City Journal analyzes why the nation's first Educational Savings Account (ESA) policy, from the Sunset State, is leaving families increasingly dissatisfied: accessing students' funds is laborious, confusing, and often delayed. CA lawmakers, take notes.
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Governments can offer retirement plans that don’t require lifer status—the defined benefit pension, after all, shortchanges employees who seek career-mobility. Instead, a defined contribution plan can deliver retirement security while breaking taxpayers out of unfunded liabilities. Reason Foundation’s Zachary Christensen writes how the “DC choice” helped Utah improve its funded status.
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In this Opp Now exclusive Q&A, we chat with Santa Clara CM and engineer Kevin Park about why he believes the “area median income” metric no longer serves the Valley’s lower-income residents. Due to wage disparities, local median salaries (and thus, affordable housing prices) are grossly overinflated—so is it time we rethink affordability?
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Two days. Hundreds of engineers. Cash prizes for the winning ideas. ABC News explains how a 2023 “hackathon” event partnering with the Golden City incentivized residents to come up with creative, out-of-the-box approaches to crime, home development, and more.
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Last week, San Jose City Council voted unanimously to extend sidewalk sitting/sleeping restrictions two extra hours (previously 10am–12pm, now beginning 8am). In this Opp Now exclusive, California Policy Center's Edward Ring, SCC Libertarians' Mark Hinkle, Coalition for a Better Oakland's Steve Heimoff, and SF Libertarians’ Starchild offer their perspectives on SJ's decision—and how local jurisdictions can continue fighting homelessness.
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As the SJ City Council prepares to tackle its $45m budget shortfall, citizens should get ready for a blizzard of arcane language that'll likely leave us utterly confused. The FlashReport provides a quick primer to help clarify what is meant to be obscure.
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Union and politicians' predictions that the VTA transit worker walkout would have a notable impact on Valley commuting and business has turned out to be wildly exaggerated. A quick look at publicly available data explains why: VTA ridership is so low, only a miniscule percentage of local travelers notice that the buses and ghost rail aren't running.
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Many local cities have tried—or are considering—natural gas bans on new buildings. Though “green” mandates get a good rep ‘round San Jose, Silicon Valley GOP head David G. Johnson believes we aren’t considering all the facts. Namely: that renewable energy’s expensive, unsustainable, insufficient for our needs, and—um—is a far cry from “clean.” His Opp Now exclusive op-ed, below.
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Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that California’s High-Speed Rail boondoggle will undergo a review to determine whether about $4 billion in federal funds should continue to go toward the project. Townhall reports.
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CA's latest homelessness numbers. What a parcel tax means for your wallet. Or how the State's actually spending its cheddar. It's easy to fall prey to misleading political narratives—as info literacy expert Melanie Trecek-King explains, on YouTube—if we don't understand the web of internal/external forces influencing our judgments.
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One of the major reasons we haven't put a dent in SJ's homelessness crisis is that our approach has been scattershot, not strategic—a long list of small-scale bureaucratic maneuvers. So says Irene Smith, D3 CM candidate who provides an update to her 2022 Incremental Ladder of Housing Success proposal, which focuses on a step-by-step approach to interim housing solutions, starting with large-scale community shelters. An Opp Now exclusive Q&A.
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The Liberal Democrats are the Third Way party in the U.K., charting a course between Labour and Conservatives. Below, Lib Dems provide (on Local Gov't Ass'n) a hyper-local perspective regarding proposed Nat'l Health Services funding that might be useful for SJ's City Council, which seems hopelessly wedded to a centralized, tax-increase model.
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