Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty KFI AM six forty Bill Handle and the
Speaker 1: Morning Crew. It is a Monday morning, March twentieth. You've
Speaker 1: got some news that we are looking at. For example,
Speaker 1: House Speaker Mike Johnson has unveiled plans I did over
Speaker 1: the weekend for the government funding stopgap because the government
Speaker 1: was going to end I think in a couple of
Speaker 1: weeks or at least the money that the government can spend,
Speaker 1: and so we said, how about through September thirtieth, We'll
Speaker 1: figure it out because of a presidential government or a
Speaker 1: potential government shut down. Oh, the deadline is coming up
Speaker 1: on Friday, and the point is is to get the
Speaker 1: Trump budget through and that Mike Johnson has said, this
Speaker 1: is what the most important thing that we can do
Speaker 1: as a Congress is to make sure that the president
Speaker 1: wishes are met. Now Here is a story I want
Speaker 1: to share with you, and this is an Elon Musk story.
Speaker 1: Musk story, and this one is devastating. This has to
Speaker 1: do with Doge where Musk is coming in and with
Speaker 1: a blowtorch stopping, eliminating, devastating, reducing programs out there at
Speaker 1: the first cabinet meeting that Donald Trump had, and there
Speaker 1: was musk almost. I think it's fair to say he
Speaker 1: was leading the meeting. He was the first person called
Speaker 1: on and he started lecturing the people in the room,
Speaker 1: the cabinet members, the cabinet secretaries, and he admitted at
Speaker 1: that first meeting that DOGE had accidentally canceled ebola prevention programs. Oops,
Speaker 1: and he said, Okay, that was oversight. Someone's got to
Speaker 1: mute over there. That is oversight. But we've swiftly corrected it.
Speaker 1: The problem is it wasn't swiftly corrected. It has dismantled
Speaker 1: the infrastructure of this ebullet prevention program and others. Now
Speaker 1: we rely on these programs to detect and confront pathodogens.
Speaker 1: I'm still hearing an echo. By the way, guys, doja's
Speaker 1: slash and burn campaign has hit everything, the NIH, the
Speaker 1: National Weather Service, the cuts to global health. Those are
Speaker 1: particularly alarming. And I'll tell you why. And the big
Speaker 1: one is that they immediately went through was the Agency
Speaker 1: for International Development, the US AIDS program. And why because well,
Speaker 1: the allegations made against this program this organization is that
Speaker 1: on its face it seems ridiculous and it's easy to attack.
Speaker 1: For example, the handing out of condoms in Africa. BOYK,
Speaker 1: isn't that crazy. I mean, we're spending tens of millions
Speaker 1: of dollars handing out condoms so people can stoop over
Speaker 1: there and do it with impunity. Oh yeah, the fact
Speaker 1: that the reason it's there is to stop the spread
Speaker 1: of AIDS. Why don't you add that line to it?
Speaker 1: You think that's a little important. Another one that was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting, musk actually describe USAID as a criminal organization,
Speaker 1: and here is the accusation. Another one at the White
Speaker 1: House maid about alleged wasteful spending. There was funding for
Speaker 1: a d Ei musical in Ireland paid for by the
Speaker 1: US government. Guess what, that didn't happen. It just didn't happen.
Speaker 1: It's just not true. So what hey, one in doubt
Speaker 1: makes stuff up because that is what makes the argument
Speaker 1: so much stronger. They're eating the cats and dogs? Okay,
Speaker 1: how many of them are there? Do people eat cats
Speaker 1: and dogs? Are their Koreans, some tiny little group of
Speaker 1: them who actually do eat dogs? Or Chinese? The tiniest group. Yeah?
Speaker 1: Does that mean everybody? Of course not. Although I've gotten
Speaker 1: in a lot of trouble for intimidating that or intimating
Speaker 1: that everybody does. And so what mus said is we
Speaker 1: are going to put the USAID Agency us AIDS into
Speaker 1: the wood chipper. And we're talking about the National Weather
Speaker 1: Service because that's not important enough. And you've got the
Speaker 1: NIH National Institute of Health, that's not important enough. And
Speaker 1: then the poster child, the US Agency for International Development
Speaker 1: usage as must said, that's going into the woodchipper. And
Speaker 1: he declared it a criminal organization, pointed to alleged wasteful spending, which,
Speaker 1: by the way, I want to point something out, there
Speaker 1: is tons of wasteful spending. The government is bloated. There's
Speaker 1: no issue. It's easy to bloat a government, truly. It's
Speaker 1: you know, you go to Congress and Congress likes hiring people,
Speaker 1: congressman senators in his or her own district. You look
Speaker 1: cold that way. Look how many jobs I brought to
Speaker 1: the district. You know, welcome to the world of elected officials.
Speaker 1: And I have no problem with the concept of a
Speaker 1: government an administration going in and saying, you know what,
Speaker 1: this is too much. You know, we have to reinvent
Speaker 1: the wheel here, which I think is fine. The point
Speaker 1: is do you destroy everything? That's the problem and the
Speaker 1: discussion here here it is is you've got these programs.
Speaker 1: You've got the Democrats wanting to play chess. You've got
Speaker 1: an administration that wants to burn down the chessboard. Where
Speaker 1: do you go with that? You know, where's the discussion?
Speaker 1: And the chessboard is governmental programs that are controlled by
Speaker 1: the administration. All right, So here is usaight, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is the one that has the Dei musical in Ireland,
Speaker 1: which never happened, condoms in Africa which have happened. Okay.
Speaker 1: Much of USAID's budget is devoted to addressing humanitarian and
Speaker 1: health crisis aboard, with the goal of preventing those emergencies
Speaker 1: from reaching our shores. If you look at the charter,
Speaker 1: the goal is to advance American security and prosperity and
Speaker 1: those programs that help people overseas. The tagline, the stamp
Speaker 1: that's on a lot of the boxes of medicine, for example,
Speaker 1: the trucks that deliver medicine and food and testing equipment,
Speaker 1: says right there, this is from the American people. That's
Speaker 1: what it says. It's from the American people. And so
Speaker 1: the world relies on it for sure. USA was the
Speaker 1: primary funder of the President's Emergency Plan for Age Relief
Speaker 1: all over the world by the way, that was established
Speaker 1: in two thousand and three under George W. Bush. And
Speaker 1: this emergency age relief program has been credited with saving
Speaker 1: twenty five million lives and actually helped smother the HIV pandemic,
Speaker 1: although didn't do enough. Were their missteps, You bet there
Speaker 1: were so these people that were receiving age treatment still
Speaker 1: around the world through the program. Trump signed the executive
Speaker 1: order in first day pausing all foreign aid for ninety
Speaker 1: days while they're trying to figure out and you know, again,
Speaker 1: investigate your brains out. I don't care. You know, root
Speaker 1: out the problem. But do you root it out after
Speaker 1: you shut it down, or do you root it out
Speaker 1: while you're investigating it. So USAID's staff or placed on
Speaker 1: administrative leave. There's no distribution of medicine, there is no
Speaker 1: there's no covering of costs for transport personnel. USA's efforts
Speaker 1: to stop ebola at its source gone and its role
Speaker 1: in containment has long been considered essential. During the twenty
Speaker 1: fourteen West Africa outbreak, more than eleven thousand people died.
Speaker 1: So what did USA do? It oversaw training of local
Speaker 1: healthcare workers, the building of a bowl of treatment centers,
Speaker 1: passenger screening at the borders and airports. Now we're into
Speaker 1: Trump's second term. Days into it, Uganda reports another abola outbreak.
Speaker 1: By the way, that's not to say that's the fault
Speaker 1: of the United States, and of course it's not. But
Speaker 1: there's nothing there that the United States is doing to
Speaker 1: stop it or treat the people. USA it is unable
Speaker 1: to supply resources for transporting lab specimens or implementing airport screening.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is important stuff, it really is. Trump
Speaker 1: signed an executive order to withdraw the United States from
Speaker 1: who Great Band World Health organization why demanding owner's payments
Speaker 1: from the United States. So in twenty twenty three, the
Speaker 1: US contributed four hundred and eighty one million dollars. That's
Speaker 1: half a billion dollars. That is a big chunk of money.
Speaker 1: But here is the fun one, and that is less
Speaker 1: than what we pay for dog training in the United States.
