On this episode of The Karol Markowicz Show, Karol sits down with journalist and commentator Joel Pollak, the opinion editor of the newly launched California Post. Pollak explains the mission behind the new publication and why its founders believe there is a large, underserved audience in California looking for a different perspective on politics, culture, and daily life in the Golden State.
The conversation dives into the current state of California politics, including Governor Gavin Newsom’s policies, the state’s growing fiscal challenges, and controversial legislation affecting local governments and school districts. Pollak shares why he believes California is at a crossroads—and why he’s still investing his time and energy into helping shape its future.
Pollak also reflects on a transformative personal experience during the Palisades fire that reshaped his outlook on community, politics, and rebuilding California. The discussion broadens into culture, family life, and what it takes to stay optimistic in uncertain times.
To close the show, Pollak shares practical advice for improving your life—from the importance of daily exercise and boxing workouts to keeping a daily journal to clear your mind and unlock creativity.
Topics covered in this episode include:
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The launch and mission of the California Post
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The political and cultural battles shaping California today
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Gavin Newsom’s policies and their long-term impact on the state
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The Palisades fire and how it changed Pollak’s perspective
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Why community rebuilding matters more than national politics
-
Life advice: exercise, journaling, and building a meaningful life
If you’re interested in the future of California, media, politics, and personal growth, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
Follow Clay & Buck on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/clayandbuck
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
The Fact to Carol Market's show on I Harvey. My
guest today Pollock Joel is the opinion editor of the
brand new California Post. Hi, Joel, so nice to have
you on.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So what are you guys doing out there? What's the
California Post all about?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
California Post is about providing a new, hard hitting journalistic
perspective on everything happening in California, and my part of
it is the opinion page. So I'm dealing with a
lot of politics, a lot of debates over lifestyle and culture.
But the paper, as you know from reading the New
(00:43):
York Post, is also about sports. It's about celebrity. It's
got everything in there that you want to hear about
gossip and that's what keeps people coming back to the
news pages and the opinion pages. So it's a real
opportunity to reach people and to hold up a mirror
to California. You know. So the other publications, some of
whom are doing great jobs, are primarily aimed at a
(01:06):
left of center audience, and there's a huge underserved market
in California. And it's not a partisan thing. This is
not about reaching the Republicans, because there are plenty of
Democrats who read the New York Post as well. Sure, yeah,
there are Democrats who like the California Post. And we've
even had people who are fierce opponents of President Trump
writing already in the California Post. But it really is
(01:27):
about reaching an audience of people who work for a living,
people who care about their families and the future, and
people who believe they deserve better not just from government
but from popular culture. People who believe in this country,
believe in the state of California, the vision, the dream
of California, and feel it slipping away a little bit
(01:48):
and want to fight to preserve it.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
California Post, the fact that you're covering the whole state
is that, I mean, that's kind of a big job.
California is the size of like three small countries. Is
it hard to mean the issues of northern California are
not the issues of southern California. How are you guys
going to do that?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Well, we do have teams in Sacramento and in San Francisco,
so we do have a headquarters in LA that branches
out from there. LA is the primary market for just
about anything in California just because there are more people there.
But it's really interesting, as you point out, maybe three
separate countries, maybe more. San Francisco and the Bay Area
(02:32):
are where our leaders come from. Most of our political
leaders are from that area. Most of our business leaders,
the billionaires, the Silicon Valley tycoons, they're obviously from the
Bay Area. There is also a Silicon Beach in LA
and of course you got Hollywood. But yes, it is
a lot to cover, and it's all intertwined, and it
really is a wonderful state with this incredible diversity of regions.
(02:58):
I mean, I like to write about water, and there's
a lot more water in northern California than in Southern California.
And what we've done over the decades and now centuries
to manage that water is a fascinating story. And you
can't really disentangle northern from Southern California, and the two
are so interdependent, even though they do specialize in different things. So, yeah,
(03:22):
it's a tough task to cover the entire state. But
we're going to build out our coverage and we're going
to cover the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, the border region,
far northern California, Mendosino and the Sierras and Shasta and
all this stuff going on. It's an incredible place and
(03:43):
I love it. I feel alive when I'm there. I
go back and forth now between LA and d C
because my wife is in DC where I am actually
at the moment. I was in LA yesterday. I'll be
in LA tomorrow, but I'm in DC today. So it's
a bit of a mission. But it is a lot
of fun.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
You know. The sense in the right of censor world
is that California is over right. I mean, people are
leaving in larger numbers that are coming in. The governance
is obviously like a model for bad governance throughout the country.
But starting California post is a very optimistic move. Are
(04:21):
you personally optimistic on California.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I'd have to say yes, because I'm investing so much
in it, so I think yes. Is my day to
day feeling one of optimism? No? No, really, right, No,
I get that.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah. I look, you know that was me in New York. Like,
I think they're going to be okay long term, but
day to day, I'm like, I got to get.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Out of here. I don't know if California is going
to be okay long term. I'd like to believe it is.
Let me tell you what really motivated me to join
the California Post. It was the Palisades fire. My house
is in Pacific Palisades. It survived the fire. I put
the house or I put the fire out on my
fence and on my property and the adjacent properties. I
(05:05):
put it out with my bare hands, and with help
from some neighbors. We fought the fire ourselves. We had
no running water. Wow. And it was a transformative experience.
Before the fire, I thought I can engage in national
politics in a way. I'm not really ever going to
get involved in local and state politics. I know what's
going on. I report on what's going on. I take
(05:28):
an interest. But I live in this little enclave that
is part of the city of Los Angeles but has
largely been untouched by some of the pathologies of la
the homelessness, the drugs, the crime. We're up on a
little hill. There's no gate around our community. Where the
kind of community where celebrities go to live if they
want to live like ordinary people without a barrier between
(05:51):
them and the rest of life. It was a little
throwback Pacific Palisades to an earlier era of a small
town vibe where everybody would come out to the baseball
field for Little league playoffs and where you would just
meet everybody at the mall. I mean literally everybody, a
list celebrities. My wife was having lunch one day and
in walks one of the Wahlberg's with I can't even
(06:16):
remember the other celebrities they were with, and just they're
just having lunch with you. You know. It was that
kind of place, but it was isolated, and California's problems
were something we wrote about, but they were somebody else's
problems and they became my problem. I don't think California
right now, on the present course, has a long term future.
(06:37):
I think California is digging itself up by the roots.
And I'm going to give you an example of that.
That's a little bit controversial, but.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
We love controversy on the Carol Marcos Show.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, you might have heard of some of this stuff.
Gavin Newsom is done. I mean some of it has
been just terrible. Failing to clear the brush for the fire,
the fraud that we presume is going on in California's
government because how could you double the budget without doing
any commensurate improvement in services? Right, where's that money going?
Twenty billion out the door? At least maybe thirty billion
(07:08):
during the pandemic for unemployment fraud, maybe other kinds of fraud.
Half a billion on a nine to one one system
that never worked, the train to nowhere eighteen billion already
something like that. Okay, But possibly the worst thing Gavin
Newsom has done is sign a law called AB two eighteen.
(07:28):
AB two eighteen basically made it a lot easier for
people to sue for past sexual abuse. I'm not saying
that victims shouldn't have some recourse, of course, yeah, and
some of the people who have come forward probably did
experience some really terrible things. However, we have this concept
(07:54):
of a statute of limitations, and it's not some kind
of misogynistic device or a way to protect pedophiles or whatever.
It's a way of limiting the damage of the sins
of a few individuals, because why should the rest of
us suffer because a couple of people were horrible, really horrible?
(08:14):
So what is the result of this law. The result
is that a bunch of lawyers have organized a bunch
of these sex abuse lawsuits. And the craziest part of
this law is that you have five years to sue
from the moment you remember the abuse, so make it
up as you go along is definitely a possibility. I'm
(08:35):
not saying that that's actually happening, but there's no safeguard
on this really, so they're suing or threatening to sue.
And what's happening State governments or excuse me, local governments.
Local governments in California and local school districts are being bankrupted,
I mean really just emptied of cash. Santa Monica, which
is a fairly wealthy community on the coast, is now
(08:58):
in severe financial distress because they have everyone out. Yeah,
they had to pay out something like a quarter of
a billion dollars because of some city employee like forty
years ago who abused a bunch of people. And in
this case, apparently it really was abuse, but it was
forty years ago or something like early eighties, fifty, I
don't know how many years ago. A quarter of a
(09:20):
billion dollars. So they're cutting back on city services. How
about this one, the La Unified School District, the public
school districts in La. You know how many poor kids
are in LA and how they depend on the public
schools because that's the only way they're going to get
anywhere is going to school. Their parents are working, can't
teach them. You got to go to school, public school LA.
(09:40):
They just borrowed seven hundred and fifty million dollars to
pay these old sex abuse claims. Borrowed it. They don't
have the money, so they're going to have to pay
back seven hundred and fifty million dollar loan with interest.
And that's money that could have been used to educate children.
So we are deliberately impoverishing the children of today because
(10:05):
of some abuses that happened to children a generation or
two ago in La County. Massive County has to provide
for a lot of people, a lot of different services,
four billion dollars, four billion dollars. So you drive around California,
beautiful place, and you wonder, why are the roads so bad?
Why is the infrastructure falling apart? Why does the coastline
(10:27):
not look as good as it should, even in the fancy,
nice price And the answer is that we are bankrupting
ourselves on garbage. Sorry, I mean again.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I get it. It's obviously you want people to be
held accountable, and you want to see bad people go
to prison. But forty years later those people are largely
not alive or not going to prison.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Right, Yeah, yeah, you could be dead. Yeah, so we
are digging.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
It's yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
It's it's I think my wife said it best. She said,
children think they can have whatever they want, and it's
the it's the responsibility of adults to set boundaries. And
California is governed by children. It is governed by people
who know no boundaries and refuse to accept boundaries, whether
fiscal or moral or whatever. And I'm a libertarian on
(11:21):
social issues. I don't care what people do in their
personal lives. But if you tell me that I feel
I'm under threat of personal violence unless someone uses my
pronouns or that if my parents know that, you know
that I'm transitioning at school, that means I'm going to
be bullied. Yeah, I mean, this is all like we
(11:41):
thought the cry bully phenomenon when it emerged at Yale
and really started the woke movement over Halloween costumes twelve
years ago, we thought that that was a campus phenomenon.
It's basically become the dominant culture in California. And if
you can claim victimhood, I mean, yeah, California is going to.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Be on the left in general, I'd say yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, but I mean California leads the left. How about
this reparations? So Newsom is smart enough not to pay
a lot of cash or any cash so far, but
he's creating an office of reparations. Why does California have
to pay reparations to anybody? California enter the Union as
a free state. That was a choice made at the time.
(12:19):
It was in eighteen fifty, so states could choose. There
were some incentives to become a slave state. You get
a lot of people moving there with labor to do stuff,
and California needed labor. California made a moral choice not
to be a slave state. Why are we paying a
penalty when the moral choice was made not to be
(12:39):
a slave state to be a free state. And then
I hear it, well, you know there was housing discrimination. Okay,
but pay the people who lost property or who compensate
the individuals. Don't don't make it this thing. So this
is the problem is that we've developed a culture that
emphasizes victimhood and where you aren't somebody unless you've suffered
(13:01):
and that's just not that's just not healthy. It's not healthy.
You know, we live in a beautiful state. We need
to emphasize the positive and the forward in the future,
and ultimately that's the only thing that's going to pull
us out of this. So am I optimistic.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
About Calvini optimistic? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
No, but I am optimistic that it can be better.
So I don't think it's going to be saved just yet,
but I do think it can be better.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Well, we're rooting for you, for sure, not just for
you personally, but for the whole state. It's such a
beautiful state. I've always enjoyed my time in California, and
I would hate to think that it's a failed state.
Although obviously, again I'm very concerned about the path that
it's on and the fact that Yeavin Newsom is planning
to take that you know, amazing leadership, possibly national. We're
(13:49):
going to take a quick break and be right back
on the Carol Marcowitch Show. The New York Post has
what I would consider some you know, esoteric beats. You know,
they cover specific issues in New York City politics. Is
California posts going to have kind of their pet issues.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
When we were starting up. One of the things I
suggested is that we should print a daily surf report.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Oh I like that.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, it turns out to be very hard because even
in the same city, with the same weather conditions in
the atmosphere, you can have very different ocean conditions. Right.
I'm a very casual surfer. I mean, I'm really at
the beginning level of surfing, and if I stay on
the board, I'm happy with myself. You know, like I
kind of wimp out, especially in the winter waves. The
(14:40):
winter waves are really dump you. I wimp out and
I basically surf the white water, the foam, you know,
just to get up on a board and have some fun.
But I do enjoy it. And I have friends who
are very serious, and I've said to them, where do
you go for information about what the surf conditions are?
And They'll list a whole bunch of websites, and they
were the most skeptical that you could summarize this information
(15:01):
in one place. They're just like, kind of hard. I mean,
I'm not saying we won't do it in the future,
but yeah, yeah, we could do the surf report. We
could do the ski report. You know, people always want
to know how much powder there is on topow or
mammoth or whatever. It's a great state. I have, in fact,
surfed and skied in the same weekend, which is like,
you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I always say the ocean in La is just it's
way too cold for me. And I'm you know, I'm
a New Yorker. I swim in the cold Atlantic. The
La Pacific ocean.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Is I don't know, we get used to it sort of. Yeah.
There were a period of years where I would go
in the water almost every single day, and I have
a tradition of going in on New Year's Day. I'm
one of those January first people who goes to the
water and it's not that cold, but basically from January
to April it's below sixty degrees by the coast. In
(15:54):
the water, yeah, and you start to feel your chest
compressed after about a minute. Yeah yeah, So you get
out and like if you've been in water that cold,
you start you'll understand like you just kind of feel
this compression here and it kind of this is down
into your stomach and you're like, I got to get
out of here.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
But that's your body telling you you shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
This, but the feeling you have after you're out of
the water is incredible. I mean with the rush of
the cold water. I'm told by people who swim in
cold water regularly that it's supposed to be very good
for your immune system.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Cold plunge thing.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, so I like it. I
like the cold water. I do think it's hard to
take kids into the cold water. I have one child
who just adores the water and doesn't care what temperature
it is. And I have one child who if it's
a hair below eighty degrees won't Yeah, that's me.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I can't even do Miami in like the winter months anymore.
When we first moved here, like December, ocean was great.
Now it's like, oh no, it's winter. I can't. What
are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I am most proud of my wife. I'm most proud
of my wife. There's no way in which I deserved
to have married this incredible woman. She continues to amaze
me every single day.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And long we married.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
We have been married for sixteen years. We've been married
for sixteen years, and we've known each other for twenty
one years.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
So what's so great?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
And we have four kids, four beautiful kids who have,
thank god, been very healthy and rambunctious and very good.
We have had no problems with any of that. And
my wife is the chief economist of the Department of
Labor here in DC. We ended up in DC, and
(17:43):
we have four kids without a nanny. We do take
the baby to day care, but the elvist is fourteen,
the youngest is just over a one year old, and
she balances everything and I don't really know how she
does it, but she's just this incredible woman. She's also
incredibly attractive, and uh, I just I have inappropriate thoughts
(18:06):
about her all day. So that's that's the thing I'm
thought so much.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I believe a lot of people say their kids, you know,
that's like kind of the automatic answer. I love that
you are so effusive about loving your wife.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
That's just beautiful, proud of her, like it's you know, yeah,
it's it's it's It's definitely my greatest achievement. I mean,
I still don't know quite how I managed it. But
I do think that if I had to give dating advice,
it would be mostly for men, because I think men
are the limiting factor and moving relationships forward. I think
(18:40):
persistence is the key to everything that you You don't
want to become a stalker, okay, no stocking, Yeah, but
if you show interest, you know, it goes a long way.
And I when I met her, I knew this was
the woman I wanted to marry, and so I did
not let go of it.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Oh, I love that much. That is so awesome. This
is a show about advice, also about living better, and
a lot of people write in asking, you know, questions
about relationships.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So I realized, I don't want to over I don't
want to overstate that. I didn't realize it the instant
I met when I the day I met her, I
had other thoughts which are not repeatable on the podcast.
