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>> Jonathan Movroydis: It's Thursday, November 16, 2023, and you're listening to Matters of Policy and Politics, a Hoover Institution podcast devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the free world. I'm Jonathan Movroydis, senior product manager at the Hoover Institution, and I'm sitting in the chair of Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbes Carpenter distinguished policy fellow in journalism.
So that he can answer questions and provide commentary about California policy and politics in which he is well versed. Bill Whalen, in addition to being a Washington Post columnist, writes weekly for Hoover's California On Your Mind web channel. Whalen is joined today by Lee Ohanian, Hoover Institute senior fellow and professor of economics and director of the Ettinger Family Program in macroeconomic research at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Ohanian also writes about the policy environment, the Golden State for California On Your Mind. Good day, gentlemen. Let's talk about the latest developments in policy and politics in the Golden State. There's a lot to talk about this week, gentlemen. San Francisco is hosting the summit for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation.
Xi Jinping arrived in the city Tuesday afternoon and was greeted by Governor Gavin Newsom and first partner Jennifer in this current chaotic international environment, with conflicts continuing to rage in Ukraine and the Middle East. President Biden met yesterday on the sidelines of the summit at the lavish Fioli Gardens in Woodside. And, of course, San Francisco hosting APEC isn't without controversy.
San Francisco continues to be plagued by crime, homelessness, and streets littered with garbage and drug paraphernalia. To keep up appearances for international visitors, the city decided to undergo a massive cleanup effort. More shockingly, the city also built a security barrier to protect President Xi. Last week, Governor Newsom made this seemingly unfortunate soundbite during the unveiling of a new urban tree planting program.
In regards to the summit at APEC, quote, I know folks are saying, they're just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming to town. That's true because it's true. Bill, isn't this a slap in the face to San Francisco residents and taxpayers who have pleaded with city officials that their city addressed quality of life issues only to see action inspired by the visit of an American adversary?
>> Bill Whelan: Yeah, I think Lee and Jonathan, the short answer to that is yes, it is a slap in the face. That full Newsom quote, by the way, after what you said. He also added, we've been talking about this for months, but that doesn't change the point that it took this APEC summit coming to San Francisco to force the city and the state to spring into action and clean up San Francisco.
And by cleaning up, moving at homeless encampments and repainting parts of the city and just power flushing the place, things they could have done a year ago if they so wanted to. So, yes, if I were a San Francisco resident, San Francisco taxpayer, I'd be furious right now because I've been sitting there in relative squalor waiting for the city and the state to do something, and it takes the world coming to San Francisco to change this.
But it's interesting, in addition to what you mentioned, there was also a robbery, which this summit just kinda showed the best of the worst of San Francisco. It's a beautiful city when it's clean and it's on display. On the other hand, yes, you had the hypocrisy question about cleaning up the city. The summit was not without a crime incident. A Czech public TV crew came into town and probably got robbed at gunpoint. Welcome to San Francisco, and then you had protest.
You had protest going down Market street? As close as they could get to the summit. We're doing this on Thursday the 16th. Earlier this morning, protesters went out on the westbound lanes of the San Francisco Bay bridge and shut it down. Protested, locked up traffic for about four hours. So it was kinda the best and worst of San Francisco. But the question, Lee, would be this, once the summit is over and that cleanup goes away, is San Francisco go back to its status quo?
Does anything here change for the better? >> Lee Ohanian: And Bill, that's the $64,000 question. Will it backslide to what it was before, I doubt that all of the changes are gonna stick, but the question becomes, will some of the changes stick? Earlier this week, I spoke on the phone with an independent journalist who's lived in San Francisco, I think last 30, 35 years. She's one of the grassroots organizers for reforming San Francisco politics and San Francisco policies.
And she runs a weekly TV show about San Francisco politics. So she's very, very plugged in. And I'll be writing a piece for California on your mind in the near future about this. And I was actually interviewing her about her perceptions about San Francisco since APEC, and we talked widely about the issues. And I'll share with you a couple of I think what were really striking observations that she told me. I asked her, how do people feel that it took APEC to make these changes?
And she said, we knew it could happen. We knew the police could come and deal with this. It's at the same time it's a release because for at least a few days we have our city back, but it is also very bitter because we've been living with this for decades and it's as if to say we don't matter enough to have a safe, clean city. And, it was interesting that she said the city smells different. She said they've been power washing buildings and streets and they have been painting poles.
She said the containment zone, the APEC zone, was in terms of drug use and crime and just the overall vibe. She said what was a ten on a scale of one to ten, ten being worst, it's now down to a one or a two, she said. She said was walking in the area the other day. There was a naked woman taking a shower in a fountain. The homeless outreach team responded within five minutes. She said, many times they won't respond at all [COUGH] or perhaps they might come within two or three hours.
They were there within five minutes, then they got her out of there. She said the drug trade has largely disappeared from the main corridors, south market, tenderloin and civic center. She said the UN center is totally transformed. She said it just is as if it's a whole new city. And I said, well, how are they doing this? She said every police officer is working 15 days straight. No one's getting a day off, the bills are full.
And she said drug users have responded by either going into hiding or leaving the city. Hopefully they've left the city for good. Perhaps they'll be back after APEC. But another interesting thing she said is that, hey, things are changing. People's perceptions of SF are so bad that even in terms of far left people, she said, I know a lot of people, those on the far left, they're fed up and interesting enough. She said, we all know Newsom wants to be president.
