March 6, 2025 • 36 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 2 (03/06) - Matthew Bergman, the attorney representing parents suing Snapchat over their children dying from fentanyl poisoning from pills they bought on the social media platform comes on the show to talk about the lawsuit. Preliminary results from LAHSA's audit have been released. LA County is going broke.
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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. Well,
this Gavin Newsom doing a flip on on guys who
are transgender and compete in women's sports in college. He
did this on his podcast this morning, a front page
(00:24):
story of the New York Times. He's got left wing
people denouncing him from coast to coast. It's big news
all over the place.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
That's good. That's good.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
You have a new podcast when you're looking to transition
into a new career, your very first your very first
show creates coast to coast news.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And then yet you have everybody arguing and angry.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
John even you don't have that.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I don't have that. Keavin Newsom's that's far out done
me in a single day.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Wow, And how many years have you been doing that?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Too many years? And it never could do what Gavin
Newsom did in one hour. He is a formable, a
formidable talent and broadcasting I can tell you, and I
am glad he's my podcast mate.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah here at iHeart.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
All right, we'll get to more of that later because
it's actually quite funny.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
All the the.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Entire trends industry is now against him. Let's uh, let's
let let's talk about something serious here.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Snapchat.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
You know, you never know if people are on up, up,
on all the social media.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Snapchat's been around for years. It's a social media platform.
A lot of teenagers use it. You get a video
message from your friend, and then a minute later, the
thing disintegrates, disappears. And drug dealers use this and they
contact teenagers and offer them drugs, often painkillers like percocet
(01:52):
or oxy codone, and the kids buy the drugs, want
to experiment, not knowing that actually they're getting sent to
nil and then they die. And sixty families are suing
Snap for allowing drug dealers to sell the pathentical pills
(02:13):
and allowing these these drug dealers to kill their sons
and daughters. Sixty families are suing. We're going to talk
to the attorney representing these parents, Matthew Bergman. Matthew, how
are you welcome? Well, thank you for coming on. You
might you must have heard a lot of really sad,
(02:35):
heartbreaking stories.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yes, Just today I got an email from another family
who lost a kid to fentanol. It's the largest killer
of kids. Eighteen and under in the United States and Canada.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I didn't know that. That's pretty scary. Can you explain
in detail how this whole system works. How do these
drug dealers find these teenagers to sell the pills? Because
obviously they don't know who the kids are. They don't
have their names or phone numbers or anything in a database.
These are random meetings online. How does it work?
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Well? Snapchat really functions as an open air drug market.
It provides opportunities for drug dealers to meet kids, many
times kids who aren't even looking for drugs, and through
the quick ad feature, kids are connected to potential drug dealers.
The way the algorithms work is they connect drug dealers
(03:32):
to people in their area based on age and other
demographic issues. And then Snapchat provides an opportunity for drug
dealers to provide a veritable menu of available drugs for kids,
typically a weed or percocet or oxy or something like that.
And then it provides an opportunity to use geolocating so
(03:55):
that drug dealers can basically act as door dash delivery
people and provide drugs identify where the kids are. It
also provides an opportunity for drug dealers to confirm that
the person is not a law enforcement officer. And finally,
and most significantly, the way the snipchat product is designed,
all the evidence of this crime is automatically disappeared, both
(04:18):
on the front end and the back end, So it
essentially allows drug dealers to sell their products at scale,
like put a put a great big billboard down down
in this town square. But do so, Sarah Tipps, surreptitiously,
so that the the the evidence of their of their
benevolent crime is is deleted. And of course, kids being kids,
(04:43):
they make bad decisions. We don't in any way condone
kids purchasing prescription drugs online. But they're not seeking front nyl.
But the drugs are contaminated with fetanoyl. Kids make you know,
teenagers make very bad decisions from time to time. They
shouldn't have to die for them.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So they actually the drug dealers run ads on Snapchat.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Actual ads. Yes, they're called menus, and they use the
Snapchat the design features to make the menus look particularly
cool and appealing. Uh be it in and provide a
menu of available drug options. And and and I've never
seen one that says fentanyl. By the way, the ones
that I see are are you know, other drugs and
(05:27):
and what happens is that the kids think they're getting
uh usually oxy or perk uh and it's a counterfeit
drug that is manufactured by a drug dealer using fentanyl
as the hallucinage as the intoxicating agent. Uh. And they
are you typically manufactured in such a slipshot fashion, or
(05:49):
that the feentanyl, which is four hundred times more powerful
than heroin, It can be concentrated in one pill uh
and kids can die and do die in a matter
of minutes.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
This is really horrible.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And so these these drug menus that the dealers send
on Snapchat, they just appear randomly in the feed that
the teenagers have on their Snapchat account.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Know the nature of the quick ad features allows drug
dealers to identify likely customers based on age, geography, demographic
characteristics and then apply apply them with advertisements for drugs.
In some cases kids are looking for drugs, in some
cases they aren't. But in all cases, Snapchats facilitates the
(06:38):
sale of this deadly material.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
How long do you think Snapchat has known that this
has been going on their service?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Well, we have seen records going back to twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And have they ever?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I mean, I mean, I'm sure people complained very early
on because you had teenagers dying almost immediately, you know,
you ingest that kind of fentinel that you were discussing.
