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Fund the Community DataBank
Nov 13, 2026
San Francisco residents need an organization that can follow public money and decisions before the damage is done. I propose a Community DataBank, beginning with Pacific Heights and Cow Hollow, supported by a modest, publicly approved allocation of our taxes. Residents should be able to find out what government is doing without requiring everyone to research City Hall.
My earlier proposal placed two desks outside the Mayor’s Office, staffed by neighborhood association members who would watch who goes in and out and follow the public business behind those visits. The DataBank would give those desks useful work and reliable records. A visitor’s presence would prompt a question; official documents would establish what actually happened.
Use disclosed calendars, lobbying filings, and public records to follow official business, respecting privacy and building rules. Set scheduled hours so residents know when someone is available. Publish each request and response in the relevant issue file. If officials correct an entry, preserve the correction and its explanation. The record should help residents participate early and give departments a practical way to answer questions once for everyone without repeated paperwork.
Invite the Pacific Heights Residents Association and Cow Hollow Association to develop the first demonstration. Both have newsletter channels, and Cow Hollow has a block captain network. Neither has agreed to participate. Their existing email networks offer a practical starting point without inventing a new organization’s audience overnight.
Each association could send its own invitation. Residents would choose whether to join the DataBank and share contact information. Existing private lists would stay with the associations. Renters, homeowners and people who cannot afford membership dues would have equal access to public information. Phone and paper participation would remain available.
Keep a private contact register, public files on neighborhood decisions and a public money ledger. Every public entry should identify its source, responsible agency, and update date. Show missing answers plainly. Record what officials promised alongside what they delivered, with corrections visible to readers.
Once a week, send a brief that takes five minutes to read and asks residents about a concrete priority. AI can help summarize documents, but people must check accuracy and include differing views. Publish participation totals. Never present an advisory neighborhood response as an official election result.
Start with two assignments: trace a street repair allocation through completed work and follow one development application. Show the applicable rules, applicant, decision dates, review opportunities, and official answers. Residents need this information while they can still participate. The pilot would create no automatic neighborhood veto over development.
The money trail begins with the fund. San Francisco’s General Fund receives local tax revenue and supports many services. Other revenue, including particular grants and bond proceeds, has restricted uses. The Mayor proposes spending; supervisors adopt appropriations. Departments carry out authorized work. A budget, a payment, and a completed repair are different records.
Street history deserves accuracy. A 2005 Public Works report says Dianne Feinstein used millions from a General Fund surplus for street repairs in the early 1980s. It says gas tax and road fund revenues were going to cleaning rather than paving by 2005. It does not establish that Feinstein moved road money into the General Fund.
For a damaged block, identify the responsible agency, funding source, repair schedule, commitments, payments, and completion record. Include dated photographs and service request numbers. When a department cannot connect a payment to the block, ask it to explain. Residents should not have to guess where their repair money went.
Herb Caen joked about rush hour double parking on Pine in 1995. We can document today’s obstructions on Bush and Pine and ask merchants, delivery operators, and officials for workable loading arrangements. Two blocked lanes on a three-lane block leave one moving lane. Photograph the conditions and measure delays before prescribing changes.
I have heard complaints about water department favoritism and poor accountability dating to the Willie Brown years. Those accounts require records and a management response. City rules permit dismissal for cause with procedural protections. Experienced workers should also receive paid time to train successors before their practical knowledge retires with them.
Request $7,520 for a ninety-day demonstration, through an approved General Fund grant supported by existing municipal tax revenue. Funding requires an available appropriation, a sponsoring department, and an eligible operator. Neighborhood taxes are not automatically reserved for associations. No grant, operating agreement, or City Hall space has been secured.
Volunteers would coordinate the database, check records, and staff the desks. Plan for eight coordinator hours and twelve reporting and desk hours weekly, shared among a roster. Record volunteer hours separately from cash spending. Shifts, backup coverage, and training would make the service dependable.
The cash budget provides $2,000 for database setup and secure hosting; $1,500 for limited independent planning or legal review; $1,200 for outreach; $1,800 for administration and insurance; and $1,020 contingency. Publish estimates and actual costs. The volunteer roster would provide scheduled desk coverage during agreed hours.
A qualified nonprofit or fiscal sponsor would administer the grant and support volunteers. Six volunteer resident representatives, three from each neighborhood with tenant representation, would oversee priorities under published selection rules. Disclose financial interests and conflicts. Public information must remain accessible to people who buy no membership or shares.
Start the clock after funding and agreements are in place. Target 200 consenting residents, ten weekly briefs, two maintained issue files and three monthly spending statements. Seek responses from at least fifty distinct residents. Report unanswered questions and missed targets alongside successes. Renewal should depend on results and actual costs.
The grant would support nonpartisan information and participation, with terms expressly prohibiting spending on candidate or ballot measure campaigns. Publish the DataBank’s own grant and invoices. Pacific Heights and Cow Hollow can test the method, then share it with other neighborhoods, with fair support for communities that have fewer resources. Our taxes should help us oversee our city.
John van Sicklen Maeck II is a writer based in San Francisco.
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America’s Gridlock Is Beijing’s Best Argument
Nov 12, 2026
Americans tend to treat democracy’s superiority as settled, and the long-run evidence backs them up. A major study by MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and colleagues found that countries that democratize end up about 20 percent richer per person within a generation. But most of the world does not grade governments on long-run studies. For billions of people outside the wealthy West, the test is simpler: does the power stay on, are food prices steady, is there work, and do the roads get built? When the stomach is empty, a ballot can feel like a luxury.
China understands this and sells its model on exactly those terms. Its GDP per capita has climbed from about $300 in 1980 to nearly $15,000 today, by IMF figures, and the World Bank credits it with lifting some 800 million people out of extreme poverty. India, the world’s largest democracy, started from a similar place and sits near $2,800. Beijing’s centralized system, paired with Deng Xiaoping’s market reforms, built power plants, factories and rail lines at a pace India’s more deliberative politics has not matched. Anyone who values liberty will find little to admire in that model. It does explain why the model sells.
Prosperity Usually Comes First
Political science has a blunt finding here. Adam Przeworski and Fernando Limongi found that no democracy had ever collapsed in a country richer than Argentina was in 1975, about $6,000 per head in 1985 dollars, while poorer democracies fell again and again. South Korea and Taiwan industrialized under authoritarian rule and became durable democracies once they grew rich. Singapore took a hybrid road under Lee Kuan Yew, pairing disciplined execution with tight limits on political freedom; its GDP per capita now tops $100,000.
Silencing people is the wrong takeaway. Regimes that crush dissent blind themselves to their own mistakes. The lesson is about the order of needs. A factory worker in Shenzhen or a farmer in Uttar Pradesh wants a reliable bus and a working school first and a freer debate second. A democracy that cannot supply the first will struggle to sell the second.
America’s Vetocracy
That is where the United States should worry. In April, Gallup found just 10 percent of Americans approve of Congress, one point above the record low set in 2013, with 86 percent disapproving. Last fall the government shut down for 43 days, the longest full shutdown in American history, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates the economy permanently lost about $11 billion. This spring the Department of Homeland Security went unfunded for a record 76 days. Continuing resolutions stand in for budgets. A typical federal environmental impact statement takes about four and a half years before a shovel moves. California voters approved high-speed rail in 2008 at an estimated $33 billion; the state’s own estimate is now $126 billion, and the first passengers are not expected until the 2030s. Over the same years, China built more than 50,000 kilometers of high-speed track, more than the rest of the world combined.
The same pattern now reaches the top of the world. As Arctic ice retreats, Chinese container ships recently completed their first season of regular weekly service to Europe along Russia’s northern coast, cutting the Suez voyage nearly in half. America’s answer is a heavy icebreaker contracted in 2019 for delivery in 2024; the GAO now expects it in 2033. Until then, the Coast Guard’s only working heavy icebreaker is the Polar Star, commissioned in 1976. Congress paid for these ships. Washington simply could not get them built.
Francis Fukuyama calls this a “vetocracy,” a system so well defended against overreach that it is also defended against action. Gridlock is usually treated as a domestic annoyance. Abroad, every stalled American project is free advertising for Beijing.
When Pressure Worked
Democracies can still move fast when someone applies pressure on purpose. For years, polite diplomacy left most European allies short of even NATO’s 2 percent defense target. The Trump administration took a blunter, transactional approach, and much of the foreign-policy establishment called it reckless. Yet at The Hague in June 2025, every ally except Spain, which negotiated its way out, committed to spend 5 percent of GDP on defense and security by 2035, with 3.5 percent for core military needs. This March, NATO reported that European allies and Canada had raised real defense spending by 20 percent in 2025, and that for the first time every member cleared the 2 percent bar.
The method has costs. Alliances rest partly on predictability, and an adversary who cannot tell which commitments are firm may miscalculate. Still, deliberate pressure inside an existing structure broke an inertia that decades of consensus diplomacy could not.
Reforms Worth Debating
None of this argues for abandoning checks and balances. It argues for sorting the checks that produce accountability from those that merely produce paralysis. Several reforms would push the system toward delivery without touching the Constitution: a narrow filibuster exception for infrastructure and budget bills; sunset dates that force major programs to be reauthorized on a schedule rather than run on autopilot; and a public, plain-English scorecard for every large federal project. Congress already accepts the logic of the first idea, since budget reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered. In my years running R&D programs, a project with no milestones was one nobody could kill or save.
A bolder idea deserves debate, if only for what it forces us to confront: a president elected to a single, non-renewable term of five or six years, with narrow authority to break legislative deadlock on designated infrastructure and economic bills, subject to full judicial review. It would require a constitutional amendment and carries real risk of abuse, so it should be considered only with guardrails at least as strong as the power it grants. But removing the reelection motive would strip out much of the posturing that fuels gridlock today.
The postwar assumption that democracy wins by default, whether or not it delivers, is wearing thin across the developing world and, increasingly, at home. Ordinary people need full refrigerators more than fine speeches. The contest with China will not be settled by speeches about freedom. It will be settled in part by which system can pass a budget, build a bridge and keep a promise on time. If America keeps mistaking gridlock for principle, it will keep handing its rivals their best argument.
Meda Parameswara Reddy, Ph.D., is the Director of the Reddy Center for Critical and Integrated Thinking.
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Why America Must Rethink Its Counterterrorism Strategy in Nigeria
Nov 11, 2026
When American forces conducted airstrikes against suspected Islamic State militants in northwest Nigeria on Christmas Day 2025, the operation signaled a renewal of security cooperation between Washington and Abuja. Yet for Nigerians living in communities plagued by terrorism, kidnapping, and armed attacks, a critical question remained: Will these strikes make their daily lives any safer?
That question demands serious consideration in Washington. The United States has spent decades helping Nigeria combat terrorism through military equipment, intelligence sharing, and tactical training. Yet, armed violence continues to disrupt daily life across northern Nigeria, raising doubts about how the effectiveness of American counterterrorism assistance should be measured.
The December operations followed a diplomatic dispute in which President Donald Trump accused Nigeria of failing to protect Christians and threatened military intervention. Nigeria subsequently welcomed U.S. assistance, leading to coordinated strikes against suspected militants in Sokoto State.
While military strikes can disrupt terrorist operations, destroy equipment, and neutralize commanders, they cannot single-handedly guarantee community safety or restore public trust in government institutions.
The United States and Nigeria have maintained security ties for over five decades. According to a 2024 State Department fact sheet, Washington held $590 million in active government-to-government military sales cases with Nigeria. Major transactions included a $497 million deal for 12 A-29 Super Tucano aircraft and a $997 million deal for 12 AH-1Z attack helicopters.
Between fiscal years 2019 and 2023, the United States also provided more than $8 million in counterterrorism training, equipment, and advisory support, along with approximately $5 million for international military education and training. These figures encompass various programs and stages of assistance rather than a single lump sum already expended.
This partnership extends beyond defense hardware to include military professionalization, intelligence sharing, border security, and initiatives to enhance accountability within Nigeria's security sector.
Although these investments have strengthened aspects of Nigeria's military capabilities, civilians' persistent vulnerability raises a broader question: How should success ultimately be defined?
In northeastern Nigeria, Boko Haram and the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) have sustained an insurgency that has devastated communities across the Lake Chad Basin. Meanwhile, in the northwest, armed bandit networks have expanded kidnapping for ransom, cattle rustling, and raids on rural settlements. Although some groups operate in overlapping areas, their motivations and organizational structures differ significantly.
That distinction matters: treating every armed group strictly as a terrorist organization risks overlooking the criminal economies, local grievances, and law enforcement failures that sustain different forms of violence.
The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) recorded more than 400 kidnapping incidents across northwest Nigeria in 2026 by the time of its analysis. In June, at least 39 civilians were abducted in Maradun, Zamfara State, after traveling to negotiate peace terms with an armed group.
A separate ACLED assessment found that armed bandits accounted for more than 80 percent of recorded mass abductions since the beginning of 2025.
These figures do not mean U.S. counterterrorism operations have failed; rather, they demonstrate that Nigeria's civilian security crisis extends far beyond the militant organizations targeted by airstrikes.
Having reported on terrorism and violent conflict in northern Nigeria, I have witnessed how insecurity paralyzes communities long after the immediate violence subsides. Farmers struggle to cultivate their fields, families live in constant fear, and residents face travel restrictions that disrupt ordinary economic and social life.
For those living under these conditions, security is measured less by the body count of neutralized militants than by whether they can travel safely, earn a living, and send their children to school.
This is where Washington should reconsider its approach.
The United States and Nigeria have already recognized the necessity of broader security reforms. During the 2024 U.S.–Nigeria Binational Commission, both governments committed to expanding military and law enforcement cooperation while prioritizing civilian protection, human rights, and democratic principles.
They proposed establishing a standing security working group and enhancing joint efforts in border and aviation security, anti-terrorist financing, criminal investigations, and explosives detection. Discussions also focused on creating specialized police anti-kidnapping units, improving oversight mechanisms, mapping crime, advancing police reform, and strengthening judicial institutions.
Furthermore, their commitments encompassed civilian harm mitigation, community peacebuilding, farmer–herder conflict resolution, and the safeguarding of freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and religious liberty.
These mutual agreements offer a framework for evaluating whether security cooperation is making a tangible difference on the ground. Washington should actively advocate for transparent assessments of civilian casualties, kidnapping metrics, accountability for human rights abuses, and the safe return of displaced communities.
It should also invest in supporting Nigerian civil and judicial institutions capable of investigating and prosecuting violent crimes, rather than relying primarily on military solutions.
While protecting religious freedom must remain a priority, Nigeria's security crisis cannot be viewed solely through the lens of attacks on Christian communities. Muslims have also suffered extensively from terrorism and banditry. A comprehensive policy aimed at protecting all civilians will far better address the nation's complex security realities.
The stakes extend well beyond Nigeria's borders. As Africa's most populous nation and a key regional democracy, Nigeria is central to West African stability and global cooperation. Persistent insecurity erodes public confidence in elected leaders, suppresses civic participation, and creates power vacuums that armed groups exploit.
For the United States, supporting Nigeria involves far more than neutralizing terrorist organizations—it means helping a strategic democratic partner build trusted governance and judicial institutions.
A robust bilateral relationship should align security assistance with civilian protection, public accountability, and sustained diplomatic engagement. Such an approach would demonstrate that U.S. foreign policy can effectively advance democratic governance while confronting violent extremism.
Ultimately, the success of U.S.–Nigeria counterterrorism efforts must be judged by whether ordinary Nigerians can live free from fear, participate in civic life, and trust the institutions charged with their protection. Until these outcomes serve as the primary metrics of progress, even successful military strikes will remain an incomplete response to Nigeria's complex security challenges.
Idris Mohammed is a Ph.D. student at the University of Alabama concentrating in Journalism & Creative Media and a fall Fulcrum Fellow.
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US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth on October 28, 2026.
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Pete Hegseth and the High Price of Compromised Governance
Nov 10, 2026
Just days after a historic midterm election in which everyday Americans sent a clear, undeniable demand for political accountability and transparency, the halls of Congress have devolved into a new theater of crisis. Republican Representative Thomas Massie’s introduction of eight articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has thrown the Department—and the nation’s fragile democratic norms—into uncharted territory.
Massie, a longtime Trump critic who plans to retire from Congress at the end of the year, accuses Hegseth of bypassing Congress and violating constitutional limits on war powers.
Speaking on the House floor, Massie argued that Hegseth had overstepped his authority through U.S. military action involving Iran. Hegseth “has acted in a manner contrary to his trust as secretary of defense,” Massie said, adding that he “has demonstrated that he will remain a threat to the Constitution if allowed to remain in office, and has acted in a manner grossly incompatible with his duties and the rule of law.”
According to Massie’s announcement, the first article “charges Secretary Hegseth with waging the Iran war despite no declaration of war, statutory authorization, attack on the United States, or imminent threat.” The article further asserts that “it establishes that the war was unlawful from its inception.”
There is little doubt that Hegseth's turbulent tenure deserves fierce criticism. From allegations of bypassing the War Powers Resolution by launching unauthorized military actions in Iran and Yemen, to the tragic strike on an Iranian school that resulted in mass civilian casualties, his leadership has operated on a doctrine of unilateral defiance. Add to that the extrajudicial targeting of crews in the Pacific, the reckless capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, and chilling threats to prosecute critics like Senator Mark Kelly for exercising free speech, and we see an administrator who treats international law and constitutional constraints as mere suggestions. Hegseth’s ongoing assault on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives has already compromised internal national security and alienated the very communities that make our military strong. By any objective metric of steady governance, his record is an absolute failure.
But as a journalist and advocate for systemic democratic reform, I am compelled to look past the political theater and ask the central, sobering question: Does Pete Hegseth legally deserve impeachment?
Under Article II, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution, impeachment requires a threshold of "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." The legal case brought by Massie holds genuine structural merit, particularly regarding the separation of powers. Waging unauthorized warfare in direct violation of statutory law and intentionally subverting Congressional oversight represent exactly the kind of executive overreach the Founders sought to curb.
Yet, history and recent political reality remind us that impeachment is rarely a purely legal exercise—it is inherently a political instrument. As Jonah Goldberg recently noted in The Fulcrum regarding the broader debates surrounding accountability in this administration, the line between constitutional duty and political strategy is dangerously thin. If the House moves forward with a vote within the required 48 hours, it risks hyper-politicizing what should be a sober legal process. With House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries signaling a united Democratic front and the slim Republican majority teetering on a knife's edge, a vote to impeach might satisfy a desperate public hunger for accountability, but it could further fracture an already broken legislative branch.
Which brings us to the final dilemma: Should Donald Trump fire him?
For the sake of our national security and global standing, the answer is an unequivocal yes. President Trump has spent the days following the midterms trapped in an alternate-reality delusion, refusing to accept that voters delivered a devastating verdict on his administration’s chaotic governance. Defending Hegseth as the victim of a "political sham" only deepens this blindness.
True leadership requires recognizing when a cabinet official has become a liability to the republic. Leaving Hegseth at the helm of our military forces further isolates America on the world stage and erodes domestic trust. Trump should fire Hegseth immediately to restore structural integrity to our defense institutions—not to appease Congress, but to show that his administration can, for once, prioritize the stability of our democracy over personal loyalty.
Because Massie introduced the measure as a privileged resolution, House Republican leaders must bring the impeachment articles to the floor within two legislative days. GOP lawmakers could also move to table or dismiss the measure, but doing so would require support from a majority of the House.
The House needs only a simple majority to approve the articles of impeachment. If adopted, the matter would then move to the Senate, where senators would decide whether to convict Hegseth and remove him from office.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network
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