Speaker 1: You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty.
Speaker 2: KFI AM six forty on a hump day, Wednesday, May seventh.
Speaker 2: A couple of stories we're looking at. Federal agents have
Speaker 2: started visiting courthouses waiting for people to show up for
Speaker 2: their legal proceedings and then arresting them. And legal experts
Speaker 2: and immigration advocates are saying, not that it's illegal, not
Speaker 2: that the.
Speaker 1: Feds can't do it, they already tried that.
Speaker 2: It's what these arrests disrupt the judicial process and may
Speaker 2: intimidate people from attending court hearings. And that's going to
Speaker 2: go no place too, because it is now upheld. The
Speaker 2: Feds can go into the courthouse. Well, they always could,
Speaker 2: it was just upheld by the courts.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: Now moving on to a bill that at first glance
Speaker 2: make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: And at first glance, the Democrats who.
Speaker 2: Were opposed to this bill were ripped into and they
Speaker 2: had to come back, they had to change their mind.
Speaker 1: And why there's a point to what they say. Okay.
Speaker 2: The Democrats were in opposition to a bill that would
Speaker 2: increase the penalty for soliciting a minor age sixteen or
Speaker 2: seventeen and make that a felony automatic felony, and that
Speaker 2: change after they walked it back. They had to walk
Speaker 2: it back because they man faced such criticism, including Governor
Speaker 2: Gavin Newsom.
Speaker 1: AB three seventy nine.
Speaker 2: Would allow prosecutors to file felony charges against adults who
Speaker 2: solicit sex from a sixteen or seventeen year old if
Speaker 2: the accused is three years older than the miner, they
Speaker 2: can now be charged with a felony if the offenders
Speaker 2: win three years of the miner. If not, the charge
Speaker 2: is a misdemeanor automatically. And now they're saying it is
Speaker 2: a felony or it can be a felony, and that's important.
Speaker 2: That's important because there is a secondary point to this story.
Speaker 1: Also, the bill includes.
Speaker 2: A grant program from the state to streamline prosecution and
Speaker 2: human trafficking sex trafficking support for survivors.
Speaker 1: All of that, of course, makes sense, and no one's
Speaker 1: going to say no.
Speaker 2: So current law allows the offense of soliciting a minor
Speaker 2: under sixteen for six to be punishable as a misdemeanor
Speaker 2: or a felony on the first defense, and as a
Speaker 2: felony on subsequent A fence so under sixteen it's punishable
Speaker 2: as a misdemeanor or a felony. And now it is, well,
Speaker 2: it's going to be automatic under sixteen.
Speaker 1: Which it should be. But here is the bill.
Speaker 2: Maggie Krell, a Democrat out of Sacramento Assembly member who
Speaker 2: authored ABE seventy nine, extends the same punishment to those
Speaker 2: who solicit sixteen and seventeen year olds. So last week
Speaker 2: the Democratic and a Democratic Assembly approved an amendment that
Speaker 2: removed that provision. Removed it, and the backlog was crazy.
Speaker 2: What do you mean, how can it be possible that
Speaker 2: celeiciting a minor can be a misdemeanor. That's impossible. Well,
Speaker 2: it extended it to sixteen and seventeen year olds, and
Speaker 2: here is the difference. A judge should be able to
Speaker 2: take that on a case by case basis.
Speaker 1: Let me give you a scenario.
Speaker 2: You've got a twenty year old stoops a seventeen year old,
Speaker 2: a seventeen seventeen plus ten months year old two months
Speaker 2: away from her usually her eighteenth birthday.
Speaker 1: That's a crime that is automatically a crime.
Speaker 2: Wait a minute, twenty year olds with someone who is
Speaker 2: almost eighteen? Really, and so the Democrat said no, that's crazy.
Speaker 2: And then the backlash came like you couldn't believe, and
Speaker 2: Newsom came down and the Democrats came back and said, okay, okay,
Speaker 2: it is a crime on a case by case basis.
Speaker 2: The prosecutor should be able to not even file I
Speaker 2: mean that is consensual sex, except if someone is under
Speaker 2: the eighteenth birth under their eighteenth birthday.
Speaker 1: That is a criminal offense. This is why it is.
Speaker 2: It has to be done on a case by case.
Speaker 2: Because there are twenty year olds or twenty two or
Speaker 2: twenty five. This is the minimum twenty three years older.
Speaker 2: There are a couple of different ways that a twenty
Speaker 2: year old can have sex with a seventeen year old.
