Speaker 1: And we continue at one oh five in the afternoon.
Speaker 1: On the John Phillips Show, mister Randy Wang has the
Speaker 1: day off. His flight was canceled and he's stuck in Dallas.
Speaker 1: So I assume he's eating barbecue and not paying attention
Speaker 1: to the Texas Rangers, and by that I mean the
Speaker 1: ball club, not the police. Eight hundred two two two
Speaker 1: five two two two is jellphone number one eight hundred
Speaker 1: two to two five two two two. If you're on
Speaker 1: holdsday there, we'll get to your calls later on in
Speaker 1: the program. But as I mentioned before, election day is
Speaker 1: a week from today, next Tuesday, June the second. If
Speaker 1: you plan to vote, you can vote in person at
Speaker 1: a voting center. You can vote on election day, or
Speaker 1: all of you have ballots that were mailed to you.
Speaker 1: As long as it's postmarked by June second, your vote
Speaker 1: will count. So if you plan on voting, make sure
Speaker 1: you get your vote in by next Tuesday, June second.
Speaker 1: One of the contest that'll be on your ballot is
Speaker 1: the contest to decide who will become California's next Treasurer.
Speaker 1: Fiona ma is California's current treasurer. She's termed out and
Speaker 1: running for a lieutenant governor, which means the seat is
Speaker 1: open and any number of candidates have a shot at
Speaker 1: becoming elected state treasurer. Joining us at right now is
Speaker 1: a candidate for that office. You can get her online
Speaker 1: at Hawks for us dot com. Candidate for California State Treasurer,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Hawks. Welcome.
Speaker 2: Thank you John for having me on today.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the obvious. Why should you be
Speaker 1: the next treasurer of the State of California.
Speaker 2: Well, John, to be very honest with you, this is
Speaker 2: not something that I had in my wheelhouse about a
Speaker 2: year ago, but as I have watched the state decline,
Speaker 2: it became apparent to me that somebody needed to step
Speaker 2: forward and say enough is enough. Twenty twenty one, I
Speaker 2: retired after forty five almost fifty years of employment and
Speaker 2: have been enjoying being retired, and I am willing to
Speaker 2: come out of retirement to put on the panty hose
Speaker 2: and the lipstick and go to Sacramento and see if
Speaker 2: we can't begin to get this ship turned around.
Speaker 1: As someone who has obviously been studying the books of
Speaker 1: the State of California, how we spend our money, where
Speaker 1: we spend our money. I'm sure you've been closely following
Speaker 1: all the stories regarding fraud, whether it be ed D
Speaker 1: fraud where the state of California was taken for something
Speaker 1: to the tune of thirty billion dollars, which is the
Speaker 1: largest theft in the history of the United States. We're
Speaker 1: currently seeing, courtesy of Nick Shirley and CBS News, a
Speaker 1: story involving fraud regarding hospice centers in the San Fernando Valley,
Speaker 1: where the state of California is on the hook to
Speaker 1: pay for services that are obviously not being rendered. The
Speaker 1: California Secretary is Date Shirley Weber, who is in charge
Speaker 1: of handing out business licenses to many of these fraudulent businesses,
Speaker 1: says it's not her job to determine which companies are
Speaker 1: fraudulent and which companies aren't, so the State of California
Speaker 1: has been mailing them money. And then, of course you
Speaker 1: have all of these NGOs who are making a king's
Speaker 1: ransom in the name of fighting homelessness or in the
Speaker 1: name of any other altruistic goals, where they're not doing
Speaker 1: anything to make the problem go away. They're enriching themselves
Speaker 1: in the process. Will all of us have to deal
Speaker 1: with the chaos that people living on the streets brings us.
Speaker 1: How much fraud do you think is actually going on
Speaker 1: in the state of California.
Speaker 2: I think a lot more than we have even begun
Speaker 2: to uncover, and that, unfortunately, is very sad, and you
Speaker 2: should make every tax paying California furious and wanted to
Speaker 2: see change up there. If it's not the Secretary State's
Speaker 2: job to oversee this, then who is in charge? And
Speaker 2: that seems to be a problem. There seems to be
Speaker 2: a lot of figure pointing. This person, that person, the
Speaker 2: controller actually really has a lot of oversight on this
Speaker 2: as well, and she's also been a little bit asleep
Speaker 2: at the switch. A lot of how this money goes
Speaker 2: out the door is so multi layered that nobody takes
Speaker 2: the blame. It's all a bunch of figure pointing, and
Speaker 2: I would imagine that. In fact, I'm gonna meet Nick
Speaker 2: Shirley on the ninth of June when I can't wait,
Speaker 2: and hoping that I can get his assistance on digging
Speaker 2: into a little bit more other areas that I'm kind
Speaker 2: of concerned about. Number one being some of these affordable
Speaker 2: housing projects that are that come up through the Treasure's
Speaker 2: office and get rubber stamped. There is so much money
Speaker 2: that is going out the door to not only the
Speaker 2: fraud piece of this, but also to to contractors and
Speaker 2: people that are on the bottom of this that are
Speaker 2: just getting filthy rich. And by the time this thing
Speaker 2: gets its way up the pipeline and gets rubber stamped,
Speaker 2: they've already a lot of them have already paid off
Speaker 2: other people. I mean, it is a who you know operation,
Speaker 2: which is one of the concerns that I have with
Speaker 2: the current Lieutenant governor who is also running for this position.
Speaker 2: She is a long term, longtime developer. She's worked for
Speaker 2: her dad for the last two decades, shown multiple buildings
Speaker 2: around the state capitol, all of which, by the way,
Speaker 2: are rented out to state agencies. That's a little bit
Speaker 2: of conflict of interest, I think. And she has already
Speaker 2: gotten the endorsement of almost every major low income housing
Speaker 2: developer and they have been pumping thousands and tens of
Speaker 2: thousands of dollars into her campaign. That should be enough
Speaker 2: to That's a red flag right there for every family
Speaker 2: in California that's just fighting to keep their head above water.
Speaker 1: If the waste fraud and abuse were to be identified
Speaker 1: and eliminated. How much do you think we could lower
Speaker 1: the tax burden in California, in a state where taxes
Speaker 1: are virtually higher than any other state in the Union,
Speaker 1: and now we're looking at taxes on the ballot for
Speaker 1: public transit. We're potentially looking at one on the November
Speaker 1: ballot that's a wealth confiscation tax that's already caused over
Speaker 1: a trillion dollars to move out of the state. In
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, the firefighters say they need a tax on
Speaker 1: the ballot so they're made whole. How much of the
Speaker 1: tax burden do you think is represented by the waye
Speaker 1: fraud and abuse.
Speaker 2: I think we could easily get our tax, our tax
Speaker 2: down to under five percent if we got all of
Speaker 2: this stuff cleaned up. And who knows, we might even
Speaker 2: be able to go as far as we're Florida and
Speaker 2: some of these others have gotten. But the fact that
Speaker 2: we have reached a point we don't have a we
Speaker 2: don't have a tax problem. We have a spending problem.
Speaker 2: That's the problem. Sacramento. Good is never good enough, you know.
Speaker 2: I've talked to families both husband and wife, both work,
Speaker 2: their kids are going to they're in public schools. The
Speaker 2: schools are failing. They can't even pick up and leave
Speaker 2: the state because their support system is here. They've got
Speaker 2: aunts or uncles or grandparents that are picking up the
Speaker 2: kids because they're both both working all day long and
Speaker 2: there's more months than money at the end of every month.
Speaker 2: I mean, something has got to give, and if not.
Speaker 2: Now when I think for the first time, I am
Speaker 2: seeing probably one of the most educated, sharp slate of
Speaker 2: candidates that are running to get to get this state
Speaker 2: turned around, I'm so impressed with the candidates, and I
Speaker 2: think if we can get a handful of us in,
Speaker 2: We're not going to get out of this overnight. John.
Speaker 2: This has been going on for sixteen years of one
Speaker 2: party rule. But we can start to make traction. Some
Speaker 2: of the things that I'm going to be able to
Speaker 2: do right off the bat is I'll be able to
Speaker 2: demand audits and I'm going to require additional reporting. I
Speaker 2: can replace weak managers or managers that have agendas that
Speaker 2: are pushing things along. I can hold questionable practices accountable.
Speaker 2: The other thing I can do is I can go
Speaker 2: to the press if I see something going on and
Speaker 2: I'm not getting any actions. I've got the ability to
Speaker 2: pick up the phone and call people like you and say, John,
Speaker 2: can you and I have a chat. I think the
Speaker 2: California people would like to know what's going on right now.
Speaker 2: These are some of the things that I can do.
Speaker 2: I can get some questions answered before approvals go out
Speaker 2: the door.
Speaker 1: The California State Auditor seems to be do a pretty
Speaker 1: good job of identifying a lot of the fraud, a
Speaker 1: lot of the waste, a lot of the abuse that's
Speaker 1: going on right now. They publish a report, they make
Speaker 1: it available to the legislature, they make it available to
Speaker 1: the governor and the other statewide constitutional officers, but it
Speaker 1: seems like they choose not to do anything with it. It's
Speaker 1: not that the information is something that's not available to them.
Speaker 1: It's not that this is some big secret. It's that
Speaker 1: they just don't have the will to act. Do you
Speaker 1: see it that way?
