East Bay Conservative

Today’s NY Times article about restorative justice programs in schools pushes the agenda that schools should be trying to “fix” kids with severe social or discipline problems.

I’ll be honest that the Measure Y poster in the background of the photo accompanying the article didn’t improve my mood on reading it. What a con job that was. Pretending to hire more cops so they could funnel more money to terrible social programs.

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The face of Oakland is continuing its rapid transformation as gentrification draws new families to the area and displaces others.

I crunched the numbers for the past 20 years and came up with a pretty interesting chart showing how Oakland Unified’s enrollment has changed. I suspect this is a common theme across all big California cities. But still, I’m not sure people in the Bay Area realize the extent of the transformation.

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Amid the constant reports of burglaries, murders and other crime problems in Oakland, it’s surprising to see Oakland in the middle of housing bidding wars.

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I was really heartened to see an article today about 34 black Oakland Unified kids who got perfect scores on their STAR tests.

Here’s a link to the article. It looks like they’re mostly on the younger side, but old enough for the tests to be meaningful.

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I enjoyed reading this interview with Rick Holliday, who is now finding more success selling units at his Pacific Cannery Lofts project.

Of particular interest is his description of a potential future for West Oakland. He talks about biotech maybe moving in as Emeryville becomes saturated.
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The Times published an article a few days ago ostensibly about all the protests in Oakland. Here it is.

The article correctly points out that the protests are mostly the last gasp of an old mode of thinking about Oakland. In fact, the protests are largely a reaction to Oakland’s continuing gentrification. The process has begun in earnest, and it will not stop.

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Interesting article today in the SF Chronicle about Oakland’s PFRS pension obligation.

My opinion is that Oakland should essentially go bankrupt as soon as possible. At this point, only a couple cities in California have taken this step. That mean’s there is still an opportunity to get a fairly good deal out of a bankruptcy.

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I know it’s not as exciting and seemingly timely a topic as budget chest thumping by the city council, but the most important article to come out in months is right here.

I assume no one has talked about this article either because they’re not sure what to say or because of political correctness.

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Let’s hope so.

One thing that more or less guarantees that you’ll wind up with lots of poor people is when you construct programs that pay them to be poor.

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Take a look at this: http://tinyurl.com/5s9x6me

You can switch it around to see different ethnicities. As you can see, every year whites and latinos tick up, and blacks tick down. OUSD has lost 40% of its black population in the last decade. That’s a huge decline, and sort of oddly worrying.

There must be a story here. Anyone in the mainstream media care to comment?