The Patriot Post® · The Wildfire Blame Game

By Nate Jackson ·
https://patriotpost.us/articles/113361-the-wildfire-blame-game-2025-01-09

The wildfires raging through Southern California are awful and devastating. At least 130,000 have been evacuated and lost everything. At least five people have died. The footage of burned-out streets or people filming the fires from inside their homes is shocking and harrowing.

Unfortunately, as is often the case with natural disasters — and perhaps especially with wildfires — the fires are also politically charged. Failures abound from the mayor to the governor to the president. Democrats are dogmatically devoted to the religion of climate change, but the irony is that their ecofascism obstructs precisely the measures that would prevent and mitigate wildfires.

Beginning at the local level, there was much consternation over the fact that Democrat Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass knew there were advance warnings of prime conditions for wildfires and left town beforehand anyway. She wasn’t just elsewhere in the state, either, but in Ghana. You might ask what critical city business the mayor has in Africa. Well, she attended Tuesday’s inauguration of John Dramani Mahama as Ghana’s president as part of Joe Biden’s four-member delegation. Was no one else available to substitute for her?

It’s true that she would provide little help in person once the fires started. It’s not as if she was going to grab a hose. But leadership requires presence. Speaking of hoses and water, however, that’s precisely where she and other city leaders failed. “There’s no water in the fire hydrants,” said Los Angeles developer Rick Caruso, who lost to Bass in the 2022 election. “My understanding is the reservoir was not refilled in time and in a timely manner to keep the hydrants going,” Caruso added. “This is basic stuff. This isn’t high science here. It’s all about leadership and management.”

Indeed, water management has been a disaster in California for years. Due to corruption and mismanagement, Democrats there put ecofascist regulations supposedly meant to protect wildlife ahead of providing for human needs and planning to save human lives.

Another element is that the city has cut the fire department’s budget while doling out taxpayer money for left-wing priorities. Fox News reports, “For the 2023-2024 fiscal year, Los Angeles budgeted $837 million for the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD), which was roughly 65% the size of the homeless budget of $1.3 billion. From the 2023-2024 to the 2024-2025 budgets, the LAFD’s budget was reduced by $17,553,814 from $837,191,237 to $819,637,423.”

But hey, at least the fire department has a lesbian chief whose primary concern is DEI hiring.

(Since “fact-checkers” have been in the news this week, I’ll mention that Newsweek “fact-checked” the $17 million cut claim, found it to be true … and then rated it “needs context.”)

When Bass landed back in LA, she was confronted by Sky News reporter David Blevins. She refused to even acknowledge his presence as he peppered her with questions: “Do you owe citizens an apology for being absent while their homes were burning? And do you regret cutting the Fire Department budget by millions of dollars, Madame Mayor? Have you absolutely nothing to say to the citizens today?”

During a press conference later yesterday, she said, “I took the fastest route back, which included being on a military plane, which facilitated our communications. … So I was able to be on the phone the entire time of the flight.” Oh.

Next up is Democrat California Governor Gavin Newsom. His gross mismanagement of the nation’s most-populated state is the stuff of legend, but he never misses an opportunity to blame Republicans who have no say in his one-party state. This time, it was to hammer Donald Trump, who Newsom said chose “to politicize it” (by saying true things about Newsom’s governance). Unfortunately for Newsom, he “did the meme.” He grumbled about Trump while standing with the fire behind him on CNN — just like that infamous CNN reporter who explained that the George Floyd riots in Minneapolis were “fiery by mostly peaceful.”

Newsom failed to increase controlled burns across the state as he promised, instead lying about a decline in those burns. The water shortage is at his feet, too, though he blamed “local folks” for it. According to the Washington Examiner’s Tiana Lowe Doescher, “California has not constructed a new major reservoir since 1979, meaning that even though local reservoirs were reportedly at capacity before the Palisades fire, dozens of fire hydrants in the coastal city are completely out of water.”

Moreover, she adds, the homeless crisis that Newsom has only exacerbated could also be to blame: “We still don’t know how the handful of fires fueling the Angeleno apocalypse were started, but the Los Angeles Fire Department has estimated that 4 in 5 fires downtown and more than half citywide are caused by homeless people.”

Finally, and much less seriously, Joe Biden stood next to Newsom in Santa Monica, California, to talk about the fire and also his own family. “The good news is I’m a great-grandfather as of today,” Biden announced in his tired grandpa voice. “Ten-pound baby girl — baby boy — so I’ll remember this day.” The granddaughter he won’t acknowledge might like to comment on whether he is, in fact, a great grandfather.

The only surprise is that he didn’t remind people of that time his house nearly burned down — in that tiny kitchen fire that was put out in a few minutes. He told that lie to Hawaii residents after a devastating wildfire there last year because he just can’t help but make everything about himself. That was always true, but his senility has deprived him of all circumspection.

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