The Honorable Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom

Warren Baker: Well, thank you. I had an opportunity to get into one or two of the sessions this morning. The electricity and the excitement was fantastic and a lot of good information has come forth. Now we have the opportunity to speak with our lieutenant governor and we're pleased to have him here in this very important initiative for STEM education. Gavin Newsom, 43, was elected as the 49th governor of the state of California on November 2nd, 2010. His top priorities are economic development and job creation and we know a lot about that, the kind of work that he has done both within the state and surveying what's going on in other states, improving access to higher education, and maintaining California's environmental leadership. He came from a successful background of both the private sectors starting 15 small businesses and creating more than a thousand jobs in local government, having served as mayor of the city of San Francisco and a member of the Board of County Supervisors. In 1997, Willie Brown appointed the governor to the city's board of supervisors. Voters elected him to the board in 1998 and reelected him in 2000 and 2002. He was elected the youngest mayor and you can see that, in San Francisco in more than a century. That's quite a record. In 2007, he was elected with more than 73%, reelected with more than 73% of the vote during his second term. He built upon the successive of his first term launching new environmental initiatives and a comprehensive strategy to transform one of the city's more troubled neighborhoods into a life sciences, digital media, and clean tech center. He's also a champion of public education and is proud that the San Francisco public school district is the highest performing urban school district in the state. The lieutenant governor also serves as a member of the board of regents of the University of California and the Board of Trustees of the California State University. And he was agreed to answer some questions at the end of his presentation. So, please, join me in giving a warm welcome to lieutenant governor Gavin Newsom. [Applause] Gavin Newsom: I love writing the introductions. Thank you all very much for the opportunity to share some thoughts with you and some words and I'm grateful that all of you are here on an incredibly important topic. Of course, not a topic that is unfamiliar to folks not only in your profession, your advocacy, and your particular perspectives, but not unfamiliar to the state and our nation. We continue to convene in conferences like this and have seemingly for decades, as things continue to get more challenging one could just argue getting worse for not only this state but this nation. So the question for all of you is self-evident. What are we gonna do to create a pattern interrupt? What are we gonna do to scratch the proverbial record because otherwise, you know how this thing ends. It's the same group, the same speeches, same politicians, or rather new politicians because we come and go, that make the same perfunctory remarks about how important it is that we ought to educate so we can now compete. That's a real cliche. Nothing that surprise you about the introduction but, Warren, I care about jobs and the economy. That's real cliche. I care about higher ed. I understand the linkage. That's obvious. I care about the environment. Boy, you think that was poll-tested introduction points because everyone is saying the same thing. The question is what are we doing differently? And are we serious about this or are we gonna continue just to play in the margins and try to fail more efficiently because it seems to me, that's the debate we're having not only in this state but this country. How can we fail more efficiently and who's to blame, because we're in the business of blame. Who is better in explaining the problem? Those are the people that get elected and then reelected. Those that are better at advocating responsibility, those are the ones that get elected and get re-elected. But I imagine, you didn't come here to focus on who's to blame, I hope. But you want to focus on what to do. And that's why I was honored to take the opportunity to share some of my thoughts because I am sick and tired of the who's to blame business as much as you are and I didn't come here to fail more efficiently and I don't just want to be the 49th lieutenant governor so you can have an introduction in a few years for the 50th lieutenant governor and all of you wonder, What does a lieutenant governor do? So, I've been trying to figure this out. Now, you know, Warren was kind. You know, I do come from the private sector so I have a little bit of experience in job creation and I'm fortunate to have started a number of businesses. And so, I have a bias in that respect and I have great admiration for entrepreneurs. I think there are a few more noble things. They are putting everything on the line and making something happen. I love innovation and I love that entrepreneurial spirit. I think, at our best, California is not just a state of dreamers but a state of doers of entrepreneurs and innovators, a state that has long prided itself on being on the leading and cutting edge of new ideas. I think Steve Jobs reminded us, as if we needed to be, and I think we did need to be reminded of that. His legacy is perseverance, a composer and a conductor, always in the future business but also, he allowed us a way to participate in that future. And California historically has always been in that future business. Remember, you come out west to start something. You go back east to join something. But it's really been the spirit of the west, the spirit of our state. And consider, because you like data, you like numbers, that's why I like this topic and I know we're supposed to tell stories because those are the things you remember, but the data is important and I hope you consider, even if you don't remember the facts, the fundamental point I'm trying to make, between 1950 and 1980, we were in the future business in California. We were the jobs generator of this country. We grew at an annual rate of 3.7% in annual job production. The nation, at 2.2%, wasn't bad but no state outperformed California during those three decades. What's happened since 1980? I'm not focusing on who's to blame. Since 1980, we have flat-lined. Numbers came in March of this year between 1980 and 2010 from 3.7% in the first three decades. The last three decades, we flat-lined at 1.1%, the nation slightly better at 1.2%. That's not the state that I knew. That's the not the state in the future business. We're becoming about average. And so, the debate becomes not just about who is to blame and failing more efficiently, it becomes now about our solvency as opposed to our greatness. We've dumbed down. We're not even asking good questions and it's the oldest adage in the world. You don't like the answer, ask a better question. Think about that. It's about now our solvency, not our greatness. It's not about that sense of spirit and pride that's long defined California. And that's and intangible that's profoundly important because how do you unite 37-plus million people, north, south, east, west, rural, suburban? Unless you can distill a sense of place and pride and collective wisdom and collective action. So, we're been suffering. So many people focus on the effects of that suffering as it relates to how it's manifested in our states since Lehman Day on September 15th, 2008. That's exposed it, but, again, it's the last 30 years that scare me more than the last 36 months. Creeping mediocrity, 30-year structural problem. In a world that is changing so rapidly that even five years ago, as Tom Friedman has long remarked in his book, The World is Flat, he looked back in his new book, That Used to Be Us, where he has a very scathing chapter on California, and he says he looked under the index under F and The World is Flat was written in 04 and came out in 05, 2005, not that long ago. And he looked for Facebook, it wasn't in there. Twitter, he says, was a sound in 2005, 4G was a parking space, the cloud was in the sky, apps were things you filled out to get into college, LinkedIn was a prison, and Skype was usually a typo. That was five years ago. His point is it's no longer a globalized interconnected world, it's now a hyperconnected world. The change of pace and speed is so extraordinary that it should alarm every single one of you. What's the pattern interrupt? We've kind of gotten used to it, that's right, that used to be us, that's sure, but we're still surviving because of the investments we made in the past. But we're not making those investments today. Those that don't, and you know this, invest in the future tend not to do very well there. You've got to pay forward. And we paid forward in the '50s and '60s. Certainly, the '60s with the establishment of a new framework, the master plan for higher education, linkages between community colleges and the state system and the UC system. And we invested in that. We paid forward, and we did better than anybody else. But now, we're no longer doing that. We have a state where 2,157,000 that are actively seeking to find employment can't. That's not underemployment. Twelve percent in the August numbers. There are 49 counties with unemployment in double digits, 49, in California. There are 18 without employment 15% and if you're from, we were just talking outside, if you're from Imperial County, your unemployment rate in August went to 32.4%--32.4%. I know it sounds like another politician and these are the depressionary numbers. What are we gonna do about it? Challenge is we don't have a plan for growth. We don't and that's alarming and that should alarm every single one of you but let me challenge you. We also don't have a plan for cuts. In this in many respects is even more alarming because what built this great state can be torn down and what's built over decades can be torn down in just a few years because when you stop and you think about it, you don't have a plan for cuts and you're not talking about--you're not asking the right questions. Where are we and where are we going, vis-a-vis the rest of the world for that matter, the rest of this country? You can make mistakes where you're not cutting in the bone, you're cutting into an artery and you all know the distinction because you can bleed out quickly. And if you think I'm being hyperbolic, am I? Look at the tuition at UC Davis. Since 2007, it's close to doubled, not 1997 since 2007. Close to tripled since 2001. CSU, same thing. We cut 650 million dollars. Let me just see, the budget this year, $650 million from the state college budget because we don't have a plan for cuts. It's all about solvency, not about greatness. It's about getting by. It's a math problem, I get it. I get it. I was mayor. I had to put those budgets out there as well. So it's not a quick cheap shot or critique. It's just an observation or concern. So when I sit there on the UC Board of Regents, the CSU Board, but particularly the UC regents, where we all but gave up last month by saying, You know what? Let's just choose today to set a four-year strategy to increase tuition so we don't have to keep doing this every single year. Talk about defeatist, where we're gonna go from $3,400 roughly, depends on how you analyze tuition and