Speaker 1: For any of you with younger kids, maybe in college,
Speaker 1: coming out of college, young adults, and especially if your
Speaker 1: kid is was able to go to college out of
Speaker 1: state or something like that, your kid's pretty industrious. I
Speaker 1: think we all have had to sort of have the
Speaker 1: thought for younger people. And I sort of was having
Speaker 1: this thought. I mean, with a young couple from our
Speaker 1: church that we're helping out with like our church's marriage
Speaker 1: prep program, and I'm sort of looking at these young people,
Speaker 1: and I'm kind of asking myself, should they stay? Should
Speaker 1: they stay here in the San Joaquin Valley. I see
Speaker 1: a news story about how Fresnan's Fresno is among the
Speaker 1: nation's most rent burdened city. Census data shows thirty four
Speaker 1: percent of Fresno renters spent more than half of their
Speaker 1: income on rent in twenty twenty three, the fourth highest
Speaker 1: rate of cities with more than two hundred thousand households
Speaker 1: in the nation. According to the news website Axios, the
Speaker 1: only cities to beat Fresno were Port Saint Lucy, Cape
Speaker 1: Carrall and Palm Bay, Florida, with Miami in fifth place.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a wild guess that Fresno has kind
Speaker 1: of a lower average income than all of those cities.
Speaker 1: I don't know they're parts of Miami, I think that
Speaker 1: are more low income. But that's kind of that's kind
Speaker 1: of disturbing. And I've been thinking this for myself, just
Speaker 1: looking around at like, Okay, you know, I got a
Speaker 1: job that was sort of potentially shopped me. It's not
Speaker 1: a job I would ever take because it's in Idaho,
Speaker 1: and I was sort of looking at it and I'm like, Okay,
Speaker 1: well I could make a little bit more than I
Speaker 1: make now. And the cost of living to go live
Speaker 1: in Idaho. To live in Idaho.
Speaker 2: Is just.
Speaker 1: Globally smaller. I mean, it's world's apart. Between gas prices,
Speaker 1: energy prices, housing costs, everything taxes, state income taxes, state
Speaker 1: regulatory stuff like that. Just your overall if you're gonna
Speaker 1: make X dollars in Fresno versus X dollars in Idaho,
Speaker 1: that X dollars is going to take you way farther.
Speaker 1: And it just kind of makes me shake my head
Speaker 1: for someone who is from here. And I guess I
Speaker 1: want to emphasize that I think there is a problem
Speaker 1: in modern America with sort of the you know, between
Speaker 1: air travel, car travel interstate highways and people having more
Speaker 1: social mobility. There's more of a tendency for especially the
Speaker 1: better educated you are, for people to move away from
Speaker 1: their hometowns. And you see the concept of brain drain,
Speaker 1: where really smart college graduates tend to leave their hometowns
Speaker 1: and flock to consolidate to the big cities. I had
Speaker 1: a bunch of friends from Notre Dame who are from
Speaker 1: all over and a lot of whom just wound up
Speaker 1: in Chicago, wound up in Chicago, wound up in New York.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's a lot of kids who in colleges
Speaker 1: up and down California who maybe are from Fresno or
Speaker 1: are from here or from there, and they wind up
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. They wind up in the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: Why because that's where the jobs are for students with
Speaker 1: elite degrees. The concept of brain drain is nothing new.
Speaker 1: People grow up in Ti Larry, let's say, and they
Speaker 1: get their education, they go off to college, and they
Speaker 1: just never come back, or they only come back sporadically
Speaker 1: or at lower percentages. And I think that's a sad thing,
Speaker 1: you know, And you know, I see it in my
Speaker 1: own family. I mean, my my brother grew up here
Speaker 1: and he's living in Washington, d C. My sister grew
Speaker 1: up here and she's living in Los Angeles. Why well,
Speaker 1: they followed the jobs that they wanted to follow. And
Speaker 1: my brother's case, he met a girl from the DC
Speaker 1: Northern Virginia area, married her. My sister because she's working
Speaker 1: in movies. Where else is she gonna work? You know,
Speaker 1: she has to be in uh Burbank. And my little brother,
Speaker 1: who's an army officer, sort of trying to figure out
Speaker 1: where he wants to be. And I don't know how
Speaker 1: hot to trot he is about wanting to stay in California.