They've never cleaned up their.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Act, not appreciably, no, I mean they And indeed, you know,
we have cases where a child has died of fentanyl poisoning,
the parents have informed law enforcement of the exact identity
of the drug dealer, and eight months later, the same
drug dealer sells drugs to another kid and that kid
(07:26):
loses his life as well. Snapchat claims that it's doing
a lot. In fact, it's doing very little. It could
be doing more, and our kids are dying because of it.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
They want the traffic so bad that they don't care
if this kills hundreds or thousands of their customers teenagers.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I can't speak to their motivation, but what I can
speak to is that there are many things they can
and should be doing to make their platforms less attractive
to drug dealers. They're not doing that. One of the
things that they will say is that, you know, the
messaging feature, the disappearing message feature, is one of the
things that makes Snapchat so attractive, and so anything to
(08:08):
mess with that they claim would detract from their profits.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, that's what I was saying. It's like they want
the traffic, they want the profits. So even if you
have hundreds of thousands of kids dying from fentanyl poisoning,
you know, that's a price of doing business.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
They don't care. It's not their kid.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Well, until recently, they've never had to bear legal consequences
for their decisions. We're trying to change that.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
What what's the status of the court case.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
So Snapchat sought to dismiss the case out of the box,
claiming that under American law that they had absolute immunity,
and the trial court considered both sides arguments rejected That
allowed the case to go forward. But before it could
go forward, Snapchat appealed to the California Square of Appeals
(09:01):
and then in December, the California Appeals Court appeal said
we're not going to consider this issue now and send
it back to the trial court. So the cases are
getting are starting to get worked up for trial, and
both sides are exchanging information and there'll be many more
battles ahead. The only certain thing about this lawsuit is
it's going to be a long, hard slog, but you know,
(09:23):
when you talk to these parents who've lost kids, they
don't care. I've never had clients less concerned about money
and more concerned about justice than these parents. And for
that reason, it's an absolute honor to be representing them
in what is very difficult that I can worth while struggle.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, in nineteen ninety six, Congress passed the law it's
called Section two thirty, the Communications Decency Act, and platforms
like Snapchat or Facebook or Twitter, they have immunity against
anything that happens on their platform, anything anybody says, or
(10:01):
any kind of video, any kind of photo. They're saying,
we're just like the phone company. We're just passing along
messages here. We're not responsible for what those messages are.
And they've had pretty ironclad protection because of that section
of law. But maybe there's a line that's been crossed
here now that you have all these teenagers dying of
(10:22):
fetano poisoning.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Well, what we're saying is that they you know, first
of all, we're saying that Stamschatu, you just have the
same responsibility that any other company does reasonable care, and
that we don't you know the fact that the third
parties involved, we believe is not sufficient when they design
a product that facilitates these deadly sales. So we're we're
(10:45):
moving forward. We know it's a hard flog, but it's
something we believe in and something we think needs to
be done.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Well, well, good luck with this, and you know we'll
talk again as the case progresses. Matthew Bergman, the attorney
for at least sixty families suing Snap, the good people
Snap in Santa Monica. Congratulations, it's pretty nice. You get
up for work every day and you work at a
company that has a service that actively kills the innocent teenagers.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Wonderful. Hope you get your bonuses.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I feel like I'm going insane.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I feel the same way, John.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I know, I know, I know you may have already arrived.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I have. I'm getting there. I'm driving there, but I
think your car got there first. This is breaking news
that came out just moments ago. I'm looking at two
separate articles that were just released. The much anticipated audit
(11:54):
of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority I've told you
this is a bunch of of it's fools, criminals that
run these non these these government agencies, these nonprofits. The
entire homeless operation in la is nothing but a racket
and a scam, which is why there's forty five thousand
(12:16):
people dying in the streets. It's never gotten any better,
and they've blown billions and billions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Listen to UH These preliminary audit.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Results significant gaps in financial oversight, data tracking, and accountability
in the city's homelessness programs. Karen Bass has been running
these homeless programs for two years two years. LASA is
an agency that is works for the county and the city.
(12:50):
It's some some joint agency. And you, if you lived
in the city of La agree to pay another tax.
This past November sales tax went up again, and I
told you not to do that, that they're wasting the money,
(13:11):
that it's a crooked industry. I don't know why people
won't believe it, because you've been giving money to these
agencies now for about eight years with these new tax
revenue streams, and this problem has gotten worse. There have
been plenty of stories making it clear that a racket
run by idiots and criminals, and you still vote to
(13:32):
give him more money.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Because people don't believe that.
Speaker 6 (13:35):
They think, how can I vote against helping the homeless?
Of course I'm going to of course I want to
help the homeless. Of Course I want to vote for
this tax. I would be a horrible person if I
wouldn't vote for this. That's what people say.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Elon Musk actually had a line the other day and
he nailed it, and we've talked about this on the air.
He goes, the real weakness in human nature sometimes is empathy.
Because people want to feel empathetic, and so the bad guys,
the criminals in our government, the criminals who run the nonprofits,
(14:10):
they manipulate you psychologically because of your empathy. Empathy is
a wonderful thing to have, but bad guys manipulate a
con Artists manipulate your empathy, and that explains the entire
homeless industry. They know that there is an unending river
(14:31):
of money as long as you push the right emotional
buttons and enough people Now, some of us wised up
to this some years ago, but their entire industry is
based on making you feel making you feel guilty, feel empathy,
feel sorrow for these people. They take your money. They
do absolutely nothing for the homeless. The homeless die by
(14:54):
the thousands. Over two thousand die in the streets here
in La County, over two thousand die in the shelters
every year.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So all they do is die. They're not getting off
the streets.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
If they got off the streets, they go into these
horrible shelters and they die there. This assessment was ordered
by a district judge, David o'carter. Oh. They examined three
city funded programs. Inside Safe that's Karen.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Bass's gold star program.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
That's the only thing she talks about when the media
does kiss ass articles about Karen Basketball.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
You know she instituted inside Safe.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I told you Inside Safe is not only not doing anything,
it's it's extremely expensive. Putting guys in motel rooms costs
a lot of money, and the city is broken.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And it's not doing any good anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Inside Safe, the Roadmap Program, the Alliance Settlement Program. They
analyzed this from Juna twenty twenty to June twenty twenty four.
They identified two point three billion dollars in funding just
for these three programs and found that the total amount
(16:25):
spent on services could not be fully accounted for. That's
a fancy way of saying, we don't know what happened
to the money. Just in these three programs two and
a quarter billion dollars, fragmented data systems, inconsistent financial reporting,
poor coordination between.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
LASA, the City, and the County of La.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
The audit painted a picture of a fractured and inefficient
system that failed to properly manage taxpayer funds or track
the effectiveness to attract the effectiveness of homelessness programs. Look
at this says exactly what I've been telling you, because
there's been plenty anecdotal stories about it, and now you
(17:08):
have a study done by Alvarez and Marcel public Sector Services.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
You have a problem with the audit. Audit. Take it
up with Alvarez and Marcel.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
The staff revealed, or rather the audit revealed, that auditors
were unable to verify the total amounts spent on homelessness
because of inconsistent and incomplete financial records across LASA, the City,
and the county. The report found glaring inconsistencies how LASS
attracted shelter beds and services, making it impossible to determine
(17:42):
how many beds were available, or occupied or even functional
at any given time. Auditors noted that LASA and the
city routinely approved invoices from service providers without verifying whether
the build services were actually provided.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So they made a deal with.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
These homeless nonprofits and paid them off and never bothered
to see if any work had been done to help
the homeless. Payments were off in process based on high
level summaries with little scrutiny of receipts or actual service delivery.
