Los Angeles is consistently ranked as one of the dirtiest cities in the United States, but one mayoral candidate thinks tying the city's cleanliness to government officials' records is the key to getting the city spotless.
Through a municipal service called 311, residents can already report trash, graffiti, and other garbage-related issues. However, this has not helped L.A. escape the lowest rankings of studies that measure filth in big cities.
'Our city council members need to feel that when election time comes around.'
A 2025 study by Oxi Fresh measured cities in terms of the amount of rodents, vandalism, litter, and more. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim was No. 34 out of 35 cities, only ahead of New York-Newark-Jersey City, earning a D+ rating.
Another study from last year placed Los Angeles at second-worst in terms of living conditions, waste infrastructure, pollution, and resident dissatisfaction. The only city worse off than L.A. in the massive 303-city ranking system was San Bernardino, California.
Enter mayoral candidate and former television star Spencer Pratt, who says tying the record of politicians' districts in the city to cleanliness will keep them accountable.
"I created an app that will replace 311 that actually has accountability and eventually the app would merge into the city dashboards ... [or] go on the city website," Pratt said on his podcast, "The Fame Game with Heidi & Spencer."
RELATED: Los Angeles mayor's re-election campaign gets crushing news from 'downright devastating' poll
- YouTube
Pratt and his wife, Heidi, discussed the city's lack of cleanliness with Juan Naula, who spends his time showcasing the filth of L.A., while actually going out and cleaning it.
Pratt proposed that his app would allow residents to film or photograph their local garbage, which then gets geo-stamped and sent to the appropriate district representatives.
"What the app will do is it will show wherever you are in the city ... it's going to geo-stamp it, and it's going to create accountability to all the people that are responsible," Pratt continued. "It'll automatically email them and then it'll show their track record of their response time, their failures, so that we see as voters and constituents, our city council members, and they'll be ranked and rated."
The 42-year-old likened the idea to delivery services and restaurants, which live and prosper off the back of ratings systems that push them to provide satisfactory customer service.
"Why are our city council members not held to the same expectations that my mom will hold the place [giving] her spinach artichoke choke dip," the host asked.
Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images/MTV
The L.A. website's reportable services currently includes dumping and trash collection issues, bulk item pickups, potholes and graffiti reports, parking enforcement, and animal services.
There is no built-in measurement for accountability, but a review of city data by UCLA showed that the typical response time was four to six days depending on the situation.
Anonymous reports allegedly took a day longer to solve than named reports; five days versus four days. At the same time, Android submissions took an average of six days for a resolution while Apple report had a response time of five days.
The pressure of performance was paramount for Pratt, who said "our city council members need to feel that when election time comes around."
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
Comedian and HBO host Bill Maher chastised those who wish that President Trump had died during the third assassination attempt against him at the White House Correspondents' Association (WHCA) Dinner shooting last week.
The post Bill Maher Scolds Those Wishing Trump Died in Third Assassination Attempt: ‘You’re Not a Good Person’ appeared first on Breitbart.
Director Andy Serkis took the anti-communist classic Animal Farm and turned it into an anti-capitalist children’s movie complete with fart jokes. The result? Well, God bless America, it was humiliated at the box office with a catastrophic $3.4 million debut weekend.
The post Nolte: Anti-Capitalist ‘Animal Farm’ Bombs, ‘Michael’ Still Defying Woke Critics appeared first on Breitbart.
The big news here in Portland, Oregon, is that a high school baseball player used a “racial hate speech” slur during a pregame, player-only huddle.
The slur itself has been kept from the public lest we all die of shock. I’m sure none of us has ever heard such a word.
Naturally, the media was called in, so the student leaders got to practice their TV interview skills.
One interesting thing about the incident: It happened at a prominent Catholic school in town, Central Catholic.
Unforced errorThe reaction of the Central Catholic administration was the other interesting thing. Check this out:
Which meant that another couple of days would be spent processing the trauma and psychological suffering they’d been put through.
This all occurred even though the only students who actually heard the “racial hate speech” slur were the players on the baseball team.
Heaven help usCentral Catholic is a typical Catholic high school. Its students are good at sports. It has solid extracurriculars. It is considered a notch above the local public high schools in educational standards.
Historically, all Catholic schools were known for a certain traditionalism regarding student behavior and teaching philosophy.
If you wanted your child to have an education tainted by the latest social trends and political ideologies, you sent them to public school.
If you wanted a more classical education, with a more disciplined and rigorous approach, you sent them to a Catholic school.
But that’s no longer the case, apparently. Even a public high school wouldn’t shut down its entire campus for two days over one baseball player saying one bad word.
