East Bay Conservative

By Mark Ross, Contributing Writer

[Disclaimer: the objects of the verb “kill” in the above title are corporate entities and not living organisms.]

Meg Whitman has been buying copious amounts of media time extolling her agenda for a revitalized California. She wants to make the schools good, the government frugal and the future bright. Some of us are getting just a little too adapted to living with elephants in the living room.

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Joe Tuman is the only candidate for mayor of Oakland who seems to actually understand or care about the city’s problem with public-employee pay and pensions.

For this reason, combined with the enormous sums of money you can expect the corrupt unions to pour into the election, he has little chance of winning the election. Still, if voters want to see any sort of improvement in Oakland’s governance, they should vote for him.

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Just a quick post to point visitors to the site created by Marleen Sacks against Measure BB.

I’m somewhat conflicted about this measure. While I appreciate the notion of “starving the beast” by preventing the city from collecting property taxes, I do generally like the idea of parcel taxes because they are regressive.

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The property tax bills for Oakland homeowners are in, and as usual the situation is pretty ugly.

But, looking at my bill for the year, I was shocked to see that the county appears not to be collecting funds for Measure Y. I’m not sure if this is a consequence of Marleen Sacks’ brave efforts (please click that link to see her excellent blog on the matter).

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By Mark Ross, Contributing Writer

Early March, 2007, Oakland Mayor Ronald V. Dellums and his hand picked replacement in the U.S. House of Representatives, Barbara Lee, hold a joint press conference.  It is Mayor Dellums’ first major public media event of his (fortunately) limited tenure.  The topic?  Condoms for incarcerated villains.

The rest of us can live or die without consequence (as long as we keep paying taxes).  But God forbid the worst miscreants that society can produce should be exposed to disease as an unintended consequence of their punishment.  I use this as an example of the extensive and often bizarre agenda of what I call the Urban Mob.

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There’s an article in today’s SF Chronicle about the race for Oakland mayor, crime and policing.

The positions taken by our politicians are unsurprising in general, but I was actually pretty shocked when I came across this little gem from Councilwoman Jean Quan, who is running for mayor:

City officials, including Quan, said Measure Y required the city only to set aside money for – but not actually staff – an 802-officer force. That figure includes the 63 that Measure Y would pay for.

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Readers should take a look at Daniel Borenstein’s sobering article from last month about how Oakland’s terrible property tax situation came about.

Complaints about overly generous public-employee pensions have (thankfully) become a standard part of the political dialog in California over the past couple of years. Unfortunately, for Oakland, this is the second time employees and their unions have assaulted the city’s finances.

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