I want to talk about the horrible wildfires.
In Los Angeles and kind of what this might mean for the Gavin Newsom legacy. The obvious human toll of it is terrible, their homes being destroyed, their people's lives on the line. First, though, let's talk about city government in Los Angeles.
And the total.
Incapacity of modern day liberal When you have modern day liberals, with their modern day liberal approaches to the world, their focus on DEI, I think it leads to a competency crisis, where basically, when the far left completely controls an area, they are incapable of running it. You see this in city after city after city that is completely governed and administered by the left. When the left completely controls your criminal law enforcement, it's a disaster. When they control the
provision of city services, those city services suffer. They do great with diversity, equity, and inclusion, but not very good at the actual purpose of those city services. Here's a news story from recently about the new LA Fire Department fire chief, which, by the way, they've got problems because I guess apparently in La Fire hydrants weren't fully loaded, like they didn't have enough water on hand, so this
is leading to problems with fighting fires. But here is a news story from looks Like from ABC seven in Los Angeles about the first gay female fire chief for the LA Fire Department.
Ellen Caulleen. The discrepancies are a start, even just on paper. The LAFD this year hired its first ever female chief, and it says so far this year, eight percent of its applicants have been women. That might sound like a small number, but it's actually twice the percentage of female firefighters currently in the department. Every day, the LAFD is called upon to respond to crises, and today it is
taking a step to resolve one of its own. The department's first ever Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bureau will launch in January, one year since its first ever female fire chief, Christian Crowley, was appointed.
So by creating this new bureau, our Diversity Equit Inclusion Bureau, now we actually have the staff to do the work. When it comes to doing a deep dive in regard to how we do business, how we take care of one another in the fire stations and in our work environment.
The plan is to do so by adding training and enforcing accountability. Calls for accountability have echoed for years. In twenty twenty one, women's advocacy groups, including one representing female firefighters, pushed for changes at the highest level, saying, all right.
It goes on and on and on.
So first the news report calls it a crisis that within the LA Fire Department women are underrepresented. Then you had this quote from the LA Fire chief that, oh, thank god we have a DEI department because now we can really get down to doing the work.
To solve how we take care of each other within the fire station. Which is like.
And I see this, by the way, again and again and again and again with liberal government workers, teachers' unions, public sector unions, I think have a lot to do with this attitude. The focus of government work as being a job's program for the workers, an inward facing.
Set up.
As opposed to this, government work is ordered towards helping other people. The point of the fire department is not to benefit the lives of fire workers. The point of public schools is not to be a job's program for teachers and school administrators. The point of the police department is not to represent the diversity of the community. The point of city workers is not again that it's some
kind of government jobs program. The point of all of these things, which when liberals get in charge, I think this is lost sight of because they are so obsessed with DEI, so obsessed with being pro labor, so obsessed with all of these this panoply of sort of leftist concerns that we forget what's the whole point of these jobs. Like within the context of schools, if someone says, hey, should maybe teacher pay be somehow tied to teacher performance?
Oh my god? What what kind of a monster are you? That's outrageous.
That's the genuine reaction you'll get from from the teachers union if you dare breathe the suggestion that maybe teacher pay should be tied to student outcomes in some way, shape or form.
WHOA, what the heck are you talking about?
That's a anti labor and it's missing the point. What's the point of the teachers It's not to be a jobs program for teachers. What In the context of this fire department discussion here for the l A F D, Oh, yeah, we need to get the DEI program because oh, we got all this problem. This is massive underrepresentation of women within the fire station with this baffled. Ho, why could that possibly be that there aren't as many women who
sign up to be firefighters? Hmmm, as if it's one of life's great unscrutable mysteries.
Inscrutable, I guess, unscrewab inscrutable. Yeah, oh, we gotta really, we gotta bump up these numbers.
We need a DEI proper as opposed to, Hey, what's the job of a fire station? It's to put out fire, It's to respond to emergencies. That is the t lose the end goal towards which the fire department is oriented,
not DEI whatever. Also, by the way, every employer the idea that you need a DEI department in order to correct I'm not sure if that's exactly where this news story was going, But if there are allegations of sexual harassment or something in the workplace, or improper treatment of female employees within the fire station, you don't need a DEI department.
To deal with that.
