They are $etting the trend to the Great Re$et this time:
"Calamities -- along with high costs -- challenge California’s $3 trillion economy" by Conor Dougherty New York Times, October 5, 2020
SAN FRANCISCO — Businesses shuttered by the pandemic are slowly reopening, but technology complexes are quiet, their workers carrying on from home indefinitely. The smoke-filled skies had started to clear, but new fires have arrived in a fierce wildfire season that shows the intensifying effects of climate change.
Not necessarily, but that is part of the whole ball of wax that the WEF calls $u$tainable development -- which is nothing more than a fancy phrase for eat $hit.
Now California and its $3 trillion economy are confronting a profound question: How much will go back to normal, and how much has been permanently changed?
An Economy in Transition
This is still the home of 40 million people, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, and the country’s largest farming industry and port complex. In August, amid the pandemic, Apple became a $2 trillion company, just two years after hitting $1 trillion, but the message from the recent calamities is clear. If California is to continue leading the nation’s economy deep into the future, its leaders and residents will have to rethink where and how the state grows.
For decades, California has operated under a trade-off: In exchange for high taxes and a high cost of living, its companies reap the rewards of an educated populace, an inviting lifestyle, and a culture of innovation.
The events of 2020 have forced a closer look at the calculus. While the state is recovering from the coronavirus, an assessment from the UCLA Anderson Forecast predicts it will be at least two years before the economy has fully recovered. Mirroring the national economy, office vacancies are rising, small businesses are teetering, and temporary layoffs are being made permanent.
Superficially, the forecasts for California are no better or worse than for the nation, with some sectors, like tourism, badly hurt, and others, like technology, barely touched, but between climate change and remote work, the state is facing questions that uniquely cut to the core of its economic identity.
In the case of the pandemic, companies may increasingly ask whether the high cost of California cities is worth it if their workers can work remotely with the same productivity. Some companies may choose to leave the state, and the spate of wildfires has brought new scrutiny to the spread-out development patterns that have accommodated an expanding population — and pushed people to cheaper inland areas most exposed to fire.
Some are suggesting they are directed energy weapons, and there would seem to be some evidence for that; however, what we do know is that official explanations are BS.
The goal is to get those people to move back to the cities, per the WEF plan.
“These have long been questions that have been in the back of people’s minds, but now there’s an actual drill,” said Ted Egan, chief economist for the City of San Francisco.
Companies have long moved sales and customer-service jobs to cheaper cities like Phoenix, but they have been more reluctant to do so in areas like software engineering and management, figuring that proximity to the talent, research universities and venture capital in the tech epicenter outweighed the higher cost of labor.
Even before the pandemic, there were indications that was starting to shift. Silicon Valley companies were increasingly putting jobs in engineering hubs in cities like Austin, Texas, and Toronto. Now they have an opportunity to run a remote-working experiment on a scale that would not have otherwise been tried.
Hmmmmmmmmm!
COVID is a cover and accelerant for a multitude of agendas.
Google and Facebook have said they will allow employees to work remotely until 2021. Stripe, a payments company, recently announced it would pay employees $20,000 to leave the San Francisco Bay Area if they accepted a salary reduction of up to 10 percent based on the cost of living wherever they went. Citing a shift toward more employees working from home, Pinterest, which allows people to save images to virtual pinboards, paid $90 million to cancel a lease for 500,000 square feet in an unbuilt office building in San Francisco.
Maybe they can get a second job cleaning the streets of shit.
Nobody knows how efficient large-scale remote work will be over time, or if such arrangements will be attractive once people feel safe on public transportation and urban amenities like bars and restaurants have reopened, but if workers untethered from their offices flee the state, or companies start basing more highly paid workers elsewhere, it will have huge ramifications for California’s outlook.
The past decade of economic expansion was heavily indebted to the boom in technology, and the state’s budget, with its highly progressive tax structure, is unusually dependent on wealthier residents.
State governments will soon be relics of the past (like Confederates), to be rep-laced by regional arrangements before the complete formation of a one-world $uper-authority.
Despite the diversity of California’s vast economy, there is near-universal agreement on one barrier to growth: the exorbitant cost of housing. The median price for single-family homes and condos in the state is closing in on $600,000, according to the real estate site Zillow, more than twice the national level. The figure reflects a longstanding shortage that has also caused rising rents, crowded households, and two-hour commutes that are used to offset the cost of living. Much more than taxes, the reason that companies move jobs out of the state is lower-priced housing and the lower labor costs that go with it.
Enjoy the Communi$m!
Economists and planners have long counseled that the best way to relieve this pressure is to build more housing near the coastal job centers, but California has continued to sprawl, a pattern that has undermined the state’s own emission-reduction goals by encouraging longer commutes, while placing more homes in fire zones.
“Climate change is here — this is not some far-off theoretical thing — and we build houses over a multi-decade time frame in which they are going to be standing in these areas well into the time when the impact on the climate will be much more severe,” said Kate Gordon, senior adviser to Goveror Gavin Newsom.....
How is the recall effort going out there?
--more--"
Related:
"California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a law on Saturday requiring the state to house transgender inmates in prisons based on their gender identity -- but only if the state does not have "management or security concerns.'' The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation houses men and women in separate facilities. Transgender inmates are often housed based on their sex assigned at birth. The law Newsom signed Saturday says officers must ask inmates privately during the intake process if they identify as transgender, nonbinary or intersex. Those inmates can then request to be placed in a facility that houses either men or women. The law says the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation cannot deny those requests solely because of inmates' anatomy, sexual orientation or a factor present'' among other inmates at the facility, but the state can deny those requests if it has "management or security concerns.'' If a request is denied, the state must give the inmate a written statement explaining the decision and give the inmate a "meaningful opportunity'' to object....."
Newsom is the one who belongs in prison.
"A Los Angeles Police Department officer suffered minor injuries during an altercation in a police station with a man who wrestled away the officer’s gun, fired it and then ran when another officer shot at him, authorities said. The suspect, who was not wounded, got into a vehicle and drove off, police said. Officers stopped him a short distance away and he was arrested. The incident inside the Harbor Station in the Sen Pedro area of Los Angeles unfolded late Saturday night. The suspect walked into the lobby and an officer came out to talk with him. “It escalated into some type of altercation,” Chief Michel Moore said at a news conference outside the hospital where the officer was being treated....."
They busted his getaway driver:
"A woman was charged with attempted murder after the car she was driving struck two people during a demonstration for racial justice in California that clashed with a counterprotest on Saturday, the authorities said. The driver, Tatiana Turner, of Long Beach, Calif., was also charged with assault with a deadly weapon, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department said in a news release. The protest, which took place in Yorba Linda, about 35 miles southeast of Los Angeles, was organized by Caravan4Justice, a grass roots protest group that campaigns against police brutality. It was met by a group of counterprotesters, some waving “Trump 2020” flags and wearing “Make America Great Again” hats. The police estimated that a total of 150 people from both contingents began protesting at 2 p.m. on Saturday. Thirty minutes later, the police said the crowd swelled to about 250 people. The groups began to clash and scream at each other, videos show. The Sheriff’s Department said it received reports of demonstrators carrying weapons and “physical altercations” between the groups, with at least one protester pepper-spraying another. The authorities declared the gathering an unlawful assembly and told the crowds to disperse, the department said. After several dispersal orders, a white sedan in the Yorba Linda Public Library parking lot, driven by Ms. Turner, lurched through a crowd and hit two people, a man and a woman, the police said. Ms. Turner, who officials said was attending the protest as part of the Caravan4Justice group, continued driving as a swarm of protesters tried to stop her car. She was taken into custody at the scene. It was not immediately clear on Sunday whether Ms. Turner, 40, had a lawyer. The two injured were taken to a hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening and were expected to survive, Carrie Braun, a spokeswoman for the Sheriff’s Department, said on Sunday....."
Didn't get nearly the pre$$ that the hit-and-run in Charlottesville did..
".... It was unclear whether they were part of the Caravan4Justice group or the counterprotest group because both groups had converged at the time, she said. On Thursday, a driver plowed through a crowd of people in Hollywood who were protesting the decision not to charge the Louisville police officers involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor during a botched raid of her apartment in March. There have been dozens of similar incidents involving cars striking demonstrators at protests against racism and police brutality across the country in the months since George Floyd died in police custody in Minneapolis in May. In Bloomington, Ind., a woman who was accused of driving her car through a crowd of protesters, injuring at least two people, was charged with two counts of criminal recklessness, a felony, and leaving the scene of an accident resulting in serious bodily injury. In Seattle, the authorities said a man drove into a protest, killing one demonstrator. He was charged with vehicular homicide, vehicular assault and reckless driving, and a man was arrested in June in Brooklyn after striking at least one person with his car during a Black Lives Matter march."
The whole agenda was given the gas in Minneapolis, and maybe you should move to Oregon -- if you have the energy:
I am of the belief that nefarious forces are piling on the alleged downing of power lines and lightning strikes.
{@@##$$%%^^&&}
Back into lockdown:
It didn't work last time, so WTF?
The new stay-at-home order is described as more limited than the spring order; in addition to applying only overnight, it has a built-in expiration date for now, and applies only to so-called purple tier counties, which are under the state’s most stringent restrictions in its reopening plan. It will go into effect Saturday night and will remain in place until the morning of Dec. 21. As in the spring order, residents can still go outside for walks or to go to work in what are deemed essential jobs, like in grocery stores, and it doesn’t apply to people experiencing homelessness. Restaurants, which are deemed essential, can continue to do takeout and delivery, but it effectively forces all restaurants to close in-person operations at 10 p.m., even if they are operating outdoors. As with the spring order, it is likely to be enforced differently across the state, depending on the severity of violations and the attitudes of local leaders.
Yeah, there are a bunch of cities and counties that are telling the him to f**k off, and rightly so.
Officials didn’t make clear what enforcement might look like. The move comes amid what California officials and experts have described as an alarming — but not yet irreversible — wave of new infections, heading into a dangerous Thanksgiving week. According to The Times’s database, the state was reporting a weekly average of 9,974 new cases per day, more than double the average two weeks ago.
All based on a flawed and faulty technique of amplification they call a test.
On Monday, Mr. Newsom said that the state was “pulling the emergency brake” on its reopening plan, which sorts counties across the geographically and demographically varied expanse that is California into levels of restriction based on their case numbers and positivity rates. Counties where more than 94 percent of the state’s population lives — including Los Angeles, Orange, Santa Clara and San Diego Counties — fall into the state’s most restrictive purple tier, meaning most businesses had to shut down or cut back on indoor operations. Indoor restaurants were closed. Arenas and other sites where the state set up extra health care space earlier in the pandemic were once again being prepared to quickly receive patients, if hospitals become overwhelmed, and the governor on Monday had hinted that more restrictions, including the curfew, could be on the way. Officials in Los Angeles County — which has for months struggled more than many other parts of the state — also announced more stringent restrictions than required by the state, including a curfew for restaurants and nonessential stores. Starting on Friday, they must close from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. The county ordered restaurants operating outdoors to halve their capacity, and officials said they may be forced to resort to restrictions more like the aggressive lockdown that kept Californians at home in March if conditions do not quickly improve.
Earlier in the week, Dr. Bob Wachter, a professor and chair of the University of California, San Francisco’s department of medicine, said that the state’s actions were warranted to curb the spread of the virus, particularly in light of the imminent holiday. “Whether or not it’s enough, I guess we’ll see,” he said. A Times analysis shows that states that imposed more restrictions have less bad outbreaks, and California was the first state to put in place a stay-at-home order in March. Less is known specifically about the effectiveness of curfews, but New York officials recently took a similar step. According to Curbed, many public health officials described measures like the one that California announced on Thursday as weaker stay-at-home orders, not curfews, and see them as less helpful than more targeted guidance. Mr. Newsom announced the curfew in a news release, foregoing his usual lengthy virtual news conference, in the wake of stinging criticism and outrage over his decision to attend a high-dollar dinner celebrating a lobbyist friend’s birthday at the French Laundry, a Napa Valley destination, along with members of several other households. Critics said that Mr. Newsom undermined the spirit of the restrictions he has so intensely promoted — even to the point of scolding residents for gathering in too-large groups or embracing their loved ones. On Monday, he apologized, calling it a “bad mistake.”
Apology NOT ACCEPTED, a$$hole!
"
California’s intensive care units could be overloaded by the middle of December, and its hospitals could be dangerously close to full by Christmas, according to sobering projections that Gov. Gavin Newsom presented on Monday, and the strain could be even worse in the hardest-hit areas, like the San Joaquin Valley, which was projected to reach 83 percent of its hospital capacity by Dec. 24. “If these trends continue, California will
need to take drastic action,” Mr. Newsom said during a virtual briefing, adding that
more severe restrictions, including full stay-at-home orders, could come within the next few days. California is
one of several states that had appeared to have gained control of the
virus, only to see it spread rapidly throughout the fall. On Sunday it became the first state to record over 100,000 cases in just a week, according to a New York Times database. A University of Arizona Covid-19
modeling team recently urged the state of Arizona to
take action to stem hospitalizations or else “
risk a catastrophe on a scale of the worst natural disaster the state has ever experienced. Already, 99 percent of California’s residents are under a curfew that bans them from leaving their homes to gather or to go to nonessential businesses after 10 p.m. Los Angeles County health leaders have gone even further, announcing a ban on all gatherings in public or at private homes that goes into effect on Monday.
The surge has upended some marquee elements of California’s sports and entertainment scenes. The San Francisco 49ers will play their next two home games in Glendale, Ariz., after health officials in Santa Clara County, Calif., where the team’s stadium is, banned contact sports at all levels through late December in a bid to slow the surge in virus infections there. The U.C.L.A. men’s basketball team announced that its home opener, scheduled for Monday, was being postponed because of its opponent’s virus protocol. In Los Angeles, residents complained on Monday that a feature film shoot that had been permitted by the city and county’s official film office had shut down a coronavirus testing kiosk at Union Station for a day. City officials said that residents who had testing appointments for Tuesday would be accommodated at any of the city’s other testing locations. Officials had spent the weekend talking with local leaders and health care providers about their concerns, said Dr. Mark Ghaly, the state’s secretary of health and human services, who also spoke during the Monday briefing. “Everything is on the table, in terms of how we guide the state through this,” he said, “and we want to make sure what we do is impactful and as time-limited as possible,” but unlike early in the pandemic, when just a few coastal states bore the brunt, the governor noted that the tidal wave of cases slamming the entire country has limited the likelihood of aid from the federal government or other states.
Honestly, who gives a f**k about the marquee elements of California’s sports and entertainment scenes?
I know I don't.
The total number of coronavirus cases in the United States for November surpassed four million on Saturday, more than double the record set in October of 1.9 million cases, and the sharp escalation is likely to continue after Americans traveled by the millions for the long Thanksgiving weekend. By contrast, after three weeks of lockdown in England, the number of new cases has fallen 30 percent, according to new data....."
Don't let any of them in here, what with the new mutation and all.
"
More than 1 million people have passed through U.S. airport security checkpoints in each of the past two days in a sign that public health pleas to avoid holiday travel are being ignored, despite an alarming surge in COVID-19 cases. Although lockdowns are no longer in effect in many parts of the country, stay-at-home orders have returned in some areas in effort to contain the virus. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued an advisory declaring “postponing travel and staying home is the best way to protect yourself and others from COVID-19.” Nevertheless, about 1.07 million people passed through the security checkpoints at U.S. airports on Friday and again on Saturday, according to the Transportation Security Administration. Saturday’s volume was down 57% from the same time last year, the smallest year-over-year decline in daily traffic at U.S. airports since Nov. 22 as people began their Thanksgiving getaways. If that early trend continues, U.S.
public health officials fear it
will lead to more
superspreader events as people unwittingly transmit the virus to family and friends while gathering indoors for holiday celebrations. Health officials note the upcoming holiday period from Christmas to New Year’s Day covers a longer timespan than the Thanksgiving break....."
"
California on Thursday surpassed 25,000 coronavirus deaths since the start of the pandemic, the third state to do so after New York and Texas, health officials said. The grim milestone comes as the nation’s most-populated state faces a surge of COVID-19 infections that has hospitals stretched to capacity and forced nurses and doctors to treat more patients than usual. California also has confirmed the second reported US case of a mutant variant of the coronavirus that appears to be more contagious. The state Department of Public Health says hospitals in Southern California and the agricultural San Joaquin Valley, which together account for a large majority of the state’s 40 million residents, have
no capacity left in intensive care units to treat COVID-19 patients. Hospitals are housing patients in hallways, conference rooms, a cafeteria, and gift shops. Makeshift hospitals are being set up in tents, arenas, and schools. California was the third state to reach 25,000 deaths, behind New York, which has nearly 38,000 deaths, and Texas, which has more than 27,000, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. California’s reported its first case of COVID-19 in late January. It recorded it’s 10,000th death from the virus in August. This week, Los Angeles County reached a “terrible milestone,” with 274 additional deaths in 24 hours for a record toll of 10,056 deaths, said Dr. Barbara Ferrer, the county health director. The nation’s most-populated county has had about 40 percent of California’s virus deaths. Most of the state is under newly extended restrictions that have closed or reduced capacity of businesses, and people are being urged to stay home as much as possible to try to slow the spread of infections. Meanwhile, California became the second state after Colorado to report finding a
new strain of the virus that was first confirmed in the United Kingdom. The patient, who developed symptoms on Dec. 27, is a 30-year-old San Diego County
man who didn’t have any history of travel, which could indicate that
someone else already had brought the new strain into the state, officials said (
ASSOCIATED PRESS)."
Are you sick of all the cover-their-ass qualifiers in the reporting?
I know I am.
