May 30, 2025 • 25 mins
(Friday 05/30/25)
Elon Musk announces exit from US government role. Group seeks to force election on L.A.’s hotel and airport wage hike. Did insurers collude to force homeowners onto state insurance plans? There are two blockbuster lawsuits.
Elon Musk announces exit from US government role. Group seeks to force election on L.A.’s hotel and airport wage hike. Did insurers collude to force homeowners onto state insurance plans? There are two blockbuster lawsuits.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Good morning, everybody, Bill Handle Here. It's a Friday morning,
May thirtieth, which means it's a foody Friday, and that's
from eight to a thirty. And then ask Handle anything
A thirty to nine Friday is always fun.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Elon Musk has left government and he has left behind chaos.
Now a couple things about Elon Musk. I mean, the
guy is a visionary. You don't get to be the
world's richest ban by accident. With SpaceX, he created a
way of going into space that heretofore never existed before.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I mean, the guy is just brilliant.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
He created the practical electric car with the Tesla, even
though the Tesla is a piece of crap as a car.
I had one for three minutes and I got rid
of it at a huge loss, and it's one of.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The best things I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
But on the other hand, in addition to him being
a visionary, he is also kind of nuts.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And we know that.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So the president who came into office believing there's a
tremendous amount of waste and fraud in government.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
And by the way, I don't disagree with him.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's hard to have a budget of what for trillion
dollars and not have waste and not have abuse with
three million employees. So he came in saying, we are
going to we are actually going to clean.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
This place up. And that is the United States government.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
And so Musk formally exits his role Wednesday, ending his
sojourn as not only contentious but generally unpopular of the
de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency DOGE.
Now officially his title was Senior Advisor to the President, unpaid.
(01:57):
And I don't think DOGE is a formal government bureaucracy.
I don't believe it is a cabinet position. You know, Trump,
for example, created you know the spaceballs, you know, the
part of the Air Force that deals with space. That
was a new It was like the US Air Force.
It was created after World War One.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Or NASA was.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Created during the Trouban administration. So this is sort of
kind of not really a governmental agency.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
But man, what it did. He leaves. First of all,
he leaves.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And he goes back to Tesla because Tesla tanks as
a result of him going to DOGE and ignoring the
company and also his political issues, and so the company Tesla.
Let me tell you that there are a few shareholders.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
That are not thrilled. I think it's half the value
that it was at its heighth.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And what he does is leave just a mess of
half realized plans, gutted agencies where he installed his acolytes,
his sycophants in key positions across the country, having across
the agencies having unbelievable power. And now the question is
(03:15):
how much power do they have without Musk?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Without Musk?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And is anyone going to rebuild the programs that have
been completely totally decimated and or are gutted, And man,
that list just goes on and on. Now, the basic
premise of looking at waste and fraud is absolutely a
(03:43):
good thing to do. I mean, there's a lot of
criticism about Joe Biden that's being thrown about the Biden administration,
some of which is simply ludicrous and some of which
is legitimate. One of them being, for example, he wasn't
strong in immigration. Absolutely, even officials in the Biden administration
will admit they weren't nearly as strong as security in
the border. The other one, they weren't big in terms
(04:05):
of fighting waste and fighting fraud. Biden has a forty
something almost fifty year career in government and sort of
got used to way government works, and government just does
get complacent and fraud and waste enters into the picture.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Now do you go in there.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Like Sherman through Georgia and just everything in your path
you destroy or gut or change without really thinking it through.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And there's a few things that were not thought through.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
And the basic premise of DOGE was to eliminate waste
and fraud and to reduce the expenditure of government. And
President Trump said, with the efforts of Doze and el
we are going to reduce enough of the expenditure, enough
(05:06):
of the negative spending in this country to in fact
stop deficit spending and get really into fighting our national debt.
Reducing our national debt. That's what we're going to do.
Not quite. Trump's new tax bill, the big beautiful bill,
(05:28):
increases our national debt and the deficit goes up. In
other words, anything that DOGE has done is far superseded
by the new tax bill. So effectively, how successful was DOGE, Well,
I think there was some success, but it's a drop
in the bucket. Compared to what's happening with the new
(05:50):
tax bill, and people are a little upset about it.
There are some staunch Republicans that are saying, hey, man,
come on, the problem is we're spending too much money.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
As a government. And Trump is saying, no, we're not.
