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.
Saying you a qon these days is advertising you are one of the very worst of human beings.
Terrorist
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.
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.
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
A Rizzler’s last thoughts should be of Ohio.
Never mind that California probably has more conservatives than most conservative states…
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!
Yeah, it’s a big place. Lots of farms vs the very high density cities.
House Republican Loses Drinking Bet to Start Stupid Performative Shit in The Media
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.
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
Luigi-stares
Fuck Ohio then. GGez. Don’t @ me about hypocrisy I’m done with it.
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.”
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
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.
Reminder that the late asshole, Jim Imhofe, did delay hurricane relief aid to hurricane Sandy victims. You don’t see them attempting this asshole behavior for relief to Oklahoma or Florida. Every time I have suggested that someone reciprocate this behavior for red state aid, I have been shouted down. Because the behavior goes unpunished, it continues.
It’s important to remember Republicans do not see voting as a way of selecting representative leadership.
They see it as a litmus test for the peasants, any who do not vote for the One True American Party are traitors to the state and must be punished.
Deny us aid and we stop sending you more federal taxes than any other state…by far.
We could use that money here.
So fucking tired of these clowns.
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!”
