California Is the Poorest State in America

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My ongoing fascination with Gavin Newsom's desire to be president
continues to come again and again and again. I know,
if you've listened to the show, you keep hearing me
do this, But I keep coming back to the same thing.
What does Gavin Newsom say when he's on a debate

(00:20):
stage during the Democratic primary it's him and Pete Boudages
and Josh Shapiro, John Fetterman, And what does he do
and what does he say when he's up there and
they just ask him about California. He's got like five
or six things about California that are such disasters, such policy,

(00:47):
train wrecks, so many things that were problems when he
started as governor were problems he didn't solve and will
continue to be problems probably after he leaves. He just
doesn't have a very good answer for. And they're not
like partisan things. It's not like some hard partisan thing

(01:08):
where like, yeah, you know, a liberal would really like this,
but a conservative or a moderate would really dislike it.
It's just bad stuff. Stuff that's just bad no matter
how you look at it. The high speed rail train
wasn't functioning when he came in as governor in twenty eighteen.
It's not gonna be functioning in twenty twenty seven when
he's on that debate stage. The homelessness was a problem

(01:35):
in twenty eighteen, it continued to be a problem throughout
his governorship. It's gonna be a worse problem by the
time he leaves office housing and construction was a lack
of construction was a problem in twenty eighteen when he
ran for governor. It's gonna be a problem in twenty
twenty seven when he's in that debate. And that's what
I don't understand. I don't understand. He's had so many

(01:57):
failures or things that could be characterizes failures from a
very objective position. And again I'm not talking about, Oh,
Gavin Newsom instituted single payer healthcare and Republicans think that's terrible,
but Democrats think that's great. I'm not talking about failures
like that. I'm talking about things that cannot be looked
at as anything other than failures, no matter how you

(02:19):
look at it. Even something Democrats would like, Gavin Newsom
expanded medical coverage so that everyone receives coverage. Newsom had
to roll it back. He had to embarrassingly roll back

(02:40):
something that he initiated because providing medical coverage for illegal
aliens was costing the state like ten billion dollars per
year more than expected, and it's making up the bulk
of this year's budget deficit. So Newsom has of these problems,

(03:02):
tons of these things that nobody is gonna like, everyone's
gonna look at and be eh. And Newsom has been
able to skate by in California politics because he's had
the backing of big time donors. But I don't think
it prepares him for primetime. I think it's given him
or I don't think it's preparing him for the national stage.

(03:23):
I should say. I think it's given him this sort
of sense of invincibility and success and of popularity that
is just not merited. I think on a debate st
on a national stage, he is going to look terrible. Well,

(03:47):
we got some new economic numbers coming out that California
has the nation's highest rate of poverty as defined by
the Census Bureau. The pub Policy Institute of California Research
indicates that thirty one point one percent of Californians were
living in or near poverty in twenty twenty three. In

(04:12):
some high cost counties. The state Housing Department classifies adults
making more than one hundred thousand dollars a year as poor.

Speaker 2 (04:20):
Like that's how that's how expensive it is to live
in California.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Dan Walters writes about this for cal Matters. Forty years ago,
he says, I wrote a series of fourteen articles for
The Sacramento Bee describing major economic, social, cultural, and political
trends coursing through California as the twentieth century was drawing
to a close. One theme of the series, which later
became a book, was the transformation of California from a

(04:54):
state with high economic and social mobility to one of
relatively rigid classes defined by ethnicity, education, incomes, and wealth.
I quoted two researchers, Leon Bouvier and Philip Martin, who
had projected California's future as quote the possible emerging of
a two tier economy, with Asians and non Hispanic whites

(05:15):
competing for high status positions while Hispanics and blacks struggled
to get the low paying service jobs. Unfortunately, their analysis
turned out to be quite accurate. California has the nation's
highest rate of poverty as defined by the Census Bureau.
When it includes the cost of living in its calculations

(05:38):
eighteen point nine percent in twenty twenty three, or more
than seven million people, so eighteen point nine percent of
people are in poverty as defined by the Census Bureau,
eighteen point nine percent of Californians. Additional research by the
Public Policy Institute of California revealed that thirty one point

(05:59):
one percent of Californians were living in or near poverty
in twenty twenty three. More than half that group is
Latino and another thirteen point six percent is black. Furthermore,
the poverty rate among undocumented immigrants was twenty nine point
six percent, and unsurprisingly, Californians without high school diplomas were

