Speaker 1: Kamala Harris was on a podcast recently, and it's it's
Speaker 1: very interesting to me how the podcast choices of both
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, that they're both wanting to
Speaker 1: appear on different kinds of media things, and the choices
Speaker 1: they make that just seem to lean into the demographics
Speaker 1: they think are going to get them over the top.
Speaker 1: Trump keeps going on all kinds of podcasts listened to
Speaker 1: by young men, all kinds of different comedians and YouTube
Speaker 1: influencer type guys that probably most of you listening who
Speaker 1: are millennials or older, maybe it's not really in your wheelhouse,
Speaker 1: but for sort of younger millennials and zoomers kind of
Speaker 1: more in your wheelhouse. And Harris is doing very limited
Speaker 1: as far as I mean, Harris is doing very limited
Speaker 1: media in general, far less out there than Trump is.
Speaker 1: But she goes on this podcast called Call Her Daddy,
Speaker 1: which I think sort of started out of the Barstool
Speaker 1: universe for those who know what that is, but then
Speaker 1: sort of went off on its own. A lot of
Speaker 1: young women listening to it. Now, this is interesting as
Speaker 1: far as you know, to whom are the two sides talking.
Speaker 1: Harris has a huge lead among single women, Trump is
Speaker 1: gaining a bigger, bigger lead among men and single young
Speaker 1: single men are leaning more and more into the Trump camp,
Speaker 1: and I sort of wonder for Trump if how that
Speaker 1: could go. I mean, no, one's probably a less reliable
Speaker 1: voter than a twenty year old man, But if Trump
Speaker 1: can get men like that out to the holes in droves,
Speaker 1: I think that could be a hugely untapped on accounted
Speaker 1: for by the pollsters number of people that could really
Speaker 1: push Trump over the top at this point. I mean,
Speaker 1: I just saw a polling today showing Trump and Harris
Speaker 1: in a dead split nationwide, which if that's the case,
Speaker 1: then Trump's gonna win pretty easily, but we'll see. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be very close election still. Anyway.
Speaker 1: The thing that I thought was interesting was Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: goes on this podcast and of course she's leaning heavily
Speaker 1: into the abortion thing. It's like the only It's so
Speaker 1: dispiriting to me that how abortion is like the only
Speaker 1: thing Kamala Harris has to run on that that it
Speaker 1: seems for the most part, the nation likes her presentation
Speaker 1: of what she believes on the abortion issue more than
Speaker 1: they like Trump, and Trump has realized this and has
Speaker 1: completely abandoned ship run as far to the left on
Speaker 1: abortion as he can without completely alienating pro life voters.
Speaker 1: So Harris goes on this show and she's asked about abortion,
Speaker 1: and the host just is Harris is not going on
Speaker 1: anything where she's getting anything other than complete total hanging
Speaker 1: curveballs right over the plate that she can knock out
Speaker 1: of the park, and even then she's not really knocking
Speaker 1: things out of the park. The host asks her if
Speaker 1: there's any law that tells a man what to do
Speaker 1: with his body, the implication being that abortion restrictions tell
Speaker 1: women what to do with their bodies, and there's no
Speaker 1: equivalent thing for any man, no equivalent thing for any man.
Speaker 1: And Harris is like, oh, no, of course not. There's
Speaker 1: no law like that that controls a man's body. That
Speaker 1: only these evil abortion limitation laws. And I was thinking
Speaker 1: about this. Of course there are laws like that. They're
Speaker 1: one hundred are and it starts to make me think
Speaker 1: about law and sort of what the purposes of laws are.
Speaker 1: All right, So, first of all, I don't know if
Speaker 1: all of you have heard of this thing called the draft.
Speaker 1: Men have to register for the select service, which could
Speaker 1: be the draft when they turn eighteen. Women don't have to.
