Joel Pollak Reports from the Palisades Fire and Helen Thompson Discusses the Fall of Europe’s Car Industry
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Welcome to Breaking Battlegrounds with your host Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. As always, we're jumping right into it today. A special guest who is right in the thick of the story surrounding the LA fires. He's been putting out some of the most important information available. Joel Pollack, Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM, Channel 125, airs at 7 p.m. Joel, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time today.

Thank you. Joel, you had a great question this morning on Twitter, which Sam and I have been wondering. You simply asked, okay, you're not going to argue with people who think this was caused by climate change, but you want to ask why people who were elected who also believe in climate change did absolutely nothing to prepare for the risk. What are they missing? What have they blown on this?

Well, two things. First of all, a lot of the people who believe in climate change do so almost as a recreational belief, a form of virtue signaling that they care about the planet. They don't actually believe in it because if they really believed in it, they wouldn't fly to international climate change conferences on jet airplanes, which emit a lot of carbon. They would not

who drive expensive cars, not just electric cars, but the other kind. I mean, they wouldn't build their homes near coastlines if they believed the oceans were going to rise. So we don't see the belief in climate change reflected in the personal behavior of many of the people who believe in that theory, at least in the alarmist version of that theory. But more to the point, when you elect people who

place ideology at the core of their political identity rather than public service and delivery, then what you get are people who believe in climate change but have absolutely no idea what to do about it because they don't know what to do about anything. And you can go through issue after issue, not just climate change. They don't know how to police the streets. They don't know how to manage traffic.

They don't know how to run the schools. They have ideas about education, but they don't know how to teach or how to learn. So we've elected people who are very good at

abstract forms of thinking. And our Ivy League universities and our best public universities in California turn out a lot of people like that. Like me. I went to Harvard. And I know what this is about. It doesn't mean that everybody who goes to Harvard is like this or whatever. I'm not trying to disparage people. I'm just saying these are the skills we've prioritized. But they're not electing people who also know how to do things.

and they can be business leaders who know how to invest and succeed or turn around failing companies. They can be managers who know how to work with large organizations, and they can also be practical people who know how to keep the lights on and the water flowing. And so...

That's the problem. We've elected people on the basis of their beliefs, but not on the basis of what they can actually do. And that's an important point. So if all these folks say they believe in climate change, China and India are continuing to emit more and will for some time in the future, decades into the future. So any gains we make in reducing emissions here in the United States and Europe are being overwhelmed by that. So if they believe these changes are coming,

and they haven't planned for them, this LA fire is a perfect example of the kind of disasters you can face when you're not planning. If you believe that there are going to be more fires, shouldn't you have more water tanks, larger reservoirs, building more of them around the area, upgrading your pipeline infrastructure to be able to handle a larger volume during an event like this? Okay, so what I'm going to say is not necessarily going to satisfy you, but...

You're right. However, the availability of water was probably not the main issue. It was an issue, certainly. But we're talking about 100 mile an hour winds at the top of these mountains when a fire had already started. When you look at some of the videos of what the fire was like when it was at its worst, there is no way any amount of water was going to stop some of these neighborhoods from going up. However...

There's no excuse for not having a ready supply of water and a distribution of water so that people have access to that water when they do have the opportunity to put out fires. In my neighborhood, we were using buckets to put out the fires because we could collect water that was running through the gutter. We had no water pressure. But there are ways to do this. The other issue, though, that I think your question gets at is just the general lack of preparedness. And I'll give you a perfect example.

One of my neighbors called 911 and asked the dispatch to send police to deal with the fire evacuation. First of all, the dispatcher had no idea that there was a fire because they hadn't been told. So the emergency departments weren't communicating.

And then the dispatch said, well, why don't you call the fire department for a fire? And he said, I'm not trying to stop the fire. I'm sure they're fighting the fire. I'm trying to get rid of the gridlock on Sunset Boulevard because people are trying to run away and to evacuate. Nobody can get anywhere because we don't have anyone directing traffic.

and be police officers to direct the traffic. And he ended up turning his car around and going back to his building. He eventually got out, but the building burnt down. The point is, you don't need to believe in climate change to make sure that the police and the fire department can communicate to one another and that you have enough police available, even just traffic police, take them away from writing parking tickets, put them at the intersections, and get people out of there. You folks have all been in the eye of the hurricane. You've lost your home, correct?

No, I did not lose my home. Thank goodness. I was one of the lucky few who did not. I'll tell you a little story about that. So my neighborhood is almost completely destroyed on our block. I would say probably 75 percent of the homes have been burnt to the foundations. And on my side of the street, there are seven homes in a row that are intact. Every home on the other side of the street has been burnt down.

And I'm not exactly sure why the seven survived. There was a little fire break, perhaps, on the north side of that row of homes that might have saved the homes. There were little spot fires that I had to put out. I put out fires around my fence and I put fires out at my neighbor's house. I put out a fire. My neighbor's fence was on fire. I put that out. His tree was on fire. I put that out.

Any one of these little fires could have caused all seven of the remaining houses to go up. But the crazy thing was when I got to my house and I checked on it because I have press credentials and I was covering the fires and I managed to get there, I found my garden hose was fully extended across my lawn and it ended at my fence. And my fence, which is made of vinyl to keep termites out, my fence had melted. Oh my goodness. What that told me was that a neighbor or a firefighter

had found my garden hose, had gone into my house after we evacuated, not into my house, but into my yard and had put out the fire or had fought the fire and probably saved the house and maybe the entire row of houses. So that's who Palisades people are. And we helped. It's not the only story. I mean, I've known so many stories, people who lost their own homes, but put out fires in their neighbor's home. I mean, that's what we had to do, but it's also who we are. And, um,

That's why my home is there. Unfortunately, we live on a corner. My home is the only one of the four corner homes that's standing on every other street, on every house on the corner, except mine is completely gone. Well, and you mentioned maybe a partial firebreak. That ties to a threat on X that you had that I thought was very important talking about or referring to when the rebuilding process comes along.

These kind of things have to be considered in the permitting. I mean, the layouts that are permitted, where you can build and how you can build matter a lot for things like wildfires and other events. I'll make it even simpler. You're absolutely right.

But there's one neighborhood in Palisades where there's only one way in and one way out. There's only one road. And it's a long road. It's the Highlands. And the Highlands burned a lot yesterday. And the Highlands are connected to the rest of L.A. by one road called Palisades Drive. It's a very beautiful canyon, but it's the only entry and exit to the entire neighborhood of thousands of people. And on Sunday morning, this is now two days before the fires, I took my mom up there to fetch my son from a play date.

And she said, wow, this is really beautiful. And I said, yeah, but I'd never live up here because there's only one way in and one way out. If there's a fire, you're stuck. That was on Sunday. And that is an obvious problem.

That doesn't require long debates about where people can build and where they can't build. Build another road. You can't get people an escape route. Because the first place people started abandoning their cars was on that road. I talked to a guy, one of the guys who helped me put out fires at my house. He was stuck on that road and his truck started burning. He got out, but you can't...

You can't solve stupid. Right. You have to throw out the people who allowed this to happen. Throw them out of office. And you've got to elect people who can get things done. You're on the ground there. What else is the legacy media not reporting about these fires that people should be aware about? Yeah.

That's a great question. Look, I think in general they've done a pretty good job, unfortunately, because one thing even the mainstream media are very good at is reporting disasters. You can't trust most of what you believe on CNN, but if they're standing in front of a raging wind, it's probably a hurricane. Although even then, you know, the famous shot of the guy standing waist-deep in water and people walking behind him ankle-deep, they find the deep spots so they can get the really dramatic shot. I mean, there's a bit of that. I saw that in my neighborhood as well, people choosing the most

ghastly destruction and filming in front of that. And, you know, obviously like that's, that's interesting to see and gets clicks and views. And I understand that, but I think what people haven't yet understood in the media, because they don't understand it politically, maybe ideologically, they're not able to understand it. We had a choice two years ago in the election of 2022, almost over two years ago now. And Karen Bass, uh,

Democrat member of Congress ran on the Dobbs decision, on Supreme Court's decision on abortion. And she won narrowly, but she won by arguing she was the pro-choice Democrat. And the media are very taken with the issue of abortion. And they think it's very important and they're very interested in how the Dobbs decision affects Democrats in other races. And that's what they talk about. Her opponent, Rick Caruso, is a local businessman. He's a property developer. And

She said he was insufficiently pro-choice because he had donated to pro-life candidates in the past and because he used to be a Republican. And she didn't say this part, but he's also Catholic and donates to Catholic charities. So he's presumed to be pro-life even if he says he's pro-choice. And that was the big issue for Democrats in that election and in 2024. And that's what the media are focused on. Vic Caruso presented himself to the voters and said, we have big problems in our city. We have homelessness.

be of crime. I think in retrospect, he could have talked about water. I didn't even know this at the time. I couldn't. Maybe I did. And I forgot. But he was once the water commissioner of L.A. 20 or 30 years ago. So he knows about water. And he said, I know how to get things done. And a lot of people voted for him, including in Palisades. Palisades was won by Rick Caruso. But Karen Bass won the overall election. Point about Rick Caruso is that his building is the only commercial building standing in Pacific Palisades.

So that's the guy we didn't elect. I'm sorry. Competence in local government matters a ton. Joel Pollack, we want to thank you so much. Senior editor at large at Breitbart News. You can follow him on X at Joel Pollack or subscribe on Locals, joelpollack.locals.com. Joel, thank you so much. We really appreciate it. Joel, be safe. We'll talk to you soon. You're welcome. Appreciate you. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Thanks for watching.

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Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds. Folks, check out our friends with Invest, the letter Y, then RAFY.com. Learn how you can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return in a secure collateralized portfolio. And when you invest with Y Refi, you're doing well for yourself and your family by doing good for others and helping students pay off their high-interest student loans early. So check them out. Invest, the letter Y, then RAFY.com. All right. Our next guest up today had a fascinating piece.

on how Europe crashed its car industry, short-sighted policy gave China the upper hand. So welcome to the program, Helen Thompson, professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge and co-host of Unheard's These Times podcast.

Pleasure to be here. So in 2020, Europe produced 25% of the autos manufactured. In 24, it's 16%. In 2000, China only did 3% of the autos manufactured in the world. Now they do one third. What has happened to the European auto industry, Helen? Well, I think that it's as much a question, to be honest, as what has happened to the Chinese automobile industry, as it is to the European automobile industry.

and that Europe was entirely unprepared for the China shock, and Germany in particular, because Germany has been the historical center, at least in the post-war world, of the European car industry. So on the one hand, that you have got an industrial policy in China that,

that not only made China very successful with electric vehicles, but made Chinese car companies pretty competitive in conventional car markets too. And on the other side, that you have a European car industry that was going to struggle with that shock, I think, anyway, and then had to deal, as it was faced with that shock, with the pressure from European governments

to accelerate the shift away from internal combustion engines to electric vehicles. So in that sense, it was terrible timing aside from anything else on the electric vehicles question. Because even if you took that out of it, I think that Europe would still have had a car problem. But to deal with the rise of China as a major exporter of cars at the same time that European car firms were struggling

with the change to electric vehicles has had really devastating effects across Europe. Now, if you talk about countries like Britain and Italy, you can see a fairly sort of long story of deindustrialization in relation to the car industry. But that wasn't true for Germany. Germany had in significant ways saved itself from the fate of European industrialization.

