Speaker 1: What's going on.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for listening to this podcast. It
is heard live every day from noon to three on
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smartphone or tablet. And again, thank you so much for
your support. I don't know about you, but I am
just now on the lookout for the locusts. I feel
like that's the next thing that's coming, right because we
had what September, so I guess like every three months,
so we had the massive floods western North Carolina and
then out west. Now we've had the massive fire, and
I think the next thing is the locusts. I think
that's what comes next. Or the killer bees from Central
America that are migrating up here.
Speaker 1: Remember that one. Whatever happened to all those killer bees? Yeah,
I don't know that.
Speaker 2: No, that's weird because that was the thing that we
all had to be afraid. Look, I said this, I
was joking when we did our our award winning coverage
on Friday snow Man on the Street. And you know,
I said, if you're not scared, I'm not doing my job.
This was this became very clear to me. You know
when the West Nile virus, remember that whatever happened to that, no,
that one that was like early two thousands, and it
came right on the heels of a drought in Charlotte.
And you know, that's that's when I learned what gray
water was, which is I think a non lethal militia
group out of North Carolina that deploys all over the place.
For it's like a mercenary group, but they don't use
any lethal force. Graywater, No, I'm kidding. Graywater is when
you take water like you would take a bucket. We
would I did. I would take a bucket and I
would put it in the shower and when I would
turn the water on to get the water hot, you
got to waste water right to get the water hot.
And I would just collect that water in the bucket
and I would just keep it there as I showered.
And then I would just take the bucket of water
and I used it to water my trees in the
front yard of my house. In East Charlotte, and then
I was told that's illegal, that's grey water.
Speaker 1: It's not treated.
Speaker 2: How dare you in this case me dump the gray
water into the ground.
Speaker 1: They're killing the trees which.
Speaker 2: Are actually dying from drought. Nobody ever charged me for anything,
so I think the statute of limitations is now passed
on that.
Speaker 1: So that's why I feel comfortable disclosed this to you now.
Speaker 2: But there was this big drought and they were talking
about everything dying and we're not gonna have enough water,
and you know, the the intake pipes for the nuclear
power plant needs the water, and the water lake levels
were so down and now the water's not going in
to cool the plant and we're all gonna die from
a meltdown. Like all of these the parade of horribles,
all the speculative kind of journalisming. And look, I was
a reporter at the time. I'm sure I did maybe
two or three, you know, hundred stories of a similar nature.
Speaker 1: Okay, and then the rains came, and then we got rains.
Then all of a sudden it was West Nile virus.
Speaker 2: So you're gonna right now, you're gonna get all the
mosquitoes from the standing water and they're gonna kill you. Right,
So first the drought was gonna kill us, and then
when it rained, the mosquitoes are gonna kill us after
the rains, right, So there was That's when it became
because it shifted so quickly. It's kind of like the
climate change silliness. Everything is climate change. Just for the record,
lest I get.
Speaker 1: The pizza denier that the climate change, I don't deny
climate change. I believe the climate does change. I believe
there are people that are employed to tell me how
the climate is changing on a day to day basis.
Speaker 2: I know this. I spoke with one in studio on Friday.
They call them meteorologists, and they talk about how the
climate is changing every single day. So I believe it
does occur, and does it occur on a longer term,
a longer like a long term scale. Obviously, the dinosaurs
didn't kill themselves.
Speaker 1: Maybe they did. I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's possible. I wasn't around. Maybe they did kill themselves
when they saw like the meteor coming. They thought the
comet was the sign that they were waiting for. They
I'll put on the Nike sneakers.
Speaker 1: And killed themselves. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't think that's what happened, but I think the
records are pretty clear that the climate has in fact
changed over the course of the life span of the planet.
Speaker 1: I'm okay with that. Now, is man and women and persons? Okay?
Speaker 2: Is the human race or the Hue woman race or
the Hue person race. Is man causing global warming, climate change,
global cooling, or whatever it needs to be at any
given time. I suspect there probably is some kind of
an impact. How big, not worth impoverishing the entire planet.
That's just me, okay. I don't think that the juice
is worth the squeeze on this.
Speaker 1: I don't.
Speaker 2: I think that actually the Sun, and I've laid this
out very clearly. I've presented my evidence on this for
years that the Sun I believe is actively trying to
kill us, okay, and I think that we need to
take the threat more seriously. I think that the Sun
is actually more responsible for how hot our planet gets.
Have you seen the size of the Sun. I mean,
it looks small from where we are, but when you
get up close, not only is it really hot, but
it's really big, Like you could set off a nuclear
bomb on that thing and you wouldn't even see it.
That's how much fire and explosive activity there are, you know, EMPs,
the solar flares and stuff that knock out communications on
our planet. Right, So there are all of these things
that contribute. You got cloud cover, right, the Moon which
is like you know, it's got like this sun complex
where it's like smaller, but it's.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, could affect the water, you know, okay whatever.
Speaker 2: That's like the Wonder Twins like, okay, yeah, you can
make yourself an animal or and you make yourself like
a tear drop.
Speaker 1: Good for you.
Speaker 2: So I think that there are much bigger entities out
there that are having way more impact on our climate
than us. We're pretty small compared to the Sun and
the moon, just like your size. You know, even if
you put all the people on the planet together in
a big ball and like you mush us all together
into a ball, we're still smaller than the moon. So
I think, yeah, I think those things probably have more
of an impact.
Speaker 1: And again the key.
Speaker 2: Part here is is it worth impoverishing the entire planet
in order to get a reduction in the carbon emissions?
Speaker 1: And no, I don't think it is.
Speaker 2: I think that it's better to have people not dying
at age, you know, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen years old because
they can't stay warm or can't get cool. I like
my air conditioning, Sorry so, And I will start living
as if climate change is in fact an existential threat
when the people who tell me that it is start
living like it is an existential threat. Right when you
start behaving in a manner that comports with what you're
telling me, then I will believe that you believe what
you're telling me. But let me just take an example.
If you believe that climate change is going to cause
the complete incideration of the California coastline, right, then don't
you think you would take steps to mitigate the climate change?
If I believed that were the case, I think I would,
for example, put a lot of money into combating those effects.
I would put a lot of money into relocating everybody
off of the coastline. Which, by the way, did you
notice how close the fire was to the ocean? How
have y'all not figured this out yet? You got all
that water and got a fire right next to the water.
And I know I saw some planes. I think they
actually get some of them came from Canada. Eh, and
they flew Have you seen these things? They fly along,
they skim the water, and they suck up like thousands
of gallons of water, and then they fly over and
they dump the water on the fire. That seems like
a pretty good idea. I saw another guy. He ran
a pump out of his swimming pool and use that
water to keep his house from catching fire.
Speaker 1: He was just spraying down.
Speaker 2: He and his wife were spraying down all the house,
the roofline, and all the trees and shrubs. They just
kept spreading water all over the property and they saved
their house.
Speaker 1: Everything around them burned and they survived and their house survived.
I don't know.
Speaker 2: Maybe they were the only ones with a pool in
the neighborhood. I don't know, but that seems unlikely. How
have you guys not figured this out? All that water,
all that water, and you guys have all these water problems,
Like you have the biggest coastline I think of any state,
maybe Florida, Florida might well if you're counting islands, I
don't know, Okay, but like Florida or uh, California, you know,
just greedy, gluttonous. They take up like most of the
coast on the west coast, they have like the whole
side of the country over there, right, they don't want
to break it up and share it with a bunch
of different states.
Speaker 1: So they have the whole thing.
Speaker 2: And you got all that water and you can't figure
out how to get the salt out of it, which
we do know actually how to do the desalinization, so
like we're desalination whatever.
Speaker 1: So like you can do it, but for some reason
you don't want to do it again.
Speaker 2: When you start acting like these things are existential threats,
then maybe I will believe you that it is in
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a lifetime. Let me let's go over and talk with Lisa.
Hello Lisa, Welcome to the program. Hello Pete.
Speaker 3: How are you doing.
Speaker 1: I'm good. How are you well?
Speaker 3: My heart is hurting a lot. I was born and reared.
You raise cattle, you rear children. I was born and
reared in Pasadena, California. I grew up two blocks east
of Lake Street, which is completely gone. And I know
so many people, and I do want to give a
shout out to the Dina Dogs because they know who
they are. But no, Carola, I don't want to know
who that is. But they're all my peeps up in Altadena.
But I have a friend, I have several friends up
there who lost everything, like ten people I know that
lost everything, just off the top of my head. And
one of my friends, his father was Armenian and like
migrated over here built the house. His house is still
standing because it built out of stone and he is
a slate roof and they are literally that property is
at the base of the mountains of Altadina. Alan told
me his son that they cut off the water supply
and if it wasn't for the swimming pool and they
were able to get the pump happening. By the way,
I haven't been listening to your program. I just just
tuned in right now, but I just I need to
tell you what's happening. They cut off the water supply
up there, they shut it off.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've seen the reports people reporting that that that occurred.
There's also reports that one of the reservoirs was empty.
So there's also reports that the water pressure may have
given the same sort of.
Speaker 3: Dam right there. And there there's a dam right there
off of Maiden Lanes. You google it, you can find it.
