Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty Bill.
Speaker 2: Handles show Wayne Resinik here and some of the stories
Speaker 2: we're following for you. President Biden announced yesterday six hundred
Speaker 2: and twelve million dollars in funding to improve the energy
Speaker 2: grid in areas impacted by the.
Speaker 1: Hurricanes Milton and Helene.
Speaker 2: There are, at last count from Amy King in the
Speaker 2: New Center, like four hundred thousand ish people still without
Speaker 2: power after Milton. But those two storms combined knocked out
Speaker 2: power for more than eight million people according to FEMA,
Speaker 2: and the latest CNN poll of national polling finds no
Speaker 2: clear leader in the presidential race. In this particular poll,
Speaker 2: likely voters fifty percent support Kamala Harris forty seven percent
Speaker 2: support Donald Trump. That is within the margin of error,
Speaker 2: so it doesn't really mean it. That's a deadline, including
Speaker 2: in some key battleground states like your Wisconsin and your Michigan,
Speaker 2: your Pennsylvania. Okay, roll up your sleeves, everybody, because we've
Speaker 2: got a battle here in the state of California. I
Speaker 2: don't know if it's a grudge match, but they're definitely
Speaker 2: in the octagon. The California Energy Commission versus the California
Speaker 2: Air Resource Board first up, getting all the headlines right now,
Speaker 2: the California Energy Commission indirectly, you'll see how they figure
Speaker 2: into this in a moment. The legislature has passed a law,
Speaker 2: a law that Governor Newsom wanted and that he is
Speaker 2: expected to sign as early as today. And you may
Speaker 2: recall Governor Newsom coming out and talking about these spikes
Speaker 2: in gas prices when, for example, a refinery is taken
Speaker 2: out of commission for maintenance, and that when that happens,
Speaker 2: the supply of gas drops and the gas that's already
Speaker 2: out there becomes more valuable, and you see a big
Speaker 2: price bike it.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want that to happen anymore.
Speaker 2: So he wants the oil companies to be required to
Speaker 2: maintain reserves at all times, to keep the supply of
Speaker 2: gas relatively even even when they shut down refineries, even
Speaker 2: if a refinery unexpectedly goes down for some emergency maintenance.
Speaker 2: That is the idea behind it. It's not a super
Speaker 2: specific plan, what the parameters are, how big of a
Speaker 2: stockpile must they maintain, what happens if they don't, It's
Speaker 2: not but it's the basic idea and The reason it's
Speaker 2: not a specific plan in the law is because the
Speaker 2: law leaves it to the California Energy Commission to figure
Speaker 2: out the details. Now, some economists say this is a
Speaker 2: good idea, and they will point to Japan, Australia as
Speaker 2: companies countries that already do something like this with their
Speaker 2: gas industries, or maybe it's petrol, depending on where you are.
Speaker 2: But other economists even say that this might not have
Speaker 2: the intended consequence and that it could in fact backfire
Speaker 2: and end up with higher gas prices, even though that's
Speaker 2: not the intent. It is so controversial that in California
Speaker 2: with a Democratic supermajority, this thing didn't.
Speaker 1: Get by as definitively as it could.
Speaker 2: You actually had a number of Democrats who either voted
Speaker 2: against it or abstained or did not come to the vote.
Speaker 2: Republicans obviously don't like it. The oil industry of course
Speaker 2: hates it, and they say, first of all, we don't
Speaker 2: have enough storage to do this idea, and then some
Speaker 2: experts say, well, yes you do, and that's a big
Speaker 2: finger pointing about can the oil company even do what
Speaker 2: Newsom wants them to do. Also buried in there is
Speaker 2: the idea, you know, how with carbon with pollution and
Speaker 2: you can either lower your pollution or you can continue
Speaker 2: to pollute and you.
Speaker 1: Can buy carbon credits.
Speaker 2: Well, there's something similar here with the storing of the
Speaker 2: oil in the gasoline that if you're a refiner and
Speaker 2: you don't have enough storage in your tanks, you could
Speaker 2: buy storage credits from other refiners who have a lot
Speaker 2: of capacity. It's crazy, and it gets crazier because while
Speaker 2: that's going on, this law being passed, the California Energy
Speaker 2: Commission would be able to come up with a plan
Speaker 2: to tell oil companies that they have to keep a
Speaker 2: lot of gasoline and oil on hand so that the
Speaker 2: supply doesn't fluctuate so much. At the same time, the
Speaker 2: California Air Resource Board, they're the pollution people, is going
Speaker 2: to vote apparently after the election, they are gonna vote
Speaker 2: for new stricter pollution standards for the gasoline in California.
