February 4, 2025 • 37 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (02/04) - Pres. Trump said they are going to launch an investigation into California's high-speed rail project. Steve Soboroff told Hollywood execs who live in the Palisades to hold onto their properties because their value will triple in the future thanks to investments in the area from the city of LA in the aftermath of the fires. Alex Stone comes on the show to talk about a Congressional investigation into LA's faulty emergency alert system. More on high-speed rail.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
It's the John Cobelt Show and we're on every day
from one until four three hours.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
It is packed.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's overflowing today and then after four o'clock. If you
miss anything, you go to the iHeart app for John
Cobelt Show on demand. It's the podcast. It's the same
as the radio show. It contains everything, all the all
the material. And let me tell you, today's one of
those days you ought to take in all three hours
if you if you possibly can. We've got something that
(00:35):
just broke a few minutes ago, and I haven't even
heard this audio yet. For seventeen years, California has been
trying to build high speed rail. It is one of
the biggest scandals, one of the biggest travesties, one of
the most expensive ripoffs ever. And for seventeen years I've
been saying, you can't have a project go on that long,
(00:57):
spend that much money, ten to fifteen billion dollars, and
not have anything to show for it. It's got to
be a crime. There's got to be crimes going on here.
People have been looting money from high speed rail for
seventeen years and getting away with it. There aren't even
records on how a lot of the money was spin
(01:17):
So now Trump just a few minutes ago said he
wants an investigation. Let's play this audience and see what
it's about.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
And one of the things I want to investigate rapidly
because I've never seen anything to this extent. The train
that's being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is
the worst managed project I think I've ever seen, and
I've seen some of the worst. Billions and billions, hundreds
of billions of dollars over budget. In fact, I read
(01:46):
where you could take every single person that was going
to go on the train and get the finest limousine
service in the world and take them back and forth
with limousines, and you'd have hundreds of billions of dollars
left over. It is the worst thing, and we're going
to start an investigation in that because it's not possible.
I built for a living, and i'd built on time,
on budget. It's impossible that something could cost that much.
(02:11):
And now it's not even going to San Francisco, and
it's not going to Los Angeles. It's they made it
much shorter, so now it's at little places way away
from San Francisco and way away from Los Angeles. No,
we're going to start a big investigation on that because
I've never seen anything like it. Nobody has ever seen
(02:31):
anything like it. The worst overruns that there have ever
been in the history of our country. And it wasn't
even necessary. I would have said, you don't buy it,
you take an airplane. Of course you're two dollars. Of course,
he's nothing. You take an airplane. But this got started,
and if you have to drive, you can drive. They
have hundreds of billions of dollars of cost overruns and
(02:55):
it's not even the same project. It's much shorter, it's
way outside of San France, so it's going way outside
of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So we're going to be looking into this.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Is that dog is going to investigate the trend? No,
I'm doing that myself.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, he's in charge of the Justice Department. He ought
to get Justice Department investigators on this. I'm sure there's
got to be federal crimes committed. They've certainly used federal money,
so it's under his jurisdiction. This is not just about
saving money that reporter was piping up. Is this a
DOGE thing.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Doge is an advisory board. Basically, they don't have any
direct power. They can't cut any spending, they can't fire people.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It's all Trump.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Trump is ultimately responsible for all the decisions, whether you
like it or not. Musk and his crowd is just
doing the analysis and doing the advice. You don't have
to be elon Musk. You don't have to have a
two hundred IQ to figure this thing out. This passed
in two thousand and eight. They spent anywhere from ten
billion dollars already, and he's right. The projection of spending
(04:04):
is supposed to be two hundred billion dollars two hundred billion,
and they're never going to get there what they have now.
You know, you always have to go back to the beginning.
People forget, people don't keep track, and it's understandable everybody's
got their own life, but criminals in politics, criminals in government,
(04:29):
bank on the fact that you're going to forget, you're
not going to keep track of this, and you don't
want to deal with too many numbers. Back in two
thousand and eight, the original deal was they would spend
thirty three billion dollars three to three, and we were
going to get a high speed rail track starting Sacramento
(04:50):
and then to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles
and down to Anaheim and San Diego, all of that,
Sacramento to San Diego thirty three billion dollars and it
was supposed to be built by now. And what do
we have after seventeen years. There is no track going anywhere.
(05:14):
And now they're working on a little sliver to run
from they say Bakersfield to Merced, which is an absurdity.
There is no market to go from Bakersfield to Mercede none.
In fact, I don't even think it's it's those two cities.
It's two outlying towns. If I remember correctly, it's it's
(05:36):
it's Madera, outside of outside of Merced. And then what's
the town. There's a little town next to Bakersfield. It's
slipping my memory right now, but that's really where the
train is going to go from beginning to end, not
even Bakersfield to Merced. And it's supposed to be a
minimum LA to San Francisco, if not San Diego to Sacramento.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Where did the billions of dollars go.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, they did several audits a few years ago, and
I remember clearly one of the audits, and of course
it was news for about half a day.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And then everybody moved on.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
The audit findings said that there was no paperwork, no
written record of where a lot of the money went.
They can't tell you where the tax money went, who
received the money.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Nothing.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Well, once I heard that, then it confirmed to me.
I think, to any reasonable person, it's like, oh, so
it really is a criminal operation. The money disappeared. Now
I can't accuse specific people because I don't have proof
who specifically stole it. But I would look at everybody
with a title that ran high speed rail over the
(06:54):
last seventeen years, because they must know where the money went.
Somebody had to sign those checks. How could you have
no paperwork, no paperwork at all, and there's no need
for the damn thing.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You can get a flight to San Francisco for sixty bucks.
I know.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I had two sons go to school in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
We took a lot of trips up to San Francisco
and back, all cleaning back, drove there and back many times.
You know, for it's about about five and a half
six hours. There was never, ever, ever, any need. It
was something that Schwarzenegger sold. What he was I don't
(07:37):
know what he was snorting, but he was on his
global warming high and he convinced all the buffoons in
this state that, oh, yeah, high speed rail, it's gonna
fight global warming, and oh the trains are gonna be
really cool. And Jerry Brown pushed this through and it's
been total nonsense. There was no need for it. They
made up numbers that you know, tens of millions of
(07:59):
people were gonna take. No, there's no very interest in this.
I have never heard a single person, not a single
person say to me it's like, wow, if I couldn't
we only had a train to San Francisco. There's I
think because we've taken so many trips up there in
my family. I think there's thirty two flights a day.
(08:22):
I mean, there's there's a couple every hour on just
about every airline. There's and and and they're relatively cheap,
unless you you know, order one at the very last minute,
it'll cost much. It was it's a scam, it's a crime,
(08:44):
it's a rip off. They have looted fifteen billion dollars.
