The plain and simple fact is that the current City Council hasn’t learned a damned thing from the failures of their predecessors. Any way you cut it, they’re still tax-and-spenders, determined to tinker with their socialist schemes paid for by you, the hard-working people of Oakland.
You’ll get what they give you, and you’ll like it.
What communism is, fundamentally, is “to each according to his need, from each according to his ability.” This means that the City Council gets to decide what each citizen needs, while at the same time having the power to determine what is the ability of each citizen to provide for that need. Can I make it any simpler? If you’re Carroll Fife, you see needs everywhere you look, from the homeless she cares so much about to the Black children who are failing in school to the druggies who are victims of structural racism. You also see a piggy bank to pay for it all: workers and homeowners. Carroll can impose new sales and business taxes on the workers and she can impose new parcel taxes on the homeowners. Together, that’s a lot of money: potentially hundreds of millions of dollars. It makes Carroll’s heart beat faster when she contemplates having the power to snap her fingers and—just like that!—raise hundreds of millions for her pet causes.
Think of how many friends she can give good jobs to! She can reward all those pals who helped her climb the greasy pole to the top, all the way to the Oakland.City.Council. Quite an achievement for a poor girl who, just a few years ago, was homeless and squatting illegally in someone else’s house. And lest Carroll Fife’s conscience ever bother her, no problem: she can tell herself that she’s helping the homeless, as God-given a cause as ever chanced to fall Carroll Fife’s way. And then she can tell her voters that she did exactly what they wanted her to do: she took money from the “rich” and gave it, Robin Hood-style, to the poor.
You, dear Oakland sucker, are in Carroll Fife’s gun sights. If you own any property, she’ll slap a new parcel tax on it faster than you can say “grift.” If you buy something, she’ll slap a new sales tax on it. You think coffee is expensive now? Just wait! Carroll Fife will raise the minimum wage in the name of equity so that a barista will earn $30 an hour, which should make your mocha-choca cinnamon-infused latte cost around, say, $12. And if you bitch about it, Carroll Fife and the idiots who follow her will call you a greedy little prick. They might even cancel you.
There are about 250,000 adults living in Oakland. If you’re Carroll Fife, you do the math like this: You figure you can extort an additional $250 a year from each of them, through all your new taxes. That adds up to $62,500,000. Not bad for a quick haul! Carroll is practically orgasming in monetary power now, swimming in a sleazy pool of bucks like Scrooge McDuck naked from the waist down. Let’s see: We’ll give half to anti-violence programs, and we’ll give the other half to equity programs. That means that every one of Carroll’s colleagues on the City Council will get a hefty chunk of change they can give to their favorite unions. Which means, of course, that all the other Council members will be beholden to Carroll Fife. The unions, ever grateful for Carroll’s largesse, will work even harder for Carroll. She now has a Seat For Life. Don’t even think about running against Carroll Fife. She’ll crush you with one flick of her manicured middle finger.
And so Oakland ends up with Soviet-style government. Answerable to no one but the union paymasters. Invisible to outside inquiry. Somebody’s making a lot of money, but who? It’s not you or me. Could it be Carroll Fife? Don’t waste your time trying to find out. She might be buying her power suits these days from Ralph Lauren, but she’s still the modest little girl from Muskegon Heights, Michigan, who came to Oakland to do good, and did well.
Steve Heimoff