One of California’s top storytellers is repeating a troubling performance.
Indeed, in a June 20 X post, California Governor Gavin Newsom not only set the table to blame Trump, he employed slippery stats that can mislead readers, writing:
“Donald Trump isn’t just threatening CA’s disaster aid, he’s also pushing for dangerous cuts ahead of wildfire season — A 63% REDUCTION in the U.S. Forest Service’s budget. A 30% REDUCTION in workforce — 10,000 employees. The agency is the nation’s largest firefighting entity. It oversees more than half of the state’s forestland. He is literally playing politics with people’s lives.”
There are more than a few problems with his claims.
First, the U.S. Forest Service budget is not decreasing. As so many politicians do, Newsom is using the deceptive trick of “Baseline Budgeting” to claim that an increase which doesn’t go as high as some had originally proposed is a “cut”.
The faux “reduction” is calculated from an initially proposed higher amount: the House Interior Subcommittee’s markup on June 26, 2024, projected a funding level of $8.43 billion for FY 2025, reflecting a $53.5 million increase over FY 2024’s regular appropriation.
Newsom’s claim about “workforce” reductions might hit closer to the truth. That workforce reduction, equating to about 10,000 employees, is part of Trump's proposal for overall employee reductions, supported by recent reports of personnel cuts due to “retirement incentives” and forced retirements, though a federal judge has temporarily halted further reductions.
But larger, long-term, problems remain.
As I wrote SIX years ago:
“…the core and majority of PG&E’s power lines run above government owned and mismanaged land. As numerous commentators have observed, the lack of private property ownership, control, and real liability for management of land has led to a shocking history of fires in California and elsewhere in the US. The government won’t go out of business if it causes damage to other peoples’ property through the mismanagement of land it claims as its own.”
And, as X user Kevin Dalton pointed out in a reply to Newsom:
“President Trump warned you about your lack of wildfire management more than five years ago. And then you lied about it. And then you cut the fire budget. And then California burned. Again Again”
Related: CA Utility’s Idea To Prevent Wildfires? Shut Down Power to 5M Residents | MRCTV
All the land in California that Newsom claims is to be better managed by the U.S. Forest Service is supposed to be managed by the state or, preferably, by private interests – interests that would have to address their liability for fire in responsible ways that the feds and state routinely avoid.
And that brings us to the final damning piece of evidence Newsom will not address.
As the Sacramento Bee reports, PG&E just repeated what it told customers a few years after I cited their problematic powerlines located over government-run land. Again, they are readying Californians for rolling brownouts and blackouts – to reduce the fire risk.
It has been years, and the government-PG&E brains still cannot get it right.
Instead, Newsom wants to grease the gears of a blame machine, steering it away from himself and his bureaucracy should another devastating fire light up.