President Biden and House Speaker McCarthy are set to resume debt ceiling negotiations today as the June 1st debt ceiling deadline approaches. Governor Gavin Newsom has introduced a sweeping plan to speed up California infrastructure projects. And Wayne Resnick is back for 'Do They Have A Case?'
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Your listings camp I AM six fortythe bill handles show on demand on the
iHeartRadio f and a good morning.It's a Monday, May twenty two,
if you've just tuned in, andif you tuned in an hour ago.
Strangely enough, it's still Monday,May twenty two, and we got a
lot to cover today. Let megive you the top stories. Biden and
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McCarthy are meeting once again on thedebt ceiling. But that magic number,
that magic date, June first,is coming up very quickly, and no
doubt we'll be talking about that bigtime. SpaceX launches a private astronaut mission.
You two can go up on Spacesix and hit the International Space Station
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if you've got fifty sixty million dollarsto blow on one trip. We don't
know the exact figure, but goingback, I don't know how many years
when Dennis Tito was the first firstperson civilian who went up and he paid
money to go on the s S. I think he spent twenty million dollars
data on Soya's That is a bargainobviously at this point. Now I'll tell
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you what's going on. Remember I'vebeen talking about the care courts The care
Courts are these special courts that arebeing set up for the state by the
State of California to to deal withthe mentally ill well. October first is
the first rollout and there are sevencounties that are starting on October first,
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including Orange County in La County,and these are the these are the pilot
programs. So October one is therollout, and the law orders each county
to create special courts, the carecourt And that is all about the courts
having the authority to order treatment plansfor individuals with I'm gonna quote here untreated
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schizophrenia and related orders. Now,the plans are not compulsitory. But wait
a minute. How does a judgehave the authority to order treatment plans where
the individuals who are to be treateddon't have to go. It's not compulsory.
It's like you being in front ofa judge having committed some kind of
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crime. The judge orders a yearin prison, but you say no,
thank you, I'd rather not,and you walk out the door. That
seems to be the case here.The Care Act was signed by Governor Gasson
Gavin Newsom last September, and here'swhat it's about. And I'll tell you
more into it in a second.But it requires counties to come up with
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a bureaucratic mechanism that supports the goalof dealing with this whole epidemic of severe
mental illness so effectively. It isa new bureaucracy that is being created.
And I'll tell you how it works. Oh God, this is not complicated
at all. For every individual thatappears before the court, they are going
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to be clerks who process the petitionthat started the proceedings, and then outreach
teams who found the individual who ismentally ill and serve the paperwork. Because
it's a court, it's a courtorder, you got to show up.
Then you got the psychiatrists who prepareda treatment plan. You've got defense attorneys
who represents the person that is beingordered maybe to go into a go into
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quick care court, and then followwith the judge mandates, which usually go
into facility of some kind. Thenyou have the behavioral health clinicians who present
the plan their individual plans, andthen you have the judges who make the
decision. And let's not forget theinsurance companies to pay for all of this.
Assuming there is insurance, which manyindividuals have and so how does all
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of this work and how do theydo this? And how many people are
involved? State says seven to twelvethousand people are going to qualify for a
treatment plan. And who can tellwho can start the proceedings? Well,
obviously any police officer, any mentalhealth worker, but a family member,
a roommate, and so what isthe issue here? Well, how about
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this? Counties are concerned they're goingto be overwhelmed. And of course this
is paid for by the state.The startup was fifty seven million dollars.
It's going to go into the hundredsof millions of dollars and by the time,
at least tens of millions of dollarsby the time this is finished.
And the part I like about itis none of it is mandatory. You
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know it used to be mandatory.Do you know that during the prior to
the Reagan administration I'm talking about Governor, the courts used to mandate people going
into a metal a mental facility.Anybody who goes to UC Channel Islands for
example, that was the largest mentalfacility in the state, which judge can
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say, go there, and youhad no choice. And what stopped all
that? Two two avenues came tostop that. One Governor Reagan, who
said this is just way too muchmoney. And number two the ACLU that
came out and basically got a court. Had the court decide that you have
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every right to be crazy and roamthe streets as long as you were not
a danger to yourself or others.Now, the President, as you know,
has been in Japan and was aHiroshima for the G seven and he
left warely. He was supposed tomeet with Actually you're supposed to go to
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Australia. Used to go to Papuain New Guinea to look at the Museum
of Shrunken Heads because that's where theyare. And he cut it all short
because he had to go back anddeal with the debt ceiling and meet with
Kevin McCarthy. And this is scarystuff for a couple of reasons. First
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of all, there's a June firstdeadline in which the United States runs out
of money to pay its bills.And I'm talking about existing bills, not
future programs, bills that have alreadybeen incurred. You know that desk that
was bought at the General well thePentagon, for example, that has to
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be paid for and we have toincrease the debt limit. Congress has to
increase the debt limit, which meansit has to allow itself to borrow more
money. That's the way the lawworks. It can't just print money.
It has to give itself the powerto print money. Right. There has
never been any point in history inwhich Congress has not voted the increase of
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the debt ceiling. Never. Andthe fear is if that happens then and
we go into technical default, eventhough everybody knows we have the ability and
we will at some point do it, it's a technical default. And the
fear if you listen to Janie Yelling, for example, our Treasury secretary,
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former head of the Fed, soshe has a lot of credentials, the
fear is that the economy is goingto go into a tailspin and the world
financial markets are going to look atthis and going to just reel why,
because the United States is, infact the basis of the entire world economy.
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We are the juggernaut. Everything isbased on the dollar. You buy
oil, it's the dollar. Youbuy gold, it's the dollar. How
much is goldworth x number of dollarsyou buy a barrel of oil, it's
X number of dollars. It's allbased on the dollar. Just a quick
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sideline. Ecuador by example, it'sofficial currency is the dollar. Doesn't print
them, but it just uses thedollar. That's how powerful the dollar is.
So the fear is that we aregoing to go into a technical default
and the entire economic system is goingto take just a big hit, now,
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just a quick one on June first. There are ways around that temporarily,
except there will be constitutional attacks andthe courts will have it and it
can get a little bit dicey.So you have Kevin McCarthy, who is
the Speaker of the House, issaying I'm not going to let it's the
House that has to increase that aswell as the Senate. And well,
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the senate's easy because you've got aDemocratic Senate. And Kevin McCarthy is saying,
uh, you don't give us ourtax cuts, you don't give us
the cut and expenditures, saying thisto Biden, We're not going to let
you have the debt ceiling. It'snever happened before. It's always been a
clean bill, meaning it's outside ofany politics. Is we have to have
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the money, we have to payour debts. Let's vote the ability to
borrow the money to pay our debtscleanly. No discussion, no politics,
a little bit of politics where Republicansdecided they were going to hold off on
deficit spending, which is very different. It was the budget of the United
States that was at risk when theRepublicans had dealt with it twice and got
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nailed for it. So the presidentis back and he is having talks with
Kevin McCarthy, and Kevin McCarthy wantsto cut expenditure. The president wants to
clean bill. And now they're negotiating. And here is the problem the way
I see it. Number one,the fact that we're even close to not
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increasing the debt ceiling is scarier thanhell. Interestingly enough, this Republican Congress
during the Trump administration administration passed thedoubts debt ceiling vote four times in a
row, no issue. It waseasy. And Trump went a trillion dollars
or more into deficits spending, sohe just had to increase it. Republicans
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said, fine, no problem.So that is one problem, just the
politics of it, and the otherproblem is or just the financial part of
it. And it'll be the firsttime we go into detail, connect that
with the politics and what are thepolitics. You have a party that's in
power Congress. You have a presidentthat's on the other side of the aisle,
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Joe Biden Democrat, and it's thepresident that produces the budget, which
then Congress passes. And McCarthy issaying, we're not going to pass it
unless you do what we want interms of the budget. It You're going
to curtail the budget. You're goingto spin the budget around the way we
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want it, or at least negotiatethe way we want it, to cut
expenditures for the first time in history, which means that if let's spin it
around that there becomes a Republican presidentand a Democratic Congress. Same thing happens,
mister President, we're not going toaccept your budget. Well, we're
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going to vote no on it,which has happened a few times. You
can do that, but we're notgoing to InCrest increase the debt ceiling.
