April 18, 2025 • 26 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 1 (04/18) - Michael Monks comes on the show to talk about Palisades residents demanding answers as the city’s $10 million recovery firm offers few details of the work being done. More on all the wasteful government spending. LAX is sliding down the list of busiest airports.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome, how are you? It's good that you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
We're always on every day Monday through Friday from one
to four o'clock and after four o'clock every day we
become a podcast John Cobelt Show on demand also on
the iHeart app. It's the same as the radio show.
You can listen to what you missed coming up next hour.
USC Professor Michael mcchey we had him on a couple
of weeks ago because he had a bombshell of a study.
(00:34):
He studied fifty years worth of California gas prices and
found out that the government has largely inflicted the excessive
gas prices on us. It is, he said, largely self inflicted.
There is little evidence of the oil companies price gouging,
(00:55):
price manipulating.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
To me, it's do some lying is ass off and
it's got to stop.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
The truth is that we've got gas that as of
yesterday was four dollars and eighty five cents a gallon
on average for regular and there are states back east
that are down around two seventy and it is so atrocious,
and there are several rounds of price increases coming, including
(01:25):
one potentially in the next year when the Valero refinery
in northern California closes down. We used to have forty
three refineries in the state. We're down to about eight,
and the Valero refinery. That would be a big blow
because we don't have much margin of Vara yet and
that a loan's going to drive the price up. Anyway,
(01:46):
Michael MChE wanted to talk about that, and we will
discuss it within Coeneugh coming up after two o'clock. All right,
let's get now to the ideocy of the Karen Bass administration.
If you remember, she briefly hired for a half million
dollars or so for three months Steve Soberoff, the businessman,
(02:09):
to kick start the rebuild, and then she and sober
Off had a big falling out. She pulled back the money,
he was pissed off, and he just a few days
ago was the end of his term. Bass switched to
something called Haggarty Consulting, a company out of Iowa, a
consulting firm. Beware of consulting firms because the word consulting
(02:33):
doesn't tell you what they do. They had a public
hearing at the Pacific Palisades Community Council this week. They
were selected by BASS to help with the restoration and
the environmental mitigation. Michael Monks was there and he's got
some audio clips of it, and because a lot of
(02:53):
people in the Palisades were unhappy, it didn't take long
for the crowd to start to turn on the Haggarty people.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Michael, how are you good afternoon to you John.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, this was absolutely a disastrous presentation for those consultants,
And I just want to make sure the audience understands
that the Mayor Bess hired Steve Soberoff as a fire recoveriesar,
but also hired this consulting firm separately. This is a
ten million dollar contract possibly if if it pays out
(03:24):
in its entirety. It's a contract that basically says, we'll
pay you up to ten million dollars for your work
over the course of the next year. And the questions
that a representative from Haggardy consultant faced by an increasingly
angry group of Palisades residents was what do you have
to show for your work? In fact, what work have
(03:46):
you done? If we got time John, I clipped some
sound and I'd love to play a little bit for you.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Okay, can you stay a second segment too, I would
love to. Okay, good, because I want to get all
your clips in. Well, let's start.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Okay, let's hear the first Eric, give me.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
A concrete example of something you did in a prior
disaster such as Lehina or Paradise or wherever you guys
go to do this that is not just another layer
of bureaufic.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
As a residents, it feels like after the presentation, I'm
looking for what did you just see?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Basically, can you tell me you did? Tell me how
this is relevant to me?
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Moved things forward and moved the needle, and I'd appreciate
hearing it now.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Not later.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Now listen to the silence. Okay, back that back Harrison.
Harrison's the guy from at some point silence.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
Hello, Yeah, you know I I don't mean to be disrespectful,
and I do intend to provide that information. We also
have a website that has a lot of examples of
our work. You know, I I what I I want.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Off the top of your head, just something that you did.
I mean, it's got to be a memorable moment for
you if this is what you specialize in.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, John, these these residents were not clicking on the website. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
It was basically visit our website and that will tell
you what we do. So I've got more of that.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
For you now. It was this a zoom meeting. It
wasn't online meeting.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
They did meet online and it streamed online and that's
how I got to see it. And the residents, they
really gave them an earful and you'll want to hear
the rest of this.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It was pretty embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
That is like the longest silence I ever heard. It
wasn't that hard a question, not at all. It's like
it's like Elon Musk question, So what.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Do you do all day? What did you do?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
But it's shocking how consultants speak in a certain speech
pattern and I think any type of English language question
throws them off a bit.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Okay, I want more of this and Michael will have
it when we come back.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI A
six forty.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
We continue with Michael Monks. He covered this community meeting
Pacific Palisades. Everybody's on this big Zoom call to talk
to this consulting firm called Haggerty, which had gotten a
ten million dollar contract from Karen Bass to help with
recovery from the fire. And apparently they talked for forty
(06:29):
minutes and nobody understood what they said. And when it
came time for questions from the audience, you heard what
Michael played. This woman asked for one concrete example of
what Haggarty did in another similar disaster, such as the
Lahina Paradise fires. And it's the longest silence I've ever
(06:50):
heard my life from the Haggarty official. He had nothing,
He had no concrete example of what his company does
in this situation. So, Michael, what else here?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Well, and let me just also note that this guy
is not like mister Haggerty. He's not, to see always
some mid level guy that got put in this position
but just could not represent the company very well based
on the questions. And so here's a little bit of
what he has to say about what they do.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
You know, So I mean I think that, you know,
I want to I want to go down that road.
