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The Parnas Perspective
Breaking: Trump Furious as Reflecting Pool Projects Blows Up in his Face
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Aaron (Interviewer/Host)
major developments this afternoon. Donald Trump's construction or renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. It's in big trouble. A significant new lawsuit has been filed to block the renovation of the reflecting pool in front of the Washington Monument in front of the Lincoln Memorial. That's not all. According to new reporting from the New York times, it's costing 88% more than they thought it would. Over a million dollars taxpayer dollars. Algae may soon turn the color from the blue that he wants to green and more. And he's not happy about it because once again, it looks as though one of his quintessential projects will soon be blocked. So big news right now. I also speak with Tom Steyer, who's running for governor of California. At the end of this, you're not going to want to miss that conversation. I do want to jump right in before I do Like Comment Share get the Word out subscribe to my Substack Click the link below to support my work Today a new lawsuit has been filed by the Cultural Landscape foundation and Charles Birnbaum against the Department of Interior, Doug Burgum, the National Park Service, alleging that the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is one of the most iconic design landscapes in the world. Completed in 1924 in the Central axis of the National Mall, it has defined the visual and experiential character of the nation's capital for over a century. The Reflecting Pool's profound reflective quality, achieved through deliberate design choices, including the dark color of its basin, creates a sweeping mirror image of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument that millions experience every year. Dark gray achromatic basin was not incidental to the design. It was the design. 1999 National Park Service Cultural Landscape Report for the Lincoln Memorial Grounds specifically identifies dark tilled basin as a character defining feature of the historic landscape, noting that the dark color of the tile created the illusion of great depth and a more profound reflection. But all that started changing when defendants engaged a swimming pool contractor to resurface the Reflecting Pool, a vivid blue coating. The work is ongoing. Goes on to talk about how the Reflecting Pool and its surrounding landscape are listed in the National Register of Historic Places as part of the National Mall Historic District. Accordingly, before making any changes to the Reflecting Pool, defendants were obligated to follow the Section 106 procedures, including consulting with various interested parties such as experts, nonprofit organizations with relevant experience that provide input on proposed changes. They did that, however, without conducting the section 106 consultation. No parties have been notified, engaged, or given an opportunity to participate. Every day that the resurfacing continues, the historic character of the Reflecting Pool is being further and fundamentally altered. And every day that defendants forge ahead without following Section 106 procedures, plaintiffs are deprived of information and ability to participate in the review process that Congress provided in the nhpa. Plaintiffs, a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to education about and promoting informed stewardship of historic design landscapes and one of the most one of the foremost national authorities on national policies for managing change at and the treatment of cultural landscapes, seek declaratory injunctive relief, requiring defendants to halt further resurfacing of the Reflecting Pool basis. Pretty big News because today we also learned that the cost of his plan to repair the reflecting pool has jumped by 88% to $13.1 million. That's a 88% hike, including a 20% profit margin for Trump's handpicked contractor who got the job in a no bid contract. No big contract under the dubious urgency exemption. Project was never reviewed. Contractor had no expertise in swimming pools. And Donald Trump's own motorcade may have damaged the surface. And not just that, algae may soon obscure the paint. And that's why today this lawsuit was filed demanding that essentially a court stop the construction and renovation of the reflecting pool. If this were to happen, a true social post we would get is, I mean, second to none, truly. Only angrier than when the court blocked Donald Trump's attempt to build the White House ballroom. This is the same thing, just another baby of the President's. He really wants to do this reflecting pool thing and it's just a complete, an utter nightmare right now and it's costing taxpayers a lot of money. And I spoke to Tom Steyer, who's running for governor of California about affordability and taxpayer dollars right now. Make sure to like comment, Share subscribe here's my conversation with Tom Steyer. Super excited today to be joined by Tom Steyer, who's running for governor in California. Tom, great to be here with you. I really want to jump right in. You all have a very, very hectic election out there right now. Why are you the best candidate?
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Tom Steyer
Well, I think this election, Aaron, has become very simple, which is there is one candidate who is pushing for change. The big problem Californians have is they can't afford to live here anymore. And the reasons go to housing costs, they go to electricity costs, they go to health care, they go to gasoline costs at the pump. And in every one of those, I am willing to make structural change to push so that Californians can afford to live here again. And in order to do that, it means I have to take on the electric monopolies. It means that I have to take on the oil companies. It means that I have to be willing to take on, I'm for single payer health care. That means I'm taking on the health insurers in every one of those categories. I have to be willing to say it's not going to change until we have structural change. And here's what that would look like. No one else is doing that. There's no one else in this race who's willing to take on the corporate special interests that run California and what that means is I can prove it because they are spending tens of millions of dollars to stop me. And I'm supported by progressives, by every environmentalist in the state, and by organized labor. So I think this race, from my point, is very, very simple, which is, if you want change in California so that people can afford to live here, if you want change in California so that people who are working people can be well represented, there's really only one candidate. It's me. And everybody else is, in effect, status quo. Candidates, like, what's going on is fine. I'm for that.
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Aaron (Interviewer/Host)
I want to talk to you more about the affordability aspect of it. I want to start with gas prices. California has notoriously high gas prices even before the war in Iran. How are you going to lower gas prices?
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Tom Steyer
Look, what I've said is we have a windfall profits tax on the books. The oil and gas company's costs haven't gone up a penny as a result of the Iran war. The only thing that they're doing is charging more for gas. And in fact, last week, the head of the Western States Petroleum association, which is the lobbying group for oil and gas, said it is the fiduciary duty of the oil and gas majors to charge every penny they can get out of Californians. People like Chevron are charging a dollar more per gallon right now than the unbranded gasoline stations. Okay, you're saying you're going to take advantage of Californians to the legal maximum you can get away with as a result of a war that Donald Trump started in Iran. Okay. Well, it turns out we have a. That is an absolute windfall for you of tens of billions of dollars. That's why we have a windfall profits tax on the books. We just have to apply it. I would say that $1.50. And plus that you're overcharging us as a result of this war. We're going to take that and send it not to the government of California, but directly back to the, to the citizens who are losing it at the pump.
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Aaron (Interviewer/Host)
What about housing? Because right now I'm 27 years old. If I wanted to move out to Los Angeles, I look on Zillow to get a single family home, four or five bedrooms. I'm spending, spending a million plus, easily. Most, most people my age can't afford that. So how are we going to lower housing costs?
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Tom Steyer
Absolutely. So this is something where there are multiple things we need to do. And in some of them, I'm the only person who's willing to do it. So the first thing is we need to shorten the permitting time, make it faster and much cheaper. Okay, there's been, there was a first step on that in the legislature last year, but we need to go further because time is money when it comes to real estate. The longer it stretches out, the more expensive it is for multiple reasons. I have a total plan for that. It's not that we can do that zoning. I believe in building densely around public transportation about safe walkable communities. That's what Californians want. That's what we need to build. That is being made easier. The third is we need to build cheaper just on a per square foot basis. We, we are spending way too much. And there is a way to do that, which is basically to construct off site, assemble on site. The technology is here. It's not just modularization. It drives down the cost per square foot by, we think, a third, at least fourth. One of the biggest problems in this whole issue is the cities and counties don't want to build housing. You know, the saying is, I'd rather have a used car lot in my town than have a new housing development. And the reason is simple. They don't think they can afford to take care of the people who are going to live in the houses because of the way the tax system has worked in California. And they feel like every housing development is an unfunded mandate to them to supply services. I've said, and I'm the only person saying anything like this or bringing revenue today, but I said, on day one, I'll call a special election to close a corporate real estate tax loophole that's worth $20 billion a year. There's absolutely no justification for it. The money would then go to the cities and counties and it would go from being an unfunded mandate. Like they don't know how to pay for the education of the kids in those houses. They don't know how to pay for the healthcare of the people in those houses to being a funded mandate. That is a huge fact, Aaron. It's one thing to say you're going to do things, but so many times the question is, where is the money going to come from? This is a huge question about how do we grease the skids to make it actually happen in the real world. And, and the last thing is finance. You know, my wife and I started a Nonprofit community bank 20 years ago. We financed 17,000 low income housing units. The state of California is not using its balance sheet well at all either in terms of, you know, producing low Cost finance to buy houses or producing what I would think of as sensible down payment assistance, both are doable. We cannot have a generation of Californians who believe they'll never be able to buy a house because that is, that is, you're taking away people's ability to build a life and build a family in the way that they want if they can't buy a house. I've been a renter, I've been a homeowner. I know the difference and I know that we have to make it possible. We do the five things I said. We are going to drop the cost of housing. We're going to drop the cost for rent, we're going to be able to build things again inexpensively or relatively inexpensively, and we're going to make it possible for people in California to deal with their biggest expense at the end of the month, which is housing, whether you're a renter or a homeowner.
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Aaron (Interviewer/Host)
Now, you mentioned where is the money coming from? Where is the money coming from for single payer? Because I think that's a policy that a lot of people. I mean, it's great in concept, but then you have the critics who say it's never actually going to happen because you can't actually afford it.
