← The World and Everything In It
The World and Everything In It
6.3.26 Assessing Trump’s two presidencies, Prime Minister Mark Carney’s political leverage, and digitizing Greek manuscripts
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- [00:00]
Nick Eicher
Before we start today. Every story that you hear today represents hundreds of large and small decisions. What to cover, what to verify, and how to tell the truth with fairness and clarity.
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Myrna Brown
During our June giving drive, we're inviting listeners who value that work to help sustain it. If world has become part of your daily routine, I hope you consider a gift today. WNG.org donate. Good morning. Will Canada's prime minister block the expansion of doctor assisted suicide?
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Kent Covington
It would be a step in the direction of a government that actually protects the vulnerable rather than sees them as something to kill.
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Nick Eicher
Also today, Washington Wednesday. Hunter Baker on the good and the bad of the two Trump presidencies. Later, a biblical scholar on a mission to digitize thousands of Greek New Testament manuscripts.
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Dan Wallace
The Bible is the only religious book of any major religion that says you want to see if I'm true? Test it.
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Nick Eicher
And world commentator Cal Thomas on the LA Mayor.
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Myrna Brown
It's Wednesday, June 3rd. This is the world and everything in it from listener supported World Radio. I'm Myrna Brown.
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Nick Eicher
And I'm Nick Iger. Good morning.
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Myrna Brown
Up next, Kent Covington with today's news.
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Kent Covington
On Capitol Hill, Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the Trump administration's Iran strategy. On Tuesday. In his first testimony since the war began, the secretary clashed with Democrats. Senator Cory Booker asserted that Iran is now in a stronger negotiating position than before the war. We are the strongest nation on the planet earth and we're in a stalemate with Iran and now we're begging to
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Dan Wallace
get back into a deal with that
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Kent Covington
you all trashed in the first place. Rubio countered that if anyone is begging, it is Iran, whose military has been devastated and whose economy is in shambles, pointing to protests in Iran even before the war. Economic factors in Iran are far worse today than they were six months ago when those protests were happening. They have hyperinflation. Their currency is completely devalued. They're struggling to make payroll for their government workers. He added that U.S. negotiators see Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as increasingly engaged in talks through writing and intermediary. He added that Tehran has agreed to negotiate parts of its nuclear program that it once refused to talk about. And he also once again defended the decision to strike Iran. He said if anyone thinks Tehran has leverage now by choking the Strait of Hormuz, imagine what nuclear weapons would give them leverage to do. At that point. They wouldn't even have to announce that we're controlling this. They would just say we control the straits. There's nothing you can do about it because our nuclear weapon will allow us to do it.
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Nick Eicher
You will have to pay us a
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Kent Covington
toll for using an international waterway from now on, and you can't do anything to us militarily because we'll blow you up with a nucle. Democrats largely reject the argument that the action was necessary, calling it a war of choice. President Trump has picked a temporary replacement for Tulsi Gabbard to oversee America's spy agencies, at least for now. Bill Pulte will be the interim director of national intelligence. He runs the Federal Housing Finance Agency and chairs mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The 38 year old has no known national security background and he will keep his housing jobs. Amid the interim roll, Trump pointed to Polti's experience safeguarding sensitive financial markets, and allies also vouch for him. Trump health official Dr. Mehmedaz he is a very sharp, quick study of people, their emotional abilities and their ability to persevere in the face of hardship. But the pick is drawing criticism from some lawmakers. The director of national intelligence oversees 18 spy agencies, and critics question whether Pulte is equipped to lead them. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer accused the president of simply picking a loyalist americans
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Hunter Baker
need an intelligence chief loyal to the facts, the intelligence, the security of the nation, not the political interests of one man.
