San Jose Inside

City Awards Former Mayor Hard-to-Find Electronic Games

The city council on Tuesday took the unusual step of pledging $6 million in cash to former Mayor Tom McEnery to “do as he saw fit.”

SO MUCH for urgency ordinances. Last week, the San Jose Redevelopment Agency recommended deferring until August a specific urgency ordinance originally slated to be railroaded through Council on June 17. The ordinance was to place a “moratorium on the installation and relocation of freestanding news racks within the downtown core and the Civic Plaza Redevelopment project area; and to establish a consolidated pedestal mounted news rack zone pilot program within those same project areas.”

Food for Thought

Anyone who lives or works around San Jose Airport (SJC) is used to seeing the constant stream of jets arriving and departing. If you look carefully, you’ll notice that in between the usual airline company planes, there are just as many, if not more, unmarked jets of various sizes. These are the rides of the wealthy elite of the corporate plutocracy. You know, the ones who own (George Carlin RIP) this country and are much too important to stand in security lines and sit in Ken-and-Barbie-size coach seats like the rest of us; the one percent at the top who got there and stay there by taking what they can from the 99 percent of the rest of us.

The last San Jose City Council meeting before the summer break has occurred and it was a very long one.  Many things happened in that session and there was an equally long list of items that seemed innocuous (some even incomprehensible), but progress was served. Yet, there were a few items that really should be highlighted.

The San Jose Downtown Association (SJDA) has called for an investigation into whether the city’s police department targeted the nonprofit for an enforcement action by the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control (ABC), presumably in retaliation for SJDA’s advocacy of after-hours club closings, which SJPD opposed.

One of the most nerve-racking experiences a worker can have on the job is announcing to their manager that they want a union. Doing so can be a quick way to lose your job, and lamenting about ineffective labor laws doesn’t pay the bills while looking through classifieds on your couch.  It is, by all measure, a dangerous gamble, but one that can pay off in the long run with higher wages, benefits, and a mechanism for airing grievances.

I am used to hearing about grass fires throughout the Bay Area each summer, but this year the number of fires burning across our neck of the woods and the state are just alarming. The fires in Gilroy, Morgan Hill, San Martin and Santa Cruz make you wonder what we are doing to help create this, and if nature is trying to tell us something. But beyond that, and strictly having to do with dollars and cents, who is paying for all of this—literally?

Councilmember’s Tough Week

In politics, timing is everything.  Some might say that Councilmember Nora Campos picked the wrong time to play politics.

City Hall Diary

The city council spent 12 hours on “Budget Tuesday” last week.  Here are three of the topics we covered.

This week’s open forum where you can write about anything you like.

High School Science Students Copycat Latest British Columbian Body-Part Crime

In a copycat crime, several high school science students were arrested late Wednesday when they were accused of using a ripe ape carcass they stole from their biology lab, dressing it in a suit, adding grey hair, and passing it off as Pete McHugh during several county board meetings.

Silicon Alleys

IT SEEMS like the San Jose McEnery Convention Center just can’t get enough attention these days, and the brutal paradoxes keep on coming.

Food for Thought

Why is it that every time we get behind the wheel of a powerful automobile weighing thousands of pounds we think it gives us the individual right to break the laws that were put in place to protect everyone? Last week’s avoidable vehicular killing of a young girl by an unlicensed driver in the Rose Garden neighborhood may be the latest example, but is by no means an isolated incident, as statistics from across the country show.