Phil and Camille bring you the latest in California politics!
In this episode, Phil and Camille discuss Newsom's recent racial gaffe in Atlanta, the California Democrats can't agree on a candidate for Governor, and BART is being bailed out by taxpayers...again.
Original air date 2.24.26
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00:00:02
Gavin Newsom makes the ultimate racial gaffe out in Atlanta by
00:00:06
trying to bond with black voters by saying he's dumb just like
00:00:10
they are. We're also going to talk about
00:00:12
how the California Democrats couldn't figure out and agree on
00:00:14
one candidate for governor and also Bart's getting bailed out
00:00:19
yet again. We're going to talk about all
00:00:21
that and more on tonight's episode of the California
00:00:23
Underground, starting right now. What's going on, everybody?
00:00:42
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of California
00:00:44
Underground. I am your host, Phil.
00:00:46
We got a lot to talk about tonight with Gavin Newsom
00:00:49
pulling a Hillary Clinton hot sauce moment.
00:00:51
And then we also have to talk about how the California
00:00:53
Democrats don't know who they think should be governor.
00:00:55
And then obviously Bart game bailed out with half a billion
00:00:58
dollars. So before we get started, make
00:01:01
sure you subscribe, like share all that stuff helps with the
00:01:04
algorithm if you are new here and all that stuff and welcoming
00:01:08
in my trusty Co host, the best, the fastest researcher in the
00:01:10
West. Camille, How are you tonight,
00:01:12
Camille? I'm good.
00:01:15
How are you? I'm good, much better than last
00:01:18
week. So if anybody tuned in last
00:01:20
week, I apologize for the state of my voice was bad because I
00:01:25
was getting over a cold and tried to make it through a
00:01:27
podcast. I made it through.
00:01:29
It was touch and go there for a little bit.
00:01:33
I had to pop some cough drops, but here we are.
00:01:36
A big announcement. First off, before we get
00:01:38
started, in tonight's first story, we have a new channel.
00:01:45
It's a little bit of housekeeping.
00:01:46
California Underground has a new channel.
00:01:48
It's going to be called California Underground News and
00:01:51
the purpose of it is what we are trying to do.
00:01:55
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00:02:11
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00:02:15
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00:02:19
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00:02:21
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00:02:24
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00:02:26
This main channel is going to remain dedicated to the podcast.
00:02:31
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00:02:32
This is where the podcast live will be all of that stuff.
00:02:35
So if any of you are out there listening and tuning in, in the
00:02:40
chat, First off, let us know where you're tuning in from.
00:02:42
Anywhere in California. So go head over to California
00:02:46
Underground News. It's literally not even 24 hours
00:02:48
old. So with that, I think we should
00:02:52
hop into our first story, which is about Gavin Newsom went out
00:02:58
to Atlanta for an interview and he made a pretty bad racial
00:03:04
gaffe. I know a lot of Democrat
00:03:07
candidates, for some reason, just they can't seem to not step
00:03:12
on their own feet when it comes to making these racial gaffes.
00:03:16
Like there was Hillary Clinton pandering that she said she had
00:03:19
hot sauce in her bag at all times.
00:03:22
Biden said that poor kids are just as bright as white kids or
00:03:26
something like that, implying some racial discrimination.
00:03:31
And Gavin, well, I think we should just watch the clip and
00:03:37
see what he said. I'm not, you know, I'm not
00:03:41
trying to impress you, I'm just trying to impress upon you.
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I'm like you. I'm no better than you.
00:03:49
You know, I'm a 960 SAT guy and you know, and I'm not trying to
00:03:56
offend anyone, you know, trying to act all there if you got 940
00:04:02
but literally a 960 SAT guy. I cannot you you've never seen
00:04:07
me read a speech. Because I cannot read a speech
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may be the wrong business to be. All right, So what else can you
00:04:25
say about Gavin Newsom besides it was.
00:04:28
So painful to watch. What were you thinking when you
00:04:32
said I'm just like you? I have a 960 SAT score.
00:04:38
Wow. OK, Camille, I'll let you take
00:04:43
the first crack at this one. Oh gosh, I, I don't even know
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where someone comes up with that, that thought.
00:04:54
I've never, ever thought. I've never looked at anybody and
00:04:59
been like, but they had a lower SAT score, but they couldn't
00:05:04
score even 1000. I mean, I've probably looked at
00:05:09
Asians and been like, perfect score.
00:05:12
Yeah. But we know they're extremely
00:05:17
bright and they work really hard and they're very educated.
00:05:20
But so isn't he? Is he on his book tour?
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Is this part of his book tour? This interview?
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Yeah, this is part of his Young Man in a Hurry book.
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Tour. So he's out of the state.
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This is this is nothing to do with his political career.
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He's just on a book tour, speaking to a room full of
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people who likely bought his book or planned to buy his book
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to read it. And then he's just like all of
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you dumb people can't read, but yet you're here for my book.
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And just the whole thing is so bizarre.
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So bizarre. Which Speaking of being on his
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book tour, I asked Grok how many days Gavin Newsom has been out
00:06:01
of the state of California in 2026.
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And it's 11 days, which may not sound like a lot, but today is
00:06:06
day 55 of 2026. And so that is exactly 20
00:06:09
percent, 20% of his time spent outside of California, the state
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that he allegedly governs. It's a lot of time to be out of
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the state. You can't even take off 20% of
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your job, like your actual day job.
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And Gavin's just kind of taking 20% off being governor of like
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one of the largest states in the country.
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I, I guess you could, it just seems so weird that he went with
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that of all things to try and bond with the audience.
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Like you could have said a number of things.
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He could even went back to his line about Wonder Bread and Mac
00:06:48
and cheese and shooting hoops or something like that.
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He could have went back to that and that would have been fine.
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I mean, it's still kind of odd to think of Gavin Newsom, Mr.
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Burberry scarf wearing, you know, like yuppie from San
00:07:01
Francisco. You don't really think of him
00:07:03
like stacks of Wonder Bread and Mac and cheese and and Ballin.
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But why go to that? Why did you go to 960 SAT?
00:07:14
Like I'm just like you 960 score on SATI don't think I'd ever
00:07:19
bring that up and assume that an entire race of people score a
00:07:25
certain thing on the SAT. Like like you said, maybe Asians
00:07:30
are better at this, but but that's in a in a good light.
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I think it's bad to kind of assume that a whole race can't
00:07:37
break 1000 on the Sats. To be fair, I couldn't actually.
00:07:41
It took me a while to break 1000 on the Sats.
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I don't even know what the scores are now.
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They're like all over the place. But back when I took the Sats,
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it was like breaking a 1000 was kind of like just average.
00:07:52
What was it? 1600 was perfect.
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So I was far from perfect. It worked.
00:07:57
It got me into college. But such a weird thing to come
00:08:01
up with. And it does come off as like,
00:08:02
why do all these Democrats try and pander too hard for the
00:08:08
black vote? And, and it's almost like, say
00:08:11
what you will about Donald Trump, the thing about Donald
00:08:14
Trump is he's always Donald Trump.
00:08:16
Like he's 24/7, he's Donald Trump.
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And I think that's why people like him is that if he's in
00:08:22
front of a room full of like big, big machinery construction
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workers or he's in front of a room of bankers, he's still
00:08:30
Donald Trump. Like either way, he's not
00:08:33
pretending to be something he isn't.
00:08:35
And you think of like Kamala Harris and her many different
00:08:38
accents that she had. And we played them all.
00:08:40
Like she had a Jamaican accent and she had like an inner city
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accent. And then she had a Southern
00:08:47
accent. And like even AOC, like she
00:08:49
plays like this Black preacher when she's in the South.
