February 20, 2025 • 23 mins
FEMA rejects call by Newsom’s office to test soil in fire areas for toxic contaminants. “My next home must be fireproof”… Why more Angelenos are looking to build ‘Super Adobes.’ L.A. hires law firm at up to $1,975 an hour, to defend against wildfire lawsuits. For many viewers, YouTube is TV now. What that means for Hollywood.
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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 kf I
AM six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here. It is a Thursday morning, February twentieth. It is
nice days, nice sunny out there. What's the weather going
to be amy, It's.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Going to be some clouds this morning and then mostly
sunny with eyes in the seventies.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh, it's gonna be a beautiful day.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
And where did I just hear that? What was one
of the cities.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It's going to be fifty degrees below in the east
twenty degrees below.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
They're in some of.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
The most devastating winter weather that has been around in
a very very long time.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Kentucky is all underwater? Right?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Is it snowing in New Orleans? I have no idea
good place to be in southern California. Too many people
are moving in. Okay, just want to know what the
weather was like. FEMA one of our favorite agencies. FEMA
actually has a great reputation for helping people out and
distress it.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
FEMA's like the Red Cross, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
They come in almost immediately and help whatever area. Eve
Soul States actually when there are disasters like the fire.
So here's what's happening. The cleanup of those the various
areas that were devastated by both fires eating and peladiice
(01:28):
Paradise fires had to start almost immediately, and it did,
and FEMA came in, federal contractors, Female hired a bunch
of contractors, and they're cleaning up the place, even at
a more rapid rapid pace than was here to heretofore
being anticipated.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And so here's what always happened.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Is they would come in, FEMA would come in, the State,
would come in, clear up a debris area, a debris field,
and then test the soil for contamination. Having found out
that in many cases the policies that were being followed
the actual removal involved not only removing the debris, but
(02:10):
also removing several layers of top soil, several inches of
top soil. That's part of the cleanup. So the state said, okay,
you know, thank you very much. The FEDS are now
being involved, and now let's talk about the soil testing.
And FAMA said, nah, we're not going to do the
soil testing. I say, wait a minute, You've always do
it in the past. Yeah, well we think and this
(02:32):
is the director of FEMA, the Federal Coordinating Officer Curtis Brown.
He writes back to the California Safety Standards folks, California's
Office of Emergency Services, and he says, we're not going
to do any soil testing.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
If you want to, you do it on your own.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
And now you have the Office Emergency Services in California saying,
wait a minute, we're not going to know you have
to you have to test the soil. Will now not
going to And by the way, even if you test
the soil and you find out that it's too contaminated,
we're not going to go any further down in terms
of removing top soil.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
What do you do with that?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Is this the ongoing battle of California versus the Feds,
I think so so far.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
In the other areas.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Traditionally, when you've even California, but you've had flooding that
goes on throughout the Mississippi Delta, and you've had the
hurricanes that have just destroyed so much of the South East, Southeast,
the eastern part of the United States, there has always
been just part and parcel of cleanup. You do the
(03:44):
toxic testing and then you get to work. This time,
the answer is no, even worse than that, And I
wish it was just I wish they had just said
FEMA said, now we're not going to because we hate
you guys, because we're part of administration that just isn't
very happy with California.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
That's the way we're going to deal with it. No, no, no, no,
This is the fun that I just love what Brown said.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Curtis Brown and saying no to the California Emergency Services
folks is soil testing jeopardizes the speed and the budget
of the cleanup, and it would delay recovery by several months.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
He writes.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
However, FEMA does not prevent the state, local governments, or
individual property owners from conducting their own soil testing if
they want to. We encourage the state to conduct soil
testing if they wish, if they wish to do so,
Brown wrote, but we are confident that our current practices
speed up recovery while protecting and advancing public healthy health
(04:49):
and safety. This is one of those nicotine doesn't actually
harm you. This is big Pharma saying higher prices are
actually good for you, that can suer lower prices are bad.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And this is FEMA saying.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Soil testing lack of soil tasting is good for you.
