THE WAY I SEE IT
by Don Polson Red
Bluff Daily News 2/21/2017
Priorities of “Mud State” elite
Regarding the Oroville dam disaster, it’s been noted
that three environmental groups called for reinforcing, or “armoring,” the area
below the concrete lip of the emergency spillway about 12 years ago. Their
concern for the now evident erosion of earthen hillside was correct.
Others have pointed to reluctance by state agencies,
contracted users and owners of the reservoir to authorize what would have been
relatively inexpensive fixes at the time. Engineers in and out of government
certainly had the expertise to raise red flags about the apparently minor flaws
in the main spillway; said flaws then spiraled out of control under the
inundation of massive—but hardly unprecedented—releases.
Less well covered have been some larger issues of
fiscal incompetence and ideological blindness, beyond the shortsighted denial
of needed maintenance. It’s a stark reminder that when the political
class—almost entirely Democratic in this case—all hold their hands and proclaim
that human-caused, global warming-induced drought conditions are with us for the
foreseeable future, nature may have the temerity to disagree. Why fix unneeded
spillways?
When environmentally inclined leaders, also all
Democrats, give lip service to the blindingly obvious need for more water
storage, and drag their budgetary feet to the point that no-brainer projects
like Sites reservoir seem unachievable, you know you are witnessing massive self-delusion.
Only ideological arrogance can explain how Gov. Jerry Brown—son of Gov. Pat
Brown who saw the need and built such common sense infrastructure as the
Oroville dam and numerous other projects, highways, bridges and canals—never
put Oroville dam maintenance into any requests for infrastructure spending.
Not when Jerry Brown ran for governor; not when he
submitted requests to the Trump administration for spending projects (He did
ask for unneeded funds for Folsom dam); and certainly not while charging ahead
on the nearly-$100 billion fool’s errand of a high-speed train, while a
reported $25 billion is spent every year on illegal immigrants’ welfare, health
care and schooling. Rational, long-term priorities for a growing, prosperous
state like California (if only a desire to grow and prosper) would seem to
obviously include maintaining and expanding transportation, power and water
storage projects.
However, the “less is more,” “small is beautiful”
earth-worshiping fanatics running Sacramento—many of whom live in secure
enclaves in the elite, wealthy coastal corridor—have deluded themselves that
their only obligation is to maintain the tax structure that fills the trough of
funds to redistribute to needy, favored groups. Think of immigrants and poor urban-dwellers
whose votes then secure the cycle of political dominance for the Democrats.
John Schroeder, who posts at HughHewitt.com, pointed
to the complexity of “the plethora of agencies and authorities, bureaus, boards
and districts that have battled each other for more than a century now. It is
about to get much worse…the finger pointing is now beginning in earnest…Ron
Stork, policy director of Friends of the River, said state water officials told
him privately at the time that the Metropolitan Water District of Southern
California and other water contractors that buy Oroville’s water did not want
to pay the additional costs.” Finger pointed.
“This last election was, for the rest of the nation, a
‘throw the bums out’ election. So fed up has the nation been…that they just
decided to throw a bomb in the mess and clean up. California, for whatever
cockamamie reason decided to stay the course. Hillary’s much ballyhooed
‘popular vote win,’ came virtually entirely from the Golden State—which should
probably be called the ‘Mud State.’”
Other notable items: The Democrat/media party faithful
have worked themselves into a froth over innocuous contacts, such as they were,
between Trump’s now-resigned intell chief, Mike Flynn, and the Russian
ambassador. Their short, hypocritical memories must have forgotten such
infamous events as citizen John Kerry contacting our North Vietnamese enemies
in Paris prior to the cessation of hostilities in that war. That would be the
same John Kerry who later lied to Congress and all of America about phony
atrocities committed by our soldiers in combat.
In “When The Democrats Do It, That Means That It’s Not
Illegal,” Kate of smalldeadanimals.com posted a memo from Soviet archives,
dated December 1, 1976. It noted favorably that Jimmy Carter’s representative,
Averill Harriman, having met with Carter in Plains, GA, conveyed messages to
ambassador A.F. Dobrynin, who received them on behalf of Soviet leader L.I.
Brezhnev. “The ‘President-elect’ (Carter’s current title) has authorized Harriman
to convey the following answer for transmission to L.I. Brezhnev (the text of
which he held)…” You can read about Carter’s secret 1976 USSR contacts at
http://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/
Then-Senator “Ted Kennedy Secretly Asked The Soviets
To Intervene In The 1984 Elections” (Sean Davis, 3/10/2015, TheFederalist.com).
Two years ago, outraged liberals called it treasonous for Congressional
Republicans to “inform the leaders of Iran that any nuclear deal with the
United States that failed Senate approval” was dead in 2017. “If these
progressives want to know what actual treason looks like, they should consult
liberal lion Ted Kennedy, who not only allegedly sent secret messages to the
Soviets in the midst of the cold war, he also begged them to intervene in a
U.S. presidential election in order to unseat President Ronald Reagan.”
In “Obama’s Secret Communications With Mullahs
Undermined American Foreign Policy,” J. Hinderaker describes the despicable way
Obama conspired with Iran’s leaders to undercut President Bush’s nuclear
negotiations with Iran. I dare call that “treason.”
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