On today’s episode of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” Victor Davis Hanson and Sami Winc discuss how California officials would rather go after Immigration and Customs Enforcement than help those impacted by the Palisades Fire, and how California’s powerful “live in splendor,” impervious to the suffering caused by their progressive policies.
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s edition of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal Senior Contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to VDH’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.
Sami Winc: Well, let’s turn then to the Palisades Fire in California and the destruction it wrought. Lee Zeldin, our [head of the Environmental Protection Agency], has reported that the federal government has finished their debris removal, but residents are still complaining that it is almost impossible to get permits to get the rebuilding going. And he said that it’s [California Gov.] Gavin Newsom and [Los Angeles Mayor] Karen Bass who have not sped up one thing, despite their promises. I was wondering your thoughts.
Victor Davis Hanson: I have mixed feelings about this because, on the one hand, these noble people who tragically lost their homes are being used as pawns because they have a lunatic mayor in Karen Bass, a lunatic City Council in L.A.
All they’re interested in is fighting ICE. There’s a million illegal aliens in Los Angeles County. How it got to that point, I don’t know. But that’s what the agenda of Newsom and Karen Bass are. They care more about illegal aliens not being deported than they do homeowners.
And they have this idea that they’re going to rezone the Palisades and make high-density housing, or at least small little cottages. I don’t know what they are. But they don’t want these people who were affluent to build these majestic Romanesque homes again. I drove through there about two weeks ago, at least along the [Pacific Coast Highway], and there’s nothing happening. It’s just pathetic.
And then when I said I’m conflicted, Prop. 50, which is going to destroy the bipartisan committee and gerrymander California from nine congressional Republican representatives to probably four or five, they voted almost 60%. So, a lot of those people in the Palisades voted for this thing.
And they keep voting for Newsom and they keep voting for the Karen Basses of the world, and they keep voting for these crazy people in the legislature. Then they get surprised when it boomerangs back on them.
The voting of the elite along the coast is, “I want to use other people as lab rats. I want to build massive solar plants. I want to decommission nuclear plants. I don’t want natural gas or oil to be tapped in California. I want to overregulate agriculture. I don’t want any charter schools, prep schools. I want the teacher’s unions to run the state and the government unions. I think homelessness is really great. I don’t want to touch the homeless problem. I want to have reparations,” and then, ding. “I live in Bel Air.” Ding. “I live in Atherton.” Ding. “I live in Napa.” Ding. “I hang out on the shores of Lake Tahoe.” What I just described is the mentality of the Bay Area, the people who got us into this mess in this state.
And I’m talking about you, Jerry Brown, 16 years as governor, Gavin Newsom, maybe 30 years. San Francisco City Council, San Francisco mayor, San Francisco lieutenant governor, San Francisco governor. You got about 30 years right there. And then you had Barbara Boxer. She was responsible. The late Dianne Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris.
What do they all have in common? Well, they all wanted to make a progressive, radical state, and they got their wish. We have the highest gas prices, the highest gas taxes, the highest electricity cost, kilowatt. We have 49th, I think, Reason magazine said that our infrastructure and highways were. We’re about 42nd in education.
San Francisco’s per capita property crime rate was the highest in the country. We’ve got the most illegal aliens. We’ve got the most homeless people. One-third of the United States population on entitlements lives here. Half the births are on Medi-Cal. I could go on forever.
That’s the state. And those people gave us this state. And where did they live? Barbara Boxer went down to, I think, Rancho Mirage or somewhere near. Kamala Harris lives in [Brentwood]. Jerry Brown retired to his woodsy Grass Valley estate. Gavin Newsom has a $9 million home, right. Nancy Pelosi made about $200 million somehow as an insider knowledgeable person about stock trades.
A speaker, she has a mansion in San Francisco and an Italian-designed estate in Napa. So, what am I getting at? The people who destroyed the state and made people in the San Joaquin Valley or Inland Empire or Foothills have to pay these exorbitant prices never had to suffer the consequences of their own ideology.
They made out like bandits. And they live in splendor, and people can’t make that connection and they keep voting them in. So, what happens? We’re in a doom … The people that can make the connection, they leave, 300,000 a year, and the people who are left are either the very, very wealthy who are immune from the toxicity of what they plan for others, or they’re the 50% of the state who Medi-Cal pays for all their births or the 40% that pays for their health care.
It’s a medieval society of a few very wealthy on the cone of the period pyramid and everybody else below.
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