Speaker 2: I do see it that way, And just for your information,
Speaker 2: and also two for the public. The state Auditor, which
Speaker 2: should be an independent, freestanding position, is actually appointed by
Speaker 2: the governor. So if we can get a good governor in,
Speaker 2: we're going to assure that we're going to have a
Speaker 2: good state auditor, and he also is the one that
Speaker 2: would appoint or she would be the one would appoint
Speaker 2: the director of Finance if we had a good director
Speaker 2: of Finance and we had a good controller and a
Speaker 2: good treasure And I'm going to put myself in that position.
Speaker 2: I'm going to call that the three legged stool for
Speaker 2: a better choice of words. Those three have tremendous ability
Speaker 2: to shut the spickt off in Sacramento. And so I'm
Speaker 2: just asking every California that that has had enough of
Speaker 2: this to police, get out and vote. This particular election
Speaker 2: is probably I think one of the most important in
Speaker 2: our lifetime for the state. We cannot continue to go
Speaker 2: down the financial path that we are on. When you
Speaker 2: just look at the energy in the industry alone, they
Speaker 2: have just enough decimated our energy industry. And when you
Speaker 2: talked about the billionaires and how many have gone out,
Speaker 2: I just did a quick assessment. I picked the top
Speaker 2: six that had gone out the door, and then added
Speaker 2: Elon Musk into that mix. The one time amount of
Speaker 2: tacks that they would have been able to get off
Speaker 2: of these guys was just north of about seventy eight
Speaker 2: billion dollars. But it's backsired on them because they've not
Speaker 2: only lost the seventy eight billion they all left before
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five, in the twenty twenty five they've taken
Speaker 2: with them what they would be paying on an annual basis.
Speaker 2: They've also taken their companies and we've lost jobs. So
Speaker 2: what that number actually represents who knows. But when you
Speaker 2: just look at our debt bond alone for the state
Speaker 2: of Calcualt, we are we pump out more bonds on
Speaker 2: the backs of our people than any other states in
Speaker 2: the in the country. Our bond debt alone is just
Speaker 2: north of seventy eight billion dollars and our annual debt
Speaker 2: service on that is eight point two. I mean, we
Speaker 2: just can't keep running with the numbers that we're running.
Speaker 2: We are physically running. They're physically running this state into
Speaker 2: the ground. And what's amazing is he's going to be
Speaker 2: out at the end of the year and somebody else
Speaker 2: is going to have to clean up the mess. He
Speaker 2: just passed a new budget of three hundred and forty
Speaker 2: nine billion dollars and this is just not sustainable. It's
Speaker 2: just not sustainable. We can't keep all the entitlements plus
Speaker 2: the money that's going out the door with the frauds
Speaker 2: and our pensions. Our pensions are not even running fully
Speaker 2: fully funded. They're running between seventy one and seventy percent funded,
Speaker 2: So we've got a huge risk there as well.
Speaker 1: You mentioned your chief opponent in this race, the current
Speaker 1: lieutenant governor, a billionaire heiress, a lady Connell Louchus. When
Speaker 1: you look at how she campaigns, what she's putting on
Speaker 1: her website, what she's saying when she's interviewed, what she's
Speaker 1: saying at public forums that she's participating in, it seems
Speaker 1: like all she talks about is Donald Trump, how much
Speaker 1: she hates Donald Trump, what she's going to do to
Speaker 1: block the Trump administration, how much she dislikes what he
Speaker 1: puts out on social media, the basics. She seems like
Speaker 1: she's not even concerned with the duties that comes with
Speaker 1: the office. It seems like something that she's just not
Speaker 1: interested in. Is it frustrating to run for an office
Speaker 1: against people who aren't even talking about the subject matter
Speaker 1: that you would have to deal with should you be elected.
Speaker 2: She knows something. I think that's one of the reasons
Speaker 2: why I am trying to be as vocal as I can,
Speaker 2: and I'm talking to folks. The Lieutenant governor position is
Speaker 2: kind of also a figurehead. You kind of have a
Speaker 2: beautiful little title, but you really don't have to do
Speaker 2: much work unless you want to. The Treasurer's office can
Speaker 2: be the same can be the same way because the
Speaker 2: day to day work is actually done within the divisions
Speaker 2: of that office. There's four hundred employees, and within that
Speaker 2: there's about eight or nine major divisions, and they all
Speaker 2: have their own CEOs and experts within those. The day
Speaker 2: to day work is done in those divisions, and so
Speaker 2: she basically could take this position and continue on basically
Speaker 2: doing nothing and just being a figurehead. That's not why
Speaker 2: I'm running. I'm running. I'm coming out of retirement. I
Speaker 2: don't need this job. I don't need the salary off
Speaker 2: of this job. I'm going up there because my kids
Speaker 2: and my grandkids can barely afford to live in this
Speaker 2: state anymore. And as I talk to other people around,
Speaker 2: they're hurting, they're suffering, and you know something, maybe instead
Speaker 2: of fighting Trump, maybe you should start fighting for the
Speaker 2: people of California, because those are the people that you've
Speaker 2: been duly elected to represent. That's why I'm going to Sacramento.
