The Brett Davis Podcast with Dan Plante (Ep 570)

BLU Lapis Southern California Leaders Award Summit Winner for the "Storytelling Brilliance Award

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hello, everybody. It's an honorto get to meet Dan Platt here at
the studio, actually here today onhis off time. Brett, thank you
for inviting me. Yes, thisis my day off on Fridays, and
I always reserve it for events likethis. Anytime I'm waiting for Brett to
call her Texas say what are youdoing on Friday? Man? We want
a half you on the show.So he did it, and here I
am, and I really appreciate.It's an honor to be on your podcast.

(00:23):
Seriously, what's an honor because Ihave been very happy with the work
that you and I have done,and Larry and Sarah because honestly, I
think is awaken people more and peopleare now. I mean, just in
just the last couple of days,we've had a huge increase in numbers of
people that have watched the film.I think it went up like five hundred

(00:46):
people since yesterday. Yeah, sowe're talking about, of course, sewage.
If you're not aware talking about dyou want a sewage crisis and everybody
your documentary, Yeah, I guessyou already knew that. But anyway,
it's called The Big Dump and ithas had an amazing pact it really hasn't.
And if you want to talk,I mean, you guys, put
your heart and soul into this.As you know, I've been covering this
story as a news reporter since collegenineteen eighty four, Brett, and here

(01:10):
we are twenty twenty four, andit is worse today than it's ever been.
Right. So when you told methis, originally, I thought,
how can this be? Because youhave a strong voice in media, people
listen to what you say. Yethere we are twenty twenty four. You
probably were in college around nineteen eightyfour, that was it. I graduated

(01:32):
eighty four. You that's forty years. So when you said that, I
thought, you know, this filmhas to make some type of impact because
I can't imagine you going the restof your life and this is still being
a problem. And you know,no, you know that's exactly right.
And generations and generations. You know. The Congressman Brian Bill Bray, former
congressman from Imperial Beach. He wasalso the mayor of Imperial Beach. He

(01:55):
was a kind of superhigh. Buthis famous saying is I'm now working on
fourth generation sewage babies. His brand, his great grandchildren. And that's no
lie. And Brian Bilbray was theone who got the bulldozer and said,
hey, if the government's not goingto do this, I'm going to do
it myself. He rented this big, huge front loader and he started pushing
the dirt into the Tijuana River totry to back it up into Tijuana so

(02:15):
the sewage wouldn't come in and obviouslypollute our beaches. And Brian was also
a lifeguard at the time and asurf still a surfer to this day.
But yes, that's sort of thethe epitome of how long this has been
going on. Fourth generation sewage babies, and it actually goes back to the
nineteen forties if you want to followit all the way. But as the
population of Tijuana grows and the sewagesystem remains the same, it becomes our

(02:38):
problem more every single day. Imean, right now, the CEA of
Tijuana has about three million people inthe metro area. They have a sewage
system for about a half a million. Do the math, and the rest
of it comes our way. Thisis a crisis, This is a catastrophe.
This should be a state of emergency. And I know a lot of
local politicians have been appealing to thePresident and the governor to declare a state

(03:00):
of emergency down here. And notonly that, but the effort that you
have had through your movie and theschools and the school system is amazing.
And I visited those kids and wehave hundreds of kids on board now writing
letters to the governor, to thePresident. And as I said in my
reports, if they don't listen tothe big people, maybe they'll listen to
the young ones. Right. Andyou know what, that story kicked off

(03:21):
two more schools, So now wehave a total of three schools. Nice.
Nice. Yeah. So that meanswe have to move up to the
North County now. Yeah. Andyou know what I've always said about this
as well, is out of sight, out of mind, right, And
so if you're up in the NorthCounty, you don't have these problems.
You go out to your beaches andpretty much everything's fine. The water's clean
anyway. They have some sand issues, right, and some erosion issues and

(03:42):
some crumbling cliffs, that's for sure, but they have clean water as you
get around Point Loma, and theydon't have a problem. I've heard it
is is now is getting sewage?Well, it's got to be from here
right now. There's now there's differentsort of sources of sewage up in those
areas, the creeks, and ofcourse there's little you know, sewage pipes
that leak and things like that.But the amazing thing is, and you

