Speaker 1: I did eat a whole sleeping oreos in front of
Speaker 1: a seven eleven today and was scolded by a ten
Speaker 1: year old. It was it was for medical reasons. Okay,
Speaker 1: how am I going to introduce? How do we need
Speaker 1: to start? That's the start, We already got it. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we're doing the oreos yep, ten year old children? Okay,
Speaker 1: I guess yeah, yeah, yeah, this is where it worked.
Speaker 1: And today everyone, because it's Monday, we are starting something
Speaker 1: that we like to call shitty mayres Monday. I don't
Speaker 1: know as we'll actually let us put shitty in the
Speaker 1: in the in the title. They might, they might. That's
Speaker 1: that's that's what we're calling it. That's what we're calling
Speaker 1: it on the can't stop us here. It would be
Speaker 1: funnier if it just had like ten seconds of bleep
Speaker 1: and then it was like bears Monday, like I'd said,
Speaker 1: some truly unfathomable shit. Okay. So we've noticed that across
Speaker 1: America right there a lot of mayors who ran and
Speaker 1: were elected as liberals, progressives, certainly as Democrats, but tend
Speaker 1: to have governed in a particularly shitty and terrible way
Speaker 1: that doesn't really have any material difference from a Republican mayor,
Speaker 1: but like the way that they post on Instagram is
Speaker 1: a little bit different. So I guess that is nice.
Speaker 1: And we're starting with the town I live in, which
Speaker 1: is San Diego, and with the mayor we have, who
Speaker 1: is Todd Gloria. The people might have heard of Tod Gloria,
Speaker 1: and last year we did we did an episode with
Speaker 1: several people who work with an How's people in San
Speaker 1: Diego Mutual Aid workers advocates, and they spoke a lot
Speaker 1: about Todd Gloria. Not in glowing terms, but we spoke
Speaker 1: about Tod Gloria. So we're going to talk about his
Speaker 1: record on homelessness, We're going to talk about his life
Speaker 1: a little bit, and then we're going to look at
Speaker 1: sort of the promises he made when he was elected,
Speaker 1: I guess, and the things that he's done, which it
Speaker 1: will shock you to hear, are not the same things.
Speaker 1: And we're also going to talk about his hip hop video.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, yeah, Bunny really yeah he did. He did
Speaker 1: Return of the Mat but hilariously changed it to Todd
Speaker 1: Gloria is Back. Oh yeah, No. If you want to
Speaker 1: see some problematically sinking, you're going to Yeah, Grace yourself.
Speaker 1: A local newspaper had a headline that called it the
Speaker 1: cringiest video ever, which rare wind for local media. Everyone's
Speaker 1: in a while, local news does one good thing. Yeah yeah, yeah, occasionally,
Speaker 1: like like like a stopped clock there, yeah exactly, yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: all right. So when Todd Gloria talks about his early life,
Speaker 1: he talks about being the son of a maid in
Speaker 1: a gardener, and it's a way I think of distinguishing
Speaker 1: himself from the very few elites who have held power
Speaker 1: in the city for a very long time, people whose
Speaker 1: names are on every building. But his dad's LinkedIn profile
Speaker 1: tells a little bit of a different story. According to
Speaker 1: his own LinkedIn account, Phil Gloria a sixty four, there's
Speaker 1: been in the aerospace industry for many years, including as
Speaker 1: a production controller at General Atomics, who people might remember
Speaker 1: as a manufacturers of the Predator and Reapid drones. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's a slightly different story, right, It's different from
Speaker 1: made in a gardener. Prior to working at General Atomics
Speaker 1: to a Gloria works for fourteen years the supervisor United Technologies,
Speaker 1: another errors space and technology company. Gloria has clarified later
Speaker 1: that his parents didn't work in those specific fields that
Speaker 1: the son of a maiden a guiden the thing recently,
Speaker 1: but they did when he was born, so he wasn't
Speaker 1: he's not. Yeah, I don't, that's bullshit. Like I could,
Speaker 1: I can. I could take this argument and argue that
Speaker 1: like I am the child of like a pancake maker
Speaker 1: and a dishwasher, like this is a yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like it's it's sort of classic like this classic politicians, right,
Speaker 1: like like telling enough of the truth for it not
Speaker 1: to be a lie, but but maybe not telling the
Speaker 1: whole truth. And like I know, like like my folks
Speaker 1: worked in agriculture when I was a kid. They still do,
Speaker 1: but like they also worked very hard, you know to
Speaker 1: like provide for me and get a better splace in life.
Speaker 1: And I wouldn't want to run them down by denigrating
Speaker 1: the work that they did, but hey, I don't want
Speaker 1: to be a mayor either. Yeah. It's also like also
Speaker 1: like you know, you don't get to do your fucking
Speaker 1: like burnishing working class credentials and then your dad worked
Speaker 1: for a fucking like yeah, yeah, none of my parents
Speaker 1: have ever made a reaper drone, so I guess I
Speaker 1: do have that in my favor, it is an extremely
Speaker 1: San Diego story. In twenty twenty, San Diego Union Tribune
Speaker 1: wrote he was running so to San Diego. Story that
Speaker 1: allowed his mother, a hotel maid and his father, a gardener,
Speaker 1: to work hard and afford a home doesn't end with
Speaker 1: their generation. That story seemed to admit the glaring reality
Speaker 1: that San Diego is one of the least affordable cities
Speaker 1: in the world right now, and it's housing as unaffordable
Speaker 1: as ever has been, and it's got worse since took
Speaker 1: Gloria became mayor. So who is to Gloria. He's an
Speaker 1: enrolled member of the clinget hyda Indian tribe of Alaska.
