In this episode of the California Underground Podcast, host Phil discusses several pressing issues in California politics, including the recently passed 'One Big Beautiful Bill' and its implications for tax cuts and spending. He also delves into the controversy surrounding LA Mayor Karen Bass and her deletion of text messages during the LA wildfire crisis, highlighting the legal ramifications of such actions. Additionally, the podcast covers the financial strain of California's healthcare system for undocumented citizens and the potential for new taxes to support these initiatives. Phil emphasizes the importance of accountability and transparency in government, while also exploring the future of California politics and the challenges ahead for both parties.
Are you a Californian who feels isolated and alone in your political views in a deep blue state? Feel like you canβt talk about insane taxes, an overbearing government, and radical social experiments without getting a side eye? Then join us on the California Underground Podcast, the most trusted podcast on all things California politics.
Original air date 5.22.25
Chapters
00:00 Introduction to California Politics Podcast
02:43 The One Big Beautiful Bill: Overview and Implications
15:31 Karen Bass and the Text Message Controversy
30:51 California's Healthcare for Undocumented Citizens: A Financial Crisis
33:28 California's Budget Crisis and Political Accountability
42:52 Healthcare Policy and Its Implications
49:48 The Role of Taxes in California's Budget
56:25 Democrats' Choice of How to Pass New Taxes
01:00:55 Political Ammo for California Republicans?
*The California Underground Podcast is dedicated to discussing California politics from a place of sanity and rationality.*
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00:00:02
If you're a California conservative, A libertarian, A
00:00:05
moderate Democrat, believe in common sense, or just the same
00:00:08
person, this is the political podcast for you.
00:00:11
It's the California Underground podcast.
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What is going on? Everybody, thanks for tuning in
00:00:20
to another episode of the California Underground podcast.
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I'm your host Phil riding solo tonight.
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Oh, forgot to mention the tagline.
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The most trusted podcast for all things California politics,
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Riding solo tonight. But that doesn't mean we don't
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have a lot to talk about tonight.
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There is certainly a lot to talk about having to be back on IG
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tonight with a lot of you people, people who might
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remember back in the day when we did Coffee in California
00:00:47
politics, that was that was an OG thing.
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That was like a OG COVID California underground thing.
00:00:56
I was like back when I had like 2000 followers on IG, we used to
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do Coffee in California politics every Wednesday.
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So it's nice to be back on IG for tonight.
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With that said, we are live on YouTube, Rumble X twitch, I
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think at this point and IG tonight.
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So if there's anything that you guys want to talk about, if
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there's nothing you want to bring up, I will do my best to
00:01:22
check all of the chats and make sure that I'm keeping up.
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There's you know, how many chats am I trying to keep track of?
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So if you if there's any comments, questions, stuff like
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that you want to talk about, that's why we do an interactive
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podcast and that's why we do it live is because we love when the
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audience kind of joins us in the conversation and you know,
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engages with us. And this is really your time to
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kind of use this as a platform to ask questions and be curious
00:01:50
about California politics. And we have a lot to get to
00:01:53
tonight. We're going to talk about the
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one big beautiful bill, the one big beautiful bill.
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It's one big, really big beautiful bill.
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Most beautiful bill you've ever seen.
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We're going to talk about that for a little bit because I do
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have some thoughts, good and bad, regarding the one big
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beautiful bill. There's some good stuff and
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there's some not some good stuff that I'm, you know, a little
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hesitant about, but we'll get to that.
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We're also going to be talking about Karen Bass deleting a lot
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of text messages right around the time of the wildfires, like
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what was going on. This is stuff that
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communications you can request. We'll get into that.
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That is against the law to delete those text messages and
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those communications. And then finally, we're gonna
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get into the struggle in Sacramento.
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Newsom is backing off a lot of the free healthcare for
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undocumented citizens here in California.
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And then California Democrats are now coming out and saying,
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Nope, not so fast, Mr. Newsom. We would like to continue that,
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even if that includes new taxes. So we're gonna get to all of
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that tonight. And again, if you're on YouTube
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Rumble, all those places, feel free to let me know your
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comments, questions and all of that stuff.
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So let's get started right away. We'll talk about the big
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beautiful bill. OK, so this happened last night
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and I'm going to read a little bit from Zero Hedge as soon as I
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pull this up for all of you. Let's see.
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So this was passed late last night.
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They were up very late. The House of House of
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Representatives or Republicans, They passed the big, one, big
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beautiful bill. And this is what Donald Trump
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said. I'm not going to read the whole
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thing in his entire voice because it gets a little long.
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He said on Truth Social. The one big beautiful bill has
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passed the House of Representatives, arguably the
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most significant piece of legislation that will ever be
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signed in the history of our country.
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Not sure about that, but OK. There's been a lot of other
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legislation that's been signed. Probably more consequential.
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The bill includes massive tax cuts, no tax on tips, no tax on
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overtime, tax deductions when you purchase an American made
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vehicle, along with strong border security measures.
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There's also talk about the Trump savings account during
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girls lost control of themselves.
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They're aimlessly wandering around, no confidence, grit or
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determination. They don't realize that these
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things are so many more like them.
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Will never happen again. So obviously Trump taking a
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victory lap on this bill passing late last night.
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It was a multi trillion dollar tax package, as we said already
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known as the big beautiful bill cleared the House in a last
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minute 200 and 15214 vote on Thursday morning.
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It's now going to go over to the Senate faces a little bit of an
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uphill battle over there because I think they have to get over
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like 60 votes over there. So it's not going to be as quite
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easy and they probably aren't expecting this until July that
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it's even if it passes if it's going to end up on Donald
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Trump's desk. It aims to prevent a year end
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tax hike and potential debt default by would significantly
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increase the near term federal deficit.
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So let's see the some of the big things that came out of this is
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a lot of good things. And then I'm going to talk about
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a couple bad things. And in my personal opinion about
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the one big beautiful bill, one big beautiful bill.
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It says the extension of Trump era tax cuts in new relief, such
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as exempting tips and overtime from taxation.
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Good. I'm sure that will be, you know,
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legislated back overtime by lobbyists and stuff like that.
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But for now, it's a campaign promise that Donald Trump had.
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He said I was not, I was going to do no tax on tips and
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overtime. Great.
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I love that. I mean, maybe, maybe maybe we're
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getting ahead of ourselves. Maybe it starts with, you know,
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tips and overtime on your income.
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And then sooner or later people are going to say, why do we pay
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any tax on our income? Why do we do any of that?
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So maybe that will start to seep into people's minds.
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The state and local tax deduction cap will be increased
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to $40 with phase outs for high earners.
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So that was basically if you paid state and local taxes, you
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could deduct those from your federal taxes.
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They lowered it all the way down to 10.
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Obviously, a lot of people in like high tax states here, like
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here in California were getting upset because they're paying a
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lot in California taxes and they weren't able to deduct it from
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their federal taxes, which can result in a big federal tax
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bill. So they've now increased its
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40 and was 10. Cuts to safety net programs such
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as Medicaid and food stamps alongside new work requirements
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starting in December 2026. Rollbacks on clean energy tax
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credits, boosting fossil fuel incentives.
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Major increases in military and border security spending.
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New taxes targeting elite universities, IG or EG Harvard
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and other Ivy Leagues and immigrant remittances.
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The elimination of IV tax credits replaced by interest
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deductions on US built vehicle loans.
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There was also something I believe I saw that they, they
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got in there, which was they got rid of the transfer tax on
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suppressors. So 2 Second Amendment people
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rejoice about that. That's pretty exciting.
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Here's my problem. If you look at this graph right
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here, this is the big problem. So I'm all in favor of tax cuts.
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I, I think tax cuts are great for the economy.
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I think taxes are a burden on us.
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I hope we start going down the road of maybe slowly getting rid
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of a lot of taxes because I don't think we need as many
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taxes. Especially when you think about
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prime example here in California, we get taxed to
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death and somehow all of our cities and our state are
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completely in the red. So it just goes to show you it
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doesn't matter how much you tax these politicians when they're
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given too much money, we'll end up just squandering it away.
