San Jose Mercury News

Speaker Micah Weinberg, from the think-tank New America Foundation, agreed. Kim Johnson, who runs an AAMCO auto repair franchise in Santa Cruz with three ...

"Spectrum is becoming increasingly crowded," Lawrence Summers, one of Obama's top economic advisers and director of the National Economic Council, said Monday in a speech at the New America Foundation outlining the president's proposal. The plan, he said, "creates prosperity and jobs while at the same time raising revenue for public purposes like public safety and increasing our ability to compete internationally."...

To a degree, society already shares in health care costs for those with pre-existing conditions, said Micah Weinberg, California Health Program director for the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan public policy institute. For example, insured hospital patients subsidize the costs of uninsured patients, he said.

"It's possible we will be paying slightly higher insurance rates (in 2014), but we won't be paying for these people in other ways we are now," he said.

If officials deliver on the plan's promise, "we will be in a great position to fix what's gone awry with broadband in America," said Sascha Meinrath, director of the New American Foundation think tank's Open Technology Initiative. "My fear is that we'll get bogged down in an endless series of processes, debates and data collection that leaves us falling further and further behind." ...

If Google were a person, Tim Wu, a Columbia law professor and veteran of Silicon Valley, is quoted as saying in this perspicacious new ...

Border Patrol apprehensions may have dipped to the lowest rate in 35 years, but it has nothing to do with border security. Rates of illegal migration are governed by social and economic forces, not by expensive surveillance technology, walls and the Border Patrol. It thus makes no sense to continue to rely on an expensive and failed border fortification as a centerpiece of our immigration policy.

"It's all about expectations," said Gregory Rodriguez, senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank. "The fortunes of any given candidate really depend on our expectations of that person at any given moment and on the candidate's own rhetoric and sense of righteousness."

"I think it's the right choice for us," said Councilman Sam Liccardo at a Thursday forum sponsored by the New America Foundation and Common Cause. "The question is how we get there." Original article

Madison Nguyen shouldn't be the only one breathing a sigh a relief.

When San Jose District 7 voters rejected a recall of the city councilwoman Tuesday, they spared the entire city the cost of holding two additional special elections.

Deep in the doldrums of California's economic woes, with state government unable to pass a budget, Bay Area business leaders have proposed a constitutional convention. Since this could open Pandora's box, a crucial question remains unanswered: Who will wrestle with the demons that come out of the box and lead our state to a better tomorrow? Who are California's James Madisons and Thomas Jeffersons, our Ben Franklins and George Washingtons?