My views and expectations of government and business leaders were shaped growing up in Toronto in the 60s and early 70s. Toronto’s deft urban planning, which ensured well maintained parks and other nods to quality-of-life amenities, as well as the city’s efficient and reliable delivery of public services, earned it the sobriquet, “The City that Works.” Toronto, like California, had its share of zany political leaders, but politicians who opposed more expressways and advocated for height limits on skyscrapers didn’t strike me as bad people.
The Toronto of my youth still had legendary Canadian snowstorms, and I always marveled at the military efficiency of the city’s snowplow brigades. It’s a measure of the visibility of the city’s leadership that more than a half century later I still recall Toronto’s roads and traffic commissioner. His name was Sam Cass, and the Toronto Globe and Mail gave him a lengthy and deserving obituary when he died three years ago.
Whenever there was a snowstorm, Cass was a ubiquitous presence on Toronto radio advising us of road conditions and when it was safe to drive.
Toronto’s business leaders contributed mightily to the world class stature the city enjoyed until it morphed into one of the biggest centers of Jew hatred outside the Middle East. The Fairview Corp., a predecessor company to Cadillac Fairview, built the three-tower Toronto Dominion Centre, an architectural breakthrough in its day and one that signaled Toronto overtaking Montreal as Canada’s business center. The Reichmann brothers, responsible for New York’s World Financial Center, London’s Canary Wharf and respected around the world for their integrity, built First Canadian Place, another innovative building that set a new standard for commercial real estate.
Toronto’s beaux arts Royal Alexander Theatre was saved and restored by a colorful businessman named “Honest Ed” Mirvish, a reference to his kitschy discount department store called Honest Ed’s. Another pioneering business leader was “Bad Boy” Mel Lastman, a reference to the name of the discount furniture and appliance store he owned. Lastman developed suburban North York into a significant business and retail district.
I lived in Manhattan on 9/11, and my office was kitty corner to the New York Stock Exchange. In the aftermath of the terrorist attack, then mayor Rudy Guiliani and his administration inspired confidence because New York City prepared for such a catastrophe. I recall reading that immediately after the 9/11 attacks, Guiliani and his aides moved to a bunker that was in place to manage communications in the event of a terrorist attack or other major disruption.
Then there was New York City’s business leadership. When Ken Langone, who financed the creation of Home Depot and served on the company’s board, learned that first responders didn’t have enough rescue equipment, he personally arranged for supplies to be sent from various Home Depot stores around the country. My former client Dick Grasso got the New York Stock Exchange back up and running in a matter of days. There were stories galore about other New York business leaders stepping up to the plate, vowing to ensure New York City’s recovery.
Living in Los Angeles while the city burns and homes and businesses are destroyed one quickly appreciates the pathetic leadership overseeing California and Los Angeles. It’s abundantly clear that Karen Bass, the city’s mayor and Gavin Newsom, the state’s multimillionaire governor with perennially perfectly gelled hair, are way out of their depths. While the global media has done an excellent job highlighting Bass’s and Newsom’s gross incompetence, ineptness has long been a part of California’s political DNA, as have identity politics.
Notably, the fire gods practice diversity, equity, and inclusion. Although much of the global media’s fire coverage has focused on the destruction of luxury homes and impacted celebrities, minorities have also been hard hit. The fire ravaged Los Angeles suburb of Altadena is about 27% Hispanic or Latino, and 18% Black.
Rome had Nero, who fiddled while that city burned. Los Angeles has Bass, who jaunted off to Ghana to celebrate the inauguration of President John Dramani Mahama, despite National Weather Service warnings of potentially strong winds — amid “extreme fire conditions”. In a city where wildfires are as certain as death and taxes, we’ve learned that Bass cut nearly $18 million from the fire department’s budget, and a week ago moved to cut an additional $49 million. She also reportedly wanted to close as many as 16 fire stations.
FEMA administrator Deanne Criswell said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that the wildfires in Southern California are caused by climate change. We’ve known about climate change for decades. Indeed, President Biden in 2022 declared climate change “an existential threat to our nation and to the world.” Wildfires have plagued California and Los Angeles for decades, and despite climate and other experts predicting fire risks would dramatically increase, Bass thought it a swell time to cut the LAFD’s budget to provide more funds to deal with L.A.’s homeless situation.
Thanks to the negligence of Bass and others, L.A.’s homeless situation has swelled by the hundreds, if not the thousands.
NBC4 Los Angeles reported that LA fire chief Kristin Crowley warned in the weeks before the devastating Palisades fire that the decision to cut the department’s budget would diminish its ability to prepare for and respond to large scale emergencies.
“The reduction… has severely limited the department’s capacity to prepare for, train for, and respond to large-scale emergencies, including wildfires,” Crowley wrote in a memo dated Dec. 4, 2024.
It’s been reported that fire hydrants in the bush-dense Palisades had no water and that a 117-million gallon reservoir serving the area was out of commission. Janisse Quiñones, the $750,000 a year executive overseeing L.A.’s Department of Water and Power (LADWP), reportedly was aware of the situation.
Newsom has called for an independent investigation but given that Quiñones was previously an executive of utility felon PG&E, her seeming negligence is hardly a surprise.
I’ve previously written about Newsom’s controversial connections and conflicted oversight of California’s major utility PG&E, which the Justice Department successfully prosecuted for six criminal felonies for negligence relating to a 2010 gas pipeline explosion that killed eight people in suburban San Francisco. Former California Attorney General Kamala Harris declined to press charges, despite pleas from local political leaders and residents. (Yeah, that Kamala Harris)
Newsom arguably ranks as America’s most clueless and inept governor, although Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and New York’s Kathy Hochul give him a good run for his money.
In my extensive readings about the fires, I’ve yet to come across even one story about how the LAFD monitors and allocates resources to respond to fires erupting without notice. L.A. doesn’t appear to have a Sam Cass advising residents about road closures or ensuring that the city’s highways and byways are passable in times of crisis. Malibu residents escaping the fires were forced to abandon their vehicles on the Pacific Coast Highway because of congestion, impairing access for emergency vehicles. Bulldozers were brought in to clear the vehicles.
I was aghast to learn that more than 10% of L.A.’s firefighters are inmates from minimum security prisons who are paid between $5.80 and $10.24 per day, with additional monies provided during emergencies and in other circumstances. These individuals aren’t professionally trained firefighters, so not surprisingly they are subject to more injuries.
California is one of more than a dozen states that operates conservation camps, commonly known as fire camps, for incarcerated people to train to fight fires and respond to other disasters. A California attorney general named Kamala Harris defied a Supreme Court ruling to reduce overcrowding in California prisons, ostensibly to protect the state’s cheap of source of firefighting labor. (Yep, that Kamala Harris again)
Los Angeles doesn’t appear to have local versions of Ken Langone with the will and the clout to make things happen. According to Ka (Jessica) Burbank, an activist journalist who writes for Drop Site, a Substack newsletter focused on politics and war, as of early May last year, 86 emergency vehicles were out of commission in Los Angeles because funds had not been allocated to hire sheet metal workers and mechanics to fix them. This included: 40 fire engines (which carry water and are used to fight fires), 36 ambulances, and 10 fire trucks (which carry equipment, like ladders and rescue supplies).
LAFD Captain Chuong Ho testified during a budget hearing, “It just makes no sense to have million dollar fire trucks and engines taken out of service and sidelined because we don’t have enough mechanics to keep them running.”
Most U.S. firetrucks are manufactured by Wisconsin-based Oshkosh Corp. I’d bet if someone called company CEO John Pfeifer and asked if he could provide some emergency personnel and parts, he’d oblige or at least could suggest some alternative sources of expertise.
I’m not alone railing about the pathetic state of California’s leadership. Among the loudest critics is Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Pat Soon-Shiong, who said it’s “crazy” California “doesn’t elect leaders with competence.”
“It’s so crazy we have leaders that are reactive rather than proactive,” Soon-Shiong said during an appearance on NewsNation. “We have to ask ourselves where are we spending the money and why. Where is the actual planning of preparing for this.”
Among the contributors to California’s dismal leadership is Soon-Shiong’s disgraceful publication, which is deservedly losing tens of millions of dollars a year and which I’ve repeatedly railed about (see here and here).
The L.A. Times endorsed Karen Bass for mayor, despite her lack of meaningful qualifications. She’s a career politician who served six years in Congress, was head of the Black caucus, and made the short list to serve as Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020. Bass previously was embroiled in considerable controversy, having received a free scholarship from the University of Southern California without even applying. What gave the arrangement especially bad optics was the school’s dean of social work pleaded guilty to bribing another city official.
USC was part of Bass’s Congressional district. Bass’s opponent, a billionaire developer named Rick Caruso with a long and an impressive history of L.A. public service, quite rightly said Bass’s scholarship reeked of “corruption.” Someone I know who worked with Caruso told me he’s not only an incredibly brilliant businessman but also a person of peerless integrity, a rare trait among real estate developers.
The L.A. Times also opposed the recall of Gavin Newsom in 2021 and last November endorsed the reelection of George Soros’s soft-on-crime DA George Gascón. Underscoring the Los Angeles Times’s lost influence, Gascón was trounced by Nathan Hochman, a former longtime Republican who ran as an independent candidate.
Soon-Shiong won’t be remembered for his civic leadership during the fire crisis. Most newspapers remove their paywalls during emergency situations, as the Washington Post and others did during the pandemic. Most of the Times’s stories require a subscription to access. No biggie. I learned that the Brentwood neighborhood where my cousin lives was evacuated Friday night reading the New York Post, whose fire coverage puts the L.A. Times to shame. In fairness, the Times’s newsroom is outside L.A. in El Segundo, so the City of Angels might be a tad foreign to the publication’s reporters.
As for California’s identity politics, fire chief Kristin Crowley, who is openly lesbian, was appointed to her position in 2022 to combat accusations of sexism and racial bias within the force.
“I care,” Crowley said. “And we will continue to care and create the space for everybody, men and women within this organization, to come to work, to feel supported, to feel included and work together as a team. Now it’s about action. It’s not about words.”
Among the LAFD areas adversely impacted by Bass’s budget cuts was the department’s equity and human resources bureau, which addresses personnel grievances and workplace equity.