May 29, 2025 • 38 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (05/29) - John dives into a scathing report with journalist Jamie Paige exposing how Project Roomkey and Homekey spent hundreds of millions on overvalued buildings—many of which now sit empty. He slams city officials for blaming ADA compliance while taxpayers foot the bill. Then, John unpacks Michael Mische’s claim that California’s gas prices—soon hitting $8.50—are entirely self-inflicted by government policies and new carbon standards. Plus, a San Francisco school tries “equity grading” and nearly sets the bar at 21%. Wrapping the hour, John calls out the unelected bureaucrats at the California Air Resources Board for keeping gas prices $2 higher than the national average.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can if I am six forty you're listening to the
John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's good that you're here.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
You should be here every day from one until four o'clock,
and then after four o'clock if you dared to miss anything,
we give you a podcast, John Cobel's Show on demand
and that's posted after four and you can listen to
everything that you missed. We are This is where you
come for all the news that really matters in your
(00:29):
life that nobody else wants to cover. And I think you,
especially if you live in La City, La County, you
really wonder what happened to the billions of dollars in
tax money that has been blown on homeless spending, because
you don't see anything that's been fixed, and the issue
(00:50):
keeps getting worse and worse. It's been ten years of this.
We know a lot of the money has disappeared, is
not traceable. There's a hearing that's been going on this
week in a federal judge's court to try to identify
where all this money went and whether the city and
the county should be running this homeless bureaucracy anymore. Here's
(01:14):
an angle and we're going to talk with Jamie Page
in just a moment. She's with Westside Current dot com.
And I tell you west Side Current you may not
be aware of it. It covers a lot of news
on the West side of la and the city in general,
and it really is one of the best news sites
out there. They've got a surprising number of fascinating stories that, again,
(01:36):
the other media outlets in town just ignore. They don't
even bother. You probably heard a few years ago of
Project home Key. This was a Gavin Newsom State of
California production, and the city and the county spent about
(01:57):
a billion, three hundred million dollars on their share of
Project home Key, and it was about purchasing buildings, renovating them,
fixing them up, and having the homeless live in them.
And they did a pretty thorough investigation to find out
that after spending a billion three to buy these buildings,
(02:20):
a lot of them are sitting unrenovated. They're dumps basically,
and a lot of the ones that have homeless are
still seriously underutilized. There are a lot of vacancies. And
we'll go through and this is both the city and
the county. We'll go through all this with Jamie Page,
(02:41):
one of the star writers at the West Side Current
who did a lot of this investigation.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Jamie, how are you.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I'm good? How are you, John?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
This is a great report. It's really everybody should read
this Westside Current dot com. Let's go over to describe
what Project home Key is supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
This was a twenty twenty idea.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, it was twenty twenty that at that point, and
not to confuse things, but it's important it was Project
room Key at the time. That's when we were purchasing
motils and hotels what we felt was going to be
interim housing during COVID. It then transitioned into permanent support
of housing with home Key. One of the important identifiers
(03:23):
of this is we went from hotels and motels to
brand new apartment buildings that we spent tens of millions
of dollars per per building and they still remain empty.
So hotels, motels and brand new apartment buildings are sitting empty.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
And they built these apartment buildings. The county and the
city did.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
No We bought these from contractors. And in my story
I also highlight not only did we purchase some of
these we purchased some of them with leans on them
mechanics Leans, so two point one million dollars on one
of them. So in addition to bought the liens on
that building and some of them, they set record prices
(04:12):
in the neighborhood for the purchase when we bought them.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
So we paid for buildings that were already constructed, and
we paid record prices for the buildings.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And new buildings, and then the buildings sit empty.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah, what what? There's a place in Canoga Park that
I drive to quite frequently because it's still remains empty.
And we that's one of our most expensive We paid
about I want to say, sixty million, two hundred and
seventy eight thousand per unit for this facility, brand new
build and it still remains empty. I called the contractor
(04:52):
on this and asked why, and he said, it just
takes a long time to do things in the city.
That was his reason.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
In the county paid over a half a billion to
acquire thirty two properties, and seventy one percent of the
rooms are still vacant. Seventy one percent after a half
of vacant half a billion dollars. Well.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
One of the things too, is I've been purposely driving
to these locations. There's a total of seventy nine locations
that I've been investigating now for two years. I go
during the daytime. Sometimes I go during the day and night,
just to kind of see what's happening, because we all
know the encampments start at night and those are some
of the complaints. But during the daytime, a majority of
(05:37):
these buildings have maybe one or two construction workers or
none at all during working hours weekdays and.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
In the city spend eight hundred million dollars, and forty
four percent of those units are vacant as well, So
some of the s four.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
And go ahead, No, you go ahead.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I was just going to say the same scenario. I
drive during the daytime, during working hours. Many of the
building there's no contractors, there's no workers there, which is
surprising to me and to you know, just to go
there during the day when there's a sense of urgency.
We've got thousands of people on our streets, We've paid
more than a billion dollars for all these units, and
(06:25):
nobody's hustling to get them online.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Do you have any idea? Is it just bureaucracy and
red tape and inertia. Does that explain this?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
I've gotten several answers from the states. I've emailed the
governor's office. They told me that construction prices are high,
that that's their major one reason the city says it's
ADA compliance. My question to them, though, was okay, fine,
if it's eighty eight compliance, then why did we not
buy buildings that were eighty eight compliant instead of in
(06:59):
one case, I mean twenty seven million dollars to build
into EIGHTYA compliance after the purchase price.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
That's ironic because the homeless people living in the streets
and on the sidewalks violate the ADA rights of regular citizens.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I asked that same question.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
They don't care.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
About the eighty eight violations in the streets, but suddenly
the ADA violations And I guess you're talking about the
older buildings. I mean, the newly constructed buildings shouldn't have
any eighty eight problems.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Nope, I am talking about both. So I am talking
about both buildings. It goes way back to a lawsuit
that we had to settle. It's, you know, another layer
to this story. But because we didn't have enough eighty
eight compliant homeless housing on any unit, we put online
now has to be EIGHTYA compliant. So we are retrofitting
(07:51):
brand new buildings that we bought, some high end apartment buildings.
We have to tear them down and rebuild them. Yes,
I've seen building.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Is it giving these people a roof enough?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It has to comply with every kakamami regulation that they've
invented over the last fifty years.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
You have a roof, You're not going to get wet.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Not only is there a roof, but the majority of
the people moving into this, as we know, don't need
an eighty eight compliance, no facility. And we're in a
state of an emergency. So the mayor, we mean we
may not be, but we're in a state of an emergency.
So the mayor can bypass all of this and use
the rooms.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
You have a quote here from Sam Yebrie. He runs
a political organization called Thrive LA. I believe he's run
for office recently, and he says, when Bass claims there's
a ten percent reduction street homelessness, it exactly matches the
(08:58):
number of people who have died on Los Angeles streets
in the last year. Is that how Bass came to
that number.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It's a question out there and thrive. LA is a
source that we go to because there are a common
sense source and Sam often has something in a great
input in stories like this and and yes, it has
been studied. The same amount of people who die on
our streets show for the reduction and homelessness. They say
it's anecdotal. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Well, they're really dead. It's two thy five and eight.
I mean, I guess that's that's an exact number there,
So that must be the official data, right if you
counted the bodies.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
It is, But they will argue that point that there's
that that's not an accurate assessment of the numbers of
course in the city.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
He also says that Bass and Lassa kept two thousand
rooms empty. So that's the number of rooms that they
have available to fill with homeless people, but they don't
use them.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Well, he's referring to the story. I reached out to
him for comment on these empty rooms, So he's just
talking about the rooms that are empty that could be online. Again,
we're in a state of emergency, we can put these
rooms online. The majority of these were bought anyways for
interim housing. We could have kept it at interim housing.
It was because of the move from room key to
(10:31):
home key that that's why we now have to look
at PSH instead of interim.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
And one more thing in the article, and I heard
urge everyone to read it at Westside current dot com.
And the headline is LA port over a billion dollars
into homeless housing. Thousands of units sit empty, and you
talk in great detail, and it's like too many numbers
to get into on the radio. But the general idea
is the city paid what looks to be excessive amounts
(11:01):
of money for this real estate, right way beyond what
the market would suggest. And there's some inexplicable deals that
they blew a lot of money on. And now these
buildings are setting sitting empty with no homeless people in them.
And I guess you found that story repeatedly.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
We in some cases the price went three x. One
of the cases that we looked at, it was online
for seven million dollars. Then it's not the story's not
in front of me a few weeks later for twenty
four million dollars. So I mean we have several cases.
We have one case where the realtor bragged that he
(11:41):
had set a record in that community for the sale
to the city, and then we saw this realtor in
multiple transactions with the city as well.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, in some city, the city made a deal described
as the most expensive building ever sold in that Sunland
zip code. And in Chevy At Hills, the nonprofit Wineguard
Center they acquired, Yeah, they acquired with home Key Funds.
(12:12):
So is our tax money for twenty seven million dollars
a seventy six unit facility. And just twelve days earlier,
another company had bought the same property for eleven million.
So this company bought the property for eleven million, turned
around and sold it to the Wineguard Center for twenty
seven million. From eleven million to twenty seven million and
(12:33):
twelve days and that twenty seven million dollars was our
tax money.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Well that that really stinks. That should be investigating.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Hard earned tax money. Yeah, and we've brought it up
several times and asked why these numbers are the way
they are. Here's another facility too, it's a retirement center.
So we're looking at now, are they going to rehab
a retirement center because this should be eighty eight compliant rehabilitation. Sorry,
(13:00):
So it's we're taking a we're looking closely at this
facility for sure, but yeah, from eleven to twenty seven
million in twelve days.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I know the market is hot, but I'm going to
go sell my house when I get home. Thank you
for coming on, Jamie Page. We'll talk against doing great work.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Appreciate the coverage.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Thank you, Hi, Jamie Page from Westside Current dot com.
You go and read the whole thing. It's very long
in detail.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
We just had Jamie Page on and if you're just
joining us, I urge you very much to listen to
the last segment we did later on on the podcast
because she and the staff over at the West Side
Current did a great report, because I know we talk
about this frequently and makes you bang your head if
you're a tax payer. It's like, we port billions of
(13:53):
dollars into this homeless scam and what did we get. Well,
it turns out, according to the West Side Current investigation,
one billion, three hundred million dollars has been spent by
the county and city to buy properties. It started out
as a program to buy hotels and motels, then they
started buying finished apartment buildings, a lot of motels and
(14:18):
hotels were in bad shape, but they have not been
renovated yet. The good buildings just hadn't been populated with homeless.
The whole project is just a disaster. And of the
units they bought with city tax money, forty four percent
are vacant. Among the units they bought with county tax money,
(14:41):
seventy one percent is vacant. And she has in her story,
Jamie Page, many many examples of these hotels, motels, apartment
buildings that are sitting empty, some of them in dilapidated shape,
and the city and the county paid in in some
cases obscene amounts of money, which sounds like corruption, which
(15:04):
sounds like a money laundering scheme, and somebody who got
rewarded for being part of this corrupt system. It's really
awful when we just I mean, we're talking about billion
three and by the way, the city's budget deficit is
over a billion dollars. And remember this is much more
(15:26):
money than we spend on the fire department, for example.
Speaker 5 (15:30):
And this.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Is a colossal, enormous set of crimes that are going on,
just absolute felonies are going on under our nose every day.
That nobody's investigating, nobody's doing anything about it. Well, I
should say now in the last few weeks that has
changed because Bill is Saley, the US Attorney, and he's
looking to see if any federal money is used in
(15:54):
all this corruption, then there are going to be crimes charged. Meantime,
God forbid you try to have a business. Let's say,
a doctor's office in La County. Huntington Park, you may know,
is a small town just south of the city of
Los Angeles, and uh, there's a doctor's office that's been
(16:17):
terrorized by a homeless encampment on a building rooftop. Channel
five has the story KTLA. Play cut number one and
you'll see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Here.
Speaker 6 (16:28):
You can really hear the frustration in this woman's voice.
She says, not only has the homeless encampment taken her
right to feel safe away, but now they've also taken
away her viability.
Speaker 7 (16:40):
Were living here in hell.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
The woman who owns this building on the corner of
Rugby and Zoey Avenue is in Huntington Park, says people
living on the roof of a next door structure have
been terrorizing her and her staff for years.
Speaker 7 (16:53):
The Ron de My roof.
Speaker 6 (16:54):
Doctor Tahani Soliman says she's out one hundred thousand dollars
from damages caused by the unworn groove.
Speaker 7 (17:00):
I have to put roof, new roof, and the electricity
from the AC I have to replace all of them.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Where was that fire? Is a trash fire?
Speaker 6 (17:13):
Refer Just yesterday crews put out a trash fire on
the rooftop of the parking structure. And this wasn't the
first time. In twenty twenty three, there was a fire
at the building next door. Gabby Rodriguez, who works for
the doctor, says the fire department was the one who
told them people were living there.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
We ended up putting a fence with barb one.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
They took that down.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Then we ended up caging our AC units.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
They took that down.
