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Sometimes it's difficult to oppose a government
program because it's doing things that are kind

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of obviously nice or obviously not harmful, or you'll look like a jerk saying

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you think this is a silly idea. I'm going to take the risk of

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saying this is a silly idea.
The anti hate hotline now the language of

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hate on the left. Stop the
hate, oppose hate, anti hate.

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I remember a long time ago,
like I was a kid, I must

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have been in high school, and
my mom heard about a stop the Hate

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rally or something that was happening at
I think it was at Fresno City College

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or something, and she I think, very uh, perceptively. I've always

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been a lot more trust. This
is a flaw. This is a John

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Girardi character flaw. I'm always too
I am trusting of people to a fault,

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and this has I think actually hurt
me several times in my professional life

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where I trust people. I trust
people, I trust people and then they

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sort of burn me I and and
it's I don't think it's like, oh,

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this is not me trying to humble
brag about what I'm such a wonderful

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person. I think it's part of
my desire that things not be wrong and

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that I not have to fix them. So I keep wanting to trust people

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because that gives more equanimity to life. If you're well, he's going to

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do the right thing, and rather
than doing the difficult work of following up,

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I'm sometimes tempted to lazily just sort
of trust people anyway. So I've

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always been a little bit more trusting, I guess and gullible. And my

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mom was like, this is My
mom was very skeptical of this Stop the

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Hate rally, and I was like, well, I don't think it's evil

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or anything. My mom was like, no, this is a this is

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an LGBT thing, and I was
like, I don't think it is.

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And then going forward, you know
now today that is actually most of what

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stopped the hate means. It's usually
something that has to do with LGBT stuff.

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Now, in this California context,
there's a story in the paper about

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an anti hate hotline that the state
of California established after twenty twenty. Now,

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in twenty twenty, some of you
may have remembered this. Early in

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twenty twenty, there was this spate
of various acts of assault that were being

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committed against Asian Americans in California and
in New York and it was kind of

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noticeable and troubling. So in response
to this, California, because California legislators

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can and this is I guess the
fundamental flaw of the California legislature. The

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California legislature is a year long legislative
session. It goes pretty much the whole

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year goes from January through either the
end of August during an election year or

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mid September during a non election year. So our state legislators are working are

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in Sacramento working on legislation for like
nine months. They have way too much

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time on their hands, way too
much time and ability to screw things up.

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Plus they're also term limited, so
they're kind of incentivized to pass as

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many bills as they can. So
instead of addressing the problem of hey,

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here are all these anti Asian American
acts of violence that are happening. Is

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there something we can focus on here, Like, what can we do here

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to better address this with the resources
we have available? Should? You know,

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should law enforcement more closely look at
this? Should should we allocate funding

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over here? Should how should we
address this? You know, are we're

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talking with local sheriffs in the counties
where this is happening or police officials.

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No, the state legislature things we
need a new law. Part of the

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fact that, you know, beating
up Asian people, last I checked,

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is not legal in the state of
California. I'm not sure that there's a

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new law that we need. We
seem to have plenty of laws that would

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address the problem of beating people up, Asian or otherwise. So we pass

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a new law. We pass a
new law for an anti hate hotline.

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And here's the thing with something like
this, like who's gonna say no?

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Is someone gonna say no? People
who are abused or bully, people who

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are victims of racist whatever, we
shouldn't help them. We shouldn't have a

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hot light. You seem like a
jerk if you say that. And so

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this gets presented as something that is
something to universe acclaim. So here's the

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story about it. Mina Fedor,
who is Korean American, was in middle

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school when she learned of identity based
bullying. I mean, it's kind of

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when all of us learn about identity
based bullying, right Anyway, it was

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the beginning of the pandemic, or
of you know you have big ears based

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bullying or bullying, or you know
you wet your pants in third grade based

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bullying. It was the beginning of
the pandemic in twenty twenty, when reports

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of eight anti Asian incidents and rhetoric
were on the rise across the nation.

