By Elliott Brack
Editor and Publisher, GwinnettForum
JAN. 14, 2025 | Catch-up day on subjects we’ve been wanting to mention.
It’s hard for me to grasp the scope and horror of the California wildfires. It is so destructive and so vast that it really boggles the mind.
It’s hard to imagine that you might go out for dinner, or to a movie, or some other gathering one night, and return home to see your house being gutted in flames, as well as many of the other houses in your neighborhood. Think of all a lifetime of work and memories and suddenly you are left with nothing!
It’s also difficult for us to grasp the vastness of the fires, and of many elements of California itself. For instance, Los Angeles County consists of 4,084 square miles. Here in Gwinnett, we have 437 square miles, so it’s about nine times as big.
And it is also about as thickly populated as Gwinnett. Los Angeles County’s 2023 population estimate is 9,663,000. That’s nearly 10 million people, about ten times the size of Gwinnett. It is vast and densely packed, similar to Gwinnett. And it has, can you believe this, 88 independent cities, compared to Gwinnett having now 17.
Altogether, the most recent figure we’ve seen is that the California wildfires have burned 467,000 acres. Such destruction! You could see how some might think the end of the world is near, since the Bible teaches the earth would never be destroyed with water again, but with fire.
The Masters: Want to go? Tickets are scarce at this time of year, but this week we got an invitation to go to the 2026 Master’s. If you want to go, all you have to do is fork over $89,900 for eight people lodged in a private home for three nights. You only get tickets for Saturday and Sunday with premium food and an open bar. Doesn’t say where you will be parked. At this price, they ought to fly you in on a drone!
Current economic statistics: Recently the Department of Labor released the final jobs report of Joe Biden’s presidency. The nation added 256,000 new jobs in December, a number significantly higher than economists expected. That brings the total number of jobs created under Biden to 16.6 million and makes Biden’s the only administration in history to have created jobs every month. Under the Biden administration, the nation has also had the lowest average unemployment rate of any administration in 50 years, ending at 4.1 percent.
The 47th president, Donald Trump, will come to office with our nation in the best shape it’s been in since at least 2000. We read this assessment the other day:
“No U.S. troops are fighting in foreign wars, murders have plummeted, deaths from drug overdoses have dropped sharply, undocumented immigration is below where it was when Trump left office, stocks have just had their best two years since the last century. The economy is growing, real wages are rising, inflation has fallen to close to its normal range, unemployment is at near-historic lows, and energy production is at historic highs. The economy has added more than 700,000 manufacturing jobs among the 16 million total created since 2020.”
Thank you, Joe Biden.
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