California matters

I didn't see anything from a quick search of the news. Other than Newsom and the Legislature are weren't seeing eye to eye on the proposal.

I really wish that they'd do something about making more affordable housing. SB 9 is a good start, but they really have to go further than that to alleviate the housing crisis. And then there's the NIMBYs and city councils opposing it.

Recently just went through the process of applying for BMR housing only to discover that while we are too poor to be able to afford a house at market rate, we're too rich to qualify for housing assistance. It really does seem like the only way to afford a house around here is to hope for another market crash.

It was from an editoral that originally ran in the Los Angeles Times. (https://www.mercurynews.com/2022/01/15/8866516/) Keep in mind that even though he claims Democrats don't support it, he only cites one Assemblywoman who says that she won't vote for it in the Legislature but will still approve it to be up to vote. While I'm skeptical about it passing (but I sure hope it does!), the claims he present does seem a bit sketchy.

Thanks, I was wondering where I saw it. I knew it was one of the relatively local papers, but couldn't remember any other details.

Hope it passes anyway, and that they don't start variously backpeddling or coming up with excuses why we can't have better healthcare along with our generally moderately-better-than-other-states stuff too. That happened last time.

I'd like gas prices to go down, thanks. We're apparently the worst in the country when it comes to that (hovering around $5 a gallon right now and my sister says Texas is like $2 cheaper) and I drive for a living. I am trying to find a new job, but the current situation isn't doing anyone any favors.

I just live off of BART and AC Transit - which, speaking of, desperately needs to be more reliable. Quite a few times on the weekends I've seen AC Transit outright skip several of their supposed times, just because "the drivers don't feel like working on a weekend."

So here's something I have learned about today that I really friggin' wish I didn't. People who make money by suing businesses for ADA violations. Basically, they go around to various stores, restaurants, and offices, surreptitiously snap some photos and take some measurements, then slap them all with a lawsuit saying that they are not ADA-compliant in some way, and threaten to take them to court or settle for several thousand dollars. It's an obvious racket, especially since the law requires that the plaintiff has to actually experience the non-compliance, and in most of these cases the plaintiff never even entered the premises.

I know about this because the restaurant my mother works at just got hit with one, along with every other restaurant and business on the street. Odds are that these are all from Scott Johnson, a quadriplegic in a wheelchair who abuses his disability to file thousands of suits a year and make hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlements. He usually targets smaller businesses that would be too poor, afraid, and uneducated to try to fight it out in court. Complete scumbag, whatever he and his lawyers try to dress it up as.

In housing policy matters, Woodside freezes SB 9 projects, citing an exemption for mountain lion habitats. A somewhat more polemical Twitter take is "Wealthy Silicon Valley suburb Woodside — median household income $250k — declares the entire town "mountain lion habitat" in an attempt to sidestep a new state law allowing duplexes on single-family home lots"

Is this a California thing? The ADA is federal level, so I don't see how this is California related. Maybe this happened IN California, but mass lawsuits happen in lots of places.

Considering that it was unlikely that SB9 would even do anything to woodside in the first place, yes, this is pretty blatantly an attempt to keep home prices in the area inflated. Not that anyone was going to split a lot or sell the house ever.

California is one of the most ADA-litigous states because of the way the law is implemented. There's no "cure" period where after getting an ADA violation you have some amount of time to make changes to become compliant and can't be sued in that time. You're just immediately slapped with a fine or lawsuit. That makes California a goldmine for serial litigators.

Obviously question, but what stops businesses from just being ADA compliant and then not getting fined?

That doesn’t solve the problem of fake claims as a way to extort money by using the cost of hiring a lawyer as a threat, but that’s also something where people should be getting their licences to practise law revoked.

A multitude of reasons. Biggest one being that it's simply not adequately enforced. A tiny hole-in-the-wall restaurant run by immigrants has tables and chairs placed really close together and don't realize that ADA requires a minimum clearance? Lawsuit. New tenants lease a space that the landlord never bothered to renovate to make sure the bathroom layout was up-to-code? $20,000 settlement. So government laziness ends up pushing the cost onto unaware business owners.

Simplest way to rectify this is that every business already has to be inspected on a regular basis for fire safety, food and health, etc. Just include ADA compliance in that inspection, and make it so that violations result in a fix-it ticket rather than open the business up to profitable litigation.

