This is Gary and Shannon and you're listening to KFI AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. It is Wednesday, March fifth, twenty twenty five.
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Mentioned the medspas push to prey on people's insecurity over balding how that's kind of the latest playground that they are trying to.
Steal your money in.
There was an article in Blueberg Business Week about how medspas conquered America, the tactics, all of our insecurities, how they prey on us, how they pick their price points. Is it all worth it? Where the best ones are? We'll get into all that coming up in the eleven o'clock hour. In the meantime, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says there may be carve outs coming to the tariffs placed
on Canada and Mexico by President Trump. We've been talking about this all morning in the wake of the speech where the President said maybe a little bit of an adjustment time, we can handle it kind of thing.
Well, the markets did not agree.
The markets responded not well to those tariffs going into effects. So now the Commerce Secretary is saying, well, kind of backing away after it saw the stock market get hurt by this. Consumers are worried, according to polling, and a trade war not a good optic, is it. In an interview this morning with Bloomberg, Lutnick said that Trump would update his tariff plans with an afternoon announcement potentially today,
possibly sparing sectors like autos from the import taxes. As we've talked about, the price of new cars is going to go up a dramatic if they don't back off of these to some extent. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is called Trump's sweeping tariffs very dumb. These are his waning days in office, by the way, that should be said. He called out for Trump's appeasement of Vladimir Putin while
launching this trade war against Canada. He said that Canada will plaster retaliatory trade tariffs on more than one hundred billion of American goods in response. So we'll stay on top of all of that news. Huntington Park. What the hell's going on in Huntington Park. This is a story we're staying on top of. Huntington Park doesn't get a lot of attention in La County. It's a small community east of the one ten right there, not far from
Inglewood and Watts, ten miles away from Bell. The reason I bring that up is because what's going on in Huntington Park is very reminiscent of when the fiefs in Bell decided to pillage the town's coffers for their own benefit. And that seems to be what's going on just down the road in hunting Park. And like I say, I learned it from John and Ken. If you're not paying attention, they're going to screw you over and twice on Sundays.
The people that you elected to look out for your cities, for your towns, for your states, for your countries, what have you. You've got to pay attention to where your tax dollars are going or they're going to use them to benefit themselves. Not everybody, but there are a lot of them. That get into the game for number one, Huntington Park. We've talked about it before. This is the area where they got it signed off on that fourteen million dollars would go to build this beautiful aquatic park
for the community. It would have an Olympic sized pool. We're talking to thirty thousand square foot, two story, state.
Of the art facility. And it sounded great.
It sounded great for the beautiful park that is around this center, sounded great for the kids growing up in the community to have access to this.
It was.
It was wonderful and it was signed off on years ago and fourteen million dollars have been collected for this. What has been built absolutely nothing.
Nothing.
There has been an investigation by the La County DA's office going back to the fall of twenty twenty two about this, and it was go time this past week when several homes and officers were raided in Huntington Park. The Mayor Karina Massias her home was searched as part of this corruption probe. A lot of people showed up at the city council meeting that was called for last Friday, and they were pissed off, as they should be, as they should be in place like Huntington Park.
It's all about community.
It's all about local community, community and what's available for the kids or what have you. And the fact that this was a town that tried to pretend like it was invested in that and then turned around and just pillaged the tax dollars. They should be very upset. The mayor is in her third four year term, very confident in how things work and probably how to rob the city. She says that the aquatic center in the pool project is not an illusion in the community and will soon become a reality.
That is the latest today where she says, no, it's just.
On hold, it's still going to happen, just not much has been done yet, well, not anything has been done yet. Longtime Huntington Park city attorney left. He said the current environment, lack of communication with my office has made my job unreasonably difficult. Basically, the attorney that is there to help city council members not run.
A foul of the law says, I'm out.
I am out. Y'all are crazy. I don't know what you think you're doing with your checkbooks over there with the city checkbooks, but I can't defend your asses and I certainly can't give you any legal representation, so I'm out now. I don't know if he said any of those things publicly, but that's essentially what that.
Means when the city attorney kicks out like that.
There are four former Huntington Park employees have sued the city. They say that they face discrimination and retaliation for raising their hand, for saying something's not right here, something's not right with this project, something's not right with the way the city is spending or is pretending to spend these tax dollars on this project. All four of these people were placed on leave. Three were fired for raising their
hand and saying something is a foul here. Well, we're going to try and get their attorney on because those people know where the bodies are buried. And the fact that the fiefs that run the fiefdom that is Huntington Park dismissed these people, fired them. My god, they thought they could get away with everything, don't they. Around The Horn has been canceled, going off the air after more than twenty years on the network twenty three years on ESPN.
