Seems like Jerry Dyer's starting to learn the harsh, cold, cruel realities of
supporting different massive California infrastructure things, trying to sort of position himself in the
middle be buddy buddies with Gavin Newsom story in The Bee That's kind of funny,
which is about the high speed rail construction work that's been going on in
downtown Fresno for a gazillion for a very long time, basically for the last
seven years. Traffic between the story and Fresno Bee by Tim Shechean. For
going on seven years, traffic between downtown Fresno and its nearby historic Chinatown district
has been disrupted by work on a high speed rail underpass on to Larry Street.
It was a project that was initially expected to take about two years.
A few blocks to the south, a similar construction project at Ventura Street is
running months behind schedule after getting started in May of twenty twenty one. The
delays are becoming a major point of contention for Fresno Mayor Jerry Dyer, despite
counting himself as a supporter of California High Speed Rail Authority's controversial Bullet train project.
In recent comments to the rail Authorities Board of Directors. Dyer said that
he, along with residents and businesses in Chinatown and Downtown are concerned quote about
the length of time and some of the road closures that we've had some for
eight years. And at Church Avenue, which crosses three sets of railroad tracks
south of Downtown, work on a major new overpass is also fine, falling
behind schedule since the road was closed April twenty twenty three. So then Dyer
makes it sort of gives the game away, says, what's been bothering him?
Quote quite frankly, I stuck my neck out as mayor to give authorization
to have that street closed Church Avenue with the assurance that we would not have
delays, Dyer told the REIL Agency board. And now we're months behind,
so that is definitely a concern now. Shean then goes on in the article
to talk about what is actually taking all of this so long. So he
goes into it and talks more and more and more about the different reasons behind
why it's taking so long. He interviews a guy from the Central Valley,
the Garth Fernandez, the Central Valley Regional director for the California High Speed Rail
Authority, who acknowledges the frustration over the delays in downtown, but he added
the challenges that the agency and its prime contractor, Tutor Parini Zachary Parsons have
run into at Tilari Inventuris Streets have proven to be a cautionary tale and it's
offered valuable lessons. Oh good, well, as long as we're all learning
together. As long as we're all learning together while still making Downtown Fresno completely
impossible to navigate, already already not exactly the easiest thing to navigate downtown Fresno.
And then the article goes on and on and on to talk about the
delays and the plan and how it's gonna get resolved and what it's gonna look
like blah blah blah blah blah. By the way, for some of this
the hand ringing that's been going on about, you know, attendance at Grizzlies
games and you know, the long term viability of the Grizzlies and stuff like
that. It obviously and the lack of success relatively speaking over its first twenty
years of Grizzly Stadium being able to revitalize the downtown area. It definitely isn't
helping that we've been working on the high speed rail station right next to Grizzly
Stadium for like seven years, that it's got all this construction that's been going
on for years and years and years right next to Grizzly Stadium that isn't complete.
Like yeah, I mean, it's all this stuff that's immediately southwest of
the stadium along to Larry Street, all this construction that comes up traffic there
in which you know, given that construction is still ongoing, still not completed,
who's gonna want to buy up properties in that area? And by the
way, when you drive down there, and I've driven down there quite a
bit, there's a bank I go to not infrequently. Down there, it's
a ghost town. Like there are parts of it where you're driving through where
there's like nothing down there. There's some industrial stuff, but then there's like
these big, why various kind of semi vacant lots that have a bunch of
homeless people encamped on them, and it's it's a weird almost ghost town experience
driving through some parts of that sort of area sort of to the southwest of
the stadium, around where all this new construction is taking place. But what
developers are going to want to buy up properties around there when this construction is
still ongo Well, I don't know, maybe now's the time to buy.
You can buy low. Probably now. This brings us to our good friend
Jerry Dyer. Jerry Dyer is sort of representative of this whole class of Fresno
area politicians, this sort of softly kind of conservative class of politicians, Ashley,
basically all of our mayors, Ashley, Swearingein, Liebrand, et cetera,
who were obviously deceived by the promise of high speed rail because I think
they sort of look at their job as maraor Fresno. They look at it
through the lens of how do we get funding for the city, how do
we bring business to the city, And that's sort of the lens they look
at it through. And when presented with high speed rail, what do they
see, Well, they see state investment, state money flowing in new construction,
new opportunities for growth. Local government people love infusions about side money.
Okay, if you can get money from the state, if you can get
money from the federal government. Local government officials are always acquisitive, greedy for
outside sources of funding. Where they don't have to increase your taxes. Why
local governments have to operate in the black. They cannot go into the red.
They can't do deficit and debt spending the way that the federal government can.
So when you dangle to in front of a city a pot of state
money that's available to them, if you dangle in front of a city a
pot of federal money that's available to them, they will move heaven and earth
to go get it. And sometimes they will make, you know, uh,
decisions, or support positions that are look that are a little too sunny
and rosy and optimistic too much, look at sort of the short term benefit
without thinking about the long term risks. I think that's kind of what every
mayor of Fresno for the last however many years. That's how they all thought
of things. When it came to high speed rail, Ashley Swearingen bought it
hook line and sinker. Didn't want to listen to all the people saying this
is going to be way more expensive, this is going to take way longer
than people say. Well, she didn't care. She saw that it would
involve state money coming into Fresno for development of a fairly depressed part of the
city. She thought it could spur new investment. She was all on board,
Brand Dire all think the same thing. But this is the problem.
All the objections people had to high speed rail are just being played out right
now. Everything takes longer to do everything. Everything takes longer to do everything,
is more expensive to do than originally estimated. Everything is more complex engineering
wise than originally estimated. And it's sort of a thing of like, on
the one hand, I sort of feel bad for Jerry Dyer, but at
the same time, it's not like before he came into office, people didn't
know that the high speed rail was a fraud proposition that was taking way longer
to accomplish than everyone said it would and also with questionable benefits. So you
know, to Larry Street was first closed in twenty seventeen, still closed,
Venturas Street was closed in twenty twenty one, still closed. Avenue was closed
a year ago. It's supposed to be done September twenty twenty five. I
guess I'm not holding my breath. And now Dyer has to live with all
of this now. I mean, the high speed rail was started before him,
and the wheels of that were set in motion before he came into office,
so you can't necessarily blame him for any of this. But this isn't
the only sort of place where Dyer is sort of again begging for state investment
because again, what what does he want? He wants He wants outside sources
of revenue to help out the city. City can't. The city only has
so much tax revenue available to it, It only has so much money to
spend. So we've had the story over the last you know, sort of
year or two about the I think it's about two hundred million dollars worth of
state funding that's supposed to come to the City of Fresno for various kinds of
infrastructure things, plumbing things, et cetera. And of course Gavin Newsom late
last year says, ah, sorry, we're gonna push that all back by
one year. And Dyer, who has bent over backwards to be nice to
Gavin Newsom, Dyer who has bent over backwards to be chummy and nice and
friendly and accommodating to Joe Biden, to Gavin Newsom, never says an ill
word about the guy, just doing everything in his power to be supportive of
him. He's getting screwed. He gets Gavin Newsom saying in the budgetary process,
Eh, we're strapped. Sorry, Fresno, you got to wait a
year. Oh it'll just be a year. Sure, And you know,
again, it's hard to fault dire too much given his priorities. But given
his priorities, given the position Fresno that's in, we only have so much
tax revenue. If we want to do if there's a pot of state money
available, then let's go for it. I think it's more the fault really
more here lies with the voters of California who initially bought this whole thing back
in two thousand and four. It was the two thousand and four two thousand
and eight basically this premise that a high speed rail system was going to radically
transform the state of California. It was only going to cost forty billion dollars,
it'd be done in just a couple of years. And again, where
are we with high speed rail? Look, not a single track is operative.
And this is the thing. If we're having such a hard time getting
the construction work done in Fresno, and not, by the way, in
the most bustling part of the city, like this part of the city's been
dead for a long time. If we can't get a construction project like this
done in Fresno, how are we gonna get it done ever in San Francisco?
How is it ever gonna go through Southern California. This project is so
obviously not Like, I just do not understand how this thing is ever gonna
get accomplished. And maybe they just accept we're just gonna triangle through it,
and it's gonna cost way more, and we'll just push through it and eventually
someday some portion of it will get accomplished. But I think my real fear
is they're gonna complete Mer said to Bakersfield, they won't have the money or
the will to finish anything else, and it's going to because people are almost
barely are almost never going to use it. We'll dig more into this after
the break. This is the John Girardi Show on Power Talk. Story in
the Bee about the massive delays that have continued to gum up construction and gum
up traffic along to Larry Street, sort of southwest of Grizzly Stadium in downtown
Fresno. Jerry Dyer's getting mad and this big interview with the sort of Fresno,
Regional Director of the High Speed Reil Authority. So I'm going through this.
Here's the basic real Why is it taking so long? Jerry Dyer's mad,
everyone's frustrated. They had all of these sort of rosy assessments for how
quickly this construction would get done. But why has it taken so much longer?
Okay, here's why. The High Speed Rail Authority gives all of these,
uh, these grand predictions about these sections of rail that are going to
get completely these you know, the sections of rail that are coming up traffic,
all this construction that has to take place. They give all these rosy
assessments. Okay, it's going to be done by time. The problem is
a lot of the renovations that are happening are happening near and along and to
existing Amtrak rail which is owned by Union Pacific. Okay, it includes like
renovating the existing you know train depot, the existing you know train station that
already exists there in downtown Fresno. Okay, we have this twenty million dollar
grant from the federal government, Hell pay for it. So the High Speed
Rail gave this whole plan for how it was gonna get done and by that
plan, we should have been done by now. The problem is the High
Speed Rail Authority can't work on Union Pacific's rail. Union Pacific has to work
on it. They're not just gonna let Union Pacific is not just gonna let
the High Speed Rail Authority do all this construction work like or to just follow
their plan. Union Pacific has to do it. So the uh So,
basically the rail authority head for Fresno is describing that they had to have like
nine or so back and forth plan designs going back and forth between Union Pacific
and the rail authority, and each back and forth was like a forty five
day wait in between these dueling, competing design ideas. So what effect essentially
was happening was the High Speed Rail Authority was telling everyone in Fresno, oh,
yes, this will be done by this without having actually confirmed anything with
Union Pacific, who actually has to okay whatever the construction plan is. So
they were full of it, like they were giving these assessments but didn't actually
know how long it was going to take. So yeah, the original plans
in twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen, they were great, but Union Pacific didn't
agree with them. So what were we even talking about? What were they
even selling? So they were selling to Jerry Dyer this whole idea that everything
would be done by a certain point, and they weren't. So yeah,
I think Jerry Dyer after reading this, Jerry Dyer has a right to be
ticked off because basically it seems like the high Speed Rail authority just didn't actually
communicate the anything that was actually approved by the relevant people who needed to approve
it. Construction with the Church Avenue overpass, which was they also needed to
construct an overpass to carry traffic up and over a confluence of the various rail
lines has similarly proven more complex than the rail authorities, engineers, and contractor
originally anticipated. Why do these guys keep anticipating that things won't be hard or
that things won't be harder than they anticipate. The whole history of the California
High Speed Rail has been one long sequence of this was more complicated than we
thought. Everything's been more complicated than they thought. And that's the thing.
Like as as long as, if anything, it feels to me like the
development of downtown, which politicians have been talking about wanting to revitalize downtown Fresno
for I don't know as long as I have been alive, the desire to
revitalize in downtown. We need something to revitalize downtown. What about downtown revitalization
blah blah blah blah. Pretty much everything southwest of Grizzly Stadium, where you
know the rail the railroad lines go sort of that they kind of run,
uh, you know, northwest to southeast. So everything southwest of the stadium
is just being held up and in suspense while we wait for the high speed
rail. How can we revitalize anything when we've got this permanent construction project going
on where we're permanently sort of waiting for the high speed rail to show up.
And then I guess the big fear is, let's wave a magic wand,
we wave a magic wand and we successfully complete the high speed rail station.
We have a beautiful, big, shining glass high speed rail station that
looks terrible and looks like terrible modern architecture that has no connection to the history
or architecture or culture of the San Joaquin Valley. It just looks like a
big modernist glass tube, looks like one of the sandworms from Dune Okay,
great, great job. Let's say it's all complete and it's all shiny and
new. Is that gonna spur downtown revitalization? Are people going to want to
build a bunch of restaurants, hotels, whatever, all around that station?
Are people really gonna use it for a rail line that will basically only be
or said, to Bakersfield. I guess my fear is that no one's gonna
ride this train. No one is gonna pay the extra money to take a
train to Bakersfield, where presumably they'll need either someone to pick them up or
they'll need to get an uber or rent a car, when they can just
get in their car and drive down the ninety nine. So, even if
we complete this high speed rail system, the whole premise of why we were
doing high speed rail was to connect us to La. It was to connect
us to San Francisco. And at this point, if it's not gonna connect
us to LA or San Francisco, what economic boon is this thing gonna be?
How is this really going to revitalize downtown? Who's going to want to
build a bunch of restaurants, hotels, et cetera for a train where the
only utility is if you want to take it to Bakersfield or merced I just
feel like we're pinning so many of our hopes and aspirations for downtown Fresno over
this huge construction project which is gumming things up all over the place in downtown,
holding everything in suspended animation for a project that I don't think is really
gonna spur that much investment. Boy, it's kind of trite for a talk
radio person locally to say the high speed rail is a disaster, But man,
I don't even know. Even if this thing does get completed, I
just don't know that it's gonna do any of the crap that they were,
you know, that they were promising back when they first sold this thing,
when we were earn some of the trickle down effects of President Trump's statement about
abortion earlier this week. Where does it leave individual local Republican politicians. That's
next on the John Girardi Show. Obviously, I've been talking a lot about
President Trump's statement about abortion that he made earlier this week, and I think
the more I'm listening to it and the more I'm thinking about it, the
more disturbed I kind of get about it. There's some real trickle down effects
of it that I don't think we've fully comprehended, and sort of what it
means for the Republican Party for its presidential nominee for a year saying all this
about saying the kinds of stuff Trump has said about abortion. So let me
just kind of reiterate. Trump's position is that he's not going to pursue any
federal limits on abortion. He has also now criticized openly and he's basically said
abortion is an issue for states to decide, And he's basically said he's not
endorsing any particular state position for or against abortion. Well sort of. He
has actually openly opposed several pro life laws now in various states. So he
opposed the bill Rond De Santis signed in Florida which has limited abortion to feudal
heartbeat, so no abortions after six weeks into a pregnancy when field heartbeat can
be detected. By the way, when Trump stated his opposition to that bill,
which I think frankly was chiefly motivated by the fact that he was in
a primary contest against Rond De Santis. So if Ronda Santis said that the
sky was blue, Trump would have said it was fake news and corrupt.
You know, little Rond sanctimonious was giving the fake news that the sky was
blue. By the way, when Trump said his opposition stated his opposition to
that law, that was the precise kind of law that was at issue in
Ohio. Ohio had a statewide ballot initiative it voted on in November twenty twenty
three to get rid of their law, which was precisely the same law that
was there in Florida, or more or less, the exact same statute had
been passed both in Florida and in Ohio. Well, guess what. Here's
Donald Trump out saying that that law is terrible, and a whole bunch of
Republicans voted to reinstate legal abortion in Ohio. There is a trickle down effect
here to President Trump, who's sort of claiming that he is neutral on abortion,
but he's actually actively opposing various kinds of state abortion law. Now this
focus is shifting to Arizona, all right, So let me explain what's going
on in Arizona. Arizona, like most states in the Union, passed a
law in the sort of around the time of the Civil War. I think
it must have been around the time that Arizona became a state that outlawed abortion
except to save the mother's life. Most states in the Union had a law
like that on the books about abortion, and most of those laws got passed
around the time of the Civil War. This law, though in Arizona,
was repeatedly reaffirmed by the Arizona State legislature and at different points between its original
adoption and the issuing of Roe v. Wade. So it's not just an
eighteen sixty law. It was a law that was repeatedly reaffirm by the Arizona
State legislature, you know, when they were you know, reforming various legal
codes and things like that, they kept reissuing it. In fact, the
Arizona Legislature re asserted it reissued it in nineteen seventy seven, four years after
Roe v. Wade. In spite of the fact that they couldn't enforce it.
The Arizona legislature said, hey, this is the law of the land
here in Arizona. Anyway, we can't enforce it because we've got this rov.
Wade decision on the books, but this is our state law. The
Arizona State Supreme Court ruled that that law Yes, originally passed in the nineteenth
century but repeatedly reaffirmed by the Arizona legislature as recently as nineteen seventy seven,
was still in effect and could be enforced that because Roe v. Wade was
now overturned, that law is still on the books. It's still valid law,
and it's a pretty comprehensive abortion law. No abortion except to save the
life of the mother. Donald Trump and his Arizona lapdog, Carrie Lake have
now openly come out opposing that law, which, let me just remind you
all the platform Republican position is that to ban abortion except for cases to save
the mom's life. Donald Trump is opposing it, and again it makes you
think, well, he just had this video statement saying abortion is going to
be left to the states, refusing to tell people how to vote when it
came to various state abortion references, telling people repeat it, you got to
follow your heart. But then he's jumping into these controversies in individual states to
say, yeah, this is bad and they got to fix that. So
I guess this is my problem is that a lot of people are trying to
defend Trump and say, look, Trump's just trying to be pragmatic here,
like he's just trying to be politically smart. He's trying not to not to
tie himself to an unpopular political position. He'll still do what he can as
a president, but he's not gonna commit himself to doing things that are politically
unfeasible anyway, just to play cap pro lifers. But he's gonna, you
know, try and stay neutral on the abortion question. Just let states duke
it out. That's the appropriate venue for duking it out. The problem is
he's not really doing that. He's actively undercutting pro lifers in the States.
He's actively undercutting them in Florida, he's actively undercutting them in Ohio. He's
actively undercutting them in Arizona. Now, and the thing that's scaring me is
actually Carrie Lake. Let me describe this all right. Carrie Lake is running
for the US Senate seat in Arizona this year. She unsuccessfully ran for governor
two years ago. Carry Lake is maybe one of the most Trump aligned people
running for Senate. She's constantly at mar A Lago. She says what Trump
says. She follows the Trump line scrupulously. Okay, She's now come out
and pledged she is not going to vote for any national pro life legislation.
I just want to remind all of you any national pro life regulation. I
just want to remind all of you. Republicans in the House and Senate have
been voting on federal abortion restrictions for I don't know, the last forty years,
the last excuse me, the last fifty years. Republicans in the House
in the Senate have been voting for those things. Your elected Republican representatives have
voted for these things multiple multiple, multiple times from the most and Donald Trump
when he was president, supported them repeatedly. Okay, the idea that the
federal government doesn't have a role regulating abortion is all of a sudden now completely
in vogue among Republicans. And why did you pro lifers ever think that we
would want to support a federal restriction on abortion because Republicans voted for those things
multiple times. Donald Trump supported such initiatives multiple multiple times Congress. And also,
there's a sort of a kind of lack of precision in saying this that
really gives me concern. What do you mean you're not gonna vote for any
federal abortion restriction. You're not going to vote to cut off federal funding for
planned parenthood. You're not going to vote to limit federal funding for abortion via
the High Amendment. That's a federal restriction on abortion. Now, Lake did
say she wouldn't vote for any federal funding for abortion. Okay, that's good,
I guess. I am concerned though, that if this is what Carrie
Lake's doing, how many other people running for the House, how many other
people running for the Senate are going to start to contour their positions on abortion
to perfectly align with what Trump's saying? Is this going to what's going to
happen to the Republican Party platform this year at the Republican convention? Assuming we
have a platform which we declined to write in the last election, which was
I think idiotic, what's the platform position going to be on abortion? Now?
Do we actually support restricting abortion? Now? It seems like we're not
gonna it's not a federal job. Now when we return, I want to
talk about the selective federalism and the selective pragmatism of the Trump side when it
comes to abortion. I'll explain what I mean after the break. This is
the John's Already show on Power Talk. There's a selective pragmatism to this new
sort of Trump party line about not supporting federal restrictions on abortion. There's selective
pragmatism and a selective adherence to Tenth Amendment style federalism. So let me start
with the federalism idea. The federalism idea is all these people trying to advance
this sort of constitutional argument for why Congress shouldn't pass some kind of law to
try to limit abortion at say, fifteen weeks or twenty weeks. The argument
is, hey, the federal government regulates way more stuff than they should.
We've expanded the Commerce clause part of the Constitution that says Congress can pass laws
to regulate interstate commerce, which the massive expansion of what constitutes interstate commerce has
allowed Congress to really grow in its power to the detriment of states Congress regulates
too much. Abortion is one of these things that shouldn't be regulated as commerce,
in spite of the fact that abortion is a major, major international industry
with huge corporate entities that provide abortions across state lines. And it seems actually
like perfectly the kind of thing that is interstate commerce that would be reasonable for
Congress to regulate, but no, Congress shouldn't it. It's a matter for
the states. All these Republicans who have voted for years to regulate other kinds
of industries that are no more or less interstate than the abortion industry is all
of a sudden they're putting on their Thomas Jefferson hats or and all the tenth
Amendment federalism. Okay, well, we got to be really careful that we
don't have Congress regulate abortion. Meanwhile, out of the other side of the
mouth, you're saying, yes, let's support federal legislation to support IVF clinics.
Oh, supporting IVF clinics, that is interstate commerce. But abortion is
not. Supporting IVF much more popular position. Yes, that's interstate commerce.
Opposing abortion not as popular a position. Oh oh the tenth Amendment totally.
Well that's not what the commerce closes. But that's is that interesting? Oh?
Should we really? I just know it's a constitutional scholar. I just
don't know if that's something Congress should regulate. So we have this selective adherence
to federalism when it comes to abortion, and also selective pragmatism. So this
is what I can't stand. I understand the Trump camps strong adherence to the
position that the twenty twenty election was stolen. They have made no bones about
the fact that they're still gonna keep carrying and waving that flag. In fact
that there's some reporting that the RNC was like vetting people based on do you
think the election in twenty twenty was stolen? And if you didn't think it
was stolen, then they weren't gonna hire you. Like we are firmly committed
to this proposition because Trump is still bitter and angry over losing the election,
and he's still carrying that flag. And by the way, I would say,
even if you do think that the election was flat out stolen, I
e. There was provable fraud that changed the outcome, which I do think
there was fraud. I'm open to discussions of whether it's fraud. It is
clearly a wildly unpopular position to hold. How many candidates lost in twenty twenty
two because they kept going on and on about the twenty twenty election. The
guy, the guy ran for governor in Pennsylvania, Carrie Lake in Arizona.
So we lose all these races in twenty twenty two because people are going on
and on about the twenty election being stolen. Stop telling me that abortion is
unpopular and that's why we need to not talk about it. If you're just
not letting go of the twenty twenty election fraud line of talking, even if
you're right, and you might be, most of the country doesn't want to
hear it, So pleased, I don't want to get lectures in pragmatism for
people taking the most unpragmatic position possible on that. That'll do it for John
Girardi Show. See you next time on Power Talk.