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Speaker 1: Shining a spotlight on the insane asylum that is modern-day California. It's the John Phillips Show.
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Speaker 2: And a very happy Thursday to you at 12.06 in the West.
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Speaker 3: It's the John Phillips Show. Mr.
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Speaker 4: Randy Wiggs in the San Fernando Valley. Oh, I like hearing that. I didn't have to commute today. But we don't have time to talk about that. There is so much huge news going on. Johnny, we're broadcasting live on the radio, 790K ABC in Southern California, 810K SFO in the Bay Area. And we're also broadcasting live on video every single day. You can watch us do the show live and react to the news of the day in the lively chat room at johnnydontlike.com. That's Johnny with a Y, johnnydontlike.com. Make your voice heard. Tell us what you think and make all the jokes you can about our idiot politicians at johnnydontlike.com. And boy, oh boy, Johnny, is it a big news Thursday, as just a few hours ago, it was announced that the CEO of High Speed Rail, Ian Chowdhury, has resigned from his position after weeks and weeks and weeks of scrutiny from reporters like Julie Watts and Ashley Zavala about all that crooked spending going on with contractors.
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Speaker 2: What's a guy going to do for work who has presided over a non-operational train for years?
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Speaker 3: Oh, I know. He could work at LAX.
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Speaker 4: Now, the timing of this is kind of fascinating because last night, Ashley Zavala, arguably one of the best political reporters in the entire state, got 10 whole minutes to sit down with gubernatorial candidate Javier Becerra. And one of the questions that she asked Javier Becerra about was Ian Chowdhury and High Speed Rail. And less than 12 hours after this interview dropped, Ian Chowdhury quit.
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Speaker 3: I guess he could see the writing on the wall.
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Speaker 4: So while we're going to get to the whole interview, including Javier Becerra's many plans to raise your taxes, he's actually campaigning on raising taxes, and that's kind of wild. Let's hear what he had to say. about California's ill-fated, never-gonna-happen high-speed rail. This is Javier Baccaria and Ashley Zavala for 10 whole minutes.
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Speaker 5: You just invoked the high-speed rail, and I want to ask you just the optics of Ian Chowdhury, the current CEO. How are you feeling about that?
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Speaker 1: Not good.
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Speaker 5: Have you met with him?
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Speaker 4: No. Okay.
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Speaker 5: Do you think he would stay in that position under a Governor Becerra?
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Speaker 1: You know, there's going to be a new sheriff in town.
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Speaker 3: Cliche.
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Speaker 1: We're going to have to scrub a lot.
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Speaker 3: And we're back to that.
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Speaker 4: He did such a good job of taking that term out of his vernacular after his initial campaign launch was nothing.
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Speaker 3: But scrub it.
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Speaker 1: But when you do the scrub.
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Speaker 3: And scrub it.
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Speaker 4: And now that we're at the tail end of the campaign, he's back to scrub it.
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Speaker 3: He should have become a dental hygienist.
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Speaker 6: High-speed rail authority is going to have to look really different if we're going to continue this project.
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Speaker 1: I want it to continue.
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Speaker 6: But I've got to be able to tell people how we're going to pay for it. And we're not going to be doing this this way.
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Speaker 4: And we're going to pay for it by raising your taxes and taxing EV drivers.
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Speaker 1: To your point about transparency.
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Speaker 6: I need the faith of the public in order to make these big projects go. I think the public is quickly losing faith if they haven't already.
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Speaker 4: Does anybody outside of the building trades unions have faith in this project?
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Speaker 2: What's weird is, and I think I retweeted this person some time ago, when high-speed rail passed, it passed with 50, I think, 2 or 53 percent.
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Speaker 3: That was in 2008.
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Speaker 2: And now when you pull what percentage of the public supports high-speed rail, now that we're over on time, we're over on budget, it's like in the 60s. The longer this project goes on and the longer they don't actually move anyone around the state, the more popular it gets.
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Speaker 6: In high-speed rail. And we need high-speed rail. And so I need to gain the confidence of the public. I can't gain it if I keep the same characters in place. You know, the Keystone Cops... They always got lucky, but that's not the way you do business. I'm sorry, Keystone Cops, most people probably don't know who the Keystone Cops are.
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Speaker 3: Good way to point out that you're old, Javi.
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Speaker 1: Look it up. Google it. You can find it.
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Speaker 4: All right.
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Speaker 3: So that happened.
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Speaker 4: Zavala dropped that interview around 8 o'clock last night, and 8 o'clock this morning, CalMatters, I believe, was the first organization to report that Ian Chowdhury... the man with the toupee who is in charge of high-speed rail for the past few years, the man who is responsible for not buying any trains and not laying any tracks and taking consultants out to fancy steak dinners and then Ubering back to his house, he has resigned from his position to spend more time with his family.
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Speaker 2: Doesn't he have domestic disputes going on right and left with the family, too?
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Speaker 4: Yes. In fact, one of the reasons that Ian Chowdhury never sat down with Ashley Zavala was she wanted to ask about that domestic incident where the police were called to his house and apparently he was detained and his lady friend was detained, who, by the way, works at a consulting firm that the high-speed rail was doing business with. And apparently there was a fight between his lady friend and his daughter. So I don't know what was going on there. But this guy has been living, as they say, high on the hog for way too long. And it is kind of fascinating, even though he's not the governor yet, just the idea of this interview saying, I don't think we can keep around the same characters.
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Speaker 3: And Ian's like, I've had enough of this.
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Speaker 2: It should also be noted that he would not ever agree to any interviews at all unless you agree to not ask him about his domestic disputes. And then most recently, he was at a High Speed Rail Authority meeting, left the room, and it was Ashley Zavala and our friend Julie Watts who were chasing him down the hallway trying to get him to answer questions.
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Speaker 3: He wouldn't do it, and.
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Speaker 2: He sicked this bald guy who was in charge of communications for High Speed Rail on the two reporters who was really nasty to them. They were asking that guy questions. The guy said, Submit a request for an interview, and we'll get right back to you. And they go, we've been doing that for a long time, and you guys never do. And he goes, well, submit it again. And it was a bad look for them.
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Speaker 4: I'm sorry to use a pun here, but it looks like the high-speed rail project has been derailed yet again.
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Speaker 3: That it has, Randy. That it has.
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Speaker 2: All right.
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Speaker 4: Should we go back to the beginning of this interview so you can hear how Javier Becerra wants to raise everybody's taxes?
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Speaker 3: Great.
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Speaker 4: Ashley Zavala has for months put in request to do a sit down interview on her statewide political show, California Politics 360 with Javier Becerra. And six days before the end of election season, he says yes for only 10 minutes.
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Speaker 2: And I think all of his interviews have potted plants in them now, don't they?
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Speaker 4: Well, it is reminiscent of the Between Two Ferns-style interview that he did with that comedian from the San Francisco Standard. But believe you me, this interview is much more substantial because Zavala knew, okay, I've only got 10 minutes. I'm not going to ask him about any of the stuff he's going to blather on. Let's get to 10 problems the state has and how he says he's going to fix them or not.
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Speaker 3: Ashley, take it away.
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Speaker 5: Javier Becerra, thank you so much for making time for us.
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Speaker 4: Always.
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Speaker 5: Your team has.
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Speaker 3: Not always. When there's not a scheduling conflict.
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Speaker 5: He's given us 10 minutes with you. I have nine questions related to issues that you're going to be immediately confronted with in office this year. So let's go. So first, in April, you told me to address California's budget problems. You would raise taxes on the wealthy, but you are against Proposition 40. How would you raise taxes on the richest people in this state?
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Speaker 1: Fair share.
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Speaker 6: If we can prove that you're not paying your fair share... And to me, that's pretty basic. If you're a billionaire and you're paying at a lower tax rate than a firefighter, a teacher.
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Speaker 1: A nurse, you're not paying your fair share.
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Speaker 5: Are you taxing assets?
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Speaker 1: I would try to do it with income.
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Speaker 6: When you start getting into assets, as Prop 40 does, you start to get into real complications. Having done tax policy for over 20 years in Congress, you want to make sure it's something that's fair, it's predictable, and it's stable.
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Speaker 3: Now, wait a minute.
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Speaker 2: If you are a billionaire and you're paying less, I'm assuming he's talking about in terms of percentages, than a firefighter, and you're paying whatever it is that you owe, how is that fraudulent? How is that unethical? How is that coloring outside the lines? You pay what you owe, and you don't pay a penny more. What dummy would willingly pay more than what they owe to the state of California?
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Speaker 4: Whenever you start hearing the phrase fair share, you got to wonder what is fair. I don't make anywhere near the kind of money that these people are talking about right here.
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Speaker 3: I work in radio, but you know what? I've seen my pay stubs.
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Speaker 4: I pay way more than my fair share and I don't get anything for it.
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Speaker 2: Well, if you're talking about what rate they pay, if they're paying a lower rate, that means they make their money a different way. It means they make their money on capital gains, which is typically investments, stocks, real estate, that sort of thing. And we know that specifically Silicon Valley is what's driving the state's economy. So when the Big tech companies do well, and people make a ton of money in stock. That's when they pay a ton in taxes.
