Speaker 1: Some of you have seen or heard or read these
Speaker 1: stories about how California is still counting its ballots, and
Speaker 1: people say something like, who is it that you know?
Speaker 1: Name your country? You know India? I saw a static
Speaker 1: this about India.
Speaker 2: The entire country of India counted six hundred million ballots
Speaker 2: casts in their election in one day. But California it's
Speaker 2: taking a whole month to count fifteen million votes. How
Speaker 2: can they do that.
Speaker 1: It's on purpose. This isn't incompetence. It isn't like a failure.
Speaker 1: It's deliberate. It's intentional. They intentionally want the process to
Speaker 1: last long.
Speaker 2: So that.
Speaker 1: Moneyed political interests, the side with more money can have
Speaker 1: the capacity to pull out a win in a tight election.
Speaker 1: Exhibit A. The John Duarte versus Adam Gray race for
Speaker 1: that congressional seat sort of north goes from kinda west side,
Speaker 1: going from through West Fresno County up all the way
Speaker 1: almost approaching Modesto. In Modesto, here's the story about what's happening.
Speaker 1: How Christine Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's daughter of all people, is
Speaker 1: now a key player in this ongoing razor thin tight race.
Speaker 1: And it's ongoing because the votes are still being counted,
Speaker 1: and it has to do with this interesting California process
Speaker 1: of curing ballots that have some kind of mistake. Here's
Speaker 1: the story in GV wire. Christine Pelosi leads charge and
Speaker 1: just get this insanely biased headline, Christine Pelosi leads charge
Speaker 1: to ensure every vote counts in tight Duarte Gray race.
Speaker 1: In a closely contested California House race. Christine Pelosi, daughter
Speaker 1: of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi. Really we're calling her the
Speaker 1: emerita speaker emerita for those who don't know that. The
Speaker 1: title emeritus from male or emerita for a female. That's
Speaker 1: like given to a professor who is like honorably retired
Speaker 1: from their posts, like the speaker, the professor emeritus of
Speaker 1: blah blah.
Speaker 3: Blah, and I I've never heard of anyone being called
Speaker 3: a speaker emeritus other than Nancy Pelosi. All right, anyway,
Speaker 3: daughter of Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, has joined a group
Speaker 3: of volunteers working to quote cure ballots with signature issues.
Speaker 3: The race between Republican Representative John Duarte and Democratic challenger
Speaker 3: Adam Gray in the Central Valley's thirteenth district is separated
Speaker 3: by just two hundred and ten votes as of Friday.
Speaker 3: What do we mean by curing a ballot that has
Speaker 3: a signature issue. Curing involves fixing problems with voters' ballots
Speaker 3: to ensure they can be counted before the December third deadline.
Speaker 3: Pelosi told the San Francisco Chronicle she was quote staking
Speaker 3: out a modesto home hoping to connect with a voter
Speaker 3: whose ballot was rejected due to a signature problem. Elizabeth Churr,
Speaker 3: another San Francisco volunteer, estimates she's cured twenty five ballots
Speaker 3: in the last week. We're also letting you know that
Speaker 3: wasn't spam, because a lot of people get post election
Speaker 3: emails and texts and they just delete them thinking they're spam,
Speaker 3: Pelosi explained to one voter. Both campaigns engaged in curing efforts.
Speaker 3: Both campaigns are engaged in this effort, which could prove
Speaker 3: decisive in the razor thin race. Adam Gray stated, that's
Speaker 3: all part of making sure that every vote is counted.
Speaker 3: So let me explain what's going on.
