January 5, 2026 • 29 mins
(January 05, 2026)
U.S. plan to ‘run’ Venezuela clouded in confusion and uncertainty. 'Giving up' on homeownership leads to riskier investments and less effort at work, study says. Billionaire tax proposal sparks soul-searching for Californians. GPS systems are vulnerable to jamming attacks that could devastate the economy.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, KFI AM six forty Bill Handle here as we
start the new year. It's Monday morning, January fifth, and
you figure, all right, it takes a couple of days
they get things moving.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Huh man, what a way to start the new year.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And of course I'm talking about what happened in Venezuela
where United States States, the US Special Forces and military
forces went into in a dazzling display of military prowess,
went in to Caracas into a well fortified, very well
(00:45):
fortified home on a military base in which Nicholas Maduro
and his wife lived and grabbed him, just straight out
grabbed him, threw him on a helicopter when they hadn't
flew out to warship that was in the Caribbean off
the Venezuela coast, and brought him to New York where
(01:07):
he is right now sitting and on his way to
be arraigned. And that's going to happen in a couple
of hours. He's going to be arraigned in the United States. Now, boy,
are there some moving pieces here. The thing that's really
knocking everybody out on this one is what the President
said during his press conference, and that is we the
(01:30):
United States running Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
We are running the country now.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
When he said that, I sort of looked and I thought,
was that a throwaway line? And I think to some
extent it must have been. Now, the planning militarily was
over months and months, even to the point where the
special forces that actually went in and extracted him or
kidnapped him. According to the detractors, they had even built
(01:58):
a model home of where he lived, anew room by room,
where the family was, where he was, where his bedroom was,
where he and his wife were sleeping one thirty in
the morning when he was grabbed. Then the issue becomes,
and this is a huge issue that is being asked
like crazy, because now everybody's had a chance to sit
(02:20):
back for a couple of days and look at this.
At first, it was just looking at analyzing what happened,
which was extraordinary. I mean, helicopters flying in off of
the warships and you had special forces that actually went
into his house grabbed him.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
It was an attack.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
No American lives were lost, probably about eighty Venezuelan lives
were lost. You had, first of all, the aircraft go
in one hundred and fifty of them, take out air defenses,
take out communications networks, and then went in and grabbed them. Okay,
so everybody talked about how extraordinary that was, and boy
is it. You know, it was said by the administration.
(03:04):
I don't think anybody disagreed. Only the United States could
pull this off. No other country in the world could
probably do this. And as Marco Rubio or Secretary of
State anothers said, only this president would can ever do this.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
And you know, to that extent, would any other president
do this? I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
The big issue is whether actually two issues here or
three or four, But.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
One is who is running the country right now.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The administration is saying we the administration, we are running
the country.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
No one knows what that means. The person who was
just sworn in as president.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Is the vice president who the Supreme Court just swore
in as interim president, who at first we were told
by Donald Trump Marco Rubio that she had agreed to
cooperate with the States is going to make the transition smooth. Well,
you look at her on TV and what she said,
(04:06):
no chance this arrest was illegal. Demand of the immediate
return of Maduro and said we will not let the
United States take over the country. Which I don't know
how the United States has taken over the country.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
It grabbed the president.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Now, who's left everybody else, who's running Venezuela, everybody who
was running Venezuela. I mean, the only person gone is
the president. And let's say we lose a president. Well,
the government is still there. The people that are running
the various agencies are still there, the technocrats are still there.
(04:48):
And that's the case here and so and what does
Venezuela do now? The military in Venezuela saw a press
conference of these military leaders all lined up on this table,
not looking very happy on my dad, and they talked
about how they were in solidarity with Maduro and how
(05:12):
we think this is illegal and we will not let
anybody invade our sovereignty even though it all happened. Now,
what's the next step is the United States is saying
we're going.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
To run you people. What are the people of Venezuela
do And what does that mean again?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
In terms of running it, I mean you've got major
let's say you have the fence industry who runs it.
United States brings in somebody. I mean literally all that
was taken out. Who was taken out was the president.
The country still survives, and so the President has said
we're going to run it now.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Why Well, the big.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Reason is he said is because of oil, is that
we were there also because of drugs. Now, the drugs
issue is kind of interesting because the President talked about
how the hundreds of thousands of Americans have died because
the fentanyl poisoning. Fentanyl does not come out out of Venezuela.
Cocaine comes out of Venezuela. And I don't know how
(06:15):
many hundreds of thousands of people have odd on cocaine.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Having been.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
A light user of cocaine in my earlier years, okay,
a moderate user of cocaine during my earlier years, Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I was stoned every single day on.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Cocaine for four years before I went into drug rehab.