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We'll talk about that in a little bit in a different story.
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So this is the big beautiful bill will massively increase
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near term deficits and add $5 trillion in debt.
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Not great. OK.
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We're already what, over $36 trillion in debt and then this
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is going to add another 5 million or $5 trillion in debt.
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There was a slow auction. I don't want to get really like
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too wonky for you guys of what what's going on here.
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But there was an auction the other day, I think it was
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yesterday for Treasury bonds. So basically, when the market
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looks at this, if Treasury bonds at an auction don't sell really
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well, that's a signal to the market that investors are not
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really quite as sure are confident in American policies,
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economic policies going forward. They don't feel like they want
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to buy American debt because while you keep raising debt and
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you keep piling on more debt, how do we know at the end of the
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day, our Treasury bonds in 30 years are actually going to get
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paid back? So obviously, there's not going
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to be a lot of people who rush to buy bonds if there is this
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for kind of looming forewarning, looming debt crisis that nobody
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seems to really want to address. Now, Thomas Massie was one
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representative who voted no. And this is where people say
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like, oh, Thomas Massie, he's such a seller.
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He always votes with the Democrats, but he doesn't vote
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with the Democrats because he believes what Democrats are
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saying. Democrats are voting with the
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way they are because they hate Donald Trump.
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Thomas Massie is basically coming out and saying, look,
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this is all fine and dainty. I'm for tax cuts.
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I love tax cuts. Let's cut back as much as
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possible. But if you're not cutting the
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spending, then we're really going to be in trouble.
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And I think right now they didn't give you a final number.
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I had to do some research because this is a reconciliation
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bill, meaning it's not like a straight like budget.
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And I'm not going to get really too wonky in terms of like the
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federal policy here. So there's not really a, a firm
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number. It's probably around like $6.5
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trillion of spending, which keep in mind, like before COVID was
00:10:11
almost half of what we were paying.
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Now, I mean, COVID spiked everything up because of these
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relief bills and the payouts and telling everyone to stay home
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and all the loans and all that stuff.
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We got to get it back under what it was before COVID.
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I mean, we've got a long way to go and they're not even really
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close to this. So one problem I see right now
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is that this, this bill looks to cut 1.5 trillion from the, the
00:10:40
federal budget over 10 years. Now, I would argue that's not
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even good enough because you should probably be cutting 1.5
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trillion this year. Like there's probably 1.5
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trillion of waste right now in, right now in the budget.
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So the fact that they're saying, oh, over over 10 years, we'll
00:11:00
get to 1.5 trillion, you'll add on like another how many
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trillions of dollars before that 10 years.
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If we're adding on another 5 trillion every single year based
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on these spending projections, you're going to be how much more
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in debt because of the fact that you haven't cut spending?
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So that is 1 big issue I really have with this is tax cuts are
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great. I'm, I'm in favor, favor of the
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tax cuts, love tax cuts. I, I will stand by this.
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It has been proven time and time and time again, no matter how
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much leftist economist want to try and tell you that this is
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not how it works. This is how it works.
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It is, it is so simple. When you leave people to have
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more money in their pocket, people will use that money to
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spend in the economy. And when they use that money to
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spend in the economy, the economy does better.
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So I'm not sure that any sort of fancy falutin doctorate in
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economics can really refute the fact that when people have more
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money in their pocket, they can go spend more money and the
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economy gets better, simple as that.
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I don't know how you refute that.
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There's always a lot of leftist economies like, oh, well, these
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tax cuts are for the rich and then blah, blah, blah, blah.
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And then for corporations. And hey, if the corporation that
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you work for is seeing their corporate tax rate go from 21%
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down to 15%, that helps you as an employee because there's
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profits that they can then reinvest into the company with
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salaries and bonuses, stuff like that.
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But getting ahead of myself, that's really one of my, my
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biggest issues here is that it doesn't cut enough.
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There wasn't a lot of the DOGE cuts specifically.
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They, they said a lot of Doge stuff was included, but there
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was, it wasn't really anything specifically like outlined of
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like this is what DOGE said. And this is what we're kind of
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including. So basically, yay, tax cuts,
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like the tax cuts, Boo, increased spending, like we're
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still spending an exorbitant amount of money.
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And we really need to rein that in so that that's like, OK,
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there's campaign promises that were met.
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No tax on tips, no tax on overtime, stuff like that.
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But there was this huge opportunity missed regarding not
00:13:27
not cutting the spending as much as I was expecting.
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They were going to cut it and they need to cut it really,
00:13:32
really quickly because we are hurtling towards catastrophe
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financially as a country. We are hurt.
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I don't know how like this gets like people.
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This is like when people just kind of they, they don't open
00:13:46
the credit card statement and they just figure like if I don't
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look at the credit card amount and I, I know I still have the
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stuff on there and I can keep doing it.
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I'm just going to keep spending until it gets to a point where
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you've maxed out the credit card and then you can't spend and
00:14:01
then you're in trouble and you can't pay it all back.
00:14:03
That's where we're at right now. I brought this up on NBC when
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they asked me to come on, talk about Trump's first 100 days was
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somebody's got to open the credit card statement and
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someone's got to look at this and go, we have spent way too
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much money. There is way too much waste,
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There's way too much fraud and abuse.
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We cannot be what's probably going to be $40 trillion in debt
00:14:25
at this point without a plan to pay it down.
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And I don't see a plan to pay it down that has to get paid down
00:14:33
either. There's one of two ways this
00:14:35
goes down and and neither are pretty for Americans either.
00:14:39
One, the United States of America defaults on its debt,
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which would be catastrophic to the United States of America.
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Or two, they raise taxes to pay off this debt.
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Neither of those are great options.
00:14:53
So unless the federal government says we have to really kind of
00:14:56
rein in spending, and it looks like they haven't.
00:14:58
It looks like congressional Republicans did the, the old a,
00:15:01
here's your tax cuts. But we're going to keep spending
00:15:03
as much as possible. That's where we're at.
00:15:06
So not happy with the fact that we're spending like a drunken
00:15:10
sailor. Not happy about that, happy
00:15:13
about tax cuts. I don't know if it'll be the, as
00:15:16
he said, the most beautiful, incredible bill ever in the
00:15:19
history of bills ever signed in American history.
00:15:22
That's exactly the most beautiful bill.
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I don't think, I don't know if it's going to be that level of I
00:15:31
don't think it's going to be that level of incredible.
00:15:33
It's going to be nice. I mean, tax cuts are great.
00:15:35
I like to see a booming economy. Everyone likes tax cuts.
00:15:38
So all right, on to our next topic tonight, Karen Bass.
00:15:45
Karen Bass, Mayor of LA, We all know she had this horrible,
00:15:50
horrible handling of the wildfires in LA early this year.
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We don't need to really go over all the story, but I'm going to
00:16:02
just give you a little background to begin with.
00:16:05
Karen Bass, mayor of LA, big wildfire started.
00:16:09
She was in Ghana, right? She was in Ghana for some, I'm
00:16:14
not really quite sure, dinner or something, she was away.
00:16:18
Basically. She was not in LA at the time
00:16:21
that there was a risk of wildfires.
00:16:24
This all broke out. She then had to rush back to LA.
00:16:28
Now, during that time, you can imagine that she was probably
00:16:32
communicating with her staff a lot because you're halfway
00:16:35
around the world in Ghana and you need to know what's going on
00:16:41
as the mayor of LA. So what do you do?
00:16:45
Well, you can call people. You can e-mail people.
00:16:47
Most likely you're texting people.
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You're texting people back and forth.
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That's the number one way people communicate nowadays is they
00:16:53
text. Now, when you text as public
00:16:59
employees, that's a public record because we, we as voters
00:17:05
are supposed to know what you're talking about.
00:17:08
What went into your decisions? Why did it take you so long?
00:17:12
Why were you in Ghana? Why did you go to Ghana before
00:17:17
you knew there was going to be an issue?
00:17:21
So that's where we're at, right, Those communications.
00:17:26
So this is from Breitbart, LA Times.
00:17:28
Karen Bass is deleting her text messages.
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Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is deleting her text messages, thus
00:17:35
defeating efforts by media organizations to obtain them as
00:17:38
government communications subject to public records
00:17:40
requests, according to the Los Angeles Times.
00:17:43
The Times reported that a been unable to obtain Bass's text
00:17:47
messages concerning her overseas trip to Ghana, during which the
00:17:51
LA fires broke out because they were automatically deleted and
00:17:56
the city had not retained them, the Times reported.
00:17:59
She and her office have said that she was in constant
00:18:01
communication during that period, but it's impossible to
00:18:04
know exactly what she was communicating because her
00:18:07
messages were not saved, according to a city lawyer.
00:18:11
Her phone is not set to save is Her phone is set not to save
00:18:16
text messages, said the lawyer, David Michaelson.
00:18:19
Michaelson said there is no requirement that a city official
00:18:22
or employee save text messages, despite the fact that the city's
00:18:25
own document retention policies dictate that the most records
00:18:29
should be kept for at least two years.
00:18:32
The time suggests that Bass is violating both state law and the
00:18:34
city's own administrative code. So the fact that I, I mean, I
00:18:42
guess this might have been the same attorney for LAHASA who
00:18:45
said, oh, it was a mistake or an administrative oversight that I
00:18:50
signed three checks equally in over $2 that went to my
00:18:54
husband's nonprofit. Must be the same attorney and
00:18:56
probably all the same attorney who come up with these crazy
00:18:58
excuses. This is against the law.
00:19:03
I'm going to say this right now. This is against the law here in
00:19:07
California. Let me take a sip of water
00:19:09
because I want to make sure I get this.
00:19:15
This is against the law in California.
00:19:17
There's something called the California Public Records Act
00:19:20
under Government Code section 6250, which means that people
00:19:26
who are public, public employees, are bound to hold on
00:19:31
to records so that people, the people who vote for you, have a
00:19:37
right to look at the stuff that you're doing and talking about.
00:19:42
Now you can make a public records request.
00:19:46
That is something that you can do.
00:19:50
You can do it pretty easily. It's now just a form that you
00:19:53
fill out. How long they take to get back
00:19:55
to you might be a whole different story, but you can do
00:20:00
that. So for example, I can go in and
00:20:03
request of San Diego County. I can say, hey, give me your
00:20:07
communications on this subject between these time periods.
00:20:13
Usually they're supposed to comply.
00:20:15
If you make it pretty reasonable to say, hey, can you give me
00:20:17
this stuff? I'm looking specifically at
00:20:19
maybe this topic between these time periods.
00:20:23
I want to see what was going on. They have to comply with that.
00:20:26
That is part of the California Public Records Act and that is
00:20:29
part, it's like a Freedom of Information Act.
00:20:31
Like when you make it a FOIA request, it's sort of the same
00:20:34
thing. The California Supreme Court
00:20:38
this was 2017 recently held in the city of San Jose versus
00:20:42
Superior Court, California Supreme Court that public
00:20:45
employees digital messages existing in private electronic
00:20:49
devices. IGEGI keep getting that wrong.
00:20:52
EGIG smartphones and computers or in personal messaging
00:20:56
accounts are presumptively open to public disclosure under the
00:21:00
California Public Records Act. Under the courts holding digital
00:21:04
messages constitute public records and subject to
00:21:06
disclosure under the CRPA if they are written by a public
00:21:11
employee and they substantially relate to public business.
00:21:15
If these two requirements are met, a message is a public
00:21:18
record even if it exists largely in a single public employees
00:21:21
device or deemed retained by the enemy agency.
00:21:27
So OK, basically Karen Bass is now coming out with this excuse
00:21:35
that they don't save the text messages.
00:21:37
It hasn't been that long. All right, let's let's start
00:21:40
right there. It hasn't been that long that
00:21:46
she should be deleting or having her phone automatically delete
00:21:49
text messages, right? You are the mayor of Los
00:21:53
Angeles, probably the second biggest, biggest city in America
00:21:58
like you are. You're not mayor of a tiny
00:22:00
little town. You're the mayor of Los Angeles.
00:22:03
You did not know or no one advised you that all of your
00:22:07
stuff, all of your records, all of your text messages are public
00:22:10
record. And then people have to have
00:22:12
access to them or can have access to them.
00:22:14
That was never that was never discussed, right?
00:22:17
So now conveniently, when the LA Times is trying to do a story on
00:22:25
this, now all of a sudden they're coming back and saying,
00:22:30
no, we don't have those text messages because Karen Bass's
00:22:33
phone automatically deleted them.
00:22:35
Great, great. I mean, that's a great excuse.
00:22:37
The dog ate my homework. Why not?
00:22:40
I guess we're all supposed to just wipe her hand and go, Yep,
00:22:43
that's good enough for us. I guess her phone automatically
00:22:45
deletes it. But it's different if it's, if
00:22:48
it's, for example, my phone. If it's my phone, as a private
00:22:51
citizen, I set it to delete every 30 days because I just get
00:22:55
tired of having 1000 text messages that take up space on
00:22:58
my phone. There's a big difference between
00:23:01
that and the mayor of Los Angeles, especially during a
00:23:04
time that the city was going through one of its most
00:23:07
catastrophic natural disasters in history like this.
00:23:13
You should be making sure that, oh, I should probably not delete
00:23:17
these because somebody's probably going to come looking
00:23:19
for these. They think that if they just
00:23:22
delete them, the problem will go away, right?
00:23:27
They just think that, Oh, well, we don't want them to see what,
00:23:31
what, what we were texting about.
00:23:33
So we'll just delete them, which to me makes it sound like what,
00:23:39
what, what's the person? You think you're hiding
00:23:42
something? You're absolutely hiding
00:23:45
something. Because if you don't have
00:23:49
anything to hide, why would you delete those text messages?
00:23:53
And it looks fishier if the LA Times is showing up and going,
00:23:56
hey, doing a story California public records request.
00:24:00
We're, we're going to, can we get those text messages and they
00:24:03
go, oh, we don't have them. They automatically deleted what?
00:24:07
And This is why the LA Times is suing, because you're supposed
00:24:09
to actually hold on to these text messages.
00:24:13
It you're fueling the fire, right?
00:24:16
Like it's one of those things where you're, you're making it
00:24:18
worse. It would have been better if you
00:24:20
just held on to them, no matter how bad those text messages
00:24:23
were, if you would just held on to them.
00:24:27
And I mean, disclose them. I mean, even if they were bad,
00:24:31
this looks way worse. Combine this with what's going
00:24:36
on with LAHSAII keep saying this.
00:24:41
I don't know what people in LA are doing.
00:24:42
I think there's a recall going on, but there should absolutely
00:24:45
be 100% a recall going on because Karen Bass has done
00:24:48
nothing but show how absolutely incompetent she is to run the
00:24:52
city of Los Angeles, right? And between this and LHSA, where
00:24:59
millions of dollars have gone missing because her, she was
00:25:02
friends with the CEO of LAHSA and she wasn't not necessarily
00:25:07
qualified and she was hiring unqualified people.
00:25:09
And then she's whining about the fact that she can't use taxpayer
00:25:13
funds to pay for her open bar at a holiday party.
00:25:16
Like I, I, I have a feeling and I'm not, I'm not a fortune
00:25:21
teller, but I, I have this weird feeling that 2025 is not going
00:25:26
to be a great year for Karen Bass.
00:25:28
Like I have this weird feeling things are going to get a lot
00:25:31
worse. I feel like she's probably going
00:25:32
to get served with this recall. She might get kicked out of
00:25:35
office. I mean, there's a good chance
00:25:38
she gets kicked out of office based on the fact that between
00:25:42
she's hiding these text messages, what going on with the
00:25:44
wildfires. Not to mention we don't really
00:25:46
know what's going on with the wildfires anymore.
00:25:48
People don't really even talk about it except for our friend
00:25:50
Luke Melquire who came on the show a while ago who still posts
00:25:54
updates. Thank you to Luke.
00:25:57
Nobody really talks about what's going on in LA anymore.
00:26:00
It's just kind of like, oh OK, we all showed up, we did our
00:26:02
photo OPS, blah blah blah, and now nobody knows what's going on
00:26:04
anymore. If you are looking for like
00:26:07
updates on what's going on with the wildfires, definitely follow
00:26:10
Luke, He is Luke Melquire. It's Melquire Mel, spelled choir
00:26:16
CH0R 0IR. He's giving a ton of updates and
00:26:21
keeping everyone updated on what's going on with the
00:26:23
rebuilding effort up in LA. So if you're curious, definitely
00:26:26
go check out Luke. He was also on the show a couple
00:26:29
months back right after that. But like, you know what?
00:26:36
You're not helping your 'cause if you're deleting text messages
00:26:40
around a very contentious time where everybody in the world
00:26:43
going, why were you in Ghana? Well, what are you doing in
00:26:46
Ghana? That's so much more important
00:26:47
than being here in LA. So, Karen Bass, what are you
00:26:53
hiding? That's all I got to ask.
00:26:56
What are you hiding? What?
00:26:57
What incompetence are you hiding with those text messages being
00:27:01
deleted? You're only making it worse for
00:27:03
you, Karen. So all right, everyone out there
00:27:09
who's tuning in, make sure you if you are listening, comment
00:27:13
question, stuff like that. Thank you to everyone who's
00:27:17
tuning in right now is on YouTube rumble, all of that
00:27:19
stuff. Instagram.
00:27:21
I see a lot of people joining on Instagram.
00:27:22
So I go thank you for joining on Instagram.
00:27:27
I think someone says I think the Karen Bass scandal is going to
00:27:30
get swept under the rug. You know, I, I don't, I don't
00:27:35
think it's going to if, if the LA Times is going after her,
00:27:39
that's not a good sign. Like the LA Times.
00:27:45
The LA Times, I think this is the right they, they decided not
00:27:48
to endorse any, They didn't endorse Kamala Harris or
00:27:50
something. I think if the LA Times is doing
00:27:54
this right now, I think that means she's in trouble.
00:27:58
Like the LA Times is, is doing real journalism now, which is
00:28:03
pretty crazy. They're actually doing real
00:28:04
journalism. So I don't think it's going away
00:28:08
anytime soon. They will try and and this might
00:28:11
be, this might be more emblematic, I guess, or, or
00:28:17
symbolic of the the hubris and and cockiness of California
00:28:24
Democrats right now as they believe, because they have so
00:28:27
much power and they have so much, they have the Super
00:28:31
majority. They have all this power.
00:28:32
They run everything. They can get away with
00:28:35
everything. I don't think that that that's
00:28:38
lasting as long as they think it did.
00:28:40
I mean, think about people who've been recalled recently,
00:28:43
right? Like London, Brie was just, she
00:28:46
wasn't recalled, but she was voted out of office for Daniel
00:28:48
Lurie. Pamela Price, who was up in
00:28:51
Alameda County, she was recalled.
00:28:54
The DA of San Francisco was recalled.
00:28:57
George Gascon was voted out for what was essentially a
00:29:00
Republican District Attorney. There's a lot of stuff going on
00:29:04
where these entrenched far left Democrats, the status Democrats
00:29:10
are not as safe as I think they once thought they were.
00:29:14
And that's where I, I think it's getting interesting because I, I
00:29:18
don't think they're going to, I don't think enough people are
00:29:21
going to fall on their sword for Karen Bass.
00:29:23
Let's put it that way. Gavin Newsom's not going to fall
00:29:24
on his sword for Karen Bass. And I think there's a lot of
00:29:26
people who are not going to fall on their sword for Karen Bass.
00:29:30
So someone said she's doing some face saving lately.
00:29:35
I think she knows she's in trouble.
00:29:37
There was a story I saw that she was in Malibu at a steakhouse
00:29:44
and I guess she was, you know, having a good time at this
00:29:48
steakhouse and everything. And it was Malibu and somebody
00:29:51
just lost it. They were like, I can't believe
00:29:54
that you're here. Like you have a job to do.
00:29:57
Malibu is gone, basically burned to the ground and you're sitting
00:30:01
here and yuckin it up at a steakhouse.
00:30:03
I mean, Karen Bass can go to a restaurant that's but it it, it
00:30:07
looks bad. Like it's these dumb mistakes
00:30:10
where she thinks she's above it, where she thinks she's above it
00:30:16
and therefore she doesn't have to answer to people like, oh, I
00:30:19
can go to a fancy steakhouse in Malibu and not get called out.
00:30:24
Someone says it needs to be said, so thank you for saying
00:30:27
that. Well, that's the point.
00:30:29
That's why I'm here, folks. I'm here to say the things that
00:30:31
you want to say. Somebody commented on YouTube.
00:30:35
I'm so pissed. I will not be paying for free
00:30:37
health care. We pay so much now in taxes.
00:30:40
I'm going to say screw these crooks.
00:30:43
All right, well, that's a perfect segue into our next
00:30:47
story. All right, next story California
00:30:55
couple years ago decided and I, I'd done a whole podcast on
00:30:59
this. Ironically, the last time I did
00:31:01
a solo podcast, I did a whole whole thing about this that we,
00:31:08
we, I'd say we actually the politicians in charge slowly
00:31:12
implemented and slowly rolled out over time.
00:31:15
What was free healthcare for undocumented citizens started
00:31:19
with children and then it started with people over 80 and
00:31:22
started and pretty soon before you knew it, Gavin Newsom signed
00:31:25
into law that they would allow for basically everybody to get
00:31:30
access to medical, which is, you know, our, our state sponsored
00:31:37
healthcare system. So that if you, you know, you're
00:31:40
low income or something like that, you can get access to
00:31:42
healthcare. He signed it so that basically
00:31:46
no matter what age, no matter what your immigration status
00:31:49
was, you can sign up for medical couple months ago.
00:31:54
While this all sounded great, right?
00:31:58
This all sounds amazing. I don't think it sounds amazing
00:32:03
to them. It sounds amazing.
00:32:04
It sounds amazing and virtue signaling.
00:32:06
Again, I don't think this sounds great.
00:32:08
They thought I'm going to sign this.
00:32:10
I look so woke. I look so incredible.
00:32:12
I'm such a a champion. This is a perfect example of
00:32:17
when virtue signaling crashes head first into reality.
00:32:22
I'm doing the Trump hands right now as a virtue signal right
00:32:25
into reality. And this is what happened.
00:32:31
No more than a year after this happened, it was determined that
00:32:37
medical was essentially broke, that there were so many people
00:32:42
who signed up for medical, there were so many undocumented
00:32:46
citizens who signed up for free healthcare, taxpayer funded
00:32:49
healthcare, that it broke the system.
00:32:54
They were literally broke a couple months ago.
00:32:58
Think about that. In a year, they over blew the
00:33:02
budget and broke medical that Governor Newsom had to go to the
00:33:06
legislature. At first it was, oh, I need a
00:33:09
couple billion. I'm saying a couple billion.
00:33:11
Like it's like nothing. I need a couple billion to cover
00:33:14
this, this hole to pay bills for medical for this month, right,
00:33:17
Just for that month for 2 billion.
00:33:19
Then the number went up to 6 billion just to cover bills for
00:33:23
that month. And this is how broken it was.
00:33:27
And again, this was something Gavin Newsom had brought in.
00:33:31
This is something he signed. This is only he supported.
00:33:34
And now he's dealing with the ramifications of the fact that
00:33:37
it is way over budget. And anybody, again, you don't
00:33:42
need to have a doctorate in economics from Stanford or
00:33:45
something to understand that if you promise more people services
00:33:52
then you can budget for, your budget will go broke.
00:33:58
I mean, it's simple as that. If your budget is to cover this
00:34:02
many people based on your tax revenues, well, then if you
00:34:08
increase that amount of people and the budget stays the same,
00:34:14
you're not going to have money to cover everybody.
00:34:18
That's the bottom line. But of course, California
00:34:21
Democrats love more than anything, they left a virtue
00:34:24
signal. They love to come off as these
00:34:26
incredible people. They don't like to face reality.
00:34:29
They're definitely not looking at this from a real perspective
00:34:33
of numbers and dollars and cents.
00:34:34
They're looking at this as how many political points can I
00:34:36
score with your tax dollars? That's basically what they do.
00:34:40
They go, how many points can I score with your tax dollars?
00:34:43
So that's the background of where we're at.
00:34:48
May has now come around as part of the budget process.
00:34:52
The governor proposes a budget, right?
00:34:55
And the May revision is usually he puts out a budget at the
00:34:58
beginning of the year. It's kind of rough.
00:34:59
They kind of go back and work on it.
00:35:01
May is closer to what the final budget is supposed to be because
00:35:07
June 15th is the deadline that they have to get the budget
00:35:09
passed. That's how our year works.
00:35:12
For California, it starts in June, ends in June, starts in
00:35:16
June. So Gavin Newsom released his
00:35:20
revised budget, keeping in mind that he just caught hell for all
00:35:24
of this just a month or so ago, and he came out and we have a
00:35:31
video and we'll watch that. And yeah, we'll discuss after
00:35:36
that. Well, a new tax cuts to other
00:35:43
state services. These are things that are now
00:35:45
being talked about here at the state Capitol as some lawmakers
00:35:48
try to continue providing healthcare to undocumented
00:35:52
people at the scale that California has been.
00:35:54
As we've been reporting, state leaders ended up spending a lot
00:35:58
more money than they thought they would on this program this
00:36:01
year alone to cover 1.6 million undocumented people.
00:36:04
California taxpayers are spending about $11 billion.
00:36:08
The state next year is expecting to spend even more.
00:36:11
To address that, the governor proposed capping the program no
00:36:15
longer allowing undocumented adults to sign up starting in
00:36:18
2026. I'm.
00:36:20
Going to stop you right there. I'm going to stop you right
00:36:22
there. No new sign ups or undocumented
00:36:25
adults starting in 2026. It is only May of 2025, right?
00:36:31
Only May of 2025. So if you give this much of a
00:36:35
runway, so let's let's say in June, let's say they pass this
00:36:40
budget based on what Gavin news I'm saying, right, this is what
00:36:43
they're going to say. OK, 2026 that's after that, you
00:36:47
can't sign up for this program anymore.
00:36:49
So all the all the undocumented who wanted to sign up for this,
00:36:53
you better sign up right now. So that's let's see.
00:36:56
Well, you know, June is half a month.
00:36:59
So we'll say July, August, September, October, November,
00:37:04
December, and six months, six months that you were giving
00:37:10
runway and a headway to people to sign up for it.
00:37:14
So if you didn't sign up for it this time, you better rush and
00:37:17
sign up for it now. And you better believe they're
00:37:19
going to be activists out there who are telling people that you
00:37:24
should sign up for this before the deadline.
00:37:26
And nothing gets people off their butts to sign or sign up
00:37:29
for something knowing that they have to get it done or they lose
00:37:32
it. So the fact that this is right
00:37:36
now, not until 2026, you've given him a six month window,
00:37:40
which I would only assume is going to backfire because you
00:37:44
can't cover the people that you are paying right now.
00:37:48
We've already proven that one year into this, you you can't
00:37:51
pay for the people that you are that you are covering right now.
00:37:58
So you propose give them six months to sign up, even more
00:38:02
people, even more thousands and thousands of people.
00:38:05
And you, you're still back at square one where you don't have
00:38:08
the budget, you can't make it, and more and more people are
00:38:11
going to rush to sign up for this.
00:38:14
So already off to a horrible start in the monthly premium 100
00:38:20
bucks, like, OK, is that going to?
00:38:23
What is that supposed to do? I'm not sure what the 100 bucks
00:38:26
is supposed to do, so let's keep watching.
00:38:30
And for those who are already signed up, the governor proposes
00:38:33
a monthly $100 premium. This would not have an impact on
00:38:37
kids. The issue is that the federal
00:38:40
government helps pay for Medicaid costs for low income
00:38:42
Californians. In fact, the federal government
00:38:44
provides California with more than half of those healthcare
00:38:47
funds. But the federal government will
00:38:50
not reimburse the state for costs associated with
00:38:53
undocumented immigrants. The Democratic Latino
00:38:56
Legislative Caucus held this press conference today,
00:38:59
blatantly rejecting the governor's proposal to make
00:39:01
changes. The caucus did not provide any
00:39:04
specific solutions. They said everything should be
00:39:07
on the table, including a new tax to help pay for those costs.
00:39:11
We've got to assess everything we're saying.
00:39:13
We've got to be reasonable about this approach.
00:39:15
We have to stop the narrative on vilifying immigrants.
00:39:18
The rhetoric, what would they want you to believe, is that our
00:39:22
community is at fault for the deficit in our state's budget.
00:39:25
But it's not. But you certainly aren't
00:39:28
helping. This policy certainly is not
00:39:31
helping. Let's just put it that way.
00:39:32
I'm going to stop you right there.
00:39:34
Also, the sign if you're not watching and you're listening on
00:39:37
audio says our patients rights have no borders.
00:39:41
Let's just think about that for a second.
00:39:43
Let's just think about that for a second.
00:39:47
Our patients rights have no borders.
00:39:51
Basically these California Democrats that you see right
00:39:56
here, they have their nice little, you know, they have
00:39:58
their little podium set up there.
00:39:59
They're very, they're very upset.
00:40:02
They're very upset that they can't pander to people anymore.
00:40:04
They can't give away free stuff that they're, they're, you know,
00:40:07
they can't do that anymore or that they're proposing they
00:40:10
can't do that anymore. They have a sign that says our
00:40:13
patients rights have no borders when it comes to free health
00:40:18
care that taxpayers of California are paying for.
00:40:23
They're basically saying that we as Californians and we taxpayers
00:40:29
should be paying for anybody in the world who wants free health
00:40:35
care. Anybody in the world.
00:40:38
There's no borders, not outside the borders of California.
00:40:42
There's no borders. If you want health care,
00:40:45
California will pay for it. This lady tries.
00:40:52
You know, I'm trying to see who this is.
00:40:53
This is Caroline Menghivar, Van Nuys state senator.
00:41:00
She's saying that, oh, it's not our fault that there there's a
00:41:03
budget deficit. Well, you ain't, this ain't
00:41:05
helping, that's for sure. Let's just put that put it out
00:41:07
there. There's a lot of reasons why
00:41:11
there's a budget deficit. But, you know, borrowing $6
00:41:15
billion in one month because you can't pay for the healthcare for
00:41:19
every single person in California, undocumented or not,
00:41:22
certainly not helping. So let's keep watching.
00:41:25
What is happening year after year after year is that
00:41:28
entities, businesses are getting away with providing a less than
00:41:32
livable wage or getting away with forcing their employees to
00:41:36
have a part time schedule, forcing them into our state's
00:41:40
driven medical program. Now, California this year also
00:41:43
has a Republican Hispanic Legislative Caucus.
00:41:47
We checked in with members there, some who tell us that the
00:41:50
healthcare was a promise that the governor could not keep.
00:41:53
Assemblyman Josh Hoover is one of those members.
00:41:56
Here's what he had to say about a possible new tax that the
00:41:59
Democrats are floating. The idea that they would even
00:42:02
consider a tax increase to cover these services, I think it just
00:42:07
shows where California's priorities are.
00:42:10
We, we are, you know, the governor, to his credit, is
00:42:14
trying to be a little bit more responsible.
00:42:15
We cannot in good conscience continue to cover those programs
00:42:20
while cutting IHSS and cutting foster youth programs and all
00:42:23
these other priorities in California.
00:42:25
Over the next month or so, this will be 1 of, if not the biggest
00:42:28
debate as California lawmakers and the governor try to nail
00:42:32
down the state spending plan for the upcoming year.
00:42:35
Reporting at the state Capitol. Ashley Zavala, KCRA 3 News
00:42:39
Federal lawmakers are still in the process of deciding possible
00:42:43
cuts to the Medicaid program. The result of that could also
00:42:46
impact how the state moves forward with healthcare for
00:42:49
undocumented people. All right.
