From the first spark on January 7, until the rains came, Los Angeles residents wondered if losing their homes would be the worst thing to happen to them. Maui's disastrous fire response wasn't far from their thoughts. Suspicions grew. Now, with an announcement from city hall, their worst fears are being realized. Now, their safe old neighborhood is probably going to be turned into an urban planner's "moonshot."
I hope Angelenos have learned the hard lessons of Minneapolis, Portland, and Seattle. When you hire people for office and they haven't done the first thing to make you, the citizen, safer, they don't know what they're doing. It demonstrates that their priorities don't match the job. And when the worst comes — riots, police conflict, floods, disasters, and fires — these leaders lack the intellectual reservoir from which to draw their responses and solutions. When that happens, citizens, you're screwed.
This brings us to Karen Bass, which rhymes with — you know.
After being confronted with the wave of competence from those who lost their homes in Pacific Palisades at that meeting with President Trump last Friday, Bass ignored it and, like the communist autocrat she is, announced she'd put a developer (whose son is an MSNBC commentator) in charge of planning the rebuilding of the Palisades from the ground up. Her announcement was an answer to a question nobody was asking.
The mayor of LA is going full communist.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 29, 2025
Recall her before it is too late. https://t.co/XA3gXg2VId
When confronted with her own ridiculous rules and timelines, she backpedaled and told President Trump that she would "let" people get to their property within a week. But now she's requiring special passes and identification (yes, the woman who opposes voter ID) and announced that she's installing a friend of the party, a developer, as the Palisades rebuilding czar. The people just want to build back their homes or sell out and restart their lives, but some guy just came between the homeowners, their land, and their rights.
The man chosen by Bass, which rhymes with — you know, to oversee the rebuilding of Palisades is Steve Soboroff. The mayor says he'll act as the city's representative and the "owners' rep" for air and water quality and damage assessments and be the liaison with the feds. He's both.
Related: An Architect Lays Out a Plan to Rebuild L.A., But Do California Democrats Have the Guts to Do It?
Over the years, leftists have replaced "the people" with "stakeholders" so that government or friends of government always have an outsized influence in decisions. So, Bass, which rhymes with — you know, chose to name a guy no one was asking for, without any buy-in from the people on whose behalf he presumes to act. Homeowners are going to be surprised to learn that they aren't stakeholders.
Nobody in Pacific Palisades asked for this. In fact, the only thing I wanted was for the feds to name a special master to oversee the billions of dollars in aid. No one trusts Bass, which rhymes with — you know, or Gov. Gavin Newsom to handle that kind of money without misspending it.
A realtor is sounding the alarm about the takeover of the neighborhood.
The mayor is setting the stage to remake the Palisades in the name of "equity." The woman who reduced the fire department budget, didn't know the fire hydrants were dry and the reservoir was offline, and didn't bother to pre-stage fire fighting apparatus (or at least make sure her lesbian fire chief would do it) before she bugged out of town before a once in a lifetime wind event.
Already, urban planners from around the country have begun salivating to remake the Palisades neighborhood into something out of Europe. Reuters calls the remaking of the Palisade an urban planning "moonshot."
The news site imagines "apartment buildings could spring up where strip malls and parking lots once stood, with locals walking to ground-floor shops, offices and cafes, European-style." The city could, "'infill' vertically to add affordable housing in safer downtown areas, rather than outwards with more single-family homes on fire-prone hills," the news site enthuses.
Related: Goodbye Pacific Palisades, Hello Full Communism
One planner at Pomona College imagines that "burned-out lots could be turned into what he envisions as fire buffer zones. While disruptive to residents, Miller believes many would be willing to use the money to relocate."
That last idea was already tried when the Department of Water and Power put fire mitigation in Topanga Canyon and was fined $2 million for hurting a rare herb.
That's how stupid this has gotten.
All these people want is to rebuild their homes and neighborhoods without the stupid rules that prevent them from protecting them.
Even that should make sense to Karen Bass, which rhymes with — you know.
