I Have To Eat Crow on This One! Mayor Dyer Gets $100M for Downtown Fresno

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
There's an aspect of illegal immigration that I don't understand
why the conclusion is therefore against immigration enforcement as opposed
to against other kinds of things that liberals tend to dislike.
Here's the story that makes me scratch my head over this.

(00:23):
Liberals who are usually so pro labor in other contexts,
but are seemingly quite okay with bad labor conditions if
it means unfettered immigration. So let me let me explain
what I'm talking about. This is a story from the
Fresno be written by Marina Pana. Mass deportations could cost

(00:47):
the San Joaquin Valley more than nineteen billion dollars, study
fines mass deportations of undocumented immigrants could cost California's San
Juquein Valley roughly ten percent of the region's total gross
domestic product, or about nineteen point two billion dollars, according
to a new study. The data comes from a collaborative
study by yuciemer Said and the Bay Area Council Economic

(01:07):
Institute exploring the potential economic impact of mass deportation in California,
which risks losing two hundred and seventy five billion dollars
in GDP without undocumented workers The research is based on
federal data, economic modeling, and nearly forty interviews with business leaders,
elected officials, and community advocates community advocates from across the state.

(01:33):
Maria Elena Young, an assistant professor of public health at
useemer Said, who led the study What's a Professor of
Public Health doing with a study on economics, said the
Central Valley has a particularly high share of immigrants yeah
no kidding, about one in five residents. Of those immigrants,
roughly one in four is undocumented, making the region especially

(01:55):
vulnerable to the effects of immigration enforcement. Young said the
agriculture industry would be hit the hardest, as undocumented workers
make up roughly a quarter of the area's agricultural workforce.
It's an industry that truly relies on immigrant labor to thrive,
so in this region, increased enforcement actions at work sites
would likely hurt agricultural workplaces, she said. Even enforcement at

(02:16):
other types of workplaces can have ripple effects throughout the
community and ultimately impact the agriculture industry. Construction in the
Central Valley, which is also heavily reliant on immigrant labor,
could face big disruptions as well because there's construction demand
throughout the state. Enforcement actions in southern California that disrupt
the local labor force could draw skilled workers from the
Central Valley to Los Angeles, where jobs may offer higher wages.

(02:38):
Young said, Okay, so it goes on and on and on,
and basically the long and short of it is, if
Trump is very aggressive about enforcing federal immigration law and
deporting people who are not in the country legally, it
would be bad for the San Joaquin Valley economically. Okay,

(02:58):
And that makes sense. I mean, the Fresno makes sense
with the Fresno Bee's editorial position that they would seek
out an opinion like this. I mean, I must say
I'm a little skeptical about the nature of this survey,
given that it's done by a public health professor doing
an economic assessment. Public health seems to be you know what,

(03:22):
every I have heard this set. Maybe this is unfair,
but I have heard this said that everyone with a
master's of public you know what, every person with a
master's of public health degree has that no doctor has
a rejection letter from a medical school. That is anyway
I heard that. I don't know if it's true. I
don't know if that stereotype is accurate. I am just

(03:45):
passing it on to you. So while I'm a little
skeptical of some aspects of this particular study, I mean,
the long and short is, this is not a shocking conclusion.
Agri culture heavily depends on illegal alien labor. A lot

(04:07):
of businesses depend on illegal alien labor for a significant
percentage of their workforce that is unlawful, unlawfully here in
the United States, construction, agriculture, et cetera. And it would
probably hurt their bottom dollar if they lost out on
those immigrants. But no one seems to then make the

(04:29):
next step. The conclusion of the thesis that you're supposed
to draw from this, the conclusion that you're expected to
draw from this from the Fresno b is Donald Trump
is a bad guy. You know, Deporting people who are
here illegally is bad and wrong. Republicans are bad, Donald

(04:54):
Trump is bad. People who want to deport people are bad. Okay,
Why isn't the conclusion to look with skepticism on the
industries that rely on illegal immigrant labor. It's amazing to

(05:17):
me how liberals and again, as I said at the start,
it's amazing to me how liberals who are so pro labor,
so pro worker, who when it comes to you know,
public sector union workers, you know, want to roll the
red carpet out for them with pensions and with you know,
short hours and big breaks and all this elaborate, extensive

(05:43):
body of labor law designed to protect workers enormously. But
the whole reason why you bring in illegal immigrants to
work for you, I mean, one of the foundational reasons

(06:05):
is because they're cheaper, you're able to get away with
paying them less, and you're probably able to get away
with a lot more labor law violations when your workforce
is immigrants, both legal and illegal. I'll add, Okay, you
bring in someone on an American work visa, very often

(06:29):
their visa their ability to be even legally in the
United States. And this is true also with the H
one B visas. That's for a lot of Indians are
being brought over to the United States to work as
engineers and things like that with H one B visas
and people, oh, this is just a wonderful thing. Well,
how wonderful is it? Let's pause, Okay, Corporations like H

(06:54):
one B visa holders for a couple of reasons. One,
they can pay them less, than Americans, is that actually
what we want that we want our immigration system, Like
liberals have sort of coded a generous immigration system as
being something that is kind and good, and it's like you,

(07:15):
you do realize that what you want is aligning perfect
perfectly with rabidly capitalistic, profit driven corporate interest. Right, So
you have an H one B visa holder who comes in,
you can pay that person less and that person's never
gonna complain why they can only hold on to their

(07:38):
H one B visa. Their whole existence in the United
States is dependent on them still having a job. If
they get fired. They don't just lose a job and
have to go on you know, oh, let's go on
the different job posting websites. You go. They don't have
to just go on indeed dot com. They're going back
to India. So if the boss is underpaying them, or

(08:05):
doesn't pay them on time, or is god knows even
sexually harassing them, maybe do you think they're gonna complain
or whatever kind of harassment there could be in the workplace,
and any kind of bad thing that could be happening
in the workplace, their employer is violating labor law in

(08:27):
one way or another. Are they gonna complain? No, because
if they get fired, they can't risk getting fired. They
can't risk losing the job because they'll be shipped back
to India. I think it's a very similar thing in
the agriculture and construction industries. You know that if you

(08:48):
act up, if you're a pain in the butt, you're
in the country illegally, your boss could give you up,
you could get your rear end to poor. So are
you gonna make waves? No? Are you going to complain
about bad working conditions? You know? And this I think

(09:09):
this could be true for people both legally and illegally,
who are here. Are you gonna make waves? Are you
gonna complain? No, You're not gonna do any of that stuff.
Why cause you don't want to go back home. You
want to stay here. I mean, it reminds me of
the scene in the movie Heat, which started Al Pacino
and Robert de Niro. There's one scene where it was

(09:32):
Robert de Niro is like a high level bank robber
and he's trying to recruit a guy to be part
of his crew. It's a guy who's on parole, who's
out of prison but is working a job as a
kind of work parole thing. He gets to a burger
joint or a diner, and the owner of the diner
says to him, you give me half of your salary,

(09:55):
that's the deal, and if you don't, I'll report you,
as you know, failing at this job, and you'll go
back to jail. So the the guy who's on parole,
who's working at the diner is getting extorted by the
owner of the diner basically saying, you're gonna give me
half of everything you make. I'm stealing it from you,

(10:16):
and if you complain about it, I have the power
to send you back to jail. Because that's how this
game is played. If you're you're on parole, that one
of the conditions of your parole is that you hold
this job, so I have total control of you. There's
a similar dynamic with immigration. So why is our now

(10:41):
I don't think it's inherently evil to use immigrant labor.
Let me let me make that clear. It's not the
same as the diner owner guy. But there is obviously
that that dynamic is obviously in play. And I think
think if we are looking at our economy and to say, hey,

(11:05):
there are major segments of this economy that can only
exist with immigrant labor. Well, why is that? Why is
it set up that way? There needs to be a
massive realignment then so that it's not purely dependent on
immigrant labor. All right, Detroit, You know Detroit and the

(11:29):
auto industry and production lines in the auto industry there.
It's very far away from Mexico. I guarantee you the
auto industry would be more profitable and cars would be
cheaper if instead of American citizen unionized labor, it was
all replaced with illegal or legal But here on a

(11:50):
work visa immigrants from Mexico. I'm sure that's the case,
and we would hear all the same arguments, Well, Americans
don't want to work as hard as as Mexicans do,
and Americans do well. No, clearly, Americans are willing to
work extremely hard and did in Detroit for decades and
decades and decades, still do so. I I don't understand

(12:16):
why liberals, especially liberals who are so hostile to corporate
America in almost every other capacity, when it gets to immigration,
the only bad guy they can see is Donald Trump
for wanting to deport people who aren't in the country legally.
And I would raise the question why isn't there this
same level of hostility for corporate entities taking advantage of

(12:42):
illegal immigrant labor, which they know they can underpay, which
they know they can mistreat, which they know that they
can skimp skip out on otherwise relevant labor law. Why
is the focus not on corporations or why is why

(13:08):
isn't there any anger whatsoever on the left at corporations
who take advantage of illegal immigrant labor for ruth again,
for ruthlessly capitalistic, bottom line driven profit maximalization reasons. I mean,
that's why why do hotels hire a bunch of maids

(13:31):
who are here either legally or either legally on some
kind of work views or illegally. Oh, because they can
get away with paying them less. Clearly they can get
away with paying them less, giving them worse working conditions
the end of story. I don't know. I mean, it

(13:52):
seems fairly obvious to me, and I don't understand why
the host still And this is also a thing even
with Christian bodies, when they look at the illegal immigration
problem and look at what President Trump's doing. You know,
I have great respect for Archbishop Gomes, who's the Archbishop

(14:13):
of Los Angeles, he released a statement about the Trump
deportation efforts, and he does raise I think legitimate things
to be concerned about about what level of due process
is happening. How are you know we've heard reports of
people being seized in immigration raids who were not illegal aliens,

(14:35):
you know, and that is I think I'm not saying
illegal aliens deserve the full panoply of due process that
an American criminal defendant deserves, but some process at least
to correctly identify them as either in the country illegally
or not needs to happen. And if archisip Gomes wants
to raise that complaint, I certainly think that's fine. But

(14:57):
Archbisipal Gomas doesn't really anywhere in the statement he released
on this a couple of weeks ago. And you know,
maybe I'm being maybe I'm being a bit you know,
overly critical here that you know, he can't identity. You know,
he's not writing a book, He's writing a short statement. Again, though,

(15:17):
I think it seems like massive corporations trying to maximize
their profits get sort of left off the hook in
the Christian in so many Christian assessments of the illegal
immigration problem, I think there's such an immediate concern with
you know, here's all these people who are parishioners in
our churches who are distressed and are afraid to come

(15:42):
to church, and that understandably pulls at your heartstrings, and
and it doesn't seem great. And our special Gomez wants
to help those people and provide them with spiritual care
as best see could. That's good, that's his job. But
if you're trying to make a moral assessment of this

(16:04):
and you're not going, I just think it's there's something
a little missing, a little inadequate, if we don't call
out what is really the root reason why all these
immigrants are coming, which is corporations in many cases wanting
to maximize their profits on the backs of immigrants whom

(16:29):
they know they can treat worse than American citizens. When
we return the weird left wing colonialism ideas and how
that works its way into what is again a fairly
straightforward economic problem with regards to illegal immigration, that is
next on the John Girardi Show. I'm talking about the

(16:53):
dynamic of immigration, a big Fresno Bee story about how
deportations could cost the San Juaquin Valley billions and billions
of dollars in GDP and Okay, yeah, I acknowledge it
could have a bad economic impact. Why is the conclusion then,
that deportation efforts are bad rather than, hey, why do

(17:17):
we have whole industries whose existence is propped up by
illegal labor or barely legal labor, who intrinsically, by their
very nature are able to be exploited much more so
than an American citizen can. All right, you're not getting

(17:38):
a wrongful termination lawsuit from someone whose visa is dependent
on him holding that job. You're not afraid of a
lawsuit from someone working for you who's not legally supposed
to be in the United States to begin with. You
do have to straighten up and fly right though. For

(17:59):
an American citizen of American citizens sees that you're mistreating
him in his job, yeah, he can sue you. And
why liberals, who are usually so pro worker, they see
illegal immigration and don't conclude, oh, well, yeah, illegal immigration
is because of corporate the massive corporate desire to cut costs,

(18:20):
cut labor costs, keep labor costs down to maximize profits.
Why that conclusion is never drawn to is never drawn
in the moral assessment about immigration always baffles me. Now
that's the weirder thing is the sort of Zoron Mamdani
kind of strain of liberalism that looks at immigration as

(18:44):
a kind of retribution. Basically, the United States are colonizers.
White Americans are colonialist, oppressor colonizers therefore and colonize, oppressively,

(19:04):
colonized what had once truly been Mexico in spite of
the fact that Mexico owned uh, you know, the Western
United States for not a particularly like California. Mexico owned
California for like a very small short period of time.
The United States has owned Mexico low longer. Spain owned

(19:25):
it for a while, and then it was in Mexico,
then it was the United States anyway. But there's this
sense of Americans as colonizers and immigration and this was
you saw this and some of the anti ice protests
that happened over the course of the last month or so,
that Americans deserve this, that that that immigration from Latin

(19:50):
America or other third world countries into the United States
are kind of retribution for colonizing. And again, I don't
understand why they don't see the corporate angle of this.
If you view the world through the lens of colonizers

(20:11):
and the oppressed. Who is oppressing whom, who is taking
advantage of whom? The chief group benefiting from unrestricted illegal immigration,
barely restricted immigration, our corporate interests. I don't know how

(20:34):
many of you know of the Cato Institute. The Cato
Institute's this big libertarian think tank in Washington, DC, explicitly
not conservative libertarian. No one is a bigger cheerleader against
immigration enforcement and four unrestrained immigration, unrestrained legal immigration than
the Cato Institute. They're desperate for more immigration, more immigration.

(20:59):
Why because they're very explicitly pro capital. They want Cato
Institutes funded by big time right leaning corporate interests, and
that's whom they represent. They want corporations to maximize their profits.
That's what they want. They don't like any kind of
minimum wage. They don't like worker protections, they don't like unions,

(21:21):
they don't like any of those things that the left
is supposed to like. Many things that I like, all right.
I think workers should be paid fairly. I think workers
should make a decent living wage and an ability to
I think the model of Detroit versus, for example, Central
California agriculture well, Detroit was farther away from Mexico, so

(21:44):
the auto industry starts there. They don't rely on immigrant labor,
so they have to set up a system where they're
actually paying Americans who have rights and our voters and
our citizens, and have to pay them a fair wage.

(22:04):
You know what's the difference, Oh, the work is harder
in the Central Valley for decades it was. I'll concede
that the work is harder in Central Valley agriculture today
than it is in Detroit now. But I don't think
the difference was that great in you know, the Detroit
of the nineteen forties and fifties and sixties. I think

(22:26):
those guys worked their butts off in Detroit. They certainly
weren't working any less hard than Mexican immigrants in the
San Joaquin Valley. So again, I don't understand. Even if
you take this colonizer's and oppressed view of the world,

(22:47):
why and you think, ah, yeah, immigration from the South,
immigration from Mexico, immigration from the third world is sticking
it back at those Americans. No, well, you're sticking it
to Americans in the form of corporate American overlords making
more money by saving money on labor costs by hiring
these immigrants. Again, I just don't understand why that dynamic

(23:12):
is never mentioned on the left, on the pro immigration left,
whether it's the soft left, the Christian leaning anti immigration
enforcement people, or the hard left. You know, this is
payback for America's colonialism kind of left. There's never a
discussion seeing or very rarely a discussion of how immigration

(23:32):
itself is helping corporate America more so than anyone else.
When we return, I have to eat some humble pie
about funding from the state actually coming in for infrastructure
in downtown Presno, that's next on the John Girardi Show. Well, guys,

(23:52):
I have to eat some humble pie. For years, I've
been saying that Jerry Dyer was never going to get
his one hundred million dollars from the state California, its
whole two hundred and fifty million dollars that was pledged
to Newsome during the bumper years of twenty twenty two.
And it appears that we're getting some of it. So

(24:15):
I was wrong. I was wrong. My thought was, well,
California is going to continue to run these structural deficits.
I just don't think we're ever going to get all
that money. So here's here's what happened after the twenty
twenty two tax year. So let's go back twenty twenty two.
California had a surplus with its budget. Why well, we
had this huge infusion of federal cash because of COVID.

(24:39):
So all of a sudden, who hey, happy days are here,
Bumper time. And in that year, Gavin Newsom makes this
pledge to Jerry Dyer that the state is going to
provide the City of Fresno with two hundred and fifty
million dollars in infrastructure support. So two hundred and fifty
million dollars in funding to help with various kinds of

(25:01):
infrastructure for downtown Fresno revitalization. Dyer has this whole grand
plan for revitalizing downtown. Part of it it basically he
wants to have more residential in downtown. I think Dyers
said he wants to like encourage like ten thousand new
people to actually move to and live in downtown Fresno.

(25:25):
To do that, you need to seriously upgrade downtown Fresno's infrastructure,
things even like sewers and you know stuff like that, sewers, parking,
all kinds of things, and so this two hundred and
fifty million dollar grand from the state was going to
help do that. So the way it was set up was,
so here's a report on it from GV wire, a

(25:47):
little rite up on it. The state pledged two hundred
fifty million dollars to the city two years ago to
be paid off in three budget years. Fresno received the
first fifty million dollar installment in the twenty twenty three
to twenty twenty four by and then since no dice,
it was bumped. It was. It was delayed by about

(26:07):
two years. The original and revised version of this year's
state three hundred and twenty one billion dollar spending plan
failed to fulfill the remainder of Governor Newsom's promise. At
the time, Dyer called the development disappointing, but Dyer continued
to lobby anyway. Dyer thanked Newsom and State assembly Member

(26:27):
as Morel Desaia, who was on hand for the announcement.
For decades, the city has been talking about revitalizing Fresno,
and that's what this one hundred million will do. So
basically it was going to be in three installments, fifty
one hundred and one hundred. The second one hundred million
dollar thing was delayed, delayed, delayed, and he was even

(26:47):
announced earlier this year was going to be delayed for
another year. But it seems that Dyer and Sorrier were
able to win over Newsom and in this latest budget
deal to secure this promised one hundred million dollars. Basically,
Newsom didn't have this money provided in his May revision
of the budget. So the way the budget works, by

(27:07):
the way, in California, the governor introduces a budget proposal
in January for the next fiscal year. So in January
of twenty twenty five, Newsom's giving a proposed budget for
fiscal year twenty five twenty six July today, the first
day July first, twenty twenty five through June thirtieth, twenty
twenty six. He gives his initial proposal in January, people

(27:30):
look at it, study at work on it. In May,
the governor introduces what's called his May revise. So basically
it's taking into account new information, and the main raft
of new information that we get stems from April fifteenth,
tax Day. Okay, so the state actually then by May

(27:52):
has a good sense of, well, how much money did
we actually collect in taxes. If we collected a lot more,
maybe we can revise the budget to be a little
more generous. If we collected a lot less, oo boy,
then we got a cut and the May revise was brutal.
In May, Newsom realized we were facing a twelve billion

(28:14):
dollar deficit. So Newsom gives this updated May revision to
the budget. Liberals all screen bloody murder over it. Liberals
in the state legislature amend it to be a little
less punitive, and Newsom is on board with that. So
in Newsom's original May revision, that one hundred million dollars

(28:34):
wasn't there. But it seems that the state legislature's sort
of moderating proposal included that one hundred million dollars. And
Dyer said that he was able to meet with Newsom
one on one in April about it in Sacramento. Quote.

(28:54):
I let him know that we were heavily dependent on
that second tranch of one hundred million dollars and that
if we did not it, we were going to have
to bond in order to continue, and as we all know,
it's not cheap bonding. And the longer we waited, the
more it was going to cost us in terms of
material as well as labor. So Dyer was able to
make the case to newsim, hey, listen, if you don't

(29:14):
give us this money now, every year you delay, everything's
going to cost more. And if we have to do
bond measures for it, that that's really expensive. So and
he's right, I mean, Dyer's completely right about that. If
you have to do bond initiatives to pay for stuff,
it's way more expensive. So I give DIYer a lot
of credit for that, for making that case, because I

(29:36):
feel like the bond measure is such an overused and
wrongly used method for paying for all kinds of things
in local government. I mean, the whole the public schools
completely rely on bonds, and again the John Girardi lesson
on bonds, my my stated hatred of all bond measures.

(30:00):
A bond, What is a bond? I think people think, oh,
we vote for a ballot initiative for a bond for
a school, and money just falls from this guy. No,
a bond is a loan to a municipal entity, a county,
a city, a school district, the school district's city, county.

(30:21):
They get the money, They get the money right away.
You have to pay the loan back. So it's a
loan where the school district gets the money and you
got to pay it. And how do you pay it, Well,
you pay it for the next thirty years in your
property taxes. And so if the school district gets six

(30:44):
hundred million dollars, you're paying that loan back over the
course of thirty years in property taxes with interest. So
you're not paying back six hundred million dollars. You're probably
paying back at least a billion dollars because that's what

(31:05):
a loan is. Okay, it's alone with interest and over
course of thirty year life cycle of you know how
much does your house cost in your mortgage, Well, it
costs a heck of a lot more over thirty years
than just the You know, if you're able to pay
cash right there, you get a lot more for it.
So yeah, uh, kudo's to Dyer for not bonding it,

(31:30):
not relying on bond measures to pay for it. So
Dyers said that water and sewer main projects will start
in the fall and take up to eight months. The
city also plans a nine hundred spot parking garage across
the street from chick Chansy Park stadium. Well, that'll be

(31:55):
really useful for uh, you know the the in credit
I do nine hundred people go to Grizzlies games. I mean,
it would be really nice if more people went too
Grizzlies games. And in fairness, there's a lot of other
walkable two businesses in downtown Fresno where a nine hundred
spot parking garage would be actually quite convenient and so

(32:16):
you don't have to do you know, the nightmare that
is trying to park downtown where you're trying desperately to
find a parking meter available, and it's yeah, it stinks.
Now that the city has the one hundred million dollar commitment,
negotiations can move forward with the landowner, the Baker family,
former owners of the Fresno Grizzlies. Dyer said five housing

(32:38):
projects are waiting on the spending. Dyer only mentioned one,
a project with the Fresno Housing Authority on Fulton Street
by the former CVS Pharmacy Esmeraldasoria is running for state
Senate in twenty twenty six. She is endorsing Fresno City
Council member on Alsa Perea to succeed her in the Assembly.
Both appeared at a groundbreaking at a groundbreaking ceremony Monday

(33:00):
at Delaura's Where to Park in Fresno, Sorria, thanked assembly
woman and at Leasta. Oh wait, that's a different story anyway. Okay,
So I'll just say this, I was wrong. I was wrong.
Kudos to Jerry Dyer for getting this done. When we returned, though,

(33:22):
I still have real reservations about this downtown revitalization project.
And I have and to a certain extent, it's maybe
not so much a criticism of Dier as a criticism
of the hand that he was dealt. And I'll explain
what those criticisms are in the next segment. This is
the John Jerardi Show. So I have to eat crow,

(33:45):
and I have to give Jerry Dyer his props. He
actually got one of the two payments of one hundred
million dollars that Gavin Newsom promised him. So Newsom promised
him two hundred and fifty. Newsom gave him the original
fifty million, and then kept delaying, delaying, delaying, delaying for
the last two payments of one hundred million dollars apiece,

(34:06):
I thought they would never come. Dyer was able to
get the next payment of one hundred million dollars and
all of this is again for downtown Fresno revitalization. Now
I will eat crow. I thought that money was never coming,
especially given the state's budget was I'm still not like

(34:27):
super hopeful, optimistic, sanguine about this downtown revitalization project for
a couple of reasons. And I don't know that this
is so much a criticism of Dire as much as
it is a criticism of the hand he was dealt.
So the idea of building up infrastructure in downtown Fresno

(34:49):
to sustain ten thousand new people living there, more parking,
more sewage, infrastructured again to sustain the extra number of
people Dire wants to have lived there. Okay, good, that's
all fine, I'm with you. But a big centerpiece of
the dire downtown revitalization project is still centered around a

(35:16):
big high speed rail stadium. Excuse me, a high speed
rail station. And I just fundamentally don't think a high
speed rail station is going to draw anybody. And again,

(35:37):
I don't know that it's much of a criticism of
Dier himself as much as the hand Dier was dealt.
Dier can't stop the decision that Newsom made to plow
forward with the high speed rail proposal, and if the
high speed rail proposal is going to happen, dire wants
it to go through Fresno. And still repeating a lot

(36:01):
of these expressions about all doubt the high speed rail
is going to revitalize Fresno's economy and all these things.
Does he I don't know if he believes it or
if it's basically on his part. Look, I'm the mayor
of Fresno. If I talk about how terrible the high
speed rail system is, it's not gonna help me with
you know, a cruddy high speed rail station that's tiny

(36:24):
is definitely not going to draw up people. So given
the hand I've been dealt, I want the high speed
rail station to be as big and beautiful and as
able to draw up as many people to downtown Fresno
as possible. Okay, I get it, but I still don't
really know or think that high speed rail is going

(36:45):
to draw anybody. And the idea is have a station
there with a bunch of restaurants and stuff, all kinds
of things, so that, you know, encouraging traffic to Fresno
away from what I just fundamentally continue not to think
anyone's gonna drive on the high speed rail first, because
we only have any kind of commitment that merceaid to

(37:07):
Bakersfield is gonna get done, and God knows that how
we're gonna get the money even to finish that. So
if that's the only thing that we know is gonna
get done. Again, as I've said a million times, why
would anyone in their right mind take a train from
Fresno to Bakersfield when they can just hop in their
car and be there in two hours as opposed to

(37:29):
get to the train station half hour early, get on
the train, train takes an hour. Then you got to
get out, and then you got to find a way
to get around in Bakersfield. You got to call an
uber or have a friend pick you up or something.
It's not like you can walk or rent a car.
I mean, there's there's nobody in their right and you
have to pay for the cost of the train, which

(37:50):
is likely going to be more expensive than just driving
your car. So I I just I think there's a
lot of hope pinned around this high speed rail station
and what it can do for downturn revitalization. I'm also
skeptical about that last one hundred million. I mean, we

(38:10):
are facing bad budgetary constraints and Dyer's going to need
that last one hundred million dollar payment. We'll see if
it comes through, but I am willing to eat quo.
He did get that first one hundred million. That'll do it.
John Glarady Show, See you next time on Power Talk