Speaker 1: Pretty much every time that I am encountered with a
Speaker 1: presidential Joint Session of Congress speech, I hate watching it.
Speaker 1: I really hate watching those speeches because you can read
Speaker 1: the whole speech probably in about fifteen minutes, but then
Speaker 1: it takes actually like two hours to get through the
Speaker 1: actual speech because there's so many applause breaks. So I'm
Speaker 1: engaging in that exercise in my analysis of President Trump's
Speaker 1: speech yesterday, and there's a couple of things about the
Speaker 1: speech that I sort of want to note. I wound up,
Speaker 1: I read through the whole thing, and first of all,
Speaker 1: the behavior of the Democrats is just not going to
Speaker 1: look It's not going to reflect well or age well
Speaker 1: for them because they hate Trump so much that they
Speaker 1: can't at least do the kind of like I understand,
Speaker 1: the two political parties don't like each other. I understand
Speaker 1: these kinds of speeches by presidents are you know, nationally
Speaker 1: televised campaign stump speeches, effectively their victory laps, and the
Speaker 1: one side is talking up quite a bit about the
Speaker 1: things it's doing or wanting to do, or criticizing the
Speaker 1: other side in ways that the other side doesn't agree with.
Speaker 1: But they also trot out things that are you know,
Speaker 1: good or try. They bring guests to these State of
Speaker 1: the Union type speeches that are sort of heartwarming stories,
Speaker 1: and you gotta find if you're the side in the minority,
Speaker 1: you're not ever gonna win one of these speeches where
Speaker 1: it's the president talking the president high up his side.
Speaker 1: If you're the side in the opposition, you're never gonna win.
Speaker 1: The key is just don't lose, don't look like an idiot.
Speaker 1: And the Democrats did several things that made them look
Speaker 1: like an idiot. So, first of all, Representative Al Green
Speaker 1: gets himself thrown out by standing up and yelling and
Speaker 1: interrupting the president's speech so much so that Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: basically directed security to escort him out. Then the Democrats
Speaker 1: are holding these little like Plackhart placard things that say
Speaker 1: not true on them, little signs that say, you know,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk steals blah blah blah, like this is a
Speaker 1: baseball game or like it's a or holding out these
Speaker 1: little signs like they're at a silent auction, they're at
Speaker 1: a live auction, or something like, well, what are we
Speaker 1: doing here? This is an address by an American president
Speaker 1: to a joint session of Congress. So I think the
Speaker 1: Democrats just came off again. There's no way for the
Speaker 1: Democrats to win a speech like this. You never win,
Speaker 1: but it's definitely possible for your conduct to make you lose.
Speaker 1: More like the one time Barack Obama gave a joint
Speaker 1: address to Congress and there was that one Republican member
Speaker 1: of the House who stood up and yelled, you lie
Speaker 1: at him, and he just sort of looked like an idiot,
Speaker 1: and it just made the Republicans look worse. I sort
Speaker 1: of think Democrats had that kind of a moment, if
Speaker 1: not a little worse. There was just nothing good that
Speaker 1: was gonna come out of it for them by behaving
Speaker 1: the way they did, and for them too sort of.
Speaker 1: You know, they had a lot of the female members
Speaker 1: of Congress had their pink coordinated outfits, which it's unclear
Speaker 1: what it was even standing for other than abortion, I guess,
Speaker 1: a topic that Trump didn't mention the entire night. They
Speaker 1: just sort of looked bizarre and dumb, and just their
Speaker 1: unwillingness to applaud stuff, even like you know, bipartisan warm
Speaker 1: fuzzy things. You know, the kid who was made an
Speaker 1: honorary Secret Service member, blah blah blah. You know, their
Speaker 1: their unwillingness to applaud even for just good things is
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't look good. And it brings me
Speaker 1: to kinda the almost the impossible position, that almost the
Speaker 1: impossible problem that Democrats face. Democrats, to keep themselves being
Speaker 1: able to sleep at night, have to tell themselves that
Speaker 1: the problem is their messaging. It's not the message, it's
Speaker 1: the medium, not the message. That you know, if we
Speaker 1: just get another leader like Barack Obama or someone like that,
Speaker 1: then we can still win, we can still rise to
Speaker 1: prominence in American politics. It's not what we believe, it's
Speaker 1: how we transmit it that we just you know, Joe
Speaker 1: Biden was only so effective a messenger of our position.
Speaker 1: Kamala Harris was not an effective messenger of our politics.
Speaker 1: Our politics are still popular, our politics are still good,
Speaker 1: and all we need is just to find the right messenger. Now,
Speaker 1: I will let me admit a couple of things. I
Speaker 1: think both parties have issues that they do very well
Speaker 1: in and issues that they do poorly in. Problem is
Speaker 1: that Democrats are holding on to a lot of positions
Speaker 1: where they are unwilling to change and are doing really poorly,
Speaker 1: and Trump is able to position himself with basically like
Speaker 1: seventy thirty favorable positions. Okay, as an example, let me
Speaker 1: just affirm for you guys this reality. Donald Trump is
Speaker 1: going to keep talking about transgender issues till Kingdom come.
Speaker 1: He's going to keep talking about how he's keeping men
Speaker 1: out of women's sports till Kingdom come, and the Democrats
Speaker 1: are stuck. Democrats have proclaimed that the transgender cause is
Speaker 1: like the human rights cause of our day. They're acting
Speaker 1: like it's Martin Luther King Junior's you know, this is
Speaker 1: the successor to Martin Luther King Junior's cause, is the
Speaker 1: cause for transgenderism. Democrats really said stuff like that, believe
Speaker 1: stuff like that. So now they're stuck with that position.
Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, we've all come to this
Speaker 1: realization in America that, hey, the pro trans argument and
Speaker 1: all that it entails, biological men in women's prisons, biological
Speaker 1: men playing women's sports, has you know, thirty percent favorability.
Speaker 1: So Trump is positioning himself in a position where he
Speaker 1: has seventy percent favorability. Likewise, on the border, all right,
Speaker 1: a lot of what Trump was saying about the border
Speaker 1: is undeniable. A lot of the stuff Trump Trump talked
Speaker 1: about in his speech was undeniable. One that like twenty
Speaker 1: one million people came into the country under Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: That's true, and it's not good. Two that the number
Speaker 1: of attempted illegal border crossings has decreased to essentially nothing
Speaker 1: within a month, month and a half, a month and
Speaker 1: a half after taking office, attempts at illegal border crossings
Speaker 1: have reduced themselves to nothing because the word got out
Speaker 1: that Trump was in charge and that he wasn't taking
Speaker 1: he was not messing around and attempted more illegal border
Speaker 1: crossings have basically reduced down to a trickle. It's that
Speaker 1: that outcome of being tough on illegal immigration in order
Speaker 1: to cut off the flow. That's like a sixty six
Speaker 1: thirty three position. Okay, that's like a sixty six percent
Speaker 1: favorability position. A lot of what Trump was saying about,
Speaker 1: you know, Trump talking really tough about and bringing to
Speaker 1: the State of the Union, address the families of people
Speaker 1: who were victimized by people who shouldn't have been in
Speaker 1: the country in the first place, and were only in
Speaker 1: the country because of lax immigration policy. Lake and Riley's
Speaker 1: family et cetera. Democrats look terrible in comparison to it.
Speaker 1: They can't express of you on immigration like what Trump
Speaker 1: has expressed because of their ideological commitments. So that's another
Speaker 1: massive advantage Trump has with regards to this other disputed issue.
Speaker 1: So Trump has like a couple of these issues, you know,
Speaker 1: tax cuts. Trump wants to make his tax cuts permanent.
