Ben Shapiro

And they keep doing this over and over.

In 2014, they passed something called Prop 47 that reduced dozens of drug felonies and all property crimes under 960 bucks.

to misdemeanors, so more criminals on the street.

Shoplifting became fundamentally legal in practice across much of the state because the police stopped making arrests because it wouldn't result in prosecution anyway.

And then people stopped reporting the crime because the police weren't going to come.

The state's own data showed property crime reports dropping, not because property crime actually dropped, but because people stopped reporting it.

And then the legislature passed Prop 57.

That gave early release to thousands of prisoners classified as nonviolent, a classification that under the bill's language could include people convicted of rape by intoxication, drive-by shootings, and human trafficking.

Voters were told it was for low-level offenders.

It was most definitely not.

LA has a budget that now approaches $15 billion annually.

It has a structural deficit.

It just cut nearly $200 million in homeless funding, while homelessness remains essentially unchanged from where it was a decade ago.

The city's response to the Palisades fire has been to commission reports and hold hearings and point fingers at the fire department and point fingers at the water department and point fingers at the sun and climate change.

Nobody points at the 24 years of one-party governance that left the city's infrastructure, hydrants, reservoirs, and emergency management systems in a state of institutional decay.

When there is no opposition, no one can do the pointing.

There is no one to create the threat of change.

Again, notice the pattern.

Last summer, LA saw days of riots, vandalism, looting, arson, attacks on law enforcement in the name of anti-ICE protests.

People were literally throwing bricks at cop cars.