Sep 29, 2014
San Jose City Positions on November Ballot Measures Among the recommendations city staff is making for the council is to keep CA prisons as overcrowded as possible. Proposition 47 – Criminal Sentences. Misdemeanor OPPOSE Tweet
Sep 25, 2014
From The Daily Fetch A mere weeks before making the motion and casting a vote directing the San Jose Redevelopment Agency to pay substantially above the appraised amount for land, Sam Liccardo took campaign cash directly from the property owner and his family for his city council re-election campaign in 2009 and 2010. The property purchase was acquired to build a road to…
Sep 25, 2014
The heartbreaking headlines about thousands of Central American children making the treacherous journey alone to seek refuge in the U.S. have me thinking about my own American immigration story more than 25 years ago — and how different my family’s experience was from the inhumane policy response of our current government. My family came to the U.S to escape from…
Sep 24, 2014
Congressman Mike Honda believes that “igniting the American Dream” begins in the classroom. But, he recognizes that attaining it is endangered by an opportunity gap in public education where wealth disparities too often dictate which students at which schools will have the most success. He says it is time to shift the education paradigm by focusing on opportunity for each…
Sep 23, 2014
Moving to San Jose? Don’t forget to bring your own police officers. And be prepared to pay for them. That might very well be the sales pitch in the near future, as San Jose residents become increasingly fed up with their City leaders decimating the local police force. It seems the new trend to ensure personal safety here in the…
Sep 22, 2014
Santa Clara County Expanding CalWORKs subsidized employment In 2013, Santa Clara County implemented an Expanded Subsidized Employment Program with the goal of increasing job opportunities for CalWORKS Employment Services participants. The program offers local employers financial compensation for providing participants with a combination of employment, training, skill development and employment. The proposed recommendation would expand the program at no cost…
Sep 22, 2014
Sam Liccardo must be kicking himself for sticking with an unconstitutional approach to public pensions that he knew, as a lawyer, could not withstand legal scrutiny. It was a political miscalculation based on the views of the electorate during a recession. When the economy is suffering, the public has a tendency to look critically at public employee compensation and benefits…
Sep 18, 2014
At the Silicon Valley Leadership Group Education Summit, David Welch was given the Education Leader Award for 2014. Mr. Welch is the founder of Students Matter and the mastermind behind Vegara v. California. The SVLG recognized him for innovating the teacher tenure system and teacher seniority rights. In fact, Welch’s efforts had just the opposite effect. When education reformers begin…
Sep 17, 2014
At The Left Hook we feel it’s our responsibility to make sure you, the reading and voting public, are properly informed about issues so we want to set the record straight on a recent post on San Jose Inside. Jennifer Wadsworth reported the San Jose Ethics Commission “ordered” mayoral Candidate Dave Cortese to return close to $10,000 in campaign contributions…
Sep 16, 2014
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) was pushed primarily as a way to extend health insurance coverage. This was and is an important goal. However another important aspect of the ACA is its impact on the labor market. The vast majority of people who are below Medicare age get their insurance through their job. This meant that tens of millions of…