California Democrats have said no to Alexandra's Law, a bill that would deliver harsher penalties for fentanyl dealers. Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer joins the show to talk about the Crime Victims Event where people rallied against an OC judge and lawmakers. While a 4.0 student was able to beat all the odds, they still find themselves being unable to afford a UC Campus tuition. And Dr. Jim Keany, Co-Director of the ER at Mission Hospital in Mission Viejo comes on for some Medical News! Students are abusing the ADHD medication adderall in schools, there's a new sympton that a COVID variant may be causing, and even if you don't have allergies, this season will be miserable for you.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
You're listening to kf I AM sixforty. The bill handles show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. Kf IAM six forty handle here and we are
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.Some of the stories we are covering this
morning, A southern California man getsfour years in prison for his role in
(00:21):
the Capitol riot. And I waswatching last night, or a couple of
nights ago, a segment replay ofSean Hannity in which he showed a group
of people quietly going through the Capitoland he said, quote, there was
no Capitol riot. It were Itwas peaceful. Wasn't even demonstrators it these
(00:46):
were peaceful was the word. I'mtrying to remember what he actually said.
Anyway, they were not protesters.No, they were there as sight seers.
They were peaceful sights sears. Yeah, peaceful tourists, I think is
the word he used. How couldthis guy get four years in jail for
(01:06):
being a tourist, A peaceful tourist. Man, if you appeal your honor,
I was a peaceful tourist. Hegave me four years. Maybe we
got confused. It was North Koreaor something. Oh yeah, yeah,
I just uh, I mean,here's the problem, by the way,
just really quickly before we get intothis topic. And uh, that is
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and we've known that people who onlywatch Fox get that news, people that
only watch CNN or MSNBC only getthat news, and they don't watch the
other side. So that's that's theproblem. That is absolutely the problem.
And so you know we're getting that. All right, let's move on a
(01:51):
story about intended consequences. There wasa public Safety committee session the state Senate
and they were looking at SP fortyfour Alexandra's Law, which is a proposed
legislation named after this young woman whodied in her home after suffering a fentyl
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overdose in twenty nineteen. And underthis proposed law, the convicted fentyl dealer
gets a warning from a judge.It's required by law, you have a
warning, which I find fascinating.Now, after the warning, if the
(02:36):
dealer continues to deal drugs and someonedies as a result, if there is
a connection, then the dealer issubject to a harsher penalty. All right,
on his face, that makes alittle bit of sense. It died
in committee. The Democrats killed it. I mean, come on, who
(02:59):
would ever think that anybody, well, if it's gonna be, anybody's gonna
be the Democrats, who would everthink that making a harsher penalty for fentanyl
dealers would fail? And it failed. And it has a lot to do
with unintended consequences, It has alot to do with connecting the dots,
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and those are legitimate arguments that theycame up with. By the way,
I have no problem with those arguments. Usually I agree with the concept of
unintended consequences. You've heard me talkabout it over and over again. And
that's the hardest part of writing anylegislation, is the unintended consequences part.
I was involved, as I've saidmany times, in legislation involving surrogate parenting.
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No surprise there, and we spendmore time talking about unintended consequences than
anything else by a factor of atleast five to one. So there's no
issue here. One of the senators, Senator Nancy Skinner, Democrat, because
this thing failed because of the Democrats, said the concern here is that there's
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no real evidence that it would evenlimit overdose deaths. Well, rat the
Democrat state senator who authored the bill, disputed that saying there is evidence,
we have evidence, we have evidencethat this kind of law saves lives.
The problem is is that the SenatorTom Umberg who authored the bill, based
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all of his assertion, assertions andevidence on existing policies regarding drunk driving,
not the sale of fentanyl. Sohere is the warning. If here's the
judge defendant, they rarely just saydefendant, They usually use the guy's name.
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Mister defendant, you've just been convictedof drunk driving. If you do
it a again and someone has hurt, then the sentence will be enhanced and
you're going to go to prison fora very long time. So that's one
problem. And political experts looking atthis are saying, you know, these
legislators are in a bind because hereare the questions. You punish dealers for
(05:20):
selling fentyl a second time, andthat second time results in deaths. And
so one of the professors looking atthis from LMU said, you know,
it's really difficult to tie who touchedthe fenyl before the individual took it and
died. Is it the person whosold it, is it the person who
(05:43):
made it? Is the person towho transported it? And that's not clear
to me, now since the billwas struck down, it can't be voted
on again. And we're going totalk, by the way later on with
Todd Spitzer, Orange County, DAa little bit about this. And just
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to give you a stat in twentytwenty one, fentinel killed over fifty seven
hundred people in California, a lotof whom thought they were taking prescription drugs,
prescription medication. These aren't drug usersor these are people to say,
oh, I'm taking prescription opiate becauseI'm in such pain, and so is
that legitimate to take the opiates?So well, yeah, and doctors don't
(06:27):
prescribe opiates anymore. I get callsa handle on the law. Last week
I got a call from a manand this was in the He was in
the VA. He'd been been prescribedopiates for years and years, had a
horrible back injury. They couldn't operateon it, and the doctor just cut
him off and said start using hypoprofAnd he wanted to sue. The doctor
wanted to the VA. I said, no, you can't do that.
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So you can't get if you area prescription drug user, that is a
legitimate user. We're not talking aboutgetting high, not to talk about using
as the drug user that you thinkout on the street. We're talking about
someone who was under the care ofa doctor. You can't get the stuff,
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so you buy it on the street, and sometimes you buy it it
looks just like the opius and you'retold this is real stuff and it turns
out to be fentanyl and you die. Okay, So there's a problem.
So back to the question as towho is going to be liable, and
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that is the individual that sold thatdrug, or made that drug, or
transported that drug by the way withoutknowing, because it can be argued I
had no idea that there was fentanylin this drug, So how can I
be convicted? Isn't that an intentcrime? In other words, I have
to know what I am selling thatit is dangerous. And I told you
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there's a two word answer across theboard on this one, and I'd like
to share it with you. Andthe answer is very simply, too bad,
tough cookies. You're sol that's threeright, that's three words. Actually
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that's four words. And here ismy point. It doesn't matter if you
make it, you're going to getnailed. Forget about first warnings too.
I don't get that if you transportit, because you know you're transporting illegal
drugs, too bad, you're goingto get nailed. If you distribute it,
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too bad, you're going to getnailed. If you are involved in
any part of this and someone dies, you're going to prison for a very
long time because no one is involvedin that and not knowing that these drugs
are elicit and it's too bad.If someone dies and you are transporting fentyl
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gee, I didn't know it wasfentanyl in there. Too bad. You're
the one. You're the bad guy. You're the one that took the chance.
I don't care if you're selling marijuanaillegally and there it's laced with fentanyl.
I don't know how you do that. But assuming that it is too
bad, you're going to get nailed. And so when we talk about unintended
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consequences here, it really doesn't matter. Intended nonintended, you just get nailed
for it. And there is aconcept in civil court, okay, when
you're suing four damages intended nonintended,if, for example, you hurt someone
who has and it's the eggshell skullconcept where if you hurt someone who happens
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to have an eggshell skull as opposedto someone know has a thick skull and
someone eyes too bad. Those arethe damages. Unintended consequences mean nothing.
Just don't do it. If youare involved in any way in providing anything
that could contain fentanyl in it,someone dies, you know they're going to
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prison for a long time. Ihave no idea why they don't do that.
But keep in mind that we're talkingabout a bunch of Democrats and the
Senate Public Safety Committee and Democrats whoare voting this in So why is it
Democrats? Because Republicans have nothing todo with our state legislature. Republicans are
irrelevant in California. In the statelegislature, it is a supermajority in California,
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So the Democrats can do whatever thehell they want. Story I want
to share with you. You knowwhat's happening this week, or you don't,
but I want to share it withyou. India is overtaking China to
become the world's most populous country,and they're all kinds of avenues to take
on this one. And that hasto do with China policy, the one
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child policy that I'll talk about ina minute, and that is the poverty
level of India. How many kidsare being born? And so let's start
with this is the first time sincenineteen fifty that China has dropped to second
place in global population ranks. Nineteenfifty is a year after the Chinese Revolution
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where Mount Saying Toung took control ofChina. We don't have a whole lot
of figures there, but according tothe UN projections, India now has a
population. I love how specific theyget one billion, four hundred and twenty
five million, seven hundred and seventyfive thousand, eight hundred and fifty point
three people. The point three personis I think a dwarf, very very
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small. Yeah, what hand?Okay with that? The question is why
why is India overtaking China as themost populous country in the world. Well,
other than the obvious. Do theyspend more time together in bed?
