Episode Transcript
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You're listening to Bill Handle on demandfrom KFI AM six forty. Call your
doctor if you have high fever,stiff muscles, on confusion, or if
you have uncontrollable muscle movements bill Handle. Other risks include dizziness upon standing,
seizures, trouble swallowing, and impairedjudgment or motor skills. Here's Wayne Resnick
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kf I AM six forty live everywhereon the iHeartRadio app Good Morning, It
is a pill Handle show, andhe is back on Tuesday. Wayne Resnick
here until nine o'clock and then DougMcIntyre is in for Gary and Shannon.
Mark Thompson is holding down the fortfor John Colebelt, Tim Conway Juniors out,
Chris Merrill is in and mister MoeKelly, my buddy, is gonna
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host his own show tonight and he'sgonna come here at eight thirty for earlier
with Moe. Now, some newlaws. We're not gonna go through every
single new law. We might getto some more of them on Monday here
on New Year's Day. But there'sthree I wanted to tell you about,
and let's just get right into it. A new law for twenty twenty four
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in California, workers will be entitledto five page six days a year.
Currently entitled to three sick days ayear, but now it's up to five.
And as you might imagine, businessesdon't like it. Some trade associations
fought it, like the California GrocersAssociation, the California Hotel and Lodging Association,
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various chambers of commerce. They saythis will hurt small businesses because they
had the pandemic and they're still recoveringfrom the pandemic, and then you have
inflation which really walloped them, andnow there'd be more days that they'll have
to bear the additional cost of coveringfor sick workers. There's a group called
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the National Federation of Independent Business andit has a list of the top five
compliance headaches for small business owners inCalifornia, and this is one of them.
They put this on their list.The State Chamber of Commerce called it
a job killer that makes no senseto me, no offense unless what they
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mean is these small businesses will completelygo out of business for having to provide
two extra sick days a year,and therefore all the jobs will be lost.
And California was the second state toadopt any kind of sick leaf policy
way back in twenty fourteen, sowe didn't lead the country in this.
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Since that time, many states havesimilar laws requiring the minimum paid sick days.
So now we're at five, whichis less time. Then you are
guaranteed in fifteen states, as wellas a lot of cities here in California.
So if you work at LA orSan Diego or Berkeley, of course
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Berkeley or Oakland, you're entitled tomore than the five. Now they wanted
look the other side of it,the employee activist side of it wanted seven.
They didn't get it. So nobody'shappy, which means it was probably
the right thing to do. Anotherthing, ah, And there was a
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write up in the paper about theMealy family where the kid had to go
to the hospital. So the ambulancetakes a kid to the hospital and it
turned out it was out of networkfor their insurance plan and they got a
nine thousand dollars bill. Well,a new California law will prevent that kind
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of surprise ambulance bill from happening tosome people, but not all people.
You will only have to pay theequivalent of what you would have paid for
an in network service. So forexample, for this family, their co
pay eighty three dollars, which isway less than nine thousand dollars. I'm
not trying to brag about being goodat math. So this is similar to
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the National No Surprises Act, whichprotects Americans from getting all kinds of surprise
bills from hospitals air ambulance transports,but that act doesn't cover ground ambulance rides.
So now the state is going toprotect you from that if you're on
a commercial health plan. So ifyou're on another kind of health plan,
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you may not be protected by this. And what happens is, you know,
when you're sick enough that you haveto go to the hospital, the
last thing you or your family shouldbe having to worry about is the ambulance
in my network. Is the doctorat the er in my network. Is
the other doctor who's gonna come seeme later in my network? Is the
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lab in my network? And sothe federal law says, you just go
and you get your thing, andif some of that stuff is out of
network, that's too bad. Sosad. That's between the insurance company and
whoever gave you the medical care,and they have to work it out,
but they cannot bill you. Andthat's the way this ambulance law in California's
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gonna work as well. And finally, marijuana, starting January one, employers
will not be able to ask youabout your off job marijuana use when you
go for a job interview. Theycannot ask you if you smoke marijuana.
I guess they could ask you,do you smoke marijuana when you're on duty
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at a job. I think theywould be still allowed to ask you that,
but they can't ask you generally.And if they find out that you
do, they cannot refuse to hireyou. If you're already working there and
they find out that you use marijuanaoff the job, they cannot retaliate against
you in any way. And theycannot use the results of hair or your
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intests for marijuana in making any oftheir employment decisions, which makes sense because
urine tests and hair tests do notmeasure impairment, especially hair tests that can
look back a month sometimes more,at whether somebody used to drug thirty days
ago. The Biden administration appears readyto announce sometime next year they're going to
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change marijuana from a Schedule one controlledsubstance to a Schedule three controlled substance.
This is something that people have beenasking for for a very long time,
and yet within the government there hasbeen hard resistance against doing it. But
it looks like it might happen.And we know this because it's actually a
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wonky, boring, long process tochange or deschedule a controlled substance. The
Department of Health and Human Services looksat the substance, they review all the
research and whatever they know about it, and they write up a thing and
they send it to the DEA,and then the DEA decides whether to change
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the classification of the drug. Andwe know that. Back in August,
Javier Besserra, Secretary of Health andHuman Services, said that his department had
completed this review. Now he didn'tsay what they were recommending, but the
fact that he said publicly they hadfinished their part of the process is kind
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of a big deal because normally that'snot what happens. It's kind of a
it's not that it's a top secretprocess, but it's not something they give
updates on. And here's another thing. And I don't know if this was
a coincidence or not. I can'tbelieve it was because he made the announcement
on x and the post was putup at four twenty pm, which is
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kind of cheeky, But in anyevent, we don't know what their recommendation
is. However, Bloomberg News gottheir hands on a letter from Health and
Human Services to the DEA. It'sseparate from this report or review, whatever
you want to talk about. Ifthere was a letter to the DEA that
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did recommend moving marijuana to Schedule three, so instead of being next to LSD
and heroin, it would be nextto ketamine and anabolic steroids and think things
that basically are not flat out illegalno matter what at the federal level,
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which is what marijuana still is.Marijuana businesses love it. They want this
to happen so bad because it willsave them tax dollars because it's a Schedule
one controlled substance. If you're runninga marijuana dispensary or a company that makes
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cannabis products, you cannot deduct anyof your business expenses, so you end
up paying a lot more in taxes. Some marijuana businesses pay like eighty percent
income tax rates. That would change. Also, it will be easier for
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these businesses to do their banking allbecause of the difference between being Schedule one
and Schedule three, because Schedule threesays, hey, you can't sell it
at the corner store, but youknow, doctors can prescribe it and it
has many legitimate uses, whereas Scheduleone means the government doesn't think it has
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any legitimate use and therefore it's flatout illegal. There isn't you know.
We know that there's that drug merinol, which does have THC in it,
that you can get prescribed under verynarrow circumstances, but marijuana itself, forget
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it. Despite the fact that thirtyeight states now well over half of the
states in this country have approved marijuanafor medicinal use, and I think we're
up to for recreational use. Ibelieve we're up to twenty four states plus
of course DC that allow it tobe consumed recreationally. Now, not all
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of these states allow sales retail sales, but nonetheless, you can see the
trend in the country. Also,every time they take a poll, a
significant majority of Americans say marijuana youshould be legal. In fact, Gallup
just released a survey last month seventypercent marijuana should be legal. That doesn't
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mean, though, here's the thing. So it doesn't mean marijuana should be
like a candy bar where you cango into any place and get it and
it still will be controlled as acontrolled substance. It's just that right now
the category that it's in makes itimpossible for the states to have fully the
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kinds of programs at businesses and taxrevenue that they would like to have.
Not everybody likes this. There isanother side to this whole story. There's
a group called Smart Approaches to Marijuana, and their president, Kevin Sabath,
said he opposes dropping down the classificationof the drug. And he said,
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well, and I don't think thethings he's saying are factually wrong. He
said, we're gonna have more commercialization, we're gonna have more marketing, we're
gonna have more glamorizations. That part, I'm not so sure, but sure
because they'll be more discussion commercially aboutmarijuana if this happens. And he says
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it's bad because it's gonna send themessage that it's harmless, Well, I
don't know. Just talking about cigarettessend the message that they're harmless. Does
alcohol advertising send the message that it'sharmless? He don't. I mean they
don't dwell, they don't dwell onthe risks. But I'm not so sure
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that just talking about something is thesame thing as saying, oh, there's
no downside to it. And thereis some research coming out that there can
perhaps be some downside to using marijuana. This new study was published in the
New England Journal of Medicine that saidmarijuana use accounts for ten percent of all
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drug related er visits in the UnitedStates. Okay, we also know that
in the world of psychology psychiatry thereare seven separate recognized disorders related to the
use of cannabis. For example,there's cannabis induced anxiety disorder, or maybe
you have cannabis induced psychotic disorder,or possibly you have cannabis induce sleep disorder
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or cannabis induced delirium, and regularold cannabis use disorder. You know,
you use too much pot in itand it creates problems for you in your
life. I think most people understandthat marijuana has the same risks. They
might not be exactly the same typeof risk, but they have the same
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kinds of risks that alcohol does andcigarettes do, and in some and in
some ways that gambling does. Interms of becoming habituated to it and taking
it from schedule one to schedule three. It's a massive, massive change,
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but it is very much not thesame thing as saying, oh, marijuana
is just free and easy and legaleverywhere. Now, we have a guest,
very happy to speak to this gentleman. He is the aviation analyst for
iHeartRadio and Fox News. Also,this is a separate thing that we won't
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be talking about too much, butthe president of day Trade Fun and you
can find out all about him atJim Ratlift dot com. R A t
l I f F. Because whyis the website called that, because that's
his name. Ladies and gentlemen,Jay Rathfliffe, welcome, mckaafiser, Very
pleasure, Good morning to you.All right, thank you for coming on
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now as an aviation analyst. ThisI think has been a bumper crop year
for you and the airline industry.Do you want to start with the fact
that it seems now everybody thinks theairlines stink? Well, I think we've
discovered that before this year, Wayne, but you're right, it's getting to
the point where we're hearing about itmore and I am thrilled each time I'm
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on this station any other stations acrossthe country. One of the things I
keep hammering is that if we reallywant airlines to treat us better, then
we've got to do battle with airlines. And by that I mean if we
have a complaint against a carrier,the last thing we should do is complain
to the airline. They can ignoreus. But if you go to the
Department of Transportation website doot dot gov, you can fill out an online complaint
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where the dot goes to the airlineline on our behalf saying here's the complaint,
please respond, please copy us in, and I can tell you the
airlines hate this. I spent decadesin the airline industry. At anytime I'm
on a national show and I'm talkingabout dot dot gub, my airline friends
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call me and say, Jay,shut up. Those complaints take too much
time. It's something that costs usmoney to do, and just stop talking
about it. And I'm not goingto because if they treated us better,
then we wouldn't have to complain.But here's the issue. The government looks
at those complaint numbers as a barometerof how the airlines are treating us.
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Many years ago, the DOT wouldget between twelve and fifteen thousand complaints a
year, So the next year,if they got thirteen thousand complaints, they
would say, oh, airlines,you're treating us better because the complaints are
going down. And of course I'min the back of the room, screaming,
losing my mind, thinking, howcan we base something like the idea
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of how airlines are treating us ona metric that most people aren't even aware
of. Well, last year wehad I don't know forty some thousand complaints
have come into the DOT because ofpeople now complaining about airline service, and
that's one of the reasons we're seeingthe airlines held more accountable because the government's
fully aware of exactly how bad itis, how bad it's getting, and
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those complaints need to continue. Whenif it's a current issue or a past
one, is there a law thatrequires the airlines to reply to these complaints?
When the DOT goes to the airlineand says, hey, we're getting
this complaint, you need to respondand let us see us. Is that
because it's actually legally required or isit because the airlines are not willing to
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just blow off the DOT? Well, the DOT is what sets the rules
the Federal Aviation Administration as well,and the idea is the dot. If
they don't get a response in atimely fashion, they're going to ask more
questions. It's going to take moretime, more manpower, and it's going
to cause the airlines further grief,which you know, I love it when
the airlines complain about something we're doing, because they put the screws to us
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so often that it's just unbelievable,and you know, we no longer enjoy
air travel. We endure it.And it's almost a reality show of just
how much can these people take becauseyou constantly are seeing stories of how they're
cramming more people onto airplanes. Seatsare getting smaller, you have airfares that
are going up, and oh yeah, if you're not there at a certain
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time, they'll leave you, clearyour seat to a stand by, which
has happened for years. But it'sjust gotten to the point where it's getting
worse, and it's getting worse ata rapid pace. And the scariest part,
ten years from now, we couldlook back at today as the good
old days. And if that doesn'tscary it, I don't know what does
that Just scared the crap out ofme. Actually, oh, good lord,
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we're headed in that direction. No, uh, what about safety?
A pretty safe this year, Nomishaps, no near misses, everybody's cool.
Well, we're kind of having morenear misses than we should. In
fact, the FAA has reported nineteennear misses, and by that I mean
two airplanes that could eventually occupy thesame airspace. Bad news. And because
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of the nineteen that we've had reported, and I believe there's more than that,
that's at a seven year high.And one of the things that's concerning
is when you look at the causesfor some of these near misses, where
you have an airplane about to takeoff and another airplane cleared to land on
the theme runway, you have airtraffic controller and pilot miscommunication. There's some
technology issues at play. Sometimes it'san experience issue in the tower or in
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the cockpit. And during a timewhen we're enjoying the safest era ever of
commercial jet travel, which is whatwe're enjoying now, the idea that we
could have an accident that could leadto injuries or fatalities based on mental mistakes
is just unacceptable, and the FAAis trying to put some additional heat on
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the airlines air traffic controllers, saying, look, we need to do what
we can now. Sometimes air trafficcontrollers are overwork. Sometimes the pilots are
overworked, and obviously that can leadto mistakes. They can put passengers into
harm's way. But you know theother thing is it's air traffic controllers.
Many years ago, the FAA wantedto become more inclusive. They wanted to
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make it easier for people because that'sthe fair thing to do. So they
lowered sarcasm here, they lowered theentry requirements considerably for people to become an
air traffic controller. So I hopeone of the things that they look at
is they dive deep into these isare some of these accident near accidents occurring
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or taking place because of the factthat we don't have the experience level or
the right kind of people at theright kind of jobs. Look, I
don't want us to lower the baron pilots, mechanics, flight attendants or
air traffic controllers. Everybody needs tobe at the top of their game.
If it's a man a woman,I don't care the color, I don't
care anything other than the job.That they can do when we start pivoting
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and trying to become more inclusive justbecause it feels like the right thing to
do. But then we start tomaybe have an issue where we have a
safety as an adverse reaction, Thento me, that's something that's just unacceptable.
And again, hopefully that's going tobe something that's going to be looked
at as well with everything else aswe dive deeper into the weeds on these
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near misses. You know, thatmakes the stuff I've been reading about how
they don't have enough air traffic controllershit differently because they lowered the bar to
get the job and they still don'thave enough. Well, you know,
the FAA did surprise me because thisyear they had a goal of hiring fifteen
hundred new air traffic controllers by thethirty first by Sunday, and that was
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an aggressive goal in January when theyset forth, they hired fifteen hundred by
September first. Wow. Actually high. Now, look, we've got to
get them trained, We've got along process before they're doing their job.
But next year they're hoping if theyhave some additional funding where they can hire
even more. And I like thatbecause then you don't have the issue of
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a lot of these air traffic controllersworking extra shifts, or perhaps being exhausted
at work, or whatever else mightbe the issue. Now, there was
a story if you don't feel badenough already from the New York Times that
talked about some of these air trafficcontrollers that are so stressed because of this,
they're turning to substances alcohol, drugs, other types of things, causing
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some times where some of these peopleare showing up at work under the influence
of some of these things. Sothere's a lot of different moving parts here
that are going to have to beaddressed and addressed quickly because the demand for
travel continues to grow. We're thinkingworldwide it's going to double in the next
ten years. So if we haveissues now, they need to be addressed
and addressed quickly because it's only goingto get worse from a staffing standpoint,
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And we're finally seeing the kind ofthe pivot turn just a bit with regards
to some additional personnel that the airlinesare hiring, both pilots and groundworkers,
where they're getting back to and evenpast some of the pre pandemic numbers.