Speaker 1: But there is some and I think there's something really
Speaker 1: sad about that in certain respects that California has just
Speaker 1: made itself. California has made itself really inhospitable for people
Speaker 1: to come back. And I'm seeing this more and more
Speaker 1: as a you know, older, you know, getting older every day.
Speaker 1: I just turned thirty seven, and I hurt my back,
Speaker 1: so I'm not feeling particularly young. But you know, thirty seven,
Speaker 1: I've got a young family. I've got you know, five
Speaker 1: young kids, and I see it. I see the possibility
Speaker 1: of greener pastures on the other side of the state border.
Speaker 1: I see, how like, oh yeah, this state is really
Speaker 1: not geared around me economically thriving. This state is not
Speaker 1: designed for middle class success, not nearly as much as
Speaker 1: a lot of other places are. And I'm lucky. I
Speaker 1: mean I was able to We were able to buy
Speaker 1: our house, you know, with relatively low interest rates in
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, before interest rates skyrocketed and before housing costs skyrocketed,
Speaker 1: the housing costs of skyrocketed over the last you know,
Speaker 1: five six years, five years here, I think our house
Speaker 1: would be totally out of reach to me if if
Speaker 1: I had was looking for it today rather than five
Speaker 1: years ago. We were lucky. And I think it's sad
Speaker 1: because you know, where you are, the political community, the area,
Speaker 1: the place where you are from, has an impact on you.
Speaker 1: It helps form and shape you. Aristotle writing about politics,
Speaker 1: he was writing his Polish politics, okay, And for Aristotle,
Speaker 1: the city was sort of the signature political unit of
Speaker 1: his time. The city state, the Greek city state, which
Speaker 1: basically encompassed the city, the urban center, plus kind of
Speaker 1: the immediate surrounding countryside, and usually in Greece, because it's
Speaker 1: so so much of it is near the ocean, the
Speaker 1: surrounding farmland, plus probably the port. And for Aristotle, that
Speaker 1: sort of local regional governance was the paradigm. That was
Speaker 1: the paradigm for Greece, and that was how all of
Speaker 1: their political divisions were. You had sparred over here in
Speaker 1: Athens over here, and Themes over there, and they were
Speaker 1: different political entities with different governments and oftentimes in alliance
Speaker 1: with each other, oftentimes militarily opposed to each other. And
Speaker 1: he thought of politics as and I'm not sure if
Speaker 1: this was more descriptive or prescriptive or prescriptive. Politics makes
Speaker 1: sense when you have a community bound together by mutual
Speaker 1: ties of being from that place, you are that kind
Speaker 1: of a people. We are Athenians. This is our national
Speaker 1: political polis based city character. We are this kind of
Speaker 1: a people. We worship these kinds of gods. We are
Speaker 1: from this kind of place. We have this kind of
Speaker 1: Our military is our navy. You know, we're a port city.
Speaker 1: These are the economic things that ties the religion and
Speaker 1: things that tie us, the cultural things that tie us.
Speaker 1: This is our style of government that reflects our civic character.
Speaker 1: Where you're from can have an impact on you in
Speaker 1: a way. That's good in a way that's meaningful and profound,
Speaker 1: and certainly I realize in modern America and modern California
Speaker 1: today that sort of the beauty of being from a place,
Speaker 1: living in that place, putting down roots in that place,
Speaker 1: being embedded within that community that raised you. I recognize
Speaker 1: that economically and just the happens stands of individual people's
Speaker 1: lives that can't always be Sometimes you have to you know,
Speaker 1: you have to put bread on your table, you have
Speaker 1: to go pursue a job. And if that means you
Speaker 1: got to up and move, maybe that's what you have
Speaker 1: to do. Maybe that's the right thing for you to do.
Speaker 1: You know, you go to college out of state, you
Speaker 1: meet a girl from another part of the country. She's
Speaker 1: from one place, you're from another place. You got to
Speaker 1: pick one place to live.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: That's what our family's done. I'm always so grateful to
Speaker 1: my wife that she was willing to move to from
Speaker 1: her home in Minnesota to where to Fresno, California, where
Speaker 1: it's one hundred degrees in the middle of September. That's
Speaker 1: quite the thing. It's less of an ask when it's
Speaker 1: February and we're wearing shorts and her family in Minnesota
Speaker 1: is buried under twenty feet of snow or whatever. So
Speaker 1: that's when it becomes a bit of an easier ask.
Speaker 1: But when it's September and it's that we've got more
Speaker 1: one hundred day temperatures coming up in the forecast next week,
Speaker 1: this is this is the time when it becomes a
Speaker 1: little trying. I recognize that there's happenstance like that where
Speaker 1: people have to move from where they are. I just
Speaker 1: think that California, you know, I think California is making
Speaker 1: this that necessity of needing to move more urgent to
Speaker 1: more and more and more people in a way that
Speaker 1: is horrible, in a way that is going to be
Speaker 1: economically unsustainable for the state, and in a way that
Speaker 1: that I think is culturally deeply sad. I mean again,
Speaker 1: I I'm looking at, you know, young couples just starting
Speaker 1: out their lives, and I'm thinking, man, like, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to make it here when you could just move
Speaker 1: to I don't know, Idaho or Arizona, Nebraska or anywhere
Speaker 1: and just have such less cost, such better economic opportunity.
Speaker 1: I mean, trying to make it here, it's almost like
Speaker 1: trying to trying to play, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like trying to box with one hand behind your back.
Speaker 1: You're at this like automatic economic disadvantage by deciding to
Speaker 1: settle down here, And I guess that's what just depresses me,
Speaker 1: that this region which is really my home. If you're
Speaker 1: going to say, how do you John DROREDI identify I
Speaker 1: identify as someone from the San Joaquin Valley. I've never
Speaker 1: thought of myself as a Californian. I would say probably
Speaker 1: I'm first and foremost a clove site. I still don't
Speaker 1: know the I still don't know the adjective for someone
Speaker 1: who lives in close. I lived in Clovis my whole life.
Speaker 1: After I was done with college, in law school, I
Speaker 1: came back. I moved back to Clovis, probably primarily Clovis,
Speaker 1: and then my secondary identity is someone from the San
Speaker 1: Joaquin Valley. I've never thought of myself as a Californian.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't even know what a Californian is.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's anyone in California who identifies as
Speaker 1: I'm a Californian. No, you identify with whatever region of
Speaker 1: California you're in or from. You would probably more so
Speaker 1: identify as someone from the Bay Area, or someone from LA,
Speaker 1: or someone from even your particular region of LA or
Speaker 1: the greater Southern California area. As being from Orange County
Speaker 1: is a very different thing from being from East LA.
Speaker 1: Being from San Diego is a very different thing from
Speaker 1: any of those people identify with regions of the state,
Speaker 1: not as I'm a Californian. And yet that's the level
Speaker 1: at which all these decisions, or most of these decisions anyway,
Speaker 1: are being made to govern our lives in ways that
Speaker 1: are often harmful. When we return, I'll dig a little
Speaker 1: bit more into this and talk about my firm, long
Speaker 1: standing belief that California should be broken up into several states.
Speaker 1: That's next on the John Girardi Show. I've long had
Speaker 1: the opinion that California should be broken up into several states,
Speaker 1: and also the equally firm opinion that it will never
Speaker 1: ever happen. Let's talk about why it should. First of all,
Speaker 1: why should it? I think when people hear the proposal here,
Speaker 1: a proposal that California should be broken up into several states,
Speaker 1: they sort of look at it with this kind of incredulity.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's kind of a while it's a wild
Speaker 1: sounding idea to a lot of people. They see, any ah,
Speaker 1: that's crazy, that can never happen, even like state wide
Speaker 1: ballot initiatives that have sort of proposed it as you know,
Speaker 1: ineffective as those would have been. As I'll explain later,
Speaker 1: there have been state wide ballot initiatives, you know, pos
Speaker 1: proposing the idea, and they never really get much traction.
Speaker 1: You know, people have come up with a lot of
Speaker 1: different schemes. There's a lot of different schemes you could
Speaker 1: come up with. I think that fundamentally, the idea of
Speaker 1: breaking California up into its kind of distinct regions would
Speaker 1: make sense. So let me let me explain a couple
Speaker 1: of reasons why. So there's the theoretical reason, and then
Speaker 1: there's the kind of good governance reason, and maybe the
Speaker 1: good governance reason comes first. First of all, I think
Speaker 1: people have this idea that the boundaries of California were
Speaker 1: drawn by Almighty God himself and that they cannot be
Speaker 1: touched or changed. No, California was a sort of arbitrary
Speaker 1: set of boundaries, just sort of bounded by the mountains
Speaker 1: over on one side and kind of going up a
Speaker 1: sort of indeterminate mountain north. And it followed along the
Speaker 1: settlements that Spanish settlers like Spanish slash Mexican settlers like
Speaker 1: Huniproserra who Nimbrosara was just Spanish that who Nipprosera and
Speaker 1: others made mostly along the coast, but also further inland.
Speaker 1: And it turned out that we had gold, and so
Speaker 1: we had the gold rush, and we had more and
Speaker 1: more and more people coming here in ways that we
Speaker 1: couldn't have really anticipated, and all of a sudden, we
Speaker 1: now have California encompassing forty million people. Should a state
Speaker 1: have an American state? Should an American state have forty
Speaker 1: million people? I think you can just safely answer that no,
Speaker 1: I don't think it should. Like if you look at
Speaker 1: the original thirteen colonies at the time of the founding,
Speaker 1: the estimates are that the total population of the thirteen
Speaker 1: colonies was in the ballpark of about two point five million,
Speaker 1: and it grew from there until seventeen ninety it was
Speaker 1: maybe around three million or something. So your average colony
Speaker 1: just did not have a population even close to forty
Speaker 1: million people, And you can start to make the question
Speaker 1: of is that just too big for a state government
Speaker 1: effectively to be I think it is, especially when you
Speaker 1: look at questions like how many people are represented by
Speaker 1: a state legislator on average California State Assembly members. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we have our two houses in our state legislature.
Speaker 1: We have the State Assembly and we have the state Senate.
Speaker 1: California state Assembly members represent five hundred thousand people a piece.
Speaker 1: California state senators represent a population of about a million
Speaker 1: residents a peace. That's the most disproportionate ratio for any
Speaker 1: state legislature in the country. Most state legislators are representing
Speaker 1: about a couple tens of thousands of people, not hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands. State senators in California represent more people than
Speaker 1: a member of the US House of Representatives does. So
Speaker 1: the divide the distance between an individual citizen and their
Speaker 1: state government is so vast. I mean a state legislator
Speaker 1: at the time of the founding, like one of the
Speaker 1: various individual thirteen state legislators. If you were a state legislator,
Speaker 1: you could probably get to know individually every single voter
Speaker 1: you represent. Wasn't that large of a pool. And I
Speaker 1: think there's something to be said with the kind of
Speaker 1: there's this sort of political apathy in California, where I
Speaker 1: think there's a ton of people who just feel like
Speaker 1: they have they make no difference in politics whatsoever. I
Speaker 1: think it leads to depressed voter turnout. You can very
Speaker 1: credibly you know there are more Republican voters in California.
Speaker 1: There are enough Republican voters in California that there's something
Speaker 1: like twelve million Republicans in California if you well, let
Speaker 1: me put it this way, if you take all the
Speaker 1: red counties of California, that there aren't twelve million Republican
Speaker 1: voters in California, but this is true. If you take
Speaker 1: all the red counties of California and put them together
Speaker 1: as one, it turns into a bright red state of
Speaker 1: about twelve million people. That's like more, that's about as
Speaker 1: much as Ohio. So hidden inside ultraliberal California because it's
Speaker 1: so huge, is a red state about the size of
Speaker 1: Ohio that nobody really knows exists. And to have that
Speaker 1: many tens of millions of people just kind of disenfranchised,
Speaker 1: not disenfranchised, but just like, yeah, you're gonna be in
Speaker 1: the minority all the time, and you must live under
Speaker 1: these people. I don't know that that's a great thing
Speaker 1: for democracy to have that enormous a population of people
Speaker 1: become that apathetic to politics because they know they're going
Speaker 1: to lose everything all the time. All Right, when we return,
Speaker 1: I'll talk a bit more about the theoretical reason why
Speaker 1: I think California should be broken up into multiple states.
Speaker 1: That's next on the John Gerrardy Show. Why should California
Speaker 1: be broken up into several states? There's a lot of
Speaker 1: the practical reasons. There's the fact that state legislators in
Speaker 1: California represent way more people than state legislators do in
Speaker 1: any other state. It's not even close. Your average state
Speaker 1: assembly member in California represents five hundred thousand residents. Your
Speaker 1: average state senator is representing about a million residents. It's
Speaker 1: completely insane the distance between your average voter and his
Speaker 1: or her average state legislator, or it's just a bigger
Speaker 1: divide than you see in any other state in the Union.
Speaker 1: You have such a huge population, that you have such
Speaker 1: a huge population of people who feel like their political
Speaker 1: views are completely unimportant, not listened to, not cared about.
Speaker 1: Leads to voter apathy, It leads to voter burnout. It
Speaker 1: leads to people wanting to leave the state. And we
Speaker 1: see that, we see people moving out, we see the
Speaker 1: population dropping. And especially when you think about the idea
Speaker 1: that there's basically a if you take all the red
Speaker 1: counties of California and put them together, it creates a
Speaker 1: red state of about twelve million people, which is about
Speaker 1: the size of Ohio. Like there's a there's a huge
Speaker 1: red state just hidden inside of California that just gets
Speaker 1: swallowed up by that behemoth that is California. Now I
Speaker 1: understand practically speaking, politically speaking, California will never be broken
Speaker 1: up into several states. Why well, it'll never be broken
Speaker 1: up into several states because of the politics of it.
Speaker 1: To create a new state requires Congress to vote for
Speaker 1: it and whatever state or states legislatures to vote for it,
Speaker 1: whatever states might be involved. So if if you wanted
Speaker 1: to create a new state out of a chunk of
Speaker 1: Oregon and a chunk of California, for example, the state
Speaker 1: legislature of Oregon would have to vote for it, and
Speaker 1: the state legislature of California would have to vote for it,
Speaker 1: and Congress would have to vote for it. Okay, So
Speaker 1: to split California up into several states. What would it require, Well,
Speaker 1: it would require the California state legislature to vote for it,
Speaker 1: and it would require Congress to vote for it. I
Speaker 1: don't think those outcomes are likely to happen. Why. Well,
Speaker 1: because of the Senate. If you were to create like
Speaker 1: a state of San Joaquin basically, which is what I
Speaker 1: would want to keep California as it is, but let's
Speaker 1: just cut out the middle chunk of it, and that's
Speaker 1: the state of San Joaquin, Well, that would probably be
Speaker 1: a red state and Democrats don't want that. They absolutely
Speaker 1: wouldn't go for that. Why vote for that? It would
Speaker 1: take away presidential election electoral college votes because right now
Speaker 1: Democrats get all fifty or whatever it is of California's
Speaker 1: electoral college votes every single presidential election. If you create
Speaker 1: a new state that might be Republican leaning, they just
Speaker 1: lose out on a couple of those electoral college votes. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the Senate, it would just add two Republican senators to
Speaker 1: the Senate. Why would any Democrat go for that? So
Speaker 1: Democrats would never go for it. So if you were
Speaker 1: to break up the state, you'd have to do so
Speaker 1: in a way that equitably split things between Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 1: Democrats would only go for it if they got a
Speaker 1: Democrats state and Republicans got a Republican state. So maybe
Speaker 1: you could do something where you break California up into
Speaker 1: maybe like from one state to maybe like five states
Speaker 1: to create two new Republican states, two new Democrats states,
Speaker 1: plus the existing California. So Republicans add form more senators,
Speaker 1: Democrats add form more senators. But still Democrats wouldn't go
Speaker 1: for that. Why Well, because again they're losing out on
Speaker 1: electoral college votes during presidential elections. They don't want to
Speaker 1: break California up. If they break California up, that means
Speaker 1: they don't get all those electoral college votes. Now, if
Speaker 1: electoral college votes in California worked the way they do
Speaker 1: in Nebraska, where in Nebraska you get an electoral college
Speaker 1: vote based on the individual vote within each Nebraska congressional seat,
Speaker 1: that would be a different story. Okay, So that's why,
Speaker 1: like in I think Nebraska and Maine both have this
Speaker 1: where you could get like one of Nebraska's electoral college
Speaker 1: votes rather than all four or five, you can get
Speaker 1: one in Maine is the same way. But that's not
Speaker 1: how California does it. If you win California, you get
Speaker 1: all the electoral college votes. In spite of the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, if you live in Vince Fong's congressional district,
Speaker 1: Vince Fong's congressional district is super duper right wing. But sorry,
Speaker 1: your electoral college vote is still going to Kamala Harris now.
Speaker 1: So Democrats will never go for it, and that's the procedure.
Speaker 1: Congress has to vote for it, and the state legislature
Speaker 1: has to vote for it, and it's never going to happen,
Speaker 1: but it should. And here's why. It's some of the
Speaker 1: stuff we talked about in the first part of the show.
Speaker 1: A good political community is bound together by ties of love, affection,
Speaker 1: and commonality. A good political community has these sort of
Speaker 1: common traits with each other that are formed by being
Speaker 1: from the same place, caring about the same things, working
Speaker 1: the same fields, living in the same spaces, walking the
Speaker 1: same streets. If you walk the same streets as someone,
Speaker 1: you have something in common, you have a bond, there's
Speaker 1: something you share, and that's what a true political community is.
Speaker 1: The music you hear, the songs you sing, the in
Speaker 1: ancient Greece, the gods you worship and maybe here now
Speaker 1: in America, we've made religion and race less important as
Speaker 1: the ties that bind a political community together. In some
Speaker 1: ways that are better than ancient Greece. But to have
Speaker 1: a tie of commonality is what makes you able to
Speaker 1: identify with this other person in that other person, that
Speaker 1: other person, all these people who live in one place.
Speaker 1: It's why it feels weird for you and I. You
Speaker 1: listener and I listen. I talker to say that we
Speaker 1: are from californ I'm a Californian. I don't identify as
Speaker 1: a Californian. What even is a Californian. California is such
Speaker 1: a heterogeneous, diverse place that there's no one thing a
Speaker 1: Californian is. Someone living in a ranch up north near
Speaker 1: the Oregon border has basically nothing to do with someone
Speaker 1: who lives in Beverly Hills, who also is quite different
Speaker 1: from someone who lives in Oakland, who is also quite
Speaker 1: different from someone who lives in Selma. These are wildly
Speaker 1: different places from each other. They have very little who
Speaker 1: is different from someone who lives in Oakhurst Like These
Speaker 1: are wildly, wildly different places from each other that don't
Speaker 1: really have a lot in common. I think someone Monterey
Speaker 1: and Santa Cruz might have some kind of kinship, sort
Speaker 1: of a central coast y kind of kinship, but that's
Speaker 1: you know that they're not gonna feel the same kind
Speaker 1: of kinship with someone from San Diego further south along
Speaker 1: the coast. California is so big, so massive, so diverse,
Speaker 1: and in ways that could be their own state. Okay,
Speaker 1: if you just took Los Angeles County itself has a
Speaker 1: bigger population than many many states. You put La and
Speaker 1: Orange Counties together, they would have a bigger population than
Speaker 1: most states. Probably it would be geographically bigger also than
Speaker 1: many states. Rhode Island is a state things tiny. All
Speaker 1: it's got is Providence, and we sort of allow that.
Speaker 1: We think it's fine. So I just I find the
Speaker 1: sort of incredulity that people have. Oh yeah, yeah, you can't.
Speaker 1: That's ridiculous to cut California up into several states. No,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's ridiculous. I think there's a lot
Speaker 1: of very solid reasons that, yes, it would make sense
Speaker 1: to break it up into several states, especially when you
Speaker 1: think about the economic interests that are so widely different.
Speaker 1: We in the San Joaquin Valley care about agriculture. We
Speaker 1: understand the need for water, We understand the importance of farming.
Speaker 1: We understand the important farming is important to us. But
Speaker 1: we are governed. Our water decisions are often governed our
Speaker 1: environmental decisions. Our farming activity is governed in large part
Speaker 1: by environmental attorneys from San Francisco who view San Jaquin
Speaker 1: Valley farming as a plight, as a blight rather on
Speaker 1: the environment, as something to be wiped out, as a
Speaker 1: blight on the otherwise pristine face of the state of California.
Speaker 1: We are governed by people who are not one of us,
Speaker 1: and that leads to resentment. It leads to bad outcomes,
Speaker 1: It leads to outcomes for our interests being snuffed out.
Speaker 1: Here comes President Trump for the first time in god
Speaker 1: knows how many decades, trying to get some more water
Speaker 1: to San Juquean Valley farmers, with the biological opinions saying, okay,
Speaker 1: for basically, what we'll do with water that's being pumped
Speaker 1: through the Central Valley federal system is we're going to
Speaker 1: monitor rather than just having a set standard that we
Speaker 1: set for the whole year that's really really low and
Speaker 1: really really punitive and keeping it there the whole time.
Speaker 1: We will assess fish populations, how fish are doing throughout
Speaker 1: the course of the year, and we will pump more
Speaker 1: water appropriately. If they're doing well, we can pump more
Speaker 1: towards farming from the delta, will pump more towards farming
Speaker 1: and less towards environmental need when the environmental need is less.
Speaker 1: No President Trump does that to do something to help
Speaker 1: San Juaquean Valley farmers at the urging. I'm sure of
Speaker 1: Devin Nunez and David Valdeo, another San Juan Valley legislators
Speaker 1: who are pushing for this. And what happens our own
Speaker 1: state sues to stop this. Our own state, our own state,
Speaker 1: our state government of US Californians acts in a way
Speaker 1: that's directly hostile to our interests because our state is
Speaker 1: governed by a bunch of people from the Bay Area
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles who just don't give a crap about farming.
Speaker 1: They don't give a crap about us. Fundamentally, we are
Speaker 1: governed by Bay Area environmental lawyers, not by fellow farmers.
Speaker 1: And as long as that's the case, this region is
Speaker 1: never going to have the support it needs for agriculture.
Speaker 1: It just isn't. And this is why I say things like, yes,
Speaker 1: I think we should divide California into different states, because
Speaker 1: our people should be governing our affairs. We are getting
Speaker 1: to a point where we're not, you know, self government
Speaker 1: sounds great until you're just in this permanent minority where
Speaker 1: a whole region that oversees a huge component of the
Speaker 1: American economy, a huge percentage of our agricultural production is
Speaker 1: in the hands of people who actively hate agriculture. When
Speaker 1: we return, how does the Republican Party find the worst
Speaker 1: human beings possible to run as governors and senators? Next
Speaker 1: on the John Girardi Show, So the Republican Lieutenant governor
Speaker 1: of North Carolina who is running for governor. This a
Speaker 1: guy named Mark Robinson. There were news stories hinting that, oh,
Speaker 1: a CNN story is about to drop that's gonna wreck
Speaker 1: this guy's campaign. And he comes out with a little video.
Speaker 1: Here's what he has to say, and then I'll kind
Speaker 1: of explain what it was that was revealed about him.
Speaker 2: Hey, guys, Lieutenant Governor Robinson and your Republican nominee for
Speaker 2: governor as well. Of course, well, guys, that news media
Speaker 2: has added again my opponent is added again. You all
Speaker 2: have seen to have truth and outright lives of Josh
Speaker 2: style these ads over and over again. And now a lead,
Speaker 2: a story leaked by him to see an end is
Speaker 2: up hearing. Now let me reassure you the things that
Speaker 2: you will see in that story, those are not the
Speaker 2: words of Mark Robinson. You know my words, you know
Speaker 2: my character, and you know that I have been completely
Speaker 2: transparent in this race and before.
Speaker 1: So first of all, he sounds like the politicians from
Speaker 1: the movie Oh Brother, Where art thou. Secondly, what was
Speaker 1: revealed is that Mark Robinson was a frequent commentator on
Speaker 1: a pornography chat message board where he was talking about
Speaker 1: his various kinds of appreciation for Adolf Hitler, saying that
Speaker 1: slavery was kind of a good thing, that he would
Speaker 1: have owned some slaves if he could. Of this is
Speaker 1: an African American politician. Were comments from two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine or something, a whole bunch of freaky porn related commentary,
Speaker 1: And he's saying those are not the words of Mark Robinson,
Speaker 1: by which I think he means that's not who I
Speaker 1: am today. And his denial is ah, I'm just plowing ahead. Nope.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna keep going to my campaign. His denial
Speaker 1: is basically not really a denial because clearly those were
Speaker 1: his words. Where does the GOP find these kinds of idiots?
Speaker 1: His whole message is this same kind of just ranting like,
Speaker 1: oh my opponent, oh the lies and the lies and
Speaker 1: dishonesty coming from him, from you know, quoting your own
Speaker 1: words on this chat board when you were still an adult.
Speaker 1: By the way, this not like a twenty year old kid.
Speaker 1: And I guess we'll see if this guy is gonna
Speaker 1: drag Donald Trump down with him to make Trump lose
Speaker 1: North Carolina. It was a very tight rais and very
Speaker 1: competitive this election. That'll do it for John Girardi Show.
Speaker 1: See you next time on Power Talk