As the Smoke Clears, Will Dumb, Rich Voters Finally Get It?

Will the wildfires finally wake up Los Angeles? Adam Carolla, evacuated from home and ranting into his mic in a Los Angeles hotel room, seems to think so.

When the fast winds that fueled two of L.A. County’s largest wildfires on record die down, wealthy residents of Pacific Palisades rushing to rebuild their homes will crash headlong into a thicket of state, county, and local permitting and building codes. Then, Carolla predicts, and only then will they vote differently, with the neighborhood in ruins and the state’s phalanx of environmental regulation turned against them.

It’s a common fantasy. Rich lefties getting their comeuppance and said comeuppance finally beating sense into the next election result is a daydream outnumbered conservatives know too well. In bizarro, chronically mismanaged California, it’s bread and butter.

But such an outcome is a long way off, even as mainstream coverage untangles the lasagna of bad policy, corruption, ill-maintained infrastructure, and outrageous DEI priorities that overshadowed prevention and doomed the fight against the Palisades and Eaton fires. Like Sacramento, one party and one party alone runs Los Angeles. Fairly or not, that’s where the blame will land for empty reservoirs, hydrants that ran dry, and the frenzied evacuations of nearly 200,000 people. . .

While no one can control 100-mph winds or California’s predictably dry weather, a sense of outrage over preventable measures that could have saved homes is understandable. Like the power lines a co-worker of mine saw banging against trees in Studio City last week, talk of recall is already sparking.

Political careers have been ruined for far less. A search for culprits is rarely fair or thoughtful, and yet Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D), who upon rushing back from Ghana appeared dumbstruck, before reading a speech that wasn’t even proofread, and Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), who has been more vocal about destroying dams along the far-north Klamath River to restore salmon than ramping up reservoir storage, aren’t doing themselves any favors. (Read more from “As the Smoke Clears, Will Dumb, Rich Voters Finally Get It?” HERE)

Photo credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr