SB 51: the California politics thread

how the recall process would work

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/weekly-score/2021/03/15/the-dates-to-know-for-the-potential-newsom-recall-793982

gonna be a long summer and a lot of wasted time, but for now he looks like he'll survive the vote

A reminder that Grey Davis' recall polled at or ahead of his final margin of defeat (55% yes 45% no).

38% is not gonna get it done. https://t.co/d7x15Zg3de

— Steve Singiser (@stevesingiser) March 15, 2021

Meantime, whew.

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2021-03-18/mwd-manager-left-legacy-abuse-desert-water-world

i certainly don't love newsom but this recall is fucking dumb

i want an option on the ballot that says "i dislike all these fkrs even more than i dislike Gavin Newsom THINK ABOUT THAT"

i want an option that makes the people who funded this recall to have to pay everyone $50 for having to participate in this bullshit

I'm not sure the goal is really to actually replace Newsom (highly unlikely) but rather to besmirch him, drag his name through the mud, criticize the Democrats, etc. It's a general smear campaign that feigns loftier goals.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/03/18/trailer-explaining-california-recall/

the recall is bs, but this is not

See how @BlueShieldCA Spent Years Cultivating a Relationship with @GavinNewsom. It Got the State Vaccine Contract. https://t.co/kR8iNCNl2i via @khnews with @ahartreports

— Samantha Young (@youngsamantha) March 19, 2021

so many companies getting contracts for things related to Covid that are just ... ugh ... otoh, this pandemic is hopefully demonstrating the value of chronically underpaid, underfunded non-profit organizations which really should get more power/say in policy and systems development than some of these corporate clowns

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/03/22/why-newsom-isnt-counting-on-his-own-government-to-manage-vaccine-rollout-1368548

Newsom, a wine entrepreneur who got his political start in San Francisco, has long been enthralled by the private sector's ability to solve problems on the fly compared to the slow pace of government. In his 2013 book, "Citizenville," he said that government doesn't have the money, programmers or engineering mindset to address problems in the technology age. But, he added, "we don't have to. We simply have to make it possible for people outside government to help us fix them."

how's that working out?

idk but Salesforce built the data infrastructure for the Emergency Rental Assistance Program and a lot of the state emergency funding grants are being managed by a company called Lendistry ... there are issues with both of these things

otoh -- there is the EDD

ha! well if you run it badly and underfund it then newsom's prediction that government is bad turns out to be correct, it's true.

my hunch is he doesn't actually have an opinion about The Private Sector, but he likes that outsourcing allows him to claim he's not responsible, and that will be the #1 lesson he learns from the EDD.

otm on both counts

I think that the, uh, lack of capacity the state has had for responding to Covid, both the virus itself and the economic repercussions really shows how underfunded the state government has been, probably since Reagan tbh

the Emergency Rental Assistance Program is a mish-mash of programs with jurisdictional overlap and some of the local and regional programs aren't up and running, and there are people that qualify for both local/regional and state, but they might get a "better deal" with the local/regional programs that aren't online yet ... and meanwhile there is pressure to get people into the system ASAP due to funding timelines, and it's like ... does anyone know how this is supposed to work?

haha you love to see it

oh yeah, and so the administration of the state program got outsourced, and the organization it got outsourced to has further outsourced things to "local partners" and us local partners are supposed to be getting right to work, but we are just getting confirmation of how much we will get paid ... and of course that means, they haven't paid the local partners any of this yet, but we are supposed to be hiring new staff and increasing the workloads of existing staff ... granted it's only been a couple of weeks.

oh and the application to be a local partner -- it was literally due in 6 days from when it was announced. That included a last minute 3 day extension from Friday to Monday.

It's less messy for people in lower population areas where the whole program is administered by the state. But you have places like San Francisco and Oakland that have a city program and are eligible for the state program, and then you have places that are not going through the state and running their own program, like Alameda County, except for Oakland and Fremont. I think there's confusion in re LA city and LA county, and then there's something even messier about San Bernadino, but I forgot what it was because my org doesn't do any work there.

NEW: CA is expanding eligibility for the #COVID19 vaccine.

Beginning April 1, Californians 50+ will be able to sign up for an appointment.

Beginning April 15, eligibility will be expanded to everyone 16 and older.

The light at the end of the tunnel continues to get brighter.

— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) March 25, 2021

Hshsjdkdushahs

Sorry WA is still seemingly the slowest otherwise-functioning state and I’m getting grouchier about it

This is major!