Newsome supposedly was gonna cut it off, and then the
corrupt construction unions put them at a headlock, and.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
He changed his.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And it's those construction unions that have been pushing it
in recent years. But there've got to be so many
people that if you did a real investigation, a lot
of face charges.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Just there's no way you could do this in the
private sector.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Any executives who carried on like this in the private
sector would be in prison. So I hope he means
what he says, because it is the worst project, the
biggest waste of money. How do you build nothing? For
seventeen years, they didn't even try to put up a
cover story, not even you do like some construction, you know,
(09:37):
at least lay down, you know, fifteen miles around, just
so there's video for the idiot newspeople to run to
make it look like there is something. What a terrible media,
by the way we have it in California for this
to go on seventeen years. There was one writer, Ralph
Vardibedian from the Los Angeles Times, while a knuckleheads on
(09:58):
the La Times EDITORI board kept pushing this garbage. He
wrote and explained a lot of the corruption that was
going on, a lot of the delays and nonsense. And
of course he's working for some other news site.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I think he's freelancing, because you know, they all times
lost interest in printing the truth. They just went on
their green propaganda kick. All right, we got more coming up.
What I want to tell Well, well, if we get
in more details on what Trump is talking about, we'll
tell you when we come back. I don't know if
you've ever been on the inside, been part of the
in crowd.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
People who are.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
On the inside of things, they get a lot of benefits.
And there's people in the Palisades who are rich, powerful,
connected to Hollywood, and they get their own private Zoom
calls with a guy like Steve Soboroff, who's supposed to
be overseeing the Palisades recovery. And Steve was on Zoom
(10:55):
the other night and he's telling these rich people things
that the rest of the public is not informed about.
You're gonna be fascinated by this.
Speaker 6 (11:05):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I don't know if you've ever been on the inside.
I don't think Deborah and I have ever been on
the inside. We're just naturally on the outside. Are you
an insider? Time I can tell Summer we're we're not insiders.
(11:35):
Nobody nobody wants to tell us any secrets. Steve Steve
sober Off is Karen Bass's point man for the recovery.
She's not talking publicly because of the shame that she
carries around for running off to Africa while La burned.
So she puts Steve sober Off. And if you track
(11:58):
city politics, he's been around for decades. He helped build
the Staples Center, used to be a former city police commissioner.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
He's a real estate developer.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
He's got a.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Similar profile to Rick Caruso, about ten years older. And
I think he ran for mayor once. Like I said,
he was on the police commission. So you know he's
done all his civic duty and right now he's running
this recovery effort, trying to organize things.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
So if you're on the.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Inside, if you're a Hollywood agent, you get on a
private zoom call with sober Off, and sober Off tells
you what to do with your property. A lot of
these guys were burned out or had their homes badly damaged.
None of this information is available to the rest of
the Palisades residents who are much less wealthy and much
(12:49):
less well connected. So here's what he told them, according
to the Free Beacon, which is a Washington based newspaper,
and the Free Beacon got a copy of the Zoom meeting,
so they had the audio recording, and Soberoff said, whether
you're broke or you're old, don't sell now, because in
(13:12):
one year we're going to be putting billions of dollars
in your neighborhood of improvements. You'll get triple what these
guys are offering you for now. Now he's telling wealthy
people like executives and staff of three Hollywood talent agencies
William Morris CIA UTA United Talent Agency, which hosted the meeting.
(13:39):
Among them was the UTA vice chair, Jay Schures. Give
you an example, he represents Jake Tapper, the CNN anchor.
Another executive on the call was a Willie Morris partner,
Richard Welts. His clients Tina fey Seth McFarlan and Ricky Gervais.
And so these guys got the inside. Oh pay don't
(14:01):
don't sell your place to somebody offering you pennies. Just
hold on because lots of money is being invested. You know,
the city, state, federal government is going to be bringing
in huge barrels of cash, billions of dollars. Now they
don't have a public meeting to tell people this.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Uh, you just had to be part of the in crowd.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
So Broff also complained that half our labor could get
deported before the palisades are rebuilt, and that can make
things extremely expensive.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
It's funny.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I wonder if he's ever added up the hundreds of
millions of dollars we've spent on a legal immigration. They
always talk about, oh, you know, if you if you
you don't have a legal immigration, the cost of the
labor is going to go away.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Prices are going to go up.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We spent a huge percentage of our tax money on
a legal immigration. I've never seen anybody compare the two,
how much we spend da Like, all the money we
spent to support illegal aliens doesn't count. It's only the
money that we're gonna spend on more expensive workers that's
(15:14):
real money, right. I don't think when you netted it
all out, we're saving very much. And he also told
he also told the rich guys, just because the DWP
says your water is safe, have somebody test it before
you move back in. And if they say drink water,
use bottled water. What they don't say is, and they're
(15:38):
starting to say it now, don't bathe your baby in
their water. Don't take a bath in the water, don't
take a shower, don't do your dishes, don't do laundry.
You don't want anything to do with that water until
it's deemed safe. And I would get an independent agency.
Maybe there's a kit at CBS that tells your water
a safe. In other words, don't trust the DWP. So
(16:00):
the entertainment executives get this free advice. Don't trust a DWP.
The water may be poisonous, don't feed it to your kids.
But everybody else, how would they know that? They don't
get a private zoom call from Steve sober Off. You're
supposed to drink the water and get poisoned and die.
(16:25):
I guess you're supposed to get the parasite. Drink the parasites.
Unless you're special and privileged and you work in the
entertainment industry as an agent, then we wouldn't want your
digestive system to be compromised by parasites or some other
toxic chemicals. You believe this, And later on he said,
(16:49):
I trust DWP, but when they say water is safe,
I would check every faucet well. In other words, he
doesn't believe the water is safe. But the rest of
us in that general area are still drinking the water.
So you got one of the top city officials that
(17:11):
Karen Bass is hired or has appointed to run the recovery,
and he's telling his buddies on the side, Hey, don't
don't go near the water.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Well, where's genez. She's not drinking the lost equity. No,
I'm not drinking the water.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
No, I we we actually never drink the water, cress.
It tastes foul. But you know, there's some incidental times
you do. You do take in the water, you do
wash the dishes, you do brush your teeth. But what's
really Oh, I got to take a break. I'm gonna
finish this later in the hour. Later on, I'll do
(17:50):
part two of this, and I'm going to tell you
about the bust too, Yes, and the bust to know
because sober Off was shutting down any criticisms in this
Zoom meeting, and this.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Is the policy.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It looks like the whole city has, all the city
politicians and all the bureaucrats, they are never going to
talk anytime soon about all the things they did wrong.
They don't want any blame, no finger pointing, no second guessing,
no Monday Morning quarterbacking. They want to shut the conversation
(18:24):
down so that people lose their steam, lose their energy
over what happened. And sober Off is trying to enforce
that privately on these Zoom calls with the rich guys
in the entertainment industry. I'll tell you that coming up.
But later on when we return though, we're going to
have Alex Stone on from ABC News because Congress wants
(18:45):
to investigate why there were so many bad warnings going
out the night of the fire, false warnings in a
lot of cases, no warnings for people who were in
danger and died. Congress wants to sort this out. We'll
talk to Alex Stone coming up.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
We're on every day from one until four and then
after four o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
It's the podcast version same as the radio show. A
little bit after four o'clock.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
It's posted, so if you miss anything, then you could
play the podcast all afternoon, all evening, all night into
tomorrow morning. Among all the disasters that we've been chronicling
for a month now, man, can you believe how many
things the government failed? And they don't want to talk
(19:39):
about it. Wait to hear the Steve sober Off quotes.
I'm going to tell you later. They're trying to shut
down all the criticism. They don't want anybody asking anything.
