February 10, 2025 • 34 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (02/10) - The fire recovery process has been quite the headache and it is only in the very beginning stages. Audio of Steve Soboroff speaking to high profile Pacific Palisades residents. A woman who lives in Pacific Palisades called out the New York Times for misquoting what some of her neighbors said to the writer of this story about the aftermath of the fires.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am six forty.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
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Welcome, how are you?
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We're on every day from one until four o'clock and
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it up on whoa, whoa, whoa? Hold on?
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Just blow my ears out?
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Hang on.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I have a malfunctioning headset here. Oh my god, way,
whoa hold on? Okay, all right, that's that's dangerous. The
bones in my face are reverberating here, hold on something.
Something has gone wrong here. I can plod on for
this segment.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
But we.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Head this headset's malfunctioning. Okay, that's not I have trouble
starting the last couple of days. We're on from one
to four after four o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand
on the iHeart app.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Now, I told you.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I warned you that this Karen Bass led recovery is
going to be a disaster. Said, I told you that
the biggest problem with the Palisades recovering is going to
be it's the same clowns that created the situation. Bass
(01:14):
created a situation by never funding the fire department and
not overseeing a pre deployment of fire engines and firefighters
and drones. That's why the fire got out of control
very quickly because nobody was in position, nobody knew what
to do. She wasn't around, And I said, that same
(01:38):
mentality is going to permeate this recovery. And if I
was in the Pacific Palisades right now, I would be
calling everybody I know in forming some kind of I
don't know, twenty thousand person union, demanding that she and
Steve sober Off get out, just simply get out, because
(02:01):
this latest story that developed over the weekend there nobody knew.
Nobody knew that Steve Soberoff was going to make a
half a million dollars to work three months.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Nobody knew that.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
But that story came out I guess h late on Friday,
and everybody said, five hundred thousand dollars for three months.
Who agreed to that? Well, Karen Bash did. And you're saying, well,
where's the money coming from? And this is where it
(02:41):
gets strange. They said, well, it was coming from philanthropic groups, charities,
Well which charities? Who runs those charities? Why are they
being so generous to donate that much money? For so
(03:01):
little work, and nobody can even define exactly what he's
going to do or what he has been doing. It's
not only a half a million dollars to sober Off,
but it was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
another real estate executive named Randy Johnson, and he's going
to report the sober Off. So now you've got seven
(03:25):
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for two people for three
months from these mystery philanthropic groups. And we don't know
what the political connections are. We don't even know if
these groups are real. Why would you give out a
vague phrase like philanthropic groups? What charity would spend three
(03:46):
quarters of a million dollars on a seventy six year
old man who's going to work for three months, Especially
when Rick Caruso is putting together his own organization, a
nonprofit it for free?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
What?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
What's what's what's this sober Off guy doing? I just
don't get this. Nobody gets this. So Basque got so
much criticism she announced that.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
That he's going to work for free.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Sober Off at first was defending the deal, saying, well,
his expertise made him worth the price expertise, said where
where did he have expertise bringing back an entire town
that had burned to the ground. What expertise was that?
(04:42):
So Bass had to call sober Off up and beg
him to give up the money. She this is Bass speaking.
I spoke to him today and asked him to modify
his agreement and work for free. He said, yes, we
agree that we don't need anything distracting from the.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Recovery where we're doing.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
So.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I don't know who broke the story originally, but if
that story had been broken, we still wouldn't know he
was getting half a million dollars. The only reason she
changed her mind is not because she thought it was
the right thing to do. It's because they got caught.
They got caught spending three quarters of a million dollars
(05:24):
of somebody else's money.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And they won't say who the somebody else is.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And if that's come out, you know, sometime in the
last few hours, you know, let me know. But I'm
really suspicious. I don't understand this. And why wouldn't you
spend the three quarters of a million dollars on some
of the people who are struggling and suffering. Wow, this
(05:51):
salary as I said, for sober Off would be two
million a year, and that is far more than any
city employee makes, including the mayor. Obviously, on top of that,
Bass has not been able to explain exactly what sober
Off is gonna do. Originally they said he was gonna
(06:12):
lead the first phase of the rebuilding effort, and then
Friday she said, well, maybe he's gonna focus on rebuilding
the historic business district. Soberoff disagreed with that, so he
disagreed that he's going to have a diminished role. He
says he's regularly interacting with federal agencies. Now Trump has
(06:37):
somebody here overseeing this before any federal money goes out.
Rick Grennell's his name, and Grennell it was the ambassador
for Trump first time around. Grenell called Soberoff's pay offensive.
I'm getting paid zero dollars, as are many people. It's
a good thing. They'll be strings attached on the federal
(06:59):
money for California.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Oh, now you know there there will be.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And this is this is why when Trump says there's
gonna be strings attached.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
People go, how could you do that? Well, how could
you do that?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
It's like paying attention to what Elon musk is finding
you have the screaming of all the cockroaches in Washington,
d C.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Stuff like this always turns into a racket. Always, it's
always a racket.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
There's one council member finally came out of a coma,
Monica Rodriguez. She's part of a committee overseeing the recovery.
She said it was infuriating that the philanthropic groups would
provide three quarters of a million dollars for two people
when there's so many fire victims in need.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So now sober Off is gonna get Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
In fact, I found a quote by Soberoff saying it's like, well,
you know, if you want me to drop everything, you know,
it's it's it's different.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
If nothing was going on.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
But he said if you have to drop, if I
have to drop everything, then he expected to be compensated
for it. Well, now there's no compensation. I'm sure is
heart is going to be in it. We've got a clip,
by the way, somebody posted on a next door app
(08:25):
just four minutes of that Steve sober Off zoom call
which he had with Hollywood talent agents. Remember I talked
about this a couple of times last week. Sober Off
had this zoom call with top agents from CIA and
William Morris and UTA, and is giving him advice on
(08:49):
how to hold that they should hold on to their properties.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Give it a year.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
The value of your property is going to triple because
of all the money coming in. Don't drink the water,
don't wash your babies in the water. And that only
went to the to the high end talent agents. The
rest of the Palisades. I mean, there's people still living
in femas shelters, but they didn't get this advice from
sober Off.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Maybe they didn't.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I don't know. Did they not anti up the money
did he charge for that zoom call? See this whole
thing smells and I'm sorry you're in the Palisades. You
should have zero confidence in this crowd. I don't know
what to tell you, because you know it's not likely.
