Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four o'clock, and then after four
o'clock it's the podcast John Cobelt's Show on demand on
the iHeart app. And that's where you get to hear
whatever you miss during the day, or maybe you just
want to hear it all over again. I am often
(00:21):
baffled by everything what goes down in the world. Wow,
how media covers stories, weird issues or phrases that get
repeated over and over again by everybody in politics and
the media, and you know, you can almost see the
(00:42):
wheels of the propaganda machine working. So I've noticed, if
you follow news at all, you can't help but notice
that there's a word that was rarely used in recent years, affordability,
which being repeated over and over again. Self evident. Affordability
(01:04):
means do people have enough money to buy the stuff
they need to live at a decent level, and that
nation has suddenly maybe this happened a week ago Tuesday,
become unaffordable and so it's become a big weapon to
be used for the next election cycle against Trump and
(01:26):
I was trying to figure out, like, why suddenly they
keep talking about people upset about prices. Prices are high,
prices are high, But why are people upset when the
inflation rate is so much less than it was under Biden.
Under Biden it was over nine percent. Now it's under
(01:47):
three percent. And I think what's happened is is that
Trump campaigned and people over promise and distort when they
campaigned that he was going to lower prices. Now I
don't remember in my lifetime, Eddie president actually lowering prices.
What he can help do is lower the rate of inflation.
(02:11):
But that's not what he was saying. He said lower prices.
And since most people have no sense of history or
memory and they can't do math, that kind of claim
should have been dismissed immediately. Well, he's not going to
do that, and because he hasn't, there's no way to
do that. You can't affect the price of well the
(02:31):
inflation rate with your policies, and so people, I guess,
actually thought that the price of stuff was going to
go down. And when you tell them, well, the inflation
rates only two point eight percent or whatever it is. Yeah, yeah,
but that means you know the prices are even higher,
and yeah, that's the problem. During the Biden years, prices
(02:54):
went up cumulatively twenty two percent. So this extra let's
say three percent inflation is on top of that twenty
two percent, and people still have in their heads the
brain is fixed on what did stuff used to cost
five years ago, right in twenty twenty, like before the pandemic,
(03:15):
what did stuff cost? And that's still in everybody's heads,
and they never got used to the last five years
of inflation. And now Trump comes along and you got
another three percent inflation. It's like, well, the prices still
are bad, and they are bad. But I think that's
the disconnect between Trump's crowds saying well, we've lowered the
rate of inflation. It's like, well, yeah, but he promised
(03:38):
to lower the prices, which is a bad promise. Nobody's
ever done that. That's not possible. I think the only
time prices go down significantly is if you have the
Great Depression, and nobody wants that. So the Democrats are
using that, trying to build that as an argument and
make a case going into the election cycle next November
(04:01):
for the mid terms for Congress, and then eventually the
presidential race, which is now three years away, and Gavin
Newsom has become the leading candidate by all accounts in
these early polls because he says nasty things about Trump
and apparently that's all half the country is looking for.
(04:25):
But if this affordability question is really important to people,
then the world has got to look at what has
happened to prices in the state of California since Gavin
Newsom took over. H John Fleischman, political analyst. He has
a website called so does Itmatter dot com? So does Itmatter?
(04:48):
Dot Com? And you have to you have to pay
for many things on the website and it's worth it.
And he wrote a piece this Gavin Newsom's gift to
the state soon could be his gift to the nation.
Got to take seriously this idea that Newsom is the
(05:10):
leading candidate, because I don't think you want to live
in a country where Gavin Newsom is the president. And
I'm going to run down all the price changes here
in California, and most of this has to do with
his policies. But you go through this and you realize
(05:32):
he is like the worst candidate if he's going to
be prattling about affordability. I remember, he's not going to
be running against Trump, so he's going to have to
promote what he's done in California. Right, What else is
on the resume? Eight years of being governor, eight years
of being lieutenant governor, eight years of being the mayor
(05:53):
of San Francisco. What do you have to show after
twenty four years at high levels of government? Well, according
to the Legislative Analyst Office in Sacramento, you know what
it costs people to carry a typical mid tier home,
like a middle of the pack house. You got to
(06:16):
pay fifty five hundred dollars. Fifty five hundred dollars. That
is about eighty percent higher than it was five years ago.