But years ago there was another fire and the street
that I used to live on was like a terraced
down like Zane Gray Drive. About two houses made it out.
My street made it. The whole thing is gone. It's gone.
It's all gone. And it's by design. I know it's
by design.
Speaker 1: How do you know it's by design?
Speaker 3: Uh? Water? And also uh, there was a thing about
imminent domain.
Speaker 1: Thing.
Speaker 2: I know what eminent domain is? What thing about it
are you talking about?
Speaker 1: Also also no, well no, just focus on the eminent
domain part.
Speaker 3: Hold on, hold on, hold on. Let me be honest.
I have to go do my research. But I was
told about it. Hold on. But also why would the
insurance companies all of a sudden just ditch out four
months before this happened.
Speaker 2: We covered that last week. The insurance State Farm was
the big one. They said that they cannot cover all
of the losses in a catastrophic event, and so they
had asked for a premium increase. So they would not
go bankrupt basically in the event of a catastrophe. And
the state refused to allow them to hike the premiums
to cover a catastrophic event, and so they said, we
have to drop we can't renew the policies. Basically, so
anybody who's policy, who anyone who had a policy that expired,
would not get the renewal of that policy. And the
reason why State Farm Arm and the insurance carriers were
trying to raise the premiums was because they are aware
of the risks.
Speaker 1: In a way.
Speaker 2: I mean, these people, this is all they do is
they just calculate risks and when they see the policies,
they see fire suppression efforts, they understand the police and
fire budgets and stuff, and they're like, we can't afford
if there's another catastrophic event, we cannot afford to pay
out all of the claims.
Speaker 3: So because of the North North, Northern California, all of that,
it started. Those policy ideas started with Northern California. Here's
a little example. My father has been paying into his
insurance policy for twenty two years. When they first got here,
maybe a tree fell done, it fell down and it
almost hit the chimney. That was fine. But the first
time in twenty years we made a claim because the bathroom,
the upstairs bathroom started leaking. And all of a sudden,
like we're paying in, we're paying in, we're paying in.
And the first time we make a claim in twenty
years for a bathtub leak. Now you're going to raise
our insurance by six hundred dollars. How does that work?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, I'm not one to defend all insurance
companies and all practices, but that is actually how insurance works.
Speaker 1: You're not paying into an account.
Speaker 2: It's not like the money is accruing over time unless
you're doing like a whole life policy or something. But
like you, you're not. It's an annualized risk and the
pool is everybody in the risk. So the more people
start drawing out, then the company has to They've got
to balance their books. Like the insurance companies are not
going are They don't set up their business to go
out of business, so right, they're assessing the risks. All right,
I hope you had a happy holiday season, But tell
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your family and friends are gathered around, maybe y'all are
in the living room. You're laughing, swapping stories, reminiscing, and
then somebody says, hey, Dad, remember those old VHS tapes?
Did you ever get them transferred? And then the room
gets all quiet. All eyes are on Dad, who says, oh,
you know, well, I've been meaning to but I just
having gotten around to it. Look, don't let those priceless
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create a Video dot com. I have a message here
from Steve on the Twitter machine formerly known as x
It's a Pete tweet. Steve says, insurance companies operate what
is basically a legal Ponzi scheme. That's not I disagree
it's not a ponzi anyway. Meanwhile, the payer is reasonably
sure a claim will at some point be made and paid.
The insurer collects those premiums, all the while finding ways
to not pay.
Speaker 1: That's how it works.
Speaker 2: If you believe that that is how it works, then
don't ever buy insurance. It's very simple. Don't buy it
right now. I understand, like in some states you have
to have insurance on the car, so you have to
buy insurance there.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I will tell you whenever I've had an insurance claim,
they paid it. That's just my personal experience. When I
had an insurance claim on the house for the burglary
that we suffered and water damage that occurred, the insurance
company paid both of those claims. So the idea that
they never pay, that's not true.
Speaker 1: They do pay.
Speaker 2: Insurance companies do pay, but I understand sometimes they do not,
and some insurance carriers are better than others. I've always
I mean, I've been on USAA for twenty years, so
I can only speak for my experience, but other people's
mileage may vary, no doubt about it. But if you
don't want to pay for insurance and you're I mean,
all you're doing is, you know, you're basically like it's
like life insurance. You're betting that you're not going to die,
or no, your betting you are going to die, and
they're betting you're not.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's like when I buy the policy and I'm making
the payments every month, my bet ism I die. This
year i die, here's some more money, might die And
if I die, then you got to give some payout
to my loved ones. Right, So they do pay out
those life insurance. They pay life insurance all the time.
