Million Dollar Moron
Josh Flagg might be an outstanding realtor, but why is he all over cable news playing pretend emergency management expert unchallenged?
I admit, I am a fan of Million Dollar Listing: Los Angeles, namely because I do enjoy seeing some of the older, legendary homes in Los Angeles, courtesy of Josh Flagg. Flagg is also quite a character and entertaining to watch. All well and good. The show is what he’s good at, being a realtor, marketing, etc. There are lessons that can be learned for people in that world, because he is a creative personality.
Since the firestorms broke out in Los Angeles a week ago, Flagg has been on Fox News and CNN proclaiming for all to hear that the city has terribly mismanaged firefighting, and without saying her name, claimed mayor Karen Bass is incompetent and that this would’ve all been done so much better if his “good friend” Rick Caruso had been elected mayor instead. Bass is a black woman of modest wealth, while Caruso another old white boomer billionaire who hired private firefighters to protect HIS house—hardly a savior of the masses. It feels very racism-coded, even though I’m positive Flagg is not a racist. He’s a gay Jewish man who is also very wealthy, and the wealth is the real issue here. It creates a disconnect, a belief that because he is wealthy, and Caruso is wealthy, they are smarter than other people. This is the same mindset that drives the Silicon Valley TechBro claque—their expertise in one particular area that made them wealthy means they can do anything better than anyone else.
Someone tell me when Josh Flagg became an expert at wildfire prevention and emergency management.
Seriously, I want to know where Josh Flagg gets his credentials here. Show some evidence, not just baseless speculation, to demonstrate objectively that Karen Bass is the problem with the firefighting efforts. He hasn’t, of course, nor can he, because it’s not provable. Rick Caruso is an attorney and developer of real estate. He’s served on two Los Angeles commissions. That’s the extent of his public service. Public service matters for a lot of reasons, not least of all because the “run government like a CEO” mindset is shallow and ignorant. Government does not exist to turn a profit. Government exists for the public good. The public good requires thoughtful leadership, knowledge of what that means, and the desire to implement policies equitably. CEOs, on the other hand, exist to make profits. They have grown more obscenely wealthy at the expense of their workforces, and they make decisions that show scant knowledge of strategic thinking on a regular basis. That mindset is utterly incompatible with being a mayor.
Furthermore, his buddy Caruso has been perfectly happy to fund a massive campaign to bypass building restrictions and the state’s environmental protections so he could develop a shopping mall. Those environmental protections have been in place to help reduce the likelihood of these disasters. They aren’t bureaucracy for the sake of making life difficult. They exist because the state is massive, with a massive population (39,128,186, to be exact, which would rank it 37th out of 195 nations were it independent), and as such, needs to be governed in that fashion. Caruso, like any CEO, saw an obstacle to crush, spending over $12 million in an ultimately failed effort. He likely could’ve met those environmental obligations for less, the same way that corporations spend far more money to crush unions than to pay fair wages, but again, the mindset is not about the greater good. It’s just greed.
It should also be noted, of course, that the anchors hosting these segments bear responsibility for not challenging Flagg’s expertise to make such glib assessments. I don’t have much hope for Fox News, but Kaitlyn Collins at CNN surely could have interrupted after the second time Flagg name-dropped Rick Caruso to ask him for some evidence to back his opinion, or some experties about how it could’ve been handled better. Just as she did when faced with Donald Trump’s bulldozer tactics at the town hall she questioned him at, Collins froze in the face of Flagg’s breezy self-assuredness. I won’t go into my long-held belief that she’s not cut out for anchoring, but the question is low-hanging fruit and Collins still couldn’t find a way to ask it.
Lastly, and this was the other low-hanging fruit of a question that Collins couldn’t locate if it were bathed in heavenly light with a chorus of angels singing, these were historic firestorms. Winds in excess of 100 miles/hour with extraordinarily dry ground outside of the typical fire season. Embers were carried for miles by the winds, setting alight multiple areas at once. I really would love to know how this was somehow preventable according to Emergency Management and Firefighting Expert Josh Flagg.
We are all about to be taught once again starting in a week that competency matters. We’re about to see, in real-time during a massive disaster, how utterly disinterested Republicans are in public service or good governance. Caruso, a Republican nearly all his life—let’s face it, he only stops being a Republican when he’s getting ready to run for office in liberal Los Angeles (the 2013 mayor’s race that he ultimately passed on, and the 2022 race)—likely would have done worse, because good governance isn’t profitable, and turning profits is the only thing Caruso excels at. His buddies, Republican senators, are currently floating the idea of tying a ton of strings to disaster relief for California. That would be no different if Caruso were mayor, because they’d demand something of Governor Gavin Newsom instead. Once we go down that road, society will truly collapse—which would hardly benefit Flagg or Caruso. That is something that Flagg should be spending time talking about, not pretending to be an expert on things he is not.