Lurie starts to undo Breed's budget fiasco

One of the less attractive gifts London Breed left for new SF Mayor. Daniel Lurie was a mammoth-sized ($800m!) budget deficit. SF's Briones Society's policy experts smartly analyze Lurie's first steps to get our northern neighborhor's finances back into the real world, and offer pointers to Mahan and SJ City Council.

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Costi Khamis
☆ Opinions: Critical social justice ideology commits a fatal mathematics error (4/6)

We all learned it in grade school: correlation causation. Unless you're a local Woke university trying to define (and box in) students by their heritage and skin color—which has huge consequences for The Academy's central mission. An Opp Now exclusive with experts Dr. Tabia Lee and Kenny Xu.

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SF's Lurie takes on City's homeless industrial complex

Lurie moves money away from Housing First and to shelters. Also increases mayor's power to direct homelessness spend. Housing advocates squawk. Sound familiar? The SF Examiner reports.

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Costi Khamis
☆ Opinion: SCV Open Space Authority appt process systemically, intentionally excludes outsiders

Did you know that in May, Santa Clara Valley OSA was seeking a new board member to appoint? Well, neither did Ted Stroll, former Assembly candidate and seasoned OSA volunteer—and he scrutinizes the agency's dubious practices (which yielded just one applicant) in this Opp Now exclusive. He also recalls being the sole applicant to OSA's Citizens Advisory Committee in '22, and how their strange pivot—after praising Stroll's qualifications—might reveal "aspects of a private club."

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Mass incarceration myth misleads California activists

In California and Silicon Valley, local leaders and activists in cities like Oakland push a deceptive decarceration narrative that downplays public safety concerns and puts residents in danger. The book Mass Incarceration Nation by Jeffrey Bellin perpetuates the false notion that America over-incarcerates, but Zack Smith at the Heritage Foundation explains how the book's thesis is flawed and how it ignores the roots and impacts of crime. 

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Costi Khamis
☆ Opinions: Intersectionality/DEI aren't gone from local schools. They're just under different names (3/6)

As ever with the free market, many Silicon Valley companies are now dropping their DEI depts, initiatives, and language. But education—from Kindergarten to college—is a whole different story. Free speech advocates Kenny Xu and Dr. Tabia Lee analyze in this Opp Now exclusive.

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SV GOP chief says city, county homelessness increases are a sign of strategic failure

County and SJ City homelessness rates are rising. The majority of our homeless neighbors remain unsheltered. Yet local officials, says SV GOP chair David Johnson, refuse to respond in a businesslike manner to the scope of the crisis. From svgop.com.

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Costi Khamis
How some cities (not Silicon Valley's) are reducing housing costs

It can be done. Rent prices are falling fast in a number of pro-housing cities in the U.S. Reason magazine explores what they're doing right {Spoiler alert: Deregulating housing market & dramatically upping permitting are key}.

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Costi Khamis
☆ Local profs discuss: teaching economics (effectively) in today’s loaded political climate is simple, not always easy

Three California economics professors (with the Hoover Institution and the Mises Institute). Three perspectives on cultivating better economists in the next generation—not students who just regurgitate models and, you know, progressive talking points. An Opp Now exclusive.

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Why politicians can't admit they're wrong

They fall into the "sunk cost trap," says leadership consultant Gustavo Razetti. And become entangled in defending, spinning, and desperately holding onto ideas that simply don't work anymore {See Silicon Valley city and county gov'ts denial re: homelessness strategy failure}. Fearless Culture unpacks the psychological dynamics.  

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christopher escher
Poem: On coming to terms with getting it wrong

Poet Jonathan Krogh, with a soft touch, lays bare the awkward process of coming to realize that he's been mistaken, and has unfairly otherized those who had disagreed with him. From the Pastor's blog, First Presbyterian Church, La Grange, IL, website.  

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Costi Khamis
Predictable thinking can look right on paper, but end up being all wrong

The funny thing about mistakes, suggests Dr. Hashim Al Zain (in his review of Joseph Hallinan's book, Why We Make Mistakes) is that they often look right the first couple of times around. They fit established ways of thinking. The data seems to support them. And hey, everybody agrees with you. It often takes unconventional, counterintuitive perspectives to break through deceptive systems of seeing and interpreting to get to the truth. From Medium.

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Costi Khamis