450: Elaine Culotti—California is in Real Trouble

Chuck, do you know how I know that California is in real trouble?

No, Mike.

How do you know that?

Because that's the name of this episode.

Welcome to the Way I Heard It, everyone.

It's me, Mike Rowe.

Chuck is still here in our little studio in beautiful Southern California.

Don't you love California, Mike?

I do love it.

Yeah.

And I make no apology for it.

And our guest today loves it probably more than the two of us combined.

Yep.

Her name is Elaine Colati.

And if you've heard of her, maybe it's because you're a fan of farming and you're familiar with the farm that she owns and her moniker as the lipstick farmer that she blogs on from time to time.

Or maybe you still watch the Discovery Channel and you remember season two of Undercover Billionaire where she made an appearance, wound up in

Fresno with a check for $100.

Yeah.

And turned it into how much in 90 days?

A lot.

A lot.

Yeah.

It was during lockdowns and took like a dilapidated old hostel or something and turned it into something truly useful.

Right.

Yeah.

She'll tell you the story in a moment and then she's going to tell you some other things.

And look,

I get it.

This is going to be a tad political.

I don't apologize for it because I'm worried for my adopted home state.

You know, Chuck and I both are proud Maryland boys, but we make California our home.

And we're both well acquainted with lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people who have left.

Yes.

And it's such a shame.

I honestly don't care what your politics are, even though this does get a bit political.

It's not really about your dogma.

This is a conversation about management and incentives.

and why people like me choose to live here but take our productions to places like Oklahoma.

Or Georgia.

Yeah.

And why people like Joe Rogan, who loved it here,

just couldn't take it anymore and up and left.

And I know some people listening are probably going, well, who needs you?

Good riddance.

Bye-bye.

I understand that feeling too.

But something has happened, I think, recently.

I think the fires really lit a fire, as it were, under a lot of people.

Well, they really showed us just how badly the state is run run and the city of Los Angeles as well.

When the firefighters, you know, go to open a hydrant and there's not water in it

in the middle of a big fire.

That's a thing.

We've talked about this on the podcast, and

maybe you've heard it already as we listen to a fire engine outside.

I love it.

I love the symmetry of that.

But it's been eight months, folks.

It's been eight months.

and hundreds of tons of debris are still in the palisades.

Yeah.

And

the permits are not being issued quickly enough.

And decisions are being made that's going to force people who didn't lose their homes to make massive changes and raise them up into the air.

The cost is just astronomical.

It just feels like something truly, truly is amiss.

And we're not being incentivized or motivated to do anything other than endure and ignore the thing that's clearly visible right in front of us.

And look, if I sound agitated, it is because I don't want to move.

I really don't.

I love that MicroWorks is here and I love coming home to this state.

But man, oh man, oh man.

Yeah.

There's a point where I think people get worn down.

And Elaine is a very successful businesswoman.

Yes.

She's an entrepreneur who loves this state deeply, and she's about at the end of her rope.

And she's doing things, and

she's taking steps, and she's venturing outside of her lane a bit as a real estate magnate to try and effectuate some change, which honestly I think the state needs.

Yeah, absolutely, it does.

And she is, it sounds like she might be hinting at a run for the governorship.

I couldn't get her to say it, but

listen to the passion with which she speaks, and listen to

the certainty that she has about what needs to occur.

And understand,

as I hope will illustrate in the first half hour, what a serious person this is.

She's a player and she's succeeded in, I don't even know how many businesses.

But it's a really fun conversation with a woman I met for the first time just now.

And I suspect we'll stay on each other's radar.

We're calling the episode, California is in real trouble on account of it is.

Oh, one other thing, Chuck?

One other thing.

Yeah.

There's like a little fact check in here.

Oh, yeah.

She mentions toward the end of the pot of the episode, she mentions, she says that 48% of Californians are conservative.

And she cites a Madison McQueen poll that was recently done.

And I looked it up afterwards, and I think she conflated something.

And actually, this will give you an example of how connected she is.

She called up Owen, who owns Madison McQueen, and he called me to let me know exactly what the poll was.

And I'm not sure she's confused or conflated at all.

I think I started singing a silly song as she was in the midst of explaining.

And this will all be made clear, but the poll basically said that if the election were held now.

Well, for the 2026 election for governor, 48% of Californians would consider voting for a Republican.

48% 48% of Californians who vote

would consider voting Republican.

Yeah, across party lines.

Yeah.

That's extraordinary.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So having said all that,

and at the risk of repeating myself, California is in real trouble.

Dumb.

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Everything you need, nothing you don't.

It's impossible to know how to introduce you.

I don't think anything's impossible for you.

I'm telling you, I don't even know how to introduce.

Are you a farmer?

Are you a serial entrepreneur?

Are you a TV sensation?

Are you a real estate mogul?

I mean, what do you prefer?

I mean, at the moment, I prefer saving California and fixing our beautiful Los Angeles after the fires.

Jagged little czar.

I want to be a czar.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like it.

I need a job.

I need Trumpy Trump to give me a job as the czar.

I need some position of power so I can get rid of all these people making such a muck of it.

All right.

We will get to the, what the ad pukes call the single-minded proposition momentarily.

But first, I want people, genuinely, I want to better understand because just so people know, I'm meeting you for the first time, which is unusual with this podcast.

It is.

You live with a guy named Tim who has, he was friends with a guy named John, who called me a couple of weeks ago and said, Mike, this guy, Tim, and this woman, Elaine, she's on some kind of vision quest, and I think you're really going to like her.

And there's a bunch of triangulating you can do, both with the Discovery Channel and went down a list of other things.

And for whatever reason, I just, I trust this guy, John McGlenan, who owns

One Union.

One Union Recording, where I've been making sounds and microphones in a crisp, well-modulated baritone for over 20 years now.

So based on his quasi-recommendation, I thought, okay, I'm going to reach out to this Elaine person.

And turns out you also know Grant Cardone.

Turns out you also work for Discovery from time to time.

So let's just start there since we each are bound to know some Discovery people.

So

I kind of got hung up in the

let's not do any reality stuff.

My kids were like, no, no, no.

But when COVID happened, a friend of mine reached out.

His name's Glenn Stearns, and he had had a very successful show called Undercover Billionaire.

And they were doing season two.

I mean, you can't be an undercover billionaire twice.

So he had to put together a team.

Your secret's blown.

You're outed.

And so he put together a team, and I was one of the very lucky people to be chosen.

Now, not necessarily billionaires.

These are hardworking people that he felt could actually do the job, which is scale the business to a million dollars with nothing but a hundred bucks.

So they give you a hundred bucks.

They don't tell you where you're going.

Nothing.

They basically drop you off in in some berg, give you a beater of a car, 90 days and 100 bucks.

What did you do?

I mean, for anyone who hasn't watched the show, it's season two.

You can still download it on Discovery Plus and watch it.

And I completely by accident tried to stay at a hostel, which wasn't actually a hostel, but it looked like a hostel.

And I turned it into the greatest business.

It took a while to get there, and I was terrified.

I was in the middle of Fresno.

It was during the, my partner calls it something else, no.

And we've now, you know, grown to love Fresno.

It took me about maybe two or three weeks of being there to see all of the undeveloped talent.

What did you do with the hostel that wasn't a hostel?

I made it a essential business.

It was COVID.

It didn't have windows and doors.

It had to be an essential business or it had to be shut down.

So I was like, okay, essential.

Groceries are essential.

Food is essential.

Farming is essential.

We have to do something in food and farming.

And having a little bit of experience, and I don't want to say I had a lot of experience, I have a farm in Fallbrook.

Where's Fallbrook?

Fallbrook, San Diego County, North San Diego County.

It's pretty.

I bought the ranch because I needed a place for horses and

my dogs and my swans and my turtle and my stuff.

So I'm like, I get this ranch.

Sorry.

And yeah, and I have a lot of animals.

How many swans you got?

I have three.

What are you calling them?

Robbie and Israel, and the third is unnamed.

Why?

Because I haven't thought of a name yet.

How about Gibbons?

Okay, what is it?

Orlando Gibbons wrote a famous madrigal called The Silver Swan, who living had no note when death approached, unlocked its silent throat, leaning her breast against a reedy shore, thus sang her first and last and sang no more.

Something like that.

Are you hitting on me?

A little bit.

Farewell, all joy.

Oh, death, come close my eyes.

More geese than swans now live.

More fools

than wise.

Orlando Gibbons.

Gibbons.

G-I-B-B-O-N-S.

Yeah.

So, and Gibbons could be a boy or girl name.

Could be.

Well, I haven't probed the swan, so it has to be a girl-boy name.

Probed.

You mean examined?

Yes.

Do you prefer not to know the gender of the swan?

No, I'd like to know because I had a mated pair and they haven't made babies since the babies came.

Because they mate for life, you know.

I know.

So one of them's interfering, and I don't know which one is which anymore.