Speaker 6 (17:38):
We ended up caging our water.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Flosst I'm outside and they still find a way.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
To get to everything, Rodriguez says, With the police telling
them there isn't much they can do and calls to
the city left unreturned, the encampment has all but solidified
doctor Solomon's future.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
No protection for me or my patient, or my employee
or my tenant.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
That's why I'm going.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
To retire because of this. I lost everything.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Now we did reach out to the city. They said
they would look into it and get back to us.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
What a bunch of jerks.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Huh, why aren't they scumbacks? This is Huntington Park. Well,
I looked up to see who the mayor of Huntington
Park is. Our Touro Flores. That's the kind of town,
our Toro Flores is running. The woman is a doctor,
she's got a business, and there's a gang of probably
wracked out drug addicted vagrants on the roof next door,
(18:34):
destroying destroying her building, and even a wire fence didn't
stop them, and the police won't come. What I The
police apparently told, uh, the doctor there's nothing we can
do about it. So I looked up to see who
the police chief is. Somebody named Cosme Lozano. Cosme Lozano
(18:58):
has police officers who can't do anything about destructive vagrants
who are setting fires, causing all kinds of physical damage
and vandalism. Really, there's somebody starting fires and the county
fire department they.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Can't stop these guys.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Data can't report them to the police and say, hey,
we have a band of arsonists here again.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
This is a woman who she's retiring.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
She's put all her life into building a practice, practicing
medicine of all things, trying to help sick people in
the neighborhood, and she gets run out because the idiot
mayor or Torre Flores does nothing about it. And here's
the rest of the city council. The vice mayor is
Eduardo Eddie Martinez, Coriina Messias, Jonathan Sonabrio, Nancy Martiz. They're
(19:53):
all in office and they do nothing. They let a
doctor go out of business. A band of arson loving,
vagrant mental patients can have their nightly party on the
roof of the building next door. This is it's completely uncivilized.
People in cave days had more, had better lives than
(20:15):
this magine. Go to work every day and you got
to deal with that group up on the roof next door.
God knows what they're doing. And our tour Flores de
Maria does nothing about it. The police chief here, cosmid
Lozano does nothing about it. He oh read his bio.
Though he was appointed police chief in twenty fifteen. Has
brought many innovative programs, including the Mental Evaluation Team, which
(20:40):
works with the Department of Mental health and the mentally
ill population in the community. Well, why don't you send
him up to the roof of the building. A bunch
of morons running that town. Jeez, So the doctor goes
out of business. The doctor is terrified.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
You're listening to John cobelts on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Run every day from one until four and then after
four o'clock whatever you missed John Cobelt's show on demand
on the iHeart app. And it's a great way to
keep track of everything that goes on here, and you should.
It's very important. Now, two things coming up very soon.
I don't want you to miss either. One coming up
(21:25):
in just a few minutes, we are going to set
up the return of Michael mcsche. Michael McShee is the
USC professor who really rocked the Newsomb administration with his research.
Two pieces of research he did, and the brilliant pieces
both are correct. First one, after an extensive study of
(21:48):
fifty years of California gas prices and government policy, he
concluded that the high gas prices in California, we're paying
two dollars more per gallon than many other states, is
almost entirely self inflicted by the government by the policies.
You know, Newsom has been spouting about price manipulation and gouging,
(22:12):
no such thing for fifty years. He found very little
evidence of that. Then he looked at what's coming and
since we have two major refineries closing, and we only
have eight major refineries that give us ninety six percent
of our gasoline, two were closing in the next year
and a half. That's going to leave six. That's going
(22:36):
to seriously jack up the price. And the California Air
Resources Board is also going to raise the price significantly
because they're insisting on a new carbon standard. And with
all that going on, the price of gas could be
eight dollars and fifty cents a year and a half
from now. That's what michee did. That's what Micheade discovered
(22:56):
when he did his research. And then Newsom and those
weasels in his office tried to spear Mache, spear Machet,
but they were lying. They claimed he had some connections
with Saudi Arabia. They were lying. And now you have
(23:17):
members of the Assembly, Democratic members of the Assembly agreeing
with Mache's analysis because it's true. And we're going to
talk to Michael Mache coming up at two o'clock. I'm
going to give you a rundown on the story in
about fifteen minutes or so, ten to fifteen minutes, and
(23:39):
then at two o'clock Michael Michel come on now. Yesterday,
late in the show, we unveiled the Grading for Equity
program in San Francisco Grading for Equity, and we were
all astonished by this. This is a new program which
(24:00):
looks like it only lasted twenty four hours. And if
you haven't heard a score of eighty percent, this is
the San Francisco School District. Eighty percent would now be
an A, right, So if you got an eighty or
you got a ninety nine, it was an A. If
you got a forty one, a forty one, you'd get
(24:23):
a C. So you could blow six out of ten
answers and you get a C in San Francisco. And
then let's say you blew eight out of ten answers
and it was you got to score twenty one. You
would earn a D. You would pass the course if
(24:47):
you scored at least twenty one out of one hundred
on a test. And this was about to be imposed
by the San Francisco Superintendent of education.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
And everybody went nuts.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
This is destructive progressive ideology. These people are so insane.
Why would you create a system where people would potentially
get high school diplomas after only get twent after only
getting twenty percent of the answers right throughout their entire
(25:23):
childhood and adolescence. Can you imagine You imagine for twelve
years you got eighty percent of the answers wrong, and
you still get a diploma just like someone who got
one hundred percent of the answers right. This is equity,
and the progressives created this sinister, diabolical idea that equality
(25:50):
was no longer the agual Equality means we all have
the same opportunity, we all can go to the same class,
the same quality of school. Have this no now that
we no longer were going to have segregated schools and
that we weren't going to have public schools where wealthy
people had better opportunities for their kids than poor people.
(26:12):
If you do it right, that's how you get a quality.
They came up with equity. Everyone is supposed to have
the same result, regardless that we're not born with the
same intellectual gifts, we're not born with the same drive
we're not born with the same set of parents who
(26:34):
might have more or less resources to help us out
or who can guide us properly. We were all supposed
to have our kids come out with the exact same result.
That is equity. It is the most damaging, most absurd.
It's really like just anti human, anti anybody who's smart
(26:58):
and accomplished twenty one. Well, what do you think is
gonna happen if you only require kids to get at
twenty one? Many of them are only going to get
at twenty one, and then what and then they get
an equity diploma. This is stuff that you know, for
(27:18):
one hundred years, a thousand years, nobody would ever think
of I don't know how they thought of this. It's
a horrific idea. I think anybody who's got a parent,
who's had a bit of parent would agree. But it's
San Francisco. The superintendent was waiving this like a this
(27:38):
is the new cool way. Other school districts have tried
this kind of kind of thing and they failed. Dublin
Unified got rid of zeros for missing assignments, and if
you just made a reasonable attempt, you got a fifty.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
So as long as you.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
At some boxes you got a fifty. Well, the parents
started screaming. They got rid of that. They have bastardized
the idea of equality. And the National Review wrote a
piece today saying that this upside down system of were
(28:23):
used to school kids and still knowledge and virtue and
habits so they could learn all their life. Now the
whole concept is will make them equal at the end.
So the smartest kid has to be penalized, the kid
who works the hardest has to be penalized. The kid
who comes from a culture where they value education and
accomplishment has to be penalized. And everybody's dumbed down to
(28:48):
the lowest common denominator. The kid who has the least
intellectual gifts, the kid who has the least amount of
energy and drive, the kid who comes from parents who
absolutely don't give a about their kid accomplishing and succeeding.
We're all dragged down to that level. Now, we're all
down there at the bottom. I cannot The list of
(29:14):
destructive progressive policies is endless, and they're all here in California.
You take this idea, take take it to forty nine
other states and see what they would do with this idea.
This is child abuse. That's that's San Francisco school superintendent
(29:34):
ought to be putting jail for child abuse for suggesting this.
