This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Baxter. Three California cities in trouble in different fashion.

Bill Whalen of the Hoover Institution, who is a podcast with politics and policy with his colleagues,

and the good fellows, a videocast and a podcast with his fellows at Hoover, looking at Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland.

Bill, Karen Bass, the mayor of Los Angeles, was on the shortlist for the vice presidency.

She has served her country ably for many years, but the series of mistakes that have been emphasized by these fires, are they atypical to Karen Bass, or she made mistakes before and always recovered from them? Good evening, too.

Good evening, John. This is atypical for her. Her career path has been community organizer, and then she did

about 20 years of time in the state legislator. I think right as you have to speak her in the

assembly, and then moving on to Congress. And then from her position in Congress, she was on the

short list of Joe Biden's presidential prospects in 2020, the job going to somebody else

from Los Angeles, her named Kamala Harris.

But this is the first time that you really would associate the word of competency with her,

and it really is just a smack of a competency.

You know, part of the story here is just kind of plain bad luck.

She was in Ghana, the African nation, when the fires broke out.

Back in 1965, Pat Brown, when he was governor of California, he was vacationing in Greece when the

Los Angeles Watts riots broke out. I'm a D.C. person by native, John, Mary and Barry, remember him,

the mayor in the 1980s? He was playing tennis in Beverly Hills when Washington got buried in a foot of snow in February one year.

And so, you know, these things can happen to politicians.

But the problem for Bass is number one.

She was warned ahead of time that there could be trouble with high winds and potential

fire, but she went to Africa anyway.

But then coming back, we just get story after story of how the city was, you know, unfunded for dealing with wildfires.

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