After her election as mayor of Los Angeles in 2022, Karen Bass was a heroine of California’s Left. A former backer of Fidel Castro, she decisively defeated billionaire businessman Rick Caruso, who spent more than $100 million to try and defeat her. With a struggling economy, rising crime, and a high cost of living, Bass’s election seemed to confirm LA’s final transition from a place of political diversity to a single-party city dominated by a well-organised Left and funders from the public unions.
Now, though, Bass “is a dead woman walking”, as a union organiser friend told me this week. The revelations of incompetence, poor planning, and awful communication, combined with the fact that the LA mayor was partying in Ghana when wildfires started in her city, have worked against her, and yesterday angry protestors gathered outside her home. Some charges made by Donald Trump and Elon Musk tying the disaster to DEI and climate policies are exaggerated. But Bass’s lack of interest in public safety mirrors the new progressive script which prioritises “social justice” over actual justice, racial quotas over merit, and climate alarmism over common sense.
Naturally, Bass, Governor Gavin Newsom and their media supporters reject conservatives’ accusations of incompetence. They say opponents are using the fires as a political “piñata”, and blame the damage on climate change. Yet Steven Koonin, a respected physicist and advisor in the Obama administration, has argued that the real responsibility lies with a slew of bad policies which left the city unprepared for the scale of the disaster. Fires have been a regular feature of life here in Southern California for at least 20 million years. Given recent weather conditions, the city should have known what was coming.
Rather than help save our piece of the planet, proponents of the green movement have been consistent barriers to effective fire management. As far back as 2018, the Little Hoover Commission found that controlled burns and brush clearance were necessary to avoid catastrophic wildfires, yet not enough was done. Even as the state reacted to major fires in 2020, attempts at controlled fires have been hampered by environmental lawsuits that delay implementation, as well as fire management budget cuts. Bass also cut the fire budget.
California has been running huge deficits in recent years, but not enough of those funds have gone towards fire preparedness. Those in charge never made sure that fire engines were in place beforehand, that there was sufficient water pressure in hydrants, and that reservoirs were filled. To her credit, the LA council member who represents the Palisades, Traci Park, has consistently made these arguments.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a groundswell against Bass and the city’s bureaucrats. Some Hollywood stars — a group which has historically been the bulwark of the progressive movement — have even joined in. Celebrities including Maria Shriver, Justine Bateman and Dennis Quaid have now called on Bass to resign, as have the 150,000 signatories of a petition launched last week. As the journalist Michael Shellenberger notes: “They didn’t imagine their vote would result in their homes burning down.”
Whether Bass is kicked out in 2026 or sooner may not matter much, unless a new reform-minded mayor — as opposed to just a younger progressive — enters office. In 1993, following the LA riots, the city was fortunate to elect the late Richard Riordan, a Republican businessman, who also steered the city through the aftermath of a 1994 earthquake. Although the council was mostly Democratic, Riordan did much to fix the city and attracted capital to rebuild large swathes of the devastated areas. Much of northern LA now requires similar reconstruction.
All hope is not lost, though. Despite the obsessive pounding about climate change, less than one in three Californians approve of Newsom’s handling of the fires. Demands from Republicans in Congress could force the city and state to reverse the policies that exacerbated the fires. Perhaps the worst thing that could happen would be to follow a Bidenesque approach of handing out billions without reforming anything or imposing performance benchmarks.
But ultimately — and particularly in Trump’s second term — cities will have to save themselves. The fact that LA last year removed its Soros-financed District Attorney by a wide margin, replacing him with a moderate Republican, marks something of a departure from the current course. Progressives will push for rebuilding to focus on racial concerns, fearing the imposition of “apartheid”. If people truly begin to see how destructive the progressive agenda is, there may be an opportunity, as in San Francisco recently, to elect a moderate, practical, business-oriented mayor. But even with the city up in flames, that will still be a major political challenge.
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SubscribeRichard, we didn’t start the fire. It was always burning, since the world’s been turning.
You know what? That lyric crossed my mind the moment I read the comment and wondered whether I should post it as a response. But I scroll down and, right on cue, there you are. Always appreciate your contributions.
I live in Southern Portugal downwind from Monchique where large eucalyptus fires erupt every 15 years or so and are carried down towards the coast by the North winds (burning eucalyptus bark carries up to 25 kilometers). Every cycle there is less uncleared brush to ignite. Every cycle more land ownership in the hills is identified. Every cycle the volunteer firefighters are able to spot the ignition of blazes earlier. The app on my phone/computer shows that responders are sent out within a minute of first fire reports . Little by little Portugal has become less dangerous and we are a poor country compared to California.
How can the regular devastation in those rich lands be down to anything other than feckless mismanagement?
Great comment, thankyou.
The massive, lethal fires in Australia a couple of years ago were apparently largely caused by the ‘green’ authorities not annually clearing eucalypus brush and deadwood and undertaking controlled burns under the pretext that such practises were inimical to climate change policies. This resulted in a high death toll and many properties destroyed. Left-wing, Woke politics is bad news!
Has anyone found out who started the fires?
Or would they prefer not to know?
Or do they know and would rather we didn’t know?
Isn’t that your standard response to any issue? Stir the meaningless pot (yawn). Surely everyone in LA wants to know. Sometimes nature starts her own fires, sometimes someone (camper, smoker) is careless and sometimes it’s a pyromaniac, a grudge bearer or other person with criminal intent.
I miss the reply button. I can’t talk to my trolls.
So very sad that “Common Sense” is far from common these days
It appears to me that Common Sense was probably deemed one of those holy cows of Western culture that underpinned small c conservatism and therefore identified by the marxist globalists as something that had to be buried beneath new concepts and perceptions of what constitutes proper and correct thinking that could then be enshrined in new laws. Just as Common Law that had served Britain for centuries was deemed inadequate for protecting “civil liberties” in the UK, new thinking was dreamed up to bury Common Sense which is now termed “far right”.
According to Billy Joel, it wasn’t him
Wasn’t it David Bowie putting out the fires with gasoline
It appears that Lancashire Lad is the only one allowed to reply to comments. What makes you so special? 🙂
I can’t imagine.
I’m afraid I’m past caring what the Los Angelinos do. If you elect foolish leadership, what does that say about YOU? After all, “Who is more foolish, the fool, or the fool who follows him?”
Are you responsible for your government’s failings? If you’re British, shall I blame you for the Tory government? And shall I blame you for the Labour government too? if someone else gets in next, shall I get back to you to blame you for them also?
Counterpoint the current party has less than 30% of Britons vote for them and they aren’t popular at all. In LA these people have held a stranglehold over the city for decades came in with overwhelming support and most people may disagree with them on the fire issue but generally support the mindset overall.
So yes I’d say the Angelenos are a fair bit more responsible for their predicament than the average citizen of the UK.
You’re conflating ‘responsibility’ with ‘blameworthiness or culpability’. A leader is responsible for what happens on his or her watch. Voters are responsible for what their elected representatives do. Thus, for instance, I and all of my fellow adult Americans, bear a responsibility for the sorry state of our nation.
At this point blaming the progressives is just not helpful. And it’s getting kinda tedious.
Progressivism is a form of extended adolescence. It’s not realistic to expect competence or an acceptance of adult responsibility from these people.
‘Progressivism’ is not so much a form of extended adolescence as a means to camouflage tyranny and fascist authoritarianism.
If you vote for left wing politicians, you have to live with the impact of left wing policies.
I find in hard to cry for the Hollywood Celebs who seem to vote for these cretins every time, if they have lost one of their houses.
Okay Joel, thanks for some re-hashed info, and for citing complaints of Hollywooders who are already conservative. I’m still interested to find out the extent of buyers’ remorse among the Angelinos, and specifically the liberals entrenched in show business there… after the Biden/Harris debacle and now these fires, surely they are smelling the pink salts?