I am sure there are wasteful social welfare programs that can be cut in Oakland and elsewhere. Police are one of the few government agencies/programs that should only be cut as a last resort.
Every town, city & state should be slashing education. We spend way too much on each child and get precious little in return. Education is the big fat cow the unions are trying to protect at all costs.
Read the book “Crazy Like A Fox” by Ben Chavis and Carey Blakely. Chavis is an Indian who become an educator and takes over a charter school in Oakland that had been created for their American Indian community. When Chavis gets there, the kids are drinking 40’s, smoking pot and having sex on a mattress behind a tool shed - and it is a middle school, in disrepair no less. There is an absentee rate of 35%, the kids cannot read nor write and they are blanking on the state tests. The liberal intelligentsia of Oakland, fools that they are, are teaching the kids bead making and banging on drums to keep them in touch with their Indian “heritage”. You will be cheering as Chavis throws the bead bums out, fires the idiots and spits the Oakland establishment in the face. He attacks the Democrats, even though he is one, for trashing the education of minority children. They have run it for decades and produced nothing but union contracts, while the kids cannot even read. He yells at them for always throwing too much money at the problem and having no accountability. He spends less money but gets great results.
This man does a job and he takes a school of illiterates, writes new rules, drops the truancy to almost zero, rips off the makeup, pulls up their pants, shaves the heads of disobedient students, stops rotating kids in different classes by anchoring them with one teacher and makes the school reach the top 5 schools in California based on standardized tests. He beats the rich white schools in the suburbs. Well, then the Governor, the press and even Laura Ingraham shows up. This guy Chavis has answers and I think he could make big things happen in inner city schools if he was given the helm. He gets results where the Democratic led education establishment has failed for decades.
Chavis loves No Child Left Behind because it makes schools accountable - and that is why the teachers unions hate it.
Oh and guess what - the education establishment hates him - what else is new.