The fires this time

 You know, I remember back in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina almost moved the city of New Orleans into the middle of the Gulf of Mexico, a reporter asked General Honore, the head of the Federal task force coordinating the response  to the catastrophe, a question about the shortcomings of the earlier state and local responses the general had been brought in to correct. General  Honore cut the reporter off, telling him to not get stuck on stupid.  There would be a time for such questions once the disaster was over, but the current moment was neither the time or the place; people needed rescuing, the levees had to be shored up, the city had to be saved.  First things first.

Twenty years later, the city of Los Angeles, California (is the state even necessary in this sentence? There is only one LA, and everyone knows where it is located) is not only stuck on stupid, the city and the state's leadership class is firmly and proudly stuck on stupid, stranded in the muck of its own progressive delusions and doing its best to remain stuck there while simultaneously getting the rest of the country to pay for the cleanup (unlikely) and avoiding responsibility for the fires in the first place (even more unlikely). But hope springs eternal, so there will be no change in the city's forest management program and the reservoirs will remain unfilled and the snail darter will remain protected.  Los Angeles firefighters will have to check the right demographic boxes in order to get a job in the first place and will have to spout the progressive movement's DEI bromides with tremendous enthusiasm in order to keep the job they have.  Insurance companies will not be allowed to make money for their own good and poorly insulated electric wires will remain above ground for reasons that surpasseth understanding. So the more the fires destroy, the more things will stay the same. And Los Angeles, the city and the county, and state of California will not lower taxes on the population in their time of affliction, which makes the city and county of Los Angeles and the state of California look a lot less like modern governments and more like a poorly run protection racket operated by the Mafia's not so best and brightest.  All of them will probably be re-elected.