Scientist: Preventing Fires Like Maui’s
“What went wrong in Maui?” asks engineering prof Costas Synolakis at The Wall Street Journal. Fires last month in Rhodes, a Greek island of similar size and economy to Maui, brought just one casualty, a volunteer firefighter, as 30,000 people were evacuated.
Maui saw only 11,000 tourists evacuated and at least 96 deaths; “many people didn’t receive timely warnings,” nor reportedly did sirens blare. Greece learned from a 2018 fire in Mati, rolling out new warning systems as recommended by a Synolakis-led investiagion.
Advanced-detection technology, “improved emergency alert systems,” better first responses and proper forest management can prevent “disasters.”
Conservative: More Media Smears of DeSantis
The media “are playing” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ suspension of State Attorney Monique Worrell “as an attack on democracy itself, not as the removal of a prosecutor whose manifestly lousy decisions have made the people of Florida decidedly less safe,” gripes Becket Adams at The Hill.
“Florida’s governor has the legal authority to suspend state attorneys,” and Worrell “has offered no satisfactory explanation for her office’s remarkable leniency toward violent repeat offenders,” including failing to charge a man who “allegedly went on to shoot five people, killing three, including a 9-year-old girl and a 24-year-old television news reporter.” Just “pretend for a moment [the media] understand DeSantis has the power to suspend state attorneys. If, for them, Worrell doesn’t clear the bar for dereliction of duty and incompetence, then who ever could?”
Ed desk: NYC Spends More, Educates Less
Despite losing “more than 136,000 students, or roughly the same population as the entire city of Pasadena,” Calif., over four years, scoffs Reason’s Matt Welch, the New York City public school system’s budget has grown by $4 billion and it’s “set to go on an expensive hiring spree, thanks to” the state’s NYC-only “class-reduction law.”
Its “estimated per-student cost” this fall will be $38,000, and will hit $44,000 in fiscal 2026. “The system as it stands bears all the markings of a vicious policy circle. More than one-third of New York City’s gargantuan budget is spent on a system that tens of thousands of families each year are hell-bent on escaping” due to “government dysfunction bordering on the openly malfeasant.”
Justice watch: Special Counsel Corruption
The choice of special counsel to oversee Hunter Biden’s case shows “the Justice Department is outrageously biased leftward,” notes the Washington Examiner’s Quin Hillyer. “Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed to the post the same man, U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who already has fumbled (or perhaps tried to bury) the investigation for more than five years.”
The decision “is a major self-contradiction” as “Garland and Weiss have insisted [for months] that Garland already had ‘ultimate authority’ to file charges against the presidential son in any jurisdiction.” More proof of corruption: If the Justice Department’s controversial decisions “were random, then both conservatives and liberals would” complain. But it’s only conservatives complaining because all the “strange calls seem to disadvantage the Right while letting the Left off scot-free.”
From the right: Time To Heed Mayor Adams
“To his credit, Mayor Adams has tried to prevent migration into New York from resulting in total public breakdown as seen in the ever-growing tent encampments that form in California cities,” observe National Review’s editors. Adams is wrong to demand the feds loosen work-authorization rules, as that “would be only another magnet driving up immigration numbers” and expanding the pool of exploited laborers. But he’s right to say “the current rate of immigration to New York City is ‘not sustainable.’ ” Team Biden needs to begin “enforcing the law at the border, and tightening up our asylum procedures.” The administration’s current neglect of immigration law “congratulates itself as humanitarian even as it exposes more immigrants and asylum seekers to dangerous journeys and exploitation.”
Compiled by The Post Editorial Board
Source link: https://nypost.com/2023/08/14/preventing-fires-like-mauis-special-counsel-corruption-and-other-commentary/