The Sparks Show
Hosted by Spencer Parks, The Sparks Show is a conservative American politics podcast that goes far beyond the headlines. Each episode dives into the core issues shaping our nation — from the economy, healthcare, and foreign policy to the border, immigration, and the culture shaping America’s future.
Featuring influential guests from politics, business, media, and faith, Spencer leads candid, truth-driven conversations that challenge narratives and champion conservative values. Inspired by the legacy of Charlie Kirk, The Sparks Show continues the mission to speak boldly, stand firm in faith, and fight for the principles that make this country great.
Because the truth still matters — and the torch must be carried forward.
The Sparks Show
Ep. 8 "The CA Primary Election: Election Day or Election Month?"
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A new chapter begins on The Sparks Show as Spencer Parks officially welcomes Cameron Collier as the show’s new Co-Host.
In this episode, Spencer and Cameron dive into one of the biggest debates surrounding California’s primary election: Has Election Day become Election Month?
As ballots continue to be counted long after polls close, questions surrounding election transparency, public confidence, and the integrity of the process have become a major topic of discussion across the state. The guys examine the concerns many Californians have about the current system and discuss whether reforms are needed to restore trust in the electoral process.
The conversation doesn’t stop there.
Spencer and Cameron also discuss California’s growing tax burden, the impact government policies are having on working families and business owners, and why so many residents continue to question the direction of the Golden State. They also touch on the restoration of monuments and memorials in Washington, D.C., the importance of preserving American history, and what these cultural battles say about the future of the country.
Most importantly, this episode marks the official beginning of a new era for The Sparks Show as Cameron joins the program as Co-Host, bringing his unique perspective, humor, and insight to the conversations that matter most.
Whether you agree or disagree, this episode is packed with thought-provoking discussion, political commentary, and the kind of honest conversation that has become the foundation of The Sparks Show.
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All right. Welcome back, everybody, to this episode of the Spark Show. This is episode eight. Unbelievable eight. That's pretty wild. And I'd like to introduce myself, Spencer Parks, as your host, and Cameron Collier as your newly designated co-host of the Spark Show. Welcome, Cameron. Hell yeah. Weasled my way in here. Yeah, well, we love to have you, man. And it's been a mission of mine to bring you on board. And I was really sort of hammering you on it ever since the beginning. I started dropping these solo podcast episodes back in November of 25 to get on the podcast. Had to shake those pregame jitters, get you on here to flush out some of those raw emotions that we have when we talk about these the culture, politics, and all of the madness going on in our country, our state, and even in our local communities.
SPEAKER_00Well, nothing's worse than listening to your own voice and looking into an empty camera. It's it seems to take all the words that you want to say right out of your brain, and you just trip and stumble. So but I'm not afraid to look like an idiot. It happens.
SPEAKER_01I mean, I gotta say, so far, all the clips, all of our episodes, they seem to be a lot more kosher, a lot more digestible than just watching me solo on the camera. So I'm definitely glad to have you here. I think we're gonna have to work our another mic or two into here and maybe another two chairs so we could get some other guests on the show now, now that we have a host and a co-host, we might need to start getting some other voices on here so that way we can bring in a little bit more juice from some other participants.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it'd be a lot of fun. I got some good friends I'd like to introduce you to that have diverging thoughts from our own. So it'd be good to have those debates.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely. And right when I was starting the podcast, I had a friend of mine who I had worked with in the past. He had moved out to the East Coast and he actually ran for one of California's state assembly districts, I think 34th district or something like that, Adam Ventura. His name is Cole Brocado, good guy. And he actually offered to make some introductions to the Ventura GOP to see if we can't get anybody from out in the actual political realm to join us on the show. And so I've had some jitters myself thinking about getting some real political pundits here on the show. It's a little bit nerve-wracking, but I think it's gonna be a push in the right direction so we can start dipping our toes and getting our fingers wet into the real political arena. Well, you gotta crawl before you run, so that's what we're doing here. Absolutely. Well, speaking of state assembly men and all of the races that we have going on right now, I think our pre-show chat was about the madness of this primary election.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, here we are, four days later, and three million ballots still outstanding. It's just I mean, if it's not just a perfect example of the way government bureaucracy works, it's just nothing gets done, and then you put a little political party behind that machine, and it's just like I mean, it's embarrassing. What are we doing here, folks? It's there's so many attacks of this is fraud and all that sort of stuff, and I've been harping on it. It doesn't have to be fraud, it's just they have designed the system to their advantage.
SPEAKER_01So you say maybe there's no fraud. I know the my first instinct, we had Steve Hilton leading the governor's race of California pretty much on election day for two, maybe three days. And just recently, I think it was yesterday on the vote dump, we had Xavier Becerra take the lead in the governor's race. And immediately following his lead, he was basically granted a pass to the general election in November, which I told you immediately. I said, get the National Guard here. I want somebody over the shoulder of everybody in these elections offices. I don't want any cheating. I want to know what's going on. I am as you've said before, I am demoralized by what I see going on in this state, and it pisses me off.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, well, I'm absolutely encouraged by it because the bigger of a clown show that it can be, it just opens more and more people's eyeballs. I always say the answer to your political problems isn't anger, it's mockery. And it's just make a mockery of these fools that want and assert to be our leaders, and it's like they can't even hold a normal election. That I mean, I was talking to you about India. India knows the night of, and they have mail-in ballots and all that sort of stuff the same way California does. And here we are four days later, and it's okay. Well, did you guys even hire enough people? I was seeing articles about voting count or count, wait, voting counts, counting centers just absolutely empty, a few people in there counting votes. Okay, well, where's the where are your employees at? Get the people from the DMV or so. We're looking at these centers that are counting all the votes, and they're understaffed. And it's well, can't you just pull in government employees from other agencies if you're understaffed? I mean, who knows what the update is on that? That was as a few days ago. Maybe staffing shortages have been answered by then, but still, it's a total clown show where you're like three million outstanding ballots. What are we doing here?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, Trump has been watching this race closely because he's endorsed Steve Hilton for governor. He likes the refreshing perspective and outlook of Spencer Pratt for mayor. And I think the first thing that Trump sniffed out in this phony election was that we got started getting late ballot dumps for the mayor mayoral election that started favoring the Democrats, Nithya Rahman, and the mayor Karen Bass very heavily to the point where we saw ballot drops that did not once, not one ballot went to Spencer Pratt. And that was for about 24,000 votes. I believe it was 24,800.
SPEAKER_00Statistic probability of that happening is like one in a trillion. Well, according to chap GPT, those all could have came from one neighborhood that only votes a Democrat, and it was hilarious. I'm raging at the machine, and I'm like, even still, you're gonna have Republicans in majority Democrat neighborhoods, even if it's one or two. You know what I mean? So it's well, first of all, what neighborhood are we talking about with 24,000 people that are 800 people that voted all Democrat and not a single one for the Republican? You know, it's interesting too because on my travels with my wife all throughout the city, I'm seeing Spencer Pratt signs everywhere, and I'm not seeing very many Karambass and Nithya Raman signs. So it just goes to show the grassroots, the organic growth, organic campaign is all on Spencer Pratt's side, and the institutional choice is the Karambass and the Nithya Ramans, where it's just like there's unless it's just like these exclusively socialist or hyper liberal areas that are all for them. You know what I mean? Like the closer you get to the center of LA, but as you start going further and further out, it's just go look at the yard signs and tell me how many Karambass you see.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, as soon as we see a statistical improbability occur, that's the first red flag. Second red flag is when we start getting ballot drop boxes burned down in neighborhoods that would heavily favor Spencer Pratt. So those are two red flags. And what happened? Oh, yeah, just full-on, just torched ballot drop boxes in Republican dominant neighborhoods in Los Angeles. Oh, oh, isn't that? Yeah, but nothing to be done about that.
SPEAKER_00No, that's just a homeless person trying to make a campfire.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, not any of those guys working for the NGOs out there trading marijuana or cigarettes or two bucks for uh to get their vote in, which let me just remind the listeners, Cameron and I were discussing that is highly illegal. Yeah, that's a federal crime. Yeah, we can't pay people for votes. Absolutely not. But they're out there doing it, and a Democrat run city and the laws do not enforce.
SPEAKER_00And if you don't believe us, look at James O'Keefe. He just released a video under under underground, undercover investigation. It's it's shocking what's going on. But I would argue Okay, if we're talking about percentages, maybe 10% of that's fraud, because really just the way they set the game up and the way they wrote the law is you can ballot harvest, you can collect the ballots, and you can drop them off, and you can designate anyone to do it, and the Republicans can do it as well. And my point to you earlier was where's the Republican effort? My sister gets text messages from Democrat voting groups all the time during election season. Cast your ballot, cast your ballot. We're still showing that your ballot isn't cast all the way up until election day. And it's just like I got zero text messages from a Republican apparatus. So what are we doing here, folks? But that's the demoralization that they that the powers at B want you to believe in. Oh, Republicans don't have a chance, so why are we gonna even spend money on that? And it's absolutely not. Stop ceding ground to these people. It's through demoralization that they win.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's my opinion that the Republicans, the GOP, they're still living in 1990s when it comes to running campaigns. They still heavily think that collecting fundraising donations and things like that and getting the most in the fundraising race is gonna put you at the top of the box. But that's just right. That's just not the case anymore. You know that. And quickly, Cameron, if you could explain for the listeners, ballot harvesting, what exactly does that mean? And why do you think California has heavily legalized that and promoted that, especially for the Democrats?
SPEAKER_00Well, from my understanding, it just came around from 2020 and the pandemic area where everyone nationwide received this, and Republicans immediately were sus suspect of it, especially with the results of the 2020 election, where it's the exact same thing that we saw with Spencer Pratt and the 28,000 dump that we had in, I think maybe it was Pennsylvania or something like that, and where Donald Trump on election night he's got a huge advantage over Joe Biden, and then at two o'clock in the morning it just goes straight up, and then all of a sudden he's the winner. And it's like, well, it was perfectly legal because they wrote the law to do it, and and the Democrats put together a ground game to go around and collect these ballots legally, and they can absolutely do that in California. So they just go either door knocking, they probably don't even need to do that because you register to vote. And if you register to vote Democrat, they have your name, they have your number, they have your address. So all they gotta do, they know where you live, they know you have a ballot, so they just go, Oh, well, I know where the Democrat voters are, I just go straight to them and I get their ballot, and then we do our ballot dumps. And you can also in California, I think it's as long as it's postmarked before election day or on election day, they can count that vote up to seven days afterward, all that. So you can absolutely gamify this system to your advantage.
SPEAKER_01And we were just talking what's so frustrating because with the ballot harvesting, as you were saying, Democrats have this gamified. This is strategy, implemented strategy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's institutional party politics that know where their voters are and they just go around collecting it. It's not about the message, it's not about who the voter appeal, it's about who can collect the most ballots, and that is the way it works. On election day, it's the messaging, and we saw who won the messaging. Steve Hilton won. Did Spencer Pratt win? Or was he he was a little bit he was second? Yeah. So, and then there you go, you got the institutional party apparatus that comes in behind 100% legal. There's nothing illegal about it. They just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not right, but it's the gamification. I call it election engineering or electioneering. It's at the end of the day, it's what they're doing.
SPEAKER_01Every major uh Republican influencer on my Instagram the second day of this mayoral race was blasting this 24,000 24,000 ballot dump that happened on the second day at 4 p.m., where none of the votes went to Spencer Pratt. And after our conversation and ballot harvesting, and knowing that the Democrats are just banking these Democrat votes into these election bins, probably in their elections offices, where they can just walk into the Democrat vote room, grab a big bin of their Democrat votes, not knowing if it's for Karen Bass or Nithya Raman. Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. So long as they're in the top two. All right, folks. Well, these are the ones we're counting today. Take them on over to the votes. So let's tabulate them up, get them out, and we'll leave all those other random votes that just came in that we haven't sifted or collected or harvested. We're gonna leave those for tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00Well, I would venture to guess it's more of an NGO, right? So you got the NGO that's on the side of Karen Bass, and you got the NGO that's on the side of Nithya Rahman. So those two are kind of competing against each other for the Democrat votes, so they go out and try to collect as many votes for they can for their candidates. So then they have them banked and then they just dump them wherever they these drop boxes or what have you, and or wherever it is that you can legally drop them off to. It doesn't have to be some conspiratorial back office sort of thing. It doesn't have to be like that. They've they created the structure, they know what the structure, and I guarantee you they got their lawyers with their lawyers speak and making sure everything's every I and every T dotted and crossed. They there's so it doesn't even matter, even like you said, Trump with the investigations and all that sort of stuff. All maybe if you find some fraud, maybe who knows? It's probably not enough to turn the election in the Republicans' favor because not the point.
SPEAKER_01Well, I for one don't have any trust in the elections officials, especially after the 2020 race. The shenanigans we saw going on late in the night, 2 a.m. We had major water pipes break, gotta shut down the office. Yeah. We had election watchdogs there, everyone was over the watching over the shoulders of the elections officials. And what do they do? They board up the windows, we're not gonna let you watch. Yeah. What is that all about? Oh, and don't forget the guy who fortifying the election. Right. Well, what about the guy who had like we're talking to these big bins, right? Of votes, these ballots, and they're saying, Oh, we're all done counting ballots, and then all of a sudden, in this video that we have of the election office, we got this guy lifting the curtain from the table he's counting ballots on, and he pulls a whole bin of ballots and walks them over to God knows where.
SPEAKER_00And like those ballots can be 100% legal, though. That's my point. Sure. Because they wrote the law, and so it doesn't really matter. And it's and all they can do, like the best thing that they can do is win the messaging war against the kooky, crazy, conspiratorial Republicans that are just salty that they lost the election. That's it, that's another game that they're playing. So I I made this point to you earlier. It was like, I don't think Trump thinks he's that his attorney is gonna find anything. I think all he's doing is he's forcing the national spotlight, the media spotlight, to stay on the elections to show the absurdity of this counting process that's going on and on. And the more hyperbolic he can be, the more they have to defend the process. And that's that is Trump, in my opinion, that's what his strategy is. Is he folks, common sense people, do you think this should even be allowed? I mean, is this even the spirit of elections? It shouldn't it be the will of the people, not the will of the institution?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think you brought up a point that Trump did appoint one of his U.S. attorneys to conduct investigations into California elections to see what's going on here, to see if there's any fraud or if there's any funny business going on with counting these ballots. So two days after the election was underway, we got the U.S. attorneys and deputy U.S. attorneys out here in the elections offices doing in-person investigations. So whether that's going to find anything or shed any light on anything going on, well, it may not look good on a federal stage, but in California, the Democrat supermajority who've all voted to have these laws implemented, it's nothing phony going on. It's just again, it's the gamified system that the Democrats have set the stage for.
SPEAKER_00Yep. It's an institution that has set up a an election apparatus that will ensure that their power is never overthrown. That's what it's about. But because there's so much dissension in California, we see the shifting of the counties, they're moving more and more red, more and more purple because people are dissatisfied with what's going on. And the reason why Spencer Pratt was such a threat to them is because he just was able to use social media to just personify how mystified the people are with just how terrible these leaders are at just basic city maintenance. And so the good news of that is if we can actually create an oppositional apparatus that does everything that the Democrats do according to the letter of the law, then there's a choice. I'd said it to you. It's what you have to do is you just let's see what the turnout numbers are. We know how many Democrat voters are, we know how many independent and Republican voters are. So let's see if we can buffer the numbers for Republicans, see if we can get more Republican registrations, and then let's get an apparatus to collect that vote when it's time to collect their vote, just like the Democrats do.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I hate to say it, but I just don't know if the GOP here in California is going to have the will to put together such apparatus. My my feeling about Republicans and the GOP in general is just that they don't want to play into the gamified system that's been established. They want to play to win.
SPEAKER_00They want to they want to stand on their principles. They're principled people. We're not gonna do that. Absolutely not, sir.
SPEAKER_01Well, pass the Save America Act, right? And we want voter ID, we want same-day elections, we want basically the traditional voting system. We don't want this skewed or stretched, sort of. We don't want we want election day. We don't want election month, is essentially what we want. And to my surprise, which I was really pleased to hear, was that there was actually a case in Mississippi recently that brought up these issues similar to California, where we have extended voting periods due to delayed mail-in ballots that are postmarked by election day.
SPEAKER_00That's that stuff's ridiculous. It's like if you can't get your mail-in ballot a week before, it's like absolutely not. It that there should be a cutoff for the mail-in ballot. Sure, give the Democrats their thing, give the mail-in ballots, but then take away the the right for them to go and collect and ballot harvest and all that sort of stuff and make that illegal. Then let's see how you know, how excited they are for that sort of system.
SPEAKER_01Well, what I was getting to was that later this month we're expecting to hear a court ruling from the Supreme Court on that exact issue. So I'm praying that we get a solid ruling from our conservative majority Supreme Court, but hard to just sit, wait on this, and watch those vote counts for the GOP continually decline. Um, like you said, man, it just feels demoralizing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. You can actually be demoralized by it. But like I said, I'm excited because I just see the opportunity, and it's just like the crazier that the Democrats get with their hyperbolic messaging, and the more that they kind of like threaten like the billionaires, say Silicon Valley and all that, that's just opportunity to bring them on your side and say, hey, I who's the guy, Sergey Brennan or whatever his name is for Google, I think it is. I think he gave to the Spencer Pratt campaign. And it's well, if you can get a big-brained guy like that to create a ballast ballot, legal ballot harvesting apparatus for the Republicans, well, we're in the game now, baby. And so now all of a sudden we could have election year where they're got 10 million ballots that they gotta count. And it's just like, oh, one for the Republican, oh, one for the Democrat, and then all of a sudden their system starts melting down.
