You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty, KFI.
AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeart Radio app.
Good Morning.
This is the Bill Handles Show, and he is on holiday vacation, but he returns on Monday. I'm Wayne Resnik. I'm filling in till nine and I'll be here tomorrow and Friday, and then I am officially retired.
Completely.
Now we're following some stories for you here at KFI, and the big one today, unfortunately, is not a nice one. Officials at New Orleans say at least ten people have been killed another thirty injured when somebody intentionally drove a car into a large crowd of people in the French Quarter. People are celebrating New Year's Eve. It was about four am local time there. Then this person, according to many witnesses, and the police got out and started firing a gun.
Police engaged him in a gunfight.
Two cops injured, the perpetrator dead, and some reports that they have found improvised explosive devices in the area. There's a press conference that's supposed to be happening sometime around eight o'clock our time, and when it happens we will dip in and see what new information they have for us from this tragedy.
This may be good news.
Illegal border crossings dropped to a four year low in November. According to data from the US Customs at Border Protection Agency. In November forty six six and ten people were stopped between ports of entry.
In other words, we have.
Designated places where you are allowed to show up, even if you don't have permission to come into the country. You are allowed to show up at a port of entry and say hi, I'm here. And you can do this if you're requesting asylum. Hello, I'm here, I need asylum, and then there are processes that we go through to determine whether you will get the asylum.
But if you're not at.
One of those things, man, it's game over for you now it used to be, and under federal law this is an interesting quirk.
Really, it doesn't.
Matter where you are when you present yourself if you're looking for asylum. But what the Biden administration did, after getting hammered by Donald Trump and many Republicans and other people as well, hammered over borders urges in the first part of Joe Biden's administration, they adopted a carrot and stick approach where they tried to make.
It easier.
To turn yourself in at a port of entry, in other words, do it the correct way if you will, or the preferred way, and then saying if you don't, if you come in between ports of entry, we're gonna declare you're automatically ineligible for asylum. And that is probably what is responsible for the drop in the number of encounters between these ports of entry, because I guess the word filtered out that if you try to come in that way, you're never, never, never, going to get asylum.
So that is what's happening at the national level. That's still a lot of people, but it's headed in the correct direct action. And if you are someone who really wants to see those numbers go down even more, then you are in luck.
I suppose.
With the new administration coming in, I imagine they're going to be even more What they will probably do is keep the stick and get rid of the carrot.
That will be my guess. In the meantime, a memo has.
Leaked from Sacramento somewhere up there. A memo has come out that is a draft memo, and it's called Immigrant Support Network concept, and it's a game plan for how the state of California plans to help people who are here unlawfully. They're going to build regional hubs to coordinate support for undocumented immigrants. It'll be run by the California Department of Social Services, and it will help connect people
to legal services, to unions, to their low sources. Funding from the Social Services Department for community outreach will be given to nonprofits.
We've seen this business model before. We've seen this business model.
Where the government gives a bunch of money to nonprofits to help them raise awareness of whatever the goal is.
Most recently we've seen this with homelessness.
And that usually does not pay off very well. So, in any event, this was not meant for public disclosure, and the deputy Public Affairs director up there at California Department of Social Services named Scott Murray, he says, hey, we haven't finalized any planned This is a draft. It was for internal discussion only, so let's don't yell at us yet. Is basically, don't yell at us yet for what's in this memo. If we ever release it publicly and it becomes the official plan, I guess then you
can start yelling at us. Let's get some news from the wonderful Michael Monks and then when we come back. What is the secret to happiness? What even is happiness? Is there something specific I could tell you to do today that would increase your happiness?
Nobody knows.
However, a bunch of scientists wanna find out. I'm gonna tell you about this massive mega study that they have planned. It's KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. There are moving companies that exist. KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
It's the Bill Handles Show, He's back.
From his vacation on Wayne Resnik sitting in until nine, and some stories that we are watching for you here at KFI. There is a homicide investigation underway. A guy was found shot dead in the city of Paramount earlier this morning, about two am this morning, near the seven ten Freeway in Rose Krantz Avenue.
If you know where that area is.
All we know for sure is there is a person. He is a man, and he is dead from a gunshot. We don't have other details about who he is. There's no description of any shooters or suspects at this time. If you know something about it, and we like to do this, but I understand the chances are almost nil, but they're not entirely nil that someone hearing me right
now might know something about it. Call the homicide Bureau at the Sheriff's Department three two three eight nine zero five five zero zero, or if you want to, if you have some information but you don't really want to get involved, you can call crime Stoppers anonymously eight hundred
two two two eight four seven seven. We are awaiting a press conference sometime in the next forty forty five minutes about the incident in New Orleans where a man plowed his car into a large crowd of people in the French Quarter, killing ten injuring thirty, got out of the car started shooting. He was eventually killed by police. Boy doesn't see with news like that, it seems, how are you gonna be happy? But even on a good day, it's tough to know what you can do to be happy.
And the Dalai Lama goes around and says, the purpose of life is to be happy, thank you, except can you tell me how?
No?
He can't, so he's of no help the Dalai Lama, but maybe Professor Elizabeth Dunn from the University of British Columbia will be of some help in answering the question what's the secret to happiness?
Because she's teaming up with over.
One thousand scientists in over seventy countries and they are going to try to get thirty thousand volunteers minimum for the Global Happiness Mega Study. They're really gonna try to quantify practical things that you could do.
To increase your happiness.
So what's gonna happen is they're gonna get all these volunteers and they are going.
To have them do each of them one of seven.
Different interventions, if you will short happiness interventions. The most obvious example would be say taking a walk or doing fifteen minutes of yoga, or engaging in some kind of social interaction. And then I with surveys and crunching of data, they're going to find those activities or actions which can be shown to reliably increase your happiness. Now, this is all science, and science is supposed to be objective, but happiness.
Is subjective.
Joni Mitchell wants famously saying sometimes I'm happy, Sometimes I'm blue, I forgot the next part. My mood depends on you, or something like that. And there are people, by the way, this really complicates for me defining happiness. Usually in science, if you're trying to measure the effect of interventions on something, you define the something. So here they would start with some kind of scientific objective definition of happiness. Happiness looks
different to you, to me, to anybody. In fact, you know, there are a lot of people who they're only happy when they're mad, or they're only happy when they're sad.
I don't know if people.
I guess I'm speaking about myself here, but I don't think I'm that weird. I don't know if people themselves can ever say in any given moment if they're happy or not. There's certain moments in your life when clearly you are happy and you feel happy, and if someone said are you happy right now?
You would say, I'm happy.
But a lot of times you don't even know, are am I happy right now? They've tried this before, but not to this scale, not this rigorously. Harvard one of the most famous studies on happiness was out of Harvard, where they followed to twoe hundred and sixty eight men who went into Harvard over the period of the late nineteen thirties, and they followed their lives, and that was the study that said, and you've heard this people this. Anytime anybody talks about happiness, they bring up this study.
You know, you know what's important for happiness. It's not the money, it's not fame. It's having close relationships, and not only that, but having close relationships.
You live longer.
And that may be all well and good for these two hundred and sixty eight men. The thing about it is it's kind of a it's kind of a useless study because they were all the same kind of people. They were all white guys from well to do families. People like this is true some of the people who were in this study.
John F.
Kennedy, who would go on to be president, and Ben Bradley, who would go on to be the editor of the Washington Post. So when you have a group that's that is that homogeneous, it's not gonna help anybody, because guess what, not everybody is that. So this study is trying to get people from all genders, nationalities, generations, all of it, so that the results should.
Be applicable no matter who you are.
It's it's the only study I've ever seen that seems like it at least has a possibility of getting some answers.
It's still got a flaw.
Which is they they've identified seven specific interventions that they're going to test.
And you know, how many things are there in life? How many things could you do today?
