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Jan. 15, 2021 - Epoch Times
47:35
Why California Isn’t What It Used To Be | Rabbi Dov Fischer
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We want to talk to you about how California has changed.
California actually has become the socialist worst nightmare.
It has become a state for the very rich and very poor.
When you moved here, was there much bigger middle class and less divide between rich and poor?
People didn't really talk a lot about the middle class.
There wasn't so much discussion of class consciousness.
Back in 1987, 88, 89, it was a very good time in California.
What about the jobs?
Was it similar the way the jobs were, the pay, than what it is now?
California still is one of the world's largest economies, if it were, country unto itself.
But it's losing important jobs.
It's losing middle class jobs.
And what do you think people can do about this?
Regardless of your politics, when you have a one-party state or a one-party society, it's never good that you have politicians in Sacramento out of touch.
They speak about helping the little guy.
They're so far out of touch from the little guy that they pass laws that force the little guy to raise millions of dollars to say, stop helping me so much.
Leave me alone and let me live.
Do you think people need to change the way they vote and actually pay attention to different politicians based on their policies and characters?
People need to consider sending a message by voting the other way.
It's an American tradition to throw the bums out if they're not doing a good job.
Californians need to think in those terms also.
To throw the bums out.
And frankly, if the other party comes in and they don't do better, then throw those bums out.
So that they know the only way they're going to hold their chops is by doing the things that people need and that people want.
Because if you don't throw the bums out right now, the people in power are absolutely convinced that they cannot be defeated.
The trend of people moving out of California leaves many wondering what is happening to the Golden State.
My guest today is Rabbi Dov Fisher of Young Israel of Orange County.
He's a professor of law at UC Irvine and Loyola Law Schools.
He will explain how the state has changed over the last few decades and what Californians can do to reverse this trend.
Welcome to California Insider.
Rabbi Dov, it's great to have you on.
Welcome.
Thank you so much.
Great to be here.
We want to talk to you about how California has changed.
In your opinion, California has changed over the 30 years.
You've been here for 35 years or 30 years?
Yes, I arrived in 1987.
Tell me how it is now and how it was before.
Well, I'll tell you.
It's easier for me to tell you how it was before.
First of all, I came here and interestingly in 1987 people told me, as I arrived from New York, they told me that the California they came to in 1970, when they came from New York, no longer was the California of 1987.
First of all, The climate, and I don't mean the geographical, sun, global climate.
The social climate changed.
This is like the New York I remember.
Now, it may be that 33 years later, New York is 33 years worse also.
I don't know.
But in parts of California, you also don't look people in the eye anymore.
In parts of California, we now have homelessness.
We did not have homelessness then.
The idea that there are certain neighborhoods you have to stay away from because they are populated by people who are homeless, who will accost you.
There are needles and drugs on the street.
I had never before, I'd read about the homeless problem in downtown LA. I never before physically saw it.
It was horrifying what happened to Los Angeles.
This is not La La Land.
This is not the sunny Los Angeles I remember, so that's one issue.
The homelessness is out of control.
The second problem, I made a reference to the traffic.
It should be 40 minutes, 45 minutes from downtown LA to my home in Orange County.
It now is two hours, with even mild traffic, not only during rush hour, but three o'clock in the afternoon.
As I mentioned, sometimes I teach night class, sometimes I teach in the day hours.
And to drive from a 45-minute drive should take two hours.
That has all kinds of ramifications.
It destroys an aspect of the joy of life, the lifestyle, because suddenly you're devoting four hours.
If a person driving to work during rush hour, which is when people drive to work, and driving home during rush hour, when people drive to work, that means you're putting four hours a day in a car just trying to commute.
And it's horrific.
That destroys your lifestyle.
And we can have an interesting discussion.
What caused this?
It probably includes a massive influx of people who are not skilled.
And therefore, this is my theory, they are not able to find work close to home because their skills, their resume, Do not immediately get them jobs when they apply.
They have to take whatever they can get.
