Episode 246 - Is Prop 1 a Trojan Horse?

[00:00:00] If you're a California conservative, a libertarian, a moderate Democrat, believe in common sense,

[00:00:14] or just the same person, this is the political podcast for you.

[00:00:18] It's the California Underground Podcast. This is the only proposition that's coming up on the ballot on March 5th. So it's really got all the attention and it supposedly has this bipartisan support, which makes people think that everybody supports it, bipartisan support. Couple bits of news before we get started though. Next Saturday, the 24th, Camille and I will be at the Libertarian Convention up in Orange County.

[00:01:46] We'll be there Saturday.

[00:02:41] or something like that. So yeah, we'll be breaking down everything.

[00:02:44] It's gonna be a diverse group of panelists.

[00:02:45] So I'm excited to be on.

[00:02:49] It'll be my first like panel with like a news organization.

[00:02:54] I feel like I don't know what to do, like how to dress.

[00:02:57] Like I got to practice, do I have to practice like,

[00:02:59] how I'd say it and stuff like that.

[00:03:00] It's gonna be different than sitting here in a podcast.

[00:03:02] So comfortably.

[00:03:04] All right, I was confused. Like today I'm talking to my husband, I was like, I think we vote on it on the fifth and not. I like it's, I mean, it says it's on the primary, but, but I'm like, I, I was confused because it fell off. So thank you. Yeah, so that's, that's the first thing. Yes, we are voting on it on March 5th.

[00:04:22] So for all those people who are, you know, maybe not voting in yeah, a lot of people, there is lower turnout during the primary, a lot of people don't even know the primaries happening, except for political nerds like us going into this podcast tonight. So yeah, there's definitely a possibility that there is lower voter turnout, because if it's the general, especially if it's landing on like presidential

[00:05:41] elections, right, election, you're gonna have a huge turnout. Exactly. Historically,

[00:06:43] of where we got on here, but I, you know, I'm very upfront that I'm a Republican,

[00:06:47] but I don't want to be a Republican

[00:06:48] who just comes here and says,

[00:06:50] proposition, taxes, bad, don't, you know, no, vote, no,

[00:06:54] vote, no, because the truth is sometimes

[00:06:57] there are some worthy things of like,

[00:06:59] hey, it's gonna be some tax dollars up front,

[00:07:01] but down the road, it's, there's worthwhile things.

[00:07:03] So I don't like, this is not a show up

[00:07:07] and we're gonna tell you, to understand this that we can't just go and say taxes, bad, no. It's what is this prop really, really doing? What is it accomplishing? What have previous propositions that are similar accomplished?

[00:08:20] Who passed them?

[00:08:21] What did they do?

[00:08:22] Where did the money really go?

[00:08:24] And so that is what we're really gonna get into. Prop 1, let's just, the proposal is new bonds to build more places for mental health and drug or alcohol treatment and more housing. Proposition 1 allows the state to sell 6.4 billion in new bonds. Bonds are a way that the state borrows money and then repays the money plus interest over time. Use of fund, places for mental health care, drug or alcohol treatment, Prop 1 would give

[00:09:42] up to 4.4 billion to the state program that builds more places for mental health care

[00:09:46] and drug or alcohol treatment. would be used differently. The proposition shifts roughly 140 million annually of the MHSA money from the counties to the state. This amount will be higher or lower depending on the total amount of MHSA money collected annually. Possible increase costs to counties to continue current programs. Counties would provide more housing and personalized support services but would have less

[00:11:00] MHSA money for the mental health services. We're going to put some of your money and low-risk stuff. Bonds are usually issued by governments, the US bonds, state bonds, stuff like that, municipal bonds. They are considered safe because the government technically never really runs out of money because they can just keep taxing people. But the...

[00:12:20] You know,

[00:12:22] we just create money and we just make money and we like, oh, hello, what's, what's just crazy money.

[00:13:25] for an argument against. We're going to get into all that stuff. Anyway, shall we hear from the man himself on why he thinks this is such a great idea. Let's see, still getting used to the technology

[00:13:38] here. That is the main focus of our sit down with our show's most frequent guests this year.

[00:14:43] this and the related issues around crime, quality of life.

[00:14:45] Okay, so there's two parts to this, right? There's a $6.3 billion bond.

[00:14:48] Yep.

[00:14:48] And what does that do?

[00:14:49] 11,000 units.

[00:14:51] I mean, I'm going to stop right there for one quick second because

[00:14:56] this is something he said in another video.

[00:15:00] Newsome loves to point the finger at Ronald Reagan about homelessness.

[00:16:07] late 60s. They always, yes, to clarify, when Ronald Reagan was governor of California, before he was president, he signed what is called the Lantermanan Petrus Act. Now, we've

[00:16:16] talked about this on the show before. The Lantermanan Petrus Act, Lantermanan Petrus

[00:16:22] Short Act, it was a bill of rights the way you can still get people into mental institutions, but you have to get what is called an LPS conservatorship. And a conservatorship is where someone comes in and they have legal right to control

[00:17:42] your healthcare decisions, where you are, where you live, all that stuff.

[00:18:46] not Democrats fault, it's because of Ronald Reagan. This article that you sent me, and he's sort of right, that none of this actually did happen. They never did go into the community-based

[00:18:50] facilities, and they never really completed the other half of what they were promising.

[00:18:58] Landerman, one of the sponsors or authors of the time, behavioral health, mental health, target chronic homeless individuals, but also target the needs and desires of everybody watching

[00:20:21] that's struggling maybe themselves

[00:20:23] with issues of mental health and emotional distress

[00:20:26] and those they love.

[00:20:27] And so this is one of the great opportunities do something like that and to create some beds like this. Yeah, I mean, you see a unit like this, and you read the headlines in the LA Times, and it's $800,000, $800,000 a unit. Your taxpayer, you're kidding? It took six years to develop that. That may not be fair, may be fair. The bottom line is we don't have time. We need to get these sites up, and we need to do it more cost-efficient way.

[00:21:40] But here's also the other signing component part.

[00:21:42] We're gonna reform the Mental Health Service Act.

[00:21:44] What is it?

[00:21:45] In 2004, the same topic. This is actually from 2021 at California Globe, until the homeless industrial complex.

[00:23:04] Isn't that 2018? By the Los Angeles City Council, it will be a wet shelter, meaning druggies and drunkards will be able to come and go as they please, meaning there's no stipulations as to, you know, there's no requirement for you to show up. There are some shelters where they say you have to be sober to show up. This one, and like a lot in California, are becoming like this, where you don't have to be

[00:24:21] sober. The estimated cost for the shelter so far is $ the existing tax. Okay, again, I mentioned this already.

[00:26:42] as Taxpayers Association bonds are the most expensive and inefficient way to pay for a government program.

[00:26:45] With the interest rates today, it's a very bad time

[00:26:47] to be taking out new bond debt adding at least 60%

[00:26:50] and interest costs costing tax periods estimated 10.58

[00:26:54] to 12.45 billion dollars,

[00:26:57] which will take decades to pay back.

[00:27:00] Sorry kids, sorry kids, you were born

[00:27:03] to California and you raised your.

[00:27:05] Sorry, sorry that you're gonna end up paying off

[00:27:07] all of their eyes. Yeah. Because they don't see it. Don't we have like a hundred? What is it? I think I've written down 170,000 homeless people in California. Sorry. Yeah, it sounds about right. He said he said 68,000.

[00:28:22] Or did he say we've got?

[00:28:23] She said we've gotten six.

[00:28:24] Did he say we've gotten them off the streets or we have them on the streets?

[00:28:27] I'm not sure.

[00:29:26] California's end up homeless in the vast majority of them say a subsidy as little as $300 a month could have kept them off the streets

[00:29:34] Meaning money income. It's it's not affordable to live in California. So that's the number one reason why people are homeless

[00:29:36] loss of and loss of income. Yeah, and

[00:29:38] This is something that I get really frustrated with Democrats is because again, it's like putting a

[00:29:45] Band-Aid on an axe looked like they just put all their stuff in a cart. They had their iPhone and they were just that they had nowhere else to go. Like they were kicked out. They couldn't pay for their rent. Now, there were a lot of renter protections and stuff like that. But if you lost your job and you couldn't work, I mean, there's a lot of people who didn't listen to that and you had to be kicked out and you lost your income.

[00:32:08] You know utilities gas all this stuff costs more and Democrats never address that issue that people are just like

[00:32:10] Living on the edge Deliving one paycheck away from being homeless instead. They focus on mental health issues. They're not focusing on that issue

[00:32:17] right

[00:32:18] It never does go on to even talk about stories of what you just said where people are saying

[00:32:24] COVID shutdowns mandatory shutdowns say been getting by. They never expected in their lifetime that the whole world would shut down and you wouldn't be able to make a living. Yeah. And they had no where else to go. They had nothing else to do. Um, and they ended up homeless. And I mean, like this article said, I feel like I'm going to have to work really hard to put all of these links in the show notes because there's

[00:33:42] a lot of good information for anybody else who wants to read as much as we did.

[00:33:46] We prepped a lot for this episode.

[00:34:44] people's relationships, they're used to alcohol and other kinds of problematic substances and impinges on their health status.

[00:34:46] And yeah, I mean, that makes sense.

[00:34:48] Like what's the number one reason why couples fight money and if money is tight and you

[00:34:55] don't know what's going on, you don't know how you're going to make rent.

[00:34:58] Like all of a sudden, you know, it builds up stress.

[00:35:01] People fight.

[00:35:02] Maybe they turn to substance.

[00:35:03] And I don't, I'm not sure that downplay mental health issues.

[00:35:08] They're real. guy yelling on the street and taking a dump on the street. It's easier to clean him out, like just take him off the street and put him somewhere else. Literally that looks better. We will get the grace. This is, you know, yeah, it looks better if all of a sudden you go, Hey, remember, you know, that crazy guy who would run around with, you know, a big shoe on his head or something and

[00:36:22] scream obscenities. I don't see him anymore. I don, let's keep going. Scale and scope, we can solve homelessness for an individual, but the scale of the challenge in the state and those that are struggling that end up on the streets every single day to keep up and get ahead, we need something at this scale. And this is all about scale

[00:37:41] and speed, scale, speed and your team's not doing well. Like what are your solutions to this? And you just went into your manager and was like, scale, scale. We just have to scale and they're like, scale what like you're doing horribly. You want us to give you more money?

[00:39:03] Like, yeah, I want you to give me more money. That's obviously what we're doing is working.

[00:39:06] So scale.

[00:40:04] Oh, I hear you're like, just shift the focus.

[00:40:07] Shift it and move through the hand motion. You got to do the hand motion of scaling and big hands and then shifting.

[00:40:12] Scaling.

[00:40:13] It'll help if you have like a little like tennis ball or something and you just

[00:40:16] shift it from one hand to the other and just shift it and they're like, okay.

[00:40:21] I'm sorry.

[00:40:22] Well, this person looks like they know what they're doing.

[00:40:24] I'll trust them.

[00:40:26] The focus is on the most acute chronic problem. addressing that and addressing that gap in a very strategic way with For those watching Do you take a course in political hand maneuvers? If you're watching this the amount of hand movements that Gavin does he points. He does this He does that he does the swing and then he does this he puts it together

[00:41:43] Yes You know, that's, you know, Alex doesn't really push back. And a lot of these interviews, he's a nice guy. We've met Alex. So he doesn't, but with Gavin Newsom, he doesn't really ever push back on a lot of the stuff that he gets all these exclusive interviews, but he doesn't really ever push back on him. He just lets him do his word salad.

[00:43:00] Proven strategies, when I'm making this up,

[00:43:02] we know what works.

[00:43:04] It's why we're a program that's working.

[00:43:06] New PPIC poll this week showed pretty good news So it's not funny. It's an a whole move. It's it's it's kind of like such a jerk comeback. Yeah, it's it's kind of like, well, I guess you like the status quo. I what else do you want us to do? It's like, I don't know, not grab people off the streets, pulling their pants down, defecating, and we have no tools to help that person. And the only thing we have is compassion by watching them die and suffer on the streets in the name of compassion. We want through care court, a separate initiative,

[00:45:42] to have the resources and a resourceful mindset to, yeah, have court order treatment.

[00:46:51] the assembly have been in control by Democrats. Yeah, I it was like 94 to 96. One of them had had the majority, but otherwise since literally the 70s, they have been in control of the state.

[00:46:57] Yeah. Who are you talking to? Do you some? Yeah, they're trying to like outflank themselves

[00:47:02] on this issue, which is interesting that they, that they idea during COVID of like, okay, we'll let

[00:48:23] the counties figure it out, let them do their thing and they know best. what type of units? Where would they be located? How do you locate them? How do you fund them? How do you do it cost efficient way? And what's the time value of that in terms of just making sure they're done in our lifetimes? Because we don't have time to wait. And we broke that down and we said we need to do a little better than that 11,000 units. And we have my component and we're gonna

[00:49:40] reform an existing system without spending more money. You combine those

[00:49:44] two things with all the other work politics. So this Kaiser, who would be providing mental health

[00:52:23] services, members' voice of state or another construction union, interesting. California State Council of Labor's Issues, PAC, PAC giving 250,000. Are we starting to see a trend here with who is giving money? Who are the top donors of Prop 1? People that would benefit, I'm sorry, PACS groups,

[00:53:42] that would benefit from, you know, who's going it? Why are they supporting it? That's always one of the best ways, and this is a tip that Camille and I always tell people. If you're curious about why they're pushing a proposition or who's behind a candidate or something like that, just go and check out who's funding them. Like who's giving the money? And in this case, you can clearly see it's construction unions, construction committees,

[00:55:00] construction packs, and healthcare.

[00:55:03] They're both gonna be huge benefactors of this.

[00:56:03] Please feel free to to share them while I'm getting this article up

[00:56:09] If anyone in the comments has any thoughts or questions, please feel free to share them right now

[00:56:17] So this is from the daily LA daily news proposition is the expensive scam that must be rejected on March 5th

[00:56:23] It says the measure is terrible but collecting businesses is housing units are projected to be built for veterans from this $6.38 billion bond. That's a lot of money for not much help. It's to kind of wind down because we're almost coming up on the full hour here. There's so much to talk about. I want to say something if you'll allow me,

[00:57:41] but it's okay if you want what I was. No going to say that there's something nefarious going on here. If anyone knows and wants to follow this up like through, I am extremely curious and confused about this. So that nonprofit Phoenix House were in New Zealand recorded that interview at, it's a nonprofit kind of like in salary is what I'm seeing because everything was doubled. And then so everyone else's salaries are doubled. And I'm not implying that if you work for a nonprofit that you shouldn't be paid, I'm not implying that she's not legit

[01:00:21] or that she's not qualified or anything like that.

[01:00:23] But imagine if her salary was 250 as opposed to 600,

[01:01:28] like CEO, nonprofit, homeless nonprofit CEO, salary, California.

[01:01:33] I found about 12 articles already about how much people are making. So this was the article I was thinking of before.

[01:01:36] It's from the California Globe.

[01:01:37] It's a different article related to measure H, which was passed in LA County.

[01:02:45] when you're making $250,000 a year, there was something in the end of this article.

[01:02:55] Somebody spent $933,000 on someone's hotel stays for his clients in 2017, like almost a million dollars on hotel stays. Like, what? You should, what? Yeah, and it's not like they were spending

[01:03:01] on homeless, they were spending on their clients for a million people or for almost a million dollars.

[01:04:06] year. Newson wants to spend on average 74,000 per year for homeless. Imagine the nice homework apartment you can rent for that. Valley and that's who she is. She makes $570,000 a year

[01:04:12] at a modest size nonprofit. And a lot of this, what Prop 1 is, is they're going to be giving

[01:04:20] out grants to these counties. And obviously, whoever, you know, type in homeless nonprofit CEO salary of California and you'll just get article after article article of these people making $250, $500 million. It's like, it's just, they're making ton of money. And it's a huge business. And like we said, there's no incentive to ever stop homelessness or end homelessness because

[01:05:42] you're making a be doing this noble job, like helping the homeless, I feel like it's weird that you're taking more than half a million dollars as salary. I agree. Someone asked in the chat on Instagram, how do we know the money isn't going back to their party as donations? Well, I mean, you could just look up like a lot of these people, like go to followthemoney.org

[01:07:01] and you can literally just put in these people and it'll give it tracks like all of these

[01:07:06] people.

[01:07:07] It's an amazing website. board members and now we're going to increase it to 27. So just in case anyone questions that I did, that's the answer I got. So there's a lot to, I mean, we're coming up on well, over an hour, but there's a lot to get into with prop one as we've shown you. I'll put as much of these links in the show notes as possible for people to

[01:08:20] kind of do their research on their own.

[01:08:22] Um, but definitely think about this.

[01:08:24] And, and this, I think your point at the is involved. She wrote a whole op-ed about why we should vote for it. We were supposed to share with that. That was the original plan. That was the original plan. And then we found the interview and we're like, this is a better way to go through it and just fact check Newsom. But yeah, it just goes to show you that another lesson,

[01:09:43] there's a lot of lessons in this episode

[01:09:45] about being mindful, being skeptical, being critical this like, you guys have no compassion and it's like, well, what does this really do? We do have a culture we do care, but couldn't this money be used way better than 600 case salaries and $900,000 on hotel client guests? And you know, if it's, if we're really trying to solve mental health and homelessness, then shouldn't the money be there?

[01:11:02] Well, because this politically, if you want to do that. So it's easier to hand out billions of dollars and say, look at this new mental health facility that I built. It's so beautiful. Look where we're ending homelessness. Chairman, I'm sure that show, this is so random, extreme home makeover. I feel like if we just hired them, they could come in and in like,

[01:12:21] in every county build all these things in like a week

[01:12:24] and get all these volunteers. But anyway, as we like to end every show, thank you for everyone for tuning in. Make sure you like, share, subscribe, review, all of that stuff. And like I just said, if anyone out there is like, what the heck is Prop 1? I don't understand it. Send them the show. Tell them to listen to it. We break it all down for them. We'll put the show notes in there with the links and all that stuff so they know we're not making stuff up.

[01:13:41] It's the best and free way to support the show is to just share it with somebody.

[01:13:45] And yeah, we'll see you on the next one.

[01:13:47] Have a good one, everyone.

[01:13:48] Later.