We Don’t Need No Education (Bonds)

is all tied into this. It's just a vicious cycle of just using more and more and more and more of your taxpayer dollars to fund more and more and more and more construction that I'm not sure we even really need within public school and the community college district. So here's the summary right now in the San Jauquean Valley, we are looking at in the Fresno area, five count them, five different local bond measures that will all be on

the ballot this upcoming November. So pretty much everyone in the Fresno area listening to this, and I actually I'm betting it's people all up and down the valley listening to this. You're probably voting on a bond measure for either your local school district and or your community college district.

Fresno Unified has Measure H A five hundred million dollar bond measure, Clovis Unified Measure A A four hundred million dollar bond measure, Central Unified Measure X A one hundred nine million dollar bond measure, Saying or Unified Measure M one hundred and seventy five million dollar bond measure, State Center Community College District Measure Q six hundred ninety six million. Now, let's remind ourselves that we just voted on a round

of bond measures four years ago. We just voted on around of bond measures four years ago, and now all of a sudden, who we need more? We need more school bonds, We need more money again. Now, what is actually motivating this, Well, the actual thing that's motivating this, as I explained, is that there is a statewide education bond initiative that we're going to be voting on. I believe it's Proposition two Proposition three, one of the propositions that will be voting on. I will look it up

as I'm talking here. Now, Basically, what's happening is you've got a statewide ten billion dollar bond measure, ten billion dollars for schools K through twelve school districts and also for community colleges. So here's a pot of ten billion dollars. Why did this ballot initiative come to be Well, basically, Gavin Newsom has had to make certain kinds of cuts or certain kinds of non increases in funding for education over the course of the last budgetary cycle. This ticked

off the teachers' unions who wanted more money. Oh, basically the idea was okay, well, they Knewsome had to negotiate this deal with the teachers. The teachers were all mad at him. The teachers union is the most powerful force in Sacramento. Newsom's tick them off by cutting, by not increasing funding to the extent that they want. They wrestle together and they come up with this solution. Okay, Newsom, you give out this budgetary figure that we can kind

of live with. But at the same time, we're going to go to the voters to vote for a bond initiative, a ten billion dollar bond initiative, and in addition to ten billion dollars in statewide bond funding, basically local school districts can get more with like a match. So if your local school district passes a bond measure to raise X amount of dollars, you can get state money to

match it. So that's why all these school districts and the community college districts are having bond measures right now. It's not actually a response to genuine need. Okay, it's not like Clovis Unified is sitting around. Oh dear, you know, the coppers are really running low here. Oh geez, we have all this need, all these new people moving in. We don't have the tax revenue yet to pay for all this stuff that we're trying to do. We're trying to get a new Clovis South High School. We're trying

to get it finished. Oh, we just don't have the money. Okay, we need to go to the taxpayer's hat in hand and ask them for help for this, just this one exigency. No, that's not what it is. They just know there's money on the table to be had, and they're not gonna let it. They're not gonna let it sit there. They're gonna go after it. There's ten billion dollars in state funding. They get access to more of it if they pass a local bond measure, so they can double up their money.

Now it is in the context, however, of a bond. All of this is in the context of a bond. So the state wide measure is Proposition two ten billion dollars in bonds to fund construction and modernization of public education facilities. So we've got ten billion dollars, a ten billion dollar bond from the state. And then, as I

said before, we've got here's again the lineup. Five hundred million dollars bond for Fresne Unified, four hundred million dollars bond for Close Unified, one oh nine million dollar bond for Central Unified, one hundred and seventy five million dollar bond for Singer Unified, six hundred and ninety eight million dollar bond for State Center Community College District, and State Center Community College District. For those who't know, it's think

of it like a school district. So it's basically like a school district, only the schools that it runs are a bunch of the local community colleges in the presdenty area Readley College, Fresno City College, Closed Community, et cetera. These are bonds and what is a bond. Let us remember what is a bond. I think sometimes people hear the word, they don't exactly know what it means, and they just kind of keep talking or reading and don't really acknowledge exactly what a bond is. A bond is

a loan. It is a loan made out to a governmental entity like a school district, and like any loan, it needs to be paid back over a certain term of years with interest. Most educational bonds are thirty year loans. For those of you who've been thinking about maybe buying a house or something like that over the last year or so, you might be aware of the fact that interest rates really high right now. So that's also going

to impact the nature of these bonds. We might be paying back in taxes almost double the amount the sticker price on these bond measures. So when we're talking about voting on Proposition too a quote ten billion dollar bond measure statewide for construction, for construction for schools and for community college for K through twelve school districts and community colleges.

