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Summary
Glenn Beck delivers a keynote at CPAC and talks about socialism, the future of this country, and whether or not socialism is the right direction for this country. Glenn also talks about the border crisis and Ted Cruz's border plan.
Transcript
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All right, welcome to the podcast. Today, Mr. Glenn Beck will be live at CPAC. You'll hear him
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talking from the radio row there and doing the show from DC. You can actually see the show and
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watch it back. You can also see Glenn's speech that he had at CPAC this morning. Subscribe to
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BlazeTV. Go to blazetv.com slash Beck. Use the promo code Beck and you can get 10 bucks off
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your subscription. See the show, see the TV show every night. You also get Stephen Crowder,
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Mark Levin and Steve Dace and Pat Gray and all the big names. So check it out, blazetv.com
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slash Beck. Glenn has a couple of interviews, talks to BlazeTV's own John Miller, our White
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House correspondent during the program. Also talks to Ted Cruz who comes on and discusses
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what to do with the border. He's got a great idea what to do with the border and it doesn't
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require the Emergency Act. So that would be kind of a nice improvement there. We also have,
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we're also talking about the debacle in California with the high speed rail as they start pitching
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the Green New Deal and building trains everywhere. Maybe we should look at California to see how that
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one's turning out as we're about 10 times the projected cost already and almost none of it's
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built. And we will also go through and talk about Glenn's message to CPAC, the future of this
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country and whether socialism is the right direction to go. A little spoiler alert, he doesn't think it
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You're listening to the best of the Glenn Beck program.
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All right, Glenn is down in CPAC right now. Glenn, are you with us?
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I am, Stu. Thank you so much. I'm very titillated by the fact you're here. Oh, I wish I was there
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too. I really do. Do you? Actually, it's good to be here because the crowd is very young, dynamic,
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and I think wide awake. It was interesting. I've never had to start a conference before and walk out
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where everybody's like, I can't believe I have to get up this early for this conference. But people are here
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because they know the country is in real trouble. They feel it. And the theme today, unbeknownst to me,
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is socialism. That's what the CPAC started out with in this opening video about socialism and how socialism
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is coming and what Ronald Reagan said about it. And that's what my speech was about. Did you get a
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chance to see it? I did. It seemed like it went really well. It was well received. You went through
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a bunch of, I mean, we're going to play a little bit of it coming up later in the program, but you
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really went into socialism. And, you know, one of the things you've talked about for a long time is
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this sort of conversion of the left from people who deny they're socialists and say you're a racist for
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calling them socialists and that conversion to taking the mask off and saying, you know what?
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Capitalism doesn't work. I am a socialist. I'm proud of it. I'm not denying it anymore. Here we are.
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And I mean, that's America today. That is what we're seeing with the Democratic Party.
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Yeah, I remember saying that while I was on Fox. I remember saying there's going to come a time when
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they're going to take the mask off because they want to tell you they want they're dying to tell you
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that capitalism doesn't work, you cretin. And and really, if exactly what I had in my mind is
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exactly Ocasio-Cortez and what she what she said, I think was on 60 Minutes where she's like, yeah,
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I'm a socialist, you know, because this isn't working. This isn't working. So if I guess being
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for, you know, a better system and justice and fairness, you know, if that's what that that's a
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socialist, then, yeah, I'm a socialist. Exactly what I thought that they would start to say.
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And now they're saying it in droves. But as I pointed out in the speech, capitalism, capitalism
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is about justice and fairness. Socialism is about equality. Now, equality sounds nice. We're all for
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equality, but therefore equality of outcome and equality of outcome does not exist in nature.
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It's not like all lions are created equal. No, some lions kill and eat other lions.
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It is unnatural. You've got to remember, we the progressives and socialists try to take man
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and and perfect him into a God because they don't believe in God. They have to perfect man and man can
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be a God. Government can be a God. And that's just not true. Our founders understood we're not gods.
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We're the farthest thing from it. We're animals and there's a natural instinct in us. And so the
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systems that work are the ones that try to protect equal justice, not equal outcome. And and what's
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happened is we have social justice and equal outcomes. Well, that's not going to do anything
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but provide misery. Just misery. Yeah. And we're seeing it. And you talked about any socialism,
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as I said today, socialism works. It does. I know everybody says it doesn't, but it does. It does
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exactly what it is designed to do. And you can see it in Venezuela. What does socialism always do?
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It takes those who are the ranchers who know better than everybody else, and it puts them in
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charge of the farm or the ranch. It gives them all of the benefits. They create fences because the
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cattle and the sheep, they're just they're just too stupid. They're going to hurt themselves. And I
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know what's best. And so they will they will milk the cows and slaughter the sheep and get richer and
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richer, take all of the benefits and keep all that cattle just breeding, just consuming so they can
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live off that fatted calf. And and then what? If there is a bull or a cow or a sheep that just will
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not remain in the fence, they got to kill that one. They got to slaughter it. If it won't play by the
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rules, if it doesn't understand that the rancher is in charge, they got to get rid of it. And meanwhile,
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what is socialism doing for the elite right now? Maduro is taking gold and shipping it. Another
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eight tons of Venezuelan gold has been shipped away for who for who for him and Chavez. His daughter is
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a multimillionaire. How? What did she do besides being the the daughter of the the leader of Venezuela
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that raped the country? So all it does, it accomplishes everything that it is set out to
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do. Make the elite rich and in control, control the masses and let them all be equal, equally
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miserable, equally poor and eventually equally dead. You mentioned something you kind of described
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this in a way I hadn't heard you describe it before with socialism and this idea of equality and how
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socialism targets equality, you know, but it makes us all equally poor. You mentioned holding up the
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socialist yardstick to measure, measure capitalism, and how we've kind of given into that over over
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time, we've given into this idea that we're supposed to say, well, well, yes, we swear it will make you
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equal eventually, when that's not really the idea of what capitalism supposed to provide at the end.
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Right. It's we say, you know, capitalism creates inequality. Yes, yes. And it's time to just say it.
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Yes, it does. And that's a good thing. Inequality of outcome. Because if if you try to use the socialist
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measuring stick, which, by the way, has no numbers on it, I'd like to say that it's a metric measuring
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stick, but it's not even that there. There's no measuring stick. This system has never worked as
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they described. It's never been implemented. It doesn't exist, nor can or will it ever exist. It's
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like measuring things against a fantasy unicorn. Well, your horse can't do what my unicorn does.
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Well, where's where's your unicorn? Well, I'm I'm gonna get it in a minute. If you would just I could
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just get your horse out of the way. Maybe I could find my unicorn. You can't. Unicorns don't exist.
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And so we're comparing our horses, if you will, to their unicorn, which doesn't exist. Why are we
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playing this game? Yeah, why are we? Why are we? Why are we comparing ourselves to a system
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that is a fantasy? I'll compare this system to Venezuela. I'll compare this system to Russia.
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I'll compare our system to Cuba. But what they'll say is, well, that's not really I mean, they didn't
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do it right. Okay, show me where they did it right. Sweden. That's not socialism. That's a capitalist
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system with a giant welfare state. That's what that is. So again, give me the socialist utopia
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that I can compare it to. I can't produce one because it's a unicorn.
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No, I mean, you can everyone can sit here and say, let's measure this against the perfect
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thing. The only fair thing to compare American capitalism is to is every other nation in the
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history of the earth. And if you do that, American capitalism looks pretty damn sweet.
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When you when you look, Stu, and we've talked about this before, when you look at the the
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actual stats that because of the free market system, because of the free market, we now have
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fewer children dying before the age of five than ever before. In fact, the death of children
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under the age of five has dropped by half since 1990. Now, what caused that Sweden or the American
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and free market ingenuity that Americans and the American system has unleashed? When you look at
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everybody, you don't hear that stat. You don't hear that people are living much longer, much healthier
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all around the world. You don't hear that capitalism has, yes, made the more the world more unequal
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because we have lifted billions of people out of poverty. And there are still people in poverty.
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And there are more rich people than ever before. But we can work on the people in poverty. Why tear
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down the rich? When you when you know that 70% of the people believe health care and poverty has
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gotten worse. But just because of the life saving improvements that have happened just in the last
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two decades, it is the equivalent of averting 27 major plane crashes full of children every single day.
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Why why are we why is why are we focused on the plane crash? Because there's no bad news in in the free
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market when you look at it and step back when you're looking at well, look at this. This is a problem.
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Yeah, yeah, he's got a bad hangnail. Yeah, he might have even a broken foot. America and capitalism has lost its
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moorings for sure. But it is, it is still the best system. And if we would just recognize that and come back to our
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Like listening to this podcast. If you're not a subscriber, become one now on iTunes. While you're
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there, do us a favor and rate the show. Where is john lot? Let me bring john lot in john is here.
