myBurbank Talks
myBurbank Talks
Meet the Candidate: Dr. Alex Balekian, 30th District Congressional Candidate
Ever wondered how growing up in an Armenian immigrant household shapes a future Congressional candidate? Join us as Dr. Alex Balekian, a Glendale-born physician and Republican candidate, takes us through his fascinating journey from a high-achieving student who graduated high school at 16 to a respected pulmonologist and lung cancer researcher at USC. Dr. Balekian offers an eye-opening look into his shift from no-party preference to aligning with the Republican Party, fueled by his belief in the inefficacy of progressive policies and a vision for a fiscally responsible, socially moderate platform.
Dr. Balekian doesn't shy away from the tough issues, providing an in-depth analysis of homelessness, affordable housing, and mental health crises, advocating for comprehensive, multi-faceted strategies to address these challenges head-on. From reopening federal mental institutions to securing our borders against drug influxes, his proposals are both bold and pragmatic. We also unpack his perspectives on education reform, touching on the inefficiencies despite substantial funding, and the need for a return to core academic excellence to keep America competitive.
Shifting gears, Dr. Balekian's take on gun control, term limits, and immigration policy offers a fresh perspective on balancing humanitarian concerns with law enforcement. He emphasizes the need for a transparent immigration system, while also prioritizing the health, wealth, and security of American citizens. As we wrap up, Dr. Balekian shares his commitment to his constituents and his strategy to navigate political differences while remaining true to his values. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in understanding the complexities of modern American politics through the lens of a dedicated physician and aspiring lawmaker.
My Burbank Talks presents another episode of Meet the Candidate, the show where we invite anyone appearing on the Burbank ballot in the 2024 election to join us here and give our listeners a chance to learn about their background and the issues important to them. Now let's join our podcast.
Speaker 2:Hello Burbank, craig Schubert here with you once again and another Meet the Candidate podcast, and this one, I think, is a little more special. This time we're going way above our pay grade here and we're doing for a member of Congress. So this is for Adam Schiff's seat, who is now running for Senate, and his seat is now empty. So we have a wide open field. And so today we have Dr Alex Lincoln in, who is going to talk about his candidacy and his background and let you get to know him a little bit. And as always, you know me, I'm going to ask the tough questions. I think it's important to get to know who he is because, in all honesty, I don't know who he is, and these are questions that I want to know. So I think it's important that you also find out these things too. So I want to give you a little background on him first. He's from Glendale. He attended the Glendale Unified School District, so I guess that's a good thing. You know we're in Burbank, but you know we still like our Glendale people.
Speaker 2:Dr Blinken identifies as a proud Dukmasian Republican and has felt disenfranchised within his party for the last 20 years. He began the race as a no-party preference candidate but redesigned his campaign as a Republican two months later. We can ask him about that. Dr Blinken is a Glendale-born and raised physician is defining the GOP in Los Angeles County. He embodies characteristics not typically associated with contemporary Republican candidates Middle Eastern, the son of immigrants, pro-choice and never having run for public office before. He is also married to a man. Dr Blinken frames his campaign as a contest between progressives and non-progressives, rather than Democrats versus Republicans. He states. Progressive policies aren't working. My fiscally responsible, socially sane platform, prioritizing ideas over identity politics, will attract disenfranchised voters. Moderate Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans tired of extreme polarization in the two-party system Find that all very interesting, so let's get into some of that. So let's start off Number one. Dr Blink, thank you for coming today. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Thank you, Craig. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Well, we're glad to have you here. I mean, like I said, I'm very excited about this one. So you attended Glendale Unified School District, but it doesn't say much about that. Did you play any sports in school? Did you do any extra, quicker activities? Just a little about the first 18 years of your life, a little bit.
Speaker 3:Right. So it was actually the first 16 years of my life, so it answered your question. No, I definitely was not sporty. I graduated second in my class. I was 16 years old, so I was on that nerdy side of the spectrum rather than the sporty side of the spectrum. Um, yeah, born and raised and she's becoming a doctor. Yes, um.
Speaker 3:So yeah, born and raised in Glendale, grew up in an Armenian immigrant household. I was the first member of my extended family born here in the States and I went to Armenian school for the first six or seven grades because my parents wanted me to read and write Armenian, and then after that I went to Glendale Public Schools, first Toll Junior High School and then Hoover High School. Yeah, I was two years younger than everybody else, so I was kind of an anomaly. For that reason. I didn't really have many friends and I was just a bookworm and yeah. So I was 16 when I graduated, back when a public school education here in Southern California could actually get you into places like UCLA and then get you into medical school. So the inexorable decline that we've seen, at least with my high school, hoover High School, with the test scores, is something that I find regrettable and something that I am hoping that the school district will try to reverse.
Speaker 2:Do you think some of that is due to the culture in Glendale?
Speaker 3:I think it's all of the above. I think there has a lot to do with Armenian immigrant families. If you have parents who don't speak English, who are not fluent in English, they may not participate more with the kids, you know, helping them with their homework. That said, one of my first memories of childhood I was probably around three years old remember looking up at the fluorescent light bulbs in glendale college because my mother took me with her to english classes. So when I was growing up, my mother's command of the english language was definitely not fluent. Um, so it's not an uh but it's important.
Speaker 2:I think that she did work to try to learn the language and not just you know, know, I mean, and try to fit in, which I think is very important for any immigrant.
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and I that's what I say is one of my policies is to have comprehensive immigration reform where we actually have a transparent system. A transparent system that people kind of like applying for school or for a job. You are ranked, and so what things would we, would we be prioritizing? Well, we want industrious, skilled immigrants who are going to um, embrace our constitution and we're going to assimilate fully into life. So I'm going to hold you right there, cause we will get an immigration later.
Speaker 2:Sure, of course, I've got a lot of categories for you coming up here. Let's do this. I think it's important. Um, okay, so on the college, and you did you go. You said UCLA, I went to UCLA.
Speaker 3:I went to UCLA because I was 16 at the time, my mother said you were not living on campus, so I stayed at home for four years, um, so I never went to parties, frat parties, I never pledged anything. And then, when I was 20 and I got into medical school down in San Diego and I moved away and I was, you know, two hours away. That is when I really hit my kind of like party phase and stuff. So it was the timing was a bit off, as you know what it should have been, but I I kind of had my college experience in medical school.
Speaker 2:It's still good to go through that, though, because I think that you know that's a life experience, you know to see that entire culture of you know I mean you work hard Monday through, or Sunday through Thursday, and then Friday and Saturday nights. It's on.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and I learned how to surf when I was in San Diego, so that was an added benefit, an added bonus.
Speaker 2:It's a great community down there. Okay, so now you are a practicing doctor right now, right, so what's your specialty and are you working out of of a facility or hospital? Tell us a little about that, yeah.
Speaker 3:So, um, I've been a physician for 20 years now. I practice pulmonary and critical care medicine, so I'm triple boarded. I practice pulmonary medicine, so that means I'm a lung specialist. Um, I am also boarded in critical care, so I work in the intensive care unit. Life support people connected to machines, kind of people saw that or experienced it with the whole COVID pandemic, so that was me kind of putting on my space suit and going in there head first. I also practice internal medicine, so I'm a general internist if I need to be. I've worked as a hospitalist in a hospital, so I'm entirely hospital-based. I work at a couple hospitals here in Glendale and also up in the Bay Area, so I commute up and down couple hospitals here in Glendale and also up in the Bay Area, so I commute up and down.
Speaker 2:Oh okay, so that's a heavy schedule then. So if you do win the election, what happens to all that then? Do you get sabbatical or something, or do you walk away or do you still practice a little bit? What goes on next?
Speaker 3:Excellent question. So for the first 10 years of my career I was at USC, I was an academic pulmonologist, I did research in lung cancer, I taught at the medical school and then in 2019, I said okay, I just kind of want to change your pace and cleanse my palate. So I went into private practice. So I am kind of an endangered species. I am a solo practitioner with my own private practice, which nowadays you don't find many of those anymore and because of that I control my own schedule. So I have I staff an intensive care unit with a bunch of doctors and nurse practitioners up in the Bay Area and I control the scheduling. And so I work about eight days per month, plus two weekends a month.
Speaker 3:And what people don't realize is after Newt Gingrich and the Republicans took over Congress in 1994, they consolidated the votes over a 36-hour period. So people come in on a Tuesday morning, they vote on a Tuesday afternoon all day, wednesday and also Thursday morning, and then they are expected to go back to their constituents on Thursday evening. So Friday, saturday, sunday, monday of every week you are expected to be back in your home district. Sunday, monday of every week, you are expected to be back in your home district, and that facilitates me working as a physician, because with intensive care it's more shift work when you're on, you're on, and when you're not on, you're not on. So it's something that I will still be able to do and I want to do, because that is how I will keep my finger on the pulse of my community and also of being a small business owner.
Speaker 2:I always have thought it's been a. If you look how that's all set up and going back to your district, well you know, if you live on the East Coast you're commuting half an hour an hour, whatever, back and forth. But those of us on the West Coast you're talking about, you know three, four hour flights in each direction at each time, which takes up a good. You know that takes a lot of time in itself just flying back and forth. So I think that's you know. People in the East Coast don't realize the sacrifice our politicians make on the West Coast to be in their districts as much as they are.
Speaker 3:But there's also politicians who don't make that sacrifice and there are people who are not present within their district, and I think a good example is somebody like maxine waters mad max, they call her. She has been representing inglewood for close to 40 years now. She doesn't live in inglewood, um. And so there are those people who are just kind of career politicians, who have made a life out of living off of other people's tax dollars and aren't necessarily beholden to their constituents. They spend more time with the lobbyists in Washington, and I would like to reverse that trend and I think we need to bring back the idea of the citizen legislator and we need to erase from our minds this politician right. I don't think a politician should exist. It should be somebody who is part of the citizenry, part of the community, a small business owner who knows what it's like to work on a budget and have to pivot with the economy, for example, going poorly, rather than somebody who says, oh, I've been in a lifetime of public service, what exactly is that public service?
Speaker 2:Well, you just said I don't want to be a politician, you know. But let's get into the I said we'd talk about a little later. You were an independent. Now I am actually an independent voter. I I will go on the record, I'm a. I'm a registered Democrat because I registered when I was 18 years old and didn't know the difference really back then, never really changed it, but I've always voted independently. I have voted Republican, I voted Democrat. I think it's the man or the woman, not the, you know, not the party.
Speaker 3:I agree.
Speaker 2:My dad was the opposite. If you, he was a strict Republican and you had the R next to your name, you got the vote no matter what, but I've always thought the best person gets the vote so independent. But yet you went from independent and became a Republican. Now, what was the reason for that? Why didn't you make that decision? Was it because of you were trying to get more votes on that side and saw you're running against all these Democrats and you stand out more as Republican? Are you identifying more with the party right now? Why did you go Republican?
Speaker 3:So a lot to unpack there. But I grew up in an Armenian household in California in the 80s. You could not be Armenian in California in the 80s and not be Republican, because your uncle, george, george Duke Magian, was running the state. And I remember when I was in Armenian school there was one busload of kids every year that would go up to Sacramento to see him, our Uncle George right, it was usually the older kids in eighth and ninth grade, so I would always get passed over, but they would take up your picture and they put in the yearbook. So it was this big thing. So I grew up in a Republican household and at the time what did that mean? It meant exactly what George Duke Mason stood for public safety, stay out of my bank account, stay out of my personal life, and that is what I firmly believe. And that is the immigrant experience.
Speaker 3:Where you come to this country, usually you've been uprooted because you don't want to leave your home of. You know, my father was 41 years old when he had to uproot himself. He was born and raised in Baghdad and when Saddam and the Baathist revolution happened he was 41. I think to myself, god, if I had to hit the reset button at 41, right, I'm 45 now, just four years ago. If I just had to just leave everything and start over, what would I do? So, even if I'm having a bad day, I think that pales in comparison sacrifices our parents have made, right? And so they came here and what he did was the man was a trained engineer, but he didn't come here with his licensing, his degree. So what did he do? He found a. He leased a fried chicken shop in san fernando back when san fernando in the in the 70s was just gang territory, um, and it was very cheap because it was, you know, gang territory. And he leased a chicken joint, fried chicken joint, and made that work until he could get his general contractor's license.
Speaker 3:But that business friendly, be able to redefine yourself, reset yourself, free of regulations, free of the government stepping in, and the harder you work, the more you can make of yourself, the more you can build of your dream and you're not going to get taxed to death. That is what this country meant to my parents and it still means to me, and at the time the Republican party reflected those values and that is why I grew up as a Republican. And not to say that welfare doesn't have its place, but it's a a safety net. You weren't supposed to be dependent upon things like welfare. If you were down on your luck, yes, you could rely on it, but you know personal responsibility, rugged individualism, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. That is what I grew up with and that is what I stand for.
Speaker 3:And then since so now I'm I'm a disenfranchised republican because, especially since 20 sorry, with the Bush-Cheney years my party of fiscal responsibility and smaller government became the party of invading and bombing other countries, running up our national debt by opening up several theaters of war, and that was not something that I wanted. So for the last 20 years I've been a disenfranchised Republican and so when I made this run, I said OK, I'm going to run as an independent because neither party speaks for me. Neither party in its current state speaks for me. I disagree with the two party system. I think it unnecessarily divides us and the moderate 80 percent of us in the middle dilutes our power because it makes us choose red or blue, r or D, and in that way the powers that be are able to kind of distract us and get done what they're going to get done.
Speaker 2:That's very well said, by the way, and I do totally agree with that Right Huge problem right now in our country.
Speaker 3:Huge and so, but what we found out within three months is no name, no party, no support, going nowhere. So I said, ok, I dislike the two party system, but if I'm going to change the game, I have to play the game. And it was disingenuous of me to register as a democrat, because I've never been a democrat, and I said, okay, I'm going to be a disenfranchised republican. I'm going to be very explicit by being a disenfranchised republican. And the support from the GOP has not been full-throated, and that's fine, because when I get to Congress I won't owe anything to anyone, except for my constituents here.
Speaker 2:Do they think that this is because Adam Schiff's seat and he's a very strong Democrat and very popular here and, by the way, he's done a great job and we see him at every event in the city of Burbank, every time, and he's always. He'll stay, he'll talk to people. Good man, Do you think that the Republicans just figured we can't win that district, so we're not going to even care about it and you're on your own, Is that?
Speaker 3:how you feel. That's exactly what it is, and they've said that explicitly. And they said this is not a something that's on our radar. You're on your own kid. That is fine, because it's great, because when we have this victory, it will belong to us completely and that is why and again, proof positive right Everybody said, oh, there's a safe Dem on Dem race. It's 54% Democrat. Everybody said, oh, there's a safe Dem on Dem race, it's 54% Democrat. There are going to be two Democrats. It's going to be two of the four Laura Friedman, assemblywoman. Anthony Portantino, state Senator. Mike Feuer, former city attorney and former assemblyman. Or Nick Melvoin, current LAUSD board member, and especially, because they out-raised this 15 to 1.
Speaker 2:Well, I also think the two LA people didn't resonate in non-LA places and this district is more non-LA than LA, so I think they didn't really have a chance. I also see the fact that in many races a Republican did make it to the runoff and I wonder, you know, if the Democrats kind of orchestrated that, figuring they had a better chance of winning with a Democrat versus Republican when it was a one-on-one election for the general. So you kind of wonder you know what goes on behind the scenes sometimes.
Speaker 3:They. To my knowledge, they did not orchestrate it. And I'll tell you why because I hear through the grapevine that Anthony Portantino is still supremely angry at me and the Armenians. He's supremely angry at me for derailing his candidacy and he's supremely angry at the Armenians for what he sees as a betrayal of him.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, people vote the way they see they should vote. I'm sorry to hear that, because he is a good man, a Burbank resident too. But hey, you know things happen. Let's get into some topics. Let's do it. Okay, we're going to start off with homelessness and affordable housing. You can have. I went to your website and I pulled a bunch of your talking points off, but I didn't go look at them because I wanted to talk to you about it. Sure, I don't want to be predisposed to anything. So I put homelessness and affordable housing together, okay, as a topic. Um, homelessness is a big buzzword nowadays. You know, in california it's. It's a huge thing. I don't know how big of a thing is another in other states, you know. And of course, you got to work with a bunch of other congressmen across the country. But throwing money it seems that at homelessness is not the solution, because— Not, if you ask Laura Friedman.
Speaker 2:Well, measure H came along years ago and Burbank gets I think it's 5% of the money they put into it and we're having to pull money out of our general funds to pay for our own homeless stuff here because we don't get the—we put $10 million in and we get back $200,000, which is ridiculous, and a lot of the money that's going into homelessness now can't be accounted for.
Speaker 3:Evaporated to thin air.
Speaker 2:They don't know where it went. Millions and millions of dollars, you know, billions.
Speaker 3:Billions 25 billion at last clip.
Speaker 2:So what are your thoughts? Because homelessness, I think, is more of a regional issue than it is a national issue, to a point. So what's your thoughts and what can you do to help California in that situation, you think?
Speaker 3:So I would actually wholeheartedly disagree with you. The fact that we haven't solved it so far is because we think that it's a regional issue and it is absolutely a national issue. And I'm going to tell you my centerpiece legislation. So I'm going to separate homelessness from affordable housing. Okay, because the homeless population about, I would say, a quarter to a third of it are people who are truly down on their luck, living out of their cars like have no money. So that is a completely separate population than the other two-thirds, which is mental illness, schizophrenia, drug addiction. So I'm going to I'm going to split those two apart because we've treated the entirety of the homeless population as an affordable housing issue and we've thrown money and thrown money and thrown money and has been fixed. Why? Because the majority the boulders, not the pebbles. The boulders are not a housing issue, it's a mental health issue. These people cannot take care of themselves. If you put them in a house, how are they going to take care of the house? So I, as a physician, am uniquely qualified to say okay, this is a mental health issue. We need to diagnose the mental illness, we need to diagnose the drug addiction. We need to take care of them first, and then everything else will logically follow. So I'm going to take out, we're going to put a pin in the affordable housing part of it. Okay, and the people who are down on their luck, because those people they don't live in the tent cities, they don't want to be out on the street, they live in their car. If they can find a shelter they'll go over there. They don't have problems with drug addiction, it's usually something else that's happened. Let's say, they had an illness and they lost their job, or they got unexpectedly pregnant and now they have an extra mouth to feed Um and mom cannot go to work because now she has a baby to take care of. So it's those things where it's a life event and not necessarily mental illness or drug addiction. So we're going to put a pin in that. So how would I solve this?
Speaker 3:From Congress, three things. Number one reopen the federal mental institutions, the ones that we know had abuses. We've learned from them in the past. There are severely mentally ill people with schizophrenia yelling at the sky. They're hallucinating those people. They lack medical capacity. They need to be hospitalized. They need to be put on medications whatnot to get them better. Once they are better and they have medical capacity again, they can tell what and wrong.
Speaker 3:Then we say, okay, where is your family? Let's find your family. Let's reunite you with your family, because family support for mental illness means that you have fewer outbreaks, for example, of your schizophrenia or bipolar. Similarly, the people who are drug addicted they don't have schizophrenia, um, they are drug addicted and their drug addiction is so powerful that it preempts their ability to hold down a job, hold down steady income, put a roof over their heads. Those people who live in the tent cities disband the tent cities. That is not their family. Find their families, ask them where did you go to high school? Most of these people they so 40% of California homeless are not from California, although they were here immediately before they went homeless. They were couch surfing for a very long time, originated from out of state and then came over here.
Speaker 2:That's why I call it a regional issue, because you're not going to find the homeless in Minnesota and other cold weather states. You're just not going to find it.
Speaker 3:Correct. But so if you're going to be transporting those people across state lines back to their families, then you need to pair them with federal dollars so that their home states and their home counties can then construct rehab beds for them to be treated.
Speaker 2:You see, the return to their place of origin, basically where they might have a support system Correct, because family is the number one predictor of sobriety in drug addiction.
Speaker 3:Family-based counseling is superior to non-family based counseling and again, I as a physician know this from the medical literature. And the final thing, and this is where federally needs to happen, the drugs, the drugs are coming from our ports, they're coming from the southern border. We know that there's Chinese fentanyl that's coming, being assembled in Mexico. There's also crystal meth. There was, maybe about two weeks ago, a drug bust with 5,000 pounds of crystal meth disguised ridiculously as watermelons. I don't know if you saw those. So although the one before then which was disguised as zucchini, like the pale green zucchini, that kind of looked like it could pass, but 5,000 pounds of crystal meth, all of this fentanyl that's coming if you're not securing the border.
Speaker 3:So I say, fund the police, fund Customs and Border Protection. Do you know that when our local cops, when our sheriffs, they find somebody with a drug bust and it's suspected that they've come from across the border, they are forbidden, forbidden from speaking to or cooperating with customs and border control? Why? Because california is a sanctuary state. My opponent, laura freeman, has passed legislation that actively makes it difficult for our local police and sheriff's deputies to communicate with customs and border control. If there's a drug bust, if we suspect that this has come illegally over, for our local police and sheriff's deputies to communicate with Customs and Border Control.
Speaker 3:If there's a drug bust, if we suspect that this has come illegally over the Southern border, it's just catch and release. Why? Because of people, progressive politics like Laura Friedman, who have made these laws. So it's really about public safety and that's what I stand for. And she is a threat to public safety. And we are not going to make the public safe from the mentally ill homeless, from the drug addicted homeless who are just desperate and are going to rob somebody just so they can get their next fix, unless we buck these progressive policies Driven by the founder of the Progressive Caucus, laura Friedman, that are threatening our public safety.
Speaker 2:OK, and I think these are all great. I agree, you told me this was going to be hard.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, well, it is.
Speaker 2:But I think it's hard questions, but I think you have answers, which is good. So throw the affordable housing in now too Sure, because we did put that down too. So that's not affordable housing. Because a lot of times, state rules, like like in Burbank, have created havoc here. Yes, in our, you know, in our community, and it's it shouldn't be one size fits all Right, which is what they've done. So what are your thoughts on affordable housing and how can you not force cities, but how can you encourage cities?
Speaker 3:So there are five things which lead into how much you pay for your housing. So number one is the interest rate on the loan, number two is the property tax on the dwelling, number three is the insurance and upkeep for the dwelling, number four is the utilities gas and electricity. And then number five is the profit that the landlord puts on it. So again just to recap the interest rate on the loan, the property tax on the dwelling, the insurance and upkeep of the home, the cost of those. Number four is the utilities gas and electric. And then number five is the profit that the landlord puts. The government has control over the first four. So the interest rates nationally. If our government is spend spend spending $35 trillion in debt, a dollar isn't worth that much anymore. We have inflation. That's why interest rates go up. So it is governmental actions that lead to that increase.
Speaker 3:Number two property taxes. My opponent, laura Friedman, in order to generate more money that she can waste on homeless housing, has authored Prop 5. Prop 5 will increase property taxes on homes, will increase the rents on the rental places, will increase the prices of the stores that you go to, because those store owners now have to pay higher property taxes, right. So she's. Whatever. Doesn't matter what the question is, her answer is always going to be let's raise taxes and spend more money. Number three insurance. Number three insurance. It's costly to build and repair here. Why? Simply because if you have high starting minimum wages Gas If it takes a certain price of gas to transport lumber from Home Depot to your house, the contractor is going to fold that in. So if gas prices are high, it's going to increase how much it's going to cost to fix your home. Finally, number four utilities electricity. I don't know about you, but in Glendale electricity rates went up by 70% last month. They're going to go over the next two years up 200%.
Speaker 2:We've had raises here in Burbank too, right For infrastructure purposes.
Speaker 3:Yes, exactly, gwp sets those. It's the government that sets those. So when people talk about high cost of living, 80% of those factors four out of the five is in the lap of our elected officials, laura Friedman. Now, when they want to say okay, landlord, you can't raise the rent, you can make the landlord's profit zero. Go ahead, make it zero. Okay, what is that landlord going to do? That landlord is going to stop upkeeping your apartment. So more regulations, like my opponent Laura Freeman and her progressive posse have done, have not resulted in improved cost of living. In fact, it's been quite the opposite in improved cost of living. In fact, it's been quite the opposite. So I'm here as a civilian to say these are where the problems lie. But it's not politically expedient for them to say the truth. So that's why they incorrectly vilify landlords as these evil land barons who are trying to squeeze the people dry.
Speaker 2:We're going through that in Burbank right now and I don't know if either one has an easy answer, because I think the landlords have great points and the renters have great points, so we're going to see what that all shakes out. But that's a tough subject. Let's move into education. You kind of touched on it before that education is becoming worse and worse. I think our country is dumb, dumbing down, as they say. You know, um, uh, where other countries you know your china's and places like that are. You know they? They go after things. Um, where do you? What would you do to change, to fix our education system? Because our public schools that's public schools. It's not our teachers, it's not the teachers, but our system, education system, public system is not serving our needs as a country and on our students and challenging anymore. So what are your thoughts?
Speaker 3:there, the unions, the teachers unions, are the problems. I'll just go ahead and say it California spends about $24,000 per pupil per year and Texas, I think, is about $12,000 or $14,000 per pupil per year. So we have high cost, low value education. Where does that money go? Prop 2 is a bond measure because they've not been keeping up with the schools, repairing them, et, etc. And they want to increase our property taxes to pay for that. We have plenty of money being thrown onto the bonfire of our California education system and so they just need to be more judicious, expeditious with our money, rather than us throwing more money at the problem.