But then over time, when I managed somehow to land
this incredibly attractive woman, I began realizing that I had
fallen in love with her. So it was about three
(19:29):
or four months in and then I said, Okay, I'm
putting aside the rest of my life to make sure
this happens.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
So oh, I love this. I love that story so much.
Thank you for sharing that with us. We're going to
take a quick break and be right back on the
Carol Marcowitch show give us a five year out prediction,
and it could be about anything at all.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
My worldview has become a little bit more narrow since
the fire. When President Trump was inaugurated the second time,
Normally I would have been watching TV and working on
an article about it, taking it all in, or I
would have been there. I was at his first inauguration. Instead,
I was with firefighters at the incident base camp in
(20:12):
Malibu as they were deploying two different parts of the
Palisades Fire to check on hotspots and collect data and
do all kinds of surveillance. Most of the fire was
out by then, but they were still trying to contain it.
And I remember listening to the President's in Augrill address
while I was with the firefighters, and it was a
(20:33):
huge event, obviously, but it was also secondary to what
I was dealing with. And a few days later Trump
actually came to Pacific Palisades and I was in the
town hall meeting and spoke with him, and I met
Malania Trump, the first lady. She was incredibly gracious. So
my worldview has narrowed to what's happening in my community.
(20:54):
And when I think of five year time horizons, that
really feels to me like when I hope my community
is rebuilt, I think it's not unreasonable to hope that.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
That sounds reasonable. Five years.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
It might not happen because there are so many roadblocks
right now, but in five years, I'd like to be
in my house, in my community. I know it's going
to be different than it was. We'll never get it
back exactly as it was, but we will hopefully have
a beautiful community again. I should say beautiful neighborhood. The
community is still there, people are still in touch on
WhatsApp and all kinds of things. But I'm hoping that
(21:29):
that happens. I'm hoping my kids are happy in school.
It's very hard to balance the needs of children who
are different and have different talents. My eldest, she's really
into music. She's also into religion. My second, he is
an avid baseball player. He's a very good baseball player.
He likes religion, but he enjoys the kind of rough
(21:50):
and tumble of public school, a little bit more more
of a street kid. East Persona and my third and
fourth are still developing who they are. But you know,
I'm hoping that the kids are happy and well adjusted
and my daughter will be on our way to some
good college. I hope something that's not.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
If they'll still exist by then, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I mean, you know, I'm hoping for that kind of
personal happiness and because if I can enjoy that, it
probably means there's also a public happiness going on in
my community as well, so that that's where I hope
things are five years out.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
That's really great. We're rooting for you.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Really, thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I've loved this conversation. I feel like I didn't know
that much about you, and I've really gotten to know
you on this On this talk, leave us here with
your best tip for my listeners on how they can
improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I'll give you a couple. I'll give you a couple
since I have a couple of props here just unintentionally.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
It's an audio show.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But okay, yeah, oh I see, well, I'll exclaim. So
I've got some advice that came from my late friend
Scott Adams, which is that physical health is really the
foundation of everything else, and if you can exercise daily
or almost daily, you'll find that your mental and emotional
(23:06):
outlook is a lot better. And it doesn't have to
be strenuous exercise. You're not becoming an Instagram fitness influencer,
but just find something you enjoy. Could even be walking
your dog around the park a couple extra times, not
just to relieve the dog, but to just get some
more steps in. It's really great. I mean, you'll feel better.
And here's my problem. I mean, this is my favorite
(23:28):
form of exercise, and I'm not trying to flex too
hard here, maybe just a little bit, but you know,
this is this is one of my boxing gloves. I mean,
I discovered boxing almost ten years ago and I box
about twice a week and it's incredible, just absolutely incredible.
It's a wonderful. It's a wonderful form of exercise because
it is challenging, it's difficult, but you're also not really
(23:53):
going to get injured if you're not taking punches. So
I do a little bit of sparring, but not much.
Mostly what I'm doing is just fitness work and you're
not really going to get injured. I did run before.
Running is hard to keep up because after a while
your knees start to her hamstring. I just love boxing,
and the other piece of advice that was given to
me more than twenty five years ago that I actually
(24:15):
followed was to keep a daily journal, and there's a
still I do. There's a wonderful book called The Artist's
Way by Julia Cameron which she advises that people write
three pages a day, and lately I've only been able
to manage one a day. But this is this is
my latest journal. I have dozens and dozens of these
that I've that I've filled. I mean, this is this
(24:37):
is min wow. Wow.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Jola is showing me really full pages in a journal.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No. The challenge is you got to
fill the page. Really, you should fill three pages. But
I have a lot.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Going on every day, every single day.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Every six days a week. I do. I do it, yeah,
six days a week and it it's.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
A hero when I check my email every day.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
You know. So it really opened up a lot of
pathways for me. I didn't become a screenwriter or or
winning novelist, you know. Really she advertises it as a
way to unlock your creativity, but there are other ways
to be creative. I just found ways of writing nonfiction
that came out of that experience, and I think that
(25:20):
practice enables me to write a lot of material in
a short period of time, because I start the day
by writing something for myself and so you kind of
get some creative ideas. You also get rid of the
mental clutter that you wake up with and then you
just write. So my advice would be get that book.
The two books I would recommend The Artist's Way by
(25:43):
Julia Cameron, and then Scott Adams's book, which I happen
to have here, how to fail at almost everything and
still win big. That's where he talks about many things,
but also about exercise. That would be my advice.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Amazing, Thank you so much. He's Joel Pollock. Check out
the California Post. It is really awesome and I were
really rooting for California and for the California Post and
for you, Joel.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Thanks for coming on h
The Fact to Carol Market's show on I Harvey. My
guest today Pollock Joel is the opinion editor of the
brand new California Post. Hi, Joel, so nice to have
you on.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
It's great to be with you.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
So what are you guys doing out there? What's the
California Post all about?
Speaker 2 (00:23):
California Post is about providing a new, hard hitting journalistic
perspective on everything happening in California, and my part of
it is the opinion page. So I'm dealing with a
lot of politics, a lot of debates over lifestyle and culture.
But the paper, as you know from reading the New
(00:43):
York Post, is also about sports. It's about celebrity. It's
got everything in there that you want to hear about
gossip and that's what keeps people coming back to the
news pages and the opinion pages. So it's a real
opportunity to reach people and to hold up a mirror
to California. You know. So the other publications, some of
whom are doing great jobs, are primarily aimed at a
(01:06):
left of center audience, and there's a huge underserved market
in California. And it's not a partisan thing. This is
not about reaching the Republicans, because there are plenty of
Democrats who read the New York Post as well. Sure, yeah,
there are Democrats who like the California Post. And we've
even had people who are fierce opponents of President Trump
writing already in the California Post. But it really is
(01:27):
about reaching an audience of people who work for a living,
people who care about their families and the future, and
people who believe they deserve better not just from government
but from popular culture. People who believe in this country,
believe in the state of California, the vision, the dream
of California, and feel it slipping away a little bit
(01:48):
and want to fight to preserve it.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
California Post, the fact that you're covering the whole state
is that, I mean, that's kind of a big job.
California is the size of like three small countries. Is
it hard to mean the issues of northern California are
not the issues of southern California. How are you guys
going to do that?
Speaker 2 (02:08):
Well, we do have teams in Sacramento and in San Francisco,
so we do have a headquarters in LA that branches
out from there. LA is the primary market for just
about anything in California just because there are more people there.
But it's really interesting, as you point out, maybe three
separate countries, maybe more. San Francisco and the Bay Area
(02:32):
are where our leaders come from. Most of our political
leaders are from that area. Most of our business leaders,
the billionaires, the Silicon Valley tycoons, they're obviously from the
Bay Area. There is also a Silicon Beach in LA
and of course you got Hollywood. But yes, it is
a lot to cover, and it's all intertwined, and it
really is a wonderful state with this incredible diversity of regions.
(02:58):
I mean, I like to write about water, and there's
a lot more water in northern California than in Southern California.
And what we've done over the decades and now centuries
to manage that water is a fascinating story. And you
can't really disentangle northern from Southern California, and the two
are so interdependent, even though they do specialize in different things. So, yeah,
(03:22):
it's a tough task to cover the entire state. But
we're going to build out our coverage and we're going
to cover the Central Valley, the Inland Empire, the border region,
far northern California, Mendosino and the Sierras and Shasta and
all this stuff going on. It's an incredible place and
(03:43):
I love it. I feel alive when I'm there. I
go back and forth now between LA and d C
because my wife is in DC where I am actually
at the moment. I was in LA yesterday. I'll be
in LA tomorrow, but I'm in DC today. So it's
a bit of a mission. But it is a lot
of fun.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
You know. The sense in the right of censor world
is that California is over right. I mean, people are
leaving in larger numbers that are coming in. The governance
is obviously like a model for bad governance throughout the country.
But starting California post is a very optimistic move. Are
(04:21):
you personally optimistic on California.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
I'd have to say yes, because I'm investing so much
in it, so I think yes. Is my day to
day feeling one of optimism? No? No, really, right, No,
I get that.
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah. I look, you know that was me in New York. Like,
I think they're going to be okay long term, but
day to day, I'm like, I got to get.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Out of here. I don't know if California is going
to be okay long term. I'd like to believe it is.
Let me tell you what really motivated me to join
the California Post. It was the Palisades fire. My house
is in Pacific Palisades. It survived the fire. I put
the house or I put the fire out on my
fence and on my property and the adjacent properties. I
(05:05):
put it out with my bare hands, and with help
from some neighbors. We fought the fire ourselves. We had
no running water. Wow. And it was a transformative experience.
Before the fire, I thought I can engage in national
politics in a way. I'm not really ever going to
get involved in local and state politics. I know what's
going on. I report on what's going on. I take
(05:28):
an interest. But I live in this little enclave that
is part of the city of Los Angeles but has
largely been untouched by some of the pathologies of la
the homelessness, the drugs, the crime. We're up on a
little hill. There's no gate around our community. Where the
kind of community where celebrities go to live if they
want to live like ordinary people without a barrier between
(05:51):
them and the rest of life. It was a little
throwback Pacific Palisades to an earlier era of a small
town vibe where everybody would come out to the baseball
field for Little league playoffs and where you would just
meet everybody at the mall. I mean literally everybody, a
list celebrities. My wife was having lunch one day and
in walks one of the Wahlberg's with I can't even
(06:16):
remember the other celebrities they were with, and just they're
just having lunch with you. You know. It was that
kind of place, but it was isolated, and California's problems
were something we wrote about, but they were somebody else's
problems and they became my problem. I don't think California
right now, on the present course, has a long term future.
(06:37):
I think California is digging itself up by the roots.
