September 8, 2025 • 26 mins
(Sept 08,2025)
Newsom promised real progress on mental health with Care Court… after 2 years, here is what the numbers show. L.A buys Griffith Park Carousel for $1MIL. French winemaker gets prison for scheme that threatened the champagne bubble. Santa Monica is poised to declare a fiscal emergency.
Newsom promised real progress on mental health with Care Court… after 2 years, here is what the numbers show. L.A buys Griffith Park Carousel for $1MIL. French winemaker gets prison for scheme that threatened the champagne bubble. Santa Monica is poised to declare a fiscal emergency.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from kf I
am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
On. Ye fine Handle here on a Monday morning, September
the eighth, and we got some news certainly today. You know,
weekends are all news cycles also, and it drives everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Completely crazy in the news business.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Let me get my my zoom back up.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I don't know what the hell is happening glitch city
here on the computer. Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I've been talking and have talked to you about the
Care Program. And this was a program set up by
the state of California, actually Gavin Newsom, and three years
ago he proposed a new solution to one of the
state's most difficult programs. California is sleeping on the streets
(01:08):
and suffering severe mental illness same time, because the two
are inextricably connected, and he set up the Care program
to help thousands of people deal with this. After all,
he said, everything else has failed, and so one of
the state's major prior attempts, Laura's Law.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Well, they did the.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Same thing and it helped a whopping two hundred and
eighteen people during the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen fiscal year.
He said, well, that's not progress, but this one is
going to be so he launches care Court super successful
a few hundred people. So cal Matters investigated thirty interviews,
(01:59):
data from every count and it showed low numbers, a
slow rollout, and predictions that wildly outpace reality. How unusual, right?
And what the program was? We've talked about this before.
Designed to allow family members, first responders, doctors, others to
petition the courts on behalf of someone who has severe
(02:21):
psychosis can't take care of themselves, and if the petition
is expected, is accepted.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Remember you go in front of a judge. Then a
person has.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
To voluntarily agree to treatment, which includes counseling, medication, housing
and more. Asking someone who is mentally ill living on
the street, do you want to have all of this
treatment and do better? I have run across mentally ill
people on the streets and they're just not interested.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
And if they refuse.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
A judge can order them to participate in a treatment
plan and that's all all right.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Here's the numbers.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
The Newsome administration estimated between seven and twelve thousand people
would qualify for care Court. Twenty four hundred petitions have
been filed through July five, hundred and twenty eight have
resulted in the agreements and the plans. San Diego County
(03:21):
anticipated one thousand petitions court ordered treatment plans two hundred
and fifty people in two years the count The counties
received three hundred and eighty four petitions, one hundred and
thirty four voluntary agreements. I mean, this thing is miserable.
I can go through county by county and it is
(03:45):
just a total, complete failure. And then the question becomes
is this a political move?
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Was this optics?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Does the Newsom administration understand that this probably would have
been a failure, But it looks great because here we
are helping people who desperately need it.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
And tell me where homelessness is not a problem.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
We are the homeless capital of the United States in
southern California for a whole bunch of reasons.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Number one, of course, the cost of housing.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Number two, anybody who decides to live here is mentally ill,
and that's a given, and so various programs have come up.
By the way, the various homeless organizations are ripping into
this saying this doesn't make any sense, it's not working.
Tens of millions of dollars are being spent on care
(04:38):
courts and it's a few hundred people a year and
that's it.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It was supposed to be thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So now we go back to the original question, was
this and is this simply a ploy to have Gavin
Newsom create yet another step in his run for president
sidency for the presidency, Well, if you know a lot
of what he's doing, yeah, he has to succeed at
(05:08):
because it's failure after failure.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
He's in a.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Little bit of trouble when it comes to politics. So
that's what's going on there. All right, there's a great
story going on. This is the city of Los Angeles,
and this one you're probably going to agree with.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Most of the time.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Whenever a city county does something, you shake your head, no,
not no, But this one is kind of Neat the
Griffith Park carousel, if you've ever been to Griffith Park,
if a carousel which has not been working for.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
A couple of years.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
This is where Walt Disney used to take his two
daughters on Sundays and they would ride the carousel, and
he said, we can do better than this, and he
actually came up with the idea of Disneyland at that carousel.
So that particular care has a lot of history, to
(06:02):
say the least. It was built during the Depression. Its operator,
previous operator who owned it died suddenly during COVID, and
so now who owns it and restrictions are starting to
ease and people were going back to Griffith Park. It
(06:22):
opened briefly in the spring in twenty twenty one, closed
a year later, no clear owner at this point, badly
in need of repairs. So what Disney did is he
left that carousel alone.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I mean, he was not going to get involved with.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
That particular carousel because it needed insane amounts of repair.
