It Could Happen Here - Bad Mayor Monday: Todd Gloria

Episode Date: March 20, 2023

James, Gare, and Mia sit down to talk about Todd Gloria’s anti homeless policies, defunding the libraries, and his incredibly cringe music video.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires.

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okay i guess yeah yeah yeah this is we're at work and today everyone because it's monday we are starting something that we like to call shitty mares monday i don't know if they'll actually let us put shitty in the title. They might, but they might not. We'll figure it out. That's what we're calling it. That's what we're calling it on the fucking recording. They can't stop us here.

It would be funnier if it just had like 10 seconds of bleep and then it was like Mayors Monday. I'd said some truly unfathomable shit. Okay, so we've noticed that across America, right, there are a lot of mayors who ran and were elected as liberals, progressives, certainly as Democrats, but tend to have governed in a particularly shitty and terrible way that doesn't really have any material difference from a Republican mayor,

but the way that they post on Instagram is a little bit different. So I guess that is nice. And we're starting with the town I live in, which is San Diego. And with the mayor we have, who is Todd Gloria. The people might've heard of Todd Gloria. Last year, we did an episode with several people who work with unhoused people in San Diego,

mutual aid workers, advocates. And they spoke a lot about Todd Gloria, not in glowing terms, but we spoke about Todd Gloria. So we're going to talk about his record on homelessness. We're going to talk about his life a little bit. And then we're going to look at sort of the promises he made when he was elected, I guess,

and the things that he's done, which it will shock you to hear are not the same things. And we're also going to talk about his hip hop video. Wait, wait. Yeah, yeah, Yeah, yeah. Yeah, buddy. Really? Yeah, no, he did Return of the Mac,

but hilariously changed it to Todd Gloria is Back. Oh. Yeah, no, if you want to see some problematic lip syncing, you're going to. Yeah, okay. All right. All right, I guess. Brace yourself.

A local newspaper had a headline that called it the cringiest video ever, which I think is a rare win for local media. Look, everyone wants to know why a local news does one good thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They occasionally, like a stopped clock. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. All right, so when Todd Gloria talks about his early life,

he talks about being the son of a maid and a gardener. And it's a way, I think, of distinguishing himself from the very few elites who have held power in the city for a very long time, right? People whose names are on every building. But his dad's LinkedIn profile tells a little bit of a different story. According to his own LinkedIn account,

Phil Gloria, age 64, has been in the aerospace industry for many years, including as a production controller at General Atomics, who people might remember as the manufacturers of the Predator and Reaper drones. Oh! Yeah, so it's a slightly different story, right? It's different from Maiden and Gardener. Prior to working at General Atomics, Phil Gloria worked for 14 years as a supervisor at United Technologies, another aerospace and technology company. Gloria has clarified later that his parents didn't work in those specific fields that the son of a maid

in the garden thing recently, but they did when he was born. So he wasn't, he's not. Yeah, that's bullshit. Like I could take this argument and argue that like I am the child of like a a pancake maker and a dishwasher like this is oh yeah yeah it's like it's it's sort of classic uh like this classic politicians right like telling enough of the truth for it not to be a lie uh but but maybe not telling the whole truth

and like i know like like my folks worked in agriculture when I was a kid, they still do. But like, they also worked very hard, you know, to like provide for me and get a better space in life. And I wouldn't want to run them down by denigrating the work that they did. But hey, I don't want to be a mayor either. Yeah, but also like, you don't get to do your fucking like burnishing working class credentials

and then your dad worked for a fucking like military contractor like come on like yeah yeah none of my parents have ever made a reaper drone so i guess i do have that in my favor uh it is an extremely san diego story uh in 2020 the san diego union tribune wrote he was running so the san diego story that allowed his mother a hotel maid and his a gardener, to work hard and afford a home doesn't end with their generation. That story seemed to admit the glaring reality that San Diego is one of the least affordable cities in the world right now. And its housing is unaffordable as it ever has been. And it's got worse since Todd Gloria became mayor. So who is Todd Gloria? He's an enrolled member of the Tlingit Haida Indian tribe of Alaska. He was born and raised in San Diego and graduated from the

University of San Diego with a bachelor's degree in history and political science. He began his career at San Diego's Health and Human Services Agency, and then he worked with Congresswoman Susan Davis, who became his mentor. He was elected to the city council in 2008 and 2012 and served as interim mayor from August 2013 to March 2014. He was also elected to the California State Assembly in 2016 and 2018 and he chose not to seek re-election for the assembly when he launched his campaign for mayor in 2020. So he's done the kind of the the sort of the the climb up of of offices that you see a lot of these folks do right and i'm sure that he has ambitions to run for further office that would be my guess and so in 2020 he was elected mayor of san diego he became our first gay mayor our first mayor of

color our first indigenous mayor so it was a lot of first for us and like it is good to to have a gay indigenous mayor right like if we're good to have a gay indigenous mayor, right? Like if we're going to have a mayor, you know, like it's nice that it's a position that's open to more people. But unfortunately, he hasn't done a lot else to encourage upward social mobility. He made a big push for private sector housing building as opposed to subsidized public housing. And he promised police reform. In a 2020 op-ed for the Union Tribune, Gloria wrote, We watched in horror as George Floyd was killed by four Minneapolis police officers.

Mr. Floyd and other victims of excessive force by law enforcement demand that we revisit, reconsider and reimagine how police operate in our community and how we expect them to interact with the public. It's time we work together to create a more just system of policing. The primary responsibility of government is to protect its people, all people. Many of us don't feel safe or protected, particularly our black community. So it seems like a pro at least reform statement, right? He went on to say, whether it's our mental health crisis or our homelessness crisis, we resort to the same same solution send the police and arrest people we have to stop severely penalizing some people for minor missteps and invest in lifting people up from difficult situations i will need

to put a pin in that uh as we talk about his his his politics it will shock you to hear that he's done exactly that he also wrote the rapidly expanding and secretive use of digital surveillance of our community members is unconstitutional and it should end. Again, put a pin in that as we get back to discussion of the cameras that we're putting on streetlights in San Diego. So in a PDF of his plan to end homelessness, which has been removed from his campaign website, but was sanctuarily preserved by our friends at Voice of San Diego, Gloria wrote, no more criminalizing the existence of San Diego's poorest and sickest residents. He also told right-wing news station KUSI that San Diego cannot claim to be America's finest city or even a great city when thousands of people live

unsheltered and dying on our streets. It's time to stop the band-aids, the temporary solutions, and bad policy from City Hall on this issue. said as mayor my administration will prioritize ending chronic homelessness i will focus the city's energy and resources on results oriented programs proven to get homeless individuals off the street connected to services and back on their feet now to be fair well there's two things one is that at any time okay like any person who is running for mayor is systematically lying to you about what they're gonna do the second thing is if you ever hear someone say the words results oriented it is time to grab like the largest saber you have and like yeah get to work oh yeah and as we'll discover the results uh that he's oriented towards uh somewhat disappointing.

I was going to say for all of us. Hashtag for all of us is his campaign slogan. Jesus Christ. Yeah, it's just it's very cringe. And I know we'll it's very sad when we see the impact of this for the least fortunate people in San Diego. And like it is very funny. But when you see how this plays out on the street it's also very sad uh you know what is also very funny and kind of sad Mia uh the the the Ronald Reagan coin services yeah yeah it's a Ronald Reagan silver coins that

pay for my friends to get hormones. So please enjoy these adverts. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko.

It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house.

So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. The 2025 iHeart Podcast Awards are coming. This is the chance to nominate your podcast for the industry's biggest award. Submit your podcast for nomination now at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. But hurry, submissions close on December 8th. Hey, you've been doing all that talking. It's time to get rewarded for it. Submit your podcast today at iHeart.com slash podcast awards. That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards.

Thank you, ally Ronald Reagan, for funding my HR team. Thanks, Ronnie. All right, we're back. We're talking about Tol Gloria, San Diego's mayor. Before the break, we talked about his promises, right? So let's see how he did on those promises. I want to start with January 9th, 2021. Tolgloria had taken office a few days before.

If you can cast your mind back then, there had been a significant event at the Capitol a couple of days before. Proud Boys, neo-Nazis, Earth are assorted chuds, decided to visit San Diego three days after they visited the Capitol. Anti-fascist assembles showed them they weren't welcome, and the police responded by declaring the anti-fascist assembly illegal, escorting the chuds around Pacific Beach as they did various crimes, and trying to shoot me in the dick with pepper balls.

Garrison's just smirking. I thought, Gloria, the guy who ran on police reform, had this to say. Mayor Gloria spoke candidly about what happened at the Capitol and how that's reverberating around the country. After seeing what happened in Washington on Wednesday, what are you doing out on our streets supporting that mess? Right. Racism, fascism, anti-democracy. Why would you choose to be out there? Gloria says despite his feelings, San Diego supports peaceful protests of all kinds. But on Saturday, police say three people were arrested and five officers suffered minor injuries. We're asking for the public's assistance in helping us to identify some of those folks who we were not able to apprehend yesterday to make sure they're held accountable.

These are people on both sides of the debate. Both sides. Yeah, both sides. So some of you remember some other people have called out people on both sides of the debate. So I think the most blatant sort of thing he did with regards to the police comes after Derek Chauvin, the cop who murdered George Floyd, was convicted of murder. I guess a few of you can probably remember where you were that day. I can remember where I was.

And it was, at the very least, after an entire summer of protest, right, it was like the smallest token instance of accountability, but I guess at least it was something. And in that moment, Todd Gloria, who was looking at that same thing that nearly everyone was looking at in this country that moment, Todd Gloria, who was looking at that same thing that nearly everyone was looking at in this country that day, right? He thought about what he wanted to do and he decided that

rather than talking to the black organizers who had been in the street for almost a year and had been pepperballed and tear gassed and maced and never stopped demanding justice, he was instead going to call the cops. Many such cases. Yeah, yeah.

And check that the verdict wasn't making them sad. What he did was took over the entire police scanner radio thing and delivered a message to the cops, which I've got audio of here. Colleagues, this is Mayor Todd Gloria. I want to address each and every single one of you who nobly serve our great city. Today's verdict is just the beginning of building a deeper trust with our community. Justice was served today against someone who does not represent you or us or our department or who we are as a nation. So I want you to hear from me today. I know who you are.

You are people who help complete strangers on the worst day in their life. You are people who believe in collaboration and community. You're people who put your lives on the line every single day to protect this city. I and the people of San Diego are grateful for your dedication and your service. With today's decision made, it is now time for all of us to come together to heal and to move forward please take care of yourself of each other

and of the people of this great city be safe everybody has anyone ever said the words to move forward and not just be an absolute dipshit this sounds like it was written by an AI yeah if you had a chat GPT for a liberal mayor, it wouldn't look hugely different to what we have in San Diego.

Do a liberal mayor statement. Submit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chat GPT, write a liberal mayor writing a peon to the cops. Now it's time to heal and come together as a community. Yeah, mm-hmm. Stop with your Black Lives Mattering. It's scary. Yeah, it was extremely cringe,

especially when you consider how it differs from what he was saying just a few months ago. And that, again, this was about a man who murdered someone, and that somebody in San... It wasn't SDPD who killed the person, but somebody in San Diego died in similar circumstances with someone doing a carotid restraint on them. A few days before this,

Gloria also proposed a budget. In his budget, he proposed that we cut library hours significantly and lay off 153 library employees, but give the police $19 million more than the previous year. The previous year, I probably don't have to remind people, is a year in which San Diegans had turned up in droves at Zoom council meetings to urge the city to do the exact opposite of this let's check in on that surveillance claim he made you remember that he said it was unconstitutional right um so on march the second of this year told gloria in a shocking vault fast tweeted streetlight cameras and license plates readers can be helpful public safety tools you know just just just because he thinks it's unconstitutional doesn't mean he

doesn't think it's right yeah yeah yeah he's once again been held back from protecting the people of san diego by that pesky constitution the city passed strong privacy protections last year and now it's time for at san diego pd to use this technology to keep us safe public meetings to get this done start soon so yeah we um these street lights they were deactivated in 2020 but they had previously been introduced and built as a way to assess traffic patterns but in fact they never assessed traffic patterns yeah yeah this will shock you uh they they put thousands of cameras and microphones on our streets, including one outside a Planned Parenthood facility. You know, for traffic.

You know, the funniest part about this, this was literally the thing about doing traffic science, this was literally Tom Cruise's cover story in one of the early Mission Impossible movies. So that's what we have next, is it? It's fucking Scientology coming for san diego uh yeah it'll uh it'll shock you to hear that uh we stopped using these for very reasonable uh people had very reasonable concerns in 2020 that you know it's not a good idea for the cops

to be able to see and hear everything that you do to be able to read your license plate and see everywhere that you go but todd wants them back and it if people actually want to follow the discussion about having them back because every single time like every single public meeting there's someone and they'll stand up and have a vehement like position pro cameras and then it'll turn out that they are like a prosecutor at the DA's office or in one instance there was a prosecutor in one instance Who insisted he was there in his personal capacity The lieutenant for Sauron is defending

All of these surveillance cameras That are being posted around Middle-earth Curious This guy whose name is not Big Brother Is here to advocate for Having cameras in your home The king of the Orukai Is backing Suron on his

new surveillance program but he's wearing a uh a fake mustache so you can't tell who he is so let's look at what he said about stopping criminalizing homelessness right and this is a big big issue in san diego we have a massive and growing unhoused population because our rents are exceptionally high and our wages are not. So the number of unhoused people has increased under Gloria, so have deaths on the street, which hit a record of 574

in the county last year. That's more than one person dying every single day in the streets, right? He's opened some shelters, but some shelters are scheduled to close. The shelter beds and traditional transitional housing provided have failed to grow at the same rate as the unhoused population

but it's haven't stopped him taking photos and claiming every single one it's a huge step forward we also continue to build what are called congregate shelters which which don't give people privacy right which don't give them uh a lot of people might not want to go into a congregate shelter into effectively a dormitory. There are a number of reasons why you might not want to do that. And yet, that's what we're building.

There are also some other single-occupancy shelters, but nowhere near enough. He's been a huge backer of something called California's Care Court. Are you guys familiar with the Care Court at all? No. No.

This shit is dystopian. This could be a whole episode episode maybe one day it will be care stands for community assistance recovery and empowerment which i have a feeling that this is not going to be about empowerment yeah when it's empowering someone garrison uh but but it's not empowering the people we might want to empower uh what it is in practice is a massive expansion of forced conservatorship. So I'm going to quote from Human Rights Watch here. Human Rights Watch said the plan promotes a system of involuntary,

coerced treatment enforced by an expanded judicial infrastructure that will, in practice, simply remove unhoused people with perceived mental health conditions from the public eye without effectively addressing those mental health conditions. Jesus. Yeah, it's pretty bad. It doesn't provide money for mental health services. It takes money that's already existing in the budget

and puts it across to court-mandated treatments. It doesn't provide housing, which the multiple studies show that a housing-first approach is a way to solve homelessness um instead it allows for a broad range of people which include family members first responders including cops and outreach workers the public guardian service providers and the director of the county behavioral health agency to refer individuals to the jurisdiction of the court to take away their autonomy and liberty. It very broadly covers people it describes as having schizophrenia, spectrum or other psychotic disorders.

Under this system, judges can force people into treatment and housing. If they don't comply, they can be forced into conservatorship. Now, obviously, evidence doesn't support the conclusion that involuntary outpatient treatment is more effective than intensive voluntary outpatient treatment. And indeed, it does show that involuntary outpatient treatment is more effective than intensive voluntary outpatient treatment and indeed it does show that involuntary coercive treatment is harmful but it isn't really about people with mental health it's about keeping unhoused people where they can't be seen and human rights watch claims that this violates due process and international

human rights conventions uh and yet like cloak doria and gavin newsom to be fair who i'm sure will run for president soon have been cheerleading this and it's it's like i'm surprised it hasn't got more press coverage internationally and nationally sorry because it's it's a massive assault on personal freedoms right and it's extremely easy to effectively say that somebody quote-unquote needs mental health help force them into conservatorship and if they're not willing to attend these treatments so they're not able to attend these treatments they're not willing to go into the housing that they are assigned uh let's say that they don't want to live in in congregate housing right or something like that um or they're in housing with someone who they don't feel comfortable or safe with and they could be forced into conservatorship

and effectively lose all their liberty right yeah it's pretty it's pretty bad. It's a new and exciting way of criminalizing homelessness effectively. Like I said, it doesn't provide housing. It doesn't provide funding for behavioral health care. It just directs existing funding to court-mandated programs. So I could pick hundreds of other examples of this Todd Gloria stuff, but I want to pick one more to focus on.

And it's something that, like, I think it gets a little bit into, like, inside politics, grifty stuff, but it, like, it has ruined a good number of careers in San Diego politics. And I'm really heavily indebted to La Prensa and Voice of San Diego for their reporting on this.

But let's start by talking about public restrooms. So I think most of us can agree that having a safe place to shit and wash your hands is a pretty basic human right. But in San Diego, it's something that not everyone has. So since 2000, four grand jury reports have warned the city's inadequate public restroom infrastructure could become a public health threat. That's what happened in 2017 and 2018 when hepatitis A swept through the city, sickening 582 people and killing 20. So after the hepatitis A...

Yeah, it's not a thing that you expect, right? Like on the left coast in America's finest city. Most Americans will not encounter, thankfully, hepatitis in their lifetime. Sadly, Mayor, this isn't our only hepatitis outbreak. So that's great. Oh, no. So after the Hep A outbreak,

the city stopped locking restrooms at night, which it had done previously. But that changed with the COVID pandemic when the facilities were temporarily closed. And some have since not returned to 24-7 service. Following this, a 2021 Shigella outbreak sickened at least 41 homeless residents, most of whom were staying in central San Diego, further shed light on the city's restroom issues. Much of this was dealt with in a great report by Bella Ross in The Voice of San Diego, to which Gloria commented, I don't quite know what he was going for here,

but not having a place to shit is an everyone issue. This isn't just an unhoused issue right like everybody poops and not all of us live in houses and have giant offices in city hall downtown and so it it was this bizarre kind of gaslighting approach like we fundamentally have an issue with access to bathrooms. And to try and reframe this as another issue where he's also failing, it's kind of indicative of their response, but also very bizarre. Where the city has installed new bathrooms, they're often installed by private groups as part of development projects, which is great, right?

A good old public-private partnership has never gone wrong before. So it will shock you to hear that these private groups are responsible for maintaining and securing these facilities, and this means that they're often locked. So despite literal human shit being all over downtown and people being forced to endure the massive indignity of having nowhere to poop, in December 2022, research by SDSU's Project for Sanitation Justice

found that less than half of City's permanent restrooms could be considered truly open access, and that just two permanent facilities were available around the clock, seven days a week. Gloria has later acknowledged that City has an issue, but he's chosen to blame residents. I just need folks to quit acting a fool in these bathrooms. I mean, it's not just the homeless population, it's everybody, he said in an interview. In February 2023, nearly five years after the last outbreak, San Diego County again began recording

an uptick in hepatitis A cases, which is great, right? We're back to where we started. Much of this reporting was met with absolutely unhinged responses on Twitter from some of Gloria's staff. They call themselves the Todd Squad. That sucks.

Yeah, it's pretty bad. Notable responses come from Dave Rolland, who left the old weekly City Beat for a job in PR, and Rachel Lang, who, she's Todd's, I think, head of public relations. She spent June of 2020 posting about Black Lives Matter whilst also doing volunteer public relations work for the cops. Wow. Amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Could volunteer public relations? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like, there's like a joke on, like, there's like a sort of pejorative label for... Okay, so on Chinese Twitter, there's this joke calling people unpaid five cent army, There's like a sort of pejorative label for it. Okay, so on Chinese Twitter, there's this joke calling people unpaid five cent army,

which is like, the five cent army is like, the number of cents changes over time. It's like, yeah, there used to be a thing where you could get paid by the government to get like, that you get paid per post, like post whatever fucking shit the Chinese government wanted to have posts on. but this person's actually literally an unpaid like actually literally volunteer

yeah like volunteer public relations for the cops like what the fuck is this bullshit oh yeah it was really a magical public record find when when i sent that pra email uh yeah yeah um i think she framed it as like helping the community and the police talk to one another in a difficult time uh the future the future is is the giant boot stamping on your face people volunteer to paint the boot yes yeah that is yeah yeah it is a rainbow boot uh yeah i mean you can you can find their feed some of the attacks on myself and some of my colleagues are like incredibly petty and unprofessional uh and also quite unnerving when you consider uh the huge amounts of taxpayer money that are wasted on their salaries which

pay them to post. And again, this is a town where people die because they don't have a place to take a shit, but we're paying people to get into Twitter beef. You know, it's also really cool that, like, the sort of two axes of American politics are you can't use the bathroom because you're trans and you can't use the bathroom because you don trans and you can't use the bathroom because you

don't own one. And then sometimes they just converge and it's the same. Yeah, yeah. Locking. Yeah, that's a hands clasping meme. Locking trans people out of the bathroom. Welcome. I'm Danny Trejo. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern-day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time.

Experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend, and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head

and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's the one with the green guy on it. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field. And I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology.

I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God, things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. so now we're about to get to uh Todd Squad's finest hour uh which is when they use city resources and work time to make a video of them singing Return of the Mac only it wasn't Return of the Mac it was Todd Gloria is back and yeah'm going to make you all watch it.

Was that it? Was he walking through a... Yeah, at City Hall, yeah. Was the first part him walking to a security line at the airport? Yeah, which is funny because... That's a security line to get into City Hall, yeah. Was the first part him walking to a security line at the airport? Yeah. Which is funny because... That's a security line to get into City Hall. Oh, okay. Have you never been to a City Hall before? I didn't have that.

It certainly does now. In Chicago? Yes, it certainly has that now. My local town one didn't. Are they saying that the mayor lied to town one didn't. Are they saying that the mayor lied to the city? Is that what they're saying? Yes. Yeah, the previous

mayor. Wasn't he the previous mayor? Only for a little bit of time. Then he was interim mayor. Oh, okay. Okay. They're playing... Oh my god

I didn't believe you When you said air guitar I thought it'd be one guy Doing air guitar on broomstick That was like 12 guys Yeah This feels like it's gone on For like 40 minutes

Yeah This is my Stalin grad There's a point where they come in Dressed as Flavor Flav But I think it's here Anyway One of them's wearing a medallion That just says Cox on it There's a point where they come in dressed as Flavor Flav, but I think it's here. Anyway, one of them's wearing a medallion that just says Cox on it.

Okay, Todd Gloria's wearing a medallion here. We can probably... No, no, hang on. Here he is again. That's some cops. What is going on? Why are they laying on the ground in a circle with their heads touching? There's some cops There's a person with a Cox medallion again Okay, this is one of the worst things I've ever seen

Chained it was like an SD for San Diego when it first first comes onto screen, it really looks like a swastika. This is a Padres logo. That's, yeah, that's like the most famous logo. Yes. That's a shitty-ass team. Go Mariners. The Padres did a different genocide, and it shouldn't be conflated with the other genocide.

I'm guessing this is like a sports thing or something. Yeah, they are the sports ball team. Yeah, that's what I thought. Baseball, to be specific. I knew that. Very proud of them. But yeah, as you'll have noticed, one of the most cringe things that has ever fucking happened.

Yeah, that's pretty rough. It's pretty bad, right? It's pretty bad right like like it it's it's it's pretty crushing when like like i have personally known people who have died on our streets and uh and also my merit is making return of the mac videos uh dressed as flavor flavor uh so i think we're mostly done uh i want to talk about one more thing uh because no review of San Diego politics will be complete without a mention of the giant monument to Griff that is 101 Ash Street.

So what is 101 Ash Street? In 2016, San Diego leased a downtown high-rise hoping to house city employees. It turned out that the building was riddled with asbestos. And it turns out the city knew it was riddled with asbestos when it started to lease the building.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it will shock you to know that they denied this at first, but in the agreement to lease to own the building, it says, buyer acknowledges that the building contains asbestos and that Sempra has maintained

an asbestos monitoring and handling program. So eventually in 2019, they managed to move staff in after a renovation that ballooned in cost. In 2020, they were forced to evacuate the building because of the asbestos. Since then, DA's investigation has been opened into Jason Hughes, who publicly represented himself as a volunteer advisor to the city,

according to Voice of San Diego. But unbeknown advisor to the city according to voice of san diego but unbeknownst to the city collected 9.4 million dollars from cistera who owned 101 ash street the city attorney's office alleged but could not prove that the city's former top bureaucrat chris michael ordered city information technology staff to purge records tied to the 101 ash street debacle last year so they couldn't prove that she purged the records, but what they do know that she did was pass a confidential legal document to Corey Briggs, a candidate for city attorney. NBC reported that the memo included a footnote,

which Elliot and others later decried as fabricated. In the footnote, they claimed that Elliot's office made an effort to shield Gloria from an outside probe at the 101 Ash Street debacle. The footnote suggested an interview with Gloria might have clarified why the city decided to go forward with the Ash Street lease, given Gloria's skepticism about a similar past deal.