Imagine if you have a smart, driven kid and they
have to subject themselves to this.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
We're gonna have Richie Greenberg on.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
He's a writer and a commentator and he's politically active
up in San Francisco, and he's gonna be on after
three o'clock. All right, I'll set up Michael Mche's return
appearance to the show, the USC professor who's done all
the research on gasoline prices, and I got a story
to play from you from Channel three Casera and Sacramento
only station in the state covering all the idiocy and Sacramento.
(30:08):
Anybody in La interested in sending a reporter up there once,
you know, once in a while, once a month.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
No, no takers.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Okay, you're listening to John Cobelts on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
All right, right after two o'clock, we're going to have
USC professor Michael Machet. He has the research out. We've
had him on a couple of times. In fact, one
of his parents has gave us a record number of
Instagram views. I think people around the state are really
inwardly angry over the price of guess, and you should be,
because it is a total scam. We're paying almost five
(30:43):
bucks a gallon. The rest of the country is paying three.
There's about twenty five states paying less than three dollars
a gallon. It's not an anomaly, it's not a quirk.
It's states all over the country are paying, you know,
from between two fifty and three dollars a gallon, and
I think forty three states are paying less than three
(31:03):
forty a gallon. And then we're up at five. And
it's entirely, entirely due to taxes and regulations that are
unnecessary and punitive, and we're under the tyranny of this
unelected California Air Resources Board, which is filled with climate fanatics,
(31:24):
even though they have had zero effect on the world's
climate as long as they've been in existence. I mean,
it's just their monsters are what they are, and what
they do is they hurt the middle class and the
working class and poor people terribly because you know, twenty
(31:45):
dollars two dollars extra for a gallon of gas is
forty dollars a week for a tank of gas forty bucks.
It's two thousand a year taken from people who don't
have much money.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
That is abusive.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
That is financial bullying and financial abusiveness on the part
of the California Air Resources Board. The chair is someone
named Leanne Randolph, and Siva Gunda is the vice chair
and the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight Director Ty Milder.
(32:22):
Everybody's got like weird names and they're running things here.
And they testified before the Assembly Utility and Energy Committee,
and here's the shaker. And this is a sign that
the legislature is hearing from normal people who are really
really pissed because they got a lot of blowback from
Democrats in the Assembly. Let's play you this story from
(32:44):
KRCA Channel three up in Sacramento that they covered the hearing.
So play cut number two if you would.
Speaker 8 (32:51):
Governor Gavin Newsom's top administration officials in the hot seat
today over California situation with oil refiners and potential rising
gas price. Is Democratic lawmakers signaling they may be losing
trust with some of these agencies.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
I know that what climate leadership does not look like,
and that is ten dollars gas present.
Speaker 8 (33:11):
California's clean air push facing push back from both political parties.
Lawmakers worry state regulators have kept drivers, workers, and Californians
overall as an afterthought as two oil refiners prepare to
shut down within the next year. Those two account for
about twenty percent of the state's oil refining capacity.
Speaker 9 (33:31):
We're talking about a plan when these companies leave and
what happens to the land.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
I'm concerned about what happened to the people.
Speaker 8 (33:39):
Lawmakers grilled the leaders of the state agencies that regulate
the oil and gas industry, including California Air Resources Board
Chairlee and Randolph, Vice Chairman of the California Energy Commission Seevagunda,
and the Department of Petroleum Market Oversight Director Time Milder.
Speaker 5 (33:54):
We have a crisis on our hand that may have
been self created by the actions that perhaps have been
taken by the state by regulators.
Speaker 8 (34:04):
Democratic Assemblyment David Alvarez and others frustrated after they were
swayed to approve some of the latest regulations put on
the oil and gas industry.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
I think I also heard you say that another closure
can lead to a significant increase in cost to consumers
on the price of gas.
Speaker 8 (34:22):
Yes, Sir Gunda Toad lawmakers, California will likely need to
have oil imported from other parts of the world by ships.
Speaker 5 (34:30):
So we really have only one choice there today, which
is increasing imports.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Based on at work right now, that will be very
tight for the North.
Speaker 9 (34:39):
Increase in imports, which means that you have more vessels.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Who in what I've heard.
Speaker 9 (34:47):
Also with you increase the vessels, that that means more
emissions because we don't control those vessels and the missions
in which they bring.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
But you are correct that additional marine traffic would implicate.
Speaker 8 (35:01):
Air quality issues beyond state waters that we do not regulate. Now,
this was just an informational hearing, so no action was taken.
It's unclear exactly what the next steps will be, but
Governor Newsom's administration is still apparently trying to come up
with a plan to deal with those two upcoming refinery closures.
Reporting at the state capital, Ashley Zablla case Harry three News.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Ashley Zabella the only working reporter in the state covering
the oppressive, abusive legislature, so she did another great job
there so you could see them slowly coming to life.
This has been well known for years We've been talking
about this for years. The excessive taxes and regulations have
(35:44):
strangled people financially to no benefit. You heard Leanne Randolph,
she's the nut who's the chair of the California Air
Resources Board. She goes that, Yeah, if we import oil
from foreign countries, additional marine traffic would imp implicate air
quality issues beyond state waters that we do not regulate. Yeah,
(36:07):
because you're regulating emissions here in California. As if all
the air in California is contained within the state borders,
it's not. Any oil and gas that we don't produce
here is produced somewhere else, and it's the same amount
(36:29):
of emissions going into the same atmosphere that the.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Whole world shares.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Like it just hit her that, I mean, I'm sure
they would love to regulate the entire Earth's atmosphere, but
she can't.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
So what's the point. What's the point of taking.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Oil and gas that got refined in Saudi Arabia which
has far more lax regulations regarding admissions. Other countries have
much much worse systems at regulating emissions than we do.
And now they're going to be producing another twenty percent
(37:10):
of our cast and oil. How does that help the world.
It doesn't. It makes it worse if you believe in
this nonsense. This makes no sense. This is just about
pure abusive control of our lives. That's all it is.
It's human nature. If you get some power, you get
abusive with the power when there's no check. Why do
(37:30):
you think we have a complicated system in Washington between
the President, the House, the Senate, and the court system.
Three levels of the court system, so nobody can get
too abusive, nobody can get too much power.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
But here we got to.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
The California Our Resources Board elected by no One appointed
by Governor Newsom, and now they're going to be beating
us over the head with eight point fifty gas. One
of the legislatureisla later said ten dollars. By the way,
all the legislators, and I'm going to name them later
after we have Michael Machey on. All the legislators that
(38:08):
you heard in that clip, they are all Democrats. It
was all democratic pushback. Okay, Michael miche the USC professor
conon next. You got to be listening to him. All right, 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 on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Can if I am six forty you're listening to the
John Cobel podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
It's good that you're here.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
You should be here every day from one until four o'clock,
and then after four o'clock if you dared to miss anything,
we give you a podcast, John Cobel's Show on demand
and that's posted after four and you can listen to
everything that you missed. We are This is where you
come for all the news that really matters in your
(00:29):
life that nobody else wants to cover. And I think you,
especially if you live in La City, La County, you
really wonder what happened to the billions of dollars in
tax money that has been blown on homeless spending, because
you don't see anything that's been fixed, and the issue
(00:50):
keeps getting worse and worse. It's been ten years of this.
