BHS - 7A – California CO2 Rules | Nuclear Sole Authority

it's auto emission standards. As you know, California, Gavin Newsom has declared and this is state law now, by twenty thirty five, there will only be ev sold. There will be no gas powered cars sold in the state. So does that mean there will be no gas powered cars? Of course not. That doesn't mean that at all, because you know, people have cars two, three, four, ten years later. Cars last a long time, so they'll be gas powered cars for a very long time. And I don't know

how long you can keep a car. I'm assuming the average car today lasts I don't know, seven, eight, ten years, if not longer, because they're so reliable. So California has decided we're going to do all evs. California has also decided that the auto emission standards that are in place, because they're getting more and more strict by the year, are well. They're in place and they can stay in place.

The Supreme Court just ruled, but it's a mixed ruling because quite often the Supreme Court when it rules, just allows a company or a person or an entity to go ahead with the suit. So you file a lawsuit. The other side then says you don't have standing, you cannot sue, and then the court decides whether you can or not. We're not talking about the merits of the case now, we're not talking about the underlying merits. We're just talking about the ability to sue. And Wayne comes

up with that and that's a lot. That's many cases that he comes up with on Monday when we do the legal segment here on KFI. And so what happened was there were a bunch of states, sixteen states or seventeen states that sued California, stripping it of its authority to adopt vehicle emission standards that were stricter than the federal benchmarks, saying California doesn't have the ability to pass its own laws that are stricter than the federal government

because this is a federal issue. That's it. And the same time, you've got the fuel producers that have sue that have joined lawsuits. So there are two plaintiffs here, fuel producers and the states. Well, the Supreme Court just rules that California, the state of California, they have standing to sue. They'll just and they'll decide that. Let me

see if I got this right. Ohio California one. And then it was a challenge up from Ohio and the state Supreme Court rule that California is prevalent here that the states do not have the right to sue. Boom Over. So not the merits of the case, not whether or not the standards are good or bad, it's just the states can't bring the lawsuit forward. California's immune to the states. However,

the fuel producers can bring the suits forward. So now the lawsuit is limited to the fuel producers who are arguing the same premise that California does not have the right to have ambissions stronger than more stringent than the Feds. And why is that Because the fuel producers are saying those are actual damages to us. The states more broadly, they states say, well, it's a damage to us by these standards, these excessive standards that California has. Well, it's California, guys.

What does that have to do with Ohio. Now you don't have a lawsuit here. You can't prove that California's law hurts Ohio's law. Because California has more stringent laws about fuel emits, the fuel producers have a better argument because they can't point to actual damages in the sense that the fuel producers are going to sell less fuel the more stringent the California rules are. And California goes

beyond the federal government all the time. For example, the amount of pollution the fossil fuels emissions that flow out of cars that are produced by cars, California is far more rigid than anybody else. And so you know what ends up happening. They're fine, California can do it. Because of the damage that happens to the state because of fuel imute emissions, carbon dioxide, methane, I mean all of it.

And you know what ended up happening. Why it's become moot because even though the rest of the company a country doesn't meet Californifornia standards on car pollution, they manufacture cars to that standard anyway all over the country. Cars sold in New Jersey meet the same standards as car sold in California, because California is too big a market, so we might as well adopt California's rules. It's that simple.

On the other hand, California also demands a fuel during the summer, during the summer, the summer blend that produces less pollution. The other states say, too bad. You know, you do what you want. So what ends up California. We can't bring in gas from other states when there's a shortage of gas here, we can't bring it in. All we can do is use California refineries. There hasn't been a refinery built, I don't know, in decades, while

our population has doubled over the last thirty years. So when there is a shutdown of a refinery, guess what happens. We have a reduction in fuel. One refinery going down, one fuel prices go up because the amount of fuel that is produced in California. Every drop is used because no one wants a refinery near them. You know, it's an mb situation. Yes, we need more refineries, not in my neighborhood, you don't. So it ends up that we are screwed other states when there's a shortage, you know

what they do. They're pipelines. They just bring in. You know, for example, you've got let's say North Dakota is short of fuel because of some reason, maintenance problems, refineries are down. Well, the South Dakota produces its own fuel and it has plenty, so they ship it in, not in California. So this was sort of kind of a win for environmental advocates and they're cautiously optimistic. Now we have the lawsuit that is going forward by the fuel producers. Where is that

going to go? We don't know. But the states that suit ude, they're out. Okay, was that too wonkey? By the way, do that makes sense? Guys, that's a question I'm asking you. They're asleep, Okay, thank you, I'll wake them up. Now. Let's go to seventeen ninety three. A little bit of a handle history. James Madison, fourth President, wrote the trust and the temptation would be too great for any one man. What was he writing about the ability to declare war, which Congress has solely under Article

one of the Constitution, Congress must declare war. That's it. When FDR proclaimed on December eighth, a day that will live in infamy, he asked Congress to declare war on Japan, he didn't have the ability to do it. Well, now let's talk about the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons. The president basically has a sole authority to order a bomb dropped. Harry Truman, it was his decision. He said, all right,

we're going to bomb Japan. Now it's both. You know, you can argue that the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was a good decision, bad decision. There's a lot of history there in interpretation, but the bottom line is since nuclear bombs came into being, it's been the president who has made that call. And the argument is that's not a declaration of war. Although you tell me bombing a foreign country is not a declaration of war, since then,

it's only the president. By the way, the last time war was declared, and look at the number of fights of conflicts we've been involved in Vietnam, Korea, you have Granada, you have Serbia, and those are among the very very few examples of many, many battles. Not once was war declared. Last time war was actually declared was December eighth, nineteen forty one. Korea was a quote police action, which is still not over. It's an armistice. They're still at war

North and South Korea. And when it came to Vietnam, Congress did allow President Johnson to fight, but it wasn't to declare war. It was the Tonkin Resolution, Tonkin Gulf Resolution, where Lynna Johnson made up an attack on an American, an American warship that was in those waters, international waters, he says, And it wasn't and anyway, there's a whole history there, but it was not a declaration war by Congress.

So now you have an issue where the president, and this has been going on since nineteen forty five, in August when the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place, the president makes a sole decision. Congress has nothing to do with it. And in light of the fear that Donald Trump is going to be president and he is, let's say, reacts very quickly and doesn't think things through, and therefore a lot of people are frightened. I'm not.

I'm not If Kim Jong un does not launch a bomb, who is far crazier if you run that gets a nuclear weapon and they're working very hard on it, and they're within a couple of years. I don't think would launch a bomb. Certainly Donald Trump would never launch a bomb. But it comes to an interesting position here and studying the fact that a president has the ability presses the button.

It's not a button, by the way. What it actually is is by I think today it would be an email and a phone call that he says, Okay, let's launch this thing, and there are some safeguards it has to go. He actually doesn't order specifically, it's the Secretary of Defense that actually orders it. But the secretary of Defense works for the president, so the secretary of Defense can say no, thank you. So there are some safeguards, but the decision ultimately is the president's. Now here's the

question I want to throw at you. Is the president allowed to defensively use nuclear weapons? The reason we have not gone to war with Russia and used nuclear weapons we had we had the concept of mad mutually assured destruction. You launch, We're going to launch right there, I mean within seconds of us seeing the launching, because a nor rad up north that can figure out Russian missiles coming in. They still have that system, by the way, And so

do you wait for Congress to declare war? If launching an atomic weapon is a declaration of war, that's the argument. That's what makes this whole thing kind of fun, And the fact that wiping out the earth in a nuclear holocaust is kind of fun. I'm one of the few people that think that's entertaining. But I love discussing the issue of when is it appropriate for a president to launch a nuclear weapon? Now if preemptively canny launch can because of fear of a nuclear weapon by being used

by the other side. Can a president launch and not in self defense, although you argue self defense but premature well not prematurely, but launch first. Yeah, a president can do that. And according to James Madison, that is way too dangerous. If you look at a president and they didn't have many nuclear weapons in seventeen ninety three, granted so he probably wasn't thinking of nuclear weapons, but he was thinking of Congress having the sole power to declare war,

not the president, only Congress. So you got to think this one through. I find this fascinating because a preemptive law launch, is it a declaration of war? And if it is constitutionally speaking, the president can't do it. On the other hand, if it's in self defense and Russia or any enemy knows the president can do that, maybe it doesn't do that. Or if the law says that

