LA: Who’s Surprised?

The results of the Los Angeles mayoral primary are disappointing to the rest of America but unsurprising. It appears the voters of that great American city are satisfied with surpassing malgovernance as long as the mayor has a (D) behind his or her name.

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Karen Bass apparently won a plurality of the votes counted so far. Of course, this is a Blue City, so votes will continue to be counted until the correct result is achieved. Distress comes from realizing that if all the votes for the even more extreme progressive Nithya Raman were added to Bass’s then a majority results.

The only good news is that Spencer Pratt looks likely to make it to the runoff with Bass. This despite voting irregularities already discovered. For example, almost 13,000 votes were counted containing nearly zero votes for Pratt. Considering that an early report had Pratt with a quarter of the vote, this is a statistically suspicious result. Don’t expect any further investigation by authorities suspecting criminal behavior.

Karen Bass has presided over the decline of Los Angeles for almost four years. Fortunately, considering the apparent ignorance and stupidity of the voters, she can be re-elected only once. But, it would be best if she were single-termed.

Bass is famous for being out of the country in January 2025 as wildfires devastated her city in the Palisades and later Eaton. Perhaps because it was such a DEI bastion, she supported the incompetence of the fire department and initially supported its DEI fire chief Kristin Crowley until Crowley was canned in February. Bass takes no credit for demanding the fire department make $67M budget cuts which would have shut down 16 fire stations. She doesn’t look in the mirror to see who is responsible for negligent fire prevention policies or empty reservoirs. Apart from that, Bass made no dent in her vaunted goal of ending homelessness by 2026.

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Democrats ruining great American cities such as Baltimore, Chicago, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and now Los Angeles, is nothing newsworthy. How can progressives run cities well? The leadership of these cities, the administration and staff, are unskilled. They may have a piece of paper indicating that they graduated from an institution of higher learning, but that doesn’t mean they are either numerate or literate. Progressives migrating into education and civil governance tend to be unable to produce any good or service for which people would willingly pay. They matriculated in subjects immersed in economic and cultural Marxism. Progressives do not know how to invent, create, or fix good, beautiful, and true things. How would it be possible for them to know how to fix a pothole, eradicate homeless encampments, maintain law and order, provide fire protection, or improve infrastructure?

You may think a politician doesn’t have to know how to fix a pothole because that work is done either by a city department or else it is outsourced. In our progressive cities, though, cultural Marxism requires DEI hiring, so merit is never considered for staffing purposes. The city department will be staffed by individuals who have the politically correct skin color, or gender, or ideology. If the work is outsourced, then tribalism will triumph. The work will not go to the lowest bidder or best contractor, but to the politically favored entity, such as the faithful union always supporting progressivism and progressive candidates, or else some company led by someone with the correct gender or skin color. Such corruption isn’t isolated. Rather, this political corruption in hiring easily leads to fraud wherever else taxpayer monies are distributed. Paraphrasing Dostoevsky, “God is dead, so all things are permissible.”

Science, mathematics, and engineering faculty of the University of California system are calling for reinstatement of SAT and ACT testing. This is because grade inflation in our failed government schools leads to a complete inability to discern which student applicants are literate and numerate and which are not. Standardized testing maintained at a high level can reliably differentiate educational achievement. Unfortunately, cultural Marxism reared its ugly head with Ibram Kendi pronouncing SAT and ACT testing racist. Our educational systems being in the grip of progressives, many colleges and universities obediently scuttled objective standardized testing. The effect on college admissions was predictable. Now, we will see how the struggle plays out between higher standards and political correctness. Colleges and universities will now have to choose between restoration of excellence and politically correct mediocrity and failure.

Los Angeles is a battleground in the struggle for competence, decency, and common sense against progressivism. It is not a far stretch to characterize progressive voters as mentally ill, demonically possessed, immoral, ignorant, stupid, or propagandized. Los Angeles is at a tipping point. If there is a majority of such progressive voters, then Los Angeles will continue its descent into the abyss to which there is no bottom. Los Angeles will halt its decline and begin ascent only if there is a majority of city voters favoring criminal justice over social justice, character over skin color, reality over cultural Marxist ideology, diversity of thought over diversity by melanin content, equal opportunity over equal results, merit over tribalist favoritism, property rights over the “warmth of collectivism,” entrepreneurship over entitlements, and firmly addressing mental illness and substance addiction over enablement. Good luck with all that. Spencer Pratt has an uphill slog, but if anyone can do it, he can.

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