Reversing California's Stupidest Policies

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's certainly true in America, and we understand this to
be true, that policy is driven by elections. Whom you
pick determines policy. However, sometimes the situation is so so

(00:22):
enormously shifted a certain way, or the circumstances that a
political body.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Is encountering, that a political community is encountering.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
Are such that it almost doesn't matter whom you pick
to be the governor, to be your state legislator, to
be your president, to be your congressman. Certain things are
going to have to change, almost regardless of who is elected.
And I think that's what's coming to California. Left, right

(00:53):
and center. There's now starting to be pretty much just
a universal acknowledgment that however we've been doing things has
not worked. And if The New York Times is even
admitting it, then that's sort of the signal to the left.

(01:16):
If The New York Times is really still, in so
many ways the ideological gatekeeper for the left, If some
even just ah columnist from the New York Times publishes something,
it signals to the rest of educated Liberaldom that it's
okay to take a certain position on something. I remember,

(01:38):
I mean, for years, you could never ever get a
liberal to say anything cross eyed about the pornography industry
until Nicholas Christoff, a New York Times columnist, had the
temerity to publish a column about women who have been
sexually abused in the pornography industry, and it opened this

(01:58):
enormous can of worms to allow people to look at
major pornography producers' websites that host pornography like porn Hub,
that hey, these are basically ongoing criminal enterprises. They are
hosting people making their own homemade porn and just posting
it onto porn Hub almost like its YouTube. Only what

(02:19):
they're posting is very often rape, either statutory rape or
just plain old rape rape. But no one on the
left was willing to criticize them until Nicholas Kristoff did it. Similarly,
no one's willing to criticize California, how it's governed, how
it's being governed, its various failures, until Ezracline. Ezracline seems

(02:45):
to have opened the floodgates. Ezraclined New York Times columnists
who said, why is it that liberals can't build anything?
Why is it that the high speed rail thing in
California is such a disaster?

Speaker 2 (02:56):
How come.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
Liberals are screwing up things that they've governed continuously California.
In California, for example, Liberals have continuously governed everything since
January of twenty eleven. There has not been a single
Republican in statewide office since January of twenty eleven. Democrats
have had a super majority in the state legislature since

(03:19):
that time. Why is California such as disaster? Here's this
piece from the New York Times about California Los Angeles.
California eclipsed Japan in twenty twenty four. By the way,

(03:39):
this comes off the heels of yesterday Gavin Newsom saying
that we were going to face a twelve billion dollar
budget deficit.

Speaker 2 (03:47):
It might be much larger than twelve billion.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
California eclipse Japan in twenty twenty four to become the
fourth largest economy in the world. Governor Gavin Newsom announced
earlier this month that the state's population increased for the
second year in a row. Tourism has hit record levels
as Los Angeles prepares to step onto the world stage
as the host of the twenty twenty eight Summer Olympics.
But for all of that, there are rising signs that

(04:10):
California is entering one of the most difficult periods in
its history. The state is confronting what many leaders and
officials say is an unprecedented confluence of forces economic, political, social,
environmental that's about to test its long record of resilience
in the face of catastrophe, natural and otherwise. Does California
have a long record of resilience. I mean, we have

(04:34):
a lot of bad things that happen in California.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
I don't know. How are we particularly resilient? I don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:40):
Anyway, those population figures may prove to be a mirage.
Analysts say that the state's population could well decline because
of the wildfires that wiped out more than six thousand
homes in Los Angeles in January and because of the
Trump administration's immigration crackdown. Many young people are moving to
other states to escape a housing shortage, leaving an aging

(05:00):
population in a state that has long been a symbol
of youth and energy. Los Angeles, an economic engine for
the state, is grappling with a one billion dollar budget
shortfall even before it confronts the challenge of rebuilding from
the fires and the potential economic drain of preparing for
the Olympics, like San Francisco. There are all these economic

(05:21):
analyzes that various cities or countries that host the Olympics
actually wind up worse off. So I'm wondering how beneficial
necessarily the Olympics are going to wind up being for
Los Angeles. In twenty twenty eight, we will see like
San Francisco, it is struggling with an epidemic of homelessness
on its sidewalks in downtown business districts that have been

(05:43):
hollowed out by the COVID pandemic. They haven't been hollowed
out by the COVID pandemic. They were hollowed out by
the state. This is me interjecting here. They were hollowed
out by the state's response to the COVID pandemic.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
Let's be clear.

Speaker 1 (06:02):
And at a time when the state is more vulnerable
and more desperate for federal assistants after the fires, it
seems unlikely California can look to Washington for help. President
Donald Trump has been far more antagonistic towards the state
than he was in his first term. Despite the challenges,
some are optimistic. For all the signs of trouble. Some

(06:23):
California leaders say they remain optimistic. Look who they drag
up for a quote like this. We have problems, we
have challenges, said Gray Davis, a Democrat who served as
governor of California from nineteen ninety nine to two thousand
and three. We can overcome them. We'll see the evidence
of that over the next five few years. I wouldn't
bet against California, Gray Davis. They drug up the guy

(06:46):
who got recalled by Arnold. Jerry Brown, a Democrat who's
served twice as California as governor and who oversaw much
of this amazing decline we've seen over the last fifteen years,
said he has long been skeptical of stories in the
media that declared that California's best days are behind it. Yeah,
because he was the biggest enthusiast for some of the

(07:09):
stupidest policies that have led to the current bad situation.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
The homelessness epidemic.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Started state as a statewide phenomenon under him. The wildfire's
stuff came on the heels of eight years of his governorship.
The high speed rail continued unabated over eight years of
his governor. Like, why are we interviewing him? I remember

(07:36):
a Look magazine article talking about the same thing when
my father was governor, he said of Pat Brown, his dad,
who was governor from nineteen fifty nine to nineteen sixty seven.
Thank you, Jerry for that relevant and timely comparison. Still,
even Jerry Brown said the coming months and years would
be difficult, marked by budget deficits, higher taxes, battles with

(07:57):
the Trump administration, and climate chain. Always climate change, it's
never our response to the climate change. It's never just
accepting whatever's happening with the climate and then responding appropriately.

Speaker 2 (08:07):
But no climate change.

Speaker 1 (08:09):
I think the wealth of California will allow for a
basic and enduring resilience. Brown said. There will be cut
backs in LA and in a lot of places. The
point is that it's such a wealthy state that there's
a lot of room to adjust. But a lot of
people are going to get hurt in the process.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Well, all those little all those little people in Fresno,
maybe they can get hurt in the process. All those
little people who can't afford ever, ever, ever, in a
billion years to buy a home.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, they're going to be hurt in the process.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
James Gallagher, the State Assembly's Republican leader and a sixth
generation California Rice Farmer said conditions in the state were
as distressing as he could ever remember. Look, I'm a
California optimist, Gallagher said, I do believe that we can
turn this around. There's always been the California dream. If
you come out here, you can follow your dreams and
make them come true. That is becoming less true. State

(08:57):
leadership at a crossroads, and it talks about how Newsom's
termed out.

Speaker 2 (09:02):
Some new governor will have to be elected.

Speaker 1 (09:08):
Mayor Karen Bass is running for re election in Los
Angeles and faces an electorate frustrated with her response to
the fires. Newsom has royaled members of his own party
as he pivots from assailing the Trump administration to publicly
criticizing Democrats and inviting Trump supporters to appear on his podcast.
Democrats here, like party members across the nation, are in

(09:30):
a battle about the future direction of the party amid
evidence that it lost some voters by staking oppositions that
were too far to the left. Trump lost California in
the twenty twenty four presidential election, but he had a
relatively strong showing in parts of the state, winning ten
counties that Joe Biden carried in twenty twenty. We definitely
need to reclaim the magic, said Donna Bujarski, a longtime

(09:51):
civic leader and Democrat activist. Civic leader and Democrat activist.
What kind of a wacko did The New York Times
pull up for this? If I google her, I'm gonna
find she's the biggest nut job ever. It's not helpless,
but it is Sisyphian. I mean, if it's Sisyphian, then
it is helpless. That's the definition. Sisyphis was the guy

(10:16):
who rolled the rock up the hill, and every time
he would get to the top of the hill, the
rock would roll down. That is helpless. Anyway, California does
have particular challenges at this moment. It is different from
what we faced before. Pete Wilson, a Republican, was governor
from nineteen ninety one to nineteen ninety nine, a tenure
that included the tail end of the collapse of the
aerospace industry and a major earthquake. He said the state

(10:38):
seemed in much tougher shape now, pointing to rising homelessness
and struggling public schools. It's much worse now than it
was then, and it was pretty bad. Then Wilson said,
if things don't change, I'm not optimistic. Now this is
maybe that's the point. If things don't change, I think

(11:01):
things are gonna have to change. Some things are gonna
have to change. And this has been my thesis that
some policies are so stupid, some things that the state
is doing are so ineffective. And you've already started to
see it under Newsom, that California is gonna have to

(11:24):
reverse course on certain things.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
We already saw it.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
Just yesterday Gavin Newsom announces he's pulling back on medical
coverage for illegal aliens, which, by the way, was like
a huge like it was unbelievable on Newsom's part. The
whole arc of that. Newsom runs for governor in twenty

(11:52):
eighteen saying he's going to push for single payer universal
health care. He doesn't actually push for single pay universal
health care. When he gets into office, totally flips on
that whole commitment, says instead, Oh, we're gonna get universal coverage.
And what's his tool for doing that medical massively expanding
medical He finally caps it off in twenty twenty four

(12:16):
by extending medical eligibility to illegal aliens and we immediately
learned within a year that that was billions of billions
of dollars more expensive than Newsome anticipated, massively contributing to
our deficits. This then results in Newsome having to shamefacedly,
sheepishly come to the podium and say, eh, we're gonna

(12:39):
have to pull some of that back. We're not gonna
do coverage for all these illegal aliens.

Speaker 2 (12:46):
And I think, what's gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
I mean, they're already acting like, oh, Gavin Newsom has
moderated on illegally. No, he didn't moderate. He was faced
with the utter failure of his policy and had to
shamefacedly pull it back. Newsom wasn't moderating on transgenderism for
you know, biological boys playing girls sports. He was faced

(13:07):
in the twenty twenty four elections with the obvious rejection
of that policy by the American people, and Gavin Newsom,
who would like to run for president, thank you very much,
realized he had to back off on it with his
tail between his legs Republicans and this is I think,
what's going to happen. And by the way, Newsom gets

(13:29):
heralded for this, Oh wow, Newsom. Gavin newsom you know,
original thinker, although maybe he's not being heralded too much.
Maybe people are across the spectrum recognizing him for the two.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
Faced weasel that he is. But I think what's going
to happen is this, This is my thesis.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Democrats, almost regardless of whom they elect, the fiscal forces
at play in the state, electoral force at play in
the state, are going to force Democrats. Democrats will still win.
I think Democrats will still win elections, but but the

(14:10):
political pressures at play are going to force them to
abandon ship on some of their stupidest policies. I wouldn't
be shocked if things like needle exchange programs, et cetera
maybe start going the way of the Dodo bird. I
wouldn't be shocked necessarily if the craziest iterations of criminal
law enforcement go away. I wouldn't be shocked if ballot

(14:33):
initiatives come around to totally get rid of, you know,
prop to maybe restore some more sanity to America. California
criminal law. Let's remember, we had a ballot initiative to
basically toughen certain kinds of criminal penalties. We had a
ballot initiative like that in the twenty twenty four election,

(14:56):
and it passed overwhelmingly. It won a majority of the
vote in every single county of California. If it's winning
a majority of the vote in San Francisco and Marine County, yeah,
clearly California wants tougher criminal law enforcement. I just think
that Democrats are going to have to no matter who's

(15:18):
elected governor, they are going to have to abandon some
of their stupidest policies, and then they will tear their
rotator cuffs, patting themselves on the back for doing things
that Republicans have been screaming at them to do for
fifteen years. But they are going to have to change
some of these things. We'll talk about more of those
things after the break. This is the John Girardy Show.

