April 15, 2025 • 28 mins
The John Kobylt Show Hour 3 (04/15) - Alex Stone comes on the show to talk about the multi-million dollar jewelry heist in Downtown LA. How much manufacturing actually takes place in the United States? The LA Times is still not getting answers to questions they have about the fires in January. Soda and candy are no longer covered by federal food stamps.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four o'clock, and if you miss anything,
go to the iHeart app for John Cobelt's show on demand.
It's a podcast version. All right, you've heard Debra report
on this all afternoon. We're going to get even more
details now with Alex Stone from ABC News on Broadway
(00:26):
in downtown, LA thieves broke into a jewelry store and
it was quite an operation and they ran out, says
the owner, with over twenty millions worth of gold jewelry cash. Alex,
what went on? Yeah, this one's weird, but it also
(00:46):
is kind of reminiscent. Remember the the jewelry heights that
went on over the Grapevine out of that truck that
on one side. Those who lost they said like one
hundred million dollars, and then the Sheriff's department of that
one was saying it was far low that amount. And
then there was a one in like the Pacoima area
near the Costco out there where there's a storage area
(01:06):
for armored bug car remember that. Yeah, they got into
that one and took a bunch, so there's a little
discrepancy on the amount of money that this was, but
it does seem like something out of a movie, and
questions about what it was or wasn't. But the owners
of Love Jewels on Broadway in the Jewelry District are
saying that they now have gone back to their surveillance
(01:27):
videos and they have found that for over a month
that these bad guys at night were digging their way in,
digging a tunnel from an empty store next door and
getting through the concrete to make that tunnel, and they
went back and this is what they heard night after night,
but apparently nobody knew that at nighttime they were doing
(01:48):
this cutting their way into the store until eventually they
got in. And the owners claim that the bad guys
somehow as they came in, disabled all of the surveillance
cameras so nobody was caught on camera, and then spent
all Sunday night into Monday morning, over many many hours,
clearing out everything inside Love Jewels except a couple of
silver bracelets, and apparently they did not like and did
(02:09):
not want and they left those behind. The store was empty,
according to the family when they arrived yesterday morning, that
they came to work at around ten am and right
around there the LAPD was called for a burglary that
had gone on and everything was gone. Kevin is the
store owner's son. He says his dad is too distraught
to talk, but he says, I want to see justice.
He wants to see justice. Everything was left in shambles,
(02:31):
broken windows, everything tossed over, things overturned. So the family,
John says about twenty million dollars in gold bars, jewelry cash,
that it was all stolen today, that they brought that
down to about ten million dollars. We've talked to a
number of police sources who say when they went they
claimed to his five million dollars and or right over
five million, but not twenty million. And the family claims
(02:54):
no insurance on anything in there, and that it's going
to be on the hook for everything, and they started possible,
I don't know to have insurance. That's a good question.
I don't know how you have no insurance on anything
that's in there. So they have started to go fund
me now to try tell about the family. But they
say they've got nothing left that's in there, and that
they're going to be on the hook and Kevin Sam
(03:16):
twenty years of my father's work is just gone. So
they're offering one hundred thousand dollars reward. At this point,
nobody in custody, the LAPD doesn't have anybody. It's unclear
who did it, exactly how they pulled it off, where
all the loot is right now, or you know how
this was going on night after night and nobody knew
what was going on. And with the GoFundMe, he's saying.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
We're hoping that the community can support us and help
us get back on our field.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Now they think that they were hit or that it
may have played a role because they have apparently become
quite popular on Instagram for making different videos about love
jewels because they supply bling to rappers in the rap community.
So they think that maybe they were hit because of that.
Investigators are saying they don't know, they don't know what
this whole thing was. There's a whole money discrepancy, there's
(04:03):
this night after night getting in there, going on and
digging their way in. So it was either very sophisticated
or something else was going on, but at this point
they don't know. Yes, something else is going on. I
mean I read in one story that I mean they
actually supplied a jewelry to gangsters. Allegedly there was some
(04:24):
of that going on to people who could afford the
stuff that they have been kind of the wrap go
to Bling place, according to them and their Instagram that
it's where where people come to down client base. They
had a look at their client base for suspects. Yeah,
but I mean, I don't know what community of customers
(04:45):
comes up with a sophisticated tunnel through the wall, through
concrete and knock out the cameras that appear to have
been wired cameras, not just jamming the Wi Fi and
then going in there and taking everything out of there
and the cash and the gold bar. The one arms
no alarms, Yeah, no larms that we know of, the
one in Pacoima and the one up over the Grapevine.
(05:08):
They still haven't caught anybody in those and they may
never catch anybody. You know, you think with jewelry that
at some point you go, oh, we know where this
came from. Cash totally different thing. That's understandable, where that
could you could take off with that, But when it
comes to like the one over the grape Vine, and
this one it's jewelry. I always think it's people who
working for these companies because I mean, I so much
(05:30):
information to pull off the physical robbery. And you also,
like in the Grapevine case, the timing of it was
really important. Yeah. I don't know in this case what
it's gonna end up being, And in the others they
have not solved them. But I can tell you that
on the investigative side, there have definitely been investigators who
have had questions and hunches and in some of these
(05:51):
cases about was somebody on the inside involved? Was there
more to it? They haven't been able to prove anything
and nothing indicating that it was done from the inside,
but there have been There's always questions from detectives as
they come upon these wondering just how they were Were
they carried out without somebody on the inside of it.