00:08:52
And then like when she's in the Bronx, like she puts on like a
00:08:55
heavy Hispanic accent. Like Democrats just do this
00:08:58
weird pandering that I, I don't know, it's just these, what is
00:09:03
it the bigotry of low or soft expectations or something like
00:09:06
that, or soft bigotry of low expectations.
00:09:09
Democrats just can't stop doing it.
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And yet for some reason they still get the vote.
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Like people still vote for him even though they are basically
00:09:17
openly like racist towards them and talking down to them.
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But I don't know what do you think?
00:09:24
It, it, it really is very odd that they just, they count on
00:09:30
people being stupid. I and I don't get it.
00:09:34
I was talking to my mom on the phone today about this.
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Like it, it works. They keep voting for him and
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we're like, it's the public education system.
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My mom was, she was pro homeschooled.
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Like I was homeschooled part of my life.
00:09:46
I did go to a public high school, but we're just like,
00:09:50
we're both like, yeah, this is what they, this is exactly what
00:09:52
they want. They dumbed down the education
00:09:54
and then this works and they get the votes and even going back to
00:09:58
his whole birth certificate thing because you know the save
00:10:01
act right now and they want the the whole birth certificate
00:10:06
thing. And he's like, I lost my birth
00:10:07
certificate when I was 7. How nobody knows if you like, if
00:10:14
your parents decide to to give you the responsibility of
00:10:18
holding on to your birth certificate and you lose it at
00:10:21
seven, you don't know at 50 something years old if you lost
00:10:25
your birth certificate at 7 years old, that's oddly
00:10:27
specific. You know, you just like I lost
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it when I was seven. Well, you needed it to register
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for college. So that's interesting.
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And then? To be like, I don't even know
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where to get it. He's trying to make the point of
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I don't even know where my birth certificate is.
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You're the governor, you could easily make one phone call and
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I'm sure they'll rush a birth certificate up to you.
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You you kind of run the state, so I don't think you finding a
00:10:54
birth. Certificate we do.
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There's probably like this, this special printer at the Capitol,
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like he could probably like call, you know, room 1O1A and be
00:11:03
like, hey, can you print me on my birth certificate?
00:11:05
They'll be like be there in 5 minutes, you know?
00:11:08
Yeah, be right up, Mr. Governor. We'll be right there.
00:11:12
So one person who obviously called him out for what can
00:11:17
nothing can only be described as racist remarks was ex
00:11:21
presidential candidate Cornell West.
00:11:24
And he obviously had a lot to say about it.
00:11:27
So I'm going to pull this up real quick.
00:11:30
This is from the New York Post. He says when he thinks of black
00:11:34
people, this is Cornell West talking about Gavin Newsom.
00:11:37
He thinks of lower SA TS, W said during a podcast interview, a
00:11:41
clip of which he posted on his ex account.
00:11:44
The mindset sits at the core, white supremacy of the belief
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that Black people are less beautiful, less moral, less
00:11:49
intelligent. Don't play with us like that
00:11:51
California guy. Wonder if I play this, Can you
00:11:53
hear it? I'm no better than you, you
00:11:57
know. I'm a 960 SAT guy.
00:12:00
They're just playing the same thing.
00:12:02
So Cornell West came out swinging about it, and the
00:12:07
fallout has not been good for Gavin Newsom in terms of
00:12:13
everybody who is coming after him.
00:12:16
In fact, it's gotten so bad that like his own press office.
00:12:20
And if you don't know anything about his press office, they are
00:12:23
run by a bunch of like, entitled, snotty little leftist.
00:12:28
And I, and I'm saying that in like the most professional
00:12:31
sense, the like snotty little leftist because they, they think
00:12:35
like, they can be like trolls on social media and that works for
00:12:39
them. And you know, they're just like,
00:12:41
oh, we're going to be, we're going to be uncouth.
00:12:43
We're going to be unprofessional because we're going to be like
00:12:45
Donald Trump. And so Izzy Gardan, who is one
00:12:51
of the, I think he's one of the press conference people.
00:12:53
Hold on, let me pull this up. Getting used to the, some
00:12:56
software here. So pushing a lot of buttons back
00:12:59
here. We always say this on the show.
00:13:02
There's always, there's always an opening for a producer on the
00:13:06
show. So this was from Susan Crabtree,
00:13:11
who's a reporter. She said, what about the Gavin
00:13:13
Newsom dyslexia diagnosis? Can the governor provide any
00:13:16
paperwork related to his dyslexia diagnosis at any time
00:13:20
of his life? Newsome's com team just now
00:13:23
tells me to F off. And that was easy.
00:13:27
Gardon also to Brandon Richards, you can find these people all
00:13:31
over Twitter who are like fact checking and gaslighting people
00:13:34
about Gavin Newsom's lies and all that stuff.
00:13:37
So they're not taking it too well.
00:13:39
This fallout has been pretty bad for Gavin Newsom.
00:13:43
I'm paying attention, I'm just trying to look something up.
00:13:47
There was another. Let me see if I can pull this up
00:13:50
as well. Gavin did not take too kindly to
00:13:54
let me see. He did not take too kindly to
00:14:01
people calling him out. So let's see if I can pull this
00:14:05
up as well that the 10 is this with the clip that I'm looking
00:14:08
for. Apologies to everyone for
00:14:11
figuring this out. Still, this was the video.
00:14:18
I was trying to look up that person to see if I can find
00:14:20
their salary on Transparent California but taking too much
00:14:24
time so. Here it is.
00:14:27
So this was his response to Sean Hannity and called out Gavin
00:14:31
Newsom about this. He thinks that a 960 SAT makes
00:14:36
him like black Americans. Let that sink in, which I think
00:14:39
most of the country is thinking about.
00:14:41
And this is Gavin Newsom's reply, very professional, very
00:14:45
cordial. He said you don't give a shit
00:14:48
about the President, United States of America posting an 8
00:14:51
video, President Obama or calling African nations shit
00:14:54
holes, but you're going to call me racist for talking about my
00:14:57
lifelong struggle with dyslexia? Spare me your fake FN outrage,
00:15:02
Sean. So things seem to be going
00:15:05
really well over in the Newsome camp.
00:15:09
His press comms is melting down. He's melting down.
00:15:12
Everyone's melting down over this whole racial gaffe.
00:15:15
And I don't blame him because you screwed up.
00:15:18
You screwed up like royally and now you have to pay the
00:15:21
consequences. So is this going to be something
00:15:25
that follows him? Or yeah, and probably not, but
00:15:32
just because that's how it works, you know, you know, the
00:15:35
that video that Trump had posted that the way whoever the White
00:15:39
House Trump that was, that was one thing.
00:15:43
But to try to be like, well, they did this, so I can do this.
00:15:48
That is such childish behavior. I hate that two wrongs don't
00:15:54
make a right. Just because someone did
00:15:57
something doesn't excuse your behavior.
00:16:00
Just take accountability. You said something you shouldn't
00:16:04
have said. Apologize.
00:16:07
Move. On and it.
00:16:09
It it goes against the whole idea of like Democrats are the
00:16:13
moral and what's the word, I'm looking for the moral and higher
00:16:20
integrity choice over MAGA Republicans.
00:16:24
When you act like they're doing right now, when you're telling
00:16:28
reporters to F off, when you're telling Sean Hannity to F off,
00:16:34
all of this just doesn't look like you have a adult handle on
00:16:37
the situation. And you're, you may have tried
00:16:42
to be like, I get the whole like strategy of he was trying to
00:16:47
troll Donald Trump with X and he was trying to pretend to be
00:16:53
Trump. And it was like putting a mirror
00:16:55
up to Trump and trying to show how ridiculous it was.