00:42:52
So as we know as of today, there were cuts to Medicaid and
00:42:59
obviously this administration is not going to be, how do I say,
00:43:03
sympathetic to giving free healthcare through medical to
00:43:06
undocumented citizens. The big headline here that to
00:43:13
take away and I I that state senator who brought this up.
00:43:20
Good on you for giving the California Republicans more life
00:43:25
to flip seats. OK, it's already bad enough.
00:43:30
And I just wrote an article on my sub stack which been writing
00:43:33
more blog articles. Go check the those out, sub
00:43:36
stack. Go check that out.
00:43:39
Basically, how low can California Democrats go?
00:43:42
AB 379, which we talked about, was this whole debate over
00:43:47
Should we include a felony charge for those who try to
00:43:51
solicit sex from those who are 16 or 17 years old?
00:43:56
For some reason, California Democrats, some of them were
00:43:59
like, no, I don't. I don't think it should be a
00:44:02
felony. It should be a misdemeanor or a
00:44:03
wobbler or something like that. Now you have this state senator
00:44:09
out there crying about, well, it's not our fault that there's
00:44:11
a budget deficit. This is clearly not the problem.
00:44:15
Forget the forget the fact that it was already broke two months
00:44:19
ago and that it, you know, we had to borrow 6 billion from the
00:44:22
general fund just to pay bills for one month.
00:44:26
But it's not our fault. It's not it's not our fault that
00:44:29
there's a budget deficit fact that this whole program is is
00:44:31
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00:45:45
She may have provided one of the greatest campaign talking points
00:45:49
for California Republicans going into 2026 when there are
00:45:54
vulnerable seats out there. Meaning if you're chipping away
00:45:57
at the Super majority between AB379 and now this, you are just
00:46:03
feeding into great talking points for California
00:46:07
Republicans. Because imagine posting that all
00:46:10
over in battleground districts here in California.
00:46:14
Imagine posting what she said on an attack ad or some sort of
00:46:19
pack ad basically showing her saying, look, we don't believe
00:46:23
this program should go away. We need to protect our
00:46:25
constituents. Mind you, they are undocumented.
00:46:29
So are they voted like they're not, they're not voting, right?
00:46:33
They're they're undocumented. They shouldn't be voting.
00:46:35
So they're not really your constituents.
00:46:37
They're not your voting constituents.
00:46:39
But put that reel out there of her saying it will.
00:46:43
We'll do whatever it takes. Even it means a new tax, a new
00:46:47
tax to pay for free health care for every undocumented citizen
00:46:51
here in California. Run that on the airwaves, on the
00:46:55
radio, on YouTube ads, on TV. Run that all through 2026.
00:47:01
If I was running the California GOP, I would run that and AB379
00:47:05
continuously in California. Just continuously that they want
00:47:10
to propose a new tax just to pay for the free healthcare of
00:47:14
undocumented citizens. As if California is already not
00:47:17
expensive enough, let's propose a new tax on top of all of it.
00:47:24
So. Oh hey, what's up Cam?
00:47:26
Camille just hopped into the chat.
00:47:27
What's up? Co host in the chat.
00:47:30
Let's see. Some people are chiming.
00:47:32
I want to make sure I get this. How low can they go?
00:47:36
How low as hell? Well, I mean, when you're
00:47:37
protecting people who are buying children for for the purposes of
00:47:41
sex, I don't know if it could get any lower than that.
00:47:45
California Democrats repealing Prop 13 is the bottom.
00:47:48
They have been trying to chip away at that for a long time.
00:47:53
Trump should send doge audit where all the Fed's money is
00:47:55
gone. What about the 40 billion EDD
00:47:57
that was stolen to win our arrest, Seize assets from
00:47:59
criminals? Yeah, there.
00:48:01
There was probably way. I mean, if anything, Doe should
00:48:05
start going after all the COVID relief funds.
00:48:08
So Newson is the problem. All America knows that.
00:48:13
Yeah. Well, he brought, I mean, he
00:48:14
brought this on himself. He started this.
00:48:17
OK, YouTube. See, I'm.
00:48:19
I'm bouncing around people. So tell me what's the gas prices
00:48:24
there now? I don't know.
00:48:29
I drive a Tesla, so I don't know what gas prices as are right
00:48:32
now. 5 dollars 550 anybody in the in the in the chat.
00:48:37
All right, So again, I want to go back to that and just say use
00:48:42
that as the footage and the talking point going into 2026
00:48:46
that and AB379 this lady. I I there's kind of always a
00:48:52
theme, right? This is absolutely a theme of of
00:48:57
this hubris of believing that you're invincible.
00:49:03
You're invincible because you have so much power and you're
00:49:06
the one party state. You have so much power and no
00:49:09
one's going to question your authority.
00:49:11
So if you know what, if we demand we want a new tax on the
00:49:15
plebes because we want to pay for this health care, you're
00:49:17
just going to have to sit there and take it and no one's going
00:49:20
to push back. Well, I got news for you.
00:49:23
You might have just written one more little notch that's going
00:49:27
to knock the California Democrats down a peg coming up
00:49:29
the next election. And Josh Hoover is a smart guy,
00:49:31
friend of the show, Love you, Josh.
00:49:33
Need to get Josh back on very soon.
00:49:36
He's a good one. Always keep an eye on what Josh
00:49:38
Hoover is saying up there. All right.
00:49:42
There's some other things I want to talk about regarding this
00:49:45
whole thing. Largest expenditure in
00:49:49
California, right? So going back to what that state
00:49:53
senator, her name already is Escapee Caroline Ninjavar or
00:49:57
something Ninjavar, she said. This is not the reason why
00:50:03
there's a budget deficit. I would say is a good, probably
00:50:07
a good part of it that like I said, there's a whole bunch of
00:50:10
things of why there is a budget deficit, but you're probably a
00:50:14
big part of it. You might not be the only thing.
00:50:16
Just going to say you're not. You might not be the only thing,
00:50:21
but for sure you're part of it. You're a big part of it.
00:50:25
The biggest part of the California State budget, so
00:50:28
broken down the California State budget, the biggest sector that
00:50:33
we spend money on is Health and Human services with the general
00:50:38
fund expenditures estimated at $85.6 billion.
00:50:45
I think our total is something around $300 billion.
00:50:48
So give just keep that in mind, $86.5 billion and I think it's
00:50:51
around $300 billion is our overall budget.
00:50:55
This includes critical programs like medical medical, which
00:51:00
we're talking about you broke Medacom because you are giving
00:51:03
free health care to all undocumented education, while
00:51:07
significant, is often split into K through 12 around 80.5 billion
00:51:10
and higher education is 28.1 billion totaling 108 six
00:51:15
billion. So already biggest part of the
00:51:21
budget is healthcare here in the state.
00:51:24
And when one of your biggest parts of that budget or that
00:51:28
part is going bankrupt, you know, again, you don't need a
00:51:34
doctorate from Stanford in economics to figure out that if
00:51:38
the biggest part of your budget is costing you the most amount
00:51:41
of money and causing you to spend more than you budgeted,
00:51:45
that might be a reason why you're broke.
00:51:48
I mean, personally, if you are doing your own personal finances
00:51:52
and you're looking and you go, OK, well, we got to spend this
00:51:53
much on gas and we got to spend this much on groceries and we
00:51:57
got to spend this much on this. And then all of a sudden there
00:51:59
comes along a category and it's like Amazon shopping and all of
00:52:03
a sudden you budget $200.00 and at the end of month you look and
00:52:06
you spend $1000 and you go, why do we have no more money at the
00:52:08
end of the month? Probably this, this category
00:52:10
right here, Amazon spending over 1000 dollars, $800 over what we
00:52:15
budget. That's probably why we don't
00:52:16
have any money at the end of the budget.
00:52:18
So again, to that state senator who says we're not the reason
00:52:22
why there's a budget deficit, you might not be the sole
00:52:26
reason, but you probably are a big reason why there is one.
00:52:33
OK, there's something else I want to talk about.
00:52:36
Can we afford to even do this? So there's some stuff I wanted
00:52:40
to bring up about fact checking the May budget revision.