No we're not.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
As he does. It's one of those I'm fighting in
I'm fighting inflation. It's still too high. I am reducing
the deficit.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
No you're not. I'm reducing the national debt. No you're not.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
It's going up. But in Trump world, if he says it,
it's true.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Keep this in mind.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I've never seen this ever in administration where the president
says it's raining outside where the sun is there, and
you go outside and you look up at the sun
and it's eighty degrees and you say it's raining. Why
because the president says it's raining, and therefore it's raining.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
You have no jobs.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
None, All your jobs have been taken by illegal aliens.
But you go to work every day. Nope, have no jobs.
I mean it is crazy. I mean it is nuts.
But that is a little tangental. I just do that
to piss off everybody and refute that. Please, if you
can I want to come back and talk about some
specifics and some stuff that is heartbreaking that has been gutted,
(07:11):
you know, some of it, okay, and some of it,
for example, gutting FEMA, which makes no sense because I
mean FEMA, right, which saves people and comes in and
helps with when earthquakes happen or natural disasters happen, and
comes in the government in gutting that says we are
(07:33):
going to change. We're simply going to move what FEMA
does to another agency. In other words, the same thing
is going to happen, We're just going to move it
to another agency.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
You know what, if you want to do that, I
don't care. It's you still have to help people. In
the end, it's still the way it's supposed to be
with the government being involved. This is where, by the way,
government should be involved. I don't give a rats about Oh,
government shouldn't be involve over seeing business and should leave
us alone, etc. This one I believe is legitimate. The
(08:05):
government is there to protect us.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Okay. So there's that one.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
But for example, cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization
and not replacing it with anything that handles whether a
natural disaster forecasting. Explain why that one we don't want anymore.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has not been replaced what.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It does in many instances. Explain that one to me.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Fraud and waste and Noah, the National Oceanic and Administrative Organization.
Now the one that has really gotten people upset, and
I'm right there is the gutting of USAID, making it
disappear because of fraud and waste, which I'd like to
(08:58):
see how much fraud and waste it is is It
was the world's largest single provider of humanitarian aid, feeding
people inoculations, vaccinations around the world, putting up water filtration
systems around the world for people. Well, it's poor people,
(09:21):
people who can't eat, who don't have potable water, And
it's simply humanitarian assistance and disease prevention.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And I think one of.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
The programs, for example, is undoing the US HIV slash
AIDS response. Its whole purpose is to deal with AIDS
and to curtail it. For example, he jokes about remember
one hundred million dollars for condoms, and that's what the
government is handing out. First of all, it wasn't one
hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I mean, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It was a let's say it was a couple of
million dollars because Trump exaggerated condoms.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, think about this. You hand out condoms and.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
That stops the spread of aids if people start using them.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
People don't. People do not stop stooping.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
But if you can be educated, if a group of
people can be educated, whatever percentage, then you have a
certain percentage that are not going to transmit HIV if
they have it. So that becomes just a fundamental belief
that we should not do that. We should not feed
the world if we can, We should not help poor people.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
That is a political decision. That's those.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And the other situation is even if those agencies come back,
and some are coming back because the government realizes, okay,
maybe we're kind of dumb in cutting things. Some of
it doesn't make any sense. Okay, so let's bring back
the folks who work there. There were agencies where people
were fired on Tuesday, and on Wednesday they got the
(10:59):
email saying oh no mind, no, don't clean out your desk.
And here with some heads of some agencies have said
there are people that have spent a lifetime at that agency,
their entire careers at any given agency, and develop an expertise,
which it takes. You really don't need an expertise to
run a cabinet this department. You know, Pete Hegseith does
(11:22):
not have any expertise in running the Department of Defense,
But you do have career officers and civilians who have
thirty years of experience and procurement and oversight and training.
And to get rid of all of those people, they're
(11:42):
going to go on with their lives. They're not going
to wait around and sit on unemployment for two years.
They're gone, and that expertise goes with them. And how
do you replace thirty years of experience with someone who's
brand new that you've hired as a trainee.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
For example, let's just use this show Okay as an example.
We have years, in years, decades of experience. So let's
say management decide let's gut the radio stations and bring
in new people, or at some point realize, wait a minute,
(12:27):
we need these radio stations. So they hire all new
people without the expertise, just brand new people that have
no idea of what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
That's what's happening there now.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
In the case of Kno and Will, you're never going
to be able to tell the difference. But in the
case of people who have true experience, see, this is
a compliment to you, Amy. You can't replace that, you can't. Okay,
thank you, Bill, You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Welcome, compliments to Neil, compliments to Ann.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
So you trash everybody and then say nice things about Amy.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
No.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It was a mission.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Actually it was a compliment by omission, is what that was.
