District 5 voters have a chance to restore balance to the San Jose City Council by electing Magdalena Carrasco, a talented and articulate neighborhood activist who began a grassroots campaign and now enjoys a wide base of support.

It feels like madness. China continues to fund our debt, launches major initiatives to improve their future—particularly in green technologies—and their education system is outsmarting us. Concurrently, with the rising drop-out rate and decreasing graduation rate of our 18 year olds, we are spending trillions of U.S. tax dollars nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 1970 the U.S. produced 30 percent of the world’s college graduates…today only 15 percent. This is madness. We need nation building here beginning with public education now.

The San Jose convention center was visited by experts on the National Debt last Friday, Sept. 23. This was part of the Fiscal Solutions Tour comprised of both Democrats and Republicans, with budget expertise organized by the Concord Coalition. The speakers former titles included: the Comptroller General of the United States, head the General Accounting Office (GAO),  head of the Congressional Budget Office, Public Trustee of the Social Security and Medicare program to name a few.

Steven Colbert testified before Congress this morning after being invited to Capitol Hill by San Jose’s congresswoman, US Rep. Zoe Lofgren. The visit occurred following Lofgren’s Tuesday night appearance on The Colbert Report, where the mock-Republican mock-newsman interviewed Lofgren, whom he identified as “the Chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Immigration, and notorious Mexican-hugger.” VIDEOS.

The San Jose Police Officers’ Association got their money’s worth out of the full page ad that they took out in last Sunday’s Mercury News.  The story received a lot of coverage from other media outlets and was the lead story for several Bay Area television stations

I vividly remember being an invited guest at the San Jose Downtown Rotary meeting last year listening to the luncheon speaker Reed Hastings, Netflix’s founder, blaming the ills of American public education on local elected school boards. I believe there is much blame to go around as we have discussed on this site—parents, administrators, tenure, etc.—but school boards as a systemic cause of school failure did not resonate with me.

For the most part, I do not think people want things to change. However, could you see living without highway 280, 85, 87 or 237? When building large transportation projects there always seems to be opposition of some sort. Government at all levels—local, state and federal—deems that certain projects have a higher value in the long term.

On Sept. 2, the San Jose Police Department issued a press release that explained the department’s policy on enforcing immigration laws. “Much discussion is taking place across the country concerning what responsibility local police departments have to ensure compliance with immigration laws,” it reads. “While the San Jose Police Department stands ready to work with any law enforcement agency to pursue violent suspects, regardless of a suspect’s immigration status, the Department has a longstanding policy of not arresting persons based solely upon their failure to comply with Federal immigration laws.

“It’s Not Fair To Make Public Unions The Scapegoats…Unions Are Not Devils,” writes Evan Low, mayor of the City of Campbell, in a recent opinion piece published by the Mercury News. “In these tough economic times, we cannot stereotype or demonize one another or strictly adhere to political ideologies. We need to look at what’s fair and what’s right considering the limited resources we have…”

Should we be celebrating Silicon Valley’s small educational gains this week? Are these gains scalable? Are we beginning to turn the educational tide? My answer to all these questions is a resounding “maybe.”

Last Tuesday,  the City Council had a study session on the upcoming Redevelopment Agency (RDA) budget. RDA funds are regulated by state law and are almost entirely spent on land and construction, similar to how bond monies are restricted. We have funded some limited city services in RDA and Strong Neighborhood Initiatives (SNI) areas (not citywide), such as anti-gang programs and code enforcement. The bulk of RDA funds have gone to capital project like the HP Pavilion, numerous museums, the convention center, parking garages, hotels, Adobe and facade grants as well as industrial projects in North San Jose and Edenvale.  However, RDA also funded approximately $70 million for SNI capital projects like community centers, parks, traffic calming, etc

Finally, this might be the change that I and millions of educators have been awaiting. Arnie Duncan, Secretary of Education, announced on Saturday a new path for American school assessments to begin after development by a consortium of member states in 2014-15. The $330 million project will be managed by Achieve Inc. and involve 44 states

On April 18, 2006, the City Council unanimously approved the Guadalupe Mines General Plan amendment, changing the zoning from Research & Development to Residential. At that same meeting, the Council debated other industrial conversions along Old Oakland Road/Rock Avenue, and voted to convert all of the employment-land parcels that night to housing.

“A’s Wait For New Home As Cities Play Hardball.” So read the sub-headline of a recent front-page story in the Mercury News. The paper provided an overview of the three proposed ballpark sites in Oakland. It seems that some civic leaders from the East Bay are making an eleventh-hour push to keep the A’s in Oakland despite the fact that Mr. Wolff has expressed a strong interest in moving the A’s to San Jose.

Thomas Jefferson said, “Democracy is never a final achievement. It is a call to an untiring effort.” At a dinner party I attended on Saturday evening there was much thoughtful political discourse, a good democratic tradition. I wanted to know, from the bright and civic-minded guests, if they are optimistic about the future of America in the next 50 years.

My sampling size was small (n=5) but the result was illuminating—and very depressing.

I attended the first community meeting regarding the selection of the next San Jose Police Chief on Tuesday,  Aug. 24 at the Roosevelt Community Center.  Approximately 21 people attended. Attendees were divided into small groups to discuss five questions. I did not see any police officers however they may have been in attendance but remained anonymous.