A little fire, scarecrow!

A natural and political disaster zone!

We do have a heart here at the Werkes but it’s a loaner. Now that the news networks have rerouted their their on-air talent from Gaza to an equally disastrous zone, California, we want to say about empathy, We Gave at the Office.

[UPDATE: O.K., No one should suffer except the guilty.]

Fresh from making over-the-road truckers pay off the college loans incurred by grievance studies majors, President Biden promises to cover 100% of California’s firefighting bill and help the Malibu millionaires rebuild. Sorry, but after the third or fourth multi-millionaire laments the loss of his latest architectural pleasure dome to fire, the indentured servants are keeping their tear ducts dry as the Santa Anna wind.

An episode of This Old House a few years ago explored the ingenious methods being used to rebuild homes in Paradise, California. And expensive. 

Paradise (so ironically named) is the town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains that burned to the ground in the Camp Fire conflagration in November 2018, killing 18 people. One of the new fire-proof building techniques examined on PBS are air intake vents that close off at high temperatures to prevent embers and flames from entering the attic. Does Menards stock these things!

It occurred to the indentured servants watching on the b&w Philco at the time that maybe people shouldn’t rebuild in Paradise CA. Maybe they should not have built there in the first place. The town was only incorporated in 1979.

 Leaving on a jet plane

No, end-timers, God is not punishing Hollywood for making Disney Woke. But one might one think that a state that outlaws (in effect) gasoline might consider putting the kibosh on building amidst highly flammable chaparral. California might also consider electing Republicans.

Because the state elected its other natural disaster: Democrats. Two days after the National Weather Service warned Angelenos that strong winds and “extreme fire weather conditions” would soon threaten the city, what does the Democrat(ic) mayor of Los Angeles do? Fly to Ghana for the swearing in of that African country’s president. Ghana!?

“But this isn’t just about Karen Bass,” reports Bari Weiss’ Free Press:

A great city can survive a bad mayor, or even a series of bad mayors. This is a story about the failure of California to prevent, or capably mitigate, a long-predicted catastrophe, and how a state that was once a model of good governance came to prioritize the boutique concerns of ambitious politicians over the basics of what government must do.

The Free Press notes that L.A. allocated $1.3 billion to combat homelessness last year. Los Angeles funded its Fire Department at a little more than half that — $837 million. A budget that has since been cut by $17 million. Or the department’s DEI hiring practices, resulting in a shortage of fire fighters. Result: a lot more homeless because FIRE!

Already in the November 2024 election, California voters — and those in New York — swung towards Trump more than any other state — by 12 percentage points, according to a Newsweek analysis. And California is Kamala Harris’ home state! The Werkes remembers the (un)prophetic words from that Peter Pan of progressivism, John Nichols, who says cities are “the Democrat(ic) heartlands of the U.S.” As such, its mayors will “put guardrails on Trump.”

→ Even our favorite African sulcata tortoise has been displaced!

Blaska’s Bottom Line: The entire premise of the party of Democrats is that government is the solution. Bad schools, shootings, shoplifting, sidewalk squatting — now Big Fire! Henry Grabar concluded in Slate magazine: “Voters are fed up with lousy metropolitan governance.”

‘Guard rails on Trump’?
How about just putting out the fires?