They made the announcement yesterday saying a half hour version of Sports Center will air weekdays instead.
The last episode of Around the Horn will be made at twenty third.
Eight leaders or members of a Chinese hacking company have been charged alongside two Chinese law enforcement officers. This is a global cyber espionage campaign that has targeted dissonance that are here in the United States. Now we've known that the Chinese government has deputized some of their brightest minds. Think about Elon Musk and what he's doing with Doje.
That's what they're doing in China. Essentially, with hackers. They're finding the best and the brightest, and they're using these brilliant kids to as weapons against the US and against dissidents. A set of criminal cases today adding new detail to what US officials say is this hacking for higher ecosystem in China. They are targeting victims of particular interest to Beijing. Well, we've got a lot of probation officers in trouble here
in Ellie County. And sometimes when these stories surface, you wonder, how are this many people involved? That mob mentality that rears its head from time to time, and it could be the mentality of three people, or five people, or in this case thirty officers from the Probation Department have been indicted on criminal charges. This was an investigation into allegations that they allowed and encouraged fights between teenagers at juvenile halls here in La County. Now, juvenile halls have
been in the news because they're a freaking mess. There's not the funding, there's not the staffing. You think La County jails are a mess, well, the juvenile halls make those look like tea parties. An indictment and seal unsealed this week shows seventy one counts of child abuse, conspiracy, and battery against thirty of these officers. These are fights in particular that took place from July to December in
twenty twenty three. Two officers are accused of telling other officers not to intervene, not to make report.
That's when fights happened. Just don't fill out that What are you doing over there, Bob, don't fill that out. No, no, no, We're going to pretend like this didn't happen.
One of the officers told teenagers involved in the fights not to seek medical attention in order to cover up the fights. The Attorney General has referred to these as gladiator fights, which means more media attention. The indictments were the result of a Department of Justice investigation on a state level because there were some leaked security video.
What is that video show?
It shows eight probation officers standing idly by while a group of teenagers attacked a seventeen year old. This was inside the Los Padrino's juvenile hall there in Downey. This teenager suffered a broken nose and a TBI dramatic brain injury because of this. This was not a scuffed up elbow, rob Bonti said at the news conference.
The officers look more like referees.
Or audience members at a prize fight in this video, not the adults charged with the supervision of these people. The officers, they don't step in, they don't intervene, and they don't protect the kids.
They reviewed all the videos.
They found sixty nine fights that occurred among dozens of teenagers, and we're talking ages twelve to eighteen. And these are fights in particular there at Los Padrinos. This was the
first six months after this hall opened. The thing about the other thing I mentioned the mob mentality of thirty officers being embroiled in this thirty people thought that that was okay enough to be brought up on charges, not just like somebody, I mean probably not just somebody walking by seeing what's going on and continue to walk by. Although maybe it's that easy that maybe the bars that
load to get charged in this investigation. But thirty people thought this was okay, that they wouldn't get caught, that this was copacetic to have these kids fight each other for sport. If you're believing what the Attorney General says, that's exactly what it is. That the probation officers were just using these kids as entertainment to fight each other. So there's that, and then the other problem I have.
The other hurdle is that the officers knew that there's video running in these halls, and that somebody at some point would get their hands on videos that showed their role in all of this. That the fights were, they say in the charging papers, orchestrated. It wasn't even that these kids were just getting together and fighting maybe getting
a cut of it. Got to believe the kids were getting a cut of it, that they were getting some some sort of kick back from the probation officers, that there was some sort of betting scheme going on.
All a fight club, right.
The Attorney General says, we believe these fights were planned, They were intended that they wanted them to happen. The officers did at the beginning of the day and at a certain time a certain place. My goodness, they were instructed. Rookie officers were instructed not to say anything, not to write anything down, and just to watch when the youth fight occurred. I wonder what would happen like that, Like in your workplace, it's pretty it's pretty quiet around here.
It's pretty dull. Shanna, are you trying to spice them?
I'm not saying it would make it more entertaining, but it would. It was like we could put money on different people and have them fight in what used to be the sales area. We are to have a basketball hoop, why not throw in a ring of some kind and put a couple of people in there. I mean, I've got people I would bet on. Who Jacob he's pissed off, you know, he'll hit somebody. Yeah, I mean I would. Jacob would be my racehorse that I would bet on all day long. I know I picked a winner. You
gotta go for the ones that are really angry. Okay, anyway, I'm not saying that that's right. It's awful. And we're talking about children, teenagers, not growing.
I train for you.
Okay, good, You're gonna have to drop some weight. You're gonna have to drop some weight to get into your weight class.
Jacob, Wow, got.
To start wearing three pairs of sweatpants and stuff because the person I want you to fight is under your weight class.
Do you have a spink cup?
Some stories we're following for you today, trending right now.
Firing squads.
They've had a long and storied history in the US, served as punishment for mutiny and colonial times, way to discourage desertion during the Civil War, a dose of frontier justice in the Old West, right, But now they are considered by some to be a more humane alternative to lethal injection. South Carolina this week Friday is scheduled to conduct the first firing squad execution in the US in fifteen years.
Who's Gonna Die?
Guy by the name of Brad Sigmund, he was convicted of killing his ex girlfriend's parents in two thousand and one, has elected to the firing squad over what's available in South Carolina, which is the good old electric chair, as well as lethal injection. Minor updates maybe not some minor, depending on how you feel about this story. To the death of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, one discrepancy, I guess I should say has been cleared up. It
involves one of their dogs. Authorities mistakenly identified the dog that was found dead. Remember in that closet near the body of the wife, Betsy. There was a mistake when they called this dog a German Shepherd. A dog care facility owner says that a German Shepherd named Bear survived from property, along with a second dog named Nikita. At the same time, he says, the couple's Kelpie mex kelpie mix.
Excuse me if I'm screwing that up. Kelpie mix Zinna died, of course, still looking for answers after the bodies of Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa were discovered partially mummified yet last week in their home there in Santa Fe. All right, how is my kid doing in school? That is a perennial question, isn't it. That's why you've got state test scores,
among other things. And today the state Board of Education is meeting, and a big topic on the table is should they change the way they describe student performance on standardized tests. I don't need to tell you that scores have been in the toilet for quite some time here in California. It's not just us, but let's just own the problem and say we're not doing great. When it comes to reading and math. Student scores have been ranked in one of four categories on these tests. The topics
the subjects are math, reading, and science. And here are the categories standard, exceeded, standard met, standard nearly met, or standard not met. Now the consortium, now I'll talk about bureaucracy.
Listen to this.
The consortium that manages the standardized tests told officials in California in a presentation last September that there has been confusion about.
What those levels mean.
Again, standard exceeded, standard met, standard nearly met, or standard not met. Seems pretty self explanatory to me, right, seems pretty basic. They say, no, now that's confusing. They've suggested new labels here.
They are.
Advanced, proficient, foundational, and inconsistent. So if you're failing, you're inconsistent. Now, if you've gotten everything wrong, you're not wrong. You're inconsistent. Inconsistent means they've kind of gotten some stuff right.
Right.
If you fail the math problem, you've failed the math problem. There's nothing inconsistent about it. You're not going to go to work once you graduate. If you graduate senior year and fail to put in that pipe fitting correctly, your boss isn't going to tell you, you know what, that is inconsistent work. He's going to tell you, Hey, you've screwing up that pipe fitting. And I have no idea what I'm talking about right now. You know that, but you screwed up that pipe fitting. That's going to cost
the company seven thousand dollars. That's coming out of your paycheck. Oops, you haven't worked here long enough. You're fired. That's the real world. It's not inconsistent. If you fail something, you fail, it sucks. It sucks for whatever reason, maybe your school or your tutors have failed you. But there it is failed, And what are you going to do about it? Then? Where do you go from there? Where are you going to grow from there? You need to get better at
that math problem. You're going to get better at that pipe fitting. Again, no idea what I'm talking about with pipes so they're going to talk about this. They have not gotten any public input, which they've gotten heat for. Although whoever shows up at that meeting, wow, don't come to any parties I throw. They say that the terms are just they've always been kind of vague, but everyone
can agree that we need to do better. The pre pandemic levels of twenty nineteen were not great to begin with, and math and English test scores have declined nationwide between fourth and eighth graders. They're about the same in LA and California as well. They're just we haven't bounced back from that. Attendance is one raison. The reliance on screens probably another reason.
Like that, by the way that the I thought this was.
Interesting, the standardized tests are computer based. If I didn't know this part. If students are doing well, the program sends the student harder questions. If the student is faring poorly, the program sends easier questions. They say the goal is to get a more precise reading of a student's skills, but the test represents only a snapshot of a student's performance.
Of course, the rest is.
Whether their teachers say what their you know, engagement is in class extracurriculu, all those things.
You know that, so it's just a bar.
But I did not know that the test the questions were adjusted for how they're doing on specific tests. That's interesting to me. It makes sense. I guess it makes sense to know exactly where they're at. You got to constantly recalibrate the test to that particular student.
That's pretty cool.
President Trump granting a one month exemption on his stiff new tariffs on imports from mexic in Canada for US automakers. They are worried that this trade war is going to harm the auto industry, which it would have. We heard from leaders of the industry that said that new car prices were going to be astronomical. Essentially, the announcement comes after Trump spoke today with the leaders of the Big Three,
so that's Ford, GM and Stalantis. Trump said in a statement read by a spokesperson, we spoke with the Big three auto dealers, were going to give a one month exemption on any autos coming through US MCA, which is the North American Free Trade Agreement that HU renegotiated in
his first term. So that may be the compromise we've been waiting for of course, Howard Lutnik, the Commerce Secretary, went on Fox Business today said there may be carve outs coming to those twenty five percent tariffs placed on Canada and Mexico today. A softening really of position that we talked about yesterday. Because the stock market reacted. It
was not good and nobody likes a trade war. You want to pay your fair share, but the idea of a trade war doesn't play well in the financial markets. So at least now we have this one month exemption. Again, we're not really sure what the bargaining goal is here, what exactly he wants from Canada and Mexico, but one month exemption on the stiff new tariffs on imports there,
so we will stay on top of that. We know that Jade Vance has a trip to the border this afternoon, so he will probably have more details that he announces and we'll take you there live if it happens. All right, So, there was a story about a woman in Hollywood. She was convicted yesterday for running uber but for drugs. They called this a lucrative drug delivery business out of her apartment and the criminality, well it comes with the drugs, doesn't it. But they were dirty drugs. This was woman
was essentially killing people. Jerry found her responsible for supplying fentanyl that caused multiple overdoses. These go back to twenty twenty twenty twenty one. Remember everything was delivery in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one. You weren't going anywhere. Everything was delivered to your door. It was the height of delivery. Some people have not rebounded from that. She's just thirty
six years old. Marilla is her name, Marilla Tota Rova and three overdose survivors testified at her trial in the past week. Two of them warned this woman. They told the jury that repeatedly they told her throughout the time there twenty twenty twenty twenty one that she was selling dirty drugs, but time and again she ignored their concerns to keep profits up. Her former delivery driver testified during the trial, saying, it's not something I signed up for.
People were getting sick, people were getting hurt. A delivery driver making more than the average delivery person because he was delivering drugs, but he didn't know he was delivering dirty drugs.
I guess she was.
Found guilty of selling meth, cocaine, and ecstasy. Her sentencings not until September when they arrested her. In March twenty twenty one. They were able to track her down during cell phone data. DEA agents found several stockpiles of plastic
bowls of containing color for colorful pills and powders. It was like it was like the Willie Walk and the chocolate factory inside there, but for drugs, packing materials, kitchen scales, ziplock bags everywhere, cash, drugs tucked into drawers, strown about the floor. They seized a lot of different drugs, cocaine, ecstasy, ketamine, mushrooms, pills, oxy,
all of it. They said that her phone stored a daily journal of a drug owner operating a drug business that she sent regularly updated drug menus to her drivers and clients. She instructed the delivery driver how to cook drugs in her apartment and demanded efficiency from her other delivery drivers to maximize her profits. This is very breaking bad, isn't it. I always survived through one series of breaking bad, but it sounds like this is. But I don't think
she was trying to beat cancer. That's the caveat That's what makes you feel okay about breaking bad right, trying to beat the cancer, trying to do what's right for his family. We don't know what her motive was, but her personal phone was linked via iCloud to several work phones used by her employees, and prosecutors maintained that she kept this watchful eye on her business like a mob boss. She would routinely travel between the United States and Mexico.
Why because that is where her pet lived, her pet jaguar named Princess.
Now, had she not been selling.
Dirty drugs, I would say that's pretty badass to orchestrate this kind of ring and at the same time have a pet jaguar named Princess.
Now.
She took the stand in her own defense this week. She said that it wasn't me. It was my ex boyfriend. That's why he ran. The whole thing was I was just the little lady. But anyway, they said she was young, attractive, and intelligent and easy to believe and easy to do things for and all the time she was running this dirty drug ring. That is also probably a plot for maybe not a major motion picture, but maybe straight to
Netflix type of a movie on that one. All right, We've got swamp watched plenty to get to, including the breaking news that Trump is granting this one month exemption on the new import the new tariffs for imports from Mexico and Canada. When it comes to cars, that's a big one. Will there be more movement on the terraff front? At least that's what the Commerce Secretary has told media outlets today, That the administration has noticed that Wall Street
has not responded very well. It's not a very healthy situation for the markets, and that doesn't play well in Washington with this administration. So we may see throughout the day some more recalibrating, so to speak, when it comes to these tariffs.
So we'll have all that for you when we come back to Gary and Shannon. You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show.
You can always hear us live on KFIAM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.