They're hoping all this goes away. Actually, I think a
lot of these people ought to go to jail. A
lot of people ought to go to jail in government,
people with the high speed rail fiasco, people in this
(20:01):
fire response. And one of the aspects is we pay
a lot of money for an emergency alerts system in
Los Angeles County, and as you know, a lot of
people got bogus alerts to evacuate when they were nowhere
near the fire. And then the people in the fire
zone and out to Dina, where they had quite an
(20:22):
enormous amount of damage and some deaths. Some of those
neighborhoods never got a warning to evacuate until seven nine
hours later, and now Congress wants to do an investigation.
We're going to talk to Alex Stone ABC News to
see what this is about.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Alex.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
We're team members of Congress who are saying, all of
them from southern California are saying, all right, whether it
be La or you know, it could be anywhere in
the US or anywhere in the world, that we have
to understand how these wireless emergency alerts work. And if
they aren't working the way we think that they should,
then we got to get to the bottom of it,
because it didn't work during the wildfires that yeah, areas
(21:02):
about the Dina where people died, that they never got
them or got them heavily delayed many hours later. But
on the flip side of that, what this investigation is
really looking at, it's those erroneous ones that went out
to all ten million people in La County and some
in Orange County and some elsewhere saying that there was
a wildfire near them and they needed to get out immediately.
(21:22):
And then oops, no, never mind that that was sent
out by mistake and those people were fifty miles away
from the wildfires and they had no danger around them.
So this is being led by Congressman Robert Garcia, former mayor.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Of Long Beach.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
He got it down in Long Beach saying there's a
wildfire near you get out, and he was like looking around,
going there's nothing around here.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
But he says, we got to figure this out.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
This was a state emergency where there was a clear
failure in our system to get the public the information
they needed.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
And this really isn't just about La It could be anywhere.
They want to know why these cell phone alerts, you
know where the tone goes off and you get the
message why they didn't really work, and the erroneous ones
that he fears it's going to be like crying wolf
and the people will silence their alerts, which you can
do in the settings on your phone, and then you
won't get anything in the future, or ignore them just completely.
(22:10):
They come in, but you just look at them and
don't do what they say, or you know, you tell
people forty fifty miles away from the disaster that they've
got to go at a time when it was windy
and dry, that they could freak out and think that
there's another wildfire near them. I know living in Santa
Clarita that we and our neighbors we thought there was
something there when we got the alert, because there were
(22:31):
wildfires in the general area, and you think, where is it,
you know, waking up in the middle of the night,
thinking you got to go that somebody could get in
their car and crash their car or have an accident,
panicking trying to get out. If you remember when this
went down, there was a county employee in charge of
the alerts who came out and said it was not
humans sending out the mistake and alerts, it was a
computers doing it.
Speaker 7 (22:52):
First of all, I want to clarify this is not
human driven. There is no one sitting at a desk
right now initiating emergency alerts.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
But Congressman Garcia saying, wait a second, there's not a
human that the computers are taking over and doing this
all on their own.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
We have somehow an automated system that's sending out alerts
without any sort of human control. To be able to
stop that or to fix that issue as it's happening
is really concerning, And you.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Got to think, I mean when the fire department or
the Sheriff's Department or LAPD or making the decision of
what area is going to be evacuated next, and they
let the emergency operations center know there's got to be
a human inputting this information.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It's not you know, but be crazy about that?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Well, is that that that I forgot the name of
that guy that you played the clip of. He was
in charge of the emergency operations. He was trying to
reassure us that it wasn't human error. It sounded to
me like he just wanted everybody to know. It's like, no,
none of us made a mistake. Here was it was
the computer. It's like, that doesn't make anybody feel good. Well,
then you got the there was some rogue algorithm going on. Yeah,
(23:57):
but there's got to be a human deciding all right,
it's time to go and then activating whether they you know,
maybe they put it in and for whatever reason, the
computer expanded the area by mistake or they didn't click
the right button of where they wanted it to go off.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
That they want to figure out.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
So they are sending this now to a letter to
the county, to FEMA, to the FCC, to the software
company that they use to send out these emergency alerts
on your cell phone, saying they got to understand this.
They want to know for future emergencies. It could be
an earthquake, it could be a wildfire, it could be
a snowstay anything so this doesn't go on again, and
so in mass people aren't told to evacuate when they
(24:35):
really don't need to. And the Congressman saying, it's really
about the future of figuring out how to make it better.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
We're prone our area to not just fires, but earthquakes
and other serious natural emergencies, and so we need to
make sure that we are prepared for whatever the next big.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
We're on every day from one until four and then
after four o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand. It's the
podcast version same as the radio show. A little bit
after four o'clock it's posted, so if you miss anything,
then you could play the podcast all afternoon, all evening,
all night into tomorrow morning. Among all the disasters that
(25:13):
we've been chronicling for a month now, man, can you
believe how many things the government failed and they don't
want to talk about it. Wait to hear the Steve
sober Off quotes. I'm going to tell you later. They're
trying to shut down all the criticism. They don't want
anybody asking anything. They're hoping all this goes away. Actually,
I think a lot of these people ought to go
(25:33):
to jail. A lot of people ought to go to
jail in government, people with the high speed rail fiasco,
people involved in this fire response. And one of the
aspects is we pay a lot of money for an
emergency alerts system in Los Angeles County, and as you know,
a lot of people got bogus alerts to evacuate when
(25:56):
they were nowhere near the fire. And then the people
in the fire zone and out to Dina where they
had quite an enormous amount of damage and some deaths.
Some of those neighborhoods never got a warning to evacuate
until seven nine hours later. And now Congress wants to
do an investigation. We're going to talk to Alex Stone
(26:16):
ABC News to see what this is about.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Alex.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
We're team members of Congress who are saying, all of
them from southern California are saying, all right, whether it
be LA or you know, it could be anywhere in
the US or anywhere in the world, that we have
to understand how these wireless emergency alerts work, and if
they aren't working the way we think that they should,
then we got to get to the bottom of it,
because it didn't work during the wildfires. That yeah, areas
(26:42):
about the Dina where people died that they never got
them or got them heavily delayed many hours later. But
on the flip side of that, what this investigation is
really looking at, it's those erroneous ones that went out
to all ten million people in La County and some
in Orange County and some elsewhere saying that there was
wildfire near them and they needed to get out immediately.
(27:02):
And then oops, no, never mind that that was sent
out by mistake and those people were fifty miles away
from the wildfires and they had no danger around them.
So this is being led by Congressman Robert Garcia, former
mayor of Long Beach. He got it down in Long
Beach saying there's a wildfire near you, get out, and
he was like looking around, going there's nothing around here.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
But he says, we got to figure this out.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
This was a state emergency where there was a clear
failure in our system to get the public the information
they needed.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
And this really isn't just about La, it could be anywhere.
They want to know why these cell phone alerts, you
know where the tone goes off and you get the
message why they didn't really work, and the erroneous ones
that he fears it's going to be like crying wolf
and the people will silence their alerts, which you can
do in the settings on your phone, and then you
won't get anything in the future, or ignore them just completely.
(27:50):
They come in, but you just look at them and
don't do what they say. Or you know, you tell
people forty fifty miles away from the disaster that they've
got to go at a time it was windy and dry,
that they could freak out and think that there's another
wildfire near them. I know, living in Santa Clarita that
we and our neighbors we thought there was something there
when we got the alert, because there were wildfires in
(28:12):
the general area, and you think where is it, you know,
waking up in the middle of the night thinking you
got to go, that somebody could get in their car
and crash their car or have an accident panicking trying
to get out. If you remember when this went down,
there was a county employee in charge of the alerts
who came out and said it was not humans sending
out the mistake and alerts, it was a computers doing it.
Speaker 7 (28:32):
First of all, I want to clarify this is not
human driven. There is no one sitting at a desk
right now initiating emergency alerts.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
But Congress mac Garcia saying, wait a second, there's not
a human that the computers are taking over and doing
this all on their own.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
We have somehow an automated system that's sending out alerts
without any sort of human control. To be able to
stop that or to fix that issue as it's happening
is really.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And you got to think, I mean, when the fire
department or the Sheriff's department or LAPD or making the
decision of what area is going to be evacuated next,
and they let the emergency operations center know there's got
to be a human inputting this information, it's not you know,
but be crazy about that? Well? Is that that that
that I forgot the name of that guy that you
played the clip of. He was in charge of the
emergency operations. He was trying to reassure us that it
(29:24):
wasn't human error. It sounded to me like he just
wanted everybody to know. It's like, no, none of us
made a mistake. Here was it was the computer. It's like,
that doesn't make anybody feel good. Well, then you got
there was some rogue algorithm going on. Yeah, but there's
got to be a human deciding all right, it's time
to go and then activating whether they you know, maybe
they put it in and for whatever reason the computer
(29:46):
expanded the area by mistake or they didn't click the
right button of where they wanted it to go off.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
That they want to figure out.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So they are sending this now to a letter to
the county, to FEMA, to the FCC, to the software
company that they use to send out these emergency alerts
on your cell phone, saying they got to understand this.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
They want to know for future emergencies.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It could be an earthquake, it could be a wildfire,
it could be a snowstory, anything so this doesn't go
on again, and so in mass people aren't told to
evacuate when they really don't need to. And the congressman saying,
it's really about the future of figuring out how to
make it better.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
We're prone our area to not just fires, but earthquakes
and other serious natural emergencies, and so we need to
make sure that we are prepared for whatever the next big.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI A sixty.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
You may have heard in.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Deborah's News, and she'll have more at two o'clock. Right
as we started the show, Trump was doing his daily
rambling in front of the reporters and he got on
the high speed railcase here in California. He's wants a
criminal investigation. He said it's the worst project he's ever seen,
and it is. It's the worst project anybody's ever seen.
(31:00):
To continue discussing the high speed rail, we're going to
talk with assembly Woman Alexandra messdo Uh from Tallare and
she thinks it's time to cut off the funding after
seventeen years and ten and a half billion dollars on
a route between a Field and Madera and an Orchard
(31:20):
and Shafter, it's time to redirect.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
The state's proper priorities. Shafter. That's the town I was
looking for.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
You know how they're trying to tell you that they
are going to complete high speed rail between Bakersfield and.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Merced. It's not Bakersfield. And Merced. It's Shafter and Madera.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Shafter is outside of Bakersfield, and Madera is outside of Merced,
and it is an orchard and shafter and an empty
field in Madera. That's going to be the beginning and
end of the high speed rail system. Ten and a
half billion dollars and they want to spend billions more
in Tryump said there should be a criminal investigation, and
(32:03):
assembly Woman Alexandra Messido said, we've got to stop the
funding for this.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
There's so much insanity. And guess what she thinks that
ought to go for.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Maybe wildfire prevention and water are infrastructure projects.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Maybe that would be more useful.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Ask the people in the Palisades if maybe a billion
extra dollars should have been spent on the water system
and the hydrant system. So we're going to get to
that coming up. In fact, I got a whole thing
on the hydrants. The New York Times this story today
that Los Angeles has the Palisades, twenty five percent of
(32:46):
the fire hydrants date back to the nineteen forties. The
nineteen forties, they have the most primitive fire hydrant that
exists in the modern world. That was one of the
reasons that the firefighters could not respond properly to the
raging fire. They had these two and a half inch
(33:09):
diameter fire hydrant outlets, and it's supposed to be four inches,
but the hydrants in the Palisades go back to the
nineteen forties. Think of all the tax money that's been
paid since then, and then think of all the tax
money that goes for the stupid high speed rail. It's
just incredible. What's going on here now another story. People
(33:33):
are just upset all over the place here in southern California.
So the EPA is going to be collecting an enormous,
enormous amount of toxic waste right now. You would think
that the EPA has access to processing sites around the
country that they own processing sites, And there's a whole
big desert out not far from Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Guess where I'm telling you everybody in.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Government must hate They just all hate us because the
EPA is requested.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You're not gonna believe this.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
They want to open a processing site for fire debris
near Malibu City Hall. Seriously, with all the government land,
all the land that the federal government owns in this state,
with that huge desert out there to the east. They
want to dump the fire debris near city Hall. All
(34:31):
the restaurants, all the residents are really upset and the
local officials. They do not want the hazardous waste stored
in a busy part of town, according to the La Times,
near multiple schools.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Oh but it's safe, John, it's safe. Yeah, because we've
done testing. Okay, we just found out a little while ago.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Steve Soboroff doesn't trust the water in the Palisades no
matter what the DWP's says. Now, the EPA is hoping
to use a concrete covered lot near the Civic Center
as a staging area for paint, bleach, asbestos, propane tanks,
(35:16):
lithium ion batteries that they've removed from the Palisades burn zone.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Oh and it said the discussion was heated. Why would
it be heated.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
I wouldn't be upset if that was in my backyard.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Why would you take the toxic waste to the middle
of Malibu, one guy said Jeremy Fink, whose kid goes
to a school nearby, at the meeting, I do resent
comparing this to like cleaning out some old DRAINO.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
This is not effing DRAINO. The lot.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It's at the corner of Webway and Civic Center Way
in Malibu. It's a half mile from two elementary schools,
Webster Elementary and the Art Lady of Malibu School. It's
a quarter of a mile from Santa Monica College, the
Malibu Campus, one mile from Pepperdine.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Are they insane?
Speaker 2 (36:15):
All the federal land in this whole wide world and
they're going to put all the toxic waste next to
Malibu City Hall, just down the block from all these schools.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
You can't make this stuff up. Well, it's another thing
we got to follow here. We come back.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Alexandra Messdo, the assembly woman, says enough money on high
speed rail. How about the money goes for wildfire prevention
and what are infrastructure projects? We'll talk about that coming up.
Deborah Mark Live in the CAFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to The John Covelt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
(36:53):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
It's the John Cobelt Show and we're on every day
from one until four three hours.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
It is packed.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
It's overflowing today and then after four o'clock. If you
miss anything, you go to the iHeart app for John
Cobelt Show on demand. It's the podcast. It's the same
as the radio show. It contains everything, all the all
the material. And let me tell you, today's one of
those days you ought to take in all three hours
if you if you possibly can. We've got something that
(00:35):
just broke a few minutes ago, and I haven't even
heard this audio yet. For seventeen years, California has been
trying to build high speed rail. It is one of
the biggest scandals, one of the biggest travesties, one of
the most expensive ripoffs ever. And for seventeen years I've
been saying, you can't have a project go on that long,
(00:57):
spend that much money, ten to fifteen billion dollars, and
not have anything to show for it. It's got to
be a crime. There's got to be crimes going on here.
