The mask finally slipped at the wacky 2.1.22 SJ City Council meeting. Progressive council members acknowledged, at last, that they view the Office of Racial Equity as a platform to deliver a citywide, race-based affirmative action regime. The Opp Now editorial team analyzes the latest matinee performance of SJ's opera bouffe, below.
Read MoreDespite the fact that Democrats have a supermajority in the California state legislature, local Assemblyman Ash Kalra was unable to get enough votes to advance his radical government-funded universal health care bill for the State. Moderate Democrats and the handful of remaining Republicans in the chamber rejected the bill as too radical, too expensive, and too likely to fail. KSBW and The Hill report
Read MoreCities like San Jose continue to follow the failed assumption that the only way to create affordable urban housing is to subsidize it via grants to unaccountable nonprofit housing providers. What if the opposite were true? The comments section at Econlib offers a lively, bay area-centric, discussion of how housing deregulation would encourage lowered housing costs—accommodating already high demand to live in big cities. Moreover, sweeping nationwide exoduses to suburban cities would reverse, as citizens could finally afford to stay in previously too-expensive urban residences.
Read MoreCOPA is the latest troubled proposal from the San Jose
Housing Department designed to privilege the local non-profit housing cabal. In COPA's case, it's giving those nonprofits special status in the purchase of residential property in the city--all at the expense of mom-and-pop housing providers. A recent op-ed from pro-COPA advocates in San Jose Spotlight peddled a number of inaccurate claims in a dubious defense of the program and was fact-checked below by a collection of local legal, housing, and political experts.
Read MoreSan Francisco has the dubious distinction of providing other Bay Area cities with a sneak peek at what happens when social justice warriors’ agenda of decarceration and police defunding is implemented. In S.F., it’s been a more than 500% increase in hate crimes against Asian-Americans. The Washington Post Reports.
Read MoreEconomics professor Bryan Caplan argues on Econlib that deregulating the housing market would increase movement to urban and suburban areas. Some commenters voiced concerns of population density and traffic congestion. However, others point out that mass transit, if privatized as in Hong Kong and Chile, could operate profitably and manage growth better than current failed U.S. public transit schemes.
Read MoreSmall property owner Dean Hotop has previously written critically in Opp Now of San Jose Housing Department’s (SJHD) proposed Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) and the unintended consequences it will produce (see here). In this essay, he takes a step back and gives a 10,000 ft view of what COPA really is, in its essence, and then proposes some alternatives {for anyone who still thinks it’s a great idea to use gov’t funding (i.e., taxpayers money)} to facilitate the transfer of privately-owned, market rate housing units to Non-Profit Organizations and converting them to low-income housing forever.
Read MoreIn a series of dueling op-eds, Supervisor candidate Johnny Khamis took issue with Supervisor Susan Ellenberg's efforts to dramatically decrease the county jail population, efforts which are part of the radical left's decarceration movement. Instead of Ellenberg's binary approach to the issue, Khamis calls for coupling new jail and mental health facilities. Decarceration has been widely discredited as an effort that increases crime and recidivism, see nearby. Khamis' op-ed is in San Jose Spotlight, Ellenberg's in CalMatters. County supervisors are likely to vote on the fate of the county jail on January 25, 2022.
Read MoreNoted forensic linguist Dr. Alan Perlman applies his expertise in BS-identification (see nearby) to city staff's recent redefining of "equity" and finds that, well, it's full of it. City staff drafted this definition at the request of City Council to help clarify the mission of San Jose's new Office of Racial Equity. Perlman believes the bizarre definition will create a radical expansion of affirmative action commitments that will torment San Joseans for decades. Perlman provides a line-by-line exegesis of the daft definition below. City staff language is in normal font, Perlman's comments in italics. (City Council will vote on approving this incoherent inflation of its affirmative action obligations on Tuesday, January 25).
Read MoreLanguage expert and forensic linguist Alan Perlman says there has always been a category of human communication which we now call BS. But rhetoricians and language pros have only recently turned their attention to unpack actually what this type of malarkey is, and how it works. Perlman provides a brief synopsis for Opp Now readers as part of his exegesis of the city staff definition of "equity," which is analyzed nearby.
Read More"Decarceration" is a social justice movement that aims to greatly decrease the number of people jailed for all types of criminal offenses. Progressive advocacy groups and Supervisor Susan Ellenberg are pressing the county for a "Care not Cages" strategy that would redirect monies for jail maintenance and improvement onto abolitionist and reformist non-custodial programs. Rafael Manual of the Manhattan Institute suggests these strategies lead to disastrous results, including greater crime and recidivism.
Read MoreScott Beyer of the Market Urbanism Report reviews Alain Bertaud's upcoming book, Order Without Design. The book brings economic logic and quantitative analysis to guide urban planning decision-making, colored by a hands-on, 55-year career as a global urban planner. Bertaud concludes that urban planning is oblivious to the economic effects of its decisions, and eventually creates unintended consequences to urban development.
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