many regulations that aren't necessary that aren't I mean this you you really don't believe that the state we live in California is is lacking regulation. There's over 300,000 regulations. I mean I went well maybe they're needed.
They're [music] not. When I tried to put in a garage door, I had to have three inspections there. There should have been none.
I should be allowed to change my garage door. Are you kidding? Really?
It was about a garage door? Absolutely. I'm sorry.
Yeah, that is No, you know this about California. Come on. No, I don't.
Well, well, I'm sorry. I don't. California today is viewed by many as a full-blown catastrophe.
What was once the nation's brightest beacon has curdled into a sprawling, bewildering mess that hardly anyone can fully still [music] grasp. And whenever the topic surfaces, one label gets pinned to the damage. Democrats.
And not by accident. Regular viewers of this program may recall my long battle to get solar power hooked up at my house. It involved this shed which had to be built to house this solar battery.
Yes, that battery needed a house to live in. [laughter] And not just any house, one that had to follow the specifications of this chart. That's a real chart of the steps we had to go through to get this thing turned on.
[laughter] Democrats have to stop thinking that what the voters dream about is to be hassled. If you buy a shed at Costco, it comes with this warning. Warning, this product can expose you to wood dust.
Wood dust. So, in one of his real time segments, Bill Maher went straight at the DNC over California's unraveling. And [music] yeah, it was ruthless.
Smash that subscribe button if you haven't yet, and let's get right into it. California just passed a law requiring large retailers to have a non-gendered toy section. a non-gendered toy section.
Isn't ken enough? We need a law for that. You have to inject yourselves into everything from where you can throw a frisbee to who can braid hair.
[music] This is why so many people, by the way, were triggered by co policies. They were already sick of rules. Regulation should be a good issue for Democrats.
It's certainly one they're associated with. And I think the average voter would agree that banks and chemical plants and drug companies need watching. [music] Mar kicked off by going at California's obsession with overregulation and plenty of people see his point.
The state has turned into one of the most tightly controlled places in America where almost every corner of daily life is boxed in by layers of rules and restrictions from small business permits and housing codes to environmental mandates that drift into the ridiculous. even basic tasks often demand approvals that feel excessive and pointless. For many Californians, it builds a suffocating atmosphere, one where innovation stalls, costs shoot up, and simple choices become bureaucratic nightmares.
Entrepreneurs struggle to start, homeowners hit endless compliance hurdles, and workers get buried under policies that feel detached from reality. Mars argument goes beyond politics. When regulation gets overwhelming, it stops protecting people and starts trapping them.
And that rising frustration is exactly why many think the state isn't just struggling, it's slowly unraveling under the weight of its own rules. Telling a company, "You can't dump the waste from your hog farm straight into the water supply. We're mostly all for that.
" But Democrats have become a parody of themselves, just making rules to make rules because it makes you feel like you're a better person. making sure that everything bad never happens again, which you can never fully do. It just makes everyone else's life a drag.
The Biden infrastructure bill has a provision that requires all new cars to install an alert system that goes off when you leave a baby in the back seat, which is something done only by crackheads and people who sadly, yes, do it on purpose. Mars got a point. California has a habit of rolling out new laws to make sure certain incidents never happen again, but those same incidents keep happening because human nature doesn't just flip on command.
Instead, the rules pile up, stretch wider, and eventually start weighing down the very people who weren't the problem to begin with. A clear example is what Mah pointed out. In a lot of cases, it's negligent individuals or careless adults who leave kids in cars.
Yet, the response is a broad policy requiring every new vehicle to include alarm systems that go off when a child is left behind. On paper, it sounds reasonable. In practice, it adds cost and inconvenience to millions of responsible drivers who would never make that mistake.
[music] That's the pattern. Laws meant for a few end up burdening the many, creating frustration instead of real solutions. A sensor light is not going to fix this problem.
And Democrats no longer possess the common sense to understand that not every problem in the world can be fixed with a regulation. But don't tell that to the advocacy groups who also want every future car in America to only start when the driver blows into a breathalyzer. Oh great, my other car is a Karen.
Critics say Democrats habit of layering on new rules has helped drive what many now see as California's mounting problems. There's a stubborn belief that every issue needs another round of regulation, as if piling on complexity somehow counts as a fix instead of stepping back to ask whether the current policies are even doing their job. The reflex is always the same.
More laws, more mandates, more oversight. But here's the truth. You don't repair a broken system by making it heavier.
In plenty of cases, the rules already exist in excess. They're just enforced poorly. When enforcement falls short, adding more regulations doesn't solve anything.
It breeds confusion, opens loopholes, and creates unintended fallout. Mars critique hits the core. [music] Good governance isn't about how many rules you can stack up, but how effectively you use the ones already on the books.
Well, you know, it's also not safe to drive when you're crying. Should we should should we make a car that follows your texts and stops the engine when you're dumped? Racism is bad.
How about a car that won't start unless you play a message about tolerance from George Decay Mah isn't even being subtle. He's straight up mocking the DNC's fixation on overregulation. And honestly, if I lived in California, I'd probably be right there with him.
A lot of these rules just don't survive a basic common sense check. Sure, the intentions sound good. prevent harm, protect people, stop mistakes from repeating.
But the thinking has a built-in flaw. Not every bad outcome can be legislated out of existence. Some risks are just part of life, and pretending otherwise tends to backfire [music] because what comes next is predictable.
Laws aimed at specific problems end up applied to everyone. They stack, overlap, and turn everyday tasks into slow, expensive, bureaucratic slogs. Things that should be simple suddenly come with permits, compliance hoops, and extra costs nobody asked for.
