L.A. COUNTY FIRST RESPONDERS WANT RAISES

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The bill handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio app Handle here Morning Crew, except for Neil, who's sick, except for kno who's sick. And I'm here and I'm sick. But that's questionable as to how sick I am? And yes, yes,

And they're all little incidents.

One is a sheriff's deputy talking about as she was in the middle of the inferno. She was driving her car. The tires melted on her car. A lifeguard talks about from his body camera. There's video of him driving through black smoke and spotting a beam from the flashlight and finding a man whose house was about to be consumed by flames. And firefighters sharing double working, double shifts without food or sleep. And the union rep said, my members

Fair enough now.

A month ago, La County Chief Executive Fescia Devenport told the unions no raises because of unprecedented financial pressures. First of all, the county has a four billion dollar sex abuse settlement on his hands, two billion dollars in wildfire costs, and the White House. It looks like are you going to cut hundreds of millions of dollars worth of public health grants? So put all that together, no money, And

Now the county.

The county actually balanced its forty eight billion dollar budget for the upcoming fiscal year. The City of Los Angeles not so much. It's a billion dollars short. The officials of the county are going to be able to balance the budget even with the settlement, which can be paid with bonds, and they have a rainy day fund which is very rarely touched. It will be this time. That's

The budget deficit.

Unions are saying, you've got money left over for raises and we want it now. I have a question about that. Do they deserve raises? Well, everybody deserves a race. But let me ask you something. Didn't they sign up for this? Am I missing something here? You know, a cop saves someone, Okay, that's their job. You know, firefighters go in and the fire is worse than they anticipated. Therefore they should get a raise.

Hold on a minute, you sign up for.

It, that's your job, and if it's tougher, it's tougher, then don't then do something else. And I have no problem asking for raises because that's the job of the unions and using everything they can to document how much work they have to justify extra money.

I get that.

I get that, you know, I don't hold them negatively for doing everything they can. But at the same time, do you cave on that one? I mean, it's oh, you know, you sign up for it, you know, I mean, what did we sign up for? We signed up for sitting on our asses screaming into a microphone. However, threats come down the pike, you know when you know, we get fed free food when they come in. Sometimes we don't get it as fresh as we would like it.

So you know, hey, we don't have money, we don't have the money.

Now depends on how much money you're talking about. One of the things that the shriff's deputies, the unions are saying is other agencies, other departments are paying more money than La County is, and we are losing deputies because they're leaving LA and they're going over there in LA trained them at no small expense, and the attrition rate is going down. Okay, that's a different story, got it. But short of that, I don't think so. I don't think so, because the philosophy is you signed up for

You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.

So guess who comes in?

Amy comes into the broadcast our room and leaves her little booth and is talking to Anne. And do you know what we were talking about, which is general conversation during the course of the breaks. Is the discussion is what a dick I am? And that's basically our general conversation. Amy, Is that not true? It is true? Thank you so much. Now I want to talk about what's going on with corporate America. Corporate America is basically hand in hand with

Why because of tariffs?

I mean, the world is reeling because of Donald Trump's tariff position, and not just his philosophy on tariffs, Because if his tariff position were consistent or was consistent, the world could deal with that.

Business can deal with consistency.

What it can't deal with economies, markets, business. What can't be dealt with is inconsistency and not knowing what the hell is going to happen. And that's exactly what's going on is I don't even think so much. It is the implication and implementation implementation of the tariffs.

It's the fact that they're going all over the places. Every day. It's different every day, it's different.

Right, And we're talking about the largest companies in America. PepsiCo, American Airlines, Chipotle, IBM, Proctoring, Gamble, a bunch of others announced quarterly earning this week, and earnings not only are down, but the forecast because what the companies do is not only here are earnings, but here is what we anticipate.

Here, here are our projections. And then the market comes back with here is our projections. And this is what a stock does well is, for example, when stock does better, a company does better than projections. Stock goes up worse than projections, even if they're making a lot of money, the stock goes down. And so the markets are.

Very very sensitive to what is happening. Now, think of what's going on with this because forecasting is so important to any company, and how how do you forecast when you have one hundred and forty five percent tariff coming in on Chinese goods and the next day, well, we're not going to have one hundred and forty five percent terroriffts, but we're going to have some tariffs. We don't know how much we're going to play in tariffs and when they're going to go down or up.

No one has any idea. But I'll tell you what is going on.

And it's not the major technological companies. They're fine. Apple is fine. You've got the manufacturers of the iPhone, the importers of the iPhone, those distributors, they're fine because those were exempt from any tariff.

Now, originally it was going to be one hundred and forty five percent.

Trump turned around and said, okay, we're going to exempt or I'm going to exempt those companies because you know it's a one hundred percent importation from China. Well, then you have these small companies like mine and as you know, I'm a partner, my partner Savil, we have a small company that inputs, imports, cookwear from China one hundred percent made in China.

We have stopped everything everything.

We have a container at the Port of China ready to go, and we stopped it done. We don't know what the hell is going on. China, on the other hand, doesn't know what's going on. So you know what they're doing. Even if we wanted to release that container, because we have already paid the deposit on it, if we wanted to release it, China isn't allowing it to leave. They have stopped all exportation. We have stopped all importation. That's what's called the tariff war because nobody knows what the

We're gonna I'm gonna fire Jerome Powell. I'm going to figure out a way to.

Fire him legally, even though it is very difficult, it's a little complicated. The only way that a fed share can be fired is for cause. And Trump was looking and this administration was actually exploring, let's figure out how to fire him, and let's figure out cause. He makes that announcement, and the stock market tanks a thousand points.

The world market reacts.

The IMF, the International Monetary Fund, comes out and says.

The world global growth is going.

To slow dramatically because of these announcements. Next day, I'm not going to fire Jerome Powell. No, I don't have no intention of firing Jerome Powell. But yesterday said you were, I have no intention of firing Jerome Powell. Well, how about one hundred and forty five percent tariff on China? Well, China and I, she and I are talking and we're negotiating it. The Chinese government says, no, we're not. No one's sitting down with the administration. Nobody now from China.

No, well you have to believe someone. I don't know who to believe.

Is she making this up? Is Trump making this up? At this point, I don't know. One hundred countries have come to the table with Washington, and eighteen have proposals on the table, which ones, well, we're not saying what are the terms. Well, we're not saying, how about the proposal? What does the proposal look like?

Well, we're not saying. You know, I don't know who or what to believe at this point.

More importantly, all I know is that my company is at a dead stop.

That's it.

I mean, we are stopped and we're just waiting to see what happens. And we're not alone because there are hundreds of thousands of companies in the same position. That's why you had the leaders of Walmart, CEOs of Walmart and Home Depot went to the White House and said, you know what, we all the stuff that's on our shells comes from China. We're a huge majority of it. We're gonna have empty shells.

In three weeks.

And Trump comes back and says, Okay, it won't be one hundred and forty five percent, it'll be it'll be less. It won't be zero, but it'll be less. How much will it be? Well, I can't tell you when is right now? With one hundred and forty five percent. At this moment, it's one hundred and forty five percent. I bring in one hundred dollars worth of goods, I am writing the government a check. By the way, with accumulative taxes,

It's untenable. I mean, you can't do it.

Business is over, and so everybody is waiting, and Corporate America is just reeling.

As we're all reeling.

I mean, yeah, I can understand that you want to level playing field. I get that that's fair. Is it true that we are being ripped off? I don't know if by the I don't know if it's ripped off. Certainly there's no level playing field. You know, China charges a lot more in tariffs and on American goods than we do on Chinese goods by a long shot.

But do you do it this way? Okay?

Coming up playing incidents, have you noticed that there are just a lot more of these crashes and near crashes and these incidents of airlines you know we're about to hit each other. I'll give you some real stats on that. And it's kind of interesting stuff.

You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from kf I Am six forty.

It's not Foody Friday because Neil is sick this morning. So we're gonna hold off Foody Friday until next Friday. And we're still going to do ask Handle anything, which we do on a Friday. And it's always great, great fun when people ask me questions, personal questions, and generally I'm a well first of all, I answer them. You know, my life's an open book. I don't keep much I hidden, and they're generally humiliating and it's just fun.

All right.

So now let me move over to why we don't fly on airplanes or why you are concerned about flying on airplanes.

Because you're gonna die.

I mean, look at videos planes crashing.

It's gotten to the point.

Now where even small planes crashing somewhere out and you know, buffalo breath wyoming.

It becomes national news. Well, there's a.

Plane with a single pilot and it crashed into a parking lot and the pilot was killed. Okay, I mean that's rough for the pilot and his family. I get that, but okay, that's national news. The point is that we're seeing videos because everybody as a video of everything, and so if there is a fire on a jet, right on an airliner, and an airliner lands safely, okay, that's

That's become news.

There is nothing that happens in the air, on the ground, in a store, in your house that can't and won't

Far safer.

And when we used to say far safer, it is now far safer than far safer, it's actually far safer than that. That is that is the actual truth and the stats, and that's according to the NTSB National Transportation Safety Board NTSSE. NTSB data shows that last year, for example, was the lowest number of helicopter fatalities in the US since two thousand and seven, and that's with fifteen people since two thousand and seven last year.

Now, most of the incidents are with small planes.

That because there are a lot more and many more small planes out there. Again, we go to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics, five hundred and.

Seventy two commercial aircraft in the air.

This is in twenty twenty three, general aviation civilian owned small airplanes two hundred and ten thousand. So just by sheer numbers, you're going to see more crashes and incidents with small airplanes.

Oh, I'm not going to get on a small airplane.

You know, what's gotten to the point where small airplane pilots general license are almost the equivalent of having commercial license that the airline pilots have. Now, airline pilots have a lot of thousands of hours in the air before they're even made captain. But at the same time, it

You don't do that with your car. So on, people die.

How many people die in car accidents every year? What thirty thousand something like that? Amy was the figure on that one. You know, all right, you don't have to look that up panel look it up. I'll look it up, hey, siri. How many Americans die in car crashes every year? Thirty eight thousand Americans die in car crashes every year, all right? And we're talking how many people died in plane crashes this year? I don't know, you know, a few dozen, that's it.

But ours is one hundred, over one hundred a day.

It averages out to you're talking what the thirty eight thousand, yeah, is over one hundred?

Yeah? I don't There aren't a hundred crash.

There aren't one hundred fatalities a year, not even close in the United States the airline fatalities in the air So it really is safe.

It's much safer, although it is still scary. Do you know that.

George Norri, who of course does coast to coast over night here on CAI. It's nationally syndicated show. I've run into him three times on my way to Las Vegas, and so we grab each other, sit each other on the plane next to each other. Do you know what the conversation is every single time? Who gets top billing if the plane goes down? Is it George?

Isn't me?

That's our argument who It depends on the day. George says, I do. I say, George does?

All right? Coming up?

Ooh, tipping, tipping, tipping, tipping. Oh, I had an incident yesterday that I want to share with you about tipping and this we're all suffering from this.

You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.

All right now, Oh, yesterday, So I'm taking my vacation. I'm going to go in September, and yesterday I was on the phone with one of these travel agent kind of people that you know, find great deals for you.

And it took about an hour and a half and the guy was terrific.

We were going through all the different flights and how much I am going. Can't go direct to where I'm going, so I had to take connecting flights. So you know how much time layovers and which flight, and it took, it took a long time, took an.

Hour and a half. And this is what he does.

And we found one and it was fantastic, and so he did a great job. And so took the credit card and they confirmed and then popped up in the confirmation tip starting at one hundred dollars because it was an expensive flight. A tip for somebody who is helping me put together a flight because he works for the company. I go, what is that about?

Last night? Went to a restaurant right there? Tip starting at eighteen percent.

Now I go to a restaurants sometimes and it starts at twenty percent and they put it right on the check and it's sort of embarrassing. Or how about the tip jar? Oh, that was another one. So I went to a bagel shop yesterday, my favorite bagel shop, Western Bagels, and there is and I paid with a credit card. So I asked for onion bagels, Western bagels, of course, real jew bagels West. So I asked for onion bagels, and I asked for playing bagels, and the guy bends over.

He literally reached over, picked.

Up bagels, put him in a bag, put him on the counter. I gave him a credit card tip on the credit card starting at eighteen percent for someone reaching three feet to pick up bagels and put him in a bag, And it took thirty seconds.

Go here's the sip.

People are getting really upset about that as I am, and diners are pushing back big time. And now it's turning out where he used to be that tips went up dramatically because of the way they presented, you know, the tip jars. I don't know if a Starbucks still does tip jars. I have no idea. I mean, and if you don't put it in, they give you a weird look. Come on, really, and then you put it with a credit card and you sort of feel bad if you don't. So it used to be that those

Last night.

I took my daughter and we had three appetizers. I had my diet coke and she had two of their drinky things. Don't know what they call them, those fruity alcoholic things. It was one hundred and ten dollars. It's one hundred and ten dollars. And the tip starts at eighteen percent. Twenty percent would be twenty what is it? Twenty two dollars, twenty four dollars. I don't know something

It's hurting. You know where it works. You know what works in Europe? They don't.

You don't tip in Europe. If you have phenomenal service, you give five percent. Nobody tips. Why Because it's a career to be a server. It is a career. You sit down at a restaurant. Here server comes up and goes, would you like to read my screenplay? That does not happen in Europe? All right, enough of that, What are we talking about? Coming up at eight o'clock? Ooh, fiasco at the National Security Council, Let's talk about that inside

This is KFI AM sixty. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.

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