We know a lot of the money has disappeared, is
not traceable. There's a hearing that's been going on this
week in a federal judge's court to try to identify
where all this money went and whether the city and
the county should be running this homeless bureaucracy anymore. Here's
(01:14):
an angle and we're going to talk with Jamie Page
in just a moment. She's with Westside Current dot com.
And I tell you west Side Current you may not
be aware of it. It covers a lot of news
on the West side of la and the city in general,
and it really is one of the best news sites
out there. They've got a surprising number of fascinating stories that, again,
(01:36):
the other media outlets in town just ignore. They don't
even bother. You probably heard a few years ago of
Project home Key. This was a Gavin Newsom State of
California production, and the city and the county spent about
(01:57):
a billion, three hundred million dollars on their share of
Project home Key, and it was about purchasing buildings, renovating them,
fixing them up, and having the homeless live in them.
And they did a pretty thorough investigation to find out
that after spending a billion three to buy these buildings,
(02:20):
a lot of them are sitting unrenovated. They're dumps basically,
and a lot of the ones that have homeless are
still seriously underutilized. There are a lot of vacancies. And
we'll go through and this is both the city and
the county. We'll go through all this with Jamie Page,
(02:41):
one of the star writers at the West Side Current
who did a lot of this investigation.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
Jamie, how are you.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
I'm good? How are you, John?
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I'm good.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
This is a great report. It's really everybody should read
this Westside Current dot com. Let's go over to describe
what Project home Key is supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
This was a twenty twenty idea.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
Yeah, it was twenty twenty that at that point, and
not to confuse things, but it's important it was Project
room Key at the time. That's when we were purchasing
motils and hotels what we felt was going to be
interim housing during COVID. It then transitioned into permanent support
of housing with home Key. One of the important identifiers
(03:23):
of this is we went from hotels and motels to
brand new apartment buildings that we spent tens of millions
of dollars per per building and they still remain empty.
So hotels, motels and brand new apartment buildings are sitting empty.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
And they built these apartment buildings. The county and the
city did.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
No We bought these from contractors. And in my story
I also highlight not only did we purchase some of
these we purchased some of them with leans on them
mechanics Leans, so two point one million dollars on one
of them. So in addition to bought the liens on
that building and some of them, they set record prices
(04:12):
in the neighborhood for the purchase when we bought them.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
So we paid for buildings that were already constructed, and
we paid record prices for the buildings.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
And new buildings, and then the buildings sit empty.
Speaker 3 (04:31):
Yeah, what what? There's a place in Canoga Park that
I drive to quite frequently because it's still remains empty.
And we that's one of our most expensive We paid
about I want to say, sixty million, two hundred and
seventy eight thousand per unit for this facility, brand new
build and it still remains empty. I called the contractor
(04:52):
on this and asked why, and he said, it just
takes a long time to do things in the city.
That was his reason.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
In the county paid over a half a billion to
acquire thirty two properties, and seventy one percent of the
rooms are still vacant. Seventy one percent after a half
of vacant half a billion dollars. Well.
Speaker 3 (05:17):
One of the things too, is I've been purposely driving
to these locations. There's a total of seventy nine locations
that I've been investigating now for two years. I go
during the daytime. Sometimes I go during the day and night,
just to kind of see what's happening, because we all
know the encampments start at night and those are some
of the complaints. But during the daytime, a majority of
(05:37):
these buildings have maybe one or two construction workers or
none at all during working hours weekdays and.
Speaker 1 (05:47):
In the city spend eight hundred million dollars, and forty
four percent of those units are vacant as well, So
some of the s four.
Speaker 2 (06:01):
And go ahead, No, you go ahead.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
I was just going to say the same scenario. I
drive during the daytime, during working hours. Many of the
building there's no contractors, there's no workers there, which is
surprising to me and to you know, just to go
there during the day when there's a sense of urgency.
We've got thousands of people on our streets, We've paid
more than a billion dollars for all these units, and
(06:25):
nobody's hustling to get them online.
Speaker 1 (06:29):
Do you have any idea? Is it just bureaucracy and
red tape and inertia. Does that explain this?
Speaker 3 (06:37):
I've gotten several answers from the states. I've emailed the
governor's office. They told me that construction prices are high,
that that's their major one reason the city says it's
ADA compliance. My question to them, though, was okay, fine,
if it's eighty eight compliance, then why did we not
buy buildings that were eighty eight compliant instead of in
(06:59):
one case, I mean twenty seven million dollars to build
into EIGHTYA compliance after the purchase price.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
That's ironic because the homeless people living in the streets
and on the sidewalks violate the ADA rights of regular citizens.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
I asked that same question.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
They don't care.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
About the eighty eight violations in the streets, but suddenly
the ADA violations And I guess you're talking about the
older buildings. I mean, the newly constructed buildings shouldn't have
any eighty eight problems.
Speaker 3 (07:30):
Nope, I am talking about both. So I am talking
about both buildings. It goes way back to a lawsuit
that we had to settle. It's, you know, another layer
to this story. But because we didn't have enough eighty
eight compliant homeless housing on any unit, we put online
now has to be EIGHTYA compliant. So we are retrofitting
(07:51):
brand new buildings that we bought, some high end apartment buildings.
We have to tear them down and rebuild them. Yes,
I've seen building.
Speaker 2 (08:04):
Is it giving these people a roof enough?
Speaker 1 (08:08):
It has to comply with every kakamami regulation that they've
invented over the last fifty years.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
You have a roof, You're not going to get wet.
Speaker 3 (08:18):
Not only is there a roof, but the majority of
the people moving into this, as we know, don't need
an eighty eight compliance, no facility. And we're in a
state of an emergency. So the mayor, we mean we
may not be, but we're in a state of an emergency.
So the mayor can bypass all of this and use
the rooms.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
You have a quote here from Sam Yebrie. He runs
a political organization called Thrive LA. I believe he's run
for office recently, and he says, when Bass claims there's
a ten percent reduction street homelessness, it exactly matches the
(08:58):
number of people who have died on Los Angeles streets
in the last year. Is that how Bass came to
that number.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
It's a question out there and thrive. LA is a
source that we go to because there are a common
sense source and Sam often has something in a great
input in stories like this and and yes, it has
been studied. The same amount of people who die on
our streets show for the reduction and homelessness. They say
it's anecdotal. I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Well, they're really dead. It's two thy five and eight.
I mean, I guess that's that's an exact number there,
So that must be the official data, right if you
counted the bodies.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
It is, But they will argue that point that there's
that that's not an accurate assessment of the numbers of
course in the city.
Speaker 2 (09:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
He also says that Bass and Lassa kept two thousand
rooms empty. So that's the number of rooms that they
have available to fill with homeless people, but they don't
use them.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Well, he's referring to the story. I reached out to
him for comment on these empty rooms, So he's just
talking about the rooms that are empty that could be online. Again,
we're in a state of emergency, we can put these
rooms online. The majority of these were bought anyways for
interim housing. We could have kept it at interim housing.
It was because of the move from room key to
(10:31):
home key that that's why we now have to look
at PSH instead of interim.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
And one more thing in the article, and I heard
urge everyone to read it at Westside current dot com.
And the headline is LA port over a billion dollars
into homeless housing. Thousands of units sit empty, and you
talk in great detail, and it's like too many numbers
to get into on the radio. But the general idea
is the city paid what looks to be excessive amounts
(11:01):
of money for this real estate, right way beyond what
the market would suggest. And there's some inexplicable deals that
they blew a lot of money on. And now these
buildings are setting sitting empty with no homeless people in them.
And I guess you found that story repeatedly.
Speaker 3 (11:19):
We in some cases the price went three x. One
of the cases that we looked at, it was online
for seven million dollars. Then it's not the story's not
in front of me a few weeks later for twenty
four million dollars. So I mean we have several cases.
We have one case where the realtor bragged that he
(11:41):
had set a record in that community for the sale
to the city, and then we saw this realtor in
multiple transactions with the city as well.
Speaker 1 (11:51):
Yeah, in some city, the city made a deal described
as the most expensive building ever sold in that Sunland
zip code. And in Chevy At Hills, the nonprofit Wineguard
Center they acquired, Yeah, they acquired with home Key Funds.
(12:12):
So is our tax money for twenty seven million dollars
a seventy six unit facility. And just twelve days earlier,
another company had bought the same property for eleven million.
So this company bought the property for eleven million, turned
around and sold it to the Wineguard Center for twenty
seven million. From eleven million to twenty seven million and
(12:33):
twelve days and that twenty seven million dollars was our
tax money.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Well that that really stinks. That should be investigating.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Hard earned tax money. Yeah, and we've brought it up
several times and asked why these numbers are the way
they are. Here's another facility too, it's a retirement center.
So we're looking at now, are they going to rehab
a retirement center because this should be eighty eight compliant rehabilitation. Sorry,
(13:00):
So it's we're taking a we're looking closely at this
facility for sure, but yeah, from eleven to twenty seven
million in twelve days.
Speaker 1 (13:09):
I know the market is hot, but I'm going to
go sell my house when I get home. Thank you
for coming on, Jamie Page. We'll talk against doing great work.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Appreciate the coverage.
Speaker 1 (13:19):
Thank you, Hi, Jamie Page from Westside Current dot com.
You go and read the whole thing. It's very long
in detail.
Speaker 4 (13:27):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
We just had Jamie Page on and if you're just
joining us, I urge you very much to listen to
the last segment we did later on on the podcast
because she and the staff over at the West Side
Current did a great report, because I know we talk
about this frequently and makes you bang your head if
you're a tax payer. It's like, we port billions of
(13:53):
dollars into this homeless scam and what did we get. Well,
it turns out, according to the West Side Current investigation,
one billion, three hundred million dollars has been spent by
the county and city to buy properties. It started out
as a program to buy hotels and motels, then they
started buying finished apartment buildings, a lot of motels and
(14:18):
hotels were in bad shape, but they have not been
renovated yet. The good buildings just hadn't been populated with homeless.
The whole project is just a disaster. And of the
units they bought with city tax money, forty four percent
are vacant. Among the units they bought with county tax money,
(14:41):
seventy one percent is vacant. And she has in her story,
Jamie Page, many many examples of these hotels, motels, apartment
buildings that are sitting empty, some of them in dilapidated shape,
and the city and the county paid in in some
cases obscene amounts of money, which sounds like corruption, which
(15:04):
sounds like a money laundering scheme, and somebody who got
rewarded for being part of this corrupt system. It's really
awful when we just I mean, we're talking about billion
three and by the way, the city's budget deficit is
over a billion dollars. And remember this is much more
(15:26):
money than we spend on the fire department, for example.
Speaker 5 (15:30):
And this.
Speaker 1 (15:33):
Is a colossal, enormous set of crimes that are going on,
just absolute felonies are going on under our nose every day.
That nobody's investigating, nobody's doing anything about it. Well, I
should say now in the last few weeks that has
changed because Bill is Saley, the US Attorney, and he's
looking to see if any federal money is used in
(15:54):
all this corruption, then there are going to be crimes charged. Meantime,
God forbid you try to have a business. Let's say,
a doctor's office in La County. Huntington Park, you may know,
is a small town just south of the city of
Los Angeles, and uh, there's a doctor's office that's been
(16:17):
terrorized by a homeless encampment on a building rooftop. Channel
five has the story KTLA. Play cut number one and
you'll see what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
Here.
Speaker 6 (16:28):
You can really hear the frustration in this woman's voice.
She says, not only has the homeless encampment taken her
right to feel safe away, but now they've also taken
away her viability.
Speaker 7 (16:40):
Were living here in hell.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
The woman who owns this building on the corner of
Rugby and Zoey Avenue is in Huntington Park, says people
living on the roof of a next door structure have
been terrorizing her and her staff for years.
Speaker 7 (16:53):
The Ron de My roof.
Speaker 6 (16:54):
Doctor Tahani Soliman says she's out one hundred thousand dollars
from damages caused by the unworn groove.
Speaker 7 (17:00):
I have to put roof, new roof, and the electricity
from the AC I have to replace all of them.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Where was that fire? Is a trash fire?
Speaker 6 (17:13):
Refer Just yesterday crews put out a trash fire on
the rooftop of the parking structure. And this wasn't the
first time. In twenty twenty three, there was a fire
at the building next door. Gabby Rodriguez, who works for
the doctor, says the fire department was the one who
told them people were living there.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
We ended up putting a fence with barb one.
Speaker 1 (17:33):
They took that down.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
Then we ended up caging our AC units.
Speaker 1 (17:37):
They took that down.
Speaker 6 (17:38):
We ended up caging our water.
Speaker 2 (17:39):
Flosst I'm outside and they still find a way.
Speaker 6 (17:42):
To get to everything, Rodriguez says, With the police telling
them there isn't much they can do and calls to
the city left unreturned, the encampment has all but solidified
doctor Solomon's future.
Speaker 7 (17:54):
No protection for me or my patient, or my employee
or my tenant.
Speaker 3 (18:00):
That's why I'm going.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
To retire because of this. I lost everything.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Now we did reach out to the city. They said
they would look into it and get back to us.
Speaker 2 (18:10):
What a bunch of jerks.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
Huh, why aren't they scumbacks? This is Huntington Park. Well,
I looked up to see who the mayor of Huntington
Park is. Our Touro Flores. That's the kind of town,
our Toro Flores is running. The woman is a doctor,
she's got a business, and there's a gang of probably
wracked out drug addicted vagrants on the roof next door,
(18:34):
destroying destroying her building, and even a wire fence didn't
stop them, and the police won't come. What I The
police apparently told, uh, the doctor there's nothing we can
do about it. So I looked up to see who
the police chief is. Somebody named Cosme Lozano. Cosme Lozano
(18:58):
has police officers who can't do anything about destructive vagrants
who are setting fires, causing all kinds of physical damage
and vandalism. Really, there's somebody starting fires and the county
fire department they.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Can't stop these guys.
Speaker 1 (19:17):
Data can't report them to the police and say, hey,
we have a band of arsonists here again.
Speaker 2 (19:23):
This is a woman who she's retiring.
Speaker 1 (19:25):
She's put all her life into building a practice, practicing
medicine of all things, trying to help sick people in
the neighborhood, and she gets run out because the idiot
mayor or Torre Flores does nothing about it. And here's
the rest of the city council. The vice mayor is
Eduardo Eddie Martinez, Coriina Messias, Jonathan Sonabrio, Nancy Martiz. They're
(19:53):
all in office and they do nothing. They let a
doctor go out of business. A band of arson loving,
vagrant mental patients can have their nightly party on the
roof of the building next door. This is it's completely uncivilized.
People in cave days had more, had better lives than
(20:15):
this magine. Go to work every day and you got
to deal with that group up on the roof next door.
God knows what they're doing. And our tour Flores de
Maria does nothing about it. The police chief here, cosmid
Lozano does nothing about it. He oh read his bio.
Though he was appointed police chief in twenty fifteen. Has
brought many innovative programs, including the Mental Evaluation Team, which
(20:40):
works with the Department of Mental health and the mentally
ill population in the community. Well, why don't you send
him up to the roof of the building. A bunch
of morons running that town. Jeez, So the doctor goes
out of business. The doctor is terrified.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
You're listening to John cobelts on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (21:02):
Run every day from one until four and then after
four o'clock whatever you missed John Cobelt's show on demand
on the iHeart app. And it's a great way to
keep track of everything that goes on here, and you should.
It's very important. Now, two things coming up very soon.
I don't want you to miss either. One coming up
(21:25):
in just a few minutes, we are going to set
up the return of Michael mcsche. Michael McShee is the
USC professor who really rocked the Newsomb administration with his research.
Two pieces of research he did, and the brilliant pieces
both are correct. First one, after an extensive study of
(21:48):
fifty years of California gas prices and government policy, he
concluded that the high gas prices in California, we're paying
two dollars more per gallon than many other states, is
almost entirely self inflicted by the government by the policies.
You know, Newsom has been spouting about price manipulation and gouging,
(22:12):
no such thing for fifty years. He found very little
evidence of that. Then he looked at what's coming and
since we have two major refineries closing, and we only
have eight major refineries that give us ninety six percent
of our gasoline, two were closing in the next year
and a half. That's going to leave six. That's going
(22:36):
to seriously jack up the price. And the California Air
Resources Board is also going to raise the price significantly
because they're insisting on a new carbon standard. And with
all that going on, the price of gas could be
eight dollars and fifty cents a year and a half
from now. That's what michee did. That's what Micheade discovered
(22:56):
when he did his research. And then Newsom and those
weasels in his office tried to spear Mache, spear Machet,
but they were lying. They claimed he had some connections
with Saudi Arabia. They were lying. And now you have
(23:17):
members of the Assembly, Democratic members of the Assembly agreeing
with Mache's analysis because it's true. And we're going to
talk to Michael Mache coming up at two o'clock. I'm
going to give you a rundown on the story in
about fifteen minutes or so, ten to fifteen minutes, and
(23:39):
then at two o'clock Michael Michel come on now. Yesterday,
late in the show, we unveiled the Grading for Equity
program in San Francisco Grading for Equity, and we were
all astonished by this. This is a new program which
(24:00):
looks like it only lasted twenty four hours. And if
you haven't heard a score of eighty percent, this is
the San Francisco School District. Eighty percent would now be
an A, right, So if you got an eighty or
you got a ninety nine, it was an A. If
you got a forty one, a forty one, you'd get
(24:23):
a C. So you could blow six out of ten
answers and you get a C in San Francisco. And
then let's say you blew eight out of ten answers
and it was you got to score twenty one. You
would earn a D. You would pass the course if
(24:47):
you scored at least twenty one out of one hundred
on a test. And this was about to be imposed
by the San Francisco Superintendent of education.
Speaker 2 (25:01):
And everybody went nuts.
Speaker 1 (25:03):
This is destructive progressive ideology. These people are so insane.
Why would you create a system where people would potentially
get high school diplomas after only get twent after only
getting twenty percent of the answers right throughout their entire
(25:23):
childhood and adolescence. Can you imagine You imagine for twelve
years you got eighty percent of the answers wrong, and
you still get a diploma just like someone who got
one hundred percent of the answers right. This is equity,
and the progressives created this sinister, diabolical idea that equality
(25:50):
was no longer the agual Equality means we all have
the same opportunity, we all can go to the same class,
the same quality of school. Have this no now that
we no longer were going to have segregated schools and
that we weren't going to have public schools where wealthy
people had better opportunities for their kids than poor people.
(26:12):
If you do it right, that's how you get a quality.
They came up with equity. Everyone is supposed to have
the same result, regardless that we're not born with the
same intellectual gifts, we're not born with the same drive
we're not born with the same set of parents who
(26:34):
might have more or less resources to help us out
or who can guide us properly. We were all supposed
to have our kids come out with the exact same result.
That is equity. It is the most damaging, most absurd.
It's really like just anti human, anti anybody who's smart
(26:58):
and accomplished twenty one. Well, what do you think is
gonna happen if you only require kids to get at
twenty one? Many of them are only going to get
at twenty one, and then what and then they get
an equity diploma. This is stuff that you know, for
(27:18):
one hundred years, a thousand years, nobody would ever think
of I don't know how they thought of this. It's
a horrific idea. I think anybody who's got a parent,
who's had a bit of parent would agree. But it's
San Francisco. The superintendent was waiving this like a this
(27:38):
is the new cool way. Other school districts have tried
this kind of kind of thing and they failed. Dublin
Unified got rid of zeros for missing assignments, and if
you just made a reasonable attempt, you got a fifty.
Speaker 2 (27:57):
So as long as you.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
At some boxes you got a fifty. Well, the parents
started screaming. They got rid of that. They have bastardized
the idea of equality. And the National Review wrote a
piece today saying that this upside down system of were
(28:23):
used to school kids and still knowledge and virtue and
habits so they could learn all their life. Now the
whole concept is will make them equal at the end.
So the smartest kid has to be penalized, the kid
who works the hardest has to be penalized. The kid
who comes from a culture where they value education and
accomplishment has to be penalized. And everybody's dumbed down to
(28:48):
the lowest common denominator. The kid who has the least
intellectual gifts, the kid who has the least amount of
energy and drive, the kid who comes from parents who
absolutely don't give a about their kid accomplishing and succeeding.
We're all dragged down to that level. Now, we're all
down there at the bottom. I cannot The list of
(29:14):
destructive progressive policies is endless, and they're all here in California.
You take this idea, take take it to forty nine
other states and see what they would do with this idea.
This is child abuse. That's that's San Francisco school superintendent
(29:34):
ought to be putting jail for child abuse for suggesting this.
