Speaker 1: I want to talk about homelessness and the difference between
Speaker 1: immediate causes versus long term causes. And there's a Fresno
Speaker 1: Bee story about homelessness in the valley. Homeless population in
Speaker 1: Fresno in Madera up three percent, why that number will
Speaker 1: likely grow.
Speaker 2: It's written by Thaddeus Miller.
Speaker 1: Now the main thrust of the story, so that the
Speaker 1: title is up three percent. You get into the story,
Speaker 1: it says the number of people living unsheltered in the
Speaker 1: region has grown by ten percent over the last count.
Speaker 1: The Fresno Madera Continuum of Care said this week the
Speaker 1: entire homeless population, which includes those in shelters, rose by
Speaker 1: three percent. Okay, so our unsheltered numbers grow by ten percent.
Speaker 1: But the entire homeless population, so that includes people who
Speaker 1: are in fact have some shelter at least for the moment,
Speaker 1: but they're living in they're living in homeless shelters, rose
Speaker 1: by three percent from the last count in twenty twenty three. Officially,
Speaker 1: there were four hundred ninety three homeless people as of
Speaker 1: January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, in the last count
Speaker 1: in the Fresno and Madera tally. A full report on
Speaker 1: this year's tally will be released after the numbers are
Speaker 1: reported to the US Department of Housing in Urban Development
Speaker 1: in June. So, no matter how you slice it, it
Speaker 1: seems as though the number of homeless people is increasing
Speaker 1: in Fresno and Madera. And yet the story Now, there's
Speaker 1: a part of me that's a little skeptical about this.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how reliable these stats are, like.
Speaker 2: That they give.
Speaker 1: You know, the number they give is four four hundred
Speaker 1: and ninety three, not four four hundred and ninety two.
Speaker 1: We're counting skinny Pete, but we're not counting you know,
Speaker 1: Bob who's uh, you know, living on his sister's.
Speaker 2: Couch or something. You know.
Speaker 1: I I feel like it's really hard to actually survey
Speaker 1: the area and actually find out exactly how many homeless
Speaker 1: people there are.
Speaker 2: It's a moving target.
Speaker 1: The whole nature of homelessness is that you're a little
Speaker 1: bit off the grid. You're you're not residing somewhere, you
Speaker 1: don't have a mailbox to respond to a survey of
Speaker 1: are you homeless? So it seems like this is a
Speaker 1: moving target. However, to whatever extent they have metrics, the
Speaker 1: metrics are not looking good, they're all pointing in the
Speaker 1: direction of more homelessness. Well, then the story takes a turn.
Speaker 1: It takes a turn towards criticizing the Trump administration. So
Speaker 1: the news of a growing homeless population Thttius Miller writes
Speaker 1: in Fresno in Madera Counties comes as the Fresno Housing
Speaker 1: Authority raised concerns about proposed federal cuts that could affect
Speaker 1: housing security for many families. Then it goes on to
Speaker 1: sort of have the normal Fresno be complaint about the
Speaker 1: no camping ordinance. Fresno b hates the no camping ordinance.
Speaker 1: On top of that, the city of Fresno has taken
Speaker 1: a more aggressive stance on dealing with homelessness, including making
Speaker 1: arrests of the unhouse if they decline.
Speaker 2: To accept help. Blah blah, blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Officials said the growing number is difficult to pin down
Speaker 1: anyone factor, with the lack of affordable housing, low incomes,
Speaker 1: mental health challenges, and substance abuse disorders all contributing to
Speaker 1: the rise of the same old story. All right, So
Speaker 1: here's the turn. The federal budget proposed earlier this month
Speaker 1: showed significant cuts to programs related to homelessness. After twenty
Speaker 1: twenty five, the Fresno Housing Authority will no longer receive
Speaker 1: funding to support two hundred and sixty Fresno families with
Speaker 1: Federal Emergency housing vouchers, a program that started in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one. Officials from the Fresno Housing ASTHA already said
Speaker 1: that said that the program was originally intended to continue
Speaker 1: through twenty thirty and was funded by the American Rescue
Speaker 1: Plan Act of twenty twenty one. Slashing those five years
Speaker 1: would amount to a fifteen million dollar cut, according to
Speaker 1: the authority. All right, now, this is purely the Fresno
Speaker 1: Bee relaying what the Fresno Housing Authority is complaining about
Speaker 1: about the Trump budget. That the Trump budget is cutting this. Now,
Speaker 1: this would be a little bit of surprise to me.
