Homeless Spending Is Going Where?

This is Gary and Shannon, and you're listening to kf I AM six forty the Gary and Shannon Show on demand on the iHeartRadio app. It's rare I go to Starbucks, but today I did this morning and.

Then put a creature.

There was no creature.

It said hi, just high, no exclamation point, just h I, which I thought was kind of creepy because I've gotten hearts, and I've gotten high exclamation point and I've gotten a happy face. But this was the first time I just said hi, no punctuity, no punctuation, and it felt a little serial killer e to me. However, the woman at the window said, here you go, sweetie, and I loved that. I want to start off every morning with some stranger calling me sweetie.

That is very funny because yesterday on Fox News Channel there was a whole blow up. Randy Weingarten, the head of the Teachers Union the National Teachers Union, referred to Martha McCallum as sweetheart, and Martha McCallum hated it. Now granted situation, she was being super condescending. Martha McCollums like, uh, you know, call me sweetheart.

See, but that makes it worse for her. When someone calls you sweetheart, you got to just laugh it off. Steve Gregor used to do that. Oh sweetheart, you just gotta laugh it off.

You know what I mean?

If you take umbrage with it, if you take issue with it, then you are.

The the lily makes it worse. You know, we should do that as a talkback. Actually is what is your love it?

I love movie called sweetheart?

Sweetie doesn't have to be Starbucks.

But in a place where they ask your name, do you give him your real name or do you give him something like now?

I mean, since they have a high on your head.

I have a real hard time with people who use fake names like you seem like the kind of person that would do that. You do that with your stupid email addresses and stupid stuff like you're very private?

I know, but why who the hell are you? What I mean, who are you? Why would you hide your identity.

Because I didn't want to be found out.

People like Starbucks like Dave Bruce just tell him Bruce, tell.

Him name because they want to hear their they want to hear the barista call out a funny name.

That's stupid.

I agree. I'm just saying there are plenty of people who do it.

You don't do it.

I don't do that.

You've never done that.

I don't think I've ever used a fake name kick or like at a hotel or whatever. I'm sorry for profiling you incorrectly.

Very strange. Listen, I like your outfit. Thanks. President Trump has said has said.

Maybe he is ready to pull back on some of those tariffs on China.

One hundred and forty five percent is very high, and it won't be that high.

It's not going to be that high.

It'll come down to substay and three. But it won't be zero. He used to be zero.

We were just destroyed.

China was taking us for a ride and just not gonna have It's not gonna happen.

So the Wall Street Journal got on this and said that the plan that is likely going to happen mirror is one that was introduced by the House late last year.

This would be a tiered approach.

Thirty five percent levees items that are not considered a threat to national security, but at least one hundred percent on those that are eased down over five years. One White House official told the Wall Street Journal the result would be an overall tariff somewhere between a China tariff roughly between fifty and sixty five percent.

So that's the endgame that we're dealing with here.

I still find it fascinating that Wall Street reacts to all the whims of this president. And I guess you have to because he is a president of the United States. Sure, you're reacting to the title making these calls, not the person behind the title, because we have said said from go that this is not tenable.

This is not a tenable situation.

Yeah, and if Scott Bessen, I mean, if the Secretary of the Treasury says these exact same words and he has it doesn't make a tenth the impact on Wall Street that it does when a president says it. Now, other presidents had been more careful and measured when it comes to things like talking about the Fed Reserve chair or something like that, because they know that it could have an impact significantly on Wall Street and the way people view American stocks and bonds.

Trump's also said he didn't feel the need to play hardball with Hi Jinping.

This is yeah, that language is just hey, we're just friends having a little bit of a dispute here over what. But then he'll talk about how it feels like China has been taking advantage of the United States for decades, which which is very different then, but we don't have to be we don't have to get we don't have to be nasty to it.

It's such a tactic, right, you come out and you're super nasty, and then you dial back again, leaving the door open for maybe a friendship, hoping to lure that person into the cave of negotiation.

Yea. Then it gives you.

