Understanding why media is so biased and unreliable
Ever have this feeling? You are scrolling through the web, reading about political developments in your home town, and being taken aback by how obviously partisan the news stories are. How they're framed from the headline on down in a transparently political matter. How the language is loaded to prompt outrage. How only one side gets to comment. Your reaction is accurate: in the past decade the news media has abandoned all pretense of objectivity and fairness due to fundamental changes in their business models. Leighton Woodhouse explains in The Algorithm.
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Housing dept staffers, advocates (oops did we repeat ourselves?) mistakenly call SJ a "segregated" city; online commenters set them right
At a recent meeting to discuss the city’s rules for locating affordable housing projects, staffers from the SJ Housing Department and local progressive non profits voiced a series of inaccurate, ahistorical, and misleading comments about the racial nature of San Jose’s residential landscape. Central to their narrative was the false assumption that SJ's current racial residential patterns derive exclusively from past government policies, and that neighborhoods that are predominantly one ethnic or racial group are, by extension, “segregated.” The meeting was covered by San Jose Spotlight here. Online commenters on Spotlight corrected many of the misconceptions promulgated by speakers at the event. A collation of misstatements and clarifications follows.
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Local Dems vote to preserve single family zoning in wealthy white suburbs, endorse upzoning in SJ
In their June 3, 2021 meeting, the Santa Clara County Democratic Central Committee (SCCDCC) voted to single out San Jose as the only municipality in Santa Clara County which should implement a vast, citywide upzoning policy. If enacted, the resolution would likely permanently end single-family-zoned neighborhoods in all of SJ while preserving the restrictive zoning in Palo Alto, Saratoga, Los Gatos, Los Altos (Hills) et al. Guess which city the SCCDCC chair lives in?
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Report: SJ is California's most racially diverse large city
You wouldn't know it from the race-baiting misinformation coming out of the SJ Housing department and local progressive non profits, but the data is clear: San Jose is more racially diverse than every other large (600,000+ population) city in California. The conclusion comes from a collation of updated 2020 data from the Census, FBI, OpenStreetMaps, among other sources, by Chris Kolmar of the urban ranking website, Homesnacks.
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Deeply flawed, heavy-handed New Urbanist planning responsible for housing crisis
Over the course of the past 70 years, California cities have grown outward to create multiple new urban centers across a metropolitan landscape. Modern planners in Silicon Valley, however, can’t control this model of growth, so they have limited growth across the board, causing housing prices to skyrocket. These policies negatively impact lower-income residents—in both urban and suburban areas—the most. Joel Kotkin examines the debris in City Journal.
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SF tents for homeless cost $60k each, city wants more
Many people were shocked to find that the affordable housing lobby ends up charging cities upwards of $500k to build new "affordable" units. But how about more than $50k for a tent? The SF Chronicle examines the madness.
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Nationally-recognized financial expert disappointed that Google capitulated in SJ development deal
David Bahnsen, widely respected economist and Founder/Managing Partner of the Bahnsen Group, decries the way Google was coerced into paying into a giant, $200m slush fund as part of their deal to develop at Diridon Station. HIs comments are in response to Randal O'Toole's groundbreaking story in Opp Now (see nearby) and occurred during the June 23 Radio Free California podcast.
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Post pandemic urban priorities: safety and healthiness, not woke diversions
Many urban planning experts believe that the coronavirus pandemic revealed frightening fault lines in modern American urban design. And that city leaders should be clear-eyed about what the pandemic taught us, and focus on substantial structural issues such as delivering core services, not on the trendy virtue signalling we see coming out of local city governments. Joel Kotkin considers the issues in City Journal.
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How San Jose held up Google for hundreds of millions of dollars
Once-vocal progressive critics to Google's downtown project have gone strangely quiet. Maybe it has something to do with the $200m community slush fund Google offered up to get local approval for the project. Randal O'Toole of the Thoreau Institute wonders if the Google deal sets a precedent that makes it impossible for small and medium businesses to develop in San Jose in the future. An Opportunity Now exclusive.
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This week's Best of Local Web comments
The gems from the comments sections of the Merc, SJ Spotlight, and SJ Inside.
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When did the left abandon MLK?
Critical race theory, now ascendant in San Jose City Council Rules Committee meetings and other progressive institutions, rejects the colorblind sensibilities that drove the 20th century civil rights movement. In fact, even to say “colorblind” is verboten. Karl Zinsmeister mourns the passing of a grand vision in City Journal.
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Report: Local pandemic stay-at-home orders backfired
We all know that the pain caused by the county's response to the coronavirus was substantial, but were assured it was worthwhile. A new study casts doubt on that supposition, and suggests that the lockdowns may have created many more problems than they solved. Brad Polumbo explores at fee.org.
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