Feb 5, 2015
CAPITAL & MAIN’S NEW MONTH-LONG SERIES EXPLORES HOW ECONOMIC INEQUALITY IS TRANSFORMING CALIFORNIA, AND WHAT CAN BE DONE TO REBUILD OUR VANISHING MIDDLE CLASS. The California Chasm As it pushes historic levels, inequality has become a hot topic. Activists have organized around the rich-poor divide, with “The One Percent” and “The 99 Percent” becoming a part of everyday language. Tweet
Feb 4, 2015
No sooner than the November 2014 elections were over, San Jose found itself preparing for another race for City Council seat in District 4, this time on April 7th. The seat was vacated by Kansen Chu after he won his race for the State Assembly in District 25. Just like other Council races, this one will be very critical for the…
Feb 2, 2015
The campaign to replace Assemblymember Nora Campos when she terms out in 2016 is already off the ground for at least two candidates interested in the seat. San Jose City Council Member Ash Kalra kicked off his campaign over the weekend, drawing a strong and supportive crowd, as lion dancers ushered in the lineup of impressive names there to endorse…
Feb 2, 2015
Palo Alto: Raise the Wage Colleagues Memo from Council Members Berman, Burt, DuBois, and Wolbach Regarding a City-Wide Minimum Wage Ordinance. Tweet
Jan 29, 2015
How does one become a leader in the community when formal education only provides part of the story surrounding some of the most critical political issues of our time: from income inequality to affordable housing, to understanding the valley’s political history and structural power? There are few courses in college that touch on these critical issues and if they are…
Jan 27, 2015
Newly elected members of Congress had barely finished moving into their Capitol offices before ramping up their attacks on access to essential women’s health care. With a list of bills lined up and ready to go—six have already been introduced —the new Congress of ultra-conservative zealots is not letting up in its anti-reproductive-rights crusade, which disproportionately affects low-income women and…
Jan 23, 2015
Inequality in the country has exceeded that of the Great Depression. Zoom in to Silicon Valley, and the crisis is magnified. Silicon Valley, the poster child of groundbreaking innovation and wealth has sadly also become the nation’s capital of inequality. With the highest per capita millionaires and billionaires in Santa Clara, a raise for the lowest wage workers is way…
Jan 22, 2015
There’s good news and bad news in the City of San Jose’s just-released Comprehensive Annual Financial Report on its two pension funds. The good news is that the investment returns for the Police and Fire Plan (which covers police and fire) and the Federated Plan (which covers everyone else) were 13.5% and 14.2% respectively. That’s well above the 7.125% and…
Jan 21, 2015
We’ve learned a few important lessons from Election Day 2014, and perhaps one of the most important is how communities of color are stacking up to become forces in local politics, particularly the Vietnamese American community. And within that theme, there is another consideration, about who might take the 25th Assembly District seat when Nora Campos terms out in 2016. …
Jan 16, 2015
You might be surprised to learn who got the most votes on Nov 4th. It wasn’t Sam Liccardo or Dave Cortese. It wasn’t Mike Honda or Ro Khanna. None of those candidates garnered even a quarter of the votes. The overwhelming winner of this election was Nobody. Tweet