We already have laws on the books in California, laws governing how employers conduct themselves that can address problems like that. You don't need a DEI department. You don't even need a DEI department to deal with like hiring discrepancies, If they are actually the result of discrimination on the part of employers, you don't need a DEI department to deal
with that. Unlawful Gender based discrimination is already unlawful. But the focus here is so much on these things that are just ancillary internal workings of the internal mechanics of the fire department, without any sort of sense of no. The actual job of the fire department is putting out fires. It's right there in the name fire department. It's not the DEI department. It's not the making government employees feel
good department. It's the fire department, and its chief goal should always be effectiveness of emergency response.
That's the point. And I.
There are some people who will try to make the oh, there's a walk and chew gum fallacy. They can be concerned about DEI and also be concerned about, you know, firefighting effectiveness. I don't believe that. I honestly don't believe that, not all the time.
I do. Yes, I acknowledge that people can walk and chew gum.
At the same time, I acknowledge that maybe there could be a scenario where someone can spend a lot of time and effort focused on DEI initiatives, but also really be focused on firefighting really effectively, and that maybe one won't detract from the other, But.
I don't know.
I mean, if you have a fire chief, that person only has so many hours in their day. They have only so many hours of their day to work on buttress support, engage with problems within the fire department.
And I think if you're.
Spending a lot of time on exit does lead to less time on why. And you know, and again, let's let's look at Los Angeles. This is a city government, city government, county government completely dominated by Democrats. They only just now got rid of George Gascon, their ultraliberal district attorney for La County, but short of that they had complete one left control. Karen bass Is their mayor, who, by the way, as of early this morning, was not in Los Angeles. She was in Ghana for the inauguration
of its president Ghana, the African country of Ghana. I hope in the next election that she will be a Ghana But you know, if she loses, it'll only be to another Democrat.
But it's astonishing to me how every.
Single part of this country where Democrats have complete control over some over a city or over a state. The whole thing has fallen a hell in a handbasket. And more and more commentators, even of the left, are starting to notice the massive ineffectiveness of the left in being able to actually build infrastructure projects, being able to actually govern cities effectively, being able to actually reduce crime, actually
address homelessness. I mean, they are even Liberals in California who are starting to be like, how many billions of dollars has Gavin Newsom spent on homelessness and it's the situation is still not improving. How many billions of dollars have we spent on the high speed rail and it's still not anywhere close to being done with any real prospects of getting finished. How many gazillions of dollars have
we spent on you know? I think Biden had some whole like Wi Fi infrastructure thing, a broadband infrastructure program that they.
Spend billions of dollars on, and it's accomplished. Jack.
I think Liberals are having some real trust deficit problems because it's very hard for someone who's a genuine although they keep voting for Democrats in California.
Jes Louise.
But I'd have to think if you're a genuine independent who is looking at the situation of California right now, you can't look at the situation and think, boy, the Democrats sure are doing a great job governing the state of California. All of the things that were problems ten years ago are still problems today, worse. I'm not sure that there's a single thing. I mean, if they're not worse, they're about as bad.
Here.
We've got massive wildfire problems, you know, after four years ago we had horrible wildfires, and Gavin Newsom in all, oh, this wildfire thing is such.
A terrible problem.
He did the sort of Gavin Newsom thing where something's been a long standing problem in California, but then it happens while he's governor, and then he's like, oh my gosh, this thing just fell into my lap. What a what a terrible thing that now I must deal with? Ah, poor poor me. This problem has fallen from the sky. I could have never predicted it, could have never imagined it.
When everyone could have predicted it, imagined it. It's been a long standing problem in California for years and years and years. The problems without controlled wildfires. So Newsom in twenty with the bad wildfires we had in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one's, oh my goodness, how terrible this is.
What a surprise that this has become a problem? Makes all these grand promises, for all these wonderful ways he's going to fix a beefing up, CalFire, beefing up all this stuff, and then mean to in the meanwhile, here we are with these horrible wildfires in Los Angeles, threatening homes, threatening lives. Clearly he hasn't done enough to be able now, And I mean, I'm I'm trying not to be unfair, Like how you know, how fair is it to judge Gavin Newsom on? You know, can you is it possible
to fully eradicate the problem of wildfires in California? I don't know that that's fully possible. There are a lot of things that are outside of his control, but I know that the kinds of I mean, he was resisted in a lot of the policies he was promoting by people like the Sierra Club, who were constantly pushing on him to never dare cut down any tree ever, even though thinning of forests and things like that controlled burns and things like that are actually a useful way to
reduce the risk of more serious wildfires. So, you know, I can't say I know one hundred percent how Newsom's policies may have contributed or not contributed to this problem, but it's certainly nothing has really improved, it doesn't seem. I mean, we've got this Palisades fire that's burned over twenty nine hundred acres, it's threatening ten thousand homes, and meanwhile.
