And we continue at one oh five in the afternoon on The John Phillips Show Live from Las Vegas, Nevada. Mister Randy Wang's in Culver City. All right, here's the latest AI scam. A ride share driver tried to get a passenger to pay a seventy five dollars fine for damage to a vehicle that was faked by an AI picture. I'm telling you this AI is a can of worms. Although you know what, it's made much easier for me. What's that travel?
Oh?
Yeah, Because typically you go to a new place and you don't know what restaurants to eat at, you don't know what part of town to stay in, and you tell AI what you'd like, and AI, I use GROC will tell you. We'll give you a list of restaurants, a list of hotels to stay at, and so far are the advice has been spot on.
So what did you type into GROC for this trip? Who's got the loosest slots in Vegas?
Answered? None of them?
Eight hundred two two two five two two two is telephone number? What eight hundred two to two two five two two two. Well, despite the fact that we have spent a fortune on the nine one one system. Here in the state of California, the nine one one system doesn't really work in many parts of the state.
The state of California has spent over a half a billion dollars trying to upgrade their nine one one system to something called next Gen nine one one, and the rollout has been a complete disaster, and whistleblowers are now speaking out about why it was such a total disaster. And what do you know, it all goes back to a guy appointed by Newsome Ugh.
For more, I don't say. For more on this, we go to NBC in the Bay.
For the first time.
We're learning what may have led to the ouster of the man behind California's nine to one to one system overhaul and why this high price project went sideways.
The upgrade has been a technical mess and a money pit. It cost Californians a half billion dollars and counting.
See, and that's just to upgrade the system while we're still paying for the existing system. So we're paying double and this system doesn't work great.
Senior investigator Candace Win has been pouring over those internal records to find the answers and she joins us.
Now, Candace, we have been fighting for these records from the California Office of Emergency Services for more than a year. After sixteen months of filing requests even a demand letter from NBC attorneys, the office finally released them. Some of these records suggest serious problems with leadership and oversight of
the state's Next Generation one upgrade. In Sacramento, California, emergency management leaders struggled to answer lawmakers questions about what's exactly wrong with the state's nine one one overhaul?
Is the system operating properly? Now?
I think the system is operating the way we've experienced.
It, So now, what the hell does that mean?
They also couldn't say who's responsible for the problems.
Who's accountable for the delays and the costs overrun because nobody's there that was there when this started, Right.
Yeah, I believe that's probably true.
Yes, Now new details about that accountability are coming to light, and government records exclusively obtained by the NBC Bay Area Investigative Units. The California Office of Emergency Services, or CALOES, manages the project called Next Generation nine one one that's supposed to modernize our aging nine to one one calling system, adding video and better location capabilities.
And it didn't do any of that. So funny.
This is the kind of stuff that was straight out of Gavin Newsom's book Citizenville, that we're gonna and one of the things he ran on when he ran for governor in twenty eighteen is we're going to modernize the government. We're going to upgrade our computer systems. And at every angle where they actually were going to do that, it was a total disaster.
Well look at this, Look at what happened with edd. Look at what's going on with the Secretary of State giving out all of those fraudulent business licenses to the hospice facilities in the San Fernando Valley. No one is minding the store across the board. And that's not even to mention the bullet rainex term alone.
Look at the emergency.
But seven years and nearly a half of billion dollars later, it's years behind schedule and as we've reported, was plagued with misrouted and dropped call problems that delayed emergency response.
Me either a mediating work.
Can you imagine getting that when you're calling nine one one because you're having a heart attack.
Well, especially if you think about who's using nine one one Old people have a lot of medical problems. So you're eighty something, you're having a stroke, you're having a heart attack. You have it in you to go to the phone to call nine one one, and.
That's what you hear.
Is me medial war work.
This twenty twenty four email from a next Gen nine to one one regional coordinator to a top project leader corroborates what we've heard.
And just remember when you hear all of this. We are in the technology capital of the world. How hard would this have been to go to Google and say, hey, can you create a new nine to one one system for us?