Speaker 3:And you just look at charter schools. There's been an explosion of charter schools, private schools. There are these ridiculously long wait lists for Armenian private schools. So when I went to private school, my parents sent me because they wanted me to learn Armenian. But seventh grade they said okay, now you need to go to an American school, because nobody's going to take an Armenian school seriously. You need to go to the American school so that you can get places. That is why I went into public schools. Now it's quite the opposite, because now you have these private schools that are kind of the bastions. Why? Because the unions don't have that much of a reach in those schools and that is where the money is being frittered away.
Speaker 3:And my whole point is we need to focus on making our kids educated, innovative Americans. Right Back in our glory days in the 60s and 70s, with the space race, math and science were key and we needed to put a man on the moon, and that is what drove everything and that is what drove our innovation. Now you have the likes of Taiwan, china, india. They're the ones innovating. What I tell people is in 2023, california tech companies applied for and received 40,000 foreign worker visas because they couldn't find that tech talent at home.
Speaker 3:And there's this. You know, people call me my one of my city council members called me an anti-LGBT, magafied extremist because I spoke out against our school districts. Now I'll give the example of LAUSD. Lausd has a curriculum that they call queer all year and their math, their test scores are worse than Glendale's test scores. I say why can't you have math all month, right, um, and so why can't you have multiplication Mondays? Why, if why, can we not just focus on the basics so that we make marketable, innovative students? And again, I'm not anti-LGBT. I, as a gay man, as a closeted student, I am a success because my teachers didn't focus on affirming my identity. They focused on affirming my IQ and then I became a happy, well-adjusted, confident, successful adult. Because I had those skills, because I was a leader, and that is what schools should be there for is academic excellence, and unless we're churning out the truth, experts, um, that are not being, you know, run circles around by the Chinese and the Indians. Until we're doing that, we shouldn't be focusing on much else.
Speaker 2:Well, I think, uh, once again, great points. I'm going to move on and saying it's probably very near and dear to you, but you'll caveat to this, and that's healthcare, yes, but as a Republican now I'm going to say the A word abortion. Okay, you know, reproductive rights. The Republican Party has kind of stuck their foot in their mouth a little on that and it's become a huge issue in the country. But you seem to have a different approach. So why don't you talk about how you feel about all that?
Speaker 2:Right, this is so yeah, we're talking about health care and about abortion rights and all that too. So what is yours?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I will start with abortion rights. Gay marriage, abortion stay out of it. That is not the government's position. That is not my position, even though I disagree with you. That is not the government's position. That is not my position, even though I disagree with you. I say that the home, the household, is the ultimate unit of governance, the primary unit of governance, and you have control over your own household and the government. Be damned.
Speaker 2:And that is why I'm a disenfranchised Republican. So if Roe versus Wade was the law for most of our lifetimes and they were vote to bring that back Now, would you vote for that? Or would you say I'm not going to vote for that because I went? I want to have no rules at all. I mean, what, what, what's your? How are you going to come down on that?
Speaker 3:So my, I prefer no rules at all. I may, I'm essentially a libertarian. So what I say is nobody should come between the patient-doctor relationship, nobody should insert themselves into the doctor-patient relationship, and I believe that fewer laws are better, because you will create unintended loopholes and unintended red tape. So the example that I give is okay. So let's say, says Alex, would you vote for an constitutional amendment that says abortion? So, roe v Wade, right, they said essentially it's legal until the point of fetal viability. And me, I'm an intensive care physician, right, I connect people to life support, adults to life support. A child who's 26 weeks, you know, in when connected life support, it is a 70% chance of life. So if you're in the third trimester, I personally think if there's nothing wrong with mom, nothing wrong with baby and the child at 26 weeks, it is medically unethical. And I think that we as physicians should have this code of ethics and say okay, are you sure you can't? You know, talk about this, but don't get in that patient doctor relationship. Don't you have that in? Do no harm, correct, you have that in. Do no harm. Precisely so, number one do no harm. And number two patient autonomy shall never be violated. So when people say, my body, my choice, whether with abortion or whether with vaccine mandates, I would say yes, I agree, because I took an oath to do no harm and also not violate patient autonomy.
Speaker 3:And what I find is a lot of people just focus on, okay, pro-life, pro-choice. I say that we should focus more on prevention. I would prefer prevention rather than punishment. If we can get better access to family planning to women and we have them have fewer unexpected pregnancies, I, as a, would go for that, and some women also.
Speaker 3:When they get pregnant unexpectedly, it's not that they don't want the child. They say, oh my gosh, I don't have childcare, I'm not gonna be able to juggle this with my job or with my school. And if somebody says, oh well, here's a way to have affordable childcare, would you now want to have this child? And now that you're better able to juggle this and a lot of women will say, oh, yes, I would prefer this.
Speaker 3:So I want to steer people away from that dichotomy of abortion or no abortion and I want to say there's 2 million yearly opportunities of prevention that are missed because there are 2 million unexpected pregnancies in this country every year, 1 million of which and an abortion and 1 million of which end in abortion and one million of which are carried to term and cause upheaval of life in whatever way they're going to. But if those two million pregnancies were unplanned, I say those are two million opportunities of prevention that we missed. And I would rather focus on making widespread availability of birth control, making more widespread sex education, so younger kids they know exactly, you know, what's safe and not unsafe sex. So that is how I prefer to look at it. But in the end, government should stay out of it. I firmly believe in that.
Speaker 2:Okay, and also health care. Yep, you know the Obama or Affordable Care Act is under attack by the Republicans and we're going to abolish it. We're gonna get rid of it All. They've never presented a plan to replace it with, but they just want to get rid of it because it's not theirs. So what happens when, let's say, mr Trump wins the election and says we're going to cancel that? And where do you come down on that?
Speaker 3:My whole thing is don't get rid of plan a if you already don't have plan B fleshed out Right. This is not something that we're going to go by the seat of our pants. We've never seen a plan B Correct. So if we can get a better plan B, then I say OK, then let's nix plan A and go to plan B.
Speaker 3:Are there things about the Affordable Care Act that I don't like? Absolutely? The biggest thing that I don't like, and a lot of people don't know about, is that doctors were forbidden from owning and running hospitals In order to get the hospital lobby backing the bill and not to kill it. They said we don't want to compete with doctor-owned hospitals. Why Doctors who run hospitals? I know where all the inefficiencies are. I know exactly how we can change things to make things better. I don't need somebody, an administrator, in the C-suite telling me what's going to work or not, right? So physician-run hospitals get better outcomes with fewer resources. But then that was next. So since the Affordable Care Act was passed, doctors have been forbidden from owning or running hospitals. The ones who existed grandfathered in. So that is one big piece that I, as a physician, would change, because physicians can run hospitals more efficiently than administrators can, but other things. So it's great to say, okay, we want to expand health coverage to everybody, universal health coverage, yes, I would love that.
Speaker 3:There are good ways and bad ways of doing that. For example, here in California they just extended Medi-Cal to almost a million illegal immigrants, but they didn't increase the number of doctors, nurse practitioners to see those patients. So, yes, you're going to pat yourself on the back for giving a million immigrants somebody who just came across two weeks ago full health coverage, but the existing Californians who are low income. So if you have more patients to see but you didn't increase the number of doctors, your wait times will increase, your mammogram will be delayed, your colonoscopy will delay, your cancer screening tests will be delayed and then that will translate downstream to higher cancer deaths. How exactly did we serve the greater good of the population? We didn't. I, as a physician, know I am intimately aware and uniquely qualified to know where the inefficiencies are and how to fix this. The problem is we as physicians tend not to advocate for themselves, but I want to change that when I get to Congress.
Speaker 2:I agree with the fact there's, but that's okay. Let's say we increase the amount of doctors, yep, then are you for the extra, the immigrants all getting medicare also, or medical I mean also, if we increase the amount of doctors?
Speaker 3:so public health is getting the greater, getting the greatest good for the population with as few resources as possible. So if doing so costs more money and it's going to cause more debt, then no, I'm not in favor of that. We need to prioritize where we're going to do things. But also, again, I'm very fiercely anti-lobbyist, anti-big pharma, anti-hospital corporations, anti-insurance companies. They are dominating the conversation and they can do so because their lobbyists have their claws inside these career politicians. Laura Friedman, for example, has owned six figures in Pfizer stock at least for the last 10 years since she's been in the Glendale City Council. I've never owned pharmaceutical stock. So those kinds of anti-corruption things that will get these large big players I'm not going to say out of the conversation entirely, because they still need to be involved, but they've dominated it. And the people on the ground, the doctors and the patients, their voices have been drowned out or snuffed out entirely, and I think that's wrong and that is why we need a complete overhaul and I think something like term limits, for example, would go help that tremendously.
Speaker 2:We're going to bounce off the wall again. Okay, and for people, we're going to go long on this podcast than usual, because I think the issues are important and I think you know, hearing what he has to say is very important also. So if you're listening out there, sit back and relax. I think it's going to continue to stay. Interesting Transportation Now that once again it might be more regional than national, but California. We're dealing with high-speed rail right now and we're putting billions of dollars.
Speaker 3:What high-speed rail.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, and we get a lot of money from the federal government. How do you feel about transportation, especially in LA, where we're so glued to our cars and everything else here? Are there any simple solutions? Not simple solutions, but what do you see about transportation in general? Transportation in general, by the way. That was not on your website, by the way, correct, that's.
Speaker 3:that's a trick question by me no, that that's great and I'm I'm happy to talk about that and we can just kind of break it down into things. So there is, for example, local transportation, which is walking and bicycling. Bike lanes right now are a huge hot topic in glendale hollywood and west hollywood because these road diets and lanes of traffic that have been taken away.
Speaker 2:We're going down Burbank right now.
Speaker 3:Yes, with our BRT system on all of yes to put in bike lanes, and I'll come back to that. But let's go top to this high-speed train. So the high-speed train. So LA to San Francisco. That route is the busiest route in the country. It's the busiest flight route in the country. La to San Francisco. And when I say LA, like LA, burbank, ontario airports, and then you have, you know, san Jose, oakland, southern California, northern California.
Speaker 3:Correct, we're a big state though? Yes, and that is the busiest corridor, if you look at somebody like the French, and they have their TGV, their high-speed bullet train. Those trains have to be on rail like straight, straight rail to be able to achieve those speeds of 280 miles an hour. You're not going to be able to achieve those unless you have an uninterrupted straight line, no curves across swaths of land. So you're going to have to do eminent domain across different properties. That is a big deal and, like I said, the French. But it's been nationalized.
Speaker 3:So whatever farmland it went through, they went ahead and claimed as eminent domain and then they went ahead and reimbursed the people who owned it. So we need to ask ourselves is this something that people would use often and just kind of do a cost benefit analysis of it? But as it stands now, this pie in the sky, dream of this train it's not happening. It's not happening at all. Why? Because you have the exact opposite of him in a domain where you're having all these people who are. These are usually affluent people who don't want the train going through their neighborhood, for example, and are suing on behalf. Yes.
Speaker 3:And they're suing on behalf of a minnow that's in some creek. So, again, this is government red tape. California has a lot of red tape and this is not something easy to fix. Um, yeah, so that's the. That's what I'm going to say on on the train. So it's a very complex issue. I think the way that we're going about it is difficult. I think either we suck it up and say, okay, we're going to do imminent domain, we're not. We're going to make a real straight line from union station all the way up to you, the bart station and sfo, um, and you know there's not going to be anybody who can sue for environmental stuff. We are going to reimburse the people, um, whose land it goes through threefold, whatever it's worth, we're going to do it and and that's it.
Speaker 2:Um, that is probably how you would have to do it it's just amazing that we are supposed to be the greatest country in the world but yet we can't get high-speed rail, and it's all across Europe. Like I said, people, they just do it. They don't sit there and play politics with it, they just do it. And we can't do that here, which I find amazing at times.
Speaker 3:It's because the individual can put a stop to the entire machine. It's like the filibuster An individual can do that, and so that's what makes us uniquely American, because no other country has the filibuster. So it's the analog to the filibuster, but more local things. Right with transportation. My opponent, the bike lane lady, we'll call her she is pushing through in Sacramento a bill that will not only mandate bicycle lanes in every city in the state but will also expedite them as a quick build which will bypass the normal public comment period, and then the city will just go ahead and insert it and the public comment period will be for a year to five years after that to see if they want to keep it or reverse it. Not a very efficient way of doing things. But you know, she says we got to get people out of their cars. We need to make it. We need to stop making it so easy for people to park everywhere and drive everywhere.
Speaker 3:I would love it if I was privileged enough that my home and my place of work were separated by a leisurely 20 minute bicycle ride. I would love that, or even a bus ride, or even a bus ride. But that doesn't exist. So even if you built the best bike lanes in the world. My commute is longer than that. I wouldn't be able to bicycle Bus lanes, sorry. Buses Comes back to public safety and homeless. Right now, our buses, our metros, they are mobile mental institutions. You have a better than average chance of getting stabbed and killed on LA Metro than actually getting to your place of work unscathed. And the first step is don't put the cart before the horse. Don't build your bus lanes, because people aren't going to ride the buses if they're still crazy people on the buses. And what you need to do is first fix the homeless problem and then people will naturally gravitate.
Speaker 3:Laura Friedman says if you just let me shove these bike lanes down your throat, I am sure you would enjoy the taste. And they say if you build it, they will come. And if we give subsidies to electric stuff, people will build it. What I say is what government subsidy did you receive to buy your smartphone? You didn't, I didn't.
Speaker 3:Smartphones exploded in popularity. Why? Because they were a good idea and people naturally adopted them without being forced to do so. So if there is a good idea, people will naturally gravitate towards it. And I say fix the homeless problem, get the homeless problem off the bus. I would love to sit and have somebody drive me so that I could read, but I don't want to have to look out of the corner of my eye at that crazy person, you know, mumbling to himself. I don't know if he's got a weapon or not or if he has any self-restraint. I don't want that danger. It's all about public safety, and once you clean up that threat to public safety, then people will naturally gravitate towards something that will become a good idea.
Speaker 2:I think it's evident. I still think it's convenience. If you ever go on a Google Maps and you need to go somewhere in the right directions and it gives you by car or by bus, by walking, walking, and it's 15 to 18 minutes in a car, but an hour and 45 minutes to two hours and a half on a bus, right, why would you want to take a bus and go two and a half hours in each? That's five hours, just to you know. Say, hey, I'm taking public transportation. Until they make public transportation convenient for people, like the subway in new york, yeah, what's the motivation for people to get rid of their cars? Because it's just, you don't have that kind of time in a day.
Speaker 3:But that's also. It's this european romanticization that americans have and everything's better, right, you fall in love while you're on your vacation. It's your summer love. You go over there. I. I rode the metro in Paris and it was great, it was convenient.
Speaker 3:Paris is a two mile wide circle, two miles. The greater Parisian area is six miles. A couple million people put into that. Okay, glendale to Burbank is about six miles, right, yeah, so these are densely packed areas with everything that you need in those areas.
Speaker 3:But once you get out of Paris, if you go to Provence or you go to Nice, they have no subways. People drive their cars, because that's just how it's built. So, yes, in downtown LA, if you want to make it dense, a metropolis and have buses and metros going to places, sure. But it's a fallacy that a bedroom community, a less dense community like Burbank or Glendale or Salon de Honga, is going to be able to be fit into that box. I think it's this European romantization that doesn't occur outside of the big cities into that box. I think it's this european romantization that doesn't occur outside of the big cities holland, I am um amsterdam, berlin, london and paris. Right, it doesn't. You go to harlem, dutch harlem. They don't have metros there, right? So it's just, it's it's this artificial romantization that occurs, that I think that they're trying to artificially apply here.
Speaker 2:Okay, we open another box now. Sure, okay, let's do it. Well, we, we, we talk.
Speaker 3:Dodger's exhausted.
Speaker 2:I put him to sleep all the time talking. Let's well we. We tackle Roe versus Wade, so let's get another hot, hot button topic. Once again, it is a huge contrast between Republicans and Democrats, and that's on gun control. Yep.
Speaker 2:We just had another incident of a school shooting, and I do agree, you know, the guns aren't killing people, it's the people who have the guns who are killing people. I get all that, but in Burbank we had 14 gun shops in a five-mile square Number one the most gun shops in square miles in the world. It's easy to get guns, especially assault rifles. And why do we need assault rifles? I mean, I just I don't get it. I love the Second Amendment. I think I'm not trying to change it, but just sometimes it doesn't make sense to me. So the republicans are, I don't want to say, pro guns, but they're also kind of in the nra's pocket and where democrats keep trying to pass gun legislation and ban assault weapons, and it's just it. It's just they're colliding. So let's have your thoughts on it. Sure.
Speaker 3:Um, I'm a physician, I'm a statistician, I'm a math geek, so I like to look at the numbers. There are 40,000 gun deaths in this country every year. 600 of them about one and a half percent are due to assault rifles. Of them, about 1.5% are due to assault rifles. So if you snapped your fingers and got rid of assault rifles, 98.5% of gun deaths would still occur. So 39,400 gun deaths would still occur.
Speaker 3:So it's a politically expedient topic that will get nothing tangible done for the greater good of public health. And we've proven that because if you look at the gun death rate from before and after the expiration of the Clinton assault weapon ban that happened during the Bush years W the rate of gun deaths didn't change. Why? Because it's one and a half percent. So again, talking about the boulders versus the pebbles. So yes, they grab news headlines, but just over half, almost 60%, of gun deaths every year are from older white men who kill themselves with their pistols, their legal pistols. That is a mental health problem. A lot of those men are veterans. They're legal pistols. That is a mental health problem. A lot of those men are veterans. A lot of those men are widowers. It is a mental health problem. Banning assault weapons is not going to change that, even if you ban guns.
Speaker 2:So there are, you know, in, but it was this the assault weapons are used more in mass shootings than just a typical handgun Although they do use handguns at times but assault weapons are a cause in most mass shootings in the schools and other places though.
Speaker 3:So the data does not support that. So as far as mass shootings, so the majority of mass shootings, which is defined as four people, not the gunman being shot, okay, the majority of mass shootings are done with pistols, semi-automatic pistols. So, for example, you go to chicago on labor day weekend and they said there were six shootings, you know, over the weekend. Those are done by easily concealable glocks that these kids, these youth, they just kind of put in their pant waistband and then they just go out and shoot. So again, numbers, let's deal honestly in numbers. So people focus on the assault weapons because it's serves their political purposes, but me, as a services researcher, it doesn't move the needle.
Speaker 3:As far as gun deaths, so again, the mental health problem. Older white men, we are forgetting about them. The remaining ones are going to be young, primarily black men who get their guns illegally and perpetrate their shootings. So they're already skirting the gun laws. More gun laws they will skirt. So how are we going to prevent those? And it's not an easy task. But again, the solution for these longstanding problems doesn't lie where you're looking. It lies, far from it. The homelessness issue is not a housing issue, it's a mental health issue. The gun death issue. It's a mental health issue and an education issue. We need to go into these inner cities. We need to make sure these young men and the young women who have these young men as babies get educated, because educated people have gainful employment. People with gainful employment are less likely to commit crimes, and that's how you solve that.
Speaker 2:I've never heard the stats on assault weapons and deaths before. I find that very interesting. I'm still not convinced that taking away assault weapons is not a good idea, even if it saves only 2,000 lives a year, because that's 2,000 lives. But it just seems like we always hear about an assault weapon on these big mass shootings. So I'm still a proponent of getting rid of assault weapons. But I think you have some good points there and, like I say, the whole idea of this is to share and to learn, and I may disagree with you, but I respect your opinion on that and I think it's once again I learned something. So it's one thing I have to take into consideration.
Speaker 3:One other thing that I'd like you to take into consideration is let's look at the example of Venezuela. So, venezuela, you have Maduro, who the opposition says, okay, he lost the election. And so now the opposition leader is has fled to Spain as a political refugee, and so Maduro is telling his is directing his soldiers to snuff out whatever's happening. And even though we can say, oh, that would never be us, venezuela was an up and coming, like it was the darling of South America, right Adjacent to Columbia, which was horrible at the time, in the late eighties, early nineties. So you have, if the people cannot have guns, how are they going to fight against their government that's suppressing them?
Speaker 3:So somebody told me this, and it was interesting, it was actually somebody that I was calling for fundraising. Um, he said the assault weapons are there in case the government tries to pull anything on us, in case they try to make us stay in our homes unlawfully, unless they have military curfews, for example. Um, and I thought that was interesting because, yes, our military has those guns. And what if they try to snuff us down? What? What do we have to fight back against them? Are we going to throw rocks, throw stones?
Speaker 2:I am going to say also, the January 6th thing was it was absolutely horrendous, but I do, I, you know, you look back and they did not bring in assault rifles and start mowing down people and everything else. That was all just physical violence, and with sticks and poles and and fists and everything else. That was all just physical violence and with sticks, and poles, and fists and everything else. So, yeah, that could have been a whole lot worse, you know, and if they thought the election was not overturned correctly. So I understand your point, but I'm also glad that it didn't come to that at our Capitol. That could have been absolutely terrible, agreed. Okay, time to jump in another box here, and this one's not not as tough. I just saw it. I saw it on your, your website, so I want to just throw it out. Touch on real quickly. It said term limits.
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So what do you? What's your your thought on term limits? Cause, of course, you have lifelong politicians who you know, but yeah, we've had adam schiff for 20 years and he got a lot of power because of that 20 years and it helped us, I think, in the long run. So what are your thoughts on term limits?
Speaker 3:I think term limits are necessary. Um, because our government and if you ask people, the average joe on the street our government has stopped representing us and acting in our best interests, and it is acting in special interests is what it's doing. And our elected officials are less beholden to us and more beholden to the people who get them re-elected, to the people who contribute to the re-election funds. An example that I'll give is Henry Cuellar, representative from Texas, who was caught getting bribes half a million dollars from the government of Azerbaijan. And then you have somebody like Senator Menendez from New Jersey, who is getting gold bars from the Egyptian government. These people have been there longer than they need to.
Speaker 3:I always talk about King Charles and Lady Di. I'm talking about Chuck Schumer, okay, and also Lady Di like Diane Feinstein, okay. Monarchs die in their thrones. An elected official shouldn't die in their throne unless they're assassinated, right? So Diane Feinstein, who'd been there for 30 some odd years, do you think she was running her own show? Towards the end of it, she wasn't. People were telling her where to go, what to do. Her staffers, her unelected staffers, who were not beholden to us, were the ones who were likely running the show.
Speaker 2:You have to worry about is Joe Biden going through the same thing? And if they didn't step in, he got reelected. Who would really be running the presidency. So I think Joe Biden's done a good job. But my dad lived to 101, and I saw his decline mentally as he got into his 90s and stuff. And he was a smart man. But to run a country and run a household two different things.
Speaker 3:I agree. That's why I think that term limits are great and I would advocate for two terms or 12 years for a senator and I would advocate for three terms or six years for some. You know House of Representatives, but you have all these examples of you know these staffers and these lobbyists doing things for people. In the California legislature there was a great example of the assemblyman from Riverside I forget what his name is, it'll come to me he was taught somebody had queried him about his bill and he says oh, I don't know the exact details of it. Like buddy, you authored this bill, you introduced this bill. How do you not know what's in your own bill? Because he didn't write it. Somebody wrote it for him, a staffer who's been there God knows how long, a lobbyist. So that's why I think if you till your soil you won't get weeds, and right now we got a bunch of weeds.
Speaker 2:Agreed. I also have heard over and over again that anybody elected to Congress, once they leave, if they're not a millionaire, they did something wrong, right, I've heard that for how long? How long, you know, through stock trading or whatever they do there.
Speaker 3:So, um, and it's not just. It's not just term limits for congressional representatives and centers, it's for their staff as well. A lot of people don't know that the peace corps has a four year limit. Why? Because they want fresh ideas, fresh faces. So what I would do is I would not only I would limit not only representatives and senators to the terms that I put out, but also their staff six years max. And I would put a six-year moratorium between the time that they leave and the time they can work for lobbyists. Right now it's only one year, so they still have their contacts. They still they trade their influence, their contacts, for money on behalf of the lobbyists.
Speaker 3:And a lot of people say well, you know writing laws, you know it takes time, like we. There's some mastery that occurs there. The two things that I say is number one the constitution was written by the founding fathers, who were farmers, they were small business owners. Right, they were not. I guess they were statesmen, but they weren't, you know, career politicians. But also number two, and more importantly, I was in a three-year internal medicine residency. I learned how to save a life in three years. From intern to resident, I learned how to save a life in three years. You can learn writing laws and bills in a six-year period. It's not rocket science.
Speaker 2:Well, I do agree. I think that the bills are way too complicated and put all the writers on them and everything else. Let's move on. Another one of these hot-button issues Immigration and border security. Yes, and we all know that Donald Trump wanted to build the wall, and the wall, I think, is two-thirds built, to a point. Each party blames each other for all the border crisis and everything else. What's your, what's your take on all that?
Speaker 3:Again, I'm going to, I'm going to be a geek and geek it on the numbers. So let's first talk about my solution. Don't lie, the numbers don't lie. So my solution is comprehensive immigration reform where we have an explicit system that prioritizes immigrants, as if you were getting somebody into college or at a job, things that I would prioritize younger, able-bodied people who are going to work and be productive, people who have certain job skills that the country needs and people who speak the language so they assimilate and they don't create these insular neighborhoods that are just going to be walled off from everything. And when I say skills that the country needs, I'm not going to, I don't want to.
Speaker 2:I am going to interrupt you. Yeah, you said when your parents came here they had to go and learn English here. They didn't have that. They didn't have that skill, correct, when they came here, so they would not have qualified then so my, my father spoke english.
Speaker 3:Um, my mother very broken english, shattered, I would say, um, but yeah, he had, he had commanded the english language. Okay, um, but yes, she learned and but it's. It's just one of those things where you say, okay, we're going to give you conditional it was paying attention to what you said say what it was of course, of course, and so the.
