Another Mr. Hope 'N' Change Hits A (Blue) Wall

"Not a lot of love lost between Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums and the families of the four slain police officers who were laid to rest Friday.

None of the families requested that the mayor speak at the televised funeral - in fact, we're told, two families specifically asked that he not speak.

One of the slain officers went so far as to leave behind specific instructions in his emergency packet that Dellums not be asked to speak should the officer be killed in the line of duty."

-- Phillip Matier and Andrew Ross, on the only thing that could've made a sad occasion even sadder - Ron Dellums (above) saying nothing while running off at the mouth - with full coverage by The San Francisco Chronicle.

Fact: When Black People Finally Figure This Cult Shit Out - And How The NewAge Left Has Fucked Them With It - Man, They're Gonna Be Pissed!!!

It seems Rep. Barbara Lee, the famous anti-Iraq War politician, has a cultist working in her office, and helped a group of killer cultists because they're black.

Also (because of the preponderance of cultists, inside and outside of government, in the San Francisco Bay Area) there weren't too many places Chauncey Bailey - the journalist covering Oakland, California's Your Black Muslim Bakery cult - could go to escape his own murder, which happened on a crowded street in broad daylight.

The reporting on this story - and Bay Area cultism, period - has been atrocious, but let's go to The San Francisco Chronicle anyway:

Founded in 1968 by Yusuf Bey, the bakery professed an ethic of black self-reliance and empowerment. It had the support of numerous local politicians and police officials.

But the bakery went into a steep decline after Bey died in 2003.

Let's stop right here for a second. Notice there's no mention who those "politicians and police officials" are, or that they knew Yusuf Bey was a racist nutjob who did crazy rants for decades on the San Francisco public access TV station. Nor is there any mention that Bey "adopted" a number of girls and sexually abused them - including making them drink his urine.

No, the way this piece of crap "journalism" reads, you'd think we were discussing a nice community organizer - just as all cultists try to put forth a "nice" image of the sinister shit that they're up to - and everyone else, including the so-called "journalists," just go along.

O.K., let's go back to the version sanitized for public consumption:

By early 2006, Bey IV, one of Yusuf Bey's sons, was in charge. Prosecutors say some members of the bakery embarked on a string of crimes that ranged from vandalism targeting liquor stores to murder.

TMR again: Keep in mind, crimes such as these were being done by the cult long before Bey IV took over, with the police and politicians turning a blind eye merely because of the "uplifting" rhetoric (mixed with racist blather) the cult espoused. Sorry for interrupting - here's more:

Soon after taking over, Yusuf Bey IV went to court to seek protection for the bakery from its creditors. He was hoping to stave off a balloon payment coming due on the bakery's headquarters building on San Pablo Avenue in Oakland, records show.

However, as the case advanced in Bankruptcy Court, Bey IV had a change of heart. In June 2007, he asked a judge to let the bakery withdraw from the proceedings.

His request was fought by Saleem Bey [standing to the right of Barbara Lee, above] who is married to one of bakery founder Bey's daughters and led a faction that was trying to wrest control from Bey IV.

Saleem Bey had earlier tried but failed to convince the Bankruptcy Court that Yusuf Bey IV had taken control of the group through fraud. By mid-2007, he was still trying to show that Bey IV was not the rightful leader of the group and hoped to intercede in the reorganization proceedings.

In July 2007, a month before Bailey was killed, Bey IV went to Lee's office for help.

Leslie Littleton [Far right, above] who was then Lee's district director and now is Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums' deputy chief of staff, told prosecutors that Bey IV showed up unannounced at Lee's office with an entourage of bakery followers on July 11 and asked to speak with the congresswoman, who was not there.

Bey IV then asked Littleton for a letter of support for the bakery from Lee, Littleton told prosecutors. Time was pressing, as a Bankruptcy Court hearing was set for the next day.

Sandra Andrews [standing next to the lady in pink, above] a Lee staffer who has been close to bakery members, persuaded a reluctant Littleton to write the letter, Littleton told prosecutors. She told Littleton that Bey IV was "like a son" to her.

Check that shit out: now we've got the anti-war candidate's office working on behalf of a cult, led by a killer Lee's staff member views as "a son". It would be heartbreaking if it wasn't so typical of how everything related to cultism eventually pans out. As you will see, these people are everywhere.

The letter that Littleton wrote was addressed to the Internal Revenue Service trustee - not the Bankruptcy Court - but carried Lee's signature.

The letter asked the IRS, a major creditor, to delay its demand for $250,000 in back taxes from the bakery so Bey IV could "present a reasonable strategy for fulfilling his financial obligations."

Andrews delivered the support letter personally in the Bankruptcy Court the next day, an action that Lee's office has since called "a huge error of judgment" because the document was supposed to go only to the IRS trustee.

...It turned out that Saleem Bey had been at the bankruptcy hearing and had seen Andrews deliver Lee's support letter. Littleton said Saleem Bey had then warned her that Lee "faced public embarrassment when allegations of fraud and criminal wrongdoings became public," according to the summary of her interview with prosecutors.

And Saleem Bey had done more than get in touch with Lee's people, the investigative documents show. He had also brought Chauncey Bailey into the picture.

Bailey was a former Oakland Tribune reporter who had spent the previous two years working at the Oakland Post, a weekly that is aimed mainly at the city's African American community. His title at the newspaper was editor, but Bailey also regularly wrote stories on community groups and businesses.

Saleem Bey told investigators that he happened to run into Bailey on July 16 at the Post's offices on 14th Street. He said he had briefed Bailey on the bakery's financial problems, but that Bailey apparently already knew about them.

Saleem Bey also passed on details of allegations that Bey IV and other bakery members had been involved in violent crimes, he told prosecutors.

He said he would be a source for any story Bailey might do, but he did not want to be quoted by name, according to his account to prosecutors.

Bailey told Saleem Bey he was interested. As he was leaving, however, Bey ran into an advertising saleswoman for the Post, Nisa Bey, a former wife of bakery founder Yusuf Bey.

Later that same day, Saleem Bey told prosecutors, he got a call from someone at Your Black Muslim Bakery, who "advised him that people at the bakery were aware that Saleem was providing Chauncey with information detrimental to the bakery," according to prosecutors' notes.

Saleem Bey says he suspects Nisa Bey told bakery members of his meeting with Bailey. She denied doing so in interviews with The Chronicle and with prosecutors.

Saleem Bey talked to Bailey again the next day, July 17, he told prosecutors. In a 2007 interview with The Chronicle, he said he had reminded Bailey that he was supposed to be an anonymous source.

"You don't understand the gravity," he said he had told Bailey. "These dudes are killers."

Bailey told him that the Post's publisher, Paul Cobb, had decided not to run Bailey's story on the bakery because he was scared of the group's members and that Bey IV's followers were "thugs," according to notes of Saleem Bey's interview with district attorney's investigators.

Cobb has said publicly that he killed the story because it was not properly sourced.

Where to begin? This cult is literally "raping the community," it's in the congresswoman's staff, and at the local newspaper - but, while everyone else is risking their lives to get this mindblower of a story out, the publisher is found to be more scared than the reporters he's in charge of, and kills it. And here's the kicker:

This is just normal stuff in the San Francisco Bay Area.

The only thing that's unusual about it is a reporter was killed, so other reporters are, kind of, investigating - while, still, missing (or not caring about) The Big Picture of what's been occurring right under their noses. Why so little seems to make sense.

All this is just "business as usual" in the san Francisco bay Area. It's not just because it's Your Black Muslim Bakery we're talking about that this is happening. You notice, even after all this corrosion is exposed, there's been no outcry in the Bay - no sense of horror finally being revealed - why not?

Because it's just another cult story in the 'Frisco Bay, and we may as well be describing any of the nonsense associated with the mayor of Oakland, Ron Dellums (above) or the NewAge mayor of San Francisco, Gavin Newsom, and/or their allowing/assisting the One Taste cult, Falun Gong, etc., to flourish there - just as they did The People's Temple that claimed 900 lives.

How many people have been killed and/or terrorized by Your Black Muslim Bakery? Nobody knows. But, considering they've been pulling this crap since the Oh, so glorious year of 1968, we betcha 900 is the smallest number we could hope for.

And nobody's EVER come, or is coming, to their aid.

Except good ol' TMR.

(Now go back and read the rest of this heartbreaking story - and get righteously pissed off - it, and the silly reporting about it, deserves it.)

Just Say No (I Can't Believe I Just Wrote That)

"How do you say 'No' to the mayor's wife? I could lose my job. I'm afraid of her."

-- An anonymous staffer, getting all metrosexual about the issue of who runs Oakland, California since (my) Mayor Ron Dellums isn't, or so says the SFGate.

Zombies

How could they hang with that creep? What were Oakland's leaders thinking?

Those questions run through the mind in the wake of revelations of how Oakland politicians tolerated the thuggish, thieving conduct of Yusuf Bey and his followers. For years.

There was a city loan never repaid, high-profile visits to Bey's home base Your Black Muslim Bakery, muzzled police inquiries, go-easy letters to a sentencing judge, and help with a bankruptcy mess. At every turn, City Hall came through for a quasi-religious group that was more gangster than godly.

Only late in the game, when Bey's empire crumbled after the killing of local journalist Chauncey Bailey, did these enablers vanish.

In the rearview mirror, it was abysmal judgment. But it's more than that - it's the heart of cynical deal-making, the transactional politics that mixes risk and reward to produce a decision. It's what happens when leaders fail in a fundamental way to compute the full effects of a decision.

This short-term thinking may work when locating a freeway billboard or curbing liquor sales in corner stores. But it doesn't compute with criminals linked to rape, spousal abuse, murder and torture with a heated knife. Lives, many of them, were scarred by Bey and the violent conduct he spurred.

The explanations, if you can find one from his long-gone supporters, are plausible but soft: [Your Black Muslim Bakery] was a self-help beacon in a crime-soaked neighborhood. Ex-cons and the jobless benefited. The strong, even harsh ideals of the group sent a message of personal change and belief. That bad stuff? We had no idea, honest.

It's time for a history lesson. This spin was heard before, right across the bay where a parallel saga played out a generation ago. In the late 1970s, the Rev. Jim Jones likewise surrounded himself with big-shouldered bodyguards and a retinue of flunkies. He gave edgy speeches on civil rights and marched at housing eviction protests. His church nursed social programs and health care on a grimy corner in the Fillmore District. He was a wizard with the race card: a white preacher who led a congregation of largely black and poor followers. As in Oakland, the political set flocked to his Peoples Temple to be part of the show. Doubt was not encouraged.

The names of the visitors are gilt-edged Hall of Famers. In San Francisco, it was Willie Brown, gay icon Harvey Milk and then-Mayor George Moscone, who named Jones to the Housing Authority. In Oakland, Bey's chums included former mayor and now Attorney General Jerry Brown, Mayor Ron Dellums and U.S. Rep. Barbara Lee. There were plenty of others on both guest lists.

Did these outsiders, on their closely-escorted visits, suspect something amiss or troubling? Did they wonder how either of these airless worlds operated? Were they worried about future embarrassment if the clearly eccentric Jones or Bey had a darker side?

All of them are too smart and seasoned to have missed the trouble signs. Instead they put up with these deluded leaders and hoped things wouldn't get worse. In the meantime, the bargain held with the politicos picking up a high-vis ally while the two decidedly dangerous "community leaders" bought the respect they craved.

The two stories are about more than political back-scratching. Both Jones and Bey were never seriously investigated until late in the game. Jones ran a string of rest homes and foster care facilities that he milked for income. He sheared off pension checks from his elderly followers and sold their possessions in exchange for a promised-land journey to Guyana, where their lives ended. There was no official inquiry until Rep. Leo Ryan went to Guyana in 1978 to check on temple members at the behest of their worried families. That mission unhinged Jones, who oversaw the forced deaths of some 900 followers, including his own suicide.

Bey, who died from cancer in 2003, was a less spectacular saga. His business enterprises brought him respect and standing. His troops chased off drug dealers, which led City Hall and police higher-ups to protect him from investigation. If that sounds like a defensible bargain, you're forgetting the people raped, abused and killed by Bey's soldiers.

There's an age-old question always asked when a monster falls: What have we learned to avoid a repeat? Judging from these two stories, there's a clear answer. Absolutely nothing.

--Marshall Kilduff is a San Francisco Chronicle editorial writer.