Lawrence Person's BattleSwarm Blog

Five years ago, a coalition of the usual lefty pressure organizations — public labor unions, progressive activist groups, and “housing advocates” — pushed for a citywide ballot initiative called United to House L.A. or ULA.

Here’s the initiative that made the ballot in 2022: “Shall an ordinance be adopted to add a tax on the sale or transfer of real property valued at over $5 million to fund affordable housing and tenant assistance programs?”

It passed, naturally, because voters like to feel good about themselves for doing their bit to promote “affordable housing and tenant assistance,” while feeling even better about not having to actually pay for any of it. Set a cap at “soak the rich level,” and you’ll be amazed at how altruistic people become with other people’s money.

It was billed as a “mansion tax” to fund low-income housing.

Over at the L.A. Times way back when, staff writer Benjamin Oreskes actually led with “an ambitious effort to address the homelessness crisis,” because the paper wasn’t at all pushing a lefty agenda. No, sir-ee.

Meanwhile, RAND warned in 2022 that “the revenue raised by Measure ULA may disappoint,” pointing to “the city’s Affordable Housing Linkage Fee — a 2018 program that amounts to a tax on new market rate housing construction to fund affordable housing construction — suggested that it would raise $100 million per year. However, the actual revenue to date has been around one third of that amount or lower.”

Supporters claimed the “mansion tax” would raise $900 million a year, or $2.7 billion over its first three years. “Instead,” the New York Post reported this weekend, ULA “brought in about $1.2 billion.” That’s less than half the expected revenues, nearly three years after passage.

Snip.

The Post also reported that ULA “blocked the building of 9,100 homes, wiped out 16,650 full-time construction jobs and cost $452 million in revenue.” So ULA might have raised $1.2 billion, but at the cost of nearly half a billion in lost income taxes, and more than 16,000 jobs.

And that affordable housing? Still hasn’t happened: “The City has barely touched the cash, spending just $114 million as of May — less than 10% of the money raised,” the Post reported, but no new affordable housing units have been built.

For Democrats, big pots of money that never get used for their professed purpose is the goal.

A California-based independent journalist going by InnerRhythmMedia — think of him as Nick Shirley 2.0 — recently looked into the headquarters of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, and what he found looked more like a multibillion-dollar Silicon Valley firm than a joint city-county government project.

Snip.

As broken down by Wall Street Apes on Tuesday, LAHSA “is headquartered in a luxury high rise building where employees enjoy VIP amenities like a fitness center, rock climbing wall, an infrared sauna, a cold plunge, and a helipad.”

And the pay? Oh my, the pay:

• Chief Executive Officer, Va Lecia Adams Kellum, $491,908
• Chief Financial Officer, Janine Trejo, $299,912
• Deputy Chief, Systems, Nathaniel VerGow, $257,196
• Chief of Staff, Rachel Johnson, $252,079
• Chief Operating Officer, Tifara Monroe, $248,367

More here.

Effective October 9, 2026, ATF will no longer require individuals to seek ATF approval under the NFA before making or transferring short-barreled rifles, short-barreled shotguns, silencers, and “any other weapon[s]” as defined in 26 U.S.C. § 5845(e). ATF will also no longer require such items to be registered in the National Firearms Registration and Transfer Record. These policies apply uniformly to anyone otherwise subject to these requirements, not just to the plaintiffs.

However, it’s not all sunshine, silencers and kittens: “The injunction does not disturb the NFA’s application to machineguns and destructive devices. The One Big Beautiful Bill Act maintained the $200 tax on such items. Consequently, all NFA provisions still apply to machineguns and destructive devices.” And state laws for the same items still apply. (Hat tip: Gun Owners of America.)

The Iranian economy is “rapidly deteriorating” under the weight of President Donald Trump’s Operation Economic Outcast, the regime’s national security chief Mohsen Rezaei said. The admission comes six weeks after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent launched a sweeping sanctions campaign to cut off the regime’s global commercial and financial access.

Since President Donald Trump threatened Tehran with an “Economic D-Day” in August, the regime has struggled to break the U.S. naval blockade or find buyers for its oil. “This will be an ECONOMIC D-DAY, and we need all of our Allies to stand with the United States of America to isolate, and defeat, the Iran threat,” he wrote on Truth Social in August. “These maniacs are on the ropes, and these HISTORIC MEASURES will cripple them and their ability to project terror worldwide.”

Just months after boasting that Iran would ‘neutralize’ U.S. sanctions, Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad has been forced to leave the office. “Iran’s oil minister has resigned days after allegations that an intermediary trust selling Iranian oil abroad owed millions of dollars’ worth of export receipts to the state,” The Guardian reported on Monday. “Mohsen Paknejad’s departure comes as Iran grapples with a dire economic situation, including inflation running at 85%.”

The Mullahs would rather the Iranian people starve their give up their dreams of nuclear weapons.

More than 1,600 convictions have been secured by Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Child Exploitation Unit as part of its efforts to combat online predators and child pornography.

According to figures released Tuesday by the Office of the Attorney General, the unit has made 278 arrests for online solicitation of a minor, resulting in 214 convictions. Another 610 arrests for possession of child pornography have resulted in 1,410 convictions. Numerous cases remain pending.

The figures were released as part of an update on the attorney general’s law enforcement operations.

Snip.

Paxton’s Human Trafficking Unit has separately made 373 arrests and secured 126 convictions, with several cases still pending.

The attorney general also announced that the office’s Fugitive Apprehension Unit has now made 18,291 arrests since its inception, including 68 individuals on the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Top 10 Most Wanted List.

“Yesterday, the brave patriots of ICE arrested pedophiles, animal abusers, drug traffickers, and other public safety threats from our communities,” DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin said in a statement. “Even while facing a more than 1,600% increase in assaults against them as they put their lives on the line, ICE will not be deterred. Illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S. We will find you, arrest you, and remove you from our nation.”

Topping the Wednesday roundup was Edis Canales-Montoya of Honduras, who was convicted of sexual conduct against a child.

Gonzalo Sanchez of Mexico was convicted for possession of child pornography and driving under the influence.

Carlos Arturo Zelaya-Argueta of El Salvador was convicted of sexual abuse of an animal and drug distribution.

Manuel Gomez-Lopez of Guatemala was convicted for the manufacture/delivery of a controlled substance.

Jesus Garcia-Serrano of Mexico was convicted for obstructing a criminal investigation and for unlawful possession of handguns.

Today we are announcing that a federal grand jury returned an indictment against 10 foreign nationals who have committed unlawful voting and registration offenses in the state of Minnesota. In total, the grand jury’s indictments include 9 counts of illegal voting by an alien, and 9 counts of making a false claim of citizenship in order to register to vote.

Charges include illegally voting in the general elections of 2022, 2024, and the primary elections of this year, of August 2026.

The defendants that have been charged include foreign nationals from Brazil, Ghana, and Liberia.

MS NOW’s Morning Joe aired the second installment of its midterm series, “The Voter Files,” on Tuesday. Network contributor Elise Jordan spoke with a panel of black voters from Wayne County, Michigan, who had backed Rep. Haley Stevens in the state’s Democratic Senate primary. Their remarks did not bode well for Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed.

The consensus was that the far-left El-Sayed has wrongly taken black support for granted. Panelists said he assumes that because black voters typically vote Democratic, they would set aside their reservations, and vote for him — no outreach required.

One woman noted, “I think he’s taken advantage that we, as black people, are Democratic, and he thinks we’re gonna vote for him anyway, and I’m like, ‘No sir.’”

“I’m gonna have to put uncommitted down on that little circle and move on,” she added. “If you’re going to Congress to represent me, I need you to talk about what’s going on in this community.”

Another woman on the panel felt El-Sayed had missed opportunities to let black people know who he is. “We don’t understand him,” she said. “We don’t know him.”

I wonder how much resentment is based on the unspoken assumption that he’ll be directing graft to Muslims rather than blacks…

The Department of War (DOW) issued a press release September 29 announcing the latest change the Trump administration is making at U.S. service academies, including West Point and the Naval Academy. In order to keep the academies “laser-focused on lethality and readiness,” there will no longer be any civilians appointed to tenured positions at the academies.

“This directly addresses the critical issues of academic stagnation and complacency that are often associated with tenure, and which threaten to dilute the academies’ primary focus on warfighting and tactical dominance,” the DOW press release argued.

This will necessitate a major hiring adjustment, and I would not be at all surprised if the Trump administration ends up in court over this simply because judges seem to interfere with everything this administration does, particularly if it undercuts bloated bureaucracy

President Donald Trump weighed in on France’s ongoing school protest crisis on Tuesday, arguing that the unrest reflected broader concerns about immigration and integration.

In a Truth Social post, Trump wrote: “What’s happening in France is nothing less than out of control mass migration. This isn’t about schools, this is about Islam wanting to take over a once great Country!”

Conservatives have only been warning about unassimilated Muslims in the French banlieues since the 1990s…