But how do you keep them from flying away?

Well, one is pinioned.

They just don't.

I don't think they know they can fly.

Pinioned, Chuck.

You familiar with that term?

No, should I look it up?

No.

It's something they do to the wings so they can't, you know.

Yeah.

You have to do it right when they're born, though.

And I just.

I'm Latin for cutting them off.

I didn't do it myself, though, by the way.

And so the reason the other two aren't is because I couldn't.

So there you go.

Yeah.

But the first one I got pinioned.

So is it a farm or a ranch?

It's both.

What do you grow?

Row Row vegetables, avocado, or lots of citrus, lemon lime, seasonal, have a farm stand, do CSA.

What's that?

CSA, community-supported agriculture.

I see.

Oh, yeah.

Great.

I do farming.

All right.

And I left the ranch to go to Fresno.

And so I had a little bit of experience.

I mean, even though my farming partner is really the farmer, I had a delivery business during COVID of vegetables to all my friends in LA and Beverly Hills, which was really funny.

And I have a long list, which you'd be blown away.

Then I started this idea that maybe we should do fresh farm delivery out of this essential business.

We got bags and we started a business and I opened a bar outside.

I opened a coffee shop.

What'd you call it?

It's called Shep's Club.

It used to be called Shepherd's Inn.

So Shep's Club, is it still in Fresno?

It is.

It's still in Fresno.

It's right on,

it's right across from the Greyhound bus station and the train track.

You should write vacation brochures.

But it's a going concern.

It's a going business.

And the thing about, I had said this to many people, it's like the testimony of whether or not a business can survive with a television show is after the television show is done.

If it keeps going.

And it's kept going.

And the guy that runs it's a really smart cookie.

So.

I just want a quick sidebar.

I'm not quite bitter or broken, but I'm skeptical.

I'm deeply skeptical of the reality genre because when I entered it 22 years ago, There was that like a brief shining moment where it lived up to its name.

And Dirty Jobs was a truly honest show.

How How honest is undercover billionaire?

I can't speak for everybody, but for me, it was like incredibly.

And I didn't know anything about it, but I couldn't, like, they did zero for me.

There was one point where I stayed in the hotel with the crew when the crime rate was so bad and they lit the back of the building on fire.

And that night I stayed at the, I stayed at their place where they were staying, Hilton.

They called me out.

But for the most part, they were like icksnay.

I even had a night camera girl, Lauren, who was so amazing and she was so terrified she's like i'm going back to the hotel i'm like no you're staying here with me so they really filmed this thing over the course of three months yeah 90 days every day you're on camera and at night like sleeping washing driving

Why did you accept?

Because it was COVID and everything was so boring and closed and I was just like out of my mind at the ranch.

Okay, this is important.

I'm writing down the word bored because I don't want to forget it.

And honestly, what little little I do know about you does speak to a chronic and unusual work ethic.

Why not do it?

How bad, what's the worst thing that could happen, you know?

Oh,

reputational loss, profound humiliation, loss of consortium.

Not a worry, not a worry, not a worry.

Who cares?

It's just occurred to me, Chuck, I've never said loss of consortium.

I don't believe I've ever heard you say that either.

I don't even know what that really means.

Chuck, you want to explain that to me?

Yes, loss of consortium.

Why forgot?

I feel like, you know,

the best you can do, as my dad used to say, the biggest room in the world is the room for improvement.

So.

What'd your old man do?

He was a fighter pilot.

A good one.

Yeah.

Army, Navy?

He was Air Force, and he flew F-100s and F-111s.

No kidding.

Yep.

So you're an Army brat.

I am an Air Force brat.

Where'd you grow up?

Germany, England.

My mom's British.

My mom's an orphan.

She grew up in an orphanage.

Her parents were, as she says, blitzed during the war.

And so I have this great mom and dad, you know, they're amazing.

Well, my dad's passed away, but he's still amazing to me every day.

You ever

changed the fuel cell on a KC-135R Stratotanker?

Good God, no.

You would love it.

No, but I've gassed up my tractor plenty of times.

What kind of tractor?

I have two.

I have a Kubota, which is pretty reliable.

And the other one's like a GMC.

It's old and it's not reliable.

We had a Massey Massey Ferguson growing up and a John Deere and an international harvester.

I have a couple cranes too, but I don't know what they are.

Scout maybe is one?

Scout makes cranes.

And I don't know what the other.

I have a lot of equipment at the ranch.

No, when you say cranes,

you are referring to the mechanical device, not the distant cousin to the aforementioned swan.

Because if you have swans and cranes.

You know what?

I might be the only person you know that has both.

Get out of here.

I have cranes at the pond, and I have cranes that you lift things with.

You are like, so it's all creatures, creatures, great and small.

You're an animal lover?

I can't, they're the best things on the planet, and every single one of them, wild and domestic.

I love animals.

We're so like them, too.

Well, I mean, yeah, we are part of the kingdom.

One time I got a phone call from somebody at my house that said, Elaine, you need to come home because there's a crane in the house.

And I was like, well, why would the guys put the crane in the house?

And it was.

That's a fair question.

That's a fair question.

Yeah.

And they sent me a picture of this like beautiful long black bird.

He was gray.

The ones that come come by our thing are gray.

Because not to be confused with the herrings, which are white.

And he had his head down in the chandelier and he was hiding in this giant chandelier.

I have a picture of it, so I'm going to send you the picture.

And he was trying to hide in the chandelier to not be seen.

I'd like to see that picture.

Insane.

Taylor, where were we with the birds?

In King City.

Were you talking about the fowl?

No, no, no.

The ones that attacked me, I had the broom.

And I had the

way with the broom.

Somebody's doing it.

Storks.

Whooping cranes.

cranes, yes.

Whooping cranes.

Those are big birds.

They are big birds, and they're very protective.

And I, you know, when you're around them, because they'll imprint when they're young on whatever is raising them.

So if you're a human and you're raising these cranes as they do, I think it was like off Patuxton, maybe somewhere.

Yeah, Maryland, yeah.

So you've got to dress like a crane.

Like you wear like a burqa and these white sheets.

You look like Casper the Friendly Ghost and you have to whisper.

You always whisper.

This is not real.

I swear to God, it's real.

Well, you were wearing like a little burqa with it.

It wasn't so little.

I mean, it was a look at me.

I mean, European.

There I am, right there.

And there's the Burka.

Yeah.

That's me wearing a Burka.

Well, that's not.

That's me trying to fend off these cranes.

Oh, yeah.

And he was mad.

But those are the Burkas, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, look how cute.

Was this a dirty job statement?

No, it was called Some.

Somebody's got to do it.

Somebody's got to do it.

I've been doing the same show for 22 years, Elaine.

I just changed the title every six months.

Someone's got to do it.

It's a great job name.

Well, you know what?

Someone's got to do a lot of things right now, okay?

Well, that is, it's so funny because I said to Chuck when we were just kind of pitching the idea of you and not yet knowing, right?

But I'm like, this woman is on a mission.

And what's got to be done in the Palisades, and I think in Altadena and in California in general, I promise we're going to get to it, but I'm not yet fully satisfied that we can jump into your mission until we understand even more.

Like as an entrepreneur, I don't want to make this gross, but you're a woman of means, obviously.

You're on on undercover billionaire.

You said you're not a billionaire, but I'm guessing you're well-heeled.

Dumb.

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I was for a long time.

I was

I started out with, you know, well, my mom was a school teacher.

when she finally was able to work.

And my father was retired military.

He worked for Jepson, so he was the technical writer he's very bright guy and we lived in a modest home in aurora colorado and um

i was entrepreneurial from a very young age i started a shoe shine company all my girlfriends

all my girlfriends worked for me um how old uh i was like maybe 16.

uh-huh yeah and my first job was a job job it's the only job i have but i didn't get paid hourly i got paid by the lead and i worked for train heating and air conditioning and i would call up and do these home surveys i was probably 14 or 15 i'd be like hello I'm trained in heating and air conditioning.

We'd like to come to your house and do a survey.

I wish I had your voice because that would have really, I would have doubled down on the money people.

You know how weird you would be with my voice.

Your face, my voice?

That would truly be a voice for radio, right?

I would just have to hide behind something.

And then when I went off to Arizona to go to school, I took Shoeshine Stance with me and I started this big, pretty big shoeshine company and sold it.

What was it called?

It was called Racktime.

Rack time?

Ragtime.

Like old time.

Ragtime.

Yeah, like that.

Ragtime Joe played an old piano in a honky-tonk cafe.

When anyone requested a brand new tune, here's what Ragtime Joe would say.

There'll be no new tunes on this old piano, this old piano of mine.

There'll be no boogie woogie and none of that jazz or any other kind of that razzimitaz.

We'll sing about Swanny, the old folks at home, the wide open spaces where the buffalo roam.

But there'll be no new tunes on this old piano, this old piano of mine.

