Clovis City Councilmembers Clash Over Transgender Athlete Controversy

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The least surprising article of all time just got published
in the Fresno B. Fresno B piece Here we go.
Clovis Council members criticize for waiting into transgender athlete controversy,
and of course this has to do with Over the weekend,

(00:21):
a biological boy won the California State championship in the
triple jump, tied for first in the California State Championship
in the high jump, and got second place in the
California State Championships in the long jump. A biological boy
was competing in the California State Championships, which were held
in Clovis at Buchanan High School, and it was a

(00:44):
local City of Clovis Council member, Diane Pearce, who rallied
national and local attention to this issue to such an
extent that the Trump administration is basically giving an ultimatum
to the California Interscholastic Federation to bring itself into compliance

(01:07):
with President Trump's executive Order. President Trump's executive order says
that Title nine demands that boys not play girls' sports,
as well as, according to the Trump administration argument, the
equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment so it was
Diane Pierce, as a Clovi City Council member, who was

(01:28):
really one of the main people who helped bring national
attention to this. She was the one helping coordinate getting
Vince Fong to who is the congressman who represents the
Clovis area. He was reaching out to national partners, all
kinds of stuff. So Diane Pierce was a real leader
on this. But it wasn't just Diane Pierce. Other members

(01:52):
of the Clovi City Council got involved as well. When
Miss Pierce had her press conference on a week ago today,
so last Thursday afternoon, a majority of the Clovis City
Council was there. She was there, vang wu Wanatua, who's

(02:12):
the mayor of Clovis, so basically he's the president of
the president of the City Council. Basically is what the
Clovis mayor is. It's not a mayor analogous to like
Jerry Dyer, it's just one of the members of the
city council. So Dian Pierce was there, vang wan Atua
was there, Andrew Bessinger was there, So that's a majority

(02:36):
of the city council. Matt Baskal wasn't there, and Lynn Ashbeck,
of course was not there. So here's the piece in
the fresnovie. Clovis council members drew criticism from some residents.
Of course, some residents don't like it all all, you know.

(02:59):
All twenty liberals who live in Clovis made their voice
heard on this for publicly criticizing state rules that allowed
a transgender athlete to compete in the track and Field
Championships hosted at Veterans Memorial Stadium this past weekend. Clovis
spent twenty one thousand dollars in police overtime to address
two day protests at the state track meet over the weekend,

(03:19):
according to city Manager Andrew Housler. The track meet, organized
by the California Interscholastic Federation, the state's governing body for
school sports, drew significant media attention after President Donald Trump
threatened to withhold federal funds from California for allowing transgender
athletes to participation. Clovis Mayor pro tem Diane Pierce organized
a pair of press conferences last week in which several
conservative elected officials and the state's rules, in which several

(03:45):
conservative elected officials said that the state's rules were unfair.
The article puts it to cist gender girls just girls.
You can just say girls. This is the insane thing
about the transgender argument is that the media feels totally
fine with just one hundred percent adopting the arguments and

(04:06):
language of one side, the minority side, frankly, of this
incredibly bitterly disputed debate. Why because basically the way that
the media decides these things for their style guides, whether
they're following the AP Style Guide or whatever, is they say, well,
how should we refer to people in this situation? What's

(04:27):
the style we should use in our writing and reporting?
And often it's the AP Style Guide is the answer.
And how does the AP Style Guide and other kinds
of style guides, how do they answer those kinds of questions?