And yet this car story is now accelerating deindustrialization in Germany itself. What does Europe...

produce or manufacture? Are they just turning away from the roots of being manufacturers like the Germans? I mean, what do they produce? I think this is important for the world. I mean, we used to have this great industrial powerhouse in Germany and cars in Italy and so forth, but Europe seems to be turning away from that. Is that a false assumption by us Americans or is that what's happening? I think that it's been happening on different timescales in different European countries. I think you can...

say that in Britain that there was a turn in the direction of deindustrialisation really from the 1970s. I know that some people who are very critical of the Thatcher governments would put a lot of responsibility on the Thatcher governments and in some ways that's understandable. But if you look at the trends that they're there really from the 70s onwards,

As I said, the exception has been Germany because Germany, unlike other European states, found a way of not only retaining a pretty high level of industrial production at home that was central to Germany's growth prospects, but found a way of its companies

producing in China and nowhere more so really than in the automobile sector. So that is why the China shock is being experienced most traumatically in Germany. Because if you look at a company like Volkswagen, even a few years ago, it's making more than a third of its profits in China. So if it's being pressurized in the Chinese market, which it absolutely is by the Chinese car firm BYD, at the same time as China is starting to penetrate

export markets and in particular the European export market, then that is pretty existential for the future of

German industrial production and it is happening at a time when already German industrial production has been in decline and again there's a kind of story about this that says that it's simply the function of the energy shock that hit Germany with Russia's invasion of Ukraine but if you look at the data then it's been going on since at least 2018 and maybe the middle point of the of the the year before and

We are speaking with Helen Thompson, professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge. Two things that I've been thinking about in relation to this, and please correct me if I'm wrong here. China gives lip service to international agreements, climate change agreements, but they have clearly not followed them. Their goal is to produce as much energy as cheaply as possible, which really has hypercharged their industrial base. And then

On the other side, their economic system doesn't have the same siloing between companies. So as battery technologies and other technologies for EVs are developed, the costs are being spread across the entire auto industry there. How much of an advantage is that giving China in terms of cost control as they look to move into these new markets? I think on both scores of that is true, that if you look on the energy side,

The difference between Europe and China, I don't think it's really the difference between the US and China, but here the real difference is between Europe and China. And in one sense, Europe and China have got something in common in which they are dependent upon the import of hydrocarbons from other parts of the world. But the difference is that European governments individually in the European Union collectively, taking the decision to move away from coal.

Whereas if you look at China, China still uses in terms of its overall energy consumption about 60% coal. And that's certainly even higher than that, I think, in the electricity sectors. So if you look at the comparative energy costs for European firms compared to the industrial firms compared to China, there's a sizable difference between them.

and that European companies have to exist in an energy world in which governments have decided that coal consumption has to come down radically, and it has indeed come down radically. Chinese industrial firms do not exist in that world. They still live in a coal-centered economy.

And then on the other side of the picture, you can see that backed by the Chinese state, Chinese companies have got much better integration of the supply chain. They are not dependent upon importing, say, batteries from the other side of the world in order to produce electric vehicles.

That is effectively the case for European countries. And when there has been an effort really to develop a European battery base, North Volks, a Swedish company, would be a good example of that. It's gone bankrupt. And so the benefits that the Chinese companies get from this integration, really vertical integration on the supply chain, are really considerable.

Absolutely. We're going to be continuing on here with more from Helen Thompson in just a moment. So stay tuned for that. Folks, make sure if you're not already, you are subscribed. BreakingBattlegrounds.vote. Check out the website. Go on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, because we always have that nice little podcast segment at the end that is exclusive to those subscribers. So be sure to check that out. Breaking Battlegrounds coming back in just a moment.

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We're continuing on right now with our interview with Helen Thompson, professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge and co-host of Unheard's These Times podcast. You can follow her on X at Helen Het 20. Helen, you're a professor at Political Economy University of Cambridge. How are your students today different from those two decades ago?

That's a good question. They are different than two decades ago, it was the beginning to teach millennials. Now they're very much Generation Z. They've had a very different schooling experience than the students two decades ago, at least in the ones that the British educated at school level have.

They want to learn in the same way students always want to learn. They want to do well. But school, I think the distance between school and university for them is significantly bigger than it was two decades ago.

Are they optimistic about the future now? I mean, you know, London, you know, United States at the end of the day, Americans are always go big, go home. Right. It's sort of in our psyche. Doesn't matter what political party you are. It's like, oh, let's just build something bigger. So there's a there's an inherent optimism with our mythology of the American dream.

Do these students have optimism for the future of England? Because it looks right now very static, lots of concerns, and I'd love to know your opinion. It's a time of turmoil and change. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, there's no doubt. I think that the students now, the last few years have been significantly more pessimistic than the students were in the early 2000s or when I first started teaching in the 1990s. And part of that isn't just the world. It's the fact that the

education that they receive is much more expensive in Britain than it was 20 years ago, 30 years ago, that they are now not necessarily coming out with the levels of debt that American students come out from American universities, but significantly higher than was the case in the past. And that shapes the way in which they think about the adult world, I think, in quite significant ways. And I also think that they

are pessimistic about the future. I wouldn't actually say in terms of the students that that manifests around particular pessimism about Britain, just more generally about the world. I think that...

Many of them, their horizons go beyond imagining necessarily a future in Britain. Many of them anyway are quite internationally minded. So at least thus far, maybe it will change. A strong sense of pessimism about Britain isn't what's coming out. It's a more strong sense of pessimism about the world as a whole. Helen, we have only two minutes left. So I'll ask as a follow-up to that question,

What do we need to be telling these next generations to give them hope for the future and say, hey, we can actually make things better going forward than they've ever been? Because in a lot of measures they are, but also there's obviously a lot going on that people are nervous about. Yeah, I mean, I think that this is a really interesting question because I think that we're at a juncture now.

in world history, if you like, where we have to find a way of simultaneously being optimistic and in a way being pessimistic, because we need optimism because there has to be faith in the future in order in some sense to carry on.

but on the other hand i think there was a lot of optimism let's say the optimism of the 1990s that turned out to be like pretty facile and in a way the world in which we now live is a world in which the optimistic illusions of the 1990s at least in the west have shattered so we find we need to find a way of being what i try to communicate to the students in this sense is is optimism is good

necessary but it has to be optimism based on on realism yeah and that and that that's the balance that has to be struck because having another sort of series of optimistic bubbles that crash is no good for any of us

Optimistic realism sounds like a very good plan for the future. I think it's called adulting. I mean, I think if you're – it's adulting. You've got to be optimistic. You've got to understand realities as well. Absolutely. Helen Thompson, I want to thank you so much for joining us today. We really appreciate your time and would like to have you back on the program in the future to talk about European economic issues. I think that's something that American audiences –

don't have enough information about. And so we really appreciate you taking the time for us. It's a pleasure to do it. Thank you. Have a great weekend, Helen. Folks, Breaking Battlegrounds will be coming back in just a moment.

Folks, this is Sam Stone for Breaking Battlegrounds. Discover true freedom today with 4Freedom Mobile. Their SIM automatically switches to the best network, guaranteeing no missed calls. You can enjoy browsing social media and the internet without compromising your privacy. Plus, make secure mobile payments worldwide with no fees or monitoring. Visit 4FreedomMobile.com today for top-notch coverage.

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At Overstock, we know home is a pretty important place, and that's why we believe everyone deserves a home that makes them happy. Whether you're furnishing a new house or apartment or simply looking to update and refresh a few rooms, Overstock has everyday free shipping and amazing deals on the beautiful, high-quality furniture and decor you need to transform any home into the home of your dreams. Overstock, making dream homes come true.

Welcome back to Breaking Battlegrounds with yours Chuck Morin. I'm Sam Stone. I want to thank both of our guests today. Joe Pollock for taking the time. He is in the midst of the mess in Los Angeles right now. Apparently got really lucky having his house still standing and

and Helen Thompson, a professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge. I want to bring her back on here soon. I always love having guests from over from the pond come over. I do. I do. We're so international. Maybe when they come over, though, they could invest with YRefi and learn how they can earn up to a 10.25% fixed rate of return. Based on the English economy and how Stammer is rating pensions, they should invest in YRefi. They should invest in YRefi. In fact, I'm going to write a note and talk to YRefi about that.

Yeah, because my goodness, right now that economy is in real trouble. The U.S. economy, there's a huge difference in the industrial basis of their continent versus ours right now. Well, you know, look, there's this great movie out called London Has Fallen, right? Oh, I love it. It's nonsense, but it's great. Look, England's falling. I mean, we need to get on more and talk about it, but –

It's it's falling. Yes. And it's for various reasons. For a lot of reasons, it's really coming apart. And at the seams, the uncontrolled immigration from countries, you know, we do a good job here in this country of integrating people into our society. If you have a steady but not crazy flow, we do a great job of bringing people in. They do not.

Well, you and I had this conversation this week that we have to get to the point where you can say – I have not heard anybody on the conservative side that has any credence to say, oh, we should stop all legal immigration. I haven't even heard that. We allow 1.2 million a year. I've even had people who are against the open border say we probably need to go to 2 million a year plus. I mean I've heard this. I mean this is from conservatives, right?

But what we've got to get in on, we've got to start being stronger on this, is when you go and do that and they call you a racist, say, no, I'm not a racist. You're a fool. Yes. You're an idiot. And you've just got to call them. You've just got to turn around and call them for what it is because they are – people need to assimilate in country. The problem is I've been to – when's the last time you were in London? It was a couple of years, about 2018. So I think I've been four times the past five years. It's different every year. I remember –

I went in 2017. We've talked about this before. I went to Hotel Hilton for a conference. You know, five blocks from the hotel you go, it's three, four blocks of Muslim neighborhoods. That's fine. People, immigrants, fine. Sure. Mackenzie and I went this year for an internet conference. That buffer was no longer there. It was all Muslim neighborhoods, and it went past the hotel. And when you went inside the hotel, like we have here, you have English, Spanish, and signs. Right. They had English and Arabic. Yep.

And again, I'm for legal sane immigration. They have had no sane immigration. And because they're trying so hard to protect it, this is why you have the rape of all these girls by these Pakistani men. And as our guest offline said –

She goes, it's been being talked about here a lot, but must put a megaphone on it. Well, the UAE foreign minister had a very interesting take at a conference back in – I think it was 2018 when this problem was still just sort of in its early phases. He said, listen, you're taking people –

that we would not accept in any of our countries. And obviously, we're all Muslim countries. The reason we're not accepting these folks in is because they are going to create huge problems. You don't understand where the regional differences are within the Middle East and the type of population you're bringing in, and it's going to backfire. And he's been 100% right. Well, just ask Egypt why they're taking no one in from Gaza. Right.

Okay. So let's talk about the foolishness of England leadership and what we got in California foolishness. So we have – They're mirror images in different forms. They are very much so. So we have this horrible fire. It's like an act of God type fire, right? And I'm sure there are people that think it is.

And you have those who say it's climate change and so forth. But California seems to be at the point now where they keep producing completely incompetent, inarticulate public officials from Kamala Harris to Mayor Bass. And we have a doozy yesterday from the speaker of the California Assembly, Robert Rivas. They're doing a special session on Trump.

As literally Los Angeles burns to the ground. Oh, my goodness. Jeremy, can you play that clip, please? Here's a reporter asking the Speaker of the Assembly, Robert Revis, a question about why they are focusing on Trump on a special session and not the fires. Go ahead, Jeremy.