(18:29):
In other words, no one checked to see if any
homeless people were helped in any way.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
They just spent the money.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Nearly half of program participants exited back into homelessness, only
twenty two percent found permanent housing. These findings indicate that
loss of the city and the county failed to properly
track spending and outcomes, leaving billions of taxpayer dollars vulnerable
to waste, fraud, and abuse. Holy mackerell, what a disaster.
(19:11):
This homeless program is a disaster, and Karen Bass has
been one of the people running it for the last
two years. It's her claim to fame. We'll talk about
here to take break.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
We're on every day from one until four, and then
after four o'clock you can hear our podcast. It's the
same as the radio show on the iHeart app the
same place you can hear Gavin Newsom's new podcast. Its
debut episode is out and we spent most of the
first hour playing new highlights of him renouncing many progressive
(19:56):
positions seriously. He went on with a a guy from
the Maga World, Charlie Kirk, who's a conservative political organizer.
He has a number of organizations tries to get young
people into the movement, and Kirk got Newsom to say
all kinds of things. We'll talk about it again after
(20:20):
three o'clock. But we also have somebody coming on the
air after three o'clock. Oh, Bill Salley is coming on
after three o'clock, the Assemblyman and well, hold on, I
can't find here we go and he's coming on. He's
asking Governor Newsom to support an Assembly bill to save
(20:40):
girl sports to keep boys who are transitioning from participating
in girls sports. Since Newsom said he called out the
unfairness of men in women's sports, we will play you
Newsom's clips, which is set the political world on fire.
(21:01):
It's getting a lot of cable TV coverage. It's on
the front of the New York Times. There's all kinds
of left wing progressive nuts denouncing him.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Uh, this is great. Chaos is great news him.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
By the way, will will sell out anything. He'd sell
his own male body part if he thought it could
make him president.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
That's all he wants.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
No, no, no, no, he doesn't understand why we're obsessing
over him and the possibility of.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Right, we have new some derangement syndrome. Yes, okay, you're
not running for president. Sure, but no he he came
out against about six pillars awoke today, So we'll try
to get that.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
And there's some I could I could do stuff on
Avenue somem all week now with this podcast.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Uh, I mean, I mean, it just seems like every
minute had had had a gem in it.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
All.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Right, let me let me go back to actually what
matters more your life? And we've told you about this
for so long. Karen Bass is running really this LASA,
this Los Angeles Homeless Services authority that Bass is involved in,
and the County Supervisors of LA are involved in this
(22:19):
is the big mother homeless agency, and it's utterly corrupt
and incompetent to the bone. And a judge US district judge,
there's a federal judge, David o'quorter a Carter ordered an assessment,
an audit of LASA, and the audit was released today
(22:42):
and they found significant gaps in financial oversight, data tracking,
and accountability two point three billion dollars in funding for
just three of their programs, and found that a lot
of the money can't be accounted for. They were unable
to verify the total amount spend out homelessness, inconsistent incomplete
(23:03):
financial records, They paid out invoices without verifying whether any
work was actually provided, and nearly half of the program
participants ended up back in homelessness anyway after spending all
this money. Says an attorney for the LA Alliance for
(23:25):
Human Rights, these findings are not just troubling, they're deadly well.
I don't know it's Elizabeth Mitchell. I don't know where
Elizabeth Mitchell has been. This is people are stealing money.
Understand that that is the purpose here is to steal
the money and to enrich yourself and your friends and
your relatives and your political associates and donors.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
That's what the racket is.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
And every single person in government, in city government and
county government knows, and they don't care.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And you can't shame them.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
You can't argue with them, you can't convince them, you
can't bring up evidence and show they care.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
They're not going to respond. They're getting away with it.
You're paying for it.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
In fact, idiot, LA voters agreed in November to increase
the sales tax so that more money could be stolen
by these criminal organizations, some of them run by the governments.
Some are nonprofits. But you know, really that phrase, that
is the worst phrase. They are not nonprofits. The people
(24:27):
are profiting immensely, the people who work there. I have
looked at what the salaries are for people at LASA
and these and these nonprofits. Let me give you an example,
because this was just in the news a few weeks ago,
(24:47):
an investigative report found that the LASSA chief executive. We
talked about this, Valicia Adams Kellum. I count four words there,
Adams Kellum. She signed a two million dollar contract and
two contract amendments with an agency, a homeless agency. One
(25:13):
of the people who's a senior executive with this agency
was her own husband, Edward Kellem So Valicia Adams Kellum
gave two million dollars to a homeless group that her
husband is heavily involved in. She's not supposed to do that,
(25:42):
and then she claimed, well, I signed the papers. I
didn't know what I was signing, but they shouldn't have
sent it to me. In other words, you're incompetent at
your job. Is that what you're telling me? You don't
read what you're signing. You didn't notice your husband's nonprofit
the name of the nonprofit at the top of the contract.
(26:03):
You didn't recognize that this.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
This is what, this is what they tried to do. Oh,
I didn't know. I didn't know that. Oh was that?
Was that Edwards? Was that Edwards Charity?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I didn't know it was Upward Bound House based in
Santa Monica, a nonprofit her husband, Edward Kellum, works in
senior leadership. A Loss of spokesperson said the contracts had
inadvertently ended up in front of Adams Kellum to sign,
(26:39):
So they inadvertently end up in front of her. She
doesn't recognize her husband's organization, and she signs them anyway,
what is that upward bound?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Do we know upward bound? Anybody familiar with upward Bound?
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
That's the organization my husband works for. Is one of
the senior leaders? Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Sure, I'll sign it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Ge, why do you think most of the money can't
be tracked at LASA wee The woman at the top
of the pyramid gives away two million dollars of our
tax money to her husband's organization and claims she didn't
notice when she signed it that the forums ended up
on her desk by accident. It must have been magic.
(27:22):
They must have been conjured up a fractured, ineffective system
plagued by poor oversight, lack of coordination, negligible results, negligible results,
negligible results.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
You know what negligible means? Almost nothing?
Speaker 2 (27:42):
They have almost no good results, severe financial mismanagement, leaving
billions of taxpayer dollars vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse.
This is an analysis by the LA Alliance for Human Rights.
