Episodes
The Debate Breakdown: What Becerra Didn't Answer
play-by-play of the CNN debate between Xavier Becerra and Steve Hilton, candidates for California governor. Phil goes through the debate exchange by exchange, tracking whether each answer included something checkable, whether it ended at Trump, and whether the question was answered. Hilton's num...
Bonta Caves to Newsom on Paramount Deal
California's Attorney General sued to block a $111 billion media merger — then settled it after Newsom, Bass, and Becerra personally pushed him to fold. The deal is being sold as a win for California jobs. It doesn't actually require a single one of those jobs to be in California. This episo...
Ghost Homeless: LA's $118M Fraud, the Rail Nightclub, and California's AI Land Grab
Three stories this week, one pattern: public money and public land moving to insiders through systems with almost no oversight. First — a Los Angeles nonprofit took in $118 million in public funds to house homeless people. Prosecutors say $12 million of it went to a nightclub, luxury travel, and vin...
Voter ID and Recall Reform, Explained
Voter ID has passed in 36 states. California could be next — and the measure on this ballot is trailing in the polls even though the same policy wins by a landslide almost everywhere else in the country. Orange County GOP Chairman Will O'Neill joins Phil and Camille to make the case for Prop 39 ...
LA County Cut Fire Relief in Half
LA County set aside $10 million specifically for fire victims. A revised board motion, passed months later with little public notice, cut that fund in half — the same year the county filed a lawsuit publicly branding itself as fire survivors' defender. This episode also covers the one Napa winer...
Props 3 and 43: The Pension Math and the Author Voting No
In 2012, California voters approved Proposition 30 — officially titled "Temporary Taxes to Fund Education." The new tax brackets were written to expire in 2018. Voters extended them in 2016. This November, Proposition 3 asks whether to remove the expiration entirely. Phil and Camille go th...
Your Tax Dollars Fund Radical Nonprofits
A California Assemblyman named his own nonprofit "Nonprofit of the Year" — three weeks before it received a $6 million line item in the state budget he helped pass. In this episode, we pull that exact page of the budget and show what else is on it: a group tied to last year's Los Angel...
LA Taxpayers Are Funding Karen Bass's Campaign
Los Angeles pays a qualifying mayoral candidate six dollars in public money for every one dollar an individual donates — and in the current mayor's race, challenger Nithya Raman has drawn more of that taxpayer match than Karen Bass. Phil and Camille break down how the public matching-funds progr...
Billionaire Tax Fight: Props 40, 41, 42
California's billionaire tax is on the ballot this fall — and almost nobody fighting over it is who you'd expect. The state's own nonpartisan analyst won't back the $100 billion revenue number the sponsors are citing. A 1979 law from the same tax revolt that gave California Prop 13 h...