Urban Decay

A sanitary plumbing system was one of the great innovations of urban civilizations. It was designed to supply fresh water to the masses ... and carry away their waste products. Mystically, many West Coast (Democrat) mayors seem to have turned their backs on this invention. And, all across our country, liberal city officials are abdicating other civic duties ... such as workable transportation systems, even-handed law and order, well-educated children, uplifting urban beauty, insuring a disease/vermin-free environment and promoting fiscal responsibility. I wonder why these doofuses think they were elected? To grab a megaphone and call the rest of the us racists?

Is there some Jovian reason they are not supposed to do their jobs?

La La Land

The responsibility of state governments is protecting their citizens from criminals and mayhem, building and maintaining certain infrastructure, spending taxpayers' funds in a fiscally responsible manner, executing plans to ameliorate potential natural disasters (floods, droughts, wildfires, earthquakes, etc.), higher educating their children, and working to otherwise better the lives of their citizens. California falls down on most of these fronts. Recent history shows that it cannot plan and execute solutions to at least four of these duties, fiscal responsibility, wildfire dangers, droughts and protecting its citizenry.

In this blog posting I will first focus on just one of these failings ... reducing the dangers of wildfires. Quite a while ago I wrote here about how totally ineptly California handled the natural danger of wildfires there ... see: California Burning. And now, eight years later, nothing seems to have changed. Los Angeles and surroundings are in the midst of the worst wildfires ever, requiring untold millions of dollars to keep more houses from burning down ... see: LA Times Article.These. same millions,  if they had been better spent on preventative measures, could have possibly averted this crisis.

Instead Governor Moonbeam and the liberal California establishment have focused their energies and shrinking discretionary funds on most everything else ... protecting illegal aliens, gun control, transgender everything, globalism, diversity and inclusion training, fighting global warming, etc.  -- the primary responsibilities of state governments, as listed above, have taken a back seat to the liberal agenda. Is it planning for the next drought? No. Is it really protecting its citizenry from imported criminals? No. Is it taking preventive measures against future wildfires? No. Is it on a path to fiscal sanity? No. I'm not even sure it is spending much effort in preparing for the next big earthquake,

And they want to secede from the Union! This really is La La Land ...

Rewarding Bad Behavior

When governments reward bad behavior ... they get more bad behavior ... this is the cold hard reality of life. Germany and the European Union are relearning this ages-old lesson as a result of the crisis in Greece where this country had been propped up by it neighbors as it went on a multi-year spree of excessive pensions and tax cheating ... with the natural result of digging itself into a financial hole from which there is no logical outcome except default ... see: Boomberg Story. This same scenerio is being repeated here in the United States as Puerto Rico is also teetering on the brink of bankruptcy ... see: New York Times Story. And let us not forget Detroit.

How is it that we keep forgetting this well-defined lesson? The parameters of fiscal responsibility are so obvious that ignoring them cannot be accidental. Political poltroons have to know that they are laying land mines for their predecessors when they offer multiple freebies to voters in order to get elected ... yet they continue to exhibit this bad behavior ... usually without consequences to themselves. And this is the rub. There is no claw-back for such fiscal irresponsibility ... and there should be. Perhaps, whenever a political entity goes bankrupt, all the previously responsible politicians (and their heirs) who caused this catastrophe should lose all their government-acquired assets, pensions and any other government perks that they still enjoy.

Is this so difficult?

Afterward: And now a prediction from the Ghost of the Christmas Future: Washington Examiner Story.