Speaker 2: One is grooming that seventeen year old and doing it
Speaker 2: such a way as coercion or duress or fraud, or
Speaker 2: pretending to be someone else, pretending to be another seventeen
Speaker 2: year old. Okay, I'll buy that, But what if it's
Speaker 2: totally consensual. You know, the average age that people start
Speaker 2: having sex in the United States has not changed since
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties. And you know what that is, Heather,
Speaker 2: average age for sex? How much what sixteen boy, you
Speaker 2: must have had a really wild life when you were younger.
Speaker 1: Okay, no, not me.
Speaker 2: I just maybe it's just la I just yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: you protest too much.
Speaker 1: Close and.
Speaker 2: Notice I'm asking the women here average age of when
Speaker 2: do you start having sex?
Speaker 1: When when women.
Speaker 2: Girls start having sex? Eighteen seventeen? Oh, they're miners seventeen
Speaker 2: and under the law they are miners. So if an
Speaker 2: eighteen year old has sex with someone who is seventeen,
Speaker 2: that may be a criminal offense. What this bill says
Speaker 2: there has to well, it has to be three years older.
Speaker 2: So if someone is almost seventeen then or almost eighteen
Speaker 2: seventeen being the average age of which people start stooping, then.
Speaker 1: It's uh was where is that going with that?
Speaker 2: Then it is criminal. So goes beyond it goes beyond
Speaker 2: what we normally do. Neil, I was just wondering, aren't
Speaker 2: there some state that have the age of consent at
Speaker 2: like sixteen or something?
Speaker 1: You bet much lower? You bet?
Speaker 2: So? Is this a this is California? This is California. Yeah,
Speaker 2: this is straight California. Now, there are some countries that
Speaker 2: have well there's no consent, but you can get married
Speaker 2: at the age of eight. You know, those are some
Speaker 2: Muslim countries a lot of fun as.
Speaker 1: Them twelve year old. I do think about this a lot,
Speaker 1: and I wonder, like how that's all going to play
Speaker 1: out in the future.
Speaker 2: Well, I have two girls and I was really well
Speaker 2: concerned about them being sexually active. So they got their
Speaker 2: guarda sil shot when they were seven.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness. Okay, a little.
Speaker 2: Bit on the tariffs going on, and I'm in the
Speaker 2: just in the middle of all this terraffs from China,
Speaker 2: particularly one hundred and forty five percent. So how does
Speaker 2: a business get around a terraff from China?
Speaker 1: Are they just stuck? Not necessarily.
Speaker 2: There are end a rounds two particularly, and one is
Speaker 2: the bonded warehouse, and that is goods that are shipped
Speaker 2: into the United States do not go to the distributor
Speaker 2: or the buyer. They go into a bonded warehouse, which
Speaker 2: means those are sealed. It hasn't come into the United
Speaker 2: States officially, and the tariff is only paid when the
Speaker 2: goods are pulled out of that bonded warehouse. That's regulated
Speaker 2: by the way, by the customs folks. So that bonded
Speaker 2: warehouse means the goods haven't come in the other way,
Speaker 2: and this can be this is kind of fun. This
Speaker 2: is tariff engineering and harmonize system codes to qualify for
Speaker 2: lower rates. The fun one is tariff engineering. What does
Speaker 2: that mean? Well, we start with why do tariff agreements
Speaker 2: take so long? There are five thousand different products that
Speaker 2: have to be discussed because there are differences in tariffs
Speaker 2: in each one of these categories.
Speaker 1: That's why you don't overnight.
Speaker 2: Even the right now the people in the financial end
Speaker 2: of the Trump administration are saying, yeah, you know what,
Speaker 2: it's not gonna happen immediately. Even if we cut a deal,
Speaker 2: it can take a year. It can take two years
Speaker 2: to renegotiate a tariff deal. Let me give you an
Speaker 2: example of this tariff engineering converse. They have the all
Speaker 2: star sneaker. The soul of that sneaker contains some felt.
Speaker 2: It's not all rubber. So why would they put felt
Speaker 2: in the sneaker. Well, because if you have felt in
Speaker 2: these sneakers, they could be considered house slippers because there
Speaker 2: is felt in it. You make whatever minimum amount of
Speaker 2: felt necessary under the treaty agreement, and all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: you don't have a sneaker, you have a house slipper,
Speaker 2: which is very different in tariffs than a sneaker. Columbia
Speaker 2: Sportswear big company has a whole team of people who
Speaker 2: work with the designers and manufacturers to deal with tariffs.
Speaker 1: That's one of the end arounds.
Speaker 2: There is a law firm, GDLSK specializes in trade compliance.
Speaker 2: One of the partners says, we're working with compani who say, gee,
Speaker 2: I really want this to be on the list.
Speaker 1: Look at my tariff codes. What can I do now?
Speaker 2: Slapping a new code doesn't necessarily mean anything, because just
Speaker 2: if you call it a different thing, that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: it is a different thing. This is not a duck.
Speaker 2: You can call it a duck, but it may not
Speaker 2: be a duck. So what US Customs and Border Protection
Speaker 2: does when they examine goods, they will send fabrics out
Speaker 2: to the l to see if they meet the requirements.
Speaker 2: Because pure wool is on one level. Wool that has
Speaker 2: rayon on it is on something else. Polyester maybe on
Speaker 2: a different level. If it's thirty.
Speaker 1: Percent, it qualifies for one tariff.
Speaker 2: These are from every country we have tariff agreements with.
Speaker 2: You wonder why they're saying you deal a new terrify
Speaker 2: a new teriff agreement. Why it would take so long.
Speaker 2: I used to know someone that was in the jewelry business.
Speaker 2: The tariff on a ring that's manufactured is at one level.
Speaker 2: The tariff on just the gold and the diamond or
Speaker 2: the stone was on a different level. So they would
Speaker 2: buy rings that weren't put together, separate rings, separate stones manufactured,
Speaker 2: and they put they would assemble them in the United
Speaker 2: States and it was a whole different tariff level. That's
Speaker 2: the end around. And how am I in the middle
Speaker 2: of it? Well, we my partner and I we have
Speaker 2: a shipment on the way right now coming in the
Speaker 2: United States that as soon as it hits US ports
Speaker 2: is one hundred and forty five percent. It's coming from
Speaker 2: China made out of stainless steel at another twenty five
Speaker 2: percent or another twenty percent, so we now become one
Speaker 2: hundred and sixty five percent tariff.
Speaker 1: It's going into a bonded warehouse.
Speaker 2: You can, if you're a company, keep goods in a
Speaker 2: bonded warehouse up to five years. It's as if they
Speaker 2: never came in the United States and just wait for
Speaker 2: the tariff to drop, and it maybe a month and
Speaker 2: maybe two.
Speaker 1: We have one.
Speaker 2: Situation where we have a container coming over, a shipment
Speaker 2: coming over that we have no choice and we're going
Speaker 2: to just pay it. We have a contract. We don't
Speaker 2: want to lose the customer. We have to have the
Speaker 2: company or factory. It is not ours, but in factor
Speaker 2: we dealt for years in China, stay alive. So we're
Speaker 2: going to just hit the tariff. Were going to lose
Speaker 2: our shirts on this one shipment. There's not much you
Speaker 2: can do, all right.
Speaker 1: Jesus is my friend. Jesus geez.
Speaker 2: That's the song that you heard as the cardinals were
Speaker 2: marching into the Sistine Chapel.
Speaker 1: They were all singing and dancing.
Speaker 2: And I do believe they have entered the Sistine Chapel
Speaker 2: and the doors have been sealed. And now the cardinals
Speaker 2: start to work. One hundred and I think thirty three
Speaker 2: who are voting. Cardinals now sit and.
Speaker 1: Begin the vote.
Speaker 2: And the way it works is a vote is taken
Speaker 2: twice a day, actually morning and evening.
Speaker 1: The votes are counted. The cardinal that runs.
Speaker 2: The election, and I don't know how will you say,
Speaker 2: the cardinal that runs the election in Latin anyway, he
Speaker 2: calls out the votes and everybody knows which way it's going.
Speaker 2: And it's almost like it's very close to a political
Speaker 2: party at a convention. That's a very close convention. And
Speaker 2: it used to be that way. Names would be tossed around,
Speaker 2: there'd be votes among the various state delegations until some
Speaker 2: name came out, and there was a lot of politicking.
Speaker 1: There's also a lot of politicking in the Vatican.
Speaker 2: The cardinals all got together several days ago as quickly
Speaker 2: as possible because they don't know each other. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not like they hang at the local bar. There
Speaker 2: is no local bar. They come from one hundred countries
Speaker 2: all over the world. Francis did that. He made sure
Speaker 2: that cardinals were named from all over the world, a
Speaker 2: lot of third world countries. He named eighty percent of
Speaker 2: those cardinals that are voting. And that it has a
Speaker 2: lot to do with who is going to be the
Speaker 2: next pope? And so is there politicking As they get
Speaker 2: to know each other, they start banding about names. They
Speaker 2: are looking at whether and this is the big one,
Speaker 2: it is the next post pope going to be a
Speaker 2: conservative or is he going to be a liberal pope?
Speaker 2: Is he going to expand with the Catholic Church? And
Speaker 2: is about and how inclusive in the way it works,
Speaker 2: or is it going to contract and go back to
Speaker 2: more conservative values.
Speaker 1: That's important.
Speaker 2: That is actually the biggest question they have is which
Speaker 2: way the Catholic Church is going to go? And pope
Speaker 2: is chosen based on that. Now, regular politicking is everybody
Speaker 2: goes around says I'll give you this position. You can
Speaker 2: be secretary of state, you can be posted to a
Speaker 2: master general, if you're head of a delegation, I want
Speaker 2: your votes. There is similar politicking, but it's not about positions.
Speaker 2: It is about which way does the church go? And
Speaker 2: it really started, I mean the issue as to conservatism,
Speaker 2: real conservatism or real liberalism started back in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Prior to that, every pope was pretty conservative.
Speaker 2: There was no move to include gays or talk about
Speaker 2: people who are not part of the traditional definition of Catholics.
Speaker 1: You couldn't take communion if.
Speaker 2: You were divorced, the Church wouldn't recognize a second marriage.
Speaker 1: Certainly, abortion.
Speaker 2: Gay relationship didn't even exist in the world of Catholicism.
Speaker 2: So then they elect Pope John the twenty third, who
Speaker 2: died only four years after he became pope, and I
Speaker 2: think he died of some food poisoning that he got
Speaker 2: at an all you can eat buffet around the corner
Speaker 2: from the apartments, the papal apartments. A very big guy,
Speaker 2: by the way, he was close to three hundred pounds.
Speaker 2: In any case, he was extraordinarily liberal. He was changing
Speaker 2: the way the church goes Vatican Two, which just expanded inclusivity.
Speaker 2: And I mean he was talking about female clerics, I mean,
Speaker 2: and scared the Curia, which are this small group of
Speaker 2: cardinals that really run it's like a polit bureau who
Speaker 2: run the Catholic Church. Scared the hell out of them
Speaker 2: that from then on they had really conservative pontiffs.
Speaker 1: Benedict was a real conservative pontiff.
Speaker 2: Good pontiff. That's never mind, that's a happy Friday night
Speaker 2: in Yiddish anyway, So he was insanely conservative. Going back
Speaker 2: to Pious the Tenth, who actually was the Nuncio in
Speaker 2: the thirties, effectively he was the foreign minister to Germany,
Speaker 2: Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1: They were kind of close. He in Nazi Germany.
Speaker 2: Benedict was an unenthusiastic member of the Hitler youth during
Speaker 2: the war, and by the way, that's by his definition
Speaker 2: an unenthusiastic member of the Nazi of Nazi youth so
Speaker 2: or the Hitler youth. Now they are in conclave, and
Speaker 2: that means that it is a secret conclave. They're in
Speaker 2: the Sistine Champel, and you've seen pictures of those two
Speaker 2: rows of table at double row of table just looks
Speaker 2: like a very very long table with I think what
Speaker 2: sixty seventy seats on either side, and in the middle
Speaker 2: is empty space and at the end there is It's
Speaker 2: like the British Parliament where you have two sets of
Speaker 2: people on either side of the aisle, and then you
Speaker 2: have the guy who's running it. I forgot his name,
Speaker 2: I think is Fred, and he counts the votes because
Speaker 2: they're written on paper, and hand it to him and
Speaker 2: he then tells the cardinals how many votes any given
Speaker 2: nominee has, and the cardinals are for the last couple
Speaker 2: of days walking around getting to know each other, throwing
Speaker 2: some names around and deciding which way is the church
Speaker 2: going to go. You have conservatives who want to not
Speaker 2: only maintain the tenants of the church but actually bring
Speaker 2: it back. This liberalism they don't want to hear. Francis
Speaker 2: was known as a liberal. But if you think about it,
Speaker 2: the basic tenants did not change. I mean he was
Speaker 2: more inclusive. He spent more time talking about the marginalized people.
Speaker 2: His personal stop was very different than popees. He wouldn't
Speaker 2: live in the fancy apartments. He lived basically in a
Speaker 2: dorm where that was built for the cardinals when they meet.
Speaker 1: To elect a new pope. Very simple food. He drove
Speaker 1: around when he was the archbishop in Buenos Aires.
Speaker 2: He drove an old car. He would take the bus.
Speaker 2: Simple man. And he was very politically involved, which popes
Speaker 2: normally don't do. You have problems all over the world
Speaker 2: and the pope praise right, you have a conflict. Let's
Speaker 2: pray for the people who are being killed hurt. He
Speaker 2: got involved, man. He came down hard on the Ukraine
Speaker 2: Russia war. That came down hard against Russia, came down
Speaker 2: hard against Israel. I mean, he was political, but did
Speaker 2: not change the basic philosophy of the church. No married priests. Abortion,
Speaker 2: doesn't say the same women in the clergy. Uh, that's
Speaker 2: not going to happen now. He did give communion to
Speaker 2: people who are same sex couples and reached out to them,
Speaker 2: but giving communion is not the same as accepting them
Speaker 2: in the basis of the church, and so he looked
Speaker 2: like he was super liberal. There were some, but it's
Speaker 2: pretty superficial stuff. So now, which way are they going
Speaker 2: to go?
Speaker 1: Because that's the.
Speaker 2: Big one is is is the church going to go
Speaker 2: by way of Francis? He chose eighty percent of the cardinals,
Speaker 2: so that gives a big lift to his philosophy of
Speaker 2: more inclusion, but not really more inclusion. Then you have
Speaker 2: the other side of the very conservative cardinals who want
Speaker 2: the church going way back to where it was. I mean,
Speaker 2: the church has been around for two thousand years. It
Speaker 2: really hasn't changed its philosophy. So we are going to
Speaker 2: see at this point right now, no one has any
Speaker 2: idea which way it's going because it's a secret vote.
Speaker 1: And then of.
Speaker 2: Course the chimney that is above the Sistine Chapel. I
Speaker 2: don't think I dated exactly above the chapel. They do
Speaker 2: it in a different room.
Speaker 1: Where they actually burn the votes. They burn the paper,
Speaker 1: and if it's.
Speaker 2: Black smoke, it's no pope, no pope for you, And
Speaker 2: if it's white smoke, we have a new pope. Abemo's
Speaker 2: pop'm and what and that everybody goes nuts in Saint
Speaker 2: Peter's Square, Hundreds of thousands of people are there waiting
Speaker 2: for that white smoke.
Speaker 1: And now it's chemicals that do it.
Speaker 2: So there's it's you can tell what's black, you can
Speaker 2: tell it's white. And once one of the cardinals comes
Speaker 2: out and says that abemo's popham.
Speaker 1: I think that's what they say. We have a pope,
Speaker 1: and now everybody's going wild. Who is it? Who is it?
Speaker 2: While the new pope, it goes down to the dressing room,
Speaker 2: it's a green room effectively snacks, you know, coax there
Speaker 2: you've got this big bucket of ice where they have
Speaker 2: sodas and et cetera little ore derbs.
Speaker 1: By the way.
Speaker 2: I don't know that for a fact, but this is
Speaker 2: where the vestments are where and there are three sizes
Speaker 2: of papal garments small, medium, large, and depends on how
Speaker 2: big the pope is.
Speaker 1: And then out he comes on to that.
Speaker 2: Balcony, blesses everybody, and there's a new pope, and everybody
Speaker 2: goes berserk. One of the rules is you cannot want
Speaker 2: to be pope. To become pope, I mean you want
Speaker 2: to be pope, I mean secretly, but you can't sort
Speaker 2: of look like you're looking for popiosity. You have to
Speaker 2: be chosen by the cardinals. So you know it used
Speaker 2: to be in presidential politics, you cannot seem to want
Speaker 2: to be president. Probably the most famous one that we
Speaker 2: know historically Abraham Lincoln. He was a compromise candidate eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty when he was elected a second time, or eighteen
Speaker 2: sixty four he was elected a second time. Oh no,
Speaker 2: I don't want to be president. That never went out,
Speaker 2: never called anybody, but.
Speaker 1: He had his surrogates go out and do the work.
Speaker 2: Today people go out and start screaming, I want to
Speaker 2: be president. I want to be president. It's a different world,
Speaker 2: not with a pope. Pope dumb is still done. You
Speaker 2: can't want to be the pope. And you have to
Speaker 2: be humble, and you have to be contrite. You have
Speaker 2: to pray and then what somehow the cardinals vote, and
Speaker 2: then the phone line gets plugged in directly to God
Speaker 2: or to Jesus.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that works. I don't know who
Speaker 1: does that.
Speaker 2: What techno guy takes the pope's cell phone and somehow
Speaker 2: puts in a secret number that God, only God has
Speaker 2: The Vicar of Christ.
Speaker 1: It's fascinating stuff. I love this stuff. All right. This
Speaker 1: is KFI AM sixty. You've been listening to the Bill
Speaker 1: Handle Show.
Speaker 2: Catch my Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am,
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