Latest / The Bill Handel Show / President Trump $250 Bill | China & Cigs
Transcript
- 0:00Speaker 1: You're list Saints KFI AM six forty.
- 0:03Speaker 2: The Bill Handles show on demand on the iHeartRadio app The.
- 0:08Speaker 1: Trap Trup in the school that the Club Trup On
- 0:12Speaker 1: a Friday morning, May twenty nine, a couple of stories.
- 0:16Speaker 1: We're looking at the rocket built bite Jeff Bezos Blue Origin.
- 0:22Speaker 1: It was quite exciting. You talk about fireworks. It blew
- 0:25Speaker 1: up on the launch pad, and I mean it blew
- 0:28Speaker 1: up on the launch pad. So that set back Blue
- 0:32Speaker 1: Origin a bit. And it looks like we may have
- 0:35Speaker 1: a tentative agreement, well at least to extend the cease
- 0:38Speaker 1: fire by sixty days around the United States and start
- 0:41Speaker 1: a round of new talks. Okay, we'll see what happens.
- 0:45Speaker 1: I don't think we're going to get much. I think
- 0:47Speaker 1: you to see a lot of where we were before
- 0:50Speaker 1: the Straight of Horror moves was closed and the attack happened.
- 0:53Speaker 1: But we'll talk more about that as it comes down. Now, man,
- 0:56Speaker 1: I love this story. Scott Besson, who is the Treasury Secretary,
- 1:04Speaker 1: has shown a new two hundred and fifty dollars bill
- 1:09Speaker 1: is part of the celebration of the two hundred and
- 1:12Speaker 1: fiftieth anniversary of the United States. Two hundred and fifty
- 1:15Speaker 1: dollars two hundred and fiftieth anniversary. Pretty neat and what
- 1:19Speaker 1: a shocker in a very surprising move that no one
- 1:21Speaker 1: thought was going to happen. What the Treasury Department is
- 1:25Speaker 1: suggesting that Donald Trump's face appears on the bill, and
- 1:31Speaker 1: if you look at a prototype, it is a glowering
- 1:34Speaker 1: look where he's going down not very happy. Now. The
- 1:38Speaker 1: law right now says no living president can appear on currency.
- 1:44Speaker 1: But the administration is preparing for the possibility that Congress
- 1:49Speaker 1: will pass legislation authorizing what is called the Special Trump
- 1:54Speaker 1: Bill of his face on two hundred and fifty dollars. Yep.
- 1:59Speaker 1: Isn't that fun now? And I don't know if it
- 2:02Speaker 1: takes some more than a simple majority for a bill
- 2:07Speaker 1: to become law under these circumstances. And if it is
- 2:10Speaker 1: just a simple majority, Congress will pass it, I'm sure
- 2:14Speaker 1: and we'll see a two hundred and fifty dollars bill
- 2:17Speaker 1: all with the president's picture, So Bescent said, it's all
- 2:21Speaker 1: in the hands of Capitol Hill, and we're prepared things
- 2:25Speaker 1: in advance, but we will stick to the law. And
- 2:28Speaker 1: of course, the point is they're working very hard to
- 2:31Speaker 1: change the law, and then Bescent said he didn't think
- 2:34Speaker 1: there was anything untoward about having the president, who was
- 2:38Speaker 1: in office during the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, appear
- 2:42Speaker 1: on the bill. Okay, last year there was Representative Joe
- 2:48Speaker 1: Wilson of South Carolina proposed a bill that would require
- 2:52Speaker 1: the Treasury Treasury to print two hundred and fifty dollars
- 2:54Speaker 1: notes with Trump's portion on it. But it hasn't been
- 2:58Speaker 1: taken up yet, but you bet it going to. And
- 3:02Speaker 1: how did all this happen? Well, the Washington Post said
- 3:05Speaker 1: it was two Trump political appointees who began urging the
- 3:09Speaker 1: drafts of the new two hundred and fifty dollars note
- 3:13Speaker 1: and set up a mockup of the president's likeness. And
- 3:16Speaker 1: he showed it and I'm looking at it, and there
- 3:19Speaker 1: it is two hundred and fifty dollars and there's the
- 3:21Speaker 1: president's face. He's not happy, by the way, he's not
- 3:24Speaker 1: smiling on this bill. He's giving the Trump I don't
- 3:29Speaker 1: like you. Look. I'm really concerned about this look. He's
- 3:33Speaker 1: looking sort of down. And yeah, it's not the most
- 3:35Speaker 1: flattering picture. You think he'd be grinning like a cheshire cat,
- 3:39Speaker 1: being so excited being on a two hundred and fifty
- 3:41Speaker 1: dollars bill. And I'm going to tell you a little
- 3:43Speaker 1: bit about the bill because a couple of things. If
- 3:48Speaker 1: Congress does pass the law, Trump would be the first
- 3:52Speaker 1: living person to appear on currency. Now, the law says
- 3:56Speaker 1: you can't, but there was once a in eighteen sixty
- 4:01Speaker 1: six was the last time that happened, and we know
- 4:05Speaker 1: already with the currency. The Treasury Department announced that Donald
- 4:10Speaker 1: Trump's signature would appear on all new printed money, as
- 4:14Speaker 1: opposed to what's happening now. The Treasury Secretary and the
- 4:19Speaker 1: Treasurer of the United States. And by the way, this
- 4:24Speaker 1: is something that we haven't seen before because if you
- 4:27Speaker 1: look at the new commemorative plasport has Trump's face on it.
- 4:31Speaker 1: A commemorative coin has, strangely enough, Trump's face on it.
- 4:36Speaker 1: If you look at a National Parks pass which you
- 4:40Speaker 1: can buy, ooh, Trump's face on it. If you look
- 4:44Speaker 1: at the Justice Department the front of the building, you
- 4:48Speaker 1: will see one of those banners that you see in
- 4:50Speaker 1: front of museums, the ones that go from the top
- 4:53Speaker 1: of the building down to basically the floor, at least
- 4:56Speaker 1: the first floor. And there's this huge, huge picture of
- 5:01Speaker 1: Trump's face on it. Let's not forget the Donald J.
- 5:05Speaker 1: Trump Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Donald J.
- 5:09Speaker 1: Trump US Institute of Peace, Oh, the Trump accounts, Trump RX.
- 5:16Speaker 1: So any surprise at all that this is happening. Now,
- 5:20Speaker 1: what I want to do is spend some time and
- 5:21Speaker 1: give you a little bit of history about these bills.
- 5:24Speaker 1: Let's start with a law that says nobody living can
- 5:28Speaker 1: be on any currency in the United States. They have
- 5:33Speaker 1: to undo that, but there's already moving Congress, of course,
- 5:36Speaker 1: to undo that law. So the president's face can in
- 5:39Speaker 1: fact beyond it. If there is no law, then it's
- 5:41Speaker 1: the Treasury Secretary who makes that decision as to who's
- 5:44Speaker 1: going to be on it. So in circulation today five
- 5:48Speaker 1: US presidents, two founding fathers, and there were plans to
- 5:54Speaker 1: put Harriet Tubman, who is one of the great civil
- 5:57Speaker 1: rights I mean, she was a hero of the movement
- 6:01Speaker 1: to stop slavery. I mean just she risked her life
- 6:04Speaker 1: time and time again bringing African Americans through the underground
- 6:08Speaker 1: railroad to freedom in the North during and before the
- 6:11Speaker 1: Civil War. Anyways, there was plans to put her picture
- 6:15Speaker 1: on the bill that in twenty sixteen, but that was stalled.
- 6:19Speaker 1: So five American presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and two founding fathers,
- 6:27Speaker 1: Alexander Hamilton being one of them. And here is the
- 6:32Speaker 1: fun part, Okay that a lot of people don't realize.
- 6:37Speaker 1: We now have one hundred dollars bill. That is the
- 6:40Speaker 1: biggest denomination that we have in the world of currency.
