There's an interesting piece in cal Matters talking about housing and California housing and specifically how the Trump administration could make housing more or less difficult to build in the state of California. Now, it would seem hard to imagine a scenario how the Trump administration could make it more difficult, given that it's already happening at an unbelievable snail's pace.
I actually read a stat that the Dallas area of Texas alone, which I assume is Dallas, Fort Worth, Arlington, which is a big population but not as big as all of California, the Dallas area of Texas alone is building more houses per year than California is than the whole state of California is.
It's just insane.
And we've had this continuous problem in California that we're not building enough to meet demand. And that simple math in economics that when you have high demand and low supply, that leads to high high, high, high high prices and it's unsustainable. It's what drove the idea for the stupid high speed rail train, the idea of basically that basically the chief benefit of the high speed rail train would
have been for Bay Area workers. That they could live further and further and further away from San Francisco or Silicon Valley, live further and further and further south, and then just zip up, you know, twice a week or something on the train, get your mansion in Madera, and commute up to San Jose for your work maybe once
a week or something. Now here's the main problem in California is that we impose all kinds of building regulations that make it really difficult and environmental regulations that make it really difficult for builders to invest the money needed to build homes. That's the first, last, and middle problem. As much as we have these debates in California about not in my backyard ism, nimbiism, you know, wealthy liberal enclaves of.
California that refuse to have you know, a.
Multi unit dwelling built in their city and block it through municipal action, you know, at the level of the city council or the city Planning Commission, whatever.
And I feel like, though that stuff is.
That is talked about a lot as if that's some big problem, but that attitude exists all over the United States of America. Those attitudes can exist, those mechanisms for trying to blockhousing can exist in city councils all up and down this country, and other parts of the country don't have the problem with housing that we have. Why Well, because other states don't have the environmental regulation that we have. Other states don't have the kinds of environmental laws that
make it so easy to block new construction. Probably the most sort of consequential of these is SEQUA, the California Environmental Quality Act. So with SEQUA, there's all kinds of insane things that does. Every new project requires a kind of a massive sort of environmental impact report that's very
onerous to put together, very expensive to put together. You'll have a situation like what's happening right now, where the City of Fresno put together a massive citywide environmental impact report to sort of help facilitate people investing in Fresno to build stuff in Fresno, businesses building. So the city of Fresno basically tried to do much of the work for these developers, and then the developers their environmental impact
report would just have to be this smaller thing. Well guess what happened though, And this is another lovely part of SEQUA is that anyone can sue you for allegedly not fully complying with sequa's terms. Anyone can sue you. It doesn't have to be someone who's directly harmed by the environmental impact of your construction project or something. That's the way that most American litigation happens. Most lawsuits in America, you have to somehow be harmed before you can sue somebody.
You have to be the one who is harmed before you have what's called standing to sue.
Standing is a.
Sort of essential bedrock of American law, bedrock principle, bed rock limiting principle. Then not anybody can sue anybody for anything. If someone crashes their car into my friend Jonathan Keller's house, well Jonathan can sue the guy for negligence, for property
damage whatever. I can't sue the guy though. I can't come into the court and say I'm suing this man for crashing his car into Jonathan Keller's house, and the judge will look at me and say, well, why are you here, Why are you suing so well, I'm really upset your honor. Yeah, well that's not enough to provide you with standing. You have to suffer some harm. You have to have some showable damages, something that has happened to you, some infringement of your rights, some economic harm,
whatever it is, before you can sue. SEQUA kind of is a massive exception to that basic normal principle of American law with SEQUA, I guess because they sort of figure, well, environmental harms are so diffuse that basically, who is the one person harmed by a bad environment? Does anyone who has asthma.
Able to sue?
Well, not necessarily, So basically what they do is go to the opposite extreme and just say everyone can sue. Anyone can sue anybody, any real estate developer, any builder, And in the case of the City of Fresno, a city putting together an environmental impact report, a city wide environmental impact report can be sued by literally anyone for violating the terms of SEQUA. And that's precisely what happened
with the City of Fresno. The City of Fresno got sued for its citywide environmental Impact Report, which was the basis off of which all these other developers all over the city were building projects. Some left wing nonprofit groups sues the City of Fresno over its environmental impact report, a judge agrees with them, and guess what. Now, We've got like twelve different construction, housing, etc. Projects all stalled because of some RinkyDink nonprofit organization that wins a lawsuit.
And it's that threat that I think hinders housing construction businesses, businesses that want to build things from building. Why would you start a massive housing project if you have no idea that in the middle of it, litigation might fly in on some spurious grounds to say that no, no, no, the environmental impact report is insufficient. That this environmental heart and the lawsuit could come from anybody. It could come from a competing developer. It could come from Joe Bleep,
the Ragman, as my dad used to say. It could come from some environmental Waco group. It could come from maybe it could come.
From a NIMBI impulse.
You want to build a multi dwelling unit, some apartments and homeowners in the neighborhood think that that's going to reduce their property values, so they sue you for the alleged environmental impact of what you're doing, when really they don't give a darn about the environmental impact. What they care about is the fact that they think it's going to reduce their property values.
So the result of this.
Furthermore is that what kind of housing can California builders build. Well, the only things they can really build is very hot. Now this isn't true universally, but broad strokes and we do see this in Fresno. A lot of the construction that's happening in Fresno is one of two things. It's either very high end or very low end. It's either very high end apartments in Clovis and that are very far north where they can charge very high rents, or
it's registered trademark California lower income housing registered trademark. Now, the problem is that registered trademark California lower income housing has to meet all these kinds of environmental requirements, etc. Such that it's more expensive to build than the normal housing that people in most of the states of the United States live in. It's very expensive to build quote
lower income community housing. You've had stories of these apartment complexes being built as quote lower income housing in California where each unit costs like five hundred thousand dollars. I think about a story where each unit costs like a million dollars to build and the only reason builders can build it is because the state is dumping out subsidies
to allow it to be profitable for the builders. So the only ways you can make money is if you build quote, lower income housing and you get a state subsidy, or you build really high end stuff for high wealthy people where you know that you can charge very high rents, or self for very high Guess where that leaves the middle class.
With jack You know what? So how would a Trump administration impact this? Well?
The article from cal Matters focuses a lot on immigration, and it keeps saying, well, if President Trump deports all the illegal aliens, then who will be around to build o offend, which strikes me as naive. We already went through a Trump administration once there wasn't a lack of
workers able to build housing. The idea that the unsustainably high levels of illegal immigration that the Biden administration allowed to flow into this country that we couldn't have both one massive deportations and two enough workers to do construction, I.
Think is incredibly naive and a silly talking point.
One of the main people quoted in this piece is I think one of the worst people in all of American politics, and certainly in California politics. Scott Wiener, it was a California state senator who represents sort of Nancy Pelosi's stomping grounds right in the heart of San Francisco. This is the kind of guy who actually marked he's a state senator. He marches in gay pride parades wearing leather stuff.
Just leave it at that.
This is the guy who's introduced all kinds of horrible sort of you know, horrible stuff with transgenderism, about if a kid comes from out of state to California wanting to transition, the parents don't can we transition the kid without the parents approval? Like he's that level, Like he's maybe, as I say, one of the worst people in all
of American politics. Like there were some rumblings that he was going to run for Nancy Pelosi that there still are, I think rumblings that he's going to run for Nancy Pelosi's House of Representatives district once she retires. The rumblings are between Christine Pelosi, Nancy's daughter, and him, and I hate him so much I would campaign for Christine Pelosi to make sure that he doesn't get that seat. Like
I'm almost serious. I don't know that i'd actually campaign for a Pelosi, but oh my gosh, he is the worst. So Wiener raises the concerns that President Electrump could deport enough people that it would increase the cause of housing, and that tariffs could increased costs with regard to housing.
Maybe tariffs, what I mean that might be fair? I mean that there are trade offs with tariffs, but they're you know, it could have the impact of making certain kinds of products that are used in construction more expensive. It's rich, though, hearing any Democrat in California complain about Republican policies and how Republican policies might make housing more
expensive when they all know the score. Everything I said in the first ten minutes of this show about why housing is expensive in California, how environmental regulation makes housing more expensive, everyone in our state legislature knows it. Everyone in our state legislature understands the negative impacts of SEQUA, Everyone in our state legislature understands the negative impacts of lots of other kinds of specifically California regulation that makes
housing more expensive. They know what the problem is. Honestly, it's very similar to the right. I mean, like, you know, there are people on the right who complain about, you know, the federal budget being out of balance and spending is too much. Well, the reason why spending is too much is because of Medicare, Medicaid, and the military.
Those are the main things.
If you aren't going to cut those things, you're really never going to balance the budget. And nobody wants to cut those things. Certainly nobody on the right does anymore. They don't want to cut the military, they don't want to cut Medicare, they don't want to cut Medicaid, they don't want to cut Social Security. This is a Republican This sort of willful blindness to the problem is not exclusively a left going phenomenon.
It exists on the right too.
But in California, everyone understands why housing is expensive, and they just don't want to do anything to stop it. They don't want to do anything to change it. And I guess that's what I don't understand about some of these,
like Harvard Howard Jarvis texts fighters Association types. If they've got the money for ballad initiative fights, which seemingly they do, why don't they just introduce ballid initiatives to try to abolish or reform sequa why not it strikes me, or to reform the California Resources Board, to do all kinds of things. It just strikes me as bizarre that we've got this direct democracy system in California and people on the right have been so inept at utilizing it to
fix problems. When we return, how I wonder if this is an untapped resource, the ballot initiative system, if this is a totally untapped resources for the right in California. Next on the John Growardy Show, going through this piece from Calmatters dot org about whether or not it's written by Felicia Mellow discussing the idea of whether or not a Trump administration could ease the problems with housing in California. We come against this problem. I don't know how much
the Trump administration could really do. Certainly there's federal regulation that Trump could cut. There are other things Trump could do that could influence the cost of housing in some cases, perhaps negatively, like tariffs. Tariffs could I mean, I'm open to the argument that tariffs over the long run could be a good thing for the economy and could be beneficial for American industry in lots of ways. It would probably though, make certain kinds of products used in home
construction more expensive. Maybe you say that's worth it given the trade offs in other ways. But that is a real possibility. But the real problem I see is how do you get you know, how do you bring this horse to water? You can bring the horse to water, you can't make them drink. How does Trump make the horse of California drink? I mean, Trump can do anything you want at the federal level. It doesn't make state laws go away in California, doesn't make state regulators in
California go away. It doesn't make state regulation go away. It doesn't make the California Air Resources Board go away, which is passed sort of on its own, various kinds of environmental regulations that are harmful.
It doesn't make things like what other things. It doesn't make sequa go away.
Trump can do all that stuff he wants, but that's never going away.
Now.
I think there are possibilities at the federal level that Trump could and especially since housing as a major problem seems to be much more of a focus of the Trump forty seven administration than it was the trump forty five administration. Vice President elect Vance talked about it a lot on the campaign trail. I think there's a lot to it. I think there's a lot more focus on
this issue than there was before. I'd be interested to see who the new head of Housing and Urban Development is going to be.
I hope it's not.
What often tends to happen is that basically administrations dump somebody to be the Secretary for Housing in Urban Development too.
You know, it's sort of a political ally.
They sort of want a reward, but you know, they're not sure what to do with him, so they make him the head of HUT. That's what they did with Ben Carson, which didn't make much sense to me. So I guess we'll have to see. But I guess the problem is that there is a bunch of California law that Trump still has in his way that that's not going to change now when we return, I want to focus on the California ballid initiative system.
I wanted to save this for the.
Third segment so I have more time the California ballid initiative system, how I think it's underutilized, and how there's one person who started to be come involved in American politics, who could maybe do something really impressive with it. That's next on the John Girardi Show.
I think the.
California ballot initiative system is massively underutilized by the right, and I think this most recent election cycle has showed us that there is an avenue there for pursuing conservative events. So let me let me go through a little bit some of the election results from the ballot initiatives this past election cycle in twenty twenty four. It may be that we're seeing a right word shift nationally and maybe
even a little bit in California. Every state in the Union seemingly went a little bit right, even states that Harris won went right of where they were in twenty twenty. I mean that there was one point during the evening on election night.
I remember the CNN where they had oh, what is that guy's name?
He was talking with Jake Tapper, one of their election analyst dudes, and he was showing, these are all of the counties throughout the entire United States of America that we've tracked that Kamala Harris has outperformed Joe Biden from twenty twenty And then they showed it, and there was not one county in the entire United States highlighted on the map at the time. Jake Tapper's standing there incredules
what not even one. Now, eventually, I think over time, as we've counted all the votes, there were a few counties, maybe like three or four, that that Harris did in fact outperform Joe Biden. But the matter stands, Republicans did much better, Democrats did much worse. There's a right word shift in the country, and you could even see that in California. California, Republicans actually did decently well in some of the House raises, and I think actually picked up
one or two competitive seats in the state legislature. And most of all, I think the ballot initiative outcomes were surprising, surprisingly good for Republicans. A lot of things that Republicans wanted to see blocked were blocked. Rent control was blocked, a minimum wage increase was blocked. Now, some liberal priorities did get passed. The stupid ten billion dollars statewide education
bond passed. It's all right, we'll spend ten billion dollars in education stuff that we'll have to pay for down the road with twenty billion dollars, because a bond is a loan to a governmental entity that you have to pay back with interest, and the interest will basically be more or less double the principle. So you know, ten billion dollar bond for education. Why because the teachers' unions were mad that there wasn't enough in the state budget.
