Democrats have no Republicans to blame for the Los Angeles fires that have burned out of control, so they have moved on to attacking Republicans for “disinformation” in saying Democratic incompetence led to the crisis.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA), desperately trying to keep his presidential ambitions alive in the face of yet another one of his failures, whined during a meeting with the White House, “We’ve got to deal with this misinformation. There were hurricane-force winds of mis- and disinformation — lies.” In one example, Newsom said it was a “ridiculous lie” to say California cut its fire budget by $100 million months before the fire. According to Newsom, “We have doubled the size of our fire-fighting army … and increased the forest management tenfold since taking office.”
The “since taking office” line was Newsom’s attempt to weasel out of the truth here because he did cut $101 million from “wildfire and forest resilience,” according to Newsweek and California’s Legislative Analyst’s Office. That money went into various forest management programs, including vegetation management by the California National Guard. Newsom is attempting to lie his way out of blame because California’s Democratic officials, under his watch, have neglected forest management for years and turned the state into a tinderbox.
In fact, Newsom said in 2021 that the state had treated 90,000 acres with fire prevention methods under his administration. In case you are trusting Newsom’s notion that he has stayed on top of this matter, here is left-wing NPR’s reporting at the time: “The state’s own data shows that, in reality, it was less than 12,000 acres, so just a fraction of what Newsom claimed. And looking at the bigger picture, not just those specific projects, we also found that the state’s fire prevention work overall dropped by half last year, which was the worst wildfire season on record for California. And during that time, Newsom also slashed about $150 million from the state’s wildfire prevention budget.”
Newsom has gone so far as to release a “fact-checking” website where he can cherry-pick claims to inspect, making him seem like the victim of a political disinformation campaign. His fire fact-checking website is also his own campaign website, “paid for by Newsom for California.”
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President Joe Biden mocked the idea that Los Angeles fire hydrants weren’t producing water for firefighters, which was true, and said it was the fault of utilities who cut off the power so wires wouldn’t cause more fires. Southern California Edison and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said that this was false. Biden’s Federal Emergency Management Agency tried to absolve Los Angeles Democrats of their share of the blame by saying they “have never seen 100-mile-an-hour winds that are fueling the fire.” However, the Santa Ana winds hit 97 miles per hour in 2011 when they knocked out power in Los Angeles and hit 102 miles per hour in 2022.
As is the usual case, “disinformation” is the magic word Democrats use to absolve themselves of blame for their own incompetence. California Democrats did not have enough water stored and ready for the fires. They cut fire management funding even as they set aside millions of dollars to fight President-elect Donald Trump’s policies. They were not prepared for anything despite the kindling in the state’s forests and the Santa Ana winds being predictable variables. California and Los Angeles Democrats are incompetent and lazy, and no amount of complaining about “disinformation” is going to make this crisis any less their fault.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