Speaker 1: The Trump budget, the Reconciliation Bill, the one big Beautiful Bill,
Speaker 1: as they call it, is.
Speaker 2: A spending nightmare.
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's yet another example of Republicans talking
Speaker 1: a big game about fiscal responsibility and spending when they
Speaker 1: are out of power, and then as soon as they
Speaker 1: get into power, they don't do anything to control spending. However,
Speaker 1: so I guess I'm a little surprised that there's going
Speaker 1: to be these massive cut in homelessness. Now, this is
Speaker 1: where I get into the differences between immediate problems versus
Speaker 1: root problems. The Fresno Bee wants to take a little
Speaker 1: potshot at Donald Trump, the Trump administration, Trump's budget. So
Speaker 1: they see, oh, this federal program is getting cut. This
Speaker 1: federal program provides funding for this reresne housing authority. It's
Speaker 1: going to endanger the ability of the PRESNOE Housing Authority
Speaker 1: to provide housing to some of these they say, families.
Speaker 2: Not sure what that means. Does that mean households?
Speaker 3: Does that meaning seemingly I don't know, does that mean
Speaker 3: single people at homeless people like you don't see too
Speaker 3: many homeless families out on the street.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: That strikes me as a little odd that that way
Speaker 1: of expressing it. And therefore it's Trump's fault because we're
Speaker 1: cutting funding for homelessness. Let's ignore the fact that the
Speaker 1: state of California has spent billions and billions of dollars
Speaker 1: on homelessness to seemingly no effect. In fact, it's a
Speaker 1: massive scandal that the Newsom administration has spent billions of
Speaker 1: dollars didn't really track outcomes very well and seemingly has
Speaker 1: had no improvement on homelessness. Here's a CBS News story
Speaker 1: from a year ago. Audit finds California spent twenty four
Speaker 1: billion dollars on homelessness in five years, didn't consistently track outcomes.
Speaker 1: California spent twenty four billion dollars to tackle homelessness over
Speaker 1: the past five years, but didn't consistently track whether the
Speaker 1: huge outlay of public money actually improved the situation. According
Speaker 1: to the state audit released again. This was back in
Speaker 1: April of twenty twenty four, and estimated one hundred and
Speaker 1: seventy one thousand people are homeless in California, which amounts
Speaker 1: to roughly thirty percent of all the homeless people in
Speaker 1: the US. Despite the roughly billions of dollars spent on
Speaker 1: more than thirty homeless in housing programs during the twenty
Speaker 1: eighteen to twenty twenty three fiscal years, California doesn't have
Speaker 1: reliable data needed to fully understand why the problem didn't
Speaker 1: improve in many cities, according to the state auditor's report.
Speaker 1: This report concludes that the state must do more to
Speaker 1: assess the cost effectiveness of its homelessness program, state auditor
Speaker 1: Grant Parks wrote in a letter to Governor Gavin Newsman lawmakers.
Speaker 1: The audit analyzed five programs that received a combine thirteen
Speaker 1: point seven billion dollars in funding. It determined that only
Speaker 1: two of them are likely cost effective, including one that
Speaker 1: converts hotel and motel rooms into housing and another that
Speaker 1: provides housing assistance to prevent families from becoming homeless. Under
Speaker 1: the three point six billion dollar program to convert hotels
Speaker 1: and motel rooms, which is a lynchpin in Newsome's almostness planed,
Speaker 1: the average cost of a room is at least two
Speaker 1: point five times cheaper than building a new home, the
Speaker 1: audit found. Blah blah, blah blah. Anyway, the remaining three programs,
Speaker 1: which received a total of nine point four billion dollars
Speaker 1: since twenty twenty, couldn't be evaluated due to a lack
Speaker 1: of data. So this is the problem with California has
Speaker 1: spent a lot of money on band Aids. I think
Speaker 1: that's the conclusion we should we can maybe draw here.
Speaker 1: California is spending a lot of money on band aids,
Speaker 1: you know, because even I mean, even this idea of
Speaker 1: converting hotel rooms into housing. That's not necessarily a long
Speaker 1: term solution. It's not really addressing the root causes. It's
Speaker 1: getting people off the street, which is good, that's great,
Speaker 1: But I then wonder.
Speaker 2: Well, are you really addressing the root causes? And again
Speaker 2: I have my sort of limited window for dealing with this.
