This question has become central to the whole conversation about homelessness. By “incorrigibles” I mean the drug addicts and shiftless types who roam our streets, break into our cars, trash our city, and make life miserable for so many store owners. If you listen to the progressives, the answer is “We owe these poor, unfortunate people everything.” We not only need to feel compassion for them, we need to devote whatever resources it takes to cure them so they can re-enter society. And resources, of course, cost money, so we need to raise as much money as possible, even if that means taking money away from the traditional responsibilities of government—like police.

For the first time ever, I’m publishing something I didn’t write. It’s a Mercury-News analysis of the Libby Schaaf regime, and it’s spot-on, in my opinion. Read it, and ask yourself why in God’s name Oakland continues to elect disastrous incompetents to citywide office. I have my own theory, which I’ll reveal at the bottom.

Results of the new East Bay Express reader poll are astounding, when you consider how consistently left-of-center the free paper has been for decades. You would think that its readers share the paper’s anti-cop point of view. But the poll’s results strongly demonstrate that the vast majority of them are closer to the moderate policies we advocate here at the Coalition for a Better Oakland than they are to the progressive policies pushed by the likes of Carroll Fife and Sheng Thao.

Carroll Fife sat down with her pencil and came up with a great new idea: Put every resident of Oakland, every man, woman and child—some 434,000 in all—on the hook for $11,520, for a total of $5 billion. Then give that money to Black people in the form of reparations.

I sincerely hope Pamela Price is not under the illusion that she has a mandate to usher in a “new era of change and reform in Alameda County” when it comes to policing and crime.