Emeryville, Fremont, Concord and Foster City are four cities in the Bay Area that actually are thriving, even as San Francisco and Oakland circle the drain of crime, homelessness and despair.
There’s a reason why businesses and residents are moving out of S.F. and Oakland and relocating to the four cities. It’s a simple reason, all too human in its dimensions: Emeryville, Fremont, Concord and Foster City are quiet, well-behaved places that have rejected blatant wokeness in government. Citizens feel safe walking their streets; crime is not exploding; greedy progressive electeds don’t steal from taxpayers the way they do in the two big cities; store owners can make a profit without worrying about getting robbed; police departments are well-funded; and homeowners can expect their property values to rise over time.
None of those conditions applies to S.F. or Oakland. Quite the opposite: quality of life continues to fall. The feeling of being on the wrong track is widespread. Of course, in Oakland the despair is far more entrenched than in San Francisco, because of Oakland’s long addiction to progressive, racialist-based politics. We see in Oakland the manifestation of every Hollywood movie portraying the breakdown of civil society. Our dysfunction, sadly, brings to mind the Mad Max films, with their post-apocalyptic societal collapse, roving bands of marauders, and landscapes of bleak wasteland, craters and smoking ruins.
There can be little wonder why businessmen don’t want to do business in Oakland, or why everyone who is able to move already has done so, or is considering it. Despite having the best weather in the Bay Area, and despite our natural beauty, Oakland has become a cesspool. You know it, I know it, Sheng Thao knows it. The difference is that you and I admit it, whereby Thao continues to drone on with annoying cliches about “enriching our community” and our “unique diversity,” as though she were a high school beauty queen hired by the Chamber of Commerce to lead a Fourth of July parade. A recent poll on Twitter—not a very scientific one, I concede, but still, a barometer of public opinion—has 97 percent of respondents demanding that Thao be recalled. One commenter tweeted, “It’s almost as if [Thao] is prepping herself for a new career path and trying her inept-best at crisis control…”. Just what that “new career path” might be is hard to say: She’d be finished in politics, and she’d also be toxic to private enterprise, which knows a loser when it sees one. Heading up a nonprofit might be the only way Thao could make a six-figure salary. She might even be able to afford to buy a house, which means she could no longer brag about being a renter.
Anyhow, it’s sad, isn’t it, that Oakland is surrounded by cities that actually know how to succeed. I’ve given up on the likes of Carroll Fife, Nikki Bas and Sheng Thao ever coming to their senses, but how about Oakland voters? Where there’s life, there’s hope.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Steve Heimoff