Nobody ever thinks about that when they think about the
insurance claims though, But they pay out on life insurance
all the time. The actuarials are pretty solid on the
life span and that and the risks and all of
that stuff. It's tougher when you're dealing with homes because
they are impacted by so many other types of policies
at the government level. And that's what we're seeing in California.
And this isn't new, by the way, this is not new.
Insurance companies have been dropping all sorts of policies and
coverages for the last three years, I think, and like,
we had a personal experience with this at our neighborhood
when we moved in, there was like a four foot
slide that was at the pool.
Speaker 1: It is no longer there.
Speaker 2: They paid to tear the slide down because nobody would
write insurance any longer on the slide. We could not
get insurance coverage for the slide, for the for the HOA,
so they tore the slide down. So like, the insurance
companies have been paying out. Also, by the way, this
also links back to payments that were made after all
of the destruction of the fiery but mostly peaceful Summer
of Love protests after Saint George Floyd died, insurance companies
took massive hits.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean again, it's gambling, right.
Speaker 2: You're you're making bets that if you you know that
some catastrophe doesn't happen, or does happen rather, and the
insurance company is betting that it doesn't, and they're betting
that they're going to be able to take more of
your money over the longer term than it's going to
cost in paying out. And at some point like, if
you have a bunch of claims on your car insurance,
they're either going.
Speaker 1: To drop you or they're going to raise your rates. Right.
Speaker 2: Everybody who has a teenage driver on their policy knows
this too. As soon as you put that kid on
the policy, the rates go through the roof. Why is
that well, because they know younger drivers cost more money,
They get into more accidents, they drive, they do more
stupid things. Right, Just like if you're a young male,
you're going to and you want to get a life
insurance policy, it's going to cost you more than a
young female because young men take more risks, more dangerous behavior.
But a younger man from a life insurance perspective is
going to be cheaper on a monthly premium cost than
a seventy year old guy. And I don't even think
you can get insurance policies that late in life right
to be very very expensive. So just take your money
and instead of you know, sending fifty dollars a month
to an insurance company, put it into a bank account.
And then here's the key, don't spend it. Don't spend
the money. Then you could be your own insurer. Right,
just save the money, Just put it aside, let it
a crue interest, maybe invest some of it and do
it that way. I'm not here to tell you insurance
companies are all awesome and they all make the right
decision all the time. I'm not trying to make that case.
What I'm arguing against is the generalization that they are
all terrible and they all.
Speaker 1: Deny claims all the time.
Speaker 2: That's it, and so I don't believe again, absent any
evidence what I would call proof, that would persuade me
into a different direction, my default is not to say
that this was somehow, as I think the callers suggested
earlier that this was planned, and that the State Farm
Insurance Company dropping these policies late last year, that that
somehow was indicative of knowledge of forethought right, that they
knew that they were going to be fires, and that
the Santa Ana wins were going to be so bad
and it was going to burn this particular neighborhood, and
so therefore they canceled all the policies. No, they were
making again, like this is what they do. They assessed risk,
they saw the risks. They were like, we can't afford
if this kind of thing happens. We could not afford
to pay this out, so we're not renewing policies.
Speaker 1: And by the way, they were right.
Speaker 2: They were right, which I take as a sign that
they know what they're doing because they have to, because
that's the private sector. They have to know what they're doing,
or they're out of business. They go bankrupt. And what
happens when they go bankrupt is they can't pay out
all the policies for everybody, for anybody. They're out of business,
and then everybody is harmed. That's why they tried to
raise the premiums and they weren't allowed to, so they
told the state of California, we're out again. Not an
expert in insurance, and I'm not a defender of all
insurance companies and practices. I'm just giving you what my
read on the situation is from all these many miles away.
All right, if you're listening to this show, you know
I try to keep up with all sorts of current events,
and I know you do too, And you've probably heard
me say get your news from multiple sources. Why well,
because it's how you detect media bias, which is why
I've been so impressed with ground News. It's an app
and it's a website and it combines news from around
the world in one place so you can compare coverage
and verify information. You can check it out at check
dot ground, dot news slash Pete. I put the link
in the podcast description too. I started using ground News
a few months ago and more recently chose to work
with them as an affiliate because it lets me see
clearly how stories get covered and by whom. The blind
spot feature shows you which stories get ignored by the
left and the right.
Speaker 1: See for yourself.
Speaker 2: Check dot ground, dot news slash pete. Subscribe through that
link and you'll get fifteen percent off any subscription. I
use the Vantage plan to get unlimited access to every feature.
Your subscription then not only helps my podcast, but it
also supports ground News as they make the media landscape
more transparent. Got a message here from stand an email
to Pete at the peatclendarshow dot com. That's k A
L I n e R. By the way, Hello.
