When you do a daily radio show, you have to do a daily little
bit of scanning the newspapers and scanning local news outlets for stuff to talk about.
And one of the things I realize is just how many stories there are
about construction, delayed construction, anticipated construction, anticipated construction that is going to
cause a bunch of delays and traffic snag ups, et cetera. And all
of it revolved, and all of this money and all this time, and
all of this energy, and all of this infrastructure, all of it surrounding
rail not even just the high speed rail, though that's much of it high
speed rails stuff to spruce up our existing rail lines. There's just so much
city infrastructure stuff in Fresno that is revolving, as if the whole city is
so hyper focused on the downtown area and the railroad systems around it, and
that this is the focus of city investment, state investment, maybe at some
point federal investment to spruce all this up. That we're going to have years
and years and years and years and years and years and years and years of
construction and infrastructure spending, and we're getting money for downtown revitalization and all this
stuff to build up this corridor of downtown Fresno around the rail line, around
the railroads, to get what end towards what end? What is the end
result of all of this investment in high speed rail, all this stuff going
to be I just think we are going to be sewing so much into this
field and we're gonna be reaping very little out of it. So the story
that precipitated this after a couple of weeks ago, talking about how the entire
intersection of Fresno of Blackstone and McKinley. All right, so Blackstone and McKinley
a very busy little intersection, not a little intersection, a very busy intersection,
big intersection to the single biggest north south street in Fresno and one of
the biggest east west streets Blackstone and McKinley. That the city is doing eminent
domain seizures for a ton of it and is going to lower the entire intersection
down about twenty feet so that the rail line can pass over cars without stopping
traffic. Right now, that is you know, I'll admit that is a
somewhat frustrating traffic situation there at Blackstone and McKinley. If a train. If
you're trying to go to Fresno City College, and I remember in high school
I took a couple of classes at City College. You're trying to go to
Fresno City College for a class. You get off at you know, you
take the forty one to McKinley. You get off at McKinley. You're heading
west on McKinley to go to Presdo City and then what happens, Holy cow,
a train. Now I got to sit here for another three minutes.
I'm running late for class. How many people have been late for a class
at Fresno City because of that specific situation, I'd bet thousands of people over
the last several decades. So admittedly it's a traffic SNEPHU, but we're gonna
tie up that intersection between about twenty twenty six through twenty thirty to dig under
it to allow that rail line, which is not even one of the high
speed rail trains. It's like a I think it's an Amtrak slash normal rail.
We're gonna dig that intersection up for it's estimated between like twenty twenty six
and twenty thirty. We're doing the City's doing all the eminent domain stuff.
Now, So that was a few weeks ago. Here's a story from the
fifth of July about high speed rail work that's gonna close McKinley Avenue just west
basically a big stretch of McKinley Avenue from about Golden State Boulevard all the way
to Marx. Actually this big stretch, but this square made, this rectangle
made between Clinton Avenue, West Avenue, McKinley and Highway ninety nine. Actually
it's not gonna go all the way to Marks. I think it's it's gonna
get the ninety nine corridor sout out that ways. High speed railwork will close
McKinley Avenue for a year. How it affects your commute from the Fresno b
by Tim Shechean. McKinley Avenue will be closed east of Highway ninety nine and
west Central Fresno for about a year for construction of a new overpass above existing
freight railroad tracks and future high speed rail tracks. The McKinley closure is set
to begin on Monday and continue through July twenty twenty five between Highway ninety nine
and West Avenue. The McKinley Avenue off ramp from Highway ninety nine will also
be closed. According to the California High Speed Rail Authority, the overpass is
to create a grade separation to eliminate the potential for collisions between California's future high
speed high speed rail and vehicles on McKinley Avenue. The overpass will also do
away with the existing Union Pacific Railroad crossing at McKinley Avenue. Also to be
closed as part of the construction are West Avenue between Golden State Boulevard, Nallave
Avenue and Weaver Avenue. Weber is Webber, Weaver. I don't know Weber
Avenue between Clinton and McKinley Avenues, but local traffic will be permitted on Weber
between Clinton and Weldon Avenues. Signs will be in place to direct drivers to
detour routes, and access to businesses in the area will be maintained. The
Rail Authority reports then it gives a list of all the different kind of detours
you're gonna see. The McKinley overpasses one of numerous structures in Fresno that will
create grade separations between street traffic and high speed trains that by some time between
twenty thirty and twenty thirty three are expected to carry passengers at speeds up to
two hundred and twenty miles per hour through the Sanwalking Valley between Merced and Bakersfield.
Up to two hundred and twenty miles per hour, folks, although then
you have to stop in hand for you have to stop at this little town
and that little town, and that little town and that little town. So
you know, the total average miles per hour speed is probably not going to
be two hundred and twenty miles per hour. Just my guess, just my
guess. Future extensions of the line are in the planning stages west and north
to San Jose and south to Palmdale, Palmdale Burbank, Los Angeles, Nina.
Yeah. Yeah, we've been hearing about the future plans for extensions of
the high speed rail for quite some time. Here we are. Now this
is let me let's get to what I'm my point here. This is another
big traffic snafu that people in this part of Fresno are gonna have to live
with. People are gonna have to live with traffic snaffoos. There's all kinds
of traffic snaffoos around all of the rail systems Downtown. I sort of put
two and two together. I'd always wondered my whole life, like, why
is Fresno Clovis on a north south east west grid? But then for some
reason, downtown Fresno is like a separate grid that's turned you know, forty
five degrees, so it's it's no longer north south east west, it's now
you know, uh, northwest, southeast, northeast, southwest. And I
realized, well, I think it's because I'm not a historian, so I
don't know this, but it's my guess. Well, it's because of the
rail system. The railroads went through Fresno there. Okay, the railroads more
or less followed the ninety nine, or the ninety nine was built to follow
the railroads in all likelihood, I'm guessing. Again, I'm not a historian
here, So that's why. Because all the rail systems are there in downtown
Fresno, and the railroads were going a certain direction. And then they started
building up the city of Fresno, and they built it along the you know,
built it, you know, continuously with the railroad system. So instead
of building everything north southeast west, they built everything northwest, northeast, southwest,
southeast. And I guess I'm I sort of wonder we're going to have
tons of construction happening in the Chinatown area. Dyer is already sounding the alarm
about how frustrated he is about the construction he wants to do in the Chinatown
area. How long the High Speed Rail Authority people are taking for their renovations,
how long everything is taking, and how much traffic snapho this is taking.
How much longer construction is taking than planned. We've got that, We've
got the McKinley and Blackstone lower It by twenty feet project. We've got this
project around McKinley in ninety nine to create an overpass that's going to you know,
snaggle things up for a year. We say a year, what do
we really mean, Probably, you know, a year and a half.
Maybe it means two years, God knows. And all of this is for
what is the end goal of all this work. The end goal of all
this work is is a big, shiny high speed rail station in downtown Fresno
that will encourage new businesses to come down there, that will encourage investment.
We'll get all this money from the State of California to help build up downtown
Fresno's infrastructure to allow about ten thousand more people to live in downtown Fresno.
Well, maybe Gavin Newsom has delayed that two hundred million dollars and it's in
giving it to us for the last two years. You know, it's easy
to make those kinds of promises in the bumper years of twenty twenty two,
when the state budget was flushed with all this COVID money, when the state
yeah, when the state coffers were flushed with a bunch of federal COVID money.
Oh, yeah, we'll give Fresno two hundred fifty million dollars over three
years. Here's your first fifty million. And then in twenty twenty three,
when we have a massive budget deficit at the state level, Oh, we
can't give you that first one hundred million this year, We'll do it next
year. Then twenty twenty four along, Oh we can't give you that one
hundred million this year, We'll do it next year. Guys, that that
two hundred million ain't coming. So I don't know, I mean, I
just find it highly unlikely that we're going to get all of that two hundred
million in time before Gavin Newsom leaves office. And then God knows who's gonna
open. Maybe it's Rob Bonta. Maybe, you know, God knows who's
going to replace Gavin Newsom. You know, maybe it'll be someone less,
you know, amicably disposed towards Jerry Dyer and towards the city of Fresno.
I just feel like, we are going to invest all of this money,
and what will the end result of it all be? Will people really will
we really be able to have more people living in downtown if we do,
will it really help it be revitalized? Will businesses really come? I'll address
all that next. This is the John Juraradi Show on Power Talk. We're
doing all of this construction surrounding rail in Fresno. We're doing so much construction,
so much infrastructure, so much investment. We're lowering the McKinley Blackstone intersection
by twenty feet to allow a real thing to go over that's gonna snag up
that whole intersection by for the next five years or so. We're spending all
this money for eminent domain seizures to get all these business all this property around
there. We've got tons of construction happening around the Chinatown area for building a
high speed rail station again for a rail line that does not yet have any
active trains moving on it. We've got another construction project for an overpass for
a rail system around McKinley in ninety nine. All of this, we're wanting
to do this massive infrastructure investment in downtown Fresno to allow to thousand more people
to live there, with the idea that once we have this grand, new,
shiny central rail system, you know, rail station in downtown Fresno that
looks like a giant glass tube. It looks like one of the worms from
the Dune movies. Once we have that, then all these businesses will want
to locate in this part of Fresno and we'll have restaurants and the grand dream,
the dream, the dream of the dreamer that we've been dreaming since you
know, two thousand, as long as I've been politically aware of Fresno politics,
when I was, you know, twelve or thirteen years old, that
we're going to have a revitalized downtown. We're going to revitalize downtown. We'll
have ten thousand more people living there, we'll have all this business, all
that will we for rail, for high speed rail. This is my big
fear with all this, This is my big fear every time I read an
another story about another major expensive traffic thing, a major expensive construction project,
and it's usually all around downtown Fresno. And it's more and more of these
stories about these projects for quote, revitalizing downtown, and they all in some
way are circl They're orbiting around the central axis of rail, which last I
checked, is just not a booming medium of transportation. It's just not.
And the rationale behind high speed rail twenty years ago, when the voters in
California voted to approve a high speed rail system disastrously not really understanding what it
would cost, not really under massively underestimating its cost, its complexity, it's
difficulty, it's it's timeline. I think if you had told all the well
people did tell them, if you told all the proponents of the high speed
rail twenty years ago when it passed, hey this thing is going to be
you know, twenty years on. Actually, what year was high speed rail
passed? One second here, okay, that was in two thousand and eight.
It was Proposition one. A gosh, the two thousand and eight,
the November two thousand and eight election in California was wild. You had Barack
Obama, you had Proposition eight, which actually passed a majority of Californians,
defined marriage as being between one man and one woman, and you had the
high speed rail approved. Wow, what an election that was. Anyway,
if I told so, we're sixteen years. If in two thousand and eight
someone said aloud, hey, sixteen years from now, not one inch of
the high speed rail system will be active, not an inch, the cost
will of balloon from about forty four billion was kind of the number of people
were thrown around to well over one hundred billion. The only thing we've actually
got planned out is a stretch of the rail from Bakersfield to Mercede, not
even you know, Bakersfield to La not even merced to San Francisco, not
even the Bay Area sections of the high speed rail or the Southern California sections
of the high speed rail. No, all we've got is the San juan
Quin Valley, you know, the least populous, flattest, simplest from an
engineering standpoint, stretch of the rail system. That's the only thing that we've
even got a plan for. If you had said that in two thousand and
eight, none of the proponents would have believed you, And in fact,
many people did say it in two thousand and eight. Many people did accurately
predict this in two thousand and eight. I think actually Chuck Putigian, was
longtime state senator, Republican state senator from the Fresno area, did in fact
predict precisely this. He was one of the opponents of it. And this
is the thing. One of the big rationales behind high speed rail was one
the idea that it was premised on. This is a San Francisco to La
connection, not a Merced to Bakersfield connection. First of all, and while
Gavin Newsom has said, well, let's finish merceaid to Bakersfield and then that
can establish the viability of the system, I don't know how Merced to Bakersfield
establishes the viability of the system, because basically it's going to be a high
speed rail system going along the ninety night And I just defy you to explain
to me how if I'm in Fresno and I want to go to Bakersfield,
why would I take a high speed rail train to do that when I could
just get in my car and drive to do the high speed rail. I'd
need to buy my ticket in advance. I'd have to go to the train
station probably forty five minutes before the train leaves, or so, just to
be safe on the safe side, give myself some cushion so I don't miss
the train. Take it to Bakersfield. I think it's probably gonna stop one
or two times along the way, so it's not like I'm blazing two hundred
twenty miles per hour the whole route. Finally get to Bakersfield, and then
hope I'm in walking distance or of my destination, or I need to take
an uber to wherever it is in Bakersfield I wanted to go in the first
place. Or do I need to rent a car? Or I could just
get in my car and get on the ninety nine and go to Bakersfield,
says I just don't. I cannot fathom how many people in the Fresno area
would opt for the train option when they can just get in their car and
drive to Bakersfield. Along with what's one of the big rationales for high speed
rail, save the environment. Have an electric train that's not emitting a ton
of fossil fuels, get fewer people driving up and down California in their cars,
get them on this train to lower emissions. Well, California is mandating
that one d percent since two thousand and eight, this little thing called Tesla
came along, and now by twenty thirty five, California's mandating that one hundred
percent of all new car sales have to be electric vehicles anyway, So by
the time the high speed rail is actually ready, what percentage of cars are
going to be zero emission cars? Anyway? It's massively undercutting California's insistence on
zero emission cars. You know, let's ignore how the electricity gets to those
cars. California's insistence on zero emissions cars massively undercuts one of the central rationales
for high speed rail. So how many people will actually ride on this thing?
I don't think it's a lot. And yet so much of our downtown
investment, so much of our city, our regional infrastructure investment, building up
downtown, building this station downtown with the idea that all these businesses will go
there, and that people will want to move to downtown and will build up
all the infrastructure we're getting California funding that we're seeking to direct towards downtown rather
than other parts of the city, all premised around this idea that the high
speed rail station will be the like like River Park South, that it will
just be this hub of local life, and I just don't think it's going
to be that. I think it's going to very quickly demonstrate to all we're
going to spend the next decade building up all this investment around a high speed
reil CIS train in downtown Fresno that I just don't know is really going to
feel forgive the pun, take us anywhere, all right. When we return,
I want to talk about Senator jd Vance, a possible Trump hopeful,
and we'll talk about it more on Right to Life Radio, But I just
want to talk about sort of compromising to win elections and how that's happening with
the abortion issue. That's next on the John Girardi Show. Winning a presidential
election is obviously a delicate balance. It's a very difficult thing that Donald Trump
has done successfully once and I have done successfully zero times. So you can
take everything I say with a bailable grain assault in that regard. But there's
also this difficult dance that both parties have to do. It's basically you get
nominated through the votes of your base. You win the Democrat primary, you
win the Republican primary because your base supports you. This is the odd thing
about America's system for nominating and then electing a president is that people are just
not as the average mass of the populace is just not as locked in on
the primary stage of things. There are a lot of people who will maybe
vote in November, but a lot fewer people will vote in their state's primary.
And the people who are going to vote are the people who are more
hardcore, ideologically committed conservative primary voters. You know, Republican primary voters are
generally more hardcore conservative than Republican general election voters. Democrat primary voters are generally
more hardcore liberal than Democrat general election voters. Okay, that's true of both.
So to thread the needle, you need to find a candidate who makes
the base happy with ideological commitments, but can be appealing enough to the more
moderate, broader swath of the electorate who votes in a general election. And
often what this means is that after a candidate wins the primary for either the
Republican Party or the Democrat Party, what do you see them do for the
general election, they run to the center. They run to the center.
They start offering either compromises or sort of more watered down versions of different policies,
et cetera. And that's okay to do as long as though you keep
what are the key priorities, what are the central goals that have to be
accomplished for your base. I think, for example, Barack Obama did this
perfectly, where you know, he ran on certain things, he had a
very broad, appealing general election sort of message, and then he gets into
office and what does he do. He really aggressively pursues and gets Obamacare passed.
And Obama had to take a lot of lumps, and the Democrats had
to take a lot of lumps for passing Obamacare. They lost Congress because they
passed Obamacare. Okay, they lost the House in twenty ten, and they
lost the Senate in twenty fourteen. They had to take their lumps, but
they got it passed. They got it over the finished line. And guess
what, Obamacare is here to stay. Trump's not even talking about repealing Obamacare
anymore. Republicans are not even talking about repealing Obamacare. Why because they tried
to do it in twenty seventeen, they were unsuccessful in doing it, and
a whole bunch of members of the House lost their seats. You know,
Republicans quickly proceeded to lose the House of Representatives in twenty eighteen. Why because
a bunch of Republicans took this unpopular vote to repeal Obamacare. So guess what.
Obamacare is here to stay. That ratchet only goes on and there's no
way to get rid of it now. I would say that conservatives achieved a
similar caliber of victory on the abortion front. Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell got
three Supreme Court justices appointed in a four year term. They had to fight
like hell to get each of those three in McConnell heroically refused, along with
all the Republicans in the Senate who had his back. And by the way,
I think there are prior Republicans. This is the one thing I don't
you know, I don't grovel at Mitch McConnell's feet. I don't think he
is perfect. I don't think he's the most wonderful man who ever lived.
But what I will say is, after Antonin Scalia died in twenty sixteen,
in February of twenty sixteen, we were, you know, nine months out
from the election still and McConnell was facing all this pressure to have hearings for
vote on Merrick Garland. Maybe just take except that Merrick Garland was going to
fill antoninsically a seat. Obama deliberately, i think, picked Merrick Garland because
he was a little older, you know. He didn't pick someone who was
in their late forties who would be on the court for the next forty years,
and he picked someone who was perceived as much more moderate. Merrick Garland's
tenure as Attorney General has shown he was not very moderate, but that was
the perception in twenty sixteen. So Obama is like trying to say, look,
I'm being the reasonable one here. Obama loved doing crap like that,
pretending like he was the reasonable one in the room. I'm the adult in
the room. I'm being reasonable. I'm I'm not giving you a hardcore leftist
activist. I'm not giving you another soda mayor. I'm giving you a respected
senior judge who's moderate, who had, you know, been a criminal justice
guy at the Department of Justice. And and McConnell heroically said no, We're
not going to play ball for a whole year. McConnell said, no,
we're not going to play ball. Donald Trump improbably wins and we're able to
replace antonin Scalia with Neil Gorstitch. McConnell and Trump stick with their guy,
Brett Kavanaugh throughout the ridiculous proceed I think more and more the more distance I
get from all the Brett Kavanaugh stuff, the more I think all the accusations
against him were utter nonsense. They stick with their guy, Brett Cavanaugh.
He gets confirmed. Ruth Bader Ginsburg improbably dies in September before the November twenty
twenty election. McConnell and Trump stick with their guns. They get Amy Cony
Barrett confirmed, and Trump even had like a really inspired I need to find
the exact quote, but for Barrett's confirmation, Trump was reported to have said
something to the Republican senators, this is the doing stuff like this. This
is the reason we were elected to take these difficult kinds of votes, these
difficult kinds of actions. This is why people put us in office, is
to accomplish these goals. And he was one hundred percent correct. We now
have this much more conservative Supreme Court. It's not perfect by any stretch,
but it's much more conservative than it's ever been. And unbelievably, it overturned
Roe v. Wade. It actually did the thing that pro lifers have been
wanting for the last fifty years, the impossible goal. I never thought i'd
see Rov Wade overturned in my lifetime. Overturning Roe v. Wade. What
an amazing victory. Have conservatives taken their lumps for it? Yeah, just
like Democrats have since the overturning of Obamacare. But you know what Democrats never
did after Obamacare. They never compromised, they never wavered on it, stood
true to it, and guess what, over time took about ten years,
public opinion went in their favor. The law had this educative effect. People
came to like it. I'm getting really concerned about. Yes, I understand
that Donald Trump needs to win, and I understand the one issue where he
pulls worse than Joe Biden right now is abortion. I get it, I
understand it. I am even I'll even go so far as to say I'm
okay with Donald Trump saying I don't want to pursue a federal abortion restriction like
a federal ban on abortion after fifteen weeks, and for one thing, I'll
say, because I understand there's no way he's going to get it passed,
because as long as Democrats have even forty one seats in the Senate, they
can block it with the filibuster. Okay, So if Trump wants to say,
I'm not going to push for a federal abortion ban because I know I'm
never gonna get it, Okay, you want to compromise there, that's fine.
But if it's stuff that's entirely within the control of the executive branch that
he can do that, if he's elected he can do that, I still
expect to happen. That is stuff push as far as you can for the
possible. If you want to compromise on stuff that's politically impractical anyway, Okay,
that's all right. What am I talking about here? Jd Vance,
who's clearly a vice presidential hopeful along with Trump himself, during the debate,
indicated that they don't want to push for restrictions on the abortion pill. And
it's one of those tiny, little sounding political details that has massive problems.
If you are pro life, I want you to understand this. Almost nothing
about the abortion issue matters as much as restricting the abortion pill, and probably
most of you don't even really know what it is, miphipristone, aka the
abortion pill. This is not the morning after pill. This is not a
pill that you take the morning after some encounter. This is a pill to
bring about basically an artificial miscarriage up to ten weeks into a pregnancy. Baby
had ten weeks of pregnancy's got arms, legs, fingers, toes, heartbeat,
brain activity. President Biden loosened all the FDA regulations around it to allow
the abortion pill to be shipped to people directly through the mail or picked up
at major pharmacies, and as a result, the number of abortions in America
since twenty twenty one when Biden did that, have skyrocketed. It used to
be something like eight hundred thousand plus abortions per year back in like you know,
twenty eighteen, twenty nineteen. Today the total number of abortions per year
in America is around one million, and now the abortion pill is the majority.
Almost two thirds of all abortions are done via the abortion pill. I'm
not talking about trying to pass some law through Congress, like you know,
even you know the partial birth abortion ban that Republicans passed it during the during
the Bush years. They fought like hell to get it done. How many
abortions did it actually stop? Every single one of those lives is precious in
but let's be real, the total number of lives saved by that law were
very, very very small number. Trump controls the Department of Health and Human
Services, which controls the FDA. He could bring back the pre Obama health
and safety restrictions on the abortion pill. Not let it be sent through the
mail, not let it be picked up at major pharmacies, only let it
be distributed at clinics. That would result in probably given that we see the
numbers of abortions when the abortion pill was restricted like that, he could stop
something like one hundred thousand abortions per year by doing this. And it's entirely
within his control. And he's saying I don't want to touch it, and
that I find it when we return. I want to talk about this idea
of compromising versus what are your end goals? Because I got to tell you
that's a compromise pill. That is I am going to have a very hard
time swallowing, if at all that's next do. On the John Girardi Show,
President Trump is sort of signaling that he doesn't want to do anything to
touch regulation of the abortion pill. This is not the morning after pill.
This is a pill to basically bring about an artificial miscarriage up to ten weeks
into a pregnancy, not just the morning after, up to ten weeks into
pregnancy. It is now the most common method of abortion in America. Something
like sixty three percent of all abortions are done this way since President Biden deregulated
it the abortion pill in twenty twenty one, his FDA passed regulations allowing the
abortion pill to be prescribed without an in person visit to a doctor who could
confirm justtational age, who could confirm you're not having an ectopic pregnancy. All
the health and safety stuff you would need for this got rid of it all.
He's allowing the abortion pill to be shipped to people directly through the mail
and allowing the abortion pill to be picked up at major pharmacies. Since then,
the total numbers of abortions in America have jumped by one hundred thousand per
year. We're talking about we use to be at something like eight hundred thousand
abortions per year prior to twenty twenty today, and it's sharply jumped since twenty
twenty one when Biden issued those regulations. Total number of abortions in America is
about a million. I keep hearing conservatives saying to me, well, Trump
has to compromise on this to get elected. You got to get elected first
before you can do anything. And maybe he'll do a switch root. No,
he's committing himself to one position, and I guess this is my thing.
I'm not going to fight like hell to get a guy hired to be
a baker. If he commits on the front to end that, he's not
gonna make bread. You don't compromise on the main thing. I can't accept
as a pro lifer that we're going to compromise on the single most important aspect
right now of the abortion question to accomplish what other goals? What other goals?
Just keeping the Supreme Court as is the status quo, that's all we're
pushing for. That's a very bad pill to swallow. And I hope this
is not the route Trump goes. That'll do it. John Jerrorady Show,
see you next time on Power talk,