Two-Tiered Justice: San Francisco and Oakland Edition

I hope you’ve been paying at least some attention to the circus unfolding in the city of Oakland, California.  It’s on a downward spiral more rapidly since the election of its mayor, Sheng Thao, who began her term January 2023.

Mere weeks after her being sworn in, Thao fired the city’s police chief- and then refused to approve a short list of chief replacements until May of 2024, more than a year later. Oakland has seen massive crime spikes in carjackings, retail shop lootings, sideshows, murders and brazen daytime robberies. Several long-time fixtures in the community like Denny’s restaurant closed, the In-n-Out Burger also left town and just days ago the Oakland Airport Hilton hotel announced it was closing for good this August. Countless cafes and small businesses have shut, their mom-and-pop owners moving out of town for safer pastures.

Crime, employee safety, deteriorating business conditions are main reasons cited and it appears Sheng Thao as Oakland’s mayor, coupled with that county’s embattled District Attorney Pamela Price, (herself embroiled in a failure of accountability and now facing a recall), both these radical women with rogue ideology wreak havoc on their city.

I’ve said time and time again, one would have hoped voters over there in Alameda County/Oakland had paid attention to the similar goings-on here in San Francisco, especially in 2022, where we here had crime spikes and accountability problems. Voters here took decisive action ousting disgraced “district attorney” Chesa Boudin. Later this year, our mayor London Breed will probably lose her re-election bid in November.

There are common themes in play comparing our two cities. Both have top elected officials who are under intense scrutiny for their failing to lead. Both’s city hall officials claim to be fighting for, and representing, the downtrodden, the disadvantaged, the marginalized, and hard-working families. And when being criticized and targeted for a lack of mismanagement and accountability, both city’s mayors (as well as Alameda’s DA Price) assert it’s the rich, right-wingers out to get them. That’s the knee-jerk reaction, blame the ultra-MAGA Republicans.

Hilarity aside, this desperate claim made by Breed, Thao and Price are obvious excuse-making and palpable deflection. Similarly, when ousted SF District Attorney Chesa Boudin was nearing the end of the line in 2022, he also delivered fiery “anti-right-wing billionaire” speeches, writing scathing, pandering and inflammatory Op Eds blaming everything and everyone in paranoid diatribes, never personally accepting an ounce of culpability, as he made pleas to the populace showing the world he was in his words fighting the good fight, railing against evil MAGA republicans and the racists. Yet, he was thrown out decisively by vote of a majority non-MAGA San Franciscans, more specifically, the non-billionaire Democrats.

November 2022, Sheng Thao made a compelling reason to elect her, that is, compelling to some who find a candidate’s identity and race to be most important: born to refugee immigrant parents, she is one of ten children. She later experienced an abusive boyfriend, had a child, relied largely on social services, welfare and public assistance. She got an internship at Oakland city council chambers, then studied law at UC Berkeley. In other words, Thao was a ward of the state since birth and checked so many of the boxes of oppression and victimhood. Voters ate up the narrative; she was basically a diversity hire.

Yet Thao, along with London Breed and Pamela Price claim there exists a two-tier system. I concur. But not in the way they allude to. Today, with the institution of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) and other social justice warrior causes in our city halls and state legislature, the Bay Area has intertwined government-sponsored racism into the daily workings of the city halls, of nonprofit grant-making, hiring, budget making, contracting and education curriculum.

This two-tier DEI system made inroads fairly quickly, most noticeably in the summer of 2020 about the time of George Floyd killing in Minneapolis. Here in San Francisco, the framework for DEI was already put in place by our Board of Supervisor’s approving creation of the “Office of Racial Equity” in 2019. So, once that office existed, the diverting of much of San Francisco’s Police Department budget ($120 million) to a Black-centric initiative was quite easy when the Geroge Floyd riots began. Mayor Breed takes great pride in championing this “accomplishment.” And nearly instantly, the city began its downward spiral as mass retail lootings and riots ensued.

Where is the justice? Depends on who you ask.

For many on the pro-Defund the Police, anti-prosecution, anti-jail, anti-accountability side, they see justice as the election (and appointment) of such radical ideologues to lead their city. From tearing down undesirable statues and monuments, renaming schools and streets, demoralizing police departments to an explosion of newly created agencies and commissions addressing myriad city issues – often led by  unqualified, appointed individuals getting high-paying salaries, all at taxpayers’ expense, in San Francisco.

Mayor Breed was reckless with our finances exactly in this reckless manner, creating and expanded highly controversial and unconstitutional race-based programs funded by a fuzzy-warmly named “Human Rights Commission,” while ultimately leading to today’s budget crises. Budget meetings and deliberations are now in full swing in San Francisco and Oakland city hall chambers as well, as bureaucrats in both cities seek to borrow through proposed bond measures, and cut certain programs funding to close the deficit, yet Mayor Breed’s race-based pet projects aren’t on the chopping block, apparently. To Breed, her allies and her voters, this is “justice;” adoption by governmental decree of unlawful, race-based, preferential giveaways.

There’s the two tiers: The hard-working, law-abiding, high-tax-paying citizenry contributing to the city’s coffers, and the law-breaking, scheming, corrupt, nepotistic and meritless groups receiving that which can be siphoned off from of us.

Early morning last week, news feeds were working overtime as Oakland Mayor Thao’s home was raided in a combined effort by the FBI, IRS and US Postal Inspector, hauling off crates and boxes of evidence, in a corruption case that has entangled Thao and her 2022 campaign supporters. She held a press conference a few days ago without actually notifying her top-notch attorney, He promptly quit. Then her communications director quit. Who knows what’s coming tomorrow or the next day. But when listening to her defiant rant televised to eager-to-know viewers – including yours truly – she went off on the “rich”, blaming billionaires from San Francisco and Piedmont ( a section of Oakland/Alameda County) who are apparently out to get her. The right-wingers, rich and powerful who “wrote policy to maintain power and dominance over the rest of us.” as she claimed.

Hold on, I was under the impression the city had little to no MAGA right-wingers?

In reality, Oakland has been run by incompetents, by malicious grifters, adherents of nepotism and diversity hires, where merit and excellence are all but shunned. The resulting collapse of Oakland’s law and order, retail looting and businesses fleeing are solely issues brought upon themselves, by their own doing.  These problems don’t exist at this level in neighboring towns.

Time and time again, the failures of the ultra-left radicals become evident. Without exception, the social justice radicals’ world comes crashing down. DEI is a failure and their version of a two-tiered system they blame, is a fallacy.

When Sheng Thao and DA Pamela Price are either recalled (this November) or forced to resign in shame, and when Mayor London Breed is defeated at the polls this November as well, it’s not because of their perverse definition of an unfair, two-tier system, but rather, we local voters just can’t stand them.