- 6:45Speaker 1: There used to be and I remember this. I was
- 6:48Speaker 1: a kid when these bills were actually in circulation. You
- 6:52Speaker 1: could use them to buy things. There was a five
- 6:57Speaker 1: hundred dollars bill. There was a thousand dollar bill. There
- 7:05Speaker 1: was a ten thousand dollar bill that was in general circulation.
- 7:11Speaker 1: Who is on that? Imagine, pardon who was on that bill? Uh?
- 7:14Speaker 1: You know what? I remember? Who was? Was it Wilson?
- 7:16Speaker 1: I'm trying to remember who that was? Ten thousand dollar bill? Well,
- 7:20Speaker 1: it gets better than that. There was a hundred thousand
- 7:23Speaker 1: dollar bill, a single bill of one hundred thousand dollars.
- 7:28Speaker 1: Now that one was not in general circulation. That one
- 7:30Speaker 1: hundred thousand dollar bill was only used for transactions between
- 7:35Speaker 1: the Federal Reserve and banks because it's the Fed that
- 7:38Speaker 1: issues money. Of course, it's all been by wire now,
- 7:42Speaker 1: but in terms of transferring money, there was real currency
- 7:46Speaker 1: of one hundred thousand dollars and one bill. Wow. But
- 7:52Speaker 1: in terms of general circulation that you could use that
- 7:54Speaker 1: was out there, ten thousand dollars. Can you imagine going
- 7:57Speaker 1: to a fast food establishment. Hi, I'll have a burger
- 8:00Speaker 1: and some fries, and can you make change please?
- 8:03Speaker 3: I'm just imagining putting it in a slot machine.
- 8:06Speaker 1: Yeah, can you image?
- 8:07Speaker 2: Yes?
- 8:08Speaker 1: Yeah, ten thousand dollars. And I remember my folks at
- 8:12Speaker 1: one point, I remember seeing a thousand dollars bill. It
- 8:15Speaker 1: was part of savings they were going to put into
- 8:18Speaker 1: an account from one account to the other. And yeah,
- 8:20Speaker 1: it was a one thousand bucks.
- 8:22Speaker 3: I know who's on that one. Pardon, I know who's
- 8:25Speaker 3: on that one? That was Cleveland, I think, yeah.
- 8:28Speaker 1: I mean some weird ones and now a few things,
- 8:31Speaker 1: and boy, that's changed all over the place. It was
- 8:36Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen the Department of Treasury was going to
- 8:39Speaker 1: bump Andrew Jackson on to the back of the twenty
- 8:44Speaker 1: dollars bill and then put Harriet Tubman on the front.
- 8:48Speaker 1: And that didn't happen. This is are you ready for this?
- 8:53Speaker 1: In the eighteen hundreds, Martha Washington's face appeared on the
- 8:59Speaker 1: one dollar silver certificate in the eighteen hundreds. George Washington's
- 9:04Speaker 1: face didn't appear until the early early nineteen hundreds. Alexander
- 9:10Speaker 1: Hamilton was the first Secretary of Treasury secretary who, by
- 9:14Speaker 1: the way, created the Federal Bank. Originally, when you have
- 9:18Speaker 1: the Thomas Jefferson that you wanted these states rights people
- 9:21Speaker 1: wanted the states to have their individual currencies, because that's
- 9:25Speaker 1: what happened during the Revolutionary wore. Each state came out
- 9:27Speaker 1: with its own currency and it was a mess. And
- 9:30Speaker 1: Hamilton pushed for a single currency, a federal currency, and
- 9:34Speaker 1: he got it. Man otherwise it would have been a mess.
- 9:37Speaker 1: So he gets a lot of credit for that, and
- 9:39Speaker 1: so his face appears pretty quickly. In any case, you've
- 9:44Speaker 1: got Lincoln and Hamilton. There's going to stay on the
- 9:47Speaker 1: five dollar bill and the ten dollar bill. Of course Lincoln.