When we say ten billion dollars, what we actually mean is this is going to cost the taxpayers maybe almost twenty billion dollars, because it's not just the principle you have to repay, it's the interest over the course of thirty years. President Unified's Measure H is not a five hundred million dollars bond, and as the price on the sticker says, it's really almost a billion dollar bond. Close Unified's Measure A is not a four hundred million dollar bond,

It's almost an eight hundred million dollar bond. Central Unified's Measure X is not one hundred and nine million, it's about two hundred million. Saying you're unified, it's not one hundred and seventy five million, it's almost three hundred and fifty million. State Center Community College District. It's not a six hundred and ninety eight million dollar bond. It's over a billion dollars in property taxes. That's the thing. We have to realize that the near inherent immorality almost I mean,

I genuinely feel there's something almost immoral about this. That it's not even the tax directly benefiting from this loan. The money goes to the school district. They get to build stuff, hire people, do all this great stuff, employ more people. I'll note that various public sectors, various of the unions that represent employees within some of these school districts.

For example, the Teachers' union within President Unified As expressed their support for measure H. Of course, you know they might get to benefit from all this, but it's chiefly the district itself that gets to benefit from it. But it's the taxpayers who pay it back. And what you're effectively saying to the taxpayers is this, Hey, taxpayer, pay us almost a billion dollars in property taxes over the next thirty years so that we can get about five

hundred million dollars worth of benefit. That is a bad bang for your buck. It just is. Now. The problem is that people love voting for school bonds. Now, when we return, I want to talk about this sentimentality, this sentimental love that people have for voting for school bonds. And I just want to break through this mindset that you're some kind of community oriented, good governmance person. When I and again it would be one thing if this was in response to need. I think it is not

in response to need. That is next on the John Girardi Show. People love voting for school bond measures. The piece in gv wire has sort of the rundown of all of the local school bond measures that voters in the Fresno area are going to be paying for or voting on, rather voting on and then likely paying for.

So you've got Fresne Unified with its Measure H five hundred million dollars, Clovis Unified with its Measure A four hundred million dollar bond, Central Unified with Measure X one hundred nine million dollar bond, Saying Unified with Measure M one hundred and seventy five million dollar bond, State Center Community College District Measure Q six hundred and ninety eight million dollars. Again, that's just the sticker price, that's the money the school district gets. But again, a bond is

a loan. It's a loan that you have to repay with interests. So Measure H Presne Unified taxpayers are probably going to have to pay back in taxes somewhere approaching a billion dollars. Clovis Unified will have to pay back, not the four hundred million dollars still price on Measure A, but something approaching eight hundred million dollars, et cetera. Et cetera,

et cetera. In spite of all this, in spite of the fact that the school districts seem to it's it's it's just every four years now almost We're just doing another huge nine figure dollar bond for Clovis Unified, for President Unified, and taxpayers just keep saying yes. They just keep saying yes, in spite of the relatively high electoral hurdle that local bond measures like these need to reach. You need a fifty five percent majority to approve a

local bond measure like these. It's a weird thing with California elections and California laws it governs bond measures for local municipal entities. It's not it doesn't require a simple, you know, fifty percent plus one majority. It needs actually a bit of a super majority. You need actually fifty five percent of voters to approve the passage of a bond measure in order for it to come into effect. And yet local voters love doing it. So the piece in GV wire interviews fres note this guy, he's a

political campaign manager locally named Jason Carnes. He sees all of these local bond measures passing. Again, this November quote, you can almost put it on the ballot and do some very basic communication and the bond is likely to get fifty five percent unless there's some politics going on separately that for some reason has upset people. Carnes said,

even in March of twenty twenty. March of twenty twenty, which was this weird election where the bond measures for Clovis Unified and Central Unifide both failed, the districts put them on the ballot again in nov Member of twenty twenty, and both of them passed. So maybe the school districts no, like, Okay, well, let's let's not put them on a primary ballot ballot. Let you know, let's focus on November. I guess it's

trying to line up with proposition too. Now, what I want to break through here is this kind of good government, good citizen bs that I think infects people into thinking that voting for these bond measures again and again and again and again and again is some kind of almost good citizenship deal. I've seen this my whole life, growing up in Clovis and seeing this with Clovis Unified, How you know, whatever is this the current iteration of the

Clovis Unified Bond measure. And by the way, my wife and I looked at our property taxes, we're still paying for a Clovis Unified bond measure that passed in two thousand. There's like there's like a backlog of four different Clovis Unified bond measures that we as people who live in Close Unified that we are still paying for. So this

is just adding a fifth one. And my whole life growing up in Clovis, I saw this that that people in Clovis have this sort of you know, this picturesque attitude of Clovis Unified, this idea promoted by builders and you know real estate builders that oh it's the highly acclaimed Clovis Unified School District, the highly acclaimed Clovis Unified School District, highly acclaimed Close Unified School District, which was in all the ads that I heard on the radio

growing up for you know, buy a home in this new development, buy a home in this new development. It's located within the highly claimed Clothes Unified School District. Highly acclaimed, which is like well, highly acclaimed by whom by you, by the builders who want to sell expensive houses within Close Unify. I mean, who care? What do you mean? And highly acclaimed what do you mean? The best of two school districts in the Fresno area and Clothes Unified.

People believe often in this mythos around Clovis Unified.

ago and right now. And I think both of the measures were called Measure A if I'm not mistaken, both the twenty twenty Measure A and the current Measure A. Both of them said that the reason for getting these four hundred million dollar bonds was to help pay for oh, well for paying for dilapidating classrooms, updating things, bringing things up to code. Basic repairs and maintenance, Basic repairs and maintenance. Why do you need a special four hundred million dollar

bond for basic repairs and maintenance? Shouldn't that just be part of your normal budgetary a normal budgetary item, ongoing repairs and maintenance. Why do we need a special bond measure to pay for it? Now? The thing that they're trying to pitch from Clovis Unified is, oh, well, Clovis South High School is still unfinished. We need this money to help pay for it. So one of two things.

Either you started Clovis South High School without any game plan for how you were going to finish it, because nobody knew this bond measure was gonna happen a year ago, and obviously it took you more than a It was more than just last year that you thought of building Clovis South High School. So either you started a high school with no earthly idea how you were going to pay for it, or you actually don't really need this money to finish it. Again, you just got a four

hundred million dollar bond measure passed four years ago. Why do you need another one four years later? I mean in prior years, Clovis unif goes about eight years or ten years in between bond measures. Four years and already you need another one. Why again? The reason why they're doing this bond measure and what a quinki dink that Clovis Unified is doing it the exact same election is Presdney Unified and saying are unified and essential unified in

the states. In our community college district. It has nothing to do with existing need. It's not like they're so desperately hurting that, oh, we need this infusion of cash. Whatever will we do. No, they're doing it because there's a statewide bond measure on the table. There's a statewide bond measure for ten billion dollars, and your school district can get more of that pie if you raise your own local bond measures, you can get a match from

the state. So this isn't President Unified trying to get five and a million dollars. It's Fresney Unified trying to get a billion dollars. But again, it remains a raw deal for the taxpayers. Presde Unified wants a billion dollars but the taxpayers have to basically pay double that over the course of time. Over the course of time, the interest we have to pay via our taxes to pay back this loan, which is what a bond is. It's a loan to a municipal entity. The taxpayers pay back

the loan. They have to pay back the principal of the loan, the five hundred million dollars sticker price for measure H for President unified, the four hundred million dollars sticker price for measure A for clothes unified, plus interest, and the interest is going to be almost double. So what I am telling you all is just stop this cycle.

Just stop this maddening cycle of every time these school districts just want more and more and more money, more money that is taken from you in this incredibly inefficient way because they just figure you don't look very hard at your property tax statement and you just consider it money out the door and you don't really notice it.

If they actually just raised a normal tax for a normal tax on everyone, just to pay for four hundred million dollars straight up without it being alone, without it being alone, that we have to pay double on with interest over the course of time, I would actually respect it a lot more. It's just a BS system and I hate it. I just think it's almost immoral to make taxpayers spend you know, X amount for half of x of the impact when we return the forced unreality

of the Harris twenty twenty four campaign. Next on the John Girardi Show, I want to talk about the sort of bizarre unreality of so many people on the left. And I'm trying not to have this be too cliched, because Kamala Harris is not good. Okay, you don't need to look very far on your radio dial to find someone willing to say that Democrats are hypocrites, no kidding. I guess my surprise or my despair is the kind of unreality that thought leaders on the left have seemingly

just completely embraced uncritically, and that it's working. It's working to such an extent that it looks like Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are going to be in a neck to neck, you know, absolute blood bath fight to the bitter finish for the presidency, as opposed to what I kind of think it should be. I kind of think it should be. Kamala Harris just losing based on a disastrous record. Now Trump brings his own weight of baggage

that I have to acknowledge. And I think it's fairly evident that Trump seems to have a ceiling within the electorate. I think it's hard for Trump to get over a majority. I think he's sort of hardened opinion about himself. He's a known quantity at this point. The guy's been around for nine years at this point as a campaigner for president slash president slash not president. He's a known quantity. And I don't think he's getting over sort of a

forty eight percent threshold. So that's you know, that just is what it is. Harris is the relatively new face on the block in spite of the fact that she's been vice president for four years. Well, here's an example of this of what I'm trying to say, the skepticism that I have that just the unreality that even thought leaders on the left are suggesting. Now. In March of this year, Kathleen Parker, who's a Washington Post columnist has won a Pulitzer actually called just in March five months ago,

called for Vice President Harris to resign. To resign in March Here's what she had to say. Harris was known then to quote, this is Kathleen Parker, a Washington Post columnist. She was known to quote embarrass her boss Biden with her sometimes inane rambling remarks and a laugh that erupts from nowhere about nothing obvious to others. Harris was, according to Parker quote, a colossal failure, as borders are again.

That was in March, when it was okay to call her the borders are Parker thought she would be Biden could be Biden's downfall in twenty twenty four. At that time, Harris had an approval rating of thirty seven point two percent, basement level low. There was, according to Parker quote, no reason to think her ranking would spike were she suddenly promoted. All right. Michael Brendan Doherty from National Reviews, writing about this,

Here's what he has to say. Harris is now rebranded as the face of a pleasant near term future in which all political turmoil of the past decade is simply transcended by an assertion of an unexpected, joyful emotion. She has nothing to do with the past administration, I either the current administration, except to have been so proud of its leader's gallantly selfless decision to exercise super superogatory nobility and enthusiastically walk away from political power, thereby granting us

and her this chance at joy. No longer tied to Biden politically, she is running as the challenger and making the dour, aberrant mood of American politics over the last decade, now solely represented by Trump, into the incumbent against which she is running. Instead of being the bumbling, screw up and colossal failure of five months ago, she is now the front runner. The question is do you buy it?

The polls show that Democrats are buying it. The week's long democratic agony after Biden's debate performance and the relief when he retired himself from the race, has provided Democrats with an occasion to declare themselves euphoric, and if you turned into their convention in Chicago this week, you heard them announce their quote joy over and over and over again.

Democrats have decided that any present political dissatisfaction over inflation or the chaos at the border can be safely deposited onto the same ice flow as the current president of the United States. Letting Biden go adrift on an ice flow.

And I guess this is the stuff that I don't get is you have allegedly serious people who do buy it, who do buy it, the elite level people on the Democrats side, who are buying this notion that Kamala Harris is almost somehow a representative of change, and the voters seem to be buying it. She's doing way better than Joe. She's doing way better than Joe Biden was doing. I mean, Joe Biden was clearly facing a catastrophe and Democrat voters are looking at her with utter confidence, when like a

month ago, it was a genuinely live issue. Is Kamala Harris actually worse than senile Joe Biden? Like that was a genuine conversation people were having five weeks ago. And I guess the thing that terrifies me somewhat is the level of control that the media still has. I think conservatives almost still just can can fathom and cannot break through. When the media is clearly united behind some kind of goal, they can make a thing happen. And we saw it

in twenty twenty. We saw that this united media was able to push so many things about COVID that were just wrong. They were able to push so many things about Hunter Biden's laptop not being a thing, They were able to push Hunter Biden's laptop possibly being Russian collusion, that when they're united, they can still have this massive impact and still sway the people who need to be swayed to such an extent that Joe Biden won was elected president. And you see these like kind of serious

people on the right, like or maybe formally serious. Maybe they're just maybe they were just clowns all along people who they're so I understand them disliking Donald Trump. Okay, I can understand them disliking Donald Trump. I can understand them taking the position of Bill Barr. Okay. So Bill Barr, Trump's attorney general, didn't see eye to eye with Trump on a lot, was very angry at Trump over January sixth, was you know, clearly for the people in Trump world,

Bill Barr is, you know, persona non grata. I get that Bill Barr at the very least is saying he's gonna vote for Trump. He's not doing the thing like Adam Kinsinger is doing the you know, former GOP congressman who's now actively endorsing Kamala Harris because Trump has a bandoned conservative principles. Okay, so because Trump abandoned conservative principles, you're gonna vote for this, this most radically left wing

presidential candidate. Practically ever, you have columnists and authors and people like David French and Bill Crystal and all these people say, oh, yes, we're actively Michael Steele, the former head of the RNC, all saying Trump was so bad that we're actively voting for Kamala Harris because we're such true conservatives. Barr, at the very least is saying, Hey, I have problems with both presidential candidates, but I think Donald Trump will do less harm. I think he's a

better option, at least that's intellectually honest. I guess I just can't fathom. Well, maybe, I mean it's hard to accept. I'll put it that way. It is hard to accept that there is this level of dishonesty on the left and within the media and that it works, It really does work. It's kind of this bitter pill to accept that genuinely, the good guys don't always win that genue, or maybe better to say that bad guys do win, that bad guys do get away with doing bad things.

That the media is exactly as powerful as they've always been. I mean, as much as conservatives like to sort of pat themselves on the back and.

they listen to talk radio. And the reality is, guys, that a Republican hasn't won a majority of the post popular vote since George W. Bush in two thousand and four, and then hadn't won a majority of the popular vote before that since George H. W. Bush in nineteen eighty eight. Since nineteen eighty eight, Republican has won a majority of the popular vote one time. It's not a great it's

not a great situation. I've honestly, this electoral cycle has made me really depressed about I mean, even if Trump wins, there's a lot about this cycle that's made me incredibly depressed. The way in which the Republican Party has run away from the abortion issue because of one bad election cycle

in twenty twenty two. The way that we are able to put like a nationwide hypnotizing of the elector of the electorate into genuinely thinking that Kamala Harri is magically converted all of a sudden from bumbling, incompetent, cackling dufus, that Democrats were so terrified, like they were trying to keep Joe by none because they genuinely thought he would be better than her, to now all of a sudden, she's you know, Mama La, and she's got joy and

blah blah blah. How the entire law fair campaign collapsed and we don't even really care. I just find the whole thing incredibly depressing on both sides. And meanwhile, the massive injustices that I care about, the most proliferation of legal abortion, especially via the abortion pill, none of it gets addressed. None of it gets addressed by the National Republican Party. Some state Republican parties do the right thing and address these issues, but I don't know. I've been

so depressed this. I've been so bummed at different moments of this electoral cycle. Even when things were going great for Trump, it was at the same time that we were completely running away from the abortion issue. I just think it's fundamentally not my country that I am not part of whatever is the rising tide here. It's been very isolating and weird to see one so many people believing such unreality, and even on the conservatives and on the conservative side, to see such cowardice in the face

of one bad electoral cycle. We'll be back with an update on the Trump anti Trump Lawfair campaign next on John Girardi Show. For all of the bluster, it seems like the Lawfair campaign against Donald Trump is going to completely fizzle out. And the grand goal of the Lawfair campaign was, of course, to get Trump convicted and sentenced

before the election. Well, he's gonna have one guilty verdict against him, and it looks like even his sentencing in the Manhattan case, a bunch of developments have happened where it looks like the sentencing is going to get pushed

back until after the election. After the election, meaning they can't even honestly call Trump a convicted felon you're not actually convicted until the judge imposes the sentence, and the sentencing is all screwed up now because of the Supreme Court's immunity case, which raises all these issues with Trump's Manhattan guilty verdict to possibly have it be thrown out. The Washington case is going nowhere, the Florida case has

been thrown out, and Fanny Willis's Georgia case is sunk. Basically, you'll notice Democrats have gotten more mileage out of calling Trump weird than out of any of this lawfare stuff. What a complete collapse. That'll do it for John Gardy Show. See you next time on Power Talk.