If we've taken anything from 2023, it's that traditional media doesn't always see eye-to-eye with (cough) reality—and that while it's tough to escape their many obfuscations, the truth is always out there. What's more, audiences who want intelligent, common-sense commentary (hello, faithful free market readers!) are only growing. In the next exclusive installment, Opp Now contributors Steve Heimoff, Dean Hotop, and Johnny Khamis analyze what's shaped their political perspectives this past year.

San Francisco homeless advocate JConr Ortega offers up three practical steps for addressing homelessness in and beyond the Golden Gate City: audit nonprofits and withdraw funding from ineffective orgs, impose accountability requirements for social service recipients, and crack down on local drug cartels. Ortega's hard-hitting comments for California Insider (the final Opp Now installment) reads below.

VTA stumbles forward to waste billions more on its misbegotten extension of BART to downtown SJ—and beyond. Randal O'Toole, transportation and land-use policy analyst for the Thoreau Institute, has another idea: how about a system based on actual usage patterns of Valley residents and a concern for speed, service, and efficiency? An Opp Now exclusive.

Haven for Hope, a headline-making shelter located in San Antonio, serves 85% of the city's homeless population, providing a bed and litany of social services to virtually anyone in need. CalMatters breaks down keys to the shelter's overwhelming success: sobriety requirements, all-inclusive services (not just a place to sleep), and proximity to mental health and substance abuse recovery facilities. Implications for California's homelessness response—take note, SJ Housing Dept—below.

SJtoday takes us on a tour through the heart of DTSJ's streets, highlighting the unique, vibrant, and culturally rich murals the Silicon Valley's Capital has to offer. Below, take a break from local news and enjoy a tasting plate of SJ's best art: celebrating cultures all over the globe, important figures like San Josean LGBTQ+ activist Billy DeFrank, and—you got it—innovation itself.

You'll never guess this one: it's actually way more lucrative for City-funded nonprofits when homeless people stay homeless, points out formerly unhoused San Franciscan JConr Ortega. Below, Ortega's analysis of the Homeless Industrial Complex—the gov't/nonprofit entities that profit from homelessness, so long as it remains a serious (unsolved) problem—and how it affects Bay Areans.

$3.073B in grant funds to CA HSR is sure a big hunk of cash—remarks Cato Institute's Marc Joffe—but let's be real: it'll barely dent HSR's back-breaking budget. In a thoughtful LA Daily News article, Joffe wonders if the federal gov't should continue using taxpayer money to prop up long-delayed, fiscally dubious projects, and he contrasts California's with Florida's (more successful) High-Speed Rail.

On Twitter, Stanford finance prof and Hoover Institution fellow Joshua Rauh examines recent research on CA's wealthy population downtick. As taxes spike up, and particularly during Covid, many high-earning taxpayers vamoose to low-/no-income tax states like Florida, Texas, and Nevada. And CA's budget (not to mention remaining residents) is feeling the burn.

The CA Legislative Analyst's Office has just admitted that, thanks to persistent substantial unemployment rates, the Golden State is entering a recession. Looking on, the Washington Examiner remarks that CA—with the highest income inequality, homelessness, and poverty rates in the nation—isn't the emulable powerhouse it used to be; that today, being “like California” (once a hallmark of innovation, success, problem-solving) is more insult than aspiration.