Speaker 2: And earlier in this process they estimated that it would
Speaker 2: raise the price of a gallon of gas forty seven
Speaker 2: cents a gallon. Then there was a separate Independence study
Speaker 2: that concluded that these new stricter pollution standards for gas
Speaker 2: would raise the price of a gallon of gas sixty
Speaker 2: five cents a gallon. And now if you ask the
Speaker 2: California Air Resources Board, hey, how much will these new
Speaker 2: standards raise the price of a gallon of gas? They
Speaker 2: now say, oh, it's impossible to know. So this is
Speaker 2: literally true. On one track is legislation that is supposed
Speaker 2: to lower the price of gasoline, and on the on
Speaker 2: another track, simultaneously is a regulation coming that will raise
Speaker 2: the price of a gallon of gas.
Speaker 1: And maybe at best.
Speaker 2: These two things would cancel each other out, or we
Speaker 2: could end up with permanently higher gas prices here in California.
Speaker 2: And the thing about it is Newsom appoints the people
Speaker 2: on both of these entities, so he should have something
Speaker 2: to say. And if he's really really concerned about the
Speaker 2: price of gas, he should probably be putting pressure on
Speaker 2: the California Air Resources Board to not do this. I mean,
Speaker 2: we already have special blends of gas to lower the
Speaker 2: pollution from our gasoline compared to the rest of the country.
Speaker 2: So that's what's going on. And if it doesn't make
Speaker 2: sense to you, you want to know why.
Speaker 1: Because it doesn't make sense.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about this super special LA Sheriff's Department police unit.
Speaker 2: There was a big hearing on Friday. The Civilian Oversight
Speaker 2: Commission that oversees the Sheriff's department got to get testimony
Speaker 2: from two former members of this secret unit, or maybe
Speaker 2: I should say secretive. It's not that nobody knew it existed,
Speaker 2: it's that nobody outside of it knew everything they were
Speaker 2: up to. It's the civil rights and public integrity detail,
Speaker 2: and ostensibly their job was to investigate corruption, particularly at
Speaker 2: the highest levels of county government. And the fact that
Speaker 2: there was a unit like this is not in and
Speaker 2: of itself unusual or suspicious. The US Attorney's Office has
Speaker 2: a public integrity unit. They prosecute, Oh, I don't know,
Speaker 2: congress people who take bribes, or mayors who take bribes,
Speaker 2: or well, it's basically taking bribes is pretty much what
Speaker 2: is going on.
Speaker 1: So this unit, though.
Speaker 2: Is very interesting, and we got some information about it
Speaker 2: from the testimony of a guy, Sergeant Max Fernandez, and
Speaker 2: a former homicide detective named Mark Lillienfeld. First thing interesting,
Speaker 2: nobody was ever sure at any time how many members
Speaker 2: were on this unit. The former homicide detective said anywhere
Speaker 2: from two to ten depending on when you were looking,
Speaker 2: and on paper.
Speaker 1: These officers were not assigned to the unit.
Speaker 2: You didn't get a directory of the Sheriff's Department and
Speaker 2: it said, oh, the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail,
Speaker 2: and here's who's on it. They on paper, were all
Speaker 2: on assignments, scattered all over the county. One of the
Speaker 2: people was on paper a patrol person up and I
Speaker 2: think in the Atlanta Analope.
Speaker 1: Valley like that.
Speaker 2: So the thing about it that's controversial not that it exists,
Speaker 2: and maybe not that the members of it were on
Speaker 2: paper assigned to other duties. It's that they went after
Speaker 2: some people in a way that a lot of people
Speaker 2: thought was political, not legitimately law enforcement. And one of
Speaker 2: the interesting aspects of this is that over a period
Speaker 2: of time that they're looking at, there were maybe fifty
Speaker 2: five or sixty cases that this unit investigated. So these
Speaker 2: would theoretically all be cases of some kind of public corruption.
Speaker 1: But the only cases that they.
Speaker 2: Announced and talked about publicly involved people who were in
Speaker 2: essence enemies of then Sheriff via Nueva, like Patty Giggins,
Speaker 2: who's on this Civilian Oversight Commission and also runs a charity.
Speaker 2: And if my memory is serving me about that situation.