The fire chief for the city of la.
Is going on and on and on about DEI and she's far from the only one. I mean, the government of workers all up and down the state, in Democrat controlled areas have had this massive focus on DEI initiatives while their city services or county services or governmental.
Services that they were actually supposed to provide were not really being provided.
When we return, more thoughts on governor gave his various wardrobe changes for when he's roughing it, and more about the fires next on the John Gerardy Show.
One question I have.
About these wildfires now I know what is causing them to spread. You have the Santa Anna winds, you have dry conditions. Once a fire gets started and the Santa Ana winds are blowing. That's, you know, in some of the foothills and mountainous areas around Los Angeles, US. You know, that is a perfect recipe for disaster, and especially for areas with lots and lots of trees. I've got ember I've seen some of the videos of these fires.
You've got these.
Embers just flying all over the place, floating all over the place like you know, dry conditions.
This is a recipe for disaster.
I'm wondering what started them, though, very often wildfires get started by human activity, whether it's a car, some kind of car explosion, or something sparking, like a kind of a converter, something going wrong with a car that's often blamed. Sometimes wildfires get started by arsonists. Sometimes it's started by lightning strikes, although that doesn't seem like that's the right
explanation for this particular wildfire. So my mind is starting to wander, and I will freely admit here I am going into the realm of wild reckless, possibly irresponsible speculation. So just understanding that I don't know this at all to be true. Understand this is again John gerlready engaging in wild wild somewhat reckless speculation.
Okay, here we go. I've given you that caveat means I can say whatever I want.
I wonder with these wildfires, given that it seems like some of them are starting near major roads, given that the you know, given that starting around populated areas. Also given the timing of it, this is a weird time for big wildfires to happen, even in La right. I mean, it's January. It's not like this is, you know, September or October. Yeah, I could understand September. It's tinder dry. Still, it's still pretty hot. You've had three months of no rain.
You know, it's a tinderbox just waiting to go up. It's January.
It's not.
That kind of conditions. And I genuinely wonder the following at my office a right to life, and I know this is a problem throughout the city. There are problems with homeless people lighting fires. Okay, my office. In November of twenty three, I had someone break into my office, into the bathroom and light a fire under my bathroom sink because presumably this person was cold. I've seen people lighting small fires on the street right outside of my business,
asked the fire department to come out for it. Actually, what I was really doing was asking nine to one. I was just calling nine one one. Mostly I was wanting the police to get the person to leave. I didn't actually really need a whole fire truck to deal with the situation. I wanted the police to make this almost person who had let a fire in front of
my business to go away. But in winter, that's what's happening, and it's a very common phenomenon throughout California, where homeless people are cold at night and they try to find a way to keep themselves warm, they light fires. These are often not people who are making the best decisions or practicing you know, ideal eagle scout level fires safety. And sometimes homeless people are living near on under freeways freeway overpasses that have a lot of dry grasses and shrub.
There was a big, really.
Bad fire near freeway in Los Angeles I believe last year that was caused by homeless people. This is not an uncommon phenomenon, and it seems as though no one's It seems like fire authorities have not really identified the source of the fire yet, Like I don't know, I did a Google search how did the wildfires in Los Angeles start? And I get to a USA Today story how do the wildfires in Los Angeles start? And it says we don't actually know, so it seems like that
has not been identified. So I apologize if I'm engaged in wild speculation here, but it doesn't feel like and again I'm engaged in speculation here. I don't know this for effect, but I will say, if it turns out that this was caused by homeless people lighting fires, it wouldn't shock me. It wouldn't shock me because this is a weird time of year for wildfires to be happening
in January, it's cold at night. It would sort of make sense that if it was started by something, it could have been started by homeless people lighting fires and all of a sudden that fire gets out of control. I'm again, I don't know that that's what happened. It's kind of speculation. It's one hundred percent speculation at this point, but it would perhaps be consistent with my own experience and with a phenomena that is phenomenon that is happening all up and down the state. I want to talk
about Gavin Newsom and his wardrobe changes. We got some updates on the high speed rail and the competence gap that we see in California. That's next on the John Gerardi Show. Good Old Gave, Good Old. Gavin Newsom I think is sort of desperate for some aspect of the high speed rail to be functional before he leaves office, or certainly at the very least for some aspect of it to be functional before twenty twenty eight when he's running for president, because he had a very consequential decision
that he made in January of twenty ninth. Is starting in January of twenty nineteen, after he became the governor, there was a lot of thought that Newsome was not as enthused about the high speed rail project as Jerry
Brown had been. I mean, the high speed Rail was already looking like a disaster, a complete flop in twenty twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, and there was a thought that Newsom would retreat from Jerry Brown's just unbridled commitment to the project, and from most of the reporting, it
sounded like that's what was going to happen. And then Organized Labor got to him and basically convinced him to change his position to not abandon high speed rail, but to focus on we're gonna get Merced to Bakersfield done, and that's been the Newsome pasture ever since. We're gonna get Merced to Bakersfield completed. Once we complete mer said to Bakersfield, that will demonstrate the viability of the system
more broadly viability, that's the term they used. And from there that will give us the momentum needed to get the funding necessary to extend this all the way from San Francisco to Los Angeles. That was the new some postures. So Newsom had the opportunity to just cut bait from this sunk cost or to carry on, and he chose to carry on, and that was I think it's going
to be a very consequential decision of his. It's going to be very consequential for his prospects of whether or not he can be president because by choosing not to cut out this sunk cost, I think Newsom has doomed his chances or or severely harmed his chances of being president because there's no way the high speed rail is going to get done in the timeframe that he wants. There's no way the high speed rail is going to get done in a way that's not embarrassing to him.
