Exposing “Moderate” Democrat Matt Mahan

The whole reason he's in this race, Matt Mahan, is because he's come out against the billionaire's tax. So Matt Mahan wants death tax, sales tax, housing tax, property tax, but not on California billionaires. I mean, it's just amazing. Hello, everyone. Welcome to The Steve Hilton Show. taping this on Monday morning before the very first TV debate in the California governor's race. So I'm looking forward to that. In fact, I'm going to get a little bit of briefing for that debate from someone who's joining us to tell us the truth about the latest entrant into the California governor's race, Democrat Matt Mahan, mayor of San Jose, being sold to us as the moderate Democrat, the moderate Democrat that we need in California. Is that true? Do we need Matt Mahan? Is he moderate? Dave Johnson, who knows him really well. He's the chair of the Santa Clara County Republican Party in which County San Jose is. So he knows all about Matt Mahan and he's here to tell us the truth. And Susan Shelley is here with some incredible stories of corruption in California. And one particular story about what's going on with paving the sidewalks in L.A., or rather not paving them, that just illustrates in an insane way everything that is wrong with how California is run by these Democrats after 16 years of one party rule. And that's all coming up. But I just want to start with this. Another example in the last week of the total casual disregard of Democrats who are in charge of our state for anything that resembles good stewardship of public money, being careful with the taxes that we pay, making sure that they take the minimum they need and give us the best possible results in exchange. exactly the opposite. They just keep doing it. They keep taking more and more and more, and we get less and less. And one of their favorite piggy banks, if you like, for taking money from regular Californians and then either wasting it or allowing it to be stolen and fraud and corruption, and there's all that going on. You've seen stories this week with Nick Shirley here looking into that, working alongside one of my colleagues at Cal Doge and Benny Johnson, who I was with on the streets of LA a few weeks ago. He's put out some of the stuff that we put together on that. So it's just, you know, it's a national story, what's going on in California. Susan Shelley, who's coming up later in the show, talking about Dr. Oz, who was here, pointing out the vast scale of fraud in the California healthcare budget. And all this is going on, the fraud gets worse, the corruption gets worse, the bloat in our government. What do they do about it? Instead of actually cutting it, doing something to be careful with your money, the answer is always more, more, more. And here's the latest. It's called the mileage tax. The mileage tax in California. This is their latest scheme to take more money from us for their bottomless pit of money and this is even even worse than normal because it combines stealing money from us for no good reason and creepy surveillance so this is the idea that you're going to be charged they're going to track you every mile you drive and they're going to charge you per mile and they're not even telling us exactly how that's going to work the creepy surveillance that's going to mean that they know exactly where you go every minute of the day in your car or truck or whatever it may be. And they have these sort of vague statements. This was passed in the legislature this week. That's why this has come up. These vague statements about, well, protect your privacy. Who believes a word of that? Of course they don't. So you've got this creepy surveillance part of it, and you've got the costs. And the costs are estimated to be over $1,000 a year, typically. Of course, that would be much more for the people who can least afford it. That's what's so outrageous about this kind of thing from the Democrats, because when you're talking about a mileage tax, who's that really going to hurt? It's going to hurt the people who drive the most. And who's that? It's not the climate warriors, you know, tapping away at their MacBooks in Marin County, lecturing everyone on climate change. It's working class Californians who drive their cars and their trucks two, three, four, five hours a day to get to and from work because housing costs are so high. It's working class Californians who will be hit the most. It's an incredibly unfair, incredibly regressive in the economic jargon, this tax, because what it means by regressive is that the poorer you are, the higher the proportion of your income that is taxed. It is completely disgusting that they're talking about this. And they're not talking about it, you know, instead of other taxes. We already pay the highest taxes in the country. And here they come with another one that's proposed. I made clear. I mean, it's still a proposal. But if this comes up and they pass it in the legislature when I'm governor, I will veto this for sure. No question. I'll be absolutely delighted to veto because it's outrageous. And then the other bit of it that's so outrageous is they say, oh, we need this money to spend on roads and this and that. We have the worst roads in the country. They're already taxing us to the help. We have the highest gas tax. And another part of it that I addressed last week was vehicle registration. Vehicle registration in California, off the charts, expensive. In most