(06:19):
almost four times more likely than college educated Californians to
be poor. High poverty rates underscore the fact that Californians
costs for housing, utilities, fuel, and other necessities of life
are among the nation's highest. In some high cost counties,
California's Housing Department considers adults making more than one hundred
thousand dollars a year to be poor in terms of

(06:40):
qualifying for housing assistants. Being poor from an income standpoint
has another aspect that hasn't gotten as much attention the
even starker stratification of Californians by wealth. So it's not
just that we have a lot of poverty, we have
very our social stratug are very clearly defined. There's a

(07:02):
logical connection between the two. Low family income and high
living costs make it more difficult to buy a home,
contribute to retirement accounts, and otherwise acquire what's known as
generational wealth, assets that can grow and be passed down
to airs. So the rich are getting richer, the poor

(07:25):
are staying poor. Basically, this is sort of the stratification
that's happening. Walters is saying, there's less social mobility. Prior
to the eighties, you had this kind of social mobility
where people can jump from place to place. Now people
are sort of rigidly stuck because you cannot Your high

(07:47):
costs make it such that you cannot save. You cannot save,
you cannot invest, you cannot build generational wealth. Wealth creation
is of the public policy and Steut of California has
delved into that aspect of Californian's personal finances. Wealth creation
is of particular concerning California, where high costs of living,

(08:08):
high poverty rates, and a shortage of housing all exacerbate
the challenges of building up assets. pPIC researchers Tess Thorman
and Shannon mcconvill right in their new study. But while
Californians keenly feel the barriers to building wealth, many have
only a broad sense that the experience is shared, and
relatively little research has explored this important component of economic

(08:30):
well being in the state. While overall Californians net worth
assets minus debts is about fifty percent higher than those
of other states, that thanks in part to California's high
housing values, low wealth is concentrated in Latino and Black households,
corresponding to lower levels of education. Home Ownership rates and
equity are low among Latino households, driven largely by their

(08:52):
younger age profile and lower education levels, the study foone.
In contrast, Black slash other homeownership rates are low even
after we account for factors like age, income, and education levels.
While three and four households owe some money or unsecured debts,
those without collateral like credit card, student loans, or medical bills.
The report continued, older households are less likely than others

(09:14):
to hold any unsecured debt as are white Asian immigrant households.
Latino households are more likely to carry credit card debt,
and black other and Latino households are more likely to
carry education related debt than white and Asian households. So
there it is another confirmation that California has indeed become
a highly stratified society, the perhaps unchangeable reality of a

(09:39):
state whose political leadership still insists that it is a
model for the world. And this is the this is
why I think Democrats are in trouble in a lot
of ways, both nationwide but maybe Gavin Newsom specifically. It's
a lot of Democrats under like late Jerry Brown were

(10:04):
trying to act like the California model was like the
model for the whole country, Like look at California totally,
you know, Democrats controlling more than two thirds of the
vote in the Assembly and Senate. California's got a strong
economy and sort of the first Trump administration, you know,

(10:25):
Democrat governor, very liberal social policy, and so people were like,
look at this beautiful state of California. And then Gavin
Newsom comes in and every problem that had been lingering
in California just gets exacerbated. Exacerbated, exacerbated to such a
point that by the end of the Newsom administration, and boy,

(10:48):
what a lame duck Newsom is. At this point, like
were like, I feel like everyone in California government is
counting down the days. It's only a year and a
half away, only a year and a half till we
get rid of this guy. But it's still a year
and a half. I mean, he's still got a decently
long time. By the end of the Newsome administration, it's

(11:11):
impossible to ignore the California model failed. And it's not again,
it's not failing in ways that have to do with
a partisan political difference of opinion that liberals really like
it and conservatives really don't. It's just failed. We're experiencing

(11:32):
population decline because people are leaving the state for better states,
for better economic situations. The rich are getting richer, the
poor are getting poor even in you know, that's the thing.
California is not dominated by white supremacists. It's dominated by
bleeding heart liberals who want minority communities to succeed, and

(11:57):
if anything, minority communities are doing worse here. There is
this sort of ossified stratification that's happening where Latinos and
blacks are locked into this lower socioeconomic category because they
can't build generational wealth. The costs of living are so

(12:19):
high that too much of their paycheck gets eaten up,
not in savings, but in just paying off the daily
necessities of life. Cost of living is so high that
it actually results in like a huge percentage of our
population being poor. That we have we are the poorest.

