Uber’s tired of getting sued for breaking laws so they’re trying to change them. Vote no.

Honestly, getting me to take the side of ambulance chasers is quite the accomplishment. I’m impressed by their dedication to evil.

Ahh, the biennial California trip to the smog check station.

It’s an inconvenience I suffer gladly, though. I have asthma. I like being able to breathe. If keeping junkers off the road means having to prove that our own vehicle is playing by the rules, then so be it.

One of our credit card companies, acting as “Californians for Medical Privacy”, is opposing CA’s AB 2746. They say:

Lenders could need to know what medical services you received, if they were “medically necessary”, and potentially, even your private treatment details, if AB 2746 (Schiavo) were to become law.

Liars.

California’s existing law basically says that you can’t use a person’s medical debt against them when making credit decisions. Someone getting sick and racking up an enormous medical bill because their insurer denied, defended, and deposed, is not something they could have reasonably foreseen and avoided. It’s a different category of debt than, say, maxing out your credit cards in Las Vegas.

The new changes would clarify and expand the definition of “medical debt” in reasonable ways. The members of Californians for Medical Privacy claim they’d need to know why you borrowed money on a credit card to pay a hospital bill. While it’s not completely wrong, it’s a flashback to COVID times when people said dumb things like “I’m not allowed to tell you whether I have a fever because of HIPPA¹” to avoid getting kicked out of a bar for having the plague.

See, if you’re allowed to tell them that you charged $10,000 to pay an emergency room to fix a broken arm, then they can’t hold that against you when you apply for a mortgage. They’d much rather hold your future in their greedy little hands while you sell your car to pay for a root canal. Their explanation of the law is probably more or less correct. Their claims about the implications of it to us, the residents of California, the patients, and the borrowers, are complete lies.

I didn’t know about AB 2746 until our credit card — which we’re closing today — told us about it. And now that I know what it is, and the lies lenders will tell to oppose it, they’ve convinced me to be in favor of it.

The icing on the cake was their email footer:

ABOUT THIS EMAIL: This email was sent by [lender] to provide important account servicing information regarding your [lender] account. You may receive account servicing emails even if you have requested not to receive marketing offers by email for your [lender] account.

This was an political astroturfing campaign, not an “account servicing email”.

Again: Liars.

Snow on Mt. Diablo, as seen from Brentwood.

We’re having an honest-to-god thunderstorm in San Francisco! I’ve missed this so much.

How California sent residents’ personal health data to LinkedIn – The Markup:

As visitors filled out forms on the website, trackers on the same pages told LinkedIn their answers to questions about whether they were blind, pregnant, or used a high number of prescription medications.

Do not, ever, use a web browser without an ad-blocker. Even the FBI and NSA officially recommend it.

California is now 4th-largest economy in world, surpassing Japan

Some Americans constantly talk about how much CA supposedly sucks and is on the edge of collapse. My favorite criticism is that “no one wants to live there because it’s so expensive”, although the fundamentals of capitalism explain that it’s so expensive because so many people want to live there.

Meanwhile, back in reality…

California now requires credit card companies to assign a merchant category code to gun stores. Stripe has a list with 294 already used codes including Electric Razor Stores (5997); Glassware, Crystal Stores (5950); Massage Parlors (7297); and Shoe Repair/Hat Cleaning (7251).

Gun advocacy extremists make it sound like credit card companies are trying to do something new and unique to punish gun stores. In reality the law creates 1 more category alongside the few hundred others.

California governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required self-driving vehicles to have a human driver.

“Considering the longstanding commitment of my administration to addressing the present and future challenges for work and workers in California, and the existing regulatory framework that presently and sufficiently governs this particular technology, this bill is not needed at this time,” Newsom wrote. “For these reasons, I cannot sign this bill.”"

Good. I don’t see this as a safety issue so much as a make-work law. If a human would have to be in a self-driving truck at all times and ready to assume the controls at a moment’s notice, that’s basically human-driven with extra steps. Either the tech is good enough to be autonomous, or it’s not good enough to replace a human driver in the first place. And as a driver, I don’t think I’d want to be legally responsible for whatever boneheaded move a truck might take in the moments before I could regain control over it. “Hey, I know it was the AI that decided to swerve into the crowd of toddlers, and you only had 300ms to respond, but you were the one sitting in the driver’s seat…”

I’m not thrilled with ending human jobs without giving those people a way to survive. Even if I weren’t sympathetic to those hard-working people who are ready and willing to do the tough jobs that keep society running (and I hope it’s obvious that I am), enlightened self-interest means that I don’t want all of them to be unemployed and hungry. That’s bad for everyone. I also wish we shipped more freight via train, which is cheaper and way more environmentally friendly. Making it easier and cheaper to carry even more via truck is probably the wrong process to optimize.

Still, I think this bill was a well meaning but ultimately wrong solution. Frankly, it seems like it’d be cheaper and more efficient to pay those drivers to stay home than to pay them to perch in a self-driving truck.

These are my recommendations for the November 8, 2022 midterm election in California.

Propositions

Direct democracy looks like a great idea on paper. In practice, we end up with awful laws like Prop 8. Because it’s so hard to remove bad propositions once they’re approved, it’s better to vote “no” on ballot propositions you’re unsure about. If it’s a great idea — or even a bad one, in the case of Prop 29’s predecessors — the proposers can try again in a later election. You can always choose to approve it next time.

Proposition 1 — Reproductive Freedom

Yes. Explicitly protect abortion rights at the state constitution level.

Proposition 26 — Casino Sports Betting

No. This isn’t so important that we need to write it into law.

Proposition 27 — Online Sports Betting

No. This isn’t so important that we need to write it into law. Note that some advertising makes it sound like you have to pick one of Prop 26 or Prop 27. That’s untrue, and you can vote “no” or “yes” to either, both, or neither, as you wish.

Proposition 28 — School Arts

Yes. California has decent support for STEM education. We should also support creative arts. We have a record budget surplus and should invest in all our students.

Proposition 29 — Dialysis Clinics

No, and stop asking. This terrible idea keeps arising every couple of years. We’ve said repeatedly that we don’t want to enshrine this mistake into the California constitution, and we still don’t.

Proposition 30 — Electric Vehicle Subsidies

No. I’m ambivalent. When in doubt, say “no”.

Proposition 31 — Enforce the Flavored Tobacco Bans

Yes. The tobacco industry worked to block enacting a widely supported law that would make it harder for them to market “fun” vape flavors to kids. California has already chosen this legislation. Now let’s defeat Tobacco’s efforts to stop it.