California Wildfires Explained 27 Years Ago, Democracy, and ‘Abiding’
The Free Press (www.tfp.com) included the following revealing item on Monday, Jan. 13.
‘There’s a common misconception that beneath the asphalt, Los Angeles is a desert. It isn’t. It’s grassland. And part of the natural cycle of the grassland ecosystem is fire. Twenty-seven years ago, Mike Davis wrote 'Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and the Imagination of Disaster.' One of its chapters is titled ‘The Case for Letting Malibu Burn.’
In it, he argued that the area between the beach and the Santa Monica Mountains simply never should have been developed. No matter what measures we take to prevent it, those hills are going to burn, and the houses we erect upon them are only so much kindling...’
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| Pacific Palisades burning as 'kindling,' as predicted by Mike Davis in his book. Windborne embers continue to spread the wildfires there as you read this. Historically, this is nothing new to the area as documented by its earlier Native American and Spanish populations. Only Americans, believing that money conquers everything, seem to have been blind to it. |
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The idea of leveraging Federal aid to California in battling its wildfire crisis by pressuring States to adopt conservative, right-wing, political positions, voiced by some Congressional Republicans, is repulsive, disgusting, and un-American. It is the result of the 2024 elections which revealed the extent of our democracy’s Achilles heel. Jeffersonian democracy suggested a level of education and intelligence that too many American voters lack. November, 2024 confirmed that.
Those who believe that our representative democracy is a ‘work in progress’ must recognize that such ‘work’ can be both overly constructive and overly destructive. Historically, it seems to bounce back and forth between the two, with those 'temporarily' in charge demeaning their opposition.
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And if one is unhappy with the results of the 2024 elections, as many are, they can still ‘abide,’ bearing those election results patiently and enduring them without yielding, which is the secular meaning of the word 'abide' included in dictionary definitions of it …
Or they can turn to the common religious use of the word, finding solace in belief in a God despite circumstances, as did blind poet John Milton when he concluded that ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’ in his Sonnet 19:
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,
And that one Talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest he returning chide;
“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”
I fondly ask.
But patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies,
“God doth not need
Either man’s work or his own gifts;
who best
Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best.
His state
Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed
And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:
They also serve who only stand and wait.”
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Either way, Abide!
JL
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Ten Best Movies of 2024
(USA Today critic's listing from Palm Beach Post of January 5 - in ascending order) *
10. The Piano Lesson
9. The Substance
8. A Different Man
7. Inside Out 2
6. Civil War
5. Dune: Part 2
4. A Complete Unknown
3. Sing Sing
2. Conclave
1. The Brutalist
* This section of the paper also ranked 2024's ten best books, TV shows, Broadway shows, Songs, and Concerts, according to their critics. (I have a copy if you are curious.)
JL
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Continuing The Use of Fossil Fuels – Good or Bad?
Most of us know that climate change is at least part of the source of some of the environmental (and possibly economic) problems we Earthlings face, and the use of fossil fuels contributes to them. That’s why electrically powered vehicles (EV), even though their manufacture also ultimately draws upon power enabled by fossil fuels, has been touted as one solution to the problem.
They have a limitless future. Fossil fuels do not and eventually will be exhausted.
Elon Musk’s Tesla automobile is one such EV, and there are others. In fact, the United States government has offered financial incentives to those who purchase an EV rather than one using gasoline. That is the supposed ‘mandate’ mentioned in the advertisement reproduced below.
President Trump is an enemy of EVs, despite his strange relationship with Musk.
Here is a full-page advertisement which has been appearing in newspapers nationwide which makes that very clear.
If the very bottom lines of the ad did not appear clearly in this posting, AFPM (which paid for these advertisements thanking Trump for his position) stands for ‘American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers’ and their website is www.dontbanourcars.com.
While continuing the use of fossil fuels is in the interest of those who paid for this ad, and possibly gained some votes for the President, their continued use has been recognized by scientists as part of the climatological problem that jeopardizes the planet’s survival.
If Trump’s enthusiastic ‘Drill, Baby, Drill,’ exclamation is to be carried out, the first offshore wells should be in the Atlantic Ocean, just east of Mar-a-Lago, as suggested by columnist Frank Cerabino. But let's first see if he actually ends the 'mandate' on his Day 1 or was that just campaign malarky. Doing so would antagonize Elon, who is far wealthier than Trump.
JL
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Some Thoughts on Insurance
A problem for the insurance industry is a problem for all of us. Thinking that insurance will cover the damage done by the California wildfires is like living in a ‘fool’s paradise.’
We must recognize that the unbelievable, warlike, damage wildfires are presently causing in California as well as the massive damage, if not destruction, to properties in Florida and North Carolina caused by 2024’s storms, specifically Milton and Helene, are not just the problems of those immediately affected. They are ours as well, State borders notwithstanding.
In such situations, many look to the insurance companies from which they have purchased protection for relief. So let’s look at those companies. Bear in mind that many of them have subsidiaries in the States where they operate, limiting their risk exposure to those states only, but in the final analysis, their ‘parent companies’ are also affected, particularly in the area of ‘reinsurance,’ to which we’ll get shortly.
Besides providing protection to individuals and businesses in the event of a loss, insurance companies exist to provide a predictable source of funding for the investments they make and from which they profit. By selling insurance, they acquire the money they are holding from premium payments to ultimately use to pay claims.
But in the meantime, in the financial world, they use this money they hold as a source of lending within regulated limits, along with banks, to businesses and local governments. They employ skilled mathematicians, called actuaries, to make sure this structure works.
Insurance companies must be able to accurately predict how much money they will need on hand to pay out to policyholders who submit claims. That’s pretty easy in the case of life insurance which can be paid out when there is a death, or a policy is cashed in. Health insurance premiums can be similarly structured but not with the near certainty that life insurance premiums can be. In short, mortality (frequency of deaths) and morbidity (frequency of sicknesses) usually can be measured and serve as a basis for premiums.
The real trick is for an insurer to price the coverage it sells so that it works when most of its policyholders do not submit major claims, where the premiums paid by the many go to pay the claims of the very few.
Unlike life and health insurance, that is the case with homeowners’ insurance and to a lesser extent with automobile insurance.
Most purchasers of such insurance protection never anticipate submitting a major claim and never do. For every major fire in a house or an automobile ‘totaled’ or stolen, thousands of others who also have paid premiums for protection never have such a claim to submit. Submitting claims to insurance companies are usually ‘singular’ events, and that is that frequency on which companies base their pricing.
The occurrence, however, of massive disasters such as those caused by hurricanes and wildfires, where entire communities are ravaged, produces an unpredictable situation involving thousands of claims.
Insurance companies, even the giant ones, purchase reinsurance beforehand, available through both domestic and foreign marketplaces, to enable them to cope with such situations when the claims submitted to them stretch beyond their own considerable resources. Even these reinsurance companies have ‘treaties’ among themselves where they agree to share the support of one another, especially when such unpredictable disasters occur.
But legitimate claims caused by massive and usually unpredictable disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes, or rising seas, can even extend beyond the capabilities of the reinsurance marketplace, for both ‘parent’ companies and their ‘subsidiaries’ in States where they do business. Chickens do come home to roost.
I suspect that is where we are heading today. It may be something beyond the capacity of the private sector to solve, even with reinsurance.
This can mean that only government intervention can meet this challenge. There already are many State laws where the inability of an insurer to pay its claims is remedied by ‘guarantee corporations’ financed by increases in the premiums paid by the policyholders of the other insurers operating in that State. Yet untapped, however, are taxes to be paid by all, even those without insurance, for this purpose. This also would seriously diminish the financial role of insurance companies as a major source of lending to businesses and local governments through its investment of the premium dollars they hold.
Try to keep some of this in mind when you next pay the premiums due for your life, health, homeowners, renters, or automobile insurance. This problem for the insurance industry is a problem for all of us.
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(Of course, insurance cannot solve the enormous ongoing personal problems events such as those the California wildfires have caused or magnified in the areas of employment, education, housing, infrastructure, those that have died, existing medical problems, social and community 'fabric,' finances, etc. Even if every insurance claim were paid, these problems would still exist for those recovering among the ashes. This is an enormous problem with which the entire nation must live.)
JL
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Sports Section
Those who watch Baltimore Oriole baseball games in person or on TV know that the Orioles are sometimes simply referred to as the ‘O’s. In fact, when the fans in the ballpark there rise to sing the National Anthem before each game, they always scream out the first word of its final stanza thusly: ‘OHHHHHH, Say does that star spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.’
Apparently, Baltimore Raven football fans can’t break that habit and do the same thing when the National Anthem is sung before National Football League games played there, even though there is no ‘O’ in Ravens.
For those interested, I predict the Ravens will win the Super Bowl in a few weeks, led by Boynton Beach High School graduate, Lamar Jackson.
JL
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Again, I urge you to forward this posting to anyone you think might benefit from reading it.
JL
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