Going soft in my old age

One of my most favorite non-Alameda blogs is V Smoothe’s A Better Oakland.   She has that delicious blend of snarky and factual down to a science and it’s what makes her blog special.   Plus she has this pink and brown theme right now that is adorable.   Anyway, reading her latest posts about the Oakland Mayoral election makes me realized how soft I’ve gotten.    That’s right, soft.

Maybe it’s because there has been so much negativity from external sources — and I don’t mean external as in outside Alameda, but external as in outside of the candidates’ campaigns themselves — that I just didn’t want to add to it.    Or maybe it’s because I was sort of tired of the whole “Who’s paying Lauren now” game that arises every election year.   So yes, I’ve pulled punches that I would normally have let flying, because being accused of being on SunCal’s payroll, being a shill for Candidate X, Y, or Z, or “personally attacking” people when I critique their own actions or issues just gets really old after a while.   So yes, soft, I’ve been smushy this campaign season.

Normally I would have written posts that examined the candidates past records, such as the fact that Jean Sweeney has written some fairly outrageous things like when she accused City staff and some Planning Board members of trying to overturn Measure A because they used MTC allocated money to have a consultant develop Land Use and Transportation Option Plans for Alameda Point.   Saying that:

Last Thursday, the Planning Staff hired consultants using a grant from MTC to present a “convincing” case for overturning Measure A at Alameda Point.  This charge was led by the Senior Planning staff and the Vice President of the Planning Board.

…

It is all outrageous.  Planning has no business using MTC money (our taxpayer money) to campaign for the overthrow of Measure A. It was admitted by their own hired consultant that we will have sufficient density to support mass transit.

And then making it really personal, when she talks about one of the Planning Board members:

We were told by the Planning Board VP on Thursday that it was hard telling her daughter why she had to be there that evening.  I should think it would be hard to tell your child that you have led the charge to overturn our density ordinance after 35 years of protecting our city from over development.

Continuing on, Jean Sweeney writes that:

Catellus has asked for the overthrow of Measure A in their proposal to be the developer at Alameda Point. If we can’t get a developer to make Measure A work, then we should try one that can. The Preliminary Development plan is compliant with Measure A.

Of course, as I pointed out at that time (because this was well during the whole pick a new Master Developer for Alameda Point time), Catellus was actually the only developer to say that they would retain Measure A in their Proposal, but back then Catellus was the boogeyman, seriously someone at Catellus should be sending SunCal a muffin basket for taking that mantel away from them.

Full letter here on Berekely Daily Planet

Then there were the allegations that Jean Sweeney leveled during the time when the 2006 elections were fully underway and the “Action Alameda” slate of Doug deHaan, Eugenie Thompson, and Pat Bail were running under their “slow growth mantra” to save the City.  Jean Sweeney alleged that the City of Alameda was targeting Park Street businesses that supported the Action Alameda Slate with an audit!  She wrote into the Alameda Journal and claimed that:

Recently at the car show on Park Street, I stopped in an eatery with my campaign shirt on and was told by the proprietor that his business is being audited by the City of Alameda because he had a Doug de Haan sign in his window.

Evidently that is not the only business that is being audited for the same reason.

I protest my tax money being spent to carry out dirty politics.

Of course it turned out to be baseless.   Not to mention that she was one of the appellants that protested the creation of the Ad Hoc group to talk about talking about Measure A.

So yeah, normally I would be writing posts  like that, because the voter memory is rather short and while a candidate can speak to being a “consensus builder” sometimes the evidence doesn’t bear that out.   But I haven’t been because, honestly, the shenanigans of SunCal and the Taxpayer Network makes it really difficult to do so without being lumped in as part of some grand conspiracy to destroy Alameda.

Back to V Smoothe, at the end of her post explaining why she is voting for Don Perata for Mayor, adds a disclaimer that I found interesting in light of the circular accusations that always arise when someone puts their opinions out there that may not be in line with  disgruntled readers out there, she says:

I have been putting myself and my opinions out there for public criticism and debate for more than four years, and I have given tremendous amounts of time to trying to help Oakland move in the direction I believe it should go. And I think that, through my work, I should have established a certain level of trust — if not in my judgment, then at least in my integrity. And if you disagree? Well, if my history isn’t enough to convince you of my honesty of heart, then there’s nothing new I can say that is going to.

And really, that’s all any blogger can do.

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