00:52:44
And this is from the California Policy Center, also a great
00:52:47
site. Go check them out.
00:52:49
I believe they're nonprofit that this just came out a couple days
00:52:52
ago. So Governor Spin, I'm just going
00:52:56
to read a couple of them. You can go ahead and just look
00:52:58
this up this at California Policy Center.
00:53:01
Governor spin. Trump's tariffs are to blame for
00:53:03
California's revenue declines. He says a significant portion of
00:53:07
Newsome's presentation revolved during the challenge of economic
00:53:10
uncertainty, which he he tried to tie to President Trump's
00:53:14
tariff policies. California's once again
00:53:17
grappling with budget deficit now totalling 12 billion.
00:53:19
The governor says that uncertainty caused by the Trump
00:53:22
administration is the reason California leaders anticipate a
00:53:25
$16 billion decline in revenue over the next two fiscal years.
00:53:29
Fact Check if the final budget bill is close to Newsome's 321.9
00:53:35
billion revised proposal. So I was right about 300
00:53:37
billion, 320. This would constitute budget
00:53:40
growth of over 100 billion since the 2019-2020 budget at the
00:53:44
beginning of his term. That's not a tariff problem.
00:53:47
It's the result of years of runaway spending, lost revenue
00:53:49
from companies fleeing the state, unrealistic promises to
00:53:52
public sector unions, and failure to seriously prepare for
00:53:54
economic downturns. Another spin related to the
00:53:59
topic at hand here regarding the medical governor's spin.
00:54:03
We're putting a freeze on medical to save costs.
00:54:07
To address the budget problem, Newsome proposed a $5 billion
00:54:10
freeze on medical expansion, particularly for undocumented
00:54:13
immigrants, acknowledging that 1.6 millionaire now enrolled.
00:54:17
A significantly large number than we anticipate, Newsome
00:54:20
said. And it's only going to get
00:54:21
bigger now that you gave him a deadline of 2026, which is 6
00:54:24
months away. Fact Check.
00:54:27
This freeze marks one of the biggest surprises in nuisance
00:54:29
budget revision, in admission that the state's medical
00:54:32
expansion, particularly for illegal immigrants, has become a
00:54:34
serious financial strain. For a governor who once touted
00:54:38
this as a cornerstone of California's progressive
00:54:40
identity, pulling back is no small shift.
00:54:43
But even the proposed modest rollbacks may not be enough to
00:54:45
shield the state from billions and potential federal funding
00:54:48
cuts. Right?
00:54:50
So 5 billion dollars, $5 billion.
00:54:54
OK, you borrowed 6 billion for one month.
00:55:02
Let's do the math here. 1.6 million people are covered by
00:55:06
medical. It's probably going to be closer
00:55:08
to 2 by the time 2026 rolls around because you've
00:55:11
given him a deadline of hurry up and get there.
00:55:14
So now you still can't pay for him and you've paused it for $5
00:55:17
billion. And you think because you paused
00:55:20
it and somehow did the numbers of 5 billion and that's going to
00:55:25
fix the hole in the problem, that your medical budget is
00:55:29
overblown by probably 10s of billions of dollars by the end
00:55:33
of the year? That's politician math for you.
00:55:38
Yeah, that's it. Looks fancy.
00:55:40
You know, Newsome's over here. Look at the numbers.
00:55:42
Look at the numbers. This looks great.
00:55:45
This all looks fancy, $5 billion.
00:55:47
But then when you look at the real numbers, you go, wait a
00:55:51
second. That doesn't add up.
00:55:53
So again, I've know I've said it a bunch of times, you know,
00:55:57
means I have a doctorate from Stanford in economics.
00:55:59
Does does Stanford even have a doctorate in economics?
00:56:01
I feel like they should have a doctorate in economics program,
00:56:04
but I don't know why I keep bringing up Stanford, bougie,
00:56:07
Ivy League, whatever. All right.
00:56:11
Most importantly though, for people who are questioning,
00:56:15
well, what does it take to pass a tax in California, this is
00:56:21
where it's going to get a little interesting, right?
00:56:25
Under the California State Constitution, it requires for a
00:56:30
new tax, not a fee or anything like that, a new tax to be
00:56:33
implemented. You need 2 thirds, 2/3 of vote
00:56:38
of both chambers in the legislature.
00:56:41
So both houses, you know, the Assembly and the Senate, you
00:56:45
need 2/3 of both those chambers or you need 2/3 of voter
00:56:49
approval. So they could put this two way
00:56:53
people's vote, right, which all right, let's play this out
00:56:58
strategically for California Democrats.
00:57:02
You say you want a new tax, right.
00:57:06
You say you want a new tax so you can pay for, for medical for
00:57:10
all undocumented citizens. Let's let's put on our our
00:57:14
political consultant hats and think about this for a second.
00:57:18
Your California Democrats, you go, look, this is unpopular.
00:57:25
People are not a fan of this, right?
00:57:28
They don't like this. They don't like the fact that
00:57:31
we're talking about a new tax to support undocumented, give free
00:57:36
health care to undocumented citizens.
00:57:39
So what do we do? We can a, we can introduce a
00:57:42
bill which Wood Forest, all of the members of the Assembly in
00:57:47
the Senate to put their name and ascribe to it and vote for it.
00:57:52
And then we get to see everybody out there and then I'll be on
00:57:56
their record forever. You voted for free healthcare
00:58:03
and new taxes for free healthcare, for undocumented
00:58:05
assistance. That's on your record.
00:58:08
Now if you're Calvary net, you know you probably have a good
00:58:11
chance. You could do that, right?
00:58:12
You have a super majority. So that would be technically the
00:58:15
easier path because you do have the numbers to get it passed.
00:58:21
But politically there's the problem of, well, now your
00:58:27
name's ascribed to it and now people can campaign on that and
00:58:31
they can put you in ads. And if you're in a vulnerable
00:58:34
district, which also made conversely, may dwindle the
00:58:39
amount of people who actually support it in both these
00:58:41
chambers, they may not get past 2/3 because there may be enough
00:58:45
moderate Democrats that go, I'm not going to vote for this in my
00:58:48
district because I'm in a district that could get flipped.
00:58:51
So I'm not going to do that. The alternative is this.
00:58:55
And it could be a little bit riskier because you're you don't
00:58:57
really control it as much. They could introduce it as a
00:59:01
voter initiative. So the assembly can introduce
00:59:05
something that will then be put towards the voter initiative.
00:59:09
So basically they don't have to worry about signatures and all
00:59:12
that stuff. They can just pass and say, OK,
00:59:14
we're going to send this off to the voters.
00:59:15
It's going to be a new proposition that you have to
00:59:17
vote on. They could do that.
00:59:21
They could create this voter initiative, send it out to the
00:59:24
voters, let them figure it out. And usually with enough money
00:59:29
behind it. Because people like, you know,
00:59:33
doctors unions and nurses unions and all these unions that
00:59:35
benefit from more people getting medical services, all of a
00:59:39
sudden they're dumping 10s of millions of dollars into a
00:59:42
campaign to vote to support a voter initiative like this or a
00:59:46
proposition like this. Maybe it gets passed that way
00:59:49
and then the voters vote for it. And then people go, well, the
00:59:52
voters voted for it that, you know, so which way does this go?
00:59:57
So there's two paths. Do they go the Assembly and
01:00:00
Senate route where they try and pass it the old fashioned way,
01:00:03
2/3 in both chambers, but you got to put your name to it and
01:00:07
that can be dangerous. Or do you throw it out there as
01:00:10
a proposition? Give it some fancy name like you
01:00:13
know? Looking out for the most
01:00:16
whatever vulnerable community, I don't know, give it something
01:00:19
like puppy dogs and rainbows and chocolate chip cookies or
01:00:21
something like that. And then people go, well, how,
01:00:23
how do you vote against that? That sounds horrible, Why would
01:00:25
it? And then let the rest handle
01:00:27
itself. You know, enough unions, enough
01:00:29
associations will dump 10s of millions of dollars into it.
