Category Archives: Politics

Housing, Politics, Uncategorized

Secret in-flight recording sparks rage over wildfire insurance ‘bailout’

By Sophia Bollag, Joe Garofoli : sfchronicle – excerpt

SACRAMENTO — A conversation with a lobbyist secretly recorded on an airplane is shedding light on discussions of possible wildfire insurance legislation that consumer advocates are worried will be pushed through the Legislature in the final two weeks of the session.

“We are trying to jam a bill in the last three weeks,” longtime insurance industry lobbyist Michael Gunning says on the recording, which was taken on a Southwest flight from Los Angeles to Sacramento. He went on to explain that major insurance companies, including Farmers, State Farm and Allstate, have been reducing their footprint in the state…

The conversation goes to the heart of a question roiling Sacramento in the last days that bills can be written before the end of the legislative session: What can state lawmakers do to stave off concerns of an insurance crisis in California — a state that boasts the strongest insurance protections for consumers in the country?…

Consumer Watchdog has long been a thorn in the side of the insurance industry, and its founder was the chief backer of Proposition 103, the 1988 voter-approved ballot measure that created California’s strict rules governing insurance policies in the state. That measure also created the office of the insurance commissioner.

Gunning, a registered lobbyist with the firm Lighthouse Public Affairs, did not return a call seeking comment for this story. A colleague from his firm followed up with an emailed statement, characterizing the recording as an example of Gunning’s work to address California’s housing crisis.

“Let’s not do a bailout at the end of session with no public scrutiny,” she said. “It never ends well for consumers when lawmakers push through a bailout at the end of session.”…(more)

This news broke on national broadcast news so the secret is out.

Most bills are created by lobbyists who go to great lengths to hide the details from the public until the bills are passed. People have been complaining about backroom deals for years, but, the information has fallen on deaf ears.

All of a sudden the media is acting surprised. We shall see how far they go with it. Will they only despair of insurance company scams or will they admit how widespread the practice is? How many bills are passed without public knowledge or participation?

Isn’t this how we got SB35 and SB2011 that are now being blamed for such monstrosities as 2700 Sloat and a little known project going up on a greenway next to Sunset Blvd.? Is this how they will confiscate the parks and golf courses and waterfront sites that are not tied down to a trust of some kind? In San Francisco our public parks are being leased to private enterprises for a pittance . Not much is of limits when the developers get greedy and the state reps are hooked on their largesse.

Politics

Chaos Is Not a Viable Leadership Style

by Theodore Kinni : strategy-business – excerpt

Sowing seeds of confusion and discord is no way to run an organization.

Thirty years ago, the business world had a fling with chaos theory — the idea that although nonlinear systems, such as markets and companies, are inherently unpredictable, some order exists within them nonetheless. Tom Peters told us that chaotic markets harbored valuable business opportunities. Meg Wheatley said that chaotic companies were more adaptive, creative, and resilient than hierarchical companies. But I don’t recall anyone recommending chaos as a leadership style.

To be sure, there are prominent leaders today who adopt chaos as their modus operandi. Take Brandon Truaxe, the CEO of Deciem, a fast-growing Canada-based beauty products company that expects to record US$300 million in sales this year. Since January 2018, here are a few things he has done. Truaxe fired his social media team and started posting strange messages on Deciem’s Instagram account, including, as described in Elle, “closeup videos of him talking disjointedly about the popular skin-care line’s vision, a river flowing around a mass of garbage, and a photo of a dead sheep, captioned with a promise to never test products on animals.” He fired co-CEO Nicola Kilner, which prompted chief financial officer Stephen Kaplan to quit. (In July, Kilner rejoined the company.) Truaxe also emailed the company’s employees, “I’m done with DECIEM and EVERYTHING. No need to discuss.”.

One big benefit of being a chaotic leader is that you get a lot of attention. In this social media–driven, attention-addled, 24/7 world, it could be that the quantity of attention matters more than its content. Indeed, even as media and customer reactions to Truaxe’s actions turned negative, the company’s products continued selling briskly. “All they’re (his actions) doing is creating more sales for me,” Truaxe told WWD.

Well, maybe. But before you adopt a chaotic leadership style for its Barnum-like marketing effects, you probably should pause to consider what it does to the people and organizations that you are charged with leading. Chaotic leaders are like Loki, the trickster of Norse mythology, who sows the seeds of confusion and discord.…(more)

Look no further than Elon Musk, who completely destroyed Twitter, and who knows what else in an inexplicable mania to blow it up and start over. Some governments seem to be on a similar track. They are so compelled to rush headlong into the unknown future that they throw many successful business practices out the window while the confusion leaves businesses with no choice by to bail. If there is one thing the market hates it is confusion, or so we are told.

Politics, Transportation

Cruise Car hits Fire Truck

VIDEO: SF fire truck, driverless Cruise car collide, injuring passenger, company says.

By Gloria Rodriguez : abc7news – excerpt (includes video)

SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — A driverless Cruise car and a fire truck collided in San Francisco late Thursday night, sending one passenger to the hospital.

The crash happened at the intersection of Turk and Polk in the city’s Tenderloin district after 10 p.m.

Video shows the Cruise car with its passenger side doors smashed in after the collision with a San Francisco Fire Department truck responding to a call nearby… If you have been following the Autonomous Vehicle saga waiting for the shoe to drop. It finally has. A Cruise car hit an emergency vehicle and injured a passenger. . .

VIDEO: Driverless Cruise car struck by SF fire truck, injuring passenger, company says
abc7news.com

https://abc7news.com/cruise-driverless-car-sffd-fire-truck-accident/13666936/#:~:text=Cruise%20says%20that%20one%20of,one%20passenger%20to%20the%20hospital.

We should take this opportunity to request an audit of the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC). In their zeal to thrust the state into high growth, forced density and future technologies, the CPUC has removed important safety guardrails that protected the public. Our their health, safety, and economic well-being have given way to the demands of corporate investors. Many of the recent CPUC decisions have come in spite of requests and warnings from the public that were backed by scientific and expert opinions that the changes were not in the publics’ interest.

Who does the CPUC work for? Why do they ignore experts on subjects they are clearly not prepared to judge? Why are they forcing us to rush into a dubious future with products and services that we do not need or trust and many will not use? Why are they setting up job cutting technologies that are unproven, untrusted against the public’s will?

They clearly blew it with robotaxis that have been nothing but trouble since they were given the green light to expand. What else are they getting wrong and who are the people that are making major decisions re: public health, safety and the economy?

How honest and competent is the state system that oversees people who have such a heavy hand on our lives? Where does their money come from and what is their incentive for raising the cost of living by forcing the public to foot higher energy bills? First they cut the payments to the solar producers who are feeding the grid to lower the costs of producing energy. Now they want to raise the cost to consumers by adding “taxes” onto the bills they just claimed to have lowered. How dumb do they think we are?

What is the end game and who is pulling the strings? Why is our governor appointing these people to oversee these important decisions that affect most aspects of our lives, from jobs, to housing and transportation, to energy and the economy. Who will step up to take control of conditions that have banks and insurance companies fleeing the state? What do they know that we don’t?

Housing, Planning, Politics, Transportation

Can Bay Area Political Leaders Solve Climate Change?

By Marc Joffe : cato – excerpt

Passing laws, adopting regulations, and spending money to fight climate change are popular activities for both elected and unelected officials in the San Francisco Bay Area. But since they only govern 2.3 percent of the U.S. population, their ability to turn the tide on greenhouse gas emissions is limited. Instead, their costly and coercive policies drive up the area’s cost of living and help drive out residents.

In a previous post I described some of the high cost, low ridership Bay Area transit projects that raise local sales taxes while replacing only a handful of car trips. Since I last wrote, we have learned that San Francisco’s new $2,000,000,000 Central Subway is afflicted by serious water intrusion issues, making the travel experience less appealing for the roughly 1,000 passengers that use the Chinatown station each day.

More recently, local lawmakers have declared war on natural gas, an energy source that used to be popular with some environmentalists because it burns more cleanly than other fossil fuels. But now the intention is to fully embrace electricity even though California is unwilling to add nuclear generating capacity and lacks the enormous number of solar panels and windmills needed to fully power the state…(more)

CEQA, Housing, Politics

My house or my beach? How California’s housing crisis could weaken its coastal protections

By Ben Christopher : Calmatters – excerpt (includes audio track)

For more stories on inequality in California, sign up for Inequality Insights, a weekly must-read on one of California’s most pressing issues.

California lawmakers have been busy over the last decade trying to make it easier to build homes across a housing-strapped state. But there’s an 840-mile-long exception.

In an undulating band that generally runs 1,000 yards from the shoreline, the 12 members of the California Coastal Commission have the final say over what gets built, where and how.

Voters empowered the commission to protect the state’s iconic beaches in 1972, responding to a crisis of despoiled seas and the prospect of the Miami-fication of the California coast.

But five decades later, the state faces a different crisis as millions of Californians struggle to find an affordable place to call home. Now, a growing number of legislators and housing advocates are trying to wrest away some of the commission’s power…(more)

Politics

How the game is played in Sacramento

Opinion by Susan Shelley : dailynews – excerpt

The California Legislature is a waste of money and space.

Every year, the Legislature goes through the motions of passing laws through its regular process, appearing to be a deliberative body. Actually, it’s a dead body. The real decisions are made in back rooms and regulatory agencies, where the public is excluded or ignored.

One aspect of this decayed process is on display in Sacramento right now. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced a package of legislation to streamline infrastructure projects. “Streamline” is a word used in Sacramento when government officials want

to override their own strangling mess of regulations and requirements, but only for certain people or projects, not for everything and everybody.

It’s best understood as a fundraising technique. It’s quite streamlined in that regard…(more)

Write Susan and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley… opinion … (more)

Susan Shelley describes what we are all finding out about this year as we watch the Sacramento politicians play their games in the dark. More writers are giving us more details. Perhaps you would like to follow Susan Shelley on Twitter @Susan_Shelley or http://www.susanshelley.com/

I like this article:

California’s absurd war on cars : To paraphrase the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, the problem with California government is that you eventually run out of other people’s money…(more)

Housing, Planning, Politics

Newsom signs executive order, proposes reforms to environmental law known as CEQA

By Fox 40 News : youtube – excerpt (includes video)

The executive order will create a team that will identify environmental, infrastructure and transit projects held up by the strict law known as CEQA. The governor also proposed making adjustments to this law through the legislative process…(more)

RELATED:

Governor Newsom Unveils New Proposals to Build California’s Clean Future, Faster