January 6, 2026 • 40 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (01/06) - John was sent a funny meme about the high-speed rail boondoggle. Joel Pollak comes on the show to talk about the launch of the California Post on Jan. 26th and what is wrong with California.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We're on every day
from one until four o'clock and every day as soon
as the show is over shortly after four, we post
the podcast John Cobelt's Show on demand, same as the
radio show, and you can get that on the iHeart
app as well. We are awaiting the arrival of Joel Pollock.
(00:24):
He is the opinion editor for the New California Post.
This is a sister publication of the New York Post,
which is going to launch on January twenty sixth. And
if you're familiar with the New York Post and its
style and how it goes after New York and Washington
politicians and issues, this is going to be entertaining because
(00:47):
the media, most of the media here in California, especially
in Los Angeles, is lazy, progressive, woke and just covers
either covers things stupidly and superficially, or covers the subject
matter is stupid and superficial, but there isn't much to it.
(01:11):
There is virtually no coverage of Sacramento, which is is
virtually no coverage of you know, La City Hall, and
the mayor. In fact, I got a great example of it.
I'm going to talk about later. I looked at two
of the local stations on their websites today because everybody's
going to run the first anniversary remembrance coverage of the fire,
(01:34):
and I'm looking at both of these two stories, and
they have nothing about all the scandals that have piled
up that's been reported on by the LA Times, primarily
nothing from beginning to end on how bad every level
of government behaved for the fire. And it's like, what, wow,
(01:57):
this is, this is this is bad. These aren't even
news operations. I don't even know what to call him anymore.
We'll get to that, but Joe Pollock is approaching the studio.
We're gonna have him on in a second now. This
this morning, somebody sent me one of those internet memes
and I don't normally spend a lot of time on them,
(02:18):
but this one is kind of funny. It was a
meme on high speed rail compared to other major US
construction projects, and they got a photo of the Hoover
Dam and underneath it says five years, one billion dollars,
and that's adjusted for inflation. Panama Canal ten years, fifteen billion,
(02:41):
the Transcontinental Railroad. Think about that. The railroad going from
the east to the West coast took him about six
years to build for a billion dollars in adjusted money.
And then the Lincoln Tunnel connecting New Jersey and New
York City underneath the Hudson River seven years, two point
(03:03):
three billion, comparing it to the California High Speed Rail
now in our eighteenth year and projected one hundred and
thirty billion plus. Sky's the limit on that, right. They
don't even talk about what the total projection is longer
than anything. It's taken longer than anything we've built in America,
(03:26):
and it's cost more than anything we've ever built in America,
and nothing's been built. Which leads me to a phone
call I had yesterday. And I'm going to be vague
about this because I don't know a lot firsthand, so
put this under the category of unproven rumor. But according
(03:49):
to my political insider, during the you notice this happened
during Christmas break, Gavin Newsom and Rob Bonto withdrew the
lawsuit against the Trump adminished ration because Trump had cut
off billions of dollars in high speed rail money. That
the federal government.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I was supposed to.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Kick in, and they have sued Trump forty fifty times,
and this was highly unusual. I don't know if they've
done this for any of the other lawsuits. They withdrew it.
They just dropped it quietly. It's like, why would he
do that. Usually, even when you know you're going to lose,
you rite out the appeals and you get cheap headlines
(04:30):
from continuing to vow defiance to Trump. They dropped this
thing well. According to my source, unverifiable unpproval, look for
possibly Newsom to finally pull out of high speed rail
entirely because it is such an albatross around his neck
(04:52):
to run for president. It's so easy to take cheap
shots at Newsom over this railroad thing. It's never going
to be built anyway. And the people that he's been well,
the people have benefited from this, the unions and the
various lobbyists, you know, a lawyer's construction, architectural engineering, that
(05:20):
whole crowd. They've been pretty well fed for the last
eighteen years. And they understand that finally the jig is
up on this thing. All right, You can't push this
scam much longer. And he's got to run for president
and he doesn't want this when it's going to come
up in every interview, is going to come up in
every debate, and he's just going to say, hey, look
(05:41):
I'm the one who pulled the plug on this thing. Okay,
I pulled the plug. The other governors, the other administrations,
they let it go and go and go. So just
watch for that, watch for possibly, and it's going to
time it to some key moment in the upcoming election cycle.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
And that our gas prices are going to drastically go
down to before he really gets into campaign mode, the
homeless situation's gonna ease.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, he's got a lot of stuff to take care of.
This is easy. I think he can stop this fairly easy.
The others, I don't know. You can't take a hole
for like ten or twenty years and then fix everything
in a matter of months just because you're running for president.
Well look who's here. It's Joel Pollock. Welcome Joel Pollock,
(06:29):
opinion editor for the California Post. And you're probably wondering,
what the hell is the California Post. Well, it's the
new sister publication to the New York Post. It's coming
out January twenty sixth. I'm really excited about this because
it is a really a tough market to look for real,
truthful news that matter to people and that we could
use on the show. Joel welcome. Good to be here.
(06:52):
Explain to everybody who if they're not excited about the
California Post, they will become excited. It's gonna come to
twenty and I assume it's going to have the same
look as.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
The New York Post, very similar.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
It's going to be a California paper, not a New
York paper. In California. It is the California Post, and
it is going to hold up a mirror to the
state and it's going to take interest in what's going
on here, and that means culture, politics, sports, everything, with
(07:27):
a view to creating a sense of community among California
readers as well as and this is where I come
in politically, maybe some political diversity in the mix, because
most of the other publications that are out there have
a left of center view, to put it mildly, and
the California Post is coming in with a different point
(07:48):
of view, one that tells readers you don't have to
accept things the way they are and the way I
look at it on the opinion page. I'm not pro
Republican or pro Democrat. My motto is we deserve better.
We deserve much better than what we're getting. And that's
a shared sentiment among California as no matter who you
vote for.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yes, I think most people want better and they're just baffled.
They feel powerless, they don't know nobody's interested in them,
and nobody in the media. It covers many of the
stories that are most important here. I mean there's virtually
no coverage what's going on in Sacramento, and very limited
coverage or what goes on in La with the mayor
(08:28):
and the city council, and just the overwhelming problems like
the homelessness and the crime. There's just no coverage, not
even biased slanted coverage. It just doesn't exist.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
You know what's crazy to me is we always hit
January first in California and there are the inevitable articles
laws that go into affect January first. How many hundreds
of laws are there going to be in California new laws?
And you always look back at that and say, well,
I don't remember them passing hundreds of laws where are
(09:00):
these hundreds of laws coming from Well, there are hundreds
of laws every year that are passed in Sacramento, and
the governor signs most of them. Veto's another of several hundred,
and we don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Much about them.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
If you try to work out, in terms of legislative
working days, how many of these bills could they actually read,
how many could they actually debate, how many would we
know about, how many would they have public input into.
It's just impossible to pass that number of bills in
the short working year of a California state legislator. So
(09:33):
Sacramento is a machine. It just moves these things through.
And there is this revelation on January first about everything
new that you're subjected to. I mean, how much coverage
was there, for example, of the new one point five
percent fee on anything with an embedded battery, I mean
my phone, your iPad there, did we have a conversation
(09:56):
about one point five percent more expensive? I thought we
were all about affordability now, but on January first, we
all now have to pay one point five percent extra
on anything with an embedded battery up to fifteen dollars.
So that's something that's going to hit ordinary Californian is hard.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's a aggressive tax. And did we have a debate
about it.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
No, because we're debating all these other things like transgender
parental notification, which is important, but that's just what we
know about. There are all these other bills that just
go right through. And you're right, there needs to be
more news coverage, more debate, and that happens when you
know there's an alternate perspective, if there's a clear second
side to the story, and we're not necessarily going to
(10:37):
get that from a political opposition, because Republicans have a
tiny minority now in the state legislature.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And unfortunately, it's a negative feedback loop.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Because the more of these one one party state policies
that get passed, the more the opposing party leaves the state.
I mean, Republicans have lost their voter base in California
in many places, the small business owners, the homeowners who
traditionally vote Republican, they've just decided to vote their feet.
And you can't blame people for doing that because it's
more effective in changing the circumstances of your own life.
(11:05):
And once again, I just saw the study came out
today California leads in one way, U haul rentals from
California out. Yes, and Newsom's trying to talk about state's
population rising again and so forth. Yes, you can pick
and choose statistics that make it look like he's doing
a good job. But people are voting with their feet.
