Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Fortyfi Handle and the Morning Crew on Aday Wednesday.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
Hey, I want to invite you to join me this Saturday.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Night at the Walt Disney Concert Hall where I amc
the LA Lawyers, Philharmonic and Legal Voices. These are lawyers, judges,
pair of legals who are world class musicians who wanted
to make a living in the legal profession and not
starve as musicians. And it is this Saturday at the
Disney Concert Hall.
Speaker 1 (00:35):
I am am seeing it, which I do every year.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'm in a tuxedo. I make an ass out of
myself as you can imagine, and it is just terrific music.
For example, selections from Phantom of the Opera and then
a couple of classical pieces like Carmina Burana. Anyway, please
join me. You can get tickets, and tickets are inexpensive.
They go from twenty dollars on and this is a benefit.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
So go to LA lawyersphil dot org. That's LA Lawyers
phil as.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
In Philharmonic La lawyersphil dot org and love to have
you join me. All right, let's start with what happens
here in California.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
Money wise.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Gavin Newsom, who is going to run for president, is
an interesting guy.
Speaker 1 (01:25):
He is a devout liberal, but at the same.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
Time he's turning out to be a physical fiscal conservative
in a bunch of ways. So the Democrats and Newsom
announce a new budget three hundred and twenty one billion
dollar budget deal. Budget has to be in place by
July first, that's the law. We have to have a
balanced budget by July one and in the constant that's
(01:48):
the constitution. So how do you make it happen with
a deficit of twelve billion dollars?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, you play games, is what you do.
Speaker 2 (02:01):
You borrow money, you move money around, you do accounting,
You put programs together and then take them away. Democrats
in this state, there is a philosophy. Look up Will
Rogers if you don't know who Will Rogers is. By
the way, it's worth it. He Owes a great commentator,
by the way, out of KFI is when he did
(02:23):
his commentating, and he was a man that was beloved
by virtually everybody in this country. He was a radio
commentator and he also had a column, etc. And when
he died on his tombstone it was written, I never
met a man I didn't like. Very famous, every Democrat
(02:44):
who has ever served in the Assembly or the Senate
on their tombstone will be I never met a tax
or a social program I didn't like because our state legislature,
which the Dems have a super majority, is basically nuts.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
What happens is programs are placed.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Into law, put into law, and start, and when there's money,
there are new programs that are put into place, or
existing programs are expanded, like for example, medical care for
undocumented immigrants that we now have including dental.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
I mean, just it's crazy. No other state does that.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
So they've come to an agreement that is the legislature
newsome and we're going to have a budget, and one
of the principal aspects of the budget is housing reform.
Interestingly enough, everybody's on the same side of housing reform,
(03:59):
yet you've got the Dems in the state that will not,
for example, limit environmental controls, what stops development.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Regulations.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
And by the way, I have built before I grew
up in the construction business, I've known a whole lot
of people. I've built a house and remodeled a bunch
of houses, and the requirements are completely crazy. Department building
in safety. Getting permits is nuts.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Why.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
One of the reasons is environmental protection. Let me give
you an example. The California Coastal Commission, which runs several
miles inland from the coast, controls all that property and
you have to if you're building, you have to comply.
And they are crazy, okay, they have to say no
(04:58):
to everything.
Speaker 1 (04:58):
It takes weeks and weeks.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Then you have local for example in Calabasas, if someone
is building in the West Valley, they have their own regulations,
and then you have the County of Los Angeles, which
has its regulations.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Then you have the state of California.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Which has its regulations, and some of them contradict each other,
some of them because, for example, it's not a contradiction
if you've got a state minimum requirement some environmental issue
where you have to limit your building, and county is
more strict, the county controls, and if the city is
(05:37):
stricter yet, then the city one controls. Effectively, you can't build.
It is impossible to build. It is just they make
it so difficult. And one of them is the environmental control.
So we get lip service from the Democratic legislature. Lots
and lots of lip service. But in the end, oh
(05:58):
my god, you can't screw around with the environment. You
can't screw around with the protections. I mean, we've got
to protect our land, especially the land under your house.
So the California Constitution demands a balanced budget by July one,
So there's only a week to go, and the scramble
(06:22):
still is going on.
Speaker 1 (06:24):
Maybe a deal is in.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Place, the governor being conservative relative to the Democratic legislature,
the Senate and the Assembly, Republicans having virtually no say
because it's a super majority among the republic among the.
Speaker 1 (06:43):
Democrats.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
So, as I explained earlier in the last segment, we
are looking at a twelve billion dollar budget deficit, and
we're looking at a California legislature that doesn't.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
Want to get anything up.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
It just is willing to, I don't know, kick the
can down the road.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
How do you make a budget work?
