You're listening to bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI AM six forty Bill Handle. Here it is Aday, Wednesday, September twenty five.
Some of the big stories we're looking at.
Yesterday, the Senate passed a bill that gives Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump the same protections.
As Joe Biden, a sitting president. And that's new.
And by the way, it was unanimous in the House and in the Senate. You don't see that very often. Also, Helene, Florida residents are bracing for Helen the first or excuse me, I think it's what the fourth hurricane to make landfall in the US this year and we're only into how early.
In the season, are we? Huh? We're going to see a lot of hurricanes this season. Okay. Lawsuit time.
The Justice Department is sued Visa alleging it has monopolized the market for consumer payments and it's worth trillions of dollars every year the market. It's an anti trust complaint that effectively says Visa, you are curtailing the market, you are not letting free enterprise, and we're gonna stop it. And here's what the Justice Apartment is saying Visa did it has paid companies like Amazon or like Apple and others in an Amazon.
To hold on a minute.
I'm I've got double vision here for a moment. A right, Yeah, no, I just you know, occasionally I get vertigo and then I go crazy.
I get you know, wait, how many fingers am I holding up?
Nine? No, it's just the one. Oh, okay, it's one. So let me get through this a moment anyway. I'm that's weird, Neil. You're four people.
Well, I had no idea, you know, and it's it's not any better looking either.
You don't want four of me? No, no, I don't want four of you in any case? What all right? Yeah, I'm okay, I just have a I'm not going to stand up. Yeah, I have a little vidigo.
They'd be concerned about you.
It occasionally hits me. No, I'm fine. I'm fine. It's not like I'm having a.
And then we'd have to go pokey with a stick.
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
That's by the way, if I ever do stroke out or have a heart attack or whatever, I'm definitely gonna do it on the air.
Boy, what ratings? Where we get on that one.
And it makes us signed documents that we will we will do it for the ratings.
In any case, the point of this story is that Visa is being accused of using its power.
It has sixty percent of the market.
We're talking about it when it chargess to process the credit cards, and there is a fee that Visa and other processors charge, And the Justice Department is saying, hey, guys, you have a huge market and the way you're acting, because not only are you curtailing the transactions, and here's how they do it. If one of the vendors who uses you, in fact ghosts uses anybody else for anything else,
higher fees kick in. And they've paid Amazon and have paid Apple to not develop their own transactions and cut them in for their profit.
And according to the Justice Department, if.
It's true what they say, you bet, it's in violation of the antitrust laws.
You can't do that. You can't do that.
You cannot work that aggressively to control the market, in fact, successfully control the market. And this is what Visa is being accused. Of course, Visa said, absolutely not true. We
don't control the market sixty percent. And the lawsuit this is according to the Visa General Counsel, that the lawsuit ignores the reality that Visa is just one of many competitors in a debit space that is growing and believing this is growing like crazy because how many stores are disappearing and how much is online shopping growing.
It's growing like crazy, and it's.
Credit cards that have to be used, although credit cards are used across the board, and it's the Just Department saying this, just thinkt fair the way Visa is acting. Of course Visa said no, no, no, no, there are plenty of competitors out there. If this is true, I think Visas in a lot of trouble. There's no question about it. So it's not going to be broken up. That is not going to happen. Just Apartment is not asking for that. They're just asking that Visa stop doing
what it's doing. Now, let's move into politics for a moment with this story. Who gets elected, Well, e, she gets elected, She's going to continue on with this lawsuit to nail Visa. Now, if Donald Trump gets elected, is he get to stop this because he is pro business? You know, this lawsuit was started under Donald Trump, He's the one under his administration. They went after Visa for anti trust. So you can't necessarily think that it's.
Going to be all roses. What's the phrase peaches and cream.
Peaches and cream, pins and roses, raining cats and roses.
I don't know what that is.
In any case, it's not necessarily going to be a whole lot of help for Visa if Trump wins this election. And by the way, if this is true, which I think it is, well, Ticketmaster got nailed for excessive prices and because it controlled the market and did everything it could to stop any other sale of concert ticket by anybody else, and they got nailed pretty hard for it.
And the same thing is going to happen to Visa. Do you remember, if.
Memory serves and and you can look this up, Visa was originally Bank Americ card, one of the very first credit cards out there. The first one I think was Discover and I think that's the case. Which is the one that was Oh no, I think Dining the Dining card. I'm going way back. This is just I'm playing with history here.
Oh Diner's card, Yeah, I think so.
The Diner's card I think may have been the first one.
And then Visa was originally Bank Americ Card because Bank of America got into this one of the early players, and it became massive, and then it changed its name to Visa.
Yeah, and that was in nineteen fifty eight.
Okay, Now I wasn't aware of it. I wasn't using credit cards in nineteen fifty eight. But it's this credit card business. Well, as you know, it's just exploding. It's getting even crazier and we're not going to have Does anybody carry cash or anymore? Do you buy anything with cash?
Very rarely do I have any anything with cash? I mean I carry you know, I've told this for I always have a couple hundred dollars in my pocket, and I do that as a matter of policy only because if someone sticks a gun to my head who's a dope addict and says I want all your money, at least they're happy. There's nothing worse than giving someone a dollar and a quarter who's robbing you and get getting really depressed and you have a hole in your head after that.
Not very nice.
By the way, I had Pepe's towing service out there in Ontario tow us we high centered on this thing a couple days ago, and they came out and I didn't have any cash on me, and I want to tip them. I said, could I you? He says, no, this is a courtesy. We're just helping you out. I couldn't take it. Couldn't take it if you had it on you.
He was running a temperature at that time. Okay, I have a story for you, and this you may know about. Well, it's it's kind of interesting.
It's one of those this is what's happening in the future stories.
A few years ago, tech giants swore that they were going to slash their carbon emissions. And since tech giants use an unbelievable amount of energy, how do you reconcile we are going to slash our carbon emissions since they don't produce the energy, they use the energy. And so you have power companies that are trying to deal with this, and they are you just we don't have enough power out there. So there are there is a the economy here.
There's actually a contradiction. We need more power, a lot more power, and at the same time, we want to zero zero out of our emissions or bring them down, and you're the ones that provide the power.
We need more, but you don't have it.
You have to then well, basically you got to keep power plants going longer than is on the books.
Just give me an idea of the kind of.
Power, especially where AI is going. You have your normal search on Google and that takes power. I mean, there's no question. Computers have to be involved, and you've got the search engine and you.
Have hardware that's involved.
So that costs x sense or fractions of a penny or nano's fractions of a penny to do that search.
You do a search on.
Chat GPT that takes ten times more power for that search than a regular search on Google.
And imagine how much you're going to use AI.
And it's not just Chat GPD, it's AI searches. And so these tech companies are scrambling to one get more power that they need and cut emissions.
Well how do you do that?
And the power companies are saying, well, of course you need more power, and we're going.
To give you more at the same time cut emissions.
So people are companies are going crazy trying to figure out which way do we go. Battery power that lasts for days instead of hours, nuclear nuclear power, which by the way, everybody is frightened up I like nuke power. I always have. I don't live near a nuclear power plant either. But even environmentalists are about fifty to fifty on nuclear energy now because there are no carbon emissions with nuclear power and the nuclear waste issue, Hey, I'm going to be dead by the time you have to
deal with it. So muzzletov enjoy. So there are they are scrambling. There's geothermal power. Now, hydroelectric power is basically done. You're not going to build any more dams. But everybody is working in conjunction. So now instead of these companies just buying power, there now partnering up to try to figure out how we're going to do this this massive new demand for power, this massive move towards reducing carbon emissions.
Have you There was a story I was that on sixty minutes where you have the bitcoin mining operations, right and this computers that do this, and there is a community that lives next door to one of these massive operations and.
They have thousands and thousands.
Of computers in these buildings and the amount of power that it takes and the computers heat up because they're just generating heat, so they need air conditioning. Now, how loud do you think in air conditioning a or several or dozens or hundreds of air conditioning units, how loud do you think those get that are sitting on roofs? And you if you want to be next door, No, very few people live right next door, for example, to an Amazon fulfillment center of two million square feet, because
the noise that's generated is crazy. And by the way, the power that a two million square foot warehouse uses.
Up, what do you think of that? Huh? And you got the utility, it's most of what the utility produces. And that's what's happening.
Demand is increasing like crazy, emission controls are increasing like crazy, and so basically all of this becomes a partnership. That's what the wave of the future is. And you're going to see all kinds of alternative wind. We already have solars, certainly. You know, I have a solar system in my house and people are buying him like crazy.
You're going to see small.
Reactors that they're developing in neighborhoods.
Even I saw plans for.
A reactor of back yard reactor, little tiny guy. So when that up, all it does is take out a diameter of ten houses. It is the wave of the future. We are going to see that. That's what changes. Okay, community colleges interesting. We have a community college system in California that is unlike any other system in the country. I mean, it's extraordinary the amount of money we pay in the opportunities community colleges give us and give Californians. Now,
there's two aspects of community college. One of them is pretty much a failure now and the other one is even more of a failure. And here are the two areas that community colleges are about. One is getting the AA degree for purposes of transferring into either a UC or a cal state and finishing up your four year degree.
And it's an easy way of doing it. It is far cheaper doing it now.
The community colleges are commuter colleges. You're not going to have dorms at community colleges. You're not going to have sororities, fraternities, I mean, none of that happens. And it's usually older students that go to community colleges. Although there was a tutor, a math tutor when my kids were smaller, and just the brightest lady I've ever seen who was instantly accepted
by any school in the UC system. And what she did is she decided to go to junior college to get her first two years and not pay the money and not have to live outside of the area. She lived at home with her mom and dad, and then went on to accept a full scholarship. I think it was UC San Diego, and that made sense, But that is aberrational she made. She was she defined exactly what
junior colleges were set up to do, certainly in that sense. Now, the other way junior colleges work so well is you get an AA degree in one sense, or you get a certificate because they have professional courses. You can get a certificate in welding, for example, autoshop.
You can get a certificate in.
Not computer sciences, well maybe against computer science has been not at the same level you would get with a computer engineering degree, and you walk out the door with a skills set having gone to school that is marketable, that is saleable, and you've just come from a junior college. Also, I've always wondered and such a good time. You know, when I was laid up, I was at home after my back surgery and I was sitting there, I was
watching CNN I was watching Netflix, et cetera. But I also was turning on cable TV and regular broadcast TV, and it was all these for profit professional schools. Professional in the sense of you two can learn how to be a front row receptionist, a front line receptionist, receptionist for a doctor's office.
You can get our certificate.
It's only six months, and of course it costs you thirty five thousand dollars. And I always sat and wondered, you know how much and why you would pay thirty five thousand dollars so you could pick up the phone and go Hi, doctor Smith's office, Can I help you?
Now?
I understand that takes a lot of training. At least in junior college you get that virtually for free. The point is they have certificates. They actually give you a marketable skill. Now is it working at all? Well, well, if the point of junior college, which it was supposed to be, this is the reason it was set up, is to give you the first two years of college, you get your a day degree, and then you transfer to a four year institution. And that's the way the
system was built. Started in nineteen sixty, I think, is when they changed the rules and they made it easier for transfer students to even transfer in. There's a whole system of you do your two years, you transfer in. So how many students you think actually make the grade who go from junior college and graduate from college. One in five twenty percent do.
What the system is supposed to do.
So I'm going to come back and talk to you about why it is not working and there is a fix.
And by the way, I am a fan of junior college.
For those of you that have kids and you're writing the checks for college tuition today, let me tell you why junior college at solutely works for you.
In a major way and it helps the kids.
At the bottom line is community colleges are supposed to be you go, you get your two year associate's degree, and then you move on to a regular four year college, and that is the plan. Well, the audit tells us that one in five students do that, and the transfer rates from community college to a four year college. It's fewer for people in the less affluent parts of the state. If you're poor, you're going to do this less, of course,
and this is inevitably. Students who are black or Hispanic are always at a disadvantage doesn't matter where we're talking about.
There's always a disparity, unfortunately.
And why would you want a bachelor's degree even though they are insanely expensive?
A lot of jobs require bachelors.
Kids young adults with bachelor's degree earn sixteen thousand dollars more per year than those with just an AA degree. And of course if you only have a high school diploma, you're going to even earn far less. So why is it so difficult, Well, you have community college. The UC system and the state system are three different entities, and there are three different bureaucracies. They don't talk to each other,
so you have you're supposed to be able to transfer classes. Well, some ucs and some cow states don't take community college credits, and you don't know which one because you don't know what'school you're going to.
Okay, some don't take transfers. Some community college don't even.
Offer the classes that are necessary to go to certain UC classes. So what they're trying to do is make it easier because assuming you want to go, assuming.
You're willing to put in your two years and get an.
AA degree, assuming you want to transfer, the hoops people have to go through are in sc because you're talking three different systems, three different jurisdictions, three different requirements. As a matter of fact, certain schools depending on say you want to go to UC is totally different requirements than you know, a cal state system and different. I mean, it's just it's so so difficult to do this. So the plan is to reform the entire system. Oh, there
are guarantees certain spots, and that's another one. You want to get into a really good school, do it as a transfer student. If you can't get into UCLA, which is almost impossible to get into, go to junior college because a certain number and far more than just applying for UCLA out of high school, going from a community college, they have to reserve certain amount certain numbers of spaces. It is far easier to get into a major, good, insanely good public school out of junior college. And a
lot of people don't know that. It just makes more sense. It is if you look at it. When the community college system works well, it's one of the best best ways to get into a four year college. And let me tell you something else. Let's say you go to community college, you do your two years.
And I'll talk locally.
You go to UCLA, let's say, or you see Davis or you see Irvine or whatever. On your diploma, it doesn't show you went to a community college. All it shows is you graduated from UCLA. All it shows is you graduated from Berkeley.
That's it. So it's all the reason in the world.
To go to community college. And my kids I told them, not only are you going to community college, I don't even think I'm going to pay the tuition for.
Community college, because it is just to give you an idea.
I remember, I don't know how many years ago it is. I don't even know what the tuition is. I just remember that it was ten dollars a unit when I was looking at it, so a full semester it was one hundred and sixty bucks a semester if you took sixteen units.
I'm sure that's not the case now.
But if you look and compare tuition community college, cal state colleges, then the UC system, it's still far far cheaper. Although go to the UC system and get a medical degree or get a law degree, fifty grand a year in tuition at a state school. This is kfi AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
Catch My Show Monday through Friday, six am to nine am, and any time on demand on the iHeartRadio app.