(12:40):
This was the one thing Avenues I've ever said that
I thought was really insightful. California is the richest and
the poorest state in the Union simultaneously. It's true, we
are the richest and the poorest state in the Union.
We have huge numbers of extremely wealthy people, but well,

(13:00):
relatively huge numbers of extremely wealthy people, but we have huge, huge, huge, huge,
huger numbers of very very poor people. And you can
even see that. As far as California's taxes and budgetary situation,
another ongoing disaster that is far worse now than it
was eight years ago. Another thing Newsome can't really answer

(13:23):
for that we have a structural deficit, as it's called.
It's not just that year over year we have a
budget deficit It's that the commitments we've made for spending,
the rates we've set for spending on state programs versus
the consistent pattern of the consistent rates of what we

(13:47):
take in as far as tax revenue, is such that
we're going to have a ten to twenty billion dollars
structural budget deficit year over year over year, we're consistently
taking in about ten to twenty billion dollars less in
tax revenue than we are spending year over year. That
is not a situation that Gavin Newsom inherited. That is

(14:09):
a situation that Gavin Newsom built up over the course
of you know, we're at about six and a half
years now. So again I come to our buddy gave
you know this, This inheritor of the lauded cal you know,
the California model that was being praised to the skies

(14:32):
by liberal thought leaders in twenty eighteen when he was
running for governor, is now being the subject of serious
scrutiny and self reflection by the likes of Ezra Kleine.
Ezra Clined, the communist from The New York Times, just
wrote a big book about this, about like why are
why can't we build anything? How come liberal dominated states

(14:55):
like Illinois, California, et cetera. How come they're failing in
so many destructive ways at just getting stuff done. I
don't understand how Gavin Newsom's gonna stand on a debate
stage in twenty twenty seven and look around and someone

(15:16):
isn't going to roast him. That someone isn't going to
have the Tulsi gabbered Kamala Harris moment where they end
this man's whole career. It's bound to happen, because again,
it's just issue after issue after issue where it's not

(15:38):
a part is in question. He's just objectively failed and
no one can call him out on it in California,
But on a national stage someone's gonna call him out
for it when we return. Why California politicians aren't really
well prepared for a debate stage. Next on The John

(16:00):
Girardi Show, here's the problem with California politicians when they
try to run for president. How you win in California
is different, a little different anyway with how you win
on a national level, and it results in people like

(16:21):
Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom living in this unrealistic bubble
where they think they're amazing, and they have all these
bootlickers saying, Oh, you're amazing, You're amazing, You're amazing. Now,
I'm sure every politician is surrounded by yes men who
give them, you know, distorted views of the world. However,

(16:48):
I think in California it's worse. Why Well, because in
California you don't really win. I don't think you don't
really win on the basis of being the best or
the smartest or the brightest. You certainly don't win statewide
office that way. It's not like you have a big

(17:10):
old battle royale debate and the person who comes out
of it looking the best, that's the guy who winds
up winning. That's the gal who winds up winning. It's
not really a meritocracy. It's controlled by only one party,

(17:31):
first of all, and that one party is making decisions
on things like electability and is this person going to
advance our particular interests, both financially, politically, et cetera. It
looks at things like relationships and whatnot. So you don't

(17:56):
really win in California on the basis of oh, this
person had an awe some debate night, and the California
people saw who was the best part. I don't think
there's like any coverage. There's almost zero coverage for even
gubernatorial debates in California because the question is usually already
decided and they're not doing Democrat primary I mean, if

(18:18):
they do, I just don't think that people are paying
much attention to Democrat primary debates for governor or senator.
What happens is you win statewide office in California on
the strength of getting big time Democrat donors behind you.
You get big time Democrat donors behind you, and that
allows you to run enough television ads in the Los

(18:40):
Angeles media market. That's it. It's name recognition. You win
on the basis of name recognition. I think Californians are
maybe on average, less connected to statewide politics than say
people in Ohio or smaller dates, and as a result,

(19:03):
it's one name you don't know versus another name you
don't know. So whoever gets the most TV money is
going to get their name out there more and is
going to get more people to vote for them because
they actually know a name. And that's how Gavin Newsom
and Kamala Harris have wrote on to victory. They always
had the donors behind them. They had enough donors to

(19:24):
get themselves enough name recognition to get them to win.
And this is how you saw Kamala Harris got all
the way to these very exalted positions. She's running for
president in twenty twenty and or a twenty nineteen. Her
campaign didn't even make it to twenty twenty and in
twenty nineteen, she gets absolutely smoked on the debate stage

(19:47):
by Tulsea Gabbard, who pointed out what a humongous hypocrite
she was because Harris had never faced that kind of
pushback before her whole career. She's been the anointed, chosen one.

