Slip Sliding Away

Palos Verdes Peninsula in LA (Fallon/AFP/SFGate)

Rancho Palos Verdes is a coastal city in Los Angeles, west of Long Beach. The city has a population of 42,000 and is known

for its breathtaking ocean views, luxurious homes, and serene environment, [and] has been named the richest retirement town in the country, boasting a median household income of $166,747.

I became familiar with RPV when I helped an aviation executive put together business plans for a startup (we couldn't persuade enough investors to make a go of it). He loved living there not only for the aforementioned attributes but also because its schools made it an excellent place to raise his kids. Now the community is suffering from a slow-moving natural disaster: [bold added]

According to data captured by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory using airborne radar, a portion of the Palos Verdes Peninsula is slipping towards the Pacific Ocean as much as 4 inches per week.

California has experienced its share of natural disasters in recent years. However, its wealthiest residents have generally avoided feeling the consequences....until the Pacific Palisades fire showed that even they are vulnerable.

Repairing Pacific Palisades, and perhaps Rancho Palos Verdes, will require funds that only the Federal Government can provide, yet the Progressives that run California have passed legislation to "Trump-proof" California. Why poke the bear? The moneyed backers of the current regime can only wonder if it is really interested in protecting their interests.

Democrats: Time to Put Up

At the end of yesterday's column by Peggy Noonan ("Trump and the Collapse of the Old Order") she advised Democrats how they can regain power:

Admit what your party’s gotten wrong the past 15 years. Don’t be defensive, be humble.

Most of all, make something work. You run nearly every great city in the nation. Make one work—clean it up, control crime, smash corruption, educate the kids.

You want everyone in the country to know who you are? Save a city.

Gavin Newsom hasn't fixed California
or any of its cities.

The vast majority of Americans are pragmatists, not ideologues. If methods work, people will want to bring them to their own cities and will vote for politicians who will do so.

In California Progressives have been in control for the entire 21st century, yet crime. homelessness, and taxes keep going up, while students' test scores keep going down. California politicians build multibillion-dollar trains to nowhere, cut greenhouse gas emissions by decommissioning working power plants, and enforce speech codes while cities burn and drug deaths escalate.

Peggy Noonan is correct; people recoil in horror at the prospect of spreading California governance to the rest of the country. California has the benefit of its weather and trillion-dollar employers (Apple, Google, Facebook, Nvidia), yet it still can't make a single major city a desirable place to live. It's time to stop spinning narratives, Democrats, show us what you can do.

Up in Smoke

LA Mayor Bass and Gov. Newsom tour the ruins of the
Palisades business district (Photo by Thayer/TNS/Chron)

Chronicle "reporter" Kurtis Alexander says we should go easy on criticisms of politicians for their responsibility for the LA fires:

If you were to scan social media for what was behind this week’s deadly Southern California wildfires, you might think leaders in Los Angeles and Sacramento went out of their way to push policies to invite disaster.

The mayor of Los Angeles cut the city’s fire department budget, one pervasive criticism goes. The fire department hired the wrong people, others say. The city didn’t fill the reservoirs that feed the fire hydrants, another asserts. The state didn’t send enough water from Northern California for the firefight, yet another criticism goes.

While the series of wind-driven fires that has blasted Los Angeles County certainly exposed government shortcomings, media experts are quick to note that many of the accusations circulating online are less about real problems and more about pushing an agenda. And some are flat-out wrong.

Should you care to read the rest of the editorialist's (not "reporter"'s) defense against accusations of poor water management (both LA and statewide), emphasizing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion over merit, misplacing budget priorities, and why we shouldn't dismiss climate change so quickly, click on the link above.

Your humble blogger understands that people have been overly quick to seize onto these criticisms but also understands that the Progressive ideologues who have run California for a quarter-century are responsible for that portion of the disaster that cannot be laid at the feet of Mother Nature.

And that portion will be significant, no matter how hard the people in charge will try to deflect the blame.

[Note: the Mayor and Governor's tight-lipped expressions aren't typical of sadness or concern. Could it be because they both realize their political futures have gone up in smoke?]

California's Official Slug

Banana slug (Chron photo)

You've got to hand it to Governor Newsom. Amidst all the problems California is facing--crime, homelessness, a multibillion-dollar budget deficit, businesses fleeing the state--he still found the time to name three new state symbols.

The state now recognizes the Dungeness crab as its official crustacean, the banana slug as its official slug, and the black abalone as its official seashell.

