The 2006 movie Idiocracy was just supposed to be a stupid comedy based on some social commentary. It is quite an enjoyable movie, so long as you don’t mind a bunch of sexual innuendo and locker room humor. Sadly though, it seems that the idiot politicians here in California, my home state, have used that movie as a blueprint for how to run the state.
They have ignored infrastructure maintenance to the point that our dams and roadways are crumbling; they throw tax money away on unnecessary pet projects and illegal immigrants; they exacerbated a multiyear drought by mismanaging the existing water resources; prior to that they ignored the growing demand on water and have failed to add water storage capacity even though demand has doubled every decade or so; hell, the California State Senate and Assembly house a collection of idiots that closely resemble President Comacho’s cabinet from the movie; and to top it off, the majority of the population of this state resembles the brainless morons who populate the world in the movie by continually re-electing the idiots who are in charge of this once “golden state” because the idiots say what the moron voters want to hear; those same morons (populace) gather to protest a recently elected president wearing vagina costumes and hats. Lastly, yesterday, once again, a felon who was released early from prison, due to decisions made by the idiots in charge and the morons who vote for them, shot and killed a fellow cop. Sadly, he was not remotely the first cop killed by a felon who was released early from prison, and the way things are going, he will not be the last.
At about 18 minutes into the movie, the main character Joe wakes up 500 years in the future to find a society that has let the buildings and roadways crumble (see screen grab). While it took 500 years in the movie for this to happen, it has only taken a couple decades for California to accomplish this same feat. The state has known for 12 years that the Oroville dam, a dam that was completed in 1968, needed serious attention but they did nothing during those 12 years and now the dam is quite literally crumbling away. The seriousness of the situation at the Oroville dam prompted the evacuation of 188,000 people from the city of Oroville, CA and surrounding towns. State officials managed to drop the water level behind the dam, preventing (at least temporarily) the dam from suffering catastrophic failure by stopping the outflow from multiple dams upstream. However, those upstream reservoirs are already at capacity and it is still raining, with several more days of rain in the forecast. In addition to the total fumbling of the Oroville Dam situation thus far, the state fired a number of the workers repairing the dam because they posted photos of the damaged spillway to social media. Seriously? Priorities askew much?
Moving on, California state roads and highways have been ignored so long, that they are crumbling and falling apart. This week, Highway 1 near El Sur, one of the most scenic stretches of one of the most scenic highways was closed because the bridge supports are crumbling. North of San Francisco, the same highway was closed because portions of it are falling down the hillside. Just three days ago, the streets in Los Angeles swallowed up an entire fire engine (a mere $600k fire rig) as well as a couple of cars. Just last night, part of Highway 50 in the Sierra Mountains buckled and collapsed causing one westbound lane to be closed. According to reports, the roads in California are the worst in the nation. The situation with the roads in California is so pronounced that there is a coalition of businesses, labor unions, municipal transportation utilities and local governments demanding the roads be repaired.
Meanwhile, the Democrat leadership in California has been spending Billions of dollars on Jerry Brown’s high speed choo choo train, because he likes trains. It was originally supposed to be a high speed rail that extended from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but now the high speed portion has been limited to only a stretch in the central valley. The initial estimates for this high speed train to nowhere came in at $64B (billion), but at last report, the already vastly over budget train is projected to run 171% of that initial estimate.
In addition to wasting nearly $100B dollars on a train, in just 2014, California democrats spent millions to issue over 600K illegal immigrants driver’s licenses. Those same liberal politicians extended healthcare benefits to those same illegal immigrants at a cost of $1.3B (billion) to the taxpayers. Lastly, the democrats running the state have burdened the California tax payers with a $14.4B annual cost to educate illegal immigrants in the public schools.
Another favorite topic of the Democrat politicians running California is the need to raise the minimum wage. They keep harping that everyone flipping a burger should be earning a “living wage.” Last year, Jerry Brown signed a bill with the sole purpose of raising the state’s minimum wage. Oddly enough, the totally foreseeable outcome of an overpriced workforce was yet another issue that was also addressed in Idiocracy. I offer you the fully automated Carl’s Jr. store from the movie. Not surprisingly, as wages have been artificially raised, fast food chains have been seeking ways to lower costs. One of those ways is to remove workers and introduce automation, and now we are starting to see the introduction of self-serve kiosks in fast food restaurants, and Carl’s Jr. is already heading that way.
In the movie, the idiots populating the world have almost entirely replaced water with Brawndo, a fictional energy drink, because it has to be better than water, it has electrolytes. They even began watering crops with the stuff, and the only place they used water was in the toilet. The world in Idiocracy has become a dustbowl because nothing would grow, and thus they are suffering a long term, manmade drought.
Welcome to California, where the total mismanagement of our water resources has greatly worsened a naturally occurring drought. Despite the population of the state more than doubling since the late 1970’s, our water storage facilities (dams and reservoirs) have had no new additions since 1979. In fact, since the completion of the last dam built in the state, California has actually removed an absolutely shocking number of dams, and many for reasons as ridiculous as “habitat restoration” or “improving fish passage.” Yet one more way in which this state wastes millions of gallons of water every year is by maintaining the outflow from dams in order to keep water levels in the San Francisco bay delta waterways in an effort to prevent a tiny 3” long fish, the delta smelt, from going extinct. Despite those herculean efforts, a recent survey found only 6 of them still alive. Meanwhile, the statewide water shortage has been forcing farmers to reduce their crop sizes because they do not have enough water to grow the food. Not only does this drastically hurt the food supply, and thus raise the cost of produce, but California has historically been the largest agricultural producing state in the nation. With California producing less agriculture, the amount of income from outside the state naturally dwindles.
In Idiocracy, the president’s cabinet is comprised of three complete moron adults, a kid that won a contest and gets to be the Secretary of Energy, and the attorney general who got the job due to her large breasts. Here in California, the mentally deficient population keeps re-electing a senile, burnt out hippie as governor, and votes for babbling liberal politicians like senators Kevin “Ghost Gun” De Leon and Isadore Hall. Hell, just recently Democrat Lorena Gonzalez-Fletcher introduced Assembly Bill 250 that would create taxpayer funded beach vacations for the poor. Not only does the bill seek to subsidize those beach vacations, but it aims to use eminent domain to forcibly take beach properties from private citizens so that they can be converted to these new low income, government funded vacation homes, and at a time that the California budget is billions in the red, and is currently asking the federal government for money.
Also, just like in the movie, where the “dumb angry mobs” began to turn against Joe, the entire state of California (via our elected leaders) have turned against the recently elected president. Governor Moonbeam recently vowed to fight any federal enforcement of immigration laws and to that effect, the state hired former US Attorney General Eric Holder to fight President Trump. The flat broke state of California is currently paying Holder $25k a month (for those with math difficulties, that is $300k annually) to do that, whatever that is. In addition to the state’s fight with the current president and his policies, a large number of residents seem intent on proving their similarity to the populous of the Idiocracy world by having various protests against the recently elected leader of the country. In an apparent attempt to prove their stupidity, many donned pink vagina hats, or dressed in full body vagina costumes to protest his election, while others chose President’s day to stage a “Not my president’s day” protest.
Lastly, and perhaps the most personal aspect of this whole similarity, is the idiotic way in which California is releasing convicted felons from prison en masse. The ease with which the liberals running California have convinced the voting populace to cut those felons free reminds me of the scene in Idiocracy in which Joe escapes from prison, although it is hard to call it an escape. The voters in California have twice voted to decriminalize certain felonies, and to shorten sentences, thus releasing thousands of convicted felons from prison, all because some politicians named the ballot initiatives something entirely misleading. Since those felons have been released early, a number of them have gone on to murder some of my fellow California law enforcement officers. Just yesterday, Whittier Police Officer Keith Boyer who was shot and killed by a convicted felon gang member who was released early thanks to idiotic liberal policies. Sadly, Officer Boyer was not the first cop killed because of these lax liberal policies, he is only the most recent.
Just as in the movie where it was not too late to save the country, it is also not too late for California, but it is getting close. However, as in the movie, it is time to stop doing the same stupid stuff that has got us here. As a state, we need to stop electing liberal politicians who have mismanaged us into a total state of disrepair and total lawlessness. Stop voting with your hearts people, start voting with your brains.