CommentsLEANING RIGHT--Congratulations, California, for voting in woker and woker morons to implement lamer and lamer laws.
Much of that is due to an increasingly one-party system (never works for either political party!), much of that is due to driving out Californians of all political bents who haven't lost their damned minds...
… and much of it is due to an electorate that hasn't figured out that its "leadership" is actually CAUSING the problems it decries, and then screaming about it to divert the blame it so richly deserves:
1) You hate man-made climate change ... I hate climate man-made change. However, overdevelopment, insufficient water reserves and infrastructure, and cramming more people into smaller spaces is as causative of man-made climate change as anything that the West can ever do.
And how does California making it more expensive to live, work, and survive have anything to do with global population growth and technological advancement in what used to be the Third World, which causes man-made climate change more than anything we can do about that (and why would we want to keep the Third World in the stone age?).
The Governor Gavin Newsom who had the guts to admit the limits of "green" and "renewable" energy, particularly with respect to brownouts and blackouts showed honesty and courage. In summary, solar energy is great, but wind and other cost-ineffective energy will NOT be enough for a 21st Century California. Carbon-based fuels are NOT going to be avoidable nearly as soon as we all wish it would.
Unless, of course, you LIKE blackouts and brownouts.
2) However, the Governor Gavin Newsom who screeched about "those guys" (whoever they are) denying climate change causing our current devastating fires ignores Sacramento's (and California's cities') causation of man-made climate change, and is a clear way to distract from his own inadequacy about preventing these fires.
Governor Newsom has blood on his hands, and so do all the leaders who've made solar energy unaffordable for most of us, and choose to instead buy expensive electricity from other states who sell carbon-based energy/electricity while we dither around closing our own electrical infrastructure for feel-good endeavors that have NOTHING to do with reality..
So Governor Newsom distracts from his lack of forestry cleanups, and screaming about Trump, while being more than happy to take money from Trump and feds for what HE ultimately caused (and his predecessors in Sacramento) in setting California ablaze.
And we WILL get more huge fires unless we clean up the tinderbox that is our forest floor in a jiffy.
3) Leadership goes both ways with respect to ambushed cops and how the cops need to behave better.
Unless Governor Newsom and the Golden State's mayors hit HARD and sharply decry attacks on law enforcement like the tragedy we just saw in Compton, we'll be seeing more police in fear of their lives, and in fear of going to prison simply for doing their jobs, than taking out the bad guys.
And oh, yes, there are bad guys among us.
That said, throwing a member of the press down to the ground (Josie Huang of KPCC) who was reporting on low-lives outside the hospital, where two Compton sheriff's deputies were fighting for their lives after being cruelly ambushed by a criminal animal, was equally stupid.
The reporter probably wanted a story illustrating and decrying those preventing access to the hospital and calling for the officers' deaths. But yet video caught on tape entirely goes against the sheriff's department version of what happened. She did identify herself as a reporter and had nowhere to back up against a car when ordered to do so.
Great job, L.A. Sheriff's--you probably set the stage for another, horrible and terrible, attack on police.
Great job, Sheriff Alex Villanueva, for stonewalling the inspector general in an era where the citizenry is on your side...until you condone the bad apples in the L.A. County Sheriff's Department.
Great leaders are hard to find, especially those who seek political office. But a climate change of leadership, from Washington, D.C. to Sacramento on down, is more necessary than ever. People's lives are being destroyed, and people are dying, all because we have this lack of a climate that promotes good leadership.
And THAT is a climate change that is still possible, and one that we need more than ever.
(CityWatch Columnist, Kenneth S. Alpern, M.D, is a dermatologist who has served in clinics in Los Angeles, Orange, and Riverside Counties, and is a proud husband and father to two cherished children and a wonderful wife. He was termed out of the Mar Vista Community Council (MVCC) twice after two stints as a Board member for 8-9 years and is also a Board member of the Westside Village Homeowners Association. He previously co-chaired the MVCC Outreach and Planning Committees, and currently is Co-Chair of the MVCC Transportation/Infrastructure Committee. He was previously co-chair of the CD11 Transportation Advisory Committee, the grassroots Friends of the Green Line (which focused on a Green Line/LAX connection), and the nonprofit Transit Coalition, and can be reached at [email protected]. The views expressed in this article are solely those of Dr. Alpern.)
-cw