In the beginning was ... the WordI’m going to take a wild guess and predict that the “racial hate speech” slur was probably based on a common derogatory derivative of the antiquated term "negro" — as further appropriated and transformed by hip-hop culture. Because of hip-hop's massive popularity, this "soft A" variant has become a more-or-less neutral form of address among young people of all races.
Our entertainment industry has bombarded young people with this word for decades, making it sound funny and cool. And then our academic communities act like it’s the gravest sin to repeat it.
Obviously, it is not a word that should be used at school. It's vulgar and still retains some of its capacity to degrade and insult. But a two-day shutdown of the entire student body? With a school-wide assembly? And the local media alerted? And almost an entire week lost processing the trauma?
How about the administration has a stern talk with the baseball player? In private?
Truant believersBut that would be too easy. Never mind that the kid’s high school career will be ruined by this obvious overreaction. What was important was allowing the administration to advertise its moral superiority.
The student body was also inspired to take advantage of this educational opportunity. A week after the initial controversy, students walked out of class in protest. “Not enough has been done!” they claimed, as they assembled outside to loiter in the street and watch TikTok videos on their phones.
Naturally, the media was called in, so the student leaders got to practice their TV interview skills.
This is what is being taught at Catholic school these days. Complain. Protest. Disrupt. And above all, don’t go to class and learn anything.
RELATED: Healthy as a horse: My journey into the ivermectin underworld
CBS/Getty Images
Mater DEIOne thing this controversy demonstrates is that a Catholic school is no longer a protection from woke ideology. It is, in fact, almost a guarantee of it.
So what are parents to do if they want their kids at a genuinely Christian school? Like a school where there aren’t Pride flags and sex manuals in every classroom. Where kids are not diagnosed with ADHD or toxic masculinity. Where America is not constantly slandered and vilified by radical leftist textbooks.
There are still some authentically Christian schools in Portland. I’m assuming they are authentic because they are small, they are self-contained, and they keep to themselves.
You would barely know these schools exist if you didn’t go looking for them. They dare not draw attention to themselves, lest our “social justice” local government — or our politicized media — invent some reason to attack them.
Bad educationSo what was Central Catholic really up to during the racial slur controversy?
It was virtue signaling. Pretending it is more righteous than you are or I am, by wasting everybody’s time with performative outrage.
And this happened in Oregon, which famously ranks near the bottom of every national educational metric. In Portland, most parents’ choice of schools is: bad, worse, or terrible.
That is, until you realize there are a few actual Christian schools around. Just don’t tell anyone where they are!
As if brother-marrying jihadi Ilhan Omar and terrorist Rashida Tlaib weren’t enough, we have a Nazi-tattooed extremist running in Main, a madnman who said that the massacre of Jews on Bondi Beach during Chanukah was executed by Zionists, and now this. ALL DEMOCRATS. New Jersey, no less, who lost 704 New Jerseyans on 9/11. New...
Two days before the White House Correspondents' Dinner, late-night comedy host Jimmy Kimmel, parodying the upcoming event, made a joke that Melania Trump had “a glow like an expectant widow.”
Many found the joke insensitive and inflammatory, especially given the repeated assassination attempts against President Trump — the most recent of which happened at the White House Correspondents' Dinner, during which a gunman rushed a security checkpoint and fired multiple shots in hopes of killing Trump and other administrative officials.
Kimmel doubled down on his joke in the wake of the WHCD assassination attempt, insisting that the widow joke wasn’t about assassination but Trump’s old age.
President Trump, Melania, and many other prominent conservatives are actively calling for Kimmel’s firing.
But some conservatives are pushing back. One of them is Canadian writer, podcaster, and political commentator Gavin McInnes.
“We got to drop the pearl-clutching,” he told Glenn Beck on a recent episode of “The Glenn Beck Program,” “because you lose the youth if you clutch the pearls, and if you don’t have youth on your side, you’re done, and we have the youth on our side right now.”
Further, McInnes believes that Kimmel really was joking about Trump and Melania’s age gap.
“The joke was way before the [White House] Correspondents' Dinner, and he always jokes about their age gap,” he says, encouraging conservatives to learn how to “take [a joke] on the chin.”
There are limitations though.
When people are “calling for violence,” that’s where we draw the line, says McInnes, citing multiple examples, including comedian Kathy Griffin’s 2017 stunt where she held up a prop that looked like a bloody, severed head resembling Donald Trump.
But Kimmel, he argues, made a genuine, albeit “cruel,” joke.
He calls conservatives out for spinning a narrative about Kimmel’s “expectant widow” comment that just isn’t true.
“That's what the left does. That's propaganda. They twist things, and I don't want to join that club,” he says.
To hear Glenn’s response, watch the video above.
Want more from Glenn Beck?To enjoy more of Glenn’s masterful storytelling, thought-provoking analysis, and uncanny ability to make sense of the chaos, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.
Rev. Lawrence Holland fell in his bathroom on Christmas Day and suffered a hip fracture. While the 79-year-old Catholic priest went to a nearby hospital in search of help, health care workers at the facility apparently had a final solution in mind: state-facilitated suicide.
Since the Canadian federal government under ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau legalized medically assisted suicide nationwide in 2016, the so-called Medical Assistance in Dying program has been grossly liberalized.
'The moment you lose hope, the devil comes in.'
Initially, MAID applicants had to be 18 or older and suffering from a "grievous and irremediable medical condition" causing "enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable" to them. Now, persons struggling with anxiety, autism, depression, economic hardship, PTSD, and other survivable issues appear to be fair game.
Next year, persons suffering solely from a mental illness will also be eligible.
MAID — which Canada's Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer boasted in October 2020 would, with expanded access, "result in a net reduction in health care costs for the provincial governments" — is now among the leading causes of death in Canada, accounting for over 5% of all deaths in Canada in 2024.
"It's a false compassion," Rev. Holland told the B.C. Catholic, the Archdiocese of Vancouver's biweekly publication.
The hobbled priest claimed that a doctor and a nurse at Vancouver General Hospital, directly affiliated with the British Columbia Ministry of Health, offered him MAID while he was recovering from his hip fracture, which is hardly a terminal condition. The priest further claimed that both medical professionals knew he is a Catholic priest.
"I think I was very shocked," said Holland. "It is such a sensitive subject."
Rev. Larry Lynn, pro-life chaplain for the Archdiocese of Vancouver, said, "This must surely be among the most appalling examples of Canada’s coercive and insensitive euthanasia regime."
RELATED: Euthanasia and the lie of the 'good death'
Mininyx Doodle/Getty Images
Although he was left "kind of silent" for a moment when the topic of assisted suicide was first apparently broached, Rev. Holland emphasized to the doctor that he, a Catholic priest, was morally opposed to the practice.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that direct euthanasia is "morally unacceptable"; that such actions constitute "a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator; and that "even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted."
The Catholic Church has long campaigned against assisted suicide.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops noted in 2023, for instance, that "euthanasia and assisted suicide (MAID) have always been, and will always be, morally unacceptable because they are affronts to human dignity and violations of natural and divine law."
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has similarly and repeatedly condemned the practice, affirming that "we are dealing here with 'a violation of the divine law, an offense against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity.'"
Just last month, Catholic bishops in New York published a guidebook reiterating the church's moral teaching "that this practice is objectively immoral and must be avoided, despite the false veil of compassion with which it is sold." The state was apparently in need of a reminder given its recent adoption of a law legalizing doctor-assisted suicide.
Even when dealing with a patient from a "faith community" that's opposed to MAID, the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers still recommends that Canadian health care professionals make the pitch for assisted suicide.
After informing his doctor that he was opposed to assisted suicide, Rev. Holland recalled the doctor explaining that he "just wanted to make sure that, if a [terminal] diagnosis came up or not ... I knew the different services I had access to."
Rev. Holland told the B.C. Catholic that weeks later, a nurse also raised the matter of MAID with him.
A spokesman for Vancouver Coastal Health, which runs the hospital, told the B.C. Catholic that "staff may consider bringing up MAID based on their clinical judgment, provided they possess the necessary knowledge and skills to do so."
Staff are also "responsible for answering questions when patients bring up the topic of MAID," added the spokesman.
Rev. Ronald Sequeria, the Catholic chaplain serving at Vancouver General Hospital, suggested there was something demonic about how MAID-pushers prey on suffering patients' despair — especially when suffering can be redemptive.
"The moment you lose hope, the devil comes in, in different personalities, and says, 'Do you want MAID? I don’t want people to suffer,'" said Rev. Sequeira.
"God makes us more pure, more strong, through the suffering when we offer it up," said the chaplain. "So we give hope — help them not to lose hope."
Rev. Holland drove home this point, stressing that enduring pain "can encourage growth."
"It can motivate you, it can open up new worlds, new vistas, new opportunities," added the priest.
Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!
At least 10 people were injured Sunday night in Oklahoma when two masked gunman opened fire "at a park near Arcadia Lake," according to FOX 25.
The post At Least 10 Injured When 2 Masked Gunmen Open Fire at Oklahoma Lake appeared first on Breitbart.