Bass Resigns From LAHSA Board (09/09)

0:00This is an I heart podcast guaranteed human. Can't find am six 40 you're listening to the John Cobalt podcast on the I heart radio. Can't find am six 40 more stimulating talk radio. It's the John Cobalt show. Welcome. We are here. We're on from three to six every day after six o'clock, whatever you missed. It's the podcast John Cobalt show on demand. We're live on YouTube. We're live on X. And let's get to it because we got a special guest right at the start. We have a congressman Tim Birchett from Tennessee's Republican. And he's the chairman of the subcommittee on delivering government efficiency. And he's these launching investigation into Los Angeles about where the billions of dollars, specifically the federal money went that was supposed to be spent on homeless this. And as we know, there's a tremendous amount of theft and corruption. And there's more and more people living and dying in the streets.

1:02The hearing is called and it's going to be on Tuesday, fixing fraud and failure in federally funded homelessness services. Nice alliteration there. Yeah, it's supposed to be Tuesday. And Carabas is supposed to testify at in front of this committee next week, but she's refusing to told them no, she's busy. She's out of the things to do. Yeah, because she is trying very hard to avoid any intensive questioning as to where all the money went and why everything's getting worse. Let's get Tim Birchett on. How are you? Welcome. Oh, I'm well. Thank you all so much for having me on. What do you suspect is going on out here? We cover this story nearly every day. I mean, I have read hundreds of articles. What are you aware of? And what are you trying to get to the bottom of? I just like to know where the money went. It's our money. It's the last day out of the taxpayers money.

2:03I've had roughly a billion dollars in federal funding since 2021. You know, you've had the problems where one of the agencies was, investigators found out that CEO of LAHFA, Los Angeles, homeless service authority. The CEO, her husband was involved with a company that received roughly $2.1 million. That to me is a signal right there of the arrogance and in callousness towards the taxpayer. You never did that. I mean, who do I think they are? Congress. Having that somebody would do in Congress almost. Oh, invest is best. By the way, it was close friends with that CEO, the Tcia Adams. Yeah. It always ends the work that way. And you know, and we just can't keep doing this. We're, you know, we haven't communities basically stealing more money than we

3:04can print and Washington, they say, and that model just doesn't work or $40 trillion in debt. And I know everybody's going to say this is partisan, but you know, it's like I told the Democrat ranking member or co-chair, as I call her, I said, let's if we can, if we can eliminate some of this waste abuse and fraud, you know, you can, you can channel that money towards the projects that you want or what I want is to pay down debt, is to not create the programs in the first place. And you know, it's just all over government. You can't, you can't check a stick without hitting some of this. You turn over a rock and it crawls right out from under every dad gum time. And we're saying this in the homeless thing, especially because people are passionate about it. You see them every day. Oh, we got a throw money at it. And you know, you know, you've seen your numbers actually go up in Los Angeles. I believe they're out almost 4% last year. Exactly. Yeah, not just the numbers. You actually have to experience this. It is overwhelming.

4:06It's so disgusting. It's so scary. There are mental patients running in the streets. There are meth heads running in the streets screaming and assaulting people, a terrorizing people. And some there's large areas, like in the downtown area and skid row, there are no go zones. Like nobody wants to walk or drive there. It's crazy land and dogs. They're experimenting on dogs. They're testing the drugs out on the dogs first and then killing them. Yeah. I have no idea. Well, I used to be in the U Hall business. I had a little truck in trailer business. We sold trailers, welded some and we ran a few U halls and it was always tough to get the big trucks because they were always leaving the state. Now, guess what? I don't know in the U Hall business anymore, but you go by U Hall dealers. And it's all big trucks that have moved here and where are their tags from? California.

5:06And it's it's crazy. The number of people that are moving here to Tennessee because we're a low tax state, a right to work state. We don't put up with this kind of nonsense, at least in our more of our rural areas, we sure don't. And you just see it and it's happening all over the country and these blue communities and they allow for this. And then they run off all their alleged legitimate businesses. And there's a model there. You know, I don't want to get labeled McCarthy or whatever, but the truth is, is that there is a model there to delete all the funds, to throw it out to all these social services, collapse your government and start over with their own little woken topy. And I think you're seeing a pretty good view of what it's going to be like right there in Los Angeles. I mean, with 40, I got the statistics and the numbers I got are over 45. 1000 homeless people in the city of Los Angeles. Well, that's true. 2026. And that to me is hard to five them as a taxpayer that they were continuing this.

6:10And it doesn't seem that they care. I mean, Bass has heard this criticism for years and the media surprisingly covers a lot of the fraud in detail. I know you had access to some of the news stories that I think help to instigate this investigation. It's all true. Forget partisan. The thing is, it's true. It's really happening. Now why they're letting it happen. Yeah, maybe it's to ruin the government and set up their own woken topy. And it also takes, obviously takes care of their friends as well. And you're seeing that over and over again and whether many applicants or are a Minnesota with all the fraud there, the leering centers and things like that. And you just see it on and on and on. And it just it just in the main problem you got is the voters don't at least not enough of them. You always say you got to put enough points on the board so they can't steal it. And obviously, yeah, I'm going to have to do that in your all's community. Yeah, but the you know, and voters have got to start paying attention.

7:15This is not your, your, this is not, I mean, this is sure as heck not John F Kennedy's Democrat party. And it's not even Bill Clinton. It might be Hillary's. I'm not sure. But this bunch is so far to the left. It's to me. And this is what's running the Democrat party now. It's a, you know, the socialism is a socialism to communism. I say, socialism's delivered at the ballot box and communism's delivered at the point of the bayonet. And you know, and where we at in this whole thing, because it just never ends. We did. A lot of this is criminal behavior. I'm convinced a lot of the people in local government, city council, and, and, and bureaucrats, they've got to be getting a cut on the back end. They have to be. They know that all these programs don't work. It's clear. I know they know none of this works, which means they must be profiting from this. That's why I asked the president just to eliminate them all and let's start all over.

8:16Are these so called, um, they're just a bunch of big getters as all they are. And they throw this money at these problems. They've been overseas. And we've seen the money has gone back. I have a great conversation with the Elon Musk. A while back at the, they said, I'm convinced the money goes right back to Washington. And it goes back in the form of dark money and these campaigns. And I always say, you know, these is so called charitable organizations. Somebody's in Washington. Somebody's wife and or girlfriend probably works for these organizations. You know, they're getting a billion dollars. And the way they operate in Washington is you start an organization. And then a terrible group and they go overseas. And then they, they might be start off with a little bit of money, federal money. But then, but a billionaire will drop a million dollars into one of these things. And then some federal bureaucrat sees it. And so why this thing's got a million dollars. Let's start funding it. And you know, we find almost a trillion dollars in this kind of waste throughout the government.

9:18And yet we can't get Congress to do anything about it. It's a may that is just that's the, that's really a major crime. And it's and then unfortunately it's both parties. The other parties a lot worse than ours. But, but we're not, we're not, we're not going to walk away from this thing with a clean conscience. The talk, but it's Congress from Timberchette, Birchette from Tennessee. And he's the chairman of the subcommittee on delivering government efficiency. Karen Bass was summoned to testify. And she's not coming. And I can tell you she's not going to come. I know she worded it very politely. She's, so what do you do next? I always to paint on her. We could actually bring her in. And then she can play the fifth. What we've got to have is a justice department that goes after these people, because that's where it's got to go until you see somebody drove from the capital and in, and change. I don't think it'll ever clear up Washington. And until you see some big city operators get, get arrested, charged arrested and convicted.

10:22And that's the other thing. Of course, you worry about going before some judge, you get some probation or, you know, or text away their gangboy for the weekend or something. And that's, that's kind of what you're looking at a lot of these week judges. The El Salvador model is a great model. You know, they got rid of all the judges and they put cops on the street. They could put a dead gun camera on every corner. They put cops on the street and they enforce their laws and they back their law enforcement and they put all the criminals in prison. So, so if she never appears, you will subpoena her. 100%. 100%. I know her. I knew her in Congress, but, you know, I, I don't care if it's my, if my next four days, or if they're going to fund their nose, the United States Congress, we've got to take this serious. In America, it's sick of it. Really, there's sick of us cobbling these people. There's sick of us, you know, oh, we're going to ride a tough ladder to somebody. I'm sick of that stuff, man. I'm just not, I'm not going to put up with it.

11:23And you know, the difference in the way I run this committee and a lot of the other committees is every, every committee hearing we come up with legislation to fix the problem. And we try and we, we put it out. And it's just very difficult to get it through the committees because these, the lobbyists are so embedded with your, with your staff members that you can't get bills out and the committee. And, and leaderships about staying in power, unfortunately, and we've got to change that mentality. It's, it's, it's in fact been in Congress. That's always, they want the suburban, they want the entourage, they want to meet with the movie stars and, and sit at the great seats at the concert at the sporting events. And we've got to have people that are not worried about re-election for their egos. Again, I want to bust some ass and do what's right for our country. All right. Thank you for coming on. I hope we can talk again soon about this because it's good. I hope we have a good resolve of this. Yeah. All right. I hope so too. Tim Birchett, he's the chairman of the subcommittee on delivering government efficiency.

12:24Thanks for coming on. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. Can't buy AM640. We're stimulating talk radio. John Cobalt show moist line is 877 moist 8677 moist 86 or usually talk back feature on the I heart radio app or interview with Tim Birchett went long. So we just have a couple of minutes here. And he's the chairman of the subcommittee on delivering government efficiency. And he said definitively that if carabass doesn't come and testify before his committee, then he's going to subpoena her and he expects that she would take the fifth amendment, which implies that he thinks she may be guilty of crimes when it comes to explaining where the billion dollars in federal homeless money has has gone. And this doesn't even scratch the surface on the amount of money that's been spent over

13:25the last five years on homelessness in the last four years under her rule, because you have city money, county money, state money, you know, the tax money that came from various propositions that jacked up the sales tax and all for nothing. Everything got worse. Now I am telling you, I know that all these fraud stories that I read, the only way they would allow and enable these massive fraud, all these massive fraud schemes to exist is if it's their friends, relatives or they themselves are benefiting on the back end in a way that's hard to trace. And because our attorney general is not going to prosecute a fellow Democrat and our news media is mostly progressive Democrats, they are not ever going to try to corner her.

14:26She will not test, she would not testify before the federal judge and a David Carter in that civil case, she would, she's not, she's refusing to testify with Tim Birchett. Don't believe the garbage that, well, you know, we have a scheduling conflict here. No, she's not testifying. She knows what she was involved with. She knows what her friends have been involved with. She knows why it's worse and just care. But she's going to incriminate herself. So it's fifth amendment time after she gets subpoenaed. Because these, this is criminal activity. Shame on everybody in the news business here in Los Angeles for not pursuing this every single freaking day. Because these reporters know this is criminal activity.

15:26It's billions of dollars. It's like just stop it. Why don't you just come out and admit you're all fanboys and fangirls and you got to do what's best for the team and that you're not going to lay a glove on Karen bass. The lady won't testify before judge and hire 15 lawyers to insulator. She will testify before this committee. She's not coming on this show. Obviously, why is that? She'll promote this show when Tracy Park comes on and pops off about Nithya ramen. But Karen bass is not coming on and she's not testify not in court, not before a committee. Not if anybody's going to ask her about where the homeless money went. Now, she's resigning from the from loss from the board. Talk about that when we come back. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. KFI AM640 more stimulating talk radio. The John Cobalt show around for three to six.

16:28We're live on YouTube live on X and go to youtube.com slash Hatch on Cobalt show. And you can subscribe and become a member. That is youtube.com slash at John Cobalt show. And you go watch the video either again on X or YouTube. We had Republican Congressman Tim Birchett on in the first 15 minutes. He is the chairman of the fix of the subcommittee on delivering government efficiency. And there's a hearing on the fraud going on in the Los Angeles homeless industry. And the mixture of the fraud is Karen bass here in the city. And she's refusing to testify. This comes after she refused to testify in a civil trial regarding where the homeless money went. That was a federal trial run by a federal judge named David Carter. So she won't talk to the judge.

17:29She will not talk to this congressional committee. Birchett said if she's not coming, we'll subpoena her and she'll probably take the fifth amendment. So he thinks that she's been up to no good and doesn't want to talk about it. Now curiously, while Birchett has been trying to get bass to come to Washington and tell the truth, she suddenly resigns from the board of law. And it turns out she appointed herself. She does these things. And she and her political staff, they think they're really clever and nobody notices this crap. But she appoints herself. She is responsible for half the people on the loss of commission. And now as she's running desperately for reelection, she's saying, well, losses really messed up.

18:29It's really screwed up. It's dysfunctional. You are lost. Loss is you when you're on the board and you have selected half of the board members or re-approved half the board members. Then you are lost. You're responsible. When you're one of your best friends is running losses, the CEO, and it's forced off because she's given away $2 million to her husband's non-profit, Alicia Adams-Kellum. Stop it. Bass is a complete and total fraud on this. That's why she doesn't come on the show. God, I'd hit her with this right in the first few seconds. How is it your best friend gave away $2 million to her husband? How is it that you're on the commission? You're appointed or re-appointed for others.

19:32And you call it dysfunctional. Like it's your fault. And now that you're getting investigated by a congressional committee, suddenly you're resigning. So you can blame them? Here's another little quirk. There's a Loss of commissioner in Justin, Salasa. He was pushing for stronger auditing and oversight. Well, he got removed as the chairman of the agency's audit committee by the new chair, another ally of Bass. So Bass is friend who's the chairman of a chairperson, Salasa, removed the commissioner from running the audit committee. Because he's uncovered, for example, one non-profit being paid to operate more homeless spaces that actually existed. LAS reported this. Nick Gurdah, we just had him on the show yesterday.

20:34So you have as biased as the media is. The front is so widespread that LAS discovering it. LAS has been covering the stuff California Post has. It needs some television. But I watched some local news last night. He's like, you know, it's going to be hot today. I turned on the news last night. It at 9 o'clock. It's 10 minutes of, it's going to be hot tomorrow. You believe how hot it is. Oh my god, is it hot? Oh, the heat's coming from the south and it's coming from the west and it's at the humidity. Oh, humidity. It's heat and humidity. Well, I have been doing those stories as well. I admit it. I look, but everybody knows it's hot. I know, but it's so humid. This is unusual for Los Angeles. I've given this speech a thousand times. I grew up in New Jersey. I know. And I've strung a lot of time in Florida.

21:37This is nothing. Okay, but this is not everybody is like you. I have lived in New Jersey or spent a lot of time in Florida. This is every day of my childhood was this. Seriously, I get it. You know, I've been to Florida. Yeah, well, in Jersey, I grew up in. You know, I wait in the summertime. Between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. None of us went outside. I watched television game shows every summer for hours every day. Because you couldn't go out. There's also not a lot of news. Apparently, yes, apparently. But everybody's talking about it though. It is true though, John. Everybody's talking about how hot and humid it is. That's not news though. That's that's whether that's but it is. It's a table conversation. I understand remember storm watch. Yeah, I know. We have that. I know it's just making sense. But this is what's wrong with the television newscast here.

22:37They do 10 minutes on the obvious that nobody. Nobody is nobody's dying of the heat here in LA. Nobody can change the heat in LA. Why don't you tell us what's going on with Karen Bass and the billions of dollars of our tax money disappearing and we have to step over all the drug addicts and mental patients. In the heat. In the heat. In the heat. They're all dying in the heat right now. Tim Perchett in his announcement of the hearing. He says left wing policies that refuse to bar behavior like drug abuse and public housing only perpetuate the cycle of homelessness. Most of the nation's homeless suffer from drug addiction, mental illness or both. And Karen Bass knows this. All these left wing progressives know this. They know that giving them needles and pipes so they can smoke and snort and inject.

23:38They know that makes the drug addiction worse. They don't care because they're all making money. Karen Bass knows that Felicia Adams-Kellum was making a lot of money running loss and funneling the money to Felicia's husband. So they're not going to stop the gravy train. This is what has to be investigated. He wrote Tim Perchett that LA is a case study of failed policy, fraud and mismanagement that has been left unchecked for too long. It's a shame that Mayor Karen Bass refuses to show up to testify about her role in all this. Well, the reason is when she finally gets the peanut, is she's going to take the fifth amendment. She'll never answer these questions. She doesn't answer him here. She doesn't answer him in that federal courtroom with Judge Carter. Not going to answer him in front of this government efficiency committee.

24:39And Tim Perchett. Now, when we come back, you know where she appears? She appeared on the Scotty and Friends podcast. Who I will give credit to Scotty or the friends. They actually brought up the mayor of Santa Ana, Valerie Amescuah, who we had on the show recently, who announced on social media. From now on, nobody gets to sleep on the streets. You go to drug or mental health treatment. Or you go find your family or you go to jail. That's it. Why don't we do it here? Well, play with Karen Bassett and we come back. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. Okay, five AM640 live everywhere on the I heart radio app. We've been on rambling the Karen Bass situation. She's refusing to testify in Congress before the House subcommittee.

