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 Several weeks ago, I wrote a column outlining the problems associated with Oakland's Measure Y.
Measure Y, which allowed the city to collect roughly $20 million annually through a parcel tax, has clearly failed to live up to its billing when it passed with 70 percent approval in 2004.
What was proposed as a public-safety measure — funding the fire department, violence prevention programs, community policing and other related projects — has become a mismanaged fiscal disaster where no one within city government can offer a definitive accounting for the tax dollars collected.
Those who support Measure Y cited the column as the type of "neoconservative, uninformed" commentary that is not useful in our public discourse.
I also received several complimentary e-mails from those who identified themselves as being with the tea party movement. Their laudatory comments suggested my observations about wasteful spending and local government chicanery were in line with the frustrations they have felt for some time.
Just below the surface of the tea party praise and liberal acrimony lies an unwitting arrogance suggesting they, and they alone, are the overseers of what is right for society.
This speaks to the problem within our current political discourse, be it on local or national issues, where one embraces a "truth" that serves as the beginning and end of all communication relative to the subject.
My documented disagreements about the implementation of Measure Y were met with erroneous charges of neoconservatism. When does citing an ineffective policy that has failed to live up to the promise made to Oakland residents reduce me to a fraternal brother of former Vice President Dick Cheney?
The acknowledged surprise by those who belong to the tea party movement leaves me to conclude that I had been temporarily released from the shackles of liberal groupthink that subscribes to taxing hardworking individuals ad nauseam to redistribute the funds to less-deserving deadbeats.
Given the complexity of the problems that confront us at the national, state and local levels, I wish the issues were as easy as some would have us believe. There is no such thing as going back to what the Founders intended — a favorite slogan among the tea party faithful. But that's about the extent of its value.
Assuming one could state what the Founders intended with any degree of certainty, one would be forced to respond negatively to the following questions based on what transpired after the Constitution was ratified in 1787:
Did the Founders intend for women to vote?
Did the Founders intend for nonwhite males to vote?
Did the Founders intend for white males who did not own land to vote?
Who's left in the vaunted grouping of what the Founders intended? Unless there are qualifiers of which I am unaware, many of those who advocate for going back to what the Founders intended do so against their own self-interest.
Our current discourse is akin of free agency in professional sports. Rare are the days when one's favorite players remain with the home team for their entire career. As a result, one is more apt to root for the uniform represented than the players who adorn them.
If an individual who is identified as liberal takes a position on a specific issue, some will endorse it before a word is uttered, while others will condemn it using similar methodology.
The criticism I received regarding Measure Y suggests whatever the government does is OK and it is only neoconservatives who criticize such policies even though there is an overt, systematic and documented misuse of taxpayer dollars.
How pedantic to offer that disagreement can only come from those that one is philosophically opposed?
My differences with the tea party movement is its loose interpretation of history to justify its actions, calling all things "unconstitutional" that it opposes without specifically citing what portion of the Constitution has been violated. And the level of their anger over the last 18 months seems incongruent given the genesis of the challenges began at least six years prior at a time when they were noticeably silent.
But I commend the party's commitment to stay engaged. Those of us on the sidelines could learn something from the party's ability to hold elected officials accountable.
Yet the various reactions to my Measure Y piece demonstrate that tea party members and their left wing counterparts are miles apart philosophically, and they share the debilitating trait of believing only their world view is normative.
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