states, renewing your vehicle registration every year costs under 100 bucks in most places in America. California hundreds even thousands of dollars literally I mean you ask around you talk to people oh I paid $1,500 um 670 these numbers are typical because this is what they actually do and and I made my announcement on this at the end of last week they got a flat registration fee and then they add on all these taxes things like transportation improvement fee what is that the transportation's a disaster we have the worst roads literally the by you know i looked it up there's a ranking of the of the roads and the quality of the roads the smoothness of the roads we're 50th out of 50 states so where's all this money going i mean most of when you look at the all these different charges and taxes that they put up when you renew your registration every year it's all these things you can't you don't know where the money's going general fund and county this and city that and whatever. It's just more and more taxes. So on that, I had a very specific plan, which I laid out last week, which is to cap vehicle registration in California at $71. That is the flat fee. That's the basic rate. And then they add all these other things. I'm not going to add all those other things on. They're not going to be added on at all because we already pay the highest taxes in the country. They don't need more money from us. They don't need more revenue. They need to cut the fraud and the waste and the corruption and the bloat and actually make sure the money is spent wisely. That's what we need to do in California. And this is part of it. And then when people say, oh, you're never going to, how are you going to pay for the roads? Well, we looked it up. And if you look at the actual proportion of the income to the government from the vehicle registration that goes to roads, it's about 26%. And if you do the calculation of how much would be saved by what I'm talking about, it would bring in about 25% of the revenue that we currently have. So the numbers basically match up. What we're cutting out is all this other nonsense that doesn't help improve the roads at all. And boy, do they need improving. So it's just an example of just how terrible it all is. And actually, the thing that I really hate about this is the way that when they attack and charge you for all these things to do with driving your car, of course, that's also ideological because it's part of their climate crusade. And so they hate people who drive cars. They hate people who drive trucks. And they just want to punish you. And it's disgusting because it's working class people that are going to be hurt the most. So we're going to stop all of that when I'm government. It is part of my plan to make this state califordable. You can see all of those plans and look it all up, including on vehicle registration at my campaign website, Steve Hilton for governor dot com. All right, Susan, the usual list of catastrophes and disasters and corruption from Democrats in California. The first big story as a national story. Then, of course, Gavin Newsom didn't like it. So there's been a lot of back and forth. Dr. Oz, who the administrator of the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare services, if I'm getting that right. was here exposing fraud. Tell us what's been going on with that. Well, Dr. Oz came to town to point out that there is a tremendous amount of fraud in California. We all saw what happened in Minnesota. California makes that look very petty. Just by the dollar amount and the size of the population, it's going to be much, much bigger. So he pointed out that 18% of the home health care billing in the United States, 18%, comes out of Los Angeles County by itself. Wow. Home health care. Home health care billing. This is for home health care and hospice together. And what he found is that there are a huge number of fake hospice agencies. And he said this is organized crime. It's organized international gangs that are doing this. And in the city of Van Nuys, which is in the San Fernando Valley, there are more than 200 within one mile of each other, hospice agencies, and they have a death rate of zero. So what is happening is that people are being tricked into signing up for these hospice services. They don't realize that cancels their eligibility for medical care. So they are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid doctor services any longer once they're in hospice care. And so you have a combination of fake billing, and you have people being defrauded and you have the taxpayers being defrauded and it's an enormous problem. Now, Gavin Newsom was very irritated because Dr. Oz said some of this was coming out of the Armenian community, Armenian gangs. And Gavin Newsom, he pointed out that Dr. Oz is Turkish by ethnicity and he said this is a civil rights violation. So he's asking for an investigation that accusing these Armenian businesses of being fraudulent is a civil rights violation. And so he's trying to make it all about race and ethnicity and not about the fact that there's this enormous fraud on the taxpayers. And of course, in California, you're being fleeced twice as a state taxpayer, because half of that Medicaid stuff is paid for by California taxpayers, and the other half plus Medicare is paid by your federal taxes. So you're being fleeced twice. And the income tax rates in California, we have to say, are extremely high on the middle class. Everybody talks about the top rate of 13.3% for millionaires. 