John Gerardi Guest Hosts - Checking in With District 8 State Assemblyman David Tangipa

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Joining me.

Speaker 2 (00:02):
Guy who I think is maybe a little bit part
of this new sort of a rising moment, new generation
here in local politics here at the sanwaqu Valley. He's
a California State Assembly member for a District eight. David Tongypo,
what's up, David.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
Hey, It's always good to see you, John and hang out.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
Absolutely, Well, we got to see each other last night
at the Charlie Kirk Memorial event that Turning Point USA's
Fresment State Chapter hosted on campus, which was a really
cool event. I thought it was really nicely done and
good to see so many students there. A couple of
great gray beards and gray hairs, but a lot of

(00:37):
students there, which was really encouraging. And I think we'll
talk a bit about what Charlie sort of meant to you.
I know you had gotten to meet him a bit,
you had gotten more personal interaction with him than I
ever did. But given that I've got you in the
building and you've been super active. This has been your
first year in the California State Assembly. I believe you

(00:59):
said you put something like fifty thousand miles on your
car just driving back and forth to Sacramento.

Speaker 1 (01:05):
Ninety two thousand. Oh geez, fifty thousand. One year.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
All right, So tell us a little bit about year
one in Sacramento. There highlights, low lights, most interesting things,
and we'll probably we'll head into talking about Prop fifty,
the ludicrous plan to redo all the district lines for
the House representative seats.

Speaker 3 (01:26):
Yeah, it's been one I mean, it's been one heck
of a year. I'll tell you that. I mean, we
get there. The first week, we have the largest economic
disaster in California's history with the LA wildfires. Right. I
had talked about often on how we were one large
scale disaster away from collapsing the insurance market here in
the state of California. I believe we are still in

(01:47):
that free fall portion of it. And then there's also
a lot more material failures. You know. My first year
being there, I do have a new record in California.
I am the fastest legislator to be it to have
been kicked off of committees.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
Yeah, well I was amazed at that. So tell us
a story about that.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
Because you just got there, you're a freshman, you get
assigned to committees, and then there's this petty I mean,
I mean the Democrats already control these committees. Like for
those who don't know, Democrats have a literal three quarters
majority in the state Assembly, yes, not an exaggeration, like
sixty to twenty, and so they proportionally have about that

(02:25):
much of a majority on all the individual committees. And
usually the two sides are not super petty about if
the Republicans want these people on the committee, Okay, we'll
let them have these people. They can, ultimately, though, just
choose to kick you off. So why did they choose
to kick Why were they picking on you? I mean
you who just got there, you know, five seconds ago.

Speaker 3 (02:46):
Yeah, well, I mean we started out. I mean I
have a lot of data, I have everything that I'm
talking about, And what they were trying to do was
simply crack the whip because as a freshman member, I
apparently didn't know my place right. And there were groups
of esecially on the progressive side. In most of them
are progressive.

Speaker 1 (03:04):
That they're even more progressive.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Yeah, it's yeah, it's the I would always say, it's
like it's a difference between crazy and kind of not
that great, less crazy. But the this is they are
so angry with Donald Trump, They're so angry that they're
just so blinded from that. And the way I described
it was Trump arrangement syndrome is hindering our ability to
govern our state properly because we are so reactive. I mean,

(03:28):
we we gabbled into a special session with the day
I swore in on December eighth, It's just supposed to
be a celebratory day, but instead the governor calls a
special session to allocate fifty million dollars to sue Donald Trump.
And he didn't take office till January twentieth. Our first
action was on that, and I was willing to speak
up from the very first point. The main reason why

(03:49):
the Legislative Analyst's Office. One of our first budget meetings,
they tell us that we are in a ten to
thirty billion dollar structural deficit mandatory payments, and that's part
let's talk.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Let's talk about that a little. So this is I mean,
you're just starting, you're hoping to be in, you know,
at this for maybe the next twelve years or so.
Maybe I'm forecasting. You can say or nothing, whatever you want.
Tell us what a structural deficit is and tell the
audience what is a structural deficit? What is this that