So that's good news as well.So I mean, hopefully all this is
just going to continue to move inthe same direction and all we can do
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is get safer. But you wouldbe lying to yourself if you said that
we don't have some serious concerns rightnow, and those concerns need to be
addressed. I'm glad we're talking aboutthem. I just hope we get past
the talking point and we start tosee some changes that are needed to make
things easier certainly safer for the twopoint four million people or whatever it is
happened to be flying every single day. Well, I'm glad we were able
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to get some good news on thesituation. Jay Ratliffe, thank you so
much for coming on KFI. Peoplecan check you out at your website.
J. Ratliff, R. A. T. L I S S dot
Com aviation analysts for iHeartRadio. Thankyou, sir, Always my pleasure.
Right we'll talk to you again maybesoon. Male theft and service problems.
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Male theft has been with us sincethere was mail, since people were robbing
the dude with the bags on theback of the horse of the Pony Express.
But in some communities it's really,really, really getting out of hand,
And that's why we talked about thisearlier on the show, that they've
put in these ten thousand high security, high tech mail collection boxes that they
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say are designed to make it muchmore difficult for criminals to break in there
and get the stuff. They willnot say what's inside there, They will
not say what they have done tothe design so that it works that way,
but they say that it does.And I guess we'll find out in
a few months when we look atthe rates of mail theft. We know
one thing that happens is you've gotthese special keys that your postal carrier has
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and they get robbed of those keys, and now that person can open up
any mailbox, pretty much any gangbox at your apartment building, those blue
mailboxes, those arrow keys. Iremember them being called arrow keys because we
used to see cases all at times, people getting popped and they would be
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found with a bunch of stolen mailand an arrow key. I don't know
if they still call them that.The other thing is the bad service,
And I will tell you what.For a couple three weeks recently, my
mail was delivered after nine pm,sometimes as late as eleven PM, because
I'd be in bed already, andI'd hear the sound of the postal truck
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going around the street dropping off themail, and I didn't like it.
I don't like it. I don'tlike the mail coming that late, because
do you get out of bed andget it or do you leave it in
their own overnight. In my case, we don't have locked you know,
we have regular suburban mailboxes, andit's a totally safe place. I don't
really think somebody would steal it.But I didn't really like thinking about it.
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And then all of a sudden,the mail's now coming at a more
reasonable hour. And apparently because ofstaffing shortages, people being out, sick
and so forth, there were certainroutes that were not even getting delivered every
day. And people definitely are noticingthis kind of thing. Now, how
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about some good news. Some goodnews is they really are trying to make
things better at the post office.And I know the current Postmaster General,
Lewis de Joy is the controversial figure, but he is in a year three
of a ten year plan to modernizethe post office. It's a forty billion
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dollar plan and it should make yourservice better. And this also designed to
help the post office compete more effectivelyagainst ups and Amazon. And so,
for example, it used to beat post office, the mail would be
in these in these bins in acage, and the employees have to go
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in there and unload these cages fullof all the packages and everything and walk
them around to go to the areafor the for the postal carrier to put
their route together. Very inefficient kindof backbreaking work. And now the new
idea is you have this big longconveyor belt and it scans every piece of
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mail and then it knows where itneeds to go, which bin for the
carrier it needs to go to,and it just boom boom boom boom boom
puts it where it needs to go. And that way the workers can check
to make sure that, for example, that a package could still fall off
of this conveyor belt and they're thereto put it on. And sometimes the
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label is not really readable or scannableand they're there to step in. But
it's not people lugging this stuff allover the place all morning. It's mostly
automated with scanning technology. I didn'tknow this. In some post offices there
was no designated place for your postalcarrier to get ready for their route.
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They just found someplace that happened tobe available at the moment, and now
under this plan, designated labeled stationsfor the letter carriers to get ready to
deliver the mail to you. Theyalso have better scanners themselves. Little they
look like a smartphone. They're notas clunky to carry around. The GPS
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in them is better, and they'remore user friendly for doing the timekeeping.
And they're making the post office justa nicer place to work esthetically, better
lighting, they're paying them, they'reputting nice floors in the in the bathrooms,
they're upgrading the lunch rooms to havemore seating, to have refrigerators.
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Some I don't know if you've everbeen behind the counter at a post office.
A lot of these post offices havebeen dismal places to work, and
they're trying to do something about thatas well. It's KFI AM six forty
live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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Catch my Show Monday through Friday sixam to nine am, and anytime
on demand on the iHeartRadio app.