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Well, you borrow money, an issue a bond, No, that's
off the table as something else.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
You move money around, You do what you can.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
And this deal that is cutting into place relies mainly
unborrowed money and going into state reserves and shifting funding around.
So it becomes an accounting issue, and the budget continues
(07:38):
the practice of state programs and it spares the state
programs because that's what the Democratic legislature wants.
Speaker 1 (07:50):
And what it does is.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
It stops us from immediate pain. This budget is going
to work and long term budget will just keep on
keeping ongoing. Republican Leader James Gallagher of the Assembly says,
we're in this situation because of overspending.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It's that simple.
Speaker 2 (08:09):
We've made long term commitments that the Democrats have wanted
and now, just like everybody warned, the money's not there
and they don't want to cut back on the programs.
The day expanded. And here's what happens when there is
a surplus. And some years there is a surplus when
the economy is good and California is their revenues. California's
(08:34):
revenues is based on income tax, and the wealthy pay
the income tax like eighty percent.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
People in the top twenty percent pay well.
Speaker 2 (08:44):
When the economy goes south, you know, you don't make
as much money. Now, rich people don't make as much
money as they did the year before.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
When the economy is good, which means the revenues to
the state dropped.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Dramatically, and what Democratic legislators do when there's money.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Oh boy, let's start a program.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Let's expand a program, much like expanding medical to include
all illegal immigrants, including dental, and the state legislature or
is still going for it. Newsoma says, we can. We
have to stop that. I mean, we're done with that.
(09:24):
We now have to restrict. Now, the governor still wants
to provide seven hundred and fifty million dollars to expand
the film and television tax credit, which so, how can
you expand How can you spend money on that and
cut these programs Because when you spend money on the
film and television tax credit, it's money coming in. It
(09:46):
provides income to the state. It provides jobs. Believe me,
medical does not provide jobs. It's expenditure. And the issue
is medical should be there, but do you also offer
it for illegal migrants? And the big change is medical
(10:10):
cost overruns, major problems, higher than expected price tags for
expansion that the healthcare system put into place.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
Newsom's budget budget trims a lot.
Speaker 2 (10:24):
Of that for people who are undocumented, and of course
the liberal Democratic legislature.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Saying, oh no, not at all.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
Well, he wants to include freezing new enrollment as of
January first, requiring all adults, including illegal migrants, to pay
one hundred dollars a month for premiums, eliminating long term
care benefits long term care you don't have long term care,
(10:52):
but illegal migrants do, and cutting full dental coverage. So
here's what the lawmakers ultimately agreed on, which is kicking in.
Undocumented immigrant adults ages nineteen to fifty nine are to
pay thirty dollars monthly premiums beginning in.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
July of twenty twenty seven. Thirty bucks a month. That's
what they're going to pay now.
Speaker 2 (11:24):
The argument is that there are migrant families that are
so poor that thirty dollars actually mean something. But at
at the same time, I mean, how much does the
state pay? Well, California is the great state to come here.
I don't know how many homeless people are in upstate
New York. In Buffalo, for example, in the middle of winter,
(11:46):
when it's forty degrees below zero, I'm assuming there are
plenty of shelter beds. But I can guarantee you New York, well,
New York State isn't a bad place. It's not California
in terms of benefits, but it's better than Alabama, Mississippi.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
Those are not good places to be homeless.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
So expanding housing by cutting down environmental controls, which we love,
and bringing down social programs because when there's money, the
legislature goes crazy. And the problem is those become permanent
programs and when there is no money, they're still in place.
(12:31):
Welcome to California, all right now, talking about Iron's nuclear program,
you know where it all started. The United States started
their program. Now a little of handle history here. There
was a speech the President Dwight Eisenhower delivered nineteen fifty
(12:52):
three in which he talked about Adams for Peace and
he warned of the dangers of a nuclear arms race
with the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
That's it, nothing more, nothing less.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
And at that time the nuclear bomb was only held
by the United States, Russia, which we were enemies, and
then France and.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Great Britain, who were allies, of course.
Speaker 2 (13:17):
And what ended up happening was that the United States
actually sent Tehran sent Iran a full nuclear reactor, and
it's in Tehran's northern suburbs. It's a small nuclear reactor.
It's used for only peaceful purposes. It was not the
(13:41):
target of the Israeli or the US campaign. And it's
a research reactor and its real significance is really symbolic.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
It doesn't do much.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
It was shipped to Iran by the US in the
nineteen sixties part of the Atoms for Peace program that
Dwight Eisenhower established, sharing nuclear technology with our allies, which
Iran was at that time, and that was to modernize
their economies that's in quotes, and have them move closer
(14:13):
to Washington in a world divided by the Cold War. Now,
the reactor does not contribute to the enrichment program of Iran.
