Speaker 1: You're listening to bill handle on demand from KFI A
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty bill handle. Here it is a
Speaker 2: Friday morning, November one. Tuesday comes the election, and we're
Speaker 2: gonna be talking about the election well after the election,
Speaker 2: because the lawsuits are already flying, the accusations are already there.
Speaker 2: All right, I want to go into a story about
Speaker 2: our economy and some real information. Now we are hearing
Speaker 2: such crap out there that it almost befuddles me. You know,
Speaker 2: for example, well, you know inflation is out of control.
Speaker 2: Inflation is not out of control, is not out of control.
Speaker 2: Inflation has been completely controlled. But I want to make
Speaker 2: an analogy here. We all have suffered from inflation that
Speaker 2: has in fact hit us. Let me make an analogy here.
Speaker 2: House has termites, okay, and they've done some damage. You
Speaker 2: call Pacific Coast Termite Ding, send them a bill for this.
Speaker 2: They come out and treat your home. And you don't
Speaker 2: have termites anymore. Well, the damage is already there. If
Speaker 2: you don't have any termites, the damage is there. You've
Speaker 2: got to fix the damage. Inflation did its damage. Prices
Speaker 2: are much higher than they were. And even if inflation
Speaker 2: is brought down to zero. You still have a price
Speaker 2: that's thirty percent higher if you go to a restaurant
Speaker 2: than it was three years ago. So that's the reality.
Speaker 2: Inflation is out of control. It is not inflation was
Speaker 2: out of control. Okay, So the Commerce Department on Wednesday
Speaker 2: said that the US gross domestic product the GDP, which
Speaker 2: is the value of all goods and services produced in
Speaker 2: our country in any country, which is the measure of
Speaker 2: the economy more so than anything else, expanded at the
Speaker 2: rate of two point eight in the third quarter. The
Speaker 2: bottom line is that the US economy is outpacing almost
Speaker 2: every other developed nation on the planet. Our economy is
Speaker 2: actually in good shape, but we're not looking at the
Speaker 2: real numbers. Now, if you look at inflation, you're paying
Speaker 2: more for almost everything. Therefore, the economy is horrible, but
Speaker 2: it really isn't. If you're looking at mortgage rates that
Speaker 2: were two and three quarters percent and you're paying six percent, now, yeah,
Speaker 2: it's out of control.
Speaker 1: But the reality is, even though it's gone up.
Speaker 2: A little bit the last two three weeks, incrementally, it's
Speaker 2: still pretty good. It's just we came from a place
Speaker 2: where there was no reality. We came from a place
Speaker 2: where inflation was far more than it should have been.
Speaker 2: You know, right now wages are outpacing inflation.
Speaker 1: That is a good thing.
Speaker 2: And saying no, but and you and I are going
Speaker 2: to have a really good time talking about that during
Speaker 2: the break. And why is that happening? Well, we're back
Speaker 2: to spending like crazy.
Speaker 1: Two thirds of our.
Speaker 2: Economy in the United States is consumer spending, and we
Speaker 2: are spending like crazy. Solid job market, declining, inflation, booming
Speaker 2: stock market. So I'm gonna throw politics out there. Okay,
Speaker 2: that you have heard over and over again. The illegals
Speaker 2: have come over and taken your jobs. Okay for those
Speaker 2: people that are listening. For those that aren't, obviously you're
Speaker 2: not listening. But for those of you that are listening, brilliant,
Speaker 2: aren't I I want you to look in the mirror
Speaker 2: and say your job has been taken by an illegal migrant.
Speaker 2: You are not working because your job was taken. How
Speaker 2: many people would raise their hands if I asked that question.
Speaker 1: It's just not true.
Speaker 2: And if you look at real figures, our economy is
Speaker 2: actually doing Okay.
Speaker 1: Now, are there people out of jobs? Of course there
Speaker 1: are are there people.
Speaker 2: Housing is out of control, of course it is, but
Speaker 2: that's southern California.
Speaker 1: I mean we're outliers.
Speaker 2: For example, the jobs in the transportation area.
Speaker 1: If you work at the ports, you're doing great.
Speaker 2: If you're in high tech right now, you're not doing
Speaker 2: so great. But the bottom line is you're working and
Speaker 2: no illegal migrant has taken your job. Now, we are
Speaker 2: going to get some figures coming out today Labor Department,
Speaker 2: where the numbers are going to be pretty bad. But
Speaker 2: that's also because you have two hurricanes that hit and
Speaker 2: the strike by Boeing, so.
Speaker 1: You can't really pay attention to those numbers.
Speaker 2: Although you're going to USGDP is projected to increase three
Speaker 2: percent for the year. That's considered healthy, robust, exactly.
Speaker 1: Where we want to go.
Speaker 2: The banking sector has been solid, corporate profits are solid,
Speaker 2: Productivity has picked up in recent quarters. By the way,
Speaker 2: an influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal, has in
Speaker 2: fact boosted the labor supply.
Speaker 1: It's great for employers.
Speaker 2: To have illegal migrants work, but I want to go
Speaker 2: back again, you're not working because an illegal migrant.
Speaker 1: Has taken your job. Right, that's a croc.
Speaker 2: And so the part of the illegal migrants coming in
Speaker 2: outside of the politics helps employers because illegal migrants work
Speaker 2: for cheap, so illegal migrants as well as legal migrants.
Speaker 1: And by the way, that's the only way that our population.
Speaker 2: Grows or stays stable, because if you look at the
Speaker 2: birth rate in this country, it would it declines every year,
Speaker 2: and if we didn't have migration, we'd be losing population
Speaker 2: like crazy, household spending going up. Actually, most people went
Speaker 2: into the pandemic in pretty good shape and then everybody
Speaker 2: lost their jobs. And then the money poured in, the
Speaker 2: stimulus money, so many businesses actually did better. A lot closed,
Speaker 2: but people walked out. They're in better shape now. But
Speaker 2: for inflation, legitimate, that is a legitimate statement. Inflation absolutely
Speaker 2: was destructive, but you know at some point that goes away.
Speaker 2: You know, World War two wiped out this country economically,
Speaker 2: but we came out of it and we did great
Speaker 2: after that. Inflation has done a huge amount of damage,
Speaker 2: but we're out of it now.
Speaker 1: Please keep that in mind you are working. Ah drives
Speaker 1: me nuts. So here's this is the part that absolutely
Speaker 1: kills me.
Speaker 2: Real numbers, real figures out of the Department of Labor,
Speaker 2: Bureau of Labor Statistics. None of this matters None of
Speaker 2: this matters because we no longer look at numbers coming
Speaker 2: in from the government and real statistics.
Speaker 1: It's all gone to hell in a handbasket, all right.
Speaker 2: I want to go into a story about a nineteen
Speaker 2: year old guy named Nazel Warren, and he's la and
Speaker 2: he's been arrested five times in five months, including for
Speaker 2: robberies while under the court ordered GPS tracking. He's wearing
Speaker 2: that anklet and has been arrested five times since putting
Speaker 2: it on.
Speaker 1: I go, wait a minute, how is that possible?
Speaker 2: The Probation Department supervises these defendants and judges are turning
Speaker 2: increasingly to GPS as a way of monitoring and making
Speaker 2: sure that these defendants and show up a trial, show up,
Speaker 2: but hearings, etc. And that's happening more and more because
Speaker 2: cash bail is considered very unfair and it is for
Speaker 2: poor people.
Speaker 1: It effective means effectively means no bail.
Speaker 2: So we're turning to GPS, and we figured GPS works well. Okay,
Speaker 2: So Warren is charged this summer with carrying a gun
Speaker 2: in public. A judge releases him on the condition that
Speaker 2: Probation Department track his movements with a GPS device. That's
Speaker 2: put on his ankle. So out he goes with a
Speaker 2: GPS device. Arrested three weeks.
Speaker 1: Later suspicion of robbing an elderly couple.
Speaker 2: A different judge lets him out again with GPS tracking.
Speaker 2: After that, they alleged he went on to rob two
Speaker 2: more people, an elderly couple and another robbery of a
Speaker 2: jewelry store, and he was picked up against week his
Speaker 2: fifth the rest in five months.
Speaker 1: You go, oh, come on.
Speaker 2: Really, now, the Probation Department is supervised is pre pre
Speaker 2: trial defendants because judges are more and more turning to
Speaker 2: GPS for a couple of reasons. First of all, it
Speaker 2: allows people to go to work, stay with their families,
Speaker 2: so the families don't suffer the way they would if
Speaker 2: the guy is in prison or in jail awaiting trial.
Speaker 2: Because remember you're innocent until proven guilty. And so the
Speaker 2: Probation Department is supposed to track this and by the way,
Speaker 2: in real time, yeah, I think that's happening.
Speaker 1: So Probation Department, and this was.
Speaker 2: Interviews with defendants, and it's supposed to conduct a rec
Speaker 2: risk assessment of the defendant whether it's worth the risk,
Speaker 2: and asking.
Speaker 1: For the GPS.
Speaker 2: All right, so fourteen hundred people that they looked at
Speaker 2: under GPS monitoring had absconded. Well of the fourteen hundred,
Speaker 2: four hundred and two had absconded had fled, So now
Speaker 2: we are talking thirty percent gone. An additional two hundred
Speaker 2: and thirty one allowed the batteries to run and die,
Speaker 2: which means they don't know where these guys are, so
Speaker 2: we don't know if.
Speaker 1: They've bailed out or not.
Speaker 2: And then on top of that, one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: two defendants failed to show up to meet with their
Speaker 2: probation officers, so we're talking way north of fifty percent
Speaker 2: wearing these ankle bracelets either leave, don't show up, run
Speaker 2: out of a battery which they're supposed to put in there.
Speaker 1: So this is a problem.
Speaker 2: The GPS program was designed to allow law enforcement to
Speaker 2: track defendants, establish a record, to know where they are
Speaker 2: and in real time.
Speaker 1: So here's what happened.
Speaker 2: They're trying to figure out how this company contracted to
Speaker 2: run the GPS program.
Speaker 1: The technology.
Speaker 2: The company is called Securists, and they're changing their name
Speaker 2: to not Securists because.
Speaker 1: It ain't working.
Speaker 2: And so they serve the detectives serve a search warrant
Speaker 2: on Securists to turn over the information from Warren's GPS monitor.
Speaker 2: Why they needed a search warrant, I don't know. But
Speaker 2: when the warrant was served, Securist goes in to court
Speaker 2: and says the data was so flawed they can't even
Speaker 2: bring anybody into court an expert explaining how the system
Speaker 2: even works. All their information is flawed. We cannot certify
Speaker 2: any of the data during the timeframe they're talking about,
Speaker 2: Securists or not. Securists now gets three hundred and fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars a month to operate the GPS system with
Speaker 2: LA County.
Speaker 1: I mean, really crazy stuff. By the way.
Speaker 2: In one case, this guy Warren, nineteen year old Warren
Speaker 2: is defended by his lawyer and he was picked up
Speaker 2: for a gun possession. He is a felon. He is
Speaker 2: not supposed to have a gun. They got him with
Speaker 2: a gun, and his lawyer said the reason he had
Speaker 2: a gun is because he was afraid of being robbed
Speaker 2: of his twenty thousand dollars Rulix watch, of which he
Speaker 2: had stolen. I mean, these are lawyers, they'll come up
Speaker 2: with anything. So he's been arrested over and over again,
Speaker 2: and the GPS system, which is supposed to work, and
Speaker 2: Keith being these criminal defendants on track, doesn't look like
Speaker 2: it works. And judges more and more are using this
Speaker 2: for two reasons. One because, as I said before, it
Speaker 2: allows defendants who have only been charged, not convicted, with
Speaker 2: the ability to work, stay with their families, all all
Speaker 2: of that, and to the jails the prisons, and the
Speaker 2: jails are so crowded.
Speaker 1: That there's just not room.
Speaker 2: And then there's a third reason is if you don't
Speaker 2: have this and you have bail, bail is so expensive,
Speaker 2: bail is so onerous. For people who have no money,
Speaker 2: bail is effectively no bail.
Speaker 1: The system is just broken, all right. I want to start.
Speaker 2: This is a story about Jeff Bezos and his decision
Speaker 2: not to endorse a one of the presidential candidates, or
Speaker 2: any presidential candidate, after the editorial board of the Washington
Speaker 2: Posts had voted and decided to endorse Kamala Harris.
Speaker 1: I'm going to start with asking Amy a question. Amy.
Speaker 2: I don't want to sandbag you, but I want your
Speaker 2: but here we go, no no, no, no, no, you're
Speaker 2: you're no, you're well, basically your view on this your
Speaker 2: take on this, all right?
Speaker 1: I view you as mainstream media, no question.
Speaker 2: I view you and other people here at KFI as
Speaker 2: objective for the most part and corroborating facts that you
Speaker 2: give out. So with that, and you've been involved in
Speaker 2: news for a very long time, right, you're yeah, You're
Speaker 2: no spring chicken.
Speaker 1: You You're welcome.
Speaker 2: Have you at all noticed that your credibility as a
Speaker 2: newsperson has declined over the years in the buzz that's
Speaker 2: out there, in what you hear, what you feel, what
Speaker 2: you experience.
Speaker 1: I don't think so.
Speaker 3: And this is why, because I do think that there
Speaker 3: are news organizations that you know are liberal or you
Speaker 3: know are conservative. CAFI works very hard not to skew
Speaker 3: and in fact, one of the things that our news
Speaker 3: director Chris Little tells us is do not tell KFI
Speaker 3: listeners what to do, give them the information, let them
Speaker 3: do it themselves. Yeah, and I think that the news
Speaker 3: department works really hard to make sure that that's what
Speaker 3: we do.
Speaker 2: And by the way, I have no idea the way
Speaker 2: Amy feels about the politics, which side she's on. One
Speaker 2: of my best friends, Steve Gregory, who is a newsperson,
Speaker 2: I mean, we talk, we talk about a lot of stuff,
Speaker 2: a lot of intimate stuff. I mean we are very close.
Speaker 2: We have a lot of sex together. Oh I shouldn't
Speaker 2: have shared that. And he will not tell me on
Speaker 2: which political side he is on, because he's adamant about.
Speaker 1: Being a newsperson.
Speaker 2: And the reason I brought this up is Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: in his explanation as to why the Washington Post will
Speaker 2: not make an endorsement, Well, I'm going to share this
Speaker 2: with you now. This is an article by a mainstream newsperson,
Speaker 2: Chuck Todd, actually, who was on Meet the Press for
Speaker 2: years and years. He was a correspondent for NBC News
Speaker 2: and considered one of the top news guys out there.
Speaker 2: He wrote an op ed piece in the Atlantic and
Speaker 2: he argued the reason why we the Washington Post and
Speaker 2: he made the decision is not going to endorse is
Speaker 2: that he in the Washington Post is not considered particularly
Speaker 2: I don't think political one way or the other.
Speaker 1: I think it's fairly objective.
Speaker 2: He says that the press, mainstream press, needs to accept
Speaker 2: the reality about its own im unpopularity, and that it's
Speaker 2: the journalists that are to blame for the sinking reputation
Speaker 2: of the mainstream media. He writes, we must be accurate.
Speaker 2: We are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe
Speaker 2: the media is biased. It would be easy to blame
Speaker 2: others for our long and continuing fall in credibility, and
Speaker 2: therefore our decline and impact and a victim mentality will
Speaker 2: not help. And complaining about this is not a strategy.
Speaker 2: We have to work harder to control what we can
Speaker 2: control to increase our credibility. That is astounding what he
Speaker 2: said about this conflating, basically conflating Newsmax with NBC.
Speaker 1: That's effective what he's doing.
Speaker 2: I want to continue on with this off ed piece
Speaker 2: that was written by Chuck Todd, who is a very
Speaker 2: well respected journalist who's host to Meet the Press for
Speaker 2: a bunch of years, and he talked about Jeff Bezos
Speaker 2: explaining why Bezo's decided not to endorse any presidential candidate
Speaker 2: this year this election after the editorial board voted to
Speaker 2: endorse Kamala Harris. Usually there is a firewall between the
Speaker 2: owner and the editorial board, where the editorial board makes
Speaker 2: all the decisions as far as editorial content. In the
Speaker 2: way the paper actually is now, the owner has influence,
Speaker 2: but not on that or shouldn't have on that. By
Speaker 2: the way, the owner of the La Times did exactly
Speaker 2: the same thing. And Bezos explains this and says it's
Speaker 2: because the credibility of mainstream media, and that is the
Speaker 2: Washington Post is part of that regarded part of the
Speaker 2: mainstream media has lost its reputation along with other mainstream media,
Speaker 2: and the press needs to accept reality about its unpopularity
Speaker 2: and that journalists are.
Speaker 1: To blame for the sinking reputation.
Speaker 2: He writes, we must be accurate, we must be believed
Speaker 2: to be accurate. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but
Speaker 2: we are failing on the second requirement, and that is
Speaker 2: the believability. And he goes, it's easy to blame others
Speaker 2: for our long and continuing fall and credibility. Therefore decline
Speaker 2: an impact and a mentality victim or a victim mentality
Speaker 2: is not going to help. Complaining is not a strategy.
Speaker 2: We must work harder to control what we can control
Speaker 2: to increase our credibility. How do you control what you
Speaker 2: can't control when all you do as media outlet is
Speaker 2: try to be as objective as possible and corroborate facts.
Speaker 2: And when the media does this and that's exactly what
Speaker 2: mainstream media tends to do.
Speaker 1: Now, does it.
Speaker 2: Go liberal, Yeah, I think so, but marginally liberal. It
Speaker 2: doesn't go wildly liberal where you have conservative media, and
Speaker 2: that's much bigger than, for example, a truly biased media
Speaker 2: on the other side. Now we're talking about the edges.
Speaker 2: The problem is the edges have become mainstream and so
Speaker 2: now it's all one big basket stories that are not
Speaker 2: corroborated at all, just opinion stories taken out of the Internet,
Speaker 2: out of the crazy stuff that are now being circulated.
Speaker 2: That's the same even though facts are not corroborated and
Speaker 2: it's just theories and just crazy stuff. And Bezos is
Speaker 2: bought into that, saying it is our fault. It is
Speaker 2: actually the journalist's fault. And you go, come on, really, okay,
Speaker 2: So when did this start really start where the media
Speaker 2: was not believed When you talk about mainstream media, radio, television,
Speaker 2: these news outlets, they were believed. Oh man, were they believed?
Speaker 2: That was where we got our news? So what destroyed it?
Speaker 2: And this is something that a lot of us were
Speaker 2: involved with nineteen seventy two, Richard Nixon.
Speaker 1: And the Watergate story.
Speaker 2: There's a neat new documentary on Netflix by the Way,
Speaker 2: about Watergate and how it connects with the modern era
Speaker 2: or what's happening today to Watergate. Richard Nixon started with
Speaker 2: the press is the enemy. The press is lying, the
Speaker 2: press is victimizing me. And that broke down where you
Speaker 2: had supporters of Richard Nixon and a lot.
Speaker 1: Of them buying into it.
Speaker 2: And I was my first year in college when Watergate
Speaker 2: broke and I had a political science class I graduated
Speaker 2: in that was my major political science and it should
Speaker 2: have been in parentheses useless major close parentheses. But I
Speaker 2: had a political science teacher who said, very early on,
Speaker 2: this is the end of Richard Nixon. But the problem
Speaker 2: you're going to see is how it's being covered. And unfortunately,
Speaker 2: Nixon is having very many people believe that the press
Speaker 2: is attacking him personally and lying about the facts, and
Speaker 2: it is very depressing. And part all of this is
Speaker 2: I hope we get over this, truly. I hope we
Speaker 2: get over the fact that if you have the Washington Post,
Speaker 2: if you have NBCCBS, not MSNBC, and.
Speaker 1: Not Fox by the way, Fox.
Speaker 2: Roger Ales, who created Fox News, is a genius because
Speaker 2: he created and started this movement that Fox is the answer,
Speaker 2: that is reality. Everything else is not the truth. And
Speaker 2: he made a fortune doing that. Whether or not he
Speaker 2: was a true believer, I don't know. I haven't looked
Speaker 2: enough into him, but man, was that a good call.
Speaker 2: And if you look at it, mainstream media doesn't make
Speaker 2: much money anymore, to the point where the networks are
Speaker 2: in trouble because they just aren't making enough money. Network
Speaker 2: news shows are in trouble. The news departments, they don't
Speaker 2: make any money. But it's they have all they and
Speaker 2: by the way, they have never made money, but it's
Speaker 2: the integrity of the networks that kept them alive.
Speaker 1: The days of Edward R.
Speaker 2: Murrow are long long gone, the days of Walter Cronkite
Speaker 2: are long long gone. And Jeff Bezos jumped right into
Speaker 2: this and unfortunately you and I can talk about it.
Speaker 2: We're not Jeff Bezos. The influence this man has is astronomical.
Speaker 2: This is KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the
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