How’s this for irony: a city bureau, taxpayer-funded, lobbying the state to weaken Prop 13 protections and make it easier to pass more taxes. If San Jose’s serious about retaining residents—says former Charter Review commissioner Tobin Gilman—it should start with reforming the IGR (SJ's lobbying arm). And protecting our hard-earned money. An Opp Now exclusive.

Cato Institute's Randal O’Toole argues that high-speed rail is obsolete tech. It’s slower than jets, pricier than driving, and a fiscal flop that'd bury America in trillions of debt for paltry gains. With California's rotting rail project now lurching past $100B, Silicon Valley taxpayers might wonder: why fund this broken-down bureaucracy any longer?

Getting a proposition to qualify for the ballot doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive, says HJTA VP Susan Shelley in an Opp Now exclusive Q&A. A recent campaign proved the concept, she says, that it only costs about a dollar per signature to circulate if you let voters print out their own petitions. 

Larry Clark, former president of the Alameda Business Ass'n and business owner on The Alameda in SJ says that the process used by City Hall to charge local businesses an assessment for so-called "improvements" in the area was flawed and corrupt.  A Q&A with Clark follows.

It's not just the partisan exaggeration and silliness--it's worse. Political gaslighting is increasing in Silicon Valley: from city officials brazenly ignoring crime sprees to non profits blithely ignoring basic math.  

With the increasing prevalence of psychological concepts in our everyday language, “gaslighting” has emerged as a powerful tool to describe manipulation. And it is not just limited to interpersonal relationships: in our age of post-truth and rampant misinformation, entire societies could be gaslit. Green European Journal explores how can we defend ourselves from the truth-bending rhetoric of narcissistic leaders.

“If you want to change the world, the objective chance that you will prevail is probably bleak,” write the political scientists Eric Beerbohm and Ryan W. Davis of citizen mobilization efforts. “So it is unsurprising that citizens collectively engaged in efforts to put a dent in the world have to adopt and maintain beliefs that—in some ways—extend beyond the evidence available to them.”

Chilling from across the pond: Spain’s El Pais says it is imperative that societies start imposing high costs and severe consequences to organizations and individuals who deliberately and continuously disseminate false information. But who watches the watchers?