“California has some of the most biodiverse environments in the world — with over 5,500 plants, animals, and other life forms,” Newsom said in a statement. “From the majestic California redwood down to the delicate California quail, every organism matters here — and it’s time we celebrated our less cuddly friends before they get too crabby.”

The abalone and the Dungeness crab are more well-known, but your humble blogger finds the banana slug especially appropros to California: [bold added]

Neon yellow banana slugs that are synonymous with UC Santa Cruz make their home in the region’s lush redwood forests. The slugs, which can grow to 7 inches and longer, have both male and female reproductive organs. This gives them unique mating abilities, including the option to reproduce asexually, though extremely rare.

According to ChatGPT California is the second State to have designated an official slug, the first being Tennessee's coneflower slug in 2023. California used to be first in woo-woo stuff like biodiversity, but it's losing its edge, beaten out by a red state no less. Well, California's slug is non-binary, so there.

Chevron's Departure: the Self-Ruination of California

Closing Chevron's Richmond refinery will have substantial
negative impact on California's gasoline supply chain.

Last week's announcement by Chevron that it is moving its headquarters from San Ramon (35 miles east of the Peninsula) to Texas comes as no surprise.

IMHO, old-timers in ownership and management had Chevron hanging on in California because of sentimentality over its 145-year history in the State; however, repeated public excoriation of the oil and gas industry and laws that made it increasingly costly to operate took its toll.

When California announced that it wanted Chevron to close down operations 10-25 years in the future--but not yet--there was no reason for it to adhere to California's timetable. [bold added]

Chevron, which dates its origins to the California Star Oil Works, which struck oil in the Santa Susana Mountains of Southern California in 1876, characterized the move from San Ramon to Houston as merely an ordinary managerial consolidation.

However, given its prominence, Newsom’s recurrent vilification of the industry and his vow to end sales of gasoline-powered cars as a way of becoming carbon-neutral by 2045, the move’s political aspects could not be ignored.

Initially, Newsom posted on social media a video denouncing oil industry “price gouging,” including a melty-face emoji characterizing the industry’s reaction to California’s efforts to dampen gas prices.

But his office quickly took down the video and issued a statement saying Chevron’s announcement “is the logical culmination of a long process that has repeatedly been foreshadowed by Chevron.”

...California has seen a steady exodus of corporations, as the Bay Area Council noted, thus reinforcing its image of hostility to business.

Just days earlier, Elon Musk, who had already moved his Tesla corporate headquarters to Texas, announced that X and SpaceX would follow.

Chevron’s announcement also comes amid a flurry of layoffs and corporate retrenchments in the Bay Area’s high-tech industry, which have contributed to the state’s having the nation’s highest unemployment rate.

Moreover, we may not have heard the last of Chevron’s moves. The company had been warning California officials that it might close its two refineries in the state, which are major producers of the state’s unique gasoline blend.

Voters in Richmond, the site of one Chevron refinery, will decide in November whether to impose a special tax on the refinery, $1 per barrel, and the company has accused Richmond’s leaders of “playing chicken” with their largest taxpayer and employer.

Progressive politicians who accuse refineries of price gouging should ask themselves why those greedy capitalists are shutting down the refineries and foregoing such a profitable business. Such self-reflection is foreign to the one-party state. In fact, one risible solution promises to dig the hole deeper.

Enter Mr. Newsom’s energy commission, which is charged with investigating the causes of California’s high gas prices. A commission staff report this week failed to find wrongdoing but nonetheless floats state control of the refining industry.

One idea is to “purchase and own refineries in the State to manage the supply and price of gasoline.” At least the commission concedes there are “significant legal issues” to address and “there are complex industrial processes that the State has no experience in managing.” That’s for sure.

Sacramento can’t currently provide basic public services such as reliable power. How would it run an industry it wants to shut down? The report wonders too: “As demand for fossil fuel declines, will the presence of State-owned refineries inhibit an orderly phase out of refinery capacity?”

If Democrats in Sacramento want to reduce refinery production, nationalizing the industry a la Venezuela would work. But as the report muses: “What would drive how the State managed the refinery? Profit? Maximize production? Minimize production?” This is hilarious.

Sure, manage an oil refinery when the government cannot even manage the services such as education, public transportation, and police protection that it is supposed to provide. If we weren't laughing, we'd be crying.

Amusing While it Lasted

Assoc. Justice Goodwin Liu wrote the 7-0 ruling.

As expected, the Governor, the Legislature, the labor unions, and all the powers that run our one-party State were successful in having the California Supreme Court disqualify the tax initiative from the November ballot. If passed, it would have required higher taxes to be approved by two-thirds of the voters in addition to the two-thirds majority already required of the Legislature.The measure

must be removed from the November ballot because it is so far-reaching that it would be a “revision” of the state Constitution, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday.

Initiatives can amend but not "revise" the Constitution, went the Court's reasoning.

Well, it was amusing while it lasted. As I posted last month

To be frank (and a little childish), I like seeing the single-party State squirm a little and, after denouncing Republicans as a threat to democracy, argue that the people should not have the ability to decide.

Threat to Democracy in California

California Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero

One never knows until the ruling is issued, but so far the California Supreme Court appears reluctant to pull the tax initiative (discussed yesterday) from the November ballot: [bold added]

The state Supreme Court seemed reluctant Wednesday to grant Democrats’ request to remove from the November ballot a business-supported initiative that would require voter approval for any increase in state and local taxes or fees. But the justices appeared willing to put the tax-cut provisions on hold if the measure passes and then decide their legality.

As the hearing began, Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero asked a lawyer for Gov. Gavin Newsom and Legislative Democrats why the court should take the rare step of blocking the ballot measure “instead of allowing the voters to consider it.”

Justice Joshua Groban asked a similar question, and Justice Martin Jenkins said less-drastic actions were available, like a freeze on provisions that would slash government revenue. Justice Leondra Kruger noted that the court usually considers a ballot measure’s challenged sections individually rather than taking up the entire measure, and asked, “Why shouldn’t we do so here?”

Governor Newsom and the Democrats argued that the legislature's power to control taxation is in the California Constitution, and the people's ability to supersede the legislature through an initiative is therefore un-Constitutional.

Your humble blogger is not a lawyer or historian, but because California initiatives have been around since 1911, the constitutional arguments would seem to have been settled.

To be frank (and a little childish), I like seeing the single-party State squirm a little and, after denouncing Republicans as a threat to democracy, argue that the people should not have the ability to decide.

California's Self-Inflicted Energy Wounds

Headline: California electricity prices now second-highest in U.S.: ‘Everyone is getting squeezed’ [bold added]

Propelled in large part by PG&E, which hiked residential electricity rates by 20% for about 16 million Californians in January, the state’s high electricity prices are second only to Hawaii, which is always an expensive outlier because of the costs of shipping oil to the far-flung archipelago...

East Coast residents are paying higher prices during cold winter months with Californians paying higher electricity prices for a brief period nearly every summer since 2014, likely when people must cool their homes during heat waves.

It is unusual for Californians to pay higher prices than the East Coast in the depth of winter.

It's a safe bet that the "unusual"-ness of California paying more than East Coasters during winter will become the usual story. As is there wont, pro-regulation activists blame lax Public Utilities Commission oversight--there may be some truth to that--but as we stated in 2019, it's impossible to place all these conflicting demands on an energy provider:

Deliver electricity and natural gas reliably to 16 million Californians;

Charge customers as low a rate as possible;

Earn a profit for investors, including a regular dividend;

Clear trees and brush to reduce the risk of wildfires;

Provide generous salary, medical and pension benefits in accordance with union contracts;

Repair and replace its aging infrastructure with less efficient and more costly carbon-minimizing energy sources (principally windmills and solar, but not nuclear);

Decommission Diablo Canyon, its last nuclear power plant, for an estimated $4.8 billion beginning in 2024;

Meet Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards;

Pay $billions in damages for its culpability in the 2017-2019 wildfires.

Transfer hundreds of thousands of acres to tribes and public agencies per agreements dating back to 2001.

After PG&E declared bankruptcy in 2019, Governor Newsom threatened to take over the troubled utility. It was in the end a hollow threat, because he knew that politicians would take the blame for the hard decisions that had to be made (for example, backing off from green energy goals to keep fossil-fuel plants operating). If PG&E had become "Government Gas & Electric", who knows how much larger California's projected $73-billion budget deficit might have become?

Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

2020: in front of four EV's Gavin Newsom bans the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035.

Gavin Newsom's war against fossil fuels has been waged across several fronts, including

Banning the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles starting in 2035;

Imposing "price gouging" penalties on the oil and gas industry;

Prohibiting improvements to and retrofitting of pre-existing wells around which communities have sprung.