They have sued the city in County over homelessness. The
(28:04):
Alliance also says inaccurate and inconsistent data tracking, so housing
services and funding efforts are unreliable. A complete absence of
accountability from the city, county, and LASA, making it impossible
to assess the true impact of homeless programs. And again
you voted to increase taxes in November to give this
(28:25):
organization more money. So Karen Bass. And who's that dope,
Marquis Harris Dawson, the acting mayor of the day of
the fire. Remember, yeah, those disaster people. The homeless agency
that they send billions of dollars of our money to
(28:46):
is a disaster.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Gee.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Why is the city broke? Why is the county? There's
another story I wanted to get to. Maybe I'll do
that next. The counties broke. So the city's broke, the
counties broke, and they have billions of dollars in homeless money.
We still have tens of thousands of homeless people littered
about human debris and there's no accounting for this. Why
(29:10):
did you let Karen Bass again?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, demographics, right, she had special demographics. Do you think
in the decades that Rick Caruso has been running many
different business organizations that there has ever been an audit
(29:35):
that described his company plagued by poor oversight, lack of coordination,
negligible results, fraud, waste abuse, severe financial mismanagement. In the
history of all the companies that Rick Caruso has been
involved in for let's say the last forty years, do
you think there's one audit that has that kind of analysis?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So why'd you vote for Karen bassagan.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Us All right, let me tell you about the county
going bankrupt when we come back. They've also blown billions
of dollars on this homeless crusade.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
I said this the other day. I'm standing by it.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
As much corruption and waste and fraud they're finding in Washington,
D C. Mosk and Trump, I think on a proportional basis,
there's far more going on here in the city and
county of LA. By the way, and all the articles
I've read so far, no reaction from any elected official.
They hope it's a one day story and it blows over,
(30:38):
just like they hope the fire was a one day
story and would blow over.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI A
six forty.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Dever's got the news in a few minutes, and then
we're going to talk to some of them in Bill
Saley from the Inland Empire, and he wants Gavin Newsom
to support his bill to on transgenders playing girl sports.
California enacted a law in twenty fourteen so that trans
(31:14):
athletes can compete in girls and women's sports, and a
Sale's bill would reverse it, And today it looks like
the governor reversed himself on the issue. He called out
the unfairness of men competing in women's sports.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
So we're gonna talk to.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Bill a Sale because we're going to play you the
Newsome clip on his debut iHeart Media podcast that he
did today and he renounced about a half a dozen
different woke stances all in one podcast.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
So now you like him now, Jean.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
We're finding common ground.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
You know you're gonna vote for him when he runs
for president.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well, let's see, let's see, he's got more ground to
cover here.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
The ground is not common enough yet.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I was just telling you that the last half hour
that the there's a judge who demanded an audit, a
federal judge, and they have found that the Los Angeles
Homeless Services Authority, which is a city in county production
is a complete disaster and that most of the money
cannot be accounted for. They don't know where it went.
(32:23):
And what good it did. We've had about four of
these audits for State City County. Yeah, it's all is
that they're wasting the money. They're stealing the money. That's
all you got to know. Meantime, La County government is
going broke. It has a hiring freeze. Its budget is
forty five billion dollars a year, forty five billion dollars,
(32:45):
and it is facing, according to the La Times, enormous
pressures because the wildfires, a flood of sex abuse lawsuits,
sex abuse lawsuits, and of course Trump is threatening to
slash funding. We have a CEO in La County. I
never heard of this woman. Her name is Fesha Davenport Fbsia.
(33:09):
You know how to pronounce that. I never remember seeing her.
She's the chief executive and I've never seen her name
in the news. Fesha or Fesia Fisia. She's warned the
county supervisors that the situation could devolve into a financial crisis.
Do you know the county has one hundred and seventeen
(33:31):
thousand budgeted positions. One hundred and seventeen thousand, thirteen thousand
of these positions are unfilled. I bet you you and
I could get a county job. I'm sure we qualify
for two. Yeah, of the thirteen thousand empty positions.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Well, I get paid more.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
You won't have to show up for work, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't have to deal with traffic.
I get paid more.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
And you could sit home in your bathroom.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
My bathroom, my leopard bathroom.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
And your your leopard fuzzy slippers.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I have those, and that s yes, I do. I
have about three parents.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Well, you got to come to work, county workers do. Yeah,
it says uh. You know, they got two billion dollars
from Biden after the pandemic. All that money's gone, and
they changed the statue of limitations for victim of victims
of child sex abuse, and so now thousands of sex
(34:29):
abuse victims have sued over sex abuse in the county's
juvenile facilities and foster care system. The liability for those
lawsuits could be billions of dollars. Why do foster families
sexually abuse the kids they're supposed to take care of?
What is that the reason that their foster parents in
(34:50):
order so they have a free shot. What percentage of
foster parents are in that particular line of work in
order to sexually abuse the kids. Anybody have an answer
on that? Well, I guess, I guess there's thousands. I
mean there's thousands of lawsuits. Sales, tax revenues are going
(35:13):
to be down because of all the businesses that have
been shut down.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I mean, you had the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
You know, there a lot of rioting going on like
in Santa Monica in LA and a lot of businesses
closed permanently because they allowed those George Floyd riots. Then
they shut down because of the pandemic. And then Karen
Bass was in Africa when the fire broke out. Well,
property taxes are down, are going to be down in
(35:39):
the Palis Aides area. Bit don't you think all those
homes destroyed, all the homes destroying now to Dina because
the so Cal Edison had malfunctioning equipment because they never
buried the power lines. I got a lot of stuff
on that I haven't gotten too yet. And oh, downy
(36:00):
unions want a big Hey, you've been listening to the John.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Cobalt Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
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. Well,
this Gavin Newsom doing a flip on on guys who
are transgender and compete in women's sports in college. He
did this on his podcast this morning, a front page
(00:24):
story of the New York Times. He's got left wing
people denouncing him from coast to coast. It's big news
all over the place.
Speaker 1 (00:32):
That's good. That's good.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
You have a new podcast when you're looking to transition
into a new career, your very first your very first
show creates coast to coast news.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
And then yet you have everybody arguing and angry.
Speaker 3 (00:45):
John even you don't have that.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
I don't have that. Keavin Newsom's that's far out done
me in a single day.
Speaker 3 (00:50):
Wow, And how many years have you been doing that?
Speaker 2 (00:53):
Too many years? And it never could do what Gavin
Newsom did in one hour. He is a formable, a
formidable talent and broadcasting I can tell you, and I
am glad he's my podcast mate.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah here at iHeart.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
All right, we'll get to more of that later because
it's actually quite funny.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
All the the.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Entire trends industry is now against him. Let's uh, let's
let let's talk about something serious here.
Speaker 1 (01:24):
Snapchat.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
You know, you never know if people are on up, up,
on all the social media.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Snapchat's been around for years. It's a social media platform.
A lot of teenagers use it. You get a video
message from your friend, and then a minute later, the
thing disintegrates, disappears. And drug dealers use this and they
contact teenagers and offer them drugs, often painkillers like percocet
(01:52):
or oxy codone, and the kids buy the drugs, want
to experiment, not knowing that actually they're getting sent to
nil and then they die. And sixty families are suing
Snap for allowing drug dealers to sell the pathentical pills
(02:13):
and allowing these these drug dealers to kill their sons
and daughters. Sixty families are suing. We're going to talk
to the attorney representing these parents, Matthew Bergman. Matthew, how
are you welcome? Well, thank you for coming on. You
might you must have heard a lot of really sad,
(02:35):
heartbreaking stories.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Huh.
Speaker 4 (02:38):
Yes, Just today I got an email from another family
who lost a kid to fentanol. It's the largest killer
of kids. Eighteen and under in the United States and Canada.
Speaker 2 (02:47):
I didn't know that. That's pretty scary. Can you explain
in detail how this whole system works. How do these
drug dealers find these teenagers to sell the pills? Because
obviously they don't know who the kids are. They don't
have their names or phone numbers or anything in a database.
These are random meetings online. How does it work?
Speaker 4 (03:11):
Well? Snapchat really functions as an open air drug market.
It provides opportunities for drug dealers to meet kids, many
times kids who aren't even looking for drugs, and through
the quick ad feature, kids are connected to potential drug dealers.
The way the algorithms work is they connect drug dealers
(03:32):
to people in their area based on age and other
demographic issues. And then Snapchat provides an opportunity for drug
dealers to provide a veritable menu of available drugs for kids,
typically a weed or percocet or oxy or something like that.
And then it provides an opportunity to use geolocating so
(03:55):
that drug dealers can basically act as door dash delivery
people and provide drugs identify where the kids are. It
also provides an opportunity for drug dealers to confirm that
the person is not a law enforcement officer. And finally,
and most significantly, the way the snipchat product is designed,
all the evidence of this crime is automatically disappeared, both
(04:18):
on the front end and the back end, So it
essentially allows drug dealers to sell their products at scale,
like put a put a great big billboard down down
in this town square. But do so, Sarah Tipps, surreptitiously,
so that the the the evidence of their of their
benevolent crime is is deleted. And of course, kids being kids,
(04:43):
they make bad decisions. We don't in any way condone
kids purchasing prescription drugs online. But they're not seeking front nyl.
But the drugs are contaminated with fetanoyl. Kids make you know,
teenagers make very bad decisions from time to time. They
shouldn't have to die for them.
Speaker 2 (05:00):
So they actually the drug dealers run ads on Snapchat.
Speaker 4 (05:05):
Actual ads. Yes, they're called menus, and they use the
Snapchat the design features to make the menus look particularly
cool and appealing. Uh be it in and provide a
menu of available drug options. And and and I've never
seen one that says fentanyl. By the way, the ones
that I see are are you know, other drugs and
(05:27):
and what happens is that the kids think they're getting
uh usually oxy or perk uh and it's a counterfeit
drug that is manufactured by a drug dealer using fentanyl
as the hallucinage as the intoxicating agent. Uh. And they
are you typically manufactured in such a slipshot fashion, or
(05:49):
that the feentanyl, which is four hundred times more powerful
than heroin, It can be concentrated in one pill uh
and kids can die and do die in a matter
of minutes.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
This is really horrible.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
And so these these drug menus that the dealers send
on Snapchat, they just appear randomly in the feed that
the teenagers have on their Snapchat account.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Know the nature of the quick ad features allows drug
dealers to identify likely customers based on age, geography, demographic
characteristics and then apply apply them with advertisements for drugs.
In some cases kids are looking for drugs, in some
cases they aren't. But in all cases, Snapchats facilitates the
(06:38):
sale of this deadly material.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
How long do you think Snapchat has known that this
has been going on their service?
Speaker 4 (06:46):
Well, we have seen records going back to twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
And have they ever?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
I mean, I mean, I'm sure people complained very early
on because you had teenagers dying almost immediately, you know,
you ingest that kind of fentinel that you were discussing.
They've never cleaned up their.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
Act, not appreciably, no, I mean they And indeed, you know,
we have cases where a child has died of fentanyl poisoning,
the parents have informed law enforcement of the exact identity
of the drug dealer, and eight months later, the same
drug dealer sells drugs to another kid and that kid
(07:26):
loses his life as well. Snapchat claims that it's doing
a lot. In fact, it's doing very little. It could
be doing more, and our kids are dying because of it.
Speaker 2 (07:35):
They want the traffic so bad that they don't care
if this kills hundreds or thousands of their customers teenagers.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
I can't speak to their motivation, but what I can
speak to is that there are many things they can
and should be doing to make their platforms less attractive
to drug dealers. They're not doing that. One of the
things that they will say is that, you know, the
messaging feature, the disappearing message feature, is one of the
things that makes Snapchat so attractive, and so anything to
(08:08):
mess with that they claim would detract from their profits.
Speaker 1 (08:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Yeah, that's what I was saying. It's like they want
the traffic, they want the profits. So even if you
have hundreds of thousands of kids dying from fentanyl poisoning,
you know, that's a price of doing business.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
They don't care. It's not their kid.
Speaker 4 (08:27):
Well, until recently, they've never had to bear legal consequences
for their decisions. We're trying to change that.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
What what's the status of the court case.
Speaker 4 (08:39):
So Snapchat sought to dismiss the case out of the box,
claiming that under American law that they had absolute immunity,
and the trial court considered both sides arguments rejected That
allowed the case to go forward. But before it could
go forward, Snapchat appealed to the California Square of Appeals
(09:01):
and then in December, the California Appeals Court appeal said
we're not going to consider this issue now and send
it back to the trial court. So the cases are
getting are starting to get worked up for trial, and
both sides are exchanging information and there'll be many more
battles ahead. The only certain thing about this lawsuit is
it's going to be a long, hard slog, but you know,
(09:23):
when you talk to these parents who've lost kids, they
don't care. I've never had clients less concerned about money
and more concerned about justice than these parents. And for
that reason, it's an absolute honor to be representing them
in what is very difficult that I can worth while struggle.
Speaker 2 (09:41):
Yeah, in nineteen ninety six, Congress passed the law it's
called Section two thirty, the Communications Decency Act, and platforms
like Snapchat or Facebook or Twitter, they have immunity against
anything that happens on their platform, anything anybody says, or
(10:01):
any kind of video, any kind of photo. They're saying,
we're just like the phone company. We're just passing along
messages here. We're not responsible for what those messages are.
And they've had pretty ironclad protection because of that section
of law. But maybe there's a line that's been crossed
here now that you have all these teenagers dying of
(10:22):
fetano poisoning.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
Well, what we're saying is that they you know, first
of all, we're saying that Stamschatu, you just have the
same responsibility that any other company does reasonable care, and
that we don't you know the fact that the third
parties involved, we believe is not sufficient when they design
a product that facilitates these deadly sales. So we're we're
(10:45):
moving forward. We know it's a hard flog, but it's
something we believe in and something we think needs to
be done.
Speaker 2 (10:51):
Well, well, good luck with this, and you know we'll
talk again as the case progresses. Matthew Bergman, the attorney
for at least sixty families suing Snap, the good people
Snap in Santa Monica. Congratulations, it's pretty nice. You get
up for work every day and you work at a
company that has a service that actively kills the innocent teenagers.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Wonderful. Hope you get your bonuses.
Speaker 5 (11:15):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
I feel like I'm going insane.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
I feel the same way, John.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I know, I know, I know you may have already arrived.
Speaker 2 (11:31):
I have. I'm getting there. I'm driving there, but I
think your car got there first. This is breaking news
that came out just moments ago. I'm looking at two
separate articles that were just released. The much anticipated audit
(11:54):
of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority I've told you
this is a bunch of of it's fools, criminals that
run these non these these government agencies, these nonprofits. The
entire homeless operation in la is nothing but a racket
and a scam, which is why there's forty five thousand
(12:16):
people dying in the streets. It's never gotten any better,
and they've blown billions and billions of dollars.
Speaker 1 (12:22):
Listen to UH These preliminary audit.
Speaker 2 (12:26):
Results significant gaps in financial oversight, data tracking, and accountability
in the city's homelessness programs. Karen Bass has been running
these homeless programs for two years two years. LASA is
an agency that is works for the county and the city.
(12:50):
It's some some joint agency. And you, if you lived
in the city of La agree to pay another tax.
This past November sales tax went up again, and I
told you not to do that, that they're wasting the money,
(13:11):
that it's a crooked industry. I don't know why people
won't believe it, because you've been giving money to these
agencies now for about eight years with these new tax
revenue streams, and this problem has gotten worse. There have
been plenty of stories making it clear that a racket
run by idiots and criminals, and you still vote to
(13:32):
give him more money.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
Because people don't believe that.
Speaker 6 (13:35):
They think, how can I vote against helping the homeless?
Of course I'm going to of course I want to
help the homeless. Of Course I want to vote for
this tax. I would be a horrible person if I
wouldn't vote for this. That's what people say.
Speaker 1 (13:48):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:49):
Elon Musk actually had a line the other day and
he nailed it, and we've talked about this on the air.
He goes, the real weakness in human nature sometimes is empathy.
Because people want to feel empathetic, and so the bad guys,
the criminals in our government, the criminals who run the nonprofits,
(14:10):
they manipulate you psychologically because of your empathy. Empathy is
a wonderful thing to have, but bad guys manipulate a
con Artists manipulate your empathy, and that explains the entire
homeless industry. They know that there is an unending river
(14:31):
of money as long as you push the right emotional
buttons and enough people Now, some of us wised up
to this some years ago, but their entire industry is
based on making you feel making you feel guilty, feel empathy,
feel sorrow for these people. They take your money. They
do absolutely nothing for the homeless. The homeless die by
(14:54):
the thousands. Over two thousand die in the streets here
in La County, over two thousand die in the shelters
every year.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
So all they do is die. They're not getting off
the streets.
Speaker 2 (15:10):
If they got off the streets, they go into these
horrible shelters and they die there. This assessment was ordered
by a district judge, David o'carter. Oh. They examined three
city funded programs. Inside Safe that's Karen.
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Bass's gold star program.
Speaker 2 (15:35):
That's the only thing she talks about when the media
does kiss ass articles about Karen Basketball.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
You know she instituted inside Safe.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I told you Inside Safe is not only not doing anything,
it's it's extremely expensive. Putting guys in motel rooms costs
a lot of money, and the city is broken.
Speaker 1 (16:01):
And it's not doing any good anyway.
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Inside Safe, the Roadmap Program, the Alliance Settlement Program. They
analyzed this from Juna twenty twenty to June twenty twenty four.
They identified two point three billion dollars in funding just
for these three programs and found that the total amount
(16:25):
spent on services could not be fully accounted for. That's
a fancy way of saying, we don't know what happened
to the money. Just in these three programs two and
a quarter billion dollars, fragmented data systems, inconsistent financial reporting,
poor coordination between.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
LASA, the City, and the County of La.
Speaker 2 (16:47):
The audit painted a picture of a fractured and inefficient
system that failed to properly manage taxpayer funds or track
the effectiveness to attract the effectiveness of homelessness programs. Look
at this says exactly what I've been telling you, because
there's been plenty anecdotal stories about it, and now you
(17:08):
have a study done by Alvarez and Marcel public Sector Services.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
You have a problem with the audit. Audit. Take it
up with Alvarez and Marcel.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
The staff revealed, or rather the audit revealed, that auditors
were unable to verify the total amounts spent on homelessness
because of inconsistent and incomplete financial records across LASA, the City,
and the county. The report found glaring inconsistencies how LASS
attracted shelter beds and services, making it impossible to determine
(17:42):
how many beds were available, or occupied or even functional
at any given time. Auditors noted that LASA and the
city routinely approved invoices from service providers without verifying whether
the build services were actually provided.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So they made a deal with.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
These homeless nonprofits and paid them off and never bothered
to see if any work had been done to help
the homeless. Payments were off in process based on high
level summaries with little scrutiny of receipts or actual service delivery.
(18:29):
In other words, no one checked to see if any
homeless people were helped in any way.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
They just spent the money.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Nearly half of program participants exited back into homelessness, only
twenty two percent found permanent housing. These findings indicate that
loss of the city and the county failed to properly
track spending and outcomes, leaving billions of taxpayer dollars vulnerable
to waste, fraud, and abuse. Holy mackerell, what a disaster.
(19:11):
This homeless program is a disaster, and Karen Bass has
been one of the people running it for the last
two years. It's her claim to fame. We'll talk about
here to take break.
Speaker 5 (19:30):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 2 (19:35):
We're on every day from one until four, and then
after four o'clock you can hear our podcast. It's the
same as the radio show on the iHeart app the
same place you can hear Gavin Newsom's new podcast. Its
debut episode is out and we spent most of the
first hour playing new highlights of him renouncing many progressive
(19:56):
positions seriously. He went on with a a guy from
the Maga World, Charlie Kirk, who's a conservative political organizer.
He has a number of organizations tries to get young
people into the movement, and Kirk got Newsom to say
all kinds of things. We'll talk about it again after
(20:20):
three o'clock. But we also have somebody coming on the
air after three o'clock. Oh, Bill Salley is coming on
after three o'clock, the Assemblyman and well, hold on, I
can't find here we go and he's coming on. He's
asking Governor Newsom to support an Assembly bill to save
(20:40):
girl sports to keep boys who are transitioning from participating
in girls sports. Since Newsom said he called out the
unfairness of men in women's sports, we will play you
Newsom's clips, which is set the political world on fire.
(21:01):
It's getting a lot of cable TV coverage. It's on
the front of the New York Times. There's all kinds
of left wing progressive nuts denouncing him.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Uh, this is great. Chaos is great news him.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
By the way, will will sell out anything. He'd sell
his own male body part if he thought it could
make him president.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
That's all he wants.
Speaker 6 (21:27):
No, no, no, no, he doesn't understand why we're obsessing
over him and the possibility of.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
Right, we have new some derangement syndrome. Yes, okay, you're
not running for president. Sure, but no he he came
out against about six pillars awoke today, So we'll try
to get that.
Speaker 1 (21:48):
And there's some I could I could do stuff on
Avenue somem all week now with this podcast.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Uh, I mean, I mean, it just seems like every
minute had had had a gem in it.
Speaker 4 (21:56):
All.
Speaker 2 (21:57):
Right, let me let me go back to actually what
matters more your life? And we've told you about this
for so long. Karen Bass is running really this LASA,
this Los Angeles Homeless Services authority that Bass is involved in,
and the County Supervisors of LA are involved in this
(22:19):
is the big mother homeless agency, and it's utterly corrupt
and incompetent to the bone. And a judge US district judge,
there's a federal judge, David o'quorter a Carter ordered an assessment,
an audit of LASA, and the audit was released today
(22:42):
and they found significant gaps in financial oversight, data tracking,
and accountability two point three billion dollars in funding for
just three of their programs, and found that a lot
of the money can't be accounted for. They were unable
to verify the total amount spend out homelessness, inconsistent incomplete
(23:03):
financial records, They paid out invoices without verifying whether any
work was actually provided, and nearly half of the program
participants ended up back in homelessness anyway after spending all
this money. Says an attorney for the LA Alliance for
(23:25):
Human Rights, these findings are not just troubling, they're deadly well.
I don't know it's Elizabeth Mitchell. I don't know where
Elizabeth Mitchell has been. This is people are stealing money.
Understand that that is the purpose here is to steal
the money and to enrich yourself and your friends and
your relatives and your political associates and donors.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
That's what the racket is.
Speaker 2 (23:47):
And every single person in government, in city government and
county government knows, and they don't care.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
And you can't shame them.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
You can't argue with them, you can't convince them, you
can't bring up evidence and show they care.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
They're not going to respond. They're getting away with it.
You're paying for it.
Speaker 2 (24:04):
In fact, idiot, LA voters agreed in November to increase
the sales tax so that more money could be stolen
by these criminal organizations, some of them run by the governments.
Some are nonprofits. But you know, really that phrase, that
is the worst phrase. They are not nonprofits. The people
(24:27):
are profiting immensely, the people who work there. I have
looked at what the salaries are for people at LASA
and these and these nonprofits. Let me give you an example,
because this was just in the news a few weeks ago,
(24:47):
an investigative report found that the LASSA chief executive. We
talked about this, Valicia Adams Kellum. I count four words there,
Adams Kellum. She signed a two million dollar contract and
two contract amendments with an agency, a homeless agency. One
(25:13):
of the people who's a senior executive with this agency
was her own husband, Edward Kellem So Valicia Adams Kellum
gave two million dollars to a homeless group that her
husband is heavily involved in. She's not supposed to do that,
(25:42):
and then she claimed, well, I signed the papers. I
didn't know what I was signing, but they shouldn't have
sent it to me. In other words, you're incompetent at
your job. Is that what you're telling me? You don't
read what you're signing. You didn't notice your husband's nonprofit
the name of the nonprofit at the top of the contract.
(26:03):
You didn't recognize that this.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
This is what, this is what they tried to do. Oh,
I didn't know. I didn't know that. Oh was that?
Was that Edwards? Was that Edwards Charity?
Speaker 2 (26:18):
I didn't know it was Upward Bound House based in
Santa Monica, a nonprofit her husband, Edward Kellum, works in
senior leadership. A Loss of spokesperson said the contracts had
inadvertently ended up in front of Adams Kellum to sign,
(26:39):
So they inadvertently end up in front of her. She
doesn't recognize her husband's organization, and she signs them anyway,
what is that upward bound?
Speaker 1 (26:49):
Do we know upward bound? Anybody familiar with upward Bound?
Speaker 4 (26:52):
Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:52):
Is that?
Speaker 2 (26:53):
That's the organization my husband works for. Is one of
the senior leaders? Oh?
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Sure, I'll sign it.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
Ge, why do you think most of the money can't
be tracked at LASA wee The woman at the top
of the pyramid gives away two million dollars of our
tax money to her husband's organization and claims she didn't
notice when she signed it that the forums ended up
on her desk by accident. It must have been magic.
(27:22):
They must have been conjured up a fractured, ineffective system
plagued by poor oversight, lack of coordination, negligible results, negligible results,
negligible results.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
You know what negligible means? Almost nothing?