(04:20):
the state has found with these sort of deep seated
this is not just a one year bad physical problem.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
So people will remember from in twenty twenty one, we
had a ninety eight billion dollar surplus that was reported everywhere.
I mean, they were bragging about it, you know, and
that really turned Gavin Newsom into Oprah Winfrey and she
was like, you get this, you get this, you get this,
you get this. And then the next year we had
that sixty eight billion dollar deficit, but that was a
deficit of one time funding because he just promised everybody

(04:47):
they were going to get all this money. Sure, but
it wasn't you know, part of our built in legislature,
built in like right over.

Speaker 2 (04:56):
It was an overinflated number from the prior you know,
sixty eight whatever it was surplus.

Speaker 3 (05:02):
Yeah, well exactly, and most of the surplus actually came
from just the build back better COVID money. Well, they
just injected a bunch of money from the Biden administration.
They just gave it out to everybody. That's where it
was an artificial inflation on that part, not generate. We
didn't generate new revenue, which somebody gave us a loan
and then now what that did was really we thought,

(05:24):
I guess the increased revenue that we had seen through
the COVID periods was going to basically maintain. So we
passed a bunch of laws to you know, raise teacher salaries,
raise labor salaries, raise wages, raise here, raise here. That
now we've built into our structure that we can't afford

(05:45):
to do all of these programs that are now mandatory.
We can't pay the certain wages that we wanted to
and we're seeing that a lot in a lot of
our local municipalities as well. At that time during COVID,
everybody got a raise. Well, the only way when revenues
start to decrease to consolidate, you are either going to
have to decrease people's wages or you're going to have
to fire people. Right, And it's basically, I mean, it's

(06:08):
one of the most insane things. As a member of
the budget committee. Yeah, they told me that in our revenue,
the state revenue, forty two percent of our revenue comes
from capital gains. Yeah, that is extremely irresponsible.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
For those who don't know, is investment income that typically
it's you know, the upper what five percent of taxpayers
who are we are getting a lot of capital gains
revenue to themselves and paying in that revenue to.

Speaker 3 (06:34):
Well, actually the insane portion of it. In that same
meeting with the Legislative anast's office in the Department of Finance,
they stated that it was less than one percent. Yeah,
make up a majority of the forty two percent. But
the part that they irresponsible about it is forty two percent.
So almost fifty percent of our revenue is predicated on
capital gains, which is based on the stock market, which

(06:56):
means that if we have a stagnant year or a
depression of a slight maybe it's one percent, forty two
percent of our revenue is gone. Yeah, completely gone. And
now we have with the LA wildfires, fifteen thousand plus
parcels out there that have been completely destroyed the tax
revenue for LA. It's just it's the most irresponsible thing.

(07:18):
And I often say this. I'm twenty nine years old.
I'm the youngest member of the state legislature, and I'm
always having to tell them to act like adults, right, yeah,
and it's crazy to me.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
So now we're in this place where it's not that
oh we have a bad year, it's a twenty billion
dollar deficit. No, we're because we've increased this baseline level
of spending so much and revenue is not just not
going to catch up. We're going to have deficits, yes,
year over year over year, every.

Speaker 3 (07:42):
Year, bad year. The Legislative Analyst Report is actually a
three year projection, right, and they have stated again and
I got them to admit this Friday. I put out
a video on my social media having the Department of
Finance and LAO say yes, ten to thirty billion dollars
structural deficit year over year until twenty twenty eight. Only
reason why it's not in beyond twenty twenty eight is

(08:02):
because they just don't predict beyond twenty twenty eight. They
just do three year assessments. But a new one is
going to come in November, and the way that they
talked about it in this committee hearing, I honestly believe
that they're going to change that projection from ten to
thirty billion dollars. It's probably going to be a lot
closer to twenty five to fifty billion dollars structural deficit
in an adjustment. I just don't see how we don't
The only two areas of job growth we've seen in

(08:23):
the state of California is government and healthcare. The two
shakiest areas for our revenues is government and healthcare. Private
sector's blowing up, Our insurance is blowing up. People can't
afford it. And what the legislature is going to try
to do right now is put all the blame on
Donald Trump. That's what they're trying to do right now.

