Oakland's Gentrification Accelerates

Amid all the bad news since the recession and housing crash began, the world has taken on a grayish hue.

With a do-nothing mayor like Ron Dullums, it's easy to see why this pall has extended to Oakland, at least in the minds of most people.



What's interesting about Oakland, though, is that its future may not really depend at all on the behaviors of its politicians. Sure, they can slow down one thing and speed up another, but they are at the mercy of the underlying trends just the same as the rest of us.

I was pleased to see The OakBook begin a series on the gentrification of Oakland. Of course, they use different words for it, and they go to great pains to label "gentrification" as a politically charged word.

I have a reputation (such as it is) for telling things as they are. In that vein, let me be very clear about what is happening in Oakland: The black people are leaving. In large measure, they are being replaced by Latinos, with a few whites and asians filling in the rest of the mix.

Here's a separate piece of information that hasn't received very much media attention in the politically correct Bay Area press. Take a look at Oakland Unified's "two-year comparison report" (caution: PDF file).  I take a look at these kinds of reports when they come out because, as an Oakland property owner, I realize that a big part of my investment is the performance of our beleaguered school district.

In any event, the report was largely unexciting. Things generally improved, as they have for the last 10 years. OUSD's crypto-trend of becoming a reasonably good school district continues unabated. I call it a crypto-trend because no one talks about it, which is probably just as well, since discussion would probably cause the powers-that-be to try and stamp it out as some kind of racist trick.

Back to the PDF. Usually, I look at these documents they way they're intended to be viewed -- taking into account the ratio of kids performing at or above grade level for each task. But in this document, a separate piece of data jumped out at me -- the denominators.

According this PDF, in 2008--2009, this was the ethnic breakdown of the Oakland school system: 1894 whites, 9358 Latinos, 4206 Asians and 9555 African Americans.

In 2009-2010, there were 1968 whites, 9827 Latinos, 4093 Asians and 8647 African Americans.

Now, let's net out those numbers to see how the district's population has changed:

• Whites, +74 (+3.9%)


• Latinos, +469 (+5.0%)


• Asians, -113 (-2.8%)


• Blacks, -908 (-9.5%)

One of these numbers jumps out as far more significant than the others. A 10 percent reduction in black students in a single year is an enormous change. While I'm sure some part of it is attributable to charter schools or some such, what I can say is that none of it is due to lower overall attendance at Oakland schools. The total number of students increased by 65 from 26,880 to 26,945 over the last two years.

This school district information goes along with the information in the census and the OakBook article to paint a clear picture of Oakland.

The bottom line is this: Oakland is no longer a black-dominated city. And, in several years it will see a black proportion of the population lower than the average American city. This is incidentally is exactly what has happened in San Francisco.

There are some cities in America with sizable affluent black populations -- Atlanta is a great example. Oakland is not such a city. As such, the marked decrease in black population in Oakland is a symptom of the city's rapid gentrification.

There's another movement that I view along similar lines. It's the group of people organizing to encourage locals to enroll their kids in local public schools. Most recently I read an article about a parents' group doing this for Oakland High -- a traditionally low-performing high school.

Such efforts are not really activism. They're actually a natural reaction by rational parents to gentrification. I expect similar movements soon for schools such as Montera Middle School -- a school located in a predominantly upper-middle class area which suffers from low local enrollment and attendant busing of students from bad parts of town.

This is the steamroller of gentrification: Fueled by easy access to Bart and great amenities, encouraged by lackadaisical city planning policies and galvanized by moronically inept activists trying to hold it back.

And, these are all reasons why, in the midst of this sluggish economy, I expect those who invest in Oakland to reap rewards as the unemployed and poor gradually leave our beautiful town.

Why Can't Oakland Compete With San Francisco's Lowell High?

Back from my long absence, I'm still thinking about schools in Oakland.

Some months ago, I wrote a post about magnet schools in Oakland. For the most part I was ignored, save for one person who took the time to inform me that such programs are illegal in California.

I didn't do too much research after receiving this comment. Then, I ran across the following links:

http://www.greatschools.org/cgi-bin/ca/achievement/6397

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lowell_High_School_(San_Francisco)

So, San Francisco has a fantastic, high-performing magnet high school that requires students meet certain academic requirements.

Why can't Oakland do the same thing? For starters, this seems like something the teacher union would like. This school would not be a charter school, so its teachers would be in the union.

And, such a project would pull dollars back into the Oakland school district as parents shifted back to public school from private school. It's common knowledge that parents with high-achieving kids in Oakland send them to private school if they can afford it.

I'm sure many parents would breathe a sigh of relief to have such an option available in this economy.

And, Oakland clearly has the facilities to spare to implement such a project. My understanding is that flight from the Oakland schools to charters and private schools has left many schools half-full.

I recently read on Katy Murphy's blog about how  the union is planning a strike over wages. Maybe they could add a unionized magnet middle and high school to their list of demands.

I also saw a video where the superintendent of schools, Tony Smith, indicated that he wants to look for ways to fix the schools budget crisis. Maybe attracting back students with a magnet school could be part of the solution?

What's the rationale for the city to have no magnet school anyway? It can't be just liberalism -- since San Francisco is plenty liberal and has Lowell. What's going on here?

Oh and one other thing. If Oakland had better options for high-performing middle and high school students, that would increase property values (just look at the values in Piedmont). That would improve the city's tax base, which would help schools as well.

Isn't this a win-win?

The $43 Billion Train to Nowhere

Breaking News: A screwball Federal grant of $2.25 billion has been awarded to California exclusively to subsidize the development of a “bullet train” running north and south . This makes about as much sense as if one were to give a friend or relative $10,000 to stave off the foreclosure of their house… and they go out and blow it all on beer and cigarettes.


The Projected Result: Some work will get done… leaving a ditch that will fill up with water and breed mosquitoes. The project will be abandoned because of financial reality. First off, the balance of the $43 billion estimated price tag has to be accounted for. Should work continue beyond the initial phase then extraordinary cost overruns will arise (think Bay Bridge rebuild).

At some point, long before completion, it will be discovered that there’s no money available to run the train. What? It was expected to pay for itself or even make a profit (like the airlines it’s intended to replace). But, should such a grandiose money hog charge each passenger what it would really cost to use, no one would bother buying a ticket.


Why? First “why” is why does such a ridiculous idea get catapulted to serious consideration? It has political sex appeal. It’s futuristic, glamorous… it captures the imagination… kind of like wearing propeller beanies to generate electricity.

The second “why” is why is it such a stupid idea? California does have a lot of people… but it also has a lot of empty space. The high speed rail that is currently successful (meaning that the local taxing authorities are able and willing to support the negative cash flow) services areas of mostly continuous high population density. Not only is it where people are, it’s also where they want to go. Should someone in Oakland hop on a “California Bullet Train” to Los Angeles (Anaheim) then what? They have to rent a car. If they’re going to the San Fernando Valley they’d get there later and poorer than if they had just taken I-5 in a car they already own.

Out in remote parts of our state are ghost towns like Bodie… where veins of gold gave out. There are also abandoned utopian communes and religious colonies. Some day there will be the remnants of a train to nowhere and some future documentary film maker will tell it’s ironic story.

For Berkeley Liberals, Political Correctness Trumps Competitiveness

I literally nearly spilled my steaming cup of tea all over my hand and arm when I read this week's East Bay Express article about eliminating science labs in the Berkeley schools to free up money for "struggling" students.

How do they define a "struggling" student? It won't surprise you to find out that this word is a synonym for "black and Latino" students.



Apparently, the School Governance Council -- a community body which I hope has absolutely no say in the matter -- voted nearly unanimously to support this reallocation of resources.

I have a few opinions about this, but my most important observation concerns global competitiveness.

Does it never occur to those Leftists out there that our country is in competition with others around the world?