Edited by danime91 on Feb 4th 2022 at 2:24:47 AM

That would be nice and an okay solution if the inspectors and enforcers weren't severely underfunded, largely due to the tax dodging efforts of the wealthy and the deregulatory efforts of business lobbyists. The problem is not solely with the individual plaintiffs (usually disabled people with prior criminal records, who are unable to get proper jobs because of that double black mark on their resume) and law firms coordinating mass lawsuits, the problem is that the solution to prevent these mass lawsuits is made inaccessible because of the larger businesses and the wealthy actively and passively undermining most solutions respectively. It's the larger system making intimidating smaller businesses viable.

On another negative note, the California single-payer bill died again, so hopefully they try again some other time and actually get it through instead of doing whatever stopped them this time. (I've heard it speculated that it's a worry that the proposed tax increase would scare voters away, but that's just hearsay)

Man, single-payer would be great. I have such an engrained fear of hospital bills that I did not go see a doctor until my appendix was literally about to explode on me.

Well, my impression of single payer and the like is that you can't do them at the state level b/c they will be overrun by out-of-state claimants...

Canada has to have a system for keeping Americans from hopping the border for free medical treatment. Why would California not be able to require proof of residency to get access to CaliCare? (Not access to medical care at all, just the right for California to pay for it.)

Edited by Ramidel on Feb 6th 2022 at 3:02:54 AM

February 15th - California's state mask mandate is due to expire.

Well, everybody, the mask mandate - except at schools and on public transit and in more sensitive locales - has expired. Anyone from California have any plans on where to go or what to do?

Me personally, I know some night clubs I've been meaning to try out.

It'd be a better idea to wait a few weeks to see how it all plays out. If there's no spike in hospitalization and death, then feel free to go without a mask.

This of course assumes you and all immediate eligible family members are already vaccinated and boosted.

Night clubs and bars are probably the worst possible places to stop masking. You have a bunch of people with lowered inhibitions all close to each other and all chatting with each other for hours at a time. At least at restaurants there is some distance between the tables or booths, and at least in movie theaters people generally aren't opening their mouth holes to talk since that's just fucking rude.

Edited by M84 on Feb 19th 2022 at 3:39:00 AM

My plan is to continue to quietly judge customers harshly and my known-antivaxx coworkers harsher still for their poor masking behaviors, and continue to avoid contact with people outside of work and school hours while continuing to wear a mask throughout the times when I have to be in contact with people. Same as the last few times the mandate lifted.

Really, I think it would be better if the mandate had remained, because then people wouldn't immediately take it as an excuse to act as irresponsibly as possible, and it was far easier to tell which people to avoid (like and for the sake of the plague). The masks weren't and aren't even inconvenient or uncomfortable, even for long periods, so I really don't know what people are complaining about other than the standard "you can't tell me what to do" thing.

All things considered I probably won't stop wearing a mask for years, even if this pandemic stops, if just because I think I look better with one than without (and because I can be an end to transmission for whatever other, future diseases spread through droplets I should catch. I've had only one time I've gotten sick in three years because of these restrictions and I'm loving it.)

I plan on carrying on as usual: being cautious around others., wearing my mask in public, and not going to public spaces with a lot of people unless it's to purchase necessities.

Edited by dragonfire5000 on Feb 19th 2022 at 9:37:23 AM

In other news, San Francisco voted overwhelmingly to recall three school board members.

The school board got national attention when it came out they were planning to rename over 40 schools they considered to be named after racists or sexists individual. They spent hours going over the school names, without public input, and often making the rename decisions on very flimsy research. What got a lot of people's attention in particular was the vote to strip the name of Abraham Lincoln from his school.

This by itself might not have been a huge blow up were it not for the fact that this was all happening in the middle of the pandemic and the school board was spending hours on this while spending almost no time trying to figure out the safest way to reopen schools. While schools in the surrounding areas were gradually reopening, the SF schools were kept closed and it seems the school board frankly didn't care when they'd open again.

Some national media is framing this as a blow to Democratic stronghold, but as the article I linked shows, the recall movement was led and supported by mostly Democrats themselves. From parents wearing "GAY FOR LINCOLN" shirts to the city mayor herself.

Man arrested by border agents in San Ysidro after they discover 52 reptiles hidden in his clothes.

Aren't horned lizards on the bigger side?!

I guess he had really big pockets.