Congress has to meet, well, let me ask you. You got the congress people driving and flying in to vote for a declaration of war that takes days, takes twenty minutes for a launch from Russia or Iran or from North Korea. Fascinating topic. I love this, And we go back to is wiping the earth or wiping humanity from the earth? Is that entertaining? Is that fun? Well? I'm one of the few people that think, yeah, you know, that's kind

of interesting concept, isn't it. Now here's a stat that from CNN the median renter in America, the renter has a net worth of ten thousand dollars. The median homeowner's networth is four hundred thousand dollars. Now, right off, that's fairly easy to explain, because a homeowner has equity in the house for the most part, and anybody who bought a house even a year ago or two years ago

have seen their property values rise a year ago. When I decided to buy a house a year ago because there was no housing and because I had I had boxes had to be checked out, and I found the perfect house, well short of a remodel or parts of it remodeled, I paid top top dollar and realized, you know, it's not going to get more expensive than this. Property values have to fall because I've paid an insane price. The previous owner, who had bought the house a year before,

made astronomical profit on it. Well, my house has risen twelve percent in value in a year. And I'm going, wait a minute, now, it didn't matter to me because I'm going to live there basically forever. I'm going to end up dying there, probably in the next couple of years. But let's go, yeah, let's hope. So, but it's just my value in that house and I put you know, I put a chunk down. All of a sudden, my net worth increased twelve percent of the value of the house. Yes,

not bad, And that's what happened. If you're a homeowner, Neil, same thing. He bought the house, I don't know how many years ago, and the value of his house has what gone up fifty percent, doubled maybe, oh easily. Yeah.

that's just statistic. Renters are most likely to or excuse me, renters have less positive cash flow, less positive cash flow, bigger debt, fewer savings, and more likely to hold the student loans in in bigger, bigger amounts. So it's it's a person who can own and afford a home simply is financially better off than just the value of the home. It's just someone who can afford a home. Who is that today? Nobody million dollar homes. I've said this before.

We look out the window of the studio and we look at these little cracker jack you know, cracker box houses is that the right word, that are down the street and they're eleven hundred square feet in their two bedroom, three bedroom, one bath, a million dollars on loss side.

thousand dollars down. So now you're sitting after two hundred thousand dollars after tax money that you're writing a check for or wiring it in these days, and then you're looking at an eight hundred thousand dollars mortgage at six point six percent just came out, and so six point six percent on eight hundred thousand dollars. What is that seven thousand dollars a month, and it used to be four thousand dollars a month thirty five hundred dollars a

month a few years back. So if you're a homeowner, you're in great shape. If you're a renter, it's tough now. Some people rent because it's just easier. For example, you know, and I've told you when I retire, I plan on living in Italy for part of the year, if not for the entire year, just moving. I'm never going to buy a home. I'm going to rent for the rest of my life. I just don't want to deal with home ownership because it really has a pain in the ass. Insurance.

Home insurance is the delight, isn't it. Taxes are a delight. Used to be you could deduct taxes as much as you paid in property tax. Used to be off your federal tax Now because of Trump in his previous administration, Captain at ten thousand dollars is the deduction, by the way, ten thousand dollars. Oh my god, who pays ten thousand dollars in taxes? Anybody who has a home that's a million dollars in value, and that's virtually every home in

southern California. And the reason Trump did that because he hates California. And the same thing. As far as income, you pay your state income taxes, that was deductible against your federal taxes, and that was capped the ten thousand dollars wide. Because our wages are much higher than the

rest of the country. Because when you buy a house, for example, in Arkansas, and your car is out in front and there are no wheels, and it is on cinder block, on cinder blocks, and the couch is on the porch, and the springs have sprung, and there's no dentists within one hundred and fifty miles. Now, wages aren't very very high, and the home prices aren't very high. Okay, enough of that. Now tell you about my daughter Pamela.