And what seems to have happened, in my opinion, is that people who live in the San Fernando Valley, who used to work in the San Fernando Valley, now will take a job in Orange County if that's all they can get.
And people in Orange County, who used to work in Orange County, will take a job in the San Fernando Valley if that's all they can get.
So the next thing you know, you have everybody on the freeway.
It's not that more people are buying cars now than before, but now the influx of the people with the long distance commuting, the roads are not the same.
There are more potholes.
It's another problem that I certainly remember from New York.
We didn't have that here in California then.
There are other subtle things.
Some of my very dearest friends Have moved out of California to Arizona, Nevada, and Texas to run away from the taxes.
They've run away from taxes to Texas.
And I asked them, when it's one person or two people...
Come on, I moved from New York to California?
Okay.
But it is a stream.
It's no longer just a person who...
It's ideological.
I'm a rabbi of a congregation, as well as a law professor, as well as a writer.
And I speak to members of my congregation who have moved or are moving.
They tell me, Rabbi, you know, I'm retiring now.
I have a fixed income pension plus Social Security.
If I move to Nevada or Arizona or Texas, I could live a pretty decent life.
It's tax-free.
The state taxes, no state taxes.
Prices are lower.
Here in Southern California, I was able to keep up while I was working because the salaries are higher.
Not that you get richer, but that's what they have to pay in order to be able to live here.
Now that I'm on a fixed income, I got to get out.
So these could be people, liberal or conservative.
Why do you think the cost of living is so high here?
Again?
Why do you think the cost of living is so high here?
You have a lot of factors.
First of all, because the taxes are high, very high state income taxes, and we pay extra taxes on our gasoline like nobody pays.
Our gasoline is about 50 cents a gallon more than anywhere else.
When I read that gas prices have gone down to such and such, it's a whole different universe from California.
Because of the high taxes, state income taxes, real estate taxes, taxes on gasoline, other taxes, employers have to pay more to hold their employees.
So there's more money in the system being paid out.
What happens in an economy when everybody is paid more?
Prices go up.
Because the supply and demand, the law of supply and demand.
So let's say milk is a dollar a quart everywhere.
But if everybody suddenly is getting twice as much income, so the people who sell milk can up the price to twice as much.
Because people have that money.
So you have high taxes, causing higher salaries, causing people to raise prices.
Now you have a bigger problem with land, housing.
Here's what's going on with housing.
California has enormous amounts of zoning rules.
In wealthy communities and above average economic demographics, they are zoned in a way to prevent multi-unit housing and frankly, even to prevent new housing construction.
In other words, I'm rich in Malibu or Beverly...
I don't want to let anybody else...
I don't want other people to come into this neighborhood.
That's the mindset.
Exactly.
So what they've done is, you can't build new housing.
It goes on in San Francisco.
Big problem in San Francisco and the Silicon Valley.
You cannot build new housing because of the zoning.
But you do have new people coming in, more people coming in.
So supply and demand raises the prices of the housing.
The landlord who's about to sell a house Suddenly realizes there's such a higher demand and above average demand that they can raise prices ridiculously high.
I have a dear friend who lives in Seattle.
About five years ago, he saw my home and he said to me, Dov, what did you pay for your home?
$600,000, $700,000?
I told him it's over a million bucks.
He couldn't believe it.
He lives in Seattle.
He said the same house for which I had to pay over a million, he could buy for maybe five, six hundred thousand dollars.
And that's Seattle.
Seattle is not, you know, a dirt pit.
But what's happened is I live in a lovely community where they have zoning.
I did not create the zoning rules, but they're not going to have, they restrict housing, new construction.
So that raises prices everywhere.
Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Los Angeles.
And by the way, it also increases rent.
So not only does the house cost more, it costs more to rent.
Now, add to that, that we have all these special rules that, like in many parts of California, they restrict landlords from raising the rents.
That's an interesting thing.
The theory is that by rent control, you're going to protect people with less money, preventing them from getting hit hard with high rent increases.