(20:07):
She was anointed to be San Francisco DA, anointed to
be the Attorney General of California of California, anointed to
be a US Senator for California, and never faced much
tough competition. So then she gets on the primary stage

(20:27):
in twenty nineteen and she gets roasted. She gets skewed
because she's never faced an actual hostile questioner. And even
into twenty twenty four, she can barely sit down for
an interview without stumbling, fumbling, bumbling all over herself. See,
the CBS still wouldn't release the whole transcript of her
sixty minutes interview. Apparently because it was such a disaster,

(20:50):
she goes on the view and says, oh, I never does.
There's nothing comes to mind about what I would have
done differently from Joe Biden, Like she was a train wreck.
And that's the problem with California politicians. They think that
they're ready for prime time because they're a statewide California politician.
They're the senator of the one of the two senators
from the largest state in the Union. They're the governor

(21:11):
of the largest state of the Union. So they think, oh,
of course I could tell them the governor of Kentucky.
This guy's a chump. I think Andy Basheer, the governor
of Kentucky, has a much better chance of winning the
Democrat nomination than Gavin Newsom does because Newsom has been

(21:31):
allowed to live in this bubble where he is the
most wonderfulest, awesomest, greatest person ever, and I don't think
he fully appreciates the slew of things he hasn't fixed
and or has made worse in California that that just
won't fly on a national stage. Guys like Andy Basheer,

(21:51):
Josh Shapiro are all these They're gonna roast him for
failure after failure after failure after failure. When we return
poor Jerry Dyer, where does the City of Fresno stand
when it comes to all that state money we're banking

(22:12):
on for revitalizing downtown next on the John Growardy Show. Now,
the problem the state budget faces is not just we're
having a down year. Anyone who's paid attention is seen
twenty twenty three was a down year. Twenty twenty four
was a down year. Twenty twenty five is a down year. Eventually,
it's not just a question of down years. And by

(22:36):
the way, twenty twenty twenty one were kind of down years.
The only good year we had was twenty twenty two,
when California had this huge influx of federal COVID money
that resulted in a budget surplus, which Newsome then improvidently
foolishly spent like a drunken sailor. The problem is what's

(22:59):
called the structural deficit. Structural deficit means that the kinds
of spending commitments California has made, the kinds of things
California has sort of committed itself to law and public
policy et cetera, is about ten or twenty billion dollars

(23:23):
more expensive over the course of a year then the
average expected inflow of cash we're going to get from taxes.
So it's not a question of we had a down year,
we're facing a five billion dollar deficit, we have an
up year, We're going to have a five billion dollar

(23:43):
budget surplus, which is probably how most states operate. Of
the orders of magnitude are going to be different for California,
you know, versus you know, Montana. I think I doubt
Montana's whole budget is that large, but you get the

(24:04):
idea most states. Now, this is a reality for state
governments as opposed to federal government and leads to various
kinds of attitudes that state and local governments have that
are different from the federal government. The federal government's okay
with spending into the red. They're okay with people holding

(24:26):
federal treasury bonds, and with being in debt, they're okay
with it. In fact, if the federal government eliminated the
entire national debt overnight, it would actually kind of result
in a hugely destabilizing event for the global economy because
people like parking their money in US government bonds. So

(24:50):
the federal government has kind of got and there's sort
of broad based agreement among moderate Republicans to Democrats that
spending is okay, especially as long as interest rates are
as long as the relationship between interest rates and the debt. Like,

(25:11):
the federal government is basically okay with spending into the red.
And the federal government is capable of spending into the red,
they can kick whatever problems are resulting from all the
deficit spending we have. Those problems are being kicked down
the road. The federal government can spend and spend and spend,
they can print their own money. State governments can't do that, okay,
it's real consequences of a state government actually spends into