How many things are out in the world that affect your life that might be relevant to whether or not you're happy, and that you could try to manipulate to be happier. You know, how do we know there's not something about how many particulates are in the air that affect your happiness, And so if you really wanted to be happy, you would have to move to a place with really clean air. So they still are only gonna be able to test a small part of what it
is to be alive. But at least they're going to do it with a ton of people, and they got a bunch of scientists, and they're gonna have meticulous records, and they're gonna have the best, you know, data crunching algorithms that money can buy. And I am curious to see what those results are. It's not going to be for a while, and undertaking this big is going to take a very long time, and that makes me unhappy.
So hurry up, guys.
Now, let's get some news from Michael Monks. And then with all the talk about how President elect Donald Trump is big on tariffs and the different arguments that take place about what are tariffs and does he understand what tariffs are? And is it really gonna work or is it just going to cause inflation? Here's the thing. There's another there's another angle here, which is what if the countries.
Find a way around them.
What if you imposed tariffs and nobody had to pay them because they were too clever. That's what I'm gonna talk about next right here on KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. Good morning, It's the Bill Handles Show. Wayne Resnik sitting in Bill's back from his vacation. On Monday, we are expecting a a news conference in New Orleans about the incident overnight where somebody plowed their car into a bunch of people in the French quarter. Ten killed, thirty injured. The perpetrator taken out by the cops in a in a gunfight because he came out of the car and
started shooting a gun. And when that news conference happens, we're gonna We're gonna take it now.
I'll tell you right now.
I don't think it's happening till nine. I just saw an update. Oh not till nine now, okay, Well then that will be all right. Well that'll be somebody else's issue to deal with. Thank you, Michelle. Some other stories that we're watching for you.
Oh yeah, we're only about a little less than half an hour away from the start of the one hundred and thirty sixth the annual Rose Parade, that historic five and a half mile route floats will start at Orange Grove Boulevard.
I love they have the whole route in here. Listen, nobody. I don't need to read the whole route to you. Everybody knows the route goes up Colorado Boulevard.
That's roads are clut Look, here's the thing. Obviously roads are closed over there near the parade. Don't go over there unless you're gonna go to watch the parade. If you're going for some other reason, you're going to be a very angry puppy. But they say the roads and traffic should be back to normal by two o'clock this afternoon. And then guess what else happens the Rose Bowl game Ohio State v.
Oregon. That should be a good all right, we'll see.
All right, let's talk about this President elect Donald Trump wants to put a bunch of tariffs. I'm going to talk specifically about China right now. China's not the only country that he's talking about, but China is a makes a point about what we might expect as to the success of tariffs imposed by the new administration.
So here's a little story for you. Mm hmm.
In twenty eighteen, there was a president and his name was Donald J. Trump, and there was a country called China. Kids, and in China, amongst all the other things they made, they made bicycles. And this president, Donald J. Trump slapped some tariffs on these Chinese bicycles. He didn't fly over there and slapped the bicycles, but he imposed stiff tariffs
on these bicycles twenty five percent. So if you're a seller of bicycles, in the United States and you want to import bicycles from China, you're gonna have to pay a twenty five percent tariff in addition to whatever you have to pay.
For the bike.
And the idea was, that'll teach China to make a bunch of bikes and send them to us. And then here's what happened. China said, Oh, here's what we're gonna do. We look at the rules of the tariffs. Okay, we'll take the final assembly of these bikes, and we won't do it in China. We'll open facilities in Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Cambodia.
And then guess what.
Now, those bikes no tariff. They are Chinese bikes, the parts are Chinese. They were largely still made in China, but because of the way tariff rules were, because the final assembly was in a different country, they weren't subject to the tariff in the first place. And there's a guy named Arnold Kamler. He's the chief executive of a bike company called Kent International, and he said, what happened and the result of the tariffs was not an increase
in domestic production of bicycles. The net effect of the terraffs was that Chinese factories and China set up Chinese factories in other countries. That's what happened, and that is likely to happen again if tariffs are put on goods from China other countries. I'm not talking about them because number one, I don't have a nice story for you about how another country evaded terriffs. And also China can do it because it's such a big country and they
do everything at such scale. It does cost money to move part of your manufacturing to another country. It's less expensive than I guess whatever happens to your manufacturing with these big tariffs. But smaller countries subject to terrafts wouldn't necessarily be able to make these moves. But also other countries subject to terrifts, perhaps Mexico for example.
Aren't really the target.
This is really a battle between the United States and China, and so it's what China can or can't do that's gonna matter.
Some Chinese companies just moved.
Their factories to other parts of Asia or even Latin America, so it's the same Chinese product.
Basically, it takes the long.
Way around the world to come into the United States. And it does not produce a tariff. What are the purposes of the tariff? What are you trying to do? There's actually two reasons. The I believe this is the reason that President elect Trump is talking about, which is there's a competition tariff. This is where what you're trying to do is you're trying to punish foreign makers who undercut the marketplace and ship a bunch of cheap crap
to the United States. Although remember, you know, we make it sound like there's a guy in China who wakes up and he goes today, Today, I shall ship ten thousand cheap bicycles to the United States, flooding the market with cheap bicycles and making it impossible for US bike manufacturers to compete. But you're not going to get up and send ten thousand bicycles to another country just because let's keep in mind that we are part of this equation.
That guy wakes up and he sends ten thousand cheap bicycles to somebody here in the United States who asked for them. So in any event, the idea is, well, they won't be cheap because there's let's say, a twenty five percent additional cost to bring in a cheap bicycle from China, which means really a tariff is a punish.
It's not a punishment against China.
It's a punishment against American businesses who are.
Importing stuff from China.
It's basically saying, we're gonna make it more expensive for you, some distributor in the United States to sell cheap Chinese bikes instead of more expensive American bikes. But the idea is to prop up and protect the American in this case, bicycle makers by making the competition less robust. Well, if the Chinese bike makers find ways around the tariffs, then you can't accomplish your goal. There's another kind of tariff. It's actually a revenue tariff. It's not really designed to
help American companies compete. It's really designed just to raise money for the American government. And they have been used in the history of this government. And I know that President elect Trump has talked about not as much as he's talked about, you know, dinging these countries for their cheap goods with tariffs, even though that's not what happens. He's also mentioned a few times that maybe we won't have an income tax anymore because we'll raise so much
money from tariffs. So he's I don't know if he's talking about one set of protective tariffs and another different set of revenue tariffs, or he's he's thinking these terraffs will be both kinds of tariffs at the same time. It's a it's a what was that skit? It's a floor wax and a dessert topping from Saturday Night Live, some product two in one. But here's the thing, So that discussion, what is it? Do they work? Who's really paying it? It almost it's irrelevant if they're not being paid.
And China has is already pretty dang good at adjusting how they do business, and right now in China they are at least three big companies.
There may be more, but there's at least three big ones.
Their business is helping Chinese companies find factory space in Mexico and hire workers in Mexico so that they'll have a base to make things and send them to the United States and not pay teriffs.
One of their ads says.
Seize the opportunity in Mexico and sees the market. So if we're gonna argue about tarras, let's first argue about how are we gonna make it so the tariffs have to be paid otherwise there's no point. Let's get some news from Michael Monks and then this trend. Now, look, I'm not upset about this.
I don't. I don't, I don't. I don't understand it. It's not for me. I'm not mad about it.
But there's a big trend going on, particularly amongst gen z and it makes my feet hurt just reading about it.
And I'll tell you what it is.
It's KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app.
I'm I'm speechless at that discussion.
KFI AM six forty Live everywhere on the iHeart Radio app. Oh my goodness, it's a pill Handle show. He's on vacation until Monday. Not that far away, folks, Wayne residents sitting in until nine. And you know, there's some new laws that have taken effect today. In fact, we're going to talk about a lot of them coming right up. But one of them is very interesting to me. It's sent It Bill eleven hundred and it says it's illegal in a job posting to require applicants to have a valid driver's license.
What there's there's only two conditions.
There's only there's only certain ways now that you can require a job applicant to have a driver's license if you reasonably expect driving to be one of the job functions of the job, or if you believe that using an alternative form of transportation would not be comparable in travel time or cost to the employer. Otherwise, now this is this is you can't require the applicant to have a driver's license.
It doesn't mean you have to hire them.
You know, a lot of these ban the box laws where you can't require you know, can't ask people if they have a prior conviction, this kind of thing where you can't say, you know, don't you can't even apply if you don't have a driver's license. All this does is just force employers to not say specifically why they didn't hire you, and to waste everybody's time because now you've got to take the application and look at the application. Does this require you to give the person an interview?
If you're an employer and you don't want to hire anybody who doesn't have a driver's license, you don't have to. That's not a protected class. So I understand I understand the thinking behind it. I'm not against the sentiment behind it, but it really I wonder if employers agree with me. It's really just wasting everybody time in a situation where you don't have to hire the person anyway, so you can still not hire them. You just have to jump
through some more hoops first. But let's talk about this instead.
Marathon running is the new hotness ladies and gentlemen. Now.
Back in the nineteen seventies they called it jogging, and then about twenty five years later Oprah Winfrey ran a marathon I think it was the Marine Corps Marathon, and all of a sudden, millions of women started running half marathons, full marathons, ten ks, five k's, every kind of k. But there's never been anything like twenty twenty four. Everybody's running marathons. I know it's not really that everybody is,
but it kind of feels like it sometimes. The Paris Marathon set a record in April for the number of runners and finishers, and then that record was broken twice September, Berlin even more finishers, and New York City in November. The king right now over fifty five thousand people finish that marathon. That's the people who finished. Then you have the number of people who started it but they didn't
finish it, and then you haven't. I will tell you the truth, there's somebody who's not trying to run marathons.
I didn't know this.
There's also, because I'm going to count them as part of this trend, hundreds of thousands of people enter lotteries to be able to get into these races. There's literally not enough marathons for the people who want to run marathons.
I mean, officially, you can go out and run for twenty six point two miles anytime you like, be my guest, but to participate in an you know, like an official marathon, apparently for every person who runs it, there were maybe ten fifteen people who wanted to and there simply wasn't
enough space. That's how popular it's become. Part of the reason is I remember seeing on TV the end of marathons, the end of the Boston Marathon or whatever, and everybody was like just this skinny nobody, fat, rail thin, sometime even kind of sickly looking bean poles coming across.
The finish line. No, no, no, no, everybody's running it now.
All sizes. Also, you don't have to run it really fast. Nobody really cares anymore if you're just running it for fun. Nobody cares anymore if you're just walking it. People of all sizes, speeds, ages, And it's the youngsters, ladies and gentlemen who are really driving this. The percentage of runners between age twenty and twenty four has been rising since twenty twenty one. Gen Z, these people, they love marathons.
Millennials. Here's what happened.
There was a time when the millennials were running some marathons, but a lot of millennials are now doing orange theory or yoga or what is it, cardio bar or pilates or extreme pilates. But gen Z, they just want to go out and run and run and run and run. And it's the women who are driving it even more than the fellas.
Of marathon runs. Gen Z women.
This year, gen Z men, fifteen percent of marathon runners now together, that's thirty five percent.
Of all marathon runners. Gen Z.
That's great. Here's another phenomenon, run clubs. There's a Koreatown run club here in Los Angeles, and when they get together for their weekly training and workouts and all the stuff that they do. It's over one hundred and fifty people.
That's too many people to be running altogether. In my humble opinion, some of this probably started with, honestly, the pandemic, because one thing you could still do is go out by yourself and run, and many people did take up running or walking during that time.
But it's also this. I want to leave you with this.
There's a bunch of new kinds of shoes that are like running on marshmallows. Hok is one brand. There's a brand called onn On Shoes and they have developed this high tech foam and the soles of these shoes are super cushioned. It doesn't make the shoe any heavier, and that's why it is really if you've ever worn one, it is like walking around or running on marshmallows. And I guess it makes it easier to run for twenty six point two miles without crying.
If I run for two point six miles, I cry. I cry.
If somebody says, hey, do you want to run two point six miles, I already start crying.
Let's get some news.
For Michael Monks and then we'll go over many of the new laws here in California. It wouldn't want you to run a foul. 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.