SPEAKER_01Well, I mean, truthfully, that's exactly how Trump won in 2020, or I'm sorry, in 2024. He turned the tides. He said, you know what, we're not gonna win on our same platform from 2016. It's not gonna happen. They know how we run. And so what did Trump do? He freaking reined in some of the longtime Democrats that we knew. RFK basically brought in the Maha movement with the MAGA movement, Tulsi Gabbard, Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk, which oh my gosh, man, that was just victorious to get that guy going for the GOP. And what a game changer. You put some money and influence like Elon Musk behind a campaign. The guy knew the outcome of the election before it started. I mean, he saw the swing states, he closed the door, went to bed. He was like, Oh, my system that I've created, my my app can tabulate this when the probable outcomes here before we even have to get through 20% of the vote.
SPEAKER_00So well, the the liberals online say that no, he used his space lasers to to alter the votes and the voting machines, and it's yeah, a laser or starlink, you know what I mean? So now they're jumping on the QAnon theories, but now it's blue and on, you know what I mean? And I mean, there's his you know, must baby mama Ashley Sinclair, she's been going out there saying stuff about oh, he was telling me this, that this and that, and when I think, well, I'm not saying he did anything, she's like operating in this gray zone of like obviously to drum up viewership, in my opinion. But what I'm seeing is I would like to see in these swing states, did they have mail in but mail-in voting is ballot harvesting legal? Because all he has to do is use his billions to create a legal ballot harvesting apparatus, just like I'm saying here in California, and then he already knows. How many Republican votes he has, and then so he can create an algorithm that's gonna tell him the rate of return of how many are gonna be Democrat and how many are going to be Republican, and then from there, of course he knows who's gonna win because I got more ballots than you got.
SPEAKER_01I just want to point out really quick, Cam, that we're just two ordinary guys raising families, talking on a podcast because we got a little overstimulated on our politics, but we really enjoy talking about it. But my point here is that if you just take a few minutes to understand the laws that have been implemented in your state, whether you run red or you run blue, you understand those laws, you can start to understand how corruption can start to occur. It may not be actual corruption to where something illegal is being being done, but it is laws that have corrupted the system that's that we once knew. And so you put a little thought into this, you can come up with a theory, let's call it a theory so we don't get sued or anything. But yeah, we could see now through ballot harvesting and some of the laws implemented through these Democrat deep blue states how elections can be easily pinpointed before they're called and how you can gamify the system to your favor.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that that's ultimately that's a threat to the spirit of our system of governance, it's of the people, by the people, for the people, but it's turned into of the political party, for the political party, by the political party, and it's we have to demand fair elections. And it's guys, we cannot have election month. We need to have election day. There can be common, there can be common ground found with mailing ballots and all that sort of stuff. But you know, I like to fall on the side of you have to just show up to vote, it's the will of the people. If you don't even have the will to show up to cast your vote, why should you have a say? If someone has to come to you and coerce you into giving them your ballot, I mean, this is not a government by the will of the people.
SPEAKER_01I I think a lot of people are demoralized by the billionaire class, a lot of the big timers that own major corporations that carry heavy influence in our elections. I, for one, am not somebody who's taxed the billionaires and obliterate the big corporations type of guy. I'm a big, I want everybody to prosper and prosper at your own rate. If you're a billionaire, wonderful. Glad you could do it. But also, too, I'm not a big advocate of corporations having influence in our elections. That's one thing that I am not big on. I do not like that the Supreme Court allowed for corporate corporations to donate to political campaigns and carry that type of influence in our elections. I think that's really not a good thing for our nation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I definitely agree with you on that point.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's if anything distorts the will of the people, I think it's major fiscal influence like that. I just think you're up against essentially a machine and you have to gather actually grassroots, a tremendous amount of votes to be in opposition to that machine machine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so kind of the reason why I took a pause there, because I was kind of you got me thinking, what was the the motto for the revolution? No taxation without representation. And it's okay, well, if corporations and billionaires are gonna have an inordinate amount of say in what is happening, why are you taxing us? Stop taxing us.
SPEAKER_01Well, I have to give props where they're due. And just recently we saw that the state of Florida, by the grace of God, is finally stripping the state of their property taxes. And property tax was just it there's many taxes that are ultimately theft from the people. We've gotten to this extraordinary point in time where we're s taxed to almost half of our money, maybe more, being collected by the government through all these different taxes. But Florida finally stood up and said, I think it's 70%. 70%, sure. Right? After all the sales tax and everything beyond just what the income taxes are. Yeah, I mean, we're we see all of our money just completely s siphoned from our bank accounts quickly. And that's why everyone struggles so hard. And Florida finally just said we've had enough of this. The people of Florida said no more. Thank God they have Ron DeSantis over there doing a great job, and they have many great representatives in Congress and their Senate members who agreed, and they said no more property taxes, because if anything, we want the great people of Florida to actually own their homes without the fear of it being taken from the government because you're not paying your property taxes after you've fully paid off your mortgage.
SPEAKER_00No, yeah, absolutely. It's like property tax. I mean, just kind of think about it. You're do you even own property if you're constantly being taxed on it?
SPEAKER_01It reminds me of the horrible scenes from all of the medieval movies that I watched as a kid or now feudalism, where you gotta pay the Lord. The Lord's tax collector comes by. I'm here for my taxes. If you don't, we will be stripping you of your land.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and that's exactly what they do. They kick you right out and out if you don't pay your property tax, and then they sell your house and they take their chunk and then they give you back crumbs. Well, we started this episode with saying election madness, but you know what? That's tax madness. No, absolutely. I that's why I'm a big proponent of f of tariffs, because it's a it's a tax on a business transaction. And yes, the end consumer will wind up paying for it, but if you get rid of all these other taxes and and that's the only transition transactional tax that's occurring in the marketplace, that that would make sense to me, right? Especially if you're tariffing other countries coming into your markets and stuff like that, or maybe other states that are coming into your state and you're tariffing that on those goods that are coming in. And then that makes sense. It makes sense for the taxes on well, actually I've I haven't put too much thought into it, so I don't know, because it's like absolutely we need some sort of revenue to provide for services, and so it's like there are smarter people to answer that question on taxes than me. But personally, that's why I set up an S corporation and I looked at the tax law and I look, okay, how can I pay as little tax as possible? Because I hate taxes. It's it might be a necessity, but I do not want to be that person that is spending 70% of my income sent to taxes. And if I can save an extra 20%, I will.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's take the tax conversation back to the election and talk about Steve Hilton for a minute and the great proposals he's had for the taxes in our great nation, our great nation, our great state. He said that for the average family earning whatever the amount is, six figures, the first hundred K is tax free. What a great platform to run on. Where everything with Democrats is what other taxes would you like us to tack on?
SPEAKER_00And they've Yeah, that's it's never tax relief. It's always we're gonna tax the billionaires. And then once we've pushed them out and we lost that, now your taxes are going to inevitably increase because they still need to fund all their programs and where are they gonna get those pro that those proceeds from? That's why they want to get rid of Prop 13, the protection, the cap on property tax here in California. It's one percent. And it's like with how expensive property is in California, that one percent is obscene to me. It's like it's crazy how much you have to pay. It's like I think for me personally, it's I want to say let's just say a thousand. It's probably around maybe nine hundred, but it's like a thousand bucks a month. It's crazy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I had a neighbor stop by my house the other day. It was weird. She talked to my wife earlier in the week and said, Hey, I just want to stop by, talk to Spencer. He's a small business owner, right? And she's like, Yeah, she's oh, well, there's this proposition coming up. I want to talk to him about the proposition. And I was like, Oh, great, yeah, tell her to come by. Lo and behold, she stops by and I totally got pawned into a sales scheme of trying to be becoming a member of some sort of small business organization that fights for small businesses in Sacramento and goes up against all these different things. And I was I was willing to have her over chat for five minutes, but I've been practicing my no thank yous when I'm asked about those types of things, especially with tipping at restaurants where I'm picking up food and the system's always asking me, Oh, would you like to tip? And it's just no, I've actually been working on my neurological response to hit no tip. Just no, no. And no matter what I think they're thinking in their mind, just no thank you. And I don't really care anymore about how the woman that came to my table and told me all she wanted to do was talk politics. I was super stoked. Thought we were gonna have a great conversation, but no, you were trying to sell me a membership to your organization. And quite frankly, the guys who run the podcast of your organization are Democrats, and so I'm gonna start my own organization over here on the Spark Show, and we're gonna fight Sacramento the way that we want to, because if anyone needs to go to Sacramento and get in the politician's face, I'm gonna do it for myself. I'm not gonna do it though. You're a small organization. So thanks, but no thanks. Yeah, thanks, but no thanks. But to my point, she actually did bring up a good point. There was a prop that she was saying that it was gonna hurt small businesses, and it actually had to do with reassessing home values for property taxes, and that was gonna be on the ballot in the general election that Sacramento wants to reassess the values of everybody's home, regardless of how long you've owned it for, and determine your new property taxes based off of your home's current value, which would completely devastate some homeowners who have owned their homes for decades and maybe have even paid off their mortgages, where they bought a home in California for the low six figures, maybe 150,000, low 200s, and now their homes are worth 800,000. Dude, could you imagine? I mean, you're gonna be tripling, maybe quadrupling property taxes for some of these people who all they want to do is just live on social media. Social security. Yeah, they're living on Social Security, they're retired, so they're living off a pension. We don't live in wealthy neighborhoods, we live in just suburban areas. Leave the people alone. This is we the people raising families, the people that are staying in the family neighborhoods that have raised their families, they're empty nesters, they're getting old. They would like to live in peace. They don't want to continue working. Maybe some of them do, but they don't want to have to be hustling.
SPEAKER_00Well, it's you're always, I mean, Republicans in California have been fighting Democrats for decades on that. They're always that's why we have Melaruz on unincorporated areas. It's an extra tax that they put on new housing, and it's more property tax. And I remember looking at a house, I think it was 20 2020 actually, and it had Melarus, and if I'm not mistaken, it was property tax on top of it. So and the problem with Melarus is it can it's not capped, it can increase. And guess who votes on it? Schools, police, and fire. And do you think they're ever going to relinquish that income? Of course not. But the promise is oh, the reason why we're taxing you is because we're gonna build a new firehouse, we're gonna build a new school and a new police, parks, and all this good stuff, and then it could fall away. It's never gonna fall away.
SPEAKER_01I am just not a big advocate of any more taxes. And this was a conversation that I continued with my my neighbor when she was here telling me about all this stuff. She was asking me, Well, do you oppose any new taxes? And I'm like, I heavily oppose any new tax. In fact, I am at the point in my life where I would like to abolish all taxes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I just I'm at the revolutionary stage of my life. Yeah. It's no taxation without representation. And this all boils down to understanding the laws as they come to you and uh put on your ballot. So it's the 500-page laws that nobody has the time to read. Thank goodness for chat. Highly recommend if you want to actually get the good debrief, you just upload that to an AI of your picking or choosing and just have it break it down for you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no, I get what you're saying on taxes. I'm sick and tired of it. Basically, living paycheck to paycheck and then get to pay taxes on all of it, and then you do the math and you're looking at it and you're like, I'm I think it's three thousand dollars a month is what goes to taxes. That is insane. Three thousand dollars a month. I can't even afford to put my kids in daycare. I have to, you know, it's like I could work more if I could put the kids in daycare, but it's like I can't. And so it's if that was gone, that would be stimulating the economy more, wouldn't it? So instead of going to the general California general fund to go into the high-speed rail program that we've built only a mile of track and spent 24 billion or whatever it is, it's what are we? I mean, I just don't get it. And I love when I come over comments and just see how people are like they're in a cult of personality, right? And so I saw this one girl, there was a picture of Spencer Pratt and his wife, and that her comment is no thanks. And you can kind of see it's just like this snarky valley girl, and you're like, what like what what about him? Is it cleaning up the homelessness that you don't like? Is it not spending millions of dollars on per bed for the it's what is it that you don't like? Oh, you just don't like his personality. Oh, we've already had a game show host, and it's absolutely it this is just ridiculous. Look at the state of our country. Actually, let's look at the state of Washington, D.C. That tyrant, he invoked the the National Guard to go around and start cleaning up DC. And I mean, what a tyrant he was. He's taking over Washington, D.C. And oh, well, what's happening a year later? Oh, Meridian Hill Park is opening up for the first time in 20 years. The Columbus or statue in front of Union Station's open.
SPEAKER_01I think you brought up Alcamax Park the other day, and I saw a video yesterday of a bystander walking through saying, I've lived here since 98 and I've never seen the water flowing through this part of the uh of the park. So the water's running through all of the fountains. We've restored them from all of the riots back in 2020, where we were getting Palestinian free Palestine graffiti and all that stuff. It's just, I mean, this is our beloved capital of the nation. Yeah, you and this is where we want people to visit and to find these remarkable features.
SPEAKER_00To be inspired, right? Not demoralized. But that's the point. They want you demoralized. The political establishment that was in power before, they don't want you to think Washington, D.C. is beautiful. They want you to look at your Congress with disdain. They want you to hate your politicians, they want you to hate everything about your government because it's easier to control you because you don't get off your ass and vote, you sit on your hands and you complain. And it's just like divide and conquer. So stop being demoralized. Be encouraged. There is opportunity. Go out and take it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I always love to bring up this point. As much as the Democrats love to have their no kings protest, I just want to highlight the fact that when an actual king, the king, King Charles from the UK, visits Congress, he enters the chamber and they applaud and stand and cheer the kingdom. The king has returned. The king is here, and you actually stand and you do not protest there actually being a legitimate king still of a nation.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Oh, that's right. That's right, right? Because Trump, his actions in Washington, D.C., he's being a king. We didn't we don't want kings. And well, look at our look at the Lincoln Memorial and the reflecting pool. They were freaking out about it. How what he's doing is absolutely terrible. What do you he's circumvetting the whole process. He's he's spending taxpayer dollars on this. He's he hired his pool boy, like all this sort of stuff, all these disparaging comments. And then you just go see what this place looked like before. Algae blooms at green, it and the people would say it's smelt of just rotting, decaying, matter. Absolutely disgusting. This is the Washington, or I'm sorry, the Lincoln Memorial, the president responsible for ending slavery, and this is how you treat the memorial. It's disgusting. And what does he do? Cleans it out, and then they're kicking and screaming, and oh, what you're doing, the fact that you're painting it American flag blue, absolutely not. It's not supposed to look like that, it's supposed to be a calm, serene area. Well, I just saw a picture of it this morning filling up with that American flag blue, and guess what? Look at the color, folks. It's navy blue. Have you ever seen a pool with a dark covering on the bottom? You can't see the bottom. So it keeps the same aesthetic, but it's cleaner.
SPEAKER_01And a couple of points about the uh the pool, and I don't think they call it a pool. Pond, reflecting pawn. Reflecting pawn. Number one, they would say that, oh, with this new American flag blue, it's not going to reflect the image of the Lincoln Memorial. Oh, it reflects it. You're like, oh my gosh, it reflects in a glorious manner. Very beautifully. It's glorious. And I'd also like to add, one of the big things that they said was Trump granted this to his pool guys who have done work for him at Mar-a-Lago. And I actually read and watched the interview of the contractors who did this yesterday. They were allowed to finally speak on it because they completed the project. Yeah, I saw it. They have never once ever in their history. Hey, they voted for him. Hey, they voted for him, but they never once had a contract with President Trump. Any of his affiliates. Liar. And not to mention, it wasn't just a it's self-dealing. He gave his best friend millions of dollar contract. Yeah, it and it wasn't just like a contract that was awarded blindly to this contractor because it was his best friend. Turns out that this there was a special type of uh polyuretha uh coating that was used in order to prevent the mold, algae growth, and all these other issues that would eventually develop again in the future. And so these are rhino lining. Yes, part of it was a rhino lining, but these guys were specialty coating contractors.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so there's not many guys that could do it at that scale. And not to mention, these guys also said that there was rumors of them exceeding the budget, but these guys kept it within a $13 million budget, and that was well below what people were saying that the contract award amount was. And you're like, no, dude, there wasn't. And in fact, if anything was over budget, it was because the government had added extra areas of the pond they wanted them to work on, and these rumors were just false.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, no. So what I remember from that interview that you're talking about is the government chose the material that they wanted, and the problem is okay, so you put it up for an an open government contracting bid, and well, guess what? There it's going to be more money because all these government or these contractors that are bidding are going to mark up that material. So why not just go to the manufacturer of the material and have them do it? And that's how you save money. But guess what? A businessman understands this. You go straight to the contractor, you don't go through a formal bidding process where you're gonna have 18 layers of subcontractors. That's the way government contracts are done. It's like you got some guy who's got the in that's gonna win the award. I mean, we know ourselves, remember in the window cleaning business. What was it, Mr. Window Cleaning? That guy never cleaned a window once in his life. He would just go around, win government contracts, and then hire us to do the job. And then he's we never know it wasn't until we started bidding on the process ourselves and started seeing the margins he was making. I mean, when you're making a 50% margin on a government contract on prevailing wage and you don't even have to lift a finger, I mean, what a business model.
SPEAKER_01At minimum, if you're a prime contractor subbing any job out, you're putting a 20% minimum markup on that. Yep. And so that's that's your markup. That's your portion for making the sale. And some might argue that could be the hardest part of the business process. But at the same time, if the customer's willing to pay it and then the contractor's willing to do it for that price, that's just the way that capitalism works.
SPEAKER_00Yep, absolutely. But if you have a businessman that understands this bidding model because he built buildings and had to deal with concrete contractors and steel contractors and drywall contractors and all the contractors and the general contractors, so he knows it's just okay. We need competent people that are doing this. So I need to put it into the hands of the people that are actually responsible for the manufacturing of this product to make sure that this isn't some embarrassment that's gonna continue leaking and it's gonna provide well. Maybe that's the pumping stations that has to deal with algae blooms and all that sort. So I won't put the illness on them.
SPEAKER_01Well, like you're saying, when the manufacturer is the supplier and the contractor, it's a win-win. You're gonna completely avoid any sort of egregious markup from any sort of contractor that's gonna sub out the job and have somebody purchase materials through the manufacturer or the supplier.
SPEAKER_00Are they gonna purchase the correct materials, right? Or are they gonna save some money? They're gonna get something tinted. Yeah. American flag blue. It's American flag. Well, and maybe it's not that hardened polyurethane or whatever you're saying the material is. It's cheaper, but it's this it's the color, and that's all that matters. And then ten years down the line, no, gotta do it again, guys.
SPEAKER_01Well, let's just give President Trump some props. Well done on restoring some of our monuments and great landmarks in Washington, D.C. It's remarkable.
SPEAKER_00I want to go to Washington, D.C. and I want to go check out our nation's capital, get on one of those electric bikes and bike around and check everything out with the family. Yeah, go see the museums. It's of course. I mean, when an area is beautiful and you've beautified it, people want to go and enjoy it. When it's full of graffiti and all that, yet no thanks. But some say with that. It's culturally enriching. I think it's dog shit.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, it's George Lucas is supposed to be opening up this flagship Star Wars museum down in Los Angeles. And I'm just thinking, what? Who is gonna go down to Los Angeles, even if they love Star Wars? I love Star Wars, but man, the first thing I saw was stuff from the inside, and I'm inspired, and I love that, and I want to see it. But at the same time, I'm like circling around Los Angeles. I am not even driving through Los Angeles. I am going Glendale, I am going Pasadena, I am doing everything in my power to avoid just even driving the five through Los Angeles. Nobody wants to be a part of the filth, the cesspool of disease and homelessness and fecal matter collecting on the sidewalks, the tent cities. It is not safe. It is disgusting. And I speak from experience when I say this that it's disgusting because we are a contractor that cleans up these areas in Los Angeles. And even when we think we're in a place where we're gonna be maybe not so exposed to some of the homelessness, like in a subterranean parking garage, man, let me tell you, they still find their way down there and they use it as a complete port a potty. And before we know it, we're doing hazardous material cleanup because we're cleaning fecal matter and urine from just endless amounts of homeless people that are occupying these garages and these basements. And it's just, it's filthy, it's disgusting. We've got no enforcement of the law. The people who pay for, you know, the city streets to be safe and clean don't deserve this. We deserve so much better. And that's why at the end of the day, we want Spencer Pratt as mayor because that's what his campaign was. He campaigned on the safety, the cleanup, and just the promotion of a more beautiful Los Angeles.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean it's gonna bring business. And then once business comes in, hiring occurs, more people are spending money. It's I mean, it's not that hard. And it's I don't know, just ask yourself do you are you guys ready to go to Havana, Cuba? You want to go vacation in Cuba? How about Venezuela? Maybe El Salvador, right? With Bukele. You know, have you seen those transformations of the capital? It's El Salvador and Bukele, right? They call him the dictator. I don't know Bukele, no. You don't know Bukele? Uh-uh. So Bukele's the one that created, I think it's called CentCom or something like this. Or basically what he did, MS-13, is the criminal gain that comes from El Salvador. And he got into power promising on the on this same platform. And well, guess what? You have gang members have human rights. You can't just arrest them because they have a gang tattoo. Well, he said, absolutely not, they're being arrested. And then once they're in jail, they can prove their innocence. It's a bit questionable, but guess what happened? It went from the murder capital of the world to not being the murder capital of the world. So it turns out you can just get out of this problem by just putting the criminals in jail and getting rid of them. And then what he did was is he started cleaning up the capital city and taking out all the shant the shanty towns and all that that propped up, all the poor people and stuff. And now the capital city looks like a European capital city. It's absolutely beautiful. I encourage you to check it out.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, nothing makes me cringe more than hearing that a 14-time felon has been released on bail for the 15th time out to the public and commits a heinous crime like murdering somebody or something like that because a DEI higher judge decides that they deserve an 18th chance. Yeah, they this isn't gonna do them any justice being in the uh in jail in the uh institutionalized program. There's nothing we could do for him. You're like, well, you essentially just murdered an innocent civilian by releasing this career criminal.
SPEAKER_00Well, they operate under this assumption that it was society's fault that he was left behind, so because he was left behind, he had to turn to a life of crime. And it's no, there's just such a thing as thug life, thug culture, outlaw culture for the it's like there's always going to be a criminal element. There are people that just like being criminals, that it makes them feel like bad motherfuckers. And it's like they want to be a bad motherfucker. And so they go around and and they just look for opportunity to victimize people to puff up their egos. That's what gang culture is. It's guys, it's not society's fault. If anything, it's it comes down to the structure of the family home, but those same people want to dismantle it because they say that's an artificial construct of white supremacy. That's a father in the home? What?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, soft on crime policies freak me out, if I'm being quite honest, especially raising a family, especially putting out a message that I know a lot of people agree with. But also I think that if you're gonna have soft-on crime policies, then you ought to allow the law-abiding citizens to practice their Second Amendment right to their fullest extent. And what I mean by that is allowing open carry. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Concealed carry, open carry. It's it seems like you want soft on crime policies, and I better have my insurance package on my hip.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, if the career criminals allowed to be strapped, you ought to let the man raising up a family doing right by God and right by the government's laws to cowboy up. Yeah. It seems that's only fair. However, I was just thinking about this in my head the other day. I was like, well, if I was out there concealed carrying without a permit when I was practicing and making sure I didn't have my education and doing my thing, but God forbid my something happens. You're gonna go to prison here in Los Angeles if you defend yourself and your family from a career criminal who attacks you or tries to attack your children.