Speaker 2: A home was housing into the setup shop right across
Speaker 2: the street from my office at Blackstone. And you know
Speaker 2: I'm at Blackstone and Griffith. That's where the Right to
Speaker 2: Life office is.
Speaker 1: And it's the old Motel six at Blackstone in Ashland,
Speaker 1: and the back of its parking lot is right across
Speaker 1: the street from me. And they turned that back fence
Speaker 1: of the parking lot for some reason, they turned it
Speaker 1: into a security checkpoint that allows people to come on
Speaker 1: and off the campus to walk on Griffith Avenue. And
Speaker 1: what happened a ton of drug dealers just set up
Speaker 1: shop on Griffith to sell to anybody and everybody from
Speaker 1: the homeless shelter. So what I was realizing looking at
Speaker 1: it was okay, well if this is allowed to continue,
Speaker 1: And I mean I made such a huge stink on
Speaker 1: in the city, calling the cops et cetera, that it
Speaker 1: seemingly is not continuing. If this is just allowed to continue,
Speaker 1: these people have a drug problem, which majorly contributes to
Speaker 1: their homelessness to begin with. They're allowed to maintain their
Speaker 1: drug problem the whole time that they're living in this shelter.
Speaker 1: And this is not a permanent shelter. I think it
Speaker 1: was like it's like a twenty eight day kind of
Speaker 1: temporary housing deal. As soon as they leave the shelter,
Speaker 1: they're still going to have a drug addiction problem. So
Speaker 1: what is that accomplishing.
Speaker 2: Nothing? Here?
Speaker 1: We are we're spending all this money for this particular
Speaker 1: housing project. I don't know exactly what it's funded by.
Speaker 1: I don't know if maybe they're trying to take more
Speaker 1: measures to cut down on people using drugs. They were
Speaker 1: responsive to me when I said, hey, you gotta I'm
Speaker 1: not gonna allow this. I'm not gonna allow your residents
Speaker 1: just to sit on my stoop and litter and all that.
Speaker 1: But if that's how a lot of these homeless shelters
Speaker 1: are maintained, where like drug dealers just kind of roam
Speaker 1: around the perimeter of them to sell drugs to residents,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know how much money was spent
Speaker 1: to convert that motel six into homeless housing. It's got
Speaker 1: to be a lot. It's got to be a lot
Speaker 1: to buy it. It's got to be a lot to
Speaker 1: retrofit it. It's gotta be a lot of construction costs.
Speaker 1: I'm I don't know who funded it. I know it's
Speaker 1: not a city funded thing. I talked with some city
Speaker 1: council members. Nope, Nope, that's not a city thing. So
Speaker 1: I presume it's some kind of state grant. Millions of
Speaker 1: dollars were probably spent on that shelter. And if that
Speaker 1: shelter is not able to do anything to deter any
Speaker 1: of their residents from maintaining a drug problem the whole time,
Speaker 1: that's just going to be money flushed down the drain.
Speaker 1: And that's why I'm a little skeptical of these stories
Speaker 1: about oh, Trump Administration's cutting a homelessness program and that's
Speaker 1: going to lead to people being homeless?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Is?
Speaker 2: It? Really? Is? I sort of wonder.
Speaker 1: I sort of wonder if we're so focused on the
Speaker 1: after the fact band aid that we're not getting the
Speaker 1: root of the problem. We're not really addressing the root
Speaker 1: of the problem. The root problems.
Speaker 2: Are drug use.
Speaker 1: The root problems are the unaffordability of housing in the
Speaker 1: first place. And it feels like that this is a constant,
Speaker 1: this is a constant California thing. We subsidize the demand
Speaker 1: rather than increase the supply. We can't afford to build
Speaker 1: housing for lower income people.
Speaker 2: So what do we do.
Speaker 1: Well, you give a bunch of government subsidies for building
Speaker 1: low income housing. We don't do anything to address the supply,
Speaker 1: Like if you had more supply, the cost would go down. No,
Speaker 1: we don't do any kind of supply side response. Everything
Speaker 1: is subsidizing the demand. That's the case with housing and
Speaker 1: with so many other problems housing or lower income people
Speaker 1: can't afford mortgages. Oh, we have the Rench, We have
Speaker 1: mortgage assistance programs with more federal subsidies for it, more spending,
Speaker 1: more spending, more spending, more subsidies, more subsidies, more subsidies.
