Web Version [link removed] | Update Preferences [link removed] CBRT in the News California Voters Rejected Prop 15. What Now For Property Tax Reform?

Proposition 15 came close, but it failed to win enough support from California voters to carry out an ambitious overhaul of the state's commercial property tax system.

The measure is currently trailing, 51.8% to 48.2%. Votes are still being counted, but the Associated Press called the race on Tuesday.

As a result of Prop 15's defeat, businesses will continue to pay property taxes based on rules laid out under Proposition 13, the historic tax-cutting measure passed in 1978.

Prop 13 has been popular for decades, but it's also been a target for progressive reformers for just as long. Despite this loss, some say the results show that millions of California voters favor changes to create a more equitable property tax system.

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Prop 15's defeat "should send a clear message to the proponents and warn all politicians that voters will continue to reject attempts to dismantle Prop 13," California Business Roundtable president Rob Lapsley said in a statement.

Read More [[link removed]] In Liberal California, Election Shows Prop. 13 Tax Revolt Is Alive And Well

With the failure of Proposition 15, the $140 million campaign to hike property taxes on businesses across the state finally comes to a close.

Now begins a new statewide competition to explain what the results really mean.

For opponents, which include large business groups, commercial landlords and low-tax advocates, the lesson is clear: Forty years after California voters passed Proposition 13 — capping property taxes and hamstringing state and local governments' ability to raise new revenue — the "tax revolt" is live and well.

The state's voters may routinely elect and then re-elect Democrats, said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, a coalition of large businesses that opposed the measure. But that doesn't mean they want to weaken what he called the state's "last remaining tax protection."

"This was the most favorable political climate they could have asked for," he said. "An anti-Trump climate driving a high-turnout election, a pandemic with deficits at cities and school districts across the state."

Read More [[link removed]] California Voters Reject Proposal To Roll Back Limits On Commercial And Industrial Property Taxes

Supporters have conceded defeat of a union-backed initiative that would have resulted in higher property taxes for commercial and industrial property to provide additional funding for local governments, schools and community colleges.

Proposition 15 trailed 51.8%-48.2%, according to figures released Tuesday by the Secretary of State's Office. It was one of 12 statewide propositions left up to California voters to decide in the Nov. 3 election.

"California's challenges are not going anywhere, and this election result has shown that there is strong public demand for closing the corporate tax loopholes which cost our local communities billions every year,'' said Alex Stack, the communications director of the campaign on behalf of Proposition 15.

Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable and a co-chair of the No on Proposition 15 campaign called the proposal deeply flawed.

"From day one, we knew that if voters understood the harm this deeply flawed tax hike would impose on California's economy and its families, farmers and small businesses, voters would reject this ill-advised effort," Lapsley said. "Today's victory should send a clear message to the proponents and warn all politicians that voters will continue to reject attempts to dismantle Prop 13.''

Read More [[link removed]] Voters Reject Proposition 15 — A Ballot Question To Partially Dismantle A Cap On Property Taxes

alifornia voters narrowly rejected a ballot question to partially dismantle the state’s 42-year-old cap on property taxes. Proposition 15 failed to reach the majority vote needed to pass on Tuesday night, according to the Associated Press.

Proposition 15, a measure backed by organized labor to fundamentally change the way California calculates property taxes for commercial and industrial real estate and generate revenue for schools and local government services, failed Tuesday night.

Proposition 15 represented a wish by liberal Democrats, ever since the landmark tax-cutting measure Proposition 13 passed in 1978, to create a so-called "split roll" — splitting off commercial and industrial property from residential and farm land for the purpose of calculating taxes.

Currently, all property in California is taxed by the Proposition 13 formula, based on 1% of the purchase price with an annual increase of no more than 2%.

“From day one, we knew that if voters understood the harm this deeply flawed tax hike would impose on California’s economy and its families, farmers and small businesses, voters would reject this ill-advised effort,” said Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable, in a statement. “Today’s victory should send a clear message to the proponents and warn all politicians that voters will continue to reject attempts to dismantle Prop 13.”

Read More [[link removed]] Sacramento Business Groups Urge California To Modify COVID-19 Restrictions

Organizations representing Sacramento’s Central City Property and Business Improvement Districts are urging state leaders to re-evaluate coronavirus business restrictions.

In a Tuesday letter to California’s Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. Mark Ghaly, the business groups urged the state to amend its most restrictive “purple tier” to allow restaurants, museums, and fitness industries to operate indoors as they have in the state’s second-most restrictive “red tier.”

California has implemented a county-by-county four-tier system of restrictions that are based on population and daily coronavirus case rates. Sacramento County and several other Northern California counties were moved back into the most restrictive tier Tuesday as coronavirus case rates rise.

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The California Business Roundtable has criticized Gov. Gavin Newsom for policies they say are stagnating business in the state.

“Despite the governor and public health officials citing family gatherings as the main cause of the increase in COVID cases, it’s once again the workers and small business owners that is paying the price,” said Rob Lapsley, President of the California Business Roundtable. “We have repeatedly asked the governor and his administration for contact tracing data that would show how business openings have affected COVID rates and transmission.”

Read More [[link removed]] Two Unappealing Choices For Newsom, Lawmakers

Proposition 15 is dead — and with it, one of California’s few remaining hopes of infusing money into local governments and schools staring down massive deficits.

The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday night with 51.8% of voters opposing and 48.2% supporting the campaign to raise taxes on commercial properties. For Prop. 15‘s supporters, it signaled how close they were to winning a majority of the vote. For its opponents, it underscored the enduring power of Prop. 13, the landmark 1978 measure that capped property taxes and limited state and local governments’ ability to raise new revenue, CalMatters’ Ben Christopher reports.

Rob Lapsley, president of the California Business Roundtable: “This was the most favorable political climate (supporters) could have asked for. An anti-Trump climate driving a high-turnout election, a pandemic with deficits at cities and school districts across the state.”

Read More [[link removed]] Colorblind California

The presidential election may be a muddy mess, thanks to newly permissive policies on mail-in voting. One outcome, however, is beyond dispute: Californians’ resounding rejection of racial quotas. A ballot initiative that sought to reintroduce racial preferences throughout state government has lost by a margin of 12 percentage points. For now, elites’ goal of a permanently race-divided society will have to wait a few more years.

The losing initiative, Proposition 16, aimed to repeal an earlier ballot initiative, Proposition 209. In 1996, Prop. 209 changed the state’s constitution to require California’s government to treat all individuals equally. The text of Proposition 209 was an insult to proponents of artificially created “diversity.” The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, Californians “on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin,” reads the post-209 state constitution.

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The business community also came out swinging in support of Proposition 16. The chairman of the California Business Roundtable told Los Angeles Times columnist George Skelton: “Prop. 16 will help allow small, minority and women-owned businesses better access to capital, especially in applying for and receiving important state contracts.” The California Chamber of Commerce backed the measure. The former chairman of the Los Angeles Latino Chamber of Commerce told Skelton: “There’s a constant barrier for ethnic minorities and women” who seek government contracts.

Read More [[link removed]] Business Climate and Job Creation Fed Chair Powell Says Rising Virus Cases Could Challenge Economic Recovery

Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said it is too soon to say how progress in the global hunt for a coronavirus vaccine will influence the U.S. economy, particularly given concerning increases in infections that could weaken the recent economic recovery.

“The next few months could be challenging,” Mr. Powell said Thursday during a virtual panel discussion with other central bankers. On the implications of a vaccine, he added, “From our standpoint, it’s just too soon to assess with any confidence the implications of the news for the path of the economy, especially in the near term.”

Mr. Powell spoke Thursday alongside two of his foreign counterparts, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde and Bank of England Gov. Andrew Bailey.

Read More [[link removed]] U.S. Unemployment Claims Slip But Hold At High Levels

New applications for unemployment benefits fell sharply last week, suggesting layoffs are easing as the broader economy flashes signs of improvement.

Initial claims for jobless benefits, a proxy for layoffs, declined to 709,000 last week from 757,000 a week earlier, the Labor Department said Thursday. While weekly claims have fallen from a peak of near 7 million at the end of March, they remain well above levels of about 200,000 seen before the coronavirus hit this spring.

The number of people collecting unemployment benefits through regular state programs, which cover most workers, dropped to 6.8 million for the week ended Oct. 31 from 7.2 million a week earlier. Continuing claims are down significantly from their spring levels, reflecting that many laid-off workers have been recalled to jobs or hired elsewhere. Others, though, have exhausted state benefits, a sign many are facing long periods of joblessness.

Read More [[link removed]] Biden Labor Department To Focus On Executive Actions If GOP Keeps Senate

President-elect Joe Biden ran on an agenda he said would empower American workers, committing to raise the federal minimum wage and ease the path to join labor unions, but his ability to fully execute that vision is doubtful if Republicans retain control of the Senate.

If both Democratic candidates win Jan. 5 runoffs in Georgia, the Senate would flip to Democratic control, and Mr. Biden would be free to pursue everything from bolstering union membership to making more workers eligible for overtime pay.

But if Republicans win only one of the races, if not both, as some analysts predict, control would remain with the GOP. A Biden administration then would focus on changes that can be accomplished through regulation and executive directives, such as increasing enforcement of worker-safety rules, according to labor-policy analysts.

Read More [[link removed]] U.S. Consumer Prices Unchanged In October

U.S. consumer prices were flat in October following four straight months of gains, a sign of subdued inflation as coronavirus cases again climbed across the U.S.

The consumer-price index—which measures what consumers pay for everyday items including groceries, clothing and vehicles—was unchanged in October from September, the Labor Department said Thursday. Higher costs for dining out and groceries last month were offset by declines for items such as apparel and household furnishings.

Excluding the often-volatile categories of food and energy, so-called core prices were also flat.

The flattening in overall prices during October came amid a resurgence in U.S. coronavirus cases that has continued into November. The rise in infections and hospitalizations poses a threat to the economic recovery, economists have said.

Read More [[link removed]] Consumer Sentiment Fell In First Half of November

Americans’ outlook on the economy soured in the two weeks straddling the national elections, as Republicans grew more pessimistic and Democrats worried about a surge in coronavirus infections, according to survey findings released Friday.

The University of Michigan’s index of consumer sentiment dropped to 77.0 in the two weeks ended Nov. 10, from 81.8 in October. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal had expected a reading of 81.5. The index of expectations drove the decline, falling to 71.3 from 79.2 in October.

The index is the first read on consumer attitudes since President-elect Joe Biden’s victory and President Trump’s campaign launched efforts to contest the election results, which came amid rising coronavirus infections and hospitalizations.

“Interviews conducted following the election recorded a substantial negative shift in the Expectations Index among Republicans, but recorded no gain among Democrats,” said Richard Curtin, the survey’s chief economist.

Read More [[link removed]] Disney CEO 'Extremely Disappointed' Disneyland Remains Closed By California's 'Arbitrary Standard'

Disney CEO Bob Chapek says he is “extremely disappointed” that Disneyland remains closed after nearly eight months by an “arbitrary standard” in COVID-19 state guidelines established by California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s administration.

“Unfortunately, we’re extremely disappointed that the state of California continues to keep Disneyland closed,” Chapek said during a conference call with analysts on Thursday, Nov. 12. “Frankly, as we and other civic leaders have stated before, we believe state leadership should look objectively at what we’ve achieved successfully at our parks around the world, all based on science as opposed to setting an arbitrary standard.”

Large California theme parks such as Disneyland and Disney California Adventure remain closed and are unlikely to return to full operation until early 2021 or next summer. The guidelines say major parks cannot reopen until their counties reach the yellow or minimal tier under Newsom’s Blueprint for a Safer Economy, a level that Orange County Health Care Agency Director Clayton Chau has said he expects the county to attain “by next summer, hopefully.”

Read More [[link removed]] Big City Exodus: Rents Of Single-Family Houses Rise Across The US, Even As Apartment Rents In Expensive Cities Drop Sharply

Like so many trends, the growth in the number of single-family houses for rent, and the increase in rents at those houses, preceded the Pandemic, but the Pandemic has accelerated them. In September, single-family rents across the nation rose 3.8% from a year ago, according to the Burns Single-Family Rent Index (chart by John Burns Real Estate Consulting, click to enlarge).

The steepest year-over-year increases in single-family rents occurred in Kansas City (+7.7%), Memphis (+7.5%), Tucson (+7.4%), Phoenix (+7.3%) and Sacramento (+7.3%).

“Landlords are able to raise rents right now at a rate that is high in normal times,” Rick Palacios Jr., head of research at John Burns, told the Wall Street Journal. “It’s ridiculously high when you put it in a backdrop of a recession.”

None of the 63 markets that the index tracks showed year-over-year rent declines. The five markets with the smallest year-over-year increases were: Houston (+0.9%), Newark (+1.1%), San Jose (+1.2%), New York (+1.4%), and San Francisco (+1.5%).

Read More [[link removed]] California Offered A Lifeline When Their Hours Were Cut -- Then Payments Froze

Bailey Brown had never heard of Work Sharing when her boss pitched the state program to keep her and her co-workers on the payroll when California went into lockdown.

It was mid-March, and Brown, 63, saw her full-time hours slashed 60% as talent and HR manager for San Luis Obispo action sports retailer LeftLane Sports. The cuts were unnerving, but the layoff-prevention program run by California’s unemployment agency offered a lifeline. With Work Sharing, Brown’s employer kept paying for her benefits and reduced hours, and the state paid her for some lost wages — at first, anyway.

“All of a sudden,” Brown said, “it just stopped.”

Brown is one of an unknown number of the more than 43,640 Californians who have applied for Work Sharing benefits since March, but who have since encountered long payment delays, missing funds, fraudulent charges or accounts frozen when workers need them most. It’s one of the smaller programs overseen by the state’s Employment Development Department, but Work Sharing claimants’ struggles underscore big questions about how many people are falling through the cracks at the agency consumed by a backlog of more than 1 million unemployment claims.

Read More [[link removed]] Energy and Climate Change How Joe Biden Plans To Use Executive Powers To Fight Climate Change

Former Vice President Joe Biden is the president-elect of the United States.

Now the work begins: to make the handoff between governments, figure out who will fill key posts, and start making the to-do list.

It’s not clear yet who will control the Senate. That may end up becoming the biggest obstacle for Biden’s administration, particularly his ambitious agenda to deal with climate change.

His proposal calls for an aggressive shift to clean energy, carbon neutrality by the middle of the century, and massive federal investment to drive these changes. Contrast that with President Donald Trump, who put forth no plan to deal with climate change and actively undermined existing policies to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Read More [[link removed]] Biden Doesn't Need Congress To Step Up The Fight Against Climate Change

President-elect Joe Biden can expect to face fierce political opposition as he seeks to implement what amounts to the country's boldest-ever plan for combating climate change. Given those obstacles, can he actually get anything done?

Actually, yes. A Biden administration can help the economy go green without ever involving Congress. Biden's toolkit as head of state includes executive orders, rule-making at federal agencies, authority over trade and foreign policy, and the U.S. government's massive purchasing power.

The first step: Unwinding the Trump administration's policies, which rolled back numerous environmental protections and supported fossil-fuel production. Because carbon emissions accumulate in the atmosphere, exacerbating global warming, experts say the U.S. must make much steeper cuts in greenhouse gases now in order to have any chance of staving off runaway climate change.

Read More [[link removed]] San Francisco Supervisors Approve Ban On Natural Gas In New Building Construction

San Francisco supervisors have approved a ban on natural gas in newly-constructed buildings in the city, but some are questioning whether now is the right time to go “all-electric.”

Critics say transitioning to all-electric buildings isn’t the smartest move considering the number of PG&E public safety power shutoffs recently.

San Francisco is among at least 30 cities now across the state to implement this ban. The natural gas explosion on Geary Boulevard in February 2019 is one reason the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously voted to ban it in newly constructed buildings starting in June of next year.

Read More [[link removed]] San Francisco's Gas Ban On New Buildings Could Prompt Statewide Action

San Francisco this week became the latest, and perhaps the largest, U.S. city to ban natural gas in new buildings.

In a meeting on Tuesday, the city's Board of Supervisors passed legislation requiring new residential and commercial building construction to utilize all-electric power, starting with projects that file permits next year. This ordinance will cover about 60% of the city's current development pipeline in an effort to reduce city carbon emissions and tackle climate change, said District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman in the meeting.

"San Francisco has taken climate change seriously for a long time and today — on the heels of yet another catastrophic fire season, a record string of unhealthier days, extreme heat waves, and even a day when the sun didn't come up — we San Franciscans have an opportunity to make one more incremental but important move to help save our planet," he told his colleagues in the meeting.

Read More [[link removed]] Groups Press CA To Ban Natural Gas In New Building Construction

Climate advocates are pressing the California Energy Commission (CEC) to ban natural gas in new construction, starting in 2022. The CEC updates building codes every three years.

In December, the agency is expected to consider a less aggressive plan to offer developers pollution credits as an incentive to go all-electric.

Jonny Kocher, building electrification program associate with the Rocky Mountain Institute said allowing new gas-powered buildings would be counterproductive.

