Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty. KFI AM six forty. It's a Bill Handle show.
Speaker 1: He's on vacation, Dwayne Resnick sitting in. Some of the
Speaker 1: stories were following for you. At least eight LA County
Speaker 1: Shriff's deputies, including some sergeants, have been relieved of duty.
Speaker 1: It's pursued to a federal investigation into the beating of
Speaker 1: a man last year in a seven to eleven parking lot.
Speaker 1: He drove by a deputy who was talking to somebody
Speaker 1: on a call and flipped off the deputy, and the
Speaker 1: deputy chased him down and got him at the seven
Speaker 1: eleven and roughed him up pretty good, and there were
Speaker 1: some other indignities after he was booked. So that deputy
Speaker 1: has agreed to plead guilty in the incident. He had
Speaker 1: admitted lying to the FBI about what happened, and numerous
Speaker 1: other sheriff's officials and officers are accused of helping him
Speaker 1: obstruct it. And when I say accused, I've already seen
Speaker 1: some of the evidence against them. I don't have secret access.
Speaker 1: It's out there publicly and there are text messages and
Speaker 1: some other things that show that they concocted a story
Speaker 1: to cover up the fact that it looks like this
Speaker 1: guy was targeted and beaten up just because he pissed
Speaker 1: off the cop by flipping him off. Also, that plane
Speaker 1: crash Azerby John Airline's plane crash killed thirty eight entered
Speaker 1: twenty nine more crashed yesterday in a heavily militarized part
Speaker 1: of the Russia Ukraine conflict. And the speculation is that
Speaker 1: the airport where they were trying to land as an
Speaker 1: emergency landing was also being bombarded by Ukraine with drones
Speaker 1: and that Russia may have accidentally shut down a shotdown
Speaker 1: excuse me, this airplane. So the last story we did
Speaker 1: in Handle on the news is about the Starbucks works
Speaker 1: who had staged some wildcat strikes over the Christmas holiday.
Speaker 1: They're all back to work, but they're not done fighting.
Speaker 1: There also was a strike and is a strike going
Speaker 1: on by some Amazon employees. And these two situations have
Speaker 1: a lot in common and they reflect a larger trend
Speaker 1: that is happening in the workplace. So we'll talk about
Speaker 1: each of them, but the big picture is that we
Speaker 1: have a new administration coming in, so you know, there's
Speaker 1: this National Labor Relations Board, and they can make rules
Speaker 1: and regulations affecting how companies deal with employees who want
Speaker 1: to unionize and the current administration. Under the current administration,
Speaker 1: they have issued some rulings that have been very pro
Speaker 1: labor organizing. One of them, for example, and this is
Speaker 1: maybe the most important thing that's happened under the current
Speaker 1: administration in this regard, is a decision from twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three that says, when you have employees who a majority
Speaker 1: of them want to unionize, but they haven't yet conducted
Speaker 1: a representation election, you must still deal with them. You
Speaker 1: have to negotiate with them. You have to recognize the
Speaker 1: union even though they haven't yet officially voted to be represented,
Speaker 1: and you have to bargain with them, or you as
Speaker 1: the employer, have to get an election going within fourteen days.
Speaker 1: You cannot just refuse to acknowledge them and carry on
Speaker 1: per usual. And that's what's been behind that ruling, is
Speaker 1: what's been behind a lot of these organization attempts, particularly
Speaker 1: at Starbucks, because you're supposed to be able to get
Speaker 1: something going with your boss even though you haven't fully
Speaker 1: become unionized yet. Well, the new administration is highly likely
Speaker 1: to simply undo that ruling, in which case the companies
Speaker 1: will go back to the way it was before. So
Speaker 1: at Amazon, the main beef at Amazon is that they
Speaker 1: employ a lot of people, well employ I guess finger
Speaker 1: quotes employ. They have a lot of people working for them.
Speaker 1: The reason it's hard for me to express it in
Speaker 1: words is I don't know what to call it, except
Speaker 1: that they consider these people to be independent contractors. This
Speaker 1: is mostly the delivery partners, they call them delivery service partners.
Speaker 1: Those people do not work directly for Amazon. They work
Speaker 1: for third party companies that Amazon has contracts with. Up
Speaker 1: in Palmdale, there is a company called Battle Tested Strategies
Speaker 1: and it was a group of drivers working for that
Speaker 1: company who were the first in this triunion back in
Speaker 1: April of last year. And after that happened, guess what
Speaker 1: Amazon did. So you have a group of drivers. They
Speaker 1: work for this company, it's not Amazon, but they have
Speaker 1: contracts with Amazon. They unionize, and then Amazon ends its
Speaker 1: contract with the company. The union of the teamsters. They
Speaker 1: say that's retaliation. Amazon said no, Actually, the delivery company
Speaker 1: breached the contract a lot of times, so that's why
Speaker 1: they weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing,
Speaker 1: and a regional director for the National Labor Relations Board
Speaker 1: here in LA did throw out the retaliation claim, so
Speaker 1: that person found, nah, it probably was not retaliation. So
Speaker 1: now that's happening all over the country with Amazon, and
Speaker 1: it's this big, huge, which question. If you work for
Speaker 1: a company and that company works for Amazon, should Amazon
Speaker 1: have to deal with you when it comes to being unionized?
Speaker 1: Should Amazon have to negotiate with you? Or is it
Speaker 1: none of their business and none of their responsibility because
Speaker 1: you don't work for them? And this is what Amazon
Speaker 1: is saying. They don't work for us, they're not our employees.
Speaker 1: How can we negotiate with them? Which makes sense on
Speaker 1: paper you look at it. Why should any company be
Speaker 1: required to negotiate anything with people who don't work for them?
Speaker 1: Of course, the reason that Amazon can say this is
Speaker 1: because corporations have set up over the last I mean
Speaker 1: this kind of started, I'm gonna say, big time when
Speaker 1: the gig economy started up with Uber and Lyft and
Speaker 1: then the food delivery arms of Uber and so forth.
Speaker 1: Companies have arranged to put themselves at arm's length from
Speaker 1: people who do work work on their behalf they do
Speaker 1: work that benefits them. But because of this independent this
Speaker 1: rise of the use of independent contractors, companies are technically,
Speaker 1: I guess correctly able to say they don't work for us,
Speaker 1: we have no obligation to them. And the thing with
Speaker 1: Starbucks is not the same thing, because in the case
Speaker 1: of Starbucks, those people do work for Starbucks. So in
Speaker 1: the case of Starbucks, it has to do with their
Speaker 1: claim that Starbucks simply will not deal with them even
Speaker 1: though they are employees. Starbucks can't say they're not our
Speaker 1: employees the way Amazon can, but that Starbucks just kind
Speaker 1: of slow rolls everything and is not interested in negotiating
Speaker 1: and good faith, which is what the union say. Starbucks says, hey,
Speaker 1: unionizing would make it worse, and we treat our people
Speaker 1: very well and there should be no need for this.
Speaker 1: So one of these cases, the Amazon case, at some
Speaker 1: point there's going to have to be a court ruling
Speaker 1: that definitively says once and for all what the obligation
Speaker 1: of an Amazon is to the people who drive for
Speaker 1: the benefit of Amazon but aren't directly employed by Amazon.
