“Recession cranks up pressure on white men.”  So reads the subhead of a front page piece that appeared in the Aug. 23 edition of the Mercury News. According to Bay Area News Group reporters Mike Swift and Josh Richman, there seems to be something brewing in our nation’s “troubled soul.”

“Many say the tempest over health care has its origin in the new administration’s breathtaking pace of change.” Who are these “many?” The article doesn’t really say.

The Caravan Lounge has poured strong drinks on South Almaden Avenue in downtown San Jose for at least 45 years, but ever since current property owners Jan Chargin and Lynn M. Bohnen asked the Redevelopment Agency in 2007 to buy the building, rumors have run rampant about what would finally happen to the classic dive bar. The San Jose City Council was scheduled to vote today on whether the RDA should fork over $1,120,000 for the property, plus an extra $187,000 in “relocation” costs to current Caravan operator, George Rich.

However, the meeting adjourned 15 minutes ago with no mention of the Caravan.

San Jose moved one step closer yesterday to implementing a citywide Bring Your Own Bag policy. A four-member City Council committee voted unanimously to prohibit grocery stores and major retailers from handing out plastic bags to their customers. Taking the issue one step further, they also voted to ban most paper bags, unless they are made of at least 50 percent recycled material. Even then, customers will be required to pay a fee in order to receive the paper bags.

I am endorsing former Franklin-McKinley Superintendent Larry Aceves for State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I will explain my reasons later.

Max Rafferty, Wilson Riles, Bill Honig and Delaine Eastin have all served as California’s Superintendents of Public Instruction. Jack O’Connell is in the last 15 months of his reign as the current office holder. All were influential leaders in my career as a teacher and principal.

One of the most important responsibilities a councilmember has is working on constituent issues. So far, my office has managed 4,675 constituent issues, which I refer to as “cases.” I set up a web database that allows constituents to track our case work in real time online. In most cases we are successful in resolving the issue or concern. In other cases, constituents just want to share their comments on a particular matter.

Recently, I had a request that came from a constituent who is a professional in the commercial real estate industry and is a veteran at purchasing property.

Apparently, Democratic Congresswoman Anna Eshoo of Palo Alto decided to play it safe—rather than face her constituents (and whoever else showed up) head-on in a public town hall meeting yesterday, she chose to host a phone-in discussion, where participants had to register first. Her staff could then screen questions from listeners, and potentially avoid all the nasty loonies that have plagued other town hall meetings across the nation.

California believes that it can save as much as $1 billion by releasing non-violent inmates from prison. Santa Clara County DA Dolores Carr admits that, but says that in practice it amounts to decriminalizing property crimes—such as car theft, grand theft, commercial burglary, and writing bad checks—by reducing them to misdemeanors. “This is really going to cause an increase in crime in our local communities,” she wrote in a letter to the governor.

Pam Foley dropped out of the San Jose City Council District 9 race this morning, saying she had decided that cannot balance being a mother, a school board member and a businesswoman while running a campaign. “I’m really, really sad about it,” Foley told Fly—somehow managing to sound extremely confident in resignation: “It was tough because I know I was going to win this race,” she said. “I had everything I needed to win.”

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 has surprisingly reached my desk, in the form of $3.14 million of new revenue to the Santa Clara County Office of Education (SCCOE). These funds are one-time only and must be used within 18 months or be returned to the Federal government.

At last Wednesday’s Board meeting, I and my fellow SCCOE trustees were asked to approve a revision of the FY2009-10 budget to incorporate these new funds into our previously approved budget. I voted “aye” reluctantly, with an admonition to County Superintendent Weis and staff that every public dollar is spent wisely with strong accountability measures. It is also our obligation that we make certain that the ARRA funds help stimulate the local economy.

Anyone who’s watched an open meeting of City Council will have seen council members fiddle with their iPhones and Blackberries to check their latest emails or text messages. Councilmember Sam Liccardo now argues that those messages should be disclosed to the public as part of the city’s policy on open governance.

“Council meetings are open to the public for a reason,” Liccardo says, “and if we’re voting on a matter and outside groups are using private means to communicate with us about how we should or shouldn’t vote, the public ought to know what’s being said and who’s saying it.”

Well we’re a day late and a dollar short. The weather’s too nice here in sunny San Jose to stay inside and post, so we recommend you get out and enjoy the sunshine. Take a walk, ride a bike, hike a mountain, visit a park or head to the beach. If there’s anything on your mind on any subject that you’d like to share with fellow San Joseans, though, please share it here.

Lost in the ongoing debate for a national health care system are questions of personal responsibility. If we as a nation accept and require that everyone should receive health care services, shouldn’t there be some minimal standards of responsibility to help the program along?

The San Jose City Council passed a series of resolutions on the topic of campaign contributions yesterday. The most controversial vote revolved around a cap on so-called “soft money”—contributions by individuals or special interest groups that act independently to persuade voters to support one candidate or another. The cap, set at $250, was ruled unconstitutional in federal court in 2006 as a violation of free speech, but this ruling was later overturned on a technicality. The city voted to extend the cap by a vote of 6 to 5.

Was Cesar Chavez a racist?  No, I don’t think so.  But today, people of every political stripe and ethnicity are labeled “racists” for espousing some of the same attitudes towards immigration and immigration law as Cesar Chavez did.

Figures just released by the Sacramento Bee calculate how much local counties, cities, and redevelopment agencies across the state will be forced to pay to cover the $3.7 billion that the state needs to balance its own budget. In Santa Clara County, that sum comes to $185,253,807.

A watershed moment in an acrimonious battle between local labor and business occured Tuesday when the San Jose City Council reversed its vote to rebid the construction of the Educational Park Library and awarded the contract to low bidder Barry Swenson Builder.
The vote was 6 to 5, with union-aligned councilmembers Nora Campos, Kansen Chu, Ash Kalra, Madison Nguyen and Nancy Pyle opposed.