People have been looting money from high speed rail for
seventeen years and getting away with it. There aren't even
records on how a lot of the money was spin
(01:17):
So now Trump just a few minutes ago said he
wants an investigation. Let's play this audience and see what
it's about.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
And one of the things I want to investigate rapidly
because I've never seen anything to this extent. The train
that's being built between Los Angeles and San Francisco is
the worst managed project I think I've ever seen, and
I've seen some of the worst. Billions and billions, hundreds
of billions of dollars over budget. In fact, I read
(01:46):
where you could take every single person that was going
to go on the train and get the finest limousine
service in the world and take them back and forth
with limousines, and you'd have hundreds of billions of dollars
left over. It is the worst thing, and we're going
to start an investigation in that because it's not possible.
I built for a living, and i'd built on time,
on budget. It's impossible that something could cost that much.
(02:11):
And now it's not even going to San Francisco, and
it's not going to Los Angeles. It's they made it
much shorter, so now it's at little places way away
from San Francisco and way away from Los Angeles. No,
we're going to start a big investigation on that because
I've never seen anything like it. Nobody has ever seen
(02:31):
anything like it. The worst overruns that there have ever
been in the history of our country. And it wasn't
even necessary. I would have said, you don't buy it,
you take an airplane. Of course you're two dollars. Of course,
he's nothing. You take an airplane. But this got started,
and if you have to drive, you can drive. They
have hundreds of billions of dollars of cost overruns and
(02:55):
it's not even the same project. It's much shorter, it's
way outside of San France, so it's going way outside
of Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
So we're going to be looking into this.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
Is that dog is going to investigate the trend? No,
I'm doing that myself.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Yeah, he's in charge of the Justice Department. He ought
to get Justice Department investigators on this. I'm sure there's
got to be federal crimes committed. They've certainly used federal money,
so it's under his jurisdiction. This is not just about
saving money that reporter was piping up. Is this a
DOGE thing.
Speaker 4 (03:28):
It's not.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Doge is an advisory board. Basically, they don't have any
direct power. They can't cut any spending, they can't fire people.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
It's all Trump.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Trump is ultimately responsible for all the decisions, whether you
like it or not. Musk and his crowd is just
doing the analysis and doing the advice. You don't have
to be elon Musk. You don't have to have a
two hundred IQ to figure this thing out. This passed
in two thousand and eight. They spent anywhere from ten
billion dollars already, and he's right. The projection of spending
(04:04):
is supposed to be two hundred billion dollars two hundred billion,
and they're never going to get there what they have now.
You know, you always have to go back to the beginning.
People forget, people don't keep track, and it's understandable everybody's
got their own life, but criminals in politics, criminals in government,
(04:29):
bank on the fact that you're going to forget, you're
not going to keep track of this, and you don't
want to deal with too many numbers. Back in two
thousand and eight, the original deal was they would spend
thirty three billion dollars three to three, and we were
going to get a high speed rail track starting Sacramento
(04:50):
and then to San Francisco and then to Los Angeles
and down to Anaheim and San Diego, all of that,
Sacramento to San Diego thirty three billion dollars and it
was supposed to be built by now. And what do
we have after seventeen years. There is no track going anywhere.
(05:14):
And now they're working on a little sliver to run
from they say Bakersfield to Merced, which is an absurdity.
There is no market to go from Bakersfield to Mercede none.
In fact, I don't even think it's it's those two cities.
It's two outlying towns. If I remember correctly, it's it's
(05:36):
it's Madera, outside of outside of Merced. And then what's
the town. There's a little town next to Bakersfield. It's
slipping my memory right now, but that's really where the
train is going to go from beginning to end, not
even Bakersfield to Merced. And it's supposed to be a
minimum LA to San Francisco, if not San Diego to Sacramento.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
Where did the billions of dollars go.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
Well, they did several audits a few years ago, and
I remember clearly one of the audits, and of course
it was news for about half a day.
Speaker 1 (06:09):
And then everybody moved on.
Speaker 2 (06:12):
The audit findings said that there was no paperwork, no
written record of where a lot of the money went.
They can't tell you where the tax money went, who
received the money.
Speaker 1 (06:30):
Nothing.
Speaker 2 (06:32):
Well, once I heard that, then it confirmed to me.
I think, to any reasonable person, it's like, oh, so
it really is a criminal operation. The money disappeared. Now
I can't accuse specific people because I don't have proof
who specifically stole it. But I would look at everybody
with a title that ran high speed rail over the
(06:54):
last seventeen years, because they must know where the money went.
Somebody had to sign those checks. How could you have
no paperwork, no paperwork at all, and there's no need
for the damn thing.
Speaker 1 (07:10):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
You can get a flight to San Francisco for sixty bucks.
I know.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
I had two sons go to school in the Bay Area.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
We took a lot of trips up to San Francisco
and back, all cleaning back, drove there and back many times.
You know, for it's about about five and a half
six hours. There was never, ever, ever, any need. It
was something that Schwarzenegger sold. What he was I don't
(07:37):
know what he was snorting, but he was on his
global warming high and he convinced all the buffoons in
this state that, oh, yeah, high speed rail, it's gonna
fight global warming, and oh the trains are gonna be
really cool. And Jerry Brown pushed this through and it's
been total nonsense. There was no need for it. They
made up numbers that you know, tens of millions of
(07:59):
people were gonna take. No, there's no very interest in this.
I have never heard a single person, not a single
person say to me it's like, wow, if I couldn't
we only had a train to San Francisco. There's I
think because we've taken so many trips up there in
my family. I think there's thirty two flights a day.
(08:22):
I mean, there's there's a couple every hour on just
about every airline. There's and and and they're relatively cheap,
unless you you know, order one at the very last minute,
it'll cost much. It was it's a scam, it's a crime,
(08:44):
it's a rip off. They have looted fifteen billion dollars.
Newsome supposedly was gonna cut it off, and then the
corrupt construction unions put them at a headlock, and.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
He changed his.
Speaker 2 (09:02):
And it's those construction unions that have been pushing it
in recent years. But there've got to be so many
people that if you did a real investigation, a lot
of face charges.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
Just there's no way you could do this in the
private sector.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Any executives who carried on like this in the private
sector would be in prison. So I hope he means
what he says, because it is the worst project, the
biggest waste of money. How do you build nothing? For
seventeen years, they didn't even try to put up a
cover story, not even you do like some construction, you know,
(09:37):
at least lay down, you know, fifteen miles around, just
so there's video for the idiot newspeople to run to
make it look like there is something. What a terrible media,
by the way we have it in California for this
to go on seventeen years. There was one writer, Ralph
Vardibedian from the Los Angeles Times, while a knuckleheads on
(09:58):
the La Times EDITORI board kept pushing this garbage. He
wrote and explained a lot of the corruption that was
going on, a lot of the delays and nonsense. And
of course he's working for some other news site.
Speaker 5 (10:11):
Now.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
I think he's freelancing, because you know, they all times
lost interest in printing the truth. They just went on
their green propaganda kick. All right, we got more coming up.