Speaker 1: The Starbucks thing is going to be a matter of
Speaker 1: whether or not these baristas can cause enough hurt financially
Speaker 1: and enough hurt in the court of public opinion to
Speaker 1: make Starbucks start to believe that it's in their best
Speaker 1: interest to be more union friendly. Now LA Unified and
Speaker 1: the Catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles, those are the two
Speaker 1: parties in a lawsuit over how money is being doled
Speaker 1: out for poor students in the district. LA Unified, of course,
Speaker 1: runs public schools primarily, and the Catholic Archdiocese they have
Speaker 1: their own kind of school district. Then they have their
Speaker 1: private Catholic schools, and they are entitled to the same
Speaker 1: pool of money that the public schools are under Title one,
Speaker 1: this is funding for low income students. Well, apparently LA
Speaker 1: Unified was playing a game of hide the ball and
Speaker 1: cutting the amount of money from this Title I funding
Speaker 1: that they were giving to the Catholic schools, not just
Speaker 1: cutting it a little bit here and a little bit there,
Speaker 1: apparently cut that funding by more than ninety percent over
Speaker 1: the peer period of the agreement that's in question here,
Speaker 1: the funding went from nine and a half million dollars
Speaker 1: to seven hundred and fifty seven thousand dollars. Man So
Speaker 1: this goes back to nineteen sixty eight when Congress said
Speaker 1: Title one funding for poor students should go to private
Speaker 1: schools and religious schools because we want to boost the
Speaker 1: chances for all poor students. However, we don't want and
Speaker 1: really can't, have the government directly giving money to religious schools.
Speaker 1: So here's what we're going to do. We're going to
Speaker 1: let the local what do you call secular school district
Speaker 1: handle the money, decide what the eligibility requirements will be,
Speaker 1: and talk with the schools about what services the students
Speaker 1: should get. So LA Unified, which mostly runs public schools,
Speaker 1: also gets to decide who's eligible, including the students who
Speaker 1: are going to private schools, religious schools, who's eligible and
Speaker 1: what they get, and how that money is gold out.
Speaker 1: So how do you gain that system? Well, let's start
Speaker 1: with this. Why would you gain that system if you're
Speaker 1: LA Unified, Because you would like to keep as much
Speaker 1: of that money for your schools and give as little
Speaker 1: of it as possible to the private schools and the
Speaker 1: religious schools. And because I'm not aware, and if somebody
Speaker 1: knows of cases, please bring them to my attention. But
Speaker 1: I'm not aware of any big lawsuits from secular private
Speaker 1: schools accusing LA Unified of doing this. It makes me think,
Speaker 1: it makes me wonder if they had a bias specifically
Speaker 1: against religious schools and maybe even more specifically against Catholic
Speaker 1: schools in doing what they did. There are different ways
Speaker 1: that you can determine who's eligible for this money. So
Speaker 1: the simple one, the one that is best for private
Speaker 1: schools and the one that's used in most big urban
Speaker 1: school districts, is you just look at the census data.
Speaker 1: You look at the level of poverty in a particular neighborhood,
Speaker 1: and you use that to calculate the eligibility of the
Speaker 1: students basically proportionately. Well, apparently LA Unified did this for
Speaker 1: a while and then Austin Butner came to be the
Speaker 1: superintendent and they changed the eligibility requirements, They changed the process,
Speaker 1: They used a different formula which was much less fair,
Speaker 1: if you will, to the private religious schools. And they
Speaker 1: didn't tell the schools that they were going to do
Speaker 1: that before. They gave no prior notice. They just one
Speaker 1: day said, oh, by the way, here's what you have
Speaker 1: to do now. And it had to do with getting
Speaker 1: surveys of families to determine their income, to look at
Speaker 1: federally subsidized meal programs and how many students are registered
Speaker 1: in those. In other words, instead of just looking at statistics,
Speaker 1: it became very granular, and it put a lot of
Speaker 1: responsibility on the Catholic schools and the families to kind
Speaker 1: of prove that they're eligible. And then they monkeyed around
Speaker 1: with the deadlines. At one point, apparently over a holiday break. Oh,
Speaker 1: it was a summer break, forgive me, over a summer break.
Speaker 1: They gave the archdiocese schools twelve days to come up
Speaker 1: with income surveys for the families, and any schools that
Speaker 1: couldn't do it were just removed from eligibility for the money.
