Speaker 1: Well, coming up next, I have Ezra Kleine here in
Speaker 1: studio talking about his new book that he co authored
Speaker 1: with Derek Thompson called Abundance. In this book, Ezra does
Speaker 1: not hold back on taking a very critical look at
Speaker 1: democratic governance all across the United States of America, in
Speaker 1: particular in my home state of California. This is Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom and this is Ezra Klein. Ezra is great to
Speaker 1: have you here in studio.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me here for this weird inversion.
Speaker 1: Weird inversion, and you've been I mean you've been all
Speaker 1: over the place. You got a new book, Abundance, and
Speaker 1: we'll jump right into that, but I want to just
Speaker 1: frame a little bit of the relationship that we have
Speaker 1: that goes back and you may not even remember this.
Speaker 1: I was a new mayor in San Francisco and was
Speaker 1: asked by Bill Mahert to go on a show. I
Speaker 1: remember that you were one of the panelist, and I'll
Speaker 1: remember forget just sparring with Bill obviously, and then you
Speaker 1: And after the show was done and we were all finishing,
Speaker 1: you had left, maher goes up to me and he goes,
Speaker 1: who the hell was that? And I'm like, I know
Speaker 1: who the hell was that, and it was you. We
Speaker 1: were like whoa, uh, just for both of us didn't
Speaker 1: have a you know, I was I was relatively new,
Speaker 1: Bill's been seasoned.
Speaker 2: You a lieutenant governor then, I don't think you lieutenant.
Speaker 1: Got wasn't it? You know? It was I still was liet.
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure lieutenant governor. So but I was like, anyway,
Speaker 1: I'd been on the show a bunch of times, but
Speaker 1: you were. You had a next level capacity to analyze
Speaker 1: things and to deliver a point of view. And so
Speaker 1: it's not surprising to me that so much of that,
Speaker 1: including that conversation we probably had on that studio and said,
Speaker 1: it's reflected in what you've been focused on.
Speaker 2: I think about your book from that era, Republic two
Speaker 2: point zero.
Speaker 1: It was called right, yeah, Citizenville, Citizenville you had to
Speaker 1: take the town square digital and reinvent government. How about that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's something we should thread into this conversation. I
Speaker 2: think people have forgotten that era of Gavinism.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I think in so many reflects in aspects
Speaker 1: I was reading this book and you're reflected in this.
Speaker 1: I mean, this has been my struggle as a former mayor.
Speaker 1: You chronicle San Francisco, California disproportionately. But this book is
Speaker 1: fundamentally about the future, and you framing the future in
Speaker 1: abundance terms. But it's also a real shot against liberalism
Speaker 1: in many respects, against the world we created now competing
Speaker 1: against us in terms of process and courts and laws
Speaker 1: and rule making and all of that that's created so
Speaker 1: much of this cost of living dynamics. So tell us
Speaker 1: what was the inspiration of the book. Tell us a
Speaker 1: little bit about what abundance is.
Speaker 2: I mean, the reason the book is so rooted in
Speaker 2: California that I am. I mean, so this book is
Speaker 2: co authored with Derk Thompson from the Atlantic, and so
Speaker 2: we both have our own things you bring to it.
Speaker 2: But I grew up in Irvine, as you know. I
Speaker 2: went to the C system that went to d C
Speaker 2: for twelve or thirteen fourteen years, and I spent a
Speaker 2: bunch of time in DC covering a political system where
Speaker 2: the problem was Republicans were bad. Oftentimes the things that
Speaker 2: I wanted to see happen were not happening there because
Speaker 2: they were being blocked by the Republican Party. And then
Speaker 2: in twenty eighteen, I moved back here. I moved back
Speaker 2: to Oakland and then to San Francisco, and I looked
Speaker 2: around and it just wasn't doing well. People were unhappy,
Speaker 2: people were leaving. I mean, I mean, you know this,
Speaker 2: you're a retail politician, like you can sense people's anger
Speaker 2: when they find out you have anything to do with politics,
Speaker 2: they tell you real quick. And we could see the
Speaker 2: housing crisis hadn't tastasized into something that was genuinely now
Speaker 2: a crisis. Not just homes are expensive. California high speed
Speaker 2: rail has always lit me on fire that, yeah, we'll
Speaker 2: get to that. And when I began to and I
Speaker 2: was thinking about clean energy where your I mean, the
Speaker 2: goals that you have set for clean energy in the
Speaker 2: state are remarkable, and in order to achieve them here
Speaker 2: or nationally, because the Inflation Reduction Act was passing around
Speaker 2: this time too, that I was thinking.
Speaker 1: About a lot of this.
Speaker 2: We have to build faster than we have ever built,
Speaker 2: and the laws don't really permit that. And so the
Speaker 2: thing that I began thinking a lot about was that
Speaker 2: there is something liberalism is good at and knows how
Speaker 2: to look for, which is where can we subsidize something
Speaker 2: that people need. But there's something liberalism is bad at
Speaker 2: because it doesn't know how to look for it, which
Speaker 2: is how do we create more? How do we make
Speaker 2: it possible to build more of things people need? And
Speaker 2: not only are we not good at pursuing that, we
Speaker 2: don't even realize how often we are getting in the
Speaker 2: way of it, how often we are the problem. There
Speaker 2: is I think something bracing as a liberal about asking
Speaker 2: this question of why, in the places where people who
Speaker 2: agree with me govern, you and I don't think have
Speaker 2: that different politics aren't the outcomes what I want to see?
Speaker 2: Why can't I go say to the Texans or the Floridians, No, no, no, no,
Speaker 2: you just have to do our policies from California. And
Speaker 2: that's the thing I'm grappling with here.
Speaker 1: No, And I appreciate that, and we'll get to that
Speaker 1: question because I think it's a fundamental question, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting what you sort of define from that prism. That's
Speaker 1: important because what people are actually looking for isn't necessarily
Speaker 1: what you are identifying. Specifically, I would challenge, as the
Speaker 1: problem is that said, what you identify as the problem?
Speaker 1: I completely agree that. I was going back to my speech,
Speaker 1: my first speech is governor at the State of California,
Speaker 1: it might have well, it's these pages. Yeah, literally said
Speaker 1: if you can build a sports stadium with these new
Speaker 1: rules and fast tack of judicial process and what we
Speaker 1: referred to, we'll get the SEQUA are California rules that
Speaker 1: go back to quite literally Ronald Reagan in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: as it relates to environmental review. It should work for homelessness,
Speaker 1: it should work for housing. And I announced that day
Speaker 1: an effort to sue up to forty seven cities. We
Speaker 1: started with one, Huntingdon Beach, California. Doesn't make you popular
Speaker 1: as governor to announce a lawsuit against Erl City because
Speaker 1: they weren't meeting their zoning requirements under our housing element.
Speaker 1: So much of that again reflected in this friction and
Speaker 1: your own reflected frustration and lived experience in the state
Speaker 1: of California. But my point is this, as a practitioner,
Speaker 1: it's a very different reality. But what you identify, I
Speaker 1: completely embrace these labyrinths of rules, federal rules, state rules.
Speaker 1: Absolutely localism though, and I want to talk about that
Speaker 1: localism is determinative and you pick on understandably San Francisco,
Speaker 1: but you can look at almost any city, including a
Speaker 1: Republican health city like Huntington Beach, and these same rules
Speaker 1: and restrictions apply there in the same frustrations. So from
Speaker 1: the prism of left versus right, you take the shot
Speaker 1: against liberals. But can't we argue that there is sort
Speaker 1: of quality of consideration and nimbism that persists in rural
Speaker 1: and red parts the countries.
Speaker 2: Well, let me flip this because to shadow box around
Speaker 2: the fact that you know more about California governance than
Speaker 2: I ever will in a thousand years ago in this
Speaker 2: would be ridiculous. Why is it easier to build homes
Speaker 2: in Texas and California.
Speaker 1: They have Well you established that in the book. In
Speaker 1: Houston you make the point I think it was seventy
Speaker 1: thousand permits in twenty twenty three, just seventy five hundred
Speaker 1: in a much smaller city, San Francisco, but understandable contract
Speaker 1: a city with more demand, more demand, and it's simply
Speaker 1: because they have no zoning. They have land use consideration,
Speaker 1: but Austin has zoning. Yeah, but not Houston. In the
Speaker 1: context of that.
Speaker 2: The thing I'm getting it here, which I really would
Speaker 2: like your the thing you just said right about localism.
Speaker 2: It's so important, and like, this is so much the
Speaker 2: conversation I'd love for us to have here because the
Speaker 2: texture that you have been grappling with of why do
Speaker 2: things that you want to have happen not happen is
Speaker 2: I think a really interesting thing to add to it.
Speaker 2: But when you're saying, well, you know, is this really
Speaker 2: a problem for liberals. It's easier to build in Texas
Speaker 2: and Florida. They're not just in California, but in California
Speaker 2: or New York. Right, the cost of living crisis is
Speaker 2: worse in blue states. And a little bit of that
Speaker 2: is Blue states are place a lot of people live,
Speaker 2: but you should be able to in places ent governing
Speaker 2: for the working class and theory, and your point.
Speaker 1: Is a point and just to level set, people are
Speaker 1: listening completely agree this notion of the supply demand imbalance.
Speaker 1: I mean, you're making an econ one to one argument. Uh,
Speaker 1: And that supply to imbalance is next level in the
Speaker 1: state of California, Whi're simply not building enough housing and
Speaker 1: that goes to I mean, and you correctly identify a nimbiism. Uh,
Speaker 1: and people you know, incumbent protection rackets, so to speak,
Speaker 1: not just from a corporate perspective, but someone who's very
Speaker 1: satisfied with their backyard and their views and their home
Speaker 1: and their community. They don't want density, they don't want
Speaker 1: other people moving in, they don't want any infrastructure built
Speaker 1: around it. As it relates to transportation, they're very satisfied
Speaker 1: with what they have, and I think and they abuse
Speaker 1: in some respects a lot of these rules that have
Speaker 1: been around decades and decades uh to advance that aim.
Speaker 2: So you identified all this, I think pretty well as
Speaker 2: a problem for the state and for you. So when
Speaker 2: you gave a State of the State a couple years back,
Speaker 2: I'm genuinely forgetting the number. What was the housing goal
Speaker 2: you set?
Speaker 1: We said, well, we had we had an audacious goal
Speaker 1: that was a study of studies that identified what the
Speaker 1: state would need in order to address the supply demand
Speaker 1: and ballants. But we made the point we were going
Speaker 1: through a legally binding process what we referred to as
Speaker 1: arena goals, and we've established that here is the legally
Speaker 1: binding goal two point five million units by twenty thirty,
Speaker 1: and that is the established state policy, and that's the goal.