Not testing the soil is actually good. Okay, so kick back,
enjoy us not doing the work because you know it's
better for you.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know it's going to be well, it is going
to be quicker. That's true.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
If we don't test the soil, you know that permitting
will be faster because testing soil coming back saying there's
still toxicity levels and therefore we have to dig down
even deeper to remove top soil. You know that's good
to delay things. That's true. He's absolutely right. But we
all know that if we don't test and you build
on toxic levels, that's actually good for you.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
What's up is down, what's down is up.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And really that letter you wrote, what you think is
on square paper, is actually a round piece of paper,
don't you know that. By the way, I'm looking out
the window, I see blue skies. But if the National
Weather Service tells me that it's raining, it's raining, and
(06:18):
even further, I would say, they would say it's raining
cats and dogs until you eat those cats and dogs. Now,
I understand that that's kind of a stretch. I get
that a little put a political statement there, give or take.
Why don't we just change subjects on this one. Going
back to the fires for a moment. And as I've
said over and over again, we're going to be doing
fire stories for I don't know months, probably, and how
(06:42):
to deal with the aftermath of these just killer firestorms
that hit, those devastating wildfires that eating and the Palistas
eating fire in the Palisades. And so we're talking about
our building permitting process is going to be changed. Yes,
they're going to be speeded up. Are there going to
be people who yesterday we did a story on be
(07:03):
able to take and do our own permitting for example,
or our own investigations inspectors will be able to do
it ourselves or at least the builders, the engineers, etc. Yeah,
that's one of them possibility. And then then it goes
a little further. If you go to a place in Hissperia,
right on the edge of the Mohave Debt Desert, there
(07:26):
is a place called cal Earth, and it returns us
to our roots, sort of one of those hippie dippy
yippie places where people who live in commune should go
forward and set up their own living environment, that sort
of thing. But I'll tell you what they have there
and this is where it's taken it to a new level.
(07:48):
There is at cal Earth a place called Earth one
and cal Earth is a campus and nonprofit organization that
pitches new ways of living and they have championed a
building style called the super Adobe. It's a house, but man,
(08:11):
what a house it is. It's not a box house.
What it does is it looks like vaulted domes nestled
inside each other. The walls are curved, the ceilings are
tall and arched. It's almost like something out of a
Star Wars movie, you know, one of those weird planets.
And what this building can do, it can withstand a
(08:35):
colossal natural disaster, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, fire, and it is
a really interesting building because what it does is utilize
materials from the earth. Not that technically everything isn't but
it's not lumber. It has some concrete, it uses adobe,
(08:59):
which is mud and water, some binders, it uses some rebar.
Point is it is a lot cheaper than building and
it looks like it does a whole lot more.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
In terms of what it can do to avert fire.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And right now, super Adobes have been constructed all over
the world.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Homes and ADUs and.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Resorts and orphanages and clinics. A super Adobe and Nepal
survived both a seven point three and a seven point
earthquake that leveled everything else where.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
It was constructed in the.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Thomas fire, Ventura County, seventeen twenty eighteen. Super Adobees came
out of them unscathed. Now this has been around for
a whole long time. Matter of fact, Adobe the earth
and building material, the Adobe. If remember when school, when
we were kids and we made Adobe bricks, because the
(10:02):
missions are out of Adobe bricks.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
And they're still around.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
The other day I was where which one of the
San Frano mission is still around. It was built in
the seventeen hundreds of adobe. It's not concrete, it's Adobe
bricks that are made by the Indians.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Of course that when we were kids thought Father Sarah
was this.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
This great loving Catholic priests who lovingly took the Indians.
Turned out he was enslaved all of them and killed
half of them with the disease. But with diseases, but
that's a different story. You look at the Spanish missions
and the homes that were built and the buildings were
(10:45):
built of that time, made out of adobe. Those just work.
You don't need the building materials. There aren't toxins involved.
The cost of building one of these super adobees is
about a third the price of building the same house,
same size home, using conventional labor, conventional architecture. It seems
(11:08):
to be the way of the future, and you know
what it is, it's a way of the past.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And it's really kind of looking this up. You want
to look at cal earth.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It relies on the arch you know, these domes and
the homes can be connected to the electric grid, sewer lines.
