California’s Political Class Doesn’t Care if We Die

Karen Bass and Nithya Raman to Angelenos: Drop Dead

Los Angeles has reached the point at which hot dogs have become political. Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass ordered the LAPD to stop issuing citations to street vendors who violate permitting and other city laws. 

Make no mistake, Bass’s order isn’t public policy, it’s political ass covering. Don’t take my word for it, it was right there in the headline of a New York Times story last week: “Los Angeles Mayor, Stung in Debate, Eases Street Vending Crackdown.” There was a time not too long ago when a politician would make a gaffe and issue a groveling apology. Not anymore. Now they change the law to assuage the feelings of the offended.

What was Bass’s alleged miscue? At a mayoral debate last week with her friend-turned-bitter-rival Nithya “Instant” Raman, Bass said that street vendors shouldn’t be allowed to operate directly in front of brick and mortar businesses. It was a rare moment of common sense from a mayor who otherwise lost her mind a long time ago.

Then she took it a step further, saying that “You can move that person so that person can have a living, make money, but not right in front of a restaurant that discourages patrons from going in. Just like you shouldn’t have encampments in front of restaurants, or in front of schools.”

Whoops. What is common sense to rational people is a howling outrage to the activist class. There were the utterly predictable ululations from immigrant activists and street vendors themselves, who have become so numerous as to constitute an influence block.

Now look, I’m as big a fan of street food as you’ll meet. Some of the best tacos I’ve ever tried came from vendors. But that was back in the day, when vendors competed with food trucks in a sort of guerilla culinary scene. 

A decade ago, most L.A. street vendors were serious, committed cooks, many of whom graduated to food trucks and brick and mortar restaurants. Today, anyone with a fold-out table, a hot plate, and a bag of Ballpark Franks can set up on any sidewalk in the city. Illegal vendors peddling everything from burritos to luggage to home appliances have proliferated by the tens of thousands across L.A. Anything you can buy in a legitimate store you can now find on the street. 

And they’re not exactly the bouquinistes on the Left Bank of the Seine. Large swathes of L.A. have come to resemble third world souks, and not in the exhilaratingly exotic way. They ain’t Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar.

It all raises a host of concerns. Food service is highly regulated for a reason. Like all western countries, the United States has an incredibly safe food supply chain, part of which ends at the plate served at a restaurant or from a food truck. Major outbreaks of food borne illnesses are so rare as to constitute national front page news. I’ve gotten food poisoning twice in my life — once in China and once in Nepal. 

Bass’s order puts that safety at risk, and the health of four million Angelenos. And she’s doing it in an effort to pander. It’s disgraceful.

Make no mistake: Bass is saying that her political future is more important than Angelenos’ safety and well-being. So what if your kid gets salmonella from a tainted burrito at an unregulated, illegal street vendor? There’s a mayoral election to win.

We’ve reached a point at which, as a city, we don’t just actively protect illegal immigrants, we encourage them to operate illegal food service businesses that flout even basic food handling rules meant to keep those four million people safe. All for political gain.

Death by Politics

Bass’s order adds to an ever expanding litany of policies in L.A. and California that actively endanger people. In the name of climate change, L.A. has spent a decade installing road diets and other anti-car road features that data show often increase fatal and serious injury accidents.

Incidentally, I took a look at recent accident data along the infamous Venice Boulevard road diet in Mar Vista. Installed eight years ago, it was supposed to eliminate fatal and serious injury accidents and make the street safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. According to the Statewide Integrated Traffic Records System (SWITRS), last year there were seven total accidents along the 0.8 mile stretch, one of which involved a severely injured bicyclist and three that involved pedestrians, one of which resulted in severe injuries and one of which was fatal.

Traffic safety, L.A. style

All told, since the city installed the road diet in 2017 there have been five fatal accidents, all involving either bicyclists or pedestrians, and 14 severe injury accidents, all but two of which involved bicyclists or pedestrians. That compares to zero fatal accidents and nine severe injury accidents, all but three of which involved vehicles, in the seven years before the project.

The project, motivated entirely by anti-car ideology, is literally killing the very people it was supposed to protect. It’s the same pattern we see with homelessness and addiction. Under the downright Orwellian concept of “harm reduction” the city and county spend tens of millions per year handing out drug paraphernalia, particularly syringes, to homeless addicts. I personally documented one such program in Santa Monica in 2023. Employees of Venice Family Clinic — a thoroughly shady operation — handed out bags of needles without offering help or collecting used needles. Indeed, the employees barely even spoke to the homeless addicts they were enabling.

The needle handout program also endangers regular residents. There are many documented cases of people stepping on discarded needles, particularly on the beach. In sum, the program enables addiction and overdoses, while endangering innocent people with the very infections the program purportedly is intended to prevent. You cannot make this stuff up.

The State is Doing Its Part to Kill You

Not to be outdone, up in Sacramento state lawmakers have their own ways of making life in California more dangerous and deadly. In 2023 they passed a bill sponsored by the noxious state senator Scott Wiener that decriminalized loitering with intent to commit prostitution. In reality, the ability to arrest girls and women working the streets is one of the few methods law enforcement has of rescuing them. Prostitutes who attempt to leave voluntarily often face repercussions from their pimps, including severe physical abuse. Being arrested gives them an excuse.

Wiener claimed that the law was necessary because police disproportionately target trans sex workers. Which raises the question of why trans sex workers don’t deserve the same law enforcement protections as everyone else. The point is, the law empowers pimps. It’s sick.

Sacramento endangers Californians in other ways. Over the last eight years lawmakers in Sacramento passed hundreds of laws that reward developers who build dense multifamily housing in high fire danger hazard zones and other dangerous areas. In the most insane recent example, activists aligned with the state “YIMBY” movement sued the cities of Pasadena and Malibu to force them to implement SB 9 in areas affected by the Eaton and Palisades Fires, respectively. That law allows developers to demolish single family homes and build as many as four new units. Let that sink in a minute: State policy enables developers to make money by shoehorning more people into areas that already burned, and areas that are in the path of the next wildfire.

Michael Jackson (are we still allowed to talk about him?) sang “All I really know is that they don’t really care about us.” He could have been singing about California’s political class, who are content to watch people suffer and die on the altar of their self-righteous ideologies.

It’s madness.