You're listening to bill handle on demand from KFI A six forty.
KFI AM six forty bill handle. Here it is a Friday morning, November one. Tuesday comes the election, and we're gonna be talking about the election well after the election, because the lawsuits are already flying, the accusations are already there. All right, I want to go into a story about our economy and some real information. Now we are hearing such crap out there that it almost befuddles me. You know, for example, well, you know inflation is out of control.
Inflation is not out of control, is not out of control. Inflation has been completely controlled. But I want to make an analogy here. We all have suffered from inflation that has in fact hit us. Let me make an analogy here. House has termites, okay, and they've done some damage. You call Pacific Coast Termite Ding, send them a bill for this. They come out and treat your home. And you don't have termites anymore. Well, the damage is already there. If
you don't have any termites, the damage is there. You've got to fix the damage. Inflation did its damage. Prices are much higher than they were. And even if inflation is brought down to zero. You still have a price that's thirty percent higher if you go to a restaurant than it was three years ago. So that's the reality. Inflation is out of control. It is not inflation was
out of control. Okay, So the Commerce Department on Wednesday said that the US gross domestic product the GDP, which is the value of all goods and services produced in our country in any country, which is the measure of the economy more so than anything else, expanded at the rate of two point eight in the third quarter. The bottom line is that the US economy is outpacing almost every other developed nation on the planet. Our economy is actually in good shape, but we're not looking at the
real numbers. Now, if you look at inflation, you're paying more for almost everything. Therefore, the economy is horrible, but it really isn't. If you're looking at mortgage rates that were two and three quarters percent and you're paying six percent, now, yeah, it's out of control.
But the reality is, even though it's gone up.
A little bit the last two three weeks, incrementally, it's still pretty good. It's just we came from a place where there was no reality. We came from a place where inflation was far more than it should have been. You know, right now wages are outpacing inflation.
That is a good thing.
And saying no, but and you and I are going to have a really good time talking about that during the break. And why is that happening? Well, we're back to spending like crazy.
Two thirds of our.
Economy in the United States is consumer spending, and we are spending like crazy. Solid job market, declining, inflation, booming stock market. So I'm gonna throw politics out there. Okay, that you have heard over and over again. The illegals have come over and taken your jobs. Okay for those people that are listening. For those that aren't, obviously you're
not listening. But for those of you that are listening, brilliant, aren't I I want you to look in the mirror and say your job has been taken by an illegal migrant. You are not working because your job was taken. How many people would raise their hands if I asked that question.
It's just not true.
And if you look at real figures, our economy is actually doing Okay.
Now, are there people out of jobs? Of course there are are there people.
Housing is out of control, of course it is, but that's southern California.
I mean we're outliers.
For example, the jobs in the transportation area.
If you work at the ports, you're doing great.
If you're in high tech right now, you're not doing so great. But the bottom line is you're working and no illegal migrant has taken your job. Now, we are going to get some figures coming out today Labor Department, where the numbers are going to be pretty bad. But that's also because you have two hurricanes that hit and the strike by Boeing, so.
You can't really pay attention to those numbers.
Although you're going to USGDP is projected to increase three percent for the year. That's considered healthy, robust, exactly.
Where we want to go.
The banking sector has been solid, corporate profits are solid, Productivity has picked up in recent quarters. By the way, an influx of immigrants, both legal and illegal, has in fact boosted the labor supply.
It's great for employers.
To have illegal migrants work, but I want to go back again, you're not working because an illegal migrant.
Has taken your job. Right, that's a croc.
And so the part of the illegal migrants coming in outside of the politics helps employers because illegal migrants work for cheap, so illegal migrants as well as legal migrants.
And by the way, that's the only way that our population.
Grows or stays stable, because if you look at the birth rate in this country, it would it declines every year, and if we didn't have migration, we'd be losing population like crazy, household spending going up. Actually, most people went into the pandemic in pretty good shape and then everybody lost their jobs. And then the money poured in, the stimulus money, so many businesses actually did better. A lot closed, but people walked out. They're in better shape now. But
for inflation, legitimate, that is a legitimate statement. Inflation absolutely was destructive, but you know at some point that goes away. You know, World War two wiped out this country economically, but we came out of it and we did great after that. Inflation has done a huge amount of damage, but we're out of it now.
Please keep that in mind you are working. Ah drives me nuts. So here's this is the part that absolutely kills me.
Real numbers, real figures out of the Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. None of this matters None of this matters because we no longer look at numbers coming in from the government and real statistics.
It's all gone to hell in a handbasket, all right.
I want to go into a story about a nineteen year old guy named Nazel Warren, and he's la and he's been arrested five times in five months, including for robberies while under the court ordered GPS tracking. He's wearing that anklet and has been arrested five times since putting it on.
I go, wait a minute, how is that possible?
The Probation Department supervises these defendants and judges are turning increasingly to GPS as a way of monitoring and making sure that these defendants and show up a trial, show up, but hearings, etc. And that's happening more and more because cash bail is considered very unfair and it is for poor people.
It effective means effectively means no bail.
So we're turning to GPS, and we figured GPS works well. Okay, So Warren is charged this summer with carrying a gun in public. A judge releases him on the condition that Probation Department track his movements with a GPS device. That's put on his ankle. So out he goes with a GPS device. Arrested three weeks.
Later suspicion of robbing an elderly couple.
A different judge lets him out again with GPS tracking. After that, they alleged he went on to rob two more people, an elderly couple and another robbery of a jewelry store, and he was picked up against week his fifth the rest in five months.
You go, oh, come on.
Really, now, the Probation Department is supervised is pre pre trial defendants because judges are more and more turning to GPS for a couple of reasons. First of all, it allows people to go to work, stay with their families, so the families don't suffer the way they would if the guy is in prison or in jail awaiting trial. Because remember you're innocent until proven guilty. And so the Probation Department is supposed to track this and by the way, in real time, yeah, I think that's happening.
So Probation Department, and this was.
Interviews with defendants, and it's supposed to conduct a rec risk assessment of the defendant whether it's worth the risk, and asking.
For the GPS.
All right, so fourteen hundred people that they looked at under GPS monitoring had absconded. Well of the fourteen hundred, four hundred and two had absconded had fled, So now we are talking thirty percent gone. An additional two hundred and thirty one allowed the batteries to run and die, which means they don't know where these guys are, so we don't know if.
They've bailed out or not.
And then on top of that, one hundred and forty two defendants failed to show up to meet with their probation officers, so we're talking way north of fifty percent wearing these ankle bracelets either leave, don't show up, run out of a battery which they're supposed to put in there.
So this is a problem.
The GPS program was designed to allow law enforcement to track defendants, establish a record, to know where they are and in real time.
So here's what happened.
They're trying to figure out how this company contracted to run the GPS program.
The technology.
The company is called Securists, and they're changing their name to not Securists because.
It ain't working.
And so they serve the detectives serve a search warrant on Securists to turn over the information from Warren's GPS monitor. Why they needed a search warrant, I don't know. But when the warrant was served, Securist goes in to court and says the data was so flawed they can't even bring anybody into court an expert explaining how the system even works. All their information is flawed. We cannot certify any of the data during the timeframe they're talking about,
Securists or not. Securists now gets three hundred and fifty thousand dollars a month to operate the GPS system with LA County.
I mean, really crazy stuff. By the way.
In one case, this guy Warren, nineteen year old Warren is defended by his lawyer and he was picked up for a gun possession. He is a felon. He is not supposed to have a gun. They got him with a gun, and his lawyer said the reason he had a gun is because he was afraid of being robbed of his twenty thousand dollars Rulix watch, of which he had stolen. I mean, these are lawyers, they'll come up
with anything. So he's been arrested over and over again, and the GPS system, which is supposed to work, and Keith being these criminal defendants on track, doesn't look like it works. And judges more and more are using this for two reasons. One because, as I said before, it allows defendants who have only been charged, not convicted, with the ability to work, stay with their families, all all of that, and to the jails the prisons, and the jails are so crowded.
That there's just not room.
And then there's a third reason is if you don't have this and you have bail, bail is so expensive, bail is so onerous. For people who have no money, bail is effectively no bail.
The system is just broken, all right. I want to start.
This is a story about Jeff Bezos and his decision not to endorse a one of the presidential candidates, or any presidential candidate, after the editorial board of the Washington Posts had voted and decided to endorse Kamala Harris.
I'm going to start with asking Amy a question. Amy.
I don't want to sandbag you, but I want your but here we go, no no, no, no, no, you're you're no, you're well, basically your view on this your take on this, all right?
I view you as mainstream media, no question.
I view you and other people here at KFI as objective for the most part and corroborating facts that you give out. So with that, and you've been involved in news for a very long time, right, you're yeah, You're no spring chicken.
You You're welcome.
Have you at all noticed that your credibility as a newsperson has declined over the years in the buzz that's out there, in what you hear, what you feel, what you experience.
I don't think so.
And this is why, because I do think that there are news organizations that you know are liberal or you know are conservative. CAFI works very hard not to skew and in fact, one of the things that our news director Chris Little tells us is do not tell KFI listeners what to do, give them the information, let them do it themselves. Yeah, and I think that the news department works really hard to make sure that that's what we do.
And by the way, I have no idea the way Amy feels about the politics, which side she's on. One of my best friends, Steve Gregory, who is a newsperson, I mean, we talk, we talk about a lot of stuff, a lot of intimate stuff. I mean we are very close. We have a lot of sex together. Oh I shouldn't have shared that. And he will not tell me on which political side he is on, because he's adamant about.
Being a newsperson.
And the reason I brought this up is Jeff Bezos in his explanation as to why the Washington Post will not make an endorsement, Well, I'm going to share this with you now. This is an article by a mainstream newsperson, Chuck Todd, actually, who was on Meet the Press for years and years. He was a correspondent for NBC News and considered one of the top news guys out there.
He wrote an op ed piece in the Atlantic and he argued the reason why we the Washington Post and he made the decision is not going to endorse is that he in the Washington Post is not considered particularly I don't think political one way or the other.
I think it's fairly objective.
He says that the press, mainstream press, needs to accept the reality about its own im unpopularity, and that it's the journalists that are to blame for the sinking reputation of the mainstream media. He writes, we must be accurate. We are failing on the second requirement. Most people believe the media is biased. It would be easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall in credibility, and therefore our decline and impact and a victim mentality will
not help. And complaining about this is not a strategy. We have to work harder to control what we can control to increase our credibility. That is astounding what he said about this conflating, basically conflating Newsmax with NBC.
That's effective what he's doing.
I want to continue on with this off ed piece that was written by Chuck Todd, who is a very well respected journalist who's host to Meet the Press for a bunch of years, and he talked about Jeff Bezos explaining why Bezo's decided not to endorse any presidential candidate this year this election after the editorial board voted to endorse Kamala Harris. Usually there is a firewall between the owner and the editorial board, where the editorial board makes
all the decisions as far as editorial content. In the way the paper actually is now, the owner has influence, but not on that or shouldn't have on that. By the way, the owner of the La Times did exactly
the same thing. And Bezos explains this and says it's because the credibility of mainstream media, and that is the Washington Post is part of that regarded part of the mainstream media has lost its reputation along with other mainstream media, and the press needs to accept reality about its unpopularity and that journalists are.
To blame for the sinking reputation.
He writes, we must be accurate, we must be believed to be accurate. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but we are failing on the second requirement, and that is the believability. And he goes, it's easy to blame others for our long and continuing fall and credibility. Therefore decline an impact and a mentality victim or a victim mentality is not going to help. Complaining is not a strategy. We must work harder to control what we can control
to increase our credibility. How do you control what you can't control when all you do as media outlet is try to be as objective as possible and corroborate facts. And when the media does this and that's exactly what mainstream media tends to do.
Now, does it.
Go liberal, Yeah, I think so, but marginally liberal. It doesn't go wildly liberal where you have conservative media, and that's much bigger than, for example, a truly biased media on the other side. Now we're talking about the edges. The problem is the edges have become mainstream and so now it's all one big basket stories that are not corroborated at all, just opinion stories taken out of the Internet, out of the crazy stuff that are now being circulated.
That's the same even though facts are not corroborated and it's just theories and just crazy stuff. And Bezos is bought into that, saying it is our fault. It is actually the journalist's fault. And you go, come on, really, okay, So when did this start really start where the media was not believed When you talk about mainstream media, radio, television, these news outlets, they were believed. Oh man, were they believed? That was where we got our news? So what destroyed it?
And this is something that a lot of us were involved with nineteen seventy two, Richard Nixon.
And the Watergate story.
There's a neat new documentary on Netflix by the Way, about Watergate and how it connects with the modern era or what's happening today to Watergate. Richard Nixon started with the press is the enemy. The press is lying, the press is victimizing me. And that broke down where you had supporters of Richard Nixon and a lot.
Of them buying into it.
And I was my first year in college when Watergate broke and I had a political science class I graduated in that was my major political science and it should have been in parentheses useless major close parentheses. But I had a political science teacher who said, very early on, this is the end of Richard Nixon. But the problem
you're going to see is how it's being covered. And unfortunately, Nixon is having very many people believe that the press is attacking him personally and lying about the facts, and it is very depressing. And part all of this is I hope we get over this, truly. I hope we get over the fact that if you have the Washington Post, if you have NBCCBS, not MSNBC, and.
Not Fox by the way, Fox.
Roger Ales, who created Fox News, is a genius because he created and started this movement that Fox is the answer, that is reality. Everything else is not the truth. And he made a fortune doing that. Whether or not he was a true believer, I don't know. I haven't looked enough into him, but man, was that a good call. And if you look at it, mainstream media doesn't make much money anymore, to the point where the networks are in trouble because they just aren't making enough money. Network
news shows are in trouble. The news departments, they don't make any money. But it's they have all they and by the way, they have never made money, but it's the integrity of the networks that kept them alive.
The days of Edward R.
Murrow are long long gone, the days of Walter Cronkite are long long gone. And Jeff Bezos jumped right into this and unfortunately you and I can talk about it. We're not Jeff Bezos. The influence this man has is astronomical. 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 anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.