You know, every community that we work in their recovery
and what we do with them is kind of unique.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Okay, just one thing though, I mean, this crowd is not.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
So you know, in communities we've worked in where we've
worked on long term recovery, we've done work to make
sure that loan processing is faster and more effective and
more communicated to communities we've made well. See, So if
I give an example of apologies, but if I give
an example I could give. I mean, this is literally what.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
We do all day, every day.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
But he still about opt in and out opt out
processes and making sure the community is aware of those
and trying to leverage all the assets to making sure
that as many people can go through that process as
they can. Those are all things we're supporting. So I
would really suggest that you know, in in this case,
almost everything that is happening when when there's augmentation support
(08:16):
augmentation the augmentation support that that's the point of it.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
The reason why I wanted to play all of that
in its entirety for you.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And you've already reacted the way I expected. Did you
understand support? Did you understand about Oh? I didn't understand.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So whenever whenever there's a meeting, right and some Wiener
stands up and starts talking about leveraging the assets. I
know he's a complete empty suit. It is leveraging the
it is.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I want to I want you to know you're not
alone in that feeling. The residents had something to say
about augmentation.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
And we're trying to make it that means.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I don't know, I don't even know what is augmentation support.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
It means.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
It just means more people working on the recovery every
day so that the missions and the work of the
recovery can happen more fast, can happen more effectively and efficiently.
So you're bringing more people to bear, so they're less
thinly stretched, and you're achieving work faster.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So that is what augmentation is.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
John, and the people weren't having it either, And I
know that you've got more to get to today. But
our friend David Howard, who works with us here at
iHeart in Los Angeles, is a Palisades resident whose family
did list their home in that fire, and who was
on this call, and I spoke to him. I'm gonna
have a full interview with him about it tomorrow night
(09:43):
on Michael Monk's Reports at seven o'clock here on KFI.
But he spoke out on the call to the haggardy consultant.
Let's hear from him.
Speaker 7 (09:50):
I'm angry, really angry, because I spent twenty five minutes
listening to you speak and I don't know what you said.
Oh yeah, okay, and.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
It's not great.
Speaker 7 (10:01):
It's not to rip you or go, but you got
to start providing answers. And when you tell us you're
alignment the mayor's office, that's a problem because she has
not been there for us before the fire, and she's
not here for us right now. So the lip service
and the holding hands and the kumbaya it's over. It's over.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Now.
Speaker 7 (10:19):
You got to start producing ten million dollars, ten million dollars,
pay me ten million dollars, and I'll do exactly what
you just did. Say nothing.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So David Howard's remarks there, John are pretty representative of
the call in general. People not happy with the progress
of the recovery, and certainly not with the amount of
money that's been set aside for this consulting firm that
could not explain its results.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That is that is beautiful, that is great stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
So you've got a show on this weekend, what time
and day, Saturday.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Night, seven o'clock Michael Monks reports every Saturday night, kind
of going over what happened in the week, with some
fresh interviews as well, and we will have more on
this meeting and a full interview with David Howard about
what Palisades residents really say that they want a need
right now in the wake of this recovery.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Well, we stay on top of this because I don't
want them ever to rest.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
That was atrocious, That really was horrible.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
All right, Thanks Michael, You've got John Michael MUCKs from
a KFI news.
Speaker 6 (11:21):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
We're gonna have Michael miche on the USC professor right
after two o'clock.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
He had the study we.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Discussed a couple of weeks ago that the California government
is largely responsible for the massive gas price situation we
have In California, we pay forty five a gallon. Other
states pay as little as two seventy. In fact, there's
twenty one states that pay less than three bucks a gallon.
(11:52):
We're at for eighty five. And he says mostly that
is the government that is taxes and fees and policies
and regulations. They created the monster Newsome is lying about
it when he says that the oil companies are gouging us.