I mean, Caruso, his intentions are good. He's not taking
(09:37):
any money. He's setting up this this outside it's called
Steadfast LA, this outside organization to try to connect homeowners
with everything they need to get on the rebuilding path.
But what sober Off is doing and Karen Pass is doing,
(10:00):
and how many times has she changed her mind on
something important so far. You know, when Trump came to
town and she had promised in front of Trump that
people could go back to their homes within twenty four hours.
That turned out not to be true. And also what's
(10:20):
not been settled is why the hell have they set
up this toxic waste dump at the beach at will
Rogers State Beach instead of sorting out the toxic waste
in the Palisades itself, where everything is already screwed. I
know there was a protest, there's going to be a
protest march from some of the residents. They were going
(10:42):
to march along pch or along the parking lots there.
I mean, there's so much that's crazy about this, and
no decision seems to stick for more than a couple
of days because they don't know what they're doing and
they don't think things through, and then they get all
kinds of angry blowback from people. But I'm telling you,
(11:03):
that's that's unconscionable. I want to and I want that
if anybody knows the names of these philanthropic groups, please
let us know, because there's not a whole lot of
digging going on. There's some superficial digging going on. But
I think there's a lot of ugly stories still to come.
We're coming up. I'll play some of that. Well, yeah,
(11:24):
that's what I started to say that Steve Soberoff clips.
I'm going to play that zoom call. Somebody posted a piece.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Of it online. I want to give the idea what
this guy's about.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
All right, so we've been telling you that Steve Soberoff
is now not going to get paid a half a
million dollars for three months work and his number two
guy named named Randy Johnson.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I assume not the baseball player, right, No, I don't
think so. He's a photographer now.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a real estate
executive named Randy Johnson. So he was going to report
to Sobrof neither one is gonna get paid. They're gonna
work for three months for no pay only because the
world found out. And in going through this timeline again,
Sobroff says, I've been doing this for thirty five years
(12:21):
for free on some of the biggest civic projects for
the city of Los Angeles, But no one ever asked
me to drop everything. This time they did so that
I'm assuming when they said, hey, you want to take
over this recovery effort, Well it's gonna cost you.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
What are you gonna pay me?
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And they said, oh jeez, we can't pay tax money, right,
So they called up these philanthropic charities and did they
get strong armed? I mean, I can't imagine if you're
running a charity and you've got a half million line
around in the middle of the worst disaster ever to
hit the worst fire disaster ever to hit an American city,
(13:05):
you'd go, yeah, yeah, sure, take take a half million.
Scare the victims. Steve Soberoff needs more money. Yeah, he's
he's very he's very rich. This is does all this
is too weird because Bass named sober Off. The recoveries
(13:25):
are January seventeenth, and he and Bass and everybody in
Bass's circle, nobody would say what he was going to
get paid. Now, why keep it a secret? Because it
would cause a firestorm, and they knew it. Sober Off
in Bass knew it would cause a firestorm, and they
thought they could keep it a secret. Why did he
(13:49):
insist on the half million dollars. I'm assuming he did.
I mean, che didn't open the negotiation by saying, hey,
you want a half million?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And he goes, oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
That On Friday, appearing at a news conference, Bass and
sober Off again declined to say how much he would
be paid.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Ten hours later, this was Friday night.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
The La Times kept asking finally the mayor released the information,
and they were still defending it, saying, Zach Sidell, he's
the spokeshole for Bass. There's simply no one like Steve.
And then by Saturday there were so many people screaming
in the palisades. Oh yeah, that was another thing that
(14:34):
Bass reversed herself on. Remember pulling the National Guard out
of the palisades, pulling the checkpoints out, and everybody started screaming.
It's like, why are you doing that? You're gonna get
free rate of the looters. Oh yeah, I go, so boy,
her decisions are dumb, aren't they? Just flat out dumb?
(14:56):
Taking out the National Guard while the looters are going.
U give sober Off a half million dollars and you
and you refuse to tell anybody the truth. What happened
to all the transparency on this that that's their favorite word, transparency. Well,
why don't you start with the first half million dollars?
You're paying one guy for three months, and then what
about the second three months.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I think this recovery is gonna go on by five, seven,
ten years. Who and this this just stinks. This stinks.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And their behavior in covering it up, their behavior in
refusing to reveal the truth.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It all stinks, which is why they covered it up.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Let me play you some of the now this is
a color like a montage of sober off on the
zoom call with the UH with the agents from William
Morris and CIA and Utah. They got their own prime
the audience, and so he gave them all kinds of
analysis and advice.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Let's play some of this.
Speaker 6 (16:06):
Construction costs are going to be high because the demand
for commodities is going to be high. The demand for labor,
whether or not half our labor gets deported before this happens,
is going to be high. So we're going to be
recruiting people from around the country to come, you know,
and live at motel sixes like the Alaska Gold Rust.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
So there are subs out here to do work.
Speaker 6 (16:30):
So you're just going to choose the fork in the
road that goes back to the way. You could do
it any other time, and it's going to take a
long time. I'm very worried about the people who work
for you. I don't know if I'm more worried about
them than I am worried about you, because none of
you are going to be homeless, and a lot of
these people are. So the California Community Foundation is taking
(16:53):
care of them. They're giving them money, They're giving them.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Stop saying he's worried about the workers for these rich people,
you know, presumably the the housekeepers and the gardeners and
the nannies and all that. So, so why why are
you sucking up a half million if you're worried about them?
Why didn't you throw that half million into the pot
or let the philanthropic agency keep it so they could
(17:16):
help it. So what I don't understand his persona here
is say I think I care more about them than
about you.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Meantime, he and.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Bass are covering up his half billion dollar three month deal.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
At bad Oder coming out of this.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
I'm telling you, a few people in the Palisades don't
do something about this, you're gonna deserve what you get.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
The warning flags are out here.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Okay, you are not dealing with people who were forthcoming,
and you're not dealing with competence at all from Karen Bass.
I mean she has swung and missed on so many
aspects of this play.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Some more.
Speaker 6 (17:55):
They're giving them money, they're giving shelter and everything else.