Speaker 1: And that doesn't seem very fair at all. Well, I'm
Speaker 1: not the only one who so. Obviously the church thinks so,
Speaker 1: and that's why they filed the big lawsuit. And now
Speaker 1: it looks like LAUSD has maybe come to their senses
Speaker 1: a little bit, because that lawsuit has been settled and
Speaker 1: the district is gonna pay three million dollars that it
Speaker 1: withheld from the schools. It agrees now with I guess
Speaker 1: oversight of the court, that it'll comply with all the
Speaker 1: federal regulations about being transparent and talking to the in
Speaker 1: this case the archdiocese about what you're gonna do, and
Speaker 1: they've agreed to do it, But they didn't agree to
Speaker 1: settle until the church was successful in getting a judge
Speaker 1: to order LAUSD to turn over a bunch of documents
Speaker 1: and emails and other records pertaining to this issue. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, as long as they thought they could
Speaker 1: hide the ball, they weren't interested in settling the lawsuit.
Speaker 1: But as soon as they knew they couldn't anymore, then
Speaker 1: they wanted a quick settlement. And this three million dollars
Speaker 1: that they're going to pay, that is only a fraction
Speaker 1: of what was improperly denied. But sometimes you know, when
Speaker 1: you have a group acting badly like LAUSD and you
Speaker 1: have to go to a long court thing, sometimes you know,
Speaker 1: you take a fraction of what really you should be getting.
Speaker 1: So that's what happened the beginning of a clean energy
Speaker 1: boom when the Inflation Reduction Act was signed in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty two. And this was a big, a big thing
Speaker 1: in the Biden administration, one of their big accomplishments that
Speaker 1: they will point to. And when I say a boom,
Speaker 1: there's a group called the Rodium Group. They're a research
Speaker 1: group that focuses on energy. And then there's also a
Speaker 1: little place called MIT heard of it. They keep track
Speaker 1: of data and they agree that in the third quarter
Speaker 1: of this year, seventy one billion dollars in clean investment.
Speaker 1: This is renewable energy, it's also things like electric cars
Speaker 1: and batteries and solar panels, and it's been a big
Speaker 1: boon for that industry. Now we have a new administration
Speaker 1: coming in and President Elect Donald Trump called the Biden
Speaker 1: policies the green new scam during the campaign. So what's
Speaker 1: going to happen Because probably the new administration is not
Speaker 1: going to want to continue handing out subsidies to these
Speaker 1: industries and probably wants to undo regulations that were intended.
Speaker 1: But all industries that are interested in what do they
Speaker 1: call it decarbonization, because you may not be making solar
Speaker 1: panels or evs, but you might be making something else
Speaker 1: and there'll be economic reasons from the government for you
Speaker 1: to try to make those things in a cleaner way. Well,
Speaker 1: that may go away. It's a matter of to what
Speaker 1: extent will it go away and will it end this boom?
Speaker 1: And it might be directly by for example, pulling back subsidies.
Speaker 1: It might be bindirectly. One of the things we know
Speaker 1: that President elect Trump wants to do is extend the
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen tax cuts. He's going to have to reduce
Speaker 1: spending somewhere to do it, So a likely target would
Speaker 1: be clean energy tax credits, which you're going to be
Speaker 1: if he doesn't touch them. It'll be about three hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty billion dollars over the next three years. And
Speaker 1: that's according to the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation, so
Speaker 1: that's not a partisan motivated read. And the more they're
Speaker 1: paired back, the more that these clean investment projects don't
Speaker 1: make sense financially. And this speaks to this relatively new
Speaker 1: clean energy industry having the same problems as any other industry.
