As residents in Maui sift through the ashes of the wildfire, they are being harassed by corporate thugs on Wall Street who want to buy up their properties. New reports have confirmed that residents are being inundated with calls from realtors and investors, and the residents are absolutely livid. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Click here to learn more about Maui wildfire lawsuits.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: As residents in Maui sift through the ashes of the wildfire, they’re being harassed by corporate thugs on Wall Street who want to buy up their properties for as little as possible. New reports have confirmed that residents are being inundated with calls from realtors and investors and residents are absolutely livid, and they should be. You have these people basically walking around on bones right now, these people showing up. It’s disgusting. You know, of course when it comes to Wall Street, that’s always who I’m across the table with, and whether it’s a pharmaceutical case, environmental case, fraud case, one of the biggest cases in the country, the opioid case, I just finished, the PFAS case I just finished, tobacco, which originated in this law firm. We’re always on the other side of these creeps. And sometimes it’s hard to get the public to understand that we’re dealing with real sociopaths. I mean, if you had a DSM 5 and you’re doing a checklist, is this person a sociopath? When you start really drilling down on it, you’d find that they are. What kind of person shows up that these people have lost everything? They lost their family, they lost their friends, they lost their house, they lost the clothes on their back and people showing up, hey, can I buy your property? Who the hell does that?
Farron Cousins: And they’re doing it as one resident said, as the cadaver dogs are running around trying to find their family members and their cell phones are ringing, hey, uh, would you be interested? We understand you just had a recent event. Maybe you could sell us your house. And these people are saying, I don’t know where my relatives are. This is absolutely disgusting, as one resident put it to even be getting these phone calls. And look, you and I sat here four days ago saying, predicting that this was going to happen. And sure enough, immediately following that, all of these Wall Street vultures or hyenas, or jackals, whatever you want to call ’em, it’s inhuman what they’re doing.
Mike Papantonio: The first day we, you and I agreed, the best thing this governor can do is create a moratorium. I don’t know much about this governor. I really like this guy. The more I know about him, the more I like him. He’s a doctor. He has a huge history of doing good things for those islands. He just, you know, he’s just a, sounds like a good guy with a good plan. And he says, look, I’m not gonna let this happen. I’m not gonna let these vultures come in and sweep up this property, which they’ve always wanted to do.
Farron Cousins: Yeah.
Mike Papantonio: They’ve always wanted to bulldoze the place. It was like, same thing we saw after Katrina in New Orleans. Right? Same kind of deal. We saw the same thing happen. We have lived through this, haven’t we? We have lived through these folks coming in, folks, I mean, these people from Wall Street and Chicago and Miami and LA coming in, hey, we’re gonna build a better life for you. It is the most disgusting. So this governor says, hell no, you’re not. As a matter of fact, I’m working on a moratorium. Now, if I really analyze it, the moratorium is gonna have constitutional issues. So what. You can hold it up in court for years, and that’s all they need to do. He’s saying, look, don’t leave this island. Don’t go to the mainland. There’s no reason for you to do that. Come back. Let’s all rebuild together. I love the attitude that this guy has. And you’ve got people on their own. You’ve got a woman that’s creating a huge movement over there saying, look, I’m not gonna let this happen. Talk about that a little bit.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. She’s basically talking about the fact that, look, the history, the heritage of this town that has now been pretty much completely destroyed, as the governor said, there’s almost nothing left at all. But it has such a rich history that it has to be preserved. And the people who live here are that living history. This is generation upon generation going back hundreds of years on that island, in that town. Do not give it up to these Wall Street vultures.
Mike Papantonio: First of all, the Hawaiians have fought like hell to hold onto their culture, to hold onto what is Hawaiian, to hold onto that thing that connects them with Hawaii. This is one example of it. As you said, there’s 3, 4, 5 generations of people that have given every thing they can to hold onto their business, to build a life for their family and their friends in that community. And to have these people come in. I love this quote. This is Green. He says, I’ve reached out to our attorney general to explore our options on moratorium on any sales of our property that have been damaged or destroyed. I just, I love that he probably understands the same thing we’re talking about. It may not succeed at first. Who cares? By the time it goes through the appellate process, you would’ve slowed all this down. And the only thing that’s gonna slow it down is the people on that island being led by these folks that are saying, look, we have to fight back. And this woman is doing this through social media.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Very powerful.
Mike Papantonio: I just love what’s happening. But they’ve got to be, they’ve gotta be strong and they cannot back down. Look, here’s what they’re faced with. They’ve lost everything. Somebody comes in and says, hey, you’ve got a piece of property that’s $1.66 million, but you know what, it really isn’t worth that anymore. We’re gonna pay you $400,000. Can you take that? Well, they got children to feed. Right. They don’t have a home. They have to rebuild somewhere. They have to start from scratch. They’re tempted to say, yeah, let me do that. Big mistake. Whatever has to happen on that island for everybody to pull together and say, we’re just not gonna allow this to happen.
Farron Cousins: Well, and it’s important for people to understand the Wall Street banks coming in, they’re not talking about, oh, we’re just gonna rebuild houses and just sell them. This whole area here will be demolished. These will be be giant hotels, a Disney resort, a Sandals Resort.
Mike Papantonio: Oh, it’ll look like Miami Beach.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. They’ll charge $2,000 a night because this island is one of the top tourist destinations, not just in the country, in the world.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. I mean, hell, you’ll have Mickey Mouse running around the road before it’s all over. Look, this has got deep, this area has deep historical significance, not just a rational relationship between the people and the land. It’s got history. This used to be the capital, you know, when everything first started happening, this was the capital. And I just love that these people have just been so tough in the past to say, we’re not gonna allow it. Do not allow these thugs to come to this island and do what they wanna do. I mean, that’s my message. And you can succeed, especially with this governor. Again, I don’t know much about the guy. Did a little reading on him last night. I like his background. I like the fact he’s heavily invested into the best interest of these people on that island.