Speaker 2: She has this a charitable organization called Peace Over Violence,
Speaker 2: and they got a contract from the county to run
Speaker 2: a hotline, I think some kind of a hotline, and
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's department said, we are investigating this to see
Speaker 2: if there is some if this was a favor. She
Speaker 2: was given the contract to run this hotline by the
Speaker 2: county as a favor because she supported county Supervisor Sheila
Speaker 2: Cule a quid pro quote, if you will, That was
Speaker 2: one of them. They also investigated Chili Cule, who is
Speaker 2: somebody who you know who was not a huge fan
Speaker 2: of Villanueva, former CEO of La County, the General inspector
Speaker 2: or actually the Inspector General, Max Huntsman, who we know
Speaker 2: butt heads with Villanueva all the time, and an La
Speaker 2: Times reporter and if you remember that case, there was
Speaker 2: a list of problem deputies that got leaked and it
Speaker 2: got to the hands of the press and it was
Speaker 2: published and then they started investigating these reporters for stolen property.
Speaker 1: But those cases were never prosecuted.
Speaker 2: And so the idea here is, was this a legitimate
Speaker 2: public integrity law enforcement department or squad as part of
Speaker 2: the Sheriff's department and it just so happened, and that
Speaker 2: some of the things that they investigated involved people who
Speaker 2: were not big fans of the sheriff. Or was that
Speaker 2: unit used as a kind of a personal vengeance squad
Speaker 2: on behalf of then sheriff of Villanueva. And I don't
Speaker 2: know that that question is has been answered by their testimony,
Speaker 2: but we got a little bit of insight into how
Speaker 2: it operated and that and that it was not as
Speaker 2: not as transparent as we might like, particularly from from
Speaker 2: law enforcement in general, and particularly from an arm of
Speaker 2: law enforcement that they that that says, we're here to
Speaker 2: investigate shadiness and corruption, and we'll see if there's any
Speaker 2: more hearings and anymore dirt comes out. A man was
Speaker 2: arrested near the Donald Trump rally at Coachella over the
Speaker 2: weekend after his vehicle was stopped. It was actually a checkpoint,
Speaker 2: so all the vehicles were being stopped, and this gentleman
Speaker 2: stood out because he was driving a black SUV unregistered
Speaker 2: with fake license plates, but not fake license plates that
Speaker 2: look like real license plates, sovereign plates plates indicating that
Speaker 2: the driver considers themselves a sovereign citizen not subject to
Speaker 2: the jurisdiction of the United States. Also, the interior was
Speaker 2: in disarray, and based on that, they searched it and
Speaker 2: they found in the trunk a shotgun, a handgun, a
Speaker 2: high capacity magazine. They apparently found numerous driver's licenses and
Speaker 2: passports in fake identities. He said he was a journalist,
Speaker 2: but he had no proof that he was a journalist
Speaker 2: working for any known journalistic entity in any of it.
Speaker 1: He was arrested on.
Speaker 2: Suspicion of having a loaded handgun and possession of a
Speaker 2: high capacity magazine.
Speaker 1: They are illegal in California. No no, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: but them.
Speaker 2: Miller, which is his name, was released on five thousand
Speaker 2: dollars bail yesterday, so he was only there overnight, and
Speaker 2: the sheriff's office in Riverside said that at no time
Speaker 2: were any of the people at the rally or former
Speaker 2: President Trump in danger. And he also said the sheriff
Speaker 2: of Riverside County that they had probably stopped an assassination attempt. Now,
Speaker 2: I feel like those two statements can't live together, but
Speaker 2: they were both. Lets you know that Jurius guy or
Speaker 2: somebody who's a threat. Now the Feds are probably going
Speaker 2: to take a look and see if they can figure
Speaker 2: out if he was up to no good. But he
Speaker 2: said he's a Donald Trump supporter and he was not
Speaker 2: there to hurt anybody, and that he's just a journalist
Speaker 2: to tell you something about sovereign citizens and at the
Speaker 2: risk of upsetting any sovereign citizens listening now. First of all,
Speaker 2: special message for you sovereign citizens. Yes, yes, the fringe
Speaker 2: on the flag is definitely a big deal sovereign citizens.
