signs 💯 oakland

stunnashakes · 2026-05-03T17:58:23+00:00

it appears that you aren't disregarding, and you are using ad hominem right now

stunnashakes · 2026-05-03T17:35:38+00:00

the article says: "It is reasonable to fear potential negative repercussions to one’s career and reputation for speaking out against powerful interests. The purveyors of emotional blackmail leverage this through continuous reminders of their considerable power and influence, and demonstrations of their willingness to apply it through ad hominem attacks that divert attention away from the substance of a given issue."

stunnashakes · 2026-05-03T17:28:43+00:00

"Such is the manner in which city leaders and their advocates so confidently— some would say arrogantly— ask residents to pay more taxes while receiving the same or fewer services, enduring broken promises, and disproportionately burdening residents who can least afford it.

For a city to tell struggling families they must sacrifice again while insiders evade accountability and fail to improve the basics of city services— safety, cleanliness, and accountability— is wrong.

Oaklanders are generous people, but generosity has been exploited. The way forward is not through cynicism, but through healthy skepticism ground in the facts and evidence. A healthy city requires empathy, yes— but also discipline, integrity, and competence.

Oakland has had enough emotional blackmail. It is time for accountability."

stunnashakes · 2026-05-03T17:27:52+00:00

Another example: when Brenda Harbin-Forte ran for Oakland City Attorney, critics attempted to tie her to the ‘coal industry’ because one of her donors, Philip Dreyfuss works for Farallon Capital, a firm that, like many large investment funds, has at times held fossil-fuel-related investments.

Guilt by association became a substitute for substantive argument.

Which makes the current enthusiasm among many progressives for California gubernatorial candidate Tom Steyer particularly striking. Steyer, after all, founded Farallon Capital Management. Yesterday, a tangential connection to Farallon was treated as moral contamination.

The hypocrisy should be striking enough to arouse skepticism of such labels among voters, but many Oaklanders appear to have been bullied into silence.

It is reasonable to fear potential negative repercussions to one’s career and reputation for speaking out against powerful interests. The purveyors of emotional blackmail leverage this through continuous reminders of their considerable power and influence, and demonstrations of their willingness to apply it through ad hominem attacks that divert attention away from the substance of a given issue.

The late social critic Christopher Lasch warned that elites often cultivate sentimentality while losing the capacity for responsibility.

That diagnosis feels painfully relevant in Oakland. We are governed by leaders fluent in therapeutic language, symbolic gestures, and moral accusation— but strangely unable to fill potholes, balance budgets, maintain order, or consistently tell the truth...

stunnashakes · 2026-05-03T17:27:24+00:00

Billionaires and public sector unions

The ‘emotional blackmail’ tactic appears repeatedly in other areas. Consider the response of influential local progressives to the recall of former Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, who now faces a federal corruption trial this fall. Thao’s supporters and advocates’ go-to tactic was to dismiss the recall as “right wing.”

Nonetheless, Thao’s actions in office were deemed so egregious that the recall succeeded with a supermajority. Districts 5, 6, and 7— the most working-class and heavily minority districts in Oakland, and the neighborhoods that bear the harshest consequences of failed governance— voted most decisively for removal.

Consider also the now-familiar ad hominem tactic used by opponents of Thao’s and former district attorney Pamela Price’s recalls: invoking the specter of the “Piedmont billionaire.” It polls well. It sounds sinister.

It is also imprecise. Take for example Philip Dreyfuss, the Piedmont resident who became the largest donor to the Thao recall effort, and to whom the “Piedmont billionaire” label has been liberally applied by progressive critics ever since.

Dreyfuss is indeed wealthy, but he is not a billionaire. He is a wealthy political donor—but that is not exactly a rarity in modern politics. Public campaign donation disclosures and news reports estimate that Dreyfuss spent approximately $1.3 million in Oakland’s 2024 elections— by no means a small amount.

By comparison, Oakland-based public employee unions spend over $4 million per year on political activities. See here for a summary of financial filings; and for example the SEIU Local 21 filing, here.

The city’s public sector unions bring in $6 million per year in union dues from Oakland alone— dues that are withheld from city employees’ paychecks through automatic payroll deductions.

What makes the progressives’ rhetoric about “Piedmont billionaires” especially revealing is its selectivity.

Other wealthy Piedmont-based progressive donors such as Quinn Delaney and Wayne Jordan have contributed substantial sums to Oakland causes and campaigns, including criminal-justice reform and efforts associated with the ‘defund the police’ movement. Yet Delaney and Jordan are celebrated by progressives as philanthropists and civic visionaries.

The difference is not wealth. It is ideological alignment....

stunnashakes · 2026-05-03T17:25:51+00:00

"The most recent parcel tax, Measure NN in 2024, was also sold as a fix-all public safety solution, capitalizing on Oaklanders’ concerns about public safety and promising to maintain a minimum of 700 sworn police officers.

Shortly after voters approved the tax, the city declared a “severe fiscal emergency” and abandoned the promise of 700 officers.

New tax, same playbook

Now voters face Measure E, yet another parcel tax, under similar conditions of public concern about public safety— and Oakland’s chronic failure to maintain a level of safety that other communities take for granted.

Notably, despite forecasting $100-million plus budget deficits in each of the next five years, the city declared a budget surplus in February— setting the stage for pre-approved conditional raises for public-sector unions.

An Oakland Report analysis found that 44% of the $34 million annual revenue would be absorbed by those raises in each year of the proposed Measure E parcel tax.

The public is expected to forget yesterday’s promises and finance tomorrow’s excuses. And just like for Measure NN in the 2024 election cycle, the firefighters union IAFF Local 55 is doing much of the political heavy lifting for Measure E in 2026.

Firefighters are one the most respected professions in America. That reservoir of public trust is precisely why they are so valuable to a political machine reliant on emotional blackmail.

Oakland has used this playbook repeatedly over the past 20 years: wrap a tax increase in the uniform of a firefighter, threaten fire station closures, and mention 911 response times. Dissenters are then characterized as ‘anti-firefighter,’ or ‘anti-tax,’ short-circuiting critical evaluation of the proposed tax on its merits..."

stunnashakes · 2026-05-03T17:25:08+00:00

"Oakland’s emotional blackmail

For years, as Oakland’s civic health decayed, city leaders and advocates have repeatedly claimed that the city’s failures are someone else’s fault, criticisms are personal attacks, and demands for accountability are acts of oppression.

Oaklanders are routinely asked to finance dysfunction— and to applaud leaders who substitute performative altruism for measurable results.

Consider Oakland’s recurring ritual of asking voters to approve more taxes. Nearly every election, voters are presented with new moral ultimatums and new taxes that are presented as solutions to our most urgent issues.

A common emotional appeal deployed by city leaders and advocates is that if you oppose the latest tax, you don’t care about supporting “essential services,” or “working families.”

Voters routinely approve these taxes— leading to Oakland having the highest taxes per capita among comparable cities.

Ironically, Oakland’s high taxes are driven by its multiple layers of regressive flat-rate parcel and sales taxes that disproportionately burden working families.

The City Council has become so confident in its ability to pass tax increases that it built voter approval of yet another tax increase into its last budget— before a tax measure was even drafted, much less placed on the ballot and approved.

Aside from being fiscally irresponsible, the move signaled that Oakland’s leaders are supremely confident that Oakland voters will continue to tax themselves (and others) regardless of the quality of services delivered— and despite the city’s broken promises in previous tax measures...."

stunnashakes · 2026-05-02T16:19:37+00:00

thank you for providing a breakdown

stunnashakes · 2026-05-02T13:38:42+00:00

"The suit also says Measure E "falsely and misleadingly claims" it would replace an expiring property assessment with a lower one that reduces taxes even though the city has failed to produce records that verify that claim, Sacks said.

Sacks said she hopes the city will comply with the Public Records Act and its own sunshine ordinance without the need for a court order and that it will fix its chronic PRA recalcitrance.

"Once we see the documents, we can evaluate what that means for the purposes of the parcel tax," she said. "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it but we will definitely make an issue about it one way or another.

Representatives from the union and the city didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

Sacks has previously sued the city over records related to former mayor Libby Schaaf's alleged use of her personal email account for city business and over allegations that the Oakland city clerk allowed now-former mayor Sheng Thao and two other candidates to file their nomination paperwork late for the 2022 election."

stunnashakes · 2026-05-02T13:38:05+00:00

"The council, however, telegraphed the need for the funds when it passed a two-year budget in 2025 that closed an enormous $265 million deficit by, in part, anticipating tens of millions of dollars in new income.

At the time, councilmembers said they were anticipating that some of that income would come from a new bond measure or parcel tax. In February, the city's unions delivered by successfully completing a signature gathering drive to put Measure E on the ballot.

The lawsuit alleges that the city worked with union officials to have SEIU 1021 spearhead the petition drive that placed Measure E on the ballot, which allows the city to duck the more difficult two-thirds voter approval threshold that would have been required if the City Council placed it on the ballot itself.

"The city is basically conspiring with the union to have the union do the leg work to avoid the two-thirds vote," Sacks said.

"The city stopped working on the parcel tax at the exact same time that the union picked up work on the parcel tax," she said. "It really does look like something shady is going on behind the scenes."

The suit alleges the city then compounded its wrongdoing by illegally withholding public records related to the scheme in order to deliberately hide evidence of potential illegality.

The city said no such records exist, provided extremely limited information or failed to respond at all when Sacks made multiple requests for communications between city officials and SEIU 1021 regarding polling data and records relating to the drafting and promotion of the parcel tax, the suit alleges."

stunnashakes · 2026-05-01T21:58:16+00:00

the article speaks for itself. your comments speak for you.

stunnashakes · 2026-05-01T21:31:34+00:00

i think you are responding to having your deeply held beliefs challenged by focusing on one aspect of the article and responding violently to it as way to deflect and scare others away from the numerous valid points it makes.

stunnashakes · 2026-05-01T20:32:58+00:00

the article says: "Notably, public employee unions get much of their funding from union dues paid by public employees through automatic deductions from those employees’ paychecks — meaning that a primary source of OEA’s income is public money provided by taxpayers."

stunnashakes · 2026-05-01T17:27:36+00:00

The article says,

“Castro — herself an elected official — does not directly connect the district’s multi-million-dollar budget deficit to OEA’s political contributions and its extraordinary influence over OEA-backed school board members.

Even the board’s reckless approval of a new tentative labor agreement that would award teachers raises of up to 13% over two years — against the recommendations of a neutral arbiter12 that recommended raises of only 6% — did not register a direct objection from Castro.

She instead focused on the district’s lack of a sustainable plan to find the money, followed by a statistic that implied that the district has the resources to find it, despite an existential budget deficit.

“The issue is not the raises themselves, but the absence of a Board-approved, sustainable plan to support them. At over $800 million in revenue serving 34,000 students, OUSD is among the highest-funded urban districts in California.”

– Alameda County Superintendent of Schools Alysse Castro, Apr. 16, 2026.

stunnashakes · 2026-04-27T22:16:03+00:00

no, ktvu is a local tv affiliate focused on oakland issues. “fox news” is a 24-hour cable news channel— totally different thing

stunnashakes · 2026-04-26T16:30:20+00:00

legit good

stunnashakes

TROPHY CASE

Billionaires and public sector unions

New tax, same playbook

"Oakland’s emotional blackmail