Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Pasadena Trade Show Travelog #1
SJC Airport - Thu, 6 Mar 2025, 2pm

I'm headed down to Southern California today to work a trade show tomorrow through the weekend. Yes, this IT industry trade show runs through the weekend. It's the way this one's always scheduled.

This year the show's back in Pasadena after a few years in LA near LAX airport. I liked the latter location as it was easy in/out for me. I could fly to LAX and walk to the hotel. I did exactly that— walked from the airport to the hotel for this conference a few years ago. It's a bit intense walking a mile with a suitcase in hand. Though I did it again, walking to a slightly closer airport hotel on a business trip a few months ago.

Anyway, it's back in Pasadena now. That means I'll fly to Burbank Airport (BUR), which is a much smaller airport than LAX. And there's definitely no walking from the airport, as even BUR is 16 miles away. So I'll fly and call Lyft/Uber to get around.

One thing you might wonder is, "Wait, since it's all in California, could you drive?" Yes, I could. From my house to downtown Pasadena is a drive of 350 miles. Even with mostly wide-open superhighways between here and there it's at the edge of where I'd consider driving vs. flying. I'll share more thoughts about the fly-vs-drive calculation soon if I have time. For now, though, it's time to fly!

Today, December 21st, is the winter solstice in the northern hemisphere. It's the shortest day, the longest night, and the start of winter by modern convention.

Winter means rain in California. Our climate pattern is such that we have beautiful, long, sunny summers. In turn, we get virtually all our rainfall for the year in winter. Of course, that definition of winter is not limited to astronomical dates like December 21. Typically our rainy season starts sometime in November and runs through March.

The way winter weather starts before the official start of winter means that, some years, I'm tired of winter by the time it starts. 😰 That was the case last year; fortunately it's not the case this year. I'm okay with winter right now. It hasn't dragged me down too much already. I think I'll be okay— as in not dispirited— by a couple months of drear. If nothing else, at least now that it's the winter solstice the days will start getting longer again. Soon it won't be dark at 5pm any more!

I'm going through the ballot propositions on the ballot here in the 2024 general election. In this 4th blog in the series I'll finish with the last two statewide propositions. But then I'll have to write at least a Part 5 to address the local props on the ballot. Whew!

Here are my previous blogs on this year's ballot propositions:

• Part 1: Props 2 & 3 and a few links on how props work
• Part 2: Props 4, 5, and 6
• Part 3: Props 32, 33, and 34

Now onto Props 35 and 36.

Prop 35: Permanent Funding for Medi-Cal: YES.

Medi-Cal is a program that funds health care for millions of poor people and children in California. One of its sources of funding, a tax on health insurance plans, will lapse if nothing changes. And that lapse would be a double whammy as the funding is matched by federal dollars. A YES vote on 35 makes the temporary funding permanent, at least at the state level. The federal matching... well, that depends on who wins the presidency.

Prop 36: Stiffer Criminal Penalties for Minor Crimes: NO.

Ten years ago California voters approved Prop 47, which reduced penalties on certain minor crimes such as small-time theft and drug use, reducing them from felonies to misdemeanors. Curiously the original motivation behind it was to reduce California's prison population— as federal courts had found the terrible conditions in the prisons unconstitutionally harsh and were threatening to release prisoners ad hoc if the state didn't reduce the prison population itself. That notwithstanding, many of us voted in favor of Prop 47 as a matter of rationalizing criminal law and promoting fairer social justice. Now, 10 years later, the lock-'em-up faction of politics is looking to repeal Prop 47.

The lock-'em-up side of politics warns us breathlessly of a crime wave sweeping our cities. Murders, drug use, homelessness (which isn't really a crime), and theft. Our cities, especially our cities where Democrats lead, are cesspools, they cry. But here are the facts: Crime overall is near a 50 year low. Yes, it ticked up a bit from absolute lows during part of the Covid pandemic, but signs are that it's coming back down.

