California's drought: How Trump's blustering caricatured a genuine crisis
http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-trump-westlands-20160606-snap-story.html
Of all the mistakes, misstatements, and assorted bloviations issuing from Donald Trump during the current Presidential campaign, surely one of the leading head-scratchers is his May 27 assertion to the effect that there is no drought in California.
Lets consider a fuller quote from Trumps appearance (see the video below):
Were going to solve your water problemyou have a water problem that is so insane, it is so ridiculous, where theyre taking the water and shoving it out to sea. And I just met with a lot of the farmers who are great people, and they're saying, we dont even understand it
.They have farms up here, and they dont get water. I said, Oh, thats too bad. Is it a drought?' No, we have plenty of water
.We shove it out to sea.
.The environmentalists dont know why. Theyre trying to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish...My environmental standard is very simple. I want clean air and clean water.
This was a typical Trump liturgy, in that he took an extremely complicated problem and caricatured it as a simple problem, easily solved. It was also typical in that, while masquerading as the peoples friend, he actually was parroting the position of vested interestsin this case, Central Valley growers and their water suppliers, especially the giant Westlands Water District, who have been grousing for years about their drought-related reduced allocations from the federal Central Valley Project. We can glean this from the fact that Trumps meeting with farmers had been arranged by Johnny Amaral, a local political figure who is the deputy general manager of Westlands.
<more>
Stupid Donnie
Dumbass Donnie