Pamela and her roommate Harper have been working on a game for the last over a year year and a half and I mean a lot of hours. And you would think they would do an app, right because that's where you put games. It's a board game, it's not an app, and you go board games. We can seet during the pandemic, family sits down. You play Monopoly. In my case, it was Shoots and Ladders, and I had a very hard time understanding it. I finally got it. You've got various games that scrabble, a lot of just

fun games, and then you figure out the pandemic. Okay, it's done. Now we go back to our reality, and board games just keep on going and going and going. And board games or a Monopoly, for example, was created in the third in the middle of the depression because it was a money issue, and as we know, people were completely broken. This was a sort of a sidebar. Let's play, let's play with fake money. Other games came in at the turn of the last century. We just

like board games. Now they were losing all kinds of attention, and the number of people that were playing board games just really started falling off the radar, especially during the fifties. I think fifties and sixties started going downhill. And it was, as I said, during the pandemic, it completely exploded. And if you were the manufacturer of a board game, you did just great. So this phenomena is now increasing and

why well, here's what's happening. People are still kind of lonely, and they still talk on the internet, they're not in person, so people are sort of desperate to get together. So you know what's going on, not just board games, but clubs where people get together to play board games. Again, Pamela, she does a weekly game of Dungeons and Dragons with a group of people she never met before. It's sort of a coffee clatch clotch where they get together, and

that's not unusual. There are thousands of those groups across the country, particularly in New York. For some reason, New York is sort of the center of this. You know why, because New York has had chess clubs forever. When you look at people in the park playing chess in movies or TV shows, it's always New York because that's what they do here. In southern California, you go to Venice and it's always these bodybuilders who take a lot of steroid and their balls are the size of raisins. It's

a different culture here there across the Midwest. But the concept of these New York clubs that play board games is really rising, and I mean dramatically. By the way, tabletop board games go back thousands of years. The ancient Egyptians played board games, and where it really started here is in the United States, was the nineteenth century, the eighteen hundreds, where wealthy men would play chess, and then that expanded into various board games, and then in the

fifties the number of games just exploded. There is in New York City backgammon clubs held at restaurants in Brooklyn and Manhattan. Ten dollars per event. Is the admission cost thirty five hundred people? Yes, is what the number they can figure out Green Tile Social Club in New York and Majong Mistress. Okay, they also offer a lot of other stuff. The Majong Mistress. I thought Majong was only

old Jewish ladies getting together talking to each other playing majan. No, I mean I've seen majong where they talk to each other. My son's a docta. No, he's not. He's a dentist. Doctor. That's not a docta. My son is a real doctor. My son is a specialist. He is not a doctor doctor like your son is. Those are my jong games. It turns out there's a lot more than that. By the way, if you've ever seen a bunch of old Jewish biddies playing majong. That's exactly the conversation they have.

So still Chess is at the top of the game, so to speak. Chess is still the number one because it's been around a whole long time. And the reason it has exploded far more than did before is the mini series in the movie the Queen's Gambit that just gets things started for Formula one Racing has exploded because of the Netflix series. I don't miss that series, the Formula one series. I've been watching it for six years. What did I care about Formula one until that came out?

So we are susceptible to TV movies and that just spins us in that direction. So because of the Queen's Gambit. By the way, you see that movie, I thought it was tremendous. I loved the Queen's Gambit. Yeah, everybody's nodding. Neil is nodding, Ann is nodding. Cono is not paying at ten, Amy is not paying attime. I'm paying attention. Okay, have you watched what movie? Am I talking about? Queen's Gambit? She took my words? Oh sorry, Oh we both listening. Okay, Well,

it's a shocker. That's unusual Amy. Did you see the movie? Uh, it was a series. Actually, remember, Oh, I didn't see a movie. I watched the series and I thought it was fantastic. Yeah, watched the movie too, the movie that was the basis of the series. It's tremendous. I saw the series. Did you say you didn't see the movie? No, watch both. They're really great. All right, this is KFI AM six forty. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.

Catch my show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.