May 19, 2025 • 39 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 2 (05/19) - The high-speed rail's budget gap has gotten even bigger. There was a shooting at a shoe store at the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica and multiple inmates escaped from a jail in New Orleans. A guy blew up a fertility clinic in Palm Springs over the weekend. More on Haggerty Consulting helping with fire recovery but Palisades residents aren't happy with them.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
I am six forty.
Speaker 3 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're on every day from one until four o'clock, and
every day after four o'clock we transform into a podcast,
John Cobel's Show on demand, so whatever you miss, same
as the radio show, you.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Can listen to it.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Then shortly after four o'clock. This never ends, and nobody's
trying to stop it. The corruption in the state is
just overwhelming. California High Speed Rail has another ten billion
dollar budget gap, even larger than what they expected two
(00:43):
months ago, ten billion dollars. Newsom had announced a few
days ago that he wants to take a billion dollars
of gas tax money and throw it into the black
hole of high speed rail. Nobody stops him. Nobody stops
(01:04):
the really the rapid abuse of the taxpayer in the state.
Seventeen years, seventeen billion dollars. And this is for that
short stretch from Bakersfield and Merced, which is only one
hundred and seventy one miles along. It's nowhere near La
it's nowhere near San Francisco. This stretch between Bakersfield and
(01:29):
Merced is going to cost at least thirty eight billion dollars,
which is more than the entire rail line was supposed
to cost. The original rail line was going Sacramento to
San Francisco to Los Angeles to Anaheim to San Diego,
all that for thirty three billion dollars. But they lied,
like everybody in government and everybody in the media lies
(01:51):
every day.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
They make it up.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Now we've blown seventeen billion, you need another ten billion.
They have a plan to try to finish this stretch
in twenty thirty three. These are like science fiction years,
science fiction budgets. Meantime, the unions and the consultants and
(02:16):
the grifters and sisters and parasites are all stealing your
tax money and you'll let them. Here's an overview of
the situation. This is KCRA Channel three and Sacramento. Their reporter,
the only reporter that covers the Sacramento legislature, Ashley's EVA.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
That last check that Merch said to Bakersfield line was
expected to cost California taxpayers thirty five point three billion dollars,
but sources tell us project leaders are now warning lawmakers
that cost could grow again, now up to thirty eight
point five billion.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Dollars.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
This also means the project's budget gap could reach up
to even more than ten billion dollars again, just for
this Central Valley segment. High speed Rail Authority has confirmed
these new figures. Now, the possible funding gap presents even
more questions about the project. That Baker's Field tm mersedline
was expected to be completed between twenty thirty and twenty
thirty three, but the project's inspector General earlier this year
(03:14):
warned that may no longer be the case. The High
Speed Rail Authority at some point this summer is expected
to have a full update on what's going on. But
in those documents that we obtain to get this information
and that project leaders have confirmed, they note the cost
estimate has arranged depending on.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
A variety of factors.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Those factors include inflation and the rising cost of materials
like concrete and copper. The High Speed Rail Authority is
eyeing possible design changes to save money, potentially so. State
Senator Tony Strickland is the vice chairman of the Senate's
Transportation Committee. In a statement, he told us quote, the
high speed rail project continues to suffer from self inflicted wounds,
and I am extremely disturbed to learn about this latest information,
(03:55):
which further erodes the public's trust and a project as proposed.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
Will never be built.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
He went on to say, I urged my colleagues and
the Senate for us to have a serious conversation on
how we can discontinue this failed project, as our state
truly does not have the money to waste, and Californians
are sensitive to government waste.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I also checked in.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
With Democratic State Senator Dave Cortesi, who leads the Transportation
committee there in the Senate. Nothing from him yet, but
he was hoping to have a hearing on the high
speed rail in May, and obviously we're halfway through the month,
so we'll see, right.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
So we also know that Trump administration is performing an audit,
so where does that stand.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
That's right, That audit apparently is still underway, and we
reached out to the Trump administration for comment about this update.
Nothing yet from them. We should note California taxpayers have
spent fourteen billion dollars on this project so far, and
the federal government so far has put about.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
Four billion dollars up.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Next year, the governor plans to put a billion dollars
toward the project.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
But it's not clear at all how.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
This possibly ten billion dollar funding gap will be addressed
by the legislature, by lawmakers, and even President Donald Trump
has said that this is a project he's not interested
in funding. So a lot of questions about this bullet train.
One other thing I should note is that the La
to San Francisco project was originally pitched to voters to
cost him forty billion dollars. This baker Field toi Marsaid
(05:15):
line is almost reaching that price.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Dag Actually what I had read it was thirty three billion.
But fine. The federal government has spent four billion California taxpayers,
that's you, has spent fourteen billion, eighteen billion dollars in
seventeen years. Not an inch of track has been laid out.
(05:38):
They don't even own all the land that they need
to own, let alone develop the land properly. It's been
seventeen freaking years. Nobody can stop this there there is
so there's a lot of union corruption here with these
fake jobs, these make work jobs that the unions had
(05:59):
done demanding. Gavin Newsom is a silly coward. I mean,
maybe maybe when the doctors went for Biden's testicles, they
cut off Newsom's testicles by mistake. I don't know, but Newsom,
if he was a grown man, would stand up and say,
I don't come up with a fake executive order. It's like,
(06:20):
no more, not another penny. This is it done. We're
not barring any more money, We're not taking any more
money from the federal government.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Nothing.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Do you know in eighteen years, no private companies have
come forward to often any to offer any type of investment.
Why do you think that is? It is because it's
clearly a massive failure, and it just enrages me. We're
so overtaxed, so wildly overtaxed. I was we were driving
(06:51):
down Sunset Boulevard a couple of times this weekend. If
you've never been on Sunset Boulevard on the west side,
I am telling you Afghanistan has been roads.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It is rough.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
It shakes your brain, your teeth, You practically have a concussion.
If you drive in the right lane, yeah, you have
to drive in the left lane, but then you have
to deal with all the drunks and coke addicts on
Sunset Boulevard who are coming at you right across the
double yellow line. So you go to the right lane
(07:23):
because you feel psychologically a little safer, except that that
it's like land minds had gone off. Maybe land mindes
did go off. I'm just astonished. The roads are so
awful in the city, so awful, and there's no tax
money spent to fix them, and yet we've got eighteen
(07:46):
billion dollars going to the worst Paris. We have the
worst human beings working in government and who access government
with their parasitical companies. There their consultancies and they're engineering,
and their lawyering and their real estate consulting, all the stuff.
It is. They laugh like hell at us, and we
(08:11):
have a bunch of schmucks going around.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
It's like, actually, have a high speed train. That'd be
really cool. I voted for. I've heard some of these
people I voted for that. I thought it'd be really cool,
and you know, you know it's going to help climate change.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Like stupid ass, apparently you had your brain removed. There
is There is no high speed rail coming effort. It's
going to be a perpetual scam until we're dead, and
then after we're dead, the scam will continue for the
next generation of parasites, and none of the politicians want
(08:46):
to stop it. Because they have political donors who depend
on our tax money for their way of life, and
then they give kickbacks to everybody who serves in the legislature.
Kickbacks go to every one of them campaign donations. It's
(09:08):
it's like the homeless racket, you got, the high speed
rail racket, you got the climate change racket.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
It's all a racket.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It's all just money laundering, circulating money, and they play
on your emotions. They manipulate your motions.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Say well, I'm kind of afraid about what's happening with
the climateciness.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It's wrong with you? And why so many in col
Why are so many in.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
California afflicted with this disease? They don't have these stupid
projects in other states. Just here, Nobody is spending tens
of billions of dollars on homelessness, tens of billions of
dollars on climate change, tens of billions of dollars on
high speed rail. No other state is doing this except us,
(09:53):
and we got we've got nothing for it, nothing.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
All right, more coming up? Oh what do I do next?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Do care about these these New Orleans prisoners that escaped?
Carved out a big hole in a wall behind a
toilet and they've gotten away with it.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI A
six forty.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
I just noticed this story. I came him out less
than an hour ago. Sunday night, they had a shooting
on the Third Street Promenade Santa Monica. Boy, they really
Santa Monica. The mental patients that run that city really
ruined the Third Street promenade and an owner of a
(10:41):
shoe store shot to death.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
An attempted robber. Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
The property manager is John Alley, who we've had on
the show many times. He has told us about the
degradation of Santa Monica. And they have the most far
left government that I have ever seen in my life.
And I lived just a couple of miles from Santa
Monica and so I have unfortunately firsthand experience all the time.
(11:12):
They are sick and crazy there. It's unlimited homelessness, little
crime enforcement. But you know what they constantly enforce. They
enforce parking regulations, traffic regulations. They have those stupid ballards
in every corner so you don't make a right turn
(11:32):
easily right.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
They try to stop.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
You from making a right turn, so they set up
these short posts they're called ballards, so you.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Can't do it.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And they have red paint on lots of curbs so
you can't park. They have all kinds of crisscross intersections
that make no sense. They have flashing lights everywhere for
one reason or another. It is a naze of paint
painted crosswalks and green lanes. You know. For the three
(12:02):
people who bikes, it's just not oh and then and
the traffic lights like will stop you every single block,
I mean really every single block. It's crazy. They declared
war a war on cars. They've made everything difficult. The
one thing they allow, though, is they allow criminals, vagrants,
(12:23):
mental patients, and drug addicts to run free. And then
the other day they announced that they were going to
have an outdoor alcohol zone that would be opened till
two in the morning on the Santa Monica Promenade, which
I remember when I moved here, I thought was one
of the coolest places to go to. Soon you're gonna
(12:43):
be able to drink at two am outdoors. And here's
what was going on outdoors on Sunday night, nine thirty.
There's a guy who owns a shoe store called Soul
and Laces and he was with a customer. It was
after hours, but he was making a sale and a
bad guy showed up and tried to rob the place.
(13:05):
And it looks like a second person entered the store
and pepper sprayed the owner, and the store owner, who
had I legally owned gun shot the suspect and killed him.
So there you go. Well there's good news. One of
one of the one of the robbers was was shot
to death. Oh so, so here's how they set up
(13:29):
the owner. They wanted an after hours sale. Looks like
the contacted the owner and said, Hey, I want to
buy some stuff. Can we do it after closing hours?
And the owner said okay. So the guy shows up,
he's talking to the owner trying to make the deal,
(13:51):
and then the customer had an accomplice who showed up
with pepper spray, and then the owner shot the.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Guy to death.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
The first man was arrested on suspicion of being involved
in the robbery. And they haven't identified the shop keeper.
But Souls and Laces is the name of it. Yeah,
that's that's your. That's your that's your weekend night at
the promenade down uh in New Orleans. That's another city
(14:26):
that that's gone to hell.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Ten ten serious violent criminals escaped from a New Orleans jail.
They cut a hole in a jail cell behind a toilet.
They lifted up the toilet apparatus and uh busted through
the hole in the wall. Ten of them escaped, seven
(14:51):
are still at large, according to Louisiana State Police. The
governor of Louisiana said the was the worst in recent
state history. Jeff Landry ordering an audit of the sheriff's office.
They think, obviously that there was help maybe from some
of the sheriff's deputies who were supposed to be guarding
(15:13):
these guys. You should see the photos of these characters. Jeez,
we're a lot of bizarre hair, facial tattoos. I like
tattoos on the cheek and on the forehead. That's usually
a sign of good mental health. The governor said nine
of the ten escapees had been in the pre trial
stage for years, and he wants to know why the
(15:34):
DA has never prosecuted these guys fully, they just were
stuffed in jail. The governor is blaming the progressive justice system. Yeah,
this is progress, all right, and they've got rewards out.
It took hours for the sheriff's officials to learn of
(15:56):
the escape. They apparently escaped at twelve thirty in the
morning overnight, but nobody discovered it until a head count
was done at at eight o'clock to a eight thirty
the next morning, so they had been gone for eight hours.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Ten ten. What is it about.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Jails in prisons? Anybody who's hired to work jail in
prison just nobody cares. Nobody cares about anything. You imagine this,
You had ten would be sellons missing for eight hours, escaped,
big hole in the wall.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Nobody heard it. I guess.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Around twelve twenty three am the inmates yanked the sliding
jail cell door off the track. At one on one
am they exited the jail. Oh, I guess they have
video of a timestamp on it. That's why they have
such a precise accounting of what happened. And then they
breached a wall behind the toilet. They found clean cuts
on metal bars behind the toilet inside the jail cells.
(17:00):
The toilet and the bolts were removed using toiletry items,
but didn't specify what the items were. What what kind
of toiletry items? Can you can you cut the the
bars of a jail cell with.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
A toothbrush made into a shank, and I could go
through the metal in the bar if it's sharp enough. Yeah,
that's uh. Oh, you seem you seem to have a
lot of knowledge on this. Well, I've watched prison Break
on TV. Did you see the note that they left
for everybody on the wall? No, right above where the
(17:34):
toilet was. They had written graffiti all over the wall
and everything, and one of them said too easy l
O L.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Of course they spelled to wrong. Yeah they had instead
of t O O. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Well, if you take a look at these guys, that's
not a surprise. Uh but I mean everybody, everybody was
shocked at this, Like nobody knew what was happening. Everybody done.