Keep in mind this is why whenever they ask you for a tax increase, whenever they ask you for a bond, the answer is no. It's not that you don't think that whatever it is that they're asking for money for doesn't deserve it. These people, the people in charge right now, cannot be trusted to spend the money correctly. This is what they do with the money. Imagine if they came to you and go, hey, our nine to one one system is old. We need an upgrade. Let's put a
tax on the ballot to pay for it. That seems reasonable. I think most people would vote for it in California, Okay, But then this is what you get, and this is why you can't give them any more money.
This twenty twenty four email from a next Gen nine one one regional coordinator to a top project leader corroborates what we've heard from inside sources who say state officials knew about serious issues and knew who was likely responsible as far back as six years ago. The coordinator wrote, when she started her role in twenty twenty, she learned quickly that the project lacked clear direction, operational knowledge, and the one person really in control was willing to risk
lives for the sake of innovation. She says she was talking about Budge Courier, the visionary and architect who Governor Gavin Newsom appointed as Assistant Director of Public Safety Communication.
This is the power that the governor has. They can make all kinds of appointments to all different kinds of bureaucracies. And when you put your friends in charge of very important projects instead of somebody who's qualified, disaster strikes.
And this is also an argument that I use against people who are mad at me for arguing in favor of the Democrat lockout in November, and they say it doesn't matter because if there's a Republican elected governor, the legislature is going to block everything that they want to do. Well, you can appoint people to very sensitive positions. You have that power as the chief executive of the state. And one of those positions is the one that was just described.
And just imagine, if nothing else, if a Republican governor can't do anything about the bullet train, can't do anything about the budget, can't do anything about crime or homelessness, whatever, if they can fix nine to one one by putting a competent person in that position, at least we get something.
The visionary and architect who Governor Gavin Newsom appointed as Assistant Director of Public Safety Communication, he.
Had professional network engineers that would tell him this is not going to work, we need to talk about this, we need to change this. And he told them that we're not going to change this.
The insiders we've been touching.
So the idiot that Gavin puts in charge won't listen to the experts when they say his thing won't work.
And these are the same people who tell us that we can't trust an outsider to be elected to office because they don't have the experience. Look at what the people with the experience are doing when lives are at stake.
The insiders we've been talking to, including this man on the next Gen team, say Courier knew some of the technology was problematic, but forced it through caloes's nine one one tech certification process and into real world environments.
Anyway, Oh yeah, I was definitely hostile.
This thing was not ready for prime time. Every place where they rolled it out it was a disaster, and they knew it would be and they don't care because they figure in a one party state there is no punishment.
Oh yeah, I was definitely hostile.
Separately, two high level CALOES sources tell our investigative units they tried sending out two dozen contract violation letters to hold vendors responsible and presented Courier data that they say identified critical flaws with the nine one one technology. But Courier dismissed the data, they say, and rejected many violations or is demanding that the project keep going.
The guys they were afraid to make a move. They feared upsetting Budge. I heard him threaten them once.
Who names their kid Budge al Bundi named his kid Bud.
I heard him threaten them once or twice while he was there that he could fire all of them if they didn't do what he said. I heard him threaten them even after he left. Calloees said different conventions, pulling people aside, saying they're going to mess up the entire plan that he laid out and they could lose their jobs.
How do you know this?
I was there.
I saw it. He was very loud.
Okay, So Gavin Newsom is going to run for president as the guy who can bring the Democrats out of the wilderness. And he knows how to govern because he governed a big state. Look At how his team operates. Look at how abusive this individual is. Look at what Dana Williamson, his chief staff, was doing, which we learned only because she was charged with federal crimes. And we found out that she would get lit late at night and call people up and threaten them on behalf of
the governor. This is the type of behavior that is allowed in a one party system. You can be abusive, you can be disrespectful, you can cross every ethical line known to man, and it's all fine because you're going to win the election regardless.
This is what you're voting for California.
I heard him threaten them once or twice while he was there that he could fire all of them if they didn't do what he said. I heard him threaten them even after he left. Caloees said different conventions, pulling people aside, saying they're going to mess up the entire plan that he laid out and they could lose their jobs.
How do you know this?
I was there, I saw it.
He was very loud, truly going to save a lot of time in.
The Courier didn't answer our questions about how he treated employees or allegations he dismissed warnings. He texted us saying the process to address employee grievances and contract violation letters were enforced. So what eventually happened to Currier? These text messages show he left the agency, but it was likely not his choice. Shortly after he parted ways with Callos in twenty twenty four, a manager at another agency texted the number two person on the project, well, is he gone?
Access removed?
Okay?
How is this not on the front page of the La Times? This is a big deal and the La Times runs piece after piece. How many pieces did they run? Calling Larry Elder the blackface of white supremacy? Now they're going after Spencer Pratt because he no longer lives in his house after Karen Bass burned it down.
They have time for all of that, but they don't have time to report on this. Luckily NBC in the Bay does is he gone?
Access removed?
Spill the tee.
The manager wrote, he upset executives a few too many times and got ahead of being fired by retirements. The next Gen official responded, this was Calleyes's organization, right.
So we're paying for this buffoon's pension now, Oh great?
This was Calleyes's organization chart at the time. And these leaders are no longer with the agency since we started reporting on next Gen nine one one a year and
a half ago. The people who've left include the agency's director and deputy director Caluis, and the Governor's office, which oversees the agency, sent us the same statement, saying through personnel changes, increased oversight and contractor accountability, the state is now working towards a renewed vision for next Gen nine to one to one.
They're still going to try to roll this thing out even after we've wasted half a billion dollars and it doesn't work, and patting themselves on the back talking about what great leadership they have.
I think it raises a lot of questions and it underlies exactly why we need an audit of the next generation nine one one.
System nine one one is so important with.
A nine to one to one project too big to fail, we cannot blow this. State lawmakers and analysts now say they question if the agency in charge should be in charge.
And to just sit there and say that we're going to have the people who blew it with the last six years or so manage that even more seems to be very risky for the state of California.
State legislative analysts recently recommended a total pause on the project until oversight issues are addressed. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking until KLAWEA says it wants all LA Area nine one one centers on next Gen.
Oh boy, they want it to be here. These people are so stupid. It's really hard to believe.
This is just one department in the many, many, many, many many departments that Gavin Newsom gets to appoint people too. And the results have been nothing short of a disaster.
Everything they do is the bullet train. We know about the bullet train because we voted on it, and it's way past when you're supposed to be able to write it, and so there's attention on it. And Trump has taken an interest in the subject, and because Trump has taken an interest in the subject, it becomes national news. But here's the dirty little secret. Everything else is run the exact same way. All of the cost overruns, all of the money that's being stolen, all of the cronyism, all
of the incompetence. It's edd it's at the Secretary of State's office, it's in the Department of Insurance, it's all over the state of California.
It's with the nine to one to one system. This is how they run shop, and.
From their point of view, they keep getting rewarded by being re elected until there are consequences for this behavior.
Nothing is going to change nothing. And when you run shop like this, I might add, taxes can only go one way, and that's up because if everything costs triple what it's supposed to cost, and you have to pay for two systems at once, because the system that you're wed to doesn't work, then the costs explode and you didn't budget for any of that, so you constantly need to go to the public and ask for more money, and it becomes never ending. There's never enough. Because the
incompetence is widespread. This state does not function. Think about the stories we've done today. You can't use the libraries anymore because the homeless have taken it over. Downtown Los Angeles is seeing buildings blow up four on one block in a short period of time because of squatters that the city refuses to remove. And now nine to one one doesn't work. We have a system that we know doesn't work, and now the state of California is going to try to force it on the largest county in
the country, knowing it doesn't work. It's really hard to believe. When I travel and I tell people how the state is run, they don't believe me. The fact that Gavin Newsom is guarded as a top tier presidential candidate after producing all of this failure shows you how about a
shape the Democratic Party is in nationally. They shouldn't want anything to do with this guy, Yet if the polls are accurate, they might nominate him to be president, and now Javier Bessera is the next one on the pipeline, the one that the Biden administration said was the worst pick Joe made. And think about all the bad decisions he made in four years, and that one was supposed to be the worst.
Scrub it.
And he may be the next governor. God help us. Eight hundred two two two five two two two is a telephone number. What eight hundred two two two five two two two. If you'd like to email the show, you can do sell it. Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com.
And Randy.
Now that we're approaching the long weekend, we're not going to be doing live shows on Saturday, Sunday or Monday. But if you want to listen to us, you can do that quite easily.
Well, and a lot of people are doing it. They're downloading the podcast of this show.
Fun fact, over the last thirty days, our podcast of this noon to three show has been downloaded one hundred and fifty nine thousand times by thirty four thousand unique listeners. That's according to the statistics on the website where we post this stuff. That is exciting, so be part of the team here. Subscribe to The John Phillips Show on Apple Podcasts, Subscribe to the John Phillips Show on iHeartRadio,
Subscribe to the John Phillip Show on Spotify. Although only five percent of our listeners do that, thirty four percent of them use Apple Podcasts, thirty three percent use iHeartRadio. So there's some fun stats for you. And if you want to know who's listening from where, well, we have the vast majority of our listen and our downloads are happening in the United States, of course, in California, in cities like La and Oakland in San Jose, and Irvine
in Pasadena. But Johnny, check this out. We have in the last thirty days six hundred and fifty five downloads in the UK, four hundred and ninety in Canada, three hundred and fifty in Singapore, two hundred and eighty two in South Korea, two hundred and fifty four in Australia, and two hundred and six in Mexico.
Do you think that those are people who live in those countries who are listening to us or our listeners from southern California on vacation.
I think it's a little of both. We had one hundred and thirty four downloads in Croatia, specifically eighty four downloads in the city of Clarkovac. Will it show you our top ten? Yes, if you want the top ten cities that we're in. LA's number one, then Pasadena, Irvine, Long Beach, Oakland, San Jose, Riverside, San Francisco, Sacramento, Berkeley.
And then Okay, and then that would make sense.
Vegas is up there, Phoenix is up there, Hutchinson, Kansas is up there, Portland is up there. We're all over the place. So the point is, subscribe to the podcast so we can brag about it and you know, hopefully make some money for the station. And on election night we're coming back for round two. Yeah, but we don't get paid extra for it, so you damn well better listen for it. It's The John Phillips Show Election Special
seven to nine pm on Tuesday, June second. I know you probably want to watch the new season premiere of Love Island, but it's on streaming. You can watch it after nine o'clock. From seven to nine, you gotta be here with us as we give you the election results. When the polls close at eight. We're gonna be broadcasting live on kab KSFO and KMJ for this very special show.
Now, speaking of trash TV, there's a new reality show or I don't know if it's new actually, but it's new to me, where everyone goes on a blind date in the nude. Are you familiar with this Dating Naked?
Yeah?
Is it?
Are you watching the American version or the UK version?
No?
I'm not watching it, but a friend of mine is going to be on it. Oh my, let me just tell you. There are many different versions of Dating Naked, but the version that's that the UK errors and the first season of it is on Paramount Plus. They don't blur anything out. Really you see everything of everybody and it is fascinating. What if you need to do something like uncork a bottle of wine, they just know if that would look good in the nude, They show all all of it.
What if you drop something, they show that too interesting if you're looking, if you were curious as to what
that looks like. There's also on HBO Max they have this British show that is another naked dating show called Naked Attraction, where you stand in a room and They have six people that are on a stage and they slowly reveal themselves, starting at their feet, then up to their torso, then up to their head, and you get to knock out which ones you don't want to pick until you finally find the person and the people that you're looking at are completely naked, and that one's completely uncensored too.
Where do you go on a first date in the nude? You can't go to Applebee's, you can't go to a Laker game.
Well, to be clear, they put the clothes on for the date, and then it gets much more awkward. Oh so they're not actually nude on the date on Dating Naked, they are, but on Naked Attraction they're only naked on the show. But then they go and put clothes on for the actual date at a bar that lasts about twenty minutes.
That's stupid, all right.
Then you might want to watch Dating Naked UK on Paramount Plus. It is fascinating, all right.