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Well, they appeal to.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
Quote the experts, and quote the experts are the doctors
who profit off of transgender surgeries and transgenderism in general,
and all these professional associations of physicians are completely dominated
by the left in a way that's really outsize relative
to how conservative or liberal all of the doctors within

(05:06):
that practice are. Okay, obgyns are probably fairly liberal, but
they're not nearly as liberal as a cog is the
American College of Obstetricians and Kynecologists Radiologists are probably on
the whole fairly liberal, not as left wing as their
professional association is. The American Academy of Pediatrics is more

(05:26):
liberal than pediatricians as a whole in America. So you
have these professional associations that decide, well, we should use
gender affirming pronouns and bubbava, and so the media says, okay,
So the media just decides in their reporting, we're going
to one hundred percent utilize the language of the extreme left,

(05:50):
so which inevitably makes the media's reporting hugely biased towards
one side of a bitterly just but it issue. You
shouldn't call girls cisgender girls, They're just girls. The whole
term cisgender is ridiculous. About a dozen Clovist residents spoke

(06:15):
at Monday evening's council meeting, urging council members to stay
out of divisive issues that the city does not have
legal authority over. When our city council steps into debates
that are outside its jurisdiction, especially ones that are divisive
and politically charged, it distracts from the work that you
were all elected to do. We need leadership on public safety,
on water infrastructure, and housing, said Kendra Divasion. Water infrastructure

(06:39):
is this is a very limited amount of the City
of Clothes could do for water infrastructure. Anyway, I ask uh,
I ask you.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
The Fresno Bee's website is terrible. It keeps like reloading.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
I ask you to lead with restraint. Let CIF handle
CIF issues, just as they don't know your Clovis City
Council issues. Well yeah, okay, I'll get to the message
of why this is wrong later on, Denny Boyle's longtime
resident and former member of the city's Planning Commission, criticized
council member's decision to protest the transgender athlete. That's a mischaracterization.

(07:22):
Diane Pierce and all of the people at that press
conference last Thursday made it abundantly clear that they weren't
protesting the kid. They were protesting CIF and its policies.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
That it was folks.

Speaker 1 (07:37):
They made it clear that Hernande ab Hernandez, the biological
boy who well just the boy who competed in all
the girls of all these girls events, that he was
not the object of anyone's scorn or protest or anger.
They encourage people do not be disrespectful to him. It
was the adults who are the problem, cif their policies

(08:03):
that was the target of the criticism, So that this
is a mischaracterization of what Diane Pierce did. And again
a majority of the Clovis City Council. I wish you
would expand code enforcement so that the porta potty business
running two streets over from my house could maybe be curtailed. Instead,
you hold hate rallies to protest one teenager who doesn't

(08:25):
even live here, Boyle said again, it wasn't a hate rally.
State Representative David Tangipa, clovismyrvong one to two, and council
Member Drew Messenger Clovis Unified Trustee Tiffany Stoker Madson attended
a Thursday press conference. The two day track meet drew
protesters outside the stadium both days. Clove Police Department deployed

(08:47):
fourteen officers each on Friday and Saturday in response to
the protests. Their total of two hundred and thirty one
hours of overtime resulted in a twenty one thousand dollars
expense to the city.

Speaker 2 (08:54):
According to city officials.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
We did not pass measure why to spend money on
manufactured conflict, said council member Lynn Ashbeck, referring to the
city's new one percent sales text. What if our communities
behavior jeopardizes future opportunities to host the state finals? Okay,
then it jeopardizes it, see Lynn Ashbec, all right, I

(09:22):
want to talk about this. Lynn Ashbeck has been a
Clover City council member.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
For a very very long time, and.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
It's clear that she cannot stand Diane Pierce and her style,
and it boils down to, well, I think Ashbec wants
to make it out.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
That it boils down to a difference in philosophy.

Speaker 1 (09:48):
What I really suspect is that Ashbec is a pretty
liberal person. That's my suspicion. I think List Ashbec is actually.

Speaker 2 (09:55):
Just kind of a liberal.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
I don't know that. I'm just suspecting, and she doesn't
like Pierce being who Pierce is. Diane Pierce is a
very very conservative person, so is a large majority of

(10:22):
the City of Clovis, by the way, and that's the
thing I think Ashbeck has given off this appearance of being, oh,
just another Republican conservative member of the Clovis City council
just like you and me. And then when she's actually
in office, she's not actually all that conservative, and she's
able to kind of hide because you know, elections for

(10:44):
Clovis City Council members, you don't run as a member
of a party. Everyone kind of knows the deal. It's
you're not going to get elected as a Clover City
council member if you're a big liberal.

