And, This is Ezra Klein

Gavin is joined by New York Times opinion columnist and podcaster, Ezra Klein, to discuss what Democrats can learn from his and co-author Derek Thompson’s new book Abundance.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, coming up next, I have Ezra Kleine here in
studio talking about his new book that he co authored
with Derek Thompson called Abundance. In this book, Ezra does
not hold back on taking a very critical look at
democratic governance all across the United States of America, in
particular in my home state of California. This is Gavin

(00:32):
Newsom and this is Ezra Klein. Ezra is great to
have you here in studio.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Thanks for having me here for this weird inversion.

Speaker 1 (00:42):
Weird inversion, and you've been I mean you've been all
over the place. You got a new book, Abundance, and
we'll jump right into that, but I want to just
frame a little bit of the relationship that we have
that goes back and you may not even remember this.
I was a new mayor in San Francisco and was
asked by Bill Mahert to go on a show. I
remember that you were one of the panelist, and I'll
remember forget just sparring with Bill obviously, and then you

(01:05):
And after the show was done and we were all finishing,
you had left, maher goes up to me and he goes,
who the hell was that? And I'm like, I know
who the hell was that, and it was you. We
were like whoa, uh, just for both of us didn't
have a you know, I was I was relatively new,
Bill's been seasoned.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
You a lieutenant governor then, I don't think you lieutenant.

Speaker 1 (01:25):
Got wasn't it? You know? It was I still was liet.
I'm pretty sure lieutenant governor. So but I was like, anyway,
I'd been on the show a bunch of times, but
you were. You had a next level capacity to analyze
things and to deliver a point of view. And so
it's not surprising to me that so much of that,
including that conversation we probably had on that studio and said,

(01:46):
it's reflected in what you've been focused on.

Speaker 2 (01:49):
I think about your book from that era, Republic two
point zero.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
It was called right, yeah, Citizenville, Citizenville you had to
take the town square digital and reinvent government. How about that?

Speaker 2 (01:59):
Yeah, it's something we should thread into this conversation. I
think people have forgotten that era of Gavinism.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah. Well, I think in so many reflects in aspects
I was reading this book and you're reflected in this.
I mean, this has been my struggle as a former mayor.
You chronicle San Francisco, California disproportionately. But this book is
fundamentally about the future, and you framing the future in
abundance terms. But it's also a real shot against liberalism

(02:27):
in many respects, against the world we created now competing
against us in terms of process and courts and laws
and rule making and all of that that's created so
much of this cost of living dynamics. So tell us
what was the inspiration of the book. Tell us a
little bit about what abundance is.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
I mean, the reason the book is so rooted in
California that I am. I mean, so this book is
co authored with Derk Thompson from the Atlantic, and so
we both have our own things you bring to it.
But I grew up in Irvine, as you know. I
went to the C system that went to d C
for twelve or thirteen fourteen years, and I spent a
bunch of time in DC covering a political system where

(03:04):
the problem was Republicans were bad. Oftentimes the things that
I wanted to see happen were not happening there because
they were being blocked by the Republican Party. And then
in twenty eighteen, I moved back here. I moved back
to Oakland and then to San Francisco, and I looked
around and it just wasn't doing well. People were unhappy,
people were leaving. I mean, I mean, you know this,

(03:26):
you're a retail politician, like you can sense people's anger
when they find out you have anything to do with politics,
they tell you real quick. And we could see the
housing crisis hadn't tastasized into something that was genuinely now
a crisis. Not just homes are expensive. California high speed
rail has always lit me on fire that, yeah, we'll
get to that. And when I began to and I

(03:46):
was thinking about clean energy where your I mean, the
goals that you have set for clean energy in the
state are remarkable, and in order to achieve them here
or nationally, because the Inflation Reduction Act was passing around
this time too, that I was thinking.

Speaker 1 (03:58):
About a lot of this.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
We have to build faster than we have ever built,
and the laws don't really permit that. And so the
thing that I began thinking a lot about was that
there is something liberalism is good at and knows how
to look for, which is where can we subsidize something
that people need. But there's something liberalism is bad at
because it doesn't know how to look for it, which
is how do we create more? How do we make

(04:21):
it possible to build more of things people need? And
not only are we not good at pursuing that, we
don't even realize how often we are getting in the
way of it, how often we are the problem. There
is I think something bracing as a liberal about asking
this question of why, in the places where people who
agree with me govern, you and I don't think have
that different politics aren't the outcomes what I want to see?

(04:43):
Why can't I go say to the Texans or the Floridians, No, no, no, no,
you just have to do our policies from California. And
that's the thing I'm grappling with here.

Speaker 1 (04:53):
No, And I appreciate that, and we'll get to that
question because I think it's a fundamental question, and it's
interesting what you sort of define from that prism. That's
important because what people are actually looking for isn't necessarily
what you are identifying. Specifically, I would challenge, as the

(05:15):
problem is that said, what you identify as the problem?
I completely agree that. I was going back to my speech,
my first speech is governor at the State of California,
it might have well, it's these pages. Yeah, literally said
if you can build a sports stadium with these new
rules and fast tack of judicial process and what we
referred to, we'll get the SEQUA are California rules that

(05:36):
go back to quite literally Ronald Reagan in nineteen seventy
as it relates to environmental review. It should work for homelessness,
it should work for housing. And I announced that day
an effort to sue up to forty seven cities. We
started with one, Huntingdon Beach, California. Doesn't make you popular
as governor to announce a lawsuit against Erl City because
they weren't meeting their zoning requirements under our housing element.

(05:58):
So much of that again reflected in this friction and
your own reflected frustration and lived experience in the state
of California. But my point is this, as a practitioner,
it's a very different reality. But what you identify, I
completely embrace these labyrinths of rules, federal rules, state rules.

(06:21):
Absolutely localism though, and I want to talk about that
localism is determinative and you pick on understandably San Francisco,
but you can look at almost any city, including a
Republican health city like Huntington Beach, and these same rules
and restrictions apply there in the same frustrations. So from

(06:42):
the prism of left versus right, you take the shot
against liberals. But can't we argue that there is sort
of quality of consideration and nimbism that persists in rural
and red parts the countries.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
Well, let me flip this because to shadow box around
the fact that you know more about California governance than
I ever will in a thousand years ago in this
would be ridiculous. Why is it easier to build homes
in Texas and California.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
They have Well you established that in the book. In
Houston you make the point I think it was seventy
thousand permits in twenty twenty three, just seventy five hundred
in a much smaller city, San Francisco, but understandable contract
a city with more demand, more demand, and it's simply
because they have no zoning. They have land use consideration,
but Austin has zoning. Yeah, but not Houston. In the
context of that.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
The thing I'm getting it here, which I really would
like your the thing you just said right about localism.
It's so important, and like, this is so much the
conversation I'd love for us to have here because the
texture that you have been grappling with of why do
things that you want to have happen not happen is
I think a really interesting thing to add to it.
But when you're saying, well, you know, is this really
a problem for liberals. It's easier to build in Texas

(07:51):
and Florida. They're not just in California, but in California
or New York. Right, the cost of living crisis is
worse in blue states. And a little bit of that
is Blue states are place a lot of people live,
but you should be able to in places ent governing
for the working class and theory, and your point.

Speaker 1 (08:07):
Is a point and just to level set, people are
listening completely agree this notion of the supply demand imbalance.
I mean, you're making an econ one to one argument. Uh,
And that supply to imbalance is next level in the
state of California, Whi're simply not building enough housing and
that goes to I mean, and you correctly identify a nimbiism. Uh,
and people you know, incumbent protection rackets, so to speak,

(08:29):
not just from a corporate perspective, but someone who's very
satisfied with their backyard and their views and their home
and their community. They don't want density, they don't want
other people moving in, they don't want any infrastructure built
around it. As it relates to transportation, they're very satisfied
with what they have, and I think and they abuse
in some respects a lot of these rules that have
been around decades and decades uh to advance that aim.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
So you identified all this, I think pretty well as
a problem for the state and for you. So when
you gave a State of the State a couple years back,
I'm genuinely forgetting the number. What was the housing goal
you set?

