Life-threatening' windstorm fans fires in Southern Calaifornia as blazes burn in Los Angeles

Os Trigonum · Jan 10, 2025

durvasa said: ↑

Agreed, but seeing reports she might not have been fired (although she was expecting to be):

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...rowley-fired-mayor-karen-bass-humiliated.html
Click to expand...

that story got changed within the last half hour, so presumably the mayor either stepped back from the brink or the chief overreacted. who knows. They're both under a lot of stress.

fchowd0311 · Jan 10, 2025

Os Trigonum said: ↑

that story got changed within the last half hour, so presumably the mayor either stepped back from the brink or the chief overreacted. who knows. They're both under a lot of stress.
Click to expand...

Dealing with fires and racism/sexism. This is why white males should be in charge always. Because when natural disasters happen we can only concentrate on the disaster itself instead of concentrating on the fact a non white non male was in charge.

durvasa · Jan 10, 2025

Os Trigonum said: ↑

https://www.city-journal.org/article/la-mayor-karen-bass-budget-wildfires

L.A.’s Total Leadership Failure
The city slashed fire and other basic services after Mayor Karen Bass awarded fat contracts to government workers.
Jan 10 2025
Steven Malanga

 The devastating wildfires in Los Angeles have spotlighted questionable state and local government policies in California that may have contributed to the blazes and left areas like Hollywood vulnerable due to insufficient firefighting resources. Mayor Karen Bass’s budget cuts to the city’s fire department, enacted just months ago amid warnings about the city’s deteriorating finances, stand out as a striking example of misplaced priorities. The cuts stemmed from a budget crisis triggered by her administration’s decision to reward city employees with rich contracts and benefits—even as it dismissed worries that the reductions would hurt services. “Predictions that city services will be impossible to deliver,” deputy mayor Zach Seidl told the press, “are simply false.” Few public statements have aged as poorly—or as hauntingly—as this one.

Bass took office in December 2022 after a surprisingly close race against real estate developer Rick Caruso, a Republican who had switched to the Democratic Party. A Los Angeles Times poll showed that Caruso did well among voters viewing the economy and public safety as key issues; Bass dominated among voters who prioritized climate change and “coalition building.” Shortly after taking office, Bass began negotiating with public sector unions over expiring contracts. Early last year, those talks resulted in more than two dozen agreements with unions representing the city’s civilian employees, guaranteeing wage hikes of between 20 percent and 25 percent over five years. The contracts raised the minimum wage for city employees from $20 to $25 per hour and also contained rich benefits, including allowing workers to cash in 100 percent of their unused sick time when they retire—an increasingly rare perk in the private sector. An analysis by the city’s administrative officer said the deal would cost Los Angeles $3.5 billion over the life of the contracts. A similar multiyear deal with police unions was projected to add another $1 billion to costs.

The new contracts were the largest, in percentage terms, given to city employees since 2007, when then-mayor Antonio Villaraigosa delivered pay raises amounting to 25 percent over five years. Coming just before the 2008 Wall Street crisis crashed the economy, those contracts helped to blow a huge hole in Los Angeles’s budget—leading to the elimination of thousands of jobs and shrinking investment in basic services. Critics warned that something similar might occur following the 2024 contracts, which could drain the city’s fiscal reserves.

It took just months for those fears to materialize. This time it wasn’t a Wall Street meltdown that busted the budget but a series of unanticipated expenses related to judgments against the city in personal-injury negligence cases arising from dangerous conditions, such as broken sidewalks and inadequate streetlighting, as well as judgments against the police. Under normal circumstances, Los Angeles should have been able to absorb those costs, but its reserves had dropped below acceptable levels, and paying the liability cases without additional revenues or budget cuts would have been enough to force the city council to declare a fiscal emergency. In response, Bass cut the city’s budget to $12.9 billion, down from $13.1 billion the previous year. This involved making reductions in some 20 areas, including a cut of $17.6 million in the fire department—the steepest decline in any area except street services, where Bass reduced spending by $21 million.

“The city is living beyond its means,” the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times notedat the time, adding that the problem was “self-inflicted.” For Angelenos hoping the city would invest in infrastructure—“smoothing busted sidewalks, fixing burned-out streetlights, trimming trees, or any other public improvements”—those hopes seemed unlikely to be realized. Critics also faulted the administration for how it handled union negotiations that led to the budget-busting contracts. Most of the talks were conducted in secret, with little public discussion of the costly perks included in the agreements until they were finalized.

California’s latest bout of horrific fires will reopen debate about the state government’s failures to address a deadly problem. California’s decades-long resistance to boosting its water-storage capacity—what Victor Davis Hanson has described as “the scorching of California”—will face new scrutiny. The state’s land-management practices, which incoming President Trump has already criticized, will provoke more controversy. Los Angeles’s water-management system, lambasted by former mayoral candidate Caruso—formerly a commissioner of the city’s Department of Water and Power—for running dry in some neighborhoods during the current fires, will require new investment. Questions will linger, too, over how much difference the $17.6 million cut by Mayor Bass from the city’s fire department might have made.

What is beyond dispute is that Los Angeles and the surrounding area have a long history of wildfires, including in recent years. That threat didn’t seem to be much of a priority in Karen Bass’s budget.

Steven Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and City Journal’s senior editor.

Click to expand...

So, budget cuts to services to offset city employee salary bumps. Definitely doesn’t look good.

FranchiseBlade · Jan 10, 2025

Os Trigonum said: ↑

actually it's pretty damn sad that the mayor is so weak she would think it appropriate to terminate the fire chief right smack in the middle of a catastrophe. Hard to know who has worse judgment: the insubordinate fire chief who thought it was somehow appropriate to complain publicly about her boss on television, or the mayor who has so rapidly lost control of the situation she thinks firing the chief is somehow the right move. What a circus.
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So the lesbian person of color fire chief deserved the job and wasn't DEI. Got it.

Os Trigonum · Jan 10, 2025

FranchiseBlade said: ↑

So the lesbian person of color fire chief deserved the job and wasn't DEI. Got it.
Click to expand...

how the **** does that have anything to do with what I said?

adoo · Jan 10, 2025

Os Trigonum said: ↑

https://www.city-journal.org/article/la-mayor-karen-bass-budget-wildfires

Bass took office in December 2022 after a surprisingly close race against real estate developer Rick Caruso, a Republican who had switched to the Democratic Party. A Los Angeles Times poll showed that Caruso did well among voters viewing the economy and public safety as key issues; Bass dominated among voters who prioritized climate change and “coalition building.”
Click to expand...

being an out-of-towner, in nicest way possible, you're easily fooled by this intellectual dishonesty authored by someone who doesn't know Los Angeles.

here was the analysis, by the largest local newspaper, on the Bass vs. Caruso majoral race. https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=45269d1a-c83d-413b-8c92-47412d43019e

Caruso, who was a Republican for much of his life, switched his party registration to “decline to state” in 2011 while mulling over a run in the city’s 2013 mayoral election. It’s also widely known that Caruso changed his party affiliation to Democratic in late January of this year, less than a month before filing to run in the 2022 mayoral election.

Less attention has been paid to the fact that Caruso re-registered as a Republican in March 2016, according to records from the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office. Caruso kept his Republican Party affiliation until mid-November 2019, when he changed his registration back to “no party preference,” according to county records.

All told, the real estate developer has changed his party registration four times in the last 11 years, shifting twice between Republican and no party preference before re-registering as a Democrat about four months ago.

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=45269d1a-c83d-413b-8c92-47412d43019e, top on Caruso's campaign promise was, on day one as mayor, to declare a state of emergency to end homelessness. WOKE ! WOKE ! WOKE! and Caruso spent tens of millions to run his campaign.

homelessness was also top on Bass's campaign promise.

juxtapositioning the candidates background w campaign promises, the LA voters voted against the political chameleon / phony

tallanvor · Jan 10, 2025

FranchiseBlade · Jan 10, 2025

Os Trigonum said: ↑

how the **** does that have anything to do with what I said?
Click to expand...

You mentioned it was not right to fire her. So either she was doing a job that warranted her staying or she didn't.

raining threes · Jan 10, 2025

deb4rockets said: ↑

Your biased and uninformed opinion just tells me how ridiculously petty and sickening MAGA folks can be whenever a national disaster occurs. Circumstances are irrelevant if you can find someone to point fingers at instead of understanding why the fires spread so rapidly in 70-100 mile winds on hillsides and drought ridden areas. I can see why people like you believe the words of a pathological lying fraud and con as your new Presidential choice.

As for having nothing to do with sexual orientation, that's exactly what AOM's post was about.
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Wow, I certainly didn't expect this post. You're a little too emotional right now. Some would call it defensive. The reservoirs were dry, the budget was cut, the fire chief obviously is in over her head. The Mayor is an idiot and the Governor is a grifter. Are you saying they only hire the best and the brightest and dont need to start over with new leadership? Looks like the Mayor just threw the failed Fire Chief under the bus.

raining threes · Jan 10, 2025

fchowd0311 said: ↑

White conservative dudes can preside over god damn 9/11 and be re-elected and here we are today where whenever something goes wrong and a person that isn't a white male is in charge we suddenly have to tolerate neo-nazi talking points about how colored women are deserving of their positions in society.

Just so you know, I'd jab everyone here in the nose who starts rambling about women fire chiefs being why there are fires in LA in person. Just a light jab and me saying "nope, you don't have the freedom of speech in front of my physical presence if you decide to go on your Nazi rants". I'd assume that would shut the mouths of 90% of the beer belly 50 year old sedentary divorce dads here and understand their place. And no, no one here is capable of shaming me into recanting this.
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LMAO

Like I said before let it burn let it burn let it burn. Maybe some lessons will be learned, but after seeing posts like yours if the whole city burned to the ground you would still make posts like this. Fact : They knew this was coming a week before time and instead of preparing they did nothing. In fact worse than nothing, the Mayor decided to take a paid trip to Africa probably on the taxpayers dime.

raining threes · Jan 10, 2025

Os Trigonum said: ↑

actually it's pretty damn sad that the mayor is so weak she would think it appropriate to terminate the fire chief right smack in the middle of a catastrophe. Hard to know who has worse judgment: the insubordinate fire chief who thought it was somehow appropriate to complain publicly about her boss on television, or the mayor who has so rapidly lost control of the situation she thinks firing the chief is somehow the right move. What a circus.
Click to expand...

Quoted for truth

You cant make this stuff up. LMAO

This is what they voted for.

AroundTheWorld · Jan 10, 2025

raining threes · Jan 10, 2025

Os Trigonum said: ↑

https://www.city-journal.org/article/la-mayor-karen-bass-budget-wildfires

L.A.’s Total Leadership Failure
The city slashed fire and other basic services after Mayor Karen Bass awarded fat contracts to government workers.
Jan 10 2025
Steven Malanga

 The devastating wildfires in Los Angeles have spotlighted questionable state and local government policies in California that may have contributed to the blazes and left areas like Hollywood vulnerable due to insufficient firefighting resources. Mayor Karen Bass’s budget cuts to the city’s fire department, enacted just months ago amid warnings about the city’s deteriorating finances, stand out as a striking example of misplaced priorities. The cuts stemmed from a budget crisis triggered by her administration’s decision to reward city employees with rich contracts and benefits—even as it dismissed worries that the reductions would hurt services. “Predictions that city services will be impossible to deliver,” deputy mayor Zach Seidl told the press, “are simply false.” Few public statements have aged as poorly—or as hauntingly—as this one.

Bass took office in December 2022 after a surprisingly close race against real estate developer Rick Caruso, a Republican who had switched to the Democratic Party. A Los Angeles Times poll showed that Caruso did well among voters viewing the economy and public safety as key issues; Bass dominated among voters who prioritized climate change and “coalition building.” Shortly after taking office, Bass began negotiating with public sector unions over expiring contracts. Early last year, those talks resulted in more than two dozen agreements with unions representing the city’s civilian employees, guaranteeing wage hikes of between 20 percent and 25 percent over five years. The contracts raised the minimum wage for city employees from $20 to $25 per hour and also contained rich benefits, including allowing workers to cash in 100 percent of their unused sick time when they retire—an increasingly rare perk in the private sector. An analysis by the city’s administrative officer said the deal would cost Los Angeles $3.5 billion over the life of the contracts. A similar multiyear deal with police unions was projected to add another $1 billion to costs.

The new contracts were the largest, in percentage terms, given to city employees since 2007, when then-mayor Antonio Villaraigosa delivered pay raises amounting to 25 percent over five years. Coming just before the 2008 Wall Street crisis crashed the economy, those contracts helped to blow a huge hole in Los Angeles’s budget—leading to the elimination of thousands of jobs and shrinking investment in basic services. Critics warned that something similar might occur following the 2024 contracts, which could drain the city’s fiscal reserves.

It took just months for those fears to materialize. This time it wasn’t a Wall Street meltdown that busted the budget but a series of unanticipated expenses related to judgments against the city in personal-injury negligence cases arising from dangerous conditions, such as broken sidewalks and inadequate streetlighting, as well as judgments against the police. Under normal circumstances, Los Angeles should have been able to absorb those costs, but its reserves had dropped below acceptable levels, and paying the liability cases without additional revenues or budget cuts would have been enough to force the city council to declare a fiscal emergency. In response, Bass cut the city’s budget to $12.9 billion, down from $13.1 billion the previous year. This involved making reductions in some 20 areas, including a cut of $17.6 million in the fire department—the steepest decline in any area except street services, where Bass reduced spending by $21 million.

“The city is living beyond its means,” the editorial board of the Los Angeles Times notedat the time, adding that the problem was “self-inflicted.” For Angelenos hoping the city would invest in infrastructure—“smoothing busted sidewalks, fixing burned-out streetlights, trimming trees, or any other public improvements”—those hopes seemed unlikely to be realized. Critics also faulted the administration for how it handled union negotiations that led to the budget-busting contracts. Most of the talks were conducted in secret, with little public discussion of the costly perks included in the agreements until they were finalized.

California’s latest bout of horrific fires will reopen debate about the state government’s failures to address a deadly problem. California’s decades-long resistance to boosting its water-storage capacity—what Victor Davis Hanson has described as “the scorching of California”—will face new scrutiny. The state’s land-management practices, which incoming President Trump has already criticized, will provoke more controversy. Los Angeles’s water-management system, lambasted by former mayoral candidate Caruso—formerly a commissioner of the city’s Department of Water and Power—for running dry in some neighborhoods during the current fires, will require new investment. Questions will linger, too, over how much difference the $17.6 million cut by Mayor Bass from the city’s fire department might have made.

What is beyond dispute is that Los Angeles and the surrounding area have a long history of wildfires, including in recent years. That threat didn’t seem to be much of a priority in Karen Bass’s budget.

Steven Malanga is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and City Journal’s senior editor.

Click to expand...

This should be required reading.

raining threes · Jan 10, 2025

AroundTheWorld said: ↑

Click to expand...

Incredible, the lack of caring by the asst Fire Chief.

raining threes · Jan 10, 2025

fchowd0311 said: ↑

Dealing with fires and racism/sexism. This is why white males should be in charge always. Because when natural disasters happen we can only concentrate on the disaster itself instead of concentrating on the fact a non white non male was in charge.
Click to expand...

Your hate for White males knows no bounds. It's really sad. The people who made most of the mistakes other than Newsome weren't white males. Deal with it.

raining threes · Jan 10, 2025

adoo said: ↑

being an out-of-towner, in nicest way possible, you're easily fooled by this intellectual dishonesty authored by someone who doesn't know Los Angeles.

here was the analysis, by the largest local newspaper, on the Bass vs. Caruso majoral race. https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=45269d1a-c83d-413b-8c92-47412d43019e

Caruso, who was a Republican for much of his life, switched his party registration to “decline to state” in 2011 while mulling over a run in the city’s 2013 mayoral election. It’s also widely known that Caruso changed his party affiliation to Democratic in late January of this year, less than a month before filing to run in the 2022 mayoral election.

Less attention has been paid to the fact that Caruso re-registered as a Republican in March 2016, according to records from the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder/county clerk’s office. Caruso kept his Republican Party affiliation until mid-November 2019, when he changed his registration back to “no party preference,” according to county records.

All told, the real estate developer has changed his party registration four times in the last 11 years, shifting twice between Republican and no party preference before re-registering as a Democrat about four months ago.

https://enewspaper.latimes.com/infinity/article_share.aspx?guid=45269d1a-c83d-413b-8c92-47412d43019e, top on Caruso's campaign promise was, on day one as mayor, to declare a state of emergency to end homelessness. WOKE ! WOKE ! WOKE! and Caruso spent tens of millions to run his campaign.

homelessness was also top on Bass's campaign promise.

juxtapositioning the candidates background w campaign promises, the LA voters voted against the political chameleon / phony

Click to expand...

Want to bet if Bass vs Caruso race happens again Caruso wins?

AroundTheWorld · Jan 10, 2025

tallanvor · Jan 10, 2025

fchowd0311 said: ↑

Dealing with fires and racism/sexism. This is why white males should be in charge always. Because when natural disasters happen we can only concentrate on the disaster itself instead of concentrating on the fact a non white non male was in charge.
Click to expand...

Someone must benefit from DEI policies or why would it be important to implement? Those who benefit are known as 'DEI hires'. Yes, affirmative action policies taint any achievement by whatever demographic the policy is for. No minority will ever know if they earned their promotion or just benefitted from a minority hiring policy. Its one of the reasons DEI is so insidious.

Exiled · Jan 10, 2025

Im glad adoo & FranchiseBlade and their loved one doing ok, probably its a good idea if feasible to move away until lead asbestos,fume and micro plastic settle down, you can debate with the same folks at given time as they have not much else to do later on

GOATuve · Jan 10, 2025

Exiled said: ↑

Im glad adoo & FranchiseBlade and their loved one doing ok, probably its a good idea if feasible to move away until lead asbestos,fume and micro plastic settle down, you can debate with the same folks at given time as they have not much else to do later on
Click to expand...

Glad @FranchiseBlade is doing ok. @adoo is an ******* but I don't wish harm on anyone even though he's been the exact opposite to me because of politics. Not a good person

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