So I would say, if you donate to that fund
at the California Community Foundation, it's a good thing. You know,
I'm paying my housekeeper anyway. I'm actually worked for me
for thirty years. You know, it's all my kids. What
am I do?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Tell her?
Speaker 6 (18:09):
Sorry, you know, but that's that's every everybody's choice. But
I'm worried about all those people who drive west on
the Santa Monica Freeway every morning, because losing their job
to them is like dropping a brick in a puddle.
But make sure it's clean. Have all your clothes cleaned. Water,
he's all your linens cleaned. The water now is unsafe
(18:34):
in all these houses. The DWP says you have to
use bottled water. I don't know. If Jay gave me
bottle water, you probably give me DWP water. But just
because the dw P says your water safe. Have somebody
tested for you before you move back in. And and
when they say, you know, drinking water, you know, use
(18:55):
bottled water, what they don't say is, and they're 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 your laundry. You don't
want to do anything with that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
We got to take a news break. But again, this
is for a few wealthy agents. The rest of the
public was told that the water's okay and sober after
saying well, and I'll listen to the d w B
and what is not okay? This is what I'm talking
about here. There's tens of thousands of people in the
Palisades who we're not told that the water's not okay.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
We're coming up.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
You're listening to John Cobbel's on demand from KFI A six.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
On from one until four and then after four o'clock
John Cobelt's show on demand on the iHeart app. All right,
it's going to play a couple more minutes of this
Steve Sober off zoom call, and then we got a
clip to play for you. Pacific Palisades resident named Kay
Steinsaper got really upset with The New York Times for
(20:08):
she thought mischaracterizing most of the people in the Palisades
as these rich people. And she says that's not true.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And she.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Made this a video and sounded off, we're going to
play you a clip because she thinks the New York
Times is way out of line in their characterization. But first,
a little more Steve Soberoff. Over the weekend. This all
happened since Friday night. It was discovered that sober Off
was getting a half million dollars for three months work
(20:43):
to be in charge of the recovery three months, and
he got another real estate guy named Randy Thomas two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The money is coming from
charitable organizations, but nobody wants to say who. And then
there was so much criticism that Bass reversed her decision
and asked sober Off to work for free, and so he.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
He did agree. I don't know if it was reluctantly.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
What do you think In any event, we told you
last week sober Off was on a zoom call with
these uh, these uh agents, Hollywood agents who apparently are
entitled to their own private advice from sober Off, and
he gave him advice everything from the quality of the
water to how long they should keep their properties before
(21:33):
they sell. Let's let's play some more, because we're gonna
get We're gonna end up with the bus ts and
the bus to know if.
Speaker 6 (21:39):
You can afford it, I'd get an independent agency or
maybe there's a kid at see the water thing.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
It'll tell you if you're working montage and then you're
going to move in.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
I've asked for and gotten approval to go ahead and
start rebuilding.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
The library, the park.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
They're going to have that, they're going to have the
ten k race, They're going to have the Fourth of
July parade, be in different places. I'm talking to Ralph's
and to Gelson's about expediting their return to get these
to get these services. So people may say, well, gee,
I don't want to go back if there's not going
to be an uptown Pacific Palisades other than Rick's Place.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
You know the village, so it's called the village. Yea.
I want to go back to the community.
Speaker 6 (22:21):
I want to go back to Cafe Vida, I want
to go back to you know, I want to go
back to Noah's Bagels, and so, you know, we collectively
are trying to help those people get their permits, just
like I'm trying to help your people get yours. We
have a community Pacific Palisades, twenty three thousand people, ten
(22:44):
thousand homes, of which five thousand are gone, that has
been decimated. You've up to Marquez Knowles. Some of the
schools are going. Six out of nine of our churches
and synagogues are going.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
This is something that's never happened. We're going.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
So it needs to be rebuilt. In my and I
use the term. Maybe it's wrong. I say we're going
to rebuild, not reimagine, because if you start reimagining, well
maybe the road should be here, maybe this should be
an apartment building instead of this, or maybe this office
building should go to luxury apartments.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
They can just go through the city process.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
My job is for you simple get your back where
you are and get your housekeeper back where she is.
You know, the worst case is you're finished building your
house and they haven't hooked up your water. But I
just don't see that. So now some people are going
to take longer. I mean, you know it's going to
take five years for some people and three years.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
For other people. Or yeah, it can't be done too.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
I mean, you can't build a I couldn't even build
my garage in a year, you know, although we built
they built Stable center in eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Well, you can't sold it much because the city of
LA has been so difficult with permitting.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Everything is everything.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Has been a joke, the whole process of permitting in
the city of La.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
He said, this wasn't going to be political. Now, why
you're on the bus to Yes please.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It's been frustrating, I know for a lot of people. Yeah,
that's when he started talking about the bus to Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
All of a sudden, one of the agents said, hey,
the reason we can't build it sooner is because of
Los Angeles' terrible permitting process, which of course Bass has
promised she's going to clean up, but nobody believes her.
And the permitting process is awful Los Angeles. It is onerous,
it's oppressive, it's stupid, it's so difficult. Having said this,
(24:37):
I'll probably never get a permit to build a dog house.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
But it's true. It's a horrendous process.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
And they all know it, and sober Off even acknowledges
it there that you know it's going to take a while,
you know it could take three years. Well, whereas Caruso said,
it's like, if someone saying it takes three years, why
can't we do it a year. If somebody says it's
gonna take a year, why can't we do it in
six months? That that's what Trump said too. It's like
(25:05):
that that's too.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Long a time. Everything is too long.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
And nobody believes Bass is going to streamline anything because
this is the same crowd that brought you the disaster,
the same crowd that brought you these impossible permitting uh uh,
I don't know how to describe it. It's like one long,
endless game in the third circle of Hell, and the
(25:31):
people who brought you these absurd permitting processes are still
in charge and they don't know anything different. They think
they're justified to do this.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
That's the thing. You talk to them.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
They have all kinds of reasons and all kinds of excuses,
you know, It's what It's what I noticed Trump and
Elon Musk are running into in Washington. They're trying to
cut obvious absurd spending.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
It's like Wow.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
You know the reason we do with this why is well, actually,
you know that there's a there's a good excuse for this.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you know what it is.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
It's corruption, Okay, terrific corruption combined with incompetence. And if
you're hearing what they're finding in Washington, d C. What
do you think they'd find in La if they started
auditing every department?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Huh?