What he did is he built his own carousel. Now,
this one was built in nineteen twenty six, oh before
the depression, and it was relocated to Griffith Park during
the depression in nineteen thirty seven, and the horses are
(07:04):
hand carved by the guy who created Santa Monica Pier.
And it was the start of an extraordinary history at Disneyland.
Of course, it was one of the original rides at Disneyland,
open in nineteen fifty five. And as I said, it's
going to require significant repairs before it can reopen. So
(07:29):
that is history in the making, big time. This is
where the city is bought. And I think, Neil, you
said for a million dollars, they are and it's going
to take a lot of repairs to fix. It'll be
several million dollars. But it doesn't matter. This canes not
get more iconic than that. I mean, there are certain
(07:53):
benches in the world that you just look at. I
remember when going to Yalta in the crime area, in
the Crimea for the Yolta conference where you had Truman, No,
you had Roosevelt Stalin and Winston Churchill sit on a
bench and the bench is still there.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
You can take pictures sitting on that bench.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
The bench at Disney or the bench at Griffith Park
is still there, by the way, is it been moved
or are people allowed to sit on it?
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Neil, My understanding is that the original is in the
theater at Disneyland, the Lincoln Theater as you go in there.
I think that's the original. They do have one that
has a plaque on it there in the park, but
I think that is not the original.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Okay, And this is a story that Neil is very
aware of.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Oh I love it.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
No, no, no, I'm talking about the next story.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I don't know the story. Yeah, you're using it and
I don't remember. I'll I'll tell you what the story is.
We used to have a talk show host here, Phil Hendry,
on KFI.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
We used to also.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Have Disneyland that used to advertise on KFI, and you'll
notice they no longer do. And this was many years
ago where Phil Henry he had a habit of doing
these remote broadcasts of which he made up the people.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
That were there and where he was going to be.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And one of his remote broadcasts that of course he
manufactured in the studio because Phil is a pretty sick guy,
also brilliant at what he does, is he was doing
a remote at the carousel at Disneyland, and the carousel
all of a sudden started speeding up.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And it was before they were able to slow it down.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
A bunch of kids who were writing it got very
sick because they just ate lunch and the centrifugal for
force on it.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
The kids started vomiting and literally the.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
People who were all around it were hit with the
vomit that was produced by these children. And he described
it perfectly because that was Phil. Needless to say, they
weren't happy. The other thing he did at Disney, just
want to share that with you, is he was doing
a remote at Big Thunder Mountain and people would wait
(10:34):
in the line, of course, at the bottom of the mountain,
and then the train would go through the mountainous area
and some person was decapitated. And he had an expert on,
an engineer, a civil engineer, who described that if someone
was over six foot two turned a certain way, very
(10:58):
rarely do they do that, hit the mountain and the
head would come off.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Now, he also described in detail.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The head rolling down that mountain and landing at the
foot of some of the people that were waiting in
line to Big Thunder Mountain.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I think that was the one that did it.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
As far as Disney was unfortunately at the time, I
will tell you this, I was intimately involved because back
then in management I would go to those meetings, and
I will tell you firsthand, Disney.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Was incredibly gracious under the circumstance.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Under the circumstances they stopped advertising.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Well, no that's not true. That is not true.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
There's many other things, but they were incredibly gracious under
the circumstance. Because you know, there's a lot of stupid
myths out there about things gone. I think he was
playing off of those types of things, but I remember them.
I was expecting to be rolled over the coals, and
they were under the circumstances very gracious.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
So you're telling me that, as he described on the radio,
this guy's head rolling down the mountain and landing in
the line.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
As people were waiting. That was just and people believed it.
By the way, this was war of the world.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah there.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
People aren't super smart when it comes to that stuff. Anyways,
I remember, and we did still have a partnership and
still have partnerships to this day.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So that's not with KFI.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
With this.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
We do.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Give Amy and I both do we do.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I'm sorry, am I hearing ads on?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Oh you get tickets away, We can get tickets away.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
We do all kinds of stuff. I don't ruin the story.
Come on, no, you like.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
It just like Doom and Gloom.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Of course I do be happy, of course I do.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I mean, although I'm telling you if I rolled down
at my feet from Big Thunder Mountain.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
That would make me happy. That is there. Yeah, it's
really unfortunate, all right.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I think the rights closed currently.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
For Okay, Now, interesting story out of France. Uh, there
is a guy by the did you chopin or did
your chopin? Fifty six year old French whymaker accused of
passing off wine with carbonated grapes from Spain and other
(13:34):
regions and he said it was champagne. That's against the law.
You can't do that. Comade champion. A local trade association
dictates the rules of champagne. For example, the distance between
vines in the area of champagne, and it is an
(14:00):
area right the rule of Champagne. Only producers using local
grapes can can claim that name. That started nineteen thirty six,
where growers receive special protection if there is if they're
in that area. Now you can buy champagne like products,
(14:22):
but you can't call it champagne.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
For example on one.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Minor little asterix there and that is there is a
clause about California champagnes that's really weird and convoluted. But yes,
there are some California champagnes.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
I didn't know there were California champagne.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Champagne really weird. It's this strange clause. So there are
some California champagne but you're right that ultimately.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
The most part you can't do it. And this started
nineteen thirty six. And if you have the word champagn
on the bottle, it's intended to signal quality and guarantee
the buyers are getting the real thing.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
That doesn't mean that there aren't crap champagnes.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
All it means is that you are getting grapes and
you're getting the bubbly from that area, which I guess
signifies it's great, that it's terrific stuff. All right, So
what happened with this guy? Well, first of all, he's
a fraudster. He was accused and charged with this crime
(15:33):
and then went to Morocco where he was arrested on
bad check charges there. I mean, quite quite a character.
So there was a court, a trial in Reims, France.
He's found guilty of selling hundreds of thousands of bottles
of wine worth millions of euros, made with a grape
(15:54):
some Spain, other French regions.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
He added carbonation.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I guess he went to Costco and you know, did
the carbonation, turned off the diet coke part of it,
and he put in romas and try to fool everybody.
And he did for a long time, and he was
handed to prison time. Now, after he was convicted, he admitted,
(16:19):
saying he made a mistake which ruined him. I have
a question, how come every time you kill someone, chop
a family to death with an axe, it's a mistake.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Have you noticed that everything, every criminal act is a mistake.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
We'll see.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, that's always the truth.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
He denied the allegations but until he was convicted.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Now, I happen.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
To have a wife who lives on prosecco, Prosecco being
the Italian version of champagne, and California, there are very
high quality champagnes, which I didn't know that there was.
(17:11):
There was an exception. Frankly for me, cold duck works
for me. I don't buy high quality champagnes because I
can't tell the difference.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I cannot.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I once did a taint a test, taste tests.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Are you doing it right now?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
No?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I once did a taste test with Dome perignon and
a bottle of cold duck.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
The cold duck won.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
And cold duck is three dollars a bottle and a
bottle of Dome.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
How much is that today? Two hundred bucks? Oh?
Speaker 4 (17:49):
You can get a bottle for I don't know, a
hundred bucks hundred. No you can't, No, you can't. They're
not a full there. But you can buy one hundred
and something dollars bottle. I haven't looked in a while,
but Costco usually has them.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Okay, And hey, sirihy, hey, sirih boy, how much does
the bottle of dome Perignon costs at COSTO.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Eighty?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
I said fifty?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Now, you said one hundred.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I did. I changed it. I said one fifty.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And I said two hundred.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So both of us are sort of half right, with
you being a little bit more right than I am.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Always I'm a little bit more right than you are.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And I was given a bottle, a very very high
end champagne.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
It was either crystal or uh some champagne. I know
when I got married, uh what thirty five years ago?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
What from a wrapper?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
No? I actually and I opened it up after thirty
five years champagne.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
It was it was vinegar. I used it for a salad.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
No, that's cleaning fluid at that point.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, yep, yep, all right, we're done with that anyway, Champagne.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
He went to jail.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
He got four years, his wife got two years because
she was part in parcel with this, and he has
stopped from being involved in wine making for the rest
of his life.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Not a bad gg. I mean, he made a lot
of money on this one.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Okay, before we jump into what's happening in Santa Monica
and it is no fun if you happen to live
in Santa Monica or have anything to do with Santa Monica.
I'm going to share with you a story. But first, Neil,
you have an event coming up.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Yeah, run down the coast from Santa Monica to Manhattan
Beach this weekend. A massive celebration of the culinary arts
going on Manhattan Beach Food and Wine features forty six
top chefs and Tonio lafass So she's not only a
sweet human being, but a fantastic chef. You got Chris Cousin, Tino,
(20:07):
Neil Frasier, who I'm a huge fan of more than
forty wines and spirits. All you can eat and drink
for the ticket price. But the tickets are going very fast.
I was there last year. It's fantastic. Go to Manhattan
Beachfood and Wine dot Com Manhattanbeachfood and Wine dot com.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Get your tickets now.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Santa Monica.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
There is a guy who used to work for Santa Monica.
He was a police dispatcher and he had a disgusting
habit of molesting kids. He worked with boys and girls
at the police nonprofits after school program, And according to
(20:54):
a twenty eighteen report by the La County Sheriff's Department,
several former Santa Monica City employees told detectives, this guy
is molesting kids, and of course they ignored it.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And so can you imagine that one in front of
a jury. No chance.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So the city has already paid out more than two
hundred and twenty nine million dollars in settlements relating just
to this guy. And so what happened with Santa Monica?
Well services or yeah, the services of the city provides.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Boy, they were cut during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
City leaders slashed the city's budget, eliminated hundreds of positions.
Those have not come back, and Santa Monica recently approved
a budget for next year expenditures of four one hundred
and eighty four but income of four hundred and seventy three,
So expenditures are more than income and let me tell
(21:58):
you about expenditures a city or a county or a
federal government. It's always more than anticipated. They always spend more.
One of the things that's now in budgets police departments,
county city governments is a fund to pay those who
(22:19):
have suffered from sexual misconduct by city employees. That's the fund.
It's just part of it. Hundreds of millions of dollars.
I have never seen one that was under the budget.
They have spent more money than you can possibly imagine.
So what is Santa Monica doing? They're looking at bankruptcy.
(22:42):
Can a city go bankrupt?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
YEP? Sure? Can Can a county go bankrupt? Yep? Certainly?
Can can a utility go bankrupt? Yep?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
And I have all kinds of historical notations and all
kinds of history regarding those that have gone bankrupt.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
That was the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history. The
largest county by debt was Jefferson County, Alabama. Stockton went bankrupt,
San Berdandino went bankrupt Orange County. Did you know that
Orange County went bankrupt? The guy who ran the finances
(23:32):
for Orange.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
County bought these.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Very risky derivative investments that went south the city or
the county went bankrupt. Can county countries go bankrupt? Well, yeah,
what they do is they default. Now can a state
go bankrupt? Can California can south to go bankrupt? I
(24:01):
don't know what stops them from going bankrupt. It's a
federal issue. The only thing is the federal government can't
go bankrupt because it can't go bankrupt on itself. Lehman
Brothers Pacific Gas and Electric as filing for bankruptcy again.
It went into bankruptcy in twenty nineteen and Ron remember
(24:24):
that story. General Motors filed for bankruptcy.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Chrysler Corporation.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Leiahcoca remember when he was brought into head Chrysler and
he borrowed the money.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
There was a huge issue, and this was George W.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Bush, who got in a lot of trouble by just
piling money into the investment world as well as the
car world. And Leiahcoca borrowed the money from the government,
and I mean tons of it was nailed for that,
not only him borrowing the money to save Chrysler, but
(25:03):
also the government loaning the money.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Well, to give you an idea, how smart Leiacocca was.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Not only did he pay back all the money that
was borrowed from the government, the government made a profit
on the money that was borrowed because it was early
repayment and there were clauses that interest still applied.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So Santa Monica going bankrupt, why not?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
You know?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Well?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
And what it is what makes this particularly horrible. Same
thing with Michigan University of Michigan, if I remember at
Michigan State. Same thing with sc and the hundreds of
millions of dollars is not only did this sexual misconduct
actually the rape of these young women for the most
part doctors is they knew about it, They were told
(25:54):
about it, and they still allowed it to happen and
it up for these guys. That's when you don't go
in front of a jury. This is when a jury
goes nuts. And that's why these settlements happened for so
much money. All Right, this is KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
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 kf I
am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
On. Ye fine Handle here on a Monday morning, September
the eighth, and we got some news certainly today. You know,
weekends are all news cycles also, and it drives everybody.
Speaker 1 (00:31):
Completely crazy in the news business.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Let me get my my zoom back up.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
I don't know what the hell is happening glitch city
here on the computer. Okay.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
I've been talking and have talked to you about the
Care Program. And this was a program set up by
the state of California, actually Gavin Newsom, and three years
ago he proposed a new solution to one of the
state's most difficult programs. California is sleeping on the streets
(01:08):
and suffering severe mental illness same time, because the two
are inextricably connected, and he set up the Care program
to help thousands of people deal with this. After all,
he said, everything else has failed, and so one of
the state's major prior attempts, Laura's Law.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Well, they did the.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Same thing and it helped a whopping two hundred and
eighteen people during the twenty eighteen twenty nineteen fiscal year.