Speaker 1: And I think it's nuts. I think it's an after
Speaker 1: the fact way of addressing problems. It's not getting to
Speaker 1: the root. So I guess I'm I'm a little leery
Speaker 1: to say, and especially.
Speaker 2: Because I don't know all the details and and blah blah.
Speaker 1: Blah, I'm a little leery to say, oh, yes, the
Speaker 1: Trump administration, what a bunch of evil jerks for cutting
Speaker 1: this homeless this housing program.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was wise, maybe it wasn't. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but I'm.
Speaker 1: A little loath to say, oh, this cut of money,
Speaker 1: that's the problem. I don't think money is the problem.
Speaker 1: We were spending Jack, we were spending zilch on homelessness,
Speaker 1: you know, thirty years ago, and we had way less
Speaker 1: homelessness in California. Why because it was more affordable to
Speaker 1: live here. So I'm you know, drug proliferation of drugs
Speaker 1: wasn't quite as bad. Maybe I don't know. Maybe it
Speaker 1: was just as bad thirty years ago as far as
Speaker 1: drug problems, but we weren't spending that much thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: and we didn't have the same problem with homelessness. Clearly,
Speaker 1: there is something wrong with our state, and it's with
Speaker 1: our state, with our state and Oregon and Washington and
Speaker 1: New York and Illinois.
Speaker 2: Hmm. Maybe the problem is purely just.
Speaker 1: Electing Democrats all the time. That's the one connective thread
Speaker 1: between everything. So in short, I think this is another
Speaker 1: kind of classic example of making liberal lawmakers feel better
Speaker 1: about themselves by saying we spent fifteen billion dollars to
Speaker 1: address homelessness without actually looking at one, Does that actually
Speaker 1: fix the problem in two?
Speaker 2: Is this not really a.
Speaker 1: Root problems solution. This is just a band aid to
Speaker 1: cover up what's going on when we return how this
Speaker 1: is yet another feather in the cap of good old
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsome. That's next on the John Girardi Show. Homelessness
Speaker 1: is one of the many reasons I just don't see
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsome credibly winning, credibly winning the presidency, credibly even
Speaker 1: winning the Democratic nomination to be president. The state has
Speaker 1: spent under his watch tens of billions of dollars. In
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, they had this audit come out and say, hey,
Speaker 1: you know how we spent like twenty four billion dollars
Speaker 1: over five years on homelessness, and it seems like we
Speaker 1: have no.
Speaker 2: Data to ensure that this was effective at all.
Speaker 1: We didn't even have metrics for ensuring it was effective.
Speaker 1: And by the way, it doesn't seem like it was effective.
Speaker 1: It's it's one of like five or six huge issues
Speaker 1: that I don't see how he recovers from. And my
Speaker 1: mind always goes to the same place the hypothetical CNN
Speaker 1: or MSNBC Democrat primary debate that presumably will be held
Speaker 1: in probably the first one will happen in December of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty seven, November December of twenty twenty seven. And
Speaker 1: he's gonna be up there with maybe Kamala maybe maybe not,
Speaker 1: we'll see, but certainly with Pete Boodagig. He'll be up there,
Speaker 1: maybe JB. Pritzker, Newsom's overweight Illinois twin, maybe Josh Shapiro,
Speaker 1: maybe John Fetterman. Uh, you know, there'll be a smattering
Speaker 1: of god knows, maybe even AOC. The AOC wild card
Speaker 1: is really something to think about, because I think she's
Speaker 1: got some options right now. There are a lot of
Speaker 1: people thinking she could challenge Chuck Chuck Schumer for his
Speaker 1: Senate seat.
Speaker 2: Or she could run for president. So that's the wild card.
Speaker 1: Anyway, you'll have all these other ambitious Democrats up there.
