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Hollywood Producer Ryan Kavanaugh Fleeing L.A. over Crime, Homelessness, High Taxes: 'It's Not the Pandemic, It's Policy'

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Hollywood producer Ryan Kavanaugh is fleeing Los Angeles, California, amid rising crime, homelessness, and higher taxes. Flight from the Democrat-run city is trending as “a growing chorus of Hollywood executives are talking about leaving the city,” one entertainment industry insider told The Wrap.

Ryan Kavanaugh, American film financier and founder and CEO of the video-sharing app Triller — who grew up in Los Angeles and has called it home for 47 years — is now getting ready to pick up and move his family and business headquarters to Florida.

Kavanaugh — who’s backed over 200 films, including Limitless, Hancock, Mamma Mia!, and The Social Network — told TheWrap that the main reason why he’s looking to flee L.A. is due to the city’s rising crime, homelessness, and California’s anti-business policies.

“I grew up here, I grew up in Brentwood, and I was allowed to be on the streets,” he said. “I would never let my kids walk (alone) in Brentwood — how many times do you have to be out in Los Angeles and see feces in the streets before you just don’t want to be here anymore?”

LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – (David McNew/Getty Images)

A LAPD police officer stands at the corner of Fairfax Avenue and Sunset Boulevard where a body covered in a white sheet lies on the pavement in Los Angeles. (VALERIE MACON/AFP via Getty Images)

Kavanaugh added that he doesn’t blame the Chinese coronavirus pandemic for what he sees transpiring throughout L.A., bur rather, city and state government regulations that he says have made it more difficult to prosecute criminals, and local leaders who have failed to address a homelessness crisis.

“It’s not the pandemic, it’s policy,” he said.

(Eric Charbonneau/Invision for Relativity Studios/AP Images)

Moreover, the murder of Jacqueline Avant — wife of famed music executive Clarence Avant and mother-in-law of Netflix’s Ted Sarandos — who was killed by an intruder in her Beverly Hills home last month, is contributing to a feeling of insecurity as crime hits closer to home for the elite, experts told The Wrap.

“A new tipping point emerged late last year with the murder of philanthropist Jacqueline Avant in her Beverly Hills home,” Gene Del Vecchio, adjunct professor of marketing at USC’s Marshall School of Business, said.

“It so shocked the protected community that even the liberal Beverly Hills city council voted to recall the liberal Los Angeles district attorney George Gascón,” Del Vecchio added. “When crime hits home, it becomes personal, and people act by either fighting, as with the Gascón recall, or by leaving.”

And Kavanaugh is not the only one among Hollywood’s wealthy residents who have recently decided to leave the city.

Veteran network TV executive Ted Harbert — most recently chairman of NBC Broadcasting — not only fled Los Angeles, but the United States altogether, telling The Wrap that he has moved to Portugal, where he is building a house because, “#americatoocrazy.”

UFC commentator and podcaster Joe Rogan also moved from California to Texas last year.

California has seen a surge in homicides in recent years as the state continues to buckle under high crime that has been allowed to fester under Democrat rule. In 2020, the state saw 2,202 homicides, up a colossal 31 percent from 2019, making it the deadliest year in the state since 2007, according to the California Department of Justice.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.

Poll: State Republicans Lead Democrats by Six Points on Generic Ballot

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Voters in crucial battleground states favor Republicans at the state legislative level as a way to counter President Joe Biden’s radical left agenda, according to a Cygnal poll.

Republican state legislative candidates lead Democrats by 48 to 42 percent. More than half of those polled said they “would prefer a Republican candidate who would act as a check and balance on President Biden and his Democratic policies.” Just 40 percent of respondents would rather have a pro-Biden Democrat candidate in office.

The survey revealed 62 percent of likely voters believe the country is headed in the wrong direction. In addition, Americans trust Republican candidates to handle the top issues on their minds, like the economy, crime, and education. Democrats have a slight edge on lesser important issues like coronavirus and voting rights.

State Republicans have the edge over Democrats on the economy in general and inflation. The poll found that 51 percent of voters trust Republicans on the economy and 49 percent for inflation at the state level. This is compared to 38 percent support for Democrats on the economy in general and 39 percent on inflation.

The “economy in general” is an important issue for 96 percent of likely voters, and inflation is on the minds of 95 percent of voters.

According to the poll, 74 percent of voters want their state legislates to pass laws that decrease gas and sales taxes amid rising inflation.

State Republicans similarly dominate Democrats when it comes to controlling crime and violence. Voters favor Republicans by a margin of 49 percent to 39 percent. This issue is important for 94 percent of those surveyed.

Republicans have the advantage again on the issue of education, which is an important issue for 91 percent of likely voters. State Republicans lead on education by one point, 44 percent to 43 percent. Although education typically favors Democrats, the Republican lead is primarily due to the issue of parental control over curriculum. State Republicans have a ten-point advantage, 47 to 37 percent, when it comes to which party “is more trusted to protect parental control in education.”

The poll also found that 67 percent of voters support school choice policies that give families more control to choose the best school for their children.

