May 8, 2026 • 32 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (05/08) - John tells a story about just how obvious the decline of LA is just by what happened to his wife taking their dog to the vet yesterday! A guy in Venice almost had his arm hacked off by a homeless person. US Asst. Attorney Bill Essayli comes on the show to talk about the raid earlier this week in MacArthur Park that resulted in the arrest of 18 people and the seizure of 40lbs of fentanyl. What is the "vehicle miles traveled" tax?
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can I am six forty you're listening to the John
Cobelt Podcast on the iHeartRadio app. It's the John Cobelt
Show and welcome. We're on every day from three to
six and after six o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand.
That's the podcast on the iHeart app. And a day
ago at this time, we had Spencer Pratt in here
(00:23):
talking about his debate performance. And because he was a
surprise addition to the show and so it was, Doctor
Oz never got a chance to play more than a
couple of clips from the debate, and I really want
to talk about a lot of the exchanges. So we'll
do that next hour, the four o'clock hour, a thorough
a thorough analysis of the Pratt Ramen Bass debate. That'll
(00:46):
be coming up with many clips. Also, we're gonna Bill
Saley coming on, the first Assistant US Attorney. He runs
the Central California office and the District of and he
is going to come out to talk about the great
MacArthur Park bust, which we discussed with Doctor Oz.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yesterday.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
They arrested a lot of gang members who had been
funneling a lot of Sentinel and other drugs into MacArthur Park.
They have ruled MacArthur Park for years. Bass didn't do
anything about it. By the way, Garcetti didn't do anything
about it. And you know what, the Trump administration has
taken over and they're cleaning it up. And some of
(01:27):
the best stuff to make Los Angeles spender has been
done by the Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And that's the truth.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And Bass, as we saw in the debate, just well,
I'll get to that.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I'll get to that next hour. If I start, I
won't stop.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I gotta first tell a story of my own absurd
existence here in the city of Los Angeles. Yesterday, when
Spencer Pratt was in the studio, he was talking about
how he spends a lot of time listening to people
and everybody's pouring out their stories, either in person or
(02:04):
they send him emails or any other way you can communicate.
And he has been listening to the stories and remembering them,
and he told some of them during the debate yesterday,
and that was such a key to his performance, is
that he was talking about real people's lives and Bass
and Ramen were conjuring up a bunch of fake statistics
(02:26):
that nobody believes. I said this a thousand times. I
trust my own.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Eyes, and so today, well, during the.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Discussion with Pratt yesterday, my wife texted me and we
have a dog. He's very old. He's about thirteen and
a half years old. He's a Mini Schnauzer, cute little guy.
We got up as a rescue when he was either
one or two years old. And his which I is it.
(03:00):
It's his right eye. It's compromised. He's he's got a condition.
It's got a long name to it, but it makes
it very susceptible to problems. And somehow he accidentally injured
the eye. Don't know exactly what happened, but he started
pawing at it and pawing at it, which led to
(03:21):
an ulcer in the eye and an infection. And my
wife took him to that yesterday like an eye specialist.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And she was.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Texting during the show that she pulls up at this
place she'd never been before, to this particular doctor and
Santa Monica Boulevard on the west side now by air miles.
It's a mile and a half from my house and
we live in a nice neighborhood, but you go one
and a half air miles to the south southeast Santa
(03:56):
Monica Boulevard on the west side is an absolute health
whole nightmare.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
It gets really bad. So she's with the dog.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
The dog has a cone on his head, you know
those plastic cones, so he doesn't rub the eye anymore,
and so she feels a little uh unbalanced, uh, you know, vulnerable.
There's a there's parking spaces nearby, but she doesn't want
to take them because she says there was about six
(04:27):
mental patients, drug addicts, creeps wandering around. She parks across
the street. Now she's got a cross Santa Monica Boulevard
with with the dog and two guys, two thug guys
goons pedal by on bikes and they look at her
(04:47):
and suddenly they're they're turning their bikes around and coming
back at her. Scurries across the street in half a panic,
goes inside to the VETS office, tells the two women
at the reception desk what was going on out there,
because you know, there were a lot of creepy people.
And the reception women said, oh, yeah, well, yesterday somebody
(05:11):
got stabbed right outside the office, stabbed to death, seriously
homeless people probably, and one guy's murdered right outside the office.
It's funny how you just sense, you know, you get
out of your car and you know this is bad.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
All right.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Today I had to go to the vet, little follow
up visit, medication adjustment. I got to the same vet
by myself. I had to bring the dog. He's wearing
the cone, and I come across exactly the intersection she
was describing yesterday, and it was described it perfectly. Yes,
they're all sorts of mental patient, vagrant lunatics stumbling around,
(05:57):
weaving around. I go park my car are on the
side street, and nobody's parked on that block. It seemed
the whole area seemed abandoned in some way. There's just
an emptiness to it. There's a parking meter, and I
(06:17):
briefly thought about sliding in my credit card. I thought, no,
there are too many weirdos wandering around. I'm not gonna
stand there with my dog and he's wearing his plastic
cone and I'm gonna start fumbling with the credit card
trying to slide it in and out of the parking meter.
That's because if somebody comes to me, what am I
(06:39):
gonna do? And it's the dog, I'm worried about. Right,
if there's some kind of scuffle, you know, the dog
will get loose, I'll accidentally let go of the leash,
the dog will run into traffic. With his cone on,
he can't see around him. Oh so I thought, you
know what, I'm not gonna stop and fiddle with because
the parking meters half of him don't work. The credit
card is hard to slide in and out. So I'm
not dealing with this. So I go inside. It takes about,
(07:04):
I don't know, forty five minutes to go through whatever
the dog needed. I come back out and I didn't
notice this for a couple hours, but I'd gotten a ticket.
I got a ticket for seventy three dollars. And this
was a moment where I just wanted to get on
my hind legs and roar at the moon. It's like, you,
(07:25):
sons of you bastards. You create this wildly unsafe place.
A guy dies on this corner two days ago. My
wife's got to deal with two weirdos on bikes menacing her.
There's all other various transients and drug addicts wandering around.
So when I get out with the dog, I'm a
(07:46):
little I'm a little wacky You know, I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna play with the parking meter. And of course,
of course, seventy three dollars ticket, seventy three dollars ticket.
That's the tax I have to pay for not wanting
to die at the hands of one of Karen Bass's
mental patients in her outdoor asylum. I get charged for
(08:09):
that seventy three dollars. It's it's ten thirty in the morning.