(08:45):
We have a big but the big, beautiful bill doesn't
even come into fruition until October first, and they're already
blaming it for the reason why we have hospital shutting down,
we have medical we are still in the Biden era policies,
and they're trying to blame Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
All right, Well, let's let's shift gears then to the
next biggest thing on the agenda for the legislature, which
is Prop fifty. So Prop fifty is Gavin Newsom's attempt
to redraw the district lines. And this is just for
House Representative members, right, not not for you or the
State Assembly or the state sentence. Is just for the
members of the House Representatives. Okay, So this is Gavin

(09:23):
Newsom's scheme to redraw our district maps only for this
emergency situation. It's okay, it's just temporary allegedly, And so
I want you to give us the update of sort
of where we are with it, how it's looking. You know,
I haven't seen too much polling recently in the last
couple of weeks. I think you're privy to more of
that stuff than I am. But what is your assessment

(09:44):
of how things are going with Prop fifty.

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Yeah, the last polling I had seen, and this is
prior to what happened to Charlie kirk, right, and there
are expectations that that this is going to shift quite
a bit. Yeah, it was fifty two. It was fifty
fifty percent in favor of voting yes Prop fifty because
the Democrats in California, they didn't really care what it was.
As long as somebody was fighting Donald Trump. They're willing

(10:07):
to throw out the Constitution. And this is what I
talk about when it comes to that Trump arrangement. Yeah,
you know, blinders, they just have blinders on. It doesn't matter.
We can you know, if it means to crash through
a wall, that we have to run over a crib. Yeah,
that's there.

Speaker 2 (10:20):
Will pass AB four ninety five or you know, some
people say, oh my god, we could talk about that
later anyway.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Well, and that's that's where with Prop fifty. What we're
seeing right now too is we just need people the
moment that they get their ballots to just vote no
on Prop fifty And it's an easy message. Governor Knewsom
and the Legislative Body. I mean, they admitted this is
a partisan jerrymander and they broke the constitution. And the
part that really bothers me is they did this whole
thing in four days. Four days, they allocated quarter billion dollars.

(10:49):
They they took bills completely we were we reworked them,
forced them onto us in the Elections Committee, and then
pushed it through. And they even admitted that they didn't
even the bills. I'm in my Elections committee meeting in
the chair of the Elections Committee. I'm looking at my
notes and the maps changed the day before, right before
we're asked. And I told the chair, I was like,

(11:09):
she's trying to limit my time, she's trying to cut
me off after speeding this entire thing through. And I
tell her, I was like, my questions aren't even relevant
because they changed the maps, and she goes, You've had
the chance to review this since Friday of last week,
and you should have done it. The consultant sitting next
to her had to scoot over tell her, no, Madam Chair,
the maps changed. Yeah, And I go, Madam Chair, the

(11:30):
fact that you didn't know that, yeah, grant me more time,
because forty million people here in the state of California
deserve a whole lot more than the twenty minutes of
questioning that I have, right because if I'm confused, I
haven't read it, I haven't seen it. How the heck
am I supposed to vote on it?

Speaker 1 (11:44):
So who drew the maps?

Speaker 2 (11:46):
This is the grand question ringing through the halls of
the Capitol as Ashley Zabala chases Democrat lawmakers. Ashley Zabala
the only reporter in Sacramento. I joke who drew the maps?

Speaker 3 (11:57):
We all know who drew the maps. It was Paul Mitchell,
a Democrat consultant, who drew the maps. He went on
a podcast and admitted that he drew the maps. But
in the legislation, and this is why I hate it
so much, as they're lying to people. In the legislation,
it says that the California Assembly and Senate Elections Committee
drew the maps? Why am I so angry about that?
That means I drew the maps. I'm on the elections committee.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
Yeah, So who was Who's the other person on the
Assembly member mesdo okay? Yeah, So I saw that the
clip went viral of her who drew the maps?