Yesterday the Governor withdrew the price-gouging legislation in favor of setting up an Executive Branch "watchdog": [bold added]

On Wednesday, the governor’s office said it is proposing legislation to create a watchdog body, backed by subpoena powers, within the California Energy Commission to investigate the state’s oil refinery market and gas prices. Based on findings from the watchdog entity, the commission could issue penalties at its discretion on the state’s oil refiners, according to advisers in the governor’s office.

IMHO, the new proposal is worse than the one it replaced. "Penalties at its discretion" is an invitation to corruption, i.e., payments to the right people will get fines waived since there don't seem to be objective criteria about where the penalty lines are.

It's also clear that a persistent price premium must have an explanation other than capitalist greed, which, if that were the case, would exist peculiarly only in California. My hypothesis: gasoline producers have only 12 years to recover their investment in California plant and equipment, after which the market for gasoline will dry up. In the rest of the country refiners can count on a useful life of 20 years or longer, thereby lowering the prices they require to turn a profit.

Come summer hellfires or winter high waters, the Progressives in charge of the one-party State are marching California to their utopian destination, while making sure that they're getting their cut along the way.

Making Nice in Palo Alto

(Mercury News photo)

It's not as noteworthy as the lion lying down with the lamb, but the most prominent businessman and one of the most prominent politicians in the U.S. made nice today:

Tesla has decided to base its engineering headquarters in Palo Alto at a former Hewlett-Packard site, the company’s top boss Elon Musk announced on Wednesday.

Musk made the announcement in Palo Alto during an unusual joint appearance with Gov. Gavin Newsom. The pair have sparred in the past over California’s business climate...California and its political establishment...were jolted in 2021 when Tesla decided to decamp its headquarters from the Golden State and move the company’s corporate offices to Texas.

Both men have attracted attention by making public statements that inflame political activists on the left and right. But they didn't get to where they were by passing up opportunities to make a win-win deal.

IMHO, the "real" Gavin Newsom and the "real" Elon Musk are both shrewd, calculating individuals who measure both the short- and long-term consequences of their actions. The next time they issue a provocative tweet that makes you cheer or sputter, that's exactly what they wanted you to do.

Junk Thoughts

The odometer at 27 years--220,044 miles

Although I posted about it in 2018, today is the fifth anniversary of scrapping our 1990 Toyota Camry Wagon (that's September 27, 2017 for the chronologically challenged). The car had given us 27 years of service and 220,000 miles.

The Camry was breaking down every week, and repairs couldn't be justified under any set of cost-benefit assumptions. Luckily, California's clunker buy-back program was paying owners to take old cars off the road.

The requirements were that the car be operating, be at least 22 years old, and pass a visual inspection (for example, minimum of one headlight, one taillight and one brake light). Provided I could drive it to the Buyback scrapyard, the BAAQMD [Bay Area Air Quality Management District] would pay me $1,000.

Just behind the stacks of tires and rusted autos.

The junkyard had been there for decades. It was adjacent to East Palo Alto marsh land, land once considered hostile to development.

Now the land would be worth many millions of dollars to home builders because of the Bay setting and proximity to tech employers.

The marsh land was now an open space preserve and will, along with the junkyard, likely remain unchanged.

Based on past patters of ownership, I'll be back around 2045 when it comes time to scrap our two cars (mfg 2018 and 2019). Governor Newsom, who banned the sale of gas-powered automobiles after 2034, will undoubtedly be disappointed in us bitter-clingers, but since there's no room in my retirement fund for a Tesla I'll have to live with his disapproval.

Anyone but the Current Incumbent

(Image via Opindia / YouTube)

The WSJ editorial page is more honest about what Democratic power-brokers are trying to do than the Party is with its own membership. President Biden has been a disaster, Democratic leaders don't want him to run again, and it may be difficult to push him off the stage. [bold added]

The New York Times kicked off the kicking with a story quoting various progressive sages suddenly admitting what everyone has known all along: Mr. Biden is the oldest serving U.S. President at age 79, and he’ll be 82 when he finishes his term. He looks and sounds every bit his age. This declaration of the obvious has now moved along the progressive media chorus line to the Atlantic, with a piece that asserts “Let me put this bluntly: Joe Biden should not run for re-election in 2024. He is too old.”

These stories treat this as a revelation, as if Mr. Biden suddenly showed some dramatic decline. The truth is that the President demonstrated he had lost a verbal, and maybe mental, step in the first Democratic candidate debate in 2019. He hasn’t improved. Democrats admitted it privately at the time, but they rallied to him during the South Carolina primary when it looked like he was the only Democrat who could hold off the nomination of Bernie Sanders and defeat Donald Trump.

