{"id":2054,"date":"2015-04-20T13:17:43","date_gmt":"2015-04-20T21:17:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/?p=2054"},"modified":"2015-04-20T13:17:43","modified_gmt":"2015-04-20T21:17:43","slug":"californias-leaders-visionaries-lacking-in-leadership-vision","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/californias-leaders-visionaries-lacking-in-leadership-vision\/","title":{"rendered":"California&#8217;s Leaders, Visionaries Lacking In Leadership, Vision"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"TweetButton_button\" style=\"float: right; margin-left: 10px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/share\" class=\"twitter-share-button\"  data-url=\"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/californias-leaders-visionaries-lacking-in-leadership-vision\/\" data-text=\"California&#038;%238217;s Leaders, Visionaries Lacking In Leadership, Vision\" data-lang=\"en\">Tweet<\/a><br \/>\n<script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src=\"\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,\"script\",\"twitter-wjs\");<\/script><\/div>\n<p><em><strong>California&#8217;s Leaders and Visionaries are lacking in leadership and vision. \u00a0Other than that, things are going great.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>People are starting to notice that the &#8220;leaders&#8221; in California aren&#8217;t doing such a great job. \u00a0Over at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thedailybeast.com\/articles\/2015\/04\/19\/big-idea-california-is-so-over.html\" target=\"_blank\">The Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin does a nice job<\/a> of making his case that California is becoming a feudal society of the very rich, the very poor and a vanishing middle class, with a liberal-socialist dominated state government that is incapable of dealing with any crisis large or small, no matter how much advanced warning they have. \u00a0The &#8220;no-growth&#8221; and &#8220;environment first&#8221; policies have resulted in a state whose crumbling infrastrucure is insufficient to support it&#8217;s burgeoning population. \u00a0Hell, it was insufficient 40 years ago during the reign of Moonbeam I, and now during the Weekend at Bernie&#8217;s administration of Moonbeam II and III we&#8217;ll be lucky if there&#8217;s water to flush the toilets.<\/p>\n<p>What am I talking about? \u00a0<em><strong>THE DROUGHT!<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>Who could possibly have foreseen a drought? \u00a0Only anyone with a pulse, that&#8217;s who. \u00a0What are we doing about it? \u00a0Letting our lawns die. \u00a0<em>Visionary!<\/em> \u00a0More importantly what are we doing to alleviate the next drought? \u00a0Because there will be a next drought. \u00a0California&#8217;s history is basically a list of droughts that occur on a regular basis. \u00a0You can practically set your clock by them. \u00a0SO&#8230;are we planning a system of aqueducts like the Romans did? \u00a0Nope. \u00a0Are we building more dams and reservoirs for water storage capacity? \u00a0Nope. \u00a0We passed a bond measure (translation: borrowed money) to deal with the problem. \u00a0What are we building with the money? \u00a0A giant bureaucracy to create regulations on how we use water. \u00a0<em>Problem solved!<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s not that we can&#8217;t afford to do something about it. \u00a0God knows our politicos are shoveling the taxpayer&#8217;s money down various holes like a fireman shovels coal on a steam locomotive. \u00a0(Governor Brown: please don&#8217;t get any more ideas!). \u00a0Even with businesses and middle class taxpayers fleeing, there is still record tax revenue. \u00a0The state budget has more than doubled in the last 20 years. \u00a0So what&#8217;s the problem? \u00a0The problem is the mindset &#8211; what we chose to spend (and not spend) on. \u00a0The mindset about what ends are achievable and desirable versus those that are counter to the laws of economics, not to mention the laws of physics and indeed the laws of nature itself.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/california-politicos-need-water-build-train\/bring-me-men-to-match-my-mountains\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1235\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-1235 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/bring-me-men-to-match-my-mountains.jpg\" alt=\"bring me men to match my mountains\" width=\"640\" height=\"241\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/bring-me-men-to-match-my-mountains.jpg 640w, https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/bring-me-men-to-match-my-mountains-150x56.jpg 150w, https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/07\/bring-me-men-to-match-my-mountains-300x112.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Some time ago <a href=\"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/?p=1234\" target=\"_blank\">I wrote that California needs leaders<\/a> &#8211; Men to Match Her Mountains. \u00a0Or Women. \u00a0Women or Men with the vision to see what needs to be done and the courage to see it done.<\/p>\n<p>I am not advocating mass disregard for the environment, but if you&#8217;re going to have forty million or more people live somewhere, they are going to have needs and those needs must be met. \u00a0Meeting those needs will leave a footprint. \u00a0Visionaries look forward and find innovative ways to meet challenges. \u00a0Yeah, we&#8217;ll leave a footprint or two. \u00a0But we can also tread lightly as possible and mitigate the effects of the things we need to do, the things <em>that\u00a0we must do<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>There is nothing &#8220;progressive&#8221; about a mindset that says in order to move forward we must lower our standards of living and make do with less. \u00a0That we must aspire to less. \u00a0That we must scale back our dreams. \u00a0If that is what our leaders and visionaries are telling us, then they are neither leaders nor visionaries.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tweet California&#8217;s Leaders and Visionaries are lacking in leadership and vision. \u00a0Other than that, things are going great. People are starting to notice that the &#8220;leaders&#8221; in California aren&#8217;t doing such a great job. \u00a0Over at The Daily Beast, Joel Kotkin does a nice job&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2054"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2171,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2054\/revisions\/2171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ego-vero.net\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}