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Kent Covington
Tulsi Gabbard announced last month that she was stepping down at the end of June to care for her husband, recently diagnosed with a rare cancer. America's job market continues to show resilience, world's Benjamin Eicher explains. The Labor Department reported Tuesday that U.S. employers advertised 7.6 million open jobs in April, the most in nearly two years
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Hunter Baker
and far more than economists had expected
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Kent Covington
that despite some economic pressure from the Iran war, openings jumped more than 700,000 in a single month. Layoffs fell, but so did the number of Americans quitting their jobs, which is a sign of confidence in their prospects. Still, companies are cautious as overall hiring slowed in April. Unemployment, though, is holding at a low 4.3%. The next test comes on Friday, when the government releases the May jobs report,
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Hunter Baker
which will reveal whether hiring has picked up. For World I'm Benjamin Eicher
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Kent Covington
in Ukraine, air raid sirens sounded in Kyiv Tuesday, followed by explosions that, as Ukraine's air force said Russia launched a massive attack on the capital city that included well over 600 drones and 70 missiles. At least 22 people were killed and well over 100 were wounded in the barrage. One woman described her home being hit and smoke covering everything, she said she tried to cover her six year old daughter and described the scene as though they were living through the apocalypse. Meantime, in Moscow, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov continues to insist the Kremlin wants a peaceful end to the war. Ogiyev would describe it as surrender. Peskov told reporters that the conflict could end within 24 hours if Ukraine would withdraw its forces from Ukrainian territory that Russia now claims as its own. Voters went to the polls Tuesday in primary elections across the United States. In Los Angeles, former reality TV star Spencer Pratt could be heading to a runoff election against incumbent Mayor Karen Bass. As of early this morning, only about half the votes were counted in the mayoral race, but Bass and Pratt both held double digit leads over all other that is a nonpartisan race. Leading up to the vote, Bass had touted what she claimed was a reduction in homelessness in the city, but Pratt pushed back.
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Hunter Baker
There has not been a reduction in one homeless person. Actually, there's been an increase of naked drug addict zombies in front of every kid's playground, every kid's school, every coffee shop.
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Kent Covington
And in the race for California governor, Republican Steve Hilton and Democratic state Attorney General Javier Becerra held healthy leads over the rest of the field. In both races, the top two vote getters, regardless of party, advanced to a head to head matchup in November. The night's biggest surprise came in Iowa. Republicans there picked political newcomer Zach Lon for governor in an upset over Congressman Randy Feenstra, who had been favored. And Iowa Democrats nominated Paralympic gold medalist Josh Turek for U.S. senate. I'm Ken Covington. And coming up, party defections changed the political landscape in Canada. Plus making ancient biblical manuscripts available to anyone. This is the World and everything in it.
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Myrna Brown
It's Wednesday, the 3rd of June. Glad to have you along for today's edition of the World and Everything In It. Good morning. Hi, I'm Myrna Brown.
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Nick Eicher
And I'm Nick Eicher. First up, Washington, Wednesday. President Trump is nearing the midpoint of his second term. Voters are already preparing their report cards as midterm elections approach. And so we are clearly far enough along to begin asking the larger question, what has the Trump presidency actually accomplished?
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Myrna Brown
A provocative new paper was presented to a Washington think tank this week. Its conclusion may surprise both Trump's critics and his supporters. The author argues that Trump's most important achievement was not a tax cut, a trade policy, or even a Supreme Court appointment. It was winning twice. Winning in a way that interrupted what many conservatives saw as an accelerating progressive project in the courts, the bureaucracy and the culture.
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Nick Eicher
But alongside praise, it does raise sharp questions about persistent budget deficits, the Iran war, and what Trump has done to America's political culture. Joining us now is the author of that paper, political scientist and world opinions commentator Hunter Baker. Hunter, good morning.
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Hunter Baker
Good morning.
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Nick Eicher
Well, Hunter, as we mentioned, you argue President Trump's greatest accomplishment was winning, and winning against long odds. But Republicans have won presidential elections before. Ronald Reagan won, George W. Bush won what was uniquely Trump about his victories. What did they interrupt that a more conventional Republican presidency probably would not have interrupted?
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Hunter Baker
In my view, things stood in a different kind of a place with Barack Obama as president for eight years. He was sort of the ideal secular progressive president, very gifted, skilled speaker, and he accomplished the goal that Democrats had had for a very long time, which was sort of a massive overhaul of the health care system. Now, whether or not that was effective or helpful is a separate question, but he did it, and that's what Democrats had wanted. But there were other things, right? So there was. He got rid of don't ask, don't tell with gays in the military. We had the Obergefell decision occur during his presidency, of which he was supportive. We had sort of the tacit approval of the legalization of marijuana across the country. And maybe on this podcast, I think I've said that the scent of marijuana in our cities is the scent of American decline and sort of that early approval of the sort of things that we saw with transgenderism. So we saw what I would argue was sort of a progressive juggernaut, politically and culturally building. And had Hillary Clinton won the presidency, I think that she probably would have won two more terms. And the number of sort of policy victories and cultural changes that would have racked up over that time would have been. So I think that the biggest thing that we could say about Trump is that he put an obstacle in the way of that progressive juggernaut and really probably protected a lot of institutions, including Christian institutions, from potential fallout over Obergefell.
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Nick Eicher
Hunter, for many conservatives, the defining argument for Trump, especially in the first administration, was the courts. I mean, to the point that critics would mock Trump supporters with the phrase, you've heard this before, but Gorsuch, you know, kind of a shorthand way of saying conservatives were willing to overlook almost anything because of the courts. And you argue that Trump's judicial appointments were enormously consequential, helping to produce the Dobbs decision to return abortion to the people, to the states and a more constitutionally minded court. But you also argue that it's a virtue, not A defect that the court has refused to become a rubber stamp for Trump, something that he's quite complained about. So why is that a virtue to you? If the court was the bargain, why is it good that the court sometimes goes against him?
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Hunter Baker
Because we need a court. That is a court. The last thing that we need is another legislature, like a smaller legislature that operates in conjunction with the Congress and the presidency. In fact, I would argue that's part of what Democrats are seeking as they talk about packing the court, expanding the number. I mean, once we go down that road, expanding from nine, then we're going to have 29. We're going to have 39. You know, there's no end to it, as each side would seek advantage. We need an independent court that interprets the law, and that does not make law. People act like Dobbs was some sort of activist decision. It was not. It absolutely was not. What Dobbs did was to return us to constitutionalism. It did not take us away from constitutionalism. And I think that this court's other decision have been in keeping with the Constitution.
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Myrna Brown
Well, Hunter, the Doge project was sold as a fundamentally different approach to shrinking government. Yet you conclude it largely ran into the same realities that have frustrated reform efforts for decades. Why are those things so difficult to overcome?
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Hunter Baker
So there have been many of these kinds of commissions. There was a Hoover Commission in the past, trying to take advantage of sort of his vast expertise of engineering things and making things happen. There was a Grace Commission during Ronald Reagan's presidency. Bill Clinton and Al Gore had their own commission of this type. And Doge was simply the most exciting of these commissions because it was led by the most interesting entrepreneur in the world, who is Elon Musk. Sometimes I say he's the closest thing we have to Tony Stark. And so he wanted this to happen and got very excited. But it ran into the realities of Washington, D.C. which is you cannot go into the federal government and make the kind of changes that you can with an IBM or a Microsoft, where suddenly you make some drastic changes and you get a lot of shareholder value and you save a lot of money. You can't do that with a government. When you want to really make changes in the government, you've got to have Congress on your side and you've got to be willing to go through the hard work of legislation and budget.
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Myrna Brown
In your paper, Hunter, you write that Iran presents a challenge, unlike China or NATO, because the regime isn't operating according to the assumptions behind the art of the deal. What does that reveal about the Limits of Trump's approach to foreign policy.
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Hunter Baker
Donald Trump is an extremely shrewd man. And, you know, people want to. They don't want to take him seriously, and, you know, they make a caricature like he's some sort of idiot. But the reality is this is a man who has built massive buildings, which is a huge undertaking. What it takes to build a skyscraper is just amazing, the kind of structures that he has built in his past as a real estate developer. So this is a guy who knows how to get things done. When he talks about the Art of the Deal, he knows how to make a deal. He knows how to work with private agencies and with governments and with unions to get things done. And so when he released the Art of the Deal, people were interested with good reason. But with Iran, I think that we've seen maybe a blind spot for Donald Trump. I think that in his life, he's used to working with people who we might call rational maximizers or people who just like money and are always willing to find a way to get it. I don't think that's who he's dealing with in Iran. I think he's dealing with fundamentalist Islam. And I think that a lot of this stuff, they don't care. They don't care about the kind of things that he cares about. And it's going to take a while, I think, for him to accept that and to move this negotiation in a different direction.
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Myrna Brown
You describe border security as one of Trump's clearest policy victories. Why was he able to make progress on immigration where several previous presidents struggled? And then, Hunter, what do you make of all that progress reversing because of Minnesota?
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Hunter Baker
So Al Gore used to say that political will is a renewable resource. And what he meant by that was that we have all the political will we need to kind of reverse the climate or something like that. But I'll tell you who really has political will, and that's Donald Trump. And with regard to the border, he was serious about that. He was serious about policing the border, about controlling it in a way that other presidents have simply not been willing to grapple with. And why that is. I mean, whether or not an open border served certain people or certain policy interests, I can't exactly say. But other presidents simply were not willing to do what it took. But here's the thing we talked about with Doge, how you would need. You need Congress, you need to legislate. Managing the border is something a president can do. It's basically a law enforcement activity. And he's the chief law enforcer. And so he's able to mobilize those resources and make it happen. And that's what he's done. And I mean, so whatever else Donald Trump has done, I think that that's his policy accomplishment. He has effectively managed the border. Now, how did that all fall apart? Or, you know, falling apart is too extreme. But we've seen the progress reverse because of what happened in Minnesota, and that's because we became ambitious. Right. So after you control the border, the next question is, what do we do about the people who are already here? Well, so first of all, voters are more sympathetic in many cases to people who are already here and kind of have established a life. And so disrespectful, disrupting them is a bigger question. But second, when you have those agents out on the streets and then you have kind of a mob form and then violence results, that's when a lot of people start to get worried. And that's what happened here. People were repulsed by the idea of citizens being killed in a protest of that sort, and it really hurt his program.
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Nick Eicher
Hunter, we're tight on time, but I do want to get this last question in about your paper. You argued that that President Trump delivered some genuinely consequential conservative victories, yet you also wrote that he helped to condition Americans to expect politics as spectacle. So looking ahead again, quickly, which of those legacies do you think will prove more durable?
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Hunter Baker
So, first of all, getting in the way of the secular progressive juggernaut, especially in the immediate wake of Obergefell, was huge. It was huge. So I hope I've made that clear. But second, and I think that there is part of Donald Trump, people know he was involved with WWF or wwe, kind of participating in the entertainment. I think that sometimes he thinks that that's good for politics. And so he doesn't always want to be a serious guy. He wants to do almost a pro wrestling monologue type approach. And I think it hurts our political culture. I think people need to see our president as a sober and serious person, and he gives in too often to not maintaining that standard.
- [19:40]
Nick Eicher
Hunter Baker is provost at North Greenville University. He's a world opinions commentator and our resident scholar of the American political scene. Hunter, thanks so much.
- [19:52]
Hunter Baker
Thank you.
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Kent Covington
Additional support comes from Ambassadors Impact Network, a group of Christian investors finding companies that share the gospel through business. More@ambassadorsimpact.com From Dort University, host of the upcoming At Work in the Garden conference celebrating God's good design of work. Dort. Edu Garden and from Pensacola Theological Seminary, preparing students to preach God's word. Go.pcci edustartseminary
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Myrna Brown
Coming up next on the World and Everything in It World tour, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney now has a majority in Parliament after a rush of elections and five lawmakers switched to his party. I'm very happy to be the newest member of our new Liberal government. Marilyn Gladyu, an Ontario mp, is the latest Conservative to join Carney's Liberal Party. She says Carney is the global leader Canada needs to address uncertainties from American tariffs and make her country more resilient. He's invited me to bring my experience, my talents and my views into the large Liberal tent and I think that will have a better effect inside than it will outside. Her former party is known for trying to balance budgets and build Canada's energy infrastructure. The Liberal Party usually implements social programs like universal health care and pro LGBT policies.
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Nick Eicher
Party switching has happened before, but this latest series of defections to the Liberal Party has shocked many people.
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Kent Covington
There are a lot of questions about the sincerity of motivations for the MPs who did this.
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Nick Eicher
Peter Copeland is deputy director of domestic policy at the Macdonald Laurier Institute, a non partisan Canadian think tank.
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Kent Covington
From evidence cited in media that there were fairly aggressive lobbying tactics by the Liberal Party and staff to court floor
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Nick Eicher
crossers, Copeland says some defectors, like Gladview, have been known as the more conservative members within the Conservative Party. He also says some Conservative Party lawmakers have found the governing style of party leader Pierre Poliev too aggressive. In April, the Liberal Party won three federal by elections. Now it holds 174 of 343 seats in the House of Commons. That gives the Liberal Party enough of a majority to pass legislation without the support of opposition parties. A report released by Canada based nanos Research early last month found Canadians top three concerns are the economy, inflation and Canada's relation with the U.S. carney addressed affordability as one of his priorities during a recent video message.
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Kent Covington
So we know that Canadians need a boost today and a bridge to tomorrow. That's why as we build a stronger economy, we're focused on lowering costs for Canadians.
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Myrna Brown
His government has cut various taxes, including suspending the federal tax on gas and diesel until early September to help citizens cope with rising fuel costs from the Iran war. Brian Da Kama, president of the Christian think tank Cartas in Canada Canada has other concerns.
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Kent Covington
Canada has a euthanasia regime and we've seen that go out of control under the Trudeau regime and unchallenged in many cases. And so Mr. Carney has the opportunity to put a halt to that.
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Myrna Brown
DICOMA is referring to the federal government's plan to expand the assisted suicide program in March next year. It would extend eligibility to people whose only underlying condition is mental illness. He believes Carney, who is a practicing Catholic, should stop the expansion because it
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Kent Covington
would save, you know, thousands of lives and it would be a step in the direction of a government that actually protects the vulnerable rather than just sees them as something to jettison or something to kill.
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Nick Eicher
Meanwhile, Carney has sought deals with other countries to diversify Canada's trade and investments. That includes China. Copeland is among the Canadians who are wary about their country developing a strategic partnership with China.
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Kent Covington
It's well documented the extent of the hybrid warfare activities that China carries carries out on Canadian soil.
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Nick Eicher
According to Canada's intelligence agency, China is a main perpetrator of foreign interference and espionage against Canada. As for Canada U.S. relations, Carney has stressed that Canada needs to decrease dependence on its southern neighbor.
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Kent Covington
The US has fundamentally changed its approach to trade, raising its tariffs to levels last seen during the Great depression.
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Nick Eicher
Carney says U.S. tariffs on Canadian autos, steel and lumber have particularly hurt the workers in those industries. While Canada U.S. relations are at a low. Copeland maintains a big picture view.
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Kent Covington
But ultimately, I think, you know, we need to double down on our efforts to shore up that relationship because it's a permanent relationship that will outlast single administration.
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Nick Eicher
A United Airlines flight headed from New Jersey to Spain made an unexpected return trip before it even got past nova Scotia. About 90 minutes in, flight attendants got on the PA with an urgent message. Turn off all Bluetooth devices immediately. The warnings continued. Eventually, pilots declared an emergency and headed back to Jersey. Back on the ground, passengers were escorted off the plane. Security crews conducted a full sweep, all because of a bomb threat, or at least what appeared to be one. Turns out the signal wasn't an actual threat at all. Authorities say a teenager had renamed his Bluetooth speaker Bomb Reminder. If you're going to rename your peripherals, the safer choice is Tiny Bag of Pretzels. It's the World and everything in It.
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Myrna Brown
Today is Wednesday, June 3rd. Thank you for turning to World Radio to help start your day. Good morning. I'm Myrna Brown.
- [26:47]
Nick Eicher
And I'm Nick Eicher. Coming next on the World and everything in It. Preserving ancient New Testament manuscripts. No original writings of the Bible are known to have survived to this day, including any New Testament books.
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Myrna Brown
The New Testament has been reconstructed from early fragments and manuscripts that had been carefully hand copied by scribes and it has vastly more material evidence than other Greco Roman literature. Now a a team of scholars is on a mission to digitize all Greek New Testament manuscripts for future generations. Rose Jenny Ruff brings us the story.
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Jenny Ruff
Dan Wallace can spend hours staring at a single Greek letter.
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Dan Wallace
Is that an epsilon or was it supposed to be a sigma and the guy accidentally put some ink there?
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Jenny Ruff
Wallace is a textual critic. He evaluates ancient biblical manuscripts and compares textual variants or differences to determine the most accurate wor. So he knows that the distinction between a sigma and an epsilon can change an entire word. Take 1 Corinthians 13:3, where the apostle Paul writes about giving up his body
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Dan Wallace
in love in order that I might boast or in order that I might burn. Is he talking about giving up his body to be as a sacrifice? It's a single letter difference.
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Jenny Ruff
Wallace has been at this since his college days.
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Dan Wallace
I had all sorts of questions, you know, and I grew up in a Christian home, and then all of a sudden going, is this stuff real? You know, that's typical for a lot of teenagers. And I began to investigate.
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Jenny Ruff
He studied Old Testament Hebrew too, but ultimately decided to focus on the New Testament because of his love of Christ.
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Dan Wallace
The Bible is the only religious book of any major religion that subjects itself to historical verification. It says, you want to see if I'm true? Test it.
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Jenny Ruff
At the center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts and Plano Texts, Wallace opens a text called the Novum Testamentum Graecum. It's written in Koine Greek, the original dialect. It dates to 1751.
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Dan Wallace
So this is J.J. wetstein, or Wet Shtein.
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Jenny Ruff
Wallace is careful not to touch the ink on the pages. With a pencil, he points to a verse that textual critics have squawked about for centuries.
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Dan Wallace
And here you get to 1 Timothy 3, 1st Timothy 3, 16.
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Jenny Ruff
Vetstein included a lengthy footnote about it, whether the word who was altered to God. Vetstein was also a textual critic in that time. Traveling to see older manuscripts in person was laborious. But Wallace has spent nearly a quarter century working to make things easier. He's traveled everywhere, from Germany to Greece to Albania, to digitize all copies of Greek New Testament manuscripts and post them online. Under the old method, scholars had to look at the document with a magnifying glass, often in a rushed few hours. The invention of microfilm improved things, but people still had to travel to libraries to view it. And microfilm was far from perfect. Today, under the direction of Wallace, his team at the nonprofit center uses state of the art technology to photograph Fragments of papyrus, parchment and paper. Mark Gaither is the center's chief operating officer.
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Kent Covington
This is a 150 megapixel camera. We want to make sure that we're capturing the manuscript as it really is. And so that's part of the lighting here as well. This is 5,000 Kelvin lighting, which mimics sunlight.
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Jenny Ruff
Easy online access means teams of scholars can debate together because no manuscript.
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Kent Covington
Two manuscripts are the same because people make mistakes as they're copying one manuscript over. We're fallible. So what happens is we'll skip a word or we'll duplicate a word or there might be misspellings.
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Jenny Ruff
Dan Wallace sees the little errors as the equivalent of typos.
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Dan Wallace
As time goes on, you think of the New Testament as kind of like a snowball rolling downhill. It's going to pick up some alien elements, some twigs and leaves and things like that. Maybe a couple of raccoons, who knows? So. So it's got some stuff in there that it shouldn't have. And at the same time, maybe some of the snow has fallen off.
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Jenny Ruff
The more serious errors, the raccoons tend to center on passages that appear in some early manuscripts but are missing from others. Like the story of the woman caught in adultery in the Gospel of John.
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Dan Wallace
That's probably the most disputed passage that people absolutely love. And most textualist scholars say it's not original.
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Jenny Ruff
Wallace adds that most of the English translations today are exceptional and they note a few of the differences in the margins or in a footnote. He also adds there is not a
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Dan Wallace
single doctrine that is different because of these new translations.
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Jenny Ruff
A scribe once noted that the hand that copied the manuscript will rot in the grave, but the words will stand until the fullness of time. Wallace says that's the motto of his sentence.
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Dan Wallace
We are following in the train, the great train of these scribes to continue to preserve the word of God for future generations. It's helping scholars to get back to the original wording in every place where they are unsure.
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Jenny Ruff
So far, the center has digitized about 20% of all the known Greek New Testament manuscripts. It has thousands more to go, plus whatever archaeologists continue to dig up. Reporting for World World, I'm Jenny Ruff in Plano, Texas.
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Nick Eicher
Good morning. This is the world and everything in it. From listener supported World Radio, I'm Nick Iker.
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Myrna Brown
And I'm Myrna Brown. How much failure will voters tolerate before they demand something different? That question is not unique to Los Angeles, but few cities have put it on display more clearly. World commentator Cal Thomas reflects on the city's mayor, the challenges of facing America's second largest city, and the surprising durability of political failure.
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Cal Thomas
Politics is the only profession of which I'm aware in which competence does not seem to matter. One can fail miserably. One can be corrupt. One can even get away with behavior that, if committed by someone outside elective office, might result in arrest, prosecution and a stint in jail. Which brings me to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. Her tenure has become a case study in what happens when voters stop expecting government to do basic things government is supposed to do. Start with the Palisades fire, which erupted on January 7th of last year and destroyed thousands of homes and businesses. Rebuilding has moved at a glacial pace, thanks in large measure to a permit process tangled in environmental regulations and bureaucratic delay. Then there is homelessness. During her first campaign, Bass promised to end street homelessness. She now prefers the more fashionable to term the unhoused. But changing the language has not solved the problem. Her much publicized Inside Safe initiative has moved some people off the streets, but large encampments remain, along with the drug addicted, the mentally ill and public disorder that accompany them. Then there are the city's finances. Bass approved a budget that cut millions of dollars from the Los Angeles Fire Department even as the city continued spending beyond its means. The normally liberal Los Angeles Times editorial board recently described the city's fiscal problems as self inflicted and criticized the failure to address deteriorating infrastructure, including broken sidewalks, burned out street lights and untrimmed trees. These are not ideological issues they are competence issues. Citizens expect their government to protect life and property, maintain basic services and spend public money responsibly. Those expectations should not be controversial. One measure of how dissatisfied many Angelenos have become is that they have begun looking outside the traditional political class for alternatives. Reality television personality Spencer Pratt attracted attention in the mayor's race not because he possesses a long record in public service, but because many voters have become frustrated with those who do. That should concern every elected official, regardless of party. When voters conclude that experienced politicians are incapable of solving obvious problems, they begin looking elsewhere. Sometimes they find better leaders. Sometimes they do not. But the search itself is revealing. The real story in Los Angeles is not insurgent candidacies. The real story is that after years of homelessness, bureaucratic dysfunction, fiscal problems and a painfully slow recovery from disaster, so many voters have become willing to consider something drastically different. That is not primarily a commentary on anyone but Karen Bass for world, I'm Cal Thomas.
- [36:30]
Myrna Brown
A reminder. It's our June Giving drive. Please visit WS to find out more and give today, tomorrow, the latest on the growing Ebola outbreak in Africa. And an astronaut stranded in space navigates disaster through faith in God. That and more tomorrow. I'm Myrna Brown.
- [36:53]
Nick Eicher
And I'm Nick Icker. The world and everything in it comes to you from World Radio. World's mission is biblically objective dream journalism that informs, educates, and inspires. The Bible says, the spirit of the Lord speaks by me. His word is on my tongue. The God of Israel has spoken. The rock of Israel has said to me. When one rules justly over men ruling in the fear of God, he dawns on them like the morning light, like the sun shining forth on a cloudless morning, like rain that makes great grass to sprout from the earth. Verses 2 through 4 of 2 Samuel 23. Go now in grace and peace.