And it was interesting she said, nobody here really has much good to say about him. Nothing personal, it's just that his policies that have been placed for a long time have really ruined the city. And she said at the national stage, I see San Francisco as a cinder block attached to the end of the rope that he's gonna wear around his neck. He just won't be able to escape this.
>> Bill Whelan: Yeah, actually, Lee, a lot of Californians have problems with the governor these days, and we'll get to that later in the podcast with a poll that came out that shows some very bad approval numbers for him, but the Internet's been having a field day with this. You take San Francisco, the idea of being nice to a Chinese president slash dictator who's visiting and you can imagine the memes.
My favorite meme, Lee and Jonathan, was one that showed a giant can of Febreze hovering over San Francisco and spraying away. So you have it. But Lee, you mentioned Newsom and the presidential thing. And, of course, anytime you put Gavin Newsom in a setting like this, it cannot be avoided. But in this case, the president of the United States kind of fanned the flames. And on Wednesday night, there was a dinner after Newsom met with Gee, and a lot of local tech people were invited to it.
Elon Musk went, and here's what the president said about our governor, quote, he's been one hell of a governor man. Matter of fact, he could be anything he wants, he could have the job I'm looking for. I would love to have had a split screen of Biden saying that and Kamala Harris, who's probably sitting somewhere in that audience either spitting up her drink [LAUGH] or choking on her fruit or whatever. But a nice plug for Gavin Newsom, but Newsom did have a good moment here.
But again, what is just hard to escape is the question of a lot of photos on the internet, Lee showing San Francisco a year ago versus today, the before and after. But a year from now, you can put that photo on the right, on the left, and here is 2023. It's really a question what 2024 at this time will look like for San Francisco. >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, like how much backsliding will occur, and APEC is bringing in an enormous amount of revenue for the city.
I think there's about 30,000 people there, without that type of revenue, they're not gonna be able to sustain the type of manpower they're putting into this with police not getting a day off, police working overtime. So yeah, Bill you wonder to what extent is this not just a wakeup call, but will San Francisco's just demand of London Breed and the board of supervisors and other policymakers? You better keep it this way, because we're not gonna accept anything less than this.
And of course, 2024 is a reelection year for Breed and some of the sups. And another interesting thing that Miss Sandberg said to me was, she said in terms of all the people I've talked to, she says, I talked to people, not that there are all that many on the right in San Francisco, because I talk to people who are in the middle. San Francisco middle means a little bit something different than the rest of the country middle, she goes, I talk to people way out on the left.
And she said there has been a sea change in the stranglehold that progressives have had on the city. And she said, not even just the democratic party, the Democratic Socialist Party is more influential here than the Democratic Party. And she said, they have been, I'm gonna quote her, they have been gob smacked. They just didn't see this coming, and they have no idea how to respond now.
So, perhaps this will be something that will stick, I'm actually gonna do another interview with her in a couple of weeks to see if anything has changed in the city. So, I'll have more to say about that. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Moving down south of Los Angeles gentlemen, LA is struggling with the aftermath of a massive fire that shut down a portion of the I-10 freeway.
During a press conference earlier this week, Governor Newsom claimed that the fire was an act of arson, he specifically used the phrase malicious intent. However, California's authorities have yet to specify the origin of the fire, a suspect, or a possible motive. Investigators are still talking to witnesses, including the areas homeless.
During the press conference, Governor Newsom was joined by LA Mayor Karen Bass, who made a parallel with the recovery efforts of the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Saying quote, for those of you that remember the 1994 of Northridge earthquake, Caltrans worked around the clock to complete the emergency repairs of the freeways.
And the structural damage calls to the same level of urgency and effort, Bill, you were working for then California Governor Pete Wilson at the time, can you describe that line of effort back almost 20 years ago? >> Bill Whelan: Pretty simple, yeah, the earthquake happened on January 17th in 1994. Earthquakes tend to happen, it was in the dead of the night, I don't know Lee if you're in Los Angeles at the time or not.
It was, of course, just a matter of huge inconvenience for everyone, and it was a bad situation because not just the Santa Monica freeway, but some other freeways are brought down at the same time. But Santa Monica was really a focus because this is an important artery in Los Angeles, as Lee can attest to. Wilson worked with Richard Riordon, then the mayor of Los Angeles, and very quickly moved into action.
And what he did, it's interesting, whereas Mayor Bass would say, this is really kind of a heroic saga of Caltrans workers, and don't get me wrong, they did great work around the clock here. Wilson thought outside the box, and he thought outside the box in great part because he had advice from the late George Schultz and Michael Boskin, a Hoover Institution senior fellow.
They were both members of the governor's council of economic advisors, and Wilson did two things in particular that sped this up. Number one, he froze environmental reviews, in other words, just instead of having this become paralysis by analysis as you go through all environmental loopholes. And as Liam and I have talked on this show before about CEQA and various things like that, fast track through that so they could speed along construction.
Secondly, they hired a constructor by the name of CC Myers and company to come in and do the construction, and they made it incentive based, which is something that state government does not do. And what they did was they offered Myers a contract with the set date for finishing it with a $200,000 bonus per day for every day that he finished early. And lo and behold, they finished early, I think they opened up the freeway something like three weeks ahead of time.
