If Mayor Karen Bass Isn’t Recalled, Prosecuted, Or Forced To Resign, Democracy Is Wasted On L.A.

The Federalist ^ | 01/09/2025 | Beth Brelje

[SeekAndFind]

“Unprecedented” is an insult to the intelligence of every newly homeless, property-tax-paying citizen.

The brush was dry, the drought was high, Santa Ana winds made sparks fly, and Los Angeles officials lied about why residents have been killed and thousands of homes have been destroyed.

This fire is different, they insist, and for this lie alone, Los Angeles voters should do what it takes to remove incompetent leaders when they are done sweeping up the ashes.

“[T]his is an absolutely unprecedented event,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a press conference on Wednesday. “It has been many, many years since we’ve faced this strong [of] winds …The water pressure dropped as a result of the massive need to fight this unprecedented incident.”

Bass regurgitated similar claims in a press conference Thursday, repeatedly blaming “unprecedented” and “historic” winds.

Unprecedented? Many L.A. officials have been leaning on that lie. But if you trust science, the rules of fire have not changed since the beginning of time. Fire spreads quickly when fuel and winds are plentiful.

Who could have foreseen such a hellscape? Everyone. But especially Bass, who last year hacked more than $17.5 million from the fire department budget. She was warned.

Los Angeles City Fire Chief Kristin Crowley sounded the alarm just last month, in a Dec. 4 memo to the Board of Fire Commissioners, in which she cautioned that the mayor’s deep budget cuts compromised the department’s ability to maintain core operations. The funding slash included a $7 million reduction in overtime hours.

L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley warned Mayor Karen Bass (D) last month the $17+ million she cut from the department's budget "severely limited the department's capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires" pic.twitter.com/tgzIAeHIsQ— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) January 9, 2025

“These budgetary reductions have adversely affected the department’s ability to maintain core operations such as … training, fire prevention, and community education,” Crowley wrote. “In addition … the reduction [in overtime hours] has severely limited the Department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large scale emergencies, including wildfires, earthquakes, hazardous material incidents, and large public events.”

“Specialized programs and resources such as Air Operations, Tactical EMS Units, Disaster Response, and Community Emergency Response Teams … are now at risk of reduced effectiveness,” the memo added.

The Federalist obtained the report referenced in the memo via a records request. It says budget cuts have compromised the fire department’s ability to complete “required brush clearance inspections,” which it describes as “crucial for mitigating fire risks in high-hazard areas.” Budget and staff cuts have also caused a reduction in residential dwelling inspections, and training, according to the report.

Los Angeles residents deserve better. They are rightfully outraged at the Bass budget cuts, her absence and silence when the fires started, her focus on DEI and skin color diversity over safety, and her shoulder-shrugging attitude suggesting that, because the fires are “unprecedented” in their destruction, they were unpreventable.

“Unprecedented” is an insult to the intelligence of every newly homeless, property-tax-paying citizen.

“Unprecedented” means there was no way to prepare for such fires, and that means there is no way Bass, who earns $269,000 a year, can be called responsible, for what happened, O.K.?

No, not O.K. Bass should quit in disgrace, and if she does not, she is ripe for a recall election. Voters can embrace self-governance and replace her with a smarter, more qualified leader focused on providing basic government services like fire safety.

Bass is among the political breed who have taken their eyes off the mundane stuff of municipal leadership. Smooth roads, regular trash pick-up, and trained and well-staffed emergency responders are the boring basics that matter most. Too many leaders like Bass avert their attention and taxpayers’ money to pet issues. They end up cutting $17 million from the fire department but still have enough money to buy electric vehicles.

When the L.A. fires started, Bass was not even on the continent. She was in West Africa, attending the inauguration of Ghana President John Mahama. She was also reportedly scheduled to meet the country’s first female vice president, Naana Jane Opoku-Agyemang.

This Africa trip was not what L.A. residents needed at this moment. It is not what they need, ever. Not one penny of that self-indulgent trip should come from the hurting people of Los Angeles.

After the smoke clears, will voters move to oust Bass, or forget her role in the destruction and let L.A. continue to ruin? If the latter, democracy is wasted in L.A.

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Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.

[Dilbert San Diego]

There are fires every year in California and other western states. They are a recurring threat. It’s not like this has never happened before.

[dfwgator]

Just give it back to Mexico, already.

[Liz]

Mayor Karen Bass must be Recalled, Prosecuted, Or Forced To Resign

Aerial view of destruction.

[cockroach_magoo]

Atlas never shrugged.

As part of the patriarchy he was relieved of his duties, which were reassigned to the island of Lesbos.

[DoodleBob]

My biggest gripe bout lol this Greenland etc talk, is 50 states and 50 stars on the flag are good things.

Here’s a modest proposal.

Have Maine annex Canada.
Give Cali back to Mexico.
Grant Greenland Statehood.

Voila! We stay at 50.

[dfwgator]

We can consolidate all of those tiny Northeastern states into one.

[dfwgator]

And if Puerto Rico wants to join the US, just make it the 6th Borough of NYC.

[DoodleBob]

Deal.

[Political Junkie Too]

“[T]his is an absolutely unprecedented event,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said in a press conference on Wednesday. “It has been many, many years since we’ve faced this strong [of] winds …The water pressure dropped as a result of the massive need to fight this unprecedented incident.”

So Mayor Bass admits that these winds have been seen before.

When meteorologists call something a "100-year storm" or a "500-year storm," that doesn't mean they are "unprecedented" or that they "can't happen again." It means it's always a possibility and the community must be prepared for it to happen.

What Bass did was "bet the house" that the fire wouldn't happen during her tenure, and she lost. She failed to consider two things:

1. Even if the statistical odds of a "500-year event" happening doesn't change from year to year (a 1/500 chance of occurring this year), the probability is that it will hit at some point in time.

   And... what if it hits on the 500th year, and then hits again on the 1st year of the next 500? That would be two consecutive years of "500-year storms" hitting, followed by the possibility of 998 years with no storms.

2. Each year that the city fails to take preventative actions only tilts the odds towards the event happening even sooner than expected because the probabilities had changed due to their neglect of the environment.

Californians got complacent, they got lazy, they got dumbed down to the realities of the math and science, and they got whacked for it. What was unprecedented was the extent of the neglect to and ignorance of the environment they were entrusted to protec. Instead, they used their trust to further their own radical agendas, and ended up burning down the house.

-PJ

[Olog-hai]

A democracy is a political system in which the people periodically, by majority vote at the polls, select their rulers. The rulers then have absolute power to make whatever laws they please, by majority vote among themselves.

In a constitutional Republic, the people also, by majority vote at the polls, select rulers, who make laws by majority vote among themselves; but the rulers cannot make any laws they please because the Constitution severely restricts their lawmaking power.

The ideal of a democracy is universal equality. The ideal of a constitutional Republic is individual liberty.

In this century, great strides have been made toward the goal of subverting our Republic and transforming it into a democracy. One tactic of the subverters is subversion of language. By calling the United States a democracy until people thoughtlessly accept and use the term, totalitarians have obscured the real meaning of our principles of government.

— Dan Smoot Report, 1966

It’s republicanism you want, not democracy; and Article IV Section 4 of the US Constitution says that the federal government must guarantee such a government to the states.

It’s democracy that brought people like Karen Bass into positions of power.

[montag813]

It shouldn’t be hard to recall her. Do it quickly while anger is still acute. She only got 53% of the vote, a pittance for a Democrat in that state and city. Many celebs openly opposed her, like Katy Perry.

[Political Junkie Too]

A democracy is a political system in which the people periodically, by majority vote at the polls, select their rulers. The rulers then have absolute power to make whatever laws they please, by majority vote among themselves.

If I'm remembering Plato's Republic properly (and I admit that it was tooooo long ago to be sure), a "democracy" is when the people vote directly on each issue brought to bear. There are no middle-man "representatives."

What the Smoot Report called a "democracy" sounds more like an unqualified "republic," if it's being compared and contrasted to the qualified "constitutional republic." In both cases, the people vote for representatives and the representatives act in the best interests of all involved.

Whether there are guardrails around the actions the representatives can take or not, there is still the basic expectation that if they fail to serve the people they represent, the people will not reelect them to represent them in the future.

What we must assume is that in liberal "blue" states, the representatives have broken their bond with the people they were chosen to represent, and have instead chosen to represent a different cohort of people once they attained office. It's becoming clear to the electorate-at-large that the chosen cohort is driving their representatives to make choices greatly at odds with the people who voted for them in the first place.

It's a bitter pill to swallow when one finds out they were scammed, but that's what's happening to the liberals in Los Angeles who are finding out that their representatives have chosen to represent different interests once they attained power, and those interests don't include them.

-PJ

[hinckley buzzard]

Fifty states is kind of tidy isn’t it. Let’s make the other territories just possessions, like PR or Guam.

[Olog-hai]

The term “democracy” is favored by the left-wingers who wish to subvert the republic(s) in the USA and bring things to the state where elected representatives craft any laws they please unfettered by a constitution. It is also favored by Marxists, who use the term in the Communist Manifesto and in Engels’ Principles of Communism. Not to mention, historical democracy was almost never the “direct democracy” form.

Article IV Section 4 does not say “constitutional republican form of government”, just for the record, so it would follow that “republic” has the same definition of “constitutional republic” in all cases.

[rottweiller_inc]

If there’s a city left in the end. It’s looking pretty grim

[healy61]

I don’t think the people of LA have hurt enough to fire her fat ass. I can’t imagine what it would take.

[Political Junkie Too]

Article IV Section 4 does not say “constitutional republican form of government”, just for the record, so it would follow that “republic” has the same definition of “constitutional republic” in all cases.

I agree, which is why I don't understand the first sentence that you cited from the Smoot Report. What Smoot called a "democracy" he then described as a republic without a constitution.

Republics are by definition representative. Democracies are by definition each person votes directly.

I get it that I'm describing a "pure" democracy in early Greek terms of "rule by the people" and not the modern use as in "consent of the governed." The latter was meant to be juxtaposed with "consent of the monarch," which we overthrew.

The term “democracy” is favored by the left-wingers who wish to subvert the republic(s) in the USA

I think, to your point, that when left-wingers throw out the word "democracy," they are talking about the popular vote during presidential elections. When Republicans win the electoral college but lose the popular vote, the left cries "democracy is dying." The Electoral College is a perfect example of a republic at work. It's actually a republic within a republic, so to speak.

Here is a boilerplate of mine that discusses the Article IV Section 4 "guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government."

---

When the Framers insisted that the states guarantee a republican form of government and protection from invasion, it was for the fear of larger states invading smaller states and expecting neighboring states to band together to repel the invasion. By extension, the Framers expected the states to police each other, as the federal government didn't have the expansive resources to act as a centralized ruling body with enforcement power. It was only supposed to act within its narrow delegated powers.

As James Madison wrote in Federalist #43, the states were expected to police themselves against invasion and insurrection:

6. "To guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government; to protect each of them against invasion; and on application of the legislature, or of the executive (when the legislature cannot be convened), against domestic violence.

In a confederacy founded on republican principles, and composed of republican members, the superintending government ought clearly to possess authority to defend the system against aristocratic or monarchial innovations. The more intimate the nature of such a union may be, the greater interest have the members in the political institutions of each other; and the greater right to insist that the forms of government under which the compact was entered into should be SUBSTANTIALLY maintained. But a right implies a remedy; and where else could the remedy be deposited, than where it is deposited by the Constitution?

Madison sets up the argument by pointing out that the several states are of like disposition. A "superintending government" (the federal government, in this case) is the natural home for the authority to defend the system (republicanism). The more alike the states are, the more interested the states will become in each other's affairs, and the more desirable it will be for each state to maintain its form of government in harmony with the others.

Madison then gives a brief history lesson of past confederacies of dissimilar city-states.

Governments of dissimilar principles and forms have been found less adapted to a federal coalition of any sort, than those of a kindred nature. "As the confederate republic of Germany,'' says Montesquieu, "consists of free cities and petty states, subject to different princes, experience shows us that it is more imperfect than that of Holland and Switzerland. '' "Greece was undone,'' he adds, "as soon as the king of Macedon obtained a seat among the Amphictyons.'' In the latter case, no doubt, the disproportionate force, as well as the monarchical form, of the new confederate, had its share of influence on the events. It may possibly be asked, what need there could be of such a precaution, and whether it may not become a pretext for alterations in the State governments, without the concurrence of the States themselves.

Madison goes on to say that the federal government is not expected to enforce republicanism onto the states, it is enough to simply "guaranty" to the states a republican form of government, and the states will take care of enforcing it on each other.

These questions admit of ready answers. If the interposition of the general government should not be needed, the provision for such an event will be a harmless superfluity only in the Constitution. But who can say what experiments may be produced by the caprice of particular States, by the ambition of enterprising leaders, or by the intrigues and influence of foreign powers? To the second question it may be answered, that if the general government should interpose by virtue of this constitutional authority, it will be, of course, bound to pursue the authority.

But the authority extends no further than to a GUARANTY of a republican form of government, which supposes a pre-existing government of the form which is to be guaranteed. As long, therefore, as the existing republican forms are continued by the States, they are guaranteed by the federal Constitution. Whenever the States may choose to substitute other republican forms, they have a right to do so, and to claim the federal guaranty for the latter. The only restriction imposed on them is, that they shall not exchange republican for antirepublican Constitutions; a restriction which, it is presumed, will hardly be considered as a grievance.

This is how Madison disposes of the word "guarantee" in Article IV -- it is limited to the federal government issuing the guaranty to the states, but not enforcing it onto the states from above. The states were expected to police themselves based on their mutual common alignments, unlike how the "free cities and petty states, subject to different princes" of Europe behaved.

---

My boilerplate goes on to discuss how the view of republicanism was vital for the states to act together to repel invasions and quell domestic violence, but I'm going to snip that out of this discussion.

-PJ

[CondoleezzaProtege]

Mayor Bass is disassociated from reality and playing the lead in a Truman Show charade of sorts, but Governor Newsom is the worst of all. He has held the cards to statewide fire prevention for years and has done absolutely nothing but sabotage and scheme to cover for our corrupt electricity overseers PG&E and SoCal Edison. Here he is being confronted by this desperate mom who encountered him by chance! (video below.)

Congresswoman AOC or Sen Bernie Sanders may spew intellectual nonsense, but I can at least stomach their contributions to the liberal Left and to American discourse. I can’t imagine either of them displaying THIS level of sociopathy towards the suffering of their constituents as Gavin Newsom. The spirit be exudes is on a league of its own. And he wants to make CA ground zero for the efforts to subvert all of the righteousness about to descend on DC the 20th of January. Must not happen. CA must be taken back! Prayers appreciated!

https://youtu.be/0U3pDE3pB3k?feature=shared

[Lurker]

Bass is just a symptom of the problem. The real problem is the voters who put her into office.

That will be a very difficult thing to change.

L