Poodle Springs

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This was the Raymond Chandler estate's first effort at making some money off an author who'd been dead for 30 years. It is (however) an honest co-authorship: Chandler wrote the first four chapters, while Robert B. Parker ably supplied the final 37. I try to ignore the inherent profit-driven ghoulishness, and instead concentrate on the pleasures of finding out what Philip Marlowe is up to.

What he's up to, at first, is settling into marriage with Linda Marlowe, née Loring, out in the tony desert town of Poodle Springs. Linda's daddy is rich, and so is she. Marlowe, on the other hand, is relatively poor, and wants to continue making his honest living doing what he knows: being a private detective, going down those famed mean streets, assuming he can find any of those in Poodle Springs. This is a continuing source of friction in their marriage. Like throughout the book, a continuing bone of contention that seems unresolvable.

Soon enough, Marlowe gets a client: Manny Lipshultz, who operates a gambling den outside the city limits. He has accepted an IOU from a shady photographer, Les Valentine, in the amount of $100,000. But now Valentine has vanished, and Lipshultz is worried that the casino's (anonymous) owner will find out and be irate.

From there on out, the plot gets complicated, and eventually homicidal.

I bought and read this in hardcover when it came out in 1989, being a fan of both Chandler and Parker. I think I liked it better on the re-read, about 35 years later. Parker got Marlowe pretty much right, although there are definite notes of Spenser in the wisecracks. (It may be heresy to say this, but: Parker's Spenser was always funnier than Chandler's Marlowe.)

I notice that HBO made a movie based on the book, with James Caan playing Marlowe. I didn't know that. I'll see if it's streamable!

“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..”

Today's headline is a famous quote from Milton's Paradise Lost; today's eye candy is (I think) a PL-inspired etching; our first item is from Allysia Finley at the WSJ, and she describes How the Left Turned California Into a Paradise Lost.

After the November election, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced his plans to “Trump-proof” the Golden State. How about fire-proofing? Los Angeles’s horrific fires are exposing the costs of its progressive follies, which even wealthy liberals in their Palisades palaces can’t escape.

Start with its environmental obsessions. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in 2019 sought to widen a fire-access road and replace old wooden utility poles in the Topanga Canyon abutting the Palisades with steel ones to make power lines fire- and wind-resistant. In the process, crews removed an estimated 182 Braunton’s milkvetch plants, an endangered species.

The utility halted the project as state officials investigated the plant destruction. More than a year later, the California Coastal Commission issued a cease-and-desist order, fined the utility $2 million, and required “mitigation” for the project’s impact on the species. This involved replacing “nonnative” vegetation with plants native to the state. You have to chuckle at the contradiction: California’s progressives want to expel foreign flora and fauna but provide a sanctuary for illegal immigrants.

Allysia is not kidding about that "Trump-proof" effort. The Hill reports that, after apparently having satisfied themselves that all other "burning" priorities have been adequately funded, California Democrats approve $50M budget to help Newsom ‘Trump-proof’ the state.

At Reason, J.D. Tuccille also (1) confirms my priors; and (2) satisfies my (admittedly deplorable) urge to rubberneck at scenes of tragedy and horror: California’s fire catastrophe is largely a result of bad government policies.

In the weeks, months, and years to come, there will be plenty of blame to share for the lapses that let the California wildfires of 2025 get so out of hand, costing lives and tens of billions of dollars. The fact that I wrote "of 2025" to distinguish these fires from other outbreaks should make it clear that these fires are anything but unprecedented, meaning that they should have been anticipated and their causes addressed. That they weren't points to a massive failure in policy.

As I write on Sunday, January 12, Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Kristin Crowley is pointing fingers at Mayor Karen Bass for stripping the department of key resources and funding, California Gov. Gavin Newsom vows to find out the reason fire hydrants went dry during efforts to battle the devastating blazes, and everybody wants to know why a major reservoir in Pacific Palisades was empty and offline for a year. When faced with hard questions, state and local officials including Bass and Newsom are practicing more impressive dodging and weaving than we saw during the Mike Tyson–Jake Paul fight.

But that dodging and weaving can't erase the serious missteps that led to this very predictable moment.

But one more thing about Paradise Lost: a lot of results from the Getty Image search are of Paradise, California. You may remember (as I didn't): that town was a victim of the Camp Fire, which happened in November 2018, killed 85 people, destroyed over 18,000 structures (mostly houses), part of $16.65 billion (2018 USD) in damages.

But by all means, California Democrats: Trump-proof your state.

Also of note:

  • A lone voice of sanity. Dominic Pino begs: Don't Make the Tax Code More Complicated, Republicans.

    One of the biggest wins in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), the Republican tax reform law passed at the end of 2017, was the doubling of the standard deduction. That reduced the number of taxpayers for whom it was advantageous to itemize deductions. In 2017, before the TCJA, 46.8 million taxpayers itemized; the next year, only 17.5 million did so. The share of taxpayers who itemize, which was stuck around 30 percent for decades, immediately dropped post-TCJA to around 10 percent, where it has stayed in the years since.

    That means about 20 percent of taxpayers who used to itemize no longer have to waste their time doing so. That’s good news for them, but it’s also good news for future tax reforms. When fewer taxpayers take advantage of carve-outs in the tax code, the carve-outs become easier to repeal entirely. Conservatives should be striving for a flatter income tax with a broader base and lower rates that is easy to pay, and the TCJA was a step in the right direction to getting there.

    Aside from doubling the standard deduction, the TCJA also reduced the cap on the mortgage interest deduction from a principal of $1 million to $750,000 and capped the state and local tax (SALT) deduction at $10,000. Now, with these provisions in need of renewal by the end of 2025, some Republicans, including Donald Trump, have said they want to raise or eliminate the SALT deduction cap.

    It falls to Audrey Fahlberg to report the sad news on that front: New York Republicans Are Optimistic about Lifting the SALT Deduction Cap, after Mar-a-Lago Meeting with Trump.

    Sigh. "New York Republicans". Who knew there were any still out there?

    A group of House Republicans from New York, California, and New Jersey departed a meeting with Donald Trump this weekend feeling optimistic that the president-elect will keep his campaign pledge to lift the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap — a controversial tax write-off that allows individual and married joint filers in high-tax states to deduct $10,000 from their state and local taxes from their federal income taxes.

    “The president didn’t back away from the commitment that he made on the campaign trail to fix SALT,” Representative Nick LaLota (R., N.Y.) told National Review on Saturday, a few hours after meeting privately with Trump in Mar-a-Lago alongside 15 other House Republicans and two of the president-elect’s political advisers.

    Talk about feeding the caricature of the GOP doing favors for fat-cat millionaires in their McMansions!

  • But at least the incoming FCC chief will be a warrior for free speach, right? Sadly, no. Joe Lancaster reports: The Incoming FCC Chief Is No 'Warrior for Free Speech'

    President-elect Donald Trump is set to take office next week, and his second-term agenda is taking shape as he fills out his administration. One of the first hires announced after the November election was the elevation of Brendan Carr, who sits on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), to be the agency's new head.

    Trump dubbed Carr "a warrior for free speech," and in response, Carr pledged to "dismantle the censorship cartel and restore free speech rights for everyday Americans." But Carr appears all too willing to wield the federal censorship apparatus on Trump's behalf.

    Over the weekend, Charles Gasparino reported in the New York Post that Carr is unlikely to quickly approve a proposed merger between Paramount Global—the media conglomerate whose assets include the Paramount Pictures film studio as well as the broadcast network CBS and its CBS News division—and Skydance Media, which produced recent hit films like Top Gun: Maverick and entries in the Mission: Impossible series.

    Apparently, the bee in Carr's bonnet (perhaps placed there by his soon-to-be boss) is CBS's creative editing of a 60 Minutes interview, replacing Kamala's word-salad answer to a question with something more coherent and responsive.

    Click through for Joe's use of a portmanteau with which I was unfamiliar: "Sanewashing". Usually an epithet deployed against softball coverage of Republicans, but Joe notes there's room for bothsidesism.

  • Once a grifter… NHJournal reports on local news from our state's capital city: Concord City Councilors Defend 'Cash Cow' DEI Consultant, Approve $40k Contract.

    Complaining about news coverage from the “anti-progressive New Hampshire Journal,” the Concord City Council approved a $40,000 contract for a DEI consultant who previously hosted a “get rich from consulting” event.

    NHJournal first reported on James Bird Guess, now president and CEO of Racial Equity Group, and his background, pitching his “From Broke to Millionaire Consultant” web page on Monday morning.

    NHJournal's previous story about James Bird Guess is here. And you definitely want to check out JBG's website plugging his 2020 Cash Cow Consultant Conference. For some reason, it's still alive. You don't want to miss the pic of him lighting a large cigar while sitting on the hood of his new Bentley.