I like that song.

I don't think I've ever had anyone speak it to me.

Well, it's a big day for both of us.

It's my first big ragtime day.

So after ragtime, I...

What'd you sell it for?

Is it rude?

Gosh, it's like maybe a couple hundred grand.

Not a lot.

So you're 17, 18?

Yeah, I was young.

Yeah, in Aurora.

When I was 21, 22.

Yeah.

You're a military brat.

You're in your early 20s, and you sell a shoeshine business for a few hundred thousand dollars.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

What'd your parents think of that?

I don't think they understood it.

I think they were like, I mean, they've never seen that before.

I think they must have thought I was doing something far more nefarious, nefarious, for sure.

That is so wild.

I mean, your pop must have been proud, though.

I think he was very proud of me.

I mean, we had, my dad always gave me good advice, but my dad was the opposite of extravagant.

He was very, he didn't like anything flashy.

Yeah, nothing flashy ever.

And so I had to be very careful about, you know, talking or bragging.

It's unbecoming and not allowed.

But you were aware of all that at 21, 22.

No, it didn't seem that big of a deal to me.

I thought I kind of, I was, you know, very interested in design, very interested in like buying and flipping homes, but I was, I didn't have the means to do it.

So I had to sell something in order to be able to buy my first piece of real estate.

And that was the only way I was going to do it without any means of how to fix it up or money to get it or an idea of how to get a loan or no clue.

And but eventually, you know, I got the hang of it.

And then when I came to Los Angeles,

after

school, I was very interested in this weird, I was going back to Europe and buying antiques and coming back and forth, and I got very interested in the vintage Levi business.

I thought, what a fascinating, and I love vintage.

I'm wearing a pair right now, by the way, if anybody hasn't noticed.

I did that.

And I thought the, you know, I love American companies, I always have, and I thought Levi's is such an incredible company.

And the shoe shank, this is the craziest story.

Do we have time?

Nothing but time.

So people were trying to worry.

So, okay, in the industry of rags, rag business.

So if you're cleaning like oil in a shop, there's rag companies.

And essentially, they take in all sorts of like remnant rags, towels, and jeans, and you know, sheets from places, and they're called rag companies.

They're all over downtown LA.

And in these rag businesses, they wash the stuff and then they deliver it to your mechanic shop.

So, the biggest expense that I had in the shoeshine company when I had like 30 cents was rags because you have to keep changing them out.

Polish them.

You know what I need you to find?

Yeah, I think so.

Go ahead and find it.

I'm afraid to ask.

Go ahead.

Okay, so this rag business, I was downtown in this big rag place one day.

And when I say big, I'm talking about maybe like 300,000, 400,000 square feet filled from the floor to the ceiling with big piles of fabric and jeans.

And there was a jean pile.

And I said to the guy, I'm like, how much are the jeans if I just use jeans?

And he goes, that's like seven cents a pound.

Can't get rid of the stuff.

And I was like, I'll take all of it.

So I went to every rag company and I bought every pile of rags at every company.

And I wound up getting this baker's building out in Sherman Oaks.

Wait, wait, denim?

Denim.

You're buying denim.

I just bought denim.

Okay.

I took it out to this building in Sherman Oaks.

A friend of mine owned a food truck business that did movie sets called The Cast Supper.

So cute.

I can't remember his name of Kevin, maybe.

And then he was next to this baker and they had baker's racks.

And I wound up in this, I took over this bakery and I had all my jeans all over the place.

And I graded them.

I put them on a grading scale.

A being the best ones all the way down to shorts where you had to cut them off.

Levi's Wrangler, vintage, vintage not vintage everything

and I made up prices and I sold them and I made so much money selling jeans it was insane in Europe I had European buyers I had everyone's like she's got I was a queen of Levi's I don't so but you're selling existing brands is that right mostly Levi's Levi's was really kind of it I had probably the largest private Levi collection period.

And what was this business called?

It didn't have a name.

Didn't have a name.

It was very private.

It was very private.

If I were to suggest a name for that, I'd go with Third Swan.

Oh, I like that.

Third Swan.

Nameless.

I thought it was Gibbons.

Nameless.

Well, I mean, it hasn't.

The reason it was a nameless business is that it was, I was so busy, so fast, and so trying to figure out what was the way to really turn it into real estate because that's all I was obsessed with buying real estate.

And what I found is the Italian kind of merchant business in Rimini, Italy was where the Japanese would come to buy the jeans.

And the guy that was my middleman guy that would buy them and fly out here and buy containers, it was all cash business.

And he was very serious about this business.

Like he knew way more about it than I did.

And he was gaming me.

That's the thing.

Like I didn't know what they were really worth.

So, yeah, that was my.

So how long did you run this nameless business?

I did it for two years, long enough that I could buy like real real estate.

And then I bought real estate.

And how much did did you sell it for?

That's not too bad.

I didn't sell it.

I sold out of the goods.

I ran out of material.

I couldn't get any more jeans.

But you made enough money to make your next move.

Yeah, I think that's a good thing.

Before we go there, quick sidebar, you mentioned shop towels.

Yeah.

And rags.

Oh, there you go.

There's Chuck, the producer, right there.

That's me doing a campaign on these rags you were talking about.

So that's an industrial shop towel right there.

Yeah, yep.

And the problem with these things is they're laundered with lots and lots of other towels from lots and lots of other businesses.

And some of those businesses have a lot of heavy metals in them.

Oh, yeah.

And so freshly laundered shop towels were coming back with crazy high traces of dangerous metals in them.

And so this company hired me, was Kimberly Clark, to introduce these disposable shop towels as a remedy for those things.

And they worked so well, I wound up getting boycotted by some union I'd never heard of, textile washers union or something.

Chuck didn't suffer at all as a result.

He's just there mugging it up for the counters again.

Oh, he loves that chuck.

Oh, Chuck.

Anyway, I'm also fascinated in that last exchange by the fact that you had a whole denim thing.

I just created a mess on social media when I posted Sidney Sweeney's thing with the Good Jeans thing because I did a commercial.

I used to work for Lee and Wrangler.

I had my mom in a series of commercials talking about good genes as well.

I just mention all of this because I'm slowly getting the listeners permission to get to the reason that I know you agreed to come here, but we're not there yet.

Did you see the Hillary Clinton Bad Genes ad?

Yes.

I just wanted to know if you saw it.

Yeah, I saw it.

I mean, that's lightning in a bottle, you know, to get a campaign like that and to have it just

incredible.

It's epic.

Yeah.

It's truly epic.

People should learn from it.

Did you see Scott Bayo today?

Oh, yeah.

That tweet where he basically went after Tyrus.

Yeah, he went after Tyrus.

Yeah.

I mean, Tyrus doesn't know, and I love that show.

I've never seen that.

And I love Tyrus.

He's been on this podcast.

Has he?

Oh, my God.

I love that show.

That's a great show.

But I got to say, I also love Scott Bayo, and good for him for saying something.

And you know something?

He had like 150,000 hits this morning when I saw it early because people love him.

Yeah.

And it's just, it's not Tyrus's fault.

The reality is, that's what happened to people.

Yeah.

I'm glad he said something.

Yeah, I think what Tyrus said in passing, almost parenthetically, was I don't even know if Scott Bayo is alive.

Yeah, he made a crack about that he could be dead for all, uh, for all he knows.

And Scott Bayo came on to set the record straight that he is alive.

And what happened to him, why you haven't seen him, is because he got canceled for

speaking out in favor of Trump in 2016.

Well, I think he spoke at the inauguration or at the first announcement of whatever it was.

Yeah, whatever it was.

But I mean, that's a great, like, I think it's fair to say that Tyrus could have reinvigorated him and pumped him right up to somebody that people want to spend time with now.

So good.

I'm glad.

Well, you know what?

People are still,

and I think this is relevant enough to mention because we're going to get into politics in a minute.

But I think, like, I'm getting a lot of heat right now.

Do you know who Nick Cersei is?

He's an actor.

He was on Justified, Fried Green Tomatoes.

He's been around for a long time.

I'm sorry, Nick.

I don't know who you are.

Well, he made a movie called Capital Punishment.

And he was at January 6th.

And he saw something very different than what most of us see and made a movie about it.

Anyway, I had him on, and he told his story.

And I don't obsess over comments, but it is interesting how people are still right on the knife's edge.

And when they hear something they don't like, man, they just, they can't help but...

They can't help but tell the world about it.

You know, it's really,

people are fragile and they're upset with me because a guy named Nick sat here and

told a story that they didn't like.

And I think we're still in

that world, you know, because it felt like for a while that maybe we got past it a little bit, but the Scott Bayo thing kind of reminded me that no.

Well, we shouldn't get past it.

I don't think we should.

I mean, I think that the importance of what's happening right now.

God, I hope I don't get you in more trouble.

And I'm used sirens and motorcycles.

First, before I say anything, I just want you guys to know that Mike has no idea what I'm about to say.

I'm just going to say that.

Thank you.

And you, I don't know if you have the luxury of editing, but if you don't, I'm sorry.

No, this is live right now, actually.

You really need to toughen up.

You know, if you weren't having any of the rhetoric before 2016, but starting at 2016, if you believed that there was no laptop, if you believed that if you didn't get a vaccine, you were going to like, you know, kill your grandmother, if you were, if you thought that people that were protesting that went into the Capitol were truly criminals, have you bought into all that stuff?

That's too bad, in my opinion.

Because at the end of the day, now there is more than enough evidence that there was a laptop.

There is more than enough evidence that forcing people to take vaccines was probably not a great idea.

There is more than enough evidence that many people that were in the Capitol were just curious and upset.

And I feel like if you can't see that, you can't see anything.

You can't see anything, just except the basics.

Just the basics.

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I really don't.

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We talk a lot about the elephant on this podcast.

The blind man grabbing the tusk and concluding he's holding on to a statue made of ivory.

or the tail or the leg and coming to a different conclusion.

Or the trunk and coming to an altogether different conclusion.

But yeah, it's look, the evidence demands a verdict, but the evidence is not limited to a tusk or a trunk.

Right.

There's a lot to look at.

There's a huge body of evidence.

Right.

And that starts to open the door to what I really want to talk to you about, but not quite yet.

What's the story of the saying that Mark Twain, I know you know it about convincing somebody of the truth is easy, but convincing them that they've been duped is incredibly true.

That's right.

Yeah, that's a great one.

It goes.

I love that you know this stuff.

Well, Well, it's a lot easier to convince somebody

that

look it up.

Something was wrong.

Well, he also said the truth gets around the world.

In the time it takes a man to put his pants on, a lie gets around the world.

The truth takes a long time to get around the world, but a lie gets around the world like that.

It's like reputations, too.

The reputation of a town like Baltimore or Albuquerque, you know.

It's like the reputation of a man.

You work all your life on a thing and in one moment there's a riot or a murder or maybe it's Freddie Gray or maybe you know The Wire, right, shot in Baltimore, one of the best shows ever made.

But as a result, poor Joan in Boise is pretty sure the only reason to go to my hometown is to buy some heroin or hire a crack or

because of that show.

And Breaking Bad did the same thing to Albuquerque.

And so, you know.

Albuquerque's a a mess.

Yeah, it is.

I got the quote: It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.

That's right.

And that is

right.

That is true.

It just found it on the internet.

It has to be true.

And that's where we are.

It has to be true.

In the words of, was it Abe Lincoln, Henry Ford, Mark Twain, or Cicero?

Yeah.

We just have such an opportunity for the first time in so long to just consider

that it might not all be true, that there might be a lot of nonsense that we've been fed.

I think, you know what I think?

What's wrong with that?

I've been reading this guy.

Which guy?

Well, his name is Jeff

Childers.

Unless it's Childers.

Yeah, it could be either one.

I'm not sure.

But he started in 2020 writing a column called Coffee and COVID.

He's an attorney, and I think he found himself with some time on his hands and he

took a dim view of our institutions and a lot of what was being sold as

settled science and started writing about it in a way that was

elegant and eloquent and funny and weirdly optimistic.

And now he has a huge file, not huge yet, but it's big.

And I'd I'd love to meet the guy.

But he made the point this morning when he was talking about DC.

And I don't know if you've been to DC recently, but we just filmed a movie there not long ago, and there's some lovely parts.

The mall still looks great, but boy, it's bad.

And it's self-evident.

You just can't deny it unless you're in the emperor's new clothes.

Unless you're the townspeople looking straight at the naked emperor and going, oh, bravo, that looks great.

That's the thing that I thought we were largely past, but we're not.

We're not there yet.

And it's so strange, rather than argue the fact that maybe there's a better way to deal with the problem than mobilize every LEO in the country.

What comes back over the net is there is no problem.

Wait, what's LEO?

Law enforcement officers.

Got it.

Right.

So you got the FBI.

You got the

everybody.

I just didn't know the acronym.

Well, so this was Jeff's point this morning, one of several.

He's like, we're still doing it.

You know, I'm not saying the Republicans or the conservatives or the president is correct in this course of action.

I'm simply saying that if you're going to take the opposite view, you can either say, I wouldn't do that.

I would do this instead.

But that's not happening.

What comes back is Chuck Schumer literally says out loud, I feel perfectly safe walking around D.C.

Chuck Schumer has 22

Secret Service people, and he's walking around the mall.

He's not walking in these other areas.

And then everybody jumps onto that.

And I don't mean to make this as political as it's sounding, but the media will pick up the narrative and go, okay, so there's no problem.

The whole thing is a gaslight.

And so normal people look at all of that and go, what...

Is there a problem or isn't there a problem?

Instead of saying, obviously there's a problem, maybe we can disagree or possibly agree or discuss the best way to remedy all of that.

And so that's what I mean.

We haven't moved past the fact that, well, if they say black, the other side says white.

We're not quite to the point where maybe even with the palisades, maybe even with the thing you really came here to talk about, but we're not quite ready to do it yet, maybe the same applies.

Maybe they see it and they see two different things.

I think we're turning the tide.

I don't have anywhere near the opposition that I used to have.

My friends have stopped calling me an anti-vaxxer.

At least I'm past that.

My friends have stopped calling me a, you know, Trumper or Trump this or you like Trump when I simply wanted a more fiscal, you know,

educated president.

I wanted somebody that understood working and signing the front of a paycheck.

It wasn't really that I had an opinion one way or another.

And

I also find that less people

are dismissive of me if I say something that's political.

Now they're starting to listen.

And I've been fairly consistent.

Going back in history about when I might have been what you call red-pilled, it would have to go back to Benghazi.

Because for me, that was just such a weird thing, like to witness and really try to put the pieces together.

It didn't fully set in.

And

I went to the 2016 inauguration because I was invited.

I just wanted to go to the parties.

I didn't really even any, I didn't vote, and I didn't care.

I just wanted to go to all the parties because these people that invited me were doing the whole inauguration.

They're like, you should come.

It's going to be great.

I was like, okay, I'll go.

And I went.

And all my friends here were like, are you going to the march?

And I was like, what?

Like, and I had such a grand time.

And I did go to the march.

And it was so weird.

And

Madonna was like screaming on the thing.

I mean, it was just the inauguration was perfectly beautiful and the parties were fun.

I mean, Texas can throw a hell of a winter.

Oh, my God.

I was there.

Oh, my gosh.

I was there this year.

The Lucasi boot thing.

And I was, this is insane.

So that was like the only reason I went.

And so I have had a fairly consistent migration into the mindset that I now have.

And also, I'm raising children.

And I'm like, no, you're not going down that road.

That's not.

And they're like, mom, I'm like 16.

Let me do what I not, mom, I'm 18, leave me alone.

I go, no, I will never leave you alone.

You are absolutely not doing that.

So how old are your kids?

Jesse's 30.

Leo is 29.

And they're both very conservative kids.

And then Cosie, who is 21, is not conservative.

He's,

I don't even want to say.

But the point is that they get their own opinions no matter what you do.

And the best thing you can do is be consistent and do the same thing.

And I am consistent about my politics.

I want good governance.

I don't want my money to be unaccounted for.

And everyone should want that.

And speaking of money, again, just to close the loop on this, you got the denim thing, you sold the thing, and then you get into real estate.

And that was your wish fulfillment.

It was.

I love it.

So I love development.

I like building things.

Are you more a developer?

Or a

salesperson.

I didn't have any money.

No, I don't sell anything.

I like to keep it, but sometimes they have to sell it because you can't afford it.

I've done that.

But if I can keep it, I will keep it, and I'll fight to keep it even if I don't have any money.

And also, I've had no money and lots of money and no money and lots of money.

It's always up and down.

And it doesn't really bother me like it bothers some people, which is, I think, a key important trait of a real entrepreneur.

It's really not the money.

It's really the kind of the experience and the journey of it all.

Sorry, to go way back for a minute, was there a bet on Billionaire?

Like, did you have to put up money?

Yeah, 50 grand.

So you bet $50,000?

I said I'd bet them a half a million if they wanted it in cash because I was so thought it was so ridiculous that they thought it was impossible to do.

I was like,

it's easy.

It'll be done.

I'm going to get it done.

I was so overly confident until I got there.

I learned a very big lesson because I had been out of the scrappy business.

of really throwing deals together and at no, you know, just no holds bar, just figure out how to duct tape and staple it together for so long that I had to get back to that.

And it took me a minute because I'm not me.

I'm this person that has nothing, so I can't like act like that.

Right.

And so it just took me a second, but I figured it out.

It just took a minute.

So, what in terms of properties that you own or manage or have developed, again, forgive me, I don't mean to make it personal, but I think this is going to be very, very relevant when the audience hears what you really came here to talk about.