Speaker 1 (12:29):
I'm on, I'm in the Assembly. I didn't draw the maps.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
And I forget whom it was she was she was
interviewing or who was testifying before the committee that she
was grilling there. It was Curry, Yeah, Kurry okay, And
and she admitted she didn't draw the maps and who did?

Speaker 3 (12:50):
But then one of the other members was like, leadership
drew the maps. Curry is in leadership, and they're like me,
but I mean, I didn't do it. And then we
got another answer, you know, and then it's It's the
biggest thing for me is if they thought they were
doing the right thing, why are they lying on the
ballot statement? Why are they a lying to the It.

Speaker 2 (13:06):
Seems like they're trying to hold two obviously contradictory things
in place at the same time. One is that we
have to do this superpartisan thing because Trump is trying
to do it in Texas. So we have to we
have to do a superpartisan thing, but somehow it's not
superpartisan't like, I guess we're doing jerrymandering less politically than

(13:28):
the Republicans in Texas are. I mean, but it's the same.
It's the same thing. You're redrawing the maps to make
it really politically advantageous to one party. But I think
they realize if they just say that, they'll lose.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
No, if they do just say that, they do lose.
But not only that, this the entire argument when it
comes to Texas is actually built on a false premise. Texas.
Excuse me, Yeah, Texas has to redraw their maps because
Texas lost a case called Petty Way the Galveston County,
And what they found in that case was that Texas,
when they were doing their state legislature redistricting, kept minority

(14:02):
communities together in one singular district and they justified it
because of the Rights Act exactly. And now the courts
found that as illegal. It was race based redistricting. Right
that was done because a lawsuit from LULAC, which is
the Latino United Group in Texas, wanted the Biden DOJ

(14:23):
to take the Texas map and redraw it. So then
on July seventh of this year, the DOJ under the
Trump Department sent a letter to Texas stating that this
is your final notice.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
You have to.

Speaker 3 (14:34):
Redistrict or we will redistrict for you. So Texas, you know, decides, Okay,
we're going to do our own redistricting. We're going to
do it, you know. And really I wish President Trump
if he wanted the conversation to like, hey, draw me
more seeds or something like that, maybe we do it,
not do a truth social I mean, that doesn't really.

Speaker 1 (14:52):
I mean, he gives the game away a little.

Speaker 3 (14:53):
He just kind of just put it out there, Hey
give you more. And then that's where kind of like
that whole crazy thing. But Texas has to redraw their maps.
And this is the part where it really bothers me,
is we're about to allocate two hundred and fifty plus
million dollars. We're going to do all of this, and
then more than likely the maps here in California actually
can lose the same lawsuit that Texas lost because within ours,

(15:16):
we define communities of interests are redistricting based off of race.

Speaker 2 (15:20):
Right well, and the Supreme Court's about to take that on.
And yeah, serially two of the voting rights side, which
I've always thought was like I've always thought like that,
that just seems especially this Supreme Court, which seems so
eager to have an e race blind, equality based approaches
things which we've seen with you know, affirmative action cases
and college admissions and all kinds of stuff. I mean, which,

(15:42):
by the way, might down the road help things for
the Independent Redistricting Commission.

Speaker 1 (15:46):
Okay, this is the.

Speaker 3 (15:47):
Trevor carry Show on the Valley's Power Talk.

Speaker 2 (15:50):
I realized, David, looking at your district map, I had
always just sort of thought, yeah, he represents like Clovis.
And then I looked at your map and like it's
geographically humongous, Like you're like all the way from like
Bishop Well, you got all the kind of mountain area,
like all the way to the Nevada border.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
Twenty five thousand square miles, and so I'm the way
the easier way to describe it is, I've got city
of Fresno, city of Clovis northern portion, and then the
top of my district's forty five minutes away from Tahoe,
and the bottom of my district's forty five minutes away
from Vegas.

Speaker 1 (16:18):
Holy Cow.