Speaker 1 (09:01):
We said, well, we had we had an audacious goal
that was a study of studies that identified what the
state would need in order to address the supply demand
and ballants. But we made the point we were going
through a legally binding process what we referred to as
arena goals, and we've established that here is the legally

(09:22):
binding goal two point five million units by twenty thirty,
and that is the established state policy, and that's the goal.
So you're not on track for that, not even close
why for well number of reasons, macroeconomic. I mean, I
think you have to be fair as it relates to
the realities of what just occurred, as it relates to
the constraints around the marketing of interest rates or interest

(09:42):
rates are high. Obviously, we came out of a very
difficult period during during COVID, but fundamentally because of the
inability to get local government to get out of the
way and allow for more construction. And that's why we
created a Housing Accountability Unit. That's why we've taken eight
hundred actions, That's why I've unlocked seventy five hundred units, uh,

(10:06):
and that's why we have advanced forty two sequel reforms
in some of the most significant housing reforms in California history.
As it relates to eighty US, which you identify eighty US.
Now you can buildinally do in single fami family home
zoning and duplexus. But at the end of the day,
state visions realized back to.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
Localists, why did the ADU effort work and the single
family housing or multi family housing didn't. I mean, those
were big bills and we Yimbi's greeted them with delight.
But I would say everybody would say that what was
it us be nine yes if the cities have made
it so those don't. Actually it doesn't build as much

(10:46):
housing it and.

Speaker 1 (10:47):
That's why we created this housing accountability to drive more
responsibility at the local level and providing technical assistance. It's
not just a stick, it's also a carrot. But no,
look there's the that's the construct, right, I mean, that's
a classic example. People like their neighborhoods. That's the foundation
of Nimbiaism. And I had look this yimbiism frame, which

(11:08):
is yes in my backyard. For those wondering the hell
we're even talking about, I embrace it. I celebrate. I
don't think there's been a more yemb governor in California's history.
And it's why we've signed so many of these bills
and supported many of these bills. But you're right that
application a lot of these are new reforms just in
the last few years in this high interest rate environment.
So we'll see how quickly things unlock as interest rates

(11:31):
dropped down. But fundamentally, it's the Nimbiaism that drags it.

Speaker 2 (11:34):
Let me ask you something about the housing reforms. As
I flipped the whole table this podcast. It's problem with
having a podcast host on. So during the election, when
Kamala Harris and then Barack Obama at the DNC, actually,
by the way, on Barck Obama than Kamala Harris. We're
up there talking about the need to build three million
new homes, right and really sad in like Yimbi's from

(11:56):
the stage. I was thinking, man, that is a huge
intellectual victory for movement that didn't exist like twenty five
minutes ago. I started thinking and and started running back
the date, and I'm like, Okay, how's it working out?
And you look in San Francisco and housing starts aren't up.
And you look in LA and they're not up. You
look in California. Not talking here about ADUs, but housing
starts in January twenty twenty five were lower than in

(12:18):
twenty fifteen. I began thinking to myself, oh shit, we
actually have won an intellectual argument without winning the policy.
So I began doing some reporting because I knew how many.
I'm not literally how many, but I knew there's been
a pretty torrid pace with you and you know, Scott
Wiener and Buffy Wicks and a bunch of other housing
local and the Last Day bills, and so I began

(12:39):
calling developers in San Francisco and said, what's going on here,
why don't I see a movement? And how much you're building?
And what they all told me was I didn't end
up writing this piece. I just didn't have time, but
I meant to for some time. Was all these fast
track bills required me to take on a bunch of
new standards and requirements, prevailing wages and environmental standards and

(13:04):
this and that. That made it more expensive for me
to take the fast track than just do what I'm doing.
It wouldn't pencil out for me to do it right.
I don't know if that's one hundred percent true. I
could see you. But if that's not it, why do
you think all those bills didn't lead to Well.

Speaker 1 (13:21):
A lot of them have. How we can talk about it,
you know, I don't want to get into really parochial politics,
but we can talk about a five hundred unit project
on Stevenson Street in San Francisco was never going to
get done until the state intervened and compelled the hand
of the city to actually move forward again. I mean,
and you've got an ideological war that's going on in
progressive cities. They don't believe in the supply demand framework.

(13:42):
They don't believe in this notion of abundance. Fundamentally, they
have a d growth mindset, which you talk a lot
about or at least right around in the book, And
so you're struggling with that ideological spectrum. But San Francisco,
I mean, it's just infamously just loves its neighborhoods. Doesn't
want to see it up, so they don't want to
see the density. So they're constantly pushing back against this,
and we are as a state finally intervening in the ways

(14:05):
the state is never intervened in the past. So I
think it's a little too early to sort of assert
that the sort of fatalist or have a fatalist a
notion of what hasn't yet occurred, when in fact, we're
starting now to flex our muscles and the application of
these laws are now starting to fully go into effect,
and ultimately we want to see them materialize and manifest.

(14:28):
But that's I think that's that's the friction. But look,
let me just stipulate again. We're not arguing here, You're
one hundred percent right.

Speaker 2 (14:33):
I was asking I'm curious.

Speaker 1 (14:34):
No, but but also you're not. I'm you know, you
talk about as a bagel of earth was everything, Yeah, everything,
attack everything together. Even we're a little critical of the
Biden administration and the Chips and Science Acts and the
infrastructure stuff because they did the same thing. Look, you
go to the.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Rural broadband effort. Right twenty twenty one, they passed a
bi Parson infrastructure bail. We'll say it's the biggest infrastructure
bill in decades, which is not wrong one point two.

Speaker 1 (14:57):
Turing, but five hundred and five to fifty of.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
New Yeah, And one of the big headline pieces of
it is forty two billion dollars for World Broadband YEP
twenty twenty one that passes by the end of twenty
twenty four. Functioningly nobody's hooked up to Royal Broadband. And
me and Derek look into it, and there is a
fourteen stage process. I mean, I'm sure California was going
through a fourteen stage process of their creating a map,

(15:20):
and then the map can be challenged, and there's these
letters of intent and so on and so forth, and
by the end of their administration of the fifty six
states and jurisdictions that were trying to apply for the money,
three had made it through, which, putting aside the fact
that them, me and all these people didn't get broadband,
it also meant that they couldn't run on that right.
So much of the political theory of the Biden administration
was that if you can show liberal democracy can deliver,

(15:43):
you will pull people out of wanting these strongmen who
say they're going to burn the whole thing down and
give you something out of the ashes. And if you can't, really,
if the things don't move fast enough, if they don't
get to the people fast enough, it's much harder for
liberal democracy to make the case said it delivers. I
want it to deliver. I like these policies, but the

(16:04):
speed thing is a real problem. And I'll say one
more thing, because I was talking. I did an event
the other night with John Favreau and we were talking
about we were talking about high speed rail, but I
was saying that the stimulus bill under Obama that had
three big headline projects for reinvestment. It had high speed rail,
it had smart grid, and it had a nationwide system

(16:25):
of interoperable health records.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
I remember those days.

Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, Oh for three. Yeah, at some point we got
to be upset about this.

Speaker 1 (16:34):
You know. So you have five core chapters in this book.
You talk about growth, you talk about governance, you talk
about deploying, inventing. You know, a lot of language very
familiar here in the state of California. Again, abundance is
fundamentally foundationally who we are, at least believe we are

(16:55):
in the state of California. And so in that respect,
I agree this sort of this perception performance is one thing,
and I would argue a little bit more favorably to Biden.
I mean, seven hundred and seventy five thousand manufacturing jobs,
just the job growth generally, and I'm not just talking
about job recovery from the pandemic, but the six plus
million jobs that you have to stack on that after

(17:17):
we were back to full recovery. The fact that Chips
and Science Act is producing real results as it relates
to private sector investment, and the fact that we finally
have an industrial policy that is worker center centric. And
I think that's that worker centricity that you can argue against,
because that was in you call it out and here
when you talk to Gina about issues related to childcare
and other aspirational frameworks as it relates to small businesses

(17:41):
and reaching diversity goals and the like. But there is
the fundamental disconnect, and you're absolutely right as it relates
to these large scale, adacious projects. And I will give
you your do on high speed rail. I have been
as critical or more than you have about this. In fact,
I appreciate you reference my pivot after I took this

(18:04):
job as governor, where we called out the status quo
and now we're trying to level set and get this
back on track. But at least there's a vision. At
least Obama had a vision. He wanted to be big
and big things, he wanted to do big things. And
at least progressive states still have a vision and they
have a design. I mean, and I think that's part

(18:25):
of an abundance frame and and and while it's difficult
to manifest that vision, I don't think it's an indictment
necessary it well, it's indictment in terms of our ability
to deliver on time and under budget. But the vision
I think is foundational and important. And I give credit
to the aboveman administration in that respect. For all three,
even if they were over.

Speaker 2 (18:45):
Thirsk, I'm all for vision. I upset the point of
this book is that I want the things to happen.
I mean, we could talk about high speed rally, we
must talk about high speed draft. But before we before
we get there for a second, I mean, I do
the question around this book because it is very critical
of how liberals have governed. Well, then why you're just
a Republican?