Imagine if you have a smart, driven kid and they
have to subject themselves to this.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
We're gonna have Richie Greenberg on.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
He's a writer and a commentator and he's politically active
up in San Francisco, and he's gonna be on after
three o'clock. All right, I'll set up Michael Mche's return
appearance to the show, the USC professor who's done all
the research on gasoline prices, and I got a story
to play from you from Channel three Casera and Sacramento
only station in the state covering all the idiocy and Sacramento.
(30:08):
Anybody in La interested in sending a reporter up there once,
you know, once in a while, once a month.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
No, no takers.
Speaker 4 (30:14):
Okay, you're listening to John Cobelts on demand from KFI
AM six forty.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
All right, right after two o'clock, we're going to have
USC professor Michael Machet. He has the research out. We've
had him on a couple of times. In fact, one
of his parents has gave us a record number of
Instagram views. I think people around the state are really
inwardly angry over the price of guess, and you should be,
because it is a total scam. We're paying almost five
(30:43):
bucks a gallon. The rest of the country is paying three.
There's about twenty five states paying less than three dollars
a gallon. It's not an anomaly, it's not a quirk.
It's states all over the country are paying, you know,
from between two fifty and three dollars a gallon, and
I think forty three states are paying less than three
(31:03):
forty a gallon. And then we're up at five. And
it's entirely, entirely due to taxes and regulations that are
unnecessary and punitive, and we're under the tyranny of this
unelected California Air Resources Board, which is filled with climate fanatics,
(31:24):
even though they have had zero effect on the world's
climate as long as they've been in existence. I mean,
it's just their monsters are what they are, and what
they do is they hurt the middle class and the
working class and poor people terribly because you know, twenty
(31:45):
dollars two dollars extra for a gallon of gas is
forty dollars a week for a tank of gas forty bucks.
It's two thousand a year taken from people who don't
have much money.
Speaker 2 (31:57):
That is abusive.
Speaker 1 (31:59):
That is financial bullying and financial abusiveness on the part
of the California Air Resources Board. The chair is someone
named Leanne Randolph, and Siva Gunda is the vice chair
and the Division of Petroleum Market Oversight Director Ty Milder.
(32:22):
Everybody's got like weird names and they're running things here.
And they testified before the Assembly Utility and Energy Committee,
and here's the shaker. And this is a sign that
the legislature is hearing from normal people who are really
really pissed because they got a lot of blowback from
Democrats in the Assembly. Let's play you this story from
(32:44):
KRCA Channel three up in Sacramento that they covered the hearing.
So play cut number two if you would.
Speaker 8 (32:51):
Governor Gavin Newsom's top administration officials in the hot seat
today over California situation with oil refiners and potential rising
gas price. Is Democratic lawmakers signaling they may be losing
trust with some of these agencies.
Speaker 5 (33:07):
I know that what climate leadership does not look like,
and that is ten dollars gas present.
Speaker 8 (33:11):
California's clean air push facing push back from both political parties.
Lawmakers worry state regulators have kept drivers, workers, and Californians
overall as an afterthought as two oil refiners prepare to
shut down within the next year. Those two account for
about twenty percent of the state's oil refining capacity.
Speaker 9 (33:31):
We're talking about a plan when these companies leave and
what happens to the land.
Speaker 2 (33:37):
I'm concerned about what happened to the people.
Speaker 8 (33:39):
Lawmakers grilled the leaders of the state agencies that regulate
the oil and gas industry, including California Air Resources Board
Chairlee and Randolph, Vice Chairman of the California Energy Commission Seevagunda,
and the Department of Petroleum Market Oversight Director Time Milder.
Speaker 5 (33:54):
We have a crisis on our hand that may have
been self created by the actions that perhaps have been
taken by the state by regulators.
Speaker 8 (34:04):
Democratic Assemblyment David Alvarez and others frustrated after they were
swayed to approve some of the latest regulations put on
the oil and gas industry.
Speaker 5 (34:13):
I think I also heard you say that another closure
can lead to a significant increase in cost to consumers
on the price of gas.
Speaker 8 (34:22):
Yes, Sir Gunda Toad lawmakers, California will likely need to
have oil imported from other parts of the world by ships.
Speaker 5 (34:30):
So we really have only one choice there today, which
is increasing imports.
Speaker 2 (34:35):
Based on at work right now, that will be very
tight for the North.
Speaker 9 (34:39):
Increase in imports, which means that you have more vessels.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Who in what I've heard.
Speaker 9 (34:47):
Also with you increase the vessels, that that means more
emissions because we don't control those vessels and the missions
in which they bring.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (34:55):
But you are correct that additional marine traffic would implicate.
Speaker 8 (35:01):
Air quality issues beyond state waters that we do not regulate. Now,
this was just an informational hearing, so no action was taken.
It's unclear exactly what the next steps will be, but
Governor Newsom's administration is still apparently trying to come up
with a plan to deal with those two upcoming refinery closures.
Reporting at the state capital, Ashley Zablla case Harry three News.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Ashley Zabella the only working reporter in the state covering
the oppressive, abusive legislature, so she did another great job
there so you could see them slowly coming to life.
This has been well known for years We've been talking
about this for years. The excessive taxes and regulations have
(35:44):
strangled people financially to no benefit. You heard Leanne Randolph,
she's the nut who's the chair of the California Air
Resources Board. She goes that, Yeah, if we import oil
from foreign countries, additional marine traffic would imp implicate air
quality issues beyond state waters that we do not regulate. Yeah,
(36:07):
because you're regulating emissions here in California. As if all
the air in California is contained within the state borders,
it's not. Any oil and gas that we don't produce
here is produced somewhere else, and it's the same amount
(36:29):
of emissions going into the same atmosphere that the.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Whole world shares.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Like it just hit her that, I mean, I'm sure
they would love to regulate the entire Earth's atmosphere, but
she can't.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
So what's the point. What's the point of taking.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Oil and gas that got refined in Saudi Arabia which
has far more lax regulations regarding admissions. Other countries have
much much worse systems at regulating emissions than we do.
And now they're going to be producing another twenty percent
(37:10):
of our cast and oil. How does that help the world.
It doesn't. It makes it worse if you believe in
this nonsense. This makes no sense. This is just about
pure abusive control of our lives. That's all it is.
It's human nature. If you get some power, you get
abusive with the power when there's no check. Why do
(37:30):
you think we have a complicated system in Washington between
the President, the House, the Senate, and the court system.
Three levels of the court system, so nobody can get
too abusive, nobody can get too much power.
Speaker 2 (37:46):
But here we got to.
Speaker 1 (37:47):
The California Our Resources Board elected by no One appointed
by Governor Newsom, and now they're going to be beating
us over the head with eight point fifty gas. One
of the legislatureisla later said ten dollars. By the way,
all the legislators, and I'm going to name them later
after we have Michael Machey on. All the legislators that
(38:08):
you heard in that clip, they are all Democrats. It
was all democratic pushback. Okay, Michael miche the USC professor
conon next. You got to be listening to him. All right, 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 on demand on the iHeartRadio app
The John Kobylt Show News
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John Kobylt
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