You're invested in this state.

You're invested in the Palisades.

I'm just wondering, roughly to what degree.

80% of my portfolio is in the Palisades.

And there's literally no clear

way to evaluate what it's worth.

And that should be very scary to everybody else.

And I know it's what's troubling Rick Caruso.

How much did you lose in the fires?

Just like maybe, you know, 18% if you take the, you know, like what burned and what can be repaired.

But the issue.

Well, first of all, let's get back to the fact that like certain things in real estate are fundamentally easier to do, even though they might be hard work.

Like, if you buy an old home and you fix it up and you flip it, that is easier to do if you're willing to put the work in and do it yourself and get in there.

But if you want to buy a piece of land and develop it, you need a lot of different things that are not easy to do yourself.

Like a really good land use attorney or a really good soils engineer or a civil engineer.

And then you need a planning person and a permitting person.

And you start to go through this process.

And it's not just incredibly laborious, but it's also very expensive.

And so the Pacific Palisades and also Malibu, but probably more so Malibu, entitlements are very challenging to get, to obtain.

And an entitlement, for anybody who doesn't know, is the ability to build whatever is permitted to be built there.

So if you have a piece of raw land that's unentitled, it's not really worth anything.

Once you get a permit for a house or you get a permit for a building, now you've entitled it to whatever that design is.

And those entitlements are issued by local government or by the state?

Well, there's some zoning that's already set in place, but it's definitely local government.

It's the local building department.

The Department of Building and Safety is a big quagmire.

There's a lot that goes on there.

They're understaffed.

And they work ridiculous hours.

They work so hard.

But there's so much bureaucracy and red tape and requirements and clearances that the people that run the building department and work in the building department

don't have the power to say yes.

They only have the power to say no.

And that slows things down to two, three, four, five, six years, you know, hearings, and you can't get anything entitled.

So, in real time now, it's been what, four months?

No, baby, it's been eight months.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah.

January 7th.

What are we, August?

What's the day?

15th?

14th?

I can't believe it's been eight months.

August 14th, too.

August 14th.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do, do.

Dumb.

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Yep, it's been eight months, and

they opened up a satellite building department, sort of.

It's not satellite.

It's actually in West Los Angeles.

I'm going to just speak about the Palisades to unconfuse people.

Let's not talk about all of it.

Let's just talk about what I know really well.

That building department is in the Sawtel building department in West LA.

It's called the One Stop.

It's a great idea.

It's supposed to go in there one stop.

It's called One Stop and get your permits, but it doesn't work like that.

Number one, number two, 1,541 people were in there like I checked maybe at the 1st of August.

88 permits have been issued, and 18 of those permits are in the Palisades.

Now, I know that I have stuff that I've been working on for a couple years because I'm a developer.

It's a lot easier for me to go to one-stop.

So maybe the 1,541 people are not from the Palisades.

And that's not okay.

If our resources are for the people in the Palisades, we should be issuing one-stop permits for people in the Palisades as they come in the door.

And we're not doing that.

Why do you think?

Can't.

Bureaucracy.

It goes back to the beginning of the conversation that we were having before the show.

Like, there's a money issue in Los Angeles.

We have poor management of our resources.

So, and that is, you know, clearly explained when you just look at the fires to begin with.

There's no brush clearance.

There's no water.

The fire hydrants don't work.

We don't have enough staff on the fire department itself.

And when

your mayor's not in town, and then you have a meeting with Trump who came in, and a bunch of promises are made and none are kept.

So our resources aren't managed.

Then you have this mobilization to do cleaning, which was provided by what's called the Biden May talk, the FEMA.

FEMA comes in.

There's MATOX and SATOX.

People don't know what they are, but if you're in big construction, which I have been, you know that there's kind of a, in an emergency response situation, you have to have a preparedness.

You have to be ready.

And so that means you have to already have in line who is going to mobilize for you.

What cleaning company, what hauling company, what, you know, know, check and balance write the accounting company?

What traffic control company?

And those people are in what's called a MATOC, which is a mandatory award outside contract thing that FEMA puts together.

And then when the emergency happens, inevitably they always do, your mobilization team is ready and everyone gets in the plane and the cars and the trucks and they show up.

Army Corps of Engineers.

Boom, there they are.

And they are set up like a military outfit.

So they're in theater.

They're in theater.

What are we doing?

Okay, we're going to do opt-in.

This is our first program.

Go to everybody, find everybody, opt-in.

Are you opting in?

Are you up to sign up here?

Everyone signs in.

6,800 opt-ins.

Okay, great.

Clean 600, 8,000 homes.

The postage stamp of the home, simple lots, EPA comes in, military style.

You know, if you're not opting in, go over and sign that line.

That money, that $1.1 billion, is federal.

It is not Los Angeles.

LA was standing around as an observer.

In fact, in some cases, in the way.

This is a military outfit in theater cleaning up our streets and making sure everybody's okay.

When did they arrive?

They arrived like the, I think, 11th of January.

So that was fast?

Oh my God, they were quick as can be.

I mean, Army Corps was on it.

Okay.

And also the National Guard.

They had everybody trying to figure out what to do to make sure that everyone was out.

Remember now, they haven't even figured it out.

They had body dogs, body, what do they call this?

Cadaver dogs.

Cadaver dogs out there, live and they're two different kinds of dogs, by the way.

I had a whole thing on that.

Two different kinds of cadaver dogs?

Yeah, one's look for, no, two different kinds of dogs, live dogs, dead dogs.

Dogs that look for dead bodies, dogs that look for live bodies.

Yes.

Did I say that right?

Not dead dogs.

I just can't imagine bringing a dead dog out to look for.

Okay, so what I meant is there are dogs that look for dead bodies and there are dogs that look for dead

bodies.

Okay, all right.

Sometimes.

I mean, how do you decide?

I mean, can you imagine the conversation at the pound?

You know,

the dog's like some weird Rochambeau.

There's two roads we can go down here.

I don't want to look for the dead ones.

Give me the live ones.

So they did all that, and then they started cleaning.

And they were so great.

I mean, they were really, really great.

But again, let me just stress, it's 6,800.

And what's frustrating is because we're so unorganized in Los Angeles, and I'm sorry, you know, to the people in LA that are not unorganized, because believe me, there's plenty of people in LA that are not as unorganized as the overall management.

So I apologize to all of you because I know you're all working hard, Tracy, everybody.

The issue is that you don't have a communication hub that is central for everything else.

So all of the math is from the Army Corps' organization.

So when you say we're 80% done and you're at a microphone and you're Karen Bass, you're 80% done with what the Army Corps of Engineers is doing.

And that's not fair because that's not true.

If you have 18,000 structures that are gone and those structures are big and small structures, 25,000 people without a place to sleep and 100,000 people displaced, you don't say that when you're 80% done with 6,800 written down, organized by the Army Corps, you know, list of structures that were 80% done.

It's just a straight-up fabrication.

And it's a fabrication of the math and it gives false hope to people that we're further along than we are.

Also, everything else is wrong.

How many trucks are there?

How much debris storage do we need?

How much time do we need?

How much time does the insurance company need?

Where does the debris storage, I mean, I keep reading about the landfills and the drama about where we're going to put it and how we're going to get it there and trains and all of this.

I mean, it's complicated.

It's like you need to be a quartermaster.

You're running a supply chain.

Or have an accidentally weird skill set in railroad and in building.

Right.

Like, I mean, how do you, who knew?

So, like, let's just focus on the debris for a minute.

How much is there and where are we going to put it?

And what's the holdup?

Okay, so everybody has their like secret little talents.

Mine is a very weird talent.

So I see empty space full in my head.

I always have.

It's how I like.

create things.

I'm like, what's it going to look like when it's done?

Like, whether it's land or a room.

And when the Palisades burned and I drove Taltadina and I went through Malibu,

I was like, this is a million trucks.

This is a million trucks of debris.

It broke my heart.

Like,

it's just rubble.

I mean, it's insane.

It's worse than, it's so big.

It's far bigger than Gaza.

Yeah.

Like, think of it like that.

And it's flattened.

And they're like, it's not going to be

in 6,800.

And it infuriates me because it's a million trucks.

Stop saying that.

Because if you know it's it's a million, you can prepare for that.

Instead, we just made it up.

We let them make it up.

And just like all the other narratives that you know are not true, we want to believe it's true.

And they wanted to believe that 6,800 would do it.

Army Corps is gone or going.

They just got like finish up work.

You mean, wait a minute, 6,800 trucks would do it.

I'm sorry, 6,800 homes was the end of it.

And by the way, they're over 400,000 trucks and were half cleaned up.

So

what's the reasonable expectation?

Like you're eight months into a disaster of this magnitude.

How much of the debris should be gone, in your opinion?

I don't think that the Army Corps and the efforts by FEMA

were any less than 1,000% spot on and incredible.