This may shock liberals, but the primary reason why the United States enjoys such a high standard of living is not because Martin Luther King gave such nice speeches, not because Roosevelt packed the court and not because labor unions fought for higher wages for menial work.

Just look around you at all the technological marvels which make your life so easy. Cars, computers and cellphones are all the product of basic research -- a significant part of which was funded by the government.

Basic research is one of the few areas where the government actually contributes toward an increase in relative GDP between one country and another. And, improved comparative GDP is the only reason why our country is considered part of the "first world" while much of the rest of the world lies in poverty.

The government's contribution is critical -- both in educating people and in funding research in promising new areas which are not yet clearly profitable investments.

This issue goes hand in hand with my general frustration about way education "battles" are cast these days in our country. People view education only as a way to raise up people at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder. While it can serve this purpose, it is vital to think of education instead as a way to raise the ladder as a whole.

So, I oppose cutting UC Berkeley's budget just as much as the students who protested there last month. Sadly, though, the signs those students held aloft said things like "Save Our Janitors' Jobs."

These students don't get it. The measure of our country's competitiveness does not lie with the wages we pay our least-educated people. It lies with the value we place on promoting our best and brightest.

So, we should not fight to fund community colleges. We should fight to fund programs for the smartest kids at the top universities.

Our secondary schools should not worry so much about troublemakers or the "special needs" kids. They should instead fight for magnet and Advanced Placement programs to ensure the most able among us can gain the skills they need to pull us along.

This news from Berkeley reminds me of a scene from a Douglas Adams novel, where it turned out the Earth was populated by middle-managers and "telephone sanitizers." There's nothing wrong with having such people in a society, but they do nothing to make that society great.

Don't these people understand that by closing science labs -- even in the spirit of promoting equality -- they are consigning everybody to a lower standard of living? It sounds to me like someone needs to re-read Atlas Shrugged.

These Leftists spend so much time working on solving the "racial achievement" gap, but I'd prefer just to call it what it is: racism.

After all, no one seems to mind when schools at every level throw untold millions of dollars at the best and the brightest athletes. For some reason, in the athletic sphere we seem to get it -- some people have the skills to get things done, and others can't make it.

Of course, in athletics, the racial mix is far different. I'll let you do the math on that one.

Academics should be no different. And, thank goodness, for the most part it remains a meritocracy.

While most universities have been forced to accept unqualified candidates through quota systems, such efforts are pretty pro forma. To see this for yourself, just compare the makeup of UC Berkeley as a whole to that of an upper-division math or physics lecture hall.

Still, this news from Berkeley is disturbing. If this is the direction we're heading I can't see how we'll continue to compete with other countries such as China, which are much more interested in cultivating their brightest minds than self-flagellating over past inequalities.

When Will the Rotting Corpse of the Global Warming Hoax Finally Begin to Stink?

As this is written, about a week has passed since the initial revelation of hacked e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU). At first, the authenticity of such purloined correspondence was in serious doubt… that was until the University itself blurted out that they were, in fact, genuine.

Conservative media lunged into the fray. Meanwhile, the “lame” stream propaganda outlets have remained mostly mum… perhaps because they have been so heavily invested in the perpetuation of such a shabby and dangerous hoax.


A brief history: Back in the 1970s an unmanned space probe entered the atmosphere of Venus. Zounds! Venus was a lot hotter than expected. How could this be? Other than its proximity to the Sun… its atmosphere is really dense. It must be the atmosphere. Could this be a portent of impending disaster for us Earthlings?

Reasoned speculations of climate future have always fluctuated between warming and cooling. Climate is never constant… it has to always be trending towards either warming or cooling. Precipitation also trends up and down… but more locally than globally.

When the Democrats took back both houses of Congress in 2006, the hysterical assault on global economic vitality was fast-tracked in the American political arena. Absurd and obnoxious schemes to micro manage individual behavior and completely subvert macroeconomic processes were given new credence and support.