Speaker 1: They were his tax cuts, his tax cuts that he
Speaker 1: passed in his first administration. Democrats have to decide are
Speaker 1: we going to begrudgingly make those tax cuts permanent or
Speaker 1: do we vote against it and look like idiots? You know? Again,
Speaker 1: another like sixty six to thirty three Trump advantage position. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of stuff Trump believes that I think
Speaker 1: don't necessarily have massive popular sort that aren't maybe majority
Speaker 1: popular positions. I don't know that any of Trump's views
Speaker 1: on tariffs necessarily have a majority support. I don't know
Speaker 1: that necessarily everything with how Trump has handled the Ukraine
Speaker 1: situation has necessarily majority support. But he doesn't have like
Speaker 1: that much opposition. I'd say the numbers are maybe like
Speaker 1: people aren't loving the tariff thing. Maybe it's like fifty
Speaker 1: five to forty five. I think maybe people aren't crazy
Speaker 1: about every decision he's made with regards to Ukraine so far.
Speaker 1: Although it seems like the blow up from last Friday,
Speaker 1: the meeting with Zelensky, that that maybe that's not the
Speaker 1: end of the story, and you know that this is
Speaker 1: a thing about foreign policy. I mean, maybe I do
Speaker 1: another segment about this later on in the show. I
Speaker 1: think people get so worked up about the making of
Speaker 1: the pizza of foreign policy and don't focus enough on
Speaker 1: what is the actual end pizza that comes out. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: you may not like how I'm kneeding the dough right now,
Speaker 1: but the end result pizza is delicious, Like foreign policy
Speaker 1: has to be judged based on the end result pizza. Okay.
Speaker 1: Trump and Zelensky got into a shouting match, all right.
Speaker 1: Is that going to change the ultimate outcome of things
Speaker 1: with Ukraine? Maybe not. Apparently, Zelenski writes this letter where
Speaker 1: he says, we are very grateful and we're willing to
Speaker 1: sign this deal. You know, Trump was reporting about this
Speaker 1: letter that Zelenski sent, so I don't know, it seems
Speaker 1: like but again, if Trump isn't in a very popular
Speaker 1: position with regards to Ukraine, and I don't even know
Speaker 1: that he is very unpopular with regards how he's dealing
Speaker 1: with your crane. His unpopularity is maybe at the level
Speaker 1: of like fifty to forty five. I think every Republican
Speaker 1: practically other than a few like Beltway mindset folks who
Speaker 1: are like diehard Ukraine supporters, is okay, and let saying,
Speaker 1: let's give Trump some grace here and see how he
Speaker 1: makes what he can do here. His all of Trump's
Speaker 1: negatives are like fifty to forty five negatives and most
Speaker 1: of Trump's many of Trump's positives are seventy to thirty positives.
Speaker 1: He knows it. That's why his like overall approval ratings
Speaker 1: right now are better than they ever were at any
Speaker 1: point in the first administration. He's at like a forty
Speaker 1: eight percent approval rating with only forty three percent negative.
Speaker 1: He's above water on approval rating, which he basically wan
Speaker 1: wasn't for his entire first administration. You know, even with tariffs. Okay,
Speaker 1: Trump spent a lot of time in this speech actually
Speaker 1: talking about tariffs, which you realize is like, Okay, this
Speaker 1: is the stuff that actually really animates him and revs
Speaker 1: his engine. And I think, you know, as someone who's
Speaker 1: not you know, just because you have a microphone in
Speaker 1: your face doesn't mean that you know everything about everything.
Speaker 1: And in fact, I will readily admit I don't know
Speaker 1: everything about everything, and economics is one of my areas
Speaker 1: where I often lack expertise. And the interplay of tariffs
Speaker 1: and how that all works. I'm gonna confess I'm not
Speaker 1: like some grand economics expert. But I think Trump's one
Speaker 1: of the things Trump's sort of asserting, it's a little
Speaker 1: hard to dispute it too much, is because I'm going
Speaker 1: to put tariffs on imports from foreign countries. It's going
Speaker 1: to incentivize American businesses to set up shop in America,
Speaker 1: and that is a long term good thing. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't think it's a coincidence that Apple announced this
Speaker 1: huge five hundred billion dollar American worker investment shortly after
Speaker 1: Trump takes office, Shortly after Trump's do you know all
Speaker 1: these tariffs with China. I mean, that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that's going to spur more investment into into America.
