Serious question, occasioned by evidence and experience: Do some members of California’s political class actually want people to die horrific deaths in wildfires and other natural disasters? Because they’re sure acting like it.
In the game of Russian Roulette, people put guns to their own heads while gamblers wager on the outcome. California Roulette is different. It involves politicians putting guns to everyone else’s heads while the powerful financial and business interests that control them rake in massive profits. At least Russian Roulette requires balls. California Roulette is premised on cowardice, mendacity, and avarice.
Take state Senator Scott Wiener (D–San Francisco), who has been on an eight year crusade to destroy suburbs and single family neighborhoods. He has called houses “racist and exclusionary,” as if inanimate objects can be bigoted. Wiener, who grew up in Princeton, New Jersey, one of the wealthiest (and whitest) suburbs on the planet, doesn’t want anyone in his adopted state to enjoy the kind of life he did as a child. He envisions a brave new California in which 39 million people all live in small, densely packed apartments and get around on public transit and bicycles. No more front or back yards and quiet, tree-lined streets for us naughty, carbon spewing fleshbags. Definitely no more cars.
His hypocrisy isn’t just galling. It’s dangerous. Wiener, who has been called “California’s most devious and craven politician” (which, considering the competition for that particular crown, is really saying something) routinely dismisses concerns about housing development in hazard zones. In fact, he’s introduced multiple pieces of legislation that sought to make it easier for developers to make millions constructing huge apartment buildings in high fire danger severity zones (HFDSZs), tsunami zones, liquefaction zones, areas vulnerable to subsidence, and other places in which dense housing is completely inappropriate.
A flood of dangerous, irresponsible legislation
For example, last year Wiener introduced Senate Bill (SB) 610, which would have eliminated local officials’ power to identify high fire danger severity zones (HFDSZs) in their jurisdictions and prohibit development within those boundaries. He asserted that cities were “weaponizing” HFDSZ designations in order to limit needed new housing (more on the Big Lie behind California’s non-existent housing crisis in another post).
In Scott Wiener’s fever dreamworld, selfish city councilmembers are forever concocting all manner of nefarious schemes to prevent new housing construction. It is beyond his (limited) power of imagination to grasp that local leaders actually care about the safety and lives of the people they represent. Wiener lives in a purely transactional, binary world in which there are only two sides in the housing debate, YIMBYs and NIMBYs. The former are beyond reproach while the latter are beyond salvation. Everyone must be shoved into one of those categories, else his entire reality comes crashing down.
Wiener’s cynicism is boundless. In February, even as the embers of the Eaton and Palisades Fires in Los Angeles were still smoldering, even as a hundred thousand Angelenos were barely beginning to sift through the ruins of their homes and their lives, even as the body count was still being tallied and cadaver dogs were sifting for human remains, he wrote and introduced SB 677. That bill would have made it easier for developers to replace single family homes with four, eight, or ten units – but only in disaster zones.
Read the rest of this piece at All Aspect Report.
Christopher LeGras is an attorney, journalist, muckraker, and Californian.
Photo: Pacific Palisades: To normal people, a scene of unspeakable loss and tragedy. To many in California’s political class, a blank slate and opportunity. Drone image by Christopher LeGras.
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