Speaker 1: California has universal vote by mail, so everyone can turn
Speaker 1: in a mail in ballot and it has a signature requirement. Well,
Speaker 1: if elections officials note some problem with the signature I
Speaker 1: either isn't a signature or the signatures totally don't match up,
Speaker 1: they don't count that vote. What Demo Tucrats have been
Speaker 1: doing is after an election is over, before the sort
Speaker 1: of certification deadline, which is apparently December third, so you know,
Speaker 1: a solid month following the election, Democrats, who have much
Speaker 1: more money than Republicans on the hole in California. And
Speaker 1: by the way, this is a California specific thing. Democrats
Speaker 1: identify these ballots that have been turned in but have
Speaker 1: a problem with them, and reconnect with the voter who
Speaker 1: allegedly turned them in to try to get that voter
Speaker 1: to quote, cure their ballot, fix their ballot, to fix
Speaker 1: whatever signature issue may have existed in order for that
Speaker 1: ballot to then count California did the Democrats in California
Speaker 1: did this earlier this year in March. They had this
Speaker 1: Proposition one. So Proposition one was this ballot initiative. It
Speaker 1: was supposed to fund some kind of like mental health services. Anyway,
Speaker 1: it was something Democrats wanted to pass and this we
Speaker 1: voted on it during the March California primary election. They
Speaker 1: also had this statewide ballot initiative, and it was about
Speaker 1: a fifty to fifty thing. It was very close after
Speaker 1: election night, it was very close. And what did Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom do well? Gavin Newsom wanted this past. Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: has this massive war chest of campaign money that he's
Speaker 1: still got. It's basically leftovers from his recall campaign. And
Speaker 1: this was actually, this is the real flop of the
Speaker 1: effort to recall Governor Newsom is that basically we tried
Speaker 1: to recall Newsom and he was able to fundraise so
Speaker 1: much money off of it that now he's got this
Speaker 1: war chest that he uses for all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: So he used it this money earlier this year on
Speaker 1: a massive statewide Cure your Ballot campaign to help ensure
Speaker 1: that this Proposition one, which was again introduced earlier this year,
Speaker 1: to help make sure that Proposition one got over the
Speaker 1: fifty percent hump. And that's what Democrats are doing. Basically,
Speaker 1: the reason why it takes California a long time to
Speaker 1: count votes is not due to incompetence. It's not because
Speaker 1: people are slow, it's not any of that. It is deliberate.
Speaker 1: This is the deliberate reason why Democrats do. This is
Speaker 1: so they can get these highly sketchy, highly questionable ballots
Speaker 1: that were turned in without a signature or the signature
Speaker 1: didn't match something, take it back to the voter. So,
Speaker 1: oh it didn't go through. Do you want to try
Speaker 1: and fix it? Wink wink, nudge, nudge, hint hint, And
Speaker 1: they they bring it back to these voters and make
Speaker 1: sure that these voters fix their ballot, and then they
Speaker 1: get more and more votes. So this Adam Gray John
Speaker 1: Duarte race. Duarte was leading on election day. d'Arte has
Speaker 1: been leading for most of the time frame since election day,
Speaker 1: but his lead is getting narrower and narrower. He's only
Speaker 1: up two hundred and ten votes. So by the time
Speaker 1: this is all said and done, I mean, they could
Speaker 1: cure enough ballots in this congressional district to maybe get
Speaker 1: Adam Gray over the top. But that's what this is about.
Speaker 1: It's about Democrats in a tight race knowing that they
Speaker 1: have more money, more of a political machine than Republicans
Speaker 1: have in California, almost anywhere in California. They're gonna have
Speaker 1: more resources, more money, more get out the vote efforts,
Speaker 1: more get out the cur your vote efforts, and so
Speaker 1: they would have more of an ability to cure more
Speaker 1: votes and maybe swing an election. That's the whole point
Speaker 1: of this. It's basically institutionalized cheating. Like this is a
Speaker 1: ballot that was incorrectly cast, it shouldn't count. But and
Speaker 1: this is the insanity is first of all, the insanity
Speaker 1: of how the media is framing this. This is a
Speaker 1: San Francisco Chronicle story. I don't know who wrote this
Speaker 1: headline on reading it on GV wire, Christine palo He
Speaker 1: leads charge to ensure every vote counts in tight Duarte
Speaker 1: careers ball You know what, No, she doesn't care about
Speaker 1: every vote being counted. She wants every Democrat vote counted.