fees, to $22,000 by 2014. It was $3,400 in 2001. So the question is, if we don't have a plan for growth, and we don't have a plan for cuts, if we know that the best of the state was that we played well in the future because we not only invented it but we invested in it. And we know foundationally that you can't have an economic development strategy without a workforce development strategy and that human capital is our most precious resource and we need to invest in that. What are gonna do dramatically differently because you can't, we can't afford to play in the margins. They're not playing in the margins in Singapore. They're not playing in the margins in South Korea. They're not playing in the margins in Vietnam, let alone India and China. And for some of you, you'll say, Well you know, I'm so sick. I heard this the other day. Someone said China. You know, it reminds me of, you haven't been around, so you're a younger guy. You don't remember really the '80s as well as I do. I said, I remember the '80s quite well, actually. But you start to say, you know, Japan was gonna take over the world. That really didn't happen. Don't be so hyperbolic, you told me. I think it's important to remind folks, Japan was never a threat, necessarily, to America. It was a threat more to industries in America, consumer electronics and automobiles. It's a threat more to Detroit than any other city. China is a threat to every American city and every industry because we're not just exporting cheap labor and manufacturing cheap labor, as it's now been noted. They're allowing us to access cheap genius. How do you compete with cheap labor and cheap genius? We know the secret sauce was the foundation of education because people and products built the middle class. And what are those Wall Street protesters protesting? The loss of that middle class, understandably this barbell that exists and, interestingly, we're doubling down on that with the cuts on higher education because what do we do best to our credit we make up for the cuts for low income folks quite well, Blue and Gold Plan, Pell Grants, Cal Grants, foundations have stepped up but, boy, you get lost in the middle, you're finished because you can't get any grants for that. So, we're exacerbating that one condition we said education was going to reconcile. But we don't have a plan for cuts, let along the plan for growth. So, we've got to disabuse ourselves so we can continue down this path. I noted Warren's comments about my traveling because he referenced a trip I took to Texas, which was alarming. And this really woke me up more than my trips to Asia and India recently and the Karnataka region around Bangalore. Everybody gets it, and now, we're competing with Massachusetts at a whole 'nother level. They doubled down on their biotech investment a few years ago. We're competing with Ohio, their Third Frontier Program. They put 2.3 billion dollars to invest in that quality of imagination we're talking about. With Maryland and Martin O'Malley, Colorado and their new governor, former mayor of Denver, John Hickenlooper, Austin Chamber of Commerce, this is what was alarming about the trip. Not just about the fact the governor was elected three times and that's being exposed so I don't have to expose it on the nightly news, I say respectfully to Perry. But the Chamber of Commerce in Austin is opening an office in California. Just think about that for a second. The Chamber of Commerce in the city of Austin is opening up an office not somewhere else in Texas but in California. The Chamber in Salt Lake City already opened an office in Southern California. Utah has a presence in our state. Haley Barbour is casing our joint all of the time, Mississippi governor. Bobby Jindal, I, check it out. When I go to the airports, I say, Who's been around, who's interesting? And I hear about all these other folks coming on hunting trips to California. That's what Rick Perry called them, hunting trips for jobs here in California. And they're making investments. We were just talking about this, in Texas, in STEM. I love that we dismiss Texas, you know. It's all quantity, not quality. California is all quality with 16.3% of us living in poverty. It's all good down here. We've got to wake up. It's not just our overseas competitors. It's over the border of California competing with us and where do they go? To the biggest state in this nation. Still a 1.9 trillion dollar economy but they go to where the talent has long resided and they start picking our pockets. Washington state, they branded a marketing campaign to get Boeing up there for the new 737s. We haven't even called the CEO of Boeing to say we care about, you know, we want you down in Long Beach to replace the C-17 facilities that have been shuttered because of the defense cutbacks. We're not even in the game. This is serious and I know I'm sounding hyperbolic and I don't mean to depress and I'm not and I'm gonna end more positively. But I think we owe to ourselves because this state is too important. Your work is too critical. This country is too important from a geopolitical perspective to continue down the path. It used to be that you could continue to do what you have done and you'll get what you've got. No longer. It used to be, continue to do what you've done. You'll get what you've got. But not in a world that is changing so rapidly, not when you're competing against 2 billion new middle class customers in just the last 20 years. Continue to do what you've done, you'll become below average. You'll slide back. We can't even do that. So, you're the secret sauce. You know that. That's what you're talking about today. You know where the solution resides, in our ability to educate so we can now compete. We used to teach way past technology. You all know this. We can't even teach to the new technology. I mentioned 2 million people that are unemployed. I didn't mention there are over half a million jobs in the state California right now that are available. Can you believe that fact? Just in fact, the 540,000 jobs that I can show you on a website that exist just in this state that we can't fill because of the skills mismatch. They're close to 40,000 just in my old town of San Francisco. Ask the folks at Twitter. They can't hire enough. Ask the folks at Salesforce.com in the cloud, they can't hire enough. Ask the folks at Facebook and Google. Google just had increased--if any of you work there, congratulations--they just did huge bonuses for every engineer because they're trying to keep them because everyone's casing their joint to try to take the talent. There is a huge skills mismatch. Stanford, MIT used to be a conveyor belt, right? And we always got first-round draft to us. So if you didn't have the conveyor belt spinning people out, you can always get folks. But now, we know H-1Bs are followed up in four months and there are still H-1Bs available. I think it's a third of what it was in 2003 and they're still debating that one. It's amazing if you hear another Democrat say it's time for us to reform H-1B. So what are you doing about it? You got the president. You want a Republican? There are. Do something. Well, we can't. We have to link to it to comprehensive immigration. Okay, I get it and I'm with you but, geesh. But we know what to do. We have got to double down on this. And so, I'm here just to thank you because I'm desperately searching for solutions and one thing I know, there is not a problem that exist in this state that hasn't been solved by someone somewhere. It's all about scale, something we are also talking about. There are extraordinary things that you are doing, things that I will learn about, things that I have had the privilege of knowing about that you are doing that just need to see light and scale because otherwise, it's just a hobby. Because the scope of the state in our economy is so vast that our solutions have to match that challenge. You can't play in the margins. It's order of magnitude in the state of California. This is critical. Science, technology, engineering, and math. And yes, it means at UC Davis that the faculty has to think a little differently about how we educate, because one thing I know, I have a 2-year-old. She literally grabs my phone, goes like this, goes like this, pushes this and waits--at 2 years old. She does it. She barely speaks. She's way past Angry Birds and she's gonna go to school and she's got a different reality. This is the world she's living. It's this. It's not the old Socratic world that, frankly, I lived in and some of you lived in. So education has to dramatically ramp up and we've got to disabuse ourselves that we can fight these tools of technologies that relates to the classroom. We've got to make the investment, yes, financial investment in STEM subjects. But don't forget the A that's missing in STEM, which is the real STEAM, and I'm not talking about the tea party and letting off steam, I'm talking about the steam that is the engine of our economic growth and that's the quality of imagination, creativity, arts. One of the things I'm most proud of is the mayor of San Francisco, it's not that the bar is low and I can claim that we are top performer in the urban school districts because that's not a big deal. But it's that we put arts education in every single classroom, every child of a classroom, K through 12, we decided to stop talking about it in the city. Just send money over. We actually created college savings accounts. Every kindergartener that enters into our public school system, only city in America that I know of, and they get a college savings account. They have their own online account and bank account or more than half the families don't even have bank accounts. And now, these kids have their own college savings account. The old adage, once a mind is stretched, it never goes back to its original form. We want people thinking differently and we have some called the SF promise. We promise and guarantee a four-year-old education for every single kindergartener that enters our public school system and we'll fulfill that promise by being creative. We didn't have the money to do these things but we found it because money is not our problem. There's plenty of money out there. It's lack of ideas and that's my final point and I hope this is more of an optimistic point. Don't let money be your excuse. When I opened my first business, I didn't have any money. I didn't have someone say, Here's a couple hundred thousand dollars. Open something. It's the other way around. I had actually put pen to paper back then, literally pen to paper and put a plan together and then I marketed the idea and remarkably, I found people that were willing to invest in that idea. One thing I've learned in my life as mayor in public life when we did universal healthcare, no city in America has universal healthcare. We have it. I'm not waiting around for Obama and debate all these things. We do it. We didn't have the money three years ago. We had huge budget deficits but we had a better idea. And remarkably, the money started flowing. By the way, where does the college savings account money come? From the same folks that are supporting this conference. They got excited about it. It's something new and they have the resources. There is trillions of dollars on the sidelines, trillions, trillions in the banks' hedge funds, trillions. There is plenty of money out