So we're going to bring this countryto the brink or go into default and
go over the edge. And whatends up happening, no one knows,
but I got to tell you thatis a huge problem. We talk about
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how polarized our country is. Imean, can you imagine that we are
polarized to the point where the veryexistence of our economic system is at least
at risk to some extent, evena little bit. Let's say it's one
percent, let's say it's five percent. I'm scared to death of this.
I truly am. I don't knowif you watch sixty minutes what two three
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weeks ago, and there was astory about lithium mining in the Sultan Sea.
Now the Sultan Sea, and Ithink it's east of us, and
I don't know how far, acouple hundred miles. Maybe this is the
Dead Sea. It's just the evaporationof the water has caused all these chemicals
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and turns out that there is probablyone of the biggest deposits of lithium in
the United States, if not theworld, sitting there. And what's lithium
about. It's a byproduct. Imean, it wasn't sort of got in
the way, you know, itjust wasn't very important stuff until bad he
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started being manufactured. All right,big deal. How much lithium is in
a D battery? But batteries havebecome huge news, mainly because of electric
vehicles, because if you know howelectric vehicles work, the entire bottom of
the EV is a battery and it'shuge. So what ended up happening,
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Well, the car manufacturers were caughtflat footed on this. They thought GM,
for example, had a team fortypeople just sourcing materials and they said,
you know, plenty of lithium,which was necessary, plenty of nickel,
which is necessary, and there's plentyout there on the open market.
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And then they find out there isn'tmuch on the open market. A matter
of fact, you've got two countriesthat really control the world lithium market,
and that's Australia and China. Australiaan ally of ours, is not a
problem. China, they could turnoff the spigot tomorrow afternoon and all of
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a sudden, these evs come toa screeching halt. And so what are
these car manufacturers doing. Well,they're getting into the mining business. And
one of the things about car manufacturers, they're not good at getting into the
mining business. Why they're two entirelydifferent businesses. You've got car manufacturers that
know exactly how many cars are goingto be manufactured per hour, what the
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equipment is on demand, components.I mean, it's all there, scientifically
right there. It's all there,timed perfect, They have inventory, they
know exactly what they're doing. Howabout mining companies always late very sloppy in
the sense they don't know how muchis down there. They don't know how
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much they can take out at anygiven time. There are areas of the
mind that have more minerals and otherminerals. It's just not the same.
And all of a sudden, thecar companies are into the mining business,
and they're not really comfortable with it, but they have no choice. New
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battery plants are popping all across theUS and Nevada you had Tesla making the
largest factory in I think in theworld, and companies reporting billions of dollars
into the vehicle factories themselves. Andone of the biggest bottlenecks is lithium.
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Matter of fact, it's lithium thatis going to curtail the manufacture of those
batteries. And without those batteries,there's no place else you can go.
And it was the deficit goes backabout a decade or so. China was
selling all of it, and allof a sudden you had the supply chain
problem, and all of a sudden, China was not. And then the
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market exploded as the evs came backor the ev started selling and the manufacturing
started going crazy. And you knowwhat China had done. They sort of
knew it was happening. But Chinanow being like any major corporate country,
they took all the profits they weremaking off a lithium and paying in the
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shareholders. And now everybody is scrambling. So you're gonna hear stories about lithium
coming up big time. And ifyou're a piece of advice you're going to
invest, I would do it inlithium. You want a good job,
get yourself a certificate of lithium mining. I have no idea how that works,
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by the way, none. Howdo you mind lithium? I think
you minded well clearly out of theground. But I think they're open air
mines. You know where they didthese massive trucks and dump trucks. In
any case, you're gonna hear lotsand lots about lithium now. As I
have said, one of my favoritetopics of all time is Dying. It's
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a great Netflix documentary, so Ithink it's on Netflix. Six Ways to
die, and it's about six differentpeople and how they died and how they
were buried, and one of thembecame compost that was kind of neat,
and one of them a little bitof went up in one of the spacecraft.
As you know, I didn't knowthis, but you can actually buy
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yourself a little tiny tube like avial of cocaine, a one grand vial.
And interesting I know that, andyou can shoot yourself up into the
stars or into orbit. Because itturns out that and I know that there's
a market for little bits and piecesof space, not space outside space,
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but space inside of the rocket itselfthat carries capsules or satellites, and so
they put stuff in there and peoplepay for it in its wild. In
any case, let's go to thestory at hand, and this has to
do with scattering ashes. It's becomevery very big stuff because it turns out,
if I can give you some andwe've talked about this before, it
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turns out that the cost of burialruns about eight thousand dollars, give or
take. And so that's a traditionalfuneral with a viewing and burial. And
I've always enjoyed viewings. First timeI ever went to a viewing. There's
the dead guy there. And asI'm approaching the dead guy, I hear
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people in front of me. Oh, he looks like he's just sleeping.
Ah, he looks great. Igo up there and look at him.
Now he looks dead. You cantell when someone looks dead they're not sleeping,
they're dead. In any case,Jews don't do that. Jews just
throwing in a casket and throwing inthe ground within twenty four hours. No
embalming. Casket is just made outof wood, nothing fancy, and so
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Jewish funerals are a lot cheaper.Now if you want to go to a
cremation with a burial, that isyou get the little urn or whatever,
the cardboard box or whatever, thelittle lunchbacks box with Batman on the front,
whatever you want to put the ashesin. That runs at about one
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thousand dollars cheaper. And that's it. Now. If you're going for direct
cremation, which means that they crematethe body and they hand the issue,
they hand the ashes to you inlike a ziplock bag, that runs about
sixteen hundred dollars. So more andmore people are doing the cremation, and
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what do people do. And I'vealways found this wild. Is they take
the ashes and put it on amantle and there there they are, Uncle
George, right, Granddad, Imean right across the mantle. Now that's
a little bit morbid in my opinion. And I like death, you know
that, but that's beyond me.So when someone dies in California, the
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legal next of ken is the rightto say where that body is going.
Even if you say I want tobe buried, the next of ken,
who normally would pay for the funeralpay expenses, can say, now we're
going to cremate. That's it.And my parents. I buried my parents,
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and it turns out if I hadreally thought about the amount of money
I would have saved by cremating them, they'd be on my mantle right now.
But they're not. So it's thefamily that needs to decide which way
to go. And then a questionof where do you put the ashes?
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Now you can spend thousands of dollarsand put them in those little boxes at
mortuaries cemeteries, and that costs youthousands of dollars. Or you can scatter
the ashes and you can do itany place. But here are the rules.
You have to have written permission fromthe owner or the governing body of
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the property. You want to doit at a park, you have to
have parks and recreations say go ahead. The remains are removed from their container
and not distinguishable to the public.You got to spread them so no one
knows what they are. You can't, for example, take ashes with an
arm sticking out of the bag.You can't do that. It all has
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to be cremated. I don't knowabout little bits and pieces of bone,
because if you look at ashes,and I've seen ashes a couple of times,
you see little bits of bone inthere. That may it's been a
long time, so that may be. That may be. Difference may be
different. And in La County thereare places, but you have to get
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a permit, but the bureaucracy isso incredibly difficult to get through. No
one follows. And by the way, if you end up scattering ashes,
no one bothers, No one bothers. The reality is you can scatter them
whatever you want. And you've heardthat missive that if you scatter them on
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the oceans it's illegal, but it'swell, it's sort of illegal, but
it's just you can't get permission fromanybody who owns the oceans, although now
you can't federal government. You'd haveto technically get permission. But you throw
them out there, and who whopays attention? So people do that all
the time, and I've always wonderedabout that. I mean, I can
see if you're a sea loving humanbeing and you're a scuba diver and you're
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a sailor, out goes the ashes. But you know how many people put
their ashes out there? You know, I don't know what if you're in
the north and you know people putsalt on their driveways for the snow.
That would work, wouldn't it?Okay, maybe a little bit morbid.
