Original Reporting

Congress fiddles while Treasury burns
Original Reporting | By T.J. Lewan | Corporations, Taxes
More and more corporations are looking to take advantage of a glaring tax loophole: acquire a smaller overseas rival from a low-tax country and treat the entire merged entity as no longer being American. This tax avoidance, currently legal, will cost U.S. taxpayers many billions of dollars in lost revenue over the years. A bill to stop the practice cold has been introduced in Congress, but, so far, most Senators and Representatives are content not to take prompt action. More
Ignoring a solution to chronic drug shortages
Original Reporting | By T.J. Lewan | Health care, Medicine
Since shortages of critical drugs became a fixture of the American medical landscape a decade ago, pundits have proposed an array of incentives to encourage more production from pharmaceutical companies. But an obvious alternative or supplement — having the government manufacture the drugs — appears not to have made it to anyone’s list. Why not? More
Education underfunding still foundation of New York’s new budget
Original Reporting | By David Noriega | Education
Lawsuit highlights state's failure to fund K-12 at level agreed necessary in 2007. If the state were paying the $3 billion it owed and then continued to meet state constitutional obligation to fund schools properly, the budget picture would be far less rosy than the one painted by Gov. Cuomo when he said tax cuts were possible and no new taxes were needed to fund pre-K. More
Think twice before throwing doctors to the wind
Original Reporting | By David Noriega | Health care
Some suggest that nurse practitioners and doctors are interchangeable in the provision of primary care. But there are substantial differences in the education and training of the two groups. Nurses say the differences are not material, but physicians outline several ways in which their additional training can help them be better practitioners. More
Forging a different path
Original Reporting | By David Noriega | Alternative models, Role of government
There are solutions to San Jose’s problems, but they require going after the structural causes: inequity within Silicon Valley, unrestrained competition between municipalities in the region, a nationwide race to the bottom with tax incentives, and California’s restrictions on local revenue. First, however, it is necessary for elected officials to identify and denounce the problem, something they have so far been unwilling to do. More
This valley is their valley
Original Reporting | By David Noriega | Corporate influence, Income inequality, Urban Policy
Decades of inequitable development and intra-regional competition have created a deeply divided Silicon Valley, one where the city of San Jose bears most of the burden: a disproportionate share of the poor and working-class residents of the region, along with a strained public budget. Meanwhile, more and more wealth has accumulated exorbitantly in the smaller cities of the Valley, and the corporate sector has come to dictate the terms for regional planning and investment. More
The delusions of an American Technopolis
Original Reporting | By David Noriega | Globalization, History, Urban Policy
The roots of San Jose’s problems stretch back to the mid-20th Century, when a period of breakneck suburbanization caused the city to quadruple in size. This was followed by decades of disinvestment on the federal and state levels, to which San Jose responded by aggressively pursuing an “entrepreneurial” form of government dedicated to attracting and retaining corporate wealth. That focus on corporate-based redevelopment never paid off for the city's residents. More
Deep-rooted dysfunction
Original Reporting | By David Noriega | Government services, Taxes
Part 1 of our series: The current administration in San Jose points to "excessive" retirement benefits for its workers as the cause of its chronic budget woes. But "blame the workers" is not an adequate explanation for San Jose's troubles. The city has ignored deeper causes, especially ones on the revenue side of the ledger. This includes remarkably low taxes on commercial property. More

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