"But what about rampant retail theft?" social critics ask. It turns out it's been overreported. The head of a drugstore chain admitted that they played up "theft" as a reason for their poor financial results and the need to close stores in some locations. Really the primary causes were a) overexpansion coupled with b) failure to adapt an outdated business model to the changing market. And as for stores locking up more and more products behind plexiglass... well, consider that the stores are doing this because they're cheaping out on staff to run the stores. When I go to my local CVS to fill prescriptions I notice that while the pharmacy often has 3 or even 4 people filling bottles, the whole rest of the store generally has one employee.

But let's not get too lost in the details. The big picture here is that we've been down the lock-'em-up road before. It doesn't work. It fills our prisons with low-level offenders who could be better reformed with treatment than incarceration, stresses available prison space to the point that conditions are inhumane, provokes a spending crisis as we confront the costs of having to build more prisons to house everyone we convict, and ultimately doesn't reduce the crime rate. Vote NO on 36.

I'm going through the ballot propositions on the ballot here in the 2024 general election. See part 1 of this series for a few links on how props work and my thoughts about Props 2 & 3. Here are my thoughts on the next few.

Prop 4: Bond for Safe Drinking Water, Wildfire Prevention, and Protecting Land from Climate Risks: Yes.

Like Prop 2 this is a bond issue already passed by the legislature that now needs to go to voters for final approval. Yes, that's the clumsy process for borrowing money in California, forced upon us by anti-tax activists years ago. Those same anti-tax activists also oppose virtually every single bond measure as a matter of course. They say we should fund the projects from the current budget instead of borrowing against the future. Except they also oppose funding major projects as current-year expenses. It's like they don't think we should be able to have nice things— or that we should have them but somehow not pay for them.

Climate change is real and getting worse. This bond is worthwhile because its funding helps California mitigate some of the most dangerous impacts, such as increased wildfire risks. It also directs 40% of its funding to low-income communities, which generally are most vulnerable to climate change as they lack the resources to ward against risks and recover from harm after it occurs. Vote YES on 4.

Prop 5: Allow Bonds for Affordable Housing & Public Infrastructure to Pass with Just 55% Approval: Yes.

Part of the anti-tax crusaders' legacy in California is that not only does borrowing through public bonds require public approval after being passed by the legislature but that it must win a two-thirds supermajority of the public vote. Even in deep blue California it's rare that you can get 2/3 of the electorate to agree on anything. And that's doubly true nowadays when Republican voters live in news echo chambers of conspiracy theories and outright lies.

Anyway, over the years voters have passed constitutional amendments relaxing the vote requirement from 66.67% to just 55% for certain categories of bonds. This new constitutional amendment adds two more categories to the 55% threshold rule: bonds for affordable housing and public infrastructure. The virtually unattainable two-thirds threshold is why we're decades behind where we should be in things like building public transit. Vote YES on this one so the state and our localities are about to get more stuff done.

Prop 6: Eliminate Forced Labor in Prisons: Yes.

This proposition is a legislative constitutional amendment— meaning it's been passed by the State Assembly and Senate and must now go to voters for approval. What's at issue here is that prisons in California are allowed to force inmates to work. It's involuntary servitude. That's what the official title of the measure calls it: involuntary servitude. But some would even call it slavery.

In fact, some do call it slavery. The League of Pissed Off Voters, a progressive group in San Francisco, labels this "Abolish Slavery in CA Prisons". As always, they write vigorously and colorfully. For that reason alone I read and consider all of their opinions even though I don't always agree with them. As far as calling this slavery, though, they're... not wrong. Inmates can be forced to work on pain of punishment. It's allowed in our state constitution as a literal exception to the "NO SLAVERY" rule that been in there since California became a state.

I'm choosing to use the term forced labor here because it makes comparison easier. Type a question like, "Which countries have forced labor in prisons" into your favorite search engine and you'll see interesting answers. According to Walk Free, an Australian human rights group, only 17 countries still practice forced labor in prisons. A glance at which countries those are shows the US keeping poor company. Among the others on the list are Russia, China, North Korea, and Myanmar; all countries with terrible civil rights records.

Look, I get it that "prisoners' rights" is not always a compelling political issue. Prisoners committed crimes against individuals and society, and they should pay. But this is a question about what we want our prisons to be. Is incarceration just a matter of locking people up, or can they also be punished further by being required to work for literal pennies an hour? And understand that this work is not just mild stuff like sweeping floors to keep the cell block clean. Convicts labor built the beuatiful Highway 1 on the Pacific coast years ago, and convicts today serve on crews battling wildfires. And they get paid pennies an hour for risking their lives.

BTW, this measure will not change the fact that when convicts do work, they are paid literal pennies an hour. The measure will only make it so that they can't be coerced, on threat of additional punishment, to work for pennies an hour. Yes, it would be ideal to fix the rate of pay issue, as well. But doing that would make this an expensive measure, one that would attract all kinds of opposition (from anti-tax activists and voters) focused on its dollar cost. Removing the coercion to work is a partial victory for inmates' civil rights that we can achieve right now.

Every election season I try to write about the key races and issues on the ballot. Today I thought to myself, "I should start writing about the ballot props!" because there are so many of them this year. Then I realized before I dig into examining what the props are about I should take stock of all the different ways I can vote.

I live in California, where all registered voters are mailed a ballot in advance. We can then vote it in many different ways:

1. Mark the mailed ballot and return it by mail.


2. Mark the mailed ballot and drop it in an official locked drop-box. This is how I've often done it the past few years, using the dropbox at my city library a little over 1 mile away.


3. Mark the ballot and deliver it to a voting station. Voting stations are open early— 9 days before election day


4. Vote the ballot in person at a voting station— on election day or as early as October 26.


5. If you don't have an advance ballot or wish to vote at a different voting station, you can vote a provisional ballot at any voting station.

I might choose Option 2 again this year. Though since Hawk has volunteered as a poll worker I may choose Option 3 so I can give her a hard time, maybe by asking her for help in Spanish, at her polling station. 😂

A bit over a week ago we made the decision to pull the plug on our July 4 hiking trip in the Shasta-Trinity mountains. The weather forecast was showing extreme heat over the 4 days we'd be there, and we decided it would spoil the enjoyment of hiking. Instead we stayed home— in the milder extreme heat Silicon Valley got— and had a great time lounging around the pool 4 afternoons in a row. But what did we miss? News reports yesterday provided some of the receipts.

From Friday through Sunday numerous heat records were set in California. In Sacramento, on-this-date records were set with 110° on Friday and 113° on Saturday. The Saturday high blew away the previous record of 105° set on July 6, 1989. In Redding a new all-time high temperature of 119° F (48.3° C) was recorded. New records were set in plenty of other cities, too.

Redding's record is directly relevant to what we missed because it's the closest larger city to the mountains where we would've gone hiking. Now, 119 in Redding doesn't mean it was 119 up in the mountains. As a rule of thumb, the air temperature drops 3 degrees Fahrenheit per 1,000 feet of elevation. Redding stands at around 600' elevation at the northern end of the Central Valley just below the Shasta-Trinity mountains. The hiking trails we were looking at had us starting at elevations of 5,500-6,500. So 15 to 18 degrees cooler than 119— yeah, still over 100. 🥵

Starting today in California the minimum wage for fast food workers is $20/hour. No, that's not an April Fool's joke. It's a result of AB 1228, which the California legislature passed last year and Governor Gavin Newsom signed into law on September 28, 2023. The law took effect today, April 1, 2024.

$20 may seem an eye-popping wage to some, especially as a minimum wage. Indeed it dwarfs the US federal minimum wage, a paltry $7.25 last raised in 2009 (source: US Dept. of Labor). But the California minimum wage is already $16/hour state-wide— and many high cost-cities have even higher rates. Here in Sunnyvale it's $18.55/hour. In neighboring Mountain View it's $18.75.

I'm a big believer in worker rights, living wages, and raising minimum wages in general... but this law has a number of particulars that set off alarms with my good governance sense.

For one, this $20/hour minimum is too steep for fast-food employers state-wide. It's not out of line here in prosperous Silicon Valley, or in other HCOL areas like San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, etc., but what about the many rural counties and small towns in California? Not every local economy can support this pay.

The degree to which this law targets a small number of employers really offends my sense of good governance. It applies to just one sub-industry, fast food— not even all restaurants or food service work, but fast food in particular. Moreover it contains so many exceptions that it really does seem to be targeting a relatively small set of political disfavored companies. Governor Newsom isn't even coy about that. He touts it as the intent.

The targeted companies are big, "wealthy" fast food chains. Normally when lawmakers want to target chains with rules while favoring small, "mom and pop" businesses they write laws with thresholds on the number of employees. For example, a variety of laws apply only to businesses employing at least, say, 50 employees. But this law applies based on the size of the chain. Only restaurants belonging to a chain with at least 60 locations nationwide are affected.

The law also provides a bakery carve-out that reeks of favoritism. If a chain restaurants sells bread as a stand-alone item, and bakes that bread itself, even if it also sells bread as part of a meal (like a sandwich), it's exempt from the law. Who does that exempt? Basically just one chain, Panera. And billionaire Greg Flynn, who owns 24 Panera franchises in California, is a buddy of Governor Newsom and donated to his campaigns. For the record, Flynn and Newsom both deny there's any favoritism there. But further adding to the sense of backroom dealing is the fact that the legislative deliberations that yielded this compromise are secret under binding NDAs. Though subsequent to a firestorm of media scrutiny Flynn offered to pay $20 at all of his restaurants. (Example news coverage: CNN.com article, 5 Mar 2024; Associated Press article, 11 Mar 2024)

Tomorrow, March 5, is the 2024 primary election in California. That means today I filled out my ballot and sealed it up to drop off at the ballot box tomorrow. Yes, California is one of those voting rights states where everyone can get a mail-in ballot, no questions asked. Mail-in ballots are much easier for people whose job and or family situations make it prohibitive to carve out time on election day to go to a polling station, wait in line, and fill out a ballot provided only then and there.

Here's a run down of the main things on the ballot this time.

President: I'll assume if you can read this and are eligible to vote in the US, you know what the choices are here.

US Senator: It's a race to replace Diane Feinstein, who died several months ago. Actually it's two races, making it more confusing. One race is to fill her seat for the remainder of her current term, which ends 3 January 2025. The other race is to be US Senator from California for a full, 6 year term.

Both of these senate races follow California's "top two" primary rule, which is also affectionately known as a "jungle primary". Numerous candidates run in the primary, and the top two vote-getters advance to the general election. This narrowing of the field is done without regard to political party, so it's possible the general election could feature two Democrats running against each other and no Republican.

There are three credible Democrats in this race. All three are sitting members of Congress: Adam Schiff, Barbara Lee, and Katie Porter. The leading Republican is past baseball star Steve Garvey. Schiff leads among all the candidates and has spent a lot of his considerable campaign money telling people Garvey is a conservative. Poll watchers agree this seems to be a play by Schiff to shape the results of the "top two" primary by boosting Garvey to be the #2 finisher. If that happens Schiff would presumably coast to a win in the general election, given the overwhelming registration advantage Democrats have in California, versus having to fight it out against a fellow Democrat.

US Congress: Again, a "top two" primary race, though with only a handful of candidates rather than the dozens in the senate race. Here our incumbent, Rep. Ro Khanna, has been doing a pretty good job, so I gave him my vote again.

State Assembly: My district's incumbent Assembly member, Evan Low, is termed out this year and is seeking higher office. He's running for US Congress (though not in my district). I usually don't pay much attention to State Assembly, but this year I went to a meet-and-greet with one of the candidates, Patrick Ahrens. I went into that backyard rally skeptical and left shaking his hand and telling him he'd earned my vote. This is a race where I politely disagree with my friend mithriltabby who posted his usual well-researched recommendations a few weeks ago. Edit: I don't think the opponent of Ahrens's he chose is poor but I do consider Ahrens a stronger candidate than he gave him credit for. I found Ahrens to be intelligent, thoughtful, and skilled at bringing together political leaders across different levels of government to solve challenging problems, like housing for the homeless, that are often dismissed with finger-pointing about who else needs to be involved. Ahrens has a record of not just identifying who else needs to participate in the solution but actually getting them to help.