Do they find their loved ones moreattractive? I have no idea, but
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here's what's happening. China. Thepopulation was declining. Even that as it
was growing to be the world's mostpopulous nation, it was declining. Its
growth was going down because of thelaws to bring down the booming birthrate,
and there was the introduction of theone child policy in the nineteen eighties.
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I don't know if you remember that, but the one child policy, when
China try to slow down its growth, said you get one kid, that's
it. And by the way,if you get two kids, we're gonna
find you. I mean it wasliterally there and not only endorsed but encouraged
abortion. If you have three kids, you're gonna die. No, that's
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not true. I'm for some reasontoday I'm really big into if you do
this, you're gonna die. Nottrue. In any case, they made
it pretty difficult they have kids.On top of that, the Chinese are
really interested in boys. When wetalk about the value of people, let
me come right out and say it. Chinese culture, boys are more valuable
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than girls. How is that fora non woke philosophy? Santis loves this
one right, because that's about asanti woke as you can get. Boys
are more valuable, which means sincewe have a pretty good idea of boy
versus girl, and say, takingan amnio and you know specifically what the
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sex is, just abart if it'sa girl, and that's what they did
today, it is a god awfulmess. In China. There are far
more boys males than there are females, and there is a scramble. If
you're a Chinese woman, you're ingreat shape. You go to a bar
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and you're inundated with guys. I'venever been to a Chinese bar, so
I'm just making that assumption all ofa sudden, I want to go to
one. I know, Yeah,there you are. And what pickup line
do you use that differentiates you fromanybody else? Don't know the answer.
So there were forced abortions in China, there were sterilizations, there were fines
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for having kids. Well, thathas changed. That has changed. But
the problem is since kids were notbeing born, the population is aging like
crazy, and so China has allthese problems. India, by the way,
has its own problems. India hastoo many people and India's population is
exploding. In India is poor,I mean far poorer than China is now.
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I have often talked about how degreesare not what they used to be,
and I make a joke about thoseof us here a matter of fact,
ninety percent of the people around thestation went to the same same school
CSU, which I jokingly called CaliforniaState useless because degrees just aren't what they
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used to be. They're really adime a dozen because we have a philosophy
or everybody goes to college. Okay, a few degrees are very worthwhile you
do very well with them, butin most a lot of cases they're just
not as valuable as they used tobe. All right, So that's our
position. Let's go to India.Man, they've taken it to a whole
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new level because you've got thousands,tens of fouls of young Indians finding themselves
graduating either with limited, no skillswhatsoever. The education industry industries one hundred
and seventeen billion bucks. That's alot of money. And kids are so
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desperate to get ahead. Some arepaying for two and three degrees in the
hopes of find the of landing ajob. So where do they go.
Well, colleges are all over thecountry, inside small apartment buildings, inside
shops, in marketplaces. I meanyou look at highways. Our highways are
littered with personal injury commercial personal injurylawyers on every billboard there. It's all
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about going to college, about thecolleges, and it really is a strange
paradox why, Well, because youhave some very top notch schools that have
turned out some really top notch peoplelike, for example, Alphabet's chief Sundar
Pichai, Microsoft cso is Satai Nadella. I mean, you know, we're
talking pretty high end people. Butthen you have the other end. These
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small private colleges don't have regular classes, have teachers with little training, curriculums
that are outdated or make no sense, no experience or job platement placements and
so around the world and we dotoo. Students are going, okay,
what is the return on a degreeversus the cost? And it used to
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be you always went for a degree. Now the cost is very high and
the degree not as valuable. Andthis is going on globally. Where this
conversation is taking place India man asit hit a level and the government regularly
highlights the benefits of having more youngpeople. Okay, fair enough. Half
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of the graduates in India are unemployable, can't get a job even with degrees
that really mean very little, andbusinesses are struggling to hire people because of
the mixed quality of education. Theywant educated people. Problem is that college
degrees you don't for the most partin India, it really isn't an education.
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Unemployment still at over seven percent,even though India is the world's fastest
growing major economy, and they justdon't have enough people. Now there are
cities and I'm going to throw somenames out here, bow Pill, bow
Pill, I guess pronounce it,two point six million people in central India.
There you see massive billboards private collegespromising young people degrees and the jobs
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are out there one of them.And this is a huge billboard that has
probably seen more than any regular classesand better playment placements, need we say
more. So what happens is peoplego to these things. It's hard to
resist because you've got people of thatare living pretty miserable lives. They're dreaming
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of a better life. Higher degreesused to be only accessible to the to
the wealthy people, and they degreeshave a very special cachet, although less
and less, and it is justgetting worse and worse in India because their
schools are schlocky. Now we've hadour issues. A matter of fact,
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most of the technical schools you knowthat you see advertised on TV daytime TV,
and that is learn to be adental assistant. Learn My favorite one
is learned to be a front andassistant in a medical office. And I
still don't know what that means.Do they teach you to pick up the
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phone and go hi, doctor Smith'soffice? Can I help you? What
more do you do? Front endassistant? I just don't get that.
And a lot of those schools,those tech schools went under, have been
sued by the government, and notnecessarily because you don't get an education there,
because of the fraudulent promise of goodjobs which don't exist, because well
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school job the people that have jobs, the owners of companies, management just
doesn't look at those degrees because somany people come out with a crap education.
Some are good, but it doesn'tmatter. It's a broad brush,
and a lot of them have beensued by the government. There are programs
out there that schools that have gonedefunct, and student loans. That's a
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lot of the fraud. You takeout these massive student loans. A school
sets you up with these student loans, you take them out, you pay
ridiculous interest rates, and the schooldoesn't give you the education and promises some
of them and they go bankrupt.So and but the money has been taken,
you still owe the money. Soin some cases, depending if it's
a federal loan, the loan isactually given by the government. So the
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problems that we have here are therein India squared and so are we going
to deal with it? Yeah?Yeah. In education, it isn't what
it used to be. Although rightnow if you look at the stats,
long term stats at this point stillshow than an education a college education,
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over the long run, you simplydo better. However, we're looking at
long term with current studies. Waitfive ten years from now when we talk
about the tech jobs that are availableand how much money people who are involved
in solar and new technology, howmuch money they're going to make. And
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I think that's going to I thinkthat's going to skew the numbers. I
really do. We have Todd Spitzerwith us. A quick word about Todd.
Todd is the District Attorney of OrangeCounty. He's been in Orange County
forever. He was a supervisor andin the state legislature for a bunch of
years, and then he ran andwon the DA's position. And let me
(22:07):
tell you the difference between Orange Countyand La County. For a moment,
I don't think there are any twocounties in the United States that are next
to each other that have the kindof differences between Todd and George Gascone.
It literally is the difference between applesand Ardvarks. It could not be more
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different. Todd, who is aprosecutor and he's a prosecutor's prosecutor, and
George Gascone our da is a defenseattorney. It's that simple. So it
is no surprise when Todd comes out. And in this case, I mean
Todd and I have had disagreements,but in this case, or these kinds
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of cases, Todd is sort ofthe poster child of dealing with well,
I guess, the political correctness,the pro defending philosophy we have Todd.
Good morning, Bill. You knowyou're the talk show host, talk show
host. I just want you toknow, thank you for the compliment.
Yeah, you already got the job, Todd. You don't have to say
that. Okay, all right,So tell me what's going on, because
(23:15):
this is you were at this eventfor crime victims and you sort of well,
I guess, I don't know,over the top, but your usual
Todd Spitzer that no one misses yourmessage. So let's talk about that.
Well, first of all, thisis Crime Victims Week in our entire nation,
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okay, And we celebrate every yearin Orange County crime Victims Week,
and we have an event we hostedI hosted at my office which is between
my office and the Sheriff's office,and we have a monument there that was
erected. It's a large, largeboulder. It's inscripted. And we had
two different kinds of victims this year. We had parents of fentinyl death,
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so we had Matt Capperudo who testifiedand hearing that you talked about the center
unbergs SB forty four and testified.These testified multiple times. So we had
the and Preliamandoza and other parents who'slost their children. And then, for
the first time, I felt itwas necessary to have two police officers,
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one a deputy sheriff and one abrey of police officer who were injured in
the line of duty and the waythey were treated and how the system screwed
them over and did not get justiceneeded to be pointed out. They are
crime victims as well. And Bill, to your earlier point, I thought
you did a phenomenal job analyzing thefeentinyl issue. The only thing I want
(24:45):
to add for those who heard youat your you know, seven o'clock you
know hour on fentinyl bill. Thebill failed, but it has nothing to
do with fentinel. And these policeofficers were given a gross miss carriage of
justice in our superior court here inOrange County. Because the defund the police
movement and the packing of liberal judgesby liberal governors is working. That's why
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cops are being ared bonuses to goto LAPD in Alameda County, Oakland,
because no one wants to work inthese crappy cities anymore. Bill police officers
are being prosecuted, They're not beingtreated with any dignity or respect, and
now the courts are getting packed withjudges who share the same sentiment. Unfortunately,
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as Governor Newsome and Senator Skinner andSenator Bradford and other people who were
on the Public Safety Committee. Youknow, when I was in the Assembly,
I was on the Public Safety Committee. They've been doing this for twenty
years. The reason they voted noon fentnel bill was not because they didn't
want to support any fentnel bill.It's because they will support no bills that
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could possibly increase any increase penalties onany crime. They believe in decarceration,
not putting people in prison. Everybodycan be rehabilitated. We should close prisons.
And the reason is we should allbe guilty because people grow up poor
without their fathers in the household,and they got poor educations. It's our
(26:18):
fault, it's society's fault, andno one has taken responsibility for anybody's misconduct
today. So that's that's in anutshell, my friend. Okay. So
and by the way, Todd,you're certainly not alone in saying what you
say. That position used to bekind of crazy. It was out there.
It was a fringe position. Man, what you're advocating and what you
(26:42):
are analyzing has become mainstream and it'sscarier than ever. All right, Todd,
thank you always, good stuff.All right, so much, all
right, take care of Todd.Spitzer And what he was talking about was
this bill dealing with enhancement for fentanyldealers that after a warning if a fentanyl
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dealer, if someone dies as aresult of the fentanyl that was provided by
a dealer, it's enhanced as tothe sentencing. And of course that failed,
that failed as Todd just said,as I've often said, the United
States, and you know, wealways talk about this. We're the greatest
country in the world, and Ialways talk about, well, let's break
(27:26):
that down, infant mortality, mortality, literacy rate, you know, sometimes
not so much. And one ofthe issues we have is the cost of
education. And there's something going on. I've seen this and that is it's
one of the things that I dida topic on how education college educations are
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becoming less and less important as technojobs are becoming more important. Well,
if you're going to get a collegeeducation here in the state of California,
I'll tell you where you should go. Well, first of all, Stanford
and Berkeley, that's sort of beengiven. But UCLA, and that's part
of the UC system, University ofCalifornia system, which is like at the
(28:08):
top of the heap. Do youknow that at one point, the University
of California system, and that's underClark care way back in the Pat Brown
administration, then the campuses of theUniversity of California were considered by far the
finest university system in the world.Not so much anymore. But anyways,
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let's move over, and I wantto tell you a story about a guy,
A young man, Jonathan Cornejo,a senior at West Adam's Prep School
in Central LA. His mom camefrom Hill Salvador, single mom at home.
He had no WiFi, he hadno working laptop, didn't have a
study space for in the family's apartment, and considering all of that, he
(28:56):
still had a four point zero GPA. He was student body president and the
yearbook editor in chief. You know, that's the kind of guy schools want.
Any received an admission offer from hisdream school, and that is you
see san Diego, top rated school. But guess where he's going. He's
not going to you see San Diego. He's going to junior college. It's
(29:21):
going to community college. And that'shappening more and more, rising college costs,
inflation, the pandemic fallout those dreamcampuses of which students can get into
out of reach. More than tenthousand of the state's lowest income students who
(29:41):
admitted to SUC systems are choosing togo to community colleges or California State University,
most of it due to financial shortfallsand the undergraduates at you see those
pell grants is for people that areparticularly poor those kids receive PELL grants.
That's dropped over the last decade.So in Jonathan's case, and he got
(30:03):
all the scholarships you can possibly get, he was still short four thousand dollars.
He works part time as a Starbucksbarista or barista. We can't get
sexual you know that's I think that'snot appropriate in terms of gender. His
mom has two jobs as a cooklow age, and he said, I
(30:26):
cried about it. You do allthese things, you try your best,
and you look at the money andyou can't afford to go and sc If
you're going to get an education,you want to go to the University of
California. If you're here in California. And the share of University of California
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students with incomes low enough to receivePILL grants drop thirty three percent in the
fall of twenty twenty two, comparedwith ten years before it was forty two
percent. So it dropped fifty percent. Why Well, because you got rising
incomes pushing more students out of theeligibility for PELL grants. So if you're
(31:07):
a buck and a half over thePELL grant minimum, guess what, You're
not going to get the PELL grant, and wages have gone up, and
the cost of living, for exampleof Los Angeles, you think that's gone
up. Well, here is somethingyou probably didn't know. So let's compare
La to Houston. The cost ofliving in Los Angeles is forty percent higher
(31:30):
than in Houston. The PELL grantprogram, a federal program, makes no
adjustments geographically. So the PELL grant, you're going to get the same amount
of money in Houston, where it'shalf the price of living. That is
a problem. And so you seedata University of California data shows far more
(31:55):
low income students are choosing community collegesthan those with higher family incomes. I
mean that is obvious. There waswhen my kids were in high school,
we hired a tutor for them,a math tutor, and it was this
a young lady, Sophia, whois just brilliant, absolutely brilliant, I
(32:16):
mean four point three gpa. Imean, she was just phenomenal at what
she did, sharp as attack,could get into any school whatsoever, was
accepted by almost every uc she appliedto. She went to community college,
that her two years at community college, and then went to the four year
(32:37):
school couldn't afford it. Now youstill end up with your degree at the
four year school. I mean itmakes sense, you're paying a lot less
money, that diploma doesn't show twoyears at a community college. But still
it's not the same education you get. So what students are doing and one
(33:00):
educator says, there are headwinds thatare driving down the number of low income
students at universities across the country,but California is worse because the key barrier
of college here in California, nosurprise, the cost of housing, which
is generally not covered by grants andscholarships. Tuition is but generally not living
(33:25):
expenses. Also, look at wherethe UC campuses are. They're in the
Some of the priciest areas you canget go to UCLA is in Brentwood.
You know what houses are in Brentwood. You know rentals are in Brentwood.
I don't think you can get ahouse in Brentwood for under three million dollars.
(33:46):
And commuting is really not an optionbecause first of all, UC campuses
are farther from home and junior collegesevery other street as a junior college,
and so you live at home.And so the counselors at LA Unified schools
have noted the trend of UC eligiblestudents is turning way down, very very
(34:08):
quickly. And what ends up happeningis the cost of tuition. Even with
all of these grants, usually there'sa shortfall, and over the years,
fewer students are even taking out loans. The number of loans have dropped.
(34:29):
Why because it's just too damn expensivewith the loans. So we're not even
going to bother Even if we canborrow the money to cover all of this,
we're not going to do it becausethe payback over the years. Look
at the Constitution. I remember whenI was in law school, the school
went nuts when it went from fortyfive dollars to sixty five dollars per unit.
(34:52):
Now, granted it wasn't the bestlaw school in the world, and
I'm not going to suggest you goto the law school I went to because
it's out of business, it's shutdown. But tuition was I think I
borrowed. I did a student loanthirty thousand dollars that I had to pay
back. Today you go to lawschool, it is fifty thousand dollars a
(35:13):
year tuition and that's at a stateschool. So you put all that together,
and we go back to my premiseis you know, there are just
some parts of living in this country, especially if you're poor, uh,
that are far far more difficult thanother parts of the world. Are the
(35:37):
last two segments of today's program withdoctor Jim Kenney, co director of the
er Mission Hospital and Mission va HOA good morning, Jim, and there
(35:59):
you are there, there are wayin the distance. Oh there you go.
No, we're better, We're good. No, we're good. All
right. I usually, um,you know, we occasionally have specific stories
to talk about, but today ismore general, except for one story that
came out that I want to talkabout because this one as I was reading,
(36:22):
and I go, really, becauseI know a lot of people in
this situation, and that is theissue of ADHD medications and the abuse and
schools. And now we're not talkingabout going out on the street or finding
drugs illicitly. This is medication thatshould be given, but this being totally
(36:46):
abuse in the schools. Let's gothrough that story. Sure, I mean,
the drugs that we prescribe as positionsfor you know, good uses are
diverted for misuse. And that's somethingthat we are aware that happens right,
when narcotics with things like valium withall stimulants as well. So ADHD treatment
(37:09):
uses a stimulant, adderall or vivantsor a bunch of other medications you can
use for ADHD, it has theopposite effect, right, And people with
that neuro divergent kind of brain,they tend to get calmer and more focused
when you give them a stimulant.The thing is, there's kids that are
(37:29):
realized that off I have to stayup late studying at night, they can
take adderall. You know. There'skids, high school kids across the country
right now hearing that going duff.You know, we've been doing this for
years, so it's something that they'rewell aware of and that they've been doing
for a while. This recent study, though, kind of sounds the alarm
that it's some schools up to twentyfive percent of kids are abusing the stimulants
(37:52):
and using them to study. Eithera small percentage of the ones that have
ADHD that are actually using it tostay up late and study, the bigger
percentage of people that don't even haveADHD and they're using it as a stimulant
to be able to perform better atschool. Now, if it's prescribed,
and they're just abusing the prescription.I mean, the parents have to know
about it, and the parents,I guess my folks would have been fine
(38:16):
if I stayed up all night andstudied and came home with the grades.