(15:40):
I'm just going to keep repeating this because I feel
like I'm going to be proven right again and again
and again and again so often over the next four years.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
Circumstances are going to force.

Speaker 1 (15:54):
The remainder of Newsom's term and the next Democrat governor
of California to reverse the Democrat's stupidest policies, and Liberals
will tear their rotator cuffs patting themselves on the back
for how brave they are. Let's talk about the ways
in which this is going to happen. This is going
to have to happen. So we are already seeing Newsome

(16:15):
having to backtrack on medical coverage for illegal aliens. Undoubtedly
that's going to have to happen. It sounds like if
Republicans are able to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill,
some kind of trimming of medical eligibility is going to
be a part of it, and that it could wind

(16:37):
up excluding, for example, illegal aliens from the roles of
who's eligible for medical now other policies. This was from
last last week. Gas prices in California could source seventy

(16:59):
five percent go up to as high as eight dollars
plus per gallon in twenty twenty six due to the
shutdown of two major in state refineries. According to a
recent analysis by USC professor Michael Mischi, we still have

(17:19):
for all of the homes that were burned in the
Los Angeles fire, something like four thousand homes. Permitting has
only been done for a minuscule number of them to rebuild. Eventually,
these are not sustainable things. The problems that are causing
all this are Democrat policies.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
End of sentence. It's Democrat policies.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Why does it take so long to permit to rebuild
a home that got destroyed in a wildfire. It's all
a bunch of policies that have been favored by, perpetuated
by held in place by Democrats. Why are oil refineries
moving out of the country, out of the state rather,

(18:07):
Maybe it's because Gavin Newsom passed a law, a law
that was allegedly to prevent oil and gas companies from
price gouging, to say, basically, to insist that oil companies
that refineries maintain a certain artificially high level of gasoline

(18:27):
on hand so that to prevent big fluctuations and prices
demand increases, which the gas company said that that's not
how this would work, that we can't feasibly do that.
That adds more cost to us. It's just going to
wind up in the costs increasing all the time. And
at a certain point we need to look at the
financial feasibility of these California based refineries to make your

(18:50):
specific blend of California based fuel, the specific blend requirements
mandated by the State of California for emissions.

Speaker 2 (19:04):
And let's remember this.

Speaker 1 (19:06):
Everyone understands why gas is expensive in California, and everyone
pretends like they don't understand. Gas is expensive in California
because California has a very specific blend of gasoline that
only it allows in its cars for its specific emission standards.
It results in California being a kind of gas island.

(19:29):
We can't use the same kind of gasoline that's sold
in the pump in Oregon and Washington and Nevada and
Arizona and Idaho and Utah. No, we're not allowed to
use that stuff. We have to have our own specific
kind of California gas. This requires gas companies to set
up their own separate sort of series of refineries specifically

(19:52):
for California gas. We have California based fuel refineries producing
California compliant gas. So if you keep putting onerous regulation
after onerous regulation on these gas companies that need to
invest like three hundred million bucks a year just to
keep their refineries operable, and make it more and more

(20:15):
difficult for them to make money, eventually they're gonna say, eh,
we're gonna pull out, and guess what we got? Two
major in state refineries are gonna shut down immediately after
Gavin Newsom in twenty twenty four pass this bill, with
the oil companies telling him this is a bad idea
and if you do this, we are going to pull out.

(20:37):
So now we're facing eight dollars and forty three cents
a gallon. Guess in twenty twenty six that's going to
have to change. I'm sorry that there is I cannot fathom.
Maybe I'm blind, Maybe I'm maybe I'm blind. Here's what's

(21:01):
going to happen. A Democrat's gonna get elected and they're
going to do something to change that.

Speaker 2 (21:05):
They just have to. They just have to.

Speaker 1 (21:08):
I mean, unless maybe this is all unless California voters
are really just that dumb. Maybe California voters are just like, yep,
we just keep voting for the Democrat forever and ever.

Speaker 2 (21:20):
Amen.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
But I think that's the thing that's going to have
to change. I think eventually the high speed rail is
going to have to Eventually someone will pull the plug.
There are so many things where again, the stupidest policies
in California are so dumb, and they are so bad,
and they are so harmful. They are at this they're

(21:43):
getting to be at this point so actively harmful that
eventually it's going to just force the hand of some
Democrat governor to change it. And when that Democrat governor
changes it, everyone will applaud what a brave and visionary

(22:06):
forward thinker that person is. When we return, I want
to talk about homeless shelters, my whole little situation, and
then the whole ongoing attitude of local governments, including county government,
towards drug use. That is next on the John Gerardi Show.
I talked on the show earlier this week about the

(22:26):
experience I had at my business at Right to Life
of Central California. We are located across the street from
a homeless housing entity. It seems to be a temporary
kind of like twenty eight day stay housing entity for
homeless people. It once had been a Motel six. It's

(22:49):
at Blackstone and Ashland. Right to Life is on Griffith Avenue,
and we are across the street from the back of
this entity's parking lot. They put in the back of
the parking lot. This kind of security checkpoint almost looks
like an airport's security thing, where I guess residents can
go out to walk, they can come in and come out,
but it's got like a security checkpoint. I think the

(23:10):
idea is to make sure that people aren't bringing drugs
onto the premises. Well, the lovely thing that has happened
is that drug dealers have just camped out right there,
just camped out on the not this not very busy street,
this not very busy stretch of Griffith Avenue, right across
the street from right to Life, and drug dealers just

(23:33):
camp out there and they sell drugs. They sell drugs
within like ten yards of the security people who are
standing there for this almost housing entity, just selling drugs
and then using drugs and then loitering around on the
stoop of my business, throwing dice against the wall and

(23:55):
throwing garbage into up against my business, and blah.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Blah blah blah blah. Great.

Speaker 1 (24:03):
And the point I've been trying to make is we're
not going to actually address homelessness if we're gonna maintain
if this is how homeless housing shelters operate, they're not
gonna make a nickel of difference, or some not a

(24:27):
nickel of difference for a lot of people who are
going to these shelters. All right, many, many people are
homeless because of drug problems.

Speaker 2 (24:38):
Ooh, mental health problems.

Speaker 1 (24:39):
Okay, call me crazy, but people who use drugs tend
to have more mental health problems. Yes, maybe the two
go hand in hand. I don't know if it's a
chicken egg situation or a direct cause and effect situation.
You take a lot of drugs, it results in mental
health problems. Anyway, the two go very hand in hand.
Let's just leave it at before we get into causation.

(25:03):
Let's just leave it at. A lot of people are
homeless and a contributing factor for them is drug problems.
If they kick their drug habit, very good chance that
a lot of people who are homeless could get in
a better situation where maybe they are not. So any
kind of homeless housing entity needs to have a kind

(25:27):
of vigilant attitude when it comes to drugs. If the
city is going to partner with these various homeless housing entities,
and if the city is going to be invested in
anti homelessness efforts, and if the state is going to
be invested in anti homelessness efforts, then there needs to
probably be some kind of coordinated effort to make sure
that people living in those units aren't doing drugs or

(25:53):
can get clean, and I don't think that's going to
happen if the situation like mine. Now, I recognize my
situation is just this is a very narrow window from
which I am generalizing, but I can. I'm sure this
is not the only such situation. Human nature being what
it is, this, you know, this friendly little drug dealer

(26:16):
just seems like a quite the entrepreneurial fellow. Now it
makes me wonder, though, is the general problem of we're
spending fifteen billion dollars. California has spent something like fifteen

(26:36):
billion dollars on homeless various kinds of homeless homelessness abatement efforts,
and the problem has not gone away or even been
meaningfully impacted as a result of all those billions of
dollars of spending. Where did the money go?

Speaker 2 (26:53):
And it leads me to.

Speaker 1 (26:57):
Ask about the very attitudes of various state and local
governments towards drug use in general.

Speaker 2 (27:05):
There's a certain.

Speaker 1 (27:06):
Portion of left liberal libertarianism that is kind of deep
down at its core, okay, with people doing drugs. There's
a weird, extremely doctrinaire version of liberal libertarianism. I think
it briefly. I forget if it was Oregon or Washington

(27:26):
State actually passed a law to legalize various kinds of
psychedelics beyond marijuana. They're really kind of okay. They're really
kind of okay with a lot of illegal drug use
deep down at their core, really hardcore left wing libertarian

(27:48):
left people are kind of okay with, as they call it,
sex work, and they're really kind of okay with drug
use and thereby selling drugs. And it's one of those
sort of real hardcore liberal positions that they're sort of
embarrassed to trot out too much, because obviously, hardcore drug

(28:10):
use is really really bad and extremely dangerous to human
life and extremely destructive to communities and destructive to individual persons.

Speaker 2 (28:18):
It's bad.

Speaker 1 (28:21):
The more respectable way that it represents that it sort
of shows itself is with things like needle exchange programs
and crackpipe exchange programs, where basically, in the interest of

(28:42):
you know, some kind of idea that well, we're not
going to do a primary preventative approach, we're going to
public health, which is the best way to approach public
health problem. No, we're going to do a secondary risk
reduction effort at public health, which everyone knows is not
as effective to make we just sort of take it.

(29:05):
We just decide to turn a blind eye and accept
that people are going to do drugs, and let's just
make it safer without some sense that maybe you are
helping further this, and thus the idea of needle exchange
programs crack pipe exchange programs.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Was born.

Speaker 1 (29:31):
Fresno County itself helps fund this kind of a program.
Here's a blithe story about it from December of twenty
twenty three. The free needle exchange program in downtown Fresno's
Fulton Street, which will allow the exchange of dirty drug paraphernalia,
will start next month. The state funded harm Reduction Pilot program,

(29:54):
also known as the San Jauquin Valley Free Medical Clinic
and Needle Exchange, is set to start on January sixth,
twenty twenty four, operating only on Saturdays from nine am
to twelve pm at the Fresno County Department of Public
Health building on Fulton Street. Hey, why don't people like
to walk around downtown Presno on a Saturday morning?

Speaker 2 (30:14):
Mmm?

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Free needle exchange paraphernalia. Medical care for drug related illnesses,
Treatment for substance abuse disorder, opioid methanal call access to
Fresno County Social Services, Public and behavioral health. The program
was involved in controversy in September when two Fresno City
Council members and Fresno's mayor publicly spoke out against it.
The three opposing included Mayor Jerry Dier, council member Miguel Arius,

(30:38):
and council Member Gary Bretdefeld, all of whom strongly opposed
the proposition described as destructive and dangerous. There's simply no
accountability with this program, said Brettefeld in September. Without any
accountability or consequences for these destructive behaviors, you get more
of the same behavior and it only worsens. This is
similar to the crime problem we face in California. By
weakening all the criminal laws, there is no accountability for crime,

(31:00):
so it worsens and intensifies, and you get more of it.
The Fresno County Department of Public Health counter that position
because it results in them getting money from the state.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Oh sorry, that was just my editorial.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Comment, saying the initiative is intended to prevent the spread
of blood borne illnesses such as HIV, AIDS and hepatitis. Well,
if that's the intent, then that's wonderful. Oh, I guess
we can then ignore all the results. The goal of
the pilot program, well, as long as it's got a
good goal, is to reduce the harm caused by intravenous

(31:33):
drug use, including blood borne illnesses at hepatitis B and C,
softissue infections HIV eights, which is under the auspices of
the Public Health Department.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Blah blah, blah, blah blah.

Speaker 1 (31:40):
All right, now here's what I don't understand about this
whole thing. I agree with noted right winger Miguel Arius. Okay,
not a noted right wing If even Miguel Arius thinks

(32:02):
that this program is bunk, I think I'm allowed to
say with total confidence that this program is bunk.

Speaker 2 (32:10):
And basically, I.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Really really wonder because this is even happening in Fresno County.
Fresno County, for one thing, has this problem. Maybe I'll
do the Fresno County bit in the next segment. I'll
stick with the state issues with homelessness.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
Okay, So first, there's this problem. Fresno County has.

Speaker 1 (32:33):
Had a Republican majority on the Fresno County Board of
supervisors for forever. Why do we have a needle exchange program?
This is a thing you would see in San Francisco, Like,
why are the county supervisors allowing this?

Speaker 2 (32:44):
This is absurdity.

Speaker 1 (32:46):
Secondly, so many of these state homelessness abatement programs happening
all up and down the state are being run by
various kinds of bleeding heart lil nonprofit entities getting grants
from bleeding heart liberal state entities who are all in

(33:06):
totally down for these kinds of programs risk reduction so
called programs like needle exchange programs, drug paraphernalia exchange programs,
blah blah blah blah blah, which I think, if anything,
are only helping perpetuate a lot of people in their
drug problems. Now they claim that there's research showing that
it actually helped, but which I don't believe.

Speaker 2 (33:28):
I'm sorry.

Speaker 1 (33:29):
Since COVID, I'm more willing to say I don't believe
some of this research, given that probably most of the
research done on it was done by people who wanted
to do these programs and probably had a certain financial
tilt towards wanting to keep being funded for doing clinics
like this, there's state money to be had. The people

(33:51):
who opposed it, what do they have to gain not
getting a state grant for something? The people who supported it,
what do they have to gain getting a state grant
for it? I mean, do the math. So I my
little narrow experience where you've got this nonprofit that seems

(34:12):
to not want to do much about contacting police to
aggressively say, hey, you got drug dealers right outside our
things selling drugs to our tenants. Like, why am I
the one calling the police over this? I'm just a neighbor.
Why aren't they aggressively calling police to make sure that
drug dealers aren't around for their tenants. Basically, if these

(34:39):
nonprofits take a kind of risk reduction approach to their
residents at these homeless shelters drug use, and it results
in these people still having drug problems, it's never gonna work.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
The risk reduction approach to drugs.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
Plus homelessness abatement efforts, these people are going to have
a drug problem that makes them be homeless. They're going
to have a drug problem while they're in a homeless shelter.
They're going to continue to have a drug problem after
they leave, and they're going to continue to be homeless,
plain and simple, And I wonder if these soft approaches
to drugs is really what's driving the ineffectiveness of the

(35:19):
state's spending on this stuff. When we return again, why
does Fresno County have a needle exchange program with a
Republican majority on the County Board of Supervisors? Next on
the John Girardy Show. It's a question I've long asked myself.

(35:39):
Why does Fresno County government still seem to push maintain
so many liberal leaning policies when they have a Republican
majority on the County Board of Supervisors and have had
a Republican majority on the County Board of Supervisors for forever.

Speaker 2 (36:03):
Why why.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
President County librarians super left wing agitating, acting as though
it is outrageous that the Board of Supervisors would supervise
a county service who hired all these people, who hired
all these left wingers? Again, when the Board of Supervisors

(36:27):
is majority Republican. Why during COVID did Presno County take
the most mainstream left wing positions possible when it came
to seemingly everything as far as I could tell, Why
did Presno County just totally embrace every single statewide initiative

(36:48):
for you know, vote by mail, this, the you know
early vote, vote by mail, all the stuff that conservatives
didn't necessarily like with changes to California voting procedures. Why
does Fresno County still have a needle exchange program? A
needle exchange program that is way too left wing for

(37:09):
Jerry Dyer and Miguel Arius of all people. Why do
they still have a needle exchange program? It kind of
makes me wonder if Fresno Counties, you know, I don't understand,
I don't understand if the Republican majority. And by the way,

(37:31):
I was a big fan of Steve Brandau when he
was on the County Board of Supervisor Supervisors. I like
Nathan Magzig Brandow. I will always be grateful to him
for the library measure, for him carrying that in spite
of fierce opposition, very politically hot thing. But you know

(37:51):
the fact that Gary Bretdefeld is coming onto the Board
of Supervisors talking about this particular thing. I mean, it
honestly reminds me of Washington, how Republican presidents come and
presidents go, but the federal workforce is always left wing.
Why I think there needs to be a cleaning of
the swamp in county government. That'll do it for John

(38:13):
Jorroady Show, See next time on Power Talk