Speaker 1: The state of California is expected to lose between three
Speaker 1: and five congressional seats and electoral votes after the next
Speaker 1: census because of our population decline. You go to states
Speaker 1: like Arizona, Nevada, now even places like Texas and Florida
Speaker 1: and Idaho and other states in the West, in the
Speaker 1: Rocky Mountain West, you find a former bunch of former Californians.
Speaker 1: If we don't write this ship, do you think we're
Speaker 1: going to continue to see a population decline over time?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Absolutely, We're already seeing it. And matter of fact,
Speaker 2: I've got quite a few friends that have moved to
Speaker 2: Florida or have to move to Tennessee to get out
Speaker 2: from underneath the amount of tech tax debt that they've
Speaker 2: had to pay. And I mean I just recently bought
Speaker 2: a house in November and I had to still stock
Speaker 2: to be able to purchase the house. And were I say,
Speaker 2: California Franchise Tax Board was right there. They want their
Speaker 2: money immediately. Where the federal government, I mean, you can
Speaker 2: kind of push it out over time, but not the
Speaker 2: state of California. It's just the sense of the greed
Speaker 2: on that machine is just it's never ending. And I
Speaker 2: think if we can't get this ship turned around, we're
Speaker 2: going to continue to see people leave.
Speaker 1: And you talk to realtors and they say a lot
Speaker 1: of people are trying to sell their homes. We don't
Speaker 1: have many buyers right now.
Speaker 2: Well, the reason why we don't have a lot of
Speaker 2: buyers is number one. Now we've got a new fed
Speaker 2: share I think that's going to help. I think they've
Speaker 2: kept things boosted to hurt the current administration. So I
Speaker 2: think if we can get some interest rates down, and
Speaker 2: I think if we can get the tax burden lifted
Speaker 2: off the people. The other thing, too, is the amount
Speaker 2: of regulations that just continues to get cranked out by
Speaker 2: our legislators or by bureaucrats. We've got to get some
Speaker 2: of this stuff turned around and lift the weight off
Speaker 2: of the people of this state. If we can do that,
Speaker 2: I think, and make California golden again.
Speaker 1: And I'll tell you and we'll end with this right now,
Speaker 1: the tech industry and AI specifically, is driving not only
Speaker 1: the economy of the state, the economy of the country,
Speaker 1: the economy of the world. If we can't figure out
Speaker 1: how to make the state work, we're going to lose
Speaker 1: that industry to Texas or some other state that will
Speaker 1: welcome them with open arms. And all of those high
Speaker 1: paying jobs, all of the people that work for those companies,
Speaker 1: all of the wealth that they create, all the capital
Speaker 1: gains that's going to go with them, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be devastating for the state.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 2: And you know all these big AI data centers that
Speaker 2: are going to be needed to run all of these
Speaker 2: things have to have power and they have to have water,
Speaker 2: two other elements that this current administration has decimated in
Speaker 2: this state. So we need a new governor, We need
Speaker 2: a new lieutenant governor, we need a new controller, we
Speaker 2: need a new Secretary of state, and we in a
Speaker 2: new treasure I just want to urge your listeners please
Speaker 2: please get out and vote. And it's time for change.
Speaker 2: And the only way for change is if you don't
Speaker 2: follow a party line, but you follow policy, good old
Speaker 2: common sense. It's got to make a comeback in this state.
Speaker 1: Jennifer Hawks, candidate for State treasure certainly sounds like you've
Speaker 1: done your homework. You can get her online at hawksfor
Speaker 1: us dot com. Jennifer Hawks, thanks so much for stopping
Speaker 1: by and good luck on election day.
Speaker 2: John, thank you so very much. I've enjoyed my time
Speaker 2: with you.
Speaker 1: If you'd like to email the show, you can do
Speaker 1: so at Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com.
Speaker 1: That's Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. And
Speaker 1: do not forget. On election night, which is Tuesday, June second,
Speaker 1: we're going to be doing double duty. We'll be back
Speaker 1: from seven to nine at night talking about the election results,
Speaker 1: assuming they come in. Although we do live in a
Speaker 1: state that seems to take a monk moth to count
Speaker 1: the ballots. But maybe we'll learn certain things on election night,
Speaker 1: and of course if we do, we'll bring that live
Speaker 1: to you. I'm KABC in La KSFO in the Bay
Speaker 1: Area and KMJ in Fresno. And right now it's time
Speaker 1: to make a couple of listeners very happy. Seven ninety
Speaker 1: KABC welcomes Nile, Rogers and Sheep to the Pacific Amphitheater
Speaker 1: at the OC Fair on July the thirty. First tickets
Speaker 1: are on sale right now at pacamp dot com. However,
Speaker 1: if you're caller number nine right now at eight eight
Speaker 1: eight seven nine ozho five two two two, that's eight
Speaker 1: eight eight seven nine oh five two two two you'll
Speaker 1: win a pair of tickets to the show, and all
Speaker 1: concert tickets include admission to the OC Fair. Tickets are
Speaker 1: furnished by the Pacific Amphitheater. Good luck dialing. It is
Speaker 1: our pleasure to welcome our next guest to the program.
