Has the grift become an endless cycle in California, much like the failure of the state to adequately prepare for predictable and cyclical wildfire risks?

Duane mentioned this briefly in his earlier post about Gavin Newsom's attempts to spin his way out of accountability, but let's take a closer look at fundraising on the Left over the wildfires. A number of efforts have begun to raise money for victims of the wildfires, most of them no doubt legitimate and worthy. However, Newsom chose to raise money through his own campaign super-PAC, which is serviced by a Democrat Party fundraising machine that is already under scrutiny in several different states over its business practices.

People began howling on social media about the hidden grift over the weekend, and the New York Post picked up on it:

California Gov. Gavin Newsom sparked fierce outrage Suday for soliciting donations to victims of the deadly Los Angeles wildfires via his super PAC, which pushed users to add their personal information to a Democratic fundraising site.

Newsom, 57, posted a link on X to californiafirefacts.com, a website set up by his campaign committee, in response to what he claimed was misinformation on the wildfires. 

But the site urges users to give money to the California Fire Foundation and links them to a module from ActBlue, the Democratic Party’s fundraising platform. The ActBlue donation box says the money is being raised by Campaign for Democracy, Newsom’s super PAC. 

Why bother with ActBlue or a campaign super-PAC at all? We'll get to that question in a moment, but it's worth noting  -- as the Post does -- that no middlemen are necessary at all. The California Fire Foundation accepts donations directly at this link, and has a good reputation for use of funds. Charity Navigator gives it four stars and a 91% rating, in fact. If Newsom wanted to raise funds via the California Fire Foundation, he could have just promoted its link. 

Furthermore, if Newsom wants to fight 'misinformation' (as defined by Newsom himself), why would that have to go through ActBlue or his campaign? He's the governor of the state! That would be a function of his office and the state's media relations team, assuming that they have any legit beef at all about 'misinformation.' The shift of this 'misinformation' campaign -- and that's exactly what it is -- and its commingling-in-spirit with victim relief to political super-PACs tells us all we need to know about the political nature of Newsom's efforts. He's not raising money to help anyone other than himself and his ambitions for higher office.

But why ActBlue? Democrats want to use this to expand their mailing lists and their cell-phone contacts for later GOTV efforts, as this one observer explains (via Twitchy):

So Gavin Newsom launched a website to fight fire disinformation but really it’s a political page for himself to launch his 2028 presidential run. You can even donate.

Wow. Rock bottom meet basement. pic.twitter.com/wLB8NTfepb

— Insurrection Barbie (@DefiyantlyFree) January 12, 2025

That is why Newsom wants to insert ActBlue and his campaign as middlemen between donors and legitimate relief efforts. They want to phish the donations for later political exploitation, and let ActBlue get its 3.95% fee on each donation to shore up its Democrat-supporting operations for 2026 and 2028. They certainly need the money; several states have opened up investigations into their operations over potential fraud and violations of campaign-finance laws, including Texas and Virginia, as well as the House Administration Committee. David has been tracking the developments in the ActBlue scandal, which are now numerous enough to question why a sitting governor would use ActBlue as a middleman in the middle of a catastrophic natural disaster magnified by local and state government incompetency and failures. 

Newsom and his fellow Democrats are attempting to benefit from the misery of his constituents -- misery to which Newsom himself contributed mightily by his own incompetence and progressive activism. Newsom has been spreading his own misinformation of late as well, insisting that this fire resulted from "climate change" rather than a lack of proper brush management and water-resource development. Newsom and the state's progressives have been sitting on $7.5 billion approved by taxpayers to add water reservoirs around the state for both agricultural and fire-prevention improvements, but have yet to build a single reservoir.

So even if "climate change" is a contributing factor, Issues & Insights' editorial board argues today, where has Newsom been for the last six years?

If climate change really is to blame, why was California so obviously, so woefully, so inexcusably unprepared?

Someone needs to ask Newsom why the state didn’t spend the last four years aggressively clearing out underbrush to minimize the chances of a catastrophic wildfire. Why didn’t it carve out large and effective buffer zones to keep fires from reaching populated areas? Why wasn’t there a Marshall Plan-scale effort to build reservoirs so firefighters could get water from hydrants?

It’s not as though the state didn’t have plenty of warning. For decades, environmentalists have been screaming about how “climate change” was going to make wildfires more frequent, more all-consuming, and more deadly.

Yet in the very state where environmentalists hold all the levers of power, they dawdled and delayed, let bureaucratic red tape and environmental groups stall efforts to prepare for the worst, and put other ridiculous and massively expensive projects (such as the “bullet” train) at the front of the line.

The reasons are obvious. Newsom prefers "climate change" as an argument to control energy and water use, not as a problem which requires real preparation and work. He prefers to fundraise through crises rather than address the disasters themselves. And Newsom prefers to exploit victims by phishing the donors seeking to help them. Despicable.