🚨🚨🚨JUST IN: MASSIVE VICTORY IN CALIFORNIA! CA Supreme Court just ruled unanimously that "the state cannot keep people behind bars simply because they cannot afford to post bail pending their trial." Cash bail as we know it over in California. Speechless.https://t.co/vnrN9E8IOt

— Scott Hechinger (@ScottHech) March 25, 2021

boom

The bail bonds industry should literally be the last jobs we should try to protect.

oy vey

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/08/caitlyn-jenner-california-governor-run-480232

Saw that... once again, as with Schwarzenegger & Meg Whitman, wouldn't it be prudent to start your political career a little lower down the ladder than governor of the nation's most populous state? I don't think this recall is going anywhere anyway, but still..

extremely good https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ytnYrv3W5REovP0_t-XVzOIuItr2WQQW/view

(context: https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-08-07/a-judge-commandeers-l-a-s-city-hall-in-his-campaign-to-curb-homelessness)

this is a pretty technical ruling about the city's responsibilities to its unhoused residents, and it starts

"In the ebb of afternoon sunlight, young Americans looked at their former
compatriots as adversaries as they advanced towards them. Young teenagers
carried battle flags to rally upon in the chaos that would soon ensue. There is nothing free about freedom. It is borne from immense pain, suffering, and
sacrifice. Our country has struggled since the Emancipation Proclamation to right the evil of slavery."

and ends

"The devotion that Abraham Lincoln called for has not been met here."

don't know a single person who got a vaccine through myturn. anyone here?

For months, Alyssa Jenkins logged countless hours on MyTurn, California’s COVID vaccine registration site as she searched for precious appointment slots for her fellow teachers.

"I’d become obsessed," said Jenkins. "I was living in the system." https://t.co/IVmwY55i2e

— CalMatters (@CalMatters) April 22, 2021

i know plenty? ... i am waiting until May because I am just too busy with work to budget a few days of being sick

the site was a mess and buggy, but i know loads of people who got their appointments (oakland coliseum) through myturn.

maybe it ended up being more useful in the bay area.

yeah, most of the folks I know who used it got their shots at the Coliseum

generally i get the impression shots have been harder to come by in the bay area, especially in SV. my work colleagues up there are still taking random half days this week, and i don't know anyone down here who hasn't got it yet. presumably this is because there are fewer hesitant/hourly waged people in a hyper wealthy part of the world like palo alto.

The Bay Area is quite large and sprawling and there are plenty of hesitant/hourly-waged people and a lot of unemployed people? I mean, one could make a similarly semi-sensible generalization involving health-conscious affluent people in places like Santa Monica and the fucking Palisades ... idk dude

nah I think he's right about the lower hesitancy

https://abc7news.com/covid-vaccine-appointment-california-ca/10517371/

New data shows San Francisco has the lowest vaccine hesitancy in California. Only 7% of people in San Francisco said they're hesitant about getting the COVID-19 vaccine ...

The entire Bay Area ranks very low in vaccine hesitancy. Solano County has the most residents who are hesitant, according to the CDC, and they're still only at 11% hesitancy.

Yeah I know the east bay exists. I’m making a generalisation that is true on average.

lol it isn't even just the East Bay ... you continue to make these generalizations and it's like ... can you just stop?

https://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-cases-tracking-outbreak/covid-19-vaccines-distribution/

Map don’t lie. I’m speculating about the reason but the fact is more people are getting vaccinated (and appointments seem correspondingly harder to come by) in the Bay Area than in Southern California.

I guess, looking at the map there is more "dark green" in the Bay Area than in SoCal ... still, San Benito County and Monterey County are about where I thought they would be, as in, not at the top of the charts, as it were. I consider both of these part of the Bay Area. A lot of it does seem to correlate to population density, as opposed to region.

yes, if you look at the map there is more "dark green" in the bay area.

all I'm saying is that the aggregation of data by county doesn't reflect the internal differences in those counties. ... For example, Santa Clara County is not just Silicon Valley, and it would be interesting to see a more detailed map. I don't doubt that affluence and education level play roles here, but I think population density and relative reliance on mass transit are factors as well.

SF hit 66%/two-thirds with at least one shot yesterday so whatever's going on, I'll take it.

right, but if the thing you're trying to explain is a regional observation (which is how this started) then it's not "generalizing" or bad faith or whatever to look at attributes of region X and region Y at the regional level, and literally ignore the internal differences.

it is true that the rate of vaccination in the bay area is very high, possibly the highest in the united states except a couple of tribal nations. certainly the highest in the state. seems like hesitancy is also very low based on that survey.

it is *also* true that the level of education and median income are high in the bay area relative to the rest of the state.

i think these two might be connected. that doesn't mean i think everyone in the bay area owns two teslas and has a seven figure stock grant and a graduate degree. (but i do think that kind of person, who are more common in the bay area than elsewhere, are part of the reason the regional vaccination numbers are so high).

fair enough.

i would also like to see a bay area map. i've seen the vaccination map for la and it's not pretty. it correlates with fraction of white people and income (and even worse it anticorrelates perfectly with covid infection rates).

it correlates with fraction of white people and income (and even worse it anticorrelates perfectly with covid infection rates).

i would guess that ours is not dissimilar