There's parking spaces everywhere. Nobody's parked there, and that should
have been a tip off. I don't you know, it
seemed empty, but I didn't. I didn't do a I
didn't do a close look on how many businesses were
actually empty. I guess probably most of them are. And
(08:31):
there's no customers, so there's no parking. But that bastard
parking attendant gave me a seventy three dollars ticket. If
you know, it's probably one of those little troll ladies,
one of those little gerbil ladies.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
They all seem to look alike, and I'm thinking, yeah, this,
this is Los Angeles. This is effing insane. I'm just
absolutely insane.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I just got taxed because I was freaked out about
all the lunatics standing around on the street corner. Oh,
I'm trying to get the dog into the vet. Yeah,
that's that's daily life here. If you're a safe in
Orange or Ventura County or up in the mountains somewhere,
stay where you are, all right. This place, this place
(09:15):
ought to be. They ought to put a big cage
around it. When we come back. I had a better
day though in a guy in Venice. Guy in Venice
almost had his arm hacked off by one of these
mental patients. Story just broke in the California Post. I'll
tell you about that when we return. And then Bill
a Sale coming on right after three point thirty.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Bill a Sale, the first assistant to US Attorney for
the Central Coast, for the Central District here in Los Angeles.
He is going he's the US attorney for our area
in short and we're gonna have him on to talk
about the big mccarth their park bust yesterday. All right,
So I just told my experience just wanting to take
(10:08):
my poor little dog to the vet and having to
go to a an intersection where there was a murder
two days ago, and my wife was surrounded by a
whole bunch of vagrants and mental patients. I had to
go back today with the dog and was really jumpy
(10:28):
about it. So it was the dog we left the car,
and I didn't I didn't put anything in the parking
meter because I didn't want to stand there and risk
you know, getting well, getting my arm chopped off, which
is what happened to the guy in Venice. California Post
just had this story out this afternoon. There is a
(10:51):
guy named Justin Tucker. You're not gonna believe, you will
believe this story, but this is really really crazy, all right.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
This is on.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Rose Avenue in Venice, which has become a notorious thoroughfare.
Justin Tucker is the name of the guy who used
a sixty inch samurai blade and nearly whacked off the
arm of a twenty seven year old victim. This happened
(11:20):
on the street about six thirty last night at seven
twenty Rows Avenue. Thinks Justin Tucker. He was identified by
the building's management. Take a guess what kind of building
this was? Yes, you are correct, it's the Venice Housing corporation,
(11:44):
a nonprofit, A nonprofit that provides low income housing and
job services.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, that's your tax money.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
So they got this whack job alleged suspect Justin.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Justin Tucker.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
By the way, just wait, I have a photo in
front of me that is I can't I can't wait
to describe to you. If you're eating, you might want
to put your food down. So the nonprofit puts out
a poster because Justin Tucker and his sword got away,
and they write, you may be aware there was an
(12:27):
incident in front of Rose Apartments this evening. Unfortunately, our neighbor,
Justin Tucker was involved. Our neighbor. He was the guy
with the sword. He wasn't the victim. He's the guy
at the sword. He is suspected to be armed and dangerous.
Not a good neighbor. This is what these crazy nonprofits
(12:50):
are about. They put in a poster saying, our neighbor
here is on the loose. He's a white man in
his late twenties with a short haircut. There were two witnesses,
probably two of the homeless people. They said Tucker had
just returned to seven twenty rows Avenue from a shopping
(13:12):
trip to a smart and final and Tucker was accosted
by a man in front of the building who asked
Tucker if he had any drugs. Well, Tucker went up
to his unit and returned with a sword, and then
they swung at the at the left arm of this
man and blood started spurting everywhere. And the photos that
(13:36):
I'm looking at, yeah, there's blood all over the sidewalk,
all over this low cement wall in front of the building.
Holy moly, this guy lost a lot of blood. Horrified
bystander called nine to one one oh cops showed up,
started the paramedics and they tried to stop the bleeding
(13:58):
and get him to the hospital. And a woman who
lived nearby said she was called to the scene by
a friend who was panicking who lives at seven twenty
Rows Avenue, and when she got there, she saw.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
The victim holding his arm above.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
His head, wrapped in a T shirt a plastic bandage,
but it was squirting blood.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Quote the blood was pulling under his arm and on
the wall. Real quickly.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Walking by was somebody in a hospital uniform, a nurse,
and he went to the car and came with a tourniquet,
and Tucker was gone by top of the police came.
He ran away on foot and eventually disappeared. They're still
looking for him as of this writing.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
The co executive directors of the Venice Community Housing Project,
Erica Lee and Alison Riley. Oh, I should look them up,
see how much they make to bring this kind of
mental patient mayhem into the neighborhood. We take safety concerns seriously.
They said, this is why nobody ever wants low income
(15:04):
housing in your neighborhood. Nobody ever wants any one of
these homeless services apartment complexes because they're filled with crazy,
violent lunatics. I mean, he doesn't bother Erica Lee and
Allison Riley. They got to go home every night. The
woman who had responded to help the victim said she'd
(15:27):
been assaulted on the block and once heard another woman
screaming that she was being raped in the alley nearby.
These are horrible things happening every day. People on drugs
walking around like zombies. Yeah, that was like the neighborhood
I was in. It's not safe. Nobody comes to help.
The block deteriorated when the low income housing complex opened
there several years ago, and police don't come very much,
(15:51):
those low income housing units. That's death for the neighborhood.
Then nobody can live there. Dumbest, dumbest, stupidest cruel idea.
This I wonder if this is something Bonning brought in.
Oh my god, you.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Imagine that.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Kyle almost had his arm hacked off because but you
know what did he do? He was trying to score
some drugs from this Justin Tucker. According to the story,
Tucker just could have said no. But because these people
are mentally ill, wildly unstable, you don't know what they're
gonna do. He could have said, yeah, I got some
(16:34):
in the apartment. No, I don't have him, get away
from me, ignore him. Instead he gets a samurai sword.
How come all these guys have samurai swords? How many
vagrant attack stories have I read where the attacker has
a samurai sword? I don't know anybody with one, but
it seems every other homeless guy has one. We come
back big MacArthur park Bus Bill A. Saley, who's the
(16:55):
US Attorney for the Central District here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
He's coming up to be our guest. Next.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
We are on from three to six every day after
six o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand on the iHeart app.
You can follow us at social on social media John
Cobelt Radio, and subscribe on YouTube. We're live on YouTube
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(17:27):
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And if you'd like to watch, get to get to
YouTube immediately. John Cobelt Show is the way to find us,
all right. Next up is Bill Saley, and he is
(17:48):
the first Assistant US Attorney. He's running the Central Central
District Office here in Los Angeles, and there was a
big bust that his office was involved in and twenty
five people were arrested. These are the gang members that
have been supplying all the fentanyl and the meth into
(18:13):
MacArthur Park. And that's why MacArthur Park has been scary
and disgusting and horrible for so many years. Karen Bass
didn't do anything about it. The only time she was
in MacArthur Park was to run and scream at ICE agents,
but finally the FEDS came in with the help of
the LAPED. We're gonna talk with Bill le Sale about
(18:34):
all this right now. Bill, How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Good?
Speaker 4 (18:38):
John, glad to have you back in your original time.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yes, it's really good to be here.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
What what?
Speaker 4 (18:46):
What?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
First of all, would you do explain who you arrested
and what you arrested him for. Let's go through the
basics to start.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah, let's back up. So actually this you fourt to
call it phase one. Phase one started in March when
we indicted in a usted a bunch of the MS.
I'm sorry, not MS, but the Eighteenth Street Gang members,
the leadership, the people actually running the gang organization. That
was done by FBI. That was in March, and they're
the main gang, remember that claims this territory, this the
(19:16):
north part of the MacArthur Park is claimed by the
Eighteenth Street Gang. So Phase one was taking out their
leadership structure. We knew that taking out the leadership was
not going to have a major impact there at the park,
so right after that we initiated Phase two. Phase two
was we got with the DEA and we have these
drug introduction task forces with local law enforcement. So Phase
(19:39):
two was for the next two months we conducted intense
twenty four hour surveillance of the park so we could
learn who the street level dealers are and where they
were going to get their new supply from. And we
did that for about forty five days, and then we
got warrants for everybody that we identified as being involved
in selling drugs there in MacArthur Park. Those are the
(20:01):
twenty five people that we got arrest warrants for, and
then we also got warrants to search locations that were
being used to stash the drugs, and that's why we
rated those particular businesses there at MacArthur Park. It doesn't
mean that the business owner themselves is in on it,
but the drug dealers are using those businesses to hold
the drugs, to hold the backpacks, to hold the supply
for the day, so it's not out in plane view
(20:23):
while they're selling the drugs. And whether the business owners
do that willingly or they're forced to do it, you know,
we'll have to figure that out. But we wanted to
have a big impact in the park and that's what
you saw happen this week, and.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
You made arrests all over the place, right, not just
MacArthur Park, but other cities as well.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Yeah, so the ones not at the park, well, first
of all, these people come and go, so they're not
always at the park, so we needed to arrest them
wherever they were at the time. But the two other
locations we searched were the higher up folks that were
supplying the drugs to the dealers in MacArthur Park. One
of them is the daughter of one of the Eighteenth
(21:01):
Street gang leaders we arrested in March, so then her
daughter and I think that was featured in the California Post.
She was one of the people we arrested this week
because she picked up where her mom left off, and
then she was the main supplier and one of those
houses where we got the nineteen kilos of fentanyl, which
is a crazy amount of fentanyl to have some location.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Nineteen kilos, I mean, give people an idea of how
much damage nineteen kilos can do. I mean that could
kill tons and tons of people, hundreds.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Of thousands of lethal doses just in that amount. And
so it's hundreds of thousands of doses and mind you're
sitting now, is like they're so just careless with how
dealing it there actually will just they'll sprinkle the powder.
They're not even packaging anymore. They'll just grab a handful
and they'll they'll give it to the homeless be or
the junkies out there that need it. These people are
(21:53):
building a big resistance to it, and so they're making
super fentanyl. They're making super mess And in fact, I've
also heard that they have two different concentrations depending on
how experienced of an attict you're on, because they don't
want to kill you, right, they want you to come back,
so they'll give you the lower concentrated version if you're new,
and then they have the more souped up version if
(22:13):
you're if you're experienced in using fentanyl. And it has
about a street value of ten million dollars of what
we recovered just this week.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Do you know how long this particular operation has been
going on? How many years?
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Well, you mean at MacArthur Park, Yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, with the people with this this particular you do gang.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yeah, I think it's been going on for decades. I
mean it predates my time here. No one seems to
really have cared or done much about it. They've sort
of normalized open air drug markets, whether it's skid Rower
MacArthur Park. But you know, I got in here. I
mean I got a lot to I got a lot
on my plate. But one of the things we want
to do is get rid of these open air drug markets.
I had never been to MacArthur Park, I'll be honest
(22:54):
with you. I went about a month ago undercover with
with the DEA to kind of get a sense of
what's going on there.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I was shocked.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
It is zombie land. I could not believe this was
the United States of America. I could not believe it.
It looked like a third world country. People have needles
in open air shooting up. You see them fold over
in real time. People o ding and the city just
pays the hand out needles. And they have over adose
response teams that come and shoot you up with narcans
(23:22):
so you can keep going.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That's what's crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Ken Bass's contribution to this is to give them needles,
to give them fresh meth pipes, and if you have
an overdose, to send a rescue crew over there. And
then when the narcan wears off, they go and get
another sentinel fix.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
It's so nuts, it's so crazy.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Claims she's against it. Now, she claims she's against it.
So we'll see that, and I will give credit where
credits do. LAPD was a partner in this investigation, So
Jim McDonald's was a part of this. They send a
hundred of their officers on Wednesday to assist us. We
had two hundred Fettle agents, one hundred LAPD and the
smile on the faces of the local law enforcement, the
(24:05):
local LAPD officers, they were beaming that the morale was
high because this is overdue. This is what they want
to do, but they're you know, their hands are tied
by these ridiculous state policies, these city council policies, and
so you know, everyone was very excited and proud to
be part of this operation. And we're going to continue,
by the way, So now phase three, everyone says, what's next,
(24:26):
you know, aren't they just going to come back? Well,
the good news is the park's been pretty quiet for
the last few days. It's not going to be like
that forever. But what we're going to do is have
a sustained effort. And so I got a call from
Nathan Hawkman, he told, and he's right. He says, Look,
you have the tools to go after the dealers, but
you can't do anything about the users. That's where I
can come in. And so now with Prop thirty six,
Nathan has tools, and so we're going to team up
(24:48):
with him, and we're going to go after both users
and dealers together and hopefully get them in a rehab
or jail if they don't want it.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Wow, I mean, is this something that the city could
have taken care of years ago? Or did they let
Obviously they let it go so far you had to
get the Feds in or you.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Can't in California. It's really you know, I blame Sacramento
more than anyone, and maybe that's I'm biased because I
was up there with those idiots. But Sacramento has taken
away any teeth to the criminal justice system. So it's
not really the cities. It's not one hundred percent the
city's fault, because when you get arrested by LAPD, there's
nowhere to send you. There's no prison, The prisons are full.