Speaker 1 (19:05):
Right?

Speaker 2 (19:05):
If Texas is so good at housing? And the thing
that I keep telling people is you've really confused means
and ends here. Another thing that keeps coming up is like,
you want deregulation. Isn't that a Republican thing? Well not
if I'm deregulating the government itself so it can deliver
on the things you want. What's supposed to matter in
politics is not the means, it's the ends. And what

(19:27):
I sort of want. What I'm trying to push here
is for liberals to get a little bit more means
agnostic and more like ends obsessed. So the thing that
I the place where I probably differ a little bit
in what you just said a second ago, is that
I don't want to give anybody credit for a vision
that didn't happen. High speed rails you have a great
quote to me in this I use it in the

(19:47):
book High speed Rails undermined the public's faith and what
can get done? It undermines the next high speed rail?

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Right.

Speaker 2 (19:53):
And the thing that I want to see happen is
a kind of reckoning inside the governing I would call
it a culture. Not just laws. It's not just regulations,
although it is all those things. But it is a
culture of what happens when the Democrats who are setting
this stuff up getting the room together, and people start
raising their hands and saying, what about this and what
about that? And how about the other thing? And instead

(20:15):
of here and no, I think it's kind of a
little bit, and it's not the only thing going on,
but there is something wrong in a culture that so
often fails to deliver what it promises. I mean, not
just high speed rail, the big dig, the second Avenue subway,
right these you know, parts of them got done in
the second Avenue piece or the big dig eventually got done,
but too much, too expensive. You can't do enough if

(20:36):
you're doing that, and it's not inevitable. Europe builds trains
better than we do. They just do. And they have
governments I checked, and they have unions more than we do.

Speaker 1 (20:48):
So it's not just the lawyers. And you point that
out of the wall.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, that's an issue I'd be very curious to hear.
So this is the thing I think people don't know
that I would love to hear it. To your thoughts
on that we do government different in this country than
they do in Europe, is a qualitative difference between it,
which is they run government through bureaucracies and we restrain
government through courts, which at the moment with Trump, seems
good in a bunch of ways, and there are ways

(21:12):
in which it's good, and there are also ways in
which it makes it hellacious.

Speaker 1 (21:17):
You got it to deliver, Yeah, and I would say
that's the central theory of least. The argument that I
would make against the high speed rail is, I mean, look,
this thing started, and you make the point it started.
There was sort of talk about the vision. The original
vision was not Obama, it wasn't even necessarily Jerry Brown.
But you pointed nineteen eighty two when Brown at least
says former Governor Jerry Brown, we should look at this

(21:38):
high speed rail thing. And then eventually Arnold Schwarzenegger, a
Republican puts a bond on the ballot in two thousand
and eight, and the voters approve it. And you're right.
There was a lot of promotion and promise. Thirty three
point six billion dollars, two hours and twenty minutes downtown
twenty by twenty twenty and the whole thing. And then reality.

(21:58):
Now I get here later decade plus later and reconcile
the fact that we have to dig our way out
of this. There's a new reality. There's a scarcity of resources,
there's an abundance of delay, there's an abundance of cost overruns,
and we have to level set that we need to
build something or we're left with literally nothing. We're left

(22:18):
with pieces that go nowhere, that have no utility and
actually have a long term costs. But let's do it
by telling people what it is and what it's not.
And so this focus on the Central Valley, which is
recognized was stipulated as a requirement under the Obama grant,
the three billion dollars in one of the fastest growing
parts of the state, an important part of the state,

(22:40):
a state that has deep desire to connect to the
rest of the state, and a state of mind that's
not just about a transportation project, but about upsony about
economic development, which a lot of that has occurred in
and around these new stations that have been built, fifty
large scale projects, the size of three Golden Gate bridges.
The entire environmental cpearance is now one hundred percent done.
LA to San Francisco, there were two.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
Thousand, twenty twelve to twenty twenty five.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
I can't I can't make up for that. I can
only deal.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
With the quota party, which is crazy.

Speaker 1 (23:08):
It's crazy. But the point is we're at the point
where just announced we're doing railhead. We're finally laying the tracks.
I mean we could, we can lament about it. We
absolutely learned from it, and we've stressed test a lot
of it. You talk about the consulting class versus a
bureaucratic class, you're absolutely right, and we started to shift
that just a few years ago. But the litigation on

(23:29):
the two thousand, two hundred and seventy parcels that we
had to purchase was next level, and that delay, I
think is the core of this. There's plenty of other
bureaucratic malays and other issues we can identify, but back
to this notion, I think you're right this idea of
so I think liberal litigation. I don't know what phrase

(23:50):
you used in the book, but we were mindful of
that and critical of that, and you mark that as
a big part of the sort of nineteen seventies construct
in a America and tell us a little bit more about.

Speaker 2 (24:01):
Yeah, we can put a pin in high speed rail.
There are two major liberal movements that happen in the
twentieth century. The one we think about a lot is
New Deal liberalism. That's the one where we build aggressively.
It's a growth orient to liberalism. It's a liberalism of

(24:22):
material goods. And it's the liberalism that defines the left
right divide in our national narrative. Right liberals believe in big,
strong government, conservatives believe in small, limited government. In the sixties, seventies, eighties,
you have real problems that have emerged from this New
Deal order. We have built heedlessly, recklessly, intensely. We are

(24:45):
cutting highways all across the country, many of them, they're
not all of them through marginalized communities, but man, the
rich communities don't like it when a highway goes through
either right, and they have a lot of the power
that leads to this. There is a genuine spoiling of
the environment. My colleague Derek likes to talk about the
moment in Los Angeles. I think it's in the forties
or fifties where people wake up and think there's been

(25:07):
a chemical attack from Japanese, but it turned out that
the city had launched its own chemical attack on itself.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
But you'll forget. In California, a lazy pundit could suggest
the modern environmental movement started in nineteen sixty seven in
reaction to that in the business community saying enough and
Governor RONA. Reagan established the California Air Resources Board, of
which that rights and responsibility were afforded under the nineteen
seventy Clean Air Act, which you also highlight in the

(25:34):
book Richard Nixon affording California waiver so that we can
address the unique air quality concerns that you identify them book.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
And then of course everybody forgets it's Reagan who signs
the California Environmental Quality Activity.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Yeah, this SEQUE issue that you and others and myself.

Speaker 2 (25:53):
It's worth I think taking time, it's worth taking I
think a minute on SEQUA. So Reagan signs a bill
into law. From Jake Ambnder's research, it doesn't even merit
a full article in the La Times. It's interesting nobody
quite knows what they've done because initially SEQUA it just says, look,
when the government does stuff, it's got to produce o
report on you know what the likely consequences are. No

(26:15):
big deal. And then there is a proposed development in Mammoth, which,
you know, the great ski and snowboard town, which I've
been too many many.

Speaker 1 (26:25):
Times, you Southern Californians.

Speaker 2 (26:27):
Yeah, Math, But there's a mixed use development that's proposed there,
you know, sort of condos and some shopping at the
bottom of them, and a bunch of rich Mammothians, I
don't know what they call themselves. Foul lawsuit, and they
have a novel argument, which is that this development can't
go forward because it violates SEQUA. And this gets rejected

(26:47):
the courts because this is not roughly would this be
I'd want to double check this, but early seven years
these things, but I could be wrong with that. So
so what happens here is that the courts reject this
a bunch of times because Seque is about public development,
and then the Supreme Court rules no no no. Public

(27:08):
development is anything that requires a permit by the state
of California. There's a Sierra Club lobbyist who we quote
in the book. It says after that sequel applies to
anything where you are rubbing two sticks together in the state.
And so, now, having been as Ambunder puts it in
his dissertation on this stuff, informed by the courts of
what the law they passed actually does, the legislature puts

(27:31):
a pause on it because now everything's in a huge
legal limbo. But the key thing is at SEQUA. I mean,
and I'm sure you know all this much better than
I do. But Sequa's power is amplified a lot by
courts that interpreted it in a way that was very
different than anybody initially interpreted it. And this is part
of a period in liberalism where you have this rise

(27:52):
of an environmental movement that has legal dimensions and political dimensions,
and statutory dimensions and cultural dimensions. It's Rachel Carson, It's
Ralph And the key thing about this period of liberalism,
the New Left period of liberalism, is it is fundamentally
skeptical of government action. The New Deal is this alliance
between the government, the unions and the corporations to build,

(28:13):
to put people to work, to industrialize America and make
it into this kind of advanced, globe spanning superpower. And
the new Left comes in and says, we are destroying
this place, We are turning this country conformists. The term
tiki Taki comes from a song about Daily City and
how gross all those homes are. Right, Like, there's a

(28:34):
whole thing about the esthetic destruction of it. I have
great quotes from Lyndon Johnson's speeches about we used to
worry about the ugly American, Now we have to worry
about the ugly America. Right, there's a whole change. It
begins to happen. And the way that this moment in
liberalism tries to square the circle because the new Left
is part of this era that's very individualistic, right. We

(28:56):
think about this for Reagan and individuals, but it's happening
on the left too and wants a highly participatory democracy.
And the way it tries to square it is create
a million different ways that individuals or individuals represented by
nonprofit groups typically can sue the government to stop it
or force it to think about things that it wasn't
thinking about before. Sorry, gott a mosquito there, And it

(29:19):
creates ways to sue the government and force it to
think about things that it wasn't thinking about or had
an earlier Get.

Speaker 1 (29:26):
That damn thing.

Speaker 2 (29:28):
If I got it, I'd be like a mom and
that I remember the time when he truly seems superpowered.
So the way they do that is they create this
raft of legislation. Of it is some of it is environmental,
but not all of it. And what it allows is
for individuals or individuals represented by groups and a huge
world of nonprofits emerges to take the best talent out

(29:49):
of the law schools and set them to suing government
to sort of enforce this. Ralph Nader, when he runs
for president in two thousand, is asked what qualifies you
to be president? Says he has sued more government agencies
than I have. And yeah, and so this is very
potent in blue states. It had a strong New Left,

(30:09):
and we don't think about it. Really, it's not part
of our national narrative of the left and the right.
Our national narrative is like the guys who like government
and the party that likes government and the party that doesn't.
It's not that way. The right loves a big police
state and the left has a very divided soul on government.
It likes some kinds of government, but it hobbles government.

(30:30):
And that sort of made sense for its time. But
now we're in a different time where the problems are
problems of not building enough and environmentally particularly, All of
a sudden, we've gone from a period where it really
was environmentally important to stop much of the things that
were happening, and now we're in one where the environmental
movement has to build, build, build, build the i ras
of building approach to climate change, and our laws are

(30:53):
not set up for that. And this is where I'd
like to get your perspective. The thing that's also is
like the Democratic coalition is not set up to revisit
those laws. You all been doing little carve outs of SIQUA. Yeah,
but you've not ripped it out and rebuilt it, and
nor have we done that at the national level. And
as much as Democrats know this, the environmental groups don't

(31:15):
want to do that. There's a lot of power and
incumbents around the legislative architecture we have now, and you
don't get a huge I mean, you've tell me if
this is wrong, but I feel like you don't get
a huge parade for rebuilding legislative process, right zero.

Speaker 1 (31:29):
I mean so it feels like the contrary. It's years
and years of friction, trial and error. It takes a
couple of years. You introduce, you socialize, it gets nowhere,
finally gets through new coalition, new personalities, You finally get
it done. Then two years later you're actual exercise it.
I'll give you two specific examples. I have a two
hundred and seventy day judicial review process that we pushed.

(31:52):
We worked it for. Its first use case was the
first above ground storage facility in California, last half century sites.
It's in an offstream dam in California. At the second
quite literally a week ago, for three hundred megawatt large
scale solar facility which we are testing. It hardly perfect,

(32:14):
but that was three years in the making just to
have this established rule where I can finally fast track
large scale projects to start addressing your point. And you're right,
there was no fundamental coalition for any of that. It
was a very lonely process until after years and years
of trial and error, we finally broke through.

Speaker 2 (32:33):
Do you think you benefit from the other side of it,
from being able to get these projects built, Like if
you could get them built, do you think like it's
an intermediate period of pain and then better politics.

Speaker 1 (32:42):
It will be better politics, but I won't be around
to enjoy the fruits of that. And I think that's
the great struggle. To your point, I mean you made
that point about Biden earlier. I mean that's just a
it's forty eight months. You're in the middle of trying
to address the pandemic. You've got all kinds of global issues,
you've got supply train constraints, you've got war in Ukraine,
You've got all of these issues, and yet he passes
I refer to as a master class.

Speaker 2 (33:08):
You are more defensive of Biden's record than of your own.

Speaker 1 (33:11):
No, I'm more proud of the work they did, breaking
through actually addressing the issues that Democrats claim they wanted
to address, including marginally. And I agree with you again,
there's zero daylight in this book which is markable, including
its own critique, my own self critique of my own
state and my own performance. So it's interesting. But he had,

(33:32):
as I said, industrial policy, there was worker centric and
there was reforms at the same time, to deal with mansion,
which you acknowledge in the book.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Marginal Well, the progressives killed those we just killed. But
you're talking about the permitting the permanent reforms.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
But that sort of manifested and finally on the Chips
and Science Act to be a version of that with
Kelly and Cruz as it relates to. So there was
some component parts.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
And they learned on this. I mean, Brandiese, who is
Biden's former a NEC director, has an awesome piece in
Foreign Affairs about why we need to build faster. Right,
there's learning here. But I would wish but.

Speaker 1 (34:01):
If we but I'm going to let me stipulate, let
me make this quickly if we can figure that out.
If we can, I don't. This is this is the
most one of the most important books democrats can read.
Wake up. I sent this to the two leaders of
my California Assembly and Senate.

Speaker 2 (34:15):
You love to hear it.

Speaker 1 (34:16):
I just know. No, I'm serious, I said, guys, wake
this is it. I mean, we're being judged here at
a different level. We've done some good things together. We
got to get serious. As the spot on on a
lot of this stuff. There's some you know, we had
population growth, the last two years. By the way, in
December they updated all the census numbers. It grew in
California the last two years. He had red states that

(34:38):
a population declined in the last few years, with the
exception of Vermont. There's some QUI I can equivalent some
of that respect, but fundamentally, these larger trend lines you
identify and this friction struggle to build more and build
better and to address I'm with you on the high
speed rail. It furiates me as a taxpayer. You're one
hundred percent. It's an indictment of our ability to deliver.
That said, we are finally doing realized where by train sets.

(35:00):
We got partnership with the Bright Line and High Desert Corridor.
We did full electrification of Caltran seven hundred and fourteen
million dollars fifty one miles. We got all the environmental
work done, all the hard works now behind us. Now
we're laying track and we're finally getting that first one
hundred nineteen miles done. We'll get to one seventy one.
It's a six point five billion dollar gap. We have
strategy to address that.

Speaker 2 (35:21):
I don't even want to go I want to hold
high title for a second. I want to do one
thing on Biden before we go.

Speaker 1 (35:26):
But the issue with Biden is I don't know what
the hell more he could have done in a short
period of time to deliver on a bold vision and
lay the tracks for benefits that will enjoy. Yes, not
all in forty eight months, but over the course the
next four eight years.

Speaker 2 (35:43):
It'll be loving Like. I'm not saying it's all his fault.
That's not my point here, right, He is inheriting a government,
although you see in a very dark way with Musk
and Doge that a lot that was taken as a
binding constraint actually isn't. So I want to hold that
because I think there are things as grotesque is what
that crew is doing to the government. There's also things

(36:03):
that need to be learned from what they're doing to
the government.

Speaker 1 (36:05):
But it didn't.

Speaker 2 (36:07):
I really think it's important to hold this in mind
for all of us, because it's something I really did
not understand. It did not used to take this long
to deliver Medicare. Medicare delivered Medicare cards a year after
they passed that bail. It took the Affordable Care Act
four years to begin delivering actual insurance to any we
can talk. It took on the Inflation Reduction Act, which

(36:28):
is doing the much smaller job of just beginning to
negotiate prices on some drugs three years to get that started.
I mean we built I mean, these are the classic examples.
But we built the Empire State Building in a year.
The average environmental review takes four and a half years.

Speaker 1 (36:43):
Just a few years ago to get bridge. I agree,
you know.

Speaker 2 (36:45):
All this The thing that I want to say about this,
which is not Joe Biden's fault, but it is the
fault of now. I think a long period of Democrats
beginning to get accustomed to this slowness. This is not
going to work politically. I agree with you are not
going to hold the people you need to hold if
your answer in every term is he can't feel what

(37:07):
I did because a government takes too long. If it
had to take too long, fine, but it doesn't actually right.
These are man made and it's not.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
Just government, it's also private sector. I mean, there is
there is another component of this. The markets actually play
a really significant outsize influence in timing on a lot
of these things, on investments, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (37:25):
Yeah, but they would build fast. In a lot of cases,
if we let them build fast, I mean, they're not
why we didn't get world broadband done.

Speaker 1 (37:31):
That was not that No, but that's just you know,
I agree, that's fifty states solutions, thousands thousands.

Speaker 2 (37:37):
Think I'm pushing on a little bit here with using
the example of Biden, not you, But I do think
this is I think that those of us who want
to defend liberal democracy from an actual challenge to it.

Speaker 1 (37:47):
Right.

Speaker 2 (37:47):
One of the things Trump is getting the most mileage
out of, and he says it himself all the time.
I think it's why he likes what Elon Musk is
doing for all. The risk of it is the sense
of constant action. Yeah, all of a sudden government which
normally you don't feel moving. You feel it moving, maybe badly.
Maybe what you feel is the heat from it burning
to the ground, but you feel movement. Right and Populace

(38:09):
have that. They have a politics of energy almost all
of the time.

Speaker 1 (38:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (38:13):
This is something you see across countries, and I think
that Democrats need to begin to think about speed as
a thing we are actually tracking and pursuing government. We
have other things we need to pursue. In track equity right,
just right. There are a lot of things we need
to think about and you need to make trade offs
between them. But speed is one we have just let slip.
And it's not just like bad, because it's kind of

(38:36):
sad that we let it slip. Jake Sullivan said about Biden,
he said, elections are measured in four years, and his
presidency will be measured in decades. It won't or his
policy agenda be judged in decades, so much of it
is going to get undone, including a lot of the
Transatlantic alliance that he worked so hard to rebuild that
it won't. One reason that this book is politically important

(38:58):
to me not just the kind of background, as is
a policy reporter, and the stuff I like is like
the details of the policy. But one reason it's politically
important to me is that Democrats have I think, got
in a little bit of learned helplessness around not every
little bit of how gardment moved slowly. People think about
procurement reforms. You've done a lot on that, but in general,

(39:19):
the sense that we just can't do what we once did,
like the way the garment used to work. I was
reading a great piece by Harold Myerson, who's at the
American Prospect, and he's a great California reporter too, and
he wrote this piece was back during the stimulus debate
under Obomba. He sent it to me the other day
and he talks about the way the worst progress administration

(39:40):
started up under FDR and the unfathomable speed at which
they just cut through everything to put millions of people
the equivalent today of putting ten million people to work
in a matter of months. Right, And he was saying,
you can't do it today, Harold was because you just
wouldn't have the laws. But I just think it's really

(40:02):
important to say laws are man made. There are laws
of physics, there are technical things we don't yet know
how to do. But the difference between places at construct
apartment buildings quickly and that don't is that's us.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
One hundred percent. And look and you highlight some of
those successes. I mean you you talk about what happened
during the Trump administration in COVID. By the way, a
lot of innovation happened during COVID. Yeah, including on land use.
We did something called home key, room key. We changed
land use and sequel. We did it through a emergency frame.
You referenced the Eye ninety because risk tolerance went up,
risk tolance went up, I ninety five and emergency frame.

(40:39):
It's exact posts of any we had the Eye ten,
which we got done in eight days. That was even
more through the ninety five. Yeah, you should have added
that and one nice thing you could have said about
our state. But so there was a state of mind though.
I mean, we're doing it right now in terms of
the emergency work we're doing on the rebuilding of the
fire declaration and people are celebrating it and the emergency.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
Structures work better. Yeah, then why is it not making
the normal structure closer to them?

Speaker 1 (41:03):
No? I look, I this this is why. That's why
I wanted to do this podcast, is why I love
don't like your book. That's why I think it's essential
reading for democrats. This notion of speed, appearing to take
action but not doing things to people, but with people
and finding that right balance it's not I think there's
the stress. And it goes to your opening point about
some of the questions you're getting sort of this notion

(41:24):
of a binary that it's one or the other. Why
aren't you a Republican as opposed to risk taking without recklessness.
You know what's that right balance? You know? Is the
right balance of DOGE is the example of the one
hundred and forty billion dollars that Clinton and Gore saved
on a one point four trillion dollar government and they
reduced the size of the workforce by four hundred thousand.
But they did that again in partnership and did real

(41:47):
reform versus the recklessness of DOGE. Is it the RFI
two process. I thank you for recognizing our procurement reforms
you highlight. We brought in gen Polka to it from
Code for America to bring in a private sector version.
We did the original DOGE. We call it ODI, which
the Office of Digital Innovation, which is now Office of
Data Innovation. We're trying to change the entire procurement framework.
We inherited these old Cobalt systems that you highlight from

(42:09):
nineteen fifty nine and these IBM mainframes in the nineteen eighties.
All of that creates a stress on the system, and
so it's not easy overnight to fix it. But the
emergency mindset and I think the break the glass point
you're making is for democrats right now, and it's the
soul searching we have, we got to deliver it.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
Does your legislature want to fix it?

Speaker 1 (42:37):
They all intellectually do. But then you have you have
every constituency in every group, and they're showing up twenty
four to seven. Then nimbiism as well established. You've established
it from the mindset. It's not just by the way Reagan.
In sequel, it's the NEPA, it's in Dangered Species Act,
it's the Clean Water Act, all the stuff Nixon did.
But it's not. But in any reform, people panic, oh,

(42:57):
you don't care about you You've just turned it conservative.
You can't even I mean, we've had a podcast here.
You talked to Republicans. You're like, geez, what the hell
is going on? Guys selling out sold his soul. So
you have reforms around process. In sequel, people panic said, what,
you just want to destroy the environment. So there's a
political price you pay for that reform. But you're right,
there's a political price for not reforming, which is where

(43:19):
the Democratic Party is today. So speed decision making, the
sense of action and purpose. By the way, a lot
of what this president is celebrating is what the last
president did, and a lot of the investments, I mean
the AI investments that Sam and others were making and
that we're making.

Speaker 2 (43:40):
I want to get the credit. That's one of the
reason I think the speed thing is actually so important.
You want to shorten. Look, the policy feedback loops are
broken because people don't know who did the policy. When
you said a second a couple of minutes ago that
these projects that can only exist because of your fast
tracking will not exist while you are in office, right,
that a breakdown of the way the voters can maintain

(44:03):
accountability right when they don't know who did what. It's
actually a big problem. One thing that I think about
with what you were just saying on the politics of
it is that and I see it very clearly in California.
I'm sure it's true in other places. You can you
should tell me if this is facile. You can avoid
short term pain in a way that ultimately creates almost

(44:24):
unsolvable long term pain. And so you know you obviously
used to be mayor of San Francisco London Breed said
a lot of the right things on yimbiism and all
the rest of Itancisco, but couldn't get it done and
lost reelection. Not the only reason, but a big reason.
People are furious about the homelessness problem there, and that's
in large part of a housing problem. It's not the

(44:45):
only reason, but.

Speaker 1 (44:46):
A large problem. You make that point, and you're spot on.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
In Oakland, they were called the mayor in Los Angeles.
I mean, there's a lot of reasons for what's going
on there, but Crusoe ran a much stronger campaign than
people have expected at the beginning, and.

Speaker 1 (44:58):
Former Republican we're out performed a.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
Lot of Yeah, and so you have this sort of
thing happening where there's almost I think, I don't want
to say a ceiling. We'll see what you do in
a couple of years. I don't want to say a
ceiling on where California politicians can go. But it is
very hard to be successful when people are angry of
our problems that maybe you didn't cause, right, but you're
also not willing to take the pain out assault.

Speaker 1 (45:21):
Well, I'm trying. I am taking the pain and I'm
taking the political I mean, I can give you proof
points of the work we've done in the political capital
We've used to get a lot of these reforms advanced,
and that's I think that's That's where I struggle a
little bit with the book. Just again, the book that
I celebrate and I'm handing out to folks, is it's
not a lot of that is acknowledged the actual policy

(45:43):
reforms that we are advancing, that we are marching and
moving towards, and how we're actually starting to see some
progress in that respect. But with that in mind, I
get the speed and the scale, but I also want
to make a case. Look, this is a state, you know,
where we're aiming population again, We're running budget surpluses. We
dominate in every innovative category you talk about the future

(46:08):
of abundance in the context of invention and deployment, that's California.
Eighteen percent of the world's R and D is in
the state. No other state comes close. Only two countries
have more R and D, and that's that's Germany and China.
This is a state with forty one percent more manufacturing
output than the state that tends to get a lot

(46:29):
of credit in Texas. Texas, by the way, takes seventy
one point one billion dollars of federal money from the taxpayers.
We give eighty three point one billion dollars. We have
more scientists, engineers, more, Nobel laureates, more venture capital. Half
of the unicorn companies in the country are in California.
There's a lot going right. They just get a survey
of the top ten happiest cities. I would respect Houston

(46:52):
went on that list, but Santa was very Irvine was
on that list. Fremont interesting, number one, San Diego. So
you know, I don't know, we dominate in AI. The
world again, we're inventing the future happens here. By the
way you saw in homelessness, the numbers through the roof
across the rest of the country stabilized here in California.

