Not having a car, I take BART a lot. I have used the system since I moved to California in 1978. In the intervening 45 years, I’ve witnessed BART’s steady downward slide, from a safe, clean (if crowded) system to today’s chaos, grime and danger. I still take BART these days by force majeure, but every time I do, I wish there were some other way of transporting my body around.

The Oakland teachers strike may seem a little remote from our usual concerns about cops and camps, but actually the issues are closely intertwined. Wokeness in the strikers’ union, the Oakland Education Association, has become so malignant that half of OEA’s board itself, as well as many teachers and parents, are outraged at some of the union’s demands.

Here we go: the next episode of “Reparations” began over the weekend, with the release of the California Reparations Task Force’s report on what kind of financial handout Black Californians should get.

Good heavens, everybody is demanding reparations. The State of California; the cities of San Francisco and Oakland; Alameda County, and now, even the Oakland Education Association, the teachers union that is currently on strike.

Sheng Thao and her woke pals on the City Council are saying how proud they are of Oakland’s new budget. What they’re not talking about (because they’re ashamed of it) is how severely they’ve cut staffing at the Oakland Police Department.