Michael MChE found little evidence that the oil companies have
ever gouged us in the last fifty years or manipulated
(12:15):
the price in any way. It's really important because there
are three things that will be happening in the next
few months to drive up the price of gas. One
is a sixty five cent a gallon increase because of
a new California Air Resources Board fuel standard. It's called
(12:37):
a low Carbon fuel standard. Add sixty five cents to
gallon of gas. Just from that. There is an automatic
gas tax that kicks in on the first of July,
and Valero announced that within a year they are going
to be likely closing down their refinery in Benetia up
in northern California, and we had two other two other.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Refineries.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
It was announced that they were going to close here
in southern California in the Carson, Los Angeles area. That
was Phillip sixty six. We used to have forty three refineries.
Now we're down to about eight. And all these things
are going to drive up the price of gas, and
we're already paying more than two dollars a gallon than
many states. Michael MChE is coming on because this is this,
(13:27):
this should be the number one crisis. And you know,
for all the people running for governor, and I think
there's probably about seventeen of them who's talking about this,
I'm just shocked there's nobody interested in finally blowing the
whistle and saying the hell with this. Forty five a
gallon headed for five point fifty five sixty five seventy
(13:50):
within a few months. Hello, Why everyone's putting up with
it is baffling. There is a tremendous amount of waste
in government. And again, Michael Michelle, beyond after two o'clock
and at the Internal Revenue Service, who would have thought?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
New York Post has this exclusive story employees at the
Internal Revenue Service. There's a lot of squealing going on
because thousands are taking the buyouts, the early retirement. In fact,
this week there was some news that one third of
the IRS is quitting. And they've gone through several IRS executives,
(14:35):
several commissioners just in the last few weeks. But does
it really matter how many employees are working for the
IRS and how many quit because as it turns out,
they rarely show up for work. In fact, it's in
their contract that they don't have to show up to
(14:55):
work very often. The most recent collective bargaining agreement broken
between the IRS executives and the union, employees were able
to work from home eight out of ten days. Their
(15:15):
pay period lasts two weeks, ten work days. Eight out
of ten. They don't have to show up eight out
of ten. And here's a kicker. This was a lengthy
negotiation between the IRS and the union. We paid for
the negotiation, that's right. The whole negotiation was paid by taxpayers,
(15:44):
and in the end everybody agreed that the government workers
who were paying for don't have to show up for
work eighty percent of the time. The IRS management wanted
them to show up.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Six days a week. No, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
They wanted him to show up two days a week,
four days for every pay period. That was the offer,
and the union said no, and they won on that point.
So now they only have to show up two days
each pay period, one day a week. The union is
(16:30):
called the National Treasury Employees Union, and the whole deal
was negotiated using taxpayer funding. In fact, do you know
agencies in the federal government spend one hundred and sixty
million dollars a year on negotiating union contracts. There's also
(16:58):
apparently what they call bloated bonus structures. How do you
get a bonus when you're not shown up for work?
But the the IRS employees do. IRS employees who are
rated as outstanding and fully successful get extra money. Now,
(17:22):
Trump had signed an executive order directing all agencies and
departments to take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements.
He wanted everybody coming in five days a week. And
this is run into all kinds of pushback and resistance.
They all should be fired. If you don't want to
(17:42):
show up for work, you don't have to. You don't
have to have the job.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
I don't. I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
All my life, all my mom and dad's life, it
was obvious you showed up at work to get paid,
and you did the work. And here they don't do
the work, They don't show up for work, and they.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Want full pay with bonuses.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And I'm supposed to have a heart attack and die
because the thought of them are resigning now because they
don't like the new terms.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
And remember their.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Whole purpose is to make sure they take my money
from me and.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You you work for them.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
These IRS employees their entire career, their entire existence, depends
on them successfully separating you from your money. And if
they don't like what you're paying, they could put you
through all kinds of hell to wring more out of you.
They don't have to show up for work, they get
(18:50):
some nonsense bonus. And I'm supposed to be devastated. What
I'm going to march in the streets to save the
IRS jobs? Oh my god, Then I have to work
twice every two weeks.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
What a load of nonsense.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
No.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
I hope Trump puts the whole Irs out of business.
I really do.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
When we come back, Well, two o'clock is michaelmche from
USC we're going to talk about the gas price increases.
In fact, I'm gonna go check and see what the
latest prices are today. This is really crucial stuff and ordinarily,
entire political careers would be destroyed if the price of
gas was almost double any other state, but not in
(19:35):
Bizarro California. Again, that's coming up after two o'clock.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
Michael mcchee, you're listening to John Cobels on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
John Cobelt here and after two o'clock Michael MChE from
USC he was done with us a couple of weeks
ago with his study fifty years of looking at California
gas prices and said it's mostly self inflict by the
California government against us. It's not the oil companies. Not
much evidence of price gouging over the years. And now
(20:07):
we have a new story this week that Valero is
closing a refinery in Benetia, northern California. And we have
dropped from forty three refineries to eight, and we're losing
this one. There's two more in the Carsonarrea there being
shut down, and you're looking to gas somewhere between five
fifty and six dollars a gallon sometime this year. Now
(20:33):
La Times have a story about you know, i'd every
time I see a story about where there's some kind
of loss of business, some kind of budget problems governments
are having. They all still as a reflex five years
later say well, you know, it was the pandemic, and.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I saw the same thing in this story.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Lax is sliding down the list of the world's busiest airports.
