(Mods: that auto-suggested title is different from the one on on the page itself, but it’s honestly a better headline in terms of the article’s contents. Let me know if i need to change it.)

On Thursday, Rep. Andy Harris told Newsmax that money for wildfire aid isn’t a priority for Republicans because “we just put more money into FEMA before we left for the Christmas holidays,” and the Maryland Republican claimed that Los Angeles “mishandled the fire department so egregiously that they ought to bear some of the burden for that rebuilding.”

  • errer@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    California should just secede. I’m not joking, what’s the point of funneling money to other states that don’t care about human rights, don’t come to our aid when we need it, and happily siphon all our tax dollars but fight any reciprocation? California could absolutely succeed as a sovereign nation.

    • CaptnNMorgan@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      It would be nice, but unless California has a militia on the same level as the US military, it wouldn’t end well

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        While I agree it would go poorly, the way this would happen in theory is that the state would take their contributions to the federal military with them, and for California that would be a pretty sizeable chunk. So it’s not just local police and national guard.

        • CaptnNMorgan@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          This is very interesting. It’s my understanding that a lot of grunts in the military are big fans of Trump, so wouldn’t that throw a wrench in the gear? Even if that isn’t the case, the military falls under the executive branch, the president is their commander in chief. What does that mean when a state seceeds?

          • jj4211@lemmy.world
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            1 month ago

            I think another complicating factor is that military folks are moved around so much that they wouldn’t have the same loyalty to wherever they happen to be. So it’s likely to be quite bad, just staying that generally the military itself would split.

            As to technically reporting to the president, well all bets would be off, since the act of secession is already a rejection of the current government and rule of law. There wasn’t any legal framework for the revolutionary war nor the civil war to happen, and yet they did.

            Despite all this technicality, I’d really not want to see the nightmare of how this would play out in practice. Of course I could not see it happening until the GOP got too greedy and fully shut down elections or go too far away from free and fair elections. Ultimately confidence in elections serves as a release valve for anger with the government, and messing with that invites disaster.

    • slickgoat@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      I’m not an American, but I heard that if California was a separate country it would be one of the top wealthiest countries in the world. The rest of the US is a tick on your butt. NY excepted.

      I may be wrong.

    • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      We shit on Texas everytime they talk about seceding. Don’t be as dumb as those people.

      • skulblaka@sh.itjust.works
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        1 month ago

        California has the fifth largest economy in the world, Texas has half the GDP of California and still manages to post a net loss.

        There’s a reason we clown on Texas about it and that reason is because Texas quite literally cannot survive on its own but screeches constantly about threatening secession. California on the other hand would survive just fine without a single one of the entire rest of the States but they don’t constantly remind everyone of that fact.

        Texas gets made fun of for it because the answer to “Well what would you do without Texas, huh???” is… I’d pay less taxes because Texas wouldn’t be sucking down a bunch of surplus anymore.

      • jj4211@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        That’s generally because it’s ridiculous and often right in the heels of some big illustration of how Texas benefits from the other states.

        If the federal government did withhold aid, then that would perhaps be part of a scenario where California is tossing money at a government that will not reciprocate.

        Now it may be premature, as this might just be posturing and even if they made it rough, there is every reason to hope that in 2 years than shift . But if this was a real and durable situation, I could see it being their only path to get some more negotiating power.

        • BassTurd@lemmy.world
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          1 month ago

          I do agree with the sentiment and all of the points are valid. I think talking about it as secession detracts from those points. Highlighting that California pays in way more than it takes is important especially in the context of not receiving aid for malicious reasons.

      • Alenalda@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Hasn’t Texas changed hands several times. It was it’s own country at one point. It was part of Mexico now part of the US. Texas is a clown show for many reasons.

    • Matriks404@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Can’t they just not recognize the federal government? Should just make their own (maybe other states would participate as well). It wouldn’t be seceding, but they would de facto work as a separate political entity. That is unless they get raided of course.

  • JordanZ@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Talking about egregiously mishandled things…

    In a giant step for energy security, the infamously independent Texas grid (ERCOT) is preparing to connect to the U.S. grid. The Biden-Harris administration has committed a $360 million federal grant for this vast project as part of their Investing in America’ program.

  • bean@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Wasn’t it so people stepped up to help Texas for example, when things got bad in the winter? Pretty sure that’s a republican state so, huh. I thought Religious conservatives would be all ‘love thy neighbor’.

    • Sprocketfree@sh.itjust.works
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      1 month ago

      Haha I’ve never seen Republicans spousing actual Christian values in my lifetime. They will fuck you given the chance.

  • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Thats cool, uncle joe has it covered. Link

    The only other time FEMA and the federal government have done this was 9/11. Not even hurricane katrina or super-storm sandy got 100% federal relief funding (This policy was enacted in 2021 Link). The truely shameful part of this is that the GOP and 47 can not be trusted to not withhold relief funding because LA didnt vote for him. And if you think there isn’t precident for this, Nixon did the exact same thing when he closed the Boston naval yard in the 1970s. Link

      • Bahnd Rollard@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Then 47 will have to intentionally roll it back, and thats really not a good look. He is already operating on the slimmest majority, bad calls are not something he can afford many of. Its really a good political check (in a Chess sense) from Biden. With conservative media calling for 47 to not help, he is sorta damned if he does and damned if he dosent.

        Or he will make up some new distraction like how were going to take ohio back from the yogurt or something crazy.

    • Entropywins@lemmy.world
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      1 month ago

      Be careful some people not from the area are convinced its a racist agenda…got down voted and told how shit I was for agreeing with a ethnowhite racist agenda…what’s weird is that’s the first time in my life I’d heard that.

      • ikidd@lemmy.world
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        1 month ago

        Yah, that’s news to me. If figure if there’s racists involved, Idaho would have to be in the mix.

  • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    Who knows, maybe they really do believe in those principles of theirs and the problem will take care of itself as they die off one by one to natural disasters and never help eachother until they’re all gone.

  • sumguyonline@lemmy.world
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    1 month ago

    I was all for the fire when it was taking the homes of people that have never lost everything, and had regularly taken everything from others(palisades), but there’s poor people that barely have living situations having that taken from them, and people that genuinely earned everything they have(Mel Gibson, hate him or love him he started poor), it’s unfortunate to see people losing everything they had picked out to make themselves at home. Even tho it’s actually pretty cool to say “relieved of my physical belongings”, and irresponsible to say an animal dewormed definitively cured cancer when it truly could have created a genuine placebo effect and their body curied cancer. Bodies cure cancer all the time. It wouldn’t be a stretch to assume a placebo effect stirred a persons own immune system to cure a nasty bout if it wasn’t already weakened by radiation treatment. Not out of the realm of possibility, but unfortunately not very reproducible… But I digress, the people that are working, and or earned already everything they have is a definitive tragedy. I understand not caring about the Hollywood 1%, but the poor, once it reaches their door step it’s everybody’s problem. Cuz if they let it happen to them, they will let it happen to you, an me.

    • Flying Squid@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 month ago

      Even when it was taking homes of rich people, it was also filling the L.A. basin and the San Fernando Valley with choking smoke. I lived there over a decade ago and there were far less intense fires, but still big ones, and you could not be outside for more than a few minutes without feeling your lungs burning… and that doesn’t go into people with respiratory problems.

      These fires kill people who are nowhere near close enough to feel the heat or even be blinded by the smoke.