Speaker 1: Well, the city council might only give you sixty seconds
Speaker 1: to where your grievance is.
Speaker 2: Oh hi, i'd like to start go to the first
Speaker 2: caller on the phone.
Speaker 1: Well, if you're lucky, now we're giving you a full
Speaker 1: sixty minutes. It's a KABC News Blitz with Randy Wang
Speaker 1: and our long recap of the day's top local stories
Speaker 1: flung your drive home, and unlike the city Council, we're
Speaker 1: the perfect vehicle to actually get your voice heard. The
Speaker 1: KADC News Blitz with Randy Wang starts no.
Speaker 3: It is the News Blitz with Randy Wang on Talk
Speaker 3: Radio seven ninety KABC. This is your daily rundown of
Speaker 3: everything you need to know that's going on in southern
Speaker 3: California as well as the Bay Area, Sacramento, and San Diego.
Speaker 3: I compile a list every single day of all the
Speaker 3: stories that I think you need to know about, stories
Speaker 3: that you may have missed at Randywangradio dot substack dot com,
Speaker 3: and make sure you check out all of our on
Speaker 3: demand content at Johnny don't like dot com or Randywangradio
Speaker 3: dot com. They literally go to the same place, but
Speaker 3: I figure, why not buy two domains? That is the
Speaker 3: live John Phillips Show from noon to three every day,
Speaker 3: every weekday, and all of the on demand content the
Speaker 3: best segments from that show I post those the Accountability Podcast.
Speaker 3: Please check out all five episodes of our podcast if
Speaker 3: you have not watched them yet, you can also listen
Speaker 3: to them by searching for Accountability Podcast wherever you get
Speaker 3: your podcasts. And I even post videos of this show
Speaker 3: the News Blitz, so you can watch me give you
Speaker 3: the news. It's a good time. It's very intimate, it's
Speaker 3: just you and me. We start with the great data
Speaker 3: center debate. CBSLA actually went inside a data center in Irvine,
Speaker 3: and the first thing you need to know is that
Speaker 3: this data center that they investigated has been open for
Speaker 3: twenty years. I understand there are a lot of concerns
Speaker 3: and there are a lot of fears about what's going
Speaker 3: to happen with AI. Doesn't mean that a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of people are going to lose their jobs. I understand
Speaker 3: all of that, but I feel like the fear among
Speaker 3: specifically data centers and data centers don't necessarily even mean AI. Again,
Speaker 3: this one in Irvine has been around for twenty years,
Speaker 3: and some of the server space powers the data for hospitals,
Speaker 3: some of it provides for other companies. All kinds of
Speaker 3: businesses use servers and use data centers. Now, these aren't
Speaker 3: as massive as the ones that are being talked about
Speaker 3: in other states, but we've had these in California for
Speaker 3: a very long time, and I think it's one of
Speaker 3: those situations where rumors get spread on the internet, and
Speaker 3: because it's hard for us in the age of the
Speaker 3: Internet to really deem what's true, you hear something enough
Speaker 3: times and you just believe it. So one of the
Speaker 3: things that people say, oh, we don't want this, we
Speaker 3: don't want the data centers is because of the noise.
Speaker 3: Well there is noise inside the data center with all
Speaker 3: the air conditioning running, but outside it just looks like
Speaker 3: a regular industrial building. Now, you might not want these
Speaker 3: in a residential neighborhood, that's fair, But in a place
Speaker 3: that's zoned for industrial or anything, I don't really see
Speaker 3: what the problem is here. The other big myth is
Speaker 3: that is a huge drain on resources, that it is
Speaker 3: a huge drain on power and a huge drain on water.
Speaker 3: And that can be true for some of these data centers,
Speaker 3: but a lot of them you're like, well, what is
Speaker 3: the water use. The water use is from powering the
Speaker 3: air conditioning, and you can use reclaimed and recycled water
Speaker 3: for that, so you're not using the regular water supply.
Speaker 3: And when it comes to the power, well, you can
Speaker 3: do solar, you can do all kinds of things to
Speaker 3: lower the impact on that. And honestly, I feel that
Speaker 3: like the anger towards rising energy costs should be pointed
Speaker 3: towards the energy companies that have found an excuse to
Speaker 3: raise their prices because of all of this demand. Because
Speaker 3: the other thing that we have learned, especially recently, is
Speaker 3: the current demand isn't anywhere near what was expected, even
Speaker 3: for all the AI data centers, because right now the
Speaker 3: applications for AI are not as widespread as everyone hoped
Speaker 3: it would be. Maybe we'll get there, you'll have the
Speaker 3: tech CEOs always talking about, oh, this next update is
Speaker 3: the game changer. But at the beginning of the year,
Speaker 3: a lot of companies that we're investing in building more
Speaker 3: of these data centers and building more infrastructures change their
Speaker 3: business model to actually leasing out the space they already
Speaker 3: have because the demand is going way down. When you
Speaker 3: talk about things like chat, GPT, and Claude. There are
Speaker 3: people that use it just as a curiosity. But when
Speaker 3: it comes to does it actually increase efficiency, increase sales
Speaker 3: in all kinds of businesses that we're paying for all
Speaker 3: of these credits to be determined. So maybe the demand
Speaker 3: will rise and maybe we will need it, but right
Speaker 3: now I feel like that is overblown as well. And again,
Speaker 3: these things power way more than AI. They power all
Speaker 3: kinds of things cloud computing. For instance, I do the
Speaker 3: live broadcast of the John Phillips Show through a web
Speaker 3: app called Restream, and Restream, which I love, by the way,
Speaker 3: works out really well for us. It takes my Internet connection,
Speaker 3: whether I'm broadcasting from the radio station, whether I'm broadcasting
Speaker 3: from home, which I'm doing right now, or whether I'm
Speaker 3: broadcasting from a hotel room with just a basic hotel
Speaker 3: Internet connection, and it takes my feed. And then I
Speaker 3: connect to somebody like John Phillips and it takes his feed.
Speaker 3: And then let's say we add a guest like Jennifer
Speaker 3: Van Laher or Mike Netter or Seneca Scott, it takes
Speaker 3: in their feed. The whole show is actually being hosted,
Speaker 3: not on my computer with my bandwidth. It's being hosted
Speaker 3: at a data center on a server farm. I don't
Speaker 3: even know where the cloud computing is hosting everything, using
Speaker 3: all the bandwidth, and then pushing out our product to
Speaker 3: YouTube and Facebook and Twitter and Twitch all at the
Speaker 3: same time. That would not be possible without data centers.
Speaker 2: Now, this one's more of a lark.
Speaker 3: But the silly little graphics that I create for this show,
Speaker 3: and obviously for the John Phillips Show, those use AI,
Speaker 3: and well people seem to be a big fan of those.
Speaker 3: And look, I think AI is slowly doing a whole
Speaker 3: bunch of things to make our lives a little easier
Speaker 3: here and there. And I do understand there are fears,
Speaker 3: but this is also people just get into these knee
Speaker 3: jerk reactions, which turns into what is plagued California for many,
Speaker 3: many men years. And there are legitimate concerns around every corner.
Speaker 3: We've even had guests this week where we talk to
Speaker 3: people that were opposed to a development in Woodland Hills.
Speaker 3: We talk to people that were opposed to a bus
Speaker 3: rapid transit line in Burbank, and there are legitimate.
Speaker 2: Concerns to both of those.
Speaker 3: Course, there are, especially when it comes to clogging up
Speaker 3: the streets with a bus rapid transit line. When it
Speaker 3: also comes to making sure that there is fire access
Speaker 3: for building a development in the Woodland Hills fire zone area.
Speaker 3: I understand all of that, but this is the attitude
Speaker 3: that got California to a point where we don't build
Speaker 3: things and it takes forever to build things. This kind
Speaker 3: of attitude of well, we don't want this and we
Speaker 3: don't want that, because these things are coming whether you
Speaker 3: like them or not, and we can either take the
Speaker 3: economic benefit we get from them, or they're going to
Speaker 3: be built in Texas, They're going to be built in Utah.
Speaker 2: If you don't want.
Speaker 3: Them literally in your neighborhood, okay, but what's the big
Speaker 3: deal about having one of these in an industrial center?
Speaker 3: Because again, the top line thing that you need to
Speaker 3: know if you're freaked out about data centers is we've
Speaker 3: had them for a very long time and you only
Speaker 3: realize that recently, and you only realized what they were recently.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of these fears are completely unfounded.
Speaker 2: Whether it's the noise, whether it is.
Speaker 3: The use of resources, or the proliferation of AI. It's
Speaker 3: just a building with a bunch of servers in air conditioning,
Speaker 3: so I do not. I think this is one of
Speaker 3: these things where people hear something and they play telephone
Speaker 3: or fantastic board game, tell illustrations.
Speaker 2: Look it up. You will love it.
Speaker 3: Where you hear something, you repeat it to somebody else,
Speaker 3: except it's not the exact same thing, and then they
Speaker 3: repeat it to somebody else, and then all of sudden
Speaker 3: you have a situation like I wasn't gonna tell this story,
Speaker 3: but I have to because it is the funniest thing
Speaker 3: that I have heard all week. So one of my
Speaker 3: closest friends is a big fan of sparkling water. As
Speaker 3: I am, I am drinking a Trader Joe's Tangerine Vanilla
Speaker 3: sparkling water.
Speaker 2: As we do this show very good.
Speaker 3: My friend really likes the brand Liquid Death, which is
Speaker 3: some of the smartest marketing I have ever seen. They
Speaker 3: came out around COVID and it is just water, bottled water,
Speaker 3: flavored water, well not bottled but canned water, flavored water,
Speaker 3: sparkling water and like much healthier soda option. But they
Speaker 3: call themselves Liquid Death, and the branding is fantastic, especially
Speaker 3: for people that you know, want to hold something that
Speaker 3: looks like they're drinking a tall Boy, but they don't
Speaker 3: drink It is a very, very, very popular brand. So
Speaker 3: we're doing trivia the other night with my friend and
Speaker 3: she tells me that she and her girlfriend are no
Speaker 3: longer drinking Liquid Death and I'm like, wait, you love
Speaker 3: Liquid Death and the girlfriend's like, yeah, she won't let
Speaker 3: me drink it anymore. She saw on TikTok that it
Speaker 3: contains arsenic and I said, what, There's no way that's true,
Speaker 3: and she said, yeah, no, that's what I saw. And
Speaker 3: so she had autoshipments of Liquid Death on Amazon that
Speaker 3: she canceled and then switched to another less tasty brand.
Speaker 3: So we asked, can you send us this video?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll look for it.
Speaker 3: Why again, do you think that it's not safe to
Speaker 3: drink this stuff that's in every single grocery store. Oh
Speaker 3: well they banded in Europe. Do a quick Google search.
Speaker 3: No they didn't do a quick Google search. Does Liquid
Speaker 3: Death have arsenic in it?
Speaker 2: No it doesn't. So I'm so confused.
Speaker 3: Where did she get this information and why does she
Speaker 3: think Liquid Death contains arsenic to the point where she
Speaker 3: had to completely change her drinking habits of sparkling water.
Speaker 3: The next day, she sends us a text message in
Speaker 3: one of our friend group chats, Hey, I found the video.
Speaker 3: It didn't even say anything about liquid death. That was
Speaker 3: completely wrong about that. I've reordered the stuff. And this
Speaker 3: is what happens in our age of too much information.
Speaker 3: You hear something, maybe you have an emotional reaction to it,
Speaker 3: and maybe you are only half listening or half paying attention,
Speaker 3: as we all do when we're doom scrolling on our phone,
Speaker 3: and all of a sudden, something that you heard wrong
Speaker 3: or you weren't really paying attention to gets edged in
Speaker 3: your brain as fact, and it makes you make irrational
Speaker 3: decisions based on nothing. Now I'm not directly comparing the
Speaker 3: liquid death thing with the fear over data centers, but
Speaker 3: I think it's very important that we all get educated
Speaker 3: on the subject. Realize that these are just buildings with servers.
Speaker 3: We've had them for decades, and they're not really that
Speaker 3: big of a deal. And so while it might feel
Speaker 3: real good emotionally to ban them in places like Monterey
Speaker 3: Park and Gilroy doesn't want them on unused farmland, that
Speaker 3: just means that your cities are going to lose out
Speaker 3: on the tax benefits, on the job benefits, and all
Speaker 3: kinds of other things, because we have arbitrarily decided that
Speaker 3: this business is bad and it is based on a
Speaker 3: bunch of whoy.
Speaker 2: That is at least my opinion.
Speaker 3: If you have a different opinion, maybe you find yourself
Speaker 3: to be more educated on this subject than me.
Speaker 2: Send me an email.
Speaker 3: It's very easy to do so at randywangradio at gmail
Speaker 3: dot com. That's Randy Wang radio at gmail dot com.
Speaker 3: I have no problem with the data centers. Again, maybe
Speaker 3: you think it's a noise thing. Well, if you live
Speaker 3: next to one and there's a lot of noise, please
Speaker 3: tell me about it. Because I literally had somebody. When
Speaker 3: we were talking about this the other day. We got
Speaker 3: a lot of response on the email, including from one
Speaker 3: guy who sent me a message, well, I heard they're
Speaker 3: really loud. Yeah, but did you hear the loud noises?
Speaker 3: Did you were you next to one? Or did you
Speaker 3: just hear that from somebody who heard it from somebody else.
Speaker 3: This is true for so many different aspects of our life.
Speaker 3: It's why you know, as somebody that delivers the news
Speaker 3: to you, I trade and make sure that I'm never
Speaker 3: pushing out any unwonted fears, and I have my facts
Speaker 3: straight on everything. Even though I'm not technically a journalist,
Speaker 3: I still feel that I have to do that as
Speaker 3: I give you the news. It's the News Blitz with
Speaker 3: Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. It's the
Speaker 3: News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC. In the age
Speaker 3: of technology that we are moving into, there is a
Speaker 3: Bay Area startup that has started to put out there
Speaker 3: robot maids, and this is way more than a roomba,
Speaker 3: but it's still not Rosy the robot and Rosy the
Speaker 3: robot didn't really have like the best hands to be
Speaker 3: picking up things and sweeping and mopping, but it worked
Speaker 3: in a cartoon. But we are at a point where
Speaker 3: we're going to start seeing robotics. I've been listening to
Speaker 3: a lot of podcasts on this stuff lately, and there
Speaker 3: are some things that AI and robotics can do better
Speaker 3: than humans. But when it comes to like physical manipulation
Speaker 3: of things with your hands, robots are not nearly as
Speaker 3: adept as we are, and will not be for a very,
Speaker 3: very very long time. When you talk about specifically things
Speaker 3: like cleaning, when you talk about things like sweeping up
Speaker 3: loading things into a dishwasher, being gentle. It's that kind
Speaker 3: of technology. Work quite a while from and they say, well,
Speaker 3: the maids that we have, it will be at a
Speaker 3: cheap price. I think it's like thirty dollars an hour
Speaker 3: for the robot. But how efficient is the robot. We
Speaker 3: have maids and we love them. My wife realized a
Speaker 3: long time ago that if she did not get house cleaner,
Speaker 3: she was gonna murder me. And we pay our maid
Speaker 3: and it's a woman and her niece and they come
Speaker 3: every two weeks. Pay them one hundred and forty dollars.
Speaker 3: It makes our life way easier. I don't see replacing
Speaker 3: them with robots ever, because I trust these people. They
Speaker 3: do a fantastic job, and I feel like I am
Speaker 3: contributing to the economy in a great way. You know,
Speaker 3: not only am I getting a huge benefit out of it,
Speaker 3: but they're making money.
Speaker 2: I don't see hiring a robot to do that.
Speaker 3: Even if it is a little cheaper, because well, for
Speaker 3: certain things, maybe you want that personal touch, maybe you don't.
Speaker 3: Maybe you'd rather have a robot that's just sweeping around
Speaker 3: your house all day long.
Speaker 2: That's definitely possible.
Speaker 3: Does this mean though, that we are slowly but surely
Speaker 3: getting into the Wally future that was predicted in that
Speaker 3: movie from two thousand and eight, you know, the little
Speaker 3: one with the robot Wally and Eva. You remember how
Speaker 3: all the humans in that movie lived on an intergalactic
Speaker 3: cruise ship and they were all five hundred pounds on
Speaker 3: floating movable recliners and couldn't do anything for themselves. Are
Speaker 3: we at the beginning of that story? Is that possible?
Speaker 3: I mean maybe in like a few hundred years, Although
Speaker 3: if you listen to the AI CEOs, like next year,
Speaker 3: AI is going to be smarter than every human combined.
Speaker 2: And what is that going to mean? I don't really know.
Speaker 3: I don't think the AI robot maids are going to
Speaker 3: be completely changing that industry anytime soon. Some industries they will.
Speaker 3: I don't see for that one happening. It at least
Speaker 3: in the next few years. I'll be keeping my mates.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much. Hey, if you've ever missed in
Speaker 3: the episodes of this show, we have podcasts at wherever
Speaker 3: you get your podcast, search for the News Blitz with
Speaker 3: Randy Wang. You can also go to Randy Wang Radio
Speaker 3: dot com. Johnny don't like dot com because I put
Speaker 3: every episode of this show on video on demand, along
Speaker 3: with The John Phillips Show and The Accountability Podcast.
Speaker 2: So check it all out.
Speaker 3: Randy Wang Radio dot com or Johnny don't Like dot com. Subscribe,
Speaker 3: hit the like button on every episode that you watch
Speaker 3: and leave a comment. We want to hear from you.
Speaker 3: It's the News Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC.
Speaker 2: It's the News Blitz.
Speaker 3: With Randy Wang on Talk Radio seven ninety KABC. This
Speaker 3: is your daily rundown of everything you need to know
Speaker 3: that is going on in southern California as well as
Speaker 3: the Bay Area, Sacramento, San Diego, and the Central Valley.
Speaker 3: I compile a list every single day of all the
Speaker 3: stories that I think you need to know about, the
Speaker 3: stories that I found interesting. You know, I usually go
Speaker 3: through about thirty stories and I whittle it down to
Speaker 3: fifteen to twenty. So there's plenty of stuff that I
Speaker 3: listen to them like this is not worth your time,
Speaker 3: but there is stuff that I find interesting that you
Speaker 3: find interesting that affects us, and it's all local. You
Speaker 3: will almost never hear me talk about national or international politics,
Speaker 3: and there's a specific reason for that. There are plenty
Speaker 3: of other places where you can get that information on
Speaker 3: every side of the political spectrum. But for the most part,
Speaker 3: this show is apolitical. It's about what's going on locally,
Speaker 3: and we talk about things that affect you, maybe in
Speaker 3: a lot bigger sense than what goes on in Washington
Speaker 3: or what goes on around the world. One of the
Speaker 3: things that California is known for is being the big
Speaker 3: bigas state in the Union to have legal cannabis. We
Speaker 3: weren't the first, but we definitely are the biggest, and
Speaker 3: cannabis tourism is a thing, and we have done a
Speaker 3: whole lot of things recently to make it easier in
Speaker 3: the state of California to consume cannabis, including now you
Speaker 3: can buy food and drink at the pot lounges and
Speaker 3: make it feel like Amsterdam at a coffee shop. Yeah,
Speaker 3: spoiler alert, if you're ever in Amsterdam, the coffee shops
Speaker 3: are not coffee shops, and if you're actually looking for coffee,
Speaker 3: it can be kind of confusing. And no, I did
Speaker 3: not parteke in any space cakes or hashish or smoking
Speaker 3: in Amsterdam, because well, that part of my life is over.
Speaker 3: I did have Heineken and let me just tell you
Speaker 3: if you're ever in Amsterdam and you think Heineken taste
Speaker 3: like butt, which I did for many years, it's because
Speaker 3: it does not travel well. If you have it at
Speaker 3: the source, it's one of the best beers you will
Speaker 3: ever taste. Am still light the exact same thing.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: We'll get to the legal cannabis industry in a second,
Speaker 3: but I feel like I have to make this pitch
Speaker 3: to you. One of the things that I have really
Speaker 3: really loved in my travels around the world, which is
Speaker 3: something that I've only been doing for a little while now,
Speaker 3: is trying the local beverages. And while I do love
Speaker 3: wine and I do love spirits, and even in when
Speaker 3: I was in Amsterdam, I learned about Jinnvader, the Dutch
Speaker 3: version of gin, and I thought it was very good,
Speaker 3: especially when you do a kopstut, which is Dutch for headbutt,
Speaker 3: where you drink the Jinnovader with the beer back. Not
Speaker 3: as a shot, because again I'm forty, but I really
Speaker 3: love trying the local beers of a foreign country. I
Speaker 3: feel like you get a really good flavor not only
Speaker 3: for the country that you're in, but also the city
Speaker 3: that you're in and of course, when you're in Dublin,
Speaker 3: you're gonna try the Guinness, and I love the Guinness.
Speaker 3: Guinness was like, oh yeah, it's pretty good. And then
Speaker 3: you go to Dublin, you go to Ireland where it
Speaker 3: is made, and it is fantastic. But there are other
Speaker 3: Irish stouts that you may not know about. Beamish. I
Speaker 3: thought Beamish was fantastic. I tried a whole bunch of
Speaker 3: different Irish beers and was very happy, including a lot
Speaker 3: of Irish craft beers and some IPAs. When I was
Speaker 3: in Amsterdam, of course you had Honeken and amstell Light.
Speaker 3: And when I was in Toronto last week, I tried
Speaker 3: so many different Canadian beers and specifically all of them
Speaker 3: from the Ontario province and local ones. Found this bar
Speaker 3: called beer Town, which was it was maybe my favorite
Speaker 3: place we went to. Well, the steakhouse was pretty good,
Speaker 3: but that place was pretty excellent, and you could get
Speaker 3: a plank of four different local beers and they had
Speaker 3: one that was all different kinds of loggers, one that
Speaker 3: was all different kinds of IPAs, one that was all
Speaker 3: different kinds of sour. I got such a great taste
Speaker 3: for it, and I'm not a big beer drinker at
Speaker 3: home because my wife has a glute analogy. But when
Speaker 3: I'm traveling, it is a fun way to experience what
Speaker 3: the locals enjoy, especially when you're talking about the craft
Speaker 3: beer world, which you know it's huge here, especially in
Speaker 3: places like San Diego.
Speaker 2: But I love.
Speaker 3: Trying that stuff internationally Anyway. Some people don't like to drink.
Speaker 3: They like pot and whatever works for you. I learned
Speaker 3: about eight years ago that pot does not work for me.
Speaker 3: It makes me way too lazy, It makes me way
Speaker 3: too what's the opposite of ambitious? That But if it's
Speaker 3: good for you, I mean, it also gave me crippling
Speaker 3: anxiety the older I got. So I feel like for
Speaker 3: a lot of people it turns on you at some point.
Speaker 3: But if it's what you like, and maybe you just
Speaker 3: do the CBD, what have you. The problem with the
Speaker 3: legal cannabis industry in California is the way that we
Speaker 3: implemented it was incredibly stupid. Now there are some major
Speaker 3: hurdles because it's still illegal at the federal level, and
Speaker 3: you know, I was just hearing on the news today
Speaker 3: that this is still actually I heard it in this story, Mike,
Speaker 3: where did I hear this, Oh the story that I'm
Speaker 3: talking about from ABC ten as I was driving to
Speaker 3: my pilates class that you know, the federal government is
Speaker 3: still debating taking cannabis off of the Schedule one, which
Speaker 3: I thought the President like said, we're doing that, but
Speaker 3: you know, it's one of those things where everyone talks
Speaker 3: about it and it takes Congress of bazillion years to
Speaker 3: do anything. But one of the issues with cannabis being
Speaker 3: a Schedule one drug being classified in the same categories
Speaker 3: as cocaine and meth is it makes all of the
Speaker 3: legal cannabis businesses, whether you're talking about in California or
Speaker 3: in Colorado, what have you, not eligible to participate in
Speaker 3: the banking system. They cannot use banks for their business,
Speaker 3: which means a lot of them keep all of their
Speaker 3: cash on the premises in a safe, which means these
Speaker 3: places are very likely to get robbed. I don't like that,
Speaker 3: especially if they are operating within the letter of the law.
Speaker 3: We should have a banking system that works for them.
Speaker 3: So hopefully that gets resolved pretty soon. But there are
Speaker 3: other major challenges, which mostly have to do with California
Speaker 3: over taxing this product. And by the way, you should
Speaker 3: ask yourself where all that money has gone towards? All
Speaker 3: the tax revenue money from the cannabis tax, which was
Speaker 3: supposed to go towards things like drug treatment. You ever
Speaker 3: wonder what it's really going towards. I bet you lots
Speaker 3: of it's going towards harm reduction and other weird nonprofits
Speaker 3: that what have you. But let's fore get about where
Speaker 3: the money's going. But it is very interesting to wonder
Speaker 3: where it is. And let's just talk about why they're
Speaker 3: making it so expensive yet not going after the illegal market.
Speaker 2: Because when Prop. Sixty four was on.
Speaker 3: The ballot in what twenty sixteen, twenty eighteen, it was
Speaker 3: sold as we're going to wipe out the black market
Speaker 3: by legalizing this product that everyone was smoking anyway because
Speaker 3: of their medical cards. I had a medical card because
Speaker 3: I had insomnia and then my wife flies. You realize
Speaker 3: that is causing you you're insomnia. Yes, well, now we
Speaker 3: legalized it. We taxed it so high. Where the effective
Speaker 3: tax rate for a cannabis purchase, when you're talking about
Speaker 3: the excise taxes and the sales tax and the taxes
Speaker 3: the businesses have to pay it, it's like forty percent
Speaker 3: of what it costs to grow the stuff, and then
Speaker 3: there's taxes on top of that, so the product is
Speaker 3: artificially more expensive than it needs to be. And that's
Speaker 3: fine if there's nowhere else you can get it. But
Speaker 3: there are plenty of people who can buy this stuff illegally,
Speaker 3: whether it's just through a dealer somebody you know that's
Speaker 3: growing it. Because anybody can grow it, even though you're
Speaker 3: not really supposed to unless you have a permit. Anybody
Speaker 3: could grow it, you know. I had friends that had
Speaker 3: little grows. I never tried to do that. I can
Speaker 3: barely take care of the plants we have in the house.
Speaker 3: Oh boy, I forget to water my wife's plant in
Speaker 3: the office for the last three weeks. Okay, I need
Speaker 3: to do that as soon as I get off the air.
Speaker 3: Should be fine, right maybe whoops? Yeah, so I was
Speaker 3: never a grower. Don't use that as a drop. When
Speaker 3: you have situation where you've made it very expensive to
Speaker 3: do things the right way and there is little to
Speaker 3: no punishment for doing things the wrong way, to the
Speaker 3: point where you have illegal grows that are well known,
Speaker 3: and you want to talk about something that is using
Speaker 3: a lot of water. The illegal cannabis grows in places
Speaker 3: like the Antelote Valley. That's something you should be way
Speaker 3: more upset about than data centers, because those are definitely
Speaker 3: using a ridiculous amount of water to grow those crops,
Speaker 3: and they're not paying for the water rights, and they're
Speaker 3: operating illegally. They don't have licenses. They are selling at
Speaker 3: forty percent lower because they're not paying the taxes and
Speaker 3: we're not enforcing those laws. Whether it's just there's the
Speaker 3: occasional bus that you see, but the thing that really
Speaker 3: really really kind of just irked me earlier this year,
Speaker 3: it was like, wait, what almost had to do a
Speaker 3: double take when I heard this.
Speaker 2: Listen to an LA City.
Speaker 3: Council meeting because apparently our current city attorney, who was
Speaker 3: so bad at her job she got knocked out in
Speaker 3: the primary, says that they have no power to shut
Speaker 3: down an illegally operating pot store, whether it's a smoke
Speaker 3: shop that's selling things they're not supposed to, somebody that
Speaker 3: moved into a storefront that is leasing from a commercial
Speaker 3: property in a strip mall, but they do not have
Speaker 3: a license. We cannot shut them down. Why I don't
Speaker 3: understand it. I have the same issue when it comes
Speaker 3: to the very obvious illicit massage parlors. I have a
Speaker 3: strip mall, and I'll mention this all the time because
Speaker 3: it's so funny. There's a strip mall near my house.
Speaker 3: It's next to a seven to eleven. There are four
Speaker 3: potential stores that could be in there. Two of them
Speaker 3: are out of business, one's been vacant forever, one's at
Speaker 3: bakery that definitely closed a couple of years ago. But
Speaker 3: the two things that are thriving in there a smoke
Speaker 3: shop that is selling a whole bunch of stuff that
Speaker 3: should be illegal, like kretum and selling stuff I'm sure
Speaker 3: that is illegal like pot. And what's next to it
Speaker 3: a massage parlia with flashing lights.
Speaker 2: That say open late at night.
Speaker 3: And I always wonder if the reason a city attorney
Speaker 3: in a place like Los Angeles doesn't shut them down
Speaker 3: is because and why the landlords of these strip malls
Speaker 3: aren't evicting these tenants is because it's like who else
Speaker 3: is going to move in? And are we all on
Speaker 3: this commercial real estate bubble that is going to burst?
Speaker 3: Where if we actually shut down all these criminal enterprises,
Speaker 3: well then there'd be nobody to pay the rent to
Speaker 3: the landlord, and the strip malls would all go bankrupt.
Speaker 2: Just something to think about. It is interesting.
Speaker 3: There is a establish a place on Woodland and Victory,
Speaker 3: near the old Vayarta near Metro. That is, it's a
Speaker 3: strip mall that has been empty for a very long time.
Speaker 3: There's one building that is zoned to be a pot
Speaker 3: store that nobody will move into. There's one building that's
Speaker 3: zoned to be a restaurant, and every restaurant goes out
Speaker 3: of business in six months. Currently both places are completely
Speaker 3: empty and the only thing that does any business there
Speaker 3: is a Leo's Taco truck because everyone loves that alpast
Speaker 3: or taco. But it's like we've made it so impossible
Speaker 3: to do business the right way that there's been an
Speaker 3: empty storefront that is zoned for this in a very
Speaker 3: highly populated area and nobody wants to move in because
Speaker 3: we can't shut down the illegal competition, which is unacceptable.
Speaker 3: So this brings me to the insane thing that I
Speaker 3: heard at the La City Council, something that people voted
Speaker 3: on in June. Well, we can't shut down the illegally
Speaker 3: operating pot stores. So what if instead of shutting them
Speaker 3: down we sent them a bill to pay taxes, and
Speaker 3: it is something that people voted on in June, and
Speaker 3: the residents of the Los Angeles, whether they understood what
Speaker 3: that proposition was or didn't, voted to pass it. So
Speaker 3: good luck collecting the taxes on that. Until we knock
Speaker 3: down the illegal market and actually take it seriously. The
Speaker 3: illegal pop market is bigger today than it was before
Speaker 3: Prop sixty four. And until we lower the taxes in
Speaker 3: the fees to where they are reasonable that people can
Speaker 3: not only operate as a business the right way, but
Speaker 3: the consumer isn't so priced out that they will purchase
Speaker 3: it the right way. This market is a complete mess,
Speaker 3: and it completely deflates the argument that the super libertarians
Speaker 3: have that I probably had when I was in my twenties,
Speaker 3: that well, why don't we just legalize all drugs because
Speaker 3: that would get rid of the black market. Nope, not
Speaker 3: the way California did it.
Speaker 2: It's the News.
Speaker 3: Blitz with Randy Wang on KABC. It's the News Blitz
Speaker 3: with Randy Wang on KABC. The City Attorney of San Francisco,
Speaker 3: David Chu is cracking down on what he calls hotel
Speaker 3: booking scams where you're looking for a hotel room. Maybe
Speaker 3: it's in San Francisco, maybe it's in a place like Wyoming,
Speaker 3: and you Google. What you think is you know, where's
Speaker 3: the best deal. You think you're clicking on the hotel's website,
Speaker 3: but it is a third party website that is charging
Speaker 3: all kinds of fees, and it's way more expensive than
Speaker 3: it should have been, and trying to get a refund
Speaker 3: because you bought it at the wrong place is almost impossible.
Speaker 3: The city attorney wants to shut the kind of practice down.
Speaker 3: By the way, doesn't this sound exactly like the need
Speaker 3: tags websites that the state of California allows to operate
Speaker 3: because they're profiting from those ripoff fees. Interesting thing to
Speaker 3: think about. Here's what I will say, as somebody that
Speaker 3: books hotels quite frequently, I never use Google to try
Speaker 3: to figure out where's the best place to stay because Google,
Speaker 3: which is a service that I use a lot. I mean,
Speaker 3: YouTube is Google. I watch almost everything on that. I've
Speaker 3: had a Gmail account since two thousand and nine and
Speaker 3: it is my file cabinet for life. I use Google
Speaker 3: Gemini to make the AI images for this show and
Speaker 3: The John Phillips Show. But when I'm doing a Google search.
Speaker 3: I'm well aware that so many of the search results
Speaker 3: for things like when you're shopping for a hotel, well,
Speaker 3: they are coming from sponsored content and third party links.
Speaker 3: And it's one thing to search for a hotel, look
Speaker 3: up like on the map where the hotels are, and
Speaker 3: then find the real website for the hotel chain or
Speaker 3: the hotel if it's an independent operator. But it is
Speaker 3: so much smarter too if it is, like you know,
Speaker 3: if you're looking for stuff that are Hilton or Marriott properties,
Speaker 3: go straight on their websites, go on their apps.
Speaker 2: You can even pay for some things with points.
Speaker 3: You might get better rates any of these third party sites,
Speaker 3: whether it be the big ones that you know about,
Speaker 3: the travelocities, the expedias, or all of these ones that
Speaker 3: like when you shop on Google for a hotel, it'll
Speaker 3: be like, well, this website says it's way cheaper than
Speaker 3: everything else. Sometimes those are a scam, so try to
Speaker 3: book directly with everybody, or you know, sometimes I sound
Speaker 3: like a show for it, and I'd love to be
Speaker 3: somebody that endorses this. But the credit card companies really
Speaker 3: do a great job with booking travel, specifically American Express.
Speaker 3: We've booked hotels through them, especially when we're trying to
Speaker 3: use those hotel credits to go to places like San Francisco.
Speaker 3: They make the process really easy. And if you have
Speaker 3: American Express, it's like you have a little travel agent
Speaker 3: in your pocket that can make the system a lot easier.
Speaker 3: And you know that you're getting a good price, you
Speaker 3: know that you're getting good points, and you know that
Speaker 3: if there's any situation that comes up, the credit card
Speaker 3: company has got your back. I think Chas does a
Speaker 3: great job as well, because I have that card. We
Speaker 3: have booked hotels through Chase when we went to Europe.
Speaker 3: It worked really really well. So that's my advice book.
Speaker 3: Direct with the hotel chains, John would say, you know,
Speaker 3: your best option is to be like a hotel chain
Speaker 3: partisan he's a Hilton guy for everything, because then you're
Speaker 3: going to accumulate so many nights and so many points
Speaker 3: that you'll get Diamond status.
Speaker 2: Although there is a credit card hard for that.
Speaker 3: If you pay the annual fee, you'll get Diamond status,
Speaker 3: which means you get room upgrades and you get the
Speaker 3: free water bottles and the food credit, and sometimes that
Speaker 3: really pays off. But maybe you want to be a
Speaker 3: little more flexible because you're flying to places that may
Speaker 3: not have a bunch of Hilton's or Marriotts, although they
Speaker 3: do seem to have them almost everywhere. But I really
Speaker 3: like booking hotels and stuff through the credit card apps,
Speaker 3: and I feel like I'm a little more protected.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: The credit card company usually has your back in so
Speaker 3: many ways that these third party sites that are making
Speaker 3: money off of all kinds of hidden fees do not.
Speaker 3: It was also that story of the couple from San Francisco,
Speaker 3: you know, from San Diego. They were staying in Puerto
Speaker 3: Varta during the whole lockdown because of the cartel boss
Speaker 3: that got hit, and they were trying to get their
Speaker 3: money back from Expedia when they found a flight that
Speaker 3: was easier, and it was a nightmare to get that
Speaker 3: taken care of. So yeah, go through the credit card companies.
Speaker 3: That's my advice. I have a wonderful weekend everybody. We'll
Speaker 3: see you on Monday. If you need something to watch
Speaker 3: over the weekend, we get tons of content for you
Speaker 3: at Randywangradio dot com or Johnny Don't like dot com.
Speaker 3: Like everything that we have, Subscribe and leave a comment
Speaker 3: and see you Monday.