Had they do this? Why have they been sitting there
so many years and not put on trial? Nobody seems
to care. Nobody seems to care about anything anymore on
any level of government in any state.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
When we come.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Back this Palm Springs guy, this is a new kind
of ideology. I never heard of the guy who blew
up the fertility clinic. He has a belief system that
this is the first of its kind that I'm aware
of this was the motivation for.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Blowing up the clinic. We'll tell you about it we
come back.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
A six forty boy.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I've never heard of this ideology before.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
This is the guy.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
His name is Guy Bartkas from twenty nine Palms and
he blew up the fertility clinic in Palm Springs over
the weekend and he he uh. And you know, the
fertility clinic is where they store a lot of frozen
embryos and that's where couples go and they try to
(19:09):
fertilize the embryo and hopefully have a child from what's
been saved. They do in vitro fertilization treatments, egg collections,
and other related procedures. This guy, this guy's big, big
issue was he he doesn't think that people should be
(19:30):
brought into this world without their permission. And it makes
you stop and think, like, how does this work. It's
because I think we're all brought into the world without
our permission.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
It's it's not.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Like you can fill out a form in the womb
and saying yeah, I want to get out, No, I
want to be vacuumed and flushed away somewhere. You know,
we're we're all forced into the world, whether we like
it or not. And I there's no way, there's no
other way to do it, as far as I'm aware.
But this is what drove him. I guess he looked
(20:09):
at the embryos being well fertilized and humans being created
through that process, and he thought it was like a
civil rights violation of the embryo. But the idea that, yeah,
he opposed people being born without their consent, and I
(20:30):
assume that includes himself, who consented to coming into the world.
Guy Bartkas he's twenty five years old, and of course
he had a manifesto, and so THEBI is reading the manifesto.
Those are always a good time. Twenty nine Palms is
where the largest Marine Corps base is. But he was
(20:53):
not a marine because they thought, well, maybe he's a
marine and he had access to explosives. No, they don't
know if he was connected though in some other way
so we get access exposives. They don't even know if
the exposives came from the marine base. Nobody seemed to
know this guy, At least as of now, no one's
(21:13):
come forward to say, yeah, he was the whack job
in the neighborhood. It damaged buildings several blocks away. The
FBI said, is probably the largest bombing scene we've had
in Southern California history. Now they found what was left
of Barcas mangled near the scene. I mean, they believe
(21:38):
it's him. They but he was really scrambled up. He
wanted to live stream the attack, so they're not sure
if he intended to blow himself up, but that's what happened.
And he he said he had a war against pro
(22:04):
life people and a fertilization clinic would be targeted. He
also hears some of his belief system too. Bed Debra's
not here today. He believed in a bottle abolitionist, veganism,
the opposition to all animal use by humans. Pro mortalism.
(22:27):
It is the belief that it's best for living beings
to die as soon as possible to prevent future suffering.
So he wants all of us dead because I guess
all of us brings suffering to somebody along the line.
I'd never heard of this stuff. In the manifesto, he
denounced those who bring human life into the world. Well,
(22:49):
that'd be a lot of us, and his final goal
is to sterilize this planet of the disease of life,
so he wanted to wipe out the human race. They
found an audio file where he would explain why I've
decided to bomb an IVF building, and basically it comes
(23:14):
down to that I'm angry that I exist.
Speaker 5 (23:19):
I was about to say, this guy hates his mom.
If he hates I bring life into the world.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I'm angry that I exist.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I mean, he could simply kill himself, which is what
he did, but it looks like he wanted to take
I'm angry and and you know, nobody got my consent
to bring me here. Well, while that's never going to happen,
you can always opt out at any moment, and it's
not hard to do.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Wow, of course he's vegan, though, I got a file
this for tomorrow or whenever Debra comes back. She's she's
got got a bad deb sign it condition. She can't
speak very well right now, but when she comes back.
Because I've got a couple of vegan stories that there
is a militant extremist Vegan wing among that crowd and
(24:15):
the UH. Brian Levin is the founder of the Center
for the Study of Hate and extremism cal State San Bernardino,
And he said this, this bomber appears to be part
of a growing movement. Oh oh, that's great, A growing
movement of people who hate themselves and don't want to exist,
(24:38):
alienated lone actors who get radicalized on obscure internet sites
and misinformation. It's called an anti natalism movement. See you're
against babies being born, so you're anti natal and describes
him as a hopeless, unstable young man who soon suicidal
(25:00):
despair stirs him into a self consuming, brutal death, justified
by a distorted embrace of an obscure anti life ideology. Yeah,
it's obscure. I mean this is a new one. There's
this is so many people sitting on the internet reading
(25:23):
bizarre websites, and they read these things and they get
radicalized the way you would for religion. But it was
a terribly powerful bomb. It's stunning that he was the
only one killed. I think there was somebody else who
was injured. But I just never had seen he's against
(25:46):
people being born without their consent. All right, when we
come back, there's a story in the La Times. Palisades
residents are getting angrier and angrier by the day because
they don't see a plan and they don't see any
(26:08):
movement on the part of the city to rebuild the Palisades.
And you know, we've had we had David Howard on
one of our sales managers here a.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
KFI who talked about this.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
They're like Karen Bass has engineered some kind of brick
wall between her and the good people of the Palisades.
Like we told you, there's only been a handful of
permits that have been granted to rebuild, and one writer
estimated it would take about four hundred and sixty years
(26:40):
to rebuild the Palisades in Altadena based on the speed
of the permitting process. Rick Cruso is trying from the
outside to speed this up, but there's got to be
I'm thinking some kind of intervention here. You can't continue
to have her run the government with her staff and
this city council because they are flat out unwilling to
(27:02):
help the Palisades people rebuild. You know, they send out raw,
raw press releases, but the permitting system is at a standstill.
And it's now four and a half months in and
despair has been beginning to set in.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
So we're gonna get to all this coming up.
Speaker 6 (27:20):
You're listening to John Cobelts on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
You can follow us on social media at John Cobelt
Radio at John Cobelt Radio. La Times had a story
over the weekend that if you read the whole thing
and it becomes clear that there has been there has
been very little movement on the part of Bass administration
to do anything for the people in the Palisades, and uh,
(27:51):
there's some kind of some kind of deal going on,
and I know a lot of people in the Palisades
are very angry about this. They hired something called Haggarty Consulting,
and they were supposed to help the Emergency Management Department
(28:12):
with recovery.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
And the residents.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
If you remember that infamous Zoom meeting, We played some
of that on the air, and they had an executive
from Haggarty and the guy's based in Illinois or Iowa,
somewhere out in the Midwest. And they beast paid this
company ten million dollars and they came here and a
woman asked, well, what's your experience in other disasters? Can
(28:38):
you give us an idea of what you have done
in other similar situations, and the guy couldn't speak for
about a minute and a half. He was totally stunned,
unprepared for the question and had and had no answer.
When he started speaking, just gibberish came out. Well, apparently
nothing's changed. Still, nobody seems to know what Haggarty Consulting
(28:59):
is doing, and Karen Bass has done nothing to explain it.
The recovery is supposed to be led by the Los
Angeles Emergency Management Department, which, according to the LA Times,
is long underfunded. All the things that you would need
(29:24):
in a wildfire, an urban wildfire, police, fire, emergency management,
they all were way way unfunded or underfunded. We've told
you the fire department was only funded at a fifty
percent rate. Same thing with the police department. They're going
to be down to eighty four hundred cops within a
(29:46):
number of months. They used to have ten thousand. They're
going to need twelve thousand, especially with the Olympics coming,
and they're at eighty four hundred and they're dropping. And
Karen Bass's new budget cuts money for police, cuts money
for fire, and they already had hardly any money for
(30:08):
emergency management. Carol Parks was the chief of the Los
Angeles Emergency Management Department, and she went before a budget
committee last year and told them that they only got
a tiny fraction of the budget, and they've only got
(30:31):
thirty people, and there was nobody on staff devoted to
full time disaster recovery. So if we had an earthquake
or wildfire, the city would be scrambling. And then you
remember what happened. Karen Bass decided to take the week
off and go to Africa, and we had nobody running
the city. You know how we're finding out that we
(30:51):
had nobody running the federal government when Joe Biden's mind
turned to oatmeal. We just had nobody who showed up
for work, right because Bass was gone. Her deputy mayor,
who's in charge of the police and Fire department, he
was on leave, suspected of calling in bomb threats by
(31:14):
the FBI.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
You know, everybody forgets this.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
I like to go through a little reminder session every
once in a while. There was no mayor, There was
no deputy mayor, at least for police and fire.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
He was on the bench.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
There was nobody devoted to full time disaster recovery, and
the city council and the mayor balked at devoting more
money to the Emergency Management Department. This all happened last May.
Seven months later was the Big fire. Six thousand structures burned,
(31:50):
tens of thousands of people displaced. Do you know what
the Emergency Management department? You know how much money they get.
They have a budget that is smaller than what the
police department spends in two days. You take police expenses
for two days, that's the entire annual budget for the
(32:13):
Emergency Management Department. So, in other words, we don't really
have one. So that's why she went to this Haggarty consulting.
They're from Illinois, ten million dollars and now here we are.
(32:34):
It's more than four months after the fire, and the
Palisades residents, according to The Times, are saying.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Who's in charge? What have they been doing?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
What is Haggarty doing, what's the plan to restore the Palisades.
There's no answers. You can't get a hold of anybody.
They have nothing to say. After the Palisades, the Emergency
Management Department assigned a mid level staffer to take on
(33:08):
the recovery. Then they brought back a former general manager,
Jim Featherstone, out of retirement to serve as the recovery chief.
You know, we had Steve sober off for five minutes
and until he found out he wasn't going to get paid.
(33:33):
The city code puts the Emergency Management Department in charge
of coordinating a disaster recovery. But it turns out that
LA only spends a dollar fifty six per resident on
emergency management. San Francisco spends seven dollars and fifty nine cents,
So they spend six times as much in San Francisco,
(33:57):
Is that right? Three times as much and we have
four hundred and sixty nine square miles. The chief, Carol Parks,
said last year the department lacks the experience and dedicated
(34:17):
staff to oversee long term recovery projects. Well, this is
why nothing's happening in the Palisades. They don't have it apart.
They actually don't have the employees. The office barely exists.
They don't have money, they don't have people, they don't
have anything. And she warned the city council last year,
(34:38):
but nobody in the city council cares. Sh God, it's
like worse than anybody could have ever imagined, and none
of it's getting better. Karen Pass is really a sociopath.
She just doesn't care. And I know enough people who
are really struggling, you know, trying to get through the day.
(35:06):
But you know, the government, all they're good at is
making an incredible amount of restrictions and regulations and red
tape and delays. I you know, I've read this story
several times and I just.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
So.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
As of mid March, Haggarty has twenty two employees working
on the Palisades fire recovery. That's it. And they're billing
the city at hourly rates ranging from eighty to four
hundred dollars per hour per employee. Monica Rodriguez is one
of the few speaking out. She's a city council member,
(35:48):
and she goes, I don't understand their purpose. I don't
need another contractor, we need staff to do the work.
And then you talk to that idiot puppethead Zach Sidell.
He's he's Bass's chief spokes hole, another one of these
professional liars, and she says, he says, despite one of
(36:14):
the worst natural disasters in recent history, LA's recovery is
on track to be the fastest in modern California history.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
What the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (36:24):
The bulb faced lying is is really stunning. They will
say anything, what do you mean the fastest recovery, it's
a handful of permits. Palisades residents say, Haggerty, Emergency Management Department,
(36:45):
Karen Bass, poor job communicating. Nobody knows what's going on,
and there's no you know, occasionally have these zoom meetings
where residents, you know, yell at the zoom screen. I mean,
(37:06):
you know, there's got to be some kind of dramatic
takeover here. There really is. I mean, there really has
to be some kind of intervention. You can't because otherwise
you're gonna drift for the next year and a half.
Does she show up for work anymore? But what does
she do all day? What is everybody there do all day?
(37:27):
And you know the people in the Palisades, they're high achievers.
These are people who've accumulated a lot of money because
they work long hours, they work hard, They have unusual
amounts of energy and and they're they're they're staring at
the city government that are you know, their mouths are
hanging open. These people are drooling on their on themselves,
(37:52):
and you know, Gavin Knwso promised this was all going
to be cleared up. But of course his mouth was moving,
so he was lying as well. The uh Sighteel says
forty addresses have received permits. That's what he claims, except
(38:15):
they've lost thousands of homes.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I don't know. What do you do? What do you do?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
It's supposed to be a democracy, right, You're supposed to
wait till the next election. Except the city allowed a
huge chunk of land to burn, did nothing to prepare
for the fire. There was no water, there was no
fire department at the ready, there was nothing. Nobody in
(38:51):
the city, in the county cleared the brush. They didn't
fill up the reservoirs. The fire trucks, one hundred of
them were busted. We have like a non government situation.
And still they managed to spend themselves a billion dollars
into debt this year. They're still a billion dollar deficit.
(39:13):
And they're not even refuting any of this. They're not
even arguing about it. It's like, yeah, yeah, that's what
it is.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
So what do you want from us? Good job voting?
All right?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Michael Krazer's got the news live in the KFI twenty
four hour newsroom.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Hey, you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
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 3 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
We're on every day from one until four o'clock, and
every day after four o'clock we transform into a podcast,
John Cobel's Show on demand, so whatever you miss, same
as the radio show, you.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
Can listen to it.
Speaker 3 (00:17):
Then shortly after four o'clock. This never ends, and nobody's
trying to stop it. The corruption in the state is
just overwhelming. California High Speed Rail has another ten billion
dollar budget gap, even larger than what they expected two
(00:43):
months ago, ten billion dollars. Newsom had announced a few
days ago that he wants to take a billion dollars
of gas tax money and throw it into the black
hole of high speed rail. Nobody stops him. Nobody stops
(01:04):
the really the rapid abuse of the taxpayer in the state.