And it was just kind of a very good success story as to what government can do when it is creative and kind of unleashed and friendly with the public sector, if you will. So, that's a question Lee, in terms of the dealing with the Santa Monica Freeway here in 2023, will the state government and the city government get creative in a way to think outside the box to speed this up?
Because one reason why Governor Newsom was on top of this with Mayor Bass, nothing drives voters more crazy than gridlock and being shut down on their freeways. And by the way, this is one of the interesting things about this, back in 1994, when the Wilson administration said it would take several months to do this, there's media pushback on the left saying that he's exaggerating for political purposes.
I've noticed that Newsom and Bass have said this is gonna be shut down for several weeks, I think three to five weeks this timeframe they put out there. But the question really is Lee, the creative thinking, because as we see in this administration, Bush comes to shove especially in economic matters, they create a 108-member economic [LAUGH] recovery task force to solve the problem. There's no way 108 members in 2023 are gonna come up with creative solutions to open that freeway early.
>> Lee Ohanian: I see no reason why it shouldn't take anything more than three to five weeks, I think they should be able to get it done sooner. But what was possible in California roughly 30 years ago is I don't think possible today. I say possible because it could be possible, but not with the leadership we have in place. So, I suspect it'll take much longer [LAUGH] than three to five weeks, despite the enormous cost this imposes on businesses and people living in Los Angeles.
And Bill, you know what I thought was a bit of a tone-deaf tweet came from the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, who posted a tweet, and it showed her riding on one of the city buses with a big smile on her face. And she was saying, ridership is up 10% the last two days [LAUGH], and of course the last two days has been since the I-10 has been shut down [LAUGH].
And she was talking about how we're doing this wonderful job and we're adding more routes and people love mass transit and no, they don't [LAUGH]. >> Bill Whelan: Michael Bloomberg rode the subway every day to work as mayor of Los Angeles. I don't know if Mayor Bass rides the bus every day to work, but that kind of sounds me, Lee, like a celebrity who endorses some lousy soft drink and the moment they cut the camera they spit it out [LAUGH]. >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah [LAUGH].
No yeah, I thought it was a very tone-deaf moment, instead of riding mass transit, she should be telling people this is what we're gonna do to get this back in operation just as remarkably fast as possible. And Bill, it's ironic that we talked many times about regulations in California, particularly regulations that impede development, And building both commercial and residential. And maybe the state and the city will think long and hard about the protections they provide for eviction.
Because the fire occurred at a property that had been leased by a landlord that hadn't paid rent in over a year, and it was leased from Caltrans. And Caltrans was in the process of trying to get this guy evicted. You would think it wouldn't be that difficult to get him evicted, particularly when he had sublet the space illegally to people that had bare wood pallets sitting there. That when you say fire, the bare wood pallet lights up almost on its own, spontaneous ignition.
So it's sadly ironic that this could have been avoided in a state, in a city where it can take years to build something. Presumably cuz we wanna make sure that it's environmentally friendly and there's not gonna be damages and no one's gonna get hurt. We have this kind of thing happen. >> Bill Whelan: I'm glad you mentioned about Caltrans, Lee, because there are two things here, I think, worth noting.
Number one, when was the last time anybody in Sacramento looked into Caltrans and contracting and how diligent Caltrans is in terms of studying its leases? And also just its eyes on the ground, in terms what's going on underneath freeways, which sounds like a whole entire ecosystem of not just companies, but homelessness, which is what we'll get to in a minute.
So if they were an aggressive state controller, or dare I say, if the state Republican lawmakers had a pulse, they would probably be on top of this debate investigation. But the other issue here is homelessness. And here I know, by the way, California newspapers, Lee and Jonathan, suddenly don't like to use the H word. We know instead of calling a homeless population, we now use phrases like unhoused residents and things like that.
It's kinda like how we moved away from illegal immigrants to undocumented Californians, if you will. But I think the homeless issue overshadows this as well in this regard. And maybe this is one of the reasons why the governor has been kind of over his skis in terms of saying malicious intent and kinda knowing the origins of this.
I think he does not want in any way for this to become a story about a homeless encampment underneath the freeway lighting a fire, which started the explosion or something like that. So you could have two paths here, Lee, another conversation about homelessness in California. Just how many homeless people are living under freeways and possible tinder boxes.
But the other question, Lee, that kinda reminds me of the EDD scandal, which you've written about for California on your mind, is really how competent is Caltrans and monitoring? What goes on underneath its freeways? >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, well, not very close at all, Bill, it turns out. So another issue of accountability. Caltrans is an organization that's just enormous budget. And not just enormous, it's enormous for the size and scope for what it does.
And Bill, Newsom has come out there saying prematurely that this is malicious intent. And I've seen some other stories suggesting as arson. So I'm not sure we've seen an official declaration it was arson. But you wonder how much politics is playing into that premature statement, he's saying. But sadly, there have been a number of fires in Los Angeles that have been quite destructive, that have been front and center at homeless encampments.
And the cause typically is somebody burning a fire to either stay warm or to cook something. A few years ago, there was a terrible fire that started in Ventura, and it was wind blown and went all the way up into Santa Barbara. Affected me and my family, we had to leave our home, and we were out of our home for an awful long time. We were lucky and [COUGH] our home was spared. But that fire in Ventura started on the very day that two fires started in Los Angeles at homeless encampments.
And those fires at homeless encampments sucked in quite a bit of firefighting resources. So one might ask the question, okay, well, if we didn't have to go and fight those fires, could that have been contained and not spread all the way up 30 miles up into Santa Barbara? So again, Newsom, in his state of the state speech, earlier this year, just in January of this year, talked about homelessness, saying, we've gotta do the right thing. And he gave these moral and righteous statements.
And we have 170,000 plus homeless in the state that's bigger than the capital of Oregon at 170 plus thousand. He loves to talk about how much money is being spent, but at the end of the day, these are the issues that people are facing every day. And we just cross our fingers that these kinds of events, such as the fire that happened under the I-10, we just keep our fingers crossed and pray that these things don't happen. But they almost [INAUDIBLE].
>> Bill Whelan: Well, I'd be very curious to see what actually the origin is of the fire. And then secondly, I also be very curious to see how the Los Angeles Times approaches this because this is a newspaper that historically does great investigative work. And boy, if ever there's an opportunity for a multipart series about Los Angeles, it'd be life underneath LA's freeways. >> Lee Ohanian: Absolutely. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Gentlemen, let's turn to the topic of education.
Lee, in the column that you wrote last week for California, mind you, describe how Hamas's attack on Israel has revealed the political agenda of the University of California's Ethnic Studies Faculty Council, the ESFC. Which is charged with designing and promoting a highly politicized school curriculum known as liberated ethnic studies. You write, Lee, that liberated ethnic studies is founded on the notion that the US is a highly racist society in which whites systematically oppress minorities.
Lee, can you explain the events that led to the revelation of the ESFC's perspective about Hamas and what it says about the curriculum being taught to young people in the Golden State? >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, Jonathan, recently, I think probably three years ago, a law was passed, Newsom signed that requires high school students to complete at least one course in ethnic studies. So what's ethnic studies?
Well, the legislation, the language within the legislation, pretty much says we want students to become citizens of the world and appreciate other cultures and accept people for who we are. And all that sounds good, but ethnic studies within California high schools is anything but that. The ethnic studies curriculum is largely being designed by a faculty council within the University of California. The faculty council includes 300 people.
Of course, not all 300 are involved in designing this new curriculum. But the curriculum is not anything about helping students become a citizen of the world [LAUGH] and understand the wonderful foods that come from Kenya and Mongolia and Italy, for example. It's very much a partisan curriculum that essentially says, hey, white males are bad and they do a lot of oppressing, particularly for people of color. And that's what our courses are gonna be about. That's largely what the curriculum is.
It took three different revisions of this curriculum to finally get it to be signed by Newsom. And what really came to light last week, Jonathan, is that the president of the University of California, a fellow named Michael Drake, very prominent physician. And the chair of the UC Board of Regents, a fellow named Richard Leib. They issued a statement on behalf of the UC system that condemned the October 7 Hamas attack.
It was very, very brief, it essentially expressed grief for those affected on both sides, expressed hope for peaceful revolution, and it also called the Hamas attack a terrorist attack. So what happens next is this 300 faculty ethnic studies council sends a letter. It was publicly sent, it was an open letter, but it was addressed to the UC president Drake and the UC Board of Regents Richard Leib. And it's essentially, abhorrent and dishonest, in my opinion.
This ethnic studies faculty council claims that the leadership of the UC distort and misrepresent the unfolding genocide of Palestinians. They irresponsibly wield charges of terrorism, and they have contributed to a climate that has made Palestinian students and community members unsafe, even in their own homes. And this was a real head scratcher, [LAUGH] because what we know from the Hamas attacks is that, there is an Israeli mom and child clutching each other as they are burned alive.
Women and girls were raped, children were beheaded, torture, dismembering of victims. I mean, there's no reasonable person, in my opinion, that would not call that a terrorist, horrific, unhuman attack. And yet these same ethnic studies faculty are saying, well, the UC leadership really should join us in calling for freedom for Palestinians, and they should not be calling Hamas terrorists, and they should not be inciting people to violence against Middle East.
And the statement that Drake and Leib made is online is easily found. I would dare anybody to read that and make the claim that that was an inflammatory statement, that there was anything unreasonable about what they wrote. This is 300 UC faculty, and I'll just close with this one last thought. One of the other regents on the board wrote the following. A fellow named Jay Sarrus, Bill, I don't know him, perhaps you do.
He's a United artist, very, very successful person in the entertainment business. Here's what UC regent Jay Sarrus writes in response to these UC faculty who think Hamas apparently is entirely justified. He writes, there are absolutely no words to describe how appalling and repugnant I found your letter. It is rife with falsehoods about Israel, it seeks to legitimize and defend the horrific savagery of the Hamas massacre.
You ask us, as a body, the regents, to retract our charges of terrorism, to uplift the Palestinian freedom struggle and to stand against genocide of Palestinians. Well, the thought that young and impressionable students might be taught the falsehoods of your letter absolutely sickens me. Your organization should commit to learning more about antisemitism and all forms of hate, how it lives on our campuses, where you are tasked and trusted to educating our next generation of students and leaders.
So I'm very glad he wrote that, because the letter from these UC faculty is that poor. >> Bill Whelan: Lee, I had a conversation the other day with one of our colleagues at Hoover, who also teaches at Stanford, he's a very celebrated teacher, he's very popular in the classroom.