The processing of uranium it runs on nuclear fuel far
far too weak to power a bomb. Now. A couple
(14:34):
of statistics here. In order for a bomb to be
successfully manufactured, uranium has to be purified to ninety percent.
And you do that with centrifuges, centrifuge centrifuges, and that
uran has thirty thousand of these. Because it's incremental, it's
tiny little processes to make it.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
A little purer, a little purer, a little puer.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Right now, Iran has brought it up to about sixty
percent and it's a pretty short run to ninety percent.
Get how much a peaceful nuclear reactor uses in terms
of uranium with the processing, how much purity. It's two
to three percent.
Speaker 1 (15:17):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (15:19):
So what ended up happening is when that nuclear reactor
was shipped to Iran, it quickly became an object of
national pride, first of all as an engine of economic growth. See,
we're going to grow with nuclear power, because that was
the end all be all in those days. And then
(15:42):
later on and this is where it went south for
the US, and that was as the potential source of
ultimate military power read the atomic bomb. Robert Einhorn, who
was a former Arms Control official who worked on US
negotiations with Iran, said, we gave.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Iran its starter kick. He delivered.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Eisenhower delivered that speech in December of nineteen fifty three,
and he actually warned of the dangers of a nuclear
arms race with the Soviet Union and vowed to leave
the world to lead the world out of this dark
chamber of horrors in the night.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
And here's what he explained.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
The world should better understand the destructive technology and understanding
how dangerous nuclear arms are. Because you're looking at the
destruction of the Earth. I mean we have at one
point we had thirty thousand nukes. Russia had twenty five
(16:48):
thousand nukes. Can you imagine where one good sized nuke
blows up a city. So Eisenhower said that the secrets
of nuclear power, low grade uranium to power power to
power plants produce electricity.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
That should be shared.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
It's not enough just to take this weapon out of
the hands of soldiers. Because as soon as the atomic
bomb was developed in the United States and it was
set off in Hiroshima in Nagasaki under the civilians actually
created it. Immediately the civilians were fired and it went
under military control. And what he's saying is what Eisenhower said,
(17:37):
it has to be put in the hands of people
who know how to strip the military casing and adapt
it to the arts of peace. We have to use
nuclear power for peace. Therefore, we sent a reactor to
Iran that started all of this. Now it was back
(17:58):
in the fifties, actually was in the sixties when it happened,
and this had to do with Eisenhower. President Eisenhower with
the program Adams for Peace, Adams being atoms and a
different world. Because the Cold War, we were in the
middle of the Cold War, and we wanted the Western
(18:19):
world not to have weapons, but to be self sustaining
and take our technology and create a better economy and
join the modern world with nuclear power, not nuclear weapons.
And so Eisenhower explained, the world should better understrand the
understand the destructive technology, but the secrets should be shared
(18:45):
and put to constructive use. And boy, you think he
was a little pie in the sky, And why did
he do it well? To gain influence over important pieces
of the Cold War Chess Boar, which incidentally included Israel,
Pakistan and Iran given nuclear information and training and equipment,
(19:08):
all for peaceful purposes, right, science, medicine, energy. So that
reactor that was actually given to Iran in sixty seven
very different from the reactors today, that's for sure. And
at that time we gave it to the Shaw. The
(19:29):
Shaw was a very westward leaning monarch, is what he
was put into place in a nineteen fifty three coups
backed by the CIA, and Iran to this day is
a little bit upset about how their government, their elected
government was tossed out because it wasn't pro west enough
(19:50):
and the Shaw, Pavlavi modernized the nation world power with
American backing. And he was a liberal secularism, western education,
repressed political opposition which turned the United States against him,
or really cared no women's veil modern art. Actually, Andy
(20:11):
Warhol once painted his portrait literacy infrastructure, and he budgeted
billions of dollars for the Iranian nuclear program. And what
he did is switch the premise of this is for
peaceful purposes into all of a sudden it was a
(20:34):
program where Iran was going to become a nuclear force
onto itself.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
And that is what changed everything.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
And of course nineteen seventy nine the revolution took place
in Iran. At first, they really didn't care about the nukes.
The Humani at that point was just not ignoring it.
He was establishing the country and changing into a religious theocracy.
Speaker 1 (21:01):
And then quickly realized.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
You know what, this is good, especially after the eight
year war with a Rock in the eighties, and so
they went into nuclear power and ever since, well you
know what it is now.
Speaker 1 (21:18):
So what's the takeaway here? As you look at Iran.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Processing uranium and making it as quickly as it can
into did bomb grade material. It was all started by
the US.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
We didn't know.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Different time, different place, KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
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