What I want to tell Well, well, if we get
in more details on what Trump is talking about, we'll
tell you when we come back. I don't know if
you've ever been on the inside, been part of the
in crowd.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
People who are.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
On the inside of things, they get a lot of benefits.
And there's people in the Palisades who are rich, powerful,
connected to Hollywood, and they get their own private Zoom
calls with a guy like Steve Soboroff, who's supposed to
be overseeing the Palisades recovery. And Steve was on Zoom
(10:55):
the other night and he's telling these rich people things
that the rest of the public is not informed about.
You're gonna be fascinated by this.
Speaker 6 (11:05):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I don't know if you've ever been on the inside.
I don't think Deborah and I have ever been on
the inside. We're just naturally on the outside. Are you
an insider? Time I can tell Summer we're we're not insiders.
(11:35):
Nobody nobody wants to tell us any secrets. Steve Steve
sober Off is Karen Bass's point man for the recovery.
She's not talking publicly because of the shame that she
carries around for running off to Africa while La burned.
So she puts Steve sober Off. And if you track
(11:58):
city politics, he's been around for decades. He helped build
the Staples Center, used to be a former city police commissioner.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
He's a real estate developer.
Speaker 4 (12:06):
He's got a.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
Similar profile to Rick Caruso, about ten years older. And
I think he ran for mayor once. Like I said,
he was on the police commission. So you know he's
done all his civic duty and right now he's running
this recovery effort, trying to organize things.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
So if you're on the.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Inside, if you're a Hollywood agent, you get on a
private zoom call with sober Off, and sober Off tells
you what to do with your property. A lot of
these guys were burned out or had their homes badly damaged.
None of this information is available to the rest of
the Palisades residents who are much less wealthy and much
(12:49):
less well connected. So here's what he told them, according
to the Free Beacon, which is a Washington based newspaper,
and the Free Beacon got a copy of the Zoom meeting,
so they had the audio recording, and Soberoff said, whether
you're broke or you're old, don't sell now, because in
(13:12):
one year we're going to be putting billions of dollars
in your neighborhood of improvements. You'll get triple what these
guys are offering you for now. Now he's telling wealthy
people like executives and staff of three Hollywood talent agencies
William Morris CIA UTA United Talent Agency, which hosted the meeting.
(13:39):
Among them was the UTA vice chair, Jay Schures. Give
you an example, he represents Jake Tapper, the CNN anchor.
Another executive on the call was a Willie Morris partner,
Richard Welts. His clients Tina fey Seth McFarlan and Ricky Gervais.
And so these guys got the inside. Oh pay don't
(14:01):
don't sell your place to somebody offering you pennies. Just
hold on because lots of money is being invested. You know,
the city, state, federal government is going to be bringing
in huge barrels of cash, billions of dollars. Now they
don't have a public meeting to tell people this.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
Uh, you just had to be part of the in crowd.
Speaker 2 (14:26):
So Broff also complained that half our labor could get
deported before the palisades are rebuilt, and that can make
things extremely expensive.
Speaker 1 (14:36):
It's funny.
Speaker 2 (14:37):
I wonder if he's ever added up the hundreds of
millions of dollars we've spent on a legal immigration. They
always talk about, oh, you know, if you if you
you don't have a legal immigration, the cost of the
labor is going to go away.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Prices are going to go up.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
We spent a huge percentage of our tax money on
a legal immigration. I've never seen anybody compare the two,
how much we spend da Like, all the money we
spent to support illegal aliens doesn't count. It's only the
money that we're gonna spend on more expensive workers that's
(15:14):
real money, right. I don't think when you netted it
all out, we're saving very much. And he also told
he also told the rich guys, just because the DWP
says your water is safe, have somebody test it before
you move back in. And if they say drink water,
use bottled water. What they don't say is, and they're
(15:38):
starting to say it now, don't bathe your baby in
their water. Don't take a bath in the water, don't
take a shower, don't do your dishes, don't do laundry.
You don't want anything to do with that water until
it's deemed safe. And I would get an independent agency.
Maybe there's a kit at CBS that tells your water
a safe. In other words, don't trust the DWP. So
(16:00):
the entertainment executives get this free advice. Don't trust a DWP.
The water may be poisonous, don't feed it to your kids.
But everybody else, how would they know that? They don't
get a private zoom call from Steve sober Off. You're
supposed to drink the water and get poisoned and die.
(16:25):
I guess you're supposed to get the parasite. Drink the parasites.
Unless you're special and privileged and you work in the
entertainment industry as an agent, then we wouldn't want your
digestive system to be compromised by parasites or some other
toxic chemicals. You believe this, And later on he said,
(16:49):
I trust DWP, but when they say water is safe,
I would check every faucet well. In other words, he
doesn't believe the water is safe. But the rest of
us in that general area are still drinking the water.
So you got one of the top city officials that
(17:11):
Karen Bass is hired or has appointed to run the recovery,
and he's telling his buddies on the side, Hey, don't
don't go near the water.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
Well, where's genez. She's not drinking the lost equity. No,
I'm not drinking the water.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
No, I we we actually never drink the water, cress.
It tastes foul. But you know, there's some incidental times
you do. You do take in the water, you do
wash the dishes, you do brush your teeth. But what's
really Oh, I got to take a break. I'm gonna
finish this later in the hour. Later on, I'll do
(17:50):
part two of this, and I'm going to tell you
about the bust too, Yes, and the bust to know
because sober Off was shutting down any criticisms in this
Zoom meeting, and this.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
Is the policy.
Speaker 2 (18:02):
It looks like the whole city has, all the city
politicians and all the bureaucrats, they are never going to
talk anytime soon about all the things they did wrong.
They don't want any blame, no finger pointing, no second guessing,
no Monday Morning quarterbacking. They want to shut the conversation
(18:24):
down so that people lose their steam, lose their energy
over what happened. And sober Off is trying to enforce
that privately on these Zoom calls with the rich guys
in the entertainment industry. I'll tell you that coming up.
But later on when we return though, we're going to
have Alex Stone on from ABC News because Congress wants
(18:45):
to investigate why there were so many bad warnings going
out the night of the fire, false warnings in a
lot of cases, no warnings for people who were in
danger and died. Congress wants to sort this out. We'll
talk to Alex Stone coming up.
Speaker 6 (19:04):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
We're on every day from one until four and then
after four o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand.
Speaker 1 (19:15):
It's the podcast version same as the radio show. A
little bit after four o'clock.
Speaker 2 (19:18):
It's posted, so if you miss anything, then you could
play the podcast all afternoon, all evening, all night into
tomorrow morning. Among all the disasters that we've been chronicling
for a month now, man, can you believe how many
things the government failed? And they don't want to talk
(19:39):
about it. Wait to hear the Steve sober Off quotes.
I'm going to tell you later. They're trying to shut
down all the criticism. They don't want anybody asking anything.
They're hoping all this goes away. Actually, I think a
lot of these people ought to go to jail. A
lot of people ought to go to jail in government,
people with the high speed rail fiasco, people in this
(20:01):
fire response. And one of the aspects is we pay
a lot of money for an emergency alerts system in
Los Angeles County, and as you know, a lot of
people got bogus alerts to evacuate when they were nowhere
near the fire. And then the people in the fire
zone and out to Dina, where they had quite an
(20:22):
enormous amount of damage and some deaths. Some of those
neighborhoods never got a warning to evacuate until seven nine
hours later, and now Congress wants to do an investigation.
We're going to talk to Alex Stone ABC News to
see what this is about.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Alex.
Speaker 2 (20:40):
We're team members of Congress who are saying, all of
them from southern California are saying, all right, whether it
be La or you know, it could be anywhere in
the US or anywhere in the world, that we have
to understand how these wireless emergency alerts work. And if
they aren't working the way we think that they should,
then we got to get to the bottom of it,
because it didn't work during the wildfires that yeah, areas
(21:02):
about the Dina where people died, that they never got
them or got them heavily delayed many hours later. But
on the flip side of that, what this investigation is
really looking at, it's those erroneous ones that went out
to all ten million people in La County and some
in Orange County and some elsewhere saying that there was
a wildfire near them and they needed to get out immediately.
(21:22):
And then oops, no, never mind that that was sent
out by mistake and those people were fifty miles away
from the wildfires and they had no danger around them.
So this is being led by Congressman Robert Garcia, former mayor.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Of Long Beach.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
He got it down in Long Beach saying there's a
wildfire near you get out, and he was like looking around,
going there's nothing around here.
Speaker 4 (21:42):
But he says, we got to figure this out.
Speaker 5 (21:44):
This was a state emergency where there was a clear
failure in our system to get the public the information
they needed.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
And this really isn't just about La It could be anywhere.
They want to know why these cell phone alerts, you
know where the tone goes off and you get the
message why they didn't really work, and the erroneous ones
that he fears it's going to be like crying wolf
and the people will silence their alerts, which you can
do in the settings on your phone, and then you
won't get anything in the future, or ignore them just completely.
(22:10):
They come in, but you just look at them and
don't do what they say, or you know, you tell
people forty fifty miles away from the disaster that they've
got to go at a time when it was windy
and dry, that they could freak out and think that
there's another wildfire near them. I know living in Santa
Clarita that we and our neighbors we thought there was
something there when we got the alert, because there were
(22:31):
wildfires in the general area, and you think, where is it,
you know, waking up in the middle of the night,
thinking you got to go that somebody could get in
their car and crash their car or have an accident,
panicking trying to get out. If you remember when this
went down, there was a county employee in charge of
the alerts who came out and said it was not
humans sending out the mistake and alerts, it was a
computers doing it.
Speaker 7 (22:52):
First of all, I want to clarify this is not
human driven. There is no one sitting at a desk
right now initiating emergency alerts.
Speaker 2 (23:02):
But Congressman Garcia saying, wait a second, there's not a
human that the computers are taking over and doing this
all on their own.
Speaker 5 (23:08):
We have somehow an automated system that's sending out alerts
without any sort of human control. To be able to
stop that or to fix that issue as it's happening
is really concerning, And you.
Speaker 2 (23:21):
Got to think, I mean when the fire department or
the Sheriff's Department or LAPD or making the decision of
what area is going to be evacuated next, and they
let the emergency operations center know there's got to be
a human inputting this information.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
It's not you know, but be crazy about that?
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Well, is that that that I forgot the name of
that guy that you played the clip of. He was
in charge of the emergency operations. He was trying to
reassure us that it wasn't human error. It sounded to
me like he just wanted everybody to know. It's like, no,
none of us made a mistake. Here was it was
the computer. It's like, that doesn't make anybody feel good. Well,
then you got the there was some rogue algorithm going on. Yeah,
(23:57):
but there's got to be a human deciding all right,
it's time to go and then activating whether they you know,
maybe they put it in and for whatever reason, the
computer expanded the area by mistake or they didn't click
the right button of where they wanted it to go off.
Speaker 4 (24:11):
That they want to figure out.
Speaker 2 (24:12):
So they are sending this now to a letter to
the county, to FEMA, to the FCC, to the software
company that they use to send out these emergency alerts
on your cell phone, saying they got to understand this.
They want to know for future emergencies. It could be
an earthquake, it could be a wildfire, it could be
a snowstay anything so this doesn't go on again, and
so in mass people aren't told to evacuate when they
(24:35):
really don't need to. And the Congressman saying, it's really
about the future of figuring out how to make it better.
Speaker 5 (24:40):
We're prone our area to not just fires, but earthquakes
and other serious natural emergencies, and so we need to
make sure that we are prepared for whatever the next big.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
We're on every day from one until four and then
after four o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand. It's the
podcast version same as the radio show. A little bit
after four o'clock it's posted, so if you miss anything,
then you could play the podcast all afternoon, all evening,
all night into tomorrow morning. Among all the disasters that
(25:13):
we've been chronicling for a month now, man, can you
believe how many things the government failed and they don't
want to talk about it. Wait to hear the Steve
sober Off quotes. I'm going to tell you later. They're
trying to shut down all the criticism. They don't want
anybody asking anything. They're hoping all this goes away. Actually,
I think a lot of these people ought to go
(25:33):
to jail. A lot of people ought to go to
jail in government, people with the high speed rail fiasco,
people involved in this fire response. And one of the
aspects is we pay a lot of money for an
emergency alerts system in Los Angeles County, and as you know,
a lot of people got bogus alerts to evacuate when
(25:56):
they were nowhere near the fire. And then the people
in the fire zone and out to Dina where they
had quite an enormous amount of damage and some deaths.
Some of those neighborhoods never got a warning to evacuate
until seven nine hours later. And now Congress wants to
do an investigation. We're going to talk to Alex Stone
(26:16):
ABC News to see what this is about.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Alex.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
We're team members of Congress who are saying, all of
them from southern California are saying, all right, whether it
be LA or you know, it could be anywhere in
the US or anywhere in the world, that we have
to understand how these wireless emergency alerts work, and if
they aren't working the way we think that they should,
then we got to get to the bottom of it,
because it didn't work during the wildfires. That yeah, areas
(26:42):
about the Dina where people died that they never got
them or got them heavily delayed many hours later. But
on the flip side of that, what this investigation is
really looking at, it's those erroneous ones that went out
to all ten million people in La County and some
in Orange County and some elsewhere saying that there was
wildfire near them and they needed to get out immediately.
(27:02):
And then oops, no, never mind that that was sent
out by mistake and those people were fifty miles away
from the wildfires and they had no danger around them.
So this is being led by Congressman Robert Garcia, former
mayor of Long Beach. He got it down in Long
Beach saying there's a wildfire near you, get out, and
he was like looking around, going there's nothing around here.
Speaker 4 (27:22):
But he says, we got to figure this out.
Speaker 5 (27:24):
This was a state emergency where there was a clear
failure in our system to get the public the information
they needed.
Speaker 2 (27:30):
And this really isn't just about La, it could be anywhere.
They want to know why these cell phone alerts, you
know where the tone goes off and you get the
message why they didn't really work, and the erroneous ones
that he fears it's going to be like crying wolf
and the people will silence their alerts, which you can
do in the settings on your phone, and then you
won't get anything in the future, or ignore them just completely.
(27:50):
They come in, but you just look at them and
don't do what they say. Or you know, you tell
people forty fifty miles away from the disaster that they've
got to go at a time it was windy and dry,
that they could freak out and think that there's another
wildfire near them. I know, living in Santa Clarita that
we and our neighbors we thought there was something there
when we got the alert, because there were wildfires in
(28:12):
the general area, and you think where is it, you know,
waking up in the middle of the night thinking you
got to go, that somebody could get in their car
and crash their car or have an accident panicking trying
to get out. If you remember when this went down,
there was a county employee in charge of the alerts
who came out and said it was not humans sending
out the mistake and alerts, it was a computers doing it.
Speaker 7 (28:32):
First of all, I want to clarify this is not
human driven. There is no one sitting at a desk
right now initiating emergency alerts.
Speaker 2 (28:42):
But Congress mac Garcia saying, wait a second, there's not
a human that the computers are taking over and doing
this all on their own.
Speaker 5 (28:48):
We have somehow an automated system that's sending out alerts
without any sort of human control. To be able to
stop that or to fix that issue as it's happening
is really.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
And you got to think, I mean, when the fire
department or the Sheriff's department or LAPD or making the
decision of what area is going to be evacuated next,
and they let the emergency operations center know there's got
to be a human inputting this information, it's not you know,
but be crazy about that? Well? Is that that that
that I forgot the name of that guy that you
played the clip of. He was in charge of the
emergency operations. He was trying to reassure us that it
(29:24):
wasn't human error. It sounded to me like he just
wanted everybody to know. It's like, no, none of us
made a mistake. Here was it was the computer. It's like,
that doesn't make anybody feel good. Well, then you got
there was some rogue algorithm going on. Yeah, but there's
got to be a human deciding all right, it's time
to go and then activating whether they you know, maybe
they put it in and for whatever reason the computer
(29:46):
expanded the area by mistake or they didn't click the
right button of where they wanted it to go off.
Speaker 4 (29:51):
That they want to figure out.
Speaker 2 (29:52):
So they are sending this now to a letter to
the county, to FEMA, to the FCC, to the software
company that they use to send out these emergency alerts
on your cell phone, saying they got to understand this.
Speaker 4 (30:04):
They want to know for future emergencies.
Speaker 2 (30:07):
It could be an earthquake, it could be a wildfire,
it could be a snowstory, anything so this doesn't go
on again, and so in mass people aren't told to
evacuate when they really don't need to. And the congressman saying,
it's really about the future of figuring out how to
make it better.
Speaker 5 (30:20):
We're prone our area to not just fires, but earthquakes
and other serious natural emergencies, and so we need to
make sure that we are prepared for whatever the next big.
Speaker 6 (30:31):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI A sixty.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
You may have heard in.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Deborah's News, and she'll have more at two o'clock. Right
as we started the show, Trump was doing his daily
rambling in front of the reporters and he got on
the high speed railcase here in California. He's wants a
criminal investigation. He said it's the worst project he's ever seen,
and it is. It's the worst project anybody's ever seen.
(31:00):
To continue discussing the high speed rail, we're going to
talk with assembly Woman Alexandra messdo Uh from Tallare and
she thinks it's time to cut off the funding after
seventeen years and ten and a half billion dollars on
a route between a Field and Madera and an Orchard
(31:20):
and Shafter, it's time to redirect.
Speaker 1 (31:23):
The state's proper priorities. Shafter. That's the town I was
looking for.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
You know how they're trying to tell you that they
are going to complete high speed rail between Bakersfield and.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Merced. It's not Bakersfield. And Merced. It's Shafter and Madera.
Speaker 2 (31:42):
Shafter is outside of Bakersfield, and Madera is outside of Merced,
and it is an orchard and shafter and an empty
field in Madera. That's going to be the beginning and
end of the high speed rail system. Ten and a
half billion dollars and they want to spend billions more
in Tryump said there should be a criminal investigation, and
(32:03):
assembly Woman Alexandra Messido said, we've got to stop the
funding for this.
Speaker 1 (32:08):
There's so much insanity. And guess what she thinks that
ought to go for.
Speaker 2 (32:12):
Maybe wildfire prevention and water are infrastructure projects.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Maybe that would be more useful.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Ask the people in the Palisades if maybe a billion
extra dollars should have been spent on the water system
and the hydrant system. So we're going to get to
that coming up. In fact, I got a whole thing
on the hydrants. The New York Times this story today
that Los Angeles has the Palisades, twenty five percent of
(32:46):
the fire hydrants date back to the nineteen forties. The
nineteen forties, they have the most primitive fire hydrant that
exists in the modern world. That was one of the
reasons that the firefighters could not respond properly to the
raging fire. They had these two and a half inch
(33:09):
diameter fire hydrant outlets, and it's supposed to be four inches,
but the hydrants in the Palisades go back to the
nineteen forties. Think of all the tax money that's been
paid since then, and then think of all the tax
money that goes for the stupid high speed rail. It's
just incredible. What's going on here now another story. People
(33:33):
are just upset all over the place here in southern California.
So the EPA is going to be collecting an enormous,
enormous amount of toxic waste right now. You would think
that the EPA has access to processing sites around the
country that they own processing sites, And there's a whole
big desert out not far from Los Angeles.
Speaker 1 (33:57):
Guess where I'm telling you everybody in.
Speaker 2 (33:59):
Government must hate They just all hate us because the
EPA is requested.
Speaker 1 (34:07):
You're not gonna believe this.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
They want to open a processing site for fire debris
near Malibu City Hall. Seriously, with all the government land,
all the land that the federal government owns in this state,
with that huge desert out there to the east. They
want to dump the fire debris near city Hall. All
(34:31):
the restaurants, all the residents are really upset and the
local officials. They do not want the hazardous waste stored
in a busy part of town, according to the La Times,
near multiple schools.
Speaker 1 (34:45):
Oh but it's safe, John, it's safe. Yeah, because we've
done testing. Okay, we just found out a little while ago.
Speaker 2 (34:54):
Steve Soboroff doesn't trust the water in the Palisades no
matter what the DWP's says. Now, the EPA is hoping
to use a concrete covered lot near the Civic Center
as a staging area for paint, bleach, asbestos, propane tanks,
(35:16):
lithium ion batteries that they've removed from the Palisades burn zone.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Oh and it said the discussion was heated. Why would
it be heated.
Speaker 5 (35:29):
I wouldn't be upset if that was in my backyard.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
Why would you take the toxic waste to the middle
of Malibu, one guy said Jeremy Fink, whose kid goes
to a school nearby, at the meeting, I do resent
comparing this to like cleaning out some old DRAINO.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
This is not effing DRAINO. The lot.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
It's at the corner of Webway and Civic Center Way
in Malibu. It's a half mile from two elementary schools,
Webster Elementary and the Art Lady of Malibu School. It's
a quarter of a mile from Santa Monica College, the
Malibu Campus, one mile from Pepperdine.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
Are they insane?
Speaker 2 (36:15):
All the federal land in this whole wide world and
they're going to put all the toxic waste next to
Malibu City Hall, just down the block from all these schools.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
You can't make this stuff up. Well, it's another thing
we got to follow here. We come back.
Speaker 2 (36:31):
Alexandra Messdo, the assembly woman, says enough money on high
speed rail. How about the money goes for wildfire prevention
and what are infrastructure projects? We'll talk about that coming up.
Deborah Mark Live in the CAFI twenty four hour Newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to The John Covelt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
(36:53):
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.
The John Kobylt Show News
Host
John Kobylt
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