A Silk Purse

Ho Chi Minh, when he became North Vitnam's leader, made a silk purse out of a sow's ear. He rounded up all the prostitutes in Hanoi and turned them into public nurses ... not a bad idea. So how come our political leaders can't be equally innovative? For instance, every year a too large portion of rural California burns down ... primarily because the officials there won't spend the money to cut back the scrub brush that grows in the public spaces and along the roads ... see: CNBC Story.

Then, during the dry season, when lightning strikes and/or a powerline falls, it takes millions of dollars to subdue the resulting conflagrations ... often with the loss of life and personal property. The cost to put out these fires is probably much larger than what it would have been to remove the dangerous overgrown underbrush to begin with.

And how about a little icing on this cake? Why don't the California authorities use convict labor, welfare recipients and their myriad homeless people performing this clean up duty as a condition for their parole, welfare payments or shelter? This gratis exchange seems very much like a Ho Chi Minh silk-purse solution ... one that would save this state lots of money and grief every dry season.

Afterward: Over six years ago I wrote a similar, albeit better post, California is Burning, in which I made many of these same points. In the interim, California has done nothing to reduce this fire hazard ...