If you want to see the difference in governing between many Republican governors and Democrats, just look at the California disaster. In Florida, you have hurricanes, in Iowa you have tornadoes and occasionally derechos (which are hurricane strength winds coming across fruited plains) and in California, you have wildfires and earthquakes.
The fire showed the complete failures of the blue progressive governance as Joel Kotkin noted, “The reason for this shift lies in the clear failure of Democrats, writ large in the inferno now consuming large swathes of LA. In states like California, Democratic politicians no longer prioritize such things as public safety and key infrastructure, including roads, ports and, most importantly at the moment, water systems. Indeed, today’s ‘progressives’ generally shy away from things like building dams or maintaining water pressure in the name of protecting the environment. They are far more focused on climate change and ‘social justice’… Of course, California progressives will justify this by blaming the fires on climate change, even though a leading fire expert at the US Geological Survey suggests this claim is unsupported. Fires have been a regular feature of life in southern California for at least 20 million years. Moreover, given the recent extremely dry weather conditions, LA should have been prepared for a conflagration. It was not. A councilperson representing the Palisades has noted the ‘chronic underinvestment in our critical infrastructure’.”
California failures can be contrasted with red states like Florida where DeSantis not only was superior in his handling the pandemic as he opened up the schools and economy sooner, but his handling of severe hurricanes in which power was restored quickly was superior how Galvin Newsom handled the Californi fires and the state began its rebuild quickly. California largest city is burning to the ground, and the state officials have no clue what to do and as the council person noted, there was chronic underinvestment in critical infrastructure.
There are methodology to reduce or eliminate fires as one report noted, “Instead of focusing almost solely on fire suppression, the state must institute wide-scale controlled burns and other strategic measures as a tool to reinvigorate forests, inhibit firestorms and help protect air and water quality, according to the Commission’s report, Fire on the Mountain: Rethinking Forest Management in the Sierra Nevada.”
California officials had the information needed to prevent this disaster, but they chose instead to spend millions on “Trump proofing” of the state while they actually cut the budget on fire fighting and failed to fill the reservoir.
Kotkin wondered, “The LA fires are likely to accelerate the shift in American politics, demography, and economy away from the old centers of wealth – Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, New York, Boston, Chicago – and towards a new constellation of former laggard states, mostly from the South, the intermountain west and Texas. These provide the base for Trumpism. Indeed, the current ring-kissing at Mar-a-Lago in Florida symbolizes this shift in regional power.”
In the past few years, bad Democrats politicians have often been replaced by worse as Andrew Cuomo was replaced by Kathy Hochul, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was replaced by Brandon Johnson and Garvin Newsom survived a recall and no guarantees that he would not be replaced by a worse governor and Los Angeles did vote in Karen Bass.
Blue progressive model has failed, and this failure has caused massive destruction and at least two dozen deaths.
The Donelson Files 