This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast. More of what you
here weekday afternoon is on the Drive. He was born in Iran. Karami
and his family left the country when he was sixteen, lived in Mexico for
two years, and wound up at the University of San Diego with a BA
in finance. He's now the editor of the Southern California edition of The Epic
Times. Karami has produced a new documentary called Leaving California The Untold Story.
Let's just start. We've been reading a little bit about this Siamic for a
while, but let's just start with how did you get to this topic after
all of the meandering you've done around the planet? Well, thank you,
Lee for having me on, and I wanted to talk to you. I
wanted to So it's interesting, like I've lived in all these countries and when
I came here in California, I really trusted the media and the govern myth
and the last thing I could picture myself is getting involved with the media.
So as most of us as immigrants, when we come here, you know
this is this is the best country in the world, and you know,
we trust the system and we trust the media, and in the last decade,
I saw that things are changing the state that I know. It's changing
with crime. I had specific examples where a lot of homelessness, crime is
getting out of control. And I started getting more involved in the media.
And twenty seven percent of Californians are immigrants compared to the rest of the mission
which is fourteen percent. And I realized I was left out even though I
was very informed. I'm an entrepreneur at the started businesses, and I realized
that there was the problem here. And I've interviewed about three hundred people on
my show called California Insider. I realized the state has a lot of problems.
And then through the process of looking at at the same time the trend
of exodus. There was a mass exodus. There's been a mass exodus of
the state. I was like, Okay, why are these people leaving?
So we went in underground to dive in to figure out why these people are
leaving, and what we found was amazing. It was it was unbelievable,
and you documented all in your documentary Leaving California, The Untold Story. Let's
talk about some of these You mentioned crime, but education you said is also
becoming a problem in California. Education is a big problem, and we are
spending more than double, like we're spending almost twenty three thousand dollars per student
per year compared to ten years ago. Ten years ago, we were spending
less than ten thousand dollars per student per year. And the results, the
proficiency is the same ten years ago, and it's very bad. About thirty
percent of kids here can read in the public schools at grade level to the
disaster imagine three and kids can can read that grade level and and nobody's talking
about it. You know, it's it's it's and sometimes are leaving because they're
fed up with it. On top of it, there's a lot of things
in the school system that should not be in the school system. Parents are
frustrated with the fact that a lot of things that are happening in the school
systems that are not told about, like the sex education and other things that
But we we actually in this documentary we went after all the things that everybody
can agree on, which is that the proficiency rates, and then we dove
deeper to find out why is it this way, and we kind of uncovered
the unions and their influence on the California government. See Karami is the producer
of leaving California. You're the untold story. Another is the cost of living
One of the things we are seeing firsthand here in Oklahoma siamic because many people
are relocating here to Oklahoma because they can sell their property in California with make
a lot of money off of it and can afford two and three houses in
Oklahoma. Yeah, that's true, and I'm sorry that it hasn't caused a
problem yet. I haven't seen a lot of the California sensibilities import with the
with the people who are coming in. You know, the thing that's happened
here. When I came here, they would call it a sunshine tax.
You know, everything is a lot more expensive. You're in California, and
you kind of think you're told this is the sunshine tax, but nobody talks
about why did this way? And then the sunshine tax has been growing up
and up and up in the last and years. So coast of energy here
it's thirty four cents per culo at hour for electricity compared to fourteen cents national
average, more than all cost of gas here is almost forty percent higher than
the rest of the nation. And when these two things are higher, everything
else gets more expensive. There is these hidden taxes on energy because we want
we have very extreme climate policies. We want to solve the climate problems of
the whole world, so we have made everything a lot more expensive, and
housing is another component to it. Housing itself is significantly higher than the rest
of nation. And California government talks about solving their problems, but they're actually
at the same time passing laws, like they're mandating new homes to have solar
panels on them, which would make them to forty thousand dollars more expensive.
At the same time, they're passing laws that are making housing a lot more
extensive. So there is a sense of disconnect between the leadership of this state
and the problems that they're trying to solve and the problems that average people have,
which we got to the conclusion of seeing all of that in the documentary.
The documentary is called Leaving California The Untold Story Seamic Korami as the producer.
He works with the Epic Times, and that's another thing I wanted to
touch on. Maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong. There's a sensibility
in California, whether it's northern California or southern California. I think it's a
sensibility that is derived from California weather. It is always beautiful in California,
always sunny, always seventy two. People spend a lot of time outdoors.
There is no discernible winter where people are cooped up for a long period of
time indoors, So they go out. They enjoy these mountains, they enjoy
these beaches, they enjoy this weather, and they don't want anything to happen
to it. So they have no problem paying all these extra taxes you site,
because the government is going to preserve all of this for them. Is
that the sensibility or am I a little off kilter? Yeah, we're kind
of We're not paying enough attention. You know. The thing is, if
you look at Californians, we are innovative, we are business oriented, we
do we work hard. At the same time, we have this outdoor environment.
We enjoy it. We've trusted the state, the politics and the laws
and the state. We've trusted the state leaders to manage the state and were
we don't really know whether the root of root cause of our problems, and
we also are told so there's ballot initiatives. When when we go back to
crime, there was a ballot initiative called Safe Schools and Neighborhoods Act. It's
uh, this ballot initiative actually legalized best in California under nine hundred and fifty
dollars. But we were told it's Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act. So we
voted for it. And at the same time that we're not paying attention.
It seems like there is a movement in the state that there's all these laws
that are passing based on different special interests, are different ideologies that are kind
of parroting us. So you're totally right about the weather being the way it
is and us being so disconnected because it's not that we it's not that we
cannot fix these things, because we innovate a lot. We have a lot
of businesses here, we're entrepreneurial. It's like, I think it's because we
are not looking into that. Well. Seeama Karami, the documentary is leaving
California the Untold Story. We don't mind your visiting if you decide to relocate
to Oklahoma, just don't bring those sensibilities. With you, We're going to
try to see if we can help change these things in this state here in
Castling Up. We like our cars, We like our oil. Thanks for
listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to
listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation