying as illegal immigration, that people should be here, no
matter what I said. So, my kids have twenty eight
children in the school room. How many kids you think
(06:01):
are going to be in the school room that your
grandchildren are in forty fifty Because there are so many
children that are coming in over the border and they
have to be able to go to school. That's the law.
So what do you think that's going to cost your
family in terms of the education? And she sat and
(06:23):
thought about it. She became the most anti illegal immigration
person out there. Damn it. No, keep them out, keep
them out, all right. We're still talking about we will
for a very long time. We're in the aftermath of
the Eton and the Palisades fire, as well as other
fires out there, the two big ones that destroyed over
(06:43):
ten thousand homes and businesses. I mean, it was just
completely crazy, and a lot of the blame is we're
looking around to see who to blame. Was it Edison
and was that a spark that caused the first part
of the fire was at Arcis the start of the fire.
(07:04):
The fire could have been put out if there was
enough water pressure, if that reservoir in the Palisades had
water and wasn't empty at the time, if the fire
department had anticipated and put firefighters in front of the fire.
Or is it, for the most part kind of impossible
to put blame or at least the level of these
(07:24):
fires because winds were going at one hundred miles an hour,
and the experts, at least the ones I quoted, said,
there is no way on God's Earth that any fire
department anywhere in the world could have successfully fought this fire.
I mean, this is one of those once in a
(07:45):
thousand years events where it was that dry and the
winds were that powerful. So one of the accusations was,
and it was true, there wasn't enough water. There wasn't
enough water pressure, especially up in the higher parts of
the Palisades. So the President put a lot of blame
on Newsom and the bear of the fire departments. There
(08:06):
wasn't enough. And what he did is he ordered the
US Army Corps of Engineers to open two dams last
Friday in central California, letting in over two billion gallons
of water flow out of those reservoirs, and this was
with the intent to send water to southern California, which
has been fire completely ravaged by fire. And he went
(08:27):
on truths social saying, the water is flowing in California.
Now you have enough water basically to fight the fires,
and it's heading to farmers throughout the state and to
Los Angeles. Yeah, we got a couple of major problems
with that, okay, because if there had been that water,
for example, if Newsom had ordered, well, if anybody had
(08:49):
ordered that water to be distributed, would that have done anything.
Absolutely not. And here's why, because even this water doesn't
come to Los Angeles, it just doesn't. What do you
do with you need water, but it doesn't come here.
And this is in reservoirs that are they hold extra
(09:10):
water for a dry summer that's coming up, that's when
we really need the water, and it's being let out.
I mean, this is totally contrary to logic. This hurts
far more than it helps. The California Department of Water Resources,
the director said, there's no coordination or a little between
(09:32):
the FEDS and the state and local water managers at
this point. And she went and said these reservoirs were
federal reservoirs. State of California wasn't even part of the decision. Usually,
the state of California is part of the decisions as
to how much water is let go. The State Water
Project supplies water from northern California to southern California, including
(09:55):
to La Los Angeles. Water supply comes from state reservoirs,
partly from the Colorado River. It is completely separated from
the water system that the two lakes. These reservoirs come from.
Where the water goes is into the Central Valley, agriculture,
(10:16):
large farms, nut citrus, grasses for animal feed. It doesn't
come to Los Angeles. And so to argue that the
fault is with the water officials, the fault is with
how it is being managed in southern California. Read the
liberals control at all because it's democratic city, it's a
(10:36):
democratic state. Therefore, the fault lies with the water managers.
And had there been enough water, there would have been
plenty of supply in the Palisades. Here's the problem. The
system is not made to bring up that amount of
water in that amount of time. The fire experts will
(10:58):
say there is no system that is designed anywhere that
can supply water to that level, to that length of time.
So what's happening on this one is, unfortunately, if it
turns out to be a very dry summer, certainly a
dry winner. We're in drought anyway. Even we've been a
(11:22):
drought for about ten or twelve years. Even with the
heaviest rainfall we've had in decades a couple of years ago,
that still doesn't change it because we'd have to have
that kind of rain for several seasons in a row,
which we're not going to. So what happens when we're
short of water this summer because we won't have them
the water in the reservoirs, We're going to see you sometimes.
(11:45):
And this is not just Trump people do this. Politicians
do this where they make decisions simply for political purposes,
completely at odds to what makes sense, what's logic. And
that's across the board. By the way, I'm making that accusation.
Nothing is more important than getting re elected or furthering
your political agenda. Nothing, all right, coming in a little
(12:09):
offshoot story about the fires and insurance, good luck, because
now you've got a real problem. Oh, it's did he RFK?
Was he? Yes? He was confirmed by the committee, right, Yes,
he's been approved by the committee on a fourteen to
(12:32):
thirteen votes right around party line, straight down party line.
So he is probably going to be new Secretary of Hies.
Of course, there's nobody, nobody that's going to be nominated,
no matter what qualifications at all, that will not get through. Okay,
(12:54):
all right, right now, it's a story about the fires.
You think I'm going to do a story or two
about the fires in the next week, two weeks, months, years.
So here is the latest State Farm, State Farm General,
the holding company we'll just call it State Farm, which
is California's largest home insurer, has asked for an emergency
(13:17):
rate hike of twenty two percent, saying that well, we're
in a lot of financial trouble. Of course you are.
And why who are they asking? How come they just
don't raise their rates like every other business does. Well.
We passed in nineteen eighty eight a ballot measure here
(13:38):
in California, Prop one OZ three, and it gave the commissioner,
insurance commissioner the power and boy this is powerful stuff,
the authority to review a just reject proposed rate hikes.
So there's no such thing as an insurer raising rates
without the the commissioner saying uh eh, you know, yeah, no,
(14:04):
now this one. I don't know how he's gonna say
no on this one. State Farm already said it's received
eighty seven hundred claims and has paid out more than
a billion dollars, and it expects to pay out significantly more.
This is the costly, costly, costliest natural disaster, certainly in
southern California. Now, the companies also had already asked for
(14:29):
rate hikes of thirty eight percent for rental dwellings and
fifteen percent for tenants, and this is going to go
in effect May one. And so this latest request, and
they're saying it outright, I love this corporate language is
necessary to rebuild the company's capital base so it will
(14:49):
not have to further constrain the company's ability to provide
home insurance in the state. That's corporate tac for. We're
gonna go broke if you don't give us this raise,
we are out of here. We are not going to
have enough money to pay these claims. And also said,
and I've been saying this a long time, it has
(15:11):
lost almost three billion dollars over the last nine year period,
and that includes gains from investment income. The insurance companies
make a lot of money from investing the money, I
mean a ton of money. So what they're saying is
we lost almost three billion dollars state Farm over the
last nine years including our investment income. And last year's
(15:34):
State Farm financial rating was downgraded. For those people that
are saying insurance insurance companies are making just money fist
handover fist, and they're making a fortune, and that's why
they're charging us so much, because they just are able
to make so much money, it's not true. Course, all
you need the insurance commission and say hello to hello
and yes to everything, and when they asked for a
(15:56):
rate cut or a rate increase, the insurance commissioner can
actually get them rate cut when they asked for a
rate increase. It's not just we're asking. They have to
provide tons of information and backup and say here's why,
and it's looked at by the commission and the commissioner.
So State Farm has about twenty percent of the insurance market.
(16:20):
Homeowners market in twenty twenty three, about a million homeowners
has about a million point eight other policies too, But
this is all about homeowners. It's this big, big stuff.
So in March, the state farm last Mart's announced it's
going to be renewing seventy two thousand home, apartment and
(16:41):
property policies in California. Why well, reconstruction costs. Well, I
was talking to some people last night. They have a
very expensive home living in the Palisades, and they have
insurance they had to get they had to get the
Fair Plan because they couldn't they're running surable, They're in
a high risk area, high fire risk area, and so
(17:03):
they had to go to the California Fair Plan, which
I'd explained to you what it is. It is a
plan that is a plan of the last resort that
insurance companies fund all of them. And it's only fire insurance.
