Don's Tuesday Column

THE WAY I SEE IT by Don Polson         Red Bluff Daily News 1/28/2024

        The more you know, the worse it is

“In the fullness of time, all is revealed,” is an age-old saying with current relevance. It was soon known that the great 1871 Chicago fire’s inception involved a cow, owned by the O’Learys, kicking over an oil lamp in a hay-filled barn. With 300 dead, 100,000 homeless, and 2,100 acres of the city burned, martial law was imposed to deal with the chaos and looting from the 3-day inferno.

When our family lived in Chicago in late 1960s, in a northwest section bounded by Park Ridge, Morton Grove and Niles, our subdivision had been rural farms in the 1870s. The property loss, then $200 million, would now be $5 billion.

The footprint of that fire is dwarfed by the nearly 24,000-acre footprint of the Palisades fire alone; current economic losses approximate $250 billion. Although vastly larger than the Great Chicago Fire, the SoCal death toll is currently in the dozens.

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Watching news streamed from Real America’s Voice and Newsmax this week—the inauguration, the Executive Orders, the nomination hearings and, as of Friday, the news conferences over the fires—was like having ring-side seats for the narrative battle. Anyone watching the presidential visit to North Carolina, followed by the helicopter view of the Palisades area as seen by the President and accompanying news media, would have to admit—regardless of political affiliation—that they were watching once-in-a-lifetime, real-time history unfolding.

Headlines do tell: “Gavin Newsom Shows Up Uninvited as Trump Arrives in California for Wildfire Aid”; “Leadership: Donald Trump Smoothly Takes Control After Gavin Newsom Attempts to Hijack LAX Tarmac Presser”; “Trump Gloriously Lays Waste to L.A. Politicians Standing in the Way of Rebuilding.”

We were glued to the “tube” (now flat screen “smart” monitors), watching the landing at Will Rogers State Park, where we made day-trips to enjoy the vast green lawn, and even watched some horse polo events (a riveting sport as you hear and feel the hooves pounding and the crack of mallets hitting the ball). Will Roger’s abodes, that we viewed, are gone, leaving only chimneys.

Then we watched the “round table” with the President, politicians and officials, including our own Congressman Doug LaMalfa, State Senator James Gallagher, and others—some not-so-friendly to conservative, rural Northern California. Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman represents Sherman Oaks, where we lived near Magnolia and Sepulveda Blvd, serenaded by the booming of high-power automotive sound systems from the streets below, and the whine of motors taking off from stop lights.

Although we weren’t political back then, were we still (perish the thought) in Sherman Oaks, we’d not be voting for the lefty Democrat Sherman. Most readers can be grateful Congress is in the hands, by a narrow margin, of Doug LaMalfa’s, not Brad Sherman’s, party.

In that public forum devoted to recovery from the fires, Mr. Sherman clownishly lectured the President over how he wouldn’t seek to impose abortion requirements on, say, Republican Florida, or clean energy restrictions on, say, natural gas-producing Republican states—as a condition for federal disaster aid. He was injecting a partisan, obscure argument over Trump’s desire to impose voter ID, and water policies more favorable to farmers and people and away from environmental hobby-horse causes.

It’s indisputable that California’s sign-every-warm-body-up-for-mail-in-ballots policy gathers up vast numbers of ineligible voters (polling shows that significant portions of illegal immigrants do fill out the ballots they receive). How do people know that their votes for LA Mayor, county supervisors, and state and federal representatives are the result of legal citizens’ votes? If those who are elected are making policies affecting fire safety, water allocation and emergency preparedness, why is it not relevant to insist that those votes be legal?

How is it not imperative that if current politicians have so screwed up the water policies of California—dry and nonexistent reservoirs, empty hydrants, and a bait fish called the smelt as the rationale for sending unlimited water to the ocean—changes to those policies be required for federal recovery aid?

So, LA Mayor Bass—who stood mute upon returning from Ghana when asked for thoughts she might have for her burned-out residents—managed to find her voice to argue with President Trump over recovery, and permitting delays holding up rebuilding. Headlines tell the result: “Trump Cooked LA Mayor Karen Bass During California Visit”; “Trump Destroys LA Mayor Karen Bass on Live TV—Let Wildfire Victims Clear Their Properties Already”; “President Trump Soaks Los Angeles Mayor With Buckets of Common Sense.”

Yes, let people don gloves, heavy clothes, and dust masks, and fill their own wheel barrows and truck beds with the debris and ashes of their once-marvelous homes; and, load-by-load, make their land ready for their chosen replacement home without pesky, intrusive, self-serving inspectors, permits and Coastal Commission nonsense. Let the bureaucratic paper shufflers, box-checkers and permitting titans get the heck out of the way.