(#7) “More disappointed than shocked”: Stanford student org pres on Woke college takeovers
Continuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #7 (first posted 3.14): In March, Stanford students/a DEI admin aggressively heckled controversial guest speaker Judge Kyle Duncan, disrupting and cutting short his prepared talk. Tim Rosenberger, Jr., president of Stanford Law’s Federalist Society chapter, sat down with Opp Now for an exclusive breakdown of Stanford’s dangerously “comfort”-driven student/faculty culture—and his proposed steps to restore diverse thought to the revered university.
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(#8) Twenty years of failure: Why SJ Housing Dept's 2003 Homelessness plan flopped
Continuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #8 (first posted 2.10): In 2003, San Jose released a Homeless Strategy plan, which promised it would “eliminate homelessness in ten years.” Whoops. It’s been 20 years, billions spent, and homelessness only rises in our fair burgh. Scott Beyer of the Market Urbanist untangled the flawed thinking that contributed to our ongoing housing catastrophe. An Opp Now exclusive.
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(#9) If local Woke colleges are 1984, I was Julia: A young conservative's perspective
Continuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #9 (first posted 6.5): An Opp Now contributor (anonymized by request) recently participated in a graduate program at a Bay Area public university. Rampant social justice conditioning and closed-minded conversations? Check and check. But here, they reflected on an overlooked consequence of systematic Leftist indoctrination: It can render young free thinkers numb to shock, outrage, and action. An Opp Now exclusive.
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(#10) CM Peter Ortiz falsely accuses colleagues of violent class animosities; Mayor Mahan rebukes him
Continuing our annual tradition of listing our most popular stories of the year, here’s #10 (first posted 5.5): Any hopes that Sylvia Arenas' exit from the SJ City Council would signal the end of wild comments from the dais were dashed on 4.25 as District 5's CM Peter Ortiz picked up Arenas' mantle with gusto. Ortiz proclaimed that votes against a memo to expand SJ's housing preservation efforts were "violence against working families." In an Opp Now exclusive, the team unpacked Ortiz’s hyperbolic falsehoods.
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☆ A poem for Christmas Day, 2023
Holiday Season in Silicon Valley: A winter view through the bare trees. An unexpected shower. Lost clouds lingering along the bottom of Monte Bello Ridge. For many of us locals, this is a distinctive time of year: full of reflection about change, about remembering, about forgetting, about hope. Peter Coe Verbica hits many of these notes in his lyrical poem that journeys from Costa Rica to the crests of the Diablo Range. An Opp Now exclusive. And from all of us at Opp Now—Lauren, Jackson, Lucy, Jeff, & Christopher—we wish you an inspirational Holiday Season and a New Year full of (we had to say it) unlimited opportunity. :-)
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☆ SJ mayor and councilmembers reflect on 2023 media that lit up their imaginations (5/5)
San Jose's Mayor Matt Mahan and Councilmembers Dev Davis, Bien Doan, Domingo Candelas, and Arjun Batra cover the intellectual waterfront with their perspectives on the movies, podcasts, and games from 2023 that inspired them to better serve and unite our local community. An Opp Now exclusive.
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Sans camping ban, Sac rivers polluted by human excrement
District Attorney Thien Ho recently filed a lawsuit against Sacramento for looking the other way on dangerous street encampments. The DA claims these homeless camps are contaminating Sactown's once-beautiful waterways (and leave residents shaken after violent encounters with folks who need mental health/substance abuse treatment). Below, Ho chats with the Globe to unpack our local homeless crisis.
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☆ Year in review: Where leading and aspiring local pols find their inspirations (4/5)
For the latest in our exclusive Opp Now series about the media that most impacts Silicon Valley movers and shakers, we check in with candidates and influential thinkers from around the Valley, and find a vast constellation of differing, compelling, and intriguing books, songs, podcasts, and videos.
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☆ Gov't finance consultant: Here's why (too) many residents are putting CA in the rearview
Tom Rubin—boasting decades of experience assisting gov't agencies with capital, operational, and financial planning—is no stranger to the Golden State's outmigration crisis. Indeed, SJ lost 50k folks in just four years, losing its place in the top 10 most populated U.S. cities. For Opp Now, Rubin exclusively breaks down the tax/cost of living barriers excluding even longtime locals from CA living.
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☆ Opp Now commentators' favorite books/etc. are powerful, passionate, piercing (3/5)
Some media we consume is pure brightness, lilting and inviolate joy amidst an oft-downtrodden world (did you know Chat GPT's more optimistic about DTSJ than some local pols?). Other pieces of media, as Kafka poignantly remarks, are more of an “axe for the frozen sea within us.” In this Opp Now exclusive, Irene Smith, Sheridan Swanson, Pat Waite, Lance Christensen, Elizabeth Weiss, and Tom Rubin chime in with their most impactful reads/watches of 2023.
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SJ BART extension insight: Double-bore tunnels cheaper/simpler than single-bore
Transit analysis blog Systemic Failure sheds light on why many Bay Area transportation advocates, and even BART staff, are questioning VTA's insistence on developing a single-bore tunnel through DTSJ to Santa Clara: single-bore (two tracks stacked deeper underground) incurs extra operational costs/hurdles, while impairing passenger accessibility.
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☆ Local political watchdogs recommend enlightening reads/watches of '23 (2/5)
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.
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