There was a theme to some of my articles today: government incompetence.
Yes, it's a day ending in '-y', so we're not really surprised that government sucks today, too. But the absolute failure of California government in the wake of the L.A. wildfires has thrown into sharp relief the importance of electing people who actually know what they're doing.
Perhaps this is a message that's finally resonating with the media, or at least the owner of The Los Angeles Times, who now says endorsing Karen Bass was a mistake.
WATCH:
NEW: LA Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong says it was a mistake for his paper to endorse Karen Bass, says competent people should be elected, not professional politicians.
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 13, 2025
While I'm glad people are waking up, this is not some profound concept.
"We endorsed Karen Bass. I… pic.twitter.com/YLHTvhjqDP
The entire post reads:
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While I'm glad people are waking up, this is not some profound concept.
'We endorsed Karen Bass. I think right now, that's a mistake. And we admit that.'
'I think we were one of the few to say competence matters... the interesting thing is that maybe we should think about how we elect people on the basis of did they actually run a job?'
'Did they actually make a payroll? Do they understand what it is?'
'Rather than having professional politicians whose only job is ready to run for office.'
Gee, you mean nominating and electing people because they check political DEI boxes leads to bad things? And that maybe we should nominate and elect people who've lived in the real world and actually run businesses rather than insulated politicians who have no clue what goes on in their districts?
No. S**t. Sherlock.
What a novel concept.
Earlier, The Atlantic decided to run interference for Karen Bass, Gavin Newsom, and all California Democrats by saying the policies that reduced L.A. to an ash heap were 'well-intentioned.' Imagine with me if you will that Exxon Mobil argued they meant well in the aftermath of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. That would've gone over like a lead balloon.
Charges were brought against Exxon and the ship's captain, John Hazelwood, for what it's worth.
But I digress.
Bari Weiss of The Free Press was on Fox News today, and she rightly argued that politicians have forgotten the most basic tenets of governance. Like Soon-Shiong, she's also correct. Their most fundamental purpose is the protection of citizens and the maintenance of infrastructure related to that purpose, like roads, fire, and police services. They've gotten away from that, and think they have the power to control our healthcare and even the lightbulbs we use in our homes.
They also spend their money on things that don't benefit the citizens of the state.
In California in the past several months, millions of dollars were cut from the L.A. fire department budget and general fire prevention efforts. Gavin Newsom cut $100 million from the state's firefighting budget. In the last decade or so, the reservoirs California voters approved were never built.
Meanwhile, and while L.A. was burning, California Democrats allocated $50 million to 'Trump-proof' the state, $24 billion on combating homelessness (which increased to 181,000 in 2024), and roughly $31 billion a year on illegal immigrants.
Karen Bass has been in politics for 20 years, starting as a member of the California State Assembly in 2004. Prior to that, she was a physician's assistant (egads). But she ran no business. Never had to make payroll. For two decades, she's been insulated from the policies she's forced on the people of California. And she was almost Joe Biden's Vice President.
Gavin Newsom founded a winery with a bunch of billionaires and has been in politics since 1997 (the year I started high school). Like Bass, he doesn't live under the policies he forces on others. In fact, he exempted Panera Bread from California's recent minimum wage hike, because longtime donor Greg Flynn owns two dozen locations in the state. And during COVID, while Californians were on lockdown, Newsom partied at the swanky French Laundry with his friends.
We have to stop nominating and electing career politicians. We have to start electing people who have had to live and work under the policies forced on us by out-of-touch so-called 'public servants.' In other words: start electing businessmen. Start electing men (and women) who've created wealth, who've created jobs (and no career politician has ever created a single job), who know how to run an organization. Like Donald Trump.
If we are going to permanently right the ship of the United States, we need business leaders at the helm.