- 9:51Speaker 1: Now there's a move to put Donald Trump's face on
- 9:56Speaker 1: the five dollar bill, but he's going to look ridiculous
- 9:58Speaker 1: with that beard. But that's still that doesn't stop them
- 10:01Speaker 1: from doing it. Okay, it's just it's fantastic. So you've
- 10:06Speaker 1: got the five dollar bill, which is Abraham Lincoln. You
- 10:11Speaker 1: have the one dollar bill, which is, of course George
- 10:15Speaker 1: Washington one hundred dollar bill. You've heard the phrase Franklin's Well,
- 10:21Speaker 1: it's Benjamin Franklin's face. So Thomas Jefferson's face still appears
- 10:28Speaker 1: on the two dollar bill.
- 10:30Speaker 3: Can I tell you a funny story about that. So
- 10:32Speaker 3: my husband works at Costco, and every single day somebody
- 10:37Speaker 3: brings out two dollar bills to pay at the registers,
- 10:40Speaker 3: and all of the young people think it's fake, so
- 10:43Speaker 3: they have to go out and explain to the cashiers
- 10:45Speaker 3: that it is real currency.
- 10:48Speaker 1: I love it. It didn't go any place, but I
- 10:50Speaker 1: absolutely love it. You know, it's like a dollar dollar
- 10:54Speaker 1: coins still exist out there, which is fine. Of course,
- 10:57Speaker 1: Abraham Lincoln andrew accent, as I said, is on the
- 11:01Speaker 1: twenty dollars bill. And as I look at this, I
- 11:05Speaker 1: because I actually have to look at it. Whose faces
- 11:09Speaker 1: The five hundred dollars bill had William McKinley. McKinley's face,
- 11:14Speaker 1: that's no longer in circulation. That dates back to nineteen eighteen.
- 11:19Speaker 1: The thousand dollars bill was Grover Cleveland, and that goes
- 11:23Speaker 1: back to nineteen eighteen, and that was that was discontinued
- 11:29Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, printed nineteen forty five. James Madison on
- 11:33Speaker 1: the five thousand dollars bill, first printed nineteen eighteen. That's
- 11:38Speaker 1: nineteen eighteen seems to be a year when a lot
- 11:40Speaker 1: of this stuff happened. That was discontinued in sixty nine,
- 11:44Speaker 1: last printed in forty five. The ten thousand dollars bill
- 11:48Speaker 1: will was Salmon P. Chase, who was a Treasury secretary
- 11:52Speaker 1: under Abraham Lincoln and was, as Lincoln said, and he
- 11:57Speaker 1: was a huge enemy of Lincoln, but Lincoln thought he
- 11:59Speaker 1: was irreplaceable, which he was in terms of raising money
- 12:03Speaker 1: for the Civil War. That was first print in nineteen eighteen,
- 12:08Speaker 1: and Americans continue to hold these notes. You can have
- 12:11Speaker 1: a ten thousand dollars bill and use it as currency.
- 12:15Speaker 1: But the point is, if there are any ten thousand
- 12:17Speaker 1: dollars bills out there, they're worth a lot more than
- 12:20Speaker 1: ten thousand dollars. No one is crazy enough to do it.
- 12:23Speaker 1: And that one hundred thousand dollars bill, which was not
- 12:27Speaker 1: in general circulation and only used by Federal Reserve banks.
- 12:33Speaker 1: It is the picture is Woodrow Wilson, and it is
- 12:38Speaker 1: not considered legal tender to be used by all of us.
- 12:42Speaker 1: By the way, that one hundred thousand dollars bill is
- 12:44Speaker 1: worth at least a million dollars to collectors. But if
- 12:48Speaker 1: you happen to have a ten thousand dollar bill, you
- 12:50Speaker 1: can walk in the bank and say, I'd like some change.
