Last Wednesday, Father James Mifsud, Pastor of Queen of Apostles Church in San Jose, passed away. He was 75 years old.

A wise man once said that “Heroes create joy.” Father Jim created a lot of joy for a lot of people. He was a hero, mentor, guardian, and friend to many thousands of people. James Mifsud stood for the integrity of the individual and looked for the divine in every person.

This is to correct and clarify several points contained in your article “SBLC Helps Big Political Contributors Erase Their Tracks,” [Sept. 22]. Your article states: “Enforcement of city election laws falls on the Government Integrity Unit of the District Attorney’s Office.” That is inaccurate. Section 12.06.260, which prohibits contributions from card rooms to candidates or candidate controlled committees is found in the San Jose Municipal Code, Title 12. Enforcing violations of Title 12 fall within the jurisdiction of the City of San Jose and its Elections Commission. Title 12 lays out an entire regulatory framework for the investigation of Title 12 violations, including campaign contribution violations.

Measure V puts budget control back in the hands of the elected representatives of the people, which is where it should be. It’s our money, and we elect people that we think will spend it in the most productive way possible.

Measure W would allow the city to create new retirement programs for new hires that are in line with today’s employment landscape. It protects current employees’ pensions— nobody who works for the city will be affected by this change.

The unionized education hourglass has a few minutes of sand left before its upper glass chamber loses its last speck. Race to the Top and the Charter School movement have quickened the pace of the draining granules of sand. Unions can flip the hourglass to gain some time for dialogue, but only if they heed some advice.

County Assessor Larry Stone visited the San Jose City Council study session last week and gave an extensive lecture on the role of the County Assessor and a critique of Spectrum Economics. His comments were blunt, sparing only profanity about the economist hired by the RDA for $15,000. I wrote about this topic three weeks ago.

This is the only time that another elected official has spoken to the City Council at length during my tenure.

What should happen to the San Jose police officer who handcuffed the teenage boy after confronting him about contact with his step-daughter? I believe that the cop should be fired immediately.

When Mike Wasserman came to Metro’s offices for an interview back before the June primary, our editorial committee was unanimously impressed. Although we endorsed Teresa Alvarado in that race, we liked what we heard from Wasserman and feel strongly that he will make a good supervisor.

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.