Speaker 1 (26:15):
They already found out in the housing bureaucracy, you're the
homeless housing bureaucracy. Much of the money has gone unaccounted for,
billions unaccounted for. You know, we need a Musk and
a Trump here in LA badly because much of the
money that you pay in taxes is being looted. I
(26:40):
mean that La City government is a criminal organization. They
got nothing on the mob, and too many people in
California are too stupid to realize what's going on. Sacramento
is another one that's another huge criminal organization. And if
you did it audit, you would find exactly what Musk
and Trump are finding in Washington, d C. These are
criminal or organizations that have been stealing billions upon billions
(27:03):
of tax dollars forever. All right we come back, I
want to play you a clip of Kay Steinsaper who
went off on the New York Times. She some snotty
writer named Rondack Cason in the Times wrote a piece
calling Pacific Palisades residents the rogue rich. And this Kay
(27:31):
Steinsaper's who's a mother, just went off, and we'll tell
you a clip at her thing.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Coming up.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Coming up after two o'clock, we are going to talk
with Alex Stone because now there's a rash of egg
heists around the country.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Excuse me, sorry about that.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
In fact, in Seattle burglars stole five and forty eggs
last week, just like that rampant egg crime because the
price is so high due to the bird flu. Well,
we'll talk to Alex coming up right after two o'clock.
Then we got to get into some of the crazy
stuff that Musk is finding about the seene amounts of
(28:21):
money being spent on utter garbage by the federal government.
Back to the Palasades for a moment. There's a mother
from the Palisades. Her name is Kay Steinsaper, and she
got really angry because the New York Times has a
writer named Ronda Cason, and casein, I've never seen this before.
(28:47):
You had a town of innocent people, the town is
destroyed by fire, and the culprits include the idiots who've
run the government for years and decades, because as I've
told you, Los Angeles only has half a fire department,
(29:08):
and of the remaining half that we have, nobody was
assigned to monitor high profile, high fire areas, even though
the National Weather Service was issuing stern warnings as stern
as you possibly can. I mean, they broke the English
language trying to come up with ways to tell you
(29:30):
that we're going to have a very deadly, very bad,
destructive fire. And Karen Bascot in the plane went to Africa.
And now after the Palisades, who put see this is
what I'm saying. People saying, well, you got to trust
the government, that the government tries to do the right thing. No,
nobody I know of nobody who knew that the government
(29:51):
had half funded the fire department all these years, fifty
percent funding, that's a fact.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Nobody knew that.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Because nobody pays ten how would you know how much
the fire department? And then what little fire department we
have much of the time, more than half the time,
when it answers a fire call, it's homeless people starting
a fire.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I'm telling you this.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
You cannot have a city where we spend more money
on drug addicts and vagrants in the street than we
spend on a fire department. Okay, you cannot have a
city like this. This is what happens because we have
spent year after year more money on drug addicts and
vagrants that we do our fire department.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
What do you think is going to happen?
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And the incredible stupidity of our government, And now that
we all know this, if it continues, then it's our
incredible stupidity. It's the taxpayers and voters of Los Angeles.
You've got to get your head out of your ideological
rear end and start voting on practical issues. Anyway, back
to case Steinsaper, here's what the writer in The Times
(31:05):
wrote about Palisades residents. It's deep pocketed, well connected residents
have access to power that few have. They can pick
up the phone and call Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass or
Steve Soberoff. The sheer concentration of affluence, coupled with the
frustration that the government's response to one of the biggest
(31:26):
American catastrophes in recent history has been inadequate could greatly
shape the future of the Palisades. I then quote some
expert as saying, I suspect, because these are pretty wealthy
households with a lot of economic and political power, they're
going to be able to dictate the terms of their
own recovery.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Well.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Kate Steinsaper took offense to that, and while taking a
video tour of her burned out neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
This is the video she posted.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
I was over at the Female Recovery Center yesterday and
the stories that I've heard all around me were heartbreaking.
Senior citizens on fixed incomes who are just literally terrified
about what's next can see this house. This is what
happened to my community, you guys. And it's so hurtful,
and it's so outrageous that people want to pretend that
(32:19):
this doesn't matter because they assume people here are wealthy.
It's just literally not true. The New York Times published
a piece yesterday that was so incredibly false and hurtful.
I know people who were interviewed for that piece who
had their quotes taken out of context. The person who
wrote the piece clearly had an agenda when she spoke
(32:41):
to them, and it's just sickening. So New York Times
thank you. This is what it's like.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, she points out the video that and we've discussed this.
A lot of people the Palisades bought homes many decades ago,
when the price of a house was much much less
expensive and the cost of constructing a house was much
much less expensive. And they've kept that house for decades,
or it's been passed from grandparents to parents to kids,
(33:11):
and that while the house may be worth a lot
by modern standards, that's all their net worth. And then
just learned about people last week who maybe took out
a second mortgages because as their equity went up became
their savings account. They started borrowing against the equity that
was building up in the house. And now the house
(33:33):
is gone, but they still have to pay off those loans.
So this New York Times reporter was completely off, just
a complete idiot. Get her name again. Run to cas
Rod to Casey. That was just cruel, false, unwarranted. Mean,
(33:54):
I don't know what else to say. All right, we
come back. You know something is you know the price
of something has gone way too high when people are
now going out of their way to steal large quantities
of the item and its eggs are now getting stolen.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
I mean big heists going on.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
We'll talk about that next with Alex Stone from ABC News,
and we have Brigina di Gastino live in the KFI
twenty four our newsroom.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Hey, you've been listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am six forty.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Welcome, how are you?
Speaker 1 (00:07):
We're on every day from one until four o'clock and
then after four o'clock. Whatever you missed you could pick
it up on whoa, whoa, whoa? Hold on?
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Just blow my ears out?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
Hang on.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
I have a malfunctioning headset here. Oh my god, way,
whoa hold on? Okay, all right, that's that's dangerous. The
bones in my face are reverberating here, hold on something.
Something has gone wrong here. I can plod on for
this segment.
