The Rip Post Endorses Caruso for Mayor

RIPOSTE       by RIP RENSE

THE KAREN VS. CARUSO
  (Oct. 25, 2022)

                Anyone who votes for Karen Bass is an idiot.
                How is that for an incisive, analytical, political appraisal of a mayoral contest?
                But not just an ordinary idiot---a woke idiot, which is to say, anyone voting for Bass simply because she is black. In other words, a person who bases his or her decision on race. In other words, a racist. Or, in the cases of those voting for her because she is female, a sexist.
                Bass is a self-perpetuating, self-aggrandizing, bland-speaking career pol. She likes the ego-inflating gig, and the easy money that goes with it. As a congresswoman (hmmm. . .not “congressperson” yet?), she has essentially ridden racial issues and other politically correct “woke” causes, such as so-called LGBTQ interests, to a comfy career.
                She thrives on the make-nice “consensus building” “partnering”  “coalition-making” bureaucratic no-man’s-land lingo on which most government inefficiency, stagnation, constipation, is built. Remember, this is a person who said she would need two mayoral terms to have any impact on the cataclysmic problem of homelessness in L.A..
               Talk about a ploy. Talk about setting your sights low.

L.A. is in the kind of trouble that finds most descriptors inadequate. I mean, “horrific,” and “devastating” don’t cut it. This city is an unruled, unruly mess.

                Two terms? Her rival, Rick Caruso, was dead right to call her on this wimped-out, self-serving absurdity, a de facto admission of her status quo-maintaining turgidity. My God. We are living in what can only reasonably be described as an absolute emergency, a horrific crisis of criminality, mayhem, filth, devolution, disease, savagery, and this fool says she needs eight salaried years to have any impact.
                Cue the laughing jackass.
                But these aspects of Bass’s candidacy are almost beside the point. Really! The candidate is irrefutably, demonstrably, flagrantly, spectacularly, openly. . . 
                Corrupt.
                What else do you call taking a full-tuition master’s degree scholarship valued at about $100,000 from USC’s social work program---effectively a free degree---and then turning around and shilling for USC in Congress? I’ll tell you what you call it: a payoff. Confronted with the accusation, Bass obfuscated:
                “I did not author any legislation that benefited USC,” she said.
                Really? As the L.A. Times reported, after receiving the free tuition, Bass sponsored the Child Welfare Workforce Partnership Act, which sounds all nicey-poo and good, yet allows private universities like USC to obtain federal reimbursement to train social workers---just as public universities can. Translation: free money for Tommy Trojan. Lots of free money.
                Quid.
                Pro.
                Quo.
                I mean, this sure isn’t representing the public interest. Remember: the former dean of USC’s social work program, Marilyn Flynn---she who gave Bass the “scholarship”---pleaded guilty to bribing now-disgraced and indicted L.A. County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas with, coincidentally, another hundred grand. Also in exchange for supporting legislation that would benefit USC.
                If it quacks like a duck. . .
                Yet Bass is not (yet) under investigation, and, rather like a Karen, dismisses her taking free goodies from USC as just a nasty campaign charge by Caruso. 
                Wow. This is a woman who Biden considered as a prospect for vice-president of the United States? Say it ain’t so, Joe. That’s really carrying woke-ism too far. (Of course, so was appointing Kamala Harris, probably the least qualified presidential material ever, next to Trump.) And get this: Bass did not even disclose the value of the scholarship---ninety-five thousand juicy dollars awarded in 2012---until 2019! How many “ordinary citizens” would have been heavily fined or locked up for such an apparent dodge---which she, predictably, characterized as a mistake by a staffer.
                Cough. Sneeze. Fart.
                Come on, wokey-jokey folkies, this woman is as dirty as Santa Monica Bay. 

               And then there is the Scientology thing, which Caruso so correctly turned into a campaign issue. This is another wow. Scientology, let us remember, was a religion and/or philosophy invented by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. Whatever it purports to be, so-called “Dianetics” seems to amount to a license to become an amoral sociopathic egomaniac, as near as I can tell. But don’t take my word---the organization is infamously rife with attacks and allegations of cultism, brainwashing, abuse, general creepiness.
                Yet here is what Karen Bass said, with her Mr. Sardonicus smile spread from ear to ear, at a Scientology rally:
                “The Church of Scientology, I know, has made a difference, because your creed is a universal creed and one that speaks to all people everywhere,” Bass told an audience of 6,000. “That is why the words are exciting of your founder L. Ron Hubbard, in the creed of the Church of Scientology: That all people of whatever race, color or creed are created with equal rights.”
                Again, there she was, riding woke-ism, and not minding in the least that she was smooching a $1.5 billion outfit whose reputation is every bit as shiny as Kanye West’s. When confronted about this obvious pandering to a mega-buck corporate "church," Bass said she was just making a speech because the Church of Scientology was in her congressional district.    
                One minor problem: it wasn’t!
                Another minor problem: after Caruso ran a campaign ad showing oleaginous Bass oozing love for Scientology---to a crowd at Scientology HQ, no less---her staff issued a statement reading, in part (ready for this?):
                “Everybody knows Karen Bass condemns Scientology.”
                Uh, really?
                Could this be any more shameless, disingenuous, fake?
                To paraphrase that white supremacist who Howard Stern used to lampoon:
                Wake up, woke people!
                L.A. is in the kind of trouble that finds most descriptors inadequate. I mean, “horrific,” and “devastating” don’t cut it. This city is an unruled, and unruly mess of: stabbings, shootings, smash-and-grab robberies, follow-home robberies (both directed by organized crime), mayhem, rape, murder, road rage, rampage, indigence, car chases, cars driving daily into businesses and homes, 100-percent-THC pot clouds emanating from every fifth vehicle and, and, most terrifying of all. . .oblivious, grinning, chirpy TeeVee Newsmannequins.

Yes, Caruso's lavish shopping centers, with their piped-in feel-good music and perfumed air, make me feel like I'm in an episode of The Prisoner," or the middle of a Hallmark Card. . .

                And then we have the latest L.A. atrocity, our Shitty Council and its cadre of do-nothing, lowbrow, low-rent, gutter-dwelling racists. Caruso immediately called for the resignations of councilpersons Nury Martinez, Kevin “de” Leon (the “de” is fake), Gil Cedillo, while Bass made some bland “let me be clear” statement about meeting with latino and black representatives to make sure this never happens again, or words to that effect---only later, when calls to resign became a chorus, adding her voice to it.
              Wait, did I say “do-nothing?” Not true. The L.A. Shitty Council and Board of Stuporvisors, despite the presence of the occasional intelligent civil servant, can boast a tremendous accomplishment:
                They have spectacularly greased the way for every realtor, developer, private equity group, venture capitalist, flipper, to slaughter neighborhoods and replace lovely old homes and quaint apartment buildings with hideous, insanely priced hives of apartments and condos. It’s “elegant density” for L.A., as the fabulously cunning PR term defines stuffing cement boxes into every square inch.  “Green space?” It translates to a few papyruses or a “gentrification wall” of pittosporum.  Bye-bye birdies! Hey! Want to put up 500 units on a half-acre, at $3000-$5000 a month each (penthouse for $10,000)? Here’s your red carpet, says L.A government, and may we please kiss your rich asses as you pass by?
               Or, as in the case of ex-Councilman Jose Huizar, the red carpet came with a price---in his case,  the FBI says, taking $1.5 million in bribes from robberbaron realtors.
                What a city! I mean, we need more corruption?

                All of this so-called development is, of course, excused with the biggest lie since Donald Trump: there is a housing crisis. They all say it, beginning with the limpest excuse for a mayor in L.A. history, Eric Garcetti. Right, so building “housing” that working folk can’t afford is the answer. Basing rents and home prices on tekkie millennial princelings’ bankbooks, instead of average weekly working class wages (as it used to be), is the answer. Uh-huh. And the Dodgers won the pennant.
                Which brings us back to Caruso.
                I’ve read snarky comments in “social” media about how developer Grand Wazir Caruso “created homelessness,” so “Oh, sure, he wants to fix it now.” I would call such comments cynical if they had enough intellect to justify the label. No, Caruso did not create homelessness. First of all, most of his properties are fantasyland shopping complexes, from The Grove in Beverly Hills to the Americana in Glendale to The Lakes in Thousand Oaks. Yes, they contain obscenely priced luxury apartments, lots of them, but this did not create tent cities along the L.A. River, or people shooting up and openly crapping in the kush-smoke clouded streets of downtown.
                So who did? Why, every developer who has vomited up the thousands---yes, thousands---of half-empty, brand-new apartment/condo high-rises with all the charm of penal institutions, on almost every street in Southern California, that’s who. Affordable only to Google whores on scooters whose adjectival vocabulary and “ethos” consists of “cool” and “awesome." Oh, and the city/county offal who took bribes or offered tax incentives to build, that’s who.  
                Caruso says he is outraged at the state of Los Angeles, thank you, and wants to fix it. “Make it livable again” are his neon words. His plot: fifteen hundred more cops, 500 more sanitation workers, 500 more mental health care workers, homeless housing/treatment to the tune of 30,000 units in first twelve months in office, at $800 million. No tax increase. Hmm. . .Bass? She has proposed only 500 more cops, and a plan using existing, highly ineffective government programs to house only 17,000 at about $292 million (with an all-but-assured tax raise.) It's that sort of half-measure, go-through-existing channels mentality again---as opposed to taking daring, innovative steps. Status quo, as opposed to visionary.
                Also: there is something Caruso says about homelessness that---even if it was focused grouped---smacks of decency. He calls the problem "inhumane." He does not vilify the homeless, or play the fear/law-and-order card---both of which are angles that could easily be exploited (and would be by any Republican.) He incisively, summarily quantifies the problem, again, as "inhumane," because tht is exactly what it is---from inhumane housing costs to inhumane closing of mental health services to the inhumane ineffectiveness of Garcetti, the city council, and board of supervisors who have allowed homelessness to grow. And grow. And grow.

Besides, Sweet Alice Harris, the legendary community activist in Watts, has endorsed him. Hell, that's good enough for me.

                Now, the big rap on Caruso is that: a) he is a billionaire developer trying to buy the election b) he used to be a Republican, c) he used to be a Republican, and, d) he is a billionaire developer trying to buy the election. Oh yeah, and that he opposes abortion, never mind his various claims that he will defend abortion rights. Never mind that a mayor of L.A. has no power over this issue.
                Taking these charges one by one. . .
                Yes, Caruso is a self-made, mega-successful developer, but his developments have largely been the aforementioned malls---not hideous new habitation hives springing up everywhere like moist morning fungus. Yes, Caruso's lavish shopping centers, with their piped-in feel-good music and perfumed air, make me feel like I'm in an episode of The Prisoner," or the middle of a Hallmark Card. Yes, there was his effort to build another such center in Carlsbad a few years ago, in which he tried to bypass environmental regulations, ultimately giving the effort up after extensive protests. Yech.
                But. . .
                Most people absolutely love his Carusolands. Love. Most people consider them wonderful, fab additions to the city. I'm the odd man out.
                As for being obscenely, grotesquely wealthy, well, he has always shared an astonishing amount of his winnings with many a hard-core cause, from south-central scholarships to Operation Progress Ecosystem in Watts to Para Los Niños to Children's Hospital, and much more (read about it.) His reputation as a heroically generous philanthropist is ironclad.
                Okay, what about "used to be a Republican?" This is like "used to be a member of the Flat Earth Society," you say? Taint is taint? Maybe. But Caurso left the Republican party way back in 2011, and registered as "no preference" until early 2022, when he formally switched to Democrat. This was not a facile maneuver.
               As for his history of supporting anti-abortion candidates years ago---he is, after all, Catholic---consider: Caruso has contributed $900,000 to a political action committee that he formed in late May to support Proposition 1. Right. Proposition 1, which would enshrine abortion rights in the state Constitution. He has backed this up with recent ads in which he goes on the record in firm support of these rights.
               Case closed.
               But what about Bass's charge that he is trying to buy the election? He has vastly outspent Bass, true, but she has tapped high-powered liberal friends such as movie moguls Jeffrey Katzenberg, Steven Spielberg, and J.J. Abrams for ads and money. TV spots paid for by Katzenberg contain no substantive criticism of Caruso, instead crassly brand him a "liar" and a "phony." And Bass is doing the same thing, ad nauseam, claiming without any basis that Caruso is still Republican and is "lying." This just smacks of foundering desperation. For his part, Caruso's criticism of Bass has always stuck to her record, indisputable facts, and steered clear of personal attack (which he says should have no place in any campaign.) Rather refreshing, I'd say.
               One reservation: if Caruso gets in, will he try to grease the way for more development? Probably. But if this is the cost of someone taking a hands-on approach to homelessness and crime, it's worth the price of admission. Development will continue to infect L.A. like COVID variants, regardless of Caruso (and Quid Pro Quo Bass is hardly on the record opposing it.) Caruso's history as a businessman is nothing if not one of a hands-on doer. L.A. could use a hands-on doer mayor, especially after Garcetti, who was really, really good at cutting ribbons.
                And ask yourself this: if you were an aging billionaire, and could spend the rest of your days farting through silk, why the hell would you want to be mayor of Hell? Call me naïve, but I believe he means it. I believe he really wants to push for drastic, immediate repairs in the remains of this city.
               Besides, Sweet Alice Harris, the legendary community activist in Watts, has endorsed him. That's good enough for me.
                Yet career pol Bass, stinging from righteous attacks regarding USC and L. Ron Hubbard, has stooped to sliming Caruso as a “con," because he switched parties, and has pathetically portraying herself as a victim, because she can't compete with his spending. The truth is that she can't compete with him on the isssues, and that's the problem. Switching from Republican to Democrat these days is nothing if not a good working definition of sanity.
                And taking an apparent payoff, and pandering to a corporate church, is actually a good working definition of Republican. Karen.

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