(47:14):
The housing crisis not unique to Blue states, any larger, longer,
lower taxes in this state than in many many states.
People talk about the high taxes in California. It's just BS.
Sixteen states. Sixteen states tax their poorest residents more than
we tax our top one percent. Forty percent of our

(47:36):
residents pay lower taxes than in Florida and Texas. Eighty
percent of our residents pay slightly above average taxes. So
this notion of even being a high tax state is BS.
This notion that everyone's leaving is complete BS. We dominate
in so many of these categories because I think of
our values, but we're not build enough damn housing, and

(47:57):
that's led to this homeless crisis. Not exclusively, you said,
but it's contributed. And yes, we had a vision decades ago.
The taxpayers advanced it on a high speed rail and
we watched China clean our clock. You highlight that in
miles and numerics that are depressing. Don't you want you
to repeat them? I can for everybody, but I'm not
going to. But we're going to get the damn thing done.

(48:17):
They complained about the Erie Canal, they complained about the
Panama Canal, they complained about the trans Continental Railroad right
before it finally started, uh to start to start to
see real progress. And I feel like we're at that
tipping point with this damn high speed rail. But nonetheless,
you're right speed.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Rail for a second. So I, for instance, I will,
I will, I will say, first look, I love California. No,
I have redwoods tattooed on my shoulder, like no joke,
and like and leaving the state to go live in
New York City was like the right thing for a
bunch of reasons. But but you know, a difficult personal

(48:54):
choice for me because this is my soil. So every
you live through a tough time, though, Francis, you know
what I would still I mean it was that was
that was im That was a tough time in the pandemic.

Speaker 1 (49:06):
And by the way that city is coming around, it's
turning around. Objectively, I love s F two objectively.

Speaker 2 (49:12):
You know, as I say, what is a criticism is
an act of love.

Speaker 1 (49:15):
Yes, bless you. There's a lot of love, a lot
of love.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
In this book, man, a lot of love in this book.
But and then this is I think always the great
uh paradox of California. California is the frontier of the future.
It always has been. And technologically as you said, but
also culture right. You go to northern California, we're inventing
everybody's technology. You go to southern we're given the whole world.

(49:40):
It's culture right, It's a wild place. And the to me,
the reason the housing thing matters here, the reason I
structure the housing chapter the way that that I do
with Derek, is that you need to make it possible
for people to be and and and prosper from that

(50:02):
prosperity right, it is good for people.

Speaker 1 (50:07):
To be near the AI boom.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
I have friends. I mean they fought fires in the
city of San Francisco, couldn't afford to live there.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Right.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
The point of California's riches is that they should be shared,
not shared necessarily just through taxation and reistribution, but through
the ability to people to go live in these super
high productivity places. Where has happened with like a young
Steve Jobs and Wosniak, you sort of fall into this
world where maybe if you have a genius for something,
you have the connections to make it matter.

Speaker 1 (50:36):
You know.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
I have this sort of line in the book that
in making these cities so expensive, we did the real gating.
We really closed the frontier, because the true frontier isn't land.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
Its ideas you frame it with Horace Greeley, go west,
young Man, go west, and then you create that new construct.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, so I want to pull that. It's actually everything
you say about California. And you know this I'm not telling,
but I'm sanding for the audience that that makes it
so important that like the working class families can be
here are not driven out but on my speed rail.
Let me because by.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
The way, just beg the housing crisis in this state
explains more things and more ways on more days, that
affordability issue is the core of ninety percent of California's
real and structural problems. This is foundational. Again, you could
not be more right. It is at the core of
the issues that define the challenges not just to this state,

(51:29):
increasingly all over the United States. We talk about the
future happening here first, where America is coming to traction.
That's all those wonderful things. Then you and I were
just discussing, but obviously all of these perilous issues that
you have been discussing, and the reason you wrote.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
This book so high speed rail. So when I went
on and did the reporting on that, and I went
up and down the track with the people building it
and the people from the rail authority, and they told
me a couple things that have stuck in my head
that I don't try to resolve in the book, but
I'd be careious for your thoughts. So one was that
the said Bakersfield Leg, which is the leg that is
currently being tried. I think they said they had something
like line of sight either had spent or head line

(52:08):
of sight on something like it was in the range
of eleven to fifteen billion dollars.

Speaker 1 (52:11):
We thirteen point four billion dollars of which ten point
eight from the state and two point six from the feds.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
All right, and that the estimate on finishing was said
to Bakersfield was thirty six billion.

Speaker 1 (52:22):
Yeah, well, there's there's currently our estimates and this plus
or minus and this moving target about six point five
billion dollars that we based upon what we have the
current commitments. We had additional three billion dollars from the
federal government. Obviously, the term of administration is trying to
analyze that as they did in the last time. And
then cap and trade proceeds that will continue to accrue

(52:46):
if we extend cap and trade. Can you bond against that?
There's a lot of variations.

Speaker 2 (52:50):
So you're saying you think you have line of sight
on the money we have with a delta six point
five billion roughly, And what a bunch of the people
working on set is like, look, in the end for
this to really work, needs to be LA to San
Francisco and now would cost one hundred and ten billion dollars.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
Yeah, well we're looking at and I don't you know, Look,
we've extended high speed rail the idea is to get
it in these density and population quarterors, which is the
point you make in the critique, and get Ta Fresno,
for example, to Gilroy where Caltran is, and we can
we can then connect to San Jose and into San Francisco.

(53:23):
We have the existing infrastructure in place. That's about an
hour you get into Palmdale. Now you're connecting with the
new Bright line that's going all the way to Vegas
and one of the fastest growing parts of the state
in Palmdale, where middle class families can still afford a home.
And so those are component parts and that's where I
think that thirty six million billion dollar number came from.

(53:44):
Those three component parts. Roughly add up to that now
that to Hatchpee Mountains, getting them over all of those
larger issues. Those are issues that obviously are component parts of.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
This larger and that'll be you know, over the course
of many minuters.

Speaker 1 (53:58):
Right. Oh.

Speaker 2 (53:59):
But I think the I think the big question people
have about it, and you hear people asking us all
the time, is that And.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
I'm just write I inherited this.

Speaker 2 (54:09):
I'm not blaming governors on the dog.

Speaker 1 (54:12):
I'm just trying to think that.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
Question is if there is not a line of sight
on that thirty six to one ten billion, right, that
doesn't exist, and that's a very hard.

Speaker 1 (54:21):
Thing when you're trying to get revenue generation. Once you
start getting the large population corridors, if you could connect
Silicon Valley to Central Valley, which is the foundational argument,
and you can start sharing. We're looking at train sets
that have interoperability not just with bright Line, but a
high desert corridors. You have two private sector partners and
we're actually procuring train sets very very shortly, as I

(54:42):
say we did the railhead. We're starting to lay track.
This thing is starting to get very very real. Some
of the projects you did see are projects that will
have profound impacts economically in terms of the up zone,
particularly in the Fresno corridor, and Fresno is a very.

Speaker 2 (54:55):
Important I think the big the big worry I heard
from transportation types is that the ridership in those quarters,
as fast growing as they may be, is not enough
to throw off money. It's not even enough to handle
that operating budget very likely, and it's definitely not going
to throw off money that's going to complete one hundred
and ten billion dollar train, and that we're finishing something
that in the end is going to be a monument
to not being able to Well there's the thing we

(55:17):
want it.

Speaker 1 (55:17):
Yeah, we're not going to be able to build a
new airport. We're not, you know, I mean the end
of the day, we've got these constraints that are well
established already, these pre existing constraints. There's not a high
speed railing system that's not enjoying some popularity and success.
Most at least are wildly popular. It's an experience no
one's had in the United States of America. At least,
we're out there daring and we're trying to it can be.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Made that would make the next pieces just easier. I mean,
I was always interested that, Like it wasn't exempted from
sequel in the first place. It's a pro environmental project,
I know. You know, are there things like that?

Speaker 1 (55:52):
Oh my god, I mean, I wish you wrote this
damn book in two thousand and seven. Wow, Where the
hell were you? It's a good question, seriously, by the way,
where were you? I was in Washington, man in Washington,
was in Washington. I mean, but you're right, no, look,
and I don't see it's the art of the possible,
and I know that back to that's a practitioner framework.
I mean, I love to intellectualize all these things what

(56:12):
could have, should have, would have, but there's certain foundational facts.
And interestingly, you made the point in the book that
I have to over and over make to people, why
did we start in the Central Valley? It was a requirement,
federal requirement for federal dollars. Now it's not the worst idea,
I mean the Intercontinental.

Speaker 2 (56:29):
Just to say it was a requirement because the federal
program wasn't just for high speed rail. It's his start
where you had air pollution for marginalized communities, which is
both Like, I just want to say this because it's
part of why I'm saying this in the book is
that that all sounds great and there's you can come
up with reasons starting Central Valley, but it's the part

(56:49):
of the state that will generate the least political capital
to keep going because it has the least danse ridership.

Speaker 1 (56:56):
But it's also part of the state that does have
I mean, you know, you talk about it ignorance, poverty,
and disease. You talk about the issues of air quality
and life expectancy, you talk about the economic opportunity.

Speaker 2 (57:06):
But as air quality is the whole track.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
Well, ultimately fully electrified track. I mean that ultimately will This.

Speaker 2 (57:13):
Is just to me, it's an example. This one wasn't
California's fault. This was the Obama administration. But it's an
example of they should have given I want to say
what I think should have happened here. They should have
given you whatever three some billion dollars that's what that
grant was, and just said use it for high speed rail.

Speaker 1 (57:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
It shouldn't have been a stacked series of ideas. Right,
it doesn't all need to be a triple axle. Right,
high speed rail is hard enough, as you know better
than I do.

Speaker 1 (57:38):
It's you know, representative democracy is a tough thing. Dictatorships
are a little easy.

Speaker 2 (57:43):
Representative Tom knew that.

Speaker 1 (57:45):
You know, a lot of folks in the Central Valley,
a lot of the elected officials, a lot of the
blue dog Democrats a lot.

Speaker 2 (57:50):
But the Obama administration when they created those programs, right, yeah,
that's a lot happening. I really, this isn't.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
There were a lot of representatives, Democrats, representers that still
sipulated their support for that bill in those dollars that
it go to the center.

Speaker 2 (58:05):
There is a lot to be politics in that. I
don't want to take that away, but I do want
to say because this comes up a lot when I'm
talking about this book. It's like, oh, do you hate democracy?
People have no fucking idea what is happening in these
regulatory processes, Like I cover this professionally, and when I
dig into what is happening after these bills pass, I'm like,
oh my god, really that is not democracy. That is,

(58:27):
we have created things that were supposed to a lot
of participation and they are often very captured. Maybe they're
captured by interests. You like, that's fine, but that is
not the thing that you know, the massive Californians have
voted for Prop one A knew they were getting. And
even those of us covering the stimulus bill, we're not
looking at the precise requirements in the notice of funding
opportunity in the grant program. So there is this thing,

(58:50):
I think where a lot of this highly technocratic governance,
which is very much a negotiation between different interests, is
in this like King's Cup Way being justified as democracy.
That's not what democracy looks like. I'll use that chant here, right,
I mean, it's not SHP. Nobody knows about you.

Speaker 1 (59:08):
Look, I mean you're you're very adjacent to the arguments
that Elon Musk is making with Doge, this clay layer
of bureaucracy. This is not representative. Who the hell are
these people to make these rules? Who are these people
making these decisions? And the opacity of these decisions? And
I've made in sunshine and daylight and a lot of
these three levels.

Speaker 2 (59:26):
Supposed to Nicholas Bagley, the more liberal law professor, making
these rules. But I think I'll take the head.

Speaker 1 (59:32):
No, it's well, it's not even a hit. But I mean,
I think it goes to the sentiment, it goes to
I think it goes to the thematics of your book.
It goes to what you're trying to stress test and
what you're trying to stress upon us as Democrats, that
we need to be more accountable. Here's anything. But let
me make this point. I say this all the time,
my legislative friends. Right when I sign a bill, I said,
this happens so obviously not indictment of any individual legislature.

(59:54):
It's in sort of institutionalized. They think the process is done,
process just begun.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Just beginning program again not problem.

Speaker 1 (01:00:00):
Solving, and then that implementation application goes through exactly what
you're saying. What's an You mentioned no foes in in
in the book, we have no fuzz, which I notice
a funny availability, not opportunity. And then you stack all
those things up with all these rules and requirements along
the lines you suggest that was never part of anyone's understanding.
Your vision is what you just saw this, And I

(01:00:22):
think there's absolutegitimacy.

Speaker 2 (01:00:23):
I have this joke that everybody knows a schoolhouse rock
song of like how a bill becomes a law, but
what they don't know is how a law becomes or
does not become like a reality, right, like the things
that happened after actually much more complicated. But I want
to say one thing about Elon Muskandoje And at this
point I was just I just referenced Nick Bagley, who
is a great administ of law professor of Michigan. He
was Gretchen Whitmer's your your gubernatorial colleagues, chief counsel. He

(01:00:47):
wrote this piece it's very influential these days and very
influential for me, called the procedural fetish, And one of
the things he says in that that I think is
really wise is that the Democotic Party is very legalistic.
It's got a lot of lawyers in it. Between Tim
Walls was the first person on a Democratic ticket since
Mondell to not go to law school. We're very legalistic

(01:01:10):
and lawyers and constitutional lawyers and administrative procedure lawyers. They
grapple a lot with a very hard question, which is
what makes government action legitimate? And the answer they often
come to his procedure right is following the procedures set
out in the laws and the rules and the court orders,
et cetera. It's not that there's nothing to that. But
the point Bagley makes, which I think is the right
counter or the way to think about the point Elon
Musk is making, is it, to most people, what makes

(01:01:33):
government legitimate in a democracy is it they are getting
what they think they voted for. When they vote for
you and you say you're going to do X, Y
and Z, they got X, Y and Z. And if
they don't feel like they got that, they vote you
out right. They see you as illegitimate failure. And the
problem with Musk and Doge, in addition to its lawless nature,
is that its ends are terrible, and the people did

(01:01:55):
not vote for, you know, not to be able to
reach anybody at Social Security Administration or the IRS. Ever
again on the phone, right, that wasn't part of the pitch,
But it's I think really important that liberals have a
little bit more of the sense not the procedure is meaningless,
because it isn't you need procedure. But what really connects

(01:02:16):
government to people is outcomes, the lived experience of government
acting in their life. And if you are letting endless
levels of not just process but process, you have created.
I mean when we're talking about no foes and no fas,
and I mean that is the work of men and women.
You know, we are writing that shit down on the computer.

Speaker 1 (01:02:34):
Yeah, and when we lost everyone, we opened up with sequences.

Speaker 2 (01:02:36):
And this is this is going to be a very high,
high audience podcast. But when you do that, I think
that that actually is a cultural change. The thing I
respect about Elon Musk there's a lot these days I
don't like about the guy, but there is a relentlessness
to the way he pursues his objectives, a real sense
it in between here and the end he is seeking

(01:02:58):
might be a lot of pain a lot of disappointment,
might be a lot of angry people. But if this
is worth it, which on Tesla and SpaceX it was,
and on destroying the federal government, in my view it isn't,
then this is worth it, And that I think has
not been the culture of liberal governance. The culture of
liberal governance has actually been to try to generate political
support by giving things to interest groups in the middle

(01:03:21):
of the process. Right, you pass the bill, then there's
a regulatory thing. Nobody's really paying attention to that, and
you do a bunch of payoffs there, and then the
thing doesn't work as well, or it's slower, or it's
more expensive, and then people think you don't do a
great job, and like that's actually undermining the legitimacy of government.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Could agree more. By the way, sort of going back
to that book, Citizen literally talks about this in the
context of it's not inputs, it's outcomes. This pyramids inverting
more choice, more voice. I talk about government being a
vending machine where you put in your taxes, you get police, fire, healthcare, education.

(01:04:01):
If you don't like what you get, you kick the machine,
you shake the machine. And shifting that paradigm and not
just government efficiency, but how government works. Moving away from
you vote, I decide more of a participatory framework in
between elections. We're finally starting to see the fruits of
that vision, and near the end of my term in
the context of these new models we've created, Engaged California,

(01:04:24):
our new procurement platforms, the work that Jen Polka helps
seed in the reforms we're doing as it relates to
our large scale IT reforms. But look, this is this
notion of being accountable. Society becomes how we behave we
are behaviors. All this, to your point, happened on our watch.
We own it. Democrats, we own it. Can't point fingers.

