The Daily Signal - Fighting to Bring Conservative Common Sense to Liberal States

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

It must be easy to be a conservative in Texas or Florida, right? Joking aside, what does it take to get up every day in an area that most people think is a lost cause to progressivism? At the annual State Policy Network Annual Meeting we caught up with the leaders of the Cascade Policy Institute from Oregon, John Charles, and the Empire Center in New York Zilvinas Silenas on doing just that. Keep Up With The Daily Signal   Sign up for our email newsletters:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.dailysignal.com/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠     Subscribe to our other shows:    The Tony Kinnett Cast: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2284199939⁠ The Signal Sitdown: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376⁠   Problematic Women:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL7765680741⁠   Victor Davis Hanson: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9809784327⁠     Follow The Daily Signal:    X:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=DailySignal⁠ Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Truth Social:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Thanks for listening to this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast. I'm your host, Joe Thomas, Virginia correspondent for The Daily Signal. Before we dive into today's interview, I want to thank you for tuning in today. If you're a first-time listener, The Daily Signal, brings you fact-based reporting and conservative commentary on politics, policy, and culture. And I hope you join our band of regular listeners to our podcast. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and also take a

moment to rate and review us wherever you get your podcast, you can find additional content at DailySignal.com. Now, let's get started with today's conversation right after this. John Charles is joining us from the Cascade Policy Institute. And John, thank you very much for taking some time out. It's Cascadepolicy.org is where you find them online. How are you doing? And have you gotten to New Orleans yet? I arrived here yesterday. I had a wonderful Cajun dinner last night, and it will conference itself. We'll swing into action later today.

Talk about, and I was reading your piece, and it struck so close to home because Virginia went through the same thing where all of a sudden the Department of Transportation turned their pockets inside out and said, I don't know where all the money went. And like so many things, whether it's marijuana or you name it, the state says, oh, if we tax this, never have to tax anything again until they come back with their pockets, turns inside out. Talk about what happened and if it's the same thing that was happening in Virginia, where they just couldn't tax automobiles and gasoline enough, and the Department of Transportation ran out of money anyway.

Well, it's kind of a conflict situation. There's a lot of blame to be shared by some, I'd say, mismanagement on the part of ODOT, but also beginning 24 years ago, the state legislature started passing a series of bills, creating new revenue streams for ODOT, but also legally restricting where the money could go and directing it. And as ODOT's money from registration fees and gas tax, weight, mile taxes, increased, only a small portion of that was available for basic road maintenance. Of course. The legislature told them to spend it on a bunch of capital projects, sort of shining new objects that were either not necessary or in one case of a megaproject was just a bad idea. So over 25 years, the amount of money for maintenance has been slowly plateauing and then starting to decline, coupled with perhaps a more serious problem that the legislature also authorized.

the agency to sell bonds to get money today paid back by debt service on future gas tax revenues. And that really creates a situation where debt service becomes a tapeworm that eats away your general fund over time. So last year, they had debt service of $358 million, and that ate up 555% of their gas tax money. Oh my gosh. So the legislature itself has caused quite a bit of the problem. And so we've recommended to them for the special session coming up on the 29th that they give the agency more flexibility to spend money on maintenance and also to pay off their what is now a $3.9 billion liability on death service paid off with lottery funds rather than raise new gas tax. It's a much better idea, but it's a warning. I always give people when they start talking about whether it's urban renewal projects or transportation,

especially these light rail projects and things like that, and they always say, oh, but we'll make so much money in tax revenue. They call it tax increment financing, or they just go out and directly sell bonds, and it never materializes. I've yet one time in 40 years of doing this, seeing a turnaround and actually create all, if not more, of the time. if not more of the tax revenue. They're always coming back in 20 years saying, ah, we just didn't, you know, we're going to have to, and they try to play fast and loose with it, John. Thank you for taking us inside yet another proofable point,

data point in these issues and, you know, so much better things. Oregonians, and it strikes me that, you know, living in Charlottesville, Virginia, I often get this from people saying, Joe, why do you, why do you try? It's a crazy left-wing town, and Oregon gets a reputation. You know, even some of the left-wing comics, like the folks who did Portlandia, take some time at how Oregon can swing so far to the left. But there's so many great people, and it's such a beautiful place.

Talk about your membership and the people who are there. And if at some point maybe the governor and the Democrats in Oregon, drag too many people towards the Overton window and people in Oregon start waking up and tapping into conservative policies. I have to imagine that's what you get up every morning hoping. Well, when the governor, the governor, when she won her last race, she only took, I think, six out of the 36 counties. Wow. So the majority of Oregon counties are rural and they're very conservative. And it wasn't that long ago. For instance, in around 2000, when the former governor, Kate Brown, was a young state senator and was just voted to be in charge of her Democratic caucus.

Her total caucus had 10 members. Well, it's a 30-member Senate. She was routinely on the wrong end of 20 to 10 votes. And the Republicans also had the House. So most things in politics are cyclical. And you have to take a longer view. And yes, over the last 20 years, or. Oregon has become a very much of a blue state, very much enamored with large central planning

schemes. But those planning schemes inevitably fail, and that presents an opportunity for those of us who are in the small government free market arena to say, hey, we're still here. Our ideas have merit. And we're ready. Whenever you get tired of failing, we're still here. And I think that moment is coming for Oregon. It's kind of what I call a Joe Biden debate moment where, you know, a little more than a year ago, millions and millions of voters were horrified to discover that everything they thought they knew about Joe Biden was wrong, and things came crashing down for them. And Oregon is going to experience its own Biden debate moment. Well, I think a lot of people are because they're, every time I think they've reached a point where they can't possibly say, here, hold my beer,

they do it again. And Hakeem Trefries over the weekend was doubling down on more of these, you know, crazy policies that have never been proven and are routinely being proven in live action that they don't work. You know, one of the things I was talking to a fellow on the way over here, there's a conference going on nearby about housing and housing costs. I said, gosh, that's like one of the two biggest issues in, in this state policy network is liberating, I guess is the word housing. How is housing in Oregon? I imagine it's got to be facing the same struggles it is all across the country with onerous government policies killing it. Well, we're probably the worst off in that we have the most onerous statewide land use regulatory system. You really can only build or at least easily build.

housing inside these urban growth boundaries that we've had for half a century and Oregon is I think the sixth largest state and yet our urban growth boundaries restrict housing development to about one percent of the land mass of the state one percent oh my god so it's almost impossible to build anything including housing on 99 percent of the land and 55 percent of the land is owned by the federal So that's a total, no build zone. So, okay, well, the laws of supply and demand in housing would say that at some point you need more land. You need to make it easier to build. And the progressives who are basically kind of mean, really, they have a win.

They have 99%. John, you were talking right before we went to break. And it's so funny because our flagship city, Charlottesville, they have this. 5%. You can only build in 5% of the county. And I thought that was draconian. You're telling me, I mean, it's 1% of Oregon can have houses or homes or anything built on it. They act as if they act as as if their 99 to 1 ratio were reduced to 98 to 2. That would be a crisis. Hey, oh my gosh, pave over paradise, dogs and cats living together. Terrible. No. No. It's It's so, you know, they've, that's part of it.

And so if you're a young person, you have almost no chance, me young, I say, coming out of college or high school, you have almost no chance over the next decade of owning a home. So we were now seeing population plateauing and opportunities are better elsewhere. And, hey, there are 49 other states and you don't understand that. They don't have to stay in Oregon. What obviously your voice is one of those voices speaking out on it. Is it gaining traction? You said it's only been, you know, 20 years this lurched to the left in Oregon. Are people in the decision-making world looking at, you know, down-zoning?

I was just talking to a young lady from Mercatus who said the city of Houston's completely eliminated, you know, type zoning. So if you have an empty warehouse that nobody's using, you can tear it down and build a there if you want to without having to go through the whole rezoning process. Right. Well, Houston has long been known as the anti-Portland for that reason. And yes, so zoning, frankly, almost any place in Texas is easy to build. And that's why, or it's a primary reason why there's a lot of housing and moderately priced housing in Texas. In Oregon, will things change?

I don't know. I mean, public policy is frequently a matter of, King of the Mountain. You get here first, you defend the mountain. And owner's zoning has been in place for about 52 years in Oregon. And it's possible that that's going to be as permanent as gambling in Nevada. If you want to get rid of gambling in Nevada, you should probably just leave Nevada. Because that's probably not going to happen.

I hope that doesn't happen to Oregon. I don't know. I don't be overly depressing about Oregon. But zoning, strict zoning has a big home court advantage. Well, keep talking about it. Cascadepolicy.org, John Charles. I appreciate it. Look forward to meeting you in person as the conference gets underway today here in New Orleans and keep fighting the good fight and being one of those voices. And I appreciate you visiting us this morning. All right. Thanks for the call. Joining us now here is the State Policy Network annual meeting. And I've spent a good bit of this show just showing folks listening in all these places that just like you. Like my flagship city of Charlottesville, the stereotype is, oh, there's no conservative voices there. And there are, there are so many of them.

And I've told you the story more as a way to give you hope. I grew up in New York City. And if there's a blue place on the planet outside of San Francisco, it's New York City right now. But that's not how it always was. And it's not the way it still is for the most of them. This is how Eric Adams wound up falling out of favor with the Biden administration was because he realized the residents of New York didn't like the open borders. We'll put a bunch of people who aren't supposed to be here and we don't know who they are in our elementary schools with our kids confronted with that. Even moms who I'm sure voted five to one in favor of Joe Biden for president said not just no, but hell no.

And these are the things we hang our hats on. And joining us is Zylvinius Salinas from the Empire Center. It's New York's one of New York's conservative voices here at the state policy network. Did I say that, right? Zvinus Salinas? Z. Okay. Well, I appreciate it, Z.

And I appreciate what you do in New York because it's my home state or I grew up. And I just feel like whether it's our listeners in Beacon, Newberg, and Poughkeepsie or Amira or, or, you know, wherever in New York listening to us, Westchester, there is so many more conservative voices, common sense voices in a city that I thought invented the idea of common sense. How do you reach out to people in New York to get more people involved in reconserving the message? Right. So I think many of these places you mentioned are definitely conservative. I would say New York City is the big exception, as is almost everywhere.

Urban centers are more blue outside of urban centers to get more red. But regardless of the color, I think we have the right approach with talking to people about common sense. So one of the ways, one of the issues, one of the tactics to talk to people is rather than approaching issues from that partisan point of view, what we do is we ditch that partisanship and we say okay let's say New York has this outrageous climate policy which was enacted in 2019 and now the chickens are coming to roost and your energy prices are getting higher your energy price are getting higher they're higher than in neighboring states they're higher than in New Jersey or Pennsylvania and it's not going to stop and in fact here are the plans here are the papers here are the receipts that would increase energy prices even further

you know we think this doesn't make sense we think it doesn't make new york better we think it does nothing to fight climate change we think it's just means more or less control of government government control over power industry we think it's wrong but what do you think and in fact many people agree oh sure and when you lay it out without political party. I mean, it's like asking, are you a Yankees fan or a Mets fan? Or, you know, maybe that's a bad example, but, you know, jets, are there still Jets fans? I'm not sure. But you get my point, Z, is that the issue, and when you look at it and say, has the climate got any better for all of this? Or is it just more money out of your pocket into somebody else's pocket? New Yorkers get that. I mean, I schooled up on this arguing with my friends through college in the miners of Queens. I think there's people in New York that would stand up for it. And maybe, you know, looking at a guy like Zorhan Mamdani is a wake-up call saying, hold it. Have we gone too far? What do you think? Well, I think it's worse than a wake-up call. That are some people

who say, well, if Zoran Mandami gets elected, that's finally how people, that's when New Yorkers will realize how that socialism is. And I would say that that's too high a price to pay for such an educational lesson. I agree with you. So yeah, that I have reasonable New Yorkers and we do opinion polls all the time. It's all about climate and we say, hey, which direction should New York take go faster on emissions reduction if it means higher prices to you or should we go, should we do everything? to lower the prices and even if it increases the emissions and most people basically have 20%

of people on one side 20% of people on the other side who balance each other out and you have a silent majority who basically say yes let's save the planet but only if it doesn't cost me anything what they're called casual and not a mentalist right and then the question of course so why are we pursuing policies that only 20% of people implicitly support That's a great point. Right. Right. So I have a question that we're asking.

Going back to Montana, I think the threat is bigger than most people realize or would like to realize. I think unless something big happens, unless something changes or the other three candidates consolidate, we might have a socialist as a leader of New York's largest city. You know, it would be scary to think about that. But, you know, when he talks about things like government-run grocery stores, and I don't know where you stop from there, government-run clothing stores, government-run real estate, you know, it's Johnny Bar the Door at that point, isn't it? Well, unlike Mandami, I have actually had a misfortune of shopping in government-owned grocery stores. I was born in Soviet Union, not by choice, but I lived for 10 years of actual socialism.

and i can tell you that government run grocery stores are not fun at all no i don't believe so he doesn't he doesn't know what he's talking about he knows nothing about grocery business his idea of how government run grocery stores are going to be better he's saying in those rare moments when he actually elaborates what this looks like he says well we're not going to charge your property tax or he says the government knows a whole bunch of empty buildings which is going to give it to those state-run grocery stores. And that's how they will lower the price, which of course is ridiculous. I mean, don't charge property tax or give fee premises to any grocery store, and they

will be able to lower the prices. So that's one. And two, New York has already tried it. There was a semi-public-private partnership in Buffalo that failed miserably. I know everyone is now talking about Kansas, which that failed. There are other 32 grocery stores in New York City that receive state support in terms of grants and things like that. And I bet prices in those bodegas of corner stores are not lower. No, definitely not.

It's the first radio program in America that had a phone call from an American who lives in Moscow and a Soviet national who lives in New York now. So, you know, we've balanced now, Zee. I appreciate that. You know, talk about the work you do. Empire Center. By the way, if you're looking for them and you're listening to us in New York, Empirecenter.org. And every state has great groups like this. And we're going to try to highlight a lot of them, whether it's here on the radio show while we're here in New Orleans or in the Daily Signal podcast.

I'll be doing all week as well. But one of the big issues is school choice. And you have a great piece on the school enrollment and how it's cratering in. New York. Is it parents opting out and doing things like we're seeing here in Virginia with micro schools or are they just taking the hit and paying the massive property taxes and going to a private school anyway? It's all of the above and it would be much more pronounced if New York wasn't occupied by teacher unions. Because to open it, I see to open a charter school, You have to jump through a whole lot of proverbial hoops.

We just had a case in which two charter schools went denied a license or denied the permit to be open. Because apparently somewhere on there get this 700-page application. Some of the approving members weren't convinced that they're using the right teaching method. Oh, my gosh. They get that far into the weeds. It's the Empire Center is EmpireCenter.org. Is there a prescribed method for teaching, Z?

Well, no. There isn't. They just weren't sure about the methodology, which, of course, is rich coming from a state, which by its own standards, has only about 50% proficiency in reading and math. There are entire school districts in which reading proficiency. in which reading proficiency is 18%. That's awful. So basically, yes, so this establishment that, let me remind you,

spent the most in the country and the world to educate a single student, $35,000. This is give or take on average. This is what we're talking average. We have school districts that spend $100,000 per year. So these guys who spend the most in the world, achieve very mediocre results, in fact, since we're in Louisiana, I think, in grades four, and it's reading of mathematics, New York falls below Louisiana.

So those folks who spend the most in the world achieve very mediocre results, then look at the application of 700 pages and say, well, we're not quite sure you're up for the tax. I mean, if the same criteria were applied to district schools or government-run schools, then we probably have to shed three-quarters of them. So that's what I mean by the group of teachers' unions. If New Yorkers were given choice, if New Yorkers were allowed to choose, we would probably have much bigger flight from district schools. And because district schools spent so much, we could do 100%.

school choice in New York and in fact would be saving money and spending less money than we do right now. Well, we were talking with Corey DeAngelis earlier and he was saying, I mean, you know, the teachers union grip and the teachers are the ones who take it on the chin yet. They line up every year to vote for the people who are allowing the unions to keep them down. I mean, I talked to teachers all across the country and they they owe almost to a man, woman and child. They're like, oh, we get paid crappy salaries. I said, why are you? Are you still in a union if you can't get a decent salary for what you do? That's the part that doesn't make any sense to me, Z. Well, so think about this, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy because the grip is so tight and because there are so few alternatives in terms of schools. If you're a teacher, in terms of employment, you also have a few alternatives. So you are stuck in a system.

So in this way, it hurts not just the parents of the families, it hurts the teachers themselves for 95% of whom employment at a district school and in the state-run system is probably the only, they see that the only viable place of employment. Yeah, it's that monopoly idea. Z, what's coming up with the Empire Center? I can't wait to meet you in person here at the State Policy Network annual meeting. EmpireCenter.org, what are you guys working on coming up? So we're working on New York's energy plan. We're going to submit our comments. We're going to march straight to those public consultations,

and we're going to give them a piece of our mind about how bad of a job they do in planning New York's energy policy. Then we run an education project, which is called K-12 SOS. And in that, we provide detailed data on each school. district. We compare that school district to other school districts. We look at every school school and how they're doing. And my point is to empower parents and families with that kind of information. My colleague, Bill Hammond, is ripping New York's health care apart and showing how kind of similarly they spend the most in the country and don't achieve anything. And we are big

on protecting the property tax cap and some other same policies than it comes to taxation. Well, thank you so much. Yeah, a whole lot of work. Well, thank you for doing. doing that in my home state. It's been years since I've lived here, but I still have family here and my best friends. So, you know, keep, keep riding the ship in New York. If it can be, if it can be corrected in New York, it'd be corrected anywhere. And I can't wait to meet you in person. Have a great morning. And we'll talk to you again very soon. Thank you. That'll do it for today's show. Don't forget to hit that subscribe button.

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