- 12:56Speaker 1: That's kind of neat. So President Trump's picture on the
- 13:00Speaker 1: two hundred and two hundred fifty dollars bill. I'll tell you,
- 13:03Speaker 1: the only thing that surprised me, surprises me about this
- 13:07Speaker 1: one is they're not creating a twenty five thousand dollars bill,
- 13:12Speaker 1: or how about this, a two hundred and fifty thousand
- 13:14Speaker 1: dollars bill with the president's picture on. I just this
- 13:18Speaker 1: measly two hundred and fifty dollars. Come on, you can
- 13:21Speaker 1: do better than that. Okay. Now, lawsuits have been flying
- 13:28Speaker 1: all over the place. Whenever there's a new business or
- 13:31Speaker 1: a housing tract, andever it will be. There's the NIMBI
- 13:34Speaker 1: folks not in my backyard that want to put a
- 13:37Speaker 1: stop to anything that's close to a residential area. Environmental
- 13:42Speaker 1: impacts studies have to be ordered in the courts of
- 13:45Speaker 1: uphild those and that's one of the reason why housing
- 13:48Speaker 1: is so expensive in California because these rules and regulations
- 13:53Speaker 1: and impact studies and that's just the way we do it. Now,
- 13:58Speaker 1: let me tell you interest story. It starts with the
- 14:02Speaker 1: governor is now mandating that every all the state employees
- 14:07Speaker 1: go back to work at least four days a week.
- 14:10Speaker 1: That we're heretofore in offices, then went into remote working
- 14:13Speaker 1: at home because of the pandemic, and now the orders
- 14:16Speaker 1: come back to work. Well, there's some people that are
- 14:19Speaker 1: upset about it. So let me put the pieces together.
- 14:22Speaker 1: There's a state workers' union and there are these unions
- 14:26Speaker 1: that are jumping aboard big time, and they are using
- 14:31Speaker 1: that law which says that the state or anybody agency
- 14:37Speaker 1: or business much must consider impact, traffic impact, fossil fuels impact,
- 14:47Speaker 1: and they're using that to stop the governor's order to
- 14:50Speaker 1: go back to work. Wow. They've sent letters to one
- 14:55Speaker 1: hundred state departments arguing that the return to office order
- 15:00Speaker 1: will require more than ninety thousand state employees to commute
- 15:04Speaker 1: four days a week and that's going to impact the environment.
- 15:09Speaker 1: That's their argument. It's a novel argument, and I got
- 15:12Speaker 1: to tell you it looks like it may work. The
- 15:15Speaker 1: California Environment Quality Act requires agencies to complete a report
- 15:20Speaker 1: on the additional carbon dioxide emitted from more drivers on
- 15:23Speaker 1: the road before this order comes in. At least that's
- 15:27Speaker 1: what they're arguing. And so this bill requires that each
- 15:32Speaker 1: agency and department consider feasible alternatives, one of them being
- 15:38Speaker 1: we've been remote working for six years, and that is
- 15:41Speaker 1: a legitimate feasible alternative. And it's the latest attempt to
- 15:47Speaker 1: prevent the governor from carrying out this incredibly unpopular return
- 15:52Speaker 1: to office order. As a matter of fact, earlier this year,
- 15:56Speaker 1: some union sponsored a bill that would push it in
- 15:59Speaker 1: that direction. So the return to office order was the
- 16:03Speaker 1: later year, last June, because there were negotiations between the
- 16:07Speaker 1: administration and unions, and at that time several labeled UH
- 16:12Speaker 1: several labor groups filed lawsuits. And this is pretty terrific stuff.
- 16:18Speaker 1: I mean, I love this. Where this bill has traditionally
- 16:21Speaker 1: been used to block the construction of new housing, impact
- 16:26Speaker 1: studies to too many cars on the roads and the
- 16:30Speaker 1: impact on traffic fossil fuels being used to to to
- 16:38Speaker 1: make allow the cars to drive, just to be able
- 16:41Speaker 1: to function cars and trucks, et cetera. And so therefore
- 16:46Speaker 1: a law that says We're going to stop that kind
- 16:49Speaker 1: of driving helps the environment, helps climate the climate warming,
- 16:56Speaker 1: and helps the use of fossil fuels, the pollution, all
- 16:59Speaker 1: of it. We want to stay home now. We can't
- 17:03Speaker 1: just stay home in light of the governor, who legally
- 17:07Speaker 1: can say you've got to go back to work. You're
- 17:09Speaker 1: a state employee. You basically work for the state. And
- 17:14Speaker 1: who's head of the state, who's head of the executive Well,
- 17:18Speaker 1: of course the governor is. And if you work for
- 17:20Speaker 1: a state agency, you're working at the pleasure of the
- 17:24Speaker 1: governor unless you have civil service protection. But this isn't
- 17:27Speaker 1: another issue completely. And the governor has the right to
- 17:30Speaker 1: make policy, and that's exactly what he is doing. He
- 17:32Speaker 1: had the right to lift the mandate that you go
- 17:36Speaker 1: to work five days a week, and he has a
- 17:38Speaker 1: right now to rescind that mandate. And what they're saying,
- 17:42Speaker 1: and that, incidentally, working from home is kind of neat.