Speaker 2: Where I saw a lot of them in tax evasion
Speaker 2: cases that I worked on, because you would get sovereign
Speaker 2: citizens who say, and you've probably heard people tell you this,
Speaker 2: you don't have to pay taxes. It's actually voluntary, another gobbledegook,
Speaker 2: And so they would not pay their taxes, and they
Speaker 2: would come to court and they would maintain that they
Speaker 2: don't have to pay taxes and it's voluntary. And I
Speaker 2: can tell you something that federal judges.
Speaker 1: Hate that they hate it.
Speaker 2: Even the most liberal and lenient of judges would slam
Speaker 2: hard somebody on a tax evasion case saying I'm not
Speaker 2: required Now. It probably didn't help that they would say,
Speaker 2: I don't even recognize your authority as a federal judge.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's a pretty good way to tick off
Speaker 2: a federal judge. But they would get harsh sentences, and
Speaker 2: then they'd appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and the Ninth
Speaker 2: Circuit would say, you guys are idiots, and you would
Speaker 2: be better off being a tax cheat and just say, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I know I'm supposed to pay taxes. I didn't want
Speaker 2: to because I'm greedy. You would have a better chance
Speaker 2: of getting leniency than if you come in with this
Speaker 2: sovereign citizen stuff that this guy did. There's also another
Speaker 2: interesting wrinkle with them Miller, the man caught with the
Speaker 2: guns outside the Trump rally. There's a photo circulating now
Speaker 2: of them Miller with former presidential candidate Vivic Ramaswami, and
Speaker 2: now Ramaswami is getting heat because he's in a picture
Speaker 2: with this guy. And this guy was a rested outside
Speaker 2: the Trump rally with guns, and it looks like he's,
Speaker 2: you know, some kind of a kook. My opinion, this is,
Speaker 2: by the way, a constitutionally protected, pure opinion. I'm certainly
Speaker 2: not implying that I'm making a medical diagnosis or that
Speaker 2: I have any special information about him that I'm not
Speaker 2: telling you, because I don't.
Speaker 1: But I do think we should not.
Speaker 2: I don't know how much when you start holding people
Speaker 2: accountable for old pictures with somebody who later turns out
Speaker 2: to be a problem. All right, Elon Musk would like
Speaker 2: to launch more rockets from the coast of California. And
Speaker 2: he's not the only one that wants him to launch
Speaker 2: these rockets. The US military, in the form of Space
Speaker 2: Force and the Air Force, would like Elon Musk to
Speaker 2: be able to launch more rockets off the coast of California.
Speaker 2: And before we get into what the controversy, I do
Speaker 2: want to say it's nice to have a story where
Speaker 2: Space Force is prominently featured, because you really don't hear
Speaker 2: about Space Force enough, I think.
Speaker 1: But they're a big part of this story.
Speaker 2: So SpaceX has contracts with Space Force and the Air
Speaker 2: Force and probably with other arms of the military as well,
Speaker 2: and one of the things involves launching rockets off the
Speaker 2: coast of California. But also SpaceX will launch rockets for
Speaker 2: a private business. So there's been a problem with these
Speaker 2: rocket launches. The rocket launches have sometimes caused big sonic
Speaker 2: booms that go on over about one hundred mile distance,
Speaker 2: and they screw up wildlife. They scare the animals, they
Speaker 2: bother people, and there are also some I guess pollution
Speaker 2: concerns about these rocket launches. So the California Coastal Commission
Speaker 2: has been working with the military, with Space Force and
Speaker 2: Air Force on a to mitigate some of these problems
Speaker 2: when these rockets are launched. And there was a hearing
Speaker 2: and the California Coastal Commission people said, hey, Space Force,
Speaker 2: you're cool man. You've worked with us, You've agreed to
Speaker 2: certain plans to make these rocket launches better and not
Speaker 2: as disturbing to the environment, and you're awesome and we
Speaker 2: love you. And also Air Force come here, you get
Speaker 2: some love too, because we're all working together on these
Speaker 2: plans to mitigate the stuff. And then they turned their
Speaker 2: attention to Elon Musk and they said, but you, you
Speaker 2: we don't like, so you we have a problem with.
Speaker 2: And even though we just praised the heck at a
Speaker 2: Space Force and the Air Force, now we're saying we're
Speaker 2: not going to let you increase the number of your
Speaker 2: rocket launches.
Speaker 1: Sir, sorry, sorry, sorry, Why what did I do?