00:16:59
But now it's like they've kind of taken on that persona, like
00:17:02
they've spent too much time being the imitation of Trump
00:17:06
that I, I mean, even Trump doesn't like yell at people to
00:17:09
like F off and stuff like this. He's almost like falling into
00:17:13
this attitude. And it's so weird that he's
00:17:17
just, he's lost his cool over this.
00:17:21
And yeah, it's absolutely damage control because if you're
00:17:25
looking ahead, if you're a Democratic presidential nominee
00:17:29
or Democratic presidential candidate and you're running in
00:17:32
the primary in 2027, S Carolina is a bellwether state for
00:17:39
Democratic candidates. And basically, if you can win
00:17:44
South Carolina, that almost guarantees you're going to win
00:17:46
the nomination because it shows you can carry the black vote,
00:17:49
which is very important in the Democratic nominee and the
00:17:52
Democratic being a Democratic president.
00:17:55
So it it is, it's imperative that you are able to, I guess,
00:18:01
connect and, and get the support of black voters.
00:18:06
So looking ahead for Gavin Newsom screwing this up is a
00:18:11
horrible thing because now it's going to be out there for every
00:18:15
single person who's running against you to run this in South
00:18:19
Carolina non-stop in 2027 and be like, hey, this is what Gavin
00:18:24
Newsom thinks of you. He thinks you're dumb.
00:18:28
So who would you rather have? Someone like me who doesn't
00:18:31
think you're dumb or Gavin Newsom, who thinks that you you
00:18:35
can't even read a book, which also you had sent this over.
00:18:41
Speaking of hypocrisy in terms of Gavin Newsom saying I can't
00:18:47
read. And I'm trying to pretend like I
00:18:48
I'm so in in, you know, I'm bonding with you guys.
00:18:52
I'm just like you guys. You sent this over as well.
00:18:56
And this was him reading some banned books to figure out what
00:18:59
these states are so afraid of. I thought you can't read.
00:19:02
So are you just staring at the book?
00:19:04
And those are are those big print books?
00:19:08
Those look like pretty big books.
00:19:09
Like I don't think I remember To Kill a Mockingbird looking that
00:19:12
big when I read it in high school.
00:19:13
I don't think the copy on my shelf is that big.
00:19:15
That looks like a graphic novel. Maybe he's.
00:19:17
Reading it is a tiny little book I'm going to have.
00:19:20
I have it. Maybe that's a graphic novel, To
00:19:23
Kill a Mockingbird. It's got pictures and that's why
00:19:25
he can read it. Maybe.
00:19:29
But there's also a clip circulating of him saying like,
00:19:32
oh, I can't, I can't read. But then he also read a book
00:19:36
that was like 200 pages or something and like an hour, 2
00:19:39
hours or something. Like he's so fast at reading.
00:19:42
I don't know, all bad, just really screwed up and.
00:19:47
I was just saying I'm just like you, but I get to hide behind an
00:19:53
entire staff of, you know, my communications department and
00:19:58
everyone else, and I don't have to even address what I said.
00:20:13
Sorry, did I lose you for a second?
00:20:14
I think you froze up for a second.
00:20:16
I, oh, did I freeze up? I thought you froze up.
00:20:19
I was just saying, imagine saying I'm just like you, but
00:20:23
then you get to hide behind staff, You get to behind hide
00:20:26
behind your communications department and not be held
00:20:28
accountable. Yep, that's the nice thing for
00:20:33
Gavin Newsom is he can send his little twerpy PR people out
00:20:36
there to go yell at people on Twitter and tell them to go F
00:20:39
off. So yes, that's totally just.
00:20:44
Like you. Yeah, that's just like everybody
00:20:47
else. Everybody else has a team of PR
00:20:49
people to go and yell at people on X for him.
00:20:53
So, all right, Gavin Newsom totally screwed up.
00:20:57
No way about it. Will it actually affect him in
00:20:59
the presidential race? I guess we'll see.
00:21:01
I think it's going to linger for those races like in South
00:21:04
Carolina where you do have to reach out to black voters.
00:21:07
But Democrats, again, just can't stop the soft bigotry of low
00:21:12
expectations. All right, Speaking of
00:21:16
Democrats, Gavin wasn't the only California Democrat to have an
00:21:20
eventful weekend. There was a Democrat convention
00:21:24
in San Francisco to, well, there's always these party
00:21:28
conventions. If you don't know, there's
00:21:29
always party conventions like every year.
00:21:32
Sometimes we go, sometimes we don't.
00:21:34
Sometimes they're not worth going.
00:21:36
This year would be a year you'd want to go because they're
00:21:38
endorsing someone for governor. So they sent everybody to San
00:21:42
Francisco to figure out who's going to be endorsed by the
00:21:46
California Democratic Party. That's a big endorsement.
00:21:48
If the California Democratic Party says we think you should
00:21:51
be the governor, that's a big deal because it sends a signal
00:21:54
to all the Democrats in the primary.
00:21:56
This is who we think should be governor.
00:21:58
You want that, Chip? You want to run with that?
00:22:03
And Needless to say, even Democrats couldn't figure out
00:22:05
who they want to run for governor.
00:22:07
So we're going to watch this clip and then we'll we'll add
00:22:09
our commentary. That's right, Trump.
00:22:15
The worst president ever? Donald Trump and his ICE thugs
00:22:18
are. Terrorizing our communities.
00:22:21
Democratic candidates for California governors speaking
00:22:23
out against President Trump this weekend at the California
00:22:26
Democratic Party State Convention, making their case to
00:22:30
some 4000 attendees for their endorsement.
00:22:34
And when the dust settled on the convention, there was no
00:22:37
official endorsement. No candidate was able to garner
00:22:39
the requisite 60% support to secure the full party support.
00:22:44
Congressman Eric Swalwell led the field with 24.
00:22:48
I'm just going to say the most shocking thing of this list is
00:22:51
that Betty Yee is in section. I know.
00:22:57
I know last was it. Last week before we were like,
00:23:01
she's here. What?
00:23:04
If you don't worry, a couple of weeks ago we had, we broke down
00:23:07
the debate and she kept popping up and you and I were like, why
00:23:11
are you here? Like, who cares that you're
00:23:13
here? But somehow she garnered 17% of
00:23:15
the California Democratic Convention vote.
00:23:18
So good for Betty Yee. Maybe she is the underdog that
00:23:23
she's talking about and saying like, don't underestimate me,
00:23:26
I'm the underdog. Maybe she is, Who knows?
00:23:29
Sent with former state controller Betty Yee a
00:23:32
surprising second. Javier Becerra and Tom Steyer
00:23:35
are the only other candidates in the double digits.
00:23:38
The Democrats weekend of indecision mapped out in
00:23:42
incredible detail in today's Politico California Playbook,
00:23:46
co-authored by Blake Jones. And with more on the convention
00:23:49
and a wild weekend in California politics, we are joined by Blake
00:23:53
Jones, co-author of the Politico California Playbook.
00:23:56
A great read, Blake. Let's dive right in.
00:23:59
Your reaction to the results of the endorsement poll and what it
00:24:02
could mean for the months ahead. And who do you think San
00:24:06
Francisco is going to get behind here with some momentum?
00:24:10
Yeah, the results actually aren't that surprising.
00:24:13
And as you all mentioned, it requires 60% of the vote to get
00:24:16
a party endorsement in the California Democratic Party
00:24:19
process. And there are so many candidates
00:24:22
in the field right now, it's just near impossible to reach
00:24:24
that kind of the peak. But I will say that the vote was
00:24:29
so divided that I think that it's clear that party activists
00:24:32
and people who are really plugged into the Democratic
00:24:35
Party here in the state are extremely divided on the
00:24:38
outcome, you know, with just around 3 months until the
00:24:41
primary here. So we in an interview this
00:24:45
weekend with our Aiton Wallace, Katie Porter said.
00:24:48
And I quote, if your campaign isn't viable, you're not going
00:24:52
to be able to go toe to toe and beat those Republicans and beat
00:24:56
Donald Trump, then I think it's time to make the right choice.
00:25:07
Katie Porter I wish someone could just grab her by the
00:25:11
shoulders and shake her and say you're not running against
00:25:17
Donald Trump, you're running for governor of California.
00:25:21
What her she has this weird obsession with like I have to
00:25:27
beat Donald Trump. You're not running against
00:25:30
Donald Trump. You're maybe governor of
00:25:31
California. There's there is 100 issues that
00:25:34
should concern you as governor of California before you even
00:25:38
get to Donald Trump. And she just won't shut up about
00:25:41
Donald Trump. And like she brought out a
00:25:43
little whiteboard. If you weren't watching, they
00:25:45
blurted out, she brought out a little whiteboard, said F Trump.
00:25:48
And she was waving it around like, Oh my God, I brought my
00:25:50
whiteboard and it says F Trump. It's like, girl, you just got to
00:25:53
stop being obsessed with Trump. Like there's so many other
00:25:56
issues that Californians care about.
00:25:59
And yeah, if you may touch on a little bit of anti Trump
00:26:02
sentiment, but my gosh, like her whole platform should just be I
00:26:08
hate Trump and if you hate Trump too, you should vote for me.
00:26:11
I don't have anything else to talk about.
00:26:13
I just hate Trump. I don't.
00:26:15
Well, it's. Not working for her.
00:26:17
No because she's what, 5th in that polling?
00:26:20
She did not do well and obviously videos of her.
00:26:23
No she didn't even break she got like 7.9%.
00:26:29
Videos of her berating her staff probably also didn't help as
00:26:32
well. But she just doesn't.
00:26:35
She came out as like the anti Trump warrior and then she
00:26:40
doesn't seem to have anything else to talk about so not
00:26:45
surprising, but let's keep going.
00:26:47
For California, do you get the sense that anyone will do that
00:26:53
ahead of the March 6th filing deadline, including possibly
00:26:55
Porter, who who's ranked 5th in that endorsement poll?
00:27:01
So that's a good question because the party endorsement
00:27:04
hasn't really pushed anyone out of the race so far.
00:27:07
But we do have a few weeks here. And there's a lot of pressure on
00:27:10
some of the lowest polling candidates, not in the
00:27:13
endorsement process, but in public surveys to drop out of
00:27:18
the race and to help kind of consolidate Democratic support
00:27:21
so that people can align behind a smaller group.
00:27:25
Now, we haven't seen any particular tea leaves with some
00:27:28
of those, you know, underperforming that they're
00:27:32
going to drop out. But with representative or
00:27:35
former Representative Porter, I would expect that she's going to
00:27:38
stay in through June because although she had a fairly poor
00:27:43
performance with these Democratic activists at the
00:27:46
party, she's still one of the top candidates when it comes to
00:27:49
fundraising and when it comes to polling.
00:27:52
And, you know, I think that she is still viewed by a lot of the
00:27:55
political class here in California as one of the more
00:27:58
competitive contenders still in the race.
00:28:00
And I would be very surprised if I saw her drop out before June.
00:28:04
Blake, while we have you, Governor Gavin Newsom is facing
00:28:06
criticism after this comment went viral during his book tour
00:28:10
this weekend as he spoke to a predominantly Black crowd in
00:28:14
Atlanta. Listen.
00:28:15
I'm not, you know, I'm not trying to impress you.
00:28:18
I'm just trying to press upon you.
00:28:20
I'm like you. I'm no better than you, you
00:28:25
know, I'm a 960 SAT guy. I cannot you.
00:28:29
You've never seen me read a speech because I cannot read a
00:28:34
speech. All right, And so Newsom is
00:28:37
firing back in a post on X. This is directed at.
00:28:41
All right, this is all stuff that we've already covered, so
00:28:43
no need to go over that again. Good, Good to keep reminding
00:28:46
everybody that is how it. Got into some.
00:28:48
Feels about black voters. Yeah, he thinks black voters are
00:28:53
dumb, so they couldn't figure out.
00:28:57
I kind of agree with whoever that kid is.
00:29:00
I say kid. He could be, I don't know.
00:29:01
It could be 30, but he looks like a kid.
00:29:03
He looks like he's like 20 years old or something.
00:29:06
I I agree that it's hard to get to 60% when you have like 1000
00:29:10
people in the race and it splits up the vote that much.
00:29:14
Nobody really ran away with it though.
00:29:16
I think that's the most important thing that you could
00:29:19
probably take away from it is that nobody really was heads and
00:29:23
tails above everybody else. Like, I think what did, what did
00:29:26
swallow get like 2224%, which is a lot for 24, but you know,
00:29:33
Betty Yee's right on his heels at 17.
00:29:35
So it, it's not like anybody was heads and tails above any of the
00:29:42
other candidates. And yeah, it it, it just shows
00:29:46
that like the pack is very close.
00:29:49
I didn't see Matt Mahan on there either, did I?
00:29:51
Did I miss Matt Mahan if he got in there?
00:29:53
I well. He wasn't top five.
00:29:55
I don't, right? I didn't see, I just didn't see
00:29:59
his name. I saw Xavier Becerra, I saw Tony
00:30:01
Thurman, Tony Thurman who somehow is still hanging around
00:30:04
just kind of in the middle of the pack.
00:30:07
All these candidates. I, I guess The thing is, and not
00:30:12
to kind of compliment Gavin Newsom, which kind of makes me
00:30:17
throw up in my mouth a little bit.
00:30:18
By the way, I'm wearing my noodle shirt in honor of
00:30:20
noodles. Big racial gaffe.
00:30:22
You can go get it on California Underground dot live.
00:30:24
I actually saw somebody on social media call him Noodles
00:30:27
and it made me chuckle a little bit.
00:30:31
I guess when you have someone of the star power of Gavin Newsom
00:30:37
and and star power, good or bad, he's a big personality.
00:30:42
He's a big player in politics. When you go from Gavin Newsom
00:30:45
down to like these candidates, they're not really in the same
00:30:48
ballpark of like, wow factor. Like, it's not like people look
00:30:52
at them and go, whoa, I've been waiting for this person to run
00:30:54
for governor. I think a lot of Democrats now
00:30:57
are just kind of like, well, what are our choices?
00:31:00
Like Newsome's leaving. Kamala didn't run.
00:31:05
Porter was sort of the heads, like she was supposed to be the
00:31:10
big front runner. She fell behind because she
00:31:12
turned out to be a horrible boss and she can't stop talking about
00:31:17
Trump. So we kind of have this
00:31:19
lackluster field of like, meh. Like, that's the best way to
00:31:23
describe. And I bet if you asked an honest
00:31:26
Democrat in California, like, what do you think of this slate
00:31:29
of candidates? And they probably be like, meh,
00:31:32
I don't know. Like, I guess I'll have to vote
00:31:35
for one of them. Like, I'm not going to vote for
00:31:38
Bianca or Hilton. Maybe they will.
00:31:40
I don't know. But maybe that's the problem.
00:31:43
It's a field of meh, and they're just so average and not like,
00:31:48
impressive at all that nobody's really coalescing.
00:31:51
No one's figured out how to bring the coalition together
00:31:57
like you. You don't think Betty Yee can
00:31:59
bring a coalition together? What do you think?
00:32:03
I'm very surprised about Betty Yee still.
00:32:05
It's so funny. But I wonder why Matt Matt Mahan
00:32:09
wasn't pulling. But perhaps he's just too new.