And I asked him this question because I've been walking around the campus and there have been kids out for three weeks now protesting over Palestine, and you see chalk on the grounds saying derogatory things about Israel banner straight and so forth. And my question to our colleague was, some of the brightest kids in America come to a school like Stanford, as they do to your UCLA.
Do kids come to college pre-wired this way in terms of their worldview, or is this something they pick up in college? And if they pick it up in college, do they pick it up from their fellow students or is this from professors? And he said the answer is neither the above, he said the problem is kids are getting this in high school.
And so I read your column, and I thought to myself, this is only gonna make the problem worse, especially as some of the allegations are, is that there's gonna be anti-Semitism in this ethnic studies that these kids are gonna learn. But here's my question, Lee, it's not just a question of teaching ethnic studies, the question is who's gonna teach the teachers, if you will? We have historically in California, very specific credentials when it comes to teaching things.
I remember back in the dark ages when I worked in state government, we pointed out some of the fallacies at K-12, one of which was at Bill Walsh, who was the legendary coach of the San Francisco 49ers. If he retired from football at the time, he could not have got a job teaching K-12 PE. He was not qualified in their reviews for that.
So there's a question at this hour, Lee, of what qualifies a student to teach ethnic studies, which is now gonna take us to another avenue, I think, how ethnic studies are taught in the CSU and UC systems. So Lee, it just seems to me this, this bill is just gonna create a lot of this law, I should say, is gonna create a lot of unintended consequences. Wonder which now is what kids are gonna learn not just in high schools, but colleges.
>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, absolutely right, the teaching establishment in California and within public schools pretty much every other state in the country, this is kind of a classic cartel. Cartels prevent entry, they don't like competition. So yeah, one of the most famous football coaches ever lived is not qualified to teach physical education yet, so it's ridiculous. And Bill is absolutely right, kids are getting this in high school. Who is qualified to teach ethnic studies?
Well, it'll be the people who, the UC ethnic studies faculty council will say who get to teach those classes. Before the ethnic studies requirement became law, I wrote a couple of pieces for California on your mind about this, expressing concern about anti-Semitism in the curriculum. And also crazy things such as, Martin Luther King was not discussed within the curriculum yet.
Convicted cop killers who are convicted with ballistic evidence and eyewitness evidence and all sorts of evidence, they are in the curriculum, crazy stuff like that. And so those are the people who are gonna be teaching our kids. And Bill, it's interesting, a few years ago, I was at a lunch on campus, there was a UCLA event. Woman sitting next to me was from the sociology department. And somehow the topic of Israel came up and I thought, I really don't wanna talk about Israel with this woman.
But in any case, she went on a rant about Israel and Zionism and the Palestinians, the Middle East. And finally I asked her, I said, well, you say Israel stole this land, do you know when Israelites were first in this land? It was about 2,000, before Christ, it was from the people from the Canaanites. And she looked at me like, well, I didn't know that. And we went through the history, including the takeover by the Ottoman Empire and the British from 1917 up until 1947.
And the number of times it teaches Two-state solution had been offered. And the fact that Israel was attacked by Syria, and Jordan, and Egypt immediately upon declaring themselves a sovereign state. Initially enough, Bill, none of this made a dent on her. It ends up becoming, no pun intended, just a religious belief. And I'm afraid that we're gonna have to be living with this for an awful long time.
>> Bill Whelan: Yeah, I would note, Lee, that when a bill like this becomes law, immediately there's pushback in more conservative parts of California, Orange County, for example. But I'm up at Northern California, and I'm in Santa Clara County, just across the border from San Mateo County, Lee and Jonathan, where about a thousand parents sent in very angry letters about this.
And their concern is basically this, Lee, and you can appreciate this as a professor, their concern is that kids aren't really being taught how to critically assess issues or being taught how to think. And this is just goes to the heart of education. Lee, be like you teaching an economic class and saying, in effect that Milton Friedman was a jackass and John Maynard Keynes was a god. In other words, you're not supposed to kinda skew people's views of history.
You're supposed to kinda encourage kids to kinda learn how to think things themselves. >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, you'd like to think our school system helps kids to think independently and gives them the tools to logically evaluate arguments and draw their own conclusions. Even if those conclusions offer in the gray areas so much of life often is. But there's a lot of indoctrination going on, and there is a lot of pushback within California schools among parents.
About 300 plus thousand kids have left public K through 12 in the state since 2019. And a big part of that is because parents are just getting fed up with the education, or the lack of education that's being taught in our schools. >> Bill Whelan: Well, Lee, I wanna go back to the question of how teachers are taught, because this ties into another of your columns that you wrote for California to mind. And this is about a new law, which requires media literacy for kids in K through 12.
First of all, are you gonna tell me that we're actually trying to teach media literacy to kindergarteners? I have grand nephews who are kindergarteners, and trust me, there's not much they're really thinking of besides who's playing football on Sunday. But again, this question, Lee, if we're gonna be teaching kids about disinformation in K through 12, who's gonna teach teachers what disinformation constitutes? >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
So one of our new laws this year signed in by Newsom is that California law requires essentially fake news classes to be taught beginning in kindergarten. Bill, so you'll have to pry your nephews away from watching that screen and start thinking about CNN, good, Fox News, bad, because that's what essential this is about. Marc Berman, who's in the state assembly, he's the Democrat, represents Menlo Park.
