Shortly after I blogged that the Oroville Dam used its emergency spillway for first time in its nearly 50-year history, as water topped its capacity, emergency evacuation orders to Californians in the valley areas below were given.
Those evacuation orders are still in effect:
A day after 188,000 people were evacuated from the towns surrounding northern California’s Oroville Dam, officials sounded a note of cautious optimism about containing the threat of flooding.Still, the mandatory evacuation order remained in place Monday for Butte, Sutter and Yuba counties.The evacuation was initially ordered Sunday after a massive erosion hole was discovered in an emergency spillway, which catches excess water when Lake Oroville’s water level rises to overflow the dam, threatening communities downstream….Butte County Sheriff Kony Honea defended the decision to evacuate, saying the “dynamic” situation required a quick response.“We did this because our primary purpose is to ensure public safety,” he said in a Monday news conference.
In my earlier post, many commenters remarked that President Trump should deny disaster relief funding requested by Governor Jerry Brown. However, that would be punishing the very people who voted for Trump in the presidential election and have been most active in trying to fight Sacramento’s extreme liberal policies. Here are how the three counties voted in 2016:
My favorite suggestion was to have President Trump tour the disaster area, with Governor Brown in tow. Trump could also bring a van of supplies, like he did for Louisiana. This approach has the benefit of directly aiding his supporters, while forcing Brown to admit that ignoring water infrastructure while chasing his high-speed train legacy was…unwise.
However, the aid must come with conditions. California leaders must be forced to redirect tax revenue originally slated for illegal aliens to the hard-working citizens of the state. Clearly, one of the contributing factors in the Oroville Dam emergency is that the red-areas of California are being punished for not supporting Democratic politicians.
California-based reporter Katy Grimes summarizes some of the Golden State political proposals designed to benefit the immigrants who are likely, then, to vote in more Democrats.
Democrat Leftists in the State Legislature are proposing providing in-state tuition for refugees, yet too many working class families cannot afford to send their kids to California colleges and universities.These same legislative leftists have proposed a bill to use taxpayer money to fund beach vacations for the poor. AB 250, by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego), requires the California Coastal Conservancy, the state agency in charge of preserving California’s 840 miles of coastline, to develop a “Low Cost Overnight Accommodations Program” for the poor, because “visiting on the coast has become prohibitively expensive for many Californians.”These same leftist lawmakers have a package of bills to provide lawyers and public defenders to illegal aliens facing deportation. One of the bills in the package requires taxpayers to pay for the legal defense of illegal aliens.
Perhaps the Californians fleeing the dam site can head on over to the cheap beach house they paid for with their tax dollars?
Trump must get a team to go through California’s accounts, and force the state fund as much of the repair and recovery as it can before he authorizes the federal government to pay a penny. Then, Trump can use some federal monies now going to progressive entities (e.g., Planned Parenthood, NPR) to make up the difference.
Recall that Obama’s Stimulus Package, which inspired many to join the Tea Party movement, was suppose to be used on crumbling infrastructure. As we Tea Party participants expected, that policy was a complete farce:
So where did all that sweet stimulus money go? Of the money spent in swing state Wisconsin, 80 percent went to public sector unions – those with already locked-in jobs. In fact, right-to-work states got $266 less per person in stimulus money than heavily unionized states. Where Democrats had a vast majority of representatives, their states got $460 per person more.
Reports of structural concerns over the Oroville Dam’s spillway stretch back 12 years. So, Obama’s tried to buy Wisconsin for the Democrats (which failed), and as a result, there was no money to strengthen the structure. I assert that the current emergency is an exquisite symbol of Obama’s entire legacy.
President Trump has an opportunity to build a solid legacy for himself, by forcing California’s politicians to make policy choices that serve the citizens of the state for generations to come. In other words, he can use the Orville Dam emergency to “make California American again”.
Meanwhile, our prayers go out to the people in the region, that the emergency is resolved quickly and everyone and their animals get back home safely.
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