(04:04):
mentioned an interesting thing, is oh, Encinitas has sewage. Let's get after
it immediately, right, Let's fixthis, let's trace it, and let's
track it down and let's stop it. Well, what's been happening down here
in the South Bay for the pastforty years. Why don't we do the
same thing with the same urgency.Up in Long Beach, there was a
five thousand gallon oil spilled. Theyclosed down the entire beach for like a

(04:25):
week exaggeration it was like three days. But I mean they literally, literally
the first sight of some nasty stuffin the water, they dealt with it.
Down here on our border, we'renow measuring the sewage in the billions
of gallons, not the millions.In the billions. And by the way,
the formula when it rains now,and we've had a lot of rain

(04:46):
lately, the formula down there inthe Tijuana River Valley is for every inch
of rain, you get one billiongallons of runoff, and if it's coming
from Tijuana, that billion gallons ofrunoff is carrying fecal matter, diseases,
heavy metals, chemicals that have beenoutlawed in the United States for decades.
We're talking DDT not to mention themkiadoras that the American companies on the other

(05:10):
side of the border that are dumpingsome really nasty stuff, because the environmental
restrictions over in Mexico are basically nonexistent. And so it is up to
us in the United States to takethe lead on this and clean if it's
ever gonna happen, it's going tohappen because the United States is going to
take the lead. And I havealways sort of preached the only way we're
going to get this done is throughthe Army Corps of Engineers. So that's

(05:31):
how big this job is. Anysort of piecemeal approach to this is just
not going to work. Get inthere, carve out the Tijuana River valley
because it's all clogged up with plastic. Some of the river valleys have been
grown over by trees, and nowwhen it rains, and if it rains
an inch, that's a billion gallonsthose rivers are clogged up and the river

(05:51):
changes direction, and now the farmsand the horse ranches are getting flooded as
a result. Not just flooded withwater. This isn't water. This is
water that will kill these horses ifthey drink it. So this is a
nasty situation down there. And obviouslythe biggest problem is it's an international situation
and the folks on that side ofthe border have a completely different approach to

(06:12):
the environment as on our side ofthe border. Right. And not to
mention, of course, of theair quality. Now we're hearing more and
more about quality, the nasal raineffect possibly when it rains fog Now with
that's like poison fog. It remindsme of London, you know, back
in the eighteen hundreds when they havethe poison fog, thousands of people died
just from breathing the air. Thatcould happen and down there, well,

(06:34):
what's happening here is and there wasa study by a scientist that you see
San Diego, very well renowned aerosolscientist, right, and she studied other
you know, sort of aerosols thatare poisoning people around the world. But
when the folks from Imperial Beach cameto her and said, can you look
at the ocean spray and can youlook at the sort of the mist that's

(06:55):
coming off the ocean and test thatand see what are we breathing down there?
And what they found out was yourwhat you're breathing in the air is
the same stuff that's flowing in thewater, and it's coming up in an
aerosol form, and it is justnasty. So it is in the water,
it is in the land, andit is in the air. And
this is a catastrophe that needs toend. There needs to be a state

(07:16):
of emergency, and hopefully as yourally all these school kids around San Diego,
somebody in Washington and Sacramento will finallyopen their eyes and ears to the
longest environmental catastrophe in American history.Let's be honest, this movie was took
a lot of varieties of talent.You you were a huge part of the
movie. Why it did so well, the covers that you did, the

(07:39):
trust the public has with you,Bill Bray being in the movie. Ron
Morrison, you know, of courseploma yea Coloma has become the new warrior.
Of course, she's really fighting forher city. Yeah, yeah,
I mean, she really is.And you know, Serge de Diino,
of course, was the previous mayorin John Duncan, John Duncan the future

(08:00):
mayor of Coronado. Of course,we'll be there was in the movie.
But Paloma really has she stepped up, and she stepped up in that she
is not backing down from the stateof emergency and nothing short of a state
of emergency. Quite honestly, we'llfix this problem. Obviously, there's a
lot of layers of things that youneed to qualify for a state of emergency

(08:22):
for the state government or for thefederal government. But it has to start
in the state level, and thenthe state would appeal to the federal right
and then if the federal agrees,then we get possibly the Army Corps of
Engineers down here to finally do thisjob and stop the madness because generations and
generations of kids are being poisoned aswe speak. The south end of Imperial
Beach has now been closed for overeight hundred days. That is two and

(08:46):
a half years. If my mathis correct, it's about two and a
half two years and one hundred days, and so that is just unconscionable.
Can you imagine anywhere else in theUnited States of America where the government turns
its eye and turns its back ona catastrophe like this, And of course
it's dealing with the Mexican government.This is the most difficult part of this,
dealing with a foreign government that reallydoesn't care. And quite honestly,

(09:09):
if you want to look at theflows and how the flows went during the
Trump administration, when Trump was puttingup the border wall and Trump was slamming
the people of Mexico and doing allthose things, guess what happened. Our
sewage problem got worse during that entiretime. Really, it got much worse
during that time. If you lookat the numbers of sewage, if you

(09:31):
look through the years, and youcan find this on the internet, you
will see that during the Trump years, stuff started flowing down in record numbers
like we have never seen before.Almost like it was punishment from the Mexican
government to say, take this America. Unfortunately, that's not America. That
is the South Bay of San Diego. You want to punish someone, punish
the people in Washington, but theycan't do that. All they can do

(09:54):
is punish the people in the UnitedStates. And there's a lot of people
who believe and a lot of peoplewith good information who believe that one of
the reasons it got worse was becauseDonald Trump was there slamming and putting up,
putting up the walls. Very interesting. Yeah, so we have a
presidency going on an election in Mexico. Yes, and I keep hearing the
name Shinebaum, Claudia Shinbaum. Yeah. So Mexico either way is going to

(10:18):
be historic because there will be afemale president. Because the way Mexico runs
their elections, the parties pick theirpeople and then they decide, hey,
you're going to be the next president. There's always an opposition party who once
in a while can win, butusually the ruling party, which is Amlow
right now, he chose Shinbaum,so Shinebaum will probably get in now.

(10:39):
The interesting thing about her is thatshe is a Nobel Prize winning environmentalist,
was part of a project, anenvironmental project, so she is aware of
the environment. Whether she can whethershe can work the government and the system
to help the environment is another questionaltogether, because once you once you get
into that office, you start answeringto a lot of different sources that want

(11:01):
you to do things or not wantyou to do things if you know what
I mean, wink wink. Youknow, there's a lot of very powerful
cartel forces that control things. Theycontrol the entire border. As we know,
the cartels control all the people goingacross, they control all the drugs
going across, They control majority ofthe money. There are the government.
They are the government. And quitehonestly, if you look at how Amlo

(11:24):
the you know, the current presidentof Mexico treats these guys. I think
he said hugs. You know,basically, we're going to deal with this
with hugs, not guns. Andyou're talking about the cartel that beheads people
for hobby, you know that killsurfers down in you know from ob from

(11:45):
my hometown. Three surfers just murdereddown there by the cartel because they wanted
the tires off of their trucks.So this is a very corrupt nation.
And quite honestly, Serge Dedina saidto me, had said to me many
times over the years, and hewas the mayor. He says, you
know, Dan, we're getting tiredof sending money over there because every time
we send money over there, wehave to send more money because the problem

(12:07):
doesn't get fixed. We've sent tenmillion dollars over to fix the same pipe
ten times that one pipe was costUS one hundred million dollars and it's still
not fixed. Well, where doyou think that money's going. Where do
you think that money's going. It'sgoing to corruption, it's pocketd it's being
pocketed. And that's the way itis over there. So if Cloudy as
shinebaumb wins the presidency, and sheprobably will, and by the way that

(12:28):
election is coming up, I believenext month it is, perhaps somebody from
the United States can appeal to herabout this madness and the longest environmental disaster
in American history. Because the truthis Brett as you know, it's not
just our disaster over here, althoughthe swells tend to go from the south

