Oakland’s Shocking Demographic Shift
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.
Oakland To Lose Federal Funding For Poor?
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.
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?
Another Oakland Pension Update
Apparently Mayor Jean Qunt (pronounced as it’s spelt) disagrees with the actuaries who say that Oakland’s 1976 crop of retirees will live for some time yet.
Now, far be it for me to argue with a Qunt, but I suspect the actuaries are actually fairly good at their task. Yes, it’s amazing that so much money is owed to a set of people who are all in their 70s and above. But, that’s the obligation Oakland undertook.
I noticed none of the local bloggers seemed to care about this story in the Chroncle about Oakland’s legacy pension issue.
To refresh your memory, these pensions apply only to workers hired before 1976, so all but one of thousand or so people are just collecting nowadays. So, as usual, the taxpayers are the bagholders for a former liberal scheme.
By now it is pretty clear that Measure L has fallen around 3,500 “yes” votes short of passage.
The measure would have taxed each property in Oakland $195 to pay for schools. The teachers’ union took no position on its passage, because it would have allowed some of the money to go to charter schools.
First, We Kill All The Public Employee Unions
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.
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.
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.
Oakland No Longer Collecting Measure Y Funds?
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).