Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six.
Speaker 2: Fortyfi Handle and the Morning Crew on Aday Wednesday.
Speaker 1: Hey, I want to invite you to join me this Saturday.
Speaker 2: Night at the Walt Disney Concert Hall where I amc
Speaker 2: the LA Lawyers, Philharmonic and Legal Voices. These are lawyers, judges,
Speaker 2: pair of legals who are world class musicians who wanted
Speaker 2: to make a living in the legal profession and not
Speaker 2: starve as musicians. And it is this Saturday at the
Speaker 2: Disney Concert Hall.
Speaker 1: I am am seeing it, which I do every year.
Speaker 2: I'm in a tuxedo. I make an ass out of
Speaker 2: myself as you can imagine, and it is just terrific music.
Speaker 2: For example, selections from Phantom of the Opera and then
Speaker 2: a couple of classical pieces like Carmina Burana. Anyway, please
Speaker 2: join me. You can get tickets, and tickets are inexpensive.
Speaker 2: They go from twenty dollars on and this is a benefit.
Speaker 1: So go to LA lawyersphil dot org. That's LA Lawyers
Speaker 1: phil as.
Speaker 2: In Philharmonic La lawyersphil dot org and love to have
Speaker 2: you join me. All right, let's start with what happens
Speaker 2: here in California.
Speaker 1: Money wise.
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom, who is going to run for president, is
Speaker 2: an interesting guy.
Speaker 1: He is a devout liberal, but at the same.
Speaker 2: Time he's turning out to be a physical fiscal conservative
Speaker 2: in a bunch of ways. So the Democrats and Newsom
Speaker 2: announce a new budget three hundred and twenty one billion
Speaker 2: dollar budget deal. Budget has to be in place by
Speaker 2: July first, that's the law. We have to have a
Speaker 2: balanced budget by July one and in the constant that's
Speaker 2: the constitution. So how do you make it happen with
Speaker 2: a deficit of twelve billion dollars?
Speaker 1: Well, you play games, is what you do.
Speaker 2: You borrow money, you move money around, you do accounting,
Speaker 2: You put programs together and then take them away. Democrats
Speaker 2: in this state, there is a philosophy. Look up Will
Speaker 2: Rogers if you don't know who Will Rogers is. By
Speaker 2: the way, it's worth it. He Owes a great commentator,
Speaker 2: by the way, out of KFI is when he did
Speaker 2: his commentating, and he was a man that was beloved
Speaker 2: by virtually everybody in this country. He was a radio
Speaker 2: commentator and he also had a column, etc. And when
Speaker 2: he died on his tombstone it was written, I never
Speaker 2: met a man I didn't like. Very famous, every Democrat
Speaker 2: who has ever served in the Assembly or the Senate
Speaker 2: on their tombstone will be I never met a tax
Speaker 2: or a social program I didn't like because our state legislature,
Speaker 2: which the Dems have a super majority, is basically nuts.
Speaker 1: What happens is programs are placed.
Speaker 2: Into law, put into law, and start, and when there's money,
Speaker 2: there are new programs that are put into place, or
Speaker 2: existing programs are expanded, like for example, medical care for
Speaker 2: undocumented immigrants that we now have including dental.
Speaker 1: I mean, just it's crazy. No other state does that.
Speaker 2: So they've come to an agreement that is the legislature
Speaker 2: newsome and we're going to have a budget, and one
Speaker 2: of the principal aspects of the budget is housing reform.
Speaker 2: Interestingly enough, everybody's on the same side of housing reform,
Speaker 2: yet you've got the Dems in the state that will not,
Speaker 2: for example, limit environmental controls, what stops development.
Speaker 1: Regulations.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I have built before I grew
Speaker 2: up in the construction business, I've known a whole lot
Speaker 2: of people. I've built a house and remodeled a bunch
Speaker 2: of houses, and the requirements are completely crazy. Department building
Speaker 2: in safety. Getting permits is nuts.
Speaker 1: Why.
Speaker 2: One of the reasons is environmental protection. Let me give
Speaker 2: you an example. The California Coastal Commission, which runs several
Speaker 2: miles inland from the coast, controls all that property and
Speaker 2: you have to if you're building, you have to comply.
Speaker 2: And they are crazy, okay, they have to say no
Speaker 2: to everything.
Speaker 1: It takes weeks and weeks.
Speaker 2: Then you have local for example in Calabasas, if someone
Speaker 2: is building in the West Valley, they have their own regulations,
Speaker 2: and then you have the County of Los Angeles, which
Speaker 2: has its regulations.
Speaker 1: Then you have the state of California.
