Summary
Rep. Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) threatened to withhold federal disaster relief from California during ongoing Los Angeles wildfires that have killed at least 16 people and destroyed over 12,000 structures.
Davidson criticized California’s forest management policies, echoing misleading right-wing claims that poor management, not climate change, is to blame.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom refuted these claims, noting that the state’s forest management budget has increased tenfold since 2019.
Davidson’s comments follow a pattern of GOP blaming state policies for disasters, similar to rhetoric from Trump.
Almost every single red state is a welfare queen. They exist as parasites to better run, Democratic economies, and subsist on Federal largesse.
Let’s play the game. Cut these shitheel states down to their state-level economies, and use the funding for programs that allow citizens to move OUT of those states.
Now THAT is what I’m talking about! Finally someone who has an answer to the question “How and with what cash?”, when we Southerners are told to “Just move!”
bOtH siDeS!
That was the old thing. The new thing is bOtH siDeS riGgEd SyStEm!
Then instead of doing anything you do nothing and it’s the same result. Much more convenient.
Do it, do it. Watch the federal budget crash without California.
It’s not like we can just choose not to pay federal taxes in response to this.
(Would be nice if we just seceded.)
I think you are implying they could charge more in state taxes so the feds don’t get the money. Sadly in the California housing market, that $10k limit makes it meaningless.
Literally waiting for succession already. Please. California can sustain itself can we please leave already?
Reminder that California pays the highest federal taxes in the country and has never once complained about the cost of rebuilding in Florida despite annual devastating hurricanes or rebuilding in “tornado alley” despite frequent devastating tornadoes. People keep rebuilding their houses there and we never say shit.
Californians did not build their houses in wildfire country, they built them in areas that were previously safe and have now become tinderboxes thanks to climate change. It’s not our fault that we are stuck holding the bag, but at least have the common courtesy of extending us the exact same aid money we send out to other high risk areas.
Great post but I have one quibble.
Californians did not build their houses in wildfire country
In fact we did. Most of the state is comprised of fire-adapted ecosystems. I think it would be more correct to say that we built in wildfire country when the impacts of wildfire were manageable.
I only mention this because I believe it’s important to accept that fire is good and a part of these ecosystems that we need to embrace if we are going to live in them. It’s not that climate change has “introduced” fire it’s that it, the scale of human development, and over a century of misguided fire management has made it so dramatically impactful.
Okay, that’s a very fair point. Perhaps we are not giving enough acknowledgement to the fact that we are living in a place that historically has been extremely fire-prone and that if we had bothered to ask the native tribes living here when we arrived, they probably would have warned us that settling in this area with buildings meant to last is probably not the best idea.
Absolutely. They could also have given us a lot of important information on how to handle it all through cultural burning. Instead we made their practices illegal and jailed/killed native americans for doing what they’ve done for millennia in part to “protect” timber “resources” but mainly to drive them off their land.
An interesting tangent here is that the ecosystems here are co-adapted to these cultural practices. IOW, native burning of areas has co-existed with and altered the landscape over thousands of years. The notion that this land was “untrammeled by man” is racist fiction.
Yosemite Valley is a good example of this and you can even compare what it looked like in photos from the 19th century. It was predominantly wide-open meadow with widely spaced very large trees that were extremely resistant to fire. We suppressed fire and now it’s incredibly susceptible to it. Duh.
The good news is that we are finally waking up to the importance of this historical native knowledge and their practices.
Here’s an interesting recent article on this: https://www.savetheredwoods.org/redwoods-magazine/autumn-winter-2024/banned-for-100-years-cultural-burns-could-save-sequoias/
And this one talks about Yosemite and nearby areas in particular: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/how-indigenous-practice-good-fire-can-help-our-forests-thrive
These idiots really aren’t thinking through the repercussions of denying aid to a population that’s greater than almost every one of their states. What happens when pissed off Angelinos with nothing to loose start driving out to Ohio with a few gas cans and road flares?
I’d be curious to see how much $$$$ damage/relief is given to hurricane victims compared to fire…
Somehow all those Republican States deserve hurricane disaster relief but Californian’s don’t?
Lots of them voted “no” when it came time to help NJ and NY.
There is a small petty part of me that hopes it degenerates into no aid approval for anyone. The South is gonna get more hurricanes, they’ll break first
I don’t hope that of course, because people will suffer.
Not much. Ohio is covered in snow right now.
I’m in about the least snowy part of the state and I have almost a foot on the ground still.
Probably the same thing that keeps happening to us: our state government will fuck us raw and gerrymander a bit harder as an extra fuck you. They might attack trans people and/or Marijuana in response as well as JD Vance decries such things as symptoms of coastal elitism.
Fuck I hate what they’ve done to my home
The people fighting back is the only thing that will get the GOP to behave
Or, you know, just moving there and voting those a-holes out of office? The average default Lemming reaction being violence is getting old.
I mean, the fact that those people would then have to live there kind of insulates the politicians from those consequences. It’s not so simple to move your entire life, but to do so in order to live somewhere you don’t actually want to, so you can be one small drop in the bucket toward maybe voting one of these jerks out 2 years from now? Ridiculous, quite frankly, and not something enough people would ever be willing to do (rightfully so) to turn the tides.
Californians have been moving to Texas and voting for decades without change. They have these red states so fucked on gerrymandering. Look at the voting district map of Austin TX and see exactly why that won’t work. Those map drawing folks llooooove them a good snake drawing.
I assume the governor is elected by popular vote and not districts though right?
The Californians moving to Texas aren’t typically Democrats. California has more Republicans than Texas, after all.
There’s also just a lot of generally apolitical people who move to cheaper (generally red) states from California, New York, etc. for totally apolitical reasons. Not everyone cares about the cultural advantages of living in a city and just want a big house with a yard to have steak and potatoes in every night. They might as well move to Idaho and live their best life.
Not to pick on Idaho, specifically. It’s just a land where the potatoes and cows are plentiful.
Sure, but with tons of voter suppression and when a Democrat becomes governor in a state with a GOP controlled legislature, they transfer powers from the governor to themselves before the new governor even takes office.
It’s happened 3 times in the last decade or less and since nobody did anything to stop it or even punish the ones responsible afterwards, it’s going to keep happening.
Bruh, this fact right here is truly what made me give up on Texas. Gerrymandering IS a valid excuse for the federal elections.
But when Greg Abbott, and Dan Patrick won AGAIN?!, I immediately was like “Fuck this state and everyone in it. We get what we deserve.”
Right wing Californians keep moving to Ohio and being real assholes to us left wing ohioans. Like dude you moved to a major city, idk why you thought there wouldn’t be a lot of queer and left wing people here
Proposing a ridiculous solution like “just move there and vote” as if it is a viable option, is just as tiresome.
I’m not trying to be argumentative, but I get the same sort of feeling when I am told I should just pick up and move out of Florida when I’ve lived here my whole life. I don’t like the bullshit policies these clowns like DeSantis put in place, but running away doesn’t help things either. Better to try to work to make people see how shitty the politicians are making life for everyone here than running to greener pastures.
At least until the climate forces me out, which may come sooner than I want.
No worries, I don’t take it as argumentative, just expressing your opinion, same as me. 🙂
My general thought is, if you don’t like where you live AND you can leave, take action and go. But in many cases, leaving just isn’t an option. I know this all too well. I hate Oklahoma. I hate the politics of it. I hate that it’s always 20 years in the past compared to any other state. I hate the people wanting to strike up a convo while I’m in line to get my groceries. I hate the “good ol boy” culture and the obsession over sports trucks and hunting. I hate so much about this place. But I can’t afford to leave. I’ve tried to save many times but wages are so suppressed here and getting an out of state job is such a bitch, I can’t. Still trying a decade down the road with the same road blocks and will keep trying till I die.
But until then, I vote in everything I can. I try to make it work. I take opportunity to disagree with bad politics when I can. I try to make the best of what I’ve got. Because I can’t do anything else. Do what you can, when you can, where you are is my general philosophy for this. Bit rambly but hope that makes sense.
Extremely relatable response and sounds pretty close to my situation as well.
Hopefully you’ve got some good friends to weather it with at least. That helps a lot for me.
Im confused as to why all these people who purport to hate their government, do nothing while living in a stand your ground state.
Lots of ground to stand on…
I’m a pacifist and even I think violence is a less unacceptable solution than moving to Ohio.
Now that many of them don’t have homes, provided they don’t get scammed out of their insurance money, moving to some of these states might be a decent financial option. Then they can vote these assholes out.
Never mind how baseline dry California is. It’s so dry, your lips start to chap just being there. Embers in hurricane winds landing on exquisitely dry grass, brush, trees.
People who live in deserts get it. A semi can have a chain dangle too low, hit the highway, and start a brush fire.
Pod Save America has some solid, direct info on it.
So fucking tired of these clowns.
Ohio was on the verge of similar wildfires because of the drought this year too. There was a stretch of several weeks where the shoe was almost on the other foot. I think it was more luck, than anything, that we made it into winter largely unscathed.
Luigi-stares
I thought it was well established that decades of forest management that included extinguishing every single fire is what has produced an excess of fuel for today’s fires.
Edit: In case I am misunderstood, I’m pretty sure that kind of forest management was changed a long time ago, but the consequences are still evident. I am not saying that denying funding is in any way correct or justified. There is nothing about California’s forest management that would demand that.
Yes, so what’s “misleading” is that they’re using these talking points to blame current forest management policies on the problem. Also they’re doing this so they can ignore/deny that the climate is changing and making the area more susceptible to fires, no matter what your fire management policies are.
There’s also the “California bad” rhetoric because nobody wants to live in shitass Ohio.
LMAO get bent Ohio GOP: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Ohio
Never mind that California probably has more conservatives than most conservative states…
Yeah, it’s a big place. Lots of farms vs the very high density cities.
California has more 2024 Trump votes than the smallest 30 states have citizens of every age.
It’s very close to matching the Trump votes of Texas and Florida, but they were a bit ahead.
I’m on the other side of the continent, but California is a big place!
A Rizzler’s last thoughts should be of Ohio.
They stopped doing controlled burns. Climate change is just more fuel on the fire so to speak. Fire is natural, not allowing shit to burn away ungrowth has %100 not helped, but this is just repubs denying climate change like the fucking dipshits…as usual.
They stopped doing controlled burns
For a while, yes. They’ve been doing them again for a while now, though, so we’re not even as bad at it as we were
That’s scary to think this could be worse.
Honest question here … What is Ohio good for? For a state that often determines elections and can have one idiot withhold money by a baseless opinion, exactly what does that state do that holds so much sway over the rest of the country and other states?
What is Ohio good for?
It helps you remember the Japanese word for “good morning”.
This is how I remember: https://youtu.be/JyFI-jpDkQA
It provides comic relief.
Why do you think the kids use “Ohio” as in insult.
Like “You got skibidi ohio riz”
When you’re driving, it’s better than Indiana or Kentucky or west Virginia, as well as being on par with western PA. So it’s part of a gradient of shittiness.
California could just not pay the US gov that much easily. They get MUCH more from Cali than Cali gets from them…I hope it doesnt come to that though.
This is where we are now: fall in line with status quo, or burn.
They can’t get the independent and free-thinking side of America to support them, so now they will leverage health and safety to force them into submission.
Correct
Somehow, I’m pretty sure California has an overall policy of “no, you get to play by the rules, or we don’t let you have money.”
House Republican Loses Drinking Bet to Start Stupid Performative Shit in The Media
