A couple weeks back, I received some troubling news from the California Moderate Party. After three years of toiling in the weeds of The Golden State’s political fringes, Ash Roughani finally decided to throw in the towel on his latest effort to establish a genuine, grassroots third party. As a Democratic activist, it would seem odd for me to lament the loss of what could only have amounted to another siphon of progressive votes at a time when the left is so fractured that we can’t capitalize on our own victories. But the failure of the Moderate Party is just another symptom of the slow death of the political party system as a whole.

Are San Jose’s graffiti clean up crews padding the stats to make more money? That’s the question our favorite investigative crew over at NBC is asking. Last June, the city laid off employees and outsourced its graffiti abatement program in an attempt to cut down on expenses to the General Fund. Graffiti Protective Coatings (GPC), a Los Angeles-based private contractor, signed a five-year contract with the city worth $3.1 million. But only nine months into that contract, GPC told the city that it has already exceeded its yearly quota.

SOS (…- - -…) is the commonly known Morse code distress symbol, not an acronym. That said, many think of “save our ship” or “save our souls when the term is used. During my tenure as a principal, school board member and SJI columnist, I have a different distress signal. If I could, I would tap out the code “Save Our Schools” every single hour of every day in all cities across Silicon Valley.

I predict going forward that groups sponsoring ballot initiatives will be a constant part of the political landscape in San Jose, similar to the outside funding of planning department ordinances by third parties to move forward on regulations. The minimum wage initiative recently gathered and submitted the required signatures last week, and action will be taken at the May 22 City Council meeting. A library initiative is also in the process of gathering signatures for a November election.

The San Francisco 49ers broke ground Thursday on their new stadium in Santa Clara and threw a tremendous party replete with football royalty, current players, politicians and, most importantly, volunteers from the Measure J campaign that made the day possible. The model used by Santa Clara and the Niners should be replicated in San Jose for the new A’s stadium.

At the National School Boards Association conference in Boston on Saturday, NSBA President Mary Broderick sent a tersely worded letter to President Obama urging him to work hand in hand with Congress to abandon the current “command-and-control” federal education oversight of the No Child Left Behind Act. Unfortunately, I have no hope that the NCLB/ Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) will be reauthorized during the 2012 election year, therefore no change in the law will occur.

We all have an impact on the sewer system and our waste must go somewhere to be treated. Miles upon miles of pipe transport and maintain our civilization and virtually eliminates outbreaks of typhoid and cholera. As some have said, “No pipes, no civilization.” if you would like to learn more about the challenges San Jose has with over 2,000 miles of sewer lines—and some portions being approximately 100 years old—attend a presentation at 6:30pm tonight at City Hall. And on another rnote, local residents now have the chance to submit business plans in a contest that has no better home than Silicon Valley: the Santa Clara County Start Up Cup.

I was a little bummed out Tuesday afternoon. I had my popcorn ready. I had my browser pointed to the City of San Jose website. I was keyed up to watch the council discussion of an update on progress with the city’s economic development priorities. Essentially, the city’s current economic strategy has been condensed to a five-point plan—as if we don’t have enough of those. To be frank, it should really be a one-point plan.

The Secret Service agents implicated in the prostitution scandal last week in Columbia probably never saw Mike Wallace’s 60 minutes interview with agent Clint Hill. If the agents had, there wouldn’t be a scandal.

Recently, I was asked to take part in a community stakeholder interview for Cristo Rey High School in San Jose, which is currently going through a feasibility study. The landscape of public and private schools in Silicon Valley looks the same to many as it did in 1980. However, in reality, the new scene is vastly different and rapid change is occurring. One of these changes is a focus on corporate work-study programs.

The “victory” claimed by certain union members by suing the city over the word “reform”—as in “pension reform,” known as Measure B for the June ballot measure—may have actually jeopardized a future tax increase to fund their own jobs. The removal of the wording, “essential city services including neighborhood police patrols, fire stations, libraries, community centers, streets and parks,” was included in the ruling and cannot be used as a way for the city to lure residents into supporting higher taxation.

The much anticipated San Jose Rotary Club debate between Councilmembers Pete Constant and Ash Kalra did not disappoint. Both Constant and Kalra were spirited advocates for their positions: Constant defending Measure B, the pension “modification” measure; Kalra, a lawyer, presenting the views in opposition. By the end of the debate, to the disappointment of many, it was Kalra who gained the most.

I tuned in to the Master’s golf tournament Sunday and was struck by the ExxonMobile commercials urging the country to work toward improving our declining global rank in math and science education. The narrator of one of the many commercial spots says, “Today we rank 25th in mathematics. There’s no medal for that. Let’s train more teachers. Let’s inspire our students. Let’s get America back on track.” Easy for ExxonMobile to say, but enormously difficult to do—particularly in California, where we are continuing to disinvest in education in apocalyptic ways.

As we know, health care costs are escalating at double-digit rates. The continuous high costs are a burden to the self-insured, businesses and government. In San Jose, we have an unfunded health care liability of approximately $1.5 billion. The City of Stockton has been in the news for starting the process of bankruptcy under AB506, and much of their plight is due to the cost of health care benefits. San Jose should implement a incentive/mandatory wellness program in 2012 to reduce the cost of health care.

The spillover from Milpitas’ toxic political landscape has finally seeped over to San Jose. On Tuesday, Milpitas councilmember Debbie Giordano requested the city’s attorney investigate council colleague Armando Gomez’s fundraising activities for San Jose Mayor Chuck Reed. The direction by Giordano seems to be a direct response to Gomez—a senior budget advisor to Reed—targeting a lobbying loophole that he says Giordano and political consultant Vic Ajlouny have taken advantage of.

We San Joseans are a schizophrenic bunch. We’re all for economic development, but we consistently complain about noise generated by the airplanes, traffic, and sporting events that come with it. We’re pro-environment, but we’ll drive our Hummers to shop in Campbell or Milpitas, so we can have plastic bags to pick up our dog droppings. We’re pro-innovation, but we do very little to attract the startups and R&D projects that form the backbone of our region, and we add insult to injury by embracing the misnomer “Capital of Silicon Valley.”