You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI A six forty.
KF I am six forty Bill Handled here a little bit under the weather.
All right, some of the stories we're looking at.
Volodimir Veolinsky said he's ready to give up his leadership leadership if that will lead to a piece between Ukraine and Russia. And you know, interestingly enough that when the Elon Musk memo went out to the entire government of the United States and the employee saying, tell us what you have done in the past week, give me gives five good things or five.
Things you have done.
Otherwise if you don't reply, that will be we will interpret that as your resignation, which I don't quite get how that's your resignation. But you've got some agency's are saying don't bother, including the FBI under cash PTEL. It's kind of interesting now the story the ongoing fight, if you wanted to a fight, because this may be where Trump and Gavin Newsom actually come together. Trump has said
he will help California. When they met and Trump landed at lax and there was Gavenusom down at the bottom.
Of the tarmac, the bottom of the Astairs Trump.
They were both for the microphones, and Trump said, I'm going to do whatever I can.
You are going to get the support of the US government.
Well, with that in mind, Gavin Newsom is asking Congress to approve an additional forty billion dollars in aid to help LA recover.
And this is no.
Doubt going to become the costliest natural disaster.
In US history.
And he sends a letter to the House Speaker, the House Minority Leader Hakim Jeffries.
And others who were on the House.
Appropriations Committee, which is going to be responsible for allowing payment or determining how much. And estimates of the economic gloss have swelled more than two hundred and fifty billion dollars,
real estate loan thirty billion dollars. Sixteen thousand structures were destroyed, thirty seven thousand acres of Pacific Palisades, Malibu, Pasadenia, of course Altadena, and Newsom talks about what the money would be used for rebuilding homes, infrastructure, business schools, churches, healthcare facilities, and Newsom rights in his letter, make no mistake, Los Angeles will use this money wisely.
This is an additional by the way.
An additional sixteen eighteen billion dollars from the FEDS FEMA, which is intended to rebuild property and infrastructure debris cleanup which FEMA is doing that is estimated at five billion dollars.
And the letter doesn't even go into the dispute over the Trump administration threatening to oppose conditions on federal aid, one of them being and it's already happened the water coming down from northern California, because had the water come down from the Delta, then the fires would have been able to be put out, even though the water has nothing to do with the water pressure on the amount of water that Palisades and the other communities had at hand or would have at hand. So what it does
doesn't mention a word about that. It just thanks the President for fast tracking there were a debris removal, debris removal.
And offering a hands all hands on deck approach to recovery.
I knew some rights were entirely grateful, internally grateful, and LA will continue to serve as a beacon to the world and putting the city on solid ground in the coming years is going to be hugely important as it hosts the FIFA World Cup, the Olympics, and we will be thriving for the century to come.
Well, will this get approved? Well?
It hinges on the willingness of Republican lawmakers to give funding, for example, the House Appropriations Committee, which funds virtually everything, and you have the Republicans that are in charge, and they have they hate California. As Trump feels and talks, Republicans in Congress follow and so some Republicans have suggested linking the AID to imposing the water policy, new voter ID requirements, helping the FEDS deal with finding and helping deport immigration.
Straight out.
He's threatened to withhold federal funding the states that did not support his agenda, and frequent critic of California new some The bottom line is he hates California. California is as anti Trump as any state in the Union. And when you're anti Trump, it comes back fivefold tenfold. And one of the possible conditions being discussed simply defunding the California Coastal Commission, which regulates coastal development and protects public
be that beach excess. Now I want to say something about, you know, stopping the educate, disbanding the Department of education. A department was founded in nineteen seventy seven. Okay, how are our kids reading scores now? How are our kids mass scores now less than they were when the Department of Education was founded? Is there an argument to be had that that government has to look at itself?
Is there fraud? Is there a waste? You bet there is?
Did the Biden administration ignore that completely? Yes it did. Did the Biden administration put more emphasis on LBGTQ rights and immigration than it did on inflation, on the issues that Americas actually care about the economy? Yes, it did. One of the reasons that the election went to Trump. So is there a method to the madness? The problem is the amount and the speed of which is going on.
You know, there are eighteen and nineteen year old kids that work for Musks that are going through the various departments and cleaning them out. One nineteen year olds reported is an advisor, a senior advisor to Musk and doge.
I mean that's wild stuff, all right? Moving on, and this has to do with solar power.
Now, when I built a Persian palace, I didn't put in solar power, but as soon as it became sort of available and became popular.
I immediately put in solar panels.
And because solar panels that they generate more power than most houses use, the power goes back to the grid automatically, and the power companies had to pay for that at retail.
Well, that started going down down, and then it.