Speaker 1: Now there's some stuff. I mean, Trump is sort of
Speaker 1: like warning people that there might be an adjustment period
Speaker 1: with some of this. He clearly this is the one
Speaker 1: thing that could be a fatal flaw for Trump is
Speaker 1: if food prices don't go down, is if basically if
Speaker 1: costs don't stabilize or go down, that could be a
Speaker 1: real achilles heel for Trump, and that could grow over time.
Speaker 1: I mean, he's only been in office like a month
Speaker 1: and a half. Democrats are already starting to yell about it.
Speaker 1: Anything he does that's not going to result in food
Speaker 1: prices going down, Democrats yell about now. Trump talked specifically
Speaker 1: about even like the price of eggs in America, which
Speaker 1: are ludicrous, and anyone who's buying eggs for a large family,
Speaker 1: as our family is, knows about this problem. Costs of goods,
Speaker 1: costs of living, costs of groceries, costs of food especially
Speaker 1: could be Trump's achilles heel as we come up to
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty six midterms. But if food costs stabilize,
Speaker 1: if inflation sort of levels out, maybe if something can
Speaker 1: happen to get you know, stuff like eggs, you know,
Speaker 1: get the supply chain more stabilized. A lot of the
Speaker 1: reason why eggs are so expensive right now is because
Speaker 1: the USDA ordered one hundred like something like tens hundreds
Speaker 1: of millions of poultry to be killed because of disease
Speaker 1: or suspected disease or something. So wave too few chickens,
Speaker 1: not enough eggs to meet demand, prices go up. Maybe
Speaker 1: if that situation stabilizes, Republicans are going to have a
Speaker 1: lot of things to point to come twenty twenty six
Speaker 1: that are again seventy thirty type issues for them, like
Speaker 1: seventy percent favorability issues for them. And I don't know
Speaker 1: where Democrats are going to go. And that's the problem
Speaker 1: for Democrats. It's not just you know, the problem for
Speaker 1: Democrats is it's not just the messenger, it's the message
Speaker 1: in no small a part. When we return, I'm going
Speaker 1: to talk about all the women who wore pink and
Speaker 1: what exactly were they there representing? Next on the John
Speaker 1: Gewardy Show, there was a group of Democrat women who
Speaker 1: showed up for the joint addressed to Congress last night,
Speaker 1: all dressed in pink outfits, pink blazers, pink sweaters over
Speaker 1: their you know, blouses, et cetera. What were they there
Speaker 1: standing for? Were they what? And this is a big
Speaker 1: problem Democrats are facing Trump because he's leveraging this seventy
Speaker 1: to thirty position about transgenderism and the bad impact of
Speaker 1: transgenderism specifically on women's sports and women's privacy. Trump is
Speaker 1: sort of almost retaking this. I don't know if he's
Speaker 1: totally there yet, And certainly this isn't necessarily being reflected
Speaker 1: in the vote. I mean, if only women voted, Kamala
Speaker 1: Harris would have won in the landslide. If only men voted,
Speaker 1: you know, Trump would have won the landslide. But he's
Speaker 1: got another issue where it forces you to actually ask
Speaker 1: the question, You're all these Democrat women, Democrat legislators wearing pink.
Speaker 1: How are they standing up for women here? What issues
Speaker 1: do Democrats actually stand up for women? Because they don't
Speaker 1: care about women's sports. Clearly, they don't care about protecting
Speaker 1: women's shelters from having biological men be housed in them.
Speaker 1: They don't care about women's prisons. You know, I talked
Speaker 1: with Sally Marino on the show a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: ago about this horrific case they were dealing with at
Speaker 1: the California Correctional Facility, the women's correctional facility in Chowchilla,
Speaker 1: where a obvious biological man who didn't change his name
Speaker 1: has facial hair claim to be transgender, goes to the
Speaker 1: women's prison and proceeds to rape some women there with
Speaker 1: nothing but a mere verbal claim that he is transgender.
