I’ll have a new post next Monday, Jan. 6. I’ve had to lay low over the holidays, due to this damned disease I have and also to a bad cold I caught that’s wrecking my throat. It’s not COVID or the flu because I’m vaccinated against both. Maybe RSV?

Fremont, our sister city to the south and the fourth largest in the Bay Area, has done something that Oakland steadfastly refuses to do: crack down on illegal and dangerous homeless encampments. Their City Council, unlike our feckless one, just passed the strictest encampment policy in the Bay Area, mandating “the removal of personal property left on any public space—including buildings, parks, streets, open areas and waterways. It also allows authorities to enforce the abatement of belongings left unattended on public property for 24 hours or more.”

I want to start by praising Jimmy Carter. The Republicans have always loathed him because he epitomized decency as a human being, something their own politicians rarely demonstrate, and also because his life was a beautiful repudiation of the fake Christianity so often expressed by the hypocrites in the GOP.

Just a few random comments before I take the rest of the week off for the holidays:

Virtually alone among Bay Area big cities, Oakland defiantly continues to allow the worst encampments to despoil the city. From Lakeside Park to Mosswood to East 12th Street and the despicable mess along the Estuary, your pro-homeless government is resisting doing what everyone else is doing: Cleaning up the slums.