The wonderful thing here is that it's not just a story of glazed-eyed government incompetence breaking at the same time that the Obama administration is trying to nationalize 15% of the US economy. It's that the incompetence has its source in interest groups who issue diktats according to whatever the prevailing liberal pseudo-sophistication happens to be. 30 years ago it was preservation, then we decided that nature should always be allowed to take its course, then we decided we had to plant trees everywhere to enrich the atmosphere - opps! - and now we've got some kind of non-interventionist hodgepodge.

The upshot being that if you think this is bad, wait until panels of doctors and bureaucrats get to make calculations - and set premiums - based on which social groups they think are responsible for unreasonable costs. The public "blame the smokers no blame the drinkers no blame people who drive too much" populism is going to be exciting enough.

But when well-heeled Blue State bureaucrats start making decisions based on a combination of non-replicated studies, shrill urban hand-wringing, and a sensibility about healthy living derived mostly from the Barnes and Noble "Personal Enrichment" shelf - that's when things get really awesome. If someone in San Francisco has made a serious effort to ban or regulate something you enjoy consuming, bummer.

Anyway, yeah:

Federal authorities failed to follow through on plans earlier this year to burn away highly flammable brush in a forest on the edge of Los Angeles to avoid the very kind of wildfire now raging there... Months before the huge blaze erupted, the U.S. Forest Service obtained permits to burn away the undergrowth and brush on more than 1,700 acres of the Angeles National Forest. But just 193 acres had been cleared by the time the fire broke out, Forest Service resource officer Steve Bear said.

The agency defended its efforts, saying weather, wind and environmental rules tightly limit how often these "prescribed burns" can be conducted... Some critics suggested that protests from environmentalists over prescribed burns contributed to the disaster, which came after the brush was allowed to build up for as much as 40 years. "This brush was ready to explode," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich... "The environmentalists have gone to the extreme to prevent controlled burns, and as a result we have this catastrophe today."...

The blaze has destroyed more than five dozen homes, killed two firefighters and forced thousands of people to flee... Biologist Ileene Anderson with the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental organization, said burn permits should be difficult to get because of the potential damage to air quality. Clearing chaparral by hand or machine must be closely scrutinized because it can hurt native species.

Acres supposed to get cleared: 1,748. Acres actually cleared, according to official records: 12.8. In fairness, the fire service says that the records are wrong by a factor of 10 and that they actually managed to clear 193 acres.

So just over 10%.

References:
* Careful Where You Put That Tree [Wired]
* Shh... Massachusetts Proves Mandate-Based Health Reform Will Be A Disaster [MR]
* Feds didn't clear brush in wildfire area [AP]

Previously:
* Geithner Tells Reporters: "I'm Very Confident You... Will Do A Good Job Of Framing This Thing"
* Guy Who Accused Bush Of "Ethnically Cleansing" New Orleans Wets Himself Over Obama Hitler Poster
* Incompetence In Education, Foreign Policy, Economics. But Especially Education. (Plus: Uber-Competent Right Truth Joins Watchers Council)