You're listening to Bill Handle on demand from KFI AM six forty.
KFI AM six forty on a hump day, Wednesday, May seventh. A couple of stories we're looking at. Federal agents have started visiting courthouses waiting for people to show up for their legal proceedings and then arresting them. And legal experts and immigration advocates are saying, not that it's illegal, not that the.
Feds can't do it, they already tried that.
It's what these arrests disrupt the judicial process and may intimidate people from attending court hearings. And that's going to go no place too, because it is now upheld. The Feds can go into the courthouse. Well, they always could, it was just upheld by the courts.
Okay.
Now moving on to a bill that at first glance make a lot of sense.
And at first glance, the Democrats who.
Were opposed to this bill were ripped into and they had to come back, they had to change their mind.
And why there's a point to what they say. Okay.
The Democrats were in opposition to a bill that would increase the penalty for soliciting a minor age sixteen or seventeen and make that a felony automatic felony, and that change after they walked it back. They had to walk it back because they man faced such criticism, including Governor Gavin Newsom.
AB three seventy nine.
Would allow prosecutors to file felony charges against adults who solicit sex from a sixteen or seventeen year old if the accused is three years older than the miner, they can now be charged with a felony if the offenders win three years of the miner. If not, the charge is a misdemeanor automatically. And now they're saying it is a felony or it can be a felony, and that's important. That's important because there is a secondary point to this story.
Also, the bill includes.
A grant program from the state to streamline prosecution and human trafficking sex trafficking support for survivors.
All of that, of course, makes sense, and no one's going to say no.
So current law allows the offense of soliciting a minor under sixteen for six to be punishable as a misdemeanor or a felony on the first defense, and as a felony on subsequent A fence so under sixteen it's punishable as a misdemeanor or a felony. And now it is, well, it's going to be automatic under sixteen.
Which it should be. But here is the bill.
Maggie Krell, a Democrat out of Sacramento Assembly member who authored ABE seventy nine, extends the same punishment to those who solicit sixteen and seventeen year olds. So last week the Democratic and a Democratic Assembly approved an amendment that removed that provision. Removed it, and the backlog was crazy. What do you mean, how can it be possible that celeiciting a minor can be a misdemeanor. That's impossible. Well, it extended it to sixteen and seventeen year olds, and
here is the difference. A judge should be able to take that on a case by case basis.
Let me give you a scenario.
You've got a twenty year old stoops a seventeen year old, a seventeen seventeen plus ten months year old two months away from her usually her eighteenth birthday.
That's a crime that is automatically a crime.
Wait a minute, twenty year olds with someone who is almost eighteen? Really, and so the Democrat said no, that's crazy. And then the backlash came like you couldn't believe, and Newsom came down and the Democrats came back and said, okay, okay, it is a crime on a case by case basis. The prosecutor should be able to not even file I mean that is consensual sex, except if someone is under the eighteenth birth under their eighteenth birthday.
That is a criminal offense. This is why it is.
It has to be done on a case by case. Because there are twenty year olds or twenty two or twenty five. This is the minimum twenty three years older. There are a couple of different ways that a twenty year old can have sex with a seventeen year old. One is grooming that seventeen year old and doing it such a way as coercion or duress or fraud, or pretending to be someone else, pretending to be another seventeen year old. Okay, I'll buy that, But what if it's
totally consensual. You know, the average age that people start having sex in the United States has not changed since the nineteen fifties. And you know what that is, Heather, average age for sex? How much what sixteen boy, you must have had a really wild life when you were younger.
Okay, no, not me.
I just maybe it's just la I just yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you protest too much.
Close and.
Notice I'm asking the women here average age of when do you start having sex?
When when women.
Girls start having sex? Eighteen seventeen? Oh, they're miners seventeen and under the law they are miners. So if an eighteen year old has sex with someone who is seventeen, that may be a criminal offense. What this bill says there has to well, it has to be three years older. So if someone is almost seventeen then or almost eighteen seventeen being the average age of which people start stooping, then.
It's uh was where is that going with that?
Then it is criminal. So goes beyond it goes beyond what we normally do. Neil, I was just wondering, aren't there some state that have the age of consent at like sixteen or something?
You bet much lower? You bet?
So? Is this a this is California? This is California. Yeah, this is straight California. Now, there are some countries that have well there's no consent, but you can get married at the age of eight. You know, those are some Muslim countries a lot of fun as.
Them twelve year old. I do think about this a lot, and I wonder, like how that's all going to play out in the future.
Well, I have two girls and I was really well concerned about them being sexually active. So they got their guarda sil shot when they were seven.
Oh my goodness. Okay, a little.
Bit on the tariffs going on, and I'm in the just in the middle of all this terraffs from China, particularly one hundred and forty five percent. So how does a business get around a terraff from China?
Are they just stuck? Not necessarily.
There are end a rounds two particularly, and one is the bonded warehouse, and that is goods that are shipped into the United States do not go to the distributor or the buyer. They go into a bonded warehouse, which means those are sealed. It hasn't come into the United States officially, and the tariff is only paid when the goods are pulled out of that bonded warehouse. That's regulated by the way, by the customs folks. So that bonded warehouse means the goods haven't come in the other way,
and this can be this is kind of fun. This is tariff engineering and harmonize system codes to qualify for lower rates. The fun one is tariff engineering. What does that mean? Well, we start with why do tariff agreements take so long? There are five thousand different products that have to be discussed because there are differences in tariffs in each one of these categories.
That's why you don't overnight.
Even the right now the people in the financial end of the Trump administration are saying, yeah, you know what, it's not gonna happen immediately. Even if we cut a deal, it can take a year. It can take two years to renegotiate a tariff deal. Let me give you an example of this tariff engineering converse. They have the all star sneaker. The soul of that sneaker contains some felt. It's not all rubber. So why would they put felt
in the sneaker. Well, because if you have felt in these sneakers, they could be considered house slippers because there is felt in it. You make whatever minimum amount of felt necessary under the treaty agreement, and all of a sudden, you don't have a sneaker, you have a house slipper, which is very different in tariffs than a sneaker. Columbia Sportswear big company has a whole team of people who work with the designers and manufacturers to deal with tariffs.
That's one of the end arounds.
There is a law firm, GDLSK specializes in trade compliance. One of the partners says, we're working with compani who say, gee, I really want this to be on the list.
Look at my tariff codes. What can I do now?
Slapping a new code doesn't necessarily mean anything, because just if you call it a different thing, that doesn't mean it is a different thing. This is not a duck. You can call it a duck, but it may not be a duck. So what US Customs and Border Protection does when they examine goods, they will send fabrics out to the l to see if they meet the requirements. Because pure wool is on one level. Wool that has rayon on it is on something else. Polyester maybe on a different level. If it's thirty.
Percent, it qualifies for one tariff.
These are from every country we have tariff agreements with. You wonder why they're saying you deal a new terrify a new teriff agreement. Why it would take so long. I used to know someone that was in the jewelry business. The tariff on a ring that's manufactured is at one level. The tariff on just the gold and the diamond or
the stone was on a different level. So they would buy rings that weren't put together, separate rings, separate stones manufactured, and they put they would assemble them in the United States and it was a whole different tariff level. That's the end around. And how am I in the middle of it? Well, we my partner and I we have a shipment on the way right now coming in the United States that as soon as it hits US ports
is one hundred and forty five percent. It's coming from China made out of stainless steel at another twenty five percent or another twenty percent, so we now become one hundred and sixty five percent tariff.
It's going into a bonded warehouse.
You can, if you're a company, keep goods in a bonded warehouse up to five years. It's as if they never came in the United States and just wait for the tariff to drop, and it maybe a month and maybe two.
We have one.
Situation where we have a container coming over, a shipment coming over that we have no choice and we're going to just pay it. We have a contract. We don't want to lose the customer. We have to have the company or factory. It is not ours, but in factor we dealt for years in China, stay alive. So we're going to just hit the tariff. Were going to lose our shirts on this one shipment. There's not much you can do, all right.
Jesus is my friend. Jesus geez.
That's the song that you heard as the cardinals were marching into the Sistine Chapel.
They were all singing and dancing.
And I do believe they have entered the Sistine Chapel and the doors have been sealed. And now the cardinals start to work. One hundred and I think thirty three who are voting. Cardinals now sit and.
Begin the vote.
And the way it works is a vote is taken twice a day, actually morning and evening.
The votes are counted. The cardinal that runs.
The election, and I don't know how will you say, the cardinal that runs the election in Latin anyway, he calls out the votes and everybody knows which way it's going. And it's almost like it's very close to a political party at a convention. That's a very close convention. And it used to be that way. Names would be tossed around, there'd be votes among the various state delegations until some name came out, and there was a lot of politicking.
There's also a lot of politicking in the Vatican.
The cardinals all got together several days ago as quickly as possible because they don't know each other. I mean, it's not like they hang at the local bar. There is no local bar. They come from one hundred countries all over the world. Francis did that. He made sure that cardinals were named from all over the world, a lot of third world countries. He named eighty percent of those cardinals that are voting. And that it has a lot to do with who is going to be the
next pope? And so is there politicking As they get to know each other, they start banding about names. They are looking at whether and this is the big one, it is the next post pope going to be a conservative or is he going to be a liberal pope? Is he going to expand with the Catholic Church? And is about and how inclusive in the way it works, or is it going to contract and go back to more conservative values.
That's important.
That is actually the biggest question they have is which way the Catholic Church is going to go? And pope is chosen based on that. Now, regular politicking is everybody goes around says I'll give you this position. You can be secretary of state, you can be posted to a master general, if you're head of a delegation, I want your votes. There is similar politicking, but it's not about positions.
It is about which way does the church go? And it really started, I mean the issue as to conservatism, real conservatism or real liberalism started back in the nineteen sixties.
Prior to that, every pope was pretty conservative.
There was no move to include gays or talk about people who are not part of the traditional definition of Catholics.
You couldn't take communion if.
You were divorced, the Church wouldn't recognize a second marriage.
Certainly, abortion.
Gay relationship didn't even exist in the world of Catholicism. So then they elect Pope John the twenty third, who died only four years after he became pope, and I think he died of some food poisoning that he got at an all you can eat buffet around the corner from the apartments, the papal apartments. A very big guy, by the way, he was close to three hundred pounds. In any case, he was extraordinarily liberal. He was changing the way the church goes Vatican Two, which just expanded inclusivity.
And I mean he was talking about female clerics, I mean, and scared the Curia, which are this small group of cardinals that really run it's like a polit bureau who run the Catholic Church. Scared the hell out of them that from then on they had really conservative pontiffs.
Benedict was a real conservative pontiff.
Good pontiff. That's never mind, that's a happy Friday night in Yiddish anyway, So he was insanely conservative. Going back to Pious the Tenth, who actually was the Nuncio in the thirties, effectively he was the foreign minister to Germany, Nazi Germany.
They were kind of close. He in Nazi Germany.
