East Bay Conservative

By Mark Ross, Contributing Writer

Sixteen years ago I was asked what I thought of Mrs. Clinton’s machinations on the health care front. I told the questioner that every member of Congress who backed the reinvention of American health care, as Mrs. Clinton was proposing, was booking a stateroom on the Titanic. What Americans want, I added, was for the price to go down and for there to be fewer other patients in the waiting room. Including the heretofore uninsured into the system and reducing the career appeal of the practice of medicine does exactly the opposite on both fronts.

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I’ve made no secret in the past of my utter contempt for Oakland’s school system.

I can’t imagine sending my kid to an Oakland public school — even one of the few good elementary schools sprinkled throughout the hills area. While economically, sending a child there would seem like a bargain, I simply am unwilling to put any faith or trust in these unionized teachers.

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The headline more-or-less says it all. I’ve blogged on this topic before, but it’s never been nearly this bad.

Last year, Oakland’s Ad Valorem rate was 1.33% of the tax value of the property. This year, somehow it magically has risen to 1.41%. If anyone understands how this came to be, I’d be very interested in knowing. I was unaware the electorate had passed a bunch of large new taxes.

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By Mark Ross, Contributing Writer

Well, it happened. I was sitting down at my computer cranking out some right-wing screed, when I heard a knock on the door. It was three guys in matching jump suits. A fourth was down below in the driver’s seat of a waiting van. They insisted that I come with them. I began to think things over when a firm hand clenched my arm.

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Regular readers of this blog know that I’ve pointed out several times the ridiculous number of cars parked all day long on city streets with disabled placards.

This wouldn’t be a big deal if it weren’t for the fact that they apparently are allowed to park there all day, and naturally they are not required to pay a dime.

To add insult to injury, my experience has been that when I do see someone retrieving or parking a car with the placard, 75 percent of the time the person has no apparent disability.

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By Mark Ross, Contributing Writer

I used to have a friend who was very politically involved, as an Anarchist.

He was a Wobbly — a dues paying member of the International Workers of the World, the IWW. History books call them an anarcho-syndicalist labor organization. He was radicalized in the Army during the Korean War, as an enlisted Army Intelligence operative. When the war ended he joined the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA).

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By Mark Ross, Contribuing Writer

Is it me… or does anyone else think that it’s sort of curious that mayoral candidates are lining up in Oakland… as if the incumbent has announced his retirement… which he hasn’t? Talk about foregone conclusions.

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This week’s edition of the Berkeley Daily Planet really was chock full of commentaries on racism (all from the predictable point of view), so I thought I’d continue with the same theme today.

The Daily Planet published an opinion piece by Cecil Brown entitled “Racial Profiling and Swimming While Black.” I encourage you to read it, but the gist of it is that Brown, a Black UC Berkeley professor, was hassled by the police at the UC swimming pool apparently because some other Black guy had earlier caused trouble at the pool.

Someone called the cops mistakenly thinking Prof. Brown was the troublemaker. This was obviously very embarrassing and troubling for the Prof. Brown.

Prof. Brown then decided the police were racists who hated Black people, so he wrote a rap song about the experience.

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I guess this might come as a surprise to Black people, but in my experience white men spend essentially zero time thinking about race and race relations. It’s just a total non-issue.

A reasonable response to this fact might be something like, “It’s easy to say you don’t think about something when it isn’t a big problem in your life.”

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The state released results today from the annual student achievement tests. As has been the case for the past few years, the gap between Hispanic/Black students and everyone else failed to narrow significantly.

And, as in prior years, the educational establishment decries the situation as “unacceptable” and racist, but then all the solutions that it offers will accomplish nothing.

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