This column was written on Tuesday, Jan. 30, in advance of the State of the Union address.
Tonight, the President gives his State of the Union address, and if he sticks to his script and resists the temptation to tweet, he will probably get away with reasonably decent marks. During his one year in office, he’s managed to lower the bar to an extent that none of us would have believed if we hadn’t seen it with our own eyes, so most of us aren’t expecting much in the way of fresh ideas or soaring oratory. I anticipate he’ll be taking credit for the economy, the stock market and low unemployment. I’ve long suspected that the president—any president—has minimal impact on our economy, but since all presidents get blamed for a bad economy, it’s only fair that they get credit for a good economy. I’m guessing most often they have little to do with either. Besides, odds are this hot economy will cool and he’s going to see some downturn in the economy before this four-year term is over, and rest assured, it will be someone else’s fault.
The White House is putting a full court press on people and also parts of the country that are not falling in line with their program, whether it’s on the Russia investigation or about immigration policy. In my lifetime, I can’t remember a president attacking a deputy director of the FBI. Heck, I can’t remember even knowing the name of a FBI deputy director or of a deputy attorney general. The reason we know these names now is that Trump has chosen to attack them. This is all, I suspect, a preemptive strike on the Mueller report and perhaps additional indictments that are certainly coming. It’s a variation on the “everybody does it” defense, which essentially says that we may be dirty, but so are the Democrats, and the FBI and the entire intelligence community so what the hell—it’s all just politics as usual, nothing to get excited about, and there is just enough truth in the charge to make people very skeptical.
In their assault against sanctuary cities, the Department of Justice is threatening to subpoena 23 cities, counties and states, including, in California: the state itself, Monterey County, Sacramento County, Sonoma County, and the cities of LA and San Francisco, among others.
Our Attorney General, who never says undocumented but always talks about “criminal aliens,” has been waving subpoenas and threats about withholding federal grant money, which probably gets Trump off his back for a while but kind of sounds like the anti-immigration Palmer raids rhetoric of the 1920s against radical leftists and anarchists, many of whom were deported.
•••
Locally, there is a major battle going on in the Sycamore Park area, which is a guard-gated community in mid-Malibu, over access to a parcel of land purchased by the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA), which is Joe Edmiston’s turf. The community is incensed because MRCA wants to open Sycamore Park to the general public, claiming that it owns a parcel like everyone else and it’s entitled to invite its own guests as would any homeowner in Sycamore Park. Since the road is private and paid for by everyone in the Sycamore Park community, the homeowners are charging that MRCA is burdening the homeowners with maintaining a public improvement for the entire world. Needless to say, it’s in litigation now and, in fact, is due for a court-ordered mediation this Friday. However, it’s unlikely that anything can be resolved. This past weekend, there was some sort of a confrontation between the private security guards of the association and the Conservancy ranger, with each side claiming to be the aggrieved party, and everyone taking pictures and videos and accusing each other of illegal behavior. Apparently, the situation got a little tense. We’ll keep you abreast as things happen.
•••
The fire this week in the Civic Center area was absolutely frightening. It came close to exploding into Malibu Knolls, as you can from see our pictures. Although we don’t yet know what caused it to ignite, it’s clearly apparent that our fire risk is extraordinarily high. Once again, we’ve had no rain and are quickly falling behind the rainfall averages for the area. If this is the new normal, we have to be realistic about it and take steps to protect ourselves. The quick response of the first responders—particularly the fire department—saved us from a potential disaster. We owe them all a debt of gratitude.