But the thought of overdosing was simply not part of
the conversation.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
So that's one issue. The other issue that.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
The President pointed out is that he is, in fact,
or Moduro was head of this cartel, or he was
part of this narco terrorism cartel, which I think is
absolutely true. And we're going to see what happens when
he will be tried, and he will be for all
those counts, and I'll share with you some of the
(07:06):
counts that he is being charged with and is being
arraigned nine o'clock our time this morning. And the other
issue is the oil. This is the big one, the oil.
And the president mentioned oil. I don't know how many
dozen times.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
What he has not mentioned is returning the country to democracy.
There hasn't been a democracy in Venezuela for twenty five years.
Hugo Chavez was elected as the first communist socialist president
of Venezuela. That was a legitimate election, and then it
(07:41):
became a dictatorship and Hugo Chavez, having died of cancers,
Maduro handpicks Madurea, who then helps to destroy the country
which they have. And the oil industry, which used to
be controlled by the United States. The major oil companies
were invald and had almost unique abilities. And we're the
(08:06):
only companies there that really had contracts with the Venezuela oil.
And when the president says this is our oil, there
is some truth that to that, depending on how you
view it. Well, he said we're going to bring back
the oil industry. We want the oil. It's our oil.
We want it all back, and that's one of the
big reasons we went. And where's this going to go?
(08:28):
Where's it going to go? So when we come back,
I want to follow that up a little bit and
talk about the future of what's going to happen in
this country of Venezuela, and it actually has a chance
to return to where it was now. Probably the most
controversial part of what is going on with this is
everybody knows that he is, that is Maduro, part of
(08:51):
this narco terrorists organization we embedded and actually part of
the cartel. Where As president can you imagine the power
he has. He was issuing diplomatic passports, he was helping
the drug trade, he was being responsible for so much
of the money and the drugs being diverted and the
(09:14):
drugs being brought to the United States. I mean, the
power that a president has is extraordinary. And so we've
known for a long time. And President Trump, to his credit,
said this guy is not going to stay in he
is a threat to the United States, which I buy now.
Very few presidents would then order what happened on the
argument that Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, said the United
(09:38):
States is the only country could pull this off, and
we sort of agree with that. And certainly Donald Trump
is the only president who could do this, while the
only president who would do this, and it was wildly
successful this rescue attempt. Now, Jimmy Carter tried in the
seventies to rescue the hostages in Tehran, which failed miserably.
(10:01):
American lives were lost. So a lot of the success
is really important, and this one was hugely successful. Now
the president, our president has said this is all about oil,
and I think the drug part is sort of minimal
compared to the oil. Our president is a businessman. There's
(10:22):
a lot of oil in Venezuela and the biggest oil
reserves on the planet, and the infrastructure of oil has
disappeared at the pumping and refining oil has literally disappeared
in Venezuela, especially when Chaves came into power and the
entire oil industry was nationalized. Up to that point, it
(10:44):
was the major oil companies in the United States, Chevron
I think, being the biggest that actually ran the oil industry,
extracted the oil and then shipped it all over the world,
primarily to the United States. That ability to function and
deal with the oil is complicated stuff, and it takes
(11:04):
a lot of money to do that, and it takes
a lot of expertise.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Well.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
With the nationalization, oil companies are gone, the hierarchy is gone,
the technocrats are gone, the ability to maintain the oil
infrastructure is gone, and it went into the toilet. No
money is being spent or was being spent. And whatever
income that comes off the oil was used for the Venezuela,
(11:32):
Venezuelan economy, and that was the major revenue that Venezuela
had and it decreases, decreases, decreases, and today the oil
sale and the oil production in Venezuela is twenty percent
of what it was prior to Chavez, which is why
we saw very little movement in the price of oil
(11:54):
when it can you imagine Saudi Arabia all of a
sudden being cut off and no oil is being sold
are distributed.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
What would that do to the world market.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Even the Emirates create any of those countries, it will
be massive. With Venezuela, it's no big deal because there's
so little oil being produced right now out of Venezuela
and being sold and the president has enormous power because
not only is Maduro gone, the president can shut down
(12:27):
the sale of oil. President Trump and the American military
can literally shut down all sale of oil.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And it looks like he has.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
There's some minor, minor sales still being allowed, strangely enough
to China. So here's the big issue that everybody is spinning.
President Trump says, we in the United States, we're running
Venezuela and we will continue to run Venezuela. And no
one has any idea what that means. Nobody has any idea.
(13:02):
No one has any idea who the president of Venezuela is.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Now in Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
The vice president, Dulce Rodriguez, was by the Supreme Court
of Venezuela sworn in as the interim president. You have
the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize who ran
for president, and she in the primaries won overwhelmingly, and
then she had to I mean, the government went after
(13:30):
her and she had to go into hiding.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
And that was the primary.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And so what happened is her party runs a proxy
for president who.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Wins with seventy percent.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Of the vote, which Maduro immediately said, I won. Set
aside the vote and it declared himself a dictator, which
he had been anyway. Venezuela was the wealthiest country in
South America. Now it is among the poorest countries in
(14:03):
South America. Thirty million Venezuelans, twenty five percent walked out
the door. They just couldn't take it anymore. Inflation is rampant.
