In his WSJ piece about the mayoral race in Los Angeles between a hard core Progressive-Democratic Party incumbent and a dual member of the Democratic Socialists of America and the Progressive-Democratic Party upstart, Karen Bass and Nithya Raman, respectively, the news writer wrote about the broken condition of the city and each candidate’s hopes and dreams (my characterization) for fixing it.

It took an average of seven days to fix a pothole in the fiscal year that ended June 30, up from 0.9 days in 2021-22. Also, the average response time to repair a streetlight outage rose to 224 working days from 31 over the same period, amid a spate of copper-wire theft.

A week to fix a pothole and nearly a year for a streetlight. It’s ridiculous even for those repairs to take the earlier 21 hours and an entire month. If the pothole takes more than a couple of hours to fill with asphalt for a sound repair, it’s only because the city had let the hole fester for so long that a far more extensive repair became necessary. It’s even worse for the streetlight. A month!?

Big government regulation, at the core of those delays and which has so severely damaged the city over the last 25 years of Progressive-Democratic rule, is unlikely to be reduced—indeed, quite the opposite—whether the city is ruled by another Progressive-Democrat or by a socialist running as a Progressive-Democrat.

Regarding the potholes and streetlights in particular, it should be as simple as, channeling Major John “Mac” McGillis, see the hole, fix the hole; see the light, fix the light.

Fat chance under LA’s new old regime.