Thursday, September 26, 2024

Government Is The Problem. As Usual.

 h/t CW



















Reference please the above pic from CW's daily timewaster site.

Yes, we're sure it's an idyllic place, with gorgeous views, and tucked right in amidst Nature on all sides. Which is rather exactly the problem with it. If we were to name such a homestead, on the order of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater, we would name this architectural act of insanity contrary to all common sense Kindling. Calling it Kingsford might be a wee bit too on-the-nose.

My absolutely curmudgeonly response:

"In a canyon, with a wood shake roof. And dead leaves all over it. Might as well just stack full gas cans against the outside walls. And violating just about every other survivability measure in a wildfire zone.

And some fall, the tearful owner will be "Shocked! Shocked, I say..." that's it's about to become a monument to human stupidity during a major brushfire.

This is why some areas should be declared unbuildable, all fire protection withdrawn completely, home insurance legally denied in perpetuity with the full backing of the state, and the entire area redlined from ever receiving a penny of federal disaster relief.

If you can absorb the cost to rebuild it every ten or twenty years out of your own pocket when it inevitably burns to the ground, ROWYBS.

Otherwise, once it burns down and the owner can't eat the cost to put it back, rebuilding permits are denied forever, and it reverts to permanent wild habitat by eminent domain, and the owner given $1/acre.

Now show some rich stupid jackhole's house perched over the waves and built beyond the mean high tide line that gets surf-pummeled by storms every generation or so."


And then, inevitably, Anonymous Yahoo (funny how they're almost always Anonymous, i'n'it?) pipes up:

"But also we are totally opposed to government intervention in people's private lives! Do we know that this property is in a location where brushfires are common? Seems like you want to confiscate these people's property based on a picture. But again, small government and "don't tread on me" or something"

 

To which load of halt-witted codswallop we reply:

"1) "Totally opposed"? No. Never said any such thing. You conflate "minimal" with "anarchy" at risk to your own argument, with a heaping helping of reductio ad absurdum. Best wishes with that approach.

2) Those are oak trees, growing in a canyon. Brushfire city. Period.

3) I don't want the property confiscated until Reality makes it obvious it never should have been built upon to begin with.

It was jackassical government greed that let some mid-century idiot build there in the first place, to maximize the county's taxable property value. Which then requires more brush crews to save it, and more roads to maintain to get to it.And then more disaster funds when it repeatedly gets burned up.

Government created this problem.

Smaller government would start by ripping out the paved road that gets there, closing the nearest fire stations, condemning the land, and turning it into permanent natural habitat. But that breaks five or ten government rice bowls, and gets entitled idiots all riled up. 
I've only seen this about 5M times in my lifetime in this state.

If some idiot wants to build his own private road, or make do by getting supplies in and out by pack mule, and carries the liability for such an idiotic house out of his own pocket, that should be the only way that place gets built.

Dollars to donuts the owner also gets all bent up when coyotes eat his pets, and mountain lions start eyeing his kids, and screams to Uncle Government to "do something". Then pisses and moans when the local fire department tells him that with trees and brush 20' from the house, they've already written it off when a fire breaks out. And he's likely the first in line at the trough when they declare a "disaster" (as opposed to "natural causes x human stupidity", which is also the plot recipe for every episode of Rescue 9-1-1, USCG: Cape Disappointment, and 57 other reality-based shows) once his house is a charred chimney surrounded by ashes.

It was big government that started such nonsense, A to Z, in the first place. Like people along the Mississippi found out a few years back, some places shouldn't have houses on them, ever, unless there's an annual stupidity tax on the property equal to 100% of its assessed value.

If government withdraws all services to such parcels save tax assessments, and cancels utility easements, which currently start a goodly number of brushfires up there in competition with lightning (you could look it up) the problem self-corrects within years, if not months, with no further effort nor public expenditure.

That's minimal government.

Your ball.

For a vivid exemplar of this sort of stupidity right now, google "Rancho Palos Verdes landslide zone", and read up about the latest batch of entitled idiots with more money than common sense, currently pissing, moaning, and harrumphing that gravity has annoyingly reasserted itself in their multi-million-dollar cliffside neighborhood, and demanding that government somehow stop it, and/or recompense them from public funds for their idiotic residential choices.

Boo frickin' hoo."

QED, podex.

Doubtless we'll be seeing further examples from FL and the Gulf Coast in a day or three as well, crying about "How dare Nature impinge upon our desire to build substandard houses in stupid places! Government should pay us for being that dumb!" in 3, 2...

We apologize to CW for buggering up his site with the second entry, or having to. Should he choose to zap all of the above back and forth into oblivion, we wouldn't blame him. His house, his choices. Which is why we moved it here, in case he does exactly that.

The annoyance at idiots who build such houses where they don't belong, purely out of presumption on the public's funds and good wishes, deserves calling out, which is why we have done so.

Ditto the air-headed thoughtlessness of Anonymous Yahoo's asinine riposte. But the lack of critical thinking which underpins such opinions bespeaks that the left end of the IQ bell curve continues to be over-represented both in real life, and on the internet. As always.

As my father pointed out more than once, "You could get rid of all the horses in the world, but you'd still never run out of horses' asses."


UPDATE: And here's the latest edition of The Stupid People's Gravy Train

22 comments:

  1. There's a spot less than 5 miles from where I'm sitting, where the hills & hollers form a natural wind channel. There are several singlewides sitting there.
    About every 10 to 12 years, hard straight-line winds come blasting through there & knock out 2 or 4 trailers. As soon as they're cleaned up, guess what? New singlewides are moved in.
    I feel the same way about them as I do the idiots who rebuild in flood-prone areas.
    --Tennessee Budd

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  2. Amen and Amen!

    Why is .FED still bailing out Nawlins year after year after year when hurricanes wipe out houses LOWER THAN SEA LEVEL?!?

    That craphole should be the national landfill until it is 20 feet taller than sea level. THEN somebody can rebuild it.

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  3. "God hates trailer parks." - Dr. Johnny Fever, WKRP In Cincinatti

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    1. Now do Wrightwood California. Look at the CalFire map of the Bridge Fire, and see how the town of Wrightwood . was once again spared. Wrightwood does not have defensible space anywhere, trees butt right up against houses. After all, what's the point of living in the mountains and forests if you have to cut them down to create a defensible space? CalFire will never let Wrightwood burn down, We the People pay for CalFire, and the Wrightwood residents thank us for keeping their properties intact and affordable. The same for BigBear, Idlewild, and Lake Arrowhead.

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    2. HA HA! Classic. Fundamental truth quote!

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  4. I live in a wildfire area and the sane/not stupid people have cleared flammables away from the house. I've seen lots totally overgrown, with a house smack in the middle. They don't do well in fires. And half of them don't have fire insurance, with the owners thinking taxpayers owe them a replacement. Nope. BFYTW.

    Then there are towns that think overgrown trees add "natural character" to the place. Ask the people who used to live in Paradise, CA about how well that works. Lots of empty lots to show the results of the "no trees shall be removed" ordinances and rulings. Lots of other cities and towns like that. They don't learn.

    RCPete

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    Replies
    1. Same thing in Maui. After the last big fire, the top recommendation was to clear brush - the city not ignored it, they made the process to remove brush harder
      Jonathan

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  5. I was hoping a conservative would win the WH and have the EPA intervene. I can see the report now. "Recklessly and repeatedly allow dangerous environmental destruction and carbon release without any effort at remediation." Some mention of billions of tons of carbon released yearly with an increasing trend. Fine of $100 billion. Per occurrence.

    I think both ideas have the same odds of success.

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  6. Let them build. Just no disaster relief or any other government service that helps them live there. Other than that, leave them be. Their choice, their consequences or education depending on your perspective.

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  7. Fred in Texas, Get government out of the equation and it'll get swarmed with people who love peace and quiet. Declare it unbuildable, remove ALL government services AND the tax assessments and you will have created the most desirable property in the world. I would gladly start over somewhere with NO government intervention or harassment.

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    Replies
    1. I'd gladly be YOUR neighbor. You get it.

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    2. They also need to remove all permitting and zoning requirements, which existnin most places that lack government services...
      Jonathan

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  8. Funny how background and perspective change things. I spent most of my life in the rainy Midwest, and I didn't look closely at the plants to identify location. Brushfires were never a thing. It looks like an idyllic setting in nature to get away from it all to me. Kind of like a more wooded version of the farm I grew up on.

    So I lacked your visceral reaction, and was wistful instead.

    I gather it must be in California. May as well be in Timbuktu from my perspective.

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  9. I second this nomination! Having lived in some of those "idyllic" spots, I can speak from experience. Looks all peaceful-until you realize that you, your kin, and your pets are on the feeding list. No fencing means dogs, God love them, go "hunting" straight into the canyon. So YOU are now searching, calling, and terrified that FluffBunny has been dispatched to the Great Unknown. When you find FluffBunny full of stickers, weeds, dirt, and likely cut, the trip to the vet will enhance your credit limit. Mountain lions, bears, and rattlesnakes all love water and coolness too so meet your new neighbors. In fact rattlesnakes love heat too as Folsom has more GD rattlesnakes per square inch than Arizona. Known fact. The suburbs is no known deterrent to snakes (human or slithering) or other creatures that took the Ark journey. Factor in earthquakes and fires (since all weeds and brush are sacred in Kommiefornia), migrants, homeless, and run-of-the-mill burglars and you are now on speed dial with local law enforcement and fire department. Some people get all famous and then build the mega-mansion in such idyllic places and then expect us peons to pay for it. EVERY year!

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  10. Spot on...about time people dealt with the consequences of their own decisions. It can be done, and done well...but people think they can fit a square peg into a smaller round hole by pounding away at it with their cash sledgehammer. Fine, just don't make me pay for it.

    Had to change homeowners (et al. bundled) insurance providers after 20+ years when I got the new bill (American Family), a 50% increase. Spoke with them (loosely that is, was pretty peeved the more I heard). Come to find out they were "working" (aka. colluding) with the state insurance commissioner to spread their liability to everyone in the state due to the large Marshall fire in Boulder county that started in some guys shed (in December no less) then proceeded to burn adjoining neighborhoods to the ground (ie. dense builder's grade PUD's to maximize tax revenues). Told her their loss was not my responsibility. The agent was unapologetic. Everything is a scam foisted onto the unsuspecting public (like property taxes...total theft as they believe we rent from them. Just don;t pay it and see what happens to the property you bought and maintain).

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  11. here in NH, people build mansions right as close to the beach and they can. they also get government-subsidized flood insurance that pretty much covers rebuilding the entire place.

    every 5 years or so there is a big enough storm to wipe out a good portion of those mansions. and the taxpayers fund the reconstruction, right in the same place and with no considerations towards making them less vulnerable to being demolished he next time around.

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  12. It’s a religious cult.

    These people build expensive structures which are then consumed as sacrifices to the Fire Gods.

    Only way I can understand it.

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  13. And I would add the idjits that go back time and time again on the Mississippi after the floods because 'muy famli been dere a hunnert years'...

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  14. Government's only a problem if you're dumb and cowardly enough to respect their imaginary authority. Just sayin'.

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  15. https://wildfiretoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/map-fire-freq.jpg

    Historic frequency of wild-fires. Unless it is desert, alpine or temperate rainforest...California is flammable. Especially chaparral.

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  16. Exactly as I said.

    I'd be fine with redlining certain areas, and making them permit-free, tax-free, and government services-free, as long as they were also disaster relief-free.
    YOYO, forever. Then, the smart people would build houses that wouldn't burn down, and the stupid people would last one fire, and be gone forever.

    But that won't happen.
    Some crybabies would piss and moan that it "wasn't fair".

    So fuck those idiots, and make those areas structure-free instead. Government and whiny crybabies are why we can't have nice things.

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  17. As I sit here drinking a beer, oaks all around the house reducing my electric bill and me with a rather unusual HO policy -- I am only covered for tornados, by my design. I live in the bottom end of tornado alley, north TX. But alas I don't have the hot tup like in the picture.

    Foolish? Well the homestead has a metal roof. All the leaf drop goes into the gardens. I have a stone fire break around the exterior of the home. Short of the AC units I can fix anything in the house as I have already rebuilt and refinished the whole dwelling once before. I figure my only other outstanding risk is nuclear war in which case I have bigger issues and most likely won't be aorund to worry about it, Carswell AFB is only 10 mi away.

    Real foolishness is flood insurance for waterfront property. There was a reason all those old fishermen I knew in Fla put up tar paper shacks on pilings in the intercoastal -- no loss if it was blown away in a CAT 5 monster.

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