Excuse me, not that I really care, because the fewer
people at the airport the better. As far as I'm concerned,
I don't want to be at the world's most popular,
busiest airport. But it does show you what LA's perception
(21:21):
is in the rest of the world. Fewer people want
to come here because it's not that we're still recovering
from the pandemic. They get about well as in twenty nineteen,
LAX got eighty eight million passengers a year, and they
(21:44):
had planned for one hundred and ten million passengers in
twenty twenty eight. You know all that construction that's going
on at LAX, right, Partly that's because they there'd be
one hundred and ten million people a year coming through.
Now it looks like there's only only going to be
(22:06):
ninety million a year coming through. So they've spent a
lot of money upgrading and expanding the airport, and people
aren't going to show aren't showing up, and it's not
the pandemic. Compared to twenty nineteen, the overall number for
(22:28):
twenty twenty six will be about fifteen percent below the
pre pandemic level. And they keep using that word as
if that's the cause. It's like, no, the world sees
that Los Angeles is a disgusting cesspool. You don't think
all this stuff has been on television ten years of
disgusting vagrants in the streets doing drugs, acting crazy, all
(22:52):
the mental patients, all the poop.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
And the needles. How terrifying is that.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
For a family who wants to take their kids on
a vacation, you get to go to La You're gonna
go what in the Hollywood Walk of Fame where you
know every star has a pile of poop sitting on it.
And the thing is like Atlanta's passenger account I grew
(23:20):
by more than three percent, Dallas fort Worth, their airport
went up by seven percent. In fact, Atlanta's has one
hundred and eighty eight million passengers and Dallas has eighty
seven million. And lax is is they're spending thirty billion
(23:43):
dollars on the overhaul. And this is all supposed to
be done for the twenty twenty eight Summer Olympics, so
thirty billion dollars to make it. If the Olympics weren't happening,
they never would have done any of this. But they
also thought there'd be tens of millions of more passengers,
(24:05):
but none of nobody wants to address the issue about
about city leaders making LA disgusting. I mean, everybody's seen
the fires, right and that LA didn't respond to the
fires properly. And they've seen the homeless situation, they saw
the smash and grab robberies. This stuff, you know, goes
(24:28):
on social media instantly, and that's how people learn about
the world now, scrolling social media.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
By far, that's the number one source of news.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
And so those little clips of LA burning La, homeless
dying in the streets, smashing grab robberies at a jewelry store.
People have been getting this for years and years and years.
You just see a few of those, and you know,
at dinner you're going to say, Hey, what do you
think we go to LA for a vacation this year.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
No, that doesn't look like fun.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
We're gonna step in poop, get stabbed by an ego,
have a homeless person whack us on the head, have
our have our stuff robbed? I mean, all the clips
of tourists getting robbed up in San Francisco, pop open
their trunks and you know, people would park on the
(25:26):
on the side of the street and go into a store,
a restaurant, and here come the thieves and they pop
open the trunk and they run off with all the luggage.
People were doing that at Oakland Airport. People were doing
it at the Oakland Airport rent a car centers. You
can drive up to a rent a car center. Before
(25:49):
you could get out of your car to return it,
the thieves already popped your trunk and ran off of
your luggage, all right, Michael mache Next, Also, people also
probably have a stroke when they land here and find
out you got to pay five bucks a gallon for gas.
Imagine somebody coming from Mississippi. They're paying two sixty nine.
(26:10):
Tennessee's two sixty nine and we're at for eighty four. Well,
we're going to talk to USC professor Michael Machee about
this huge price discreptancy on how it's going to get worse.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
That's next, and in for.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Dembor Markets Heather Brooker live in the CAFI twenty four
our newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to the John Covelt
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't. I am six forty.
Speaker 2 (00:02):
You're listening to the John Cobel Podcast on the iHeartRadio app.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome, how are you? It's good that you're here.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
We're always on every day Monday through Friday from one
to four o'clock and after four o'clock every day we
become a podcast John Cobelt Show on demand also on
the iHeart app. It's the same as the radio show.
You can listen to what you missed coming up next hour.
USC Professor Michael mcchey we had him on a couple
of weeks ago because he had a bombshell of a study.