Speaker 2 (27:42):
They have almost no good results, severe financial mismanagement, leaving
billions of taxpayer dollars vulnerable to fraud, waste, and abuse.
This is an analysis by the LA Alliance for Human Rights.
They have sued the city in County over homelessness. The
(28:04):
Alliance also says inaccurate and inconsistent data tracking, so housing
services and funding efforts are unreliable. A complete absence of
accountability from the city, county, and LASA, making it impossible
to assess the true impact of homeless programs. And again
you voted to increase taxes in November to give this
(28:25):
organization more money. So Karen Bass. And who's that dope,
Marquis Harris Dawson, the acting mayor of the day of
the fire. Remember, yeah, those disaster people. The homeless agency
that they send billions of dollars of our money to
(28:46):
is a disaster.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
Gee.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Why is the city broke? Why is the county? There's
another story I wanted to get to. Maybe I'll do
that next. The counties broke. So the city's broke, the
counties broke, and they have billions of dollars in homeless money.
We still have tens of thousands of homeless people littered
about human debris and there's no accounting for this. Why
(29:10):
did you let Karen Bass again?
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Oh?
Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, demographics, right, she had special demographics. Do you think
in the decades that Rick Caruso has been running many
different business organizations that there has ever been an audit
(29:35):
that described his company plagued by poor oversight, lack of coordination,
negligible results, fraud, waste abuse, severe financial mismanagement. In the
history of all the companies that Rick Caruso has been
involved in for let's say the last forty years, do
you think there's one audit that has that kind of analysis?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
So why'd you vote for Karen bassagan.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Us All right, let me tell you about the county
going bankrupt when we come back. They've also blown billions
of dollars on this homeless crusade.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
I said this the other day. I'm standing by it.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
As much corruption and waste and fraud they're finding in Washington,
D C. Mosk and Trump, I think on a proportional basis,
there's far more going on here in the city and
county of LA. By the way, and all the articles
I've read so far, no reaction from any elected official.
They hope it's a one day story and it blows over,
(30:38):
just like they hope the fire was a one day
story and would blow over.
Speaker 5 (30:43):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI A
six forty.
Speaker 2 (30:49):
Dever's got the news in a few minutes, and then
we're going to talk to some of them in Bill
Saley from the Inland Empire, and he wants Gavin Newsom
to support his bill to on transgenders playing girl sports.
California enacted a law in twenty fourteen so that trans
(31:14):
athletes can compete in girls and women's sports, and a
Sale's bill would reverse it, And today it looks like
the governor reversed himself on the issue. He called out
the unfairness of men competing in women's sports.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
So we're gonna talk to.
Speaker 2 (31:29):
Bill a Sale because we're going to play you the
Newsome clip on his debut iHeart Media podcast that he
did today and he renounced about a half a dozen
different woke stances all in one podcast.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
So now you like him now, Jean.
Speaker 1 (31:47):
We're finding common ground.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
You know you're gonna vote for him when he runs
for president.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Well, let's see, let's see, he's got more ground to
cover here.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
The ground is not common enough yet.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I was just telling you that the last half hour
that the there's a judge who demanded an audit, a
federal judge, and they have found that the Los Angeles
Homeless Services Authority, which is a city in county production
is a complete disaster and that most of the money
cannot be accounted for. They don't know where it went.
(32:23):
And what good it did. We've had about four of
these audits for State City County. Yeah, it's all is
that they're wasting the money. They're stealing the money. That's
all you got to know. Meantime, La County government is
going broke. It has a hiring freeze. Its budget is
forty five billion dollars a year, forty five billion dollars,
(32:45):
and it is facing, according to the La Times, enormous
pressures because the wildfires, a flood of sex abuse lawsuits,
sex abuse lawsuits, and of course Trump is threatening to
slash funding. We have a CEO in La County. I
never heard of this woman. Her name is Fesha Davenport Fbsia.
(33:09):
You know how to pronounce that. I never remember seeing her.
She's the chief executive and I've never seen her name
in the news. Fesha or Fesia Fisia. She's warned the
county supervisors that the situation could devolve into a financial crisis.
Do you know the county has one hundred and seventeen
(33:31):
thousand budgeted positions. One hundred and seventeen thousand, thirteen thousand
of these positions are unfilled. I bet you you and
I could get a county job. I'm sure we qualify
for two. Yeah, of the thirteen thousand empty positions.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Well, I get paid more.
Speaker 1 (33:47):
You won't have to show up for work, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't have to deal with traffic.
I get paid more.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
And you could sit home in your bathroom.
Speaker 3 (33:56):
My bathroom, my leopard bathroom.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
And your your leopard fuzzy slippers.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
I have those, and that s yes, I do. I
have about three parents.
Speaker 2 (34:05):
Well, you got to come to work, county workers do. Yeah,
it says uh. You know, they got two billion dollars
from Biden after the pandemic. All that money's gone, and
they changed the statue of limitations for victim of victims
of child sex abuse, and so now thousands of sex
(34:29):
abuse victims have sued over sex abuse in the county's
juvenile facilities and foster care system. The liability for those
lawsuits could be billions of dollars. Why do foster families
sexually abuse the kids they're supposed to take care of?
What is that the reason that their foster parents in
(34:50):
order so they have a free shot. What percentage of
foster parents are in that particular line of work in
order to sexually abuse the kids. Anybody have an answer
on that? Well, I guess, I guess there's thousands. I
mean there's thousands of lawsuits. Sales, tax revenues are going
(35:13):
to be down because of all the businesses that have
been shut down.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
I mean, you had the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
You know, there a lot of rioting going on like
in Santa Monica in LA and a lot of businesses
closed permanently because they allowed those George Floyd riots. Then
they shut down because of the pandemic. And then Karen
Bass was in Africa when the fire broke out. Well,
property taxes are down, are going to be down in
(35:39):
the Palis Aides area. Bit don't you think all those
homes destroyed, all the homes destroying now to Dina because
the so Cal Edison had malfunctioning equipment because they never
buried the power lines. I got a lot of stuff
on that I haven't gotten too yet. And oh, downy
(36:00):
unions want a big Hey, you've been listening to the John.
Speaker 1 (36:02):
Cobalt Show podcast.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
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.
Speaker 1 (36:11):
On the iHeartRadio app,
The John Kobylt Show News
Host
John Kobylt
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