Speaker 1: He is the editor of The Gus Report, who you
Speaker 1: can get on online at Daniel Gus dot substack dot
Speaker 1: com and follow on x at the Gus Report. Daniel Gus, Welcome.
Speaker 3: Hey John, Thanks for having me back. It never rans
Speaker 3: does it?
Speaker 1: Never? A dull moment in the insane asylum?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: All right? You have a new peace out suggesting that
Speaker 1: the numbers regarding crimes that the City of Los Angeles
Speaker 1: is putting out may not necessarily reflect reality.
Speaker 3: Yeah, may not. You don't need to have a database
Speaker 3: from the LAPD, John to know that any claim by
Speaker 3: Karen Bass or the La Times about crime stats being down,
Speaker 3: let alone down to near historic lows is beyond offensive.
Speaker 3: And I wasn't going to write about this subject as
Speaker 3: I did this morning until the La Times came out
Speaker 3: with a propaganda piece over the weekend that just cut
Speaker 3: me to my core. It was so deeply offensive that
Speaker 3: I had to write about it today.
Speaker 1: And what did you write? Well?
Speaker 3: The LA Times published this story over the weekend saying
Speaker 3: that Karen Bass's you know, fight against crime is so low,
Speaker 3: that is so good, that the crime stats are near
Speaker 3: historic lows for violent crime in the city of Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: which anybody with one or two open eyes can see.
Speaker 3: Is patently false. And here's the problem. There is no
Speaker 3: way that the LA Times could know that because for
Speaker 3: the past year or two, the LAPD has prevented people
Speaker 3: from actually seeing real crime data, including what's called block
Speaker 3: crime data, where you can see what's happening on your
Speaker 3: street and the neighboring streets. So it's patently false. And
Speaker 3: I want to give a shout out to KCBS because
Speaker 3: their assignment editor, Mike Rogers, late last year submitted a
Speaker 3: public record's request to the LAPD and they've been dragging
Speaker 3: their feet. It's too expensive or they have too much
Speaker 3: to do, and it's not working. And essentially they kind
Speaker 3: of dropped the ball on that. And so we are
Speaker 3: being gas lit. What a surprise by Karen Bass the LAPD,
Speaker 3: but most offensively by the Los Angeles Times that's claiming
Speaker 3: to know things that it couldn't possibly know about crime
Speaker 3: statistics in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Here's the question that I would have for them. If
Speaker 1: crime as it historic lows, then why is it that
Speaker 1: businesses can't buy insurance or their rates are going through
Speaker 1: the roof and the insurance companies are specifically citing crime
Speaker 1: when these people call their agent to find out why
Speaker 1: their policies are going through the roof? Why is it
Speaker 1: that people are so frustrated with retail theft and with
Speaker 1: crimes being committed at their place of business that they
Speaker 1: just stop calling the police at the time when it
Speaker 1: happens because they know it's useless.
Speaker 3: Well, right, but you're assuming that if you ask that
Speaker 3: question of the Mayor's office or the l a p
Speaker 3: D or the LA Times, that they're going to speak
Speaker 3: to you man to man, that they're not agenda driven
Speaker 3: in terms of the LA Times, or or budget driven
Speaker 3: like the l a p D. Or politically driven like
Speaker 3: the Mayor's office. And this is even more the case.
Speaker 3: It's such a deeply offensive claim by the Times in
Speaker 3: Bass and the l a p D. That this is
Speaker 3: especially acutely dishonest when it comes to violent crimes. Aren't robbery, murder,
Speaker 3: sexual assaults and so yeah, that's the question I would
Speaker 3: have for them. But they are not in the business
Speaker 3: of news and transparency. They are in the business of
Speaker 3: keeping one another employed at your mind and your listener's expense.
Speaker 1: Well, we do the California crime Blotder just about every day,
Speaker 1: and Los Angeles makes the Blotterer, particularly recently in the
Speaker 1: San Fernando Valley, all the time. And one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that we do the blotterer is because the point
Speaker 1: of view of the electeds is if we just stop
Speaker 1: talking about crime, then people would be convinced that crime
Speaker 1: is down. Well, we're not going to stop talking about
Speaker 1: it because it's going on all around us. And the
Speaker 1: pressure may work on some shops, it's not going to
Speaker 1: work here. The crime is going on and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about it. But that is their point of view.