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One classmate told her to eat a
dog, while she heard comments like go

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back to where you came from,
fedor learned what it was like to be

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treated as a foreigner in her own
country and experienced many Asian American face Americans

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faced, She said. She recalled
seeing anti Asian hate crime from across the

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country and in her own community.
The twenty twenty one death of Visha Ratanapakti,

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an eighty four year old Thai American
who was violently shoved to the ground

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and died in San Francisco during his
morning walk. Kids just miles away from

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my home were walking to school with
bats to protect themselves. Fendor said.

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Elders, including Grandpa Vicha Ratana Pakti, were brutally murdered just for being Asian.

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A year ago, the state of
California launched California Versus Hate in response

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to a growing number of hate incidents. Oh, let me object to this.

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Are we really seeing a quote growing
number of hate incidents end quote in

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California? Really? I mean not
that any of it is good. And

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by the way, we're saying hate, and I think what we mean is

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is discrimination against protected classes within the
American Civil Rights Acts, within American and

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California Civil Rights Acts. I think
that's actually what we mean when we say

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hate. No one actually gives a
crud if okay, if it was,

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because that's effectively what we're saying.
When we're saying hate. It's basically violent

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or otherwise you know, violent or
maybe nonviolent, but still harassing or abusive

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conduct motivated by discrimination on the basis
of race, sex, sexual orientation,

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ethnic origin. I think that's actually
what we mean when we say hate.

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And we're just using this as a
euphemism or we're using this to mean something

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else. So California launched a hot
line called California Versus Hate in response to

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a quote growing number of hate incidents. The hot line is a first of

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its kind in California and is offered
in more than two hundred languages. Why

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on earth is it offered in two
hundred languages? How many? How many

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people totally speak some of those languages? Once we're getting to language one fifty.

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I mean, if it's in California, I mean, I guess you're

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serving immigrant populations, so maybe not
everyone speaking English, English, Spanish,

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mong for Fresno, I guess we
have I guess a number of different Asian

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language Asian immigrants, particularly in the
Bay Area. Two hundred languages. How

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did we fund that? The anonymous
program, funded by the state Legislature's Asian,

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American and Pacific Islander Equity Agenda and
the Jabara Hayer No Hate Act grant,

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is also a partnership with California Black
Media. Since its launch, Okay,

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so since its launch, so we've
had this hotline in California for a

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year, the program has received more
than one thousand reports of hate, the

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California Civil Rights Department announced Monday.
Within those reports, four out of six

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people agreed to receive follow up services
like legal aid or counseling. During the

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first month, the hate hotline recorded
one hundred and eighty reports from across from

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across the state. Now that's not
a lot, because we're not talking about

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a thousand reports of crime. We're
talking about a thousand reports of maybe someone

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said a derogatory term, like and
yeah, like okay, it's bad to

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say something derogatory to someone based on
their racial background, no question. Is

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it a crime though, I mean
it might be workplace harassments. If you

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say that to someone in your workplace, Certainly that is handled usually not through

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any kind of civil not through any
kind of criminal process or anything involving the

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state. It would be at the
level of your HR manager. So if

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we're talking about if we're talking about
not like hate crimes, actual criminal conduct

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motivated by racial or ethnic bias,
not assault, not battery, not robbery,

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not burglary, not you know,
uh whatever. If we're just talking

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about anyone says something bad and you
can call this hote it says something mean

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to you effectively, and you can
call this hotline, then a thousand calls

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is an astonishingly small number for a
state that has forty million people living in

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in it. More than a thousand
reports of hate. Yeah, there are

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forty million people in this state.
I'm surprised it isn't forty thousand calls with

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hate, Like, you know,
how many jerks there are. If you

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put forty million people together. What
percentage of people you interact with in your

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day to day are jerks? You
only know maybe two hundred people. Multiply

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that until you get forty million.
Pe how many jerks are there in the

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whole state of California. Yes,
of course, You've had one thousand calls

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with people saying of people saying hateful
things. That's shockingly small. The most