I mean, they're basically a home that is made out
of the earth, and it seems to work.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
All right.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Good shot, by the way, always being studied by NASA
United Nations is looking at these buildings and you may
find that now they're weird looking because they really do
look like a movie set. But if it works and
it works, people are going to have to do something
and this may be the answer. And kind of looking
(12:01):
at a picture, it's actually worth looking at. It literally
does look like it's on a set of Star Wars,
you know, one of the what's that planet that the
Ewoks live on?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Do I have an indoor yeah, it looks like something
from indoor.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
One of those bars that you walk into if you
have fourteen eyes and you.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Know eight skulls. All right, Done with that, I have
a question.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Is it ever possible to justify a lawyer charging one thousand,
nine hundred and seventy five dollars an hour? And on
top of that, it's your taxpayer dollars that are going
to be used to pay this a lawyer. So let
me tell you, and at the end of this conversation,
by the way, I'm going to say, you know what,
(12:52):
this actually may make sense.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
First of all, we've got an issue with the fires,
of course, and the law suits hit before the first.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Fire was even out.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So you have La City is being sued in regards
to the Palisades fire we had. In addition to not
having enough water pressure enough water, there was that reservoir
that same thing he has water reservoir that had what
one hundred and seventeen million gallons of water that was empty,
and there's lawsuits are gonna fly there big time. Keep
(13:26):
in mind, each of these lawsuits, every homeowner is looking
at millions of dollars of money that wants back the
insurance company, same thing. The insurance company end up paying up.
They just turn around through the city. So what does
a city do with Apartment of Water and Power. They
have to hire lawyers because lawsuits have already hit. So okay,
(13:48):
we have a city attorney's office. They don't have the
expertise to do this. Now, these city attorneys are not
super specialists in wildfires. There are firms that are not.
That's all they do, but they have a lot of
experience dealing with it. And in case in point point
in case, Munger Tolls and Olsen a law firm that
(14:11):
was hired by the city. They have defended the city
before with wildfires. They defended the City of Maui and
the Maui Electrical Power Company when those fires hit.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
They've defended PG and E. They just have a lot
of experience.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Wh when you talk about, oh my god, the city
had to pay the insurance companies had to pay X
number of dollar, these huge dollars, well that's because after
that it would have been far more than that had
not good legal expertise come in. So part of the
defense that Munger Tolls has to argue is why the
reservoir was taken off line. Why it remained out of
(14:53):
service for so long. Keep in mind that this law
firm that has been retained and I can't even imagine
how many tens of millions of dollars they're going to
make on this where they're going to charge the partners
nineteen hundred and seventy five dollars an hour, associates built
(15:13):
from seven forty five to eleven eighty an hour. And
the Lacity attorney said that this was a discounted rate
structure and that was one of the reasons that Munger
was hired because they were able to give us a
discount at almost two thousand dollars an hour. So here's
(15:34):
the reason a firm like this is retained. And it
takes a big time firm to do this. This is
not an individual lawyer specialized expertise. The DWP in this
case needing immediate representation right now, going up to speed
because at an emergency, and the city said had actually
(15:55):
interviewed three law firms before selecting Monger Tolls a lot
of experience, obviously do a decent job. We don't know yet,
but when you're dealing in this hierarchy, when they talk
about lawyers making buckets of money. I always tell people
with old bills, should I become a lawyer? No?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Don't. No, am I going to make a lot of money?
No you're not.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Now if you're going to reach this kind of rarefied air,
a couple thousand dollars an hour, yeah, there aren't too
many people that do this. For example, those of you.
I remember my daughter Pamela, who's a great has a
great voice. Dad, I want to go into show business.
I want to sing, I want to do musicals. I go,
(16:40):
that's great. So will you support me? No?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I won't.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
But you said I'm good. I say, I think you're
very good. But you're not spectacular better than everybody else
out there. And then when you finish being spectacular and
better than anywhere any any of you are out there,
or anybody else is out there, then you are competing
about a thousand other spectaculars better than anybody else out
there for one role. This is very rarefied air. And
(17:13):
you don't get to be You don't get to charge
nineteen hundred and seventy five dollars an hour by accident.
It just doesn't work that way. So when we look
at these outrageous amounts of money that are being charged
in a lot of people's opinion the other way. And
by the way, am I defending this? I guess I am.
You know I am defending it. I remember when Rush Limbaugh,
(17:36):
I remember he used to be on KFI. Of course
KFI came up through the ranks because of Rush Limbaugh,
and Rush was making I don't know, thirty five million
dollars a year, and I'd be talking to people and
they go, oh my.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
God, how can anybody make that much? How can he
get paid that much? I go, he's a bargain.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
They're lucky to have him for thirty five million dollars
a year. You know, why does Tom Cruise get twenty
million dollars the picture? Because he produces He produces the results.
Why does Conda get paid minimum wage? Because he produces
results at a very competitive wage. And this is iHeart. Okay,
(18:22):
enough of that. By the way, what was the most
I ever charged.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
As a lawyer? Yeah, yeah, I'm just.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Trying to think of because I used to always do
it on a We used to do it on a
case by case basis, but occasionally I would go in
and on early surrogacy days, early reproductive law days. I
think at one point I think I hit, I don't know,
four to seventy five an hour. Now we're going back
(18:50):
thirty five years or four hundred and seventy five dollars
an hour actually with some real money for a lawyer today.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah. But and I.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Always argued that was a bargain because I knew my stuff.
They're just what There weren't other people that do it.
So some other lawyer is going to charge you five
hours just to figure out what it is. And I
know exactly what I'm talking about. There is that level
nineteen hundred seventy five dollars an hour. Man, why don't
I go back to practicing law. We're done on this one,
all right now? Moving on to YouTube. It's kind of fun.
(19:21):
I watch a lot of YouTube TV, and it is
a fortune, but all my network stuff I do on
YouTube and YouTube has just turned twenty and it is
the most watched streamer on USTv screens now. The vast
fast majority of people watch YouTube for free. I watch
YouTube TV, but it accounted for almost eleven percent of
(19:45):
television viewing in January, beating out Netflix and all of
Disney's stuff and Amazon, And on top of that, YouTube
is growing faster than any of them. Also, YouTube streaming
hours on you YouTube, including the live TV service, increased
twenty seven percent in twenty twenty four, basically went up
(20:08):
a third.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I mean, that's astronomical. And has just hit.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Quarterly advertising revenue of ten billion dollars per quarter. Okay,
this is good news, very very good news.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It used to be.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Remember when YouTube first came out of me was a
while ago, but it was all about cat videos and
those short little comedy sketches that people did. Well, it's sports,
it's traumas, it's three hour video podcasts, shows for preschoolers,
and then the big one. And I was just introduced
to this last night with I was visiting my friend
(20:48):
Anthony Zelman's Minty Mouthman's, and we were about to go
to dinner in my car needed charging and he has
a charger thing, and I didn't know quite how it
worked with his because I have a BMW and he
has a Tesla and we were we're talking about it,
and I said, so, how does really connect?
Speaker 1 (21:02):
What kind of adapter do I need? And will I
be able to do this? He goes, oh, let me go.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
On YouTube and find out and I didn't think of
it because I don't default. But there is nothing that
you cannot ask what to do, how it works, how
to fix it?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Ten minutes?
Speaker 3 (21:22):
And YouTube and you can be an expert in just
about anything. I know, and I'm not a big TV
guy these days, so but YouTube is on in my
shop when I'm working, and I learned tons of stuff
from three D printing to cab drawing, a digital design
to you know, you can learn anything, some of it
(21:44):
not correctly, but.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. But where's you say? Where's
the guardrails?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Here?
Speaker 1 (21:48):
With someone? Here's how to do a surgery.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
But you find a good you know, you go down
a good vein of people and people that I follow
and subscribe and and you learn a lot of stuff.
Wouldworking anything?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
You know, these are various programs, platforms services.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
When you think, why didn't I think of that?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
You know, and across the board, you know, it's not
just Velcrow, why didn't I think of that?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
But it's Uber? Why didn't I think of that? I mean,
you know, basically a taxi service, Airbnb? Gee, why didn't
I think of that one?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
But this is why I'm here and the twelve year
old who started uber, who is now fifteen years old,
has just bought himself a Caribbean island. Is there such
thing as a tech billionaire who is over the age
of nineteen? Does that exist? This is KFI AM six forty.
(22:47):
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 kf I
AM six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Here. It is a Thursday morning, February twentieth. It is
nice days, nice sunny out there. What's the weather going
to be amy, It's.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Going to be some clouds this morning and then mostly
sunny with eyes in the seventies.
Speaker 1 (00:24):
Oh, it's gonna be a beautiful day.
