One of the reasons I love writing this blog is because I get to call out the shit some people say. The latest example is a letter to the editor in the Chronicle from yesterday. I won’t identify the writer, but let’s just say he’s an anti-police type that’s all too common in the Bay Area.
He’s pissed because this really rich guy, Chris Larsen, who made his billions in (what else?) tech, donated $1 million to the San Francisco Police Department. Everyone I know, including me, thinks this was a fantastic thing to do. Bravo Chris Larsen! But not the letter writer. His gripe: “Billionaires like Larsen” prove that “our public safety can be bought…Letting the wealthy influence public safety sets a dangerous precedent.” According to the letter writer, Larsen should have sent the money to “our [public] schools [which] are suffering from budget deficits.”
Look, first of all, the money is Larsen’s, to do as he pleases. Secondly, the letter writer’s allegation that Larsen has any “influence” over public safety is ridiculous, and a smear. Finally, while it’s true that our public schools are financially hurting, I would argue that their main problem is not lack of funding, but disastrous mismanagement by “progressive” school districts and ideologically warped teachers, who think their job is to inject their extremist propaganda into their students’s heads, instead of teaching them how to read, write, do sums and know history. The result is that students who are failing end up blaming a supposedly racist system for their problems, instead of looking in the mirror and perceiving where the trouble truly lies.
Donating money to the police is a noble act. I salute Larsen, whom I don’t know, for his generosity.
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As Pamela Price’s chances of surviving a recall dwindle, she’s desperately bringing in the only ammo that remains in her arsenal: discredited figures like Angela Davis to fundraise for her.
Both Price and Davis made the same mistake that disgraced them before History, choosing racial grievance over public safety and racial harmony. Davis has been irrelevant for decades, ever since she enjoyed her Fifteen Minutes of Fame as the grande dame of the Black Panthers. Once upon a time, she was feted in chic liberal circles from Paris to Manhattan to San Francisco. But she’s been an expiration-date anachronism for years, one of those has-beens who never got the memo that nobody cares about them anymore. But Davis (and her Black Panther counterpart, Elaine Davis, who will be out there supporting Price this week) are still ready to crawl out from obscurity to help a Sistah in trouble.
This will work, to some extent, in Oakland, where there remain low-information voters who still believe in Black Panther revanchism. But Price’s recall election isn’t limited to Oakland, fortunately. It covers the whole county, where the Black Panthers, and Black Power in general, are not remembered with fondness, if they’re remembered at all. Most of suburban Alameda County wants nothing to do with Oakland and its hopped-up racial grievances, crime and crooked politicians, filthy streets and homeless encampments. They will happily vote against Pamela Price, whom they correctly perceive as a grifting race monger.
Steve Heimoff