8% is the income tax rate at $72,000. So that's way too low to afford to buy a house, but you're being taxed like a soak-of-the-rich tax rate that is very high in other states 8 in California that hitting you in a middle income of So when they stealing the money this is who they stealing it from people who are working and trying to pay their own bills. And it's absolutely unforgivable that California, which has known about this, has done nothing. There was a report in 2022 by the California State Auditor that found these 200 hospice agencies in Van Nuys within a mile of each other. What did the state do about it? Not a lot. Gavin Newsom said, well, he didn't want to take a chainsaw out of the fraud the way Trump does. Okay. Is that what he said? Because I saw this 2022 point in the back and forth between Newsom and Dr. Oz. And Newsom said, oh, yeah, late to the party. You know, we dealt with all this in 2022. Did they? I mean, what is he talking about? Well, I think they stopped new licensing of hospice agencies, but I don't think they did much about the ones that are still there, still billing, out of Los Angeles County. This is just an enormous amount of fraud. And what the auditor has found in a separate report is that California does a very bad job of verifying and documenting who is receiving these benefits. So people apply for these benefits. Agencies apply for these benefits. The vetting and the documentation is very liked, and there's a tremendous amount of fraud. And that's true in social services. It's true in the Department of Health Care Services. It's just true. It's true in the unemployment department. They're just not that interested in verifying anybody's identity. 18% of the home health. That's amazing. The whole country's home health care billing. One county. I mean, it's a big county, but still. It's 10 million people. But I don't think that's 18% of the nation's population. So home health care and hospital, is that Medicare money? It's Medicare and Medicaid both. But together, okay. And Medicaid is paid for partially by the state taxpayers. But this is what we're going to get into with Cal Doge. I mean, this is why it's so important. We announced that last week. We've got some great people running it. They're getting to work. We're not waiting until I'm elected governor. And Herb Morgan, who I'm doing this side by side with, who's running for state controller. We've got a really good team on it already. This is exactly what we're going to be tracking. We've got whistleblower tips coming in from califraud.com. I don't know if you caught this one, Susan. I'll just share it because it's just amazing. It's another in the healthcare arena. These are tips we've got that California taxpayers are now paying for medical benefits, treatment services, prescriptions for Mexican citizens living in Mexico, pretending to be illegal immigrants in California in order to take advantage of Gavin Newsom's free health care for illegal immigrants. Well, at least it cuts down on driving and climate emissions. It's just amazing. We now have fake illegal immigrants claiming, you know, on our tax money, getting medical benefits. You know, I think that happens with the earned income tax credit also, where people are receiving these checks from the taxpayers, which are called tax refunds, but they're not tax refunds because no taxes were paid in. But it's sort of welfare through the tax code. And I think there are people who are out of the country receiving some of those in what the government gently calls improper payments. Exactly. Well, as I say, this is an amazing... So, you know, and I'll repeat this point. You know, what will be so different when I'm elected governor is that there's going to be a partner for the federal administrations. And we'll be united in pursuing fraud and waste and corruption and all this stuff, rather than what you have now, which is the California political class saying, oh, no, it's all fine here. Nothing to see here. It's fine. We got it under control. What are you talking about, Dr. Oz? What are you talking about, Bill Assaylee, with your prosecution? And it's just going to be a completely different attitude. And of course, we'll be pursuing it here as well. And that's what's outrageous about all of this, if you think about it from the California taxpayers' point of view. He's like, why isn't our government doing this? Why haven't they been doing it for years? Why hasn't the Attorney General, Rob Bonta, been pursuing the criminal fraud and theft, for example, in the homeless industrial complex like Bill Asalie? Bill Asalie's been there a few months, and he's bringing actual prosecutions, one after another. And we've been talking about that, and especially in LA. Rob Bonta could have done that years ago. The California State Auditor has been calling this out for years and years and maybe decades on some of these programs that they are high risk for fraud and mismanagement. And now we have this other program. A press release went out from Tony Thurman's office, the superintendent of public instruction, announcing the summer food service program applications period is opening. And here's what this is. This is the same program that resulted in convictions for fraud in Minnesota, where the federal government provides money to the state to provide to nonprofits and schools and camps and other agencies to provide meals for