PHOTO: Oakland, California, Mayor Sheng Thao and some musical friends.
I’ve never been to Oakland, California, but I’ve heard a few things about the city. A popular gun club called the Black Panthers got its start there, for example.
It’s the second U.S. city, after Denver, to decriminalize psilocybin mushrooms. Other than that, I seem to recall that it’s close to San Francisco. Geographically.
But Oakland has been in the news lately.
Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao gave her first ‘State of the City’ address on Tuesday, marking the first opportunity to present her vision for how best to tackle the city’s major issues, including crime, homelessness and sports.
— from Governing.com, October 2023.
It would appear the people of Oakland, and their elected officials, are currently facing three major challenges.
Crime.
Homelessness.
Sports.
A lot of cities are struggling with crime. There is a lot of crime in Washington DC, for example. But you would expect that, because Congress meets there regularly. And the President lives there. (And the President’s son?)
Homelessness is another regular feature in American cities, these days. In cities all around the world, for that matter. We even have homelessness in rural Colorado, but we just call it “camping”, so that it seems like a pleasant recreational activity.
But I haven’t heard of a lot of cities that are seriously attempting to do something about sports. My heart goes out to Mayor Sheng Thao. I mean, how in the world can you deal with an issue like that?
We have sports here in Pagosa Springs, but it hasn’t become a serious problem yet. Although, concerns have been expressed about the Pickleball Club, which has grown from from a group of 30 or so individuals, to nearly 300 members.
The weekly Pagosa Spring SUN newspaper has done an excellent job of tracking the sports activities at the high school, but those are just children, learning how to do sports, and I would hardly consider them an issue, in the same way sports is a issue for Mayor Thao in Oakland.
Probably the biggest sports issue in Pagosa Springs is the Pagosa Springs Golf Club. As distasteful as it might be to mention in a family-friendly news source, almost 10% of Archuleta County residents play golf at least once a year. That’s, like , nearly 1,400 golfers.
Which brings me to my main point.
Has anyone been paying attention to the fact that we keep electing politicians who play golf on a regular basis?
Am I the only one who is seeing a pattern here?
And we wonder why the federal government is such a mess!
But I’m hopeful for the future. It sounds like Mayor Sheng Thao fully intends to tackle the issue in Oakland.
If she’s successful, I can imagine her being a Presidential candidate in 2028 or 2032. And I can tell you already, she has my vote.
Yes, she’s a Democrat with musical friends. But who else is willing to step up to the plate and take a swing?
My apologies for that particular metaphor. I couldn’t help it.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all.