The rest of the campaign was a long apologia for Mr. Biden’s strategy of limiting his public exposure by campaigning in his Delaware basement. Covid-19 was the perfect excuse, and woe to any journalist who dared to ask if Mr. Biden wasn’t the same man we knew as Vice President. The subject was taboo.

This was one of the great free campaign passes in history. Ronald Reagan’s age was a subject of agonized media concern when he ran for President at age 69 in 1980. He was roasted after he stumbled in the first debate against Walter Mondale in 1984, and he had to defuse the media and public doubts with a quip about Mondale’s “youth and inexperience” in the next debate.

The Gipper was three weeks shy of 78 when he left office, which was younger than Mr. Biden was when he entered the Oval. If the President runs and serves a second term, he’d be 86 on his final day in the job. But Mr. Biden was needed to defeat Mr. Trump, and so all of this age business had to be ignored in 2020.

Why the Democratic turn now? One obvious answer is that the President is down in the polls, and his low approval rating may cost Democrats control of Congress in November. The problem can’t be the party’s ideas, or Mr. Biden’s adoption of the Sanders agenda after he’d campaigned as a moderate. The problem has to be Mr. Biden. He’s suddenly not up to the burdens of the Oval Office that have aged even younger men. He can’t make the case for his ideas. He’s overwhelmed by crises.

You almost have to feel sorry for Mr. Biden, who saved his party from Mr. Trump but is expendable now that he’s a political liability. You can almost hear Mr. Biden shouting at his staff: Where’s the gratitude? You think Bernie or Mayor Pete would have beaten Trump? I’m the guy who saved democracy.

Mr. Biden can be stubborn, and as anyone with older parents knows, taking away their car keys can be a difficult conversation. The President may not want to leave town as easily as some Democrats want him to.

All the more given the lack of obvious Democratic alternatives to Mr. Biden in 2024. Vice President Kamala Harris would run in a millisecond, but nothing she has done or said since her emergence on the national scene suggests she is up to the Presidency.

The obvious candidate "far from Washington"

Democrats know this, which you can tell by all the stories earlier this year about her political struggles. That’s the Beltway insider way of preparing the field for other candidates to consider running. Not that Pete Buttigieg will need any coaxing.

Such is the price of nominating Mr. Biden with so little scrutiny about his capacity for the Presidency. Perhaps Democrats will avoid a drubbing in the midterms, or he’ll rally after the election by using a GOP Congress as a foil. But Democrats may want to begin looking for candidates far from Washington if they want to retain the White House in 2024.

California's governor---handsome, young (57 when he takes office in 2025), Washington outsider, liberal but not woke--checks off the WSJ's boxes. True, the governor will have to explain why following California's energy policy was the reason gasoline prices have doubled nationwide, and why more people are fleeing the State than entering it, but at least he can give a much more coherent answer than the current incumbent.

Sub-Zero Interest in a President Newsom

He does look the part (this nation)

Ever since he worked for Willie Brown in the 1990's, Gavin Newsom had the look of a politician who had his eye on bigger things. He has held in succession the offices of San Francisco supervisor, San Francisco mayor, California lieutenant governor, and California governor. There's now only one higher office to conquer, and he's denied that he's interested. [bold added]

Gov. Gavin Newsom has “sub-zero interest” in running for president in 2024, he told The San Francisco Chronicle editorial board on Thursday.

Newsom is running for re-election to a second term as California governor, which would last through 2026. Asked if he would promise to voters that he wouldn’t run for president before the end of that term, he said he believes Vice President Kamala Harris should be the next president after Joe Biden.

“Yeah, I mean, I have sub-zero interest,” he said. “It's not even on my radar.”

Newsom has made similar claims about having no interest in running for president before, but it hasn’t stopped speculation that he wants to be commander in chief someday. He’s stoked those rumors by positioning himself as a national political figure and publicly sparring with prominent Republicans, including former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

"Sub-zero" is an odd choice of words. It is the name of the highest-end refrigerators that can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Governor Newsom is clearly familiar with the term, just as, unmasked and closely seated contrary to his own directives in 2021, he is used to dining at expensive restaurants like the French Laundry.

Governor Newsom could have said that he wasn't interested in the Presidency until after his presumed second term ended in 2026, but all he would say is that he supports Joe Biden, then Kamala Harris. His answer means that if the prospects are propitious, he would run in 2024 in the midst of his second term as Governor.