Speaker 1: But that's voluntary because dog training United States, frankly is
Speaker 1: pretty important stuff. I'm training my dogs, you know, I
Speaker 1: got relatively new dogs and one was eaten by a coyote,
Speaker 1: and so we brought another don ye and has to
Speaker 1: be trained. So what are the choices? People die of
Speaker 1: a bola train the dogs, people die of a bola
Speaker 1: train the dogs. Which way do we go dogs? No question?
Speaker 1: And there's really crazy stuff going on. You know. Every
Speaker 1: year a group of scientists, volunteer scientists advise the government
Speaker 1: on the flu vaccine. Guess which way the flu vaccine
Speaker 1: is going to go? Which way is it going to
Speaker 1: mutate from last year? I just got my flu shot.
Speaker 1: And sometimes they're right on where it's eighty eighty five
Speaker 1: correct if they just went ahead and predicted the right one,
Speaker 1: or they miss and it's fifty percent, which is still helpful,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't do what it could be doing. But
Speaker 1: symptoms are less than the flu lasts a small a
Speaker 1: smaller length of time. For the first time, that was canceled.
Speaker 1: The government canceled that meeting. There is not going to
Speaker 1: be this group of scientists that are going to help
Speaker 1: the government determine which way the flu vaccine is going
Speaker 1: to go. It's pretty scary stuff. And the bottom line
Speaker 1: is the US AIDS position in terms of global health
Speaker 1: was considered the premier organization in the world where countries
Speaker 1: all over the world looked at it, and now not
Speaker 1: so much anymore. You know, we're not considered allies, and
Speaker 1: not only in terms of foreign affairs, but just in
Speaker 1: terms of helping people, because the US, being the wealthiest
Speaker 1: country in the world, or the wealthiest big country in
Speaker 1: the world, has been known for helping people, and it
Speaker 1: just won't. We are now becoming isolationists. You can agree
Speaker 1: or disagree with that. I have to disagree. I think
Speaker 1: US money to help people from getting ebola is a
Speaker 1: good thing. But I understand the other side of it.
Speaker 1: I get it. You know, we're going to be isolationists.
Speaker 1: We're going to be America firsters, and that's what we
Speaker 1: voted for. And I'm a big fan of democracy, A
Speaker 1: big fan of democracy. So people that bitch and moan,
Speaker 1: you know, I have friends that say he's not my president,
Speaker 1: and you know what he is. He is your president.
Speaker 1: The US electorate voted him into office. Now, don't give
Speaker 1: me he is not my president. You know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to hear it. Okay. I want to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about dumping. And this is a terrific story
Speaker 1: that came out of the Atlantic. We get a lot
Speaker 1: of information from the Atlantic because they're it's a good magazine.
Speaker 1: Now I want to get this was based in England
Speaker 1: because it talks about what's going on in England. But
Speaker 1: this happens all over the world. So it starts with
Speaker 1: a plastic shopping bag that is used at a supermarket
Speaker 1: where groceries go in Okay, The shopper puts the groceries
Speaker 1: in a bag, takes it home and then quote recycles it. Right,
Speaker 1: It puts in the recycling bin. And here's what happens.
Speaker 1: From a recycling bin in London. It's truck to Harwich,
Speaker 1: which is port town, eighty miles northeast, and then it
Speaker 1: shipped to Rotterdam, which is in Holland. Then it's driven
Speaker 1: across Germany into Poland, and then it's put into this
Speaker 1: jumbled pile of trash outside an unmarked warehouse in southern Turkey.
Speaker 1: Now it might eventually get recycled, but more likely it's
Speaker 1: just going to sit there and it'll be put out
Speaker 1: in the sun, slowly descendigrating over decad aids and for
Speaker 1: most plastic bags, this is completely invisible. We don't know
Speaker 1: how that's done. There's a book that was just written
Speaker 1: by a journalist, by a na Alexandria Clap and it's
Speaker 1: called Waste Wars, The Wild Afterlife of Your Trash. And
Speaker 1: the book goes through a whole lot of these journeys,
Speaker 1: tracking the garbage of rich countries like ours, along these
Speaker 1: arteries towards some of the planet's poorest places. As I
Speaker 1: told you, it's tough to be poor, whether you're an individual,
Speaker 1: whether you're a farmer, whether you are a country, poor people, countries,
Speaker 1: places just not good. And so one of the dark
Speaker 1: sides of consumerism what we do, what we turn out
Speaker 1: is all the discarded wrappers, old ips that are piling
Speaker 1: up and literally being burned on the other side of
Speaker 1: the world. Burning an iPhone, you think that releases a
Speaker 1: toxic or two. And what happens, according to this book,
Speaker 1: and no one's going to refute it. There's a devastating
Speaker 1: environmental toll, leeches toxic contaminants into water, air, food, Whole regions,
Speaker 1: not just countries, whole regions are becoming fields of trash.