So yesterday, excuse me.
On the sixth, rather, Newsom tweets out, we're opening twenty twenty five with a bang. We're moving into the track laying phase for the California High Speed Rail And there's more. California is also building towards connecting California High Speed Rail Authority with other projects, beginning a regional high speed rail network. Now it shows him laying track, but it's not the actual high speed rail track. It's just track that seems to be laid purely ceremonially so that he can stand there.
And I my wife sent me the tweet about his tweet about it, and my wife and I have noticed this that Newsome is never wearing, you know, less than a five thousand dollars suit, but when he is, he's now started to have a lot more of these photo ops of him quote roughing it and his wardrobe anytime he's doing some kind of outdoorsy quote roughing it job.
Is so funny.
It's so funny just how obviously carefully he's selecting his wardrobe to be just precisely so, like, yeah, he's got his sleeves.
Just rolled up about a quarter length.
He's got you know, he's got a shirt that's it's kind of like a rough in it sort of shirt, but it's almost certainly costs like two hundred dollars, you know, three hundred dollars para jeans, you know, two hundred dollars pair of boots. My my sister in law, My sister in law who manages I think it's a bunch of electricians, like like an electricians, an electrical company. So she's she's sort of the one who's sending electricians off one place
or another. So she's around all these working class dudes all the time. She noted, Ah, let's see, she noted, nothing says roughing it like unused goat skin gloves, immaculate goat skin gloves. That he's wearing an unblemish pair of white goat skin gloves. So he's got this pair of gloves on, and he's grabbing like a pickaxe or something like, Oh,
I'm working on the railroad. Yeah, And my wife texted me there, sent me the tweet with her caption he's wearing his railroad in clothes, and of course his hair is still he doesn't. There is clearly nobody in Gavin Newsom's life who is willing to pull him aside and say, Gavin, you have the stupidest haircut in the world. Everyone makes fun of you for this haircut. You need to stop styling your hair like this. You look like a nineteen eighties movie villain. You look like pat Riley. Okay, like
just or Rick Patino or something. Okay like stop stop doing this with your hair.
You look like again, he looks like a movie villain from the nineteen eighties. It's anyway, but.
Newsom has basically decided, no, I'm gonna commit myself to this high speed rail project. And I think he's starting to feel the urgency. I think he's starting to feel the urgency to actually demonstrate to an audience other than Californians that he's actually accomplished something. And the high speed rail thing is going to loom large because now you've got liberals even who are noticing.
I reference this in the first segment. Now you're now starting.
To get liberals noticing, and they're they're sort of bitterly noticing this. In the wake of Trump's victory, the collapse of the Biden the Biden presidency, the Harris campaign, the fact that there's a lot of liberal incompetence at delivering basic government services, and California's got to be exhibit A. Ezra Kleine, who's a calumnist for the New York Times, a kind of reliable liberal most of the time, has these bitter broadsides about these different liberal you know, supported
by liberals, infrastructure projects that are just flops. And the first thing he leads with is the high speed rail program in California that you know, California voters voted for that in I can never remember if it was two thousand and four to two thousand and eight. I think it was two thousand and eight. Yes, it was two thousand and eight. Okay, sorry, I'm looking it up as I'm talking. California Proposition one A, the high speed rail
bond measure. The two thousand and eight election in California, by the way, absolutely wild. Barack Obama wins by an enormous margin. For the presidential race for California, we passed the high speed rail ballot initiative, and we passed Prop eight. So we loved trains, we loved the traditional definition of marriage, and we loved Barack Obama in California in two thousand and eight.
