Nearly a year after making excuses for violent protests in the City of Roses, Mayor Ted Wheeler has finally had enough and is asking DA's to start prosecuting lawbreakers. Aaron Mesh reports for the Willamette Weekly.
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Four months after Mayor Sam LIccardo's home was trashed by left wing activists, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's home received similar violent treatment, as vandals spray-painted anarchist imagery and messages on her garage door, and left a pig's head and fake blood in the driveway. By the way, no one has yet been charged in the vandalization of Liccardo's home, even though the event was captured on video. Website TMZ reports.
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Racial justice protests, pandemic deaths and ongoing environmental concerns may signal new ways of thinking about how and why cities can make sense, putting long-held New Urbanist shibboleths to the test. Christian Britschgie explores for Reason magazine.
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The founders of Opportunity Now recap a banner year of journalism and thank our readers for their support.
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In his exclusive investigative reporting, Mark Lisheron unearthed a story local media wouldn't touch: how county and city DA's refused to charge almost everybody arrested or cited with lawbreaking during the Floyd and associated protests throughout the year. Lisheron shows how these "jailbreak" local DA's are acting in a way that is consistent with the social justice goals of other progressive DAs, including those in Portland and Seattle.
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In his exclusive report for Opportunity Now, Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau Institute explored how New Urbanist thinking and misguided anti-market policies created one of the most unaffordable housing markets in the world--and how to fix it.
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VTA's budget woes and dubious expenditures were all the news in 2020, but these were just the latest faceplants for one of the worst-performing transit agencies in the U.S. Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau Institute explored the issue in this deep-dive, exclusive analysis for Opportunity Now, which social media commentators described as "the only must-read analysis of local transit woes."
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Noted legal scholar Tony Francois is a Senior Attorney at the Pacific Legal Foundation and longtime Californian. In this exclusive interview with Opportunity Now, he examined the juridical issues around vandalizing the mayor's house, not enforcing curfew citations, and managing escalating violence.
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Media and police experts, along with SJPD chief, provided perspective on how local media failed to provide context on the protests and riots that disrupted downtown SJ. Mark Lisheron reported.
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SJ City Council, earlier this year, approved big cuts--$45 million--to the city's upcoming budgets, due to the coronavirus health crisis and concurrent business shutdowns. Pierluigi Oliverio of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association parsed the cuts, and explored why the city spends so much money on programs outside its charter.
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The San Jose City Council was forging ahead with a November ballot proposition to “align authority with accountability” as Mayor Liccardo wrote in his memorandum proposing changing the City Charter to provide the Mayor more power, reduce the power of special interests and move the mayoral election to coincide with the presidential election cycle. “What’s the rush?” asked Pat Waite, President of Citizens for Fiscal Responsibility, helping to derail the ballot proposition idea.
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Media expert and journalist Mark Lisheron took a close look at the Merc's coverage of San Jose's demonstrations--and responses to them--and found that a lot of important questions went unasked.
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