Speaker 1: It's a law that's definitely controlling our bodies in the
Speaker 1: event of wartime. And these arguments about bodily auton that
Speaker 1: women's bodies are. There's no place so many of these
Speaker 1: abortion arguments, you'll have the most liberal people in the
Speaker 1: world who favor all kinds of left wing restrictions of
Speaker 1: every sort of ever, every shape, all every liberal who
Speaker 1: was in favor of every kind and species of vaccine
Speaker 1: mandate possible, just like three years ago, all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: when it comes to a law regulating abortion, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, let's remember, these laws regulating abortion are not
Speaker 1: dealing just with one person's body. They are dealing with
Speaker 1: a second body. They are saying, there is another human
Speaker 1: being here whose life has value and for whom the
Speaker 1: state has an interest. The state has an interest in
Speaker 1: preserving the life not just of the mother, but also
Speaker 1: of the baby. So we limit the practice of abortion
Speaker 1: because it's directly killing this other living organism who is
Speaker 1: just stating inside a mother's body. But this idea, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, liberals become the most extreme libertarians humanly possible.
Speaker 1: When it comes to abortion. The senator from Georgia, the
Speaker 1: Democrat Senator from Georgia, Raphael Warnock, is like the worst
Speaker 1: defender for this. His big line anytime anyone mentions abortion
Speaker 1: to him, and he's an African American pastor, so people
Speaker 1: talk about how hypocritical his abortion position is. But his
Speaker 1: big thing that he keeps saying is I just think
Speaker 1: a doctor's office is too small for a woman, her doctor,
Speaker 1: and the government. And that's his big line. That's his
Speaker 1: big line that justifies everything, every that rationalizes his entire
Speaker 1: view in favor of expansive legal abortion. I just think
Speaker 1: a doctor's office is too small for a woman, her
Speaker 1: doctor and the federal government. Or the woman, her doctor
Speaker 1: and the government. Now this is insane on like twenty
Speaker 1: different counts. First of all, Democrats regulate the healthcare industry,
Speaker 1: and the healthcare industry is maybe one of the most
Speaker 1: regulated industries in the entire universe. The standards according which
Speaker 1: your hospital room was built probably was influenced by the
Speaker 1: government dictating the very structure of the building. You're in.
Speaker 1: The licensure process for the medical professional whom you are seeing.
Speaker 1: The doctor whom you are seeing is regulated by the state.
Speaker 1: There's a state Board of Medicine governing it. The state
Speaker 1: has all kinds of mandates. The federal government has all
Speaker 1: kinds of mandates for the kinds of drugs that your
Speaker 1: doctor is prescribing or can prescribe or cannot prescribe. There
Speaker 1: are layers and layers and layers and layers of state
Speaker 1: and federal intervention present in any encounter at any doctor's office.
Speaker 1: Are you on medical Well, guess what that's both the
Speaker 1: federal government and the state government is therefore in the
Speaker 1: hospital room with you and your doctor. Medical requirements alter
Speaker 1: all kinds of ways in which care is delivered. But
Speaker 1: for some reason, liberals all of a sudden become the
Speaker 1: most extreme, make Ron Paul Blush level libertarians when it
Speaker 1: comes to the question of the government telling me what
Speaker 1: I can do with my body, and it makes me
Speaker 1: think about law. Lots of laws, lots and lots and
Speaker 1: lots of laws tell us what we can do or
Speaker 1: cannot do with our bodies. Abortion gets singled out by
Speaker 1: the left as if this is the only thing that does.
Speaker 1: There are all kinds of laws regulating, for example, drug
Speaker 1: use that tell you, hey, can't put this in your
Speaker 1: body prescription drug abuse. Hey can't put this stuff in
Speaker 1: your body. Hey, you can't help someone put this stuff
Speaker 1: in their body. There's example after example after example of
Speaker 1: this that, and we justify it as good. I think
Speaker 1: a more classical justification of law. A classical definition of
Speaker 1: law is that it is a dictative reason instituted the
Speaker 1: general Actually that's actually been promulgated by a lawful authority
Speaker 1: towards advancing the common good. The common good here does
Speaker 1: not necessarily mean okay, five of you think it's okay
Speaker 1: to beat up a homeless person, and three of you
Speaker 1: think it's not okay to beat up a homeless person.
Speaker 1: Therefore the five people wins because that's the common good. No,
Speaker 1: that's not the idea of common good. That definition of
Speaker 1: law was from Saint Thomas Quite, and it's kind of
Speaker 1: a distillation of the classical legal tradition of from Greek
Speaker 1: philosophy throughout the Christian philosophical tradition. The common law in
Speaker 1: that sense was not, you know, five people think it's
Speaker 1: okay to, you know, beat up the slaves, and three
Speaker 1: people don't think it's okay to beat up slaves. So
Speaker 1: the five people went, No, the common good is basically
Speaker 1: the good that is common to all, the shared moral
Speaker 1: and ethical vision that's grounded in human nature, and the
Speaker 1: goods towards which human nature is oriented. So in that light,
Speaker 1: if that's your definition of law, then yeah, you can
Speaker 1: have laws that kind of dictate what people do or
Speaker 1: don't do. But this is a thing where I think
Speaker 1: conservatism and the Enlightenment philosophy that animated a lot of
Speaker 1: the Founding Fathers kind of runs into tension with one another.
Speaker 1: So the Founding Fathers were very much influenced by the Enlightenment.
Speaker 1: The Enlightenment was this sort of philosophical movement that happened
Speaker 1: in Europe during the sixteen hundreds of seventeen hundreds, starting
Speaker 1: in the fifteen hundreds that was rejecting a lot of
Speaker 1: the older order when it comes to ethics and ethics
Speaker 1: and particularly philosophy of law. It was rejecting Aristotle, it
Speaker 1: was rejecting Thomas Aquinas, and it was elevating newer thinkers,
Speaker 1: newer thinkers like Kant when it comes to ethics, newer
Speaker 1: thinkers like John Locke and Thomas Hobbes when it came
Speaker 1: to philosophy of law, and they rejected the Saint Thomas's
Speaker 1: ideas that there is one objective, no truth, there is
Speaker 1: an objective, knowable human good that governments should order their
Speaker 1: laws too. And instead they said, every single person should
Speaker 1: be free to choose the good for themselves, and as
Speaker 1: long as you're not stepping on other people's toes, you
Speaker 1: pick the good for yourself. That's the spirit that's animating
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris when she says, oh, we can't have a
Speaker 1: law telling women what to do with their bodies now,
Speaker 1: is she wildly hypocritical in this because of all of
Speaker 1: the laws she does support that tell people what to
Speaker 1: do with their bodies. Well, maybe, but maybe she tries
Speaker 1: to rationalize it by saying, well, a vaccine mandate that
Speaker 1: couldn't impact other people, So you need to do this
Speaker 1: because if you don't, you're impacting all these other people.
Speaker 1: You're stepping on their freedom. So we need to impose
Speaker 1: upon your freedom insofar as you're going to hurt other
Speaker 1: people's freedom. And that's the problem is that there is
Speaker 1: still an objective. There seems to be still not a
Speaker 1: subjective moral good that Kamala Harris points to. But she's
Speaker 1: got her own set of goods that she points to
Speaker 1: that she wants to enforce in everybody else. So she's
Speaker 1: acting like she's this total libertarian when it comes to
Speaker 1: laws regulating abortion, but not really. If you are a libertarian,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's that hard to make an argument
Speaker 1: against abortion. I mean that the pure libertarian argument for
Speaker 1: that justifies law is everyone should be able to choose
Speaker 1: the good for themselves. You're allowed to choose the good
Speaker 1: for themselves as long as you're not stepping on other
Speaker 1: people's toes. Well, abortion is the biggest act of stepping
Speaker 1: on someone else's toes possible. There's another human being involved
Speaker 1: who's getting killed in this procedure. But the thing libertarianism
Speaker 1: can't answer is what is the moral status of that
Speaker 1: human being? Do we care about that human being? Is
Speaker 1: that human being who doesn't know his or her own
Speaker 1: good yet a valuable rights bearing member of the community
Speaker 1: whom we should defend. And this is kind of where
Speaker 1: libertarianism falls apart. They don't really have a great account
Speaker 1: for that. That's why probably a lot of libertarians you
Speaker 1: talk to, or ethical libertarians you talk to, probably most
Speaker 1: of them are in favor of abortion because they view
Speaker 1: the adult as important. They view the adult who actually
Speaker 1: has an understanding of his or her own good as
Speaker 1: far more important than this unborn child. So in short,
Speaker 1: there's actually a lot of stuff, you know, Kamala Harris
Speaker 1: coming on a show and saying, now, there's no law
Speaker 1: that tells there tells men what to do with their bodies.
Speaker 1: In addition to being completely nonsensical, there's a ton of
Speaker 1: like ethical presuppositions that are really baked into what she's
Speaker 1: saying about what is the whole purpose of law? Yeah,
Speaker 1: laws can intrude upon bodily autonomy if it is a
Speaker 1: dictative reason instituted by a duly authorized lawgiver, ordered towards
Speaker 1: the common good. And this is where I think modern
Speaker 1: conservatism kind of loses its way. On the one hand,
Speaker 1: it's kind of there's this author named Joseph Bottom who
Speaker 1: said this, and this line I keep reusing. Modern day
Speaker 1: conservatism is in a tug of war between the Enlightenment
Speaker 1: on one hand, everyone's free to choose the good for themselves, freedom, freedom, freedom,
Speaker 1: and the Bible on the other the Bible, which has
Speaker 1: a very clear ethical vision of what is right and
Speaker 1: what is wrong, and a clear sense that no law
Speaker 1: should be ordered towards the good, this objective vision of
Speaker 1: what is right and what is wrong, even if he
Speaker 1: don't like that. And I think what we're seeing is
Speaker 1: with Trump, you know, slowly as Trump is sort of
Speaker 1: abandoning ship more and more on the pro life position
Speaker 1: right at the very least, leaving it up to individual
Speaker 1: people to decide for themselves. Is a shift in conservatism
Speaker 1: away from the Bible and towards the Enlightenment. I'll dig
Speaker 1: into that a little bit next. This is the John
Speaker 1: Girardi Show on Power Talk. I think Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: signaling a kind of shift in conservatism, but it's not
Speaker 1: the kind of shift that I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people are thinking. I think it has a lot to
Speaker 1: do with social conservatism and then the philosophical roots of
Speaker 1: what it means to be a social conservative. All right,
Speaker 1: So the big shift Trump has advanced when it comes
Speaker 1: to the abortion issue specifically, and all this is prompted
Speaker 1: by Kamala Harris talking on a podcast about oh, there
Speaker 1: are no laws that control which is like, well, lots
Speaker 1: of laws control everybody's bodies, and also there's the draft
Speaker 1: and you're an idiot. But it's also making me focus on, like, well,
Speaker 1: what is the purpose of law, What is the point
Speaker 1: of law? What is law? What is the philosophical justification
Speaker 1: for law? And the classical justification of law is that
Speaker 1: it is a dictate of reason, issued by a legitimate authority,
Speaker 1: ordered towards the common good. And the common good here
Speaker 1: is not understood. As you know, five people think it's
Speaker 1: okay to beat up almost people, and three people don't
Speaker 1: think it's okay to beat up homeless people. So therefore
Speaker 1: the five people win. No, the common good is the
Speaker 1: vision of the good rooted in human nature, looking at
Speaker 1: the goods towards which human nature is ordered, including our
Speaker 1: ultimate good and the objective morality that springs from it.
Speaker 1: The natural law, the law that is part of someone's nature.
Speaker 1: That's Saint Paul himself referenced. So this has been the
Speaker 1: tug of war within christ within conservatism. Conservatism as in
Speaker 1: American slash British post Glorious Revolution political rightsm that reacted
Speaker 1: so negatively to the French Revolution, for example, but was
Speaker 1: a little bit more accommodating towards the American Revolution. It
Speaker 1: is this tug of war between on the one hand,
Speaker 1: Enlightenment thinkers who think that law and right within government
Speaker 1: is a question of preserving every individual in their individual
Speaker 1: choice for what the good is for themselves. So the
Speaker 1: government gets everyone latitude to choose the good for themselves.
Speaker 1: There's no common good. Every individual gets to choose the
Speaker 1: good for himself, and the government's there just to say
Speaker 1: safeguard your ability to choose the good, but just make
Speaker 1: sure that you don't step on other people's toes. That
Speaker 1: is libertarianism in its loosest sense. Everyone gets to choose
Speaker 1: what's good for themselves. There's no objective right and wrong
Speaker 1: out there. The government's just safeguarding your ability to choose.
Speaker 1: On the other hand, is again this classical vision rooted
Speaker 1: in things like the Bible and American conservatism has been
Speaker 1: in a tug of war between the Bible saying there
Speaker 1: is an objective truth and libertarianism saying we don't know
Speaker 1: what objective truth is, so just let everyone choose the
Speaker 1: truth for themselves. I think we're seeing this tug of
Speaker 1: war playing out right now in the Republican Party about
Speaker 1: the abortion issue. Before twenty twenty two and the bad
Speaker 1: election results of twenty twenty two, everything was pretty clear
Speaker 1: Republicans were anti abortion. Republicans thought abortion was bad, Abortion
Speaker 1: was wrong. Republicans supported federal restrictions on abortion. Republicans supported
Speaker 1: a constitutional amendment safeguarding human life. It was right there
Speaker 1: in the Republican platform. Look at the twenty sixteen Republican
Speaker 1: platform and see all the things it's supported as far
Speaker 1: as regulating, limiting, cutting off abortion funding, et cetera. We
Speaker 1: had one bad election cycle in twenty twenty two, and
Speaker 1: Trump has reacted to this by running to the left
Speaker 1: on abortion, saying he doesn't like Florida's six week abortion limit,
Speaker 1: basically limiting abortion only to the first six weeks of gestation.
Speaker 1: He thinks there should be more weeks. But the big
Speaker 1: thing Trump has said is he keeps saying this for
Speaker 1: individual He's not even saying I am pro life and
Speaker 1: I think abortion is wrong. He's just saying, I think
Speaker 1: every state should vote on its own. Let the will
Speaker 1: of the people completely decide the abortion issue. That's a
Speaker 1: libertarian approach. His notion of the common good is what
Speaker 1: the people decide to do, what the people decide to do,
Speaker 1: getting abortion to the states, to the votes of individual states,
Speaker 1: that is what he is proposing as what's right. Let
Speaker 1: everyone be free to choose the good for themselves, and
Speaker 1: so we have this situation. I mean, I was saying,
Speaker 1: you know, the common good does not mean five people
Speaker 1: want to beat up homeless people and three people don't.
Speaker 1: Therefore the common good is beating up homeless people. But
Speaker 1: that is the situation that Trump is sort of praising.
Speaker 1: Within the states. Fifty one percent of the state favors
Speaker 1: the legal killing of children, who are just stating forty
Speaker 1: nine percent oppose it. Therefore, we're going to kill them
Speaker 1: because that's the common good in that state. And maybe
Speaker 1: I'm being overly harsh about Trump's views on this, but
Speaker 1: Trump has been very explicit about saying, you know, I
Speaker 1: support the ability of states to vote on this stuff,
Speaker 1: and I agree having states vote on it individually is
Speaker 1: better than what we had before. It's better than the
Speaker 1: Roe v. Wade regime, where we had the worst possible
Speaker 1: laws unabortion imposed on all fifty states. But at the
Speaker 1: same time, John Paul the Second wrote about this pretty extensively.
Speaker 1: I just don't think that the value of human beings
Speaker 1: should be left up to a democratic up or down vote.
Speaker 1: That's not what the common good is. There is a
Speaker 1: common good that is out there that is objective that
Speaker 1: is knowable, that should be respected. That that's and that
Speaker 1: laws that don't respect that lose their legitimacy as law.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of I think, really deep philosophical
Speaker 1: issues that are going on, and I think there is
Speaker 1: a shift on the Trump side when it comes to
Speaker 1: especially the abortion issue. When we return. An interesting piece
Speaker 1: about Proposition four, a bond measure for funding climate stuff
Speaker 1: ill defined next on the John Girardi Show. So there's
Speaker 1: a good piece that's been published by cal Matters. It's
Speaker 1: written by Brian Jones, who's a Republican state senator, and
Speaker 1: it's about Proposition four and this lead up to the election.
Speaker 1: I'd like to do more pieces like this, sort of
Speaker 1: deep diving pieces I find that are interesting, that are
Speaker 1: doing kind of a deep dive on one specific ballot
Speaker 1: initiative or another. And Proposition four is I knew I
Speaker 1: was voting no on this from the start, just the
Speaker 1: very description of it, but he State Senator Jones is
Speaker 1: kind of digging into this a little bit more. Let
Speaker 1: me give the first the first backdrop for it. So
Speaker 1: Proposition four is a bond measure to provide ten billion
Speaker 1: dollars towards various kinds of environmental programs. Now, the first thing,
Speaker 1: the first thing you should know is that it's a bond.
Speaker 1: And I hate bonds, and I think I basically will
Speaker 1: take a generalized approach that I am voting no on
Speaker 1: any bond measure ever. And I think it's a problem
Speaker 1: that people don't actually know what a bond is. I
Speaker 1: think people hear the word bond. But I bet if
Speaker 1: I pulled all of the tax bank, all the voters
Speaker 1: of let's say, City of Fresno, and I said, define
Speaker 1: for me what a bond is, I bet most people
Speaker 1: couldn't actually define it for you. They kind of vaguely
Speaker 1: know it has something to do with taxes or funding,
Speaker 1: and they hear, oh, it's a Because right now we
Speaker 1: are all of you listening to this, we'll be voting
Speaker 1: on I think within the sound of my voice, there's
Speaker 1: a good likelihood you're going to be voting for at
Speaker 1: least four or against at least four different bond measures
Speaker 1: this election cycle. All right, for me, I've got a
Speaker 1: close unified bond that'll probably be on my ballot. I
Speaker 1: think I've got a state center community college bond that's
Speaker 1: on my ballot. I've got Proposition four, which is this
Speaker 1: climate bond, and then there's another I think it's proposition
Speaker 1: one that is h or two that's the education bond.
Speaker 1: I'll get the exact number. So if you're voting four
Speaker 1: or against a bond, you better know what it means.
Speaker 1: If you're a voter, you should know what a bond is.
Speaker 1: So let me define it. A bond is a loan
Speaker 1: to a governmental entity a city, a county, a state,
Speaker 1: a school district, a community college district. Locally, for say,
Speaker 1: school districts or community college districts. Bonds get paid through
Speaker 1: your property taxes. Okay, So it is a loan to
Speaker 1: a governmental entity that the taxpayer must repay. That's what
Speaker 1: you get with a loan. If there's a loan, then
Speaker 1: you got to repay it. And if there's a repayment
Speaker 1: and it's not all at once and there's interest, well yeah,
Speaker 1: there's interest. Okay. Most bond measures, most local bond measures anyway,
Speaker 1: are thirty year terms and they have a certain interest rate.
Speaker 1: So if you've got a local school district, like let's
Speaker 1: take Clovis Unified. Okay, I live in Clovis Unified. I
Speaker 1: think we've got it's a four hundred million dollars bond
Speaker 1: measure that's on the ballot. Okay, we've gotta so here's
Speaker 1: what will happen. We'll vote for this bond measure. If
Speaker 1: it passes, Clubs Unified gets four hundred million bucks, all right,
Speaker 1: But somehow we got to pay that back. So the taxpayers,
Speaker 1: the property tax payers within who live within the boundaries
Speaker 1: of Clovis Unified School District, they have to pay that
Speaker 1: loan back through their property taxes over the course of
Speaker 1: thirty years with interest. So it's not really a four
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar bond. Yeah, that's what the school district gets.
Speaker 1: The taxpayer has to pay four hundred million dollars plus
Speaker 1: thirty years of interest. Meaning by the time we're done,
Speaker 1: we might wind up spending seven hundred or eight hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars to get four hundred million dollars worth of benefit.
Speaker 1: President Unified, it's got a five hundred million dollar bond measure,
Speaker 1: largest bond measure in President Unified history. That's gonna be
Speaker 1: maybe a billion dollars paid by the taxpayers. Okay, So
Speaker 1: bonds from a certain perspective are pretty In a f
Speaker 1: you're spending two X to get X level of benefit.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of fundamentally why I don't like them.
Speaker 1: It's like it's kind of like credit card debt, you know,
Speaker 1: but for a municipal entity. And I get it that,
Speaker 1: you know, the over time and with inflation that that
Speaker 1: number is not as damaging, but it's still this is
Speaker 1: it is having your cake and then kicking having your
Speaker 1: cake and expecting to eat it too, or kicking the
Speaker 1: can down the road. I don't know whatever metaphor you
Speaker 1: want to use for this, or simply you want to
Speaker 1: use for this, but basically you're it's the whatever is
Speaker 1: the opposite of delayed gratification. Now we're facing a lot
Speaker 1: of bond measures this election cycle. The only reason we're
Speaker 1: seeing so many local school districts and the community college
Speaker 1: district putting forward these local initiatives for bond measures locally
Speaker 1: is because of Proposition two, which is a statewide ten
Speaker 1: billion dollar bond measure that all of us can vote
Speaker 1: for or against. If Prop two passes and these local
Speaker 1: bond measures pass, then the school districts will get additional
Speaker 1: state funding. That's the only reason why all these local
Speaker 1: school districts are doing bond measures. Right now. I don't
Speaker 1: think it's really in response to any genuine need. It's
Speaker 1: just that's what happens to be there, happens to be
Speaker 1: a state bond measure, and these local school districts are like, well,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna if there's money from the state that's
Speaker 1: on the table, we're not gonna leave that on the table.
Speaker 1: And you get more if you match. Basically, basically, if
Speaker 1: you raise local bond funding, you can get matching state funds.
Speaker 1: So all these local school districts are Okay, well, let's
Speaker 1: let's pass a local bond measure. It's not actually a
Speaker 1: response to need. That's why, coincidentally, not coincidentally at all,
Speaker 1: every single school district in the Greater Fresno area is
Speaker 1: doing a bond measure right now this year for November
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four. It's because of this state bond measure. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about though, this environmental bond measure. This is
Speaker 1: again State Senator Brian Jones, a Republican state senator. Imagine
Speaker 1: using your credit card to buy something, knowing that by
Speaker 1: the time you finish paying off the debt, you'll have
Speaker 1: spent nearly double the original price due to interest It's
Speaker 1: a poor financial decision most of us would avoid. Yet
Speaker 1: this is precisely what democrats in the state legislature are
Speaker 1: asking California taxpayers to do with Proposition four. Add ten
Speaker 1: billion dollars in bond debt with billions more in interest
Speaker 1: to pay for ambiguous, short term, so called quote climate programs.
Speaker 1: Let's be clear about what bonds are. This isn't free money.
Speaker 1: They're Wall Street loans with high interest rates. The real
Speaker 1: winners with bonds are wealthy investors, and the losers, of course,
Speaker 1: are taxpayers. In February, California already had seventy nine billion
Speaker 1: dollars in bond debt. Earlier this year, Proposition one added
Speaker 1: another six point four billion dollars. Now we're Prop one
Speaker 1: was funding some kind of like mental health th REEC
Speaker 1: sources or something like that. Now we're being asked to
Speaker 1: shoulder another ten billion dollars plus interest, this time for
Speaker 1: supposed climate programs that are vaguely defined and in some
Speaker 1: cases dubiously labeled. Guess who's paying for it all? You
Speaker 1: the taxpayer. What's most concerning is that many items in
Speaker 1: Prop four don't even meet the basic definition of infrastructure.
Speaker 1: So that's a lot of how this is being sold
Speaker 1: as Oh, we need new environmental, green energy infrastructure. Bonds
Speaker 1: should be reserved for projects that offer lasting value, such
Speaker 1: as roads, bridges, or water storage that will still be
Speaker 1: useful decades from now, long after the forty year bond
Speaker 1: payments have been made. Instead, Prop four will spend millions
Speaker 1: on so called infrastructure for farmers' markets, things like pop
Speaker 1: up tents, restrooms, and hand washing stations. It will also
Speaker 1: fund workforce development end quote to help quote mitigate unemployment
Speaker 1: end quote, which of course is completely unrelated to infrastructure
Speaker 1: and climate. To top it off, the bond also includes
Speaker 1: grants for exhibit galleries at zoos and museums, and even
Speaker 1: van pool vehicles for low income workers. Does that sound
Speaker 1: like climate related infrastructure. While these programs may be worth pursuing,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be funded with long term debt. Again, bonds
Speaker 1: should only be used for long term investments, not temporary
Speaker 1: programs that will be gone before the debt is paid off.
Speaker 1: Then he talks about previous bond measures and their unfulfilled promises.
Speaker 1: So he writes, in twenty fourteen, California voters passed a
Speaker 1: bond measure that would provide billions of dollars, specifically for
Speaker 1: water storage projects. Nearly a decade has passed, and despite
Speaker 1: all that funding, not a single drop of water has
Speaker 1: been stored. The promises made to voters have gone unfulfilled,
Speaker 1: leaving many to wonder why Democrat politicians are asking for
Speaker 1: even more funding now with Prop four. If they can't
Speaker 1: deliver on their commitments from a decade ago, why should
Speaker 1: taxpayers believe that another loan will result in anything meaningful
Speaker 1: Before approving more borrowed money, voters deserve to see results
Speaker 1: from previous investments. Bonds come with long term financial burdens
Speaker 1: that eventually can cut into essential public services. Governor Newsom
Speaker 1: has already declared a budget emergency due to the state's
Speaker 1: spending outpacing revenue. California also faces a fifty six billion
Speaker 1: dollar deficit, and the addition of Prop fours bond debt
Speaker 1: would only worsen the situation. What's even more frustrating is
Speaker 1: that just two years ago, California had nearly a one
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar budget surplus. Had these climate projects truly
Speaker 1: been a priority, the state could have used a mere
Speaker 1: ten percent of that surplus to fund all the programs.
Speaker 1: In this bond instead, due to poor financial miss management,
Speaker 1: voters are now being asked to approve borrowing money with
Speaker 1: interest when these programs could have been funded with cash
Speaker 1: on hand. Recklessly borrowing money for pet projects is not
Speaker 1: just fiscally irresponsible, it's a disservice to California's taxpayers. With
Speaker 1: upwards of twenty billion dollars in debt being added to
Speaker 1: our state's credit card, voters should ask why critical services
Speaker 1: like safe drinking water and wildfire prevention are not already
Speaker 1: a priority in the the state's general fund budget. What's
Speaker 1: in the budget that takes precedence over these essential needs?
Speaker 1: What is in the budget he has that takes precedents
Speaker 1: over these essential needs? Before expecting Californians to sign off
Speaker 1: on billions in new debt which will ultimately come at
Speaker 1: the expense of future generations, Democrat politicians need to answer
Speaker 1: for their failures on previous bonds and why they can't
Speaker 1: pay for these supposed essential services through the existing budget.
Speaker 1: Kind of sums it up. We shouldn't be voting for
Speaker 1: more of these bond measures. And that's the thing that
Speaker 1: this bond measure in particular seems like a real kind
Speaker 1: of Democrat laundry list of things they like. It just
Speaker 1: seems like kind of a slush fund that probably some
Speaker 1: big time donors were sort of pushing and Democrats are
Speaker 1: just going along with it. And I think that the
Speaker 1: thing with a bond measure is that it doesn't have
Speaker 1: the sting of just spending the money out of your
Speaker 1: actual normal budgetary process. It doesn't have that kind of sting.
Speaker 1: You get all the money up front, and you pay
Speaker 1: the money slowly over time, but over time that builds.
Speaker 1: That builds locally in the form of very high property
Speaker 1: taxes that make housing more and more and more unaffordable.
Speaker 1: Property taxes that it's not just paid by property owners
Speaker 1: that you know, landlords will pass that cost on to
Speaker 1: renters in the form of higher rent. So again, I
Speaker 1: think if you see the word bond, vote no. Vote
Speaker 1: no as fast as you humanly can. Vote no on
Speaker 1: Prop two, Vote no on Prop four, Vote no on
Speaker 1: your president, unified Clovist, unified stations, inner community college bonds.
Speaker 1: Just vote no. Tired of trying to get money up
Speaker 1: front and pay for it over the course of forty
Speaker 1: years and you're spending twice as much when we return
Speaker 1: a completely unimportant story about Beyonce and Taylor Swift. Next
Speaker 1: on The John Girardi Show, this is a completely unimportant,
Speaker 1: little celebrity thing about Beyonce versus Taylor Swift. So, Taylor
Speaker 1: Swift has had this incredibly popular over the last year
Speaker 1: or two, She's kind of exploded in popularity. She's had
Speaker 1: this very successful tour where she was, you know, playing
Speaker 1: for football arenas and getting gazillions of dollars in her
Speaker 1: profiles really shot up, and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: liberals were uncomfortable with this because Taylor Swift's a white girl,
Speaker 1: and she's obviously way more popular and famous right now
Speaker 1: than any black entertainer, and more famous than Beyonce, who's
Speaker 1: probably the most out of black female singers, divas whatever,
Speaker 1: it was, probably the most famous. So all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: Beyonce comes out with a song called Texas Hold'em, which
Speaker 1: is kind of like a country song. It's terrible. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think all Taylor Swift's music is terrible too. It's terrible.
Speaker 1: I feel like it's the most contrived thing possible. It's
Speaker 1: the record label saying, see, we're not racist. Beyonce is good.
Speaker 1: She's got a country album. It's the most contrived thing
Speaker 1: possible and the music stinks, but then again, Taylor Music's
Speaker 1: Taylor Swift's music stinks too. Anyway, that'll do it. John
Speaker 1: Dirolady Show, see you next time on Power Talk