And do you wait until the next election. Elections are important,
(11:26):
But do you wait until the next election to see
a change in new life or do you consider it
life change? In my case, living in the Pacific Palisades
which burnt down a year ago tomorrow, many people had
no choice. Now they're not living in La Now they're
not living in California. And that was a fire that
could have been contained. It could have been prevented from
becoming the disaster it was. It was actually the New
(11:48):
York Times and out of state paper that pointed out
this week that we know.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
About the eat and fire.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
We know about the Palisades fire, but there were about
half a dozen smaller fires that broke out on the
same day that didn't spread like that conditions, but they
didn't spread. Why didn't they spread while they were contained
in one way or another? So why weren't there fire
engines outside the Lachman fire burned scar at the top
of the Palisades. When the state and the city knew
that there was the possibility of a reignition up there.
(12:17):
Why why was there no water in the reservoir? Why
were there mobile water tankers? Let's say you had to
drain the reservoir. I mean I was able to get
into the burn zone because I'm a member of the media.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Police, fire and media were allowed in for three weeks.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
No residents were allowed back in until Donald Trump came
to town and said to Karen Bass in front of
the nation, why don't you just let these people back
to their lots.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
But I was able to get in there.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And Rick Caruso defended his village Mall in Pacific Palisades,
partly because he had about a dozen water tankers surrounding
the place. He had his own water supply. Now, President
Trump has his ideas about how to get more water
into the system, and Gavin Usom has his ideas. But
the oldest and easiest idea is just put water in
trucks and make the trucks available, you know. And it's
(13:01):
little things like that that we're not thinking about. And
the misgovernance happens because there's no alternate voice.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Let me stop you right there. We'll continue with Joel Pollock,
the opinion editor of the soon to be California Post,
debuting January twenty sixth.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
The Moist Line to complain about things is going to
be unveiled Friday, three, twenty and three fifty. You call
eight seven seven Moist eighty six and we'll record your
ranting and raving eight seven seven Moist eighty six, or
you can use the talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app.
We continue with Joel Pollock, the opinion editor of the
California Post, and that is going to be launching on
(13:46):
January twenty sixth. This is a sister publication to the
New York Post. It's going to look similar, but the
content's entirely different. This is not a California edition of
the New York Post. It's its own thing, and it's
going to be California news, politics, sports, culture, all of it.
And this should really shake things up. I mean, I
(14:08):
grew up in Northern Jersey. When I was a kid,
my dad worked in a factory and he used to
bring home the tabloid newspapers, the New York Dailien. It
is in the New York Post. So I grew up
to me that was a newspaper. New York Times was
like a lot of words. It was very densely britt
and it was very dull. But this kind of coverage
cuts to the heart and tells you exactly the thing
(14:32):
you want to know, often not focusing on what they
say publicly, but what really is going on behind closed doors.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Well, it's a really fun publication. I mean, the New
York Post is the kind of newspaper that people buy
in New York, even if they don't agree necessarily with
the opinions on the editorial page. I've got relatives in
New York who are left of center, and they buy
the New York Post because they love the covers. The
covers are funny, they're engaging, and they love the sport
(15:00):
orts coverage, which is the best of any of the papers.
And also they like the level on which the Post
talks to them. The New York Post and soon the
California Post they speak to readers where they are and
it's a conversation between the readers and the journalists.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Whereas The New York Times, the Washington Post.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
They tell you what to think, they tell you what
not to think, they tell you who not to listen to.
And I think it's just a more real conversation. It
is still very hard driven journalism. The people I'm working
with are incredible. I mean, they've pulled together an amazing
team of California journalists, some people from out of state,
but most people with a lot of experience here in California.
(15:39):
And these are the best pros and just outstanding people,
the kind of people who get up early and stay
at work late and just want to get the story
to you.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And I think you're right. It really hits you in
the heart.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
It's not just a newspaper that speaks to your mind,
although it does that, and that's my job on the
opinion page, but really it really goes for the heart
of the audience.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Now you and New York Post has plenty of exposs
plenty of exclusives, and you could tell they do the digging,
they do the old fashioned reporting. I'll give you an example,
like this morning, all the television stations are doing retrospectives
of the fire right because it's the one year anniversary,
(16:19):
so I'm looking at one from channel four NBCLA, and
I'm looking at one from CBS, which is channel two
and nine out here, and they go through like the
history of the fire. They comte they could almost completely
ignore all the controversies that you mentioned in your first
(16:42):
minute here with the empty reservoir. Why was that fire
engines not deployed to the original fire site, Blackman Fire,
and on and on and on, you know the whole list.
There's about twenty five things that got screwed up and
went wrong, and there's none of this in either article.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Right and the left wanted to talk about climate change.
That's still what they want to talk about. They say
this happened because we've had too many warm summers, and
never mind that we had two very wet winters. That's
also climate change, because there was more plant growth, more
fuel growth. They don't talk about the simple fact that
you have to clear brush near where people live and
(17:24):
that doesn't destroy the environment. That is part of preserving
the environment. You lose more of the environment if it
all goes up in flames. Yeah, and there just isn't
a conversation about the ordinary things that we need our
government to do because they're so busy with the extraordinary
utopian dreams and visions of.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
A perfect world.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
You know, why is there this obsession with climate change
among California policymakers. California, as big an economy as we have,
is a very very tiny fraction of the planet's emissions.
We could turn off all the lights in California and
it wouldn't make a difference to the overall problem if
you believe climate change is happening, and it would just
have zero effect, and whatever we saved in terms of
(18:05):
emissions would be quickly overrun by the Chinese and the
Indians who are just producing as many emissions as they
can possibly burn. So why aren't we talking about efficiency,
which everybody understands because things that are efficient are cheaper.
Why aren't we talking about the simple problems of not
having police to guide and evacuation, or not having firefighters
(18:25):
in the right place, or not having water in the reservoir.
You know, there are articles out there in some of
these mainstream media publications that try to debunk the idea
that the reservoir was a factor.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And I keep reading that one hundred and seventeen million gallons.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Yeah, and there's a kernel of truth to it, which
is that at some point, no matter how much water
supply you have, if everybody's turning on the fire hydrants
at the same time and you have houses burning down
on the pipes leaking into the street, you're creating so
much demand on the system that there's a pressure problem.
So you can't get that water through the hydrant at
sufficient pressure to run the hose.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So there's a point there.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
But then the obvious answer is, okay, but there are
other ways to use the reservoir. Why don't you have
helicopters dipping into the reservoir to get buckets of water?
How about those mobile water tankers like Rick Caruso had
driving up to a reservoir, filling up, driving back into
the fire zone. I mean, you need a ready supply
of water. And so, yes, there are some design flaws
in how all of these systems were built in the
(19:26):
twentieth century, mid twentieth century. They didn't anticipate the kind
of wildfires that we have seen over the last few years.
But you know, Gavin Newsom has been governor for two
terms now. He has presided over some of the worst
wildfires that we've seen. Why haven't we seen any movement
on that. He talks a good game on desalination and
(19:47):
building new reservoirs, but we haven't seen anything built or done.
I mean, that's the difference between a Gavin Newsom and
Donald Trump. You don't to like Donald Trump, but he
gets things done. He gets project built, and whatever you
have to do to get that ballroom in the White
House done, you know, he gets it done. And everyone's
complaining and this and that. You know, if you had
Trump running California, he would have filled that reservoir, the
site's reservoir. He would have made sure there was a
(20:09):
mobile army of water tankers to move into position for
any fire. It's not just enough to have the water
in the fire engines, because that's limited. You need much
more than that, which is why the private firefighters have
access to these mobile tankers. So we're talking about small things,
limited things that a common sense person would think about
(20:30):
if you were protecting your own home.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Do I have another supply of water somewhere?
Speaker 4 (20:34):
And somehow common sense just is absent completely in California
state government and governments everywhere really, but especially here, where
we tend to think about utopian visions of whatever it is.
We want to achieve Medicare for all. Was Gavin Newsom's
a big thing, you know. He launched that two years
ago and then had to cut it off last year
because the system was going bankrupt. So we need people
(20:56):
who are down to earth common sense, and that is
the voice of the California Post. We are speaking in
those terms and we're trying to find those solutions as well.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Can you say another segment?
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yes, sir?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
All right? Joel Pollock, opinion editor for the New California Post.
Coming January twenty sixth. Are you can have print copies too? Yes, well,
turns Mike back on.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah we will.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Oh really, all right? It could be something to look
forward to.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Guy.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I just love buying newspapers and opening them up. But
obviously it'll be on your mobile devices as well.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
You're listening to John Cobbel's on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
We're on every day one until four, and if you
miss anything after four o'clock John Cobel Show on demand.
That's the podcast same as the radio show, and you
can to listen to whatever you missed out On Tomorrow,
we're going to do a special show. They're having a
big demonstration in Pacific Palisades people angry with the lack
(21:53):
of lack of fire response, the lack of preparation, the
impossible bureaucracy that has kept many from rebuilding quickly. And
the name of this demonstration is called They Let Us Burn.
They Let Us Burn, And it's going to be a
ten thirty tomorrow morning at Palisades Village corner of Antioch
(22:15):
and Swarthmore, And we're going to go and we're going
to be talking to people, recording it and then playing
it back during our regular show tomorrow between one and four.
If you're interested, you can go to They Letusburn dot com.
You can RSVP let them know you're coming. There's no
tickets or anything that you have to buy. They just
want to get an idea to size the crowd. And
(22:37):
it's going to be a lot of speakers, a lot
of residents and business owners, some local politicians, and people
are going to talk about how they feel about the
massive failure on every level of government that's lasted now
for a year. We have with us Joel Pollock. He
is the opinion editor of The California Post, which is
(23:00):
launching January twenty sixth online and also there'll be paper copies.
It looks like the New York Post, except it's all
about California, California news, politics, culture, sports, And it's very
exciting because this should really shake up the sleepy, moribund
(23:20):
media environment here. Why do you think people put up
with what they put up with here in California? I
mean every day I go through the gas prices, right,
and the average gas price now is about two to
eighty across the country, and we're at four fifty. And
(23:40):
you know, I mean I normally. I mean in France,
when they had a gas tax increase a few years ago,
they started setting fire to Paris, right, the Yellow vest riots.
And that's what I've known all my life. When the
gas prices get that far out of whack, people get
really angry and crazy, and people, politicians lose their jobs.
(24:03):
Why are we taken four point fifty compared to two
maty when it's going for alleged climate change programs which
have had no effect.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
I think because life here is simply so nice.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
We put up with.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Many things that other people wouldn't put up with in
other states. And a friend of mine asked me, why
are you, as a conservative still in California when so
many conservatives have left, and I said, well, they can't
ruin the mountains and they can't ruin the ocean. And
then a year ago they ruined the mountains and they
ruined the ocean. But I think people will put up
(24:41):
with it until they've had enough. And there are certain
issues on which Californians have stood up. For example, on
the issue of racial preferences. Twice now, Democrats have tried
to enshrine racial preferences in law, and twice California voters
have said no. And these are the same voters who
(25:01):
chose Joe Biden two to one over Donald Trump. In
the same election they voted against Proposition sixteen, which was
the Democrat's effort to reverse Prop two oh nine, which
was the proposition that banned racial preferences in state government
education and so forth. So I think there's a level
of common sense, a kind of bedrock here that does
(25:22):
eventually offer some resistance to the craziness. The problem is
is it too late by the time you get to
that bedrock to undo the damage. And that's I think
where we come in, because you have to have a
forum where you can raise these issues and you're not
called an extremist, and you're not called a racist or
a sexist or whatever, and people listen to you. And
(25:46):
I think we're watching disaster after disaster unfold around our state,
and it really is only a matter of time before
it happens to you. I think that we were quite isolated,
happily in Pacific Palisades, thinking that the problems of the
rest of La haven't really caught up to us yet.
We're on a nice little hill it's a little hard
for criminals to climb or whatever.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
We thought we were in splendid isolation. And then the
fire came rushing down the mountain and that was the
end of that. And suddenly all of the incompetence and
all of the bureaucracy that other Angelinos had to deal
with was staring us in the face. And that's why
there's only been one house that burned down that's being
rebuilt start to finish in a year. That's why we
(26:28):
still have the reservoir now being emptied, and that's why
we don't have the city council doing anything about the
permitting fees. I mean, you've got to pay thirty forty
thousand dollars just to file your permits to rebuild when
you lost your house. And part of the reason you
lost your house was because the fire department frankly didn't
have enough engines in place.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
So why should we pay again for the city's failure?
Speaker 4 (26:48):
And it's starting to be impossible to ignore it.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Now.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
We've got this election coming up, and it's not really
an election yet. It's not really a contest at least
at the mayor level. We've got Karen Bass right now
looking like she's going to be reelected unless someone jumps
into the race who can really challenge her. On the
gubernatorial level, the governor's race, there are all these Democrats
in the race, and they're spreading that out so thin
that it's possible you could have two Republicans in the
(27:12):
general election. I think that's the only way you're going
to get some change. So right now there is a
slim possibility something happens. But eventually people do have to
wake up and say, we want to be California.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
We don't want to be Texas, but we.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Want California to work, and we've got to do some
Texas things to make California work. In fact, Texas today
looks like California in the seventies. In many ways, we
want to take what was good in that past and
apply it to the present.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
It talks about how people tend to enjoy how nice
California is. It's primarily the weather, and so they put
up with a lot of nonsense. But what I've seen,
especially in the past ten years, is the nonsense, the homelessness.
For example, I mean, you get seventy thousand bodies in
La County, many of them drug zombies, mental patience, and
(28:05):
that has destroyed the nice stuff. It's made it impossible
just to walk to the grocery store because you've got
to dodge a crazy guy. My wife and I were
chased by a guy who's holding a metal pipe. Just
drive it stop. We're stopped at a light, I say, said,
d boulevard, look at the rear of your mirror, and
here comes this guy. And it's like, well, how long
(28:27):
can you put up with this? And so the nice
stuff has been overwhelmed, and I got to believe there's
going to be some rebellion to get this against this
at some point. But I don't, like you said, I
don't see the political figure or who's captured that lightning.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
It hasn't happened yet, and we'll have to see what
the choices are this year as we go to the polls,
or as we.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Go to the mailboxes and try to vote by mail.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
But I do think that part of that also comes
from not being able to imagine an alternative. When you
have a media that largely falls in line behind the
one party state that we have here, it is very
difficult to think that there could be an alternative. But
once you have alternative voices, and you have that in radio,
(29:14):
you have that on some podcasts, but we also need
it in newsprint, and you need an alternative voice, an
alternative forum, so that people can start to remember and
remind each other that things don't have to be that way.
We don't have to accept that kind of hardship, which
I've had as well. I've been chased by homeless people.
I had a homeless guy knock on my window earlier
or last year now with my kids in the car.
(29:36):
It's crazy and it's not something anybody should have to
put up with.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
It's not normal.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Well, you've been in the print internet media for a
long time. What is it about the news directors, the assignment, editors,
the producers in television that they don't want they do
not cover these stories anymore. Are they so ideologically blinded?
Because I go to dinner or go to a New
Year's party and everybody is talking about all the trouble
(30:03):
they say in the streets and about whether they should
finally bail out and move and I mean everybody. And
you turn on the TV and it's all happy talk
and fluff and nonsense. And I'm thinking, isn't there one
news producer, one news director who says, you know, we
got a market here that we should serve, and it
would be the right thing to do. Since you have
(30:23):
a license to broadcasting, you have a news department is
to do the public service of telling people what's wrong
and why and how to make it better. Why don't
they want to do that.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
It's because you get all kinds of abuse if you're
the one journalist who breaks ranks or the one public
official who breaks ranks. You know, there was a sheriff
of La County, Alex Villanueva, and he was a Democrat.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
I think he's since become a Republican.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
He was the one guy who went out there and
maybe he was a good sheriff. Maybe he was a
bad sheriff in general. I can't judge his overall performance,
but when we had homeless people living in tents on
the beach in Venice, he went out there and said
we're getting all these tents off the beach by July fourth,
and he took all kinds of flak in the media,
and the Board of Supervisors of La County basically made
it impossible for him to win reelection, and they got
(31:12):
the voters to pass a resolution or a referendum that
allowed the board to overrule the voters if.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
They reelected this guy.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
I mean, if you go against the status quo, you're
going to get hit with everything the status quot has
to hit you with, unless you have people standing up
for you and defending you. And you know, I worked
for Breitbart News for fifteen years based here in LA
and Andrew Breitbart was a guy who would get out
there and take the slings and arrows for other people.
And the California Post is going to be a publication
(31:41):
that defends people who just want the ordinary things in
life that they're entitled to have as citizens, as taxpayers,
as law abiding people. And that's what is needed. Once
you have an alternative voice, then you start to see
different decisions being made in the newsroom. Well, we could
ignore that story, but then the post people are going
to get it. Let's go cover that. You know, you
(32:03):
mentioned Tim Waltz in the break. Everybody ignored the Somali
fraud story. I was writing about it in twenty twenty
four when he was on the presidential ticket with Kamala Harris,
and I was writing about how there was this feeding
our Future scandal where billions of dollars were lost, and
I was picking it up from a conservative blog in Minnesota,
(32:23):
power Line. The power Line blog, they had written about it,
but it was frozen out of media. So now it's
this big revelation to everybody, but it's been out there
and everybody ignored it. There was a young guy, this
fellow I think, Nick Nick Shirley. Nick Shirley went door
to door and instead of covering what he was finding,
they went after him the mainstream.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I noticed that they were piled on him all week
until Walts finally resigned.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Right, so he gets Waltz to resign, but CNN went
to check his facts, not to check whether there was
fraud in the system.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
So that's what happens. That's why they're so little dissent.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Is what me up. Yeah, they were going to see
whether what we early covered in his video actually existed,
and those childcare facilities were empty. It's like, wait, wait
a second, why don't you look at how this because
already you have sixty convictions, you have ninety indictments. This
story has been building for months, years really and seeing
(33:18):
it next to no reporting on.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
It, no reporting and that's on purpose.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, everyone says, oh, yeah, we missed that. You didn't
miss it. You purposely avoided reporting on it.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
Yeah, And there have to be alternatives in the media
if citizens are going to make informed choices and nobody
has a monopoly on truth. But when one party in
one worldview has a monopoly on power, then mistakes start
to get made, Then things get overlooked, and then you
have Pacific palisades burning down.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
You got time to talk about gavenews And when we
come back, sure got one more segment. Oh by the way,
after two o'clock, we're going to talk with Jeremy and
me Paddawork and Jeremy is one along with Spencer Pratt,
is organizing the big protest about the Palisades fire, and
like I mentioned, we're going to go and cover it
tomorrow morning and record a lot of interviews and play
them on the show tomorrow afternoon. They let Us Burn
(34:05):
is the name of it. It's ten thirty tomorrow morning.
Is already more than one thousand people who've URSVP that
they're going to attend, and you should be part of it.
We're going to be part of it, and we're going
to talk more. Joel Pollock, January twenty sixth. It's going
to be a big day. California Post is going to
launch and this is gonna be quite an earthquake on
the media landscape here, something that we have needed for
(34:28):
a long long time.
Speaker 5 (34:31):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
John Cobelt's show coming up after two o'clock. Jeremy Patterwak
he's one of the organizers of the big protest in
Pacific Palisades tomorrow at ten thirty in the morning. They
let Us Burn is the name of the demonstration, and
over a thousand people have signed up to come. We'll
talk about it a few more minutes here with Joel Pollack,
thank you, by the way for giving us so much time.
(34:57):
They're very generous of you. He's the opinion editor for
California Post, which is debuting January twenty sixth. It's going
to have all the fire of the New York Post,
but it's entirely about California news, politics, sports, culture and
all of it. Gavin Newsom, we've seen what happened with
(35:20):
Tim Waltz. Eventually enough pressure and he's dropping out of
the race for the third term. And a lot of
people wanted to resign because of all the nine billion
dollars in Somali community fraud. I know, it's clear that
Gavin Newsom has overseen at least ten times as much fraud.
It may be an infinite amount of fraud. Nobody's coming
(35:44):
for him. Everything rolls off him. We've got I mean,
we've got the unemployment money that was over thirty billion dollars,
we got high speed rail at seventeen billion, we've got
homeless money. By his own admission, twenty four billion dollars
evaporated and he doesn't know exactly where it went or
whether it did any good, and it didn't. When are
(36:05):
they going to come for well, turn it out there
is mic On.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
They don't come for him because he has established himself
as the symbol of the party. And there was an
attempt back in twenty twenty one to recall him after
he went to the French Laundry restaurant and defied his
own coronavirus policies, had a masks off dinner with lobbyists
(36:36):
while he was telling other people to stay away from
restaurants shutting down restaurants. And you know, it's not just
the restaurants that shut down, its the employees who lose
their jobs. I remember the night before that band went
into effect, my wife and I went out for drinks
in Pacific Palisades and we looked around at the employees
of this restaurant and thought, you know, these are people
are all going to be thrown out of work by
this coronavirus shutdown. Newsom went to the French Laundry either
(37:00):
after and what happened was Newsom took the field of
Republican challengers that were vying to replace him, and he
picked up on Larry Elder and he said, that guy
is the West Coast Trump, that guy is the African
American Trump. Newsom didn't use that language precisely, but the
(37:21):
La Times did.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
They basically went.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Home the white the black face of white supremacist right right.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
And so.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
What that was was a signal to Democratic voters that
you may not like the job I'm doing, but you
have to come home and defend the party from Trump.
And so Newsom is able to avoid any accountability for
how he's governing or not governing the state because he
says I represent the Democratic Party. He doesn't say it
that way, yeah, but he says it by picking these
(37:50):
fights with Trump and once in a while saying no
to his left wing base. So this billionaire attacks that
they want to do. He is known to be skeptical
of it but persuadable, so he's playing both sides of that.
He knows his party wants it, but he also knows
that responsible people think it's a terrible idea. So he
indicates to them that he's sort of pragmatic, but doesn't
(38:12):
really make a tough choice and defend it against his
political base. Desalination I mentioned earlier, a great decision, a
great policy to provide more water to the state. Newsom
is theoretically in favor of it, how many plants have
been built in the eight years that he's been governor. Right,
He's not going to do anything, So he tells people
I'm a Democrat, which is also the trick Biden pulled.
(38:33):
By the way, Joe Biden didn't have to be the
best Democrat in the field in twenty twenty. He just
had to be to the right of Bernie Sanders, who
was winning at the point Biden took the nomination away.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
And that's what Newsom does. He basically says.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
To California voters, you want to be governed by a Democrat.
You cannot let these Republicans run anything. And maybe that's
a little easier to do in the case of Trump,
because Democrats have been led to believe that Trump is
this demon and they believe the worst possible things about
(39:07):
him and so forth. And that's the trick Newsom has pulled,
and it's it's not going to work in a national contest.
I think he's going to run into some serious opposition
from other Democrats. But it is working here in again,
this one party system where people convince themselves there is
no alternative, and that's deadly for a democracy.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
They don't hold them responsible for anything.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Right, They didn't hold Obama responsible. You know, the late
Rush Limbaugh had this great idea, the Russia Limbaugh theorem,
which is that Obama is not responsible for governing anything.
Remember when things went wrong, the IRS scandal, the AP scandal,
where they went after journalists, and Obama would come out
and say, I'm outraged that this happened.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
I'm outraged, I'm outraged to learn of it. This is
the first I heard about it.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
And then he would stop talking about it, and nobody
held them accountable for it. He wasn't expected to do
anything about it. And that's that is also a media problem.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Media have a double standard where they promote democrats and
they protect democrats from the results of their failure, where
a Republican who did the same thing would be tossed
out of office.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Joel Pollock, Peanut Editor, California Post, coming January twenty sixth.
Thank you for coming on today and we'll talk a
lot in the future. We got Jeremy Pataware. He's one
of the organizers of the Palisades Fire anniversary demonstration they
let us burn. He's coming up right after Debormark and
the News Live in the KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey,
(40:31):
you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Can't I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We're on every day
from one until four o'clock and every day as soon
as the show is over shortly after four, we post
the podcast John Cobelt's Show on demand, same as the
radio show, and you can get that on the iHeart
app as well. We are awaiting the arrival of Joel Pollock.
(00:24):
He is the opinion editor for the New California Post.
This is a sister publication of the New York Post,
which is going to launch on January twenty sixth. And
if you're familiar with the New York Post and its
style and how it goes after New York and Washington
politicians and issues, this is going to be entertaining because
(00:47):
the media, most of the media here in California, especially
in Los Angeles, is lazy, progressive, woke and just covers
either covers things stupidly and superficially, or covers the subject
matter is stupid and superficial, but there isn't much to it.
