- When a city is being evacuated, the demand for airline tickets out of there is what economists call "inelastic". Some report that the airlines are taking advantage of this in Yellowknife. Meanwhile in BC, around 2500 people are being evacuated in the Kelowna area, and a bunch of people needed to be rescued from a lodge. And some say that Facebook/Meta's blocking of news has led to some people not getting warnings as quickly.
- Meanwhile, in Maui the head of the county's emergency management agency has resigned following criticism of his failure to raise the alarm. In line with tradition, though, he says it's for "health reasons". To be fair, his explanation for not using the alarms makes some sense; the alarms were put in place to warn of tsunamis, not wildfires, and he feared that if they sounded people would move away from the ocean and towards the fire.
- Beyond the death toll (111 and counting), the cultural damage from the fire could be immense. Better get used to it; over the coming decades this will happen to a lot of cultures as the environment in which they developed changes beyond recognition.
- Interestingly, evidence is now coming up for human-made fires contributing to the extinction of North American megafauna.
- Toronto is looking at a municipal sales tax. Not necessarily a bad idea, but here's a thought - what about a municipal income tax, levied on any income earned at an employer there? That way, people who commute into the city would pay their fair share towards the city that they depend on for employment. However, I don't think Ontario (or any other province) allows cities to do that today, though this article states that it was allowed before the world wars, and is still collected by many cities in Europe.
- In Massachusetts, where they aren't so afraid of income taxes, they've added a new tax bracket for incomes above a million dollars, which among other things will enable them to fund school lunches for the entire state. Something to learn from.
- In that other M state with four syllables, a mistrial has been declared in what appears to be a racially motivated shooting of a FedEx driver, because the police withheld key evidence against the suspects. Supposedly this was done in error, though one could be forgiven for wondering if it was intentional given Mississippi's reputation.
- Trump must be really scared if he's actually listening to his lawyers' advice to shut the hell up about the Georgia case.
- A municipal councillor in the RM of Springfield has been suspended for saying the quiet part out loud.
- Uh-oh, there are signs of a new COVID wave, and the tweaked boosters aren't available yet.
- The MLCC strike continues; meanwhile scabs are being offered $20 an hour. It was just mentioned on the radio that MPI staff have also voted to strike, though I can't find an article on this yet.
- Hydrogen fuel cell cars are losing the battle with battery electric vehicles. They still have some folks in their corner, though, perhaps because a lot of the hydrogen used in them is made from natural gas.
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