kids when they're not in school. The kids who are eligible for free meals in school, this is for when they're not in school. And this summer meals program requires no documentation, no paperwork or personal information is required for children to participate. Well, that sounds very nice for protecting the privacy of the kids, but how do you verify that the meals were actually provided? So this is a brand new program. Applications open right now. And this is federal money going through the state to provide meals for kids. What are the fraud controls on this? Maybe none. Well, it's a great question to ask Tony Thurmond. And I'll have that opportunity tomorrow evening. We're taping this Monday morning, Susan, at the first gubernatorial debate. He's running for governor, this guy. So we'll see if there's a chance to bring it up. All right. There's endless corruption in California with this Democrat one-party rule. This is L.A., city council. What's going on there? Well, Curran Price, who is a city council member representing South L.A., has been ordered to trial on about a dozen felony counts of fraud. And what's interesting to me about this is what he's accused of doing, while it's corrupt, is pretty standard operating procedure in California politics. His wife is a consultant. She has a solely owned consulting firm. Companies that want contracts with the city have paid her a consulting fee over the years, about $800,000, $900,000. and then Curran Price, the city council member, should have recused himself on some of the votes for these contracts for these different entities. And he didn't always recuse himself. Sometimes he didn't show up for them and sometimes he did. And he has been charged by the LA County District Attorney, Nathan Hockman, with felony corruption charges. One of the things he's charged with is embezzlement. This sounds different than what it really is. He was married to someone else, but was with another woman, said that the other woman was his wife now, and put her on the medical insurance for the city. And over four years, she received about $33,000 in benefits, even though he was still legally married to someone else. So while that's certainly not good and it is corrupt, it's not exactly what you think of when you think about embezzlement of the city budget. But that's what that was. and then the rest of it is not recusing himself on these votes. So as I said, while it is corrupt, it's absolutely standard operating procedure. For instance, Janice Hahn, who is on the county board of supervisors, she has enriched her family by making her son her chief of staff. And she also put her daughter-in-law on the county payroll when she became a supervisor. So that shouldn't be legal. I don't think it is legal, but they've let it go for whatever reason. And her son is still her chief of staff at a six-figure salary. on the county payroll. And we have these other people who, their spouses, their other relatives have nonprofit organizations that get state contracts. They do behested payments for them. I mean, does the behested payments thing, I remember it's our very first conversation, Susan, you explained this to me, insane corruption that's legalized. We talked about it in the context of the state, Gavin Newsom and so on. Is this at the local level as well, behested payments? Yes, it is. Yes, it is. It's not on the same website. But, for instance, Mayor Karen Bass has done a tremendous amount of behesting for her nonprofit organizations that she controls, the Mayor's Fund of Los Angeles, the Getty House Foundation. I think there's a third one that's trying to build housing in Los Angeles. And she behests payments from companies that have business before the city or contracts with the city or that want contracts with the city or that want them to be renewed. and she calls them up and she behests payments for these nonprofits. And then what do the nonprofits do with the money? Well, they hand it over to NGOs. And some of these NGOs are doing things like organizing protests over immigration and the rest. So what is going on here? This is so corrupt that politicians can legally shake down companies that have business before the state and then direct the money into these other things that benefit them politically, but are not official through the city budget. It's just a really sleazy, Tammany Hall kind of corruption, and nobody's charged for that. That's all legal. But Curran Price has been charged and will face trial. Mark Ridley Thomas, who was also on the city council, and before that he was a county supervisor, He was charged for accepting a scholarship or soliciting a scholarship from USC for his son and a professorship job. And he was also voting for contracts for USC at the time. But Mayor Karen Bass, when she was in Congress, accepted one of these scholarships, full ride scholarships from USC for a degree in social work. And the House Ethics Committee reviewed it and decided to give her a waiver. So she's not charged, but Mark Ridley Thomas is charged. It just seems I'm not defending the corruption. I just don't understand the rules here. Some people get away with it and some people get charged for it. So just let's go over it again. Let's just use Karen Bout. So she's phoning up a company with business that needs something from the city. Right. And she's saying, please give money to this organization. What's that thing called? The Mayor's Fund. What is that? The Mayor's Fund for Los