- 17:48Speaker 1: I will tell you right now, I work from home
- 17:52Speaker 1: for the most part. I am now sitting in my
- 17:55Speaker 1: home office or my home studio. And I used to
- 18:00Speaker 1: have a twenty minute commute from my house before I
- 18:03Speaker 1: moved to Orange County. I used to have a twenty
- 18:06Speaker 1: minute commute, and I have to get up and I
- 18:08Speaker 1: have to shower, and then I would jump in the
- 18:11Speaker 1: car and drive twenty minutes. Well, these days I have
- 18:15Speaker 1: a thirty foot commute and I'm not showering because I
- 18:20Speaker 1: don't care. Right now, I am in my sleepy shorts
- 18:24Speaker 1: and I throw a shirt on and that makes life easier. Now,
- 18:28Speaker 1: if the station said you must work from the station,
- 18:33Speaker 1: I would argue, well, look a much time that I
- 18:36Speaker 1: spend I could be using it preparing the show. I mean,
- 18:39Speaker 1: I have all kinds of reasons. What the state employees
- 18:43Speaker 1: are saying is that our reasoning is that forcing us
- 18:47Speaker 1: to drive in is a question of pollution. And we're
- 18:50Speaker 1: talking ninety thousand people, a question of pollution, all kinds
- 18:55Speaker 1: of environmental impacts, traffic. These are the reasons. And using
- 19:00Speaker 1: the same law to stop construction, are they going to win? Yeah.
- 19:06Speaker 1: I think they have a really good argument. It's kind
- 19:10Speaker 1: of interesting that these are lawyers that come up with
- 19:12Speaker 1: this stuff, and that is okay, let's come up with
- 19:15Speaker 1: the reasons why we want to stay at home. Hugely
- 19:18Speaker 1: popular and I would do it now. Kono has no choice.
- 19:21Speaker 1: He has to be there. Will you could be at home,
- 19:25Speaker 1: and do you I am now and then, But okay,
- 19:28Speaker 1: it's you know, it depends on the internet too. The
- 19:31Speaker 1: internet's shaky and sometimes we have issues. Yeah, I don't care. Amy,
- 19:35Speaker 1: if you could, would you work at home? Nope?
- 19:38Speaker 4: I worked at home at one of my during the pandemic,
- 19:41Speaker 4: I was always here. But at my other job, I
- 19:43Speaker 4: worked at home, and I didn't like it.
- 19:46Speaker 1: All right, And Michelle, if you could, would you work
- 19:50Speaker 1: at home, because you easily.
- 19:51Speaker 3: Could, No, I wouldn't. I worked here all through the pandemic.
- 19:56Speaker 3: I hated any day that I had to.
- 19:58Speaker 1: Work at home. I don't understand.
- 20:01Speaker 4: I used to sneak into the office, like they'd go,
- 20:04Speaker 4: don't come in. I'm like, I need to come in
- 20:06Speaker 4: because there's some things I have to do. I was
- 20:07Speaker 4: in here the whole pandemic.
- 20:09Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't understand that. I don't.
- 20:12Speaker 4: It's the people, Bill, it's the people.
- 20:14Speaker 1: What people exactly, Well, there aren't.
- 20:16Speaker 4: There weren't a lot of people around, like people don't.
- 20:19Speaker 1: Oh, okay, I'm sorry. I misunderstood. You come in because
- 20:23Speaker 1: you like people. I don't get that. You have to
- 20:26Speaker 1: explain that to me at some point. Okay, Now, the
- 20:30Speaker 1: entire world. Almost every country smoking has decreased dramatically. One
- 20:36Speaker 1: country in the world smoking has actually increased. China. China.
- 20:43Speaker 1: Are you ready for this stat? China is the smoking
- 20:48Speaker 1: capital of the world and half of the global use
- 20:53Speaker 1: of tobacco half is China of around the world. I
- 20:58Speaker 1: mean that is prettysive stuff, because I don't know if
- 21:02Speaker 1: you've ever been to China or seen pictures of China.
- 21:05Speaker 1: If you look at any photo, for example, a maternity
- 21:09Speaker 1: ward where the babies are placed in those basinettes, half
- 21:14Speaker 1: those kids are smoking. And we're talking about kids that
- 21:17Speaker 1: are two months old, three months old, several days old.
- 21:20Speaker 1: There they are with cigarettes between their fingers. China really
- 21:24Speaker 1: goes into smoking. Now are their laws sure? There are
- 21:29Speaker 1: is their policy against smoking? Of course there are President
- 21:33Speaker 1: g for example, who used to smoke and no longer smokes,
- 21:36Speaker 1: is a big fan of not smoking because the same
- 21:40Speaker 1: problem as occur. You've got tons of heart disease, lung cancer, etc.
- 21:44Speaker 1: All the negative second hand smoke, which doesn't exist in
- 21:48Speaker 1: China for some reason. No one is victim of secondhand smoke,
- 21:53Speaker 1: but you know what, everybody ignores it for some reason.
- 21:55Speaker 1: The Chinese smoke like crazy. If you've ever been to
- 21:59Speaker 1: China and you go and literally everybody has a cigarette
- 22:05Speaker 1: in their hands between their fingers. I mean everybody. I
- 22:10Speaker 1: mean restaurants and bars and museums. I mean there's no
- 22:15Speaker 1: place that doesn't have smoking. Plenty of laws out there.
- 22:19Speaker 1: It's illegal to smoke in restaurants. You can't even vape
- 22:23Speaker 1: in restaurants. It's illegal to smoke in enclosed spaces like buildings,
- 22:29Speaker 1: just like here. The problem is no one pays attention
- 22:34Speaker 1: at all. You know why because half of the money
- 22:39Speaker 1: that people pay for their cigarettes goes to the government,
- 22:44Speaker 1: and it is a huge amount of revenue that comes
- 22:47Speaker 1: in in China, like many other countries, there's a lot
- 22:51Speaker 1: of deficit going on. They're the same position that we are.
- 22:54Speaker 1: We're in deficit spending and the government desperately needs every
- 22:58Speaker 1: dime that comes in. And so in China, on the books,
- 23:03Speaker 1: you can't smoke, but there's too much money in it.
- 23:06Speaker 1: Where the amount of money that comes into China, the
- 23:08Speaker 1: revenue of that government is seven percent of the entire
- 23:12Speaker 1: budget comes from the sale of cigarettes. They're not going
- 23:16Speaker 1: to stop that, and so it's kind of fun. There
- 23:20Speaker 1: are warnings, by the way, on cigarette packs and you
- 23:24Speaker 1: need a microscope to read them. In the meantime, if
- 23:28Speaker 1: you look at the labels happy pandas dancing around the
- 23:35Speaker 1: logos and in tiny little print, smoking may cause health issues.
- 23:42Speaker 1: So if you ever go to China and you know
- 23:45Speaker 1: what they call Chinese food in China, by the way,
- 23:50Speaker 1: they call it food, I just wanted to point that out. Okay,
- 23:56Speaker 1: fair enough, AI story about AI and the hospitality industry
- 24:04Speaker 1: and how they're connected. Wait a minute, isn't AI stopping jobs?
- 24:08Speaker 1: Isn't it cutting jobs? Not necessarily. I'll share that story
- 24:11Speaker 1: with you when we come back. This is KFI AM
- 24:14Speaker 1: six forty.
- 24:15Speaker 2: You've been listening to the Bill Handle Show. Catch my
- 24:18Speaker 2: show Monday through Friday six am to nine am, and
- 24:21Speaker 2: anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app