The card to play like, well, friends don't treat each other like this, right, we're friends, you know. A healthy competition is the way we should be going. Right, There is something that kind of happening on the back end. It's very quiet that's going on in DC, but it could potentially signal the opening of talks, sort of the opening round the capital of China. Beijing has sent People's Bank of China's governor, his deputy, and a finance minister.

I am cracking up over the media coverage of the Pope's death. Everyone is suddenly a Catholic. Everybody cares about the Catholics. Everybody treating this with the utmost reverence. People talking about mike Langelo's Pieta, talking about the Chamber of Deputies kneeling before the coffin, and the Italian Parliament lower house, and.

I mean, nobody cares.

I understand that the eighty percent of this country is church going, what percentage of that is Catholic?

You know what I mean? And everyone's is acting like.

This is just such the biggest deal, and they're trying not to butcher the names and things that we don't really care about.

It's like the Catholic guilt has.

Permeated the entire country, like y'all that did sit through it the way we all sat through it and feel guilty over every single thing. Suddenly the Pope dies and you're all getting a little dose of what we lived through.

Walking with the Rosary.

Yes, you're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.

Hey Gary and Shannon.

Hey Gary.

Question, did you we hear speedo under your clothes when you had swim practice in the morning? Buddy, I'm just curious day man.

The answer is no.

Can we unpack that for a minute.

You haven't talked about being on the swim team in high school for quite some time. That's ratnel around, rattle in around in his brain. Ye, thinking about you and your speedo. I would imagine that you brought your speedo with you and he changed in the locker room.

Before practice and then changed out of it. Well, yeah, because it was wet. Yeah, I don't know what the guy, I don't know why you wouldn't.

I don't understand, but everyone's visualizing you as a teenager great speedo underneath your street clothes.

But to clarify, in practice, I would always wear multiple I wore two or three excuse me, speedos and then trunks over the top of it. Really create more drag, big pockets and everything like that, so that when you on when you'd have a meat, most of them on Thursdays on Thursday afternoon, you would just wear your skit.

It wasn't just penis modesty.

Well, you put a lot of layers on top of that thing, keep it safe, keep it away from the public eye.

Well, I was fifteen, there probably was a little bit of that. S mentioned it.

Man, if I had one of those, I would totally wear like sixteen speedos, probably into my mid twenties.

Latin chants have been sounding across the Vatican. This procession of red hatted cardinals and bishops, et cetera accompanied Pope Francis's body from his residency out to Saint Peter's Basilica.

Sy, you're a glam squad that goes along with.

Listen, I'm going to get in trouble, but I've paid my dues. Is there a glam squad that goes along with the body to touch up the powdering and the makeup. I would assume that's a yes. You got to keep that body looking freshly powdered.

Yeah, I I don't know how. I don't know what sort of preservation is equipment, no spackle, spackling. You know he died at the age of eighty eight. Yeah, and it doesn't take long for the body to change very quickly in.

Depth.

How often are open caskets these days? Are they still as common?

I don't, I don't. I don't know. That's a good question. I don't think.

So I can't remember the last time I went to an open casket.

I did one twenty years ago, probably soon after my wife and I were married, so probably closer to twenty five years ago. I was a good friend of ours, someone I went to college with ended up being a roommate of my of my now wife, sort of a weird confluence of events.

But her younger brother was killed a motorcycle accident.

How old twenty oh, god, twenty one, and and they did an open casket and it was.

A casket because of the injuries. Oh my god, that's awful.

And I just, I mean, I can, to this day close my eyes and see john'son like, see the face.

Oh, it's just it's so sad.

First of all, it's such an awful, heartbreaking because it's a young guy, and it was a it was a bad accident.

Didn't have to happen.

It just awful, awful, awful, And then to see that as part of the whole day.

Of the funeral is just unbelievable.

I had gone to a lot of funerals. I mean not a lot, but a fair amount in my childhood. Older relatives had died. But I remember when my uncle died, My uncle Harry, a massive heart attack, and he was probably about your age, I want to say, he was early fifties, and it was obviously a shock, a surprise.

He was a big guy, but.

