How Rich Liberals Like Newsom Are Making California’s Wildfires Worse

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Fix the problem or fix the blame. That’s a line from the movie, Rising Sun. Sean Connery was delivered by him in that movie. He talked about, at the time it was the 1980s, when Michael Crichton wrote that novel, the Japanese were killing it as far as business was concerned. And he said that that’s what they do. Part of Japanese culture is fix the problem.

rather than fix the blame. And again, it was a movie and there’s a lot wrong with that statement. But anyway, let’s take that and put that aside. Let’s bring this up and we’ll talk about this in terms of the California fires because we have been inundated with sound bites and half truths and information here, there and everywhere, social media posts. again,

This, you cannot watch what’s going on and just be completely heartbroken by what has taken place. Again, I by no stretch of imagination have never had to deal with anything like that. You can’t put yourself in one’s position when you lose everything and that quickly and you watch the videos of it. Again, the easy.

thing to do, easy thing to do. And quite frankly, it’s something it’s part of, okay, fixing the problem is you have to, you know, again, pull a problem up or, you know, if you’re like pulling weeds, you can’t just pull the weed up by the top, you got to pull it up by its roots. But what we’re to do is we’re going to break down various different areas of what’s taking place with the media and the BS that’s coming out, the environmental issues that are California and quite frankly, the reality.

that is California. Now, I said this this past week, I talked about it last week on the podcast. First and foremost, what happened in California is not by definition a black swan event. It’s not. These things happen all the time. This is actually a great piece by Tom McClintock today and it’s fascinating.

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When Juan Cabrillo dropped anchor in what is now Los Angeles is San Pedro Bay in the autumn of 1542. He named it the Bay of Smokes. Annual wildfires that obviously got, and it’s coming again today, the Santa Ana winds. These are nothing new to Southern California. I’ve talked.

about this here on the program. It is nature’s way of cleaning house in dry climates. It is nature gardening.

talked about the Sequoia tree last week on the program. doesn’t, it’s just gonna do what it does. It doesn’t matter, they don’t care about your home, nature doesn’t care about any of those things. Throughout the 20th century, again, and it has human beings advance. It’s a constant battle.

against the forces of nature, the realities of nature. And again, we’ve talked about this in the past when we’ve discussed earthquakes and wealthy areas versus poor areas. Again, there’s a lot that goes into this. But anyway, here in the United States, we had various different land management agencies to do some of this supposedly some of this gardening.

that needs to be done before mother nature does it. We removed excess timber, creating resilient fire resistant forests, thriving mountain economies and a lucrative source of public revenue. We leased public lands to sheep and cattle ranchers whose stock kept brush from building up. We established competent infrastructure to stop fires from getting out of control. We cut fire breaks into the soil to contain flames. It’s amazing.

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Prior to 1800, California lost on average. This is an amazing fact. this goes back to many conversations we’ve had on this program in the past, we’re discussing climate change and when fires in this country used to, the of the globe just burned out of control before there were any firefighters to put it out. How much carbon was released into the environment then? Anyway, California lost on average.

around 4.5 million acres to fire every year. By the end of the 20th century, that average dropped to around 250,000 acres.

What happened in 2020? 2020, California suffered a single year loss of 4.3 million acres to wildfires. Between 2019 and 2023, an average of more than 1.5 million acres burned each year. What happened?

What happened? is it kids climate change? No, it’s not freaking climate change. It’s not climate change. I’m going to go through a list here and what was done. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in sought to widen a fire access road and replace old wooden utility poles.

in the Topianga Canyon, abutting the palisades with steel ones to make the power lines fire and wind resistant. In the process, crews removed an estimated 182 various clinical Broughton’s Milkvec plants and endangered species. The utility halted the project as state officials investigated the plant destruction.

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More than a year later, the California Coastal Commission issued a cease and desist order, fined the utility $2 million in required mitigation for the project’s impact on the species. This involved replacing non-native vegetation with plants native to the state. Again, this.

The only way to boost the numbers is to let the land burn again to get this plant back anyway. Misallocation of resources. Again, cutting the budget by 17 million, which she says reduced overtime compensation and reduced wildfire preparation. 350 million this year on fighter fighter pensions and benefits. Most of that would have been better spent on fire prevention, which made up only 5 % of the department’s

budget, only 5 % of their budget is fire prevention. Go on, smelt, Delta smelt here restrict the amount of water that flows from the states north to the south, led to billions of gallons of water being flushed out to the Pacific Ocean each year, along with chronic water shortages, high unemployment over pump wells and environmental degradation in the state’s central

Valley. I think it’s a little bit more than the Delta smelt, quite frankly. And we’ll get into that a little bit. There are powers that be there are wealthy families here in this country that control various different commodities. In the past, we’ve discussed in the state of Florida, the Fanjul brothers, which control big sugar. Again, kind of a kind of a, know, let’s

go back in time here. Bill Clinton was on the phone with one of the Fanjule brothers when, you know, the Lewinsky was taking place, by the way. The other Fanjule brothers, the Republican, one’s Democrat, one’s Republican, they donate to both parties. Basically keeping tariffs high on any sugar imports here into the United States, protecting their business in South Florida. But we’ll get into the, you know, the water situation as well as I get off the beaten track. You know what, let’s do it now. I can go on and on and on.

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all of the policies in California that had made this problem worse. There is a family, the information’s getting up, but everybody’s known this for some time, tycoons, if you will, that own water. Stuart and Linda Resnick, they are agricultural tycoons.

their farms, their cash crops in California are almonds and pistachios. They also have citrus groves as well, pomegranates also. Now do a deep dive if you want to see where these were almonds and pomegranates and pistachios come from. They’re not native to the United States.

kind of fascinating. They’re native to areas of the world that particularly, know, areas in the Middle East, Iran also, that we don’t do a lot of business with.

We don’t do a lot of business with. And again, I’m going to be thinking a couple steps down the line. If you don’t think that sanctions on certain countries are put in a place to benefit certain businesses and business interests here in the United States, you’re crazy because they are. But anyway, these are multi, multi billionaires. And again, big time donors to environmental causes, Democrat causes.

They,

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They own more water than the entire city of Los Angeles.

More water than the entire city of, again, this is a deal that they struck way back when. They have 185,000 acres of land and a stake in what is called the Kern Water Bank. It’s a 20,000 acre reservoir of water surplus in the San Joaquin Valley. Now, when they own that and the state of California needs more water, they sell it back to California. Now, if you are the Resnicks,

here. Do you want to see that water coming down from up north and flowing down to the south where they don’t make not able to sell their water anymore to the state? Of course not. Last week on the program, I told me mentioned Chinatown with Jack Nicholson. They don’t want fantastic film. South Park did a similar episode a couple years ago.

was hilarious. It was called the streaming wars. They actually tied in the stuff that was happening on TV. What was going on in California. It’s a racket.

Racket! Yeah, they’ve donated close to two billion dollars to these left-wing causes. It’s spent. It’s a cost of doing business.

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Smart. the same reason why the Saudis and the Russians spend a fortune donating to all sorts of Greta Thunberg climate change stuff trying to convince us here in the United States not to develop our own energy resources. So we have to keep going to them.

This is from a far left wing.

Publication, Mother Jones. 2016 investigation by Mother Jones found that the Resnex agricultural businesses consume more water in some years than was used by the residents of Los Angeles and the entire San Francisco Bay area combined. Now, I’m still trying to figure that out because again, the crops that they are

growing. The crops that they are growing, they’re not, they’re from the Middle East or from their very dry regions. It wouldn’t seem to me that we need that much water outside of maybe their citrus groves. Again, are they pumping water out into the Pacific Ocean like in Chinatown? I don’t know,

Probably, but again, there’s way too much money at stake. Again, we’ve watched these very rich, powerful families, well-connected families over the past several years. And again, these people don’t care about the country at large. I can go back to the financial crisis. Financial crisis, and one of the two biggest villains out there was, what was his name?

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Herb and Marian Sandler, Golden West Financial Corporation, Ring a Bell World Savings Bank. They took this savings and loan company of theirs. And what they did, again, they were touted in the media, CEOs of the year.

reality of the situation again this you know when they sold they sold their golden west to wacova and that was the reason why wacova went under okay i won’t force wacova to buy it i don’t think but anyway they had this this more this is this type of people they are okay they there was this thing was called the pick-a-pay mortgage it allowed borrowers to pay less

than the interest that was due on their loan each month. And they would tack that onto the principle.

Do you understand how messed up that is? And some of these mortgages as well, you couldn’t pay them back early. You couldn’t even get out from underneath them. They had like teaser rates and it was all sorts of penalties for prepayment.

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I mean, and people say, oh, I don’t want to force it. I get it. I get it. And I’m a personal responsibility guy as well. again, capitalism is not taking advantage, in my opinion, is not trying to take advantage of people. And that’s exactly who these people were. And again, they were major players in the fall of the financial crisis. In fact,

I’ve cited before there was a Saturday Night Live skit, probably one of the most honest Saturday Night Live skits of all time during the financial crisis, which they were featured in it. the cry on underneath their name during the skit was people who should be shot. The next day, the next day, the left wing Gestapo went after Saturday Night Live, made them edit that skit, never to be seen from again, they cut all of that out. They actually went after George Soros in that skit as well. It was phenomenal.

But anyway, fixing, fixing the problem, fixing the blame, what should we do?

In this case, as in many cases right now, I think we have to acknowledge the fact that fixing the problem is going to involve, it’s not a simple fix because you’re dealing with an ideology. You’re dealing with a belief systems cult-like.

that people have in that area. In that area where, you know, it’s again, that’s all they know. That’s all they know is Democrats are the greatest things ever. I don’t know. Again, I’ve had this conversation a couple of times over the course of this weekend, you know, is the politics of California gonna change after all of the incompetence? I don’t know.

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I don’t, I don’t, I think people again, once you’re, it’s difficult to get people out of a cult. It really is, it’s very, very difficult, especially if that cult is putting money on the table and being a member of that cult is putting money on the table. Like again, it helps if you’re in Hollywood, there’s no doubt about it.

We talk about, you know, the people that are in charge and, the need to fix the blame and people are talking about negligence and, simply, you know, grab this. This is, you know, from again, this is from, AI here, the elements of the tort of negligence, the tort of negligence involves a failure to exercise the care that a reasonably prudent person would exercise in similar circumstances leading to harm.

The elements of negligence in most legal jurisdictions include duty of care. The defendant must owe a duty of care to the plaintiff. This means there must be a legal obligation for the defendant to act or refrain from acting in a way that could foreseeably harm others. Breach of duty. Defendant must have breached this duty by not acting as a reasonable person would under the same circumstances. This involves evaluating whether the defendant’s actions or inactions fall below the standard of care expected.

Causation, there must be a direct link between the breach of duty and the injury or damage suffered by the plaintiff. Cause in fact actual cause, would the harm have occurred but for the defendant’s actions, often tested by the but for test. Proximate cause, the harm must be reasonably foreseeable result of the defendant’s negligence. Now again, cause in fact.

These fires are going to happen. They again, even all the and I believe this to be the case, all the mitigation efforts in the entire world were followed and they were done the right way. There was still been a fire. It just wouldn’t have been as bad. And again, to get into damages when it comes into this tort of negligence.

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My concern is this. My concern is this, okay? Part of fixing the problem in this case is, fixing the blame is you have to replace the people that allowed this mess to happen. I believe that most definitely to be the case. Again,

There have been talk now and, know, Republicans want to attach strings, money going to California for eight.

Listen, would we have allowed Bernie Madoff, Bernie Madoff to say, you know what? I had this Ponzi scheme for years. Let, know, keep me in charge of the Ponzi scheme and I’ll fix it.

Allowing the same people to, you know, that caused the major part of the problem that in many cases here, according to the tort of negligence, could be liable for this problem if they weren’t elected officials. Elected officials are never held to any account where they’re supposed to be held to count at the ballot box. But again, that hasn’t worked in California. And again, you know, what do we do as a society? What do we do?

What do we do as taxpayers?

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What do we do as taxpayers when, you know, policies of certain states are negligent and forces the rest of the body politic around the country to have to pay for these things?

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Again, I don’t know. I know, but that’s where we’re at. I mean, we can go back and take a look at the destruction, the devastation took place in North Carolina, Spain as well with the floods. Why? Well, environmental wackos.

Listen, again, I mentioned it begins podcast. Man has been battling against the elements in nature since we were thrown out of the garden, kids, okay? That has been a fact of life.

If you are going to live in these areas, have to be able to take, know, mitigate the problem.

In one way, I actually watched a video today. Again, I’ve been deep diving in a lot of this stuff. are communities. Communities in Japan. you gotta go see this. This is so cool. There are communities in Japan that there’s certain areas where they prone to fire, but they have this, you know, these thatch roofs. They actually have, it’s so bloody cool. It’s like fire, like cannons.

come out from underneath the ground and can spray the entire area in cases of fire to protect it. Boy cool!

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Again, if you want to live in certain places, you’ve got to protect yourself. It’s not just fires. You know, there’s certain areas of the world where an earthquake will occur. Remember the earthquake, whether it be in Haiti, whether it be in Turkey, one in Iran, where the construction there is different than it is.

and other areas. Well, geez, okay, we’re in an area that’s prone to hurricanes, we better design our buildings a certain way. It’s like, we got better technology now. I live in the state of Florida, prone to hurricanes. You know, the technology is available today. Well, gee, I can have glass, 150 mile an hour impact glass for Crinella. All these things, there’s nothing wrong with that. But you can’t overpopulate an area.

that is prone to fires without taking the necessary steps or eventually this bad stuff is going to happen.

Was this a natural disaster? Sure, is it a natural disaster that was made much worse by negligence?

Much, much worse. And again, talk a little bit quickly. We’ll end here on, again, the left-wing media. They’ve taken to taxed right now in order to change the narrative. Jen Psaki, who, God forbid, she makes my skin crawl.

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Again, she makes my skin crawl. To watch these people go on TV and just lie. To try to blame, again, in essence, blame the situation in California on Trump and Elon Musk. I’m not kidding.

I’m not kidding you see how evil these people are to the core Elon Musk was their hero making electric cars not too long ago anyway and the other one is this again the smart people the Atlantic the Atlantic yes sir yes very very intelligent writers we got a very very smart people basically basically putting out again you can’t make this up a piece

saying that, well, we know that there was a fire, but at least everybody in California had good intentions.

Like, I think most of the people know that the line about the road to hell being paved with good intentions, I mean, they actually did an article about this. but everybody had great intentions. What?

Again, whether it be Washington, D.C., whether it be a state capital, there are cathedrals, cathedrals of unintended consequences. Again, I pray for all of the people out there. I don’t care what side of the aisle you are on. So awful. It is truly, truly awful. Beautiful, beautiful place. Again, what…

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All the things we can hope for is obviously relief for the people there in more ways than one. that, God willing, when disasters happen, bad things happen, hopefully, hopefully a lesson can be learned and maybe things will be better. Okay, maybe I’m glasses half full type of guy right in this period of time. But again,

It’s something most certainly we should all hope for. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.