(01:11):
There is virtually no coverage of Sacramento, which is is
virtually no coverage of you know, La City Hall, and
the mayor. In fact, I got a great example of it.
I'm going to talk about later. I looked at two
of the local stations on their websites today because everybody's
going to run the first anniversary remembrance coverage of the fire,
(01:34):
and I'm looking at both of these two stories, and
they have nothing about all the scandals that have piled
up that's been reported on by the LA Times, primarily
nothing from beginning to end on how bad every level
of government behaved for the fire. And it's like, what, wow,
(01:57):
this is, this is this is bad. These aren't even
news operations. I don't even know what to call him anymore.
We'll get to that, but Joe Pollock is approaching the studio.
We're gonna have him on in a second now. This
this morning, somebody sent me one of those internet memes
and I don't normally spend a lot of time on them,
(02:18):
but this one is kind of funny. It was a
meme on high speed rail compared to other major US
construction projects, and they got a photo of the Hoover
Dam and underneath it says five years, one billion dollars,
and that's adjusted for inflation. Panama Canal ten years, fifteen billion,
(02:41):
the Transcontinental Railroad. Think about that. The railroad going from
the east to the West coast took him about six
years to build for a billion dollars in adjusted money.
And then the Lincoln Tunnel connecting New Jersey and New
York City underneath the Hudson River seven years, two point
(03:03):
three billion, comparing it to the California High Speed Rail
now in our eighteenth year and projected one hundred and
thirty billion plus. Sky's the limit on that, right. They
don't even talk about what the total projection is longer
than anything. It's taken longer than anything we've built in America,
(03:26):
and it's cost more than anything we've ever built in America,
and nothing's been built. Which leads me to a phone
call I had yesterday. And I'm going to be vague
about this because I don't know a lot firsthand, so
put this under the category of unproven rumor. But according
(03:49):
to my political insider, during the you notice this happened
during Christmas break, Gavin Newsom and Rob Bonto withdrew the
lawsuit against the Trump adminished ration because Trump had cut
off billions of dollars in high speed rail money. That
the federal government.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
I was supposed to.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
Kick in, and they have sued Trump forty fifty times,
and this was highly unusual. I don't know if they've
done this for any of the other lawsuits. They withdrew it.
They just dropped it quietly. It's like, why would he
do that. Usually, even when you know you're going to lose,
you rite out the appeals and you get cheap headlines
(04:30):
from continuing to vow defiance to Trump. They dropped this
thing well. According to my source, unverifiable unpproval, look for
possibly Newsom to finally pull out of high speed rail
entirely because it is such an albatross around his neck
(04:52):
to run for president. It's so easy to take cheap
shots at Newsom over this railroad thing. It's never going
to be built anyway. And the people that he's been well,
the people have benefited from this, the unions and the
various lobbyists, you know, a lawyer's construction, architectural engineering, that
(05:20):
whole crowd. They've been pretty well fed for the last
eighteen years. And they understand that finally the jig is
up on this thing. All right, You can't push this
scam much longer. And he's got to run for president
and he doesn't want this when it's going to come
up in every interview, is going to come up in
every debate, and he's just going to say, hey, look
(05:41):
I'm the one who pulled the plug on this thing. Okay,
I pulled the plug. The other governors, the other administrations,
they let it go and go and go. So just
watch for that, watch for possibly, and it's going to
time it to some key moment in the upcoming election cycle.
Speaker 3 (05:59):
And that our gas prices are going to drastically go
down to before he really gets into campaign mode, the
homeless situation's gonna ease.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
Yeah, he's got a lot of stuff to take care of.
This is easy. I think he can stop this fairly easy.
The others, I don't know. You can't take a hole
for like ten or twenty years and then fix everything
in a matter of months just because you're running for president.
Well look who's here. It's Joel Pollock. Welcome Joel Pollock,
(06:29):
opinion editor for the California Post. And you're probably wondering,
what the hell is the California Post. Well, it's the
new sister publication to the New York Post. It's coming
out January twenty sixth. I'm really excited about this because
it is a really a tough market to look for real,
truthful news that matter to people and that we could
use on the show. Joel welcome. Good to be here.
(06:52):
Explain to everybody who if they're not excited about the
California Post, they will become excited. It's gonna come to
twenty and I assume it's going to have the same
look as.
Speaker 2 (07:03):
The New York Post, very similar.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
It's going to be a California paper, not a New
York paper. In California. It is the California Post, and
it is going to hold up a mirror to the
state and it's going to take interest in what's going
on here, and that means culture, politics, sports, everything, with
(07:27):
a view to creating a sense of community among California
readers as well as and this is where I come
in politically, maybe some political diversity in the mix, because
most of the other publications that are out there have
a left of center view, to put it mildly, and
the California Post is coming in with a different point
(07:48):
of view, one that tells readers you don't have to
accept things the way they are and the way I
look at it on the opinion page. I'm not pro
Republican or pro Democrat. My motto is we deserve better.
We deserve much better than what we're getting. And that's
a shared sentiment among California as no matter who you
vote for.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Yes, I think most people want better and they're just baffled.
They feel powerless, they don't know nobody's interested in them,
and nobody in the media. It covers many of the
stories that are most important here. I mean there's virtually
no coverage what's going on in Sacramento, and very limited
coverage or what goes on in La with the mayor
(08:28):
and the city council, and just the overwhelming problems like
the homelessness and the crime. There's just no coverage, not
even biased slanted coverage. It just doesn't exist.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
You know what's crazy to me is we always hit
January first in California and there are the inevitable articles
laws that go into affect January first. How many hundreds
of laws are there going to be in California new laws?
And you always look back at that and say, well,
I don't remember them passing hundreds of laws where are
(09:00):
these hundreds of laws coming from Well, there are hundreds
of laws every year that are passed in Sacramento, and
the governor signs most of them. Veto's another of several hundred,
and we don't know.
Speaker 2 (09:12):
Much about them.
Speaker 4 (09:13):
If you try to work out, in terms of legislative
working days, how many of these bills could they actually read,
how many could they actually debate, how many would we
know about, how many would they have public input into.
It's just impossible to pass that number of bills in
the short working year of a California state legislator. So
(09:33):
Sacramento is a machine. It just moves these things through.
And there is this revelation on January first about everything
new that you're subjected to. I mean, how much coverage
was there, for example, of the new one point five
percent fee on anything with an embedded battery, I mean
my phone, your iPad there, did we have a conversation
(09:56):
about one point five percent more expensive? I thought we
were all about affordability now, but on January first, we
all now have to pay one point five percent extra
on anything with an embedded battery up to fifteen dollars.
So that's something that's going to hit ordinary Californian is hard.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
That's a aggressive tax. And did we have a debate
about it.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
No, because we're debating all these other things like transgender
parental notification, which is important, but that's just what we
know about. There are all these other bills that just
go right through. And you're right, there needs to be
more news coverage, more debate, and that happens when you
know there's an alternate perspective, if there's a clear second
side to the story, and we're not necessarily going to
(10:37):
get that from a political opposition, because Republicans have a
tiny minority now in the state legislature.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
And unfortunately, it's a negative feedback loop.
Speaker 4 (10:45):
Because the more of these one one party state policies
that get passed, the more the opposing party leaves the state.
I mean, Republicans have lost their voter base in California
in many places, the small business owners, the homeowners who
traditionally vote Republican, they've just decided to vote their feet.
And you can't blame people for doing that because it's
more effective in changing the circumstances of your own life.
(11:05):
And once again, I just saw the study came out
today California leads in one way, U haul rentals from
California out. Yes, and Newsom's trying to talk about state's
population rising again and so forth. Yes, you can pick
and choose statistics that make it look like he's doing
a good job. But people are voting with their feet.
And do you wait until the next election. Elections are important,
(11:26):
But do you wait until the next election to see
a change in new life or do you consider it
life change? In my case, living in the Pacific Palisades
which burnt down a year ago tomorrow, many people had
no choice. Now they're not living in La Now they're
not living in California. And that was a fire that
could have been contained. It could have been prevented from
becoming the disaster it was. It was actually the New
(11:48):
York Times and out of state paper that pointed out
this week that we know.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
About the eat and fire.
