California is a Totalitarian Swamp Nightmare

Drain That Swamp

California’s administrative state pushes a messianic faith that infinite government is the only path to salvation and “fairness.” Totalitarian politicians wants to frighten people into suspending civil liberties and canceling dissenters. In the words of Ronald Reagan, “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”

When “help” is vapid, ephemeral, and fatally incompetent the public must demand a thorough investigation and analysis of mistakes to prevent recurrence. Over a week ago, Governor Newsom said, “It’s impossible for me to express the level of appreciation and cooperation we’ve received from the White House and this administration."

Sloppy Joe (SJ) Biden helped Newsom fix what? One week later, over twenty more people are dead and rebuilding estimates have surpassed 100 billion dollars. As usual, SJ talked about himself instead of “we” or victims. Sloppy Joe, in a senile improvisational tangent, veered to his new great grandson and the miraculous salvation of his house (no mention of the over 1100 structures that had burned to ashes). Then SJ jetted off to his Maryland beach house, pleased with himself, although dispirited that his final beach junket to Italy was cancelled.

“Progressives” have leveraged machine politics into total control over California and Los Angeles for so long, that certain stable geniuses have painted the wildfires as the direct result of liberal policy. President Trump pointed out that most of California’s problems stem from decades electing incompetent Democrats:

Los Angeles’s Mayor Bass underfunded and then cut funding to the city’s firefighters, which prevented necessary “pre-deployment.” The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) drained a crucial reservoir that may have prevented a bad fire from becoming catastrophic.

Governor Gavin Newsom, and pet mayors like Bass, incentivize homelessness by giving free housing, allowing open-air drug dealing, and ignoring anti-camping laws/encouraging death trap tent cities across the state.

CA politicians were warned, catastrophic fires repeatedly predicted, and plausible solutions were available. Had thorough plans been discussed and implemented, we would never see the current pathetic response. LA county is on the Pacific Ocean. With access to that much water, there hasn’t been a plan implemented over the past fifty years to desalinate and run that water to hydrants and strategic locations? Governor Newsom claimed that, because of global warming and Donald Trump, "Every day is fire season now in California, particularly around Los Angeles. We've got to prepare like it's fire season year-round."

It sounds like Newsom wants new lock down powers. Will he shut down his state economy, again, just to hurt the economy while Trump is president? Does anyone put it past him?

If scripted politicians believed their own unproven hysterical narrative about climate change, preparing for this fire should have been the number one priority for about fifty years (when the federal narrative stopped warning that we were entering a new ice age – with the same zero predictive success we now see with “climate change”). Instead, we hear stories about how their hydrants are dry because they’re out of water and rain fall has been erratic…in a desert, where annual rainfall has held a consistent range since, at least, 1893.

The California censorship state blames global warming, never trying to establish a causal link of…anything to anything…and the spinners, who script the narrative, believe that they can stop, slow and/or limit an alleged existential threat from global warming…by forcing people to drive “green” cars and prohibiting natural gas drilling. Is that California’s full fire prevention strategy? If anyone suggests that a narrative, unabashed disconnect from all reality, is not an effective fire prevention strategy, that person can be hunted as a domestic terrorist, or a white supremacist, or whatever. The charge doesn’t matter, because the litigation costs are enough to destroy most lives and most families. During California lock downs, surfers were arrested for not wearing masks.

So, with zero consequences, and no risk of losing the next election, California, the US state with the highest taxes, cut fire funding. Governor Newsom & Mayor Bass diverted billions from fighting and prevention to illegal immigrants, homeless subsidies, and climate projects with lucrative kickbacks. The narrative was more important that lives. Politicians who grew wealthy from insane orthodoxies, pretend to save lives, are happy to stay within current left wing bubble narratives — to celebrate Joe Biden’s mental fitness long after his senility was plain; to be charmed by Kamala Harris’s cloying JOY; to say COVID vaccines are “safe and effective” while burying real concerns; to sentence over one million Ukrainians to die in a proxy war with Russia that “defends democracy,” in totalitarian Ukraine — and may have little fear of getting hunted by the intelligence agencies and lawyers from the east coast. For any who have run afoul of leftist dogma, it’s impossible to take murderous incompetence and dissenter targeting as well intentioned.

Newsom and puppet local mayors continue to smear/cancel anyone who shines light on looming catastrophes. Then they frame some alleged supervillain (President Trump, Elon Musk, RFK Jr., JK Rowling, Joe Rogan, Matt Taibbi, Vladimir Putin, etc.) and pretend to need more unconstitutional power to stop alleged threats and save democracy, or whatever. When the Swamp narrative is the priority, smears and blame trump solutions.

Effective organizations and governments have direct lines of authority and accountability. Whether plans work or go catastrophically wrong, assigning credit or blame is straightforward. This postmortem vetting process is crucial for any organization that wants competent problem solvers in place during crisis periods.

In a state like California, and cities like Los Angeles, organizational competence is inverted. The state and city’s splintered structure of mismanagement ensures that everyone shares a piece of the blame for these devastating fires. Effectively, nobody is blamed for failure, and everyone takes credit for “doing their best” in a shitty system.

Governor Newsom is now spinning the fires as an “opportunity” to rebuild, under his stewardship, an “LA 2.0.” This includes enacting an anti-“price gouging” measure all but guaranteed to create shortages in materials and construction services, compounding an already deadly stack of errors. Newsom’s full plan may cost over one trillion dollars, which the federal government must provide, if they care about victims of tragedy…at least two of which appear to be transgendered. Those two must be made more than whole first or all voters are Hitler.

California’s state insurance fund is prepared to cover about $6,000,000,000 in claims. Private insurance companies left the state, because of insane regulations. Similar regulations make it almost impossible to build new houses. This supply shock artificially raised the value of CA homes by millions for the wealthiest homeowners. So, any requested LA bailout will subsidize thousands of woke Hollywood inflated home values. If Newsome can guilt federal politicians into providing the mind-numbing funding a rebuild requires, it will still take at least ten years to navigate state regulations and rebuild. Most local builders have also been regulated out of CA.

Bill Clinton called policies that barely pretend to solve problems, “micropolicies.” A system that doesn’t care about solving problems seems oblivious to suffering. No narrative can replace the horror of watching and feeling our lives collapse. Court ordered transparency can reveal the depths of the California swamp. That swamp must be drained. The swamp water could put out fires after each annual underbrush burn off…for instance. Does anyone have a better idea?