by Robyn Dolgin, American Thinker:
LA mayor Karen Bass knew one shocking image to keep under wraps during her “tour” of the fire-ravaged city.
She wasn’t about to address the scandalous scene of more than 100 emergency vehicles — a crippling number of fire trucks — lying idle in a massive parking lot in Los Angeles (located at North Avenue 19). Residents were later treated to the image on CNN as their communities were burning to the ground in the Southland.
Mayor Bass, obviously, knew the vehicles were in need of repair and maintenance, and for that reason could not be dispatched at the city’s most critical hour.
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Such an appalling scene of incompetence was merely a glimpse into the mayor’s runaway failures and “commitment” to DEI follies. Mayor Bass and her cronies controlled a whopping (wait for it) $12.8 billion budget for the 2024- 2025 fiscal year. So why couldn’t they maintain 100 emergency vehicles? Mayor Bass, who spared no expense for personal travels, had made the now infamously tragic decision to defund $17 million from the LAFD’s already inadequate budget.
A few million taxpayers are asking themselves, where did all the money go?
This question, in a city with the nation’s highest taxes, is now the focus of a proliferation of scandalous headlines surfacing in the media. One particularly sordid headline reads: “LA Mayor Karen Bass’ Office Hit with Scandals Over Hush Money, Bribes and Accusations of ‘Legalized Corruption.” Mayor Bass, and her cronies, worked hard to suppress the 1,400 pages of documents (cited in the lawsuit) serving as the basis of the exposés of the mayor’s “completely inept” leadership.
Ironically, Bass may have regarded the lawsuit as an UXB (unexploded bomb) until now. No one paid much attention when the lawsuit was filed by the public-minded non-profit group Consumer Watchdog and the Los Angeles Times, dating as far back as 2019.
It’s hard to cherry-pick the more scandalous assertions made in the lawsuit: But the media is focusing on the alleged unpardonable misconduct by city officials including: Janisse Quinones, a friend and fellow “progressive” of the mayor, awarded a $750,000 salary, almost double her predecessor, to become CEO of the Department of Water and Power; and “Legalized shakedowns” of businesses given the proper sounding name, “Behested Payments,” which were alleged donations to the mayor’s office. AT&T and Coca Cola were named among the corporations making “donations.” And, of course, the flagrant misuse of public funds and tragic failure to allocate necessary resources to maintain the city’s firefighting infrastructure.
“We have a pay-to-pay culture in Los Angeles,” said Susan Shelley, a member of the editorial board of the Southern California New Group and vice president of communications for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. Shelley has been an annoying voice of integrity attacking the mayor’s office and her like-minded “progressives.” As for the “Behested Payments,” Shelley asserts the policy is better known as “extortion” in government circles.
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