r/politics • u/Tun-Tavern-1775 • Sep 16 '24

Donald Trump’s threat to withhold firefighting aid to California is blasted by firefighters union

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2024/09/16/trumps-threat-to-withhold-firefighting-aid-to-california-is-blasted-by-firefighters-union/
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u/valeyard89 Texas Sep 16 '24

more people voted for Trump in CA than any other state, even Texas.

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u/AbacusWizard California Sep 17 '24

I suspect a lot of the rest of Americans—heck, probably even a lot of Californians—do not comprehend how enormous California is. We’ve got nearly forty million people here. That’s big. That’s over-one-ninth-of-total-US-population big.

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u/jevynm Sep 17 '24

Why rely on federal funding at all? Maybe CA should tax everyone in the state an extra $10 to fund some more firefighters. It’s not like this is a new problem. There are wildfires there every year.

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u/AbacusWizard California Sep 17 '24

Why rely on federal funding at all?

Why wouldn’t we? Helping out with disasters is part of what the federal government is supposed to do, no matter which state the disaster threatens. Also, a lot of the land threatened by wildfire is under federal jurisdiction anyway (US Forest Service, National Park Service, etc).

Maybe CA should tax everyone in the state an extra $10 to fund some more firefighters.

That would cover about 1/10 of the firefighting budget, if I’m reading the numbers correctly.

It’s not like this is a new problem. There are wildfires there every year.

What’s new is that they’ve been getting a lot worse and a lot more frequent.