The Ricochet Podcast - The California Syndrome

Episode Date: April 29, 2022

We still can’t help but wonder what happened to California; and today’s guest has not only been writing about it for years, but is running for governor in hopes of administering a cure. Michael Shellenberger is confident he can take on Gavin Newsom and restore the Golden State to health. (Visit here to donate to his campaign!) He talks about his vision, the growing support he’s receiving... Source

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That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. I've discovered there is no absurdity that you can invent that the liberals will not state seriously. I have a dream this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. But the regime media, they're embarrassed by their puppet president. They're even worried

that conservatives are becoming cool. With all due respect, that's a bunch of malarkey. I've said it before and I'll say it again. Democracy simply doesn't work. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast with Rob Long and Stephen Hayward sitting in for Peter Robinson. I'm James Lylex. Today we talk to the next governor of California, Michael Schellenberger.

Let's have ourselves a podcast. I can hear you! Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast, number 591. Join us at Ricochet.com. Why don't you be part of the most stimulating conversation in the community and place of sanity on the web? Really, that's true. We've got some upcoming meetings to talk to you about. I'm going to be there. Rob Long is going to be there. Lots of fun stuff to discuss.

But why sit here and blather about with me and Rob Long and Stephen Hayward when we can get straight to our guest, Michael Schellenberger. He's an eco-modernist and author whose most recent books are Apocalypse Never, Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All, and San Francisco, Why Progressives Ruin Cities ruin cities he joined the golden states gubernatorial race in 2018 and he's put his hat back in the ring this time leaving the democratic party behind and running as an independent welcome to the podcast thanks for joining us thanks for having me guys so much to talk about like why you left the party if the party left you behind what chances you might have but i want to go straight to something you were tweeting about yesterday.

There was an article in San Francisco discussing the failure of their housing first policy and how it's emblematic of the way that California, San Francisco, with a $1.1 billion budget has only made homelessness worse. This is one of the quality of life issues that you've addressed, and you've got different ways to fix it. So tell us what you want to do. And two, if you think it'll resonate with the now quite, it seems on the left voters of California. Sure. Well, first, thanks for having me guys. It's a pleasure to be here with

you. And yeah, I mean, I'm running for governor because I'm absolutely heartbroken by the humanitarian disaster on the streets. We call it a homelessness problem, but it's fundamentally a problem of untreated mental illness and addiction. By treating it like a housing problem, we've ended up just warehousing extremely sick and vulnerable people in apartments by themselves, often where they overdose and die. And that's what the subject of the San Francisco Chronicle investigation was, was an excellent piece describing the disaster that is the so-called housing first agenda. What we really ought to do, and I describe this at length in my book, San Francisco, but you can also go to schellenbergerforgovernor.com and I provide a summary of it. But what we really need is a three-part plan. It's shelter first, housing earned.

I believe we do have a moral obligation to shelter all of our, you know, fellow citizens and family members who are struggling. Clean, basic shelter should be a human right. But you don't have a right to your own apartment in downtown San Francisco or Venice Beach. That's ridiculous. And yet that's the official policy of Governor Gavin Newsom in the state of California right now. Shelter-first housing earned, meaning we do have some subsidized housing that should be as a reward for making progress on your personal plan, particularly abstinence, taking your psych meds if you're

mentally ill, working. But that's the first thing we need to do, shelter first, housing earned. The second thing we need to do is have statewide psychiatric and addiction care because the county-based system where 58 counties are offering wasteful, duplicative, inefficient psychiatric and addiction care, it can't work. It's failing. It's not entirely the fault of bad governance by counties, partly that, but they're also in a bad system. We need to be able to have people get the rehab, often outside of the open-air drug market. So if you're in LA, you may need to go get in rehab in the central part of the state

or the northern part of the state or be reconnected with family. That's what a statewide system would allow to deliver low-cost psychiatric and addiction care. And then the third part is we have to start enforcing our laws again. This won't come as a surprise to conservatives, but liberals were shocked that if you don't enforce laws, people don't follow them. And if people don't follow the law, then you don't have a civilization. And as importantly, people who are struggling with addiction and mental illness don't get the care they need. Michael, it's Steve Hayward, about a mile away from you in Berkeley today, actually. Say a little bit about how the Europeans

manage this problem. I've heard you talk about it, and what an irony that so-called progressive California could learn a lot from progressive Europe. Sure. I mean, part of the reason I wrote San Francisco and part of my inspiration to run for governor is my total admiration of how European nations deal with this. mean the truth is steve every civilized nation deals with this problem in basically the same way and it's what i described they shelter all of their citizens they have a carrots and sticks so that you have rewards for good behaviors you have consequences for bad behaviors you know know, in the Netherlands, you know, I discovered that, and also the same in Portugal, you know, you can't use drugs publicly. There really is no homelessness.

There are no, you know, there's an occasional person you see near a train station or a park bench, but there's no large encampments. They did have what we call encampments and what they called open drug scenes in the late 1980s and early 1990s and there's a major paper a study of five european cities amsterdam frankfurt lisbon vienna zurich they shut down the open drug scenes they did not allow people to be using and dealing drugs publicly living outside sick, sick with addiction. They shut that down. They got people into rehab. You know, there's a lot of myths about Europe, but they don't, they didn't just decriminalize drugs and everything turned out fine. Like many on the radical left in the United States claim, they enforce laws. They require people to be in

shelters rather than than on streets. And it's that tough love. I mean, you know, I think the other thing people don't realize, there's more police officers per capita. They spend more money per capita on police officers in Europe than we do in the United States. So people have been grossly misled about what's actually going on in Europe. You know, people go to, Americans go to Europe and we're always blown away by how wonderful their cities are and how they're not filled with open drug scenes and addicts and mental health everywhere. Well, yeah, because it's not because they don't have addicts

or people with mental illness, it's because they're getting them the medical care that they need. Can I ask you a question about a happier subject for you? And then I know Rob Long wants to get in. And let me brag on you a little bit, Michael. When california announced the decision what four or five years ago now to shut down its last nuclear power plant diablo canyon uh that supplies i think i learned from you 10 of the state's total electricity carbon free we're supposed to care about that right and you didn't

just write an op-ed i remember remember you organized, typical of you, you organized a march from San Francisco to Sacramento to protest, I think, as I recall, in front of the offices of the Sierra Club and the NRDC, who'd been urging all this, and in front of the state capitol. And this morning, the news is breaking that Governor Newsom, and I thought this was coming, Governor Newsom is reconsidering closing Diablo Canyon. I think that is the first step to keeping it open. And I think you deserve a lot of the credit for that. But you used to be, and when I first met you, what, 15 years ago now, you were still pretty much on the progressive left to some extent, thinking in interesting ways. That's why I took such an interest in you. What changed your mind

about nuclear power? And did you think that there'd be so many other environmentalists having second thoughts about it? Yeah, well, thanks, Steve. I mean, I am so happy this morning. It's hard to describe. So, yeah, I mean, Governor Newsom, who fought to shut down Diablo Canyon nuclear plants, that was the scalp he delivered to his progressive donors as a reason for them to support him in becoming governor he announced that he is going to reconsider keeping it open which means they're going to keep it open i mean they have to keep it open because we're having rolling blackouts and there's no way they can keep the lights on they just can't get enough gas i mean you know the my original criticism was that you have to keep Diablo open to prevent carbon emissions going up because it would be replaced by fossil fuels. Well, now you have to keep it running just to keep the lights on in California.

So, yeah, I mean, we and we made sacrifices for this crazy technology of nuclear power and particularly for Diablo Canyon that were no one will really understand. But we were ridiculed. You know, we had all sorts of, our little nonprofit had all sorts of financial troubles. You know, we fought very hard to keep Diablo Canyon open. You know, people thought I was crazy. I've been basically blacklisted from participating on KQed because i was too assertive in my defense of the plant back in 2015 2016 so this is a he is a hard fought you know victories victories that are hard fought are obviously all the sweeter so we're delighted you know it's a we're in a big pro-nuclear moment right now that we were even before putin invaded uk. But now that he has and global energy markets are in the worst energy crisis in 50 years.

So nuclear is making a big comeback. You know, I changed my mind because it was obvious that weather dependent renewables could not replace fossil fuels, both because they're unreliable, but also because this power density problem, which just means that it takes three or four hundred times more land to produce the amount of electricity, which means you're having a big environmental impact. So so many reasons to reconsider the fears that we all had of nuclear after Chernobyl and Fukushima and certainly its primary use as a weapon. So many reasons to rethink it. And, you know, the punchline is just, you know, nuclear is the only way to achieve true environmental sustainability

alongside universal prosperity, you know, that's nuclear's transcendent moral purposes to be this really wonderful way to power human civilization into the 21st, 22nd century. And this is the fact that it's happening in California, you know, because we're this, this is the birth. California is the birthplace of the anti-nuclear movement.

We were before Germany. I had somebody on Twitter that was like, no, no long Island in the seventies and eighties. And I was like, no, no, no,

no. California in the early 60s was really the birthplace of the anti-nuclear movement. So for this to happen, it just brings it all full circle. I can't tell you how happy we are. Hey, Mike, it's Rob Long and now in New York, but I am my mid-50s 30 years of my life i was a californian in both northern and southern uh how are you a native california how long how long you've lived there i've been here 30 uh no no how long have i been here well you know the thing is that native california will always tell you in the first 10 seconds like texans yeah there. Steve's raising his hand. He missed that and was kicking himself because they usually say, well, I'm a native.

Yeah, yeah. No, I'm not a native. Semi-native. Yeah, that's kind of how I feel. And I, you know, as a writer, like every now and then you get something to do, something to write, I go back and I read old stuff that I've written to see if there's any jokes I can reuse. So I'm going back and I'm looking at some stuff that I wrote about the first Schwarzenegger campaign, the recall against Greg Ibbotson. I'm just looking at some stuff I've written.

And I'm writing about a state, it's not that long ago, that I simply don't recognize. I'm writing about a state that has like you know enthusiastic ambitious kind of crazy but inspiring tech uh dreamers and i'm writing about a state that's got these sort of sun-baked old people in the desert uh you know and i'm writing about a state that it has these sort of agricultural families that have been there for 50 000 years like growing almonds the desert and the central valley and i'm writing about agriculture and manufacturing and all the weird political coalitions that that have come together i'm reading about a state basically that you understood what that voted for reagan and p and even, you know, Pat Brown and even Jerry Brown, but I'm not writing about,

I did not recognize the California that I was writing about when I was reading, rereading it, you know, two nights ago, what the hell happened? You did a bad job of describing it before. No, I was right. What happened? I mean, a Democratic Party strategist, apparatchik, whatever, in 1992, California,

on election night, of the general, was a nail-biter you didn't know 88 it was went for bush like they closed the polls at 801 and 801 they said guys got to go for bush big red electoral l before they even had said red they didn't have red and blue then they just said republican l down from the West and across the South. What happened? What happened to California? Yeah.

How long do we have? I'll give you a minute. Today I have a follow-up. Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways to tell that story, right? I mean, there's certainly a demographic story around, you know, the geographic sorting that's occurred where, you know, liberals moved to the coasts and conservatives. Hey, move those routers there. Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere.

So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver. That's them. Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. Move to the south and the central parts of the country.

There's certainly a story about Latin American immigration into California. There's a story around changing values and sort of, you know, increasingly individualistic and libertarian values that I think the Democrats captured better than Republicans. You know, I think there's certainly a story of how Republicans in California failed to modernize. It's not a great word, but how they failed to change and adapt to new circumstances and not just once, obviously, because Republicans are 24 percent of the electorate now in California. Democrats, I believe, are 45 percent. So independents make up the difference. So what is that? 30 something percent, 40 percent independents. And I am now an independent, by the way. I changed my party affiliation from Democrat to what we call independent out here.

We call it no party preference. I changed it last year for strictly moral reasons. I just couldn't be in the Democratic Party anymore after finishing writing San Francisco. I mean, the story that generally gets told, the conventional story that gets told, and I think there's a lot of truth to it that I don't think is complete, is that Republicans sort of, you know, turned against Latino voters. Right. That's one of the versions. Yeah. Yeah. When Pete Wilson did famously the prop 187 and I guess it must've been

1994. I want to say, and that, you know, which was basically denying social services, you know, I think including education, attempting to undocumented immigrants,

it just seemed too extreme and sort of too mean. But I think, you know, that's obviously too simplistic. I mean, you know, the argument I make in San Francisco is that Republicans didn't offer a real solution to the biggest problems in the state, which include homelessness, what we call homelessness, the open drug scene. You know, I tried to get, I talked to everybody, but I tried to get the Republicans to support my agenda, you know, long, long before I ran for governor. In fact, before San Francisco was published and I got them to support the shelter first housing earned part. I think they even said those words in their proposal, but I couldn't get them on board the statewide psychiatric and addiction care part.

Cause that felt like a big government program. That feels like more of the same or more of the same of liberalism. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, so there's that. And,

you know, I spent a bunch of the end of San Francisco kind of rallying conservative thinkers, including Chris Rufo, who's now famous for his war on critical race theory but right before that he was actually a very good homelessness scholar and stephen eyed at manhattan institute you know them showing support for this alternative so i guess what i'm saying is like on the 50 000 foot level yeah i mean here's my here's an uh anecdote i'm doing this

podcast with um i'm putting it together taking it forever with a a writer named harry stein and he's got uh lots and lots he's a great magazine reporter and um reporter journalist in the 70s and 80s and he's got um great tape and he was doing a piece for the new york times sunday magazine in 1978 on 60 minutes and it's a great story because while he's doing it this people at 60 minutes just kind of figure out we have it on you know you can hear it in their voices on tape that it's gonna be tough on their methods and he kind of re-reports one a story they do did about a mexican gang in east la and he goes to east la just because there's some disgruntlement among the gang members they felt like it would be a bit misrepresented

negatively on this report and some of the social service workers felt that same way so he placed me the tape of him interviewing gang members in 1978 in East L.A. And they are incredibly, incredibly articulate. They are incredibly smart. And they're not 18, like 17, 18. They're in high school or just at high school and the leader says look this is the yellow journalism that's what this is and you can hear harry say yellow journalism yeah you know like in the 20s and 30s yellow journalism like when the spanish revolution

and i said stop the tape right now like that this kid went through the california public school system by probably by definition one of the worst schools right east la probably the poorest school in the district this kid went to and he still learned what yellow journalism was he could still talk to a reporter from the new york times and form a complete sentence and make a make a very convincing argument that is inconceivable now that any student certainly at the school this kid went to probably at palisades high could frame a sentence and an argument that well so i guess what i'm saying is california used to have this incredibly incredibly impressive public school system and now it stinks

what happened oh well yeah i mean this is this i mean if you want to get into that stuff i mean i don't think that's necessarily specific to california i mean i think there is some of that is but i mean we're dealing with i mean mean, our schools are out. It's outrageous. You know, it's 33% math proficiency overall in public schools in California, less than 50% reading proficiency, 10% math proficiency for black students, 15% proficiency for Latino students. I mean, who do you want to blame first? You know, there's obviously, there's plenty of blame to go around. So, and some of that is specific to California. Some of that is national. I mean, California in some ways,

I feel like California, you kind of go, it's the most American of all the states. It's, it's, it is completely completely and this is both scary and inspiring it's it's a leader of the country in so many ways so yeah i mean i think um there used to be a promise now it's a threat yeah well okay but look i'm ready for governor now steve and i'm gonna win so come on are you optimistic here are you optimistic about the state? I mean, you know, I'm trying to like. Well, I think there's questions about I mean. I think you framed that a little bit as a prediction, and I find that question I find that prediction questions are for me, they're they're not that interesting because I'm not really interested in predictions. First of all, experts are terrible at predictions. Experts are no better at predictions than ordinary folks, as Philip Tetlock has shown. And I'm not interested in predictions because the whole point is that we are the people that will decide what the future is.

So let's instead, I think, if I can reframe your question, what is this moment offering to us? And I think it's full of potential and full of possibility. I mean, that's why I'm running. I mean, I ran in 2018 and it did not succeed. I did not have the support. And without the support, financial and otherwise, then you don't get any attention and it's just a waste of time. So I wasn't going to do that again. And the only reason I'm doing it again is because there is support. And I've got this incredible, you know, I've got a professional political team. We've done polling. When they test my message, I get equal support from Republicans, Democrats, and independents, you know, on this issue, this issue of so-called homelessness.

We're raising money. We're feeling very confident that we're going to come in second because it's a, you know, it's a open primary on June 7th. We're feeling very confident. My just, you know, I've done Joe Rogan twice. I'm doing Bill Maher on June 3rd. We are feeling good. My finance director always director always says he says you're supposed to say we're very confident we're going to win with your support so we need you all to go to schellenberggovernment.com and make your donation there we go nonetheless we feel like we got a shot at winning this thing and and i wouldn't have attracted the support i've attracted if people didn't think we could win can i give you a piece of advice you didn't ask for yes as a former california voter yeah tell me it's going to be okay

it's gonna be okay if you vote for me if you if you're like me it's not going to be okay otherwise i know that's what i mean yeah tell me that you got it you got it oh yeah that we've been here before that this is a great state yeah and that it knows how to fix its problems and we can do it that's what i want to hear i want more than anything governor ronald reagan and i know that's a high bar and i know it's you i'm not asking you to be to be somebody you're not but no i mean absolutely and look at what we have going for us i mean so of all, it's we're such a tarnished jewel. I mean, it is you're getting at this thing that I think about all the time, which is that on the one hand, and I just, you know, we spent yesterday interviewing people in the most desperate circumstances, guys. I mean, horrible, horrible things, stuff I don't even like talking about, young women, prostitutes, homeless addicts, mentally ill people, psychotic, whoever, and you kind of just go, wow, it's daunting. At the same time, yesterday,

they announced that our budget surplus is not $45 billion. It's 60 billion dollars, you guys, 60 billion dollars. I mean, the state mints money. Now, of course, we go into deficit. If we go into recession next year, then the tax receipts will go the opposite direction. We could have a deficit. But nonetheless, California, you guys, I mean, it's the greatest state in the country. I mean, we have abundant energy, land and water. We have the greatest industries, agriculture, entertainment, tech and actually finance as well. Everybody wants to live here. The problem is us. We can't get agreement on the big issues. And that's in part my view is that it's been in the hands. The Democrats have been in the hands of the radical left. Their views are wildly unpopular. The consequences of their policies are wildly unpopular. I mean, just look at what we've done on nuclear, an issue that nobody thought six years ago we could make headway on. There is now a larger percentage of the public in favor of saving Diablo Canyon than in favor of closing it. That's a complete reversal from six years ago.

Now, you look at homelessness, my agenda, we pull at 70 to 80 percent support, 80 percent support for our agenda, which, if you say very simply, is we should arrest people that can't publicly defecate publicly, use drugs publicly and offer the alternative of rehab and psychiatric care to jail or prison. That agenda is more popular with Democrats than Republicans. Why? Because the Republicans, they don't want to offer the rehab or the psych service. They just want to put them in jail or prison. So our agenda is wildly popular. But the governor just happens to be the Democrats happen to be captured by the radical left, by which I mean specifically ACLU, specifically a clu george soros um you know the the harm reduction the housing first people so look guys we're gonna win this i'm gonna win i'm gonna win on june 7th we're gonna be the biggest political news story in the country we're gonna raise the 50 million dollars or whatever

it's gonna take to to defeat gavin and yes they're going to demonize me and the teacher's union will spend all the money blah blah blah but there will be five months for voters to look at what i'm actually saying and who i actually am and they're going to see that i am what we say we are which is people genuinely wanting to solve these problems with an agenda that looks a heck of a lot more like the agenda and the policies of the Netherlands than of Oklahoma, the current boogeyman in California or Texas, and they're going to opt for our agenda. And even if I lose, which I'm not going to do, but even if I were to lose, I'm going to win in another way, because we're going to look, got gavin to save diablo canyon without having to be governor michael let me uh i'm all for you um and i think by the way you should briefly explain to our listeners who don't know about california's as we call the jungle

primary i'm not sure you can say that anymore but in other words uh there won't be you can oh my gosh okay the point is the top two people in the primary go to the general election in November. And we've actually had statewide races where there were two Democrats in November. We had that for the Senate a few years ago with Dianne Feinstein. I wanted, though, to be devil's advocate and throw a high, hard fastball at your chin the way a cynical political reporter would. And the question goes something like this. The practical problem in California for everybody for 50 years, going back to Reagan even, was that you either need to be a celebrity like Reagan or Arnold Schwarzenegger, or you need to be plugged

into a powerful political machine, usually a democratic machine. That's how you got Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, even Feinstein to a certain extent, and some of the lesser statewide offices. It's just such a big and expensive state to campaign in. So how are you going to overcome that problem? If I'm a reporter who asks you that, how do you answer that reporter? By the way, reporters always want to do the horse race stuff, right? They don't actually want to talk about issues. And so that's why I want to ask the cynical reporter question yeah well so i mean i'm trying to um you know when i when i hired my

political team so my political team is very impressive i have the former deputy chief of staff to arnold schwarzenegger it's he's the best political consultant in the state rob is that oh he's an old friend of mine i didn't know that a small world oh yeah say hi to rob yeah yeah um never trumper you know um his team is david and he's got david kotchel who's major advisor to many republican governors and i have a democratic media team that includes layton woodhouse who did the media for Chess. data center networking portfolio and they deliver that's them hey nokia right on time get your data center ai ready someday is here with nokia so bodine who's the socialist uh district attorney of san francisco i have other um progressive friends that are my media team so it's very bipartisan very non-partisan we We've got big supporters. We've raised well over

a half a million dollars. We're going to raise a million or two million before the election. We expect there to be others helping us. We are very confident because the moment is ours the wrong track just the so the just on the political horse race stuff the the people that think california is on the wrong track is a growing majority now in california okay so this is new and it's extraordinary when you consider a that were that anybody that owns a house is a millionaire in california because of ridiculous scarcity of housing which makes you you know more status quo oriented more conservative um not politically but just in keeping the current people in power and we've got this huge budget surplus so it wouldn't be a situation that under you would normally think would be a situation for change but it is

and it's because the chaos on the streets, you have to see it to believe it. I mean, I'm in Fresno, which is supposedly a place where there's not supposed to be all this many homeless people. And there's just, it's just, you know, been chaotic and sad and tragic. So it's just reality and truths, you know, and Californians have been mugged by reality. And that's what's made the difference. So the media can gaslight and say there's no crime wave and everything's fine and homelessness is just about the rents. But the people that live here know differently. So, look, I think, you know, only time we'll be able to prove me correct on this, but we're going to win this because, you know, we've got the support this time.

I think the mood is changing. I think today's victory proves that things are trending in our direction. Just the small money donations that we're getting, they have been the, our political team has not seen that, you know, cause I came with, you know, 25,000 supporters from my 25 years of political advocacy. I have 220 or 230,000 Twitter followers at this point, which is 20 times more than my, um, my main Republican rival. So I think, and I just think people are sick of the whole left, right stuff. They're just sick of the extremism, you know, Californians are not Trumpists, but they're also not the radical left.

So, you know, we, and the, and because the extremes are so loud, it's easy to, because of the availability heuristic, we tend to think that the loud voices are the representative voices and they're not. So to sound like a real Republican, I'll just say, I think there is a very large silent majority, which is also the missing middle of American politics that is speaking, that will speak, that I think will vote and turn out on June 7th for me. And that will ultimately, you know, switch sides and give us the majority that we need on November 8th. Michael, you almost answered my last question here, but in the interest of polishing my own apple, I'll rephrase it. You mentioned before that Pete Wilson in 187 denying public

education to people who were not citizens was seen by some people as too mean. I get that, but it seems to be a California dichotomy where people live with disorder, but yet have an ideological disinclination to do anything about it because it's mean. We want to give these people education, but our taxes are so high. We don't like the disorder on the streets, but it's mean to sweep up the encampments. We don't like the people walking into the stores and shoplifting everything, but we don't want a disparate impact in incarceration rates. And it seems the disorder has to get so bad for it to tip and people to not think about that sort of meanness. They want to feel good about what they believe and they actually want action.

So my question actually was, is it maybe too soon? Are you a guy who's just a little ahead of where everybody else is going to be? But as you just sort of mentioned, you're getting the silent majority. So we hope that that's what happens. And we're going to end this by giving you a campaign site where people can go for more information. I'm going to end with this. At the beginning, we called you an eco-modernist. What is that? Yeah, well, just to answer the prior question, am I too early? Maybe, but I don't think so. I mean, you know, time doesn't move at the same rate in political time, I mean. And I think things are accelerating in the direction of change every day. I see it every day.

And so, you know, people thought that they were Republicans wanted to shake up the system with the recall last year. They thought they would do that. But they elected somebody whose positions were almost identical to Donald Trump. And California is just simply not a Donald Trump state. I'm the guy that can shake up the system. And Californians are right not to want to have to choose between mass incarceration and mass homelessness. Those aren't the only two choices. There is a third way, and it is what the Europeans did. I point out there's really the three key P's here. It's policing, psychiatry, and probation. Police are good. Police are good. They prevent crime.

And if you prevent crime, you prevent mass incarceration. Full stop. The research on policing, I finished my research on San Francisco. I did many chapters on crime. It came away very pro-police. Now, there's bad police, but the more police you have and the more trainings you can have, you can reduce the bad police, and then you can also get rid of the bad police. So police are good. We need more of them. We're short 500 police officers in San Francisco, short 500 or 700 in Los Angeles. We need more police. You need more psychiatry. We already talked about that. And you need probation. So we are underutilizing drug testing, electronic monitoring, and unannounced

visits by parole officers of people on parole. I mean, there's these guys that were let out of prison six years early in Sacramento. They shot up, got into a big fight after a nightclub. Allegedly, one of them was the shooter, got out of prison six years too early. That's too early for that guy who almost beat his girlfriend to death. But nonetheless, if we're going to reduce sentence length, which in some cases is appropriate, particularly for nonviolent crimes, then it's perfectly appropriate to have electronic monitoring. We're underutilizing this technology as well as underutilizing surveillance in general. So there's a lot of things we can do. But our governor, because he's more focused on becoming president than on running California, has not

been interested in this. He's just competing to win over the support of George Soros and others who just want to measure success as how many people you can let out of prison. We should be seeking that different direction. And so it's really, you know, my there are things I hold in common with Republicans that and I'm happy to say what they are, certainly the policing stuff. There's certainly things I hold in common with Democrats, you know, such as universal psychiatric care, something that anybody who supports universal health care should be supportive of. I think that Californians have been demanding some different path than just this kind of convulsing between extremes of left and right for the last several decades. I think we're ready for a new era of responsibility. Everybody loves our freedom. We want to care.

You know, I've been really inspired by a friend of mine who told me, he said, you know, liberals are concerned about caring for the most vulnerable, libertarians about individual freedom, and conservatives in taking care of civilization. And when he told me that, I was like, well, that's me. I mean, I want all three. And I think that if you don't have all three, if you don't have civilization, you don't have freedom, and you can't care for the vulnerable. So that's my commitment is really to try to restore some kind of balance or relationship or social contract, to use a piece of academic jargon, around civilization, freedom, and caring. We've gotten ourselves too far into one extreme of really caring and freedom without really taking care of civilization. And I think Californians are ready for that restoration and for building that statue of responsibility that I think we need to build

in California to really finish the American project, which is still such a young project. You know, you go partly, in my experience, you go to Europe and you realize how young America is, only 250 years old. And I think it's time for us to grow up. You know, it's time for us to get beyond some of these infantile, childlike demands, you know, as you were, you know, as you're describing, and really get some more of a balance that everything has, you know, costs and consequences, and that you have to, if you want rewards and freedoms, then it does cost something. You know, there's this famous Republican, Republicans like to say that freedom isn't free. I think it's sort of said in defense of the U.S. military.

I would love that. I totally agree. Freedom is not free. And I think that Californians need to realize that, too, and that, you know, we're willing to pay very high taxes out here. And I think that means we also need to demand really high quality services, which we're not getting. So some sort of a rebalancing of rights and responsibilities, freedom and responsibility, I think, is required. The website is? Schellenbergerforgovernor.com. Visit now, make your donation, read the agenda, and then make another donation, get your family members to make a donation. That's how we're going to win it.

Michael Schellenberger, thanks for coming on the podcast. I hope you invite us to your victory party at the French Laundry. We'll all be happy. That would be a sweet irony. That would be fantastic. Thanks, Mike. Good luck. Thanks, guys. Appreciate you. It's a classic American idea, of course, that we can get better. We look at all the things that have gotten worse and say, no, this is not us. I mean, I live in a state that literally has a city called Young America. I don't know how old it is. But when it comes to things getting better, sometimes, you know, you think,

I've used this too much. It's a little careworn. I should replace it. It's old. No, no, no, no, no. Some things get better as you use them, like a great leather jacket. One of those cast iron skillets that some people say you can't, you got to wash it this way. Solid wood furniture that burnishes over time. with those cast iron skillets that some people say you can't you got to wash this way solid wood

furniture that burn inches over time would you ever think that uh well rob would you ever think that sheets could possibly be in the list because the answer is yes because of the certain kind of sheets that i have ball and branch sheets that's right ball and branch they're not just buttery and breathable and impossibly comfortable they get, they get softer with every wash. Now forget your thread count. Nah, ball and branch gives you thread quality. It doesn't matter how many threads your sheets have if they aren't the best threads possible, right? That's why I, well, it's been a week now and I would, since I did the last ball and branch spot, and I'm here to tell you that they have gotten incrementally better. They just have to be because every time they're washed, they get more

soft. It's like they're made of iron, except that special kind of iron that is the most comfortable and pliable and lovely and heat thermal regulated. Well, I can't. Why don't I just tell you what they say about them? The sheets, they're made with threads so luxurious they're beloved by three U.S. presidents. They feel buttery to the touch, and they're super breathable, so they're perfect for every season. Even transitional seasons like this one in Minnesota set of one move between winter and scorching summer. They didn't acquire over 10,000 stellar reviews for no reason. No, and you got the best sheets in the market.

People notice. They're so confident you're going to love them, frankly. The Boll and Brecht gives you a 30-night risk-free trial with free shipping and returns on all orders. So why don't you wander on off now wander on off now to Bowling Branch, get the total sleep satisfaction. Alas, you say, huh, I missed the Bowling Branch April sale. Well, ha, our listeners get exclusive access

to a post-sale 20% site-wide discount through the end of April with a promo code RICOCHET at BowlingBranch.com. Act now. That's Bowling Branch, B-O-L-L-A-N-D-B-R-A-N-C-H.com. Promo code RICOCHET for 20% off through the end of april which is galloping toward us get there go there sleep better and we thank bull and branch for sponsoring this the rickish podcast one thing i want to add to this is that you know when we talked about homelessness and uh diablo there are two movies

in the 70s which i believe changed american society significantly for the worse they actually had the power to do so one of them was the china syndrome which made everybody think that the great conspiracy of nuclear energy was going to kill everybody right i remember that yeah right because jane fonda was on it and michael douglas was on it was on jack lemon and i i remember at some point that jack lemon said uh he said there was a there was a conspiracy. And Michael Douglas said, yes, we got him, because that's the word. It's post-watergate. Everything is corrupt. Nuclear energy is going to kill us all. And that just

put the fear of nukes into everything. But the corporation had cut corners. Yes, they had. They cut corners, and there was a big thing that was vibrating frighteningly. Right. And we thought, there's a nuclear power plant down the road from me. Is it vibrating frighteningly? Did they cut corners there's a nuclear power plant on the road for me is it vibrating frighteningly right do they cut corners the other was one flew over the cuckoo's nest right right when you talk when you talk now to people about you know the the disorder on the

streets and the mentally ill on the streets most of them i'm going to take a flyer here and say are not suffering from some organic psychosis that their brain chemistry went awry. It was induced by drugs, especially this new crop of meth that is just making people crazy and rewires their brain. And it's very hard to get them out of it. So, but yes, we did institutionalize back in the day because, and everybody says, Ronald Reagan, a cost-cutting measure, threw everybody out of the asylums. No, there was geraldo rivera going around to various state places and saying how horrible and awful bedlam they were and there

was a general idea that these places were nightmares and they were absolutely right it was best so it was best practice right to close those those hospitals yeah and and so we would send them out and the people who themselves were unable to care for themselves because of mental deficiencies were expected to come down to the clinic and get their meds once a week and then you know which they didn't do but but one flew over the cuckoo's nest right what is the at some point mcmurdy breaks out and takes everybody on a trip and he takes them to a boat right and there's one guy when somebody comes up and says who are these people he says we're doctors and he points to one of the mentally ill guy who sort of draws himself up with self

respect and the audience loves it because hey move those routers there oh hey it's me your data center and as you can hear i'm making some big changes in here because ai is making some bigger ones everywhere so i took a little trip to Nokia, super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated the whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver. That's them.

Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center. AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. You love all these misfit characters. Yeah. You know what? He does look like a duck. What's what's the day just don't fit in yeah they don't fit in and so the idea that

everybody there is actually some brilliant free spirit but we gotta let them out and that's better for us all those two movies had had an incredible impact on the i would say i would say i don't know whether they had i don't know whether you can measure the impact of those two, but they certainly crystallize the feeling of the time. I would just say, certainly about One Flute,

people forget, of course, that this was considered progressive movement to close the hospitals, but I think in general most of the problems that this was considered progressive movement to close the hospitals. But I think in general, most of the problems that we face are the result of progressive solutions that we implemented 25 or 30 years ago. So there's no solutions, there's only trade-offs, as the great St. Thomas Sowell has taught us over and over again again there's always going to be a trade-off and if you close the state hospitals you don't eliminate people with mental health problems you you maybe you eliminate the bedlam and the abuse that

happened there and that was certainly part of the the literature and the culture of the time was sort of like reckoning with that. But you don't eliminate the problem. And it just is amazing to me that if you actually pick any problem we have and you sort of take it back, you know, you follow the string, you'll end up at the cause of it was someone's idea of a solution. And I mean, for me, because I i'm conservative i tend to see all those those origin problems as lip solutions but it still is almost always someone's incredible incredible arrogance to think that they i we i we solved it you know i i was lost here for a moment i thought sure james was heading into another advertisement segue. I do more than that. I do do more than that.

Okay. I just come out of a segment. Well, we went a long time without. Yeah, right. That was a long first segment. I do think it's the one thing I have to add in. And usually I never want to try and compete with Rob when it comes to movies and popular culture. But remember the timing of the China Syndrome. As I recall, that movie was released about two or three weeks after the Three

Mile Island accident. And I remember going to see it in the theater and thinking it was a terrible movie. National Review had just done, right before Three Mile Island, a special issue that Richard Brookhiser put together. It was all about why nuclear power was great and what Richard has later said was his worst- worst timed journalistic enterprise ever. But I remember seeing the China syndrome and thinking this is a terrible movie, which it really is. And people in the theater were jumping up, you know, yelling and screaming and ready to march coming out of the theaters because of the media frenzy over Three Mile Island. So if that movie had been out, I don't know, five years before or five years later, I don't think it

would have had the impact it did. That was lightning striking in a bottle. But also, I think it was that that movie was part of a whole, like, skein of movies of the time in which the villain was a company. Right. In which there was always a scene with the executive who'd bring you into the office. Played by Cliff Robertson. Something like that, with a

highball glass. Let me tell you something. We can't tell our shareholders that we're going to spend $2 million on safety, and then the hero would say, but, but, but, but, we have to, the rods have to, oh, there's other ways

to do it. And then, you know, that's what the towering inferno was. Yeah, you know, those guys who made those hot shot parodies, Rob, should have passed Cliff Robertson in three days of the nuclear executive or something. Exactly right. But it was like, something was like,

was it years ago? Ben Stein wrote an article. I think it was Ben Stein. And he was like something was like it was years ago ben stein wrote an article it was ben stein and he was like home sick for a week he was like at the flu he's home sick for a week and all he did was watch tv and he said here's my conclusion watching tv mostly cop shows is that if uh this is in the 70s that That if a stripper is found murdered, horribly, violently murdered, and her body is dismembered and found in a dumpster. And there are four suspects. One is the creepy drifter with psychological problems who came to the strip club. Two is the violent bartender with the tattoos. Three is the mobster who owns the strip club two is the uh violent bartender with the tattoos three is the mobster who owns the strip club and four is the businessman who came home

get on stopped on his way home for a drink the murderer is always the businessman who came home and stopped for the one time it's all is never it's And that was sort of crystallized the idea of the in the 70s. Like if you are in a business, you're probably a crook. Not just right. Not just a crook, though. We assumed after watching all these movies in the 70s that every large corporation had on its staff paid assassins. Oh, right, right, right. They had to kill. They all had paid assassins somewhere. And you just wonder how HR dealt with those guys, what onboarding was like. You mentioned the Towering Inferno, right? Because the whole thing went up because I think Robert Vaughn or his son or who was the guy who was in the Thornbirds? Somebody cut corners on the fuses, so it all went up. Lauren Green?

It wasn't lauren green no lauren green lauren green wasn't that oh lauren green was in uh earthquake i'm getting mixed up right sterling i don't know how i could possibly mix up those films william william holden was the head of the construction company but just the idea that you would build in san francisco of all places a 129 story skysper, which is an ugly thing to begin with. I mean, if you're going to build a 130-story skyscraper, for God's sakes, don't do it in 1977. Even John Williams, with his theme, couldn't make that thing beautiful. But the one thing you don't do is fill 130 story skyscraper with shag

i mean that well that's you can't look at based the decor of the time james what do you know but the whole thing was a shag torch waiting to go off and i know that describes the playboy mansion i keep saying it's amazing we lived through the 1970s at all and of course the terrifying thought is where it looks like we're about to live through them again at least with the inflation and yeah right energy and all the rest of that hopefully well without the urban disorder oh wait a minute wait a minute well we forget all these things we forget um you know we forget uh the the level of of of alarm and surprise that from my friends on the left about this sort of weird, in my opinion, crackpot conspiracy theories on the right is I find it kind of cute. Like, I'm sort of adorable.

Like, really? This is alarming to you? Because let me tell you what my political science professor at Yale believed. And I remember I'm old enough to remember when hollywood produced movies that suggested that jfk was killed by the cia and that george w bush was uh on the thrall of a company called haliburton these were movies that were being made and i so it's sort of but but nothing kind of compares to that brew of like conspiracy big company uh cia stuff that was happening like really in that middle set probably till 78 79 and um and i it's just sort of interesting that like it's a kind of a psychosis that happens and it goes away um and i hope it goes away in this

in this particular area now too because it just seems to be paralyzing you know i always like to say rob that uh you know after 9-11 i say to my liberal friends i sure wish our cia was half as capable of all the things that are in the movies just this moment in our history because of course they're not but right no i know what he is right i mean i always like my favorite example of this is like the I think is a fable for I don't may have said this last week, the fable for our age. The greatest lesson we could learn is Vladimir Putin, the strongman dictator of Russia, Mr. Genius, Bond villain for some omniscient, omnipotent, could kill people, literally could kill people on the streets of london and get away with it he could hack into the democratic party emails he can apparently if you believe the whatever he can change an election he could do all these things he knows everything if you sneeze in moscow his reporters will tell you will tell him that you sneezed he knows everything except that

his army is crap the only thing he needs to know really the only thing he needed to know for the past year is that his army is crap and he can't do the job that's all he needed to know and that's the one thing he didn't know but this week we're told the person we have to fear most is elon musk so there you go yeah well right because well that's the other thing is the show this podcast is being done in 2022 in 2023 we'll probably have to get a certificate from the ministry of disinformation to tell us whether or not we have advanced any falsehoods or disinformations here this is going to be led by a woman who has said that she shudders shudders at

the thought of free speech versus a sort of massaging of the public sphere in order to make sure that disinformation doesn't get out um yeah that's going to be fun to watch um so yes when you say we're having the 70s replay it's true um we are at least in the 70s however we had the idea of the you know your putin point that russia had it together that for all that they were a totalitarian dictatorship for all of its economic uh founderings could muster at a snap an extraordinary force that would roll over europe and defeat the rest of us we had that sort of thing going on as well but when you mentioned the paranoia isn't it interesting yeah what i watched the conversation the other night which is which is a movie. It is a great movie.

It's a really great movie. And it is just soaked in the idea that everybody's being listened to, which at the time, no. But at the time, we're seeing all of these little gadgets, what they can do and what they can pick up and the rest of it. Now, of course, it turns out that 1984 was an entirely volunteer project. We have installed in our homes all of these listening devices that we willingly put in there. We have opted in by our choice because of convenience to be tracked everywhere we go, to have our faces put into all kinds of databases, to be viewed from every camera on the street. And we've come to accept this. And the trade-off was we would have sort of a safe, easy world that we would be able to just walk through the turnstile and beep our phone or beep our wristwatch. And that's it. If they got all this information,

that's fine. That's the price that we pay. But when you have disorder and shortages, and all of a sudden the target isn't stocked anymore, and the people are looting your Walgreens and the gas is fine, all of a sudden these trade-offs the target isn't stocked anymore and the people are looting your Walgreens and the gas is fine. All of a sudden, these tradeoffs that we made don't seem worth it anymore. All of a sudden, you sort of wonder exactly how do we get to this point? Because we were led by really not very smart people for the last 20 years who let the system just sort of go fallow. In other words, the Putin army syndrome sort of exists politically and elite-wise leadership here in America, too.

You think? Maybe? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. We think we know everything except the one thing that we need to know. The one thing we do need to know is who M. Stanton Evans is. That's right. I'm talking about that. And now we welcome back uh briefly because we just got we got about 90 seconds here uh stephen hayward who's

sitting in for peter robinson stephen hayward is a uh guest as well so change shirts why don't you he's a senior fellow with the claremont institute senior resident scholar at the institute of government studies at uc berkeley and a visiting lecturer at the Bolt Hall Law School. Even though he's been co-hosting us here for the last, however many minutes, we're going to push him into the guest chair. Get over there. Tell us about your latest book, M. Stanton Evans, Conservative Wit, Apostle of Freedom. We're going back on messages about some of his great lines. And the pith, the brevity, the coldness, the precision of his wit is a delight. But the man himself was something else. Tell us.

Yeah. So there's actually, well, it's a straight up biography of a person who was really one of the top 10 most important conservatives in the country from, I think, the early 60s into the 1990s. And he died seven years ago and is being forgotten too quickly, I think. There's a lot to say about him, but I think one thing I'll mention is that there's a part that I draw out in the book that is relevant to what Rob was just saying, and you were just saying about the incompetence of Vladimir Putin and the Russians. You know, Stan was a very big

anti-communist, of course, and one of his last books, Black Listed by History, was a revisionist history of Joe McCarthy, correcting a lot of the historical distortions that have gone down through the years in the media. But what I discovered in his old work that I wasn't familiar with from as far back as 1960 is that he thought we were overestimating the capabilities of the Soviet Union. And he thought, though, in an interesting way, a lot of lefties said that, of course, but he thought that this meant we were going to start making a lot of policy mistakes. So he thought the missile gap was phony when John F. Kennedy promoted it in 1960. It was a lot of conservatives voted for Kennedy because they thought he was a stronger Cold Warrior. And as early as 1960, Stan was saying, we're going to end up doing arms control. We're going to end up doing arms control. We're going to end up embracing mutual suicide or mutual assured destruction, as it was called, because we are taking at face value the boasts that the Soviet Union makes about how great they

are in their rocketry and their military hardware. And he was a person that paid attention to the details and to the facts. And he was often pointing out why a lot of Soviet claims couldn't be right. Now, he always supported Stan, you know, high defense spending and a vigorous military. He also, early on, saw problems with the Vietnam War. So the point is, is that that counterintuitive way of thinking, which is what he taught to people like me who were his interns, is very useful in looking out the world we have right now. I think if Stan were still with us, he wouldn't be at all surprised to see how Putin's incompetence, the incompetence of the Soviet, sorry, the Russian military. And so I think that that's important to keep in mind that if everyone says A, he used to say to us. Hey, move those routers there.

Oh, hey, it's me, your data center. And as you can hear, I'm making some big changes in here because AI is making some bigger ones everywhere. So I took a little trip to Nokia. Super fast routers, optical interconnect, fully automated. The whole data center networking portfolio. And they deliver. That's them.

Hey, Nokia, right on time. Get your data center AI ready. Someday is here with Nokia. It's probably worth investigating B because B will probably turn out to be right. What was his quote about Joe McCarthy? Well, he used to like to say, I didn't support what mccarthy was trying to do but i sure admired his methods which is a wonderful way to be yeah well a classic comic conversion yes yes um you know we talked last week just briefly about um the the the number of younger pete at the time

right i mean let's not you know not beat around the bush they ain't young now, but people at the time he had influence on. And one of the things I was struck by the people, he really, he really affected just the list of people who I, who I know is that they're all kind of funny. Yeah. Like he just, he had, he was, he was funny, but he seemed to encourage, I don't mean funny, like, you know, comics, but I mean, they have a sense of humor, like, well, like Gutfeld, like you, comics but i mean they have a sense of humor like um well like gutfeld like you like they're funny like the world seems to them and to him to be at least partially a comedy

he was a joyful person to be around you know he never or almost never showed his wit in print uh and in fact people like bill buckley would often say stan you ought to put more of your wit in your writing and he thought you know he thought thought that the, he was very disciplined this way. He thought the articles should speak for themselves. The writer shouldn't be a part of the story or the writer's personality. He did occasionally write a satire piece. I remember one where, and he'd write it like straight news. And sometimes it would fool people, especially papers that where he was syndicated. One in the eighties was James Baker and Michael Deaver are asking Reagan to retire so that Baker and Deaver and Darman can get on with running the country.

And he wrote up fake quotes and all the rest. And some newspapers thought this was a real story. Anyway, so it's in person. And, you know, I have to say when I first showed up to be an intern for him in 1981, so a long time ago now oh my god you're ancient i am i had no idea how decrepit you were but okay go ahead right well by the way one of my fellow interns that was john fund of course you know who we all know uh martin morris wooster i don't know if you know him uh anyway uh and then later on came you know ann coulter and

greg and other people uh the league of Supervillains, you guys. Oh, absolutely. And, you know, I was familiar with Stan. I've been reading him for years in National Review because I was a nerd in college. And I was, you know, appropriately, not frightened, but, you know, in awe of the man. And what immediately became clear in the first 15 seconds is how friendly and approachable he was.

If his door wasn't closed, meaning he was on a deadline, you could walk in and he'd take time and you could talk about stuff. He loved to go out drinking after hours, which usually involved rock and roll trivia contests and sporting events. And so he was just darn fun to be around. And that's when you picked up his counterintuitive way of thinking partly about humor, right? Because as you say, it's classic inversion. That was the model of his wit. One of my favorites was from the 60s.

He'd say, you remember this liberal cliche, James, at least, any country that can land a man on the moon can abolish the income tax. I love that one. You mentioned Baker and Deaver and the rest. I mean, these names all of a sudden start, I get a little vague pinball sounds in the back of my head of recognition. Yeah. But our generation is going to pass, and those names will be forgotten just as the people who were instrumental in politics in the 20s and the 30s are barely remembered.

Maybe a couple of guys in cabinets and FDR, but he had 12 years to run the show, so it may be more to stick around all passes all goes all the passions fade and are forgotten as new ones come so why do we care about this guy i have this of all the journalists of the era are you did you elevate this man set him aside and say he deserves to be remembered where the others perhaps the onrushing stream of time can erode them down to a pebble. Well, I think he's a remarkable person in being so versatile. I mean, he was a prominent journalist who's also a thinker of some depth. If he decided on an academic career, I think he could have been one of the preeminent conservative scholars in academia.

But third, he didn't limit himself just to being a scribbler and a thinker. He was also a political activist, and he really built up the American conservative union in its most important decade of the 1970s. And I won't tell the whole story, but there are some people who say that without Stan Evans, Ronald Reagan would never have been elected president in 1980. Stan would have disclaimed that honor because he was a modest fellow. But in one sentence, in 1976, Stan came to the rescue, along with some other people, Jesse Helms' operation, to Ronald Reagan when his challenge to Gerald Ford was about to collapse completely. And Stan helped with his interventions turn around the North Carolina primary. And that was the turning point that year. All the historians say if Reagan had lost in North Carolina and and his campaign had planned that they were going to drop out and endorse ford and that would have been the end of the road for reagan and stan was

smack in the middle of all that wow that's reason enough to buy the book and yeah advise everyone to do so we're gonna have more to say about this a little bit later i'm sure there's a podcast you've done we can talk about this and there's stuff we can but we do want to get out of here before the podcast turns into another uh you know rivaling some homeric epic but we got want to get out of here before the podcast turns into another, you know, rivaling some Homeric epic. But we got things to say before we go. And Rob, I know that you have something to say about the wonderful benefits of Ricochet getting pie faced with Rob himself on a small slender island somewhere. Not just me, by the way we are having uh well we are joining up with america's future uh in new york city next month for our first members only bar crawl gathering

um it's going to be really fun we've been meaning to we've been we did a bunch of these before covid and and and all during covid we said we got it the minute we can we got to do more and um and then you know got hard to plan and hard to figure out who's going to come. And then we thought, just do it. Let's just do it. So we're just doing it. It starts at City Vineyard, Saturday, May 14th, 3 p.m. 3 p.m. on a Saturday.

City Vineyard is on the Hudson River, basically. So we'll be outside. And I'm sure the weather will be beautiful. If it's not, we'll move inside. But it's a gorgeous place to stand and drink. And you can hang out with me, old friends, new friends, and do one of my favorite things, which is to have a drink on a Saturday afternoon. You can also, if I am not enough of an attraction, you will be able to have a physical in IRL encounter with James Lilacs, which is a kind of a price.

I'm coming. I'm coming. Absolutely. I got to get out of town. And this sounds like a great thing to do. Can't wait. Stand around outside. Talk to people.

Talk to people. I mean, good Lord. I go to the office. There's nobody there. We've all been living in a diminished time. And I just I need, good Lord, I go to the office. There's nobody there. We've all been living in a diminished time. And I just, I need, you know, I'm not going to go on a cruise. So this is the closest I'm going to get.

And those people who've been on me with cruises know that I get, what's the word we're looking for? Joyful. Joyful. That's the word we're looking for. And gregarious. And like, it's progressive. And here's the thing. If you show up with a mask, we're going your ears off it gets better though i call my daughter my daughter's in texture she's in boston and i said hey i'm gonna be in new york you want to come up or is it come

down boston you want to come up come down you want to come down for a day we'll go to you know we'll hit the museums i'll have dinner be great um and she said yeah that'd be fantastic she said can i come to the can i come to the thing that you're going to i said wait a minute my college age daughter wants to come to this ricochet conservative event excellent a bring the mean demographic age down a bit but b sort of see you know what's going on so you can be indoctrinated, James. My daughter might be there as well, which would just be absolutely fantastic. This is going to be fun. So, look, it's for members only. We want you to join. Come

as a member. And I'll just say another thing about being a member that I sort of alluded to last week, but I think now we've spent a very, very tortured and stressful week putting it to bed at a great expense we um we made a mistake a while ago legitimate mistake in that we um had a photograph up uh on a post doesn't matter what post we have a copyright licensing thing we pay fee, and we use photographs from there.

And somehow this one, we didn't. But it was all over the web, so it was fine, we thought. And the person who took the photograph took issue with it. Umbridge, because the photographer did not appreciate um our political viewpoint burnt umbrage yes and so uh we were sued and uh we thought this is ridiculous uh the the any judge would say this is okay 500 bucks whatever like no value at all to this picture has been everywhere. But you know, the process in America of these things is the punishment and the process and

the punishment together are very expensive and we're only going to get more expensive. And it just looked like we weren't, when we weren't going to win and we weren't going to be able to afford to keep fighting. And so we had to swallow a very bitter pill, very expensive pill, which is going to really hurt the business. I'll be honest with you. But we got to do it and it's no fun. And believe me, the management of Ricochet spent a lot of

screaming, furious, hair pulling, angry moments trying to figure out how to get out of this. And there's just no way. So we have, you know, cleansed and lit sage and try to like clear our aura and done all that stuff. And, but we're going to have to pay a lot of money. So if you've, if you're on the fence about joining Ricochet and you were looking for like, well, you know, I love the conservative community. I love that idea. And I love the podcast and, you know, the whole idea of the meetup sounds great, but I want one more reason. Then how about this, that we, this, this dude,

a lot of money and he's only sued us because we're conservative and we just need your help. So throw your lot in with us if you care about it, and we will be eternally grateful. And I'm so, exactly. And I'm so devoted and dedicated to the prospect, the future prospects of Ricochet, which I love, by the way. I'm not just sitting here nattering away in a podcast. I go into the member feed, which is a great place.

That's where a lot of the communities in Ricochet form, and post and argue and make a fool of myself sometimes. So I'm there. I love it. I love love it i don't want that home to go away and just in case you're curious i'm going to the new york thing on my own dime because it's sort of my philanthropic well i know nobody offered and you actually were so so elegantly you didn't even ask because you knew the answer was like oh like, oh, yeah. What are they going to do? But it's also New York in the springtime.

It's going to be gorgeous. It's going to be great weather. It's going to be great. It never looks better than it does in the spring. Nothing may. It's the greatest month of them all. It's been miserable and cloudy and cold here, which I, of course, know means nothing to Stephen out there in California. But I've got to ask, peter coming back next week because if he is i think we should have steven on as a guest to discuss the the book again for three weeks in a row we've never had a three-week book discussion but you know what do it honestly

i think peter i don't who cares at this point i think well i think we gotta i'd actually like to argue with rob a little bit about california because i have a different view about that whole 1994 hispanic boat business but too much for today do you i mean do i mean because you don't look at what but what i think i agree with you i think you disagree with uh schellenberger i i don't i think i i don't think i think that 1994 may have been there may have been five six years of a blip yeah but i believe like in texas the hispanic vote is not a monolithic not a democratic vote well i'll just mention here if you want to go on powerline where i write you know every day three or four days ago i had a long post about some data from david shore the

very prominent progressive data analyst and he is raising the alarm bells for democrats saying the hispanic vote is shifting to Republicans. It started before 2020, and he gave a presentation here at Berkeley, and it really upset a lot of people. It was great. Go through that. We'll talk about it later down the road. It's fascinating. What Rob was saying about going back and looking at

California in the pieces that he wrote, he doesn't recognize it today. I'm re-watching the first couple seasons of Bosch to prepare for the new season that's coming up on imdb and that california you know doesn't look a lot it looks looks like a distant world it looks it looks almost um idyllic sometimes compared to what what you read uh well you know we could do a whole podcast in the 90s maybe we will or. Or maybe we'll just talk about it at the place in New York in a couple of weeks. We hope to see you there.

But if you don't, go there, join Ricochet, of course. And please go to Apple Podcasts, give us a five-star review or so. And you also would like to go right now at this very moment to bowlinbranch.com, get that 20% post-April discount off. It ends very quickly. And beyond that, I can't think of anything except Stephen. Thank you. It's been a pleasure having you the last couple of weeks.

Well, thanks for having me. No, always, anytime. And that shirt's not loud enough. Turn the saturation down just a bit. I know you're on vacation, but really, please do try to keep up the side. Thanks, everybody, for listening. Rob, we'll see you next week, and we'll see everyone in the comments at Ricochet 4.0.

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