Archive for June 2025

Say NO to Gabby Chavez-Lopez

Image by Edgar Luinni Though it’s getting a lot of heat lately—and rightly so—in the Bay Area. The phenomenal Mises Institute reviews Patrick Newman’s 2021 book Cronyism: Liberty versus Power in Early America—highlighting the ever-relevant clash between libertarianism and elite greed in local governance. Patrick Newman dedicates Cronyism to Murray Rothbard, and it is a…

Image by Choose901 Today’s media in the Valley often forgets that it’s not about speed, or flashiness; in fact, there’s a special reward for running with purpose, strategy, and patience—perhaps better than “first place.” NYT’s beautiful ode to journalism—all things slow and profound—follows. Before the field had hit the far turn at the Preakness Stakes…

Photo by PickPik A blistering audit reveals the manifold ways (no uniform data standards or real-time oversight) that gov’t and nonprofit organizations avoid basic accountability for how they spend taxpayer money. LAist uncovers the mess. L.A. city officials have made it impossible to accurately track homelessness spending, in large part by outsourcing to an agency…

Photo by Altered Reality on StockSnap The standard journalistic narrative is that local, statewide, and national politics is unduly influenced by big business. But much data suggests that, in fact, the opposite is true. Eitan Hersh explores in Annual Review of Political Science. What role do business leaders play in American democracy? Business leaders are…

 Dear Neighbor, After months of council debate, 14 budget town halls, and five hours of public comment, we passed a budget that gets to work on our city’s biggest problems. That’s all thanks to you.    Nearly 300 people came out to have their voices heard, overwhelmingly speaking in support of pragmatic solutions to homelessness,…

Image by Nick Youngson CC BY-SA 3.0 Alpha Stock Images Some cities get it done. Abilene, TX focused on individual, by-name client management and tight cross-agency cooperation to bring their homeless neighbors off the streets and into care. Community Solutions reports. In 2019, Abilene, Texas announced that it reached functional zero for veteran homelessness. The city…

Charles Joseph Hullmandel, CC BY 4, via Wikimedia Commons If the cancel culture phenomenon is a snowball effect (starting with recruiting one coercive professor), how can we stop the snow in the first place? According to free speech advocates David Puelz and Elizabeth Weiss, it’ll take hiring centered on quality scholarship; high academic standards for…