(01:04:45):
You got to look in the mirror. You got to
take responsibility. I think foundationally that's at center of this book,
and I think it's very helpful and it's humbling as well,
but it's critically important this time not only that we
focus on situational politics, but how we're governing and how
we're delivering real results, because I mean, if I have
another press conference about how much money we're spending almost this,

(01:05:08):
they're gonna take my head off. They want to see
encampments off the damn street that's what they're measuring by.
They want more housing so that the cost of that
housing goes down because there's more supply. They don't give
a damn about the process. They don't know what a
nofa is or a no foe. They don't care about
any of that stuff. You're one hundred percent right, it
does matter. I think there's a balance that we have

(01:05:29):
to find. We're trying to find that balance. We're iterating.
But this notion of relentlessness is very resonant. What you
just said. To be seen doing what you said about
Trump a minute ago, we've got to be seen not
defending the status quo, defending the high speed rail. This
went really well for.

Speaker 2 (01:05:48):
Me, but defends into our breef.

Speaker 1 (01:05:53):
Sort of dynamic expectations that taxpayers rightfully are placed on us.
But let me just end with that, because you and
this book making that case from an abundance frame, back
to this nomenclature around abundance. But you talk about DARPA,
you talk about CRISPER, you talk about ARPA, NEET, going

(01:06:15):
back in nineteen sixty nine, the origins of the Internet,
you talk about the nih the NSF, you talk about
all of these things. That few people that are listening
even know, but that are important, and it relates to innovation.
It's not an act that occurs, it's a process contradicting
a little bit of what we just said that unfolds
over time.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
Tell me a little bit, Well, everything's a process, so
we don't want to say all processes are bad, just
like all regulations are not good or bad. Yeah, this
is the other piece of the book that we haven't
talked that much about. But abundance is not just like
me banging my fist on the table about how high
speed relting get finished. It's also motivated in part by

(01:06:55):
a belief that Democrats have developed a dysfunctional relationship with
technology and in way of the future. Sure, and I
sort of date this back in my own reading of
it to around twenty sixteen, when I think the harms
of social media became really salient to people. I think
it got over blamed for the twenty sixteen election. I've
never been a believer that misinformation was like the driver there.

(01:07:15):
But it is rotting our brains and it's not making
us better people, and it's fucking up our kids. Right,
And it's represented by like a small crew of tech
billionaires who you know, in the years since, have turned
you know, more and more both right and weird, and
I think the left got to become very skeptical of it.
And one of the things that we're trying to say

(01:07:36):
is that a huge amount of social progress, a huge
amount of what makes it possible of the life better
than the one we live now, is not just new
social insurance programs, though those are very important and I
would like to see some of them, or redistribution. It's technology,
and it is also being thoughtful about the government's ability
to organize resources and rules and manpower to pull technology

(01:07:59):
from the future into the present. Right, the canonical example
here is a Manhattan Project, But you can think of
the Internet, which, as we talked about, you know, comes
from the arpinnet. You can think about Operation warp Speed,
like the one truly great success of Aalen Trump's first term,
which is now disowned very much by him and and
to some degree by the Democrats to some credit to

(01:08:20):
a little bit. And so there is a There are
a lot of problems like the only reason we have
any shot on preventing a world of three or four
degrees of warming Celsius is because we have created miracles
through government policy in solar winds.

Speaker 1 (01:08:41):
Would not exist for the regulatory of.

Speaker 2 (01:08:45):
One of the great one of the great shames of
what Elon Musk has become is that guy is a
walking advertisement for the power of public private partnership. He
is just like every major company he has done, is
built on government subsidies, government loan guarantees.

Speaker 1 (01:09:02):
Government demand. In the original.

Speaker 2 (01:09:05):
Now guys just pulling the ladder up after him. It
drives me fucking crazy, but I guess.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
But also it's a principle that you lay out as
it relates to Dartha and which gave us GPS, gave
us the self driving car he's now promoting that gave
us so much of this innovation.

Speaker 2 (01:09:23):
Yeah, and certainly that seated it. See and you know,
look like I'm a big believer in universal healthcare. A
lot of my career has been, you know, about trying
to expand health insurance. But where health insurance.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
In the only state that does that, regardless of ability
to pay in their resisting conditions and immigration.

Speaker 2 (01:09:39):
But there's a reality to this that for the people
who have health insurance, which is most people, what really
matters is when you get sick. Is there a cure?
My wife is kept alive by shots of Vinceland. She
just is. Right, at another age she wouldn't be. There
is so much that we do not yet know how
to cure, right, there is so much. I mean, what

(01:10:01):
Medicare or Medicaid can offer, or private health insurance because
they don't yet cover it for most people with GLP
ones is just more valuable than what it could offer
before GLP ones. These are going to be transformational medications
for people they already are. And so getting really serious
about what we want the government to do technologically and

(01:10:21):
having a vision of the future that is an abundant one, right,
a vision of the future that is not just about
like how cheap consumer goods are. That's fine, but it's
about the things we need to build or better a
life right, cheap energy, cheap healthcare right, abundant housing, education. Right.
There's a lot of things we only touch on in
the book that are really important here. I think that

(01:10:44):
one of the shames of politics in the last couple
of years is it got to be a really bitter
argument over our past, right, with the r right.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
Notion of American reverse pre nineteen.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Sex the right that is gripped by a deep nostalgia
for an America. I think that never really was, and
the left was really focus, really focused on the injustices
of our history, which I think are very real. So
I'm not trying to undermine that as a thing worth confronting,
but I think visions of the future, for different reasons
on both sides, became really degraded. Cole and one thing

(01:11:18):
that did change with Trump between his first term and
the second is Elon Musk Mark Andriesen. In a way RK. Junior,
they changed his meaning. Trump was the defender of the
past America in twenty sixteen, Make America Great Again. All
these futurist influencers and you know, rocket makers and so on.
They sort of made him into something that represented a
kind of future. I think it's quite dark one, but

(01:11:39):
it is, but there is around him. JD. Vans right,
It changed what he meant and I think to compete
with that, and given that they're going to destroy the present,
I don't think it's going to end up being a
very attractive vision to people. But to compete with that,
I think Democrats need to figure out how to represent
a future again. I think Obama represented the future. I
think Bill Clinton represented the future. And like both that

(01:12:02):
sort of ability to grab reform, which is part of
what abundance is about, reform of government, and that ability
to grab the high ground of the future, which is
the other part of what it's about. This ability to
integrate a theory of technology and an optimism about it,
and the ability to sort of rapid in policy. Those
things are really important. We haven't talked about AI. There's

(01:12:22):
a lot coming here that's going to be very important,
and the party that medical frame and the party and
the thinkers in it are going to have to be
alert to this side of it too, because it is
a mistake to think of politics as a separate sphere
from technology. You know, if we could do more modular housing,
it would change what is possible in housing policy.

Speaker 1 (01:12:40):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
These things are bi directional, they're intertwined, and like, I
would like to see a liberalism that isn't just angry
about a bunch of things that government is failed to do,
as I am, but it is also optimistic about what
is possible. And that's where that vision between red and
blue states really diverges. I mean Trump and them, they're
trying to destroy winded solar. They don't want this vision.
They don't want more trade, they don't want more people.
Right there, it's all scarcity, and that leads a pretty

(01:13:03):
big opening for the Democratic Party to capture both reform
and abundance from them.

Speaker 1 (01:13:07):
I love that and it's a great way to end
because it's a framework of optimism, of course, you know,
and I appreciate just I'm thinking about Clinton, don't stop
thinking about tomorrow. I mean, obviously there was language around that,
and you know, talking about your tomorrow's not his. Yesterday's
obviously the journey that we were on in the nineteen
sixties with the vision that was JFK. But I will
say about our state, and it's a point of pride

(01:13:28):
and in principle for me as governors said, or as
the future ex governor, as a fifth generation California future
happens here first. And I talked about this being America's
coming attraction. But that's that's the game that separates, I
think our game from the game played everywhere else. It's
the reason we went from the seventh largest economy to
the sixth largest economy in the world, and we dominate
in so many spears even today. But you're absolutely right.

(01:13:51):
We now have to dominate on that reform agenda and
we have to deal with the original sin and that's
housing and again being accountable to these larger visions as
well and deliver and level set with folks. And so
it's in that spirit of an abundant mindset that Ezra,
I'm glad you took the time to be here. I'm
really moreover pleased you took time to write this book,

(01:14:13):
which is an essential reading for everybody listening. Thanks for
being with us, Thank you so much for having me.

Speaker 2 (01:14:17):
Thank you