That's the irony. Policies meant to make life safer and easier often end up doing the exact opposite. Frustrating the very people they were supposed to help.
Democrats have to stop thinking that what the voters dream about is to be hassled. If you buy a shed at Costco, it comes with this warning. Warning.
This product can expose you to wood dust. Wood dust. No kidding.
Which is known to the state of California to cause cancer. That's right. California thinks you're going to snort your shed.
And that's really the point. These laws wear people down because they quietly drain time, money, and patience. What starts as a well-meaning rule turns into a maze of paperwork, approvals, and surprise costs that regular people are stuck navigating.
Not long ago, a colleague of mine tried to put in a new roof, and the number of bureaucratic hoops was unreal. Endless forms, inspections, and delays that dragged a simple job into a full-blown ordeal. And the permits, [music] brutal.
Every step felt like it needed another signature and another fee. That's why Mars frustration lands. When something as straightforward as installing solar gets tangled in red tape, it stops feeling like progress and starts feeling like punishment.
At a certain point, the system isn't protecting people. It's just wearing them down. No kidding.
Which is known to the state of California to cause cancer. That's right. California thinks you're going to snort your shed.
[laughter] I don't want to blow Pinocchio. I just want to put the lawn mower away. Though, this is where it tips into comedy.
The shed is already manufactured when you buy it. Cut, sealed, finished, the whole deal. The odds of you inhaling any real amount of wood dust are basically non-existent.
You're not out there sawing planks or sanding boards in your backyard. You're just putting together a pre-made structure. And even in the off chance there's a trace of dust, it would be so minimal it might earn you a quick sneeze, if that.
Yet somehow, California steps in with warnings claiming the shed could release wood dust linked to cancer. At that point, it stops sounding like caution and starts sounding like overkill. The gap between the actual risk and the official warning is just way too wide to ignore.
This is exactly the kind of thing Mars mocking where hypothetical risks get blown up to the point of absurdity, leaving regular people wondering if the system is protecting them or just crying wolf. It's the vast network of regulators, administrators, inspectors, contract reviewers, project managers, fee accessors, special commissioners, zoning officers, and consultants whose jobs seem to be to make sure nothing ever happens and then charge you for it. The people who answer the phone, permit office, how may I hinder you?
And that's the reality. Critics argue that instead of making life easier, these policies often do the opposite. Loading things up with bureaucratic steps so complicated even the people writing them would struggle to get through them.
What should be a simple process turns into a slow grind of paperwork, approvals, and non-stop requirements. Take building a home in California. Before a single brick is laid, permit costs alone can chew through a huge chunk of the budget, sometimes close to what the construction itself costs.
Every stage brings another form, another inspection, another fee, another delay. By the time you finally break through it all, the excitement of building a dream home has been replaced by frustration and burnout. It stops feeling like an opportunity and starts feeling like punishment.
And that's the core issue. When the system designed to help people ends up discouraging them from even trying. Last year, Wyoming [clears throat] began construction on the largest wind farm wind farm in North America that will power two million homes in Arizona, Nevada, and California.
And to think it only took 18 years. Not to build it, to approve it. 18 backlogged, knuckled dragging, pencil pushing, thumbtaddling, ball scratching years [laughter] to finally get to Yes.
When they started doing the paperwork, Leonardo DiCaprio's girlfriend wasn't even born. There are projects like the Wyoming wind farm that took well over a decade just to get approved. Why?
A never-ending stack of bureaucracy. What should have been a straightforward build turns into years of environmental reviews, legal battles, regulatory back and forth, and political red tape that slows everything to a crawl. And it's not an outlier.
California's highspeed rail has been stuck in a loop of delays and exploding costs. much of it tied to permitting and regulatory obstacles. The Keystone XL pipeline became the poster child for the same pattern, dragged through years of reviews, lawsuits, and shifting political winds before ultimately being scrapped.
Even large housing projects in major cities get caught in zoning fights and approval processes that stretch on for years. At a certain point, it stops looking like careful oversight and starts looking like paralysis. When critical infrastructure and energy projects take decades to move, it raises a blunt question.
Is the system built to get things done or just to slow everything down indefinitely? There's over 300,000 regulations. I mean, I once Well, maybe they're needed.
They're [music] not. When I tried to put in a garage door, I had to have three inspections there. There should have been none.
I should be allowed to change my garage door. Are you kidding? Really?
It was about a garage door? Absolutely. I'm sorry.
Yeah, that is No, you know this about California. Come on. No, I don't.
Well, [music] well, I'm sorry. I don't you don't you've never heard that California is overt taxed and overregulated that we are we are a one party state [music] where there's sort of no checks on that sort of extreme leftism and that really brings everything full circle. What begins as an effort to protect people and prevent mistakes has gradually morphed into a system that can end up working against the very people it's supposed to serve.
Overregulation, excessive permitting, and endless bureaucratic hurdles don't just slow things down. They siphon time, money, and momentum from ordinary citizens trying to build, create, or simply get on with life. From housing and energy projects to something as basic as installing a roof or putting together a shed, the pattern repeats.
Good intentions buried under layers of complexity. [music] The outcome isn't a cleaner, safer system. It's frustration, stagnation, and a growing feeling that progress is getting strangled in red tape.
That's why voices like Mars land with people. At a certain point, the question stops being whether rules are necessary and starts being whether the system has gone too far, turning governance into a barrier instead of a solution. And with that, we wrap up today's episode.