Angeles. Eric Garcetti, I think, began this. And during COVID, I think there was a $5 million behested payment from the nation of Qatar. What was that about? It was a huge amount of money during COVID, and he used it to give out debit cards, COVID cash, or he has some cute name for it, to help people out. So the Mayor's Fund is a non-profit. It's a nonprofit, and supposedly it's independent of City Hall, but its offices used to be in City Hall and may still be. And it's run by people who are associated with the mayor. And they do things that make the mayor look good. Exactly right. Okay. So they behest payments into this fund and then the money is spent for like walking around money and helping out different nonprofits that can do voter turnout And it absolutely political And maybe it also philanthropic Maybe occasionally it does good work The question isn't really why they want the money. The question is, why is somebody giving the money? Just explain walking around money. Walking around money is when you pay people to help you get votes out. I've heard this before. It's an old democratic machine political trick. I think it's you put money out on the street and I think in some cases they literally pay people to vote. I mean, that's right. When I first heard this, I thought you've got to be kidding. I mean, this is just straight up buying votes. Well, now we have ballot harvesting, which is really interesting because you don't even have to turn out the voters. You just have to turn out the paper. And so they pay people to knock on the doors and ask for the ballots and harvest them. And this is legal. Nobody's going to jail for that. This is legal. So the level of corruption and then these selective prosecutions that seem to drill down on relatively minor stuff. Now, there's been major corruption also. Jose Huizar is serving a 13-year sentence right now. He was a city council member who ran a completely corrupt operation where he was essentially selling development rights. He controlled the Planning and Land Use Management Committee, and he used that position to essentially extort bribes from developers. And the bribes were spectacular. It was luxury trips and luxury meals and casinos and cash and campaign contributions and all kinds of things. This particular scandal with Curran Price, which is going on now, even the prosecutor said in court during a hearing to see if it would go to trial, He said, well, this isn't the standard kind of corruption case where you're going to see strippers and cocaine and cash. This is more like a long-term plan to enrich himself. If you don't have the strippers and the cocaine and cash, what's it even doing in Hollywood? You know, this isn't worth it. It's amazing. Just one last thing before we move to the final story. The walking around money. Obviously, I've heard that term before. it's not actually an official term. I mean, would you find a line item in any report? I mean, is it that brazen? How do they describe it officially? It's a political machine tactic. It's not unique to California. You can find this in East Coast cities where political machines are very powerful. And what has been said, and I don't have any personal evidence or knowledge of who did this or when, but the idea is that money goes out to these groups to help turn out the vote. And you can pay people to help you turn out the vote. Right, so it'd be described as voter turnout operations or something. Get out the vote, right. Get out the vote, all right, very good. Right, the last one, something to do with paving. Paving, the city of Los Angeles has stopped repaving its streets. There are 7,500 miles of streets in the city of Los Angeles, and only 60% of them are in good repair. I have to credit Orin Hadar for this. He wrote in a blog that I think it's a blog called The Future is L.A. about this. And what is happening is that a federal rule from 1994 says that when you pave a certain amount of a street, you must install ADA-required curb cuts for wheelchairs and strollers and whatever else. It's very expensive in Los Angeles because everything's very expensive the way we do it in Los Angeles. So $50,000 each curb cut, $200,000 per intersection, and they have stopped paving the streets to avoid having to pay this. And the second thing that's causing it is that in 2015, the city council passed something that was purely advisory, aspirational, they called it, the Mobility Plan 2035, which said that all of these various streets should have bike lanes and roundabouts and bus lanes and sidewalk improvements and road diets to slow traffic down. This is a mobility plan. Nobody ever thought they were really going to do this when they voted for it. But it helped draw down money from Sacramento because it looked like it was climate friendly and they could get some of this greenhouse gas reduction fund money, some of these grants for the city. So they voted for the thing. And that's what they said at the time. We have to get the money. We have to vote for this. None of this is going to happen tomorrow in your district. Don't worry about it. That was the conversation in 2015. Well, the people who wanted the bike lanes were very angry. And they put something on the ballot in March of 2024, Measure HLA for Healthy Streets LA. And this mandated that when one-eighth of a mile of a street was repaved, it triggered the enforceable installation of these road diet, bike lane, sidewalk improvement, bus lane things. The