Pros/Cons of Digital vs disc?

Over the past week, fires have ravaged greater Los Angeles, killing at least 10 people, destroying more than 10,000 buildings, scorching more than 35,000 acres, and forcing the evacuation of at least 180,000 residents. The dry Santa Ana winds continue to blow, threatening to spread the destruction further. As I write this, a backpack stuffed with mementos, documents, and a water bottle sits next to the front door of my West Los Angeles apartment.

Commentators wasted no time trying to find a villain. Was it Mayor Karen Bass, who had left the city for Ghana before the fires began? Doubtful. What about budget cuts to the Los Angeles Fire Department? In fact, its budget recently grew by $50 million. Was it a 2022 donation of firefighter boots and helmets to Ukraine? Water is in short supply, not uniforms.


The real story of the wildfires isn’t about malice or incompetence. It’s about well-intentioned policies with unintended consequences.

Take insurance—a trillion-dollar industry built to identify risks, particularly from disasters such as wildfires. Insurance companies communicate this risk to homeowners through higher premiums, providing them with useful information and incentives. People may think twice about moving to a fire-prone area if they see the danger reflected in a fee.

Read: The unfightable fire

But in 1988, California voters passed Proposition 103, arbitrarily reducing rates by 20 percent and subjecting future rate increases to public oversight. Nobody likes high premiums, of course. But the politicization of risk has been a catastrophe. Artificially low premiums encouraged more Californians to live in the state’s most dangerous areas. And they reduced the incentive for homeowners to protect their houses, such as by installing fire-resistant roofs and siding materials.

Decades of worsening climate risk alongside suppressed premiums have prompted many insurers to drop coverage altogether. Just last summer, State Farm dropped 1,600 home-insurance plans in Pacific Palisades. Earlier this week, most of the neighborhood was burning.


Many Californians in high-risk areas have been forced to depend on the California FAIR Plan—a public insurer of last resort. In 2023, the plan covered an estimated $284 billion in home value. In 2024, that exposure increased by 61 percent. Within the next few years, California taxpayers could be on the hook for more than a trillion dollars. The state insurance commissioner is scrambling to bring insurers back. But it may be too little, too late.


Artificially low premiums have also spurred new housing production in fire-prone regions on the edges of cities like Los Angeles. From 1990 to 2020, California built nearly 1.5 million homes in the wildlife-urban interface, putting millions of residents in the path of wildfires. Policy didn’t just pull Californians into dangerous areas. It also pushed them out of safer ones. Over the past 70 years, zoning has made housing expensive and difficult to build in cities, which are generally more resilient to climate change than any other part of the state.

The classic urban neighborhood in America—carefully maintained park, interconnected street grid, masonry-clad shops and apartments—is perhaps the most wildfire-resistant pattern of growth. By contrast, the modern American suburb—think stick-frame homes along cul-de-sacs that bump up against unmaintained natural lands—may be the least. Several of L.A.’s hardest-hit neighborhoods resemble this model.

Infill townhouses, apartments, and shops could help keep Californians out of harm’s way, but they are illegal to build in most California neighborhoods. And even where new infill housing is allowed, it is often subject to lengthy environmental reviews, which NIMBYs easily weaponize. And if you want to build anywhere near the coast—the only part of greater Los Angeles not currently under a red-flag warning—prepare for months of added delays.


In fairness, the state has made some progress. In 2008, California lawmakers passed S.B. 375, which directs planning agencies to reform land-use and transportation policy in order to facilitate housing production in long-settled areas. But this remains purely advisory—yet another plan on a shelf, in a state with too many plans and too little implementation.

In recent years, Los Angeles has also taken steps to fix itself. Thanks in part to state lawmakers and a rising local YIMBY movement, building homes in existing neighborhoods has been somewhat streamlined. But reform isn’t going to get any easier. Our city started the week with a housing shortage in the hundreds of thousands. Now it’s ending the week with thousands of homes destroyed, and thousands of newly homeless families.

Once the fires are out, California will need to build, fast. This disaster can teach it how, if policy makers will listen.

Because we already have diversity discrimination rules in place.

Login to view embedded media

Deplorable:

It didn’t take long for the Trump Justice Department to launch an all-out war against what it considers the deep state.
The department on Thursday evening summarily informed senior officials in the divisions that oversee civil rights and environmental enforcement that they were being transferred to a newly created office to take action against sanctuary cities. The career lawyers were told they could either accept the reassignment or face disciplinary action, including removal.


Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter

The transfers, involving at least six members of the nonpartisan Senior Executive Service with decades of experience in their areas of expertise, represent an unprecedented and unwise intervention into the topmost ranks of the civil service. As described by the Office of Personnel Management, members of the Senior Executive Service “serve in the key positions just below the top Presidential appointees.”


These are, by and large, nonpartisan experts in their fields, traditionally serving from administration to administration regardless of which party is in power. The Trump Justice Department’s actions, targeting four SES section chiefs in the Environment and Natural Resources Division and at least two additional officials in the Civil Rights Division, violate the long-standing practice that these professional attorneys carry over notwithstanding changes in administration.
Follow Ruth Marcus
Worse, Thursday’s actions constitute a dramatic misuse of government resources — one clearly intended to cripple enforcement of laws that the new administration disdains and to drive career civil servants out of government. It takes the senior brain trust of key parts of the department and places them in an area in which they have no expertise. Many will leave the government, as their experience and specialized skills will be highly valued at private firms outside the Justice Department. Running the experts off is, of course, one goal of the Trump purge.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/01/17/trump-impoundment-congress-power-grab/

“Please accept this email as notice that you are being reassigned to the Office of the Associate Attorney General to be part of the Sanctuary City Working Group, effective today,” the individuals were informed shortly before 8 p.m. Thursday.


Calling the “Department of Government Efficiency”: Putting so many members of the department’s elite corps of SES employees in this one small area makes no logical or administrative sense. Who, exactly, are all these supervisors going to supervise?
“It’s potentially crippling to government operations and will put communities across America at risk if the Trump administration removes all the senior leadership of a particular agency or department,” said David M. Uhlmann, who served as chief of the Environmental Crimes Section at Justice from 2000 to 2007 and later as assistant administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance for the Environmental Protection Agency under President Joe Biden. “This has never happened before.”
The move follows the earlier transfer to the sanctuary cities office of senior officials in the department’s national security and criminal divisions, some of whom were involved in the August 2022 search of Donald Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago.


In addition, the department fired outright the chief immigration judge and other officials involved in the immigration court system, actions that appear to run afoul of the legal requirement that employees receive at least two notices of poor performance before they can be dismissed.
On his first day in office, Trump issued an order entitled “Restoring accountability for career senior executives,” asserting that he possesses the constitutional authority to remove members of the Senior Executive Service, which currently numbers just under 8,000. “Because SES officials wield significant governmental authority, they must serve at the pleasure of the President,” the document states. Whether Trump’s claimed executive power can override statutory protections for civil servants is certain to be the subject of litigation.
The transfers will be difficult to fight. Federal law imposes a 120-day moratorium on reassignments of members of the Senior Executive Service after a new administration takes charge. But that moratorium only kicks in after the department head is confirmed, meaning that acting officials appear to have the authority to order the moves, according to experts on civil service protections. The DOJ declined to comment.


As chilling as the Trump Justice Department’s earlier moves were, given how they concentrated on those who had crossed Trump personally, the assaults against the civil rights and environmental divisions are disturbing in a different way, signaling an effort to quickly undermine, if not neuter, the professional attorneys who have been faithfully executing the laws from president to president.
A new administration of a different party is fully entitled to adopt different enforcement priorities. Elections have consequences; such changes are in the normal course of business. Though much of the Justice Department’s business continues no matter who is elected, the civil rights and environmental divisions in particular have historically been subjected to more turmoil and turnover than in other, less ideologically fraught areas. That was true eight years ago, as the Trump administration took over from the Obama Justice Department.
But Trump 2.0 is shaping up to be a more ruthlessly effective version of its predecessor. It is willing to barrel through norms in pursuit of its agenda; it is contemptuous of the bureaucracy and determined to make life as miserable as possible for those who had dedicated their lives to public service. This week, I fear, is only the start.

Deplorable Dumbasses!:

Republicans were ebullient after November’s election victories vaulted them into supermajorities in the Iowa House and Senate — the largest in more than 50 years.

To celebrate, Republican Party of Iowa Chair Jeff Kaufmann led legislators and other Republican officials in dancing along to the "YMCA" — President-elect Donald Trump’s signature campaign dance — at the party’s annual legislative breakfast before the session started Monday.

“We want people to know that Iowa Republicans are fired up,” Kaufmann said, urging the crowd out of their seats. “We want people to know that Iowa Republicans like Donald Trump.”

More:Iowa Republicans tout 'common sense' agenda as supermajority gavels in for 2025 session

He told the crowd he had been assured that Trump would be shown the videos of the dancing.

“I’ve got confirmation he will see them,” he said.https://www.press-citizen.com/story/news/politics/2025/01/13/iowa-republicans-ymca-dance-for-donald-trump-before-2025-legislative-session/77678885007/

​

MAGA. There is lots to cleanup.

At this point, I think it's clear the Payton is struggling this year. He's had a couple of good games, played decently against Northwestern and Michigan, but really fell apart against Utah St and Iowa St. This is supposed to be the leader of the team and right now, he has the 3rd best efficiency rating and is shooting 31% from 3 (27% against top 100 teams). I hope he can turn it around because he might be hurting his draft stock if his season keeps going this way.

Dear

Login to view embedded media
I hadn’t seen the whole video, maybe the rest of you had but it’s 13+ minutes and it’s pretty impressive

I think I’m as excited about the upcoming WNBA season and watching her play as I used to be waiting for football season to start…doh!!!

Literally 20 deep at every carwash I drove by today. I washed both of our vehicles at 08:00 yesterday to take advantage of the 2 decent days to beat the rush. 5 cars waiting in the turn lane to get into the one on 1st Ave in IC. A Suburban with its rear end hanging out into the street.
And, they dumped so much salt onto the roads this week it looks like the surface of the moon.

Login to view embedded media
Login to view embedded media
Login to view embedded media

Not like your first team D and O is lighting it up. Down 32 start of the fourth.
Give him a chance, what's the worst that can happen? You lose by 40 instead of 30?

Now that our national analysts have seen Iose in person and it's been against high-level competition, expect a bump in the ratings.

He has apparently been dominant so far at the Navy All-American Bowl.

Story, from Sam Spiegelman:

*****official viqueens dominate rams thread***** @IAFB2021Champs​

***Official Minnesota vs. LA Rams Thread, via Arizona*** @The Tradition​