And I'm assuming that there are moreparents that do that than we know about.
The question is that you know there'skids using it to stay up late
to party with their friends. Youknow, Okay, it's a different thing.
I mean, if you're studying andyou have ADHD, the points should
(38:37):
be that you do need that medicationto focus. And so that's the thing
about ADHD is that it's not likewhen you prescribe an antibiotic and you tell
somebody you take this exactly every eighthours for ten days and don't miss a
dose and don't stop early. That'snot how this medicine works. I mean
on weekends you tell kids, Look, if you don't need to be focused
(38:58):
at school and you're out playing withyour friends, you don't need to take
this medicine. You know, thepoint of this is to be able to
sit still in school and learn ando and other social situations where you maybe
have trouble sitting still or focusing,so you know, that's when you use
it. And so it is kindof a use case use where if you
need it, you use it,and if you don't need it, you
(39:20):
don't use it. So it ishard for parents to say, you know,
okay, you've got thirty pills atthe beginning of the month, you
know, and now you have fifteenpills. You're you're using too much,
you're using too little. It canbe challenging and I'm just thinking of it.
When I was in school, itwas upburst that we took very difficult
to get doctors, particularly today,to prescribe myth amphetamine, isn't it.
(39:44):
Yeah, yeah, you don't doit too often, do you, Jim
right, and cocaine and all thoseother things. Yeah, Oh, I
understand. COVID variant and a newsymptom we haven't seen before. Yeah,
I mean I don't know about thisone. To tell you the truth,
We've seen people with red eyes withCOVID and they're saying that this new version
(40:06):
is causing a lot more of thered, itchy irritated eyes. So,
yeah, that is a symptom ofCOVID. And if that's the only symptom
you have, But you're not feelingwell, you might want to think about
getting tested at this time a year. Of course, that's a common symptom
we see because you know, abouta quarter of the population has seasonal allergies
and it's that time. So yeah, I don't I don't really know what
(40:29):
to make of this one, butmaybe people should just be aware that red
itchy eyes can be and like andreally allergy symptoms in general can kind of
be the same symptoms as COVID.How dangerous still is COVID because obviously the
number of debts across the country arein the hundreds of days, hundreds of
hundreds per day, and they're morefluid debts or more people in car accidents,
(40:52):
more people getting killed by guns.I think there's more people being hit
by lightning almost than the number ofCOVID debt. I don't know if all
those stats are right on, butI get your point is that, Yeah,
no, COVID started off as apretty deadly disease because it was completely
novel as far as you know,our body had never seen it before.
(41:15):
It had no no good immune responseto it immediately, and then when it
did have an immune response, itkind of overreacted. So the fact that
a lot of us are either nowvaccinated or have been infected with COVID and
survived it. Now the remaining population, even as we get these variants,
they're just variations of a previously existingdisease. So now we were able to
(41:38):
handle it much better than we werebefore. And people who aren't vaccinated,
I mean, still they have verylittle chance of getting some serious complications even
if they get COVID. Is thatfair or are they in the same risk
of death and sickness as was originally? No. I think people that aren't
(42:00):
vaccinated now are highly likely that they'vehad COVID, you know, even if
maybe that was minimally symptomatic or theynever got tested, or even if they
had a false positive test. Thereis a false positive rate. So I
think it's just extremely likely that peoplehave had COVID already and are going to
do well even if they haven't beenvaccinated. But overall, just the strain,
(42:23):
you know, the predominant strain doesn'tthe omicron doesn't seem to be as
deadly as the initial strains that wehad, So the anti vaxers have a
pretty good position now that Robert F. Kennedy, Juniors of this World or
screaming anti vax, anti vax a, I have more ammunition. Well,
I think anti vax has a couplelayers to it, right, There's there's
(42:45):
Hey, I just don't want toget a COVID vaccine, just like flu,
because I think I'd rather have thedisease itself than take the risk.
And you know, with certain disease, you know, flu for example,
a lot of people miss work fromit and all kinds of problems that they
don't think about. But very fewyoung, healthy people die from influenza.
So you know, if you wantto take that risk, and we have
(43:06):
more power to you here, that'sthat's your choice to make. But when
you say anti vactors, I thinkyou include a lot of people who really
believe that vaccines cause autism and thatvaccines are overall just a bad thing,
and that you know, I thinkthat they're kind of two different groups.
Yeah, yeah, And I'm thinkinghow about those people whose kids get polio
(43:28):
at some point and didn't want tovaccinate. Boy, that that worked out
for them, didn't. My daughterBarbara just she tested positive for COVID.
The house had COVID, And Imean a lot of us didn't. We
all tested negative, and she wastotally asymptomatic. It was someone who she
(43:49):
knew, and she got it,and of course we kept her in a
mask of forty five feet away fromany of us. She was speaking to
us on a bullhorn. But howoften is that happened? I mean,
where people are totally asymptomatic and thereis no indication whatsoever, right, because
you don't know the ones that youdon't know about. So there could be
(44:10):
lots of people walking around with nosymptoms that are actually you know, their
body is fighting off COVID infection successfullyand they just don't feel ill. Yeah,
well, I'm obviously I mean thatone's obvious. But I'm talking about
people who have been they have beenexposed and show and they take the test
and they show no symptoms. Isthat a huge number of people? No,
(44:35):
I don't think it's a huge number, you know, I think it's
it's a relatively small number. Butthere are people that are exposed and then
we still don't know, right,We still don't know the answers for a
lot of things. But the testhas a false positive rate as well,
So some people are going to testpositive after being exposed, but really don't
have any COVID at all. Theother people, you know, because it's
it's testing for the actual viral particles. They may have enhance old viral particles,
(45:00):
get it on the swab when theyswab your nose, but they don't
actually have an infection. So youknow, there's people think there's just this
this one hundred percent accurate way toknow all these things, and it just
there isn't all right, Jim,thank you, great news. I know
we U. I had a coupleof other segments to talk about. We'll
(45:21):
do it next week. Have agood hun Take care, Jim. I
came up with some of the stupidestquestions I ever have in my life with
Jim. I literally came off likea moron on those. I'm usually smart.
I'm usually I'm usually smart. I'musually smarter than that. So I
say, how about people who areasymptomatic? And he said, hey,
we don't know. If you don'thave it and you have no symptoms,
(45:44):
how are we going to know.The only thing he left off is you
moron. This is I hate havingsmart people on I really do. It
really shines a bright light on ourdumb asses. So true. All right,
So Shannon, if Tucker Carlson gotfired over using this word, we're
all screwed, aren't we. Wellhave you heard that one yet? Yeah?
(46:05):
Yeah, yeah, not that,not that you would ever use that
one. Why I would never usethat word. You don't. But there
are some words that are set aroundhere that are up there. You know.
In England that word is just oh, I know, constantly consider particularly
pejorative. Well, we had abunch of students in here from England here
a couple months ago. I usedit all the time. Yeah, they
(46:29):
were like eighteen and I was justnuts. All right, So real quickly,
what else is going on today withyou? Um, let's see,
we have we have Justin Finch comingon from Washington ABC News to tell us
about the debt ceiling. It reallyis important. It's not the sexiest topic,
but it will screw over a lotof people if they don't get their
act together. Also, what's goingon with all the drones in Orange County?
(46:51):
We now have answers and the LAPDpaid a ridiculous amount of money for
security for city Council for all thosecrooks down there at city Hall when they
were exposed as being racists. Wehad to foot the bill the taxpayers did
for their security. How ridiculous,of course we did all right. Coming
up, Gary and Shannon kf IAM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio
(47:14):
app. You've been listening to theBill Handles Show. Catch my show Monday
through Friday, six am to nineam, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to kf I AM sixforty. The bill handles show on demand
on the iHeartRadio app. Kf IAM six forty handle here and we are
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.Some of the stories we are covering this
morning, A southern California man getsfour years in prison for his role in
(00:21):
the Capitol riot. And I waswatching last night, or a couple of
nights ago, a segment replay ofSean Hannity in which he showed a group
of people quietly going through the Capitoland he said, quote, there was
no Capitol riot. It were Itwas peaceful. Wasn't even demonstrators it these
(00:46):
were peaceful was the word. I'mtrying to remember what he actually said.
Anyway, they were not protesters.No, they were there as sight seers.
They were peaceful sights sears. Yeah, peaceful tourists, I think is
the word he used. How couldthis guy get four years in jail for
(01:06):
being a tourist, A peaceful tourist. Man, if you appeal your honor,
I was a peaceful tourist. Hegave me four years. Maybe we
got confused. It was North Koreaor something. Oh yeah, yeah,
I just uh, I mean,here's the problem, by the way,
just really quickly before we get intothis topic. And uh, that is
(01:30):
and we've known that people who onlywatch Fox get that news, people that
only watch CNN or MSNBC only getthat news, and they don't watch the
other side. So that's that's theproblem. That is absolutely the problem.
And so you know we're getting that. All right, let's move on a
(01:51):
story about intended consequences. There wasa public Safety committee session the state Senate
and they were looking at SP fortyfour Alexandra's Law, which is a proposed
legislation named after this young woman whodied in her home after suffering a fentyl
(02:14):
overdose in twenty nineteen. And underthis proposed law, the convicted fentyl dealer
gets a warning from a judge.It's required by law, you have a
warning, which I find fascinating.Now, after the warning, if the
(02:36):
dealer continues to deal drugs and someonedies as a result, if there is
a connection, then the dealer issubject to a harsher penalty. All right,
on his face, that makes alittle bit of sense. It died
in committee. The Democrats killed it. I mean, come on, who
(02:59):
would ever think that anybody, well, if it's gonna be, anybody's gonna
be the Democrats, who would everthink that making a harsher penalty for fentanyl
dealers would fail? And it failed. And it has a lot to do
with unintended consequences, It has alot to do with connecting the dots,
(03:23):
and those are legitimate arguments that theycame up with. By the way,
I have no problem with those arguments. Usually I agree with the concept of
unintended consequences. You've heard me talkabout it over and over again. And
that's the hardest part of writing anylegislation, is the unintended consequences part.
I was involved, as I've saidmany times, in legislation involving surrogate parenting.
(03:46):
No surprise there, and we spendmore time talking about unintended consequences than
anything else by a factor of atleast five to one. So there's no
issue here. One of the senators, Senator Nancy Skinner, Democrat, because
this thing failed because of the Democrats, said the concern here is that there's
(04:08):
no real evidence that it would evenlimit overdose deaths. Well, rat the
Democrat state senator who authored the bill, disputed that saying there is evidence,
we have evidence, we have evidencethat this kind of law saves lives.
The problem is is that the SenatorTom Umberg who authored the bill, based
(04:33):
all of his assertion, assertions andevidence on existing policies regarding drunk driving,
not the sale of fentanyl. Sohere is the warning. If here's the
judge defendant, they rarely just saydefendant, They usually use the guy's name.
(04:55):
Mister defendant, you've just been convictedof drunk driving. If you do
it a again and someone has hurt, then the sentence will be enhanced and
you're going to go to prison fora very long time. So that's one
problem. And political experts looking atthis are saying, you know, these
legislators are in a bind because hereare the questions. You punish dealers for
(05:20):
selling fentyl a second time, andthat second time results in deaths. And
so one of the professors looking atthis from LMU said, you know,
it's really difficult to tie who touchedthe fenyl before the individual took it and
died. Is it the person whosold it, is it the person who
(05:43):
made it? Is the person towho transported it? And that's not clear
to me, now since the billwas struck down, it can't be voted
on again. And we're going totalk, by the way later on with
Todd Spitzer, Orange County, DAa little bit about this. And just
(06:04):
to give you a stat in twentytwenty one, fentinel killed over fifty seven
hundred people in California, a lotof whom thought they were taking prescription drugs,
prescription medication. These aren't drug usersor these are people to say,
oh, I'm taking prescription opiate becauseI'm in such pain, and so is
that legitimate to take the opiates?So well, yeah, and doctors don't
(06:27):
prescribe opiates anymore. I get callsa handle on the law. Last week
I got a call from a manand this was in the He was in
the VA. He'd been been prescribedopiates for years and years, had a
horrible back injury. They couldn't operateon it, and the doctor just cut
him off and said start using hypoprofAnd he wanted to sue. The doctor
wanted to the VA. I said, no, you can't do that.
(06:49):
So you can't get if you area prescription drug user, that is a
legitimate user. We're not talking aboutgetting high, not to talk about using
as the drug user that you thinkout on the street. We're talking about
someone who was under the care ofa doctor. You can't get the stuff,
(07:09):
so you buy it on the street, and sometimes you buy it it
looks just like the opius and you'retold this is real stuff and it turns
out to be fentanyl and you die. Okay, So there's a problem.
So back to the question as towho is going to be liable, and
(07:29):
that is the individual that sold thatdrug, or made that drug, or
transported that drug by the way withoutknowing, because it can be argued I
had no idea that there was fentanylin this drug, So how can I
be convicted? Isn't that an intentcrime? In other words, I have
to know what I am selling thatit is dangerous. And I told you
(07:54):
there's a two word answer across theboard on this one, and I'd like
to share it with you. Andthe answer is very simply, too bad,
tough cookies. You're sol that's threeright, that's three words. Actually
(08:15):
that's four words. And here ismy point. It doesn't matter if you
make it, you're going to getnailed. Forget about first warnings too.
I don't get that if you transportit, because you know you're transporting illegal
drugs, too bad, you're goingto get nailed. If you distribute it,
(08:39):
too bad, you're going to getnailed. If you are involved in
any part of this and someone dies, you're going to prison for a very
long time because no one is involvedin that and not knowing that these drugs
are elicit and it's too bad.If someone dies and you are transporting fentyl
(09:05):
gee, I didn't know it wasfentanyl in there. Too bad. You're
the one. You're the bad guy. You're the one that took the chance.
I don't care if you're selling marijuanaillegally and there it's laced with fentanyl.
I don't know how you do that. But assuming that it is too
bad, you're going to get nailed. And so when we talk about unintended
(09:30):
consequences here, it really doesn't matter. Intended nonintended, you just get nailed
for it. And there is aconcept in civil court, okay, when
you're suing four damages intended nonintended,if, for example, you hurt someone
who has and it's the eggshell skullconcept where if you hurt someone who happens
(09:56):
to have an eggshell skull as opposedto someone know has a thick skull and
someone eyes too bad. Those arethe damages. Unintended consequences mean nothing.
Just don't do it. If youare involved in any way in providing anything
that could contain fentanyl in it,someone dies, you know they're going to
(10:20):
prison for a long time. Ihave no idea why they don't do that.
But keep in mind that we're talkingabout a bunch of Democrats and the
Senate Public Safety Committee and Democrats whoare voting this in So why is it
Democrats? Because Republicans have nothing todo with our state legislature. Republicans are
irrelevant in California. In the statelegislature, it is a supermajority in California,
(10:46):
So the Democrats can do whatever thehell they want. Story I want
to share with you. You knowwhat's happening this week, or you don't,
but I want to share it withyou. India is overtaking China to
become the world's most populous country,and they're all kinds of avenues to take
on this one. And that hasto do with China policy, the one
(11:11):
child policy that I'll talk about ina minute, and that is the poverty
level of India. How many kidsare being born? And so let's start
with this is the first time sincenineteen fifty that China has dropped to second
place in global population ranks. Nineteenfifty is a year after the Chinese Revolution
(11:35):
where Mount Saying Toung took control ofChina. We don't have a whole lot
of figures there, but according tothe UN projections, India now has a
population. I love how specific theyget one billion, four hundred and twenty
five million, seven hundred and seventyfive thousand, eight hundred and fifty point
three people. The point three personis I think a dwarf, very very
(12:01):
small. Yeah, what hand?Okay with that? The question is why
why is India overtaking China as themost populous country in the world. Well,
other than the obvious. Do theyspend more time together in bed?
Do they find their loved ones moreattractive? I have no idea, but
(12:28):
here's what's happening. China. Thepopulation was declining. Even that as it
was growing to be the world's mostpopulous nation, it was declining. Its
growth was going down because of thelaws to bring down the booming birthrate,
and there was the introduction of theone child policy in the nineteen eighties.
(12:48):
I don't know if you remember that, but the one child policy, when
China try to slow down its growth, said you get one kid, that's
it. And by the way,if you get two kids, we're gonna
find you. I mean it wasliterally there and not only endorsed but encouraged
abortion. If you have three kids, you're gonna die. No, that's
(13:13):
not true. I'm for some reasontoday I'm really big into if you do
this, you're gonna die. Nottrue. In any case, they made
it pretty difficult they have kids.On top of that, the Chinese are
really interested in boys. When wetalk about the value of people, let
me come right out and say it. Chinese culture, boys are more valuable
(13:35):
than girls. How is that fora non woke philosophy? Santis loves this
one right, because that's about asanti woke as you can get. Boys
are more valuable, which means sincewe have a pretty good idea of boy
versus girl, and say, takingan amnio and you know specifically what the
(13:58):
sex is, just abart if it'sa girl, and that's what they did
today, it is a god awfulmess. In China. There are far
more boys males than there are females, and there is a scramble. If
you're a Chinese woman, you're ingreat shape. You go to a bar
(14:18):
and you're inundated with guys. I'venever been to a Chinese bar, so
I'm just making that assumption all ofa sudden, I want to go to
one. I know, Yeah,there you are. And what pickup line
do you use that differentiates you fromanybody else? Don't know the answer.
So there were forced abortions in China, there were sterilizations, there were fines
(14:39):
for having kids. Well, thathas changed. That has changed. But
the problem is since kids were notbeing born, the population is aging like
crazy, and so China has allthese problems. India, by the way,
has its own problems. India hastoo many people and India's population is
exploding. In India is poor,I mean far poorer than China is now.
(15:05):
I have often talked about how degreesare not what they used to be,
and I make a joke about thoseof us here a matter of fact,
ninety percent of the people around thestation went to the same same school
CSU, which I jokingly called CaliforniaState useless because degrees just aren't what they
(15:30):
used to be. They're really adime a dozen because we have a philosophy
or everybody goes to college. Okay, a few degrees are very worthwhile you
do very well with them, butin most a lot of cases they're just
not as valuable as they used tobe. All right, So that's our
position. Let's go to India.Man, they've taken it to a whole
(15:54):
new level because you've got thousands,tens of fouls of young Indians finding themselves
graduating either with limited, no skillswhatsoever. The education industry industries one hundred
and seventeen billion bucks. That's alot of money. And kids are so
(16:14):
desperate to get ahead. Some arepaying for two and three degrees in the
hopes of find the of landing ajob. So where do they go.
Well, colleges are all over thecountry, inside small apartment buildings, inside
shops, in marketplaces. I meanyou look at highways. Our highways are
littered with personal injury commercial personal injurylawyers on every billboard there. It's all
(16:40):
about going to college, about thecolleges, and it really is a strange
paradox why, Well, because youhave some very top notch schools that have
turned out some really top notch peoplelike, for example, Alphabet's chief Sundar
Pichai, Microsoft cso is Satai Nadella. I mean, you know, we're
talking pretty high end people. Butthen you have the other end. These
(17:04):
small private colleges don't have regular classes, have teachers with little training, curriculums
that are outdated or make no sense, no experience or job platement placements and
so around the world and we dotoo. Students are going, okay,
what is the return on a degreeversus the cost? And it used to
(17:26):
be you always went for a degree. Now the cost is very high and
the degree not as valuable. Andthis is going on globally. Where this
conversation is taking place India man asit hit a level and the government regularly
highlights the benefits of having more youngpeople. Okay, fair enough. Half
(17:51):
of the graduates in India are unemployable, can't get a job even with degrees
that really mean very little, andbusinesses are struggling to hire people because of
the mixed quality of education. Theywant educated people. Problem is that college
degrees you don't for the most partin India, it really isn't an education.
(18:14):
Unemployment still at over seven percent,even though India is the world's fastest
growing major economy, and they justdon't have enough people. Now there are
cities and I'm going to throw somenames out here, bow Pill, bow
Pill, I guess pronounce it,two point six million people in central India.
There you see massive billboards private collegespromising young people degrees and the jobs
(18:41):
are out there one of them.And this is a huge billboard that has
probably seen more than any regular classesand better playment placements, need we say
more. So what happens is peoplego to these things. It's hard to
resist because you've got people of thatare living pretty miserable lives. They're dreaming
(19:03):
of a better life. Higher degreesused to be only accessible to the to
the wealthy people, and they degreeshave a very special cachet, although less
and less, and it is justgetting worse and worse in India because their
schools are schlocky. Now we've hadour issues. A matter of fact,
(19:26):
most of the technical schools you knowthat you see advertised on TV daytime TV,
and that is learn to be adental assistant. Learn My favorite one
is learned to be a front andassistant in a medical office. And I
still don't know what that means.Do they teach you to pick up the
(19:49):
phone and go hi, doctor Smith'soffice? Can I help you? What
more do you do? Front endassistant? I just don't get that.
And a lot of those schools,those tech schools went under, have been
sued by the government, and notnecessarily because you don't get an education there,
because of the fraudulent promise of goodjobs which don't exist, because well
(20:15):
school job the people that have jobs, the owners of companies, management just
doesn't look at those degrees because somany people come out with a crap education.
Some are good, but it doesn'tmatter. It's a broad brush,
and a lot of them have beensued by the government. There are programs
out there that schools that have gonedefunct, and student loans. That's a
(20:37):
lot of the fraud. You takeout these massive student loans. A school
sets you up with these student loans, you take them out, you pay
ridiculous interest rates, and the schooldoesn't give you the education and promises some
of them and they go bankrupt.So and but the money has been taken,
you still owe the money. Soin some cases, depending if it's
a federal loan, the loan isactually given by the government. So the
(21:02):
problems that we have here are therein India squared and so are we going
to deal with it? Yeah?Yeah. In education, it isn't what
it used to be. Although rightnow if you look at the stats,
long term stats at this point stillshow than an education a college education,
(21:22):
over the long run, you simplydo better. However, we're looking at
long term with current studies. Waitfive ten years from now when we talk
about the tech jobs that are availableand how much money people who are involved
in solar and new technology, howmuch money they're going to make. And
(21:44):
I think that's going to I thinkthat's going to skew the numbers. I
really do. We have Todd Spitzerwith us. A quick word about Todd.
Todd is the District Attorney of OrangeCounty. He's been in Orange County
forever. He was a supervisor andin the state legislature for a bunch of
years, and then he ran andwon the DA's position. And let me
(22:07):
tell you the difference between Orange Countyand La County. For a moment,
I don't think there are any twocounties in the United States that are next
to each other that have the kindof differences between Todd and George Gascone.
It literally is the difference between applesand Ardvarks. It could not be more
(22:29):
different. Todd, who is aprosecutor and he's a prosecutor's prosecutor, and
George Gascone our da is a defenseattorney. It's that simple. So it
is no surprise when Todd comes out. And in this case, I mean
Todd and I have had disagreements,but in this case, or these kinds
(22:51):
of cases, Todd is sort ofthe poster child of dealing with well,
I guess, the political correctness,the pro defending philosophy we have Todd.
Good morning, Bill. You knowyou're the talk show host, talk show
host. I just want you toknow, thank you for the compliment.
Yeah, you already got the job, Todd. You don't have to say
that. Okay, all right,So tell me what's going on, because
(23:15):
this is you were at this eventfor crime victims and you sort of well,
I guess, I don't know,over the top, but your usual
Todd Spitzer that no one misses yourmessage. So let's talk about that.
Well, first of all, thisis Crime Victims Week in our entire nation,
(23:38):
okay, And we celebrate every yearin Orange County crime Victims Week,
and we have an event we hostedI hosted at my office which is between
my office and the Sheriff's office,and we have a monument there that was
erected. It's a large, largeboulder. It's inscripted. And we had
two different kinds of victims this year. We had parents of fentinyl death,
(24:03):
so we had Matt Capperudo who testifiedand hearing that you talked about the center
unbergs SB forty four and testified.These testified multiple times. So we had
the and Preliamandoza and other parents who'slost their children. And then, for
the first time, I felt itwas necessary to have two police officers,
(24:25):
one a deputy sheriff and one abrey of police officer who were injured in
the line of duty and the waythey were treated and how the system screwed
them over and did not get justiceneeded to be pointed out. They are
crime victims as well. And Bill, to your earlier point, I thought
you did a phenomenal job analyzing thefeentinyl issue. The only thing I want
(24:45):
to add for those who heard youat your you know, seven o'clock you
know hour on fentinyl bill. Thebill failed, but it has nothing to
do with fentinel. And these policeofficers were given a gross miss carriage of
justice in our superior court here inOrange County. Because the defund the police
movement and the packing of liberal judgesby liberal governors is working. That's why
(25:11):
cops are being ared bonuses to goto LAPD in Alameda County, Oakland,
because no one wants to work inthese crappy cities anymore. Bill police officers
are being prosecuted, They're not beingtreated with any dignity or respect, and
now the courts are getting packed withjudges who share the same sentiment. Unfortunately,
(25:34):
as Governor Newsome and Senator Skinner andSenator Bradford and other people who were
on the Public Safety Committee. Youknow, when I was in the Assembly,
I was on the Public Safety Committee. They've been doing this for twenty
years. The reason they voted noon fentnel bill was not because they didn't
want to support any fentnel bill.It's because they will support no bills that
(25:56):
could possibly increase any increase penalties onany crime. They believe in decarceration,
not putting people in prison. Everybodycan be rehabilitated. We should close prisons.
And the reason is we should allbe guilty because people grow up poor
without their fathers in the household,and they got poor educations. It's our
(26:18):
fault, it's society's fault, andno one has taken responsibility for anybody's misconduct
today. So that's that's in anutshell, my friend. Okay. So
and by the way, Todd,you're certainly not alone in saying what you
say. That position used to bekind of crazy. It was out there.
It was a fringe position. Man, what you're advocating and what you
(26:42):
are analyzing has become mainstream and it'sscarier than ever. All right, Todd,
thank you always, good stuff.All right, so much, all
right, take care of Todd.Spitzer And what he was talking about was
this bill dealing with enhancement for fentanyldealers that after a warning if a fentanyl
(27:03):
dealer, if someone dies as aresult of the fentanyl that was provided by
a dealer, it's enhanced as tothe sentencing. And of course that failed,
that failed as Todd just said,as I've often said, the United
States, and you know, wealways talk about this. We're the greatest
country in the world, and Ialways talk about, well, let's break
(27:26):
that down, infant mortality, mortality, literacy rate, you know, sometimes
not so much. And one ofthe issues we have is the cost of
education. And there's something going on. I've seen this and that is it's
one of the things that I dida topic on how education college educations are
(27:48):
becoming less and less important as technojobs are becoming more important. Well,
if you're going to get a collegeeducation here in the state of California,
I'll tell you where you should go. Well, first of all, Stanford
and Berkeley, that's sort of beengiven. But UCLA, and that's part
of the UC system, University ofCalifornia system, which is like at the
(28:08):
top of the heap. Do youknow that at one point, the University
of California system, and that's underClark care way back in the Pat Brown
administration, then the campuses of theUniversity of California were considered by far the
finest university system in the world.Not so much anymore. But anyways,
(28:30):
let's move over, and I wantto tell you a story about a guy,
A young man, Jonathan Cornejo,a senior at West Adam's Prep School
in Central LA. His mom camefrom Hill Salvador, single mom at home.
He had no WiFi, he hadno working laptop, didn't have a
study space for in the family's apartment, and considering all of that, he
(28:56):
still had a four point zero GPA. He was student body president and the
yearbook editor in chief. You know, that's the kind of guy schools want.
Any received an admission offer from hisdream school, and that is you
see san Diego, top rated school. But guess where he's going. He's
not going to you see San Diego. He's going to junior college. It's
(29:21):
going to community college. And that'shappening more and more, rising college costs,
inflation, the pandemic fallout those dreamcampuses of which students can get into
out of reach. More than tenthousand of the state's lowest income students who
(29:41):
admitted to SUC systems are choosing togo to community colleges or California State University,
most of it due to financial shortfallsand the undergraduates at you see those
pell grants is for people that areparticularly poor those kids receive PELL grants.
That's dropped over the last decade.So in Jonathan's case, and he got
(30:03):
all the scholarships you can possibly get, he was still short four thousand dollars.
He works part time as a Starbucksbarista or barista. We can't get
sexual you know that's I think that'snot appropriate in terms of gender. His
mom has two jobs as a cooklow age, and he said, I
(30:26):
cried about it. You do allthese things, you try your best,
and you look at the money andyou can't afford to go and sc If
you're going to get an education,you want to go to the University of
California. If you're here in California. And the share of University of California
(30:47):
students with incomes low enough to receivePILL grants drop thirty three percent in the
fall of twenty twenty two, comparedwith ten years before it was forty two
percent. So it dropped fifty percent. Why Well, because you got rising
incomes pushing more students out of theeligibility for PELL grants. So if you're
(31:07):
a buck and a half over thePELL grant minimum, guess what, You're
not going to get the PELL grant, and wages have gone up, and
the cost of living, for exampleof Los Angeles, you think that's gone
up. Well, here is somethingyou probably didn't know. So let's compare
La to Houston. The cost ofliving in Los Angeles is forty percent higher
(31:30):
than in Houston. The PELL grantprogram, a federal program, makes no
adjustments geographically. So the PELL grant, you're going to get the same amount
of money in Houston, where it'shalf the price of living. That is
a problem. And so you seedata University of California data shows far more
(31:55):
low income students are choosing community collegesthan those with higher family incomes. I
mean that is obvious. There waswhen my kids were in high school,
we hired a tutor for them,a math tutor, and it was this
a young lady, Sophia, whois just brilliant, absolutely brilliant, I
(32:16):
mean four point three gpa. Imean, she was just phenomenal at what
she did, sharp as attack,could get into any school whatsoever, was
accepted by almost every uc she appliedto. She went to community college,
that her two years at community college, and then went to the four year
(32:37):
school couldn't afford it. Now youstill end up with your degree at the
four year school. I mean itmakes sense, you're paying a lot less
money, that diploma doesn't show twoyears at a community college. But still
it's not the same education you get. So what students are doing and one
(33:00):
educator says, there are headwinds thatare driving down the number of low income
students at universities across the country,but California is worse because the key barrier
of college here in California, nosurprise, the cost of housing, which
is generally not covered by grants andscholarships. Tuition is but generally not living
(33:25):
expenses. Also, look at wherethe UC campuses are. They're in the
Some of the priciest areas you canget go to UCLA is in Brentwood.
You know what houses are in Brentwood. You know rentals are in Brentwood.
I don't think you can get ahouse in Brentwood for under three million dollars.
(33:46):
And commuting is really not an optionbecause first of all, UC campuses
are farther from home and junior collegesevery other street as a junior college,
and so you live at home.And so the counselors at LA Unified schools
have noted the trend of UC eligiblestudents is turning way down, very very
(34:08):
quickly. And what ends up happeningis the cost of tuition. Even with
all of these grants, usually there'sa shortfall, and over the years,
fewer students are even taking out loans. The number of loans have dropped.
(34:29):
Why because it's just too damn expensivewith the loans. So we're not even
going to bother Even if we canborrow the money to cover all of this,
we're not going to do it becausethe payback over the years. Look
at the Constitution. I remember whenI was in law school, the school
went nuts when it went from fortyfive dollars to sixty five dollars per unit.
(34:52):
Now, granted it wasn't the bestlaw school in the world, and
I'm not going to suggest you goto the law school I went to because
it's out of business, it's shutdown. But tuition was I think I
borrowed. I did a student loanthirty thousand dollars that I had to pay
back. Today you go to lawschool, it is fifty thousand dollars a
(35:13):
year tuition and that's at a stateschool. So you put all that together,
and we go back to my premiseis you know, there are just
some parts of living in this country, especially if you're poor, uh,
that are far far more difficult thanother parts of the world. Are the
(35:37):
last two segments of today's program withdoctor Jim Kenney, co director of the
er Mission Hospital and Mission va HOA good morning, Jim, and there
(35:59):
you are there, there are wayin the distance. Oh there you go.
No, we're better, We're good. No, we're good. All
right. I usually, um,you know, we occasionally have specific stories
to talk about, but today ismore general, except for one story that
came out that I want to talkabout because this one as I was reading,
(36:22):
and I go, really, becauseI know a lot of people in
this situation, and that is theissue of ADHD medications and the abuse and
schools. And now we're not talkingabout going out on the street or finding
drugs illicitly. This is medication thatshould be given, but this being totally
(36:46):
abuse in the schools. Let's gothrough that story. Sure, I mean,
the drugs that we prescribe as positionsfor you know, good uses are
diverted for misuse. And that's somethingthat we are aware that happens right,
when narcotics with things like valium withall stimulants as well. So ADHD treatment
(37:09):
uses a stimulant, adderall or vivantsor a bunch of other medications you can
use for ADHD, it has theopposite effect, right, And people with
that neuro divergent kind of brain,they tend to get calmer and more focused
when you give them a stimulant.The thing is, there's kids that are
(37:29):
realized that off I have to stayup late studying at night, they can
take adderall. You know. There'skids, high school kids across the country
right now hearing that going duff.You know, we've been doing this for
years, so it's something that they'rewell aware of and that they've been doing
for a while. This recent study, though, kind of sounds the alarm
that it's some schools up to twentyfive percent of kids are abusing the stimulants
(37:52):
and using them to study. Eithera small percentage of the ones that have
ADHD that are actually using it tostay up late and study, the bigger
percentage of people that don't even haveADHD and they're using it as a stimulant
to be able to perform better atschool. Now, if it's prescribed,
and they're just abusing the prescription.I mean, the parents have to know
about it, and the parents,I guess my folks would have been fine
(38:16):
if I stayed up all night andstudied and came home with the grades.
And I'm assuming that there are moreparents that do that than we know about.
The question is that you know there'skids using it to stay up late
to party with their friends. Youknow, Okay, it's a different thing.
I mean, if you're studying andyou have ADHD, the points should
(38:37):
be that you do need that medicationto focus. And so that's the thing
about ADHD is that it's not likewhen you prescribe an antibiotic and you tell
somebody you take this exactly every eighthours for ten days and don't miss a
dose and don't stop early. That'snot how this medicine works. I mean
on weekends you tell kids, Look, if you don't need to be focused
(38:58):
at school and you're out playing withyour friends, you don't need to take
this medicine. You know, thepoint of this is to be able to
sit still in school and learn ando and other social situations where you maybe
have trouble sitting still or focusing,so you know, that's when you use
it. And so it is kindof a use case use where if you
need it, you use it,and if you don't need it, you
(39:20):
don't use it. So it ishard for parents to say, you know,
okay, you've got thirty pills atthe beginning of the month, you
know, and now you have fifteenpills. You're you're using too much,
you're using too little. It canbe challenging and I'm just thinking of it.
When I was in school, itwas upburst that we took very difficult
to get doctors, particularly today,to prescribe myth amphetamine, isn't it.
(39:44):
Yeah, yeah, you don't doit too often, do you, Jim
right, and cocaine and all thoseother things. Yeah, Oh, I
understand. COVID variant and a newsymptom we haven't seen before. Yeah,
I mean I don't know about thisone. To tell you the truth,
We've seen people with red eyes withCOVID and they're saying that this new version
(40:06):
is causing a lot more of thered, itchy irritated eyes. So,
yeah, that is a symptom ofCOVID. And if that's the only symptom
you have, But you're not feelingwell, you might want to think about
getting tested at this time a year. Of course, that's a common symptom
we see because you know, abouta quarter of the population has seasonal allergies
and it's that time. So yeah, I don't I don't really know what
(40:29):
to make of this one, butmaybe people should just be aware that red
itchy eyes can be and like andreally allergy symptoms in general can kind of
be the same symptoms as COVID.How dangerous still is COVID because obviously the
number of debts across the country arein the hundreds of days, hundreds of
hundreds per day, and they're morefluid debts or more people in car accidents,
(40:52):
more people getting killed by guns.I think there's more people being hit
by lightning almost than the number ofCOVID debt. I don't know if all
those stats are right on, butI get your point is that, Yeah,
no, COVID started off as apretty deadly disease because it was completely
novel as far as you know,our body had never seen it before.
(41:15):
It had no no good immune responseto it immediately, and then when it
did have an immune response, itkind of overreacted. So the fact that
a lot of us are either nowvaccinated or have been infected with COVID and
survived it. Now the remaining population, even as we get these variants,
they're just variations of a previously existingdisease. So now we were able to
(41:38):
handle it much better than we werebefore. And people who aren't vaccinated,
I mean, still they have verylittle chance of getting some serious complications even
if they get COVID. Is thatfair or are they in the same risk
of death and sickness as was originally? No. I think people that aren't
(42:00):
vaccinated now are highly likely that they'vehad COVID, you know, even if
maybe that was minimally symptomatic or theynever got tested, or even if they
had a false positive test. Thereis a false positive rate. So I
think it's just extremely likely that peoplehave had COVID already and are going to
do well even if they haven't beenvaccinated. But overall, just the strain,
(42:23):
you know, the predominant strain doesn'tthe omicron doesn't seem to be as
deadly as the initial strains that wehad, So the anti vaxers have a
pretty good position now that Robert F. Kennedy, Juniors of this World or
screaming anti vax, anti vax a, I have more ammunition. Well,
I think anti vax has a couplelayers to it, right, There's there's
(42:45):
Hey, I just don't want toget a COVID vaccine, just like flu,
because I think I'd rather have thedisease itself than take the risk.
And you know, with certain disease, you know, flu for example,
a lot of people miss work fromit and all kinds of problems that they
don't think about. But very fewyoung, healthy people die from influenza.
So you know, if you wantto take that risk, and we have
(43:06):
more power to you here, that'sthat's your choice to make. But when
you say anti vactors, I thinkyou include a lot of people who really
believe that vaccines cause autism and thatvaccines are overall just a bad thing,
and that you know, I thinkthat they're kind of two different groups.
Yeah, yeah, And I'm thinkinghow about those people whose kids get polio
(43:28):
at some point and didn't want tovaccinate. Boy, that that worked out
for them, didn't. My daughterBarbara just she tested positive for COVID.
The house had COVID, And Imean a lot of us didn't. We
all tested negative, and she wastotally asymptomatic. It was someone who she
(43:49):
knew, and she got it,and of course we kept her in a
mask of forty five feet away fromany of us. She was speaking to
us on a bullhorn. But howoften is that happened? I mean,
where people are totally asymptomatic and thereis no indication whatsoever, right, because
you don't know the ones that youdon't know about. So there could be
(44:10):
lots of people walking around with nosymptoms that are actually you know, their
body is fighting off COVID infection successfullyand they just don't feel ill. Yeah,
well, I'm obviously I mean thatone's obvious. But I'm talking about
people who have been they have beenexposed and show and they take the test
and they show no symptoms. Isthat a huge number of people? No,
(44:35):
I don't think it's a huge number, you know, I think it's
it's a relatively small number. Butthere are people that are exposed and then
we still don't know, right,We still don't know the answers for a
lot of things. But the testhas a false positive rate as well,
So some people are going to testpositive after being exposed, but really don't
have any COVID at all. Theother people, you know, because it's
it's testing for the actual viral particles. They may have enhance old viral particles,
(45:00):
get it on the swab when theyswab your nose, but they don't
actually have an infection. So youknow, there's people think there's just this
this one hundred percent accurate way toknow all these things, and it just
there isn't all right, Jim,thank you, great news. I know
we U. I had a coupleof other segments to talk about. We'll
(45:21):
do it next week. Have agood hun Take care, Jim. I
came up with some of the stupidestquestions I ever have in my life with
Jim. I literally came off likea moron on those. I'm usually smart.
I'm usually I'm usually smart. I'musually smarter than that. So I
say, how about people who areasymptomatic? And he said, hey,
we don't know. If you don'thave it and you have no symptoms,
(45:44):
how are we going to know.The only thing he left off is you
moron. This is I hate havingsmart people on I really do. It
really shines a bright light on ourdumb asses. So true. All right,
So Shannon, if Tucker Carlson gotfired over using this word, we're
all screwed, aren't we. Wellhave you heard that one yet? Yeah?
(46:05):
Yeah, yeah, not that,not that you would ever use that
one. Why I would never usethat word. You don't. But there
are some words that are set aroundhere that are up there. You know.
In England that word is just oh, I know, constantly consider particularly
pejorative. Well, we had abunch of students in here from England here
a couple months ago. I usedit all the time. Yeah, they
(46:29):
were like eighteen and I was justnuts. All right, So real quickly,
what else is going on today withyou? Um, let's see,
we have we have Justin Finch comingon from Washington ABC News to tell us
about the debt ceiling. It reallyis important. It's not the sexiest topic,
but it will screw over a lotof people if they don't get their
act together. Also, what's goingon with all the drones in Orange County?
(46:51):
We now have answers and the LAPDpaid a ridiculous amount of money for
security for city Council for all thosecrooks down there at city Hall when they
were exposed as being racists. Wehad to foot the bill the taxpayers did
for their security. How ridiculous,of course we did all right. Coming
up, Gary and Shannon kf IAM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio
(47:14):
app. You've been listening to theBill Handles Show. Catch my show Monday
through Friday, six am to nineam, and anytime on demand on the
iHeartRadio app.
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