That's the best I'll ever do. Minimum wage is going
up like crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
As you know. The city has this is La City,
because La City is of course.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
One of the most liberal cities, and the minimum wage
is I think higher than any place else in California in.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
The country right now. The hotel minimum wage.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
This is interesting because it's for these for the hospitality workers,
not for.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The rest of us.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The hotel minimum wage approved in twenty fourteen, currently twenty
dollars and thirty two cents an hour. The minimum wage
for private sector employees LAX is twenty five twenty three
an hour, which includes six hours hourly healthcare payment. For
everyone else in La seventeen dollars and twenty eight cents.
(13:55):
That's a minimum wage no matter where you work. The
federal minimum wage seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Can you imagine that that hasn't changed in fifty years.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So, since the minimum wage is going to kick in
in twenty twenty eight to thirty dollars an hour of
hotel and airport workers, there's a group of business people,
the La Alliance for Tourisms, Jobs and or Progress, wants
to put on the ballot measure a vote to repeal
(14:27):
that ordinance, which can be done by the voters. Even
though the city council kick this in, voters can overturn that,
and a spokesperson Phil Singer for the alliance said, the
wage increase threatens revenue LA urgently needs, especially since we're
bringing the twenty twenty eight Olympic and Paralympic Games. Small
(14:47):
businesses will be forced to shut down, workers will lose
their jobs, and the economic fallout will stretch across the city.
This is involved the city's future, our business. Millions of
guests will not have the services. Now, I want to
point something out. Okay, every time minimum wage has gone.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Up, this is what we've heard.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Businesses did not go out of business. Business did just fine.
It's almost like the car industry. You're go in the
fight with the seat belts. Oh my god, it's going
to destroy the sales of our cars.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It didn't.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So there are a couple issues here, and one is
I fervently believe that if someone works full time, I
don't care what job it is, there should be enough
money on the table to eat, to feed a family,
or at least feed yourself and put a roof over
your head.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It's not the case with minimum wage. Thirty dollars minimum wage.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, I think you can do it, but thirty dollars
minimum wage is a big, hefty, hefty cost to insert
name of business here. And now the other side of
the coin, and this is where the city councils. They've
delineated different workers in different segments to get more or
(16:09):
less money. And this depends on how powerful the unions are.
So hotel workers get several dollars an hour more than
the person who works in the business next door to
the hotel. And then there are a couple of jobs
out there where tips are so good that do they
(16:31):
really need And we're talking about traditional jobs where it's
not a possibility, it's a fact. One of them are
skycaps at the airport. When you go to the airport,
you see these skycaps with a skycap on and they
pick up your bags and they bring it to the
front or they bring it to the line where you're
(16:52):
checking in. Now, I always do skycaps for a couple
of reasons. Lindsay has she has leg issues, so she
has a hard time with bags. I'm the laziest person
you've ever seen. And if you think I'm going to
bring my bags up to the counter, it ain't going
to happen. So I call a skycap over to pick
up my bags and I don't have to lift them.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
They go on a cart and we walk up and
we go to the front of the line.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
For some reason, people who hire skycaps use skycaps get
to go to the front of the line. It's a
courtesy and it is expected. You tip a few dollars
a bag. I think the current rate now the expectation
is five dollars a bag. You have three bags is
ten or fifteen bucks is what you pay?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
All right.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Skycaps at Lax make between seventy thousand and one hundred
thousand dollars a year. They desperately need an increase in
minimum wage, don't they. You have servers, waitresses, both male
and female waitresses at restaurants, high end restaurants, who make
(18:11):
eighty thousand dollars a year because you're tipping theoretically fifty percent.
And if someone's paying eighty dollars a meal, it's very
different than some point someone paying fifteen.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Dollars a meal. So it's across the board.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And is there a system you know, I think there
is based on the average cost of a meal, and therefore.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
They don't need as high.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
But minimum wage kicks in and businesses are saying we
can't afford it.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Let me ask Neil.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Neil, you are an expert in the hospitality industry. Do
you believe that the minimum wage going up to let's
say eighteen nineteen dollars an hour is going to destroy businesses?