So the State of California owes the federal government a ton of money. We went for a really long time on that subject. We did.
The State of California owes the federal government twenty billion dollars from a loan that it took out for unemployment insurance during COVID And Johnny, what did the State of California do with all that unemployment money during COVID? They gave it to criminals who then spent it in Las
Vegas and they didn't even tip. Well, some people are wondering why we haven't paid that money back because the state of California is the only state that still owes the federal government money from loans that it took out during COVID. For more on this, here is ABC ten in Sacramento State Matters.
California is the only state still in debt to the federal government after a pandemic era a loan for unemployment insurance benefits.
That outstanding debt is in the billions of dollars and it's costing the state hundreds of millions of dollars each year in interest.
Alan ABC ten State Matters political reporter Jenny Husz here now to break down what experts call a systemic issue.
The big concern is this, the longer California fails to pay back this debt, the more California businesses will have to pay.
And when you realize that we have this much debt hanging over our heads. Everyone's saying that we have a balanced budget is full of crap, not even close.
Well, I think it's completely irresponsible that California hasn't paid its debts yet.
The governor can go out there and say we bounced the budget.
Twenty billion dollars in COVID nineteen unemployment insurance debt that California has yet to pay back to the federal government. California is the only state to not have paid that back.
California leads the way right.
We're number one in being a deadbeat. By the way.
That first voice that you heard was David tonggi Pa, the assemblyman from Fresno, who was on the show yesterday.
Experts warned, the longer that debt is outstanding, the more expensive that debt becomes, especially with hundreds of millions in annual interest. We haven't even started paying back the actual debt itself. It's all just been interest payment.
This is the state of California paying the minimum payment on a credit card.
And Gavin News some thinks he's fiscally responsible.
Didn't we have two years in a row twenty twenty one.
In twenty twenty two, where Gavin claimed we had one hundred billion dollars surpluses.
Why not pay off the debt? Then we haven't. No one knows where any of that money went.
It went to one block in the San Fernando Valley at all the phony hospice facilities.
We haven't even started paying back the actual debt itself.
It's all just been interest payment.
That's right. You could think of it as you know, for the first five years we've made interest only payment.
So the.
Not even trying to pay down the principle, are we?
So the twenty billion dollar debt remains.
You know, if if this keeps going like this and we're not paying this loan back, at some point the Feds are going to send someone out here to break California's thumbs.
Well, what they're going to do is blame Trump. This is what they're going to do whenever they run into trouble with the Feds. If Be Sarah gets indicted, it's going to be blamed on Trump. If the federal government expects the State of California to pay back the money, that's going to be Trump too. This is what they do, and you can't let them get away with it. Because it never.
Ends, so the twenty billion dollar debt remains. Newsom has allocated about six hundred and sixty two million dollars in his twenty twenty six to twenty twenty seven year budget to pay next year's interest on the loan. This is his response when asked about it.
It's got to be addressed. It's real, something we had to deal with during the Schwartzenegger administration and only comparable example, and we were able to pay it back clawback.
Well, they paid that loan back.
You notice, by the way, the change in tone in Gavin Newsom when he's talking about a story that makes him look bad because he neglects the duties of his office. He acts like he's a child that's being forced to eat vegetables.
It's got to be addressed. It's real, something we had to deal with during the Schwartzenegger administration and only comparable example, and we were able to pay it back clawback over a course of years. So I don't want to leave the next governor without those considerations. So there's going to be a series of recommendations and proposals.
I do not understand how we had two years of one hundred billion dollar surpluses that we wouldn't pay back the loan that we took because he was never interested in being governor of California. He was only interested in that office to spring board himself to run for president. So if he took that money and he could act like Santa Claus with all the Democratic interest groups and the NGOs and all of those people, they would owe
him when he would run for president. He didn't care about making sure that California was fiscally solvent.
So why hasn't California been able to pay back the loan like it did during Schwarzenegger and the Great Recession?
The taxes that employers pay into the fund have not been enough to pay out unemployment insurance benefits.
It's an oh boy busted.
The EDD Department runs at an operational deficit.
It's an ongoing systemic issue, experts.
Saying California does have a higher unemployment right than the rest of the nation, and we're spending so much on unemployment payroll taxes don't even cover it.
Well, again, if they would get serious about the waste, fraud, and abuse, maybe they could find some nickels in the couch cushions. But because they're not interested in that. In fact, they go after the news organizations or the citizen journalists who uncover it. That money is going to continue to go to the bad actors, and we're not going to have the money we need to pay our actual debts.
It's an ongoing systemic issue, experts saying California doesn't have the money to pay the federal government back, let alone maintain its own unemployment insurance reserve.
The two billion dollars in extra repayment that employers are paying is just being used to cover our basics.
So because California did not pay this back, payroll taxes were increased, every single employer has to pay more into unemployment and they're still not paying down the debt.
No, and if anyone deserves a break right now, it's California businesses who have one hurdle after another that the State of California puts in front of them, one of them being our crazy insurance market because the state screwed that up too. But instead of trying to find ways to give them a break, cut them some slack. What does the State of California do. They find ways to continue taxing them so that they can continue to allow the graft to go on.
It's just being used right now to cover our normal UI costs.
That two billion dollar extra is what California employers are paying for a higher payroll tax a result of the outstanding federal debt, about one hundred dollars more poor employee. In theory, a portion of that additional money should be used to chip away at the debt, but the money is staying in state.
That creates a.
Huge burden on businesses.
Frankly on more on smaller businesses.
We spoke to Senate Budget Committee chair, Democratic State Senator John Laird, who said there are ongoing discussions to resolve the debt, but declined to provide specifics.
Of course, why would we have specifics on a major financial obligation.
No, it's because no one up there cares about this stuff. They run for office based on how much they hate Donald Trump and how they're going to stop Donald Trump, and they don't have any interest in performing the duties of their office. And it's fine if you have one or two of them that are like that, but if everyone is like that, no one's minding the store. And
that's what's going on right now in Sacramento. They should be all over this in theory if they were going up there and doing their jobs, but they're not.
An issue that really needs to be addressed, and it's issue that's gone on for too long.
The California Employment Development Department, which oversees the UI benefit, but it says our Unemployment Insurance Fund is expected to continue running a deficit over for twenty billion dollars in the coming years. And at the federal level, Central Valley Republican Congressman Vince Wong has introduced a bill that would essentially force California to pay back the debt.
Chris, Laura, Brian, Jenny.
Huhh, thank you.
So there you go.
The latest on the twenty billion dollars California owes the federal government that they are paying interest only on kinging that over our heads and making it even tougher to do anything in this state.
Let's go to Chris and Westlake Village. Chris, Hello, hi guys.
Yeah, the art surplus was around September when Governor Newsom decided to give everyone three hundred and fifty dollars. And I turned to my wife and I said, oh, that's a bad idea. But sure enough. The election was two months later, so he got himself elected with that money, and it's just gone downhill ever since. Now we don't elect Spencer Pratt and uh what's his name? Governor? Uh, we're done. We're already bankrupt.
You know.
If you have Besarah in there, it's just going to be the same thing and going over over and over and down down, down, and they just borrow borrow money.
It's the end.
We have to end it now. That's it, all right, Thank.
You for the call, sir. We appreciate it. Vote for what's his name?
Eight hundred two two two five two two two is telephone number one eight hundred two two two five two two two. If you'd like to email the show, you can do show at Johnny don't like show at gmail dot com. That's Johnny, don't like show at gmail dot com. So during the break, I looked up one of those naked dating shows. This one's called Dating Naked. I'm gonna hear some of the names of the episodes. Sure, Stripped and searching, two faces and suitcases, drag and drop, vamps
and grams, lap dances and second chances. Oh, here's an interesting one. Pub crawls and great balls, strip down and buckle up, big fights and bald heads.
There is a lot of delicious garbage on our streaming boxes that seems like a show worth watching.
We watched the British one and we found it fascinating. In the UK, like, the rules are totally different there. You can curse on broadcast television, you could be naked on broadcast television, but violence is a no no go figure