There is growing criticism of the California politicians in the wake of the massive wildfires underway, from what are seen as poor decisions: Reducing the LA Fire Department budget by $17,000,000 and sending city firefighting equipment to Ukraine; ending forestry management practices to remove underbrush and do controlled burns to lower the proven hazard of dry spells; destruction of four dams in major rivers out of deference to fish populations which lets the water flow into the sea instead of being captured in reservoirs; failure to build new reservoirs that were budgeted for a decade ago; failure to keep existing reservoirs filled so firefighters have run out of water while current wildfires are raging uncontrolled; putting a cap on fire insurance policy costs, causing insurers to pull out leaving many homeowners with total losses; etc. Are these overly harsh criticisms, do they reflect incompetence of leadership, or is everyone being manipulated to make errors in judgment by leadership and others to ignore being vulnerable?

You already know the answer intuitively. This is a dual deception on the part of corrupting leadership of local and state government officials, coupled with a manipulated complacency on the part of the public to turn a blind eye to their shenanigans and goofiness at times. So even if people see through the faulty judgment of decisions made along the way, they failed to do anything to question or fight back and hence are a victim of their indifference as much as poor choices by governing officials. This is all part of the ongoing campaign conducted worldwide but especially in the US, to worsen things, leading to financial collapse. They want to leave the world in tatters when they withdraw for a timeout prior to carrying out their final solution of humanity on their return. The whole focus of the coming Disclosure will be to paint a picture of human incompetence in the face of negative extraterrestrial manipulation and that will be the incentive to accept their devil's bargain, so to speak, in offering to help. So the government officials may look bad, but they are victims as well, all are being duped to varying degrees and in various ways to create the conditions for the Extraterrestrial Alliance to get what it wants from the current world leaders. They want a buy-in for them to have greater control of things, promising to do cleanup and a cleanout when they have actually engineered widespread destruction and will be cleaning out your coffers as they take the world's gold away with them when they depart for a time.