They were very organized.

They were fast.

They were clean.

They were polite.

They were truly like, it's going to be very hard to replace that outfit.

And now it's independent contractors for people that did not opt in or things that were not on the list for FEMA to clean period.

Very complicated lots and things that slope down and big buildings and commercial stuff.

There's a lot of stuff that was not on the opt-in list.

Those people need a haul route.

A haul route is, is this boring?

No.

Okay.

So

in order to move debris, when you get a permit to build a house, you are going to be digging dirt, for example, because you're putting in a basement.

Where are you going to put the dirt?

You go to the city and you say, I've got so many cubic yards of dirt, where will I put it?

And they're like, You can go this way, and you get a permit to take the dirt to a dump or to a specific landfill or place that needs dirt.

That's called that route, it is called a hall route.

If it's massive quantities, you have to have a hearing for it, and you get it approved.

And the hall route hearing approves your direction on the road.

You're going to go out, you're going to go left, you're going to go this way, you're on that freeway, don't get off there, get off here.

That's your haul route.

When this first happened,

there was this huge big mess.

They were driving to all of the local landfills because they wanted to expedite the delivery of the debris out of the city.

So Karen Bass and Gavin Summon and everybody wrote all these executive orders, and one of them waived some of the toxicities that are in the burned debris would be able to go into landfills that maybe weren't able to take that kind of toxic waste.

Now, whether this did or did not happen,

because I've been challenged on this, it's in writing, but whatever.

Let's just say it's not true.

Do you care if you're a mom with two kids and you live next to the Calabasas landfill, that it may or may not be true that that landfill is toxic?

It's the point.

You don't just put your trash in someone else's backyard.

And that's what we did.

And we did a lot, 400,000 trucks to Silmar and, you know, I don't know, Calabasas, Azusa,

Simi Valley.

And the mayor of Azusa famously said, I found out about it when you did to Channel 5 News.

He didn't know.

So they didn't ask anybody.

And then they got a big hearing for a haul route.

They were fighting over the haul route.

And the Board of Supervisors caves and gives them what they want, but it's not actually what everybody thought.

It wasn't more volume.

It was more loads per day.

So

ECC, which was doing all the distributing of funds on behalf of Army Corps and the FEMA, MATOC,

got a haul route.

But not private individual contractors.

They had to have their own relationships.

So all the debris goes into all these local landfills.

I think Khloe Kardashian, and if it is you, Chloe, you should reach out.

I'd be happy to talk to you about that.

got really upset and said, well, what are you guys doing?

And I said the same thing months earlier.

What are we doing?

This is too much debris.

It needs to leave to a landfill that's not anywhere around here.

There's lots of landfill that's designed specifically for this.

It's all there lined, but it's more expensive if it's further away.

Plus, if you do a lay down yard, you know what a laydown yard is.

Kind of.

Best to explain.

So lay down yards are really important in big construction.

They're prep yards.

They're breakdown yards.

They're where you separate debris and gravel.

They're where you would lower in anything that's going to get loaded into a truck and taken off.

Laydown yards are usually where the dirt really is.

I worked in one once with cement mixers where they drive them at night,

thousands of them, and men crawl in the back of those drums with hammers because every time that drum spins, right, another layer hardens.

So by the end of the day, a space that might have been 30 cubic yards is now 10.

And all that's got to be hammered out.

Right.

That's right.

And then they dump it into the lay down yard.

And then they grind it up.

Yep.

And they make a big dust pile.

And then they, yeah, that's the lay down yard.

Okay.

So I

was, well, little pat, I felt like a mouse, like, please listen to me.

I was like, there's got to be a better way.

Why can't we put it on rail?

And

then I did a white, I love to write white papers.

And I randomly found this, it wasn't completely random, but that's a different story because

I do a lot of stuff with railroad.

But I found this place.

And it turns out that in 2007, a guy by the name of Michael Kissel, I hope he's watching this, I haven't been able to find him, wrote a white paper on creating a laydown yard in a rail setting

with loadable rail car access for massive amounts of debris if there was an emergency in Puente Hills, which is 12.4 miles from the Epicenter laydown yard in Altadena and 34.4 miles from Chautauqua and PCH.

So all of Malibu's debris and all of Altadena's debris and all of Palisades debris could go only freeway directly to that yard, which is more than big enough to take all of the debris because this is railroad.

So, you know, you got four, five, six trucks per car.

And also it's designed for it.

It's gigantic.

It's massive.

You still got to get the debris onto the railroad cars, though, right?

That's right, but that's what it's for.

It's a debris on rail facility.

All right.

So it's owned by what's called the Los Angeles Sanitation District.

and the white paper was drafted and sent to them, and I can't figure out when it happened, but sometime between 2007, 8, and 2014, they got the $500 million to build it.

They built it.

It's there.

It's beautiful.

And it's served by rail to a landfill.

It was built basically for this purpose.

Correct.

And it's served by rail.

to a landfill.

And the landfill is over by the LA River Cleanup.

It's in an area that's designed for this.

It's served by Union Pacific.

They built seven miles of custom rail to make it work.

And the landfill

is 600 million cubic yards, and it's empty.

It's closed.

And they've rented the Lu Puente Hills facility and the landfill to a trucking company for storage.

It's just a store, just the white covers, okay, for $150,000 a month for multiple years because they can't figure out how to own and operate it.

Oh my God.

So instead of mobilizing like an army and moving the trucking company, which by the way, were perfectly fine to move, I did two hauling routes.

I went to the city.

I drove to the Puente Hills.

I took pictures.

I met everybody.

I went to the landfill and mesquite.

I took pictures.

I did everything.

Instead of just saying, this is a great idea,

the email is unopened.

It sits in the box.

I can see the the email to Gavin.

It's not open.

So I got so frustrated.

So this is in the governor's inbox.

Unopened.

Gavin, unopened.

So I got so frustrated that I called Bobby Kennedy because I love Bobby.

He's such a great guy.

I called him and I said, oh my God, I'm so frustrated.

I need help.

And he goes, what's up?

And I said, can you read this?

I sent him my white paper.

He read my white paper, obviously, because he's like interested and curious and knows how to mobilize.

And he sent it to Lise Elden.

Okay.

Seven hours later, Lise Eldon has Eric Amadon and his whole team on it.

Seven hours.

This is the

head of EPA.

He's the guy running the EPA right now.

These guys are on it.

And so just my experience is always the same.

Conservative people, whether you like them or not, are workers.

They're people that work and move things all the time.

And they're always working and they're always doing and they're always like creating and going forward because that's what their passion is versus like this whole like maybe someone else will do it mentality.

And I feel like our government is not at all conservative.

They're like waiting for something to happen to them in life.

It feels somebody said to me the other day that it just feels

like a conspicuous lack of urgency.

Yes.

And if you're not, if this doesn't,

I just can't imagine living where you live.

You had a front row seat to all of this.

I was here.

I just landed the day the fires started and had a front row seat to a degree to it.

I'll remember it the rest of my life.

But for the people who really call this place home, that is going to be a defining catastrophic event.

And if that doesn't break the spell of justice.

Mismanagement.

don't it's i mean mismanagement implies a level of action that's misguided you're not talking about any good point what management you're talking about emails that aren't being opened you're talking about facilities big investments that were built it's like the fire extinguishers are within reach the structure is fully involved But we're going to have a conversation about whether or not to access the fire extinguishers.

It makes no sense.

And I think people listening in different parts of the country are just shaking their head and going, you know something?

Government's like TV.

You get what you deserve.

And these guys have got the government they deserve for a whole bunch of reasons.

And it's California.

And throw in the gerrymandering conversation and everything else.

I think, I don't know if you've thought much about it or if you care.

But the rest of the country, so much of the country doesn't know how to think about California.

They're exhausted by our

identity crisis, I think.

They're just exhausted by it.

And where a lot of people would normally feel sympathy, they don't.

They just shake their head and they go, you know what?

That's a lot of rich people in a beautiful part of the world that elected a bunch of bums.

And now

they're reaping what they sowed.

Well, I would like to go on record and say that my love for California is beyond explainable in this podcast.

And part of that is because of the people that I've met since I've been here.

There's no place more cosmopolitan.

There's no bigger diversity in terms of the kind of people you meet.

There's no harder working people.

There's lots of people, but they work really hard.

And the most successful people and everything from the acting community to the farming community to the, it's a true American dream community.

And the current administration is sabotaging it, which is frustrating.

Not just Hollywood.

They sabotage everything.

And I don't know if it's by design or accident.

I mean, I honestly don't want to give them enough credit to say it's by design.

I think it's literally like so busy trying to get elected to the next position that you're so busy hustling that that you're not really doing your job.

It just, I mean, it's not, there's no, look at Gavin's been playing at this, you know, presidential thing for well over the last few years.

And to me, he's never even here.

Your leader's not there.

I don't even know about Karen Bass.

