Speaker 1: I've made the point repeatedly on the show that there
Speaker 1: are a lot of problems in California where everyone fully
Speaker 1: understands what the problem is, what the solution is, and
Speaker 1: just decides not to solve it. And by everyone, I
Speaker 1: guess what I really mean is the Democrats were in
Speaker 1: the majority. They fully completely understand, particularly when it comes
Speaker 1: to gas prices, energy costs, that it's their environmental policies.
Speaker 1: Their environmental policies make gasoline more expensive, their emission standards
Speaker 1: requiring California to have its own special blend of gas
Speaker 1: that's put into you know, that's put into your car
Speaker 1: from the pump, their specific high gasoline taxes. That's the
Speaker 1: reason why gas prices are high in California. It's not
Speaker 1: a mystery. It's not some gas companies are greedy, but
Speaker 1: just in California. For some reason, once you cross the
Speaker 1: border into Arizona, Nevada or Oregon or something, they all
Speaker 1: of a sudden become less greedy. No, it's California's own
Speaker 1: policies that make gas and all kinds of other things
Speaker 1: much more expensive. It's California's own policies that make it
Speaker 1: more difficult to build in California, and I think a
Speaker 1: phenomenal piece about this. Just read a phenomenal piece about
Speaker 1: this in the California Globe written by John Fleischman. Now,
Speaker 1: John Fleischmann is a very interesting writer that I recommend
Speaker 1: to all of you. You can find him on Twitter.
Speaker 1: His Twitter account is at flash Report. Fleischmann used to
Speaker 1: run Brightbart's sort of California specific web page that was
Speaker 1: back in the day when Andrew Breitbart was still alive.
Speaker 1: And he's a very smart guy and a very shrewd
Speaker 1: commentator on sacrament on California politics. I got to hear
Speaker 1: him speak one time about California politics, about Sacramento politics,
Speaker 1: and like California state politics, not local Sacramento politics, and
Speaker 1: uh he honestly, like, in one talk I got to
Speaker 1: fully understand all the dynamics of how politics works in Sacramento,
Speaker 1: how much the labor unions completely run everything in Sacramento,
Speaker 1: how they are the driving force in California politics. He's
Speaker 1: a brilliant guy, and he has a great piece about
Speaker 1: California's carbon crusade. California's carbon crusade a reckless assault on prudence.
Speaker 1: California's leaders let the poor subsidize their eco fantasies, driving
Speaker 1: misery for minimal gain. California's single state war on human
Speaker 1: produced carbon emissions is a case study in policy without prudence.
Speaker 1: From Sacramento lawmakers til tech climate windmills, imposing draconian measures
Speaker 1: that harm residents while achieving little globally. The state's cap
Speaker 1: and trade program, punishing electricity taxes and regulatory over each
Speaker 1: drive up costs for those least able to afford them,
Speaker 1: exacerbate the housing crisis, and ignore the irony of wildfires
Speaker 1: dwarfing their efforts. This column critiques the worst of their policies,
Speaker 1: highlighting their futility against the backdrop of California's self inflicted woods.
Speaker 1: So first he talks a little bit more about the
Speaker 1: cap and Trade program, which I'll confess I was. I'm
Speaker 1: not super familiar with it, but it I had not
Speaker 1: been super familiar with it up to this point, but
Speaker 1: he kind of explains it a little bit. The Cap
Speaker 1: and Trade aid program, which is billed as a market
Speaker 1: based fix for emissions, is a bureaucratic mess. The Cap
Speaker 1: and Trade program what it does is it puts a
Speaker 1: cap on total emissions and it lets companies trade allowances
Speaker 1: to pollute within that limit. Okay, so we have a
Speaker 1: certain limit. Companies are allowed to pollute up to that limit,
Speaker 1: but companies are allowed to trade with each other allowances.
Speaker 1: In reality, it's a hidden tax inflating costs for businesses
Speaker 1: that trickle down to consumers. A twenty twenty three study
Speaker 1: pegged its impact at ten to fifteen cents per gallon
Speaker 1: of gasoline. So it's another policy decision on California's part
Speaker 1: that makes all kinds of energy, but including you know,
Speaker 1: gas at the pump, about ten to fifteen cents more expensive.
Speaker 1: So emission standards add this much. Cap and trade adds
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen cents on the ten to fifteen cents
Speaker 1: per gallon gas taxes in California add another you know,
Speaker 1: chunk of money, which is painful in a state with
Speaker 1: high Cap and Trade impacts the price of gasoline by
Speaker 1: ten to fifteen cents per gallon, which is painful in
Speaker 1: a state with already sky high fuel prices, while hiking
Speaker 1: electricity and heating bills. Small businesses drown in compliance costs,
Speaker 1: while corporate giants game the system. For all this, the
Speaker 1: climate impact is negligible. California produces less than one percent
Speaker 1: of global CO two, and even zeroing out its emissions
Speaker 1: wouldn't sway the global trend when nations like China add
Speaker 1: coal power plants weekly. Yet policy makers cling to this scheme,
Speaker 1: oblivion to its regressive sting as if symbolic wins trump
Speaker 1: real world harm. That this is this is why, this
Speaker 1: is like a limit of federalism. Why does any state
Speaker 1: have like emissions regulations like the idea emissions regulations that
Speaker 1: are designed to help like the global ozone the global
Speaker 1: trends of carbon based warming. Flash makes this point throughout
Speaker 1: the piece. California the sixth biggest economy or whatever is
Speaker 1: the the stat that Gavenusom always likes to trump. California
Speaker 1: is like the sixth biggest economy in the world just
Speaker 1: on its own, if considered separately from the United States,
Speaker 1: it pretty use is less than one percent of global
Speaker 1: CO two. So we are killing ourselves with environmental regulation
Speaker 1: for something that's not really impacting much of anything. I mean,
Speaker 1: we only we have forty million people. There are eight
Speaker 1: billion people on the planet. We're not really changing much.
Speaker 1: We're a relative I mean, if you're looking at the
Speaker 1: globe as a whole, we're a relatively small part of
Speaker 1: this continent. The idea that we are saving the environment
Speaker 1: by killing our businesses by regressively putting the costs for
Speaker 1: environmental compliance on lower income people paying the tax of
Speaker 1: the pump. You know this is it's the the idea
Speaker 1: of a regressive versus a aggressive tax. Okay. A progressive
Speaker 1: tax system is where people at the higher end of
Speaker 1: the wealth spectrum pay a greater percentage of their wealth.
Speaker 1: Why well, if someone who only has ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: has to spend ten percent of their wealth on taxes.
Speaker 1: So someone only has ten thousand dollars left to their name,
Speaker 1: they're not They're not in good shape. Okay. If they
Speaker 1: have to give the government one thousand dollars in taxes,
Speaker 1: that's a huge blow to them. If someone with a
Speaker 1: billion dollars has to give even fifty percent of their
Speaker 1: wealth away to the government in taxes, well, they've still
Speaker 1: got five hundred million dollars. They're fine. Their quality of
Speaker 1: life has not been impacted. There are no basic necessities
Speaker 1: that they are being shortchanged out of, even though they
Speaker 1: are being taxed at a much higher percentage. So that
Speaker 1: is a progressive taxation system. And I don't think it's
Speaker 1: supposed to carry like progressive is a very positive sounding word.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's the idea. It's just that as
Speaker 1: you gain more money, you progress in your rate of
Speaker 1: how much you pay. That's a progressive tax system. A
Speaker 1: regressive tax system would say everyone pays forty percent. Okay,
Speaker 1: well again, someone with a billion dollars paying forty percent
Speaker 1: is really not going to be hurt very much. But
Speaker 1: someone who's only making, you know, fifty thousand dollars a year,
Speaker 1: they need that forty percent much more badly than the
Speaker 1: guy with a billion dollars. Flat taxes, one could a
Speaker 1: flat tax where everyone's tax at the same rate can
Speaker 1: be deemed regressive. And sales taxes, taxes on basic necessities
Speaker 1: like gas or food, those are regressive because it's more
Speaker 1: burdensome for someone on the lower end of the income spectr.
Speaker 1: I mean, everyone has to drive, or most people anyway,
Speaker 1: have to drive for their work. People who only make
Speaker 1: forty thousand dollars a year have to drive to work
Speaker 1: just the same as you know, a fancy schmanaged lawyer
Speaker 1: who makes two million dollars a year. High gas costs
Speaker 1: impact the guy making forty thousand dollars a year worse
Speaker 1: than it does the lawyer making two million a year
Speaker 1: driving his corvette. You know, even if the guy with
Speaker 1: the corvette is pumping in premium gasoline and has a
Speaker 1: car that gets terrible gas mileage. In fact, i'd given
Speaker 1: how much remote work is being done by a white
Speaker 1: collar workers nowadays, I'd venture the lower income guy probably
Speaker 1: is has to drive more than the upper income person,
Speaker 1: all things being equal. So this is that's sort of
Speaker 1: the inegalitarian aspect of what California does. We lump so
Speaker 1: many of our costs on. We have all these costs
Speaker 1: associated with our environmentalism that are disproportionately burdening the middle
Speaker 1: and lower socioeconomic classes. Rich people in the Bay Area
Speaker 1: are fine with it. Rich people in you know, Beverly
Speaker 1: Hills or whatever, they're fine, but not lower income people
Speaker 1: who have to you know, on whom those burdens are
Speaker 1: far heavier. Small businesses drown and compliance costs, while corporate
Speaker 1: giants gain the system. For all this, the climate impact
Speaker 1: is negligible. California produces less than one percent of global
Speaker 1: CO two, and even zuring out its emissions won't sway
Speaker 1: the global trend. Yeah, I mean we're killing ourselves to
Speaker 1: one hundred percent of all new car sales in California
Speaker 1: by twenty thirty five are going to be electric vehicles. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: China's just polluting like crazy, just dumping, you know, producing
Speaker 1: coal power plants, just dumping more pollutants into the environment
Speaker 1: than we even know about it. Said, I'd be like,
Speaker 1: what is the point of us breaking our back if
Speaker 1: India and China are going to be these massive polluters.
Speaker 1: Electricity prices already crushing showcase California's disdain for affordability, at
Speaker 1: thirty two cents per kilowatt hour in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: which is double the national average. The state's rates stem
Speaker 1: from relentless regulations in taxes. Mandates for wind and solar,
Speaker 1: which demand costly grid upgrades for their intermittency, and the
Speaker 1: phase out of reliable natural gas plants have triggered blackouts
Speaker 1: like those in twenty twenty and twenty twenty two. Low
Speaker 1: income households suffer the most. A twenty twenty four California
Speaker 1: Public Utilities Commission report found one in four families struggle
Speaker 1: with electric bills, many facing shutoffs. One in four families
Speaker 1: wow prudence would balance green goals with keeping the lights on,
Speaker 1: but California's leaders let the poor subsidize their eco fantasies,
Speaker 1: driving misery for minimal gain. This war on carbon also
Speaker 1: fuels California's housing crisis, a catastrophe of affordability made worse
Speaker 1: by reckless policy, stringent environmental regulations layered atop emissions goals
Speaker 1: in flight construction costs. The California Environmental Quality Act my favorite,
Speaker 1: often weaponized to block development, delays projects for years, adding
Speaker 1: legal and compliance expenses estimated at one hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: per housing unit in some cases. Wow estimating here. I
Speaker 1: guess some people are estimating. He's citing them that SEQUA.
Speaker 1: I've talked about SEQUA a bunch of times on the
Speaker 1: show before. The idea with SEQUA is basically, anybody can
Speaker 1: sue someone starting some kind of construction, real estate project,
Speaker 1: real estate project, any kind of business, construction project on
Speaker 1: the grounds that it's environmental impact study is insufficient. And
Speaker 1: it's been used a lot by these left wing nonprofits
Speaker 1: to stop construction they don't like on some kind of
Speaker 1: environmental grounds. I thought the craziest example of this was
Speaker 1: back in December when they stopped construction of a hydrogen
Speaker 1: power plant, a zero emissions green energy hydrogen power plant
Speaker 1: that Gavin Newsom is like desperately hoping we can build
Speaker 1: more of these in California. That was going to be
Speaker 1: built in Pixley on the grounds of what Pixley For
Speaker 1: those of you who don't know, maybe you're in the
Speaker 1: North Valley and you're not familiar with Pixley. Pixley is
Speaker 1: basically a pit stop on the ninety nine, kind of
Speaker 1: in between where you would turn off on one ninety
Speaker 1: eight to go to Icelia. In between there and Bakersfield.
Speaker 1: Pixley is a tiny little town. It just kind of
Speaker 1: straddles the ninety nine. They stopped construction of this green
Speaker 1: energy hydrogen power plant on the grounds that well, it
Speaker 1: would lead to more trucks coming into Pixley to drop
Speaker 1: off I guess the raw hydrogen, liquid hydrogen or something.
Speaker 1: More trucks coming into Pixley and would lead to more
Speaker 1: truck pollution. Pixley is nothing but truck pollution. Then ninety
Speaker 1: nine goes right through the The whole town just kind
Speaker 1: of straddles the ninety nine. The whole town is there's
Speaker 1: no part of the town that's more than like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, half a mile away from the ninety nine.
Speaker 1: That's all Pixley is. It's the ninety nine. You know
Speaker 1: how many gazillions of trucks go through Pixley every year,
Speaker 1: every every day, Oh but a few will park at
Speaker 1: a power plant every day. That's that's what's gonna change
Speaker 1: the whole environmental outlook of Pixley to make a green
Speaker 1: energy power plant. That's the kind of insanity we're talking about.
Speaker 1: All of these housing construction projects that can get stopped
Speaker 1: with one jerky lawsuit that some left wing nonprofit wants
Speaker 1: to file to make a name for itself. All right,
Speaker 1: we'll keep going through this piece again. You can find
Speaker 1: it at my Twitter account, Twitter dot com, slash president
Speaker 1: Johnny at President Johnny next on the John Girardi Show.
Speaker 1: A great piece in the California Globe, a website i'd
Speaker 1: like to recommend to you, by the way, I just
Speaker 1: stumbled across. It seems to be kind of a conservative
Speaker 1: leaning California news and opinion site. John Fleischmann has a
Speaker 1: great piece in it. John Fleischman is Everyone should follow him.
Speaker 1: Go to Twitter, go to x I can't call it X.
Speaker 1: I just I'd rather have Elon Musk own Twitter than
Speaker 1: the people who owned it before. But I hate the
Speaker 1: X brand. I think it's so dumb anyway, But you know,
Speaker 1: he's got several hundred billion dollars more than I do,
Speaker 1: so maybe he knows what he's doing. Anyway. Go to
Speaker 1: Twitter dot com, look up at flash report. That's John Fleischman.
Speaker 1: He's a great commentator on California political stuff. Used to
Speaker 1: be Andrew bright Bart's main guy for California stuff. Check
Speaker 1: him out, or just go to my Twitter account and
Speaker 1: I've got the story retweeted. He's talking about California environmental
Speaker 1: law and the variety of ways in which California just
Speaker 1: completely fails the test of prudence, Like, Okay, you want
Speaker 1: to help the environment, but you're putting all these costs
Speaker 1: on people in California. You're making California just incredibly difficult
Speaker 1: to live in to what benefit. Meanwhile, he writes, so
Speaker 1: after going through all these different ways, you know, the
Speaker 1: cap and trade system, gas prices, SEQUA, and how SEQUA
Speaker 1: could add one hundred thousand dollars of costs per housing
Speaker 1: unit in some cases. He then goes on to address
Speaker 1: wildfires and the fact that because we've had so many wildfires,
Speaker 1: it's basically completely undone whatever benefit accrued from all the
Speaker 1: state's environmental policies put together, wildfires mock the state's efforts,
Speaker 1: spewing carbon far beyond what regulations curb. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: Do y'all remember the summer of twenty twenty when basically, uh,
Speaker 1: it was COVID, so everything was a bunch of stuff
Speaker 1: was closed. And then we had all the wildfires and
Speaker 1: the whole San Juaquin Valley basically looked like Mordor for
Speaker 1: a solid month. You got outside and the sun was
Speaker 1: glowing and the evil orange in your car. If you
Speaker 1: parked your car outside, it was covered with ash. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was fun or or whatever it was. In twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: fires released one hundred and twenty seven million metric tons
Speaker 1: of CO two equivalent, triple California's annual industrial emissions. Decades
Speaker 1: of forest mismanagement, including restricted burns and logging bands so
Speaker 1: bands on restricted burns and logging have left landscapes primed
Speaker 1: to blaze. Yet instead of tackling this, Sacramento fixates on
Speaker 1: tailpipes and power plants. It's like mopping the floor in
Speaker 1: a fl blood resources squandered on optics while forests burn.
Speaker 1: Prudence would fund fire breaks and brush clearing, but California's
Speaker 1: carbon tunnel vision prevails. Contrast this with the Trump administration's
Speaker 1: pragmatic energy policies from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty one
Speaker 1: and resuming in twenty twenty five. Trump prioritized domestic production oil, gas, coal,
Speaker 1: and cut red tape, lowering electricity costs and boosting self sufficiency.
Speaker 1: You know, that's the thing California. I've heard this point
Speaker 1: maybe before. California has a bunch of oil. We have
Speaker 1: oil that we can get, We have ways of generating
Speaker 1: power just from our own state, but we refuse to
Speaker 1: take advantage of it. And as a result, we then
Speaker 1: have to get oil and other sources of energy from abroad,
Speaker 1: from like Saudi Arabia and stuff. And last I checked,
Speaker 1: oil doesn't get from Saudia Arabia to here in a
Speaker 1: carbon zero fashion. There are no green shipping cruiser, you know,
Speaker 1: the the enormous shipping vessels that have you know, eight
Speaker 1: hundred like truck, you know the big things that the
Speaker 1: big rectangle things that eighteen wheelers are carrying those things,
Speaker 1: the big truck containers. Yeah, they're that are carrying you know,
Speaker 1: a thousand of those at a time. Yeah, those guys
Speaker 1: go through a lot of gas. Got it takes a
Speaker 1: lot of gas to get from Saudi Arabia to California.
Speaker 1: Go through the Panama can I don't even know what
Speaker 1: route they take. Did they They go through the Suez Canal,
Speaker 1: through the Mediterranean out into the Atlantic. They go through
Speaker 1: the Panama Canal. I guess up up to California. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's a long trip. You're burning a lot of gas
Speaker 1: to do that. California's lead. Let's see emissions now, that's
Speaker 1: the thing. Trump was president twenty seventeen to twenty one.
Speaker 1: Emissions still dropped. Emissions dropped driven by market shifts to
Speaker 1: natural gas, not by mandates. This balance growth and affordability
Speaker 1: highlights California's folly. California's leaders, with Governor Gavin Newsom atop
Speaker 1: the pack, lack the humility to see their limits. Their
Speaker 1: anti carbon crusade ignores the state's poverty, housing woes, and
Speaker 1: global insignificance. Again, less than one percent of emissions. Cap
Speaker 1: and trade burdens the poor for no climate gain. Electricity costs,
Speaker 1: crushed families to fund, shaky renewables, housing grows unattainable under
Speaker 1: the weight of regulations. Wildfires expose the absurdity of it all.
Speaker 1: Prudence demands focus on what works, affordable energy, fire prevention
Speaker 1: homes people can buy, and not on a quixotic quest
Speaker 1: to save the planet alone. Because that's the thing. There's
Speaker 1: this attitude of, well, everyone has to do their part,
Speaker 1: and so we Californians, we're doing our partns Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but if only you were doing your part separate from like,
Speaker 1: at the very least, a nationwide federal policy, then it's pointless.
Speaker 1: It's pointless if the United if if California alone adopts
Speaker 1: some kind of super rigorous uh, you know, in green
Speaker 1: environmental policy, if Texas and Oklahoma and Nevada and Wyoming
Speaker 1: and idahoa blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: don't follow suit. What's the point again? We are you
Speaker 1: look at a globe, California is a blip, all right,
Speaker 1: it's really not very much land mass. We're not saving
Speaker 1: the planet with these regulations. And if anything, our environmental
Speaker 1: regulations have contributed to more environmental harm given their responsibility,
Speaker 1: you know, no control burns, no brush clearing. They're the
Speaker 1: responsibility of those policies for so many of the wildfires
Speaker 1: we've had. All Right, when we return, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: I think we're gonna talk a little bit about planned
Speaker 1: parenthood's bad financial state. Maybe we'll talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about Harvard University losing its money or potentially losing its money.
Speaker 1: I might talk about that, is Harvard gonna lose its money?
Speaker 1: Should Harvard lose its money? Next on the John Growardy Show.
Speaker 1: All Right, President Trump made some news. He's basically right
Speaker 1: now in this little fight with Harvard. Harvard University has
Speaker 1: been resistant to Trump administration desires that it cut out
Speaker 1: some of its DEI stuff. Harvard has faced some accusations
Speaker 1: over how Jewish students were being treated based on the
Speaker 1: toleration that was given to pro Hamas align well some
Speaker 1: possibly Prohamaca line protesters on Harvard's campus, and the possible
Speaker 1: violation of federal civil rights laws that may have ensued
Speaker 1: on Harvard's campus as a result. So one of the
Speaker 1: aspects of federal civil rights law when it comes to
Speaker 1: universities is basically, if students are being hindered in their
Speaker 1: ability to walk around on campus. And if a campus
Speaker 1: is tolerating such kinds of conditions, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: existing federal civil rights law to say, hey, that's no good. Universities,
Speaker 1: if they're going to take public money, cannot gage in
Speaker 1: race based discrimination. They cannot allow students of race or religion,
Speaker 1: of a certain race or religion or ethnic backroom whatever
Speaker 1: to be subject to those kinds of mistreatment. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: think about again, a lot of federal civil rights laws
Speaker 1: coming out of the South, and our experience, the experience
Speaker 1: of African Americans, not our experience, I'm not the experience
Speaker 1: to African Americans. Our American experience, if you will, Where
Speaker 1: African Americans finally were allowed to be admitted to certain
Speaker 1: kinds of historically all white schools and may have been
Speaker 1: subject to mistreatment, threatened, made to feel like they can't
Speaker 1: actually exercise their ability to be students on campus. So
Speaker 1: there's federal civil rights law on the books to basically say, hey, universities,
Speaker 1: you can't allow that right if you want to, all
Speaker 1: of you are getting federal money of some sort. If
Speaker 1: you want to keep getting federal money, then okay, that's fine,
Speaker 1: but you got to play by our rules. You can't
Speaker 1: engage in various kinds of race based discrimination. You have
Speaker 1: to follow various kinds of federal civil rights laws. And
Speaker 1: between that and then affirmative action, between that affirmative action
Speaker 1: and dei, Harvard, I think is not in a great spot.
Speaker 1: So Harvard was like the subject of the big Supreme
Speaker 1: Court case that ultimately decided it was Harvard and University
Speaker 1: of North Carolina. They were the subject of this big
Speaker 1: Supreme Court case that was just decided a year ago saying, hey,
Speaker 1: no more affirmative action in admissions. Okay, you can't positively
Speaker 1: weigh people just on the basis of their race. And
Speaker 1: the twenty years ago sort of cut the baby in
Speaker 1: half solution devised by Sandrade O'Connor. We're getting rid of that.
Speaker 1: So Sandrede O'Connor was such a Santade O'Connor is basically
Speaker 1: responsible for the pre twenty twenty four from about two
Speaker 1: whenever those decisions came down. In the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: we were living under Sandrade O'Connor's basically legal regimes surrounding
Speaker 1: affirmative action for the last twenty years and O'Connor's viewpoint
Speaker 1: was schools can't have a crude point system where it
Speaker 1: was the Grutter and Grats cases, where basically they were
Speaker 1: looking at the University of Michigan's undergrad admissions system and
Speaker 1: their law school admission system, which were slightly different. So
Speaker 1: at that time, University of Michigan, just if you were
Speaker 1: a minority, a racial minority, and you wanted to go
Speaker 1: to the University of Michigan, they basically scored all their
Speaker 1: applicants with a kind of points system, and if you
Speaker 1: were black, you got automatically a certain number of points
Speaker 1: just by virtue of being black. And O'Connor said, now
Speaker 1: you're not allowed to do that. You can't have quotas,
Speaker 1: you can't have a point system like that. University of
Speaker 1: Michigan's law school, though, had a system where there wasn't
Speaker 1: a points system, but admissions advisors could take into account
Speaker 1: raised as part of a broad reaching review of students.
Speaker 1: And then there are genuine benefits, educational benefits that diversity
Speaker 1: affords to lawyers. And that so what O'Connor wound up approving,
Speaker 1: and she was kind of the determinative swing vote on
Speaker 1: the court for this, and what O'Connor wound up approving
Speaker 1: was basically the worst possible system. As crude as the
Speaker 1: points based system was for affirmative action, it at least
Speaker 1: left a paper trail, you know, it was at least measurable,
Speaker 1: so you could see when the university was discriminating. And
Speaker 1: basically what all these universities did was they would just have,
Speaker 1: you know, these broad based assessments solve an applicants, so
Speaker 1: strengths and weaknesses. That would always result in at African
Speaker 1: American students, who on average had lower SAT scores getting
Speaker 1: in over and against in particular Asian students. Asian Americans
Speaker 1: were the most disadvantaged by this whole system. And if
Speaker 1: it had been a straight, you know, objective assessment looking
Speaker 1: at your test scores, where we're we're not actually considering
Speaker 1: your race, one Iota, Harvard and Stanford and a lot
Speaker 1: of these elite institutions would have just been huge number,
Speaker 1: even even greater numbers of Asian American students would have
Speaker 1: gotten into those schools. And then you have the whole
Speaker 1: DEI system. The whole idea of DEI seems frankly to
Speaker 1: me to be contrary to the federal Civil rights regime.
Speaker 1: The whole idea of federal civil rights law is that
Speaker 1: you will not allow discrimination on the bays of and
Speaker 1: then it gives a list of categories race, sex, ethnic origin, religion,
Speaker 1: et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Colleges and universities have
Speaker 1: to abide by a lot of those provisions, as both
Speaker 1: both public and private universities have to do that. Public
Speaker 1: universities have to do it as kind of a constitutional
Speaker 1: mandate as government institutions. Private institutions have to comply with
Speaker 1: it by pretty much the exact same standard on the
Speaker 1: basis of the fact that they receive federal money. If
Speaker 1: they want to keep receiving federal money, they have to
Speaker 1: abide by those standards. And we sort of allowed to
Speaker 1: have the dei regime be imported into so many colleges
Speaker 1: and universities and the court into corporate settings in spite
Speaker 1: of the fact that I think it's very clearly violative
Speaker 1: of the whole broad concepts of the civil rights sect Okay,
Speaker 1: this was the importance of the Civil Rights Act. The
Speaker 1: idea was that hey, your business, this government institution whatever like,
Speaker 1: take it in the context of a private business. Okay,
Speaker 1: you run a grocery store, if you just say, well,
Speaker 1: we don't serve black people, you know, they can go
Speaker 1: to a different groceryutton. But it's my private business. Now,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to let black people out. Well, all right,
Speaker 1: Grocery stores are this kind of business that provides a
Speaker 1: kind of basic service. People need food, and it's a
Speaker 1: massive hindrance to just living and existing in society if
Speaker 1: you have to like carefully curate which businesses to go
Speaker 1: to that will legally allow you to come in the
Speaker 1: door on the basis of something so meaningless as your
Speaker 1: skin color. And as a result, you know, African Americans
Speaker 1: in the South both faced this with other kinds of
Speaker 1: basic services like restaurants and hotels. In fact, that there
Speaker 1: was a movie the Green Book, big O Mortensen and
Speaker 1: herschel Ali were in it, and it's The Green Book
Speaker 1: was basically this travel guide for African Americans traveling in
Speaker 1: the South to let them know, Okay, well you can
Speaker 1: go to in Okay, if you're traveling to this city
Speaker 1: in Louisiana, you can go to this restaurant, this restaurant, restaurant.
Speaker 1: You can't go to this restaurant, this restaurant this restaurant,
Speaker 1: you can stay in this hotel, this hotel, this hotel.
Speaker 1: You can't stay at this hotel, this hotel, at this hotel.
Speaker 1: So here's this massive way in which African Americans had
Speaker 1: to like kind of totally recalibrate where they could go.
Speaker 1: It made certain parts of town basically off limits to them,
Speaker 1: or you know, it was this huge hindrance to their
Speaker 1: day to day existence. These sorts of private actors engaging
Speaker 1: in racial discrimination put real social limits on how far
Speaker 1: African Americas could advance in society. Well, this hospital doesn't
Speaker 1: hire black doctors. You know, we just don't want to
Speaker 1: hire black doctors. This law from Oh, we just don't
Speaker 1: want to hire black lawyers. This college, you know, we
Speaker 1: just don'tt accept black applicants. And so the civil rights
Speaker 1: law said, no, you just are not allowed to consider that.
Speaker 1: You know, I always laugh at businesses that have a
Speaker 1: sign up that says we reserve the right. I don't
Speaker 1: know what reserving the right is. I just went to
Speaker 1: law school. I'm not exactly sure what reserving a right means.
Speaker 1: But businesses who hang up a sign that say we
Speaker 1: reserve the right to refuse service to anyone for any reason.
Speaker 1: You realize that that sign is completely meaningless. It affords
Speaker 1: you no power, like nothing magical happens when you put
Speaker 1: that sign up, and you still can't reserve the right.
Speaker 1: You don't have the right to refuse someone's service for
Speaker 1: any reason. I mean, imagine how silly that would be.
Speaker 1: We reserve the right to refuse anyone's for any reason,
Speaker 1: especially the Blacks and the Jews. Like, no, you can't
Speaker 1: do that. That's against the law. You're not allowed to
Speaker 1: refuse someone's service because they're Black, or because they're Jewish,
Speaker 1: or because they're Chinese or whatever. It's a violation of
Speaker 1: federal civil rights law. And I think it's generally it's
Speaker 1: a good legal regime. It makes sense. Well, Harvard has
Speaker 1: basically been in violation of that, and they get two
Speaker 1: billion dollars from the federal government. So President Trump tweets out,
Speaker 1: perhaps Harvard should lose its tax exempt status and be
Speaker 1: taxed as a political entity if it keeps pushing political
Speaker 1: ideological and terrorist inspired supporting sickness. Remember, tax exempt status
Speaker 1: is totally contingent on acting in the public interest. Now,
Speaker 1: when we return the woosy libertarian response to this tweet
Speaker 1: from President Trump, that's next on the John Gerardy Show.
Speaker 1: Libertarians and libertarian leaning conservatives are always very concerned with
Speaker 1: pro cess, a bad process that they think could set
Speaker 1: a bad precedent, And they're so obsessed with process that
Speaker 1: they often lose sight of the actual end goal of politics,
Speaker 1: which is actually attaining your desired goals. Here's President Trump
Speaker 1: looking at Harvard that is basically refusing to comply with
Speaker 1: federal civil rights law, doesn't want to get rid of
Speaker 1: its DEI regime. And again, the whole idea, I didn't
Speaker 1: get to this in the last second, but the whole
Speaker 1: idea of DEI runs counter to the whole idea of
Speaker 1: federal civil rights law. The whole idea of federal civil
Speaker 1: rights law is, don't discriminate pro or content pleas or
Speaker 1: minus whatever on the basis of race. Don't disadvantage people
Speaker 1: on the basis of race or sex or this or that,
Speaker 1: whatever these other categories are that we're protecting. The whole
Speaker 1: idea of DEI is affirmatively to discriminate in favor of
Speaker 1: whoever is deemed at the moment to be a historically
Speaker 1: disfavored group. By the way, Latinos, if you keep voting
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump, you are going to be out of
Speaker 1: the DEI lottery. You guys are gonna be no longer
Speaker 1: treated as an oppressed minority group. The liberals are already
Speaker 1: rumbling about that, so, uh, you know, just be warned.
Speaker 1: Trump tweets out about Harvard. You know, hey, perhaps Harvard
Speaker 1: should lose its tax exempt status and be taxed as
Speaker 1: a political entity if it keeps pushing political ideological and
Speaker 1: terrorists inspired supporting sickness. Remember, tax exempt status is totally
Speaker 1: contingent on acting in the public interest, And all these
Speaker 1: libertarian leaning conservatives are like, oh, that's not a good idea. Well,
Speaker 1: imagine what would if if liberals applied that standard to
Speaker 1: conservative nonprofits or religious nonprofits. Oh, that would be terrible.
Speaker 1: They already did that, do you guys not remember Lois Learner,
Speaker 1: the IRS head under Barack Obama, who initiated all kinds
Speaker 1: of audits and all kinds of spurious legal action again
Speaker 1: conservative nonprofits for no reason. They've literally already done this before.
Speaker 1: Why should we be afraid of breaking a precedent that
Speaker 1: Democrats have already broken? And by the way, none of
Speaker 1: those conservative nonprofits were violating federal civil rights law and
Speaker 1: letting Jewish students get harassed for no reason. That'll do it.
Speaker 1: John grolready show see you next time. I'm power Talk