I’m very sorry about the tragedy in Pacific Palisades and elsewhere in the county due to the fires. It must be traumatic and extremely difficult.
I am a frequent listener thanks to the interesting topics, the wit, and alignment with you on various topics.
This episode was a disappointment. You introduced Rick Caruso, and asked him about his background. During the intro, neither you nor Rick state that he ran for mayor in 2022, and that he lost. Not to rub it in, but it provides essential context for what follows. But, a bit later you say that you wish that Caruso was the mayor. Huh? Then at the end of the interview, while encouraging he run for something, you noted he ran for mayor of LA.
Caruso lost to Karen Bass by ten percentage points. Rick does a lot of complaining about how the Democratic machine came out to support Bass (Obama, Harris, Biden). Caruso out-spent the Bass campaign by about factor of ten, spending over $100 million. Might this be part of “Why not let the system work,” as Rick says? If could do an autopsy of the election, how much of Caruso’s 44% support among voters is derived from his outsized get-out-the-vote spending? How many of the Caruso voters did so because his paid door-to-door staff falsely told them that Bass was a Scientologist? We’ll never know. But sweeping this part of the story under the rug was a disappointment. By the way, I agree that the Democratic Party and the state of politics in CA gives us lots to complain about, and you’ve discussed specifics in other episodes.
Regarding the “first mover syndrome” (who decides to build first in the moonscape): Surprisingly, what isn’t mentioned at all as a precedent is the 1991 East Bay Hills fire in Berkeley and Oakland which destroyed over 3000 homes and killed 25. Not as much as the Palisades, but on a relevant scale. How could this not be a point of comparison in this interview? Doesn’t Caruso know about it? The area is rebuilt, just a few miles from my home. Lots to learn from it, due to errors before and after the fire. Surprised that Caruso had not heard of Purple Air. Meanwhile he is presented as knowledgeable on hazardous waste mitigation and pollution? You castigate other interviewers for platforming people without doing some homework and for softball questioning. So, this one is a bummer.
You urged Caruso to comment on his proposal to give away more wealth. Caruso’s net worth is north of $5B. I like your philanthropy ideas and find them personally provocative in a helpful way. But note Caruso’s hemming and hawing about how hard it is to give away wealth, about how it is made doubly difficult when the wealth is tied up in real estate. Should we consider his $100M spending on his campaign for mayor in 2022 a charitable contribution?
Sigh.
I’m very sorry for the suffering in LA caused by the fires.
Thank you for this reply. I, too, felt a lack of pushback in this interview although I do understand that this is a really hard time for Sam and what he and his family are going through. One of my first memories of the first day of the fire (after the night of terrifying winds) was hearing a morning interview with Caruso on a local LA tv station frankly politicizing the fire. It really was such bad and off-putting timing as we watched our neighbors living to the north of us losing their homes in an inferno while first responders where battling with all their dedication and bravery to help. Caruso came off as an opportunist and not someone seeking to help. I also thought it a terrible interview for the station to air at that time but these are the times we live in.
Native Northern Californian here that has voted Democratic all my adult life. I found the interview interesting. I felt his run for mayor that he lost to Bass was on display and transparent in the interview. That he over-spent significantly as compared to the Bass campaign (your point) and still lost under the fire-power provided by the Democratic party as highlighted, takes nothing away from his stated concern that CA has been controlled almost exclusively by the Democratic party for a long time (since the 70s) and it's not fairing well. They discussed a similar historic fire to the current debacle that happened in the same LA area which makes perfect sense. Besides, since 2015, Northern CA has had some of the worst community wild fires in various populated areas including the Tubb's Fire which was sparked by PG&E lines that were not maintained, the Paradise fire where the loss of life was the highest recorded in these incidents and was started by PG&E power lines that were downed due to high winds, the Valley Fire, and the Glass Fire of 2020 where my own neighborhood in Napa burned to the ground, cause undetermined. There are so many more recent fires to choose from, it's hard to understand why one would take issue that the 1991 East Bay fire was not specifically mentioned as a point of reference. A huge part of the interview was highlighting what could in fact be done to mitigate these disasters! Underground these lines! Defensible space! Wild land pruning! Fire resistant building materials! Sophisticated water delivery! Proper staffing and prep by agencies! This takes strong leadership! That is the kind of discussion and action that is needed and has been needed for decades! We all suffer when there is a lack of proper leadership in these mission critical areas, regardless of our politics. We need more of this!
I’m with you up until wild land pruning. Tell us how would this work who would pay for the initial work and more importantly maintenance in perpetuity? And good luck getting authorized by CDFW to cut a single hectare.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I like that these things are being discussed. My neighborhood in Napa burned to the ground in the Glass Fire in 2020. The next year, they began doing controlled burns in strategic mountainous areas above us and around at-risk perimeter areas, taking out years of dense overgrowth that would offer immense fuel the next fire. They take dozers and cut huge swaths for fire breaks in the midst of these disasters to save homes. Seems they can find a way to do this during and after disaster hits and I'm hoping they can do some of this in a preventative way, too.
Were the control burn areas forest with trees or chaparral vegetation? The burn very differently because chaparral is extremely dense and summer deciduous. I remember those fires as my mother in law was living up there too.
Sam- you mention all the schadenfreude and distrust of the uber wealthy in this podcast… I fear class animosity is going to accelerate significantly as the Trump White House continues to cater to Elon and the billionaire tech bros in favor of the working class and his MAGA base. This thing is only getting started…
Sam this is a spectacular failure of an episode. this episode completely lacks intellectual honesty, this is easily the most disappointing thing you've ever put out. good god i'm embarrassed.
Every time I hear “DEI” used today, it functions as a slur against anyone in any position who’s not a straight white man; as if women and minorities couldn’t possibly be qualified for any important job. When something goes wrong on a straight white man’s watch, can we accuse him of being a Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion (UIE) hire?
Good one. It was the straight white males in the gas company who installed two very large natural gas mains in the bottom of a canyon near Brentwood. Go check the situation there and you’ll be gobsmacked by the poor decision which today’s public sector staff are now grappling with. Ps everyone should be thanking lucky stars those pipes didn’t explode in the fire.
When asked about insuring the rebuild of the Palisades, Caruso, a self-styled free markets guy, said that "state or federally subsidized insurance" would be required.
Sam seemed to agree, saying "yes, there seems to be some kind of market failure [with current insurance]."
NO.
The market in private fire insurance is working EXACTLY as it should, making it expensive to live in risky, fire-prone areas.
If we care about climate change and disaster mitigation, the best thing we can do is simply let home insurance markets work. California hasn't allowed that since Prop 103.
A subsidized program is a tax-funded program. I don't want to subsidize sprawl into burn zones. If people still want to move there, that's fine—they can pay for it themselves.
I listened to most of it, and found some of it interesting, but was frustrated and disappointed with several parts of the interview.
1. Santa Ynez Reservoir. The general narrative surrounding the reservoir is that some idiot took the reservoir out of service during fire season, so instead of having 117 million gallons to fight the fire, they only had 3 one million gallon tanks, and the hydrants went dry. The public at large has accepted this, and I suspect it will remain the prevailing belief for as long as people remember these fires. While, I'm not an expert, and I really wish someone would post a hydraulic diagram of the system, I'm very confident that this narrative is substantially false. I was genuinely surprised that you seemed not to have looked into any of this at all and just let Mr. Caruso lean into this common criticism.
2. Political appointee Janisse Quinones. Mr. Caruso implies that she's unqualified and a political appointee, and he says she's made many mistakes without elaborating. I can only presume he's referring to the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which had been out of service since before she was hired and was mandated to be drained by the State Water Board. Maybe she is underqualified and clueless. With his experience on the Board of Commissioners, Mr. Caruso would have been in a unique position to offer some insight on why that is so. It's pretty easy to look her up and check her Linkedin. It seems like she has not been particularly active in politics and has loads of experience in senior engineering and executive positions at major utilities. While it may be reasonable to assume that she's a "DEI hire" in that it being a Latina woman comfortable talking about equity very likely helped her get the job, it also seems very reasonable that being a Latina woman played a significant part in Mr. Caruso asserting that she was an unqualified political hire without feeling the need to back up his claim.
3. The underfunded fire department. This is a really interesting topic that's begging for more context and real insight and I'm disappointed that we didn't get more. The fire department budget was cut almost 2% last year. How unusual is that? Do they always get what they ask for? I've read some reports that Bass was still in the process of negotiating raises when she passed the reduced budget, then finished the negotiation and paid for it with a separate part of the budget, so in effect the budget was not reduced. Is that accurate or is that misleading? What about the decision not to keep the whole force on standby and preemptively deploy to high risk locations? Is this a funding failure or a failure to leverage the resources they did have? With Mr. Caruso's unique history as a LA city insider, I was hoping for more than a blanket claim that he would have fully funded the department and a regurgitation of previously published criticisms.
4. Crime under Parks, Bratton, and Garcetti. His claims don't line up all that well with available data on the history of murder and violent crime in LA. I'm not saying they're outright lies, but it seems like his narrative is self serving, only partially true, and demands more scrutiny. His claim about a single complaint being sufficient to put a cop behind a desk for year during the Parks era doesn't seem believable, and his general assessment of that period in time seems bizarre to me. If I'm recalling correctly, he believed that main problem was that good cops were getting too many BS complaints that were taking them off the street, and so they were afraid to do their jobs. No mention of the Rampart scandal and the real problems in the department and need for reform? Why were they under a consent decree anyways? No reason? Maybe that whole portion of the conversation was tangential to what you were trying to discuss, but it still was disappointing for you to just nod and accept it all at face value.
5. Caruso the champion of meritocracy. As a middling 26-year old attorney and son of a prominent local businessman, Mr. Caruso was offered his pick of Board of Commissioner positions by the mayor. Now a city insider and still serving on the board of commissioners at LADWP, he decided to begin a new career as a developer, and became fabulously successful. He now lectures us on the need to put qualified people in government positions. Any thoughts on that?
As someone who doesn't live anywhere near LA, I thought this was interesting. Lots of details were provided on the fires and the response that wouldn't be obvious to an outsider. Interviewing a billionaire politician is tricky and with that context these comments seem extreme. I don't think this was meant to be a hard hitting interview. I realize some locals might be emotional right now, but the rest of you need to get a grip.
I’ve heard every podcast. Long time Waking Up user. I hated this campaign ad, I mean podcast. Caruso has his patter down, I will say that, but he didn’t add many facts that we haven’t already heard. His answer to every question seemed to be “Everything would be perfect if I were in charge.”
It's hard not to sound like that when every single detail we've learned (not just in this interview, but in general) depicts a management infrastructure which has rotted from the inside. Caruso is on point here, not talking himself up, but rather giving details as to what was done wrong and what was not done that should have been. If you have information that would contradict any of the points he made, or that paint current leadership in a better light, please share it.
Did I say that what he said was inaccurate? He didn’t add anything new. I agree that the leadership was lacking. He did point out that this problem has talked about for years, and that many of the problem started long before Bass took over, but I wouldn’t defend her. I just didn’t like his tone, and while the message “we need better leadership” is good, his message was “we need better leadership, and that’s me”. I was disappointed that Sam kind of sold his podcast for a campaign ad.
Sam, I really liked the info on the shift from professional managers at DFW to political appointees and the resulting mismanagement like shutting down 1 of 3 dams during peak fire season and the failure to apply lessons learned like cutting brush and staging fire crews in advance of fires. A little pushback though on the labelling of "socialists" - you seem to like this word a lot - in the Democratic Party and DEI. I think I've heard "defund the police" a thousand too many times - almost everyone I know (and Bernie Sanders who I don't know) understands that this term does not make literal sense and that point is to use taxpayer dollars spent on police more efficiently such as retaining trained mental health personnel to respond to crisises that involve mental health issues (DV, simple assault) - sometimes with police backup - rather than a police officer that relies on his/her "use of deadly force" training when things start to get out of control. Regarding DEI, I don't think it is an "either or" proposition. No public agency should have to sacrifice "professionalism and skill sets" for DEI compliance but that doesn't mean you have to get rid of DEI - there is an imbalance in many public agencies that requires a concentrated shift away from 1950's hiring practices - it may take more time than some people may want in order to assure that new employees have required skills and competence, but it can and should be done - thanks Sam, great show.
Sam the problem with philanthropy is it basically is a tax on the charitable. Good government works when it is NOT bribed by billionaires dollars. The churches must make hundreds of billions a year and I don’t see them or the truly philanthropic making huge dents in our big problems. The levels of wealth we see are a result of good government funding research and prosperity like we saw post FDR leading up to us having the worlds number one economy , the largest wealthiest middle class and the Happy days of the 50’s and 60’s. We changed course with neoliberalism and saw a ridiculous shifting of income and wealth go from the middle class to the extreme wealthy coincident with are huge $35 trillion dollar debt.
It's hard to believe that there is so much garbage information out there about these fires. Maybe it's not hard to believe actually, its the internet. This episode seems like it was a victim of "I need to get something out" media blitz style. This is obviously a complicated topic and requires a lengthy conversation with a true expert. There are so many factors at play that resulted in this event.
Mr Caruso is not the person for this conversation. There is always room to try again. Maybe an expert in Emergency Management and Planning that specializes in Wildland Urban Interface. If you want better information about the fire response itself, Cal Fire is the most experienced Wildland Fire Department in the world most likely. Maybe somebody from Cal Fire.
THANK YOU SAM! I’m only part way into this episode but you and Rick Caruso are on it. There’s so much to discuss and consider in our shared new reality. All my thoughts and best hopes to those in L.A. Let’s all talk and research more about wildfire and our risks. No matter where you live in the United States (short of a boat surrounded by water), fire is part of the ecosystem where your house or job site are located. Those of us in high risk areas just see it more often. We must understand the risks unadulterated by politics and the memories of three generations back (no one alive today has seen what a local ecosystem allowed to naturally burn, burned by people looked like). We have been unnaturally suppressing fires for over a hundred years. We have lived in an illusion of the absence of wildfire unless we have experienced it or understand the wildfire risks currently. Top recommendations: research natural or indigenous fire history of your area before 1890 (exact year TBD), research wildfire fuel reduction techniques for your area, research the role of prescribed fire, research fire suppression in natural areas and how fuel loading became a serious concern across millions of acres of land and urban interface. Finally for a deep dive look in the research of the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S Geological Survey, and Bureau of Land Management as well as the Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy. All my thoughts from the Front Range of Colorado.
When I received the reduced cost membership to your poscast, I cried. You're a shining example of how to level the playing field for thoughts and opinions. I am so grateful for that.
In the spirit of intellectual equity in the use of excess wealth, I would add some comments.
One thing that I can't support is conservatives' tendency to vote with their dollar. A billion dollars equals a billion votes vs. my one vote toward a cause. Is it any different with large-scale philanthropy? I find money and drunkenness to have at least one thing in common, that it tends to exaggerate a person's personality. Does a rich person giving away the bulk of their wealth to their favorite charity necessarily equate to the common good? Is it the best idea, ecologically speaking, to rebuild in a fire-prone area? What are the real pros and cons?
I think that's where taxes and government come in, at least when people trust the system, the system has good leaders, and it's fair. I don't think rich people need to give all their excess wealth to the government, but I think it needs to be far more, and our gov't needs to deserve it.
I'm so sorry you and your family are dealing with this. Thank you for trying to turn this time of personal tragedy into a conversation about community and the greater good. Im looking forward to hearing more.
Ouch! This is such typical left wing backlash.....I'm disgusted by the comments AND I'm a democrat. As if we haven't learned anything from the 2024 election, wake up and smell the VOCS. Something needs to change and our collective elitist sensibility should be number one to hit the dump. Please invoke our better angels and consider solutions that are pragmatic, time tested and proactive. Life is too short to be self-righteous, climate to fragile to not welcome all intelligent solutions and this incredible biosphere too precious to not rebuild just as the homeowners desire. After all, it's their neighborhood. Although I don't live in PP, as a home owner, I know the welfare of the community is paramount. Those residents deserve to restore their sense of place as they so desire. Yes, let the government upgrade the infrastructure and have building materials be more practical. Outside of that, PP families should have a wide latitude to reconstruct.
Dear Sam,
I’m very sorry about the tragedy in Pacific Palisades and elsewhere in the county due to the fires. It must be traumatic and extremely difficult.
I am a frequent listener thanks to the interesting topics, the wit, and alignment with you on various topics.