Considering that fast food places are already paying twenty twenty
two dollars an hour just to keep people behind the counter.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
First of all, not an expert, but yes, I deal
with a lot of this. I will tell you absolutely
it does. And not only is it not just about
corporations like fast food places that people think, oh they
can afford it. But what it does is it raises
the bar from mom and pop places too, because now
they have to compete with that number. So now small
businesses are competing with that. We're seeing locations closing, we're
(19:29):
seeing prices going up, and so it's there's more to
it than just throwing more money at the issue.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
But then again, let's let's go back to if you
base it on the average, and I don't know if
it's possible.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
This's just an idea I'm throwing this around.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Is if you base it on the cost of a meal,
the average cost of a meal, and that is you
have a basic, basic, basic minimum wage, which right now
is seventeen dollars in change.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And it's a tip business.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
I mean, do you know of any restaurant where the
waiters don't get tips?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Does that exist? No? No, but there it's still gratuity.
It's not mandated people.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
No, I understand, but there's an app but there is
an average income that they get. In fact, that's why
the IRS says fifteen percent of what your income is
UH is tax. Fifteen percent more is tax because of
the because of the tips that you get.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
All right, this is this conversation.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
We're going to keep on going over and over again
because you know that my base apprentiat.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
People is the problem.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It's better to have put money into educating people to
get better jobs than to pay them for menial jobs.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
All right, just one way of looking at it. Not mine,
but it's one way of looking at it. You have
heard and tell me you don't recognize the phrase environmental
impact statements.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
And whenever any.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Project is going to be built, and I don't care
what it is, neighbors and people who were posed to
the project immediately file a lawsuit arguing that an impact
statement has not been made, or is not made properly,
or is not extensive enough. And that is to protect
the environment. So let's say you have a shopping center
(21:19):
going up and you've got neighbors who are not thrilled
with it. By the way, there's no such thing as
any project going up where you have neighbors that are
not thrilled with it.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
It doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Someone is pissed off about it, and so what happens
is lawsuit is filed. The impact statement wasn't extensive enough,
they didn't file it properly, they didn't include certain criteria. Well,
a case went up to the Supreme Court in which
the court recognized that the majority of these lawsuits are
(21:54):
pure crapola. These people don't care about the environment. I mean,
what traffic is going to be affected for fifteen miles
and this only went to ten miles out and therefore
that's not far enough out, that's not extensive enough. Well,
the court finally recognized that the reality of these impacts
(22:21):
is the reason they're filed is not because the environment
is going to be affected or these people care. It's
to stop the project. And this is a move to
stop the project.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And the court recognized that the law allowing this.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Is being completely abused.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote the decision, a nineteen seventy legislative
acorn has grown over the years into an oak tree
that has hindered infrastructure development under the guise of more process.
A course correction is a pro and he said, fewer
(23:02):
projects make it to the finish line talking about these
impact study lawsuits.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Fewer projects make it to the starting line.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Those who survived end up costing much more than anticipated
or necessary, which means fewer more expensive railroads, airports, wind turbines,
transmission line dams, housing developments, highways, bridges, subway stadiums, arenas,
data centers, and the like, by the way, of which
not one of those can be built without lawsuits flying
that the impact studies have not been filed for long enough,
(23:32):
expensive enough, specific enough, and you want to This is
the interesting one that I think is that normally you
think the liberal judges would be on the on the
side of the environmentalists.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Right, this was an eight zero decision.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
The liberal judges agreed that these impact studies have gone.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Way beyond the fold.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
And the only one who the reason it was eight
zero said of nine zero is Neil Gorstitch, who is
a Colorado native who has friends that are part of
the lawsuit developers. And he said, I can't, I can't
get involved. I recuse myself. By the way, the only
one person never recused themselves is Clarence Thomas. If his
(24:23):
family was involved in a lawsuit, he wouldn't recuse himself.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
He has said that outright. It's true. But anyway the
justices have and those of us who look at this stuff.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Of course, how many people didn't know that these lawsuits
or environmental impacts that he lawsuits are pure crapola.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
It's just to stop everything.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Well, the justices have really curtailed those, which is good news.
Good news eight zero. You don't often see eight zero
or nine zero. This one you did, all right. This
is KFI AM six point. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday, six
(25:06):
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 (00:05):
Good morning, everybody, Bill Handle Here. It's a Friday morning,
May thirtieth, which means it's a foody Friday, and that's
from eight to a thirty. And then ask Handle anything
A thirty to nine Friday is always fun.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
Elon Musk has left government and he has left behind chaos.
Now a couple things about Elon Musk. I mean, the
guy is a visionary. You don't get to be the
world's richest ban by accident. With SpaceX, he created a
way of going into space that heretofore never existed before.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I mean, the guy is just brilliant.
