California Transformed, Part II: CA Left Pushes out the Middle Class

In Part I, I offered the methods used to overturn and soften the political soil of previously center-right California. And now that the Left can't lose and the Right can't even get on the ballot, California's Organized Left is in overdrive to shape this state to their liking.

And before you start talking about how stupid these laws, policies, etc. are, remember what the goal is. Hint: their goals are not the same as ours.

1. California Environmental Quality Act (1971)

California—not Mississippi, New Mexico, or West Virginia—has the highest poverty rate in the United States. (…)

Myriad state and municipal benefit programs overlap with one another; in some cases, individuals with incomes 200 percent above the poverty line receive benefits, according to the California Policy Center. California state and local governments spent nearly $958 billion from 1992 through 2015 on public welfare programs, including cash-assistance payments, vendor payments, and “other public welfare,” according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Unfortunately, California, with 12 percent of the American population, is home today to roughly one in three of the nation’s welfare recipients. The generous spending, then, has not only failed to decrease poverty; it actually seems to have made it worse. (…)

“Counties and local governments have imposed restrictive land-use regulations that drove up the price of land and dwellings,” explains analyst Wendell Cox. “Middle income households have been forced to accept lower standards of living while the less fortunate have been driven into poverty by the high cost of housing.” The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), passed in 1971, is one example; it can add $1 million to the cost of completing a housing development, says Todd Williams, an Oakland attorney who chairs the Wendel Rosen Black & Dean land-use group. CEQA costs have been known to shut down entire home-building projects. CEQA reform would help increase housing supply, but there’s no real movement to change the law.

2. Minimum Wage

California lawmakers recently passed a measure raising the minimum wage from $10 an hour to $15 an hour by 2022—but a higher minimum wage will do nothing for the 60 percent of Californians who live in poverty and don’t have jobs, and studies suggest that it will likely cause many who do have jobs to lose them.

3. PG&E

The rolling blackouts in California is not a climate change story. It’s a perfect storm of bad management decisions and rent-seeking green energy contractors. (…)

PG&E went all-in on the green energy projects that California lawmakers and their constituents love. So much so that the company was actively choosing to invest in new green projects rather than make the necessary safety upgrades to its existing transmission systems. Those investment decisions are how California got the deadliest wildfire in state history last year. They had shitty equipment that was past its useful life.

4. Rent Cap

The law limits rent increases to 5% each year plus inflation until Jan. 1, 2030. It bans landlords from evicting people for no reason, meaning they could not kick people out so they can raise the rent for a new tenant. And while the law doesn’t take effect until Jan. 1, it would apply to rent increases on or after March 15, 2019, to prevent landlords from raising rents just before the caps go into place.

5. Man on the way to work detained for eating

California

• Gives sanctuary to illegal aliens

• Frees illegal aliens who kill Americans

• Shooting up, Shitting and pissing on the side walks is no big deal

But don't dare use a plastic straw or eat a sandwich in public! They'll throw the book at you! #ShitHoleCalifornia pic.twitter.com/Kf4KWBd9Nr

— ROB (@_ROB_29) November 11, 2019

6. Banning natural gas in 13 cities and one county

Fix global warming or cook dinner on a gas stove?

That’s the choice for people in 13 cities and one county in California and one town in Massachusetts that have enacted new zoning codes encouraging or requiring all-electric new construction.

The codes, most of them passed since June, are meant to keep builders from running natural gas lines to new homes and apartments, with an eye toward creating fewer legacy gas hookups as the nation shifts to carbon-neutral energy sources.

7. Chesa Boudin

“Chesa Boudin has won the election to become San Francisco's next district attorney,” CBS News reported late Saturday. “The people of San Francisco have sent a powerful and clear message,” Boudin said in a statement. “It’s time for radical change to how we envision justice. I’m humbled to be a part of this movement that is unwavering in its demand for transformation.”

People in the vast hinterland to the east might wonder who Chesa is, exactly, and what kind of transformation he has in mind. Bernie Sanders was first to congratulate the victor, and San Francisco voters knew Chesa served as a translator for the regime of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez.

Boudin is the offspring of two Weather Underground terrorists and the adopted son of two more: Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dorhn.

8. Jacking a business

In February, the Consumer Protection and Enforcement Division (CPED) of the California Public Utilities Commission—the state body that regulates transportation network companies like Uber and Lyft—issued a citation to GoGo Grandparent for operating a for-hire transportation service without permission.

Regulators demanded that the company pay a $10,000 fine and obtain the necessary permit to run a transportation network company, which would involve getting $1 million liability insurance for its vehicles and handing over lists of its drivers to the state.

But GoGo doesn't own any vehicles, and it doesn't contract directly with any drivers.

Instead, for the past four years, the company has been providing a toll-free hotline that customers without a smartphone can call to order an Uber or Lyft ride to their home or another prearranged location. Using customer-provided information, GoGo's software automatically orders a ride, then charges a 27-cent-per-mile fee for its services.

9. Rats

California appears likely to become the first state to outlaw most use of a highly effective type of rat poison. California already restricts the use of single-dose rodenticide, as the anticoagulant poison is often known, to licensed pest controllers. But pressure groups pushing for a ban have gathered support from mostly liberal lawmakers. (…)

San Francisco’s experience sheds light on what might happen if the bill becomes law. Roughly five years after a moratorium in 2008 on single-dose rodenticide on city property, rat colonies began showing resistance to multidose poisons, says Luis Agurto of Pestec, which has a thriving rat-control business in San Francisco. Many rats had associated their illness with the slow-acting poisoned food and avoided it, a phenomenon known as “bait shyness”. San Francisco’s mayor when the moratorium was introduced was Gavin Newsom. Opposition to “super-toxic rodenticides” was part of his campaign last year to become California’s governor.

10. Schwab 

The brokerage firm Charles Schwab announced today it would acquire TD Ameritrade in a $26 billion deal and as part of the transaction Sch wab will move its headquarters to the Dallas-Forth Worth area.

The integration of the two firms is expected to take between 18 and 36 months, following the transaction’s close. The corporate headquarters of the combined firm will eventually relocate to Schwab’s new campus in Westlake, Texas, which is located in Denton and Tarrant Counties north of the cities of Fort Worth and Dallas.

Both companies have a sizable presence in the area. Any additional real estate decisions will be made over time as part of the integration process.

Schwab was founded in San Francisco and will maintain a presence in the city. However, in my experience, once a company establishes a footprint in a business-friendly location, more jobs gravitate there over time.

The move isn’t surprising considering that Schwab’s founder and chairman, Charles “Chuck” Schwab, has said that “We’re pretty much a national company now. I’m not sure [we’ll stay in San Francisco] … we’ll continue looking at that as a possibility [but] as taxes go … and the costs of doing business here are so much higher than some other place.”

11. Weed

California is increasing business tax rates on legal marijuana, a move that stunned struggling companies that have been pleading with the state to do just the opposite.

Hefty marijuana taxes that can approach 50 percent in some communities have been blamed for pushing shoppers into California’s tax-free illegal market, which is thriving. Industry analysts estimate that $3 are spent in the illegal market for every $1 in the legal one.

The California Cannabis Industry Association said in a statement that its members are “stunned and outraged.” (hat-tip: Legal Insurrection) 

12. CA Sues Trump for helping CA farmers

13. Shoplifting

When I was a kid, a television show called Supermarket Sweep featured teams of middle Americans bolting through grocery store aisles and filling their carts with food, household products, and pet supplies. The show’s premise was that, for two minutes, the rule of law—in this case, the law against shoplifting—would be suspended. The team with the largest haul could take home their bounty of groceries, win prizes, and compete for the championship.

Today, in some West Coast cities, the Supermarket Sweep isn’t a game show—it’s a dark reality, fueled by addiction, crime, and bad public policy. From Seattle to Los Angeles, a “shoplifting boom” is hitting major retailers, which deal with thousands of thefts, drug overdoses, and assaults each year. Since 2010, thefts increased by 22 percent in Portland, 50 percent in San Francisco, and 61 percent in Los Angeles. In total, California, Oregon, and Washington reported 864,326 thefts to the FBI last year. The real figure is likely much higher, as many retailers have stopped reporting most shoplifting incidents to police.

14. Ammo

Berg couldn’t buy shotgun shells at his local hardware store in Yuba City prior to a duck hunting trip last month. He was rejected under California’s stringent ammunition background check program that took effect July 1, because his personal information didn’t match what state officials had in their database.

Berg was one of tens of thousands of Californians who have been turned away from buying ammunition at firearms and sporting goods stores, even though they appear to be lawfully able to do so, a Sacramento Bee review of state data shows. Between July 1 and November, nearly one in every five ammunition purchases was rejected by the California Department of Justice, the figures show.

Of the 345,547 ammunition background checks performed, only 101 stopped the buyer because he or she was a “prohibited person” who can’t legally possess ammunition, according to state Department of Justice data.

“It’s a little ironic the fact I’m a deputy that I can’t buy ammunition,” Berg said. “But at the same time, anybody else who’s legally allowed to, they shouldn’t be denied based on address (errors). ... It’s just crazy.”

15. And, of course, freelancers – like writers. Like me.

[Assembly Bill 5], which cracks down on companies — like ride-sharing giants Lyft and Uber — that misclassify would-be employees as independent contractors, has been percolating through the California legislative system for nearly a year. It codifies the 2018 Dynamex decision by the State Supreme Court while carving out some exemptions for specific professions.

But the exemption for freelance journalists — which some have only just learned about via their colleagues, press reports, social networks and/or spirited arguments with the bill’s author on Twitter — contains what some say is a potentially career-ending requirement for a writer to remain a freelancer: If a freelance journalist writes for a magazine, newspaper or other entity whose central mission is to disseminate the news, the law says, that journalist is capped at writing 35 “submissions” per year per “putative employer.” At a time when paid freelance stories can be written for a low end of $25 and high end of $1 per word, some meet that cap in a month just to make ends meet. (…)

Many publications that employ California freelancers aren’t based in the state and it’s not clear how AB 5 will affect them. Still, some are choosing to opt out entirely. Indeed, several freelance writers who spoke to THR say that various out-of-state employers — some with offices in California — have already told them they’re cutting ties with California freelancers. (…)

THR has additionally reviewed several job notices in transcription, blogging and SEO writing that have explicitly stated that California freelancers will not be considered.

Me in October:

I write 104 blog posts a year, at minimum, for [Da Tech Guy Blog] alone. We disseminate news.

A few months back, I got booted from one of my side hustles – transcription – because I live in CA. I didn’t understand why; now the picture is clear.

I have at least 12 more items, but this post is long enough. There will be a Part III.

RELATED: Part I

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