California’s Utility Breakdown, Extreme Gas Costs, Homeless Druggies, Water Shortage, Deteriorating Roads, Failing Schools: Who is to Blame?

“You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.” ~Gavin Newsom

California was developed over the course of a century, yet it has taken only a few decades to tear it down. Incompetence, excessive government, corruption, nefarious oligarchs and Democrat dominance for 40 years is what is responsible for California’s utility breakdown, extreme gas costs, homeless druggies, water shortage, deteriorating roads, and failing schools.

Politicians are now trying to convince Californians that this is our “new normal,” and we need to get used to contributing more, with less in our pockets.

California is up in flames. San Francisco, Los Angeles, Sacramento, San Diego are littered with human waste and drug needles from the hundreds of thousands of drugged up vagrants living on the streets. The same large cities also have high numbers of homeless veterans, and illegal aliens.

Instead of addressing California’s crisis, House Democrats all voted to pursue impeachment proceedings against President Trump: Rep. Jared Huffman, John Garamendi, Mike Thompson, Doris Matsui, Ami Bera, Jerry McNerney, Josh Harder, Mark DeSaulnier, Nancy Pelosi, Barbara Lee, Jackie Speier, Eric Swallwell, Jim Costa, Ro Khanna, Anna Eshoo, Zoe Lofgren, Jimmy Panetta, TJ Cox, Salud Carbajal, Julia Brownley, Judy Chu, Adam Schiff, Tony Cardenas, Brad Sherman, Pete Aguilar, Grace Napolitano, Ted Lieu, Jimmy Gomez, Norma Torres, Raul Ruiz, Karen Bass, Linda Sanchez, Gil Cisneros, Lucille Royball-Allard, Mark Takano, Maxine Waters, Nanette Barragan, Katie Porter, Lou Correa, Alan Lowenthal, Harley Rouda, Mike Levin, Juan Vargas, Scott Peters, Susan Davis.

Remember these names. Remember the impeachment inquiry.

Most of those U.S. Representatives are from the state’s largest cities.

Meanwhile, Gov. Gavin Newsom picks ridiculous fights on Twitter with President Trump, responding to this Tweet:

The Governor of California, @GavinNewsom, has done a terrible job of forest management. I told him from the first day we met that he must “clean” his forest floors regardless of what his bosses, the environmentalists, DEMAND of him. Must also do burns and cut fire stoppers…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2019

..Every year, as the fire’s rage & California burns, it is the same thing-and then he comes to the Federal Government for $$$ help. No more. Get your act together Governor. You don’t see close to the level of burn in other states…But our teams are working well together in…..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 3, 2019

Newsom responded saying, “You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation.” Or was the real responder Wade Crowfoot, Newsom’s Secretary of the California Natural Resources Agency?

You don’t believe in climate change. You are excused from this conversation. https://t.co/PSt8N39Er5

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 3, 2019

One Man’s Reality

A recent column by Joe Mathews at Fox and Hounds Daily blamed Republicans for California’s demise.

“Modern California is in almost all respects the creation of Republicans,” Mathews said. “Even now, when Democrats hold so many elected offices, the structures of this place remain fundamentally Republican.”

“But now, in the face of all this Republican history and Republican reality, Trump’s Republicans look in the California mirror and somehow see the enemy.”

Mathews could not be more wrongheaded and delusional.

The Impulse to Blame is Strong 

More than 2.5 million Californians are or have been without power in at least 36 counties, while parts of the state burn. Utilities warn the power outages could go on for 10 years because of infrastructure disrepair.

As Governor Newsom struggles to stay in control of the state, he continues blame “climate change” and “extreme weather” for the wildfires, as well as to criticize utility giant PG&E daily for its failure to invest in its infrastructure and technology. The media cabal is joining Newsom in pointing all the blame at PG&E.

Newsom never acknowledges that his state government is in charge of the hyper-regulation of these utilities.

As Newsom searches for someone to blame, he needn’t look that far. His predecessor, Gov. Jerry Brown for whom Newsom was Lt. Governor for eight years, is responsible for implementing the majority of the climate change and environmental restrictions on water, natural gas and nuclear power, and impositions of 33%, then 50% and finally 100% renewable energy mandates on the utilities.

At the behest of radical environmentalists, California largely banned the cutting of trees underneath transmission lines, and pretty much ended most logging in the state including forest thinning. Estimates of 140 million dead trees in California’s forests are becoming wood tinder. PG&E used to be allowed to clear away foliage near the power lines 10 feet on each side. Environmentalists objected, and the foliage clearance area was reduced to just four feet.

Now Gov. Newsom is now trying to appease his critics and virtue signal his environmental bonafides by appointing his cabinet secretary, Ana Matosantos, to serve as his “energy czar” to oversee the state’s utilities.

“Californians who have experienced power outages might think it odd that the governor should look to a “czar” figure to address a statewide energy problem,” California Globe’s Lloyd Billingsley reported. “Californians also have grounds to regard Ana Matosantos as a dubious selection for the job.”

“Tzarina of Energy” Matosantos manages to get herself elevated and appointed to lofty jobs, but has a history of serving up few results other than consequences. The friend who coined “Tzarina of Energy,” commented, “The California Government, The Party has no intention of improving our condition and in fact is working with alacrity to make it worse.”

As California falls further into debt, Newsom hasn’t reduced spending – his budget is the largest in state history. He’s given more free health care and education to illegal aliens. He and Democrats are building designer homes and apartments for homeless vagrants. He’s granted clemency and pardoned violent felons, and signed bills to grant them the privilege of voting.

Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote:

“California’s three most powerful politicians — House speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein and Governor Gavin Newsom — are all multimillionaires. Their lives, homes, and privileges bear no resemblance to those of other Californians living with the consequences of their misguided policies and agendas.”

“The state’s elite took revolving-door entries and exits for granted. They assumed that California was so naturally rich, beautiful, and well-endowed that there would always be thousands of newcomers who would queue up for the weather, the shore, the mountains, and the hip culture.”

“Yet California is nearing the logical limits of progressive adventurism in policy and politics.”

Hanson sums this up with:

“No one would dare to connect the crumbling infrastructure, poor schools, and failing public health care with the non-enforcement of immigration laws, which has led to a massive influx of undocumented immigrants from the poorest regions of the world, who often arrive without fluency in English or a high-school education.”

“Has California become premodern?”

Joe Mathews sees the problem much differently:

“And so they make war against all of our Republican-ness—our direct democracy, our commitment to environment and health, our technological supremacy, our love of immigration and free trade, our tradition of independent governance and regulation. Nixon and Reagan, those great California anti-communists, must spin in their graves as the president seeks election help from China’s communists, and writes love notes to the dictator in Pyongyang.”

The leftist solution to this statewide government malpractice will be an escalation of environmental mandates, more and larger tax increases, more water and energy rationing, more restrictions on agriculture, more business-killing policies, while millions more fed-up middle-class taxpayers flee the state.

“Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the legislature. Only seven of the state’s 53 congressional seats are held by Republicans. The result is that there is no credible check on a mostly coastal majority,” Hanson says.

Mathews is living in a parallel reality if he really thinks California’s demise is because of Republicans. “Due to Democrat policies encouraging massive influxes of immigrants, and the flight of middle-class citizens, the California of Ronald Reagan, George Deukmejian, and Pete Wilson long ago ceased to exist,” Hanson said.

The California of today belongs to Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Nancy Pelosi, Dianne Feinstein, Adam Schiff, and all of the state’s elected Democrat politicians who appear to be on a fast track to destruction.

Elections have consequences. Californians are living with the results.