(00:34):
He studied fifty years worth of California gas prices and
found out that the government has largely inflicted the excessive
gas prices on us. It is, he said, largely self inflicted.
There is little evidence of the oil companies price gouging,
(00:55):
price manipulating.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
To me, it's do some lying is ass off and
it's got to stop.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
The truth is that we've got gas that as of
yesterday was four dollars and eighty five cents a gallon
on average for regular and there are states back east
that are down around two seventy and it is so atrocious,
and there are several rounds of price increases coming, including
(01:25):
one potentially in the next year when the Valero refinery
in northern California closes down. We used to have forty
three refineries in the state. We're down to about eight,
and the Valero refinery. That would be a big blow
because we don't have much margin of Vara yet and
that a loan's going to drive the price up. Anyway,
(01:46):
Michael MChE wanted to talk about that, and we will
discuss it within Coeneugh coming up after two o'clock. All right,
let's get now to the ideocy of the Karen Bass administration.
If you remember, she briefly hired for a half million
dollars or so for three months Steve Soberoff, the businessman,
(02:09):
to kick start the rebuild, and then she and sober
Off had a big falling out. She pulled back the money,
he was pissed off, and he just a few days
ago was the end of his term. Bass switched to
something called Haggarty Consulting, a company out of Iowa, a
consulting firm. Beware of consulting firms because the word consulting
(02:33):
doesn't tell you what they do. They had a public
hearing at the Pacific Palisades Community Council this week. They
were selected by BASS to help with the restoration and
the environmental mitigation. Michael Monks was there and he's got
some audio clips of it, and because a lot of
(02:53):
people in the Palisades were unhappy, it didn't take long
for the crowd to start to turn on the Haggarty people.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Michael, how are you good afternoon to you John.
Speaker 3 (03:03):
Yeah, this was absolutely a disastrous presentation for those consultants,
And I just want to make sure the audience understands
that the Mayor Bess hired Steve Soberoff as a fire recoveriesar,
but also hired this consulting firm separately. This is a
ten million dollar contract possibly if if it pays out
(03:24):
in its entirety. It's a contract that basically says, we'll
pay you up to ten million dollars for your work
over the course of the next year. And the questions
that a representative from Haggardy consultant faced by an increasingly
angry group of Palisades residents was what do you have
to show for your work? In fact, what work have
(03:46):
you done? If we got time John, I clipped some
sound and I'd love to play a little bit for you.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Okay, can you stay a second segment too, I would
love to. Okay, good, because I want to get all
your clips in. Well, let's start.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
Okay, let's hear the first Eric, give me.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
A concrete example of something you did in a prior
disaster such as Lehina or Paradise or wherever you guys
go to do this that is not just another layer
of bureaufic.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
As a residents, it feels like after the presentation, I'm
looking for what did you just see?
Speaker 1 (04:22):
Basically, can you tell me you did? Tell me how
this is relevant to me?
Speaker 4 (04:26):
Moved things forward and moved the needle, and I'd appreciate
hearing it now.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
Not later.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
Now listen to the silence. Okay, back that back Harrison.
Harrison's the guy from at some point silence.
Speaker 5 (04:43):
Hello, Yeah, you know I I don't mean to be disrespectful,
and I do intend to provide that information. We also
have a website that has a lot of examples of
our work. You know, I I what I I want.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Off the top of your head, just something that you did.
I mean, it's got to be a memorable moment for
you if this is what you specialize in.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Yeah, John, these these residents were not clicking on the website. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
It was basically visit our website and that will tell
you what we do. So I've got more of that.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
For you now. It was this a zoom meeting. It
wasn't online meeting.
Speaker 3 (05:25):
They did meet online and it streamed online and that's
how I got to see it. And the residents, they
really gave them an earful and you'll want to hear
the rest of this.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
It was pretty embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (05:37):
That is like the longest silence I ever heard. It
wasn't that hard a question, not at all. It's like
it's like Elon Musk question, So what.
Speaker 1 (05:44):
Do you do all day? What did you do?
Speaker 3 (05:46):
But it's shocking how consultants speak in a certain speech
pattern and I think any type of English language question
throws them off a bit.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Okay, I want more of this and Michael will have
it when we come back.
Speaker 6 (06:00):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI A
six forty.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
We continue with Michael Monks. He covered this community meeting
Pacific Palisades. Everybody's on this big Zoom call to talk
to this consulting firm called Haggerty, which had gotten a
ten million dollar contract from Karen Bass to help with
recovery from the fire. And apparently they talked for forty
(06:29):
minutes and nobody understood what they said. And when it
came time for questions from the audience, you heard what
Michael played. This woman asked for one concrete example of
what Haggarty did in another similar disaster, such as the
Lahina Paradise fires. And it's the longest silence I've ever
(06:50):
heard my life from the Haggarty official. He had nothing,
He had no concrete example of what his company does
in this situation. So, Michael, what else here?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
Well, and let me just also note that this guy
is not like mister Haggerty. He's not, to see always
some mid level guy that got put in this position
but just could not represent the company very well based
on the questions. And so here's a little bit of
what he has to say about what they do.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
You know, So I mean I think that, you know,
I want to I want to go down that road.
