PERSPECTIVE - The real state of Los Angeles, at least in part, can be seen and felt while driving down Sherman Way from the 405 to Canoga Park. Store after store, restaurant after restaurant, closed, shuttered, boarded up, liberally sprayed with graffiti. The facades are strewn with trash, a testament to failing economic prosperity and impossible conditions for Mom-and-Pop stores.
Voters still holding their ballots must decide. Donald Trump can be uncouth, inappropriate, and braggadocious. None of that excuses California’s governing party. Hatred of one politician is a lousy reason to give other politicians unlimited permission to make your life more expensive, more restricted, and less secure.
We want affordability and a government that treats our money responsibly. We want addicts in treatment, the Tijuana River cleaned up, forests properly managed, and firefighters equipped to protect our homes. We want to choose our cars, tires, and kitchen appliances. Californians should not be denied the right to choose because some legislator or lobbyist in Sacramento thinks they know better.
Democrats have controlled California’s governorship and both legislative chambers continuously since 2011. They have had the power to write budgets, pass laws, and appoint regulators. They own the decisions made on their watch. (Source: Ballotpedia: Historical party control of California government)
The Legislative Analyst’s Office reported in January 2025 that California residential electricity rates were close to twice those elsewhere in the country. This was due to wildfire expenses, climate policies, and utility operating costs. Families pay that premium every month. Businesses pay it and recover what they can from customers. An environmental policy that ignores affordability will eventually price people out for negligible benefit. (Source: Legislative Analyst’s Office: Residential electricity rates)
California’s blue team hasn’t created an environmental paradise or even affordable energy. We want gasoline moving toward the national price. California controls the taxes and environmental regulations that make it impossible to produce oil, natural gas, and gasoline in the State. Instead, it makes us import petrol from the Middle East on tankers burning the most polluting fuel of all: bunker fuel. This is peak hypocrisy, as any benefit from not producing O&G here is wiped out by such importing.
California’s gasoline excise tax reached 63.4 cents per gallon in July 2026, before other taxes and regulatory costs. A commuter buying fuel to get to work should not be treated as a problem the state must price out of existence. (Source: California Department of Tax and Fee Administration: Fuel tax rates)
Charging by the mile deserves to be dead on arrival. Becerra said mileage charging remained on the table to support road repairs. If so, why hasn’t our super-expensive gas tax already produced better roads? Why would adding more tax money to one of the most inefficient systems produce better roads? Someone forced into a long commute by unaffordable housing should not be an easy target for another revenue scheme. (Sources: FOX 11: Becerra interview and campaign response; Caltrans: Road-charge pilot)
Freedom of choice should be mandatory in a free society. The Blues in Cal want to restrict every choice you make because it must pass some environmental litmus test.
California’s tire-efficiency rules restrict which covered tires you can buy. The state predicts fuel savings. But if buyers want softer tires that provide better traction, forget about it. Let manufacturers compete on efficiency, price, durability, and performance, and let customers weigh those qualities. If EVs are ultimately better and they can charge fast, then consumers will buy them. (Source: California Energy Commission: Tire-efficiency requirements)
A government that demands all kinds of regulations and trade-offs that make things more expensive and harder to repair should make sure it's actually cleaning up the big pollution problems, not the perceived minuscule pollution problems of scrambling an egg on your gas stove. The Tijuana River sewage crisis matters far more than rules about plastic straws.
Voting Blue has not given us more dependable water supplies. Safer streets. Releasing rapists and murderers out of jail way before their sentence is up does not make us more secure. Waiting for a police car for hours after you’ve been robbed does not feel like security.
Fire protection requires the same level of competent infrastructure. We want maintained reservoirs, functioning pumps, backup power, tested hydrants, and realistic plans for extraordinary demand. We want forest thinning and prescribed fire where appropriate, brush management, and defensible space. If you vote blue, California’s unregulated agencies will let deadwood, brush, and leaves keep piling up until a catastrophic fire.
Catastrophic fires destroy homes and pollute the air. A climate agenda must take preventing those losses seriously. A milkvetch plant must not stop firefighters from doing their job. State officials ordered the LAFD out of Topanga State Park to protect a weed. What did you get? $50 billion in damages and 12 confirmed deaths.
The State allocated $24 billion for “homeless projects”; why did the street-addiction problem get worse? Why are more people with mental illness festering under overpasses and blocking storefronts? Spending billions on a misdiagnosed problem, over and over, is insanity by the politicians demanding we build these oversized apartment buildings that have all the aesthetic appeal of a bad shoebox. As if an apartment cures mental illness and drug addiction. (Source: California State Auditor: Homelessness program evaluation, report 2023-102.1)
With $2,4 billion spent on the “unhoused” in LA and nothing to show for it, we have the two worst mayoral candidates in the universe vying to take control of this spending. They won’t fix the mistakes they made or improve anything. They still haven’t acknowledged the problem, but they can come up with new Orwellian phrases like "unhoused " to continue bamboozling naïve liberals.
Voting for a Democrat is a vote against yourself, because crime certainly won’t go down and might get worse. Especially if we open the borders to more military-aged men and people who have prior arrest records for heinous offenses. Defund the police and hurray for social workers. Higher taxes are good, but I can’t pay my electric bill because the DWP jacked my rates, man! The streets are a dystopian nightmare right out of Blade Runner, where street vendors and drug-addicted crazies make most sidewalks impassable, and real shopkeepers are frozen out and taxed out of existence.
Don’t forget our Governor spent about $9 billion on free healthcare, another Orwellian descriptor for the undocumented. While you paid super-high premiums for mediocre insurance. That sure gives you that virtuous feeling when you go to the emergency room and wait and wait.
If Democrats can’t deliver simple projects like repairing the cover of the Santa Ynez Reservoir (2 years and 4 months out of service) or completing a 2-mile people mover tram at LAX (3 years past the proposed completion date), maybe a new team should be seated in Sacramento and at LA City Hall. Nor should they be in charge of a proposed $126 billion high-speed rail, with $13.6 billion spent and not 1 yard of track laid. How about spending money to repave roads or replace water mains?
Public safety also requires a large, adequately staffed police force. Not one Democrat candidate seems to support the police. There must be consequences for violence and smash-and-grab robberies, and determined action against fentanyl dealing, child trafficking, and cartel operations. Helping people escape addiction would be true compassion. Prosecute those who profit by poisoning them. But someone's feelings might get hurt, so catch-and-release is a good thing. Right?
California is an enemy of small business. California generally charges an LLC $800 annually, even with no business activity, until canceled. Additional fees can apply based on total California income rather than net profit. This distinction is brutal for a business with substantial receipts and almost nothing left after expenses. The state collects its charge whether the owner is prospering or struggling. Nobody in any country on this planet has ever demonstrated that taxes create prosperity. (Source: Franchise Tax Board: LLC annual tax and fees)
This is what Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy”: defending a compassionate intention while accepting destructive results even when they hit home. Abandonment does not become humane because somebody gives it a sympathetic name. Residents deserve usable sidewalks and safe neighborhoods. Taxpayers deserve quality results, especially given the money being thrown and wasted on these problems.
For voters who have not yet voted, I recommend voting against every Democrat. Break the automatic renewal of Democratic control. Do not vote for any tax increase, as there is no assurance that throwing more money at any problem in California will produce decent results.
If you want a California where working, raising children, running a business, and owning a home is possible, you might want to try something different. Democrats have had years of governing power. If their strongest defense is that you should hate Trump more than you resent their failures, they have run out of excuses.
Ballot harvesting, no voter ID, plus unidentifiable mail-in voting and paying for votes should be anathema to a genuine democratic process. However, this being California, cheaters will cheat. A vote for the Democratic Party in California is a vote to wreck our City and State. Meditate on that when you go to the polls.
(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.)