And I'm going to give you an example of that.
That's a little bit controversial, but.
Speaker 1 (06:44):
We love controversy on the Carol Marcos Show.
Speaker 2 (06:47):
Yeah, you might have heard of some of this stuff.
Gavin Newsom is done. I mean some of it has
been just terrible. Failing to clear the brush for the fire,
the fraud that we presume is going on in California's
government because how could you double the budget without doing
any commensurate improvement in services? Right, where's that money going?
Twenty billion out the door? At least maybe thirty billion
(07:08):
during the pandemic for unemployment fraud, maybe other kinds of fraud.
Half a billion on a nine to one one system
that never worked, the train to nowhere eighteen billion already
something like that. Okay, But possibly the worst thing Gavin
Newsom has done is sign a law called AB two eighteen.
(07:28):
AB two eighteen basically made it a lot easier for
people to sue for past sexual abuse. I'm not saying
that victims shouldn't have some recourse, of course, yeah, and
some of the people who have come forward probably did
experience some really terrible things. However, we have this concept
(07:54):
of a statute of limitations, and it's not some kind
of misogynistic device or a way to protect pedophiles or whatever.
It's a way of limiting the damage of the sins
of a few individuals, because why should the rest of
us suffer because a couple of people were horrible, really horrible?
(08:14):
So what is the result of this law. The result
is that a bunch of lawyers have organized a bunch
of these sex abuse lawsuits. And the craziest part of
this law is that you have five years to sue
from the moment you remember the abuse, so make it
up as you go along is definitely a possibility. I'm
(08:35):
not saying that that's actually happening, but there's no safeguard
on this really, so they're suing or threatening to sue.
And what's happening State governments or excuse me, local governments.
Local governments in California and local school districts are being bankrupted,
I mean really just emptied of cash. Santa Monica, which
is a fairly wealthy community on the coast, is now
(08:58):
in severe financial distress because they have everyone out. Yeah,
they had to pay out something like a quarter of
a billion dollars because of some city employee like forty
years ago who abused a bunch of people. And in
this case, apparently it really was abuse, but it was
forty years ago or something like early eighties, fifty, I
don't know how many years ago. A quarter of a
(09:20):
billion dollars. So they're cutting back on city services. How
about this one, the La Unified School District, the public
school districts in La. You know how many poor kids
are in LA and how they depend on the public
schools because that's the only way they're going to get
anywhere is going to school. Their parents are working, can't
teach them. You got to go to school, public school LA.
(09:40):
They just borrowed seven hundred and fifty million dollars to
pay these old sex abuse claims. Borrowed it. They don't
have the money, so they're going to have to pay
back seven hundred and fifty million dollar loan with interest.
And that's money that could have been used to educate children.
So we are deliberately impoverishing the children of today because
(10:05):
of some abuses that happened to children a generation or
two ago in La County. Massive County has to provide
for a lot of people, a lot of different services,
four billion dollars, four billion dollars. So you drive around California,
beautiful place, and you wonder, why are the roads so bad?
Why is the infrastructure falling apart? Why does the coastline
(10:27):
not look as good as it should, even in the fancy,
nice price And the answer is that we are bankrupting
ourselves on garbage. Sorry, I mean again.
Speaker 1 (10:37):
I get it. It's obviously you want people to be
held accountable, and you want to see bad people go
to prison. But forty years later those people are largely
not alive or not going to prison.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Right, Yeah, yeah, you could be dead. Yeah, so we
are digging.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
It's yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
It's it's I think my wife said it best. She said,
children think they can have whatever they want, and it's
the it's the responsibility of adults to set boundaries. And
California is governed by children. It is governed by people
who know no boundaries and refuse to accept boundaries, whether
fiscal or moral or whatever. And I'm a libertarian on
(11:21):
social issues. I don't care what people do in their
personal lives. But if you tell me that I feel
I'm under threat of personal violence unless someone uses my
pronouns or that if my parents know that, you know
that I'm transitioning at school, that means I'm going to
be bullied. Yeah, I mean, this is all like we
(11:41):
thought the cry bully phenomenon when it emerged at Yale
and really started the woke movement over Halloween costumes twelve
years ago, we thought that that was a campus phenomenon.
It's basically become the dominant culture in California. And if
you can claim victimhood, I mean, yeah, California is going to.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
Be on the left in general, I'd say yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:59):
Yeah, but I mean California leads the left. How about
this reparations? So Newsom is smart enough not to pay
a lot of cash or any cash so far, but
he's creating an office of reparations. Why does California have
to pay reparations to anybody? California enter the Union as
a free state. That was a choice made at the time.
(12:19):
It was in eighteen fifty, so states could choose. There
were some incentives to become a slave state. You get
a lot of people moving there with labor to do stuff,
and California needed labor. California made a moral choice not
to be a slave state. Why are we paying a
penalty when the moral choice was made not to be
(12:39):
a slave state to be a free state. And then
I hear it, well, you know there was housing discrimination. Okay,
but pay the people who lost property or who compensate
the individuals. Don't don't make it this thing. So this
is the problem is that we've developed a culture that
emphasizes victimhood and where you aren't somebody unless you've suffered
(13:01):
and that's just not that's just not healthy. It's not healthy.
You know, we live in a beautiful state. We need
to emphasize the positive and the forward in the future,
and ultimately that's the only thing that's going to pull
us out of this. So am I optimistic.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
About Calvini optimistic? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (13:17):
No, but I am optimistic that it can be better.
