All right, parents in Clovis Unified, listen to what I have to say.
There's a dangerous group trying to lure in your kids at school. What's
happening here? Is it drag Queen's Story Hour trying to sexualize your kids?
No, no, no, we don't worry about that. No, don't
worry about that. That's fine. That's nothing. That's nothing. It's just
a hyper sexualized environment with a bunch of adults who have a very obvious fetish
who just for some reason, I want to read stories to kids. No,
no, no, it's not anything like that. That would be alarming.
No, the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. They're trying to get your kids
to come to talks and events that they hold with pizza, luring your kids
in with a message that Jesus loves them. Enter the law and order.
Sound right now? Song tunk. Just the tone of this piece in the
local rag, the old Fresno b and I've noticed this about the Fresno be
They've and why do I talk about it? Why do I talk about it?
It is a interesting snapshot into what liberal Fresno thinks. There is a
pretty big, decent chunk of liberal opinion in this city, in this region,
and it is well reflected in the pages of the Fresno Bee, even
if fewer and fear of fear, fear of fewer, fewer and fewer people
actually read it. But this is how people who disagree with us think.
The problem in public schools is not hyper sexualizing kids with our sex ed programs.
It is not transgender ideology. It is not even you know, failing
academic standards. No, no, no, here's what we're worried about.
It's Clovis Unified letting the Fellowship of Christian athletes in to lure in your kids.
And what I've noticed is the President Bee has thrown like a ton what
of the limited resources they they have, they throw a lot into into quote
education reporting, and so much of their focus with regards to Clovis Unified is
how terrible it is that close unified teachers aren't unionized and other issues like that.
All right, so let's dig into this. Some Clovis parents say a
Christian group is trying to indoctrinate their children during lunchtime lurd to pray and talk
about Jesus Christ by offering free pizza. Three parents with children attending Rayburn Intermediate
and Clovis East High Schools said their children were offered free pizza to go to
the lecture hall in groups of three to five during their lunch period. Upon
arrival, parents said a representative from the Fellowship of Christian Athletes meets with students
after praying and hearing about Christianity. Parents said, students then receive their free
pizza in yellow boxes. I feel that they're doing wrong, one parent with
a student of Close East told the Prisono Bee. They're basically luring in kids
that are under eighteen, that are still trying to find themselves and still trying
to explore. We shouldn't be allowing Christians to indoctrinate kids at Clovis East.
They're supposed to be indoctrinated into atheism by the school. Damn it. That's
the point of California public education to make sure that kids are thoroughly indoctrinated with
modern liberalism, with modern with the priorities of modern leftism. That's what public
schools are actually for. How dare Christianity slip in and try to have a
fair shot. The parents who spoke to the Bee asked to remain anonymous.
Fearing retaliation against them or their children. Jesuse. I mean even if I
were criticizing such a parent on this, people might ask me, see if
Gerardi, you would be blasting these parents if their names were in the article.
For God's sake, you're allowed to criticize people without it being a threat
of violence. All right, let's chill out about this, good Lord.
Parents who spoke to the Bee asked to remain anonymous, fearing retaliation against them
or their children. They also said they were not notified via email, text,
permission slip or asked for their consent for the FCA to approach their children.