Very few people are happy campers and have good income. Well,
if you're a government official, yeah, if you're running an agency,
because the corruption is so great. In Venezuela and Caracas,
(14:25):
the capital used to be one of the most gorgeous
cities in the world. Broad avenues, beautiful home homes, architecture,
just gorgeous. And it's all fallen to hell in a handbasket.
So we at this point no idea who the president is.
(14:47):
You have a military. The leadership in the military is arguing,
well we are. You have the vice president saying nope,
I am. You have the winner of the lab selection
saying nope, I am.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And at this point no one knows.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
The only thing we do know is that it's Maduro
that's been taken out and that's it. Everybody else is
still in place, and it is his regime that is still.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Running the country.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
The now president, who has just been sworn in, has
said Maduro is still the president. We demand the immediate
return of President Maduro, which please give me a break.
So how much power does the United States have because remember,
once the capture of Maduro happened, all military forces were
(15:39):
taken out. We don't have any boots on the ground,
although the president said he's not adverse to that, which
again there is the political issue too. Didn't President Trump
run on no foreign wars that we are not going
to get involved in any foreign either wars or international relations.
(16:00):
We just want out. Well, it's changed. And then my
favorite interview that happened over the weekend, and this was
Jim Jordan, who was the think as head of the
Armed Services Committee of House of Representatives. He was interviewed
and was asked this question. We understand that the president
(16:24):
of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, was captured and is now waiting trial.
You the president of the United States pardoned the president
of Honduras who was convicted of exactly the same charges
that Maduro is facing. Why was he pardoned? And you
(16:47):
know what the answer was, I trust the President. I
trust him? Okay, you trust him? How about the fact
that the former president of Honduras was part I trust
what the President says and does.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Wow. Oh, there's gonna be.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Plenty more as we go through the next few days,
to say the least.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Okay, now there's something else going on.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
I want to switch to another topic, and that is
once again California taxes and money. A few years ago
I interviewed a couple of times Richard Branson, who is
head of all the Virgin companies, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Virgin Radio.
(17:36):
He had for a while Virgin Records, where he started
and he's British, and we talked about how when he
started his business, being a millionaire at nineteen, by the way,
extraordinary story. He started with a rock and roll magazine
and his office was a phone box, you know those
tetra looking phone booths that they have in England that
(17:57):
are read.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Down at the corner of the street.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Because he grew up in an era where phones at
home were not particularly in massive numbers.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So that's where he started.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And we talked about the British philosophy of wealth, and
that is, for some reason, the super wealthy in Britain
there's something morally wrong without having.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
That kind of money.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Anybody who has that kind of money, who has made
that kind of money, is somehow morally just not at
the same level of people who've inherited or inherited titles, etc.
The United States has taken a different path. There is
nothing morally wrong with being a billionaire. What's morally wrong
(18:47):
is not taxing those billionaires. In other words, let's say
you have a socialist government like in New York is
now going has now a socialist mayor a democratic socialist
some mom, donnie.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
The issue is not stopping.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
These billionaires from having money, Oh no, No, the issue
is looking them, looking at them as a bank to
fund the public services. And that's exactly what's happening here
in California. There is a proposed tax coming up. It's
a going to be an initiative that's theoretically going to
(19:25):
be on November's ballot that there will be a one
time five percent wealth tax on billionaires and that could
raise one hundred billion dollars for healthcare. And the argument is,
is this going to drive billionaires out of the state.
We're only talking a couple hundred people, but a couple
(19:47):
hundred people who are billionaires. And we're not talking about
people that are you know, one point one billion dollars
or one point two billion dollars. We're talking about billionaires
that have lots of billions of doll Let's tax them
to pay for health care. And why would we do that?
Is it because we just don't like billionaires? No, this
(20:11):
is all about health care. Health Care is for the
most part disappearing under the big beautiful Bill. The money
that went to went to health care programs has been decimated,
has been ripped out of the system. If you look
(20:34):
at Well for example, not Medicare, but Medicare, it's the
money is simply not there anymore. Services to the poor
don't exist anymore. They have been decimated. So here's what
California does. Because California receives a ton of federal money.
(20:57):
Keep in mind, the President of the United States hates
California and anything he can do to slash any money
federal money going into California is going to do. And
so across the board though it's across the board and
across the country, money is simply not there anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Where's it going.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
It's going to the military, it's going to enforcement of
the border. It certainly isn't going to healthcare.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Or certainly education.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So here is the ballot that says there will be
a five percent wealth attax on billionaires. Even Democrats are
split on this one. Of course Senator Bernie Sanders, who
is the closest Senator to a communist that we have,
not that he is, but he's touching it.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
He supports it, and you know it's against it.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Against it is Governor Gavin Newsom who is warning us
that if you look at the rest of the country
and you look at California and you're taxing billionaires to
this extent.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
People are going to leave.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Now we've said that over and over again. People are
going to leave, and companies have left. There are major
corporations that have left our population. The same. The income
coming in the state, well, it is so volatile that
there's really no way to even anticipate or prepare at
(22:33):
all for income coming in. I'll explain that when we
come back and talk about who's in favor, who's against,
and whether it makes any sense or not, and is
it even fair because the word always is used by
those who love taxes as your fair share and this
(22:54):
is only a modest tax. You know, they could tax
you with eighty percent and that would be a modest tax.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
As I have said before.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And most people know that a huge amount of services
are paid for by the Feds. I mean the massive Well,
the way the government works, our government is income tax
goes into the federal government and the money to pay
for state and county governments and in a major part
(23:25):
is then filtered down from the from the Feds.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
To the states.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
So this proposed one time five percent well tax on
billionaires that has a lot of political implications having to
do with California. Now do we have a whole lot
of billionaires. We have about two hundred of them. Although
the proponents of this, of this bill, of this attempt
(23:56):
to earn or to get a whole lot of money.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
They're saying they could raise one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
And the problem is is you've got even Democrats who
love taxing people are saying this may be the last straw.
I mean, how many people are going to leave? And
when billionaires leave, that is a big hit problem with California.
Why this would make so much sense is California is
(24:26):
a state that gets its revenue from the most part
by income tax. The top twenty percent of Californians pay
eighty percent of the entire budget, if not more. Why
because our taxes are the highest in the country and
California relies on people who make money, and there are
(24:48):
a lot of people who make money in California. The
problem is when money is being derived from income taxes
and it's the wealthy who pay the most of those
income taxes.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
You, well, is really volatile.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I mean it depends on the stock market that goes up,
that goes down, depends on property values that goes up,
that goes down. It depends on the wealth of companies
and investments. Those move around, which is why some wealthy,
wealthy people don't pay any taxes at all, because they've
lost money in the previous years.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
And the bottom line is, I don't care how rich
you are.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
If you've lost money, do you pay income tax on
money that you have lost?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Well, the answer in our tax system is no.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
So what this bill does is say We're going to
put charge five percent on top of the income tax
on any billionaire all your assets, five percent, which is
a ton of money. So here is the problem is
that does California keep on taxing. You bet it does, because,
(26:00):
as proponents of taxes say, you have to pay your
fair share. You know, for example, the people that make
north of a million dollars a year and that's you know,
that's really healthy money. Although a lot of Californians do
you know, what's your fair share? How about this fifty
two percent of your income? Is that your fair share?
(26:23):
Most people think that a reasonable amount of income tax
should be about a third thirty five percent. Very few
people will say half of your money goes to the government.
In other words, you're working for the government to write
up until July first, and people are going to leave.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
We think so far they haven't left.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
As taxes have gone up up up, and we talk
about businesses leaving, a lot of them have. But when
you look at the reality, when you look at the numbers,
not so many. And who is who wants all of
this money? Well, how about the union, the Service Employees
International Union and United Healthcare Workers. They want the money
(27:12):
to go to the state because they rely on money
through the healthcare system. So they now are going to
put this proposal on the ballot.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
But before they do.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
They need eight hundred and seventy five thousand registered voters
submitted before June twenty four. Now to get eight hundred
and seventy five thousand registered voters, you have to rease
about a third more. So it's going to be pretty
much north of a million registered voters. It's happened before
on taxes, but it was shut down either. Governor Gavin
(27:51):
Newsom vetoed the bills, which by the way, he is
not in favor of this at all. Imagine this a
liberal Democratic governor saying no to taxes, and the voters
have shut this down because it's a simple premise. Do
(28:11):
we keep on taxing people that have money? And do
we tax them up and up and up? Is there
a point? Is there a point of critical mass where Okay,
I've had it, can't take it anymore. And billionaires produce
a fair chunk of money. How do we know because
(28:33):
the proponents of this bill, this initiative are saying that
this five percent one time tax can raise one hundred
billion dollars. That's how much billionaires pay in taxes or
how much money comes into the state from billionaires.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Okay, this is KFI AM six forty. You've been listening
to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, KFI AM six forty Bill Handle here as we
start the new year. It's Monday morning, January fifth, and
you figure, all right, it takes a couple of days
they get things moving.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
Huh man, what a way to start the new year.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
And of course I'm talking about what happened in Venezuela
where United States States, the US Special Forces and military
forces went into in a dazzling display of military prowess,
went in to Caracas into a well fortified, very well
(00:45):
fortified home on a military base in which Nicholas Maduro
and his wife lived and grabbed him, just straight out
grabbed him, threw him on a helicopter when they hadn't
flew out to warship that was in the Caribbean off
the Venezuela coast, and brought him to New York where
(01:07):
he is right now sitting and on his way to
be arraigned. And that's going to happen in a couple
of hours. He's going to be arraigned in the United States. Now, boy,
are there some moving pieces here. The thing that's really
knocking everybody out on this one is what the President
said during his press conference, and that is we the
(01:30):
United States running Venezuela.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
We are running the country now.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
When he said that, I sort of looked and I thought,
was that a throwaway line? And I think to some
extent it must have been. Now, the planning militarily was
over months and months, even to the point where the
special forces that actually went in and extracted him or
kidnapped him. According to the detractors, they had even built
(01:58):
a model home of where he lived, anew room by room,
where the family was, where he was, where his bedroom was,
where he and his wife were sleeping one thirty in
the morning when he was grabbed. Then the issue becomes,
and this is a huge issue that is being asked
like crazy, because now everybody's had a chance to sit
(02:20):
back for a couple of days and look at this.