(25:30):
They emptied half the prisons, and under Prop forty seven,
there was no meaningful consequence to using drugs. It was
just a ticket and slap on the wrist. So these
guys when they get arrested by LAPD, they don't care.
They're like, I'll be out in a couple hours. It's
not a big deal of them. But when the Feds
show up, and that's why they needed us, you're not
looking at a couple hours in jail. You're looking at
ten years minimum in federal prison. Oh so, no, I
(25:53):
don't think they could do it without us. You need
the federal government. You need the DEA to come in
and deal with the gangsters, get them law up for
a long time. You need to deal with the drug dealers,
get them locked up for a long time. We have
the tools, and like I said on the on Wednesday,
our guns are bigger than theirs. So that that's the way,
that's just the law. That that's just the way it works.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Bill.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
You you are doing an incredible job helping to clean
up Los Angeles uh and and doing things that the
state in the city has is not interested in doing.
Uh and, And a lot of people really appreciate it.
I mean, everybody desperately wants to have a normal life
here in Los Angeles, and it's gotten just so chaotic
(26:36):
and just so dangerous out there, but saying so thank
you and thank to all your your all your agents,
everybody on your staff and everybody at l A p D.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
You pulled this off. This was a big one. It's
a big one.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Morales through the roof and we're not done. And actually
I'm seeing a sea change. I mean when Karen bass
is saying we shouldn't be handing out needles, that's that's
not something to to normal.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, well make sure we got to make sure she
sticks to that. Thank you Bill for coming on.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Yes, you're welcome.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Thank you Bill Sale.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
He's the first assistant US Attorney for the Central District
here in California. And yeah, ten million dollars worth of
fentandel seized MacArthur Park, twenty five gang members arrested, and
federal charges tend to stick and federal sentences are long.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Not the nonsense we have in California under new symptom.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
We are live streaming right now on YouTube and I
just got weird that we are going to extend the
live stream another hour, another hour, all the way to
five o'clock because after Kurzer's News at four, we're going
to do an in depth, intensive analysis of the entire
Pratt bass Ramen debate, which I was going to do
(27:56):
yesterday but preempted by Spencer Pratt himself. He came out
for an hour and then doctor Oz came on and
all that happened in the final minutes before the show,
and so I decided, well, we're going to do it
today because there was so much in there that has
to be dissected, so that that's next hour. Well, I
got a minute or two here though, I don't want
(28:17):
to overlook this because Steve Hilton has found something in
a some kind of housing bill that the Democrats are
proposing in the Assembly, and just to give you, like
just a line and then you can hear Steve describe it.
He put out a video. It's a bill that is
(28:39):
for new housing that's built single family housing. This would
add fifteen hundred dollars a month to the cost. They
want to tax you extra because if you live in
a single family home that means you're going to be driving.
And if you're driving, that's bad and they want to
punish you. And so they have a vehicle miles travel
(29:01):
tax embedded in this housing bill. Let Steve Hilton explain.
Speaker 5 (29:05):
This all right, VMT. Do you know what that is?
You need to know VMT. It stands for Vehicle miles traveled.
And it's yet another sneaky, stealthy way that the Democrats
in charge of California want to gouge you for the
crime of driving your car. So this latest version, I mean,
(29:27):
this comes on top, by the way of the highest
gas taxes in the country, highest vehicle registration, everything they
can do to punish people who drive. This thing we've
dug into was actually started in something that Newsome touted
as the solution to the housing crisis, to bring down
housing costs. It's a bill last year called AB one thirty,
(29:51):
and hidden away in it is this thing called the
VMT Mitigation Bank, a new tool for housing and infrastructure.
What it actually does, according to some estimates, is to
charge you for every new single family home. Remember, they
don't want single family homes. They're trying to punish single
(30:12):
family homes. They want to stop single family homes from
being built. And so they're going to put this charger
at VMT. Because if you build a new home people
are going to drive to their new home. That's vehicle
miles traveled. So to try and stop all that. Because
they want to shove apartment buildings into existing neighborhoods instead
of building new single family homes. They are trying to
(30:34):
sneak in a charge we frit of one thousand, three
hundred and fifty dollars per month for twenty years on
every new single family home. And this is in the bill,
the AB one thirty that Gavin Newson said would solve
the housing crisis. They don't want to solve the housing crisis.
(30:55):
They don't want to solve anything. They just want to
charge you more and in return you get less. That's
why we need change in California. And when I'm governor,
all this nonsense will be scrapped.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
We need Hilton as governor, need Hilton as governor, and
we need we need Pratt as the mayor. Because again
I didn't see this discussed. I don't see this reported on.
You buy a new single family home, now the bill
has not passed yet. You buy a new single family home,
you get charged to tax a mitigation fee because you
(31:28):
means you're gonna be driving a lot. Thirteen hundred and
fifty a month. I guess that's the average amount of
mileage you drive. The whatever formula they've got, that is
so horrid.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
That is so you get punished for wanting to give
your family a house.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
You work, you save, you have a family, you all
need a house, and now here's a penalty because you
want to drive to work.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
It's a penalty for driving to work.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
So that's high on the priority list. That's Steve Hilton,
and he's been doing tremendous work here. You know, you've
got the ballot in the kitchen. Hilton for governor, Pratt
for mayor. Let's go already we come back. We're going
to do the whole debate from Wednesday, and Michael Kurzier
is live in the KFI twenty four hour news room.
(32:25):
You've been listening to the John Cobelt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
forty from three to six pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
KFI Am six More stimulating talk
Can I am six forty you're listening to the John
Cobelt Podcast on the iHeartRadio app. It's the John Cobelt
Show and welcome. We're on every day from three to
six and after six o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand.