The governor is evasive, ambitious, and will sacrifice principles and friendships to get elected. Although I do agree with some of his positions, as I wrote in 2017, I would never vote for him.

Another Wise Move by Elon Musk

Spending other people's money makes him happy

I'm old enough to remember that a universal norm among State governments was to cut taxes whenever budget surpluses got too large. Spend what is necessary, went the thinking, then return the excess to the people who earned the money in the first place. There were eleven (11) states which recently enacted income tax reductions, by the way.

In the progressive state of California, that philosophy has been out of fashion for decades. California raises taxes "temporarily" to fund shortfalls, then thinks about ways to waste spend surpluses during flush times. [bold added]

The continued prosperity of California’s richest taxpayers is filling state coffers with a $97.5 billion surplus, bringing the state’s next budget to a record $300 billion, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Friday.

It’s California’s largest budget and biggest surplus ever.

“No other state in American history has ever experienced a surplus as large as this,” Newsom said at a press conference in downtown Sacramento.

The surplus highlights the chasm between the rich and poor in California, which is both the nation’s wealthiest state and home to the highest share of residents living in poverty. The state taxes its richest residents and businesses heavily, meaning their prosperity through the pandemic has filled state coffers to the brim, even as millions of Californians struggle to afford groceries and gas as inflation drives prices up.

Newsom said he sees the high revenue not as a sign taxes should be lowered, but as evidence of that divide.

What the governor doesn't say is that the surplus is mostly due to the tremendous rise in the stock market and real estate sales through 2021. Capital gains tax receipts are volatile and cannot be relied upon as a steady source of funds. As of this writing the major stock market indices are down more than 20% for 2022, and real estate sales have slowed.

A secondary effect is that many of the wealthy taxpayers who do pay taxes are moving or have moved out of California. For example, Elon Musk alone is responsible for $billions of California taxes; he declared himself to be a Texas resident at the end of 2020 (residency rules are complicated, and it's likely that the Tesla billionaire will be taxed in California on most of his 2021 income, which exceeded $20 billion.)

What will happen next year when there's no surplus and California politicians don't want to cut the gargantuan $300 billion budget? We know the answer to that, so hold on to your wallets. Elon Musk was wise to get out.

Voting Like the Good Old Days

As expected, Governor Newsom survived the recall vote; in fact it was a landslide in his favor.

With more than 8 million votes tallied, the recall campaign was capturing only a third of them. Millions of Californians had already cast their votes ahead of election day, after officials mailed a ballot to every active registered voter in the state last month, allowing county election offices to process their ballots ahead of time and begin releasing results shortly after voting concluded at 8 p.m.

A few notes about voting at the recreation center, which was the only in-person voting place in Foster City yesterday:

The line moved very slowly.

The staff made us fill out an identification form that contained our name, mailing address, and date of birth.

They re-entered the information on a computer screen and checked to see whether it matched County records, after which they handed us a paper ballot.

Not once throughout the process did they ask for a photo ID. It was my observation that an average of 5 minutes per person was wasted on filling out the form and re-entering and verifying on the computer. In contrast photo ID's were required for vaccinations, where the lines moved quickly.

There were no voting machines. We inscribed our choices in blue or black ink on little ovals on the paper ballots, which were then dropped into the slot of a big orange box. Just like the good old days.

There were two big orange boxes; the other was off screen to the right.

The Recall: Cost and Benefit

The official materials received on today's recall vote describe all the ways we can cast our ballot.

Unless I'm out-of-town or sick, I like to vote in person on Election Day (regarding today's recall vote I suppose it's "un-election" day). Going to the polling location is inefficient compared to mailing in the ballot, but many people prefer inefficient activities like attending church services, sporting events, movies, concerts, and shopping. Perhaps we derive meaning from memories of past engagements, and the emotional experience is worth the temporal cost.

Another reason to vote in person is to allow time for late-breaking data to inform one's decision, especially if one is on the fence. Your humble blogger is ambivalent on the recall: on the one hand I've never liked Gavin Newsom since the stunt he pulled as Mayor of San Francisco in 2004, on the other, I regard California's recall provision as wasteful--the Governor should be allowed four years to implement his policies, and if he does engage in egregiously bad behavior ("misconduct") he can be impeached and removed by the State Assembly and Senate..

The ballot is simple, consisting of only two boxes to be checked off: 1) Shall Gavin Newsom be recalled (removed) from the office of Governor? (Yes/No); and 2) Candidates to succeed Gavin Newsom as Governor if he is recalled, Vote for One (46 named candidates, plus a box for writing in a candidate).

As the materials in the above picture may indicate, it's harder to understand the voting process (vote by mail, drop boxes, in-person, made more confusing by the different dates these methods will be set up) than the thing we are voting on.

I'll go down to the polling place, and decide what I'm going to do there. Not that it will matter--all the polls say that Gavin Newsom is heavily favored to beat the recall. Despite the inefficiency and the unimportance of my vote, the emotional experience is worth the temporal cost.

High-Speed Rail: Staying Alive

2021: HSR construction in Fresno

We thought the multi-billion dollar High-Speed Rail (HSR) project was a bad idea in 2012 (wouldn't work, lousy project design, $billions of easily foreseeable cost overruns, less efficient than already cheap SF-LA flights).

We thought it was effectively killed when Governor Newsom drastically scaled back the project in 2019. However, a state agency kept HSR alive in 2020 despite bipartisan efforts to kill it.

The change in Administrations in Washington rewarded the bureaucrats' stalling:

California will receive $929 million in grant funding toward its high-speed rail project — funding that former President Donald Trump had previously canceled in 2019 — under a deal announced by Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office late Thursday night.

Americans are divided over policy matters, such as where to spend government funds. But they're close to unanimous against spending money on things that will never work.

The Las Vegas Review Journal: [bold added]

In the early aughts, the state’s political class bamboozled voters into approving a high-speed rail project intended to ultimately connect Los Angeles with San Francisco. Construction was supposed to be completed early this decade, and residents were assured that the shiny new “clean energy” train could be theirs for the low, low price of $30 billion. Instead, the project is more than a decade behind schedule and is now projected to cost $100 billion … and counting. Officials now hope they can complete a 171-mile stretch between Bakersfield and Merced by the end of the decade...

The Golden State bullet train is already an environmental nightmare, and there’s absolutely no evidence it can — if it’s ever actually in operation — compete with air travel in terms of time or price. President Joe Biden might as well have held a Rose Garden photo-op while chin-flicking taxpayers and taking a blowtorch to a $1 billion pile of cash. That would have been more honest than propagating the fiction that the California high-speed rail debacle is vital to saving the planet.

Like a monster in a lucrative horror movie franchise, HSR keeps coming back after you thought it was dead.

Dog Bites Man

Most conveniently, a French Laundry
dinner equals one stimulus check.

Governor Gavin Newsom has taken heat for attending an indoor dinner party earlier this month at the French Laundry Restaurant in Yountville. [bold added]

Based on current Napa County infections, the [Georgia Tech] model calculates a 12% likelihood that one guest at an event of 10 people would have COVID-19. Using Sacramento County, where many of the guests were from, gives it an 11% chance...

The Nov. 6 dinner attended by at least 12 people was celebrating the birthday of lobbyist Jason Kinney, a close friend of Newsom’s....Newsom and his wife joined members of several other households at the event — including two California Medical Association executives — despite his administration urging against private gatherings of more than three households.

Governor Newsom apologized for not following his own administration's coronavirus rules. As with most politicians, he knew what he was doing and he's really sorry...about getting caught.

California Education, Where Governor Newsom is the Sane One

(Fox News photo)

In the mid-20th century California's public education system was the nation's envy.

The decline began in 1978---according to the politicians that run the State, the education industry, and the media---with the passage of Proposition 13. That measure limited all property tax increases, and Proposition 15, on the ballot this November, removes Prop 13's protections against tax hikes on business property. As they wait for Prop 15's potential windfall, politicians haven't sat still in their efforts to fix education.

AB 331, passed by super-majorities (33-4 in the Senate and 62-12 in the Assembly) in the Legislature, would require "ethnic studies" that teach

students “the four ‘I’s of oppression” and academic concepts like “intersectionality,” “internalized oppression” and “transformative resistance.” Instead of a dynamic, imperfect, pluralistic republic with common ideals, students would be taught to see their country as an organized conspiracy against victim groups.

The University of California no longer requires taking the SAT or ACT to gain admission, purportedly because of the tests' discrimination against disadvantaged minorities. The educational philosophy that gave rise to AB 331 shows that there may be reasons other than discrimination and the lack of money that the kids aren't performing well on standardized tests of English and math.

In a rare moment of sanity in the one-Party State, Governor Newsom vetoed the bill. Perhaps it was because of stuff like "an assignment on Jewish and Irish Americans 'gaining racial privilege.'"

