OP/ED - The California Wildfires: An Orgy of Incompetence Leading to Disaster

MONTGOMERY COUNTY, TX -- The old saying of “As goes California, so goes the Nation,” is definitely not the case now. America’s largest populated state is killing itself faster than a heroin junkie on Skid Row, and it shows with many of its residents, those that can afford it, fleeing the state in droves. The state's elected officials, Democrats, voted in by large percentages by the way, routinely install insane policies that devastate the populace as a whole, and make living in a most beautiful state increasingly an insurmountable task. A new theory being bandied about ‘bioleninism,’ BioLen, or Biological Leninism; is a term where far-left believers of Leninism, create a slow revolution of disaster, added to their current failed economics and socialist drip theory. So by a one-party Democrat state installing the most inadequate leaders, like the aptly renamed Governor Gavin Newscum, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, a verified Marxist-Leninist with a dangerous past. Thus, you get policies like state-wide water rerouting to protect one small snail darter fish, while whole neighborhoods of $3-9, up to $85 million dollar homes are wiped from the map. And on top of that, the LA Fire Department gets its budget slashed by almost $18 million dollars going into a dry winter.

President Donald Trump was right during his first Administration in saying after a bad fire in 2018, that California has never been interested in fire prevention, and least since the 1980s; when firebreaks and brush management programs were ended, stopped due to the migration pattern of some mouse species. The state has since been in an environmental death spiral. Sadly, Democrats always have the habit of doing the exact opposite of whatever President Donald Trump says. They never took Trump’s suggestion on forest management seriously, so no mitigation efforts were ever put in place. During the pandemic, Democrats allowed hundreds of thousands of Americans to die for political reasons, because Trump suggested the use of Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine; medications which both were considered effective in the end to combat the Covid-19 virus. But Democrats, not wanting to be outshined by Trump, forbid the use of the meds in their scopes of their influence (Dem city and state treatment facilities), and will no doubt be brought to light with future hearings in The House.

With the California fires, some are calling for the arrest of elected officials, for the blatant misuse of their powers that did not protect the citizens, their homes and possessions. In the coming months and years ahead, the question will be brought to bear in getting some answers as to why so many Californians were allowed to have their homes burned to a crisp. And be not misinformed, California was already a burning wreck before the first sparks of the January 2025 fire season were ever lit. The state’s insurance companies, dragged down by incessant mandates by a legislature incapable of coherent business thought, made doing business in California a nightmare. So the big insurance companies left. California’s government overreach is a big arm sweeping corporations, companies, and people off a cliff, to exact that Biological Leninism by installing incompetent people (DEI hires) into roles of importance, and going off in directions that defeats the purpose of their positions, whether elected or appointed. For instance, Governor Newsom, blamed local officials for the water crisis he created in rerouting water destined for the hardest fire areas affected. LA Mayor Karen Bass was out of the country, knowing full well her town was about to burn, and LA’s Fire Chief, Kristen Crowley, a proud member of the LGBTQIA+ community, was more interested in creating the fire department’s first Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion office, obviously hell bent on reducing the amount of white and male firefighters in her department; that she sees as a virus in the LAFD.

California’s Prop 1 Water Storage Investment Program, which passed in 2014, a $4.4 billion dollar initiative, still has no viable water storage solution that could have gone into at least helping mitigate some of the damage. In fact, in 25 years, Cali voters have approved no less than eight water bonds, totalling $27 billion, and who knows how many millions of acres and property have been burned in that time, not including this year’s crop of damages. At least one major reservoir was offline when the fires began. Many firefighters ran out of water while trying to douse the flames, and I’m betting that the owners of those multi-million dollar homes don’t have millions of dollars sitting around to rebuild. And if you do rebuild, the insurance premium on the home is going to be literally insane, and that’s coupled with the already impossible prices that the state presents with just going to the grocery store, or the gas station.

The sad reality in this whole thing is that the people that lived in those houses that were destroyed, the very ones that burned, 58-65% of them voted for the same elected officials that maintained the status quo; that allowed for the fires to happen in the first place. I’ve always said, Democrat supporters vote against their own self interest, and this is a perfect case for supporting my supposition. Rebuilding for many will not be obtainable, and the government, federal on down; will not be forking out replacement millions so residents can go back to their previous Los Angeles lifestyles. And you can bet Congress will not be given out billions in resources without some change in California policies to prevent wildfires in the future.

Numerous neighborhoods, most notably Pacific Palisades, Altadena, and others; not to mention restaurants, small mom and pop businesses, grocery stores, pharmacies, schools, etc., have been destroyed. And this is only the first disaster. The second disaster will be the next heavy rain period causing massive mudflows due to the barren ground caused by the fires. That’s not to overshadow the current events, which are atrocious, but the video coming out of California is incredibly hellish and hard to watch. It’s surreal, and hard for the brain to process. I would imagine the people of Pompeii, when Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, would have felt the same bizarre or unreal feelings about the destruction of their way of life as well.

This year's California wildfires are gonna leave a lasting impression. A lot of high profile people have been affected, and despite whether they are Republican or Democrat, of which both parties have skin in the game, the Santa Ana winds are still a yearly occurrence. The fires don’t distinguish between political leanings, but they do react to mismanagement, feeding the flames with plenty of fuel to provide the right conditions to burn down houses, going street by street till there is nothing left to burn, and leaving the area looking like a bombed out city.

The cost of the clean up is going to be incredible, easily outstriping previous events like Hurricane Katrina, where Louisiana and New Orleans officials left their duties by the wayside in maintaining the damaged levies that flooded the city, while lining their own pockets just like California officials are doing. Los Angeles is a city of incompetence from the top down, with DEI initiatives taking precedence as if Nero fiddled while Rome burned.

While we in Montgomery County see efforts to clear brush from under power lines in our area, there is no such policy in California. In fact, with Cal state, properties in close proximity to city or state nature preserves that butt up to a residential property, making homeowners liable if they make attempts to clear away brush. One family in San Diego learned the hard way, when they were fined $53,367 for clearing brush in a city nature preserve behind their home. Brush that is nothing but fuel for a fire if one should strike in their area, and of course, over time the brush grows back.

Democrats have taken a beautiful state and destroyed it with policies that make no sense. Environmentalism is important up to a certain point, but when common sense is put aside, to the point of mismanagement, that’s when incompetence comes into play. No doubt all the green efforts that California has put in place to save their precious environment have all been wiped out by these fires, with the chemicals and materials that have burned, and let's not forget the dead as well. If California were to fine itself with all the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) put into the air with the fiery ends of all these wildlife areas, homes, cars, businesses, schools, government entities, and all the chemicals inside those places, the penalty would be in the tens of trillions of dollars.

Why does California need DEI programs anyway? It’s already the most leftist state in the country. They can do what they want, and there is nothing that can be done about it. These fires are gonna cause another migration away from the state of taxpaying citizens, that governments desperately rely on for their operating costs. The loss of taxable value of the homes and businesses alone is gonna cause massive dips in revenue that will have governments and state entities squealing like stuck pigs after everything is accounted for.

The wildfire disaster has nothing to do with global warming, or climate change, or whatever you want to call it. The Santa Ana winds are a yearly occurrence, and with so much government and bureaucratic mismanagement, it left the southern part of California dangerously exposed. Instead of creating a plan to combat the possibility of fires, there was no plan. Brush management in nature areas is nil. Planning or creating fire breaks is verboten. The largest wildfires in the history of California include only two years, 1889, and 1932, before the 21st Century, and the technology is so much more advanced since then.

This year’s crop of fires could quadruple (+) the amount of structures destroyed from the previous record of 2,820 in October 2003, with the Cedar fire. There is gonna be a reckoning to the destruction this time. Along with Governor Newsom’s water diversionary tactics, the Democrat mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, actually cut $17 million from the budget of the Los Angeles Fire Department months ago, and the fires hit in an exclusive area that cannot be disregarded. Famous actors and other people of high influence in Hollywood and other realms lost their homes in the Palisades fire, and these are NIMBY people, meaning, Not In My Back Yard. So after the dust settles, there will either be resignations, or recall elections or firings of the elected officials and bureaucrats involved. The sad fact is that California voted 58% for Kamala Harris in November, so blind voting for Democrats in the future may not be so automatic. Yet, there is one uncomfortable truth for the Democratic citizenry that has suffered, in that they have to include themselves in blame, making their left-leaning politics culpable in the domino effects that led to the incompetence of this disaster.

California firefighting also needs to think out of the box as well when confronting fires in these areas with a great number of residences, and when confronted with a lack of water. How many pools were in the backyards of Pacific Palisades houses that burned? Right there, those small reservoirs in every third residence or so, could have made a difference in saving some houses. Sky News Australia, my favorite news outlet outside of Montgomery, had a reporter at LAX, when Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass arrived back home from her trip to Africa. The reporter asked hard questions while she just stood there stoically, braindead, and not responding. The true mark of a Marxist-Leninist DEI hire.

Ruben can be reached at: ruben@montgomerycountynews.net