With all the talk about California Sanctuary Cities perhaps Californian’s greatest need is sanctuary from massive State Bureaucracies incapable of providing or managing the basic functions of State Government. Add to the mix the burden of a massive statewide infrastructure, utility systems, freeways and State routes, bridges and power grid for a population nearing 40 Million People – not to mention the complexities associated with a well known seismically active region – and you have a fiscal and administrative burden that dwarfs many countries; perhaps the State should be splintered into a more manageable configuration. Known for decades for its top-down State Bureaucracy dominantly populated by generational gnomes effervescing with the glow of its own form of political egomaniacal-narcissism.
California’s State Government’s single greatest accomplishment is its pathological success at doing absolutely nothing well. On the political front the State is so toxic the GOP doesn’t even bother developing a statewide support network. It can’t balance a budget without tax increases and for legislation it prefers to distance itself from it as it slithers thru the State’s “Ballot Initiative” process – a way for the “Public” to propose laws and constitutional amendments without exposing the Governor or the Legislature to the political test – by teasing the Public into voting for further wasteful spending ventures so the Government can camouflage its chronic spending sprees or political distortions.
How bad is it? In 2016 alone nearly $500 Billion was spent, by Public Interest Groups, on Ballot Initiatives. Its public pension system holds the distinction of being among the top three, of the 50 states, in unfunded pension liabilities and total State Debt. The State is in the process of developing a high-speed rail system that doesn’t bother to link the major metropolitan areas of the State and whose planned ridership revenues will barely make a dent in the systems annual operating costs let alone service the debt incurred to build this massive blunder.
It’s water management routines are trapped in an unwinnable argument that on one end places the needs of citizen and the irrigation demands of its multi-billion dollar a year Agricultural machine, one of the States few remaining economic engines that it has not yet managed to destroy or run out of the State, against the California Delta-smelt. Now, as fate would have it, we have another travesty in the making; the increasing risk that the Nation’s tallest Dam (earthen or concrete) is nearing irreversible failure.
Already issuing evacuation notices for 160,000 people (as of 9pm PST @ 2/12/17) due to damage to Northern California’s Oroville Dam’s main spillway as well as the unexpected breach of the Emergency Spillway. In an attempt to throttle-back the failure-risk to the Main Spillway, operators cut back the release of water however, inflows from recent rains forced water levels above capacity sending waters over the emergency spillway, a first in the Dam’s 50-year history.
With no alternative and despite the massive amounts of erosion occurring at both the Emergency and Main Spillway the CDWR (CA Dept. of Water Resources) resumed with higher releases over the damaged spillway in an attempt to lower the massive reservoirs storage. (Sidebar: The Dam is known to be seismically safe at the 70 percent of full capacity level, which given the high level of precipitation and the growing Sierra Snow-Pack, will experience little relief from the stresses of holding water above the 70% recommended levels).
Now for the tell-tale point that has not been widely reported; a critical weakness, in the primary spillway has been known since (at least) 2010 and though the California Department of Water Resources (CDWR) attempted a repair in 2013, a “weeping” through the concrete surfaces remained visible through the subsequent years including the summer of 2016. In 2005, during the Dam’s re-licensing process, three groups filed a motion urging the Federal Government to force the State to line the Emergency Spillway with concrete however the State was sufficiently persuasive in their opposing views and the recommended repairs were shelved.
The next Weather System, due mid-week next, is expected to drop 2-4 inches of rain with the Sierra Snow-melt expected to begin in March/April and last thru June of 2017. The only issue more conspicuous than the State’s Evacuation Order is the absenteeism of State Officials – such as Gov. Jerry Brown or Lt. Gov. Gavin “twosome” Newsom – stepping forward in any capacity even approaching leadership, let alone the offering of any keen insights or a promise of an investigative probe.
California, a State that has become fully immersed in the sanctuaried lunacy of its own making while seemingly unaffected by the financial and social costs associated with its open boarder idolatry and the suspension of Federal Law, will have no problem preying on the Federal Government for funds to cure the costs associated with this most recent bureaucratic failure. So long as he’s willing to unwrap the withered sleeves of the Federal Governments checkbook, Donald Trump is sure to become California’s Favorite President. Sanctuary State Indeed!
Curtis C. Greco, Founder