Gavin Newsom has been displaying unusual behavior, like cooperating with President Trump on wildfire management, tabling the high-speed rail project, and not granting his Party everything it wants. In this strangest of political years the Governor has nothing to fear from the toothless Republicans, and he would do well to watch his left flank over his right.

Eviction Moratorium: Long-Term Effects Ignored

(KVTA image)

Since the COVID-19 lockdown began in March, California law has prohibited the eviction of tenants who could not pay rent. The bill signed into law last night extends the eviction moratorium into next year: [bold added]

The legislation, AB3088, grants tenants who have lost income because of the coronavirus pandemic a reprieve on their missed rent and gives them five more months before they must start paying again in full...

AB3088, by Assemblyman David Chiu, D-San Francisco, would shield tenants facing financial hardships because of the pandemic from being evicted over any missed rent from March through August. The money would be converted into civil debt, which landlords could pursue in small claims court starting March 1.

Tenants would be expected to to pay a quarter of their total rent between September and January, with the rest becoming civil debt. If they could not pay at least 25% of the rent for those five months by Jan. 31, their landlords would be allowed to file to evict them starting in February.

Landlords would have to give residents 15 days to affirm under penalty of perjury that they have lost income because of the coronavirus. Those who make more than 130% of the median income in their area, if it is above $100,000, could be asked to show proof — an attempt to crack down on wealthier tenants who have engaged in solidarity “rent strikes” during the pandemic.

There is a next-to-zero chance of collecting the unpaid rent once a tenant moves out, so basically the State will have taken tens of $thousands per rental unit from property owners in order to effect public policy.

Many owners cannot afford to go without rent for a year. I know elderly landlords who rent out their homes to pay, partially, for their assisted living apartments, which cost $10,000 per month. I know another single-property owner who is taking her condo off the market. Her story:

I've always rented my place at 10-15% below other condos in the area. I try to pick good people who pay the rent on time and are happy with their lease.

My tenant of three years began asking for a reduction of rent in April. I knew his business was hurting so I said yes. Every month he would call me asking for a reduction from the price, which was already discounted. I knew he had a rainy-day fund as well as a PPP loan granted in May. I suspect he was playing me and had the money, but he did pay his lower rent on time. My condition was that he move out when his lease expired. Now that he has done so, I will leave the condo vacant though it means I have to absorb $2,200 per month in expenses. No one is giving me relief on my mortgage, property taxes, or homeowners association dues. Thank goodness I have a rainy-day fund, too.

But why not get a new tenant?

It's too much risk taking on someone who I can't evict if he doesn't pay. Eviction is how you enforce rental agreements. Also, the security deposit protected me against losing much if you can evict within 30 days. If I can't evict someone for a year, I won’t rent it. Maybe I’ll let a friend or relative stay there.

This law, through its one-size-fits-all approach, has permanently changed the rental market in California. It has permanently increased the risk of being a landlord by showing how easily California can override contracts for a year in the name of a health crisis. (The landlords do get a little something--purportedly 25% of the rent due--but if the tenants don't even pay that they still get to stay rent free until February.)

I doubt the State intended for landlords to remove rental units from the market, but that's a very foreseeable consequence of imposing a new risk on an industry.

The State, IMHO, should have let the many thousands of rental arrangements play out as they were meant to, then spend monies from the general Treasury to address the homelessness and health fallout. Instead, California is making the landlords pay.

Someday there will be stories about small landlords losing their retirement savings, the means of paying for assisted living, or the house they meant to leave to their children, but I doubt they'll get much play in the news.

[Update: in a move similar to the California law President Trump declared a moratorium on residential evictions:

Relying on a public health law intended to prevent the spread of an illness, the Trump administration said Tuesday it is implementing a national four-month moratorium on residential evictions.

To stop evictions, health officials are relying on the 1944 Public Health Service Act, which gives the administration broad quarantine powers. The moratorium, which will run through Dec. 31, applies to individuals earning less than $99,000 a year and who are unable to make rent or housing payments.

Whether by means of Federal law, State law, or executive order, long-term eviction moratoriums will have far-reaching consequences on housing markets. Some landlords will lose their properties, many rent liabilities will be too large for small claims court, more tenants will declare bankruptcy, housing supply will be withdrawn because of higher owner risk, tenant credit requirements will rise, and there will definitely be more paperwork.]

[Update 2: Will Property Rights be Permanently Diminished?]