Latest / The Orange Report with Kira Davis / Ep.62 I'll stop the payments to high speed rail boondoggle IMMEDIATELY with Herb Morgan
Transcript
- speaker-0: I paid ninety five cents for gas when I started driving, so I don't I don't even want three dollars. I want ninety five cents. speaker-1: Listen, Herb, I was telling my husband the other day, I can remember being a young newlywed and driving to Kentucky for a family event and stopping to get gas at ninety cents in Kentucky. And at that time it was like a dollar twelve or something in Indiana. And I was like, wow, it's ninety cents. speaker-0: Well, you know you're talking to a Kentucky Colonel. speaker-1: No, I didn't know that. I just got back from Louisville last week. I did a a trip with friends in Louisville for the first time. speaker-0: Love Louisville. Love Louisville. Love Lexington. Love everything about it. Great state. Well run, affordable, kind, nice people, grass everywhere, horses, and my all time favorite, bourbon. speaker-1: Well, hey everybody. I want to welcome you to the show. First of all, of course. Make make sure you follow me everywhere. But ⁓ I want to introduce my guest. You've met him here before. If you watched the show before, if you s follow me online, you see me hanging around with this guy. ⁓ I think he's running for one of the most important offices in the state, and it's probably one of the offices that you have never heard of. So I always love to make sure that everyone Understands this office and spots it on their ballot. Please welcome to the show. Herb Morgan, he is running for state controller of California. Herb, welcome. speaker-0: Tira, it is always a pleasure to be with you. ⁓ can't wait to get started. Let's have some fun. speaker-1: Yeah, I ⁓ well as always, I always start by asking you what the hell is a state controller? What does it do? Because I ⁓ I know that most people don't know what it is. They don't even recognize that office. And I'll be honest with you, Herb, and I'm embarrassed to say this as a political animal myself, until I met you, I didn't know what the state controller did. speaker-0: Well, you're not alone. A lot of people feel the same way and they don't understand maybe there's a treasurer, there's a controller, and there's an auditor, but the controller has unlimited audit authority. So why do we have an auditor and a controller, right? Peep that's a normal question to ask. So let's just get rid of the first two. An auditor is the employee of the state of California. Okay. Appointed by the governor and the Senate and hired and it's a job. That person audits each agency each year, provides a rapport. No big deal. Let's move that to the side. speaker-1: Wait, do we have an auditor in California? speaker-0: We do. We have a state auditor. They do audit. They provide beautiful audit reports. It's actually they do a very good job. Okay. The reports are posted. They're available. And those are the reports I use to read and get the information about the fraud in California. The state auditor is job, his or her job is to audit everything, put the reports out. speaker-1: Do they audit? speaker-0: And then every other year they put out what's called a high risk report where they detail all the high risk findings, the fraud. ⁓ And they put it out in December every other year, and then it gets ignored by the politicians and the agency and the department heads that are supposed to stop the fraud. So that's the otter. Let's move him or her aside. Okay. Then you have the state treasurer. State treasurer manages all of our banking relationships. Pools of capital, cash management. They buy T-bills, commercial paper. Boring, yawn, but Jennifer Hawks is going to do a great job at it. Let's move that aside. speaker-1: L I I just wanna take a minute a second here too to just reiterate Jennifer Hawks is your pick for state treasurer. Everyone, Jennifer Hawks, look for that name. Okay. speaker-0: One hundred percent, not even a doubt in my mind for one second. Jennifer Hawks, I need her as my partner to do what I am going to do as the state controller. speaker-1: Follow her on Instagram, everybody. She's actually got a pretty good Instagram account. I mean, it's not like flashy and fancy, but she does a lot of information posts where she's just running you through some of the different things that she has found. I get a lot of good information for her. So go look for Jennifer Hawks ⁓ with an E, spelled like you think, on Instagram. Sorry, Herb. I just want to make sure everybody knows about her. speaker-0: See, yeah, that's great because I need her there. And then the state controller. The state controller has audit authority, but it's a different kind of audit. So the Constitution was written when we in eighteen seventy nine, our state constitution, and it was designed to prevent the theft of state resources. So they created a job, a person, an elected official, whose job it is to prevent fraud by using financial controls. So the audit. Duties of the state controller. The very first duty