MY POINT OF VIEW - “If there is a way to take a simple project, overspend and grift on it, never get it done, and also f*** it up beyond belief, California democrats will do it every time.” LA Trader on X
Did you notice? California is burning again. On October 16, flames struck Malibu again, while another fast-moving fire burned homes and forced roughly 16,000 people to evacuate near San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano. Now the Bryson and Norte fires have attacked more of Southern California's valuable coastline. The flames change names. The official response never does. (Sources: Associated Press, Oct. 16, 2026; Los Angeles Times, Malibu fire history.)
California’s governing class blames each disaster on climate change. Then commissions another study to absolve themselves of blame. Then the Apparatchiks return to regulating grocery wrappers, tires, and homeowners while shutting down refineries because of climate change.
After the Palisades and Eaton fires killed 31 people and destroyed more than 16,000 structures, the independent Fire Safety Research Institute produced 175 findings and 266 recommendations covering preparedness, incident management, evacuation, infrastructure, suppression and accountability. Los Angeles suffered not one freak failure, but the near-complete breakdown of public systems taxpayers had already paid to maintain. How many corrections have been fully implemented and independently verified? Los Angeles cannot say. (Source: UL Research Institutes, Southern California Fires Incident Analysis Report, Oct. 2, 2026.) Why worry?
When the Palisades burned, two local reservoirs were unavailable. Quelle surprise! The 117-million-gallon Santa Ynez Reservoir was empty, and the Palisades Reservoir at Chautauqua was also empty. The lack of water made suppression harder and gave the fire more opportunity to spread. Twenty-one months later, Santa Ynez is finally being refilled again. Whether the water is potable is immaterial, as it is a valuable resource in the fight against wildfires. No water means less firefighting capacity. No bureaucratic explanation changes that equation. (Sources: LADWP preliminary water-system report; LADWP Santa Ynez Reservoir update; LADWP Palisades update, summer 2026.)
LA’s instinct was not to admit mistakes but to engage in high-level evasion and fact obscuring. The city softened drafts of the Fire Department’s after-action report. The report omitted Santa Ynez and minimized failures surrounding the earlier Lachman Fire, which investigators found was still smoldering before the Palisades inferno. Bass denied ordering improper changes. But when the account of the worst fire in city history requires seven drafts and grows gentler toward those in charge, reputational management has overtaken accountability. (Sources: Los Angeles Times, Dec. 20, 2025; Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 2026; UL Research Institutes.)
Then came the land transfer. Call it a land grab, because the numbers describe one. Redfin found that investors bought about 40 percent of the lots sold in late 2025 across the Palisades, Altadena, and Malibu fire zones: 48 of 119 in the Palisades, 27 of 61 in Altadena, and 19 of 43 in Malibu. Palisades vacant-lot listings jumped from seven to 309 in one year as insurance stalled, temporary-housing benefits expired, and owners faced rebuilding costs and delays. By mid-January 2026, only about 20% of damaged parcels countywide had submitted rebuilding applications. (Sources: Redfin, Dec. 30, 2025; Los Angeles County rebuilding update, Jan. 22, 2026.)
No evidence suggests officials started the fires to clear land, but California’s policies for maintaining State Land sure help provide abundant fuel. The results of fire after fire and property damage speak for themselves. Government failed to protect these communities, then made recovery so slow, expensive, and uncertain that selling became rational. Investors arrived with cash while residents carried mortgages, rent, insurance disputes, and permit struggles. A modern land grab needs no secret meeting. It needs a public system that applies pressure until established residents surrender property they can no longer hold.
Even relief became politicized, as funds were apparently commingled and a certain class of people who incurred no fire damage got funds that were never intended for them. County supervisors placed wildfire victims and households claiming income loss due to federal immigration enforcement in a single rent-relief program, allocating. The county chose not to ask about immigration status, so illegal immigrant households got benefits, but taxpayers cannot determine how many did or how much they received. The scandal is not the false claim that all fire money went to illegal immigrants. Instead, officials mixed disaster recovery with an immigration program and withheld the accounting needed to judge who got the money. (Sources: Los Angeles County Emergency Rent Relief report, Feb. 20, 2026; wildfire Household Relief Grant accounting.)
Homelessness spending shows where this leads. California allocated nearly $24 billion over five fiscal years but lacked the consistent cost and outcome data needed to determine whether major programs worked. Los Angeles added retroactive contracts, missing documentation, unverifiable services, and tens of millions advanced without adequate repayment agreements. Federal prosecutors now allege that nonprofit insiders used homelessness money for shell vendors, kickbacks, fictitious clients, real estate, luxury cars, and a nightclub purchase. One organization implicated in the cases received more than $118 million in public funds. (Sources: California State Auditor, Homelessness in California, April 2024; U.S. Department of Justice, September 2026 homelessness-fraud cases.)
Now, Raman wants voters to promote her from committee chair to mayor. Her signature eviction-defense program began in 2021 as a $7 million no-bid emergency pilot awarded to the Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles. City Attorney Hydee Feldstein Soto said it was amended nine times and expanded beyond $90 million without the reporting, access, and audit trail required by the original agreement. An October 9 supplemental report said that between $55 million and $87 million in city and county funds could not be reconciled using publicly available financial records and demanded a full audit.
Los Angeles cannot even complete an easy tram. The LAX Automated People Mover is a 2.25-mile loop with six stations. It was supposed to open in 2023, having started in 2018. The opening date slipped through 2024, 2025, and 2026 and is now aimed for January 2027, without a guarantee. Costs rose from roughly $2.9 billion to $3.34 billion. Four years late to move passengers two miles is a monument to the Los Angeles public-works business model: miss the deadline, raise the price, excuse the failure, and send taxpayers the bill. Meanwhile, it took Walt Disney 8 months to design and build the original Disneyland Monorail, which is longer than the LAX Automated People Mover. (Sources: Los Angeles Times, Sept. 24, 2026; LAWA Landside Access Modernization Program.)
The same airport agency treats Van Nuys Airport neighbors as collateral damage. A UCLA assessment reported elevated lead concentrations near VNY and placed the surrounding census tract’s pollution burden in the 94th percentile statewide. Residents filed 13,000 to 27,000 noise complaints each month in 2022. Operators receive a valuable public asset while neighbors cough and wheeze. LAWA monthly noise-comment reports
The 2028 Olympics is the next blank check. LA28 calls itself privately financed, but taxpayers guarantee potential shortfalls and face enormous security costs. On October 16, Controller Kenneth Mejia subpoenaed bank statements, construction budgets, and contract records after concluding that LA28 had complied with only two of nine disclosure requirements. A city that cannot finish an airport shuttle is backstopping the Olympics while fighting to learn what its own partner is spending. (Source: Los Angeles Times, Oct. 16, 2026.)
The presumption infects elections. California legalized broad third-party ballot collection and mails a ballot to every active registered voter. On October 15, the Justice Department sued, alleging that more than 20,000 federally identified likely noncitizens remained registered and received or would receive ballots, many in Los Angeles County. That allegation is not proof; databases can be wrong. But California should reconcile the records with notice and due process, then publish the results. A government confident in its rolls should welcome verification. (Sources: California AB 1921; U.S. Department of Justice, United States v. California complaint, Oct. 15, 2026.)
Californians pay some of the nation’s highest taxes for this performance. Los Angeles reduced police funding in 2020, watched staffing fall far below 10,000 officers, and now promotes hiring plans that barely match projected departures. Residents pay more, wait longer, and receive less, while every exposed failure generates a new public-relations campaign. The government is never too broke to regulate the public or subsidize its political priorities. It becomes impoverished only when asked to perform its oldest obligations: water, fire protection, policing, honest contracting and competent construction. (Sources: City of Los Angeles FY 2026–27 proposed budget; Los Angeles City Clerk police-hiring analysis.)
The final accomplice is taxpayer apathy. Why do Californians tolerate it? Is it because Democrats have controlled City Hall since 2001 and voters are now conditioned to believe that nothing will ever change? Perhaps high earners can buy distance from the consequences, while everyone else is too busy surviving taxes, traffic, and housing costs to fight City Hall. Perhaps one-party government has trained voters to treat incompetence as the new normal.
But this is not inevitable. Taxpayers could stop ignoring results and demand resignations, recalls, recoveries, prosecutions where evidence supports them, enforceable project deadlines, and public dashboards showing every contract, payment, and result. They could refuse every new tax until existing money is accounted for. They could vote out officials who discover “oversight” only after auditors, judges, and prosecutors arrive.
California still has the best weather and the loosest regulations on government and voting accountability. That is why the grifters, regulators, and criminally incompetent fight so hard to control it.
(Eliot Cohen is a longtime civic advocate who has served on the Neighborhood Council, the Van Nuys Airport Citizens Advisory Council, and the Board of Homeowners of Encino, where he was president of HOME for over seven years. A retired Wall Street executive with a 35-year career, Eliot brings a sharp eye to local governance. He critiques the bureaucratic missteps of City, County, and State officials. Eliot and his wife split their time between Los Angeles and Baja Norte, Mexico.)
