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Nearly every time I glance out the window, an organization in this neighborhood, the Girl Scouts, the Boy Scouts, the Old Peoples’ Scouts, is making an embarrassingly lavish presentation to Karen Bass.
Why? Just because it makes them feel good.
The emcee at these ceremonies fairly gurgles.
Isn’t it wonderful, he asks, that Ms. Bass is the first black woman to become Speaker of the Assembly?
Or the first woman of her height to become Speaker?
Or that she was the first community organizer to attain such lofty status? This, obviously, was in the pre-President Obama days.
Fortunately, most of the richly undeserved awards she receives were purchased at the 99-Cent Store.
Remember the Number 17
Or isn’t it simply fabulous that Ms. Bass has done so much for foster families? Yes, for a change, truly it is. However, that is not why duped, amazingly gullible, Democrats voted her into office.
Let me attempt to illustrate how wasteful the badly overblown Ms. Bass, a double-talking sandbagger, is.
Ms. Bass’s website reports, joyfully, that 17 of the Speaker’s pet projects, foster family bills, have been signed into law by Gov. Schwarzenegger.
Eh, wot?
Seventeen foster family bills?
Somebody is wasting a lot of his time thinking up a dozen and a half bills — thank you, intrusive big government fans — regulating foster families.
Seventeen.
That is a number to make even a simple child laugh.
I think Ms. Bass should return to Los Angeles and run the projection room at the Braille Institute.
I have a question. Has anyone with a modicum of integrity looked beneath the polish and inspected Ms. Bass’s record in Sacramento. Bring a thimble to shlep the important documents.
What She and Zero Have in Common
Besides thumb-sucking and carrying 17 bills to tighten the noose around the necks of foster families, what has the old girl done?
Nothing of note, we fear.
None of this will even slow the avalanche of “oh, isn’t she wonderful?” honors, however.
She could have been a secretary to someone genuinely important and made a wider contribution to society.
Friends say she is a nice lady. But I would not like to ride a bicycle in tandem with her across Overland Avenue. By the time her feet reached the pedals, she would run out of something substantive to say.
She will not be mistaken for the Philosopher of the Day, or of the Week.
I never have heard her make a pronouncement that one of our grandchildren could not have thought up, and the oldest is not yet 3 years old.
She could join the next class of astronauts, and only her family would notice the difference.
If she is so darned politically astute, so valuable, where is Ms. Overblown in the scandalous budget negotiations?
Off to the side, practicing her sneeze or her wheeze.
She could replace the wooden Indian who used to stand in front of my old barber shop. She and Mr. Indian could have swapped yarns in crayon class.
Her elevation to the Speakership was a greased, phony deal executed by the oily and also largely useless Fabian Nunez, the previous Speaker.
Perhaps Mr. Nunez and Ms. Bass would be of more help to the legal and illegal residents of California if they dialed Edgar Bergen and volunteered to teach Charlie McCarthy how to walk by himself.