Speaker 1: He was born and raised in San Diego and graduated
Speaker 1: from me Versity of San Diego with a bachelor's degree
Speaker 1: in history and political science. He began his career to
Speaker 1: San Diego's Health and Human Services Agency, and then he
Speaker 1: worked with Congresswoman's Susan Davis, who became his mentor. He
Speaker 1: was elected to the city Council in two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight and two thousand and twelve and served as interim
Speaker 1: mayor from August twenty thirteen to March twenty fty He
Speaker 1: was also elected to the California State Assembly in twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen and twenty eighteen, and he chose not to seek
Speaker 1: reelection for the Assembly when he launched his campaign for
Speaker 1: mayor in twenty twenty. So he's done the kind of
Speaker 1: the sort of the climb up of offices that you
Speaker 1: see a lot of these folks do, right, And I'm
Speaker 1: sure that he has admissions to run for further office.
Speaker 1: That would be my guests. So in twenty twenty he
Speaker 1: was elected mayor of San Diego. He became our first
Speaker 1: gay mayor, our first mayor of color, our first indigenous mayor.
Speaker 1: So it was a lot of first for us. And
Speaker 1: it is good to have a gay indigenous mayor, right like,
Speaker 1: if we're going to have a mayor, you didn't know.
Speaker 1: It's nice to there's a position. It's open to more people.
Speaker 1: But unfortunately he hasn't done a lot else to encourage
Speaker 1: up with social mobility. He made a big push for
Speaker 1: private sector housing building as opposed to subsidize public housing,
Speaker 1: and he promised police reform. In a twenty op ed
Speaker 1: for The Union Tribune, Lauria wrote, we watched in horror
Speaker 1: as George Floyd was killed by four Minneapolis police officers.
Speaker 1: Mister Floyd and other victims of excessive force by law
Speaker 1: enforcement demand that we revisit, reconsider, and reimagine how police
Speaker 1: operate in our community and how we expect them to
Speaker 1: interact with the public. It's time we work together to
Speaker 1: create a more just system of policing. The primary responsibility
Speaker 1: of government is protected. It's people, all people. Many of
Speaker 1: us don't feel safe or protected, particularly our black community,
Speaker 1: so it seems like a like a pro at least
Speaker 1: reform statement, right. He went on to say, whether it's
Speaker 1: our mental health crisis or a homelessness crisis, we resort
Speaker 1: to the same solution, send the police and arrest people.
Speaker 1: We have to stop severely penalizing some people for minors
Speaker 1: steps and invest in lifting people up from difficult situations.
Speaker 1: I will need to put a pin in that. As
Speaker 1: we talk about his politics, it will shock you to
Speaker 1: hear that he's done exactly that. He also wrote, the
Speaker 1: rapidly expanding and secretive use of digital surveillance of our
Speaker 1: community members is unconstitutional and it should end. Again put
Speaker 1: a pin in that. As we get back to discussion
Speaker 1: of the cameras that we're putting on street lights in
Speaker 1: San Diego. So in a PDF of his plan to
Speaker 1: end homelessness, which has been removed from his campaign website
Speaker 1: but was sank represerved by our friends at Voice of
Speaker 1: San Diego, Gloria wrote, no more criminalizing the existence of
Speaker 1: San Diego's poorest and sicus residence. He also told right
Speaker 1: wing news station KUSI that San Diego cannot claim to
Speaker 1: be America's finest city or even a great city where
Speaker 1: thousands of people live unsheltered and dying on our streets.
Speaker 1: It's time to stop the band aids, the temporary solutions,
Speaker 1: and bad policy from city hall on this issue, he said.
Speaker 1: As mayor, my administration will prioritize ending chronic homelessness, focus
Speaker 1: the cities energy and resources and results oriented programs proven
Speaker 1: to get homeless individuals off the street, connected to services,
Speaker 1: and back on their feet. Not to be fair. Well,
Speaker 1: one is that anything okay, like any person who was
Speaker 1: running from mayor, is the system out can lying to
Speaker 1: you about what they're going to do. The second thing
Speaker 1: is if you ever hear someone say the words results oriented,
Speaker 1: it is time to grab like the largest saber you
Speaker 1: have and like get to work. Oh yeah, And as
Speaker 1: we'll discover the results that he has oriented towards somewhat disappointing.
Speaker 1: For I was gonna say for all of us. Hashtag
Speaker 1: for all of us is his campaign slogan. It's yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just it's very cringe and I don't know, will
Speaker 1: it's very sad when we see the impact of this
Speaker 1: for like the least fortune of people in San Diego
Speaker 1: and then like it, it is very funny. But when
Speaker 1: you see how this plays out on the street, so
Speaker 1: it's also very sad. You know what is also very funny.
Speaker 1: I'm kind of sad. Mia the coin, so yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a Ronald Reagan silver coins that pay for my
Speaker 1: friends to get hormones. So please enjoy these adverts. Thank
Speaker 1: thank you, ally Ronald Reagan for funding the HRT. Yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for Ronnie. All Right, we're back and we're talking
Speaker 1: about Todd Gloria, san Diego's mayor, and we've just before
Speaker 1: the break we talked about like his promises, right, so
Speaker 1: let's see how he did on those promises. I want
Speaker 1: to start with January nine, twenty twenty one. Tod Gloria
Speaker 1: taken office a few days before. If you can cast
Speaker 1: your mind back then there have been a significant event
Speaker 1: at the at the Capitol A couple of days before
Speaker 1: Proud Boys the Nazis Earth assorted ch decided to visit
Speaker 1: San Diego. Three days after they visited the capitol, Anti
Speaker 1: Fascist assembled shows them they weren't welcome, and the police
Speaker 1: responded by declaring the anti Fascis assembly illegal, escorting the
Speaker 1: chent around Pacific Beach as they did various crimes and
Speaker 1: trying to shoot me in the dick with pepper balls.
Speaker 1: Garrison's just smirking, I thought. Gloria, the guy who ran
Speaker 1: on police reform, had this to say. Mayor Gloria spoke
Speaker 1: candidly about what happened at the Capitol and how that's
Speaker 1: reverberating around the country. After seeing what happened in Washington
Speaker 1: on Wednesday, What are you doing out on our streets
Speaker 1: supporting that mess right racism, fascism, anti democracy. Why would
Speaker 1: you choose to be out there, Gloria says, despite his feelings,
Speaker 1: San Diego supports peaceful protests of all kinds. But on Saturday,
Speaker 1: police say three people were arrested and five officers suffered
Speaker 1: minor injuries. We're asking for the public's assistance and helping
Speaker 1: us identify some of those folks who we were not
Speaker 1: able to apprehend yesterday, to make sure they held account
Speaker 1: with these people on both sides of the debate. Both sides, Yeah,
Speaker 1: both sides. So some of you remember some other people
Speaker 1: have caught out people on both sides the debate. So
Speaker 1: I think the most blatant sort of thing he did
Speaker 1: with regard to the police comes after Derek Shovin, the
Speaker 1: cop who murdered George Floyd, was convicted of murder. I
Speaker 1: guess a few you can probably remember where you were
Speaker 1: that day. I can remember I was, and it was
Speaker 1: at the very least after an entire summer of protest. Right,
Speaker 1: it was like the smallest token instance accountability, but I
Speaker 1: guess at least it was something. And in that moment
Speaker 1: told Gloria, who was looking at that same thing that
Speaker 1: nearly everyone was looking at in this country that day. Right,
Speaker 1: He thought about what he wanted to do, and he
Speaker 1: decided that rather than talking to the black organizers who
Speaker 1: had been a street for almost a year and have
Speaker 1: been peppable and tear gassed and maced and never stopped
Speaker 1: in minding justice, he was instead going to call the
Speaker 1: cops and he's such many such cases. Yeah yeah, and
Speaker 1: check out the video that the verdict wasn't making him sad.
Speaker 1: What he did was took over the entire police scanner
Speaker 1: radio thing and delivered a message to the cops, which
Speaker 1: I've got audio of here. Colleague, this is Mere Todd Gloriam.
Speaker 1: I want to address each and every single one of
Speaker 1: you who nobly serve our great city. Today's verdict is
Speaker 1: just the beginning of building a deeper trust with our community.
Speaker 1: Justice will served today against someone who does not represent you,
Speaker 1: or us, or our department, or who we are as
Speaker 1: a nation. So I want you to hear from me today.
Speaker 1: I know who you are. You are people who help
Speaker 1: complete strangers on the worst day in their life. You
Speaker 1: are people who believe in collaboration in community. You're people
Speaker 1: who put your lives on the line every single day
Speaker 1: to protect this city. I and the people of San
Speaker 1: Diego are grateful for your dedication and your service. With
Speaker 1: today's decision made, there's now time for all of us
Speaker 1: to come together, to heal and to move forward. Please
Speaker 1: take care of yourself of each other. You know the
Speaker 1: people of this great city. Be safe. Everybody has anyone
Speaker 1: ever said the words to move forward and not be
Speaker 1: in like, not just be an absolute dipshit. This sounds
Speaker 1: like it was written by an ai y. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you had a chat GPT for a liberal mayor, it
Speaker 1: wouldn't look hugely different to several mayor statements. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: chat GPT, right, liberal mayor writing a ponto the cops.