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Speaker 3: So what?
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Speaker 2: You want to tax capital gains the same way you tax income?
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Speaker 3: Is that what he's suggesting?
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Speaker 4: I don't think he has a clear policy, but let's remember that the current capital gains tax that we have in the state already makes up for a massive portion of the budget. So in certain years where you have big IPOs, like we're about to see the anthropic IPO, California might be living large for quite a while on that one. In years where Silicon Valley doesn't do well, we're broke.
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Speaker 5: Like stocks, bonds, their ownership stake.
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Speaker 6: There's a lot of corporate welfare where we give corporations tax breaks where they really don't need them. And if we can't give Californians good health care, why should we give corporations tax breaks?
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Speaker 2: Wait, the reason they do that, let's just take Hollywood as an example. The regulations are so bad in California that these movie companies are shifting all of their production to Canada, to Georgia, to New Mexico, to Louisiana. Even upstate New York is getting a lot of it. And so what do they do to entice them to stay here? They give them tax breaks. Well, okay, you could say they make a ton of money in Hollywood. Why should we be giving them tax breaks? But if you're going to take the tax breaks away, and I'm fine with that, then do something about the cost because it costs a fortune for them to film those movies here and those television shows here because of policies that people like him support.
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Speaker 4: Oh, they're not going to do anything about that. Then they would have to say no to all the unions that write all this legislation.
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Speaker 5: I'm going to follow up on that in a second. But actually, no, I will follow up on that now. A state law is in effect right now. that will require the next governor of California by April to, quote, set the stage to hold big corporations accountable.
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Speaker 3: Hey, that's the name of our podcast. A new episode dropped yesterday.
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Speaker 5: For employees that are relying on the state's Medi-Cal system, can those major companies expect a health care fee under a Governor Becerra?
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Speaker 6: They can expect something if they are not paying sufficient wages that their own employees who work full time still qualify for government subsidized health care under Medi-Cal.
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Speaker 1: That's not right.
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Speaker 6: Taxpayers are helping pay for the health care for workers because.
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Speaker 4: They're paying for plans that are better than the ones we can get. Seriously, there are people that willfully work as little as possible because Medi-Cal is so generous.
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Speaker 1: For companies, their employers aren't paying them enough. How we do it?
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Speaker 6: That's where I have to work with the legislature to make sure we can do it, whether it's a fee, whether it's working the system so that maybe the employers will boost the support.
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Speaker 1: The benefits that they give their workers.
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Speaker 6: One way or the other, people who work full-time should not have to ask taxpayers to cover their.
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Speaker 1: Health care bills.
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Speaker 5: Okay, so companies maybe like an Amazon or a Walmart should maybe be on notice then?
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Speaker 1: Any company that doesn't pay their workers enough.
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Speaker 6: And the legislature was tasked— and the governor's office were tasked with the job of trying to figure out what the route would be. I've said this to a lot of businesses already, that if you've got a business model that requires you to pay, that lets you pay less to your employees so that the state government, the taxpayers have to cover the health care costs for your employees, that's got to change.
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Speaker 4: So we're going to make it more difficult to do business here, and we're going to raise taxes on companies. This guy's going to do great.
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Speaker 2: He's going to drive more California businesses out of state.
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Speaker 5: Speaking of businesses, California is the only state in the nation that has not paid back its COVID-19 federal unemployment loan. Businesses, large and small, regardless of the type of employees they have, are paying this debt back now on their own, and that debt is growing every single year.
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Speaker 4: This is true, because California didn't pay back its COVID loan for unemployment, or we sent a bunch of unemployment checks to criminals and fraudsters. Every employer in the state pays a higher payroll tax than anywhere else, and it keeps going up because the state won't pay back its loan, which is another thing that makes it impossible to do business here.
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Speaker 2: And correct me if I'm wrong, Randy, but the stolen money from EDD during COVID was the largest theft in the history of this country. I have to imagine because the number they throw around now is between $ 30 and $ 50 billion.
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Speaker 5: If you are elected governor, will you commit to putting money toward the principle of that loan to take the pressure off of those businesses in your first budget?
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Speaker 6: Ashley, we have to make sure that employers and workers and the state government work together because.
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Speaker 1: what's.
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Speaker 6: Happening, as you just said, the debt keeps growing. And that means the burden on employers keeps growing. And so what we have to do is find out if you're a good employer, if your business is working and you're not finding that you are constantly having workers use the benefit program.
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Speaker 4: You know, sometimes Javier Becerra reminds me of Michael Scott from The Office, where he starts a sentence and he doesn't even know where it's going to end up. He's kind of improvising policy right now.
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Speaker 1: Then we should figure out if we can reward you.
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Speaker 6: If you're an employer who constantly sees turnover in your employees, and as a result, they're using unemployment benefits all the time, you're costing your fellow employers more money because you're the one that is causing employees to use the unemployment benefit system. So there are ways to do this, but what we have to do is not penalize companies, employers that are doing it the right way. And certainly you don't want to penalize workers.
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Speaker 3: Did he even understand the question? I don't think he did.
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Speaker 2: I am telling you, I've said it before, I'll say it again. We are going to elect the statewide version of Karen Bass. This guy is going to have a first term, very similar, very similar fashion to Karen Bass's first term. And I don't know if a Republican is going to beat him four years from now, but I'm sure the DSA is already licking their chops at the prospect of going up against this guy.
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Speaker 4: Johnny, we've got a lot more of the only 10 minutes that Javier Becerra had for Ashley Zavala, including Zavala asking him, you didn't even answer the question I just asked.
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Speaker 2: All right, all that coming up right here on The John Phillips Show. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at johnnydontlikeshow at gmail.com. That's johnnydontlikeshow at gmail.com. And Randy, what do you say we make a couple of listeners very happy?
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Speaker 4: Well, let's do that right now. 790 KABC welcomes Iron Maiden to the Glenn Helen Amphitheater on April 24th, 2027. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com. But right now, call in number 9 at 1-888-790-5222. Gets a pair of tickets to the show. Tickets furnished by Live Nation. Good luck dialing. Don't I sound so much more relaxed when I'm working from home?
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Speaker 2: Almost NPR-ish. And Randy, tomorrow we're going to do the show live from San Francisco.
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Speaker 3: We are.
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Speaker 4: We are doing a huge event tomorrow in the Bay Area.
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Speaker 3: I'm actually flying.
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Speaker 4: The reason I'm working from home today is because I've got to get to Burbank Airport right after the show. And then I and Johnny and you are all coming with us to Johnny Foley's Irish house. in San Francisco's Union Square from noon to three tomorrow. Our first live broadcast in the Bay Area. Let's make it a huge one. We'll be there with our friend Susan Shelley from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association spreading the word about Yes on 43. Tell everyone you know why Yes on 43 means it's harder to raise your taxes. We'll see you tomorrow at Johnny Foley's Irish Pub in Union Square in San Francisco from noon to three.
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Speaker 2: If you want to watch us perform the show live, go to johnnydontlike.com. Click that like button and participate in the chat. Let's see how many likes we're at on today's show already. And look, if you're just listening on the radio, you got a second, go to the website on your phone or on your browser, johnnydontlike.com.
00:19:19
Speaker 4: See what's going on in the chat room. Maybe drop in a joke or an insult about Javier Baccaria. We're at 137 likes and the show is just getting started. And by the way, We are now at over 9,800 subscribers on the channel. As of this moment, 9,822. On our way to 10,000 subscribers. And luckily, we didn't make any promises this time, like going to the Tijuana River.
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Speaker 2: No, we did promise, however, that when we hit 10,000, we're going to do... a special one-hour happy hour broadcast on YouTube on the weekend.
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Speaker 3: We are.
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Speaker 4: It's going to be a little drinking show. We'll have a little fun, maybe play a couple of blotters, and we can all enjoy ourselves and celebrate getting to 10,000 subscribers on the channel. at johnnydontlike.com. So if you want to see a drinking show, get us there. Tell your friends. Subscribe, johnnydontlike.com.
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Speaker 2: And Randy, that's also where you can find the Accountability Podcast.
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Speaker 3: Oh, the Accountability Podcast.
00:20:22
Speaker 4: And this latest episode is one that you've definitely got to watch if you're interested in what's going to happen to the midterms because Election Day, not just in California, is on Tuesday, but across the country. There are a lot of closely watched Senate races. And John talks to pollster Robert Cahaley about all of it, and he's got a lot of warnings about what turnout is already looking like in some of these battleground states. We've got that info and insight on the California races at johnnydontlike.com.
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Speaker 3: Give it a watch. And on election day, we're going to be doing double duty. We are.
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Speaker 4: Let me pull up the graphic for that one. So we're going to do the regular show from noon to 3 on Tuesday, November 3rd, which I can't believe we're already there. This year is going by so quick. But starting at 7 o'clock on KABC, KMJ in Fresno, KSFO in the Bay Area, and johnnydontlike.com, we'll be doing a live election special. We'll be joined by our friend Phil Teresi at KMJ, Frank Motek of KABC, a bunch of special guests. As we're here when the polls close and we start counting the local races, L.A. Mayor's race, the statewide ballot initiatives, the Bay Area transit tax, And we'll also be looking at some of the Senate races across the country as well. And at 9 o'clock, Johnny and I will be doing at least one exclusive hour right here on YouTube. And let's just say if the results are really bad, Johnny, we're not governed by the.
00:21:51
Speaker 3: FCC in that hour. That is very true.
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Speaker 4: So join us Tuesday, November 3rd on KABC, KMJ, KSFO, or... JohnnyDon'tLike.com and watch the whole thing.
00:22:07
Speaker 3: All right.
00:22:07
Speaker 2: Let's go back to Javier Baccaria and his sit-down interview with KCRA's Ashley Zavala. When we last left you, Ashley Zavala asked Javier Becerra about the state still not paying back its COVID unemployment loan, which has to raise the payroll tax for every employer in the state. Javier Becerra obviously didn't understand the question, so let's ask him again.
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Speaker 5: The state's government isn't penalizing anyone. It's the federal government that is now taking this money automatically out of every business because the state's government didn't pay this back. So the question is, will you commit to putting money from the state budget this year toward the principle of that loan?
00:22:47
Speaker 6: I will commit to lower the debt service, the debt burden that we have.
00:22:53
Speaker 5: Beyond the interest.
00:22:53
Speaker 1: Beyond the interest. Yeah, we have to because it's going to continue to grow.
00:22:58
Speaker 6: And Ashley, as you know, there's no way state government can operate if its debt continues to grow.
00:23:03
Speaker 4: If you're listening with headphones right now, this interview is being done in Sacramento, and you can hear sirens.
00:23:11
Speaker 3: California, get a California.
00:23:14
Speaker 5: Will you continue Governor Gavin Newsom's moratorium on the death penalty?
00:23:18
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:23:20
Speaker 4: Perfectly fitting that the sirens are going on during this question. Yep.
00:23:25
Speaker 3: There's going to be another inmate on death row.
00:23:28
Speaker 5: Be okay if he commuted some of all of the 560 death sentences to life without parole?
00:23:33
Speaker 6: So I just answered that question a little while ago. And what I'll tell you is this. I don't know what he's facing. I don't know what the particular cases are. That's a very individualized consideration. But I absolutely, as now that he said he's going to take this on, I wish him every opportunity to make the best call on these.
00:23:55
Speaker 1: Cases because these are tough.
00:23:57
Speaker 4: What he's saying is, Gavin, if you're going to do it, do it so I don't get the blowback you do.
00:24:03
Speaker 6: I won't weigh in on that because I don't know what he's looking at.
00:24:06
Speaker 1: I will say this.
00:24:07
Speaker 6: On my watch, given what we've seen with the death penalty, I'm not interested in enforcing it.
00:24:12
Speaker 5: But should victims have to relive these cases?
00:24:15
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's where talking to the families, the victims' families, is going to be really important because you want to make sure that they understand what we're doing. I think we want to be humane. We saw what happened. Was it in Kentucky or in Tennessee? The case where a woman was on death row. She was put to death, but she never died. She's still alive today. I mean, the death penalty just hasn't worked. It hasn't done what's supposed to.
00:24:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's because they did it wrong. You know what I would love to see?
00:24:41
Speaker 2: I would love to see one of these sons of bitches up there at San Quentin get attached to an electric chair and they pump his head so full of electricity that the lights flicker in San Diego.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: Just to be a deterrent.
00:24:56
Speaker 6: And so rather than have that, let's have a system that's smart and humane and fair. I think what Governor Newsom is now undertaking, it's a major task. I wish him luck in making the right call.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: All right.
00:25:07
Speaker 5: I know you have defendants.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: Do you have any idea what you have to do to end up on death row in this state? Because if you just kill like a normal amount of people, you don't even go to prison for the rest of your life.
00:25:22
Speaker 3: To go to death row... I don't know.
00:25:25
Speaker 2: You got to be a serial killer or something. Who in the world.
00:25:29
Speaker 4: Has sympathy for those people besides this idiot and Gavin? Let's hear what Bakari has to say about gas prices and gas taxes.
00:25:41
Speaker 6: It's a major task. I wish him luck in making the right call.
00:25:44
Speaker 2: All right.
00:25:44
Speaker 5: I know you have defended the state's gas tax, but state officials say that money may not be reliable in the future. At the end of this year, a report is coming out on a possible fee-based system on vehicle miles traveled. Would a Governor Becerra consider a vehicle miles traveled fee here in California?
00:26:05
Speaker 1: Everything should be on the table.
00:26:11
Speaker 4: I'm telling you, this is going to be Governor Karen Bass. Now, think about what happened here. The revenue for the gas tax is going down every year because Californians are doing what the state told them to do. They are getting more fuel-efficient cars. They are getting hybrids. They're getting electric vehicles. They are using less gasoline. So what does the state say? Well... Instead of, well, maybe we should just get rid of this tax since it's not making, it only makes about $ 8 billion a year in our $ 350 billion budget. But no, instead of that, what we need to do now is instead of taxing your gasoline, we're also going to tax how much you drive. You're going to pay, there's going to be a little transponder on your car and every single mile you're giving a penny to Javier Becerra.
00:27:02
Speaker 1: Well, you know this, you just, You've been commuting. You've been driving. Nothing is free. Our roads aren't maintained just by some magic wand.
00:27:11
Speaker 4: It's called the taxes that we already pay. Wait, doesn't Sheng have possession of that magic wand? Well, we kind of lost track of it because, you know, her home got raided. I think she was trying to sneak out the magic wand, but that FBI agent wouldn't let her.
00:27:27
Speaker 5: Not a day goes by where I don't wish I could just wave a magic wand and silence the gunfire.
00:27:35
Speaker 3: Poor Shaggy. Might have an update with her later.
00:27:38
Speaker 1: You have to pay for it. Do I want to tax people more than necessary? No.
00:27:43
Speaker 3: Sure sounds like you do.
00:27:47
Speaker 2: This is what you're talking about before you're elected. Usually they go, no new taxes, they get elected, then poof, we get the taxes. This guy is showing his hand to cards before November 11th. And it shows the disconnect because, John, what's the magic word that every race is talking about in the state of California across the country?
00:28:08
Speaker 3: It's affordability, affordability, affordability.
00:28:11
Speaker 4: And what is Javier Becerra talking about with almost every answer to every question? How he's going to make the state of California more expensive.
00:28:21
Speaker 1: We pay a gas tax, yes.
00:28:23
Speaker 6: Should people who drive electric vehicles who don't need gas Pay for those roads to be repaired as well?
00:28:27
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:28:28
Speaker 3: You told me to get one so I could save the planet.
00:28:31
Speaker 2: I did what you asked. Now you want to take my money? Well, now he's blaming you for the potholes.
00:28:37
Speaker 6: How?
00:28:38
Speaker 1: There are any number of ideas, but I will tell you this. We will take it on.
00:28:42
Speaker 6: Just as I've been willing to say that we will not remove the gas tax, which is obviously not music to a lot of folks' ears, I'm telling everybody else we have to make sure we pay for our roads. You can't do business as a state government if you're not willing to pay for the purposes and the resources that people will be using.
00:28:59
Speaker 4: How did we fund the roads before the gas tax? How did we fund the construction of all of these roads?
00:29:05
Speaker 2: And by the way, don't act like we have these great roads that we're driving on because we pay a fortune in taxes. How long has it been since they've repaved a mile of road in the city of Los Angeles?
00:29:17
Speaker 4: It's been about two years because in the city of L.A., we passed something called Measure HLA, which says every time you repave a road, you have to do a road diet. This year, just this year alone, I have had to replace three tires because I drove on nails. The conditions on our roads are terrible.
00:29:37
Speaker 2: It looks like something between the surface of the moon. and Manuel Noriega's face every time you drive on city streets in LA. And what's wild is, and John, you know this, you travel a lot, I know this, when you go to other states, including states that have things that we don't deal with in Southern California like snow, the roads are pristine and they don't have these kinds of taxes and fees And somehow they pay for them. Why are the roads in better condition in Texas than they are in California?
00:30:07
Speaker 3: It's not even Texas.
00:30:08
Speaker 2: It's a bunch of states that people from California look down their nose at. Go to West Virginia. Go to Alabama. The roads are better in those states than they are here in California.
00:30:21
Speaker 5: Will you try to limit the right of insurance companies to sue utilities like PG & E when those utility companies cause a catastrophic wildfire?
00:30:29
Speaker 3: Another very important question.
00:30:31
Speaker 4: This is the thing that Gavin tried to get across the finish line in his last legislative session, a final bailout to PG & E and SoCal Edison. Is Javier Baccaria going to pick up the mantle on this one?
00:30:44
Speaker 3: Johnny, we'll find out in minutes. It's the John Phillips Show. It's the John Phillips Show.
