Bad Mayor Monday: Todd Gloria

James, Gare, and Mia sit down to talk about Todd Gloria’s anti homeless policies, defunding the libraries, and his incredibly cringe music video.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
I did eat a whole sleeping oreos in front of
a seven eleven today and was scolded by a ten
year old. It was it was for medical reasons. Okay,
how am I going to introduce? How do we need
to start? That's the start, We already got it. Okay, yeah,
we're doing the oreos yep, ten year old children? Okay,
I guess yeah, yeah, yeah, this is where it worked.

(00:26):
And today everyone, because it's Monday, we are starting something
that we like to call shitty mayres Monday. I don't
know as we'll actually let us put shitty in the
in the in the title. They might, they might. That's
that's that's what we're calling it. That's what we're calling
it on the can't stop us here. It would be
funnier if it just had like ten seconds of bleep

(00:46):
and then it was like bears Monday, like I'd said,
some truly unfathomable shit. Okay. So we've noticed that across
America right there a lot of mayors who ran and
were elected as liberals, progressives, certainly as Democrats, but tend
to have governed in a particularly shitty and terrible way

(01:06):
that doesn't really have any material difference from a Republican mayor,
but like the way that they post on Instagram is
a little bit different. So I guess that is nice.
And we're starting with the town I live in, which
is San Diego, and with the mayor we have, who
is Todd Gloria. The people might have heard of Tod Gloria,
and last year we did we did an episode with
several people who work with an How's people in San

(01:28):
Diego Mutual Aid workers advocates, and they spoke a lot
about Todd Gloria. Not in glowing terms, but we spoke
about Tod Gloria. So we're going to talk about his
record on homelessness, We're going to talk about his life
a little bit, and then we're going to look at
sort of the promises he made when he was elected,
I guess, and the things that he's done, which it
will shock you to hear, are not the same things.

(01:49):
And we're also going to talk about his hip hop video.
Yeah yeah, yeah, Bunny really yeah he did. He did
Return of the Mat but hilariously changed it to Todd
Gloria is Back. Oh yeah, No. If you want to
see some problematically sinking, you're going to Yeah, Grace yourself.

(02:13):
A local newspaper had a headline that called it the
cringiest video ever, which rare wind for local media. Everyone's
in a while, local news does one good thing. Yeah yeah, yeah, occasionally,
like like like a stopped clock there, yeah exactly, yeah yeah,
all right. So when Todd Gloria talks about his early life,
he talks about being the son of a maid in

(02:34):
a gardener, and it's a way I think of distinguishing
himself from the very few elites who have held power
in the city for a very long time, people whose
names are on every building. But his dad's LinkedIn profile
tells a little bit of a different story. According to
his own LinkedIn account, Phil Gloria a sixty four, there's
been in the aerospace industry for many years, including as

(02:55):
a production controller at General Atomics, who people might remember
as a manufacturers of the Predator and Reapid drones. Oh yeah,
so it's a slightly different story, right, It's different from
made in a gardener. Prior to working at General Atomics
to a Gloria works for fourteen years the supervisor United Technologies,
another errors space and technology company. Gloria has clarified later

(03:16):
that his parents didn't work in those specific fields that
the son of a maiden a guiden the thing recently,
but they did when he was born, so he wasn't
he's not. Yeah, I don't, that's bullshit. Like I could,
I can. I could take this argument and argue that
like I am the child of like a pancake maker
and a dishwasher, like this is a yeah, yeah, it's

(03:40):
like it's it's sort of classic like this classic politicians, right,
like like telling enough of the truth for it not
to be a lie, but but maybe not telling the
whole truth. And like I know, like like my folks
worked in agriculture when I was a kid. They still do,
but like they also worked very hard, you know to
like provide for me and get a better splace in life.

(04:01):
And I wouldn't want to run them down by denigrating
the work that they did, but hey, I don't want
to be a mayor either. Yeah. It's also like also
like you know, you don't get to do your fucking
like burnishing working class credentials and then your dad worked
for a fucking like yeah, yeah, none of my parents
have ever made a reaper drone, so I guess I

(04:22):
do have that in my favor, it is an extremely
San Diego story. In twenty twenty, San Diego Union Tribune
wrote he was running so to San Diego. Story that
allowed his mother, a hotel maid and his father, a gardener,
to work hard and afford a home doesn't end with
their generation. That story seemed to admit the glaring reality
that San Diego is one of the least affordable cities

(04:44):
in the world right now, and it's housing as unaffordable
as ever has been, and it's got worse since took
Gloria became mayor. So who is to Gloria. He's an
enrolled member of the clinget hyda Indian tribe of Alaska.
He was born and raised in San Diego and graduated
from me Versity of San Diego with a bachelor's degree
in history and political science. He began his career to

(05:05):
San Diego's Health and Human Services Agency, and then he
worked with Congresswoman's Susan Davis, who became his mentor. He
was elected to the city Council in two thousand and
eight and two thousand and twelve and served as interim
mayor from August twenty thirteen to March twenty fty He
was also elected to the California State Assembly in twenty
sixteen and twenty eighteen, and he chose not to seek

(05:26):
reelection for the Assembly when he launched his campaign for
mayor in twenty twenty. So he's done the kind of
the sort of the climb up of offices that you
see a lot of these folks do, right, And I'm
sure that he has admissions to run for further office.
That would be my guests. So in twenty twenty he
was elected mayor of San Diego. He became our first

(05:46):
gay mayor, our first mayor of color, our first indigenous mayor.
So it was a lot of first for us. And
it is good to have a gay indigenous mayor, right like,
if we're going to have a mayor, you didn't know.
It's nice to there's a position. It's open to more people.
But unfortunately he hasn't done a lot else to encourage
up with social mobility. He made a big push for
private sector housing building as opposed to subsidize public housing,

(06:09):
and he promised police reform. In a twenty op ed
for The Union Tribune, Lauria wrote, we watched in horror
as George Floyd was killed by four Minneapolis police officers.
Mister Floyd and other victims of excessive force by law
enforcement demand that we revisit, reconsider, and reimagine how police
operate in our community and how we expect them to

(06:29):
interact with the public. It's time we work together to
create a more just system of policing. The primary responsibility
of government is protected. It's people, all people. Many of
us don't feel safe or protected, particularly our black community,
so it seems like a like a pro at least
reform statement, right. He went on to say, whether it's

(06:51):
our mental health crisis or a homelessness crisis, we resort
to the same solution, send the police and arrest people.
We have to stop severely penalizing some people for minors
steps and invest in lifting people up from difficult situations.
I will need to put a pin in that. As
we talk about his politics, it will shock you to
hear that he's done exactly that. He also wrote, the

(07:12):
rapidly expanding and secretive use of digital surveillance of our
community members is unconstitutional and it should end. Again put
a pin in that. As we get back to discussion
of the cameras that we're putting on street lights in
San Diego. So in a PDF of his plan to
end homelessness, which has been removed from his campaign website
but was sank represerved by our friends at Voice of

(07:33):
San Diego, Gloria wrote, no more criminalizing the existence of
San Diego's poorest and sicus residence. He also told right
wing news station KUSI that San Diego cannot claim to
be America's finest city or even a great city where
thousands of people live unsheltered and dying on our streets.
It's time to stop the band aids, the temporary solutions,
and bad policy from city hall on this issue, he said.

(07:56):
As mayor, my administration will prioritize ending chronic homelessness, focus
the cities energy and resources and results oriented programs proven
to get homeless individuals off the street, connected to services,
and back on their feet. Not to be fair. Well,
one is that anything okay, like any person who was
running from mayor, is the system out can lying to
you about what they're going to do. The second thing

(08:17):
is if you ever hear someone say the words results oriented,
it is time to grab like the largest saber you
have and like get to work. Oh yeah, And as
we'll discover the results that he has oriented towards somewhat disappointing.
For I was gonna say for all of us. Hashtag

(08:38):
for all of us is his campaign slogan. It's yeah,
it's just it's very cringe and I don't know, will
it's very sad when we see the impact of this
for like the least fortune of people in San Diego
and then like it, it is very funny. But when
you see how this plays out on the street, so
it's also very sad. You know what is also very funny.

(09:01):
I'm kind of sad. Mia the coin, so yeah, yeah, yeah,
it's a Ronald Reagan silver coins that pay for my
friends to get hormones. So please enjoy these adverts. Thank

(09:27):
thank you, ally Ronald Reagan for funding the HRT. Yeah,
thanks for Ronnie. All Right, we're back and we're talking
about Todd Gloria, san Diego's mayor, and we've just before
the break we talked about like his promises, right, so
let's see how he did on those promises. I want
to start with January nine, twenty twenty one. Tod Gloria

(09:49):
taken office a few days before. If you can cast
your mind back then there have been a significant event
at the at the Capitol A couple of days before
Proud Boys the Nazis Earth assorted ch decided to visit
San Diego. Three days after they visited the capitol, Anti
Fascist assembled shows them they weren't welcome, and the police
responded by declaring the anti Fascis assembly illegal, escorting the

(10:10):
chent around Pacific Beach as they did various crimes and
trying to shoot me in the dick with pepper balls.
Garrison's just smirking, I thought. Gloria, the guy who ran
on police reform, had this to say. Mayor Gloria spoke
candidly about what happened at the Capitol and how that's
reverberating around the country. After seeing what happened in Washington

(10:31):
on Wednesday, What are you doing out on our streets
supporting that mess right racism, fascism, anti democracy. Why would
you choose to be out there, Gloria says, despite his feelings,
San Diego supports peaceful protests of all kinds. But on Saturday,
police say three people were arrested and five officers suffered

(10:52):
minor injuries. We're asking for the public's assistance and helping
us identify some of those folks who we were not
able to apprehend yesterday, to make sure they held account
with these people on both sides of the debate. Both sides, Yeah,
both sides. So some of you remember some other people
have caught out people on both sides the debate. So
I think the most blatant sort of thing he did

(11:13):
with regard to the police comes after Derek Shovin, the
cop who murdered George Floyd, was convicted of murder. I
guess a few you can probably remember where you were
that day. I can remember I was, and it was
at the very least after an entire summer of protest. Right,
it was like the smallest token instance accountability, but I

(11:35):
guess at least it was something. And in that moment
told Gloria, who was looking at that same thing that
nearly everyone was looking at in this country that day. Right,
He thought about what he wanted to do, and he
decided that rather than talking to the black organizers who
had been a street for almost a year and have
been peppable and tear gassed and maced and never stopped
in minding justice, he was instead going to call the

(11:55):
cops and he's such many such cases. Yeah yeah, and
check out the video that the verdict wasn't making him sad.
What he did was took over the entire police scanner
radio thing and delivered a message to the cops, which
I've got audio of here. Colleague, this is Mere Todd Gloriam.

(12:16):
I want to address each and every single one of
you who nobly serve our great city. Today's verdict is
just the beginning of building a deeper trust with our community.
Justice will served today against someone who does not represent you,
or us, or our department, or who we are as
a nation. So I want you to hear from me today.

(12:37):
I know who you are. You are people who help
complete strangers on the worst day in their life. You
are people who believe in collaboration in community. You're people
who put your lives on the line every single day
to protect this city. I and the people of San
Diego are grateful for your dedication and your service. With

(12:58):
today's decision made, there's now time for all of us
to come together, to heal and to move forward. Please
take care of yourself of each other. You know the
people of this great city. Be safe. Everybody has anyone
ever said the words to move forward and not be
in like, not just be an absolute dipshit. This sounds
like it was written by an ai y. Yeah, if

(13:20):
you had a chat GPT for a liberal mayor, it
wouldn't look hugely different to several mayor statements. Yeah yeah,
chat GPT, right, liberal mayor writing a ponto the cops.
Now it's time to heal and come together as a community. Yeah,
stop with you a black lives mattering. It's it's scary. Yeah. Yeah,

(13:42):
it was extremely cringe like, especially when you consider how
it differs from what he was saying just a few
months ago. And that again, like this was about a
man who murdered someone, and that somebody in sending it
was an STPD who killed the person, but somebody in
San Diego died in similar circumstances with someone doing a
carotid straight on them. A few days before this, Gloria
also proposed a budget. In his budget, he proposed that

(14:05):
we cut library hour significantly and lay off one hundred
and fifty three library employees, but give the police nineteen
million dollars more than a previous year. The previous year,
I probably don't have to remind people is a year
in which San Diegans had turned up in droves at
zoom council meetings to urge the city to do the
exact opposite of this. Let's check in on that surveillance
claim he made. You remember that he said it was unconstitutional? Right,

(14:29):
so on ye the second of this year, told Gloria
in a shocking vault fast tweeted street light cameras and
license plates readers can be helpful public safety tools. You know,
just because he thinks it's unconstitution or doesn't mean he
doesn't think it's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's once again
been held back from protecting the people of San Diego
by that pesky constitution. The city pass strong privacy protections

(14:53):
last year, and now it's time for at San Diego
PD to use this technology to keep us safe public eatings.
To get this done, start soon. So yeah, these street lights,
they were deactivated in twenty twenty, but they had previously
been introduced and build us a way to assess traffic patterns.
But in fact, they never assessed traffic patterns. Yeah, yeah,

(15:15):
this will shock you. They put thousands of cameras and
microphones on our streets, including one outside a planned parenthood facility,
you know, for traffic You know, the funniest part about this,
this was literally the thing about doing traffic science was
this was literally Tom Cruise's cover story and like one

(15:35):
of the early Mission Impossible movies. So that's what we
have next. Is it fucking scientology coming for San Diego? Yeah,
it'll it'll shock you to hear that we stopped using
these for very reasonable people had very reasonable concerns in
twenty twenty that you know, it's not a good idea
for the cops to be able to see and hear

(15:55):
everything that you do, to be able to read your
license plate and see everywhere that you go. Betond once
some back and if people actually want to follow the
discussion about having them back, because every single time, like
every single public meeting, there's someone and they'll stand up
and have a vehement like position pro cameras, and then
it'll turn out that they are like a prosecutor at

(16:16):
the DA's office or in one instance, there was a
prosecutor in one instance who insisted he was there in
his personal capacity, but like the lieutenant for Soron is
defending the surveillance cameras that are being posted around Middle Earth.
Curious this, this guy whose name is not Big Brother,

(16:36):
is here to advocate for having cameras in your home.
The King of the a new surveillance progres. But he's
wearing a fake mustache, so you can't tell who he is.
So let's look at what he said about stopping criminalizing homelessness. Right,
And this is a big, big issue. In San Diego.

(16:56):
We have a massive and growing gunhouse population because our
rent so are exceptionally high and oh waits are not.
So the number of unhoused people has increased in the
Gloria so of death on the street, which hit a
record of five hundred and seventy four in the county
last year. So that's more than one person dying every
single day in the streets. Right. He's opened some shelters,

(17:18):
but some scouters are scheduled to close. The shelter beds
and traditional transitional housing provided have failed to go at
the same rate as a young house population. Let's haven't
stopped him taking photos and claiming every single one. It's
a huge step forward. We also continue to build what
are called congregate shelters, which which don't give people privacy, right,
which don't give them. A lot of people might not

(17:41):
want to go into a congreate shelter, into effectively a dormitory,
and there are a number of reasons why you might
not want to do that, and yet that's what we're building.
There are also some other sort of single occupisity shelters,
but nowhere near enough. He's been a huge backer of
something called California's Care Court. Are you guys familiar with
the Care Court at all? No? No, this shit is dystopian.

(18:01):
This could be a whole episode. Maybe one day it
will be CARE stands for community assistance, recovery and empowerment,
which I have a feeling that this is not going
to be about empowerment. Yeah, when it's empowering someone Garrison,
but it's not empowered to people we might want to empower.
What it is in practice, it's a massive expansion of

(18:23):
force conservatives ship. So I'm going to quote from Human
Rights Watch here. Human Rights Watch said the plan promotes
a system of involuntary coerced treatment enforced by an expanded
judicial infrastructure that will in practice simply remove unhoused people
with perceived mental health conditions from the public eye without
effectively addressing those mental health conditions. Jesus, Yeah, it's pretty bad.