Through geology and paleontology we have learned of pre-historic ice ages. Not currently being in an ice age means that we are in an interstitial warm period. Within this warm period there have been both cooling and warming trends. Why? There are inconstancies in the primary influences in climate. The Sun warms and cools. The Earth’s orbit goes through a 180,000 year cycle. Volcanoes create temporary disruptions in “normal” circumstances. Global climate and weather are the result of incredibly complex interactions that are still barely understood… if at all.


What about the heat trapping effects of “greenhouse” gasses? The atmosphere is a “soup” of different substances. Most are gasses, primarily nitrogen. Then oxygen and argon. Carbon dioxide is currently at 357 parts per million… that’s a whopping 0.04% of the atmosphere. The mechanics of heat trapping center around the “selective transparency” of different substances. Ultra violet radiation from the Sun passes through the atmosphere, hits the ground, heats the ground… which then re-radiates back up as infra red… which is trapped.

According to the hoaxers, this trapping effect is enhanced by the toxic byproducts of capitalism: CO2 and methane. Actually water vapor and clouds do the vast majority of trapping. Hoaxers contend that the Earth is in such delicate balance that the slightest alteration from the “natural” state can still be catastrophic.

Prosaic demonstrations of the impending doom associated with prosperity, typically by computer models (notorious for wide ranges of outcome resulting from miniscule changes in data input), tend to skip any detailed explanation of the actual physical and chemical goings on in the atmosphere. Hmmmmmm.

We are actually in the infancy of understanding climate trends in real time. We have some pretty neat toys such as satellites and computers. But we are dealing with the interaction of sunlight, wind, precipitation, ocean currents, dust, smoke, and (now wait for it) politics.

Such is extremely fertile ground for hoaxes.

Centuries ago an Italian proto-scientist named Bruno was put to death for deviating from established orthodoxy concerning the mechanics of what we now call the solar system. His colleague, Galileo, recanted and joined the orthodoxy… allowing him to enjoy his life for many more years. My presumption is that he knew what truth is. Unlike falsehoods, truth is immutable. It can be lost but is always rediscovered in exactly the same form.

As Copernicus, the first to develop the modern model of our solar system, lay dying, his sister burned his manuscripts in order to save his soul from eternal damnation. Yet, because of truth’s inherent durability, we still know that the Sun is the center of our world.

At Berkeley, Leftists And Unions Unwittingly Face Off

When I read in the paper that Friday that students had occupied a building down at UC Berkeley, I just had to have a look for myself.

I drove down to campus that evening, with the sound of media helicopters roaring in the air. It took a few minutes to walk from my parking spot to the epicenter of the protests, but when I got there I could tell the trip had not been in vain.

There, I saw a phalanx of riot police surrounding Wheeler Hall and the main library. Across a small barrier from the cops stood maybe 200 protesters shouting various slogans -- things like "Whose university? Our university!"

I walked all the way around the buildings to see that cops were positioned at every entrance to block the protesters. At one point, I saw an army of about 100 cops double-time it down the street to the east of the surrounded buildings. Their march looked every bit like a military maneuver.

As I followed behind this phalanx of cops, I started counting, and I telephoned a friend to get a bit of information. You see, I was much more interested in how much this police presence cost than in the protest itself. I knew -- as everyone did -- that the protest was a complete waste of time.

My friend informed me that, including benefits, an overtime police officer typically receives about $150 per hour of service. My quick count of the cop column totaled 100 officers. That means this little army cost the government about $15,000 per hour.

My first thought was that I would be very happy to join their little army for that kind of compensation. Who wouldn't? There was no meaningful probability that the protest would become violent.

From what I could discern, the protesters don't like the fact that the regents voted to increase student fees. They also seemed very upset that several unionized workers might lose their jobs -- I saw specific signs in support of janitors and "those making under $40k."

I wonder if the protesters ever considered that the very reason for the state's reduction in contributions to the school is unionized employees like those the protesters support. And, to make matters worse, the worst offenders are the men and women who were standing across the barriers from them -- the police officers.