Yeah, But that's why I likethis topic. You can do so much
with it. The governor was ata solar and a solar injury project in
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the Central Valley. This happened overthe weekend and he unveiled this package of
legislation and signed an executive order.This was actually Friday when he did this
to make it easier to build transportation, clean energy, water infrastructure across the
state. And the proposal intends tocut through bureaucratic hurdles that have just halted
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the grand the big public works projects, and on top of that, to
make sure that California gets capitalizes onthe money from the Biden administration to boost
the climate friendly construction. So itis pretty important that this happens pretty quickly
because there are timelines that these federalprograms the money comes in, and if
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they're not spent, it's basically toolate. So this is California, and
the proposal aims to shorten the contractingprocess. We're talking about bridge water projects,
environment litigation, simplify permitting and should, speed up construction, should and
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reduce costs by hundreds of millions ofdollars. Should And of course this is
California. So both sides are arguing. One says it's going too far and
weakening the environmental protections, and theother one says it limits the reforms to
select projects, so it's too muchor too little. Of course that's always
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the case. The takeaway here isthat California is very, very sluggish,
probably more so than any other statein the Union in terms of permitting projects,
major infrastructure projects. A matter offact, when you're talking about building
projects, even building a house,you go crazy. And here's a story
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I want to share with you reallyquickly about the the kind of bureaucracy.
I know a developer who bought apiece of property on Mulholland, which is
the top of the Hollywood Hills,and it fell under the jurisdiction of both
the Santa Santa Montic Conservancy, whichis nonprofit that controls the land there to
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keep the habitat pristine, and theCoastal Commission, and you have to get
permits from both of them. Andyou couldn't dig up there during the season
when some turtle was out there migratingand laying eggs or whatever. And the
two agencies had d two different timelinesand they overlapped. So based on the
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law, you could never build ahouse in those areas. And it took
months and months to get waivers.That is what goes on, and what
the governor is doing is trying tofigure out a way, and he signed
this executive order. Let's make itas quick as possible. Well, I
have said most well, what didyou want by twenty thirty five? He
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wants us to be revenue or notrevenue, but energy neutral in terms of
fossil fuels, which means some ofthis infrastructure which means solar farms, and
you're talking about hydroelectric if you canpossibly get anymore. And the one thing
that is missing is nuclear power.And the people who are against nuclear power
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don't have to sweat it because ittakes ten years to get a permit to
build a nuclear power plant between theFeds and the state and the county and
the cities, and which they're inusually is county land. You just can't
do it. So as far asmaking it quicker to build projects, yeah,
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welcome to California. That sure works. Destinate now before we get to
Wayne Residue and do they have acase. I want to finish this part
of the show with smoking marijuana andworking. Now, I must admit that
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I have done my share of smokingmarijuana and working and I didn't have to
worry about employers because I was theemployee or and the employer, So I
was fine on that one. That'swhen I was practicing law and when I
went into business. A couple oftimes, I, you know, smoke
the evil weed a couple of times. But if you're working for a governmental
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agency, it's a whole different bag. And if you're that's a bag that's
a joke, because we used tobuy it by the bag. You know
that in the bottom of a baggy. In any case, what's happening in
private industry as you know that ifyou smoke, they would do a test
quite often, and marijuana shows cannabisshows up in your system for up to
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thirty days, and therefore you weren'thired or you were fired. And because
cannabis was evil. I don't knowif you've seen those early films The Evils
and the Warrior, they warned youabout cannabis. We saw those in school.
They were hilarious. Oh my god, they were funny, and now
they're just camp. Well, itwas serious amongst employers that if you smoked
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marijuana, use any drug, butthey could test for marijuana up to thirty
days and out you go. Well, business went the other way. Business
realized far earlier that you know,people that smoke marijuana, you know they
can do it on their own time, weekends, evening. It's like drinking.
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I mean, if you moderately drink. For example, you go to
a job interview and you say,yeah, I drink. I drink on
weekends. I have a beer,I watch football, I have a few
beers. I have a few glassesa wine at dinner. Yeah, And
the bottom line was, let metell you, if you're not drunk at
work, you're fine. What doI care? But marijuana use. Remember,
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for a lot of people, thiswas the gateway drug. And my
father when he caught me, Iwas sixteen years old, I will never
forget, and I was in thegarage smoking a joint and he opened the
door and he looked at me andthe utter fear in his eyes. I
mean, it wasn't just he wasgoing to reprimand me. He was going
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to punish me. He was scaredto death. Why well, he literally
thought that you pick up a joint, you take a puff, you put
it down, and then you pickup that syringe of heroin and injected directly
into your eyeballs. That was hisidea, and a lot of people think
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that way. How often have youheard, especially well, very rarely now,
but how often have you heard fromlaw enforcement, for example, that
it's a gateway drug. Remember inelementary school, cops coming around doing the
meet the Policeman segments or are sessionsmarijuana the gateway drug? Well, okay,
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that's gone for the most part.Now it's we're into the federal government.
We're in the state government, andthe state and federal governments are the
last ones that are saying, well, okay, marijuana is okay. You
try to apply for the police department. Used to be, if you even
admitted you were spoken marijuana at anytime, you were disqualified. Now some of
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them go back, okay, haveyou smoked marijuana in the last year?
No? Or yes? Disqualified?How about in the last ninety days.
Some have moved the last ninety days. Now I don't know of any police
departments at this point that are allowingcops to be hired that are actively smoking
marijuana. Some don't even test,they just ask. And the issue is,
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if you're not high at work,why not? And why are you
allowed to drink over the weekends?Drink a glass of wine at night,
and you're eligible to be a cop, but you can't have smoked the joint
in the last week. So we'removing very quickly in the direction of not
only legalizing marijuana for both medicinal andrecreational purposes. Twenty four states now allow
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recreational marijuana. But we're moving inthe direction that if you're happen to get
high on weekends or at night,you're fine. You know, it's not
like if you get high, it'sgoing to last for days and days.
It's just not the case. Samething with alcohol. It's just the problem
is once the alcohol has been metabolized, has gone through your system, you
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can't tell it doesn't show up yourbloodstream. And I think the same thing
for other drugs for the most part. But when you talk about marijuana,
that is the problem. And thefederal government, I mean, keep in
mind with the federal government, eventhe CIA, even the FBI, what
they're doing is they're fighting against privateindustry. You know, why would I
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want to be a CIA officer makingsixty thousand dollars a year when I can
go into private industry and be thereas long and have the same skill set
and make ninety thousand dollars a year. Why would I ever do that?
And there's a worker shortage out thereand everybody is scrambling, and so they
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have to just getting more liberal withit. In April twenty twenty two,
the CIA said you had to refrainfrom using marijuana for just ninety days before
submitting an application. That's one ofthe ninety days I got rid of their
one year eligibility requirement. The FBIused to be three years now it's one
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now. Still. If you're goingfor a security clearance, that's another animal.
Uh, you can't have used illegaldrugs for the past seven years if
you're looking for national security clearance,and if you lie about it, you're
gonna get caught. I know,I don't know if you've ever been involved
in a security clearance. Uh,the FBI usually does them, and they
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go out and they talk to everybodyyou've ever met, every place you've ever
worked, every school you've ever goneto, everybody who's ever employed you,
every classmate you've ever had, andif you have used drugs, unless you
did it real secretly under the couch, you get tagged different world. Now
let's go right into Wayne and dothey have a case Jesus. When he
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was studying man, his show wasDrees Day and that is how we do
it. I love that song.By the way, Wayne, just a
quick sidebar. As I've shared withyou many times, this is how Wayne
(34:15):
broke into talk radio writing these songs. And the program director said, I'll
tell you what, you have ajob if you stop writing these songs.
Yeah. Oops, I guess Ilied, Yes you did. All right,
let's start with a do they havea case? With Wayne and me?
(34:37):
Boy? Oh boy. First ofall, this is a delicious edition
of do they have a case?Both cases involved directly or indirectly food.
And also, you're about to learnone of the most lucrative jobs on the
planet that you may not have knownof. I knew this job existed,
I didn't know how well it couldpay. Maybe you did, Bill,
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And that is to be the trusteein a big, complicated bankruptcy case.
Oh yes, there is apparently alot of money to be earned. And
the fact that there's a lot ofmoney to be earned forms the crux of
this case that involves a Southern Californiaicon of food, Rosco's Chicken and Waffles.
(35:23):
Everybody knows it, almost everybody lovesit. They did find themselves in
a bit of financial hardship, andthey were always going to be okay because
you know what, even Snoop Dogsaid at one point that if necessary,
he would buy Rosco's Chicken and Wafflesto save it if it became necessary.