Speaker 4 (11:54):
We know about the Palisades fire, but there were about
half a dozen smaller fires that broke out on the
same day that didn't spread like that conditions, but they
didn't spread. Why didn't they spread while they were contained
in one way or another? So why weren't there fire
engines outside the Lachman fire burned scar at the top
of the Palisades. When the state and the city knew
that there was the possibility of a reignition up there.
(12:17):
Why why was there no water in the reservoir? Why
were there mobile water tankers? Let's say you had to
drain the reservoir. I mean I was able to get
into the burn zone because I'm a member of the media.
Speaker 2 (12:27):
Police, fire and media were allowed in for three weeks.
Speaker 4 (12:30):
No residents were allowed back in until Donald Trump came
to town and said to Karen Bass in front of
the nation, why don't you just let these people back
to their lots.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
But I was able to get in there.
Speaker 4 (12:38):
And Rick Caruso defended his village Mall in Pacific Palisades,
partly because he had about a dozen water tankers surrounding
the place. He had his own water supply. Now, President
Trump has his ideas about how to get more water
into the system, and Gavin Usom has his ideas. But
the oldest and easiest idea is just put water in
trucks and make the trucks available, you know. And it's
(13:01):
little things like that that we're not thinking about. And
the misgovernance happens because there's no alternate voice.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
Let me stop you right there. We'll continue with Joel Pollock,
the opinion editor of the soon to be California Post,
debuting January twenty sixth.
Speaker 5 (13:17):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
The Moist Line to complain about things is going to
be unveiled Friday, three, twenty and three fifty. You call
eight seven seven Moist eighty six and we'll record your
ranting and raving eight seven seven Moist eighty six, or
you can use the talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app.
We continue with Joel Pollock, the opinion editor of the
California Post, and that is going to be launching on
(13:46):
January twenty sixth. This is a sister publication to the
New York Post. It's going to look similar, but the
content's entirely different. This is not a California edition of
the New York Post. It's its own thing, and it's
going to be California news, politics, sports, culture, all of it.
And this should really shake things up. I mean, I
(14:08):
grew up in Northern Jersey. When I was a kid,
my dad worked in a factory and he used to
bring home the tabloid newspapers, the New York Dailien. It
is in the New York Post. So I grew up
to me that was a newspaper. New York Times was
like a lot of words. It was very densely britt
and it was very dull. But this kind of coverage
cuts to the heart and tells you exactly the thing
(14:32):
you want to know, often not focusing on what they
say publicly, but what really is going on behind closed doors.
Speaker 4 (14:39):
Well, it's a really fun publication. I mean, the New
York Post is the kind of newspaper that people buy
in New York, even if they don't agree necessarily with
the opinions on the editorial page. I've got relatives in
New York who are left of center, and they buy
the New York Post because they love the covers. The
covers are funny, they're engaging, and they love the sport
(15:00):
orts coverage, which is the best of any of the papers.
And also they like the level on which the Post
talks to them. The New York Post and soon the
California Post they speak to readers where they are and
it's a conversation between the readers and the journalists.
Speaker 2 (15:15):
Whereas The New York Times, the Washington Post.
Speaker 4 (15:17):
They tell you what to think, they tell you what
not to think, they tell you who not to listen to.
And I think it's just a more real conversation. It
is still very hard driven journalism. The people I'm working
with are incredible. I mean, they've pulled together an amazing
team of California journalists, some people from out of state,
but most people with a lot of experience here in California.
(15:39):
And these are the best pros and just outstanding people,
the kind of people who get up early and stay
at work late and just want to get the story
to you.
Speaker 2 (15:46):
And I think you're right. It really hits you in
the heart.
Speaker 4 (15:50):
It's not just a newspaper that speaks to your mind,
although it does that, and that's my job on the
opinion page, but really it really goes for the heart
of the audience.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Now you and New York Post has plenty of exposs
plenty of exclusives, and you could tell they do the digging,
they do the old fashioned reporting. I'll give you an example,
like this morning, all the television stations are doing retrospectives
of the fire right because it's the one year anniversary,
(16:19):
so I'm looking at one from channel four NBCLA, and
I'm looking at one from CBS, which is channel two
and nine out here, and they go through like the
history of the fire. They comte they could almost completely
ignore all the controversies that you mentioned in your first
(16:42):
minute here with the empty reservoir. Why was that fire
engines not deployed to the original fire site, Blackman Fire,
and on and on and on, you know the whole list.
There's about twenty five things that got screwed up and
went wrong, and there's none of this in either article.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
Right and the left wanted to talk about climate change.
That's still what they want to talk about. They say
this happened because we've had too many warm summers, and
never mind that we had two very wet winters. That's
also climate change, because there was more plant growth, more
fuel growth. They don't talk about the simple fact that
you have to clear brush near where people live and
(17:24):
that doesn't destroy the environment. That is part of preserving
the environment. You lose more of the environment if it
all goes up in flames. Yeah, and there just isn't
a conversation about the ordinary things that we need our
government to do because they're so busy with the extraordinary
utopian dreams and visions of.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
A perfect world.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
You know, why is there this obsession with climate change
among California policymakers. California, as big an economy as we have,
is a very very tiny fraction of the planet's emissions.
We could turn off all the lights in California and
it wouldn't make a difference to the overall problem if
you believe climate change is happening, and it would just
have zero effect, and whatever we saved in terms of
(18:05):
emissions would be quickly overrun by the Chinese and the
Indians who are just producing as many emissions as they
can possibly burn. So why aren't we talking about efficiency,
which everybody understands because things that are efficient are cheaper.
Why aren't we talking about the simple problems of not
having police to guide and evacuation, or not having firefighters
(18:25):
in the right place, or not having water in the reservoir.
You know, there are articles out there in some of
these mainstream media publications that try to debunk the idea
that the reservoir was a factor.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And I keep reading that one hundred and seventeen million gallons.
Speaker 4 (18:41):
Yeah, and there's a kernel of truth to it, which
is that at some point, no matter how much water
supply you have, if everybody's turning on the fire hydrants
at the same time and you have houses burning down
on the pipes leaking into the street, you're creating so
much demand on the system that there's a pressure problem.
So you can't get that water through the hydrant at
sufficient pressure to run the hose.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
So there's a point there.
Speaker 4 (19:04):
But then the obvious answer is, okay, but there are
other ways to use the reservoir. Why don't you have
helicopters dipping into the reservoir to get buckets of water?
How about those mobile water tankers like Rick Caruso had
driving up to a reservoir, filling up, driving back into
the fire zone. I mean, you need a ready supply
of water. And so, yes, there are some design flaws
in how all of these systems were built in the
(19:26):
twentieth century, mid twentieth century. They didn't anticipate the kind
of wildfires that we have seen over the last few years.
But you know, Gavin Newsom has been governor for two
terms now. He has presided over some of the worst
wildfires that we've seen. Why haven't we seen any movement
on that. He talks a good game on desalination and
(19:47):
building new reservoirs, but we haven't seen anything built or done.
I mean, that's the difference between a Gavin Newsom and
Donald Trump. You don't to like Donald Trump, but he
gets things done. He gets project built, and whatever you
have to do to get that ballroom in the White
House done, you know, he gets it done. And everyone's
complaining and this and that. You know, if you had
Trump running California, he would have filled that reservoir, the
site's reservoir. He would have made sure there was a
(20:09):
mobile army of water tankers to move into position for
any fire. It's not just enough to have the water
in the fire engines, because that's limited. You need much
more than that, which is why the private firefighters have
access to these mobile tankers. So we're talking about small things,
limited things that a common sense person would think about
(20:30):
if you were protecting your own home.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
Do I have another supply of water somewhere?
Speaker 4 (20:34):
And somehow common sense just is absent completely in California
state government and governments everywhere really, but especially here, where
we tend to think about utopian visions of whatever it is.
We want to achieve Medicare for all. Was Gavin Newsom's
a big thing, you know. He launched that two years
ago and then had to cut it off last year
because the system was going bankrupt. So we need people
(20:56):
who are down to earth common sense, and that is
the voice of the California Post. We are speaking in
those terms and we're trying to find those solutions as well.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Can you say another segment?
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Yes, sir?
Speaker 1 (21:05):
All right? Joel Pollock, opinion editor for the New California Post.
Coming January twenty sixth. Are you can have print copies too? Yes, well,
turns Mike back on.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
Yeah we will.
Speaker 1 (21:15):
Oh really, all right? It could be something to look
forward to.
