File this one under “things we all should have seen coming”: Many of CA's beloved chain restaurants—including McDonald's, Chipotle, and Jack in the Box—are promising to raise consumers' prices in response to a statewide $4 min wage spike (from $16 to $20/hr). WSJ's Heather Haddon serves up the situation, otiously created by State overreach and proving most harmful to the everyday residents it's meant to help.

Thanks to disproportionately exploding prison labor wages (by 3x inflation rate), California’s shelling out more than $130,000/yr. per prisoner. CalMatters reports that we can shutter underutilized prisons, we can praise restorative justice programs, but the State has yet to put its money where its mouth is and find the most efficient uses of taxpayer contributions.

The local Jewish community was appalled this week when CSU Long Beach Jewish Studies professor Jeffrey Blutinger, on campus to deliver a talk about Middle East peace, was met by an angry crowd screaming “intifada.” Some protesters physically confronted police, shut down the speech, and compelled SJSU to seek law enforcement protection for Dr. Blutinger. In a 2.20 statement, SJSU's president Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson below condemns threatening behaviors and rebukes those shutting down “alternative voices.” SJSU is investigating the incident and considering administrative action.

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.”

Regular 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.

In 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.

It'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.

Silicon 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.

You 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.