Speaker 2 (10:54):
But so I think people.

Speaker 1 (10:57):
Kind of pretend and kind of shade things a little bit,
and I think ASHBEC is doing that. I think ASHPEC
is trying to paint all of this as procedural. The
City of Clovis should focus on city of Clovis things,
potholes and sewer problems and and just shouldn't involve itself

(11:21):
in anything that she deems to be beyond the capacity
of the city council to deal with. She says that,
but every city council spends money, time energy on things
that are beyond its scope. We have current commemorations for

(11:43):
the Armenian genocide. No one's gonna undo the Armenian genocide.
But we're in a political community together. We have bonds tied,
bonds of connection one with another. We expect our local
governments to support things that are good and oppose things

(12:03):
that are bad, and to pretend like, you know, it's
not just a totally you know, roles in liberal exercise,
in just doing the mechanisms, the mechanical work of just

(12:24):
running the operations of a city. There are actual philosophical
ideas and principles that we expect that everyone actually, if
they go deep down deep enough, expects their city to
uphold and believe it. And I'll also say this the

(12:44):
role of Yes, the city council cannot change cif's rules
governing boys playing girls sports. Should the Clovist City Council, though,
be concerned about events where boys are going to be,
you know, participating in girls accommodations. I mean, the problem

(13:06):
is that we've been living in this insane emperor has
no closed world for a long time, where California public
schools have allowed boys to use women's facilities for the
last eleven years. So it makes Diane Pierce look like
a wacko for you know, being angry about it all
of a sudden for this event, But it's been an

(13:28):
outrageous situation for eleven years, one in which it would
in a sane world, if you were a city council
member and you learned that a school in your city
was letting boys go to the women's bathroom all the time,
including the potential of eighteen year old men showering with
fourteen year old high school freshman, eighteen year old high

(13:49):
school senior boys showering with fourteen year old freshman. In
a sane world, you, as a city council member, would
be totally right to be up in arms about that.
And furthermore, the role of the Clover City Council or
a local government official to alert the citizenry to say, Hey,

(14:12):
citizens of Clovis, I understand you, I know that you
care about this stuff. The state is going to pass
a law about this. We're going to lobby to say
that we, as the city council of Clovis, don't think
this is good. Yeah, it's not something that the city
council can change. The Clovis City Council can't change cif's rules,
and it can't alter California state law permitting boys to

(14:34):
use women's facilities and play women's sports in California public
high schools. But they could make their opinion known to
the legislature they could make, they could gather community support,
and that's what Diane Pierce has done. And you know what,
that's great. That's I think perfectly in line with what

(15:00):
a city council member can and should do. By the way,
you go over to Fresno, you've got city council members
doing pride marches and you know, all kinds of stuff
with the pride flag et blah blah blah, buth. It's
beyond the scope of what the Fresno City Council can do.
It's beyond the scope of what the City of Fresno
can do, but they do it. City of Fresno tries

(15:26):
to introduce resolutions. You know, liberal members of the city
council have tried to do this.

Speaker 2 (15:31):
I don't think this has happened recently.

Speaker 1 (15:33):
To promote abortion and blah blah blah blah blah. No
one criticizes them on the left for doing something beyond
their ken. And that's the thing. I really suspect that
Ashbec's criticisms of peerce within Clovis are not really rooted
actually in getting mad that Diane Peters is getting involved

(15:59):
in things that are beyond the scope of her responsibility
as a city council member. And really, what I think
is it's about disliking the substance.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
Of what Pierce is doing. That's what I think it is.

Speaker 1 (16:14):
I think Ashbec does this every time Pierce raises some
issue like that because I think I think Ashbec is
kind of pretty liberal. It's a hunch, it's a suspicion,
you know, qualify my statement with that, But that's my
suspicion is that she's actually just not very conservative. And

(16:37):
because like this was not an outrageous thing. Again, a
majority of the city council thought this was a good idea,
was supportive of the idea that this should not be
when we return some of the stupider reasons why Ashbec
thinks Pierce shouldn't get involved, Oh, because of staff morale

(16:57):
at the City of Clovis. That's next on the John
Gerardi in all of the Clovis debates that we've had
here in my little hometown of Clovis, all the debates
we've had in Clovis where Diane Pierce's close city council
member has raised issues of let's say, broader concern than

(17:19):
what the Clovis City Council can fix but highlighting it
for the citizenry of Clovis. She was the one who
raised the issue about the Clovis branch of the Presdent
County Library stocking sexually explicit material in the kids section.
She was the one who raised the question of hey,

(17:42):
should Clovis join with other cities in challenging California's sanctuary
state laws. She was the one who raised the question
about a transgender athlete, a boy participating in the girls
championships over at the UK in high school. One of

(18:04):
the things that she keeps getting criticized for, specifically by
Lynn Ashbec, and apparently the recent closed city council meeting
that they just had earlier this week was a quite fireworky.

Speaker 2 (18:19):
City council meeting.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Ashbec keeps bringing this up repeatedly, and I think this
is a broader issue. This is an issue with Presno
County government as well as City of Clovis government that
it negatively impacts morale for the city staff. And this
was brought up a bunch during the debates about the

(18:43):
library stuff that City of Clovis officials who are gay
and who are very upset that Diane Pierce took this
position which leads me to ask the following. First of all,
this argument keeps being made by Lynn Ashbec, I could
not give less of a third that city employees don't

(19:08):
like what the elected council member says. This is the
elected council member. This person is elected by the people
of Clovis. And by the way, nobody hid the ball here.
City of Clovis council members are elected at large, meaning
the whole city votes for them. Okay, they're gonna change

(19:30):
that system, but for the moment they're elected at large,
everyone knew the ballgame. When Diane Pierce ran, everyone knew
what kind of a person she was. There's no hiding it.
She gets elected and she acts just as she's gonna act. Look,
Diane Pierce was a local radio host. She was the
head of the Fresno Republican Women like her resume kind

(19:52):
of spoke for itself about what kind of a person
she was gonna be, so we elected her. If the
city staff is upset at things, she says, well, then
they can go somewhere else. And by the way, we
have city staff who are in favor of stoking extremely

(20:15):
sexually progressive. I'll use a nice adjective for it materials
in the Fresno County libraries. We have city staff who
like boys playing in girls sports. We have city staff
who are cool with California sanctuary state law or something.
That's the implication aspect gives. Why do we have any
city staff like that in Clovis. Clovis is a It

(20:41):
reminds me of the federal issues of the swamp that,
you know, Republican presidents may come and go, but the
permanent employees, the permanent bureaucracy in Washington, d c. Remains
monolithically liberal forever. And the Republican president is apparently not
allowed to fire these people who are supposed to be

(21:02):
executing his agenda and who undermine it, and yet for
some reason we can't fire them. City of Clovis has
had a super conservative allegedly allegedly super conservative majority on
the Clovis City Council for since Kingdom, I don't know,

(21:23):
since since Moses was walking the earth. Clovis has had
an extremely conservative city council. The Fresno County Board of
Supervisors has had a Republican majority on the Board of Supervisors.

Speaker 2 (21:36):
Since time immemorial.