You know, every community that we work in their recovery
and what we do with them is kind of unique.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
Okay, just one thing though, I mean, this crowd is not.
Speaker 5 (07:32):
So you know, in communities we've worked in where we've
worked on long term recovery, we've done work to make
sure that loan processing is faster and more effective and
more communicated to communities we've made well. See, So if
I give an example of apologies, but if I give
an example I could give. I mean, this is literally what.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
We do all day, every day.
Speaker 5 (07:54):
But he still about opt in and out opt out
processes and making sure the community is aware of those
and trying to leverage all the assets to making sure
that as many people can go through that process as
they can. Those are all things we're supporting. So I
would really suggest that you know, in in this case,
almost everything that is happening when when there's augmentation support
(08:16):
augmentation the augmentation support that that's the point of it.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
The reason why I wanted to play all of that
in its entirety for you.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
And you've already reacted the way I expected. Did you
understand support? Did you understand about Oh? I didn't understand.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
So whenever whenever there's a meeting, right and some Wiener
stands up and starts talking about leveraging the assets. I
know he's a complete empty suit. It is leveraging the
it is.
Speaker 3 (08:48):
I want to I want you to know you're not
alone in that feeling. The residents had something to say
about augmentation.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
And we're trying to make it that means.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
I don't know, I don't even know what is augmentation support.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
It means.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
It just means more people working on the recovery every
day so that the missions and the work of the
recovery can happen more fast, can happen more effectively and efficiently.
So you're bringing more people to bear, so they're less
thinly stretched, and you're achieving work faster.
Speaker 1 (09:20):
So that is what augmentation is.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
John, and the people weren't having it either, And I
know that you've got more to get to today. But
our friend David Howard, who works with us here at
iHeart in Los Angeles, is a Palisades resident whose family
did list their home in that fire, and who was
on this call, and I spoke to him. I'm gonna
have a full interview with him about it tomorrow night
(09:43):
on Michael Monk's Reports at seven o'clock here on KFI.
But he spoke out on the call to the haggardy consultant.
Let's hear from him.
Speaker 7 (09:50):
I'm angry, really angry, because I spent twenty five minutes
listening to you speak and I don't know what you said.
Oh yeah, okay, and.
Speaker 4 (10:00):
It's not great.
Speaker 7 (10:01):
It's not to rip you or go, but you got
to start providing answers. And when you tell us you're
alignment the mayor's office, that's a problem because she has
not been there for us before the fire, and she's
not here for us right now. So the lip service
and the holding hands and the kumbaya it's over. It's over.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Now.
Speaker 7 (10:19):
You got to start producing ten million dollars, ten million dollars,
pay me ten million dollars, and I'll do exactly what
you just did. Say nothing.
Speaker 3 (10:29):
So David Howard's remarks there, John are pretty representative of
the call in general. People not happy with the progress
of the recovery, and certainly not with the amount of
money that's been set aside for this consulting firm that
could not explain its results.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
That is that is beautiful, that is great stuff.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
So you've got a show on this weekend, what time
and day, Saturday.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
Night, seven o'clock Michael Monks reports every Saturday night, kind
of going over what happened in the week, with some
fresh interviews as well, and we will have more on
this meeting and a full interview with David Howard about
what Palisades residents really say that they want a need
right now in the wake of this recovery.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Well, we stay on top of this because I don't
want them ever to rest.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
That was atrocious, That really was horrible.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
All right, Thanks Michael, You've got John Michael MUCKs from
a KFI news.
Speaker 6 (11:21):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI Am
six forty.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
We're gonna have Michael miche on the USC professor right
after two o'clock.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
He had the study we.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
Discussed a couple of weeks ago that the California government
is largely responsible for the massive gas price situation we
have In California, we pay forty five a gallon. Other
states pay as little as two seventy. In fact, there's
twenty one states that pay less than three bucks a gallon.
(11:52):
We're at for eighty five. And he says mostly that
is the government that is taxes and fees and policies
and regulations. They created the monster Newsome is lying about
it when he says that the oil companies are gouging us.
