Tea at Trianon: The House That DEI Built: Leadership Failures in Los Angeles

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, January 15, 2025

The House That DEI Built: Leadership Failures in Los Angeles

From Amuse on X:

Take, for instance, the saga of the Santa Ynez Reservoir. In February 2024, Martin L. Adams, the outgoing LADWP veteran, took the reservoir offline for repairs to meet safe drinking water standards. With his retirement looming and Quiñones’s DEI-driven agenda taking center stage, the repair bids languished. By the time the wildfires began, the reservoir remained drained, leaving the LAFD without critical water reserves.
Quiñones’s failure to prioritize operational readiness—combined with the fact that she reported directly to Mayor Karen Bass at her own misguided insistence, rather than to Deputy Mayor of Public Safety Brian K. Williams—meant that she was the only person at City Hall aware the reservoir was empty. Mayor Bass had no idea that Quiñones’s had taken the reservoir offline much less the awareness that she would need to explain why it was so vital to refill it. However, without visibility into the broader public safety framework, Quiñones failed to grasp the critical impact of the empty reservoir on firefighting efforts. Her subsequent attempts to blame power outages for low water pressure were exposed as false, adding another layer of dysfunction to the city’s leadership. (Read more.)

From Edward Feser at Post-Liberal Order:

Never before have I seen block after block of the city I love razed by Dresden-like firestorms. Never before have I personally known so many people whose homes were gravely threatened, seriously damaged, or in several cases completely destroyed, by a natural disaster.
Especially distressing was another personal first – my mother having to evacuate her home as one of the larger fires spread in the direction of the neighborhood I grew up in. At the time I write this, her home now appears to be safe. My immediate family and our own home are also fine. But a couple of the smaller fires that broke out last week were, for a time, alarmingly close.
The winds were strong enough on Tuesday that there was real concern about large trees or power lines coming down around or onto our house. From Tuesday night through to Thursday, we would hear word about friends, and our hearts would break as we’d learn that one after another had had their house burn down. New fires and flare-ups seem to occur daily, and this week will bring another Santa Ana event. Nerves have not stopped jumping, and the knot in the stomach refuses to go away. (Read more.)

California nightmare. From Laura at The History Desk:

California is supposed to be a paradise, with all its beauty and lovely weather. But the truth will out the fiction. Like all of Earth, the state is in progress of moving north and south, simultaneously. Thus, earthquakes. And with its mixture of deserts and mountains, hot dry winds come into town. We get those hot winds every bloody year. Some years are worse than others. But it amuses me how soon we forgot about those hot dry winds even in the north. People have short memories, because a couple of years back, the same conditions burned forests, houses and people. All because of an area that was ill prepared to face mother nature’s grueling tests of character. People tend to think they can live in paradise without personal responsibility to keep it so. The northern voters acted like the southern voters; they voted with their emotions. Northern California needs what Southern California needs; people who will deal with reality. But talking about what needs to be done in forests does not get one elected. That is dry and boring stuff. You would think that at the very least, the politicians would put in place competent people who have the know-how to arrange things around California's edginess.
You see what I mean when I say we have to hold the voters just as responsible as the people they put into power? The people need to ask hard questions. But they are too busy living the California dream. Make that fantasy.
And what about those rumors? This is point #2. Something had to start the fire that rushed through Pacific Palisades. Or someone. In the north, in 2018, the beginning of the horrific Camp Fire began with the sparks from a downed PG & E power line. But that was on the individual who was in charge. According to Wikipedia, the power lines before the fire had not been checked in 6 years. But still, there were more wildfires in the mountains even after the CampFire. Some were attributed to lighting strikes. But again, since we know these things will happen, what measures are there to mitigate the destruction? (Read more.)