Carroll Fife has said her solution to Oakland’s budget crisis is to create partnerships with State and county governments. This means that Alameda County and Sacramento would have to bail Oakland out of its current annual budget deficit of $130 million.
What is it called when destitute individuals want the government to buy them stuff theycan’t afford? Welfare. The idea is, if someone who’s broke wants something, it’s the government’s job to give it to them. After all, government is loaded with money, right? I mean, they collect all these taxes and, besides, they can print money if they want to! So why shouldn’t government buy poor people homes, food, houses, clothing, beer, childcare, healthcare and everything else?
There have always been people in our country who think this way. They believe that if they don’t have enough money to live a nice lifestyle, it has to be someone else’s fault. Certainly not theirs! In Oakland, they often blame it on racism. “The reason I’m poor is because the system keeps me down.” And cynical Oakland politicians support them in this belief. People like Sheng Thao, Nikki Bas and Carroll Fife refer to “racism” to explain why so many people of color are poor. Even Loren Taylor, a so-called moderate, has expressed beliefs along these lines. I once urged him to speak truth to his community and tell them that racism is not the only reason for their problems. I reminded him that even Barack Obama has stated this. Loren’s response: “Well, a lot of people think Obama was wrong.”
But Obama was right. For too long a welfare mentality has gripped the Black community, producing generational poverty as well as a certain resentment from people who aren’t on welfare. Carroll Fife suffers from this mentality. In her vision, if Black people have needs, it’s the responsibility of government—which is to say, the taxpayers, us—to provide for them. And that’s exactly what Fife is doing when she calls for these “Federal and State partnerships.” She’s asking California and America for welfare for Oakland.
Look, California and Alameda County both are essentially broke. Even if Gov. Newsom wanted to send Oakland $130 million (which would cover just one year of our deficit), he couldn’t, not only because California also has a huge deficit but because all the other 481 cities in California would demand the same thing. As for Alameda County, its $3.7 billion budget is largely provided by property taxes and State aid (to the tune of $1.6 billion). The latter amount will not increase and will probably go down (because, as I cited above, California is broke), while property taxes are not only unfair, but continually raising them is an unsustainable tactic. Alameda County is not going to bail out Oakland.
This is the problem with Fife’s welfare mentality. It’s not only unrealistic, it’s immoral. My father used to tell me, when I did something stupid, “You made your own bed, Steve. Now you have to sleep in it.” In other words, if I fucked up, I couldn’t really expect anyone to bail me out (although my parents usually did). I’d have to learn from my experiences, and not fuck up again.
This is a fundamental lesson of life, but it’s one that Carroll Fife never learned. She still has that expectation of entitlement: everyone else should pay for the mistakes her constituents have made, as if it’s our fault kids drop out of school, turn to drugs and crime and predation, and then get locked up in prison. Yes, to some extent we are our brothers’ keepers. But this is a limited obligation. The other side of the coin is that people must learn to take care of themselves, to be responsible and moral citizens. If they aren’t, well, they just might have to pay the consequences.
Someone should whisper in Fife’s ear, “The county and the State aren’t going to give Oakland squat.” The only way out of this deficit is for Oakland to cut its expenses and live within its means, the way the rest of us do. That does not mean cuts to public safety, but it does mean that idiotic things like MACRO and the Department of Violence Prevention should be defunded. If you gave me the power and a red pencil, I’d end Oakland’s deficit in 5 minutes!
Steve Heimoff