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Part 2 of the election panel. Sean Forbes chairs again, with Charles McGuinness, the party's vice chair Ash Seiter, and Theo Slater, who founded the California National Party. Same four issues, same zero-to-ten scores.

Issue one, the midterms: Ash expects more of the same, whoever wins; Theo expects a blue wave lowered by several feet of dirty tricks, a toothless majority, and asks whether America gets a Khrushchev moment after Trump. Issue two, why end this bad marriage: incompatible cultures, a donor state, fewer state legislators than Iowa, and the belly of the beast. Issue three, how CalExit happens: a California convention and a list of grievances, an Olive Branch Petition for the twenty-first century, the Irish model, or a slow drift as the empire loots itself into the ground. Issue four, what an independent California would look like: Scandinavian government, Finnish schools, a rail network, foreign investment in the shiny new nation, and Switzerland and Japan as models. Then a lightning-round conspiracy theory, and the book: The Courage to Secede.

Part 1, with Maya Ram and Hal Lohr, is episode 10.

In this episode

• 0:00 — Welcome, and the panel
• 1:34 — Issue one, the midterms: Ash on more of the same
• 5:59 — Theo: a blue tsunami, several feet lower
• 11:03 — Theo: a Khrushchev moment, or Obama after Bush?
• 16:22 — Issue two, why end this bad marriage? Ash: two diverging paths
• 22:50 — Sean: 44%, and how Washington would react
• 27:37 — Ash: Prop 50, and nothing the United States could do
• 29:03 — Theo: the belly of the beast, and the last days of Rome
• 35:11 — Theo: acclimated to worse governance
• 39:03 — Theo: the center won't hold
• 41:53 — Issue three, how does CalExit happen? Ash: a convention and a list of grievances
• 47:22 — Sean: an Olive Branch Petition, and the Irish model
• 51:31 — Theo: a slow drift, and no Senate
• 55:35 — Sean: the Berlin Wall fell in six years
• 1:00:07 — Issue four, what would an independent California look like? Ash: rail, schools and food security
• 1:05:02 — Ash: foreign investment for a brand-new nation
• 1:06:51 — Theo: Switzerland, Japan and soft power
• 1:08:29 — Lightning round: Ash's conspiracy theory
• 1:12:23 — Goodbyes, and the book

Facts, sources and further reading. We checked what was said in this episode, right and wrong, with links: checkpointcalifornia.com/011

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

A week before the midterms, Sean Forbes chairs a McLaughlin-Group-style panel: Charles McGuinness, Maya Ram (NorCal chapter secretary) and Hal Lohr (KPFK's Working Voices, Red Star Report). Four issues, everyone scores zero to ten, and nobody is allowed forty minutes.

Issue one, the midterms: what happens, and what happens after. Charles's Thanksgiving scenario, in which the Speaker sacks the Clerk of the House and the roll call on January 3 comes up short of Democrats. Maya on the 20,000-name list, flagged ballots, and whether a reverse January 6 is coming. Hal on why nothing changes: you're voting to change the puppets, not the ventriloquists. Issue two, California and Washington: why end this bad marriage? Charles makes the case from a counterfactual (we don't need the drama), Maya from the divorce court (irreconcilable differences), Hal with a challenge: name one benefit Californians get from being Americans. Issue three, how CalExit actually happens: collapse, occupation, a referendum, a billionaire, or fifty-four electoral votes held hostage. Issue four, what an independent California would look like: the Switzerland of the Pacific, the rail of Japan, the health care of France, and a border between us and Wall Street. Then a lightning round of conspiracy theories, and the book.

Part 2, with Theo Slater and Ash Seiter, follows.