State Democrats slightly lead Republicans on coronavirus and voting rights, which are important issues for 84 percent and 86 percent of likely voters. On coronavirus, the Democrat lead is 44 percent to 42 percent. For voting rights, their lead is 45 percent to 43 percent.

Cygnal polled 2,217 likely voters across the battleground states of Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin. The poll’s margin of error is ±2.0 percent.

Yes, the Democrats are Proposing a Federal Takeover of Elections

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People fill out ballots during early voting at a polling station in Baltimore, Md., October 26, 2020. (Hannah McKay/Reuters)

Jamelle Bouie argues, in the New York Times, as if it is some sort of revelatory “gotcha,” that the Constitution gives Congress power over elections, and therefore (1) what Democrats are proposing is not a “takeover” by the federal government of state authority and (2) everything they are trying to do is constitutional. Neither is true.

On the first point, Bouie completely ignores traditional practice in arguing that nothing much is changing. The Democrats’ current proposals would transfer a vast amount of authority to the federal government that it has never before exercised. They would, for example, micromanage what forms of identification can be used, how many days of early voting can be permitted, how long after Election Day ballots could be received, how a state can regulate mail-in ballots, and by whom a voter’s ballot could be handled. Nobody really disputes that this would be a federalization of the mechanics of voting and elections that is unprecedented in our history. It goes far beyond simply preventing states from stripping voters — in law or in fact — of the franchise. The proposals are, in fact, a federal takeover of powers traditionally exercised by states and localities, and Democrats fail to present the sort of extraordinary justifications that would support such a radical move.

On the second point, Bouie attacks a straw man: “The clear implication of the Republican argument is that any federal regulation of state elections is constitutionally suspect.” But just because Congress has extensive powers does not mean that those powers are unlimited. Legal challenges to the Democrats’ bills, if they were to be enacted, would be targeted more precisely. For example, even aside from constitutional issues with other parts of the “Freedom to Vote Act” — such as its regulation of political speech — the bill goes deep into the process of voter registration and the maintenance of voter rolls, well beyond questions of “the Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections” or the denial of the right to vote. It is far from clear from the text or history of the election clauses or the Reconstruction Amendments that Congress has the same plenary regulatory power over the voter-registration process that it has over, say, where and when votes can be cast.

There is, of course, some federal authority in this area, because the 15th Amendment would be a dead letter if Congress could not stop states from simply making it illegal or impossible for black Americans to vote. That is not a hypothetical possibility if you look at how registration worked in the Jim Crow–era South; consider the South Carolina voter-registration scheme that led Congress, in 1894, to refuse to seat the winner of an election because of how the registration rules were abused to disenfranchise black voters:

The House found a constitutional violation because voters could be registered only in one place, and only on one day a month from December to June. Moreover, as the House report found, “The testimony shows that many voters, some of them coming 30 or 40 miles, appeared regularly at the places of registration from month to month, and were denied registration by means of a systematic obstruction” so the issue went well beyond even a purposely onerous law. This was not a case of hypothetical “suppression”: Over 7,000 legally qualified voters signed petitions stating that they had attempted to vote and had been refused.

Nothing remotely resembling that justifies the Democrats’ current bills to bulldoze commonsense rules for registering voters and maintaining the rolls. As even Bouie concedes about “voter suppression laws,” they “do not appear to have a substantial impact on rates of voting, and overall voter turnout has increased significantly since the Supreme Court undermined the Voting Rights Act in 2013.”

Democrats are aiming at a problem without evidence that it exists, and they are proposing sweeping legislation that drastically alters the traditional federal-state balance, and takes Congress far afield from its constitutional powers, in doing so. Of course sensible people should oppose that.

New York: 4-in-10 Criminal Suspects Freed by 'Bail Reform' Are Rearrested

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A huge portion of arrest criminal suspects who were freed from jail, thanks to New York’s “bail reform” law that eliminated bail for a series of crimes, were later rearrested on additional criminal charges, state records reveal.

As Breitbart News has chronicled, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) signed the bail reform measures into state law that allows suspects accused of second-degree manslaughter, criminally negligent homicide, child sex crimes, and making threats of terrorism to walk free from jail without ever having to post bail.

Coinciding with the state law is New York City’s Supervised Release Program which allows thousands of criminal suspects to be released following their arrests without having to post bail or being monitored by social workers.

The data shows that from January 2020 to June 2021, the elimination of bail for a wide range of criminal suspects has resulted in thousands being rearrested, often for more serious crimes, The City reports:

But an analysis by THE CITY of data compiled by the state Office of Court Administration and the state Division of Criminal Justice Services reveals a much higher rate more recently: 23% of those freed on supervised release were re-arrested on felony charges from January 2020 through June 2021. [Emphasis added]

And the data show that participants in supervised release are re-arrested at an even higher rate when misdemeanor rearrests are factored in: 41%. [Emphasis added]

In all, four out of every 10 individuals placed in the supervised release program from Jan. 1, 2020 through June 2021 were rearrested after being freed. [Emphasis added]

Months ago, 27-year-old Luis Gabriel Gomez was arrested in Salome, Arizona, after allegedly murdering a mother and daughter in Yonkers, New York. Gomez had been arrested before the murders on arson charges but was released thanks to bail reform.

This week, New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged state lawmakers and Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) to change the bail reform law so that criminal court judges have more discretion over setting bail for suspects that they believe will go on to commit more crimes.

“We must allow judges to take dangerousness into account,” Adams said. “… New York is the only state in the country that does not allow a judge to detain a defendant who poses a threat to the community.”

New York state Democrats and Hochul, though, have ignored Adams’ plea.

“If Kathy Hochul wanted to make any changes to bail reform, it would be done,” said New York GOP Chairman Nick Langworthy said in a statement.

“She likes to talk a good game about the importance of safety, but her actions are the exact opposite … perhaps she should spend less time raising special interest money and more time protecting the people of this great state,” he said.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at [email protected] Follow him on Twitter here. 

The ‘Obstruction’ Canard

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President Joe Biden holds a formal news conference in the East Room of the White House in Washington, D.C., January 19, 2022. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

One of the Democrats’ more curious current talking points is that Republicans are simply “obstructionists” who don’t stand for anything. Joe Biden, in his press conference last week:

One thing I haven’t been able to do so far is get my Republican friends to get in the game of making things better in this country. For example, I was reading the other day — and I — I wrote the quote down so I don’t misquote him — a quote from Senator Sununu, when he decided that he wasn’t going to — excuse me, Governor Sununu — when he decided he wasn’t going to run for the Senate in New Hampshire. Here’s what he said: “They were all, for the most . . .” — quote — “They were all, for the most part, content with the speed at which they weren’t doing anything.  It was very clear that we just had to hold the line for two years. Okay, so I’m just going to be a roadblock for the next two years? That’s not what I do,” Sununu said.  He went on to say, “It bothered me that they were okay with that.” And then he goes on to say, “I said, okay, so we’re not going to get stuff done if we win the White House back” — “if we win the White House back.” “Why didn’t [we] do [anything] in 2017 and 2018?” And then, he said — how did the Republicans Sununu spoke to answer the challenge? He said, “Crickets.  Yeah, crickets. They had no answer.”

I did not anticipate that there’d be such a stalwart effort to make sure that the most important thing was that President Biden didn’t get anything done. Think about this: What are Republicans for? What are they for? Name me one thing they’re for.

Biden is playing the oldies again, trying to revive the spirit of Harry Truman and his 1948 attacks on the “Do-Nothing Republican Congress.” You can’t argue with Truman’s success; he won a surprise reelection, and his party recaptured both houses of Congress. In fact, Truman in 1948 was the only president ever to see his party win back the House after losing it on his watch. But even then, it was a lie; the 80th Congress was full of consequential activity, passing over 900 pieces of legislation including the Marshall Plan, the Taft-Hartley Act, the National Security Act (a huge restructuring of the whole military and national security state that created the Air Force and the CIA), the Presidential Succession Act, the creation of Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, and the 22nd Amendment. Then, as now, Democrats consider it “nothing” if Congress doesn’t enact Democratic policy.

History aside, there are a couple of flaws in Biden’s reasoning. One, the party out of power in the White House can’t possibly pass any federal policy on its own, unless it has big majorities in Congress and a divided opposition (as Republicans did in 1947-48). Republicans are currently the minority party in both Houses. Democrats in 2017-18 and in 2003-06 were not exactly models of cooperation with Donald Trump or George W. Bush. Two, of course, “do something” is often an excuse to do something that is worse than doing nothing.

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Three, and more importantly, it is simply not true that Republicans want to do nothing. They currently have unified control of state government in 23 states, which are home to more than 130 million Americans. Seven other states have Republican control of their entire legislature, and five more have Republican governors. Republicans control the governments of four of the ten largest states (Texas, Florida, Ohio, and Georgia), and control the legislatures of three more (Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Michigan).

Those state governments have hardly been inactive in passing laws and policies; one can hardly open the news without seeing Republicans pushing state-level policy on education, Covid, taxes, voting, abortion, law enforcement, and other subjects of public concern. And here is the irony: A lot of what Biden wants to do — the authority he is seeking from Congress, and the authority he tries to exercise by executive orders and federal lawsuits — is to obstruct those policies from taking effect. His big push on voting and election law is explicitly aimed at preempting numerous state laws passed in the past year, many of which are already targets of lawsuits by his Justice Department. Ditto abortion law and vaccine mandates. Hardly a day goes by without news of some Republican governor or legislature doing something, and Democrats and their media allies declaring, “This must be stopped!” Glenn Youngkin has had his turn in that box this week.

State governments are supposed to govern, and most of them are set up to have broader powers, more cohesive polities, and more flexibility in changing course than the federal government, which is tasked with governing a sprawling, diverse continent. The filibuster and other limits on federal legislation serve an important purpose by making it harder for the federal government to obstruct the states from operating the governments closest to the people. When Democrats stop trying to obstruct that, they can complain about obstructionism.