(12:48):
to the north and push it uptowards us, but all the people in
Tijuana and Las Plaias down there aregetting poisoned as well. But the Mexican
government doesn't care to put up signssaying polluted water. They say, come
on in, the water's fine.So there's generations of people down there have
been poisoned and they maybe don't evenrealize it, or they don't care,

(13:09):
or they don't care because they gottheir own problems going on. Well,
that's for sure. We know thegovernment doesn't care, but I guarantee you
that the good families that live downthere across the border, they care.
They don't want to complain though,No, they don't want to complain because
they know the consequences and they knowthey will get Nowhere, what's your take
on all the people that are movingto Tijuana because of the cost of living
and do you think that's going tohave an impact on the current situation with

(13:35):
the sewage as far as maybe seeingholdtype situations because they're building on that old
foundation, they're not fixing any ofit now. Yeah, Well, the
infrastructure down there is absolutely crumbling.You know. There's a lot of new
buildings going up as well, butthe infrastructure down there has changing. No,
it has been crumbled. Here's theproblem is when you build another five
hundred person, five hundred apartment unitand don't put it in the proper plumbing,

(14:01):
what do you think is going tohappen? Right? I mean seriously,
and that's what they do. Itcould implode. It absolutely could implode,
you know. And the other thingis is there's complex there are entire
housing complexes that are going up onthe hillsides of Tijuana. You can see
them right now, Yes, thathave no plumbing. What no plumbing,
It goes directly into a pipe intothe hillside. Some of them have septic

(14:26):
tanks, but they are literally buildinghousing complexes that have pipes that go into
the hillside, that roll down thehill. It is just beyond comprehension,
beyond I've heard of anything like that. Yeah, well, I've talked to
some of the contractors and they're afraidto talk out loud, and they can
get away with that, and theycan get away with that because they're across
the border. Yeah, it's justit really is a tremendous strategy. And

(14:48):
we and we hope, you know, we hope that you know, Cloudy
a shine bomb. I mean,at the same time, who knows what
will be happening in the United Statesof America. I mean Trump could be
coming in and then doubling down onthe border wall and that could you know,
stir the hornet's nest again, andClaudy Scheinbaun could say, Okay,
well you're going to do that,then we're gonna dump people. You never
know, I mean, it's politics, right, and we're talking about international

(15:11):
relations here. This isn't like ifthis was a private corporation, if this
was you know, some chemical corporateI'm not going to say a name,
but if some chemical corporation or someauto manufacturing plant that was dumping all this
stuff and creating this environmental disaster,they'd be shut down and the guys would
be in jail absolutely period. Atthe very least, they'd be fined a
lot a lot of money, anda lot of lawyers would make a lot

(15:33):
of money keeping those guys out ofjail. You know, your work has
been impeccable on covering his story sinceyou were at San Diego State and just
working with you, and just everybodyin the community has such high respect for
you. Everywhere everywhere we go,everybody's you know, they're like, God,
he was even in the movie,and he's he cares, and so,

(15:54):
you know, we decided that it'stime to do an event that honors
the human spirit and people that aredoing good things, just because it's the
right thing to do. There's noreason why you're not. You're not expecting
anything other than the fact you care, and so you're getting the first Storytelling
Brilliance Leadership Award. This is justsigned up brilliance. Yes, thank you,

(16:18):
yes, thank you, sir.I don't think I've ever been referred
to us brilliant, but thank you. And Dan's wife out there, please
recognize the word brilliant. Yes,please, honey, I'm brilliant. Feel
like I feel like I've just arrivedat the Land of Oz and I have
a hat for brilliance. Thank you, thank you, But I want to
thank you and Sarah also, thanksyou, Larry K and the other yeah,

(16:44):
the boss, she's the boss.Yeah, but all the other people
that are on that board, Nata'spolice said, you are the one that
we want to have that award forall the hard work that you do and
continue to do. See, Idon't know what, San Diego. There's
nobody like you anymore. It reallytells it the way it is now,
there isn't Unfortunately, the media businesshas changed to the point where there's a