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Thank you, Phoenix. John, come on in john is probably the leading expert on weapons and guns and, and all the
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stats off the top of his head. John, it's been a disturbing. It's been a disturbing, really weak with
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what's just passed in Congress, right with HR eight, and I think it's HR 1112. But this is just the
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beginning, isn't it? Right. Well, I mean, these are just ways to make it very costly for law
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abiding citizens to be able to own guns and to deny. And it's going to make people less safe. I mean,
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we're here in Washington, D.C. It costs $125 to privately transfer a gun in Washington, D.C. That
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may not stop you or I from being able to go and do it. But they're poor people. The very people
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that my research indicates benefit the most, who are most likely to be victims of violent crime,
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poor minorities who live in high crime urban areas. It may be great if the police were there
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all the time, but they're not. And if, and the system that they have, we keep on hearing this
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week that there have been three and a half million dangerous prohibited people that have been stopped
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from buying guns because of background checks. That's simply not true. What they should say
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is there have been three and a half million initial denial and that something around 99% of those
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are mistakes. Wow. And the thing is, it primarily hurts minorities. So, so here's what I'm concerned
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about. Cause I think all of those are valid, but I think they're doing this. And at the same time,
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they're taking a back door by going in through the financial system and telling Citibank and others,
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don't do business with gun manufacturers or gun stores. Right. If they close down and say,
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you have to transfer at a, at a gun store and then make it impossible for gun stores to operate.
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Right. How, how are you ever going to be able to obtain a gun, sell a gun, buy anything?
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No, I mean, I agree. There's many fasted ways that they're trying to make it costly for people,
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particularly poor people to be able to go and get guns to own. And it's also, I think,
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a step towards registration that they're going to be setting up where if, you know, right now,
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the bills that they have say that they can't put together registration lists, but the dealers have
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to keep records of all the transfers as well as the sales that they make. Five years or six years
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from now, if Democrats have control of Congress and the presidency, they could change the law that
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says all those records that you digitize, send into the federal government and they have an instant
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national registration list. That is exactly what happened. For law-abiding people, anyway.
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That's what happened in the Weimar Republic. Well, we've already seen California and New York
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and Connecticut and Chicago, places where they've used registration lists that they've already had
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in order to demand that people turn in guns that they had in those places. So it's, you know, I,
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look, I've, unfortunately, I've come to the belief that they really don't want people to own guns.
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And you can see this in lots of ways. Socialists never do. Venezuela lost their rights to a gun
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in 2012. Right. And you can see what happened to crime rates afterwards. And of course, now people
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aren't able to defend themselves against the government that's there. But I'll give you a
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couple examples. A few years ago when Colorado was passing its background checks on private transfers,
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I got a call from some state legislators asking me what amendment I would put up. And my suggestion
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was to put up an amendment that would exempt people below the poverty level from having
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to pay the new state tax on transferring guns. You'd think that would be a no-brainer. But
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with the exception of two pro-gun Democrats in the State House, every other Democrat voted
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against exempting people below the poverty level from paying the new state tax. How many taxes
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can you think of where Democrats will fight tooth and nail against exempting people below the poverty
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level from having to pay them? None. Look at the bill that they just passed. You have
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to do a background check on each gun that's transferred. Let's say I leave somebody 10 guns. Rather than
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just paying one $25 background check and do it all in one lump moment there, they make you
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have to spend 10 times that. You'd have to spend, like, if you're doing a transfer in D.C., you'd
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have to spend $1,250. What's the point? That's craziness. What's the point of counting a separate
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background check on each gun? You're doing it on the individual. And so, you know, it's just
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all these little things when you read through there that it's pretty clear that they're just
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trying to make it costly. Look, do you think, John, the mask has come off of the progressives
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on socialism? You know, when I said socialism, you know, the people in the White House are
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socialists. I was called a racist. And I said at that time, there's going to come a time where
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they'll take the mask off and say, you're damn right I'm a socialist because this doesn't work.
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Do you think we're close to the time when socialists now in the Democratic Party will
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stand up and say, you're damn right I'm trying to take your gun because guns are dangerous
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and it won't work? Right. Well, I mean, you go and you talk to these people and you say
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every law that they have makes it more costly. And there's like no end to the number of laws
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that they would be willing to push for this. And, you know, you have things like red flag
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laws that are getting passed. I don't know, it's like 14 states now that have these laws.
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It's kind of like the old movie Minority Report, the Tom Cruise movie, where they're trying to
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predict whether somebody is going to commit a crime. But they don't even list in many of these
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laws specific things. It's kind of like the old definition of pornography. I'll know it when I
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see it. And so you can have a neighbor or a friend or a relative or somebody else go and lodge a
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complaint. And without any experts, without just simply on the basis of somebody feels that you
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might possibly be a danger, the judge can go and take away your guns for up to 21 days, depending
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upon the state. And all they have to do is meet what's called reasonable cause or probable cause,
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which reasonable cause is just a little bit more than a hunch that you would have it in terms of
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a standard. Or they can take away your gun for a year after a hearing. But it used to be that you'd have
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to have some experts in there. And now it's just kind of feelings that people have whether or not
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I predict. And I was on a panel for uniform state laws. They were considering putting together a
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model law for this. And they'd have people who are running these laws in different states come in.
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And I was saying, well, so how do you predict whether somebody is going to go and commit a crime?
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And they'll say, well, we look at their past criminal history. And I say, well, you already have laws on
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that. If you're a felon, even if it's a non-violent felon, you lose your right to have a gun.
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What they do is they don't want to have specific things. They want to say, well, if you're arrested
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but not convicted or a complaint but not even arrest. And they want to make it so you don't even have
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to have an adjudication that you're guilty of something before they can take away your guns.
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John, thank you for everything that you do. Thank you for everything you've done. You were
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Well, it's because you're out there and you're able to get this type of information out to people
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that's so important. And you have it all in your head.
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Well, I just feel so frustrated because there's so many of these rules that I don't think
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even a lot of the congressmen that are voting on this understand the implications for these laws.
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I agree. John, thank you so much. Thank you very much.
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You bet. We'll talk again. In fact, we've got to do another special on guns.
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And John will be the first that we'll need to invite.
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I am in D.C. I gave a speech at CPAC earlier this morning about socialism.
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I made a list yesterday on the air of all of the things that these socialists and Nancy Pelosi
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I can't think of something that they haven't wholeheartedly embraced
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that America has never been for, with reparations being the latest.
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Yeah, because the media used to criticize people who were loons,
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And so you can, that's why I said they're out of their closet and in your face
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and certainly the progressive movement has gotten to that territory,
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So they can say what they want, do what they want,
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no criticism from their team, and that's what you're seeing.
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And I think the media is doing them such a grave disservice.
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But they're doing them such a grave disservice because no one is checking them.
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So I think they believe that they're in touch with the average American.
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you talk about killing a baby shortly after birth,
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The American people are not for that, are they?
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No, but you're making a mistake in the sense that you think the media supports all this crazy stuff.
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The six companies that are running all of the information flow in America,
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They don't want, Disney doesn't want Mickey to pay 70 percent of their ticket receipts
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Okay, but they have no problem embracing this crew because of Trump.
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See, if Trump weren't president, if there were another Republican who wasn't quite as flamboyant,
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But because Trump's in the White House, this has opened the door to madness.
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And you're right, the American people don't want any of this,
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and that's why this is actually helping President Trump.
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So I am, in a way, I'm thrilled that the masks have come off
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and they finally will just say what they're actually for.
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The problem, though, is, Bill, if you're right that this is really about Trump,
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if Trump loses, if the economy goes down or if something happens during the election
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and he does lose this election, we then have a group of politicians.
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I mean, anyone so far that is announced will take us straight line to socialism.
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And if they control the House and the Senate and the White House,
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I can see Trump losing, but he'd lose to somebody like Biden,
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But you don't think Biden would move that ball?
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But I think if you look at the abortion poll, for example,
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after the craziness of Andrew Cuomo and the governor of Virginia,
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And if Trump can discipline himself a little bit more,
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he's now, you know, really, really getting it now.
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But just float above it and then run your campaign in a methodical way.
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I talked to some leadership of some of the biggest voices out there today.
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And I don't want to, it was private conversations backstage,
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but they are concerned that it is going to be nothing but investigations
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and smears from here on out and which will weaken people from the ability to be able to
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Beck, I'm going to give you two things that I think you have to pass along to your CPAC pals.
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If I were President Trump, I would tell all my children and any employee of the Trump organization
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to take the Fifth Amendment if called in front of Congress.
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That is not a fair and impartial body any longer.
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It is not a court of law, but you can be prosecuted if they can trap you into perjury.
00:26:08.280
Sit there like they did in The Godfather and just say,
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we're not talking because we don't believe this is a fair proceeding.
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That will shut down all of the hysteria off Cohen.
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Secondly, if CPAC does not organize a countergroup to the boycotters of MoveOn, Media Matters, Bonner Group,
00:26:33.220
all of these people, they will lose the culture war.
00:26:38.180
It's got to be an organized conservative group that can come out and say to Mercedes-Benz,
00:26:45.620
if you pull your sponsorship because these people are threatening you on the far left,
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we're going to tell our people that you're doing it.
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There has to be a central organization from the conservative side in this country to fight the George Soros-funded groups
00:27:06.380
that are running wild, threatening freedom of speech in this country.
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I will tell you, Bill, that I will tell you that that is already, I'm beginning to see that already in action.
00:27:20.660
People don't know about it yet, but I see that force already in the late stages of being put together.
00:27:31.340
I love your idea of El Chapo paying for the wall.
00:27:52.680
It is, let's use money criminally forfeited from El Chapo, from other drug lords,
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the billions that they made illegally trafficking across the border, and let's fund and pay for the wall doing that.
00:28:03.360
He could pay, really, his assets would pay for all of it, wouldn't it?
00:28:07.440
If we could track them all down and find them, they would.
00:28:10.020
How much do you think we could actually track down?
00:28:12.340
Well, where the idea came from is this is a little over a year ago when we were debating the wall,
00:28:17.480
and Democrats were complaining it costs too much.
00:28:19.540
Now, set aside, I think Democrats have never in the history of the universe thought anything costs too much.
00:28:26.000
But at the time, the estimates for the cost of the wall were between $14 and $20 billion.
00:28:32.540
At the very same time, the Department of Justice estimates that El Chapo's global criminal net worth is about $14 billion.
00:28:40.920
And so I saw a natural and even elegant symmetry.
00:28:45.380
Well, that's what asset forfeiture is supposed to be for.
00:28:48.860
And mind you, this is criminal asset forfeiture.
00:28:52.340
It's not civil forfeiture, which has been abused many times.
00:28:55.360
This is after, in El Chapo's case, he has 10 criminal convictions.
00:28:59.660
And look, it's just like if, you know, a drug dealer in Dallas has a Ferrari,
00:29:05.360
and he gets convicted of being a drug dealer, they seize the Ferrari.
00:29:09.960
In this case, El Chapo's got a lot more than a Ferrari, and there's a justice to using the billions that he made trafficking across our border illegally to prevent the next narco trafficker from doing the same.
00:29:22.820
So Mike Pence was just speaking here, and he just said, we are going to build the wall.
00:29:34.580
And I commend the president for standing up and leading in this area.
00:29:38.680
Well, so there's a lot of focus on the emergency declaration.
00:29:45.780
I don't know what's going to happen in the Senate on that.
00:29:48.020
It is going to be a vigorous discussion the next couple of weeks.
00:29:52.100
But the good news is, regardless of what happens on that, the wall is going to be built.
00:29:57.040
So the president said, and DHS said, they need $5.7 billion.
00:30:02.380
And I'm sorry, I know math is terrible for radio.
00:30:16.180
Beyond that, the president has announced that he is going to take about $600 million in drug forfeiture money that he has and use that to build the wall.
00:30:26.220
He has clear, indisputable legal authority to do that.
00:30:34.700
That gives the Defense Department the ability to expend funds to stop narco-traffickers, to stop drug trafficking.
00:30:44.260
And in particular, and it explicitly says in statute, to build fences and border barriers.
00:30:50.120
So why are we even debating this national emergency thing?
00:30:56.760
The fund that that statute applies to has about $4 billion in it.
00:31:02.620
The administration has announced they're going to take $2.5 billion from that.
00:31:09.680
But if they took another $1.2 from that fund, we'd be at $5.7.
00:31:15.460
And you wouldn't need a penny from the emergency declaration that's causing this big fight.
00:31:19.820
How do you feel about the emergency declaration?
00:31:22.080
You know, at this point, I'm still reviewing the legal authorities.
00:31:26.400
I'm reviewing the arguments from the administration.
00:31:33.420
You and I have been down on the border together.
00:31:37.240
And all of the Democrats and media folks that are saying, oh, it's not a crisis.
00:31:42.160
They claimed it was a humanitarian crisis when Obama was in.
00:31:48.920
That being said, as you know, I'm a constitutionalist.
00:31:51.920
I believe every president, Republican or Democrat, has to follow the Constitution and follow the laws.
00:32:00.080
And we're having right now in the Senate a vigorous debate.
00:32:02.480
My hope of where we end up in the outcome is, number one, we build the wall and we get every penny of the $5.7 billion that the president says we need to build the wall.
00:32:12.680
But, number two, I hope we don't set a precedent for the next Democratic president to abuse executive power and declare emergencies.
00:32:22.940
Global warming and gun control and health care and what have you.
00:32:27.640
So I was just talking to Bill O'Reilly last hour.
00:32:34.340
Everything that you've talked about, everything I've talked about for the last 15, 20 years, it's here now.
00:32:40.500
And we could see a socialist president, Senate, and House.
00:32:59.580
I mean, what has happened to the Democratic Party is both frightening and really dangerous for this country.
00:33:06.460
It's not good for one of the two major parties in this country to get so extreme and so out of touch with the American people.
00:33:17.660
If we don't get the destruction of life with, we're not talking about abortion anymore.
00:33:31.420
Look, the Democratic Party, they are now the party of late-term abortion and infanticide.
00:33:38.480
Not only do they oppose securing the border, they're now, their presidential candidates are saying, tear down what border walls we have.
00:33:46.760
They're now the party of socialism and 70% tax rates.
00:33:57.300
They're now the party that chased Amazon out of New York City because they didn't want 25,000 jobs.
00:34:03.260
And then they attacked Amazon on the way out the door.
00:34:09.460
You take this Green New Deal, which every one of these Democratic presidential candidates is falling all over themselves to support.
00:34:15.120
The Green New Deal, it's incoherent on its face.
00:34:17.840
But if you actually take it at face value, it would ban every airplane on Earth.
00:34:29.580
But beyond that, though, if you actually read the bill, which I know you have, it says clearly to change our financial structure and our system to a system that is revolved around social justice.
00:34:47.520
And, look, all of this is driven fundamentally.
00:34:55.920
The unifying theme in the Democratic Party is they hate Donald Trump.
00:34:59.920
And that burning, blinding emotion has driven out common sense, has driven out reason.
00:35:17.520
This sort of popping up of socialism in a time where you're seeing the results of socialism so clearly in Venezuela and other places.
00:35:41.220
And I always find that to be very strange, how something can become popular right at the moment it's being shown it's a failure.
00:35:53.180
Part of the literature around the Green New Deal includes this.
00:35:57.120
Totally overhauling transportation by massively expanding electric vehicle manufacturing, building charging stations everywhere, and building out high-speed rail at a scale where air travel stops becoming necessary.
00:36:11.220
Create affordable public transit available to all with the goal of replacing every combustion engine vehicle.
00:36:22.420
There's not even a number of trains that would.
00:36:24.860
No, there's no number of trains on Earth that could make air travel stop becoming necessary.
00:36:30.660
It's just air travel is better than train travel in every way, in almost every single circumstance.
00:36:37.080
But it's amazing to see that now they're pushing for high-speed rail all over the country, while at the same time, sort of the marquee attempt at giving high-speed rail to an area that can use it was already approved many years ago and is in the middle of one of the most catastrophic collapses in public history.
00:37:01.060
In California, they promised a high-speed rail to take you, I think it was from, what, Los Angeles or San Diego all the way to San Francisco.
00:37:13.540
I want to walk you through how this has gone so far with Eric Christian.
00:37:17.200
He's the executive director of the Coalition for Fair Employment.
00:37:25.080
Greetings from the People's Republic of California, where no dream is too big and no cost is too great to achieve that dream.
00:37:33.480
Whether the dream is a nightmare or not is not material in this particular conversation.
00:37:39.540
Eric has been basically the guy who has been fighting against this train from the very beginning.
00:37:47.080
Can you take us kind of through how this thing started and all of the cost estimates?
00:37:51.880
And take us through this story, because it really is an amazing journey.
00:37:56.040
Well, just to be clear, I have been a guy fighting this, not even close to being the guy.
00:38:01.160
There are a group of farmers and citizens down in the Central Valley that have really been fighting this with their wallets,
00:38:11.220
with their daily lives devoted towards stopping this government grab of their land, of their businesses,
00:38:20.540
fighting it in violation of the law that was passed by the people of California 10 years ago
00:38:30.080
that approved an initial $10 billion in funding for the concept of what would be known as high-speed rail,
00:38:37.760
taking people from San Diego to San Francisco in 3.2 seconds.