Speaker 1: Mister Calender.
Speaker 2: I enjoy your show and depreciated your comments today on
the fires in California. I think a lot of folks
are missing the big picture regarding this and many other
catastrophes which occur where people should not be living to
begin with, market forces would likely keep people from building
or moving to areas which regularly experience catastrophic events such
as uncontrollable wildfires, hurricanes, and the like. The bottom line
is it illustrates. The bottom line it illustrates is that
we would all be much better off if the government
stayed out of everything and people just relied on market
forces to make decisions. It's always been clear that if
the federal government did not underwrite hazard insurance for coastal areas,
areas prone to wildfires, et cetera, we'd have much less
destruction and displacement due to these natural occurrences. If folks
want to pay exorbitant private insurance rates to build on
the coast or in areas where brush fires and mud
slides are guaranteed or self ensure, that's fine. But the
rest of us should not have to underwrite the negative
consequences of people taking on foolish risks. This article is
kind of long, but it's very interesting and relative. It's
a long read. Well, yes, it's longreads dot Com. But no,
I don't click linkstand But I ye, so I look
this argument. I understand I've made it for probably a
couple decades now actually that when we continue to bail
out building at the coast that constantly get its demolished
by hurricanes, at some point you have to ask why
is this the taxpayer's responsibility to keep doing so? Right again,
if you want to self ensure, you want to go
out and get insurance for it, that's fine. Now there
are some companies they just won't write the policies as
for not building in any place where a catastrophe could occur.
I don't know if that's actually feasible, because everywhere you
could have some sort of catastrophic event literally anywhere, So
I don't know. Again, the insurance companies, you know, do
the risk assessments and the like. Right, they look at, Okay,
you're in a flood prone area. They can tell that
based on the historical data. But like, for example, in
western North Carolina, that was a thousand year storm, So
I'm not sure how like so would you ban building
there and then everybody who doesn't get thousand year storm
insurance or flood insurance, mud slide insurance or whatever for
a one thousand year storm, then they're just sol right,
they're just out of luck. O, Well, shouldn't have built
in this area that hasn't seen a storm, you know,
since human beings started keeping records in the area. So
I'm not sure. I'm not sure how you would. I'm
not sure how that would apply to every single place,
you know, because I don't think any place is immune
from any kind of natural disaster. Someplaces are risk here,
no doubt about it, no doubt about it. But I
think that's what the insurance companies were talking about when
they said, look, we cannot afford a catastrophic event in
Los Angeles aka a wildfire, because they are looking at
the same data that now the rest of the country
is seeing about how inadequate the local government was and
the state government was in combating fire mitigation right and
doing fire mitigation. So they were looking at that saying,
we can't afford to replace all these multimillion dollar homes,
and a catastrophic event is going to bankrupt the company,
so we can't write any more policies, or you got
to let us raise the rates. And see that's the
other part is the government would not allow them to
raise the rates to raise premiums because then, of course,
you know, oh, that's not fair, and then people would
be all mad about it, and they would go down
to their city council meetings and stuff and lobby against
it or whatever. I'm at a loss, but market forces
I think would have better addressed it.
Speaker 1: Now. That being said, I'm.
Speaker 2: Not one who says we should abandon like I'm not
a capital l libertarian.
Speaker 1: You know, no fire departments we had that we looked.
Speaker 2: We've seen that model before in America, and the fire
departments would charge people money and then they would let
people's houses burn if they weren't paying. And they would
then also get into fist fights with other fire companies
when they arrived on the scene and they were trying
to make sales and Okay, I'm trying to fight the
fire over here, and no, no, that's our property and
all this other stuff. So it's a very messy kind
of a thing. And so I'm okay with local government
doing fire protection. That being said, if you're not doing
it well, you end up what we saw in Los Angeles.
It looks like, now, will that make people change course?
Will that make people say, you know what, we need
to focus on the highest order priorities for a local government.
I hope, but I don't live there, so I don't know.
We'll see what they decide to do come election season.
But there are a lot of reasons why it ended
up the way it has ended up.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of bad decisions.
Speaker 2: I went over this last week, right, bad policies, bad priorities,
and bad politics.
Speaker 1: Will any of those change again?
Speaker 2: I hope so, but I don't know. The death toll
now out there is up to twenty four with twelve
people still missing.
Speaker 1: All right, that'll do it for this episode. Thank you
so much for listening.
Speaker 2: I could not do the show without your support and
the support of the businesses that advertise on the podcast,
so if you'd like, please support them too and tell
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thank you so much for listening, and don't break anything
while I'm gone.