Speaker 1: What do you think she's doing. She's not there with
Speaker 1: an altruistic desire for democracy to reign. No, she wants
Speaker 1: to get this Democrat elected in a swing seat. That's
Speaker 1: what she's doing. She's a Democratic Party hack. That That's
Speaker 1: who Christine Pelosi is. She's not interested in the all
Speaker 1: truistic Oh, this poor old Republican farmer out on the
Speaker 1: West Side. He didn't he didn't quite you know, the
Speaker 1: way he signed his handkerchief or whoever. Since he had
Speaker 1: that stroke, his signature hasn't matched, So we got to
Speaker 1: make sure that he's able to vote because his mind's
Speaker 1: still sharp, but his right hand doesn't work so well.
Speaker 1: So so we got to make sure that that old
Speaker 1: Republican farmer who voted for John Duarte got to make
Speaker 1: sure his vote actually count. Because I'm Christine Pelosi, ignore
Speaker 1: my last name. What I care about is democracy in action.
Speaker 1: That's what this is all. No, she's a Democrat hack.
Speaker 1: She wants John Duarte to lose, she wants Adam Gray
Speaker 1: to win. She's out there curing obvious likely Democrat voters ballots.
Speaker 1: That's what she's doing. How they could have written this headline,
Speaker 1: Christine Pelosi leads the charge to ensure every vote counts
Speaker 1: in tight Duarte Gray. No, she doesn't give a she
Speaker 1: doesn't want any Republican vote count. That's not the point
Speaker 1: of what she's doing. I think even she'd tell you
Speaker 1: that she's there to cure the Democrat votes. So, I
Speaker 1: mean that is precisely what is happening. Is that is
Speaker 1: the reason why it takes a long time to count
Speaker 1: the votes in California. It's not. It has nothing to
Speaker 1: do with incompetence, it has nothing to do with Oh,
Speaker 1: they're so slow, how come these No, it's on purpose.
Speaker 1: They deliberately count ballots slowly so that they can cure
Speaker 1: ballots so that Democrats can win. That is it. And
Speaker 1: this is a legal process in California. It's baked into
Speaker 1: California law because the Democrats have written all of our
Speaker 1: election law over the last fourteen years of completely unified
Speaker 1: Democrat ruling California. So again, this is this is all
Speaker 1: on purpose. When we return, I just want to talk
Speaker 1: about how this relates to the idea of the whole
Speaker 1: Democrat push for quote voting rights. As they characterize it
Speaker 1: is nothing more than a subtle cover for let's try
Speaker 1: to institute processes that we think will result in Democrats winning.
Speaker 1: That's next on the John Girardi Show. We're talking about
Speaker 1: Christine Pelosi's efforts in the thirteenth California US the thirteenth
Speaker 1: Congressional district of California, the race between John Duarte and
Speaker 1: Adam Gray. This is the kind of North Valley sort
Speaker 1: of on the west side, going up north towards Modesto
Speaker 1: Congressional District. Christine Pelosi is spearheading the Democrat efforts to
Speaker 1: quote cure ballots, and what that means is this is
Speaker 1: basically the institutionalized form of cheating that Democrats have the
Speaker 1: advantage in in California elections, where basically, if it's really close, Democrats,
Speaker 1: who always have more money, more apparatus, more infrastructure than
Speaker 1: Republicans do. Democrats will take all the ballots that have
Speaker 1: signature issues, all the vote by mail ballots that have
Speaker 1: signature issues, no signature, the signature doesn't match the problem there,
Speaker 1: they will try to go back to their likely voters
Speaker 1: and say, hey, your signature was screwed up. Could you
Speaker 1: try and fix this? And then your votal count and
Speaker 1: then they go back to their voters and they collect
Speaker 1: or vote well after election day. That is why California
Speaker 1: takes a long time to do elections because on purpose,
Speaker 1: we have this ridiculous system where you're able to quote
Speaker 1: cure your ballot when you've cast it inadequately. And this
Speaker 1: relates to the whole rhetoric surrounding Democrats saying that they
Speaker 1: are four voting rights and the way that the media
Speaker 1: has sort of unflinchingly done propaganda work for Democrats to
Speaker 1: talk about how Democrats are trying to vote Democrats are
Speaker 1: pursuing legislation to protect voting rights. Republicans are opposing Democrats
Speaker 1: voting rights legislation. Blah blah blah blah blah, Christine, And
Speaker 1: this has to be the most ridiculous headline of the
Speaker 1: whole year. This gv wire piece, which was this GV
Speaker 1: wire rerunning a San Francisco Chronicle piece where the headline
Speaker 1: and the Again, I don't know if GeV wire wrote
Speaker 1: this headline who or if they're just re doing the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Chronicle headline. Christine Pelosi leads charge to ensure
Speaker 1: every vote counts in tight Duarte Gray race. No, she
Speaker 1: is not interested in getting every vote to count. She's
Speaker 1: a Democrat party hack. She's trying to get Adam Gray
Speaker 1: to win. She's trying to cure all the Democrat ballots
Speaker 1: that are screwed up. She is not trying her best
Speaker 1: to cure, you know, the ballots of some Republican farmer
Speaker 1: from the West Side who obviously voted for John Duarte
Speaker 1: but maybe a signature didn't match because he had a
Speaker 1: stroke or something. And what I'm trying to explain is
Speaker 1: California takes a long time to count its votes. To
Speaker 1: count its ballots after election day on purpose. This is
Speaker 1: an on purpose setup so that Democrats can cure enough
Speaker 1: votes so that they can get themselves over the top
Speaker 1: in the event of a really tight election. It's basically
Speaker 1: an institutionalized way for Democrats to cheat, because in any
Speaker 1: other state, if you had a vote by mail ballot
Speaker 1: come in with a serious signature problem, it just wouldn't count,
Speaker 1: and there wouldn't be an opportunity to quote cure it. Now,
Speaker 1: Democrats when they talk about voting rights, they're talking about
Speaker 1: stuff like this. They're saying that if you're an evil,
Speaker 1: nasty Republican and you think, hey, I don't think we
Speaker 1: should have some process for four weeks after the election
Speaker 1: you being able to fix an obvious signature problem with
Speaker 1: your ballot that you turn in. You didn't follow the rules,
Speaker 1: you didn't put your signature on your ballot. You screwed,
Speaker 1: You've got a huge discrepancy. Sorry, you're sol you know, no,
Speaker 1: you're This ballot is not going to count. A Republican
Speaker 1: saying that in the interest of hey, I can see
Speaker 1: a lot of scenarios where someone could screw around with
Speaker 1: this and how that could threaten the integrity of this vote,
Speaker 1: this ballot that there are a lot of ways for
Speaker 1: a ballot like that to be cast in a way
Speaker 1: that's fraudulent. So in the interest of the security of
Speaker 1: this election, no, you, okay, we'll afford someone a vote
Speaker 1: by mail process, but you got to follow the directions.
Speaker 1: You got to follow the rules. When you're doing vote
Speaker 1: by mail, there is less of a chain of custody
Speaker 1: surrounding that ballot. There's more opportunity for fraud to happen. Ergo,
Speaker 1: we're going to require Okay, we'll let you do a
Speaker 1: vote by mail, but it's got to be done right.
Speaker 1: It's got to be done like this, this, this, and this.
Speaker 1: The ballot's got to come to the county elections office
Speaker 1: by this date. You have to make it in by
Speaker 1: this date. Blah blah, blah blah blah. So a Republican
Speaker 1: saying that Democrats cast that as being anti democratic, opposed
Speaker 1: to voting rights, which is nonsense. What is the norm
Speaker 1: for voting in America? The norm that has been established
Speaker 1: over the last you know, coming up on two hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years of this country's existence. The norm that
Speaker 1: has developed, which is reflected in federal statutes, the norm
Speaker 1: for how an American exercises his or her voting rights
Speaker 1: is voting in person at your precinct at a secret
Speaker 1: ballot booth. That is the norm. That is the favored ideal.
Speaker 1: Everything else has been an extension of that, a concession
Speaker 1: from that ideal. In the light of some kind of
Speaker 1: exigen circumstance or another, you should vote in person on
Speaker 1: election day. The state will grant you some concession to
Speaker 1: vote absentee in the light of some serious circumstance or
Speaker 1: some sort of unavoidable, difficult circumstance. Okay, I myself voted absentee.
Speaker 1: I was a college student in Indiana, but my primary
Speaker 1: residence I still listed it as my home, my childhood
Speaker 1: home in Clovis, California. So I voted absentee. A military
Speaker 1: service member who's deployed to Iraq, okay, well, his home
Speaker 1: is in Topeka, Kansas. So the state of Kansas sends
Speaker 1: it is absentee ballot. Okay, that's fine. But the soldier
Speaker 1: in Iraq voting in Kansas, and the college student in
Speaker 1: Indiana voting in California, they've got to do it right.
Speaker 1: You've got to mail in your ballot by this date.
Speaker 1: You need to fill everything right, you need to seal
Speaker 1: it correctly, you need to sign it correctly. Why because
Speaker 1: the ideal that we've arrived at in America of in
Speaker 1: person at your local precinct, at a secret ballot booth.
Speaker 1: We have determined that is the most secure way to vote,
Speaker 1: the way with the least amount of pressure, the least
Speaker 1: amount of undue outside influence pressuring someone into voting against
Speaker 1: what they actually want. The whole concept of the secret
Speaker 1: ballot was developed in the nineteenth century actually in Australia,
Speaker 1: and it was in response to these Australian elections that
Speaker 1: were just turning into drunken brawls where people would vote
Speaker 1: just sort of out in public and everyone could see
Speaker 1: who you're voting for. So you'd have gangs of hooligans.
Speaker 1: Imagine gangs of Australian hooligans. What could be more terrifying
Speaker 1: beating people up for voting against what they wanted. And
Speaker 1: eventually the Australian authorities were like, this is idiotic. Let's
Speaker 1: just have people vote in private and no one can
Speaker 1: see what you're voting for and is nobody's business. And
Speaker 1: that was such a good idea that within about forty years.
Speaker 1: Basically every English speaking country in the world adopted it, America,
Speaker 1: Great Britain, et cetera. In fact, it was a centerpiece
Speaker 1: of Democrat messaging this election cycle. They had all these
Speaker 1: ads out showing women in Republican coded areas saying, ladies,
Speaker 1: you don't need to do what your husband says. You
Speaker 1: can vote for Kamala Harris. You're in. It's your vote.
Speaker 1: You don't even need to tell your husband. It'll just
Speaker 1: be our little secret. And it's these women voting at
Speaker 1: a at a secret ballot boot. It's like the Democrats
Speaker 1: acknowledge the superiority of this method of voting because it
Speaker 1: keeps you totally free from undue influence, unlike, for example,
Speaker 1: vote by mail, where presumably it's a husband and wife
Speaker 1: in their home, like, hey, you're gonna fill out your ballot,
Speaker 1: let's fill out our ballots or I mean, the secret
Speaker 1: ballot gives you more security than vote by mail. So
Speaker 1: this notion that Republicans are anti democratic because they want
Speaker 1: some kind of limits on Hey, I don't think we
Speaker 1: should be accepting vote by mail ballots that are undated. Hey,
Speaker 1: I don't think we should be accepting vote by mail
Speaker 1: ballots that are arriving well after election day. Hey, I
Speaker 1: think we need to ensure that the signatures on these
Speaker 1: match up. Hey, I think people should present some kind
Speaker 1: of id to ensure that they're actually eligible to vote,
Speaker 1: that they're actually citizens of legal age. Hey, I think
Speaker 1: we should have a registration that happens more than one
Speaker 1: day before the election, just again to ensure that the
Speaker 1: correct people are voting. That is deemed to be undemocratic. No,
Speaker 1: the norm in America is a registered voter voting in
Speaker 1: person at their precinct. Anything else at a secret ballot.
Speaker 1: Anything else that's outside of that is a concession, an extension,
Speaker 1: and if you're going to do it, you have to
Speaker 1: follow the rules. But again, what Democrats have set up
Speaker 1: in California is an institutionalized way for them to basically
Speaker 1: cheat with this whole curing ballot system, which in any
Speaker 1: other context people would just say this is completely ridiculous.
Speaker 1: When we return, the city has been cracking down on
Speaker 1: smoke shops for the last year. Here are the results.
Speaker 1: Next on the John Girardi Show. One pet peeve of mine,
Speaker 1: as someone who read a little bit of American history,
Speaker 1: I won't say I'm an American history buff or anything.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that sort of annoys me
Speaker 1: is kind of the baby boomer accepted wisdom about Prohibition,
Speaker 1: And I don't know that it's even baby boomer accepted wisdom.
Speaker 1: Might have been even pre baby Boomer accepted wisdom. Prohibition
Speaker 1: was the era in American life where, for the results
Speaker 1: of a constitutional amendment, alcohol sales were largely restricted throughout
Speaker 1: the United States of America, and this resulted in a
Speaker 1: number of criminal enterprises of bootlegging, of trying to illegally
Speaker 1: transport alcohol into the United States in order to continue
Speaker 1: selling alcohol to people. The concept of speakeasease and all
Speaker 1: kinds of you know, it's you know, subterfuge, illeg you know,
Speaker 1: quasi illegal legal slash illegal facilities where people would go
Speaker 1: to get a drink became fairly widespread, or at least
Speaker 1: that's the perception we have. And people tend to take
Speaker 1: the historical position that prohibition was silly. It was just
Speaker 1: a bunch of dumb Christians who came up with this
Speaker 1: stupid idea, and it was never enforceable, and so many
Speaker 1: people violated it. It's an example of bad law, and
Speaker 1: it was it was not good. Now, from a historical perspective,
Speaker 1: I think that's a little narrow minded. Let's remember prohibition
Speaker 1: passed as a constitutional amendment. You know how hard it
Speaker 1: is to amend the constitution. You know how much widespread,
Speaker 1: near universal public opinion in favor of something you need
Speaker 1: to have before something can be passed as a constitutional amendment.
Speaker 1: You need two thirds of both houses of Congress and
Speaker 1: then three quarters of all the state legislatures to agree
Speaker 1: on something. So huge majorities of Americans thought this was
Speaker 1: a good idea because rates of alcoholism in this country
Speaker 1: in the late eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds were
Speaker 1: astonishingly high. The number of guys who were just total
Speaker 1: dropouts from society because of alcoholism. It was unfathomable how
Speaker 1: widespread alcoholism was in this country and the kinds of
Speaker 1: social reformers who were fighting against it, many of whom
Speaker 1: were women, by the way, I mean that there were
Speaker 1: you know, let's also remember that with widespread male alcoholism
Speaker 1: came widespread female subjugation, abuse, et cetera. And this was
Speaker 1: in the same era that the that women's suffrage was
Speaker 1: becoming a big deal, and the same kind of movements
Speaker 1: that led to women getting the right to vote via
Speaker 1: the nineteenth Amendment also led to prohibition. It also led
Speaker 1: to other kinds of like efforts to cleanse government or
Speaker 1: to get to ensure more government honesty and transparency. Some
Speaker 1: of the Progressive era reforms in state governments, such as
Speaker 1: state recall mechanisms for recalling public officials who were clearly corrupt,
Speaker 1: ballot initialatives to bypass what people viewed as corrupt state legislatures,
Speaker 1: have the people directly vote on legislation referenda to basically
Speaker 1: try to repeal, have a popular vote by the people
Speaker 1: to repeal something that the state legislature had passed. California
Speaker 1: adopted all of these measures, So prohibition was actually thought
Speaker 1: reasonably by the American people to be a really important thing,
Speaker 1: and rates of alcoholism did drop drastically. The accepted normalcy
Speaker 1: of alcoholism dropped drastically during the Prohibition era. So I'm
Speaker 1: not here to say prohibition was perfect, but there was
Speaker 1: a lot of good that was accomplished by it. Well.
Speaker 1: I think having a more balanced understanding of the marijuana
Speaker 1: issue would be helpful for people because the narrative that
Speaker 1: the dominant sort of libertarian and liberal mindset has been
Speaker 1: is see, California has outlawed marijuana for so much and
Speaker 1: there's just everyone's still smoking weed anyway. There's a underground market,
Speaker 1: so we need we just need to legalize it. And
Speaker 1: if we legalize marijuana, all these problems will go away.
Speaker 1: And marijuana legalization has always been sort of pitched by
Speaker 1: its advocates as it's going to solve all these problems.
Speaker 1: We won't have this underground, illegal black market and all
Speaker 1: the negative stuff that's associated with it, the crime, the cartels,
Speaker 1: the this, the that. No, if we have a legal
Speaker 1: marijuana market, we just bring this black market out into
Speaker 1: the light, have everyone purchase, sell, use marijuana legally. Then
Speaker 1: we won't have this illegal market. And guess what, we
Speaker 1: can tax it. We can generate government revenue. And that
Speaker 1: was always the big selling point for state and local governments.
Speaker 1: Why state and local governments over time and more and
Speaker 1: more state have tended to support legalized marijuana. Why does
Speaker 1: it happen? It's not rocket science. The federal government can
Speaker 1: borrow money, they can deficit spend, they can go into
Speaker 1: the red. They just kind of keep ongoing. But state
Speaker 1: and local governments can't. State and local governments eventually have
Speaker 1: to balance their budgets, and as a result, state and
Speaker 1: local governments are always desperately greedy and acquisitive for new
Speaker 1: forms of revenue, new sources of revenue where they don't
Speaker 1: have to impose more taxes on an unwilling populace who
Speaker 1: will vote them out of office. That this is a
Speaker 1: dynamic that is always the case. It is true of
Speaker 1: local governments and state governments across you know, from sea
Speaker 1: to shining sea. And this is why local governments will
Speaker 1: tie themselves into knots to come up with some dumb
Speaker 1: libertarian rationals. Oh, you, adults will be adults, and they're
Speaker 1: going to smoke weed. They're already smoking weed anyway, so
Speaker 1: we might as well make some money off of it. Well,
Speaker 1: what's happened in California, and specifically in Fresno that's entirely predictable.
Speaker 1: Is imagine this. Imagine if prohibition had ended and they
Speaker 1: still had a bunch of illegal speakeasies operating all over
Speaker 1: the place. That's basically what's happened. We have legalized marijuana shops. Okay,
Speaker 1: there are legal marijuana shops. You can get a license
Speaker 1: to open a marijuana shop. There is legally purchasable marijuana.
Speaker 1: But guess what, potheads off and don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of money, and you know what's cheaper than taxed legal marijuana,
Speaker 1: not taxed illegal marijuana. And so instead of going to
Speaker 1: a legal dispensary, what's happened, Well, smoke shops, which I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've all seen as you drive around, these weird
Speaker 1: smoke shops that provide various kinds of smoking quote paraphernalia,
Speaker 1: have been open and operating, gazillions of them all over Fresno.
Speaker 1: And basically what these businesses were doing is selling pot
Speaker 1: illegally out the back. In fact, the black market in
Speaker 1: non legal marijuana in California is a six billion dollar
Speaker 1: a year industry. So congratulations for solving the problem of
Speaker 1: illegal black market marijuana. Say, oh, marijuana legalization hasn't solved
Speaker 1: that problem one iota. It's still very very very much
Speaker 1: a real problem, a real ongoing problem. Now here's the
Speaker 1: story in GV wire. Basically, the city of Fresno about
Speaker 1: a year ago to say that this is ridiculous. We
Speaker 1: need to crack down on these smoke shops. They are
Speaker 1: blights on the city. People are doing crime, they're basically
Speaker 1: hot beds for crime. People are selling pot illegally in
Speaker 1: the back. Rob Bonta, the Attorney General of California has
Speaker 1: been trying to crack down on this again. Everyone's trying
Speaker 1: to desperately to prop up the failure that is marijuana legalization.
Speaker 1: Fresno Code Enforcement is a piece in GV wire by
Speaker 1: Edward Smith. Fresno Code Enforcement has issued five million dollars
Speaker 1: in citations, found hundreds of pounds of illegal marijuana, and
Speaker 1: uncovered gambling operations, weapons, and evidence of human trafficking. After
Speaker 1: a year of inspecting city smoke shops also discovered eleven
Speaker 1: illegal cannabis cultivation sites and dangerous chemicals seeping into water systems.
Speaker 1: Staff with the Frame has No City Attorney's Office presented
Speaker 1: the program's results at a Fresno City Council meeting on Thursday.
Speaker 1: With support from the State Attorney General's Office, Fresno Code
Speaker 1: Enforcement teamed with city police and fire to inspect one
Speaker 1: hundred smoke shops throughout the city. According to the presentation,
Speaker 1: all the smoke shops inspected, seventy nine percent had illegal cannabis.
Speaker 1: Well seventy nine percent that we know about ninety four
Speaker 1: percent had illegal tobacco, and all of them had code
Speaker 1: violations such as illegal modifications or dangerous electrical upgrades. Fourteen
Speaker 1: of the inspected smoke shops have closed down. City attorney
Speaker 1: Andrew Jans said the program has made the city safer.
Speaker 1: The big reason why we're doing this is to eliminate
Speaker 1: the underground black market for cannabis use in the city,
Speaker 1: said Jans during the meeting. We know that if we
Speaker 1: eliminate the black market, it will have a direct positive
Speaker 1: impact on legitimate cannabis operators to generate revenue and by extension,
Speaker 1: the City of Fresno generating sales tax revenue. I don't know, Andrew,
Speaker 1: I'm not as I mean the in theory, it's if
Speaker 1: people have no black market options to go to, they
Speaker 1: will go to legal dispensaries to buy their pot. I
Speaker 1: don't know that you're going to get around this dynamic though.
Speaker 1: When we return how I just think the entire marijuana
Speaker 1: movement was nonsense and how there's some COVID experiences to
Speaker 1: learn that shed light on that. That's next on The
Speaker 1: John Dibardy Show. During COVID, one of the interesting things
Speaker 1: we learned was the ways in which medical research can
Speaker 1: be politicized and sort of shaded towards favored outcomes. I
Speaker 1: think one of the interesting things we saw was that
Speaker 1: surrounding the use of hydroxychloroquine, which President Trump received when
Speaker 1: he got COVID in twenty twenty, and he was like, Hey,
Speaker 1: I think people should use this hydroxychloroquine, and all these
Speaker 1: literal sides. The president wants people to drink bleach and
Speaker 1: after President's a quack and immediately because Trump said he
Speaker 1: thought it was a good idea ergo hydroxychloro wine was terrible.
Speaker 1: And one of the things we saw was that with
Speaker 1: medical research funding in North America that was coming out
Speaker 1: of Anthony Fauci's sort of division of the National Institutes
Speaker 1: of Health. And Fauci has been sort of famous for
Speaker 1: this for favoring vaccines over treatments, favoring vaccines over sort
Speaker 1: of favoring what he views as preventative vaccines over treatments
Speaker 1: for diseases that already happened. And thus that that being
Speaker 1: his strategy, and he having such influence and oversight for
Speaker 1: American medical research over the last decades, that has been
Speaker 1: where all the research was so most of the North
Speaker 1: American studies about hydroxychloric wine were negative, but European studies
Speaker 1: in places not under the influences of Anthony Fauci were
Speaker 1: much more positive towards it. Does anyone ever stop to
Speaker 1: wonder if all the sort of stuff that was pushed
Speaker 1: out about marijuana, all the stuff pushed out, Oh, marijuana
Speaker 1: is not habit for me, and now marijuana is actually
Speaker 1: not that bad for you, and blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: and here it's actually not that bad of a thing,
Speaker 1: and here's all the reasons why, here's all the research.
Speaker 1: Is anyone ever stopped to question that research. One side
Speaker 1: of the pro marijuana debate had nothing to gain except
Speaker 1: the Christian virtue of saying, hey, this is bad for
Speaker 1: you and the health urge of saying this is bad
Speaker 1: for you. The other side had a whole multi billion
Speaker 1: dollar industry that they were thinking they could get in
Speaker 1: on the ground floor of. So where do you think
Speaker 1: most of the money went, More of the venture capital went,
Speaker 1: more of the money to help fund the research went.
Speaker 1: I guess I just wouldn't be shocked if all of
Speaker 1: that pro legalize marijuana research, The research that the legal
Speaker 1: marijuana side cited if maybe there was something to it
Speaker 1: that that was going to be the favorite outcome all along,
Speaker 1: when really marijuana is worse for you than people think.
Speaker 1: That'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time
Speaker 1: on Power Talk