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common reason behind a report was discriminatory
treatment. Not not a crime, just

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discriminatory treatment and broad based. An
analysis by the University of California, Berkeley's

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Possibility Lab found I think it's possible
that this lab doesn't need to keep getting

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our taxpayer dollars. Sixteen percent of
callers said they were called derogatory names or

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slurs. These incidents occurred most within
a residential setting, according to twenty nine

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percent of respondents. Nine percent happened
within a workplace environment or in a public

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facility. So a lot of these
people are calling a state funded hotline because

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someone in their neighborhood called them something
rude. Again, not good. I'm

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not pro using racial slurs to your
neighbors by any stretch. Seems like a

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horrible thing to do, not a
thing I would ever do, not a

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thing I would appreciate if my neighbor
did it to me. I guess I

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just don't understand why we have a
state run hotline for it. When we

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return, we'll talk a little bit
more about this idea that we need the

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whole concept of the hate crime and
of specifically hate legislation, as if there's

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such a thing as a love crime. I guess that's next. On the

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John Girardi Show, we have this
story in the be talking about a state

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run anti hate hotline. Hate being
I guess just the word we use when

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what we mean is race based discrimination
or discrimination on the basis of some other

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kind of category that is protected in
California law. And I've been sort of

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a little bit mocking this because basically, California open up this hotline. Have

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you been a victim of hate?
And it's a hotline you can call for

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resources and support. And they received
a thousand calls over the course of the

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first year of the program. Well, of course, there are forty million

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people in this state. By rights, there should be forty thousand calls.

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You know how many jerks there are
in a state of forty million people.

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It seems like if you only got
a thousand calls to this hotline, like

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they also said they can field calls
in two hundred different languages. They almost

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have more languages they can field calls
in than they have calls. How do

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they do that? Do they just
took you up to a translator service or

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something? Anyway, regardless, it's
led me. Now these people are calling

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this hotline, and usually it seems
like many of these calls are just people

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who in their neighborhood were called something
rude by someone walking by or by someone

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that they interacted with in a public
setting. A few people mentioned that they

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were called this in their workplace,
which that's more of an issue for HR

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to handle at your work rather than
calling a state run hotline. And it's

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it also just sort of seems like, yeah, yes, we recommended legal

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or counseling service, legal services AID
or counseling services for some people, but

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like that that's the other part of
this that makes me sort of think,

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Okay, how many calls for how
many of these calls did you have anything

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useful as the State of California to
offer, like counseling services because you were

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called a mean thing? I mean, I get again, this is the

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problem with these kinds of programs.
There's nothing wrong with seeking out counseling services

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if you've been the victim of lots
of horrific racially based abuse. I guess

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I mean that, I don't think
there's anything wrong with that. I'm not

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gonna rant and rave at you if
if you decide to do that. I

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guess I'm just not understanding why the
state is offering it when we have such

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a small number of people calling about
it, and when it's like they someone

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could find this on their own without
a state run hotline. If anything,

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I think you could find it easier
without the state run hotline. You just

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I don't know, google counseling services
or something. And it leads me to

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sort of ask this, this sort
of thing, the whole idea behind hate

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crimes, and I feel like I
kind of go back and forth on it

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whether it's a useful concept at all. So the idea behind a hate crime

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is, here's a crime, but
if you commit this crime motivated by and

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we as a prosecutor, can present
enough evidence to show beyond a reasonable doubt

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that this was your motive. If
you commit this crime and it's beyond a

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reasonable doubt that you committed this crime
with the motive of antipathy towards someone because

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of their race or because of their
and then you insert whatever protected category is

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in this case protected under California law, whether it's sexual orientation and gender identity,

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sex, ethnic origin, race,
blah blah blah. If we can

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prove beyond a reasonable doubt that you
committed this crime based on antipathy against that

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thing, then we'll add basically a
heavier sentence. It's a sentencing enhancement if

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you do this thing out of some
racially motivated thing. And I guess it

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makes me ask the question, well, if you rob a liquor store versus

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if you rob a liquor store because
a black guy owns the store and you

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don't like black people. At the
end of the day, you've robbed a

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liquor store, should we care that
much what your motive for so doing was.

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I mean, it's not like robbing
the liquor store in the first place.

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It was a kindly deed of love, you know, assault and battery

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versus assault and battery because I don't
like the fact that you're Asian? Was

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the assault in battery without racial animus
like a nicer form of assault and battery

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was that a love crime as opposed
to a hate crime. The ultimate example

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of this was when Al Gore criticized
George W. Bush for I guess not

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passing certain kinds of hate crime legislation
in Texas and brought up the example of

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an African American who was lynched in
Texas, and Al Gore was talking,

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Oh, it's so terrible, George
W. Bush, how you didn't do

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this? And then George W.
This was during one of the presidential debates.

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George W. Pointed out that the
men who had committed that act of

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lynching all received the death penalty.
So Bush basically was asking what possible extra

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punishment could I have given these guys
like they We literally gave them the death

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penalty. There's not anything more we
can do to them. Now, Maybe

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if you see that racially motivated attacks
are happening, and you think a greater

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sentencing provision would deter that specific conduct, maybe there's some way in which it's

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justified. I don't know, but
I guess looking at something like a state

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run hotline for people who and reasonably, by the way, it's reasonable to

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have your feelings very much hurt when
someone says calls you an ethnic slurt.

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That's a totally reasonable thing to have
your feelings hurt over. I guess I'm

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just not sure what's the point of
a state run hotline for you to deal

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with the fact that someone was rude
to you, Like the kind of what

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help can the state offer you at
this point? You can't You know,

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your neighbor says something rude to you
and makes a derogatory racial comment, Well

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you're not. You can't arrest him. No one's gonna arrest What do you

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even want. You can't arrest the
guy. We'll give you state recommended counseling

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services. Well, I can find
that with Google. I just find the

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whole thing. It's one of these
things where you sound like a jerk if

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you question its utility, And I'm
sure that is what I sound like right

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now, but I still think it's
kind of silly like this. This is

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something that makes a politician be able
to pat him or herself on the back

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like they're doing something and it's not
really doing anything. When we return the

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weird story about Justice Alito's wife flying
the American flag, upside down. That's

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next on the John Girardi Show.
This story comes out very suspiciously, very

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suspiciously timed, I should say,
and the timing of this is important.

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So this is in May of twenty
twenty four that this story comes out,

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but this was an event that allegedly
happened. In January of twenty twenty one.

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This story comes out, and I
think it was a New York Times

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story about sam Aledo, and specifically
this has to do with some bizarre incident,

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as Justice Alito talked with some reporters
about it, an incident involving sam

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Alito's wife. So the Alitos live
in suburban northern Virginia, in kind of

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a suburb area of Washington, d
C. And d C has so many

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affluent professional people who are in some
way, shape or form employed by or

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contractors for the federal government, and
federal workers are these overwhelmingly left wing people.

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D C is an astonishingly left wing
city. It's like ninety percent to

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ten percent Democrat, and even among
Republicans, even Republicans in DC are incredibly

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anti Trump. So the Alitos apparently
have some very left wing neighbors who realize

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that they are neighbors to the Alitos
who were putting up some putting up signs

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or flags in their yards that were
incredibly aggressive and incredibly directly rude towards the

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Alitos, including a specific sign right
this neighbor of the Alitos, like right

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across the street from them, with
the F word on it, like F

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the Alitos or f F whatever,
something to that effect. And this was

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very distressed to missus Alito. Apparently
they now this was all ramped up and

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heightened and extremely volatile, apparently in
the timeframe immediately after January sixth, which

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for DC area liberals they think of
as again not to say January sixth was

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a good thing. It was a
bad thing. It it was a stupid

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thing. It was a dumb right, et cetera, et cetera, et

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cetera. Okay, you got to
do all of our stupid you know,

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go through this ritual action of declaring
that January sixth was a bad thing.

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But for people who live in d
C, the sort of liberal DC it's,

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they think of January sixth as like
the absolute worst thing that has ever

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happened in the history of this country. And basically there was some thought because

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because Alito is who he is,
that this is what you wanted. This

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is you know, blah blah blah. So these neighbors of the Alitos put

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up these derogatory like signs in their
yards with like cursing and things like that,

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and it's very obviously pointed out the
Alitos. The Alitos have go for

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a walk. This is about a
week or two after January sixth, get

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into this this sort of shit.
I guess they have a very unpleasant interaction

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with a neighbor as they're going for
a walk, and apparently for some time

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frame, in front of the Alito
house they have a flagpole, they flew

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the American flag upside down. And
the way this was reported was that this

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was a come that as a sign, this was a sort of Maga themed

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symbol of that the country's in peril
because the election has been stolen, and

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so what it means is aha see
justice Alito believes in stop the steal.

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Justice Alito believed that the twenty twenty
election, the most secure election in history,

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was stolen and therefore that he should
have to recuse himself from all future

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cases involving blah blah blah blah blah
blah blah. Now Justice Alito clarified that

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his wife did that he didn't have
anything to do with that, but it's

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led me to sort of ask more
questions. And Alito said, basically,

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his wife was very upset. She
was upset with this angry interaction she had

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with these neighbors and mad and then
that's why she did that. Now,

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there's a lot about this article that
is raising questions. First of all,

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why is this coming out three years
after the fact. I think it's coming

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out three years after the fact because
we're about to have a series of Supreme

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Court decisions. This We're about to
have a bunch of Supreme Court decisions basically,

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all right, if the twenty twenty
four, if twenty twenty four is

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going to be anything like twenty twenty, it's going to require the Supreme Court

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to have to step in on a
couple of election disputes. In twenty twenty.

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The Court had to step in and
basically, like at one point they

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had to tell Pennsylvania, hey,
you cannot change your laws just by your

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state Supreme Court issuing a fiat like
the day but like a week before the

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election just out of COVID concerns that
that's not appropriate. There are probably going

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to be a number of election cases
that the Supreme Court is going to have

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to decide on over the course of
the summer into the fall. We're also

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coming up to the end of the
Supreme Court term, which is in June,

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and usually it's at the end of
the term that the Court issues a

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lot of its decisions in some of
the big cases that they've able to have,

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they've been able to have full briefing
on over the courts of the year,

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and I think this story is being
released out of basically there's been this

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ongoing campaign the last three or four
years to try to paint the Conservative justices

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on the Court as being unacceptably ethically
or otherwise compromised, and that they have

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inappropriately refused to basically recuse themselves from
certain kinds of cases. So because Clarence

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Thomas's wife, Ginny, is involved
with a lot of Republican politics stuff,

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therefore Justice Thomas needs to recuse himself
from any cases involving Donald Trump. Well,

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that's not how recusal rules work.
The ethical rules involving when a judge

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should or should not recuse him or
herself. They it's you know, there's

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there there are rules and guidelines and
things like that for when and in what

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circumstances judges should do that. But
basically, the fact that your wife does

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something does not necessarily mean that you
need to recuse yourself. Now, if

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your family has say, you know, a major business connection or major business

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investments or something with say a company
who is a party to a lawsuit in

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front of you, then yeah,
you should probably recuse yourself. If your

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wife is an executive with Budweiser and
Budweiser's a party to the case in front

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of you, yes you should probably
recuse yourself. But basically, the fact

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that your wife is an is an
enthusiastic Trump supporter and a case that somehow

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involves Donald Trump lands in front of
Clarence Thomas does not mean Thomas needs to

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recuse himself. But there's this whole
campaign going of, like justice Thomas was

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friends with this billionaire who gave him
free flights on his on his private jet.

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Okay, and I mean it must
be nice. Yeah, I mean

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that that's nice. I wish I
got free flights on a private jet.

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That relationship is not ipso facto inappropriate
for Justice Thomas, Oh, John Roberts's

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wife is a super highly paid attorney
who's getting a bunch of big contracts.

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Is just purely because she's John Roberts's
wife. Yeah, John Roberts's wife is

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00:33:00.960 --> 00:33:06.799
also a very accomplished attorney. She
makes a ton of money, No kidding,

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Like the basically what is happening is
the media is trying to get story

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after story after story to attack the
character of conservative justices. It's always conservative

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justices, by the way. No
liberal justice has ever done anything questionable,

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by the way. There was all
kinds of stuff about, you know,

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if we want to talk about appropriateness
or inappropriateness of recusal, it was very

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questionable that Elena Kagan, for example, did not recuse herself from the big

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twenty twelve Obamacare decision, for example, which was one of the most significant

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decisions the Court issued over the course
of the twenty tens, because she had

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been Obama's Solicitor General involved in defending
it immediately prior to joining the Supreme Court.

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That was highly questionable. Ruth Bader
Ginsberg was getting all kinds of you

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know, perks and international travel and
stuff like that just as much as as

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Clarence Thomas was, if not more. But what's happening. The Left wants

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to paint a picture through unfair hit
job after unfair hit job after unfair hit

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job, that the justices on the
conservative justice on the Supreme Court are so

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ethically compromised, so engage in so
much inappropriate conduct that it therefore justifies Joe

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Biden in presidential term two with a
more compliant Senate, more compliant house.

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Let's say Democrats win everything this election, it justifies them packing the Supreme Court.

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That's what we're setting up. When
we returned, we'll talk a little

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bit more about the Alito story,
and it's particularly the idea that an upside

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down American flag was a stop the
Steel thing. Next on the John Girardi

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Show, this big story came out, Oh the Alito family, Justice Alito

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and his wife, they flew an
upside down American flag outside of their house

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after January sixth, a symbol showing
that they thought the election was stolen,

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a well known maga stop the Seals
steel sign. Now, I wasn't super

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big into stop the steal all that. I thought it was a very I

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thought a lot of those efforts were
didn't have a lot to them whatever,

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you know. Basically, I was
like, if you can give me enough

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evidence that shows we can win in
court to overturn this thing, then I

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am interested. If you cannot do
that, then get out. I don't

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00:36:00.800 --> 00:36:07.920
care. Stop whining. Either show
enough evidence that we can actually win something

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00:36:07.960 --> 00:36:20.920
in court, or stop whining and
anyway. Regardless, I have literally not

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until this story from The New York
Times came out three years after the fact,

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I have not once heard the notion
that an upside down American flag was

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a symbol for stop the steal,
or some kind of maga symbol or something

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having to do with the twenty twenty
election having been stolen. I've never once

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and by the way, I've seen
some real right wing jobbery, I've been

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to super right wing events. I've
I have friends who are super trumpy people,

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some of my dearest people that I
love very, very dearly. I've

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never once in the last four years
heard of, or seen or ever had

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any inkling that an upside down American
flag was a reference to stop the steal

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somehow, you know what it reminds
me of. There was several years ago

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there was like an Army Navy football
game, and one of the West Point

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00:37:27.400 --> 00:37:30.199
cadets was holding like an okay symbol
with his hand when the camera was on

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00:37:30.280 --> 00:37:34.599
him, and then everyone in the
media freaked out that this was a white

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supremacist symbol and it wasn't. It
was like some game, but like teenagers

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play, I don't know, some
stupid teenager thing. It feels kind of

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like that, like the media is
so confidently asserting that an upside down American

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flag was a stop the Seal Maga
symbol. And again, what this is

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really about is trying to throw as
much spaghetti against the wall, cast as

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many aspersions as we can against all
the concerns vative justices in order to delegitimize

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whatever rulings they issue over the course
of the twenty twenty four election cycle and

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justify packing the Supreme Court. That'll
do it for John Girardi Show. See

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you next time on Power Talk