In this episode

• 0:00 — Welcome, and the panel
• 1:15 — Issue one: the midterms, what happens and what happens after
• 1:51 — Charles: sand in the gears, and the Clerk of the House
• 4:51 — Maya: the 20,000-name list, flagged ballots, a reverse January 6
• 8:48 — Hal: change the puppets, not the ventriloquists
• 13:41 — Sean: alarm bells in the bunker ballroom
• 17:49 — Issue two: California and Washington, why end this bad marriage?
• 18:38 — Charles: we don't need the drama
• 21:39 — Maya: irreconcilable differences
• 26:58 — Hal: name one benefit
• 34:48 — Sean: a blank slate, and a lifeboat called California
• 41:15 — Issue three: how does CalExit happen? Charles counts the guns
• 42:55 — Maya: a referendum, and what Washington does next
• 45:10 — Hal: the United States limps along until 2037
• 50:23 — Sean: Singapore, fifty-four electoral votes, and a UDI
• 57:22 — Issue four: what would an independent California look like?
• 58:30 — Maya: Canada or Norway, and universal health care first
• 1:00:00 — Hal: a border between us and Wall Street
• 1:02:47 — Sean: the Switzerland of the Pacific
• 1:05:52 — Lightning round: conspiracy theories you should believe
• 1:09:27 — The book: The Courage to Secede
• 1:11:03 — Bye-bye

Facts, sources and further reading. We checked what was said in this episode, right and wrong, with links, and added the briefing the panel prepared from: checkpointcalifornia.com/010

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Sean turns the microphone on his co-host. Charles McGuinness, who took a master's in AI in 2019 and has built with it every day since 2023, says everything the boosters and the skeptics claim is true at once — and explains why.

How AI got here a decade early: not better chips but doubled money, over and over, like the Space Race. Why that is ending, told through the Canada lynx and the snowshoe hare: the transformers, memory chips, power and water have run out, and so has the patience of towns asked to host data centers. The Luddites, who weren't against machines but against shoddy ones. What a model actually stores, why it can't recite Pride and Prejudice, and why asking it who was Cuba's first president after the revolution is the wrong job for it. Who really loses their job, and why "we replaced them with AI" is the dog-ate-my-homework excuse for layoffs the tariffs caused. Then the California answer: health care, basic income, childcare and school lunches, so that people are safe enough to take the risks AI makes possible — including, Charles says, this podcast.

In this episode

• 00:22 — Charles, the show's other host
• 01:18 — A master's in AI, by dumb luck
• 03:06 — Is it the next dot-com bubble? "Everything you said is true"
• 03:57 — Moore's law, and buying the future with money
• 06:08 — Grandparents: horses to the space shuttle
• 07:07 — The Space Race, and why we stopped going to the moon
• 08:46 — The Canada lynx and the snowshoe hare
• 10:20 — No transformers, no memory chips, no patience
• 10:58 — The Long Beach data center that became an industrial park
• 12:28 — California makes data centers pay their own way
• 13:40 — Tropical storms, El Niño and Los Alamitos High
• 14:16 — The Industrial Revolution and its Luddites
• 18:20 — A table saw, not a brain
• 19:10 — Whose electricity, whose blueprints: the training question
• 19:32 — What a model holds, and why it can't recite Pride and Prejudice
• 21:24 — The first president of Cuba, and hallucination
• 23:46 — "Probably helium": what AI doesn't know about certainty
• 25:12 — The only driver of the economy
• 25:55 — Which jobs go: paralegals, leasing agents, maintenance crews
• 28:02 — The CEO's two speeches: the dog ate my homework
• 30:09 — Robots, cars and China
• 31:32 — Amazon, the contractors and the bottles
• 33:08 — The Star Trek future, and universal basic income
• 34:11 — Health care first, then Friedman's negative income tax
• 36:03 — Childcare, school lunches, and feeling safe enough to take risks
• 37:30 — How this podcast is made
• 39:40 — Too long, didn't listen
• 40:59 — Experts in government: "you don't want me in charge"
• 43:03 — Sign-off, and the Discord

Facts, sources and further reading. We checked what was said in this episode, right and wrong, with links, and added the reading list Charles prepared the show from: checkpointcalifornia.com/009

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Theo Slater — a Sacramento attorney and one of the founders of the California National Party — joins Sean and Charles to tell how the party began: a book about the Haitian Revolution, the wars that showed no sign of ending, and a founding convention in West Sacramento.

Theo traces the party's growth through the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaign and the shock of Trump's first win, the infighting that nearly choked it, and why it was never going to be a pressure group for the Democrats. He and Sean lay out what they think will never change while California stays in the union — the wars, health care and immigration — and look ahead: AI, cheap Chinese EVs, drones, and a radically green, decentralized California built around its counties and bioregions. Then Michael Loebs's campaign for governor, the 44% of Californians who'd vote to leave, the midterms, and why, in Theo's words, you can't reform a corpse.

In this episode

• 00:22 — Theo Slater, a founder of the party
• 02:01 — How it started: Obama's wars and The Black Jacobins
• 04:42 — War for profit, and "the most warlike nation"
• 07:55 — Eisenhower, Obama and the "good war"
• 09:46 — World War II, the camps, and deportations
• 13:59 — Why not reform the Democrats?
• 15:11 — Bernie Sanders, Clinton and the 2016 primary
• 17:53 — From ten members to fifty
• 19:39 — The night Trump won
• 21:47 — California's Republicans, and Wyoming's two senators
• 23:57 — Infighting in the early movement
• 24:50 — The Switzerland of the Pacific: defense, NATO and Ireland
• 28:22 — Growing pains
• 30:55 — Never a pressure group; the first convention
• 32:23 — The revolutionary party
• 34:38 — What will never change: war, health care, immigration
• 40:28 — Will the US last twenty years?
• 41:21 — AI, EVs and China
• 45:09 — Drones and the war of the future
• 45:46 — Michael Loebs's run for governor
• 47:46 — Inyo County, and the unheard
• 48:57 — Theo's California: Ecotopia and radical democracy
• 51:05 — The California DEAL: decentralization
• 53:15 — The California Bioregions Regeneration Council
• 55:40 — Shout-outs to the founders
• 56:14 — How Sean found the CNP
• 58:25 — 44% would vote to leave
• 59:49 — The midterms
• 1:03:36 — Gerontocracy
• 1:04:27 — You can't reform a corpse

Guest: Theo Slater — attorney, Sacramento; a founder and the first elected chair of the California National Party. He now works on the California Bioregions Regeneration Council, on Discord.

Facts and sources. We checked what was said in this episode, right and wrong, with links: checkpointcalifornia.com/008

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Ash Seiter — Lone Pine fire captain and vice chair of the California National Party — is back for a second conversation, recorded two days after the President told a cheering crowd in Nebraska that Iran could "take out" Los Angeles and San Diego.

Sean, Ash and Charles start with that remark, the silence from California's Republicans and the anti-California feeling behind the cheers, then turn to the governor's race: a Republican who can't beat a generic Democrat, and a Democrat who won't say what he stands for. From there, what the CNP would do instead — a public bank to finance housing and small business, universal basic income as "start-up socialism", universal health care, and breaking up PG&E and Southern California Edison — and what AI will and won't change about work. Sean walks through the party's California DEAL, and the arts get the longest look: a basic income for artists like Ireland's, film and tourism from Sideways to Lone Pine's westerns, and why the studios and labels keep playing it safe — and, in the last stretch, the hosts' firm conclusion that music and movies were better when they were young.

In this episode

• 00:22 — Ash returns
• 00:57 — "Take out Los Angeles; take out San Diego"
• 05:54 — A president's words, and the cheering crowd
• 07:19 — The donor state, and the abortion lawsuit
• 11:43 — Becerra, Hilton and the generic Democrat
• 15:31 — Fourth-largest economy, rising poverty, and Prop 40
• 17:59 — Housing: build, build, build — for whom?
• 20:41 — A state bank for housing
• 24:15 — Big tent or progressive platform?
• 28:29 — A party paralyzed: Massie and Greene
• 29:40 — Micro-lending and a small-business bank
• 31:34 — The CNP's soul-searching, and start-up socialism
• 36:52 — Health care, PG&E and Edison
• 40:05 — Utilities, broadband and human rights
• 43:36 — What $275 billion could do; solar and nuclear
• 45:08 — AI, jobs and a basic income
• 48:01 — Invest in the trades
• 50:41 — Robots, Uber and Waymo
• 53:03 — The California DEAL
• 55:45 — A basic income for artists
• 57:50 — Touring grants, Trailer Park Boys and Sideways
• 1:01:05 — Four hundred films in Lone Pine; arts in schools
• 1:03:09 — Franchises, Skydance, and the risk-averse studio
• 1:06:46 — Zappa, the Byrds, and why everything was better when we were young
• 1:10:04 — L for land reform, and where to find us
• 1:10:57 — Ash's podcast, Echoes from the Canyons

