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Wildfires Jeopardizes Dem Careers

By Joe Guzzardi

Thomas Jefferson: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.”  Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass is an excellent example of Jefferson’s warning. Bass is under withering criticism for mismanaging California’s Pacific Palisades and Eaton wildfires. Calls for Bass’s resignation are increasing and, in the meantime, a recall petition gathered more than 135,000 verified signatures through January 13 and is gaining momentum.

The petition demands:

     1. The immediate resignation of Mayor Karen Bass due to her failure to lead during this unprecedented crisis.
     2. A full, transparent investigation into the failures in disaster preparedness, response, and resource allocation that left our city vulnerable.
     3. Accountability for the mismanagement of taxpayer funds intended for disaster relief and recovery.
     4. A comprehensive plan for ensuring the safety of all Angelenos in the face of future disasters.
Closing sentence: “The people of Los Angeles deserve a leader who is present, accountable, and actively working to protect and serve our community. Mayor Bass’s actions—or lack thereof—have shown she is unfit for the office she holds.”

The “present, accountable, and actively working” reference is to Bass’ trip as part of a U.S. presidential delegation to Ghana to attend President John Dramani Mahama’s inauguration, a colossal waste of money with no tangible benefit to Angelenos. Moreover, three years ago Bass promised to cut back on her international travel to focus on Los Angeles. The former globe-trotting House Foreign Affairs Committee member vowed to limit her travel to D.C., Los Angeles, Sacramento and San Francisco. As Mayor, Bass had also gone to Mexico for President Claudia Sheinbaum’s inauguration and three times to France for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. To Paris and back, to Paris and back, to Paris and back, three frivolous round trips that taxpayers funded.

Bass isn’t a major global player like President Joe Biden or Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Her place is at home trying to resolve Los Angeles’ myriad crises that include a budget shortfall,  a $22 billion homelessness dilemma, and a dysfunctional public school system where, because of grade inflation, in some subjects as many as four out of every five students receive A, B, and C grades, while only one in five met grade-level benchmarks, and thousands of struggling students are left with limited access to true academic help.

Bass deserves to be recalled. But, as Jefferson would agree, the voters who put her in the mayor’s office share the blame for the disaster that’s befallen southern California. Plenty of evidence of Bass’ colossal incompetence and radical political leanings were available to voters to scrutinize in the weeks that led up to her 2022 election. During her six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, Bass embraced a far-left progressive agenda. In the 1970s, Bass worked construction for Fidel Castro’s Cuba with the Venceremos Brigade, a Communist group that for half a century has organized annual trips to Cuba for young, left-wing Americans. Bass made eight trips to Cuba as a California Assembly member from 2004 through 2010 and, when Castro died in 2016, Bass lauded him: “The passing of the Comandante en Jefe is a great loss to the people of Cuba,” an insensitive remark that outraged Cubans living in the U.S. Bass later denied that she was a Castro-sympathizer.

In the so-called non-partisan election where party affiliation is not listed, voters had a credible alternative, Republican turned Democrat Rick Caruso, a former L.A. Department of Water and Power Commissioner, and unanimously elected L.A. Board of Police Chiefs’ president. Caruso’s hands on experience with water, power, and police officers would have been helpful during the fires. Too bad for Pacific Palisades residents that Caruso is a white billionaire; DEI triumphed as he lost to Bass in a run-off election.

A recall Newsom petition is also circulating and justifiably so. The wildfires have torched more than 40,000 acres, almost three times the size of Manhattan, destroyed more than 12,000 structures and killed at least twenty-four people. Newsom’s many critics note that wildfires are a common and well-known California issue. Yet Newsom has not been able to produce any realistic plan after six years as governor and eight years as lieutenant governor, which shows that he is completely unprepared and lacks the compassion and backbone to lead California any longer.

Bass kicked off her 2026 re-election campaign in July and proclaimed that we cannot “afford to stop our momentum,” a rallying cry she will have to revise. Doubtlessly, Bass has eyes on a higher California office and perhaps beyond. She’s seen up close and personal that gross inability is not a political barrier to bigger things. Look at Kamala Harris who went from being Willie Brown’s concubine to California’s Attorney General to U.S. Senator to Vice President to presidential candidate, in which the shallowness she displayed on a national stage caught up with her.

Good luck to voters on their recall effort. Given the outcome during the Newsom 2021 recall, victory will be an uphill battle. Diversity-crazed Californians rejected a more-than qualified black gubernatorial candidate, Larry Elder, and chose the pasty-faced, glam boy, illegal alien welcoming Newsom. Go figure!

Joe Guzzardi is an Institute for Sound Public Policy. Contact him at jguzzardi@ifspp.org

Wildfires Jeopardizes Dem Careers Wildfires Jeopardizes Dem Careers