A Political Firestorm: How partisanship of the Palisades fires hinders the public’s evaluation of governmental responsibility.

The difference in ideologies between political parties have become increasingly extreme and divisive. There are too many issues that seem to have no common ground which is increasingly pushing the left further left and the right further right. The Palisades fires this week are a perfect example of how a national tragedy is being over politicized by the media and dividing party lines further from understanding the real issues at hand. This week, posts, and newsrooms across the media landscape highlighted things such as wasted local budgets, climate change agendas and DEI politics. Each post has a clear incentive driven by their affiliated political party which then becomes a game of win and lose. When in reality, tragedies such as fires are a lose-lose with billions of dollars of damage in lost homes, businesses, family members. Each issue is rooted in being “right” about a niche political issue rather than focusing on what this week’s wildfires actually unveil about our government.

LAFD and the Palisades Fire

These are two article headlines if you google LAFD budget cut:

“Los Angeles cut 17.5M from fire department budget months before deadly fires”

“Factcheck: Was the LAFD budget cut? No, it actually increased. Here’s how.”

How is anyone supposed to understand what’s happening when they can click on their team right away. This is a detriment to news reporting and political growth. It does not matter whether the budget was lowered 17.5 million or raised 23 million but put into another fund due to unpaid MOU’s. The budget is over 800 million dollars funded by taxpayer dollars locally and federally. What should be highlighted is where the 800-million-dollar budget is going. After having to scroll through 2 pages of conflicting information, you can find the LA city fire department’s budget for 2023-2024.

If you look through the whole budget there are line items and it’s clear that 17.5 million dollars is not going to move the needle, especially when there isn’t any water to pump. Some key large items spent in the budget:

Fleet Operations $35.5 million: For new vehicles and vehicle upgrades
Breathing Apparatus replacement $10 million
Wildland Fuel Management Crew $2.1 million
Emergency Appointment Paramedic training $1.3 million
Equity and Inclusion Staff Resources: $1.1 million

From these key items it does not strike me as an extra 17.5 million would add value. A couple more vehicles to fight a fire that was uncontained after day 2. Seems useless. More staff less DEI? While I disagree with DEI being in a budget and believe it is abused on a large scale, this department states 8 DEI hires are budgeted while the Wildland Fuel Management Unit had budget for 29 hires. Unless the 8 hires are grossly incompetent again it won’t move the needle and is a useless argument on this front.

The issue is not the budget and spending there was plenty of money to staff a fire department and politicizing these issues on this small of a scale is highlighting noise rather than the signal.

Climate change burned the city down?

Okay, so we can’t blame the local fire department, what’s next. Climate change for the lefties and the democratic leadership for the righties. So, who’s right. Nobody. There’s no winner when a natural disaster is blamed strictly on one thing. For example, the common liberal post or story: “Climate change is the reason for the fires severity and without strict climate change policies we are doomed. Now with Trump in charge this is the new normal.”

Let’s break that down starting with climate change and California. I will acknowledge rising temperatures and the increased risk for wildfire severity. However, California has had wildfires for thousands of years and people chose to live there because of its natural beauty and climate. Do we not consider at all the reality that the conditions may pose a threat again and act upon it. Humans are so successful because we use our environment to shape it to the way we live. The Native Americans even knew the importance of controlled burns and it’s clear there was significant understory and deadfall in the Palisades area. So, why is there an attack on the right for disregarding climate change (which I think most even acknowledge) when the situation could be questioned at a more granular, actionable level. It’s because the “you are wrong, and I am right” mentality is too prevalent with media. Whether its FOX and CNN panels debating or X posts. The goal is to pick the facts that support me the most and spew them out and get an argument conflated with several ideologies at once. Climate change is not the cause of the fire. We know fires start in arid climates and this portion of California fits the criteria. So let me posit, if this fire has burned 20,000 acres this week, but without climate change and the same conditions would have burned 50% less, say 10,000 acres, it is still a national tragedy. Herein lies my point of conflation, now we have to go down a rabbit hole of cherry-picked points in regard to the specific effects of climate change such as global fossil fuels emissions, climate history, the need for green energy or whether green energy is sustainable, and other countries emission levels. The argument distracts from the reality of the situation and politicizes it. Is it of poor taste to state: I agree there is climate change, and we can argue on the severity and how to solve the issue but that is not a narrative relative to an active fire and the climate conservatism of Donald Trump. It is simply for clicks and views and divisiveness.

On the other hand, conservative media is focusing on Gavin Newsom. Conservatives are not focusing on the actual governance of Gavin Newsom they are attacking him and its too divisive for change. Trump calling Gavin Newsom “Gavin Newscum” is polarizing and immediately discredits his statements from liberal counterparts and constituents as the incoming president.

Newsom responding with the classic liberal emotionalism doesn’t help either. Newsom responded in dramatic fashion with fire blazing behind him and choking up tears stating, “people are literally fleeing, people lost their lives… and this guy wanted to politicize it”. I mean this is movie scene stuff really, why is Anderson Cooper interviewing him in a fire suit and Newsom in a ball cap. It is absolutely ridiculous behavior from both sides because they fail to even address the actual question. “Newscum” doesn’t let the liberals hear out Trump’s reasoning behind the statements. Which is the fact that there was little preparation and therefore little action the fire department could do with the conditions at hand. And Newsom gets bailed out by crying about families on CNN.

The political warfare is a detriment to what is actually going on in California. The budget change of 17.5 million is nothing compared to 800 million, climate change is not the sole factor or even a factor that should be on political news headlines. What needs to be done is an examination of policies and practices that lead to this point.

What do the fires help us understand?

I hypothesize that this fire and other catastrophes bring light to government action that otherwise wouldn’t be necessary because everything is “working as normal”. The everyday citizen is not going to question government spend when they have the responsibilities of their own life. Hurricanes, wildfires, even terrorism bring light to issues otherwise ignored by the public. It is necessary to not overlook this moment and reflect on the situation.

So, I concluded that the budget total of $800 million for the LAFD is a moot point on either side of the coin. That doesn’t mean we should disregard it. The local budget being the problem is a noisy conclusion to a signal of the reasons why the fire couldn’t be contained more effectively. The LAFD is a government funded entity funded by taxpayer dollars. Whether it be direct or indirect (grants etc), it is government controlled and funded.

Modern government tends to be quite large and fractionalized making even this blog quite difficult to finish up. With a few hours of scrolling through the 2024-2025 enacted budget of California, I cannot quite grasp the budget on a granular level. What I can conclude, however, is the complexity of the budget clearly represents the fractionization of government. It is almost impossible to discern what a line item on the budget is actually used for without hours of research. This clearly exhibits that the government is inefficient at completing its task at a level that is increasingly concerning for its citizens. For example, the budget for California’s Department of Forestry and Fire Protection is $4.1 billion. Within this department there are 12,511 positions. The administrative portion of this department spends an average of $200,000 per person. On top of that there is a board which on average spends $363,000 per person. In total, these two auxiliary departments within a department spend $4 million and $200 million annually. A little over 5% of the budget. This 5% is less than what other states spend in total on fires, before federal aid. For example, other wildfire prone states such as Texas spends around $200 million in total for wildfire prevention and suppression while Colorado spends $20-30 million which is usually for forest management while suppression funds come from the federal government. California may have more wildfires but even proportionally this doesn’t make sense. Arming the state with more people and therefore expertise seems great on paper, but what are the admin and board workers doing to mitigate fire damage. It is clear there is diminishing returns on the amount of people hired in the department. What are 50 fire experts going to do better than 25? What are 900 admin individuals going to do better than 500? The administrative program says it provides services through executive offices, accounting, budgeting, legal, HR and information technology. For one department, they need 900 individuals to do all that. In my experience, I worked in an international HQ for a private business that did $5 billion in revenue. There were around 700-800 full time employees in the HQ with the rest spread across the globe adding up to around 12,000. How does one department have more employees than a top 100 private business (12,500) and on admin (964.7)? And on what I assume must be less work since it is taxpayer revenue. There is no sales team, there is no marketing team, the revenue comes in from taxes. Why are there 900 people doing admin work? Even the line item below ousts the state. The admin department includes legal services in the description and the line item below admin is another $6 million dollars that go to legal services from the DOJ.

It is a microcosm of what is happening in every branch of most state governments. There is a misuse of taxpayer dollars that spreads throughout millions of employees throughout the United States. The government abuses taxes and still needs more every year. People are taxed on state and federal level through their income as well as being taxed for a variety of goods and services such as gasoline, firearms, sales tax, and car registrations. The average citizen is punished for things like the 10 board members and 900 admin employees in the Department of Forestry. Nothing is certain but death and taxes right Benny? It rings truer than ever when a natural disaster destroys billions of dollars of property and business with no answers to be found from the people in charge or the media. Gavin Newsome and Trump having a surface level political war while the Mayor of LA is left speechless when she returned from Ghana. The mayor doesn’t know what’s going on and Newsom is calling for reservoir investigations. Shouldn’t this be a preemptive thing, it is in fact wildfire season coupled with strong Santa Ana winds.

It is a simple answer for me, the knowledge is out there, people study forestry, people study engineering of dams, and reservoirs, why is there not a concrete answer to the response in the media? We can chalk it up to climate change and a natural disaster’s wrath, however this is a disservice to those who lost their livelihoods.

To wrap up, let me finish with this, are people going to refrain from moving back to one of the most coveted places in the US in Malibu? Are taxpayer dollars going to rebuild this wealthy neighborhood? Are there other places in California with similar risk to wildfire damage? If yes, then we cannot sweep this one under the rug and say, “ah it just happens now, you chose to live there”. The government knows the risk and is using taxpayer dollars to fund thousands of programs and employees. If it just happens then are these people employed to do anything at all. $4 billion dollars for fire prevention. If we can’t do anything then why not just cut it all? The answer is not to cut it but rather understand the government of California is running inefficiently due to its fractional nature and ability to be bailed out through taxes on top of taxes. We must use disasters as reflection moments and be able to reform for the future.