So it's not clear if this footnote was real or fabricated. It's alleged it was fabricated, which it's bizarre. This whole sort of weird, corrupt is bizarre and it may this may well not be true like to be clear during this time Dorian Hargrove who is a reporter obtained some of those records faced legal threat of prosecution from a city attorney and lost his job for obtaining those records so far the city has poured more than 60 million into 101 ash street roughly the same amount of this annual library budget it's only occupied the office space for yeah it's great

it's absolutely this has been occupied for like less than a couple of months for the five years since the city acquired it are they do do do we do we know what their ties to like the contractors who are doing the uh renovations are and that would be an interesting thing i actually don't know that um yeah because that that's like that that's that's that's like that's the classic illinois uh grift yeah you just keep keep renovating a building keep getting donations from the uh from the contractors well or or the contractors are just your friends and and so this is how you pass around. Okay.

Yeah, keep the money around, yeah. Well, they're not doing any more contracting on it, because the city agreed to buy the building, which needs $115 million in repairs for $86 million last year. It's good stuff. Amazing. Yep.

This week, the UT reported that San Diego's top real estate official did not seek input from her staff or review internal files before recommending the city buy out the 101 Ash Street lease. They also reported that in a confidential memo to the city auditor's office, anonymous employees wrote, the city of San Diego should be aware of the level of waste and abuse that is occurring within the real estate and airport management department which has led to a toxic hostile revenue wasting and unproductive work environment which is great um we did a joke

yep we did this is the san diego we wanted hashtag for all of us um so this is a lot of inside san diego politics right so it's a lot of lists of things and promises made and promises broken. But I want to come back to the fact that this is a guy who ran for mayor on a ticket that pushed compassion and a relatively liberal set of policies. And he's done the exact opposite in his time in office. He ran as a progressive, but he's done very little to differentiate himself policy-wise from mayors like Republican Kevin Faulkner. Obviously, we're just cracking the lid on some of these policies here. He's consistently chosen to fund and support the police

over the people of the city. He's consistently moved to make it harder to live on the streets and harder to get off the streets. And he's consistently chosen photo opportunities over real governance for the city. His PR people spend hours bashing mutual aid workers, like Michael, who we had a guest on the show on Twitter, and wasting taxpayer money doing it. Just this week, he welcomed right-wing maniac Rishi Sunak, who actually is prime minister of the UK, despite the fact that people haven't noticed, to our city.

And San Diego State University researchers released a report saying negative interactions with police are driving black people who are experiencing homelessness away from services and housing opportunities this is what we got from a mayor who positioned himself as a progressive and has governed as a rainbow republican so yeah that's i would say that's all i have to say about togloria um if you follow me on twitter you will know that it's not the case and i will continue to have more to say about togloria but yeah it's really sad. It's deeply sad. And like I said, it's funny. The cringy music video is funny. We'll link to it in the show notes. But it's also really deeply troubling that this has real impacts for real people

who are already down on their luck and living on the streets or experiencing over-aggressive policing or the things that he said he would fix have just got worse. And yeah, it sucks. So thanks for listening to me whine about my city, everyone. And again, my apologies for traumatizing you further

with that video. It's fine. Next week, next week, we will... Okay, so we would have been doing Chicago's own version of this exact same person, which is Lloyd Lightfoot, except to the surprise of absolutely zero people who live in Chicago and everyone who doesn't live in Chicago. Lightfoot didn't make it out of her fucking primary. So we're instead going to be doing Chicago's once in the future. Well, not once.

Potentially future mayor Paul Vallis, who absolutely sucks ass. So stay tuned for that in another week when I get a yell about Paul Vallis and inflict some truly horrific bullshit on all of you. Very excited to get my revenge. All right, well, I will look forward to seeing Paul Vallis' hip-hop video. Kirsten's just sitting there, background dying.

This is worse than anything the Daily Wire can throw at me should we just pivot to more cum content Kirsten I'm so fucked off okay this has been they can happen here you can find us at happen here pod on twitter or instagram

but we're gonna leave before one of us dies. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening.

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