At first, it was just looking at analyzing what happened,
which was extraordinary. I mean, helicopters flying in off of
the warships and you had special forces that actually went
into his house grabbed him.
Speaker 1 (02:40):
It was an attack.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
No American lives were lost, probably about eighty Venezuelan lives
were lost. You had, first of all, the aircraft go
in one hundred and fifty of them, take out air defenses,
take out communications networks, and then went in and grabbed them. Okay,
so everybody talked about how extraordinary that was, and boy
is it. You know, it was said by the administration.
(03:04):
I don't think anybody disagreed. Only the United States could
pull this off. No other country in the world could
probably do this. And as Marco Rubio or Secretary of
State anothers said, only this president would can ever do this.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
And you know, to that extent, would any other president
do this? I don't think so.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
The big issue is whether actually two issues here or
three or four, But.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
One is who is running the country right now.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
The administration is saying we the administration, we are running
the country.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
No one knows what that means. The person who was
just sworn in as president.
Speaker 2 (03:45):
Is the vice president who the Supreme Court just swore
in as interim president, who at first we were told
by Donald Trump Marco Rubio that she had agreed to
cooperate with the States is going to make the transition smooth. Well,
you look at her on TV and what she said,
(04:06):
no chance this arrest was illegal. Demand of the immediate
return of Maduro and said we will not let the
United States take over the country. Which I don't know
how the United States has taken over the country.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
It grabbed the president.
Speaker 2 (04:23):
Now, who's left everybody else, who's running Venezuela, everybody who
was running Venezuela. I mean, the only person gone is
the president. And let's say we lose a president. Well,
the government is still there. The people that are running
the various agencies are still there, the technocrats are still there.
(04:48):
And that's the case here and so and what does
Venezuela do now? The military in Venezuela saw a press
conference of these military leaders all lined up on this table,
not looking very happy on my dad, and they talked
about how they were in solidarity with Maduro and how
(05:12):
we think this is illegal and we will not let
anybody invade our sovereignty even though it all happened. Now,
what's the next step is the United States is saying
we're going.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
To run you people. What are the people of Venezuela
do And what does that mean again?
Speaker 2 (05:31):
In terms of running it, I mean you've got major
let's say you have the fence industry who runs it.
United States brings in somebody. I mean literally all that
was taken out. Who was taken out was the president.
The country still survives, and so the President has said
we're going to run it now.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Why Well, the big.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
Reason is he said is because of oil, is that
we were there also because of drugs. Now, the drugs
issue is kind of interesting because the President talked about
how the hundreds of thousands of Americans have died because
the fentanyl poisoning. Fentanyl does not come out out of Venezuela.
Cocaine comes out of Venezuela. And I don't know how
(06:15):
many hundreds of thousands of people have odd on cocaine.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
Having been.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
A light user of cocaine in my earlier years, okay,
a moderate user of cocaine during my earlier years, Okay.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
I was stoned every single day on.
Speaker 2 (06:33):
Cocaine for four years before I went into drug rehab.
But the thought of overdosing was simply not part of
the conversation.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
So that's one issue. The other issue that.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
The President pointed out is that he is, in fact,
or Moduro was head of this cartel, or he was
part of this narco terrorism cartel, which I think is
absolutely true. And we're going to see what happens when
he will be tried, and he will be for all
those counts, and I'll share with you some of the
(07:06):
counts that he is being charged with and is being
arraigned nine o'clock our time this morning. And the other
issue is the oil. This is the big one, the oil.
And the president mentioned oil. I don't know how many
dozen times.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (07:20):
What he has not mentioned is returning the country to democracy.