city stopped paving the streets. because if you don't do the bike lane and the road diet and the rest of it, and there's, of course, a lot of opposition to many of these things, if you don't do it, anyone in the city, any resident of the city, can file a lawsuit against the city to enforce it. Wow. And that is sort of like the PAGA law, the Private Attorney General Act. This could bankrupt the city of Los Angeles, and it would obviously create tremendous opposition. And if every time they repaved a street, they took a lane away, people would be pretty upset about that. But that's pretty much what this thing requires. So they've stopped paving the streets. And now they do what they call large asphalt repairs and slurry sealing, and that doesn't trigger it. And the streets are going to crumble. So what is that as opposed to repaving? Slurry, it's this black material that is not considered the same as pavement. It's like a temporary sealing of the street to prevent further damage until you get around to repaving it. And for whatever reason, whether it's the courts or it's the regulators, somebody just determined that this is a different category. So they can slurry seal a street, which is a temporary fix, and they can do, quote, large asphalt repairs, which is something they invented themselves. That's their own term. And they have a thousand large asphalt repairs planned and no repaving. It's an amazing story. Everything about that, I'm so happy you laid it out in such detail as you always do, because it just goes to there's so much in that that just explains the madness of how we're governed in California. And it's all this just sort of ridiculous regulations, everything's so expensive. So then the bureaucracy, they have to find tricks to get around it. But and it's all just cost and bureaucracy and hassle. And we pay for it and then get worse outcomes in return. Yes. That's basically California. It's just amazing story. Thank you, Susan. That is absolutely brilliant. Wow. OK, thank you. Thank you, Steve. Right. Joining me now, my friend Dave Johnson, who is chair of Santa Clara County Republican Party. You call it Silicon Valley GOP, right? Yes. and the reason that this is the perfect guest today is that we've just had an announcement in the governor's race. Matt Mahan, the mayor of San Jose, has announced that he's running for governor. Looking forward to taking him on. But I'm really looking forward to Dave telling us the truth about Matt Mahan because he's being positioned. His backers and the media now are falling for it. Oh, this is a moderate Democrat. He's such a moderate Democrat. He's the least insane Democrat. Well, what's going on? Tell us about Matt Mahan, Dave. Yeah. So first of all, Steve, thanks. Thanks for having me. This is a ploy. The Democrats love to use this. Well, you Republicans can never win. And so your best option is to pick the least evil of the options. And they're trying to position Matt Mahan in that regard. So we're going to be hearing a lot of this in the media. And as a matter of fact, I know that in today's Wall Street journal. There was either an editorial or an op-ed that says that Mahan is a moderate that we can live with, but I don't believe it. And the reason is, is because, well, I live here in Silicon Valley and we've spent the better part of the entire year trying to get a hold of Matt Mahan's office, but he has rejected us at every turn. Why? Well, he came and solicited Republicans to support him As a moderate, a lot of my Republican friends were supporters, but he never gave us the time of day since he became the mayor. And the truth is, since he's become the mayor, he's moved very, very quickly, very far to the left. Give us some examples. Where is he on? Let's start with taxes, because I think I know where because I've been there with you campaigning against tax increases at the local level. Where is he on taxes? Yeah, well, we like to call him. So we created a new nickname for him, Steve. It's called Max Tax Mahan. But we call him that for a reason. He's been a rabid, rabid supporter of every single misguided tax scheme that's come along in the last few years since he's been in office. His record really is a litany of linking arms with economically illiterate schemes to raid our pocketbooks. What am I talking about? Number one, he's a fierce opponent of Prop 13. He supported the Prop 5 measure a couple years ago, which would have weakened Prop 13 taxpayer protections. Fortunately, the county and state taxpayers rejected Prop 5, but he's now opposing this year's local Taxpayer Protection Act to support or uphold Prop 13. He supported RM4, which was a regional housing tax, right up to the moment that it had to be pulled from the ballot because of misleading language. And he most recently in the special election in November was a supporter of our county measure A, which was a sales tax increase to, quote unquote, support the hospitals. He voted in favor of that, and then he wished he didn't after it passed because the money wasn't going to be used as it was proposed to have been used. So how much is the sales tax now? The city where I live in, it's now, I think it's 10 and a half when it goes into effect in April, 10 and a half percent. There's going to be a regional transportation tax increase that's going to be on this November's ballot. And that will add another half cent sales tax. Matt Mahan sits on the board of Valley Transportation Authority, which is