Times 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.
Read MoreCritics like SJ's Assemblymember Ash Kalra claim Newsom's CARE Court initiative and local encampment restrictions harm an already vulnerable, stigmatized community. But Reason magazine asserts that helping people off the street and into shelter actually lowers violence involving homeless folks, and cities' violent crime overall. Below, Reason's data analysis of two big cities.
Read MoreWhile the debate about whether to extend BART to downtown SJ and Santa Clara gets more and more controversial, the unfortunate link between mass transit and increased drug crimes/use becomes progressively more poignant. Reporting from Planetizen, LA Times, and SF Gate below.
Read MoreDespite Californians' consistent opposition to State-sponsored racial discrimination, legislators keep trying to find ways to elbow affirmative action agendas into State law. Proposed ACA 7 is the most recent example, explains Gail Heriot, law professor at the University of San Diego. An excerpt from her Instapundit analysis follows.
Read MorePolitical theorist Sarah Gustafson remarks that smart tax credit systems would directly assist low-income homebuyers by removing “middle man” bureaucracies/organizations. SJ sadly doesn't follow this advice: nonprofits partnering with our Housing Dept receive millions of dollars in grants annually, while our housing market remains dismal, restrictive, and unstable. From the American Enterprise Institute.
Read MoreTo paraphrase Emily Dickinson: "Once a bad idea is let out of the bag, it's hard to put it back in." Judge Glock takes issue with Belle of Amherst, and reports in City Journal that the widely-panned (and often misunderstood) 9th District decision in Martin v. Boise, which has been read as severely limiting Bay Area (and other) cities' ability to clear dangerous homeless encampments, may get a re-do at the Supreme Court.
Read MoreAuthor Ellery Adams famously said that "Words have power, and all things of power are dangerous." Many of our readers and contributors were struck by that notion while reading the transcript of County Supe Susan Ellenberg's recent State of the County address. We're all used to politicians tap dancing, but Ellenberg's formulations struck many as reaching a new level of spin altogether. A collection of edited reponses is below, from the greater Opp Now community. An Opp Now exclusive.
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