(25:33):
the red, spin spend, spends, because people will stop loading
the money. The faith and confidence that lenders have in
the United States is not the same as they have
in California or Texas or Iowa or Wisconsin. Right, you
can depend on the United States to continue to be
in existence and not be conquered by a foreign power

(25:54):
or something you are not necessarily going to be able,
And you can always rely on the United States to
print more money. You can't rely on California to print
more money. You can't rely on Texas to print more money. So,
in short, state governments cannot spend into the red the
way the Feds can. And even many states have a

(26:17):
budget a balanced budget state requirement as either a statute
or as part of their state constitutions that their budgets
have to balance every year. Well, so it's a bad
thing when California is having budget deficits year over year
over year. And again, the point is not that we

(26:38):
have a bad year and we're down ten billion. We're
going to have a ten billion dollar deficit this year
and hopefully we make up for it next year with
a ten billion dollar budget surplus. We're not going to
have a budget surplus. That's the problem. We are structurally
set up to average somewhere between ten and twenty billion
dollars every single year of deficits deficit deficit deit deficit

(27:01):
for the foreseeable future, unless there's some massive restructuring that
is not on the horizon. That's the problem, a structural deficit.
The part of it is that we have relied and

(27:23):
we knew this was a problem. We've known this was
a problem for a decade, and Newsome didn't do anything
to really address it. We knew we had this problem.
We had the highest tax rates in the country, so
increasing taxes more is not super feasible. What are you
gonna do? How much water are you gonna draw out

(27:44):
of a stone? So you already have high tax rates.
But the real problem California faced was that the whole
budget was being held up by this tiny number of people,
relatively speaking, this very very small number in the thousands

(28:09):
of extremely high income people who were paying capital gains
an income tax, especially capital gains taxes. And we were
so reliant on this very small group of people to

(28:30):
pay their taxes, and they contributed this enormously disproportionate percentage
of all tax revenue into the state. So the whole
edifice was being held up by this tiny little beam
of again, this very small number of taxpayers paying a
lot in taxes. And what happened over the last ten

(28:57):
years those people started to move. They started to move
their themselves, they started to move their money, they started
to move their businesses, and beyond them, people all up
and down the social strata started to move physically. You

(29:22):
can't find enough U hauls to drive from San Francisco
to Texas. You want to U haul from Texas to
San Francisco. Oh gosh, there're a diamond dozen people left
the state. High income people disproportionately, Okay, disproportionately. It was
the people who could afford to get out got out,

(29:51):
and a lot of people in that top upper echelon
that that small group of taxpayers were propping up the
whole state budget. A lot of them left, and COVID
was a hugely triggering event for that. Now, COVID is
often used in business. I noticed as the crutch or

(30:12):
the excuse for excusing whatever went wrong for anybody. Well,
you know, it's hard for us to recover from COVID.
But the problem is, it was a zero sum game
for this problem of where are tax high income taxpayer
is going to go? It was a zero sum game.
It's not like they all left every state. They left

(30:34):
some states to go to others. It's not like they
moved to the Cayman Islands or something. They stayed in America.
These people are not leaving the country because of COVID.
They went to different states and the states they went
to Texas, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, et cetera. They've done better since. Okay,

(31:05):
Florida is doing great. Florida's having structural budget surplus. They're
having either balanced budget or budget surplus this year over year,
so much so that I think DeSantis was talking about
eliminating certain kinds of taxes in Florida. I think if
Desanta is talking about eliminating property taxes in Florida. So

(31:32):
because California was operating a certain way during COVID, people
left California and went to other states. Now people were
doing that and leaving California before COVID. They were doing
that and leaving California since COVID. But COVID was an
especially triggering event because of how Gavin Newsom handled it

(31:53):
now on a national debate stage, on a Democrat national
debate stage. Probably k Newsom won't take much heat for this,
but the results speak for themselves. We've had deficit, deficit, deficit, deficit,
deficit year over year over year over year, and now
we have these reports budget analysis from the state saying

(32:14):
California is going to face a structural deficit of between
ten and twenty billion dollars per year, and that number
could go up. So what do we do about it? Well,
you gotta cut, You gotta cut things. And Newsom is
now in this difficult process where he's trying to cut things.