00:32:14
I don't know. I, I just thought because
00:32:17
Democrats, as much as they stick together, there's no denying
00:32:19
that California is just such a failure right now.
00:32:22
Democrats can't deny it. They, they will publicly, like
00:32:25
they'll on social media, they're going to be like, California is
00:32:28
wonderful and great, we're the 5th largest economy.
00:32:30
But they can't deny that like, they're also broke from taxes
00:32:34
and they're tired of homelessness, you know, living
00:32:39
on the freeway and public education failing and all the
00:32:42
other things that are just wrong with California.
00:32:45
There's you can't, you can only deny that for so long.
00:32:49
But I don't think that they're going to come out and be like,
00:32:53
let's all just vote for Steve Hilton.
00:32:56
You know, the lesser, like less conservative, more Republican
00:33:00
between him and Bianco. So I would have thought Matt
00:33:03
Mahan would actually be doing much better because he has
00:33:07
aligned himself as more moderate.
00:33:10
So I'm surprised that he wasn't in the top five.
00:33:15
Yeah, I think it's also because he's so new to the race.
00:33:19
He hasn't had time to stop. Maybe he got in too late, maybe
00:33:23
he took too long. He should have got in like a
00:33:25
year or so ago. Maybe it's a little too late for
00:33:27
him now. He's just he hasn't really
00:33:29
grabbed on to any sort of. And I know we said he probably
00:33:33
got in because everyone is so lackluster in meh, but now it's
00:33:37
like he didn't hit the ground running, so he's kind of lost in
00:33:40
the shuffle. Somebody asked, like, who are we
00:33:44
pushing for? We don't push for anybody.
00:33:47
Like we don't endorse anybody. So we're not pushing for a
00:33:50
specific Democrat. We're just commenting on like
00:33:53
the state of the Democrats, because one of them is going to
00:33:56
end up running for governor. And who knows?
00:33:59
Well, good chance in California, one of them will likely end up
00:34:02
being governor. Not to say anything about Hilton
00:34:05
or Bianco. Crazier things have happened.
00:34:07
You know, who knows? I'm just saying statistically
00:34:11
there if you were to be a better man.
00:34:14
You're saying there's still a chance?
00:34:16
I'm saying there's a chance that there could be.
00:34:20
I I'm just saying there's a chance there could be a
00:34:24
Republican governor this this year.
00:34:26
I'm not counting it out. Never count anything out in
00:34:29
politics. You know, crazier things have
00:34:31
happened. But I'm just saying we keep an
00:34:34
eye on the Democrats because of the fact that they're probably
00:34:38
one of them is going to be governor.
00:34:41
So, yeah, they endorsed a whole bunch of other people as well.
00:34:44
But they also, I saw a lot of chatter on the fact that they
00:34:47
endorsed a lot of establishment corporate Democrats.
00:34:53
And that was one of the biggest complaints from a lot of people
00:34:57
in the progressive wing was they didn't endorse enough
00:35:01
progressive Democrats. And that's crazy.
00:35:04
I think that in California we need more progressive Democrats.
00:35:08
I think the last thing we need is more progressive Democrats.
00:35:10
Like that's insane to me. Last thing we need is more Buffy
00:35:14
Wicks and Scott Weiner's and Alex Lee's.
00:35:17
But that was one of the big criticisms is that they endorsed
00:35:21
a bunch of people who were just kind of corporatist Democrats.
00:35:24
They were establishment Democrats.
00:35:25
They were bought out by lobbyists and progressives were
00:35:29
very upset about that because they want their progressives and
00:35:32
they want their single payer health care, which by the way,
00:35:35
they did introduce a bill just a couple days ago, just last week
00:35:39
for single payer healthcare in California.
00:35:41
So they're trying again. This will be the 5th, 4th year
00:35:46
in a row that they're trying to get single payer pass through
00:35:48
California. I guess if they just keep
00:35:51
trying. Yeah, they keep bringing it up,
00:35:55
I'm sure. I'm looking for the link I sent
00:35:56
you about the breakdown of the endorsements.
00:36:00
Who was endorsed? Well, I wasn't, I wasn't going
00:36:04
to go through the whole thing. It was like 132 seats out of
00:36:08
164, something like that. But they did not, I can't find
00:36:15
it. So they there's I believe 8
00:36:19
statewide seats and they only endorsed 3 candidates for that.
00:36:25
And then. I.
00:36:28
Elena. Elena Kuliakis got Did she get
00:36:31
endorsed or not endorsed? I don't remember and now I can't
00:36:36
find that link you. State Treasurer, which to me
00:36:40
seems like a step backwards. You were Lieutenant Governor,
00:36:42
now you're going to state treasurer.
00:36:44
I guess whatever keeps you in the state government as long as
00:36:47
possible. I guess so.
00:36:49
Whatever, I guess when you only know how to work in the public
00:36:52
sector and be a, you know, a Leech of the government or a
00:36:56
parasite of the government, what else are you going to do?
00:36:59
You're not going to go back to the private sector and like
00:37:00
actually work for a living, God forbid, all right, anymore Any
00:37:08
what? Work for the unions or you know,
00:37:12
homelessness NGO and. Oh yeah, go be a nonprofit.
00:37:16
Go be a CEO of a homeless nonprofit.
00:37:19
That's good. I hear that pays really well.
00:37:21
If you are the CEO of a homeless nonprofit, you can make like
00:37:24
half $1. All right.
00:37:26
Any other thoughts on the Democrats in their map platform?
00:37:33
No, no, OK. No, I'm sure I have thoughts you
00:37:35
guys. I'm quitting caffeine and I'm so
00:37:37
tired. Quitting caffeine all together.
00:37:41
No, it's a. Big jump, but I try and scale
00:37:45
back. I know we're now we're we're
00:37:47
rambling or we're what do they call that?
00:37:49
We're chit chatting. People don't like the chit chat
00:37:52
people in the chit. Chat.
00:37:53
They don't like boy talk. I try and cut back after 2.
00:37:58
That's my rule. I cut caffeine after two because
00:38:01
the half life, it keeps you up at night because that's what
00:38:05
happens when you hit 40. You can't take caffeine anymore
00:38:07
after 2:00. All right, next story, Bart Bay
00:38:13
Area Rapid Transit. For those who don't know,
00:38:17
another train project that has become an absolute money
00:38:20
boondoggle in California, almost as bad as the well in terms of
00:38:25
money, not as bad as the high speed rail, but it's pretty bad.
00:38:28
With how much money has been wasted on Bart and for all its
00:38:32
failures and the fact that it has reduced ridership, the fact
00:38:37
that people don't like the service or the cleanliness or
00:38:40
the fact that's not safe anymore.
00:38:42
It keeps losing money and California goes, you lost money,
00:38:47
cool, we'll just keep bailing you out.
00:38:50
So we're going to watch this clip real quick.
00:38:52
We're going to talk about how Bart is being bailed out again,
00:38:56
but this time it's being bailed out by all of us.
00:38:58
So for all of us who I don't live in the Bay Area, you don't
00:39:02
live in the Bay Area. I don't know anybody in the
00:39:04
comments, let me know. Or do you live in the Bay Area?
00:39:06
Do you take Bart? Because guess what, we're all
00:39:09
paying for it now. Even as much as it keeps
00:39:11
failing, we're all paying for it.
00:39:13
So let's watch this clip and we'll add our commentary.
00:39:17
With public transit in the Bay Area on the shakiest financial
00:39:21
ground it's been on in recent memory, Governor Gavin Newsom
00:39:24
Thursday announcing the state is loaning Bay Area transit
00:39:28
agencies $590 million. Newsom acknowledging the state
00:39:33
could have done more and sooner. We've taken a lot of these
00:39:37
systems for granted. We haven't invested in them over
00:39:39
the course of many, many decades.
