In April of 2006, I watched a posse of politicians gather at Skid Row’s Midnight Mission to introduce, with great fanfare and unbridled confidence, a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Los Angeles.
That didn’t work out so well.
Twelve years later, in his 2018 State of the City address, Mayor Eric Garcetti made a full-throated vow to quit fooling around and get the job done.
Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.
“We are here to end homelessness,” he said.
Mission not accomplished.
We have a habit of setting lofty goals and making grand promises in Los Angeles and in California.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Better to have politicians and experts who study the pressing issues of the day and go out on a limb rather than shrug their shoulders.
“It’s hard to do anything if you don’t have a vision,” said Jessica Bremner, a Cal State L.A. urban geography professor. Transit, housing and infrastructure needs won’t materialize without that vision, she added. “Nothing will move.”
Agreed. And all of us, not just politicians, want to believe there’s a better version of our community — a brighter future.
But there is a big difference between a vision and a hallucination, and we’ve had some of both in recent years.
Here’s a sampling:
A mobile phone user looks at an earthquake warning application. After the Northridge quake, the state passed a law requiring seismic upgrades of hospitals by 2030. As of 2023, nearly two-thirds had yet to complete the required improvements.
(Richard Vogel / Associated Press)
In 2022, California set a goal of eliminating the sale of gas-powered vehicles after 2035 — which would dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions — and reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the state did more than set a goal. It passed a law requiring hospitals to upgrade seismic safety by 2030.
Los Angeles, under Garcetti, championed Vision Zero in 2015. The goal? Eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. Not reduce, but eliminate.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
In 2020, the city embraced SmartLA 2028, a plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and gas-powered vehicles and build “a data-driven connected city, which addresses the digital divide and brings fresh ideas, including tele-health, clean tech and a switch to mass transit.”
In 2021, the California Master Plan for Aging set “five bold goals” to increase affordable housing and improve health, caregiving and economic security for older adults and those with disabilities by 2030.
In anticipation of L.A.’s hosting of the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, Metro introduced its “Twenty-eight by ‘28” initiative in 2018, outlining more than two dozen transit objectives.
The DTLA 2040 plan, adopted by the city in 2023, would add 70,000 housing units and 55,000 jobs over the next 15 years.
So how’s it all going?
The good news: There’s been a lot of progress.
The bad news: Where to begin?
Surely you’ll fall over backward when I tell you that funding shortages, politics, evolving priorities, lack of coordination, haphazard and disjointed planning, and less than stellar leadership have stymied progress on many fronts.
On homelessness, thousands have been housed and helped thanks to big initiatives and voter-approved resources. But as an observer once described it, we’ve been managing rather than solving the crisis and essentially bailing a leaky boat with a teaspoon. And now the agency at the helm is in disarray.
People experiencing homelessness pack their tents and belongings during the cleanup of an encampment on Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
On climate change, California deserves a big pat on the back for at least acknowledging the crisis and responding with big ideas. But the Trump administration, which is likely to hold steady up to and beyond the point at which Mar-a-Lago is underwater, has all but declared war on the Golden State’s good intentions, eliminating funding for key projects and challenging the state’s authority.
The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with Trump, Congress and fossil fuel companies in opposing the state’s ambitions. Meanwhile, a grim analysis last year, which can’t be blamed on Trump, said the state would have to triple the pace of progress to reach its 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target.
As for the law requiring seismic upgrades of hospitals by 2030, as of 2023, nearly two-thirds had yet to complete the required improvements and many had asked for amendments and extensions.
L.A.’s Vision Zero, meanwhile, which promised the redesign of high-accident locations and multiple other safety upgrades for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, has been a singular embarrassment.
Rather than an elimination of traffic deaths, the number has surged, and an audit released earlier this year serves as an indictment of local leadership. It cited lack of accountability along with “conflicts of personality, lack of total buy-in for implementation, disagreements over how the program should be administered.”
“Incredibly disappointing,” said Michael Manville, a UCLA professor of urban planning. “The city remains incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians.”
Manville didn’t have very high grades, either, for Metro’s 28×28 foray.
“It’s a joke at this point,” he said, although even though he noted that some progress is undeniable, citing in particular the expected completion of the Purple Line extension to the Westside in time for the Olympics.
One morning in June, I stood on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima with L.A. City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. She was looking to the north, in the direction of an empty promise.
“This is the home of the future San Fernando Valley Light Rail,” Rodriguez said. “It was supposed to be one of the 28 by 28, and we’re now looking at probably 2031 to 2032 for its completion … in a community that has a majority dependence … on public transit.”
We also visited the site of a proposed Sylmar fire station for which there was a groundbreaking ceremony about two decades ago. Rodriguez said with the adjacent hills turning brown as fire season approaches, Sylmar is long overdue for the station, but the city is hobbled by a massive budget deficit.
“Now I’ve just got to get the money to build it,” Rodriguez said.
An image from video shows the aftermath of a traffic collision involving three vehicles on the southbound lanes of the 405 Freeway near Wilshire Boulevard. Former Mayor Eric Garcetti championed Vision Zero in 2015. The goal? Eliminate traffic deaths by 2025.
(KTLA)
Sometimes it seems as if the big goals are designed to redirect our attention from the failures of daily governance. Sure, there’s a 10-year wait to get your ruptured sidewalk fixed, but flying taxis are in the works for the Olympics.
And one convenient feature of long-term goals is that when 2035 or 2045 rolls around, few may remember who made the promises, or even recall what was promised.
In Professor Bremner’s vision of a rosier L.A. future, there would be more buses and trains on the lines that serve the Cal State L.A. transit station. She told me she talks to her students about the relationship between climate change and the car culture, and then watches them hustle after night classes to catch a bus that runs on 30-minute intervals or a train that rolls in once an hour.
As for the other big promises I mentioned, SmartLA 2028 lays out dozens of laudable but perhaps overly ambitious goals — “Los Angeles residents will experience an improved quality of life by leveraging technology to meet urban challenges. No longer the ‘car capital of the world’, residents will choose how they wish to get around LA, using a single, digital payment platform, with choices like renovated Metro rail and bus systems or micro transit choices, such as on-demand LANow shuttles or dockless bicycles.” But in the 50-page strategy document, the word “challenges” is mentioned quite a bit, and I worry that this particular reference could be the kiss of death:
“City of Los Angeles departments have varying funding sources, missions, and directives, which can inhibit unified, citywide Smart City technology initiatives.”
It’s a little too soon to know whether the DTLA 2040 goals will rank as vision or hallucination, but downtown is the logical place for high-density residential development and construction cranes are already on the job. As for the Master Plan for Aging, there’s been progress but also uncertainty about steady funding streams, particularly given current state budget miseries, and there’s no guarantee the plan will be prioritized by future governors.
“Goals are critical,” said Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But they need to be followed up with implementation plans, with budgets, funding mechanisms, milestones and metrics.”
“That is nowhere close,” said Gold, but two other goals might be within reach. One is to have 70% of L.A.’s water locally sourced by 2035, the other is for 80% of county water to be local by 2045, using increased stormwater capture, recycled wastewater, groundwater remediation and conservation.
When he ran Heal the Bay, Gold implemented an annual report card for ocean water quality at various beaches. Maybe we ought to use the same system every time a politician takes a bow for introducing a bold, far-reaching goal.
Without the measuring stick, Gold said, “you end up looking back and saying, ‘remember when we were going to do this and that and it never happened?’ You have to continuously revisit and grade yourself on how you’re doing.”
Plans for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics are linked to a fleet of buses to transport people to and from venues like SoFi Stadium to avoid a traffic meltdown. The plan includes a $2-billion ask of the Trump administration to lease 2,700 buses to join Metro’s fleet of about 2,400.
(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Times)
While it’s true, Manville said, that “L.A. seems to be better at kicking off grand plans than seeing them through, that’s not unique to Los Angeles.”
He cited “Abundance” as one of several recent books making the case that “lots of cities in blue states can’t seem to get out of their own way.”
The failures of virtuous Democrats are indeed on full display in California and beyond. But the other side of the aisle is not without its own sins, beginning with cult-like denial of climate change and, speaking of empty promises, undying devotion to a man who said he would end the war in Ukraine before he took office and bring down grocery prices on Day One.
Would you rather live in a state crazy enough to still think it can build a bullet train and outlaw carbon, or in one of the many hurricane-battered states crazy enough to think this is a swell time to get rid of FEMA?
If you’re reaching for the stars, making it to the moon isn’t a bad start.
The latest embarrassment is LA28 chair Casey Wasserman, the man tasked with making sure the 2028 Summer Olympics are a massive success. At a news conference this week announcing that President Trump will head a federal Olympics task force, Wasserman offered L.A. a giant whoopie cushion.
With Wasserman at his left side, Trump vowed to bring L.A. “back stronger than ever.” On Trump’s right was a rash of L.A. haters, some of whom played a prominent role in Southern California’s summer of deportations, including Vice President JD Vance and Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem. Not present, but hailed by Trump during the presser as an “MVP candidate,” was Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has made it his life’s mission to crush the multicultural metropolis that birthed him.
So what did Wasserman, a prominent Democratic donor who in recent months has thrown some cash at Republican committees, do in front of people who want to rain holy hell on his hometown?
He praised Trump’s “support” of the L.A. Olympics as “truly extraordinary” and gifted him a set of medals from the 1984 Games hosted by the city. If that wasn’t groveling enough, Wasserman was grinning after Trump joked about not using an autopen to sign the executive order creating the task force — a jab at President Biden. It was more bricks on the foundation Wasserman has been laying since January, when he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
I haven’t seen such a suck-up since the last time I vacuumed my dad’s pool.
The federal government was always going to play a role in providing security for the 2028 Olympics, just as it has for previous Games in the U.S. But Trump, as the head of the task force, now gets to personally oversee our own siege.
When asked by a reporter if he would deploy the military to L.A. the way he did this summer, Trump responded, “We’ll do anything necessary to keep the Olympics safe, including using our National Guard or military, OK?”
With the Games happening in a presidential election year, Trump would love nothing more than to traipse around an L.A. radically transformed by his deportation blitzkrieg to proclaim his mission accomplished and broadcast his conquest to the world.
That’s why L.A. needs to withdraw from hosting the Olympics — the sooner the better.
Trump’s news conference, where he also called Mayor Karen Bass “not very competent,” looked like a preview of what we can expect in the lead-up to the Games. Hey, maybe the president will fall in love with the city over the next three years — and maybe Miller’s bald pate will grow hair worthy of Samson. But history has shown that no amount of puckering up to Trump will deter him from his goals — and a long-standing one is to humiliate blue L.A. at every chance.
Angelenos: Do ustedes really want to give Trump and his goon squad more chances to make life miserable for y’all? You don’t stand idly by as your sworn enemy assumes even more power to mess with you — you toss that problem elsewhere if you can. And you definitely don’t entrust kiss asses like Wasserman — I’m still not sure what he did to deserve his powerful LA28 gig, except being the grandson of the late Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman — with calming down someone like Trump. That’s like giving a rich kid a Super Soaker and telling him to water the Huntington Library gardens.
Mayor Karen Bass speaks at an event with local leaders in front of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 2024.
Indeed, few Olympics ever turn a profit. The organizing committee behind last year’s Paris Games claimed to have brought in about $30 million — which isn’t bad, but it’s just 3% of the nearly billion-dollar budget deficit that the city of L.A. faced at the beginning of the year.
Expecting the Olympics to be a financial and spiritual salvation for the city betrays Angelenos’ lack of trust in their ability to save themselves. Nevertheless, an executive for the tourism group Visit California said at a state Senate committee hearing last month that hosting the Games would present a “refreshed global image of California as the most welcoming destination in the nation.”
Spare me the PR pablum. The city doesn’t need a multibillion-dollar ad campaign to let the world know how cool it is or make it believe in itself. It needs people committed to solving problems for those who have to live with them daily — not for tourists and visiting athletes.
Supporters will whine that pulling out of the Olympics at this point is a huge inconvenience and will wreck L.A.’s global standing. But withdrawing from a commitment to host a huge sporting event isn’t unprecedented. Denver dumped the 1976 Winter Olympics three years and three months before they were set to open, and its reputation came out just fine. Mexico hosted the 1986 World Cup after Colombia pulled out three years earlier.
By passing on the Olympics, L.A. officials can set aside their concerns about whether producing a month’s worth of seven Super Bowls a day, as Wasserman loves to boast, will strain city resources. Wasserman and his band of the best and the brightest can focus on what L.A. really needs, not how to transform SoFi Stadium into an aquatics center.
And if LA28 throws a snit fit over the move? Well, then you know how truly committed they were to bettering L.A. in the first place.
I write this columna as a huge Olympics fan who watches the opening ceremony every four years, the Games’ problems be damned. I have vague but fond memories of the 1984 Games and clearly remember the Sam the Olympic Eagle lunchbox I toted around in first grade. I was looking forward to trying to score tickets to the swimming events for my wife, who was a competitive backstroker at University High in Irvine, and me.
But I don’t want my money going toward something that Trump will use to bolster his noxious legacy. I’m not going to cheer on Wasserman as he chums up Trump while la migracontinues to terrorize L.A., possibly for months, if not years. I don’t want to support an event where footage of an occupied L.A. might be as front and center as the Coliseum or badminton.
Former 21st Century Fox and Walt Disney Co. executive Peter Rice has been named head of ceremonies and content for the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Los Angeles, LA28 organizers said Wednesday.
In this role, the longtime TV veteran will be in charge of the physical production and creative oversight of the opening and closing ceremonies for both games. The 2028 Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony will be held at two venues — the Coliseum and SoFi Stadium. The Games’ closing ceremony will be held at the Coliseum.
In a statement, Rice said he looked forward to producing ceremonies that would honor the legacy of the Coliseum and “celebrate the cutting-edge future” of SoFi Stadium.
“These venues have hosted some of the most legendary moments in sports history,” Rice said. “I’m thrilled to deliver a powerful artistic experience that adds a new chapter to LA’s Olympic and Paralympic story.”
LA28 President and Chairperson Casey Wasserman said Rice’s background in “creativity, operational insight and production excellence” made him ideal for the position.
“He’s been a leading figure in shaping the modern television and film landscape and is the perfect asset to reimagining the delivery of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the digital age, leaving a legacy well beyond the Games,” Wasserman said in a statement.
Rice spent decades at Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, eventually rising to the role of president. After Disney acquired the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox in 2019, he became chairman of Disney’s TV content division. At one point, analysts and insiders speculated that he could become Disney’s CEO.
Commentary: The state sets lofty goals in the name of a brighter future. What’s a vision and what’s a hallucination?
In April of 2006, I watched a posse of politicians gather at Skid Row’s Midnight Mission to introduce, with great fanfare and unbridled confidence, a 10-year plan to end homelessness in Los Angeles.
That didn’t work out so well.
Twelve years later, in his 2018 State of the City address, Mayor Eric Garcetti made a full-throated vow to quit fooling around and get the job done.
Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.
“We are here to end homelessness,” he said.
Mission not accomplished.
We have a habit of setting lofty goals and making grand promises in Los Angeles and in California.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Better to have politicians and experts who study the pressing issues of the day and go out on a limb rather than shrug their shoulders.
“It’s hard to do anything if you don’t have a vision,” said Jessica Bremner, a Cal State L.A. urban geography professor. Transit, housing and infrastructure needs won’t materialize without that vision, she added. “Nothing will move.”
Agreed. And all of us, not just politicians, want to believe there’s a better version of our community — a brighter future.
But there is a big difference between a vision and a hallucination, and we’ve had some of both in recent years.
Here’s a sampling:
A mobile phone user looks at an earthquake warning application. After the Northridge quake, the state passed a law requiring seismic upgrades of hospitals by 2030. As of 2023, nearly two-thirds had yet to complete the required improvements.
(Richard Vogel / Associated Press)
In 2022, California set a goal of eliminating the sale of gas-powered vehicles after 2035 — which would dramatically reduce greenhouse emissions — and reaching carbon neutrality by 2045.
After the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the state did more than set a goal. It passed a law requiring hospitals to upgrade seismic safety by 2030.
Los Angeles, under Garcetti, championed Vision Zero in 2015. The goal? Eliminate traffic deaths by 2025. Not reduce, but eliminate.
Steve Lopez
Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.
In 2020, the city embraced SmartLA 2028, a plan to reduce reliance on fossil fuels and gas-powered vehicles and build “a data-driven connected city, which addresses the digital divide and brings fresh ideas, including tele-health, clean tech and a switch to mass transit.”
In 2021, the California Master Plan for Aging set “five bold goals” to increase affordable housing and improve health, caregiving and economic security for older adults and those with disabilities by 2030.
In anticipation of L.A.’s hosting of the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics, Metro introduced its “Twenty-eight by ‘28” initiative in 2018, outlining more than two dozen transit objectives.
The DTLA 2040 plan, adopted by the city in 2023, would add 70,000 housing units and 55,000 jobs over the next 15 years.
So how’s it all going?
The good news: There’s been a lot of progress.
The bad news: Where to begin?
Surely you’ll fall over backward when I tell you that funding shortages, politics, evolving priorities, lack of coordination, haphazard and disjointed planning, and less than stellar leadership have stymied progress on many fronts.
On homelessness, thousands have been housed and helped thanks to big initiatives and voter-approved resources. But as an observer once described it, we’ve been managing rather than solving the crisis and essentially bailing a leaky boat with a teaspoon. And now the agency at the helm is in disarray.
People experiencing homelessness pack their tents and belongings during the cleanup of an encampment on Wilshire Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles.
(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)
On climate change, California deserves a big pat on the back for at least acknowledging the crisis and responding with big ideas. But the Trump administration, which is likely to hold steady up to and beyond the point at which Mar-a-Lago is underwater, has all but declared war on the Golden State’s good intentions, eliminating funding for key projects and challenging the state’s authority.
The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with Trump, Congress and fossil fuel companies in opposing the state’s ambitions. Meanwhile, a grim analysis last year, which can’t be blamed on Trump, said the state would have to triple the pace of progress to reach its 2030 greenhouse gas reduction target.
As for the law requiring seismic upgrades of hospitals by 2030, as of 2023, nearly two-thirds had yet to complete the required improvements and many had asked for amendments and extensions.
L.A.’s Vision Zero, meanwhile, which promised the redesign of high-accident locations and multiple other safety upgrades for pedestrians, cyclists and motorists, has been a singular embarrassment.
Rather than an elimination of traffic deaths, the number has surged, and an audit released earlier this year serves as an indictment of local leadership. It cited lack of accountability along with “conflicts of personality, lack of total buy-in for implementation, disagreements over how the program should be administered.”
“Incredibly disappointing,” said Michael Manville, a UCLA professor of urban planning. “The city remains incredibly dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians.”
Manville didn’t have very high grades, either, for Metro’s 28×28 foray.
“It’s a joke at this point,” he said, although even though he noted that some progress is undeniable, citing in particular the expected completion of the Purple Line extension to the Westside in time for the Olympics.
But many of the 28 original projects won’t make the deadline, and oh, by the way, there’s no money at the moment to pay for the promised fleet of 2,700 buses for what Mayor Karen Bass has called the transit-first, “no-car” Olympics.
One morning in June, I stood on Van Nuys Boulevard in Pacoima with L.A. City Councilwoman Monica Rodriguez. She was looking to the north, in the direction of an empty promise.
“This is the home of the future San Fernando Valley Light Rail,” Rodriguez said. “It was supposed to be one of the 28 by 28, and we’re now looking at probably 2031 to 2032 for its completion … in a community that has a majority dependence … on public transit.”
We also visited the site of a proposed Sylmar fire station for which there was a groundbreaking ceremony about two decades ago. Rodriguez said with the adjacent hills turning brown as fire season approaches, Sylmar is long overdue for the station, but the city is hobbled by a massive budget deficit.
“Now I’ve just got to get the money to build it,” Rodriguez said.
(KTLA)
Sometimes it seems as if the big goals are designed to redirect our attention from the failures of daily governance. Sure, there’s a 10-year wait to get your ruptured sidewalk fixed, but flying taxis are in the works for the Olympics.
And one convenient feature of long-term goals is that when 2035 or 2045 rolls around, few may remember who made the promises, or even recall what was promised.
In Professor Bremner’s vision of a rosier L.A. future, there would be more buses and trains on the lines that serve the Cal State L.A. transit station. She told me she talks to her students about the relationship between climate change and the car culture, and then watches them hustle after night classes to catch a bus that runs on 30-minute intervals or a train that rolls in once an hour.
As for the other big promises I mentioned, SmartLA 2028 lays out dozens of laudable but perhaps overly ambitious goals — “Los Angeles residents will experience an improved quality of life by leveraging technology to meet urban challenges. No longer the ‘car capital of the world’, residents will choose how they wish to get around LA, using a single, digital payment platform, with choices like renovated Metro rail and bus systems or micro transit choices, such as on-demand LANow shuttles or dockless bicycles.” But in the 50-page strategy document, the word “challenges” is mentioned quite a bit, and I worry that this particular reference could be the kiss of death:
“City of Los Angeles departments have varying funding sources, missions, and directives, which can inhibit unified, citywide Smart City technology initiatives.”
It’s a little too soon to know whether the DTLA 2040 goals will rank as vision or hallucination, but downtown is the logical place for high-density residential development and construction cranes are already on the job. As for the Master Plan for Aging, there’s been progress but also uncertainty about steady funding streams, particularly given current state budget miseries, and there’s no guarantee the plan will be prioritized by future governors.
“Goals are critical,” said Mark Gold, director of water scarcity solutions at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But they need to be followed up with implementation plans, with budgets, funding mechanisms, milestones and metrics.”
Gold recalls Garcetti’s promise in 2019 that all of L.A.’s wastewater would be recycled by 2035.
“That is nowhere close,” said Gold, but two other goals might be within reach. One is to have 70% of L.A.’s water locally sourced by 2035, the other is for 80% of county water to be local by 2045, using increased stormwater capture, recycled wastewater, groundwater remediation and conservation.
When he ran Heal the Bay, Gold implemented an annual report card for ocean water quality at various beaches. Maybe we ought to use the same system every time a politician takes a bow for introducing a bold, far-reaching goal.
Without the measuring stick, Gold said, “you end up looking back and saying, ‘remember when we were going to do this and that and it never happened?’ You have to continuously revisit and grade yourself on how you’re doing.”
Plans for the 2028 Olympics and Paralympics are linked to a fleet of buses to transport people to and from venues like SoFi Stadium to avoid a traffic meltdown. The plan includes a $2-billion ask of the Trump administration to lease 2,700 buses to join Metro’s fleet of about 2,400.
(Deborah Netburn / Los Angeles Times)
While it’s true, Manville said, that “L.A. seems to be better at kicking off grand plans than seeing them through, that’s not unique to Los Angeles.”
He cited “Abundance” as one of several recent books making the case that “lots of cities in blue states can’t seem to get out of their own way.”
The failures of virtuous Democrats are indeed on full display in California and beyond. But the other side of the aisle is not without its own sins, beginning with cult-like denial of climate change and, speaking of empty promises, undying devotion to a man who said he would end the war in Ukraine before he took office and bring down grocery prices on Day One.
Would you rather live in a state crazy enough to still think it can build a bullet train and outlaw carbon, or in one of the many hurricane-battered states crazy enough to think this is a swell time to get rid of FEMA?
If you’re reaching for the stars, making it to the moon isn’t a bad start.
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L.A. never needed the Olympics. With Trump wanting in, it’s time to pull out
Los Angeles just can’t get a break.
The latest embarrassment is LA28 chair Casey Wasserman, the man tasked with making sure the 2028 Summer Olympics are a massive success. At a news conference this week announcing that President Trump will head a federal Olympics task force, Wasserman offered L.A. a giant whoopie cushion.
With Wasserman at his left side, Trump vowed to bring L.A. “back stronger than ever.” On Trump’s right was a rash of L.A. haters, some of whom played a prominent role in Southern California’s summer of deportations, including Vice President JD Vance and Department of Homeland Security head Kristi Noem. Not present, but hailed by Trump during the presser as an “MVP candidate,” was Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, who has made it his life’s mission to crush the multicultural metropolis that birthed him.
So what did Wasserman, a prominent Democratic donor who in recent months has thrown some cash at Republican committees, do in front of people who want to rain holy hell on his hometown?
He praised Trump’s “support” of the L.A. Olympics as “truly extraordinary” and gifted him a set of medals from the 1984 Games hosted by the city. If that wasn’t groveling enough, Wasserman was grinning after Trump joked about not using an autopen to sign the executive order creating the task force — a jab at President Biden. It was more bricks on the foundation Wasserman has been laying since January, when he met with Trump at Mar-a-Lago.
I haven’t seen such a suck-up since the last time I vacuumed my dad’s pool.
The federal government was always going to play a role in providing security for the 2028 Olympics, just as it has for previous Games in the U.S. But Trump, as the head of the task force, now gets to personally oversee our own siege.
When asked by a reporter if he would deploy the military to L.A. the way he did this summer, Trump responded, “We’ll do anything necessary to keep the Olympics safe, including using our National Guard or military, OK?”
With the Games happening in a presidential election year, Trump would love nothing more than to traipse around an L.A. radically transformed by his deportation blitzkrieg to proclaim his mission accomplished and broadcast his conquest to the world.
That’s why L.A. needs to withdraw from hosting the Olympics — the sooner the better.
Trump’s news conference, where he also called Mayor Karen Bass “not very competent,” looked like a preview of what we can expect in the lead-up to the Games. Hey, maybe the president will fall in love with the city over the next three years — and maybe Miller’s bald pate will grow hair worthy of Samson. But history has shown that no amount of puckering up to Trump will deter him from his goals — and a long-standing one is to humiliate blue L.A. at every chance.
Angelenos: Do ustedes really want to give Trump and his goon squad more chances to make life miserable for y’all? You don’t stand idly by as your sworn enemy assumes even more power to mess with you — you toss that problem elsewhere if you can. And you definitely don’t entrust kiss asses like Wasserman — I’m still not sure what he did to deserve his powerful LA28 gig, except being the grandson of the late Hollywood mogul Lew Wasserman — with calming down someone like Trump. That’s like giving a rich kid a Super Soaker and telling him to water the Huntington Library gardens.
Mayor Karen Bass speaks at an event with local leaders in front of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in 2024.
(Christina House / Los Angeles Times)
In a city that has long faced existential problems, the idea of staging such a spectacle always sat uneasy with me. Boosters have drowned out skeptics by insisting that the Olympics will help the city and come at “no cost” to taxpayers. But the city government will have to cover the first $270 million of any cost overruns or revenue shortfalls — and where on earth would that money come from?
Indeed, few Olympics ever turn a profit. The organizing committee behind last year’s Paris Games claimed to have brought in about $30 million — which isn’t bad, but it’s just 3% of the nearly billion-dollar budget deficit that the city of L.A. faced at the beginning of the year.
Expecting the Olympics to be a financial and spiritual salvation for the city betrays Angelenos’ lack of trust in their ability to save themselves. Nevertheless, an executive for the tourism group Visit California said at a state Senate committee hearing last month that hosting the Games would present a “refreshed global image of California as the most welcoming destination in the nation.”
Spare me the PR pablum. The city doesn’t need a multibillion-dollar ad campaign to let the world know how cool it is or make it believe in itself. It needs people committed to solving problems for those who have to live with them daily — not for tourists and visiting athletes.
Supporters will whine that pulling out of the Olympics at this point is a huge inconvenience and will wreck L.A.’s global standing. But withdrawing from a commitment to host a huge sporting event isn’t unprecedented. Denver dumped the 1976 Winter Olympics three years and three months before they were set to open, and its reputation came out just fine. Mexico hosted the 1986 World Cup after Colombia pulled out three years earlier.
By passing on the Olympics, L.A. officials can set aside their concerns about whether producing a month’s worth of seven Super Bowls a day, as Wasserman loves to boast, will strain city resources. Wasserman and his band of the best and the brightest can focus on what L.A. really needs, not how to transform SoFi Stadium into an aquatics center.
And if LA28 throws a snit fit over the move? Well, then you know how truly committed they were to bettering L.A. in the first place.
I write this columna as a huge Olympics fan who watches the opening ceremony every four years, the Games’ problems be damned. I have vague but fond memories of the 1984 Games and clearly remember the Sam the Olympic Eagle lunchbox I toted around in first grade. I was looking forward to trying to score tickets to the swimming events for my wife, who was a competitive backstroker at University High in Irvine, and me.
But I don’t want my money going toward something that Trump will use to bolster his noxious legacy. I’m not going to cheer on Wasserman as he chums up Trump while la migra continues to terrorize L.A., possibly for months, if not years. I don’t want to support an event where footage of an occupied L.A. might be as front and center as the Coliseum or badminton.
What true Angeleno would?
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Former Disney boss to run L.A. 2028 Olympics ceremonies
Former 21st Century Fox and Walt Disney Co. executive Peter Rice has been named head of ceremonies and content for the 2028 Summer Olympics and Paralympics in Los Angeles, LA28 organizers said Wednesday.
In this role, the longtime TV veteran will be in charge of the physical production and creative oversight of the opening and closing ceremonies for both games. The 2028 Summer Olympics’ opening ceremony will be held at two venues — the Coliseum and SoFi Stadium. The Games’ closing ceremony will be held at the Coliseum.
In a statement, Rice said he looked forward to producing ceremonies that would honor the legacy of the Coliseum and “celebrate the cutting-edge future” of SoFi Stadium.
“These venues have hosted some of the most legendary moments in sports history,” Rice said. “I’m thrilled to deliver a powerful artistic experience that adds a new chapter to LA’s Olympic and Paralympic story.”
LA28 President and Chairperson Casey Wasserman said Rice’s background in “creativity, operational insight and production excellence” made him ideal for the position.
“He’s been a leading figure in shaping the modern television and film landscape and is the perfect asset to reimagining the delivery of the Opening and Closing Ceremonies for the digital age, leaving a legacy well beyond the Games,” Wasserman said in a statement.
Rice spent decades at Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox, eventually rising to the role of president. After Disney acquired the entertainment assets of 21st Century Fox in 2019, he became chairman of Disney’s TV content division. At one point, analysts and insiders speculated that he could become Disney’s CEO.
He was ousted from that role in 2022 over issues of “cultural fit,” insiders said at the time. He was replaced by Dana Walden, his top lieutenant who is now seen as one of the frontrunners to succeed Bob Iger as Disney’s next chief executive.
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