(35:44):
But it didn't. They filed fora bankruptcy. They went into bankruptcy court
and they worked out a deal,and it's a great deal in a bankruptcy.
It guaranteed the creditors full payment withinterest by putting up their assets,
plus another ten million dollars kicked inby the founder of Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles.
(36:07):
So the bankruptcy part of it workedout very well for everybody. All
the people they owed money are goingto get all their money plus interest.
Here's where it becomes a case.The trustee who was appointed was originally hired
on to work for four hundred andfifty dollars an hour plus expenses. Okay,
(36:28):
when the case was over, andI guess because it turned out so
well, the trustee applied for totalfees of one point one million dollars based
on the amount of hours they hadactually worked, times their hourly rate of
(36:49):
four hundred and forty eight dollars andfifty cents an hour, which is only
about seven hundred and fifty eight thousanddollars. What's the rest for you wonder?
A sixty five percent enhancement for exceptionalservices. This is a thing a
bankruptcy judge can do. You didsuch a great job as a trustee,
(37:10):
you get a big bonus Okay.One of the creditors objects and says that's
too much. It's not fair.Here's the deal, though, everybody's going
to get all of their money.What is your harm? What is your
beef? You're going to get everythingyou're owed. You can't get any more
(37:32):
than that. What do you careif this guy gets a big bonus for
overseeing the bankruptcy. And the creditorsays, well, there's a provision in
here that says, depending on howmany secondary creditors there are, that there
could be a delay right in megetting all my money. And the other
(37:53):
side says, that's purely speculative.It hasn't happened yet, and a delay
and get your money is not thesame thing. It's not getting your money,
So get out of here. Itgoes all the way up to the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Whatdo they say, was that award too
much? Or does this creditor needto just shut up and enjoy a nice
(38:13):
number seven at Roscoe's. Okay,as you pointed out by the way,
that's such a great job. Andthe court bankruptcy court appoints the trustees.
So the more you pay off ajudge, the better off, you are
a lot of people take judges tolunch with paper sacks as they bring in
their lunches. Actually that's not true. Federal judges are pretty honest, and
(38:35):
bankruptcy judges are federal judges. Andsince the judge has discretion here, I'm
gonna say that he, the bankruptcytrustee, gets the money for a couple
of reasons. One, the judgehas a discretion and simply say, as
you said, you've done a greatjob too. All the creditors got all
of their money. Now, thedelay part, I think is a legitimate
(38:59):
or if I'm due, because you'relosing money that you could put to work
otherwise. But the judge can sayI think standing would arguing that he doesn't
have standing. And speculation is alittle bit too much. Because you can
lay, you can certainly at leastsimple interest, you can determine what the
(39:23):
delay is as opposed to speculation.I could have I would have invested,
I would have bought something, Iwould have bought new equipment. That's all
speculation. But based on everything,the judge has this discretion. It is
it seems legitimate. He's not beingarbitrary. I'm going to say the bankruptcy
trustee gets his money. Yes hedoes. And as the court pointed out,
(39:47):
even if you have to wait toget your money longer, that has
nothing to do with how much moneythis guy got paid. That would have
to do with how many secondary creditorsfile to be paid. So you have
no kay. Turtle Island Foods,the makers of tofurkey, among other plant
based products, sus over the Stateof Louisiana's food labeling law. The food
(40:10):
labeling law says, in essence,you cannot intentionally misbrand or misrepresent any food
product as being an agricultural product.What does that mean? Bottom line?
The beef people don't want you sayingsomething's beef if it's not from a cow.
The pork people don't want you sayingit's pork if it's not from a
(40:31):
pig, etc. So, ofcourse Tofurky and it's other brands, they
have all kinds of things, plantbased burgers, plant based original sausage,
plant based hot dogs. So theysue in advance and say, we want
this law declared unconstitutional as a infringingon our freedom of speech, because we
(40:55):
don't want to get in trouble forselling our products the way they're being sold,
and the State of Louisiana says,whoa slowdown, Guys, did you
see the part at the beginning ofthe law that said you cannot intentionally miss
brand or mislead. We the state, do not find your packaging to be
(41:21):
misleading. Therefore, you are notviolating this law. Therefore, there's no
problem with this law. You can'thave a problem with this law. Please
leave our law alone. It's notfor you, it's for other people.
And Tofurky says, we don't care. There are other cases where laws kind
(41:42):
of like this were found to bean infringement on the First Amendment. So
what do you do if you're thefederal judge at the district level he found
the law infringes on First Amendment rights? Up, it goes to your favorite
circuit, the Fifth Circuit. Theargument for the state basically is it only
(42:02):
outlaws labeling that was intentionally misleading,not just labeling that might happen to be
misleading because you didn't realize. Therefore, you cannot possibly violate somebody's First Amendment
right to intentionally mislead a consumer.Wow, that's the case, boy.
(42:25):
That hits a lot of different areas. One is actually asking a judge for
what is effectively declaratory relief after thecourts have the appeals court, after a
court has held that there was nointention and we don't know the intention until
it's actually done. It's effectively whatthey're saying is that before the fact that
(42:52):
ever happens, this is what thelaw is, and they have violated our
violent the law, which a judgehas said is not a violation of the
law. By the way, it'sjust a sidebar even though it is not
a violation. Can they sue uhcivilly on a different cause of action or
(43:13):
not? I don't only since there'sno enforcement action being or being threatened against
them, they really don't have anything. Yeah, that's fair. Even if
there wasn't a law, you canargue the copyright uh infringement or something like
copyright in that you're you're pretending it'smeat. It's not meat. This is
what impossible Meats did. Uh.This is what the pork people did with
(43:37):
kind of almost sausage that I'm gonnaargue tofurky. No one is going to
confuse tofurkey with turkey. But thatmay be a not based on looking at
the package and not based on puttingit in your mouth. That's like a
turducan. What is a turduccan?Is? Uh? What's a chicken in
a duck shoved in a turkey?Yeah? I think that's right. And
(44:00):
then there's a Jewish turduck and achicken in a brisket sub shoved into a
pile of gabilta fish. I don'tquite know how that works. So what
do you think does this long finallate the first Amendment? Yeah? I'm
just I mean, you know whatI'm spinning around it because I really don't
know. Uh, I would saythat, Yeah, I would say the
(44:23):
intentional part is has overridden everything becausethey can't They'll never be able to prove
intent unless there is some kind ofa memo. Hey, we know that
people are going to be confused.We know that they're going to think that
this is somehow Turkey. So I'mgonna say that the Turkey people lose.
(44:47):
On that the Turkey people lose.Wait, no, the to Turkey people
lose. Right, the real Turkeypeople win in that the law stands Now
again, the people be hind Tofurkeyare not in any trouble. Not even
the state thinks that they're trying tomislead anybody. So everything will be fine
(45:08):
until somebody is so egregious that theyset out to make you think it's real
cow meat when it's not right,which is impossible. Meat would have a
better chance of being made illegal becauseyou could easily say it's some kind of
meat, as opposed to toe furkey, which nobody thinks. Okay,
(45:30):
Wayne, Yeah, you're back againtomorrow, as we are back with Handel
on why don't we do handle onthe news together and do they have a
case together? So coming up Garyand Shannon, Gary, what do you
have going on today? Well,we're gonna talk a little bit about the
debt ceiling yawning that's going on.We do expect to have yet another meeting
(45:52):
today between Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden, so we'll talk about that. Tim
Scott, the Senator out of SouthCarolina, is an announcing right now that
he's going to be running for presidents, so we'll talk about that. And
this Bill Gates story where he mayhave or may not have been blackmailed by
Jeffrey Epstein. It's salacious. You'vebeen listening to the Bill Handles show,
(46:14):
Catch my show, Monday through Fridaysix am to nine am, and anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
Your listings camp I AM six fortythe bill handles show on demand on the
iHeartRadio f and a good morning.It's a Monday, May twenty two,
if you've just tuned in, andif you tuned in an hour ago.
Strangely enough, it's still Monday,May twenty two, and we got a
lot to cover today. Let megive you the top stories. Biden and
(00:21):
McCarthy are meeting once again on thedebt ceiling. But that magic number,
that magic date, June first,is coming up very quickly, and no
doubt we'll be talking about that bigtime. SpaceX launches a private astronaut mission.