00:39:42
Take Bart, for example, which is facing a $376 million deficit
00:39:47
for a number number of reasons, but mostly because of declining
00:39:51
ridership. Transit here in the Bay Area and
00:39:53
in other metro areas around the country are suffering from long
00:39:58
COVID. Agencies like Bart, Muni and
00:40:00
Caltrain will have 12 years to repay the loan money.
00:40:04
Transportation experts say this 9 figure shot in the arm is a
00:40:08
godsend. It gives them the stability to
00:40:10
keep providing the services that are so critical for people to
00:40:13
get around the Bay Area. So without this infusion and
00:40:17
there was an impending disaster. But Bart notably says they won't
00:40:22
take the state money if a ballot measure increasing sales tax to
00:40:26
raise yearly revenue for Bart doesn't get approved in
00:40:30
November. Bart saying these loan funds
00:40:33
will be used if a November transit funding ballot measure
00:40:37
is successful or another reliable source of funding is
00:40:41
provided to Bart. If it fails, we would not use
00:40:44
the loan money because we wouldn't be able to pay it back.
00:40:47
And if that measure doesn't pass, Bart plans to close at
00:40:50
least 10 stations and slash service.
00:40:54
We have actually already cut service.
00:40:57
Service right now is not as robust as it was before the
00:41:00
pandemic. You're waiting longer for
00:41:02
trains. There's fewer trains running.
00:41:04
Bottom line, agencies need to figure out a better way to get
00:41:08
people to take the train. We need to increase ridership
00:41:12
and so a lot of work has been done over the past couple years
00:41:14
to improve cleanliness, improve safety on Bart and other major
00:41:18
transit systems. Now, last summer, MUNI put in
00:41:21
place a whole host of cost saving measures.
00:41:24
Meanwhile, Bart's board of directors plans to vote on that
00:41:27
agency's possible service cuts at their meeting next Thursday
00:41:32
in San Francisco. I'm John Quinjak.
00:41:36
Bart to me is a perfect argument for the a government funded
00:41:45
program versus the free market. Let me explain and I think you
00:41:51
understand where I'm going with this.
00:41:53
Bart is a perfect example of when a government program begins
00:41:58
to fail, the government continues to bail it out.
00:42:01
But in the free market, as something continues to fail,
00:42:07
sooner or later it goes out of business and you file for
00:42:09
bankruptcy and it just goes away because the free market
00:42:13
determines through your dollars, your your democratic vote of
00:42:17
your dollars, what's good, what's worth keeping and what's
00:42:20
worth keeping around getting better.
00:42:23
Bart is the antithesis of that, where no matter the fact that
00:42:28
people just have chosen not to ride Bart anymore, whether it's
00:42:33
the pandemic, the pandemic did have a big, big impact on Bart.
00:42:37
I think it was like 118 million people per year were riding
00:42:41
Bart, and now it's like 59 or 57 million.
00:42:44
So it's a huge cut in ridership. But that just shows the market
00:42:49
has shifted and people aren't taking Bart as much anymore.
00:42:52
They're working remotely. So they keep thinking like the
00:42:57
state senator Jesse Eraguin, who goes, well, we have to get more
00:43:00
people to ride Bart. Why, if people are choosing not
00:43:04
to ride Bart, why should we force people to ride Bart?
00:43:09
Like people have voted and their choice is we're not riding Bart
00:43:13
anymore. But for some reason they
00:43:15
government just can't let go of something.
00:43:18
And I would venture to say it's probably because there's a lot
00:43:21
of union people who will lose jobs and that's not good for
00:43:24
anybody in Sacramento. They just can't let it go.
00:43:29
It's failing, it's failing. Nobody wants to ride it anymore.
00:43:34
Maybe you don't need it as much as you used to.
00:43:37
Maybe you do need to cut down on stations.
00:43:40
And they're trying to do this doomsday scenario of, well, if
00:43:42
you don't vote for this measure, we won't get the funding and we
00:43:46
can't pay back the loan. And you know, what will happen
00:43:48
is all these people will lose all of the the the access to
00:43:52
Bart and we'll have to close down all these stations.
00:43:55
Well, yeah, I mean, that's what happens.
00:43:58
Like we don't have to keep funding Bart forever and ever
00:44:01
and ever and ever just because you because of these doomsday
00:44:04
scenarios and whatever you think if there's a station open and
00:44:08
hypothetical, this might be an exaggeration.
00:44:11
If there were 100 people who got on every single day at 1
00:44:15
station, would you think that station is worth spending
00:44:18
millions of dollars on keeping up and paying people to keep up
00:44:21
and keep it in in circulation? Like, no, like it, you would
00:44:25
look at it and go, this station is obviously not that popular.
00:44:30
We don't need it. It's not.
00:44:31
It doesn't have a lot of people coming to it.
00:44:33
So yes, we need to close down this station so we can save
00:44:35
money. We need to scale Bart back.
00:44:38
I'm not saying get rid of Bart. I'm saying you have to accept
00:44:42
that Bart has shrunk, the ridership has shrunk.
00:44:46
It's not as big as it used to be anymore.
00:44:49
And that's just the market telling you that Bart is not a
00:44:52
viable thing anymore, right? I want to get your thoughts 1st
00:44:56
and then we can talk about how Bart is also over plagued with a
00:45:00
lot of fraud, waste and abuse which is also a reason why
00:45:03
they're always in deficit. Surprise.
00:45:06
Surprise. Well, yeah, I agree with
00:45:08
everything you just said. And I forget now the stats,
00:45:11
which I only just looked at what like an hour ago when I was
00:45:14
sending you, I was asking Grok ridership by year since like
00:45:18
2016. And yes, COVID did you know have
00:45:22
a hit on ridership, but it's really low now, like really low.
00:45:28
I'm sorry that I don't have the number compared to 20/16/2017
00:45:33
prior to COVID and all that. And so there were already was a
00:45:37
downward trend of it's just not a necessity.
00:45:40
And then of course, when everyone was pretty much stuck
00:45:42
at home, nobody was going anywhere.
00:45:44
You couldn't probably you didn't need it.
00:45:47
You probably couldn't use it anyway, all that.
00:45:49
And so I just don't understand this like, well, nobody wants to
00:45:54
use it anymore, so we should bail it out.
00:45:57
That doesn't make sense to me because if we're going to argue
00:46:00
that, then can we please bring back the Stagecoach?
00:46:03
I would like to horse drawn carriages.
00:46:05
Can we bail those out and bring them back?
00:46:08
You know, like people need to understand things.
00:46:12
Things change, technology changes things, and we have to
00:46:15
pivot along with it. And I understand that there are
00:46:18
still people that do use it and that that will be an
00:46:21
inconvenience. But when the majority isn't
00:46:23
using it and it's caught now costing us taxpayers, how much
00:46:27
is 590 million that would be paid back over 10 years?
00:46:31
And then it's it's not going to get paid back.
00:46:33
That's not how it works. And you know, and then the same
00:46:36
time they're playing with this mileage tax thing for driving,
00:46:40
which that's one way that they guess they try to get users into
00:46:43
Bart and other systems like that is, oh, if we just cost them
00:46:48
more to drive and insure their cars and registration and all
00:46:52
that. But I'm sorry, and now I'm, I'm
00:46:55
rambling again. But yeah, it's just, it's
00:46:57
unfortunately it's time to say maybe this isn't working and we
00:47:00
need to slowly but surely start closing it.
00:47:03
And then if for some reason it increases like crazy and there's
00:47:06
the funds there, well then let's look at that in a few years.