He sponsored the bill, and he said, I've seen the impact that misinformation has in the real world, how it affects the way people vote, whether they accept the outcomes of elections or try to overthrow our democracy. So those are obviously not so subtle hints towards Trump and his supporters. But, Bill, ironically, the state keeps loading up more and more requirements on kids to graduate, ethnic studies, fake news requirements.
And that seems silly when only one out of four of our kids is proficient [COUGH] in math, or science, or English. So, [COUGH] this bill wants them to be able to read media and be able to figure out what's accurate and what's not accurate. Well, they have a hard time reading at all. And Bill, hey, who's gonna teach the teachers? Well, there have been some studies about the ability of a broad cross-section of adults to be able to detect fake news.
Well, the ability of people to do that is somewhere between 4% to about 25% within the studies that have been done. So, yeah, who's gonna teach the teachers? It is a hard thing to do, and when something's difficult, people fall back on what they feel comfortable with. So in the column I wrote, that's why I said this is gonna devolve into a CNN, MSNBC, good Fox News, Breitbart bad. And meanwhile, most kids in public K through 12 are sadly deficient in virtually all of the basics.
So rather than loading up kids in schools with more requirements, let's figure out how to teach kids and make sure that they have the skills they need to be able to compete in a few years when they have to figure out how to make a living for themselves, or else they will become one of the new homeless statistics. >> Bill Whelan: Let me add one wrinkle to this, Lee, I want your thoughts on this. You're the proud father of very strapping young man still in high school, I believe.
At what age would you let your son go on either TikTok or X? Because if you're gonna try to teach disinformation, that's the heart of disinformation these days, social media. In other words, would you let a third grader, or fourth grader, or fifth grader, would you give them access to X and TikTok to supposedly look at disinformation? Cuz now you're just exposing those kids to all kinds of stuff. >> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, all sorts of things. I'm fortunate, my son is now 16.
He'll be 17 early next year. So thankfully a lot of this stuff didn't really catch on until he was older. And there's a number of wonderful aspects in social media, but there's an awful lot of garbage that comes along with that. And obviously, children aren't emotionally or academically prepared to have to deal with that. So Bill, I'm really glad I don't have a kindergartner right now, because I would [COUGH] have to be monitoring that and shutting that down for many, many years to come.
>> Bill Whelan: Well, take it again as the proud grand uncle of four very thriving young grand nephews. They wanna watch the RedZone on Sundays, they don't wanna watch Fox News or CNN. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Okay, well, let's keep our fingers crossed that holds. Lee, to your point about proficiency in your calm, or lack thereof, in math, reading and science, another way to look at this, how will these kids ever be able to discern from fact and fiction if they lack the basics in these areas?
>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, I write about education. I don't know, about one out of four, maybe one out of five my columns is about education in California, because we do such an awful job, really, literally, 25% proficiency rate in reading and in math and in science. And those proficiency rates are brought up substantially by Asian American kids. You take Asian American kids out, you look at, say, just Hispanic kids or black kids, and proficiency dips to about 15%, [LAUGH] this is an abject failure.
The K through 12 education system should be put literally into receivership. Its annual budget is, I believe, close to $130 billion, which exceeds the combined state budgets of Tennessee, Ohio, and I believe, Pennsylvania. I have the three states whose combined budgets are less than California's education budget. And those three states have about 33 million people compared to California's 39 million. We spent a lot on education.
And we're simply not getting a return for it and there's a lot of virtue signaling here in the state, and I'll do my own little virtue signaling here, which is, there's no better investment we can make than the kids who will inherit our future and guide the state in future years. And we're doing a huge disservice to them. It is awful in terms of the outcomes that we're seeing. We should demand much better parents. A few parents are beginning to.
I mentioned 300,000 kids are no longer within public K-12. They're in private schools and being homeschooled. It could be so much better, and it could be so much better within a year or two. But there's an enormous political education complex out there. And there's an awful lot of incumbent interests and all those dollars, and year in, year out, we continue to fail our kids.
And at this point, this has largely become a democratic party problem because this is a super majority state with a democratic governor. And they could put some pressure on the education system and say, you've got to do better. And here's the goals we need for the next three years, the next five years. That's never done, there's just more money being thrown at the problem. >> Jonathan Movroydis: So, Lee, final thought on this.
It seems to me we have a real disconnect here, and that on the one hand, the state wants to make it so that kids will understand that disinformation is bad and that two plus two does not equal five. And the only they ever do is such a rotten job of teaching them that they can't understand that two plus two equals four. >> Lee Ohanian: No, the proficiency statistics I cited, the bar is not particularly high.
To give an example, in math, only one out of four California 8th graders could look at a number line and pick the midpoint between two numbers they were given and the number line included tick marks. All you need to do is count halfway up and you get the right answer. Only one out of four got the right answer, it is grim. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Let's conclude this episode by talking about The Governator.
Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of Arnold Schwarzenegger swearing in the as California's 38th governor following a special election in 2003, the first election that I voted in. In which his predecessor, Gray Davis, was also recalled from office. You write about The Governator's legacy two decades on, Bill, for California on Your Mind.
As a veteran of an administration of a two-term Republican governor in Pete Wilson, as you noted earlier, Bill, did The Governator meet the expectations of the voters who put him into office? And was he successful in implementing and executing policies that contributed to the state's prosperity? >> Bill Whelan: Well, first of all, Jonathan, nice cheap shot that the first time you voted was 2003. >> Jonathan Movroydis: [LAUGH] >> Bill Whelan: Some of us had voted a long time by then.
So well done, my friend. Okay, so the question, did Arnold meet expectations, and what did he get done? Long answer short, it's complicated. He didn't meet expectations, because I think, in fairness to the man, the expectations were ridiculously high. And a lot of people thought, well, we're electing a celebrity and an action hero, and this is gonna become kind of an action movie.
He's gonna go in there and just basically kinda kick fanny and just knock the heads with the bad guys and goodness will prevail in the end. And politics is not a two-hour action movie, as we saw. It's very interestingly, Jonathan, on the one hand, you look at Schwarzenegger's record, and he does things Republicans would loudly cheer for. He got workers comp reform, he repealed a bill granting driver's licenses to undocumented Californians.
He was very pro-business, if you go back, Lee, and look at the jobs record, the California Chamber of Commerce, the job killers record under Arnold's watch, this is done by the California Chamber of Commerce each year. Arnold, I think, was presented with 67 bills during his time, he killed all but four of them. So very pro-business in that regard. But yet there is griping about him. Now, part of that was very showy because he did move on the climate.
But what I point out in the column here, Lee and Jonathan, is that people wanted to connect Schwarzenegger to Reagan. And yes, you take A-R-N-O-L-D and rearrange it, you get R-O-N-A-L-D, it's a very clever thing if you want to. But Reagan had an ideological epiphany on the way to Sacramento. He'd moved from being a new deal Democrat to a very conservative Republican. Arnold, on the other hand, was very much a policy work in progress.
And full disclosure, I worked with him before he ran for governor. So I saw a lot of this up close. So when it came time, for example, he was presented his first year a bill that banned the production of foie gras, fattening goose liver in California. But he signed it, and Republican said, have you lost your mind? What Arnold was doing was Arnold wanted to do business with John Burton, who was the president pro-tem of the Senate at the time.
When Arnold moved on climate change, again, Republicans thought he had lost his mind. But this is kind of just his policy evolution, if you will. So know what the expectations and the policy, again, complicated. But the intriguing question to me, there are two intriguing questions here. One is, if you go back to 2003, just like a Terminator going back in time, I would add, if Arnold had run not as a Republican, but an independent.
And my first thought was, yeah, he probably would have won just because he was such a novelty at the time. And it was just such a circus, as you well remember, Jonathan, voting for the first time. But I went back and I looked at the numbers here, Lee. And Jonathan, if you go back to October 2003 and look at the registration numbers in California, 43.7% Democratic, 35.3% Republican, 16% independent. Those numbers today are 46.8% Democrats, so Democrats have picked up about three points.
Republicans have bled about almost 12 points, or down to 23.9, and independents are up to 22.2. So he would have had to run a very different campaign. He was very much kind of a traditional Republican when he ran in 2003. He would have had to been kind of a different version of the Terminator and that, and maybe he gets over the finish line, but it wouldn't be quite the same. So, yeah, in terms of meeting expectations, no, but you know what? In retrospect, boy, it sure was fun, wasn't it?
Lee, you remember those good old days. >> Lee Ohanian: I do, and Jonathan, I didn't know you were so wet behind the ears, 2003. We're not gonna let you forget that [LAUGH]. >> Jonathan Movroydis: Right [LAUGH]. >> Lee Ohanian: Bill, as I was reading your column, this out today in California on Your Mind on the Hoover website, I thought, my God, what a different place California was just 20 years ago.
Even 17 years ago, when Schwarzenegger, so 03 was the recall, and then 06 was the regular, it was the general election. And Bill, I think Arnold received something like 56% of the vote in 06, compared to, I think, about 39% for Angelides on the Democratic side. >> Bill Whelan: Right. >> Lee Ohanian: My God, I can't imagine that happening today, coming close to happening today, in just those 17 years.
And I saw his first term as one of experiencing the challenges of being a little bit politically naive. I mean, he's obviously a very charming, intelligent, highly accomplished person who reads people well. But he called for a special election, Bill, in which he introduced a number of reforms. And I believe all those got voted down, didn't they, Bill? And that really was sort of a- >> Bill Whelan: They got crushed, Lee, they got hit very hard.
And this is one thing about his seven years it's worth noting here. So he comes in on a high in 2003. He runs in this crazy circus of this race with 130 candidates, I think, on the recall ballot. And he gets about 48.5% of the vote, darn near 50%. And that's with the Republican Tom McClintock getting 14%. So that's a mandate, and he had lawmakers in Sacramento scared, Lee and Jonathan. And that's how he got workers comp, for example. They did not wanna get into Ballot fights with him.
In 2004, though, he starts to get a comeuppance. He goes around the state that November and campaigns up and down the state for Republican legislative candidates. None of them get elected. And then 2005, he does what Lee just mentioned, he calls a special election, he puts a handful of measures on the ballot, all interesting ideas, by the way, but not necessarily connected. He wanted budget reforms, he wanted teacher tenure reform and so forth.
The establishment in Sacramento, the California teachers union, fought him to the death. They beat him at the ballot box. So he hit a low in 2005. But then, as Lee mentioned, he comes storming back in 06, get reelected. He embraces climate change, but then trouble occurs again in 08, 09, and his final year, 2010, the economy. The economy tanks in California, massive budget deficits, and Arnold is very unpopular. He's at about 23% in the polls when he leaves.
He is so unpopular as the governor, by the way, Lee and Jonathan, that Jerry Brown, who's running against Meg Whitman in 2010 election, he runs one of the most clever ads you'll ever see. It's called Echo. And what he does is he does side by sides of Arnold saying something and then Meg Whitman saying it almost verbatim. In other words, he's tying it to how unpopular Arnold is.
But this is a curious function about Arnold Schwarzenegger in general, in politics and movies, in his personal life, it's a series of highs and lows, if you will. In fact, here we are on Tuesday the 16th, tomorrow there'll be a reunion of his people in Sacramento. He said he'll be back, so he's back in Sacramento, but it's a bit of a renaissance for him right now. There was a Netflix special on him this summer, which kind of looks into his life. He has a book out right now.
He was on, of all things, Monday Night Football a couple of weeks ago with his pet donkey. [LAUGH] He has got a menagerie of animals in his Los Angeles house. People are kinda re-embracing the personality, if you will, but it was just, as Lee mentioned, just a very different time. But the final note on this, and I'll let it go for the day, there's a very cautionary warning in all this for one Gavin Newsom, who we always like to talk about in this podcast.
Before APEC, the governor did not have a good week, and they did not have a good week in the form of a poll that came out from Berkeley IGS. Which showed that his approval rating is at its lowest in his governorship right now. It's fallen from 55% in February to 44% at present, he's polling at only 38% among moderates. He is 15% less popular among 18 to 29-year-olds than he was at this time in February.
And we've seen this movie before in California politics, Arnold was very unpopular when he left in 2011, I should say, that 23% of rule I mentioned. Jerry Brown, the great Jerry Brown, in his first two terms as California governor, his final year, he runs for the Senate against Pete Wilson, and he gets whomped. And that's in part because, as he recognized afterwards, voters were sick and tired of him.
So if I'm Governor Newsom, I've had a nice sugar high here at APEC, but I'd probably take some time to watch Arnold in Sacramento on Friday and kinda think about the lesson of the Schwarzenegger experience in Sacramento. Which is that fame could be fleeting and so, too, can be popularity. >> Jonathan Movroydis: So too can be popularity, those are interesting numbers for Newsom. >> Bill Whelan: And I'd add to that, Lee, by the way.
So, Newsom is underwater in California, he's 44% popular, 49 unpopular. Joe Biden's also underwater in California, sorry to butt in. >> Lee Ohanian: No, no, no, Bill, to the extent that we're not seeing accomplishments for Gavin, some level, 44%, I could see that number being even lower, given the issues that the median voter in California faces. And Bill, I don't know how much, [COUGH] when you look at Newsom now, he seems bored by the job.
Although on the other hand, it's hard to tell whether it's just pure boredom and he wants to go out and stretch his wings and be part of the national scene. Or maybe he's just looking at the state and realizing, I'm here for three more years, and there's really, given the way California works, there's really nothing much I can do. Both of those are very sad statements about politics within our state, and I really don't know where all that goes from here.
>> Bill Whelan: Well, he is term limited at least, and that's gotta be frustrating. He's always suffered from what I'd call political restless leg syndrome, where he gets bored with the office. This was a knock against him when he's mayor of San Francisco, then he moves over to lieutenant governor. So you can see signs of that. But I think that poll is simple as this, I think it's voters pushing back against him for just being too involved in national politics, too many fights with Ron DeSantis.
And they're gonna have that debate coming up in a couple of weeks, people just kind of wanting him to pay attention to state businesses. So I think that gets back to him just taking a very active role in that Los Angeles situation and maybe trying to get away from the homeless issue. Because if people are frustrated with you to begin with, if that situation in Los Angeles turns out to be another reminder of homelessness, that's just gonna drive his numbers further down.
>> Lee Ohanian: Yeah, exactly. And when he was elected, it was essentially a foregone conclusion that he would have a full eight years, despite the recall that we did see, in which he won easily. With eight years, you should be able to accomplish a lot. But he's now been in office nearly five years, and all of his major campaign promises have failed abysmally.
So I sort of see him as, [LAUGH] I think he's gonna do a Nixon and declare victory, and think he's gonna be taking a victory lap, like Arnold's doing, and cruise out the lap the next three years of his term. >> Jonathan Movroydis: As always, gentlemen, this has been an hour of interesting and timely analysis, thank you for your time. >> Bill Whelan: Thank you, Jonathan, thank you, Lee and guys, have a great thanksgiving. >> Jonathan Movroydis: You too. >> Lee Ohanian: You fellas do as well.
>> Jonathan Movroydis: You've been listening to Matters of Policy and Politics, the Hoover Institution podcast, devoted to governance and balance of power here in America and around the free world. Please don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast wherever you might hear it. And if you don't mind, please spread the word, get your friends to have a listen. The Hoover Institution has Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter feeds. Our Twitter handle is @HooverInst, that's @Hoover I-N-S-T.
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Again, this is Jonathan Mavroides, sitting in Bill Whalen's show this week, he'll be back for another episode of Matters of Policy and Politics. Thank you for listening. [MUSIC] >> Speaker 4: This podcast is a production of the Hoover Institution, where we generate and promote ideas advancing freedom. For more information about our work, to hear more of our podcasts or view our video content, please visit hoover.org. [MUSIC]