You two can go up on Spacesix and hit the International Space Station
(00:44):
if you've got fifty sixty million dollarsto blow on one trip. We don't
know the exact figure, but goingback, I don't know how many years
when Dennis Tito was the first firstperson civilian who went up and he paid
money to go on the s S. I think he spent twenty million dollars
data on Soya's That is a bargainobviously at this point. Now I'll tell
(01:07):
you what's going on. Remember I'vebeen talking about the care courts The care
Courts are these special courts that arebeing set up for the state by the
State of California to to deal withthe mentally ill well. October first is
the first rollout and there are sevencounties that are starting on October first,
(01:33):
including Orange County in La County,and these are the these are the pilot
programs. So October one is therollout, and the law orders each county
to create special courts, the carecourt And that is all about the courts
having the authority to order treatment plansfor individuals with I'm gonna quote here untreated
(01:55):
schizophrenia and related orders. Now,the plans are not compulsitory. But wait
a minute. How does a judgehave the authority to order treatment plans where
the individuals who are to be treateddon't have to go. It's not compulsory.
It's like you being in front ofa judge having committed some kind of
(02:20):
crime. The judge orders a yearin prison, but you say no,
thank you, I'd rather not,and you walk out the door. That
seems to be the case here.The Care Act was signed by Governor Gasson
Gavin Newsom last September, and here'swhat it's about. And I'll tell you
more into it in a second.But it requires counties to come up with
(02:42):
a bureaucratic mechanism that supports the goalof dealing with this whole epidemic of severe
mental illness so effectively. It isa new bureaucracy that is being created.
And I'll tell you how it works. Oh God, this is not complicated
at all. For every individual thatappears before the court, they are going
(03:05):
to be clerks who process the petitionthat started the proceedings, and then outreach
teams who found the individual who ismentally ill and serve the paperwork. Because
it's a court, it's a courtorder, you got to show up.
Then you got the psychiatrists who prepareda treatment plan. You've got defense attorneys
who represents the person that is beingordered maybe to go into a go into
(03:32):
quick care court, and then followwith the judge mandates, which usually go
into facility of some kind. Thenyou have the behavioral health clinicians who present
the plan their individual plans, andthen you have the judges who make the
decision. And let's not forget theinsurance companies to pay for all of this.
Assuming there is insurance, which manyindividuals have and so how does all
(03:58):
of this work and how do theydo this? And how many people are
involved? State says seven to twelvethousand people are going to qualify for a
treatment plan. And who can tellwho can start the proceedings? Well,
obviously any police officer, any mentalhealth worker, but a family member,
a roommate, and so what isthe issue here? Well, how about
(04:23):
this? Counties are concerned they're goingto be overwhelmed. And of course this
is paid for by the state.The startup was fifty seven million dollars.
It's going to go into the hundredsof millions of dollars and by the time,
at least tens of millions of dollarsby the time this is finished.
And the part I like about itis none of it is mandatory. You
(04:43):
know it used to be mandatory.Do you know that during the prior to
the Reagan administration I'm talking about Governor, the courts used to mandate people going
into a metal a mental facility.Anybody who goes to UC Channel Islands for
example, that was the largest mentalfacility in the state, which judge can
(05:03):
say, go there, and youhad no choice. And what stopped all
that? Two two avenues came tostop that. One Governor Reagan, who
said this is just way too muchmoney. And number two the ACLU that
came out and basically got a court. Had the court decide that you have
(05:23):
every right to be crazy and roamthe streets as long as you were not
a danger to yourself or others.Now, the President, as you know,
has been in Japan and was aHiroshima for the G seven and he
left warely. He was supposed tomeet with Actually you're supposed to go to
(05:46):
Australia. Used to go to Papuain New Guinea to look at the Museum
of Shrunken Heads because that's where theyare. And he cut it all short
because he had to go back anddeal with the debt ceiling and meet with
Kevin McCarthy. And this is scarystuff for a couple of reasons. First
(06:08):
of all, there's a June firstdeadline in which the United States runs out
of money to pay its bills.And I'm talking about existing bills, not
future programs, bills that have alreadybeen incurred. You know that desk that
was bought at the General well thePentagon, for example, that has to
(06:30):
be paid for and we have toincrease the debt limit. Congress has to
increase the debt limit, which meansit has to allow itself to borrow more
money. That's the way the lawworks. It can't just print money.
It has to give itself the powerto print money. Right. There has
never been any point in history inwhich Congress has not voted the increase of
(06:53):
the debt ceiling. Never. Andthe fear is if that happens then and
we go into technical default, eventhough everybody knows we have the ability and
we will at some point do it, it's a technical default. And the
fear if you listen to Janie Yelling, for example, our Treasury secretary,
(07:14):
former head of the Fed, soshe has a lot of credentials, the
fear is that the economy is goingto go into a tailspin and the world
financial markets are going to look atthis and going to just reel why,
because the United States is, infact the basis of the entire world economy.
(07:35):
We are the juggernaut. Everything isbased on the dollar. You buy
oil, it's the dollar. Youbuy gold, it's the dollar. How
much is goldworth x number of dollarsyou buy a barrel of oil, it's
X number of dollars. It's allbased on the dollar. Just a quick
(07:55):
sideline. Ecuador by example, it'sofficial currency is the dollar. Doesn't print
them, but it just uses thedollar. That's how powerful the dollar is.
So the fear is that we aregoing to go into a technical default
and the entire economic system is goingto take just a big hit, now,
(08:16):
just a quick one on June first. There are ways around that temporarily,
except there will be constitutional attacks andthe courts will have it and it
can get a little bit dicey.So you have Kevin McCarthy, who is
the Speaker of the House, issaying I'm not going to let it's the
House that has to increase that aswell as the Senate. And well,
(08:39):
the senate's easy because you've got aDemocratic Senate. And Kevin McCarthy is saying,
uh, you don't give us ourtax cuts, you don't give us
the cut and expenditures, saying thisto Biden, We're not going to let
you have the debt ceiling. It'snever happened before. It's always been a
clean bill, meaning it's outside ofany politics. Is we have to have
(09:03):
the money, we have to payour debts. Let's vote the ability to
borrow the money to pay our debtscleanly. No discussion, no politics,
a little bit of politics where Republicansdecided they were going to hold off on
deficit spending, which is very different. It was the budget of the United
States that was at risk when theRepublicans had dealt with it twice and got
(09:28):
nailed for it. So the presidentis back and he is having talks with
Kevin McCarthy, and Kevin McCarthy wantsto cut expenditure. The president wants to
clean bill. And now they're negotiating. And here is the problem the way
I see it. Number one,the fact that we're even close to not
(09:52):
increasing the debt ceiling is scarier thanhell. Interestingly enough, this Republican Congress
during the Trump administration administration passed thedoubts debt ceiling vote four times in a
row, no issue. It waseasy. And Trump went a trillion dollars
or more into deficits spending, sohe just had to increase it. Republicans
(10:16):
said, fine, no problem.So that is one problem, just the
politics of it, and the otherproblem is or just the financial part of
it. And it'll be the firsttime we go into detail, connect that
with the politics and what are thepolitics. You have a party that's in
power Congress. You have a presidentthat's on the other side of the aisle,
(10:45):
Joe Biden Democrat, and it's thepresident that produces the budget, which
then Congress passes. And McCarthy issaying, we're not going to pass it
unless you do what we want interms of the budget. It You're going
to curtail the budget. You're goingto spin the budget around the way we
(11:05):
want it, or at least negotiatethe way we want it, to cut
expenditures for the first time in history, which means that if let's spin it
around that there becomes a Republican presidentand a Democratic Congress. Same thing happens,
mister President, we're not going toaccept your budget. Well, we're
(11:28):
going to vote no on it,which has happened a few times. You
can do that, but we're notgoing to InCrest increase the debt ceiling.
So we're going to bring this countryto the brink or go into default and
go over the edge. And whatends up happening, no one knows,
but I got to tell you thatis a huge problem. We talk about
(11:52):
how polarized our country is. Imean, can you imagine that we are
polarized to the point where the veryexistence of our economic system is at least
at risk to some extent, evena little bit. Let's say it's one
percent, let's say it's five percent. I'm scared to death of this.
