Karen Bass is digging herself a deeper hole after releasing a document which she alleged was her application for a graduate degree at the USC school for social work that is attached to an ongoing federal probe of Los Angeles Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. The document wasn’t signed and wasn’t for a graduate degree. Did she not think folks were gonna investigate it?
The copy of the application is unsigned and does not contain the “office use only” approval. pic.twitter.com/hyp4ItigQI
— Alex Silverman (@AlexSilverman) October 10, 2022
One Twitter user responded “Rep Bass has disingenuously submitted to KNX a limited status student application for those who do not wish to formally apply for USC admission. It is NOT an application for admission nor a financial aid application. And financial aid is NOT available to limited status students.”
The Los Angeles Times has endorsed Bass despite their ongoing coverage of the scandal as the former dean of the school has plead guilty to federal bribery charges when she “did the same” for then County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas’ son Sebastian, when she gave him a scholarship for a degree and teaching job that he wasn’t qualified to receive.
The misrepresentation of the truth is dicey as the federal investigation explicitly refers to an email from Flynn where she discusses “doing the same for MRT that she did for Karen Bass” for funds.
Rick Caruso has maintained Bass got the scholarship in exchange for favorable votes after she was elected to Congress. It was reported USC also contributed financially to CoCoSouthLA, a nonprofit founded by Bass.
The Times dug a little deeper and found that Bass received the scholarship BEFORE she filed an official full-length application with the school.
The Bass application — which is undated and unsigned — specifically says she had not applied to the master’s in social work program but planned to at a later date, indicating that when she began her coursework in 2012, she lacked formal admission.
The document shows that when Bass was offered a full scholarship in 2011 by USC’s social work dean, it was before she had been accepted into the social work master’s program, an unusual sequence of events that raises questions about preferential treatment for an elected official.
USC offered Karen Bass scholarship before she was admitted to social work school, records show
Then it gets worse. Bass waited nearly a decade before she put the scholarship “gift” valued at $95,000 on required campaign filings.
The full value of her scholarship was not disclosed on her congressional filings until 2019, when she added tens of thousands of dollars of previously undeclared funds related to the award to past years’ filings. Bass attributed the erroneous filings to a former staffer.
Bass is heavily supported by union labor organizations across Los Angeles County that are now in the midst of a scandal where they were found to be in cahoots to suppress minority representation in elected seats.
Despite all of this, the Los Angeles Times endorsed Karen Bass and has given no indication that they will pull their endorsement from her.
Wow. Everybody who cares about Los Angeles and seeks to understand how it went so far off the rails knows that the failure of the Los Angeles Times to hold these political criminals accountable is a huge part of why they felt so entitled and caused such harm for so long. https://t.co/8AdT98zkAB
— Esotouric’s Secret Los Angeles (@esotouric) October 13, 2022
One thing the recordings detailed, in the leaked audio of a conversation between three Los Angeles City Council members and a former union head is that you have to build “consensus” to move the needle on who is supported for which seat, and you can’t do that without the full support of the newspaper of record, who endorsed both Mark Ridley-Thomas and Karen Bass who are knee deep in a federal scandal.
They are running the same play in the Sheriff’s race and residents need to wake up and see the handwriting on the wall.
Bass and her campaign declined to comment to the Times when asked to release her ”application” to them.
Has Bass just guaranteed herself a federal indictment too?
11 Comments
Good reporting!!
Knowing that Caruso is lying about everything he wants to do to help LA doesn’t help matters. He’s is not pro-choice when put to a vote, he is the cause of much of the homelessness as a developer, etc…..This is all about a money-grab for his real estate business. Trump light.
None of his developments are in areas that directly affect homelessness. Secondly he’s Catholic so I understand why he’s pro-life which shouldn’t matter in this election since CA is a pro-choice state.
To be fair being pro-life does not make someone anti-pro choice. Biden for instance is, as a catholic, pro-life but is also pro-choice. It’s ignorant to keep repeating that someone who is pro-life can not be also pro-choice.
At any rate this is a mute point in California as the state’s court recognized abortion rights in the California Constitution way before Roe vs Wade.
Exactly, however, what I’ve learned is when people use other folks “talking points” they tend to lack an opinion of their own.
Great column
I would like to see a copy of her USC transcript. The LA Times suggests that she may have taken just one course per semester — thus ?7 courses total, for the degree. Any research? Any teaching? Was the degree a gift, more honorary than earned?
Instead of addressing what she did, she repeatedly falls back on why she did it, not the point. She dodges the issue, lies, produces documents that do nothing to support her case – quite the contrary.
Karen Bass has consistently misrepresented and/or lied about the nature of her receiving the MSW degree (a value of nearly $100K) on scholarship. I am a graduate of USC’s School of Public Policy (1995) and received a partial merit scholarship based on undergraduate performance. She received a “gift” that she was never entitled to receive and continues to lie about it. It’s unfortunate as my view are in alignment with hers on policy etc. but if she can’t come to terms on how she participated in USC’s admittance scandal then she does not deserve the trust from LA residents. It’s shameful in the sense that USC could have offered several other more deserving students financial assistance through scholarship but instead chose to “gift” the scholarship to Bass who had the ability to finance her degree on her own.
Did you read the essay? It says that during the 1980s she was on the clinical faculty in the Department of Family Medicine at USC. It says that she trained Physician Assistants in primary care and emergency medicine.
But her application says she graduated from college in 1991. Even an undergraduate degree would not be enough to become clinical faculty in the Dept. of Family Medicine at USC, or anywhere.
The people who select these candidates (not the voters) have total contempt for the public. It reminds me of Meryl’s Streep’s line in The Devil Wears Prada: “That blue sweater was chosen for you by the people in this room.”
https://twitter.com/AlexSilverman/status/1579562961265627136/photo/1
BOOM! I LOVE that movie! Good catch!
I can’t believe we have two such horrible candidates for LA mayor. Two liars. Have no idea who to pick.