Still, and I remember seeing him in they had an open casket, and seeing him in the in that casket and just losing it because he was so young and I was twenty at the time, but it gave me a sense of my parents' mortality at that point. And it was terrifying because everyone else was in their eighties, late seventies, eighties. They were ancient. You know, when you're growing up, it's ancient. But he, you know, dark hair Dad. You know my cousins were on the same age, and it was just awful.

They say that the funeral itself will be on Saturday, So if you're getting up early to watch it, it's going to be I think one o'clock our time.

Are you going to get it?

Every Saturday morning?

You're gonna put on your robes?

No, I mean, are your speedo, no, not even my speedo to watch to watch the funeral?

Is it gonna be in Latin? This is it's gotta be in Latin, right, it's a pope's funeral. Although he pooh pooed the Latin mass.

I don't know how they would do that.

They've got it.

I mean, I don't know the rules, but I would think, let me look that up.

There is also a memorial mass here in La they say with it will honor the life and the ministry Pope Francis. It's going to be Friday, of course, downtown at the huge cathedral of Our Lady of Angels. The Archdiocese of La has announced that the special service will start just after noon on Friday, led by Archbishop hose Ac Comes will also be joined by some auxiliary bishops and clergy of the Archdiocese of La. That's going to

As the pope for the last several years.

My goodness, I'm just going through the protocol. And there's a playbook for the funeral. Oh yeah, it's a twenty page playbook. It's called the University Dominicis, which is Latin for the shepherd of the Lord's whole flock.

Well, think of when the queen died, I mean, when the queen or when the prince right, it's the same bit.

It's the same bit. Is that part of our fascination as a country.

I think that, Yes, I was going to say that, I think that there is a certain amount of I mean you're talking about everybody's been affected by this, Catholic or not. There's something about us as big meat bags that like to see some amount of history, tradition, and some amount of tradition and pomp.

It's it's science. We're biologically wired to be connected to our past, Yeah, and to tradition like that, and.

This tradition goes back a couple thousand years.

You know what I would like to do. I'd like to know you got really nervous with your face right there.

Oftentimes, usually that question is answered with I'd.

Like to burn it down. I'd just like to burn it.

I don't sound like candle shoot it first of all.

Shoot it and then burn it.

I am coming from a positive place today, okay, And I think that we need a tradition on this show. This show has been around ten years, which is an eternity. Basically, we've had traditions. What coming gone well, I'd like to stick to at least one of them on the Thursday, right right, you know, I don't know. I just feel like we don't pay homage to our traditions here on this show.

Enough. Michael Monks is going to join us we come back.

Okay, Okay, we spend a lot of homeless money, and then we also don't spend a lot of homeless money. Five hundred some odd million dollars that was not spent, and finally someone in city Hall goes, hey, uh, I got an idea.

We maybe just like, look at where the money goes.

Michael Monks has been on top of this, and we'll continue to follow all of the news regarding the whole less out a City Hall Hill join us when we come back.

You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from KFI AM six forty.

Michael Monks has joined us because we continue to track what's going on in downtown LA when it comes to all the homeless dollars we have as voters have sent this way towards the county or the city, and it looks like yesterday the council called for analysis of the spending.

You would think that this would be done.

That the voters would approve a bond or a tax or what have you, and that all of the money would be accounted for and you'd know exactly where it was going, and that's what you do when other people give you their money.

Apparently that was not being done.

Now they've decided unanimously twelve nothing that they are going to start doing this.

That's right, and apologize.

I spoke before I was introduced that's a faux pas so, but you were talking ice cream sandwiches.

So no, everyone who as you are, come on.

All right, I wouldn't note that.

Yes, the council voted yesterday to say maybe we should, I don't know, have a presentation every now and then on where these moneies are going, because it's a lot of money and apparently we don't actually know. So that was the first thing they did. But there was also an example of this playing out separate from this vote.

So that alone is a problem because.

They don't know what they're doing with that.

You're not spending all of the money that you've allocated for this program. They say they don't have the you know, the social workers, they don't have the landlord's willing to rent the apartments.

That's the problem.

But to me, the bigger problem was, what do you mean between twenty five and sixty percent?

Quite a swath it is, you know, it's not twenty five to.

Thirty, you know, because they don't know what they're doing with money. These aren't money people. These are people that are our whorees that decided to get into politics to benefit themselves. They they don't have any real money. They don't know how to spend it. It's like giving a twenty one year old athlete a multimillion dollar contract and saying you've got all this money, go make great use of it.

And they're like, I don't know what to do with it. That's what's happening at city council.

They don't have anybody like Rick Caruso, for example, who knows money to come in and triage the money situation.

And again, and I think we've even spent about it together on this program, that if the results were obvious and not just occasional presentations every year about how the homeless population is dipped a percent or two, you know, in raw numbers, I think people would be more forgiving, you know, like, yeah, it's expensive to do this, but the progress isn't right that you know. I have five

You're absolutely right if we saw some change, if we saw them using the money correctly. Just give me a couple examples and we'll publicize it all day long. If you can show us constructive ways you've used the money, that's been a proof for you to use for this problem. Show us on the flip side, all we've seen is mismanagement and now them not even using the money because they don't know how. I mean, it is such a freaking mess.

It's a big mess.

And this just calls for a report in sixty days on how the money is being spent, and then they are to do these reports every quarter about homeless dollars. This includes spending by LASA, also by the Mayor's program Inside Safe, which has had some relatively secretive finances, so we'll maybe get to see a little bit more on this, But again, this is a very expensive project. The city is now kind of on its own because they don't

The number of homeless people was down this amount from year to year twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four. What do you think think about the number the amount of money we're talking about. How many fewer homeless people did we have from twenty twenty three to twenty twenty four.

Do you think percentage?

No, sheer number of homeless people?

No idea. Just take used out a couple of thousand.

Two hundred.

Oh, we've got two hundred people off the street allegedly. And how many billions of dollars have we thrown at this? I mean part of it is their complete head in the sand reluctance to understand the problem of addiction. I mean that that is something that needs to be dealt with.

I thought it was the first housing prices.

It is not it is not weird.

I thought, that's exactly what as.

Michael said, there's programs where they're getting people into homes.

That's not the problem.

That's what I thought yesterday as I pulled into my parking lot and I saw all my new neighbors outside, I thought, you know, if you didn't want to live in a tent on the street, what do you need. If you're a drug addict or a drunk, there's a program for you. If you need help getting a job, there is a program for you. If you need to get your education, there is a program for you. And if you need to be in a shelter, there is

What you want to do in that tent.

But if you go into those programs and you've got to do a bunch of things that you don't want to do. When we live in a city that makes it easy and looks the other way for people to do.

What they want to do, i e.

Crack and booze and everything that's bad for you, we enable all of it.

That's what it looks like because blocking the sidewalk is against the law. I mean, we talk about criminalizing homelessness, and it's true that I think all of us have our humanity still, Like you feel for the people who are in the situation they're in, whether it's chosen or not, that you wish their life could be a little bit better. But they're making other people's lives worse by not allowing

But if you get run over by a bike. You could get run over by a bike.

But you can't walk on the sidewalk now because they are all blocked by these massive tents which were being erected at like three in the morning with power tools and wood and rope.

Yeah, it's a whole it's a racket.

Yeah, they've got a whole situation going on.

There's infrastructure, just the whole. We have compassion for the homeless bull s, but if.

You try to build wants.

To live in a tent? You know, I want to live in a tent or you pick. It's this time of year it's beautiful. I'd like to live in a tent and zone out for a couple of months.

You couldn't set up a card table and sell Michael Monk's branded homemade ice cream. I would, Gary, That's not even something that I'm thinking about doing.

Why you could fire some of them to set up your I could.

I bet they could find all the right ingredients.

Right.

But I mean, if if you really LA city leader, La City leaders, if you truly have compassion for the homeless, you would not be looking the other way. If I got to do what part of me wants to do and lived in a tent outside Michael Monks's place and just do drugs and drink myself away for a couple months, you know, I'd have people coming to get me because they actually do have compassion for me.

Yeah, I'd come for you. You could come upstairs, you could come in.

You've probably let me do my drugs in your place.

If you shared.

