Professor Joe Mathews explains that California’s governance issues can’t be solved by hiring more political consultants, as Gov. Gavin Newsom continually does. Instead, the state needs strong leaders with operational expertise—leaders to follow through on issues affecting local citizens, businesses, and schools. Newsom’s “dropped the ball,” and his political spin doctors aren’t recovering it. This article originally appeared in Foxes and Hounds Daily.
Read MoreEven though Susan Ellenberg and progressive advocates aggressively pushed for a county decarceration plan as part of their opposition to an improved county jail, Ellenberg lost the vote at the County Supervisors. Only Cindy Chavez voted with her. D1 Supervisor candidate and former SJ city councilmember Johnny Khamis analyzes the votes and corrects some of the dubious claims made by the decarceration advocates.
Read MoreLocal social media certainly had fun mocking the wild statements of progressive city councilmembers and staff at the 2.1.22 council meeting about the Office of Racial Equity. But the party continued on the national level as well, as commenters at center right community site ricochet.com joined the party with some incisive comments on the OppNow coverage of the meeting, below.
Read MoreDavid Pandori, ex-District 3 councilmember (1990-98), was a driving force behind the creation of the Guadalupe River Park. He expresses surprise and consternation at a recent report, written by SPUR (a nonprofit urban planning group that often works with the city of SJ), which claims that the park's design is--get this--racist and sexist. Pandori's letter to SPUR is below.
Read MoreEconomics professor Bryan Caplan theorizes in EconLlib that a fully deregulated housing market would encourage construction in urban and suburban areas. Combating the refrain that nobody wants to live in cities, Caplan explains that deregulation enables choice; if construction increases, housing prices decrease, and local individuals and families make priority-based decisions from a range of options.
Read MoreLocal representatives played an outsized role in the creation Ash Kalra's statewide single-payer health care proposal, which was yanked from the legislative agenda for lack of support. Below is a list of local electeds who supported the failed bill.
Read MorePolitical commentator Joel Fox posits that Gov. Gavin Newsom must address the mass “tidal wave” of Californians moving to Texas for tax, business, and legal benefits. He believes only correcting previously-passed flawed legislation—not more intrusive new policies—will retain local businesses. This article originally appeared in Fox & Hounds Daily.
Read MoreThe 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.
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