If you have millions of dollars of product, you don't
(06:15):
spend the money to have an armed guard sitting inside
the store every night. Yeah, or insurance on it, and
now I insurance on it. On the Grapevine case, there
was a whole thing about that that most of these
folks underinsure because they don't think they're actually going to
go anywhere, and the insurance can be so expensive on
a lot of it that they will underinsure this. In
(06:36):
this case, they were no insuring this stuff. But you
remember that in the Grapevine one where they were saying, no,
it was one hundred million dollars, we want all the
money back, and yeah, that the Armored Park Company was like, no,
it's like ten million dollars. And so that it's not
unusual to have these discrepancies. In this case no insurance.
I mean, maybe that's just the way it goes down
(06:57):
in the jewelry district. Maybe that's a normal thing. It
does sound a little odds. I am suspicious, all right, Alex,
thank you very much. Shout shot. I'm not buying all this.
One of the stories says they used to make diamond
encrusted miniature a K for Evans for their clientele. I
(07:19):
don't think they were that is what. What's an M
four says they made M four trinkets? Is that a weapon?
I don't know what. I don't know either. A million? Oh,
it's an M four carbine uh a NATO assault rifle.
(07:41):
It's a shortened version of another assault rival. All Right,
you're you're not making butterflies engagement rings here, you're making
AK forty seven's and M four A assault weapons. You
(08:02):
want to look very fancy when you're killing people. I
guess there's a dress code. Now. All right, Well we
come back something I started talking about early on in
the show and we got off track and I forgot why.
But I want to go back to it because it's
really important and it explains why tariffs are the center
(08:24):
of attention for the from Washington and all the news media.
A lot of business owners, people in all industries have
their eyes focused on these tariffs. And it's a story
that goes back about forty years. And I'll give you
a rundown so you have some perspective on this, some
(08:48):
context for this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
All right. I started mentioning this before, and I want
to really get into it. There's nothing but stories on
Trump and tariffs, and there's lots of tariffs, and there's
lots of countries, and there's lots of percentages, and Trump
changes his mind every two days, and it's kind of
a pointless situation to try to analyze all this because
(09:18):
nobody knows that this is going to work. Nobody knows
exactly what's happening day to day. It seems even Trump's
own administration is confused because depending on who's talking on
what show, they get different reasons for why they're doing
what they're doing. But it is the overarching idea is
(09:38):
to make goods that are manufactured in foreign countries more
expensive so that it makes more sense for these companies
to make their products here. You see right now, it's
cheaper to make a lot of project products in foreign countries,
(09:58):
as we know, But what if we put this tariff,
this tax on the imports, then it might be cheaper
to do the manufacturing in the US. And it is
a complicated story, but what I wanted to tell you
is how we got here in the last twenty five years.
(10:20):
Because we used to be by far the number one
manufacturing powerhouse, as the Wall Street Journal puts it in
the world, coming out of World War Two about nineteen fifties.
So we got to go back seventy years, thirty five
percent of private sector jobs were in manufacturing. Today it's
(10:46):
nine percent. So we went from thirty five percent to
nine percent. And here's how we ended up losing so
many manufacturing jobs. After the war, there was a big
economic boom. People were optimistic, they were making money, and
there were a lot of new inventions that families had
(11:09):
to have washers, dryers, dishwashers, cars, any kind of appliances.
Eventually air conditioners, microwave ovens, televisions. Then the people started
flying commercially. You had jetplanes that had to be made,
(11:31):
and there's all these innovations, and you had a strong
union system, so people with high school educations can work
and make a lot of money in factories. And as
I've mentioned before, I'm very sensitive to this because my
dad went through that entire arc coming out of World
War two. Of course, you know, he was captured by
(11:52):
the Nazis. He was from Poland. But he got to
America and he worked at factories for forty seven years,
and every seven years his factory would close, and it
would close because the company was moving to the South
and then to Mexico and then to Asia. But every
(12:13):
seven years he'd be out of work because the factories
would close to move to where the labor was cheaper,
and people eventually in America got more affluent, and they
weren't buying as much right because how many TVs can
you have? How many washer dryers can you have? And
they started spending their extra money on travel, restaurants, medical care,
(12:38):
and manufacturing was flat into the nineteen eighties, but then
elsewhere in the world, labor costs were much lower in
Latin America and Asia because they didn't have minimum wage there,
they didn't have unions, they didn't have to supply health benefits,
(13:00):
they didn't have to supply pensions. It was slave labor,
and Americans didn't care if other people were slaves as
long as they got cheap stuff. So our manufacturers could
not compete with the overseas manufacturers because those countries allowed
(13:21):
the slave labor. Also, countries like China, they have no
environmental rules, they have no health and safety requirements, and
they don't care if you're getting a dollar an hour.
If you are being tortured by your company and you
want to jump off the roof, they really did build
(13:43):
suicide nets around the roof to catch you and send
you back to work. So the manufacturing conditions and a
lot of these countries are brutal. What really caused American
manufacturing to collapse was when and this was a Bush
Clinton production in the late nineties early two thousands. China
(14:07):
joined the World Trade Organization in two thousand and one,
and now you had huge production capabilities, huge amount of
slave labor in China, and the US had never faced
competition like this before. In nineteen ninety nine, the value
(14:27):
of Chinese exports was only about a tenth of Americas.
It was less than Sweden's in two thousand and eight.
In nine years, in nine years, it surpassed the US
as the world's top exporter of goods. And that drove
a lot of factories out of the United States and
(14:51):
a lot of men, young men were left behind with
no work, and eventually you saw them on the streets,
whacked out by drug uggs and alcohol, playing video games,
living with their parents. They had an aimless, pointless life.
They weren't college material, and that's what destroyed the country.
(15:13):
In nineteen eighty, manufacturing accounted for thirty nine percent of
the US jobs, and by twenty twenty one that had
dropped to twenty percent. I'm sorry, thirty nine percent of
the US jobs where workers had high wages and there
aren't that many high wage factory jobs anymore in the US.
(15:36):
So when you allow other countries to sell their products
here where they use slave labor and they don't have
any environmental laws, health and safety laws, this is what's
going to happen, and Trump wants to reverse it more.
Come it up.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
We've got the Moistline for Friday eight seven seven, Moist
Stadty six eight seven seven, Moist Dady six of the
talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app. You can follow us
at John coblt Radio and all the social media platforms.
And we never forget a story. We stay on top
of stories that much of the other media gets. They
(16:21):
get bored with. They don't want to cover it because
it embarrasses their political agenda that they support, or maybe
it's just too much hard work. I don't know, but
the La Times and this is one of the very
few areas where they have stood out with their coverage
(16:43):
in the last jeez, I don't know how many years.
It's been in decline for so long I can't even remember,
you know, but it went ultra woke and then something
something about the fire snapped them back. I think they're
all going for a pulitzer. And to day they published.
(17:03):
Eleven writers actually contributed to this story. They've been covering
the fires in Altadena and the Palisades, and they have
many questions that even though they've been beating on doors
for three months, they don't have answers to. And this
to be is a huge disgusting scandal on the part
(17:27):
of Karen Bass, the La City Council, the president, Marquise
Harris Dawson, the fire chief at the time, Kristen Crowley,
Denise keinone is the idiot that runs the DWP, the
county supervisors, all of them. There's all these questions. We
(17:48):
pay all these billions of dollars in taxes, we had
hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, we had a
few dozen people die, and nobody talks. And that's just
wrong and it's intolerable. So we're going to keep this
(18:08):
because you know, these people want to run for reelection.
They're all making hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there's
something about the weirdoh sick media climate in this state.
All these people should have been handed out of office,
but you know, since the Times wants some pulletzer, we
might as well take advantage of it. Of their desire,
and they ran a list of quotes that they want
(18:30):
answers to, and we'll start with our favorite, the Palisades
Fire the Now. Earlier in the show, I told you
that Palisad's residents are suing LAEDWP because Denis Kuioonya has
never filled the reservoir one hundred and seventeen million gallons,
(18:53):
and their attorneys, they have a high priced LA law firm,
say well, legally we don't have to we don't have
to fill the reservoir or we can't be sued over
not filling it. So their question is the terror was
discovered in January of twenty twenty four, why did it
take so long to begin repairs? Well, they've never begun repairs.
(19:16):
And what difference would a full reservoir have made for
firefighters dealing with low water pressure in fire hydrants? Remember
most of them didn't work. Well, they had access to
three million gallons. Imagine if they had one hundred and
twenty million gallons. On Karen Bass, she was in Ghana.
She's released some but not all, the text messages. Who
(19:41):
did she communicate with and how involved was she in
key decisions during the emergency. They won't release the messages.
Neither will the staff of Marquise Harris Dawson, who was
the acting mayor. They don't think they can be held accountable.
They think they're bulletproof. The Times had found that the
(20:01):
LA Fire Department could have pre deployed more engines than
firefighters on January seventh, with the dangerous forecasts. Fire leaders
say these resources either weren't available or were needed elsewhere.
What were available? The Times asks the personnel the engines.
They sent a thousand thousand fighters home, They had one
(20:22):
hundred engines that were broken. Who approved the deployment plan
that day? Nobody wants to talk? And our favorite here
was the January seventh fire, a restart of the January
first fire. How did they fight that January first fire?
(20:43):
Remember it was kids fireworks? Could officials have done more
to ensure it was completely out? Were they sure it
was out and out to Diana? It took eight hours
after the start of the Eating Fire for official to
issue evacuation orders for residents of western Altadena. Seventeen people
(21:08):
died in this area west of Lake Avenue. By time
they got evacuations, the fire was already burning. Here are
their questions. How were the decisions made on when to
issue evacuation orders, what caused the delay in sending them out?
