The John & Ken Show: Poor Children Are “Little Solyndrites”

During the January 30 broadcast of The John and Ken Show, hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou discussed California Gov. Jerry Brown's defense of a proposed ballot initiative that would raise tax revenue through additional levies on the wealthy and a temporary one cent increase of the state sales tax, which Brown delivered during an interview on Los Angeles ABC affiliate's Eyewitness Newsmakers.

According to Brown, this new revenue would benefit poor children by partially funding schools and various state welfare programs. In response, Kobylt wondered why he was “responsible for everybody's bad decision,” claiming that “you don't get a benefit” from government spending on poor children. Kobylt concluded that poor children receiving government assistance were “little Solyndrites.” From The John and Ken Show:

CHIAMPOU: Stop having kids if you are low income. Really? Half the kids born--come on. I don't care who you are, why can't you make a decision better than that.

[...]

KOBYLT: Why am I responsible for everybody's bad decision? Why do I have to invest in people when their parents don't seem to care? When the parents can't carefully plan a family. I mean really, how hard is it to slip on a condom?

CHIAMPOU: Well eventually that burdens just becomes too great, if it already isn't.

KOBYLT: It is--It's already too great. That's why we are bankrupt. We've got to many poor people. It's clear. We've got almost a third of the nation's welfare cases, just in this one state. A third.

[...]

KOBYLT: And you know, you don't seem to get a benefit from it either. These kids are largely dropping out of school. I mean if you look at LA the dropout rates are 60 percent. So we poor in all this medical care, food stamps, all these welfare benefits, then free education, and it goes on for 15 years , and then somewhere in the middle of high school they drop out and they go take a crap job, or not, and then--What did we put that money in for? What did we invest in?

[...]

KOBYLT: This is like Solyndra. All these kids are little Solyndrites.

CHIAMPOU: Yeah, they want our half a billion dollars.

KOBYLT: They take the money, and it's billions every year, and we get nothing out of it--

CHIAMPOU: In this case it's a $7 billion tax increase

KOBYLT: And they keep selling the same damn thing that they have been selling us for 50 years. It doesn't go anywhere. You don't get a benefit from investing in kids when they come from families who don't give a crap. And that's really the core of this. A lot of the families don't care. They just don't care. So what am I investing in their kids for? Or investing in them. I'm not interested. I don't have to be forced to pay money for this. It doesn't work.

The co-hosts have come under fire recently for using inflammatory rhetoric when discussing gay men, Koreans and Korean Americans, Native Americans and Latinos.

Additionally, last September, the hosts aired the personal cell phone number of Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles (CHIRLA) activist Jorge-Mario Cabrera, who received hundreds of threatening calls as a result. The hosts denied responsibility, stating repeatedly that Cabrera's phone number was part of a press release, and therefore public information.

Clear Channel, KFI's parent company, later wrote a letter to NHMC president Alex Nogales defending the hosts' actions.

Currently, NHMC is engaged in a campaign to educate companies that advertise during a broadcast of The John and Ken Show, informing them about the racially charged, inflammatory rhetoric, frequenting the discourse between the hosts, emphasizing the hosts' anti-immigrant vitriol. In response to the NHMC campaign, prominent companies such as AT&T, Verizon, and General Motors have stopped advertising during the program.

The John & Ken Show airs weekdays from 3 to 7 p.m. PT on KFI, a Clear Channel network, and reportedly has an audience of 1.2 million listeners.