Turned out that it would pay at wholesale, and then laws were passed that it they don't pay for any that goes back. And then but first tier one like my house had the Persian Palace, still were under the old system. And then now laws are being considered that you can forget all of it.
And so what is the bitch and the moaning that's going on, Well.
Those people that don't have solar are arguing that they are subsidizing people that do have solar.
I don't care about selling back to the.
Grid at all, because I have a new solar system and I get no credit for anything goes back to the grid. I just like the idea that I'm not paying for power. Now, I happen to be in the most expensive utility in the United States, and I do not pay for power used in the daytime, so I charge my car for example, during the day, I only turn my lights on during the day, which is very strange, but I try to use the least amount of power at night. But I bought a battery system too, and
right now it has some issues. So today you can't buy a solar system without batteries. And the bottom line is you don't use power from the grid. You don't because of the battery I did initially, but in goes the battery system, And so a bunch of ideas are out there floating around where you have the utilities themselves arguing.
The subsidy doesn't make any sense.
Can you imagine utilities are arguing in favor of rate payers. I mean, that's where you talk about the fox guarding the chicken house, the chicken coop, And it's true, it's true, that's the case. And they're going in front of the PUC, the Public Utilities Commission, which controls the amount of money that power companies can charge. They can't get a rate hike without the PUC saying absolutely. And the PUC just said, okay, a rate hike simply to deal with the infrastructure, because how much.
Of that you think went down?
So life is a changing And there is a report from the Commission and the advocates who are in favor of charging taxing solar roof recipients or solar rooftop installers homes that have solar rooftop rooftops, and they're saying a major reason for our fast rising electrical rates are in fact solar power. Now, you would think that because everybody is on solar power, rates would actually drop because.
There isn't as much demand.
And when there's no demand, what happens if you look at economics, Sorry about that, I'm coughing through this. If you look at the rules of economics, if you've ever taken economics one oh one, when demand drops, guess what else happens? Prices go down. It's the other way. And the argument is those that don't are paying for those that do. Those that do generally have more money. Solar
systems are pretty expensive. I mean a low of ten twelve thousand dollars up to a high of well, I'm not even gonna mention how much my solar panels cost at the Persian Palace.
I mean it was insanity.
And the way you figure out the cost of a solar system is the payback.
When does it break even?
And if it breaks even, at five or six years, you've paid back the money you've invested. That's damn good. If it takes eight or nine years, that's not bad. If it takes fifteen years, you're already dead by the time that this thing is paid off, and it doesn't make much sense. And then the issue do you lease do you buy? If you lease, it's generally a twenty five year lease which the new home buyer gets with the house. My lease is three high LEAs. My lease
is three hundred and five dollars. That's what I pay for energy, three hundred and five dollars a month. Now, keep in mind I am in the most expensive utility district in the country, So for me, three hundred and five dollars is a bargain. I have a pool, I use a lot of energy rechargeable batteries.
And I don't want to go into why. You can talk to my fiance about that.
Rechargeable batteries cost a fortune to run on electricity. Okay, here's something else that's not fun, and that has to do with AI. Couple of years ago, chat GPT came out, and who do you think is using it the most? No surprise students, and they rely on chat GPT to write essays because students hate essays and one of the things about essays, the teachers want you to think instead of just regurgitate.
I mean, that's.
Theoretically what essays are about. So guess what kids are cheating?
Oh? What a shocker.
And teachers have responded because they're using chat gpt to identify cheaters, and some have resorted to unreliable online checkers.
As opposed to chat GPT.
One university professor failed an entire class after the screening tool he uses said that all of the students were using chat GPT in his classroom. Others have hidden like little text within the assignments instructing chatbooks to use the word banana and frge sign in the when someone uses chat gpt.
Guess what teachers are losing.
There was a Pew Research Center study that was just done, and I love real science, and when real research comes out, I tend to quote it. A quarter of thirteen to seventeen year olds recently admitted they use chat ept to write their homework.
That's double what it was a year earlier. I think this thing isn't exploding now.
Cheating, I mean, who Number one doesn't cheat or try to cheat at some point.
Conor you ever cheated in homework? Of course you have, no, Please suck it up. You're such a liar. And have you ever cheated? Yes, no, cheating.
Everybody knows what cheating is. Come on using other people's works. Plagiarizing, of course you have.
In a mean way.
Well, I'm I'm sorry. You cheating really benign? Well, cheating theoretically is bad, and I'm gonna explain. And artificial intelligence, these blots have become ubiquitous and ubiquitous and capable. And now the researcher saying, is this technology affecting how we learn and think?
That's the issue.
