In May of 2003, I had a town hall meeting in the San Diego part of my district. At the end of the meeting, a park ranger from Anza Borrego came up to me and said “we have a problem, the fuel load in our state parks has reached dangerous levels.” After a discussion about what he meant, he said that the then Gray Davis administration appointees to the Department of State Parks would not allow the rangers (and others) clean up the parks to remove dead trees, vegetation and other flammables. He said “we are going to have a fire of epic proportions. People will be hurt and property will be damaged by the resulting fires.”
In September of 2003, a fire, bigger than the one in Los Angeles, hit Southern California, closing down Interstate 5 and 15 in San Diego, Interstate 15 in San Bernardino County, the Ontario Airport, and burning hundreds of homes in the more rural parts of San Diego, Riverside and San Bernardino Counties. The only difference between the fire then, and the fire in Los Angeles now, is that the 2003 fire did not burn celebrities homes, so it wasn’t national news.
So why the title of this article, what does that fire have to do with “Newsom-proofing” America. The fire happening right now in Los Angeles is happening because a conscious decision was made by political appointees at the state and local level to purposefully NOT clean up the dangerous fuel in the Santa Monica Mountains, political appointees of Newsom and the Los Angeles leftists, who believe that nature should be allowed to take its course, that is the “environmentally sensitive” thing to do. Of course, how does nature deal with dead trees and vegetation? It burns it, and if that fuel happens to be close to people’s homes, well tough, they will burn too.
So Trump is right. A state that refuses to control its fires should not look to the feds to bail them out. They need to change their policies. California, if it wants federal help, has to Newsom-proof California. The policies that led to the out of control Los Angeles fire either ought to be changed, or California, not the federal government, has to pay the price for the damage caused by their dangerous policies
It is not just fire safety issues that pose dangers to, or impose undue burdens on, Californians. We have all seen how the policies of Newsom and his Democrat allies, have enacted have placed Californians at risk. Policies like welfare payments are more important than crime prevention, so the state cuts back on prison construction and law enforcement, and gives that money and other free stuff to illegal aliens, which results in more violent felons on our streets and not in prison. Policies like the draconian efforts to punish healthy people and small business during the COVID scare (policies like forcing residential care facilities for the elderly to provide housing to COVID sufferers, thereby putting at risk the most vulnerable citizens, the elderly, who then died from COVID at unprecedented levels). While healthy people were prevented from going to restaurants or attending church under the guise of preventing the spread of the disease, Newsom and his cronies were enjoying fine meals in the establishments of his choice, killing older people, and putting hundreds of small businesses out of business. We are still feeling the effects of that.
The policies of the leftists in the state government regarding our schools have made those schools some of the worst in the nation, while state funding has grown enormously and the bureaucrats who run those schools live in luxury off the taxpayer’s dime.
I could go through hundreds more policies imposed on Californians by Newsom and his leftist allies here in California that have damaged the elderly, the small businesses, the working people and the children of California at risk, but that would take more words than this format can accommodate, but the fact is, Newsom and the Democrat majority in Sacramento should worry less about Trump, and more about the dangerous policies they pursue.
Right now, Californians who are sick and tired of these leftists destroying this beautiful state, can leave and go to live somewhere else in America. If Newsom and his allies ever got what they wanted in the federal government, there would be no place for them to go to escape the oppression of the left in California, and all the dangers that go along with leftist policies.
Trump-proof California? Save the $50 million. The feds should continue their policy of Newsom-proofing America. Save the American taxpayer the cost of paying for the failed policies of the California leftists. Perhaps that will cause the voters of California to think about what they are doing the next time they vote to keep the leftists in Sacramento in power.