What happens instead is that by having rent control, number one, landlords decide it's not profitable to stay in the Turn their homes into condominiums and they sell them as condominiums.
So they won't rent.
So they won't rent there.
So they won't rent.
And others do not build more affordable rental type units properties because there's not as much money to be made in there.
So what ends up happening is By the government restricting rent and putting in rent controls, what they've actually done is that also has raised the price of rentals in the community and throughout the state.
So with housing so expensive and with taxes so high and with all these factors and with people of skill fleeing California, While people with lesser skills are moving in, needing the state's very, very generous social services, you end up with a situation that is turning into an economic nightmare.
Side by side with the traffic problem.
Side by side with the homelessness.
And it's a shame.
But we do have a lot of innovation here.
You know, we have Silicon Valley.
We have some tech entrepreneurs here.
We have some biotech, life sciences, medical devices.
And...
What do you think of those?
We have still a lot going on for us.
Do you think this is a start of people gradually moving out or do you think that these type of industries are safe and then certain other people are moving out?
That's a great question.
I think what's happening is, if you remember, oh, it goes back to 20 years ago, maybe, John Edwards.
John Edwards, when he was running for president, vice president, he was John Kerry's running mate.
And before that, he was running for president himself.
And John Edwards talked about two Americas, that there were two Americas that were forming, a rich and a poor.
And a lot of activists on the socialist side of the scale often complain about the rich and the poor.
That's what's happened to California.
It's ironic that California, a blue state, not a red state.
No, it's like the most blue state.
Republicans don't win any offices here.
But California actually has become the socialist worst nightmare.
It has become a state for the very rich and the very poor.
The very poor come in.
They know about California's very, very generous social services.
So why go to North Dakota that will not provide that kind of social service?
California will give you pretty much everything.
So we have an influx of people that need to draw on social services.
The middle class are fleeing.
And the wealthy, they're going to be okay.
The wealthy are fine.
You mentioned certain industries, Silicon Valley.
Other industries that are at the heart of California, they'll be fine.
Rich people know how to avoid a lot of the things that the government institutes supposedly to get money out of them.
So when the government, let's say, is going to increase taxes to soak the rich, the rich know how to find the really good tax attorneys Clever and smart and gifted thinkers who really know how to look at the law.
They engineer entities in different ways of moving money internationally.
They know how to do it.
You always read about how Amazon pays no taxes.
How does that happen?
Because they know what to do.
And when you moved here, was there a big, so it seems like the middle class is moving out and that middle class getting squeezed out is causing a lot of problems.
When you moved here, was there a much bigger middle class and less divide between rich and poor?
I believe so.
I don't even think people...
People didn't really talk a lot about the middle class.
There wasn't so much discussion of class consciousness back in 1987, 88, 89.
Those are the...
Those are the end of the George Bush years, moving into the Bill Clinton years.
It was a very good time in California.
It was the beginning of the Silicon Valley boom.
No one quite perceived yet that Silicon Valley would become not only a center of high tech, but an incredibly expensive place to live for the richest of the rich.
We know about all the tycoons now in Silicon Valley.
People did not think at that time in terms of middle class as much.
So what you had was people who did not own things in Silicon Valley would go to Silicon Valley and work there.
I want to get a job.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Amazon, whoever's up in Silicon Valley.
Google, Apple.
Yeah, Google, Apple, Yahoo.
I want to get a job in Silicon Valley.
And you live near your work.
Today, what's going on?
People who work in Silicon Valley, who try to get work there, they can't afford to live there.
So you even read, it was about a year ago, I read an article in the Washington Post, an op-ed, by some lady who was talking about how she was living with like three or four people in a small one-bedroom apartment.
Because they couldn't even afford to live in the community where they were working.
Silicon Valley is that wealthy.
Again, I must say, my home, I can't complain.
It's gone up 50%.
It's over a million bucks.
And that's what's happened.
We've seen the middle class get squeezed out.
How do you buy a house?
If you just can't even put down the down payment.
So it's a real shame.
What about the jobs?
Was it similar, the way the jobs were, the pay, than what it is now?
It feels like, look, California still has jobs.
It still has employment.
Here in Orange County, there's a lot of pharmaceutical industry opportunities.
Again, we've been talking about Silicon Valley.
California still is one of the world's largest economies, if it were, country unto itself.
But it's losing important jobs.
It's losing middle class jobs.
And it's not just theoretical.
It's not just...
It's one thing when you're reading about it.
It's another thing when you make a phone call to someone and they just moved, or they're in the process of moving.
Now, how do you think California can get out of this?
Is there a way out?
It's a good question.
Some of it is political.
Some of it is practical.
I think what often happens in America...
And this I speak as a former New Yorker.
When things are going well, Americans in certain parts of the country like to go liberal and progressive.
They feel everything is really, really good for me and let me share my largesse with everyone else, my good fortune with everyone else.
I feel guilty living so well while others don't have it.
So let me share and let me go easy.
Let's have people get out of prison.
Let's go easier on prison.
Let's go easier on crime.
Let's give more social services.
And what happens is we do that.
And cities, one day you wake up and see something happened to our city.
What happened here?
What happened here?
And when it gets bad enough, in many cities people turn around and say, let's go the other direction.
So, for example, I lived in New York, New York City, and things were really good.
And the city, therefore, shared its wealth.
And then one day people woke up and saw what happened.
And they elected Rudy Giuliani.
And they made a shift to the right.
And they re-elected Rudy Giuliani.
He was there eight years.
And then Giuliani cleaned up the city, cleaned up crime, got the place cleaned up.
The people held on elected Michael Bloomberg, staying with a man that at that time presented as a Republican.
And now New York has been going with Bill de Blasio because it was kind of like the city got cleaned up.
So now it's time to be more liberal again and more forthcoming and sharing of social services.
And now we may see under de Blasio the way things are going.
Sooner or later, there'll probably be a shift over the other way.
Los Angeles went through something like that during the time I've been here.
There was one point where things got a little sketchy, and they elected a guy named Richard Reardon for two terms.
He was a moderate Republican.
And things got really nice again.
The economy straightened out, and he did some really good stuff.
And then the city went the other direction.
California right now It's very, very strongly blue state Democrat.
So in the foreseeable future, one cannot really imagine that this state will go Republican or shift, even with Democrats, to a more conservative or moderate approach.
But I think that what will happen is what we saw when they had a recall of Governor Gray Davis, a Democrat liberal.
Things were falling apart.
It finally got too bad.
And then people elected Arnold Schwarzenegger, who presented as a more moderate but more conservative Republican.
I think what is going to have to happen in California is at some point there's going to have to be a day of reckoning.
And if you have a president of the United States and a Democrat Congress that is inclined to send federal funds to keep propping up this California economy this way, it will delay the day of reckoning.
But sooner or later, there's going to be a day of reckoning because they're going to run out of money.
What happens is as the taxpayer base flees the state and as the incoming people come in seeking social services from a very generous state, at some point, unless there's an external source of ongoing money that just keeps propping it up, California will have to bite a bullet.
Now, the bullet will either be that they changed politically or even Democrats are going to have to figure out what they've got to do to keep things from falling apart because they don't want to lose the golden goose they have if they blow it and it goes Republican.
There's a terrible risk if they really run the state into the ground.
If it ever convinces Hispanics here in California that The Democrat progressive way is not the way.
If the Hispanics ever move over to a more conservative Republican way, that's going to turn this whole state around.
But there's going to have to be a reckoning soon yet.
And furthermore, there's that spending irresponsibly like the bullet train, where they decided to spend billions and billions and billions of dollars On a train that's going to take people from, let's say, parts of eastern California, the San Joaquin Valley up to San Francisco.
And the train still isn't ready.
It's been going on for years and years and years and years and years.
Every time they announce how much the train's going to cost, it goes up more and more and more and more.
Still isn't built.
They have less and less money, and it's that kind of thing they've been doing.
They've just been pouring money down the drain, and it's a concern.
What do you think people can do, the Californians, our audience, about this?
Pray?
I'm a rabbi.
If you're Jewish, join my congregation.
We're in Irvine, and we'll pray together.
So, if you're not Jewish, I guess join my congregation also.
We'll all pray.
What we can do is pray.
Because what can we do?
We have no...
You see, when you have, regardless of your politics, when you have a one-party state or a one-party society, it's never good.
We saw what happened in Alaska.
When the Republicans had everything.
Next thing you know, they're building bridges to nowhere.
But I thought Republicans are so prudent and financially conservative.
What happened in 1994 when Newt Gingrich had the contract with America and the Republicans took over the House and now we're going to have financial prudence and financial responsibility?
And what you see happen is when one party has complete control and the other party is in disarray, What ends up happening is that the people lose influence.
Do you think people need to change the way they vote by not considering themselves as one party or the other party and actually pay attention to different politicians based on their policies and characters?
Yeah, I actually have long believed that That one of the real reasons that African Americans have been left behind, and are always left behind, and that new minority groups come in, people from South Korea, and they leapfrog the African Americans.
Hispanics with no money, and they leapfrog the African Americans.
People from other areas, India, and they leapfrog the African American.
I believe one of the reasons has nothing to do with systemic racism.
If it were systemic racism, then people from India also wouldn't be able to make a living.
The problem for African Americans, and by the way, for Californians, likewise, is once you are in the pocket of one party, once the party believes they've got you in their pocket, African Americans on a national scale, the Democrats don't have to do anything for them because they've got them anyway.
So the Democrats have to run after the non-African Americans to try to win those votes.
The African Americans, they don't have to bother with.
And in the same way in California, as long as people here are lockstep voting one way, then the people in Sacramento, our state capitol, have very little reason to To try to be concerned about what those people want, what the voters want, and what's good for the public.
I got a personal education one day.
I got a ticket.
I was driving, and I had not closed my seatbelt.
And I think the ticket, I don't remember, it was like $50.
And I could have paid 50 bucks.
But first of all, I felt the ticket was unfair because I simply had loosened my seatbelt for a minute to pull a tissue out of my pocket to blow my nose.
And I felt that if I had to drive with my nose not blown, I would have been a greater danger to society than if I took my seat up for two minutes, and the cop hit me with a ticket.
And you know that I was so desirous of sneezing on the cop.
This is before COVID. Anyway, I decided the ticket's not fair, and I am a lawyer, and I am a law professor, and I never go to traffic court, and I ought to go to traffic court anyway, Not only to fight an unfair ticket, but just to expand my knowledge.
I deal with the big kind of legalism.
To see how it works, right?
Right.
The million dollar cases in the federal courts.
It's been a long time since I've been to a traffic court.
Let me see what's going on.
So I go to traffic court.
I'm like the only white guy there.
It's like a traffic court full of people, basically black and brown, basically Hispanic and black.
I'm like the only white guy there.
And I'm trying to understand what's that all about.
I know the systemic racism stuff, they're only ticketing blacks, but that's not true because they got this true with the Yarmulke for nothing.
Anyway, here's what I learned.
Here's what I learned.
What they have done in Sacramento is to raise more money in the state.
And since they did not want to be overt about raising taxes because that's so unpopular no matter what your politics is, What they have done now is like you get a $50 ticket And then when you come to pay your ticket, they slap on like $500 in extra fees on it.
People don't know this.
You end up paying $500 for a $50 ticket.
You end up paying for close to $1,000 for like a $100 or $150 speeding ticket.
You think it's $150, and then there are these penalties, not for being late, not for failing to pay, but all these penalties.
Nobody knows about this.
And they raise a fortune on these hidden penalties.
And these poor black and Latino people, I mean, you hit a guy with a $50 ticket and $300, $400 more, that's a week's income.
For me, thank God I can't complain.
It's several hours.
It's still several hours.
I don't want to lose several hours income.
But it's not even a one-day income.
For them, it's a week's income.
So what you see happening is, in Sacramento, they outsmart the people who vote for them.
Those are the same African Americans and Latinos who are the base for the Democrat Sacramento political powerhouse.
And those individuals don't even realize that when they're voting for people like that, they don't realize that they're electing people who then create a Byzantine traffic find system That eventually is going to bite those people.
I'm going to be okay.
I really am.
And I won my ticket.
I'm a lawyer.
I knew what I was saying.
I won the ticket.
But those are the people, the people that are voting for these politicians are eventually the victims that have to pay.
Always.
In fact, people so often are the victims.
of government programs that on the surface are aimed at helping them.
I'll give you an example.
My grandfather and grandmother on both sides, all my grandparents are Jews from Russia and Poland.
They came here between 1881 and 1914.
Three and a quarter million Jews.
That's when most American Jews trace back, 90% of American Jews trace back to the East European immigration of 1881 to 1914.
They all came here speaking a language called Yiddish.
Yiddish is a language of some German, some Hebrew, some Polish.
It's all mixed together.
It's not sophisticated.
There's a whole sociology of how that language was created.
Anyway, they came speaking Yiddish.
They had children, and these children now have to make it in America.
In those days, my uncles and aunts and my parents The society did not offer bilingual education.
The society said, we're teaching public schools, we're teaching in English.
We're not giving you the benefit that you're going to learn math in Yiddish or you're going to learn American history in Yiddish because you need to know math and what's the difference what language you inherited just to learn how to add and subtract.
No, no, no.
You better learn English because if you don't learn English, you're also not going to learn math.
So what ended up happening is they were forced to learn English.
And by the way, so were their parents.
When their parents made a phone call, their parents did not pick up a telephone and have a choice.
Dial one for Yiddish, dial two for Hebrew, dial three for Sanskrit, dial four for...
You had to talk English.
If you don't speak English, you can't make it.
So what ended up happening?
Everybody learned English.
The Italians learned English.
The Irish already spoke English, but the Polish had to learn English.
The Germans had to learn English.
Along comes big government that's going to help people coming from, let's say, South America.
Now you could dial two for Spanish and you have bilingual education and it works against the individuals because they want to make it in America the way I want to make it in America.
So they don't learn English and they can't compete with others that speak.
That's right.
And everybody can talk nice about how I'm tolerant and you're tolerant.
The same very tolerant, wonderful person in public when he or she is conducting a job interview and is interviewing someone who shows up and can't speak English.
That person does not get hired.
As liberal as the interviewer is, as liberal as the company, do you think Google and Apple and Yahoo and all of these companies are hiring people who cannot communicate in the language of the society?
Of course not.
They may be very, very liberal and they may support all these programs, but that's not who they hire.
Another example, the idea is you have so many people in Hollywood Talk about how they're for increasing taxes to pay for more social services.
Because we owe it to the poor.
And we have an obligation to people to offer these services.
And if it costs more money, go ahead and raise the taxes.
And the stars and the celebrities say, I'll pay more taxes.
So what ends up happening, I just used the word a minute ago, Hollywood.
I said in Hollywood, when I say Hollywood, in your mind, in the mind of our viewers...
Hollywood is a shorthand term for the movies, for television.
You know one of the great secrets is that movies and television no longer are made in Hollywood.
Those companies make their movies in North Carolina, in Iowa.
Like you'll hear, let's say North Carolina passes some law about unisex bathrooms.
Getting into that other issue.
So North Carolina passes a law, and the next thing you hear, people in Hollywood say, we're going to boycott, we're not going to make any more movies in North Carolina.
So other people hear that news, and they get into a whole interesting discussion about should there be bathrooms, should there be two bathrooms, one bathroom, three bathrooms, and should there be a boycott?
I hear that announcement.
I think something else.
Since when are they making movies in North Carolina?
I thought they made movies in Hollywood.
How'd they end up in North Carolina in the first place?
I thought North Carolina is where they have tobacco and where they make furniture.
What are they doing making Hollywood movies in North Carolina?
And the same thing, they announced there's going to be a boycott here.
How did they end up there?
So I started looking into it.
The movie theaters, the movie studios...
After all, the celebrities and the executives promote higher taxes on me so that we can pay social services for the needy, they then move their movie making out of California because the taxes are too high.
So they may have their offices in Hollywood, but they now make their movies either across the straight lines in Nevada and Arizona, or they go to North Carolina, or they go to Iowa.
And all of those states are only too happy to have them come in and make movies.
Or maybe they go overseas.
And that's what ends up happening.
So many of these well-meant programs and well-meant initiatives that are supposed to help the poor, in the end they don't help the poor.
When you dumb down school, you decide, you know what, now that we have so many people who have crossed the border into California, and they have English challenges, and we want them to succeed in school, first of all, we're putting them in school.
They've got to go into the public schools.
You can't have thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of kids, all because they're not documented.
You can't have them not going to school because then in 10 or 20 years, half the state won't be able to read or write or speak.
You have to give them school.
But the thing is to not prepare for school if they don't speak the language.
So one of the dumbing down things is pass them anyway.
After first grade, put them in second grade.
Put them in third grade.
Put them in fourth grade.
And keep passing them.
You're doing them a favor.
You're not doing them a favor.
Kid graduates from eighth grade.
Next thing goes into high school with an eighth grade education, but still doesn't have a first grade education because the kid has been failing exams.
So the government says, we'll do you a favor.
Don't sweat it.
No matter what happens, we'll pass you.
And you know what?
If you still can't read after high school, we'll put you into college and we'll give you a remediation in college.
That's not helping anyone.
When you tell a third grade child we have very bad news, But you've been failing your math tests, and you're going to need to take summer school.
We're very, very sorry.
You will need to take summer school if you want to graduate to fourth grade.
That's a summer that child never will forget.
All the other friends were playing in day camp, and that child had to spend the whole year learning how to add and subtract.
But that child now knows this place means business, and that child will do better.
Many, many children who have been left back or had to take summer school ended up succeeding greatly for that.
When the government decides, don't worry, don't worry.
We care about you.
We'll take care of you.
You'll pass anyway.
After all, you gave it a good effort.
You're sending a message.
It's a terrible thing.
From what you're saying in California, those communities that are voting, they need to pay attention for who they're voting and getting out of the one party, voting based on the one party, and look at the policies and see how these policies have affected them over the many years.
Very much, you know, and if people vote that way and are careful, they can vote either party because they will have candidates on both parties I'll give you an example.
In West Virginia, you have a governor, you have a United States senator, a Democrat.
He is very, very interesting because he does not tiptoe, I'm sorry, he does not toe in lockstep the Democrat Party line.
And that's because he's in West Virginia, a conservative state.
So even though he's a Democrat, he's a little bit more on the mind.
He's moderate because he knows what the voters want.
Meanwhile, in Maine, you have Susan Collins.
And Susan Collins is a Republican.
And on many issues, she's a capitalist and she voted for Brett Kavanaugh.
But she knows that the voters in Maine don't want a hardline right wing conservative.
So on many issues, she disappoints Republicans.
In other words, if voters are sophisticated, and politicians believe that the voter is not merely voting party, but is voting policy, although politicians will still more or less follow their party line, they will modify their positions on important issues when they see voters care about it.
So, in California, only in California, a one-party state, the politicians felt we were going to take care of the little guy.
So they passed a law called AB-5, Assembly Bill 5, or whatever AB stands for.
And the idea was, is, that there are people who work part-time.
To make some extra money on the side.
In California, we have something called Instacart.
I don't know if it's national.
Instacart, they go shopping at the supermarket.
You go online, you make your order, or you go on the smartphone, and they go shopping for you, and they drop it off at your front door.
And that way, people can work any kind of hours they want, do some shopping at the supermarket.
They can have another job and fill in.
Same thing with Lyft and Uber.
People can have another job, and then they fill in During some extra time to pick up some extra bucks, you know what Uber and Lyft is?
Or retired people on Social Security, pick up some extra...
Okay.
So the state decides we've got to protect these people.
And we're going to pass a law and we're going to force employers now to treat them like full-time employees.
And employers now are going to have to start giving them benefits and they're going to have to be like W-2 employees who have to pay taxes versus independent contractor types.
All of a sudden, everybody wakes up, not the politicians, but the people.
And they start finding that Uber says, in all honesty, if we're going to have to do all these things for people, We're just going to have to move out of California.
There is no way that our financial business model can start providing benefits and these kinds of things for the part-timers that do this stuff.
If you're going to force us to do this, we're out of here.
Instacart will have to close that.
All these companies are going to close.
These companies close.
Suddenly in California, you won't be able to get an Uber.
You won't be able to have somebody come and pick up the groceries and drop them off.
And what's that gonna do?
Okay, for me, the consumer, now I've got to start running to the supermarket.
It's not the end of the world.
The real problem are the thousands upon thousands of people whose income depends on these jobs.
These part-timers who work for Uber, Lyft, Instacart, they're gonna get murdered financially.
So the state, they won't do anything about it.
This is what the politicians want.
So it's crazy.
It is crazy, CIMAC, the idea that the people who want to repeal it have to raise millions and millions of dollars to run a television advertising campaign to kill a law that people don't want.
I don't know anybody who likes this law.
And it's a perfect example of what has gone wrong in California.
That you have politicians in Sacramento out of touch.
They speak about helping the little guy.
They're so far out of touch from the little guy that they pass laws that force the little guy to raise millions of dollars to say, stop helping me so much.
Leave me alone and let me live.
And that's the problem that Californians as voters are going to have to face in the coming months and years.
Now, Rabbi Dov, besides praying, what else can people do?
First of all, there's almost nothing besides praying.
The politicians are praying with an E. They're praying on us.
And we have to be praying to keep them away from us.
What else can we do?
Certainly we have to vote on the statewide propositions, which are neither Democrat nor Republican.
We have to vote statewide propositions to take away these crazy laws that hurt all of us.
So first of all, people need to do that, which means they have to vote.
They have to get involved.
People have to get involved.
If people really believe that times are bad, they should investigate which politician in my community seeking office is offering a solution in a way that accords with what's best for me.
And people have to join, get active in the political parties.
If there's a local Democrat club or if there's like a local in Orange County, there's something called the Lincoln Club.
It's a Republican club.
People should get involved.
You don't all have to run for office.
People should get involved politically because you can't avoid it.
Most importantly, everyone should really consider.
I've said this to African Americans I care about.
I've said it to Latinos.
People need to consider sending a message by voting the other way.
In many parts of this country, it's an American tradition to throw the bums out.
It's an expression practice, throw the bums out.
And we've seen it go both ways.
Clinton was elected president in 92.
And in 1994, two years later, they did too many things, they threw the bums out and the Republicans took over.
When George Bush was president and he messed up, two years later, they threw the bums out and they gave it to the Democrats.
When Obama came in and he became president to beat John McCain, two years later, he used the word shellacking.
They threw the bums out and they gave it to the Republicans.
It's an American tradition to throw the bums out if they're not doing a good job.
And Californians need to think in those terms also.
To throw the bums out.
And frankly, if the other party comes in and they don't do better, then throw those bums out.
So that they know the only way they're going to hold their jobs...
It's by doing the things that people need and that people want.
Because if you don't throw the bums out right now, the people in power are absolutely convinced that they cannot be defeated.
They've seen that the state has gone so solidly in one direction, they don't listen.
And they're not going to listen until we throw those bums out.
And that's really what we have to do.
Well, thank you.
Thank you so much to you, Mac.
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