California is not a failed state, but it is a state failed by both Republicans of all stripes and neoliberal Democrats

To me, it's long been a toss-up over which allegedly librul big state mosts wastes its gubernatorial and senatorial offices, California or New York.

Overall, though, as Silicon Valley gets more monstrous than Wall Street, I think it's more California. (That would be the Silicon Valley that is not as monolithic as Rethugs claim, either. The prosecution calls Peter Thiel to the stand.)

Anyway, per the first half of the header, as started Monday night at, and in conjunction with, the Republican National Convention, you and I are hearing a drumbeat of "failed state" stories about California.

It's not failed, but it does have problems. Just different problems than lying-by-omission Rethugs are telling you.

Those lightning strikes? The ones in the dry thunderstorm?

That dry thunderstorm and its intensity are believed to be at least partially connected to climate change. So say such experts as Michael Mann as quoted by the folks at Yale Climate Connections. Won't hear the GOP mention that. Sadly, you're not hearing a lot of mainstream media mention that either, per Heated. That lets the wingnuts get away with this unchecked. CJR's Jon Allsop adds that this was also true in 2018 and 2019.

The bad Paradise Fire of a couple of years ago? Officially knows as the Camp Fire? Bad electric wires caused by the cheap-ass capitalist utility PG and E, for which it corporately pled guilty. That's the same PG and E of San Bruno gas line explosion infamy. That would be the PG and E that is owned by a holding company.

Pro Publica now reports that bribery of PG and E employees, in the form of a house in the Bay Area, appears to be tied to that fire.

So, that's one set of lies right there. It is aging infrastructure, not increased use of renewable energy, that has caused capitalist PG and E to fall down on the job. (And, in this sense, with 33 percent renewables, PG and E actually IS following the market as well as state goals. Wind is not only cheaper than coal, it's at least as cheap as natural gas.)

As for Cal leadership? Arnold Schwarzenegger was gov during the gas line explosion, but Newsom was during the fire.

Back to that representation.

In the governor's office in Sacto, the state's been ill-served for some time. You had Gov. Moonbeam Jerry Brown, arguably the first modern neoliberal in a statehouse, from 1975-1983. He, of course, followed St. Ronald of Reagan. Next was Duke Deukmejian, who tried to straddle the sane conservatives vs wingnuts divide in the state GOP. Pete Wilson was the same. Then came Gray Davis, who lived up to his name before being recalled, and then replaced not by a wingnut, but by the Terminator, who eventually fully repudiated the wingnut wing. Then came Jerry 2.0, even more neoliberal than before (and not as environmentalist as he would have us believe) and now, Gov. Pothole, Gavin Newsom. Childhood and business friend of J. Paul Getty scion Gordon Getty. Your average everyday plutocrat. Also known as the former Mr. Kimberly Guilfoyle.

California's infamous Proposition 13 was approved by voters during Moonbeam's first tour of duty. Why he didn't look at a state like here in Tex-ass and propose a seniors' exemption plus caps on property for taxation, and head Prop 13 off at the pass, I don't know. Of course, this is the man who, before the NY primary in 1992, said he'd choose Jesse Jackson as his Veep. Political smarts aren't always there.

Anyway, Prop 13 has not quite gutted Cal government, but it dinged it and twisted it into pretzels, since property taxes and valuations can take "normal" hikes when property is sold. I don't know how much property sales fraud happens in the Golden State, but I'm sure it's plenty.

Rich folks of both parties have moved further into the urban-wildland interface area with their McMansions, following up on previously locating in mudslide zones.

That said, both Democratic and Republican Secretaries of the Interior have not done enough to move the U.S. Forest Service away from bad fire management and dead tree management practices. (California does not have as much of a climate change related dead tree problem as the Rockies, but it does have some.) On the Dem side, I'm thinking of oil-friendly Kenny Boy Salazar in particular.