Who was responsible for ensuring the orders were sent? They
don't answer this. The Alley fire chief doesn't answer this.
(21:33):
The La County supervisors don't answer this. All things despicable.
So they got eleven writers working on it. They're going
to court demanding, for example, texts from Karen Bass and
the rest of them, and everybody's just saying no. They
don't even answer the phone or return an email anymore.
(21:55):
Arrogate bastards. Who do they think they are? I think
we're all powerless and they're protected. And most of the
media fills their newscasts and their internet sites with incredible
(22:15):
amounts of nonsense. You watch an hour long newscast in
LA and it makes you gag how much nonsense is
in it. And if you heard PCH and Palisades the
burn area, they might open it by the end of May.
That's what Newsom claimed. That reopening PCH is a top
(22:38):
priority and we're going all in to get this done
because the businesses are going under in Malibi, and it's
an emergency. Of course, one lane in each direction is
still going to be very difficult. And it's better and nothing.
(23:01):
We got more coming up.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
You're listening to John Cobbels on demand from KFI. A.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Conway is going to be here in just a few minutes.
You could follow us at John Cobelt Radio on social media.
I told you yesterday maybe at this time I don't remember,
but the Robert F. Kennedy who's running the Department of
Health and Human Services, he's in charge of all the
the health of Americans now, as noney as that is,
and he was talking yesterday about is it right for
(23:32):
Americans to have to pay for bad choices made by
other people? And he's talking about taxpayers having to pay
for government benefits for people who you know, want to
smoke too much, drink too much, and eat bad foods
and all that. And I'm you know, I've always hated
nanny state, the naggy state. People should have the freedom
(23:56):
to do what they want, even if it kills them.
I don't want to pay for it, though, And that's
the demarcation point. And the Agriculture Department is now putting
on a fast track. Any state that requests to stop
(24:16):
they well, I mean had a word this. They want
to stop spending tax money on people who buy soda
and candy with food stamps. All right, so soda and
candy no longer covered by the federal food stamp program.
Arkansas and Indiana are the first two states you mentioned
(24:41):
how fat people must be in those states that their
governors are begging, the begging Trump and Robert Kennedy to
stop stop subsidizing all the soda and candy purchases. Both
states are seeking clearance from the USDA to implement these changes.
(25:02):
The Agriculture Secretary brook rollins that her agency would move
very very quickly to approve them. That is exactly the
vision of making America healthy again. And Arkansas wants to
make candy and all types of soda, even diet and
low sugar versions, ineligible. They have something called the Supplemental
(25:26):
Nutrition Assistance programer SNAP its food stamps, and Indiana's going
to do it. And two other states, West Virginia and Utah,
say they're going to pursue similar restrictions. And according to
the Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, no one is saying
(25:48):
you can't have a diet coke or a candy bar.
We're saying that you can't do it with taxpayer money.
If you're going to get fat and drop dead and
you got big medical bills, they're not going to pay
for your for your candy and soda. Of course, the
American beverage industry, which represent coke and pepsi and everyone else,
(26:12):
said this is not going to make an ounce of
difference on health. Spokesman for the candy industry said that
consumers understand that chocolate and candy are treats, not meal replacements.
Well maybe they understand it, but you look at people's
behavior and not what they say. So chunk food and
(26:34):
soda is going to be stripped out on a state
by state basis from the food stamp program because I
don't want to pay for those people's bad habits. I
can't imagine having a government where money is taken from
me because you drink too much soda and then you
get sick and you're gonna run up a big medicator
(26:56):
medicare bill on my tab.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
All right here, Yes, uh dig dong with you, buddy.
Alex Stone is coming on with us that guy's great.
You know, he's a big reporter with ABC, so he'll
come on and talk about the family it owns that
jewelry store downtown Los Angeles, Johny, can you believe that,
with all the crime reported on TV, the internet, newspapers, radio,
(27:19):
that somebody still was holding twenty million dollars worth of
golden jewelry at a store?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Crazy? I had my doubts about that story. I do too,
until I.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Heard the people interviewed and they seem like genuinely shocked
by it, you know, And.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Well, so hire a security guard if you got that much.
And that's a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Michael Monks is coming on with us recommended La County
budget cuts two billion dollars four billion here it's a mess.
And then also we got our NewsWhip at five and
Dodger Stadium has been picked in the twenty twenty eight
Olympics to host baseball.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Base Oh it is baseball, all right? Baseball? You never know,
yeah right, you don't. Never have been sant Anito.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
We got some of the establishments or some of the
venues they figured out. Santa Anita's on the list. Los
Alebido's beach for volleyball, so we're moving around.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
All right, Conway coming up, think do Allway and no
Thompson today. He's not here.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
He's gotten like there's a million reasons. Bellio has, like
nineteen reasons why he's not here.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Here's a complicated life, all right. Of course, it's got
the news whive in the CAFI twenty four our newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
Can't. I am six forty. You're listening to the John
Cobelt podcast on the iHeartRadio app. We are on every
day from one until four o'clock, and if you miss anything,
go to the iHeart app for John Cobelt's show on demand.
It's a podcast version. All right, you've heard Debra report
on this all afternoon. We're going to get even more
details now with Alex Stone from ABC News on Broadway
(00:26):
in downtown, LA thieves broke into a jewelry store and
it was quite an operation and they ran out, says
the owner, with over twenty millions worth of gold jewelry cash. Alex,
what went on? Yeah, this one's weird, but it also
(00:46):
is kind of reminiscent. Remember the the jewelry heights that
went on over the Grapevine out of that truck that
on one side. Those who lost they said like one
hundred million dollars, and then the Sheriff's department of that
one was saying it was far low that amount. And
then there was a one in like the Pacoima area
near the Costco out there where there's a storage area
(01:06):
for armored bug car remember that. Yeah, they got into
that one and took a bunch, so there's a little
discrepancy on the amount of money that this was, but
it does seem like something out of a movie, and
questions about what it was or wasn't. But the owners
of Love Jewels on Broadway in the Jewelry District are
saying that they now have gone back to their surveillance
(01:27):
videos and they have found that for over a month
that these bad guys at night were digging their way in,
digging a tunnel from an empty store next door and
getting through the concrete to make that tunnel, and they
went back and this is what they heard night after night,
but apparently nobody knew that at nighttime they were doing
(01:48):
this cutting their way into the store until eventually they
got in. And the owners claim that the bad guys
somehow as they came in, disabled all of the surveillance
cameras so nobody was caught on camera, and then spent
all Sunday night into Monday morning, over many many hours,
clearing out everything inside Love Jewels except a couple of
silver bracelets, and apparently they did not like and did
(02:09):
not want and they left those behind. The store was empty,
according to the family when they arrived yesterday morning, that
they came to work at around ten am and right
around there the LAPD was called for a burglary that
had gone on and everything was gone. Kevin is the
store owner's son. He says his dad is too distraught
to talk, but he says, I want to see justice.
He wants to see justice. Everything was left in shambles,
(02:31):
broken windows, everything tossed over, things overturned. So the family,
John says about twenty million dollars in gold bars, jewelry cash,
that it was all stolen today, that they brought that
down to about ten million dollars. We've talked to a
number of police sources who say when they went they
claimed to his five million dollars and or right over
five million, but not twenty million. And the family claims
(02:54):
no insurance on anything in there, and that it's going
to be on the hook for everything, and they started possible,
I don't know to have insurance. That's a good question.
I don't know how you have no insurance on anything
that's in there. So they have started to go fund
me now to try tell about the family. But they
say they've got nothing left that's in there, and that
they're going to be on the hook and Kevin Sam
(03:16):
twenty years of my father's work is just gone. So
they're offering one hundred thousand dollars reward. At this point,
nobody in custody, the LAPD doesn't have anybody. It's unclear
who did it, exactly how they pulled it off, where
all the loot is right now, or you know how
this was going on night after night and nobody knew
what was going on. And with the GoFundMe, he's saying.
Speaker 2 (03:38):
We're hoping that the community can support us and help
us get back on our field.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Now they think that they were hit or that it
may have played a role because they have apparently become
quite popular on Instagram for making different videos about love
jewels because they supply bling to rappers in the rap community.
So they think that maybe they were hit because of that.
Investigators are saying they don't know, they don't know what
this whole thing was. There's a whole money discrepancy, there's
(04:03):
this night after night getting in there, going on and
digging their way in. So it was either very sophisticated
or something else was going on, but at this point
they don't know. Yes, something else is going on. I
mean I read in one story that I mean they
actually supplied a jewelry to gangsters. Allegedly there was some
(04:24):
of that going on to people who could afford the
stuff that they have been kind of the wrap go
to Bling place, according to them and their Instagram that
it's where where people come to down client base. They
had a look at their client base for suspects. Yeah,
but I mean, I don't know what community of customers
(04:45):
comes up with a sophisticated tunnel through the wall, through
concrete and knock out the cameras that appear to have
been wired cameras, not just jamming the Wi Fi and
then going in there and taking everything out of there
and the cash and the gold bar. The one arms
no alarms, Yeah, no larms that we know of, the
one in Pacoima and the one up over the Grapevine.
(05:08):
They still haven't caught anybody in those and they may
never catch anybody. You know, you think with jewelry that
at some point you go, oh, we know where this
came from. Cash totally different thing. That's understandable, where that
could you could take off with that, But when it
comes to like the one over the grape Vine, and
this one it's jewelry. I always think it's people who
working for these companies because I mean, I so much
(05:30):
information to pull off the physical robbery. And you also,
like in the Grapevine case, the timing of it was
really important. Yeah. I don't know in this case what
it's gonna end up being, And in the others they
have not solved them. But I can tell you that
on the investigative side, there have definitely been investigators who
have had questions and hunches and in some of these
(05:51):
cases about was somebody on the inside involved? Was there
more to it? They haven't been able to prove anything
and nothing indicating that it was done from the inside,
but there have been There's always questions from detectives as
they come upon these wondering just how they were Were
they carried out without somebody on the inside of it.
If you have millions of dollars of product, you don't
(06:15):
spend the money to have an armed guard sitting inside
the store every night. Yeah, or insurance on it, and
now I insurance on it. On the Grapevine case, there
was a whole thing about that that most of these
folks underinsure because they don't think they're actually going to
go anywhere, and the insurance can be so expensive on
a lot of it that they will underinsure this. In
(06:36):
this case, they were no insuring this stuff. But you
remember that in the Grapevine one where they were saying, no,
it was one hundred million dollars, we want all the
money back, and yeah, that the Armored Park Company was like, no,
it's like ten million dollars. And so that it's not
unusual to have these discrepancies. In this case no insurance.
I mean, maybe that's just the way it goes down
(06:57):
in the jewelry district. Maybe that's a normal thing. It
does sound a little odds. I am suspicious, all right, Alex,
thank you very much. Shout shot. I'm not buying all this.
One of the stories says they used to make diamond
encrusted miniature a K for Evans for their clientele. I
(07:19):
don't think they were that is what. What's an M
four says they made M four trinkets? Is that a weapon?
I don't know what. I don't know either. A million? Oh,
it's an M four carbine uh a NATO assault rifle.
(07:41):
It's a shortened version of another assault rival. All Right,
you're you're not making butterflies engagement rings here, you're making
AK forty seven's and M four A assault weapons. You
(08:02):
want to look very fancy when you're killing people. I
guess there's a dress code. Now. All right, Well we
come back something I started talking about early on in
the show and we got off track and I forgot why.
But I want to go back to it because it's
really important and it explains why tariffs are the center
(08:24):
of attention for the from Washington and all the news media.
A lot of business owners, people in all industries have
their eyes focused on these tariffs. And it's a story
that goes back about forty years. And I'll give you
a rundown so you have some perspective on this, some
(08:48):
context for this whole thing.
Speaker 2 (08:50):
You're listening to John Cobelt on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
All right. I started mentioning this before, and I want
to really get into it. There's nothing but stories on
Trump and tariffs, and there's lots of tariffs, and there's
lots of countries, and there's lots of percentages, and Trump
changes his mind every two days, and it's kind of
a pointless situation to try to analyze all this because
(09:18):
nobody knows that this is going to work. Nobody knows
exactly what's happening day to day. It seems even Trump's
own administration is confused because depending on who's talking on
what show, they get different reasons for why they're doing
what they're doing. But it is the overarching idea is
(09:38):
to make goods that are manufactured in foreign countries more
expensive so that it makes more sense for these companies
to make their products here. You see right now, it's
cheaper to make a lot of project products in foreign countries,
(09:58):
as we know, But what if we put this tariff,
this tax on the imports, then it might be cheaper
to do the manufacturing in the US. And it is
a complicated story, but what I wanted to tell you
is how we got here in the last twenty five years.
(10:20):
Because we used to be by far the number one
manufacturing powerhouse, as the Wall Street Journal puts it in
the world, coming out of World War Two about nineteen fifties.
So we got to go back seventy years, thirty five
percent of private sector jobs were in manufacturing. Today it's
(10:46):
nine percent. So we went from thirty five percent to
nine percent. And here's how we ended up losing so
many manufacturing jobs. After the war, there was a big
economic boom. People were optimistic, they were making money, and
there were a lot of new inventions that families had
(11:09):
to have washers, dryers, dishwashers, cars, any kind of appliances.
Eventually air conditioners, microwave ovens, televisions. Then the people started
flying commercially. You had jetplanes that had to be made,
(11:31):
and there's all these innovations, and you had a strong
union system, so people with high school educations can work
and make a lot of money in factories. And as
I've mentioned before, I'm very sensitive to this because my
dad went through that entire arc coming out of World
War two. Of course, you know, he was captured by
(11:52):
the Nazis. He was from Poland. But he got to
America and he worked at factories for forty seven years,
and every seven years his factory would close, and it
would close because the company was moving to the South
and then to Mexico and then to Asia. But every
(12:13):
seven years he'd be out of work because the factories
would close to move to where the labor was cheaper,
and people eventually in America got more affluent, and they
weren't buying as much right because how many TVs can
you have? How many washer dryers can you have? And
they started spending their extra money on travel, restaurants, medical care,
(12:38):
and manufacturing was flat into the nineteen eighties, but then
elsewhere in the world, labor costs were much lower in
Latin America and Asia because they didn't have minimum wage there,
they didn't have unions, they didn't have to supply health benefits,
(13:00):
they didn't have to supply pensions. It was slave labor,
and Americans didn't care if other people were slaves as
long as they got cheap stuff. So our manufacturers could
not compete with the overseas manufacturers because those countries allowed
(13:21):
the slave labor. Also, countries like China, they have no
environmental rules, they have no health and safety requirements, and
they don't care if you're getting a dollar an hour.
If you are being tortured by your company and you
want to jump off the roof, they really did build
(13:43):
suicide nets around the roof to catch you and send
you back to work. So the manufacturing conditions and a
lot of these countries are brutal. What really caused American
manufacturing to collapse was when and this was a Bush
Clinton production in the late nineties early two thousands. China
(14:07):
joined the World Trade Organization in two thousand and one,
and now you had huge production capabilities, huge amount of
slave labor in China, and the US had never faced
competition like this before. In nineteen ninety nine, the value
(14:27):
of Chinese exports was only about a tenth of Americas.
It was less than Sweden's in two thousand and eight.
In nine years, in nine years, it surpassed the US
as the world's top exporter of goods. And that drove
a lot of factories out of the United States and
(14:51):
a lot of men, young men were left behind with
no work, and eventually you saw them on the streets,
whacked out by drug uggs and alcohol, playing video games,
living with their parents. They had an aimless, pointless life.
They weren't college material, and that's what destroyed the country.
(15:13):
In nineteen eighty, manufacturing accounted for thirty nine percent of
the US jobs, and by twenty twenty one that had
dropped to twenty percent. I'm sorry, thirty nine percent of
the US jobs where workers had high wages and there
aren't that many high wage factory jobs anymore in the US.
(15:36):
So when you allow other countries to sell their products
here where they use slave labor and they don't have
any environmental laws, health and safety laws, this is what's
going to happen, and Trump wants to reverse it more.
Come it up.
Speaker 2 (15:52):
You're listening to John Cobels on demand from KFI AM
six forty.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
We've got the Moistline for Friday eight seven seven, Moist
Stadty six eight seven seven, Moist Dady six of the
talkback feature on the iHeartRadio app. You can follow us
at John coblt Radio and all the social media platforms.
And we never forget a story. We stay on top
of stories that much of the other media gets. They
(16:21):
get bored with. They don't want to cover it because
it embarrasses their political agenda that they support, or maybe
it's just too much hard work. I don't know, but
the La Times and this is one of the very
few areas where they have stood out with their coverage
(16:43):
in the last jeez, I don't know how many years.
It's been in decline for so long I can't even remember,
you know, but it went ultra woke and then something
something about the fire snapped them back. I think they're
all going for a pulitzer. And to day they published.
(17:03):
Eleven writers actually contributed to this story. They've been covering
the fires in Altadena and the Palisades, and they have
many questions that even though they've been beating on doors
for three months, they don't have answers to. And this
to be is a huge disgusting scandal on the part
(17:27):
of Karen Bass, the La City Council, the president, Marquise
Harris Dawson, the fire chief at the time, Kristen Crowley,
Denise keinone is the idiot that runs the DWP, the
county supervisors, all of them. There's all these questions. We
(17:48):
pay all these billions of dollars in taxes, we had
hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, we had a
few dozen people die, and nobody talks. And that's just
wrong and it's intolerable. So we're going to keep this
(18:08):
because you know, these people want to run for reelection.
They're all making hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there's
something about the weirdoh sick media climate in this state.
All these people should have been handed out of office,
but you know, since the Times wants some pulletzer, we
might as well take advantage of it. Of their desire,
and they ran a list of quotes that they want
(18:30):
answers to, and we'll start with our favorite, the Palisades
Fire the Now. Earlier in the show, I told you
that Palisad's residents are suing LAEDWP because Denis Kuioonya has
never filled the reservoir one hundred and seventeen million gallons,
(18:53):
and their attorneys, they have a high priced LA law firm,
say well, legally we don't have to we don't have
to fill the reservoir or we can't be sued over
not filling it. So their question is the terror was
discovered in January of twenty twenty four, why did it
take so long to begin repairs? Well, they've never begun repairs.
(19:16):
And what difference would a full reservoir have made for
firefighters dealing with low water pressure in fire hydrants? Remember
most of them didn't work. Well, they had access to
three million gallons. Imagine if they had one hundred and
twenty million gallons. On Karen Bass, she was in Ghana.
She's released some but not all, the text messages. Who
(19:41):
did she communicate with and how involved was she in
key decisions during the emergency. They won't release the messages.
Neither will the staff of Marquise Harris Dawson, who was
the acting mayor. They don't think they can be held accountable.
They think they're bulletproof. The Times had found that the
(20:01):
LA Fire Department could have pre deployed more engines than
firefighters on January seventh, with the dangerous forecasts. Fire leaders
say these resources either weren't available or were needed elsewhere.
What were available? The Times asks the personnel the engines.
They sent a thousand thousand fighters home, They had one
(20:22):
hundred engines that were broken. Who approved the deployment plan
that day? Nobody wants to talk? And our favorite here
was the January seventh fire, a restart of the January
first fire. How did they fight that January first fire?
(20:43):
Remember it was kids fireworks? Could officials have done more
to ensure it was completely out? Were they sure it
was out and out to Diana? It took eight hours
after the start of the Eating Fire for official to
issue evacuation orders for residents of western Altadena. Seventeen people
(21:08):
died in this area west of Lake Avenue. By time
they got evacuations, the fire was already burning. Here are
their questions. How were the decisions made on when to
issue evacuation orders, what caused the delay in sending them out?
Who was responsible for ensuring the orders were sent? They
don't answer this. The Alley fire chief doesn't answer this.
(21:33):
The La County supervisors don't answer this. All things despicable.
So they got eleven writers working on it. They're going
to court demanding, for example, texts from Karen Bass and
the rest of them, and everybody's just saying no. They
don't even answer the phone or return an email anymore.
