Commentary: California’s weather was made for demagogues
California’s weather was made for demagogues. For as long as records have been kept, the state has typically experienced a series of dry years followed by a series of wet years. The weather lines up conveniently with election cycles. A few years of drought will prompt an excitable politician to declare that projections clearly show the end of the world is upon us unless California takes immediate action. Depending on the circumstances, that action can be the election of that politician to office, or re-election to office, or an oppressive law that takes effect after the perpetrators are out of office, or voter approval of borrowed money for an overpriced project that might be a state-of-the-art boondoggle. In 2018, as Gov. Jerry Brown prepared to head into the sunset of his colorful political career, he signed two new laws that imposed permanent drought-emergency restrictions on the people of California.
-Written by Susan Shelley, columnist with the LA Daily News.