Guess what, There's never going to be enough in the state budget for the teachers.
This is the norm.
Our spending habits outstripped the revenue we were going to take in. A bunch of revenue left this state during COVID. Bunch of wealthy people left and took their capital gains taxes, took their income taxes with them, and they're not coming back. So are we just every year the state budget won't be enough for education and we'll just do another bond measure. We'll just put ourselves more and more and more in debt for the rest of time. All right, sounds like
that's what's going to happen. So Proposition two passed. Proposition fours, maybe even more egregiously stupid, ten billion dollars for various environmental projects of that past. So I'm not saying all the ballot initiative results were great for Republicans, but the signal achievement of the right in the ballot initiative space in twenty twenty four was Proposition thirty six. This was the ballot initiative to classify certain kinds of crimes as
felonies rather than misdemeanors. These were things that historically were felonies and then ten years ago Prop. Forty seven, Prop fifty seven made them into misdemeanors. And guess what if it's a misdemeanor rather than a felony, that's a big disincentive to charge it at the level of your district attorney. And so you had people getting away with all kinds
of drug crimes, all kinds of robbery crimes. So Prop thirty six was this targeted thing to classify certain kinds of crimes as felonies rather than misdemeanors and restore some semblance of wanting to actually prosecute people for crime into the California criminal justice system.
On a local level, we also saw.
That this mood was impacting the state as Los Angeles County kicked out George Gascon, their ultra left wing prosecutor. Now I thought that was an impressive outcome. To actually affirmatively pass a conservative ballot initiative was amazing, and Prop thirty six passed easily seventy two percent. It won every
single county of California. There was not one county where the nos outweighed the yeses easy, And it got me to thinking that ballot initiative being successful, is that what spurs some of the California old guard Orange County Republican money to maybe think about maybe we invest in a couple of more things. Because this is as far as I can tell. I'm not a one hundred percent expert in these things, but I've seen glimpses of this stuff. This is the lay of the land with Republican money
in California. So Orange County is still a big deal in Republican politics because a lot of very, very wealthy Republican donors live there. You'll often see national Republican figures on social media some.
Oh just taking a visit out to Orange County.
Hmm, I wonder why they're doing that. It's quite obvious why they're doing that. They're doing that to go fundraise. Orange County still has a ton of Republican money. San Joaquin Valley has some big Republican money, but Orange County is a real and there are a couple of donors in the San Juaquin Valley who are significant players on
the national scene. But it's in Orange County where a ton of Republican money resides, and the attitudes of Orange County Republicans tend to dominate the state party now basically Orange County Republicans, I think for the last decade or so, they've largely given up on the state. They've given up, they've certainly given up on social conservative causes. After the flame out of Prop eight, which here's Prop eight. We
pass Prop eight. We define in the California state Constitution that a marriors between a man and a woman and what happens. One federal judge in San Francisco says that it violates the US Constitution. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jerry Brown refuse to defend Prop eight in court. It goes all the way to the US Supreme Court. The Supreme Court says, well, if the governor or attorney general of a state won't defend the law in court, then there's nobody herewithstanding to
actually be defending the law. So the ruling from the federal judge in San Francisco holds, and that's how Prop eight got overturned, with the Supreme Court saying, well, on a standing issue, if the governor refuses to defend it, and the Attorney General refused to defend it, then nothing we can do. That's how Prop eight flamed out. So all that work, all that stirm and drawing over Prop eight and it died with a whimper. Then in twenty thirteen,
of course, it completely died after the Obergefeld decision. So I think Orange County Republican donors are just tired. They're tired of funding campaigns that they.
Know will lose.
They're tired of everything, and the only thing they kind of stir their stumps over is anything that might impact historic Prop thirteen. Don't want to pay property taxes. Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association is still a force because of those donors, and Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association was able to block a couple of bad ballot initiatives this year. But there's just but basically, Orange County Republican donors have been playing a
defense game. They're not spending offensively, they are playing defense to block the worst ballot initiative proposals, sometimes successfully. But they've completely given up on social conservatism in California, and they've mostly given up on electoral politics in California. They're not spending big on governors or senators or anything like that.
Governor candidates, Senate candidates, et cetera. But Prop thirty six passing and this subtle right word shift in the country makes me wonder do some of these people rethink this stuff?
Because that's the thing with a.
Ballot initiative system. It's not that hard to qualify something, and if you position it right and you capture the mood of the people the right way, you can pass something. I mean Prop thirty six pass with seventy two percent of the state voting for it, in spite of opposition from the governor and all of the powers that be.
What if.
Any massive Orange County slash Sewakeean Valley billionaire donors who might be listening to this, What if we introduced and qualified a ballot initiative to address one or more of the state's major problems in ways that would be widely popular. For example, abolish or highly reform sequa. We need more housing sequa is the great obstacle to housing. We all know this.
Why not pass a ballid initiative for it?
We know that California gas prices are high because of certain specific things. We know that they are high because of California having this special blend of California specific gas that has to be produced, So gas companies have to set up a separate refinery chain just to produce California compliant gasoline. That's why our gas is more expensive that plus taxes. Why don't we pass a ballot initiative to
end that? Now, you'll have to fight through the fact that the Attorney General will very unfairly category characterize that ballot initiative on the actual ballot. You know, you pass some you qualify a ballot initiative to you know, just let California sell normal gas, and the Attorney General, Rob Bonta gets to write the description in the ballot and he'll say, a proposal to increase pollution in California. That's probably what I'll say. And maybe you can't fight through that.
But I don't know.
I think there are more opportunities, more avenues for fighting things in a targeted way in California where we could actually pass some kind of conservative outcome when we return. The one person who lingers over this discussion, the potential wail who could alter all of this our George Soros, Elon Musk. That's next on the John Girardi Show. Donald Trump has been just flying all over the place with Elon Musk for the last, you know, two weeks since
the election. Basically the two are inseparable, and they were at some gala events over the past weekend. It's the think tank that's sort of most closely identified with Trump, the American First Principles Institute.
Something like that.
It has a lot of former Trump administration people working for it, and it seems like it's going to be its ideas, its locus or so. It was sort of the Trump administration in waiting in this sort of interlude between Trump forty five and Trump forty seven. Now, at this gala event, there were some species given and someone said, just a matter where is it?
You know what great things we can do, but we need to sustain this movement.
Where is our George Soro and Elon Musk is sitting there and he raises his hand. I think it's not talked about as much as it has been talked about, I still don't think it's talked about enough. What a significant bit of news it is that the Republican Party recruited the wealthiest man on God's Green Earth to become a donor, a major donor who seemingly wants to commit himself to ongoing donor support of Republican efforts, and just you know, referred to himself agreed with the characterization of
himself as the George Soros of the right. For those who don't know, I mean, what has George Soros done well through his Open Society foundage whatever. George Soros basically helped create a man massive network of interlinking five on C threes, five O and C fours and packs to influence policy, elections, legislation at the federal, state, and local level.
All these hyper left wing DA's, where do they come from? Well, they come from George Soros giving money through again his vast network of interconnected packs, five on and C fours and five to one C threes. But it's his money funding it, and he was able to affect massive changes in American criminal law enforcement. Massively terrible changes, I think, but massive changes. Elon Musk no longer is a California resident, that's true, but he still got homes in California. He
used to live here. It's where he started Tesla. He's got to have some residual affection for this place, and he's got to realize that California is a major, important part of the American economy. If he still wants Tesla or SpaceX or his various entities to do various kinds of business in California, he should take an interest to what's going on in California politics.
Elon was dropping forty.
Million dollars a month in ad buys for the Trump campaign during the twenty twenty four election cycle. You could pass a ballot initiative in California with just forty million dollars.
Just forty million dollars.
That's more than enough to successfully pass a ballot initiative in this state. I really think California Republican officials need to find a way to get in touch with him. And I think what we should think about is, like, what are the two or three things If Prop thirty six could pass with seventy two percent of the vote, it shows certain kinds of conservative ideas can pass via the ballot initiative system in this state. People want more housing.
Is there a way to limit SEQUA Is there a way to limit California environmental regulation in such a way as to allow for more housing. Is there a way to change our laws regulating gasoline to make guests less expensive?
Is there a way to change the housing market?
Is there a way to change these various aspects of California that are just ruining the state via the ballot initiative system. We can't reform the state legislature overnight. It's still three quarters Democrats. Even if you have a Republican governor win in twenty twenty six, there's not much he could do. Do we abolish the California Air Resources Board. Californians need to realize that the game has changed. If Elon is willing to spend on ballot initiatives in California, the game has changed.
That'll do it.
John Jlady show, see you next time on Power Talk.