Even if you look at the bottom tier of housing,
your monthly payment is over three thousand. Yeah, I mean
(06:37):
it's extremely expensive here for housing, as you know, and
for rent. If you just want to buy a modest
starter home, well, now you need income that exceeds the
statewide median income. Not affordable. That's why I'm just I
(07:00):
don't understand how everybody's carrying on about the affordability. And
then Newsom is the top candidate. All right, that's a disaster.
Then electricity. You have a house in California, you are
paying eighty percent more for electricity than the rest of
the nation on average, eighty percent. Like PGNE customers, average
(07:28):
rates are eighty percent higher than they were in twenty nineteen.
So you're paying eighty percent higher than the start of
Newsom's term and eighty percent higher than the rest of
the country is right now TRIPLEA gas prices. They put
out a list state by state. I read from them frequently.
(07:50):
National average is two ninety five. There are states like
Oklahoma where it's down to two thirty five, California about
four fifty. So we're at four fifty. The nation's averages
two ninety five. That's over a dollar fifty per gallon higher. Wow,
(08:10):
that's that means every time you fill up, that's an
extra thirty bucks you're paying. Times you have fifty weeks
a year, that's fifteen hundred dollars extra you're paying. Insurance
in California. Wall Street Journal found that nationally, premiums have
(08:32):
risen fifty to seventy five percent. California one of the
worst markets. Back in twenty twenty, A household needed about
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars in annual income. To
have a mid priced California home, now you have to
be making a quarter of a million dollars. The median
(08:55):
rent in California is over twenty two hundred a month,
fifty percent higher than the medium and it goes on
and on like this. It's like, now, these are all
the big ticket items, electricity, gasoline, rent, mortgages. It's extraordinarily
(09:17):
high here, way higher than the rest of the country.
So how does Newsome come riding in and prattle about affordability.
I'm baffled by this. I completely don't understand it. He's
getting all kinds of tongue bads in the media. Now.
Everybody's racing to do the profile and Gavin Newsom. Hardly
(09:40):
a day goes by where I don't read like a
new interview, a new profile, a new analysis on Gavin Newsom,
and in the same publication there'll be some lengthy analysis
about how things are so unaffordable in this country. Who
I have They're they're doing this in insane cheerleading for
(10:04):
a guy who just just go by the numbers as
objectively as possible. Complete failure at providing an affordable life
for most people. Take his name away and his party away.
Look at the prices in all fifty states for electricity, gasoline, rent, mortgage.
(10:26):
If you saw his numbers, you'd say, well, not that
guy who is that? That's a bad record there. How
come all the other forty nine governors in the other
forty nine states have better numbers. Boy, that is that
is the word. Well, highest inflation ray, highest unemployment rate.
And you know, I can go on through the list,
(10:47):
talk more when we come back.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
You can follow us on social media at John Cobelt
Radio at John Cobelt Radio, and you can subscribe to
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(11:15):
and you subscribe and you'll get to see these. You
will get notification of all the segments that we put
up there. All right, So open last segment. John Fleischman
has a piece in his on his website, so does
it matter dot com? And it was it was addressing
(11:39):
this this whole craze right now, like almost everybody's writing
about it and talking about it in the media and
politics is affordability. How the price of everything is so difficult,
especially real estate, and it is people are are having
a hard time because Trump didn't lower prices. He can't.
(12:00):
The inflation rate is lower. But that lower inflation rate,
and it is a lot lower than it used to be,
still is another two and a half three percent higher
means two and a half three percent on top of
the already inflated prices. So people are looking around saying, well,
(12:21):
wait a second, nothing's changed. In fact, it's gotten slightly worse,
and it will always get slightly worse. You'll always get,
in the best of times, an inflation rate between two
and three percent. You hope your wages can keep up
that the inflation also kicks up your wages. Some cases
it is, some cases it isn't. You know. It kind
of depends what industry you're in. But all right, so
(12:42):
everybody's decided. But this is the issue with a moment, well,
with a presidential election coming up after this midterm cycle
and Gavin Newsom being at the front of the pack
right now, I'm really going to be curious to see
how long it'll take the poor before people figure out
the California economically is a disaster zone. And this is objective.
(13:07):
This is just look at the available statistics that we
can all agree on. And you know, John Fleischman wrote
about about the inflation here in California, the cost of
a home, the cost of mortgage, the cost of electricity,
the cost of gas, just for starters. Well, Victor Davis
Hanson is another writer that I really admire, and he
(13:32):
put together his own version of the affordability argument. You
give the government over to Gavin Newsom. Here's what he's
done in California. So now it's really it's really instructive,
like almost to write these things down and have a
list and keep looking at the list. And again we're
(13:54):
talking about we're talking about look at all fifty states.
Take away the names of the governors, take away the
political party. If you're just going to judge all fifty
states based on their economic numbers, who is the last
guy you would want being president? Okay, so look at California.
(14:17):
Forget that. It's news. Gas prices highest in the United States, unequivocally. Okay,
gas taxes highest in the us highest electricity rates, highest
(14:37):
home prices, fourth, highest home insurance. We have the largest
debt in the nation two hundred and seventy billion dollars.
The government's in debt because they haven't funded all the
state workers benefits that we're going to have to pay someday,
you know, their pensions and healthcare benefits. The annual budget,
(15:00):
it ranges from fifteen to seventy billion dollars. We have
the highest income taxes, the highest state sales tax, the
highest gas tax, and the top one percent of California
households pay fifty percent of the state income tax. How
many times have you heard some idiot politician go, oh,
(15:23):
the rich have to pay their fair share? Okay, is
fifty percent high enough? A lot of them have left
the state. We have forty million people who live in California.
Do you know what percentage get medical? Which is government
(15:47):
paid healthcare. It's supposed to be healthcare for poor people.
Fifty percent are on medical fifty percent people. Do you
know how many births are paid for by medical? Fifty percent?
(16:10):
Fifty percent of all the babies born. Medical has to
cover the cost. He's got another list. We have the
largest population of illegal aliens. We have the largest number
of homeless people. We have the largest number of people
who fled the state. We have the largest number of
people born in a foreign country eleven million. That's twenty
(16:34):
seven percent of the state. So we have all these
poor well, all these poor people without health insurance who
are from other countries. Many of them are legal. We
(16:54):
have the largest number of people living in poverty. We
have the highest food prices in the continental United States.
The highest food prices on top of the highest electricity,
the highest gas, the highest rent, the highest mortgage payments,
highest food prices, our infrastructure. Let's just start with the
roads at the bottom. Worst roads. We're among the five
(17:21):
worst states in violent crime per person. You'll get the
whole population divided by the violent crimes. We're among the
fifth to the five worst. All right, now you've ingested
all of those lists of statistics. That's pretty clear cut.
(17:43):
Now go put the name of the guy running the
place for the last seven years, the Gavin news So
what's what's the argument for having to be president? I
know he's shouting about Trump, insulting Trump, writing Trump insults
(18:05):
on social media or those uh, those weird those pathetic
weirdos on his staff are doing it at least well,
Trump's not going to be running. I mean, I mean
this is he is the worst candidate possible to run
for president. He's the worst candidate for the Democrats to run, really,
the worst. There's I could name five other people that
(18:29):
in the Democratic Party. If they got elected, probably they'd
be Okay. This guy is so destructive. I mean, I
can't think of a governor that has this record, ever
had this right, I mean right now. Obviously he stands
by himself. There's no other state like California. When it
comes to all these categories. They listened and these are
(18:50):
all really important categories. This is not esoteric, obscure kind
of states say, this is all the stuff that's really
important to us, right, nothing more important than whether we
can afford to live in our house, US or apartment,
whether we can afford food or gas or electricity. Top
of the charts. Now, there's got to be about almost
(19:12):
I don't know, twenty twenty five governors, right, there's about
forty five to fifty US senators. There's a couple one
hundred congress people. There's all kinds of business leaders who
are Democrats. Why this guy. Why what I mean's he's
unbelievably overwhelmingly incompetent. He's blown it in every category. What's
(19:35):
the up arrow here? What's the success story here since
he took over? Just look at it objectively. Pretend he's
not a Democrat. Pretend his name is a Gavin Newsom.
Just look at the list of things I just read
to you, and every one of these is true. So
we'll see. Okay, we've got more coming up on the
John Cobelt Show.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
You're listening to John Cobels from KFI Am six.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Forty on every day from one to four, and if
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Show on demand on the iHeart app, and we released
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(20:23):
at John Cobelt Show. YouTube dot com slash at John
Cobelt Show. This terrorist group they arrested four people. This
is described as a left wing anti government group that
was out in the Mojave Desert. They got arrested in
Lucerne Valley near twenty nine palms and out in the
(20:46):
desert they were making and testing bombs and it was
a terror plot and they were aiming for New Year's
Eve here in Los Angeles as soon as midnight hit,
going to be five locations where these these bombs would
go off. They were complicated pipe bombs from what the
(21:10):
reports say, and as Saley said, the plot was organized, sophisticated,
and extremely violent. They belonged to something called Turtle Island
Liberation Front, which sounds like a weird name. But somebody
was explaining what the phrase Turtle Island means. And I'll,
(21:39):
by the way, what it originally means and what this
group are doing is two different things. Turtle Island is
a name for Earth or North America. Some American Indian
tribes use it to describe the whole North American continent.
It's based on Indian folklore passed from one generation to
(22:02):
the next. And the Turtle Islands creation story is one
of the great tales that is told. It was first
recorded by the Europeans in the sixteen hundreds, and they
believe that the Lenape tribe believe that before creation there
(22:26):
was nothing, an empty dark space. But in this emptiness,
there existed a spirit of their creator, and eventually I
won't go through the whole thing, but it leads to
Turtle Island or Earth being formed, or in some interpretations,
North America. And it seems like if you were going
to describe these these these protest groups, these terrorist groups,
(22:49):
you know they are against all the colonialists, all the invaders.
I guess they want all the peoples of North America,
who are now mostly Europeans and other people who've migrated
here to get off, to get out. And the Turtle
(23:11):
Island Liberation Front. This is a radical faction called Order
of the Black Lotus. A one FBI spokesperson called the
faction a violent, homegrown anti government group. Now where they
were going to blow up what they were going to
(23:31):
blow up It was supposed to be around businesses, logistics centers,
something similar to what Amazon might have, you know, where
packages are sent off to destinations. Didn't say any specifically
about Amazon. The people involved include two women, Audrey i
(23:55):
Leen Carol and Tina Lai or Tina Lay. Two men,
Zachary Aaron Page and Dante Gaffield, and they've been jar
charged with various crimes. They were going to plant backpacks
with these improvised explosive devices IEDs, targeting two companies at
(24:17):
five locations. They all were going to go off at
midnight on New Year's Eve, complex pipe bombs, and what
they found is instructions how to manufacture them, how to
assemble them, and instructions that had to leave evidence to
avoid leaving evidence behind. And they tracked the group since
(24:40):
November all the way to December twelfth, when then they
went to a location the FBI did near twenty nine
Palms and found them with their bomb making materials, intervened,
(25:01):
arrested everyone, and you know, obviously the investigation was continuing.
They found a lot of ingredients to make the bombs
and PVC pipe glass bottles. These could be used to
make the IEDs or the Molotov cocktails, and that would
(25:22):
have been New Year's Eve at midnight, but they got
to It looks like somebody shared the plans with the FBI,
somebody maybe connected to the group or aware of the group,
And the group says they post well, the FBI says
that the group posts content that advocates for violence against
(25:43):
US officials and they are against peaceful protests. They want
people to rise up and fight back. It looks like
they also arrested somebody in the New Orleans area connected
to the investigation. And this was the FBI, L A
p D. Sheriff's Department, Palm Springs Police, San Bernardino County
(26:06):
Sheriff's Department. So all those organizations work together. And when
I first heard New Year's Eve, I thought the bombs
were supposed to go off, maybe at celebration sites all
over the area. And did you hear that in Paris
they're canceling the New Year's Eve celebrations along the chances.
(26:27):
They've had so many Islamic terrorist activities and crime that
they're not chanceing it. So New or His Eve is
canceled along the chancelse in Paris, which is just a
terrible thing. I mean this, this Islamic terrorist invasion is
all over the world now, and with Christmas and Hanukkah. Uh, well,
(26:51):
Potica is here, Christmas is just days away. Uh. This this,
this is this is what what they attack. You know
that how many times we had attacks at Christmas festivals
in Germany by these Islamic terrorists. It's like the season
now to celebrate religious holidays. He's become the season for
Islamic terrorism and everybody's got to be on alert. Oh
(27:15):
and then you had you had the shooting, terrible shooting
down in Australia and Sydney. We had all those people
shot and killed Jewish people celebrating on the first night
of Hanukah. It's all over the place. I mean, you know,
I'm telling you all cultures are not compatible with each other.
(27:39):
I don't believe we could all live together. I think
there's a reason that there were always separate nations, separate cultures,
borders on land, and I think that's the only only
way to go because this chaos is spreading all over
the place, and it really comes down to who are
you letting into the country, Because you let one person
(28:02):
in two, three, five, and soon you have a group
and they've organized and they don't like your way of
life and they want to kill everybody. And the only
way to police it is to have extremely strict immigration laws.
I don't see any other way around it. Okay, we've
got more coming up on the John Cobelt Show.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
If you can follow us at John Cobelt Radio on
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(28:52):
Radio for all the other social media platforms. So follow
up to on CNN Alex Michaelson's new show, The Story Is,
and we talked a lot about the exchange I had
with our Vita Martin, who's a civil rights attorney, and
we were talking about Gavin Newsom and how he got
(29:14):
shunned by the Trump administration when we went to Washington,
d C. Trying to allegedly get to fire rebuild money.
He wants thirty four billion. And what I said on
the show at the time was, well, if I was
in the Trump administration, why would I give this guy
any money? Because he admitted he blew twenty four billion
(29:35):
dollars in homeless money. He doesn't know what happened to it,
can't account for it or its effectiveness, and and other
categories where he's blown billions of dollars and our Vita
Martin just flat out wouldn't believe it. She said, those
facts aren't facts, This is not true. And this caused
(29:58):
a huge reaction once we put did this thing online
and just just hundreds of thousands of people have now
viewed the have now viewed the exchange, and a lot
of commentary on it. Next day, I went to chet
GPT and you know, when you ask chet GPT a question,
(30:20):
you get slightly you get the same answer to do
it more than once, but depending on how you worry,
you get slight variations. So a friend of mine he
went to chat GPT too and asked this question, does
Newsom know where the twenty four billion for homelessness went?
All right? And chet GPT's answer was a flat out no,
(30:48):
because our Vietna Martin just would just didn't believe that.
He actually didn't know where the money went, and admitted
that he didn't know where the money went. He admits
it because he knows politically, he's bulletproof that nobody in
California will will ever vote him out of office. They
never have and they never will. In fact, he runs
(31:13):
for president as the Democratic nominee. He'll win California probably
three to one, So he could admit that he blew
twenty four billion dollars on a program, a massive program
that didn't work, and he knows he blew it, but hey,
so what, you suckers are still going to vote for me.
So chant GPT rights. No. Governor Newsom does not have
(31:37):
a clear accounting of where all the twenty four billion
dollars spent on homelessness went. As a major twenty twenty
four state audit found California lacks consistent tracking and outcome
data for its nuest programs. Yeah, this is an audit
from the news of Administration into the twenty four billion.
(32:01):
This is leading to questions about effectiveness despite increased homelessness numbers.
When the state allocated funds for various initiatives like Project
home Key, it failed to establish reliable systems to monitor
costs and results. This stuff is basic, by the way,
when you have a massive program that gives out billions
(32:23):
systems to monitor costs and results, you have to have
that sketched out on day one. They never bothered Key
audit findings. And this is April twenty twenty four inadequate tracking.
The state wasn't consistently monitoring the costs and outcomes of
its vast homelessness initiatives. Increased homelessness despite billions spent. From
(32:48):
twenty eighteen to twenty twenty three, the number of people
homeless rose significantly limited effectiveness. The audit found that only
a few of the assessed programs were likely cost effective,
with no reliable way to know which work best. By
the way they got all their information from about eight
nine ten news media reports and information from the governor's
(33:10):
own office. Newsom's response bullet point number one. Newsom acknowledged
the audits findings, stating it wasn't a surprise, so he
admitted it and admitted he wasn't a surprise. So he
knew for quite some time that the twenty four billion
they were shoveling out was doing no good. Because he
(33:31):
has eyes, he can see Sacramento, the bodies piling up
in the streets, some of them dead. Newsom also vetoed
a bill that would have created a centralized tracking system
for homelessness, so he voted against tracking the money. He
(33:51):
not only spent the money, he knew the money was
getting wasted and vetoed a bill that would track it.
This is gonna be a great presidential campaign. Boy. I
just hope it's democratics democratic opponents knock him out in
(34:12):
the first two months. Now here's an update from the
KFI twenty four hour newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to
the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always hear the
show live on KFI Am six forty from one to
four pm every Monday through Friday, and of course, anytime
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