SB 51: the California politics thread

Well, I'm watching the weekly UCSF Zoom town hall on where things stand from their perspective, and the sense there is definitely of a positive uptick on such fronts locally, including the amount of doses, but also the expansion of facilities. UCSF isn't the city or DPH, of course, but even so.

@akm: there are 3 mass vaccination sites that are ready to go and they are planning on increasing them given vaccine bandwidth.

of course the elephant in the room (tho maybe not? maybe they are working that piece out sooner rather than later) are the homeless residents of SF

DPH has definitely been thinking about that; I'd need to check on the details but IIRC this is probably part of their expansion of coverage via the clinics and other teams.

yeah, I don't hear Libby Schaaf making bold pronouncements and Oakland might have a higher % of homeless than SF

Breed also warned that we could run out of vaccine this week. Not sure if that is still the case since they re-approved the Moderna vaccine

I know LA county is a lot bigger, but their estimates are that even with their allotments doubling, it will take all of 2021 to vaccinate the county residents. Is Breed basing her goal on an anticipated surge of dosages?

This article gives some insight into what is going on:
https://calmatters.org/health/coronavirus/2021/01/older-californians-struggling-vaccine/

It seems to me that, as the Trump Admin left details up to the states, California is doling everything out to local health departments and allowing them to set their own criteria, but not following up with info on how many dosages they will be receiving. So some counties changed to 65+, but did so without knowing whether they'd get any more doses. So basically, this is a big fuck up.

It’s hard for me to read this as anything other than an attempt to defuse momentum in the recall campaign - an action so craven that it actually does support a case for his recall. https://t.co/T8Occdmxok

— Scott Frazier (@safrazie) January 25, 2021

Yeah, lifting the lockdown confused me and this checks out.

this isn't lifting the lockdown, it's just rolling things back to where they were around Thanksgiving.

The most intriguing part about the rollback in SF was that it was announced the day after the deadliest COVID day to date (15 deaths). I am aware that local ICU capacity has seen some relief but the fact that deaths are spiking to all-time peaks and London Breed is like "Reopening sounds good to me!" is an extreme disconnect.

At least the weather will help with the record numbers of cremations that forced state legislators to announce a reprieve on the "Spare The Air" program.

this isn't lifting the lockdown, it's just rolling things back to where they were around Thanksgiving.

― akm, Tuesday, January 26, 2021 2:47 PM (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

this isn't lifting the lockdown because there never was a lockdown worth the name in the state of california.

Just in case you guys were curious:

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no one has ever defined 'lockdown'. Schools are (mostly) still closed, indoor dining is still prohibited, bars aren't open, venues aren't open, most workplace offices are not open, and there are capacity limits on most indoor places still. For most people, that is still 'lockdown'

compare to south dakota where almost none of those things are happening or have happened

I’ll call it a lockdown when they close indoor shopping malls.

And if the bar is “taking it more seriously than South Dakota” then I don’t know what to say.

point taken, my point was simply that there are certainly places in the US where there has been little to no restrictions. California is not one of those places. There are many restrictions. I'm sure there could be more but it's silly to say there are none.

and people are taking the rollback to Thanksgiving level restrictions are acting as though Newsom lifted all restrictions and flipping out (or celebrating). He did not.

that was a bad sentence, apologies.

He’s unbelievably bad at his job. I’ll leave it at that.

lifting any restrictions is the opposite of the right thing.

Schools are (mostly) still closed, indoor dining is still prohibited, bars aren't open, venues aren't open, most workplace offices are not open, and there are capacity limits on most indoor places still. For most people, that is still 'lockdown'

People are free to move about from place to place, hang out with their friends, travel between cities, restaurants and stores are open. For most people, that is not 'lockdown.'

"lockdown" is a meaningless term for what is happening (or not happening), I think we can all agree.

I definitely agree

don’t know about other places but what I’ve seen is stores have been very restrictive and restaurants have not been open at all, even for outdoor dining. that seems like a lockdown to me

Facing possible recall, Newsom comes under fire from Democrats over COVID-19 response https://t.co/OhA8aLHLrQ

— Saba Hamedy (@saba_h) February 1, 2021

Is there anybody good waiting in the wings? I don't know much about Kounalakis or Weber.

I don't think the recall will be successful.

almost certainly not his governorship is a disaster for him if his goal is to move to national politics.

this seems like an extremely bad idea https://laist.com/2021/02/01/head-scratching_over_newsoms_choice_of_blue_shield_to_lead_vaccination_push.php

the UK is going to be finished vaccinating people by the time some tech bros are cashing the check newsom has to write after this blue shield nonsense fails.

Targets scorecards 🎯 on 2 February

Based on 7-day 1st doses average (399,055):

✅15M by 15 Feb (1 day early on 14/02)
✅32M by 15 Apr (17 days early on 29/03)
✅53M by Sept (123 days early on 21/05)

All targets predicted to be achieved ahead of time 👍#vaccine pic.twitter.com/7G8xJYXooo

— UK COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker (@VaccineStatusUK) February 2, 2021

You know, like many SF ilxors I was a Gonzalez voter. Newsom has never been a details guy, and details are needed here.

But you know, this recall is more than bullshit.

Here's one thing in Newsom's corner: with Big Tech booming, so are CA state coffers. In an economy that's crushing many states, CA is flush. Newsom deserves no credit for this of course, but I bet it helps.

If Newsom deserves credit for tech stocks inflating state income tax receipts when he happens to be governor, he also deserves credit for the fact that local governments in California are going bust which is destroying the services people actually care about and vote on.

there are a lot of reasons that local governments are having budget problems ... one of the biggest wears a badge and is racist

Right but if we’re giving the governor credit for stuff he doesn’t deserve credit for, then we have to realise the electorate are also going to blame him for stuff he doesn’t deserve the blame for.

(Also pretty easy to make a case that he does deserve blame for city budgets when he runs the state and had countless opportunities to show leadership on prop 13 reform. That would have allowed them to depend on something other than sales and business taxes which go down when everyone is hibernating.)

oh ha i wasn't really giving him credit for anything tbh though he could be doing way worse than he is. Honestly, the one thing that would be immediately useful is the huge fucking mess that is the EDD and unemployment. I did notice that he's taking a page from the federal textbook and proposing $600 stimulus payments to people who got the CA Earned Income Credit on their most recently filed taxes (2019 taxes probably). ... I'm not complaining really, I wouldn't mind getting another $600

Also in terms of policy and money, the state now has a penalty for not having health insurance (basically modeled on the Federal one that got cancelled), and it would be NAGL if people who lost coverage due to being laid off because of Covid, had to pay a tax penalty for not having health insurance. That would be another thing he could do that's feasible.

Good points both.

My big concern is that Newsom ends up doing something more flashy than useful in response to this. Hopefully he realizes he has options and deploys helpful ones.

This thread is giving me vivid flashbacks of rolling blackouts & Cruz Bustamante.

the EDD situation is AFAICT 100% his responsibility

https://newrepublic.com/article/161212/gavin-newsom-covid-california-recall

Just an incredible story in @latimes about nightmare facing state’s UI workers

Endless nights; completely overwhelmed; stretched to the breaking point.

3K workers answering 3 million calls a week

1,590 employees of California’s UI system have quithttps://t.co/XJjj2S9XyQ

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) February 13, 2021

jfc what a fuck up

https://www.politico.com/states/california/story/2021/02/13/california-democrats-scramble-to-fight-recall-and-close-ranks-1363311

xp - omg seriously - we have more people eligible for unemployment and collecting benefits than the entire populations of some 1st world countries. All I gotta say is "at least we're not Texas"

Gonna be close (see thread)

BREAKING: We have an OFFICIAL recall update. Proponents submitted 370,000 raw signatures Jan-Feb to get them to 670K total valid

— Jeremy B. White, cat attorney JD (@JeremyBWhite) February 20, 2021

the Gavin Newsom recall effort is bullshit

makes me doubt your other posts caek

He only has himself to blame if he gets recalled. He’s terrible at all aspects of his job. But I don’t support the recall.

He has presided over the collapse of the CA DMV and EDD, and the almost total failure of the California Democratic Party’s ballot measure agenda at the state level in 2020. He is bad at his job as executive and leader of the party.

If he gets recalled none of this will be why, and the person who replaces him will be worse. But he’ll deserve it.

"He has presided over the collapse of the CA DMV and EDD and the almost total failure of the California Democratic Party’s ballot measure agenda at the state level in 2020. He is bad at his job as executive and leader of the party."

don't agree with any of that