Speaker 1: AOC is ambitious as hell, Josh Shapiros seemingly he is
Speaker 1: ambitious as hell. And I don't know how Newsome is
Speaker 1: able to stand up there and say, oh, I was
Speaker 1: a governor and someone's like, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1: You've been saying you're gonna fight homelessness and address the
Speaker 1: problem of homelessness. You've only been saying it for the
Speaker 1: last eight eight seven, so that's twenty three years. You've
Speaker 1: had twenty three years as a major public official to
Speaker 1: combat homelessness, where you had seven years as mayor of
Speaker 1: San Francisco, eight years as lieutenant governor, eight years as governor,
Speaker 1: and by every metric, homelessness got worse. You spent tens
Speaker 1: of billions of dollars, much of it was spent improvidently
Speaker 1: because you didn't have metrics for ensuring its success or
Speaker 1: ensuring that that it was or wasn't effective even and
Speaker 1: by every metric, homelessness got worse under your watch. And now,
Speaker 1: you know, six and a half years into his governorship,
Speaker 1: Newsom's in this sort of bitter spot where he's sort
Speaker 1: of like now trying to shift the blame to local
Speaker 1: governments because he knows he spent all these billions of
Speaker 1: dollars and it didn't do jack. So he's now trying
Speaker 1: to blame local governments for improvidently administering the money that
Speaker 1: he had the state sent because a lot of these
Speaker 1: programs got administered by you know, counties and cities and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So he's trying to do all these
Speaker 1: like tough, getting tough, like I'm not going to increase
Speaker 1: public union employee salaries for like county and city governments
Speaker 1: unless they demonstrate, you know, that they're using state money well,
Speaker 1: and that's ticking off. That's something that's in his current
Speaker 1: may revision to the budget, and the boy that's really
Speaker 1: ticking off the public sector unions right now.
Speaker 2: They are not happy with that.
Speaker 1: So Newsom has to do this like blame shifting game,
Speaker 1: and there's no way the problem is going to get
Speaker 1: better at some point in the next year and a half.
Speaker 1: So I don't know how he's again do I feel
Speaker 1: like I do this every show. I don't know how
Speaker 1: Newsome stands up there during a Democrat primary debate and
Speaker 1: looks over at.
Speaker 2: Josh Shapiro and have Josh Shapiro or.
Speaker 1: AOC to say to him, you know, you've allegedly been
Speaker 1: the governor of California for eight years and you said
Speaker 1: you were going to tackle homelessness and every metric homelessness
Speaker 1: got worse, and you spent tens of billions of dollars
Speaker 1: to no effect. How how do you come up here
Speaker 1: and lecture the rest of us about what it means
Speaker 1: to be a good leader. How can you dare to
Speaker 1: say that you should take your track record of governing
Speaker 1: one state and expand it to the whole country.
Speaker 2: You are a fraud. I mean, I.
Speaker 1: Don't And by the way, homelessness is not even the
Speaker 1: worst of these issues. Homelessness is one of like five
Speaker 1: issues that are like that for Newsome where I don't
Speaker 1: know what his response will be other than some kind
Speaker 1: of slick used car salesman kind of dodge that he's
Speaker 1: going to try to pull on everybody. But he can't
Speaker 1: do that that long. Eventually he's gonna get nailed to
Speaker 1: the wall by somebody. Someone is going to roast him.
Speaker 1: And that's why I kind of wonder if his I
Speaker 1: wonder if he knows it. I wonder if he realizes
Speaker 1: that he's not really in a good position to run for president,
Speaker 1: but news stories keep coming out that he's interested. When
Speaker 1: we return another episode in people flying enormous flags on
Speaker 1: the side of El Capitan somehow and federal employees pretending
Speaker 1: to have no idea about it, That is next on
Speaker 1: The John Girardi Show. Some of you may remember this
Speaker 1: story from February. It was San Francisco Chronicle reported on
Speaker 1: and a bunch of people reported on it that a
Speaker 1: group of Yosemite National Park staffers hung a big American
Speaker 1: flag upside down on the face of El Capitan in
Speaker 1: Yosemite as a protest to the Trump administration laying off
Speaker 1: a bunch of National Park employees. And at the time
Speaker 1: I remembered feeling that, wow, what a great illustration of
Speaker 1: why these people should be fired. And there was like
Speaker 1: the story came and went and all these questions were
Speaker 1: left lingering.
Speaker 2: So questions such.
Speaker 1: As did federal employees do that on their work time? Like,
Speaker 1: we're paying you to be forest rangers and you're up
Speaker 1: here protesting the Trump administration.
Speaker 2: Did you do that on work time?
Speaker 1: You certainly did it on work land, I mean in
Speaker 1: the National Park where you're supposed to be working. How
Speaker 1: did you get a big old flag to the top
Speaker 1: of El Capitan? That's another thing I wanted to know.
Speaker 1: How logistically was that supposed to work? Also, like, did you,
Speaker 1: as a Yosemite Park employee have special access that allowed
Speaker 1: you to get to the top of El Capitan to
Speaker 1: fly an American flag upside down? Not to mention the
Speaker 1: whole idiocy of remember how the New York Times for
Speaker 1: because Missus Alito flew a American flag upside down because her
Speaker 1: neighbors started yelling at her after January sixth, then basically
Speaker 1: tried to act as though it was Sam Alito's fault
Speaker 1: that January sixth happened for some reason.
