The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 450: Elaine Culotti—California is in Real Trouble

Episode Date: September 16, 2025

Serial entrepreneur, lipstick farmer, and season 2 undercover billionaire Elaine Culotti unleashes a no-holds-barred critique of California's downward spiral. From endless red tape and anti-business policies to the sluggish response to the Palisades fire, Elaine argues that leadership under Gavin Newsom has been nothing short of disastrous. She doesn't just complain—she hints she might run for governor herself.

Chuck, do you know how I know that California is in real trouble? No, Mike. How do you know that? Because that's the name of this episode. Welcome to the way I heard it, everyone. It's me, Mike Rowe. Chuck is still here in our little studio in beautiful Southern California. Don't you love California, Mike? I do love it.

Yeah. And I make no apology for it. And our guest today loves it probably more than the two of us combined. Yep. Her name is Elaine Kalati. And if you've heard of her, maybe it's because you're, are a fan of farming and you're familiar with the farm that she owns and her moniker as the lipstick farmer that she blogs on from time to time or or maybe you still watch the Discovery Channel and

you remember season two of undercover billionaire where she made an appearance wound up in in Fresno with a check for $100. Yeah. And turned it into how much in 90 days? A lot. A lot. Yeah. It was during lockdowns and took a like a dilapidated old hostel or something and turned it into something truly useful. Right. Yeah. She'll tell you the story in a moment and then she's going to tell you some other things. And look, I get it.

This is going to be a tad political. I don't apologize for it because I'm worried for my adopted home state. You know, Chuck and I both are proud Maryland boys. But we make California our home and we're both well-equified. with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people who have left. Yes. And it's such a shame.

I honestly don't care what your politics are, even though this does get a bit political. It's not really about your dogma. This is a conversation about management and incentives and why people like me choose to live here, but take our productions to places like Oklahoma or Georgia. Yeah. And why people like Joe Rogan, who loved it here, just couldn't take it anymore. And up and left. And I know some people listening are probably going, well, who needs you?

Good riddance. Bye-bye. I understand that feeling, too. But something has happened. I think recently, I think the fires really lit a fire, as it were, under a lot of people. Well, they really showed us just how badly the state is run and the city of Los Angeles as well. When the firefighters, you know, go to open a hydrant and there's not water in it. Yeah.

In the middle of a big fire. That's the thing. We've talked about this on the podcast, and maybe you've heard it already as we listen to a fire engine outside. I love it. I love the symmetry of that. But it's been eight months, folks. It's been eight months and hundreds of tons of debris are still in the palisades. Yeah.

And the permits are. not being issued quickly enough. And decisions are being made that's going to force people who didn't lose their homes to make massive changes and raise them up into the era. The cost is just astronomical. It just feels like something truly, truly is amiss. And we're not being incentivized or motivated to do anything other than endure and ignore the thing that's clearly visible right in front of us.

And look, if I sound agitated, it is because I don't want to move. I really don't. I love that Mike Bro Works is here, and I love coming home to this state. But man, oh, man, oh, man. Yeah. There's a point where I think people get worn down.

And Elaine is a very successful businesswoman. Yes. She's an entrepreneur who loves this state deeply, and she's about at the end of her rope. and she's doing things and she's taking steps and she's venturing outside of her lane a bit as a real estate magnate to try and effectuate some change, which honestly I think the state needs.

Yeah, absolutely it does. And she is, it sounds like she might be hinting at a run for the governorship. I couldn't get her to say it, but listen to the passion with which she speaks. and listen to the certainty that she has about what needs to occur. And understand, as I hope will illustrate in the first half hour, what a serious person this is. She's a player and she's succeeded in, I don't even know how many businesses. But it's a really fun conversation with a woman I met for the first time just now.

And I suspect we'll stay on each other's radar. We're calling the episode, California is in real trouble. on account of it is. Oh, one other thing, Chuck? One other thing, yeah. There's like a little fact check in here. Oh, yeah. She mentions, toward the end of the pot of the episode,

she mentions, she says that 48% of California's are conservative. And she cites a Madison McQueen poll that was recently done. And I looked it up afterwards, and I think she conflated something. And actually, this will give you an example of how connected she is. she called up Owen who owns Madison McQueen, and he called me to let me know exactly what the poll was. And I'm not sure she's confused or conflated at all. I think I started singing a silly song as she was in the midst of explaining. And this will all be made clear, but the poll basically said that if the election were held now. Well, if for the 2026 election for governor, 48% of Californians would come.

consider voting for a Republican. 48% of Californians who vote. Yes, likely voters. That's correct. Would consider voting Republican. Yeah. Across party lines. Yeah. That's extraordinary. Yeah. Yeah. So having said all that, and at the risk of repeating myself, California is in real trouble.

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Yeah, right? I need a job. I need Trumpy Trump to give me a job as the czar. I need some position of power so I can get rid of all these people making such a muck of it. All right. We will get to what the ad pukes call the single-minded proposition momentarily. But first, I want people, genuinely, I want to better understand because just so people know, I'm meeting you for the first time, which is unusual with this podcast.

It is. You live with a guy named Tim who has friends with the guy named John who called me a couple of weeks ago and said, Mike, this guy, Tim, and this woman, Elaine, she's on some kind of vision quest. And I think you're really going to like her. And there's a bunch of triangulating you can do both with the Discovery Channel and you went down a list of other things. And for whatever reason, I just, I trust this guy, John McLean, who owns one union. One union recording where I've been making sounds in microphones and a crisp, well-modulated baritone for over 20 years now. So based on his quasi-recommendation, I thought, okay, I'm going to reach out to this Elaine person.

And turns out you also know Grant Cardone. Turns out you also work for discovery from time to time. So let's just start there, since we each are bound to know some discovery people. So I kind of got hung up in the, let's not do any reality stuff. My kids were like, no, no, no. But when COVID happened, a friend of mine reached out, his name is Glenn Stearns, and he had had a very successful show called Undercover Billionaire. And they were doing season two.

I mean, you can't be an undercover billionaire twice. Right. So he had to put together a team. Your secret's blown. You're outed. And so he put together a team, and I was one of the very lucky people to be chosen. Now, not necessarily billionaires. These are hardworking people that he felt could actually do the job,

which is scale the business to a million dollars with nothing about $100. So they give you $100, they don't tell you where you're going. Nothing. They basically drop you off in some burg, give you a beater of a car, 90 days and $100. What did you do? I mean, for anyone who hasn't watched the show, it's season two, you can still download it on Discovery Plus and watch it. And I completely by accident tried to stay at a hostel, which wasn't actually a hostel. but it looked like a hostel,

and I turned it into the greatest business. It took a while to get there, and I was terrified. I was in the middle of Fresno. It was during the, my partner calls it something else, no. And we've now, you know, grown to love Fresno.

It took me about maybe two or three weeks of being there to see all of the undeveloped talent in that town. What did you do with the hostel that wasn't a hostel? I made it a essential business. it was COVID. It didn't have windows indoors. It had to be an essential business or it had to be shut down. So I was like, okay, essential, groceries are essential.

Food is essential. Farming is essential. We have to do something in food and farming. And having a little bit of experience, and I don't want to say I had a lot of experience. I have a farm in Fallbrook. Where's Fallbrook? Fallbrook, San Diego County, North San Diego County. It's pretty.

I bought the ranch because I needed a place for horses and my dogs and my swans and my turtle and my stuff. so I'm like, I get this ranch. Sorry. And, yeah, and I have a lot of animals. How many swans you got? I have three. What are you calling?

Robbie and Israel, and the third is unnamed. Why? Because I haven't thought I have a name yet. How about Gibbons? Okay, what is it? Orlando Gibbons wrote a famous madrigal called The Silver Swan, who living had no note when death approached

on Lott, its silent throat, leaning her breast against a reedy shore that thus sang her first, and last and sang no more. Are you... Something like that. Are you hitting on me? A little bit.

Farewell all joy. O death come close my eyes. More geese than swans now live. More fools. I love it. Than wise. Orlando Gibbons. Givins.

Gibb-B-O-N-S. Yeah. And Gibbons could be a boy or girl name. Could be. Well, I haven't probed the swan, so it has to be a girl-boy name. Probed. You mean examined? Yes.

Yes. Do you prefer not to know the gender of the swan? No, I'd like to know because I had a mated pair and they haven't made babies since the babies came. Because they mate for life, you know. I know. But one of them's interfering. And I don't know which one is which anymore.

Well, how do you keep them from flying away? Well, one is pinioned. They just don't. I don't think they know they can fly. Pinyed, Chuck. Do you familiar with that term? No. Should I look it up?

No. It's something they do to the wing so they can't, you know. Yeah. It's a. do it right when they're born, though. It's a Latin for cutting them off. I didn't do it myself, though, by the way. And so the reason the other two aren't is because I couldn't. So there you go. Yeah. But the first one I got pinioned. So is it a farmer, ranch? It's both. What do you grow? Roe vegetables, avocado or lots of citrus, lemon lime, seasonal have a farm stand, do CSA.

What's that? CSA, community-supported agriculture. I see. Oh, yeah. Great. Farming. All right. And I left the ranch to go to Fresno. And so I had a lot. And so I had a little bit of experience. I mean, even though my farming partner is really the farmer, I had a delivery business during COVID of vegetables to all my friends in L.A. in Beverly Hills, which was really funny. And I have a long list, which would you be blown away. Then I started this idea that maybe we should do, you know, fresh farm delivery out of this essential business. We got bags and we started a business and I opened a bar outside. I opened a

coffee shop. What'd you call it? It's called Shep's Club. It used to be called Shepard's Inn. So Shep's Club, is it still in Fresno? It is. It's still in Fresno. It's right across from the Greyhound bus station and the train trap. You should write vacation brochures. But it's a going concern. It's a going business.

And the thing about, I had said this to many people is like, the testimony of whether or not a business can survive with a television show is after the television show is done if it keeps going. And it's kept going. And the guy that runs, it's a really smart cookie. So I just want a quick sidebar. I'm not quite bitter or broken, but I'm skeptical. I'm deeply skeptical of the reality genre because when I entered it 22 years ago, there was that like a brief shining moment where it lived up to its name. And Dirty Jobs was a truly honest show.

How honest is undercover billionaire? I can't speak for everybody, but for me, it was like incredibly, and I didn't know anything about it, but I couldn't, like, they did zero for me. there was one point where I stayed in the hotel with the crew when the crime rate was so bad and they lit the back of the building on fire. And that night I stayed at the place where they were staying, Hilton. They pulled me out. But for the most part, they were like, Ixnay.

I even had a night camera girl, Lauren, who was so amazing. And she was so terrified. She's like, I'm going back to the hotel. I'm like, no, you were staying here with me. So they really filmed this thing over the course of three months? Yeah, 90 days. Every day you're on camera. And at night.

Like sleeping, washing, driving. Why did you accept? Because it was COVID and everything was so boring and closed and I was just like out of my mind at the ranch. Okay. This is important. I'm writing down the word bored because I don't want to forget it. And honestly, what little I do know about you does speak to a chronic and unusual work ethic. Why not do it?

What's the worst thing that could happen? you know. Reputational loss, profound humiliation, loss of consortium. Not a worry, not a worry, not a worry. Who cares? It's just occurred to me, Chuck. I've never said loss of consortium.

I don't believe I've ever heard you say that either. I don't even know what that really means. Chuck, you want to explain that to her? Yes, loss of consortium. I feel like, you know, the best you can do, as my dad used to say, the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement. So what'd your old man do? He was a fighter pilot.

A good one, yeah. Army, Navy? He was Air Force. And he flew F-100s and F-1-11s. No kidding. Yep. So you're an Army brat? I am an Air Force brat.

Where'd you grow up? Germany, England. My mom's British. My mom's an orphan. She grew up in an orphanage. Her parents were, as she says, blitzed during the war. And so I have this great mom and dad, you know. They're amazing.

Well, my dad's passed away, but he's still amazing to me. Every day. You ever change the fuel cell on a KC-135R strata tanker? Good God, no. You would love it. No, but I've gassed up my tractor plenty of times. What kind of tractor? I have two.

I have a cabota, which is pretty reliable. And the other one's like a GMC. It's old, and it's not reliable. We had a Massey Ferguson growing up at a John Deere and an international harvester. I have a couple cranes, too, but I don't know what they are. Scout maybe is one. Scott makes cranes.

And I don't know what the other. I have a lot of equipment at the ranch. Now, when you say cranes, you are referring to the mechanical device, not the distant cousin to the aforementioned swan. Because if you have swans and cranes. You know what? I might be the only person you know that has both. Get out of here. I have cranes at the pond, and I have cranes that you lift things with.

You are like, so it's all creatures great and small. You're an animal lover? I can't. They're the best things on the planet and every single one of them, wild and domestic. I love animals. We're so like them, too. Well, I mean, yeah, we are part of the kingdom. One time I got a phone call from somebody at my house that said,

Elaine, you need to come home because there's a crane in the house. And I was like, well, why would the guys put the crane in the house? And it was... That's a fair question. Fair question. Yeah, and they sent me a picture of this, like, beautiful, long, black, he was gray. The ones that come by our thing are gray,

because not to be confused with the herrings, which are white. And he had his head down in the chandelier, and he was hiding in this giant shambler. I have a picture of us. I was sending you the picture. And he was trying to hide in the chandelier to not be seen. I'd like to see that picture. Insane. Taylor, where were we with the birds? In, uh, can't see the... No, no, no, the ones that attacked me. I had the broom and I had to keep them away with the broom. Somebody's got to do. What were they storks? Wooping cranes, yes, whooping cranes. Those are big birds. They are big birds and they're very protective. And I,

you know, when you're around them, because they'll, they'll imprint when they're young, on whatever is raising them. So if you're a human and you're raising these cranes as they do, I think it was like off petuxent, maybe some. Yeah, Maryland, yeah. So you've got to dress like a crane. Like you wear like a burqa and these white sheets. And you look like Casper the friendly ghost and you have to whisper.

This is not real. I swear to God, it's real. Well, you were wearing like a little burqa with it. It wasn't so little. I mean, it was a look at me. I mean, you're here. There I am right there. And there's the burqa.

Yeah. That's me wearing a burqa. that's not. That's me trying to fend off these cranes. Oh yeah and he was mad. But those are the burkas. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, look how cute. Was this a dirty job thing? No, I was called something. Somebody's got to do it. What was somebody's got to do it. Yeah. I've been doing the same show for 22 years, Elaine. I just changed the title every six or seven. Someone's got to do it. It's a great job name. Well, you know what? Someone's got to do a lot of things right now. Okay. Well, that is, it's so funny because I said to Chuck when we were just kind of pitching the idea of you and not yet knowing, right? But I'm like,

This woman is on a mission. And what's got to be done in the Palisades, and I think in Altadena and in California in general, I promise we're going to get to it. But I'm not yet fully satisfied that we can jump into your mission until we understand even more. Like, as an entrepreneur, I don't want to make this gross, but you're a woman of means. Obviously, you're on undercover billionaire. You said you're not a billionaire, but I'm guessing you're well healed. Well, are you sick of it yet?

Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time? Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle. The poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid. AI is here to stay, and every business in the country is asking themselves the same question. How do we make it work for us?

Well, the answer to that question varies, but you'll find it in a free guide that you can get right now at NetSuite. dot com slash Mike. It's called demystifying AI. It's totally free. It's essential reading for anybody trying to make sense of a future that appears to have arrived yesterday. NetSuite, of course, is the number one AI enterprise resource planning software out there, trusted by over 43,000 businesses. With NetSuite, you can use the AI of your choice, GROC or Claude or Chat, GPT, whatever else is out there to connect to your actual business data, all of it, and automate all of those tiresome, time-sucking, soul-deadening manual processes. This is AI built into the system that's currently running your business. Learn more at net suite.com slash Mike. And while you're there, pick up their

free business guy, demystifying AI. It's filled with super useful information. And again, it's free at netseweet.com slash mike. That's net suite.com. Netsweet. Mike. I was for a long time. I was, I started out with, you know, well, my mom was a school teacher

when she finally was able to work. And my father was retired military. He worked for Jepson. So he was the technical writer. He's a very bright guy. And we lived in a modest home in Aurora, Colorado. and I was entrepreneurial from a very young age.

I started a shoe shine company. All my girlfriends, all my girlfriends worked for me. How old? I was like maybe 16. Uh-huh. Yeah. And my first job was a job job. It's the only job I had, but I didn't get paid hourly.

I got paid by the lead, and I worked for train, heating, and air conditioning. And I would call up and do these home surveys. I was probably 14 or 15. I'd be like, hello. I'm trained heating and air conditioning. We'd like to come to your house and do a survey. I wish I had your voice, because that would have really, I would have doubled down on the money per leave.

You know how weird you would be with my voice? Your face, my voice? That would truly be a voice for radio, right? I would just have to hide behind something. And then when I went off to Arizona to go to school, I took shoe shine stance with me and I started this big, pretty big shushan company and sold it.

What was it called? It was called Racktime. Rack time? Ragtime. Oh, Ragtime. Jove played an old piano on a honky talk cafe. When anyone requested a brand new tune,

here's what Ragtime Joe would say. There'll be no new tunes on this old piano, this old piano of mine. There'll be no boogie-woogie and none of that jazz or any other kind of that rasmataz. We'll sing about Swanee, the old folks at home, the wide open spaces where the buffalo roam, but there'll be no new tunes on this old piano,

this old piano of mine. I like that song. I don't think I've ever had anyone speak it to me. Well, it's a big day for both of us. It's my first big ragtime day. So after ragtime, I... Which you sell it for? Is it rude to ask? Gosh, I...

It's like maybe a couple hundred grand, not a lot. So you're 17, 18? Yeah, I was young. In Aurora. I was 21, 22. Yeah. You're a military brat. You're in your early 20s, and you sell a shooshined business for a few hundred thousand dollars.

Mm-hmm. Yep. What'd your parents think of that? I don't think they understood it. I think they were like, well, you just did what? I think they must have thought I was doing something far more nefarious, for sure. That is so wild. I mean, your pop must have been proud, though.

I think he was very proud of me. I mean, we had, my dad always gave me good advice, but my dad was the opposite of extravagant. He was very, he didn't like anything flashy. Yeah, nothing flashy ever. And so I had to be very careful about, you know, talking or bragging. It was, it's unbecoming and not allowed. But you were aware of all that at 21, 22? No, it didn't seem that big of a deal to me.

I thought I kind of, I was, you know, very interested in design, very interested in, like, buying and flipping homes, but I didn't have the means to do it. So I had to sell something in order to be able to buy my first piece of real estate. And that was the only way I was going to do it, without any means of how to fix it up or money to get it or an idea of how to get a loan. No clue. But eventually, you know, I got the hang of it.

And then when I came to Los Angeles, after school, I was very interested in this weird, I was going back to Europe and buying antiques and coming back and forth. I got very interested in the vintage Levi business. I thought, what a fascinating. And I love vintage. I'm wearing a pair right now, by the way, if anybody hasn't noticed. I did notice that.

And I thought the, you know, I love American companies. I always have. And I thought Levi's is such an incredible company. And the shoe shank, this is the craziest story. Do we have time? Okay. Nothing but time. So people are trying to word.

So, okay, in the industry of rags, rag business. So if you're cleaning, like, oil in a shop, there's rag companies. And essentially, they take in all sorts of like remnant rags, towels and jeans and, you know, sheets from places and they're called rag companies. They're all over downtown L.A. And in these rag businesses, they wash the stuff and then they deliver it to your mechanic shop. So the biggest expense that I had in the shoe shine company when I had like 30 cents was rags because you have to keep changing them out. Polishing rags. You know what I need you to find. Yeah, I think so. Go ahead and find it. I'm afraid. Go ahead. Okay. So this rag business, I was downtown in this big rag place one day.

And when I say big, I'm talking about maybe like 300,000, 400,000 square feet filled from the floor to the ceiling with big piles of fabric and jeans. And there was a gene pile. And I said to the guy, I'm like, how much are the jeans if I just use jeans? And he goes, that's like seven cents a pound. I can't get rid of the stuff. And I was like, I'll take all of it. So I went to every rag company and I bought every pile of rags at every company. And I wound up getting this baker's building out in Sherman Oaks.

Wait, wait, denim? Denham. You're buying denim. I just bought denim. Okay. I took it out to this building in Sherman Oaks. A friend of mine owned a food truck business that did movie sets called The Cast Supper. So cute. I can't remember his name about Kevin, maybe.

And then he was next to this baker and they had baker's racks. And I wound up in this, I took over his bakery and I had all my jeans all over the place. And I graded them. I put them on a grading scale, A being the best ones all the way down to shorts where you had to cut them off. Levi's Wrangler, Vintage. Not vintage, everything. And I made up prices. And I sold them.

And I made so much money selling jeans. It was insane. In Europe, I had European buyers. I had everyone, like, she's got, I was a queen of Levi's. So, but you're selling existing brands. Is that right? Mostly Levi's. Levis was really kind of it.

I had probably the largest private Levi collection, period. And what was this business called? It didn't have a name. Didn't have a name. private. It was very private. If I were to suggest the name for that, I'd go with Third Swan. Oh, I like that. Third Swan. Nameless. I thought it was Gibbons, nameless. Well, I mean, it hasn't. The reason it was in a nameless business is that it was, I was so busy, so fast, and so trying to figure out what was the way to really, like, turn it into real estate, because that's all I was obsessed with buying real estate. And what I found is the Italian kind of merchant business in Rimini, Italy, was where the Japanese would come to buy the jeans.

And the guy that was my middleman guy that would buy them and fly out here and buy containers. It was an all-cash business. And he was very serious about this business. Like he knew way more about it than I did. And he was gaming me. That's the thing. Like I didn't know what they were really worth. So, yeah, that was my.

So how long did you run this nameless business? About, I did it for two years long enough that I could buy like real real estate. And then I bought real estate. And how much you sell it for? That's not too gross. I didn't sell it. I sold out of the goods. I ran out of material.

I couldn't get any more jeans. But you made enough money to make your next move. Before we go to the quick sidebar, you mentioned shop towels. Yeah. And rags. Oh, there you go. There's Chuck, the producer right there. That's me doing a campaign on these rags you were talking about.

So that's an industrial shop towel right there. Yeah, yeah. And the problem with these things is there. laundered with lots and lots of other towels from lots and lots of other businesses. And some of those businesses have a lot of heavy metals in them. Oh, yeah. And so freshly laundered shop towels were coming back with crazy high traces of dangerous metals in them. And so this company hired me, was Kimberly Clark, to introduce these disposable shop towels as a remedy for those things. And they worked so well, I wound up getting boycotted by some union I'd never heard of, textile

washers union or something. Chuck didn't suffer at all as a result. He's just there mugging it up for the cameras again. Oh, he loves that shot. Oh, Chuck. Anyway, I'm also fascinated in that last exchange by the fact that you had a whole denim thing. I just created a mess on social media when I posted Sidney's Sweeney's thing with the good jeans thing because I did a commercial. I used to work for Lee and Rangler. I had my mom in a series of commercials, talking about good jeans as well. I just mentioned all of this because I'm slowly getting the listener's permission to get to the reason that I know you agreed to come here, but we're not there yet. Did you see the Hillary Clinton Bad Jeans ad? Yes. I just wanted to know if you

thought. Yeah, I saw it. I mean, that's lightning in a bottle, you know, to get a campaign like that and to have it just... It's incredible. Epic. Yeah. Truly epic. People should learn from it. Did you see Scott Bayo today?

Oh yeah. That tweet where he has basically went after Tyrus. Yeah, he went after Tyrus, yeah. I mean, Tyrus doesn't know, and I love that show. And I love Tyrus. He's been on this podcast. Has he? Oh my God, I love that show.

That's a great show. But I got to say, I also love Scott Beow and good for him for saying something. And you know something? He had like 150,000 hits this morning. when I saw it early because people love him. Yeah. And it's just, it's not Tyrus's fault. The reality is, that's what happened to people.

Yeah. I'm glad he said something. Yeah, I think what Tyrus said in passing, almost parenthetically, was I don't even know if Scott Beow's alive. Yeah, he made a crack about that he could be dead for all, for all he knows. And Scott Beow came on to set the record straight that he is alive. And what happened to him, why you haven't seen him, is because he got canceled for speaking out in favor of Trump in 2017.

16. Well, I think he spoke to the inauguration or at the first announcement of whatever it was. Yeah, whatever it was. But I mean, that's a great, like, I think it's fair to say that Tyrus could have reinvigorated him and pumped him right up to somebody that people want to spend time with now. So good. I'm glad. Well, you know what? People are still, and I think this is relevant enough to mention because we're going to get into politics in a minute. But I think, like I'm getting a lot of heat right now. Did you know what Nick Searcy is? He's an act. He was on justified, fried green tomatoes. He's been around for a long time. I'm sorry, Nick. I don't know who you are. Well, he made a movie called Capital Punishment. And he was at January 6th. And he saw something very different than what most of us see and made a movie about it.

Anyway, I had him on and he told his story. And I don't obsess over comments, but it is interesting how people are still right on the knife's edge. And when they hear something they don't like, man, they just, they can't help but they can't help but tell the world about it. You know, it's really, people are fragile. And they're upset with me because a guy named Nick sat here and told a story that they didn't like. And I think we're still in that, in that world, you know, because it felt like for a while that maybe we got past it a little bit. But the Scott Beo thing kind of reminded me that, no. Well, we shouldn't get past it.

I don't think we're past it. I mean, I think that the importance of what's happening right now, God, I hope I don't get you in more trouble. I mean, it's sirens and motorcycles. First, before I say anything, I just want you guys to know that Mike has no idea what I'm about to say. I'm just going to say that. Thank you. And you, I don't know if you have the luxury of editing, but if you don't, I'm sorry.

No, this is live right now, actually. People need to toughen up. You know, if you weren't having any of the rhetoric before 2016, but starting at 2016, If you believed that there was no laptop, if you believed that if you didn't get a vaccine, you were going to, like, you know, kill your grandmother. If you were, if you thought that people that were protesting that went into the Capitol were truly criminals, if you bought into all that stuff, that's too bad, in my opinion. Because at the end of the day, now there is more than enough evidence that there was a laptop. There is more than enough evidence that forcing people to take vaccines was probably not a great idea. There is more than enough evidence that many people that were in the Capitol were just curious and upset.

And I feel like if you can't see that, you can't see anything. You can't see anything. Just except the basics. Just the basics. Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about. my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read the comments. They're hysterical.

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on this podcast The blind man grabbing the tusk And concluding he's holding on to a statue made of ivory Or the tail or the leg And coming to a different conclusion Or the trunk and coming to an altogether different conclusion But yeah, it's the evidence demands a verdict But the evidence is not limited to a tusk or a trunk

Right There's a lot to look at There's a huge body of evidence. Right. And that starts to open the door to what I really want to talk to you about, but not quite yet. What's the story of the saying that Mark Twain, I know you know it about convincing somebody of the truth is easy, but convincing them that they've been duped as impossible. That's right.

Yeah, that's a great one. It goes... I love that you know this stuff. Well, it's a lot easier to convince somebody that... Let me look it up. Look it up. Something was wrong. Well, he also said the truth gets around the world.

In the time it takes a man to put his pants on that a lie gets around the world. The truth takes a long time to get around the world, but a lie gets around the world like that. It's like reputations too. The reputation of a town like Baltimore or Albuquerque, you know, it's like the reputation of a man. You work all your life on a thing. And in one moment there's a riot or a murder or, you know, maybe it's Freddie Gray. or maybe, you know, the wire, right, shot in Baltimore, one of the best shows ever made. But as a result, poor Joan in Boise is pretty sure the only reason to go to my hometown

is to, you know, buy some heroin or hire a crack war because of that show. And Breaking Bad did the same thing to Albuquerque. And so, you know. Albuquerque's a mess. Yeah, it is. I got the quote, it's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled. That's right. And that is right. I know it's right. I just found it on the internet. It has to be right. And that's

where we are. I found it on the internet. It must be true. In the words of, was it Abe Lincoln, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, Cicero. Yeah. We just have such an opportunity for the first time in so long to just consider that it might not all be true, that there might be a lot of nonsense that we've been fed. I think, you know what I think? What's wrong with that? I've been reading this guy. Which guy? Well, his name is Jeff Childers, unless it's Childers. Yeah, could be either one. I'm not sure. But he started in 2020 writing a column called Coffee and COVID. He's an attorney. And I think he found himself with some time on his hands. And he took a dim view of our institutions and a lot of what was being sold as settled science and started writing about it in a way that was

elegant and eloquent and funny and weirdly optimistic. And now he has a huge file, not huge yet, but it's big. And I'd love to meet the guy, but he made the point this morning when he was talking about D.C. And I don't know if you've been to D.C. recently, but we just filmed a movie there. not long ago and there's some lovely parts the mall still looks great but boy it's bad and it's self-evident you just can't deny it unless you're in the emperor's new clothes unless you're the townspeople looking straight at the naked emperor and going oh bravo that looks great

that's the thing that i thought we were largely passed but we're not we're not there yet and it's so strange rather than argue the fact that that maybe there's a better way to deal with the problem than mobilize every LEO in the country, what comes back over the net is there is no problem. Wait, what's the LEO? Law enforcement officers. Oh, got it.

So you got the FBI, you got the, you know, everybody. I just didn't know the acronym. Well, so this was Jeff's point this morning, one of several. He's like, we're still doing it. You know, I'm not saying the Republicans or the conservatives or the president is correct. in this course of action. I'm simply saying that if you're going to take the opposite view, you can either say, I wouldn't do that, I would do this instead. But that's not happening.

What comes back is Chuck Schumer literally says out loud, I feel perfectly safe walking around D.C. Chuck Schumer has 22 Secret Service people. And he's walking around the mall. He's not walking in these other areas. And then everybody jumps onto that. And I don't mean to make this as political as it's sounding, but the media will pick up the narrative and go, okay, so there's no problem. The whole thing is a gas light. And so normal people look at all of that and go, is there a problem or isn't there a problem? Instead of saying, obviously there's a problem, maybe we can disagree or possibly agree or discuss the best way to remedy all of that. And so that's what I mean.

We haven't moved past the fact that, well, if they say black, the other side says white. We're not quite to the point where maybe even with the palisades, maybe even with the thing you really came here to talk about, but we're not quite ready to do it yet. Maybe the same applies. Maybe they see it and they see two different things. I think we're turning the tide. I don't have anywhere near the opposition that I used to have. My friends have stopped calling me an anti-vaxxer. at least I'm past that.

My friends have stopped calling me a, you know, Trump or Trump this, or you like Trump, when I simply wanted a more fiscal, you know, educated president. I wanted somebody that understood working and signing the front of a paycheck. It wasn't really that I had an opinion one way or another. And I also find that less people are dismissive. of me if I say something that's political. Now they're starting to listen. And I've been fairly consistent.

Going back in history about when I might have been what you call red-pilled, it would have to go back to Benghazi. Because for me, that was just such a weird thing, like to witness and really try to put the pieces together. It didn't fully set in. And I went to the 2016 inauguration because I was invited. I just wanted to go to the parties. I didn't really even, I didn't vote, and I didn't care.

I just wanted to go to all the parties because these people that invited me were doing the whole inauguration. They're like, you should come, it's going to be great. I'm like, okay, I'll go. And I went. And all my friends here were like, are you going to the march? And I was like, what? And I had such a grand time. And I did go to the march.

And it was so weird. And Madonna was like screaming on the thing. I mean, it was just, the inauguration was perfectly beautiful. And the parties were fun. I mean, Texas can throw a hell of a party. Oh, my gosh. I was there this year. The Lucchese boot thing.

Yeah. I was, this is insane. So that was like the only reason I went. And so I have had a fairly consistent migration into the mindset that I now have. And also, I'm raising children. And I'm like, no, you're not going down that road. That's not. And they're like, mom, I'm like 16.

Let me do what I. Not mom. I'm 18. Leave me alone. I go, no. I will never. leave you alone. You're absolutely not doing that. So how old are your kids?

Jesse's 30. Leo is 29 and they're both very conservative kids. And then Kasi who is 21 is not conservative. He's, I don't even want to say. But the point is that they get their own opinions no matter what you do. And

the best thing you can do is be consistent and do the same thing. And I am consistent about my politics. I want good governance. I don't want my money. to be unaccounted for. And everyone should want that. And speaking of money, again, just to close the loop on this,

you got the denim thing, you sold the thing, and then you get into real estate, and that was your wish fulfillment. It was. I love it. I love development. I like building things. Are you more a developer or a salesperson?

I didn't have any money. No, I don't sell anything. I like to keep it, but sometimes they have to sell it because you can't afford it. I've done that. But if I can keep it, I will keep it. And I'll fight to keep it even if I can keep it. if I don't have any money.

And also, I've had no money and lots of money and no money and lots of money. It's always up and down. And it doesn't really bother me like it bothers some people, which is I think a key, important trait of a real entrepreneur. It's really not the money,

it's really the kind of the experience and the journey of it all. Sorry, to go way back for a minute. Was there a bet on billionaire? Like, did you have to put up money? Yeah, 50 grand. So you bet $50,000? I said I bet him a half a million

if they wanted it in cash because I thought it was so ridiculous that they thought it was impossible. to do. I was like, mm-mm, it's easy. I'll be done. I'm going to get it done. I was so overly confident until I got there. I learned a very big lesson because I had been out of the scrappy business of really throwing deals together and at no, you know, just no holds bar, just figure out how to duct tape and staple it together for so long that I had to get back to that and it took me a minute because I'm not me. I'm this person that has nothing, so I can't like act like that.

Right. And so it just took me a second, but I figured it out. I just took a minute. So what in terms of properties that you own or manage or have developed, again, forgive me, I don't mean to make it personal, but I think it's going to be very, very relevant when the audience hears what you really came here to talk about. You're invested in this state. You're invested in the Palisades. I'm just wondering roughly to what degree.

80% of my portfolios in the Palisades. And there's literally no clear way to evaluate what it's worth. And that should be very scary to everybody else. And I know it's what's troubling Rick Caruso. How much did you lose in the fires? Just like maybe 18% if you take the, you know, like what burned and what can be repaired. But the issue, well, first of all, let's get back to the fact that like certain things in real estate are, fundamentally easier to do even though they might be hard work.

Like if you buy an old home and you fix it up and you flip it, that is easier to do if you're willing to put the work in and do it yourself and get in there. But if you want to buy a piece of land and develop it, you need a lot of different things that are not easy to do yourself, like a really good land use attorney or a really good soils engineer or a civil engineer. And then you need a planning person and a permitting person. And you start to go through this process. and it's not just incredibly laborious,

but it's also very expensive. And so the Pacific Palisades and also Malibu, but probably more so Malibu, entitlements are very challenging to obtain. And an entitlement for anybody who doesn't know is the ability to build whatever is permitted to be built there. So if you have a piece of raw land that's unentitled, it's not really worth anything.

Once you get a permit for a house or you get a permit for a building, now you've entitled it to whatever that design is. And those entitlements are issued by local government or by the state? Well, there's some zoning that's already set in place, but it's definitely local government. It's the local building department. The Department of Building and Safety is a big quagmire. There's a lot that goes on there.

They're understaffed, and they work ridiculous hours. They work so hard, but there's so much bureaucracy and red tape and requirements. and clearances that the people that run the building department and work in the building department, they don't have the power to say yes. They only have the power to say no. And that slows things down to two, three, four, five, six years, you know, hearings, and you can't get anything entitled. So in real time now, it's been what, four months? No, baby, it's been eight months. Are you kidding me? Yeah. January 7th. What are we August? What's today? 15th, 14th, something like that. I can't believe it's been eight months. August 14th today. We're at August 14th. Yeah.

Yeah. Do do do do do do do. Dumb. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country. I do.

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ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. The smartest way to hire. Yep, it's been eight months, and they opened up a satellite building department, sort of. It's not satellite. It's actually in West Los Angeles. I'm going to just speak about the palisades to unconfused people. Let's not talk about all of it. Let's just talk about what I know really well.

That building department is in the Sawtail building department in West Delhi. It's called the one stop. It's a great idea. It's supposed to go in there one stop. It's called one stop and get your permits, but it doesn't work like that. Number one. Number two, 1, 1441 people were in there like I checked like maybe at the first August, 88 permits have been issued, and 18 of those permits are in the Palisades.

Now, I know that I have stuff that I've been working on for a couple years, because I'm a developer. It's a lot easier for me to go to one stop. So maybe the 1541 people are not from the palisades. And that's not okay. If our resources are for the people in the Palisades, we should be issuing one-stop permits for people in the palisades as they come in the door. And we're not doing that. Why do you think? can't. bureaucracy. It goes back to the beginning of the conversation that we're having before the show.

Like there's a money issue in Los Angeles. We have poor management of our resources. So, and that is, you know, clearly explained when you just look at the fires to begin with. There's no brush clearance. There's no water. The fire hydrants don't work. We don't have enough staff on the fire department itself. And when your mayor is not in town,

And then you have a meeting with Trump who came in and a bunch of promises are made and none are kept. So our resources aren't managed. Then you have this mobilization to do cleaning, which was provided by what's called the Biden-MATOC, the FEMA. FEMA comes in. There's May-Tox and SATACs. People don't know what they are. But if you're in big construction, which I have been, you know that there's kind of a, in an emergency response situation, you have to have a preparedness. you have to be ready.

And so that means you have to already have in line who is going to mobilize for you. What cleaning company? What hauling company? What, you know, check and balance, write the accounting company, what traffic control company. And those people are in what's called a METOC, which is a mandatory award outside contracting that FEMA puts together. And then when the emergency happens, inevitably they always do.

Your mobilization team is ready. And everyone gets in the plane and the cars and the trucks and they show up. Army Corps of Engineers. Boom, there they are. And they are set up like a military outfit. So they're in theater. They're in theater. What are we doing? Okay, we're going to do opt-in. This is our first program. Go to everybody, find everybody, opt-in. Are you opting in? Are you up to sign up here? Everyone signs it. 6,800 opt-ins. Okay, great. Clean, $600,000 homes. The postage stamp of the home, simple lots. EPA comes in. Military. style. You know, if you're not opt-in-in, go over and sign that line. That money, that $1.1.1 billion,

is federal. It is not Los Angeles. L.A. was standing around as an observer. In fact, in some cases, in the way, this is a military outfit in theater, cleaning up our streets and making sure everybody's okay. When did they arrive? They arrived to like the, I think, 11th of January. So that was fast? Oh, my God. They were quickest can be. I mean, Army Corps was on it. Okay. And also the National Guard. They had everybody trying to figure out what to do to make sure that everyone was out. Remember now, they haven't even figured out. They had body dogs, body, what do they call this? Cadabre dogs. Out there, live end, they're two different kinds of dogs, by the way. I had a whole thing on that. So. Two different kinds of cadaver dogs? Yeah. One's look for, no, two different kinds of dogs,

live dogs, dead dogs. Dogs that look for dead bodies, dogs that look for, live bodies. Can I say that right? Not dead dogs. I was like, I just can't imagine bringing a dead dog out to look for. Okay. So what I meant is there are dogs that look for dead bodies and there are dogs that look for live bodies. Okay. All right. Sometimes. I mean, how do you decide? I mean, you imagine the conversation at the pound, you know, it's like, some like weird rocham boat. There's two roads we can go down here. I don't want to look for the dead ones. Give me the live ones. So they did all that and then then they started cleaning. And they did And they were so great. I mean, they were really, really great.

But again, let me just stress, it's 6,800. And what's frustrating is because we're so unorganized in Los Angeles, and I'm sorry to the people in L.A. that are not unorganized because, well, I mean, there's plenty of people in L.A. that are not as unorganized as the overall management. So I apologize to all of you, because I know you're all working hard, Tracy, everybody.

The issue is that you don't have a communication hub that is central for everything else. So all of the math, is from the Army Corps organization. So when you say we're 80% done and you're out of microphone and you're Karen Bass, you're 80% done with what the Army Corps of Engineers is doing. And that's not fair because that's not true.

If you have 18,000 structures that are gone, and those structures are big and small structures, 25,000 people without a place to sleep and 100,000 people displaced, you don't say that when you're 80% done with 6,800, written down organized by the Army Corps, you know, list of structures that were 80% done. It's just a straight up fabrication. And it's a fabrication of the math, and it gives false hope to people that were further along than we are.

Also, everything else is wrong. How many trucks are there? How much debris storage do we need? How much time do we need? How much time does the insurance company need? Where does the debris storage? I mean, I keep reading about the land. and the drama about where we're going to put it and how we're going to get it there and trains and all of this.

I mean, it's complicated. It's like you need to be a quartermaster. You're running a supply chain. Or have an accidentally weird skill set in railroad and a building. Right. Like, I mean, how do you? Who knew? So, like, let's just focus on the debris for a minute. How much is there and where are we going to put it? And what's the hold up? Okay, so everybody has their like secret little talents. Mine is a very weird talent. So I see empty space full in my head. I always have. It's how I like create things. I'm like, what's it going to look like when it's done?

If there's land or a room. And when the palisades burned and I drove Talta Dina and I went through Malibu, I was like, this is a million trucks. This is a million trucks of debris. It broke my heart. Like, it's just rubble. I mean, it's insane.

It's worse than, it's so big. It's far bigger than Gaza. Yeah. Like, think of it like, that. And it's flattened. And they're like, it's not going to be, da, da, da, da, da, and it infuriates me because it's a million trucks. Stop saying that. Because if you know it's a million, you can prepare for that. Instead, we just made it up. So we let them make it up. And just like all the other narratives that you know are not true, we want to believe it's true. And they wanted to believe that 6,800 would do it.

Army Corps is gone or going. They just got like a finish up work. Wait, wait a minute. Six,800 trucks would do the job? Sorry, 6,800 homes was the end of it. And by the way, they're over 400,000 trucks and were half cleaned up. So what's the reasonable expectation? Like, you're eight months into a disaster of this magnitude. How much of the debris should be gone, in your opinion? I don't think the Army Corps and the efforts by FEMA were any less than a thousand percent spot on in incredible. They were very organized. They were fast. They were clean. They were polite. They were truly like, it's going to be very hard to replace that outfit. And now it's independent contractors for people that did not opt-in or things that were not on the list for FEMA to clean period.

Very complicated lots and things that sloped down and big buildings and commercial stuff. There's a lot of stuff that was not on the opt-in list. Those people need a hall route. A hall route is, is this boring? No. Okay. So in order to move debris when you get a permit to build a house, you are going to be digging dirt, for example, because you're putting in a basement. Where are you going to put the dirt? You go to the city and you say, I've got so many cubic yards of dirt, where will I put it? And they're like, you can go this way and you get a permit to take the dirt to a dump or to a specific landfill or a place that needs dirt. That's called, that route is called a hall route. If it's massive quantities, you have to have a hearing for it and you get it approved. And the hall route hearing approves your direction on the road. You're going to go out, you're going to go left, you're going to go this way, or on that freeway. Don't get off there or get off here. That's your hall route. When this first happened, there was this huge big mess. They were driving to all of the

local landfills because they wanted to expedite the delivery of the debris out of the city. So Karen Bass and Gavin Sum and everybody wrote all these executive orders and one of them waived, some of the toxicities that are in the burned debris would be able to go into landfills that maybe weren't able to take that kind of toxic waste. Now, whether this did or did not happen, because I've been challenged on this, it's in writing, but whatever, let's just say it's not true. Do you care if you're a mom with two kids and you live next to the Calabasas landfill, that it may or may not be true that that landfill is toxic? It's the point. You don't just put your trash in someone else's backyard. And that's what we did. And we did a lot, 400,000 trucks

to Silmar and, you know, I don't know, Calabasas, Azusa, Simi Valley. And the mayor of Azusa famously said, I found out about it when you did to Channel 5 News. He didn't know. So they didn't ask anybody. And then they got a big hearing for a hall route. They were fighting over the hall route. and the Board of Supervisors caves and gives them what they want, but it's not actually what everybody thought. It wasn't more volume. It was more loads per day. So, ECC, which was doing all the distributing of funds on behalf of Army Corps and the FEMA FMA, Maytag, got a haul route, but not private individual contractors. They had to have their own relationships. So, all the debris goes into all these local landfills. I think Chloe Kardashian, and if it is you,

Chloe, you should reach out. I'd be happy to talk to you about that. Got really upset and said, well, what are you guys doing? And I said the same thing months earlier. What are we doing? This is too much debris. It needs to leave to a landfill that's not anywhere around here. There's lots of landfill that's designed specifically for this. It's all they're lined, but it's more expensive. It's further away. Plus, if you do lay down yard, you know, the laydown yard is. Kind of? Best to explain.

So lay down yards are really important in big construction. They're prep yards. They're where you separate debris and gravel. There where you would lower in anything that's going to get loaded into a truck and taken off. Lay down yards are usually where the dirt really is. I worked in one once with cement mixers where they drive them at night. Thousands of them and men crawl in the back of those drums with hammers.

because every time that drum spins, right, another layer hardens. So by the end of the day, a space that might have been 30 cubic yards is now 10, and all that's got to be hammered out, right? That's right. And then they dump it into the laydown yard, and then they grind it up. Yep. And they make a big dust pile, and then they, yeah, that's laydown yard. Okay.

So I was, well, little, I felt like a mouse, like, please listen to me. I was like, there's got to be a better way. Why can't we put it on rail? And then I did a white, I love to write white papers. And I randomly found this. It wasn't completely random, but that's a different story because I do, I'm in, I do a lot of stuff with railroad. But I found this place. And it turns out that in 2007, a guy by the name of Michael Kissel, I hope he's watching this, I haven't been able to find him, wrote a white paper on creating a laydown yard in a rail.

setting with loadable rail car access for massive amounts of debris if there was an emergency in Puente Hills, which is 12.4 miles from the epicenter laydown yard in Altadena and 34.4 miles from Chautauqua and PCH. So all of Malibu's debris and all of Altadena's debris and all of Palisades debris could go only freeway directly to that yard, which is more than big enough to take all of the debris because this is railroad. So, you know, you got four, five, six trucks per car. And also, it's designed for it. It's gigantic. It's massive. You still got to get the debris onto the railroad cars, though, right? That's right, but that's what it's for. It's a debris on rail facility. All right. So it's owned by what's called the Los Angeles Sanitation District, and the white

paper was drafted and sent to them. And I can't figure out when it happened, but sometime between 2007, 8, and 2014, they got the $500 million to build it. They built it. It's there. It's beautiful. And it's served by rail to a landfill. It was built basically for this purpose. Correct. And it's served by rail to a landfill. And the landfill is over by the L.A. River cleanup. It's in an area that's designed for this. It's served by Union Pacific. They built seven miles of custom rail to make it work. And the landfill is 600 million cubic yards, and it's empty.

It's closed. And they've rented the Puente Hills facility and the landfill to a trucking company for storage. It's just the white covers, okay, for $150,000 a month for multiple years because they can't figure out how to own and operate it. Oh my God. So instead of mobilizing like an army and moving the trucking company, which by the way, were perfectly fine to move, I did two hauling routes. I went to the Pueente Hills. I took pictures.

I met everybody. I went to the landfill and mesquite. I took picture. I did everything. Instead of just saying, this is a great idea, the email's unopened. It sits in the box. I can see the email to Gavin. It's not open.

So I got so frustrated. So this is in the governor's inbox. Unopened. Gavin, unopened. So I got so frustrated that I call Bobby Kennedy because I love Bobby, such a great guy. I called him and I said, oh my God, I'm so frustrated. I need help. And he goes, what's up?

And I said, can you read this? I sent him my white paper. He read my white paper, obviously, because he's like interested and curious and knows how to mobilize. and he sent it to Lee Zeldin. Okay, seven hours later, Lee Zeldin has Eric Amadon and his whole team on it. Seven hours.

This is the head of EPA. The head of EPA. These guys are on it. And so just my experience is always the same. Conservative people, whether you like them or not,

are workers. There are people that work and move things all the time and they're always working. and they're always doing and they're always like creating and going forward because that's what their passion is versus like this whole like maybe someone else will do it mentality and I feel like our government is not in all conservative they're like waiting for something to happen to them in life it feels somebody said to me the other day that it just feels like a a conspicuous lack of

urgency yes and if you're not if this doesn't I just can't imagine living where you live. You had a front row seat to all of this. I was here. I just landed the day the fires started and had a front row seat to a degree to it. I'll remember it the rest of my life. But for the people who really call this place home, that is going to be a defining catastrophic event. And if that doesn't break the spell of just mismanagement. I mean, mismanagement implies a level of action that's misguided. You're not talking about any. Good point.

What management? You're talking about emails that aren't being opened. You're talking about facilities, big investments that were built. It's like the fire extinguishers are within reach. The structure is fully involved. But we're going to have a conversation about whether or not to access the fire extinguishers. It makes no sense. And I think people listening in different parts of the country are just shaking their head and going, you know something?

Governments like TV, you get what you deserve. And these guys have got the government they deserve for a whole bunch of reasons. And it's California and throw in the gerrymandering conversation and everything else. I think, I don't know if you've thought much about it or if you care, but the rest of the country, so much of the country doesn't know. how to think about California. They're exhausted by our identity crisis, I think. They're just exhausted by it. And where a lot of people would normally feel sympathy,

they don't. They just shake their head. And they go, you know what, that's a lot of rich people in a beautiful part of the world that elected a bunch of bums. And now they're reaping what they sowed. Well, I would like to go on record and say that my love for California is beyond explainable in this podcast. And part of that is because of the people

that I've met since I've been here. There's no place more cosmopolitan. There's no bigger diversity in terms of the kind of people you meet. There's no harder working people. There's lots of people, but they work really hard. And the most successful people and everything from the acting community to the farming community, it's a true American dream community. And the current administration is sabotaging it, which is frustrating, not just Hollywood. They sabotage everything. And I don't know if it's but design or accident. I mean, honestly, don't want to give them enough credit to say it's by design. I think it's literally like so busy trying to get elected to the next position that you're so busy hustling that, that you're not really doing your job.

It just, I mean, it's not, there's no, look at Gavin's been playing at this, you know, presidential thing for well over the last few years. And to me, he's, he's, never even here. Your leader's not there. I don't even know about Karen Bass. I cannot find. I've asked people, like, did you vote for Karen Bass? I can't find a single person. So who are these people? Because I know a lot of people. I know people inside of California. I know union people. I know San Diego people. San Francisco. I can't find anybody that voted for this woman. So our systems are screwed up. Our management is screwed up and our resources are squandered. We have no money. We're like $300 billion in debt now or something crazy.

or will be when he leaves, whatever. And with no money, no power, and no know-how, nothing is going to get resolved. And I do not believe for a minute that that's not going to change because this hit Democratic Ground Zero. And these are the people that make this state great. So these people in the palisades, these people that are friends of mine,

need to take a minute and really think about who they want to run the state. Because we can't repeat this. It can't be, you know, some assembly person from San Diego. I'm not even going to name names. There are 50 people running for mayor. There is not a single person or governor. Single, not one. I read every one of them.

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American Giant, American Made. Okay, so let's start with the fact that you can't raise money. If I say I'm going to be governor, I'm going to run, I'm having a campaign, you have to actually have a campaign committee. Once you form a campaign committee, you have to have a treasurer. and the treasurer has to have a bank account and that money has to be managed by the treasurer in the campaign committee because of campaign financing laws. So it's kind of set up like that,

which is sort of edgy because who's to say that every campaign, you know, treasurer person is, you know, truly, you know, on the up and up? Right. And you've met all the requirements by just having one. There's like probably a 4% charge for credit card charges and Bitcoin charges and things like that if you're like, you know, raising money

and somebody goes on your QR code and gives you money. So you pay that goes out right away. And then the management of this campaign costs money. So that goes out right away. So how large is the average campaign committee? How many people are we talking? You only required to have two, yourself and one treasurer.

Oh, no. It's crazy. I mean, it's crazy. I'm sure as it gets bigger and you get bigger. And if you do have a path to winning, that maybe that changes. But I'm just making the point. Like, anyone can run. In order to run, you got to declare, got to have a treasure, got to form a committee.

but the two of you are enough to justify the enterprise. That's right. You and I could do it. Yeah, we could run all over the country going, yeah, woo. And then you could talk about your show, and I could talk about my train. And we could raise money. Right, and we could raise as much money as we want. Millions. And it's all covered under our campaign stuff. What do you mean covered? Wait, who's going to be the treasurer, though? You or me.

Rock paper, scissors, baby. That's the way to do it, I think. That's the only sensible. And then we just, you know, chitty chat about everything. And then you've got like this, you're raising a lot of money and you're talking about, like, Leo, Zaki, talking about his chickens and everybody talking about their stuff. I'm just like, what are you? What?

Let's say we decide to do it. I'll be the treasure. You run for governor. All right. All right. We do it. We go out in the world. I start talking about dirty jobs.

I'm going to give you a hundred bucks and I want you to get to a million dollars. Yeah, you know, I guess we can turn into a TV show. But let's just say we go out there and people really dig what we're screaming and they like it. And we raise $10 million. And then, you know, this happens, that happens. And we decide for whatever. a reason, you know, sorry, we got to shut it down. We're not going to... You always have that campaign fund sitting there to be used for campaigning.

What do you mean? Where's the 10 million go? You don't give it back. No, it just sits in the account if you didn't spend it. If you didn't spend it and it sits in the account and you're no longer running, I don't understand. I mean, I suppose you would keep it in the account and run for something else or run down, what they call run down. People run down. I mean, why stop running? You got a campaign. and you're out there. But can you legally take that money that you've raised out of the campaign

and then go back to your private life with that money? Well, I mean, I guess if you're Kamala Harris, you can because that's what happened. Really? I mean, well, first of all, I'm sure some people caught this, and I certainly did. When you register, you have a registration number,

and Biden had a registration number, and Kamala had a registration number. And when they first swapped out the Biden-Kamala thing, they used Biden's registration number for a while. Someone caught it and it was gone. But I caught it. I took a screenshot of it. Really?

Yeah, really. You really are a jagged little pill. It pissed me off. And then they also took all the money. And then they paid like all these friends of theirs, tens of millions of dollars, Beyonce and Oprah, all these people, they paid them. And then all those people were like, no, I did it for free. They did not do it for free.

So wait. And now all the money's gone. I think she owes like $25 million to her campaign fund, which was actually Biden's campaign fund. Maybe she couldn't run for governor because she doesn't have any money. She's $25 million in the hole or something. It's a grift. The whole thing's a grift. It's absolutely a grift.

And also in California, listen, guys, it's a runoff race. So if too many people are running, we'll lose. Because if you get 2%, 3%, a little bit here, okay, one guy's like running around following you. That's one less person voting for the one person that could run it. So if you see a clear leader, drop out. If somebody is really good, drop out. And there's not really, what do you call it a primary?

Because it's a runoff race. Right. So it's kind of they can call it a primary and they can say we're going to, the Democratic Party's got to endorse someone. So they'll probably endorse maybe Katie Porter because she seems to be leading. But like it's the, I'm going to say something very unpopular, but it's like it doesn't matter right now if you're getting 16% or 15% of nothing because no one else is running.

When somebody really emboldened and really smart runs, then it'll make a difference. Is Gavin going to run for a president? Yeah. And the DNC, they're going to, these dummies are going to fund it. Who's going to run the state? This state? Yeah.

Oh, gosh. That is, I don't know. I mean, I know this girl that had this shoe shine business once upon a time. And then, you know, it's this denim thing and then this rags thing. Rags to riches. Yeah. And now she seems kind of cranky. and she's, her kids are grown, and she seems to be, she's got a pebble in her shoe, you know.

I have a pee in my mattress. Yes. I am, what an amazing opportunity to seize if you're the right person. And the right time. And the right time. And I can only say this, it's a huge job. And it's almost impossible. to be qualified to do it truly.

And I think the difference between having success at being a governor of a state this size is through the participation of the people that you ask for help. There's just too much to fix. It's really big.

And there are so many people out there individually that you could put together on a team that could write the ship if you were only willing to ask for help. And that's the problem that we have now. Karen Bash should have asked for help, and not from Steve Sobrough. She should have said, she should have gone to Ron Tudor or somebody meaningful. And it goes back.

I'm sorry, but it was like Jeff's point this morning. It's still the emperor has no clothes. It's still like, why didn't she ask for help? It feels like part of the reason is because you can't acknowledge the naked emperor. You can't look at unprecedented homelessness in D.C. and say, okay, that is a problem. Maybe we should do this to fix it instead of this. What you have to do instead is say, there's nothing to see. There is no homeless problem.

There is no crime problem. There is no palisades problem. There is no debris removal problem. There's nothing to see here. Well, admitting that you have a problem is the first. My name's Elaine. I have a problem. I'm sorry, but I have a problem.

A few problems. I mean, first of all, I think that there's, we haven't had a lieutenant governor in three decades that really moved the needle either. And the lieutenant governor's job is primarily to bring new business into the state. And we've done the opposite. We are run business out of the state, California. I love this state. My office is in this state. My best friend moved here 45 years ago or whatever.

You moved here. I don't know what it was. You've been here a long time. Chuck's stuck here with you and this state. I'm stuck. 87. That's what I moved. 87. You know, now look, I'm friendly with Joe Rogan. And when he talks about why he left and how happy he was to leave, a part of me is like, man, I, he's not really. He's not. He's just fibbing you. He's gaming. He's not either. There's no way. I'm sure he loves it in a lot of ways, but there is nobody that, look. Oh, you're saying he doesn't love Austin as much as he's saying. No, he loves Austin. I don't believe, Joe, I don't believe you.

But I do, I believe. Well, look, I don't disbelieve him because I think that you can hit a critical mass of just exhaustion with a person you love, a business you love, or a state you love. Right? I think, I think you get to the point. get like, and sometimes like I get basically what I would call extended deal fatigue. I'm just like, wait, are we at this again? But I shot two series and a movie.

One in Georgia, the other in Oklahoma. I would have loved to have filmed them here. I would have loved to have done all that for this community. And it would have wildly simplified my life. But the incentives, Elaine, it's just, I mean, you're a developer. It's so fixable, though. That's a fixable thing. This is the thing I always try to hang on to, and I wish everybody would.

Nothing has changed here. It's the best topography. It's the best weather. It's the most beautiful. It's an incredible lifestyle. The ocean is insane. The animals are insane. The people are insane.

The restaurants are insane. It's fabulous. It's easy to get in, easy to get out, close to everything. Go down to Mexico. We have this cute little island. It's perfect. When you say insane, you're just being... It's beautiful.

It's insanely beautiful. Empical. Fabulous. Wonderful. The only thing that's wrong is the management. It's just the government. If you get rid of the government and get in a new government, we're back. We are back.

We have got to get rid of the insanity. What the hell would Texas do? That's a good point. If California went. I would go back to be in Texas. They wouldn't care at all. Texas, the thing about Texans is they're pretty resilient. I don't know that they like the hoopla.

Yeah. You know, real Texans are probably like, oh, God, here comes. Here we go again. And by the way, be careful over there because you know what happens when you invite all the Democrats to your state. They vote Democrats. And there's a lot, a lot of examples of that. How's Montana, by the way? Big.

Yeah. Big sky. Big sky. Beautiful. Dakota's are beautiful. You know, my mom says that about Colorado. She's like, it has to be so conservative. Well, I mean, look, I think sometimes, you know, and listeners have heard me say this a bunch.

I'm not rooting for it or wishing for it. But sometimes things have to go splat. We're splatted. You want it to be more splatted. than this? No, I don't. We are literally like Humpty Dumpty. Are you kidding? It's like, well then, where is the strawman drang?

Where is the protest? For that? Are people just so anesthetized? Well, Madison McQueen did a poll my friend Owen. Oh my gosh. They did a poll and you get a line, I get a poll. It said,

Crawled, crawl that feeling fine, honey. Crawl that, crawl that feeling fine, baby. You get a line and I'll get a poll. We'll go fishing to crawl that hole, honey, baby, oh, mine. Okay, so 48% of California is conservative. 48%. Is that right? That is correct.

I heard 40, but okay, 48%. 48%. The problem is registration. People have a hard time, and I'm one of those people. Registering Republican, when you register a Republican, and you're from California and you're from California, and you're at the driver's license bureau, and you're going to check the box Republican, it's hard. because you're like, why is it not working?

But check the box red. I mean, just register red. Because it sends a message to Sacramento that we're done. It doesn't matter. You can vote for whoever you want, but stop voting blue right now because it's bad. Chuck, give me the Mark Twain quote again. Because look, as you search for it, I agree with you. I hate the fact that the only way to talk about what we're talking about is to make it red versus blue or conservative

versus liberal. But we have to call it something. And what you're asking people to do sounds real simple. Just check this box instead of that box. It's so easy. It's the first step. The business of checking is easy, but what you're asking them to do

is abandon their identity and admit the thing that Mark Twain says they can't, which is we were fooled. We were lied to by the people that we voted for and we've participated unwittingly perhaps in a grift. And now the only way to fix it is to have a little talk with myself. I can't just check the box until I go, you know something, I was fleeced. Right?

And that's going to be hard for people. And I mean, I've talked to some people who live in the Palisades and one in Altadena who have changed their political worldview. precisely because of the mismanagement you're talking about, but they lost everything. That's a splat. Yes. I don't want for everybody to have to lose everything in order to have that kind of parapetia. Okay, here's an easy thing.

Right now, there's a lot of scuttlebutt going on with Texas and with Gavin Newsom and the Democrats that walked out over the redistricting and relining the borders of certain districts. That's your gerrymandering. Geremanderin. And my message to people in California is this. If Gavin Newsom is proposing it, say no to it, because Gavin's leaving. And we've been under the, you know, guys that Gavin Newsom has done a fine job running state. He's leaving us with $300 billion of debt. And our state is burned down.

I don't know how we're going to do the Olympics without help from Trump. And my guess is he's not going to leave us a parting gift that is a present that we want to open. My guess is the pushing of this agenda and many other things is really bad for us and for the state, because it's pushing us further left when what we need is to try to find our center. We're off balance. And just vote for absolutely nothing that Gavin Newsom wants us to do at the end of this. It's a special election, too. and he does not have enough time.

It's a 120 days supermajority to do this, and he's going to do it in 90 days, and it's just not right. So don't vote for that. And yes, you guys, the Democrats might lose some seats. So what? We need to. We're out of balance.

We're not checking balance. Well, it's certainly not. How many seats does the state have in total? Well, this is for five. Five two? And this is for five, I think five more Democratic seats. Right now it's 43 to 9. Democrats to Republicans. Right. And what people need to understand is that, you know, our farmers and our supply chain, our unions, our pay, and all of these things, they require conservative management. And the further we get away from that, the further we enslave ourselves to the state debt. And that's the problem. And people don't understand. We cannot afford it. We have got to have some conservative reins on our checkbook. Well, look, I'll tell you this. If you're right about 48%. It's true.

You know, 25% of California is not registered to vote. They'll vote conservative. They say they're conservatives, but both Democratic and, yeah. So what's the percent? If you've got 52 seats. Oh, that's right. So and nine. How many of the 52 seats are Democratic?

I think it's almost all of them. 43. Yeah, 43 and nine Republicans. So if you were looking at what I think a lot of people would agree as kind of a rational reflection, the basic makeup of a state per capita would be reflected in their seats. So that means 48% of 52 would be on the right, and 52% of 52 would be on the left, and that margin would be more like six or seven instead of 43.

That's not realistic if you're gerrymandering and screwing around with the books all the time. But what are we going to be left with in the country? We had two million signatures to recall. Paul Gavin Newsom the first time and he wasn't recalled. You know how hard it is to get two million signatures? I do. I do. It's challenging.

We've got some serious problems. You know how does he get two million listeners? Not for you. I think I just lost about half of them. Thank you. Hey, you're going to get new ones that are really, really nice people. Look, man, I think, you know, people listen to this. You're going to get all the farmers.

You know what? Farmers are always welcome here. You're going to get the Central Valley. I mean, that was dirty jobs. Farmers and miners. You're going to get everyone in railroad. And railroad's the biggest real estate holder in the United States. All the live long day.

And there's nothing really, really loosey, goosey liberal about railroad and farming. They're just conservative people. The muscular trades is our friend Victor Davis. And the ports? Any port in a store. Import, export. Okay, look, I got to wrap it up. Where do people go to learn more about specifically, I'm talking to Californiaans now.

Where can they go to learn more about what you're up to what this shoe shine girl is turned into and how they might help if they're so inclined in your Sisyphian task? Well, I'm working diligently in the Pacific Palisades to put together a Pacific Palisades building department, the city of Pacific Palisades Building Department on sunset in the village. What we're fighting about right now, this is so great, this is so epic. the landlord who wanted to donate the space gets lost use insurance, and the insurance company wants to take away his lost use while he donates the space. So we're working through that, and then we're going to have a nice spot there in the village. I'm very easy to reach on lipstick farmer. Hashtag lipstick farmer and Instagram, because I am a baby boomer,

and lipstick farmer is easy for me to operate. And I have a website, of course, that Elaine Colladi, and you can also find me on everything, Twitter, and the norms. And now you can find me if you just ask Mike. He has my number. Oh, wow. I know how to find you. And you will officially or unofficially

begin referring to the third swan as Gibbons. From here on out. There's no question about it. And I'm going to start reciting poetry so the next time I get in here, I can one up you. Final question. It's a layup. But in a sentence or two,

what would you tell people who know in their bones that Donald Trump should not be leading this country? They know it, and they'll never come around to his way of thinking, but who live in this state and share your basic concern. How should they think about what to do? Oh, okay. I'm so controversial today. I want to say that it's really going to be wonderful to have the Olympics here.

It would be amazing. I would prefer that it's not embarrassing, and there's so much work to do for that to happen. I would prefer that we have somebody who's put together already an Olympic task force who is willing to show up here and invest money in our state. We are out of the federal conversation, and I don't think people understand that. Because of the rift between Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump, we are completely left out of the conversation, which means we don't have federal assistance when we need it, and we need it. And it might be very hard, you know, to swallow your tongue and whatever, kiss the ring,

whatever you want to say, we need federal assistance because our current administration has lost or stolen or who knows all of our money. We don't have any money. If you don't have any money, you don't have any power. And if you don't have any power, you don't have any way to solve your problem. Spoken like a true hybrid, an undercover billionaire, a lipstick farmer, a former shoe shine gal from rags to I'm tempted to say riches, but I'll just say it. You're living a big life. I'm really glad you did this. I'm a pleasure to meet you. Thank you for giving me the platform and I really appreciate it. My pleasure. Elaine Collotti. See you next week.

If you like what you heard and even if you don't, won't you please? Won't you please please please? Pretty loves grow. Well, I hate to beg and I hate pretty. The ocean delights us as playful otters restore coastal kel forests. The ocean teaches us how out-churched. choices impact even the deepest places. The ocean connects us. Visit Monterey Bay Aquarium.org slash connects.

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