There hasn't been a democracy in Venezuela for twenty five years.
Hugo Chavez was elected as the first communist socialist president
of Venezuela. That was a legitimate election, and then it
(07:41):
became a dictatorship and Hugo Chavez, having died of cancers,
Maduro handpicks Madurea, who then helps to destroy the country
which they have. And the oil industry, which used to
be controlled by the United States. The major oil companies
were invald and had almost unique abilities. And we're the
(08:06):
only companies there that really had contracts with the Venezuela oil.
And when the president says this is our oil, there
is some truth that to that, depending on how you
view it. Well, he said we're going to bring back
the oil industry. We want the oil. It's our oil.
We want it all back, and that's one of the
big reasons we went. And where's this going to go?
(08:28):
Where's it going to go? So when we come back,
I want to follow that up a little bit and
talk about the future of what's going to happen in
this country of Venezuela, and it actually has a chance
to return to where it was now. Probably the most
controversial part of what is going on with this is
everybody knows that he is, that is Maduro, part of
(08:51):
this narco terrorists organization we embedded and actually part of
the cartel. Where As president can you imagine the power
he has. He was issuing diplomatic passports, he was helping
the drug trade, he was being responsible for so much
of the money and the drugs being diverted and the
(09:14):
drugs being brought to the United States. I mean, the
power that a president has is extraordinary. And so we've
known for a long time. And President Trump, to his credit,
said this guy is not going to stay in he
is a threat to the United States, which I buy now.
Very few presidents would then order what happened on the
argument that Marco Rubio, Secretary of State, said the United
(09:38):
States is the only country could pull this off, and
we sort of agree with that. And certainly Donald Trump
is the only president who could do this, while the
only president who would do this, and it was wildly
successful this rescue attempt. Now, Jimmy Carter tried in the
seventies to rescue the hostages in Tehran, which failed miserably.
(10:01):
American lives were lost. So a lot of the success
is really important, and this one was hugely successful. Now
the president, our president has said this is all about oil,
and I think the drug part is sort of minimal
compared to the oil. Our president is a businessman. There's
(10:22):
a lot of oil in Venezuela and the biggest oil
reserves on the planet, and the infrastructure of oil has
disappeared at the pumping and refining oil has literally disappeared
in Venezuela, especially when Chaves came into power and the
entire oil industry was nationalized. Up to that point, it
(10:44):
was the major oil companies in the United States, Chevron
I think, being the biggest that actually ran the oil industry,
extracted the oil and then shipped it all over the world,
primarily to the United States. That ability to function and
deal with the oil is complicated stuff, and it takes
(11:04):
a lot of money to do that, and it takes
a lot of expertise.
Speaker 1 (11:09):
Well.
Speaker 2 (11:09):
With the nationalization, oil companies are gone, the hierarchy is gone,
the technocrats are gone, the ability to maintain the oil
infrastructure is gone, and it went into the toilet. No
money is being spent or was being spent. And whatever
income that comes off the oil was used for the Venezuela,
(11:32):
Venezuelan economy, and that was the major revenue that Venezuela
had and it decreases, decreases, decreases, and today the oil
sale and the oil production in Venezuela is twenty percent
of what it was prior to Chavez, which is why
we saw very little movement in the price of oil
(11:54):
when it can you imagine Saudi Arabia all of a
sudden being cut off and no oil is being sold
are distributed.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
What would that do to the world market.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Even the Emirates create any of those countries, it will
be massive. With Venezuela, it's no big deal because there's
so little oil being produced right now out of Venezuela
and being sold and the president has enormous power because
not only is Maduro gone, the president can shut down
(12:27):
the sale of oil. President Trump and the American military
can literally shut down all sale of oil.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
And it looks like he has.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
There's some minor, minor sales still being allowed, strangely enough
to China. So here's the big issue that everybody is spinning.
President Trump says, we in the United States, we're running
Venezuela and we will continue to run Venezuela. And no
one has any idea what that means. Nobody has any idea.
(13:02):
No one has any idea who the president of Venezuela is.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
Now in Venezuela.
Speaker 2 (13:08):
The vice president, Dulce Rodriguez, was by the Supreme Court
of Venezuela sworn in as the interim president. You have
the woman who won the Nobel Peace Prize who ran
for president, and she in the primaries won overwhelmingly, and
then she had to I mean, the government went after
(13:30):
her and she had to go into hiding.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
And that was the primary.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
And so what happened is her party runs a proxy
for president who.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Wins with seventy percent.
Speaker 2 (13:43):
Of the vote, which Maduro immediately said, I won. Set
aside the vote and it declared himself a dictator, which
he had been anyway. Venezuela was the wealthiest country in
South America. Now it is among the poorest countries in
(14:03):
South America. Thirty million Venezuelans, twenty five percent walked out
the door. They just couldn't take it anymore. Inflation is rampant.
Very few people are happy campers and have good income. Well,
if you're a government official, yeah, if you're running an agency,
because the corruption is so great. In Venezuela and Caracas,
(14:25):
the capital used to be one of the most gorgeous
cities in the world. Broad avenues, beautiful home homes, architecture,
just gorgeous. And it's all fallen to hell in a handbasket.
So we at this point no idea who the president is.
(14:47):
You have a military. The leadership in the military is arguing,
well we are. You have the vice president saying nope,
I am. You have the winner of the lab selection
saying nope, I am.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
And at this point no one knows.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
The only thing we do know is that it's Maduro
that's been taken out and that's it. Everybody else is
still in place, and it is his regime that is still.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
Running the country.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
The now president, who has just been sworn in, has
said Maduro is still the president. We demand the immediate
return of President Maduro, which please give me a break.
So how much power does the United States have because remember,
once the capture of Maduro happened, all military forces were
(15:39):
taken out. We don't have any boots on the ground,
although the president said he's not adverse to that, which
again there is the political issue too. Didn't President Trump
run on no foreign wars that we are not going
to get involved in any foreign either wars or international relations.
(16:00):
We just want out. Well, it's changed. And then my
favorite interview that happened over the weekend, and this was
Jim Jordan, who was the think as head of the
Armed Services Committee of House of Representatives. He was interviewed
and was asked this question. We understand that the president
(16:24):
of Venezuela, Nicholas Maduro, was captured and is now waiting trial.
You the president of the United States pardoned the president
of Honduras who was convicted of exactly the same charges
that Maduro is facing. Why was he pardoned? And you
(16:47):
know what the answer was, I trust the President. I
trust him? Okay, you trust him? How about the fact
that the former president of Honduras was part I trust
what the President says and does.
Speaker 1 (17:05):
Wow. Oh, there's gonna be.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Plenty more as we go through the next few days,
to say the least.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
Okay, now there's something else going on.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
I want to switch to another topic, and that is
once again California taxes and money. A few years ago
I interviewed a couple of times Richard Branson, who is
head of all the Virgin companies, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Virgin Radio.
(17:36):
He had for a while Virgin Records, where he started
and he's British, and we talked about how when he
started his business, being a millionaire at nineteen, by the way,
extraordinary story. He started with a rock and roll magazine
and his office was a phone box, you know those
tetra looking phone booths that they have in England that
(17:57):
are read.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
Down at the corner of the street.
Speaker 2 (18:00):
Because he grew up in an era where phones at
home were not particularly in massive numbers.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So that's where he started.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
And we talked about the British philosophy of wealth, and
that is, for some reason, the super wealthy in Britain
there's something morally wrong without having.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
That kind of money.
Speaker 2 (18:26):
Anybody who has that kind of money, who has made
that kind of money, is somehow morally just not at
the same level of people who've inherited or inherited titles, etc.
The United States has taken a different path. There is
nothing morally wrong with being a billionaire. What's morally wrong
(18:47):
is not taxing those billionaires. In other words, let's say
you have a socialist government like in New York is
now going has now a socialist mayor a democratic socialist
some mom, donnie.
Speaker 1 (19:01):
The issue is not stopping.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
These billionaires from having money, Oh no, No, the issue
is looking them, looking at them as a bank to
fund the public services. And that's exactly what's happening here
in California. There is a proposed tax coming up. It's
a going to be an initiative that's theoretically going to
(19:25):
be on November's ballot that there will be a one
time five percent wealth tax on billionaires and that could
raise one hundred billion dollars for healthcare. And the argument is,
is this going to drive billionaires out of the state.
We're only talking a couple hundred people, but a couple
(19:47):
hundred people who are billionaires. And we're not talking about
people that are you know, one point one billion dollars
or one point two billion dollars. We're talking about billionaires
that have lots of billions of doll Let's tax them
to pay for health care. And why would we do that?
Is it because we just don't like billionaires? No, this
(20:11):
is all about health care. Health Care is for the
most part disappearing under the big beautiful Bill. The money
that went to went to health care programs has been decimated,
has been ripped out of the system. If you look
(20:34):
at Well for example, not Medicare, but Medicare, it's the
money is simply not there anymore. Services to the poor
don't exist anymore. They have been decimated. So here's what
California does. Because California receives a ton of federal money.
(20:57):
Keep in mind, the President of the United States hates
California and anything he can do to slash any money
federal money going into California is going to do. And
so across the board though it's across the board and
across the country, money is simply not there anymore.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Where's it going.
Speaker 2 (21:16):
It's going to the military, it's going to enforcement of
the border. It certainly isn't going to healthcare.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
Or certainly education.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
So here is the ballot that says there will be
a five percent wealth attax on billionaires. Even Democrats are
split on this one. Of course Senator Bernie Sanders, who
is the closest Senator to a communist that we have,
not that he is, but he's touching it.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
He supports it, and you know it's against it.
Speaker 2 (21:54):
Against it is Governor Gavin Newsom who is warning us
that if you look at the rest of the country
and you look at California and you're taxing billionaires to
this extent.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
People are going to leave.
Speaker 2 (22:12):
Now we've said that over and over again. People are
going to leave, and companies have left. There are major
corporations that have left our population. The same. The income
coming in the state, well, it is so volatile that
there's really no way to even anticipate or prepare at
(22:33):
all for income coming in. I'll explain that when we
come back and talk about who's in favor, who's against,
and whether it makes any sense or not, and is
it even fair because the word always is used by
those who love taxes as your fair share and this
(22:54):
is only a modest tax. You know, they could tax
you with eighty percent and that would be a modest tax.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
As I have said before.
Speaker 2 (23:03):
And most people know that a huge amount of services
are paid for by the Feds. I mean the massive Well,
the way the government works, our government is income tax
goes into the federal government and the money to pay
for state and county governments and in a major part
(23:25):
is then filtered down from the from the Feds.
Speaker 1 (23:28):
To the states.
Speaker 2 (23:30):
So this proposed one time five percent well tax on
billionaires that has a lot of political implications having to
do with California. Now do we have a whole lot
of billionaires. We have about two hundred of them. Although
the proponents of this, of this bill, of this attempt
(23:56):
to earn or to get a whole lot of money.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
They're saying they could raise one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
And the problem is is you've got even Democrats who
love taxing people are saying this may be the last straw.
I mean, how many people are going to leave? And
when billionaires leave, that is a big hit problem with California.
Why this would make so much sense is California is
(24:26):
a state that gets its revenue from the most part
by income tax. The top twenty percent of Californians pay
eighty percent of the entire budget, if not more. Why
because our taxes are the highest in the country and
California relies on people who make money, and there are
(24:48):
a lot of people who make money in California. The
problem is when money is being derived from income taxes
and it's the wealthy who pay the most of those
income taxes.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
You, well, is really volatile.
Speaker 2 (25:02):
I mean it depends on the stock market that goes up,
that goes down, depends on property values that goes up,
that goes down. It depends on the wealth of companies
and investments. Those move around, which is why some wealthy,
wealthy people don't pay any taxes at all, because they've
lost money in the previous years.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
And the bottom line is, I don't care how rich
you are.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
If you've lost money, do you pay income tax on
money that you have lost?
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Well, the answer in our tax system is no.
Speaker 2 (25:36):
So what this bill does is say We're going to
put charge five percent on top of the income tax
on any billionaire all your assets, five percent, which is
a ton of money. So here is the problem is
that does California keep on taxing. You bet it does, because,
(26:00):
as proponents of taxes say, you have to pay your
fair share. You know, for example, the people that make
north of a million dollars a year and that's you know,
that's really healthy money. Although a lot of Californians do
you know, what's your fair share? How about this fifty
two percent of your income? Is that your fair share?
(26:23):
Most people think that a reasonable amount of income tax
should be about a third thirty five percent. Very few
people will say half of your money goes to the government.
In other words, you're working for the government to write
up until July first, and people are going to leave.
Speaker 1 (26:44):
We think so far they haven't left.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
As taxes have gone up up up, and we talk
about businesses leaving, a lot of them have. But when
you look at the reality, when you look at the numbers,
not so many. And who is who wants all of
this money? Well, how about the union, the Service Employees
International Union and United Healthcare Workers. They want the money
(27:12):
to go to the state because they rely on money
through the healthcare system. So they now are going to
put this proposal on the ballot.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
But before they do.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
They need eight hundred and seventy five thousand registered voters
submitted before June twenty four. Now to get eight hundred
and seventy five thousand registered voters, you have to rease
about a third more. So it's going to be pretty
much north of a million registered voters. It's happened before
on taxes, but it was shut down either. Governor Gavin
(27:51):
Newsom vetoed the bills, which by the way, he is
not in favor of this at all. Imagine this a
liberal Democratic governor saying no to taxes, and the voters
have shut this down because it's a simple premise. Do
(28:11):
we keep on taxing people that have money? And do
we tax them up and up and up? Is there
a point? Is there a point of critical mass where Okay,
I've had it, can't take it anymore. And billionaires produce
a fair chunk of money. How do we know because
(28:33):
the proponents of this bill, this initiative are saying that
this five percent one time tax can raise one hundred
billion dollars. That's how much billionaires pay in taxes or
how much money comes into the state from billionaires.
Speaker 1 (28:54):
Okay, this is KFI AM six forty. You've been listening
to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (28:59):
Catch My Show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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