DISPATCHES FROM THE BLUE ZONES: Weingart’s $27 Million Dollar Homeless Heist: LA’s Pay to Play Pipeline Strikes Again – And the Trail of Donations Tells An Ever Darker Story.

The Weingart Center Association, long portrayed as one of LA’s “trusted” homeless service providers, is now at the center of a federal probe into a secretive $27.3 million property flip in Cheviot Hills. A flip that looks less like a housing solution and more like a blueprint for legalized theft. A flip that mirrors Shangri-La’s scheme almost down to the timestamps. And a flip that, when paired with newly uncovered campaign donation data from the LA County Registrar-Recorder’s TRACER system, paints a damning picture of influence peddling, coordinated bundling, and political payoffs hiding in plain sight.

The scandal begins in April 2024, when Weingart used public dollars from California’s Homekey program, along with city and federal COVID relief funds, to buy a 76-unit senior complex on Shelby Drive for $27.3 million. The stated intent was noble: convert the building into housing for the unhoused. But nothing about this transaction was noble. Or transparent. Or even remotely defensible.

The seller, shielded behind a confidentiality clause, was a shell tied to Brentwood developer Steven Taylor, who bought the same property just four months earlier for $11.2 million. No improvements. No renovations. No additional value. Just a $16.1 million markup magically materializing, rubber-stamped by a BBG appraisal that ignored the recent purchase price and pretended the flip never happened. The entire thing should have triggered alarms up and down City Hall and the Board of Supervisors. Instead, Weingart submitted an application to the state for Homekey funds that conveniently omitted the pending sale, while Mayor Karen Bass pushed $20 million of city dollars toward the project and celebrated it as a win for homelessness.

Homeless, Inc. is a scam to line the pockets of the well-connected.

ADVANTAGE: KRUISER! U.S. May Want to Look Into Getting Rid of Minnesota.

—Stephen Kruiser, PJ Media, April 13th, 2021.

SOMETIMES YOU LEARN MORE FROM WHAT THEY DON’T TELL YOU: Here’s What the Media Won’t Tell You About Trump’s Poll Numbers.

THIS IS CNN. AGAIN: The J6 Pipe Bomber Story Is About to Get Memory-Holed. Here’s Why.

He just has a really good tan. Honest.

I MEAN, WHAT POSSIBLE REASON IS THERE TO KEEP THEM SECRET? Florida thinks professors should publish syllabi publicly. Do students agree?

Of course, given how seldom students actually read them anyway . . . .

THIS:

All DeSantis does is institute effective policy that advances conservative goals and betters his state. There are so many examples, it’s impossible to keep track at this point.

But alas. He wore those boots. https://t.co/YFVcJBkJBy

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 5, 2025

STILL JUST THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG: ICE Arrests ISIS Terrorist in Virginia; Another Biden Program Beneficiary

PRESIDENTIAL REMOVAL POWER: With Trump v. Slaughter about to be argued in the Supreme Court, Prof. Phil Hamburger has thoughts. (Bumped.)

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THAT’S NOT GOOD: University of Delaware student arrested, police say he had machine gun and a plan to attack campus. “Luqmaan Khan, 25, was arrested Nov. 24 after New Castle County Police officers found him parked illegally in Canby Park West late at night. Officers stopped his vehicle and, after he resisted arrest, searched the car. Inside, they found a modified Glock handgun with a high-capacity magazine, body armor, and a notebook laying out plans for potential attacks and how to avoid law enforcement detection.” He was talking about “martyrdom.”

2o MINUTES INTO THE FUTURE:

After a week in DC meeting Trump appointees across every level, not just the Pentagon, I’m stunned by how few truly understand the sheer size and weight of the steamroller that’s coming if we lose the midterms.

Like nothing else matters. Not even shipbuilding.

— John Ʌ Konrad V (@johnkonrad) December 5, 2025

CHANGE: CBS News’ Bari Weiss to host town hall with Erika Kirk.

CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss, in her on-air debut, will host a town hall with Erika Kirk on Dec. 13.

The event with Kirk, the widow of late conservative activist Charlie Kirk, will preempt the 28th annual Family Film and TV Awards, which will now run Dec. 20, according to The Hollywood Reporter on Thursday.

“Like so many people around the world, I will never forget the moment that Erika Kirk forgave her husband’s killer,” said Weiss, who was hired for the top post in October by CBS News parent company Paramount, a Skydance Corporation

“I am eager to speak to her—and thrilled to be doing so in front of a group of Americans who I know will elevate the conversation,” Weiss also said.

It remains to be seen how quickly or thoroughly Weiss can shake things up at CBS, but this is a big down payment with an audience that probably tuned out her network 20 years ago.

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Dems Keep Proving That They’re Terrified of Fair Elections. “Yes — ‘basic election safeguards’ are what this is all about, so of course the Democrats would be resistant to everything about it. You’ll note the deep blue shade of all the states involved in the story. This isn’t just some knee-jerk Trump Derangement Syndrome play, it’s a safe bet that the Democrats would be doing this in response to any Republican administration.”

DEMS TRYING FOR A COUP: The War on Pete Hegseth.

THAT HIGH? California scores a C- on infrastructure report card.

California scored a C-, according to a new report from the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The quadrennial report card assesses the state’s network of infrastructure, including energy, traffic, airport safety and port electrification systems, among other things. The society of engineers found California is doing well in many facets of its energy infrastructure. This includes advanced treated purified water, clean energy sources, smart traffic systems, wildfire planning, port electrification and improved emergency response.

However, the report says California doesn’t do so well in other areas, including not funding or falling behind on upkeep for aging roads, levees, bridges, water pipes, schools and public buildings. The state and the federal government have allocated money over the years for improvements, but reliance on local funding for many of these systems has resulted in a decline in upkeep for some of this infrastructure, the American Society of Civil Engineers said.

“A ‘C-‘ indicates that California’s built environment is not equipped to keep pace with the needs of the largest economy and population in the U.S., particularly as diverse environmental challenges impact infrastructure systems,” the American Society of Civil Engineers said in a Dec. 3 press release. “California’s aviation, energy, hazardous waste, levees, ports and rail grades all improved compared to their 2019 marks, while the state’s dams, drinking water, schools and stormwater categories decreased.”

Yes, but at least they have all that high-speed rail.

WHY TRUMP’S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD CRACKDOWN IS LONG OVERDUE:

The Brotherhood’s modus operandi has been understood by intelligence services for years. Trump’s move is less a policy innovation than an admission of reality.

There are several reasons why Trump is acting now. One is legislative: the “Muslim Brotherhood Terrorist Designation Act of 2025” was introduced in Congress in July, championed in the House by Representative Mario Díaz-Balart and in the Senate by Ted Cruz. The Act’s progress created a political incentive for Trump to get ahead of Congress and demonstrate leadership on the issue. The MuslimBrotherhood has piqued Republican anxieties about national security for two years now, ever since Hamas’s attack on Israel unleashed near-constant Islamist-flavored protests on American streets and campuses.

The battle against progressive academia, where such protests have often turned outright anti-Semitic, has become a mainstay of Trump’s political platforms. Pro-Hamas encampments, faculty statements whitewashing Hamas’s atrocities, and the open collaboration between progressive student groups and Islamist-aligned organizations shocked even those who thought they had become accustomed to the intellectual decay of American academia.

For Republicans, the protests confirmed what they have long suspected: that American universities have been significantly penetrated by an unholy alliance of the progressive left and Islamist networks, each using the other’s grievances for its own ends.

Trump really needs to take the battle to the Brotherhood’s final frontier: George Clooney’s Casual Muslim Brotherhood Flex: Bragging About Wife’s Terror Ties on Barrymore’s Couch.

Donald Trump has the chance to do the funniest thing… https://t.co/ITrzwnqmZS

— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) December 4, 2025

SMART: Gun Sales Surge in Virginia Ahead of Democrat Takeover.

MAYOR BANE CONTINUES TO RAID ARKHAM ASYLUM: Mamdani Taps Felon Who Served Seven Years for Robbing NYC Taxi Drivers as ‘Criminal Legal System’ Adviser.

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani tapped a convicted felon who served seven years for a string of armed robberies targeting New York City taxi drivers to advise him on the “criminal legal system.”

Mysonne Linen, a rapper-turned-social justice activist, will serve on Mamdani’s “criminal legal system committee,” 1 of 17 committees that Mamdani created to help transition into his administration. Mamdani said the appointees “will be tasked with not only making personnel recommendations but policy recommendations.”

Linen served seven years in prison for armed robberies in 1997 and 1998. Linen was part of a group of men who robbed cab driver Joseph Eziri in June 1997, and hit him with a beer bottle, the New York Daily News reported at the time. Prosecutors alleged Linen held up cabbie Francisco Monsanto at gunpoint in a March 1998 robbery, stealing jewelry and cash. Both drivers identified Linen as the stick-up man at Linen’s trial.

Good and hard Fun City, as Mamdani is taking Michael Walsh’s meme of the Democratic Party as a criminal enterprise far too literally.

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ICYMI, IT’S MY THURSDAY ESSAY FOR VIP SUBSCRIBERS: Pride Goeth Before the Fall of Europe.

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt Flew Dem Senate Candidate Seth Moulton to Ritzy Montana Retreat As Congressman Oversaw Critical Business: Moulton’s congressional work directly intersects with Schmidt’s business ventures.

WHEN THE ROT FIRST SET IN: Remembering Ed Banfield’s The Unheavenly City.

Ed Banfield, the author, is the most important American social scientist. The Unheavenly City (1970) is his most essential work and a remarkable bestseller. Here, we find ourselves in capable hands and can begin to rethink our expectations and attitudes.

At the peak of liberal domination of American life, Banfield’s book noted that liberalism had reached a core contradiction. On the one hand, liberalism was responsible for the engine of economic growth that is the modern city, oriented to commerce and technological development, and therefore requiring a highly educated class managing things. On the other hand, liberals had by the 1960s come to experience city life as an endless series of horrors, of crimes against humanity, not only problems in need of redress, but crises justifying revolution. Expectations of progress embodied in a new generation of urban, collegiate liberals led to a gradual abandonment of the Enlightenment.

Banfield therefore restated boldly the case for economic improvement (Chapter 2, The Logic of Metropolitan Growth), one of the most popular aspects of the Enlightenment, which had achieved its most remarkable success in the 1960s. He also began an analysis of the class problem in America, including what had led elites at that time — the people who most benefited from American peace and prosperity — to turn against America in the name of the poor, racial minorities, etc. (Chapter 3, The Imperatives of Class). The subsequent six chapters then made good on the promise of the introductory chapter to show how misguided elites, in policy as much as in the formation of opinion, had become regarding issues of race, unemployment, poverty, education, crime, and riots.

American politics have in many ways been treading water since the late 1960s. The Hard Hat Riot occurred in New York City in May 1970; at the start of the year, Time magazine declared “The Men and Women of the Year were the Middle Americans,” and condescendingly wrote about its subscribers in what would eventually be known as the “