It's burning again as it does every year. Some of the fires are set by stupid people, others are the result of accidents and then there are those which would happen no matter what - Mother Nature on the rampage. Why people insist on building homes in burn areas is beyond me. Then they don't have insurance against that because it is too expensive and they expect the government to bail them out.
Not only do they build in the burn areas but they build overpriced ticky-tacky houses made mostly of wood, sometimes even with "shake roofs" which are also made of wood, with shrubs and trees right next to the house. Then on top of that they build on slopes. Here in SoCal the shake roofs have pretty much been replaced but nobody makes them take them off if they still have them. The whole thing as an invitation to disaster: first the fires will burn all the vegetation (if not the houses) and when the rains come a few months later the hillsides will come sliding down because there are no bushes and trees holding them up. After that is all cleaned up the same owners will build the same ticky-tacky houses again in the same spot - how stupid can you be.
Quite a few years ago there was a really big fire on the slopes of Laguna Beach. One place was sort of a horseshoe shaped area and the whole hillside burned. All the houses were destroyed but one.
That belonged to an architect who had it built to his specifications. He was Vietnamese and he had studied architecture in Germany and had married a German woman before he came to the US. His house was built to German standards: brick and cement walls and floors, deep pylons into the ground, a tile roof, no vegetation right next to the house. The pictures in the paper showed this burnt hillside with hardly anything left standing but this big white house with a red roof in the middle of all this destruction.
Did the neighbors take heed? No, they actually hounded this man and his wife with their envy until they both left, I assume they sold their house, and then these stupid people proceeded to build their ticky-tacky houses again just like before. These houses are huge and very expensive, with an ocean view to die for, but some people just don't have any sense. The fire next time will destroy these houses again and the German house will still be there unless some fool tears it down and builds another ticky-tacky house on that spot.
Fires have been an annual occurence in SoCal since before White people ever set eyes on its coast. The Native People even had a name for the Los Angeles area that referred to it as being a smoky place. So this is nothing new and not neccessarily the fault of the people who live here now.
But I feel that if somebody wants to live in wooded areas that were subject to fires in the past then they should also take all the risks with it. That means don't expect the fire department to come and put out the fire which is a natural occurence, and don't expect the government to repair the washed-out road that comes after the rains start. You knew the risk, now live with it.
I also do not understand why the government would allow developers to come in and build in these areas in the first place. If some rustic person builds a little house on their own piece of property, that is one thing. But when there is a whole town, like Lancaster, built in the burn areas, that's a different thing and then the government is equally culpable. I just don't want my tax money going to save these houses that never should have been built there to begin with.
Right now California is in a hole with revenues not coming in, so paying out tax money for this kind of insanity is beyond me. Some would-be governors propose cuts everywhere instead of raising taxes after years of tax cuts. Sure, there is always the cry that businesses will leave if they don't get tax cuts. And just how many businesses have indeed left? Those that did have not relocated to another state, they went overseas instead which they would have done no matter which state they had been in. So the high taxes of California were not the cause.
I keep hearing the same mantra over and over: we've got to cut services, we've got to cut state employees benefits (pay & pensions), we've got to cut taxes, but also: there are so many poor people in the emergency rooms, the lines at the state offices are so long, the service is poor and slow, there are potholes everywhere, where is a cop when you need one, yada yada yada. Everybody wants something for nothing, nobody wants to pay taxes but they are always ready for a handout, and I don't mean the poor people.
It's peculiar, but if you ask a low income person if they could feed one more poor relative, there is always room at their table. Ask the same thing of a middle class or higher income person and they will try everything under the sun not to have that person under their roof, they should go to a shelter as a last resort. It used to be that "home" was where they have to take you in. That still works with the lower income classes. Once a certain income level is reached that truism oes out the window. What a sad state of affairs.
If you cut taxes you won't have the money to expand services that are needed or to hire well-qualified people to do the state's business and to administer these services. Then to cry that lines are long, that services are poor and that pot holes are not repaired is begging the question. You can't have both.
Oh sure, give all the government services to private industry to do, they can do it cheaper. Have you ever heard of private industry working for "no profit"? Do the big-wigs in private industry work for peanuts? The reason private industry can do the job cheaper is because the job goes to the one who low-balls them. Along with that goes shoddy workmanship so that the job has to be done over and it now costs twice as much. That's cheaper?
Remember the "Orange Crush"? Private industry did that and after just a few years rebar started to rust and the job did have to be done over, this time Caltrans did it and they did it right the first time, a little more expensive than the first time but no big-wig lined his/her pockets on taxpayers' money. The job should have been done by state employees to begin with, not the second time around and thus costing twice as much. You get what you pay for, low-balling is not the way to go.
Or try the Departments of Motor Vehicles or Unemployment Insurance: remember when lines were out the door at the DMV and it took many hours to get to the counter to talk to someone? There had been a hiring freeze and the people working there can only do so much. When people left due to illnes, retirement or transferred out, that put more pressure on the ones who were still there. The public screamed. So offices were opened on Saturdays. That meant people now had to work overtime which is expensive. There went more taxpayer money. Somebody finally got the bright idea that this was not working, that they had to hire more people to get the work load done. The hiring freeze stopped and once the new people were up to speed after training the lines subsided and Saturday work and thus expensive overtime stopped.
Now our governor has put the state employees on 4 days furlough per month which simply means that every employee works 4 days per month less and thus gets less money in his/her paycheck. So who is doing the work that these people would be doing? Nobody, so the lines are long again, the service is poor, the state employees are mad because they have smaller paychecks but same expenses as before. Everybody looses.
Unemployment Insurance is an even more ridiculous story: here the state employees also were put on 4 days furlough and thus some work could not be done. But what was worse: the unemployment rate kept climbing and thus there was even more work that did not get done in a timely fashion.
Now, Unemployment Insurance is partly funded by the Feds and they have something to say about how the department is run. The threat is always there that if people do not get their checks or are denied benefits in a timely fashion, about two weeks, then the Feds can pull their part of the funding, oops!The department does not want that to happen and so goes begging for more employees. Since this cannot be done and ALL state employees are furloughed 4 days per month, what can be done? Oh, lets have them work overtime!
The governor gave a one-department exception to allow overtime. So now state emploees who work in the Department of Employment Development can work 12 hours a day 6 days a week minus 4 days per month as they are still furloughed, actually pulling down bigger paychecks than if they were working just 40 hours per week. What kind of stupid math is that? Those who cannot work overtime are the losers, some people are dependent on babysitters and thus cannot go past their usual hours, they have smaller paychecks and the expenses are the same.
Well, state employees make too much money for the work that they do and they cannot get fired or laid off and their pensions are too big and their benefits are too good yada yada yada.
Would you like to stand at a counter and be abused by the public all day long? Would you like to be told on the phone "I know where you work", a threat if I ever heard one? Would you like to make about half or at the most 2/3 of what you could make if you were in private industry with the same amount of education and resposibility?
State employees being mostly in a service industry are there because they like to serve the public. There is something very satisfying about that to the people who do public service. They take the smaller paycheck for the security of most likely having a job for however long they want it which does not mean they cannot be laid off or even fired. They take the job for the benefits the job offers but which can also take a big chunk from their paycheck if they have a family that depends on them for medical benefits. Until just a few years ago they had very little in Disability payments for things that were not work-related. Just about any working stiff in California if he breaks his leg, has a car accident, gets cancer or whatever and can't work can get disability payments for up to 6 months of $350.00 to $650.00 per week. The state employee used to have none or not more than $27.00 per week. Try paying your rent or mortgage with that. A few years ago that finally changed.
Ah yes, these big pensions! The average pension of a state employee after working approximately 20 years and being at least 52 years old is $1700.00/month. Without receiving Social Security at the same time it is impossible to live on that here in SoCal. Since the average pay while working is only about $2800.00/month after taxes it would be very difficult to save anything on that towards retirement in a savings account or a 401k.
There are many single moms working for the state who have to not only feed, house and clothe their children, they also have quite a bit taken out of their check for medical care. And then there are childcare expenses on top of that. Not all of them collect child support either, more deadbeat dads. These women will live in rental housing forever and they will have nothing saved at the end of their careers. Do you now begrudge them a pension that will at least keep them living halfway decent in their old age?
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