Back in January, a fire hit California’s Pacific Palisades devouring everything in its path, and then some.
Over 40,000 acres and 10,000 structures were reduced to rubble and 27 people died.
Now, tens of thousands are homeless and drinking water in surrounding areas is contaminated, due to toxic runoff from the charred debris.
The economic toll?
It’s estimated to exceed $150 billion.
Tragically, emergency responses were hampered thanks to the far-left policies of elected officials. For starters, think — Gov. Gavin Newsom, D-Calif.
Firefighters were ill-prepared to do their jobs due to budget cutbacks.
Ridiculous environmental regulations, and restrictions on the use of salt water, caused hydrants to run dry.
Defunded police departments could not handle the looters who descended upon Los Angeles. There was more than the ransacking of homes.
Looters worked their way into an Army storage warehouse and walked off with military weapons, including three Humvees, eight machine gun vehicle mounts, seven machine gun tripods, and 18 bayonets.
To understand why government management is chaotic in the Golden State, readers should pick up a copy of “Failed State: A Portrait of California in the Twilight of Empire” by Christopher Moritz.
The book’s author is a corporate lawyer and lifelong resident of Santa Monica.
He well-argues argues that the failures are the inevitable result of “systematic incompetence, ideological rigidity and misplaced priorities” that have dismantled civic order.
For example, California’s radical Democrats, who overwhelmingly control the levers of the state government and local municipalities, enacted a “radical ideology that elevates offenders above victims, criminals above citizens, and illegal aliens above Americans.”
In the name of “crime-equity,” stealing under $950 has been essentially legalized, drug possession is overlooked, violent offenders are released without bail, many categories of crime are no longer prosecuted, prisons have been emptied out, and arrests have plummeted because cops have been told to “stand down.”
California has redefined crimes “as an unavoidable reaction to systematic injustice.”
Punishment is viewed as an “outdated tool of social control.”
Criminals have been defined as “victims of systemic racism.”
From Los Angeles to San Francisco, traditional police strategies, policies, and procedures have been dismantled in favor of “community-based alternatives that prioritize rehabilitation over accountability.”
In other words:
- Punishment is oppressive.
- Deterrence is unjust.
- A criminal is an oppressed victim.
California “is the most violent and crime-ridden of all major U.S. states, outpacing Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania by significant margins.”
The state’s robbery rate is 127 per 100,000 versus the national average of 66 per 100,000.
In the state’s largest city, Los Angeles, homicides, and violent crimes have hit all-time highs, property crimes have surged, shoplifting has soared, and there is a drug-crime epidemic.
The City of Angels is now rightfully considered the gang capital of America.
Los Angeles reported in 2022 a crime rate of 36 for 1,000 residents.
That’s one of the highest in the nation.
The economic ramifications, Moritz reports, are equally dire. “High- crime areas see businesses shuttered, investments stalled, and insurance premiums skyrocketing. . . . It’s a visible wound and acknowledgment that safety, once taken for granted, is no longer guaranteed.”
Crime is not the only problem.
The flood of illegal immigrants “has suppressed wages for native-born residents creating a permanent underclass that depends on government welfare.”
Public schools are overcrowded; more than 20% of students cannot speak English. Over half of California’s 40 million people are below the poverty line and 30% are on Medicaid.
“Poverty, addiction, and mental illness,” Moritz notes, “are no longer viewed as a crisis demanding resolution, but as perpetual conditions to be managed — sustained for the benefit of bloated social bureaucracies that grow fat on their very persistence yet solve nothing.”
As a result, “middle-class families crushed by soaring housing costs, Draconian regulations, and crumbling infrastructure are being replaced by two distinct groups: affluent tech professionals and low-wage migrant laborers. . . . “
This helps explain why 8.5 million people fled California between 2010 and 2022; 352 companies relocated out of the state between 2018 and 2021; and why personal income tax revenue declined by $24 billion between 2021 and 2022.
“The unraveling of California,” Christopher Moritz concludes, “is a case study in the perils of unchecked oligarchy where concentrated wealth, political corruption, and mass migration are weaponized to dissolve national cohesion.”
Yes, to maintain their political power, the ruling class led by Gov. Newsom, Fmr. Vice President Kamala Harris, and Fmr. U.S Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., have imposed “policies that hollow out the middle class, undermine public safety, and fracture civil society.”
While “Failed State” is a depressing recitation of California’s ills, it’s a must read for all Americans interested in saving the rest of the nation from a similar fate.
George J. Marlin, a former executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, is the author of “The American Catholic Voter: Two Hundred Years of Political Impact,” and “Christian Persecutions in the Middle East: A 21st Century Tragedy.” Read George J. Marlin’s Reports — More Here.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.
Comments