The California recall plus some good news; Where the CCP Virus is headed
To what should be nobody’s surprise, Gavin Newsom easily prevailed against the recall effort to remove him from office. Needless to say, I glad he did. There are still plenty of votes left to be counted, but with nearly 80% of the results in, the “No” vote is almost 28 points ahead of “Yes.” When the final tallies are in, the margin may shrink a little, but “No” should win by more than 20 points. The effort had no chance of success, but cost the state around $300 million.
The threshold for initiating a recall is incredibly low. Only 12% of voters in the last gubernatorial election needed to sign a petition to get it moving. That is an incredibly easy bar to meet and if every state had that, almost every governor would be facing recalls, no matter how little likelihood of success those efforts had.
It only gets worse from there. For Newsom to have been recalled, a majority would have had to vote “Yes.” The next governor, however, would not have to have been someone who got a majority of votes, just a plurality of the votes from those who picked the second option after voting “Yes.” There were two things on the ballot for the recall. One was the question of whether it should pass (“Yes” or “No”). The other was who the replacement should be. In other words, someone could be the next governor after receiving, for example, 50% of those who voted for the replacement. That would mean the new governor would only have gotten 25% of the total vote if the recall had prevailed 51-49. Any system that allows for even the possibility of that outcome is bad and needs to be scrapped.
Ideally, California would get rid of recalls altogether. I think the entire concept is bad. I think it lets voters off the hook. You get what you vote for and I do not think voters should be given an escape route. Elections happen frequently enough. Nobody is entitled to rule for life. I think we have too many elections as it is and recalls only add to that problem. The recall had good intentions behind it when it was first introduced during the Progressive Era, but that time has long since passed. It needs to go.
Realistically, that will unfortunately not happen. One of the biggest problems with California’s government is that ballot initiatives are easy to start. Almost everything has to be voter approved. It is a bad formula, but is baked into the state’s DNA. Reform efforts to recalls are being discussed, but whether any of them will happen is to be determined. Certainly, raising the threshold for signature requirements should be done as well as having a mechanism in place to ensure that someone does not get elected governor (or to any office) with just a small fraction of the total vote.
California might be starting to take housing seriously
Right after surviving the recall attempt, Newson signed several bills, including one that effectively ends single-family zoning by allowing up to four units to be built on land currently zoned for single-family homes. By itself, it will not be enough to solve the housing crisis, but it is absolutely necessary. California has the most expensive housing in the country. That has led to a series of crises, including having the worst homelessness in the country.
The reason for the housing crisis is very simple. Building housing is basically illegal. The process is extremely cumbersome and the limits imposed on new units make it impossible for supply to catch up with demand. There are lots of people who want to live there, but not nearly enough supply to make it affordable. The result is sky high housing costs.
Until Newson signed those bills, local governments were largely in charge of housing policy. The incentives are awful because the only people who can vote in local elections are those who benefit from not having any new construction. The bills signed by Newson take away power from local governments to restrict housing. That will be the key to any successful zoning reform efforts. Local governments have to lose the power to make housing rules.
The signing of the bills is a major defeat for the NIMBY crowd. Hopefully, it will not be the last. NIMBYism really is the root of so many problems and is frequently pushed for by people on the left who love to talk about how inequality is bad and we need to reduce it. They often the same people who will put up signs in their yard supporting Black Lives Matter and refugees, but when it comes to doing the thing that would advance those causes the most, they are adamantly opposed. It is time to put up or shut up. The housing situation in California (and other liberal places) is inexcusable. The bills signed are the beginning of fixing that problem. Here’s hoping we see more of them soon and in more places.
Learning to live with the CCP Virus
People need to come to the realization that it will never go away. It is now endemic and will be with us for the rest of our lives. That is okay. We deal with colds and the flu and we will deal with this. The hardest part is just getting people to recognize that.
Recognizing that would mean we can go back to our lives, albeit with a few adjustments. I highly recommend this piece by Scott Gottlieb for some ideas of what that might look like. We will likely need better ventilation in buildings and maybe have fewer large conferences and more remote working, especially during the winter. The need for people to get flu shots will probably be greater because the flu can put a strain on hospitals. It combined with the CCP Virus could be a real problem for hospitals if not addressed.
This is not in the article, but I think the odds are that those of us who are vaccinated all will get it at some point. The only question is whether it is asymptomatic, like a cold or like the flu. Regardless, it is something we need to wrap our heads around. The current approach still going on of shutting things down and isolating people because of virus exposure, even if everyone affected is vaccinated, is untenable.
We need to understand that the chances of a vaccinated person becoming a breakthrough case are almost microscopically low. I cannot recommend more highly this article by David Leonhardt on the risks to vaccinated people. If you are vaccinated, you are incredibly safe. Isolating yourself just because you may have been around someone who tested positive is nuts. Limiting what you do to avoid becoming a breakthrough infection is even crazier. On top of that, those who are breakthrough cases do not spread the virus anywhere near as much as those who are unvaccinated, contrary to some earlier, awful reporting.
As for kids younger than 12, the risk to them from the CCP Virus is really no greater than the flu. The UK may not even recommend vaccines for them when they become available because of the low risk. Let the kids go out and play. Let them have their lives back. They do not need to be wearing masks, which they are not in schools in the UK. Isolating them and limiting their social lives to protect them from something that is vastly less risky than most daily activities is lunacy and fails any rational test. It definitely is not following the science.
As much as I am angry at the unvaccinated crowd and welcome the mandates Biden is looking to impose, they are not the only problem. Crazy vaccinated people are becoming almost as big of one and eventually may be even bigger. The isolation people subjected themselves to before vaccines, in many cases, was insane. That some people are still doing that after being vaccinated is ludicrous. It is mindboggling that it is in places that are the most vaccinated where people are taking the most unnecessary precautions. Long story short, vaccinated people need to get a grip. Go live your life just as you were before. That is why you get vaccinated in the first place. I am a broken record on that, but I will not stop writing it until everyone has screwed their heads back on.
The two best people to follow
There is so much information out there with respect to the CCP Virus. Much of it is bad, but it can be hard to discern what is actually sound from what is not. Obviously, anti-vaxxers are a source of bad information, but so are crazy vaccinated people. The latter group tends to be very overrepresented on social media, especially Twitter. Unfortunately, they are heavily overrepresented among epidemiologists, virologists and people with public health degrees, making their influence huge in certain educated, liberal circles.
Some things are substantive and can help with the virus while others are pure theater that do nothing good. Examples of substantive things are vaccines, testing with very limited and shorter quarantine periods, ventilation in buildings and mask wearing (with some caveats about how necessary it is in many situations). Examples of pure theater are scrubbing and spraying surfaces, outdoor mask requirements, closing playgrounds and other outdoor areas, hand washing (a good thing to do in general and works for colds and flu but not the CCP Virus) and wearing a mask other than an N95 in places where others are not wearing masks at all.
I previously linked to articles by Scott Gottlieb and David Leonhardt. That was not random. They are some of the best sources of information on the CCP Virus. Gottlieb was formerly head of the FDA and is with the American Enterprise Institute. He is right-of-center politically. Leonhardt is a writer with the New York Times and is left-of-center politically. Both are sensible, honest, follow the science, fair and critical in a non-partisan way.
There are many others who are good sources of information as well. But it is best to keep things simple. If you are wondering who to read or follow, make it those two. You will be very well-informed about the past, present and future of the CCP Virus. Gottlieb has a book that comes out this month on the pandemic. It can be pre-ordered here. I plan on reading it later this year when I get a break from classes. I recommend that anyone reading this do the same.