I could take a couple of questions. I do have to jump on a call here. With that, I mean, with what you just mentioned and kicked off here, is now the right time to have a special legislative session on allocating money to fight Trump in a way that you could already do without a special legislative session?

So I'm here to address these wildfires. This is a historic wildfire. This is a historic event. These wildfires, as I mentioned, are going to be quite possibly some of the worst wildfires and disasters in the state and national history. But minutes ago, your house, while this wildfire is happening, and while people are trying to understand what's going on and are worried about...

disaster relief, worried about the ability to get homeowners insurance, your chamber gaveled into a special legislative session to prepare for Donald Trump in a way that you are already able to do without a special legislative session. So again, is now the right time for that?

So certainly our focus right now is speaker, Ashley. At this moment, my colleagues and I, we are acting with great urgency, great urgency to ensure that we're providing much-needed relief to Angelenos, to ensure that we understand what it's going to take for this region to recover and to support those that have been most impacted by this disaster.

And, you know, this is, you know, the response from our first responders has been unprecedented. And they're doing all that they can to control and contain, again, these multiple fires, doing whatever they can to ensure that they're keeping people safe now. And, again, in anticipation and in preparation for recovery. And as a state, we will do, as a legislature, we will do everything we can to support that recovery.

So long story short, they're still having a special session out to fight Trump. What are your real priorities? And they have a homeless crisis. They have a pechant debt crisis. They have a water crisis. They have wildfire crisis. But yeah, let's go after Trump. Well, see, this is the fundamental problem. And it goes back to what Joel Pollack was talking about at first is –

State and local government particularly is about delivering needed services, making sure you're prepared for disasters, doing all these things that are functional in the real world. And Democrat politicians, California is only the best example because they have total control of the state like New York and a few other places that are also just turning into disasters. But they all know how to soundbite the right things. They just don't do anything right. Right.

Right. I mean, and this is one of the things, like when we're watching all this going on and, and, um, uh,

woman I got to know at the city of Phoenix very well, Catherine Sorenson, the former Phoenix water director. She's one of the experts on water here in the West. She had a great post. She's a bit of an environmentalist. Oh, she, yeah. Look other. Here's the thing I liked about working with her. She is an environmentalist. That's important to her. She's probably a Democrat, but the, the environmentalism is the only way I would have ever known she's a Democrat because everything else she does is about getting results and

about building a more efficient, low-cost water system. So she's adulting. She's adulting. She's adulting in government. And she had a great post on LinkedIn. Unfortunately, I don't think she's even on X or other social media, where she was breaking down, like, look, this issue about neighborhood fire hydrants. Is neighborhood fire hydrants, the amount of water we can pump into them, is not meant to fight a wildfire? That we know that's an insufficient amount. Right.

However, there's all this other stuff that you can do, whether clearing, whether creating fire breaks, whether creating better evacuation plans.

And building up the infrastructure to battle major fires in terms of reservoirs, in terms of more and larger tanks, making sure they're filled, that everything is working right, that the pipes – people don't realize this. The pipes underneath your city lose at least – like if you're Phoenix and you had Catherine Sorensen as the water director and they did a really good job, you're losing 10 percent of your potable water to pipe leaks underneath your city. Which is what should have been part of the infrastructure bill. Right.

If you're an older city like Los Angeles that has had vastly less concern about maintaining basic services, you might be losing 20 to 30 percent of your potable water that way. And these are the things that really take you apart when there's a major incident like this. Yes, yes, yes. Well, matter of fact, I came across a funny stat this morning. You're talking about fire hydrants. Yes.

Between January 2023 and May 2024, more than 300 fire hydrants were stolen from L.A. County streets, according to data from Golden State Water Company, which manages the fire hydrants. Some of the hydrants are sold as scrap metal. Residents are asked to call if they notice a missing hydrant.

And that actually ties directly back to what Joel Pollack was talking about with. So he and his neighbors in his neighborhood were, you know, splashing water on the tree and on the fence and this. And someone probably sprayed down the fence and helped save his house. That.

infrastructure can do that. Yes. Right. So they wouldn't have had to, he wouldn't have been grabbing buckets. Like you said, out of the street where water is running off from, from firefighters, presumably trying to, to battle a thing. He wouldn't have been doing that. You would have had a working home. You know, your hose would have been working better. All those local little things. Would that stop a wildfire? No, but that can save individual homes. Yeah.

In these type of situations, a lot of time a house gets on fire in a windy day, embers get blown, it gets into it, especially palm trees. Correct. Palm trees are basically torches. They're sort of a useless tree. They look cool, but they're a useless tree. They are not native to this part of the world, quite frankly. But they're useless. They give no shade. Well, they're terrible. They suck up huge amounts of water. Yes, they're useless. They provide no shade and...

And they are just homes to scorpions and spiders and all this stuff. They're useless. They look cool, but they're useless. They're useless. Well, it goes back to – you and I have talked about this a lot during the summer about government does not work anymore. And this is example A. And I hate to break it to every state, but we have it. It's not here, but this is a – because California is such a one-party dominated state.

There's truly no checks and balances because the press is just part of that cabal anyway, right? And this is the greatness of Ron DeSantis and why Florida is no longer a swing state because he came in there and said we're going to make it work. And look at the hurricanes. Those hurricanes – people are still recovering from them, but you don't hear people moaning and groaning about the state of Florida. Right. I have a place there. I don't hear people – they like how he governs. In talking about this competence –

Neely Bowles, as you know, of the Free Press, she used to be a New York Times reporter. She left when they had the whole thing there. She said, talking about competence, she goes, growing firefighter diversity has been the main priority of LA's Department of Late. Talking about the fire department. With a whole special equity bureau.

