During these past few days, our nation has had a dramatic preview of a community that has entrusted its civic institutions for way too long to arrogant, incompetent ideologues who failed to provide the needed services to protect its citizens. Residents of Biblical Sodom and Gomorrah were punished for their evil ways; voters in the modern California replicas of these two ancient sites met fiery retribution by allowing years of highly visible deterioration to occur within their communities caused by criminal civic mismanagement by their elected elites who were bequeathed with exclusive one-party domination.
Clothed in perpetual virtue signaling, elected State and local leaders presided over one civil anomaly or catastrophe after another. These arrogant politicians allowed their once great cities to become overrun by over three-quarters millions of their most disadvantaged citizens living in the streets. Not since the Depression when refugees from the Dust Bowl fled to the American Garden of Eden on the Pacific in the 1930s had California seen such local poverty. Billions of taxpayer dollars have been expended on political rent seekers to alleviate the problem, but their actions only encouraged the number of homeless to increase.
Substance abuse use among this homeless group became endemic, and their city streets were allowed to become open-air drug markets to provide onsite delivery service. Since crime on the city streets was no longer enforced, local governments just eliminated other ‘minor crimes’ like thefts under $950. Local stores that chose not to become local charities closed their doors and moved out of the neighborhoods leaving those paying citizens, who were still old-fashioned enough to pay for their commodities, with no local supply sources.
To provide cheap labor to man the leaf blowers, clean their homes, and provide all forms of common labor, citizens stood by while their elected officials designated California a ‘Sanctuary State’ for all illegals – criminals welcomed! State services were now open to all, citizens or non-citizens alike, all paid for by California taxpayers.
Except for diverting tax revenues for these virtue-signal purposes, none of the above directly created the Pacific Palisades and other firestorms that have dominated the national news. A couple of decades ago, California politicians mimicking the Pharisees of the Old Testament, who prayed loudly in public about their so-called virtue, joined the ‘Save the Planet’ in-crowd, the most prolific Ponzi Scheme in history. Armed with self-righteousness, elected Californian officials systematically decimated the State’s energy-producing or energy-dependent industries.
The state’s main electric power provider was bankrupted. Its poorly maintained power lines started forest fires. Its intermittent wind and solar power sources caused power blackouts. Its high-cost energy production created local inflation which devastated those families living from paycheck to paycheck. Once a magnet into the most dynamic and beautiful State in the nation, people are moving out of California for more people or business friendly locals.
To add insult to injury, the State had legislated restraints on insurance companies to profitably insure buildings in the area forcing many to forego or be denied fire insurance. As such, many lower- and middle-class families will have seen their life savings absorbed in the polluted air they are breathing.
Official incompetence is being reported in the news daily. The Santa Ana winds, and the fires they have caused, have been a regular feature in the Los Angeles Valley since before the first humans moved into the area, yet fire hydrants in some areas were dry and homes were without running water. Mountain brush areas and tightly packed neighborhood structures were zoned together without thought of their compatibility.
Most civic mismanagement falls hard only on the poor and middle class. This current man-made Sodom and Gomorrah debacle hit both rich and poor alike. Businesses, churches, and schools were burned to the ground along with the jobs that were destroyed. However, the rich have the resources to quickly recover, rebuild, or relocate; the poor families will be long-suffering well into the future of the ineptitude of California’s elected elites and their enablers.
This piece was written five days after the first fire began threatening Pacific Palisades homes, yet the fires have not been quenched. Tired, undermanned firefighters are working forty-eight hours on the job, Los Angeles area citizens are breathing the most polluted atmosphere on the planet, and power blackouts have rippled throughout the region. More LA neighborhoods face evacuation as the death toll mounts daily.
Last July 13th in Pennsylvania, the United States came within one inch, or less, of coming under an Administration that would have sought to install this same California dogma and arrogant incompetence nationwide. Who still believes ‘there is no God” watching over America!
TW3
January 13, 2025
John Whitmore Jenkins
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