Speaker 1: California is housing a monster like that in the women's
Speaker 1: prison in Chowchilla. It's like the most clear cut, obvious
Speaker 1: instance of this guy's not actually transgender. This guy just
Speaker 1: wants to rape women. He's not confused about his sexuality.
Speaker 1: He just wants to rape people. He's lying about. But
Speaker 1: our insane transgender policies that we have in California under
Speaker 1: California state law allow for a monster like that to
Speaker 1: be housed in a women's prison. They don't care about
Speaker 1: women's prisons. They don't care about women's locker rooms, they
Speaker 1: don't care about women's bathrooms, they don't care about Title nine.
Speaker 1: On the extreme fringe of the left, they've got this
Speaker 1: insane I mean, you saw it at the Oscars, this
Speaker 1: insane thing where the woman who one best female actor
Speaker 1: goes up and is talking about the dignity of sex work.
Speaker 1: A sex work in scare quotes a quote profession where
Speaker 1: most of the people who participate in it are being
Speaker 1: raped in some form or another, or are many of
Speaker 1: whom are being trafficked or raped or or or whatever.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the insane liberal thing where you
Speaker 1: focus on like the thirty percent, you know, the five
Speaker 1: percent of people who are you know, oh, I'm happy, willing, voluntary,
Speaker 1: not drug addicted, the sex worker, as opposed to the
Speaker 1: ninety five percent of quote sex workers who are being
Speaker 1: trafficked or raped or what have you. Democrats don't care
Speaker 1: about women in any of those contexts where they're vulnerable.
Speaker 1: The only thing actually that these pink dressed women who
Speaker 1: are at Trump's address last night, the only thing they like,
Speaker 1: actually care about is abortion. That's it. That's the only
Speaker 1: real like, that's the only thing where democrats. You know,
Speaker 1: I talked about how Trump has all of these issues
Speaker 1: where he's got like seventy to thirty favorability. This is
Speaker 1: the one Abortion is like the one issue where Democrats
Speaker 1: have like sixty six the thirty three favorability something like that.
Speaker 1: But even when you drill into the policy specifics of abortion,
Speaker 1: I don't even know that it's that strong. That's all
Speaker 1: they're they are representing. And it makes you really ask, well,
Speaker 1: who really cares about women? Is it Democrats? Because they
Speaker 1: support abortion or is it Trump because he actually thinks
Speaker 1: that women's sports should be protected from men, that women's
Speaker 1: prisons should be protected from men, that women's shelters should
Speaker 1: be protected from men. That Title nine, I mean, who's
Speaker 1: standing up for Title nine? More Trump or these liberal
Speaker 1: female members of Congress. When we return, Gavin Newsom is
Speaker 1: desperately trying to make the budget situation in California look
Speaker 1: better than it is. Next on the John Geardi Show.
Speaker 1: Most of you listening or many of you listening, run
Speaker 1: businesses or maybe work within businesses managing budgets. I manage
Speaker 1: some budgets in my time. It's a tricky business. It's
Speaker 1: a difficult business. And one of the things you have
Speaker 1: to do when you are budgeting is you got to
Speaker 1: be realistic. And I've been sort of on both sides
Speaker 1: of that where I've had some budgets, whether it's that
Speaker 1: Right to Life or with my Obria clinic, where I
Speaker 1: was being too cautious and to such an extent, like
Speaker 1: you know, underestimating revenues and overestimating expenses to such an
Speaker 1: extent that the budget sort of fails to be useful.
Speaker 1: But the much more dangerous flaw, I'd say is to
Speaker 1: be too optimistic overestimate the kinds of revenues you're going
Speaker 1: to get and underestimate the expenses you're going to have.
Speaker 1: And if you're going to be realistic about doing any
Speaker 1: kind of budgeting within a business, you have, you know, honesty,
Speaker 1: honesty with yourself, honesty with your board, honesty with your boss.
