Government Fiddles While California Burns
by John Seiler
As I type in my writer’s garret in Huntington Beach, outside my window ash falls like snow and the sky is tinged an orange-yellow. It’s a little hard to breathe and I cough now and then.
It’s not as bad as the previous three days. But the evidence still is in the air, not just on the TV news, of the fires that have burned out large areas of Southern California.
Fires strike our area every few years, the last major fires being in 2003. The best way to prevent the fires and to fight them would be for the government to get out of the way and turn the responsibility over to private insurance companies.
Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen soon. So we’re left with the usual government incompetence, beginning with our governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Although a popular international bodybuilder and action star, in California people gradually are realizing he doesn’t know what he’s doing.
He hasn’t balanced a budget in four years, despite prosperity bringing record new revenues. We’ve suffered electricity blackouts. And Arnold is obsessed with imposing a socialized medicine scheme similar to the one in his native Austria – a place he used to say he escaped to enjoy the promise of American capitalism.
Quickly bored with his job, Arnold has traipsed around the world advancing his global-warming ideology. In June, he posed in London with "Phony" Tony Blair, then in his last days as prime minister.
Last January, in his state-of-the-state address, Arnold insisted that California was a "nation-state." I wish it were so! If California seceded, I wouldn’t have to pay massive taxes to Bush’s centralized, war-obsessed regime in Washington. And goodbye IRS, FBI, CIA, De-Ed, Heimat Security, etc.
But it isn’t so. Pretending California is a "nation-state" stokes Arnold’s ego and is yet another diversion from the hard work of actually serving the people who elected him, twice.
Arnold has had plenty of time to make sure the state he misgoverns didn’t burn down. The Los Angeles Times reported:
"A special panel appointed by Schwarzenegger recommended in 2004 that California buy 150 more fire trucks for emergencies. So far only 19 have been ordered. They are scheduled to arrive in time for next year's fire season.
The state has not replaced its Vietnam-era helicopters, although the Blue Ribbon Fire Commission had warned that many were nearing the end of their operational lives and that the availability of replacements "is diminishing and will soon be exhausted."
That means some of those helicopters are older than their pilots.
Orange County Fire Chief Chip Prather insisted:
"It is an absolute fact, had we had more air resources we would have been able to control this fire."
Yes. But it also should be pointed out that one reason Prather doesn’t have enough resources – air or otherwise – is that Orange County firemen make, on average, $175,000 a year in pay and benefits. And his Fire Authority is housed in a $50 million Taj Mahal headquarters in Irvine, near the fires.
There’s no question that firemen are bravely fighting the fires. But there would be a lot more of them, and they would have better equipment, if their pay and HQ weren’t so extravagant.
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