All you guys are friends. I know, dang it, fight at all you want? Watching it happen right in front of me, and I can't ignore it. Lori Bellow day Bell has been convicted. We'll tell you what she got popped for when we come back to Michael, Thank you, she got popped for.

You're listening to Gary and Shannon on demand from kf I AM six forty.

Yesterday we told you about the story of the judge Jeffrey Ferguson found guilty second degree murder. Was the was the final determination. We'll talk more about that story coming up next hour. Of course, he's the one who says that he stumbled taking his glock out of his ankle holster and putting it on the table and just happened to kill as one.

Well, the jury heard the show yesterday. I think that's what it came to, the right decision.

You're they were listening to it, sure.

Why not? Laurie Valo Dabell.

This is the woman, the blonde woman who has a trail of bodies in her wake. She killed her kids, She's killed an ex husband or two. She's killed an ex wife of an ex husband. I think a brother died somewhere along the way. She represented herself at her latest legal proceeding and was convicted yesterday in Arizona of conspiring to kill her fourth husband, Charles Valow.

Yeah, she represented herself at trial. She said it was her brother that did it, Alex Cox, who shot Charles Valow in self defense during an argument or after an argument. Well, it was just very convenient that Alex the brother died that year from a pulmonary embolism and was never charged. You know why, because he's dead, and she probably thought to herself, I just I just got off scot free.

She claimed that her husband got into an argument this is really rich with her daughter and threatened her daughter with a bat, the daughter that Laurie went on to kill because she said her two kids were taken over by the demon of the devil Right.

Prosecutors originally dismissed the case because they said they dismissed her self defense claim, arguing that she had several reasons to want her husband dead, including her desire to start a life with yet another man.

So the prosecutors laid it out that Lorie Valo that she had several reasons for wanting her husband dead, including her desire to start a new life with that doomsday guy.

Chad day Bell.

The prosecutor in the case of Lorie Valo wanted to be Lori da Bell, the wife of Chad day Bell, and she wanted to keep the same lifestyle that she had with Charles Valo. She could get all of this if Charles was dead. She could marry Chad day Bell and become Lori day Bell. She could live her doomsday life. She would get the million dollar life insurance policy from Charles Valo. She'd get social Security for herself and their son as the child of a dead spouse, and they should get all of it.

If Charles was dead, she.

They say the prosecution would label people who disagreed with her as dark or possessed by evil spirits, and used religion as a way for her to justify her killings. God so wild. It's so wild because religion is such a saving grace for so many people, right Like, it's used for so much good, for so much healing, when people go through the worst of the worst and they just like.

Lean on God about it.

And then when people use religion to for evil and use it as the excuse, it's just it's so gross, especially about especially using it to justify the murder of your own children. I like to believe that this woman was cuckoo pants and that there is no rhyme or reason to what she did. I know it's the prosecution's job to come up with a realistic version of events, you know, for a rational way.

Things went down right.

But for somebody to say the demon infiltrated their children and use that as a reason to kill them, I'd like to believe that's just good old fashioned mental illness, because that's easier for me to come to grips.

With than a life insurance policy.

One of the jurors in this case said lies from the defense were revealed as the trial went on, that Lorie Valo Dabel appeared unseerious in her role as her own counsel. All of this weighed on her this juror's decision. She said, many days she was just smiling and laughing and didn't seem to take anything very seriously, which would go to your point of clearly struggling with mental illness of some kind but blaming it on other people not having the recognition.

But I guess if you, if you say that she's mentally ill, then she, you know, gets gets out of it.

She gets up pass on certain things, but not convincing her brother to kill the fourth husband and then killing her own kids.

So, my god, up next, if you kill some What do you think it kills someone? What kind of excuse you think you'll come up with?

Uh?

What were you gonna say? It was gonna be pretty good?

The show that drives me crazy. Yeah, I think you can do better. I probably will have to work on that. The California Film and TV tax Credit expansion is making its way through the legislature. Maybe there is some good news for the for the film and TV industry here in California.

Heather Brooker from KFI News joins us next

You've been listening to the Gary and Shannon Show, you can always hear us live on KFIM six forty nine am to one pm every Monday through Friday, and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio ap