Speaker 1: Honesty has to be the order of the day. Like
Speaker 1: there has to be a kind of realism involved. I've
Speaker 1: had budgets in different years where I was like, this
Speaker 1: is not good. Okay, we're operating at a loss. We
Speaker 1: need to find ways to We got to find things
Speaker 1: to cut. We've got to find things to you know,
Speaker 1: ways that we can increase revenue. And you often you
Speaker 1: have to be honest with yourself about well, is this
Speaker 1: genuinely a thing we're gonna cut when the rubber meets
Speaker 1: the road. Is this genuinely a thing we can realistically cut?
Speaker 1: Is this a thing? Conversely on the other side, is
Speaker 1: this a thing over here that we can actually bank
Speaker 1: on this much revenue coming in? And so honesty with
Speaker 1: yourself has to be the order of the day. That's
Speaker 1: what you have to do when you're setting a budget
Speaker 1: for a year, Well not when you're Gavin Newsom. So
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom is doing a whole bunch of shenanigans to
Speaker 1: try to make California's budgetary situation seem not as bad
Speaker 1: as it is. Dan Walters from Calmatters dot org has,
Speaker 1: as usual. Dan Walters has been doing political commentary in
Speaker 1: California for fifty years and is still, I think one
Speaker 1: of the best in the business. Has a great piece
Speaker 1: talking about some of the little budgetary tricks that Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom is doing to make his proposed state budget for
Speaker 1: twenty five twenty six look better than it is. Here's
Speaker 1: what he has to say. One of the many gimmicks
Speaker 1: that California's governors and legislators employed to paper over budget
Speaker 1: deficits and thus to avoid actual spending cuts, real spending
Speaker 1: cuts or increasing taxes is to assume some level of
Speaker 1: savings from making state agencies and programs more efficient. They
Speaker 1: will plug arbitrary numbers into the budget from such supposed efficiencies, then,
Speaker 1: along with other gimmicks, declare that the budget gap has
Speaker 1: been closed and pat themselves on the back for the feet.
Speaker 1: The twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five budget is
Speaker 1: a prime example of such political expedients. So that's last
Speaker 1: year's I guess the budget year. I guess we're still
Speaker 1: in right now. I think, presumably through June. As enacted
Speaker 1: last June. Last year's budget total two hundred ninety seven
Speaker 1: point nine billion dollars, of which two hundred eleven point
Speaker 1: five billion was general fund spending. But the budget assumed
Speaker 1: that the state would receive two hundred and seven point
Speaker 1: two billion dollars in general fund revenues, so it had
Speaker 1: a gap to bridge. Okay, so two hundred ninety seven billion,
Speaker 1: two hundred ninety seven billion dollar budget, two hundred and
Speaker 1: seven billion dollar revenues, we have a gap. Gavin Newsom
Speaker 1: and legislators turned to a series of gimmicks and indirect
Speaker 1: loans to close the gap, including two point nine billion
Speaker 1: dollars from assumed efficiency savings in state agencies and state universities.
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are some people here listening who maybe
Speaker 1: work for a state agency or a state university, and
Speaker 1: the idea that there is efficiency in staffing at any
Speaker 1: of them probably is making you laugh. However, when Newsom
Speaker 1: unveiled a twenty twenty five to twenty twenty six budget,
Speaker 1: proposal in January. The plan acknowledged that while the universities
Speaker 1: met their relatively tiny savings goal of two hundred million,
Speaker 1: other agencies would reduce spending by just eight hundred million,
Speaker 1: or less than a third of their two point seven
Speaker 1: billion dollar goal, so the actually the universities were the
Speaker 1: only ones who met their sort of savings goal that
Speaker 1: Knewsom had spent for them. The new budget also revealed
Speaker 1: that twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five general fund
Speaker 1: spending had ballooned to an estimated two hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: two billion, So general fund spending actually went up twenty
Speaker 1: billion dollars more than they estimated, twenty one billion dollars
Speaker 1: more than the final version they had assumed, and while
Speaker 1: projected revenues had also increased to two hundred and seventeen billion,
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four to twenty twenty five deficit would
Speaker 1: widen to fifteen billion dollars. Last month, the legislator's budget analyst,
Speaker 1: Gabe Petek p TECH reported that his staff was having
Speaker 1: difficulty getting accurate information from the administration about the underachieving
Speaker 1: efficiency Decree. We have tried to get information from some
Speaker 1: of the larger departments to better understand what types of
Speaker 1: operational changes are being implemented to achieve the identified savings.
