In Reply to: Bass out the airport posted by money on January 09, 2025 at 03:24:26
this is bad optics. I wanted to find out when she went on that trip[ relative to the news of the winds picking up to put that in context, but a quick and dirty search did not give me that info. I am more than willing to identify that as a bad move. No question about that. Angelenos know what the words "Santa Ana winds" entail.
The fire department budget critique has been going on and I was more than ready to jump in it with my usual progressive "yeah, but they *increased* the LAPD budgetr" snark ... then I saw this (on politico):
Bass also took heat from far-left activists online, who accused the mayor of cutting the fire department’s budget in order to pay for a costly new contract with the city’s police. Also weighing in against her was Patrick Soon-Shiong, the politically idiosyncratic owner of the Los Angeles Times, who echoed the attack, posting on X that “the Mayor cut LA Fire Department’s budget by $23M.”That assertion is wrong. The city was in the process of negotiating a new contract with the fire department at the time the budget was being crafted, so additional funding for the department was set aside in a separate fund until that deal was finalized in November. In fact, the city’s fire budget increased more than $50 million year-over-year compared to the last budget cycle, according to Blumenfield’s office, although overall concerns about the department’s staffing level have persisted for a number of years.
But the mayor’s team did not push back on the record to inquiries about Soon-Shiong’s post, allowing the incorrect information to circulate widely online for most of Wednesday. Bass briefly noted in the news conference that LAFD’s budget was higher than what was allocated on July 1.
Also, let's note that 2 of the 4 major fires are in Bass' jurisdiction, let's also keep that in mind when we talk about her role in the response to the fires.
And FYI, it's Newsom, not Newsome.
FEMA tapped thanks to Biden.
Which disaster that occurred in the last 4 years that you think Biden should not helped out with?
BTW, do you spend any time pull the lens back a little from day to day politics and think about why these disasters are happening one after another with such increased ferocity? Do you ever wonder if there is a global pattern here due to, I don't know, shifts in climate patterns that have been fairly accelerated in the last few years? Do you ever ask yourself if your actions, your voting pattern have made things worse? Like at all?