It makes us think less, it makes us not think. So last week, a little interesting here, Bill, is that the teacher, in order to filter to see if they're using AI, has to use an AI filter. No, that's different because that's not a question of cognitive thinking. That's simply a question of trying to find teachers. Well, but now they have to be But I don't understand. So last week researchers at Microsoft and Cardnegie Mellon provided evidence.
Here's the evidence offloading our brains to AI system. Well, it lowers the ability to use our brain. There were three hundred nineteen quote knowledge workers people working in computer science, education, business administration, and found that the use of AI was associated with lower levels of critical thinking. I remember well the bar, for example. When I took the bar, wanted a lot of critical thinking. I mean, there was no way around it. They want to know that. People want
to think. Same thing with a lot of essays that you write in school. What happens is workers who use that, students who use that are less likely to engage their brains. GENAI tools appeared to reduce the perceived effort required for critical thinking. The researchers noted it used improperly cheating. For example, tech can and results in the deterioration of cognitive facilities, and reliance on it leaves our cognitive muscles.
Atrophied, unprepared.
If we don't think, we don't use those brain muscles. And I know that's neurologically kind of insane, but that's a reality. And so has it happened before? It goes back to Socrates? Huh. Socrates feared that reliance on writing writing itself interfere with our memories and led to a real surface level understanding of important arguments pocket calculator. Remember the nineteen seventies panic, Oh my god, students aren't going to learn math.
Well, guess what.
Students don't learn math and we do just fine because who can do square roots anymore?
Search engines man.
That led to a lot of issues digital and we forget things as soon as we're told them because all we do is look them up. All we do is put in search words, like I just did with the pope pope joan, a woman pope and the do they now check that.
A woman that it's a man who is pope by checking balls his balls.
Yes, but all you have to do is look it up, which I did, Balls, Pope, Pope Joan, election of Pope.
Yeah, it's all there. But here's the.
Difference, as they point out, all of those is very different because it allows us to store information. AI promises to think on our behalf. There is the difference, and what are they going to do about it? Well, here's the problem is that people who hate AI hate limiting AI.
No one wants AI, that doesn't that's the whole purpose.
One of the authors of the study says, humans appreciate comfort and if you have a tool that takes difficult things away from you and makes your life easier. Guess what happens we use it? Look at Pope Joan. Okay, let me start with I do not hang with a lot of people, very very few people I socialize with.
Neil. Do I socialize with you? Probably more than anybody else? Yeah? I do. Another person, Well, let me go through it. Cono. Do we socialize? No? Correct? And do we socialize now? Also? Correct? Michael Monks do we socialize? I've asked you, that's correct, and I say no.
Someone I do socialize with is Jim Kinney. Jim and I hang and one of the things we talk about a lot is the health system, because well we talk about the health system and how broken it is.
And he comes from a doctor's viewpoint.
People just don't trust doctors anymore, not the way I used to, or not the way they used.
To I still do. They're wary of the healthcare system supposed to make.
Us feel better and cure us, but when it doesn't because we have more diseases, not that we have more diseases, we have recognized and discovered more diseases and more drugs, and it's just so complicated that we want answers and we want them now, and if the doctor doesn't give it to us, we go to the web WebMD for example, then see I need surgery, No you don't. Or you do need surgery, no I don't. Here's what you should try.
Here's a supplement. It's not the same. So we've always relied on doctors for or pain and life saving decisions. People are less confident now we think doctors just don't care. And there's a reason for that. Do doctors care less well? People going to medical school, actually, I think are more involved in trying to help people because the money isn't nearly as great as it used to be. The problem is is that doctors are so stressed.
They see so many people.
Case in point Jim, when someone goes when he goes to the er, he does a shift.
He doesn't sit down.
He is on his feet running from er room r bay to er bay for twelve hours without stopping. Lunch is grabbing a sandwich and still walking and going. So the other reason is that we don't have enough doctors. We certainly don't have enough. In turn us we're getting older, we have more chronic condition.
We need more treatment. We need more prescription drugs.
You know, the average an older adult takes four daily medications.
I must take eight or nine.
Thirty percent of people on medicare see five or more doctors every year.
And here's the other pain in the ass.
If you have a pain there, every time you see a new doctor, you have to retell.
Your story over and over again. And I mean that happens to me.
Where I go for any treatment, any numdic medication, he goes through the whole list. The nurse or the tech will spend fifteen minutes with you or with me going through the list. And so we're all, every one of us think the healthcare is broken.
Is there an answer?
You know?
Are we going to think less of doctors? I don't know. I don't know.
I think medicine is getting better, but only for those of us to have really good insurance, you know, for folks to say we have the best medical system in the world. Yeah, go to Appalachia, go to Squirrel Hollow, where the nearest clinic is one hundred miles away, and tell them how great our medical system is. Just want to make it feel better. Okay, this is KFI A M six forty
You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty