It was always a noble idea. Imported from Margaret Thatcher’s Britain in the ’80s, it was quarter-backed by Rep. Jack Kemp and, a decade later, when the energetic politician became secretary of housing and urban development, was enacted into a nationwide program to revitalize the cities.We’re talking about "enterprise zones," now a part of most major American cities, including San Francisco. The idea was to replace "urban renewal," which tragically forced low-income people out of their dwellings so the power elites could prettify urban cores.
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It didn’t get much attention, perhaps deliberately, when the Legislature was pushing its endless wish list to the governor’s desk last week. But when the Senate passed Assemblyman Tom Umberg’s bill to bypass the Electoral College, there should have been a full-throated public debate.
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As part of last week’s mad rush by the Legislature to remake the planet — you know, commanding the climate to cool, universalizing health care — the Democrats threw in two other measures, both designed to advance their party’s national agenda by demonizing Wal-Mart.
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Much that the U.S. government does makes no sense. Jailing the sick and dying for using marijuana is one of the most senseless.The United States faces manifold challenges which consume much manpower and money: the Iraq war, terrorism, illicit immigration, transnational crime. Uncle Sam should clear the decks, so to speak. It is time to conduct policy triage, dropping government tasks that offer little benefit.But officials in Washington prefer to maintain their power.
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A significant trio of quarterly economic studies released last week delivered somewhat contradictory messages. Overall they painted a picture of a U.S. economy that, while confusing and even fragile, in some ways still performed better than expected. Most of the good news was contained in a Department of Commerce second-quarter report that suggested the economy is finding ways to compensate for the housing market slump and that inflation is still largely under control despite the oil and energy spike.
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How bad is Bay Area highway traffic going to become in the next 25 years? Worse than Los Angeles today, according to a new report by the Reason Foundation, a free-market think tank in Washington, D.C.
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It’s long been a tenet of this newspaper that some of the Bay Area’s most intractable problems — namely, housing scarcity and traffic congestion — could be solved only by unified regional action.With three distinct metropolitan centers — San Francisco, Oakland and San Jose — surrounded by suburbs crowded with literally dozens of mini-cities boasting populations of 30,000 to 100,000, the Bay Area has no choice but to attack its problems across city lines.
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According to a report released this week by the College Board, Scholastic Aptitude Test scores on the math and critical reading section of the test, which was revised last year, dropped by seven points. The decline was the largest in more than three decades.
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Great natural catastrophes can bring dramatic political change. This week’s attention to the Hurricane Katrina anniversary excepts no place or party from such consequences.The 1985 Mexico City earthquake undermined the omnipotent pretensions of the ruling party, prompting reforms and finally, after some 70 years, the election of a president from another party.
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Today, Aug. 29, is the final day for the 101,000 residents of the Peninsula Health Care District to postmark their mail-in ballots on whether to approve the long-negotiated contract for Sutter Health to rebuild Peninsula Medical Center in Burlingame. Approval now will comply with the state’s 2013 hospital seismic upgrade deadline.
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