Speaker 1: In fact, that point of view is expressed in an
Speaker 1: MTA board meeting in explicit words, where their attitude is
Speaker 1: just flood the zone with stories, positive stories about the MTA,
Speaker 1: about Los Angeles, and then people won't pay attention to
Speaker 1: the crime stories because they'll see the positive stories. And
Speaker 1: if you just get enough positive stories out there, it'll
Speaker 1: counteract all of the negative stories. But the reality is
Speaker 1: it's going on. It's happening. If it wasn't, we wouldn't
Speaker 1: be reporting on it, and they just want us to
Speaker 1: shut up, right.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing. It's a vicious cycle because all
Speaker 3: because of these you know, computer algorithms and things of
Speaker 3: that nature. When the LAPD, when the La Times puts
Speaker 3: out a story, Aol dot com and Yahoo News and
Speaker 3: Google News and MSNBC or whatever it's called now it's
Speaker 3: see and then they just parent one another's content. And
Speaker 3: so by the time it actually gets out into you know,
Speaker 3: the the universe, or as they say in City Hall,
Speaker 3: when he gets out into the diaspora of Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: the lie is repeated so many times that the truth
Speaker 3: is always running to catch up to it. And like
Speaker 3: I said, if it wasn't such a deeply offensive declaration
Speaker 3: by libor Janny or whatever his name is at the
Speaker 3: La Times, I might not have written about it. But
Speaker 3: it's so deeply offensive I had to so thank you
Speaker 3: for echoing the truth out to Los Angeles as you're
Speaker 3: doing right now. Way, John, can I also add that
Speaker 3: the timing of the La Times story, which which almost
Speaker 3: is almost a perfect mirror of Karen Bass's TV campaign ads,
Speaker 3: like it's echoing through my head. The timing of the
Speaker 3: La Times BS story cannot be missed. It cannot be
Speaker 3: underestimated because they're doing this a week before the primary.
Speaker 3: Come on, I wouldn't spend a time now or in
Speaker 3: ten year on the La Times. And gosh darn, don't
Speaker 3: trust a word that they say about anything.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you crime stats and homeless stats. It's like
Speaker 1: weight loss. You can see it with your own eyes.
Speaker 1: You can feel it. You are aware of your surroundings.
Speaker 1: You know what's going on. If you have a fat
Speaker 1: friend who claims that all they're eating is salads right now,
Speaker 1: and all they're doing is running on the treadmill and
Speaker 1: they're losing weight like you wouldn't believe, and they still
Speaker 1: have breasts and they look like they're about ten months pregnant,
Speaker 1: you know they're lying to you because you can see
Speaker 1: it with your own eyes. Now, if someone does actually
Speaker 1: lose weight Al Roker, for example, big fat guy normally
Speaker 1: delivering the weather, and all of a sudden he's a
Speaker 1: half a roker, the first thing you say to yourself is,
Speaker 1: what the hell happened to al Roker. He lost like
Speaker 1: half of his weight or more. You notice it immediately
Speaker 1: when homeless homelessness goes down and crime goes down. You
Speaker 1: can feel it. You drive around town. You see fewer tents,
Speaker 1: you're pumping gas. You don't have someone giving you a
Speaker 1: problem if you are talking about crime. You talk to
Speaker 1: people who own small businesses. They don't complain about crime
Speaker 1: twenty four to seven. You don't hear people being dropped
Speaker 1: from their insurance policies or having their insurance policies shoot
Speaker 1: through the roof. You can tell by living here, and
Speaker 1: none of us feel that way. And it's not because
Speaker 1: we're emotional, or it's not because we're being manipulated by
Speaker 1: the press and sensationalist journalism. It's because we have our
Speaker 1: eyes open and Karen Bass is trying to flood the
Speaker 1: zone with lies, so we don't believe our own lieon.
Speaker 3: Eyes right, there's a perfect analogy with the al Roger
Speaker 3: and the weight loss thing. But the problem is the
Speaker 3: mainstream media, most of it, not you, not Randy, but
Speaker 3: most of it just looks what the La Times say
Speaker 3: and doesn't do its diligence to find out what the
Speaker 3: truth is. So I also point a finger to the
Speaker 3: media outlets that just echo the same lies and people
Speaker 3: who are, like I said, going, you know, busy picking
Speaker 3: up the kids from the school, or getting to the
Speaker 3: dentist or getting dinner ready by five o'clock. They only
Speaker 3: know what's in front of them. But it's a disconnect,
Speaker 3: and we're hoping to God that this time, maybe this time,
Speaker 3: people are going to say, you know what, the mainstream
Speaker 3: media is not telling us the truth. In Los Angeles,
Speaker 3: it's way worse. I live in Sherman Oaks, which has
Speaker 3: historically been protected from the dangers and the craziness of
Speaker 3: the city, but it's a disaster here under Nathia Ramen.