Speaker 1: It is so big, this issue that it's actually reshaping
Speaker 1: entire economies. The disposal industry employees now millions and millions
Speaker 1: of people. Whole towns in India and Indonesia are buried
Speaker 1: in millions of pounds of single use plastics. Whole communities
Speaker 1: across Indian Bangladesh are populated by armies of migrant workers
Speaker 1: who I don't know if you've ever seen this story
Speaker 1: or videos or documentaries. They dismantle old cruise liners, ships, tankers.
Speaker 1: They bring them up on shore and we're talking about
Speaker 1: these massive ships and they're dismantled by hand. You see
Speaker 1: them come in with the welding torches and take out
Speaker 1: huge chunk of these ships and then bring them to
Speaker 1: recycling centers. Because steel is the most recycled material in
Speaker 1: the world. No one throws away steel, and so, as
Speaker 1: I said, rich countries pass the problems onto poorer countries.
Speaker 1: And this has been going on for a long long time,
Speaker 1: even before the use of plastics really came into being.
Speaker 1: You know, there was a time before World War Two
Speaker 1: were plastics didn't even exist. Can you imagine a world
Speaker 1: without plastics? I mean I remember a world. Oh, I'm
Speaker 1: so dated, where you couldn't no one mark at the
Speaker 1: market said paper or plastic, No one because there was
Speaker 1: no plastic. So it was paper bags and they came
Speaker 1: for free, they didn't charge you ten cents. And you
Speaker 1: know what people did, like I did, you say, plastic
Speaker 1: in paper? So they put the food in a plastic
Speaker 1: bag and then put the bag into a paper bag
Speaker 1: because you wouldn't have stuff that leaked out. And so
Speaker 1: there was a time when it was only paper. We're
Speaker 1: moving back to paper. Ah, what's old is new, what's
Speaker 1: new is old. So going back into history, before the
Speaker 1: use of plastics came up in any way whatsoever, the
Speaker 1: US dumped radio appive materials where on Pacific island nations,
Speaker 1: and decades later we're still looking at a potential radioactive
Speaker 1: disaster in those places. I mean, this is a tough story.
Speaker 1: So I want to come back give you a little
Speaker 1: bit of history of what's going on. And this is
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that I am happy that I'm
Speaker 1: not going to be around thirty years from now. I
Speaker 1: used to be really depressed that I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be around thirty forty fifty years. Where I can last
Speaker 1: in the twenty sixties twenty seventies, only because where technology
Speaker 1: is going, what's it going to be like flying cars
Speaker 1: and the Jetsons and just all of it. I was
Speaker 1: going to miss out. Well, I'm fine with missing out.
Speaker 1: I don't envy my kids. I don't envy my grandkids
Speaker 1: because I between climate change and stuff like this, I
Speaker 1: don't think it's going to be so hot? Am I
Speaker 1: depressing anybody? Amy? Is this sort of up? Isn't this good? Will?
Speaker 1: You're fairly new to the show, you haven't been around
Speaker 1: very long. But have I depressed you during the course
Speaker 1: of this show? Because I really want to. I'm a
Speaker 1: little sad. Yeah, oh goody good. We have to move
Speaker 1: a little bit more in that direction. Man. I love it,
Speaker 1: I know, And this is why on Saturday. I love
Speaker 1: it when you have no case. Hey, you don't have
Speaker 1: a case. Do you understand? There's nothing there, There's nada.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the philosophy of this show. Oh there's more,
Speaker 1: Oh there's plenty more. I'm going to talk to you
Speaker 1: about waste and what's going on throughout the world. And
Speaker 1: I'm discussing a book that was written by a journalist
Speaker 1: Alexandra Klapp called Waste Wars The Wild after Life of
Speaker 1: Your Trash. And I'm simply going through the story of
Speaker 1: what happens to our trash and how we recycle plastics,
Speaker 1: for example, which we don't, and primarily plastic bags, which
Speaker 1: are ubiquitous. And if you look at the oceans and
Speaker 1: the amount of trash that's out there, and the biggest
Speaker 1: amount of trash is plastic bags. What is it the
Speaker 1: great trash area in the Pacific where you've got the
Speaker 1: tides that are circling and there's one chunk of floating
Speaker 1: trash that's the size of Texas. I mean, just insanity.