What a world.
So two thousand and eight we passed that ballot initiative. It's twenty twenty five, not one inch of operational track. We're starting to lay track, starting to lay the track. Now seventeen years later, the cost overruns have ballooned from forty billion to at least one hundred billion. We're we don't have the funding to finish merceaid to Bakersfield, let alone San Francisco to Los Angeles. I think public support for the public support for the high speed rail project
within California is anemic. Media entities as diverse as the Los Angeles. The Los Angeles Times has done a ton of work showing that massive problems with the High Speed Rail Authority, Massive terrible strategic decisions were made that harmed the success of the program, rejecting the French consultants that we had at the start, because the French consultants said, you should have it just run along I five. You
already have everything ready for I five. But the decision was made, oh no, no, no, it has to be more like kind of somewhat along the ninety nine, not actually following the ninety nine, but it's sort of along the ninety nine because they'll all clear some deals were done to loop Fresno in and so the French engineer said, well, that's a dumb idea, and they abandoned the project, brought
in different consultants who were not as effective. So I think Newsome is staring down the barrel of he's going to be on the debate stage in twenty twenty probably in late twenty twenty seven on a Dais with a bunch of other Democrats who will all be running for president, and he needs to give an account of himself.
He needs.
He made a faithful decision in twenty nineteen that he was going to tie himself to the high speed rail project and it hasn't happened. And what we're seeing more and more and more all across the country is liberals in charge of state and local governments who cannot deliver basic city or state services and cannot accomplish the kinds of infrastructure projects that.
They want to accomplish.
And they are self hampered by their own commitments to DEI, to environmental policy, to the culture of trial lawyers and wanting everyone to sue everyone. The amount of litigation that can happen because of environmental laws, it makes it impossible to build.
A massive infrastructure project in California. You cannot do it.
I think there's going to be a massive trust gap that's going to keep going for Liberals as long as they can't run California. The state has all the same problems it had ten years ago, and they're all worse. Homelessness was beginning to be a problem ten years ago, it is worse. Wildfires were a problem ten years ago. It's not clear that it's better. I mean, as far as looking at the insurance market for homes in mountainous areas,
it's certainly not better. It's not like reforms from the state have ensured the insurance community, and these wildfires in Los Angeles are not going to do anything to help
that situation. So there's going to continue to be I think, with independent voters growing skepticism about the competence of Democrats to actually do some of the relatively non partisany stuff of just running a city, running a county, running a state, and delivering its basic services, and the perception that is reality, the perception that I think is firmly grounded in reality, that there's an over emphasis on these ideological liberal pet
projects of environmentalism and DEI, and that those pet projects are resulting in a sacrifice to basic provision of services that leads to a discernible decline in.
Quality of life.
When we're returned solving the grand mystery of why there are more male firefighters than female firefighters. Next on the John Girardi Show, we're seeing now post on Twitter all this stuff about the City of Los Angeles fire chief, who I will just give the caveat. I'm not sure if it's chiefly City of Los Angeles fire that their
deficiencies with water pumps, or if it's county stuff. I don't know if this is conservatives getting out a little over their skis because they found the one lesbian fire chief in the LA area and they're.
Just blaming her immediately.
This is City of Los Angeles, and a lot of this stuff is happening in possibly other municipalities like Pacific Palisades and things like that. Anyway, regardless, the whole news stories that were covering this new fire chief in Los Angeles who was the first gay and first female fire chief to be hired in LA. Was the problem not enough female firefighters? Oh, we really got to address this problem.
These people who just live in this unreality where they just do this pretend dance like we don't understand why more men volunteer to be signed up to be a firefighters than women do. Like you'll notice that for really cruddy jobs, no one does this. Why are there so many more male garbage collectors than female garbage collectors, or male bricklayers and female bricklayers. It's it's no, it's not a surprise. I guess the idea is that firefighting is more glamorous than those jobs.
Somehow.
It's because it's really physically taxing and demanding, and men are on the whole on a hopur bigger, taller, and stronger. That's why it's not rocket science. But we live in this unreality where we pretend like we don't understand that.
That'll do it. John Girardi Show, See you next time on Power Talk