(17:06):
lot of fear. There's a lotof fear of lawsuits, there's a lot
of fear of offending people. Imean, you know back in the day.
You know, I'm a third generationbroadcaster too. My family has been
continuously in the broadcasting business for onehundred years without a break, starting with
my grandfather. Nineteen twenty four washis first professional job. But he was

(17:26):
in the broadcast core in World WarOne, amazing, right, and so
when World War One came to anend, of course, he was a
great broadcaster and actually ended up hisname was Patrick Henry Barnes and actually ended
up one year, I think itwas nineteen twenty six winning what would be
the equivalent to the Academy Award ofRadio because back then there wasn't television,
so the Academy Awards were given toradio people. Yeah, and it was

(17:48):
called the Golden Mike Award, andPatrick Henry Barnes won the Golden Mic Award.
My brother Crys still has the trophy, that's amazing at his house in
Washington, d C. My brotherChris is a radio broadcaster in DC and
also has a TV show on Newsmax. It's called The Chris Plant, The
Right Squad, that's what it's called. So yeah, so my family's been

(18:10):
in this business for one hundred years. So yeah, it is a little
bit it's painful to see sort ofthe delusion of you know, the real
hardcore journalism in television because when Iwas growing up, you know, we
had Bill Plant, which is myfather asking the tough questions of Reagan or
Clinton or whoever it was at theWhite House because he was at my dad,

(18:33):
well, let me just start,So started with Grandpa nineteen twenty four,
first job Kdeka. I believe it'sin Pittsburgh. So here we are,
twenty twenty four. That is onehundred years. My mom was one
of the first anchor women in theworld because women were really weren't on TV
in the early fifties. But becausemy grandpa became the vice president and general
manager of WISN in Wisconsin, hesaid, hey, daughter, Barbara,

(18:56):
come on, let's do a show. She just graduated from Northway Western with
a theater degree, and by theway, graduated with Charlton Heston. Wow.
Yeah, one of my favorite actors. That's right. Went to school
with him, theater class with CharltonHeston. Charles went up to become Moses.
And my mom, well, shewent on to get her own morning
show and have six children, sixboys, and then of course all through

(19:18):
my father, Bill Plant fifty fiveyears at CBS, thirty five at the
White House. So I've seen journalismin its true form. I've been there
at the front seat for my entirelife. You know. I was in
the middle of the nineteen seventy twoyou know riots in Chicago. It was
an amazing thing. And it's aquick story. If you have a second,
have a second. This is fascinating. Yeah. So seven nineteen seventy

(19:41):
two, I believe was the year, was a Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Humphrey, it was, I believe, so. Yes, I don't
really remember that much. It wasHumphrey. Yeah, so I was a
kid. But what happened was theproducers from CBS News in New York said,
We've got to get all the bigwigs over to Chicago, and let's

(20:02):
meet at the Plant house. Let'smeet at Bill Plant's house. So here
we are. We're living in glenView, Illinois, a little suburb outside
of Chicago. And suddenly, abouttwelve fifteen, eighteen hours later or whatever,
we have Walter Cronkite sitting at mytable. We have Dan Rather sitting
at my table. We have aguy named Ike Pappus who is one of
the greatest correspondents. We have mydad, Bill Plant, one of the

(20:23):
greatest correspondents ever and all these producersand they're sitting around the table making plans
on how to cover the riots thatare happening in downtown Chicago and would eventually
explode. So this is like thefront seat where I have been for my
entire life, and as I seethe whole business getting watered down, it

(20:44):
really is depressing. There's still someareas where you can be honest, you
can be truthful, you can saythings, and this is one of them.
Sewage, well, yes, yes, this is one of them.
This is one of them where youcan be honest and you don't have to
worry, you know. I mean, we wouldn't want to say swear words
or anything like that. But there'sjust there's just a level of fear now
in media that they're afraid of offendingand they're afraid of lawsuits, and that

(21:07):
is driving everything. Back in theday, we would, you know,
the news directors would say go outand get them, you know, and
in fact, up until recently,they'd say, where's the anger today?
You know, where is go gofind the outrage and let's correct this stuff.
Let's actually have an impact in ourcommunity. But instead it's driven by
press releases and you know, prewritten things from politicians who have an agenda,

(21:33):
and somehow the media in many cases, I'm not gonna say in all
cases, but in many cases justbuys into this. This I call it
the politician press release podium news,the PPP. And if it doesn't have
a podium, a press release,or a politician attached to it, they
don't want to do it. Andit's like the original journalism and say,
hey, I got something like theHey, I have an original story here,

(21:55):
and if it's not on a pressrelease, they don't understand it anymore.
That's right, they don't understand it. So if you go out and
try to do original journalism, youhave to sit there and convince people that
this is actually a story through apress release. Threw a press put out
your own press release. That's whatwe start doing, putting out fake press
releases, send them out to media'slike my story. I think they're going
on in a lot of ways.Yeah, but anyway, so yeah,

(22:19):
things have changed. Things have changed, for sure. And you know there's
the independent voices are, if there'sany left at all, they're slowly but
surely. Well, you're you're you'revery valuable to San Diego. Well,
I'm always going to remain the independentvoice good no matter what should and you
know, face the consequences. Sofar, the consequences have been, hey,

(22:41):
wow, he's a really good voicefor this community. We really value
him. But under certain I getit, Yeah, yeah, they could.
There comes to a point sometimes people'slike, oh wait, wait,
that's too much truth, that's toohonest. I don't want to hear you
speak plain English. Go back tothe press release. Please, let's go

(23:02):
to the talking point, shall we. No, that's not true. That's
not me. It ain't me,babe. And that's whoa, whoa,
whoa, it ain't me, babe. Yeah, and that's why you are
one of our leaders, because aleader stands out from everybody else, doesn't
take the easy way. It hasn'tbeen easy swings and arrows. Yeah,
the whole thing. Yeah, wellyou think of you know, if I

(23:25):
was a spoiled network news correspondent,you know, son just had everything handed
to me out a silver platter.That wasn't the way it was. And
the truth is is I never pickedup the phone to ask for his help
once here. That never once.Now, his name probably helped me where
they said, oh are you Billplant Son? And at my first job,

(23:45):
for sure, it was in MidlandOdessa, Texas. I moved from
Sandy and graduated from San Diego Stateand drove to Midland Odessa. You talk
about depressing, Oh my god,Oh wow, maybe it's changed. Yeah,
it worse, it's gotten although yesit comes out of the oil wells.

(24:07):
So the Midland Odessa was an interestingplace, actually was because I mean,
where else would you start your firstjob and then after six months be
the weekend anchor. And so Iwas weekend anchor after six months only because
the weekend anchor who is currently doingthe job forgot to go on the air
at ten o'clock. And for tenminutes there was that little thing on the
screen that said you're watching KOSATV.Your eyes on the Permian basin, and

(24:32):
that went on for ten minutes.Finally the news director gets in his car
and he drives over to the stationbecause he lives about a mile away,
and he looks and he's like,Michael Martinez was the anchor, and he's
sitting there at his typewriter, stillwriting the show. He forgot to go
on the air. So finally hegets on the air and literally is like
putting his tie on. John's likeget out there, and he's like,

(24:52):
ah, he's sweating and he's gothis tie on, and he does the
shit. Next day, I geta call from John McCall, my news
director, saying, you're the newYou're the new weekend anchor. Just make
sure you get there on time.You know, fix your tie and fix
your tie. I never had aproblem with that the tie. My tie
was always straight. These are areso I want to thank you, though,

(25:15):
I mean because and I will saythis about these awards. You know
a lot of people have the ames, and then you know, we have
journalism awards and whatever. You know, I've got my fair share. But
recently the community has has been reachingout to me and saying thank you.
And that means more than any industryaward will ever mean to anyone. You

(25:37):
know, maybe not if you're anegotist and you like the shiny trophies and
that's you know, what you livefor. But what I live for is
to help my community and to bea good person and to try to make
a difference, not to get thetrophies, and so having an award from
a community like this means more thananything that you could ever possibly imagine,
serious sense, I believe that.Yeah, thank you, and and uh
not not degrading any awards like theEmmys. And I've never won one.

(26:02):
I know you've won probably many.But at the end of the day,
when you're on your deathbed, you'renot going to think about how many Emmys
you win. You're going to thinkabout the lives that you touched. That's
right. And Dan plantt you havetouched many lives. You're awesome, God
bless buddy. That's and that's whyhe's one of our top leaders. So
the event is Monday the twentieth.It's and scrolling okay, good serves right

(26:26):
on top of it. Scrolling it. Yeah, man, we have some
amazing individuals that are on that list. There are some amazing people and some
people who have fought and you knowall of these are the sewage fighters,
right. There's a variety of themor different leadership awards. I mean,
like so a lot of them are. Stefan's is a good person and and
you know, can't go wrong givingthe da An Award. She deserves it,
No, she does. She's donesome really good stuff over there,

(26:48):
and the one thing. She's fightingthat nine to fifty a day thing.
You know she she got a millionsignatures for that. I've set that.
Oh you're talking about Prop forty seven. Yeah, So in California, for
if anybody's watching this outside of thestate of California, it is currently legal
basically to steal nine hundred and fiftydollars worth of stuff and walk out the
door. You'll get a ticket anda notice to appear if they catch you.

(27:10):
But unfortunately nobody bothers to catch youbecause the people working behind the counters
are afraid of thugs and punks andcriminals. So what's happening in the state.
Places like Target are leaving, placeslike Walmart are closing down the losses
that some of these stores have reportedjust from theft all in California, Tree

(27:30):
Dollar Tree closing down, right.I mean I can go in there and
get you could get like an armfulof stuff and only be one hundred bucks.
You'd need to go in nine timesto get nine hundred bucks worth of
stuff at the Dollar Tree. Seriously, but people are afraid, man.
So Prop forty seven is a ballotinitiative. Hopefully it'll make it. You
only need like six hundred and fiftywho got nine hundred and fifty, So

(27:51):
it'll qualify no matter what. Andthis would basically lower that threshold, so
you can only steal four hundred bucksworth of stuff, and up above four
hundred becomes a felony again because ifit's a misdemeanor, the criminals know that
the cops don't care. I wonderwhether the governor was so supportive of the
bill in the first place, andwhy he wouldn't be more supportive with getting

(28:12):
signatures. He seemed like he didn'treally want to get involved. You'll have
to ask him that. But thereare the first time to an interview blushed
by the way, Oh well,I don't want to say something that will
actually get me in trouble, youknow, because I have an answer.
But anyway, so yeah, Imean he put it this way, the

(28:32):
simple answer on that he tends toside with the criminals and the crooks instead
of the good, hardworking people.And now is as actually asking we went
from a ninety eight billion dollar surplusafter the coronavirus ninety eight billion dollars okay,
to currently a sixty billion dollar deficit. And this guy, as he's

(28:53):
over at the Vatican right now,trying to pump up climate change with the
Pope and you know, basically runninga shadow campaign for president where the Democrat
Party now is saying, is thisthe guy we really want? Oh my
god, the ego on this guyis tremendous. And if California is the
example that this guy wants to bringto the nation, But get about it.

(29:14):
I mean, look at this place. We lost an We had lost
an entire congressional seat during the lastcensus report. That's five hundred and twenty
five thousand people since then, anotherfive hundred thousand of left. We're gonna
lose another one. Am I gettingthe wrap? I think we need to
do another show. Okay, Ithink that there's a lot left and Dan
Platt and I look forward to Ohwe just scratched the surface path, I

(29:36):
know, and I can't and Ican't wait to see the book in the
documentary. Well, you made thedocumentary and that's why we're here the big
dump. Baby, Let's do anotherone. Let's do another one, another
film and find it. We needto make movies. By the way,
I think the film got nominated wasby a KPBS today. Yeah, well
it won the Coronado A favorite,so we have them today. Something happened

(29:57):
today, So I think the bestdocument tree. It's in the category,
and it should be, and itshould be. You know what, I
what I told you earlier. Iappreciate it. This baby's got legs.
This baby's got legs. Man.Okay, everybody take care and hopefully you
can attend the event. Everybody takecare. Thanks Brett, thanks for your
time. Yeah man, Thanks Sarah. Peace