Speaker 1 (21:38):
Why are there so many liberal County employees. Why are
there allegedly, if an aspect keeps bringing this up, why
are there so many liberal City of Clovis employees, Why
there shouldn't be one. We the people elect that County

(22:01):
Board of Supervisors, the people elect that City of Clovis
City Council with the understanding that they're conservative, with the
understanding that they would hire conservative employees to affect a
conservative leaning agenda. So I don't care a fly and
rip that there's a City of Clovis official who's offended,

(22:22):
whose pro LGBT sentiments are offended at Diane Pearce saying
that we shouldn't have sexual smut in the children's section
of libraries, or that boys shouldn't compete in girls' sports
in Clovis. Get another job your employer thinks otherwise, I

(22:43):
don't care what lin I'm not gonna cry a single
crocodile tier for city staff who are there to affect
the will of the council, who are in turn, there
to affect the will of the people. So that's the
stupidest argument I hear. And it's one thing I have
real high hopes for Gary Brettefeld within Presno County government

(23:07):
is to change that atmosphere. All right, When we return
the Big Beautiful Bill and its fiscal problems, I want
to talk about it a bit.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
That's next to on the John Gerrardy Show.

Speaker 1 (23:21):
I want to talk a bit about the Big Beautiful
Bill and a little bit about the fiscal problems with it.
So one of the most dramatic consequences of the Big
Beautiful Bill is that it is really created a rift
between Donald Trump and Elon Musk. And I don't know
if it's a permanent kind of rift, but Musk hates

(23:44):
the Big Beautiful Bill, and Trump has kind of pinned
a lot of his hopes and dreams to it. Trump,
I think, was much more interested in actually reducing federal
spending than Trump ever was. I think Trump kind of
pretends like he cares about reducing spend and then he
actually gets in office and he doesn't care. What he
wants is a bill to pass that he can brag about.

(24:07):
Trump does not really prioritize cutting spending or reducing and maybe,
let me put it this way, reducing the deficit. So
here's the problem. You've got two different kinds of spending.
There's discretionary spending and mandatory spending. Mandatory spending is chiefly
entitlement programs, so Medicare, Medicaid, social Security.

Speaker 2 (24:37):
Those are the biggies. Okay.

Speaker 1 (24:41):
Elon Musk was able to find approximately one hundred and
eighty billion dollars in wasteful excess spending, but he was
really only activated on the discretionary spending side. He was
not really activated on the mandatory spending side. And the

(25:07):
mandatory spending is just so much larger. I mean, you
can cut one hundred eighty billion dollars, it doesn't matter.
Our deficit is going to be several trillion dollars. Just
the deficit, not the whole budget, just the deficit. Spending
is going to be in the trillions of dollars. So
I mean, great, one hundred eighty billion, that's great to cut.

(25:29):
It's not really solving the problem though. The mandatory spending
side is where you have to do it. And Trump
has intelligently. From a political standpoint, Trump has been really

(25:49):
smart because I remember this in twenty sixteen Republican primary
debate stage guy who wouldn't raise his hand to say
that he would do anything to quote reform social security,
restructure social security, social security, which desperately needs reform and

(26:10):
restructuring because it's insolvent. Okay, it's going to run out
of money. You know, it's a terrible financial state. The
whole program was premised. The program was established at a
time where people had a lot of kids, a lot
of young workers supporting few retiring older people, in an

(26:33):
era where people just drop dead of heart attacks at
sixty four all the time. And it was completely not
remarked upon. Okay, people are living much longer, people are
having fewer children. So I mean, the structure was supposed
to kind of look like a pyramid, a lot of young,
healthy workers at the bottom paying in taxes to fund
social Security for people at the top, for a small

(26:54):
group of retirees at the top. And we have an
inverse pyramid. We have fewer young workers supporting more and
more and more old people. And that's the problem with
that's the problem with Medicare, that's a problem with Social Security.
So they ask the Republicans during the twenty sixteen primary debate,

(27:17):
who of you wants to do anything to restructure Social Security?
Everyone but Trump raised their hands. Trump was the only
one who didn't raise his hand. Why Because Donald Trump
is smart. He knows that if there's one thing that
old voters don't like, it's people screwing around with social Security.
They don't like it. They didn't like it when George W.
Bush proposed it. And by the way, if Bush had

(27:42):
accomplished his plan of privatizing social security, we'd probably be
in a much better physical place today. But we didn't
because people told George W. Bush at that time, no,
we don't want to do it. So all these public
and it's not a coincidence that Trump was the person

(28:02):
who won the twenty sixteen primary. Okay, old people don't
like it when you screw with Medicare and Social Security.
They just don't, even though they're insoluble. And by the way,
this is a this will make some old, older folks mad,
because this is the way a lot of people, especially
older folks, think of social Security. They think of social

(28:23):
Security as I paid into social Security my whole life
in taxes as a working person, and now it's my
money and I need to get back my social Security
that I paid into. And guys, that just isn't the
practical reality of how social security works. Social Security is

(28:46):
not a thing you pay into and you get back.
If it were, you'd probably do much better if you
had just invested instead of paying money in social security taxes.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yeah, if you had just kept.

Speaker 1 (28:59):
Your own money and invested it this whole time and
gotten interest on it, you'd probably get way more than
whatever you're getting.

Speaker 2 (29:04):
In social Security.

Speaker 1 (29:05):
Okay, But because that's not really how social security works.
Social Security is a wealthy distribution thing. It's rich people
paying in way more to largely fund poorer people who
paid in way less. Okay, it's not you put in,

(29:26):
you get out. And it's not like it's held over
the course of the forty years of Mary Joe Lewis's
life as a working woman until she gets to her
sixties and starts collecting. So that's not how it works,
Mary Joe. Sorry, that's not how it works, Agnes. It's

(29:47):
money is paid in right now by young workers. It's
paid out right now to older retirees. That's how it works.
It's not you invested your money. That that's an incorrect
both theoretically, both theoretically and practically, that is a wrongheaded
way to think about it. It's just not the case.
Is it unfair? Sure, but it's the reality. So social

(30:17):
Security and Medicare are insolvent, and they can empower Elon
Musk all he wants for all the discretionary spin. Oh,
you want to cut USAID, that's great. I mean USAID
has got an eighty billion dollar budget. Medicaid is a
trillion dollars just Medicaid. Medicare is another enormous amount of money.

(30:42):
I think it's around trillion dollars. So security is another
enormous amount of money. Okay, we're talking trillions here. All
of Usaid was only eighty million dollars. Eighty billion dollars, okay.
And that's the problem is you can let Elon Musk
run wild with all the discretionary spending you want if
you're not going to be committed to actually doing stuff

(31:07):
to cut entitlement programs, to alter entitlement programs. And by
the way, you don't have to do it in a
way that's draconian.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Here's a piece in National Review written by Jim Garrity
that talks about this, and he talks about these things
that you could do that wouldn't be particularly draconian, but
it would be extremely unpopular. He said, for if you

(31:38):
eliminated Social Security and Medicare benefits for those in the
top twenty percent. You could save enormous amounts of money, but.

Speaker 2 (31:54):
No one wants to do.

Speaker 1 (31:55):
If you do better means testing, you could do a
lot of proposals right now to lessen Medicare and Social
Security benefits for people who make a lot of money,
because that's the thing. The idea of social Security and Medicare.
We like them theoretically because we want to give some
kind of social safety net for the elderly. Okay, we

(32:19):
don't want old people dying in the street because they
don't have health care, and we don't want them dying
in the street because they don't have any form of
income coming in when they're too old to work. But
you know my mom, for example, you know she was
a physician for her whole career, and her husband was

(32:41):
a physician as a surgeon. Like, my mom's doing fine,
Like she's not gonna make it or break it on
the basis of Medicare and Social Security benefits, Like her
need for it is going to be different from someone
who's in, you know, the bottom quadrant of income. But

(33:06):
if you propose any change like that, what's the headline?
Republicans want to cut Social Security. Republicans want to cut
medicare spending. Like, the Republicans are barely doing anything with
Medicaid right now. They are barely trying to do some
kind of means testing for Medicaid, recheck people's eligibility, and

(33:29):
you know, say that able bodied, healthy, able bodied people
need to have some kind of work requirement or something
before they're getting Medicaid, like some bare way of trying
to sort of adjust Medicaid, and say that illegal alien
tried to do more to exclude illegal aliens from the
Medicaid program. And David Valadeo is probably going to lose

(33:52):
his seat over it, or at least there's a very
good risk. This is what happened in twenty eighteen when
David Valadeo voted for the repeal of Obamacare, would have
cut Medicaid. David Valdeo lost his seat in twenty eighteen.
I'm afraid the same thing's gonna happen because there's so
many medical slash Medicaid beneficiaries who live in Valadeo's district.

(34:17):
So we're barely doing anything to touch Medicaid, and the
left is exploding in oh Republic. Homes are gonna kill
like literally. Chuck Schumer had a press conference in which
he referred to the Big Beautiful Bill as the We're
all going to die bill. That's now it is, and

(34:37):
so Trump is just like, nah, I don't need that headache.
And especially I think Trump has realized I don't need
that headache from seniors, who are some of Trump's biggest fans.
Trump's I mean, the bedrock of Trump's support has been
older boomers. Now He's diversified his fan base over time.

(35:01):
I think the Trump the Trump coalition now is more
racially diverse. It's more there are more younger people in
the coalition, especially young men. But he knows where his
bread is buttered. It's buttered by boomers. So he's not
touching Medicare and Social Security. And as long as he

(35:23):
does that, the Big Beautiful Bill is gonna be fiscally
not that great. And Trump has added to it by
increasing the salt deduction, the state and local tax deduction,
which is gonna result in less income coming in from
wealthy people in blue states, chiefly. I mean, let's remember

(35:43):
what the salt deduction is. It's a tax cut for
people who live in high tax blue states. It allows
them to deduct what they pay in high state and
local taxes. So Trump in increasing the salt deduction is
going to result in less income coming in. That helps

(36:04):
contribute to the deficit. And as popular as no taxes
on tips is hey, tips bring tax revenue. That's going
to result in less income coming in and not exactly
a tax. You know, there was always the idea of
the laugh Or curve that if you cut taxes it
could actually result in increased revenue coming in because it

(36:26):
allows people to do more investment, generate more business, stimulate
the economy, which could result in actually more revenue coming in.
But when you're doing that for state and local deductions,
just for rich people spending less taxes on their house,
is that really helping stimulate economic activity. Maybe hopefully, I

(36:47):
guess we'll see, But in the short term it's not great.
And I don't know that no taxes on tips is
doing much to stimulate economic activity either. When we return
the accomplishments of the Biden White House. Next on The
John Girardi Show, Corrine Jean Pierre, President Biden's former press secretary,

(37:11):
is coming out with a book about the Broken White House,
which is like well, you were the if you thought
the White House was so broken, why didn't you quit?
You were like the mouthpiece for the administration. So it's
interesting to see which Biden people are trying to cash
in on the dysfunction that was clearly there, and which
ones are not and are blasting all.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
The people who are abandoning ship.

Speaker 1 (37:34):
And someone tweeted this out, the racial legacy of the
Biden White House that he insisted and bragged to the
heavens about picking a black female vice president and a black,
gay female Press secretary, but then did everything in his
power to trash both of them privately. All of these
Biden White House officials leaked constantly about what a train

(37:58):
wreck Kamala Harris was and what a train wreck Karine
Jean Pierre is. So what a great racial legacy for
the Biden White House picking the first black female press secretary,
first black female vice president, and then constantly undercutting and
backstabbing them for how incompetent they were. That'll do it,
John Jerrady show, see you next time on Power Talk