Speaker 4 (00:37):
But we.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Head this headset's malfunctioning. Okay, that's not I have trouble
starting the last couple of days. We're on from one
to four after four o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand
on the iHeart app.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Now, I told you.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I warned you that this Karen Bass led recovery is
going to be a disaster. Said, I told you that
the biggest problem with the Palisades recovering is going to
be it's the same clowns that created the situation. Bass
(01:14):
created a situation by never funding the fire department and
not overseeing a pre deployment of fire engines and firefighters
and drones. That's why the fire got out of control
very quickly because nobody was in position, nobody knew what
to do. She wasn't around, And I said, that same
(01:38):
mentality is going to permeate this recovery. And if I
was in the Pacific Palisades right now, I would be
calling everybody I know in forming some kind of I
don't know, twenty thousand person union, demanding that she and
Steve sober Off get out, just simply get out, because
(02:01):
this latest story that developed over the weekend there nobody knew.
Nobody knew that Steve Soberoff was going to make a
half a million dollars to work three months.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
Nobody knew that.
Speaker 1 (02:21):
But that story came out I guess h late on Friday,
and everybody said, five hundred thousand dollars for three months.
Who agreed to that? Well, Karen Bash did. And you're saying, well,
where's the money coming from? And this is where it
(02:41):
gets strange. They said, well, it was coming from philanthropic groups, charities,
Well which charities? Who runs those charities? Why are they
being so generous to donate that much money? For so
(03:01):
little work, and nobody can even define exactly what he's
going to do or what he has been doing. It's
not only a half a million dollars to sober Off,
but it was two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for
another real estate executive named Randy Johnson, and he's going
to report the sober Off. So now you've got seven
(03:25):
hundred and fifty thousand dollars for two people for three
months from these mystery philanthropic groups. And we don't know
what the political connections are. We don't even know if
these groups are real. Why would you give out a
vague phrase like philanthropic groups? What charity would spend three
(03:46):
quarters of a million dollars on a seventy six year
old man who's going to work for three months, Especially
when Rick Caruso is putting together his own organization, a
nonprofit it for free?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
What?
Speaker 1 (04:03):
What's what's what's this sober Off guy doing? I just
don't get this. Nobody gets this. So Basque got so
much criticism she announced that.
Speaker 2 (04:16):
That he's going to work for free.
Speaker 1 (04:19):
Sober Off at first was defending the deal, saying, well,
his expertise made him worth the price expertise, said where
where did he have expertise bringing back an entire town
that had burned to the ground. What expertise was that?
(04:42):
So Bass had to call sober Off up and beg
him to give up the money. She this is Bass speaking.
I spoke to him today and asked him to modify
his agreement and work for free. He said, yes, we
agree that we don't need anything distracting from the.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
Recovery where we're doing.
Speaker 5 (05:01):
So.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
I don't know who broke the story originally, but if
that story had been broken, we still wouldn't know he
was getting half a million dollars. The only reason she
changed her mind is not because she thought it was
the right thing to do. It's because they got caught.
They got caught spending three quarters of a million dollars
(05:24):
of somebody else's money.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
And they won't say who the somebody else is.
Speaker 1 (05:28):
And if that's come out, you know, sometime in the
last few hours, you know, let me know. But I'm
really suspicious. I don't understand this. And why wouldn't you
spend the three quarters of a million dollars on some
of the people who are struggling and suffering. Wow, this
(05:51):
salary as I said, for sober Off would be two
million a year, and that is far more than any
city employee makes, including the mayor. Obviously, on top of that,
Bass has not been able to explain exactly what sober
Off is gonna do. Originally they said he was gonna
(06:12):
lead the first phase of the rebuilding effort, and then
Friday she said, well, maybe he's gonna focus on rebuilding
the historic business district. Soberoff disagreed with that, so he
disagreed that he's going to have a diminished role. He
says he's regularly interacting with federal agencies. Now Trump has
(06:37):
somebody here overseeing this before any federal money goes out.
Rick Grennell's his name, and Grennell it was the ambassador
for Trump first time around. Grenell called Soberoff's pay offensive.
I'm getting paid zero dollars, as are many people. It's
a good thing. They'll be strings attached on the federal
(06:59):
money for California.
Speaker 2 (07:00):
Oh, now you know there there will be.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
And this is this is why when Trump says there's
gonna be strings attached.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
People go, how could you do that? Well, how could
you do that?
Speaker 1 (07:09):
It's like paying attention to what Elon musk is finding
you have the screaming of all the cockroaches in Washington,
d C.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Stuff like this always turns into a racket. Always, it's
always a racket.
Speaker 5 (07:24):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (07:24):
There's one council member finally came out of a coma,
Monica Rodriguez. She's part of a committee overseeing the recovery.
She said it was infuriating that the philanthropic groups would
provide three quarters of a million dollars for two people
when there's so many fire victims in need.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
So now sober Off is gonna get Yeah.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
In fact, I found a quote by Soberoff saying it's like, well,
you know, if you want me to drop everything, you know,
it's it's it's different.
Speaker 2 (08:01):
If nothing was going on.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
But he said if you have to drop, if I
have to drop everything, then he expected to be compensated
for it. Well, now there's no compensation. I'm sure is
heart is going to be in it. We've got a clip,
by the way, somebody posted on a next door app
(08:25):
just four minutes of that Steve sober Off zoom call
which he had with Hollywood talent agents. Remember I talked
about this a couple of times last week. Sober Off
had this zoom call with top agents from CIA and
William Morris and UTA, and is giving him advice on
(08:49):
how to hold that they should hold on to their properties.
Speaker 2 (08:51):
Give it a year.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
The value of your property is going to triple because
of all the money coming in. Don't drink the water,
don't wash your babies in the water. And that only
went to the to the high end talent agents. The
rest of the Palisades. I mean, there's people still living
in femas shelters, but they didn't get this advice from
sober Off.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Maybe they didn't.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
I don't know. Did they not anti up the money
did he charge for that zoom call? See this whole
thing smells and I'm sorry you're in the Palisades. You
should have zero confidence in this crowd. I don't know
what to tell you, because you know it's not likely.
I mean, Caruso, his intentions are good. He's not taking
(09:37):
any money. He's setting up this this outside it's called
Steadfast LA, this outside organization to try to connect homeowners
with everything they need to get on the rebuilding path.
But what sober Off is doing and Karen Pass is doing,
(10:00):
and how many times has she changed her mind on
something important so far. You know, when Trump came to
town and she had promised in front of Trump that
people could go back to their homes within twenty four hours.
That turned out not to be true. And also what's
(10:20):
not been settled is why the hell have they set
up this toxic waste dump at the beach at will
Rogers State Beach instead of sorting out the toxic waste
in the Palisades itself, where everything is already screwed. I
know there was a protest, there's going to be a
protest march from some of the residents. They were going
(10:42):
to march along pch or along the parking lots there.
I mean, there's so much that's crazy about this, and
no decision seems to stick for more than a couple
of days because they don't know what they're doing and
they don't think things through, and then they get all
kinds of angry blowback from people. But I'm telling you,
(11:03):
that's that's unconscionable. I want to and I want that
if anybody knows the names of these philanthropic groups, please
let us know, because there's not a whole lot of
digging going on. There's some superficial digging going on. But
I think there's a lot of ugly stories still to come.
We're coming up. I'll play some of that. Well, yeah,
(11:24):
that's what I started to say that Steve Soberoff clips.
I'm going to play that zoom call. Somebody posted a piece.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
Of it online. I want to give the idea what
this guy's about.
Speaker 4 (11:34):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
All right, so we've been telling you that Steve Soberoff
is now not going to get paid a half a
million dollars for three months work and his number two
guy named named Randy Johnson.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
I assume not the baseball player, right, No, I don't
think so. He's a photographer now.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a real estate
executive named Randy Johnson. So he was going to report
to Sobrof neither one is gonna get paid. They're gonna
work for three months for no pay only because the
world found out. And in going through this timeline again,
Sobroff says, I've been doing this for thirty five years
(12:21):
for free on some of the biggest civic projects for
the city of Los Angeles, But no one ever asked
me to drop everything. This time they did so that
I'm assuming when they said, hey, you want to take
over this recovery effort, Well it's gonna cost you.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
What are you gonna pay me?
Speaker 1 (12:40):
And they said, oh jeez, we can't pay tax money, right,
So they called up these philanthropic charities and did they
get strong armed? I mean, I can't imagine if you're
running a charity and you've got a half million line
around in the middle of the worst disaster ever to
hit the worst fire disaster ever to hit an American city,
(13:05):
you'd go, yeah, yeah, sure, take take a half million.
Scare the victims. Steve Soberoff needs more money. Yeah, he's
he's very he's very rich. This is does all this
is too weird because Bass named sober Off. The recoveries
(13:25):
are January seventeenth, and he and Bass and everybody in
Bass's circle, nobody would say what he was going to
get paid. Now, why keep it a secret? Because it
would cause a firestorm, and they knew it. Sober Off
in Bass knew it would cause a firestorm, and they
thought they could keep it a secret. Why did he
(13:49):
insist on the half million dollars. I'm assuming he did.
I mean, che didn't open the negotiation by saying, hey,
you want a half million?
Speaker 2 (13:56):
And he goes, oh yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
That On Friday, appearing at a news conference, Bass and
sober Off again declined to say how much he would
be paid.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
Ten hours later, this was Friday night.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
The La Times kept asking finally the mayor released the information,
and they were still defending it, saying, Zach Sidell, he's
the spokeshole for Bass. There's simply no one like Steve.
And then by Saturday there were so many people screaming
in the palisades. Oh yeah, that was another thing that
(14:34):
Bass reversed herself on. Remember pulling the National Guard out
of the palisades, pulling the checkpoints out, and everybody started screaming.
It's like, why are you doing that? You're gonna get
free rate of the looters. Oh yeah, I go, so boy,
her decisions are dumb, aren't they? Just flat out dumb?
(14:56):
Taking out the National Guard while the looters are going.
U give sober Off a half million dollars and you
and you refuse to tell anybody the truth. What happened
to all the transparency on this that that's their favorite word, transparency. Well,
why don't you start with the first half million dollars?
You're paying one guy for three months, and then what
about the second three months.
Speaker 2 (15:18):
I think this recovery is gonna go on by five, seven,
ten years. Who and this this just stinks. This stinks.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
And their behavior in covering it up, their behavior in
refusing to reveal the truth.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
It all stinks, which is why they covered it up.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Let me play you some of the now this is
a color like a montage of sober off on the
zoom call with the UH with the agents from William
Morris and CIA and Utah. They got their own prime
the audience, and so he gave them all kinds of
analysis and advice.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
Let's play some of this.
Speaker 6 (16:06):
Construction costs are going to be high because the demand
for commodities is going to be high. The demand for labor,
whether or not half our labor gets deported before this happens,
is going to be high. So we're going to be
recruiting people from around the country to come, you know,
and live at motel sixes like the Alaska Gold Rust.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
So there are subs out here to do work.
Speaker 6 (16:30):
So you're just going to choose the fork in the
road that goes back to the way. You could do
it any other time, and it's going to take a
long time. I'm very worried about the people who work
for you. I don't know if I'm more worried about
them than I am worried about you, because none of
you are going to be homeless, and a lot of
these people are. So the California Community Foundation is taking
(16:53):
care of them. They're giving them money, They're giving them.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
Stop saying he's worried about the workers for these rich people,
you know, presumably the the housekeepers and the gardeners and
the nannies and all that. So, so why why are
you sucking up a half million if you're worried about them?
Why didn't you throw that half million into the pot
or let the philanthropic agency keep it so they could
(17:16):
help it. So what I don't understand his persona here
is say I think I care more about them than
about you.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Meantime, he and.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Bass are covering up his half billion dollar three month deal.
Speaker 2 (17:29):
At bad Oder coming out of this.
Speaker 1 (17:31):
I'm telling you, a few people in the Palisades don't
do something about this, you're gonna deserve what you get.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
The warning flags are out here.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Okay, you are not dealing with people who were forthcoming,
and you're not dealing with competence at all from Karen Bass.
I mean she has swung and missed on so many
aspects of this play.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
Some more.
Speaker 6 (17:55):
They're giving them money, they're giving shelter and everything else.
So I would say, if you donate to that fund
at the California Community Foundation, it's a good thing. You know,
I'm paying my housekeeper anyway. I'm actually worked for me
for thirty years. You know, it's all my kids. What
am I do?
Speaker 3 (18:09):
Tell her?
Speaker 6 (18:09):
Sorry, you know, but that's that's every everybody's choice. But
I'm worried about all those people who drive west on
the Santa Monica Freeway every morning, because losing their job
to them is like dropping a brick in a puddle.
But make sure it's clean. Have all your clothes cleaned. Water,
he's all your linens cleaned. The water now is unsafe
(18:34):
in all these houses. The DWP says you have to
use bottled water. I don't know. If Jay gave me
bottle water, you probably give me DWP water. But just
because the dw P says your water safe. Have somebody
tested for you before you move back in. And and
when they say, you know, drinking water, you know, use
(18:55):
bottled water, what they don't say is, and they're 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 your laundry. You don't
want to do anything with that.
Speaker 1 (19:13):
We got to take a news break. But again, this
is for a few wealthy agents. The rest of the
public was told that the water's okay and sober after
saying well, and I'll listen to the d w B
and what is not okay? This is what I'm talking
about here. There's tens of thousands of people in the
Palisades who we're not told that the water's not okay.
Speaker 2 (19:37):
We're coming up.
Speaker 4 (19:39):
You're listening to John Cobbel's on demand from KFI A six.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
On from one until four and then after four o'clock
John Cobelt's show on demand on the iHeart app. All right,
it's going to play a couple more minutes of this
Steve Sober off zoom call, and then we got a
clip to play for you. Pacific Palisades resident named Kay
Steinsaper got really upset with The New York Times for
(20:08):
she thought mischaracterizing most of the people in the Palisades
as these rich people. And she says that's not true.
Speaker 2 (20:18):
And she.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Made this a video and sounded off, we're going to
play you a clip because she thinks the New York
Times is way out of line in their characterization. But first,
a little more Steve Soberoff. Over the weekend. This all
happened since Friday night. It was discovered that sober Off
was getting a half million dollars for three months work
(20:43):
to be in charge of the recovery three months, and
he got another real estate guy named Randy Thomas two
hundred and fifty thousand dollars. The money is coming from
charitable organizations, but nobody wants to say who. And then
there was so much criticism that Bass reversed her decision
and asked sober Off to work for free, and so he.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
He did agree. I don't know if it was reluctantly.
Speaker 1 (21:12):
What do you think In any event, we told you
last week sober Off was on a zoom call with
these uh, these uh agents, Hollywood agents who apparently are
entitled to their own private advice from sober Off, and
he gave him advice everything from the quality of the
water to how long they should keep their properties before
(21:33):
they sell. Let's let's play some more, because we're gonna
get We're gonna end up with the bus ts and
the bus to know if.
Speaker 6 (21:39):
You can afford it, I'd get an independent agency or
maybe there's a kid at see the water thing.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
It'll tell you if you're working montage and then you're
going to move in.
Speaker 6 (21:47):
I've asked for and gotten approval to go ahead and
start rebuilding.
Speaker 3 (21:51):
The library, the park.
Speaker 6 (21:55):
They're going to have that, they're going to have the
ten k race, They're going to have the Fourth of
July parade, be in different places. I'm talking to Ralph's
and to Gelson's about expediting their return to get these
to get these services. So people may say, well, gee,
I don't want to go back if there's not going
to be an uptown Pacific Palisades other than Rick's Place.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
You know the village, so it's called the village. Yea.
I want to go back to the community.
Speaker 6 (22:21):
I want to go back to Cafe Vida, I want
to go back to you know, I want to go
back to Noah's Bagels, and so, you know, we collectively
are trying to help those people get their permits, just
like I'm trying to help your people get yours. We
have a community Pacific Palisades, twenty three thousand people, ten
(22:44):
thousand homes, of which five thousand are gone, that has
been decimated. You've up to Marquez Knowles. Some of the
schools are going. Six out of nine of our churches
and synagogues are going.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
This is something that's never happened. We're going.
Speaker 6 (23:02):
So it needs to be rebuilt. In my and I
use the term. Maybe it's wrong. I say we're going
to rebuild, not reimagine, because if you start reimagining, well
maybe the road should be here, maybe this should be
an apartment building instead of this, or maybe this office
building should go to luxury apartments.
Speaker 3 (23:20):
They can just go through the city process.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
My job is for you simple get your back where
you are and get your housekeeper back where she is.
You know, the worst case is you're finished building your
house and they haven't hooked up your water. But I
just don't see that. So now some people are going
to take longer. I mean, you know it's going to
take five years for some people and three years.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
For other people. Or yeah, it can't be done too.
Speaker 6 (23:47):
I mean, you can't build a I couldn't even build
my garage in a year, you know, although we built
they built Stable center in eighteen months.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
Well, you can't sold it much because the city of
LA has been so difficult with permitting.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Everything is everything.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Has been a joke, the whole process of permitting in
the city of La.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
He said, this wasn't going to be political. Now, why
you're on the bus to Yes please.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It's been frustrating, I know for a lot of people. Yeah,
that's when he started talking about the bus to Yes.
Speaker 1 (24:15):
All of a sudden, one of the agents said, hey,
the reason we can't build it sooner is because of
Los Angeles' terrible permitting process, which of course Bass has
promised she's going to clean up, but nobody believes her.
And the permitting process is awful Los Angeles. It is onerous,
it's oppressive, it's stupid, it's so difficult. Having said this,
(24:37):
I'll probably never get a permit to build a dog house.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
But it's true. It's a horrendous process.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
And they all know it, and sober Off even acknowledges
it there that you know it's going to take a while,
you know it could take three years. Well, whereas Caruso said,
it's like, if someone saying it takes three years, why
can't we do it a year. If somebody says it's
gonna take a year, why can't we do it in
six months? That that's what Trump said too. It's like
(25:05):
that that's too.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Long a time. Everything is too long.
Speaker 1 (25:10):
And nobody believes Bass is going to streamline anything because
this is the same crowd that brought you the disaster,
the same crowd that brought you these impossible permitting uh uh,
I don't know how to describe it. It's like one long,
endless game in the third circle of Hell, and the
(25:31):
people who brought you these absurd permitting processes are still
in charge and they don't know anything different. They think
they're justified to do this.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
That's the thing. You talk to them.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
They have all kinds of reasons and all kinds of excuses,
you know, It's what It's what I noticed Trump and
Elon Musk are running into in Washington. They're trying to
cut obvious absurd spending.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
It's like Wow.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
You know the reason we do with this why is well, actually,
you know that there's a there's a good excuse for this.
Speaker 2 (25:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's what you know what it is.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
It's corruption, Okay, terrific corruption combined with incompetence. And if
you're hearing what they're finding in Washington, d C. What
do you think they'd find in La if they started
auditing every department?
Speaker 3 (26:14):
Huh?
Speaker 1 (26:15):
They already found out in the housing bureaucracy, you're the
homeless housing bureaucracy. Much of the money has gone unaccounted for,
billions unaccounted for. You know, we need a Musk and
a Trump here in LA badly because much of the
money that you pay in taxes is being looted. I
(26:40):
mean that La City government is a criminal organization. They
got nothing on the mob, and too many people in
California are too stupid to realize what's going on. Sacramento
is another one that's another huge criminal organization. And if
you did it audit, you would find exactly what Musk
and Trump are finding in Washington, d C. These are
criminal or organizations that have been stealing billions upon billions
(27:03):
of tax dollars forever. All right we come back, I
want to play you a clip of Kay Steinsaper who
went off on the New York Times. She some snotty
writer named Rondack Cason in the Times wrote a piece
calling Pacific Palisades residents the rogue rich. And this Kay
(27:31):
Steinsaper's who's a mother, just went off, and we'll tell
you a clip at her thing.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Coming up.
Speaker 4 (27:36):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI.
Speaker 1 (27:42):
Coming up after two o'clock, we are going to talk
with Alex Stone because now there's a rash of egg
heists around the country.
Speaker 2 (27:56):
Excuse me, sorry about that.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
In fact, in Seattle burglars stole five and forty eggs
last week, just like that rampant egg crime because the
price is so high due to the bird flu. Well,
we'll talk to Alex coming up right after two o'clock.
Then we got to get into some of the crazy
stuff that Musk is finding about the seene amounts of
(28:21):
money being spent on utter garbage by the federal government.
Back to the Palasades for a moment. There's a mother
from the Palisades. Her name is Kay Steinsaper, and she
got really angry because the New York Times has a
writer named Ronda Cason, and casein, I've never seen this before.
(28:47):
You had a town of innocent people, the town is
destroyed by fire, and the culprits include the idiots who've
run the government for years and decades, because as I've
told you, Los Angeles only has half a fire department,
(29:08):
and of the remaining half that we have, nobody was
assigned to monitor high profile, high fire areas, even though
the National Weather Service was issuing stern warnings as stern
as you possibly can. I mean, they broke the English
language trying to come up with ways to tell you
(29:30):
that we're going to have a very deadly, very bad,
destructive fire. And Karen Bascot in the plane went to Africa.
And now after the Palisades, who put see this is
what I'm saying. People saying, well, you got to trust
the government, that the government tries to do the right thing. No,
nobody I know of nobody who knew that the government
(29:51):
had half funded the fire department all these years, fifty
percent funding, that's a fact.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
Nobody knew that.
Speaker 1 (29:58):
Because nobody pays ten how would you know how much
the fire department? And then what little fire department we
have much of the time, more than half the time,
when it answers a fire call, it's homeless people starting
a fire.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
I'm telling you this.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
You cannot have a city where we spend more money
on drug addicts and vagrants in the street than we
spend on a fire department. Okay, you cannot have a
city like this. This is what happens because we have
spent year after year more money on drug addicts and
vagrants that we do our fire department.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
What do you think is going to happen?
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And the incredible stupidity of our government, And now that
we all know this, if it continues, then it's our
incredible stupidity. It's the taxpayers and voters of Los Angeles.
You've got to get your head out of your ideological
rear end and start voting on practical issues. Anyway, back
to case Steinsaper, here's what the writer in The Times
(31:05):
wrote about Palisades residents. It's deep pocketed, well connected residents
have access to power that few have. They can pick
up the phone and call Gavin Newsom, Karen Bass or
Steve Soberoff. The sheer concentration of affluence, coupled with the
frustration that the government's response to one of the biggest
(31:26):
American catastrophes in recent history has been inadequate could greatly
shape the future of the Palisades. I then quote some
expert as saying, I suspect, because these are pretty wealthy
households with a lot of economic and political power, they're
going to be able to dictate the terms of their
own recovery.
Speaker 2 (31:45):
Well.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Kate Steinsaper took offense to that, and while taking a
video tour of her burned out neighborhood.
Speaker 2 (31:52):
This is the video she posted.
Speaker 5 (31:54):
I was over at the Female Recovery Center yesterday and
the stories that I've heard all around me were heartbreaking.
Senior citizens on fixed incomes who are just literally terrified
about what's next can see this house. This is what
happened to my community, you guys. And it's so hurtful,
and it's so outrageous that people want to pretend that
(32:19):
this doesn't matter because they assume people here are wealthy.
It's just literally not true. The New York Times published
a piece yesterday that was so incredibly false and hurtful.
I know people who were interviewed for that piece who
had their quotes taken out of context. The person who
wrote the piece clearly had an agenda when she spoke
(32:41):
to them, and it's just sickening. So New York Times
thank you. This is what it's like.
Speaker 1 (32:50):
Yeah, she points out the video that and we've discussed this.
A lot of people the Palisades bought homes many decades ago,
when the price of a house was much much less
expensive and the cost of constructing a house was much
much less expensive. And they've kept that house for decades,
or it's been passed from grandparents to parents to kids,
(33:11):
and that while the house may be worth a lot
by modern standards, that's all their net worth. And then
just learned about people last week who maybe took out
a second mortgages because as their equity went up became
their savings account. They started borrowing against the equity that
was building up in the house. And now the house
(33:33):
is gone, but they still have to pay off those loans.
So this New York Times reporter was completely off, just
a complete idiot. Get her name again. Run to cas
Rod to Casey. That was just cruel, false, unwarranted. Mean,
(33:54):
I don't know what else to say. All right, we
come back. You know something is you know the price
of something has gone way too high when people are
now going out of their way to steal large quantities
of the item and its eggs are now getting stolen.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
I mean big heists going on.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
We'll talk about that next with Alex Stone from ABC News,
and we have Brigina di Gastino live in the KFI
twenty four our newsroom.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Hey, you've been listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
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.
The John Kobylt Show News
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John Kobylt
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