And as much has been made of the beautiful rainbow leading the department run by a lesbian, should I care that a lesbian saves my lesbian-ly? You might say you're already a woman married to a woman. You're not doing enough. But it's true. Unless the firefighter is saying, come to my window, I won't get on a ladder. You know, there's just – they're forgetting what government is supposed to do. And I think it all is – and I wish almost both sides would step back and say –

Clean streets, garbage is picked up. We got to fix this water infrastructure. We're losing water. Crime. I mean, it's the basics. That's what people want. Then just leave me the hell alone. Well, and that would turn down the temperature and the political fights across the country because people know we need these things and they're not getting them.

They're talking right now that the damage of this is $52 to $57 billion. It'll probably be well over $100. Of course, what does Biden do? What does he promise the people of California? Total payback. So what did he do for Hawaii and North Carolina? $750 a person.

Trump just – so you and I talked about this before. The more I came up with this morning, I have a researcher looking into it. I think they have to increase on the 1% or 2%, an extra 1% income tax, or we do a consumption tax over items of $100,000 or more. A national luxury tax. That is sunsetted. Yeah. But this money goes towards paying these natural catastrophes, and that way it also doesn't endanger our bottom line as a nation. Yeah. Look –

There are times we're both very anti-tax, right? Very much so. But there's also a time to recognize when you're dealing with a federal deficit and debt like we have that you've got to stop paying for these things out of debt because it costs a lot more in the end. And actually, I think...

If you ask the 1%, you know, the wealthiest people in this country, do they really object to a 1% tax on a $100,000 purchase? No, not really. They don't. Well, no, and that's what we have to do. So I don't know that you do it for two years and sunset it, but you have to pay for this. I don't want to be going to the bond markets. I don't want to increase our deficit. I don't increase our debt. Yeah.

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The 2022 political field was intense, so don't get left behind in 2024. If you're running for political office, the first thing on your to-do list needs to be securing your name on the web. With a yourname.votewebdomain from godaddy.com, get yours now. Welcome to the podcast segment of Breaking Battlegrounds with yours Chuck Warren. I'm Sam Stone. And of course, leading off our podcast as always, Kylie Kipper. This one.

Got some murder and mayhem for us today? I do, I do. I also have an update on last week's story that kind of left us on the cliffhanger of the family who three members had passed away from the Christmas cake. Oh, okay. Oh, yeah. So originally we were maybe thinking it was contaminated food. There was like some arsenic? Yeah. So if you missed it, there was a family of seven. It was like...

A woman and her sisters got together with their husbands, and then there were seven of them. One did not eat the Christmas cake, but the other six ate this cake, and they ended up in the hospital. Three died almost immediately, and it was laced with copious amounts of arsenic. And one of their husbands died earlier in the year from a banana. Yeah, for a few months prior, her husband had died from a contaminated banana, and they just thought it was because earlier in Brazil there was all these floods, so they thought it was contaminated from maybe donated food or something like that.

Well, it turns out that they started looking into the woman's daughter-in-law because apparently one of the families tipped off the police because I guess at a family funeral a few months prior, she had set some rosary beads and a rose in the hands of the deceased family member, which I don't know what that means. But apparently it

an outburst of the family and people started yelling at her. Why are you even at this funeral? You don't even like anyone here. Everyone knows. So then the police start looking into her and she had all of these Google searches about arsenic. Oh, no. We were blaming it on the flood last week. We were. We were blaming on the flood. Really, it's just the daughter in law or the mom. Yes. Or the woman who made the horrible excuse that it was from the flood, to be honest with you.

Well, that seems silly. Yeah. Well, they didn't know if maybe someone's sick, you know, like sick minded could have put this in the food and then donated it to whoever. But apparently she laced the flower and it turns out that they had 350 times the amount of arsenic that it takes to kill a person. What state is this in? This is in Brazil.

Not in America. So if she was in Texas, she'd be facing the death penalty. What's Brazil's punishment system there? That's Lula, right? So probably – She probably gets a parade in a luau. Yeah, something like that. Well, you know what? Actually, though, so Brazil has been one of my favorite places on X lately because the citizens are just totally fed up with the crime and shooting everybody. Yeah, no, the vigilantes run around everywhere. Well, maybe –

That is really, you know, it's always a crazy, crazy relative. I just want to know. I need to know a little more family back history. You know, what started all this. So part three of the saga you'll have for us next week. Yeah, coming next week. You got to jump on that Reddit on this. Oh, yeah. I need to get that. And then you probably need to find a Portuguese friend who can interpret the various Portuguese. You're right. I do need to. She's texting a friend now. That's good. All right. So...

All right. So as in all cases, is the person nearest to you when you're poisoned? Yes. I mean, generally, I'd assume. A lot of deaths in general, which reminded me of there was a Utah woman who a guy was pulled over for a suspected DUI on New Year's Eve. Yes. And it was his ex-girlfriend dead in the backseat. He was going to dispose of her body and he was pulled over for a suspected DUI and actually had his ex-girlfriend.

In the back seat. Well, see, here in Arizona, we just put inflatable fake people in the passenger seat so you can use the HOV lane. So maybe that's what he was doing, right? Maybe. Like he wanted to bypass traffic for a while. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, people. That wasn't my second story. I have one more story for you guys. Before we get to the second story, I do want to ask, what's happening to our friend Karen in Massachusetts? Oh, my gosh.

