Imagine being so bad at a job that you make your predecessors Eric Garcetti and Antonio Villaraigosa — both train wrecks as Mayor of Los Angeles — look (almost) steady and competent?
I don’t know how Karen Bass gets to sleep at night, but it helps if you have a compliant local news media, which has yet to widely report that she has “absolutely” agreed to a salary cut, as I reported exclusively yesterday.
Fortunately, there isn’t enough bubble wrap in the city to insulate her from another satisfying clip from Film The Police LA, a/k/a William Gude, as she tried to get out of the box to put on a happy face this weekend.
Is it just a coincidence that the underside of Bass’s umbrella is a blue sky that doesn’t reflect her rainy reality?
Imagine if the Los Angeles Times deftly double-dipped, as Gude does here, on her refusing to allow City Controller Kenneth Mejia to audit her dubious “Inside Safe” program, before pivoting to her massive cuts to the Sanitation Department as she asks constituents to clean her streets of everything from human feces to drug needles?
That makes this a good time to preview my upcoming story about how City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto’s office has reportedly warned the LAFD and LAPD that taking troubled homeless people to the hospital against their will (if they are able to express it) is “the equivalent of kidnapping.”
A few hours after I attended Bass’s “State of the City” address last week, I asked this poor soul in one of LA’s better communities (as noted by the fine sidewalk), surrounded by needles including one stuck in the back of his hand, if he wanted me to call 911.
He declined.
When did it become “kidnapping” for first responders at the LAFD and LAPD to help people on a fast-track to death?
In other coincidental news…
After weeks of concern about Bass’s widely rumored plan to close at least half of her deadly, diseased LA Animal Services pounds, she posts this to her Twitter account at 6:35pm last night:
“Confusion,” my ass.
That means for the past few weeks, City Council, Bass’s chief of staff, her top legal advisor, deputies, her five LAAS commissioners, its interim General Manager and hundreds of its employees, their union representatives, monied humane foundations, rescue groups, volunteers, the deputy City Attorney assigned to LAAS, and Neighborhood Council Budget Advocates (experts in the subject) who spoke at the start of the 5-hour City Council committee meeting yesterday, and the pissed-off-public all got it wrong.
LA Mayor Karen Bass says that the hundreds of people who protested her massive cuts to LA Animal Services are “confused.” SOURCE: DanielGuss.Substack.com
What a coincidence…
Because nobody said otherwise until last night.
But the truth remains, 93% of the LAAS budget goes to salaries; it steals donated funds and uses them for everything from pizza parties to travel; abandons animals on the street, which is a crime if you did it; kills indiscriminately, has no thriving spay/neuter function or animal cruelty enforcement and is closed too often when it should be open at every location 24/7; and remains in need of a comprehensive restructuring.
Yet it is everyone, not Bass, who is “confused.”
Remember when I wrote last year that City Hall’s claim about being a “Sanctuary City” was a lie?
It’s a good thing that Los Angeles has its finances in order… with a Mayor and City Council that looks prepared and ready for the fight, even though it spends most of its meetings breaking quorum, meandering in the back room, eating, drinking, adjusting its underwear — with its newest member, Ysabel Jurado, literally falling asleep during a meeting a few months ago, though she questionably claimed to be “reading.”
Ready to represent? One of LA City Council’s youngest members, Ysabel Jurado is still asleep when it comes to updating her State Bar of California page. Screenshot Source: ABC-7
What a coincidence!
Jurado must have hit the snooze button when it comes to violating State Bar of California rules, the Business and Professions Code and California Rules of the Court by failing to update her place of employment.
I reported on this very subject last October and Jurado is still months out of compliance, subject to penalties at each level, if anyone were to file complaints.
LA City Councilmember Ysabel Jurado still hasn’t updated her State Bar of California page. Her employment with this law firm ended many months ago Screenshot Source: State Bar of California
The city’s most recent First Amendment loss was to a guy named Zuma Dogg, a superstar gadfly who was not only years ahead on land development corruption that eventually landed former Councilmember Jose Huizar in federal prison, he did it amusingly and ironically without expletives.
His winning ruling was by Judge Dean Pregerson, who happens to be one of the plaintiffs suing the LADWP for destroying his home in the January inferno.
Another…phenomenal…coincidence!
(Daniel Guss, MBA, won the LA Press Club’s “Online Journalist of the Year” and “Best Activism Journalism” awards in June ‘23. In June ‘24, he won its “Best Commentary, Non-Political” award. He has contributed to the Daily Mail, CityWatchLA, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, KCRW 89.9 FM, KRLA 870 AM, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star-News, Los Angeles Downtown News and the Los Angeles Times in its sports, opinion, entertainment and Sunday Magazine sections among other publishers.)
Thank you, Emily! And your columns rock-the-truth, as well!