Speaker 2 (00:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
And where did I just hear that? What was one
of the cities.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
It's going to be fifty degrees below in the east
twenty degrees below.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
They're in some of.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
The most devastating winter weather that has been around in
a very very long time.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
Kentucky is all underwater? Right?
Speaker 2 (00:47):
Is it snowing in New Orleans? I have no idea
good place to be in southern California. Too many people
are moving in. Okay, just want to know what the
weather was like. FEMA one of our favorite agencies. FEMA
actually has a great reputation for helping people out and
distress it.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
FEMA's like the Red Cross, you know.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
They come in almost immediately and help whatever area. Eve
Soul States actually when there are disasters like the fire.
So here's what's happening. The cleanup of those the various
areas that were devastated by both fires eating and peladiice
(01:28):
Paradise fires had to start almost immediately, and it did,
and FEMA came in, federal contractors, Female hired a bunch
of contractors, and they're cleaning up the place, even at
a more rapid rapid pace than was here to heretofore
being anticipated.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
And so here's what always happened.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Is they would come in, FEMA would come in, the State,
would come in, clear up a debris area, a debris field,
and then test the soil for contamination. Having found out
that in many cases the policies that were being followed
the actual removal involved not only removing the debris, but
(02:10):
also removing several layers of top soil, several inches of
top soil. That's part of the cleanup. So the state said, okay,
you know, thank you very much. The FEDS are now
being involved, and now let's talk about the soil testing.
And FAMA said, nah, we're not going to do the
soil testing. I say, wait a minute, You've always do
it in the past. Yeah, well we think and this
(02:32):
is the director of FEMA, the Federal Coordinating Officer Curtis Brown.
He writes back to the California Safety Standards folks, California's
Office of Emergency Services, and he says, we're not going
to do any soil testing.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
If you want to, you do it on your own.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
And now you have the Office Emergency Services in California saying,
wait a minute, we're not going to know you have
to you have to test the soil. Will now not
going to And by the way, even if you test
the soil and you find out that it's too contaminated,
we're not going to go any further down in terms
of removing top soil.
Speaker 1 (03:12):
What do you do with that?
Speaker 2 (03:14):
Is this the ongoing battle of California versus the Feds,
I think so so far.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
In the other areas.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Traditionally, when you've even California, but you've had flooding that
goes on throughout the Mississippi Delta, and you've had the
hurricanes that have just destroyed so much of the South East, Southeast,
the eastern part of the United States, there has always
been just part and parcel of cleanup. You do the
(03:44):
toxic testing and then you get to work. This time,
the answer is no, even worse than that, And I
wish it was just I wish they had just said
FEMA said, now we're not going to because we hate
you guys, because we're part of administration that just isn't
very happy with California.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
That's the way we're going to deal with it. No, no, no, no,
This is the fun that I just love what Brown said.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Curtis Brown and saying no to the California Emergency Services
folks is soil testing jeopardizes the speed and the budget
of the cleanup, and it would delay recovery by several months.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
He writes.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
However, FEMA does not prevent the state, local governments, or
individual property owners from conducting their own soil testing if
they want to. We encourage the state to conduct soil
testing if they wish, if they wish to do so,
Brown wrote, but we are confident that our current practices
speed up recovery while protecting and advancing public healthy health
(04:49):
and safety. This is one of those nicotine doesn't actually
harm you. This is big Pharma saying higher prices are
actually good for you, that can suer lower prices are bad.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
And this is FEMA saying.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
Soil testing lack of soil tasting is good for you.
Not testing the soil is actually good. Okay, so kick back,
enjoy us not doing the work because you know it's
better for you.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
You know it's going to be well, it is going
to be quicker. That's true.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
If we don't test the soil, you know that permitting
will be faster because testing soil coming back saying there's
still toxicity levels and therefore we have to dig down
even deeper to remove top soil. You know that's good
to delay things. That's true. He's absolutely right. But we
all know that if we don't test and you build
on toxic levels, that's actually good for you.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
What's up is down, what's down is up.
Speaker 2 (05:57):
And really that letter you wrote, what you think is
on square paper, is actually a round piece of paper,
don't you know that. By the way, I'm looking out
the window, I see blue skies. But if the National
Weather Service tells me that it's raining, it's raining, and
(06:18):
even further, I would say, they would say it's raining
cats and dogs until you eat those cats and dogs. Now,
I understand that that's kind of a stretch. I get
that a little put a political statement there, give or take.