Speaker 2 (00:41):
He created the practical electric car with the Tesla, even
though the Tesla is a piece of crap as a car.
I had one for three minutes and I got rid
of it at a huge loss, and it's one of.
Speaker 1 (00:54):
The best things I've ever done.
Speaker 2 (00:56):
But on the other hand, in addition to him being
a visionary, he is also kind of nuts.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
And we know that.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
So the president who came into office believing there's a
tremendous amount of waste and fraud in government.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
And by the way, I don't disagree with him.
Speaker 2 (01:14):
It's hard to have a budget of what for trillion
dollars and not have waste and not have abuse with
three million employees. So he came in saying, we are
going to we are actually going to clean.
Speaker 1 (01:30):
This place up. And that is the United States government.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
And so Musk formally exits his role Wednesday, ending his
sojourn as not only contentious but generally unpopular of the
de facto head of the Department of Government Efficiency DOGE.
Now officially his title was Senior Advisor to the President, unpaid.
(01:57):
And I don't think DOGE is a formal government bureaucracy.
I don't believe it is a cabinet position. You know, Trump,
for example, created you know the spaceballs, you know, the
part of the Air Force that deals with space. That
was a new It was like the US Air Force.
It was created after World War One.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Or NASA was.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Created during the Trouban administration. So this is sort of
kind of not really a governmental agency.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
But man, what it did. He leaves. First of all,
he leaves.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
And he goes back to Tesla because Tesla tanks as
a result of him going to DOGE and ignoring the
company and also his political issues, and so the company Tesla.
Let me tell you that there are a few shareholders.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
That are not thrilled. I think it's half the value
that it was at its heighth.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
And what he does is leave just a mess of
half realized plans, gutted agencies where he installed his acolytes,
his sycophants in key positions across the country, having across
the agencies having unbelievable power. And now the question is
(03:15):
how much power do they have without Musk?
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Without Musk?
Speaker 2 (03:21):
And is anyone going to rebuild the programs that have
been completely totally decimated and or are gutted, And man,
that list just goes on and on. Now, the basic
premise of looking at waste and fraud is absolutely a
(03:43):
good thing to do. I mean, there's a lot of
criticism about Joe Biden that's being thrown about the Biden administration,
some of which is simply ludicrous and some of which
is legitimate. One of them being, for example, he wasn't
strong in immigration. Absolutely, even officials in the Biden administration
will admit they weren't nearly as strong as security in
the border. The other one, they weren't big in terms
(04:05):
of fighting waste and fighting fraud. Biden has a forty
something almost fifty year career in government and sort of
got used to way government works, and government just does
get complacent and fraud and waste enters into the picture.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Now do you go in there.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Like Sherman through Georgia and just everything in your path
you destroy or gut or change without really thinking it through.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
And there's a few things that were not thought through.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
And the basic premise of DOGE was to eliminate waste
and fraud and to reduce the expenditure of government. And
President Trump said, with the efforts of Doze and el
we are going to reduce enough of the expenditure, enough
(05:06):
of the negative spending in this country to in fact
stop deficit spending and get really into fighting our national debt.
Reducing our national debt. That's what we're going to do.
Not quite. Trump's new tax bill, the big beautiful bill,
(05:28):
increases our national debt and the deficit goes up. In
other words, anything that DOGE has done is far superseded
by the new tax bill. So effectively, how successful was DOGE, Well,
I think there was some success, but it's a drop
in the bucket. Compared to what's happening with the new
(05:50):
tax bill, and people are a little upset about it.
There are some staunch Republicans that are saying, hey, man,
come on, the problem is we're spending too much money.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
As a government. And Trump is saying, no, we're not.
No we're not.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
As he does. It's one of those I'm fighting in
I'm fighting inflation. It's still too high. I am reducing
the deficit.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
No you're not. I'm reducing the national debt. No you're not.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
It's going up. But in Trump world, if he says it,
it's true.
Speaker 1 (06:25):
Keep this in mind.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
I've never seen this ever in administration where the president
says it's raining outside where the sun is there, and
you go outside and you look up at the sun
and it's eighty degrees and you say it's raining. Why
because the president says it's raining, and therefore it's raining.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
You have no jobs.
Speaker 2 (06:50):
None, All your jobs have been taken by illegal aliens.
But you go to work every day. Nope, have no jobs.
I mean it is crazy. I mean it is nuts.
But that is a little tangental. I just do that
to piss off everybody and refute that. Please, if you
can I want to come back and talk about some
specifics and some stuff that is heartbreaking that has been gutted,
(07:11):
you know, some of it, okay, and some of it,
for example, gutting FEMA, which makes no sense because I
mean FEMA, right, which saves people and comes in and
helps with when earthquakes happen or natural disasters happen, and
comes in the government in gutting that says we are
(07:33):
going to change. We're simply going to move what FEMA
does to another agency. In other words, the same thing
is going to happen, We're just going to move it
to another agency.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (07:43):
You know what, if you want to do that, I
don't care. It's you still have to help people. In
the end, it's still the way it's supposed to be
with the government being involved. This is where, by the way,
government should be involved. I don't give a rats about Oh,
government shouldn't be involve over seeing business and should leave
us alone, etc. This one I believe is legitimate. The
(08:05):
government is there to protect us.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Okay. So there's that one.
Speaker 2 (08:10):
But for example, cutting the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Organization
and not replacing it with anything that handles whether a
natural disaster forecasting. Explain why that one we don't want anymore.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has not been replaced what.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
It does in many instances. Explain that one to me.
Speaker 2 (08:37):
Fraud and waste and Noah, the National Oceanic and Administrative Organization.
Now the one that has really gotten people upset, and
I'm right there is the gutting of USAID, making it
disappear because of fraud and waste, which I'd like to
(08:58):
see how much fraud and waste it is is It
was the world's largest single provider of humanitarian aid, feeding
people inoculations, vaccinations around the world, putting up water filtration
systems around the world for people. Well, it's poor people,
(09:21):
people who can't eat, who don't have potable water, And
it's simply humanitarian assistance and disease prevention.
Speaker 1 (09:30):
And I think one of.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
The programs, for example, is undoing the US HIV slash
AIDS response. Its whole purpose is to deal with AIDS
and to curtail it. For example, he jokes about remember
one hundred million dollars for condoms, and that's what the
government is handing out. First of all, it wasn't one
hundred million dollars.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
I mean, that's crazy.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
It was a let's say it was a couple of
million dollars because Trump exaggerated condoms.
Speaker 1 (09:56):
Well, think about this. You hand out condoms and.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
That stops the spread of aids if people start using them.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
People don't. People do not stop stooping.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
But if you can be educated, if a group of
people can be educated, whatever percentage, then you have a
certain percentage that are not going to transmit HIV if
they have it. So that becomes just a fundamental belief
that we should not do that. We should not feed
the world if we can, We should not help poor people.
Speaker 1 (10:31):
That is a political decision. That's those.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
And the other situation is even if those agencies come back,
and some are coming back because the government realizes, okay,
maybe we're kind of dumb in cutting things. Some of
it doesn't make any sense. Okay, so let's bring back
the folks who work there. There were agencies where people
were fired on Tuesday, and on Wednesday they got the
(10:59):
email saying oh no mind, no, don't clean out your desk.
And here with some heads of some agencies have said
there are people that have spent a lifetime at that agency,
their entire careers at any given agency, and develop an expertise,
which it takes. You really don't need an expertise to
run a cabinet this department. You know, Pete Hegseith does
(11:22):
not have any expertise in running the Department of Defense,
But you do have career officers and civilians who have
thirty years of experience and procurement and oversight and training.
And to get rid of all of those people, they're
(11:42):
going to go on with their lives. They're not going
to wait around and sit on unemployment for two years.
They're gone, and that expertise goes with them. And how
do you replace thirty years of experience with someone who's
brand new that you've hired as a trainee.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
How do you do that?
Speaker 2 (12:07):
For example, let's just use this show Okay as an example.
We have years, in years, decades of experience. So let's
say management decide let's gut the radio stations and bring
in new people, or at some point realize, wait a minute,
(12:27):
we need these radio stations. So they hire all new
people without the expertise, just brand new people that have
no idea of what they're doing.
Speaker 1 (12:36):
That's what's happening there now.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
In the case of Kno and Will, you're never going
to be able to tell the difference. But in the
case of people who have true experience, see, this is
a compliment to you, Amy. You can't replace that, you can't. Okay,
thank you, Bill, You're welcome.
Speaker 1 (12:56):
Welcome, compliments to Neil, compliments to Ann.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
So you trash everybody and then say nice things about Amy.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
No.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
It was a mission.
Speaker 2 (13:07):
Actually it was a compliment by omission, is what that was.
That's the best I'll ever do. Minimum wage is going
up like crazy.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
As you know. The city has this is La City,
because La City is of course.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
One of the most liberal cities, and the minimum wage
is I think higher than any place else in California in.
Speaker 1 (13:26):
The country right now. The hotel minimum wage.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
This is interesting because it's for these for the hospitality workers,
not for.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
The rest of us.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
The hotel minimum wage approved in twenty fourteen, currently twenty
dollars and thirty two cents an hour. The minimum wage
for private sector employees LAX is twenty five twenty three
an hour, which includes six hours hourly healthcare payment. For
everyone else in La seventeen dollars and twenty eight cents.
(13:55):
That's a minimum wage no matter where you work. The
federal minimum wage seven dollars and twenty five cents an hour.
Speaker 1 (14:01):
Can you imagine that that hasn't changed in fifty years.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
So, since the minimum wage is going to kick in
in twenty twenty eight to thirty dollars an hour of
hotel and airport workers, there's a group of business people,
the La Alliance for Tourisms, Jobs and or Progress, wants
to put on the ballot measure a vote to repeal
(14:27):
that ordinance, which can be done by the voters. Even
though the city council kick this in, voters can overturn that,
and a spokesperson Phil Singer for the alliance said, the
wage increase threatens revenue LA urgently needs, especially since we're
bringing the twenty twenty eight Olympic and Paralympic Games. Small
(14:47):
businesses will be forced to shut down, workers will lose
their jobs, and the economic fallout will stretch across the city.
This is involved the city's future, our business. Millions of
guests will not have the services. Now, I want to
point something out. Okay, every time minimum wage has gone.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Up, this is what we've heard.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Businesses did not go out of business. Business did just fine.
It's almost like the car industry. You're go in the
fight with the seat belts. Oh my god, it's going
to destroy the sales of our cars.
Speaker 1 (15:22):
It didn't.
Speaker 2 (15:24):
So there are a couple issues here, and one is
I fervently believe that if someone works full time, I
don't care what job it is, there should be enough
money on the table to eat, to feed a family,
or at least feed yourself and put a roof over
your head.
Speaker 1 (15:41):
It's not the case with minimum wage. Thirty dollars minimum wage.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
Yeah, I think you can do it, but thirty dollars
minimum wage is a big, hefty, hefty cost to insert
name of business here. And now the other side of
the coin, and this is where the city councils. They've
delineated different workers in different segments to get more or
(16:09):
less money. And this depends on how powerful the unions are.
So hotel workers get several dollars an hour more than
the person who works in the business next door to
the hotel. And then there are a couple of jobs
out there where tips are so good that do they
(16:31):
really need And we're talking about traditional jobs where it's
not a possibility, it's a fact. One of them are
skycaps at the airport. When you go to the airport,
you see these skycaps with a skycap on and they
pick up your bags and they bring it to the
front or they bring it to the line where you're
(16:52):
checking in. Now, I always do skycaps for a couple
of reasons. Lindsay has she has leg issues, so she
has a hard time with bags. I'm the laziest person
you've ever seen. And if you think I'm going to
bring my bags up to the counter, it ain't going
to happen. So I call a skycap over to pick
up my bags and I don't have to lift them.
Speaker 1 (17:14):
They go on a cart and we walk up and
we go to the front of the line.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
For some reason, people who hire skycaps use skycaps get
to go to the front of the line. It's a
courtesy and it is expected. You tip a few dollars
a bag. I think the current rate now the expectation
is five dollars a bag. You have three bags is
ten or fifteen bucks is what you pay?
Speaker 1 (17:43):
All right.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Skycaps at Lax make between seventy thousand and one hundred
thousand dollars a year. They desperately need an increase in
minimum wage, don't they. You have servers, waitresses, both male
and female waitresses at restaurants, high end restaurants, who make
(18:11):
eighty thousand dollars a year because you're tipping theoretically fifty percent.
And if someone's paying eighty dollars a meal, it's very
different than some point someone paying fifteen.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Dollars a meal. So it's across the board.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
And is there a system you know, I think there
is based on the average cost of a meal, and therefore.
Speaker 1 (18:35):
They don't need as high.
Speaker 2 (18:36):
But minimum wage kicks in and businesses are saying we
can't afford it.
Speaker 1 (18:41):
Let me ask Neil.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Neil, you are an expert in the hospitality industry. Do
you believe that the minimum wage going up to let's
say eighteen nineteen dollars an hour is going to destroy businesses?
Considering that fast food places are already paying twenty twenty
two dollars an hour just to keep people behind the counter.
