California’s “New Normal”
California with its trillion-dollar GDP – the fifth largest economy in the WORLD, our tech industries dominate, it’s the 21 century and we can no longer keep the lights-on! Our state politicians, governor included, are plunging the citizens of this prosperous state into a third world country lifestyle. Poor policy decisions, ignorance, the complete lack of business and financial understandings as well as listening and responding to the demands to the nut-case environmentalists, has led to these man-made catastrophic events: The drought, electricity shutdowns, out of control wildfires which are all political policy and management failures. This can easily be corrected with a change state elected officials and management!
Welcome to the state of California in the process of becoming Venezuela or “Calizuela”. In August of 2018 Jerry Brown declared devastating California wildfires to be the “new normal” which could bring financial stress to state and local communities. His statement indicated the citizens of this state should just accept their fate without considering what put us in this position. What was not spoken of with power shut downs affecting large areas of the State, is the economic damage to businesses and entire communities that has been worse than had an actual firestorm occurred. The recent series of PG&E power shut downs will have a ripple effect that won’t be fully measured or understood for years. Lost employment income, business loss of sales, perishable food products ruined, tourists that stay home. For local government agencies the loss of services, tax revenue due to lower economic activity, and costs that were not anticipated in budgets will cause strain to maintain current levels of service. To begin to quantify the costs and the ripple effect power shut downs have on a rural economy, will only be understood months or years later. As with firestorms, the recovery process is years long and sometimes never as businesses do not have the cash flow to weather continual uncertainty in their markets.
Is the “new normal” about fires, or is it about droughts, or is it about a stable power supply? Or, is this one more in a series of politically manufactured crisis aimed at conditioning the people of California to accept less. When it is so proudly stated, “we are the fifth largest economy in the world” and then to see the economic devastation that happens from destructive public policy over decades, the citizens of this state need to realize who has created the problem and who will be the best capable of finding the solutions.
Our droughts in California are clearly “man-made” because policy makers will not permit new reservoirs to be built that could easily correct water shortages. Our fires are also “man-made” due to years of environmental activism that has made forest fuel reduction nearly impossible to achieve. Our power infrastructure instability is “man-made” as policy makers (including the California Public Utilities Commission) have not prioritized the value of hardening the system. The roadblock to creating a stable platform on all of these issues is years of environmental groups using lawsuits as an income tool to block projects and improvements that could have resolved all of this years ago. Whether it is water, fire, or power it all comes back to environmental activists that push public policy that is driven from Sacramento to your door and your way of life. We are the largest “third world” economy, welcome to “Calizuela”.