01:00:32
They'll they'll be able to get enough people to sign on the
01:00:35
dial line and vote for it. Who knows, But that's basically
01:00:40
where this is at. If they're serious about adding
01:00:43
this new tax, that's really where we're at.
01:00:47
So for those who are wondering how does a new tax get passed?
01:00:50
Those are the two options of how it can get passed.
01:00:55
Do they move forward with this? Do they maybe go back to the job
01:00:59
and go on? This might have not been a great
01:01:01
idea. This doesn't really pull well
01:01:03
with a lot of Californians. Maybe we should back off this a
01:01:07
little bit. We tried it didn't work out who
01:01:11
we heard, you know, like if we back off and just let it be, you
01:01:16
know, maybe we can protect our phony baloney jobs.
01:01:19
So that's where we're at. But basically we got a couple
01:01:23
minutes left right now. I know most of you people are
01:01:26
blowing up the the chat right now and I love that you guys are
01:01:30
doing that. California's going to California
01:01:34
even when he's out of office. I agree with that.
01:01:36
We've talked about that here on the on the podcast that I'm
01:01:42
actually more worried about the person who comes behind Gavin
01:01:45
Newsom because I don't think they have presidential
01:01:47
ambitions. So they might be even more far
01:01:49
left. California Redemption Value Fund
01:01:53
hasn't been audited in a while. Projected $1 billion collected
01:01:55
on that tax. Hey, Phil, if California is
01:01:59
somehow able to break the supermajority next year, how
01:02:02
confident would you feel about California electing decent
01:02:04
representatives? California Republicans as the
01:02:06
federal available vote like rhinos, right?
01:02:11
I think I think representatives like you're talking about like
01:02:19
like in our state legislature or in Congress because Congress in
01:02:25
our state legislature are like two different beasts.
01:02:29
I think the California Republicans are doing right now
01:02:31
they're doing a good job holding Democrats feet to the fire,
01:02:34
sticking to common sense policies on the congressional.
01:02:39
I mean, you already heard me talk about the fact that
01:02:41
congressional Republicans did not put enough cuts into their
01:02:45
budget. They're going to keep spending
01:02:47
like drunken sailors. I, I think there's, there's a
01:02:50
good amount of people who are trying to make a difference up
01:02:53
in Sacramento. And I think if you're able to
01:02:55
break the Super majority up there, I think, you know, I've,
01:02:59
we've been lucky enough to talk to a lot of representatives.
01:03:01
We've gotten to know them. They're all decent people.
01:03:04
You know, they're all really nice people, genuine people that
01:03:08
you would like to sit down and have a beer with.
01:03:11
So I, I think they're all, you know, good people.
01:03:15
I but again, I think it comes down to these issues that are
01:03:21
really unpopular. And if California Republicans
01:03:23
who are doing a better job of this, they're doing much better
01:03:25
job holding California Democrats feet to the fire.
01:03:29
If they campaign on this stuff, then you have a chance of
01:03:34
flipping seats. You have a chance of flipping a
01:03:38
lot of these seats that are in contention, and then all of a
01:03:42
sudden you're chipping away. And then it's a seat here and
01:03:44
it's a seat there. And then all of a sudden, before
01:03:45
you know it, politics doesn't happen slowly or doesn't happen
01:03:49
quickly. And a lot of people always are
01:03:52
like, oh, let's let's turn California red overnight.
01:03:54
Like, OK, it's not really ever going to happen overnight.
01:03:58
It goes through a phase of like, it goes from deep blue, then
01:04:02
it's maybe light blue, then it's purple, and then maybe it's
01:04:06
light red. Like that's sort of how it goes.
01:04:11
And that happens over time, you know, and it takes electing one
01:04:15
representative after another, put him in the legislature,
01:04:18
breaking the Super majority. And before you know it, you look
01:04:21
up and you go, whoa, wait a second, now it's 5050.
01:04:23
When did that happen? California is a whole different
01:04:27
state when it's 5050. I will say that if it's 5050 and
01:04:31
it's a competitive state where balance of power can go one way
01:04:35
or the other, I am telling you California is a a wholly
01:04:39
different state. You are not seeing policies.
01:04:43
You are not seeing state senators out there screaming and
01:04:46
yelling and throwing temper tantrums about taxing citizens
01:04:49
to pay for the health care of undocumented citizens.
01:04:53
I'm just saying that right now that that policy argument does
01:04:55
not get out into the political world.
01:05:00
If it's a 5050 world. And that's where you got to
01:05:02
start working towards is you got to work towards 5050 first.
01:05:06
You got to break the Super majority, break the Super
01:05:08
majority, and then 5050. Because once you get break the
01:05:11
Super majority, there is bargaining power, right?
01:05:17
There is bargaining power. When you break that super
01:05:19
majority, all of a sudden when you're not in the Super majority
01:05:22
and in the Super minority, you don't really have any bargaining
01:05:25
power. You can't stop anything.
01:05:27
You can't hold anything up. You can't really hold your votes
01:05:30
for anything. So yeah, that's why it's
01:05:35
important and that's why we're in my local elections T-shirt is
01:05:38
because this stuff does matter, you know, you got to pay
01:05:42
attention to who is voting. All right, Any other comments
01:05:47
before I log off? It's been fun hanging out with
01:05:49
you guys on IG. Long time purple California
01:05:54
sounds better than a red California.
01:05:57
I'm yeah, California. Anything we got to move away
01:06:01
from the statism, got to get away from the statism where we
01:06:04
think, you know, it's all virtue signalling and there's an
01:06:08
endless pot of money and people, you know, they they're worried
01:06:12
about tax revenues now and how much like if they're worried
01:06:17
about tax revenues right now and dwindling tax revenues, put this
01:06:23
tax out there and make people pay for it and you'll really see
01:06:27
dwindling tax revenues because people will be heading running
01:06:29
towards the exit in California. So all right, I'm going to end
01:06:35
there. Thank you everyone for tuning
01:06:39
in. This is a lot of fun.
01:06:41
Love when everyone is all chatty and and brings it to the brings
01:06:44
it to the live show. It's always a lot of fun people
01:06:46
on YouTube rumble, all those places.
01:06:49
IG is a lot I'm looking at. If you could see, I wish you
01:06:53
could see like my my whole like my whole screen right now is
01:06:57
like I got so many different chat windows.
01:06:59
I, I feel like I'm like a day trader right now looking at all
01:07:02
the different chat windows that are up and all the numbers and
01:07:04
everything flying by. But anyway, so keep an eye on
01:07:08
this as always, like we do. We will keep you updated what
01:07:11
the next steps are, but we did want to let you know that this
01:07:15
is being floated out there. Let's prime you guys up so that
01:07:18
you are already aware of the fact that they are thinking
01:07:21
about proposing a tax to cover all of this healthcare, this
01:07:24
free healthcare for undocumented.
01:07:25
So that's what our job is always to do, is to give you guys the
01:07:30
information so that you can then go, go inform others, let other
01:07:34
people know, say, hey, we listen to this podcast.
01:07:36
You got to check it out. They give you a lot of
01:07:38
information. They tell you exactly what's
01:07:40
going on. They, you know, they don't
01:07:41
sugarcoat it either as well. They're they're, you know, even
01:07:45
at the top of this show. Yeah.
01:07:48
I was brutally honest about my thoughts about the one big
01:07:52
beautiful bill. A big, big, big, beautiful bill.
01:07:56
There's good stuff and there's bad stuff.
01:07:58
And that's how we always are on this show is if there's good
01:08:01
stuff and bad stuff, we're going to call it out both ways.
01:08:03
We're going to call it like we see it.
01:08:04
So with that, thanks to everyone for tuning in.
01:08:08
Like make sure you like share, subscribe, review.
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support the show is well, you can get a nice local election
01:08:28
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01:08:31
That's always a nice shirt. One of my favorite shirts.
01:08:34
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01:08:38
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01:08:42
You can go check out our merch over there, But the best way you
01:08:45
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01:08:50
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01:08:52
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01:08:55
Californian and you should stay informed.
01:08:57
So check it out. And with that, we'll see it on
01:09:00
the next one later, everybody.