So I don't think it's going to be saved just yet,
but I do think it can be better.
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Well, we're rooting for you, for sure, not just for
you personally, but for the whole state. It's such a
beautiful state. I've always enjoyed my time in California, and
I would hate to think that it's a failed state.
Although obviously, again I'm very concerned about the path that
it's on and the fact that Yeavin Newsom is planning
to take that you know, amazing leadership, possibly national. We're
(13:49):
going to take a quick break and be right back
on the Carol Marcowitch Show. The New York Post has
what I would consider some you know, esoteric beats. You know,
they cover specific issues in New York City politics. Is
California posts going to have kind of their pet issues.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
When we were starting up. One of the things I
suggested is that we should print a daily surf report.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Oh I like that.
Speaker 2 (14:18):
Yeah, it turns out to be very hard because even
in the same city, with the same weather conditions in
the atmosphere, you can have very different ocean conditions. Right.
I'm a very casual surfer. I mean, I'm really at
the beginning level of surfing, and if I stay on
the board, I'm happy with myself. You know, like I
kind of wimp out, especially in the winter waves. The
(14:40):
winter waves are really dump you. I wimp out and
I basically surf the white water, the foam, you know,
just to get up on a board and have some fun.
But I do enjoy it. And I have friends who
are very serious, and I've said to them, where do
you go for information about what the surf conditions are?
And They'll list a whole bunch of websites, and they
were the most skeptical that you could summarize this information
(15:01):
in one place. They're just like, kind of hard. I mean,
I'm not saying we won't do it in the future,
but yeah, yeah, we could do the surf report. We
could do the ski report. You know, people always want
to know how much powder there is on topow or
mammoth or whatever. It's a great state. I have, in fact,
surfed and skied in the same weekend, which is like,
you know, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
I always say the ocean in La is just it's
way too cold for me. And I'm you know, I'm
a New Yorker. I swim in the cold Atlantic. The
La Pacific ocean.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Is I don't know, we get used to it sort of. Yeah.
There were a period of years where I would go
in the water almost every single day, and I have
a tradition of going in on New Year's Day. I'm
one of those January first people who goes to the
water and it's not that cold, but basically from January
to April it's below sixty degrees by the coast. In
(15:54):
the water, yeah, and you start to feel your chest
compressed after about a minute. Yeah yeah, So you get
out and like if you've been in water that cold,
you start you'll understand like you just kind of feel
this compression here and it kind of this is down
into your stomach and you're like, I got to get
out of here.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
But that's your body telling you you shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
This, but the feeling you have after you're out of
the water is incredible. I mean with the rush of
the cold water. I'm told by people who swim in
cold water regularly that it's supposed to be very good
for your immune system.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
Cold plunge thing.
Speaker 2 (16:26):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean, so I like it. I
like the cold water. I do think it's hard to
take kids into the cold water. I have one child
who just adores the water and doesn't care what temperature
it is. And I have one child who if it's
a hair below eighty degrees won't Yeah, that's me.
Speaker 1 (16:44):
I can't even do Miami in like the winter months anymore.
When we first moved here, like December, ocean was great.
Now it's like, oh no, it's winter. I can't. What
are you most proud of in your life?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
I am most proud of my wife. I'm most proud
of my wife. There's no way in which I deserved
to have married this incredible woman. She continues to amaze
me every single day.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And long we married.
Speaker 2 (17:13):
We have been married for sixteen years. We've been married
for sixteen years, and we've known each other for twenty
one years.
Speaker 1 (17:21):
So what's so great?
Speaker 2 (17:22):
And we have four kids, four beautiful kids who have,
thank god, been very healthy and rambunctious and very good.
We have had no problems with any of that. And
my wife is the chief economist of the Department of
Labor here in DC. We ended up in DC, and
(17:43):
we have four kids without a nanny. We do take
the baby to day care, but the elvist is fourteen,
the youngest is just over a one year old, and
she balances everything and I don't really know how she
does it, but she's just this incredible woman. She's also
incredibly attractive, and uh, I just I have inappropriate thoughts
(18:06):
about her all day. So that's that's the thing I'm
thought so much.
Speaker 1 (18:11):
I believe a lot of people say their kids, you know,
that's like kind of the automatic answer. I love that
you are so effusive about loving your wife.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
That's just beautiful, proud of her, like it's you know, yeah,
it's it's it's It's definitely my greatest achievement. I mean,
I still don't know quite how I managed it. But
I do think that if I had to give dating advice,
it would be mostly for men, because I think men
are the limiting factor and moving relationships forward. I think
(18:40):
persistence is the key to everything that you You don't
want to become a stalker, okay, no stocking, Yeah, but
if you show interest, you know, it goes a long way.
And I when I met her, I knew this was
the woman I wanted to marry, and so I did
not let go of it.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Oh, I love that much. That is so awesome. This
is a show about advice, also about living better, and
a lot of people write in asking, you know, questions
about relationships.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
So I realized, I don't want to over I don't
want to overstate that. I didn't realize it the instant
I met when I the day I met her, I
had other thoughts which are not repeatable on the podcast.
But then over time, when I managed somehow to land
this incredibly attractive woman, I began realizing that I had
fallen in love with her. So it was about three
(19:29):
or four months in and then I said, Okay, I'm
putting aside the rest of my life to make sure
this happens.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
So oh, I love this. I love that story so much.
Thank you for sharing that with us. We're going to
take a quick break and be right back on the
Carol Marcowitch show give us a five year out prediction,
and it could be about anything at all.
Speaker 2 (19:52):
My worldview has become a little bit more narrow since
the fire. When President Trump was inaugurated the second time,
Normally I would have been watching TV and working on
an article about it, taking it all in, or I
would have been there. I was at his first inauguration. Instead,
I was with firefighters at the incident base camp in
(20:12):
Malibu as they were deploying two different parts of the
Palisades Fire to check on hotspots and collect data and
do all kinds of surveillance. Most of the fire was
out by then, but they were still trying to contain it.
And I remember listening to the President's in Augrill address
while I was with the firefighters, and it was a
(20:33):
huge event, obviously, but it was also secondary to what
I was dealing with. And a few days later Trump
actually came to Pacific Palisades and I was in the
town hall meeting and spoke with him, and I met
Malania Trump, the first lady. She was incredibly gracious. So
my worldview has narrowed to what's happening in my community.
(20:54):
And when I think of five year time horizons, that
really feels to me like when I hope my community
is rebuilt, I think it's not unreasonable to hope that.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
That sounds reasonable. Five years.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
It might not happen because there are so many roadblocks
right now, but in five years, I'd like to be
in my house, in my community. I know it's going
to be different than it was. We'll never get it
back exactly as it was, but we will hopefully have
a beautiful community again. I should say beautiful neighborhood. The
community is still there, people are still in touch on
WhatsApp and all kinds of things. But I'm hoping that
(21:29):
that happens. I'm hoping my kids are happy in school.
It's very hard to balance the needs of children who
are different and have different talents. My eldest, she's really
into music. She's also into religion. My second, he is
an avid baseball player. He's a very good baseball player.
He likes religion, but he enjoys the kind of rough
(21:50):
and tumble of public school, a little bit more more
of a street kid. East Persona and my third and
fourth are still developing who they are. But you know,
I'm hoping that the kids are happy and well adjusted
and my daughter will be on our way to some
good college. I hope something that's not.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
If they'll still exist by then, you know, yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
I mean, you know, I'm hoping for that kind of
personal happiness and because if I can enjoy that, it
probably means there's also a public happiness going on in
my community as well, so that that's where I hope
things are five years out.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
That's really great. We're rooting for you.
Speaker 2 (22:25):
Really, thank you.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
I've loved this conversation. I feel like I didn't know
that much about you, and I've really gotten to know
you on this On this talk, leave us here with
your best tip for my listeners on how they can
improve their lives.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
I'll give you a couple. I'll give you a couple
since I have a couple of props here just unintentionally.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
It's an audio show.
Speaker 2 (22:45):
But okay, yeah, oh I see, well, I'll exclaim. So
I've got some advice that came from my late friend
Scott Adams, which is that physical health is really the
foundation of everything else, and if you can exercise daily
or almost daily, you'll find that your mental and emotional
(23:06):
outlook is a lot better. And it doesn't have to
be strenuous exercise. You're not becoming an Instagram fitness influencer,
but just find something you enjoy. Could even be walking
your dog around the park a couple extra times, not
just to relieve the dog, but to just get some
more steps in. It's really great. I mean, you'll feel better.
And here's my problem. I mean, this is my favorite
(23:28):
form of exercise, and I'm not trying to flex too
hard here, maybe just a little bit, but you know,
this is this is one of my boxing gloves. I mean,
I discovered boxing almost ten years ago and I box
about twice a week and it's incredible, just absolutely incredible.
It's a wonderful. It's a wonderful form of exercise because
it is challenging, it's difficult, but you're also not really
(23:53):
going to get injured if you're not taking punches. So
I do a little bit of sparring, but not much.
Mostly what I'm doing is just fitness work and you're
not really going to get injured. I did run before.
Running is hard to keep up because after a while
your knees start to her hamstring. I just love boxing,
and the other piece of advice that was given to
me more than twenty five years ago that I actually
(24:15):
followed was to keep a daily journal, and there's a
still I do. There's a wonderful book called The Artist's
Way by Julia Cameron which she advises that people write
three pages a day, and lately I've only been able
to manage one a day. But this is this is
my latest journal. I have dozens and dozens of these
that I've that I've filled. I mean, this is this
(24:37):
is min wow. Wow.
Speaker 1 (24:38):
Jola is showing me really full pages in a journal.
Speaker 2 (24:42):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No. The challenge is you got to
fill the page. Really, you should fill three pages. But
I have a lot.
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Going on every day, every single day.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Every six days a week. I do. I do it, yeah,
six days a week and it it's.
Speaker 1 (24:56):
A hero when I check my email every day.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
You know. So it really opened up a lot of
pathways for me. I didn't become a screenwriter or or
winning novelist, you know. Really she advertises it as a
way to unlock your creativity, but there are other ways
to be creative. I just found ways of writing nonfiction
that came out of that experience, and I think that
(25:20):
practice enables me to write a lot of material in
a short period of time, because I start the day
by writing something for myself and so you kind of
get some creative ideas. You also get rid of the
mental clutter that you wake up with and then you
just write. So my advice would be get that book.
The two books I would recommend The Artist's Way by
(25:43):
Julia Cameron, and then Scott Adams's book, which I happen
to have here, how to fail at almost everything and
still win big. That's where he talks about many things,
but also about exercise. That would be my advice.
Speaker 1 (25:55):
Amazing, Thank you so much. He's Joel Pollock. Check out
the California Post. It is really awesome and I were
really rooting for California and for the California Post and
for you, Joel.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Thanks for coming on h
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