Speaker 1: The armstrong and getting We will get to the woman
Speaker 1: who's looking for advice about our boyfriend that gets in
Speaker 1: a fight every time they go to the waffle house
Speaker 1: in about ten minutes or so. Oh boy, it's a
Speaker 1: good story. Jim Desmond is a supervisor for the San
Speaker 1: Diego County Border Supervisors for District five. He's a guy
Speaker 1: with quite an interesting resumes, served as a mayor and
Speaker 1: a city council member, a regional transportation committee guy. He's
Speaker 1: a U. S. Navy veteran, an electrical engineer from San
Speaker 1: Diego State University, and he thinks the state of cal
Speaker 1: Unicornia needs to set more realized sticks standards for counties
Speaker 1: to open up and get people back to work and
Speaker 1: feeding themselves. Jim Desmond joins us. Now, Jim, how are you, sir? Hey,
Speaker 1: Jonak and Joe great, Thanks for having me. Oh it's
Speaker 1: our pleasure. So listen. As a guy in pretty good
Speaker 1: touch with the business community, I assume you, like us,
Speaker 1: believe smart people can open up their businesses in smart
Speaker 1: ways and start feeding themselves again. Well perhaps lutely. I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's become a choice in California of open
Speaker 1: for businesses or playing it safe and quite frankly, we
Speaker 1: can do both. I mean, we've already proven it with
Speaker 1: the essential businesses being open and getting people to grocery
Speaker 1: stores in the big box stores, and and our numbers
Speaker 1: went down, the trends went down, you know, the curve
Speaker 1: was flattened while we had essential businesses open. And so
Speaker 1: we want to be able to continue those same guidelines
Speaker 1: that those essential businesses are following and allow some of
Speaker 1: the non essential businesses that same opportunity so they can
Speaker 1: start to eat their families and and give pay chance
Speaker 1: to people. We've got over twenty five percent unemployment in
Speaker 1: San Diego County. It's it's crazy that we're just you know,
Speaker 1: and then the governor puts in unattainable goals, that's going
Speaker 1: to stagnate. To see even further. So, we're talking about
Speaker 1: a restaurant in Colorado earlier that opened up over the
Speaker 1: weekend UH for Mother's Day and got a lot of
Speaker 1: national attention, and there people were lined up around the
Speaker 1: block to go eat and everything like that, and people
Speaker 1: were cheering and it was a happy story. And then
Speaker 1: they got hit with the giant fine yesterday UH for
Speaker 1: disobeying the orders. Had their license yanked to So what
Speaker 1: would the current situation be if somebody tried to open
Speaker 1: in your area right now? Well, right now, what we're
Speaker 1: looking at is in a couple of different counties, Uba
Speaker 1: in Sutter County in northern California. You know, they had
Speaker 1: they tried to do the same thing to start opening
Speaker 1: up businesses, and then the governor the copy of his
Speaker 1: letter he sent to them, the Governor's office said hey,
Speaker 1: if you know we're gonna start pulling your ABC licenses,
Speaker 1: we can start pulling your cosmetology licenses if you have
Speaker 1: a search, you know, we will no longer you know,
Speaker 1: support you or give you money for that effort. So
Speaker 1: basically he's holding the taxpayers dollars hostages hostage along with
Speaker 1: the licensed professional licenses and things like that that the
Speaker 1: state grants. So he's already done that and put that
Speaker 1: threat out to ubas, Uba and Sutter Counties here in California.
Speaker 1: But what he did was, you know, we we you know,
Speaker 1: get too deep into it. But he not only moved
Speaker 1: the goal close and he tore him down. He you know,
Speaker 1: he said, we can't have any COVID related deaths in
Speaker 1: San Diego County or any County for for for fourteen
Speaker 1: consecutive days before we can move any forward, not a
Speaker 1: single one COVID read two weeks step and we have.
Speaker 1: We've had a hundred and seventy five COVID related deaths
Speaker 1: in San Diego County. Six of those were purely COVID deaths. Well,
Speaker 1: and correct me if I'm wrong. San Diego County as
Speaker 1: a population of over three million people. So the idea
Speaker 1: there can't be one COVID related death for two weeks,
Speaker 1: that's insane. That is one side of the argument, utterly
Speaker 1: pushing over the other one, which is we can't have
Speaker 1: an economic collapse. That's just shocking. Well, and and that's unfortunately.
Speaker 1: We we can do both. We can be safe and
Speaker 1: we can be open. It's ridiculous that we can move
Speaker 1: thousands of people through grocery stores in a day, but
Speaker 1: we can't put fifty people through a car dealership in
Speaker 1: a day, or you know a hundred people you know
Speaker 1: in through you know furniture store. You know those places
Speaker 1: are closed and shutdown and they're just laying off, laying
Speaker 1: off people. And we keep hearing about more every day,
Speaker 1: more and more businesses that are just shuttering. When they're saying,
Speaker 1: we can't aim we we can't, we can't sustain this. Well,
Speaker 1: just a brief thought, it strikes me, it's right. It
Speaker 1: strikes me that you're saying, listen, listen, we can do
Speaker 1: it and be safe. But what the governor of cal
Speaker 1: Unicornia is demanding is that you do it and be
Speaker 1: perfectly safe, almost literally perfectly safe. If you can't have
Speaker 1: a single death over the course of two weeks, when
Speaker 1: you have tens of thousands of people filing for unemployment
Speaker 1: just in your district. Well, and we've unfortunately had six
Speaker 1: pure solely coronavirus death six out of three point three
Speaker 1: million people. I mean, we're what number are we trying
Speaker 1: to get to with with with those odds, I mean
Speaker 1: it's it's uh, it's incredible. I mean, we want to
Speaker 1: be safe and we can do it, but unfortunately it
Speaker 1: seems more about control than about you know, giving the
Speaker 1: economy going again and and keeping people safe. I don't
Speaker 1: know what it's about. I don't know if they're reading
Speaker 1: the polls and thinking this is a winning issue or
Speaker 1: I I don't get it now. I mean, if you
Speaker 1: started from today, if things weren't closed down, uh, and
Speaker 1: we weren't talking about opening things up. We were talking
Speaker 1: about whether we should shut things down. With the number
Speaker 1: of deads we've had. You wouldn't shut everything down. There's
Speaker 1: no way you'd win that argument. Well, we've had we've
Speaker 1: had six deads. We better shut down everything that exists
Speaker 1: except for restaurants. Nobody would buy that argument. No, And
Speaker 1: we still have to protect, you know, our seniors and
Speaker 1: senior film. Of course, we absolutely have to protect. So
Speaker 1: I'm not advocating for do seeing any of the health
Speaker 1: personal health requirements, keep them all in place, but let's
Speaker 1: put our businesses open under those same guidelines of the
Speaker 1: essential ones in them. In so in case we did
Speaker 1: a certain you know, we won't be so far out
Speaker 1: on the limb. But it it just makes common sense
Speaker 1: to a lot of people, is that, you know, we
Speaker 1: can do both together. We can do it. We could
Speaker 1: be safe and we could be open. Amen to that,
Speaker 1: And there are a lot of people saying the same thing.
Speaker 1: But your voice is absolutely welcome. Jim Desmond, supervisor for
Speaker 1: the San Diego County Border Soups District five. Hey, Jim,
Speaker 1: it's good to talk. Let's stay in touch. Hey, thank
Speaker 1: you very much. Appreciate the time you got a good job.
Speaker 1: Not if that made sense. What I let's try to say,
Speaker 1: it's like, um, sometimes you do that, like with stocks,
Speaker 1: like would you you have the stock today? It doesn't
Speaker 1: matter if you've had it for years? Would you buy
Speaker 1: it today? Is it a good idea to have it? Right? Um?
Speaker 1: What happened in the past doesn't matter. Would it be
Speaker 1: a good idea to shut down everything today based on
Speaker 1: the number of debts? No, I don't think most people
Speaker 1: would go along with that. Right. You could counter argue
Speaker 1: that part of the reason the number has been so
Speaker 1: low is that we have been shut down. But even
Speaker 1: if that is true, we need to push it. We
Speaker 1: need to push how open we are and see what happens.
Speaker 1: The idea that we're gonna go for perfect safety at
Speaker 1: any cost is that of the safety obsessives. And I
Speaker 1: would say Unicornians who don't understand how businesses work, don't
Speaker 1: understand how economies work, and don't understand that the capacity
Speaker 1: for government to just pay for everybody's life is limited.
Speaker 1: The one side has has had percent of the discussion. Well,
Speaker 1: I I and he said, I don't know what's driving
Speaker 1: of its power. I don't know what it is. I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's power. I think I generally just
Speaker 1: assume politicians are looking at polls and they whatever is
Speaker 1: going to get them elected. And you know, the most
Speaker 1: recent polls, pretty overwhelmingly people are in favor of staying
Speaker 1: locked down rather than opening up. Yeah, way too way
Speaker 1: over reaction, in my opinion. I think that will be
Speaker 1: the history of this going forward years from now. We
Speaker 1: way overreacted, and not at maybe not at the beginning,
Speaker 1: but certainly after we got into it and realized where
Speaker 1: we were. Yeah, we were. We had a certain momentum
Speaker 1: toward safety, and anybody advocating turning it around was accused
Speaker 1: of being callous toward the deaths of our old folks
Speaker 1: or or whomever, the rare thirty two year old mother
Speaker 1: of three and trying to get through everybody's heads. No,
Speaker 1: we're not going to go back to the way it
Speaker 1: was in December. We're gonna be wearing masks and washing
Speaker 1: our hands like crazy, and opening doors with our shoulders
Speaker 1: and not standing very close to anybody and all these
Speaker 1: things that we just do on our own because we're
Speaker 1: worried about the virus. Yeah, well, I think There's a
Speaker 1: difference between a representative representing and leading, and I think
Speaker 1: we need more leadership. We need more people saying listen.
Speaker 1: I know a lot of y'all are scared, but those
Speaker 1: are the sheeple, honestly, or the vulnerable, and we will
Speaker 1: do everything we can to protect the vulnerable. But those
Speaker 1: who think the only question is safety cannot be in charge.
Speaker 1: They don't have a realistic, adult enough point of view
Speaker 1: to be put in charge of what we do. It's
Speaker 1: time for them to step aside. A strong and getty