Prop 1 is for FAR MORE than just veterans. It's housing for a wife population. $1 billion for the CalVet Home Loan Program, which offers loans to veterans for the purchase of homes, farms, units in cooperative developments, and mobile homes; $1.5 billion for the Multifamily Housing Program (MHP), which offers loans for the construction, rehabilitation, and preservation of rental housing for persons with incomes of 60 percent or below of the area median income; $150 million for the Transit-Oriented Development Implementation Fund, which offers loans and grants to local governments and developers for housing projects near transit stations; $300 million for the Regional Planning, Housing, and Infill Incentive Account, which offers grants for infill infrastructure that supports high-density affordable and mixed-income housing; $150 million for the Home Purchase Assistance Program, which offers loans to low-income and moderate-income homebuyers; $300 million for the Joe Serna, Jr. Farmworker Housing Grant Fund, which offers grants and loans for farmworker housing; $300 million for the Local Housing Trust Matching Grant Program, which offers matching grants to local housing trust funds for "pilot programs to demonstrate innovative, cost-saving approaches to creating or preserving affordable housing;" and $300 million for the Self-Help Housing Fund, which provides forgivable loans for mortgage assistance, the development of multiple home ownership units, and manufactured homes. California has a housing crisis, and we need more funding for more homes/apartments for all the people getting kicked out by Corporate Tech America.
Who can I punch in the face about Prop 13? There's million dollar houses out in the hills that are probably paying the same or less in property taxes as my ass in my condo in Hayward.
I have no idea what to think about the gas tax repeal. Things that I know are true of California: There is a MASSIVE infrastructure shortfall. I've seen estimated of anywhere between 200M - 700M. The Bay's infrastructure is wildly lacking. The traffic is a nightmare. The BART is scary after 8pm because there's no cops on it. It's almost impossible to commute easily to SJ from anywhere except the southern peninsula. CalTrain is cool - if you can get to it. There is no efficient public transportation to SJC Airport. The Roads are terrible and always being repaired, and have too many f*cking cars on them. California is easily the highest taxed state in the Land. If you make over 50K (which I consider almost poor in the Bay), then you get hit with an income tax rate of 9.2%. This is insane. We have the 10th highest sales tax in America. with the new gas tax we have the highest gas tax in America. So with ALL of those taxes, how in the hell can California have this ginormous budget shortfall for infrastructure? Oh yea - half the ********ing state doesn't pay a dime in income tax. Also, I have reservations on if California govt has any idea on what do with all this money. I know the state is massively overpopulated when they put the original infrastructure plans in place, but this is just ridiculous. I'm leaning towards no on this not because I don't want to pay the tax, but because I have no idea if the State has a clue on what to do with it, and because I think they are incredibly inefficient with their tax system that exists now.
What's scary about BART is if you want to take a leak and you are above using the stations, the tunnels, or the parking lots as giant urinals. Especially if you happen to travel all the way from downtown SF to Millbrae after a couple of beers, then have to run up and down the steep stairs and the extra block to Peter's Café's bathroom - not that it ever happened to me - it can be torture. You'd think somebody might figure out that riders have needs, and bathrooms at the stations might help.
I found a solution for this exact problem. I had to take my kid to an event for a couple of hours in downtown SF, and I could either walk around the streets like a hobo, or go to the nearby beer garden ("Biergarten", at Octavia and Fell in Hayes Valley), but then after my kid's event was over, I had to pick him up, go back to BART, wait for the train, ride to Millbrae and get to my car, and that's tough with a liter of helles bouncing around your innards and no public restrooms. The solution? Depends. I actually got the idea from a BigSoccer thread some years ago. It may have been in the "weird news" thread, but it was discussed here. A former astronaut was driving across the country for some weird reason (I think involving a love triangle), and she was in a hurry, so she wore adult diapers to make her long drive more efficient. I figured, if it's good enough for our astronauts, it's good enough for me.
Here's how I settled 1 - yes. Housing is a BIG issue in this state, and I think this helps. Not a fan of my Property Taxes going up...but think it's worth it. If more people can afford houses, that in general increased my own homes value 2. No. I feel the combination of taking money out of existing Mental Health funding, plus programs that exist now which fail to do an adequate job of housing for homeless, basically makes this a giant give away to Developers. 3. Yes this seems obvious to me in a state that's really suffering from drought. Havig the State pick up more of the tab so that localities can do more to help locals seems like it should do good things 4. Yes. Easy enough 5. No. FFS hell no. It's basically a ginormous tax break for those over 55. If you're over 55 and selling your insanely expensive home, GTFO the bay or LA county. You don't need to go buy another expensuve home and take away all that tax revenue for the local school districts and townships. This would be a huge hit in revenue for property tax. I mean the State already has a low properly tax in the first place at 1.1% 6. No.i waffled back and forth on this quite a bit. One the one hand I don't have much faith in the State of California to handle infrastructure very well, would much rather see them hand that problem over to the private market to solve, this am not sure what the high high gas tax would accomplish... But ultimately I'm a big supporter of public transportation and infrastructure spending, and this helps. Hopefully. 7. Yes. I'm fine with states having more control over daylight savings. Of course this only says California can change it in the future with a 2/3 vote 8. Stupid. Shouldn't be a voting issue 10. I said no to this. My wife made a good point. If you move to a place like SF - you know what you're going to get. It's high priced, because there's a bunch of rich freakin people there. Don't move to SF. There are plenty of places to live that are not SF. I also don't like rent controls in general. Believe it or not, I actually believe in capitalism, and I also believe in regulations when capitalism gets too predatory. I don't know where exactly that line is. I don't think it's rent control. 11. No. I should not be regulating what private Ambulance companies should be doing with the time off. I am happy to vote for a governor and government that will regulate it with my representation in mind. 12. Yes. I probably shouldn't be voting on regulating chicken and animal space as well. ******** it. Animals should be treated humanely as possible, and none of the arguments against the propitiation were all that coherent to me.
I know you guys have been super patient waiting for an update on these, since what could be more important than the California proposition results? ******** the Senate, you guys want to know if the chickens are going to be happy here. I get it. California is pretty slow at counting ballots, so only a few of the propositions have been called so far. Prop 7, permanent daylight saving time: YES Prop 10, allow rent control statewide: NO Prop 12, provide the chickens with more luxurious living conditions: YES I disagreed with two of these, but I accept the verdict of the people of California. I'm glad that the chickens will be OK - I didn't want to have to take to the streets to fight for chicken rights if that one didn't go well. That's all we have so far. I'm sorry that we don't have any results so far on the super critical dialysis regulation and ambulance employee propositions. I'll keep you posted as we get more results (actually, I'm going to bed, but at some point there will be more results, and I will post it here sometime after they come out).
Additional proposition results as called by the LA Times (best statewide results I know of): Prop 2, bond for housing for mentally ill: YES Prop 4, bond for children's hospitals: YES Prop 5, exception to prop 13 for old people moving to bigger houses: NO Prop 6, repeal of gas tax: NO Prop 8, regulate kidney dialysis clinics: NO Prop 11, force ambulance workers to be on call during their breaks: YES Still waiting on Prop 1 (bond measure for veterans housing) and Prop 3 (bond measure for water infrastructure projects).
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">California Text Tax? State regulators are considering a tax on texting to help fund a program that makes phone service available for low income people. <a href="https://t.co/Yb8OlKwbty">pic.twitter.com/Yb8OlKwbty</a></p>— Dan Thorn (@DanThorn_) <a href="California Text Tax? State regulators are considering a tax on texting to help fund a program that makes phone service available for low income people. pic.twitter.com/Yb8OlKwbty— Dan Thorn (@DanThorn_) December 12, 2018 ">December 12, 2018</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> This has to be one of the dumbest ideas ever. Why the hell would you put a tax on something that hit poor & middle class as much as the rich? This kind of crap is Suburban Americans tend to vote Republican when you don't have someone like Trump leading the GOP.
I recently was stopped for having a defective brake light. I replaced the bulb, then had to pay $10 to have it checked off, then had to go to Superior Court and pay a $25 processing fee. When I questioned the clerk about the fees she replied, "Cali has fees for everything!". Ps...2 bulbs cost $2.50
One of the reasons on why Republicans pick on California as the state to scare people away from voting Democrat.
https://www.latimes.com/business/st...california-employment-law-moves-to-gov-newsom Can someone please talk me out of thinking that this an effing disaster in the making? I'm sympathetic towards Uber/Lyft drivers, as they are taken advantage of by the tech companies, and should be given a lot more freedom to go about thier business, if Uber/Lyft considers them independent contractors - but this bill seems to be akin to dropping a Nuke. It's goign to effect MILLIONS of workers, who consider themselves independent contractors, and hundreds of companies that use them. Builders, Doctors, Truckers, hell people who move inked Newspapers...suddenly these companies are going to have to provide benefits, and those "employees" are going to have to start paying for them. This could have massive impacts on the economy, and not just at a state level either, considering how much economic work Californians do across the nation.
Some would say that is a good thing. Independent contractors have been used to get around employment laws/regulations by way too many businesses. But yes, this could have a negative impact on the economy on the short run, but perhaps a good impact in the long run.
Yup. I have quite a few friends around here in the IT industry, and quite a lot of them are on contract work (6 month/year) because the employer is avoiding having to provide benefits to the workers.
*gasp* Why is it so bad to actually treat your employees like employees? US companies have abused "independent contractors" for decades to get around associated costs of them being employees. I'm sure there is going to be a ripple effect across various industries, but it's hard to see the rampant abuse of people working full time (or more) jobs and not getting the benefits of being an actual employee of the company. Hell, the entire reason the IT industry has a "6 month on/6 month off" cycle for "temporary" workers is because Microsoft would have "temporary" workers for years on end and those workers missed out on the associated stock options, pay increases, and benefits that Microsoft employees got. In many cases the "temporary" workers were performing the same duties that a Microsoft employee would be performing...
I'm not suggesting that there isn't contractor abuse. I'm saying that converting a MASSIVE amount of independent contractors into full-time employees via fiat isn't the answer.
There's two ways to look at that, one is that the contractor volunteered to take on that role. The 2nd is that the IT company really should be paying their contractors more. Even then, a lot of these tech companies have short term projects, and hiring a FTE means hiring someone they wouldn't have work for after the project ends. Some of these relationships ARE abusive however, and should be better regulated. Uber & Lyft are absolutely awful and should be MUCH more regulated in how they treat their drivers, and perhaps should be forced to provide benefits as FTEs. But such a wide ranging law perhaps will have more consequences than benefits.
Unfortunately, the companies aren't doing it themselves and unless they are forced to make changes, they aren't going to either.
Well, they say that the states are the laboratories of democracy. I guess we'll find out if our containment suits are ripped.
It's bad because there are many people who prefer to be independent contractors, and one of the faults of the left has always been to take a paternalistic attitude in telling people what they should want, even when they don't want it. I am not an expert in the transportation industry, but I can talk with authority about what is happening in our industry, in terms to providing equal access to justice or to health care, to those who are not proficient in English. I will repeat what I posted in another thread. The legal and medical interpreters and translators work based on a business model in which they are independent contractors and hundreds of agencies, doctors, attorneys, insurance companies, federal and state agencies, etc. from all over the state hire them to work on depositions, medical evaluations, workers comp cases, civil and criminal cases etc. This legislation is going to create a mess. In Santa Clara County, the department I run for the court system has some Spanish, Vietnamese, Mandarin and Sign language employees, but because of the fluctuating supply and demand we depend on contractors for over half the cases in those languages, and in all other languages we depend on contractors 100 percent. Fortunately for me, because I hire interpreters for the state courts, and our legislature provided an exemption for the public sector - because apparently in the views of our legislators it's okay to hire independent contractors if you are the government but not if you are the private sector - I will be able to continue hiring contractors. But I have no idea what attorneys, doctors, insurance companies and others in the private sector will do. It's still sorting itself out. Those who make a living as interpreters and translators are really stressing out now. Most of them got into the field because they prefer to be independent contractors. They organized and requested an exemption from the legislature and the governor, but the legislature told them that they wouldn't give them one unless their request was sponsored by labor. The unions refused to endorse the exemption, because it's not in their interest to support independent contractors, regardless of circumstances. But, how does for example an Amharic or a Cambodian interpreter who works cases for different customers all over the state as a contractor become an employee? There is no clear answer, because the demand is too low for one specific employer to hire them, but as independent contractors they get enough work all over the place to make a very good living. Now the interpreters and translators have no idea how they'll be able to stay in business. And without them, how can for example injured workers get justice, or sick patients get healthcare, if they don't speak English? Calling all freelance interpreters and translators of the world: Support us in California #AB5 is threatening our livelihoods. #xl8 #t9n #l10n #freedomtofreelance #WeAreB2Bnotgig @GovernorNewsom @futbollos @ProfessorOlsen @cariobana @NAJITChair @AIICUSA @atanet @XoseCastro— Esther M. Hermida (@esther_hermida) September 15, 2019 The problem is that our legislators in their ivory tower either don't know or don't care about the needs and wants of independent contractors, or of the customers that they serve.