Why don't we just change subjects on this one. Going
back to the fires for a moment. And as I've
said over and over again, we're going to be doing
fire stories for I don't know months, probably, and how
(06:42):
to deal with the aftermath of these just killer firestorms
that hit, those devastating wildfires that eating and the Palistas
eating fire in the Palisades. And so we're talking about
our building permitting process is going to be changed. Yes,
they're going to be speeded up. Are there going to
be people who yesterday we did a story on be
(07:03):
able to take and do our own permitting for example,
or our own investigations inspectors will be able to do
it ourselves or at least the builders, the engineers, etc. Yeah,
that's one of them possibility. And then then it goes
a little further. If you go to a place in Hissperia,
right on the edge of the Mohave Debt Desert, there
(07:26):
is a place called cal Earth, and it returns us
to our roots, sort of one of those hippie dippy
yippie places where people who live in commune should go
forward and set up their own living environment, that sort
of thing. But I'll tell you what they have there
and this is where it's taken it to a new level.
(07:48):
There is at cal Earth a place called Earth one
and cal Earth is a campus and nonprofit organization that
pitches new ways of living and they have championed a
building style called the super Adobe. It's a house, but man,
(08:11):
what a house it is. It's not a box house.
What it does is it looks like vaulted domes nestled
inside each other. The walls are curved, the ceilings are
tall and arched. It's almost like something out of a
Star Wars movie, you know, one of those weird planets.
And what this building can do, it can withstand a
(08:35):
colossal natural disaster, tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, fire, and it is
a really interesting building because what it does is utilize
materials from the earth. Not that technically everything isn't but
it's not lumber. It has some concrete, it uses adobe,
(08:59):
which is mud and water, some binders, it uses some rebar.
Point is it is a lot cheaper than building and
it looks like it does a whole lot more.
Speaker 1 (09:11):
In terms of what it can do to avert fire.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
And right now, super Adobes have been constructed all over
the world.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
Homes and ADUs and.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
Resorts and orphanages and clinics. A super Adobe and Nepal
survived both a seven point three and a seven point
earthquake that leveled everything else where.
Speaker 1 (09:37):
It was constructed in the.
Speaker 2 (09:42):
Thomas fire, Ventura County, seventeen twenty eighteen. Super Adobees came
out of them unscathed. Now this has been around for
a whole long time. Matter of fact, Adobe the earth
and building material, the Adobe. If remember when school, when
we were kids and we made Adobe bricks, because the
(10:02):
missions are out of Adobe bricks.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
And they're still around.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
The other day I was where which one of the
San Frano mission is still around. It was built in
the seventeen hundreds of adobe. It's not concrete, it's Adobe
bricks that are made by the Indians.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Of course that when we were kids thought Father Sarah
was this.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
This great loving Catholic priests who lovingly took the Indians.
Turned out he was enslaved all of them and killed
half of them with the disease. But with diseases, but
that's a different story. You look at the Spanish missions
and the homes that were built and the buildings were
(10:45):
built of that time, made out of adobe. Those just work.
You don't need the building materials. There aren't toxins involved.
The cost of building one of these super adobees is
about a third the price of building the same house,
same size home, using conventional labor, conventional architecture. It seems
(11:08):
to be the way of the future, and you know
what it is, it's a way of the past.
Speaker 1 (11:13):
And it's really kind of looking this up. You want
to look at cal earth.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
It relies on the arch you know, these domes and
the homes can be connected to the electric grid, sewer lines.
I mean, they're basically a home that is made out
of the earth, and it seems to work.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
All right.
Speaker 2 (11:41):
Good shot, by the way, always being studied by NASA
United Nations is looking at these buildings and you may
find that now they're weird looking because they really do
look like a movie set. But if it works and
it works, people are going to have to do something
and this may be the answer. And kind of looking
(12:01):
at a picture, it's actually worth looking at. It literally
does look like it's on a set of Star Wars,
you know, one of the what's that planet that the
Ewoks live on?
Speaker 1 (12:15):
Do I have an indoor yeah, it looks like something
from indoor.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
One of those bars that you walk into if you
have fourteen eyes and you.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Know eight skulls. All right, Done with that, I have
a question.
Speaker 2 (12:30):
Is it ever possible to justify a lawyer charging one thousand,
nine hundred and seventy five dollars an hour? And on
top of that, it's your taxpayer dollars that are going
to be used to pay this a lawyer. So let
me tell you, and at the end of this conversation,
by the way, I'm going to say, you know what,
(12:52):
this actually may make sense.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
I'll tell you why.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
First of all, we've got an issue with the fires,
of course, and the law suits hit before the first.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Fire was even out.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So you have La City is being sued in regards
to the Palisades fire we had. In addition to not
having enough water pressure enough water, there was that reservoir
that same thing he has water reservoir that had what
one hundred and seventeen million gallons of water that was empty,
and there's lawsuits are gonna fly there big time. Keep
(13:26):
in mind, each of these lawsuits, every homeowner is looking
at millions of dollars of money that wants back the
insurance company, same thing. The insurance company end up paying up.
They just turn around through the city. So what does
a city do with Apartment of Water and Power. They
have to hire lawyers because lawsuits have already hit. So okay,
(13:48):
we have a city attorney's office. They don't have the
expertise to do this. Now, these city attorneys are not
super specialists in wildfires. There are firms that are not.
That's all they do, but they have a lot of
experience dealing with it. And in case in point point
in case, Munger Tolls and Olsen a law firm that
(14:11):
was hired by the city. They have defended the city
before with wildfires. They defended the City of Maui and
the Maui Electrical Power Company when those fires hit.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
They've defended PG and E. They just have a lot
of experience.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
Wh when you talk about, oh my god, the city
had to pay the insurance companies had to pay X
number of dollar, these huge dollars, well that's because after
that it would have been far more than that had
not good legal expertise come in. So part of the
defense that Munger Tolls has to argue is why the
reservoir was taken off line. Why it remained out of
(14:53):
service for so long. Keep in mind that this law
firm that has been retained and I can't even imagine
how many tens of millions of dollars they're going to
make on this where they're going to charge the partners
nineteen hundred and seventy five dollars an hour, associates built
(15:13):
from seven forty five to eleven eighty an hour. And
the Lacity attorney said that this was a discounted rate
structure and that was one of the reasons that Munger
was hired because they were able to give us a
discount at almost two thousand dollars an hour. So here's
(15:34):
the reason a firm like this is retained. And it
takes a big time firm to do this. This is
not an individual lawyer specialized expertise. The DWP in this
case needing immediate representation right now, going up to speed
because at an emergency, and the city said had actually
(15:55):
interviewed three law firms before selecting Monger Tolls a lot
of experience, obviously do a decent job. We don't know yet,
but when you're dealing in this hierarchy, when they talk
about lawyers making buckets of money. I always tell people
with old bills, should I become a lawyer? No?
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Don't. No, am I going to make a lot of money?
No you're not.
Speaker 2 (16:20):
Now if you're going to reach this kind of rarefied air,
a couple thousand dollars an hour, yeah, there aren't too
many people that do this. For example, those of you.
I remember my daughter Pamela, who's a great has a
great voice. Dad, I want to go into show business.
I want to sing, I want to do musicals. I go,
(16:40):
that's great. So will you support me? No?
Speaker 1 (16:43):
I won't.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
But you said I'm good. I say, I think you're
very good. But you're not spectacular better than everybody else
out there. And then when you finish being spectacular and
better than anywhere any any of you are out there,
or anybody else is out there, then you are competing
about a thousand other spectaculars better than anybody else out
there for one role. This is very rarefied air. And
(17:13):
you don't get to be You don't get to charge
nineteen hundred and seventy five dollars an hour by accident.
It just doesn't work that way. So when we look
at these outrageous amounts of money that are being charged
in a lot of people's opinion the other way. And
by the way, am I defending this? I guess I am.
You know I am defending it. I remember when Rush Limbaugh,
(17:36):
I remember he used to be on KFI. Of course
KFI came up through the ranks because of Rush Limbaugh,
and Rush was making I don't know, thirty five million
dollars a year, and I'd be talking to people and
they go, oh my.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
God, how can anybody make that much? How can he
get paid that much? I go, he's a bargain.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
They're lucky to have him for thirty five million dollars
a year. You know, why does Tom Cruise get twenty
million dollars the picture? Because he produces He produces the results.
Why does Conda get paid minimum wage? Because he produces
results at a very competitive wage. And this is iHeart. Okay,
(18:22):
enough of that. By the way, what was the most
I ever charged.
Speaker 1 (18:29):
As a lawyer? Yeah, yeah, I'm just.
Speaker 2 (18:30):
Trying to think of because I used to always do
it on a We used to do it on a
case by case basis, but occasionally I would go in
and on early surrogacy days, early reproductive law days. I
think at one point I think I hit, I don't know,
four to seventy five an hour. Now we're going back
(18:50):
thirty five years or four hundred and seventy five dollars
an hour actually with some real money for a lawyer today.
Speaker 1 (18:56):
Yeah. But and I.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Always argued that was a bargain because I knew my stuff.
They're just what There weren't other people that do it.
So some other lawyer is going to charge you five
hours just to figure out what it is. And I
know exactly what I'm talking about. There is that level
nineteen hundred seventy five dollars an hour. Man, why don't
I go back to practicing law. We're done on this one,
all right now? Moving on to YouTube. It's kind of fun.
(19:21):
I watch a lot of YouTube TV, and it is
a fortune, but all my network stuff I do on
YouTube and YouTube has just turned twenty and it is
the most watched streamer on USTv screens now. The vast
fast majority of people watch YouTube for free. I watch
YouTube TV, but it accounted for almost eleven percent of
(19:45):
television viewing in January, beating out Netflix and all of
Disney's stuff and Amazon, And on top of that, YouTube
is growing faster than any of them. Also, YouTube streaming
hours on you YouTube, including the live TV service, increased
twenty seven percent in twenty twenty four, basically went up
(20:08):
a third.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
I mean, that's astronomical. And has just hit.
Speaker 2 (20:14):
Quarterly advertising revenue of ten billion dollars per quarter. Okay,
this is good news, very very good news.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
It used to be.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
Remember when YouTube first came out of me was a
while ago, but it was all about cat videos and
those short little comedy sketches that people did. Well, it's sports,
it's traumas, it's three hour video podcasts, shows for preschoolers,
and then the big one. And I was just introduced
to this last night with I was visiting my friend
(20:48):
Anthony Zelman's Minty Mouthman's, and we were about to go
to dinner in my car needed charging and he has
a charger thing, and I didn't know quite how it
worked with his because I have a BMW and he
has a Tesla and we were we're talking about it,
and I said, so, how does really connect?
Speaker 1 (21:02):
What kind of adapter do I need? And will I
be able to do this? He goes, oh, let me go.
Speaker 2 (21:08):
On YouTube and find out and I didn't think of
it because I don't default. But there is nothing that
you cannot ask what to do, how it works, how
to fix it?
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Ten minutes?
Speaker 3 (21:22):
And YouTube and you can be an expert in just
about anything. I know, and I'm not a big TV
guy these days, so but YouTube is on in my
shop when I'm working, and I learned tons of stuff
from three D printing to cab drawing, a digital design
to you know, you can learn anything, some of it
(21:44):
not correctly, but.
Speaker 1 (21:45):
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. But where's you say? Where's
the guardrails?
Speaker 2 (21:48):
Here?
Speaker 1 (21:48):
With someone? Here's how to do a surgery.
Speaker 3 (21:50):
But you find a good you know, you go down
a good vein of people and people that I follow
and subscribe and and you learn a lot of stuff.
Wouldworking anything?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
You know, these are various programs, platforms services.
Speaker 1 (22:06):
When you think, why didn't I think of that?
Speaker 2 (22:09):
You know, and across the board, you know, it's not
just Velcrow, why didn't I think of that?
Speaker 1 (22:14):
But it's Uber? Why didn't I think of that? I mean,
you know, basically a taxi service, Airbnb? Gee, why didn't
I think of that one?
Speaker 2 (22:25):
But this is why I'm here and the twelve year
old who started uber, who is now fifteen years old,
has just bought himself a Caribbean island. Is there such
thing as a tech billionaire who is over the age
of nineteen? Does that exist? This is KFI AM six forty.
(22:47):
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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