00:38:46.660
It passed narrowly, and since then, it's been all downhill.
00:38:54.720
And what we have now is a project that has grown from what they estimated would be about $60 billion.
00:39:05.640
We know it'll be much more, because all these projects always are, as studies have shown.
00:39:10.520
And what we're finding out is happening is it's receiving, in just the past two months,
00:39:21.040
The first was the Gridley-Warren report that showed that instead of actually paying for itself,
00:39:29.500
the reason you don't have any private investment, which the authors promised there would be if we approved this,
00:39:35.080
is because they understand there's not going to be – this isn't going to be a money-making operation.
00:39:40.260
And sure enough, this Gridley-Warren report shows that, in fact, it's going to have to be massively subsidized,
00:39:47.440
because nobody's going to want to sit in a train for nine hours from Merced and head over to the Bay Area
00:39:53.720
or from Bakersfield to the Bay Area, spend nine hours of their day on a train doing that.
00:40:01.220
And since they've already admitted that it's not going to be going from San Diego, let alone Los Angeles, up to the Bay Area,
00:40:08.040
they're starting it in the middle of the Central Valley, because who doesn't want to take a train from Madera to Fresno?
00:40:13.920
I mean, that's really where the population of California is, right?
00:40:17.140
If you look at travel books, I mean, that is the ultimate dream of any traveler, that trip to –
00:40:21.320
Talk about the ultimate California dream, right, up to the Central Valley.
00:40:26.260
This report showed that it's going to have to be massively subsidized, which is in violation of the law that was passed.
00:40:31.400
The second thing that happened was that Governor Newsom, as liberal as he is and as far left as he is,
00:40:38.980
he had a moment of honesty in his State of the State speech,
00:40:43.920
which he called to question the whole concept of a San Diego to San Francisco line,
00:40:55.400
It's already massively over budget, behind schedule.
00:40:58.020
So let's just finish up what we've started, and then we'll see where we are.
00:41:02.480
Well, he immediately got blowback from the trade unions, which have a project labor agreement on this,
00:41:09.160
making it a union-only project, of course, because nobody benefits from government largesse like special interest groups do.
00:41:16.700
And in California, there's nobody at the tit of government like labor unions.
00:41:21.280
They really take the cake when it comes to that.
00:41:24.200
So they gave him some blowback, and he was forced to backtrack a wee bit, but he did have a moment of clarity there.
00:41:30.240
The third thing that happened was on February 19th, the Federal Railroad Administration sent the State of California a letter
00:41:36.860
saying and listing out in four succinct bullet points exactly why they were revoking their cooperative agreement
00:41:45.520
that they had with the state because it's violating the law that was passed by the people in any number of ways.
00:41:56.120
It's not, in fact, going to adhere to the timeliness that it said it was going to get people from place to place.
00:42:03.340
So they're essentially taking almost a billion dollars back now and threatening to withhold it four days from now.
00:42:09.660
Four days from now, California is going to lose that billion dollars that's very much needed just to keep the current scheme that they have going going.
00:42:19.200
So these are three big blows to something that, again, was initially approved by the voters because it sounded really super,
00:42:27.600
And it's gone downhill since then because, as we've learned, you know, in Texas, you're doing it the right way.
00:42:34.120
You're doing it with private investment where you have market forces being brought to bear that cuts out the nonsense
00:42:42.000
and the lying and forces people to have to be accountable.
00:42:46.680
Here in California, we're doing it where it's a government-only project, and it's getting government-only results.
00:42:53.040
You know, it's like the DMV and the post office on steroids, and the results are predictable.
00:43:02.380
And, by the way, most Californians are shown opposing this now.
00:43:09.080
And this is the problem with the way that this happens.
00:43:11.900
You know, 51% of people vote for something, whether it's realistic or not, and it gets approved.
00:43:17.160
I mean, going back to this, because the initial approval had certain requirements that had to be met by this train.
00:43:25.460
I think it was two hours or so from San Diego to San Francisco.
00:43:30.280
They have now admitted, right, that there's no chance that that's possible.
00:43:34.100
They also said it was going to cost about $60 billion.
00:43:37.160
It was just $10 billion when they voted on it, but then it was $60 billion.
00:43:40.320
It was then up to $100 billion, and it's going to be even higher than that.