SPEAKER_00You have a duty to retreat, is what they say, right? You have no right to stand your ground. If someone is coming at you to kill you, you have to run away. And you're like, okay, politician, so when there is a criminal trying to assassinate you because they hate you for your political views, why is it your guns get to shoot on sight? But my gun doesn't. Rules for thee, but not for me. And it's just, I don't know, man. It's I just don't get it. It's is it really as simple as it's just good versus evil? And then these people just because they st they sell their souls to the devil for a lack of better term, and it's just all about power and accumulating power and holding on to that power. And well, how do you do that? Well, you gotta take someone else's power from them in order to gain it. So it's I don't know, maybe who knows? But uh it's crazy to me because it's I was always so resistant to this, oh, they're evil.
SPEAKER_01But then at a certain point, it's are they evil or indoctrinated and become so deluded with evil? Yeah, potentially. I just I think that the power corrupts the mind. So when they see that they can stay in power and that their constituents keep them there through these soft uncrime policies, through stripping their constitutional rights away from Americans, and people support that. They delude whatever it is that our constitutional rights are. When they find power in that, it becomes a little bit of a dangerous game.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. No, absolutely. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01But I refuse to be demoralized. Yeah. Well, we still got God knows how long left in this election cycle. And oh, yeah, that's right. We were talking about that nonsense. And I really hope that's three million votes to go, guys. Three million, and uh, we've already got Xavier Becerra already to the uh November general, and we're just waiting for that.
SPEAKER_00So what's your predictions? Who's gonna win the election?
SPEAKER_01That was last Tuesday. My prediction, well, I thought Steve Hilton and Becerra were gonna advance right now. I don't know if Tom Steyer's gonna pull the harvested ballots out of the property. There's three million left. That's outrageous. I mean, if that's the case, I mean I just don't even want to. I mean, I always say I don't want to be here anymore, but I don't know where I'm gonna go. Nashville. Austin? Phoenix. I want to go to Montana.
SPEAKER_00I can't afford Scottsdale. I want to go to Montana, but it just gets a little too cold for my liking sometimes. Oh, yeah. Something about them snowy winters. I like to snowboard, but I also like to come back down to sunny Southern California. I don't know, I'm a glutton for punishment. So maybe harder, bitch.
SPEAKER_01Maybe one day if we can garner up enough support and listeners, Cam, we can pretty much choose where we want to live just because we can make this podcast happen and from anywhere, any place, anytime. So hoping that can be the uh the eventual future situation where we don't have to be planted with roots here in California because that's where we established ourselves.
SPEAKER_00Well, no, yeah. I mean, if we become millionaires, then we just get to go into those protected neighborhoods alongside the politicians.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, well, maybe it will be those smart GOP billionaires who maybe create the ballot harvesting machine for California. I'm certainly not smart enough for that. Well a couple of cool influencers get together with Elon. I'm sure he'd be happy to make something happen over here in California to make sure that we can beat them at their own game. Yeah. Think we've all had enough here in California of the shenanigans. We're getting tired of watching these elections go from there's a chance to oh, nope, just kidding.
SPEAKER_00Flopped on its belly. I know that's that's here. I started voting 2020. I've lost every election except this one with Trump. Everyone, I lose. Yeah, no. So I don't know how to pick the winners, I'll tell you. That's why I don't gamble, folks.
SPEAKER_012016 was by far my most victorious election that I voted in, man. I mean, I was I had roommates back then living with my wife, and we had no kids, and my my roommates, I don't know if they're Republican, Democrat. They were definitely not outspoken about politics. But I was in our living room on election night, fucking jumping for joy, fucking really just getting excited. They knew I was a Trump supporter. I don't know if they thought I was crazy, but they still, they're still good friends. They respect me, I respect them. And they were probably the smarter of the two of us couples because they ended up taking jobs over on the East Coast in North Carolina, which they've now planted their roots, raising a family, and know they're enjoying a probably a beautiful life over there.
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, just check this out. There's 40 million people that live in California, and it's like what it was like 1.7 million for let's just easy numbers that say six million between the three candidates with three million, nine million people voted out of forty million. So if people weren't so demoralized, or if we had that ballot harvesting apparatus, we could actually make some change here, and it's I don't know. I mean, don't you want clean streets? Or does it is it culturally enriching to see black and trash everywhere? I mean, I I remember growing up as a kid and throwing trash out the window and just getting smacked over the side of the head. Don't you do that? Don't you litter and then just drive around the valley and just watch people all day long just dropping their trash like don't I mean, what do you I mean, when you pull something out of your refrigerator, you just drop the trash right there on the floor. I don't get it.
SPEAKER_01Well, that's a good reflection of some more liberal democratic policies. You import the third world and you allow those to become your residents, expect to become the third world. Yeah. That's exactly what we're getting because there's no respect for where you live, how the cleanliness of your home, and that's just what we're gonna get. And until people can appreciate that there is a way to dramatically change that outcome, then we're just gonna get more of the same. But I was gonna say, I think if by the grace of God we do see Steve Hilton pull through here in this primary in a top two spot, that maybe by while we grow this podcast, we can garner the attention of Elon Musk himself. And hopefully within the five months of the general election, maybe we could encourage, maybe inspire him to create a ballot harvesting organization that we could all drum up and see if we can't make some true change really come to California.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we'll know that miracles do exist because three million votes and we know they're all 95% Democrat.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, we're small now, Elon, but give us a year and we'll consistently keep drumming up the content, and maybe maybe in five months you'll hear about us and like what we're putting out, and maybe we can make something happen. I don't know. Spencer's a little more bold than me, but that's why he's leading this thing. Well, we'll we'll try to get some more inspirational, influential figures here on the podcast. But it was a great episode, eight cam. Nice to have you on. First time as the official co-host of the Spark Show. Great to have you. Really proud that you're here making the commentary with me. And any last remarks before we wrap up the episode? Nope. Got nothing. So that was a great episode, everybody. Hope you enjoyed it. We're pulling for Steve Hilton for governor, hoping that Spencer Pratt pulls through for mayor of LA. We'll kind of see what that outcome is, and we'll have a more of that on the next episode of the Spark Show next week. You can expect one episode to be dropping a week. We're gonna try to drum up that content, start working on two episodes a week. But until then, expect once a week, usually dropping on Sundays. And we'll see you next time on episode nine of the Spark Show. Thanks, everybody. Peace.