Connor O'Keeffe on why many victims of LA wildfires were uninsured

Making matters worse, many of the homes destroyed last week were uninsured.  Progressives and establishment media outlets seized on this fact to blame climate change for driving insurance providers out of high-risk areas. 

This talking point is complete nonsense.  If the risk of natural disasters in an area people want to live in increases, that’s good for insurance companies.  It drives up the demand for their product.  It’s true that home insurance providers have been fleeing the areas affected by these fires—with one provider canceling thousands of policies in the Pacific Palisades in the last year alone.  But that’s not because of climate change, it’s because of government intervention.

[...]

When governments mess with insurance prices—either through subsidies, cheap public insurance, or price controls—the result is always the same. More people move to dangerous areas that are highly susceptible to natural disasters. 

In 1988, California passed a law that forced insurance prices down by 20 percent, banned providers from using forecasts of future risk to set prices, and subjected all future price increases to government oversight. With rates severely decoupled from risk, the state saw extensive development in some very fire-prone areas. Then, after an exceptionally bad fire year in 2017, insurance providers tried to get approval to raise premiums to account for the high level of risk across the state. The government said no. 

As a result, seven of the twelve largest home insurance providers pulled out of California. And that trend is continuing today. 

~ Connor O'Keeffe, "Climate Change Is Not the Cause of California’s 'Insurance Crisis'," Mises Wire, January 14, 2025

Governor Gavin Newsom on California's train theft crisis

The images looked like a Third World country.  What you saw here in the last week is just not acceptable.  So, I took off the suit and tie and said I'm coming because I couldn't take it.  I can't turn on the news anymore.  What the hell is going on?

~ Governor Gavin Newsom, "LA councilman blasts train theft 'chaos,' calls them 'a threat to our economy'," Yahoo!Finance, February 1, 2022

Douglas Murray on California Governor Newsom's unmasked Napa Valley dinner

As photos of the gathering emerged, it has further transpired that the Governor was joined by two high-level members of the California Medical Association. The $400 per person menu included a starter of “Oysters and Pearls” followed by “Sole aux Crevettes” and Braised Veal. All of which must have left a delightful taste in the mouth of the Californian leader, various medical authorities and assorted lobbyists, but leaves a rather less pleasant aftertaste with pretty much every other resident of California.

~ Douglas Murray, "The great lockdown hypocrites," UnHerd, November 20, 2020

David Gordon on elitism in America

Elite policy is at its worst in California, now under the near-total domination of the left wing of the Democratic Party...

Who are the ordinary Americans the elite disdains, and who are the elite?  The ordinary Americans are those whom Hillary Clinton called "deplorables," i.e., white males who value their family, their religion, and their property, including their guns...

The elite consists at its core of wealthy financiers and business interests allied with government.  It is buttressed by professionals who have attended top universities, especially those of the Ivy League.

~ David Gordon, "America at the Point of No Return," The Austrian, September-October 2020

Joel Kotkin on the exodus from California

When I talk to my class, 36 kids, and I ask them, "How many of you are going to stay in California?" Four. That never would've happened twenty years ago. Why would anyone want to leave California? With great weather, beautiful topography, all sorts of culture, great food, all the stuff that is really unique to California. It takes policy genius of some diabolical sort to push people out of California.

~ Joel Kotkin, "The Reasons Why So Many People Are Leaving California," 25:15 mark, The Epoch Times, February 19, 2020

Joel Kotkin: "Most California politicians are economically illiterate"

Basically, most California politicians are economically illiterate. The vast majority of the Democrats in particular in the California legislature have no business experience. Now, in Texas, Democrats and Republicans both have business experience. So they don't even understand how it [the economy] works.

~ Joel Kotkin, "The Reason Why So Many People Are Leaving California," 11:50 mark, The Epoch Times, February 19, 2020

Jared Walczak on California's proposed wealth tax

It is far easier to call for a state-level wealth tax than it is to actually design an enforceable one...  Any tax that is actually effective at taxing wealth... would be equally effective at driving wealth out of state.

~ Jared Walczak, vice president with the Tax Foundation, "California Set To Pass The Nation's First Wealth Tax Targeting The Ultra Rich," ZeroHedge, August 17, 2020

Carla and Lou Ferrigno on their decision to leave Los Angeles

One morning around 7am I opened the curtains in our beautiful Santa Monica home and looking up at me from our driveway were three gang members with tattoos on their faces sitting on our retaining wall. They were cat-calling me and being vulgar. I motioned I was going to call the police and they just laughed, flicking their tongues at me and showing me their guns.

~ Carla Ferrigno

We put the house up for sale after 40 wonderful years and moved north. We feel lucky to have made it out. Now we are in a wonderful place and very happy.

~ Lou Ferrigno, "Hollywood's Apocalypse NOW: Rich and famous are fleeing in droves as liberal politics and coronavirus turn City of Dreams into cesspit plagued by junkies and violent criminals," Daily Mail, August 16, 2020

Dr. Mark Ghaly on the uptick of Covid-19 cases after reopenings

I think it’s natural, that it’s easy to just focus on the number of new cases. But I think that’s really anchored — if you’re not seeing a tremendous uptick in the number of hospitalizations in the right timeline or … ICU cases, that’s really connected at least in California’s case to an increase in testing. So I think it’s always important to kind of have that in the context.

~ Dr. Mark Ghaly, California's secretary of Health and Human Services, "California coronavirus surge tied to increase in testing, not reopening businesses, official says," LA Times, June 13, 2020

Barron's on state tax burdens

California has the nation's fourth-highest income tax (10.55%) behind Hawaii and Oregon (both with 11%) and New Jersey (10.75%). It also has the sixth highest overall U.S. tax burden, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation. In contrast, Texas has the eighth-lowest tax burden and is one of nine states that don't tax earned income. The others: Washington, Florida, Tennessee, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Wyoming, Nevada and Alaska.

~ Karen Hube, "Fleeing the Tax Man," Barron's, September 28, 2009

Arnold Schwarzenegger on California's possible $14 billion deficit

What we have to do is fix the budget system. The system itself needs to be fixed, and I think that this is a good year, this coming year, to fix it.

~ Arnold Schwarzenegger, Governor of California, speech made in Long Beach where he was promoting his plan for health care reform, "Schwarzenegger Will 'Declare Fiscal Emergency' In Weeks," NBC11.com, December 14, 2007

(California state spending increased by more than 40 percent since Schwarzenegger took office after the 2003 recall of then-Gov. Gray Davis.)