Here’s the coronavirus death toll through October 6. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

California Secretary of State

This is a special post for California readers. The rest of you may safely ignore it.

This year we have one bond issue and eleven initiatives on the California ballot (Propositions 14-25). As longtime readers know, my default position is to oppose all initiatives. Here’s the nickel version of a longer rant about this: (1) Most initiatives these days are funded by corporate interests, not the grassroots, and corporate interests don’t really need yet another avenue to work their will on the public; (2) generally speaking, laws should be laws, not constitutional amendments or initiative statutes, where they’re essentially etched in stone forever; and (3) ballot box budgeting is a curse. In a nutshell, this means that I have a high bar for supporting initiatives, so keep my biases in mind as you read this.

The full voter guide is here, in ten different languages. There’s sure to be one for you.

14. $5.5 billion stem cell research bond. NO. California voters approved a stem cell research bond in 2004 for no special reason except to thumb our noses at President Bush, who had cut funding for embryonic stem cell research a few years before. There’s never been any other serious justification for it, and it turns out that very few trials of embryonic stem cell research have ever been funded. That leaves non-embryonic stem cell research, but there’s no special reason that California should be funding that since it’s already well funded elsewhere. There’s really no good reason to throw more money at this program.
15. Creates split roll property tax for commercial buildings. YES. California’s famous Proposition 13 capped property taxes at 1 percent of assessed value and limited increases in assessed value to 2 percent per year—unless the property was resold. Upon resale, assessed value is reset back to market value. This has long been a sore point, since large commercial buildings are resold infrequently, and are thus able to keep their low assessed values nearly forever. Prop 15 would end this by assessing large commercial buildings at market value every year. That’s fair, and since an initiative is the only way to reform another initiative, this is the only way to accomplish it.
16. Allows state agencies to use affirmative action. YES. This would repeal Proposition 209, which banned the use of affirmative action in 1996. I have some issues with affirmative action, but I favor repealing Prop 209 because it should be an issue for the legislature, not the state constitution. However, it’s worth noting that even in the most liberal state in the nation, this initiative is way underwater in the latest polling. It’s highly unlikely to pass.
17. Allows felons to vote upon release from prison. YES. Oh hell yes.
18. Allows 17-year-olds to vote in primaries if they will be 18 by the time of the general election. NO. I can see the appeal of this, but honestly it seems kind of pointless and trivial. No matter what you do, the break point for voting will end up being arbitrary in some way or another, so why not just leave it at 18 and stop fiddling around?
19. Miscellaneous hodgepodge of tax increases. TOSSUP. This initiative raises property taxes on inherited property and then tries to hide its actual purpose by reducing property taxes on a few sympathetic groups (seniors, the disabled, victims of wildfires). On net, it would increase taxes, most of which would go to schools and firefighting. There are pros and cons here. On the one hand, taxing inherited property is hardly a huge injustice, so why not do it? On the other hand, California is already a high-tax state that has a bad habit of passing too many tax increases. On the third hand, this initiative comes from the legislature, and I’m always saying that we should leave stuff like this to them. I will probably vote no on this, but it’s mainly because I’m so annoyed by the cloyingly deceptive advertising. Still, it’s a weak no.
20. Increases penalties for certain minor crimes, primarily shoplifting. NO. I’m generally opposed to increasing penalties for anything since the United States already has insanely punitive sentencing policies. Beyond that, this is a weird initiative that’s primarily funded by supermarkets. But their problem isn’t shoplifting in general, it’s professional shoplifting rings. Current laws are probably sufficient for that kind of activity, and there’s no good reason to increase penalties for ordinary schmucks lifting a bottle of aspirin or whatever.
21. Allows local governments to enact rent control. NO. I’m not a fan of rent control, which mostly just protects people who stay in the same place for a long time. In any case, rent control is under the authority of the legislature and I favor leaving it there.
22. Repeals parts of AB5, allowing companies Uber and Lyft to classify their drivers as independent contractors. NO. This is the big one, attracting untold millions of dollars in funding from rideshare companies. Here’s the background: In 2018 the California Supreme Court ruled that workers should be considered regular employees by default unless they meet all three prongs of a new “ABC test.” This forced the legislature to revise state employment law in light of the court ruling. They responded in 2019 with AB5, which put in place rules that essentially mandated that rideshare companies treat their drivers as regular employees, not independent contractors. This meant rideshare companies would have to pay for health insurance and unemployment insurance and so forth, which would drive up their costs substantially.
     
    As it turns out, AB5 has had some unwelcome side effects. What’s more, I’m not sure I agree that rideshare workers should never be classified as contractors anyway. On the other hand, drivers are pretty clearly integral to the business of companies like Uber and Lyft, and integral employees of big companies should be treated as such. In the end, I consider this a close call, which means it should be left in the hands of the legislature, which is where it is now.
23. Requires physician or nurse to be present during dialysis treatment. NO. This was on the ballot in 2018 and failed, so now its supporters are trying again. But there was no good reason for it then, and there still isn’t.
24. Tightens California’s consumer privacy laws. NO. This is a tricky one. Prop 24 has some good features that would help consumers, but it also has some murky provisions that might hurt consumers. There are concerns, for example, that it might protect “pay for privacy” programs that allow the better off to enjoy better privacy protection than the working poor. The NAACP supports Prop 24, the local ACLU opposes it, and the EFF is neutral. It’s supposedly designed to close some loopholes in California’s 2018 privacy law, but I’m not sure it’s wise to do this after giving the law only two years on the books. If Prop 24 were clearer and better written I might consider voting for it even given its defects. In its current form, however, I’d vote no.
25. Referendum on law that replaced cash bail with one based on flight risk and public safety. YES. I don’t know if this experiment in ending the cash bail system will work, but I think it’s worth a try.

Turkey vulture is watching you. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

Kevin Drum

The New York Times reports on the trade deficit:

The U.S. trade deficit in goods and services continued to climb in August, growing 5.9 percent from the previous month to $67.1 billion, the highest monthly level since 2006, as American imports outpaced exports….The rising trade deficit comes at an inconvenient moment for the Trump administration, which is eager to declare victory on its trade agenda as the election approaches. Economists caution against using the trade deficit as a measure of the economy’s health, but President Trump views the figure as a measure of his success in rewriting trade deals in the United States’ favor.

Poor Donald. But just this once, I’ll defend him. The trade deficit, by definition, is equal to government savings plus personal savings. Because of the pandemic, the federal government is running a big deficit, so government savings are negative. Likewise, thanks to high unemployment, households have been eating into their savings since April, which means that personal savings aren’t rising to make up for this. This makes it inevitable that the trade deficit is going to increase.

So it’s not really Trump’s fault. Like nearly every economic indicator these days, the trade deficit has to be taken with a grain of salt thanks to government shutdowns caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

How are the rich countries of Europe and North American doing on the coronavirus? This is surprisingly hard to answer. You can look at cases, but they depend a lot on how much testing you’ve done. What’s more, cases don’t seem to correlate very well with deaths anymore.

So how about deaths? That’s better, but still far from perfect since there’s an increasingly open dispute about what counts as a “COVID-19 death.” Plus, deaths are a lagging indicator, as they’ve always been.

So how about share of positive tests? This is the percentage of all COVID-19 tests that come back positive, and epidemiologists say that it needs to be below 5 percent before you can tentatively say you have things under control. During the initial April outbreak, the positive test rate was as high as 20-25 percent in some countries (it peaked at about 18 percent in the US). Here’s what it looks like today:

Needless to say, this is not a perfect metric either. If you test only people who are already showing symptoms, you’ll have a high rate. If you test everyone in a city, you’ll probably have a low rate. However, most countries are testing at a rate of 1-2 per thousand people, with a few outliers above and below that, which makes the positive test rate a decent look at how things are shaping up.

The chart above shows that a few countries are in terrible shape and should probably be locking down everything in sight. Another group of countries is in OK shape but obviously on the rise. And then there’s good old Germany, with a low positivity rate and a fairly flat curve.

The United States doesn’t look good on this metric. We’ve been on the rise for the past two weeks and we broke the 5 percent barrier a few days ago. Winter is coming.

Sandys Toni L/Abaca via ZUMA

Fed chair Jerome Powell is starting to sound eerily like Ben Bernanke circa 2010:

“The expansion is still far from complete,” Mr. Powell said in remarks to be delivered at a virtual economics conference Tuesday. “At this early stage, I would argue that the risks of policy intervention are still asymmetric. Too little support would lead to a weak recovery, creating unnecessary hardship.” By contrast, the risks of providing too generous relief are smaller, he said. “Even if policy actions ultimately prove to be greater than needed, they will not go to waste,” he said.

In plain English, Powell is saying that Congress needs to pass a huge spending and relief bill. It would help the recovery and make life better for millions of people. And if the spending turns out to be bigger than we needed? It’s not a big deal.

Bernanke said much the same thing, in increasingly dire terms, during the recovery from the Great Recession, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. President Obama managed to pass a piecemeal “second stimulus” in late 2010, but that was all that Republicans ever allowed even though Bernanke persistently warned that it wasn’t enough.

Today, of course, there’s a stimulus bill all ready to go, but Republicans are stalling because it’s a few hundred billion dollars bigger than they’d like. Powell is trying to tell them not to worry about that, and instead to just pass the damn thing. So far, it’s not working:

Those pushing hard for a bill include the White House. Mr. Trump tweeted from the hospital on Saturday that the country “wants and needs” more stimulus. For Mr. Trump, a deal would serve as a sign of his authority, taking attention away from his health and unfavorable polls.

Congressional leaders, though, are still haggling. When asked Sunday whether Mr. Trump’s comments meant the two parties were closer to a deal, Ms. Pelosi demurred: “No, it means that we want to see that they will agree on what we need to do to crush the virus so that we can open the economy and open our schools safely.”

Republicans are “haggling” over a $2.2 trillion bill that they want to reduce to $1.6 trillion. This is beyond ridiculous. Democrats want more than that. Trump wants more than that. The Fed chair wants more than that. The country needs more than that. What on earth are they afraid of?

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through October 5. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

We have yet another country that has discovered a bunch of new COVID-related deaths: Mexico. This is why their trendline suddenly spiked up to 6 per million on Monday.

After many years of planning, disputes, and construction, today finally marks the opening of the new Gerald Desmond Bridge in Long Beach. It is California’s first and only major cable-stayed span, and it’s intended to be a “postcard bridge” for Long Beach. It runs parallel to the ugly old Gerald Desmond Bridge, which is now scheduled for a well-deserved demolition.

Naturally I took pictures. Unfortunately, the harbor is so crammed with harbor stuff that it’s surprisingly difficult to get a decent view of the bridge. For a good “postcard” view you need a boat, or, even better, a blimp. I have neither, so I was stuck with ground-level views. That said, here’s a collection of photos taken from various spots.

First up, the whole bridge rising out of the early morning fog. This was taken from northwest of the bridge:

This is probably the best overall view of the bridge, taken from the southeast:

This one was taken from the deck of the old bridge.

Here’s another one that clearly shows the old and new bridges together. The new one, in addition to being bigger and able to handle more traffic, is also higher than the old bridge. This allows bigger ships to dock in the inner harbor.

Here’s a more panoramic view from across the middle harbor:

And finally, we started with the morning fog so let’s end with it too. This is a black-and-white photo of the bridge in the early morning surrounded by harbor stuff. It provides a good context for what the bridge looks like in most actual views.

POSTSCRIPT: If you’re curious what the last image looks like in color on a sunny afternoon, here it is:

Gripas Yuri/Abaca via ZUMA

Now there’s one more:

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said in a statement Monday that she has tested positive for the coronavirus and will begin the quarantine process while she continues to work remotely.

Will this affect McEnany’s usual blithe attitude toward the truth when she briefs reporters? Probably not. Nothing ever seems to.

POSTSCRIPT: And this:

This is accurate. White House communications aides Chad Gilmartin and Karoline Leavitt both have coronavirus, I’m told. Other mid-level staffers have tested positive, too, in recent days. https://t.co/dDCMJHDZ0b

— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) October 5, 2020

Here’s the latest poll aggregate from the folks at the Economist:

Biden continues to slowly widen his lead over Trump, which explains much of Trump’s reckless behavior lately. As he gets more and more desperate, I expect him to respond like a cornered animal. The worst is yet to come.