Santa Clara County News

Can AI fix the long delays in San Jose’s permitting process?

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:51:55 +0000

As the San Jose government begins to tap into the use of artificial intelligence to solve civic problems, the city is set to apply it to one of its most vexing issues: permitting.

City officials announced the launch of a new AI pilot program on Thursday that will review applications for ADUs, which include the most basic information about a project and are currently sent back to customers for missing information more than 90% of the time.

The AI platform the city intends to deploy was developed by Chicago-based CivCheck, which markets itself as being “built for plan reviewers, by plan reviewers.” Once it scans an application, it will flag any missing or incomplete information and create an autogenerated response. During the testing phase, city employees will continue to perform manual application checks while evaluating the software.

Should the test phase prove successful, the city could eventually roll out the same process for single-family housing applications.

“It’s modest to begin with because we need to test and get it right, but I believe that the potential for using AI to improve the permitting process is very significant,” San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan said in an interview with The Mercury News. “We need to bring permitting into the 21st century, because we’re simply not moving at the speed of business for an increasingly competitive world. California is losing too much investment to other states, and the U.S. is losing too much ground to other countries at times.”

In addition to its quest to become the AI capital of the world, San Jose has emerged as a leading force among government entities in promoting the use of tech tools to increase efficiency and effectiveness.

The city helped forge the GovAI Coalition, which has now grown into a group of hundreds of local, state and federal agencies that share strategies to accelerate the adoption of new solutions. It was also the first city government to partner with Nvidia on a workforce pipeline initiative.

While a recent report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that 95% of companies implementing AI pilots had zero return on investment, San Jose has already implemented or is testing out translation services for city meetings and webpages, tools for identifying potholes, graffiti, illegal dumping and homeless encampments and traffic impact models for construction and major events.

The city has also developed an AI program that enables employees to learn how to utilize AI tools, thereby increasing productivity and efficiency. While its ultimate goal is to train more than 1,000 employees to use the new technology, Mahan said he did not see AI replacing employees but rather freeing them up to do other tasks that are better suited for “human effort.”

“What we’re mostly seeing right now is that AI can generate significant time savings for city staff in certain functions,” Mahan said. “It can speed up and improve the quality of crime investigation through tools like ALPRs. It can allow us to provide real-time language translation in more languages, more cost-effectively through Wordly, and having that for people to use rather than paying manual in-person translators and two or three languages, we have a tool that’s a plug-in and lower cost, and can cover more languages and more meetings more efficiently.”

However, one issue that continues to be a sore spot for developers and homeowners is the lengthy and tedious process of obtaining a permit.

Before his time as mayor, Mahan said that the Smart Cities and Service Improvements Committee had taken a deeper dive into why it was taking approvals and even denials 12 months or more.

Although the city has made some improvements to speed up specific processes, including offering pre-approved ADU plans and certifying architects and engineers to obtain permits more quickly through its Best Prepared Designer Program, city officials said that permitting was still relying on antiquated methods.

Mahan said the city decided to start with ADUs because their application is more straightforward than other projects. However, he added that they represent an essential piece in the housing production picture, estimating that ADUs represented roughly 22% of all new housing built and that there needed to be greater efficiency by reducing the back-and-forth and getting “faster to ‘Yes.'”

“This is an important experiment in the feasibility of AI to better serve our customers and goals for building in San Jose,” said Chris Burton, director of the Planning, Building and Code Enforcement Department. “We are dedicated to taking any guesswork out of the permitting process, helping builders and residents move quickly with clarity and confidence.”

Not Dead Yet! How Monty Python’s John Cleese is celebrating ‘The Holy Grail’ at 50

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:33:03 +0000

John Cleese comes on the line to chat about his Not Dead Yet! tour, which comes to Southern California to celebrate the 50th anniversary of “Monty Python and Holy Grail,” but before we can ask our first question, he’s got one for us.

“I’m wanting to know if I’ve offended Anaheim,” Cleese says in a voice instantly recognizable to anyone who ever watched an episode of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” or saw “The Holy Grail” or any of the Python troupe’s other films.

It seems the show is close to selling out in San Diego, Thousand Oaks and other stops around the country through October. But his Orange County performance at the Grove of Anaheim? Not yet.

Monty Python members Michael Palin, left, and John Cleese, dressed and ready for action on the set of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” on May 21, 1974. Cleese comes to Southern California including a show at the Grove of Anaheim on Sept. 9 2025 to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (Photo by John Downing/Express/Getty Images)

Monty Python members, from left to right, John Cleese, Neil Innes, Michael Palin and Eric Idle are seen here dressed as Arthurian knights on the set of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” on May 21, 1974. Cleese comes to Southern California including a show at the Grove of Anaheim on Sept. 9 2025 to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (Photo by John Downing/Express/Getty Images)

The Monty Python comedy group, from left to right, includes Eric Idle, John Cleese, Terry Gilliam, Michael Palin and Terry Jones. They’re seen here in June 2014 to promote a run of reunion shows. Cleese comes to Southern California including a show at the Grove of Anaheim on Sept. 9 2025 to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (Photo by John Phillips Invision/AP Images)

Monty Python’s John Cleese and his wife Jennifer Cleese are seen here in May 2924 at the opening night of “Fawlty Towers: The Play,” an adaptation of Cleese’s British sitcom that aired in 1975 and 1979. Cleese comes to Southern California including a show at the Grove of Anaheim on Sept. 9 2025 to mark the 50th anniversary of the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” (Photo by Lia Toby/Getty Images)

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“I’m wondering if I’ve offended them,” he continues tongue in cheek. “If I said something tactless about them, and now they’re taking it out on me. Do you have any advice?”

We suggest that calling us to get the word out is an excellent first step, and not just because it’s a thrill to speak to the man who played the irate owner of an ex-parrot in a classic Monty Python sketch, portrayed Lancelot the Brave, the Black Knight, a French taunter, and Tim the Enchanter in “The Holy Grail,” and created the unforgettable rude hotelier Basil Fawlty in the British TV sitcom “Fawlty Towers.”

“Good, because people like to laugh,” Cleese replies. “I’ve had a ‘Fawlty Towers’ stage show on in London for the last year or so, year and half, I think. And it’s wonderful to sit in my little box where I make a few notes about the performance and see the audience below rocking with laughter.

“I don’t mean just laughing, but literally rolling backwards and forwards in their seats,” he says. “You see their faces afterwards and they’re quite different from the people who came in, because they’re smiling at everyone.

“So what I would say is, ‘Come, you will enjoy it, and you’ll feel so much better afterwards.’ People neglect how healthy and good for us some positive laughter is, I guess.”

The current tour, which includes a San Jose stop Sept. 14, features a screening of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” followed by Cleese discussing the movie and its making and taking questions from the audience for more than an hour afterwards.

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Cleese talked about his ongoing defense of comedy that might offend, why “The Holy Grail” cast raced each other back to the hotel at the end of each day, and how his rude French soldier character who taunts King Arthur from a parapet still delights him today.

Q: For years now, you’ve argued against political correctness dictating what comedians and comedies can do.

A: There are some very sensible woke people. Inclusion, diversity, all that stuff, of course, of course. But there are a lot of them who don’t understand comedy. You see, all comedy is critical. You can’t laugh at anyone who’s perfect. All we laugh at is foibles.

That doesn’t mean that all laughter is cruel, because it depends on whether it’s done with affection or not. If it’s not done with affection, it’s nasty because the intention is to hurt a person’s feelings, not to make somebody laugh, and we must never do that. That is wrong.

But if you see people who know each other terribly well, they start teasing each other again when they haven’t seen each other for a minute. And they’re being slightly rude to each other, the whole point being that it’s in a context of affection.

This is something that the extreme woke people simply don’t understand, so they’re trying to stop us laughing when it’s one of the most healthy things we can do.

Q: You’d left “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” before its final season, but then came back with Graham Chapman, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam for “The Holy Grail,” the first movie.

A: That’s right. I only did three seasons. I felt it was – I called it the sausage machine – and I felt we were repeating ourselves. The others didn’t feel that we were. But I loved the idea of moving onto film. The main thing to say, and this is absolutely true, is that we had no idea what we were doing. This is one quite interesting facet of it, the fact that we threw away 90 percent of the first script.

That’s kind of interesting, so I talk a bit about that [in the show], and I talk about the bit that, as usual, we couldn’t get financing. We had to go to the world of rock groups, what is it? Pink Floyd and Jethro Tull and some others, because nobody else would finance it. [Led Zeppelin also put money into the production.]

Q: I want to ask you about your main characters, Lancelot, Tim the Enchanter, the Black Knight, and the French taunter. Did you work on those with Graham [Cleese’s usual writing partner] or others?

A: Well, when we started, we didn’t know what it was going to be about. So we, Graham and I, started out just thinking of medieval things. The Black Knight [“Tis but a scratch!”] is not about the plot. It doesn’t advance the plot. It’s just part of the scenario.

Similarly, the scene with the Witch [Sir Bedevere: “So, why do witches burn?” Peasants: ” ‘Cause they’re made of … wood?”] and the French taunter [“Your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!”].

They’re just funny scenes. They’re not essential to the plot. And we were writing all of those because we didn’t know what the plot was. Then, later on, when we knew what the plot was, we wrote a second taunter scene, which had something to do with the plot.

But it was all just random. It was a little bit like when we started doing [the 1979 movie] “Life of Brian.” I mean, Graham and I wrote the stoning sketch straight away, but we had no idea how it was going to fit into the film.

Q: The dialogue is so memorable, I’d imagine people quote it to you all the time.

SJPD seeks help in identifying suspects in 2019 homicide

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:32:29 +0000

SAN JOSE — The San Jose Police Department is asking for the public’s assistance in tracking down three suspects in a fatal stabbing nearly six years ago in the city’s Little Portugal neighborhood.

Officers found the victim — Jose Corona Galvan, 18, of San Jose — suffering from at least one stab wound around 9:25 p.m. on Oct. 6, 2019, in the 1500 block of Alum Rock Avenue. He was taken to an area hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

An investigation revealed one of the three suspects pulled out a knife and stabbed the victim during a brief altercation, according to San Jose police Officer Tanya Hernandez.

The suspects then ran westbound on Alum Rock Avenue over the Highway 101 overpass and continued northbound on North 27th Street through a fast-food eatery parking lot.

Detectives launched an investigation, but no suspects were identified or arrested at the time, Hernandez said.

The SJPD Homicide Unit has reopened the case. On Thursday, police released video footage of the suspects and asked for the public’s help in identifying and locating them. They are described as males in their early teens, with average builds.

Anyone with information related to the case can contact Detective Sgt. Ivan Barragan or Detective Mike Harrington of the SJPD Homicide Unit at 4106@sanjoseca.gov, 4365@sanjoseca.gov or 408-277-5283. Tips can also be left with Silicon Valley Crime Stoppers at 408-947-7867 or at siliconvalleycrimestoppers.org.

Check back for updates.

Two arrested in connection with Sunnyvale shooting, stabbing

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:31:09 +0000

SUNNYVALE — An investigation into an attempted homicide earlier this summer at a park in Sunnyvale ended in the arrest of two men Wednesday, according to authorities.

Officers were called to the intersection of Manzano and Oak Creek ways around 9:45 p.m. on July 4 for a report of a shooting and stabbing, said Capt. Dzanh Le of the Sunnyvale Department of Public Safety.

An investigation revealed two groups of people were involved in an altercation at Fairwood Park, located at 1255 Sandia Ave.

Two victims suffered “significant injuries,” Le said, adding that one was stabbed three times and the other was shot in the wrist. They were treated at area hospitals.

The suspects arrested Wednesday were identified as a Sunnyvale man and a Santa Clara man. They are being held without bail at the Santa Clara County Main Jail in San Jose.

Anyone with information related to the case can contact Detective C. Bishop at 408-730-7100.

Check back for updates.

Valkyries to play first playoff game in San Jose due to arena conflict

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:30:41 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO — The Valkyries will not play their first home playoff game in franchise history in San Francisco.

Instead, the expansion franchise will have the game on Sept. 16 or 17 moved to SAP Center in downtown San Jose, the team announced in a news release on Thursday after punching its ticket to the postseason with an 84-80 victory over Dallas.

Chase Center, where the Valkyries have sold out all 21 of their home games, had been booked years in advance for the Laver Cup tennis tournament.

The international tennis event “was booked at Chase Center in 2023 before the Bay Area was awarded a WNBA team,” the release stated. “The organization explored every possible option to host its first round Playoff game at Chase Center, but SAP Center emerged as the right fit for this historic event. Golden State vetted several venues, including Oakland Arena which had a scheduling conflict due to a property-wide private event, and is thrilled to partner with SAP Center.”

The Sharks play their NHL games at SAP Center.

Veronica Burton, the Valkyries’ leader, said neither she nor the team is fazed by having to play the postseason home game in the South Bay.

“That’s obviously above us, so we can’t control it,” Burton said. “We have faith in our fans that they’re going to continue to show out for us. And wherever we play, we’re going to bring our basketball. So we’re confident, we’re excited, and it’s another opportunity to compete. So regardless of where we’re at, we’re going to show up.”

Fans head in to the arena for game three of the Western Conference Finals between the San Jose Sharks and the St. Louis Blues during the 2016 NHL Stanley Cup Playoffs at SAP Center on May 19, 2016 in San Jose, California. (Photo by Christian Petersen/Getty Images)

How to watch the 49ers’ season opener vs. the Seahawks on Sunday

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:29:25 +0000

The San Francisco 49ers are kicking off the season against the Seattle Seahawks at 1:05 p.m. PDT on Sunday, Sept. 7 at Lumen Field in Seattle.

The Niners are hoping to bounce back from a disappointing 6-11 season a year ago, as injuries derailed their hopes of another playoff push. After remaking their roster — particularly the defense — over the offseason with primarily young faces, they open the season with a familiar NFC West foe in the Seahawks, who brought in former 49er Sam Darnold to quarterback the offense.

San Francisco’s main drama this training camp has been the Jauan Jennings saga after he requested a raise — or a trade — just before the team convened in July. He returned to practice on Monday after missing more than a month of practices with a calf injury and, later this week, received new incentives in his contract.

How to watch on local TV

FOX is broadcasting the game in California; in the Bay Area, tune in to KTVU-TV (channel 2) with an antenna or a cable TV provider. You can also log in to the FOX Sports app or website with your cable TV subscription credentials.

How to stream

DirecTV Stream includes Fox in its local channel lineup. Subscriptions currently start at $49.99 per month.

FuboTV offers a free trial and $10 off the first month; after that, it is $55.99 per month.

Hulu+Live TV is a premium service with all the local channels and starts at $82.99 per month.

NFL+ is a mobile app that streams all local and primetime games. Plans start at $6.99 per month or $39.99 a year.

YouTube TV costs $82.99 per month, but it’s currently on sale for $49.99 per month for the first two months.

How to watch outside the Bay Area

If you are outside the local coverage area, you have some options.

NFL Sunday Ticket on YouTube TV broadcasts all the games on Sunday afternoon outside of the matchups showing in the local market. If you are a Niners fan living in another state, this is a good option. New users can get the service at the starting price of $34.50 a month for eight months or $276 for the year.

NFL+ Premium carries live audio of all regular-season NFL games, and video only after the game has concluded. You have the choice of full or condensed replays on a computer, phone or tablet only for $14.99 per month.

San Jose State faces major challenge vs. No. 7 Texas, Arch Manning

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:28:14 +0000

Walker Eget was on his phone texting early Saturday morning, the mistakes he made hours earlier and the anticipation of an upcoming game against nationally-ranked Texas rattling around in his head.

Around 1:30, the San Jose State quarterback reached out to Spartans head coach Ken Niumatalolo, apologizing for their agonizing season-opening 16-14 loss to Central Michigan and vowing to play better.

Niumatalolo doesn’t doubt it.

“(I told Eget) you’re our quarterback, you’re our leader and you will bounce back,” Niumatalolo said this week. “It’s a tough position. You can’t play that position unless you have thick skin.”

Eget threw two touchdowns and passed for 308 yards, but was intercepted twice and lost a fumble against the Chippewas. He isn’t the only Spartan looking to bounce back from a game Niumatalolo called one of the worst losses in his 18 seasons as a head coach.

But they’ll have to do it Saturday morning as a 36.5-point underdog against a motivated No. 7 Texas Longhorns team expected to draw more than 100,000 fans for its home opener.

Central Michigan defensive lineman Michael Heldman (97) causes a fumble by San Jose State quarterback Walker Eget (5) in the first quarter during an NCAA football game on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025 in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Lachlan Cunningham)

“We’re going to have to play our very best to even have a shot,” Niumatalolo said. “This is a team that’s got a chance to go to the playoffs. We have to play lights out.”

Texas (0-1) is the highest-ranked team SJSU has faced since a 56-28 loss to Caleb Williams and No. 6 USC in 2023.

SJSU’s 24-16 loss against Auburn on Sept. 10, 2022 was the last time SJSU faced off against an SEC school. The Spartans have never beaten a team ranked No. 8 or higher.

The last time SJSU beat a ranked team road dates back to Nov. 1 1980 with a 30-22 win against No. 10 Baylor.

The Longhorns also are coming off a close, frustrating setback in their season opener. But last weekend’s 14-7 loss to defending national champion Ohio State knocked the Longhorns from No. 1 in the AP poll and temporarily took some steam out of quarterback Arch Manning’s potential Heisman run.

Like Eget, Manning, the nephew of former NFL stars Peyton and Eli, and Archie’s grandson, also got out to a slow start.

Manning finished with 170 yards, one touchdown and one interception against the Buckeyes, who claimed the top spot in this week’s AP poll.

Texas quarterback Arch Manning (16) runs the ball in the first half of an NCAA college football game against the Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, Saturday, Aug. 30, 2025. (Sara Diggins/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

“People are talking all these things about Arch Manning. It was one game,” Niumatalolo said. “The kid is a really good quarterback.”

Senior safety Jalen Apalit-Williams said he feels like he has watched film on the Texas Ohio State game around 100 times now.

“It’s really cool to be able to game prep watching a game like that because it is two teams at the highest level,” Apalit-Williams said. “It’s great to watch the tape and see how they play.”

The Spartans defense limited the Chippewas to 3 points in the second half after adjusting to stop the run. The Spartans also held the Chippewas to field goals on short fields to help keep the score close.

Leading the way on the defense was linebacker Jordan Pollard who had 15 tackles, which is good for fifth in the nation.

Pollard’s 15 tackle performance against CMU caught the eye of Texas head coach Steven Sarkisian.

“They’ve got a great linebacker in Pollard,” Sarkisian said during a press conference. “He’s a downhill player, run and hit guy. A good challenge for us.”

The Spartans have a lot cut out for them on Saturday.

Central Michigan running back Nahree Biggins (5) is tackled by San Jose State defensive back Jalen Apalit-Williams (7) and San Jose State cornerback Caleb Presley (0) in the fourth quarter during an NCAA football game on Friday, Aug. 29, 2025 in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Lachlan Cunningham)

“(Texas) is big, they’re fast and they’re scary looking,” offensive coordinator Craig Stutzmann said. “What an opportunity to go against probably the best team we are going to see all year and to play in a prestigious environment.”

Stutzmann’s unit only put up 14 points and Eget had three turnovers on two interceptions and one fumble.

The Spartans lost the turnover battle 3-0.

“That’s the number one stat that goes through all levels of football, the turnover margin,” Niumatalolo said. “If you win the turnover battle you normally win the game.”

Stutzmann attributed the poor offensive performance to missing blocking IDs and miscommunications all throughout the offense. This shocked Stutzmann as he said the Spartans looked very clean on the offensive side of the ball during camp.

San Jose native Danny Scudero was one of the few bright spots on the Spartans offense. Scudero had 189 yards receiving and one touchdown in his first game for his hometown college.

This week it will be wide receiver Leland Smith’s turn to go back to his home state.

Smith, a Houston native, will be playing his first football game in Texas since he was in high school in 2022. Around 40 members of Smith’s family will be attending Saturday’s game.

“My teammates blessed me with some of their tickets knowing I was from Texas,” Smith said. “Then I had to figure some stuff out and buy extra tickets.”

Smith will be seeing a lot of familiar faces lining up against him.

According to Smith, he played against or with the majority of Texas’ defensive starters in seven on seven football in the Fast Houston league. Including playing in a tournament on the same team as Longhorns corner Jaylon Guilbeau.

San Jose State's Leland Smith catches an 11-yard touchdown pass from Walker Eget on Friday night in a season opener against Central Michigan at CEFCU Stadium on Aug. 29, 2025, in San Jose, California. (Photo by Thien-An Truong/San Jose State Football)

Spartans safety Larry Turner-Gooden spent the 2022 and 23 season as a Longhorn before transferring over to the Spartans prior to the 2024 season.

SJSU is doing all it can to get ready for this Saturday’s game. This includes, playing music at practice as loud as the CEFCU speaker lets them, pumping in fake crowd noise, starting practice earlier to align with the PST kickoff time and more.

“We’re preparing for the noise, the different time zone, the heat, not to mention the really good football team we are playing,” Niumatalolo said. “The guys you are trying to cover, the guys you are trying to block are really big, fast and strong. We are just trying to be the best team we can be at kickoff.”

Appelbaum: Why Google’s antitrust loss is a victory for the Valley

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:21:27 +0000

The giants of Silicon Valley have a lot in common with Laura Ingalls Wilder, who portrayed her life on the prairie as a triumph of self-sufficiency, barely mentioning that the government underwrote the railroads, provided the farmland and tided the family through rough winters.

Tech companies, too, like to tell stories in which government rarely appears except as an outside force threatening to break the beautiful things they’ve created with their minds and their hard work. The part of the story that doesn’t get told is how Silicon Valley’s successes have relied on the steady support and occasional dramatic interventions of the federal government.

On Tuesday, a federal judge ordered Alphabet, the company better known as Google, to share some of its search data with its rivals. The decision is intended to limit the dominance of the company’s internet search engine, which was ruled an illegal monopoly last year. The government had sought to break up the company, which Alphabet decried as a “radical” intrusion on its business, and the court decided not to go that far. But the decision still marks an overdue return to the government’s longtime role.

Myth busters

Antitrust regulators repeatedly intervened in the 20th century to limit the power of big tech companies, which created room for new firms to emerge. Business historian Alfred Chandler wrote in his 2001 book, “Inventing the Electronic Century,” that in the mythos of Silicon Valley, the role of the gods — the invisible hands that shape human events — has in fact been played by the “middle-level bureaucrats in the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust division.”

The government abandoned that role in recent decades, allowing a small handful of tech firms the luxury of growing old without any real threat to their market dominance. As new technologies emerged, Alphabet and its peers bought and swallowed them, in much the same way the Greek god Kronos ate his children to prevent their emergence as rivals. The most recent chapter in this story is how the biggest tech companies have absorbed the pioneers of artificial intelligence so that the profits from the next generation of innovations will flow to the same shareholders whose firms dominate the current era.

Alphabet in its current form — huge, and hugely profitable — is the beneficiary of two large doses of good luck. The company benefited from the final round of federal interventions around the turn of the last century, and then it benefited even more from the absence of further interventions.

It’s about time the government created room for the next generation of innovators.

Google’s story doesn’t really begin in the 1990s, with co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page figuring out how to index the internet. It starts a half-century earlier, when antitrust regulators forced early technology firms like AT&T and RCA to share their patents, opening up the space in which the computer industry began to emerge. A generation later, in the 1970s, authorities forced IBM, the most successful of the early computer companies, to allow other firms to write software for its machines. One of the companies founded in the space opened by that government intervention was called Micro-Soft. It dropped the hyphen in 1976.

Fast-forward to the 1990s, and Microsoft had become so dominant that the government intervened once again, reaching an agreement with the company in 2001 that prevented it from controlling the development of the internet. Google seized the opportunity.

Silicon Valley still likes to think of itself as a place in the throes of perpetual revolution. Alphabet, Meta and the other titans of tech insist the good times could end at any time, because new technologies could upend their business models. Page has insisted that on the internet, “Competition is one click away.” But without the restraining hand of government, it’s easy for the big companies to squash competition.

Inconvenient truth

That’s the thing about free markets: They work best under the aegis of government.

It’s important to note that curbing big companies doesn’t kill them. Although RCA is no longer with us, Microsoft, IBM and even AT&T all remain large and profitable. The government didn’t destroy their businesses; it created room for new ones.

While the Trump administration deserves credit for pushing ahead with the case against Google, which was initiated under President Joe Biden, that shouldn’t be taken as a sign of a broader commitment to restrain corporate power. The Google case instead is reminiscent of the Reagan administration’s successful effort to break up AT&T in the early 1980s, just when it was pulling back from almost every other kind of antitrust enforcement. The Google case is a targeted act against a specific company, not a manifestation of some broader economic policy.

Yet, as was the case with the breakup of AT&T, acting against one company when that company is big and central can still have broad economic benefits.

We don’t know what companies might emerge in the spaces created by constraining Google. The government’s role is to create those spaces. The rest is up to those celebrated programmers working in their bedrooms and garages, trying to build the next big thing.

Binyamin Appelbaum is a New York Times editorial board member.

Trump’s cuts to health funding could endanger life-saving services around the Bay Area. One county is trying to save them with a sales tax.

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:17:41 +0000

When Chris Wilder had a massive stroke four years ago, doctors told his wife that he might not survive — and if he did, he might not ever walk or talk again.

The former Valley Health Foundation executive director, then 53, had been rushed from his home in the Santa Cruz Mountains to Good Samaritan Hospital after Kate Wilder noticed her husband’s face slump — a sign of a stroke. As Wilder’s brain swelled, doctor’s removed a large section of his skull and subsequently his left temporal lobe — a key part of the brain responsible for communication.

Once he was stable, Wilder was transferred to Valley Medical Center — Santa Clara County’s flagship public hospital with a nationally ranked rehabilitation center — where he spent the next six months relearning how to stand and teaching his brain to reconnect with the right side of his body.

In a recent interview at his home, Wilder, who now walks with a cane, described the last several years as frustration, pain and a lot of hard work and physical therapy. He credits Valley Medical Center, which he long thought of as “my hospital,” and the county’s health care system, which he helped raise more than $100 million to support, for putting him back together.

“I wouldn’t be here without them,” he said.

Chris Wilder, who is the former head of the Valley Health Foundation, shows his scar where doctors had to cut out a piece of his skull because his brain was swelling during his stroke at his home in Los Gatos, Calif., on Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)

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But without an influx of funding from a sales tax measure on November’s ballot, Santa Clara County officials say the health care services that saved Wilder’s life could be at risk.

President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which he signed into law on July 4, will hack a trillion dollars from Medicaid over the next decade, delivering a financial blow to “safety net” hospitals that rely heavily on funding from federal and state health care reimbursements.

In Santa Clara County, more than 50% of the Santa Clara Valley Healthcare system’s revenues come from Medi-Cal — California’s Medicaid program for low-income and disabled residents.

“These cuts are potentially life-changing for way too many people in our community because our county hospital serves most people in the county at one time or the other whether they are expected to or not,” Wilder said.

County officials estimate that Trump’s cuts will lead to $4.4 billion in lost revenue through the 2029-2030 fiscal year, impacting funding for health care and social services in an ecosystem that has already been strapped in recent years.

The Board of Supervisors last month unanimously approved putting the sales tax measure, known as Measure A, in front of voters this November, giving county officials less than three months to make their case.

“We have difficult decisions to make whether it passes or not, but the magnitude of what those looks like will be radically shaped by whether the measure passes,” County Executive James Williams told the Bay Area News Group.

The sales tax increase, which would sunset after five years, is expected to generate $330 million annually — roughly a third of the funding gap the county needs to close. Williams said the county is also seeking support from the state, noting “public hospitals are the backbone for health care for all Californians.”

While public hospitals make up only 6% of hospitals in the state, they operate more than 50% of trauma and burn centers, according to the California Health Care Safety Net Institute.

Across the Bay Area, public hospitals are grappling with fiscal uncertainty as a result of cuts to Medicaid. In the East Bay, the Alameda Health System is considering what CEO James Jackson called the “nuclear option” for its future budget as 70-80% of its funding comes from federal and state health care reimbursements. Santa Clara County, though, is the only Bay Area county currently considering a sales tax measure in November to plug some of the hole.

It wasn’t until 2003 that cities and counties were given the power to increase sales taxes with voter approval. Since then it’s become an increasingly popular tool for locales looking to stave off budgetary disaster.

In 2020, Alameda County voters approved a one-half percent general sales tax increase largely to address homelessness, though federal cuts have forced the county to divert some of that money to protect safety net services. Oakland passed its own sales tax increase in April to help its looming budget deficit, and Pleasanton is expected to make another attempt at a sales tax measure in 2026 after voters rejected it last November.

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center trauma surgeons, Dr. Amanda Tsoufakis, left, and Dr. Tobias Muniz, center, and cardiothoracic resident Dr. Gabe Weininger conduct a procedure in the ICU at the hospital on Friday, Aug. 2, 2024, in San Jose, Calif. SCVMC Trauma Center surgeons also conduct procedures in the ICU depending on the case counts of the day. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

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In Santa Clara County, opposition to Measure A has already started to materialize. A group of local Libertarian voters quickly filed a lawsuit attempting to block the initiative from the ballot. They accused the county of violating the state constitution by improperly declaring an emergency to rush the tax increase to the voters during a special election. But a judge last week affirmed the county was well within its right to do so.

Mark Hinkle, president of the Silicon Valley Taxpayers Association, said that he’s concerned about how the county will use the money generated by the sales tax since it is slated to go to the general fund.

“They could spend 100% of that money on salaries, pensions, roadwork, who knows,” he told the Bay Area News Group.

A coalition of current and former elected officials — including Cupertino Mayor Liang Chao, former Saratoga City Councilmember Rushi Kumar and former Assemblymember Kansen Chu — signed onto the official argument against the ballot measure, describing it as a “blank check with no oversight or accountability” and said the increase “hits hardworking families the hardest.”

The local sales tax rate is currently 9.125% countywide, and the 0.625% increase would put Campbell, Milpitas and San Jose at a 10% sales tax rate or higher.

Michael Elliot, executive director of the Valley Health Foundation who took over when Wilder stepped down in 2022 following his stroke

Viva CalleSJ will close nearly 10 miles of streets this weekend as it wraps up its 10th year

Fri, 05 Sep 2025 04:16:03 +0000

You never know what you might see at Viva CalleSJ, San Jose’s “open streets” event that closes miles of roads to motor vehicles and gives free rein to cyclists, skateboarders, strollers and some unexpected forms of transportation.

“There was a penny farthing,” said Brian Clampitt, the parks manager in charge of events for San Jose’s Parks, Recreation and Neighborhood Services department. If you’re not up on vintage bikes, a penny farthing is the one with a huge wheel in front and a small back wheel.

Clampitt has also witnessed a guy riding a bike in a perpetual wheelie because he had no front wheel, a “snake” of recombinant bikes attached to each other and even a horse and its rider dancing in front of Five Wounds Portuguese National Church on Santa Clara Street.

“It’s a picture you could never get any other day of the year,” he said.

Participants ride down Story Road past McLaughlin Avenue at Viva CalleSJ’s “Downtown and Eastbound” in San Jose, Calif., Sunday, April 13, 2025. (Thien-An Truong for Bay Area News Group)

SAN JOSE, CA - MAY 1: Bicycle riders, pedestrians, and other visitors take part in the Viva CalleSJ event on Sunday, May 1, 2022, in San Jose, Calif. Miles of city streets were closed to automobiles Sunday to allow community members to walk, bike, and skate through San Jose. Food trucks, artist booths and performance stages were spread throughout city neighborhoods. (Aric Crabb/Bay Area News Group)