Speaker 3: And so hopefully people will stop listening more to what's
Speaker 3: being parroted by the mainstream media from the La Times
Speaker 3: and start listening to their own common sense, because that
Speaker 3: is where the truth lies. And of course you.
Speaker 1: And me, and of course if they are in fact
Speaker 1: cooking the books on the crime stats, that would be
Speaker 1: totally within the character of Karen Bass and City Hall,
Speaker 1: because she was the one who got caught red handed
Speaker 1: cooking the books on the after action fire report when
Speaker 1: the actual report was going to make her look awful,
Speaker 1: so she had to finesse and massage certain things to
Speaker 1: make it look less bad. If you're willing to do
Speaker 1: that for the fire report, why wouldn't you be willing
Speaker 1: to do that for crime stats too.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, John, But they're not just cooking the books. For example,
Speaker 3: if there's an armed robbery that turns into a murder,
Speaker 3: the LAPD only counts that as one crime, it's actually
Speaker 3: two or more crimes. But they're not only cooking the books.
Speaker 3: They are withholding from us crime data that we are
Speaker 3: entitled to. The LAPD stopped providing it. In Karen Bass's term,
Speaker 3: only cooking the books and what they're releasing is untruthful.
Speaker 3: They're not allowed to withhold it from us, And what
Speaker 3: the LAPD through the City attorney, through the City Attorney's office,
Speaker 3: Heidefeldstein Soto's is saying, well, you know, if we release
Speaker 3: the actual crime data, there might be a public panic
Speaker 3: when people see what the real crime stats are and
Speaker 3: it could lead to misguided public safety discussions at city council. Well,
Speaker 3: they think that you and I and your listeners can't
Speaker 3: handle the truth. As Jack Nicholson said about what's going on, here,
Speaker 3: but we're already experiencing it, so why not release the
Speaker 3: crime data? And it will be released in time. But
Speaker 3: wake up, people, your own tax dollars are being used
Speaker 3: to gaslight you and prevent you from seeing what you
Speaker 3: already know. That crime data in Los Angeles, in my opinion,
Speaker 3: especially violent crime data, may be at near all time highs,
Speaker 3: not near all time lows.
Speaker 1: Well, and I mentioned before the apathy of people who
Speaker 1: don't even bother to notify the police when they're the
Speaker 1: victim of a crime because they know nothing's going to happen.
Speaker 1: You also have to understand that the cops are being
Speaker 1: told to just not enforce certain laws. I mean, look
Speaker 1: at what goes on on a daily basis in the
Speaker 1: homeless encampments right in front of the cops, where you
Speaker 1: have drug use going on, you have what's obviously stolen property,
Speaker 1: you have public camping, you have a litany of other
Speaker 1: crimes that go on on a daily basis, and nobody
Speaker 1: blows the whistle. So none of that shows up in
Speaker 1: any statistic. And I'd also go back to the riots
Speaker 1: that we saw when a BLM was a thing, and
Speaker 1: those were some of the most violent and costly riots
Speaker 1: that have happened in the history of the United States,
Speaker 1: and how many arrests were made, how many people got
Speaker 1: arrested for eluding or for burning businesses or breaking the law,
Speaker 1: or when Ice was here making arrest and you had
Speaker 1: the freeway shut down and black and whites lit on
Speaker 1: fire and all those things, how many people got arrested
Speaker 1: for that. The answer is almost none. So on the books,
Speaker 1: nothing happened during those two sets of riots because the
Speaker 1: city doesn't want them documented in any way.
Speaker 3: Right, And I don't know if you remember back to
Speaker 3: one specific incident during one of not the BLM riots,
Speaker 3: but the anti Ice riots, the twin daughters of a
Speaker 3: guy by the name of Rick Cole, who is a
Speaker 3: top level guy in Kenneth Maheea, the city Controller's office.
Speaker 3: Rick Cole, who has had some activist problems with the
Speaker 3: law in his past. His twin daughters, including one that
Speaker 3: worked for a city council member. One of them, at
Speaker 3: least to one of them, was arrested for throwing a
Speaker 3: frozen bottle of water at an LAPD officer. A city
Speaker 3: employee was arrested for throwing this this frozen bottle of
Speaker 3: ice water and an LAPD officer during a riot. Well,
Speaker 3: you know, John, I believe in my notes I have
Speaker 3: somewhere that city Attorney Heidi Feldstein Soto may have tried
Speaker 3: to interfere with what she was charged with, and it
Speaker 3: was she wasn't charged with what she should have been
Speaker 3: charged with, and it was watered down. So if you're
Speaker 3: an insider of city hall and if your daddy works
Speaker 3: for Kenneth Mahea's office, you might just get away with
Speaker 3: assault battery with a dangerous weapon on a police officer.