Speaker 1: One of the truths about the United States of America
Speaker 1: and the economy, and it may be true of other
Speaker 1: countries as well, but we're not talking about other countries
Speaker 1: right now, is that they're very, very few industries that
Speaker 1: operate purely on capitalism, which is to say, they make
Speaker 1: their products or they provide their services, they charge whatever
Speaker 1: they charge, and based on the money that they bring
Speaker 1: in from their customers, they continue to operate and make
Speaker 1: a profit. No, virtually every industry in this country benefits
Speaker 1: from favorable tax treatment from government subsidies and all and
Speaker 1: all kinds of other consideration. And the same is true
Speaker 1: of the clean energy industry. They rely on government subsidies
Speaker 1: to make some of their projects attractive to investors. If
Speaker 1: those go away, people aren't going to want to put
Speaker 1: their money into it. Now, it may not all be
Speaker 1: gloom and doom for the green energy and clean investment industries,
Speaker 1: because one thing that happened is a lot of the
Speaker 1: money from the Inflation Reduction Act, I'll go ahead and
Speaker 1: call it a Joe Biden, you know, thing that he
Speaker 1: pushed and he championed. A lot of that money disproportionately
Speaker 1: ended up in Republican state states that voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: So if the Trump administration decides that whether it's to
Speaker 1: extend the twenty seventeen tax cuts or whether it's because
Speaker 1: they prefer fossil fuel industries and therefore don't want to
Speaker 1: help renewable energy industries, that they start cutting some of
Speaker 1: this money, they will disproportionately be taking money away from
Speaker 1: states that were supportive of Donald Trump in the election.
Speaker 1: If people in the new administration understand that and consider
Speaker 1: it to be relevant, they might not want to cut
Speaker 1: or cut very much, especially at a time when the
Speaker 1: demand for energy is going up for the first time
Speaker 1: in quite a long time. It's also true that generally now,
Speaker 1: renewable energy is a bipartisan thing. Generally speaking, Republicans, Democrats,
Speaker 1: everybody agrees renewable energy is a good idea. They may
Speaker 1: disagree about how much money to throw at it and
Speaker 1: how to make it happen, whether or not to mandate it,
Speaker 1: or whether to let the market work to have it
Speaker 1: rise in prominence, but they all agree it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: So it remains to be seen exactly what's going to happen.
Speaker 1: But there's some people, the gloom and doomers are saying
Speaker 1: what's going to happen is the policies are gonna shift
Speaker 1: and the old fossil fuel industries will become the favored
Speaker 1: industries again, and the clean energy and the renewable energy
Speaker 1: people will be left out in the cold. But other
Speaker 1: people who are looking at with a little more nuancer
Speaker 1: saying it might not really go that way, And as
Speaker 1: with anything like this, we won't know until it's happened. Now,
Speaker 1: let's get into this store about a demonstration out at
Speaker 1: a shooting range in San Bernardino last month. A couple
Speaker 1: of dozen people out there to watch a guy throw
Speaker 1: a rock at glass, hit glass with a metal baseball bat,
Speaker 1: and shoot a gun at this glass. And he's not
Speaker 1: just any guy, obviously. He is the head of a
Speaker 1: company called safe Haven Defense. His name is Stephen Johnson.
Speaker 1: And he was not demonstrating the glass. It was the
Speaker 1: film that had been applied to the glass that he
Speaker 1: wanted to show off. So he throws the rock, he
Speaker 1: hits the thing with the baseball bat, and he's got
Speaker 1: an employee of his company like down behind the glass.
Speaker 1: He's saying, look, I'll put this person in some danger here.
Speaker 1: That's how confident I am. And here's that's what happened.
Speaker 1: Apparently the glass did break, but it didn't go anywhere.
Speaker 1: It stayed within the sheets of film and the bat
Speaker 1: could not penetrate the glass. Then he fires a gun
Speaker 1: at the window and the bullet boom in the glass.
Speaker 1: So what is the point of this, Well, this has
Speaker 1: to do with a new trend. School districts spending millions
Speaker 1: and millions of dollars not to put in bulletproof glass,
Speaker 1: but to apply special films to their existing windows in
Speaker 1: order to try to stop shooters from shooting through the
Speaker 1: windows and getting into the school. There are at least
Speaker 1: two states that I can think of that have mandates now,
Speaker 1: actual mandates that all public schools have to put in
Speaker 1: some kind of window security measure. You could put in
Speaker 1: bulletproof glass or some kind of a window film on
Speaker 1: your existing windows, but the idea is they they're mandating
Speaker 1: that schools make their windows resistant to people shooting through
Speaker 1: them and shattering them and being able to get into
Speaker 1: the school. I know Utah is one that has this mandate,
Speaker 1: and Texas is the other one that I know of.
