Americans don’t have to look as far as Venezuela to see the massive failure of a government incapable of delivering the basics of what people need from their government. A brief look at California shows how the twisted priorities of Democrat political leadership are creating a dangerous environment for the residents of the Golden State.

While combatting climate change remains a top priority for Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom and Democrat Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, the streets of California’s cities are filled with homeless camps, garbage, and disease-spreading rats.

In a throwback to medieval times, Los Angeles is facing an infectious disease epidemic caused by flea-borne disease linked to rat-infested streets. Last October, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health issued a health alert surrounding an outbreak of flea-borne typhus in the homeless population in downtown Los Angeles.

A month later, Deputy City Attorney Liz Greenwood was diagnosed with typhus, which she claims came from fleas carried by rats that are infesting City Hall and an adjacent building, City Hall East, where she worked.

Greenwood filed a $5 million lawsuit against the city, claiming she contracted typhus because the mayor and others in the city government did not clean up garbage on nearby streets, which allowed rats and fleas to flourish.

The type of typhus found in Los Angeles is called murine typhus, caused by a bacteria called Rickettsia typhi. The infection occurs when infected flea feces enters a person’s body through a cut or the eyes. Rats and other small animals carry the fleas into areas in close proximity to humans, where the exposure occurs. The symptoms include fever, headache, and joint and muscle pain, and it’s cured by antibiotics. If typhus is untreated, it can result in serious injury to organs.

Citing the California Department of Heath, NBC4 reported a new record of 124 cases of typhus in Los Angeles County in 2018.

In a related public health matter, the Central Division station of the Los Angeles Police Department had a rodent problem and other health-related issues and was fined for six violations by the California Department of Industrial Relations.

The department was faulted for “not having a program to exterminate and control rats, fleas, roaches, gnats, mosquitoes or grasshoppers in the building.”

One police officer from the Central Division recently contracted typhoid fever, which is caused by Salmonella Typhi, a different bacteria from that causing typhus. The source of the officer’s infection has not been determined yet.

Unlike typhus, typhoid fever can be a life-threatening disease and is not linked to fleas. Typhoid fever is a rare disease in the U.S. and can be spread by people or through contaminated water.

Solving the typhus problem is not rocket science and doesn’t require quantum physics. It’s basic epidemiology. The truth is you don’t need sophisticated equipment or a genius-level IQ to diagnose the problem. All you need is a pair of eyes and common sense. The rise in homelessness is leading to filth and garbage on the streets that attract rats and fleas.

The number of homeless in the city of Los Angeles has shot up 16 percent to over 36,000, reaching almost 59,000 in Los Angeles County in 2019. Remove the homeless from the streets and clean up the garbage, and the problem is solved.

A report on the source of the rat problem at City Hall was recently unearthed via a public records search. Predictably, the report blamed the homeless on the streets for the rat infestation, but for some reason, city elected officials did not publicized the study’s results. This correlates with the reluctance of city leaders to point to homeless camps as the root cause of the public health problem.

For some reason, the simplest possible solution is over the head of Mayor Garcetti. NBC4 News reported the city allows garbage to sit on the streets for months and has not implemented an aggressive program to eliminate the rat problem.

Unfortunately for Californians, their elected officials are worried about global issues such as climate change instead of basic sanitation and public health.

California is taking the lead on addressing climate change. The state has a cap-and-trade program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and a goal of generating 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.

Garcetti has Los Angeles joining the Green New Deal parade. The mayor’s plan targets transportation with a goal of having 80 percent of cars powered by electricity or zero-emission technology and to have city residents drive fewer miles each year.

Meanwhile, disease-carrying rats are running the streets and infesting city buildings.

Los Angeles should serve as a warning sign to Americans that twisted Democrat priorities can deliver third-world results.

Yesterday, California Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill fully abolishing bail in the Golden State. This is the logical conclusion of the BS “right on crime” movement of the Kochs and Soros that has been quietly and surreptitiously dismantling our criminal justice system for the past decade.

Under our long-standing English common law tradition, bail was the best way to balance the freedom of those presumed innocent unless proven guilty and the concern of public safety. While suspects have the opportunity to remain out of jail pending trial, they also have a strong incentive to show up or risk loss of property. Moreover, the commercial bondsmen have an extra incentive to help ensure a flight risk is apprehended and brought to trial. Donald Verrilli, Obama’s solicitor general, said it well in 1982: “Bail acts as a reconciling mechanism to accommodate both the defendant’s interest in pretrial liberty and society’s interest in assuring the defendant’s presence at trial.”

Now, as part of the growing jailbreak and criminal leniency movement, several states have pursued policies abolishing bail in some cases. Some state and federal courts, as always, have already said our 300-year tradition is unconstitutional in certain forms.

California’s S.B. 10, as signed into law, will abolish monetary bail in all cases, making California the first state in the nation to do so. This means that criminals will either be detained automatically before trial or released unconditionally. Given that these liberal judges will never be caught dead detaining people without bail, which in many cases would be ruled unconstitutional anyway, it means they will be releasing most criminals.

As is the case with sentencing reductions and early release efforts, the bill vaguely categorizes criminals by low, medium, and high risk to public safety. But we already know that the same people pushing this effort have a very different definition of “nonviolent” than most of us do.  Under the change in law, a judge would hold a pretrial risk assessment to determine whether the individual is higher risk, guided by protocols yet to be established by the judicial oligarchy. In other words, all but the worst offenders will be released without the deterrent of bond.

Ironically, the ACLU and NAACP oppose this bill because they fear that the lack of bail will lead to more pretrial detentions without bail. This is unlikely, given the politics of the state judges, prosecutors, and politicians in the state. The Judicial Council, which is essentially the policy-making organ of California’s courts and is headed by the chief justice of the state supreme court, will have all the power to make the rules on who is released and who must be detained.

The perfect storm of criminal aliens and jailbreak

Aside from the fact that abolishing bail violates our foundational principles of criminal justice and will generally harm public safety, it is particularly dangerous in California, more than in any other state. California is, by far, the state with the most illegal aliens – a whopping 2.6 million, according to the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The state has a major problem with criminal aliens. Illegal aliens are the consummate flight risk, yet under this bill, many criminal aliens will be released immediately without bond. This is particularly problematic given that California is a sanctuary and the entire system – from the politicians and judges to the local law enforcement – are making a concerted effort to shield illegal aliens from ICE. Illegal aliens are essentially a protected class in California.

Until now, at least the ones that stood trial and were ultimately convicted and sentenced to prison time would eventually be apprehended by ICE for deportation. Not any more. As Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, told me, “Illegal aliens know now that ICE may be waiting for them in court, thanks to the state’s sanctuary policies, since courtrooms are one of the few secure locations where ICE can still arrest deportable criminals in California.” Vaughan notes that if the lawmakers were true to their word, they would understand that all illegals should be defined as a flight risk, but California is not known for applying the law responsibly. “This law will give criminal aliens in the opportunity to avoid justice and simply add to the lawlessness that is eroding the quality of life in California for all – citizen and immigrant alike.”

Even in Florida, which is not nearly as pro-illegal alien as California, an illegal alien who was charged with multiple crimes was released before trial on one of these non-bail programs and went on to kill a cop in July. Clearly, his immigration status was not a red flag to those overseeing the program. Also in July, an illegal who re-entered the country nine times was released by Boston officials without bail, despite protests from DHS.

We are reaching a breaking point on criminal justice   

Remember, nothing in politics should be viewed in a vacuum. This is part of the Soros-Koch agenda to dismantle law and order at every stage – police tactics, prosecuting, evidence standards, bail, sentencing, early release, etc. For each agenda item, they claim they are just dealing with “nonviolent criminals,” but history has shown the opposite. Since California passed Prop 47 and other numerous sentencing downgrades and early releases, violent crime has risen 13 percent, and there was a significant uptick in burglary, larceny, and auto theft in 2015 and 2016.

As always, what begins in California doesn’t stay in California. It goes national. Liberal Republicans coached by the Kochs are pushing “bail reform” (yes, everything is “reform”) in Texas and will undoubtedly push it in the federal system. Prop 47 is the blueprint for the current jailbreak bills in Congress. California already passed S.B. 394, which officially goes from “nonviolent” drug offenses to homicide by re-opening sentencing for juvenile murderers after 25 years. This is the basis for many bills now in Congress and is part of Title II of the bipartisan “sentencing” bill every “conservative” group in Washington supports.

This is a trend that has spread like wildfire throughout the states over the past decade. But unlike any other consequential issue, it has been done relatively quietly and much of the public is unaware of it. The public is still strongly against weak-on-crime laws. It’s time real conservatives finally wake up and realize where this “criminal justice reform” train is coming from and how low into the abyss of anarchy and crime it will descend.