SB 51: the California politics thread

The LA DA race is heating up!

#BREAKING This morning Los Angeles District Attorney Jackie Lacey’s husband pulled a gun out on Black Lives Matter activists who protested his wife in front of their house. @BLMLA pic.twitter.com/wnCFMMvaWV

— Jasmyne Cannick (@Jasmyne) March 2, 2020

Any good voting guides for SF specifically / CA generally?

there are LA guides but they cover some CA races

https://tjr.xxx/content/home/california-cheat-sheet-feb-2020-front-and-back-3.pdf

https://thelapod.com/posts/la-podcast-2020-voter-guide-primary-edition/

https://www.dsa-la.org/2020_primary_voter_guide

This looks lefty: http://www.theleaguesf.org/about

ha

Text from a Lacey supporter in regards to, again can't believe I'm typing this, her husband pointing a gun at demonstrators -- "This may be the all time stupidest pre-Election Day F*** up."

— James Queally (@JamesQueallyLAT) March 2, 2020

This looks lefty: http://www.theleaguesf.org/about

― Feminism-Appropriating Regressive Transphobe (Leee), Monday, March 2, 2020 10:25 AM (yesterday)

yep.

here's another one

http://spacecats.org/

Hahah amazing!

my Glendale-resident sister reports that all her local candidates promise to do something about "traffic", which she compared to student body president candidates promising longer recess.

measure R (sheriff's oversight passed in a landslide). looks like the spending measures will pass.

jackie lacey the terrible DA with the gun-wielding husband is on 50.6%. she needs over 50% to avoid a runoff in the fall. gascon (ex-SF DA) is in second place. late reporting votes tend to move things left in LA, so she's in trouble.

on the council: david ryu will need a runoff against the nithya raman (yay). looks like john lee (the republican who switched to no registration) beat the (excellent) democrat by enough to hold even with the swing left in late count :-(

herb wesson (one half of bullshit corrupt seat swap) needs a runoff against holly mitchell and looks to be in trouble when that happens. mark ridley thomas (the other half of the bullshit corrupt seat swap) will also need a run off but is probably in less trouble.

Measure Q only got a majority and not the 2/3 needed to pass. There was a lot of anti-Q campaigning done by pro-corporate landlord PAC(s)

geez I'm surprised honestly, I thought it had a lot of goodwill. Since I've become a homeowner in the last decade I've paid a lot more attention to parcel tax increases, but I don't think there's a single one I've not supported.

While I was pro Measure Q on principle, I was sympathetic to the anti-Q people who were arguing that the City of Oakland is incompetent when it comes to managing money (e.g. the soda tax, the affordable housing impact fees) so why give them more money? I was not sympathetic to the people opposed to it because they were against the Tenants Opportunity to Purchase Act part of the measure because they somehow believed it would mean their property would be seized (?) ....

reminder

Ok, it is incredibly early, and we will know more in the coming days, but two things we can say about the outstanding votes in California (with gifs).

— CA120 (@CA_120) March 4, 2020

First: There are massive numbers of ballots to be counted in CA. This will be a record. More than 4 million. Could reach 5 million (with 1.2 million in LA County alone).

Put another way, we may only be half way there. pic.twitter.com/tLp3Sp2GJu

— CA120 (@CA_120) March 4, 2020

Uncounted votes aren’t from old white homeowner Reps, they mostly voted early and they are over represented in the current tabulations.

Uncounted will skew young, Latino, Dem. For candidate races and ballot measures this means the votes will go in one direction: to the left. pic.twitter.com/tXmQqjVNDv

— CA120 (@CA_120) March 4, 2020

Nice

LOS ANGELES updates: with 112K ballots counted today, DA Jackie Lacey drops from 50.69% to 50.14%.

She received 45% of the vote in this batch.

I'd expect hundreds of thousands of more ballot, & for them to be also much less favorable to her than earliest mail-ins (55%).

— Taniel (@Taniel) March 5, 2020

our experience here in Seattle is that the T+2 days ballot drop will see the biggest bolus of progressive votes in this kind of race

Who got the biggest bolus
I got the biggest bolus

i know silby likes this account

If you’re voting this weekend, don’t forget to vote for Nithya Raman for City Council!

The Americana: The Galleria: pic.twitter.com/3lBHCl9Ox5

— Americana at Brand Memes (@americanamemes) February 29, 2020

ryu now well under 50%, runoff time!

jackie lacey at 50.3% for DA, clinging on :(

lundquist catching up to john lee (47/53) and refusing to concede, but that's a big lift.

If you really want to go crazy, find out how many ballots are left to count and the absolute vote spread and start calculating the vote ratio necessary in uncounted ballots to make up the leads

💥 Los Angeles DA Jackie Lacey is below 50% threshold for the first time... at 49.999%.

She dipped from 50.29% to that based on ≈150K new ballots. But that's out of 800K+ remaining this am; so a long way to go!

— Taniel (@Taniel) March 7, 2020

Yep she’ll keep going lower. The “late liberal” (sic) phenomenon in mail-in votes is extreme

on the other hand 100% of ppl I have polled IRL blew their primary vote on Warren, ten days before polls close

lundquist catching up to john lee (47/53) and refusing to concede, but that's a big lift.

now 48/52

sic they should still be able to spoil their WA ballots if they want to vote for someone else I think.

Nithya is pretty impressive -- met her a couple times recently and she seems like the real deal. Levy was based on what i know also a good candidate...didn't hear anything negative about her.

Yeah legitimately excited about nithya

looooooool

Ex-L.A. Councilman Mitchell Englander surrenders in federal probe -- more details to come https://t.co/wlbrWLZlWk

— Emily Alpert Reyes (@AlpertReyes) March 9, 2020

(i know this stuff is boring for the non-LA people, but LA council people are incredibly corrupt and have had a totally free hand for a long time, and it does feel like things are getting kind of interesting electorally right when they're all going to jail)

New details: Englander faces criminal charges that he obstructed an investigation into him accepting cash, female escort services, hotel rooms and expensive meals from a businessman during trips to Las Vegas and Palm Springs, then lying to the FBI about his conduct.

— Emily Alpert Reyes (@AlpertReyes) March 9, 2020

The indictment says that an Englander staffer accompanied him on the Las Vegas trip, describing him as "a high-ranking staff member ... until approximately June 2017." I've asked John Lee, who left as Englander's chief of staff in June 2017, if he went on the trip.

— Emily Alpert Reyes (@AlpertReyes) March 9, 2020

(john lee currently up 52/48 in the count for CD12, englander's old seat)

it's not boring to me! ... besides, I post a bunch of Oakland content that I'm sure isn't all that interesting to, even the handful of Oakland people on here

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/ex-los-angeles-city-councilman-surrenders-face-federal-charges-obstructing-public

"On February 12, 2018, Englander allegedly met Businessperson A in Englander’s car and, after Englander turned up the car stereo music to a loud volume to obstruct possible listening devices, Englander again repeatedly instructed Businessperson A to lie to the FBI while driving in a circle around the block to conceal their meeting."

is that bad?

depends, what was he playing?

the Eagles

nicely done

So ... martial law, Gavin, really?

I'm not seeing anything? Source?

Something about activating 500 National Guardsmen as a backup for food distribution, allegedly.

SF feels like a ghost town, it's surreal

We’ve been in a quieter part of town anyway but when the nearby bar closed, it definitely got quiet.

I have never seen as many people on my block in Oakland as I have today

I remember everyone in my neighborhood coming out of their houses after the 89 Loma Prieta earthquake

Truly sobering story about the state of California's budget — even with a record $20 billion-plus in reserves https://t.co/C0V72BtLme

— Liam Dillon (@dillonliam) March 25, 2020

Just a reminder that California's state budget is super reliant on rich people and when rich people lose money the state as a whole suffers — via @melmason https://t.co/x7koQOiJja

— Liam Dillon (@dillonliam) March 25, 2020

honestly I feel like California isn't going to be as fucked by this as some other states.

And idk how "sobering" the fact that this huge crisis would wipe out our reserves is, really ... I remember the CA economy after the dot-com crash / 9-11 ...I feel like then we were super fucked as a state.

he's right tho that state revenue in any given year is more tied to individual income than it would be elsewhere (bc prop 13 yay!)

definitely more tied to individual income than in states with no income tax! ... what about the states that rely on sales tax for more of their budget?

lol hi

sure you're fucked if you rely on sales tax and there's a once in a century quarantine (hi WA). but CA fucked every time there's a stock market correction if you rely on income tax that is dominated by residents who receive stock compensation.

I don't know if it's actually "dominated" by that? I would be curious to see the statistical data.

"we're unusually sensitive to the stock market (especially tech IPOs etc.)" is the premise of the article in the second tweet i posted https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-pol-ca-next-california-economy/. there's plenty of numbers in there. but fair enough, if "dominated" means > 50% of the revenue, then probably not.

income tax is 70% of the revenue, that's fine -- but that doesn't really show that the income tax revenue is dominated by the tax on stock compensation? ... even if it's saying that a lot comes from capital gains, not all capital gains are coming from stock compensation. You also get capital gains from buying and selling real estate.

i know you work in this area so maybe you already know this? but i'm not sure if people outside tech realize that a typical tech worker's W2 is usually at least 20% stock comp, and closer to 80% or more at the better paid end, see https://www.levels.fyi. or at least it is, until the market crashes and then the highest paid people in the state get a huge pay cut.

granted, the *seriously* rich are getting their income from capital gains, not on a W2. and granted tech people aren't the only people in CA. but it's not a coincidence that the top 4 zip codes for CA income tax are in PA, Burlingame and Menlo Park. and in the context of a budget without a lot of wiggle room, an unanticipated pay cut on the W2 income of the highest paid "regular" W2 employees in the state is a big deal! and it happens every time there's a stock market correction.

note i'm not saying CA should take care of its tech workers better. fuck those guys myself included. i'm saying we (and washington) should move more revenue to property tax (and wealth tax more generally). it would be fairer and it would make CA revenue more predictable.