Every day, we learn more about the monumental ineptitude of elected officials in California.
At the peak of the Los Angeles wildfires, the hydrants dried up.
Green lawyers and their representatives blocked the construction of new reservoirs for the past 46 years. The last one was built in 1979, when Jimmy Carter was president and Charlie’s Angels led the TV ratings.
Permits to clear away flammable vegetation sat on the desks of bureaucrats awaiting approvals that never came.
Governor Gavin Newsom stopped a plan to pipe water from the lush north to the parched southland. He preferred to flush millions of gallons of precious snowpack into the ocean so that the smelt fish might enjoy a ride down to its natural habitat. Newsom blew up dams that provided clean hydroelectricity so that Native Americans might fish for salmon in the way of their ancestors. This, in a state that regularly suffers rolling brownouts.
California spends $41.5 billion a year on climate change, homelessness, and illegal migrants. Just two percent of that amount would double the budget of the LA fire department, according to Michael Shellenberger.
When regulators capped the profits of insurance companies, carriers ran away from Los Angeles like Bambi out of the forest. The same political class underwrote the risks themselves, collected premiums from the public but forgot to fund the company, leaving thousands of victims without coverage. The backup plan requires the rest of California to pick up the tab.
Nobody could be this incompetent and get through their day. These are not simple blunders. They are deliberate policies meant to turn back the clock to a trouble-free time, a time when Native Americans fished from riverbanks, when smelts ran unvexed to the sea, and when nobody needed insurance, let alone electricity. In days of yore, Mother Nature regularly cleansed the earth with fire, and she did not require a permit.
This is a dangerous fantasy, a harmful yearning for a pre-industrial future that is wildly impractical for the 40 million people who now live in the state.
But dreams die hard, especially in California. Leaders who bungled the prevention of wildfires have found other culprits to blame: climate change and disinformation spread by Republicans.
As if the billions spent by the state on climate change would zero out the carbon emissions of China and India. As if driving EVs would somehow mitigate the wildfires that have torched Malibu before mankind ever set foot in the place. As if elected officials would have pre-empted the problem, but for the Magic Studio
Jesus Christ is King