Speaker 1: So here's what we do is develop countries, is we
Speaker 1: take our trash and we move it to developing non
Speaker 1: developed countries, developing countries, poor countries. And what we do
Speaker 1: is not only do we remove wealth from poorer developing
Speaker 1: countries by sending them trash, we take away their wealth.
Speaker 1: It's called anti wealth. And we're talking about the very
Speaker 1: places that supplied raw material rubber, cotton, metal are now
Speaker 1: dumping grounds. We're accused of taking out their natural resources
Speaker 1: replacing them with the trash that we in fact manufacture.
Speaker 1: And you know, we go back to the seventies, there
Speaker 1: were statutes like the Federal Environmental Pesticized Control Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy two. Scores of toxic substances were banned in
Speaker 1: seventy six the Research Conservation and Recovery Act. Buying hazardous
Speaker 1: waste in the US soil became a lot more expensive,
Speaker 1: and boy, whatn't end around The industry did because this
Speaker 1: commitment to environmentalists did. Environmentalism didn't extend to other countries,
Speaker 1: I mean only the wealthy countries. So these laws were
Speaker 1: passed across Europe North America. So a semi legal international
Speaker 1: waste trade soon sprang up, and so wealthy nations like
Speaker 1: US exported asbestos DDT to countries like Benin and Haiti
Speaker 1: or Benin and Haiti desperate to develop their economies and
Speaker 1: desperate to put their people to work, and by the
Speaker 1: end of the eighties, more aid more waste than development
Speaker 1: aid dollar for dollar was going from the wealthy nations
Speaker 1: to the poor nations. And by the late nineteen eighties
Speaker 1: a lot of these developing agents had enough, and so
Speaker 1: most of the world went into something called entered into
Speaker 1: the Basel Convention, a nineteen eighty nine international agreement out
Speaker 1: lying the export of hazardous waste to other countries. One
Speaker 1: hundred and ninety one nations have ratified the Basil Convention.
Speaker 1: The United States is not one of them. You know,
Speaker 1: we're good at being one of the few nations in
Speaker 1: several instances where we just don't sign up with the
Speaker 1: rest of the world. So here is the end around
Speaker 1: because this is still going on, but it's against the law.
Speaker 1: You can't transport waste. So you know what these countries
Speaker 1: and these industry did. Boy, I'm talking about us, the
Speaker 1: wealthy guys. What happened in the nineteen nineties. They looked
Speaker 1: at a provision of the Basil Convention that an object
Speaker 1: sent from one country to another for reuse rather than disposal,
Speaker 1: was not waste. It was a thing of value. So
Speaker 1: wastebrokers and this is done by brokers. I mean this
Speaker 1: is on an international scale of magnitude. What wastebrokers did
Speaker 1: was refer to these wastes as recovered by products that
Speaker 1: can be recycled, which of course they can't. I mean,
Speaker 1: technically you can recycle plastic plastic bags. The problem is
Speaker 1: it's very expensive, it's not easy to do at all,
Speaker 1: and it just doesn't make any sense. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: any financial sense, so no one's gonna do it. But
Speaker 1: the messaging was very effective, and plastic production is still accelerating,
Speaker 1: going through the roof and it's a mess. Just wanting
Speaker 1: to make you feel better. We're done, guys, Okay. Coming up,
Speaker 1: it's Gary and Shannon at eleven twenty. They're talking about
Speaker 1: the high pressure tactics Gloria already there's a famous attorney
Speaker 1: Gloria already uses on her clients. Tomorrow we start all
Speaker 1: over again. Wake up call at five am, Amy and
Speaker 1: Will and then coming up at six o'clock it's Neil
Speaker 1: and Me and is always taking care of our show mediocrely. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Cono is bowing right now, Cono and and this is
Speaker 1: KFI am six. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Speaker 1: Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
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