To ease the distress in LA and California, begin right here

Is it any wonder Angelenos are despondent? 

In LA and California, the cost of living is stifling. Traffic is suffocating. The public schools are ill-serving kids. 

And state and local government, from the governor and legislature on down to the mayor, city council and school board, are out to lunch.

A UCLA survey has found that LA County residents’ quality-of-life satisfaction has reached its lowest point in more than a decade. 

The 2026 Los Angeles County Quality of Life Index blames a range of  issues for the sentiment, including COVID, upticks in the cost of living, immigration sweeps, and the Altadena and Palisades fires.

But the bottom line is this: Government at all levels is failing to lead, course-correct, and address –– with even minimal efficacy –– a range of issues that increasingly degrade life here.

In fact, elected officials, driven by cronyism, interest-group pressure and out-of-touch far-left ideology, mostly make the crises worse.

None of this will change until residents, and voters, demand better performance from those who purport to represent them.

Consider but a few examples.

This week, the LA Unified School District, ceding to unions, agreed to a lavish $1.2 billion package of raises for district employees –– even as the district faces multibillion-dollar budget deficits, declining enrollment, and dismal student test scores.

Meanwhile, LAUSD’s superintendent remains on leave amid a federal probe and the district faces ongoing litigation over a wave of sexual abuse claims for which the district has already earmarked more than $1 billion.

It’s a giant mess for which taxpayers will now shell out another $1.2 billion for … no discernible improvement whatsoever.

And then there are the traffic snarls that somehow are worse in California, and especially in LA, than virtually anywhere else in America. 

Yes, the congestion partly reflects population and commuting patterns –– but it’s also a function of head-in-the-clouds progressive policy.

The ideologues who control government have decided they want fewer cars on the road, and therefore, we all should have less road capacity.

Surely, if only Californians would live in sardine-style housing and ride buses, a green Utopia would arise. 

So Sacramento all but forbids freeway expansion, save for an occasional carpool lane, and city governments convert full lanes of city roads to bicycle corridors.

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Meanwhile, motorists, who can’t pick up one kid from soccer practice and another from ballet on bicycles and buses, huff in ever-thickening traffic. 

It’s madness.

As for the cost of living, well: Every level of government in California moves constantly to tax and regulate virtually every aspect of life and business in the state –– driving up prices while driving out wealth creators, jobs, and tax receipts in the process. 

Then there are the taxpayer giveaways to unions, nonprofits and other favored interests, and state and local climate policies that drive up the cost of energy –– including gasoline, which hikes the cost of nearly every product that must be transported or delivered. 

The general result, of course, is constant upward pressure on prices for all of us, and for what? 

Mostly: for ideological preening, for consolidation of political power, and for the enrichment of the politically connected.

And that’s just the tip of the malgovernance iceberg. 

So yes: Angelenos’ misery is well-founded. 

The question is: What will they do about it?