00:43:44.160
It was promised that there would be no subsidizing once they got the thing built.
00:43:50.580
There's been no private investment that was promised.
00:43:55.580
It seems like California writes these laws and these initiatives, and they think if they write it in the form of a law, it will become reality.
00:44:04.900
Like there's some magic trick that happens to physics when a legal thing is passed and the state says it's going to happen.
00:44:12.300
That mindset has got to be just killing the budget of California.
00:44:24.060
She's a colonel, and she is in charge of a lot of people who are the tip of the sword right now in the fight against terrorism.
00:44:30.940
And she has not a lot of time for bovine scatology when it comes to BS, as we like to call it, when it comes to, you know, we need to get the job done.
00:44:40.320
And one of their operating principles is, you know, okay, you have a plan.
00:44:45.580
You have a step that you wish to take, but what are the second and third and fourth order effects?
00:44:53.440
You know, don't just say we're going to do this, and this is going to be achieved.
00:44:56.860
You have to understand, you know, when they plan this, do you really think the airlines are not going to adjust their fares and lower them in order to keep the market share that they have to keep people from riding trains?
00:45:07.900
There was no assumption of that based in the model that the government created in developing this.
00:45:13.340
And that's the problem with government planning is there's never any understanding of second and third order effects.
00:45:19.380
There's never any contemplation that the market will somehow bend and adapt to try and keep their market share, in this case, the airlines or car makers who are going to still want to sell cars in the state.
00:45:33.800
And all of their assumptions, as soon as, you know, pen is put to paper, are out the window because they just aren't based on reality.
00:45:44.320
And that's what's so frustrating about, you know, living in California is, as I kind of quipped when I opened up your segment, you know, no dream is too big and no cost is too great to achieve those dreams.
00:45:56.160
And it really is, you know, it really is the fact.
00:46:00.880
One thing I don't understand, and you mentioned this before, that, you know, look, it's approved largely because it sounds cool.
00:46:05.540
It would be cool to have a cool train and we could take that up the coastline.
00:46:12.440
But, like, if you watch the documentary series Back to the Future, they go on a train in the one they go in reverse in time.
00:46:24.520
Planes get you faster from a big location to another big central location.
00:46:28.820
Cars get you faster and buses even get you there to a specific location more efficiently.
00:46:33.620
Why this obsession with trains, this old technology, that, yes, it moves a little bit faster than it used to, but it's still tying two, you know, set locations to each other.
00:46:45.980
When populations move, there's very little you can do about it except spend another $100 billion to go to the new place.
00:46:55.360
Isn't it weird how progressives seem to always view the future as having to go back to 19th century technology, be it solar or, well, in solar's case, early 1 B.C. technology, wind power, trains.
00:47:14.000
It's very, very strange, newer technologies to give us power we need, like nuclear, which would do away with, essentially, CO2 output.
00:47:22.860
They don't want to have anything to do with that.
00:47:25.080
But they want us to be on solar and wind, which, if it's cloudy and there's no wind, you're in trouble.
00:47:31.200
And when it comes to transportation, let's be honest, and this is getting, you know, from a more macro 30,000-foot level why, the question why.
00:47:38.400
And I really think, at the end of the day, it's about control.
00:47:41.620
It's about wanting to control people's movements.
00:47:44.120
The automobile really ushered in an area of freedom.
00:47:46.960
It's only been about 100 years where this has been something that humans have been able to do.
00:47:51.580
Because our country is so large, it's been unique to America in the sense that we really have these vast, wide-open spaces that we're able to travel around freely.
00:48:00.340
You know, it's like for the line from Red October where, you know, the captain is speaking to a second-in-command, and he's talking about when they defect.
00:48:10.360
You know, he wants to live in Montana, and he says, you know, I want to travel from state to state.
00:48:19.320
And Ramis, the captain played by Sean Connery, goes, no papers needed.
00:48:27.000
Because in the Soviet Union, of course, they needed papers to travel everywhere.
00:48:30.960
And I think the left, ultimately, it's about control and trains.
00:48:36.100
Of course, the second and third order effect question is, okay, when I get to point B, how do I get to where I'm going?
00:48:46.520
You know, Eric, I've never thought of it that way from a control perspective.
00:48:53.620
I want to get, you know, we should also at some point talk again about what the Trump administration is trying to do, taking back a bunch of this money as well.
00:49:01.200
Eric Christian, the executive director of Coalition for Fair Employment and Construction.