Carroll Fife is a progressive politician who has promised to create “permanently affordable housing” in Oakland.

Well, not into a bar, but their lives intersect on Broadway in Oakland on a sunny, mid-Autumn day. On my way walking home from Kaiser on Tuesday, I stopped by Sprouts for a bite to eat. It was a nice day, on the cool side but sunny. I figured I’d get one of their $5.99 sandwiches, which are really the best deal in town. Normally, I would also have got a cappuccino or cold brew to wash it down with, but the Starbucks next door recently closed, a big loss for the area, but not unexpected due to the crime and filth that plague most of our commercial corridors.

One of the most perplexing political questions of our time is “Why do people vote against their own interests?”

The latest Oakland bureaucracy to go broke is the Oakland Unified School District, where the superintendent just announced the district is going to have to cut $100 million from its budget next year--20 percent of OUSD’s general fund budget. That’s a lot of money, and right now no one knows where it will come from.

Oakland’s been pretty quiet lately. No horrendous crimes that dominate the headlines. Incidents of specific crime remain high, but this is Oakland; realistically, we won’t get down to the normal level of other cities anytime soon.