That's the podcast on the iHeart app. And a day
ago at this time, we had Spencer Pratt in here
(00:23):
talking about his debate performance. And because he was a
surprise addition to the show and so it was, Doctor
Oz never got a chance to play more than a
couple of clips from the debate, and I really want
to talk about a lot of the exchanges. So we'll
do that next hour, the four o'clock hour, a thorough
a thorough analysis of the Pratt Ramen Bass debate. That'll
(00:46):
be coming up with many clips. Also, we're gonna Bill
Saley coming on, the first Assistant US Attorney. He runs
the Central California office and the District of and he
is going to come out to talk about the great
MacArthur Park bust, which we discussed with Doctor Oz.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Yesterday.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
They arrested a lot of gang members who had been
funneling a lot of Sentinel and other drugs into MacArthur Park.
They have ruled MacArthur Park for years. Bass didn't do
anything about it. By the way, Garcetti didn't do anything
about it. And you know what, the Trump administration has
taken over and they're cleaning it up. And some of
(01:27):
the best stuff to make Los Angeles spender has been
done by the Trump administration.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
And that's the truth.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
And Bass, as we saw in the debate, just well,
I'll get to that.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
I'll get to that next hour. If I start, I
won't stop.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
I gotta first tell a story of my own absurd
existence here in the city of Los Angeles. Yesterday, when
Spencer Pratt was in the studio, he was talking about
how he spends a lot of time listening to people
and everybody's pouring out their stories, either in person or
(02:04):
they send him emails or any other way you can communicate.
And he has been listening to the stories and remembering them,
and he told some of them during the debate yesterday,
and that was such a key to his performance, is
that he was talking about real people's lives and Bass
and Ramen were conjuring up a bunch of fake statistics
(02:26):
that nobody believes. I said this a thousand times. I
trust my own.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Eyes, and so today, well, during the.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Discussion with Pratt yesterday, my wife texted me and we
have a dog. He's very old. He's about thirteen and
a half years old. He's a Mini Schnauzer, cute little guy.
We got up as a rescue when he was either
one or two years old. And his which I is it.
(03:00):
It's his right eye. It's compromised. He's he's got a condition.
It's got a long name to it, but it makes
it very susceptible to problems. And somehow he accidentally injured
the eye. Don't know exactly what happened, but he started
pawing at it and pawing at it, which led to
(03:21):
an ulcer in the eye and an infection. And my
wife took him to that yesterday like an eye specialist.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And she was.
Speaker 1 (03:31):
Texting during the show that she pulls up at this
place she'd never been before, to this particular doctor and
Santa Monica Boulevard on the west side now by air miles.
It's a mile and a half from my house and
we live in a nice neighborhood, but you go one
and a half air miles to the south southeast Santa
(03:56):
Monica Boulevard on the west side is an absolute health
whole nightmare.
Speaker 2 (04:01):
It gets really bad. So she's with the dog.
Speaker 1 (04:05):
The dog has a cone on his head, you know
those plastic cones, so he doesn't rub the eye anymore,
and so she feels a little uh unbalanced, uh, you know, vulnerable.
There's a there's parking spaces nearby, but she doesn't want
to take them because she says there was about six
(04:27):
mental patients, drug addicts, creeps wandering around. She parks across
the street. Now she's got a cross Santa Monica Boulevard
with with the dog and two guys, two thug guys
goons pedal by on bikes and they look at her
(04:47):
and suddenly they're they're turning their bikes around and coming
back at her. Scurries across the street in half a panic,
goes inside to the VETS office, tells the two women
at the reception desk what was going on out there,
because you know, there were a lot of creepy people.
And the reception women said, oh, yeah, well, yesterday somebody
(05:11):
got stabbed right outside the office, stabbed to death, seriously
homeless people probably, and one guy's murdered right outside the office.
It's funny how you just sense, you know, you get
out of your car and you know this is bad.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
All right.
Speaker 1 (05:33):
Today I had to go to the vet, little follow
up visit, medication adjustment. I got to the same vet
by myself. I had to bring the dog. He's wearing
the cone, and I come across exactly the intersection she
was describing yesterday, and it was described it perfectly. Yes,
they're all sorts of mental patient, vagrant lunatics stumbling around,
(05:57):
weaving around. I go park my car are on the
side street, and nobody's parked on that block. It seemed
the whole area seemed abandoned in some way. There's just
an emptiness to it. There's a parking meter, and I
(06:17):
briefly thought about sliding in my credit card. I thought, no,
there are too many weirdos wandering around. I'm not gonna
stand there with my dog and he's wearing his plastic
cone and I'm gonna start fumbling with the credit card
trying to slide it in and out of the parking meter.
That's because if somebody comes to me, what am I
(06:39):
gonna do? And it's the dog, I'm worried about. Right,
if there's some kind of scuffle, you know, the dog
will get loose, I'll accidentally let go of the leash,
the dog will run into traffic. With his cone on,
he can't see around him. Oh so I thought, you
know what, I'm not gonna stop and fiddle with because
the parking meters half of him don't work. The credit
card is hard to slide in and out. So I'm
not dealing with this. So I go inside. It takes about,
(07:04):
I don't know, forty five minutes to go through whatever
the dog needed. I come back out and I didn't
notice this for a couple hours, but I'd gotten a ticket.
I got a ticket for seventy three dollars. And this
was a moment where I just wanted to get on
my hind legs and roar at the moon. It's like, you,
(07:25):
sons of you bastards. You create this wildly unsafe place.
A guy dies on this corner two days ago. My
wife's got to deal with two weirdos on bikes menacing her.
There's all other various transients and drug addicts wandering around.
So when I get out with the dog, I'm a
(07:46):
little I'm a little wacky You know, I'm not gonna
I'm not gonna play with the parking meter. And of course,
of course, seventy three dollars ticket, seventy three dollars ticket.
That's the tax I have to pay for not wanting
to die at the hands of one of Karen Bass's
mental patients in her outdoor asylum. I get charged for
(08:09):
that seventy three dollars. It's it's ten thirty in the morning.
There's parking spaces everywhere. Nobody's parked there, and that should
have been a tip off. I don't you know, it
seemed empty, but I didn't. I didn't do a I
didn't do a close look on how many businesses were
actually empty. I guess probably most of them are. And
(08:31):
there's no customers, so there's no parking. But that bastard
parking attendant gave me a seventy three dollars ticket. If
you know, it's probably one of those little troll ladies,
one of those little gerbil ladies.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
They all seem to look alike, and I'm thinking, yeah, this,
this is Los Angeles. This is effing insane. I'm just
absolutely insane.
Speaker 1 (08:54):
I just got taxed because I was freaked out about
all the lunatics standing around on the street corner. Oh,
I'm trying to get the dog into the vet. Yeah,
that's that's daily life here. If you're a safe in
Orange or Ventura County or up in the mountains somewhere,
stay where you are, all right. This place, this place
(09:15):
ought to be. They ought to put a big cage
around it. When we come back. I had a better
day though in a guy in Venice. Guy in Venice
almost had his arm hacked off by one of these
mental patients. Story just broke in the California Post. I'll
tell you about that when we return. And then Bill
a Sale coming on right after three point thirty.
Speaker 3 (09:38):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
Bill a Sale, the first assistant to US Attorney for
the Central Coast, for the Central District here in Los Angeles.
He is going he's the US attorney for our area
in short and we're gonna have him on to talk
about the big mccarth their park bust yesterday. All right,
So I just told my experience just wanting to take
(10:08):
my poor little dog to the vet and having to
go to a an intersection where there was a murder
two days ago, and my wife was surrounded by a
whole bunch of vagrants and mental patients. I had to
go back today with the dog and was really jumpy
(10:28):
about it. So it was the dog we left the car,
and I didn't I didn't put anything in the parking
meter because I didn't want to stand there and risk
you know, getting well, getting my arm chopped off, which
is what happened to the guy in Venice. California Post
just had this story out this afternoon. There is a
(10:51):
guy named Justin Tucker. You're not gonna believe, you will
believe this story, but this is really really crazy, all right.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
This is on.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Rose Avenue in Venice, which has become a notorious thoroughfare.
Justin Tucker is the name of the guy who used
a sixty inch samurai blade and nearly whacked off the
arm of a twenty seven year old victim. This happened
(11:20):
on the street about six thirty last night at seven
twenty Rows Avenue. Thinks Justin Tucker. He was identified by
the building's management. Take a guess what kind of building
this was? Yes, you are correct, it's the Venice Housing corporation,
(11:44):
a nonprofit, A nonprofit that provides low income housing and
job services.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, that's your tax money.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
So they got this whack job alleged suspect Justin.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
Justin Tucker.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
By the way, just wait, I have a photo in
front of me that is I can't I can't wait
to describe to you. If you're eating, you might want
to put your food down. So the nonprofit puts out
a poster because Justin Tucker and his sword got away,
and they write, you may be aware there was an
(12:27):
incident in front of Rose Apartments this evening. Unfortunately, our neighbor,
Justin Tucker was involved. Our neighbor. He was the guy
with the sword. He wasn't the victim. He's the guy
at the sword. He is suspected to be armed and dangerous.
Not a good neighbor. This is what these crazy nonprofits
(12:50):
are about. They put in a poster saying, our neighbor
here is on the loose. He's a white man in
his late twenties with a short haircut. There were two witnesses,
probably two of the homeless people. They said Tucker had
just returned to seven twenty rows Avenue from a shopping
(13:12):
trip to a smart and final and Tucker was accosted
by a man in front of the building who asked
Tucker if he had any drugs. Well, Tucker went up
to his unit and returned with a sword, and then
they swung at the at the left arm of this
man and blood started spurting everywhere. And the photos that
(13:36):
I'm looking at, yeah, there's blood all over the sidewalk,
all over this low cement wall in front of the building.
Holy moly, this guy lost a lot of blood. Horrified
bystander called nine to one one oh cops showed up,
started the paramedics and they tried to stop the bleeding
(13:58):
and get him to the hospital. And a woman who
lived nearby said she was called to the scene by
a friend who was panicking who lives at seven twenty
Rows Avenue, and when she got there, she saw.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
The victim holding his arm above.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
His head, wrapped in a T shirt a plastic bandage,
but it was squirting blood.
Speaker 2 (14:17):
Quote the blood was pulling under his arm and on
the wall. Real quickly.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Walking by was somebody in a hospital uniform, a nurse,
and he went to the car and came with a tourniquet,
and Tucker was gone by top of the police came.
He ran away on foot and eventually disappeared. They're still
looking for him as of this writing.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (14:43):
The co executive directors of the Venice Community Housing Project,
Erica Lee and Alison Riley. Oh, I should look them up,
see how much they make to bring this kind of
mental patient mayhem into the neighborhood. We take safety concerns seriously.
They said, this is why nobody ever wants low income
(15:04):
housing in your neighborhood. Nobody ever wants any one of
these homeless services apartment complexes because they're filled with crazy,
violent lunatics. I mean, he doesn't bother Erica Lee and
Allison Riley. They got to go home every night. The
woman who had responded to help the victim said she'd
(15:27):
been assaulted on the block and once heard another woman
screaming that she was being raped in the alley nearby.
These are horrible things happening every day. People on drugs
walking around like zombies. Yeah, that was like the neighborhood
I was in. It's not safe. Nobody comes to help.
The block deteriorated when the low income housing complex opened
there several years ago, and police don't come very much,
(15:51):
those low income housing units. That's death for the neighborhood.
Then nobody can live there. Dumbest, dumbest, stupidest cruel idea.
This I wonder if this is something Bonning brought in.
Oh my god, you.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Imagine that.
Speaker 1 (16:13):
Kyle almost had his arm hacked off because but you
know what did he do? He was trying to score
some drugs from this Justin Tucker. According to the story,
Tucker just could have said no. But because these people
are mentally ill, wildly unstable, you don't know what they're
gonna do. He could have said, yeah, I got some
(16:34):
in the apartment. No, I don't have him, get away
from me, ignore him. Instead he gets a samurai sword.
How come all these guys have samurai swords? How many
vagrant attack stories have I read where the attacker has
a samurai sword? I don't know anybody with one, but
it seems every other homeless guy has one. We come
back big MacArthur park Bus Bill A. Saley, who's the
(16:55):
US Attorney for the Central District here in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2 (16:58):
He's coming up to be our guest. Next.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
We are on from three to six every day after
six o'clock John Cobelt Show on demand on the iHeart app.