Michael MChE found little evidence that the oil companies have
ever gouged us in the last fifty years or manipulated
(12:15):
the price in any way. It's really important because there
are three things that will be happening in the next
few months to drive up the price of gas. One
is a sixty five cent a gallon increase because of
a new California Air Resources Board fuel standard. It's called
(12:37):
a low Carbon fuel standard. Add sixty five cents to
gallon of gas. Just from that. There is an automatic
gas tax that kicks in on the first of July,
and Valero announced that within a year they are going
to be likely closing down their refinery in Benetia up
in northern California, and we had two other two other.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Refineries.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
It was announced that they were going to close here
in southern California in the Carson, Los Angeles area. That
was Phillip sixty six. We used to have forty three refineries.
Now we're down to about eight. And all these things
are going to drive up the price of gas, and
we're already paying more than two dollars a gallon than
many states. Michael MChE is coming on because this is this,
(13:27):
this should be the number one crisis. And you know,
for all the people running for governor, and I think
there's probably about seventeen of them who's talking about this,
I'm just shocked there's nobody interested in finally blowing the
whistle and saying the hell with this. Forty five a
gallon headed for five point fifty five sixty five seventy
(13:50):
within a few months. Hello, Why everyone's putting up with
it is baffling. There is a tremendous amount of waste
in government. And again, Michael Michelle, beyond after two o'clock
and at the Internal Revenue Service, who would have thought?
Speaker 1 (14:10):
Do you know?
Speaker 2 (14:11):
New York Post has this exclusive story employees at the
Internal Revenue Service. There's a lot of squealing going on
because thousands are taking the buyouts, the early retirement. In fact,
this week there was some news that one third of
the IRS is quitting. And they've gone through several IRS executives,
(14:35):
several commissioners just in the last few weeks. But does
it really matter how many employees are working for the
IRS and how many quit because as it turns out,
they rarely show up for work. In fact, it's in
their contract that they don't have to show up to
(14:55):
work very often. The most recent collective bargaining agreement broken
between the IRS executives and the union, employees were able
to work from home eight out of ten days. Their
(15:15):
pay period lasts two weeks, ten work days. Eight out
of ten. They don't have to show up eight out
of ten. And here's a kicker. This was a lengthy
negotiation between the IRS and the union. We paid for
the negotiation, that's right. The whole negotiation was paid by taxpayers,
(15:44):
and in the end everybody agreed that the government workers
who were paying for don't have to show up for
work eighty percent of the time. The IRS management wanted
them to show up.
Speaker 1 (16:03):
Six days a week. No, I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (16:07):
They wanted him to show up two days a week,
four days for every pay period. That was the offer,
and the union said no, and they won on that point.
So now they only have to show up two days
each pay period, one day a week. The union is
(16:30):
called the National Treasury Employees Union, and the whole deal
was negotiated using taxpayer funding. In fact, do you know
agencies in the federal government spend one hundred and sixty
million dollars a year on negotiating union contracts. There's also
(16:58):
apparently what they call bloated bonus structures. How do you
get a bonus when you're not shown up for work?
But the the IRS employees do. IRS employees who are
rated as outstanding and fully successful get extra money. Now,
(17:22):
Trump had signed an executive order directing all agencies and
departments to take all necessary steps to terminate remote work arrangements.
He wanted everybody coming in five days a week. And
this is run into all kinds of pushback and resistance.
They all should be fired. If you don't want to
(17:42):
show up for work, you don't have to. You don't
have to have the job.
Speaker 1 (17:47):
I don't. I have no idea.
Speaker 2 (17:50):
All my life, all my mom and dad's life, it
was obvious you showed up at work to get paid,
and you did the work. And here they don't do
the work, They don't show up for work, and they.
Speaker 1 (18:05):
Want full pay with bonuses.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
And I'm supposed to have a heart attack and die
because the thought of them are resigning now because they
don't like the new terms.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
And remember their.
Speaker 2 (18:20):
Whole purpose is to make sure they take my money
from me and.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
You you work for them.
Speaker 2 (18:29):
These IRS employees their entire career, their entire existence, depends
on them successfully separating you from your money. And if
they don't like what you're paying, they could put you
through all kinds of hell to wring more out of you.
They don't have to show up for work, they get
(18:50):
some nonsense bonus. And I'm supposed to be devastated. What
I'm going to march in the streets to save the
IRS jobs? Oh my god, Then I have to work
twice every two weeks.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
What a load of nonsense.
Speaker 5 (19:07):
No.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
I hope Trump puts the whole Irs out of business.
I really do.
Speaker 2 (19:12):
When we come back, Well, two o'clock is michaelmche from
USC we're going to talk about the gas price increases.
In fact, I'm gonna go check and see what the
latest prices are today. This is really crucial stuff and ordinarily,
entire political careers would be destroyed if the price of
gas was almost double any other state, but not in
(19:35):
Bizarro California. Again, that's coming up after two o'clock.
Speaker 6 (19:38):
Michael mcchee, you're listening to John Cobels on demand from
KFI AM six forty.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
John Cobelt here and after two o'clock Michael MChE from
USC he was done with us a couple of weeks
ago with his study fifty years of looking at California
gas prices and said it's mostly self inflict by the
California government against us. It's not the oil companies. Not
much evidence of price gouging over the years. And now
(20:07):
we have a new story this week that Valero is
closing a refinery in Benetia, northern California. And we have
dropped from forty three refineries to eight, and we're losing
this one. There's two more in the Carsonarrea there being
shut down, and you're looking to gas somewhere between five
fifty and six dollars a gallon sometime this year. Now
(20:33):
La Times have a story about you know, i'd every
time I see a story about where there's some kind
of loss of business, some kind of budget problems governments
are having. They all still as a reflex five years
later say well, you know, it was the pandemic, and.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
I saw the same thing in this story.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Lax is sliding down the list of the world's busiest airports.
Excuse me, not that I really care, because the fewer
people at the airport the better. As far as I'm concerned,
I don't want to be at the world's most popular,
busiest airport. But it does show you what LA's perception
(21:21):
is in the rest of the world. Fewer people want
to come here because it's not that we're still recovering
from the pandemic. They get about well as in twenty nineteen,
LAX got eighty eight million passengers a year, and they
(21:44):
had planned for one hundred and ten million passengers in
twenty twenty eight. You know all that construction that's going
on at LAX, right, Partly that's because they there'd be
one hundred and ten million people a year coming through.
Now it looks like there's only only going to be
(22:06):
ninety million a year coming through. So they've spent a
lot of money upgrading and expanding the airport, and people
aren't going to show aren't showing up, and it's not
the pandemic. Compared to twenty nineteen, the overall number for
(22:28):
twenty twenty six will be about fifteen percent below the
pre pandemic level. And they keep using that word as
if that's the cause. It's like, no, the world sees
that Los Angeles is a disgusting cesspool. You don't think
all this stuff has been on television ten years of
disgusting vagrants in the streets doing drugs, acting crazy, all
(22:52):
the mental patients, all the poop.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
And the needles. How terrifying is that.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
For a family who wants to take their kids on
a vacation, you get to go to La You're gonna
go what in the Hollywood Walk of Fame where you
know every star has a pile of poop sitting on it.
And the thing is like Atlanta's passenger account I grew
(23:20):
by more than three percent, Dallas fort Worth, their airport
went up by seven percent. In fact, Atlanta's has one
hundred and eighty eight million passengers and Dallas has eighty
seven million. And lax is is they're spending thirty billion
(23:43):
dollars on the overhaul. And this is all supposed to
be done for the twenty twenty eight Summer Olympics, so
thirty billion dollars to make it. If the Olympics weren't happening,
they never would have done any of this. But they
also thought there'd be tens of millions of more passengers,
(24:05):
but none of nobody wants to address the issue about
about city leaders making LA disgusting. I mean, everybody's seen
the fires, right and that LA didn't respond to the
fires properly. And they've seen the homeless situation, they saw
the smash and grab robberies. This stuff, you know, goes
(24:28):
on social media instantly, and that's how people learn about
the world now, scrolling social media.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
By far, that's the number one source of news.
Speaker 2 (24:40):
And so those little clips of LA burning La, homeless
dying in the streets, smashing grab robberies at a jewelry store.
People have been getting this for years and years and years.
You just see a few of those, and you know,
at dinner you're going to say, Hey, what do you
think we go to LA for a vacation this year.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
No, that doesn't look like fun.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
We're gonna step in poop, get stabbed by an ego,
have a homeless person whack us on the head, have
our have our stuff robbed? I mean, all the clips
of tourists getting robbed up in San Francisco, pop open
their trunks and you know, people would park on the
(25:26):
on the side of the street and go into a store,
a restaurant, and here come the thieves and they pop
open the trunk and they run off with all the luggage.
People were doing that at Oakland Airport. People were doing
it at the Oakland Airport rent a car centers. You
can drive up to a rent a car center. Before
(25:49):
you could get out of your car to return it,
the thieves already popped your trunk and ran off of
your luggage, all right, Michael mache Next, Also, people also
probably have a stroke when they land here and find
out you got to pay five bucks a gallon for gas.
Imagine somebody coming from Mississippi. They're paying two sixty nine.
(26:10):
Tennessee's two sixty nine and we're at for eighty four. Well,
we're going to talk to USC professor Michael Machee about
this huge price discreptancy on how it's going to get worse.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
That's next, and in for.
Speaker 2 (26:21):
Dembor Markets Heather Brooker live in the CAFI twenty four
our newsroom. Hey, you've been listening to the John Covelt
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,
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