Widely read website the College Fix notes below that the Merc and San Jose State's student newspaper have yet to acknowledge Monday's explosive antisemitic protest against Jewish speaker Dr. Jeffrey Blutinger. Blutinger advocates for peaceful Middle East resolution, and has gone on record to condemn “anti-Palestinian prejudice” along with antisemitism. Vitriolic SJSU protesters' goal on Monday was to “Show SJSU that Zionists are not welcome here.”
Read MoreRegular readers of Opp Now have noticed that SJ’s Housing First orthodoxy—in which the solution to basically all civic problems is new, free, subsidized, no-barrier housing costing $1m/unit—is finally giving way to saner, faster, more efficient interim shelter solutions. It’s even happening at the statewide level, reports the indispensable Katy Grimes in California Globe: Assembly Bill 2417 is calling to increase funding flexibility for treatment and service-oriented programs by repealing [Editor’s note: you read that right] the State’s existing one-size-fits-all “Housing First” approach to homelessness.
Read MoreIn January of this year, pro-Hamas demonstrators invoked violent antisemitic slurs at District Attorney Jeff Rosen. Today, February 19, at SJ State University, the brutishness escalated as guest academic Dr. Jeffrey Blutinger had to be escorted off campus with protection as physically aggressive protesters demanding “intifada” disrupted his speech on Mideast peace. Here's how JCRC (Jewish Community Relations Council) Bay Area describes the event on Twitter.
Read MoreIt's impressive (if not comical) when ordinary mass-produced goods, like a humble urinal, get designated “high art” and sell for millions. But when it comes to tax-funded “affordable housing,” it's not so much groundbreaking as plain depressing when simple units rack up to $900k+ each. SF Chron examines the Golden City's latest proposal to modestly house 63 folks for (hold your breath) $61.5 million.
Read MoreSilicon Valley Law Group's Bernie Vogel and Ed Kraus unpack how California Legislature's at a crossroad regarding the Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA), which lets workers frivolously allege and sue their employers for labor code infractions (even when there's little to no evidence of technical violations), essentially extorting costly settlements from their bosses. Vogel and Kraus point out that PAGA can easily bankrupt Bay Area business owners via unfounded lawsuits that, in the meantime, line local plaintiff lawyers' pockets. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreYou get a free house, and you get a free salary, and you get a free attorney! Steve Heimoff of Coalition for a Better Oakland explains that local welfare state proponents may be well-meaning, but fail to bubble in the crucial question: Where are we, you know, getting the money to fund expensive social programs? (Eyeing you, Ellenberg & Cortese's guaranteed income initiative.) In case you've lost the answer key, Heimoff clarifies: from raising your taxes.
Read MoreTimes change: friend of Opp Now Philip Davenport sends us this time capsule from the 1932 Democratic Party Platform (FDR was the presidential candidate), offering a revealing glimpse into how FDR's embrace of free markets is, politically speaking, light years away from the political discourse of today's local progressive community.
Read MoreDowntown SJ has gone through its ups and downs over the decades. But most recently, the developments that have delivered the best business—and community—benefits have not been big, disruptive ideas. Former D3 Council candidate, and current head of the local Independent Leadership Group and United Housing Alliance, Irene Smith takes a look at the latest bright, shiny idea for downtown—electronic billboards—and finds that they're not right for San Jose. From Medium.
Read MoreMany elected officials in SJ imagine indisputable links between gentrification, displacement, and new high-rent developments. Using 20 years of data, Building Salt Lake refutes the misconceptions with facts: gentrification doesn't increase one's likelihood of displacement, and gov't (not housing developers) often gentrifies neighborhoods by trying to attract high-taxpaying residents.
Read MoreFor this installment, Opp Now visited the office hours of three econ professor–researchers (San Jose State dept chair Matthew Holian and prof Tom Means, and Stanford prof Alvin Roth) with one big question: What books could yield the most acumen for folks digging into economics, whether as novices or savants or somewhere in between? An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreMark Powell posits in Times of San Diego that Prop 47, passed a decade ago to downgrade certain property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, has created a serious case of crime and (virtually) no punishment. Despite its kind intentions, Powell says Prop 47 has stuck the knife in innocent citizens, retailers, and police. Many local leaders—like SF/SJ mayors Breed and Mahan—are rethinking CA's flimsy criminal justice approach, after seeing their areas get trashed and overrun by lawlessness.
Read MoreModern progressives misunderstand what makes capitalism work, entrapped as they are in a worldview that suggests only greed can drive the sort of developments that have lifted the world out of eons of abject poverty. George Gilder, in a seminal National Review piece, posits that what makes capitalism deliver for all is its ability to tap the core forces of information theory—and how human knowledge, prosperity, and growth derive through experiment and creativity.
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