Speaker 1: You're listening to bill handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty bill handle here on a Monday morning,
Speaker 2: May twelfth, is Oh, what a weekend it is. And
Speaker 2: one of the big stories. I mean, there are a
Speaker 2: couple of massive stories, and probably in terms of business
Speaker 2: the United States. You just notice Heather reporting that the
Speaker 2: stock market is up the now he's up a thousand points.
Speaker 3: And why is that?
Speaker 2: Well, because over the weekend, China and the United States
Speaker 2: have agreed to lower tariffs on goods from each other's
Speaker 2: countries for ninety days. And let me tell you, business
Speaker 2: is reeling in a positive direction.
Speaker 3: And this is a temporary reprieve in that trade war.
Speaker 2: That threatens that I'm saying, almost guarantees of global recession.
Speaker 2: And it was I mean, the fight between China in
Speaker 2: the United States could have been.
Speaker 3: Just enormous, just enormous.
Speaker 2: So what Treasury Secretary Scott Descent and US Trade Representative
Speaker 2: Greer said that after weekend talks in Geneva with a
Speaker 2: Chinese delegation, US tariffs will be reduced from one hundred
Speaker 2: and forty five percent to thirty percent, on top of
Speaker 2: the already in place ten percent. Now we're talking forty percent.
Speaker 2: Forty percent for a lot of companies is doable. It's tough,
Speaker 2: but it's doable. And as you know, I talked to
Speaker 2: my partner every single day about these tariffs because they
Speaker 2: totally affect our business. And we were at one hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty one percent. Tariffs couldn't move now forty percent,
Speaker 2: you know what, we can deal with it, not well,
Speaker 2: but and Beijing said that its blank of terrific on
Speaker 2: American products for as one hundred and twenty five percent
Speaker 2: now drops to ten percent, and this kicks.
Speaker 3: In on Wednesday.
Speaker 2: By the way, one hundred and forty five percent and
Speaker 2: the one hundred and twenty five percent forget about a
Speaker 2: percentage of tariffs.
Speaker 3: It is a complete embargo. It's a total embargo of American.
Speaker 2: Products being sold in China, Chinese products being sold in
Speaker 2: the United States. That comes to a screeching halt. There
Speaker 2: is no business being done between the two countries at
Speaker 2: that kind of tariff rate, and so stock markets across
Speaker 2: Asia already are up here in the US one thousand
Speaker 2: points and we have a ninety day pause and a
Speaker 2: joint statement released by both countries. We have agreed on
Speaker 2: the ninety eight pause and the spirit of mutual opening,
Speaker 2: continued communication, cooperation, and mutual respect.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would argue cooperation.
Speaker 2: And mutual respect is a big word which defines perfectly
Speaker 2: our relationship with China. One of the problems with the
Speaker 2: Trump administration is not even so much the tariffs themselves.
Speaker 2: It's that it changes day today. And here is the
Speaker 2: problem you're going to see right now. Short term, there
Speaker 2: goes the stock market up through the roof a thousand
Speaker 2: points today, and then if tariffs kick in after ninety days,
Speaker 2: it's going to drop a thousand points.
Speaker 3: But long term, here's what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: The President has said trillions of dollars have been announced
Speaker 2: by various companies to be invested in the United States,
Speaker 2: new factories, new distribution systems, and what he is saying works.
Speaker 2: The problem with business is what business wants more than
Speaker 2: anything else is stability. The markets want stability, and what
Speaker 2: does a major company do. So you've got a major company,
Speaker 2: let's pick a company, General Motors, who has agreed to
Speaker 2: invest X number of dollars in the billions into a
Speaker 2: factory in the United States, moving it from Mexico. Well,
Speaker 2: the President has arbitrarily and individually decided on the tariffs
Speaker 2: because remember, Congress gives him anything he wants.
Speaker 3: It's a Republican Congress.
Speaker 2: And therefore, the next president, who is a Democrat, for example,
Speaker 2: goes the other way and reduces terrorists, and all of
Speaker 2: a sudden, the twenty thirty forty billion dollar factory that's
Speaker 2: being built in the United States doesn't make sense anymore.
Speaker 3: It becomes too expensive.
Speaker 2: Why because the average worker that works in a auto
Speaker 2: plan in the United States makes twenty five twenty six
Speaker 2: dollars a day. In China, the average worker makes under
Speaker 2: two dollars a day or under two dollars an hour.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, twenty five dollars an hour for the average
Speaker 2: worker in the United States, and an auto plant versus
Speaker 2: two dollars an hour can't compete. And at the same time,
Speaker 2: China dumps money subsidizes their big manufacturing firms. So it's
Speaker 2: just it's you can't rely on anything. And let me
Speaker 2: tell you the decision for a major company to invest
Speaker 2: billions of dollars into a manufacturing plant in the United
Speaker 2: States and move it from Mexico, that's.
Speaker 3: No small deal. That takes years.
Speaker 2: So right now, the trade surplus with the US was
Speaker 2: one hundred billion dollars. Last year, China sold more products
Speaker 2: to the US than US bot from sin by one
Speaker 2: hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 3: President Trump says it was in the trillions of dollars.
Speaker 3: It's not you know. One of the things about the
Speaker 3: numbers are kind of outrageous.
Speaker 2: So we're going to see what happens. So the trade
Speaker 2: war is continuing to a smaller extent the way during
Speaker 2: his first term, there was a twenty percent tariff issued,
Speaker 2: and this had to do with the fentanyl related chemicals
Speaker 2: coming into the country, which China does do or allows.
Speaker 2: It allows fentanyl products, and this is the products that
Speaker 2: manufacture fentanyl. They don't actually sell fentanyl. What they do
Speaker 2: is they settle in materials to make fentanyl. So that
Speaker 2: makes sense in one sense, But the same tariffs are
Speaker 2: going against Canada because of this massive amount of fentanyl
Speaker 2: materials is coming from Canada.
Speaker 3: Not also the immigration issue.
Speaker 2: While China does have an immigration issue with Chinese nationals
Speaker 2: coming in United States, how many Kate Canadians are sneaking
Speaker 2: over the border.
Speaker 3: And so it's all mixed up.
Speaker 2: Everything is put into a blender, mixed up No one
Speaker 2: knows what's happening at this point. All we know is
Speaker 2: we're gonna get a smoothie. And so as the government
Speaker 2: has said the Alicia Garcia, ro Chief Economists for Asia Pacific,
Speaker 2: it's an investment bank.
Speaker 3: The deal is not a solution.
Speaker 2: It's simply a smoothing of the impact of the bifurcation,
Speaker 2: the splitting up of our relationship. But it's certainly better
Speaker 2: the news than was happening Friday or last week, for sure.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's get local for a moment. And this has
Speaker 3: to do. This story has to do.
Speaker 2: It's the La Time story about the faulty alerts that
Speaker 2: happened during the La fires. And this was after an
Speaker 2: investigation into La County's faulty emergency alerts during the January fires.
Speaker 2: US Congressman Robert Garcia, who was investigated this, issued a
Speaker 2: report calling for more federal oversight of the nation's patchwork.
Speaker 3: And it privatized the emergency alert system.
Speaker 2: Right now, it's privatized, and it's under contract with the
Speaker 2: county or the city.
Speaker 3: And here's what happened.
Speaker 2: The investigation was launched by Garcia in more than a
Speaker 2: dozen members of the Congressional delegation LA's congressional delegation after
Speaker 2: La County sent a whole series of faulty evacuation alerts
Speaker 2: on January ninth, urging people to evacuate, now not just
Speaker 2: in the fire areas or where the fire was moving,
Speaker 2: but all over the metropolitan region of ten million people.
Speaker 2: Go evacuate ten million people, a lot of which had
Speaker 2: no issue. As a matter of fact, this alert came
Speaker 2: two days after the firestorms erupted in Pacific Pales days
Speaker 2: in Altadena, and the alerts, which were intended for a
Speaker 2: very small group of residents near Calabasas, has had to
Speaker 2: do with the Calabasas.
Speaker 3: Fire which was happening.
Speaker 2: Not much burned in Calabasas, it turned out to be
Speaker 2: those folks were very lucky. So they were intended for Calabasas,
Speaker 2: and they were blasted repeatedly to communities as far as
Speaker 2: forty miles away in which the fire had zero chants
Speaker 2: of going to.
Speaker 3: And engulfing those homes.
Speaker 2: And so the report is titled Sounding the Alarm Lessons
Speaker 2: from the Kenneth Fire False Alerts, and this talks about Genesis.
Speaker 2: This is the software company that contracted with the county
Speaker 2: to issue wireless emergency alerts.
Speaker 3: Now they're saying a technical.
Speaker 2: Error is what caused it to happen, That this was
Speaker 2: a faulty alert that went across the entire metro region.
Speaker 2: And according to Genesis, oh there goes my printer again,
Speaker 2: the software did not upload the correct evacuation area.
Speaker 3: It was. Well, they're saying it was human order, human error.
Speaker 2: The report found that contrary to accounts of La County officials,
Speaker 2: multiple echo alerts went out as cell phone provider's experience
Speaker 2: overload due to high volume and the long duration of
Speaker 2: the alerts, even when not only were they false, they
Speaker 2: went on for minutes and minutes, and confusion was compounded
Speaker 2: and it was all kinds of vague wording in the
Speaker 2: original alert.
Speaker 3: Garcia said, it's clear there's so much reform needed.
Speaker 2: We have to have operating systems that people can rely
Speaker 2: on and trust in the future. That's scary stuff when
Speaker 2: you think about emergency alerts that are either false or
Speaker 2: somehow in error. They don't do it in an area
Speaker 2: which they should. In this case, they were broadcast. They
Speaker 2: were sent to people over cell phones in a much
Speaker 2: broader area cos panic in areas that had no chance
Speaker 2: of being engulfed in flames. Garcia said, we're talking about
Speaker 2: the loss of life and property, people's confidence in our
Speaker 2: emergency notification systems.
Speaker 3: Now, do you rely on emergency notification systems? I do.
Speaker 2: You know? If I'm looking at an alert, get out
Speaker 2: of Dodge. I'm getting out of Dodge, even if I
Speaker 2: don't live in Dodge. Are there any towns named in
Speaker 2: southern California? I don't think so. But it's really scary stuff,
Speaker 2: Garcia said. People need to be able to trust that
Speaker 2: if there's a natural disaster, they're going to get an alert,
Speaker 2: which we do get, and it's going to have.
Speaker 3: Correct information which we didn't get.
Speaker 2: So the report makes some recommendation more federal funding, like
Speaker 2: we're going to get it right for funding, planning, equipment, training,
Speaker 2: system maintenance. The FEMA has an Integrated Public Alert and
Speaker 2: Warning System national system that provides emergency public alerts through
Speaker 2: mobile phones using wireless emergency alerts privately owned and it
Speaker 2: goes to radio and TV via the.
Speaker 3: Emergency Alert System. Now we get those all the time.
Speaker 2: Amber alerts, we get those even if the phone is
Speaker 2: turned off, we get these.
Speaker 3: Is that right, by the way, Uh, if you turn
Speaker 3: the phone off. Do you still get the emergency alerts
Speaker 3: or does it not come in? No matter what you know,
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer, they still come in. It
Speaker 3: may not make a sound, but you see a visual
Speaker 3: pop up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I hate that emergency alert. I mean my ears
Speaker 2: blow off, blowout, and you go, come on, Really, so
Speaker 2: you have some kids getting kidnapped? I mean, is that
Speaker 2: worth it to blow my ears out?
Speaker 3: No, it's not.
Speaker 2: So the report presses the FCC to established performance standards
Speaker 2: and develop measurable goals for monitoring, and we've.
Speaker 3: Got to have it. It's that simple. So big failure
Speaker 3: in government.
Speaker 2: And this is one of those non privatized businesses services
Speaker 2: that you know, maybe the government should be involved. Now
Speaker 2: a lot of people are not happy with the government
Speaker 2: being involved, but once in a while you do want them.
Speaker 2: For example, I'm okay with the FCC the FAA establishing
Speaker 2: minimum standards. I like the idea of when I get
Speaker 2: on an airplane, the airplane maintenance people the airlines have
Speaker 2: to report to the FAA their maintenance record, as opposed
Speaker 2: to the market deciding how safe an airplane an airplane
Speaker 2: is going to go. So if you're flying on an
Speaker 2: American carrier of some kind and they have planes falling
Speaker 2: out of the sky. The market will tell you go
Speaker 2: to another airline. Love it, Okay, Neil, this is for you.
Speaker 3: All right. Here's a question for you. And I love this.
Speaker 2: And this has to do with the religion and government,
Speaker 2: separation of church and state, and one of my favorite
Speaker 2: topics to talk about. And here's the question, who counts
Speaker 2: as a Christian?
Speaker 3: Now I don't. I know Neil does, right.
Speaker 2: Neil is in the majority in this country because there
Speaker 2: are a whole lot more Christians than any other religion,
Speaker 2: although that number has decreased dramatically. So during his campaign,
Speaker 2: Trump told Christian supporters that if he became president, they
Speaker 2: would never have to vote again because we'll have it
Speaker 2: fixed so good. And I don't think he was talking
Speaker 2: about they'll never have to vote again because he's going
Speaker 2: to run again.
Speaker 3: I don't buy that.
Speaker 2: I think it had to do because remember he's telling
Speaker 2: Christian supporters it's going I'm having it fix so good,
Speaker 2: And I think that has to do in most people.
Speaker 2: And based on what he said, is bringing back Christian
Speaker 2: values and eradicating anti Christian bias, because that seems to
Speaker 2: be an ongoing thing among Christians that there is now
Speaker 2: anti Christian bias, and he set up a task force
Speaker 2: to somehow decide what exactly constitutes authentic Christian belief and practice.
Speaker 2: I don't get that. So President Trump is in fact
Speaker 2: a Christian Christian fault.
Speaker 3: Well, maybe Christian followers have no problem with the fact
Speaker 3: that he was a complete.
Speaker 2: Womanizer and has violated many many Christian beliefs, But then
Speaker 2: again you have to turn the other cheek. Interesting how
Speaker 2: the politics work on this, because frankly, anti the pro Christian,
Speaker 2: the Christians belief it was abortion that was the number
Speaker 2: one thing an abortion has taken care of. So this
Speaker 2: is an executive order creating the task force and dealing
Speaker 2: with the examples that the Trump administration considers to be
Speaker 2: unacceptable discrimination against Christian Christians, including prosecutions during the Biden
Speaker 2: era of Christian anti abortion protesters.
Speaker 3: There is a law the Freedom.
Speaker 2: To Access Clinical Interests that were passed, and the FBI
Speaker 2: sent out a letter a memo that was later retracted
Speaker 2: big time, referring to radical traditionals Christians as potential domestic
Speaker 2: terrorism threat and the designation of Easter Sunday twenty twenty
Speaker 2: four as the year's Transgender Day of Visibility, and this
Speaker 2: is not something that this administration particularly likes. So where
Speaker 2: you had, I mean, it's completely turned around. This is
Speaker 2: no longer freedom of religion where everybody practices and the
Speaker 2: government has nothing to do with religion nothing, because under
Speaker 2: the concept of separation of church and state. And here
Speaker 2: where is where the interpretation of the Constitution comes in.
Speaker 2: This is where you have the Supreme Court deciding how
Speaker 2: far a provision of the Constitution goes. For example, Second Amendment,
Speaker 2: the Court has decided the language of the militia. In
Speaker 2: order to basically have freedom in this country, you have
Speaker 2: to have and organize militia.
Speaker 3: That disappears, it's just the freedom to bear arms.
Speaker 2: The Court also ruled that, and this is in the
Speaker 2: past that freedom of religion and separation of church and
Speaker 2: state was absolute. The state cannot get involved in any
Speaker 2: way in religion.
Speaker 3: In other words, no prayer in school at all.
Speaker 2: Can't mention God in classrooms, can't have the Ten Commandments
Speaker 2: on public buildings, just not allowed, because that is a
Speaker 2: state building, a a state classroom. And separation of church
Speaker 2: and statement. You can't mix the two up. Well, that
Speaker 2: has changed, Boy has that changed, and so conservative Christians
Speaker 2: are saying we are being discriminated against big time. For example,
Speaker 2: the Freedom to Access the Clinical Entrances Act, which they
Speaker 2: have attacked. And these are protesters that go to abortion
Speaker 2: clinics and protest, and they were actually blocking women from
Speaker 2: going in the door and harassing them and calling them murderers.
Speaker 2: And the court was pretty clear in terms of upholding
Speaker 2: the Freedom to Access Clinical Interests Act. You can protest
Speaker 2: all you want, you just can't protest in front of
Speaker 2: the clinic. You cannot stop someone from going into the clinic.
Speaker 2: You cannot harass people, you cannot.
Speaker 3: Yell murder all. That's a different issue. You probably we can.
Speaker 2: Well, it's changed because now under freedom of religion, how
Speaker 2: can you stop someone from advocating a non abortion position
Speaker 2: based on religious grounds.
Speaker 3: It has switched completely.
Speaker 2: I'm going to come back and finish this up because
Speaker 2: this is I mean, we're changing big time. When I
Speaker 2: talk about Trump changing the United States in terms of philosophy,
Speaker 2: in terms of the way we're going and trade presidential power,
Speaker 2: this one. I think this is one of the most
Speaker 2: problematic issues of the day. And they have to determine
Speaker 2: who's a Christian.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Do you know who a Christian is?
Speaker 2: Does anybody who believes in Christ a Christian? If God
Speaker 2: tells you to block someone from entering a or being
Speaker 2: in front of an abortion center and stopping women from
Speaker 2: coming in because of your religious belief, are you allowed
Speaker 2: to do that? Well, there are arguments up and down
Speaker 2: the sidewalk on that one. Now there's also anti Semitism
Speaker 2: that the White House has come down really hard and
Speaker 2: deporting people and stopping the quote anti Semitic, and having
Speaker 2: presidents of major university's tossed they had to resign. Harvard
Speaker 2: got nine billion dollars cut from the government grants for
Speaker 2: its medical research, et cetera because of the alleged anti semitism.
Speaker 2: So it's not just anti Christian Semitism. It's also anti
Speaker 2: Jewish Semitism. And for some reason, we don't have much
Speaker 2: out there of anti Muslim sentiment other than not letting
Speaker 2: them in the country and exporting them right exactly goodbye.
Speaker 2: So it's a basic tenet of belief. But the big
Speaker 2: one is Christians. And why is the big one Christians?
Speaker 2: Because there are so many Christians. Although although in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty ninety percent of Americans identified themselves as Christian today,
Speaker 2: sixty two percent say there are followers of Christ much
Speaker 2: less organized religion. So someone who is a Muslim, that's
Speaker 2: fairly easy to determine. Someone who is Jewish, that's fairly
Speaker 2: easy to determine. All you have to look at is
Speaker 2: bank accounts, and then.
Speaker 3: It's easy to determine who a Jew is. Christians are
Speaker 3: all over the board.
Speaker 2: Why because christian is a more all encompassing religion.
Speaker 3: Oh, Neil is shaking his head. Is basic? Let me
Speaker 3: ask them? Is basic Christianity just a belief in Christ? Period? No,
Speaker 3: it's not.
Speaker 1: Well, that's the point I believe in you have to
Speaker 1: believe in the trinity. Now, there's gonna be people that
Speaker 1: argue this. Jehovah's Witnesses believe differently, and there's those that
Speaker 1: would argue that they aren't. They don't fall under the
Speaker 1: fundamental tenets of Christianity.
Speaker 2: Okay, but is it self described if you believe in Christ,
Speaker 2: for example, Jehovah witnesses, if you pass a law saying
Speaker 2: that you can't go up to people's houses and stay
Speaker 2: in their doorways and knock on doors, is that anti
Speaker 2: Jehovah witness.
Speaker 1: But there are things that make you a Christian. I'd
Speaker 1: never understand why people think that it's just like I
Speaker 1: like Jesus.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're in.
Speaker 1: That's not really how it works. There are tenants to
Speaker 1: understand who the person of Christ is, the hyposthetic union
Speaker 1: between the dual nature of his godhood and his humanity.
Speaker 1: There are things that you have to believe to be
Speaker 1: a Christian. You can't just go yeah, he seems like
Speaker 1: a good guy to me.
Speaker 3: All right, So let me ask you there.
Speaker 2: You are committed all kinds of horrific acts, non Christian acts,
Speaker 2: and as you die you have genuine remorse, and you
Speaker 2: say I want in because.
Speaker 3: I really believe in you. Does the door open up?
Speaker 1: No chance in hell. You're not getting in just on
Speaker 1: personality traits. Well, this is what people don't understand.
Speaker 3: You ask about.
Speaker 1: The standards of right and wrong are not man made.
Speaker 1: Those are your laws. The standards of God are different.
Speaker 1: And everyone fails that you smash a mirror, the whole
Speaker 1: mirror is broken. You don't get a piece of the
Speaker 1: mirror broken, the whole thing.
Speaker 2: So are we born in sin? See we're moving over
Speaker 2: to a whole different issue. Yes, And you are born
Speaker 2: in sin becose I was not born in sin.
Speaker 3: I developed my sin with a lot of work. It
Speaker 3: took a long time for me to get there.
Speaker 1: It was a sin for you to be born.
Speaker 3: Yes, I'm not arguing the.
Speaker 2: Well. The point is that I know we've gone off
Speaker 2: on a tangent here. The point is there is a
Speaker 2: solid move with this administration effectively saying separation of church
Speaker 2: is out the door.
Speaker 3: We now want. But people misunderstand it.
Speaker 1: The separation of church and state, not in the Constitution,
Speaker 1: by the way, is to protect the church from the state,
Speaker 1: not the state from the church.
Speaker 3: Which is no, It's to protect individuals.
Speaker 2: It's to protect individual and you don't protect the state
Speaker 2: from the church. You know, it is the individuals because
Speaker 2: the Constitution deal with your rights, not the state's rights,
Speaker 2: but individuals' rights.
Speaker 3: And we are out of time.
Speaker 2: And I love getting the last word in Neil, because
Speaker 2: that's what this show is about. Whether I'm right or wrong,
Speaker 2: name not mine, Whether I'm wrong or right.
Speaker 3: Okay, kfi am six you've been listening to the Bill
Speaker 3: Handle Show.
Speaker 2: Catch my show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
Speaker 2: and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app,