Speaker 2: Which has its regulations, and some of them contradict each other,
Speaker 2: some of them because, for example, it's not a contradiction
Speaker 2: if you've got a state minimum requirement some environmental issue
Speaker 2: where you have to limit your building, and county is
Speaker 2: more strict, the county controls, and if the city is
Speaker 2: stricter yet, then the city one controls. Effectively, you can't build.
Speaker 2: It is impossible to build. It is just they make
Speaker 2: it so difficult. And one of them is the environmental control.
Speaker 2: So we get lip service from the Democratic legislature. Lots
Speaker 2: and lots of lip service. But in the end, oh
Speaker 2: my god, you can't screw around with the environment. You
Speaker 2: can't screw around with the protections. I mean, we've got
Speaker 2: to protect our land, especially the land under your house.
Speaker 2: So the California Constitution demands a balanced budget by July one,
Speaker 2: So there's only a week to go, and the scramble
Speaker 2: still is going on.
Speaker 1: Maybe a deal is in.
Speaker 2: Place, the governor being conservative relative to the Democratic legislature,
Speaker 2: the Senate and the Assembly, Republicans having virtually no say
Speaker 2: because it's a super majority among the republic among the.
Speaker 1: Democrats.
Speaker 2: So, as I explained earlier in the last segment, we
Speaker 2: are looking at a twelve billion dollar budget deficit, and
Speaker 2: we're looking at a California legislature that doesn't.
Speaker 1: Want to get anything up.
Speaker 2: It just is willing to, I don't know, kick the
Speaker 2: can down the road.
Speaker 1: How do you make a budget work?
Speaker 2: Well, you borrow money, an issue a bond, No, that's
Speaker 2: off the table as something else.
Speaker 1: You move money around, You do what you can.
Speaker 2: And this deal that is cutting into place relies mainly
Speaker 2: unborrowed money and going into state reserves and shifting funding around.
Speaker 2: So it becomes an accounting issue, and the budget continues
Speaker 2: the practice of state programs and it spares the state
Speaker 2: programs because that's what the Democratic legislature wants.
Speaker 1: And what it does is.
Speaker 2: It stops us from immediate pain. This budget is going
Speaker 2: to work and long term budget will just keep on
Speaker 2: keeping ongoing. Republican Leader James Gallagher of the Assembly says,
Speaker 2: we're in this situation because of overspending.
Speaker 1: It's that simple.
Speaker 2: We've made long term commitments that the Democrats have wanted
Speaker 2: and now, just like everybody warned, the money's not there
Speaker 2: and they don't want to cut back on the programs.
Speaker 2: The day expanded. And here's what happens when there is
Speaker 2: a surplus. And some years there is a surplus when
Speaker 2: the economy is good and California is their revenues. California's
Speaker 2: revenues is based on income tax, and the wealthy pay
Speaker 2: the income tax like eighty percent.
Speaker 1: People in the top twenty percent pay well.
Speaker 2: When the economy goes south, you know, you don't make
Speaker 2: as much money. Now, rich people don't make as much
Speaker 2: money as they did the year before.
Speaker 1: When the economy is good, which means the revenues to
Speaker 1: the state dropped.
Speaker 2: Dramatically, and what Democratic legislators do when there's money.
Speaker 1: Oh boy, let's start a program.
Speaker 2: Let's expand a program, much like expanding medical to include
Speaker 2: all illegal immigrants, including dental, and the state legislature or
Speaker 2: is still going for it. Newsoma says, we can. We
Speaker 2: have to stop that. I mean, we're done with that.
Speaker 2: We now have to restrict. Now, the governor still wants
Speaker 2: to provide seven hundred and fifty million dollars to expand
Speaker 2: the film and television tax credit, which so, how can
Speaker 2: you expand How can you spend money on that and
Speaker 2: cut these programs Because when you spend money on the
Speaker 2: film and television tax credit, it's money coming in. It
Speaker 2: provides income to the state. It provides jobs. Believe me,
Speaker 2: medical does not provide jobs. It's expenditure. And the issue
Speaker 2: is medical should be there, but do you also offer
Speaker 2: it for illegal migrants? And the big change is medical
Speaker 2: cost overruns, major problems, higher than expected price tags for
Speaker 2: expansion that the healthcare system put into place.
Speaker 1: Newsom's budget budget trims a lot.
Speaker 2: Of that for people who are undocumented, and of course
Speaker 2: the liberal Democratic legislature.
Speaker 1: Saying, oh no, not at all.