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Tom Steyer
So let me say this. Let's take a step back. First of all, if you look at where we are in California, health care is chewing us up. It's chewing up every family. And I can tell you that when I've gone out to people who are on strike, I say, what are you striking for? And they go like, I can't pay my health care. I literally cannot pay my health care costs for a family of three. It's one to two thousand dollars a month. We don't have it. It's chewing every family. It's also chewing up every business because to the extent that businesses are on the hook for healthcare, they don't have it. And lastly, it's chewing up the budget of the state of California. So when you say this is a nice idea, but it's hard to accomplish. True. But let me say this. We don't have a choice. And if you look at single payer overall, it costs half as much in the systems where it exists as what we're paying right now in California. Half. And it provides health care outcomes that are at least as good as the health care outcomes that we're getting in California. So when we think about single payer, do I think that there is going to be a need to work through the details I know there's going to be a need to work through the details and I understand that that's going to, you know, as I like to say, God is in the details. If you're going to set out to make a big change, you've got to be in the details because otherwise there'll be second order effects that will cause real pain and therefore you're going to. It's going to be a question of making sure we're taking care of everyone in the state. But overall, this state is paying twice as much as we need to pay. So when you say how are we going to finance, it's like, well, overall we're going to drop the cost by half. So let's be clear, there's money there. We're spending the money right now. And the question is, how do we make that? How do we work it through the system? And working through the system, God is in the details. But we can definitely do this. And we also, honestly, Aaron, we have to do this. If you watch how the budget is done in California, it's chewing up everything else. Health care has been inflating at least twice the cost of the rate of inflation for 50 years. And if you do that long enough, it chews you up. And it is chewing us up. And all of the things that people say, one, the private sector will save us. I believe that for a while. It's just not true. It isn't happening. They've been saying the exact same things that they're saying now they were saying 10 years ago or they say, well will pay for it out of waste, fraud and abuse in the system. I'll just say Doge did not work. It was a spectacular failure. And the former controller of the state of California who's in charge of the spending to make sure that everything is done right is a very good friend of mine named Betty Yee who's endorsed me. And I can tell you I don't want to use the number, but I know exactly who. What Betty thinks is available in waste, fraud and abuse. And it is not nearly enough to, you know, to solve the problems California has in terms of. Buddy.
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Aaron (Interviewer/Host)
Now, before I let you go, I want to ask you a question I asked all the other candidates running for governor and that's what does a Steyer administration look like in terms of working with the Trump administration? Is it going to be Newsom 2.0 and that you're punching back online every day, or is it going to be more of a collaborative kind of working relationship between the fifth Largest, sixth largest economy in the world and one of the largest.
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Tom Steyer
Fourth, fourth. I, you know, I, I don't understand how you cooperate with someone who's attacking you. And I think that, you know, Donald Trump has said that the people who didn't vote for him are his enemies. So to a very large extent, we are going to try and be as strong as possible. I'm going to stand up for the people of California every single day from harm, whether that's the ICE agents that he sends into our state, whether he's refusing to treat us equitably with the other states in terms of money, in terms of, you know, we have a 55. We still haven't gotten any money for the fires in Altadena and Pacific Palisades and it's well over a year. That's the slowest in history. Anything, you know, do I think when I watch him trying to attack. He's kicked 1 to 3 million people off Medi Cal. We'll find out next February how many. But he's kicked 1 to 3 million vulnerable people off their health insurance to pay for his lowering the tax rate on the richest Americans and the biggest companies. That is not a, that's not a cooperative situation. You know, you're saying to me, let me rephrase how I heard what you said, Aaron. Someone just punched you in the face. Are you going to talk it out? He's like, we're going to stand up for ourselves. I believe we have a completely different vision of democracy. He's obviously attempting to end democracy in the United States. I believe we have a different vision of liberty. He's clearly trying to control us. And I believe that we have a different vision of success both in terms of being able to succeed in compete internationally, create new businesses, create great value, put people to work. I think that the state of California is doing that in a way that no other state is doing. Absolutely, clearly. And I believe that we have a different vision of a shared prosperity. That in fact this is not a dog eat dog jungle. We're a community, we're a state. We stand up for each other and we bring everybody along. Those are very different values and those are the values that California stands for and that I stand for. And I believe our job is to succeed doing that and to resist people who attack us and to show the world that actually what we're doing is the democratic, liberty loving, nonviolent way to build a great society.
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Aaron (Interviewer/Host)
Tom Steyer, thanks for the time, Aaron.
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Tom Steyer
Thank you for having me.
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Aaron (Interviewer/Host)
Hey folks, thanks so much. For watching. Feel free to add this podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you watch for the latest breaking news and daily hits throughout the day. Make sure to follow subscribe. See you soon for more what would
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Tom Steyer
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Tom Steyer
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