Speaker 2: And her neighbors were being mean to her.
Speaker 1: So Missus Alito flew an American flag upside down, and
Speaker 1: this led to all these problems for Justice Alito.
Speaker 2: People saying, oh, the.
Speaker 1: Upside down flag was a symbol of for the stop
Speaker 1: the Steel movement. Now all of a sudden, when it's
Speaker 1: people protesting trumpets, Oh well, it's just kind of a
Speaker 1: generic American symbol for distress.
Speaker 2: Anyway, that whole story came and went.
Speaker 1: I had all these questions that led me to think, well, maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: if this is what the staff at the National Park
Speaker 1: is and does and has time to do apparently, then yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe they probably should have been fired. Well we've got
Speaker 1: another one, folks, We've got another large flag being flown
Speaker 1: on the side of El Capitan. It's written by Abigail
Speaker 1: Anthony and National Review find it odd. I didn't see
Speaker 1: this anywhere in local media. On May twentieth, activists raised
Speaker 1: a massive transgender pride flag on El Capitan in Yosemite
Speaker 1: National Park on Tuesday to protest the Trump administration's LGBTQ
Speaker 1: related policies. I will note it's only the T. The
Speaker 1: Trump administration seems totally the hunky dory with the L
Speaker 1: and the G and the B, possibly the Q.
Speaker 2: They just don't like the T.
Speaker 1: By the way, the greatest marketing UH coup of all
Speaker 1: time was how transgender activists whatever managed to stick the
Speaker 1: T in with the L and the G and the B. Because, look,
Speaker 1: I think maybe there are some philosophical reasons why it
Speaker 1: kind of makes sense for them to be together. But frankly,
Speaker 1: just at the level of American public opinion, Americans are
Speaker 1: probably at this point for the most part, don't really
Speaker 1: care that much about the L and the G. Wait
Speaker 1: a minute, the L the B. Yeah, the L, the
Speaker 1: G and the B. Americans don't care too much about it.
Speaker 1: They are mostly accepting of it. The T is like
Speaker 1: a whole different ballgame. Though the T sort of inherently
Speaker 1: involves beyond like social stuff. It involves hormonal treatments, and
Speaker 1: surgeries and all kinds of things like that that I
Speaker 1: think a lot fewer people are okay with, and the
Speaker 1: idea of that the left treats them all as of
Speaker 1: a piece when the American people have very different views
Speaker 1: about the leg, the G and the B versus the T.
Speaker 1: It's really one of the great sort of marketing coups
Speaker 1: of all time to act as.
Speaker 2: Well you're opposed to LGBT people.
Speaker 1: When someone's like, hey, I don't think that we should
Speaker 1: give a permanent life altering surgery to a twelve year
Speaker 1: old who.
Speaker 2: Is kind of confused.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's an amazing coup that they had, although it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem to be working as the Trump administration is.
Speaker 2: Basically, I think what this is in response to is
Speaker 2: the One Big Beautiful Bill, the OBBB as I call it,
Speaker 2: which my wife hates that name.
Speaker 1: She thinks it's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It is kind of ridiculous, but I think it's a
Speaker 2: little catchy.
Speaker 1: The Reconciliation Bill that the Trump administration just passed includes
Speaker 1: cutting off various forms of federal funding, I think chiefly
Speaker 1: Medicaid and possibly Medicare funding.
Speaker 2: For transgender interventions.
Speaker 1: So that's not going to be covered by Medicare Medicaid
Speaker 1: at least Medicaid, And that was kind of a point
Speaker 1: that was a little bit up in the air with
Speaker 1: the OBBB, was would it cut those things? Would it
Speaker 1: only cut it cut those kinds of interventions for miners,
Speaker 1: but still cover it for adults.
Speaker 3: No.
Speaker 1: Actually, the final version that was passed by the House
Speaker 1: includes cuts for everyone, for adults, children, et cetera. It's
Speaker 1: not The federal government is not going to be in
Speaker 1: the business of funding transgender interventions, which I think is great.
Speaker 2: I don't think they are healthcare.
Speaker 1: I don't think they have much evidence behind them that
Speaker 1: they actually help improve any outcomes for people. In fact,
Speaker 1: that's why the United Kingdom has stopped doing those interventions
Speaker 1: for miners, because the data was not there that it
Speaker 1: was helpful. This is my sort of insight. This is
Speaker 1: like the one advantage of a socialized medicine setup that
Speaker 1: the UK has in America doesn't well. With the socialized
Speaker 1: medicine setup. You're not as driven by the almighty dollar,
Speaker 1: You're not as driven by the direct profit motive for
Speaker 1: a given service. Individual doctors are not so incentivized, so,
Speaker 1: as a result, the urge to do a procedure that
Speaker 1: will make you a ton of money but doesn't actually
Speaker 1: have any long term benefit. That urge isn't as much
Speaker 1: there in the UK as it is in America. In America,
Speaker 1: those kinds of surgeries, those kinds of interventions, make bank,
Speaker 1: and so the docs who do them, I think, are
Speaker 1: more willing to overlook the evidence, spin the evidence to
Speaker 1: say that it's good and useful, when really the evidence
Speaker 1: is indicating it it's not doing anything. I mean, you're
Speaker 1: doing these interventions seemingly for someone's mental health, which is
Speaker 1: already a bit dicey to do a surgery for somebody's
Speaker 1: mental health, and to do a surgery on a healthy
Speaker 1: body for someone's alleged mental health problems, and it's not
Speaker 1: even really helping those mental health problems. The outcomes are
Speaker 1: just not there as a positive. But of course, the
Speaker 1: way that the pro transgender left acts is if you
Speaker 1: don't provide children with these kinds of hormonal interventions.
Speaker 2: Or surgeries, this child will kill him or herself. That's
Speaker 2: the kind of fear mongering they do.
Speaker 1: In the UK, they stop doing it because the profit
Speaker 1: motive isn't quite as much there for doctors or professional
Speaker 1: Associations of doctors and they just looked at the data
Speaker 1: and said, Nope, we're not doing it. So in the
Speaker 1: UK they don't do intervention. They don't do trans interventions
Speaker 1: on kids in the UK.
Speaker 2: Anyway.
Speaker 1: So in this case with the flag, this is the
Speaker 1: again the pro transgender pride flag, which if you're not
Speaker 1: up to speed on your L and G and B
Speaker 1: and T flags, this is the one that's blue and pink.
Speaker 1: It's a blue horizontal stripe, pink horizontal stripe, white horizontal stripe,
Speaker 1: pink horizontal stripe.
Speaker 2: Blue horizontal stripe.
Speaker 1: You know, because there's boys and there's girls, and you
Speaker 1: can switch and then maybe there's white that's sort of
Speaker 1: in the middle. Who knows, which, by the way, is
Speaker 1: a classic symbol for the transgender movement, which is basically
Speaker 1: boiled down what it means to be man, what it
Speaker 1: means to be a woman, to stereotypes like if you've
Speaker 1: got a boy who plays with a Barbie doll a
Speaker 1: little bit too much, they'll start thinking that this boy
Speaker 1: is transgender. If you've got a girl who's like, you know,
Speaker 1: a tomboy, they might start thinking that that girl is transgender,
Speaker 1: even though it's like This is a very surface level
Speaker 1: concept of what it means to be a man or
Speaker 1: what it means to be a woman, which you know,
Speaker 1: thirty years ago people would have said was horribly outdated
Speaker 1: and sexist, that yes, you can be a girl and
Speaker 1: be rough and tumble and a tomboy and like sports
Speaker 1: and getting in the mud and playing with frogs and stuff,
Speaker 1: and you know, still be a girl, still be a woman.
Speaker 1: You can be a boy and enjoy you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, things like ballet or the fine arts or
Speaker 1: poetry or whatever.
Speaker 2: And yes you can still you are still a boy.
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean you're not a boy.
Speaker 1: Now we've got this Pride flag raised on the side
Speaker 1: of El Capitan. This time it doesn't seem like it
Speaker 1: was done by Yosemite National Park staff, which at the
Speaker 1: very least seems like an improvement. It was a protest
Speaker 1: done by let's see the demonstrators raise the flag claim
Speaker 1: it is fifty five feet by thirty five feet. It
Speaker 1: was hung fifteen hundred feet up El Capitan on the
Speaker 1: Heart ledges between eight am and ten am Pacific time.
Speaker 1: It remained on display until about noon. Images shared by
Speaker 1: some of the activists show that statements like free Palestine,
Speaker 1: b gay do crime, trans people Save lives, and trans
Speaker 1: is beautiful were written on the flag in black marker Ah. Yes,
Speaker 1: the Palestinians notably accepting of transgenderism. With this historic unfurling,
Speaker 1: climbers reclaim space in the heart. Literally, the flag hangs
Speaker 1: on the recognizable heart ledges on l Capitan Wall in Yosemite,
Speaker 1: said the activists in a press release. The nonprofit organization
Speaker 1: called the Outdoorist Oath, which promotes an action based commitment
Speaker 1: for planet inclusion and adventure. The organization says asks members
Speaker 1: to take an oath which includes acknowledging climate change, committing
Speaker 1: to advocacy for environmental justice, and recognizing the systemic oppression
Speaker 1: in real that that systemic oppression is real, and that hatred,
Speaker 1: discrimination and biases marginalized people the hatred and discrimination biases
Speaker 1: of those evil Christian right wingers whom were allowed to
Speaker 1: hate with all of our fury.
Speaker 2: Marginalized people.
Speaker 1: Don't think that your marginalize is a Christian By acting
Speaker 1: like that, the Outdoorist Oath organization raises awareness about conduct
Speaker 1: like microaggressions in the outdoors. What is an outdoor microaggression?
Speaker 1: If I pee behind a tree? Is that a microaggression anyway?
Speaker 1: It hosts activism workshops those sound like a real blast
Speaker 1: called Stretch sessions, including sessions on white supremacy.
Speaker 2: Boy, I'd love to sign up for one of those.
Speaker 1: One of their members is a drag queen named Patty Gonia,
Speaker 1: who was named by National Geographic as one of it's
Speaker 1: nine Travelers of the Year in twenty twenty four. So
Speaker 1: I continue to wonder, though, Okay, you got this humongous
Speaker 1: flag on the side of El Capatan?
Speaker 2: Was there?
Speaker 1: Did did Yosemite Park staff help at all? Did they
Speaker 1: get more access to it as a result of maybe
Speaker 1: being friendly with the Yosemiti Park staff? The park staff
Speaker 1: said they took it down as soon as they could.
Speaker 1: It was up there for four hours, so was it
Speaker 1: as soon as they could. They don't have anyone on
Speaker 1: the top of El Capitan who could, like maybe tell people, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do this, stop it.
Speaker 2: Maybe not, I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yet again, flying your flag from the side of El
Speaker 1: Capitan influencing basically nobody? All right, when we return, something
Speaker 1: interesting happening at Buchanan High School next weekend high school
Speaker 1: Track and Field Championships in which a boy is going
Speaker 1: to win a bunch of the girl events.
Speaker 2: Next on the John Girardi Show.
Speaker 1: So next weekend at Buchanan High School is going to
Speaker 1: be the CIF the California Interschalactic Federation statewide Track and
Speaker 1: Field Championships, and so you'll have kids doing all kinds
Speaker 1: of track and field events. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: these events, the high jump, the long jump, and the
Speaker 1: triple jump, in which a male athlete who identifies as
Speaker 1: a female has dominated the Southern California sort of run
Speaker 1: up events to these championships, and there will be this
Speaker 1: biological male competing in the female events, a biological boy
Speaker 1: who goes by a b Hernandez. He is in some
Speaker 1: of these events completely dominantating the girls. And it again,
Speaker 1: it's this ridiculous situation that that's going to be on
Speaker 1: display right here in Buchanan. And again this is just
Speaker 1: to reinforce to maybe Clovis Unified parents, A lot of
Speaker 1: close Unified parents seem to think that Clovis Unified is
Speaker 1: immune to the liberal absurdities that we see in California
Speaker 1: public education all up and down the street. And I
Speaker 1: guess they think that the ghost of Doc Buchanan, Saint
Speaker 1: Doc hovers over close Unified to protect it from all liberalism.
Speaker 2: And he doesn't cloves. Unified is.
Speaker 1: Every bit as required to comply with state laws about
Speaker 1: transgenderism and transgender participation in sports and blah blah blah
Speaker 1: blah blah as any other school district in the country.
Speaker 2: And it'll be on display at Buchanan High.
Speaker 1: School next week where there's going to be a who's
Speaker 1: gonna kick everyone's butt in long jump high jump events?
Speaker 2: That'll do it. John Girardi Show, see y'all next time
Speaker 2: on Power Talk