Celebrating Sclerosis in California

May 30, 2025 by Dan Mitchell @ International Liberty

I’ve written many times about bad government policy in California (too many times to count), but I’ve only highlighted bad policy in Los Angeles four times over the past 16 years (here, here, here, and here).

But something caught my eye that demands attention. It involves how quickly the people who lost their homes in the Palisades Fire can rebuild.

As you can see from this tweet, the mayor of the city thinks the bureaucracy is beating expectations. If Mayor Bass is correct, then expectations must have been extremely low. Perhaps even zero. Why do I say that?

Because the fires occurred in early January, destroying more than 12,000 structures, and only 11 permits have been issued for rebuilding. Not 1,100, just 11.  This tweet summarizes the sloth-like permitting process in Los Angeles.

To be fair, maybe Mayor Bass is comparing Los Angeles to Maui in Hawaii, which is another place where government red tape is hindering the rebuilding process.

I’ll make two observations.

1. At the risk of sounding overly libertarian, why should homeowners need to get a permit before they sign a contract with a builder to put a house on their own land? Are there any downsides to this laissez-faire approach?
2. If there are going to be permits, there should be a time-limit rule stating that all house plans are automatically approved if bureaucrats don’t identify a specific problem within a very shot period of time such as five business days.

I’ll conclude by noting that Mayor Bass’ tweet is the regulatory version of “defining deviancy down,” which was the title of a 1993 article by former Senator Patrick Moynihan, in which he explained the unfortunate tendency of some societies to redefine norms to accommodate dysfunctional behavior.

If approving permits for 11 homes more than four months after the fire is a success, norms have definitely eroded. I’d hate to see Mayor Bass’ definition of failure.

P.S. Here’s the column I wrote about the fiscal version of defining deviancy down

Additional articles:

• Palisades Resident Destroys LA Mayor Bass’ Narrative, Describes ‘Bureaucratic Hell’ Following Wildfire — Uncontrolled wildfires raged through Los Angeles in January, all but destroying the neighborhoods of Pacific Palisades and Altadena. We at RedState covered extensively the mistakes made before the fires and after they broke out—including empty reservoirs, a missing mayor, a failure to clean out forests, a fire department that was as focused on social justice as much or more than it was about fighting fires, and more. .....

The Bass/Newsom L.A Wildfire Cartoon Roundup

The Kyrie Eleison of the left:  It's Not My Fault, It's Not My Fault, It's Not My Fault, Amen!

By Rich Kozlovich 

I will have more on this as the information coming forward about the incompetence, corruption, and failure we're seeing here being exposed is unbelievable. I've published three pieces on this, Hello Hollywood, Welcome to Reality, Part I, Part II, and Part III.  All hard hitting to the point you'd think it couldn't get any worse.  Well, that turned out to be wrong, as it appears there's no bottom to this story.  Also, if anyone has any doubts Governor Gavin Newsom is anything but an idiot, take a look at my

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Why is California a Disaster by Victor Davis Hanson

L.A. Mayor’s Friend Leads Pro-Hamas Group

By Daniel Greenfield @ Sultan Knish Blog

When Islamists and leftists attacked Jews at the Museum of Tolerance which had been screening images and videos of the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7, Mayor Karen Bass failed to condemn the violent antisemitism at a Holocaust museum.

Instead the Los Angeles mayor tweeted a generic condemnation of both sides, stating that “we cannot allow current worldwide tension to devolve into this unacceptable violence in our city. This is a time of immense pain and distress for thousands of Angelenos.”

During the UCLA Hamas riots, Mayor Bass once again did not condemn the antisemitism, only denounced the “violence” and “harassment” without saying a word about the Hamas supporters and their attacks on Jews.

And that’s not surprising both because of Bass’ radical politics, she was once a member of a pro-Castro front group, but also because of her association with a key antisemitic figure.

No one has done more to mainstream antisemitism in LA than Melina Abdullah.

Abdullah, a CalState professor and the founder of the Black Lives Matter Los Angeles chapter, was inspired by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. After the crackup of the BLM movement over shady finances, she emerged as head of the largest BLM splinter faction, BLM Grassroots, which claims twenty chapters, and has been fighting for control of BLM in court.

Even by the standards of an antisemitic movement, the Muslim convert stands out for her gutter hate. “We must dismantle patriarchy! Specifically Jewish patriarchy offending Muslims & controlling our economy & campuses!” she tweeted, claiming that “… more & more Jews [were] invading campuses, causing islamophobia, racism, & intolerance.”

During the BLM riots of 2020, the ‘Fairfax Pogrom’ broke out after Black Lives Matter LA hate march headed by Abdullah invaded Pan Pacific Park which includes a Holocaust museum during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot also known as Pentecost.

“We’ve been very deliberate in saying that the violence and pain and hurt that’s experienced on a daily basis by black folks at the hands of a repressive system should also be visited upon, to a degree, to those who think that they can just retreat to white affluence,” Abdullah warned.

Synagogues were vandalized, including with “Free Palestine” graffiti, and a local business owner described hearing screams of, “F___ Jews” during the riots.

Melina Abdullah walked away from the Fairfax Pogrom with more political influence than ever.

Cornel West picked her as his vice presidential candidate and in their first joint interview, both extremist bigots refused to condemn Hamas.

After the Oct 7 Hamas murders, rapes and kidnappings, BLM Grassroots, Abdullah’s hate group, had issued a statement calling the Hamas atrocities an “act of self-defense.”

Abdullah told CNN that she stood behind the description of the Hamas killings as “self-defense” and told the news network, “I think it’s really important to understand where uprisings come from.”

“I find it really troubling that we are constantly asked to condemn Hamas. I’m not a member of Hamas,” she argued.

Then she told CNN that the Hamas attacks on Jews were a “counterterrorist response.”

But there is also one more important thing to know about one of the worst antisemites in LA.

Melina Abdullah has called Mayor Bass a “longtime friend” and the two women indeed have a relationship going back a generation. Last year you could see them hugging at a political event.

During the election, Abdullah praised Bass as “a community organizer in the truest sense” who had “gleaned wisdom from the Black Power Movement and the global Third World liberation movement.”

When Abdullah disrupted a mayoral debate and had to be removed, Bass blasted CalState, ranting that it was “shameful that a university would remove Dr. Melina Abdullah, a tenured member of their own faculty, in the way that they did.”

And once Bass was elected, when Abdullah’s BLM LA hate group announced its proposed People’s Budget, complete with defunding the police, Mayor Bass showed up.

During the campus Hamas riots, Melina Abdullah went all in on them. While Bass kept quiet.

But tellingly, Abdullah had previously praised Bass for her complicity in the extremist agenda.

“Her current job is as an elected official, so her way of advocating has to align with that,” Abdullah had observed “But what she never does is condemn those of us who have to advocate from the outside.”

And Mayor Bass has yet to condemn Abdullah’s antisemitism or the hateful movement she leads. Not only words, but antisemitic harassment and violence have gone unpunished in LA.

Critics wonder how much Bass really agrees with Abdullah’s support for terrorizing Jews.

The inescapable fact is that Los Angeles has failed to protect Jews against antisemitic violence and hate by Abdullah’s organization and its allies, as well as those of the Bass regime.

A radical network of hate that includes not only Abdullah and Black Lives Matter LA, but also J-Town Action Solidarity, which helped incite the attack on a Holocaust museum, along with Bass allies like LA City Controller Kenneth Mejia, closely backed the Hamas campus riots.

BLM LA and BLM Grassroots, Abdullah’s hate groups, which continue to be treated as legitimate despite defending the murder of Jews, rallied Hamas supporters to go to the terrorist encampments on college campuses, and have since then been promoting efforts to individually target the Jewish protesters who stood up to them.

As California politicians issue their formal press releases for Jewish Heritage Month, they have overseen an unprecedented state of antisemitism. Last year, anti-religious hate crimes were up 41% and 83% of those, the vast majority, targeted Jews. As of this year so far despite all the claims about the serious problem of “Islamophobia”, there have been over ten times as many hate crimes involving Jews as those involving Muslims. And that was before the Hamas riots.

Why has LA failed to stop antisemitic violence? The ugly hate at UCLA and USC which top city officials either endorsed or turned a blind eye to shows all too clearly their complicity. When her good friend supports Hamas and the murder of Jews, what does the mayor really believe?

Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine. Click here to subscribe to my articles. And click here to support my work with a donation.