Speaker 5 (21:19):
Guy.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
I just love buying newspapers and opening them up. But
obviously it'll be on your mobile devices as well.
Speaker 5 (21:26):
You're listening to John Cobbel's on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
We're on every day one until four, and if you
miss anything after four o'clock John Cobel Show on demand.
That's the podcast same as the radio show, and you
can to listen to whatever you missed out On Tomorrow,
we're going to do a special show. They're having a
big demonstration in Pacific Palisades people angry with the lack
(21:53):
of lack of fire response, the lack of preparation, the
impossible bureaucracy that has kept many from rebuilding quickly. And
the name of this demonstration is called They Let Us Burn.
They Let Us Burn, And it's going to be a
ten thirty tomorrow morning at Palisades Village corner of Antioch
(22:15):
and Swarthmore, And we're going to go and we're going
to be talking to people, recording it and then playing
it back during our regular show tomorrow between one and four.
If you're interested, you can go to They Letusburn dot com.
You can RSVP let them know you're coming. There's no
tickets or anything that you have to buy. They just
want to get an idea to size the crowd. And
(22:37):
it's going to be a lot of speakers, a lot
of residents and business owners, some local politicians, and people
are going to talk about how they feel about the
massive failure on every level of government that's lasted now
for a year. We have with us Joel Pollock. He
is the opinion editor of The California Post, which is
(23:00):
launching January twenty sixth online and also there'll be paper copies.
It looks like the New York Post, except it's all
about California, California news, politics, culture, sports, And it's very
exciting because this should really shake up the sleepy, moribund
(23:20):
media environment here. Why do you think people put up
with what they put up with here in California? I
mean every day I go through the gas prices, right,
and the average gas price now is about two to
eighty across the country, and we're at four fifty. And
(23:40):
you know, I mean I normally. I mean in France,
when they had a gas tax increase a few years ago,
they started setting fire to Paris, right, the Yellow vest riots.
And that's what I've known all my life. When the
gas prices get that far out of whack, people get
really angry and crazy, and people, politicians lose their jobs.
(24:03):
Why are we taken four point fifty compared to two
maty when it's going for alleged climate change programs which
have had no effect.
Speaker 4 (24:13):
I think because life here is simply so nice.
Speaker 1 (24:17):
We put up with.
Speaker 4 (24:18):
Many things that other people wouldn't put up with in
other states. And a friend of mine asked me, why
are you, as a conservative still in California when so
many conservatives have left, and I said, well, they can't
ruin the mountains and they can't ruin the ocean. And
then a year ago they ruined the mountains and they
ruined the ocean. But I think people will put up
(24:41):
with it until they've had enough. And there are certain
issues on which Californians have stood up. For example, on
the issue of racial preferences. Twice now, Democrats have tried
to enshrine racial preferences in law, and twice California voters
have said no. And these are the same voters who
(25:01):
chose Joe Biden two to one over Donald Trump. In
the same election they voted against Proposition sixteen, which was
the Democrat's effort to reverse Prop two oh nine, which
was the proposition that banned racial preferences in state government
education and so forth. So I think there's a level
of common sense, a kind of bedrock here that does
(25:22):
eventually offer some resistance to the craziness. The problem is
is it too late by the time you get to
that bedrock to undo the damage. And that's I think
where we come in, because you have to have a
forum where you can raise these issues and you're not
called an extremist, and you're not called a racist or
a sexist or whatever, and people listen to you. And
(25:46):
I think we're watching disaster after disaster unfold around our state,
and it really is only a matter of time before
it happens to you. I think that we were quite isolated,
happily in Pacific Palisades, thinking that the problems of the
rest of La haven't really caught up to us yet.
We're on a nice little hill it's a little hard
for criminals to climb or whatever.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Whatever.
Speaker 4 (26:07):
We thought we were in splendid isolation. And then the
fire came rushing down the mountain and that was the
end of that. And suddenly all of the incompetence and
all of the bureaucracy that other Angelinos had to deal
with was staring us in the face. And that's why
there's only been one house that burned down that's being
rebuilt start to finish in a year. That's why we
(26:28):
still have the reservoir now being emptied, and that's why
we don't have the city council doing anything about the
permitting fees. I mean, you've got to pay thirty forty
thousand dollars just to file your permits to rebuild when
you lost your house. And part of the reason you
lost your house was because the fire department frankly didn't
have enough engines in place.
Speaker 2 (26:45):
So why should we pay again for the city's failure?
Speaker 4 (26:48):
And it's starting to be impossible to ignore it.
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Now.
Speaker 4 (26:52):
We've got this election coming up, and it's not really
an election yet. It's not really a contest at least
at the mayor level. We've got Karen Bass right now
looking like she's going to be reelected unless someone jumps
into the race who can really challenge her. On the
gubernatorial level, the governor's race, there are all these Democrats
in the race, and they're spreading that out so thin
that it's possible you could have two Republicans in the
(27:12):
general election. I think that's the only way you're going
to get some change. So right now there is a
slim possibility something happens. But eventually people do have to
wake up and say, we want to be California.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
We don't want to be Texas, but we.
Speaker 4 (27:26):
Want California to work, and we've got to do some
Texas things to make California work. In fact, Texas today
looks like California in the seventies. In many ways, we
want to take what was good in that past and
apply it to the present.
Speaker 1 (27:40):
It talks about how people tend to enjoy how nice
California is. It's primarily the weather, and so they put
up with a lot of nonsense. But what I've seen,
especially in the past ten years, is the nonsense, the homelessness.
For example, I mean, you get seventy thousand bodies in
La County, many of them drug zombies, mental patience, and
(28:05):
that has destroyed the nice stuff. It's made it impossible
just to walk to the grocery store because you've got
to dodge a crazy guy. My wife and I were
chased by a guy who's holding a metal pipe. Just
drive it stop. We're stopped at a light, I say, said,
d boulevard, look at the rear of your mirror, and
here comes this guy. And it's like, well, how long
(28:27):
can you put up with this? And so the nice
stuff has been overwhelmed, and I got to believe there's
going to be some rebellion to get this against this
at some point. But I don't, like you said, I
don't see the political figure or who's captured that lightning.
Speaker 4 (28:43):
It hasn't happened yet, and we'll have to see what
the choices are this year as we go to the polls,
or as we.
Speaker 2 (28:50):
Go to the mailboxes and try to vote by mail.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
But I do think that part of that also comes
from not being able to imagine an alternative. When you
have a media that largely falls in line behind the
one party state that we have here, it is very
difficult to think that there could be an alternative. But
once you have alternative voices, and you have that in radio,
(29:14):
you have that on some podcasts, but we also need
it in newsprint, and you need an alternative voice, an
alternative forum, so that people can start to remember and
remind each other that things don't have to be that way.
We don't have to accept that kind of hardship, which
I've had as well. I've been chased by homeless people.
I had a homeless guy knock on my window earlier
or last year now with my kids in the car.
(29:36):
It's crazy and it's not something anybody should have to
put up with.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
It's not normal.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Well, you've been in the print internet media for a
long time. What is it about the news directors, the assignment, editors,
the producers in television that they don't want they do
not cover these stories anymore. Are they so ideologically blinded?
Because I go to dinner or go to a New
Year's party and everybody is talking about all the trouble
(30:03):
they say in the streets and about whether they should
finally bail out and move and I mean everybody. And
you turn on the TV and it's all happy talk
and fluff and nonsense. And I'm thinking, isn't there one
news producer, one news director who says, you know, we
got a market here that we should serve, and it
would be the right thing to do. Since you have
(30:23):
a license to broadcasting, you have a news department is
to do the public service of telling people what's wrong
and why and how to make it better. Why don't
they want to do that.
Speaker 4 (30:33):
It's because you get all kinds of abuse if you're
the one journalist who breaks ranks or the one public
official who breaks ranks. You know, there was a sheriff
of La County, Alex Villanueva, and he was a Democrat.
Speaker 2 (30:46):
I think he's since become a Republican.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
He was the one guy who went out there and
maybe he was a good sheriff. Maybe he was a
bad sheriff in general. I can't judge his overall performance,
but when we had homeless people living in tents on
the beach in Venice, he went out there and said
we're getting all these tents off the beach by July fourth,
and he took all kinds of flak in the media,
and the Board of Supervisors of La County basically made
it impossible for him to win reelection, and they got
(31:12):
the voters to pass a resolution or a referendum that
allowed the board to overrule the voters if.
Speaker 2 (31:17):
They reelected this guy.
Speaker 4 (31:18):
I mean, if you go against the status quo, you're
going to get hit with everything the status quot has
to hit you with, unless you have people standing up
for you and defending you. And you know, I worked
for Breitbart News for fifteen years based here in LA
and Andrew Breitbart was a guy who would get out
there and take the slings and arrows for other people.
And the California Post is going to be a publication
(31:41):
that defends people who just want the ordinary things in
life that they're entitled to have as citizens, as taxpayers,
as law abiding people. And that's what is needed. Once
you have an alternative voice, then you start to see
different decisions being made in the newsroom. Well, we could
ignore that story, but then the post people are going
to get it. Let's go cover that. You know, you
(32:03):
mentioned Tim Waltz in the break. Everybody ignored the Somali
fraud story. I was writing about it in twenty twenty
four when he was on the presidential ticket with Kamala Harris,
and I was writing about how there was this feeding
our Future scandal where billions of dollars were lost, and
I was picking it up from a conservative blog in Minnesota,
(32:23):
power Line. The power Line blog, they had written about it,
but it was frozen out of media. So now it's
this big revelation to everybody, but it's been out there
and everybody ignored it. There was a young guy, this
fellow I think, Nick Nick Shirley. Nick Shirley went door
to door and instead of covering what he was finding,
they went after him the mainstream.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
I noticed that they were piled on him all week
until Walts finally resigned.
Speaker 4 (32:48):
Right, so he gets Waltz to resign, but CNN went
to check his facts, not to check whether there was
fraud in the system.
Speaker 2 (32:54):
So that's what happens. That's why they're so little dissent.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Is what me up. Yeah, they were going to see
whether what we early covered in his video actually existed,
and those childcare facilities were empty. It's like, wait, wait
a second, why don't you look at how this because
already you have sixty convictions, you have ninety indictments. This
story has been building for months, years really and seeing
(33:18):
it next to no reporting on.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
It, no reporting and that's on purpose.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
Yeah, everyone says, oh, yeah, we missed that. You didn't
miss it. You purposely avoided reporting on it.
Speaker 4 (33:29):
Yeah, And there have to be alternatives in the media
if citizens are going to make informed choices and nobody
has a monopoly on truth. But when one party in
one worldview has a monopoly on power, then mistakes start
to get made, Then things get overlooked, and then you
have Pacific palisades burning down.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
You got time to talk about gavenews And when we
come back, sure got one more segment. Oh by the way,
after two o'clock, we're going to talk with Jeremy and
me Paddawork and Jeremy is one along with Spencer Pratt,
is organizing the big protest about the Palisades fire, and
like I mentioned, we're going to go and cover it
tomorrow morning and record a lot of interviews and play
them on the show tomorrow afternoon. They let Us Burn
(34:05):
is the name of it. It's ten thirty tomorrow morning.
Is already more than one thousand people who've URSVP that
they're going to attend, and you should be part of it.
We're going to be part of it, and we're going
to talk more. Joel Pollock, January twenty sixth. It's going
to be a big day. California Post is going to
launch and this is gonna be quite an earthquake on
the media landscape here, something that we have needed for
(34:28):
a long long time.
Speaker 5 (34:31):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (34:36):
John Cobelt's show coming up after two o'clock. Jeremy Patterwak
he's one of the organizers of the big protest in
Pacific Palisades tomorrow at ten thirty in the morning. They
let Us Burn is the name of the demonstration, and
over a thousand people have signed up to come. We'll
talk about it a few more minutes here with Joel Pollack,
thank you, by the way for giving us so much time.
(34:57):
They're very generous of you. He's the opinion editor for
California Post, which is debuting January twenty sixth. It's going
to have all the fire of the New York Post,
but it's entirely about California news, politics, sports, culture and
all of it. Gavin Newsom, we've seen what happened with
(35:20):
Tim Waltz. Eventually enough pressure and he's dropping out of
the race for the third term. And a lot of
people wanted to resign because of all the nine billion
dollars in Somali community fraud. I know, it's clear that
Gavin Newsom has overseen at least ten times as much fraud.
It may be an infinite amount of fraud. Nobody's coming
(35:44):
for him. Everything rolls off him. We've got I mean,
we've got the unemployment money that was over thirty billion dollars,
we got high speed rail at seventeen billion, we've got
homeless money. By his own admission, twenty four billion dollars
evaporated and he doesn't know exactly where it went or
whether it did any good, and it didn't. When are
(36:05):
they going to come for well, turn it out there
is mic On.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
They don't come for him because he has established himself
as the symbol of the party. And there was an
attempt back in twenty twenty one to recall him after
he went to the French Laundry restaurant and defied his
own coronavirus policies, had a masks off dinner with lobbyists
(36:36):
while he was telling other people to stay away from
restaurants shutting down restaurants. And you know, it's not just
the restaurants that shut down, its the employees who lose
their jobs. I remember the night before that band went
into effect, my wife and I went out for drinks
in Pacific Palisades and we looked around at the employees
of this restaurant and thought, you know, these are people
are all going to be thrown out of work by
this coronavirus shutdown. Newsom went to the French Laundry either
(37:00):
after and what happened was Newsom took the field of
Republican challengers that were vying to replace him, and he
picked up on Larry Elder and he said, that guy
is the West Coast Trump, that guy is the African
American Trump. Newsom didn't use that language precisely, but the
(37:21):
La Times did.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
They basically went.
Speaker 1 (37:23):
Home the white the black face of white supremacist right right.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
And so.
Speaker 4 (37:28):
What that was was a signal to Democratic voters that
you may not like the job I'm doing, but you
have to come home and defend the party from Trump.
And so Newsom is able to avoid any accountability for
how he's governing or not governing the state because he
says I represent the Democratic Party. He doesn't say it
that way, yeah, but he says it by picking these
(37:50):
fights with Trump and once in a while saying no
to his left wing base. So this billionaire attacks that
they want to do. He is known to be skeptical
of it but persuadable, so he's playing both sides of that.
He knows his party wants it, but he also knows
that responsible people think it's a terrible idea. So he
indicates to them that he's sort of pragmatic, but doesn't
(38:12):
really make a tough choice and defend it against his
political base. Desalination I mentioned earlier, a great decision, a
great policy to provide more water to the state. Newsom
is theoretically in favor of it, how many plants have
been built in the eight years that he's been governor. Right,
He's not going to do anything, So he tells people
I'm a Democrat, which is also the trick Biden pulled.
(38:33):
By the way, Joe Biden didn't have to be the
best Democrat in the field in twenty twenty. He just
had to be to the right of Bernie Sanders, who
was winning at the point Biden took the nomination away.
Speaker 2 (38:44):
And that's what Newsom does. He basically says.
Speaker 4 (38:47):
To California voters, you want to be governed by a Democrat.
You cannot let these Republicans run anything. And maybe that's
a little easier to do in the case of Trump,
because Democrats have been led to believe that Trump is
this demon and they believe the worst possible things about
(39:07):
him and so forth. And that's the trick Newsom has pulled,
and it's it's not going to work in a national contest.
I think he's going to run into some serious opposition
from other Democrats. But it is working here in again,
this one party system where people convince themselves there is
no alternative, and that's deadly for a democracy.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
They don't hold them responsible for anything.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
Right, They didn't hold Obama responsible. You know, the late
Rush Limbaugh had this great idea, the Russia Limbaugh theorem,
which is that Obama is not responsible for governing anything.
Remember when things went wrong, the IRS scandal, the AP scandal,
where they went after journalists, and Obama would come out
and say, I'm outraged that this happened.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
I'm outraged, I'm outraged to learn of it. This is
the first I heard about it.
Speaker 4 (39:51):
And then he would stop talking about it, and nobody
held them accountable for it. He wasn't expected to do
anything about it. And that's that is also a media problem.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (40:00):
Media have a double standard where they promote democrats and
they protect democrats from the results of their failure, where
a Republican who did the same thing would be tossed
out of office.
Speaker 1 (40:10):
Joel Pollock, Peanut Editor, California Post, coming January twenty sixth.
Thank you for coming on today and we'll talk a
lot in the future. We got Jeremy Pataware. He's one
of the organizers of the Palisades Fire anniversary demonstration they
let us burn. He's coming up right after Debormark and
the News Live in the KFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey,
(40:31):
you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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