We have an election coming up in California. Yes, it’s a recall, so the current administration is invested in ignoring it, hoping it’ll go away. The large slate of candidates wishing to replace Governor Newsom, I guess, would prefer not to hear from their competitors. So once again, we are left with the election version of “you have to pass the bill to see what’s in it.” You must elect someone, to find out who they are and what they truly stand for. I would prefer to get some answers before casting my vote.

Here’s a list of the things I’d like each candidate to address. I hope they will:

1. Wildfires have consumed millions of acres of our state and destroyed multiple communities. They are getting worse every year. Governor Newsom eliminated his entire budget for forest management and brush clearing this last year. We once had thriving a logging industry in our state, that clear-cut and replanted, managed the forests for their own profit, and created jobs. Since the industry was hounded out of existence, we’ve operated on an alternative philosophy, one of letting everything grow wild and unmanageable, in the name of preservation. Clearly, that hasn’t worked. Please tell us your philosophy about how we will solve this problem.
2. Homelessness is rampant in our cities. Encampments breed violence, disease, and destruction. Garbage lines our streets, human feces, needles, filth on our sidewalks. Nobody has come up with any solution to this problem. What would you do?
3. Violence in the streets is becoming the norm. People are being accosted and robbed, punched, shot, randomly murdered. Police are demoralized, unsupported, and demonized. It is becoming unsafe to go out in the daytime, much less evening, for fear of violence. Do you have a plan to fix this?
4. Our schools are embarrassing. Our Superintendent of Education has embedded CRT in the curriculum. Teachers are being paid not to teach. Our children are languishing at home, or being forced to wear filth-ridden, toxic masks to school. Mental health problems among school children, whose vivid imaginations are not balanced by being able to see the expressions of their schoolmates, are very high. The teacher’s unions rule the roost. Would you support school choice, and having the budget per student available to all parents who want to exercise the right to find a better alternative for their children? How would you deal with these problems?
5. Water supply in this state has always been a challenge. We either have drought or flood. We have done nothing to improve the water-retention infrastructure for years, nor have we exercised ourselves, as a state, to find alternatives. Would you support (a) desalination plants on a scale to alleviate the stress on our water system and allow our farmers to farm, (b) construction of more reservoirs to capture runoff, (c) exploring the possibility of piping water from the north?
6. Energy infrastructure and supply are unreliable. We have the highest energy and gasoline prices in the nation. We are wedded to turning to electricity for all our needs, and we are eliminating reliable sources of power such as clean natural gas, in favor of solar and wind farms. These farms only operate when the sun shines and the wind blows, kill massive amounts of birds, and the energy needs to be subsidized to be affordable when it’s working at all. What will you do about the problem?
7. Our taxes are astronomical and the “services” we get for paying them are more draconian than helpful. We are over-regulated and under-supported as a business community, and as residents. Our roads are a shambles, despite massive supposedly targeted gas taxes. How would you deal with taxes?
8. COVID restrictions are killing business in the state. Forced vaccination, scare tactics, and masking, despite the clear and demonstrable uselessness of the last-mentioned measure, leave us residents under the thumb of a bureaucracy we don’t trust. Common sense has been supplanted by generalized fear. Residents are uneducated about the medical realities, which is that the virus is easily treated, that most of the death has come from being forced not to treat early, and that children don’t die from COVID unless they have an underlying condition. Censorship is the enemy of success when it comes to dealing with the disease. Famously, our current governor doesn’t obey the rules he set for all of us to follow. What is your intention regarding COVID rules?

I’m sure I’ve missed some things. But answering this simple set of pressing questions would educate us all, in terms of our vote next month. I’m not sure how to make that happen, even though we all would be better off knowing each candidate’s answers.

IMAGE: Question marks. Pixabay.

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