I cannot find, I've asked people, like, did you vote for Karen Bass?

I can't find a single person.

So who are these people?

Because I know a lot of people.

I know people inside of California.

I know union people.

I know San Diego people, San Francisco people.

I can't find anybody that voted for this woman.

So our systems are screwed up.

Our management is screwed up and our resources are squandered.

We have no money.

We're like $300 billion in debt now or something crazy or will be when he leaves, whatever.

And with no money, no power, and no know-how, nothing is going to get resolved.

And I do not believe for a minute that that's not going to change because this hit Democratic ground zero.

And these are the people that make this state great.

So these people in the Palisades, these people that are friends of mine, need to take a minute and really think about who they want to run the state.

Because we can't repeat this.

It can't be, you know, some

assembly person from San Diego.

I'm not even going to name names.

There are 50 people running for mayor.

There is not a single person or governor, single, not one.

I read every one of them.

Can you explain to me

there's got to be a grift?

There is a grift.

Why are 50 people running for governor when probably 50 of those people know with absolute certainty they cannot and will not win?

What's the point?

Okay, so let's start with the fact that you can't raise money.

If I say I'm going to be governor, I'm going to run.

I'm going to, I'm having a campaign, you have to actually have a campaign committee.

Once you form a campaign committee, you have to have a treasurer.

And the treasurer has to have a bank account.

And that money has to be managed by the treasurer in the campaign committee because of campaign financing laws.

So it's kind of set up like that, which is sort of edgy because who's to say that every campaign, you know, treasurer person is

truly you know on the up and up right and you've met all the requirements by just having one uh there's like probably a four percent charge for credit card charges and bitcoin charges and things like that if you're like you know raising money and somebody goes on your qr code and gives you money so you pay that goes out right away and then the management of this campaign costs money so that goes out right away and then so how large is the average campaign committee how many people are we talking you only you only require to have two yourself and one treasurer oh no it's it's crazy i mean it's crazy i'm sure as it it gets bigger and you get bigger and if you do have a path to, you know, winning, that maybe that changes.

But I'm just making the point.

Like, anyone can run.

In order to run, you got to declare, you got to have a treasurer, got to form a committee.

But the two of you are enough to justify that.

That's right.

You and I could do it.

Yeah.

We could run all over the country going, yeah, woo.

And then you could talk about your show and I could talk about my train.

And we could raise money.

Right.

And we could raise as much money as we want.

Millions.

It's all covered under our campaign stuff.

What do you mean covered?

Wait, who's going to be the treasurer, though?

You or me?

Rock, paper, scissors, baby.

That's the way to do do it i think that's the only sensible and then we just you know chitty chat about everything and and then you've got like this you're raising a lot of money and you're talking about like leo zaki talking about his chickens and everybody talking about their stuff i'm just like what are you what so let's let's say we decide to do it i'll be the treasurer you run for governor all right all right we do it we go out in the world i start talking about dirty jobs i'm gonna give you a hundred bucks and i want you to get to a million dollars

yeah you know i guess we could turn it into a tv show but let's just say we go out there and people really dig what we're screaming and they like it and we raise $10 million.

And then, you know, this happens, that happens, and we decide for whatever reason, you know, sorry, we got to shut it down.

We're not going to.

You always have that campaign fund sitting there to be used for campaigning.

What do you mean?

We're like, where's the 10 million go?

You don't give it back.

No, it just sits in the account if you didn't spend it.

If you didn't spend it and it sits in the account and you're no longer running, I don't understand.

I mean, I suppose you would keep it in the account and run for something else or run down, what they call run down.

People run down.

I mean, why stop running?

You got a campaign, you're out there.

But can you legally take that money that you've raised out of the campaign and then go back to your private life with that money?

Well, I mean, I guess if you're Kamala Harris, you can, because that's what happened.

I mean,

I mean, well, first of all, I'm sure some people caught this, and I certainly did.

When you register, you have a registration number, and Biden had a registration number, and Kamala had a registration number.

And when they first swapped out the Biden-Kamala thing, they used Biden's registration number for a while.

Someone caught it, and it was gone.

But I caught it.

I took a screenshot of it.

Really?

Yeah, really.

You really are a jagged little pill.

It pissed me off.

And then they also took all the money and then they paid like all these friends of theirs tens of millions of dollars, Beyonce and Oprah, all these people, they paid them.

And then all those people are like, no, I did it for free.

They did not do it for free.

So wait.

And now all the money's gone.

I think she owes like $25 million to her campaign fund, which was actually Biden's campaign fund.

God, I mean, why?

Maybe she couldn't run for governor because she doesn't have any money.

She's 25 million in the hole or something.

It's a grift.

The whole thing's a grift.

It's absolutely a grift.

And also in California, listen, guys, it's a runoff race.

So if too many people are running, we'll lose.

Because if you get 2%, 3%, a little bit here, okay, one guy's like running around following you.

That's one less person voting for the one person that could run it.

So if you see a clear leader, drop out.

If somebody is really good, drop out.

And there's not really, what do you call it, a primary?

Because it's a runoff race.

Right.

So it's kind of, they can call it a primary.

And they can say, we're going to, the Democratic Party's got to, you know, endorse someone.

So they'll probably endorse maybe Katie Porter because she seems to be leading.

But like, it's the, I'm going to say something very unpopular, but it's like, it doesn't matter right now if you're getting 16% or 15% of nothing because no one else is running.

When somebody really emboldened and really smart runs, then it'll make a difference.

Is Gavin going to run for president?

Yeah.

And the DNC,

these dummies are going to fund it.

Who's going to run the state?

The state?

Yeah.

Oh, gosh.

That is, I don't know.

I mean, I know this girl.

that had this shoe shine business

once upon a time.

And then it was this denim denim thing and then this rags thing and

it's real estate yeah and then and now she seems kind of cranky and she's her kids are grown and she seems to be

she's got a pebble in her shoe you know i have a pee in my mattress yes i am what an amazing opportunity

to seize

if

you're the right person.

In the right time.

And the right time.

And I can only say this, it's a huge job and it's almost impossible to be qualified to do it truly.

And I think the difference between having success at being a governor of a state this size

is

through the participation of the people that you ask for help.

There's just

too much to fix.

It's really big.

And there are so many people out there individually that you could put together on a team that could right the ship if you were only willing to ask for help.

And that's the problem that we have now.

Karen Bash should have asked for help and not from Steve Sobroff.

She should have said, she should have gone to Ron Tudor or somebody meaningful.

And it goes back, I'm sorry, but it was like Jeff's point this morning.

It's still the emperor has no clothes.

It's still like, why didn't she ask for help?

It feels like part of the reason is because you can't acknowledge the naked emperor.

You can't look at unprecedented homelessness in D.C.

and say, okay, that is a problem.

Maybe we should do this to fix it instead of this.

What you have to do instead is say, there's nothing to see.

There is no homeless problem.

There is no crime problem.

There is no palisades problem.

There is no debris removal problem.

There's nothing to see here.

Well, admitting that you have a problem is the first.

My name's Elaine.

I have a problem.

I'm sorry, but I have a problem.

I have a few problems.

I mean, first of all, I think that there's, we haven't had a lieutenant governor in three decades that really moved the needle either.

And the lieutenant governor's job is primarily to bring new business into the state.

And we've done the opposite.

We are running business out of the state, California.

I love this state.

My office is in this state.

My best friend moved here 45 years ago, or whenever you moved here.

I don't know when it was.

You've been here for a long time.

Chuck's stuck here with you and stuck here with me.

I'm stuck.

87.

That's when I moved here.

87.

You know, now, look, I'm friendly with Joe Rogan.

And when he talks about why he left and how happy he was to leave, a part of me is like, man, I.

He's not really.

He's not.

He's just fibbing you.

He's gaming.

He's not either.

There's no way.

I'm sure he loves it in a lot of ways, but there is nobody that, look.

Oh, you're saying he doesn't love Austin as much as he's saying.

Nobody could.

I don't believe, Joe, I don't believe you.

But I do, I believe.

Well, look, I don't disbelieve him because I think that you can hit a critical mass of just exhaustion with a person you love, a business you love, or a state you love.

Right.

I think, I think that's a good idea.

Yeah, I definitely think you get like and sometimes like I get basically what I would call extended deal fatigue.

I'm just like wait are we at this again but I shot two series and a movie

one in Georgia the other in Oklahoma.

I would have loved to have filmed them here.

I would have loved to have done all that for this community and it would have wildly simplified my life.

But the incentives, Elaine, it's just, I mean, you're a developer.

It's so fixable though.

That's a fixable thing.

This is the thing I always try to hang on to, and I wish everybody would.

Nothing has changed here.

It's the best topography.

It's the best weather.

It's the most beautiful.

It's an incredible lifestyle.

The ocean is insane.

The animals are insane.

The people are insane.

The restaurants are insane.

It's fabulous.

It's easy to get in, easy to get out, close to everything.

Go down to Mexico.

We have this cute little island.

It's a good thing.

It's good.

It's insane.

When you say insane, you're just being given.

It's beautiful.

It's insanely beautiful.

It's cool.

Fabulous.

Wonderful.

The only thing that's wrong is the management.

It's just the government.

If you get rid of the government and get in new government, we're back.

We are back.

We have got to get rid of the insanity.

What the hell would Texas do?

That's a good point.

If California went.

I would go back to be in Texas.

They wouldn't care at all.

Texas, the thing about Texans is they're pretty resilient.

I don't know that they like the hoop law.

You know, real Texans are probably like, oh, God, here comes the little one.

And by the way, be careful over there because you know what happens when you invite all the Democrats to your state, they vote Democratic and there's a lot a lot of examples of that how's Montana by the way big yeah big sky big sky beautiful Dakotas are beautiful you know my mom says that about Colorado she's like it has to be so conservative

well I mean look

I think sometimes, you know, and listeners have heard me say this a bunch, I'm not rooting for it or wishing for it, but sometimes things have to go splat.

We're splatted.

You want it to be more splatted than this?

No, I don't.

We are literally like humpty-dumpty.

Are you kidding?

It's like.

Well, then, where is the straw and drag?

Where's the protest for that?

Are people just so anesthesized?

Well, Madison McQueen did a poll.

My friend Owen, oh my gosh, they did a poll, and you get a line, I get a poll.

It said, Crawl dad, crawl dad, feeling fine, honey.

Crawled at, crawled at, feeling fine, baby.

You get a line, and I'll get a poll.

go fishing to crawl that hole honey baby oh my

okay so 48% of California is conservative 48%

is that right that is correct I heard 40 but okay 48 48 the problem is registration people have a hard time and I'm one of those people registering Republican when you register Republican and you're you know you're from California and you believe in California and you you're at the driver's license bureau wherever you are and you check the box Republican it's hard because you're like, why is it not working?

But check the box red.

I mean, just register red because it sends a message to Sacramento that we're done.

It doesn't matter.

You can vote for whoever you want, but stop voting blue right now because it's bad.

Chuck, give me the Mark Twain quote again.

Because look, as you search for it, I agree with you.

I hate the fact that the only way to talk about what we're talking about is to make it red versus blue or conservative versus liberal.

But we have to call it something.

And what you're asking people to do sounds real simple.

Just check this box instead of that box.

It's so easy.

It's the first step.

The business of checking is easy, but what you're asking them to do is abandon their identity and

admit the thing that Mark Twain says they can't.

which is we were fooled.

We were lied to by the people that we voted for.

And we've participated, unwittingly, perhaps, in a grift.

And now the only way to fix it is to have a little talk with myself.

I got to, you know, I can't just check the box until I go, you know something?

I was fleeced.

Right.

And that's going to be hard for people.

And, I mean, I've talked to some people who live in the Palisades and won an Altadeno.

who have changed their political

worldview precisely because of the mismanagement you're talking about.

But they lost everything.

That's a splat.

Yes.

I don't want for everybody to have to lose everything in order to have that kind of, you know, peripatia.

Okay, here's an easy thing.

Right now, there's a lot of scuttlebutt going on with Texas and with Gavin Newsom and the Democrats that walked out over the redistricting and re-in the borders of certain districts.

She's gerrymandering.

Gerrymandering.

And my message to people in California is this.

If Gavin Newsom is proposing it, say no to it, because Gavin's leaving.

And we've been under the, you know, guise that Gavin Newsom has done a fine job running state.

He's leaving us with $300 billion of debt and our state is burned down.

I don't know how we're going to do the Olympics without help from Trump.

And my guess is he's not going to leave us a parting gift that is a present that we want to open.

My guess is the pushing of this agenda and many other things is really bad for us and for the state because it's pushing us further left when what we need is to try to find our center.

We're off balance.

And just vote for absolutely nothing that Gavin Newsom wants us to do at the end of this.

It's a special election, too, and he does not have enough time.

It's 120 days supermajority to do this, and he's going to do it in 90 days, and it's just not right.

So don't vote for that.

And yes, you guys, the Democrats might lose some seats.

So what?

We need to.

We're out of balance.

We're not checking balance.

Well, it's certainly not.

How many seats does the state have in total?

Well, this is for five.

Yeah,

and this is for five, I think five more Democratic seats.

Right now it's 43 to 9 Democrats to Republicans.

Right.

And what people need to understand is that, you know, our farmers and our supply chain, our unions, our pay, and all of these things, they require conservative management.

And the further we get away from that, the further we enslave ourselves to the state debt.

And that's the problem.

And people don't understand.

We cannot afford it.

We have got to have some conservative reins on our checkbook.

Well, look, I'll tell you this.

If you're right about 48%.

It's true.

You know, 25% of California is not registered to vote.

They'll vote conservative.

They say they're conservatives, but both Democratic and yeah.

So what's the percent?

If you've got 52 seats.

Oh, that's right.

So, and nine.

43, yeah, 43 and 93.

43.

So if you were looking at what I think a lot of people would agree is kind of a rational reflection, the basic makeup of a state

per capita would be reflected in their seats.

So that means 48% of 52 would be on the right, and 52%

of 52 would be on the left, and that margin would be more like six or seven.

But

that's not realistic if you're gerrymandering and screwing around with the books all the time.

But what are we going to be left with in the country?

There's 2 million signatures to recall Gavin Newsom the first time and he wasn't recalled.

You know how hard it is to get 2 million signatures?

And he wasn't recalled.

I do.

It's challenging.

We've got some serious problems.

You know how hard it is to get 2 million listeners?

Not for you.

I think I just lost about half of them.

Thank you.

Hey, you're going to get new ones that are really, really nice people.

Look, man, I think, you know, people listen to this.

You're going to get all the farmers.

You know what?

Farmers are always welcome here.

You're going to get the Central Valley.

I mean, that was 30 jobs.

Farmers are going to be here.

Now you want a railroad.

And railroad's the biggest real estate holder in the United States.

All the live long day.

And there's nothing really, really loosey-goosey liberal about railroad and farming.

They're just conservative people.

The muscular trades is a very extraordinary

trade.

You're going to get all the ports?

Any port in a store.

Import, export.

Okay, look, I got to wrap it up.

Where do people go to learn more about specifically, I'm talking to Californians now, where can they go to learn more about what you're up to, what this shoeshine girl has turned into,

and how they might help if they're so inclined in your Sisyphian task.

Well, I'm working diligently in the Pacific Palisades to put together a Pacific Palisades building department, the city of Pacific Palisades building department on sunset in the village.

What we're fighting about right now, this is so great, this is so epic.

The landlord who wanted to donate the space gets lost use insurance and the insurance company wants to take away his lost use while he donates the space.

So we're working through that and then we're going to have a nice spot there in the village.

I'm very easy to reach on Lipstick Farmer, hashtag lipstick farmer on Instagram, because I am a baby boomer, and lipstick farmer is easy for me to operate.

And I have a website, of course, that Elaine Kalati, and you can also find me on everything, Twitter, and the norms.

And now you can find me if you just ask Mike.

He has my name.

Yeah, oh, wow.

I know how to find you.

And you will officially or unofficially begin referring to the third swan as Gibbons.

From here on out.

There's no question about it.

And I'm going to start reciting poetry so the next time I get in here, I can win-up you.

Final question.

It's a layup, but

in a sentence or two,

what would you tell people who know in their bones that Donald Trump should not be leading this country?

They know it, and they'll never come around to his way of thinking,

but who live in this state and share your basic concern?

How should they think about what to do?

Ooh, okay I'm in a I'm so controversial today.

I want to

say that it's really going to be wonderful to have the Olympics here.

It would be amazing.

I would prefer that it's not embarrassing and there's so much work to do for that to happen.

I would prefer that we have somebody who's put together already an Olympic task force who is willing to show up here and invest money in our state.

We are out of the federal conversation And I don't think people understand that.

Because of the rift between Gavin Newsom and Donald Trump, we are completely left out of the conversation, which means we don't have federal assistance when we need it.

And we need it.

And it might be very hard

to swallow your tongue and whatever, kiss the ring, whatever you want to say.

We need federal assistance because our current administration has lost or stolen, or who knows, all of our money.

We don't have any money.

If you don't have any money, you don't have any power.

And if you don't have any power, you don't have any way to solve your problem.

Spoken like a true hybrid, an undercover billionaire, a lipstick farmer, a former shoeshine gal from rags to, I'm tempted to say, riches, but I'll just say it.

You're living a big life.

I'm really glad you did this.

A pleasure to meet you.

Thank you for giving me the platform, and I really appreciate it.

My pleasure.

Elaine Colotti.

See you next week.

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Well, I hate to beg and I hate to plead, but please, pretty, freaking please,

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