Welcome.

That's California for welcome to the January 7th edition of National Reviews Radio Free California

podcast.

I'm Will Swain, CEO of the California Policy Center.

You can find my colleagues and me at California PolicyCenter.org. You can find my friend and co-host

David Bonson right here. He's an economist. He's host of the Capital Record podcast, author of the book,

full-time, work and the meaning of life. And of course, he's founder of the eponymous investment firm, the Boston Group. Hello, David. Hello, Will. Happy New Year. And to you, my friend, how's a big, how's been, you're in New York right now? I imagine it's gorgeous out there right now, or is it freezing? Well, it's been colder. Today was a warmer, but I mean, you know, it's real winter. I mean, they have seasons and so forth. But I think it's lovely. It's just, it's wonderful. Yeah, very happy to be here. Well, you and I are talking Wednesday, January the 7th, as I said at the outset there. And that's, of course, the one year mark for the LA wildfires. We could do a whole bunch of history notes. Oh, man, I'm so glad.

I thought you were going to do the one year mark of the January 6th. Did you know that a lot of

people on the ride are saying that's like a day of celebration? Yes. Yes, I have seen this and uh in honor of that celebration i went back

and watched a bunch of guys beat up cops and put some of them in the hospital yeah um yeah people

say it was like a tea party day and stuff so it's good i did like yeah sure but then you know the fire's

january 7 so we'll get back to to California and not get distracted by our insanity well

you and I came out with an episode that week one day after the fire started in earnest on January 7th

and as I said I think in our end of year episode just a couple of weeks ago we We haven't learned a whole lot since then, David.

This is one of those rare instances where kind of first takes on what had gone wrong

with those wildfires, the role of government incompetence, of corruption, of environmental

radicalism, all of those things have just been underscored since then.

And yet, to this day, Mayor Bass says she's still looking to get to the bottom of this thing.

She might take a look in the mirror.

Well, we haven't learned a lot. We haven't. Yeah, there was a little period of time where at least

as it pertain to how we'd get new housing replacement stock built, it sounded like we had learned something there because I heard the governor saying exactly the right things on some new shows. And there was no follow up with any of that. So from safety to regulation, to economics, to all the things that play into this intertwined story, I think you're right. I don't think we've learned anything.

Let's move real quickly to other headline news that's national and local. And we don't need to spend a lot of time here because I think some of this is utterly predictable.

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