Meme - ">1920
>be californian
>get duped into buying Australian eucalyptus trees
>plant thousands of acres
>Australians forget to mention it takes at least 100 years for the trees to mature
thousands of investors go broke
>100 years later eucalyptus trees have spread everywhere and have finally matured
>Australians also forgot to mention the trees produce a highly flammable toxic oil that builds up in the tree
>california burns down"
Los Angeles hydrants are running out of water because no one filled the reservoirs, but at least they have their first-ever lesbian fire chief who made it her mission to hire more women? - "What did she do once in the position? Create a DEI bureau, of course!! 👇... LA residents should be asking why so much time, money, and energy was spent touting a lesbian fire chief and her desire to make the department more diverse instead of spending that time on refilling water reservoirs, hiring the best people, buying the best equipment, and practicing for wildfires."
Clearly, if they had made the department more diverse, it would have functioned better, so we need even more diversity
Sara Foster on X - "We pay the highest taxes in California. Our fire hydrants were empty. Our vegetation was overgrown, brush not cleared. Our reservoirs were emptied by our governor because tribal leaders wanted to save fish. Our fire department budget was cut by our mayor. But thank god drug addicts are getting their drug kits. @MayorOfLA @GavinNewsom RESIGN. Your far left policies have ruined our state. And also our party."
Meme - "When the highly-flammable eucalyptus trees you sold to California in 1920 fully matures 100 years later and the mayor blames climate change and Trump. *Crocodile Dundee with Crocodile, Kangaroo and Australian flag*"
LA Fire Chief warned $18M budget cuts would affect response to large-scale emergencies - "The LA Fire Chief warned in the weeks before the devastating Palisades fire that the decision to cut the department's budget by nearly $18 million would diminish its ability to prepare for and respond to large scale emergencies."
Mayor Karen Bass faces fierce criticism for overseas trip, budget cuts as LA fires rage - "Rick Caruso, a real estate developer and former mayoral candidate, criticized Bass for her absence, saying, “This is an absolute mismanagement by the city and I’m going to be very honest, we’ve got a mayor that’s out of the country and we’ve got a city that’s burning.”"
Meme - "Don't you just hate it when climate change hires a fire-chief based on pronouns, gives away fire equipment to Ukraine, mismanages forests, tears down dams, refuses to fill existing water reservoirs, cancels fire insurance, and lays off firefighters for refusing an experimental vaccine?"
John Durant on X - "It may surprise you to learn that the state that took 38 days to count votes in the presidential election isn’t at all prepared for wildfires."
Meme - Crying Newscum: "It's not our fault! We don't have enough firefighters!!"
"This you?" "113 LAFD FIREFIGHTERS REMOVED FROM DUTY WITHOUT PAY FOR FAILING TO MEET CITY'S VACCINATION MANDATE"
Gavin Newsom on X - "NEW: Just issued an Executive Order that will allow victims of the SoCal fires to not get caught up in bureaucratic red tape and quickly rebuild their homes. We are also extending key price gouging protections to help make rebuilding more affordable."
Why is bureaucratic red tape a good thing normally then?
Good luck when building materials are scarce and no one wants to bring more in
Newsom Has a Permitting Epiphany - WSJ - "More than 12,000 structures in the Los Angeles region have been destroyed by the past week’s fires. At California’s glacial pace of permitting, it could take years for new homes and businesses to rise from the ashes. Rebuilding will cost multiples more than original construction owing to more stringent building codes, high permitting fees and inflation. That explains Mr. Newsom’s executive order on Sunday waiving the state’s Environmental Quality Act and Coastal Act. He directed his administration to identify other burdensome permitting and building code requirements that can be eased. This is an admission that state regulations increase costs and delay projects, if they don’t stop them entirely. Green groups and unions exploit the state’s environmental laws to tie up projects for years in court. Developers often settle lawsuits by making concessions—for example, setting aside land for conservation or using union labor—that increase project costs. Local governments impose excessive permitting fees and other requirements to mitigate a project’s impact. The Supreme Court’s landmark County of El Dorado ruling last year requires such fees to be commensurate to a project’s impact, though local governments can still tie developers up in red tape to force them to make costly concessions. A 2021 University of Southern California survey of California developers found that it typically took 18 to 45 months—yes, months—for a project to be approved. Half said they had abandoned projects owing to government fees, and 45% said they were required to substantially reduce a project’s density. More than half reported that lawsuits had scuttled projects, and 37% said legal settlements equaled at least half a project’s worth. Unnecessarily burdensome building codes also balloon costs. New homes in California must comply with efficiency standards that add tens of thousands of dollars to the price. California also mandates solar panels on new homes. Onerous licensing requirements restrict the supply of general contractors and increase labor costs. All of this explains why “affordable” housing units can cost $1 million to build and the state has a severe housing shortage. The Los Angeles metro area’s population is larger than that of Dallas and Houston combined, but the latter together permitted more than five times as many new homes last year. This is why the median home in Los Angeles County costs $1 million. California’s environmental laws also delay and inflate costs of needed public works, when they don’t kill them. A new large reservoir hasn’t been built in the state for 50 years. The California Coastal Commission in 2022 nixed a proposed desalination plant in Huntington Beach. Even Mr. Newsom’s Delta water tunnel project and bullet train have been snagged by green tape. Ditto fire prevention since permits and habitat mitigation are required to clear brush, widen fire access roads and create fire breaks on public lands, especially along the coast, such as where the Palisades fire is burning. If Mr. Newsom agrees that the state’s environmental laws are a problem, why doesn’t he at least try to reform them? The reason is Democrats in Sacramento are beholden to the green lobby, which opposes most development and uses the laws to extort businesses. It’s nice of Mr. Newsom to ease permitting so L.A.’s affluent can rebuild. Perhaps he’s worried they might leave if it takes too long or costs too much to rebuild. Moonscape neighborhoods wouldn’t look good if he runs for President in 2028, or when the Olympics comes to town the same year. But what about all the others who are leaving the state because they can’t afford its astronomical housing prices?"
Why doesn't Newsom get that regulations are meant to protect people from corporate greed and exploitation, as well as conserve the environment, and that dismantling all regulations is the endgame of neoliberal fascism?!
Time for left wingers to mock blue states again
Meme - End Wokeness @EndWokeness: Blue-haired woman saved by white man: "Stop put me down — I wanted to be saved by firefighters who look like meeeeee"
Californians voted to spend billions on more water storage. But state government keeps sitting on the cash - Los Angeles Times
From 2018. Damn climate change, corporate greed and deregulation!
Fed Scientist Rejects ‘Climate Change’ as Fueling L.A. Fires, as Arson Reports Surface - "Jon Keeley, U.S. Geological Survey scientist, has told Public, “I don't think these fires are the result of climate change. You certainly could get these events without climate change.” Keeley, who has been researching the topic for four decades, across nearly 40 U.S. regions, highlighted the human element: “humans may not only influence fire regimes but their presence can actually override, or swamp out, the effects of climate.” He explained, “We’ve looked at the history of climate and fire throughout the whole state, and through much of the state, particularly the western half of the state, we don’t see any relationship between past climates and the amount of area burned in any given year.” California is not having extreme or even very unusual weather, no matter what media talking heads say... at least one homeless man was caught by concerned citizens who saw him lighting fires in Los Angeles. The UK Daily Mail reported that two men were caught on camera lighting a gasoline fire just before the deadly Palisades fire burst out. Is arson causing and/or fueling the fiery inferno engulfing L.A.? Unfortunately, the police seem highly apathetic about charging the suspects. Climate Depot reported the findings of a 2021 study: “100% of all [Santa Ana] fires are the result of human ignitions, either intentionally or accidentally,” and “higher temperatures” were not substantially responsible for wildfires. Horrific Democrat policies — including failure to build new water storage infrastructure, DEI hiring policies, refusal to clear out brush, slashing the firefighting budget, and dumping millions of gallons of water into the ocean to save effectively extinct fish — are to blame, not “climate change.” Gavin Newsom and Karen Bass are the culprits, not your SUV and your gas stove. And, of course, it seems that arson is at least partially responsible too. Maybe if woke California did not have so many policies that fuel homelessness and crime, that wouldn’t have happened either. There have always been and will always be fires in California, but this one is such a horrific disaster not because the planet is about to go up in flames from “climate change”, but because woke, leftist environmentalists are horrible leaders."
Megyn Kelly blasts 'overweight, out-of-shape' women battling LA fires amid public outcry over response - "Megyn Kelly hit out at the three female leaders of the Los Angeles Fire Department as wildfires continue to devastate Southern California. Kelly, a former Fox News host, took special aim at Fire Chief Kristin Crowley, Training and Support Bureau Commander Jaime Brown and Deputy Chief in Equity and Human Resources Bureau Kristine Larson amid criticism that the city focused too much on diversity, equity and inclusion efforts to properly prepare forces to battle the fires. 'These three women who are at the top there are all, I mean honestly, I'm not trying to be mean, but they're obese,' Kelly said on her podcast Monday. 'These are overweight, out of shape women... 'I speak for all women - I believe speak for all females in Los Angeles - when I say: We want a strong man to rescue us. That's what we want,' she concluded. 'Do we ask for too much?' Kelly's comments came in stark contrast to remarks Larson made in a now-viral video from 2019, in which she insisted residents want to be rescued by someone with whom they identify. 'It gives that person a little bit more ease, knowing that somebody might understand their situation better,' Larson said. She also seemed to blame helpless fire victims for their need to be rescued as she addressed concerns that female firefighters may not be strong enough to carry a man out of a burning building. 'He got himself in the wrong place if I have to carry him out of a fire,' Larson stunningly claimed. Her comments infuriated many online, as the deadly blazes claimed the lives of at least 24 people and left more than 200,000 residents having to flee their homes. 'Los Angeles Fire Department Assistant Chief #KristineLarson should NOT be in her position if a heavy man is someone she won’t even consider rescuing from a fire,' one California resident posted on X. 'She’s better off working at Walmart or McDonalds.'... the LA Fire Department was left begging the city's council to approve nearly $100million to replace its entire fleet just two months ago. 'Many vehicles have surpasses their expected service life, leading to increased maintenance costs, reduces parts availability and potential downtime,' the department wrote in its request after years of depleted funds... Fire Chief Kristin Crowley wrote in a December memo that the cut of $17.6million 'adversely affected the Department’s ability to maintain core operations, such as technology and communication infrastructure, payroll processing, training, fire prevention, and community education.' She also noted there was a $7million reduction in overtime pay. Yet a leaked memo last week revealed that Bass demanded the LAFD make an additional $49million budget cut, on top of the $17.6million cut. The extra cuts, requested just days before fires broke out and devastated swathes of Los Angeles, would have shut down 16 fire stations and crippled the department's ability to respond to emergencies... the larger Los Angeles County has been accused of throwing money at DEI initiatives while cutting its own firefighting budget. Fox News reported that hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent on initiatives including $14,010 to the Gay Men's Chorus of Los Angeles, $190,000 to the Homeless and HIV needle exchange program, and $100,000 of county funds to pay for Juneteenth celebrations. But now, AccuWeather - a company that provides data on weather and its impact - estimates that the damage and economic losses from the blazes could be anywhere from $250billion to $275billion, marking the nation's costliest disaster ever."
Meme - "DON'T WoRRY! I'M AN EMERGENCY RESPONDER WHo LooKS LIKE You!"
"HEEEEEEELP! MY HUSBAND'S STILL IN THERE!"
"MY LEG'S BRoKEN! I CAN'T GET UP!"
"LooKS LIKE HE GOT HIMSELF IN THE WRONG pLace!"
Meme - "They're Saving the Dogs... They're Saving the Cats. They're Saving the Houses Of People Who Live There. 101 Mexican firefighters have come to help Fight the Catastrophic wildfires in Los Angeles"
"That was Hatians"
Left wingers think Mexico and Haiti are the same country, but call other people ignorant
Colin Wright on X - "The problem of DEI in firefighting isn't limited to LA, and should be called out everywhere before disaster strikes. In Connecticut, a bill was proposed to create "a more diverse [i.e., more female] class" of firefighters by lowering physical standards for women. Specifically, women would no longer be required to pass "fifty-pound simulated vest test component of the Candidate Physical Ability Test" that men are required to pass. Keep in mind that the basic gear firefighters are expected to wear when fighting fires is at least 59lbs. The last update on the bill's status was that it had been referred to the state legislature's "Committee on Public Safety" for review. However, there's no information indicating whether it passed or what its current status is."
Clearly, being able to move with a heavy load, carry casualties to safety and break down doors has nothing to do with how good a firefighter someone is - what matters is someone who looks like the people he serves
Nate Hochman on X - "It really is remarkable how quickly the illusions of modern liberalism evaporate, once the social order collapses. The California fires started on Tuesday. Within literal hours, the looting began. "Groups of men" were pulling up to homes en masse—by the hundreds, according to some eyewitnesses—in cars and scooters, across Los Angeles. Wherever the fires burned, they appeared. This was their first instinct—their primal reflex—in the Hobbesian state of nature. Others secured the safety of family and friends, helped neighbors evacuate, even volunteered to aid affected communities. But not the looters. The very instant they were no longer constrained by the law, they reverted to violent anarchism.
Civilization does not live equally within everyone. For some, it's an external imposition. It's only the threat of brute force—the state's "monopoly on the legitimate use of violence"—that keeps them within the confines of the social contract. Once that's lifted, these distinctions are immediately laid bare. The truth is that there are simply people who are antisocial by nature, and their capacity for living in an advanced society is made possible only by a vigilant law. This has been true in every place and time, and it remains true today, as uncomfortable as it may be to our modern sensitivities. The tragedy in California is a testament to that.
Liberal anthropology holds the opposite. It's "environmentalist"—not the popular meaning (i.e., caring about climate change), but in the sense of believing that humans are products of their environment, rather than their innate natures. "Born free, but everywhere in chains," etc. But it's simply impossible to blame what's happening in California on "socioeconomic conditions." If these people were driven by material desperation—by a desire for basic security—they would be dashing for the exit, like everyone else. Instead, they went for the flat-screen TVs."
California’s Homeowner Insurance Market Freefall: Regulatory Folly Run Amok - "California’s homeowner insurance market is in the grips of an urgent crisis as major insurers cancel existing policies, refuse to write new policies, and, in some cases, abandon the state’s insurance market entirely. Insurers’ unsustainable losses are largely due to poor forest management, which has contributed to wildfires that are more severe and destructive than any recorded in California history. Insurers’ losses have grown exponentially to unsustainable levels. California’s leaders must focus on better forest management and free market solutions to bring insurers back into the state’s market and restore reasonable costs."
From July 2024
Thread by @kimmaicutler on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "Guys. We — as in Californian voters who voted in 1988 — voted for a system where every time an insurance company wants to raise rates for automobiles or homes, they have to have a public hearing and an elected insurance commissioner has to approve that rate increase.
Even better, the non-profit, Consumer Watchdog, that ran the ballot initiative that voters voted for, wrote in a way that it could earn intervenor fees when it contested rate increases. Before the wildfire crisis, the insurance commissioner job used to be a stepping stone with great name recognition for higher office. But now it’s a political graveyard because no one wants to do the unpopular job of raising homeowners’ insurance premiums.
Lara has stalled on allowing insurance companies to factor in catastrophic modeling and reinsurance rates, which has caused 7 of the 12 top insurance companies to stop issuing new policies in California. Even today, I get emails on local mailing lists from homeowners trying to find coverage after they get non-renewed. As a result, our state plan of last resort, FAIR (which offers barebones fire insurance, meaning homeowners still have to find wraparound coverage for other risks) has tripled in size over the last five years and now has $458B in exposure. bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
Over the summer, FAIR testified it only had about $385 million in unreserved funds available to pay claims and $2.5B in reinsurance. But the @sfchronicle today looked at zip codes around the various LA fires and noted it could have up to $24B of exposure. “When the FAIR Plan runs out of money to pay claims, it’s allowed to split its remaining costs amongst all of the licensed insurers in the state, with costs allocated according to each company’s market share.” This is why insurance companies were non-renewing customers that were living far away from fire zones. It’s because they didn’t want the FAIR exposure.
In July, Lara announced a new plan to handle the FAIR liability. For the first $1B each of residential and commercial claims, insurers would be required to pay half themselves, with the option of passing on the other half to their customers. How much is this going to cost you? Consumer Watchdog (LOL, the same group that ran the 1988 initiative) said this summer that a major wildfire could force FAIR to impose a surcharge of $1,000 on insurance policies throughout CA. Multiple wildfires could be $3,700.
But if they don’t allow a surcharge, it’s hard to see how insurance companies would come back to California and we’d become uninsurable, tanking our property values and tax revenues. There’s also a weird alternate universe where Consumer Watchdog (this fucking non-profit) didn’t happen to be on the same August 2023 Southwest flight as some lobbyists, then secretly record their conversation, leak it to Politico and tank this agreement and maybe it would’ve been effective a whole year earlier and prevented more Palisades customer hemorrhaging to FAIR throughout 2024."
Clearly, capitalism has failed, and insurance company CEOs need to be murdered by Luigi Mangione
Laura Powell on X - "Last year, State Farm canceled 1,600 policies in Pacific Palisades because the state would not allow them to raise premiums enough to cover their exposure. The affected homeowners would then likely have to rely on the state-run FAIR Plan, an expensive last-resort insurance program. But the FAIR Plan reportedly only had a surplus of $200 million as of April 2024 and was likely to become insolvent if a catastrophic event occurred. Governor Newsom goes around posturing about politics instead of trying to solve urgent problems. Our state government takes billions of dollars from hard-working Californians and provides barely anything in return. An unconscionable failure."
Noah Smith 🐇 on X - "Progressives seem to believe that insurance companies are infinite pots of money whose job it is to just cradle everyone in their loving arms and make sure nothing bad ever happens to them, without charging money for that service"
Colin Wright on X - "I don't know if DEI played a causal role in the California fires, but since DEI rejects merit, injecting this ideology into a field where competency is crucial—such as firefighting—leaves it wide open to criticism. Whenever merit is disregarded, there is no solid defense against accusations that DEI is responsible for a particular failure. In fact, abandoning merit shifts the burden of proof to DEI proponents to demonstrate how their rejection of merit did not contribute to any specific disaster.
If you publicly announce that you're going to start prioritizing race and sex over merit when hiring engineers, and subsequently new bridges start collapsing, those blaming the collapses on this new hiring protocol are under no obligation to prove anything."
Colin Wright on X - "Ken Hale, a retired Cal Fire battalion chief who was chief investigator for Nevada County v. PG&E, explained in a 2019 article how "PG&E is spending millions to convince everyone in California that all these fires are caused by climate change" instead of on "vegetation management and maintenance as required by law to maintain in a safe and reliable power grid." "Sorry folks, climate change does not start fires. Powerlines in contact with vegetation does. If there is no spark, there is no fire, regardless of the weather," said Hale. During Hale's investigation, he unearthed emails from PG&E that "straight out said that it was less expensive to pay the fines than to trim the trees." Although this case resulted in over 700 criminal convictions, Hale says "PG&E has not changed much in the last 25 years."
@GavinNewsom appears to be bought and paid for by @PGE4Me . h/t @Nopilled16622"
Trust the Experts - unless they hurt the left wing agenda. Companies are greedy and evil, but if they push the left wing agenda they are good
Michael Seifert on X - "It’s amazing that our government will tell you with a straight face that they can’t stop a regional fire, but if you just pay more in taxes, they can change the entire global climate. It’s even more amazing that anyone believes them."
Meme - "LA County: 72 genders, 0 operational fire hydrants"
Meme - "Climate Change"
"Annual Rainfall Chart. Downtown Los Angeles. Seasons 1877-2024. Dotted red line is average for all seasons. Measurement is in inches. *not much change in distribution since 1957*"
Jennifer Van Laar on X - "🚨 NEW photos from former LAPD West LA Division officer Rusty Redican taken on July 5, 2021 (yes, 3.5 years ago) at 9:15 AM show the Santa Ynez Reservoir. Redican and his partner were told that maintenance was being done at that time. It looks the same as it did in Nov 2024, when we know it was empty #PalisadesFire"
Libs of TikTok on X - "The 117 million gallon Reservoir in the Pacific Palisades has been empty and undergoing “maintenance” for over 3 years with virtually no change. This is the definition of Government incompetence and negligence."
Damn climate change!
Meme - Jarvis @jarvis_best: "A lot of people dunking on Sam for this take but let me explain. The first rule of journalism is that whenever something bad happens, you have to blame the bad thing on the Republican in Closest Proximity (RICP). In the event that you're stuck with a Dem mayor and Dem gov and Dem pres, then there's no one to blame for the bad thing because there is no RICP. In such cases, you have to pivot to this: imagine how bad things WOULD be if there WAS a Republican around. It's called a Hypothetical Republican in Closest Proximity (HRICP) and it works. They teach this stuff in J school."
Sam Stein @samstein: "The swift devastation of the #PalisadesFire is horrible. And then it dawns on you that Trump, set to take office in 13 days, has threatened publicly to cut wildfire aid to the state."
Readers added context: "Trump said aid would be cut only if leaders neglected proper wildfire prevention. "Billions [are sent to] California for Forest fires that, with proper Forest Management, would never happen...Unless they get their act together... I have ordered FEMA to send no more money.""
Trump was responsible for everything that happened when he was in office, but he is also responsible for everything that's happened since. He will be blamed till the end of time for everything that goes wrong in the US
