Why do you listen to local radio so you can get local news? Why
do you listen to a geographic specific show so you get geographic specific information?
And I think one of the big holes in our information media landscape is that
very few people talk enough about what happens at the level of California state government.
It's this huge thing that impacts like forty million Americans, and yet local
newspapers are dying. Local television broadcast news is dying. And even when you
watch those or look at those, they cover California state politics so relatively little.
And that's why you've got me to cover all the big stuff that's happening
in Sacramento. Now, what do I want to cover? There is a
hugely consequential bill that will be a focus for me, particularly as mister Right
to Life. We will talk about it on Right to Life Radio. We
will talk about it on this show. I want to keep the attention focused
on this. It is SB one one nine six, s B one one
ninety six. What is SB one one nine six. This is a bill
to expand legalized physician assisted suicide. And I want to go into it because
I want to kind of explain how legalized physician assisted suicide currently works, how
they're trying to expand it, and the motivations behind it, Like, where
did this push for people to kill themselves come from? Who is pushing this,
what are the ideas behind it? What are some of the unintended consequences
behind it? So I want to dig into this. California's had legalized physician
assisted suicide since twenty fifteen, and I think the first thing to do in
this conversation is to find our terms. You have physician assisted suicide and you
have euthanasia. They are different things slightly. They are related, They're not
too far apart from each other, but they are different things, and I
would say euthanasia is worse. Both are quite bad. Euthanasia is slightly worse.
Let me explain why assisted suicide is what it says on the tin physician
assisted suicide, I am killing myself. Suicide actually from the Latin words sue
isn't really Basically the root for himself, oneself and side comes from kado caterreat
to fall death, so suicide means death to oneself, killing yourself, Okay,
physician assisted. So basically what happens is a physician helps me out but
I'm still killing myself. I am still the one doing the thing that results
in killing myself. And what happens in the context of California's legal regime around
assisted suicide is a doctor prescribes me deadly drugs so that I can kill myself.
California has created this legal structure a big exception to ordinary California law,
which is that helping someone commit suicide is a crime. Normal California law is
that if you knowingly give somebody a gun with the specific intent of I know
this person wants to kill themselves. They asked me, Hey, could you
get me a gun so I can kill myself. Here you go, buddy,
here's a gun so you can kill yourself. I'm gonna face some criminal
liability for this person's death. I'm an accomplice to murder. More, I'm
an accomplice to this person engaging in self murder. You're not legally allowed just
to commit suicide. The coercive power of the state can be used in California
and in any other jurisdiction in the United States of America. The coercive power
of the state can be used to stop you from killing yourself. All right,
if a cop sees a guy standing a cop or a firefighter sees a
guy standing on the ledge of a tall building about to jump, the CoP's
able to grab the guy and tackle him to the ground, maybe even have
him committed to, you know, being detained in a mental health setting or
something like that. The coercive power of the states allowed to stop someone from
one killing other people or two killing themselves. So California had to create a
big exception of that, and this is the legal structure by which people can
legally kill themselves. That's what we've done. We've basically said human life is
valuable in California. Human life is valuable enough that the coercive power of the
state can be used to protect innocent life. We will even use the course
of power of the state to defend innocent life to the extent of ending guilty
life. You can use deadly force. If the deadly force is the proportionate
response, you can use deadly force to protect innocent life. If someone bursts
into your home with a shotgun pointed out your head, you're allowed to grab
your pistol and shoot that guy in the chest, protecting innocent life. The
life of someone who isn't threatening deadly violence to anyone else is so important in
California that you can even go to that extent. And our desire to protect
innocent life extends to people wanting to kill themselves. But California says, has
said since twenty fifteen, No, there's a certain segment of human life that
we're not gonna protect from killing themselves, that we're gonna let kill themselves.
We're gonna say that these people their lives are a different category of not as
important because we're not going to afford them that protection well as long as they
themselves consent to it. And so California created the structure in twenty fifteen for
physician assist at suicide. It has to be for persons who have a six
month terminal prognosis. Now, what is a six month terminal prognosis? I
don't know. When my dad got diagnosed with having like very badly, he
was diagnosed with cancer, and then about a year ago they sort of determined
that the cancer was extremely progressed and dangerous and they you know, how long
did you have to live? It was anyone's guess. Honestly, you could
have. He wound up living about a year, a little less than a
year, but not even dying from like the cancer necessarily, it was he
died from complications arising from treatment. So like, honestly, a physician saying
to someone, well, you've got six months. It's not like at five
months and twenty nine days you're walking around just fine, and then at five
months and thirty days exactly six months, you boop immediately drop dead like a
stone. No, that's not how it works. It's a good faith guess
that the position gives based on all the factors that he know, he or
she knows at the time. And guess what, there are a billion and
one factors that maybe that physician does not know or cannot possibly know. There
are people who receive six month terminal diagnoses who go on to live twenty years.
There are people who receive six month terminal diagnoses who die in a week.
Nonetheless, California law has premised who can kill themselves and who can't,
Whose life has value, whose life doesn't on the basis of a six month
terminal prognosis by physician a good faith guess. So currently California law says you
need to have a terminal condition with a six month prognosis. The person asking
for physician assistant suicide has to be mentally competent to ask. There's a certain
process of talking it through with healthcare providers, of making at least two requests
through physicians for physician assistant suicide. And then what happens is the doctor prescribes
pills that contain deadly drugs that the person is supposed to ingest orally. So
it's the it's the person ingesting the drugs orally. It's not the doctor directly,
you know, killing the person. It's the doctor gives the person the
means to kill themselves. The doctor prescribes and provides deadly medication to the person
who wishes to kill himself. That person ingests the pill orally, that person
dies. That's the current law. SB eleven ninety six is going to change
that in several key ways. And Alex Schadenberg from the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition,
who does great work across the country looking at physician assistant suicide in different states
and so internationally too, looking at assisted suicide and euthanasian other countries, has
kind of a summary of this bill. You can find info about it at
at Twitter dot com slash John Girarti at John Girardi on Twitter x whatever.
So he notes what SB eleven ninety six is going to do. One,
it's going to change the criteria for who can get physician assisted suicide from people
who are terminally ill with a six month prognosis to the Canadian model quote someone
with a quote grievous and irremediable medical condition. That means two things. One
no time limit. Doesn't have to be someone with a six month terminal prognosis,
And in fact, it doesn't even need to be a terminal prognosis.
It just needs to be a medical condition that is quote grievous and irremediable.
Are you blind you can kill yourself? Do you have spina bifina You can
kill yourself? Are you any kind of disabled person? You can kill yourself?
Now you might be thinking, well, sure, but it's still you
know, this is about respecting people's autonomy. If they want to kill themselves,
why don't we let them? Ahaaa, autonomy the great refuge of the
libertarian Let's talk about autonomy and how assisted suicide immediately starts attacking the flimsy wall
that is consent. The next thing s B eleven ninety six is it allows
people with early to mid stage dementia to consent to assisted suicide euthanasia even though
they have a condition that impairs their capacity to consent. Why because people say,
oh, well, but you know you can't just deny it to anyone
who has early stage dementia. Well, by that time, that's usually when
a lot of people are at the stage where they would want assisted suicide.
So how can you do that? Would they really want to continue living in
that condition? Would they want to? Would they want to? Quality of
life questions? These immediately start creeping in. Can you see, by the
way, why one of the main opponents of physician assistant suicide are disabled people,
because whose health care is really expensive? Disabled people? You know,
it's a lot cheaper than healthcare for disabled people having them kill themselves. By
the way, this financial thing, I'll talk about it more in depth in
the next segment. The financial thing is at the root of all this.
The next big thing that SB eleven ninety six is going to do is it's
going to allow straight up euthanasia, not assisted suicide. Euthanasia not just I
prescribe you these pills. Here are these pills. You ingest them when you
want, you are still the one ingesting them. It's still you committing suicide.
Nope, we will allow the doctor to do it. Allow the doctor
to inject the drugs into an IV for you. Changing the doctor patient relationship
fundamentally. Four Removing the California residency requirement. Hey, all the rest of
the country, come to California to kill yourself. Everyone in Texas, come
to California. You can kill yourself. Five Remove the forty eight hour waiting
period between the first and second request by the patients, so you can kill
yourself the same day. Six eliminating the sunset on the current California assisted suicide
law, which is a scheduled to sunset in twenty thirty one. Now,
when we return, I want to talk about the financial aspect of assisted suicide
and euthanasia and why it's so furiously opposed by people with disabilities, why it
should be opposed by anyone who's lower income, and why the precarious state of
medical makes me terrified about assisted suicide. That's next on the John Growardy Show.
California is considering basically adopting all of Canada's standards for physician assisted suicide and
euthanasia through SB eleven ninety six, a bill that was introduced into the state
legislature, a terrible, terrible bill, and we I think we therefore need
to look at Canada, what's going on in Canada with assisted suicide and euthanasia,
because that's what's being proposed for us, and it's actually a decent comparison
point. Canada is obviously a pretty different place from California, but its population
is relatively similar. Canada's population is relatively similar to that of California. Canada
had in twenty twenty two, the most recent year that we have stats for,
about thirteen thousand people commit assisted at suicide or euthanasia, which was a
thirty one percent jump from twenty twenty one. So in Canada, assisted suicide
is booming. If we adopt all of Canada's standards, maybe obviously there's a
lot of factors that are different between California and Canada, but maybe we could
see assisted suicide jump in the same way in California as in Canada. And
I think there is one way in which that could definitely happen. It's because
of two things. One, homelessness in California, people who are homeless and
drug addicted, which I think California may have more of than Canada. And
two, a massive government healthcare system with scarce limited resources, which is going
to naturally be incentivized into pushing people into assisted suicide and euthanasia. All right,
so let me let me explain both of these things. Canada's legal standard
for who can kill themselves is what's being proposed in California, and Canada's standard
is not that you need to have a terminal diagnosis, that's the current California
law. Canada's standard is that you have to have a grievous and irremediable So
a serious grievous means serious whatever my fault, my phone, my most grievous
fault. What does grievous mean? Necessarily? Obviously, up to interpretation,
a grievous and irremediable condition means a condition you can't really fix, so doesn't
have to be a terminal diagnosis. Anyone with a disability pretty much qualifies.
Canada has been allowing drug addicts to kill themselves, Homeless people with drug addictions
to kill themselves. You know what, California has a lot of You know
what California has a massive problem with. You know what, California looks at
as a near insoluble solution that California just cannot figure out how to fix,
you know, other than like building more housing and getting rid of the environmental
regulations that inhibit us from building more housing, and getting rid of some of
the insane union rules that prohibit us that limit us from building more housing,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. No, no, no,
we couldn't just adopt more conservative policy surrounding housing or anything like that. No,
no, no, that would be completely impossible. Are you? Are
you insane? California looks at homelessness as an insoluble problem almost, I mean
more or less. I think our leadership is tacitly. You know, at
the very least, California's political leadership completely excludes certain categories of solutions to the
homelessness problem because conservatives like them and because they step on certain kinds of liberal
shibaleths regarding the environment or labor or whatever. So the state's going to be
incentivized to push to have some kind of solution to the homelessness problem. Why
not quote the final solution Now, maybe you think I'm crazy, Maybe you
think I'm maybe you think I'm off my rocker. I'm just telling you that
this is happening in Canada, that the MADE program is being gently promoted,
gently promoted, promoted, promoted, promoted, promoted all throughout Canada, and
that it's being done to homeless people, homeless people in Canada. Excuse me,
unhoused people. Just saw a big headline in the Fresno But how many
unhoused people are there in Fresno? Ah? Yes, you're so sensitive to
the unhoused people that you still that you won't call them homeless, but you
won't actually promote policies that will help them not be homeless anyway. The other
factor is a massive government run healthcare system with scarce resources. So Canada has
single payer, universal government run healthcare. California has medical all right, so
medical is not a one, single government run healthcare program that everyone's on.
But a ton of people are on medical in California. And we just extended
medical eligibility to people who have immigrated into this country illegally, so a ton
of people are on medical. It's a government run system, and much like
Canada's government run system, there is a finite amount of healthcare resources. That's
the thing with government run universal healthcare is that not everybody's getting a Cadillac.
Maybe everyone can get a Honda Civic or a Honda a Cord, but not
everyone's getting a Cadillac. And as a government run system that doesn't have an
infinite amount of money, especially a state run system like medical, you're trying
to cut. Okay, California's got medical. Medical is already like incredibly precarious.
Like all kinds of providers in different kinds different fields feel like they can't
take medical patients because they lose money on each one. They lose so much
money that they're basically and medical is such a pain in the butt to deal
with that. A lot of providers basically forget it. I'm not gonna take
medical patients. That's what's happened with a lot of obgyn care in presdent.
That's why I started our Obria Clinic, which, by the way, Thursday
this Thursday, five point thirty at the Toka Madera Winery, you can come
harving a little fundraiser for Obria. Uh if you're interested five five nine,
two oh one eight three eight oh, you can buy tickets or go to
Obria three six five dot org Obria three six five dot org. Basically,
medical is not really solvent, or at the very least, there are these
huge financial constraints, a ton of people, not enough tax revenue to pay
for them all. You know, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than
palliative care. You know, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than chemo
therapy. You know, it's a heck of a lot cheaper than any of
the very complex and expensive kinds of care that people with disabilities need. You
know what's more expensive than ongoing drug rehab therapy killing somebody. That's the thing
with assisted suicide and euthanasia. It's cheap and it's way cheaper than the alternatives.
Don't think for a second that if we in California legalize an extremely permissive
regime around euthanasia and assisted suicide that it won't get the promoted the absolute hell
to lower income people on medical specifically, that's what's going to happen, and
these families will be forced into this decision of well, do we get really
expensive chemo or do we just kill grandpa? Let grandpa kill himself. Does
Grandpa want to kill himself or put this big financial burden on his family?
Those are the kinds of choices, or maybe even you close off certain choices.
We're not going to offer this kind of chemo for this kind of person.
Here's assistant suicide is the option SB eleven ninety six. Call your assembly
member, call your state senator, tell them to vote no. When we
return Shifting Gears, a generalized rant about conservatives and how to prioritize Second Amendment
issues next on The John Girardi Show. I won't give him a ton of
publicity or anything, but there's this one kind of conservative writer, commentator and
I follow on Twitter and he's not. One of the things I've really been
noticing since Rovi Wade got overturned is that there's more and more a realization by
social conservatives like me, and I think if I label myself as conservative,
although actually I will say I one time, listen to this the Teaching Company
course on the History of Conservatism. The Teaching Company provides all these like audiobook
or video courses, like college university courses. They get professors at different colleges
and universities and they either audio record or video record different courses on a lot
of different subjects. And if I have an audible subscription, which is like
an audiobooks subscription, and they have a ton of their courses on there,
so for like fifteen bucks, I can get a whole, like forty hour
long series of lectures on the history of the Roman Empire, the history of
this, the history of you know, on history, philosophy, whatever you
know, topic might be of interest to you. And I downloaded, My
wife and I downloaded, and we're listening to a course on the history of
conservatism as a kind of political posture, as a kind of political ideology,
the idea of conservatism. And one of the things I sort of walked away
from it with was sort of, honestly a little bit of disappointment that conservatism
seems to sort of shift what it means almost every generation or so, that
it seems to be almost more of an attitude towards things than an actual kind
of concrete set of ideals or policies. It sometimes feels like to me,
it's just liberalism and slow motion. Anyway, maybe that's a topic for another
day. Regardless, for those of us who are sort of hardcore social conservatives.
We have been a little uncomfortable realizing, especially after Dobbs, after Roe
v. Wade has been overturned, that there's a lot of people in the
conservative coalition who are not really all that pro life, who are don't really
really agree with us very much at all about a lot of social conservative issues.
I think I've been extremely disillusioned by the debates over IVF that have taken
place in the last four weeks, where basically every Republican's like, no,
b ivf's totally fine. IVF is completely wonderful, absolutely no moral issues at
stake with IVF gonna back the IVF industry completely, and any Republican who says
otherwise is an idiot. And it's like every Republican across the spectrum is saying
this, from Flippin' Mike, you know, Bible clutching Mike Johnson and James
Langford the pastor senator from Oklahoma, all the way to Donald Trump and Nancy
Mas Basically everyone abandoned the fort on that regardless. I'm realizing that those of
us who are like hardcore social conservatives, like me, I mean, why
do I identify as a Republican or a conservative at all. It's chiefly for
social issues. You know, I more or less agree with the conservative movement
on a lot of other things, but the chief reason why I'm a conservative
is for social issues. And I think that's probably true for everyone that you're
a Republican or a conservative, because there's maybe one or two issues that you
really grasp and really think are really important and that's why you're a Republican.
One of the things that annoys me is when people prioritize certain kinds of things.
And I've ranted and raved how you know, I think an issue like
abortion that results in, you know, nine hundred thousand innocent lives being taken
every year, I don't see how you can't prioritize that above almost everything else.
And yet people will talk about relatively minor issues as if it's you know.
Ever, I remember, before Roe v. Wade was being overturned and
conservatives were really frustrated by Republican Supreme Court picks, there were a lot of
conservative talking heads who would say, oh, yeah, well, look how
awesome we've done with the Second Amendment. And that's specifically what I want to
talk about today. One of these gadfly sort of libertarian commentators who's been just
awful and as far as how he's talked about basically totally fine with abandoning ship
on the abortion issue. Post Obs was talking about visiting California and how,
you know, conservatives over eight how bad California is. It's still totally beautiful
here in beautiful beaches. I'm here in Orange County and I'm just living it
up. It's super safe, and you know, you can concealed carry in
most of the state. In most of the state, you can concealed Carrie
was like one of his first lead off argument for how California is more conservative
than you think. You can concealed carry in most of the state. Now,
I want to talk about two pieces of idiocy I think that reflects one
is that concealed Carrie. The ability to concealed Carrie is precisely just what the
Second Amendment allows. As Clarence Thomas has been arguing this in his decisions he's
been co authoring or authoring at the Supreme Court regarding legislation surrounding guns. The
Second Amendment specifically says the right to keep and bear arms bear not a grizzly
bear carry him around, So concealed Carrie is just what the Second Amendment affords.
So to set all, California is more conservative than you think. In
most counties you can conceal carry. Oh great, most of the counties of
California respect the Constitution of the United States, acknowledge that the Constitution of the
United States applies to them. Oh, how wonderful for those counties of California.
Why would any county of California not How do we have this situation where
we act as though like that's a gold star for you that you do,
in fact follow what the law of the land dictates in your county. Why
why doesn't literally every county of California do that, although I would guess that
every county of California kind of technically does so. I think this guy is
both both. He's like a moron from like five different directions. But the
bigger point I want to make is this to lead off by saying, well,
you know, well, California's actually a little more conservative than you think.
And he's got a picture of the beach he said, you know,
uh, California allows concealed carry in most states. As he's got a picture
of you know, surfing or whatever. It's like. First of all,
one, are you really bringing your gun with you to surf? Like?
Okay, I kind of doubt that. Secondly, that's your lead off is
being able to conceal Carrie. Second Amendment stuff. Now, I agree with
most, for the most part, with most conservative arguments in favor of private
gun ownership. Most of the kind of nrash crowd more or less I agree
with them, you know. I'm I'm fine with if people want to conceal
Carrie. I think that's great. I think people who do concealed carry result
in such a tiny fraction of gun crimes in the country and in the state.
I think concealed carry is great. I think the amount of training that
you get makes it very safe. I think that private gun ownership is,
for the most part, a decent thing. Okay, I'm more or less
fine with the Second Amendment. I'm I'm fine with it all right. For
the most part, I support Second Amendment things. I can't say though,
that if I'm looking at my political beliefs, the Second Amendment is the most
important thing for me. I guess I don't understand how for anyone who with
a social conservative position on thinking abortion is wrong anyone coming from a Christian mindset
again, and I'm pro Second Amendment, pro private gun ownership, pro people
being able to conceal carry. I think the concealed carry process is actually great.
Think having people be very well trained, good responsible citizens with no criminal
record, being really well trained in using guns, very low records of dangerous
activity or crimes or anything like that. I think that's a good thing.
I think it's honestly, it's a better thing than people buying guns who aren't
concealed carry certified. Now I think California's recent law is making concealed carry like
utterly extremely difficult to obtain or ridiculous. But nonetheless I like all of that.
I cannot say it's like even in my top five most important things that
I care about. And I guess I just can't understand a conservative coalition being
built around it now. It kind of the conservative coalition. I mean,
actions are one and lost on gun control issues, or at the very least
they were in the early two thousands and the nineties. I mean, the
NRA is a train wreck right now. For those who have been following that
particular story, I think a lot of gun owners are sitting there nodding their
heads at that NRA is in bad trouble with a lot of different scandals,
and you know their membership is down and their political influences way down. That
might be part of this, But I guess I just don't understand the idea
of making that the most important thing, if that's your most important thing and
not some kind of like moral thing or ethical thing, Like there's no moral
guiding principle to your conservatism. The main thing you're care about, oh,
can I have a gun? Like again? I like the pro second Amendment.
I agree with most conservative arguments about gun ownership. I don't understand this
kind of libertarian ish mindset that thinks it's the most important thing. When we
return my brief thoughts on whether or not America should ban TikTok next on the
John Jurardy Show, there's this whole debate right now. I guess there's a
bill that's been passed to actually ban TikTok from the American social media marketplace,
and of all people, Donald Trump is like opposed to it, which I
think is utterly ridiculous. Now I can see the various arguments getting lined up.
There's one line of argument that says, no, you shouldn't ban TikTok
because people are lunatics and for some reason, TikTok is liberal coded in spite
of the fact that it's owned and controlled by a hostile foreign power that is
literally using it to mind data on Americans in ways that can potentially be harmful.
Okay, it's owned by the Chinese. They use it to mind data
on Americans. It's bad. There's a reason a bunch of state governments don't
allow it. Why there's a reason why the federal government does not allow any
federal government owned TikTok accounts like it's bad. It's obviously bad. But I
can already see the libertarian response coming up. Well, TikTok would be fine
as long as it's sold to an American or just as long as the Chinese
communists don't own it, if they divest their ownership of it, if they
sell it, then that's fine. And I'm gonna make this argument. Yes,
TikTok is bad because it's owned by the Chinese and the Chinese are using
it to mind dad on Americans, steal dad on Americans. It's bad in
that sense, Yes, you know why, Else it's bad, though,
it's the same reason why all social media is bad. One. It's destroying
American morals. It's promoting wrongful ideas to gazillions of kids. It's why almost
a quarter of gen z is identifying as L or G or B or T.
It's not because all of a sudden, all these people had these identities.
It's because of social contagion transmitted through platforms like TikTok. It's got all
kinds of morally bad stuff. It's it's like the gateway to every kid viewing
porn. It's pervasive. It's pervasively spreading every bad thing possible to millions and
millions and millions of kids. It's also destroying attention spans. It's like it's
bad. The platform itself is bad. In fact, not only is that
platform bad. YouTube, which has scrolling videos that do the same thing is
also bad. Facebook that has scrolling videos that does the same thing, it's
also bad. Instagram that is scrolling, never ending videos that are also bad,
is also bad. It's all bad. All of it should be regulated
to stop that. And if that makes me not a libertarian, oh dear,
so be it. It's bad. It's bad for health, it's bad
for morals, it's bad for everything. It should be actually regulated and stopped,
whether in American owns it or not. That'll do it for John Girardi
Show. See you next time on Power Talk