Oh, that's been delayed to like July, I believe. Okay. All right. I just was thinking. No, April. April. Sorry. Brian Koberger is in July. Okay. Those are the two that we're still waiting on. We're waiting on. Okay. Anyway, you'll find out more about the craziness of this family. Yes, yes, yes. We're going to get the back history of that. My other story was Christmas was apparently not a great time for a few families around, you know. This woman, she was –

Holiday violence is actually kind of a thing. All the anxiety is weird for a lot of people. I think I did not notice this when I was younger because you live in your bubble. You do. But the older I get and you know through the years, trips around the sun, you get to know more people who are lonely or have bad family situations. Holidays are a horrible time for people. If you have a really dysfunctional family and you're kind of forced under the same roof again and –

There's a lot of bad stories that actually come out of that. Yeah, it's horrible. Anyway. Well, anyways, this woman, she was not under the same roof as her family because she was actually – her family called a welfare check when she failed to show up for Christmas. She was a 75-year-old woman and her niece was hosting Christmas and she did not –

So they called the police and the police actually found her deceased with injuries on her legs on the front steps of her home around 3 p.m. on Christmas Day. Where was this? This was in Ohio. Sorry about that. They later determined that she passed away due to bleeding out due to extensive superficial injuries by livestock animals. Okay.

So it turns out that they found a large pig inside her home. Two pigs seemed roaming near her. And they were hungry? Yeah. And then two pigs near her neighbor's home. And the police chief said that the incident was for, it's further complicated because it's not a pet. They're livestock animals, but they ended up, they ate her. Yeah. No, no pigs do that. Yeah. So they attacked her and ate her and essentially that's how she died. Oh my gosh.

Yeah, they're there. It's like the first episode of Deadwood. But what would the Hannibal Lecter sequel or whatever? That's that's a real thing. That's that. Yeah. No, no. Yeah. You've got to feed your pigs. Well, apparently it's the neighbor's fault and the neighbor because it's the neighbor's pigs. But they're not immediately putting these pigs down. They're right currently in quarantine because they say they don't handle it the same way as a pet because it's livestock. Yeah.

So is the neighbor liable? Well, they haven't been charged with anything currently. Like they're saying it's complicated. This has never happened. So they're not sure like what to do. But in my mind, I would assume it would be kind of similar to it. It's your responsibility. I am sure there's an attorney rubbing his hands together saying I've got a case. Well, you know, so that that'll be interesting because actually there's a lot of law from the, you know, from 100 plus years ago.

about if regular livestock gets out and it's not your fault because a tree fell and knocked over a fence or something like that and somebody gets run down by a horse or whatever. That kind of thing happened a lot more in rural society. And so there are actually legal protections that may keep her neighbor out of trouble in that sense. This is a farm kid piece of knowledge because we all knew how to kill all our neighbors if we ever wanted to.

Okay, this is what I actually want to start my segment with, but I forgot about it until the middle of my segment. But today, we're recording this on a Friday, is actually National Quitters Day. It's National Quitters Day? Yeah, because the second Friday of every January is the day people usually quit their New Year's resolution.

So did you start a resolution, quit it? No, I did not start a resolution because I was more of this year I wanted to do something that made my life better instead of getting rid of something necessarily, that kind of restriction. So I wanted to get better at sleeping. So I've taken things that have improved my sleeping. I've been doing things that improved that. Have you improved it? Yeah. It's amazing. How much have you improved it? I literally go to bed at nine and then I

I want to wake up naturally. I want to wake up naturally at like five so I can let my dog out of the crate. And it's been working really well. The other day I did sleep till six. So I felt bad. You went to nine? Nine o'clock? Nine o'clock. Yeah. And there's no, we don't have a TV in the bedroom. So you're basically 80 now. Yeah. I want to start the mouth taping, but I haven't quite gotten there yet. By the way, how is your dog you adopted? Oh, he is doing amazing. He

He's doing fabulous. I don't know. My dog loves him. My other dog loves him. He's his best friend. They play tug-of-war all the time together. Dogs are always happier if they got a friend in the house. It was a little... I told her that. It's 100% dogs need a companion. It was a rough start. I will say the first week was a little like he was like, what are you doing? Because this dog was like super hyper. But now they're like best friends. And it's great. Bowie needed the discipline of a friend. He did. They...

They always do better when they've got a play pal like that. Well, they do and so do people. Yeah. That's why there's a loneliness pandemic right now. So let's go back to the fires for a minute. And you wanted to talk about DEI. I just want people to remember the Joe Biden quote from the fires.

Quote, my son lives out here and his wife. They got a notification yesterday that their home was about to burn to the ground. Today, it appears it may still be standing, but they're not sure yet. The good news is I'm a great grandfather as of today.

Joe Biden's inspiring words for the people of California. Oh, powerful. And 100% payback, which he did not do for Hawaii or North Carolina or Florida. It's so insulting. So I guess you don't need words when you're just giving money. Well, you know, yeah. And honestly, for the elected officials in that area, that's all they care about. And so that was something, you know, we were talking briefly about Katherine Sorensen earlier.

who is the former Phoenix Water Services Director and very competent.

The city of Phoenix, when I got there, you kind of got to go back to the roots of DEI, which exploded in the last few years into the public consciousness. But this all started in government when they first started talking about making sure government mirrored their population. Right. Right. So the idea was if our population is 10 percent black, then 10 percent of our workforce should be black. If it's 20 percent Hispanic, so forth and so on, LGBT plus whatever.

By the time I started at the city of Phoenix in 2017, the city of Phoenix was significantly more – their workforce was significantly more minority – the percentages of minorities in their workforce was significantly higher than the percentage of minorities in the Phoenix community. Right. Right? So you achieved that goal and then you continued and doubled down on it.

And so you are just taking away – literally you're taking away access to the largest portion of your population. So you're giving up so many people who are talented. But it gets worse because every government, every company has been adopting these policies. The demand for the really good people –

who are, you know, the black guy who is just an absolute star. He's got 75 options coming out of school, clamoring to get him under the banner. The LGBTQ woman, same kind of story, right? Um,

And the problem with that is then to fulfill your goals, you're dipping further and further outside the merit bucket. Yes. Yes. And that's a problem. And you're seeing it in L.A. in its most brutal, life-taking form. Competence matters, and you can't do that. If people who want to push DEI really cared for a success, then they would not oppose school choice.