It's not liability, it's not theft, it's not flooding pipes breaking,
none of that, only fire insurance. And it pays three
(17:29):
million dollars total. Now three million dollars construction costs. Granted,
that's very few of us have homes that would cost
three million dollars to rebuild. Go to the Palisades, you
have homes five six thousand square feet easily. And I
was talking to my construction guy who did the remodel
(17:52):
on my house, Polo, who boy understands this, and he's
got a couple of homes that he's rebuilding for some clients.
And I said, so, what is a cat to rebuild
a home four hundred square feet six hundred square feet?
He goes, no nice custom home like that is a
thousand square one thousand dollars square foot to rebuild. So
if you have a five thousand square foot home, that's
(18:15):
a five million dollar rebuilt hard construction costs, and you
can only get three million dollars. So what do you do.
People lose their homes, They just they're done. They sell
the land, get they get their three million dollars. They
got a piece of land and they sell it. And
if they have no mortgage, which a lot of people do,
they take their money and they run. And if they
(18:35):
do have a mortgage, they're screwed. So this is not fun.
I mean, we're in some real dire straits here. I mean,
living in California was expensive enough, but if you're a homeowner,
can you imagine you just don't have insurance? My policy
was canceled at the Persian Palace before I sold it.
(18:57):
I mean just canceled. You know, they wouldn't renew. And
I'm going, okay, so I'll get another policy. I couldn't
find one. Finally I did after two and a half weeks.
I was bere for two and a half weeks, waking
up in the morning knowing I'm not insured. Let me
tell you how pleasant that was. So I ended up
finding a policy for a higher deductible less coverage twice
(19:18):
the price. That's California unfortunately. All right, good, I put
you in a good mood. Now, I really want to
put you in a good mood, very strong, good for you. Cono.
(19:46):
That's the Arsonists theme song, Handle in the Morning Crew.
It's on a Tuesday morning, February fourth, just having soda.
So let me bring it up for a moment. What
kind of a dirt bag you need to be? And
I know it's got psychological problems to light things on fire,
like to cause fires that you know will cause damaged. Yeah,
(20:08):
it's it's a little complicated. Uh. And a lot of
them have mental problems. And when you have someone that's
mentally ill to the point where they don't know that
if it's right or wrong what they're doing. You know,
what do I mean, what do you say about that?
Here's the problem with arsenists. I'm going to go through
it in a moment. What kind of people who does it?
But when you have the cereal wildfire, arsonists and for
(20:31):
whatever reason, they light up out there in the brush,
in the brush and they put an incendiary device. So
that is the real criminal mind the ones that just
really don't care. They're looking at it because it looks neat,
or they're enjoying a sexual component. Not usually, not usually,
(20:52):
but think about this, arsens happened every single day in
the city. Now we're talking about dumpster fires, car fires,
people burning garbage in alleys. I mean, it's yeah, a
big deal. When you have a wildfire. It's described by
one arsenist investigator is saying this literally has a serial
(21:19):
arsenist the wild land cereals. Arsenists has the power of
an atomic bomb at their fingertips. Think about that can
affect more people in a negative way. For example, let's
say the Palisades fire was started by an arsonist. Billions
and billions of dollars of damage, and how many seventeen
(21:43):
people die, and if it turns out to be an arsenist,
then they don't know. So looking at a story out
of CNN and talking to a fire and investigators for
Ellie County Eli Sheriffs, as he explains her, no such
thing as the typical arseness anybody. Everybody commits him for
all kinds of reasons. Some people have psychological problems, deep
(22:07):
seated ones, as you said. Others just want to see
what's going on. They like making an impact. They feel unimportant,
they feel like they don't count. Well, let's light a fire,
and boy do I count now, because I'm the one
that has created all of this, and that is insanely powerful. It's,
(22:33):
for example, people who assassinated JFK. We're talking about Lee
Harvey Oswald. Oswald who was just a loser his whole
life and never got any intention. And one of the theories,
and I buy this one, is he did this because
he wanted to make an impact, He wanted to feel important.
(22:55):
People are by far the biggest cause of fires, of course,
we know that, and has to do with either accident
or industrial like power plants, power poles going down. But
arson is a big factor about twenty percent of the
wild land or wildfires out there in the wild are
caused by humans. And it's exacerbated now because we've got
(23:18):
planet warming, dangerous fire weather, which makes it even more dangerous.
And so let's talk about fairly fascinated. We all are
by fire from when we were kids, right, we all play.
A lot of kids play with fire, and some adults, well,
let me put it this way, we continue to enjoy
(23:38):
enjoy it. Fire pits, candles, beach bonfires, you know, people
putting out cigarettes on each other during sex. What do
I have that wrong? I don't know, I don't I know.
It's just it's enjoying fire. But by the time we
(24:00):
get older, we're sort of done with that. Well not
with these guys, not at all. And according to the experts,
seeing fire and the emergency response to fire, that's a
big one is what turns these people on. And what
is even more interesting is about twenty percent of arsonists,
(24:24):
maybe a little less, are people in the fire fighting industry.
We heard so many stories of firefighters who are arsonists,
and I think about it, it makes a lot of sense
because if you have a proclivity towards fire, if fire
is your thing, What a great place to be. For example,
(24:46):
the priests, the Catholic priest and the holy issue with
young boys. Is it a question of priests the whole nature?
You become a priest to have sexu with young boys. No,
it's just a great place to be if you are
interested in that, because that is the climate that you're in.
Same thing with arsenists. I'm actually I think I'm making
(25:08):
the connection. If you are an arsenist and you love fire,
why wouldn't you go into firefighting? You get to see
the fire, you get to be near the fire, you
get to feel the fire for a living, and then
of course you go off and do your thing and
just light it up. And so we're going to find out,
you know, Arson is being investigated big time. All right,
(25:31):
this is KFI AM six forty. You've been listening to
the Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday
six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle. Here. It
is a Tuesday morning, February the fourth, yesterday was and
I think also Sunday was a day without immigrants. Now
I didn't even notice it, and this was a demonstration
(00:24):
to show the United States how valuable immigrants. Read also
illegal immigrants are and I'm of the ilk they are.
You know, without illegal immigrants, without illegal migrants are well,
the agricultural industry would just collapse. It's construction today in
(00:48):
southern California is I don't know what percentages of illegal migrants.
It's huge. And I talked to contractors, I talked to
business people, and it is just very very rough doing business.
Incredibly valuable, more valuable in terms of industry than they
are not now in terms of socially. Do they cost more?
Do they not cost more? And there's arguments all over
(01:09):
the place. Now it is now very tough to be
an illegal immigrant in this country, very very tough, because
we have it was always somewhat difficult, but today under
this new administration and the President ran on the anti
illegal immigrant that was one of his major selling points.
(01:34):
And he got it. I mean, he was able to
get the nerve of America because we as Americans do
not like illegal immigrants, illegal immigration. We don't like it.
We don't think it's fair. The rules aren't being followed
in terms of coming in this country. Oh, they're not
committing any crimes. Well they did. They're living in this
(01:57):
country illegally, which is a crime. See. A lot of
the concept of the pro immigrant the entire movement is
that it should not be a crime to come into
this country. It really is not a crime. That we
should have open borders. Well, welcome to reality. So now
you have millions of people, hopefully millions of people throughout
(02:21):
the country who didn't go to work. A day without immigrants,
all right, and they're trying to analogize it. A day
without immigrants is a day where you don't get work,
where things aren't being done, where somehow our economy stops
to it just shuts down. Well, a day without immigrants
(02:43):
basically came up to be a day without immigrants for
a pretty limited number of businesses. No big deal. I'm
going to shut down the one to one freeway a
couple of days ago. Wait it, good for them, because
that really is going to help their position. Because if
I had any kind of pro illegal immigrant feelings and
(03:07):
I'm sitting there for four hours on the freeway because
of a demonstration, boy, that's going to make me feel
even stronger about being on their side. Also, I'm watching
some video of these demonstrations by the thousands of people
that are demonstrating. I don't see one American flag. Now,
it could be that that's simply the video that the
(03:28):
media outlet is showing, But even the liberal media is
showing these people by the thousands without one American flag.
It's all Mexican flags. It's all Mexican flags. And here's
the question. If you like Mexico so much, go why
are you arguing here? I mean, if you want to
(03:50):
stay in America, at least have the brains to put
up American flags and say we want to be here.
America is where we want to work. America is where
we want to be able to take advantage of the
opportunities which do not exist in Mexico. Mexican flags. What
(04:12):
do they think which pr genius came up with this?
Here's the story. If you remember a bunch of years ago,
there was the million person march, and we're not talking
about the million man march for African Americans. We're talking
about the million person march in favor of Hispanics, illegal Hispanics,
same philosophy. But this was a huge demonstration and it
(04:33):
was all Mexican flags. I mean, among tens of thousands
of people, maybe saw one American flag. And my housekeeper, Maria,
went to that march and I said to her, I says,
I go, Maria, you can do anything you want on
the weekends. This she took off the day without my permission,
(04:55):
you know, without asking can I take the day off?
Which I probably would have given her anyway. And she
went down there and marched, and I said, you ever
do that again on my time, you are fired. And
she looked at me with eyes a little bit bright,
and I said, now, let's have a reality check, Maria.
(05:16):
My kids are in private school, so they're not affected
about as to how many illegal aliens come into this country.
They're not affected at all. Talk about your grandkids who
go to public school, and the schools are not allowed
by law to ask whether someone is legal or not legal,
because every kid who is in the United States is
entitled free public education through high school. So now you
(05:40):
guys are out there marching by the tens of thousands,
hundreds of thousands, and you're demanding that there's no such
saying as illegal immigration, that people should be here, no
matter what I said. So, my kids have twenty eight
children in the school room. How many kids you think
(06:01):
are going to be in the school room that your
grandchildren are in forty fifty Because there are so many
children that are coming in over the border and they
have to be able to go to school. That's the law.
So what do you think that's going to cost your
family in terms of the education? And she sat and
(06:23):
thought about it. She became the most anti illegal immigration
person out there. Damn it. No, keep them out, keep
them out, all right. We're still talking about we will
for a very long time. We're in the aftermath of
the Eton and the Palisades fire, as well as other
fires out there, the two big ones that destroyed over
(06:43):
ten thousand homes and businesses. I mean, it was just
completely crazy, and a lot of the blame is we're
looking around to see who to blame. Was it Edison
and was that a spark that caused the first part
of the fire was at Arcis the start of the fire.
(07:04):
The fire could have been put out if there was
enough water pressure, if that reservoir in the Palisades had
water and wasn't empty at the time, if the fire
department had anticipated and put firefighters in front of the fire.
Or is it, for the most part kind of impossible
to put blame or at least the level of these
(07:24):
fires because winds were going at one hundred miles an hour,
and the experts, at least the ones I quoted, said,
there is no way on God's Earth that any fire
department anywhere in the world could have successfully fought this fire.
I mean, this is one of those once in a
(07:45):
thousand years events where it was that dry and the
winds were that powerful. So one of the accusations was,
and it was true, there wasn't enough water. There wasn't
enough water pressure, especially up in the higher parts of
the Palisades. So the President put a lot of blame
on Newsom and the bear of the fire departments. There
(08:06):
wasn't enough. And what he did is he ordered the
US Army Corps of Engineers to open two dams last
Friday in central California, letting in over two billion gallons
of water flow out of those reservoirs, and this was
with the intent to send water to southern California, which
has been fire completely ravaged by fire. And he went
(08:27):
on truths social saying, the water is flowing in California.
Now you have enough water basically to fight the fires,
and it's heading to farmers throughout the state and to
Los Angeles. Yeah, we got a couple of major problems
with that, okay, because if there had been that water,
for example, if Newsom had ordered, well, if anybody had
(08:49):
ordered that water to be distributed, would that have done anything.
Absolutely not. And here's why, because even this water doesn't
come to Los Angeles, it just doesn't. What do you
do with you need water, but it doesn't come here.
And this is in reservoirs that are they hold extra
(09:10):
water for a dry summer that's coming up, that's when
we really need the water, and it's being let out.
I mean, this is totally contrary to logic. This hurts
far more than it helps. The California Department of Water Resources,
the director said, there's no coordination or a little between
(09:32):
the FEDS and the state and local water managers at
this point. And she went and said these reservoirs were
federal reservoirs. State of California wasn't even part of the decision. Usually,
the state of California is part of the decisions as
to how much water is let go. The State Water
Project supplies water from northern California to southern California, including
(09:55):
to La Los Angeles. Water supply comes from state reservoirs,
partly from the Colorado River. It is completely separated from
the water system that the two lakes. These reservoirs come from.
Where the water goes is into the Central Valley, agriculture,
(10:16):
large farms, nut citrus, grasses for animal feed. It doesn't
come to Los Angeles. And so to argue that the
fault is with the water officials, the fault is with
how it is being managed in southern California. Read the
liberals control at all because it's democratic city, it's a
(10:36):
democratic state. Therefore, the fault lies with the water managers.
And had there been enough water, there would have been
plenty of supply in the Palisades. Here's the problem. The
system is not made to bring up that amount of
water in that amount of time. The fire experts will
(10:58):
say there is no system that is designed anywhere that
can supply water to that level, to that length of time.
So what's happening on this one is, unfortunately, if it
turns out to be a very dry summer, certainly a
dry winner. We're in drought anyway. Even we've been a
(11:22):
drought for about ten or twelve years. Even with the
heaviest rainfall we've had in decades a couple of years ago,
that still doesn't change it because we'd have to have
that kind of rain for several seasons in a row,
which we're not going to. So what happens when we're
short of water this summer because we won't have them
the water in the reservoirs, We're going to see you sometimes.
(11:45):
And this is not just Trump people do this. Politicians
do this where they make decisions simply for political purposes,
completely at odds to what makes sense, what's logic. And
that's across the board. By the way, I'm making that accusation.
Nothing is more important than getting re elected or furthering
your political agenda. Nothing, all right, coming in a little
(12:09):
offshoot story about the fires and insurance, good luck, because
now you've got a real problem. Oh, it's did he RFK?
Was he? Yes? He was confirmed by the committee, right, Yes,
he's been approved by the committee on a fourteen to
(12:32):
thirteen votes right around party line, straight down party line.
So he is probably going to be new Secretary of Hies.
Of course, there's nobody, nobody that's going to be nominated,
no matter what qualifications at all, that will not get through. Okay,
(12:54):
all right, right now, it's a story about the fires.
You think I'm going to do a story or two
about the fires in the next week, two weeks, months, years.
So here is the latest State Farm, State Farm General,
the holding company we'll just call it State Farm, which
is California's largest home insurer, has asked for an emergency
(13:17):
rate hike of twenty two percent, saying that well, we're
in a lot of financial trouble. Of course you are.
And why who are they asking? How come they just
don't raise their rates like every other business does. Well.
We passed in nineteen eighty eight a ballot measure here
(13:38):
in California, Prop one OZ three, and it gave the commissioner,
insurance commissioner the power and boy this is powerful stuff,
the authority to review a just reject proposed rate hikes.
So there's no such thing as an insurer raising rates
without the the commissioner saying uh eh, you know, yeah, no,
(14:04):
now this one. I don't know how he's gonna say
no on this one. State Farm already said it's received
eighty seven hundred claims and has paid out more than
a billion dollars, and it expects to pay out significantly more.
This is the costly, costly, costliest natural disaster, certainly in
southern California. Now, the companies also had already asked for
(14:29):
rate hikes of thirty eight percent for rental dwellings and
fifteen percent for tenants, and this is going to go
in effect May one. And so this latest request, and
they're saying it outright, I love this corporate language is
necessary to rebuild the company's capital base so it will
(14:49):
not have to further constrain the company's ability to provide
home insurance in the state. That's corporate tac for. We're
gonna go broke if you don't give us this raise,
we are out of here. We are not going to
have enough money to pay these claims. And also said,
and I've been saying this a long time, it has
(15:11):
lost almost three billion dollars over the last nine year period,
and that includes gains from investment income. The insurance companies
make a lot of money from investing the money, I
mean a ton of money. So what they're saying is
we lost almost three billion dollars state Farm over the
last nine years including our investment income. And last year's
(15:34):
State Farm financial rating was downgraded. For those people that
are saying insurance insurance companies are making just money fist
handover fist, and they're making a fortune, and that's why
they're charging us so much, because they just are able
to make so much money, it's not true. Course, all
you need the insurance commission and say hello to hello
and yes to everything, and when they asked for a
(15:56):
rate cut or a rate increase, the insurance commissioner can
actually get them rate cut when they asked for a
rate increase. It's not just we're asking. They have to
provide tons of information and backup and say here's why,
and it's looked at by the commission and the commissioner.
So State Farm has about twenty percent of the insurance market.
(16:20):
Homeowners market in twenty twenty three, about a million homeowners
has about a million point eight other policies too, But
this is all about homeowners. It's this big, big stuff.
So in March, the state farm last Mart's announced it's
going to be renewing seventy two thousand home, apartment and
(16:41):
property policies in California. Why well, reconstruction costs. Well, I
was talking to some people last night. They have a
very expensive home living in the Palisades, and they have
insurance they had to get they had to get the
Fair Plan because they couldn't they're running surable, They're in
a high risk area, high fire risk area, and so
(17:03):
they had to go to the California Fair Plan, which
I'd explained to you what it is. It is a
plan that is a plan of the last resort that
insurance companies fund all of them. And it's only fire insurance.
It's not liability, it's not theft, it's not flooding pipes breaking,
none of that, only fire insurance. And it pays three
(17:29):
million dollars total. Now three million dollars construction costs. Granted,
that's very few of us have homes that would cost
three million dollars to rebuild. Go to the Palisades, you
have homes five six thousand square feet easily. And I
was talking to my construction guy who did the remodel
(17:52):
on my house, Polo, who boy understands this, and he's
got a couple of homes that he's rebuilding for some clients.
And I said, so, what is a cat to rebuild
a home four hundred square feet six hundred square feet?
He goes, no nice custom home like that is a
thousand square one thousand dollars square foot to rebuild. So
if you have a five thousand square foot home, that's
(18:15):
a five million dollar rebuilt hard construction costs, and you
can only get three million dollars. So what do you do.
People lose their homes, They just they're done. They sell
the land, get they get their three million dollars. They
got a piece of land and they sell it. And
if they have no mortgage, which a lot of people do,
they take their money and they run. And if they
(18:35):
do have a mortgage, they're screwed. So this is not fun.
I mean, we're in some real dire straits here. I mean,
living in California was expensive enough, but if you're a homeowner,
can you imagine you just don't have insurance? My policy
was canceled at the Persian Palace before I sold it.
(18:57):
I mean just canceled. You know, they wouldn't renew. And
I'm going, okay, so I'll get another policy. I couldn't
find one. Finally I did after two and a half weeks.
I was bere for two and a half weeks, waking
up in the morning knowing I'm not insured. Let me
tell you how pleasant that was. So I ended up
finding a policy for a higher deductible less coverage twice
(19:18):
the price. That's California unfortunately. All right, good, I put
you in a good mood. Now, I really want to
put you in a good mood, very strong, good for you. Cono.
(19:46):
That's the Arsonists theme song, Handle in the Morning Crew.
It's on a Tuesday morning, February fourth, just having soda.
So let me bring it up for a moment. What
kind of a dirt bag you need to be? And
I know it's got psychological problems to light things on fire,
like to cause fires that you know will cause damaged. Yeah,
(20:08):
it's it's a little complicated. Uh. And a lot of
them have mental problems. And when you have someone that's
mentally ill to the point where they don't know that
if it's right or wrong what they're doing. You know,
what do I mean, what do you say about that?
Here's the problem with arsenists. I'm going to go through
it in a moment. What kind of people who does it?
But when you have the cereal wildfire, arsonists and for
(20:31):
whatever reason, they light up out there in the brush,
in the brush and they put an incendiary device. So
that is the real criminal mind the ones that just
really don't care. They're looking at it because it looks neat,
or they're enjoying a sexual component. Not usually, not usually,
(20:52):
but think about this, arsens happened every single day in
the city. Now we're talking about dumpster fires, car fires,
people burning garbage in alleys. I mean, it's yeah, a
big deal. When you have a wildfire. It's described by
one arsenist investigator is saying this literally has a serial
(21:19):
arsenist the wild land cereals. Arsenists has the power of
an atomic bomb at their fingertips. Think about that can
affect more people in a negative way. For example, let's
say the Palisades fire was started by an arsonist. Billions
and billions of dollars of damage, and how many seventeen
(21:43):
people die, and if it turns out to be an arsenist,
then they don't know. So looking at a story out
of CNN and talking to a fire and investigators for
Ellie County Eli Sheriffs, as he explains her, no such
thing as the typical arseness anybody. Everybody commits him for
all kinds of reasons. Some people have psychological problems, deep
(22:07):
seated ones, as you said. Others just want to see
what's going on. They like making an impact. They feel unimportant,
they feel like they don't count. Well, let's light a fire,
and boy do I count now, because I'm the one
that has created all of this, and that is insanely powerful. It's,
(22:33):
for example, people who assassinated JFK. We're talking about Lee
Harvey Oswald. Oswald who was just a loser his whole
life and never got any intention. And one of the theories,
and I buy this one, is he did this because
he wanted to make an impact, He wanted to feel important.
(22:55):
People are by far the biggest cause of fires, of course,
we know that, and has to do with either accident
or industrial like power plants, power poles going down. But
arson is a big factor about twenty percent of the
wild land or wildfires out there in the wild are
caused by humans. And it's exacerbated now because we've got
(23:18):
planet warming, dangerous fire weather, which makes it even more dangerous.
And so let's talk about fairly fascinated. We all are
by fire from when we were kids, right, we all play.
A lot of kids play with fire, and some adults, well,
let me put it this way, we continue to enjoy
(23:38):
enjoy it. Fire pits, candles, beach bonfires, you know, people
putting out cigarettes on each other during sex. What do
I have that wrong? I don't know, I don't I know.
It's just it's enjoying fire. But by the time we
(24:00):
get older, we're sort of done with that. Well not
with these guys, not at all. And according to the experts,
seeing fire and the emergency response to fire, that's a
big one is what turns these people on. And what
is even more interesting is about twenty percent of arsonists,
(24:24):
maybe a little less, are people in the fire fighting industry.
We heard so many stories of firefighters who are arsonists,
and I think about it, it makes a lot of sense
because if you have a proclivity towards fire, if fire
is your thing, What a great place to be. For example,
(24:46):
the priests, the Catholic priest and the holy issue with
young boys. Is it a question of priests the whole nature?
You become a priest to have sexu with young boys. No,
it's just a great place to be if you are
interested in that, because that is the climate that you're in.
Same thing with arsenists. I'm actually I think I'm making
(25:08):
the connection. If you are an arsenist and you love fire,
why wouldn't you go into firefighting? You get to see
the fire, you get to be near the fire, you
get to feel the fire for a living, and then
of course you go off and do your thing and
just light it up. And so we're going to find out,
you know, Arson is being investigated big time. All right,
(25:31):
this is KFI AM six forty. You've been listening to
the Bill Handle Show. Catch my show Monday through Friday
six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on
the iHeartRadio app.
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