(21:55):
Arrogate bastards. Who do they think they are? I think
we're all powerless and they're protected. And most of the
media fills their newscasts and their internet sites with incredible
(22:15):
amounts of nonsense. You watch an hour long newscast in
LA and it makes you gag how much nonsense is
in it. And if you heard PCH and Palisades the
burn area, they might open it by the end of May.
That's what Newsom claimed. That reopening PCH is a top
(22:38):
priority and we're going all in to get this done
because the businesses are going under in Malibi, and it's
an emergency. Of course, one lane in each direction is
still going to be very difficult. And it's better and nothing.
(23:01):
We got more coming up.
Speaker 2 (23:05):
You're listening to John Cobbels on demand from KFI. A.
Speaker 1 (23:10):
Conway is going to be here in just a few minutes.
You could follow us at John Cobelt Radio on social media.
I told you yesterday maybe at this time I don't remember,
but the Robert F. Kennedy who's running the Department of
Health and Human Services, he's in charge of all the
the health of Americans now, as noney as that is,
and he was talking yesterday about is it right for
(23:32):
Americans to have to pay for bad choices made by
other people? And he's talking about taxpayers having to pay
for government benefits for people who you know, want to
smoke too much, drink too much, and eat bad foods
and all that. And I'm you know, I've always hated
nanny state, the naggy state. People should have the freedom
(23:56):
to do what they want, even if it kills them.
I don't want to pay for it, though, And that's
the demarcation point. And the Agriculture Department is now putting
on a fast track. Any state that requests to stop
(24:16):
they well, I mean had a word this. They want
to stop spending tax money on people who buy soda
and candy with food stamps. All right, so soda and
candy no longer covered by the federal food stamp program.
Arkansas and Indiana are the first two states you mentioned
(24:41):
how fat people must be in those states that their
governors are begging, the begging Trump and Robert Kennedy to
stop stop subsidizing all the soda and candy purchases. Both
states are seeking clearance from the USDA to implement these changes.
(25:02):
The Agriculture Secretary brook rollins that her agency would move
very very quickly to approve them. That is exactly the
vision of making America healthy again. And Arkansas wants to
make candy and all types of soda, even diet and
low sugar versions, ineligible. They have something called the Supplemental
(25:26):
Nutrition Assistance programer SNAP its food stamps, and Indiana's going
to do it. And two other states, West Virginia and Utah,
say they're going to pursue similar restrictions. And according to
the Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, no one is saying
(25:48):
you can't have a diet coke or a candy bar.
We're saying that you can't do it with taxpayer money.
If you're going to get fat and drop dead and
you got big medical bills, they're not going to pay
for your for your candy and soda. Of course, the
American beverage industry, which represent coke and pepsi and everyone else,
(26:12):
said this is not going to make an ounce of
difference on health. Spokesman for the candy industry said that
consumers understand that chocolate and candy are treats, not meal replacements.
Well maybe they understand it, but you look at people's
behavior and not what they say. So chunk food and
(26:34):
soda is going to be stripped out on a state
by state basis from the food stamp program because I
don't want to pay for those people's bad habits. I
can't imagine having a government where money is taken from
me because you drink too much soda and then you
get sick and you're gonna run up a big medicator
(26:56):
medicare bill on my tab.
Speaker 3 (26:59):
All right here, Yes, uh dig dong with you, buddy.
Alex Stone is coming on with us that guy's great.
You know, he's a big reporter with ABC, so he'll
come on and talk about the family it owns that
jewelry store downtown Los Angeles, Johny, can you believe that,
with all the crime reported on TV, the internet, newspapers, radio,
(27:19):
that somebody still was holding twenty million dollars worth of
golden jewelry at a store?
Speaker 1 (27:25):
Crazy? I had my doubts about that story. I do too,
until I.
Speaker 3 (27:30):
Heard the people interviewed and they seem like genuinely shocked
by it, you know, And.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Well, so hire a security guard if you got that much.
And that's a lot of money.
Speaker 3 (27:40):
Michael Monks is coming on with us recommended La County
budget cuts two billion dollars four billion here it's a mess.
And then also we got our NewsWhip at five and
Dodger Stadium has been picked in the twenty twenty eight
Olympics to host baseball.
Speaker 1 (27:59):
Base Oh it is baseball, all right? Baseball? You never know,
yeah right, you don't. Never have been sant Anito.
Speaker 3 (28:05):
We got some of the establishments or some of the
venues they figured out. Santa Anita's on the list. Los
Alebido's beach for volleyball, so we're moving around.
Speaker 1 (28:16):
All right, Conway coming up, think do Allway and no
Thompson today. He's not here.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
He's gotten like there's a million reasons. Bellio has, like
nineteen reasons why he's not here.
Speaker 1 (28:30):
Here's a complicated life, all right. Of course, it's got
the news whive in the CAFI twenty four our newsroom. Hey,
you've been listening to The John Cobalt Show podcast. You
can always hear the show live on KFI AM six
forty from one to four pm every Monday through Friday,
and of course anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app
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John Kobylt
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