Fox News Has Become Obsessed With California

Almost every day these days my news feed pops up with stories from Fox News how bad things are in California.

Part of the Fox News business model for decades has been to promote a brand of conservatism that focuses on keeping taxes on wealthy folk as low as possible - maximizing the power and influence of the folks that own Fox News.  Even though low taxes on the wealthy are not beneficial to working folks Fox News has been very adept at cultivating voting support for their political goals with a divide and conquer strategy.  

They exploit the natural human tendency to note physical or cultural differences by vilifying politically weak minorities then convincing folk they need to vote conservative to keep those bad people from ruining everything.

Now that strategy is threatening to blow up in their face.  We have a President whose knowledge of public policy seems to have been shaped by Fox News, who is almost joined at the hip with Fox News.  A President who, in three years, has effectively abandoned Asia to despots, undermined the world economy with his ill conceived and poorly executed tariffs, destroyed arms control agreements without offering an alternative, exploded our national debt and demonstrated a constant lack of any heart or compassion.  A President on his way to becoming the first President in history to repeatedly collude with foreign governments to help his business and personal political agenda.

On top of the Trump problem Fox News has lost gay rights as an issue as gays have moved mainstream, Pro-lifers are creating their own party with socialist leanings and vilification of immigrants is effective on fewer and fewer voters as noisy immigrant bashing is causing many to realize immigrants are not bad people and maybe deserve a little compassion.

So evidently Fox News new plan to is in part vilify California.  It is California politicians that are leading the impeachment probe of our truthfulness-challenged President.  Republicans controlled California in the 1980's and 1990's but folks got so sick of them they are virtually an endangered species in modern California.  Of course a State of 40 million people has some problems (many of which are leftovers from the days Republicans ran the state)., but the reality is California has a budget surplus, is the wealthy, happy and provides decent health care to a bigger percentage of folks that any Red State.  The success of Democratic California is a thumb in the eye of the conservative ideology Fox News peddles.  

So they seem to be seizing the opportunity to try to undermine the impeachment effort by convincing red state groupies that California is not to be trusted.  Unfortunately for them, Donald Trump has left so much evidence scattered in the chaos that follows him through life it is becoming clear to all but the most blindly partisan groupies that he is undermining the traditions and government of checks and balances that have sustained our democracy for 2.4 centuries. 

I thought, as I was living through the Nixon years, I was witnessing something the likes of which would not repeat in my lifetime.  But now it appears even Watergate is being Trumped. 

How Can We Prevent California Wildfires?

The conditions that cause enormously destructive wind/fire storms -  lack of rain and dry winds - occur virtually every year, and may be getting worse.  We can't stop wildfires from occurring but we can fix the problems that turn a wild fire into a firestorm.   

PG&E is where a lot of fingers are pointing.  There is no question PG&E, like all corporations, and many people, finds it hard to spend money on long term public safety in the face of short term desires to maximize profits and executive bonuses.  PG&E is justifiably in bankruptcy for their negligent practices and are not be be excused.

But we shouldn't lose sight of all the other factors that play as big a part, or perhaps a bigger part in these disasters.

The fires generate massive fires storms because big parts of the State are undeveloped land.  Over the decades they develop huge "fuel loads" - overgrown forests and underbrush that are ideal incubators for a fire storm.

Who owns all this land?  Why don't we require landowners to reduce the fuel load regularly?  It could cost a lot less to create a mechanism to enforce fuel load reduction than it does to fight and then clean up the mess after one of these huge fires.

Probably a lot of the land is owned by investors who are essentially parking wealth in an asset that is indestructible and costs them little.  Their will be objections about intrusive government and personal freedom.  But I submit this is an area where the tension between individual rights and community safety should tilt heavily towards community protection.  

By letting these landowners ignore fuel overloads on their land we are allowing them to impose enormous costs in fire fighting, loss of life and property destruction on other people and government while they wait to reap a profit from selling their land.  

Reducing fuel overload doesn't have to be a huge expense, some local governments have taken to hiring goat herds to graze off the underbrush.

What is foreseeable can be mitigated  We need to be willing to spend some money on fuel load reduction and enforcement if we want to reduce the size and destructive power to these fall firestorms.