I love the way our human minds work by association. I was trying hard yesterday, for some reason I don’t recall, to recollect the name of a certain Sixties rock band from San Francisco. Jefferson Airplane? No, that wasn’t it. Not that famous. Not the Grateful Dead either. Something else, not so well known.

“Service Alert: BART is recovering from an earlier problem. There is a 20-minute delay system wide due to an earlier medical emergency at Embarcadero.”

Republicans, and some Democrats, say Gavin Newsom is just an ambitious twit. Yes, he is ambitious. I’ve known him since the early 1990s and his drive—for precisely what, I didn’t know back then, but it was evident he was in high-gear pursuit of something—was astounding. He clearly was a young man in a hurry. By 2000, I thought I’d figured out what he was in pursuit of: the presidency of the United States. And I was right.

For the last few years I’ve admired Matt Mahan and San Jose for their (relatively) tough stance on homeless encampments. I say “relatively” because at least they tried to clear the camps, even if they haven’t been fully successful. Meanwhile, Oakland didn’t do squat regarding our camps, because our compassionate woke politicians feel sorry for the addicts and thieves.

The corrupt Service Employees International Union Local 1021, which has run Oakland for years, is getting the first challenge ever to its authoritarian hegemony, and it’s an existential one that could put it out of business. A rival union, Oakland Workers United, is undertaking a massive publicity drive to attract new members away from SEIU. And that drive appears to be working.