Are taskforces where community hopes goes to die?  I am about to find out. On Jan, 15, I went to the first meeting of the drunk-in-public taskforce, a group assembled by the council as their response to a heated public forum back in November.

The challenge of making public education a system whereby all students gain the necessary skills to be successful participants in our 21st Century democracy will be one of the toughest problems for the Obama administration to solve—closing Gitmo will be easier. However, I am very hopeful.

Since 1921, Faber’s Cyclery has occupied a legendary, leaning building at the corner of First Street and Margaret in San Jose. The structure was already steeped in local lore when Alex LaRiviere took over Faber’s in 1978. Built in 1884, the place began life as a saloon called Benjamin’s Corner. A well-preserved old blacksmith shop still sits out back, right next to a heritage pepper tree eight feet in diameter. The original wooden bar from 1884 still sits inside the place and serves as a parts counter.

On Saturday, City Manager Debra Figone and Mayor Chuck Reed hosted 100 neighborhood residents at City Hall for a discussion and group exercise on how to balance the city’s budget and eliminate the $65 million dollar deficit.

Now is the time and this is the place and to let loose, uncork, and calmly discuss any issue that needs discussion.

Tom McEnery recently returned from a visit to Vietnam. This is the third article in a three-part series.

Perhaps it was never expressed better than by Graham Greene’s fictional journalist Fowler (played by Michael Caine in the recent film, The Quiet American) when he notes of the naïve American: “ I never knew a man who had better motive for all the trouble he caused.” As I visited Hue I thought of Tet, and the victories that broke the American will to continue,  those pyrrhic victories, and the carnage on both ends of that offensive and its aftermath.

When it comes to the workings of the San Jose City Government, the devil is too often in the details. The convention center expansion is a $300 million project, yet it has received little public scrutiny.

My vote for the Best Apocalyptic, Post-Suburban-Wasteland Photo Book of 2008 goes hands down to a glossy hardback aptly titled Frezno from Process Books. Photographer Tony Stamolis grew up in that Central Valley city, and spent six years chronicling the dreadful, doped-out, deranged and disregarded underbelly of the city whose airport code is FAT.

Tom McEnery recently returned from a visit to Vietnam. This is the second in a three-part series.

Beyond the Continental Hotel and the Cathedral of Notre Dame—we just missed a wedding there—is a place I was both anxious and nervous to see. It was once called the Museum of Chinese and American War Crimes. But in slight bow to political expediency,  it has a new name: The War Remnants Museum.

By Colleen Watson
Starting at Story Road and King Street at 4:30pm. Wednesday, about 200 marchers protesting US immigration policy worked their way to City Hall, chanting “Yes We Can.” The largely Hispanic group reached a mostly empty City Hall at 6:30pm.

“My father insists that I call it Saigon—you see, he was in the Southern Army,”  was the simple, direct way our guide informed us why he used the city’s old name.  The comment was made in near perfect English. “Sometimes we say Ho Chi Minh City,” he conceded, “but I prefer Saigon.”  This was our introduction to a place so much in American minds for the last forty years, just recently a significant factor in San Jose politics.

Last week, Mayor Reed held his State of the City Address. And I think the mayor was forthright by clearing stating that the City of San Jose has a large deficit, and that cuts to services and layoffs are before us. In fact, I believe that the current $60-65 million budget deficit will worsen and grow to $70-75 million.

On Tuesday, change comes to America. Here in San Jose, life goes on. Register rants, raves, etc., here.

By Jill Escher

It’s time for SJUSD to right its wrongs.  The District was found guilty of unconstitutional backdoor taxation when, in early 2006, it secretly refinanced 1997 Measure C bonds to artificially raise tax rates to repay $22 million of new bond debt.  This week, Attorney General Jerry Brown handed down his much-anticipated opinion that such double dipping violates the state constitution and is illegal.

Watch Dog Silicon Valley reported yesterday that Tesla Motors faces new competition in the world of cool electric roadsters, and speculates that the company is unlikely to come to turn San Jose into the green Detroit that some have imagined.

Last month, for the seventh year in a row, the folks at NVIDIA—the Santa Clara–based visual computing giant—decided to do forego their annual company holiday party and commit themselves to a knock-down, drag-out community service effort called Project Inspire. One thousand employees, along with students, friends and family, volunteered and made their way out to Overfelt High School in East San Jose for the shindig last month.