there. It's ideas. So, please, as you think creatively and continue to do the extraordinary things you're doing and organizing around this conference, don't let money be your inhibitor. What would you do is you knew you could not fail? I've always loved that. What would you do if you knew you could not fail? The answer to that question in the context of what you're trying to achieve and I assure you, that answer will inspire others and we will meet the challenge, and we will organize ourselves in a completely new way and we'll create that pattern interrupt that I began with and we'll scratch that record and we'll challenge people because this is the greatest state I think God has ever conceived. We're still the most diverse state in the world's most diverse democracy and in our best, we're living together and advancing together and prospering together across every conceivable difference because we don't just tolerate that diversity. We celebrate it. All those interesting differences but we unite as Dr. King said around our common humanity, the things that bind us together that we have remarkable capacity in this state but we have got to do things differently and you are a huge part of that. So, I just want to congratulate you and thank you for your inspiration and for your constancy. As I lamented, we've been talking about this for years, but by definition, you're here because you haven't given up. And you understand the final sentence, the difference between success and failure comes down to a simple distinction: the distinction between people that are interested and people that are committed. Interested people find excuses. Committed people find ways of getting things done. So, thank you for your commitment. I look forward to working with you for many years. Thank you all very much. [Applause] Baker: Thank you very much, lieutenant governor. I want to express our appreciation to you for your interest and for your support. I know that you have a tight schedule but you have time for a couple of questions. So, please, questions out there for the lieutenant governor. Newsom: Silence. Audience member: Thank you. So, Hillary, sir, from Apple. You talked about scaling, scalability. How do you see the governor's office and private industry helping with the scalability because there are a lot of great ideas out there and I talked about it a lot with Chris when I first talked about coming to this conference. How do we get over that barrier because we want to do that in the industry. Newsom: You know, I think--boy and so appropriate, Apple rep would ask this question. I've long seen government--someone in the '70s wrote a book and said, Government is like a vending machine, right? You put in a dollar and you get healthcare, police, fire, defense, social security, and you got limited choices. And if you don't like what's in the vending machine, you shake it. Moveon.org, tea party, Wall Street, whatever it is. As opposed to the new reality, which is looking at government like Apple looks at its iPad, as a platform. And government as a platform is an extraordinary way of looking at government because there is a component where you can do it yourself, where you can design your future. And you can live in that future. Apple didn't come out with 250 or 300 or 800,000 apps. They only came out with a dozen, but they came out with a platform for others to match up and to collaborate. The only way to scale is to look, I think, as government as a platform, a fundamental shift in our thinking. And this is something I've been giving a lot of thought about and shockingly, Penguin Press paid me to put this in writing. And without sounding like one of those, I hope you buy the book next year where we lay this out after spending a great deal of time with 60 or 70 technologists and a few dozen political thinkers I admire where we are organizing this idea in a much more profound way. Government in the cloud, not in the pejorative sense, but the ubiquity of access, the ability to scale, to share best practices in real time, process as opposed to the process we have now where we see the public as Angry Birds. We amplify their voices to get elected and then we turn down the volume as we govern. That's not sustainable and that's the current model and I think that's manifested by the folks that are organizing out in the streets and why there's more security at UC campuses in the last year than I've seen in the last 20. Leslie Rodden:Leslie Rodden from San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools, part of the Inland Empire. Newsom: Yes. Rodden: Over 14% unemployment and our businesses very, very concerned and our economic development agency very concerned about business retention and expansion and can you address how we're going to deal with the regulations with business in order to retain them. We have no Fortune 500s in our area. Small businesses that are suffering, and it's a very desperate situation. Newsom: I mean I accept the notion of the desperate situation because it feels like that, right? Fear, so paralyzing, and that's the fear that's manifested in the decisions in Sacramento, right? When you're fearful, you think it's zero-sum game. You think the pie is shrinking. So, what happens is you hold on to your patch and you don't compromise. You're just holding on to your patch and that's what's happening. Federally, it's what's happening in Sacramento and that's what's so paralyzing in the private sector. I have a plan. One is well received by the governor as I had hoped and that's disappointing but I hope you take a look at it, 38 specific action items because I went on and hired Mackenzie and Brookings and said what are--not only these other states doing well but what are these other countries that we're competing with doing well? What's Bavaria doing well and why does Bavaria matter? Well, Bavaria is a remarkable model, a highly regulated economy in Germany where labor has very strong influence on the environment with their--has actually set a bar for other industrialized nations in the world. They're actually gonna meet their Kyoto Accords, interestingly, one of four industrialized countries have actually met it. No one's really done a follow-up since Kyoto and we walked away. What have they done right to have an exports-driven strategy to build back their economy and do it with a low-carbon, green-growth strategy? Why do I use that as an example? Well, you're educating the next generation of folks by definition in the green-tech space. But I use that as an example of our responsibility to see what our competitors are doing and what we did in this is populated all of these best practices into a report. And one of the ideas that inspired me in the Imperial Valley and Central Valley, the Inland Empire was the notion of plug and play, something that Singapore has done very effectively. Programmatic EIRs, as-of-right zoning to your question of regulatory alignment, where you do all the pre-planning in advance and you credit cluster strategy, not to pick Solyndra but to pick industries and pick a place and create a regional cluster framework. We're working with the community colleges in the CSUs to build partnerships as well in a regional collaborate and create within those clusters a workforce development strategy that meets the unique characteristics of San Bernardino versus Santa Barbara versus Sacramento, and other parts of the state chunking down the issue, a macro and microstrategy. Gear up in terms of infrastructure investments, scale up in terms of workforce investment, regional alignment, cluster focus, people products, export driven for even the smallest businesses. And so, we laid it out. We had a 180-day action agenda and McKinsey, any of you who have dealt with McKinsey, you understand. That's the only way they think and operate, which I like. And we are in round three of its implementation. One of the first ideas that came out was a patent office. You should all care about that in STEM. Isn't it amazing California does not have a patent or trademark office? And the president just signed a patent and trademark bill and isn't it more amazing that patent and trademark bill was money for three new offices. And isn't it disturbing that you probably didn't know that because the state hasn't dropped everything to send its leadership out to the White House and say, If you're gonna come in, Mr. President, to this giant ATM known as California, we may not be in play, but no place on the planet produces more patents, particularly medical devices. Simulation robotics, engineering, biotherapeutics, bioengineering, all the things that you educate or as you educate. Why aren't we in play? You know the first one went to? Detroit. Goof for them. Exactly though, right? I mean good for them but they were aggressive just like the Washington state governor's aggressive. We got no 737s built up there. You've got to get in the game. We haven't lost. I'm literally going out but who the heck cares? I mean I'm surp--you obviously try to get the governor and you threw me in the mix. I apologize and I get it. Seriously. But I'm going out there in a week literally or two weeks and I'm meeting with the patent folks. Seriously, I'm an ex-mayor, kind of a lieutenant thing. It's not, you know, seriously, this is serious stuff, though, but it's one of the many ideas. You don't have to just focus on an 8-hour work day that just kills everybody and then, like this, and nothing gets done. You can just focus on small wins to build some trust and momentum and enthusiasm and yes, you can work with people on the other side. Why wouldn't we work with Kevin McCarthy, the number three Republican from California. He's a nice guy. He really is. I'm a crazy lefty Democrat from San Francisco. That's what most people think. I get it. I believe in gay marriage, you know that. We do it. We have a public option, a public plan. I don't know why I don't want to--I love--God bless you, insurance companies, but I want to take you out of business, I do. Not because you don't do some good work. Kaiser is partner in our plan. I think they're actually a model. So, if you're from Kaiser, please scratch what I said about taking out business. I want to amplify your voice. But I'm very aggressive on some of these things but at the same time also, aggressive on getting things done and, I think, a Republican leader from the Central Valley who is a nice guy and generationally gets these things could be a big plus for us in getting the patent office. And so, we're trying to reach out to him to do it. And my point is, I don't care whose idea it is. I care about getting things done and I think, again, hope you guys are empirically in that point in your life. Right now, it's whose idea it was. That's why you can't go to the Teas if you're a Democrat. We're not supposed to. Dale Marsden: Hi, Dale Marsden the superintendent in High Desert, the county that Leslie was talking about and happy birthday, by the way. Newsom: No, don't do that. I wasn't gonna correct Warren. I didn't want to correct him at all. It's middle age. I saw that movie Moneyball and Billy Beane, played by Brad Pitt, who mentioned his age is my age and talked about it as middle and how it's sort of the beginning and the end of his life. So, it's a very distressing birthday. Marsden: Well, Billy Beane is coming to the High Desert on my birthday, October 20. Newsom: Alright. Marsden: But I want to let you know that we're reengineering our community. We have a vision called STEAM 2020, science, technology engineering, arts, and math. And right now, what we're doing is we're raising the floor for the educational system. We'll reimagine the High Desert where every student graduates from high school, concurrently with their community college degree and/or technical or vocational equivalent certificate in a science, technology, engineering, arts, or math field. We have in our elementary system a foundation where every child receives access to a scholarship for community college. We have systems developed in place, all in a environment with 20% unemployment, 35% of our people on income assistance, and as we do that, I want to ask you if you'd be willing to connect and engage with us around this idea because we've got the momentum going but sometimes, that support in connecting at that level I think would say a lot and go a long way. Can't do it alone. We're tapped in with this group to help do it but I'll tell you, the momentum's there and I think your level of energy is what we need to push this thing out. Newsom: That's nice of you but let me reciprocate. I'm sitting here smiling and going, this is why I'm so confident and optimistic. There is so many good things happening in so many places. Again, it goes back to the question of scale. The ideas, the solutions are out there, not just the ideas. And so, I--the answer is absolutely. I'm going this Sunday, I think, or next Sunday, to Lost Hills for the third time as lieutenant governor. Trust me, I don't think a lieutenant governor had ever been to Lost Hills. I don't mean that. It's a small little town way outside of Bakersfield, and they've got about, you know, if you want a dropout rate, I mean these kids have to take a bus and there is--I won't use the term but there is a term in Spanish for these kids that come from Lost Hills because they're all dusty and dirty, because there's no sidewalks in Lost Hills and there's no bus stop and it's 110 degrees and these kids from middle school are being bused 45 minutes away to the other side of the world called Bakersfield and these high school students are bullying them and threatening them and talking about them in ways that no one should talk about other kids but that's how kids sometimes are. And these kids are dropping out at 60-70% from Lost Hills and they're among the highest teen-pregnancy rates and meth rates and some of the most amazing people you'd ever meet on the planet. The problem is it's a red county. So, why a Democrat is up there? They'll never get elected. How many people have told me that, Why are you going back? You'll never get votes in-- Problem with our politics. They're not wrong on the politics, they're just fundamentally wrong, morally and principle. Everything I'm about as a Democrat is manifested where you are. Everything I care about you just said. I mean, you want to get serious about education and STEM? You don't start in high school. You don't start in middle school. You don't start in kindergarten. You start in preschool. You all know that. It's too late. I was--well, I used to think as mayor, We'll get them in 8th grade. Wow, I was wrong. Even in kindergarten, I was wrong. So, it sounds like you're doing it and the answer is yes. I'm gonna walk by you or by others to get to you and give you my card and I'd love to talk to you about it and learn more. And so, you guys, you're done with me. I can tell, physiologically. He's getting closer. And I just want to thank you but please, I'm inspired by this. I'm one of those politicians who thinks the best politics is a better idea. I could care less about who's up and who's down and pointing fingers. I'm so over that. And I'm desperate for other people to be over that too because it's just not interesting to be something unless you're doing something. And I'm a Democrat that, you know, is always frustrated because we control every damn constitutional office and we have the assembly and the senate and I want to change the world and I don't think we're planning to do that. And it's great people, truly. Do not underestimate the quality of people. Don't disparage the people in the system. We have some amazing folks, truly, but they are trapped in this stale, old bureaucratic and political model that has completely outlived its usefulness. And I just encourage you in that respect to work with them and give them, give all of us the courage to be audacious, the courage to stand up and to fail and learn from our mistakes. Final point, the biggest distinction between my private life and my public life is I have a reward system in my businesses where, literally, I provide bonuses to the employee that screws up the most. We call it the failure award and it's completely changed my business. There is a reason now there are 17 of them and there was only three when I started this, because I want to reward initiative as opposed to, you know, I just messed up at the hotel. And I want you to reward--please I'm sorry but we need to be not just better politicians, you all, we need to be better citizens and you need to reward initiative, even when the outcome doesn't measure up. As long as there is a process of renewal and rethinking and a new approach. That's what STEM is all about, that's what great teaching is all about but we have to re-teach so we can re-calibrate our politics and politicians. They're very teachable. I'm teachable. They're great people but they need you to demand different things. Change the incentives, please. Please change the incentives and I think you're gonna see a very different framework of governance. Thank you all very much.