Speaker 1: Now it's time to heal and come together as a community. Yeah,
Speaker 1: stop with you a black lives mattering. It's it's scary. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was extremely cringe like, especially when you consider how
Speaker 1: it differs from what he was saying just a few
Speaker 1: months ago. And that again, like this was about a
Speaker 1: man who murdered someone, and that somebody in sending it
Speaker 1: was an STPD who killed the person, but somebody in
Speaker 1: San Diego died in similar circumstances with someone doing a
Speaker 1: carotid straight on them. A few days before this, Gloria
Speaker 1: also proposed a budget. In his budget, he proposed that
Speaker 1: we cut library hour significantly and lay off one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty three library employees, but give the police nineteen
Speaker 1: million dollars more than a previous year. The previous year,
Speaker 1: I probably don't have to remind people is a year
Speaker 1: in which San Diegans had turned up in droves at
Speaker 1: zoom council meetings to urge the city to do the
Speaker 1: exact opposite of this. Let's check in on that surveillance
Speaker 1: claim he made. You remember that he said it was unconstitutional? Right,
Speaker 1: so on ye the second of this year, told Gloria
Speaker 1: in a shocking vault fast tweeted street light cameras and
Speaker 1: license plates readers can be helpful public safety tools. You know,
Speaker 1: just because he thinks it's unconstitution or doesn't mean he
Speaker 1: doesn't think it's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's once again
Speaker 1: been held back from protecting the people of San Diego
Speaker 1: by that pesky constitution. The city pass strong privacy protections
Speaker 1: last year, and now it's time for at San Diego
Speaker 1: PD to use this technology to keep us safe public eatings.
Speaker 1: To get this done, start soon. So yeah, these street lights,
Speaker 1: they were deactivated in twenty twenty, but they had previously
Speaker 1: been introduced and build us a way to assess traffic patterns.
Speaker 1: But in fact, they never assessed traffic patterns. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: this will shock you. They put thousands of cameras and
Speaker 1: microphones on our streets, including one outside a planned parenthood facility,
Speaker 1: you know, for traffic You know, the funniest part about this,
Speaker 1: this was literally the thing about doing traffic science was
Speaker 1: this was literally Tom Cruise's cover story and like one
Speaker 1: of the early Mission Impossible movies. So that's what we
Speaker 1: have next. Is it fucking scientology coming for San Diego? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it'll it'll shock you to hear that we stopped using
Speaker 1: these for very reasonable people had very reasonable concerns in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty that you know, it's not a good idea
Speaker 1: for the cops to be able to see and hear
Speaker 1: everything that you do, to be able to read your
Speaker 1: license plate and see everywhere that you go. Betond once
Speaker 1: some back and if people actually want to follow the
Speaker 1: discussion about having them back, because every single time, like
Speaker 1: every single public meeting, there's someone and they'll stand up
Speaker 1: and have a vehement like position pro cameras, and then
Speaker 1: it'll turn out that they are like a prosecutor at
Speaker 1: the DA's office or in one instance, there was a
Speaker 1: prosecutor in one instance who insisted he was there in
Speaker 1: his personal capacity, but like the lieutenant for Soron is
Speaker 1: defending the surveillance cameras that are being posted around Middle Earth.
Speaker 1: Curious this, this guy whose name is not Big Brother,
Speaker 1: is here to advocate for having cameras in your home.
Speaker 1: The King of the a new surveillance progres. But he's
Speaker 1: wearing a fake mustache, so you can't tell who he is.
Speaker 1: So let's look at what he said about stopping criminalizing homelessness. Right,
Speaker 1: And this is a big, big issue. In San Diego.
Speaker 1: We have a massive and growing gunhouse population because our
Speaker 1: rent so are exceptionally high and oh waits are not.
Speaker 1: So the number of unhoused people has increased in the
Speaker 1: Gloria so of death on the street, which hit a
Speaker 1: record of five hundred and seventy four in the county
Speaker 1: last year. So that's more than one person dying every
Speaker 1: single day in the streets. Right. He's opened some shelters,
Speaker 1: but some scouters are scheduled to close. The shelter beds
Speaker 1: and traditional transitional housing provided have failed to go at
Speaker 1: the same rate as a young house population. Let's haven't
Speaker 1: stopped him taking photos and claiming every single one. It's
Speaker 1: a huge step forward. We also continue to build what
Speaker 1: are called congregate shelters, which which don't give people privacy, right,
Speaker 1: which don't give them. A lot of people might not
Speaker 1: want to go into a congreate shelter, into effectively a dormitory,
Speaker 1: and there are a number of reasons why you might
Speaker 1: not want to do that, and yet that's what we're building.
Speaker 1: There are also some other sort of single occupisity shelters,
Speaker 1: but nowhere near enough. He's been a huge backer of
Speaker 1: something called California's Care Court. Are you guys familiar with
Speaker 1: the Care Court at all? No? No, this shit is dystopian.
Speaker 1: This could be a whole episode. Maybe one day it
Speaker 1: will be CARE stands for community assistance, recovery and empowerment,
Speaker 1: which I have a feeling that this is not going
Speaker 1: to be about empowerment. Yeah, when it's empowering someone Garrison,
Speaker 1: but it's not empowered to people we might want to empower.
Speaker 1: What it is in practice, it's a massive expansion of
Speaker 1: force conservatives ship. So I'm going to quote from Human
Speaker 1: Rights Watch here. Human Rights Watch said the plan promotes
Speaker 1: a system of involuntary coerced treatment enforced by an expanded
Speaker 1: judicial infrastructure that will in practice simply remove unhoused people
Speaker 1: with perceived mental health conditions from the public eye without
Speaker 1: effectively addressing those mental health conditions. Jesus, Yeah, it's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: It doesn't provide money for mental health services. It takes
Speaker 1: money that's already existing in the budget and puts it
Speaker 1: across to court mandated treatments. It doesn't provide housing, which
Speaker 1: the multiple study share that housing First's approach a housing
Speaker 1: first approach is a way to solve homelessness. Instead, it
Speaker 1: allows for a broad range of people, which include family members,
Speaker 1: first responders including cops and outreach workers, the public guardian,
Speaker 1: service providers, and the director of the county Behavioral Health agency,
Speaker 1: to refer individuals to the jurisdiction of the court to
Speaker 1: take away their autonomy and liberty. It very broadly covers
Speaker 1: people it describes to having schizophrenia, spectrum or other psychotic disorders.
Speaker 1: Under this system, judges can force people into treatment and housing.
Speaker 1: If they don't comply, they can be forced into conservatorship. Now,
Speaker 1: obviously evidence doesn't support the conclusion that involuntary outpatient treatment
Speaker 1: it's more effective than intensive voluntary outpatient treatment, and indeed
Speaker 1: it does show that involuntary coercive treatment is harmful. But
Speaker 1: it isn't really about people with mental health. It's about
Speaker 1: keeping gun house people where they can't be seen, and
Speaker 1: Human Rights Watch claims that this violates due process and
Speaker 1: international human rights conventions. And yet the Clode Door and
Speaker 1: Gavin you some to be fair, who I'm sure we'll
Speaker 1: run for president soon, have been cheer leading this and
Speaker 1: it's I'm surprised it hasn't got more press coverage into
Speaker 1: nationally and naturally sorry, because it's a massive assault on
Speaker 1: personal freedoms, right, And it's extremely easy to effectively say
Speaker 1: that somebody quote unquote need to mental health, help force
Speaker 1: them into conservatorship. And if they're not willing to attend
Speaker 1: these treatments, so they're not able to attend these treatments,
Speaker 1: that they're not willing to go into the housing that
Speaker 1: they are assigned. Let's say that they don't want to
Speaker 1: live in in congret at housing, right or something like that,
Speaker 1: or they're in housing with someone who they don't feel
Speaker 1: comfortable or safe with them, they could be forcing into
Speaker 1: conservatorship and effectively lose all their liberty. Rent. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty bad. It's a new and exciting way of criminalizing
Speaker 1: homelessness effectively. Like I said, it doesn't provide housing, it
Speaker 1: doesn't provide funding, for behavioral healthcare. It just directs existing
Speaker 1: funding to court mandated programs. So I could pick hundreds
Speaker 1: of other examples of this told glorious stuff, but I
Speaker 1: want to pick one more to focus on, and it's
Speaker 1: something that I think it gets a little bit like
Speaker 1: inside politics, grifty stuff, but it like it has ruined
Speaker 1: a good number of careers in San Diego politics. And
Speaker 1: I'm really heavily indebted to that plan certain Voice of
Speaker 1: San Diego for their reporting on this. But let's start
Speaker 1: by talking about public restrooms. So I think most of
Speaker 1: us are going to agree that, like having a safe
Speaker 1: place to shit and wash your hands is a pretty
Speaker 1: basic human right, but in San Diego it's something that
Speaker 1: not everyone has. So since two thousand four, grand jury
Speaker 1: reports have warned the city's inadequate public restroom infrastructure could
Speaker 1: become a public health threat. That's what happened in twenty
Speaker 1: seventeen and twenty eighteen when a hepatitis a swept through
Speaker 1: the city, sickening five and eighty two people and killing
Speaker 1: twenty So after the hepit yeah, it's not a thing
Speaker 1: that like you expect, right and like like on the
Speaker 1: left coast America's find a city most Americans will not encounter,
Speaker 1: thankfully hepatitis in their lifetime and sadly made this isn't
Speaker 1: our only hepatitis outbreak, so that's great. Oh no. And
Speaker 1: so after the hepe outbreak, the city stopped locking restrooms
Speaker 1: at night, which they had done previously, but that changed
Speaker 1: with the COVID pandemic when the facilities were temporarily closed
Speaker 1: and some have since not returned to twenty four seventh service.
Speaker 1: Following this, a twenty twenty one Shigella outbreak second at
Speaker 1: least forty one homeless residents, most of whom were staying
Speaker 1: in central San Diego, further shed light on the city's
Speaker 1: restroom issues, much as this was dealt with in a
Speaker 1: great report by Bella Ross in The Voice of San Diego,
Speaker 1: to which Gloria commented, the goal here isn't to add
Speaker 1: as many permanent public restrooms as possible. The goal is
Speaker 1: to help get unsheltered residents off the streets and into safe,
Speaker 1: sanitary shelter and permanent housing. Like I don't quite know
Speaker 1: where he was going for here, but not having a
Speaker 1: place to sit is an everyone issue. This isn't just
Speaker 1: an unhoused issue, right Like everybody poops and not all
Speaker 1: of us live in houses and have giant offices in
Speaker 1: city Hall downtown, and so it was this bizarre kind
Speaker 1: of gas lighting approach, like we fundamentally have an issue
Speaker 1: with access to bathrooms and to try and like reframe
Speaker 1: this as another issue where he's also failing. Was It's
Speaker 1: kind of indicative of their response, but also very bizarre.
Speaker 1: Where the city has installed new bathrooms, they're often installed
Speaker 1: by private groups as part of development projects, which is great, right,
Speaker 1: a good old a public private partnership has never gone
Speaker 1: wrong before, so it will shock you to hear that
Speaker 1: these private groups are responsible for maintaining and securing these facilities,
Speaker 1: and this means that they're often locked. So despite literal
Speaker 1: human shit being all over downtown and people are being
Speaker 1: forced to endure the massive and dignity of having nowhere
Speaker 1: to poop. In December twenty twenty two, researched by STSUS
Speaker 1: Project for Ntation Justice found that less than half of
Speaker 1: the city's permanent restrooms could be considered truly open access,
Speaker 1: and that just two permanent facilities were available around the clock,
Speaker 1: seven days a week. Gloria has later acknowledged that the
Speaker 1: city has an issue, but he's chosen to blame residents.
Speaker 1: I just need folks to quit acting a fool in
Speaker 1: these bathrooms. I mean, it's not just a homeless population,
Speaker 1: it's everybody, he said in an interview. In February twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, nearly five years after the last outbreak, San
Speaker 1: Diego County again began recording an uptaking hepatitis say cases.
Speaker 1: Which is great, Right, We're back to where we started.
Speaker 1: Much of this resporting was met with absolutely unhinged responses
Speaker 1: on Twitter from some of Glorious staff. They called themselves
Speaker 1: the Todd Squad. That sus Yeah, yeah, it's pretty bad.
Speaker 1: So notable responses come from Dave Rolland, who left the
Speaker 1: old Weekly City Beak for a job in PR, and
Speaker 1: Rachel Lane, who's Todd's i think, head of public relations.
Speaker 1: She spent June of twenty twenty posting about black Lives
Speaker 1: Matter whilst also doing volunteer public relations to work for
Speaker 1: the cops. Wow amazing, yeah, yeah, voucher public relations. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Like there there there's there's like a there's like a
Speaker 1: joke on like there's there's like a sort of pejorative
Speaker 1: label for the okay, so on Chinese Twitter, there's this
Speaker 1: there's this a joke of calling people unpaid five cent army,
Speaker 1: which is like army is like or well, the number
Speaker 1: of sense changes over time, but it's like there there
Speaker 1: used to be a thing where like you could get
Speaker 1: paid by the government to get like like to to
Speaker 1: to like that you get paid pro post to like posts. Wow,
Speaker 1: whatever fucking shit the Chinese government wanted to like have
Speaker 1: posts on But this person's actually literally an unpaid but
Speaker 1: like actually literally like volume cheer, yeah, like volunteer public
Speaker 1: relations for the cops, Like what the fuck is this bullshit?
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, it was really a magical when I sent
Speaker 1: that pr email. Yeah yeah, I think she framed it
Speaker 1: as like helping the community and the police talk to
Speaker 1: one another in a difficult time. The future is the
Speaker 1: giant boot stamping on your faces while people volunteer to
Speaker 1: paint the boot. Yes, yeah that is yeah, yeah, there
Speaker 1: there is a rainbow boot. Yeah, I mean you can
Speaker 1: you can find their feed. Some of the attacks on
Speaker 1: myself and some of my colleagues are like incredibly petty
Speaker 1: and unprofessional and also quite nerving when you consider the
Speaker 1: huge amounts of taxpair money that are wasted on their salaries,
Speaker 1: which pay them to post. And again, this is a
Speaker 1: town where people die because they don't have a place
Speaker 1: to take a shit. But but we're paying people to
Speaker 1: get into Twitter beef. You know. It's it's also it's
Speaker 1: it's also really cool that like there's the sort of
Speaker 1: two axes of American politics are you can't use the
Speaker 1: bathroom because you're trans, and you can't use the bathroom
Speaker 1: because you don't own one. And then sometimes they just
Speaker 1: coverage and it's the same yeah, yeah, yeah, lucking. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the hands clasping memelucking trans people out of the bathroom.
Speaker 1: All right, So now we're about to get to Todd
Speaker 1: squads finest an hour, which is when they use city
Speaker 1: resources and work time to make a video of them
Speaker 1: singing Return of the Mac. Only it wasn't Return of
Speaker 1: the Mac. It was Todd Gloria's back and yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: going to make you a watch it. So, yes, that
Speaker 1: was that was was he walking through at city Hall? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Was the first part him walking to a security line
Speaker 1: at the airport. Yeah, which is funny. That's a security
Speaker 1: line to get into city Hall. Yeah, okay, okay, have
Speaker 1: you have you never been to a city hall before.
Speaker 1: Mine didn't have that certainly does now Chicago, Yes, it
Speaker 1: certainly has that. Now my local town one didn't. Are
Speaker 1: they Are they saying that the mayor lied to the city?
Speaker 1: Is that? Is that what they're saying? They yeah, the
Speaker 1: previous Oh there, okay, wasn't he the previous mayor? Only
Speaker 1: for a little bit of time then he he was
Speaker 1: entering math Okay, they're play, Oh my god, I believe
Speaker 1: you when you said Eric, but why I thought he
Speaker 1: one guy that was like twelve guys. Yeah. It feels
Speaker 1: like it's gone on for like forty minutes. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you stalin grad there's a point where they come in
Speaker 1: dressed as flavor. Flavor. He gets here and anyway, one
Speaker 1: of them's wearing a medallion that just says cocks on it.
Speaker 1: Al is wearing a medallion here we can probably no note,
Speaker 1: hang on here he is again, franchise. That's some cops.
Speaker 1: What the leg of the ground circle? I think their
Speaker 1: heads touching. There's a person with a COXS medalion. Again,
Speaker 1: this is okay, is one of the worst things. One
Speaker 1: of these people showed up the chain that it was
Speaker 1: like an SD for San Diego when it first comes
Speaker 1: on to screen, it really looks like a swassica. This
Speaker 1: is the Padres logos. Yes, that's no shitty asked to go.
Speaker 1: The Padres did a different genocide and should have been
Speaker 1: conflated with the other genocide. I'm I'm guessing this is
Speaker 1: like a sports thing or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they
Speaker 1: are a the sports ball team. Yeah, that's what I
Speaker 1: thought baseball to be specific. That M very proud of him. Yeah.
Speaker 1: But yeah, as you'll have noticed, one of the most
Speaker 1: cringe things that has ever fucking happened. Yeah, yeah, it's
Speaker 1: pretty bad, right, like like it's it's it's pretty crushing
Speaker 1: when like, like I have personally known people who have
Speaker 1: died on our streets. And also my merrit is making
Speaker 1: Return of the Mac videos dressed as Flavor Flavor. So
Speaker 1: I think we're mostly done. I want to talk about
Speaker 1: one more thing, because no review of San Diego politics
Speaker 1: will be complete without a mention of the giant monument
Speaker 1: to Griff that is one O one Ash Street. So
Speaker 1: what is one on one Street? In twenty sixteen, San
Speaker 1: Diego leased a downtown high rise, hoping to house city employees.
Speaker 1: It turned out that the building was riddled with asbestos,
Speaker 1: and it turned out the city knew is little bit
Speaker 1: when it started to lease the building. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: And then it will shock you to know that they
Speaker 1: deny this at first, but in the agreement to lease
Speaker 1: to own the building, it says Bayer acknowledges that the
Speaker 1: building contained asbestos and that SEMPRA has maintained an asbestos
Speaker 1: monitoring and handling program. So eventually in twenty nineteen they
Speaker 1: managed to move staff in after a renovation that ballooned
Speaker 1: in cost. In twenty twenty, they were forced to evacuate
Speaker 1: the building because of the asbestos. Since then, DA's investigation
Speaker 1: has been opened into Jason Hughes, who publicly represented himself
Speaker 1: as a volunteer advisor to the city, according to Voice
Speaker 1: of San Diego, but unbeknownst to the city, collected nine
Speaker 1: point four million dollars from Cistero, who owned one on
Speaker 1: one Ash Street. The City Attorney's office alleged but could
Speaker 1: not prove that. The city's former top bureaucrat, Chris Michael,
Speaker 1: ordered city information technology staff to purge record tied to
Speaker 1: the one O one Street barcle last year so they
Speaker 1: can improve that. She heads to records, But what they
Speaker 1: do know. That she did was pass a confidential legal
Speaker 1: document to Corey Briggs, a candidate for city attorney. NBC
Speaker 1: reported that the memo included a footnote, which Eliot and
Speaker 1: others later decried as fabricated. In the footnote, they claimed
Speaker 1: that Elliot's office made an effort to shield Gloria from
Speaker 1: an outside probe at the one on one Ash Street debarkle.
Speaker 1: The footnote suggested an interview with Gloria might have clarified
Speaker 1: why the city decided to go forward with the Ash
Speaker 1: Street lease, given Gloria's skepticism about a similar past deal.
Speaker 1: So it's not clear if this, if this footnote was
Speaker 1: real or fabricated, like and then it's alleged it was fabricated,
Speaker 1: which it's bizarre, like this whole sort of weird, corrupt,
Speaker 1: corrupt thing is resigned. It may this may well not
Speaker 1: be true. To be clear, during this time, Dorian Hargrove,
Speaker 1: who was a reporter, obtained some of those records, face
Speaker 1: legal threat of prosecution from the city attorney and lost
Speaker 1: his job for obtaining those records. So far, the city
Speaker 1: has poured more than sixty million into one one Street,
Speaker 1: roughly the same amount of this annual library budget. It's
Speaker 1: only occupied the OCFER space. Yeah, it's great, it's absolutely in.
Speaker 1: This has been occupied for like less than a couple
Speaker 1: of months for the five years since the city acquired it.
Speaker 1: Are they do do do? Do we know what their
Speaker 1: ties to like the contractors who are doing the renovations are,
Speaker 1: and that will be an interesting thing. I actually don't
Speaker 1: know that. Yeah, because that that's like that that's that's
Speaker 1: that's like that's the classic Illinois griff. Yeah. You just
Speaker 1: keep keep renovating the building, keep getting donations from the
Speaker 1: from the contractors well or or or the contractors are
Speaker 1: just your friends and so that's okay. Yeah, keep the
Speaker 1: money around. Yeah, well they're not doing any more contracting
Speaker 1: on it. Mayre because the city agreed to buy the building,
Speaker 1: which needs one hundred and fifteen million million dollars in repairs,
Speaker 1: for eighty six million last year. Yeah. It's good stuff,
Speaker 1: amazing yep. This week, the UT reported that San Diego's
Speaker 1: top real estate official did not seek input from her
Speaker 1: staff or a view internal files before recommending the city
Speaker 1: buy out the one or one as Street lease. They
Speaker 1: also reported that, in a confidential memo to the city
Speaker 1: Auditor's Office. Anonymous employees wrote, the City of San Diego
Speaker 1: should be aware of the level of waste and abuse
Speaker 1: that is occurring within the Real Estate and Airport Management Department,
Speaker 1: which has led to a toxic, hostile revenue wasting, an
Speaker 1: unproductive work environment. Which is great. Yep, this is the
Speaker 1: San Diego we wanted hashtag for all of us. So
Speaker 1: this is a lot of inside San Diego politics, right.
Speaker 1: So it's a lot of lists of things and promises
Speaker 1: made and promises broken. But I want to come back
Speaker 1: to the fact that this is a guy who ran
Speaker 1: for Mare on a ticket the push compassion and a
Speaker 1: relative liberal set of policies, and he's done the exact
Speaker 1: opposite in his time in office. He ran as a progressive,
Speaker 1: but he's done very little to differentiate himself policy wise
Speaker 1: from It's like Republican Kevin Faulkner. Obviously we're just cracking
Speaker 1: the lead on some of these policies here. He's consistently
Speaker 1: chosen to suppund it, to fund and support the police
Speaker 1: over the people of the city. He's consistently moved to
Speaker 1: make it harder to live on the streets and harder
Speaker 1: to get off the streets. And he's consistently chosen photo
Speaker 1: opportunities over real governance for the city. His pr people
Speaker 1: spend hours bashing mutual aid workers like Michael who he
Speaker 1: had a guest on the show on Twitter and wasting
Speaker 1: taxpayer money doing it. Just this week, he welcomed right
Speaker 1: wing maniac Rishi Sunac, who actually as Prime Minister of
Speaker 1: the UK. Despite the fact that people haven't noticed to
Speaker 1: our city and San Diego State University Research has released
Speaker 1: a report saying negative interactions with the police are driving
Speaker 1: black people who are experiencing homelessness away from services and
Speaker 1: housing opportunities. This is what we got from a mayor
Speaker 1: who positioned himself as a progressive and its governor as
Speaker 1: a rainbow Republican. So yeah, that's I would say. That's
Speaker 1: all I have to say about Todd Gloria. If you
Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter, you'll know that it's not the case,
Speaker 1: and I will continue to have more to say about
Speaker 1: Todd Gloria. But yeah, it's really sad. It's deeply said,
Speaker 1: and it like I said, it's funny. The Cranty Mudic
Speaker 1: music video is funny. We'll linked to it in the
Speaker 1: show notes, but it's it's also really deeply troubling that
Speaker 1: this has real impacts for real people who are already
Speaker 1: down on their luck and you know, living on the
Speaker 1: streets or experiencing you know, over aggressive policing. All the
Speaker 1: things that he said he would fix have just got worse.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it sucks. So thanks for listening to me
Speaker 1: why and about my city everyone, And yeah, again, my
Speaker 1: apologies for traumatizing you further with that video. It's fine.
Speaker 1: Next week. Next week, we're well, okay, So we would
Speaker 1: have been doing Chicago's own version of this exact same person,
Speaker 1: which is Lloyd Lightfoot, except to the surprise of absolutely
Speaker 1: zero people who live in Chicago and everyone who doesn't
Speaker 1: live in Chicago, Lightfoot didn't make it out of her
Speaker 1: fucking primary. So we're instead of going to be doing
Speaker 1: Chicago's once in the future, while not once the potential
Speaker 1: future mayor Paul Vallas, who absolutely sucks ass. So stay
Speaker 1: tuned for that in another week when I get a
Speaker 1: yell about Paul Vallas and inflict some truly horrific bullshit
Speaker 1: on all of you. Very excited to get my revenge,
Speaker 1: all right, well, I will look forward to seeing Paul
Speaker 1: Vallas's hip hop video Charrison's just sitting there background at dying.
Speaker 1: This is this is, this is worse than anything anything
Speaker 1: the Daily Liar can throw at me. Should we just
Speaker 1: pivot to more come content? Garrisons, Okay, this has been taken.
Speaker 1: Happen year. You can find us it Happened here pod
Speaker 1: on Twitter, Instagram. But we're gonna leave before one of
Speaker 1: us dies. It could happen here as a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
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