Benedict was an unenthusiastic member of the Hitler youth during the war, and by the way, that's by his definition an unenthusiastic member of the Nazi of Nazi youth so or the Hitler youth. Now they are in conclave, and
that means that it is a secret conclave. They're in the Sistine Champel, and you've seen pictures of those two rows of table at double row of table just looks like a very very long table with I think what sixty seventy seats on either side, and in the middle is empty space and at the end there is It's like the British Parliament where you have two sets of people on either side of the aisle, and then you
have the guy who's running it. I forgot his name, I think is Fred, and he counts the votes because they're written on paper, and hand it to him and he then tells the cardinals how many votes any given nominee has, and the cardinals are for the last couple of days walking around getting to know each other, throwing some names around and deciding which way is the church going to go. You have conservatives who want to not only maintain the tenants of the church but actually bring
it back. This liberalism they don't want to hear. Francis was known as a liberal. But if you think about it, the basic tenants did not change. I mean he was more inclusive. He spent more time talking about the marginalized people. His personal stop was very different than popees. He wouldn't live in the fancy apartments. He lived basically in a dorm where that was built for the cardinals when they meet.
To elect a new pope. Very simple food. He drove around when he was the archbishop in Buenos Aires.
He drove an old car. He would take the bus. Simple man. And he was very politically involved, which popes normally don't do. You have problems all over the world and the pope praise right, you have a conflict. Let's pray for the people who are being killed hurt. He got involved, man. He came down hard on the Ukraine Russia war. That came down hard against Russia, came down hard against Israel. I mean, he was political, but did
not change the basic philosophy of the church. No married priests. Abortion, doesn't say the same women in the clergy. Uh, that's not going to happen now. He did give communion to people who are same sex couples and reached out to them, but giving communion is not the same as accepting them in the basis of the church, and so he looked like he was super liberal. There were some, but it's pretty superficial stuff. So now, which way are they going to go?
Because that's the.
Big one is is is the church going to go by way of Francis? He chose eighty percent of the cardinals, so that gives a big lift to his philosophy of more inclusion, but not really more inclusion. Then you have the other side of the very conservative cardinals who want the church going way back to where it was. I mean, the church has been around for two thousand years. It
really hasn't changed its philosophy. So we are going to see at this point right now, no one has any idea which way it's going because it's a secret vote.
And then of.
Course the chimney that is above the Sistine Chapel. I don't think I dated exactly above the chapel. They do it in a different room.
Where they actually burn the votes. They burn the paper, and if it's.
Black smoke, it's no pope, no pope for you, And if it's white smoke, we have a new pope. Abemo's pop'm and what and that everybody goes nuts in Saint Peter's Square, Hundreds of thousands of people are there waiting for that white smoke.
And now it's chemicals that do it.
So there's it's you can tell what's black, you can tell it's white. And once one of the cardinals comes out and says that abemo's popham.
I think that's what they say. We have a pope, and now everybody's going wild. Who is it? Who is it?
While the new pope, it goes down to the dressing room, it's a green room effectively snacks, you know, coax there you've got this big bucket of ice where they have sodas and et cetera little ore derbs.
By the way.
I don't know that for a fact, but this is where the vestments are where and there are three sizes of papal garments small, medium, large, and depends on how big the pope is.
And then out he comes on to that.
Balcony, blesses everybody, and there's a new pope, and everybody goes berserk. One of the rules is you cannot want to be pope. To become pope, I mean you want to be pope, I mean secretly, but you can't sort of look like you're looking for popiosity. You have to be chosen by the cardinals. So you know it used to be in presidential politics, you cannot seem to want to be president. Probably the most famous one that we
know historically Abraham Lincoln. He was a compromise candidate eighteen sixty when he was elected a second time, or eighteen sixty four he was elected a second time. Oh no, I don't want to be president. That never went out, never called anybody, but.
He had his surrogates go out and do the work.
Today people go out and start screaming, I want to be president. I want to be president. It's a different world, not with a pope. Pope dumb is still done. You can't want to be the pope. And you have to be humble, and you have to be contrite. You have to pray and then what somehow the cardinals vote, and then the phone line gets plugged in directly to God or to Jesus.
I don't know how that works. I don't know who does that.
What techno guy takes the pope's cell phone and somehow puts in a secret number that God, only God has The Vicar of Christ.
It's fascinating stuff. I love this stuff. All right. This is KFI AM sixty. You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show.
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