Speaker 1: P Tech wrote, as we discussed in greater detail later,
Speaker 1: we have received limited information thus far. This venture into
Speaker 1: the weeds of state budgeting generates to observations. One that
Speaker 1: gimmickry is an integral part of the current process, and
Speaker 1: second that the state faces chronic gaps between income and outgo,
Speaker 1: a condition dubbed a structural deficit. And I've been talking
Speaker 1: about this on the show for a while and I've
Speaker 1: related it actually a lot to You might have remembered this.
Speaker 1: This was about two years ago there, maybe not quite
Speaker 1: two years ago. Jerry Dyer has this grand announcement, Oh,
Speaker 1: we're doing all this big, you know, big infrastructure influx
Speaker 1: of cash from the state. City of Fresno is going
Speaker 1: to get two hundred and fifty million dollars in infrastructure
Speaker 1: funding from the state, and this is We're finally going
Speaker 1: to revitalize downtown. This is going to provide a lot
Speaker 1: of the stuff we need for plumbing and all kinds
Speaker 1: of infrastructure stuff that we need for downtown Fresno. A
Speaker 1: lot of the boring stuff that you don't think about
Speaker 1: like plumbing and parking and crap like that. So we're
Speaker 1: gonna get two hundred and fifty million dollars from the state.
Speaker 1: We got that first fifty million, We're feeling good. We've
Speaker 1: got fifty million one year. Then we're gonna get a
Speaker 1: hundred million the next year, one hundred million the next year,
Speaker 1: and we're all, Oh, this is great, this is so good.
Speaker 1: We're rocking and rolling. State's gonna give us all this money,
Speaker 1: and it's gonna allow like ten thousand new residents to
Speaker 1: live in downtown Fresno. And this is what we need.
Speaker 1: This is what we really need to revitalize. And I
Speaker 1: don't This is not a criticism of Jerry Dyer. By
Speaker 1: the way, I'm not blaming Jerry Dyer for this. Good
Speaker 1: Good for Jerry Dyer. Be a wonderful thing to revitalize downtown.
Speaker 1: Be a great thing if ten thousand more people could
Speaker 1: move there, like we need infrastructure support. Good for you,
Speaker 1: Jerry Dyer. Well, those promises were made in the fat times,
Speaker 1: and now we're coming up on the lean times. Those
Speaker 1: promises were made when the state was flush with federal
Speaker 1: COVID cash, and that well is now dry. So that
Speaker 1: next installment of one hundred million dollars, Oh it got
Speaker 1: de layed a year, and then oh it got delayed
Speaker 1: two years. Why because California faces I think, as Walters
Speaker 1: is talking about here, there's a fundamental structural problem. Income
Speaker 1: into the state from taxes from the most heavily taxed
Speaker 1: state in the Union is not enough to cover our
Speaker 1: sort of baseline set year over year expenses, even just
Speaker 1: talking about general fund expenditures. Our general fund revenues are
Speaker 1: not enough to match our general fund expenditures. Even in
Speaker 1: a year last year where we had ten billion dollars
Speaker 1: more in general fund revenue than we anticipated, we had
Speaker 1: twenty billion dollars more in spending. So how do you
Speaker 1: solve that problem? I don't know if or that you can.
Speaker 1: It's a fundamental problem. A lot of people left the
Speaker 1: state and took their capital gains tax revenue with them.