As a matter of fact, every dollar of overtime these protesters caused to be expended on the police came -- in one way or another -- directly from the same pot of money which would have gone to fund the university.

I tend to agree with part of the protesters' platform. Higher education -- and by "higher" I mean places like Berkeley, not Cal State Dominguez Hills -- is an extremely important priority, as it helps produce the technological advances which improve our lives.

However, the combination of this reasonable position with Leftist aims like "protecting union employees" leaves the protesters' position hopelessly befuddled.

You can't have it both ways. California has spent and spent and spent on ridiculous pension plans for its government/union employees. The state has bankrupted itself paying for cops and firemen, for the incarcerated, the poor and for education for the bottom rung of society.

And for what?

Here, at UC Berkeley, the absurdity of such spending comes home to roost. We as a society are investing heavily in our most useless citizens while underfunding institutions which are the keys to moving the human race forward.

So, as usual, I was left thinking to myself that both sides of the protest had it all wrong. The protesters don't really understand the nature of the situation -- or they just don't care. And the cops absolutely don't care. They're just glad to be getting that overtime check.

Both sides do have one thing in common -- they'd love to see higher taxes to pay for everything they want without cutting anything. Unfortunately, that seems to be the current plan across the land.

Higher taxes seem like a great idea until you realize several truths:

1. The need of those at the bottom of the income spectrum is limitless, and no amount of taxes will ever be enough.


2. Higher taxation drives out those with skills and high IQs, a process which is already well underway in California.


3. Raising taxes just delays the inevitable discussion of what investments society should and should not be making.

In my opinion, it's simple. Cut funding for the poor and the stupid, and increase funding for places like UC Berkeley. A rising tide lifts all boats.

A sinking tide brings -- well, you get the picture -- Obamanomics.

The Next Reichstag Fire

By Mark Ross, Contributing Writer

It was a risky political stunt that allowed the Nazi Party to consolidate its grip on the German nation.

The sad truth is that Hitler was elected democratically. The Nazis took advantage of a weakness in the Weimar constitution that allowed proportionate representation.



After an election, the seats in the Reichstag were distributed among candidates of most if not all of the various parties based on the percentages of the votes tallied. Fringe, screwball political movements got their feet in the door this way. Ironically, this is how Israel works.

The Nazis had incrementally worked their way up to having  plurality after the election of 1932. But that wasn’t good enough. In the campaign Hitler had promised, “An end to politics.” They were compelled to eliminate all opposition in order for their agenda of German reconstruction to take place.

Hence the Reichstag fire. On February 27, 1933, a mysterious arson gutted the German parliament. The loudest voices blamed Communists and their ilk (non-Nazis). Hitler swiftly moved to arrest and imprison all political opponents, and thus the way was clear for complete domination and the promised end to politics.

The American Left (a.k.a. Democrats) has taken over the national government. As a consequence they are being righteously creamed in the court of public opinion. Nothing would help them more in their quest to consolidate power than for the next two national elections to be canceled.

Even during the Civil War we held national elections, but then there was less of a political imperative for the party in power to stifle metastasizing dissent. What the Democrats could use is some kind of “event” that would allow them to declare an extraordinary national emergency -- the modern equivalent of the Reichstag Fire.

What kind of event? That’s a toughie. The domestic terror attack on the Oklahoma City Federal Building comes to mind. It would be easy to blame right wingers in the absence of tangible evidence. I’m sure Mr. Holder, the Attorney General, would be happy to help.

Plausibility for such a scheme rests on the fact that so many among us have already been stampeded by a fanciful hoax concerning vague trends in the weather.

Recently, while chatting with a friend about domestic politics he concluded that we are in a new civil war, though without guns.

Wars, however, go well beyond yelling, screaming, marching with placards and making evocative speeches. Should this be true -- and trends continue -- then some day the gloves will really start to come off.

What then? A precursor to our last Civil War was John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry in 1859. Just a thought.