25:46The hearing is fixing fraud and failure and federally funded homelessness services. Yeah, she is the poster child for that. But she won't talk about it. And we had Tim Perchett on the chairman of that committee Republican from Tennessee. And he says he's going to subpoena her then. He invited her nicely. She says no. Here comes the subpoena. And she expects her to invoke the fifth amendment because she doesn't want to talk about all the criminal activity that goes on in this homeless industry that we fund with our tax money. And like I said, she wouldn't talk at that trial at civil trials. I'm on our show. She did go on this podcast called Scotty and friends. I've never heard of this. And somebody asked her about the Santa Ana Mayor Valerie Amesqua who we had on the show. Mayor Amesqua of Santa Ana has a different policy than the failed Karen Bass.

26:46You can't sleep on the streets or in the parks ever. You have to then go to mental health treatment drug treatment. We'll send you back to your family or you got a gel. And we'll just keep arresting you and sending to jail, whatever's necessary. Bass has asked about this on the Scotty and friends podcast. So play it a little bit edited just to clear up some spots, but let it roll. Do you see the mayor of Santa Ana? They're going out. They'll offer you services. If you don't want to service, they'll put you in jail. I know. And I think she criticized me and said, why don't you do this? First of all, if you talk to Sheriff Luna who's in charge of the jails, he will tell you that I had a room. Right. So you can't do that anyway. And the majority of the people that are in jail today at 20 hours are mentally ill. Yeah. So what we've decided to do is decide society. Instead of taking care of them, we lock them up. That costs more money. They get less services and they cycle in and out of jail.

27:49For her to criticize you and say, I didn't know she criticized you by the way. But I see it's like you. You're the mayor of LA. It's different. This is a different ballgame. You can't just say, why don't you do this? Because it ain't you disank that like this ain't Santa Ana. It's not disrespect Santa Ana. It's his thing, but like this ain't the same. And so I don't like Santa Ana is a tiny city anyway. But he could put Santa. Yeah. Well, Gito, you could put Santa Ana in a neighborhood. Okay. So we are the nation's second largest city. As you said, 3.8 million people. We are a complex city where this system to deal with homeless. This is a combination of the city and the county. I don't think you should be that anymore. The city needs to have complete control. I frankly want to break away from those bureaucrats that say, it's okay for you to be on the street. But when the people on the street look like me, I'm sorry. The people on the street that thinks it's okay for me to be on the street. What is she talking about? What does that mean?

28:50The people that look like her aren't too many 72 year old women out of the street. That makes no sense. And it also makes completely no sense about the jails. They've been trying to close down the county jails. They should be building a county jail to accommodate this. That's how you treat the problem. Don't give me this. Well, you know, the jails are all full. The jails are all full because we don't have enough jail space built. We don't have jail space built because we blow so much money on homelessness. We steal money on homelessness. They steal it. And then they're like, oh, I need money to build another jail. They need to be forced by voting people out of office so that instead of blowing money on fake homelessness programs, you build a jail. And after a while, people get tired of getting arrested.

29:51And then they'll either leave the area or go back to their family or accept treatment. That is total nonsense. But it did it did it. Now it's not her fault. Now it's not her fault. She was on the loss of board for three years. She appointed herself. She's responsible for five of the seats. Now suddenly losses a bad thing. She's quitting because she's got a all kinds of investigations going on as to where the money went. Nobody. If she wins, at least for my end, I'm going to keep asking every day, where did the money go? Where's the money? What did you do with it? Who has it? Is there any more of that? You see? Suddenly Santa Ana is 300,000 people. It's not tiny. It's a decent sized city.

30:52And there are a lot of big cities in this country where you can't sleep on the streets. Like in New York, they have a law. Everybody's got to write to shelter. And shelter means a bed. And the homeless people have a mandate to take the shelter. That's what they do in New York. You don't see stuff like this in New York City. I'm sure there are little pockets. Nothing like LA. There is nothing like LA. It's full of it. She's been in charge. She has been lost. Her best friend was running loss as the CEO. Her friend was sending money to her husband. Felicia Adams-Cellum. Your friend is running. Lassa, you're on the board. You appointed yourself. You appointed or reappointed for others. I'm pulling that crap. I don't like Scotty and friends.

31:53Do it any of that. Robert Luna doesn't have any room. They're doing a federal investigation to Luna's jails. I'm going to tell you about that when we come back. Debra Mark live in the KFI 24 hour newsroom. You've been listening to the John Cobalt Show podcast. You can always hear the show live on KFI AM640 from 3 to 6 p.m. every Monday through Friday. And of course, any time on demand on the I Heart Radio M. KFI AM640. More stimulating talk.