Dallas Morning News Exposes California's Utopian Failure

As California suffers under disasters and its own delusions, the Dallas Morning News weighs in with a brilliant editorial outlining the difference between that failing state and a far more stable and successful state to its east.

Here is the difference between California and Texas: In California, even the public utility, funded by customer fees set by a government agency, can’t do its job. And in Texas, our trust in a free market system has served us well. Multiple emergencies, financial and weather, bear this out.

California’s governor declared a state of emergency over the weekend because of wildfires north of San Francisco. The utility, PG&E, responded by cutting off power to millions of people to try to prevent fires spreading because of power lines. This must be terrifying for the people in the region, who are trying to avoid the natural disaster and also find shelter with electricity.

And what is the root of that difference? Texas and California bear many similarities. Both are large, high-population states with an international border and diverse geographies, people, and economies. Both are home to thriving high-tech, entertainment, and vast energy and agriculture industries. Both suffer extreme natural disasters on a regular basis — California with its quakes and wildfires, Texas with its wildfires, tornadoes, and hurricanes.

But one is refashioning itself into a socialist utopia. The other has its boots planted firmly in real soil. California continually elects the kind of people who want to change the world but can’t even change a tire. Texas elects real leaders with real experience who get the job done.

And as the DMN observes, this makes a world of difference.

For one small example, I was part of the team that led relief after Hurricane Harvey in 2017 and 2018. Our first priority was helping Texans get back home, so much so that we practically had that tattooed on our arms. We were constantly shuttling back and forth from Austin to the storm zone on the coast. One of our team moved into an RV in Rockport for several weeks to direct housing relief on the scene. The head of the Harvey recovery effort, Pete Phillips, worked well over 100 straight days through weekends and holidays. I merely worked 35 straight days after Harvey. Don Forse, Jeff Miller, Brittany Eck, and many others — too many to name — sacrificed weekends, time with family, and sleep to get the job done.

No one on the team ever saw that disaster as a means to effect some political outcome. Can the same be said for the party that “never wants a crisis to go to waste”? Can that be said for the party that uses mass-shootings as an excuse to disarm law-abiding Americans and arrogantly lectures and tries to reshape electorates that believe in free markets, free speech, freedom of faith and freedom of self-defense?

The subtitle of the DMN editorial may as well be “Whatever you do next year, Texans, do NOT elect any Democrats to major office.”

The New York Post is even more direct in its assessment of California’s scheming:

Between the raging wildfires and the blackouts, California is now offering an abject lesson in the perils of wishful thinking. The state’s leaders may blame climate change or big utility companies, but in reality it’s their own damn fault.

[…]

Green sentiment has beaten back the timber industry, which might have put life-saving access roads into wild areas. It has prevented controlled burns (for fear of disrupting animal habitats) and barred even minor brush-clearing programs.

When last summer’s disastrous fire killed 85, the state found reason to blame PG&E — which was sued into bankruptcy and is still deep in Chapter 11. (Utilities that aren’t privately owned, meanwhile, don’t face the same liability under California law.) Hence its precautionary blackouts now.

Socialism is slavery to the state and a threat to human life and freedom. The Green(back) New Deal is, in the words of its own shadow author, a means to control people, not a means to help the environment.

Choices have consequences. California’s utopian socialists have lied and bullied their way into one disaster after another with deadly consequences — while Texas conservatives have built up a gaudy record of job growth and competent governance.