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 [ LOS ANGELES ](https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&id=312)

#  Had Enough California? Stop Electing Whackadoodles!

**@THE GUSS REPORT**-Driving down Ventura Boulevard this weekend, this column saw another frustrating consequence of our local elections.

Written by Daniel Guss.

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November 30 2020

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**@THE GUSS REPORT**-Driving down Ventura Boulevard this weekend, this column saw another frustrating consequence of our local elections.

On one side of the street, **Buffalo Exchange**, a used clothing store (sorry, *vintage*) was open for business, as well it should be, with customers allowed indoors. Across the street, wine bar **On The Thirty** stood empty despite owners who did everything to abide by recent COVID laws to host guests in open tents with masked employees, socially distanced tables, and heaters on the sidewalk.

Why can one non-essential business, a phrase this column abhors since all business is essential to their owners and employees, stay open and bring customers indoors while others cannot have customers dine on the sidewalk at a safe social distance?

It is because most of us do not vote, and those of us who do, elect, and re-elect ***whackadoodles*** who lack private sector problem-solving experience.

The LA County Board of Supervisors hired Dr. **Barbara Ferrer**, who is not a medical doctor, at a salary of $465,411 to run public health policy for 10 million people. In a recent meeting to deliberate the outdoor dining ban, KFI AM-640’s **Steve Gregory** asked her to prove the correlation between that activity and COVID spread.

Ferrer claimed she has it but didn’t have it with her.

There are no words to describe Ferrer’s level of intellectual dishonesty or lack of preparedness. Despite such lunacy, her County Supervisor bosses moved forward with this latest shut down by a vote of 3-2, with **Hilda Solis, Sheila Kuehl** and **Mark Ridley-Thomas** in favor of distrusting residents to think for themselves and **Kathryn Barger** and **Janice Hahn** siding with freedom of choice. OMG, when Janice Hahn is a voice of reason. . .

I love Janice, but I kid her. I tease.

These politicians aren’t alone in their power grab. California Governor **Gavin Newsom** and LA Mayor **Eric Garcetti**, both lying sacks of granola, have for a year babbled the phrase *follow the science*, which was born out of their disdain for President **Donald Trump**, but as the nation now knows, don’t actually live by it.

It is just something they regurgitate while groveling for television time.

There is now a growing recall effort to boot Newsom and make him the next **Gray Davis**, a predecessor ousted for far less grievous decisions. After draconian efforts to restrict Californians, Newsom and wife **Jen Siebel Newsom** had a now-infamous dinner indoors, mask-less, at a crowded table with power players from the healthcare industry at The French Laundry, one of the priciest restaurants in the United States, located in Napa Valley’s Yountville.

It was hardly Newsom’s first crack at gaming the system. Earlier this year, he shut-down wineries in Napa while keeping open the one he owns. Newsom offers lame apologies only when busted.

In LA, Garcetti, who was described in the media this summer as a “neurotic megalomaniac,” refuses to explain the “science” behind his executive order that we could walk in the wet sand of the beach shore but not lay on the nearby dry sand. Garcetti has also been repeatedly caught without a mask while in public during the pandemic.

More locally, people on the westside bellyache about homeless conditions in and around Venice Beach, but they elected proud leftist **Mike Bonin** in 2013, and enthusiastically re-elected him in 2017. If they give him another term in 2021, let’s hope he declares that nobody in Council District 11 “owns” property and that all are welcome in their living rooms, ***tout de suite***, as they say in Paris.

Not voting but complaining about awful conditions and policies in these neighborhoods is sadly humorous. But the rest of us should be laughed at as well. In a city with 4 million people, Garcetti was elected in 2013 with just 222,300 votes and, despite his failures and lies, was re-elected in 2017 with even fewer votes, at just 202,278.

In 2019, Newsom – who has virtually nothing positive to show for his time in prior offices – was elected to lead a state of 40 million people by getting 7,721,410 votes, or 61.9%, a landslide California has not seen since **Earl Warren** won re-election in 1950 with 64% of the vote.

So, what’s everyone complaining about?

We opted for this, either with our votes or refusing to cast them altogether. But as is the case with Amazon, most everything can be returned. And Newsom and the missus should be sent packing. Likewise, Garcetti, though it appears that ship has already left the dock.

Moving forward, the solution is simple. Stop electing *whackadoodle* politicians. Stop electing *whackadoodles-in-training* from their staffs. Stop electing people solely because they look like us or have surnames that sound like ours.

Right now, who in California wouldn’t prefer a pink polka-dotted purple Martian with problem-solving skills who trusts us to decide matters for ourselves?

*(Daniel Guss, MBA, was runner-up for the 2020 Los Angeles Press Club journalism award for Best Online Political Commentary and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, iHeartMedia, 790-KABC, Cumulus Media, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal, Pasadena Star News, Los Angeles Downtown News, and the Los Angeles Times in its Sports, Opinion and Entertainment sections and Sunday Magazine, among other publishers. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Photo: Fox News KTTV. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.*

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