one of the country's worst performing public transit systems. He's on the board. So, of course, he is going to be in favor for increasing regional tax, which goes to Bay Area Rapid Transit, Muni, San Mateo County Transit, Alameda County Transit and Valley Transportation Authority. But that would put us over 11 percent or at 11 percent sales tax. See by the way just that is an example of why we need the Save Prop 13 ballot initiative Because supposedly there a cap on sales tax which is seven and a quarter the state rate and then a two percent uplift locally maximum so you shouldn be more than nine and a quarter well and i i've heard and and maybe you could check it out but i've heard that the somewhere in the state constitution it says that the cap is supposed to be at 10 but either way the way that every everyone everything is going we're going to be at 11 by this time next year if the regional transportation, which I hear is going to pass. And so the 11th, so he's, by the way, this sales tax is the most regressive because it hits everyone. And so the poorest pay the most proportionately. It's a tax on the poorest, on working class people. So what's amazing about this is that the whole reason that he's in this race, Matt Mahan, is because, I mean, it really is the whole reason because I know about this because I know a lot of the people involved. Rick Caruso was seen as the great, you know, moderate hope, you know, formerly ran for mayor of LA. So he had all the kind of Silicon Valley billionaires pinning their hopes on Rick Caruso, exactly as you say, because they say, well, a Republican can't win. They're not prepared to fight to help a Republican win. And so we'll just need the least insane Democrat. So they're hoping for Rick Caruso. So the minute that Rick Caruso announced he wasn't running, they searched around and they found this guy. And the reason that they love him is because he's come out against the billionaire's tax. So basically, this is a guy who's in favor of taxing the poor. But the only tax he's against is the tax that hurts his donors, the billionaires. It's amazing. Yes. He doesn't want the state tax, but he likes the idea of a national billionaire's tax. And he's also in favor of the death tax on inherited property. Tell me about that a bit more. Where did that come up? It's going I believe it's going through the state legislature and probably Newsom will sign it. But he's in favor of a tax on inheritance so that you cannot pass your estate on to your children so that it'll be reassessed. The state will take a large fee. So, Mahan, that's another one that Mahan supports. So basically, he wants I just want to get this right. So Matt Mahan wants death tax, sales tax, housing tax, property tax, but but not on California billionaires. I mean, it's just amazing. The only thing that would be more amazing is if he actually supported the billionaire's tax. But when you got nine out of 10, you know, or whatever the actual number is, it does show a pattern. And the pattern is very clear. This is not a moderate in term. And then where does all this tax money go? It goes to a regional transit district, a county or the state. And I've heard you say many, many times, well, what does the state do with all this money? They already have plenty of money. We have the highest taxes in the country. So tax, he's just the same old Democrat. Another one you hear, I've seen this even in the California Post, they're all tough on crime Democrat, Matt Mayne. Is he tough on crime? Short answer, no. He likes to claim that San Jose is the largest safe city. We have people traumatized by stabbings at Santana Row, which is an upscale mall here in San Jose. There was a shooting on Black Friday at Valley Fair, which is the region's largest shopping mall. And there's all these smash and grabs. And you and I have actually been at the locations of several of these. This goes on and on and on and on. But the truth is, and I think I sent you a link, Like San Jose's safety profile ranks in the bottom half of the California cities. And some of our east side neighborhoods are so unsafe. They're less safe than the majority of U.S. cities. In other words, there's just rampant crime. The smash and grab was just heartbreaking. It was a Vietnamese jewelry store, right? Yes. Remind everyone about that story because it just captures what's been going on. Yeah. East San Jose, older man running the store. He didn't feel well. he was getting ready to close the store. Luckily, he had put away, I think, a lot of the very expensive jewelry. And these guys drove their car through the front window. And then whatever it was, a half a dozen or a dozen of them jump out, smash all of the display cases and steal all of the jewelry, beat the man up within an inch of his life. And then they split all before any police response was possible. How old was the guy? I think he was in his 80s. That one made the national news, but there's a lot of them that go on every day that maybe don't make the national news. And there's a lot every single day you go to any retailer, everything is locked up. Everything is locked up. You want shampoo, it's locked up. You want lipstick, it's locked up. This would be at your Walgreens, your CVS. What stores are left are doing everything they can to protect their inventory. In San Jose? In San Jose, I would say that might even be outside San Jose. You know, it's more of a regional or even a statewide issue. But certainly