Speaker 3 (16:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
So anyway, a humongous thing, which no wonder you've put, however,
many ninety two miles on your truck. All right, real quick,
just your your bottom line assessment of Prop fifty and
what you think is going to happen, and then we'll
talk a little bit about Charlie Kirk. We were at
is a little visual event for Charlie Kirk at Fresnes State.

(16:41):
So assessment of Prop fifty the redistricting thing. Do you
think it's gonna succeed? I think it's going to be close.
What's your thought? The data shows that it's very close.
Fifty two percent is the polling right now. I do
believe we can defeat it, which in California is astonishing.
Which fifty two and that's the Democrats win everything sixty
to forty.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yeah, that's with all the games that they're playing too.
I mean, their fiscal impact report actually isn't doesn't just
tell us two hundred and eighty million dollars or whatever
it is. It tells us will cost a few million
to some of the county or to the counties across
the state of California. That's what the Fiscal Impact Report
is instead of saying two hundred plus million.

Speaker 1 (17:17):
But yeah, I mean, how many counties do we have?
We have, like yeah, fifty eight.

Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah, so if it costs like three million for each one,
that's a lot of three or four million for everyone.

Speaker 1 (17:23):
That's a lot of more it's going.

Speaker 3 (17:24):
To cost like just yeah, like I think La County
it's like thirty million dollars. Yeah, but instead of saying that,
it says a few million for the counties across California.
I mean that that's the part. It's so many lies. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Well, I can't wait to read Rob Bonta's I'm sure
incredibly fair and objective ballot description of it.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
I have it.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Oh, how is it?

Speaker 3 (17:45):
It's ridiculous, Okay, I mean it says in the light
of like Texas doing what they're doing, you know, you're
willing to protect the citizens redistrict and Commission in twenty
thirty so that way we can do it right now,
or to reject what's happening.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
So it's deliberately going to be which I think we
all predicted, It's deliberately gonna be written so that you
might vote yes on accident thinking that you're voting no,
like like.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Because because it says to protect the Redistricting Commission, we
have to pause the redistricting Commission. Yeah, to protect the
state of California.

Speaker 2 (18:20):
Well even even the thing he's saying, you know, in
light of what Texas is doing. They took all the
language about Texas out of this amendment. So it used
to be it was if Texas goes through with it's redistricting.

Speaker 3 (18:32):
They removed the trigger language. Yeah, that's what we call it.
They remove the trigger language. And they did that on
the day we've voted on it, right, And that's why
I threw a fit. I mean, because I think that's
worth it. If I can't see the language, if I
can't do it, I don't want to vote on it.
Forty million people deserve better and so but that's where
we can defeat Prop fifty. I'm working on it personally
here in the Central Valley. People can go to reject

(18:52):
fifty dot com. Just reject fifty dot com. Sign up.
We've got a walk day that we're launching in Harlan
Ranch in Clovis. We're going to hit all the doors
and we just need people. They're going to get their
ballots on either October fourth through the sixth. They get
that that first week. They don't even know that an
election is going on. And if they just turn in, no,
no more power for Newsom, no more power for the legislature.

(19:13):
I always tell people this. The message isn't redistricting. The
message is, do you want to give the people who
gave us the highest poverty in the nation, the highest
unemployment in the nation, the highest on affordability in the nation,
the highest utility costs in the nation, an insurance catastrophe?
Do you want to give them more power? And when
they say heck, no, thank you, make sure you vote

(19:33):
no on Prop fifty. Let's not send that to Washington.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
On a personal note, I'll note that when Planned Parenthood
of California's director came forward to testify in favor of
a redistricting measure, I feel like it gives me a
bit more of a green light, Like, oh, okay, so
you know, I wouldn't normally have right to life take
a position on something so distinct from abortion, as you know,
redistricting policy. But I guess if Planned parent Died wants

(19:58):
to take the opposite position, maybe I will too.

Speaker 3 (20:00):
That is also the wife of Paul Mitchell who drew
the maps. That's the Democrat consultant. Even better, who they
tried to hide and put away, that is his wife.

Speaker 2 (20:08):
A lot of interesting marriage relationships up in Sacramento between
people with various levels of interest, like you know, Rob
Bonta interesting one way interesting as a way to describe it. Okay,
very quickly, just in the last minute or two. I
hate to sell you short here. You knew Charlie Kirk,
You got to meet Charlie Kirk. You were hoping to
do more events and stuff with Charlie Kirk. How has

(20:29):
he impacted you? How's he impacted you as a young lawmaker,
as a young guy who's getting into politics like this,
I've sort of likened it to you know, Kennedy had
this big impact on all these young Democrats who came
into politics, and I just wanted to hear how he
impacted you.

Speaker 3 (20:43):
Yeah. Well, for me, you know, what was great was
seeing somebody who was young, bold and confident to say
that I love my faith, I love my family, and
I love my country. And then he went into the
areas of free speech and said, talk to me, tell
me the difference in our ideologies and where I'm more
motivated than ever because Charlie's only weapon was a microphone,

(21:04):
and yet he was called a Nazi and he was
called a fascist. I don't remember Hitler going, hey, change
my mind, let's figure this out. I don't remember Mussolini going, hey.

Speaker 1 (21:12):
Yeah, he wasn't doing that.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
Hey change exactly changed my mind. And yet that's the
way that we've been described. And look if whether you
agreed or disagreed with Charlie on all of his beliefs
or some of his beliefs, he wanted people to have
that disagreement, you know. And the way that I've always
described it too is you can't even get everybody at
a Thanksgiving table to agree on everything, so why would

(21:34):
they demonize? And he was killed because of it, and
that's supposed to strike fear into us. So I couldn't
be more grateful to see what he was doing as
the youngest legislator here in the state of California working
on that side. I will not cower down. I believe
all of us have a right to stand up. I
believe he what we witnessed was an American practicing the

(21:54):
First Amendment that was killed and publicly executed in front
of us to strike fear and those who who just
wanted to be bold and convicted. He talked about that
the greatest virtue is courage and to be courageous. So
I'm asking everybody to be courageous in their own values,
stand up for what they believe in, because that's what
Charlie stood up for.

Speaker 1 (22:13):
This is the Trevor carry Show on the Valley's Power Talk.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
A ridiculous scandal involving the Los Angeles Clippers. Now I
know Charlie Kirk passed away. Everyone's talking about it. That's
the dominant story. If I talk about Charlie Kirk for
four straight hours radio, I think I might lose my mind.
This is John Girardi, by the way, filling in for
Trevor Carrey. So I want to talk about something lighter
and a little more fun, which is a really stupid

(22:41):
environmentalist story having to do with basketball. What how would
that work? All right, let me break this down for you.
I'm sure CK on Sports has talked about this. I
need to have Ck have me on the show on
Fox Sports thirteen forty and talk about this from a
lawyer angle. All right, In the national Basketball Association. They

(23:04):
have this thing called a salary cap, and basically what
it means is that individual teams they give contracts to
players and they pay their players a certain amount per year.
They have a salary cap, which basically means each team
is not allowed to spend more than this amount of
money per year, which has two effects. One, it kind

(23:24):
of allows the amount of revenue that goes to the
players to be kind of capped a little bit, so
owners can keep more of the revenue for themselves. But
it also helps maintain a certain kind of competitive parody
in the NBA. So it's not that the richest team
doesn't get to win all the time every time, year

(23:46):
over year. We could see this in the last NBA Finals.
It was the Oklahoma City Thunder beating the Indiana Pacers, right,
not the New York Knicks playing the Los Angeles Lakers.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
Okay, So if.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
You exceed the the salary cap within a certain amount,
you have to pay to the NBA what's called a
luxury tax. It's basically money you have to pay over
and above. It's sort of your penalty for exceeding the cap,
and the money goes to the other owners. And then
there's a certain cap even above that that you're absolutely
not allowed to pass. So if an owner bypasses the
salary cap, it's really bad. It's like the cardinal sin

(24:26):
in the NBA, because you're not only gaining an unfair
competitive advantage, you're stealing from the other owners. So basically,
the fear that the NBA sometimes has is owners paying
a player under the deal, under the table with some
kind of sweetener. So, oh, you get to use the
team's private jet anytime, the owner's private jet anytime you want.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Oh, I'll give you your brother a multi million dollar
deal to be this or that.

Speaker 2 (24:56):
And there have always been rumors of little things like that. Okay,
oh you get to use the private jet. Oh you
get to stay at the owners use the owner's yacht
for a weekend. Blah blah blah. Little sweeteners like that
have been going to players for a long time. However,
this news story got broke by this NBA podcaster and

(25:18):
writer named Pablo Torre, where he found documentary evidence pointing
to the idea that the Los Angeles Clippers were paying
one of their players, their star forward Kawhi Leonard, under
the table, to the tune of not you know, what's
a flight on a private jet worth you know, fifty

(25:38):
thousand dollars, sixty thousand dollars a twenty eight million dollar
deal to be a spokesman for a team sponsor, this
company called Aspiration more about them later, in which in
the contract there it was structured in such a way

(26:01):
that Leonard could get all of the money and not
do anything. It was an endorsement deal for this company.
And Leonard never endorsed them at all. He never did
any endorsement activity. He didn't appear in a commercial, he
didn't even like any of the company's social media posts.

(26:24):
And it was this company that the owner of the Clippers,
Steve Balmer, Yes, that's Steve Balmer, the former CEO of Microsoft,
one of he's in the top ten richest men in
the world and the wealthiest owner in the NBA. By
the way, a team sponsor in whom Balmer had invested

(26:45):
was giving Kawhi Leonard twenty eight million dollars for what
looked like a no show job, like Tony Soprano would have. Okay,
when you got to pay off the union, you've got
to pay off the mob guys through the labor union.
What do you do well. You set up a construction
contract to do work on a site and it's a
no show job. You get paid, the mafia pockets the

(27:08):
money and no one actually does any work. A no
show job. Okay, So the implication is that the owner
of the Clippers, Steve Bamer, paid this player twenty eight
million dollars under the table to evade the NBA's salary
cap by using a team sponsor. Now the topic of
interest for those of you who are interested in conservative politics,

(27:30):
this is not a sports show, is the nature of
the company itself, Aspiration the Green Bank. This is a
company that specializes in what's called carbon offset credits. Let

(27:51):
me explain what that is. When Leonardo DiCaprio goes on
a yacht trip, guess what yachts need all they need
gas to function. So when Leo DiCaprio gets on his
boat and it's got a sign there, you must be
under this age to step on the boat, which, for
in Leonardo DiCaprio's case is only women under the age

(28:14):
of twenty five. As soon as a woman turns twenty six,
Leo breaks up with her. Anytime Leo's on a boat,
he's expending a ton of carbon emissions. Anytime John Kerry
jumps on a private jet, he's expending a ton of
carbon emissions. You know, if Bill Gates wants to have
the air conditioning on in his twenty thousand square foot mansion,

(28:37):
carbon emissions. And these guys have realized that they are
flat out hypocrites for telling the rest of us to
live by these environmentalist standards that they obviously don't live by.
Leo DiCaprio has expended more carbon than I will ever
expend in my life. Okay, if I just don't go
on a private jet ride at any point in my life,
I will have expended less, fewer, less emissions than Leo DiCaprio.

(29:03):
So what do they do well, they try to find
a way to assuage their consciences. Here comes carbon offset emissions. Also,
you have corporations that want to look good for this
thing called ESG, environment Social and governance. It's basically this
way that the left has sort of infiltrated corporate America

(29:25):
to push various kinds of left preferred dogmas like DEI environmentalism,
et cetera. If you do something that is environmentally friendly,
if you try to make your business more carbon neutral,
that your ESG score goes up, and certain kinds of

(29:46):
Biden administration placating investors might be more willing to invest
in you, liberal investors, liberal shareholders who seemingly are more
interested in being woke than in generating value for shareholders. Now,

(30:07):
what is a carbon offset though, that's what Aspiration was
offering to companies, to individuals. What's a carbon off set? Well, basically,
it's you give Aspiration money and they turn around and
they help coordinate some kind of project to plant trees. Now,
if you're sitting there thinking that seems dicey, you would

(30:30):
be right. How can you really give a perfect scientific
one to one ratio between equivalents between Leo DiCaprio private
jet flight on the one hand, and planting X number
of trees in Africa?