Speaker 1: So you're not on track for that, not even close
Speaker 1: why for well number of reasons, macroeconomic. I mean, I
Speaker 1: think you have to be fair as it relates to
Speaker 1: the realities of what just occurred, as it relates to
Speaker 1: the constraints around the marketing of interest rates or interest
Speaker 1: rates are high. Obviously, we came out of a very
Speaker 1: difficult period during during COVID, but fundamentally because of the
Speaker 1: inability to get local government to get out of the
Speaker 1: way and allow for more construction. And that's why we
Speaker 1: created a Housing Accountability Unit. That's why we've taken eight
Speaker 1: hundred actions, That's why I've unlocked seventy five hundred units, uh,
Speaker 1: and that's why we have advanced forty two sequel reforms
Speaker 1: in some of the most significant housing reforms in California history.
Speaker 1: As it relates to eighty US, which you identify eighty US.
Speaker 1: Now you can buildinally do in single fami family home
Speaker 1: zoning and duplexus. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: state visions realized back to.
Speaker 2: Localists, why did the ADU effort work and the single
Speaker 2: family housing or multi family housing didn't. I mean, those
Speaker 2: were big bills and we Yimbi's greeted them with delight.
Speaker 2: But I would say everybody would say that what was
Speaker 2: it us be nine yes if the cities have made
Speaker 2: it so those don't. Actually it doesn't build as much
Speaker 2: housing it and.
Speaker 1: That's why we created this housing accountability to drive more
Speaker 1: responsibility at the local level and providing technical assistance. It's
Speaker 1: not just a stick, it's also a carrot. But no,
Speaker 1: look there's the that's the construct, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: a classic example. People like their neighborhoods. That's the foundation
Speaker 1: of Nimbiaism. And I had look this yimbiism frame, which
Speaker 1: is yes in my backyard. For those wondering the hell
Speaker 1: we're even talking about, I embrace it. I celebrate. I
Speaker 1: don't think there's been a more yemb governor in California's history.
Speaker 1: And it's why we've signed so many of these bills
Speaker 1: and supported many of these bills. But you're right that
Speaker 1: application a lot of these are new reforms just in
Speaker 1: the last few years in this high interest rate environment.
Speaker 1: So we'll see how quickly things unlock as interest rates
Speaker 1: dropped down. But fundamentally, it's the Nimbiaism that drags it.
Speaker 2: Let me ask you something about the housing reforms. As
Speaker 2: I flipped the whole table this podcast. It's problem with
Speaker 2: having a podcast host on. So during the election, when
Speaker 2: Kamala Harris and then Barack Obama at the DNC, actually,
Speaker 2: by the way, on Barck Obama than Kamala Harris. We're
Speaker 2: up there talking about the need to build three million
Speaker 2: new homes, right and really sad in like Yimbi's from
Speaker 2: the stage. I was thinking, man, that is a huge
Speaker 2: intellectual victory for movement that didn't exist like twenty five
Speaker 2: minutes ago. I started thinking and and started running back
Speaker 2: the date, and I'm like, Okay, how's it working out?
Speaker 2: And you look in San Francisco and housing starts aren't up.
Speaker 2: And you look in LA and they're not up. You
Speaker 2: look in California. Not talking here about ADUs, but housing
Speaker 2: starts in January twenty twenty five were lower than in
Speaker 2: twenty fifteen. I began thinking to myself, oh shit, we
Speaker 2: actually have won an intellectual argument without winning the policy.
Speaker 2: So I began doing some reporting because I knew how many.
Speaker 2: I'm not literally how many, but I knew there's been
Speaker 2: a pretty torrid pace with you and you know, Scott
Speaker 2: Wiener and Buffy Wicks and a bunch of other housing
Speaker 2: local and the Last Day bills, and so I began
Speaker 2: calling developers in San Francisco and said, what's going on here,
Speaker 2: why don't I see a movement? And how much you're building?
Speaker 2: And what they all told me was I didn't end
Speaker 2: up writing this piece. I just didn't have time, but
Speaker 2: I meant to for some time. Was all these fast
Speaker 2: track bills required me to take on a bunch of
Speaker 2: new standards and requirements, prevailing wages and environmental standards and
Speaker 2: this and that. That made it more expensive for me
Speaker 2: to take the fast track than just do what I'm doing.
Speaker 2: It wouldn't pencil out for me to do it right.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's one hundred percent true. I
Speaker 2: could see you. But if that's not it, why do
Speaker 2: you think all those bills didn't lead to Well.
Speaker 1: A lot of them have. How we can talk about it,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want to get into really parochial politics,
Speaker 1: but we can talk about a five hundred unit project
Speaker 1: on Stevenson Street in San Francisco was never going to
Speaker 1: get done until the state intervened and compelled the hand
Speaker 1: of the city to actually move forward again. I mean,
Speaker 1: and you've got an ideological war that's going on in
Speaker 1: progressive cities. They don't believe in the supply demand framework.
Speaker 1: They don't believe in this notion of abundance. Fundamentally, they
Speaker 1: have a d growth mindset, which you talk a lot
Speaker 1: about or at least right around in the book, And
Speaker 1: so you're struggling with that ideological spectrum. But San Francisco,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just infamously just loves its neighborhoods. Doesn't
Speaker 1: want to see it up, so they don't want to
Speaker 1: see the density. So they're constantly pushing back against this,
Speaker 1: and we are as a state finally intervening in the ways
Speaker 1: the state is never intervened in the past. So I
Speaker 1: think it's a little too early to sort of assert
Speaker 1: that the sort of fatalist or have a fatalist a
Speaker 1: notion of what hasn't yet occurred, when in fact, we're
Speaker 1: starting now to flex our muscles and the application of
Speaker 1: these laws are now starting to fully go into effect,
Speaker 1: and ultimately we want to see them materialize and manifest.
Speaker 1: But that's I think that's that's the friction. But look,
Speaker 1: let me just stipulate again. We're not arguing here, You're
Speaker 1: one hundred percent right.
Speaker 2: I was asking I'm curious.
Speaker 1: No, but but also you're not. I'm you know, you
Speaker 1: talk about as a bagel of earth was everything, Yeah, everything,
Speaker 1: attack everything together. Even we're a little critical of the
Speaker 1: Biden administration and the Chips and Science Acts and the
Speaker 1: infrastructure stuff because they did the same thing. Look, you
Speaker 1: go to the.
Speaker 2: Rural broadband effort. Right twenty twenty one, they passed a
Speaker 2: bi Parson infrastructure bail. We'll say it's the biggest infrastructure
Speaker 2: bill in decades, which is not wrong one point two.
Speaker 1: Turing, but five hundred and five to fifty of.
Speaker 2: New Yeah, And one of the big headline pieces of
Speaker 2: it is forty two billion dollars for World Broadband YEP
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one that passes by the end of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty four. Functioningly nobody's hooked up to Royal Broadband. And
Speaker 2: me and Derek look into it, and there is a
Speaker 2: fourteen stage process. I mean, I'm sure California was going
Speaker 2: through a fourteen stage process of their creating a map,
Speaker 2: and then the map can be challenged, and there's these
Speaker 2: letters of intent and so on and so forth, and
Speaker 2: by the end of their administration of the fifty six
Speaker 2: states and jurisdictions that were trying to apply for the money,
Speaker 2: three had made it through, which, putting aside the fact
Speaker 2: that them, me and all these people didn't get broadband,
Speaker 2: it also meant that they couldn't run on that right.
Speaker 2: So much of the political theory of the Biden administration
Speaker 2: was that if you can show liberal democracy can deliver,
Speaker 2: you will pull people out of wanting these strongmen who
Speaker 2: say they're going to burn the whole thing down and
Speaker 2: give you something out of the ashes. And if you can't, really,
Speaker 2: if the things don't move fast enough, if they don't
Speaker 2: get to the people fast enough, it's much harder for
Speaker 2: liberal democracy to make the case said it delivers. I
Speaker 2: want it to deliver. I like these policies, but the
Speaker 2: speed thing is a real problem. And I'll say one
Speaker 2: more thing, because I was talking. I did an event
Speaker 2: the other night with John Favreau and we were talking
Speaker 2: about we were talking about high speed rail, but I
Speaker 2: was saying that the stimulus bill under Obama that had
Speaker 2: three big headline projects for reinvestment. It had high speed rail,
Speaker 2: it had smart grid, and it had a nationwide system
Speaker 2: of interoperable health records.
Speaker 1: I remember those days.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Oh for three. Yeah, at some point we got
Speaker 2: to be upset about this.
Speaker 1: You know. So you have five core chapters in this book.
Speaker 1: You talk about growth, you talk about governance, you talk
Speaker 1: about deploying, inventing. You know, a lot of language very
Speaker 1: familiar here in the state of California. Again, abundance is
Speaker 1: fundamentally foundationally who we are, at least believe we are
Speaker 1: in the state of California. And so in that respect,
Speaker 1: I agree this sort of this perception performance is one thing,
Speaker 1: and I would argue a little bit more favorably to Biden.
Speaker 1: I mean, seven hundred and seventy five thousand manufacturing jobs,
Speaker 1: just the job growth generally, and I'm not just talking
Speaker 1: about job recovery from the pandemic, but the six plus
Speaker 1: million jobs that you have to stack on that after
Speaker 1: we were back to full recovery. The fact that Chips
Speaker 1: and Science Act is producing real results as it relates
Speaker 1: to private sector investment, and the fact that we finally
Speaker 1: have an industrial policy that is worker center centric. And
Speaker 1: I think that's that worker centricity that you can argue against,
Speaker 1: because that was in you call it out and here
Speaker 1: when you talk to Gina about issues related to childcare
Speaker 1: and other aspirational frameworks as it relates to small businesses
Speaker 1: and reaching diversity goals and the like. But there is
Speaker 1: the fundamental disconnect, and you're absolutely right as it relates
Speaker 1: to these large scale, adacious projects. And I will give
Speaker 1: you your do on high speed rail. I have been
Speaker 1: as critical or more than you have about this. In fact,
Speaker 1: I appreciate you reference my pivot after I took this
Speaker 1: job as governor, where we called out the status quo
Speaker 1: and now we're trying to level set and get this
Speaker 1: back on track. But at least there's a vision. At
Speaker 1: least Obama had a vision. He wanted to be big
Speaker 1: and big things, he wanted to do big things. And
Speaker 1: at least progressive states still have a vision and they
Speaker 1: have a design. I mean, and I think that's part
Speaker 1: of an abundance frame and and and while it's difficult
Speaker 1: to manifest that vision, I don't think it's an indictment
Speaker 1: necessary it well, it's indictment in terms of our ability
Speaker 1: to deliver on time and under budget. But the vision
Speaker 1: I think is foundational and important. And I give credit
Speaker 1: to the aboveman administration in that respect. For all three,
Speaker 1: even if they were over.
Speaker 2: Thirsk, I'm all for vision. I upset the point of
Speaker 2: this book is that I want the things to happen.
