Burn Baby Burn

To some, it is just symbolic. Donald Trump punishes those who oppose him and rewards those who do his bidding. California is “punishment target number one” for obvious reasons… even when pain and devastation decimate tens of thousands of lives, destroying entire communities. Empathy has left the building.

“Trump… claimed improper ‘forest management’ was the reason the blazes broke out in California in the fall — not, he added, because of climate change like [California Governor Gavin] Newsom has said.

“‘He blames it on global warming,’ Trump said of the governor, who he described as ‘nice’ and ‘young.’ ‘I say, ‘Look, try cleaning the floor of the forest a little bit. So you don’t have four feet of leaves and broken trees that have sat there for 25 years.’ ’… The president has long seemed to enjoy bashing California, using its progressive reputation as his symbolic punching bag when levying blows at the Democratic Party.” Politico.com, May 17^th.

Indeed, Donald Trump’s war against the fifth largest economy on earth, an accumulation of 40 million residents and an increasingly Democratic stronghold – California – continues at a blistering pace. As the above Tweet suggests, Trump believes that California is the cause of all the damage from the raging fires, blazes which have infected many Western states with equal devastation.  

Trump, whose California golf property is making less money than in the past, hates the entire state. Lacking federal facilities, as Trump orders the shipment the overflow of undocumented detainees to sanctuary states (mostly southern California) as punishment for opposing his vanity wall and his unusually cruel and often unlawful immigration policies, Trump delights in bating this Democratic juggernaut. Florida’s governor, a Republican, complained when some of those undocumented detainees were about to be released to his state, a state that voted for Trump. Homeland Security promptly rerouted those detainees… mostly to California. California gets a perpetual lump of coal, perhaps the only use for fuel-coal that is environmentally sound.

But Trump’s lambast of California’s fire policies, his refusal to reimburse and even his challenge to allow FEMA money to be used to help remedy the massive losses from recent fires, misses a huge point: much of the blame for the fire damage stems from failures to maintain neighboring federal forest land. 

“As California prepares to enter wildfire season, the Trump administration is holding back millions of dollars in requested reimbursement to local fire agencies for battling wildfires on federal lands last year.

“After the most destructive and expensive season on record, California issued a $72m reimbursement request for local firefighting efforts on federal lands. Rather than reimburse the local agencies in full, the US Forest Service audited the agreement that made this exchange possible and is now withholding $9m.

“‘A local fire department doesn’t budget to go help the US Forest Service,’ said Brian Marshall, fire chief for the state office of emergency services. ‘You pay it up front, expecting reimbursement. If you don’t get the money, a fire chief’s job could be in jeopardy because then they’re operating in the red and the elected officials start asking the tough questions. And that’s unacceptable.’” The Guardian (U.K.), May 23^rd.

If there is fault to be assessed, the federal government is at the top of the “fire risk mismanagement” list. “President Trump has laid the blame for out-of-control California wildfires on the state’s ‘gross mismanagement’ of its forests. Former Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke pointed the finger at ‘environmental terrorist groups.’… But according to a new study, the federal government is not doing enough to control the threat of wildfire in the West.

“Despite years of scientific research pointing to prescribed or ‘controlled’ burns as a successful method of clearing brush and restoring ecosystems, intentional fire-setting by federal agencies has declined in much of the West over the last 20 years, the study found.

“‘This suggests that the best available science is not being adopted into management practices, thereby further compounding the fire deficit in the western U.S. and the potential for more wildfire disasters,’ the report warns.

“Published Wednesday [5/29] in the journal Fire, the study by University of Idaho researcher Crystal Kolden analyzed prescribed burns set between 1998 and 2018 by a handful of federal land management agencies, most of which are under the Interior Department, as well as state fire agencies… Over this period, the amount of land burned each year nationwide increased by about 5%. But almost all of that uptick took place in the southeastern U.S.

“In the West, including Northern and Southern California, where climate change and drought have worsened the risk of wildfire, the use of prescribed burns decreased or plateaued. In the Great Basin, a region that includes most of Nevada, half of Utah, and part of several other states, it dropped significantly… ‘This may be one of many reasons why the southeastern states have experienced far fewer wildfire disasters relative to the western U.S. in recent years,’ the report noted.

“Many factors have contributed to the difference between the regions… Public attitudes toward prescribed burns in the Southeast are more favorable than they are in the West. Western landscapes pose unique challenges — the topography is more inaccessible, and some areas are too overgrown after years of policies that prioritized putting out fires.

“‘It’s a difficult place to burn. It can be very dry. There are air quality issues,’ said Cassandra Moseley, a University of Oregon professor who has studied wildfire management in the West. ‘Some states in the West are unwilling to burn.’

“When Kolden examined work done by federal agencies, which control vast swaths of land in the West, she found that only one — the Bureau of Indian Affairs — had substantially increased its use of prescribed burns… Federal money for controlled burns has been ‘depleted’ over the last two decades, the report says.” Los Angeles Times, May 29^th.

Trump’s proclivity not to take responsibility for any possible negative criticism, finding fault and blame in others instead, and his relentless need to punish those who do not support his policies is a personality defect that is particularly intolerable for the President of the United States.

              I’m Peter Dekom, and time after time, Donald John Trump proves that he is only a president for those who voted for him and support his whims and policies… for the rest… go %^$# yourself.