Speaker 1: A lot of higher income or you know, higher total
Speaker 1: wealth people took their tax revenue with them to move
Speaker 1: to Nevada or Arizona, or Florida or Texas or Idaho,
Speaker 1: and they ain't coming back. So we got used to
Speaker 1: a certain level of spending, We got used to certain
Speaker 1: habits and we're having to have this painful realization that
Speaker 1: this is not the kind of you know, we're not
Speaker 1: a filet mignon and you know, lobster mac and cheese
Speaker 1: state anymore. We're a hamburger and French fries state. And
Speaker 1: we're just not adjusting accordingly. And by the way, oh,
Speaker 1: you know, we had a massive wildfire destroy huge swaths
Speaker 1: of Los Angeles, So you know where we're having to
Speaker 1: where Gavin Newsom is going to have to go with
Speaker 1: his beggar bowl to Donald Trump to find some way,
Speaker 1: you know, Donald Trump, who is clearly leveraging all of
Speaker 1: his power and the power of the federal purse to
Speaker 1: enact the policy changes he wants. Donald Trump's making threats
Speaker 1: about not wanting to pay money to not wanting to
Speaker 1: give federal money to jurisdictions that do all the kinds
Speaker 1: of things that California loves to do dei sanctuary jurisdictions.
Speaker 1: He's not wanting to give fire releaf to California unless
Speaker 1: it fixes some of its stupid fire policies or gets
Speaker 1: you know, stops listening to the Sierra Club. So Gavin Newsom,
Speaker 1: basically there's this lack that this unreality in which Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom lives. But that's okay for Gavin Newsom to a
Speaker 1: certain extent, because he's not really thinking about anything other
Speaker 1: than twenty twenty eight when we return, How many podcasts
Speaker 1: is Gavin Newsom gonna do next? On the John Girardi Show.
Speaker 1: Gavin Newsom is so board with being the governor of California.
Speaker 1: He's got he already had a podcast set up where
Speaker 1: he was doing a podcast with it was him some
Speaker 1: guy to actually kind of play as like the host
Speaker 1: of it. And Marshawn Lynch, the former longtime running back
Speaker 1: for the Seattle Seahawks, who one you know, he got
Speaker 1: to the two won a Super Bowl with them, got
Speaker 1: to a second Super Bowl, Which makes me wonder, like,
Speaker 1: what on earth is Gavin Newsom doing with a podcast
Speaker 1: with Marshawn Lynch. I don't know. It seems like Marshawn
Speaker 1: Lynch is just like, yeah, I'll talk with Gavin Newsom, Okay,
Speaker 1: but where's my check? Sure sounds great. Newsom's launched another podcast,
Speaker 1: just The Gavin Newsom Show, and it's just it's so
Speaker 1: obvious how bored he is with being governed. He is
Speaker 1: so tired of being governor. I think he is tired
Speaker 1: of state emergencies, He's tired of actually governing. He doesn't
Speaker 1: want to talk with Donald Trump or hang out with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. He is so bored and he's just all
Speaker 1: he's trying to do is position himself for twenty twenty
Speaker 1: eight to be the front runner. And he thinks he's
Speaker 1: the man. He thinks he's going to be the guy
Speaker 1: to get the Democratic nomination win the presidency in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty eight, and that's what everything he's done has been
Speaker 1: focused around that. Now here's the problem. I think everything
Speaker 1: he's done has been focused around getting the Democrat nomination
Speaker 1: and maybe more specifically, getting the Democrat big time donors
Speaker 1: behind him. I think once he's on a debate stage
Speaker 1: in Iowa somewhere, he's not gonna look so good because
Speaker 1: it's not like California is doing great, and under his watch,
Speaker 1: it's not looking good. And he's another guy with some
Speaker 1: of these sort of seventy to thirty negatives, like high
Speaker 1: speed rail is going to make him look like an idiot.
Speaker 1: Our economy is going to make him look like an
Speaker 1: Idiot's handling wildfire is going to make him look like
Speaker 1: an idiot he's but he just keeps dancing for these
Speaker 1: donors who he wants to fund him. And maybe it'll work,
Speaker 1: work to get Kamala Harris near the throne. That'll do it,
Speaker 1: John Giardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk