I live here, in the boonies, got dumped onto the FAIR plan, and detest the political environment as much as I love my mountains. It would be great to stick it to the CA politicians and bureaucrats. But wanting the federal bureaucrats to do the sticking is the wrong approach. All it would do is set a precedent for federal micromanagement. Like the other poster says, it would apply the opposite for a Texas bailout under a Democratic admin.
No thanks. Make Californians sweat as much as possible. I'd rather fight a bailout than invite a bigger government in to fix things the wrong way.
As much as I’d love to see someone stick it to CA, I’m guessing the next Texas disaster relief would come with stipulations that some level of minimum wage be paid and a state income tax instituted.
Forest management and water management seem like ideal candidates for a progressive rule-by-experts model (as opposed to rule by elected politicians or rule by market processes). But it seems as though states like California have created a large bureaucracy of experts PLUS a thicket of red tape that prevents them from acting (the regulations around conducting controlled burns are a great example). This is self defeating. Either get rid of the experts or get rid of the red tape.
A few years ago ProPublica--hardly a Trumpian rag--did an extensive piece on California's neglect of its controlled-burning programs, for political reasons of course. (The story is highly recommended reading, btw.) It's a remarkable dereliction of duty by the state's government, which has not made any serious attempt to maintain and upgrade California's infrastructure over the past 40 years or so in the face of huge population growth. Instead, all the focus has been on pet causes and ensuring that the state's self-licking ice cream cone of a bureaucracy continues to thrive.
Agreed. I was just trying to say that even if (especially if?) we accept the premises of the rule-by-experts model, it makes no sense to turn around and tie the hands of the ostensible experts with red tape.
But in fact we have a bureaucracy of soft-authoritarian ideologists and money-grubbers, who cite experts when it is in their political interest to do so, and only when.
There is no way the next Democratic administration wouldn't do the equivalent of "loan forgiveness" and restore California's authorities, in a kind of legal bailout subsequent to the financial bailout. Thus there is no credibility to the proposition that the terms will be imposed strictly and in good faith over the long term.
Let's *please* fight a bail out. And those are the wrong conditions if it does happen. I'd pick the repeal of two propositions:
- 103, which created the insurance commission and made the commissioner elected (1988)
- 13, which capped all state and local property taxes at a 2% increase as long as you don't sell
The first has given California property owners home insurance that is below market, can't be based on future forecasts, and has to apply to large geographical areas. We own property in risky areas, and we need to feel the price of that risk. If the local power lines are a mess, and the water infrastructure is weak, that should show in the insurance rates. If our development sits next to forests or backs onto a ridge of chaparral, or is ringed by palm trees and eucalyptus, it should show in the rates.
The second has let people live their whole lives in incredibly valuable properties and not pay for the local infrastructure that's needed to protect them. California tax revenues mostly come from income and capital gains, and mostly flow through Sacramento. The municipalities have no price signal when they are making land more valuable (by allowing more building) or less valuable (by having an incompetent fire department).
We should be humbled that Prop 13 was the darling of a semi-libertarian set. Most consequences are unintended, and markets need prices.
I supported 13, which had many good short term results. But higher property taxes would have been better than the other higher taxes that CA adopted for their overspending.
It was a long term mistake. Limiting the spending of CA govt was more needed, but didn’t happen.
I live here and I say fuck California and a bailout. You vote for DEI politicians and believe in DEI in the workplace than you should now deal with their incompetence.
To address our energy and water challenges effectively, we urgently need a cohesive federal nuclear policy that streamlines the approval process for new nuclear plants while also establishing a comprehensive federal waste management policy. We should look to France's successful model as an example and implement these changes without delay. If the French can do it anyone can.
Currently, PG&E charges approximately $0.40 per kWh, which is three to four times higher than electricity rates in many other states. By investing in nuclear energy, we can bring down costs and enhance our energy reliability.
In tandem with nuclear development, we should also prioritize building desalination plants. This approach will enable us to tackle not just a perceived water shortage but a logistics challenge. California does not lack water resources; rather, we struggle with efficiently delivering water where it's needed, especially during critical periods.
By addressing both energy production through nuclear investments, establishing a robust federal waste policy to manage nuclear byproducts responsibly, and improving our water logistics with desalination plants, we can create a sustainable and resilient future for our state.
I fled Oakland in '21 because my neighbors kept voting for the pols that create & sustain the mess CA is in.
Your ideas are spot-on, but the political will (including voters) to get them done in CA are daunting. Even if it's a Federal program, CA will throw environmental & other ideological obstacles in the path of getting things built.
The federal government manages ~45% of California land (half of which is National Forest Land) and most the big water infrastructure was built by the federal Bureau of Reclamation. There is nothing gained by a switch in sovereignty. The rules at both state and federal levels need to be changed to accelerate change, but this is by no means a CA specific problem. All intermountain west states have the same problems on state and federal lands.
I am looking at pictures of Eaton Wash online. It is a perfectly ordinary looking nature path, not densely vegetated - compared to an eastern landscape it almost looks groomed in that arid area way. There are low live oaks and shrubs.
I have seen a cellphone video of the moment that fire started - a huge transformer or transmission tower across the street from houses - that caught fire and immediately spread to the neighborhood.
What change exactly, would you accelerate? Burn the neighborhood amenity to the ground every year? Pave it over - pave a buffer between the neighborhood and the mountains? The fire didn't come off the national forest land. It erupted out of that transmission tower.
While BuRec does have a water supply mandate I'm not sure current law allows them to address all of the West's needs. Individual projects have to be approve by Congress as well.
I can understand and sympathize with Dr. Kling's point regarding forest management, and I can see the connection between the fire bailout and water management, though I'm disposed to disagree with him on that account, since I don't regard fresh water's reaching the ocean as a form of waste.
But I don't see how the public-employee provision bears on the fire bailout: this sounds like "Use the fact that we've got California over a barrel to force them to do things we like." While I agree that California's public-employee unions wield undue political power, I think it should be up to the California electorate to dump the politicians who pander to said unions. The genius of federalism is that it leaves the states free to do different things, and to serve both as good examples and awful warnings to other states contemplating different policies.
One of the shocks of my young life was listening to Woody Guthrie's songs about the Columbia River. Guthrie was a left icon but the songs were all about how before the dams,
the water was wasted, uselessly flowing into the sea. But now:
And now it's a Superfund site, the great factories mostly closed. Cool.
Who do you think built all those dams? It wasn't conservatives, that's for dam sure. At one point, a plan for the entire Colorado to be dammed *its whole length* was drawn up. Only progressives could be that stupid.
Hanford Engineering Works used Columbia River electricity to make plutonium for bombs. The last production reactor was shut down in 1967. The area is now technically Hanford Reach National Monument. But like a lot of new National Monuments, it's pretty much just lines on a map. There are no visitor facilities and most of it is off-limits to the public.
Though the nearby city of Richland has the Reach Museum. From wikipedia, "The Reach Museum, also known as the Hanford Reach Interpretive Center, is a museum and visitor center for Hanford Reach National Monument located in Richland, Washington. The center tells a story of the cultural, natural, and scientific history of the Hanford Reach and Columbia Basin area, as well as promoting tourism.
What he is being is a realist to the reality that the US government bails out individual states from natural disasters; we’ve done it many times in the past and are almost certainly going to continue to do so. Attaching harsh “strings” to the money in this context makes enormous sense.
According to Biden, the USG will pay for the cost of providing emergency services during the crisis. Why should general taxpayers be on the hook for more than this amount? Why does it make sense for the USG to borrow the money, but not CA? Let the State fix the problems it has created. Let the citizens of CA reflect on the politicians they have repeatedly elected and the policies they have embraced. Yes, tough love is called for, but let it be imposed by the political establishment in CA. No more bailouts.
The reality is that the U.S. has a history of bailing out individual states from natural disasters. AK realizes this. His suggestion to attach “tough love“ strings to such a bailout is quite wise.
From my understanding it is rather worse than that. FEMA saying they didn't have money because they spent it on migrants in other states, and as I understand it NC has not seen a lot of aid from the Federal Government overall. I haven't seen a lot of coverage of NC in the past few weeks though, so maybe things have gotten sorted out. I expect, however, that there will be some serious unhappiness with bailing CA out of their self made situation when NC was seemingly given short shrift.
There’s been so much misinformation regarding this disaster that I’m not sure what to believe. It’s my understanding that the reservoirs were full, but in places like the Palisades they have three tanks at elevation into which water is pumped from the lower reservoirs. The fire was so widespread that the upper tanks couldn’t meet the demand. Is the fix to have more/bigger tanks and stronger pumps? The fire chief of Pasadena said the initial spreading couldn’t have been prevented by water since the wind not only blew embers miles in front of the fire but also grounded their aerial resources.
“Forest management in California is terrible. Experts agree that controlled burns would help to reduce the amount of combustible forest that feeds wildfires.”
It is interesting that Democrats insist that we “listen to the experts” but they refuse to do so in this case.
The power of the concentrated environmentalist money special interest wing of the Dem party.
Sorry, I don’t accept the premise that because “You would have to burn the entirety of it, every year, in perpetuity”, such controlled burns shouldn’t be done.
I am quite open to the possibility that this particular fire wouldn’t have been contained much by such controlled burns. But many other CA forest fires definitely would have.
Whether or not it would have prevented the spread of this particular fire, controlled burns are known to prevent wildfire spread, and would have reduced the spread of some of the wildfires in CA over the last few decades.
It isn’t. January is rainy season. There is currently a La Niña event leading to most of SoCal receiving zero precipitation this season.
Many of the commenters here do not understand California climate patterns and the manner in which climate change is affecting baseline conditions, year to year.
Whatever gets rebuilt in the L.A. hills should be fire proof because it isn't ever a question of if a brush fire is going happen- only when. Such builds are more expensive- much more expensive. In the mean time, the entire area needs much better fire prevention policies but this isn't ever going to happen because there is no competence left to be found in California. It is f****d
False. There are now Fire Codes preventing many high risk structures from being built. The caveat is that many homes were preexisting.
E.g., my home, 1951, had open wood rafter eaves (which I corrected w Hardiboard cement board years back). If there were RETROACTIVE codes requiring such, along w fire proof rooves, replacement of flammable siding, etc., AND inspections that could go a long way.
ADDITIONALLY: Fire fostering landscaping should be prohibited within the state, especially exotics such as:
Palms, Pampas Grass, Eucalyptus, Stipa tenuisima, etc. Yes there is a single native palm but it is NOT widely occurring in the state, and not at all near human habitation. [Washintonia filifera]
I live here, in the boonies, got dumped onto the FAIR plan, and detest the political environment as much as I love my mountains. It would be great to stick it to the CA politicians and bureaucrats. But wanting the federal bureaucrats to do the sticking is the wrong approach. All it would do is set a precedent for federal micromanagement. Like the other poster says, it would apply the opposite for a Texas bailout under a Democratic admin.
No thanks. Make Californians sweat as much as possible. I'd rather fight a bailout than invite a bigger government in to fix things the wrong way.
likewise
As much as I’d love to see someone stick it to CA, I’m guessing the next Texas disaster relief would come with stipulations that some level of minimum wage be paid and a state income tax instituted.
Texas absolutely deserves some tough love.
They let people build houses - inside the flood pool of a reservoir! Houses inside the levee! Like, why is there an earthen wall alongside my yard …
Forest management and water management seem like ideal candidates for a progressive rule-by-experts model (as opposed to rule by elected politicians or rule by market processes). But it seems as though states like California have created a large bureaucracy of experts PLUS a thicket of red tape that prevents them from acting (the regulations around conducting controlled burns are a great example). This is self defeating. Either get rid of the experts or get rid of the red tape.
A few years ago ProPublica--hardly a Trumpian rag--did an extensive piece on California's neglect of its controlled-burning programs, for political reasons of course. (The story is highly recommended reading, btw.) It's a remarkable dereliction of duty by the state's government, which has not made any serious attempt to maintain and upgrade California's infrastructure over the past 40 years or so in the face of huge population growth. Instead, all the focus has been on pet causes and ensuring that the state's self-licking ice cream cone of a bureaucracy continues to thrive.
“…have created a large bureaucracy of experts”
I agree with all but your claim of bureaucracy of “experts”.
Whether or not there happen to be a few actual experts on forest management and water management employed by CA or not.
Agreed. I was just trying to say that even if (especially if?) we accept the premises of the rule-by-experts model, it makes no sense to turn around and tie the hands of the ostensible experts with red tape.
Ok.
But in fact we have a bureaucracy of soft-authoritarian ideologists and money-grubbers, who cite experts when it is in their political interest to do so, and only when.
But all this seems to assume a federal bureaucracy that is trustworthy and competent.
There is no way the next Democratic administration wouldn't do the equivalent of "loan forgiveness" and restore California's authorities, in a kind of legal bailout subsequent to the financial bailout. Thus there is no credibility to the proposition that the terms will be imposed strictly and in good faith over the long term.
"The next Democratic administration" is at least four years away.
That's too short to allow any meaningful change to the deep state.
"Meaningful" is doing a lot of work here.
On the public employee piece, I agree with you.
On the forest management and water pieces that AK recommends, I do not.
How about outsourcing to private companies with competing bids and regular renewal reviews?
Way too smart a policy to ever be considered . . . not enough opportunity for graft.
It’s certain that a new bureaucracy started by Trump (allies & bootlickers) will be more competent than CA. At first.
It’s in the long, or mid-term that bureaucrats start going bad, first slowly, then overwhelmingly.
Let's *please* fight a bail out. And those are the wrong conditions if it does happen. I'd pick the repeal of two propositions:
- 103, which created the insurance commission and made the commissioner elected (1988)
- 13, which capped all state and local property taxes at a 2% increase as long as you don't sell
The first has given California property owners home insurance that is below market, can't be based on future forecasts, and has to apply to large geographical areas. We own property in risky areas, and we need to feel the price of that risk. If the local power lines are a mess, and the water infrastructure is weak, that should show in the insurance rates. If our development sits next to forests or backs onto a ridge of chaparral, or is ringed by palm trees and eucalyptus, it should show in the rates.
The second has let people live their whole lives in incredibly valuable properties and not pay for the local infrastructure that's needed to protect them. California tax revenues mostly come from income and capital gains, and mostly flow through Sacramento. The municipalities have no price signal when they are making land more valuable (by allowing more building) or less valuable (by having an incompetent fire department).
We should be humbled that Prop 13 was the darling of a semi-libertarian set. Most consequences are unintended, and markets need prices.
I supported 13, which had many good short term results. But higher property taxes would have been better than the other higher taxes that CA adopted for their overspending.
It was a long term mistake. Limiting the spending of CA govt was more needed, but didn’t happen.
I live here and I say fuck California and a bailout. You vote for DEI politicians and believe in DEI in the workplace than you should now deal with their incompetence.
To address our energy and water challenges effectively, we urgently need a cohesive federal nuclear policy that streamlines the approval process for new nuclear plants while also establishing a comprehensive federal waste management policy. We should look to France's successful model as an example and implement these changes without delay. If the French can do it anyone can.
Currently, PG&E charges approximately $0.40 per kWh, which is three to four times higher than electricity rates in many other states. By investing in nuclear energy, we can bring down costs and enhance our energy reliability.
In tandem with nuclear development, we should also prioritize building desalination plants. This approach will enable us to tackle not just a perceived water shortage but a logistics challenge. California does not lack water resources; rather, we struggle with efficiently delivering water where it's needed, especially during critical periods.
By addressing both energy production through nuclear investments, establishing a robust federal waste policy to manage nuclear byproducts responsibly, and improving our water logistics with desalination plants, we can create a sustainable and resilient future for our state.
"If the French can do it, anyone can" LOL
I fled Oakland in '21 because my neighbors kept voting for the pols that create & sustain the mess CA is in.
Your ideas are spot-on, but the political will (including voters) to get them done in CA are daunting. Even if it's a Federal program, CA will throw environmental & other ideological obstacles in the path of getting things built.
The assessed damages will top a quarter of a trillion dollars by the end of next week.
The federal government manages ~45% of California land (half of which is National Forest Land) and most the big water infrastructure was built by the federal Bureau of Reclamation. There is nothing gained by a switch in sovereignty. The rules at both state and federal levels need to be changed to accelerate change, but this is by no means a CA specific problem. All intermountain west states have the same problems on state and federal lands.
I am looking at pictures of Eaton Wash online. It is a perfectly ordinary looking nature path, not densely vegetated - compared to an eastern landscape it almost looks groomed in that arid area way. There are low live oaks and shrubs.
I have seen a cellphone video of the moment that fire started - a huge transformer or transmission tower across the street from houses - that caught fire and immediately spread to the neighborhood.
What change exactly, would you accelerate? Burn the neighborhood amenity to the ground every year? Pave it over - pave a buffer between the neighborhood and the mountains? The fire didn't come off the national forest land. It erupted out of that transmission tower.
How is this on the USFS?
While BuRec does have a water supply mandate I'm not sure current law allows them to address all of the West's needs. Individual projects have to be approve by Congress as well.
I can understand and sympathize with Dr. Kling's point regarding forest management, and I can see the connection between the fire bailout and water management, though I'm disposed to disagree with him on that account, since I don't regard fresh water's reaching the ocean as a form of waste.
But I don't see how the public-employee provision bears on the fire bailout: this sounds like "Use the fact that we've got California over a barrel to force them to do things we like." While I agree that California's public-employee unions wield undue political power, I think it should be up to the California electorate to dump the politicians who pander to said unions. The genius of federalism is that it leaves the states free to do different things, and to serve both as good examples and awful warnings to other states contemplating different policies.
One of the shocks of my young life was listening to Woody Guthrie's songs about the Columbia River. Guthrie was a left icon but the songs were all about how before the dams,
the water was wasted, uselessly flowing into the sea. But now:
"Roll on, Columbia, roll on
Roll on, Columbia, roll on
Your power is turning our darkness to dawn
So roll on, Columbia, roll on
...
"And on up the river is Grand Coulee Dam
The mightiest thing ever built by a man
To run the great factories and water the land
So roll on, Columbia, roll on"
And now it's a Superfund site, the great factories mostly closed. Cool.
Who do you think built all those dams? It wasn't conservatives, that's for dam sure. At one point, a plan for the entire Colorado to be dammed *its whole length* was drawn up. Only progressives could be that stupid.
Hanford Engineering Works used Columbia River electricity to make plutonium for bombs. The last production reactor was shut down in 1967. The area is now technically Hanford Reach National Monument. But like a lot of new National Monuments, it's pretty much just lines on a map. There are no visitor facilities and most of it is off-limits to the public.
Though the nearby city of Richland has the Reach Museum. From wikipedia, "The Reach Museum, also known as the Hanford Reach Interpretive Center, is a museum and visitor center for Hanford Reach National Monument located in Richland, Washington. The center tells a story of the cultural, natural, and scientific history of the Hanford Reach and Columbia Basin area, as well as promoting tourism.
you want to transfer power from the local gov to the feds on a temporary emergency basis
who are you and what happened to the real arnold kling?
What he is being is a realist to the reality that the US government bails out individual states from natural disasters; we’ve done it many times in the past and are almost certainly going to continue to do so. Attaching harsh “strings” to the money in this context makes enormous sense.
According to Biden, the USG will pay for the cost of providing emergency services during the crisis. Why should general taxpayers be on the hook for more than this amount? Why does it make sense for the USG to borrow the money, but not CA? Let the State fix the problems it has created. Let the citizens of CA reflect on the politicians they have repeatedly elected and the policies they have embraced. Yes, tough love is called for, but let it be imposed by the political establishment in CA. No more bailouts.
Exactly! Why should I a nonresident be compelled to pay for California Stupid?
Wait until you hear about Puerto Rico
…or Florida. Or Louisiana. Or NC.
The reality is that the U.S. has a history of bailing out individual states from natural disasters. AK realizes this. His suggestion to attach “tough love“ strings to such a bailout is quite wise.
I expect people from NC will have something negative to say about the prospect of bailing out CA, given recent history.
You are suggesting that some people in NC aren’t happy that folks with Trump signs in their windows didn’t get FEMA money?
I’m shocked. Shocked! Next you will tell me there is gambling in Casablanca…
https://abcnews4.com/news/local/fired-fema-worker-says-agency-also-avoided-pro-trump-homes-in-carolinas-marni-washington-fema-trump-biden-political-federal-government-north-south-carolina-hurricanes-cleanup-aftermath
From my understanding it is rather worse than that. FEMA saying they didn't have money because they spent it on migrants in other states, and as I understand it NC has not seen a lot of aid from the Federal Government overall. I haven't seen a lot of coverage of NC in the past few weeks though, so maybe things have gotten sorted out. I expect, however, that there will be some serious unhappiness with bailing CA out of their self made situation when NC was seemingly given short shrift.
Our posts are in conversation. You make a great point regarding the bailout that I hadn’t considered. https://open.substack.com/pub/uncurve/p/the-safety-illusion?r=3i88z&utm_medium=ios
There’s been so much misinformation regarding this disaster that I’m not sure what to believe. It’s my understanding that the reservoirs were full, but in places like the Palisades they have three tanks at elevation into which water is pumped from the lower reservoirs. The fire was so widespread that the upper tanks couldn’t meet the demand. Is the fix to have more/bigger tanks and stronger pumps? The fire chief of Pasadena said the initial spreading couldn’t have been prevented by water since the wind not only blew embers miles in front of the fire but also grounded their aerial resources.
“Forest management in California is terrible. Experts agree that controlled burns would help to reduce the amount of combustible forest that feeds wildfires.”
It is interesting that Democrats insist that we “listen to the experts” but they refuse to do so in this case.
The power of the concentrated environmentalist money special interest wing of the Dem party.
It's brush. You would have to burn the entirety of it, every year, in perpetuity. And you couldn't do it many months of the year.
I've been amazed because I didn't know January was one of them.
Sorry, I don’t accept the premise that because “You would have to burn the entirety of it, every year, in perpetuity”, such controlled burns shouldn’t be done.
I am quite open to the possibility that this particular fire wouldn’t have been contained much by such controlled burns. But many other CA forest fires definitely would have.
I am looking at an aerial view of Pacific Palisades. It looks like Levittown.
And what, pray tell, does that have to do with the price of tea in China?
How do you propose to burn a place laid out like Levittown? Pray?
Your premise is ludicrous.
Whether or not it would have prevented the spread of this particular fire, controlled burns are known to prevent wildfire spread, and would have reduced the spread of some of the wildfires in CA over the last few decades.
Yet you seem to be totally denying this reality.
It isn’t. January is rainy season. There is currently a La Niña event leading to most of SoCal receiving zero precipitation this season.
Many of the commenters here do not understand California climate patterns and the manner in which climate change is affecting baseline conditions, year to year.
I read that the affected area got an extraordinary or at least unusual amount of rain earlier in the year > much growth > then nothing for months.
No Bailout!
Let California taxpayers pay for it.
Whatever gets rebuilt in the L.A. hills should be fire proof because it isn't ever a question of if a brush fire is going happen- only when. Such builds are more expensive- much more expensive. In the mean time, the entire area needs much better fire prevention policies but this isn't ever going to happen because there is no competence left to be found in California. It is f****d
False. There are now Fire Codes preventing many high risk structures from being built. The caveat is that many homes were preexisting.
E.g., my home, 1951, had open wood rafter eaves (which I corrected w Hardiboard cement board years back). If there were RETROACTIVE codes requiring such, along w fire proof rooves, replacement of flammable siding, etc., AND inspections that could go a long way.
ADDITIONALLY: Fire fostering landscaping should be prohibited within the state, especially exotics such as:
Palms, Pampas Grass, Eucalyptus, Stipa tenuisima, etc. Yes there is a single native palm but it is NOT widely occurring in the state, and not at all near human habitation. [Washintonia filifera]
What part was false?