Proposition 1: There's just one statewide proposition this election. That's a good thing, because such significant measures as statewide initiatives shouldn't be passed or rejected in elections with such low turnout as primaries. In fact, the state passed a law (via ballot proposition 😂) to force most props to the general election. Anyway, this prop is clumsily named "AUTHORIZES $6.38 BILLION IN BONDS TO BUILD MENTAL HEALTH TREATMENT FACILITIES FOR THOSE WITH MENTAL HEALTH AND SUBSTANCE USE CHALLENGES; PROVIDES HOUSING FOR THE HOMELESS." Per the information in the state voter guide it changes up how money under an existing law is allocated, shifting more of it to mental health care, housing, and drug addiction treatment. It also includes a new bond to help fund these. The measure isn't perfect, as my friend mithriltabby points out, but unlike him I support it anyway. I side with The League of Pissed Off Voters in San Francisco who also explain that Prop. 1 is imperfect but voting "Yes" is far better than voting "No" for anyone who cares about the dual crisis of drug addiction and homelessness. I drive past growing tent encampments 1/2 mile from my house several days a week. I'd very much like to see them gone— and not by police rousting the homeless and simply forcing them to move elsewhere, but by us providing a compassionate, superior alternative.

Measure C: This one's a local school district bond proposal. It authorizes up to $214 million in bonds to improve local schools, paid for by a surcharge on property taxes. That may sound like a lot of money, but it's only at most $15 per $100,000 of assessed property value. For roughly a hundred bucks a year I'll invest more in local schools. I don't use the schools myself, nor do I have any schoolkids, but if our schools go up even a point on statewide scores it'll add thousands to the value of my house. So even if I didn't think educating the next generation is the right thing to do (it is the right thing to do) there's still a selfish argument to be made for it.

The news yesterday and this morning has been full of stories about violent weather around California. California's a big place, though. What happens hundreds of miles away may be totally different here. Heck, with the state's extreme differences in geography and weather patterns, what happens even 10 miles away may be totally different here. That's certainly the case with Sunday's violent weather. It was relatively calm here in my town and in my neighborhood.

Yes, we got a lot of rain. Earlier in the week we had an "atmospheric river" storm, and this weekend we had another one even bigger. From what I can tell Southern California got even more rain than Northern California did. That's kind of typical in this El Niño winter. The niño pattern means wetter weather than normal in the south, drier in the north. Southern California is definitely on the wetter side of that pattern; Northern California is around where the dividing line falls (it depends on the jet stream) so our weather may bring bits of each.

Flooding? Not here. A bit factor in flooding is how well the local runoff systems can handle it. We don't live near a river or creek prone to flooding, so there's been no flooding near our house. We don't live in a canyon or near a hillside, so there's been no mudslide here. Also no floods or washouts of the kind that can form in these areas.

We also don't live in an area prone to high wind, so we've been spared the brunt of winds elsewhere that have knocked trees and other things causing damage. We do have a few small branches down in our neighborhood. The gardeners can clean those up this week. Our biggest damage locally is a 30' long or so section of wood fence that the winds blew down. We'll have to get someone out to clean up the debris then, when things dry out, replace the section of fence. Our property management company will help coordinate that.

Update: followup blog with pictures of downed fence and a downed tree.

Yesterday, November 7, was Election Day for many in the US. Here in California it was almost a non-event. It's an off year for almost everything: presidential elections, Congressional elections, even California's state-wide offices. All we had across the state were a smattering of local elections to fill empty seats in bodies like school boards and municipal water districts. There was literally no election in my district as there was nothing to vote for.