The entire federal budget for landslide research is $3.5 million a year - far less than the property value lost on a single day when 17 mansions slid down a hill in 2005 in Laguna Beach, Calif.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The scientific effort to inform the public about landslide risks often runs head-on into powerful economic interests.
We're the largest home improvement company today, and we did $30 billion last year, or less than 10 percent of the total amount of building materials sold in the U.S. So when people ask, how much runway left does Home Depot have, it's an awful lot.
For much of this decade, both Congressional and administration budget projections showed a decline in science and technology accounts of between 20 and 30 percent in real dollars. The real impact to date has been far less severe.
Even with good maps, there's no guarantee that the public will get the word about landslide hazards, or that state and local governments will take action to discourage or prevent building in dangerous areas.
We believe the 36, nearly 40, billion pound discount given for a right to buy houses took a million houses out of the public housing sector which is desperately needed for rent.
There aren't many sources of money in San Diego, apart from local partnerships and local investors. It's pretty starkly polarized to Silicon Valley.
You can look at the state of California, which is on a pathway to destruction because they expanded government too much, thinking that there would always be someone to pay for it.
In the U.S. alone, weather disasters caused $50 billion in economic damages in 2010.
Do you know how many houses all of the nonprofits have built? No more than 5,000 in five years. Do you know how many we lost? Two hundred thousand.
I lost $35,000 in less than a week at the Mirage in Las Vegas.