You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty Bill.
Handles show Wayne Resinik here and some of the stories we're following for you. President Biden announced yesterday six hundred and twelve million dollars in funding to improve the energy grid in areas impacted by the.
Hurricanes Milton and Helene.
There are, at last count from Amy King in the New Center, like four hundred thousand ish people still without power after Milton. But those two storms combined knocked out power for more than eight million people according to FEMA, and the latest CNN poll of national polling finds no clear leader in the presidential race. In this particular poll, likely voters fifty percent support Kamala Harris forty seven percent support Donald Trump. That is within the margin of error,
so it doesn't really mean it. That's a deadline, including in some key battleground states like your Wisconsin and your Michigan, your Pennsylvania. Okay, roll up your sleeves, everybody, because we've got a battle here in the state of California. I don't know if it's a grudge match, but they're definitely
in the octagon. The California Energy Commission versus the California Air Resource Board first up, getting all the headlines right now, the California Energy Commission indirectly, you'll see how they figure into this in a moment. The legislature has passed a law, a law that Governor Newsom wanted and that he is
expected to sign as early as today. And you may recall Governor Newsom coming out and talking about these spikes in gas prices when, for example, a refinery is taken out of commission for maintenance, and that when that happens, the supply of gas drops and the gas that's already out there becomes more valuable, and you see a big price bike it.
He doesn't want that to happen anymore.
So he wants the oil companies to be required to maintain reserves at all times, to keep the supply of gas relatively even even when they shut down refineries, even if a refinery unexpectedly goes down for some emergency maintenance.
That is the idea behind it. It's not a super specific plan, what the parameters are, how big of a stockpile must they maintain, what happens if they don't, It's not but it's the basic idea and The reason it's not a specific plan in the law is because the law leaves it to the California Energy Commission to figure
out the details. Now, some economists say this is a good idea, and they will point to Japan, Australia as companies countries that already do something like this with their gas industries, or maybe it's petrol, depending on where you are. But other economists even say that this might not have the intended consequence and that it could in fact backfire and end up with higher gas prices, even though that's
not the intent. It is so controversial that in California with a Democratic supermajority, this thing didn't.
Get by as definitively as it could.
You actually had a number of Democrats who either voted against it or abstained or did not come to the vote. Republicans obviously don't like it. The oil industry of course hates it, and they say, first of all, we don't have enough storage to do this idea, and then some experts say, well, yes you do, and that's a big finger pointing about can the oil company even do what
Newsom wants them to do. Also buried in there is the idea, you know, how with carbon with pollution and you can either lower your pollution or you can continue to pollute and you.
Can buy carbon credits.
Well, there's something similar here with the storing of the oil in the gasoline that if you're a refiner and you don't have enough storage in your tanks, you could buy storage credits from other refiners who have a lot of capacity. It's crazy, and it gets crazier because while that's going on, this law being passed, the California Energy Commission would be able to come up with a plan to tell oil companies that they have to keep a lot of gasoline and oil on hand so that the
supply doesn't fluctuate so much. At the same time, the California Air Resource Board, they're the pollution people, is going to vote apparently after the election, they are gonna vote for new stricter pollution standards for the gasoline in California. And earlier in this process they estimated that it would raise the price of a gallon of gas forty seven
cents a gallon. Then there was a separate Independence study that concluded that these new stricter pollution standards for gas would raise the price of a gallon of gas sixty five cents a gallon. And now if you ask the California Air Resources Board, hey, how much will these new standards raise the price of a gallon of gas? They now say, oh, it's impossible to know. So this is
literally true. On one track is legislation that is supposed to lower the price of gasoline, and on the on another track, simultaneously is a regulation coming that will raise the price of a gallon of gas.
And maybe at best.
These two things would cancel each other out, or we could end up with permanently higher gas prices here in California. And the thing about it is Newsom appoints the people on both of these entities, so he should have something to say. And if he's really really concerned about the price of gas, he should probably be putting pressure on
the California Air Resources Board to not do this. I mean, we already have special blends of gas to lower the pollution from our gasoline compared to the rest of the country. So that's what's going on. And if it doesn't make sense to you, you want to know why.
Because it doesn't make sense.
Let's talk about this super special LA Sheriff's Department police unit. There was a big hearing on Friday. The Civilian Oversight Commission that oversees the Sheriff's department got to get testimony from two former members of this secret unit, or maybe I should say secretive. It's not that nobody knew it existed, it's that nobody outside of it knew everything they were
up to. It's the civil rights and public integrity detail, and ostensibly their job was to investigate corruption, particularly at the highest levels of county government. And the fact that there was a unit like this is not in and of itself unusual or suspicious. The US Attorney's Office has a public integrity unit. They prosecute, Oh, I don't know, congress people who take bribes, or mayors who take bribes, or well, it's basically taking bribes is pretty much what is going on.
So this unit, though.
Is very interesting, and we got some information about it from the testimony of a guy, Sergeant Max Fernandez, and a former homicide detective named Mark Lillienfeld. First thing interesting, nobody was ever sure at any time how many members were on this unit. The former homicide detective said anywhere from two to ten depending on when you were looking, and on paper.
These officers were not assigned to the unit.
You didn't get a directory of the Sheriff's Department and it said, oh, the Civil Rights and Public Integrity Detail, and here's who's on it. They on paper, were all on assignments, scattered all over the county. One of the people was on paper a patrol person up and I think in the Atlanta Analope.
Valley like that.
So the thing about it that's controversial not that it exists, and maybe not that the members of it were on paper assigned to other duties. It's that they went after some people in a way that a lot of people thought was political, not legitimately law enforcement. And one of the interesting aspects of this is that over a period of time that they're looking at, there were maybe fifty
five or sixty cases that this unit investigated. So these would theoretically all be cases of some kind of public corruption.
But the only cases that they.
Announced and talked about publicly involved people who were in essence enemies of then Sheriff via Nueva, like Patty Giggins, who's on this Civilian Oversight Commission and also runs a charity. And if my memory is serving me about that situation. She has this a charitable organization called Peace Over Violence, and they got a contract from the county to run a hotline, I think some kind of a hotline, and the Sheriff's department said, we are investigating this to see
if there is some if this was a favor. She was given the contract to run this hotline by the county as a favor because she supported county Supervisor Sheila Cule a quid pro quote, if you will, That was
one of them. They also investigated Chili Cule, who is somebody who you know who was not a huge fan of Villanueva, former CEO of La County, the General inspector or actually the Inspector General, Max Huntsman, who we know butt heads with Villanueva all the time, and an La Times reporter and if you remember that case, there was a list of problem deputies that got leaked and it got to the hands of the press and it was
published and then they started investigating these reporters for stolen property.
But those cases were never prosecuted.
And so the idea here is, was this a legitimate public integrity law enforcement department or squad as part of the Sheriff's department and it just so happened, and that some of the things that they investigated involved people who were not big fans of the sheriff. Or was that unit used as a kind of a personal vengeance squad
on behalf of then sheriff of Villanueva. And I don't know that that question is has been answered by their testimony, but we got a little bit of insight into how it operated and that and that it was not as not as transparent as we might like, particularly from from law enforcement in general, and particularly from an arm of law enforcement that they that that says, we're here to investigate shadiness and corruption, and we'll see if there's any
more hearings and anymore dirt comes out. A man was arrested near the Donald Trump rally at Coachella over the weekend after his vehicle was stopped. It was actually a checkpoint, so all the vehicles were being stopped, and this gentleman stood out because he was driving a black SUV unregistered with fake license plates, but not fake license plates that look like real license plates, sovereign plates plates indicating that the driver considers themselves a sovereign citizen not subject to
the jurisdiction of the United States. Also, the interior was in disarray, and based on that, they searched it and they found in the trunk a shotgun, a handgun, a high capacity magazine. They apparently found numerous driver's licenses and passports in fake identities. He said he was a journalist, but he had no proof that he was a journalist working for any known journalistic entity in any of it.
He was arrested on.
Suspicion of having a loaded handgun and possession of a high capacity magazine.
They are illegal in California. No no, no, no, no, but them.
Miller, which is his name, was released on five thousand dollars bail yesterday, so he was only there overnight, and the sheriff's office in Riverside said that at no time were any of the people at the rally or former President Trump in danger. And he also said the sheriff of Riverside County that they had probably stopped an assassination attempt. Now, I feel like those two statements can't live together, but they were both. Lets you know that Jurius guy or
somebody who's a threat. Now the Feds are probably going to take a look and see if they can figure out if he was up to no good. But he said he's a Donald Trump supporter and he was not there to hurt anybody, and that he's just a journalist to tell you something about sovereign citizens and at the risk of upsetting any sovereign citizens listening now. First of all, special message for you sovereign citizens. Yes, yes, the fringe on the flag is definitely a big deal sovereign citizens.
Where I saw a lot of them in tax evasion cases that I worked on, because you would get sovereign citizens who say, and you've probably heard people tell you this, you don't have to pay taxes. It's actually voluntary, another gobbledegook, And so they would not pay their taxes, and they would come to court and they would maintain that they don't have to pay taxes and it's voluntary. And I can tell you something that federal judges.
Hate that they hate it.
Even the most liberal and lenient of judges would slam hard somebody on a tax evasion case saying I'm not required Now. It probably didn't help that they would say, I don't even recognize your authority as a federal judge. I mean, that's a pretty good way to tick off a federal judge. But they would get harsh sentences, and then they'd appeal to the Ninth Circuit, and the Ninth Circuit would say, you guys are idiots, and you would be better off being a tax cheat and just say, oh, yeah,
I know I'm supposed to pay taxes. I didn't want to because I'm greedy. You would have a better chance of getting leniency than if you come in with this sovereign citizen stuff that this guy did. There's also another interesting wrinkle with them Miller, the man caught with the guns outside the Trump rally. There's a photo circulating now of them Miller with former presidential candidate Vivic Ramaswami, and now Ramaswami is getting heat because he's in a picture
with this guy. And this guy was a rested outside the Trump rally with guns, and it looks like he's, you know, some kind of a kook. My opinion, this is, by the way, a constitutionally protected, pure opinion. I'm certainly not implying that I'm making a medical diagnosis or that I have any special information about him that I'm not telling you, because I don't.
But I do think we should not.
I don't know how much when you start holding people accountable for old pictures with somebody who later turns out to be a problem. All right, Elon Musk would like to launch more rockets from the coast of California. And he's not the only one that wants him to launch these rockets. The US military, in the form of Space Force and the Air Force, would like Elon Musk to be able to launch more rockets off the coast of California.
And before we get into what the controversy, I do want to say it's nice to have a story where Space Force is prominently featured, because you really don't hear about Space Force enough, I think.
But they're a big part of this story.
So SpaceX has contracts with Space Force and the Air Force and probably with other arms of the military as well, and one of the things involves launching rockets off the coast of California. But also SpaceX will launch rockets for a private business. So there's been a problem with these rocket launches. The rocket launches have sometimes caused big sonic booms that go on over about one hundred mile distance,
and they screw up wildlife. They scare the animals, they bother people, and there are also some I guess pollution concerns about these rocket launches. So the California Coastal Commission has been working with the military, with Space Force and Air Force on a to mitigate some of these problems when these rockets are launched. And there was a hearing and the California Coastal Commission people said, hey, Space Force,
you're cool man. You've worked with us, You've agreed to certain plans to make these rocket launches better and not as disturbing to the environment, and you're awesome and we love you. And also Air Force come here, you get some love too, because we're all working together on these plans to mitigate the stuff. And then they turned their attention to Elon Musk and they said, but you, you we don't like, so you we have a problem with.
And even though we just praised the heck at a Space Force and the Air Force, now we're saying we're not going to let you increase the number of your rocket launches.
Sir, sorry, sorry, sorry, Why what did I do?
I imagine him thinking, well, the first thing that the Coastal Commission said is these rocket launches do cause problems, and yes, your friends in the military have some plan to try to help, but they still cause problems. And a lot of what you're doing is private. You know, you're sending up starlink equipment. There's an estimate that over eighty five percent of these rocket flights are carrying private starlink equipment. And that's private activity. And that's why you
got to get permission from the coastal agency. You don't have to get permission if you are the military. If Space Force wants to launch a rocket, they don't.
Got to ask nobody. They can just go launch it.
They try to work with the California Coastal Commission and be cooperative, but they don't need their permission, but Elon Musk and SpaceX needs permission for anything that's private. So there's a little bit of vagary going on about when is it private and when is it not private? And SpaceX would like the conclude to be that every rocket we send.
Up is military business. Even if it's.
A rocket and it's just got starlink equipment on it, all of these launches are still of value to the military, so they should be treated as military activity.
And I don't need your permission and Spaceford.
An interpretation that's good with us, But the California Coastal
Commission is not buying that part of it. So here's the thing you could understand, perhaps if the members of the California Coastal Commission, I don't know how many more times are the last time you launched a rocket it went haywire, and we f procedures for these rockets, and you could at least understand there's a relevant discussion about the launching of the rockets and the harm that it might or might not be doing to the coast, which is the entire point of the CCC. I'm just going
to call them the CCC. Now that's not the band. But a lot of the comments had to do with political concerns. Some of the commissioners specifically said. For example, the chair of the CCC, Carol Hart, said, we're dealing with a company, the head of which has aggressively injected himself into the presidential race. That's probably true and fair to say, but I don't know if it's relevant to whether they should be allowed to launch their.
Rockets or not.
Commissioner Mike Wilson said, this company is owned by the richest person in the world, with direct control of what could be the most expansive communication system in the planet. Just last week, that person, Elon Musk, was talking about political retribution. Gretchen Newsom, Yes, yes you are, bells are
ringing correctly, also a commissioner on the Coastal Commission. She said, Elon Musk is hopping around the country spewing and tweeting political falsehoods and attacking FEMA while claiming his desire to help hurricane victims with free star Link access to the Internet. So it's pretty clear that a big part of their thinking is they don't like Elon Musk politically.
They don't like him personally.
They think that he's getting too busy and involved in politics, and that I would imagine they think he's some kind of a jerk.
And I'm not sure.
And here's the deal, Like, Okay, you might agree with them, I agree with them, But what if what if it was somebody we like. I'm talking only to the people who don't like Elon Musk, obviously, what if it was somebody we do like who had a company but also was involved in talking about politics and so forth, and they wanted to do something, and the people on the commission said, we don't like your brand of a political engagement, so we're not gonna let you pursue the business of
your company. We'd be upset and say it wasn't fair. And I do think, yeah, you know, you got you gotta recognize that just because the same thing's happening to somebody you don't support doesn't make it right.
And that's what's going on.
And they rejected the agreement from the military agencies to mitigate the issues with the rocket launches by six to four vote, and I guess at this time they're not gonna let SpaceX launch all the rockets that they would like to. It's KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the eye Heart Radio app.
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