So they're like a multi-tiered, vertically integrated, family-owned, privately held agribusiness.

And the way that they got that water was through the land that they bought.

That land that they bought came with a certain amount of water rights.

That land that they bought, those water rights actually came from this aqueduct system

that is run by the state of California. Once they got

those rights, they lobbied to privatize infrastructure that's part of the system, kind of an

underground reservoir storage system where any kind of excess water that ends up there

essentially becomes free from any kind of regulation

from the state, meaning they can do with it whatever they want. They can sell it to the highest

bitter. They can essentially treat it like any other commodity. So through their lobbying, they

help to deregulate the water supply even further in California and create essentially a deregulated

water market to the extent that it exists in California.

They bought land with water rights and then they worked on the political side behind the scenes

to sort of increase the amount of water that's under their control.

There's, you know, a really charged conversation happening right now about who is sort of politically

responsible for these

fires. I'm sure that you've seen that many segments of the right are making the argument

that somehow DEI, by which they mean the existence of black people. Yes.

The black mayor of, you know, Los Angeles is a personally responsible. Yes, yeah, yeah. Right. Or also the fire department didn't hire enough white men to put out the fires. These are the arguments that are going on. But more so broadly, conservatives are arguing that this is a consequence of liberal negligence, California being a blue state.

And I'm curious, I think there's no doubt that there is negligence.

And I don't personally have any interest in defending Democrats generally or whatever bad

actor happens to have been responsible in this instance.

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