You can follow us at social on social media John
Cobelt Radio, and subscribe on YouTube. We're live on YouTube
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(17:27):
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And if you'd like to watch, get to get to
YouTube immediately. John Cobelt Show is the way to find us,
all right. Next up is Bill Saley, and he is
(17:48):
the first Assistant US Attorney. He's running the Central Central
District Office here in Los Angeles, and there was a
big bust that his office was involved in and twenty
five people were arrested. These are the gang members that
have been supplying all the fentanyl and the meth into
(18:13):
MacArthur Park. And that's why MacArthur Park has been scary
and disgusting and horrible for so many years. Karen Bass
didn't do anything about it. The only time she was
in MacArthur Park was to run and scream at ICE agents,
but finally the FEDS came in with the help of
the LAPED. We're gonna talk with Bill le Sale about
(18:34):
all this right now. Bill, How are you doing?
Speaker 2 (18:38):
Good?
Speaker 4 (18:38):
John, glad to have you back in your original time.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Yes, it's really good to be here.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
What what?
Speaker 4 (18:46):
What?
Speaker 1 (18:47):
First of all, would you do explain who you arrested
and what you arrested him for. Let's go through the
basics to start.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
Yeah, let's back up. So actually this you fourt to
call it phase one. Phase one started in March when
we indicted in a usted a bunch of the MS.
I'm sorry, not MS, but the Eighteenth Street Gang members,
the leadership, the people actually running the gang organization. That
was done by FBI. That was in March, and they're
the main gang, remember that claims this territory, this the
(19:16):
north part of the MacArthur Park is claimed by the
Eighteenth Street Gang. So Phase one was taking out their
leadership structure. We knew that taking out the leadership was
not going to have a major impact there at the park,
so right after that we initiated Phase two. Phase two
was we got with the DEA and we have these
drug introduction task forces with local law enforcement. So Phase
(19:39):
two was for the next two months we conducted intense
twenty four hour surveillance of the park so we could
learn who the street level dealers are and where they
were going to get their new supply from. And we
did that for about forty five days, and then we
got warrants for everybody that we identified as being involved
in selling drugs there in MacArthur Park. Those are the
(20:01):
twenty five people that we got arrest warrants for, and
then we also got warrants to search locations that were
being used to stash the drugs, and that's why we
rated those particular businesses there at MacArthur Park. It doesn't
mean that the business owner themselves is in on it,
but the drug dealers are using those businesses to hold
the drugs, to hold the backpacks, to hold the supply
for the day, so it's not out in plane view
(20:23):
while they're selling the drugs. And whether the business owners
do that willingly or they're forced to do it, you know,
we'll have to figure that out. But we wanted to
have a big impact in the park and that's what
you saw happen this week, and.
Speaker 1 (20:34):
You made arrests all over the place, right, not just
MacArthur Park, but other cities as well.
Speaker 4 (20:40):
Yeah, so the ones not at the park, well, first
of all, these people come and go, so they're not
always at the park, so we needed to arrest them
wherever they were at the time. But the two other
locations we searched were the higher up folks that were
supplying the drugs to the dealers in MacArthur Park. One
of them is the daughter of one of the Eighteenth
(21:01):
Street gang leaders we arrested in March, so then her
daughter and I think that was featured in the California Post.
She was one of the people we arrested this week
because she picked up where her mom left off, and
then she was the main supplier and one of those
houses where we got the nineteen kilos of fentanyl, which
is a crazy amount of fentanyl to have some location.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
Nineteen kilos, I mean, give people an idea of how
much damage nineteen kilos can do. I mean that could
kill tons and tons of people, hundreds.
Speaker 4 (21:32):
Of thousands of lethal doses just in that amount. And
so it's hundreds of thousands of doses and mind you're
sitting now, is like they're so just careless with how
dealing it there actually will just they'll sprinkle the powder.
They're not even packaging anymore. They'll just grab a handful
and they'll they'll give it to the homeless be or
the junkies out there that need it. These people are
(21:53):
building a big resistance to it, and so they're making
super fentanyl. They're making super mess And in fact, I've
also heard that they have two different concentrations depending on
how experienced of an attict you're on, because they don't
want to kill you, right, they want you to come back,
so they'll give you the lower concentrated version if you're new,
and then they have the more souped up version if
(22:13):
you're if you're experienced in using fentanyl. And it has
about a street value of ten million dollars of what
we recovered just this week.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
Do you know how long this particular operation has been
going on? How many years?
Speaker 4 (22:26):
Well, you mean at MacArthur Park, Yeah, well.
Speaker 2 (22:27):
Yeah, with the people with this this particular you do gang.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
Yeah, I think it's been going on for decades. I
mean it predates my time here. No one seems to
really have cared or done much about it. They've sort
of normalized open air drug markets, whether it's skid Rower
MacArthur Park. But you know, I got in here. I
mean I got a lot to I got a lot
on my plate. But one of the things we want
to do is get rid of these open air drug markets.
I had never been to MacArthur Park, I'll be honest
(22:54):
with you. I went about a month ago undercover with
with the DEA to kind of get a sense of
what's going on there.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
I was shocked.
Speaker 4 (23:01):
It is zombie land. I could not believe this was
the United States of America. I could not believe it.
It looked like a third world country. People have needles
in open air shooting up. You see them fold over
in real time. People o ding and the city just
pays the hand out needles. And they have over adose
response teams that come and shoot you up with narcans
(23:22):
so you can keep going.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
That's what's crazy.
Speaker 1 (23:25):
Ken Bass's contribution to this is to give them needles,
to give them fresh meth pipes, and if you have
an overdose, to send a rescue crew over there. And
then when the narcan wears off, they go and get
another sentinel fix.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
It's so nuts, it's so crazy.
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Claims she's against it. Now, she claims she's against it.
So we'll see that, and I will give credit where
credits do. LAPD was a partner in this investigation, So
Jim McDonald's was a part of this. They send a
hundred of their officers on Wednesday to assist us. We
had two hundred Fettle agents, one hundred LAPD and the
smile on the faces of the local law enforcement, the
(24:05):
local LAPD officers, they were beaming that the morale was
high because this is overdue. This is what they want
to do, but they're you know, their hands are tied
by these ridiculous state policies, these city council policies, and
so you know, everyone was very excited and proud to
be part of this operation. And we're going to continue,
by the way, So now phase three, everyone says, what's next,
(24:26):
you know, aren't they just going to come back? Well,
the good news is the park's been pretty quiet for
the last few days. It's not going to be like
that forever. But what we're going to do is have
a sustained effort. And so I got a call from
Nathan Hawkman, he told, and he's right. He says, Look,
you have the tools to go after the dealers, but
you can't do anything about the users. That's where I
can come in. And so now with Prop thirty six,
Nathan has tools, and so we're going to team up
(24:48):
with him, and we're going to go after both users
and dealers together and hopefully get them in a rehab
or jail if they don't want it.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
Wow, I mean, is this something that the city could
have taken care of years ago? Or did they let
Obviously they let it go so far you had to
get the Feds in or you.
