NYT: Say, Remember When Bass Promised to Stop Traveling Abroad?

When the New York Times begins throwing progressive Democrats under the bus, you know the crisis is real, and it’s spectacular. That’s especially true when the progressive media begins to hold progressives accountable for campaign promises in the wake of a disaster. Suddenly, no one wants to have Karen Bass standing too closely.

The NYT recalls one particular Bass campaign promise today, contrasting it with her AWOL status in Ghana as Los Angeles burned:

After the first rally in her campaign for mayor of Los Angeles in 2021, Karen Bass spoke candidly about what she saw as a potential drawback to the job — a lack of world travel and involvement in global affairs.

Ms. Bass was accustomed to circling the globe as a Democratic member of Congress and of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and had spent decades working on U.S.-Africa relations. It was one of the most absorbing parts of her political career, she told The New York Times in an interview on Oct. 17, 2021, at her home in the Baldwin Vista neighborhood of Los Angeles.

“I went to Africa every couple of months, all the time,” she said, adding, “The idea of leaving that, especially the international work and the Africa work, I was like, ‘Mmm, I don’t think I want to do that.’”

She ultimately decided that she did, telling The Times that if she was elected mayor, “not only would I of course live here, but I also would not travel internationally — the only places I would go would be D.C., Sacramento, San Francisco and New York, in relation to L.A.”

The NYT goes on to note that Bass’ promise “has been spectacularly broken,” shifting to the passive voice for some strange reason. It didn’t just happen to break, after all; Bass broke her pledge and went to Ghana on her own volition. What important business did Bass conduct in Ghana for the people of Los Angeles? Nothing at all; she went on the same kind of junket she’d often take as a House member. Bass went to celebrate the inauguration of Ghana’s new president, a purely ceremonial duty that had nothing to do with the city she governs.

But that’s the only time that Bass’ pledge “has been spectacularly broken,” right? Right? Wrong:

It was not her first trip abroad as mayor. A review of her public daily schedule for the past year shows that Ms. Bass has traveled out of the country at city expense at least four other times in recent months before the Ghana visit — once to Mexico for the inauguration of President Claudia Sheinbaum and three times to France for the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.

“At city expense”? Why did the citizens of Los Angeles pay the expenses for Bass’ trip to the Olympics earlier this year? Yes, Los Angeles will host the Olympics in 2028, but it’s not as if the city was flush with cash for its core obligations for safety. At the same time that LA footed Bass’ sports-spectating junket, Bass was cutting the LA Fire Department budget by nearly $18 million. Just before leaving for Ghana, as the National Weather Service warned of “extreme fire weather conditions,” Bass had demanded another $49 million in budget takebacks from the LAFD. 

As the NYT goes on to note, Bass’ critics are roaring, her progressive-elite clique has lost their homes and is rebelling, and (natch) “MAGA Republicans and their allies have swarmed social media,” aka “pouncing!” But it’s the NYT that dug up this forgotten campaign promise today and made it a news story.

In response, Bass has tried to rally support by claiming to be “laser focused on ongoing response and recovery efforts.” This is how “laser focused” Bass was last night (via Twitchy):

We’re launching a new, simple intake system to report price gouging — call @MyLA311 to report illegally hiked rents and prices.

We have no tolerance for it.

— Mayor Karen Bass (@MayorOfLA) January 13, 2025

When you have to take a page out of Joe Biden’s inflation spin playbook, you’ve hit the nadir of desperation. The crisis for survivors in Los Angeles isn’t “price gouging,” it’s supply. What is Bass doing to boost supplies for the long-term needs of survivors? The loss of thousands of residential units means that demand will skyrocket in a market that already had artificially low supply, thanks to local and state regulations and onerous permit processes. The difficulty in finding temporary shelter has hit even the elite Hollywood clique on which Bass relied for her election as mayor, Radar reports today:

After evacuating their million-dollar homes, several A-list Hollywood celebrities, like Dennis Quaid and Sarah Michelle Gellar, reportedly fought over luxury hotel rooms.

RadarOnline.com can reveal the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires have left several millionaire stars seeking shelter at one of the most exclusive hotels in the city. ….

The hotel’s most expensive rooms reportedly cost $18,000 a night, and several A-list stars have had to stay multiple nights because their homes are in danger of burning down in the ongoing fire spreading across Southern California.

These celebs are still real people who have really lost their homes, so this isn’t intended to scoff but to demonstrate just how desperate the situation has become. These entertainers have the means to find shelter outside the area if necessary, and their employment and income streams are less dependent on proximity. They can also scale down to the Hiltons if the Hotel Bel-Air and the Chateau Marmont are booked. Most Angelenos don’t have the money for extended stays at Days Inn, but an overwhelming amount of them will seek rooms nevertheless because they will have no other place to go. 

Until Bass finds more supply, the demand will overwhelm these providers. There simply won’t be enough rooms to meet it. The issue won’t be price but thousands or tens of thousands of people shifting to homelessness, especially if the city starts imposing price controls that will suppress the expansion of supply to meet the demand. 

But the “price gouging” issue is a red herring, heavy on the “red” in Bass’ case. It’s the knee-jerk response from every incompetent Marxist when their performance leads to disaster, which is why both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris tried running on it (or “price gauging,” in Harris’ case). Bass couldn’t be more lost in this crisis than if her plane had flown from Ghana to the island in the TV series Lost rather than returned her to the city she’s crippled.