Speaker 2: I mean, we could talk about high speed rally, we
Speaker 2: must talk about high speed draft. But before we before
Speaker 2: we get there for a second, I mean, I do
Speaker 2: the question around this book because it is very critical
Speaker 2: of how liberals have governed. Well, then why you're just
Speaker 2: a Republican?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: If Texas is so good at housing? And the thing
Speaker 2: that I keep telling people is you've really confused means
Speaker 2: and ends here. Another thing that keeps coming up is like,
Speaker 2: you want deregulation. Isn't that a Republican thing? Well not
Speaker 2: if I'm deregulating the government itself so it can deliver
Speaker 2: on the things you want. What's supposed to matter in
Speaker 2: politics is not the means, it's the ends. And what
Speaker 2: I sort of want. What I'm trying to push here
Speaker 2: is for liberals to get a little bit more means
Speaker 2: agnostic and more like ends obsessed. So the thing that
Speaker 2: I the place where I probably differ a little bit
Speaker 2: in what you just said a second ago, is that
Speaker 2: I don't want to give anybody credit for a vision
Speaker 2: that didn't happen. High speed rails you have a great
Speaker 2: quote to me in this I use it in the
Speaker 2: book High speed Rails undermined the public's faith and what
Speaker 2: can get done? It undermines the next high speed rail?
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And the thing that I want to see happen is
Speaker 2: a kind of reckoning inside the governing I would call
Speaker 2: it a culture. Not just laws. It's not just regulations,
Speaker 2: although it is all those things. But it is a
Speaker 2: culture of what happens when the Democrats who are setting
Speaker 2: this stuff up getting the room together, and people start
Speaker 2: raising their hands and saying, what about this and what
Speaker 2: about that? And how about the other thing? And instead
Speaker 2: of here and no, I think it's kind of a
Speaker 2: little bit, and it's not the only thing going on,
Speaker 2: but there is something wrong in a culture that so
Speaker 2: often fails to deliver what it promises. I mean, not
Speaker 2: just high speed rail, the big dig, the second Avenue subway,
Speaker 2: right these you know, parts of them got done in
Speaker 2: the second Avenue piece or the big dig eventually got done,
Speaker 2: but too much, too expensive. You can't do enough if
Speaker 2: you're doing that, and it's not inevitable. Europe builds trains
Speaker 2: better than we do. They just do. And they have
Speaker 2: governments I checked, and they have unions more than we do.
Speaker 1: So it's not just the lawyers. And you point that
Speaker 1: out of the wall.
Speaker 2: Well, that's an issue I'd be very curious to hear.
Speaker 2: So this is the thing I think people don't know
Speaker 2: that I would love to hear it. To your thoughts
Speaker 2: on that we do government different in this country than
Speaker 2: they do in Europe, is a qualitative difference between it,
Speaker 2: which is they run government through bureaucracies and we restrain
Speaker 2: government through courts, which at the moment with Trump, seems
Speaker 2: good in a bunch of ways, and there are ways
Speaker 2: in which it's good, and there are also ways in
Speaker 2: which it makes it hellacious.
Speaker 1: You got it to deliver, Yeah, and I would say
Speaker 1: that's the central theory of least. The argument that I
Speaker 1: would make against the high speed rail is, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: this thing started, and you make the point it started.
Speaker 1: There was sort of talk about the vision. The original
Speaker 1: vision was not Obama, it wasn't even necessarily Jerry Brown.
Speaker 1: But you pointed nineteen eighty two when Brown at least
Speaker 1: says former Governor Jerry Brown, we should look at this
Speaker 1: high speed rail thing. And then eventually Arnold Schwarzenegger, a
Speaker 1: Republican puts a bond on the ballot in two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, and the voters approve it. And you're right.
Speaker 1: There was a lot of promotion and promise. Thirty three
Speaker 1: point six billion dollars, two hours and twenty minutes downtown
Speaker 1: twenty by twenty twenty and the whole thing. And then reality.
Speaker 1: Now I get here later decade plus later and reconcile
Speaker 1: the fact that we have to dig our way out
Speaker 1: of this. There's a new reality. There's a scarcity of resources,
Speaker 1: there's an abundance of delay, there's an abundance of cost overruns,
Speaker 1: and we have to level set that we need to
Speaker 1: build something or we're left with literally nothing. We're left
Speaker 1: with pieces that go nowhere, that have no utility and
Speaker 1: actually have a long term costs. But let's do it
Speaker 1: by telling people what it is and what it's not.
Speaker 1: And so this focus on the Central Valley, which is
Speaker 1: recognized was stipulated as a requirement under the Obama grant,
Speaker 1: the three billion dollars in one of the fastest growing
Speaker 1: parts of the state, an important part of the state,
Speaker 1: a state that has deep desire to connect to the
Speaker 1: rest of the state, and a state of mind that's
Speaker 1: not just about a transportation project, but about upsony about
Speaker 1: economic development, which a lot of that has occurred in
Speaker 1: and around these new stations that have been built, fifty
Speaker 1: large scale projects, the size of three Golden Gate bridges.
Speaker 1: The entire environmental cpearance is now one hundred percent done.
Speaker 1: LA to San Francisco, there were two.
Speaker 2: Thousand, twenty twelve to twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: I can't I can't make up for that. I can
Speaker 1: only deal.
Speaker 2: With the quota party, which is crazy.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. But the point is we're at the point
Speaker 1: where just announced we're doing railhead. We're finally laying the tracks.
Speaker 1: I mean we could, we can lament about it. We
Speaker 1: absolutely learned from it, and we've stressed test a lot
Speaker 1: of it. You talk about the consulting class versus a
Speaker 1: bureaucratic class, you're absolutely right, and we started to shift
Speaker 1: that just a few years ago. But the litigation on
Speaker 1: the two thousand, two hundred and seventy parcels that we
Speaker 1: had to purchase was next level, and that delay, I
Speaker 1: think is the core of this. There's plenty of other
Speaker 1: bureaucratic malays and other issues we can identify, but back
Speaker 1: to this notion, I think you're right this idea of
Speaker 1: so I think liberal litigation. I don't know what phrase
Speaker 1: you used in the book, but we were mindful of
Speaker 1: that and critical of that, and you mark that as
Speaker 1: a big part of the sort of nineteen seventies construct
Speaker 1: in a America and tell us a little bit more about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we can put a pin in high speed rail.
Speaker 2: There are two major liberal movements that happen in the
Speaker 2: twentieth century. The one we think about a lot is
Speaker 2: New Deal liberalism. That's the one where we build aggressively.
Speaker 2: It's a growth orient to liberalism. It's a liberalism of
Speaker 2: material goods. And it's the liberalism that defines the left
Speaker 2: right divide in our national narrative. Right liberals believe in big,
Speaker 2: strong government, conservatives believe in small, limited government. In the sixties, seventies, eighties,
Speaker 2: you have real problems that have emerged from this New
Speaker 2: Deal order. We have built heedlessly, recklessly, intensely. We are
Speaker 2: cutting highways all across the country, many of them, they're
Speaker 2: not all of them through marginalized communities, but man, the
Speaker 2: rich communities don't like it when a highway goes through
Speaker 2: either right, and they have a lot of the power
Speaker 2: that leads to this. There is a genuine spoiling of
Speaker 2: the environment. My colleague Derek likes to talk about the
Speaker 2: moment in Los Angeles. I think it's in the forties
Speaker 2: or fifties where people wake up and think there's been
Speaker 2: a chemical attack from Japanese, but it turned out that
Speaker 2: the city had launched its own chemical attack on itself.
Speaker 1: But you'll forget. In California, a lazy pundit could suggest
Speaker 1: the modern environmental movement started in nineteen sixty seven in
Speaker 1: reaction to that in the business community saying enough and
Speaker 1: Governor RONA. Reagan established the California Air Resources Board, of
Speaker 1: which that rights and responsibility were afforded under the nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy Clean Air Act, which you also highlight in the
Speaker 1: book Richard Nixon affording California waiver so that we can
Speaker 1: address the unique air quality concerns that you identify them book.
Speaker 2: And then of course everybody forgets it's Reagan who signs
Speaker 2: the California Environmental Quality Activity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this SEQUE issue that you and others and myself.
Speaker 2: It's worth I think taking time, it's worth taking I
Speaker 2: think a minute on SEQUA. So Reagan signs a bill
Speaker 2: into law. From Jake Ambnder's research, it doesn't even merit
Speaker 2: a full article in the La Times. It's interesting nobody
Speaker 2: quite knows what they've done because initially SEQUA it just says, look,
Speaker 2: when the government does stuff, it's got to produce o
Speaker 2: report on you know what the likely consequences are. No
Speaker 2: big deal. And then there is a proposed development in Mammoth, which,
Speaker 2: you know, the great ski and snowboard town, which I've
Speaker 2: been too many many.
Speaker 1: Times, you Southern Californians.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Math, But there's a mixed use development that's proposed there,
Speaker 2: you know, sort of condos and some shopping at the
Speaker 2: bottom of them, and a bunch of rich Mammothians, I
Speaker 2: don't know what they call themselves. Foul lawsuit, and they
Speaker 2: have a novel argument, which is that this development can't
Speaker 2: go forward because it violates SEQUA. And this gets rejected
Speaker 2: the courts because this is not roughly would this be
Speaker 2: I'd want to double check this, but early seven years
Speaker 2: these things, but I could be wrong with that. So
Speaker 2: so what happens here is that the courts reject this
Speaker 2: a bunch of times because Seque is about public development,
Speaker 2: and then the Supreme Court rules no no no. Public
Speaker 2: development is anything that requires a permit by the state
Speaker 2: of California. There's a Sierra Club lobbyist who we quote
Speaker 2: in the book. It says after that sequel applies to
Speaker 2: anything where you are rubbing two sticks together in the state.
Speaker 2: And so, now, having been as Ambunder puts it in
Speaker 2: his dissertation on this stuff, informed by the courts of
Speaker 2: what the law they passed actually does, the legislature puts
Speaker 2: a pause on it because now everything's in a huge
Speaker 2: legal limbo. But the key thing is at SEQUA. I mean,
Speaker 2: and I'm sure you know all this much better than
Speaker 2: I do. But Sequa's power is amplified a lot by
Speaker 2: courts that interpreted it in a way that was very
Speaker 2: different than anybody initially interpreted it. And this is part
Speaker 2: of a period in liberalism where you have this rise
Speaker 2: of an environmental movement that has legal dimensions and political dimensions,
Speaker 2: and statutory dimensions and cultural dimensions. It's Rachel Carson, It's
Speaker 2: Ralph And the key thing about this period of liberalism,
Speaker 2: the New Left period of liberalism, is it is fundamentally
Speaker 2: skeptical of government action. The New Deal is this alliance
Speaker 2: between the government, the unions and the corporations to build,
Speaker 2: to put people to work, to industrialize America and make
Speaker 2: it into this kind of advanced, globe spanning superpower. And
Speaker 2: the new Left comes in and says, we are destroying
Speaker 2: this place, We are turning this country conformists. The term
Speaker 2: tiki Taki comes from a song about Daily City and
Speaker 2: how gross all those homes are. Right, Like, there's a
Speaker 2: whole thing about the esthetic destruction of it. I have
Speaker 2: great quotes from Lyndon Johnson's speeches about we used to
Speaker 2: worry about the ugly American, Now we have to worry
Speaker 2: about the ugly America. Right, there's a whole change. It
Speaker 2: begins to happen. And the way that this moment in
Speaker 2: liberalism tries to square the circle because the new Left
Speaker 2: is part of this era that's very individualistic, right. We
Speaker 2: think about this for Reagan and individuals, but it's happening
Speaker 2: on the left too and wants a highly participatory democracy.