Speaker 3 (19:04):
First of all, not an expert, but yes, I deal
with a lot of this. I will tell you absolutely
it does. And not only is it not just about
corporations like fast food places that people think, oh they
can afford it. But what it does is it raises
the bar from mom and pop places too, because now
they have to compete with that number. So now small
businesses are competing with that. We're seeing locations closing, we're
(19:29):
seeing prices going up, and so it's there's more to
it than just throwing more money at the issue.
Speaker 2 (19:38):
But then again, let's let's go back to if you
base it on the average, and I don't know if
it's possible.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
This's just an idea I'm throwing this around.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
Is if you base it on the cost of a meal,
the average cost of a meal, and that is you
have a basic, basic, basic minimum wage, which right now
is seventeen dollars in change.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
And it's a tip business.
Speaker 2 (19:59):
I mean, do you know of any restaurant where the
waiters don't get tips?
Speaker 1 (20:03):
Does that exist? No? No, but there it's still gratuity.
It's not mandated people.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
No, I understand, but there's an app but there is
an average income that they get. In fact, that's why
the IRS says fifteen percent of what your income is
UH is tax. Fifteen percent more is tax because of
the because of the tips that you get.
Speaker 1 (20:29):
All right, this is this conversation.
Speaker 2 (20:30):
We're going to keep on going over and over again
because you know that my base apprentiat.
Speaker 1 (20:35):
People is the problem.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
It's better to have put money into educating people to
get better jobs than to pay them for menial jobs.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
All right, just one way of looking at it. Not mine,
but it's one way of looking at it. You have
heard and tell me you don't recognize the phrase environmental
impact statements.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
And whenever any.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Project is going to be built, and I don't care
what it is, neighbors and people who were posed to
the project immediately file a lawsuit arguing that an impact
statement has not been made, or is not made properly,
or is not extensive enough. And that is to protect
the environment. So let's say you have a shopping center
(21:19):
going up and you've got neighbors who are not thrilled
with it. By the way, there's no such thing as
any project going up where you have neighbors that are
not thrilled with it.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
It doesn't exist.
Speaker 2 (21:31):
Someone is pissed off about it, and so what happens
is lawsuit is filed. The impact statement wasn't extensive enough,
they didn't file it properly, they didn't include certain criteria. Well,
a case went up to the Supreme Court in which
the court recognized that the majority of these lawsuits are
(21:54):
pure crapola. These people don't care about the environment. I mean,
what traffic is going to be affected for fifteen miles
and this only went to ten miles out and therefore
that's not far enough out, that's not extensive enough. Well,
the court finally recognized that the reality of these impacts
(22:21):
is the reason they're filed is not because the environment
is going to be affected or these people care. It's
to stop the project. And this is a move to
stop the project.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
That's it.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
And the court recognized that the law allowing this.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Is being completely abused.
Speaker 2 (22:40):
Brett Kavanaugh, who wrote the decision, a nineteen seventy legislative
acorn has grown over the years into an oak tree
that has hindered infrastructure development under the guise of more process.
A course correction is a pro and he said, fewer
(23:02):
projects make it to the finish line talking about these
impact study lawsuits.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Fewer projects make it to the starting line.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Those who survived end up costing much more than anticipated
or necessary, which means fewer more expensive railroads, airports, wind turbines,
transmission line dams, housing developments, highways, bridges, subway stadiums, arenas,
data centers, and the like, by the way, of which
not one of those can be built without lawsuits flying
that the impact studies have not been filed for long enough,
(23:32):
expensive enough, specific enough, and you want to This is
the interesting one that I think is that normally you
think the liberal judges would be on the on the
side of the environmentalists.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Right, this was an eight zero decision.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
The liberal judges agreed that these impact studies have gone.
Speaker 1 (23:57):
Way beyond the fold.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
And the only one who the reason it was eight
zero said of nine zero is Neil Gorstitch, who is
a Colorado native who has friends that are part of
the lawsuit developers. And he said, I can't, I can't
get involved. I recuse myself. By the way, the only
one person never recused themselves is Clarence Thomas. If his
(24:23):
family was involved in a lawsuit, he wouldn't recuse himself.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
He has said that outright. It's true. But anyway the
justices have and those of us who look at this stuff.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Of course, how many people didn't know that these lawsuits
or environmental impacts that he lawsuits are pure crapola.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
It's just to stop everything.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
Well, the justices have really curtailed those, which is good news.
Good news eight zero. You don't often see eight zero
or nine zero. This one you did, all right. This
is KFI AM six point. You've been listening to the
Bill Handle Show. Catch my Show Monday through Friday, six
(25:06):
am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the
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