(18:47):
It doesn't provide money for mental health services. It takes
money that's already existing in the budget and puts it
across to court mandated treatments. It doesn't provide housing, which
the multiple study share that housing First's approach a housing
first approach is a way to solve homelessness. Instead, it
allows for a broad range of people, which include family members,

(19:08):
first responders including cops and outreach workers, the public guardian,
service providers, and the director of the county Behavioral Health agency,
to refer individuals to the jurisdiction of the court to
take away their autonomy and liberty. It very broadly covers
people it describes to having schizophrenia, spectrum or other psychotic disorders.

(19:29):
Under this system, judges can force people into treatment and housing.
If they don't comply, they can be forced into conservatorship. Now,
obviously evidence doesn't support the conclusion that involuntary outpatient treatment
it's more effective than intensive voluntary outpatient treatment, and indeed
it does show that involuntary coercive treatment is harmful. But
it isn't really about people with mental health. It's about
keeping gun house people where they can't be seen, and

(19:52):
Human Rights Watch claims that this violates due process and
international human rights conventions. And yet the Clode Door and
Gavin you some to be fair, who I'm sure we'll
run for president soon, have been cheer leading this and
it's I'm surprised it hasn't got more press coverage into
nationally and naturally sorry, because it's a massive assault on

(20:12):
personal freedoms, right, And it's extremely easy to effectively say
that somebody quote unquote need to mental health, help force
them into conservatorship. And if they're not willing to attend
these treatments, so they're not able to attend these treatments,
that they're not willing to go into the housing that
they are assigned. Let's say that they don't want to
live in in congret at housing, right or something like that,
or they're in housing with someone who they don't feel

(20:34):
comfortable or safe with them, they could be forcing into
conservatorship and effectively lose all their liberty. Rent. Yeah, it's
pretty bad. It's a new and exciting way of criminalizing
homelessness effectively. Like I said, it doesn't provide housing, it
doesn't provide funding, for behavioral healthcare. It just directs existing
funding to court mandated programs. So I could pick hundreds

(20:57):
of other examples of this told glorious stuff, but I
want to pick one more to focus on, and it's
something that I think it gets a little bit like
inside politics, grifty stuff, but it like it has ruined
a good number of careers in San Diego politics. And
I'm really heavily indebted to that plan certain Voice of

(21:19):
San Diego for their reporting on this. But let's start
by talking about public restrooms. So I think most of
us are going to agree that, like having a safe
place to shit and wash your hands is a pretty
basic human right, but in San Diego it's something that
not everyone has. So since two thousand four, grand jury

(21:39):
reports have warned the city's inadequate public restroom infrastructure could
become a public health threat. That's what happened in twenty
seventeen and twenty eighteen when a hepatitis a swept through
the city, sickening five and eighty two people and killing
twenty So after the hepit yeah, it's not a thing
that like you expect, right and like like on the
left coast America's find a city most Americans will not encounter,

(22:04):
thankfully hepatitis in their lifetime and sadly made this isn't
our only hepatitis outbreak, so that's great. Oh no. And
so after the hepe outbreak, the city stopped locking restrooms
at night, which they had done previously, but that changed
with the COVID pandemic when the facilities were temporarily closed
and some have since not returned to twenty four seventh service.

(22:27):
Following this, a twenty twenty one Shigella outbreak second at
least forty one homeless residents, most of whom were staying
in central San Diego, further shed light on the city's
restroom issues, much as this was dealt with in a
great report by Bella Ross in The Voice of San Diego,
to which Gloria commented, the goal here isn't to add
as many permanent public restrooms as possible. The goal is

(22:48):
to help get unsheltered residents off the streets and into safe,
sanitary shelter and permanent housing. Like I don't quite know
where he was going for here, but not having a
place to sit is an everyone issue. This isn't just
an unhoused issue, right Like everybody poops and not all
of us live in houses and have giant offices in

(23:10):
city Hall downtown, and so it was this bizarre kind
of gas lighting approach, like we fundamentally have an issue
with access to bathrooms and to try and like reframe
this as another issue where he's also failing. Was It's
kind of indicative of their response, but also very bizarre.
Where the city has installed new bathrooms, they're often installed

(23:33):
by private groups as part of development projects, which is great, right,
a good old a public private partnership has never gone
wrong before, so it will shock you to hear that
these private groups are responsible for maintaining and securing these facilities,
and this means that they're often locked. So despite literal
human shit being all over downtown and people are being

(23:53):
forced to endure the massive and dignity of having nowhere
to poop. In December twenty twenty two, researched by STSUS
Project for Ntation Justice found that less than half of
the city's permanent restrooms could be considered truly open access,
and that just two permanent facilities were available around the clock,
seven days a week. Gloria has later acknowledged that the
city has an issue, but he's chosen to blame residents.

(24:16):
I just need folks to quit acting a fool in
these bathrooms. I mean, it's not just a homeless population,
it's everybody, he said in an interview. In February twenty
twenty three, nearly five years after the last outbreak, San
Diego County again began recording an uptaking hepatitis say cases.
Which is great, Right, We're back to where we started.

(24:39):
Much of this resporting was met with absolutely unhinged responses
on Twitter from some of Glorious staff. They called themselves
the Todd Squad. That sus Yeah, yeah, it's pretty bad.
So notable responses come from Dave Rolland, who left the
old Weekly City Beak for a job in PR, and
Rachel Lane, who's Todd's i think, head of public relations.

(25:01):
She spent June of twenty twenty posting about black Lives
Matter whilst also doing volunteer public relations to work for
the cops. Wow amazing, yeah, yeah, voucher public relations. Yeah yeah, yeah,
Like there there there's there's like a there's like a
joke on like there's there's like a sort of pejorative
label for the okay, so on Chinese Twitter, there's this

(25:22):
there's this a joke of calling people unpaid five cent army,
which is like army is like or well, the number
of sense changes over time, but it's like there there
used to be a thing where like you could get
paid by the government to get like like to to
to like that you get paid pro post to like posts. Wow,
whatever fucking shit the Chinese government wanted to like have

(25:42):
posts on But this person's actually literally an unpaid but
like actually literally like volume cheer, yeah, like volunteer public
relations for the cops, Like what the fuck is this bullshit?
Oh yeah, it was really a magical when I sent

(26:03):
that pr email. Yeah yeah, I think she framed it
as like helping the community and the police talk to
one another in a difficult time. The future is the
giant boot stamping on your faces while people volunteer to
paint the boot. Yes, yeah that is yeah, yeah, there

(26:24):
there is a rainbow boot. Yeah, I mean you can
you can find their feed. Some of the attacks on
myself and some of my colleagues are like incredibly petty
and unprofessional and also quite nerving when you consider the
huge amounts of taxpair money that are wasted on their salaries,
which pay them to post. And again, this is a

(26:44):
town where people die because they don't have a place
to take a shit. But but we're paying people to
get into Twitter beef. You know. It's it's also it's
it's also really cool that like there's the sort of
two axes of American politics are you can't use the
bathroom because you're trans, and you can't use the bathroom
because you don't own one. And then sometimes they just

(27:06):
coverage and it's the same yeah, yeah, yeah, lucking. Yeah,
that's the hands clasping memelucking trans people out of the bathroom.
All right, So now we're about to get to Todd

(27:27):
squads finest an hour, which is when they use city
resources and work time to make a video of them
singing Return of the Mac. Only it wasn't Return of
the Mac. It was Todd Gloria's back and yeah, I'm
going to make you a watch it. So, yes, that

(27:53):
was that was was he walking through at city Hall? Yeah?
Was the first part him walking to a security line
at the airport. Yeah, which is funny. That's a security
line to get into city Hall. Yeah, okay, okay, have
you have you never been to a city hall before.
Mine didn't have that certainly does now Chicago, Yes, it

(28:17):
certainly has that. Now my local town one didn't. Are
they Are they saying that the mayor lied to the city?
Is that? Is that what they're saying? They yeah, the
previous Oh there, okay, wasn't he the previous mayor? Only
for a little bit of time then he he was
entering math Okay, they're play, Oh my god, I believe

(28:44):
you when you said Eric, but why I thought he
one guy that was like twelve guys. Yeah. It feels
like it's gone on for like forty minutes. Yeah, if
you stalin grad there's a point where they come in
dressed as flavor. Flavor. He gets here and anyway, one
of them's wearing a medallion that just says cocks on it.

(29:07):
Al is wearing a medallion here we can probably no note,
hang on here he is again, franchise. That's some cops.
What the leg of the ground circle? I think their
heads touching. There's a person with a COXS medalion. Again,

(29:30):
this is okay, is one of the worst things. One
of these people showed up the chain that it was
like an SD for San Diego when it first comes
on to screen, it really looks like a swassica. This
is the Padres logos. Yes, that's no shitty asked to go.

(29:53):
The Padres did a different genocide and should have been
conflated with the other genocide. I'm I'm guessing this is
like a sports thing or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they
are a the sports ball team. Yeah, that's what I
thought baseball to be specific. That M very proud of him. Yeah.
But yeah, as you'll have noticed, one of the most

(30:14):
cringe things that has ever fucking happened. Yeah, yeah, it's
pretty bad, right, like like it's it's it's pretty crushing
when like, like I have personally known people who have
died on our streets. And also my merrit is making
Return of the Mac videos dressed as Flavor Flavor. So

(30:37):
I think we're mostly done. I want to talk about
one more thing, because no review of San Diego politics
will be complete without a mention of the giant monument
to Griff that is one O one Ash Street. So
what is one on one Street? In twenty sixteen, San
Diego leased a downtown high rise, hoping to house city employees.
It turned out that the building was riddled with asbestos,

(30:59):
and it turned out the city knew is little bit
when it started to lease the building. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And then it will shock you to know that they
deny this at first, but in the agreement to lease
to own the building, it says Bayer acknowledges that the
building contained asbestos and that SEMPRA has maintained an asbestos
monitoring and handling program. So eventually in twenty nineteen they

(31:22):
managed to move staff in after a renovation that ballooned
in cost. In twenty twenty, they were forced to evacuate
the building because of the asbestos. Since then, DA's investigation
has been opened into Jason Hughes, who publicly represented himself
as a volunteer advisor to the city, according to Voice
of San Diego, but unbeknownst to the city, collected nine

(31:44):
point four million dollars from Cistero, who owned one on
one Ash Street. The City Attorney's office alleged but could
not prove that. The city's former top bureaucrat, Chris Michael,
ordered city information technology staff to purge record tied to
the one O one Street barcle last year so they
can improve that. She heads to records, But what they
do know. That she did was pass a confidential legal

(32:06):
document to Corey Briggs, a candidate for city attorney. NBC
reported that the memo included a footnote, which Eliot and
others later decried as fabricated. In the footnote, they claimed
that Elliot's office made an effort to shield Gloria from
an outside probe at the one on one Ash Street debarkle.
The footnote suggested an interview with Gloria might have clarified
why the city decided to go forward with the Ash

(32:27):
Street lease, given Gloria's skepticism about a similar past deal.
So it's not clear if this, if this footnote was
real or fabricated, like and then it's alleged it was fabricated,
which it's bizarre, like this whole sort of weird, corrupt,
corrupt thing is resigned. It may this may well not
be true. To be clear, during this time, Dorian Hargrove,

(32:50):
who was a reporter, obtained some of those records, face
legal threat of prosecution from the city attorney and lost
his job for obtaining those records. So far, the city
has poured more than sixty million into one one Street,
roughly the same amount of this annual library budget. It's
only occupied the OCFER space. Yeah, it's great, it's absolutely in.

(33:11):
This has been occupied for like less than a couple
of months for the five years since the city acquired it.
Are they do do do? Do we know what their
ties to like the contractors who are doing the renovations are,
and that will be an interesting thing. I actually don't
know that. Yeah, because that that's like that that's that's
that's like that's the classic Illinois griff. Yeah. You just

(33:35):
keep keep renovating the building, keep getting donations from the
from the contractors well or or or the contractors are
just your friends and so that's okay. Yeah, keep the
money around. Yeah, well they're not doing any more contracting
on it. Mayre because the city agreed to buy the building,
which needs one hundred and fifteen million million dollars in repairs,
for eighty six million last year. Yeah. It's good stuff,

(34:00):
amazing yep. This week, the UT reported that San Diego's
top real estate official did not seek input from her
staff or a view internal files before recommending the city
buy out the one or one as Street lease. They
also reported that, in a confidential memo to the city
Auditor's Office. Anonymous employees wrote, the City of San Diego
should be aware of the level of waste and abuse

(34:21):
that is occurring within the Real Estate and Airport Management Department,
which has led to a toxic, hostile revenue wasting, an
unproductive work environment. Which is great. Yep, this is the
San Diego we wanted hashtag for all of us. So
this is a lot of inside San Diego politics, right.

(34:42):
So it's a lot of lists of things and promises
made and promises broken. But I want to come back
to the fact that this is a guy who ran
for Mare on a ticket the push compassion and a
relative liberal set of policies, and he's done the exact
opposite in his time in office. He ran as a progressive,
but he's done very little to differentiate himself policy wise
from It's like Republican Kevin Faulkner. Obviously we're just cracking

(35:02):
the lead on some of these policies here. He's consistently
chosen to suppund it, to fund and support the police
over the people of the city. He's consistently moved to
make it harder to live on the streets and harder
to get off the streets. And he's consistently chosen photo
opportunities over real governance for the city. His pr people
spend hours bashing mutual aid workers like Michael who he
had a guest on the show on Twitter and wasting

(35:24):
taxpayer money doing it. Just this week, he welcomed right
wing maniac Rishi Sunac, who actually as Prime Minister of
the UK. Despite the fact that people haven't noticed to
our city and San Diego State University Research has released
a report saying negative interactions with the police are driving
black people who are experiencing homelessness away from services and
housing opportunities. This is what we got from a mayor

(35:45):
who positioned himself as a progressive and its governor as
a rainbow Republican. So yeah, that's I would say. That's
all I have to say about Todd Gloria. If you
follow me on Twitter, you'll know that it's not the case,
and I will continue to have more to say about
Todd Gloria. But yeah, it's really sad. It's deeply said,
and it like I said, it's funny. The Cranty Mudic

(36:05):
music video is funny. We'll linked to it in the
show notes, but it's it's also really deeply troubling that
this has real impacts for real people who are already
down on their luck and you know, living on the
streets or experiencing you know, over aggressive policing. All the
things that he said he would fix have just got worse.
And yeah, it sucks. So thanks for listening to me

(36:28):
why and about my city everyone, And yeah, again, my
apologies for traumatizing you further with that video. It's fine.
Next week. Next week, we're well, okay, So we would
have been doing Chicago's own version of this exact same person,
which is Lloyd Lightfoot, except to the surprise of absolutely
zero people who live in Chicago and everyone who doesn't

(36:49):
live in Chicago, Lightfoot didn't make it out of her
fucking primary. So we're instead of going to be doing
Chicago's once in the future, while not once the potential
future mayor Paul Vallas, who absolutely sucks ass. So stay
tuned for that in another week when I get a
yell about Paul Vallas and inflict some truly horrific bullshit

(37:09):
on all of you. Very excited to get my revenge,
all right, well, I will look forward to seeing Paul
Vallas's hip hop video Charrison's just sitting there background at dying.
This is this is, this is worse than anything anything
the Daily Liar can throw at me. Should we just
pivot to more come content? Garrisons, Okay, this has been taken.

(37:35):
Happen year. You can find us it Happened here pod
on Twitter, Instagram. But we're gonna leave before one of
us dies. It could happen here as a production of
cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media,
visit our website cool Zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(37:56):
listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could
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com slash sources. Thanks for listening.