Guest: Ash Seiter — captain and public information officer, Lone Pine Fire Department; vice chair, California National Party. His podcast is Echoes from the Canyons: A Retrospective Music Podcast, about his father Jimmi Seiter's years on the road with the Byrds and the Flying Burrito Brothers.

Facts and sources. We checked what was said in this episode, right and wrong, with links: checkpointcalifornia.com/007

Got something to say to this podcast? Send a voicemail, and you might hear yourself on the next episode!

Sean and Charles are joined by Ash Seiter — captain and public information officer with the Lone Pine Fire Department in Inyo County, and vice chair of the California National Party — for an episode about who fights California's fires, who pays for it, and what happens when Washington stops showing up.

Ash explains why most American fire departments still run on volunteers, paid by the call or not at all, and how California's mutual-aid system sends small rural crews like his across the state. From there: federal land and federal fire policy, DOGE's cuts to the Forest Service and the North Rim fire, crews from Mexico and California's own air force, the State Guard, and seven days on the Palisades Fire — hurricane winds, failing hydrants and fires that rekindle. Closer to home, the fight to keep Lone Pine's hospital open, a "very purple" Inyo County, Los Angeles's hold on the Owens Valley, and the disconnect between rural and coastal California. Ash closes on why he thinks independence is now a matter of survival.

In this episode

• 00:40 — Ash's road to the CNP
• 03:10 — Fifteen years with Lone Pine Fire
• 04:20 — America's volunteer fire service
• 07:09 — Would volunteers rather be paid?
• 12:15 — Paid by the call
• 16:24 — Turnover, second jobs, and mutual aid through Cal OES
• 20:31 — Federal land and federal fires
• 24:42 — The North Rim, DOGE cuts, and life in fire camp
• 29:32 — CAL FIRE fills the federal gap; crews from Mexico and Australia
• 31:50 — California's air force, and the State Guard
• 34:17 — Seven days on the Palisades Fire: wind, hydrants, rekindles
• 41:43 — Governor for a day: prevention, aircraft and drones
• 46:05 — Is Washington the problem?
• 47:47 — Saving Southern Inyo Hospital
• 50:45 — One emergency system for all of California
• 52:47 — "Very purple" Inyo County
• 56:38 — Mutual aid, Big Sur, and the big earthquake
• 59:32 — Los Angeles and the Owens Valley
• 1:01:48 — El Niño, and the rural–coastal divide
• 1:06:56 — Why independence: "a necessity"
• 1:09:45 — Where to find Ash, and a food-recall bingo card

Guest: Ash Seiter — captain and public information officer, Lone Pine Fire Department; vice chair, California National Party. @ashseiter on Threads and elsewhere.

For a full review of the facts and sources quoted in the podcast, visit https://checkpointcalifornia.com/006/

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Sean and Charles are joined by Maya Ram — a registered nurse for 13 years, and the California National Party's Northern California secretary and chapter coordinator — for an episode about what the decline of American healthcare looks like from inside an East Bay safety-net hospital, and why she believes California has to leave to escape it.

Maya walks through the rural hospitals at risk of closing after the federal budget bill she calls the "Big Murder Bill", from Lone Pine to Yreka, and Sean tells the story of an Inyo County hospital whose staff cut their own hours to keep it open. From there: what universal healthcare in an independent California should look like and where Canada and the UK fall short, why "a bureaucrat between you and your doctor" already describes private insurance, concierge medicine, AI nurse lines, and the union fight that made California the only state with nurse-to-patient ratios in law. The episode closes on Gavin Newsom, state workers and farmworkers, and on handing the state's unwieldy health bureaucracy down to its regions.

In this episode

• 01:30 — Maya's road in: 13 years of watching U.S. healthcare decline
• 03:35 — The fourth-largest economy, and what Canada and Germany get for theirs
• 06:58 — The "Big Murder Bill" and California's rural hospitals at risk
• 10:03 — Lone Pine: two hospitals, one on the brink
• 13:29 — Dolly Parton, billionaires, and hoarding
• 16:40 — Day one of an independent California: which healthcare system?
• 18:30 — Government bureaucrats or corporate ones? Denials and prior auths
• 20:36 — How American healthcare became for-profit
• 24:17 — What the bills would have been without Medicare
• 26:07 — A health check in Japan, and what it would cost here
• 28:32 — CalCare, Newsom's veto, and concierge medicine
• 31:26 — AI in the hospital, and AI nurse lines
• 41:23 — Nurses' unions and nurse-to-patient ratios
• 42:30 — State workers, SEIU Local 1000, and Newsom
• 49:43 — Why California governors don't become president
• 54:44 — Breaking up the Department of Public Health: a regional California

Guest: Maya Ram — registered nurse; Northern California secretary and chapter coordinator, California National Party.

Hey! I'd love to hear your thoughts, send me a voice note.

Independence is the easy part to argue about; this episode is about the morning after — what California would do with the keys, and how much of it could be done right now, without leaving anything. Sean's answer is a tripod: a basic income paid out of a permanent fund on the Alaska model, universal healthcare underneath it, and something on rents, or the landlords simply collect the difference. Charles adds the leg it falls over without — you have to build the housing — and tells the story of bribing his way into a Manhattan apartment, one hundred-dollar bill at a time, back when rent stabilisation was supposed to be protecting him.

From there: proportional representation, and why a legislature smaller than Iowa's governs Inyo County as an afterthought; the "California hellhole" neither host recognises after thirty years of looking at it; the water nobody is campaigning on, and the desalination the state is too timid to build; and the utility monopolies, what PG&E pleaded to after the Camp Fire, and whether public power would actually be cheaper.

In this episode

• 00:31 — The day after: the lowest possible bar, and then the real answer
• 02:50 — UBI from a permanent fund: Alaska, Salton Sea lithium, an AI dividend
• 07:54 — Why insurance, not ambition, is what keeps people in their jobs
• 08:36 — The tripod: income, healthcare, and rents that don't eat both
• 12:00 — None of it works unless you build housing
• 13:08 — Manhattan, a rental broker, and hundred-dollar bills
• 14:46 — More voices: proportional representation and the German model
• 23:22 — "Let's invite Newsom on and let him defend his own record"
• 25:49 — The hellhole that isn't: San Francisco, then and now
• 26:43 — A private investigator's Los Angeles: depressing, not dangerous
• 30:25 — One-party dominance, and why Democrats should fear losing
• 32:58 — California as a nation-state, with a legislature smaller than Iowa's
• 36:50 — The one thing that binds all of California: water
• 37:03 — Inyo County, Chinatown, and the case for local control
• 44:22 — "We had to destroy democracy to save it"
• 45:34 — If it's the emergency cord, why is nobody acting like it?
• 46:42 — The Colorado, Lake Powell, and the desalination nobody will discuss
• 51:51 — How Israel and the Gulf do it, without wrecking the marine ecosystem
• 53:33 — A desalination plant that follows the sun
• 55:08 — In defense of the Democrats: what the federal constraint costs
• 56:21 — The utility monopolies: PG&E, the Camp Fire, deferred maintenance
• 01:00:44 — Regulatory capture, and whether public power would be cheaper
• 01:04:36 — November: the one link in the chain the states don't control
• 01:09:03 — A federal viceroy for California, and why that stopped being funny
• 01:11:06 — The podcast version of doomscrolling