LA County 10.25% Sales Tax (10/02)

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4:16How are you? If you missed any part of the show, we did the whole first hour on this new outside investigation that was released. The new sub in the station had commissioned it was supposedly an outside independent agency, although they glossed over the state's responsibility. But they did zone in a hone in on the Los Angeles fire department. That's what we focused on in the first hour later on. We're going to talk about the Alcadena fire as well because LA County came off really badly and that in the LA kind of firefighters as well and the emergency people. So if you missed it, please listen to the podcast tonight this weekend and get up to speed because a lot of other people in the media have moved on to other things and maybe because I live in the area, the devastation is still tremendous and people are still suffering a lot. And it's even more frustrating now between getting permits, getting getting screwed by the insurance company, dealing with the banks.

5:20It's just a tremendous, tremendous disaster that reverberates now two years later. And like I talked about the end of last hour to see the number of government workers and elected officials that simply don't care is just overwhelmingly depressing. It's staggering. But you know what you're putting up with this stuff. And here's what else you're putting up with. In fact, you're actively making it worse. The sales tax rate in LA County went up as of yesterday to 10 and a quarter percent. 10 and a quarter percent because you had this bogus phony measure ER on the ballot in June. And measure ER was advertised and just a warning here, you were scammed again. It was advertised as the money is going to go to health care services and safety net providers, including county hospitals, clinics and public health programs.

6:27That was the lie from the LA County Department of Public Health. Well, that's not necessarily true because it was passed as a general tax to go in the general fund, not a specific tax to go into a health care fund. Why did they do that? Because a specific tax would need a two thirds vote, a general tax needed only a majority vote. So by design, they lied. And now the way the laws were written, they don't have to spend a penny on health care. They could spend it all at any kind of nonsense, all like all those criminal nonprofit homeless programs, just as one example, everything I'm telling you is true. This is the way the world really works. Not the way you think it works. They don't care about public health. They don't care about financing it. They care about manipulating your emotions and taking the extra tax money from you.

7:34You think you're helping sick people. You're not. You're feeding it to the beast. And the beast is about criminality and corruption. And that's the way the real world is. Now it's a fake tax because measure ER was losing. On election day, an election night, just like Nithia ramen was losing. And then the fake ballots came in from the Skid Row homeless people and God knows where else. And just the way Nithia ramen suddenly rose from the dead with an incredible percentage of votes after the polls closed. Far, far higher than anything she was getting up until that point, the same thing with measure ER suddenly a surge of yes votes. Far, far higher percentage than measure ER was getting beforehand. And suddenly measure ER passed Nithia ramen made it to the runoff.

8:39And it's simply corruption. It's simply that ballot harvesting nonsense legalized corruption that you voted for. The officials who passed this been around for about eight years now. And it's had a horrific effect. But hey, maybe you're maybe you're just like all the people in government in the elected officials. They don't care if you die in a fire. I guess you don't care about most of this stuff. You don't want to die in a fire but everything else. You don't care. You let the ballot harvesting go on. You keep electing the same idiot politicians who were doing nothing. But raping your wallet stealing money from you. 10 and a quarter percent as of yesterday sent a Monica Pasadena and West Hollywood.

9:4011 percent. 11 percent. These are the highest tax rates in the country. There is no higher sales tax rate. Oh, except for Palmdale and Lancaster. Palmdale and Lancaster. I believe or to 11 and three quarters. Why would the people of Palmdale and Lancaster tax themselves so heavily? I don't know. I don't know. It's wrong with people. You people voted for a gas tax some years ago because the government lied to you in an ad campaign and you believed it. I thought the money was going to the roads and somehow eight years later we have the worst roads in the country. You think this money for measure he is going to go to healthcare. No, it's in writing. It's not a penny has to go to healthcare.

10:43So I don't know what everybody's doing because I keep hearing about unaffordability or affordability, right? That's the catch phrase. That is the cool political phrase everyone's campaigning on. And everybody's complaining that the cost of living is too high. And they're going to vote for the guy. Who's going to extend nuisance tax policies? So the cost of living is too high, but you're going to vote for a heavier biserah who agrees with every tax increase that nuisance engineered. Talk more about this when we come back. I'm going to tell you what gas taxes are like in the well, no, I'll tell you what gas prices are like in other states and I'll tell you what sales taxes are like in other states. You're not going to believe how low sales taxes are in most states in LA County. You're sitting at 10 and a quarter. Some people at 11 or more than 11. Well, other states.

11:46That even barely even half that. We're coming up. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. Coming up on the next bill handle show. Hey, us Americans stopped throwing dinner parties and saying words like, hello, darling, that's coming out after seven Monday morning on the next bill handle show. KFI AM640 more stimulating talk radio. John Cobalt show or live on the I heart radio app. No live stream today. Because we've having Wi-Fi problems again. There's construction going on and I know some other issue. However, all the audio works podcast after six o'clock. So you can listen to whatever you miss. Well, I was telling you how badly you were scammed and screwed by the LA County supervisors, by the way. And that would be Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Salise. You know, you forget these names. Janice Han and the Catherine Barger and the fifth one I always forget.

12:53And because she's like completely forgettable and worthless and has done nothing of any use. They put measure E R on the ballot to raise the sales tax by another half percent. So now it's 10 and quarter in LA County. It was losing and then it won after hours after the polls closed because of all the fake ballots that come in with ballot harvesting is the nithia ramen effect. That's all. Highly Mitchell. Highly Mitchell. Thank you. Every time I go through the list and they had some reason. I forgot about her too. Yeah. No, she does absolutely nothing. She's she's got where the worst districts of any district in America and just filled. With all the mental patients and drug addicts and all those disgusting RVs that are dumping human feces into the street. I mean, some TV station does a story on that every six months and it's just hundreds of them and it's just a big brown river that goes down the streets of South Los Angeles. She's just hideous.

13:58How much are you going to pay? Well, according to Bruce Bialosky who commenced with the California Post, we've had him on the air. Typical LA family now with this tax increase is going to have to pay $200 extra a year in additional taxes. He's also got more details on what this scam was about. It was supposed to go to health care programs because you know, Trump was cutting funding to Medi-Cal. And then what happened? We discovered massive fraud, underduse them in the Medi-Cal program. Pharmacy billing, hospice billing, all kinds of scams billions of dollars. So the money ought to be cut to California. The federal government should cut health care money to California because under Newsom billions have been stolen.

15:02It's the same story that happened to Tim Watson, Minnesota. So the LA County supervisors, they jump in and it's like, well, let's get it on the ballot. It's houses for health care, it's for the safety net. And like I said, it's not a health care tax. It's going into the general fund. It can and will be used for anything because a specific health care tax would require two thirds majority to pass it. A general tax only a simple majority, 50% plus one. So they scammed you that ran a lot of historical ads about health care. And in the end, it's going to have nothing to do with health care. You were simply ripped off. LA area according to my last key is frequently ranked as the number one worst area for affordability. And the average family income is $128,000. Imagine $128,000, but in LA County, your average, your middle of the middle class.

16:09And he estimates about 40,000 of that money is subject to the sales tax. So the annual cost of the sales tax will be an extra $200. Now that's if you're average, you're paying about $4,000 a year in sales taxes already. So now you're paying a couple of hundred dollars more. And if you happen to be buying something big like an automobile, the additional tax just on the average car would be 250 all by itself. We have the second highest cost of living. We have after Hawaii, which has some delivery issues, California, highest gas tax, highest income taxes in this state. Now, look at the other states. And I did when I'm a chat GPT, talked to my friend. Oh, by the way, I just want to confirm Lancaster is at 11.75%. There's like a base state tax.

17:11And then the county adds more and the cities add more. And in Lancaster, it's up to 11 and 3.4%. And that is the highest in the nation. I you people in Lancaster, I guess the heat has baked your brains. I don't know what you're doing. I don't understand everybody bitching about the price of everything when you keep taxing yourself. But let me look at these taxes here. We have the highest state sales tax, a base rate of seven and a quarter. Now, if you're paying, we're paying ten and a quarter in LA County and Lancaster is at 11 and 3.4. That's on that. That's their own taxes. The base rate in California is seven and a quarter. Do you know in Oregon, New Hampshire, Montana, Delaware, and Alaska, it's zero. There's no sales tax in Colorado. It's only 3%. In New York, of all places is only 4% along with Wyoming, Hawaii, Georgia, Alabama.

18:15Other states that are in the forest include North Carolina, Oklahoma, Missouri. Then you get the fives Wisconsin, North Dakota, Louisiana in the fives, Virginia, Nebraska, Maine, Arizona, Ohio. And then you have some states in the sixes Pennsylvania, Michigan, Kentucky, Florida, Texas, big states, Massachusetts, it's six and a quarter Illinois at six and a quarter. And in LA County, it's 10 and a quarter. There's literally no other state, no other county or city that has sales taxes this high on top of everything else. And then on the gas prices, I mentioned I was going to tell you about that. Well, today, we're at $6.40 for regular in Indiana. It's $3.79. We're $2.60 higher than Indiana. And you're going to vote for Havier Bacerra. You're going to vote for Havier Bacerra, who is promised to maintain that high gas price, saying, well, who's going to fix the roads?

19:21Even though at $6.40 a gallon, we have the worst roads in the country that has been independently confirmed and analyzed repeatedly. You could go look it up and Georgia and Texas and Louisiana and Tennessee and Mississippi and South Carolina and Arkansas are all in the threes. And Alabama Kentucky, Oklahoma, North Carolina, Missouri, Colorado, Kansas are all under 410 Florida is at 414 and where it's 640, jerseys at 432. Massachusetts 435. These are high tax democratic liberal states. They're in the 430s. New York. I lived in New York. They're wacko New York with taxes, but they got 447 for gas and they have a 4% sales tax and they're a crazy tax state and where it's 640 for gas and 10 and a quarter for sales taxes in LA County and you poor people in Lancaster are at 11 and 3 quarters. A lot of this you vote for either through the idiots that are in office or the stupid propositions.

20:26So please shut up about affordability. Shut up complaining about how the prices are too high. You're charging yourself. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. Live everywhere on the I heart radio app John Cobalt show voice line is next hour going to do twice at 520 and 550 and no live stream today. But we're on the radio here radio works the streaming works and we'll have the podcast after 6 o'clock now. We have a state with $6.40 gas is an average we have a county with 10 and a quarter percent taxes and Gavin Newsom has left the state again. And he's gone on the road to Alabama to do his podcast not making this up because he's he's in the midst of his presidential campaign.

21:30He's done all the damage he could do here. I don't think he's going to do anything for the next three months other than campaign for president. First primary is going to be in South Carolina on the Democratic side. And that's going to be in I guess about a year and a half January of 2028 or so. And so South Carolina the Democrats it's a heavy black vote I think more than half of the vote in South Carolina on the Democratic side are black voters. So when you're this white guy from California. You've got to make some inroads. You've got to impress. So this is what he did today. He went to Alabama to do his podcast live from the legacy museum. An Aston Memorial for peace and justice in Montgomery. And talked with a civil rights attorney named Brian Stevenson founded the equal justice initiative.

22:36And he went this was a whirlwind of pandering. It's it's it's impressive. It's overwhelming. And he announced that he is signing a bill that's going to force companies who've been in California a long time to dig up their past and find connections to slavery. Listen to this. I'm going to put my episode with Brian Stevenson the founder of the equal justice initiative. Some news reflecting on our conversation. You got me thinking a lot about a lot of issues. And I think he'll get you thinking as well. I have a bill in front of me privileged to have this opportunity. A bill in front of me that I'm signing quite literally right now. I'm going to put my first bill that requires large companies that operated before 1965 to search their records for ties to slavery going back to 1849.

23:36And then we make it public. These are insurance policies on enslaved people. Human beings used as collateral quite literally as collateral for loans. Accountability as Brian said starts with the truth. That's what the two of us get into what repair actually looks like. You believe this. So if you have a company in California. And your business goes back to the 1960s. You have to find your company's records to 1849. Now slavery was illegal in California. Is this the most ludicrous thing you've ever heard? Now imagine you're running a company, right? And let's say you're 40 years old. You're born in 1986 or you're 50, 1976 or even 60. You're born in 1966. You're running a company. You're born in that range.

24:37Later 20th century. You're responsible for finding out what went on in 1849. Which is when California became a state. At slavery was illegal. You actually have to hire staff to do research to see if you're connected to slow. Well, how are you going to do that? And then you got to make this is the most. This past the legislature. I'm saying you vote for this. This stuff. Excuse me. No, I stopped short. I just know I know. It was a shit. I did a shish. You vote for this shish. Uh, he's sitting there. You got to see the video. He's all smug, self-satisfied with that arrogant little snout of his. And boy, he's showing the corporations here in California. You go find your slavery connections, your slave business you were in.

25:37Nobody was in the slave business. It was illegal then. And everybody from there has been dead for what? Like 70, 80 years? They've been dead. You're picking on people who were born in the 70s and 80s. The 1970s and 1980s. But wait, there's more. Some of this podcast with the Civil Rights guy. He starts battling about the need for reparations. And you hear people and the reparations side, particularly in as we've battled the reparations question and there's been a dozen variants of, um, of reparations. It's not just cash contributions. I mean, that was sort of the headlines was just we're writing checks. And then it started to check off other ways we can be repairs of the breach. What do you say the end, but the biggest blowback and I'm curious to your response.

26:39It is like, why am I as a taxpayer responsible for the sins of not my father, but maybe my grandfather's. Yeah. Yeah. Why am I now? Well, it, it, to me, it's, you're also the beneficiary of many of those sins. It's very hard for anybody in this country to disconnect themselves from the history. Right. Everybody was born someplace. And if it's someplace where you had the benefit of that GI bill that I did not, then you got something that other people didn't get and that was wrong. That's unfair. Uh, I, I just think it's, uh, we don't disconnect from our history, right? Dad. I don't, I didn't get any benefit from slavery. My dad was in Poland. He was a slave of the Nazis. The Nazis came in when he was 14 and, and kidnapped him from his parents home and put him into a slave labor camp, a farm camp for four years.

27:44I actually had a dad who was a slave. And you're telling me I have to make reparations for slaves that didn't exist here in California. What are the two of them smoking? Seriously, I didn't benefit from anything. And neither did anybody else. Everybody who did all of that is long dead dead dead dead. And we didn't have slaves in California and we didn't have slave owners. And I'm not even from California. And my dad was a slave in Germany. So you want to come and take money from me? Are you crazy? Yes, they're crazy. Now we got a third one here. Newsom wants to cancel all the death penalty sentences.

28:47Clear everybody. Nobody's going to die of the death penalty. I never moved everyone from death row. I invested hundreds of millions of dollars into making Sam Quentin, the iconic death row, risen into a rehabilitation center. And we just did an opening on that. I anyone has to, I mean, please, that we took the best of the Norway model. And we're still, it's an imperfect thing. We're in a process of doing something we think is extraordinary from a public safety perspective. 95% of these folks get back into your neighborhood. So this is all about public safety. And making sure they're prepared to be good at neighbors when they come back. But I have to prepare for my own consciousness, my rocking chair test. Do I commute the largest death row in the Western hemisphere? I think you do. And I think it becomes a really pivotal moment in this country. I do. This is crap. Death row population in America will be reduced by 20% with the single act of commuting

29:49those people on California's death row. And I think you've already modeled how having a just system, a fair system, a system that doesn't waste money on gratuitous punishment, but actually tries to use money and improve public safety can actually create a healthier space for everybody. Letting out prisoners always improves public safety. That's Brian Stevenson, by the way, the similar rights attorney. Yes, I think we tried it version of that in LA with George Gaskone. And we stopped prosecuting crimes. And what happened? We had a lot more crimes. You start letting people out of prison. What are you going to have? You got more people committing crimes again. That's what they do. You're listening to John Cobalt on demand from KFI AM640. Okay, if I am 645 everywhere on the I heart radio app.

30:50Yes, do some wants to commute all the death row, all the death sentences of everyone on death row. That's what we just learned. And this will be a perfect segue. We have more execution news. You know about Christophe Pike, the woman in Tennessee, who, back when she was a teenager smashed another woman's head, with a big hunk of asphalt. It was some satanic killer in ritual. She carved a pentagram into the victim's chest. And she got the death penalty and she was supposed to be the first woman in 200 years executed in Tennessee. But apparently we must have sent some California state employees to Tennessee and they botched the execution. And here's what went wrong or he's what they think went wrong according to the New York Times. They couldn't find a vein. They went through seven needles trying to find a suitable vein so they could deliver the lethal drug.

31:57And Christophe Pike was left with blisters and burning around the intravenous insertion sites. They kept doing it over and over again and they never did it right. So the drug, Pento Barbertaugh, poured into the tissue, they think, surrounding the insertion site instead of getting in her bloodstream. So it's in the tissue and she didn't get a direct hit of the poison. But enough of the drug went in that it looks like she's brain damaged. She's unconscious and on a ventilator and it doesn't seem like she's coming back. There were signs that two IV catheters rather than directing the drug into the bloodstream allowed it to leak into the tissues. It's because of how or where the catheters were inserted or Christophe Pike's veins were fragile.

33:02The doctors always had difficulty finding veins when they ever they drew blood and she also had some kind of blood disorder. So this is why you bring back the firing squad. Right. Or you can hang them. Would you rather be in an essential coma and vegetable state like she is or would you rather have died either way you don't know. You're just laying there. But I mean, I can't believe how many times they botched lethal injections. They're not that lethal. There's too many things that go wrong, but you know, a bullet right between the eyes. That works every time. That is a hundred percent success rate. Just kill people the way criminals kill innocent victims. The criminals show us every day how you kill somebody. Didn't the Bible say eye for an eye? There you go. Shoot them twice in the eyes. That's going to kill them. What are we doing trying to find injection sites and trying to find veins?

34:05Seven times? That's nuts. If you're going to do this, do it. Because now we got to hear how it's cruel and inhuman and she suffered. It's like, wait, wait, wait, wait a second. She took a hunk of asphalt and slammed another girl in the head. And killed her. It's cruel and unusual. It's in human. Oh, please. She's a psychopath, a violent psychopath. Why do you, why does anybody care how somebody like that is executed? I, I mean, I don't understand human nature. When we come back, first hour, if you didn't hear and you should listen to it on the podcast tonight of this weekend, we went through a lot of the palisades fire. Now we're going to do the Al Tadina fire because of this new investigation and independent investigation commissioned by the News of Administration, done by this fire investigation agency.

35:06And boy, boy, the county really, really foul up the preparation and the execution to fight the Al Tadina fire. It's, it's, it's just mind boggling how bad they were. And nobody got fired there. Still two rounds of the Moist line as well. Debra Mark is 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 three to six PM every Monday through Friday. And of course, anytime on demand on the I heart radio. KFI AM640. More stimulating talk. You've mastered the classic wine regions. Now discover a hidden gem, organs to allatin Valley, the closest wine destination of Portland in the Willamette Valley. Explore boutique estate wineries and sip world-class wines. Round out your wine getaway into Allatin Valley with 18 holes in the lush countryside. Bring your sense of adventure and we'll introduce you to your new favorite destination.

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