Back in my days, when I was a high school student to join
any kind of club, I needed my parents to sign a permission slip for
me to attend. When Close's parents said, I am upset that they actually
do have that kind of club there without parents consent. Yeah, you need
a parent's permission slip before a kid can attend like a club meeting. A
high school kid can attend a club meeting. It's not like the kid is
going to a meeting of a club. Do you realize how danger is it's
you know, a far safer thing would be a kid, you know,
being transported off the school during school hours to go get an abortion or to
go get an IUD inserted into their arms. Yeah, no, that's fine,
you don't need a parent's permission slip for that. But to go to
a club, a club that talks about Jesus, Holy cow, what the
heck are we talking about here? This kid might come home with a decent
sense of Christian ethics, what entire nation? But you know, if Planned
Parenthood is coming on to campus to talk about sex said and to tell kids
where they can go to get abortions, Oh well, that's fine, we
don't need parents permission for that first, And that's true, you literally do
not okay with California public school sex ed. Your kid is opted into it
automatically. You have to affirmatively take a step to opt out. And by
the way, yes, in California public schools, your kid can be taken
off campus for quote reproductive health services without you knowing about it, because in
California, parents have no right to know. The kid controls the privacy rights
here. Kids control, like the hippo stuff. Kids control whether or not
a parent is going to learn about them getting an abortion, getting contraception,
whatever it is. Some parents also pointed out that they do not practice Christianity
at home, but they are religious and believe in different doctrines. They questioned
if their children's school allows other religions to conduct their activities on school grounds and
wondered why their underaged children were being exposed to a religion they don't practice at
home in this manner. Another parent who has a student at Rayburn said their
child learned about the free pizza at the lecture hall through the morning's school wide
announcements. The parents said the child recalled an adult, not a student,
leading and opening prayer and then talking about accepting God, repenting their sins,
and the relationship between Jesus and athletes. This parent also said their child wasn't
allowed to use their phone during the session. They're using pizza as a way
to get children in, one of the parents, said, Close Unified spokesperson
Kelly Avance said the FCAA can meet with students during school hours through its affiliated
student led club on campus. She said that there are forty plus student clubs
at Close East, including the Fishing, Gay Straight Alliance and Sikh Clubs.
Avant said the FAA is operating in accordance with the district's student club's policies.
Now, if FCA is doing things that are against the rules, okay,
And maybe I could understand if you were a Jewish parent and your kid was
being offered free pizza to go to a lunch lecture, and your kid all
of a sudden was like, hey, this Jesus Sky sounds pretty good.
I guess I could understand a Jewish parent being upset, or a Buddhist parent,
or a Muslim parent whatever. I just find it bizarre and hilarious.
And by the way, I think I'm I don't know that I'm one hundred
percent going to accept this account of the facts. I think I'd like to
hear Close Unified and or Fellowship of Christian Athletes side of this before just completely
buying the account given by the anonymous Close Unified parents, who whose account is
gleefully reported by the Fresidobe. But I think one of the things I just
want to make clear we operate with this fix in American public schools, and
especially California public schools, that our public schools don't promote some kind of comprehensive
worldview. They one hundred ten percent do. It's almost impossible for them not
to. Frankly, and the kind of alarm that we're seeing expressed here over
they went to a club event without a signature. And meanwhile, here we
are in California, and I know, I you know, it's John Girardi,
mister pro life, you know, always bringing it back to the abortion
issue. But this is one hundred percent true, the idea that we have
such a paternalistic at rightly, I'm not saying this as a criticism. We
have a very paternalistic attitude towards kids, towards their ability to meaningfully knowledgeably consent
to all kinds of different things. The school nurse can't give the kid a
tile and all without asking mom. Kid can't sign up for, you know,
a meeting of a school club without the parents. Okay, the kid
can't sign up for a sport without the students. Okay, you need a
permission slip from your parent for all kinds of things field trips, this,
that and the other. But to have your kid consent to these kinds of
things that are just pillars of liberal ideology, this idea of sexual liberation,
this idea of reproductive healthcare liberation. We just blithely let this go by.
We just have blithely over the years, let this be the case that again
your kid is gonna have Your kid is defaulted into a sex said curriculum whose
statewide standards are so radically pro abortion pro you know, you know, look,
I'm sure probably most people listening to this are in favor of using contraception.
I'm not, but I don't think most of you listening to this are
in favor of fully laying out for your kids to be how to be sexually
active with contraceptive use. Right here and right now, here's all the different
methods of contraception. Here's where you can go to get contraception, even if
your parents don't know about it. This is where you can go. Here,
we're going to bring into the school a vendor from a healthcare from a
clinic who's going to tell you about how about their clinic. Like, that's
the level we are at presenting to kids the most sexually progressive left wing sort
of worldview, attitudes of permissiveness towards sexuality possible, All of it can be
done without a permission slip, all of which your kid is automatically opted into.
You have to affirmatively opt them out of, and a lot of this
stuff, you can't opt them out of a lot of this stuff. Your
kid could go to school during school hours, could get an IUD inserted into
their arm, could get contraception, could get even an abortion without your permission,
without your knowing about it. That we think for some reason that fIF
that you know, sixteen year olds, fifteen year olds, fourteen year olds,
thirteen year olds are capable of making those kinds of decisions without you,
without the parent. And yet here we are also at the same time up
in arms because use high schoolers might be getting duped into going to a lecture
where they might hear about Jesus without a permission slip from the parents. When
we return, I want to talk about this fiction that public schools aren't religious.
I believe they are. Next on the John Girardi Show. When I
was in Catholic schools for a couple of years when I was growing up.
Eventually our family sort of switched to homeschooling, and I think that was a
pretty darn good choice for us. But for a couple of years in Catholic
schools, one of the things I would notice is that there would always be
a couple of kids who were not Catholic who were in the Catholic school.
And you go to a place like San Joaquin Memorial, the Catholic school in
Fresno, there are a couple of kids there who are not themselves Catholic,
but everyone kind of understands the deal. The parents and the kids understand,
Yes, we recognize you're not a Catholic. We're not gonna, you know,
treat you like a pariah or something. You're we're welcoming you into our
school here, but understand the game. This is a Catholic school. We're
gonna have, you know, corporate prayer that you're expected to kind of join
in with. We're gonna teach about the Catholic religion, which you're expected to
participate in and learn about. That's just the deal, and it's all very
open and everyone understands the deal. And sometimes families who start sending their kids
to Catholic school, sometimes those families wind up becoming Catholics. And you know,
maybe it's just a parent who hasn't thought about religion all that much,
and once their kids starts going to Catholic school, they think about these things
more deeply. Maybe the kids convert, you know. So it's all though
very open, it's all very honest. Everyone gets it. Everyone gets the
deal. And a lot of people may wind up sending their kid to SJM
because it's the private school, and maybe they think they have better, you
know, better academic standards or something like that, even if they themselves or
their kid isn't Catholic. So it's a regardless. It's all very open,
it's all very transparent, it's all very honest. Everyone gets the deal.
I think public schools operate on a lie. By contrast, I think public
schools operate under this lie that send your kid here, regardless of your religion.
Understand that your kid will not be subjected to any one particular sectarian religious
viewpoint. We will be neutral on the question of religion. You can raise
your kid in your faith, whatever that faith is. If you are Jewish,
if you are a Muslim, if you are a Buddhist, if you
are a Christian, if you are whatever variety of Christian you are. If
you're a Baptist, you're a Methodist, you're a Presbyterian, you're a Mormon,
you're a Catholic. It doesn't matter you can send your kid here and
we will not, you know, try to teach your kid a certain doctrine
or I hate the word indoctrinate. I think people there's very little difference between
indoctrinate and educate your kid in a certain religion or whatever. I think that's
a lie. I think public schools do indoctrinate their kids. It's not in
a religion sort of in the classic sense. A classic idea of a religion
is, I mean, really the word religion. It comes from the Latin
word red legerae rey again and ledger to read, to read back, to
give it back, to return. The idea is God has God, or
the gods have given us all these good things, and it is our duty
to render some part of that back as far as worship. So, religion
is this act of returning, rendering back onto God for all that he hath
rendered unto us. And generally speaking, religions have a sort of comprehensive body
of teachings and beliefs and maybe codes of ethics and codes for appropriate worship and
codes of personal individual conduct. Now, public schools don't have necessarily a code
for how to worship. They don't have a deity to worship, but they
certainly teach your kids a code of ethics. It's almost impossible not to nature
abhorrors a vacuum. There are ethical truths that are being communicated to your kids,
codes of conduct are being communicated to your kids in public schools. How
can the public school educate your kids about reproduction and biology without certain kinds of
ethical norms being communicated. Of course, they're going to be communicated. If
kids are taught about the concept of marriage in a California public school that's being
guided by California law. Of course, they're going to talk about marriages and
marriage is and arrangement between all kinds of people. It can be between two
men, it could be between two women, it could be between a man
and a woman, could be a transgender man woman whatever. Of course,
it's going to follow what California state law allows, and it's going to present
that as normative, as normative, it's offering an ethical worldview. In sex
class is going to talk about all the different methods of contraception. It's presenting
it as these are all the legal methods of contraception of birth control, that
including abortion, including IUDs, which don't really prevent conception. It's presenting all
that as normative. That is a worldview, It is a code of conduct
to govern your life, to govern, in fact, some of the most
important and intimate decisions of your life and for your health and for your future.
The way they talk about sex, the way they talk about sexuality and
relationships, that is being presented as normative. The way they talk about ethical
standards, where they have to boil things down to this sort of lowest common
de nominator morality. Your kids in public school are getting a religious upbringing.
And I recognize not everybody can send their kids to Catholic I recognize not everybody
can send their kids to private school like I not everybody can homeschool. I
get it. I'm not trying to condemn you. What I am saying is,
if you are you know many people listening to this, A lot of
people listening to this are pretty conservative. A lot of them are pretty conservative
Christians, a lot of them are pretty conservative Catholics. A lot of them
are maybe more conservative Jews or Muslims. If you're hearing this, understand if
your kids in public school and you're hearing this, understand your kids are getting
a religious upbringing just as much as the Protestant kid who goes to San joaqu
Memorial. And if you're okay with that religious upbringing, fine, but understand
the name of the game. Don't you need to understand that the public schools
lying to you about this idea that they are religiously neutral. They are not.
They're not telling you how to worship a different God, but they're giving
you a whole different conduct for living, a whole different standard in code for
living that is going to be different from your code of living as embodied in
Christianity or in whatever religious faith that you're practicing. So understand, your kid
is getting a religious upbringing, whether you like it or not. And if
you don't want them to have that religious upbringing, you've got a lot of
decoding to do, a lot of deprogramming and reprogramming to do. When we
return, I want to talk a little bit about the modern boom in sports
gambling and some real reasons for concern and caution with it. That's next on
the John Girardi Show. One of the things that I have been following quite
a bit, and I think anyone who's a pretty big sports fan has been
seeing more and more and more of this, and I'd say I'm a decently
big sports fan. I care a lot about Notre Dame football, and I
like basketball, and I like you know, I like a lot of different
sports. I like listening to podcasts and radio things about sports, and you
know, Fox Sports, Fox Sports thirteen forty K on Sports one of my
favorite shows. Check out My Boys K. I want to talk about this
thing that I see more and more becoming over the last few years, has
become more and more and more in the mainstream of American sports, which is
gambling and online gambling sites like DraftKings, fan Duel and other sites like that.
Now a lot of that is still legally restricted in California because basically there's
I don't know you guys remember this, but there there were some dueling ballot
initiatives a couple I think a year or so ago between basically the Indian casinos
in California and the big national online gambling sites who are duking it out against
each other with like these dueling ballot initiatives because they're so greedy that both the
Indian casinos and the national sites they basically couldn't figure out a way to sort
of share the California market, the enormous California market for sports gambling. Potentially
enormous market for California sports gambling. The Indian casinos were basically the Native American
casinos were basically like, well, we want one hundred percent of the share
of the California sports gambling market. We want people to be gambling at our
casinos at on sports. We want to be able to build big sports books
at our casinos and have all the action take place at our casinos and have
one hundred percent of the sports gambling in California happen here DraftKings and FanDuel,
and those online sites were like, no, no, no, no,
no, we would like one hundred percent of the share of sports gambling,
not have people gamble at Indian casinos, have it only be online gambling.
And so they introduced these dueling ballot initiatives. The one was to legalize online
sports gambling, the one was to legalize sports gambling at Native American casinos.
And both of them lost, to my delight. But nonetheless, these national
sites are still extremely popular and there is this mainstreaming of gambling that's happening all
over the place, even down to the level of you know, occasional sort
of toots his horn about what a great warrior he is for doing the right
thing and causes of social justice. Lebron James just announces that he has this
big partnership sponsorship deal with one of these big sports gambling sites. Ah,
yes, Lebron James. Who Lebron James. Who has more money than God?
Okay, Lebron James. Who's I think about to sign another probably like
two year extension with the Lakers where he might make as much as sixty million
dollars per year. I don't know what he's made lifetime just with his NBA
team contracts. Incredible amount of money. He's made an incredible amount of money
through his Nike endorsement, through endorsements with other companies like Sprite. I mean
he can, he can take his pick of endorsement deals and just make money,
more and more and more money. He was he was in a movie.
He's been in a few movies. Actually, he was in Space Jams
some other movie. Lebron James has more money than God, and yet here
he is choosing to do a sports gambling website. Now there's this guy I
follow on Twitter. His name is Haralabos Vulgaris who's an interest guy sort of
in the sports gambling world. He's actually a very wealthy He became wealthy by
being a professional gambler on NBA games, and he was able to identify sort
of in the two thousands mostly, I think most of his activity was in
the twentys and twenty tens. He was a very sharp mind when it came
to basketball, and he was identifying certain inefficiencies in how Vegas was setting different
gambling lines with regards to basketball games, and he was able to bet in
very strategic ways and make a lot of money, and he was sort of
recognized as, oh, this guy's actually a very sharp basketball mind, and
he wound up getting hired by I think he actually worked in the front office
for the Dallas Mavericks for a number of years sort of as an advisor and
because he was sort of recognized as being a pretty sharp guy. And he's
now on this little sort of anti gambling campaign online where he's basically saying,
basically he's recognizing the very unique position he's in that for every one person like
him who has been able successfully to make money sports gambling and he also recognizes
like those conditions are no longer in existence. The books have smartened up.
Those kinds of inefficiencies are almost impossible to find. That for every one person
like him, there are ninety nine people who get addicted to gambling start gambling
way too young as teenagers. This is a huge problem in England, where
their attitudes towards gambling are more advanced than ours, where there are tons of
people who are way in, way too deep in debt already, like start
having gambling problems as teenagers. And basically he's trying to sound this alarm bell
that these online sports books are just fundamentally unfair. Basically, what he's noted
is that the way that they're not regulated is such that let's say you are
actually an incredibly sharp, savvy gambler and you start placing successful bets in a
way that is consistent, like you've managed to identify inefficiencies in the system that
the sports book hasn't. If you win too much, what happens with these
online sites is that they can either ban you from the site just because you're
winning. They can either ban you from the site, or they can lower
your limits so that like the most you can the most money you can place
down on a bed is like five bucks or something like that. Basically,
they make it so that it's not worth your while anymore. These websites more
or less have carte blanche to limit anyone who's actually win. So I mean
it already. Sports books, casinos, the math. The reason why they
make money is because they set the math up in a fashion that is unfair.
That's how casinos work. It's not rocket science. Okay. The roulette
wheel has a built in disadvantage to the player. Blackjack has a built in
disadvantage to the player. All these different games they're designed for you to lose.
They're designed they are set up in such a fashion that the longer you
play, eventually you will have zero dollars left. Okay, it's guaranteed mathematically,
But for certain kinds of gambling, there are ways, if you're really
smart, that you can make money consistently, if you really know what you're
doing, and the books are trying to stop people, These big online sportsbooks
will stop you from doing that. Even in that case, And the point
that this guy is so Haralibos fuggeris who goes by Haralibob, who anyway,
he's a very interesting guy. Look him up on Twitter. He's at Haralabob
h A R A L A B O B. He's just pointing out that
he and he recognizes this sort of a little bit, the hypocrisy of his
position. He made all this money doing sports gambling, but he's realizing promoting
this as a huge national market that's accessible to eighteen year olds, nineteen year
old college kids without a lot of money, without a lot of common sense,
without a lot of judgment and discretion, who are getting into debt heavily.
This is bad for people, It is bad public policy, and these
books are just not regulated very well. And it's such a shift like there's
you know, thirty years ago, if you had anything with gambling anywhere near
baseball, football, whatever, the leagues would just flee from it immediately.
But what's happening. The leagues realize how much money they can make, and
local and state governments realize how much money they can make. State governments.
I've said this time and again on this show. State and local governments can't
spend in the red the way the federal government can, so they are always
desperate for some new source of revenue that they can generate for state government,
for local government that doesn't involve coercively increasing people's taxes. If there's some activity
that no one has to participate in that they can get a big cut of
it through taxes, that's always going to be appealing to local governments. And
local governments can swallow whatever stupid libertarian argument you want to make, whether it's
for legalized pot or legalized gambling, they'll swallow whatever dumb libertarian argument. Well,
these are people making free choices with what they want to do with their
money, and you know, yeah, there are some people who obviously do
it too much. But is that for us to decide? Does the government?
Oh, is that our responsibility to make sure that, you know what,
Maybe it is your responsibility. Maybe it is your responsibility not to have
legalized not to promote more legalized gambling, Say in California, when we already
have Native American casinos and Las Vegas is right over there, maybe we don't
need a casino in literally every single person's pocket. Maybe we don't need a
casino in every eighteen year old college kids pocket, every you know, potentially
every seventeen year old kid's pocket. So I want to sort of join in
in sounding the alarm bell on how I'm really leery of this of these nationwide
gambling sites just being promoted blithely by everyone in the sports media universe, including
you know, including people like Lebron James, who doesn't need to do this
and who you know, for all his talk about wanting to be a socially
responsible guy, and he's done some good things. I'm not saying everything Lebron
does is terrible, but if you really care about social responsibility, doing the
right thing for kids, helping people make good choices in life, promoting a
huge sports gambling site is not the way to do it. When we return
a program to give five hundred bucks per month to lower income residents in Fresno,
what could go wrong? Next? On the John Girardi Show, So
there's an interesting story about this five hundred dollars per month supplemental income program that
is targeting basically people who live in West Fresno and in Huron. So there's
a program called the Advancing Fresno County Guaranteed Income Program and it appears to be
it is run by Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission, which immediately starts kind of triggering
my antenna. A Fresno Economic Opportunities Commission is a big local nonprofit that does
lots of very left wing things, has a whole huge LGBT thing, and
it seems to sort of advocate for a lot of left wing causes. It's
one of these nonprofits that sort of hangs around the Fresno City Council with sort
of these altruistic ideas and all it needs is a contract from the city.
Now I'm trying to kind of get a sense of this where and basically this
program is just if you live under a certain income threshold, we will give
you five hundred dollars per month, no strings attached. And it's focused on
Huron and certain neighborhoods in West Fresno, the Advancing Fresno County program. So
it's it wasn't it didn't get state funding. It looks like there are this
is funded with local charitable funds. Okay, I mean that's I guess that's
fine. I mean that that obviously there's less to be concerned about when this
is funded through local charitable contributions. But I'm I feel like this is being
set up to be a government run, government funded initiative. Now, I
guess I'm not one hundred percent opposed to the idea. I mean, these
people are very poor and they could some help. Okay, that makes sense,
this is all charitably done. I guess my fear is the risk for
abuse with this if it's genuinely no strings attached. You know, I guess
I have enough confidence in people to think if you're just going to give them
five hundred well, I have enough of a lack of confidence in people to
think if you just give them five hundred dollars a month kind of no strings
attached, there are going to be some people who misuse that funding in pretty
profound ways. But if for the moment it's a charitably run thing, that's
all right. But clearly this is a program that is desperate for a government
grant. They tried to get state grant funding for it, they didn't get
it. I have a sense though, that this is going to come eventually.
This is going to come to the doorstep of either the president of city
Council or the president county Board of Supervisors. And I guess I would just
I feel like there's got to be a ton of caution for programs where you're
just straight up handing out cash just based on you know, I don't know.
I find I am nervous about programs like this. I feel like it's
always these programs that are great ideas that all they need to work is our
money. That'll do it for John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk