Local progressive naysayers paint a false picture that says the only people getting richer are Big Tech Scrooge McDucks. It's not true: Michael Strain unearths historical and current trends in the Wall Street Journal.
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One of the more demoralizing outgrowths of the increasingly hard-left drift by local progressives is how they cannot have "friends with different political viewpoints." Alas, they've stopped showing up with the gang for Friday night drinks at Cinebar. Andrew Doyle in the U.K.'s Spectator shares a similar experience.
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The second round of San Jose's Equity Training Workshop occurred in early February, with much discussion of slippery concepts such as systemic injustice and concealed bias. It recalled William Voegeli's observations on the never-ending nature of identity politics in the Fall 2019 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.
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Santa Clara County workers' labor dispute lingers against a backdrop of decreasing union membership nationwide. Jarrett Skorup of the Mackinac Center explores the role of the 2018 Supreme Court Janus decision (which ruled that workers cannot be required to pay union dues or fees) in the decline.
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Eccentric, insightful, controversial, and never dull, Roger Scruton, who passed away last month, shook up the philosophical and political world for most of his 92 years. He was a conservative, of a uniquely British sort, and his writings stood athwart tyrannical ideologies of every kind, and for freedom and beauty. Anne Applebaum in the U.K.'s Spectator offers a fitting tribute.
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Using San Francisco as a case study, James Sutton of NationalReview.com examines the arguments behind attributing the housing crisis to local business growth, and finds them unconvincing attempts to divert blame from local government.
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Task forces come and go, but city and county regulations still stymie new business and expansion of existing businesses, to everyone's detriment. Howard Baetjer, Jr. in Reason magazine explores a radical way to provide effective regulations, but without all the downsides (hint: use markets).
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State and local tax revenues are soaring, yet 231 local sales and parcel taxes increases and bond issues on the March 3 ballot in California. Dan Walters in CalMatters re-tells the age-old story: pensions.
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This time, sanity prevails. But escape clauses and tricky book-keeping hide how tax monies can get spent in opposition to voter preference, as recent Measure B kerfuffle illustrates.
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Edward Ring of California Policy Center continues his analysis of the ongoing Santa Clara County worker dispute, and reveals that payouts to employees are surprisingly high, causing unavoidable financial trouble for the County Supervisors.
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San Jose's upcoming Measure E says it's all about subsidized affordable housing, but the reality is future councils may spend its proceeds on exploding pension costs. Robert Fellner, of Transparent California, explains how cities hoodwink voters.
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The City of San Jose has engaged a group of consultants to help the city better understand its perceived systemic injustices and develop more "equitable" policies. Steven Malanga of the Manhattan Institute unearths the surprising and extreme measures these groups champion.
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