No, and they would institute and fight for real reform in our public schools. They don't care. Retake the – public schools are violent messes right now where the students completely ignore the teachers. They're on their phones. I mean it's just – Some of them. Not all of them. Not all of them. But there's a bottom 20 percent.

That you wouldn't want to send your worst enemy to. Well, and even the best ones, I've talked to teachers at good schools who are like, my kids spend all their day on their phone with their earpieces in. They do not pay any attention. Like discipline matters and you cannot have a school environment that's successful without it, period. And, and it matters for when you go to work, like when you go to a workplace and you see the people there just sitting around leaning back in their chair, playing with their phones, uh,

How much work are they getting done, especially in the public sector where the expectations often are very minimal, quite frankly? Right, right, right. Well, here's a perfect example of that, how it's just rotten inside. Los Angeles Unified School District spends almost $20,000 per student per year. So if you add it up, say there's 30 kids per classroom times $20,000, you're spending $600,000 per classroom. How much is the teacher making? Probably $70,000.

Benefits, let's say 120. Let's be generous, right? Let's be generous. So of that, for that money, in math, only 32% of Los Angeles Unified School District students met or exceeded state standards of math. Wow.

Which have been dumbed down, by the way. They keep reducing the standards. And only 40% to 50% English. It's a complete, absolute waste of time and money. Yeah. And so that actually number I know from LA Unified School District, that is state and local funding, but it doesn't include federal DSEG funding, which adds about another $10,000 per school. So there are actually over $30,000 per school in that district. $30,000 per student? So you're at $30,000, say 30 kids per classroom. Yep. $30,000.

$30,000 for 30 kids. So you have $900,000. You're almost a million dollars per classroom. Almost a million dollars per classroom. The teacher's making $120,000, $140,000 and being generous here. Where is this money going? Well, it's this thing that we were talking about with the L.A. Fire Department. So here's the interesting thing, and this is where it goes back to the first point I was making about you're dipping too far into the bucket and outside of merit, right? Yeah.

So the woman who is the LGBTQ black woman who leads the fire department was fifth out of her class of 50 in the fire exam, whatever, in her graduation. So she actually apparently was a good firefighter. And if you look at her history, she served in battalion chief roles and all these kind of –

The problem is everybody underneath her is unqualified because they've been promoted for the other reasons. And it takes a team. Yes. Look at California's spending. So California under Newsom has spent $22 billion to combat homelessness, except it's up 3% this year. Right. It's the first state to have a Medicaid program to cover illegal immigrants.

And that costs California $6.5 billion per year. Billion per year. Now, Los Angeles, with the same problem of nonessential spending, the city allocates $1.3 billion a year to combat homelessness. It's out of control, right? Well, all they're doing – And by the way, half that money is left unspent. So I don't know what they're doing with it. What they are doing with it is just lining the pockets of the service providers who are delivering –

So it goes back to efficiency. So, for example, not being efficient. So since Newsom's taken office, murder rate's gone up 15 percent since he's taken office. Right. 15 percent. You think that'd be a priority for him?

Murder rate's not one you can hide, by the way. And of course, the public education, the money's gone up for that. But test scores have plummeted. And my favorite thing is people don't realize about this, and we're going to wrap up here. Everybody remember when the Los Angeles County Fire Department gave their surplus gear to Ukraine in 2022? Right.

Because they felt it's the right thing to do. Slava to Ukraine. From the news station KTLA, they gave him boots, hoses, nozzles, body armor, and medication, among other items packed and shipped out. Because why would we need this extra stuff? Right. Emergency pumps. That was one of the things they transferred, by the way. The kind that can pump water from the ocean to fire. All right. We're going to end here with one last clip. Jeremy, would you play the clip from Chris Matthews? This is Chris Matthews explaining the White House staff and the cabinet.

There was a clearance process for talking to the press. Right. There was a clearance process. I went through and needed it done. There's nothing wrong with it, but everybody had to be cleared. You never heard from the cabinet during this guy's administration. You never heard from him. People like that. I knew the Kennedy cabinet better than this cabinet. They hid these people because they wanted to have him out there with the aviator glasses being the superstar. And they went and everybody else had to be quiet. The staff people in the White House never talked.

This is interesting. The whole pattern of it was protect him. And I understand there's a reason for that. And it's smart people that know better than we do about his ability to communicate. They know every day how good he is every day, not just when he's ready for an interview with you or Susan, but every single day when they get on the phone. There was a clearance process for talking to the press. Right.

There needs to be some lawsuits against these gatekeepers for public fraud. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if this was a publicly traded company and they treated the leadership the way they treated Joe Biden, these people would be facing SEC fines and possible jail time. And I don't know why it's any different for the White House. No, it shouldn't be. And, you know, more to the point,

There has basically now been an admission in so many ways that we have not had a president for multiple years. We don't have one now. This to me is actually leveling up to the level of a capital crime to treason against the people of the United States. I agree. We do not have a constitution that permits governance of the presidency to

by a committee of unknown individuals. And that's what we've had. And all this stuff coming out from the Biden administration right now, the offshore drilling rules and everything else they're doing. None of this is,

is legal because there is no president. And the Trump administration needs to push back. Yes. Well, folks, we thank you for joining us this week. We want to thank our guest, Joe Pollack, for joining us from Breitbart. And he is in the beast, the middle of the beast and the fires in Pacific Palisades and elsewhere. We want to thank Helen Thompson, professor of political economy at the University of Cambridge, talking about her article on how Europe

crashes car industry and it truly has crashed his car industry I don't see how Europe gets out of their manufacturing rut at all with what they're doing well not unless they totally change their industrial and energy but but they aren't no so on behalf of Jeremy Kylie Sam and myself we appreciate you joining this week you can always visit us at breaking battlegrounds dot vote on our social media or wherever you listen to your podcast have a great weekend