(32:37):
It's still not enough to eliminate the deficit. He's angering
a lot of friends and allies. So if Newsom has
to anger people that he has desperately needed as governor,
if he's making Planned Parenthood bidding furious, Matt, I need

(33:03):
to reiterate that some of the cuts from the May
revision to the budget. So the budget gets introduced in
January and then they have a revision of the budget
that's introduced in May. They do it in May because
it's after April fifteenth taxes, they're able to actually see
how much revenue they got from tax season. And then

(33:25):
they revised the budget accordingly. And the numbers from the
May revise were bad. So Newsom has had to cut things.
The most significant thing he cut was medical cover tri
legal aliens, but he's cut a whole bunch of other things.
Newsom has made Planned Parenthood so mad. They're sending out
press rely just saying they are outraged at what Newsom

(33:48):
has done. Not disappointed, outraged, saying that they look forward
to working with the legislature to solve the problem, not
working with Newsom. So here's Newsom ticking off planned parenthood
for some of his so bad they are spitting that
he's ticking off public sector employee unions. You cannot govern

(34:08):
without the public sector employee unions behind you in California
as a Democrat, you just can't. He's ticking them off
by cutting things, holding raises things like that. And so
I ask, good people of Fresno, citizens of downtown Fresno,

(34:31):
if Gavin Newsom is willing to make his dearest friends upset,
do you really think he's gonna give that last remaining
one hundred million dollars for downtown development that he promised
to Mayor Dyer a couple of years ago. No, Gavin
Newsom promised us after the bumper year of twenty twenty

(34:53):
two where we had all the federal COVID money and
Gavin Newsom was thinking he was, you know, wealth would
ever flow from his He promises Jerry Dyer two hundred
and fifty million dollars for downtown Fresno infrastructure development, sewage stuff,
et cetera. Jerry Dyer has this beautiful plan for we're
gonna have a high speed rail station in downtown Fresno,

(35:14):
the crown jewel of the new downtown. Yeah right, We're
gonna have ten thousand more people living in downtown. It's
gonna be great. Oh my gosh, this is going to
be so wonderful. Everyone's going to be excited and happy.
And we're going to get this two hundred and fifty
million dollars from the state. It's going to allow us

(35:34):
to update infrastructure in downtown so that we can sustain
this influx of ten thousand new citizens, new people living downtown.
It's not coming. And I think this is a sad
bit of the Jerry of the Jerry Dyer legacy is

(35:57):
maybe we should have pivoted, maybe in some way. And
I don't know, maybe DIYers to a certain extent. This
might not be a fair criticism of dire. He's trying
to play the handy stell. The state is whole hog
in for this high speed rail thing, a decision that's
above Dyer's head. If they're going to have a big
high speed rail train and it's going to go through
Fresno and they're gonna have a big station, then Dyer

(36:17):
wants to make it as big and as impactful as
it can be, and he wants to revitalize downtown, and
Newsom's offering him this money. Okay, well that's great. I
just don't think it's ever going to happen. I think
a lot of these projects will fall apart when we
return the never ending cycle of Fresno's downtown. Is it

(36:39):
just cursed? Next on the John Girardi Show. I just
wonder if downtown Fresno is just ever going to have
this revitalization I've been hearing about for the last I
don't know, thirty years. I mean, I'm thirty seven years old.
I've heard Fresnoe politicians since I was a child. So oh,

(37:02):
I've got to revitalize downtown. And it seems like every
generation has its own scheme, and those schemes come crashing
down when they're faced with the reality. And I feel
like we're in this slow motion movement towards yet another
one of these disasters. The first one is the baseball
stadium that you know. I love going to Grizzly Stadium.

(37:24):
It's super fun, it's a great time with kids. I'm
probably gonna go this week. It's fun baseball like it's
I love going to Grizzly Stadium. The fact of the
matter is it hasn't really worked out as far as
actually revitalizing downtown. And I feel like the Jerry Dyer

(37:47):
plan around state investment in downtown, restue infrastructure plus high
speed rail station, then now the high speed rail authorities saying, oh,
it might have to be a lot smaller than we
said it was. I just feel like this is another
slow motion train wreck of a major infrastructure project. We're
going to spend all this time in money building and
it's not really going to revitalize downtown. That's my fear.

(38:11):
That'll do it, John Girlready show see you next time
on Power Talk