UMVA has learned that a sharp critique of California’s education and green energy policies was delivered by comedian and late‑night host Bill Maher on Friday.
Maher’s monologue cut through the glossy veneer of the state’s progressive image, declaring that the Democratic stronghold was “losing to the Waffle House” and that its sprawling bureaucracy was stifling progress.
He turned the spotlight to the South, hailing Mississippi as a model that “kicks our ass in education for far less money,” and rattled the audience with the stark statistic that a black child in Mississippi is two and a half times more likely to master reading by fourth grade than a black child in California.
California’s rank of 37th in fourth‑grade reading starkly contrasts with Mississippi’s ninth place, a fact Maher used to underline the state’s educational shortcomings.
When the topic shifted to green energy, the comedian shifted the narrative to Texas, praising the Lone Star State for its swift solar panel rollouts that complete in three to four months—roughly a thousand days faster than the California process.
He jabbed at the California bureaucracy, quipping that a windmill would have been built more quickly, and critiqued the state’s “pro‑climate” rhetoric by showing a Prius with a “Save Our Planet” bumper sticker, arguing that Texas’s lax permitting allows real progress.
Maher attributed Texas’s success to its “you’re allowed to build there” ethos, noting that “every third person in Texas isn’t someone whose job it is to make sure nothing gets done.”
In a final flourish, he turned the microphone back to the Democrats, accusing them of abandoning the core issues that once defined their party: education, race, and the environment.