is to pre-audit all state spending for legality and compliance. Was the spending authorized by the statute? Has it been signed off by all the right people? Is it legal? Is the entity receiving the money in good standing? Pre-audit. What we've learned is the reason we have the fraud in California is that the Pre-audits are not being done. What our current state controller Malia Cohen has is a system whereby the requesting entity, so for example, the high-speed rail chief executive officer wants a payment of $20 million made to a consultant. They are supposed to submit the request. The controller then is supposed to verify the legality. That's a pre-audit. What Malia Cohen is doing is she is allowing the requester, meaning the high speed rail authority itself, to s to attest that they did the pre audit. That is not what the Constitution says. The Constitution is clear that the auditors shall pre audit state spending. So last week, the assembly members, led by the chairwoman and Carl DeMaio, sent a letter to Malia Cohen. And they gave her 14 days to respond. How many pre-audits did you do versus how many checks went out the door? That two-week period will expire next Tuesday, then they need to respond. She needs to respond to the assembly because the assembly is the oversight body of the state controller's office. So we believe she's not doing the pre-audits. One of the reasons we believe that. is because her own spokesperson, a man named Bismarck Obundo, was caught on video by O'Keeffe Media Group bragging, actually kind of proud of the fact in his words, there's fraud everywhere. Fraud in the agencies, departments. He went on and listed a whole litany of places. And he said there is one hundred percent fraud. This is the number two executive in the state controller's office. Wow. And the person interviewing him, it was a hidden camera interview and he was drinking a little wine. The person interviewing him said, Well, isn't it your job to do the audits to prevent the fraud? He goes on to say, Bismarck Obondo, the spokesman for Malia Cohen, we just don't do the audits. We can't do the audits. In fact, he goes on to say the politicians don't want us to do the audits. Right. This this okay, so think about that. speaker-1: Don't want to think about this. I want to grab a pitchfork and start y marching down the street with a torch. speaker-0: Every day I get into my social media feed, my my ex, my insta, whatever, and I go through and it's story after story after story about fraud in California government spending. Every day. Nick Shirley's here. He's filming phony hospice, phony daycare, ⁓ phony homeless spending. It's literally every day. And then everybody says, ⁓ Gavin's a bad governor. Well, it's true, Gavin's a very bad governor. speaker-1: Yeah. speaker-0: But it's not the governor's job to stop the fraud. It's the controller's job. It's literally the purpose. It's not one of the jobs of the state controller. It's the primary function of the state controller. speaker-1: Okay, let me let me stop you here then because honestly, let's really pick this apart, everybody. What Herb just said. We have a position. It's called state controller. That their only job, literally the reason they were created, is to prevent ⁓ fraud, to prevent the a stealing of taxpayer funds that are supposed to go to government functions, as we allow. As taxpayer, we agreed to this arrangement. ⁓ so we have a position, but when you think of California, everybody, what's one of the first things that comes to your mind behind surfers and blonde beach babes? It is, it is fraud these days. In 2026, it is fraud. Yet we have a position to prevent this. Most of y'all aren't voting for this position. ⁓ most of y'all don't think about this position, but all of y'all think about fraud. So what Herb has been happening in the position of state controller in California for decades now because when I look around, all I see is fraud. What what what are these people running on? How are they getting elected? What is going on here? Did we ever have a good state controller? speaker-0: Yeah, we had a guy named Houston Fortnoise elected in nineteen sixty seven. I mean speaker-1: What? speaker-0: California, unfortunately, has become a criminal enterprise. And it was a slow creep, okay? A little bit of this, a little bit of that. I mean, give you an example, there's this assembly member in Merino Valley, California. His name is Corey Jackson. Nobody's ever heard of Corey Jackson. I'd never heard of Corey Jackson, but Corey forms a nonprofit entity, nonprofit entity before he was elected. It was called CART. CART, Citizens Against Racism and Trauma. Now I don't know if somewhere else there's a group that's for trauma and for racism, but he but he forms this organization. He goes he resigns from the board, of course, because he's in the assembly now. Uh-huh. He then, as the chairman of the number two budget committee in the state assembly, he awards his nonprofit $250,000. Not for a contract, not to deliver a service, not to build a bathroom in a park. Literally just a earmark. Here's two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. So he does that, nobody says a word. Now he's a state assembly member and he awards his nonprofit that he formed, he awards it nonprofit entity of the year. Okay. speaker-1: Wow. speaker-0: Did it have any operations? No. Did it have any office? No. Did it have any employees? No. What did they do with the $250,000? They put on a one day or half day Zoom meeting, kind of like what you and I are doing here on Riverside.fm. They put on a thing and there was a speaker. Okay, the speaker was none other than Angela Davis. Yeah. So I would assume Angela Davis was paid an honorarium for speaking, even though she's a tenured professor at UC Santa Cruz, and we don't have to go into her background. We know how horrific it is. She gets an honorarium for speaking. Now he's got about two hundred thousand left, right? Because he awarded himself two fifty. This year, just three weeks ago, middle of the night, he awarded His own nonprofit that he's no longer affiliated with, I'm sure it was completely hands-off negotiation. Are you ready for the number? Six million dollars. Okay, I don't know what an assembly maker makes, but it's not much money, right? They make ninety grand, a hundred grand, I don't know what they make. He awarded himself six million dollars. So I don't care if you're a Republican, a socialist, a libertarian, a DSA, a communist, whatever you are. You cannot find that appropriate under any possible scenario. speaker-1: It's your money, everybody. That's your money. It's our money. Six million dollars. This guy just went and looked at the ledger, said there it is, and awarded it to himself. What would you do with even a portion of that money in your bank account, Californians? You'd probably go get a tank of gas, can tell you that. speaker-0: Yeah, how about how about we put it into special ed classrooms in our public schools? Six million dollars worth of educational materials for special ed. How about, I don't know, fix a roadway. speaker-1: Think about think about all of the measures herb that are gonna be on that are on this ballot that are asking the voters to approve a new fee, a new tax, ⁓ some kind of new charge, because we can't leave starving children and single mothers behind and we need health care and we every election cycle we are we are greeted with this utter panic from our bureaucracy saying we don't have enough money to do things and don't you care about kids? Don't you care about homeless people? And then we have people like this guy from Merino Valley just awarding himself six million dollars of your taxpayer money mere days before you go to the ballot box to vote on more charges, more taxes, more fees. Everyone should be absolutely outraged by this. speaker-0: We sh we should be. And so the controller's job, right, is to sniff out this kind of activity. And you do it through the use of financial controls. So I've been in business, in finance for 39 years. I just retired this year. Now I have very deep experience with financial controls, with audit, with balance sheets, with income statements, with public pension boards. I served with San Diego City. But there are certain financial experiences I just do not have that my opponent does. So you might want to consider voting for Malia Cohen because she has unique financial experience. I do not have the experience of buying a home with no money down and two adjustable rate mortgages, failing to make payments and having it foreclosed on, and then accusing the bank of predatory lending. I do not have that experience. speaker-1: That's the person running the controller's office right now. speaker-0: That's Malia. I also do not have the experience of having two businesses shut down by the franchise tax board for having failed to file and pay taxes because I actually know that businesses are supposed to file tax returns and pay taxes. Now, the irony here is that the state controller is the chairman of the franchise tax board. You can't make this stuff up. The other experience I don't have, you know, she claims to have more experience in government than I do. And I have to admit, I've studied government extensively extensively, and I have worked in the public sector as a volunteer pension trustee, but I never had that unique experience of being a guest of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela for sixteen days in two thousand six to study the beauties of socialism and how well it can succeed. And I never had the experience. Of coming back and screaming F the police at the top of my lungs and and arguing and to f to defund the police as a San Francisco supervisor. I never had any of those experiences. So if you want the experience of a foreclosure, business shutdown, and socialist training in Venezuela, you got Malia Cohen. There you go. speaker-1: I think at this juncture in our state's history, somebody who has a lot of experience in government, that's a disqualifier at this point. I don't I don't think that that I I think the idea that your opponents and people in Steve's race and Michael Gates race, they're doing the same thing, the fact that they're saying they don't these people don't have enough government experience. I don't think that's a bad thing. As Herb just laid out. Look at what the people with government experience are doing. The experience is not in serving people. The experience is in defrauding people. That's what that's what their experience is in. When you say this person has a lot of government experience at this point in California, that's what you're saying. They're defrauding people. I I've just I want people to understand, like this is an elected office, Herb. This is an office that you and I are responsible for elected. We don't have to put up with this. We don't have to have a Malia Cohen running our our state ledgers. We don't have to have a failed businesswoman and a fraudster, a potential fraudster, ⁓ signing off on the checks and the audits. This is us. This is an us thing. speaker-0: So, you know, going back to the state controller, the pre audit is the main function. Then there's the postaudit. The postaudit is after the money goes out the door, the controller's job is to go view fee into the field, did we get the school bus? Does it exist? Does it work? Is there a train, a high speed rail? Are there tracks? Are there trains? And that's called a a postaudit or a performance audit. So different than the regular audit that the auditor does, pre audit state spending, post audit state spending. She claims she doesn't have the money. That's why she doesn't do the audits. But the job requires you to do the audits. You cannot exactly my point. Yes, you took it right. So so we actually did a poll. We got our poll results ⁓ two nights ago, and this is sh a shock poll because it's really, really good. speaker-1: Six million dollars is speaker-0: First thing is we asked Californians, are we on the right track or the wrong track? In 2022, when we got 45% of the state control erase, 44% of people said we were on the wrong track. Today that number is 64.5%. This means we can flip this position. Actually, we could flip all the positions, but the most flippable is always the financial one because most people who are smart, they don't. Think they don't care if I'm a liberal or a conservative. They only care if I'm going to do the audits. And they know that there's fraud. So 64.5% said flippable. We then asked them a little question: hey, Herb versus Malia. Okay, it was 4941 for Malia, 9% undecided. That's huge because she's an incumbent. And it means we have this only a nine point gap, and she's under fifty, and we have all these undecided, nine percent, nine and a half percent undecided. So we're like, okay, that's great. Then we go through a process of informing the voters. Did you know or no? That we say, what's your biggest concern? Number one, across all political registrations, fraud. Number two, would you support Putting all state spending online in an open source ledger, the day it happens, every time a check gets cut, a credit card gets swiped, that is public information. In the history of polling, nothing is ever polled at 96.4%, but that's what we got. 96.4% of Californians say, yes, we want the spending online. Now, we say, Did you know that Herb Morgan was the guy? speaker-1: Mm-hmm. speaker-0: Who built a working prototype of this, and it's at California Radical Transparency dot com. They didn't know that. Well, okay, did you know that Herb Morgan has been campaigning for a year and a half on putting all spending online in order to stop Nick Shirley, to stop the fraud, to stop Nick Shirley from needing to come here and expose fraud? Did you know he was endorsed by McClatchy, which is the Sacramento Bee, which is a liberal left newspaper, and they said he's the only person remotely qualified for the job. This is A Democrat paper. Did you know he was endorsed by the Orange County Register, who said essentially the same thing that Malia Cohen has no idea what she's even doing, what the job entails? Did you know these things? And everybody goes, Now, knowing that, all of you undecided, and all of you who already said who you wanted, let's ask the question again. 52 48. We are within four points. We're at forty eight percent. What I've what I need from everybody over the next eleven days until the ballots the voting starts, and forty days until it ends, and then thirty-eight days of counting. I need everybody to go online, go to your socials, type in your search, California fraud, find every article, every post you can, and talk about it. Say the fraud in California is unacceptable. Fraud is nonpartisan. There's a person with a solution at Herb for Controller. It's called radical transparency. We put all spending online for everyone to see. Because what the poll told us is if is our name recognition is almost identical. If my name recognition can go up and be associated with solving fraud, we will win. So I'm begging all of your listeners, I want you to come donate, and that'll help me do it. But I know money's tight because you live in California. Get on your socials, just do it twice a day for 40 days. Search California fraud, talk about it, repost what we post, and you can add like $100,000 in value to my campaign without having to write a check. That's pretty big, but everybody's got to do it. speaker-1: Yeah, I wanna I wanna second that. I there I always tell people there are many different ways you can contribute to a campaign. I know money is hard. That's a tough ask, especially when you're getting into the holiday seasons. And as her pointed out, it's California. And I paid six seventy for gas the other day. Like I yeah, I get that it's crazy right now. But ⁓ there are other things you can do that are just as valuable as as the cash. Putting a sign in your yard, I cannot emphasize enough. A sign is such a big deal. It seems cheesy. It seems stupid. Who cares about the signs? When I was running for school board, I tell you what, the most valuable thing you could have given me was a sign. And that was really hard to get people to put signs in their yards. A lot of people that I don't want to be political. But listen, do you want to be, you know, affordable? That's what we're that's what we're looking at here. It's not about being political. So ⁓ Get a Herb Morgan sign. Go to his website. Look at can you get stickers, decals, get a shirt. Yeah, he has really cool cups over there. Like he has lots of fun stuff you can you can ⁓ get, but it is the sign is valuable, Herb. And I want you to know that as we're speaking, your sign is in my front yard. That's right. Corner lot. I have a corner lot. I try not to overwhelm the neighborhood with all my political signs during election season, so I switch them out every few days. So you and the whole golden speaker-0: Thank you for speaker-1: ticket get about three days a piece at a time. You, Gloria Romero, Steve Hilton, Michael Gates, ⁓ and they have some local people, but right now it's Herb Morgan. It makes such a difference because when people here's what happens, everybody. And Herb, you tell me ⁓ confirm this or or not. Tell me how you feel about the science. What happens is people drive by your yard, they see the name and maybe the office title. They will think nothing of it until They get the ballot. And when they're going, I don't know what the hell a sick controller is, they'll go, ⁓ I saw that guy's name in my neighbor's yard and I know that she, you know, votes this way or she's always concerned about fraud. So if she is, you know, putting that sign out there, that might be someone that I should vote for. And unfortunately, a lot of people vote just on name alone. So the sign is huge. speaker-0: It's accurate. And the same concept applies to social media. So you can put a sign in your yard. Yes, do it. 100% do it. You can put a sign on a on your all your friends' computers by just typing in there and using that little, where it is right there, at Herb4 controller. The more of that we get, what it's going to do, it's going to raise our algorithm value, and we start spending literally this week. Everything we've built on online advertising has been organic until now. All the money we've raised now is now going to go towards these digital ads. And if you're a Republican and you're known and you vote, you're not gonna see my ad. I'm sorry, but I can't afford to send it to you. speaker-1: Yeah. Don't batter with us. Yeah. speaker-0: My advertising w it's so detailed. We can we're hitting very certain specific targets, but I can tell you they're not I'm not gonna see my own ad. Kiri Davis is not gonna see my ad. speaker-1: Good. speaker-0: We have transparency to solve it. And we're going to be the first Republican to win in California in twenty years. That's pretty exciting. speaker-1: It is exciting and I wanna point out that this is really truly the definition of a nonpartisan office. And I've been saying this a lot that ⁓ in California, ⁓ we have just been we have been really oppressed with this idea of left versus right. It's a trick. It's a trap. And I don't think it's ever been more evident to me than in this election cycle when everything is falling apart. Like everything's going to shit. And there you nobody, whether you're all the way left or all the way right, there's nobody can deny it. We're all experiencing the same misery right now. Everybody who stopped at that gas station the other day paid the same price I did for gas. And but when you go online during this season, you see a lot of this partisanship, partisan ads. ⁓ particularly I bel see coming out of the Democrat Party. You know, they're throwing Trump's name around, they're throwing MAGA around, but the rest of us are are here going, Okay, but he doesn't run this state, he doesn't do the audits, he doesn't hand out the checks, he doesn't tally the votes here. Our problem is the California politicians. So I really want to encourage everyone to break out of this binary of this like left versus right, red versus blue. I would love for us to get back to a place, Herb, where we can argue about those things again. Where we can argue about our ideologies, you know, who's more conservative, who's more liberal. We're not there. Right now we do not have the luxury of ideology. We are suffering and we just need change. speaker-0: A Amen. We need it so bad. You know, California, we're the richest state and the richest country in the history of the human race. We tax our citizens at the highest level. Fine. That's not up to me as controller. We then spend more per per capita than any other state. Fine. Not up to me as state controller. K through twelve education, twenty-seven thousand per kid this year. Mississippi spends twelve and they have better test scores. Fine. Not my problem. What my problem and solution is fraud. Transparency. Can't say it. Can't say it enough. California's ranked bottom five in every metric, cost of living, safety. ⁓ we're bottom six or seven in education. We're bottom five in pollution. We're number we're dead last in affordability, dead last in starting a career, dead last for retirement. Yet we're paying the most. Maybe, maybe we stop voting DR and we just vote. resume, skill, competence, especially on these executive offices. In fact, I'm I'm on record, I would absolutely support a proposition to remove the partisan label from the executive offices. I get it. You want your Democrat or your Republican in the legislature to argue policy and set tax rates and spending and priorities. That's fine. But your plumber, your electrician, your roofer, your heart surgeon, your brewer, your distiller Whatever you want, your controller, why is it D or R? I don't get it. speaker-1: Right. I think it I think it's just another tactic to divide people along lines that really don't matter. And this is one office everybody that is has a huge effect on your life and really does not meet the the partisan politics. So, ⁓ Herb, I I appreciate your ⁓ willingness to to run and it's a long road and you're coming to the end of it. So congratulations. ⁓ I want to before we wrap up here though, I want to do a little lightning round with you. So let's do I want to just throw out some terms. Okay. And then you just tell me the first thing, thought that comes to your mind. Okay. A couple of these we've already brushed in our conversation. All right. First one, high speed rail. speaker-0: Stopped J R one. speaker-1: Yay. 'Cause I just saw another report on the news this morning, Herb, about the high speed rail and how ⁓ they just can't believe that this one section of the track now they're bumping it down the road till twenty speaker-0: didn't even get the legal right away before they started building. It literally it's it's it's a it's go it should be a business school case of total failure, and it's why you have to put in people with skills to the right job. They it was eight hundred, then it was one hundred and seventy seven, right? It was it was ten billion, now it's a hundred and thirty billion. We're said to Bakersfield, get on a bus. But they're building without even having a complete legal right away, and they're not gonna get the legal right away. Also, you can't make payments on high speed rail under Prop one A if it doesn't operate at break even after completion. They their own business plan says it's gonna run in a deficit and require subsidy. Therefore, as controller, I'll just stop the payments. It's over. speaker-1: Great. You that's why you have to vote for Herb. Like literally, we have to because this is not real. High speed rail at this point it's not real. It's not. It is a money laundering. It's a giant money laundering operation. Yeah. I can't even can't even believe we're still Herb. I moved to California almost twenty years ago. And when I moved here, they were just instituting a half cent soda tax to cover the high speed rail. And it was a big deal at the time. It was a big deal. And I remember going, ⁓ a half cent for high speed rail. The high speed rail sounds awesome. Fast forward twenty two l years later, her my children are adult. speaker-0: How'd that work out? speaker-1: My children are adults now and they have never set foot on a high speed ramp. ⁓ okay. Next ⁓ next phrase in the lightning round. ⁓ daycares and hospices. speaker-0: Let's have legitimate ones. speaker-1: Fair enough. I think that's so easy, everybody. Vote for her for legitimate daycares and hospices. All right. LAX people mover. speaker-0: Interesting concept. speaker-1: I feel like we could file that under the i speed rate. speaker-0: Just just another, just another project without proper competitive bidding, without getting it done right, without having deliverables and payment metrics, and they just don't even have to set this up. In the private sector, we don't have to set things up so people get paid enough, but they don't get their final payment until it's done and complete and it works. And the budget has to be guaranteed by the contractor. They just do it wrong. It's like the payroll project. We're gonna she wants to spend Melia wants to spend three billion dollars on payroll. payroll, building our own software. I'm sorry, I could have Grok build me a payroll system in about fifteen minutes and ⁓ or I could just get a payroll company to white label the software they've already built. speaker-1: Why does and is anybody as angry as I am? This is I I feel like we're all far too casual about what is going on with our tax dollars. LA people mover is is just I j again on the news this morning. Now it was supposed to be done last year. That this is the people mover to get people we cannot get people from terminal to terminal in LAX. You gotta walk or drive, which is nearly impossible. speaker-0: It's a joke. ⁓ I know. I spent I spent a lot of time at LAX this year on this campaign trail, as you can imagine. Sorry. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. It's murder. It's mayhem. It it is ridiculous. And it's just a circle. It should be so easy to build a train around an elevated train around LAX. And we're having the Olympics in twenty twenty eight. And we're not even sure if the LAX people mover now is gonna it's built, by the way, everybody. It's built. It's just not finished. It's crazy. speaker-0: Yeah, it's it's it's insanity. So government spending projects in California are just a way for people to get in front of the flow of money. So you could say the same thing about homelessness, even K through twelve education hospitals, and they re what they've learned, what the bad people have learned is that there's no audits being done. And if there's no audits being done, if you're connected, you can form an entity, get a grant, get a project, whatever it is. Massive margins. I was up in Lake Arrowhead the other day and the guy goes, Hey, look at the big sign when you leave town. It's like welcome to Arrowhead or something like that. It's got lights on it. It's got stone pillars. And he goes, I'm in the sign making business. I could have I could have made that sign for three hundred thousand dollars and and had a fifty percent profit. I would have made profit of a hundred and fifty. He goes, They paid three point five million for a sign. Then you and I'm like, this like we are so rich. We have to understand that we should have glistening streets. You should have people movers that make you a freaking latte while you're on them. We are so rich. If you travel to like China, not nearly as rich as us, and you travel, I've done it, you go through their airports and their high speed rails, and you're like, ⁓ my God. Like, how do they afford this? Are they going into massive debt? Because we can't we don't even fill our potholes. speaker-1: Yes. speaker-0: Like and our public school teachers don't have desks in the classroom. My daughter-in-law doesn't have a desk. She teaches special needs kids. Like, what the hell is wrong with us? How can you spend $354 billion and get nothing? Nothing. And it it just angers people. And then like you gotta vote though. You gotta vote. And you gotta get rid of the the in the nincompoops. speaker-1: No, yeah, you yeah, you have you have to vote. This is ⁓ we're it's twenty twenty-six and I think if everyone just stopped and really considered where we are right now, n life has never been more advanced. Life should be getting better. In the cities, life should be getting better and it's getting worse. It's degrading. ⁓ y the the you know, the LA or San Francisco or San Diego. Twenty years ago is a very different place than it is right now. It's degrading. And I think if you stop and think about it, you'll you'll admit it. And if you lose if you engage your logic for just a second, it it should be the opposite of what it is. Things should be getting easier. Things should be getting better, cleaner, more organized with everything. And things are not. So is that a technology problem, a funding problem, or is that a people problem? Things are not getting better. That is a problem. speaker-0: It's a major problem and you you brought up Los Angeles. I gotta tell you, I don't know how anybody in LA County would vote for any incumbent for anything. Think about this. National unemployment rate is four point one, California is five point one. U six unemployment means you're you're out of work and looking, out of working gave up, or out of work working part time in a gig. That's called U six unemployment. California is the highest of all 50 states, 10.1%. Los Angeles County, 12.1%. 12% unemployment in what's supposed to be the economic engine of our state. It's the biggest county. But ⁓ but what do they have? They have the worst performing schools in the state, which is the worst performing schools in the country. Like you send your kids to school in LA and they don't learn to read. They're the worst on the math scores or worse on the re worst on the reading scores. And we've had a hundred thousand decline in school enrollment in LA Unified School District. One hundred thousand decline because they're so bad that parents, even though they don't have a job, they're still pulling their kids out and figuring a way to either homeschool them or do something. And then in June, the superintendent of your school district, his home is rated by the FBI. His office is rated by the FBI. Why would you vote for any of these people in Los Angeles when And or in the state. They have failed you. They have delivered misery to you in Los Angeles. It's disgusting. This is should be the greatest city and it's not. And it should be the greatest state and it's not. We we can f and it by the way, we can fix it. Steve Heldon and I, we've got this plan. We talk about it all the time. Like this is gonna be easy. I can do it. We can do it. You've gotta give us a chance. speaker-1: the thing, isn't it, Herb? It's actually the solutions are not that complicated. The people in charge right now keep selling it as complicated because they don't want you to know how easy it is. but it really isn't that complicated. It just takes a little bit all right, let's keep let's keep moving along here, guys. speaker-0: Lightning bro. I got I sorry I got off it. It's supposed to be lightning. I'm gonna I'm gonna answer quickly this time. speaker-1: No, that's fine. No, this is good. This is what I wanted. ⁓ Nick Shirley. speaker-0: Love the kid. We're gonna stop Nick Shirley by stopping the frog. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. I l we need let's re let's duplicate Nick Shirley. I don't know how we cloned that kid, but ⁓ God bless him. Be praying for Nick out there. All right. Gavin Newsom. That's about all he has to qualify him for anything. Hair. Okay. And finally, California. speaker-0: Here. Beautiful. speaker-1: I agree. speaker-0: And saveable. speaker-1: I agree. I agree. This state is worth saving. I have been a nomad for most of my life. I have lived all over this country and in Canada. As all my viewers know I'm Canadian, born there. ⁓ I've lived in 13 different states, multiple cities. ⁓ California is the most beautiful. California is the greatest place I have ever lived, without a doubt. speaker-0: Amen. Let's fix it. speaker-1: Let's fix it. All right. In that respect then, ⁓ Herb, tell people where they can find out more about your campaign and how to support you. And maybe go get a sign. Yeah. Or some other graphics for your social media. speaker-0: So follow me on the socials. That's the best way to get up to the minute information at Herb4Controller website, herbmorgan.com. Go to the info tab, request some signs. We'll hook you up with somebody in your area because they're all over the state. Don't forget my my ask. It's not even an ask. It's a beg. I am begging you. I am putting every bit of my soul into this. And all I ask people to do is get on social media twice a day for 40 days. Type in California fraud. And then engage with those people in the comments, tell ⁓ we have a solution. Tell ⁓ about Herb Morgan. We can get this done. This is our time to take our state back. speaker-1: And I just wanna say, Herb, you don't have to beg. You are not a beggar. You are inviting people to participate and taking back this state. That's what you're doing. So you're not begging people, you're inviting people to be a part of taking back this state. And the state controller position is gonna be a huge part of that. No. ⁓ you know what, and I forgot to ask you this, but I I have when I I have ⁓ speaker-0: I agree. Thank you. speaker-1: We've done multiple interviewer interviews now. I I've even hosted you on other shows and ⁓ that I've been guest hosting. And every time I talk to a producer or a younger person, they say, ⁓ how do you is his name Herb? How do you say his name Herb? Do you get a lot of herbs? When I was a kid growing up, yeah, I'm Gen X. When I was a kid, I knew a lot of herbs and there were herbs on TV. But I didn't realize until recently. This name has really kind of gone away and a lot of people do not know how to pronounce it. speaker-0: It the the name has died, I admit. I was one of the last. I I there is a I met a kid recently, maybe in his thirties, his name was Herb. I was like, Wow. Wow But we we pronounce the we do pronounce the age, the H in herb, and herbs spelled the same way is something you know you put in your tea or flavor your sauces with herbs, herbs and spices or something like that. speaker-1: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just so funny. It just made me realize like how far we've come, maybe how old I am. That people don't people are like Herb. I'm like, ⁓ no, it's herb but I guess you haven't had an opportunity to hear this name and it used to be the most common name. speaker-0: Yeah, it was very common back, you know, forties, thirties, eighteen hundreds, I don't know. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah. Well, it's one of my favorite names and it's gonna be one of my favorite names if you win controller, which we're gonna do everything we can to make sure you get there. Herb Morgan, thank you so much for stopping by. We wish you the best out there. You have my vote, sir. speaker-0: God bless.