00:47:12
Yeah, To your point that things change here in San Diego and in
00:47:18
LA, they used to have street cars, like little trolleys that
00:47:22
went around the city. They don't have them anymore
00:47:24
because people used cars, because people were like, oh, I
00:47:26
can get a car and I can drive myself around.
00:47:29
I don't have to wait for streetcars.
00:47:31
And some people will be like, well, I want the streetcars to
00:47:33
come back. Well, no one was riding the
00:47:34
streetcars because they all had cars at that point, and they
00:47:37
phased it out. You.
00:47:38
Can ride them but like as a chore.
00:47:41
Yeah, it's like a historic thing.
00:47:42
Yeah. Like you can't like it.
00:47:44
It's not like if I want to get from one side of San Diego to
00:47:46
the other, there's no streetcars.
00:47:48
Well, there's trolleys now, but like there's no streetcars that
00:47:51
I classic streetcars I can ride anymore.
00:47:54
Somebody said that one of the things 2 missing sports teams
00:47:57
has contributed for sure. I yeah, I would agree with that.
00:47:59
There's probably Oakland, the 2 Oakland teams leaving the A's
00:48:03
and the Raiders leaving is probably a huge part of why Bart
00:48:07
is suffering. Because if you think about how
00:48:09
many millions of people went to go see the Raiders and the A's,
00:48:14
well towards the end there, not many people were going to see
00:48:17
the A's. No offense to the people who are
00:48:18
A's fans. They were just not showing up.
00:48:20
This is a very big empty cavernous, yeah.
00:48:22
It's an excellent point. Though it is an excellent point
00:48:25
that when you take away those two teams, there's a lot less
00:48:28
people who are going to be riding because it before it was
00:48:30
easy. You save money on parking.
00:48:32
You could have a couple drinks, you don't have to worry about
00:48:34
it. You could have a lot of drinks,
00:48:35
not really worry about it. So that definitely has something
00:48:38
to do with it. So thanks, Oakland, for killing
00:48:40
Bart. That's what I take away from
00:48:43
that. So in terms of not just the fact
00:48:47
that the market itself has said like, we don't want this
00:48:51
anymore. We're not using it anymore.
00:48:54
Bart also has been plagued by a ton of fraud.
00:48:57
And this is one of my favorite stories that I found.
00:49:00
It was This is from the San Francisco Gate from 2015.
00:49:06
Turns out a Bart janitor raked in $270 in pay and benefits
00:49:10
last year. Ling Zhao Zhang might be one of
00:49:15
the world's best paid janitors to feel that.
00:49:16
According to salary.com is a medium pay of 27 nationwide.
00:49:22
Zhang, whose official title system service worker had a base
00:49:25
pay of $57, about $58 in 2015.
00:49:30
By working overtime, he made $162, and Bart spokesperson
00:49:36
Alicia Trost confirmed that his total pay with benefits in 2015
00:49:39
came out to $276. That means he worked more than
00:49:45
40 hours in 2015. In comparison, a typical
00:49:48
employee clock in 40 hours weeks and taking two weeks of vacation
00:49:51
might work around 2000 hours in a year.
00:49:54
Just to put it in perspective, in my field as an attorney,
00:49:59
killing 2000 hours, like working 2000 hours is considered like
00:50:04
really busting your ass and doing a lot of work.
00:50:07
So for the fact that he's like 4000 hours in one year, that's
00:50:14
inhumane. Like that's just, you can't do
00:50:16
that. You physically can't even do
00:50:17
that. They provided a breakdown of his
00:50:21
hours. 1400 regular hours, 24 hours of protected sick leave,
00:50:26
192 hours of vacation, 48 hours of holiday, 63 hours of holiday
00:50:31
work, 1800 hours of time and a half, 601 hours of double time.
00:50:39
So that's how we racked up $167.
00:50:44
There's another article I want to pull up real quick.
00:50:45
Let's see if I can find it right here.
00:50:52
This was from a couple years ago when they were sounding the
00:50:55
alarm on Bart. Again, this is this is a theme
00:50:58
here with Bart talks about Bart the Elephant and the Subway's
00:51:02
labor cost, which by some estimates claim upward of 830
00:51:05
million from an operating budget of $1.2 billion.
00:51:08
The fraud, ways and abuse rampant among amongst Bart's
00:51:11
employees, particularly in devising schemes to inflate
00:51:13
overtime wages, is partly to blame.
00:51:16
In one recent example, an employee claimed to be working
00:51:18
12 hour shifts for weeks on end with no days off later as
00:51:22
discovered that he was simply going to the nearest Bart
00:51:25
station in the morning, clocking in, returning home, then going
00:51:27
back to the same station in the evening to clock out.
00:51:32
I don't even think that's legal to work that long without.
00:51:36
Yeah, Shouldn't a manager at a certain point be like you're
00:51:39
you're way above like your hours, Like, how are you even
00:51:43
doing this? Like who's signing off on that
00:51:44
time card to say, yeah, that's fine.
00:51:47
He's worked 12 hour shifts for months on end, so whatever.
00:51:52
He's just really dedicated. Yeah.
00:51:56
Somebody said, wow, I want to work for Bart.
00:51:58
Yeah, you want to be a janitor for Bart?
00:52:00
I guess you here I am being, you know, being a sucker and like
00:52:05
trying to work my job. I could have just went and been
00:52:07
in a janitor for, for Bart. Nothing against janitors,
00:52:11
nothing against janitors. I have an issue with janitors
00:52:14
who steal tax dollars by lying about overtime.
00:52:18
That's my issue. So there's plenty of fraud,
00:52:21
waste and abuse in Bart And there's there's tons of stories
00:52:25
of like they gave out contractor contracts to people who were
00:52:29
like married to the people giving out the contracts.
00:52:32
There was like FBI probes. I mean, Bart is just an absolute
00:52:38
mess and it continues to be a mess.
00:52:40
And giving them a blank check of $590 million, over a half a
00:52:46
billion dollars to pay for their problems.
00:52:50
Where's the accountability? Like, where's the where is the
00:52:55
kind of, I don't know, where are we going to say like, look,
00:52:58
we're going to give you $590 million of tax dollars, our tax
00:53:02
dollars. But you really need to like,
00:53:04
buckle down and tell us what the hell is going on over at Bart,
00:53:08
that you guys are losing so much money and how you're going to
00:53:11
clean it up. I don't know how California
00:53:16
taxpayers have any funds left to pay more taxes.
00:53:21
Seriously, I don't. I don't get it.
00:53:24
We are so tax broke in the state.
00:53:27
We are like people will hear, you know, oh you guys, but you
00:53:31
make X amount of dollars. Yeah, we don't.
00:53:35
We thought that might be what you know it says.
00:53:38
But after all these taxes, Oh my gosh, you guys, we are broke.
00:53:44
I did see I. Mean that like collectively.
00:53:47
Did you see the article where it said $100 in some parts of
00:53:51
California only comes out to like 66?
00:53:53
That's like, that made me really sad.
00:53:57
Yeah, 'cause. I was like, wow, yeah.
00:53:58
I sold that I. Was like, maybe I sold, that
00:54:01
makes sense somewhere else, Iceman says.
00:54:04
Arena Zarutska murder last year didn't exactly sell people on
00:54:08
public transit transport. True.
00:54:12
That's a good point. Yeah.
00:54:14
I mean, when you see that happen on public transit, maybe people
00:54:16
are like, I don't really. Yeah, I don't want my My
00:54:20
daughter loves the idea of taking the bus.
00:54:22
Mind you, she has a car, but whatever, she loves the idea of
00:54:26
taking a bus And I'm like, I'm, I'm not comfortable with that.