Speaker 3: So yeah, that and discouraging people from reporting crimes, with
Speaker 3: holding crime stats or misleading crime stats, it's all part
Speaker 3: of the same, you know, corrupt kettle of garbage.
Speaker 1: Let's go back to the La Times for a second,
Speaker 1: because the owner of the paper, Patrick Soon Schong, said
Speaker 1: on any number of occasions in public forums that he
Speaker 1: understood that the paper went off the cliff to the left,
Speaker 1: and one of the big mistakes was endorsing Karen Bass
Speaker 1: when she ran against Rick Caruso the first time around,
Speaker 1: that if he had to do it over again, he
Speaker 1: wouldn't have allowed the paper to do that. Yet you
Speaker 1: look at the coverage of the newspaper and they're printing
Speaker 1: Karen Bass's lies. They're putting stories out there that are
Speaker 1: meant to lift her up at the same time that
Speaker 1: they're out there slitting Spencer Prattz throat on a daily basis.
Speaker 1: Nothing at that paper has changed. Why is it that
Speaker 1: he can't get his people in line?
Speaker 3: You know, that's a great point, John, Yeah. Patrick Suinschong,
Speaker 3: the one hundred percent owner of the Los Angeles Times said,
Speaker 3: you know, when he decided not to endorse anybody in
Speaker 3: the presidential campaign, when he admitted that endorsing Karen Bass
Speaker 3: was a mistake, which is quite a bold move. Has
Speaker 3: absolutely gone silent on the Times coverage. Oh and his
Speaker 3: bias meter, which was a colossal fail from day one.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I don't know if the guy
Speaker 3: has just given up on this money hemorrhaging investment of
Speaker 3: his who she's now lost hundreds of millions of dollars
Speaker 3: in the past seven or eight years. I my gut
Speaker 3: is telling me that he just might be a sophisticated
Speaker 3: kind of like an elegant leftist now because nothing, as
Speaker 3: you said that, nothing of the La Times has changed.
Speaker 3: They are you know, whether it's Noah Goldberg issuing propaganda
Speaker 3: statements about Spencer Pratt's residence which is patently false, or
Speaker 3: things about crime data or about Nitia Rahman. No, it's
Speaker 3: it's a public relations outfit and he owns one hundred
Speaker 3: percent of it. So my conclusion has shifted from Gee,
Speaker 3: this this news outlet, pseudo news outlet, isn't just out
Speaker 3: of control. I'm beginning to think that Patrick soun Sean
Speaker 3: is just an executive leftist. That's my opinion, because I
Speaker 3: don't see anything to contradict that perspective.
Speaker 1: I'm not so sure about that. What I think is
Speaker 1: happening over there is I think that they just don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of respect for him. They don't like him.
Speaker 1: He tells them what he wants from them, and they
Speaker 1: go yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, and then they do
Speaker 1: what they were going to do anyway. And he's one
Speaker 1: of these guys with an attention span of a hummingbird,
Speaker 1: and he's moved on to something else, and he doesn't
Speaker 1: stay on top of them to enforce the editorial point
Speaker 1: of view of the owner.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's legitimate. Maybe if I gave that some thought,
Speaker 3: I might come to that conclusion. Also, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 3: when you're eight billion, or maybe in his case now
Speaker 3: seven billion. I guess you can just let this thing
Speaker 3: run itself into the ground, because if you lose x
Speaker 3: millions of dollars per month, and if it's feeding the
Speaker 3: fire in the leftist DSA corners of Los Angeles, maybe
Speaker 3: you can do that. Maybe I'm wrong about that, but
Speaker 3: but but gee, whiz, how do you how do you
Speaker 3: accumulate such success and such wealth and then let your
Speaker 3: employees at the La Times, uh, run the strip, run
Speaker 3: the ship into you know, into into the dock, because
Speaker 3: that's what's happening over there. But what if you remember
Speaker 3: sometime last year he was gonna come on your show
Speaker 3: and I started outing him about about hey, why are
Speaker 3: you doing this? What's happening with the biases at your corner?
Speaker 3: And he just decided, well, I'm just gonna disappear into
Speaker 3: the ether. So so he's successful. Patrick soon sean one
Speaker 3: owner of the La Times. So he's wildly successful in
Speaker 3: these other business adventures, business ventures. But yet at the
Speaker 3: La Times, you know, the inmates are running the asylum.
Speaker 3: So maybe you're you're right, but I need to give
Speaker 3: it some deeper thought.
Speaker 1: Daniel Guss, editor of The Gus Report. You can get
Speaker 1: him online at Daniel Gus dot substack dot com and
Speaker 1: follow him on Exit the Gus Report. Daniel Gus, thanks
Speaker 1: so much for stopping by.
Speaker 3: Thanks John Phillips, I'll talk to you soon.
Speaker 1: We have one more hour coming up, The John Phillips Show,
Speaker 1: Don't You Go Anywhere