Speaker 1: I know that another state, Tennessee. I believe it is
Speaker 1: if you are a new school, or you're remodeling your school,
Speaker 1: you are going to have to put some kind of
Speaker 1: window film on your windows. So, as you might imagine,
Speaker 1: this is a growth industry for window film companies. Now.
Speaker 1: Most of the big manufacturers of window film, like three M,
Speaker 1: they say, hey, we can't. We don't have any film
Speaker 1: that can stop a bullet or stop a person from
Speaker 1: shooting through a window and coming in, but there still
Speaker 1: are some dealers that are saying that they can. Now
Speaker 1: a lot of these are false claims. They're just false claims.
Speaker 1: Some of them are exaggerated claims, and in some cases
Speaker 1: there may be something to it. Schools around the country
Speaker 1: are already over one hundred million dollars into chasing this
Speaker 1: idea of you apply a film to your windows and
Speaker 1: maybe the kids are safe, because bulletproof glass simply costs
Speaker 1: way way more. And that's why you have these live
Speaker 1: demonstrations because obviously smaller companies in particular want to drum
Speaker 1: up business and the only way you could do it
Speaker 1: is to have a demonstration that shows that it does something.
Speaker 1: And that's what that demonstration was last month, and it
Speaker 1: would appear that it did have some benefit. Now the
Speaker 1: skeptics are saying, well, look in this demon they used,
Speaker 1: they used a particular kind of glass called annealed glass,
Speaker 1: and it was thicker than the typical tempered glass that
Speaker 1: would be in a school. And so maybe that's a
Speaker 1: little you know, screwing around by using a thicker, different
Speaker 1: kind of glass. But here's the thing. Both of these
Speaker 1: kinds of glass. I'm not a I'm not a glazier folks.
Speaker 1: But I know that the main difference, if I understand it,
Speaker 1: is tempered glass. If it breaks, it breaks into little
Speaker 1: like pebbles almost, which won't cut you as badly, and
Speaker 1: annealed glass, uh, breaks into big shards which can hurt you,
Speaker 1: but it's less expensive. So he was using a mealed glass.
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. So so some people said, well,
Speaker 1: look he's he's juking the demon by using a thicker,
Speaker 1: different kind of glass than a school's gonna have. But
Speaker 1: he said, and this makes some sense, is yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's weaker. I actually used a weaker glass in my demonstration.
Speaker 1: If you put this on a tempered glass window, you
Speaker 1: would get or could get even more protection. The thing
Speaker 1: about it is, right now, it's kind of the wild
Speaker 1: West out there. There's really no regulations about claiming that
Speaker 1: you have a window film that can stop a bullet
Speaker 1: or at least stop the window for breaking, or at
Speaker 1: least stop the window from shattering. And so schools I
Speaker 1: fear that they're gonna throw a lot of money at
Speaker 1: stuff that may end up not working. And to the
Speaker 1: extent that protecting the windows is an important part of
Speaker 1: hardening the schools against these shootings. I feel like maybe
Speaker 1: let's look at some way to come up with the
Speaker 1: money to do it right. And by right, I mean
Speaker 1: bulletproof glass. I know it's very expensive, Well, how much
Speaker 1: would you pay? I'm bringing it down just to the
Speaker 1: personal level now, how much of your salary or savings
Speaker 1: or what have you would you pay to stop me
Speaker 1: from shooting your kid? It might be expensive, but I
Speaker 1: can see how it would be worth it. This is
Speaker 1: KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my
Speaker 1: show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and
Speaker 1: anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.