He said, well, that's not progress, but this one is
going to be so he launches care Court super successful
a few hundred people. So cal Matters investigated thirty interviews,
(01:59):
data from every count and it showed low numbers, a
slow rollout, and predictions that wildly outpace reality. How unusual, right?
And what the program was? We've talked about this before.
Designed to allow family members, first responders, doctors, others to
petition the courts on behalf of someone who has severe
(02:21):
psychosis can't take care of themselves, and if the petition
is expected, is accepted.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Remember you go in front of a judge. Then a
person has.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
To voluntarily agree to treatment, which includes counseling, medication, housing
and more. Asking someone who is mentally ill living on
the street, do you want to have all of this
treatment and do better? I have run across mentally ill
people on the streets and they're just not interested.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
And if they refuse.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
A judge can order them to participate in a treatment
plan and that's all all right.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Here's the numbers.
Speaker 2 (03:01):
The Newsome administration estimated between seven and twelve thousand people
would qualify for care Court. Twenty four hundred petitions have
been filed through July five, hundred and twenty eight have
resulted in the agreements and the plans. San Diego County
(03:21):
anticipated one thousand petitions court ordered treatment plans two hundred
and fifty people in two years the count The counties
received three hundred and eighty four petitions, one hundred and
thirty four voluntary agreements. I mean, this thing is miserable.
I can go through county by county and it is
(03:45):
just a total, complete failure. And then the question becomes
is this a political move?
Speaker 1 (03:53):
Was this optics?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Does the Newsom administration understand that this probably would have
been a failure, But it looks great because here we
are helping people who desperately need it.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
And tell me where homelessness is not a problem.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
We are the homeless capital of the United States in
southern California for a whole bunch of reasons.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
Number one, of course, the cost of housing.
Speaker 2 (04:17):
Number two, anybody who decides to live here is mentally ill,
and that's a given, and so various programs have come up.
By the way, the various homeless organizations are ripping into
this saying this doesn't make any sense, it's not working.
Tens of millions of dollars are being spent on care
(04:38):
courts and it's a few hundred people a year and
that's it.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
It was supposed to be thousands of people.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
So now we go back to the original question, was
this and is this simply a ploy to have Gavin
Newsom create yet another step in his run for president
sidency for the presidency, Well, if you know a lot
of what he's doing, yeah, he has to succeed at
(05:08):
because it's failure after failure.
Speaker 3 (05:10):
He's in a.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Little bit of trouble when it comes to politics. So
that's what's going on there. All right, there's a great
story going on. This is the city of Los Angeles,
and this one you're probably going to agree with.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
Most of the time.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
Whenever a city county does something, you shake your head, no,
not no, But this one is kind of Neat the
Griffith Park carousel, if you've ever been to Griffith Park,
if a carousel which has not been working for.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
A couple of years.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
This is where Walt Disney used to take his two
daughters on Sundays and they would ride the carousel, and
he said, we can do better than this, and he
actually came up with the idea of Disneyland at that carousel.
So that particular care has a lot of history, to
(06:02):
say the least. It was built during the Depression. Its operator,
previous operator who owned it died suddenly during COVID, and
so now who owns it and restrictions are starting to
ease and people were going back to Griffith Park. It
(06:22):
opened briefly in the spring in twenty twenty one, closed
a year later, no clear owner at this point, badly
in need of repairs. So what Disney did is he
left that carousel alone.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
I mean, he was not going to get involved with.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
That particular carousel because it needed insane amounts of repair.
What he did is he built his own carousel. Now,
this one was built in nineteen twenty six, oh before
the depression, and it was relocated to Griffith Park during
the depression in nineteen thirty seven, and the horses are
(07:04):
hand carved by the guy who created Santa Monica Pier.
And it was the start of an extraordinary history at Disneyland.
Of course, it was one of the original rides at Disneyland,
open in nineteen fifty five. And as I said, it's
going to require significant repairs before it can reopen. So
(07:29):
that is history in the making, big time. This is
where the city is bought. And I think, Neil, you
said for a million dollars, they are and it's going
to take a lot of repairs to fix. It'll be
several million dollars. But it doesn't matter. This canes not
get more iconic than that. I mean, there are certain
(07:53):
benches in the world that you just look at. I
remember when going to Yalta in the crime area, in
the Crimea for the Yolta conference where you had Truman, No,
you had Roosevelt Stalin and Winston Churchill sit on a
bench and the bench is still there.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (08:14):
You can take pictures sitting on that bench.
