Don’t California Our Virginia
Scenes from Los Angeles are apocalyptic. Thousands of homes and buildings destroyed in a massive, uncontained conflagration. So many lives disrupted and lives lost. Chunks of a city reduced to ashes.
Is there anything good that can come out of such widespread devastation?
I believe there is.
Virginians can look at the California catastrophe and see what happens when state and local governments are run by Democrat climate crazies and DEI devotees and avoid making those mistakes here.
For instance, when governments factotums are more concerned with preserving a fish - the delta smelt - than human life, bad things happen. Dry reservoirs, for one, during a time of ample rainfall.
When a city is run by officials whose hiring practices prioritize race and sexual orientation over competency the result is incompetent departments. The L.A. city government is a perfect example. The mayor was on a taxpayer funded trip to Ghana while the fires began. She also cut funding to the city’s fire department, which in turn spent time and capital trying to hire more female fire fighters instead of preparing for inevitable wildfires.
And as we witnessed during the last Virginia’s governor’s reign of terror - don't make me utter his name, please - Virginia’s Democrat party recently began looking longingly at the one-party state of California for inspiration.
In fact, the General Assembly formally linked the commonwealth to California’s far-left emissions regulations in 2021. Last year Gov. Glenn Youngkin and Attorney General Jason Miyares declared that Virginia was not obligated to follow California’s regulations.
Virginia was on track to comply with new emissions standards adopted by the California Air Resources Board set to take effect January 1, 2025, replacing California’s current regulations. CARB’s new standards, coined Advanced Clean Cars II, required that 35 percent of cars starting with model year 2026 be sold as electric vehicles. The regulations also mandated a 100 percent electric-vehicle transition by 2035 for all new vehicles purchased.
The mandate was to fall under a 2021 Democratic law tying Virginia’s electric-vehicle policies to California’s. Youngkin urged state lawmakers to repeal the law, but Democrats opposed Republican efforts to do so, prompting the Republican governor to slash it altogether.
In a statement, Youngkin said the state is “declaring independence” from “a misguided electric vehicle mandate imposed by unelected leaders nearly 3,000 miles away from the Commonwealth.”
“The idea that government should tell people what kind of car they can or can’t purchase is fundamentally wrong,” he added. “Virginians deserve the freedom to choose which vehicles best fit the needs of their families and businesses. The law is clear, and I am proud to announce Virginians will no longer be forced to live under this out-of-touch policy.”
Youngkin’s decision was informed by Virginia attorney general Jason Miyares’s opinion on the matter. It confirmed that the state is not legally bound to follow California’s emissions standards.
Democrats were seething when Youngkin made the announcement that he was sparing us from California insanity.
Virginia will default to federal standards required under the Clean Air Act by the end of 2024 after the State Air Pollution Control Board hadn’t acted under its discretionary authority to adopt the new regulations.
The partisan move was met with criticism from state Democrats, who claim that the governor is overstepping his authority by dropping the law.
“There’s a law that’s on the books. The law says that we shall join the California Air standard,” said Senate majority leader Scott Surovell. “He just simply doesn’t have the legal authority to say that we can get out whenever we feel like. This is not how democracy works.”
Sorry, Sen. Surovell, this is EXACTLY how democracy works. Virginians voted for sanity in 2021 when Republicans scored a trifecta in state elections. It was a signal that we’d had enough of your squishy politics and leftist nonsense.
Voters should return control of Virginia to the GOP this fall, not just at the top of government, but the General Assembly. They’ll succeed if conservatives campaign on the utter incompetence of Democrats.
Frankly, we need look no further than last week’s water crisis in Richmond, due to poor city leadership and crumbling infrastructure thanks to decades of Dem rule, to see what happens. The city requested bids for new water treatment switchgears - the machinery that failed last week - in 2016, 2021 and 2022, but never struck a deal not did it replace the aging equipment.
For 115 hours, Richmonders were under a boil-water order and the streets around the Capitol were lined with parta-potties. Lovely.
That’s just a prelude of what’s to come if Democrats aren’t put out to pasture in Virginia.
The L.A. fires should be a wake-up call.
Let’s see Democrats extolling the virtues of California during this General Assembly session as fires still rage on the West Coast.
I dare them.
Oh and let’s see their nominee for governor argue that Virginia should require that more than a third of new car sales must be electric vehicles by next year.
I double-dare them.
We’ll buy electric cars if we want them. Not because a bunch of Marxists in Richmond - who can’t keep the water flowing - demand it.
Keep your eyes on California, Virginia. That’s where we’re headed if the far left isn’t stopped.
