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It’s official: Parts of california are too wildfire-prone to insure

California is facing yet another real estate-related crisis, but we’re not talking about its sky-high home prices. According to newly released data, it’s simply become too risky to insure houses in big swaths of the wildfire-prone state.

Last winter when we wrote about home insurance rates possibly going up in the wake of California’s massive, deadly fires, the insurance industry representatives we interviewed were skeptical. They noted that the stories circulating in the media about people in forested areas losing their homeowners’ insurance was based on anecdotes, not data. But now, the data is in and it’s really happening: Insurance companies aren’t renewing policies areas climate scientists say are likely to burn in giant wildfires in coming years.

Between 2015 and 2018, the 10 California counties with the most homes in flammable forests saw a 177 percent increase in homeowners turning to an expensive state-backed insurance program because they could not find private insurance.

In some ways, this news is not surprising. According to a recent survey of insurance actuaries (the people who calculate insurance risks and premiums based on available data), the industry ranked climate change as the top risk for 2019, beating out concerns over cyber damages, financial instability, and terrorism. While having insurance companies on board with climate science is a good thing for, say, requiring cities to invest in more sustainable infrastructure, it’s bad news for homeowners who can’t simply pick up their lodgings and move elsewhere.

“We are seeing an increasing trend across California where people at risk of wildfires are being non-renewed by their insurer,” said California Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara in a statement. “This data should be a wake-up call for state and local policymakers that without action to reduce the risk from extreme wildfires and preserve the insurance market we could see communities unraveling.”

A similar dynamic is likely unfolding across many other Western states, according to reporting from the New York Times.

To understand the data coming out of California we can use my own family as an example: A few months after Grist published a story about how my parent’s neighborhood is trying to fortify itself against future forest fires, my mom’s insurer informed her and my stepfather that they’d need to get home insurance elsewhere. For two months they called one insurer after another, but no company would take their premiums. So they turned to the state program as the insurer of last resort — which costs about three times more than they’d been spending under their previous, private insurer.

My folks have spent a lot of money clearing trees and brush from around their house. They’ve covered the walls in hard-to-burn cement panels, and the roof with metal. But insurance risk maps don’t adjust for these improvements. Instead, insurance companies seem to have made the call that the changing climate, along with years of fire suppression, have made houses in the midst of California’s dry forests a bad bet, and therefore uninsurable.

“For us, because we’ve done good financial planning and our house is paid off, it’s just an extra expense,” said my mom, Gail Johnson Vaughan. “But we have friends who have no choice but to leave.”

Source:  

It’s official: Parts of california are too wildfire-prone to insure

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Ted Cruz Defends His Plan to Patrol "Muslim Neighborhoods"

Mother Jones

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Ted Cruz stood by his proposal to patrol “Muslim neighborhoods” during CNN’s town hall in Wisconsin on Tuesday night, repeating his assertion that this strategy worked in New York City.

Host Anderson Cooper pressed Cruz repeatedly on his stance, noting that New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton had criticized Cruz’s proposal. “It is clear from his comments that Sen. Cruz knows absolutely nothing about counterterrorism in New York City,” Bratton wrote in an op-ed in the New York Daily News. But Cruz stood firm, describing Bratton as a member of the administration of “left-wing radical” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

Watch the exchange, starting around the 8-minute mark.

Link: 

Ted Cruz Defends His Plan to Patrol "Muslim Neighborhoods"

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The Government Just Made Prison a Little Less Terrible

Mother Jones

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For the families and friends of inmates, hearing the sound of a loved one’s voice can be an unaffordable luxury, with phone companies sometimes charging up to $14 per minute for calls from correctional facilities. The Federal Communications Commission took a step to change that today, voting to approve new rules on the rates companies can charge for inmates’ in-state calls.

The rules close a loophole created in 2013, when the FCC limited rates on interstate calls to 21 cents per minute but did not regulate in-state calls. The commission will now cap the cost of prepaid in-state calls from state and federal prisons at 11 cents a minute. County jails will use a tiered system, with calls from the smallest jails costing the most (22 cents a minute) and calls from the biggest jails costing the least (14 cents a minute).

The new rules also ban companies from charging a flat rate for calls, phase down collect call rates, and eliminate most of the add-on charges like payment and billing fees, which right now can bump up the cost of a call by 40 percent. Additionally, the rules increase the access to calling services for people with hearing or speech disabilities.

Industry giants like GTL and Securus have fought the move, and many have introduced exorbitantly priced video visitation services that have replaced in-person visits in some places.

“This system has preyed on our most vulnerable for far too long,” FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn told the Washington Post. “Families are being further torn apart and the cycle of poverty is being perpetuated.”

Source – 

The Government Just Made Prison a Little Less Terrible

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Magic Johnson on Donald Sterling: "He Shouldn’t Have a Team Anymore"

Mother Jones

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The Laker great and LA icon didn’t mince words when asked about Donald Sterling’s alleged racist comments on ABC:

There’s no place in our society for it, and there’s no place in our league. We all get along. We all play with different races of people when you’re in sports. That’s what makes sports so beautiful. He’s put his own team in a tough situation. So I believe that once Commissioner Silver…does all his due diligence, gets all the information gathered, he’s got to come down hard. He shouldn’t own a team anymore. And he should stand up and say, ‘I don’t want to own a team anymore.’ Especially when you have African Americans renting his apartments, coming to the games, playing for him, coaching for him. This is bad for everybody. This is bad for America.

(…)

He’s got to give up the team. If he doesn’t like African Americans and you’re in a league that is over 75% African Americans…When you’ve got the president of the United States saying that this is bad. You’ve got fans around the country—different races of people—saying it’s bad, it is time for him to exit.

Magic is the best.

Originally posted here – 

Magic Johnson on Donald Sterling: "He Shouldn’t Have a Team Anymore"

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