Seventeen years, seventeen billion dollars. And this is for that
short stretch from Bakersfield and Merced, which is only one
hundred and seventy one miles along. It's nowhere near La
it's nowhere near San Francisco. This stretch between Bakersfield and
(01:29):
Merced is going to cost at least thirty eight billion dollars,
which is more than the entire rail line was supposed
to cost. The original rail line was going Sacramento to
San Francisco to Los Angeles to Anaheim to San Diego,
all that for thirty three billion dollars. But they lied,
like everybody in government and everybody in the media lies
(01:51):
every day.
Speaker 2 (01:52):
They make it up.
Speaker 3 (01:54):
Now we've blown seventeen billion, you need another ten billion.
They have a plan to try to finish this stretch
in twenty thirty three. These are like science fiction years,
science fiction budgets. Meantime, the unions and the consultants and
(02:16):
the grifters and sisters and parasites are all stealing your
tax money and you'll let them. Here's an overview of
the situation. This is KCRA Channel three and Sacramento. Their reporter,
the only reporter that covers the Sacramento legislature, Ashley's EVA.
Speaker 4 (02:35):
That last check that Merch said to Bakersfield line was
expected to cost California taxpayers thirty five point three billion dollars,
but sources tell us project leaders are now warning lawmakers
that cost could grow again, now up to thirty eight
point five billion.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
Dollars.
Speaker 4 (02:52):
This also means the project's budget gap could reach up
to even more than ten billion dollars again, just for
this Central Valley segment. High speed Rail Authority has confirmed
these new figures. Now, the possible funding gap presents even
more questions about the project. That Baker's Field tm mersedline
was expected to be completed between twenty thirty and twenty
thirty three, but the project's inspector General earlier this year
(03:14):
warned that may no longer be the case. The High
Speed Rail Authority at some point this summer is expected
to have a full update on what's going on. But
in those documents that we obtain to get this information
and that project leaders have confirmed, they note the cost
estimate has arranged depending on.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
A variety of factors.
Speaker 4 (03:32):
Those factors include inflation and the rising cost of materials
like concrete and copper. The High Speed Rail Authority is
eyeing possible design changes to save money, potentially so. State
Senator Tony Strickland is the vice chairman of the Senate's
Transportation Committee. In a statement, he told us quote, the
high speed rail project continues to suffer from self inflicted wounds,
and I am extremely disturbed to learn about this latest information,
(03:55):
which further erodes the public's trust and a project as proposed.
Speaker 5 (03:59):
Will never be built.
Speaker 4 (04:00):
He went on to say, I urged my colleagues and
the Senate for us to have a serious conversation on
how we can discontinue this failed project, as our state
truly does not have the money to waste, and Californians
are sensitive to government waste.
Speaker 2 (04:13):
I also checked in.
Speaker 4 (04:14):
With Democratic State Senator Dave Cortesi, who leads the Transportation
committee there in the Senate. Nothing from him yet, but
he was hoping to have a hearing on the high
speed rail in May, and obviously we're halfway through the month,
so we'll see, right.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
So we also know that Trump administration is performing an audit,
so where does that stand.
Speaker 4 (04:29):
That's right, That audit apparently is still underway, and we
reached out to the Trump administration for comment about this update.
Nothing yet from them. We should note California taxpayers have
spent fourteen billion dollars on this project so far, and
the federal government so far has put about.
Speaker 6 (04:45):
Four billion dollars up.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Next year, the governor plans to put a billion dollars
toward the project.
Speaker 2 (04:50):
But it's not clear at all how.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
This possibly ten billion dollar funding gap will be addressed
by the legislature, by lawmakers, and even President Donald Trump
has said that this is a project he's not interested
in funding. So a lot of questions about this bullet train.
One other thing I should note is that the La
to San Francisco project was originally pitched to voters to
cost him forty billion dollars. This baker Field toi Marsaid
(05:15):
line is almost reaching that price.
Speaker 3 (05:16):
Dag Actually what I had read it was thirty three billion.
But fine. The federal government has spent four billion California taxpayers,
that's you, has spent fourteen billion, eighteen billion dollars in
seventeen years. Not an inch of track has been laid out.
(05:38):
They don't even own all the land that they need
to own, let alone develop the land properly. It's been
seventeen freaking years. Nobody can stop this there there is
so there's a lot of union corruption here with these
fake jobs, these make work jobs that the unions had
(05:59):
done demanding. Gavin Newsom is a silly coward. I mean,
maybe maybe when the doctors went for Biden's testicles, they
cut off Newsom's testicles by mistake. I don't know, but Newsom,
if he was a grown man, would stand up and say,
I don't come up with a fake executive order. It's like,
(06:20):
no more, not another penny. This is it done. We're
not barring any more money, We're not taking any more
money from the federal government.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Nothing.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
Do you know in eighteen years, no private companies have
come forward to often any to offer any type of investment.
Why do you think that is? It is because it's
clearly a massive failure, and it just enrages me. We're
so overtaxed, so wildly overtaxed. I was we were driving
(06:51):
down Sunset Boulevard a couple of times this weekend. If
you've never been on Sunset Boulevard on the west side,
I am telling you Afghanistan has been roads.
Speaker 2 (07:01):
It is rough.
Speaker 3 (07:03):
It shakes your brain, your teeth, You practically have a concussion.
If you drive in the right lane, yeah, you have
to drive in the left lane, but then you have
to deal with all the drunks and coke addicts on
Sunset Boulevard who are coming at you right across the
double yellow line. So you go to the right lane
(07:23):
because you feel psychologically a little safer, except that that
it's like land minds had gone off. Maybe land mindes
did go off. I'm just astonished. The roads are so
awful in the city, so awful, and there's no tax
money spent to fix them, and yet we've got eighteen
(07:46):
billion dollars going to the worst Paris. We have the
worst human beings working in government and who access government
with their parasitical companies. There their consultancies and they're engineering,
and their lawyering and their real estate consulting, all the stuff.
It is. They laugh like hell at us, and we
(08:11):
have a bunch of schmucks going around.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
It's like, actually, have a high speed train. That'd be
really cool. I voted for. I've heard some of these
people I voted for that. I thought it'd be really cool,
and you know, you know it's going to help climate change.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Like stupid ass, apparently you had your brain removed. There
is There is no high speed rail coming effort. It's
going to be a perpetual scam until we're dead, and
then after we're dead, the scam will continue for the
next generation of parasites, and none of the politicians want
(08:46):
to stop it. Because they have political donors who depend
on our tax money for their way of life, and
then they give kickbacks to everybody who serves in the legislature.
