For Slow Boring, Harvard gov't student Maya Bodnick outlines concerning trends she's observed with high school debate competitions. Rather than encouraging on-topic, evidence-based discourses, judges are more and more rewarding ideological “capitalism bad, critical theory good” arguments that often blow off the assigned topic.
Read MoreThe SF Standard breaks down SF's 2022 Boudin recall and Alameda County's ongoing Price recall efforts, both spearheaded by Asian locals fed up with soft “alternatives” to prosecution and jailing. Though deemed caring and progressive by the Left, these strategies have only seen anti-Asian hate crimes explode.
Read MoreLess than five months after the City Council rejected the Dept's misguided COPA proposal, a key citizens housing commission declined to approve the Housing Department's latest moves to turn SJ into a twin of collapsing SF. The commission rejected the HD's proposals to expand rent control and other misguided interventionist housing policies. The Opp Now team reports in this exclusive.
Read MoreSheridan Swanson, Research Manager at California Policy Center, surveys SJ's union contract kerfuffle. She finds that while Mayor Mahan was pursuing the firm, fiscally responsible approach to union negotiations—his colleagues on the Council wimped out. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreHomeless advocates often misread and misinterpret the Martin v Boise legal decision as suggesting that cities can't get rid of dangerous and unsanitary homeless encampments until some magical number of beds are available. The City of San Diego is leading the way in California with their no-camping ordinance. Irene Smith, president and co-founder of Independent Leadership Group, summarizes and explains SD's ordinance and its relevance to Santa Clara County in this Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreThe New Yorker's Nathan Heller suggests that basic income grants achieve the opposite of what they intend (take notes, Ellenberg): Rather than making job markets more sustainable and worker-friendly, they encourage employers to hand out smaller paychecks since subsistence is no longer a question.
Read MoreSoCal's Fox & Hounds Daily editor-in-chief and former Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association president Joel Fox wonders—following SJ's controversial handshake agreement with Labor—if our pension debt will become less manageable moving forward. An Opp Now exclusive.
Read MoreChristian Britschgi takes to Reason to refute the idea that rent control, if combined with long-term solutions like zoning reform, is a helpful temporary fix for our housing market. Analyzing SF, Britschgi points out that rent control actively discourages investment and construction; so even where there's relaxed zoning codes, housing supply won't—and can't—improve.
Read MoreSteve Heimoff, Coalition for a Better Oakland's president, exclusively chats with Opp Now to unpack the rising public outcry against crime-lax city governance. Residents are observing how Woke policies actually play out, says Heimoff—and we've reached the “tipping point.”
Read MoreMahan isn't alone in restricting homeless encampment activity in SJ. City Journal's Judge Glock breaks down how many cities across America, of all political leanings, are fighting back against out-of-control unsafe, unsanitary, and unkind illegal camps.
Read MoreStanford prof and Hoover Institution fellow Thomas Dee filed a brief as part of a 2020 lawsuit that analyzes how California's school closures hurt vulnerable student groups. But the State's Dept of Education claims—perhaps unconstitutionally—that Dee can't use public data to litigate against them. The Free Beacon reports.
Read MoreAs CA'n leaders continue huckstering absurd and altogether backwards approaches to criminal justice (namely, that hamstringing our police depts will reduce crime), frustrated residents and businesses are speaking out. According to Newsweek, it's getting harder for locals to ignore the State's surging violent and property crime—though Supe Ellenberg insists our problem is we're jailing too many people.
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