I truly am. I don't knowif you watch sixty minutes what two three
(12:16):
weeks ago, and there was astory about lithium mining in the Sultan Sea.
Now the Sultan Sea, and Ithink it's east of us, and
I don't know how far, acouple hundred miles. Maybe this is the
Dead Sea. It's just the evaporationof the water has caused all these chemicals
(12:39):
and turns out that there is probablyone of the biggest deposits of lithium in
the United States, if not theworld, sitting there. And what's lithium
about. It's a byproduct. Imean, it wasn't sort of got in
the way, you know, itjust wasn't very important stuff until bad he
(13:00):
started being manufactured. All right,big deal. How much lithium is in
a D battery? But batteries havebecome huge news, mainly because of electric
vehicles, because if you know howelectric vehicles work, the entire bottom of
the EV is a battery and it'shuge. So what ended up happening,
(13:24):
Well, the car manufacturers were caughtflat footed on this. They thought GM,
for example, had a team fortypeople just sourcing materials and they said,
you know, plenty of lithium,which was necessary, plenty of nickel,
which is necessary, and there's plentyout there on the open market.
(13:45):
And then they find out there isn'tmuch on the open market. A matter
of fact, you've got two countriesthat really control the world lithium market,
and that's Australia and China. Australiaan ally of ours, is not a
problem. China, they could turnoff the spigot tomorrow afternoon and all of
(14:05):
a sudden, these evs come toa screeching halt. And so what are
these car manufacturers doing. Well,they're getting into the mining business. And
one of the things about car manufacturers, they're not good at getting into the
mining business. Why they're two entirelydifferent businesses. You've got car manufacturers that
know exactly how many cars are goingto be manufactured per hour, what the
(14:28):
equipment is on demand, components.I mean, it's all there, scientifically
right there. It's all there,timed perfect, They have inventory, they
know exactly what they're doing. Howabout mining companies always late very sloppy in
the sense they don't know how muchis down there. They don't know how
(14:48):
much they can take out at anygiven time. There are areas of the
mind that have more minerals and otherminerals. It's just not the same.
And all of a sudden, thecar companies are into the mining business,
and they're not really comfortable with it, but they have no choice. New
(15:09):
battery plants are popping all across theUS and Nevada you had Tesla making the
largest factory in I think in theworld, and companies reporting billions of dollars
into the vehicle factories themselves. Andone of the biggest bottlenecks is lithium.
(15:31):
Matter of fact, it's lithium thatis going to curtail the manufacture of those
batteries. And without those batteries,there's no place else you can go.
And it was the deficit goes backabout a decade or so. China was
selling all of it, and allof a sudden you had the supply chain
problem, and all of a sudden, China was not. And then the
(15:54):
market exploded as the evs came backor the ev started selling and the manufacturing
started going crazy. And you knowwhat China had done. They sort of
knew it was happening. But Chinanow being like any major corporate country,
they took all the profits they weremaking off a lithium and paying in the
(16:14):
shareholders. And now everybody is scrambling. So you're gonna hear stories about lithium
coming up big time. And ifyou're a piece of advice you're going to
invest, I would do it inlithium. You want a good job,
get yourself a certificate of lithium mining. I have no idea how that works,
(16:36):
by the way, none. Howdo you mind lithium? I think
you minded well clearly out of theground. But I think they're open air
mines. You know where they didthese massive trucks and dump trucks. In
any case, you're gonna hear lotsand lots about lithium now. As I
have said, one of my favoritetopics of all time is Dying. It's
(16:57):
a great Netflix documentary, so Ithink it's on Netflix. Six Ways to
die, and it's about six differentpeople and how they died and how they
were buried, and one of thembecame compost that was kind of neat,
and one of them a little bitof went up in one of the spacecraft.
As you know, I didn't knowthis, but you can actually buy
(17:19):
yourself a little tiny tube like avial of cocaine, a one grand vial.
And interesting I know that, andyou can shoot yourself up into the
stars or into orbit. Because itturns out that and I know that there's
a market for little bits and piecesof space, not space outside space,
(17:41):
but space inside of the rocket itselfthat carries capsules or satellites, and so
they put stuff in there and peoplepay for it in its wild. In
any case, let's go to thestory at hand, and this has to
do with scattering ashes. It's becomevery very big stuff because it turns out,
if I can give you some andwe've talked about this before, it
(18:03):
turns out that the cost of burialruns about eight thousand dollars, give or
take. And so that's a traditionalfuneral with a viewing and burial. And
I've always enjoyed viewings. First timeI ever went to a viewing. There's
the dead guy there. And asI'm approaching the dead guy, I hear
(18:26):
people in front of me. Oh, he looks like he's just sleeping.
Ah, he looks great. Igo up there and look at him.
Now he looks dead. You cantell when someone looks dead they're not sleeping,
they're dead. In any case,Jews don't do that. Jews just
throwing in a casket and throwing inthe ground within twenty four hours. No
embalming. Casket is just made outof wood, nothing fancy, and so
(18:49):
Jewish funerals are a lot cheaper.Now if you want to go to a
cremation with a burial, that isyou get the little urn or whatever,
the cardboard box or whatever, thelittle lunchbacks box with Batman on the front,
whatever you want to put the ashesin. That runs at about one
(19:11):
thousand dollars cheaper. And that's it. Now. If you're going for direct
cremation, which means that they crematethe body and they hand the issue,
they hand the ashes to you inlike a ziplock bag, that runs about
sixteen hundred dollars. So more andmore people are doing the cremation, and
(19:34):
what do people do. And I'vealways found this wild. Is they take
the ashes and put it on amantle and there there they are, Uncle
George, right, Granddad, Imean right across the mantle. Now that's
a little bit morbid in my opinion. And I like death, you know
that, but that's beyond me.So when someone dies in California, the
(19:57):
legal next of ken is the rightto say where that body is going.
Even if you say I want tobe buried, the next of ken,
who normally would pay for the funeralpay expenses, can say, now we're
going to cremate. That's it.And my parents. I buried my parents,
(20:18):
and it turns out if I hadreally thought about the amount of money
I would have saved by cremating them, they'd be on my mantle right now.
But they're not. So it's thefamily that needs to decide which way
to go. And then a questionof where do you put the ashes?
(20:40):
Now you can spend thousands of dollarsand put them in those little boxes at
mortuaries cemeteries, and that costs youthousands of dollars. Or you can scatter
the ashes and you can do itany place. But here are the rules.
You have to have written permission fromthe owner or the governing body of
(21:00):
the property. You want to doit at a park, you have to
have parks and recreations say go ahead. The remains are removed from their container
and not distinguishable to the public.You got to spread them so no one
knows what they are. You can't, for example, take ashes with an
arm sticking out of the bag.You can't do that. It all has
(21:23):
to be cremated. I don't knowabout little bits and pieces of bone,
because if you look at ashes,and I've seen ashes a couple of times,
you see little bits of bone inthere. That may it's been a
long time, so that may be. That may be. Difference may be
different. And in La County thereare places, but you have to get
(21:47):
a permit, but the bureaucracy isso incredibly difficult to get through. No
one follows. And by the way, if you end up scattering ashes,
no one bothers, No one bothers. The reality is you can scatter them
whatever you want. And you've heardthat missive that if you scatter them on
(22:07):
the oceans it's illegal, but it'swell, it's sort of illegal, but
it's just you can't get permission fromanybody who owns the oceans, although now
you can't federal government. You'd haveto technically get permission. But you throw
them out there, and who whopays attention? So people do that all
the time, and I've always wonderedabout that. I mean, I can
see if you're a sea loving humanbeing and you're a scuba diver and you're
(22:32):
a sailor, out goes the ashes. But you know how many people put
their ashes out there? You know, I don't know what if you're in
the north and you know people putsalt on their driveways for the snow.
That would work, wouldn't it?Okay, maybe a little bit morbid.
Yeah, But that's why I likethis topic. You can do so much
with it. The governor was ata solar and a solar injury project in
(22:57):
the Central Valley. This happened overthe weekend and he unveiled this package of
legislation and signed an executive order.This was actually Friday when he did this
to make it easier to build transportation, clean energy, water infrastructure across the
state. And the proposal intends tocut through bureaucratic hurdles that have just halted
(23:22):
the grand the big public works projects, and on top of that, to
make sure that California gets capitalizes onthe money from the Biden administration to boost
the climate friendly construction. So itis pretty important that this happens pretty quickly
because there are timelines that these federalprograms the money comes in, and if
(23:45):
they're not spent, it's basically toolate. So this is California, and
the proposal aims to shorten the contractingprocess. We're talking about bridge water projects,
environment litigation, simplify permitting and should, speed up construction, should and
(24:07):
reduce costs by hundreds of millions ofdollars. Should And of course this is
California. So both sides are arguing. One says it's going too far and
weakening the environmental protections, and theother one says it limits the reforms to
select projects, so it's too muchor too little. Of course that's always
(24:32):
the case. The takeaway here isthat California is very, very sluggish,
probably more so than any other statein the Union in terms of permitting projects,
major infrastructure projects. A matter offact, when you're talking about building
projects, even building a house,you go crazy. And here's a story
(24:55):
I want to share with you reallyquickly about the the kind of bureaucracy.
I know a developer who bought apiece of property on Mulholland, which is
the top of the Hollywood Hills,and it fell under the jurisdiction of both
the Santa Santa Montic Conservancy, whichis nonprofit that controls the land there to
(25:17):
keep the habitat pristine, and theCoastal Commission, and you have to get
permits from both of them. Andyou couldn't dig up there during the season
when some turtle was out there migratingand laying eggs or whatever. And the
two agencies had d two different timelinesand they overlapped. So based on the
(25:41):
law, you could never build ahouse in those areas. And it took
months and months to get waivers.That is what goes on, and what
the governor is doing is trying tofigure out a way, and he signed
this executive order. Let's make itas quick as possible. Well, I
have said most well, what didyou want by twenty thirty five? He
(26:03):
wants us to be revenue or notrevenue, but energy neutral in terms of
fossil fuels, which means some ofthis infrastructure which means solar farms, and
you're talking about hydroelectric if you canpossibly get anymore. And the one thing
that is missing is nuclear power.And the people who are against nuclear power
(26:30):
don't have to sweat it because ittakes ten years to get a permit to
build a nuclear power plant between theFeds and the state and the county and
the cities, and which they're inusually is county land. You just can't
do it. So as far asmaking it quicker to build projects, yeah,
(26:52):
welcome to California. That sure works. Destinate now before we get to
Wayne Residue and do they have acase. I want to finish this part
of the show with smoking marijuana andworking. Now, I must admit that
(27:14):
I have done my share of smokingmarijuana and working and I didn't have to
worry about employers because I was theemployee or and the employer, So I
was fine on that one. That'swhen I was practicing law and when I
went into business. A couple oftimes, I, you know, smoke
the evil weed a couple of times. But if you're working for a governmental
(27:37):
agency, it's a whole different bag. And if you're that's a bag that's
a joke, because we used tobuy it by the bag. You know
that in the bottom of a baggy. In any case, what's happening in
private industry as you know that ifyou smoke, they would do a test
quite often, and marijuana shows cannabisshows up in your system for up to
(28:00):
thirty days, and therefore you weren'thired or you were fired. And because
cannabis was evil. I don't knowif you've seen those early films The Evils
and the Warrior, they warned youabout cannabis. We saw those in school.
They were hilarious. Oh my god, they were funny, and now
they're just camp. Well, itwas serious amongst employers that if you smoked
(28:23):
marijuana, use any drug, butthey could test for marijuana up to thirty
days and out you go. Well, business went the other way. Business
realized far earlier that you know,people that smoke marijuana, you know they
can do it on their own time, weekends, evening. It's like drinking.
(28:48):
I mean, if you moderately drink. For example, you go to
a job interview and you say,yeah, I drink. I drink on
weekends. I have a beer,I watch football, I have a few
beers. I have a few glassesa wine at dinner. Yeah, And
the bottom line was, let metell you, if you're not drunk at
work, you're fine. What doI care? But marijuana use. Remember,
(29:11):
for a lot of people, thiswas the gateway drug. And my
father when he caught me, Iwas sixteen years old, I will never
forget, and I was in thegarage smoking a joint and he opened the
door and he looked at me andthe utter fear in his eyes. I
mean, it wasn't just he wasgoing to reprimand me. He was going
(29:33):
to punish me. He was scaredto death. Why well, he literally
thought that you pick up a joint, you take a puff, you put
it down, and then you pickup that syringe of heroin and injected directly
into your eyeballs. That was hisidea, and a lot of people think
(29:56):
that way. How often have youheard, especially well, very rarely now,
but how often have you heard fromlaw enforcement, for example, that
it's a gateway drug. Remember inelementary school, cops coming around doing the
meet the Policeman segments or are sessionsmarijuana the gateway drug? Well, okay,
(30:17):
that's gone for the most part.Now it's we're into the federal government.
We're in the state government, andthe state and federal governments are the
last ones that are saying, well, okay, marijuana is okay. You
try to apply for the police department. Used to be, if you even
admitted you were spoken marijuana at anytime, you were disqualified. Now some of
(30:38):
them go back, okay, haveyou smoked marijuana in the last year?
No? Or yes? Disqualified?How about in the last ninety days.
Some have moved the last ninety days. Now I don't know of any police
departments at this point that are allowingcops to be hired that are actively smoking
marijuana. Some don't even test,they just ask. And the issue is,
(31:04):
if you're not high at work,why not? And why are you
allowed to drink over the weekends?Drink a glass of wine at night,
and you're eligible to be a cop, but you can't have smoked the joint
in the last week. So we'removing very quickly in the direction of not
only legalizing marijuana for both medicinal andrecreational purposes. Twenty four states now allow
(31:29):
recreational marijuana. But we're moving inthe direction that if you're happen to get
high on weekends or at night,you're fine. You know, it's not
like if you get high, it'sgoing to last for days and days.
It's just not the case. Samething with alcohol. It's just the problem
is once the alcohol has been metabolized, has gone through your system, you
(31:52):
can't tell it doesn't show up yourbloodstream. And I think the same thing
for other drugs for the most part. But when you talk about marijuana,
that is the problem. And thefederal government, I mean, keep in
mind with the federal government, eventhe CIA, even the FBI, what
they're doing is they're fighting against privateindustry. You know, why would I
(32:13):
want to be a CIA officer makingsixty thousand dollars a year when I can
go into private industry and be thereas long and have the same skill set
and make ninety thousand dollars a year. Why would I ever do that?
And there's a worker shortage out thereand everybody is scrambling, and so they
(32:35):
have to just getting more liberal withit. In April twenty twenty two,
the CIA said you had to refrainfrom using marijuana for just ninety days before
submitting an application. That's one ofthe ninety days I got rid of their
one year eligibility requirement. The FBIused to be three years now it's one
(33:00):
now. Still. If you're goingfor a security clearance, that's another animal.
Uh, you can't have used illegaldrugs for the past seven years if
you're looking for national security clearance,and if you lie about it, you're
gonna get caught. I know,I don't know if you've ever been involved
in a security clearance. Uh,the FBI usually does them, and they
(33:22):
go out and they talk to everybodyyou've ever met, every place you've ever
worked, every school you've ever goneto, everybody who's ever employed you,
every classmate you've ever had, andif you have used drugs, unless you
did it real secretly under the couch, you get tagged different world. Now
let's go right into Wayne and dothey have a case Jesus. When he
(33:50):
was studying man, his show wasDrees Day and that is how we do
it. I love that song.By the way, Wayne, just a
quick sidebar. As I've shared withyou many times, this is how Wayne
(34:15):
broke into talk radio writing these songs. And the program director said, I'll
tell you what, you have ajob if you stop writing these songs.
Yeah. Oops, I guess Ilied, Yes you did. All right,
let's start with a do they havea case? With Wayne and me?
(34:37):
Boy? Oh boy. First ofall, this is a delicious edition
of do they have a case?Both cases involved directly or indirectly food.
And also, you're about to learnone of the most lucrative jobs on the
planet that you may not have knownof. I knew this job existed,
I didn't know how well it couldpay. Maybe you did, Bill,
(35:00):
And that is to be the trusteein a big, complicated bankruptcy case.
Oh yes, there is apparently alot of money to be earned. And
the fact that there's a lot ofmoney to be earned forms the crux of
this case that involves a Southern Californiaicon of food, Rosco's Chicken and Waffles.
(35:23):
Everybody knows it, almost everybody lovesit. They did find themselves in
a bit of financial hardship, andthey were always going to be okay because
you know what, even Snoop Dogsaid at one point that if necessary,
he would buy Rosco's Chicken and Wafflesto save it if it became necessary.
(35:44):
But it didn't. They filed fora bankruptcy. They went into bankruptcy court
and they worked out a deal,and it's a great deal in a bankruptcy.
It guaranteed the creditors full payment withinterest by putting up their assets,
plus another ten million dollars kicked inby the founder of Roscoe's Chicken and Waffles.
(36:07):
So the bankruptcy part of it workedout very well for everybody. All
the people they owed money are goingto get all their money plus interest.
Here's where it becomes a case.The trustee who was appointed was originally hired
on to work for four hundred andfifty dollars an hour plus expenses. Okay,
(36:28):
when the case was over, andI guess because it turned out so
well, the trustee applied for totalfees of one point one million dollars based
on the amount of hours they hadactually worked, times their hourly rate of
(36:49):
four hundred and forty eight dollars andfifty cents an hour, which is only
about seven hundred and fifty eight thousanddollars. What's the rest for you wonder?
A sixty five percent enhancement for exceptionalservices. This is a thing a
bankruptcy judge can do. You didsuch a great job as a trustee,
(37:10):
you get a big bonus Okay.One of the creditors objects and says that's
too much. It's not fair.Here's the deal, though, everybody's going
to get all of their money.What is your harm? What is your
beef? You're going to get everythingyou're owed. You can't get any more
(37:32):
than that. What do you careif this guy gets a big bonus for
overseeing the bankruptcy. And the creditorsays, well, there's a provision in
here that says, depending on howmany secondary creditors there are, that there
could be a delay right in megetting all my money. And the other
(37:53):
side says, that's purely speculative.It hasn't happened yet, and a delay
and get your money is not thesame thing. It's not getting your money,
So get out of here. Itgoes all the way up to the
Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Whatdo they say, was that award too
much? Or does this creditor needto just shut up and enjoy a nice
(38:13):
number seven at Roscoe's. Okay,as you pointed out by the way,
that's such a great job. Andthe court bankruptcy court appoints the trustees.
So the more you pay off ajudge, the better off, you are
a lot of people take judges tolunch with paper sacks as they bring in
their lunches. Actually that's not true. Federal judges are pretty honest, and
(38:35):
bankruptcy judges are federal judges. Andsince the judge has discretion here, I'm
gonna say that he, the bankruptcytrustee, gets the money for a couple
of reasons. One, the judgehas a discretion and simply say, as
you said, you've done a greatjob too. All the creditors got all
of their money. Now, thedelay part, I think is a legitimate
(38:59):
or if I'm due, because you'relosing money that you could put to work
otherwise. But the judge can sayI think standing would arguing that he doesn't
have standing. And speculation is alittle bit too much. Because you can
lay, you can certainly at leastsimple interest, you can determine what the
(39:23):
delay is as opposed to speculation.I could have I would have invested,
I would have bought something, Iwould have bought new equipment. That's all
speculation. But based on everything,the judge has this discretion. It is
it seems legitimate. He's not beingarbitrary. I'm going to say the bankruptcy
trustee gets his money. Yes hedoes. And as the court pointed out,
(39:47):
even if you have to wait toget your money longer, that has
nothing to do with how much moneythis guy got paid. That would have
to do with how many secondary creditorsfile to be paid. So you have
no kay. Turtle Island Foods,the makers of tofurkey, among other plant
based products, sus over the Stateof Louisiana's food labeling law. The food
(40:10):
labeling law says, in essence,you cannot intentionally misbrand or misrepresent any food
product as being an agricultural product.What does that mean? Bottom line?
The beef people don't want you sayingsomething's beef if it's not from a cow.
The pork people don't want you sayingit's pork if it's not from a
(40:31):
pig, etc. So, ofcourse Tofurky and it's other brands, they
have all kinds of things, plantbased burgers, plant based original sausage,
plant based hot dogs. So theysue in advance and say, we want
this law declared unconstitutional as a infringingon our freedom of speech, because we
(40:55):
don't want to get in trouble forselling our products the way they're being sold,
and the State of Louisiana says,whoa slowdown, Guys, did you
see the part at the beginning ofthe law that said you cannot intentionally miss
brand or mislead. We the state, do not find your packaging to be
(41:21):
misleading. Therefore, you are notviolating this law. Therefore, there's no
problem with this law. You can'thave a problem with this law. Please
leave our law alone. It's notfor you, it's for other people.
And Tofurky says, we don't care. There are other cases where laws kind
(41:42):
of like this were found to bean infringement on the First Amendment. So
what do you do if you're thefederal judge at the district level he found
the law infringes on First Amendment rights? Up, it goes to your favorite
circuit, the Fifth Circuit. Theargument for the state basically is it only
(42:02):
outlaws labeling that was intentionally misleading,not just labeling that might happen to be
misleading because you didn't realize. Therefore, you cannot possibly violate somebody's First Amendment
right to intentionally mislead a consumer.Wow, that's the case, boy.
(42:25):
That hits a lot of different areas. One is actually asking a judge for
what is effectively declaratory relief after thecourts have the appeals court, after a
court has held that there was nointention and we don't know the intention until
it's actually done. It's effectively whatthey're saying is that before the fact that
(42:52):
ever happens, this is what thelaw is, and they have violated our
violent the law, which a judgehas said is not a violation of the
law. By the way, it'sjust a sidebar even though it is not
a violation. Can they sue uhcivilly on a different cause of action or
(43:13):
not? I don't only since there'sno enforcement action being or being threatened against
them, they really don't have anything. Yeah, that's fair. Even if
there wasn't a law, you canargue the copyright uh infringement or something like
copyright in that you're you're pretending it'smeat. It's not meat. This is
what impossible Meats did. Uh.This is what the pork people did with
(43:37):
kind of almost sausage that I'm gonnaargue tofurky. No one is going to
confuse tofurkey with turkey. But thatmay be a not based on looking at
the package and not based on puttingit in your mouth. That's like a
turducan. What is a turduccan?Is? Uh? What's a chicken in
a duck shoved in a turkey?Yeah? I think that's right. And
(44:00):
then there's a Jewish turduck and achicken in a brisket sub shoved into a
pile of gabilta fish. I don'tquite know how that works. So what
do you think does this long finallate the first Amendment? Yeah? I'm
just I mean, you know whatI'm spinning around it because I really don't
know. Uh, I would saythat, Yeah, I would say the
(44:23):
intentional part is has overridden everything becausethey can't They'll never be able to prove
intent unless there is some kind ofa memo. Hey, we know that
people are going to be confused.We know that they're going to think that
this is somehow Turkey. So I'mgonna say that the Turkey people lose.
(44:47):
On that the Turkey people lose.Wait, no, the to Turkey people
lose. Right, the real Turkeypeople win in that the law stands Now
again, the people be hind Tofurkeyare not in any trouble. Not even
the state thinks that they're trying tomislead anybody. So everything will be fine
(45:08):
until somebody is so egregious that theyset out to make you think it's real
cow meat when it's not right,which is impossible. Meat would have a
better chance of being made illegal becauseyou could easily say it's some kind of
meat, as opposed to toe furkey, which nobody thinks. Okay,
(45:30):
Wayne, Yeah, you're back againtomorrow, as we are back with Handel
on why don't we do handle onthe news together and do they have a
case together? So coming up Garyand Shannon, Gary, what do you
have going on today? Well,we're gonna talk a little bit about the
debt ceiling yawning that's going on.We do expect to have yet another meeting
(45:52):
today between Kevin McCarthy and Joe Biden, so we'll talk about that. Tim
Scott, the Senator out of SouthCarolina, is an announcing right now that
he's going to be running for presidents, so we'll talk about that. And
this Bill Gates story where he mayhave or may not have been blackmailed by
Jeffrey Epstein. It's salacious. You'vebeen listening to the Bill Handles show,
(46:14):
Catch my show, Monday through Fridaysix am to nine am, and anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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