Speaker 2: And the way it tries to square it is create
Speaker 2: a million different ways that individuals or individuals represented by
Speaker 2: nonprofit groups typically can sue the government to stop it
Speaker 2: or force it to think about things that it wasn't
Speaker 2: thinking about before. Sorry, gott a mosquito there, And it
Speaker 2: creates ways to sue the government and force it to
Speaker 2: think about things that it wasn't thinking about or had
Speaker 2: an earlier Get.
Speaker 1: That damn thing.
Speaker 2: If I got it, I'd be like a mom and
Speaker 2: that I remember the time when he truly seems superpowered.
Speaker 2: So the way they do that is they create this
Speaker 2: raft of legislation. Of it is some of it is environmental,
Speaker 2: but not all of it. And what it allows is
Speaker 2: for individuals or individuals represented by groups and a huge
Speaker 2: world of nonprofits emerges to take the best talent out
Speaker 2: of the law schools and set them to suing government
Speaker 2: to sort of enforce this. Ralph Nader, when he runs
Speaker 2: for president in two thousand, is asked what qualifies you
Speaker 2: to be president? Says he has sued more government agencies
Speaker 2: than I have. And yeah, and so this is very
Speaker 2: potent in blue states. It had a strong New Left,
Speaker 2: and we don't think about it. Really, it's not part
Speaker 2: of our national narrative of the left and the right.
Speaker 2: Our national narrative is like the guys who like government
Speaker 2: and the party that likes government and the party that doesn't.
Speaker 2: It's not that way. The right loves a big police
Speaker 2: state and the left has a very divided soul on government.
Speaker 2: It likes some kinds of government, but it hobbles government.
Speaker 2: And that sort of made sense for its time. But
Speaker 2: now we're in a different time where the problems are
Speaker 2: problems of not building enough and environmentally particularly, All of
Speaker 2: a sudden, we've gone from a period where it really
Speaker 2: was environmentally important to stop much of the things that
Speaker 2: were happening, and now we're in one where the environmental
Speaker 2: movement has to build, build, build, build the i ras
Speaker 2: of building approach to climate change, and our laws are
Speaker 2: not set up for that. And this is where I'd
Speaker 2: like to get your perspective. The thing that's also is
Speaker 2: like the Democratic coalition is not set up to revisit
Speaker 2: those laws. You all been doing little carve outs of SIQUA. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you've not ripped it out and rebuilt it, and
Speaker 2: nor have we done that at the national level. And
Speaker 2: as much as Democrats know this, the environmental groups don't
Speaker 2: want to do that. There's a lot of power and
Speaker 2: incumbents around the legislative architecture we have now, and you
Speaker 2: don't get a huge I mean, you've tell me if
Speaker 2: this is wrong, but I feel like you don't get
Speaker 2: a huge parade for rebuilding legislative process, right zero.
Speaker 1: I mean so it feels like the contrary. It's years
Speaker 1: and years of friction, trial and error. It takes a
Speaker 1: couple of years. You introduce, you socialize, it gets nowhere,
Speaker 1: finally gets through new coalition, new personalities, You finally get
Speaker 1: it done. Then two years later you're actual exercise it.
Speaker 1: I'll give you two specific examples. I have a two
Speaker 1: hundred and seventy day judicial review process that we pushed.
Speaker 1: We worked it for. Its first use case was the
Speaker 1: first above ground storage facility in California, last half century sites.
Speaker 1: It's in an offstream dam in California. At the second
Speaker 1: quite literally a week ago, for three hundred megawatt large
Speaker 1: scale solar facility which we are testing. It hardly perfect,
Speaker 1: but that was three years in the making just to
Speaker 1: have this established rule where I can finally fast track
Speaker 1: large scale projects to start addressing your point. And you're right,
Speaker 1: there was no fundamental coalition for any of that. It
Speaker 1: was a very lonely process until after years and years
Speaker 1: of trial and error, we finally broke through.
Speaker 2: Do you think you benefit from the other side of it,
Speaker 2: from being able to get these projects built, Like if
Speaker 2: you could get them built, do you think like it's
Speaker 2: an intermediate period of pain and then better politics.
Speaker 1: It will be better politics, but I won't be around
Speaker 1: to enjoy the fruits of that. And I think that's
Speaker 1: the great struggle. To your point, I mean you made
Speaker 1: that point about Biden earlier. I mean that's just a
Speaker 1: it's forty eight months. You're in the middle of trying
Speaker 1: to address the pandemic. You've got all kinds of global issues,
Speaker 1: you've got supply train constraints, you've got war in Ukraine,
Speaker 1: You've got all of these issues, and yet he passes
Speaker 1: I refer to as a master class.
Speaker 2: You are more defensive of Biden's record than of your own.
Speaker 1: No, I'm more proud of the work they did, breaking
Speaker 1: through actually addressing the issues that Democrats claim they wanted
Speaker 1: to address, including marginally. And I agree with you again,
Speaker 1: there's zero daylight in this book which is markable, including
Speaker 1: its own critique, my own self critique of my own
Speaker 1: state and my own performance. So it's interesting. But he had,
Speaker 1: as I said, industrial policy, there was worker centric and
Speaker 1: there was reforms at the same time, to deal with mansion,
Speaker 1: which you acknowledge in the book.
Speaker 2: Marginal Well, the progressives killed those we just killed. But
Speaker 2: you're talking about the permitting the permanent reforms.
Speaker 1: But that sort of manifested and finally on the Chips
Speaker 1: and Science Act to be a version of that with
Speaker 1: Kelly and Cruz as it relates to. So there was
Speaker 1: some component parts.
Speaker 2: And they learned on this. I mean, Brandiese, who is
Speaker 2: Biden's former a NEC director, has an awesome piece in
Speaker 2: Foreign Affairs about why we need to build faster. Right,
Speaker 2: there's learning here. But I would wish but.
Speaker 1: If we but I'm going to let me stipulate, let
Speaker 1: me make this quickly if we can figure that out.
Speaker 1: If we can, I don't. This is this is the
Speaker 1: most one of the most important books democrats can read.
Speaker 1: Wake up. I sent this to the two leaders of
Speaker 1: my California Assembly and Senate.
Speaker 2: You love to hear it.
Speaker 1: I just know. No, I'm serious, I said, guys, wake
Speaker 1: this is it. I mean, we're being judged here at
Speaker 1: a different level. We've done some good things together. We
Speaker 1: got to get serious. As the spot on on a
Speaker 1: lot of this stuff. There's some you know, we had
Speaker 1: population growth, the last two years. By the way, in
Speaker 1: December they updated all the census numbers. It grew in
Speaker 1: California the last two years. He had red states that
Speaker 1: a population declined in the last few years, with the
Speaker 1: exception of Vermont. There's some QUI I can equivalent some
Speaker 1: of that respect, but fundamentally, these larger trend lines you
Speaker 1: identify and this friction struggle to build more and build
Speaker 1: better and to address I'm with you on the high
Speaker 1: speed rail. It furiates me as a taxpayer. You're one
Speaker 1: hundred percent. It's an indictment of our ability to deliver.
Speaker 1: That said, we are finally doing realized where by train sets.
Speaker 1: We got partnership with the Bright Line and High Desert Corridor.
Speaker 1: We did full electrification of Caltran seven hundred and fourteen
Speaker 1: million dollars fifty one miles. We got all the environmental
Speaker 1: work done, all the hard works now behind us. Now
Speaker 1: we're laying track and we're finally getting that first one
Speaker 1: hundred nineteen miles done. We'll get to one seventy one.
Speaker 1: It's a six point five billion dollar gap. We have
Speaker 1: strategy to address that.
Speaker 2: I don't even want to go I want to hold
Speaker 2: high title for a second. I want to do one
Speaker 2: thing on Biden before we go.
Speaker 1: But the issue with Biden is I don't know what
Speaker 1: the hell more he could have done in a short
Speaker 1: period of time to deliver on a bold vision and
Speaker 1: lay the tracks for benefits that will enjoy. Yes, not
Speaker 1: all in forty eight months, but over the course the
Speaker 1: next four eight years.
Speaker 2: It'll be loving Like. I'm not saying it's all his fault.
Speaker 2: That's not my point here, right, He is inheriting a government,
Speaker 2: although you see in a very dark way with Musk
Speaker 2: and Doge that a lot that was taken as a
Speaker 2: binding constraint actually isn't. So I want to hold that
Speaker 2: because I think there are things as grotesque is what
Speaker 2: that crew is doing to the government. There's also things
Speaker 2: that need to be learned from what they're doing to
Speaker 2: the government.
Speaker 1: But it didn't.
Speaker 2: I really think it's important to hold this in mind
Speaker 2: for all of us, because it's something I really did
Speaker 2: not understand. It did not used to take this long
Speaker 2: to deliver Medicare. Medicare delivered Medicare cards a year after
Speaker 2: they passed that bail. It took the Affordable Care Act
Speaker 2: four years to begin delivering actual insurance to any we
Speaker 2: can talk. It took on the Inflation Reduction Act, which
Speaker 2: is doing the much smaller job of just beginning to
Speaker 2: negotiate prices on some drugs three years to get that started.
Speaker 2: I mean we built I mean, these are the classic examples.
Speaker 2: But we built the Empire State Building in a year.
Speaker 2: The average environmental review takes four and a half years.
Speaker 1: Just a few years ago to get bridge. I agree,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: All this The thing that I want to say about this,
Speaker 2: which is not Joe Biden's fault, but it is the
Speaker 2: fault of now. I think a long period of Democrats
Speaker 2: beginning to get accustomed to this slowness. This is not
Speaker 2: going to work politically. I agree with you are not
Speaker 2: going to hold the people you need to hold if
Speaker 2: your answer in every term is he can't feel what
Speaker 2: I did because a government takes too long. If it
Speaker 2: had to take too long, fine, but it doesn't actually right.
Speaker 2: These are man made and it's not.
Speaker 1: Just government, it's also private sector. I mean, there is
Speaker 1: there is another component of this. The markets actually play
Speaker 1: a really significant outsize influence in timing on a lot
Speaker 1: of these things, on investments, et cetera.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they would build fast. In a lot of cases,
Speaker 2: if we let them build fast, I mean, they're not
Speaker 2: why we didn't get world broadband done.
Speaker 1: That was not that No, but that's just you know,
Speaker 1: I agree, that's fifty states solutions, thousands thousands.
Speaker 2: Think I'm pushing on a little bit here with using
Speaker 2: the example of Biden, not you, But I do think
Speaker 2: this is I think that those of us who want
Speaker 2: to defend liberal democracy from an actual challenge to it.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: One of the things Trump is getting the most mileage
Speaker 2: out of, and he says it himself all the time.
Speaker 2: I think it's why he likes what Elon Musk is
Speaker 2: doing for all. The risk of it is the sense
Speaker 2: of constant action. Yeah, all of a sudden government which
Speaker 2: normally you don't feel moving. You feel it moving, maybe badly.
Speaker 2: Maybe what you feel is the heat from it burning
Speaker 2: to the ground, but you feel movement. Right and Populace
Speaker 2: have that. They have a politics of energy almost all
Speaker 2: of the time.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: This is something you see across countries, and I think
Speaker 2: that Democrats need to begin to think about speed as
Speaker 2: a thing we are actually tracking and pursuing government. We
Speaker 2: have other things we need to pursue. In track equity right,
Speaker 2: just right. There are a lot of things we need
Speaker 2: to think about and you need to make trade offs
Speaker 2: between them. But speed is one we have just let slip.
Speaker 2: And it's not just like bad, because it's kind of
Speaker 2: sad that we let it slip. Jake Sullivan said about Biden,
Speaker 2: he said, elections are measured in four years, and his
Speaker 2: presidency will be measured in decades. It won't or his
Speaker 2: policy agenda be judged in decades, so much of it
Speaker 2: is going to get undone, including a lot of the
Speaker 2: Transatlantic alliance that he worked so hard to rebuild that
Speaker 2: it won't. One reason that this book is politically important
Speaker 2: to me not just the kind of background, as is
Speaker 2: a policy reporter, and the stuff I like is like
Speaker 2: the details of the policy. But one reason it's politically
Speaker 2: important to me is that Democrats have I think, got
Speaker 2: in a little bit of learned helplessness around not every
Speaker 2: little bit of how gardment moved slowly. People think about
Speaker 2: procurement reforms. You've done a lot on that, but in general,
Speaker 2: the sense that we just can't do what we once did,
Speaker 2: like the way the garment used to work. I was
Speaker 2: reading a great piece by Harold Myerson, who's at the
Speaker 2: American Prospect, and he's a great California reporter too, and
Speaker 2: he wrote this piece was back during the stimulus debate
Speaker 2: under Obomba. He sent it to me the other day
Speaker 2: and he talks about the way the worst progress administration
Speaker 2: started up under FDR and the unfathomable speed at which
Speaker 2: they just cut through everything to put millions of people
Speaker 2: the equivalent today of putting ten million people to work
Speaker 2: in a matter of months. Right, And he was saying,
Speaker 2: you can't do it today, Harold was because you just
Speaker 2: wouldn't have the laws. But I just think it's really
Speaker 2: important to say laws are man made. There are laws
Speaker 2: of physics, there are technical things we don't yet know
Speaker 2: how to do. But the difference between places at construct
Speaker 2: apartment buildings quickly and that don't is that's us.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. And look and you highlight some of
Speaker 1: those successes. I mean you you talk about what happened
Speaker 1: during the Trump administration in COVID. By the way, a
Speaker 1: lot of innovation happened during COVID. Yeah, including on land use.
Speaker 1: We did something called home key, room key. We changed
Speaker 1: land use and sequel. We did it through a emergency frame.
Speaker 1: You referenced the Eye ninety because risk tolerance went up,
Speaker 1: risk tolance went up, I ninety five and emergency frame.
Speaker 1: It's exact posts of any we had the Eye ten,
Speaker 1: which we got done in eight days. That was even
Speaker 1: more through the ninety five. Yeah, you should have added
Speaker 1: that and one nice thing you could have said about
Speaker 1: our state. But so there was a state of mind though.
Speaker 1: I mean, we're doing it right now in terms of
Speaker 1: the emergency work we're doing on the rebuilding of the
Speaker 1: fire declaration and people are celebrating it and the emergency.
Speaker 2: Structures work better. Yeah, then why is it not making
Speaker 2: the normal structure closer to them?
Speaker 1: No? I look, I this this is why. That's why
Speaker 1: I wanted to do this podcast, is why I love
Speaker 1: don't like your book. That's why I think it's essential
Speaker 1: reading for democrats. This notion of speed, appearing to take
Speaker 1: action but not doing things to people, but with people
Speaker 1: and finding that right balance it's not I think there's
Speaker 1: the stress. And it goes to your opening point about
Speaker 1: some of the questions you're getting sort of this notion
Speaker 1: of a binary that it's one or the other. Why
Speaker 1: aren't you a Republican as opposed to risk taking without recklessness.
Speaker 1: You know what's that right balance? You know? Is the
Speaker 1: right balance of DOGE is the example of the one
Speaker 1: hundred and forty billion dollars that Clinton and Gore saved
Speaker 1: on a one point four trillion dollar government and they
Speaker 1: reduced the size of the workforce by four hundred thousand.
Speaker 1: But they did that again in partnership and did real
Speaker 1: reform versus the recklessness of DOGE. Is it the RFI
Speaker 1: two process. I thank you for recognizing our procurement reforms
Speaker 1: you highlight. We brought in gen Polka to it from
Speaker 1: Code for America to bring in a private sector version.
Speaker 1: We did the original DOGE. We call it ODI, which
Speaker 1: the Office of Digital Innovation, which is now Office of
Speaker 1: Data Innovation. We're trying to change the entire procurement framework.
Speaker 1: We inherited these old Cobalt systems that you highlight from
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine and these IBM mainframes in the nineteen eighties.
Speaker 1: All of that creates a stress on the system, and
Speaker 1: so it's not easy overnight to fix it. But the
Speaker 1: emergency mindset and I think the break the glass point
Speaker 1: you're making is for democrats right now, and it's the
Speaker 1: soul searching we have, we got to deliver it.
Speaker 2: Does your legislature want to fix it?
Speaker 1: They all intellectually do. But then you have you have
Speaker 1: every constituency in every group, and they're showing up twenty
Speaker 1: four to seven. Then nimbiism as well established. You've established
Speaker 1: it from the mindset. It's not just by the way Reagan.
Speaker 1: In sequel, it's the NEPA, it's in Dangered Species Act,
Speaker 1: it's the Clean Water Act, all the stuff Nixon did.
Speaker 1: But it's not. But in any reform, people panic, oh,
Speaker 1: you don't care about you You've just turned it conservative.
Speaker 1: You can't even I mean, we've had a podcast here.
Speaker 1: You talked to Republicans. You're like, geez, what the hell
Speaker 1: is going on? Guys selling out sold his soul. So
Speaker 1: you have reforms around process. In sequel, people panic said, what,
Speaker 1: you just want to destroy the environment. So there's a
Speaker 1: political price you pay for that reform. But you're right,
Speaker 1: there's a political price for not reforming, which is where
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party is today. So speed decision making, the
Speaker 1: sense of action and purpose. By the way, a lot
Speaker 1: of what this president is celebrating is what the last
Speaker 1: president did, and a lot of the investments, I mean
Speaker 1: the AI investments that Sam and others were making and
Speaker 1: that we're making.
Speaker 2: I want to get the credit. That's one of the
Speaker 2: reason I think the speed thing is actually so important.
Speaker 2: You want to shorten. Look, the policy feedback loops are
Speaker 2: broken because people don't know who did the policy. When
Speaker 2: you said a second a couple of minutes ago that
Speaker 2: these projects that can only exist because of your fast
Speaker 2: tracking will not exist while you are in office, right,
Speaker 2: that a breakdown of the way the voters can maintain
Speaker 2: accountability right when they don't know who did what. It's
Speaker 2: actually a big problem. One thing that I think about
Speaker 2: with what you were just saying on the politics of
Speaker 2: it is that and I see it very clearly in California.
Speaker 2: I'm sure it's true in other places. You can you
Speaker 2: should tell me if this is facile. You can avoid
Speaker 2: short term pain in a way that ultimately creates almost
Speaker 2: unsolvable long term pain. And so you know you obviously
Speaker 2: used to be mayor of San Francisco London Breed said
Speaker 2: a lot of the right things on yimbiism and all
Speaker 2: the rest of Itancisco, but couldn't get it done and
Speaker 2: lost reelection. Not the only reason, but a big reason.
Speaker 2: People are furious about the homelessness problem there, and that's
Speaker 2: in large part of a housing problem. It's not the
Speaker 2: only reason, but.
Speaker 1: A large problem. You make that point, and you're spot on.
Speaker 2: In Oakland, they were called the mayor in Los Angeles.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's a lot of reasons for what's going
Speaker 2: on there, but Crusoe ran a much stronger campaign than
Speaker 2: people have expected at the beginning, and.
Speaker 1: Former Republican we're out performed a.
Speaker 2: Lot of Yeah, and so you have this sort of
Speaker 2: thing happening where there's almost I think, I don't want
Speaker 2: to say a ceiling. We'll see what you do in
Speaker 2: a couple of years. I don't want to say a
Speaker 2: ceiling on where California politicians can go. But it is
Speaker 2: very hard to be successful when people are angry of
Speaker 2: our problems that maybe you didn't cause, right, but you're
Speaker 2: also not willing to take the pain out assault.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm trying. I am taking the pain and I'm
Speaker 1: taking the political I mean, I can give you proof
Speaker 1: points of the work we've done in the political capital
Speaker 1: We've used to get a lot of these reforms advanced,
Speaker 1: and that's I think that's That's where I struggle a
Speaker 1: little bit with the book. Just again, the book that
Speaker 1: I celebrate and I'm handing out to folks, is it's
Speaker 1: not a lot of that is acknowledged the actual policy
Speaker 1: reforms that we are advancing, that we are marching and
Speaker 1: moving towards, and how we're actually starting to see some
Speaker 1: progress in that respect. But with that in mind, I
Speaker 1: get the speed and the scale, but I also want
Speaker 1: to make a case. Look, this is a state, you know,
Speaker 1: where we're aiming population again, We're running budget surpluses. We
Speaker 1: dominate in every innovative category you talk about the future
Speaker 1: of abundance in the context of invention and deployment, that's California.
Speaker 1: Eighteen percent of the world's R and D is in
Speaker 1: the state. No other state comes close. Only two countries
Speaker 1: have more R and D, and that's that's Germany and China.
Speaker 1: This is a state with forty one percent more manufacturing
Speaker 1: output than the state that tends to get a lot
Speaker 1: of credit in Texas. Texas, by the way, takes seventy
Speaker 1: one point one billion dollars of federal money from the taxpayers.
Speaker 1: We give eighty three point one billion dollars. We have
Speaker 1: more scientists, engineers, more, Nobel laureates, more venture capital. Half
Speaker 1: of the unicorn companies in the country are in California.
Speaker 1: There's a lot going right. They just get a survey
Speaker 1: of the top ten happiest cities. I would respect Houston
Speaker 1: went on that list, but Santa was very Irvine was
Speaker 1: on that list. Fremont interesting, number one, San Diego. So
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know, we dominate in AI. The
Speaker 1: world again, we're inventing the future happens here. By the
Speaker 1: way you saw in homelessness, the numbers through the roof
Speaker 1: across the rest of the country stabilized here in California.
Speaker 1: The housing crisis not unique to Blue states, any larger, longer,
Speaker 1: lower taxes in this state than in many many states.
Speaker 1: People talk about the high taxes in California. It's just BS.
Speaker 1: Sixteen states. Sixteen states tax their poorest residents more than
Speaker 1: we tax our top one percent. Forty percent of our
Speaker 1: residents pay lower taxes than in Florida and Texas. Eighty
Speaker 1: percent of our residents pay slightly above average taxes. So
Speaker 1: this notion of even being a high tax state is BS.
Speaker 1: This notion that everyone's leaving is complete BS. We dominate
Speaker 1: in so many of these categories because I think of
Speaker 1: our values, but we're not build enough damn housing, and
Speaker 1: that's led to this homeless crisis. Not exclusively, you said,
Speaker 1: but it's contributed. And yes, we had a vision decades ago.
Speaker 1: The taxpayers advanced it on a high speed rail and
Speaker 1: we watched China clean our clock. You highlight that in
Speaker 1: miles and numerics that are depressing. Don't you want you
Speaker 1: to repeat them? I can for everybody, but I'm not
Speaker 1: going to. But we're going to get the damn thing done.
Speaker 1: They complained about the Erie Canal, they complained about the
Speaker 1: Panama Canal, they complained about the trans Continental Railroad right
Speaker 1: before it finally started, uh to start to start to
Speaker 1: see real progress. And I feel like we're at that
Speaker 1: tipping point with this damn high speed rail. But nonetheless,
Speaker 1: you're right speed.
Speaker 2: Rail for a second. So I, for instance, I will,
Speaker 2: I will, I will say, first look, I love California. No,
Speaker 2: I have redwoods tattooed on my shoulder, like no joke,
Speaker 2: and like and leaving the state to go live in
Speaker 2: New York City was like the right thing for a
Speaker 2: bunch of reasons. But but you know, a difficult personal
Speaker 2: choice for me because this is my soil. So every
Speaker 2: you live through a tough time, though, Francis, you know
Speaker 2: what I would still I mean it was that was
Speaker 2: that was im That was a tough time in the pandemic.
Speaker 1: And by the way that city is coming around, it's
Speaker 1: turning around. Objectively, I love s F two objectively.
Speaker 2: You know, as I say, what is a criticism is
Speaker 2: an act of love.
Speaker 1: Yes, bless you. There's a lot of love, a lot
Speaker 1: of love.
Speaker 2: In this book, man, a lot of love in this book.
Speaker 2: But and then this is I think always the great
Speaker 2: uh paradox of California. California is the frontier of the future.
Speaker 2: It always has been. And technologically as you said, but
Speaker 2: also culture right. You go to northern California, we're inventing
Speaker 2: everybody's technology. You go to southern we're given the whole world.
Speaker 2: It's culture right, It's a wild place. And the to me,
Speaker 2: the reason the housing thing matters here, the reason I
Speaker 2: structure the housing chapter the way that that I do
Speaker 2: with Derek, is that you need to make it possible
Speaker 2: for people to be and and and prosper from that
Speaker 2: prosperity right, it is good for people.
Speaker 1: To be near the AI boom.
Speaker 2: I have friends. I mean they fought fires in the
Speaker 2: city of San Francisco, couldn't afford to live there.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: The point of California's riches is that they should be shared,
Speaker 2: not shared necessarily just through taxation and reistribution, but through
Speaker 2: the ability to people to go live in these super
Speaker 2: high productivity places. Where has happened with like a young
Speaker 2: Steve Jobs and Wosniak, you sort of fall into this
Speaker 2: world where maybe if you have a genius for something,
Speaker 2: you have the connections to make it matter.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I have this sort of line in the book that
Speaker 2: in making these cities so expensive, we did the real gating.
Speaker 2: We really closed the frontier, because the true frontier isn't land.
Speaker 1: Its ideas you frame it with Horace Greeley, go west,
Speaker 1: young Man, go west, and then you create that new construct.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I want to pull that. It's actually everything
Speaker 2: you say about California. And you know this I'm not telling,
Speaker 2: but I'm sanding for the audience that that makes it
Speaker 2: so important that like the working class families can be
Speaker 2: here are not driven out but on my speed rail.
Speaker 2: Let me because by.
Speaker 1: The way, just beg the housing crisis in this state
Speaker 1: explains more things and more ways on more days, that
Speaker 1: affordability issue is the core of ninety percent of California's
Speaker 1: real and structural problems. This is foundational. Again, you could
Speaker 1: not be more right. It is at the core of
Speaker 1: the issues that define the challenges not just to this state,
Speaker 1: increasingly all over the United States. We talk about the
Speaker 1: future happening here first, where America is coming to traction.
Speaker 1: That's all those wonderful things. Then you and I were
Speaker 1: just discussing, but obviously all of these perilous issues that
Speaker 1: you have been discussing, and the reason you wrote.
Speaker 2: This book so high speed rail. So when I went
Speaker 2: on and did the reporting on that, and I went
Speaker 2: up and down the track with the people building it
Speaker 2: and the people from the rail authority, and they told
Speaker 2: me a couple things that have stuck in my head
Speaker 2: that I don't try to resolve in the book, but
Speaker 2: I'd be careious for your thoughts. So one was that
Speaker 2: the said Bakersfield Leg, which is the leg that is
Speaker 2: currently being tried. I think they said they had something
Speaker 2: like line of sight either had spent or head line
Speaker 2: of sight on something like it was in the range
Speaker 2: of eleven to fifteen billion dollars.
Speaker 1: We thirteen point four billion dollars of which ten point
Speaker 1: eight from the state and two point six from the feds.
Speaker 2: All right, and that the estimate on finishing was said
Speaker 2: to Bakersfield was thirty six billion.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there's there's currently our estimates and this plus
Speaker 1: or minus and this moving target about six point five
Speaker 1: billion dollars that we based upon what we have the
Speaker 1: current commitments. We had additional three billion dollars from the
Speaker 1: federal government. Obviously, the term of administration is trying to
Speaker 1: analyze that as they did in the last time. And
Speaker 1: then cap and trade proceeds that will continue to accrue
Speaker 1: if we extend cap and trade. Can you bond against that?
Speaker 1: There's a lot of variations.
Speaker 2: So you're saying you think you have line of sight
Speaker 2: on the money we have with a delta six point
Speaker 2: five billion roughly, And what a bunch of the people
Speaker 2: working on set is like, look, in the end for
Speaker 2: this to really work, needs to be LA to San
Speaker 2: Francisco and now would cost one hundred and ten billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we're looking at and I don't you know, Look,
Speaker 1: we've extended high speed rail the idea is to get
Speaker 1: it in these density and population quarterors, which is the
Speaker 1: point you make in the critique, and get Ta Fresno,
Speaker 1: for example, to Gilroy where Caltran is, and we can
Speaker 1: we can then connect to San Jose and into San Francisco.
Speaker 1: We have the existing infrastructure in place. That's about an
Speaker 1: hour you get into Palmdale. Now you're connecting with the
Speaker 1: new Bright line that's going all the way to Vegas
Speaker 1: and one of the fastest growing parts of the state
Speaker 1: in Palmdale, where middle class families can still afford a home.
Speaker 1: And so those are component parts and that's where I
Speaker 1: think that thirty six million billion dollar number came from.
Speaker 1: Those three component parts. Roughly add up to that now
Speaker 1: that to Hatchpee Mountains, getting them over all of those
Speaker 1: larger issues. Those are issues that obviously are component parts of.
Speaker 2: This larger and that'll be you know, over the course
Speaker 2: of many minuters.
Speaker 1: Right. Oh.
Speaker 2: But I think the I think the big question people
Speaker 2: have about it, and you hear people asking us all
Speaker 2: the time, is that And.
Speaker 1: I'm just write I inherited this.
Speaker 2: I'm not blaming governors on the dog.
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to think that.
Speaker 2: Question is if there is not a line of sight
Speaker 2: on that thirty six to one ten billion, right, that
Speaker 2: doesn't exist, and that's a very hard.
Speaker 1: Thing when you're trying to get revenue generation. Once you
Speaker 1: start getting the large population corridors, if you could connect
Speaker 1: Silicon Valley to Central Valley, which is the foundational argument,
Speaker 1: and you can start sharing. We're looking at train sets
Speaker 1: that have interoperability not just with bright Line, but a
Speaker 1: high desert corridors. You have two private sector partners and
Speaker 1: we're actually procuring train sets very very shortly, as I
Speaker 1: say we did the railhead. We're starting to lay track.
Speaker 1: This thing is starting to get very very real. Some
Speaker 1: of the projects you did see are projects that will
Speaker 1: have profound impacts economically in terms of the up zone,
Speaker 1: particularly in the Fresno corridor, and Fresno is a very.
Speaker 2: Important I think the big the big worry I heard
Speaker 2: from transportation types is that the ridership in those quarters,
Speaker 2: as fast growing as they may be, is not enough
Speaker 2: to throw off money. It's not even enough to handle
Speaker 2: that operating budget very likely, and it's definitely not going
Speaker 2: to throw off money that's going to complete one hundred
Speaker 2: and ten billion dollar train, and that we're finishing something
Speaker 2: that in the end is going to be a monument
Speaker 2: to not being able to Well there's the thing we
Speaker 2: want it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're not going to be able to build a
Speaker 1: new airport. We're not, you know, I mean the end
Speaker 1: of the day, we've got these constraints that are well
Speaker 1: established already, these pre existing constraints. There's not a high
Speaker 1: speed railing system that's not enjoying some popularity and success.
Speaker 1: Most at least are wildly popular. It's an experience no
Speaker 1: one's had in the United States of America. At least,
Speaker 1: we're out there daring and we're trying to it can be.
Speaker 2: Made that would make the next pieces just easier. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was always interested that, Like it wasn't exempted from
Speaker 2: sequel in the first place. It's a pro environmental project,
Speaker 2: I know. You know, are there things like that?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I mean, I wish you wrote this
Speaker 1: damn book in two thousand and seven. Wow, Where the
Speaker 1: hell were you? It's a good question, seriously, by the way,
Speaker 1: where were you? I was in Washington, man in Washington,
Speaker 1: was in Washington. I mean, but you're right, no, look,
Speaker 1: and I don't see it's the art of the possible,
Speaker 1: and I know that back to that's a practitioner framework.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love to intellectualize all these things what
Speaker 1: could have, should have, would have, but there's certain foundational facts.
Speaker 1: And interestingly, you made the point in the book that
Speaker 1: I have to over and over make to people, why
Speaker 1: did we start in the Central Valley? It was a requirement,
Speaker 1: federal requirement for federal dollars. Now it's not the worst idea,
Speaker 1: I mean the Intercontinental.
Speaker 2: Just to say it was a requirement because the federal
Speaker 2: program wasn't just for high speed rail. It's his start
Speaker 2: where you had air pollution for marginalized communities, which is
Speaker 2: both Like, I just want to say this because it's
Speaker 2: part of why I'm saying this in the book is
Speaker 2: that that all sounds great and there's you can come
Speaker 2: up with reasons starting Central Valley, but it's the part
Speaker 2: of the state that will generate the least political capital
Speaker 2: to keep going because it has the least danse ridership.
Speaker 1: But it's also part of the state that does have
Speaker 1: I mean, you know, you talk about it ignorance, poverty,
Speaker 1: and disease. You talk about the issues of air quality
Speaker 1: and life expectancy, you talk about the economic opportunity.
Speaker 2: But as air quality is the whole track.
Speaker 1: Well, ultimately fully electrified track. I mean that ultimately will This.
Speaker 2: Is just to me, it's an example. This one wasn't
Speaker 2: California's fault. This was the Obama administration. But it's an
Speaker 2: example of they should have given I want to say
Speaker 2: what I think should have happened here. They should have
Speaker 2: given you whatever three some billion dollars that's what that
Speaker 2: grant was, and just said use it for high speed rail.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: It shouldn't have been a stacked series of ideas. Right,
Speaker 2: it doesn't all need to be a triple axle. Right,
Speaker 2: high speed rail is hard enough, as you know better
Speaker 2: than I do.
Speaker 1: It's you know, representative democracy is a tough thing. Dictatorships
Speaker 1: are a little easy.
Speaker 2: Representative Tom knew that.
Speaker 1: You know, a lot of folks in the Central Valley,
Speaker 1: a lot of the elected officials, a lot of the
Speaker 1: blue dog Democrats a lot.
Speaker 2: But the Obama administration when they created those programs, right, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a lot happening. I really, this isn't.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of representatives, Democrats, representers that still
Speaker 1: sipulated their support for that bill in those dollars that
Speaker 1: it go to the center.
Speaker 2: There is a lot to be politics in that. I
Speaker 2: don't want to take that away, but I do want
Speaker 2: to say because this comes up a lot when I'm
Speaker 2: talking about this book. It's like, oh, do you hate democracy?
Speaker 2: People have no fucking idea what is happening in these
Speaker 2: regulatory processes, Like I cover this professionally, and when I
Speaker 2: dig into what is happening after these bills pass, I'm like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, really that is not democracy. That is,
Speaker 2: we have created things that were supposed to a lot
Speaker 2: of participation and they are often very captured. Maybe they're
Speaker 2: captured by interests. You like, that's fine, but that is
Speaker 2: not the thing that you know, the massive Californians have
Speaker 2: voted for Prop one A knew they were getting. And
Speaker 2: even those of us covering the stimulus bill, we're not
Speaker 2: looking at the precise requirements in the notice of funding
Speaker 2: opportunity in the grant program. So there is this thing,
Speaker 2: I think where a lot of this highly technocratic governance,
Speaker 2: which is very much a negotiation between different interests, is
Speaker 2: in this like King's Cup Way being justified as democracy.
Speaker 2: That's not what democracy looks like. I'll use that chant here, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not SHP. Nobody knows about you.
Speaker 1: Look, I mean you're you're very adjacent to the arguments
Speaker 1: that Elon Musk is making with Doge, this clay layer
Speaker 1: of bureaucracy. This is not representative. Who the hell are
Speaker 1: these people to make these rules? Who are these people
Speaker 1: making these decisions? And the opacity of these decisions? And
Speaker 1: I've made in sunshine and daylight and a lot of
Speaker 1: these three levels.
Speaker 2: Supposed to Nicholas Bagley, the more liberal law professor, making
Speaker 2: these rules. But I think I'll take the head.
Speaker 1: No, it's well, it's not even a hit. But I mean,
Speaker 1: I think it goes to the sentiment, it goes to
Speaker 1: I think it goes to the thematics of your book.
Speaker 1: It goes to what you're trying to stress test and
Speaker 1: what you're trying to stress upon us as Democrats, that
Speaker 1: we need to be more accountable. Here's anything. But let
Speaker 1: me make this point. I say this all the time,
Speaker 1: my legislative friends. Right when I sign a bill, I said,
Speaker 1: this happens so obviously not indictment of any individual legislature.
Speaker 1: It's in sort of institutionalized. They think the process is done,
Speaker 1: process just begun.
Speaker 2: Just beginning program again not problem.
Speaker 1: Solving, and then that implementation application goes through exactly what
Speaker 1: you're saying. What's an You mentioned no foes in in
Speaker 1: in the book, we have no fuzz, which I notice
Speaker 1: a funny availability, not opportunity. And then you stack all
Speaker 1: those things up with all these rules and requirements along
Speaker 1: the lines you suggest that was never part of anyone's understanding.
Speaker 1: Your vision is what you just saw this, And I
Speaker 1: think there's absolutegitimacy.
Speaker 2: I have this joke that everybody knows a schoolhouse rock
Speaker 2: song of like how a bill becomes a law, but
Speaker 2: what they don't know is how a law becomes or
Speaker 2: does not become like a reality, right, like the things
Speaker 2: that happened after actually much more complicated. But I want
Speaker 2: to say one thing about Elon Muskandoje And at this
Speaker 2: point I was just I just referenced Nick Bagley, who
Speaker 2: is a great administ of law professor of Michigan. He
Speaker 2: was Gretchen Whitmer's your your gubernatorial colleagues, chief counsel. He
Speaker 2: wrote this piece it's very influential these days and very
Speaker 2: influential for me, called the procedural fetish, And one of
Speaker 2: the things he says in that that I think is
Speaker 2: really wise is that the Democotic Party is very legalistic.
Speaker 2: It's got a lot of lawyers in it. Between Tim
Speaker 2: Walls was the first person on a Democratic ticket since
Speaker 2: Mondell to not go to law school. We're very legalistic
Speaker 2: and lawyers and constitutional lawyers and administrative procedure lawyers. They
Speaker 2: grapple a lot with a very hard question, which is
Speaker 2: what makes government action legitimate? And the answer they often
Speaker 2: come to his procedure right is following the procedures set
Speaker 2: out in the laws and the rules and the court orders,
Speaker 2: et cetera. It's not that there's nothing to that. But
Speaker 2: the point Bagley makes, which I think is the right
Speaker 2: counter or the way to think about the point Elon
Speaker 2: Musk is making, is it, to most people, what makes
Speaker 2: government legitimate in a democracy is it they are getting
Speaker 2: what they think they voted for. When they vote for
Speaker 2: you and you say you're going to do X, Y
Speaker 2: and Z, they got X, Y and Z. And if
Speaker 2: they don't feel like they got that, they vote you
Speaker 2: out right. They see you as illegitimate failure. And the
Speaker 2: problem with Musk and Doge, in addition to its lawless nature,
Speaker 2: is that its ends are terrible, and the people did
Speaker 2: not vote for, you know, not to be able to
Speaker 2: reach anybody at Social Security Administration or the IRS. Ever
Speaker 2: again on the phone, right, that wasn't part of the pitch,
Speaker 2: But it's I think really important that liberals have a
Speaker 2: little bit more of the sense not the procedure is meaningless,
Speaker 2: because it isn't you need procedure. But what really connects
Speaker 2: government to people is outcomes, the lived experience of government
Speaker 2: acting in their life. And if you are letting endless
Speaker 2: levels of not just process but process, you have created.
Speaker 2: I mean when we're talking about no foes and no fas,
Speaker 2: and I mean that is the work of men and women.
Speaker 2: You know, we are writing that shit down on the computer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and when we lost everyone, we opened up with sequences.
Speaker 2: And this is this is going to be a very high,
Speaker 2: high audience podcast. But when you do that, I think
Speaker 2: that that actually is a cultural change. The thing I
Speaker 2: respect about Elon Musk there's a lot these days I
Speaker 2: don't like about the guy, but there is a relentlessness
Speaker 2: to the way he pursues his objectives, a real sense
Speaker 2: it in between here and the end he is seeking
Speaker 2: might be a lot of pain a lot of disappointment,
Speaker 2: might be a lot of angry people. But if this
Speaker 2: is worth it, which on Tesla and SpaceX it was,
Speaker 2: and on destroying the federal government, in my view it isn't,
Speaker 2: then this is worth it, And that I think has
Speaker 2: not been the culture of liberal governance. The culture of
Speaker 2: liberal governance has actually been to try to generate political
Speaker 2: support by giving things to interest groups in the middle
Speaker 2: of the process. Right, you pass the bill, then there's
Speaker 2: a regulatory thing. Nobody's really paying attention to that, and
Speaker 2: you do a bunch of payoffs there, and then the
Speaker 2: thing doesn't work as well, or it's slower, or it's
Speaker 2: more expensive, and then people think you don't do a
Speaker 2: great job, and like that's actually undermining the legitimacy of government.
Speaker 1: Could agree more. By the way, sort of going back
Speaker 1: to that book, Citizen literally talks about this in the
Speaker 1: context of it's not inputs, it's outcomes. This pyramids inverting
Speaker 1: more choice, more voice. I talk about government being a
Speaker 1: vending machine where you put in your taxes, you get police, fire, healthcare, education.
Speaker 1: If you don't like what you get, you kick the machine,
Speaker 1: you shake the machine. And shifting that paradigm and not
Speaker 1: just government efficiency, but how government works. Moving away from
Speaker 1: you vote, I decide more of a participatory framework in
Speaker 1: between elections. We're finally starting to see the fruits of
Speaker 1: that vision, and near the end of my term in
Speaker 1: the context of these new models we've created, Engaged California,
Speaker 1: our new procurement platforms, the work that Jen Polka helps
Speaker 1: seed in the reforms we're doing as it relates to
Speaker 1: our large scale IT reforms. But look, this is this
Speaker 1: notion of being accountable. Society becomes how we behave we
Speaker 1: are behaviors. All this, to your point, happened on our watch.
Speaker 1: We own it. Democrats, we own it. Can't point fingers.
Speaker 1: You got to look in the mirror. You got to
Speaker 1: take responsibility. I think foundationally that's at center of this book,
Speaker 1: and I think it's very helpful and it's humbling as well,
Speaker 1: but it's critically important this time not only that we
Speaker 1: focus on situational politics, but how we're governing and how
Speaker 1: we're delivering real results, because I mean, if I have
Speaker 1: another press conference about how much money we're spending almost this,
Speaker 1: they're gonna take my head off. They want to see
Speaker 1: encampments off the damn street that's what they're measuring by.
Speaker 1: They want more housing so that the cost of that
Speaker 1: housing goes down because there's more supply. They don't give
Speaker 1: a damn about the process. They don't know what a
Speaker 1: nofa is or a no foe. They don't care about
Speaker 1: any of that stuff. You're one hundred percent right, it
Speaker 1: does matter. I think there's a balance that we have
Speaker 1: to find. We're trying to find that balance. We're iterating.
Speaker 1: But this notion of relentlessness is very resonant. What you
Speaker 1: just said. To be seen doing what you said about
Speaker 1: Trump a minute ago, we've got to be seen not
Speaker 1: defending the status quo, defending the high speed rail. This
Speaker 1: went really well for.
Speaker 2: Me, but defends into our breef.
Speaker 1: Sort of dynamic expectations that taxpayers rightfully are placed on us.
Speaker 1: But let me just end with that, because you and
Speaker 1: this book making that case from an abundance frame, back
Speaker 1: to this nomenclature around abundance. But you talk about DARPA,
Speaker 1: you talk about CRISPER, you talk about ARPA, NEET, going
Speaker 1: back in nineteen sixty nine, the origins of the Internet,
Speaker 1: you talk about the nih the NSF, you talk about
Speaker 1: all of these things. That few people that are listening
Speaker 1: even know, but that are important, and it relates to innovation.
Speaker 1: It's not an act that occurs, it's a process contradicting
Speaker 1: a little bit of what we just said that unfolds
Speaker 1: over time.
Speaker 2: Tell me a little bit, Well, everything's a process, so
Speaker 2: we don't want to say all processes are bad, just
Speaker 2: like all regulations are not good or bad. Yeah, this
Speaker 2: is the other piece of the book that we haven't
Speaker 2: talked that much about. But abundance is not just like
Speaker 2: me banging my fist on the table about how high
Speaker 2: speed relting get finished. It's also motivated in part by
Speaker 2: a belief that Democrats have developed a dysfunctional relationship with
Speaker 2: technology and in way of the future. Sure, and I
Speaker 2: sort of date this back in my own reading of
Speaker 2: it to around twenty sixteen, when I think the harms
Speaker 2: of social media became really salient to people. I think
Speaker 2: it got over blamed for the twenty sixteen election. I've
Speaker 2: never been a believer that misinformation was like the driver there.
Speaker 2: But it is rotting our brains and it's not making
Speaker 2: us better people, and it's fucking up our kids. Right,
Speaker 2: And it's represented by like a small crew of tech
Speaker 2: billionaires who you know, in the years since, have turned
Speaker 2: you know, more and more both right and weird, and
Speaker 2: I think the left got to become very skeptical of it.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that we're trying to say
Speaker 2: is that a huge amount of social progress, a huge
Speaker 2: amount of what makes it possible of the life better
Speaker 2: than the one we live now, is not just new
Speaker 2: social insurance programs, though those are very important and I
Speaker 2: would like to see some of them, or redistribution. It's technology,
Speaker 2: and it is also being thoughtful about the government's ability
Speaker 2: to organize resources and rules and manpower to pull technology
Speaker 2: from the future into the present. Right, the canonical example
Speaker 2: here is a Manhattan Project, But you can think of
Speaker 2: the Internet, which, as we talked about, you know, comes
Speaker 2: from the arpinnet. You can think about Operation warp Speed,
Speaker 2: like the one truly great success of Aalen Trump's first term,
Speaker 2: which is now disowned very much by him and and
Speaker 2: to some degree by the Democrats to some credit to
Speaker 2: a little bit. And so there is a There are
Speaker 2: a lot of problems like the only reason we have
Speaker 2: any shot on preventing a world of three or four
Speaker 2: degrees of warming Celsius is because we have created miracles
Speaker 2: through government policy in solar winds.
Speaker 1: Would not exist for the regulatory of.
Speaker 2: One of the great one of the great shames of
Speaker 2: what Elon Musk has become is that guy is a
Speaker 2: walking advertisement for the power of public private partnership. He
Speaker 2: is just like every major company he has done, is
Speaker 2: built on government subsidies, government loan guarantees.
Speaker 1: Government demand. In the original.
Speaker 2: Now guys just pulling the ladder up after him. It
Speaker 2: drives me fucking crazy, but I guess.
Speaker 1: But also it's a principle that you lay out as
Speaker 1: it relates to Dartha and which gave us GPS, gave
Speaker 1: us the self driving car he's now promoting that gave
Speaker 1: us so much of this innovation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and certainly that seated it. See and you know,
Speaker 2: look like I'm a big believer in universal healthcare. A
Speaker 2: lot of my career has been, you know, about trying
Speaker 2: to expand health insurance. But where health insurance.
Speaker 1: In the only state that does that, regardless of ability
Speaker 1: to pay in their resisting conditions and immigration.
Speaker 2: But there's a reality to this that for the people
Speaker 2: who have health insurance, which is most people, what really
Speaker 2: matters is when you get sick. Is there a cure?
Speaker 2: My wife is kept alive by shots of Vinceland. She
Speaker 2: just is. Right, at another age she wouldn't be. There
Speaker 2: is so much that we do not yet know how
Speaker 2: to cure, right, there is so much. I mean, what
Speaker 2: Medicare or Medicaid can offer, or private health insurance because
Speaker 2: they don't yet cover it for most people with GLP
Speaker 2: ones is just more valuable than what it could offer
Speaker 2: before GLP ones. These are going to be transformational medications
Speaker 2: for people they already are. And so getting really serious
Speaker 2: about what we want the government to do technologically and
Speaker 2: having a vision of the future that is an abundant one, right,
Speaker 2: a vision of the future that is not just about
Speaker 2: like how cheap consumer goods are. That's fine, but it's
Speaker 2: about the things we need to build or better a
Speaker 2: life right, cheap energy, cheap healthcare right, abundant housing, education. Right.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of things we only touch on in
Speaker 2: the book that are really important here. I think that
Speaker 2: one of the shames of politics in the last couple
Speaker 2: of years is it got to be a really bitter
Speaker 2: argument over our past, right, with the r right.
Speaker 1: Notion of American reverse pre nineteen.
Speaker 2: Sex the right that is gripped by a deep nostalgia
Speaker 2: for an America. I think that never really was, and
Speaker 2: the left was really focus, really focused on the injustices
Speaker 2: of our history, which I think are very real. So
Speaker 2: I'm not trying to undermine that as a thing worth confronting,
Speaker 2: but I think visions of the future, for different reasons
Speaker 2: on both sides, became really degraded. Cole and one thing
Speaker 2: that did change with Trump between his first term and
Speaker 2: the second is Elon Musk Mark Andriesen. In a way RK. Junior,
Speaker 2: they changed his meaning. Trump was the defender of the
Speaker 2: past America in twenty sixteen, Make America Great Again. All
Speaker 2: these futurist influencers and you know, rocket makers and so on.
Speaker 2: They sort of made him into something that represented a
Speaker 2: kind of future. I think it's quite dark one, but
Speaker 2: it is, but there is around him. JD. Vans right,
Speaker 2: It changed what he meant and I think to compete
Speaker 2: with that, and given that they're going to destroy the present,
Speaker 2: I don't think it's going to end up being a
Speaker 2: very attractive vision to people. But to compete with that,
Speaker 2: I think Democrats need to figure out how to represent
Speaker 2: a future again. I think Obama represented the future. I
Speaker 2: think Bill Clinton represented the future. And like both that
Speaker 2: sort of ability to grab reform, which is part of
Speaker 2: what abundance is about, reform of government, and that ability
Speaker 2: to grab the high ground of the future, which is
Speaker 2: the other part of what it's about. This ability to
Speaker 2: integrate a theory of technology and an optimism about it,
Speaker 2: and the ability to sort of rapid in policy. Those
Speaker 2: things are really important. We haven't talked about AI. There's
Speaker 2: a lot coming here that's going to be very important,
Speaker 2: and the party that medical frame and the party and
Speaker 2: the thinkers in it are going to have to be
Speaker 2: alert to this side of it too, because it is
Speaker 2: a mistake to think of politics as a separate sphere
Speaker 2: from technology. You know, if we could do more modular housing,
Speaker 2: it would change what is possible in housing policy.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: These things are bi directional, they're intertwined, and like, I
Speaker 2: would like to see a liberalism that isn't just angry
Speaker 2: about a bunch of things that government is failed to do,
Speaker 2: as I am, but it is also optimistic about what
Speaker 2: is possible. And that's where that vision between red and
Speaker 2: blue states really diverges. I mean Trump and them, they're
Speaker 2: trying to destroy winded solar. They don't want this vision.
Speaker 2: They don't want more trade, they don't want more people.
Speaker 2: Right there, it's all scarcity, and that leads a pretty
Speaker 2: big opening for the Democratic Party to capture both reform
Speaker 2: and abundance from them.
Speaker 1: I love that and it's a great way to end
Speaker 1: because it's a framework of optimism, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate just I'm thinking about Clinton, don't stop
Speaker 1: thinking about tomorrow. I mean, obviously there was language around that,
Speaker 1: and you know, talking about your tomorrow's not his. Yesterday's
Speaker 1: obviously the journey that we were on in the nineteen
Speaker 1: sixties with the vision that was JFK. But I will
Speaker 1: say about our state, and it's a point of pride
Speaker 1: and in principle for me as governors said, or as
Speaker 1: the future ex governor, as a fifth generation California future
Speaker 1: happens here first. And I talked about this being America's
Speaker 1: coming attraction. But that's that's the game that separates, I
Speaker 1: think our game from the game played everywhere else. It's
Speaker 1: the reason we went from the seventh largest economy to
Speaker 1: the sixth largest economy in the world, and we dominate
Speaker 1: in so many spears even today. But you're absolutely right.
Speaker 1: We now have to dominate on that reform agenda and
Speaker 1: we have to deal with the original sin and that's
Speaker 1: housing and again being accountable to these larger visions as
Speaker 1: well and deliver and level set with folks. And so
Speaker 1: it's in that spirit of an abundant mindset that Ezra,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you took the time to be here. I'm
Speaker 1: really moreover pleased you took time to write this book,
Speaker 1: which is an essential reading for everybody listening. Thanks for
Speaker 1: being with us, Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 2: Thank you