Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Life in "Progress" City - Oakland edition

From the city of Oakland, where Dog the Bounty hunter couldn't find a registered republican.

Earlier this week, I did a post about violence on an Oakland city bus. Sidney Independent was nice enough to comment with this one.

"And there are plenty of towns that have had nothing but conservative leadership that are run just as bad as you would characterize Oakland."


Really? Well first, I guess we need to determine just how bad is Oakland run...........

LAST JUNE, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums publicly proclaimed that he would take a 10 percent pay cut. Eighteen thousand dollars wasn't going to make much of a dent in the city of Oakland's then $83 million shortfall. However, the gesture was clearly meant to give Oakland residents the impression that the city's top elected official was willing to share some of the pain brought on by the city's budgetary woes.


So far that's not really backing up Sidney's comment. But hey, Mayor Dellums is competent, right?

The mayor's embarrassing financial problems are a matter of public record. He and his wife, Cynthia, still owe the Internal Revenue Service more than $252,000 in back taxes and penalties — which one can reasonably presume was a major factor in the mayor's decision not to honor his pledge.

Dellums also has been trying to sell a house he inherited from his mother to pay off his debts.

Yet Dellums' financial problems do not excuse that the mayor misled the public into believing that he had taken a pay cut, when he had not.


But when you factor in that Oakland has one of the highest murder rates in the country as well as depression like unemployment numbers I think one would be hard pressed to find few cities run worse than Oakland. Detroit, New Orleans, Cleveland and Washington DC all come to mind but there hasn't been a republican in those cities since man invented time.

But hey, I'm still open. If anyone out there can educate me on what conservative run city is actually worse than Oakland, I'm all ears.

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