00:54:30
And this is Orange County and and in fact, the city that I
00:54:34
live in, in Orange County year after year for decades is always
00:54:38
one of the safest cities in California, like top five and
00:54:42
one of the safest cities in America.
00:54:43
But I'm like, no, you know, I don't need you on a bus.
00:54:46
I'm just I would and and she's an adult.
00:54:51
I mean she's 18 but still, I would worry constantly.
00:54:57
There's one more clip I did want to show.
00:55:00
New friend of the show David Tonguepa went up on the assembly
00:55:04
floor and kind of called out this bailout for what it is.
00:55:07
I think he did a pretty good job calling it out.
00:55:10
So I'm going to pull this up right now.
00:55:15
Right now. Colleagues, let us be clear,
00:55:23
this is a payday loan for Bart. SB117 is simple.
00:55:28
The question that we must ask is how does Bart pay back the loan
00:55:34
even at peak ridership? Peak ridership, Bart never
00:55:39
collected enough in fares to cover operating expenses.
00:55:44
This is due is directly from the words of Bart that they were at
00:55:48
operating at a 30% loss. It relied on subsidies then and
00:55:55
it relies on subsidies now. Today we are offering a loan on
00:56:01
top of an already existing subsidy.
00:56:04
That's not a recovery plan. That again is a payday loan.
00:56:10
We don't even know if the Bay Area residents are willing to
00:56:14
raise their taxes to cover their share, and Bart has been clear
00:56:19
even that won't be enough to cover the loan.
00:56:25
Until Bart can demonstrate the ability to repay this loan, we
00:56:29
shouldn't be issuing it. This is about fiscal
00:56:33
responsibility. I understand the importance of
00:56:36
what Bart can do for a community.
00:56:38
I have written on Bart myself, but we cannot ask the residents
00:56:43
of Riverside County to pay for the Bay Area failures when they
00:56:46
haven't given us a concrete plan to pay it back.
00:56:50
We cannot ask the residents of Sacramento to pay this until the
00:56:54
Bay Area gives us a concrete plan to service the loan.
00:56:59
We are moving money around, and right now, when the Lao and the
00:57:03
Department of Finance under the Governor's office is telling us
00:57:07
that there are financial issues coming into the future, it is
00:57:11
our responsibility to be fiscally responsible, to manage
00:57:16
the people's money, to make sure that there is a return on
00:57:19
investment and to make sure we're putting money in the right
00:57:21
areas. And for those reasons, I
00:57:23
respectfully ask for your no vote.
00:57:26
I don't think I could have really summed it up.
00:57:28
Stop. Wiener cried out for that.
00:57:30
He did. Scott Wiener loves his little
00:57:32
Choo Choo trains. He loves his Bart trains.
00:57:35
Maybe when he's in Congress he can get a federal bailout or
00:57:38
something like that. Oh God, Scott Wiener and he was
00:57:42
endorsed. He was endorsed.
00:57:47
I mean, he's the only person running in that.
00:57:49
Well, there's other people running in that seat, but I
00:57:52
mean, he's basically the hand picked successor to Nancy
00:57:55
Pelosi. And then Nancy Pelosi's daughter
00:57:58
is running for Scott Weiner's seat.
00:57:59
So talk about nepotism. You know, do we live in an
00:58:03
aristocracy or do we get to vote for who?
00:58:05
Our representatives? I don't know.
00:58:06
I'll let people be the the judge of that.
00:58:10
So yeah, bottom line, Bart's getting bailed out again.
00:58:12
We're all bailing out Bart. Every single Californian across
00:58:16
the state, across all 58 counties, we're all bailing out
00:58:19
Bart because it's a failure. And I mean, there's nothing
00:58:26
really else to say, but it's the absolute calamity that we have
00:58:28
to bail out Bart after how bad it's been.
00:58:31
People aren't riding it. Market is not there anymore.
00:58:35
They're wasting their own money, fraud, waste and abuse.
00:58:38
It's just bailing out the Bay Area for their failures when you
00:58:43
don't even ride it. It's just, I don't know.
00:58:46
I don't know how you can sit there and with a straight face
00:58:48
and say that's good for everybody who's bailing it out.
00:58:53
But. I think what's so interesting is
00:58:55
every time somebody what an agency or or an elected
00:58:59
politician asks for a bailout, they never look at the staff.
00:59:06
What is the word of looking for the salary, the staff salary.
00:59:09
They never, you know, it's they never like, hey, maybe we need
00:59:13
to, maybe I don't need to make $700 a year as that one
00:59:20
chick who was whatever LA water department thing, you know, the
00:59:26
City Council, like LA is, they needed $2.
00:59:30
Was it 2 million or 2 billion? Two billion.
00:59:33
Yeah, they they went and asked, ask when we asked Gavin Newsom
00:59:38
for a bailout of the 2 billion. But yet we find these City
00:59:42
Council members are making almost a million a year.
00:59:45
And it's like, maybe start looking at these things and
00:59:47
cutting back there before expecting the state to bail you
00:59:52
out, before expecting everyone else to collectively fix your
00:59:55
problems because you created these problems and you need to
00:59:58
look at where the problems actually are.
01:00:00
And a lot of them can be staff. And now again, people need a
01:00:03
fair salary. But but when your salary is
01:00:09
coming from tax dollars, so tax dollars being other people's
01:00:13
money, then you need to stop being so greedy.
01:00:17
And I just wish that the departments would literally just
01:00:19
start being like, OK, you know what?
01:00:21
None of us really needs to make this kind of money.
01:00:23
Yeah, I don't think the CEO of LADWP needs to make $700.
01:00:29
Yeah. Especially after what happened
01:00:31
with the Palisades fire. But right, somebody said.
01:00:35
As to Scott Weiner, who's endorsed by Satan, I'll just
01:00:40
leave it at. That he is Satan.
01:00:42
I'm just kidding. He's a very odd man, Scott
01:00:46
Weiner, and every time we think he couldn't get weirder and more
01:00:50
cringy and all of a sudden he does something else.
01:00:54
All right. Any other thoughts on Bart?
01:00:59
Nope. OK.
01:01:01
All right, Coming up on the hour.
01:01:03
Thanks everyone for tuning in. Somebody else had cut costs
01:01:07
before bailout. Agreed.
01:01:08
I think you should go through aggressive cost cutting before
01:01:12
anybody gets bailed out. Also, like, why are we just
01:01:16
giving a blank check to Bart without them proving why they
01:01:21
need it? I don't know, maybe Bart should
01:01:24
actually go through like an like a rigorous application process
01:01:27
and be like, This is why we need it and here's how we plan on
01:01:30
paying it back and all that stuff, not just stroke of a pen.
01:01:33
All of a sudden there's $590.
01:01:36
I don't know, crazy idea. But if you were a private
01:01:40
company and you needed money, you need a loan from a bank.
01:01:42
You can't just walk into a bank and expect them to give you a
01:01:45
check. You have to go through a
01:01:46
rigorous application process. But they don't treat the private
01:01:51
sector the same way they do the public sector.
01:01:54
All right, thank you everyone for tuning in.
01:01:57
Next week we have a guest, Herb, who is running for controller.
01:02:04
So he's running for Betty Yee's seat while Betty Yee's busy
01:02:07
taking over the Democratic Party.
01:02:10
So he'll be joining us. We got some other guests who are
01:02:12
lined up or coming onto the show.
01:02:15
As always, it's going to be a busy year, 2026.
01:02:18
If you weren't here in the beginning one more time, I'm
01:02:19
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01:03:27
So with that, any other final thoughts for the evening,
01:03:31
Camille? Nope, I'm ready for bed.
01:03:35
OK, now that you're officially off caffeine.
01:03:39
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