here in San Jose, if you want to buy a bottle of whiskey, for example, you go into the Safeway. That's behind lock and key. You cannot go in and just, I mean, you can buy the rotgut, I suppose. and I don't drink whiskey, but it's all behind lock and key. Anything that's of any value at any retail store in the area is under lock and key. I think Mahan likes to brag about that his conviction rate on homicides is very high. Okay, good. You closed those murder cases. Thank you very much. But you've got all of these young people running around doing the smash and grabs at want and no one will go after them. If you go into a Walgreens or a Safeway, somebody steals something, they run out the door, nobody can do anything. They're not allowed to go after them. They can't chase them. There's no effective loss prevention programs. It's not allowed, I suppose. I would think that if you're going to make the assertion that you're tough on crime, that you would be going after the less violent crimes that lower the standard of living for everyone in the area. The most important point that I wanted to make is that when you have a situation like we have here where taxation has become so burdensome and it's continuing to go up and up and up, it makes everything less affordable. The businesses in downtown San Jose have to shutter their doors and move out. If a new business comes in, they can't find employees because the employees live too far away because they can't afford to live here. The taxation, I believe, directly impacts crime because people cannot afford, A, to be in business. We could get into the regulations it requires to open a taqueria or a Mexican, whatever, any kind of a restaurant, that's burdensome. But just focusing on taxation and the impact that that has on the mentality of young people who see no other way out or they believe that they're entitled to be able to walk in and steal $990 worth of merchandise without any fear of getting caught. That, to me, goes against being even able to make the claim that you are a moderate or that you're tough on crime. And what about his calling, you know, keeps going on about homelessness. We fix homelessness. Well, we have a problem here in San Jose, I believe, that's very similar to the state. There's a lot of money that gets thrown at it. He's offered some temporary fixes, you know, converting things. But to me, and I've been, I'm a general contractor. I've been to some of the sites, a site in particular, where they spent $100 million. They bought prefabricated wood structures, stacked them on top of each other, 220 units, cost them $100 million. And within one year, there's leaks, there's mold, there's been crime in that area. Yes, it's low-income housing, but that should have cost $10 or $20 million at the most, not $100. Where'd the money go? And so people will say the positive side is they'll say, well, he cleaned up Coyote Creek. He moved this homeless encampment out. No, they all just go somewhere else. There's no less homeless than there were. I think he was also in favor. If you are homeless and you get arrested twice in 18 months, we can throw you in jail. And he was for that. But the city council didn't approve it. They had to water it down. That's just sort of typical. There's a narrative. and right now I believe Mahan is running to take votes away from people like you who are legitimate um you know conservatives well that's why we got to point this out and we will and that's why you're going to have a very big role in the next I'm enjoying my I'm enjoying my role because it's not right I don't I'm not I don't I'm not a fan I don't approve yeah well it's very important people need to know the truth and that's the thing especially when you know they believe these slogans oh he's moderate he's competent he's cleaned up samples you know and and you know let's be fair i'm sure you know some things have gone well but actually you've got to look at the basic record and all of the record not just the things they want to cherry pick that's real that's really it you can't put lipstick on a pig and call it beautiful and that's what he's trying to do with this Matt Mahan is a moderate. It's designed so that at election day, whether it's the primary or the midterms, that Republicans believe he's the least of the worst, the least worst of the worst. I'm here to say no, not interested. Thank you very much. And I'm going to be saying no. We're taping this Monday morning, February the 2nd, tomorrow night, I'm on stage with him in a debate. So I'm looking forward to pointing all this out to a statewide audience. I'm so glad I could help. Fantastic, Dave. You're the best. I'm sure we'll be doing a lot together on this point, because this guy's got a lot of money behind him. And so, you know, we got to really watch out, and we got to take the fight to all of them and not let them pull the wool over our eyes. Dave Johnson, great to see you. See you soon. All right. Thank you, Steve. Have a great day. Bye. All right. All right. That is our show for this week. Hope you enjoyed it. By the time we meet next week, I'll have done that first TV debate. I will give you all the backstage gossip and we'll see how it went. It's going to be a big week in the governor's campaign. So lots to talk about next week. In the meantime, please follow us on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts. And we'll see you back here next week from The Steve Hilton Show. Thank you.