Archive for July 2025

Image by Edward Kimmel, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons County and SJ City homelessness rates are rising. The majority of our homeless neighbors are unsheltered. Yet local officials, says SV GOP chair David Johnson, refuse to respond in a businesslike manner to the scope of the crisis. From svgop.com. After tens of millions of…

A dark horse candidate in the San Jose District 3 special election eked out a second place finish in April. Then he trounced his opponent in the June runoff for the City Council seat. San Jose Planning Commission Chair Anthony Tordillos was able to pull voters from all of the candidates who lost in the April 8…

Red Hook Housing Project, Brooklyn, New York. General view III by itoldya420 As free marketeers, the Opp Now team tends to look askance at public housing schemes. However, the left-leaning Mission Local website in SF does a literate and intelligent job of making the pitch in favor of better public housing management, so we respectfully…

Image by Library of Congress Despite Santa Clara County’s homelessness count reaching an all-time high, Supervisor Otto Lee remains in denial, and still advocates for Housing First fantasies, while ignoring faster, quicker, more humane solutions. CBS News reports.  Santa Clara County’s homeless population has reached an all-time high, according to the latest point-in-time count released…

Image by Library of Congress Despite Santa Clara County’s homelessness count reaching an all-time high, Supervisor Otto Lee remains in denial, and still advocates for Housing First fantasies, while ignoring faster, quicker, more humane solutions. CBS News reports.  Santa Clara County’s homeless population has reached an all-time high, according to the latest point-in-time count released…

Photo by Itoldya420 In a dramatic vote of No Confidence, the federal Dept of Transportation terminates its financial support of California’s doomed high-speed rail boondoggle. The widely panned project (which is hilariously still supported by the SJ City Council) is light years over budget and likely on its last legs. National Review reports. Secretary of…

Photo by Hayden Blaz, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons Even the most casual visitor will notice that the boutique suburb to the north is cleaning up its act, as homeless sweeps, dramatically increased shelter capacity, and increased police presence bring long-delayed improvements to the City’s urban fabric. WSJ reports. Not surprisingly, public safety is…

Image by Orange County Transportation Authority Even worse than HSR? Marketed to voters as a “transformative” urban revitalization project, it’s way over budget, super late, and hopelessly undercut by gov’t dissembling. Athan Joshi reports for Ca Policy Center.  California’s bullet-train may be the state’s most high-profile transportation money-sink, consuming a projected $135 billion with no…

Image by Washoe County Despite hundreds of millions of dubious spends, the homelessness picture in San Jose and Santa Clara County remains grim. The latest point-in-time count reveals that the majority of our homeless remain unsheltered, even as the overall homeless count continues to rise. Meanwhile, solutions such as high-capacity shelters (which many cities have…

In a Freedom to Learn Substack post, psychologist Peter Gray argues that pushing local four- and five-year-olds into desk work doesn’t boost long-term achievement; rather, it hurts it. That’s a timely caution for Silicon Valley parents and lawmakers championing California’s universal TK (Transitional Kindergarten) roll-out. “Today, we have much more evidence of long-term harm of…