Speaker 2: I imagine him thinking, well, the first thing that the
Speaker 2: Coastal Commission said is these rocket launches do cause problems,
Speaker 2: and yes, your friends in the military have some plan
Speaker 2: to try to help, but they still cause problems. And
Speaker 2: a lot of what you're doing is private. You know,
Speaker 2: you're sending up starlink equipment. There's an estimate that over
Speaker 2: eighty five percent of these rocket flights are carrying private
Speaker 2: starlink equipment. And that's private activity. And that's why you
Speaker 2: got to get permission from the coastal agency. You don't
Speaker 2: have to get permission if you are the military. If
Speaker 2: Space Force wants to launch a rocket, they don't.
Speaker 1: Got to ask nobody. They can just go launch it.
Speaker 2: They try to work with the California Coastal Commission and
Speaker 2: be cooperative, but they don't need their permission, but Elon
Speaker 2: Musk and SpaceX needs permission for anything that's private. So
Speaker 2: there's a little bit of vagary going on about when
Speaker 2: is it private and when is it not private? And
Speaker 2: SpaceX would like the conclude to be that every rocket
Speaker 2: we send.
Speaker 1: Up is military business. Even if it's.
Speaker 2: A rocket and it's just got starlink equipment on it,
Speaker 2: all of these launches are still of value to the military,
Speaker 2: so they should be treated as military activity.
Speaker 1: And I don't need your permission and Spaceford.
Speaker 2: An interpretation that's good with us, But the California Coastal
Speaker 2: Commission is not buying that part of it. So here's
Speaker 2: the thing you could understand, perhaps if the members of
Speaker 2: the California Coastal Commission, I don't know how many more
Speaker 2: times are the last time you launched a rocket it
Speaker 2: went haywire, and we f procedures for these rockets, and
Speaker 2: you could at least understand there's a relevant discussion about
Speaker 2: the launching of the rockets and the harm that it
Speaker 2: might or might not be doing to the coast, which
Speaker 2: is the entire point of the CCC. I'm just going
Speaker 2: to call them the CCC. Now that's not the band.
Speaker 2: But a lot of the comments had to do with
Speaker 2: political concerns. Some of the commissioners specifically said. For example,
Speaker 2: the chair of the CCC, Carol Hart, said, we're dealing
Speaker 2: with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected
Speaker 2: himself into the presidential race. That's probably true and fair
Speaker 2: to say, but I don't know if it's relevant to
Speaker 2: whether they should be allowed to launch their.
Speaker 1: Rockets or not.
Speaker 2: Commissioner Mike Wilson said, this company is owned by the
Speaker 2: richest person in the world, with direct control of what
Speaker 2: could be the most expansive communication system in the planet.
Speaker 2: Just last week, that person, Elon Musk, was talking about
Speaker 2: political retribution. Gretchen Newsom, Yes, yes you are, bells are
Speaker 2: ringing correctly, also a commissioner on the Coastal Commission. She said,
Speaker 2: Elon Musk is hopping around the country spewing and tweeting
Speaker 2: political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to
Speaker 2: help hurricane victims with free star Link access to the Internet.
Speaker 2: So it's pretty clear that a big part of their
Speaker 2: thinking is they don't like Elon Musk politically.
Speaker 1: They don't like him personally.
Speaker 2: They think that he's getting too busy and involved in politics,
Speaker 2: and that I would imagine they think he's some kind
Speaker 2: of a jerk.
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure.
Speaker 2: And here's the deal, Like, Okay, you might agree with them,
Speaker 2: I agree with them, But what if what if it
Speaker 2: was somebody we like. I'm talking only to the people
Speaker 2: who don't like Elon Musk, obviously, what if it was
Speaker 2: somebody we do like who had a company but also
Speaker 2: was involved in talking about politics and so forth, and
Speaker 2: they wanted to do something, and the people on the
Speaker 2: commission said, we don't like your brand of a political engagement,
Speaker 2: so we're not gonna let you pursue the business of
Speaker 2: your company. We'd be upset and say it wasn't fair.
Speaker 2: And I do think, yeah, you know, you got you
Speaker 2: gotta recognize that just because the same thing's happening to
Speaker 2: somebody you don't support doesn't make it right.
Speaker 1: And that's what's going on.
Speaker 2: And they rejected the agreement from the military agencies to
Speaker 2: mitigate the issues with the rocket launches by six to
Speaker 2: four vote, and I guess at this time they're not
Speaker 2: gonna let SpaceX launch all the rockets that they would
Speaker 2: like to. It's KFI AM six forty live everywhere on
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Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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