February 27, 2017 – CA’s MAGICAL THINKING

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Two weeks ago we witnessed a near catastrophe as the Oroville, CA dam was near collapse. For today’s short post, we have four items that illustrate the shear stupidity, and more, that brought California to this point. First we learn from Instapundit that one month ago the state provided the feds with a wish list $100 billion of infrastructure improvements. Was the Oroville dam on the list? Of course not! 

Then we learn from David Cole of the CA government’s opinion that rain was not in their future. The drought was forever and there was no need to repair a dam that would be holding back very little water. 

Then from Legal Insurrection we learn it was not just stupidity. Evil intent can be seen in the allocation of the 2009 stimulus to DEM voting areas of the state at the expense of GOP areas. 

Finally, if you really want to lose your lunch, we have a four year old item from Ron Hart in the Orange County Register that tracked the 2009 stimulus money throughout the country to DEM constituencies.

In Instapundit, Ed Driscoll posts on California’s Magical Thinking.

“Reinforcing the Oroville Dam was not included on Mr. Brown’s $100 billion wish list of projects prepared last month at the request of the National Governors Association in response to Mr. Trump’s call for $1 trillion in infrastructure improvements, CNBC reported.

One project that did make the list: California high-speed rail, a pet project of Mr. Brown’s with an estimated price tag of $100 billion that has become for state Republicans a symbol of out-of-control government spending.”

During their flight from reality in the post-Clinton years, elite California lefties bragged they were “dam busters”; in the early days of Obama’s administration, his then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Deanna Archuleta, promised the enviro-faithful, “You will never see another federal dam” — and maintenance on state-run projects was apparently out as well. Like the famous Monty Python architectural sketch, Sacramento seemed to consider magical thinking as sufficient to prop them up.

  

In a Jeremiad in Taki Magazine, David Cole takes on more magical thinking of both the right and the left. Follow the link for Mr. Cole’s complete rant.

… If spending is the equivalent of prayer to a leftist, “climate change” is the equivalent of Christian “end-time” cultism. Let me share with you a very recent, and very relevant, example. Over the past week, we here in sunny insane California have faced the prospect of a major calamity as three merciless months of near-nonstop rainfall have led to the possibility of a massive failure at the tallest dam in the U.S., in Oroville, near Sacramento. It’s a big deal; 188,000 people have been evacuated. Concerns about how the aging Oroville Dam would fare in the face of record rainfall were raised years ago, but the state and the feds ignored them.

The story has been amply reported locally and nationally. But what the press conveniently leaves out of its coverage is the underlining theory behind the dam inaction: climate-change apocalyptics had convinced the Silly Putty-brained California powers-that-be that rain was never returning to the state. Quite literally, new dams, and improvements on old ones, were rejected because a doomsday cult had convinced politicians that water was “over,” that the drought that began in 2012 was not a passing thing but an “era,” something that would last decades if not a century. And why build new dams if there’ll be no water for them to hold? Why refurbish old ones if there’s no chance they’ll ever be filled again? …

… Witch doctors in white coats who study tree stumps like gypsies read tea leaves told The San Jose Mercury News in 2014 that the drought might last over one hundred, maybe even one thousand, years. If you Google “California,” “drought,” and “will last” or “may last,” you’ll see endless links to left-certified “scientific” snake-handlers who claimed, right up until a few months ago, that the drought may last hundreds of years, or thousands of years, or “forever.”

Yet here we are in February 2017, with the drought completely over in Northern Cal and close to being over in the South. The rainfall of the past few months has shattered all records. The last “abnormal” California winter, 1982/1983, saw rainfall that was 88% higher than the 30-year average. Winter 2016/2017? 120% higher. Cities like Long Beach have seen rainfall at levels never before recorded. …

… Expect more superstitious nonsense from leftists in the years to come, because if leftists have demon-haunted minds, Trump is the ghost rattling around inside, clouding all judgment and giving rise to visions and fever dreams. Undeservedly famous leftist comedians are seeing signs and wonders. Sarah Silverman’s phantom pavement swastikas were nothing more than the leftist-Jewish version of seeing Jesus in a tortilla.

Silverman’s response after being told that her “swastikas” were simple construction markers boiled down to “I’ve been driven to lunacy by Trump’s anti-Semitism.” In other words, she’s possessed; a demon made her do it.

These days, the left has no moral high ground over the religious right. In fact, I’d take a conservative Christian over a demon-haunted leftist any day, because at least conservative Christians admit that their beliefs are faith-based. They don’t go around screaming “science! science! science!” while drinking sacrificial goats’ blood Santeria-style because the rain gods are angry.

I have nothing against people of faith. But hypocrites? They piss me off like a sonofabitch.

  

Leslie Eastman of Legal Insurrection shows where the CA money went.

… Legal Insurrection readers recall that I noted that Oroville Dam lays in a deep red part of California. Despite the fact that issues with the structure were noted 12 years ago, Obama’s Stimulus Package monies for infrastructure were never sent for the needed repairs and enhancements.

However, one California dam get see several million Stimulus dollars, though it was in much better condition.

Over $22 million in stimulus funds did go toward safety improvements to the Folsom Dam, which was described as in “good shape” at the time the grant was awarded in 2009.

“The dam is in good shape but is starting to show its age,” a Bureau of Reclamation spokesperson said of the Folsom Dam at the time.

The stimulus was intended to “shore up the nation’s aging infrastructure,” said Rep. Mike Thompson, a Democrat who served California’s 1st District before being redistricted to the 5th.

The fact that the dam was in a “blue” county may have been a contributing factor. …

… Mahatma Ghandi once noted that action expresses priorities. …

  

Ron Hart follows the 2009 stimulus funds in a article in March 26, 2013 Orange County Register. Follow the link for more details.

… Of the money spent in swing state Wisconsin, 80 percent went to public sector unions – those with already locked-in jobs. In fact, right-to-work states got $266 less per person in stimulus money than heavily unionized states. Where Democrats had a vast majority of representatives, their states got $460 per person more.

When Obama signed the stimulus bill in 2009, he promised it would provide “help for those hardest hit by our economic crisis.” Clearly, it did not. The states hurt the most, the ones with more foreclosures, unemployment and bankruptcy, got less money than richer states closer to power. Washington, D.C. got the most stimulus money: $7,602 per capita.

The stimulus was a huge political slush fund with little accountability. …

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