This episode was a disappointment. You introduced Rick Caruso, and asked him about his background. During the intro, neither you nor Rick state that he ran for mayor in 2022, and that he lost. Not to rub it in, but it provides essential context for what follows. But, a bit later you say that you wish that Caruso was the mayor. Huh? Then at the end of the interview, while encouraging he run for something, you noted he ran for mayor of LA.
Caruso lost to Karen Bass by ten percentage points. Rick does a lot of complaining about how the Democratic machine came out to support Bass (Obama, Harris, Biden). Caruso out-spent the Bass campaign by about factor of ten, spending over $100 million. Might this be part of “Why not let the system work,” as Rick says? If could do an autopsy of the election, how much of Caruso’s 44% support among voters is derived from his outsized get-out-the-vote spending? How many of the Caruso voters did so because his paid door-to-door staff falsely told them that Bass was a Scientologist? We’ll never know. But sweeping this part of the story under the rug was a disappointment. By the way, I agree that the Democratic Party and the state of politics in CA gives us lots to complain about, and you’ve discussed specifics in other episodes.
Regarding the “first mover syndrome” (who decides to build first in the moonscape): Surprisingly, what isn’t mentioned at all as a precedent is the 1991 East Bay Hills fire in Berkeley and Oakland which destroyed over 3000 homes and killed 25. Not as much as the Palisades, but on a relevant scale. How could this not be a point of comparison in this interview? Doesn’t Caruso know about it? The area is rebuilt, just a few miles from my home. Lots to learn from it, due to errors before and after the fire. Surprised that Caruso had not heard of Purple Air. Meanwhile he is presented as knowledgeable on hazardous waste mitigation and pollution? You castigate other interviewers for platforming people without doing some homework and for softball questioning. So, this one is a bummer.
You urged Caruso to comment on his proposal to give away more wealth. Caruso’s net worth is north of $5B. I like your philanthropy ideas and find them personally provocative in a helpful way. But note Caruso’s hemming and hawing about how hard it is to give away wealth, about how it is made doubly difficult when the wealth is tied up in real estate. Should we consider his $100M spending on his campaign for mayor in 2022 a charitable contribution?
Sigh.
I’m very sorry for the suffering in LA caused by the fires.
Thank you for this reply. I, too, felt a lack of pushback in this interview although I do understand that this is a really hard time for Sam and what he and his family are going through. One of my first memories of the first day of the fire (after the night of terrifying winds) was hearing a morning interview with Caruso on a local LA tv station frankly politicizing the fire. It really was such bad and off-putting timing as we watched our neighbors living to the north of us losing their homes in an inferno while first responders where battling with all their dedication and bravery to help. Caruso came off as an opportunist and not someone seeking to help. I also thought it a terrible interview for the station to air at that time but these are the times we live in.
correction: You urged Caruso to comment on your proposal to give away more wealth. ....
Native Northern Californian here that has voted Democratic all my adult life. I found the interview interesting. I felt his run for mayor that he lost to Bass was on display and transparent in the interview. That he over-spent significantly as compared to the Bass campaign (your point) and still lost under the fire-power provided by the Democratic party as highlighted, takes nothing away from his stated concern that CA has been controlled almost exclusively by the Democratic party for a long time (since the 70s) and it's not fairing well. They discussed a similar historic fire to the current debacle that happened in the same LA area which makes perfect sense. Besides, since 2015, Northern CA has had some of the worst community wild fires in various populated areas including the Tubb's Fire which was sparked by PG&E lines that were not maintained, the Paradise fire where the loss of life was the highest recorded in these incidents and was started by PG&E power lines that were downed due to high winds, the Valley Fire, and the Glass Fire of 2020 where my own neighborhood in Napa burned to the ground, cause undetermined. There are so many more recent fires to choose from, it's hard to understand why one would take issue that the 1991 East Bay fire was not specifically mentioned as a point of reference. A huge part of the interview was highlighting what could in fact be done to mitigate these disasters! Underground these lines! Defensible space! Wild land pruning! Fire resistant building materials! Sophisticated water delivery! Proper staffing and prep by agencies! This takes strong leadership! That is the kind of discussion and action that is needed and has been needed for decades! We all suffer when there is a lack of proper leadership in these mission critical areas, regardless of our politics. We need more of this!
I’m with you up until wild land pruning. Tell us how would this work who would pay for the initial work and more importantly maintenance in perpetuity? And good luck getting authorized by CDFW to cut a single hectare.
I don't pretend to have all the answers, but I like that these things are being discussed. My neighborhood in Napa burned to the ground in the Glass Fire in 2020. The next year, they began doing controlled burns in strategic mountainous areas above us and around at-risk perimeter areas, taking out years of dense overgrowth that would offer immense fuel the next fire. They take dozers and cut huge swaths for fire breaks in the midst of these disasters to save homes. Seems they can find a way to do this during and after disaster hits and I'm hoping they can do some of this in a preventative way, too.
Were the control burn areas forest with trees or chaparral vegetation? The burn very differently because chaparral is extremely dense and summer deciduous. I remember those fires as my mother in law was living up there too.
Terrible. Really weak conversation. Seems you took everything at face value and questioned nothing.
Not sure what’s going on here, but this doesn’t feel like Sam Harris at all.
Sam- you mention all the schadenfreude and distrust of the uber wealthy in this podcast… I fear class animosity is going to accelerate significantly as the Trump White House continues to cater to Elon and the billionaire tech bros in favor of the working class and his MAGA base. This thing is only getting started…
Take the exception for HB1 visas for example…
Sam this is a spectacular failure of an episode. this episode completely lacks intellectual honesty, this is easily the most disappointing thing you've ever put out. good god i'm embarrassed.
Every time I hear “DEI” used today, it functions as a slur against anyone in any position who’s not a straight white man; as if women and minorities couldn’t possibly be qualified for any important job. When something goes wrong on a straight white man’s watch, can we accuse him of being a Uniformity, Inequity, and Exclusion (UIE) hire?
Good one. It was the straight white males in the gas company who installed two very large natural gas mains in the bottom of a canyon near Brentwood. Go check the situation there and you’ll be gobsmacked by the poor decision which today’s public sector staff are now grappling with. Ps everyone should be thanking lucky stars those pipes didn’t explode in the fire.
VERY bad insurance take in this podcast.
When asked about insuring the rebuild of the Palisades, Caruso, a self-styled free markets guy, said that "state or federally subsidized insurance" would be required.
Sam seemed to agree, saying "yes, there seems to be some kind of market failure [with current insurance]."
NO.
The market in private fire insurance is working EXACTLY as it should, making it expensive to live in risky, fire-prone areas.
If we care about climate change and disaster mitigation, the best thing we can do is simply let home insurance markets work. California hasn't allowed that since Prop 103.
A subsidized program is a tax-funded program. I don't want to subsidize sprawl into burn zones. If people still want to move there, that's fine—they can pay for it themselves.
I listened to most of it, and found some of it interesting, but was frustrated and disappointed with several parts of the interview.
1. Santa Ynez Reservoir. The general narrative surrounding the reservoir is that some idiot took the reservoir out of service during fire season, so instead of having 117 million gallons to fight the fire, they only had 3 one million gallon tanks, and the hydrants went dry. The public at large has accepted this, and I suspect it will remain the prevailing belief for as long as people remember these fires. While, I'm not an expert, and I really wish someone would post a hydraulic diagram of the system, I'm very confident that this narrative is substantially false. I was genuinely surprised that you seemed not to have looked into any of this at all and just let Mr. Caruso lean into this common criticism.
2. Political appointee Janisse Quinones. Mr. Caruso implies that she's unqualified and a political appointee, and he says she's made many mistakes without elaborating. I can only presume he's referring to the Santa Ynez Reservoir, which had been out of service since before she was hired and was mandated to be drained by the State Water Board. Maybe she is underqualified and clueless. With his experience on the Board of Commissioners, Mr. Caruso would have been in a unique position to offer some insight on why that is so. It's pretty easy to look her up and check her Linkedin. It seems like she has not been particularly active in politics and has loads of experience in senior engineering and executive positions at major utilities. While it may be reasonable to assume that she's a "DEI hire" in that it being a Latina woman comfortable talking about equity very likely helped her get the job, it also seems very reasonable that being a Latina woman played a significant part in Mr. Caruso asserting that she was an unqualified political hire without feeling the need to back up his claim.
3. The underfunded fire department. This is a really interesting topic that's begging for more context and real insight and I'm disappointed that we didn't get more. The fire department budget was cut almost 2% last year. How unusual is that? Do they always get what they ask for? I've read some reports that Bass was still in the process of negotiating raises when she passed the reduced budget, then finished the negotiation and paid for it with a separate part of the budget, so in effect the budget was not reduced. Is that accurate or is that misleading? What about the decision not to keep the whole force on standby and preemptively deploy to high risk locations? Is this a funding failure or a failure to leverage the resources they did have? With Mr. Caruso's unique history as a LA city insider, I was hoping for more than a blanket claim that he would have fully funded the department and a regurgitation of previously published criticisms.
4. Crime under Parks, Bratton, and Garcetti. His claims don't line up all that well with available data on the history of murder and violent crime in LA. I'm not saying they're outright lies, but it seems like his narrative is self serving, only partially true, and demands more scrutiny. His claim about a single complaint being sufficient to put a cop behind a desk for year during the Parks era doesn't seem believable, and his general assessment of that period in time seems bizarre to me. If I'm recalling correctly, he believed that main problem was that good cops were getting too many BS complaints that were taking them off the street, and so they were afraid to do their jobs. No mention of the Rampart scandal and the real problems in the department and need for reform? Why were they under a consent decree anyways? No reason? Maybe that whole portion of the conversation was tangential to what you were trying to discuss, but it still was disappointing for you to just nod and accept it all at face value.
5. Caruso the champion of meritocracy. As a middling 26-year old attorney and son of a prominent local businessman, Mr. Caruso was offered his pick of Board of Commissioner positions by the mayor. Now a city insider and still serving on the board of commissioners at LADWP, he decided to begin a new career as a developer, and became fabulously successful. He now lectures us on the need to put qualified people in government positions. Any thoughts on that?
Yes. DEI has gone bad. Many of us are clear-eyed about this but can't swallow the republican solution, Project25 style.
As someone who doesn't live anywhere near LA, I thought this was interesting. Lots of details were provided on the fires and the response that wouldn't be obvious to an outsider. Interviewing a billionaire politician is tricky and with that context these comments seem extreme. I don't think this was meant to be a hard hitting interview. I realize some locals might be emotional right now, but the rest of you need to get a grip.
I’ve heard every podcast. Long time Waking Up user. I hated this campaign ad, I mean podcast. Caruso has his patter down, I will say that, but he didn’t add many facts that we haven’t already heard. His answer to every question seemed to be “Everything would be perfect if I were in charge.”
It's hard not to sound like that when every single detail we've learned (not just in this interview, but in general) depicts a management infrastructure which has rotted from the inside. Caruso is on point here, not talking himself up, but rather giving details as to what was done wrong and what was not done that should have been. If you have information that would contradict any of the points he made, or that paint current leadership in a better light, please share it.
Did I say that what he said was inaccurate? He didn’t add anything new. I agree that the leadership was lacking. He did point out that this problem has talked about for years, and that many of the problem started long before Bass took over, but I wouldn’t defend her. I just didn’t like his tone, and while the message “we need better leadership” is good, his message was “we need better leadership, and that’s me”. I was disappointed that Sam kind of sold his podcast for a campaign ad.
Sam, I really liked the info on the shift from professional managers at DFW to political appointees and the resulting mismanagement like shutting down 1 of 3 dams during peak fire season and the failure to apply lessons learned like cutting brush and staging fire crews in advance of fires. A little pushback though on the labelling of "socialists" - you seem to like this word a lot - in the Democratic Party and DEI. I think I've heard "defund the police" a thousand too many times - almost everyone I know (and Bernie Sanders who I don't know) understands that this term does not make literal sense and that point is to use taxpayer dollars spent on police more efficiently such as retaining trained mental health personnel to respond to crisises that involve mental health issues (DV, simple assault) - sometimes with police backup - rather than a police officer that relies on his/her "use of deadly force" training when things start to get out of control. Regarding DEI, I don't think it is an "either or" proposition. No public agency should have to sacrifice "professionalism and skill sets" for DEI compliance but that doesn't mean you have to get rid of DEI - there is an imbalance in many public agencies that requires a concentrated shift away from 1950's hiring practices - it may take more time than some people may want in order to assure that new employees have required skills and competence, but it can and should be done - thanks Sam, great show.
Sam the problem with philanthropy is it basically is a tax on the charitable. Good government works when it is NOT bribed by billionaires dollars. The churches must make hundreds of billions a year and I don’t see them or the truly philanthropic making huge dents in our big problems. The levels of wealth we see are a result of good government funding research and prosperity like we saw post FDR leading up to us having the worlds number one economy , the largest wealthiest middle class and the Happy days of the 50’s and 60’s. We changed course with neoliberalism and saw a ridiculous shifting of income and wealth go from the middle class to the extreme wealthy coincident with are huge $35 trillion dollar debt.
It's hard to believe that there is so much garbage information out there about these fires. Maybe it's not hard to believe actually, its the internet. This episode seems like it was a victim of "I need to get something out" media blitz style. This is obviously a complicated topic and requires a lengthy conversation with a true expert. There are so many factors at play that resulted in this event.
Mr Caruso is not the person for this conversation. There is always room to try again. Maybe an expert in Emergency Management and Planning that specializes in Wildland Urban Interface. If you want better information about the fire response itself, Cal Fire is the most experienced Wildland Fire Department in the world most likely. Maybe somebody from Cal Fire.
THANK YOU SAM! I’m only part way into this episode but you and Rick Caruso are on it. There’s so much to discuss and consider in our shared new reality. All my thoughts and best hopes to those in L.A. Let’s all talk and research more about wildfire and our risks. No matter where you live in the United States (short of a boat surrounded by water), fire is part of the ecosystem where your house or job site are located. Those of us in high risk areas just see it more often. We must understand the risks unadulterated by politics and the memories of three generations back (no one alive today has seen what a local ecosystem allowed to naturally burn, burned by people looked like). We have been unnaturally suppressing fires for over a hundred years. We have lived in an illusion of the absence of wildfire unless we have experienced it or understand the wildfire risks currently. Top recommendations: research natural or indigenous fire history of your area before 1890 (exact year TBD), research wildfire fuel reduction techniques for your area, research the role of prescribed fire, research fire suppression in natural areas and how fuel loading became a serious concern across millions of acres of land and urban interface. Finally for a deep dive look in the research of the U.S. Forest Service, the U.S Geological Survey, and Bureau of Land Management as well as the Forest Service Wildfire Crisis Strategy. All my thoughts from the Front Range of Colorado.
Hi Sam,
When I received the reduced cost membership to your poscast, I cried. You're a shining example of how to level the playing field for thoughts and opinions. I am so grateful for that.
In the spirit of intellectual equity in the use of excess wealth, I would add some comments.
One thing that I can't support is conservatives' tendency to vote with their dollar. A billion dollars equals a billion votes vs. my one vote toward a cause. Is it any different with large-scale philanthropy? I find money and drunkenness to have at least one thing in common, that it tends to exaggerate a person's personality. Does a rich person giving away the bulk of their wealth to their favorite charity necessarily equate to the common good? Is it the best idea, ecologically speaking, to rebuild in a fire-prone area? What are the real pros and cons?
I think that's where taxes and government come in, at least when people trust the system, the system has good leaders, and it's fair. I don't think rich people need to give all their excess wealth to the government, but I think it needs to be far more, and our gov't needs to deserve it.
I'm so sorry you and your family are dealing with this. Thank you for trying to turn this time of personal tragedy into a conversation about community and the greater good. Im looking forward to hearing more.
Ouch! This is such typical left wing backlash.....I'm disgusted by the comments AND I'm a democrat. As if we haven't learned anything from the 2024 election, wake up and smell the VOCS. Something needs to change and our collective elitist sensibility should be number one to hit the dump. Please invoke our better angels and consider solutions that are pragmatic, time tested and proactive. Life is too short to be self-righteous, climate to fragile to not welcome all intelligent solutions and this incredible biosphere too precious to not rebuild just as the homeowners desire. After all, it's their neighborhood. Although I don't live in PP, as a home owner, I know the welfare of the community is paramount. Those residents deserve to restore their sense of place as they so desire. Yes, let the government upgrade the infrastructure and have building materials be more practical. Outside of that, PP families should have a wide latitude to reconstruct.