Speaker 2: Well, he wants to include freezing new enrollment as of
Speaker 2: January first, requiring all adults, including illegal migrants, to pay
Speaker 2: one hundred dollars a month for premiums, eliminating long term
Speaker 2: care benefits long term care you don't have long term care,
Speaker 2: but illegal migrants do, and cutting full dental coverage. So
Speaker 2: here's what the lawmakers ultimately agreed on, which is kicking in.
Speaker 2: Undocumented immigrant adults ages nineteen to fifty nine are to
Speaker 2: pay thirty dollars monthly premiums beginning in.
Speaker 1: July of twenty twenty seven. Thirty bucks a month. That's
Speaker 1: what they're going to pay now.
Speaker 2: The argument is that there are migrant families that are
Speaker 2: so poor that thirty dollars actually mean something. But at
Speaker 2: at the same time, I mean, how much does the
Speaker 2: state pay? Well, California is the great state to come here.
Speaker 2: I don't know how many homeless people are in upstate
Speaker 2: New York. In Buffalo, for example, in the middle of winter,
Speaker 2: when it's forty degrees below zero, I'm assuming there are
Speaker 2: plenty of shelter beds. But I can guarantee you New York, well,
Speaker 2: New York State isn't a bad place. It's not California
Speaker 2: in terms of benefits, but it's better than Alabama, Mississippi.
Speaker 1: Those are not good places to be homeless.
Speaker 2: So expanding housing by cutting down environmental controls, which we love,
Speaker 2: and bringing down social programs because when there's money, the
Speaker 2: legislature goes crazy. And the problem is those become permanent
Speaker 2: programs and when there is no money, they're still in place.
Speaker 2: Welcome to California, all right now, talking about Iron's nuclear program,
Speaker 2: you know where it all started. The United States started
Speaker 2: their program. Now a little of handle history here. There
Speaker 2: was a speech the President Dwight Eisenhower delivered nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: three in which he talked about Adams for Peace and
Speaker 2: he warned of the dangers of a nuclear arms race
Speaker 2: with the Soviet Union.
Speaker 1: That's it, nothing more, nothing less.
Speaker 2: And at that time the nuclear bomb was only held
Speaker 2: by the United States, Russia, which we were enemies, and
Speaker 2: then France and.
Speaker 1: Great Britain, who were allies, of course.
Speaker 2: And what ended up happening was that the United States
Speaker 2: actually sent Tehran sent Iran a full nuclear reactor, and
Speaker 2: it's in Tehran's northern suburbs. It's a small nuclear reactor.
Speaker 2: It's used for only peaceful purposes. It was not the
Speaker 2: target of the Israeli or the US campaign. And it's
Speaker 2: a research reactor and its real significance is really symbolic.
Speaker 1: It doesn't do much.
Speaker 2: It was shipped to Iran by the US in the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties part of the Atoms for Peace program that
Speaker 2: Dwight Eisenhower established, sharing nuclear technology with our allies, which
Speaker 2: Iran was at that time, and that was to modernize
Speaker 2: their economies that's in quotes, and have them move closer
Speaker 2: to Washington in a world divided by the Cold War. Now,
Speaker 2: the reactor does not contribute to the enrichment program of Iran.
Speaker 2: The processing of uranium it runs on nuclear fuel far
Speaker 2: far too weak to power a bomb. Now. A couple
Speaker 2: of statistics here. In order for a bomb to be
Speaker 2: successfully manufactured, uranium has to be purified to ninety percent.
Speaker 2: And you do that with centrifuges, centrifuge centrifuges, and that
Speaker 2: uran has thirty thousand of these. Because it's incremental, it's
Speaker 2: tiny little processes to make it.
Speaker 1: A little purer, a little purer, a little puer.
Speaker 2: Right now, Iran has brought it up to about sixty
Speaker 2: percent and it's a pretty short run to ninety percent.
Speaker 2: Get how much a peaceful nuclear reactor uses in terms
Speaker 2: of uranium with the processing, how much purity. It's two
Speaker 2: to three percent.
Speaker 1: That's it.
Speaker 2: So what ended up happening is when that nuclear reactor
Speaker 2: was shipped to Iran, it quickly became an object of
Speaker 2: national pride, first of all as an engine of economic growth. See,
Speaker 2: we're going to grow with nuclear power, because that was
Speaker 2: the end all be all in those days. And then
Speaker 2: later on and this is where it went south for
Speaker 2: the US, and that was as the potential source of
Speaker 2: ultimate military power read the atomic bomb. Robert Einhorn, who
Speaker 2: was a former Arms Control official who worked on US
Speaker 2: negotiations with Iran, said, we gave.
Speaker 1: Iran its starter kick. He delivered.