Speaker 4 (25:07):
Can't in California. It's really you know, I blame Sacramento
more than anyone, and maybe that's I'm biased because I
was up there with those idiots. But Sacramento has taken
away any teeth to the criminal justice system. So it's
not really the cities. It's not one hundred percent the
city's fault, because when you get arrested by LAPD, there's
nowhere to send you. There's no prison, The prisons are full.
(25:30):
They emptied half the prisons, and under Prop forty seven,
there was no meaningful consequence to using drugs. It was
just a ticket and slap on the wrist. So these
guys when they get arrested by LAPD, they don't care.
They're like, I'll be out in a couple hours. It's
not a big deal of them. But when the Feds
show up, and that's why they needed us, you're not
looking at a couple hours in jail. You're looking at
ten years minimum in federal prison. Oh so, no, I
(25:53):
don't think they could do it without us. You need
the federal government. You need the DEA to come in
and deal with the gangsters, get them law up for
a long time. You need to deal with the drug dealers,
get them locked up for a long time. We have
the tools, and like I said on the on Wednesday,
our guns are bigger than theirs. So that that's the way,
that's just the law. That that's just the way it works.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Bill.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
You you are doing an incredible job helping to clean
up Los Angeles uh and and doing things that the
state in the city has is not interested in doing.
Uh and, And a lot of people really appreciate it.
I mean, everybody desperately wants to have a normal life
here in Los Angeles, and it's gotten just so chaotic
(26:36):
and just so dangerous out there, but saying so thank
you and thank to all your your all your agents,
everybody on your staff and everybody at l A p D.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
You pulled this off. This was a big one. It's
a big one.
Speaker 4 (26:50):
Morales through the roof and we're not done. And actually
I'm seeing a sea change. I mean when Karen bass
is saying we shouldn't be handing out needles, that's that's
not something to to normal.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, well make sure we got to make sure she
sticks to that. Thank you Bill for coming on.
Speaker 4 (27:03):
Yes, you're welcome.
Speaker 2 (27:05):
Thank you Bill Sale.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
He's the first assistant US Attorney for the Central District
here in California. And yeah, ten million dollars worth of
fentandel seized MacArthur Park, twenty five gang members arrested, and
federal charges tend to stick and federal sentences are long.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Not the nonsense we have in California under new symptom.
Speaker 3 (27:29):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
We are live streaming right now on YouTube and I
just got weird that we are going to extend the
live stream another hour, another hour, all the way to
five o'clock because after Kurzer's News at four, we're going
to do an in depth, intensive analysis of the entire
Pratt bass Ramen debate, which I was going to do
(27:56):
yesterday but preempted by Spencer Pratt himself. He came out
for an hour and then doctor Oz came on and
all that happened in the final minutes before the show,
and so I decided, well, we're going to do it
today because there was so much in there that has
to be dissected, so that that's next hour. Well, I
got a minute or two here though, I don't want
(28:17):
to overlook this because Steve Hilton has found something in
a some kind of housing bill that the Democrats are
proposing in the Assembly, and just to give you, like
just a line and then you can hear Steve describe it.
He put out a video. It's a bill that is
(28:39):
for new housing that's built single family housing. This would
add fifteen hundred dollars a month to the cost. They
want to tax you extra because if you live in
a single family home that means you're going to be driving.
And if you're driving, that's bad and they want to
punish you. And so they have a vehicle miles travel
(29:01):
tax embedded in this housing bill. Let Steve Hilton explain.
Speaker 5 (29:05):
This all right, VMT. Do you know what that is?
You need to know VMT. It stands for Vehicle miles traveled.
And it's yet another sneaky, stealthy way that the Democrats
in charge of California want to gouge you for the
crime of driving your car. So this latest version, I mean,
(29:27):
this comes on top, by the way of the highest
gas taxes in the country, highest vehicle registration, everything they
can do to punish people who drive. This thing we've
dug into was actually started in something that Newsome touted
as the solution to the housing crisis, to bring down
housing costs. It's a bill last year called AB one thirty,
(29:51):
and hidden away in it is this thing called the
VMT Mitigation Bank, a new tool for housing and infrastructure.
What it actually does, according to some estimates, is to
charge you for every new single family home. Remember, they
don't want single family homes. They're trying to punish single
(30:12):
family homes. They want to stop single family homes from
being built. And so they're going to put this charger
at VMT. Because if you build a new home people
are going to drive to their new home. That's vehicle
miles traveled. So to try and stop all that. Because
they want to shove apartment buildings into existing neighborhoods instead
of building new single family homes. They are trying to
(30:34):
sneak in a charge we frit of one thousand, three
hundred and fifty dollars per month for twenty years on
every new single family home. And this is in the bill,
the AB one thirty that Gavin Newson said would solve
the housing crisis. They don't want to solve the housing crisis.
(30:55):
They don't want to solve anything. They just want to
charge you more and in return you get less. That's
why we need change in California. And when I'm governor,
all this nonsense will be scrapped.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
We need Hilton as governor, need Hilton as governor, and
we need we need Pratt as the mayor. Because again
I didn't see this discussed. I don't see this reported on.
You buy a new single family home, now the bill
has not passed yet. You buy a new single family home,
you get charged to tax a mitigation fee because you
(31:28):
means you're gonna be driving a lot. Thirteen hundred and
fifty a month. I guess that's the average amount of
mileage you drive. The whatever formula they've got, that is
so horrid.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
That is so you get punished for wanting to give
your family a house.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
You work, you save, you have a family, you all
need a house, and now here's a penalty because you
want to drive to work.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
It's a penalty for driving to work.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
So that's high on the priority list. That's Steve Hilton,
and he's been doing tremendous work here. You know, you've
got the ballot in the kitchen. Hilton for governor, Pratt
for mayor. Let's go already we come back. We're going
to do the whole debate from Wednesday, and Michael Kurzier
is live in the KFI twenty four hour news room.
(32:25):
You've been listening to the John Cobelt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
forty from three to six pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
KFI Am six More stimulating talk
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John Kobylt
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