00:30:50
Speaker 2: If you want to watch us perform the show live, go to johnnydontlike.com and click that like button. Coming up after the news at 1, Sonia Shaw joins us. She's running for state superintendent of public instruction. And later on in the program, Steve Hilton is going to be here as well. Right now, we're going through the sound of Javier Baccaria's sit-down with KCRA's Ashley Zavala.
00:31:13
Speaker 4: When we last left you, Ashley Zavala asked Javier Baccaria if he's going to continue Gavin Newsom's crusade of trying to make sure that utility companies like PG & E and SoCal Edison are not held responsible when they burn down the state.
00:31:29
Speaker 6: I see your course. You're making it tougher and tougher as we go. That has to get handled.
00:31:35
Speaker 1: What the answer is, I know that.
00:31:36
Speaker 2: He does this all the time. This is what got him in trouble in that KTLA interview. If you don't give him a fawning interview where you just lob him softball after softball after softball, he references the fact that you're asking him legitimate questions as if it's a bad thing. Well, in the KTLA interview that you referenced, he did that at the very beginning of the interview, asking, is this going to be a hit piece? And it's not like she's asking him gotcha questions. It's not like she's trying to trick him into saying something spicy. She's asking him the basics.
00:32:12
Speaker 1: Governor, the legislature are working on it.
00:32:14
Speaker 6: But I will tell you this, if that isn't off the state's plate by the end of the year when the governor is still in office, we'll take it on when I'm governor.
00:32:24
Speaker 5: So, but you haven't determined if subrogation should be eliminated or not?
00:32:28
Speaker 4: Subrogation is when the insurance company, after they paid out the fire victims, hypothetically, because some insurance companies like State Farm don't, they can get their losses repaid by the utility company because they started the fire. Gavin, and it looks like Javi, want to end that practice, which would, John, what would that do to the already awful insurance market in the state of California?
00:32:56
Speaker 2: I don't know how any of us are going to buy insurance. With the crowd that's in there now or the crowd that's coming in next, if there aren't serious course corrections made, you're going to see more companies leave the state.
00:33:10
Speaker 6: I don't have all the details that they've had. I do know this, that we can't go on with wildfires this way, where the folks who suffer the most are the very victims who lose their homes.
00:33:20
Speaker 2: You notice, by the way, that he constantly says he doesn't have enough information to take a position on any of these issues, whether it's what to do about the wildfires in the insurance companies, what to do about the death penalty, whatever the case may be. What is he spending his time doing if he's not reading and thinking about state government and state politics? Because he doesn't have enough time to do the normal things that a candidate does. So you think, okay, maybe because he's such a heavy favorite, he's been spending all of his time in preparation of becoming governor and figuring out just exactly how he's going to steer the state.
00:34:00
Speaker 1: No.
00:34:01
Speaker 2: What you have is you have someone who doesn't do the reading and Who is answering questions that he doesn't know the answer to. The only thing he knows is Trump is bad.
00:34:11
Speaker 3: And scrubbing.
00:34:11
Speaker 2: You will.
00:34:12
Speaker 4: Well, he does know how to scrub a dub dub. That is something that we have found out for a very long time.
00:34:18
Speaker 1: But when you do the scrub.
00:34:20
Speaker 5: Move into the brand new California capital annex at the end of 2027. In fact, you'll probably spend a little bit about this one. That is on track.
00:34:30
Speaker 6: All right.
00:34:30
Speaker 4: That's the first indication that we've ever seen that Javier Becerra watches the local news. Because if you watch KCRA 3, you know about Ashley Zavala's crusade against the capital annex project, the big fancy building that the state doesn't need, that they won't tell us how much it costs. that they actually built escape hallways for legislators to run away from, Ashley Zavala.
00:34:56
Speaker 5: Back to being one of the most expensive buildings in the United States. Project leaders are refusing to provide taxpayers with records proving the cost, showing the receipts. Will you, as governor, before this building is complete, try to open up the books on this project?
00:35:15
Speaker 1: I want us to be as transparent as possible.
00:35:18
Speaker 6: I suspect I've heard that some of the problems of being overly transparent are security issues that would put.
00:35:26
Speaker 4: We're not asking you to reveal the plans to the Death Star here.
00:35:29
Speaker 3: Just tell us how much it costs.
00:35:31
Speaker 2: How is it that you put their security in danger by asking for the price tag?
00:35:38
Speaker 4: Do you remember earlier this year when Zavala literally went to the construction site and none of the construction workers could answer any questions?
00:35:45
Speaker 3: No, they all had to sign NDAs.
00:35:48
Speaker 6: Certain information in harm's way. So I don't know what the reason for all the confidentiality.
00:35:56
Speaker 4: How many times in this 10-minute interview did he say the phrase, I don't know.
00:36:02
Speaker 2: Over and over and over again? And you know what? On this one, I believe him.
00:36:07
Speaker 1: But I believe in transparency.
00:36:09
Speaker 6: And when I was AG, I enforced transparency.
00:36:13
Speaker 1: I hope to do that again. I will tell you something.
00:36:16
Speaker 6: If we're going to keep high-speed rail going, We've got to be way more transparent in the way the authority operates.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: And so.
00:36:24
Speaker 6: That's my default. I have to find out what the data is, what the reasons are.
00:36:31
Speaker 1: But when you come and talk to me again, we will answer that question.
00:36:34
Speaker 3: Okay, this guy is Mr. Transparent.
00:36:37
Speaker 2: He was Secretary of Health and Human Services when the federal government was lying to us about the origins of COVID-19.
00:36:45
Speaker 3: Well, there was that.
00:36:46
Speaker 5: Expert in the law. OK, so these public records are not exempted from anything. And project leaders are saying that, yeah, they'll give them up. But once the building is finished, is that really fair?
00:36:59
Speaker 1: I don't know what the ground.
00:37:01
Speaker 4: All right. New Javier Becerra drinking game. We get to figure out new things because Gavins was always mindful when if Javier Becerra becomes governor, take a shot every single time he says, I don't know.
00:37:17
Speaker 3: You're going to end up at the Betty Ford Center if you do that.
00:37:20
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:37:21
Speaker 6: Sorry for delaying, but if it's public records, I find, and now let me put on my AG hat, there are very few reasons for us to tell the public that they don't have access to their own records.
00:37:32
Speaker 5: You just invoked the.
00:37:33
Speaker 4: So then we get to the part about high-speed rail. Let me fast-forward this a little bit.
00:37:38
Speaker 5: For you. What will be the biggest difference between you and Governor Gavin Newsom if you are elected as governor?
00:37:48
Speaker 1: Esto te lo voy a contestar en español.
00:37:52
Speaker 3: What is that?
00:37:53
Speaker 4: Spanish for I don't know? It's Spanish for I speak Spanish. That's Lucy, get over here. I'm going to put you over my knee and spank the living hell out of you.
00:38:03
Speaker 5: También en inglés, por favor.
00:38:05
Speaker 6: And I say it that I was going to answer in Spanish because that's one of the biggest.
00:38:09
Speaker 1: Difference, Ashley.
00:38:10
Speaker 4: The biggest difference between me and Gavin Newsom is hablo en español, señor.
00:38:16
Speaker 3: Scott Wiener speaks Chinese. You do know that.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: It's who I am, what I bring.
00:38:22
Speaker 6: I always tell folks, young people who ask, how do you become active in government and the leadership? I always tell them, if you want to know where a leader is going to take you, know where they've come from. I don't know if we've ever had a governor who comes from where I come from.
00:38:36
Speaker 3: Sacramento? Yep. That's where his daddy was born.
00:38:42
Speaker 1: And so will it be different? Sacramento?
00:38:45
Speaker 6: Well, I'm born and raised in Sacramento, but I mean, in terms of my roots, my background, son of immigrants.
00:38:50
Speaker 3: Wait, that's a lie. Your dad was born in Sacramento.
00:38:54
Speaker 2: Apparently, he also doesn't know where his father was born.
00:39:03
Speaker 3: Take another drink, kids.
00:39:06
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Shining a spotlight on the insane asylum that is modern-day California. It's the John Phillips Show.
00:00:12
Speaker 2: And a very happy Thursday to you at 12.06 in the West.
00:00:16
Speaker 3: It's the John Phillips Show. Mr.
00:00:18
Speaker 4: Randy Wiggs in the San Fernando Valley. Oh, I like hearing that. I didn't have to commute today. But we don't have time to talk about that. There is so much huge news going on. Johnny, we're broadcasting live on the radio, 790K ABC in Southern California, 810K SFO in the Bay Area. And we're also broadcasting live on video every single day. You can watch us do the show live and react to the news of the day in the lively chat room at johnnydontlike.com. That's Johnny with a Y, johnnydontlike.com. Make your voice heard. Tell us what you think and make all the jokes you can about our idiot politicians at johnnydontlike.com. And boy, oh boy, Johnny, is it a big news Thursday, as just a few hours ago, it was announced that the CEO of High Speed Rail, Ian Chowdhury, has resigned from his position after weeks and weeks and weeks of scrutiny from reporters like Julie Watts and Ashley Zavala about all that crooked spending going on with contractors.
00:01:21
Speaker 2: What's a guy going to do for work who has presided over a non-operational train for years?
00:01:28
Speaker 3: Oh, I know. He could work at LAX.
00:01:32
Speaker 4: Now, the timing of this is kind of fascinating because last night, Ashley Zavala, arguably one of the best political reporters in the entire state, got 10 whole minutes to sit down with gubernatorial candidate Javier Becerra. And one of the questions that she asked Javier Becerra about was Ian Chowdhury and High Speed Rail. And less than 12 hours after this interview dropped, Ian Chowdhury quit.
00:02:01
Speaker 3: I guess he could see the writing on the wall.
00:02:04
Speaker 4: So while we're going to get to the whole interview, including Javier Becerra's many plans to raise your taxes, he's actually campaigning on raising taxes, and that's kind of wild. Let's hear what he had to say. about California's ill-fated, never-gonna-happen high-speed rail. This is Javier Baccaria and Ashley Zavala for 10 whole minutes.
00:02:31
Speaker 5: You just invoked the high-speed rail, and I want to ask you just the optics of Ian Chowdhury, the current CEO. How are you feeling about that?
00:02:39
Speaker 1: Not good.
00:02:40
Speaker 5: Have you met with him?
00:02:41
Speaker 4: No. Okay.
00:02:43
Speaker 5: Do you think he would stay in that position under a Governor Becerra?
00:02:48
Speaker 1: You know, there's going to be a new sheriff in town.
00:02:53
Speaker 3: Cliche.
00:02:58
Speaker 1: We're going to have to scrub a lot.
00:03:01
Speaker 3: And we're back to that.
00:03:03
Speaker 4: He did such a good job of taking that term out of his vernacular after his initial campaign launch was nothing.
00:03:11
Speaker 3: But scrub it.
00:03:13
Speaker 1: But when you do the scrub.
00:03:14
Speaker 3: And scrub it.
00:03:16
Speaker 4: And now that we're at the tail end of the campaign, he's back to scrub it.
00:03:22
Speaker 3: He should have become a dental hygienist.
00:03:26
Speaker 6: High-speed rail authority is going to have to look really different if we're going to continue this project.
00:03:30
Speaker 1: I want it to continue.
00:03:32
Speaker 6: But I've got to be able to tell people how we're going to pay for it. And we're not going to be doing this this way.
00:03:36
Speaker 4: And we're going to pay for it by raising your taxes and taxing EV drivers.
00:03:44
Speaker 1: To your point about transparency.
00:03:47
Speaker 6: I need the faith of the public in order to make these big projects go. I think the public is quickly losing faith if they haven't already.
00:03:57
Speaker 4: Does anybody outside of the building trades unions have faith in this project?
00:04:02
Speaker 2: What's weird is, and I think I retweeted this person some time ago, when high-speed rail passed, it passed with 50, I think, 2 or 53 percent.
00:04:11
Speaker 3: That was in 2008.
00:04:16
Speaker 2: And now when you pull what percentage of the public supports high-speed rail, now that we're over on time, we're over on budget, it's like in the 60s. The longer this project goes on and the longer they don't actually move anyone around the state, the more popular it gets.
00:04:35
Speaker 6: In high-speed rail. And we need high-speed rail. And so I need to gain the confidence of the public. I can't gain it if I keep the same characters in place. You know, the Keystone Cops... They always got lucky, but that's not the way you do business. I'm sorry, Keystone Cops, most people probably don't know who the Keystone Cops are.
00:04:57
Speaker 3: Good way to point out that you're old, Javi.
00:05:01
Speaker 1: Look it up. Google it. You can find it.
00:05:03
Speaker 4: All right.
00:05:04
Speaker 3: So that happened.
00:05:06
Speaker 4: Zavala dropped that interview around 8 o'clock last night, and 8 o'clock this morning, CalMatters, I believe, was the first organization to report that Ian Chowdhury... the man with the toupee who is in charge of high-speed rail for the past few years, the man who is responsible for not buying any trains and not laying any tracks and taking consultants out to fancy steak dinners and then Ubering back to his house, he has resigned from his position to spend more time with his family.
00:05:38
Speaker 2: Doesn't he have domestic disputes going on right and left with the family, too?
00:05:42
Speaker 4: Yes. In fact, one of the reasons that Ian Chowdhury never sat down with Ashley Zavala was she wanted to ask about that domestic incident where the police were called to his house and apparently he was detained and his lady friend was detained, who, by the way, works at a consulting firm that the high-speed rail was doing business with. And apparently there was a fight between his lady friend and his daughter. So I don't know what was going on there. But this guy has been living, as they say, high on the hog for way too long. And it is kind of fascinating, even though he's not the governor yet, just the idea of this interview saying, I don't think we can keep around the same characters.
00:06:26
Speaker 3: And Ian's like, I've had enough of this.
00:06:29
Speaker 2: It should also be noted that he would not ever agree to any interviews at all unless you agree to not ask him about his domestic disputes. And then most recently, he was at a High Speed Rail Authority meeting, left the room, and it was Ashley Zavala and our friend Julie Watts who were chasing him down the hallway trying to get him to answer questions.
00:06:54
Speaker 3: He wouldn't do it, and.
00:06:56
Speaker 2: He sicked this bald guy who was in charge of communications for High Speed Rail on the two reporters who was really nasty to them. They were asking that guy questions. The guy said, Submit a request for an interview, and we'll get right back to you. And they go, we've been doing that for a long time, and you guys never do. And he goes, well, submit it again. And it was a bad look for them.
00:07:21
Speaker 4: I'm sorry to use a pun here, but it looks like the high-speed rail project has been derailed yet again.
00:07:27
Speaker 3: That it has, Randy. That it has.
00:07:31
Speaker 2: All right.
00:07:31
Speaker 4: Should we go back to the beginning of this interview so you can hear how Javier Becerra wants to raise everybody's taxes?
00:07:38
Speaker 3: Great.
00:07:40
Speaker 4: Ashley Zavala has for months put in request to do a sit down interview on her statewide political show, California Politics 360 with Javier Becerra. And six days before the end of election season, he says yes for only 10 minutes.
00:08:04
Speaker 2: And I think all of his interviews have potted plants in them now, don't they?
00:08:09
Speaker 4: Well, it is reminiscent of the Between Two Ferns-style interview that he did with that comedian from the San Francisco Standard. But believe you me, this interview is much more substantial because Zavala knew, okay, I've only got 10 minutes. I'm not going to ask him about any of the stuff he's going to blather on. Let's get to 10 problems the state has and how he says he's going to fix them or not.
00:08:33
Speaker 3: Ashley, take it away.
00:08:34
Speaker 5: Javier Becerra, thank you so much for making time for us.
00:08:37
Speaker 4: Always.
00:08:38
Speaker 5: Your team has.
00:08:38
Speaker 3: Not always. When there's not a scheduling conflict.
00:08:44
Speaker 5: He's given us 10 minutes with you. I have nine questions related to issues that you're going to be immediately confronted with in office this year. So let's go. So first, in April, you told me to address California's budget problems. You would raise taxes on the wealthy, but you are against Proposition 40. How would you raise taxes on the richest people in this state?
00:09:03
Speaker 1: Fair share.
00:09:04
Speaker 6: If we can prove that you're not paying your fair share... And to me, that's pretty basic. If you're a billionaire and you're paying at a lower tax rate than a firefighter, a teacher.
00:09:13
Speaker 1: A nurse, you're not paying your fair share.
00:09:15
Speaker 5: Are you taxing assets?
00:09:17
Speaker 1: I would try to do it with income.
00:09:19
Speaker 6: When you start getting into assets, as Prop 40 does, you start to get into real complications. Having done tax policy for over 20 years in Congress, you want to make sure it's something that's fair, it's predictable, and it's stable.
00:09:31
Speaker 3: Now, wait a minute.
00:09:33
Speaker 2: If you are a billionaire and you're paying less, I'm assuming he's talking about in terms of percentages, than a firefighter, and you're paying whatever it is that you owe, how is that fraudulent? How is that unethical? How is that coloring outside the lines? You pay what you owe, and you don't pay a penny more. What dummy would willingly pay more than what they owe to the state of California?
00:10:03
Speaker 4: Whenever you start hearing the phrase fair share, you got to wonder what is fair. I don't make anywhere near the kind of money that these people are talking about right here.
00:10:14
Speaker 3: I work in radio, but you know what? I've seen my pay stubs.
00:10:18
Speaker 4: I pay way more than my fair share and I don't get anything for it.
00:10:22
Speaker 2: Well, if you're talking about what rate they pay, if they're paying a lower rate, that means they make their money a different way. It means they make their money on capital gains, which is typically investments, stocks, real estate, that sort of thing. And we know that specifically Silicon Valley is what's driving the state's economy. So when the Big tech companies do well, and people make a ton of money in stock. That's when they pay a ton in taxes.
00:10:52
Speaker 3: So what?
00:10:52
Speaker 2: You want to tax capital gains the same way you tax income?
00:10:55
Speaker 3: Is that what he's suggesting?
00:10:57
Speaker 4: I don't think he has a clear policy, but let's remember that the current capital gains tax that we have in the state already makes up for a massive portion of the budget. So in certain years where you have big IPOs, like we're about to see the anthropic IPO, California might be living large for quite a while on that one. In years where Silicon Valley doesn't do well, we're broke.
00:11:23
Speaker 5: Like stocks, bonds, their ownership stake.
00:11:25
Speaker 6: There's a lot of corporate welfare where we give corporations tax breaks where they really don't need them. And if we can't give Californians good health care, why should we give corporations tax breaks?
00:11:37
Speaker 2: Wait, the reason they do that, let's just take Hollywood as an example. The regulations are so bad in California that these movie companies are shifting all of their production to Canada, to Georgia, to New Mexico, to Louisiana. Even upstate New York is getting a lot of it. And so what do they do to entice them to stay here? They give them tax breaks. Well, okay, you could say they make a ton of money in Hollywood. Why should we be giving them tax breaks? But if you're going to take the tax breaks away, and I'm fine with that, then do something about the cost because it costs a fortune for them to film those movies here and those television shows here because of policies that people like him support.
00:12:24
Speaker 4: Oh, they're not going to do anything about that. Then they would have to say no to all the unions that write all this legislation.
00:12:30
Speaker 5: I'm going to follow up on that in a second. But actually, no, I will follow up on that now. A state law is in effect right now. that will require the next governor of California by April to, quote, set the stage to hold big corporations accountable.
00:12:44
Speaker 3: Hey, that's the name of our podcast. A new episode dropped yesterday.
00:12:48
Speaker 5: For employees that are relying on the state's Medi-Cal system, can those major companies expect a health care fee under a Governor Becerra?
00:12:57
Speaker 6: They can expect something if they are not paying sufficient wages that their own employees who work full time still qualify for government subsidized health care under Medi-Cal.
00:13:09
Speaker 1: That's not right.
00:13:10
Speaker 6: Taxpayers are helping pay for the health care for workers because.
00:13:14
Speaker 4: They're paying for plans that are better than the ones we can get. Seriously, there are people that willfully work as little as possible because Medi-Cal is so generous.
00:13:26
Speaker 1: For companies, their employers aren't paying them enough. How we do it?
00:13:30
Speaker 6: That's where I have to work with the legislature to make sure we can do it, whether it's a fee, whether it's working the system so that maybe the employers will boost the support.
00:13:38
Speaker 1: The benefits that they give their workers.
00:13:40
Speaker 6: One way or the other, people who work full-time should not have to ask taxpayers to cover their.
00:13:47
Speaker 1: Health care bills.
00:13:47
Speaker 5: Okay, so companies maybe like an Amazon or a Walmart should maybe be on notice then?
00:13:52
Speaker 1: Any company that doesn't pay their workers enough.
00:13:54
Speaker 6: And the legislature was tasked— and the governor's office were tasked with the job of trying to figure out what the route would be. I've said this to a lot of businesses already, that if you've got a business model that requires you to pay, that lets you pay less to your employees so that the state government, the taxpayers have to cover the health care costs for your employees, that's got to change.
00:14:16
Speaker 4: So we're going to make it more difficult to do business here, and we're going to raise taxes on companies. This guy's going to do great.
00:14:24
Speaker 2: He's going to drive more California businesses out of state.
00:14:28
Speaker 5: Speaking of businesses, California is the only state in the nation that has not paid back its COVID-19 federal unemployment loan. Businesses, large and small, regardless of the type of employees they have, are paying this debt back now on their own, and that debt is growing every single year.
00:14:47
Speaker 4: This is true, because California didn't pay back its COVID loan for unemployment, or we sent a bunch of unemployment checks to criminals and fraudsters. Every employer in the state pays a higher payroll tax than anywhere else, and it keeps going up because the state won't pay back its loan, which is another thing that makes it impossible to do business here.
00:15:07
Speaker 2: And correct me if I'm wrong, Randy, but the stolen money from EDD during COVID was the largest theft in the history of this country. I have to imagine because the number they throw around now is between $ 30 and $ 50 billion.
00:15:25
Speaker 5: If you are elected governor, will you commit to putting money toward the principle of that loan to take the pressure off of those businesses in your first budget?
00:15:34
Speaker 6: Ashley, we have to make sure that employers and workers and the state government work together because.
00:15:39
Speaker 1: what's.
00:15:39
Speaker 6: Happening, as you just said, the debt keeps growing. And that means the burden on employers keeps growing. And so what we have to do is find out if you're a good employer, if your business is working and you're not finding that you are constantly having workers use the benefit program.
00:15:56
Speaker 4: You know, sometimes Javier Becerra reminds me of Michael Scott from The Office, where he starts a sentence and he doesn't even know where it's going to end up. He's kind of improvising policy right now.
00:16:08
Speaker 1: Then we should figure out if we can reward you.
00:16:11
Speaker 6: If you're an employer who constantly sees turnover in your employees, and as a result, they're using unemployment benefits all the time, you're costing your fellow employers more money because you're the one that is causing employees to use the unemployment benefit system. So there are ways to do this, but what we have to do is not penalize companies, employers that are doing it the right way. And certainly you don't want to penalize workers.
00:16:35
Speaker 3: Did he even understand the question? I don't think he did.
00:16:39
Speaker 2: I am telling you, I've said it before, I'll say it again. We are going to elect the statewide version of Karen Bass. This guy is going to have a first term, very similar, very similar fashion to Karen Bass's first term. And I don't know if a Republican is going to beat him four years from now, but I'm sure the DSA is already licking their chops at the prospect of going up against this guy.
00:17:08
Speaker 4: Johnny, we've got a lot more of the only 10 minutes that Javier Becerra had for Ashley Zavala, including Zavala asking him, you didn't even answer the question I just asked.
00:17:20
Speaker 2: All right, all that coming up right here on The John Phillips Show. If you'd like to email the show, you can do so at johnnydontlikeshow at gmail.com. That's johnnydontlikeshow at gmail.com. And Randy, what do you say we make a couple of listeners very happy?
00:17:36
Speaker 4: Well, let's do that right now. 790 KABC welcomes Iron Maiden to the Glenn Helen Amphitheater on April 24th, 2027. Tickets are on sale now at Ticketmaster.com. But right now, call in number 9 at 1-888-790-5222. Gets a pair of tickets to the show. Tickets furnished by Live Nation. Good luck dialing. Don't I sound so much more relaxed when I'm working from home?
00:18:07
Speaker 2: Almost NPR-ish. And Randy, tomorrow we're going to do the show live from San Francisco.
00:18:15
Speaker 3: We are.
00:18:16
Speaker 4: We are doing a huge event tomorrow in the Bay Area.
00:18:20
Speaker 3: I'm actually flying.
00:18:21
Speaker 4: The reason I'm working from home today is because I've got to get to Burbank Airport right after the show. And then I and Johnny and you are all coming with us to Johnny Foley's Irish house. in San Francisco's Union Square from noon to three tomorrow. Our first live broadcast in the Bay Area. Let's make it a huge one. We'll be there with our friend Susan Shelley from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association spreading the word about Yes on 43. Tell everyone you know why Yes on 43 means it's harder to raise your taxes. We'll see you tomorrow at Johnny Foley's Irish Pub in Union Square in San Francisco from noon to three.
00:19:01
Speaker 2: If you want to watch us perform the show live, go to johnnydontlike.com. Click that like button and participate in the chat. Let's see how many likes we're at on today's show already. And look, if you're just listening on the radio, you got a second, go to the website on your phone or on your browser, johnnydontlike.com.
00:19:19
Speaker 4: See what's going on in the chat room. Maybe drop in a joke or an insult about Javier Baccaria. We're at 137 likes and the show is just getting started. And by the way, We are now at over 9,800 subscribers on the channel. As of this moment, 9,822. On our way to 10,000 subscribers. And luckily, we didn't make any promises this time, like going to the Tijuana River.
00:19:45
Speaker 2: No, we did promise, however, that when we hit 10,000, we're going to do... a special one-hour happy hour broadcast on YouTube on the weekend.
00:19:57
Speaker 3: We are.
00:19:57
Speaker 4: It's going to be a little drinking show. We'll have a little fun, maybe play a couple of blotters, and we can all enjoy ourselves and celebrate getting to 10,000 subscribers on the channel. at johnnydontlike.com. So if you want to see a drinking show, get us there. Tell your friends. Subscribe, johnnydontlike.com.
00:20:16
Speaker 2: And Randy, that's also where you can find the Accountability Podcast.
00:20:20
Speaker 3: Oh, the Accountability Podcast.
00:20:22
Speaker 4: And this latest episode is one that you've definitely got to watch if you're interested in what's going to happen to the midterms because Election Day, not just in California, is on Tuesday, but across the country. There are a lot of closely watched Senate races. And John talks to pollster Robert Cahaley about all of it, and he's got a lot of warnings about what turnout is already looking like in some of these battleground states. We've got that info and insight on the California races at johnnydontlike.com.
00:20:51
Speaker 3: Give it a watch. And on election day, we're going to be doing double duty. We are.
00:20:56
Speaker 4: Let me pull up the graphic for that one. So we're going to do the regular show from noon to 3 on Tuesday, November 3rd, which I can't believe we're already there. This year is going by so quick. But starting at 7 o'clock on KABC, KMJ in Fresno, KSFO in the Bay Area, and johnnydontlike.com, we'll be doing a live election special. We'll be joined by our friend Phil Teresi at KMJ, Frank Motek of KABC, a bunch of special guests. As we're here when the polls close and we start counting the local races, L.A. Mayor's race, the statewide ballot initiatives, the Bay Area transit tax, And we'll also be looking at some of the Senate races across the country as well. And at 9 o'clock, Johnny and I will be doing at least one exclusive hour right here on YouTube. And let's just say if the results are really bad, Johnny, we're not governed by the.
00:21:51
Speaker 3: FCC in that hour. That is very true.
00:21:56
Speaker 4: So join us Tuesday, November 3rd on KABC, KMJ, KSFO, or... JohnnyDon'tLike.com and watch the whole thing.
00:22:07
Speaker 3: All right.
00:22:07
Speaker 2: Let's go back to Javier Baccaria and his sit-down interview with KCRA's Ashley Zavala. When we last left you, Ashley Zavala asked Javier Becerra about the state still not paying back its COVID unemployment loan, which has to raise the payroll tax for every employer in the state. Javier Becerra obviously didn't understand the question, so let's ask him again.
00:22:33
Speaker 5: The state's government isn't penalizing anyone. It's the federal government that is now taking this money automatically out of every business because the state's government didn't pay this back. So the question is, will you commit to putting money from the state budget this year toward the principle of that loan?
00:22:47
Speaker 6: I will commit to lower the debt service, the debt burden that we have.
00:22:53
Speaker 5: Beyond the interest.
00:22:53
Speaker 1: Beyond the interest. Yeah, we have to because it's going to continue to grow.
00:22:58
Speaker 6: And Ashley, as you know, there's no way state government can operate if its debt continues to grow.
00:23:03
Speaker 4: If you're listening with headphones right now, this interview is being done in Sacramento, and you can hear sirens.
00:23:11
Speaker 3: California, get a California.
00:23:14
Speaker 5: Will you continue Governor Gavin Newsom's moratorium on the death penalty?
00:23:18
Speaker 1: Yes.
00:23:20
Speaker 4: Perfectly fitting that the sirens are going on during this question. Yep.
00:23:25
Speaker 3: There's going to be another inmate on death row.
00:23:28
Speaker 5: Be okay if he commuted some of all of the 560 death sentences to life without parole?
00:23:33
Speaker 6: So I just answered that question a little while ago. And what I'll tell you is this. I don't know what he's facing. I don't know what the particular cases are. That's a very individualized consideration. But I absolutely, as now that he said he's going to take this on, I wish him every opportunity to make the best call on these.
00:23:55
Speaker 1: Cases because these are tough.
00:23:57
Speaker 4: What he's saying is, Gavin, if you're going to do it, do it so I don't get the blowback you do.
00:24:03
Speaker 6: I won't weigh in on that because I don't know what he's looking at.
00:24:06
Speaker 1: I will say this.
00:24:07
Speaker 6: On my watch, given what we've seen with the death penalty, I'm not interested in enforcing it.
00:24:12
Speaker 5: But should victims have to relive these cases?
00:24:15
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's where talking to the families, the victims' families, is going to be really important because you want to make sure that they understand what we're doing. I think we want to be humane. We saw what happened. Was it in Kentucky or in Tennessee? The case where a woman was on death row. She was put to death, but she never died. She's still alive today. I mean, the death penalty just hasn't worked. It hasn't done what's supposed to.
00:24:38
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's because they did it wrong. You know what I would love to see?
00:24:41
Speaker 2: I would love to see one of these sons of bitches up there at San Quentin get attached to an electric chair and they pump his head so full of electricity that the lights flicker in San Diego.
00:24:55
Speaker 1: Just to be a deterrent.
00:24:56
Speaker 6: And so rather than have that, let's have a system that's smart and humane and fair. I think what Governor Newsom is now undertaking, it's a major task. I wish him luck in making the right call.
00:25:07
Speaker 1: All right.
00:25:07
Speaker 5: I know you have defendants.
00:25:08
Speaker 2: Do you have any idea what you have to do to end up on death row in this state? Because if you just kill like a normal amount of people, you don't even go to prison for the rest of your life.
00:25:22
Speaker 3: To go to death row... I don't know.
00:25:25
Speaker 2: You got to be a serial killer or something. Who in the world.
00:25:29
Speaker 4: Has sympathy for those people besides this idiot and Gavin? Let's hear what Bakari has to say about gas prices and gas taxes.
00:25:41
Speaker 6: It's a major task. I wish him luck in making the right call.
00:25:44
Speaker 2: All right.
00:25:44
Speaker 5: I know you have defended the state's gas tax, but state officials say that money may not be reliable in the future. At the end of this year, a report is coming out on a possible fee-based system on vehicle miles traveled. Would a Governor Becerra consider a vehicle miles traveled fee here in California?
00:26:05
Speaker 1: Everything should be on the table.
00:26:11
Speaker 4: I'm telling you, this is going to be Governor Karen Bass. Now, think about what happened here. The revenue for the gas tax is going down every year because Californians are doing what the state told them to do. They are getting more fuel-efficient cars. They are getting hybrids. They're getting electric vehicles. They are using less gasoline. So what does the state say? Well... Instead of, well, maybe we should just get rid of this tax since it's not making, it only makes about $ 8 billion a year in our $ 350 billion budget. But no, instead of that, what we need to do now is instead of taxing your gasoline, we're also going to tax how much you drive. You're going to pay, there's going to be a little transponder on your car and every single mile you're giving a penny to Javier Becerra.
00:27:02
Speaker 1: Well, you know this, you just, You've been commuting. You've been driving. Nothing is free. Our roads aren't maintained just by some magic wand.
00:27:11
Speaker 4: It's called the taxes that we already pay. Wait, doesn't Sheng have possession of that magic wand? Well, we kind of lost track of it because, you know, her home got raided. I think she was trying to sneak out the magic wand, but that FBI agent wouldn't let her.
00:27:27
Speaker 5: Not a day goes by where I don't wish I could just wave a magic wand and silence the gunfire.
00:27:35
Speaker 3: Poor Shaggy. Might have an update with her later.
00:27:38
Speaker 1: You have to pay for it. Do I want to tax people more than necessary? No.
00:27:43
Speaker 3: Sure sounds like you do.
00:27:47
Speaker 2: This is what you're talking about before you're elected. Usually they go, no new taxes, they get elected, then poof, we get the taxes. This guy is showing his hand to cards before November 11th. And it shows the disconnect because, John, what's the magic word that every race is talking about in the state of California across the country?
00:28:08
Speaker 3: It's affordability, affordability, affordability.
00:28:11
Speaker 4: And what is Javier Becerra talking about with almost every answer to every question? How he's going to make the state of California more expensive.
00:28:21
Speaker 1: We pay a gas tax, yes.
00:28:23
Speaker 6: Should people who drive electric vehicles who don't need gas Pay for those roads to be repaired as well?
00:28:27
Speaker 1: Absolutely.
00:28:28
Speaker 3: You told me to get one so I could save the planet.
00:28:31
Speaker 2: I did what you asked. Now you want to take my money? Well, now he's blaming you for the potholes.
00:28:37
Speaker 6: How?
00:28:38
Speaker 1: There are any number of ideas, but I will tell you this. We will take it on.
00:28:42
Speaker 6: Just as I've been willing to say that we will not remove the gas tax, which is obviously not music to a lot of folks' ears, I'm telling everybody else we have to make sure we pay for our roads. You can't do business as a state government if you're not willing to pay for the purposes and the resources that people will be using.
00:28:59
Speaker 4: How did we fund the roads before the gas tax? How did we fund the construction of all of these roads?
00:29:05
Speaker 2: And by the way, don't act like we have these great roads that we're driving on because we pay a fortune in taxes. How long has it been since they've repaved a mile of road in the city of Los Angeles?
00:29:17
Speaker 4: It's been about two years because in the city of L.A., we passed something called Measure HLA, which says every time you repave a road, you have to do a road diet. This year, just this year alone, I have had to replace three tires because I drove on nails. The conditions on our roads are terrible.
00:29:37
Speaker 2: It looks like something between the surface of the moon. and Manuel Noriega's face every time you drive on city streets in LA. And what's wild is, and John, you know this, you travel a lot, I know this, when you go to other states, including states that have things that we don't deal with in Southern California like snow, the roads are pristine and they don't have these kinds of taxes and fees And somehow they pay for them. Why are the roads in better condition in Texas than they are in California?
00:30:07
Speaker 3: It's not even Texas.
00:30:08
Speaker 2: It's a bunch of states that people from California look down their nose at. Go to West Virginia. Go to Alabama. The roads are better in those states than they are here in California.
00:30:21
Speaker 5: Will you try to limit the right of insurance companies to sue utilities like PG & E when those utility companies cause a catastrophic wildfire?
00:30:29
Speaker 3: Another very important question.
00:30:31
Speaker 4: This is the thing that Gavin tried to get across the finish line in his last legislative session, a final bailout to PG & E and SoCal Edison. Is Javier Baccaria going to pick up the mantle on this one?
00:30:44
Speaker 3: Johnny, we'll find out in minutes. It's the John Phillips Show. It's the John Phillips Show.
00:30:50
Speaker 2: If you want to watch us perform the show live, go to johnnydontlike.com and click that like button. Coming up after the news at 1, Sonia Shaw joins us. She's running for state superintendent of public instruction. And later on in the program, Steve Hilton is going to be here as well. Right now, we're going through the sound of Javier Baccaria's sit-down with KCRA's Ashley Zavala.
00:31:13
Speaker 4: When we last left you, Ashley Zavala asked Javier Baccaria if he's going to continue Gavin Newsom's crusade of trying to make sure that utility companies like PG & E and SoCal Edison are not held responsible when they burn down the state.
00:31:29
Speaker 6: I see your course. You're making it tougher and tougher as we go. That has to get handled.
00:31:35
Speaker 1: What the answer is, I know that.
00:31:36
Speaker 2: He does this all the time. This is what got him in trouble in that KTLA interview. If you don't give him a fawning interview where you just lob him softball after softball after softball, he references the fact that you're asking him legitimate questions as if it's a bad thing. Well, in the KTLA interview that you referenced, he did that at the very beginning of the interview, asking, is this going to be a hit piece? And it's not like she's asking him gotcha questions. It's not like she's trying to trick him into saying something spicy. She's asking him the basics.
00:32:12
Speaker 1: Governor, the legislature are working on it.
00:32:14
Speaker 6: But I will tell you this, if that isn't off the state's plate by the end of the year when the governor is still in office, we'll take it on when I'm governor.
00:32:24
Speaker 5: So, but you haven't determined if subrogation should be eliminated or not?
00:32:28
Speaker 4: Subrogation is when the insurance company, after they paid out the fire victims, hypothetically, because some insurance companies like State Farm don't, they can get their losses repaid by the utility company because they started the fire. Gavin, and it looks like Javi, want to end that practice, which would, John, what would that do to the already awful insurance market in the state of California?
00:32:56
Speaker 2: I don't know how any of us are going to buy insurance. With the crowd that's in there now or the crowd that's coming in next, if there aren't serious course corrections made, you're going to see more companies leave the state.
00:33:10
Speaker 6: I don't have all the details that they've had. I do know this, that we can't go on with wildfires this way, where the folks who suffer the most are the very victims who lose their homes.
00:33:20
Speaker 2: You notice, by the way, that he constantly says he doesn't have enough information to take a position on any of these issues, whether it's what to do about the wildfires in the insurance companies, what to do about the death penalty, whatever the case may be. What is he spending his time doing if he's not reading and thinking about state government and state politics? Because he doesn't have enough time to do the normal things that a candidate does. So you think, okay, maybe because he's such a heavy favorite, he's been spending all of his time in preparation of becoming governor and figuring out just exactly how he's going to steer the state.
00:34:00
Speaker 1: No.
00:34:01
Speaker 2: What you have is you have someone who doesn't do the reading and Who is answering questions that he doesn't know the answer to. The only thing he knows is Trump is bad.
00:34:11
Speaker 3: And scrubbing.
00:34:11
Speaker 2: You will.
00:34:12
Speaker 4: Well, he does know how to scrub a dub dub. That is something that we have found out for a very long time.
00:34:18
Speaker 1: But when you do the scrub.
00:34:20
Speaker 5: Move into the brand new California capital annex at the end of 2027. In fact, you'll probably spend a little bit about this one. That is on track.
00:34:30
Speaker 6: All right.
00:34:30
Speaker 4: That's the first indication that we've ever seen that Javier Becerra watches the local news. Because if you watch KCRA 3, you know about Ashley Zavala's crusade against the capital annex project, the big fancy building that the state doesn't need, that they won't tell us how much it costs. that they actually built escape hallways for legislators to run away from, Ashley Zavala.
00:34:56
Speaker 5: Back to being one of the most expensive buildings in the United States. Project leaders are refusing to provide taxpayers with records proving the cost, showing the receipts. Will you, as governor, before this building is complete, try to open up the books on this project?
00:35:15
Speaker 1: I want us to be as transparent as possible.
00:35:18
Speaker 6: I suspect I've heard that some of the problems of being overly transparent are security issues that would put.
00:35:26
Speaker 4: We're not asking you to reveal the plans to the Death Star here.
00:35:29
Speaker 3: Just tell us how much it costs.
00:35:31
Speaker 2: How is it that you put their security in danger by asking for the price tag?
00:35:38
Speaker 4: Do you remember earlier this year when Zavala literally went to the construction site and none of the construction workers could answer any questions?
00:35:45
Speaker 3: No, they all had to sign NDAs.
00:35:48
Speaker 6: Certain information in harm's way. So I don't know what the reason for all the confidentiality.
00:35:56
Speaker 4: How many times in this 10-minute interview did he say the phrase, I don't know.
00:36:02
Speaker 2: Over and over and over again? And you know what? On this one, I believe him.
00:36:07
Speaker 1: But I believe in transparency.
00:36:09
Speaker 6: And when I was AG, I enforced transparency.
00:36:13
Speaker 1: I hope to do that again. I will tell you something.
00:36:16
Speaker 6: If we're going to keep high-speed rail going, We've got to be way more transparent in the way the authority operates.
00:36:22
Speaker 1: And so.
00:36:24
Speaker 6: That's my default. I have to find out what the data is, what the reasons are.
00:36:31
Speaker 1: But when you come and talk to me again, we will answer that question.
00:36:34
Speaker 3: Okay, this guy is Mr. Transparent.
00:36:37
Speaker 2: He was Secretary of Health and Human Services when the federal government was lying to us about the origins of COVID-19.
00:36:45
Speaker 3: Well, there was that.
00:36:46
Speaker 5: Expert in the law. OK, so these public records are not exempted from anything. And project leaders are saying that, yeah, they'll give them up. But once the building is finished, is that really fair?
00:36:59
Speaker 1: I don't know what the ground.
00:37:01
Speaker 4: All right. New Javier Becerra drinking game. We get to figure out new things because Gavins was always mindful when if Javier Becerra becomes governor, take a shot every single time he says, I don't know.
00:37:17
Speaker 3: You're going to end up at the Betty Ford Center if you do that.
00:37:20
Speaker 2: Yep.
00:37:21
Speaker 6: Sorry for delaying, but if it's public records, I find, and now let me put on my AG hat, there are very few reasons for us to tell the public that they don't have access to their own records.
00:37:32
Speaker 5: You just invoked the.
00:37:33
Speaker 4: So then we get to the part about high-speed rail. Let me fast-forward this a little bit.
00:37:38
Speaker 5: For you. What will be the biggest difference between you and Governor Gavin Newsom if you are elected as governor?
00:37:48
Speaker 1: Esto te lo voy a contestar en español.
00:37:52
Speaker 3: What is that?
00:37:53
Speaker 4: Spanish for I don't know? It's Spanish for I speak Spanish. That's Lucy, get over here. I'm going to put you over my knee and spank the living hell out of you.
00:38:03
Speaker 5: También en inglés, por favor.
00:38:05
Speaker 6: And I say it that I was going to answer in Spanish because that's one of the biggest.
00:38:09
Speaker 1: Difference, Ashley.
00:38:10
Speaker 4: The biggest difference between me and Gavin Newsom is hablo en español, señor.
00:38:16
Speaker 3: Scott Wiener speaks Chinese. You do know that.
00:38:19
Speaker 1: It's who I am, what I bring.
00:38:22
Speaker 6: I always tell folks, young people who ask, how do you become active in government and the leadership? I always tell them, if you want to know where a leader is going to take you, know where they've come from. I don't know if we've ever had a governor who comes from where I come from.
00:38:36
Speaker 3: Sacramento? Yep. That's where his daddy was born.
00:38:42
Speaker 1: And so will it be different? Sacramento?
00:38:45
Speaker 6: Well, I'm born and raised in Sacramento, but I mean, in terms of my roots, my background, son of immigrants.
00:38:50
Speaker 3: Wait, that's a lie. Your dad was born in Sacramento.
00:38:54
Speaker 2: Apparently, he also doesn't know where his father was born.
00:39:03
Speaker 3: Take another drink, kids.
00:39:06
Speaker 2: All right.
