GUYS: RED ALERT! Oroville spillway crisis a crater for republi-CONS:

[calimary]

I went to Wikipedia and looked up Arnold Schwarzenegger - WHEN HE WAS GOVERNOR.

38th Governor of California
In office
November 17, 2003 – January 3, 2011

I ran across this yesterday:

PRESIDENT BUSH AND GOV ARNOLD IGNORE THE WARNING AND SAID NO TO OROVILLE LAKE UPGRADE IN 2005
http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/02/12/oroville-dam-feds-and-state-officials-ignored-warnings-12-years-ago/

See that? "IGNORE THE WARNINGS"

Who?

dubya and AHNOLD. 2005. We in California were under republi-CON rule at that time.

They IGNORED the warnings. THEY ignored the warnings.

This is ammunition, guys! It's an opportunity we must not lose! On TWO levels:

California DUers: start working on this!
1) Push our two Senators, Feinstein and Harris, and of course, every Congressional rep. To fix it.
2) Push the talking point: the GOP was in charge when we could have fixed this, early, and prevented the calamity we now have. AND THEY IGNORED IT. Time to start eroding the supports under the GOP. Time to start connecting the dots. Time to start helping others - your friends, neighbors, relatives, to connect those same dots. We can use this, guys! You know that expanding crater in the spillway? Imagine that spillway as the flimsy "infrastructure" in GOP talking points about how they are better-equipped to run things. Yeah? Ignoring warnings about what could happen? Well, what was warned COULD happen -- DID happen! This can be a way to start chewing away at the arguments for their continuing rule in other states.

DUers in other states:
1) Push your two Senators and your Congressional reps. Point to Oroville and say - THIS is what happens when the GOP is in charge and IGNORING WARNINGS about what could happen? Well, what was warned COULD happen -- DID happen!
2) Push that same talking point, that the GOP was in charge when we could have fixed this, early, and prevented the calamity we now have. And they IGNORED IT. Time to start eroding the supports under the GOP. Time to start connecting the dots. Time to start helping others - your friends, neighbors, relatives, to connect those same dots. We can use this, guys! You know that expanding crater in the spillway? Imagine that spillway as the flimsy "infrastructure" in GOP talking points about how they are better-equipped to run things. Yeah? Ignoring warnings about what could happen? Well, what was warned COULD happen -- DID happen! This can be a way to start chewing away at the arguments for their continuing rule in other states.

This is the flip side of the crisis that old Chinese wisdom talks about. The flip side of crisis is opportunity. WE CAN USE THIS.

This is how we can start eroding confidence in the GOP. Point out how negligent they are. Point out how myopic they are. Point out how THIS, in California, CAN happen to you in YOUR state, if YOU have GOP leadership. That leadership is TYPICALLY short-sighted. Pennywise/pound-foolish. Time to eat away at their underpinnings, and at their argument that THEY are the ones to trust for leadership. This is our foothold.

Time for some erosion. Let's chip a crater into their political spillway.

[Laffy Kat]

1. Why isn't thing all over the news. nt

[global1]

2. I Have To Ask This Question.....

How long has Jerry Brown been Governor of California and did he do anything to upgrade the Lake Oroville Dam infrastructure since he's been Governor?

2005 was 12 years ago. What's happened since re: Lake Oroville Dam infrastructure?

[CountAllVotes]

3. California was on the brink of bankruptcy

Thanks to Ahnuld.

Gov. Brown came into office with a huge mess to straighten out and it is still a mess.

The situation is one of many throughout the state.

It is easy to blame it on one person but the reality of this catastrophe is nothing new.

These politicians are far more concerned about Wall Street than the average citizen, that is the reality of it and yes, this includes Gov Brown as well although prior governors were plain corrupt as well, i.e. Pete Wilson to name just one more to add to the list.

[lostnfound]

14. It's a 50 year recertification process

During schwarzeneggers reign, the need to recertify for fifty years was the question. It wasn't jerrys job to go around reopening every past evaluation.

[Orsino]

4. Jerry Brown has been governor for six years, and is backed by Dem supermajorities.

The Lege has been in Dem hands since Bill Clinton was president.

[lostnfound]

15. No - the recertification was for fifty years.

Can't expect a full review to be done just a handful of years after it was completed.

[Orsino]

18. Unless there were some sort of emergency.

And even then, this doesn't become a Republican problem.

[BostonianMagi]

5. As a brand new member

who came here to see if there were updates on the Oroville CA dam situation I saw this post and looked in. Does the person posting the message realize that the linked article suggests that the STATE agencies were the ones that recommended against the shoring up of the emergency spillway? I am all for placing blame on the Republicans when it belongs there, but this is a pretty big stretch.

Here is an excerpt from the article :
"FERC rejected that request, however, after the state Department of Water Resources, and the water agencies that would likely have had to pay the bill for the upgrades, said they were unnecessary. Those agencies included the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which provides water to 19 million people in Los Angeles, San Diego and other areas, along with the State Water Contractors, an association of 27 agencies that buy water from the state of California through the State Water Project. The association includes the Metropolitan Water District, Kern County Water Agency, the Santa Clara Valley Water District and the Alameda County Water District."

[calimary]

6. Welcome to DU, BostonianMagi!

Point well-taken.

I always immediately go to messaging. It's the messaging. And our side tends to be absolutely no good about it.

This is a foothold.

And I'm being baldly and ruthlessly strategic here. Grab the headline, and make the most of it.

Arnold and his republi-CON philosophy of pennywise/pound-foolish will always lead here. He left a mess behind for Dems to clean up. This was just one small aspect of it. Just as dubya did. Just as reagan/bush1 did. We've seen cycle after cycle wherein the GOP leaves a huge mess behind that Dems who inherit it have to clean up. It's like when you have the inmates overrunning the asylum, or the monkey cage breaking open (because it probably wasn't carefully maintained and overseen) and the monkeys now run the zoo. Leading to immediate wreckage and chaos. And then the more sensible adults have to come in and clean it all up and try to set it all to right.

When you have so much left in shambles in so many arenas, it's hard to shore everything back up. Governor Brown tends to pick his battles. Which is sometimes necessary. It's the same argument Dems are having on a national scale - do we do all out to say no to everything? Or do we get more selective and try to focus on defeating that which can be defeated, or at least eroded.

[lostnfound]

16. Was a 50 year recertification.

Brown not responsible for re-opening it.

[uppityperson]

8. Arnold Schwarzenegger was Repub Gov.

[calimary]

9. It would also be worthwhile to find out how many GOP appointees there were

on the MWD and the FERD. How far down into the political infrastructure did those shortsighted pennywise/pound-foolish attitudes drip?

I actually tweeted to the writer of that article at the San Jose Mercury News, asking the same thing.

https://twitter.com/PaulRogersSJMN

I suspect that in the San Francisco office of any bureaucratic construct based in Washington under a GOP president, and at the state level, under the authority of a GOP governor, you're likely to see GOP appointees. And they tend to win appointments to these jobs based on their agreement with the pennywise/pound-foolish policies and belief systems at the top.

I'm basically looking to undermine GOP "leadership" everywhere and anywhere I can find it. Because, as I've observed over many years, this kind of result tends to stem from that.

[dixiegrrrrl]

13. Welcome to DU

and thanks for the excerpt of the article.
Critical thinking is highly valued here, hope you will stick and around and add to the discussions.

[lostnfound]

17. It was a 50 year recertification done when Schwarzenegger was GOP governor

There was no reason for Brown to have cause to re-evaluate it.

Unless he just assumes that everything that schwarzenegger touched was suspect and probably wrong.

Which might have been a good protocol...by not an easy one.

[ProudLib72]

7. Thanks tRump!

Everything is no tRump's fault. Period.

[Caliman73]

10. California is a weird state.

On many issues we are progressive but in others we are not. There has been a battle, mostly between Northern and Southern California regarding water, since the 1920's. Governor Brown has been trying to straddle the fence regarding our water infrastructure. The South wants to build and improve the water storage and delivery systems because they are basically dependent on water from the North and from the Colorado River. The North wants to improve the natural water management systems and infrastructure that has been deferred by local and state government of both parties for decades, and blocked by Republicans before the Democrats were able to gain the super majority in both houses.

Republicans are culpable in this, but to be fair and honest, it has also been a major criticism against the Brown administration.

[calimary]

11. Indeed we are! Hence the attempts farther north to break off into their own state -

Last edited Mon Feb 13, 2017, 03:22 PM - Edit history (1)

which they've already named "Jefferson."

My basic point that tends to underscore everything is - the Dems are generally better for PEOPLE than the GOP is.

Why?

Because the GOP basically doesn't believe in government. They're basically a "nobody tells ME what to do!" crowd. I grew up with that. My father was like that. And that meant that he cut his own mustard in all ways - unfortunately, for example, including the many times when his doctors told him to stop eating so many donuts and crap because years of shortsightedness and, frankly, gluttony, led directly to late-onset diabetes. Which, in turn, cut his life short, and made his last years miserable, painful, costly, and profoundly disabling.

I simply do not believe that people who hate government should be in government. That's my bottom line, my default position. Because all the I-hate-the-government crowd is gonna do is try to dismantle whatever they can get their hands on. They tend to want it ALL sent to the states. They don't see this country as a general overriding collective of 50 states that all have to work together for the greater good, but rather of 50 separate fiefdoms which really shouldn't have to consider what the other fiefdoms or the public in those other fiefdoms want or need. For example, these are the folks who are okay with what might happen when a gay couple drives across the country - and finds they're really driving across a patchwork quilt that in some cases recognizes and validates their marriage, while in other cases would send them to jail if it were possible.

So in such a case, do you want more people in charge, at the top national levels, who prefer NOT approving marriage equality because they want to cling to old memes and old morality that doesn't reflect changing times? Or do you want more people in charge, at the top national levels, who recognize changing times and evolving public opinion from coast to coast and approve marriage equality?

And it doesn't just cover that one issue, either. It fans out across the board, from women's rights and accepting and response to climate change to the evolving picture regarding marijuana laws.

[calimary]

12. Besides that, the GOP position consistently includes wanting to starve the government. Cut taxes.

They HATE taxes. They call it "income redistribution - ("Commie alert! Commie alert!&quot . I called it shared responsibility.

But they believe in cutting taxes and doing away with as much government infrastructure as possible, so they don't have to have tax money supporting that infrastructure. That infrastructure means jobs. People working. People working in government. At the agency level. Lower down the food chain in the various departments. The people lower-down on the ziggurat who actually carry out the dictates of the leadership. Yes, taxes pay their salaries but we citizens NEED their services. And when they get laid off, that contributes to the unemployment figures rising. And it contributes to fewer case workers checking out child abuse or absenteeism from school. It contributes to fewer inspectors testing water quality and writing reports about it in places like Flint Michigan. It contributes to fewer researchers and data analysts who write position papers from informed positions to help educate and shape the policy that's determined several levels up. It means you have to stand in line longer at the DMV because there isn't enough money to hire more workers, which winds up costing YOU money and time and lost work hours. Never mind what you thought you saved in lower taxes (what? Maybe a few bucks? How much did you lose in work time?)

I distrust republi-CONS because they worship this guy Grover Norquist. Grover Norquist hates taxes. Wants NONE. Or as little as possible. He's the guy who, years ago, coined the phrase "drown it in the bathtub." As in - cut taxes so severely that you shrink government down so drastically that it's small enough that you can drown it in the bathtub."

republi-CONS believe in Ayn Rand. Who famously postulated that you should be able to keep what you earn. ALL OF IT. You should feel NO obligation, civic, moral, or otherwise (read: Christian) to your fellow man. You should feel NO obligation to help those less fortunate than you. You should feel NO obligation to try to level the playing field at all. You're all on your own, and you gotta get for YOU. It's the basis of what I've heard described as a "Republican Sacrament" - the whole "IGMFU" philosophy (I Got Mine, F-U) that means you don't have to share, you don't have to feel any responsibility to your fellow citizens or to the general wellbeing. Screw everybody. Sucks to be them. All that matters is that YOU get YOURS. And you keep it.

We don't teach our toddlers that, do we? We don't teach our kids that it's not right to have to share - or that they shouldn't feel like they have to share if they don't want to? The GOP does. That's one of their fundamental beliefs.

And in the case of Oroville, I would wonder how far Arnold cut back various departments whose leadership recognized that they didn't have the staff to be able to inspect or troubleshoot? That leadership probably believed that there wasn't much of a chance that they'd get the funding to staff up, so that this could be followed up on, sufficiently. Because Arnold is a GOPer. The more taxes they cut, the more they ease the "suffering" of the rich - who they relieve from a basic civic obligation of funding the government and the many useful and necessary services it provides.

And since the rich tend to be taxed more, because they HAVE more that can be taxed, then if you lower taxes, the rich are the primary beneficiaries. And they benefit more than the little guy because their level of tax relief tends to be a significant number of dollars, compared to the little guy for whom a tax cut might wind up being worth a few dollars, or even a mere few pennies. Meanwhile, the costs get passed on to the rest of the population that doesn't have that nice cushion of meaningful tax relief.