The left creates disaster and misery everywhere that it goes unchecked, from urban plantations, and violent crime, to high taxes and government overreach. The poster child for these abuses is California, where the left is blinded by wildfires of failure, all their own making.
We can’t smell the forests burning, but the scent of hypocrisy has some reach. Its undertones reverberate from the left coast’s chattering class. And in the scrabble of footsteps as they search for a public relations exit. Another dry and windy season disaster. Same leadership, no change. People and property hit hardest.
Not the Man Caused Disaster You Were Looking For…
No, global warming is not to blame, not Climate change, though California could do with the latter if by “climate,” you mean political. The clown car is in flames, and the only object shiny enough to point too is a power company. PG&E. One of the most regulated businesses in the state of California.
Regulated by Democrats.
The Wall Street Journal’s Allysia Finley reports this utility is in the most heavily regulated industry. The California Public Utilities Commission and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, not PG&E, set both the rates PG&E charges customers and the profit the company is allowed to earn.
The government defines all, though we’re uncertain if the State also decided that PG&E would give hundreds of thousands of dollars to California politicians who oversee their rates and profit margins, which they did. And they commanded them to do this.
The same commissions and the California state legislature have also directly influenced where PG&E must invest its resources. For example, PG&E generated almost 40 percent of its power from renewable resources in 2018 because “State law requires utilities to obtain 60% of their power from ‘renewable’ sources by 2030.”
The State decides what the utility can spend its “profits on,” as well as how and where.
It’s common knowledge these days that upgrading power lines in areas where wind can lead to fires is not high enough on the list. Nor is there enough political capital to clear branches or deadwood around those power lines. The environmentalists don’t approve, so the kindling lay waiting to snap, crackle, and pop into a full-blow man-caused disaster. Like the Camp Fire last year. Or the fires this year.
Fires are every year. So are California Democrats who are responsible (at least in part) for actual “warming” caused by the incompetence of humans with a (D) after their names.
Fire!
Instead of improving infrastructure or clearing dead wood, PG& E was told to invest in and “install 7,500 electric-car charging stations at apartment buildings and workplaces.” Translation: boutique power portals for California’s EV-driving upper class.
Lower and middle-class folks can’t afford most electric vehicles even after taxpayer propped up rebates.
But hey, the board is diverse!
“PG&E hasn’t kept detailed records on the age or condition of its transmission towers and wires,” but it keeps precise reports of the “diversity” of its employees, board, and contractors. For example, it boasts a board wherein “Five of its 14 directors are female, one is black, and two are Hispanic.”
This is excellent news because fire does not discriminate. But voters can. And perhaps it is time for a change of political seasons in the smoky aftermath of another year under the incompetent rule of #woke Democrats.
As if that would ever happen. All the votes are crowded into #woke cities, Those Urban plantations, violent crime, high taxes, and endless seas of homeless folks. They all vote Democrat. Take notes. California is how your civilization falls into progressive ruin.
