Only, unlike New Orleans, they are not drowning the city in a bathtub, they are burining it in a furnace.

The LA Times has a fascinating interview with the former Fire Chief of San Diego.

Some Tidbits:

• He quit as fire chief because they did not quitting over staffing and resource issues, what the author of the article calls, “San Diego’s long, [Republican] proud culture of skimping on services to keep taxes low”.
• San Diego has 975 firefighters for 330 square miles and 1.3 million residents, while San Francisco 1,600 firefighters for 60 square miles and 850,000 people.

As UC San Diego professor Steve Erie puts it:

“It’s paradise plundered,” which happens to be the title of a book he’s finishing “about how developers run this town.”

Erie says that “developers own most of the city councils. In Poway, in Escondido, what they do is put homeowners in harm’s way. They’re able to control zoning processes, and they’re frequently behind initiatives that say no new taxes, no new fire services. It’s insanity.”

It’s not insanity. It’s how Republicans run society, by eating our seed corn.