Speaker 2: Eisenhower delivered that speech in December of nineteen fifty three,
Speaker 2: and he actually warned of the dangers of a nuclear
Speaker 2: arms race with the Soviet Union and vowed to leave
Speaker 2: the world to lead the world out of this dark
Speaker 2: chamber of horrors in the night.
Speaker 1: And here's what he explained.
Speaker 2: The world should better understand the destructive technology and understanding
Speaker 2: how dangerous nuclear arms are. Because you're looking at the
Speaker 2: destruction of the Earth. I mean we have at one
Speaker 2: point we had thirty thousand nukes. Russia had twenty five
Speaker 2: thousand nukes. Can you imagine where one good sized nuke
Speaker 2: blows up a city. So Eisenhower said that the secrets
Speaker 2: of nuclear power, low grade uranium to power power to
Speaker 2: power plants produce electricity.
Speaker 1: That should be shared.
Speaker 2: It's not enough just to take this weapon out of
Speaker 2: the hands of soldiers. Because as soon as the atomic
Speaker 2: bomb was developed in the United States and it was
Speaker 2: set off in Hiroshima in Nagasaki under the civilians actually
Speaker 2: created it. Immediately the civilians were fired and it went
Speaker 2: under military control. And what he's saying is what Eisenhower said,
Speaker 2: it has to be put in the hands of people
Speaker 2: who know how to strip the military casing and adapt
Speaker 2: it to the arts of peace. We have to use
Speaker 2: nuclear power for peace. Therefore, we sent a reactor to
Speaker 2: Iran that started all of this. Now it was back
Speaker 2: in the fifties, actually was in the sixties when it happened,
Speaker 2: and this had to do with Eisenhower. President Eisenhower with
Speaker 2: the program Adams for Peace, Adams being atoms and a
Speaker 2: different world. Because the Cold War, we were in the
Speaker 2: middle of the Cold War, and we wanted the Western
Speaker 2: world not to have weapons, but to be self sustaining
Speaker 2: and take our technology and create a better economy and
Speaker 2: join the modern world with nuclear power, not nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2: And so Eisenhower explained, the world should better understrand the
Speaker 2: understand the destructive technology, but the secrets should be shared
Speaker 2: and put to constructive use. And boy, you think he
Speaker 2: was a little pie in the sky, And why did
Speaker 2: he do it well? To gain influence over important pieces
Speaker 2: of the Cold War Chess Boar, which incidentally included Israel,
Speaker 2: Pakistan and Iran given nuclear information and training and equipment,
Speaker 2: all for peaceful purposes, right, science, medicine, energy. So that
Speaker 2: reactor that was actually given to Iran in sixty seven
Speaker 2: very different from the reactors today, that's for sure. And
Speaker 2: at that time we gave it to the Shaw. The
Speaker 2: Shaw was a very westward leaning monarch, is what he
Speaker 2: was put into place in a nineteen fifty three coups
Speaker 2: backed by the CIA, and Iran to this day is
Speaker 2: a little bit upset about how their government, their elected
Speaker 2: government was tossed out because it wasn't pro west enough
Speaker 2: and the Shaw, Pavlavi modernized the nation world power with
Speaker 2: American backing. And he was a liberal secularism, western education,
Speaker 2: repressed political opposition which turned the United States against him,
Speaker 2: or really cared no women's veil modern art. Actually, Andy
Speaker 2: Warhol once painted his portrait literacy infrastructure, and he budgeted
Speaker 2: billions of dollars for the Iranian nuclear program. And what
Speaker 2: he did is switch the premise of this is for
Speaker 2: peaceful purposes into all of a sudden it was a
Speaker 2: program where Iran was going to become a nuclear force
Speaker 2: onto itself.
Speaker 1: And that is what changed everything.
Speaker 2: And of course nineteen seventy nine the revolution took place
Speaker 2: in Iran. At first, they really didn't care about the nukes.
Speaker 2: The Humani at that point was just not ignoring it.
Speaker 2: He was establishing the country and changing into a religious theocracy.
Speaker 1: And then quickly realized.
Speaker 2: You know what, this is good, especially after the eight
Speaker 2: year war with a Rock in the eighties, and so
Speaker 2: they went into nuclear power and ever since, well you
Speaker 2: know what it is now.
Speaker 1: So what's the takeaway here? As you look at Iran.
Speaker 2: Processing uranium and making it as quickly as it can
Speaker 2: into did bomb grade material. It was all started by
Speaker 2: the US.
Speaker 1: We didn't know.
Speaker 2: Different time, different place, KFI AM sixty.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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