Speaker 1 (30:43):
You can't. It's apples and orange.

Speaker 2 (30:46):
It probably varies depending on the kind of the tree,
how well the tree is kept for it does the tree?
What if the tree dies from some disease in five year?
I mean, on and on and on. This company, Aspiration,
that was their bread and butter, was selling this stuff
and it's now beginning to seem as if the investments
that Balmer was making in this company and his purchase

(31:09):
of credits were then going through aspiration to Kawhi Leonard. Oh,
by the way, this is the Trevor Cherry Show on
the Valley's Power Talk. I'm the executive director at Right
to Life of Central California and also the development director
for the Obria Medical Clinics of Central California. You can
go to rtlcc dot org. So, hey, this is the pitch.

(31:30):
All right, I gotta pay the bills. I ain't running
a charity here. Oh wait, I'm helping run like two charities.
If you like this show, if you like John Girardi,
if you're like, hey, I'm pro life, I like John Girardi.
I want to go to a great Christmas party. Allow
me to recommend to all of you that you go
to RTLCC dot org and you click the big link

(31:54):
up there for our Christmas Dinner and auction which is
coming up on Iday, December fifth. But you can buy
a table right now, you can buy a sponsorship right now.

Speaker 1 (32:03):
All that jazz.

Speaker 2 (32:05):
So go to RTLCC dot org and click the banner there,
and it's a great party. It's at the Valdez Hall,
the Fresno Convention Center. It's one of the largest silent
and live auctions, one of the largest charity auctions in
the Western United States. We'll have a thousand people in there.
It's a really fun event. Also, you can go to

(32:26):
Obria three six five dot org to support our Obria Clinic.
One of the big things we did coming out of
Right to Life was we saw that, you know, among
the women we were helping and assisting, we were assisting
women who were in This is what we do it
right to Life. We do educational presentations all the time.
We have our radio show on Power Talk every Saturday.
I talk for church groups all up and down the region.

(32:50):
And one of the things we were realizing was that
for a lot of lower income women in Fresno, a
lot of medical women. There's a ton of women on
medical and fewer doctors who are able to take medical
for OBGYN because they lose too much money. So we
decided to start a nonprofit clinic that can be supported

(33:10):
with your charitable support to help these women provide them
with awesome prenatal care. So we started the Obria Clinic.
The clinics located at the corner of Fresno and Barstow
Avenues and it's a full service Obgyn clinic. We provide
everything from your original intake pregnancy test all the way

(33:32):
through deliveries, which we do at Community Downtown and at
Adventist Hospital in Hanford. We have two docs, one nurse
practitioner and it's doing wonderful work. We're serving some of
the poorest of the poor in the San Joaquin Valley.
We've taken care of women who are homeless. We've taken
care of women who are victims of sex trafficking through

(33:52):
our partnership with Fresno Area breaking the Chains, and it's
just wonderful stuff. But it ain't cheap it. You know,
We're we're taking on this task of serving this population
because it loses other people money. So we need your
help and we need your support. So I would really
encourage you. If you've got fifty dollars in your pocket,

(34:13):
if you've got a dollar in your pocket pocket a day,
go to Obria three sixty five oh b ri Ia
three six five dot org and you can sign up
for Obria three sixty five, which is basically you give
a dollar a day, dollar day to support the work
of Obria. And if you want to give more than
a dollar a day. If you want to give, hey,
give a thousand dollars a day. Give give me, give
me two hundred thousand dollars right now. That would also

(34:36):
be cool. We want to build a new building. Sometimes
this assist the Trevor Carry Show Mondo Valley's power Dog,