Kickbacks go to every one of them campaign donations. It's
(09:08):
it's like the homeless racket, you got, the high speed
rail racket, you got the climate change racket.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
It's all a racket.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
It's all just money laundering, circulating money, and they play
on your emotions. They manipulate your motions.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Say well, I'm kind of afraid about what's happening with
the climateciness.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
It's wrong with you? And why so many in col
Why are so many in.
Speaker 3 (09:33):
California afflicted with this disease? They don't have these stupid
projects in other states. Just here, Nobody is spending tens
of billions of dollars on homelessness, tens of billions of
dollars on climate change, tens of billions of dollars on
high speed rail. No other state is doing this except us,
(09:53):
and we got we've got nothing for it, nothing.
Speaker 2 (09:59):
All right, more coming up? Oh what do I do next?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Do care about these these New Orleans prisoners that escaped?
Carved out a big hole in a wall behind a
toilet and they've gotten away with it.
Speaker 6 (10:14):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI A
six forty.
Speaker 3 (10:20):
I just noticed this story. I came him out less
than an hour ago. Sunday night, they had a shooting
on the Third Street Promenade Santa Monica. Boy, they really
Santa Monica. The mental patients that run that city really
ruined the Third Street promenade and an owner of a
(10:41):
shoe store shot to death.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
An attempted robber. Oh wow.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
The property manager is John Alley, who we've had on
the show many times. He has told us about the
degradation of Santa Monica. And they have the most far
left government that I have ever seen in my life.
And I lived just a couple of miles from Santa
Monica and so I have unfortunately firsthand experience all the time.
(11:12):
They are sick and crazy there. It's unlimited homelessness, little
crime enforcement. But you know what they constantly enforce. They
enforce parking regulations, traffic regulations. They have those stupid ballards
in every corner so you don't make a right turn
(11:32):
easily right.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
They try to stop.
Speaker 3 (11:34):
You from making a right turn, so they set up
these short posts they're called ballards, so you.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
Can't do it.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
And they have red paint on lots of curbs so
you can't park. They have all kinds of crisscross intersections
that make no sense. They have flashing lights everywhere for
one reason or another. It is a naze of paint
painted crosswalks and green lanes. You know. For the three
(12:02):
people who bikes, it's just not oh and then and
the traffic lights like will stop you every single block,
I mean really every single block. It's crazy. They declared
war a war on cars. They've made everything difficult. The
one thing they allow, though, is they allow criminals, vagrants,
(12:23):
mental patients, and drug addicts to run free. And then
the other day they announced that they were going to
have an outdoor alcohol zone that would be opened till
two in the morning on the Santa Monica Promenade, which
I remember when I moved here, I thought was one
of the coolest places to go to. Soon you're gonna
(12:43):
be able to drink at two am outdoors. And here's
what was going on outdoors on Sunday night, nine thirty.
There's a guy who owns a shoe store called Soul
and Laces and he was with a customer. It was
after hours, but he was making a sale and a
bad guy showed up and tried to rob the place.
(13:05):
And it looks like a second person entered the store
and pepper sprayed the owner, and the store owner, who
had I legally owned gun shot the suspect and killed him.
So there you go. Well there's good news. One of
one of the one of the robbers was was shot
to death. Oh so, so here's how they set up
(13:29):
the owner. They wanted an after hours sale. Looks like
the contacted the owner and said, Hey, I want to
buy some stuff. Can we do it after closing hours?
And the owner said okay. So the guy shows up,
he's talking to the owner trying to make the deal,
(13:51):
and then the customer had an accomplice who showed up
with pepper spray, and then the owner shot the.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Guy to death.
Speaker 3 (14:04):
The first man was arrested on suspicion of being involved
in the robbery. And they haven't identified the shop keeper.
But Souls and Laces is the name of it. Yeah,
that's that's your. That's your that's your weekend night at
the promenade down uh in New Orleans. That's another city
(14:26):
that that's gone to hell.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Uh.
Speaker 3 (14:29):
Ten ten serious violent criminals escaped from a New Orleans jail.
They cut a hole in a jail cell behind a toilet.
They lifted up the toilet apparatus and uh busted through
the hole in the wall. Ten of them escaped, seven
(14:51):
are still at large, according to Louisiana State Police. The
governor of Louisiana said the was the worst in recent
state history. Jeff Landry ordering an audit of the sheriff's office.
They think, obviously that there was help maybe from some
of the sheriff's deputies who were supposed to be guarding
(15:13):
these guys. You should see the photos of these characters. Jeez,
we're a lot of bizarre hair, facial tattoos. I like
tattoos on the cheek and on the forehead. That's usually
a sign of good mental health. The governor said nine
of the ten escapees had been in the pre trial
stage for years, and he wants to know why the
(15:34):
DA has never prosecuted these guys fully, they just were
stuffed in jail. The governor is blaming the progressive justice system. Yeah,
this is progress, all right, and they've got rewards out.
It took hours for the sheriff's officials to learn of
(15:56):
the escape. They apparently escaped at twelve thirty in the
morning overnight, but nobody discovered it until a head count
was done at at eight o'clock to a eight thirty
the next morning, so they had been gone for eight hours.
Speaker 2 (16:14):
Ten ten. What is it about.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
Jails in prisons? Anybody who's hired to work jail in
prison just nobody cares. Nobody cares about anything. You imagine this,
You had ten would be sellons missing for eight hours, escaped,
big hole in the wall.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Nobody heard it. I guess.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Around twelve twenty three am the inmates yanked the sliding
jail cell door off the track. At one on one
am they exited the jail. Oh, I guess they have
video of a timestamp on it. That's why they have
such a precise accounting of what happened. And then they
breached a wall behind the toilet. They found clean cuts
on metal bars behind the toilet inside the jail cells.
(17:00):
The toilet and the bolts were removed using toiletry items,
but didn't specify what the items were. What what kind
of toiletry items? Can you can you cut the the
bars of a jail cell with.
Speaker 5 (17:14):
A toothbrush made into a shank, and I could go
through the metal in the bar if it's sharp enough. Yeah,
that's uh. Oh, you seem you seem to have a
lot of knowledge on this. Well, I've watched prison Break
on TV. Did you see the note that they left
for everybody on the wall? No, right above where the
(17:34):
toilet was. They had written graffiti all over the wall
and everything, and one of them said too easy l
O L.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Of course they spelled to wrong. Yeah they had instead
of t O O. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Well, if you take a look at these guys, that's
not a surprise. Uh but I mean everybody, everybody was
shocked at this, Like nobody knew what was happening. Everybody done.
Had they do this? Why have they been sitting there
so many years and not put on trial? Nobody seems
to care. Nobody seems to care about anything anymore on
any level of government in any state.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
When we come.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Back this Palm Springs guy, this is a new kind
of ideology. I never heard of the guy who blew
up the fertility clinic. He has a belief system that
this is the first of its kind that I'm aware
of this was the motivation for.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
Blowing up the clinic. We'll tell you about it we
come back.
Speaker 6 (18:36):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
A six forty boy.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
I've never heard of this ideology before.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
This is the guy.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
His name is Guy Bartkas from twenty nine Palms and
he blew up the fertility clinic in Palm Springs over
the weekend and he he uh. And you know, the
fertility clinic is where they store a lot of frozen
embryos and that's where couples go and they try to
(19:09):
fertilize the embryo and hopefully have a child from what's
been saved. They do in vitro fertilization treatments, egg collections,
and other related procedures. This guy, this guy's big, big
issue was he he doesn't think that people should be
(19:30):
brought into this world without their permission. And it makes
you stop and think, like, how does this work. It's
because I think we're all brought into the world without
our permission.
Speaker 2 (19:45):
It's it's not.
Speaker 3 (19:46):
Like you can fill out a form in the womb
and saying yeah, I want to get out, No, I
want to be vacuumed and flushed away somewhere. You know,
we're we're all forced into the world, whether we like
it or not. And I there's no way, there's no
other way to do it, as far as I'm aware.
But this is what drove him. I guess he looked
(20:09):
at the embryos being well fertilized and humans being created
through that process, and he thought it was like a
civil rights violation of the embryo. But the idea that, yeah,
he opposed people being born without their consent, and I
(20:30):
assume that includes himself, who consented to coming into the world.
Guy Bartkas he's twenty five years old, and of course
he had a manifesto, and so THEBI is reading the manifesto.
Those are always a good time. Twenty nine Palms is
where the largest Marine Corps base is. But he was
(20:53):
not a marine because they thought, well, maybe he's a
marine and he had access to explosives. No, they don't
know if he was connected though in some other way
so we get access exposives. They don't even know if
the exposives came from the marine base. Nobody seemed to
know this guy, At least as of now, no one's
(21:13):
come forward to say, yeah, he was the whack job
in the neighborhood. It damaged buildings several blocks away. The
FBI said, is probably the largest bombing scene we've had
in Southern California history. Now they found what was left
of Barcas mangled near the scene. I mean, they believe
(21:38):
it's him. They but he was really scrambled up. He
wanted to live stream the attack, so they're not sure
if he intended to blow himself up, but that's what happened.
And he he said he had a war against pro
(22:04):
life people and a fertilization clinic would be targeted. He
also hears some of his belief system too. Bed Debra's
not here today. He believed in a bottle abolitionist, veganism,
the opposition to all animal use by humans. Pro mortalism.
(22:27):
It is the belief that it's best for living beings
to die as soon as possible to prevent future suffering.
So he wants all of us dead because I guess
all of us brings suffering to somebody along the line.
I'd never heard of this stuff. In the manifesto, he
denounced those who bring human life into the world. Well,
(22:49):
that'd be a lot of us, and his final goal
is to sterilize this planet of the disease of life,
so he wanted to wipe out the human race. They
found an audio file where he would explain why I've
decided to bomb an IVF building, and basically it comes
(23:14):
down to that I'm angry that I exist.
Speaker 5 (23:19):
I was about to say, this guy hates his mom.
If he hates I bring life into the world.
Speaker 2 (23:25):
I'm angry that I exist.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
I mean, he could simply kill himself, which is what
he did, but it looks like he wanted to take
I'm angry and and you know, nobody got my consent
to bring me here. Well, while that's never going to happen,
you can always opt out at any moment, and it's
not hard to do.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
Ah.
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Wow, of course he's vegan, though, I got a file
this for tomorrow or whenever Debra comes back. She's she's
got got a bad deb sign it condition. She can't
speak very well right now, but when she comes back.
Because I've got a couple of vegan stories that there
is a militant extremist Vegan wing among that crowd and
(24:15):
the UH. Brian Levin is the founder of the Center
for the Study of Hate and extremism cal State San Bernardino,
And he said this, this bomber appears to be part
of a growing movement. Oh oh, that's great, A growing
movement of people who hate themselves and don't want to exist,
(24:38):
alienated lone actors who get radicalized on obscure internet sites
and misinformation. It's called an anti natalism movement. See you're
against babies being born, so you're anti natal and describes
him as a hopeless, unstable young man who soon suicidal
(25:00):
despair stirs him into a self consuming, brutal death, justified
by a distorted embrace of an obscure anti life ideology. Yeah,
it's obscure. I mean this is a new one. There's
this is so many people sitting on the internet reading
(25:23):
bizarre websites, and they read these things and they get
radicalized the way you would for religion. But it was
a terribly powerful bomb. It's stunning that he was the
only one killed. I think there was somebody else who
was injured. But I just never had seen he's against
(25:46):
people being born without their consent. All right, when we
come back, there's a story in the La Times. Palisades
residents are getting angrier and angrier by the day because
they don't see a plan and they don't see any
(26:08):
movement on the part of the city to rebuild the Palisades.
And you know, we've had we had David Howard on
one of our sales managers here a.
Speaker 2 (26:17):
KFI who talked about this.
Speaker 3 (26:19):
They're like Karen Bass has engineered some kind of brick
wall between her and the good people of the Palisades.
Like we told you, there's only been a handful of
permits that have been granted to rebuild, and one writer
estimated it would take about four hundred and sixty years
(26:40):
to rebuild the Palisades in Altadena based on the speed
of the permitting process. Rick Cruso is trying from the
outside to speed this up, but there's got to be
I'm thinking some kind of intervention here. You can't continue
to have her run the government with her staff and
this city council because they are flat out unwilling to
(27:02):
help the Palisades people rebuild. You know, they send out raw,
raw press releases, but the permitting system is at a standstill.
And it's now four and a half months in and
despair has been beginning to set in.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
So we're gonna get to all this coming up.
Speaker 6 (27:20):
You're listening to John Cobelts on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 3 (27:25):
You can follow us on social media at John Cobelt
Radio at John Cobelt Radio. La Times had a story
over the weekend that if you read the whole thing
and it becomes clear that there has been there has
been very little movement on the part of Bass administration
to do anything for the people in the Palisades, and uh,
(27:51):
there's some kind of some kind of deal going on,
and I know a lot of people in the Palisades
are very angry about this. They hired something called Haggarty Consulting,
and they were supposed to help the Emergency Management Department
(28:12):
with recovery.
Speaker 2 (28:15):
And the residents.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
If you remember that infamous Zoom meeting, We played some
of that on the air, and they had an executive
from Haggarty and the guy's based in Illinois or Iowa,
somewhere out in the Midwest. And they beast paid this
company ten million dollars and they came here and a
woman asked, well, what's your experience in other disasters? Can
(28:38):
you give us an idea of what you have done
in other similar situations, and the guy couldn't speak for
about a minute and a half. He was totally stunned,
unprepared for the question and had and had no answer.
When he started speaking, just gibberish came out. Well, apparently
nothing's changed. Still, nobody seems to know what Haggarty Consulting
(28:59):
is doing, and Karen Bass has done nothing to explain it.
The recovery is supposed to be led by the Los
Angeles Emergency Management Department, which, according to the LA Times,
is long underfunded. All the things that you would need
(29:24):
in a wildfire, an urban wildfire, police, fire, emergency management,
they all were way way unfunded or underfunded. We've told
you the fire department was only funded at a fifty
percent rate. Same thing with the police department. They're going
to be down to eighty four hundred cops within a
(29:46):
number of months. They used to have ten thousand. They're
going to need twelve thousand, especially with the Olympics coming,
and they're at eighty four hundred and they're dropping. And
Karen Bass's new budget cuts money for police, cuts money
for fire, and they already had hardly any money for
(30:08):
emergency management. Carol Parks was the chief of the Los
Angeles Emergency Management Department, and she went before a budget
committee last year and told them that they only got
a tiny fraction of the budget, and they've only got
(30:31):
thirty people, and there was nobody on staff devoted to
full time disaster recovery. So if we had an earthquake
or wildfire, the city would be scrambling. And then you
remember what happened. Karen Bass decided to take the week
off and go to Africa, and we had nobody running
the city. You know how we're finding out that we
(30:51):
had nobody running the federal government when Joe Biden's mind
turned to oatmeal. We just had nobody who showed up
for work, right because Bass was gone. Her deputy mayor,
who's in charge of the police and Fire department, he
was on leave, suspected of calling in bomb threats by
(31:14):
the FBI.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
You know, everybody forgets this.
Speaker 3 (31:17):
I like to go through a little reminder session every
once in a while. There was no mayor, There was
no deputy mayor, at least for police and fire.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
He was on the bench.
Speaker 3 (31:29):
There was nobody devoted to full time disaster recovery, and
the city council and the mayor balked at devoting more
money to the Emergency Management Department. This all happened last May.
Seven months later was the Big fire. Six thousand structures burned,
(31:50):
tens of thousands of people displaced. Do you know what
the Emergency Management department? You know how much money they get.
They have a budget that is smaller than what the
police department spends in two days. You take police expenses
for two days, that's the entire annual budget for the
(32:13):
Emergency Management Department. So, in other words, we don't really
have one. So that's why she went to this Haggarty consulting.
They're from Illinois, ten million dollars and now here we are.
(32:34):
It's more than four months after the fire, and the
Palisades residents, according to The Times, are saying.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Who's in charge? What have they been doing?
Speaker 3 (32:44):
What is Haggarty doing, what's the plan to restore the Palisades.
There's no answers. You can't get a hold of anybody.
They have nothing to say. After the Palisades, the Emergency
Management Department assigned a mid level staffer to take on
(33:08):
the recovery. Then they brought back a former general manager,
Jim Featherstone, out of retirement to serve as the recovery chief.
You know, we had Steve sober off for five minutes
and until he found out he wasn't going to get paid.
(33:33):
The city code puts the Emergency Management Department in charge
of coordinating a disaster recovery. But it turns out that
LA only spends a dollar fifty six per resident on
emergency management. San Francisco spends seven dollars and fifty nine cents,
So they spend six times as much in San Francisco,
(33:57):
Is that right? Three times as much and we have
four hundred and sixty nine square miles. The chief, Carol Parks,
said last year the department lacks the experience and dedicated
(34:17):
staff to oversee long term recovery projects. Well, this is
why nothing's happening in the Palisades. They don't have it apart.
They actually don't have the employees. The office barely exists.
They don't have money, they don't have people, they don't
have anything. And she warned the city council last year,
(34:38):
but nobody in the city council cares. Sh God, it's
like worse than anybody could have ever imagined, and none
of it's getting better. Karen Pass is really a sociopath.
She just doesn't care. And I know enough people who
are really struggling, you know, trying to get through the day.
(35:06):
But you know, the government, all they're good at is
making an incredible amount of restrictions and regulations and red
tape and delays. I you know, I've read this story
several times and I just.
Speaker 2 (35:25):
So.
Speaker 3 (35:25):
As of mid March, Haggarty has twenty two employees working
on the Palisades fire recovery. That's it. And they're billing
the city at hourly rates ranging from eighty to four
hundred dollars per hour per employee. Monica Rodriguez is one
of the few speaking out. She's a city council member,
(35:48):
and she goes, I don't understand their purpose. I don't
need another contractor, we need staff to do the work.
And then you talk to that idiot puppethead Zach Sidell.
He's he's Bass's chief spokes hole, another one of these
professional liars, and she says, he says, despite one of
(36:14):
the worst natural disasters in recent history, LA's recovery is
on track to be the fastest in modern California history.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
What the hell are you talking about?
Speaker 3 (36:24):
The bulb faced lying is is really stunning. They will
say anything, what do you mean the fastest recovery, it's
a handful of permits. Palisades residents say, Haggerty, Emergency Management Department,
(36:45):
Karen Bass, poor job communicating. Nobody knows what's going on,
and there's no you know, occasionally have these zoom meetings
where residents, you know, yell at the zoom screen. I mean,
(37:06):
you know, there's got to be some kind of dramatic
takeover here. There really is. I mean, there really has
to be some kind of intervention. You can't because otherwise
you're gonna drift for the next year and a half.
Does she show up for work anymore? But what does
she do all day? What is everybody there do all day?
(37:27):
And you know the people in the Palisades, they're high achievers.
These are people who've accumulated a lot of money because
they work long hours, they work hard, They have unusual
amounts of energy and and they're they're they're staring at
the city government that are you know, their mouths are
hanging open. These people are drooling on their on themselves,
(37:52):
and you know, Gavin Knwso promised this was all going
to be cleared up. But of course his mouth was moving,
so he was lying as well. The uh Sighteel says
forty addresses have received permits. That's what he claims, except
(38:15):
they've lost thousands of homes.
Speaker 2 (38:21):
I don't know. What do you do? What do you do?
Speaker 3 (38:29):
It's supposed to be a democracy, right, You're supposed to
wait till the next election. Except the city allowed a
huge chunk of land to burn, did nothing to prepare
for the fire. There was no water, there was no
fire department at the ready, there was nothing. Nobody in
(38:51):
the city, in the county cleared the brush. They didn't
fill up the reservoirs. The fire trucks, one hundred of
them were busted. We have like a non government situation.
And still they managed to spend themselves a billion dollars
into debt this year. They're still a billion dollar deficit.
(39:13):
And they're not even refuting any of this. They're not
even arguing about it. It's like, yeah, yeah, that's what
it is.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
So what do you want from us? Good job voting?
All right?
Speaker 3 (39:24):
Michael Krazer's got the news live in the KFI twenty
four hour newsroom.
Speaker 2 (39:27):
Hey, you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast.
Speaker 3 (39:30):
You can always hear the show live on KFI AM
six forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course, anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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