Speaker 3:That's why. But you could say, for example and again, these are things that I would prioritize you actually put it in committee and you discuss them. So you say, okay, somebody who has job skills but doesn't learn what if they enrolled and you give them a condition, like a green card, for example, and within two years you have to pass not only the civics test but also a basic English test, and if you do, then you can become a citizen. So I'm open to those kinds of things. But we need a transparent system where people can apply so they know where their standing is. And then they do so from their home countries, and what you do is people who are here illegally. You give them an opportunity, a no-fault opportunity, to apply and get on there. And you know people say, okay, what about the dreamers? These kids who were, you know, two years old when they were brought here? They don't know any other country? Well, those kids, they're young and able-bodied, they speak the English language and if they've gone to the schools here, they probably have some marketable skill that we need. So they would actually, by virtue of those criteria, rank quite high and would be granted citizenship. And then we decide, you know we're going to give I don't know half a million, 1 million, 2 million new people every year citizenship, but at least people know where they stand.
Speaker 3:But if that system is to be respected, we must not reward the people who jump the line, and that is why we need to for lack of a better term build the wall. But here's where I get into the numbers. Prior to this flood of people from the southern border, prior to that illegal immigration, half of it came from the southern border, the other half came from tourists who overstayed their tourist visas. So, prior to joe biden, there were a lot of venezuelans flying here from their home country, which was in tatters, as tourists and then overstaying their tourist visa. So that was about half a million to about 750,000 people, most of them Venezuelans.
Speaker 3:But so it's not just, oh, building a wall is going to make this better. No, there are people who fly in. So it's not just building the wall, it's increasing funding for customs and border control. Fund the police. Don't defund the police. Okay, make it easier for local jurisdictions to cooperate with federal jurisdiction because, again, this is not simply an immigration issue, this is a public safety issue. The drug's coming in A lot of these people who want to come in, coyotes smugglers are saying okay, do this and, by the way, carry this package of illegal drugs and drop it off here for the drug dealers on the other side, and then they'll let you go free, right? So there's a lot of chicanery going on. That it's, you know. Simply, building the wall is is not going to be it. We also need increased customs and border patrol to enforce the laws okay, um, sounds good.
Speaker 2:Let's go to the box next door to that box Wars and foreign policy. Yes, I find it very interesting that our country seems to pick and choose the causes and the wars and all this Look at all the protesters with Israel and Palestine and all that but where were those people when it comes to Ukraine and Russia? Where are those people when it comes to Ukraine and Russia? Where are those people when it comes to Armenia? Where are those people when it comes to Sudan? I don't understand why that issue is so important, but the other issues aren't. And, of course, if you make it into Congress, you're going to be voting on aid to foreign countries and foreign policy and all that stuff, so give us your thoughts.
Speaker 3:Okay, I think we need to define what it is that our government needs to do for us. I think we need to redefine or remind ourselves, because a lot of people are upset, disenfranchised with their two parties, with their government, because it's not working for them. So I propose this is how I'm defining the government the government should be there to focus on the health, wealth and security of its own citizens before it adds on the bells and whistles of other countries. So public security, public health, public wealth in that order we sort out in our own home before we actually add on other things. I am my single issue. If you're going to be a single issue voter, my single issue is balanced budget.
Speaker 3:We have $35 trillion in debt and rising. That is $100,000 per American. That's crushing debt. That would be. I couldn't handle $100,000 worth of debt right now. That's crushing debt. That would be I couldn't handle $100,000 worth of debt right now. Could you Not at all? No? So my opponent, laura Friedman, worries about the planet that we're going to hand down to our children. I worry about the debt that we're going to hand down to our children. What if your parents left you not with the house that you grew up in. But the IOU to the bank of a hundred and thousand dollars that you now have to pay do they necessarily leave you better off? No, so that that to me, I am a single issue voter, and so I I try to be very formulaic about these things. Why? Because politicians have lost all credibility with the populace, because they do not behave predictably. They do not have this explicit moral code that we can hold them accountable to. Instead, decisions are made at the behest of special interests who have their claws in these politicians. So I, as far as foreign conflicts go, I say I would have to have a clear goal, timeline and exit strategy. If I'm going to vote on that and in Congress, only Congress can declare war I need a clear goal, timeline and exit strategy.
Speaker 3:So let's talk about Ukraine. What is our goal? There is no agreed upon goal. Is it to get the Russians out from before their February 2022 incursion? Is it to get the russians out from before their february 2022 incursion? That's what we want. But then you ask zielinski he wants them out of eastern ukraine. Plus, he wants crimea back.
Speaker 3:So we haven't even agreed on our goal and we just keep throwing money at the problem, throwing money at the problem, throwing money at the problem, thinking that it's gonna go away. We've thrown enough money at it that we need to switch gears and look at it differently. Something like the Israeli conflict, right? Free the hostages. That's a goal. Free the hostages. So that's what I'd go for. I was like, okay, that's what we have to focus on is their remaining hostages. Let them go, and then Israel will naturally stop firing on them. But let them go, right, that's a clear goal.
Speaker 3:So I think that's why how I would, and so you could again say a thing, for you know, why didn't the United States step in when Armenians were being ethnically cleansed from Azerbaijan? Why? Because Armenians don't have anything to exploit. We have no natural resources, right? Azerbaijan, we know, is the back door where Russian oil and gas is being smuggled and sold to Europe. Europe isn't getting a third of its oil and gas from Azerbaijan. Europe is getting a third of its Russian oil and gas via Azerbaijan, and people are profiting massively off of that, and that's why nobody helped.
Speaker 3:So it's not because we did this because of a set of ideals that we hold true. We did this because a big corporation could make money, and that is what I want to combat and that is why the likes of Laura Friedman right, who has her stocks in these pharmaceutical companies you know or you have. I mean, I'll talk about somebody like Mike Garcia, congressman Mike Garcia. I am at arm's length with Mike Garcia because the man worked for a defense contractor before he yeah, he was a fighter pilot and then worked for a defense contractor. Now he's in Congress.
Speaker 3:So again, I'm not saying that he's a good or bad guy, but I would be cautious in approaching his votes and what he's thinking Like. Who does he hold his allegiance to? And that is how I would kind of solve that. I don't think that the United States should be the world's policeman, because we are policing selectively. I think that we should go back to our basics, which is the constitution, and I think that we need to choose our allies in any conflict based on which party matches most closely to our constitution. And I think if we did that, it's explicit, it's morally defensible and that is how I'd go about entering into conflicts.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go into two more. I have two questions. I'm going to kind of put into one for you.
Speaker 3:Okay, let me know if I'm being verbose.
Speaker 2:Probably too late, but no, no, no, I, I. I think this is great. Good, if I did not know who you were. Okay, and after listening to this, I'm sure anybody now is going to understand who you are, and and and you are more independent than you really are Republican, I think so which is nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't. Like I said, our campaign, me choosing to run as a Republican was a means to an end, and that means to an end is playing the game. That, I think, is rotten and I would like to change. But I need to get from within. Same as Luke Skywalker, right, had to get close into the Death Star to hit it.
Speaker 2:Well, okay, that's great because it comes right to my question now. So let's say you win and let's say Trump wins and your policies conflict with his policies and there's a lot of divisiveness in Congress right now. Right, I mean, you watch the State of the Union and it just cracks you up when he says something and that side room rises, and that side room. It's a stupid game. To me it's theatrics.
Speaker 2:But if you go against what he says and you become a Liz Cheney and you're ostracized and suddenly you are out completely because you went against Lord Trump, right? What's going to happen when your policies differ from his policies? If you were to be elected and you were to be elected and you are the odd man out what happens then? How do you? Are you going to state your morals and your thoughts? Are you going to let the party talk you into doing what you have to do and stand up with everybody else and clap at those moments?
Speaker 3:Great question and please keep me honest as far as replying to every single point that you brought up there. First, I want to cover Liz Cheney. I greet everything with a healthy dose of skepticism and it boggles my mind how somebody named Cheney suddenly is the most moral person in the room. Dick Cheney is the primary reason why I am a disenfranchised Republican. He was a war machine, he was a warmonger, yes, and to hear somebody say, oh God, the Bush days, wasn't it better during the Bush days? And gosh, liz Cheney, she's such an angel. Oh my God, are you listening to yourself? Ok, are you listening to yourself? So I think Liz Cheney is an absolutely rotten individual. She comes from an absolutely rotten man, a warmonger, and so I think, throw out that baby with that bathwater. So that's, that's number one. How do you really feel about that? Um? So number two is you said you know what would I do if I came at a loggerheads with, with trump. This is the beauty of the, the national gop and everybody else with the exception of. So I got the endorsement of vivek ramaswamy, okay, um, because our platforms um overlap, I think almost entirely. But you know, donald trump, the national republican nrcc, the national republican congressional council. They have given me zero help, zero support. When we win this, it'll be because of our own sweat, blood, sweat and tears. So if they think that I owe them anything, they can kiss my ass. There you go, right.
Speaker 3:So I said I am a single issue voter. Mine is a balanced budget. I don't care. So the fact that Donald Trump and the Republican Congress increased the debt ceiling in 2017, that is my red line, absolutely not. You want to talk rhino? That, in my opinion, is a rhino, right? We would all be better off if we ran this country like we run our own household, on a budget and with minimal interference from outside sources.
Speaker 3:So when you say how am I going to vote, I've laid out very explicitly, I think. I think most people will know how I vote, absolutely. And so if there's a budget that they say, okay, alex, sign off on this, I say, if it's a deficit spending, I am not signing off. I don't care if it's a democrat, republican budget, so that is, I will not budge on that. I also will not budge on any sort of you know, government. Uh, again, abortion ban, gay marriage ban. Uh, vaccine mandate stay out of it. Right, I am. I am very passionate about those. So, depending on what it is, I am going to act at the behest of my people, my district, not somebody in washington, somebody on the east coast.
Speaker 3:So liz cheney was voted out because donald trump found a favored person to her right who then challenged her in the primary and got her out. That's not going to happen in District 30, right, I mean, this is not Trump town. Right, there are people who love Trump. Right, there are people who don't love Trump and there are people in between. We're just going to kind of hold their noses because he's the less you know. They don't like Kamala or Joe Biden, what have you?
Speaker 3:But, and this is the most important one, at the end of the day, I have to be true to my reputation and my conscience and that is how I'll vote. And the beauty is, I'm a practicing physician, I have a day job, I love my day job and it's not going to be the end of the world for me to lose, because I have a skill set where I've already been flourishing outside of Congress, and this you know. Second job that I'd be doing in Congress is for my people to clean up this filthy political game and bring back some sanity. Like I say, fiscally responsible, socially sane. So that is how I would treat the whole Trump thing is. I am voting my conscience, my platform, which is clearly delineated. Um and come hell or high water. That's what I'm going to do Cause, like I said, I got a day job that I can go back to.
Speaker 2:Well, if you make it in there, I'm going to hold you to that. Do it, do it Absolutely, because you will be my congressman then. So last, and you were talking about, you know, district 30, and this is your place Now. So I'm going to get very local on you, yeah, okay. Uh, adam schiff has always been very good to burbank and I say attends every function we have here is accessible. Uh, he really didn't have any kind of personal security until the uh january 6th here, because then they kind of made him bring some you know security with him. But he always just shows up and he's always. I say it's accessible. So what do you know about because you're a Glendale person and as little as I know about Glendale what do you know about Burbank and our issues right here in our city? What do you know about Burbank?
Speaker 3:So Glendale was so boring. When I was growing up, right, my sister and I we'd always hang out in Burbank. You'd always go to the AMC back when it only had 14 cinemas, right, um, we'd go to Fuddruckers back when Fuddruckers was still open. You used to love Fuddruckers, yeah. So we spent quite a bit of time in Burbank because Glendale was just boring. Um, you know club which is now actually, it's it's, it's gone, it's right, was right by black angus or maybe it's the um bicycle, I mean the bjs yeah, I think this is.
Speaker 2:It's just an empty lot now bobby mcgee.
Speaker 3:Sorry, bobby mcgee's was torn down yes and then um the bicycle club so you do remember those days.
Speaker 3:Yes, of course I remember those days, um, and so I. So they're different areas of burbank. Right, there's definitely the rancho, which the burbank rancho and the Glendale Rancho. They are very, you know, like Gemini twins, right, they're, they're attached to the hip. So that is definitely a group there that they love their equestrian properties and they don't want, you know, cars or unnecessary bike lanes or things, for example, going through their development either there. So, yes, that's the, that's. The next one is the Horace Mann condo development. So again, there's the need for more housing and then there's the way of putting it in so densely that it causes congestion, that causes people not to be able to have their livelihoods go to work, etc. Those kinds of laws sb9 and sb10, and also laura friedman's law, um, ab, not ab2290, I forget the number. So she and anthony portentino authored and passed legislation to do away with local zoning and shove this state zoning with the dense housing down people's throats Again, when I was growing up, glendale, burbank, bedroom communities, single family homes my priority is public safety.
Speaker 3:My priority is local governance. People don't like local control being taken away from them. The example that I'll give is that the bike lanes in Glendale, north Brand Boulevard, very near to where I live. I live half a mile away from those. I no longer take Brand Boulevard to the freeway because it is a cluster, it's an absolute cluster.
Speaker 3:And I've gone to the side streets and I've and I've said I'm not against bike lanes, I'm just against the poor execution of the bike lanes where they currently are.
Speaker 3:If they had simply been one or two blocks to the east, at the quieter residential streets, you can make them one way and going up in north and south, and you separate the bike traffic from the car traffic. But now what's happening is the car traffic is going to the quiet residential streets, which are no longer quiet. And again, these decisions were made without the input of the local communities, who are intimately aware of what is better for their local neighborhoods. And so this centralization of power that Laura Friedman has perpetrated away from local neighborhoods into Sacramento, where there's an edict that is being handed down, and woe be you if you don't follow this. I am dead set against that. Burbank has its identity, glendale has its identity. Even within those sub-neighborhoods right the rancho, they have their identity. So I want to bring it back to local governance and again I said, the primary unit of governance is the household and as close as we can get it there and keep the primary decision making there, I think it would make everybody happy.
Speaker 2:I think people in Burbank will agree with that, and I know you deserve a larger area, but you know Burbank cares about Burbank. You know we all care about our own cities. So we've gone long. We've gone longer than no. No, no, this is hey, I'm the one directing this. So if I want to go along, that's on me. But I think everything we brought up was important and it's how they get to know who you are and what you think. So what I always do at the end of every Meet the Candidate podcast is I let our candidate. You know who your camera is. I'm going to give you as much time as you want. You can look right in that camera. You look right at your voters, into your voters' eyes, okay, and if you're listening on a podcast, then turn up the volume a little bit. Tell them why they should vote for you for Congress. So this is your time. Take as long as you want.
Speaker 3:Thank you, craig, for having me on and thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for listening to me. I am Alex Bileckian, md, born and raised in Glendale. I am a practicing physician in the community and I am running for Congress in California's 30th district because I feel that we need better public safety. I think that a government should focus on public safety, public health and public wealth in that health and public wealth in that order, and it should do so as efficiently as possible, and I think that our elected officials, career politicians like my opponent, laura Friedman, have abdicated their responsibilities to us by not being able to provide basic public safety. I am against the likes of people like George Gcon, who are soft on crimes and would rather apologize on behalf of criminals rather than make them live up to the consequences of their crimes, and I am coming out against his teammates, people like Laura Friedman, people like Nidia Rahman, people like Hugo Soto Martinez, who are wreaking havoc in different council areas and assembly areas. I am an endangered species. I am a gay, pro-choice Republican. My husband and I live in Glendale, we have a cat and he loves it here and I love it here, and I'm running because the town that I grew up in my Glendale and also your Burbank has changed. In some ways it's changed for the better, but in a lot of ways it's changed for the worse. As far as more homelessness, as far as higher cost of living and based on how much we're paying, I don't think we're getting high value return. And I want to bring back the notion of government working for us, not simply career politicians who have found a path to enrich themselves at our expense. And that is why I'm running and my single issues would be a balanced budget. I will never vote for deficit spending and also I want to work towards term limits because I think that if we have more open spots that are accessible to regular citizens like you and me, then I think people would become more engaged and would participate and wouldn't leave the governance to other people. So I thank you for watching and, craig, thank you again for having me.
Speaker 3:Oh, and if you want to know more about me, my website is alexbalekiancom A-L-E-X-B-A-L-E-K-I-A-Ncom. It's also alex4ca30.com, if you see our billboards, if you've seen our flyers anywhere. I would love your vote, I would love your contribution, be it your contribution of money or your contribution of time. We need volunteers. We only have about 54 days left until the election. Of time. We need volunteers. We only have about 54 days left until the election and I love all hands on deck so that we could take our grassroots movement and shock them all by winning this November.
Speaker 2:Dr Alex Blinken. Very incredible, very good. I love these podcasts because we get to find out what's really going on, so thank you very much for coming in.
Speaker 3:Thanks for having me.
Speaker 2:I am Well once again throw it out there that if you're a candidate and I'm going to appear on the Burbank ballot in any way, you please send us an email at news at my Burbankcom. We will get you on, get your, get your views and opinions and let people get to know who you are, which we think is very important. So thank you very much for listening or for watching, and we will see you next time.