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Pat Walsh
Pat's Peeps Podcast
Ep. 188 Today's Peep Examines California Wildfire Mismanagement with Pat Walsh, Congressmen Doug LaMalfa and Kevin Kiley, Challenges Climate Simplifications, Considers Water Crisis Solutions, and Ends on a Nostalgic Musical Note
This episode addresses the ongoing wildfire crisis in California, emphasizing the political and administrative failures that have led to this catastrophic situation. The hosts discuss forest management missteps, water resource management, political negligence, and their impacts on communities across the state.
• Discussion on the current wildfire situation and its socio-political implications
• Critique of political figures blaming climate change without addressing mismanagement
• Insights from Congressman LaMalfa on wildfire prevention measures
• Analysis of Kevin Kiley’s points on water management issues
• Examination of Elon Musk's commentary on regulations and their impact
• Overview of the insurance crisis affecting Californians affected by wildfires
• Call for better governance and practical solutions moving forward
welcome to the pats peeps podcast. Thank you for checking back in with us. I appreciate that. Hope you're doing well. Today is a friday. It's the 10th day of January of 2025.
Speaker 1:I'm Pat Walsh, host of the Pat Walsh Show and, of course, the Pat's Peeps podcast, and as I look out into the foothills of Northern California through my studio windows, it is a beautiful day. It's been a beautiful day all day. It's just unbelievable how gorgeous this weather is. You know, the big story, of course, continues to be the fires in Los Angeles raging out of control Extremely sad. Yeah, it's just tough to watch it. You know We've been talking about that on my radio show for the last couple of nights. I also host the Pat Wall Show on KPK and heard everywhere, nationally and internationally, on your free iHeart app. But that's been. The big news is, you know, we continue to think about Los Angeles and all of the surrounding areas there. Los Angeles and all of the surrounding areas there, all of the areas in Southern California which are certainly threatened at this point.
Speaker 1:There's just so many layers to this, from insurance to Bernie Sanders with the gall to call this climate change and not even speak about the fact that these forests are completely mismanaged. It is just disgusting that you get a guy like Bernie Sanders coming and telling us that, essentially, the problem is with climate change. It's not the fact that you have people committing these crimes and starting them like they caught a guy last night. Right, they caught a guy. They had to hold him down until the police got there because he was trying to start a fire. I saw other videos. They're just people starting fires. Can you imagine this? I mean it is just incredible. I mean what has happened to society? And you get Bernie Sanders taking the heat for blaming California wildfires on climate change, Global warming. Are you serious? You know, as these wildfires continue to ravage California, burning everyone's property and homes, Sanders asserts that the climate change is real and that the president-elect, Donald Trump, must tackle the existential crisis. Well, look, oh, so Trump should do it, Bernie, right, Trump should do it. What happened to Biden? What happened to our great Governor Newsom? Why didn't they do something about it? Right, Because of their policies. 80,000 people told to evacuate blazes, 0% contained. Eight months since, the area has seen rain A scale of damage and loss unimaginable. Climate change is real, not a hoax. Shut up, Bernie. He says Donald Trump must treat this like the existential crisis that it is. How about someone in the freaking White House or in charge of the state of California doing something about it? But now Trump's got to do something about it, Okay, Okay.
Speaker 1:Conservative commentator and author, Justin Haskins, director of the Socialism Research Center at the Heartland Institute, noted wildfires, including ones much larger than this, have been happening in California forever. Nicole Shanahan, who was Robert F Kennedy Jr's presidential running mate last year before the pair dropped out, supported Trump as well was also among those who responded to Bernie's comments. State mismanagement is real, Bernie, she noted. See, they never the woke, never want to include the state mismanagement of our forests, and Bernie has had long issued such dire warnings. Climate change is existential disaster.
Speaker 1:How about cleaning a forest up? You fool Talking about transforming our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy, how about cleaning the forests? How about managing the forests? How about that? You know I could talk about this, but you know I think there's other people that might be able to talk about this and shed some light on it without me getting my blood pressure up. I've had this gentleman on my podcast before Congressman LaMalfa. Congressman LaMalfa was a great guest If you go back and listen to that podcast. He had a lot to say about this very issue and in remarks on the House floor, Doug LaMalfa Malfa denounced Governor Newsom's handling of the past wildfire seasons and the active fires in and around the Los Angeles area. Here he is talking about it.
Speaker 2:California's on fire once again. Only now, instead of burning up the red counties and the forested areas to the north, it's devastating portions of Los Angeles. Everybody's seeing it on the news. Every year we know the Santa Ana winds are gonna blow. Every year we know that there's gonna be risk. So what is our government, was our governor, doing to help stop the risk? Virtually nothing other than showing up for press conferences and waving his arms around and having long practiced monologues about oh, it's someone else's fault, this or that. So it's time for the governor to either bear down or get out of the way, because California keeps suffering.
Speaker 2:My county's up north Carr Fire, Camp Fire, Dixie Fire, one million acres and now it's hitting the constituents of Southern California hard. Why does this have to keep happening? Why is not anything being done to really mitigate the issue of forest management, of brush management and lower the risk? Why is the water being cut off at the hydrants? Is it because he won't allow us to build the water storage we need for a growing population and for growing crops? We need to build sites reservoir. We need to raise Shasta down. We need to not let all the water keep rushing out to the Pacific Ocean through the Delta to supposedly save a smelt that doesn't exist. We need to get cracking on this, Governor Newsom. Either get at it or get out of the way.
Speaker 1:Congressman doug lamalfa, who he and I and larry allen of the dallas cowboys all I've mentioned this before all part of the uh 2004 butte college most outstanding alumni. I was so proud to be in that class with congressman lamalfa. Kevin kiley also had something to say to gavin newsom regarding energy providers don't say to Gavin Newsom regarding the wildfire. Sorry about that.
Speaker 3:Kevin Kiley, who has also been on my radio show, had this to say Mr Speaker, as we speak, the California legislature has gaveled in to a special emergency session of its legislature, and you might say, well, of course they have. La is burning to the ground right now, but it turns out that's not actually what this special session is about. No, no, the legislature has gaveled into a special session called by Gavin Newsom to provide millions of dollars in funding for filing lawsuits against the incoming Trump administration. That is what their priority is at this very moment. Mr Speaker, there could not be a starker illustration of the abject political failure that has gotten our state to this point and that has served to bring about the horrifying scenes that the whole country is seeing on their television sets right now and that folks in Los Angeles are suffering through. So I want to go over a few of the failures that have gotten us to this point, but I do want to say first that my prayers are with the people in LA, the victims of this horrifying, apocalyptic set of fires, with the over 100,000 people under evacuation orders, with the at least five sadly probably more people who have lost their lives and their families, and with our firefighters and first responders who are working around the clock, doing everything they possibly can to get this blaze under control, and I'm truly grateful for all of the communities in California and across the entire country who have come together to try to help the LA area in this hour of dire need. Thank you, it is appreciated beyond measure. But after we do manage to get the fire under control, there are going to be a lot of questions that need answering. Indeed, we can already identify, even though we don't know the specific cause of each fire, the failures that we know have contributed to these conflagrations, these catastrophic events that have hit our community time and time again.
Speaker 3:Our politicians have obsessed over things like banning lawnmowers, banning leaf blowers, all the while neglecting our forests and leaving our communities vulnerable. In fact, when it comes to the forests, it is worse than neglect. The state and, frankly, the federal government, have put up unnecessary hurdles to doing proper forest management, to clearing vegetation, to doing prescribed burns, which has turned many of our forests and areas, adining residential areas in many cases as tinderboxes and caused fires that have, in many cases, become truly catastrophic, community-destroying events, and we've seen it happen, sadly, time and time again. The perversity of it all is that these restrictions on being able to manage our forests, which have decimated the timber industry, by the way are imposed in the name of the environment. But nothing could be worse for the environment than a catastrophic wildfire. Indeed, when you look at all of the emissions that are saved by every single emissions reduction program that California has, all of that gets wiped out many times over when you have a catastrophic wildfire. So there simply could not be a more backwards policy.
Speaker 1:You're listening to Kevin Kiley. By the way, I don't even know if I mentioned this. This is Pat's Peeps 188. Much more serious today, but we need this. We need this information. Thank you for listening.
Speaker 3:And in fact last year in the fall, a decision was made to halt prescribed burns. Now we don't yet know if that would have made a difference here, but we do know that the lack of doing prescribed burns in a systematic way, in an efficient way, in a timely way, has contributed to this problem. To make matters worse, governor Newsom, when he came into office, started claiming that he was doing forest management. But he wasn't telling the truth. An investigation by Capital Public Radio, the local NPR affiliate, found that Newsom had exaggerated the amount of forest management work that had been done, the number of acres treated. He'd exaggerated that number by a staggering 690%. Gabba Penton is bringing you close.
Speaker 1:This is Kevin Kiley talking about the mismanagement of the forests Boy. He's making some really great points. Kevin Kiley, here on Pat's Peeps, number 188.
Speaker 3:Local leaders in California have allowed millions of acres to become overgrown and have thereby left our communities in a vulnerable condition. Not only that, their mismanagement of our water supply has, among other things, diminished our capacity to respond to wildfires. First of all, it has been decades since California has built significant new water storage not since the state water project and secondly, even the water that we do have, when it comes down, much of it gets diverted intentionally into the ocean again, supposedly for environmental reasons. I can tell you that in 2023, when we had record storms in California, I visited the site of the Folsom Dam and you had water cascading out of the dam 10,000 cubic feet per second. Almost all of it going eventually into the ocean. Almost all of it going eventually into the ocean. And at that time, by the way, we had a flood emergency declared, of course, and yet somehow we were also still under a drought emergency.
Speaker 3:Californians were told you're not allowed to water your lawn. The legislature was passing draconian restrictions on indoor water use to 25, 30 gallons a day. Businesses were banned from having lawns in front of their property. In some parts of the state, you had to have a low flow device for your shower head, and then they would punish you if you use too much water when you took a shower, if you didn't take a five minute shower, and all the while we're sending staggering amounts of water into the ocean and we're failing to build the storage that would actually catch the water and preserve it for when we need it.
Speaker 1:That's Beach 188.
Speaker 3:As yet another example relevant to the situation in LA. The California Coastal Commission actually rejected the building of a desalination plant just a couple of years ago.
Speaker 1:How about that? How about that?
Speaker 3:So California, over the course of many years, has, in a political way, chosen to allow its forests to become overgrown and to impose artificial scarcity on its water supply. At the same time, our state and many of our municipalities, such as Los Angeles, have had completely backwards priorities and have demonstrated a total failure of just basic competence when it comes to government performance and the provision of services. And that was highlighted very clearly in this case, when you had the Los Angeles Fire Department telling the city do not deprive us of our funding. And yet the city decided to do it anyway. The fire department said that the reduction in funding would severely limit the department's capacity to prepare for, train for and respond to large-scale emergencies.
Speaker 3:Now, as the city council, the mayor, were deciding not to fully fund the fire department, they had plenty of time for things like passing a resolution reaffirming Los Angeles as a sanctuary city. It was already a sanctuary city. It's already a sanctuary state Wow. But they decided that was their priority Wow. Not to prepare for the risk of wildfire, not to fully fund the fire department, but to pass another resolution making itself a sanctuary city yet again. And we'll be learning more, I expect, about how it possibly could be that we have fire hydrants that are not working, that water isn't coming out of them, and how we didn't have the necessary personnel on hand, despite the high wind conditions. It all serves to underline, on the one hand, the misguided priorities and, on the other, the lack of basic competence. Additionally, Los Angeles and California more generally have continued to lead the nation in homelessness. More generally, have continued to lead the nation in homelessness.
Speaker 3:California has roughly half the unsheltered homeless in the United States, and there's a whole host of reasons that this is not a good thing, but one of them is that encampments tend to lead to a lot of fires.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir.
Speaker 3:In fact, in just one year, in 2023 alone, there were almost 14,000 fires related to homelessness. So, again, we don't yet know exactly what caused the set of fires that are still ongoing, but we do know that this city has been as bad as any in terms of letting homelessness proliferate, allowing encampments to grow unchecked and thereby creating more dangerous conditions for its residents because of the risk of fire.
Speaker 1:Let's not forget about illegals coming across the border.
Speaker 3:And finally, Mr Speaker, I'll point out that California has an insurance crisis.
Speaker 3:Yes, sir, yes sir that has been growing and growing and growing, year after year after year, and our state's political leaders have simply allowed it to happen.
Speaker 3:Yep, they've done not nearly enough to mitigate the risk of fire that is the underlying cause of the increased rates.
Speaker 3:They've done essentially nothing until recently to stabilize the situation, to stabilize the markets, and, as a result, you have insurers that have now pulled out of the state entirely, millions of people who are losing coverage. In my district, you have whole communities where everyone has lost coverage and they're kicked to the California Fair Plan, forced to pay three times as much, four times as much, five times as much as they were paying before, and the Fair Plan is now on the verge of collapse, accounting for the absolutely catastrophic losses that we're seeing in Los Angeles. So, mr Speaker, what is happening and is still ongoing, sadly, in Los Angeles is a truly unimaginable tragedy in terms of the images that we're seeing, in terms of the dislocation that it's causing, but I expect that we will learn that, at least to an extent, it was an avoidable one, and this should serve as a major wake-up call that our state needs to start doing things differently. Thank you that we need to get back to basics.
Speaker 1:Thank you.
Speaker 3:We need to get back to basics in California. Build our roads, manage our forests, store our water yes.
Speaker 4:Maintain our grid yes grid fund our police and our fire department Do the things government is supposed to do, do them well and do nothing else.
Speaker 3:If we can get back to basics as a state, then we can stop catastrophes like this from happening in the future and perhaps someday in the not too distant future we can start leading the nation in the right ways again.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's why I haven't spoken so much today. He's absolutely on the money, kevin Kiley, I have to have him on my podcast. I have to. I have to have him on my podcast. Congressman Lamalpha as well, to have him on my podcast. Congressman Lamolph as well he's been on my podcast Again. If you want to hear him talk about this, please go back and listen to Doug Lamolph on my podcast. Plus the fact we went to the same college and same, like I said before, most outstanding alumni class. So that was an honor. God, I just they're so right. It is just such common sense. You know, it seems like nowadays we everything has.
Speaker 1:Somehow we hear the opinion of certain people, which one of those is Elon Musk. Well, I just want to say Elon Musk has made these assertions that regulations prevent steps from being taken to avoid California wildfires, the bureaucracy, the red tape. Michael Murray made a great joke last night on my show about why we what was it that we couldn't get things? What was it? We were going to do something we had to do like a study or something to get it done. You know, you always it's all the economic study or whatever for something simple. It's just look according to Elon Musk. Here's what he says Quote climate change. And, okay, elon Musk. So we're quoting Elon Musk. I get that. We're quoting Bernie Sanders today and Elon Musk. So we're quoting Elon Musk. I get that. We're quoting Bernie Sanders today and Elon Musk. And we're listening to Lamaltha and Kylie.
Speaker 1:Climate change risk is real, says Elon, just much slower than alarmists claim. Okay, so far I agree with him. Now, I'm no expert and you may disagree with that and that's fine, but it's worth discussing, right, for those who really know. He says the immense loss of homes in la is primarily due to number one nonsensical over regulation that prevented creating fire breaks and doing brush clearing. 100 agree. Number two bad governance of the state and at a local level uh, state and local level that resulted in a shortage of water. Yes, that's what he wrote on x. He's right. Yeah, I mean you look, I'm so heartbroken at the devastation that continuously is inflicted upon our country and the world and the elected leaders. They are ignorant, they are impotent or just incompetent to doing the smart thing, which is to acknowledge that climate change is real and start to solve it. This is according to a Democrat in a tweet in California. Can you imagine this? The devastation continuously inflicted upon our country and the world. Elected leaders are ignorant, impotent or just incompetent to doing the smart thing, which is to acknowledge that climate change is real and start to solve it. That's what Jasmine Crockett of Texas lamented in a tweet. Nothing about anything that we just heard from Kevin Kiley. No, right back to climate change.
Speaker 1:Freshman representative Sarah McBride, a Democrat, first transgender I love this. The first transgender identifying member of Congress who cares Shut up? None of us care. What is a transgender identifying who cares Shut up? None of us care. What is a transgender identifying who cares Shuddy Quit, including trash like that? This is on MSN, Describing the fire as a climate catastrophe.
Speaker 1:I'm praying for the victims of raging fires around LA. The loss of alive homes, businesses and entire neighborhoods is devastating. I stand ready to work with my colleagues representing these communities to guarantee they have the resources Well, they don't have the water. To guarantee they have the resources. They don't have the resources to contain these fires. That's what she says. Well, they don't have them. It's happening now. They don't have them, so your guarantee's not happening. It's like Seinfeld when he goes to rent the car, he gets the reservations. Well, I don't think you understand what the reservations are. You made the reservation. Now it's your turn to keep the reservation. Well, you're not doing it here either. Well, guarantee no-transcript to guarantee they're the resource they need to contain these fires, recover, rebuild, prevent these climate catastrophes in the future. How about managing the force? It all comes down to that.
Speaker 1:Trump says Gavin Newsom should resign. I agree with him. Yeah, so I just want to say thank you to Congressman LaMalfa. Kevin Kiley, I just thank you for your work, for presenting us with the truth. I'm just going to kind of leave it at that today. I know it's a humorless podcast 188, but this is where we're at Generally. I try to go the other way and just kind of provide a respite from what's going on. But I love California.
Speaker 1:Today I'm wearing my Los Angeles Rams. I've got this old school sweater, the old logo, to represent just Los Angeles. Just I'm going to go to work and I'm trying to do this and just do what we can to really expose what's really happening. So that's why I admire these gentlemen. For me just to wear this this is just a sweater, just to you know, the Rams are playing, they're being moved, the game's being moved this weekend to Arizona, or it's Monday night to Arizona, the wild card round, the NFL playoffs which is obviously juxtaposed to these terrible things that are happening in Los Angeles. Not very relevant, but it's a distraction and it's a good distraction. It's my team, the Vikings, is going to be playing. It's my brother's team, as I've said. So there's just a distraction and just to sort of honor the city of LA in a tiny, tiny little, stupid little way, just because they're on my mind. But yeah, it's just, it's awful, it's just awful.
Speaker 1:Let's end it on a good note, shall we today with some music? Pulled this from my rare 45 collections and I'm going to tell you right up front, I have no idea, maybe I'll play this and something will hit me and I'll go oh yeah, somehow I remember that, but I have no clue on this one, but I'm just going to go with it. It's on Roxbury Records, which this is the first time we've dipped into that one, excuse me, it's a white label Stereo on one side, mono on the other, a song by an R&B.
Speaker 1:Oh, no, it's disco by Tavares no, oh, I see. Okay by Tavares in 82, originally recorded by this artist here in 75. Now hold up, it's a song by this, just by Tavares. I remember them in 82, okay, so recorded in 75, written by Kenny Nolan. Okay, this was released from the 1982 album New Directions. This song became Tavares's eighth and final US top 40 hit, peaked at number 33 on the US Billboard singles chart, number 28 on the cash box top 100. Unlike some of the other hits, this did not chart in Canada. Blah, blah, blah. But guess what? This isn't Tavares. No, I didn't go with Tavares, I actually picked the original on this. So this is actually the 1975 version. As a matter of fact, on the record it says right there 1975, plug side, not for sale. So this is not Tavares. This is the original of the song. A Penny for your Thoughts. This is Marian Jarvis. Maybe you know it. Maybe when I play it I'll go. Yes, I remember this. As for now, I don't.
Speaker 4:I've got to know where I stand. I've just got to know where I am With you. So here's a penny for your thoughts, a nickel for a kiss, a dime if you tell me that you love me. A penny for your thoughts.
Speaker 1:I do not remember this. Do you remember this? You know? This has the sound right here. It's coming out of like an era, it's like they're playing off of, let's see, like the stylistics, for instance, or the shy lights perhaps, but particularly the stylistic style.
Speaker 4:So here's a penny for your boss, a nickel for a kiss.
Speaker 1:But don't tell me that you won't be a penny for your boss. I do not remember this. By the way, you know what I did. I inadvertently played the mono side. I'm thinking it doesn't sound all that full. This is the mono side. Oh well, Thank you for listening to Pat's Peeps 188. I promise I'll get back to the humor on Pat's Peeps 189. Have a beautiful Friday, have a beautiful weekend. See you on the radio and see what you were thinking about.
Speaker 4:I think my ship was sinking. Are you leaving me behind? So here's a pity for your thoughts A nickel for a kiss, and I hope you're talking about the love. We are pity for your thoughts. A nickel for a kiss.
