AT via Magic Studio
Every day, we learn more about the monumental ineptitude of elected officials in California.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 <img alt captext="AT via Magic Studio” class=”post-image-right” src=”https://conservativenewsbriefing.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/california-dreamin.jpg” width=”450″>disinformation spread by their enemies, who, incidentally, have not enjoyed real power in 50 years. These are the myths required to keep the antediluvian dream alive in California.
Their response betrays an indifference to practical governance in favor of fantastical theories, a willingness to overlook simple solutions in favor of complex and exotic explanations.
Why wasn’t the underbrush cleared? Climate change caused the vegetation to grow faster than usual. Why were so many firetrucks out of service? We need DEI-certified vendors and we are prepared to wait until we find them. Why was the reservoir in the Pacific Palisades empty for seven months at the height of fire season? We had to repair a drain to comply with environmental regulations. Why was the damage so great? Well, you know people really shouldn’t be living here anyway.
It’s not difficult to imagine a counter-factual where vegetation was cleared and firetrucks were pre-deployed at critical points, where helicopters circled to contain small fires before they became conflagrations, where the reservoirs overflowed, where the mayor heeded weather warnings instead of flying off to Africa. These are practical steps that any capable government would undertake. It’s not hard to do. But it’s impossible if your mind is preoccupied with abstractions.
The disconnect between pragmatic local solutions and let’s-make-the-world-a-better-place aspirations is wide and growing wider.
Sixty years ago, Governor Pat Brown built a water system, complete with dams, that delivered millions of gallons where it was needed. For this and other infrastructural feats, he became known as the Builder of Modern California. If California had trains, he would have made them run on time. Brown did not dabble in geo-politics. He did not have a foreign policy — unlike present-day Los Angeles. He did not try to cool the planet. He was too busy taking care of the people’s business.
Compare this performance to that of his son Jerry Brown, aka Governor Moonbeam, whose accomplishments included a moratorium on nuclear power and the repeal of drilling incentives. He set auto emissions standards higher than federal guidelines. He initiated the ultra-green high-speed rail project back in 1979, which has been in low-speed construction for almost 50 years — despite $30 billion of expenditure. He restricted an $11 billion water bond in favor of the infamous smelt.
But Governor Moonbeam was always an A-list celebrity. He dated then superstar Linda Ronstadt and tried to make her first lady by running for president. In between his four terms as governor, he studied Buddhism in Japan and prayed with Mother Theresa in India. Governor Moonbeam lived at the lively intersection of fame and politics. As a citizen of the world, he played to a global audience. He shared an abiding love of the earth with like-minded illuminati everywhere — regardless of the cost or inconvenience to local yokels.
And this is where California dreams shatter against the hard realities of the desert: the place will burn without regard to the good intentions of its residents. Survival here demands more water pipes, reservoirs, and desalination plants — and fewer utopian notions from the smart set. More workhorses and fewer show ponies. And a lot more insurance.
This has been a fun ride for one-world politicos. They spent vast sums of public money on green projects that will never move the needle on global warming. They lived off unprovable claims that they were saving the earth and blamed their failures on knuckle-dragging climate deniers. That’s over.
It’s time to put water back into the hydrants.
Image: AT via Magic Studio