Speaker 2 (08:17):
The bench at Disney or the bench at Griffith Park
is still there, by the way, is it been moved
or are people allowed to sit on it?
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Neil, My understanding is that the original is in the
theater at Disneyland, the Lincoln Theater as you go in there.
I think that's the original. They do have one that
has a plaque on it there in the park, but
I think that is not the original.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Okay, And this is a story that Neil is very
aware of.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
Oh I love it.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
No, no, no, I'm talking about the next story.
Speaker 2 (08:56):
I don't know the story. Yeah, you're using it and
I don't remember. I'll I'll tell you what the story is.
We used to have a talk show host here, Phil Hendry,
on KFI.
Speaker 1 (09:07):
We used to also.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Have Disneyland that used to advertise on KFI, and you'll
notice they no longer do. And this was many years
ago where Phil Henry he had a habit of doing
these remote broadcasts of which he made up the people.
Speaker 1 (09:26):
That were there and where he was going to be.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
And one of his remote broadcasts that of course he
manufactured in the studio because Phil is a pretty sick guy,
also brilliant at what he does, is he was doing
a remote at the carousel at Disneyland, and the carousel
all of a sudden started speeding up.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
And it was before they were able to slow it down.
Speaker 2 (09:54):
A bunch of kids who were writing it got very
sick because they just ate lunch and the centrifugal for
force on it.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
The kids started vomiting and literally the.
Speaker 2 (10:09):
People who were all around it were hit with the
vomit that was produced by these children. And he described
it perfectly because that was Phil. Needless to say, they
weren't happy. The other thing he did at Disney, just
want to share that with you, is he was doing
a remote at Big Thunder Mountain and people would wait
(10:34):
in the line, of course, at the bottom of the mountain,
and then the train would go through the mountainous area
and some person was decapitated. And he had an expert on,
an engineer, a civil engineer, who described that if someone
was over six foot two turned a certain way, very
(10:58):
rarely do they do that, hit the mountain and the
head would come off.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Now, he also described in detail.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
The head rolling down that mountain and landing at the
foot of some of the people that were waiting in
line to Big Thunder Mountain.
Speaker 1 (11:14):
I think that was the one that did it.
Speaker 5 (11:16):
As far as Disney was unfortunately at the time, I
will tell you this, I was intimately involved because back
then in management I would go to those meetings, and
I will tell you firsthand, Disney.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
Was incredibly gracious under the circumstance.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Under the circumstances they stopped advertising.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
Well, no that's not true. That is not true.
Speaker 4 (11:46):
There's many other things, but they were incredibly gracious under
the circumstance. Because you know, there's a lot of stupid
myths out there about things gone. I think he was
playing off of those types of things, but I remember them.
I was expecting to be rolled over the coals, and
they were under the circumstances very gracious.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
So you're telling me that, as he described on the radio,
this guy's head rolling down the mountain and landing in
the line.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
As people were waiting. That was just and people believed it.
By the way, this was war of the world.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
Yeah there.
Speaker 4 (12:26):
People aren't super smart when it comes to that stuff. Anyways,
I remember, and we did still have a partnership and
still have partnerships to this day.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
So that's not with KFI.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
With this.
Speaker 4 (12:36):
We do.
Speaker 3 (12:38):
Give Amy and I both do we do.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
I'm sorry, am I hearing ads on?
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Oh you get tickets away, We can get tickets away.
Speaker 1 (12:48):
We do all kinds of stuff. I don't ruin the story.
Come on, no, you like.
Speaker 3 (12:52):
It just like Doom and Gloom.
Speaker 1 (12:54):
Of course I do be happy, of course I do.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
I mean, although I'm telling you if I rolled down
at my feet from Big Thunder Mountain.
Speaker 1 (13:03):
That would make me happy. That is there. Yeah, it's
really unfortunate, all right.
Speaker 3 (13:11):
I think the rights closed currently.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
For Okay, Now, interesting story out of France. Uh, there
is a guy by the did you chopin or did
your chopin? Fifty six year old French whymaker accused of
passing off wine with carbonated grapes from Spain and other
(13:34):
regions and he said it was champagne. That's against the law.
You can't do that. Comade champion. A local trade association
dictates the rules of champagne. For example, the distance between
vines in the area of champagne, and it is an
(14:00):
area right the rule of Champagne. Only producers using local
grapes can can claim that name. That started nineteen thirty six,
where growers receive special protection if there is if they're
in that area. Now you can buy champagne like products,
(14:22):
but you can't call it champagne.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
For example on one.
Speaker 4 (14:28):
Minor little asterix there and that is there is a
clause about California champagnes that's really weird and convoluted. But yes,
there are some California champagnes.
Speaker 1 (14:41):
I didn't know there were California champagne.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Champagne really weird. It's this strange clause. So there are
some California champagne but you're right that ultimately.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
The most part you can't do it. And this started
nineteen thirty six. And if you have the word champagn
on the bottle, it's intended to signal quality and guarantee
the buyers are getting the real thing.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
That doesn't mean that there aren't crap champagnes.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
All it means is that you are getting grapes and
you're getting the bubbly from that area, which I guess
signifies it's great, that it's terrific stuff. All right, So
what happened with this guy? Well, first of all, he's
a fraudster. He was accused and charged with this crime
(15:33):
and then went to Morocco where he was arrested on
bad check charges there. I mean, quite quite a character.
So there was a court, a trial in Reims, France.
He's found guilty of selling hundreds of thousands of bottles
of wine worth millions of euros, made with a grape
(15:54):
some Spain, other French regions.
Speaker 1 (15:57):
He added carbonation.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
I guess he went to Costco and you know, did
the carbonation, turned off the diet coke part of it,
and he put in romas and try to fool everybody.
And he did for a long time, and he was
handed to prison time. Now, after he was convicted, he admitted,
(16:19):
saying he made a mistake which ruined him. I have
a question, how come every time you kill someone, chop
a family to death with an axe, it's a mistake.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
Have you noticed that everything, every criminal act is a mistake.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
We'll see.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, that's always the truth.
Speaker 2 (16:44):
He denied the allegations but until he was convicted.
Speaker 1 (16:49):
Now, I happen.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
To have a wife who lives on prosecco, Prosecco being
the Italian version of champagne, and California, there are very
high quality champagnes, which I didn't know that there was.
(17:11):
There was an exception. Frankly for me, cold duck works
for me. I don't buy high quality champagnes because I
can't tell the difference.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
I cannot.
Speaker 2 (17:24):
I once did a taint a test, taste tests.
Speaker 3 (17:29):
Are you doing it right now?
Speaker 1 (17:31):
No?
Speaker 2 (17:31):
I once did a taste test with Dome perignon and
a bottle of cold duck.
Speaker 1 (17:40):
The cold duck won.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
And cold duck is three dollars a bottle and a
bottle of Dome.
Speaker 1 (17:46):
How much is that today? Two hundred bucks? Oh?
Speaker 4 (17:49):
You can get a bottle for I don't know, a
hundred bucks hundred. No you can't, No, you can't. They're
not a full there. But you can buy one hundred
and something dollars bottle. I haven't looked in a while,
but Costco usually has them.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
Okay, And hey, sirihy, hey, sirih boy, how much does
the bottle of dome Perignon costs at COSTO.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
Eighty?
Speaker 3 (18:18):
I said fifty?
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Now, you said one hundred.
Speaker 3 (18:21):
I did. I changed it. I said one fifty.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
And I said two hundred.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
So both of us are sort of half right, with
you being a little bit more right than I am.
Speaker 3 (18:32):
Always I'm a little bit more right than you are.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
And I was given a bottle, a very very high
end champagne.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
I don't remember.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
It was either crystal or uh some champagne. I know
when I got married, uh what thirty five years ago?
Speaker 3 (18:48):
What from a wrapper?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Uh?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
No? I actually and I opened it up after thirty
five years champagne.
Speaker 1 (18:57):
It was it was vinegar. I used it for a salad.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
No, that's cleaning fluid at that point.
Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yeah, yep, yep, all right, we're done with that anyway, Champagne.
Speaker 1 (19:11):
He went to jail.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
He got four years, his wife got two years because
she was part in parcel with this, and he has
stopped from being involved in wine making for the rest
of his life.
Speaker 1 (19:27):
Not a bad gg. I mean, he made a lot
of money on this one.
Speaker 2 (19:30):
Okay, before we jump into what's happening in Santa Monica
and it is no fun if you happen to live
in Santa Monica or have anything to do with Santa Monica.
I'm going to share with you a story. But first, Neil,
you have an event coming up.
Speaker 4 (19:45):
Yeah, run down the coast from Santa Monica to Manhattan
Beach this weekend. A massive celebration of the culinary arts
going on Manhattan Beach Food and Wine features forty six
top chefs and Tonio lafass So she's not only a
sweet human being, but a fantastic chef. You got Chris Cousin, Tino,
(20:07):
Neil Frasier, who I'm a huge fan of more than
forty wines and spirits. All you can eat and drink
for the ticket price. But the tickets are going very fast.
I was there last year. It's fantastic. Go to Manhattan
Beachfood and Wine dot Com Manhattanbeachfood and Wine dot com.
Speaker 3 (20:28):
Get your tickets now.
Speaker 1 (20:31):
Santa Monica.
Speaker 2 (20:33):
There is a guy who used to work for Santa Monica.
He was a police dispatcher and he had a disgusting
habit of molesting kids. He worked with boys and girls
at the police nonprofits after school program, And according to
(20:54):
a twenty eighteen report by the La County Sheriff's Department,
several former Santa Monica City employees told detectives, this guy
is molesting kids, and of course they ignored it.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
And so can you imagine that one in front of
a jury. No chance.
Speaker 2 (21:14):
So the city has already paid out more than two
hundred and twenty nine million dollars in settlements relating just
to this guy. And so what happened with Santa Monica?
Well services or yeah, the services of the city provides.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Boy, they were cut during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
City leaders slashed the city's budget, eliminated hundreds of positions.
Those have not come back, and Santa Monica recently approved
a budget for next year expenditures of four one hundred
and eighty four but income of four hundred and seventy three,
So expenditures are more than income and let me tell
(21:58):
you about expenditures a city or a county or a
federal government. It's always more than anticipated. They always spend more.
One of the things that's now in budgets police departments,
county city governments is a fund to pay those who
(22:19):
have suffered from sexual misconduct by city employees. That's the fund.
It's just part of it. Hundreds of millions of dollars.
I have never seen one that was under the budget.
They have spent more money than you can possibly imagine.
So what is Santa Monica doing? They're looking at bankruptcy.
(22:42):
Can a city go bankrupt?
Speaker 1 (22:45):
YEP? Sure? Can Can a county go bankrupt? Yep? Certainly?
Can can a utility go bankrupt? Yep?
Speaker 2 (22:57):
And I have all kinds of historical notations and all
kinds of history regarding those that have gone bankrupt.
Speaker 1 (23:06):
Detroit, Michigan.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
That was the largest municipal bankruptcy in US history. The
largest county by debt was Jefferson County, Alabama. Stockton went bankrupt,
San Berdandino went bankrupt Orange County. Did you know that
Orange County went bankrupt? The guy who ran the finances
(23:32):
for Orange.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
County bought these.
Speaker 2 (23:36):
Very risky derivative investments that went south the city or
the county went bankrupt. Can county countries go bankrupt? Well, yeah,
what they do is they default. Now can a state
go bankrupt? Can California can south to go bankrupt? I
(24:01):
don't know what stops them from going bankrupt. It's a
federal issue. The only thing is the federal government can't
go bankrupt because it can't go bankrupt on itself. Lehman
Brothers Pacific Gas and Electric as filing for bankruptcy again.
It went into bankruptcy in twenty nineteen and Ron remember
(24:24):
that story. General Motors filed for bankruptcy.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
Chrysler Corporation.
Speaker 2 (24:33):
Leiahcoca remember when he was brought into head Chrysler and
he borrowed the money.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
There was a huge issue, and this was George W.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Bush, who got in a lot of trouble by just
piling money into the investment world as well as the
car world. And Leiahcoca borrowed the money from the government,
and I mean tons of it was nailed for that,
not only him borrowing the money to save Chrysler, but
(25:03):
also the government loaning the money.
Speaker 1 (25:06):
Well, to give you an idea, how smart Leiacocca was.
Speaker 2 (25:09):
Not only did he pay back all the money that
was borrowed from the government, the government made a profit
on the money that was borrowed because it was early
repayment and there were clauses that interest still applied.
Speaker 1 (25:26):
So Santa Monica going bankrupt, why not?
Speaker 3 (25:31):
You know?
Speaker 1 (25:31):
Well?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
And what it is what makes this particularly horrible. Same
thing with Michigan University of Michigan, if I remember at
Michigan State. Same thing with sc and the hundreds of
millions of dollars is not only did this sexual misconduct
actually the rape of these young women for the most
part doctors is they knew about it, They were told
(25:54):
about it, and they still allowed it to happen and
it up for these guys. That's when you don't go
in front of a jury. This is when a jury
goes nuts. And that's why these settlements happened for so
much money. All Right, this is KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
Catch my show Monday through Friday six am to nine am,
and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
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