"All-electric is cheaper, better for the climate," Kocher contended. "It'll reduce emissions by three million tons by 2030 if we do it now rather than waiting 'til 2025. So we can't wait. We should just do it immediately."

Read More [[link removed]] Western Voters Weighed In On Climate Change, Up And Down The Ballot

We’ve known for five days that Joe Biden will be the next president, and there’s already a cottage industry of experts trying to predict what steps the Biden administration might take on climate change over the next four years.

There will be plenty of time to see how that plays out. At the moment, I’m more interested in the down-ballot races that are getting relatively less attention but could have significant climate and environmental impacts at the local level.

This will not be a comprehensive accounting. But here are some results from across the West that caught my attention:

California

The Golden State’s second- and third-largest oil-producing counties elected supervisors who have favored strong action to rein in the oil industry. In Los Angeles County, Holly Mitchell — who swore off fossil fuel campaign contributions and supports drilling setbacks — won a landslide victory. In Ventura County, Carmen Ramirez overcame heavy spending by an oil industry trade group, and by the state’s largest oil and gas producer — a company she called “absolutely shameless and not accountable.”

Read More [[link removed]] Workforce Development Why Los Angeles County's Neediest School Districts Don't Apply For Waivers To Reopen Campuses

Los Angeles elementary schools located in predominantly low-income areas were expected to be at the front of the line to bring back their youngest students to campus through the county’s waiver program, but they remain largely absent from the application pool.

Private schools continue to dominate the county’s reopening ranks. And of the few public schools that have been granted waivers, only one has a high proportion of students who can be considered low-income by qualifying for free and reduced-price meals.

Why is the number of low-income schools on the reopening list so low? Many are not applying for the waivers, which was devised by the L.A. County Board of Supervisors and allow schools in the county to bring back students from transitional kindergarten to second grade for in-person instruction.

Read More [[link removed]] California Voters, Including Parents, Have Deep Concerns About Distance Learning

As most public and private school students in California continue to study from home, distance learning gets a definite thumbs down from the state’s registered voters, including parents, according to a new EdSource poll.

A majority of voters as well as parents feel that the state’s schools in general are not prepared to offer high quality distance learning, although they are more positive about their own local schools.

Parents worry that if children are at home for the rest of the year it will result in learning loss for all students, but especially for the most economically vulnerable who suffer from hunger or housing insecurity. Low income parents in particular worry that prolonged distance learning will mean they won’t be able to get back to work.

Read More [[link removed]] Leading School Superintendents Ask Gov. Newsom To Impose A 'Common Standard' For Reopening Schools In California

Seven urban California school districts, including the state’s four largest, have called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to adopt and pay for more stringent, uniform health and safety requirements they say should be in place before bringing students back to school during the pandemic.

“It will take collective action and additional funding to bring students, teachers and staff back to schools in the way that is as safe as possible and sustainable for the long-term,” they said in a Nov. 2 letter organized by Los Angeles Unified Superintendent Austin Beutner and signed by the superintendents of San Diego, Long Beach, Fresno, Santa Ana, Sacramento and Oakland unified school districts. Adopting their recommendations would mark a shift from local control toward more rigorous state control over school reopenings.

None of the districts plans to bring students back to regular classes before January. Of the seven, Los Angeles and Long Beach are in Los Angeles County, which is coded “purple,” the most restricted category on the state’s monitoring list. That indicates high infection rates, prohibiting the reopening of schools until data improve. The other districts are in counties where schools are permitted to reopen, although infection rates in some neighborhoods in Santa Ana, Oakland and Fresno are higher than the county averages.

Read More [[link removed]] Infrastructure and Housing California Voters Reject Ballot Measures Related To Rent Control And Property Tax

While the results are yet to be certified, it is clear, a week after Election Day, that Californians have rejected both Proposition 15 – The California Schools and Local Communities Act of 2020 (“Prop. 15”)[1] and Proposition 21 – Rental Affordability Act (“Prop. 21”).[2] Despite this most recent response from the electorate, it is likely that real property tax “reform” and rent control will continue to be a topic of conversation during the next legislative cycle and appear on future ballots.

Please see below for a discussion of each proposition and voter response.

Prop. 15

Prop. 15 was intended to rollback California’s current real property tax regulatory scheme articulated in Proposition 13 (“Prop. 13”) for commercial properties only.[3] Prop. 13 allows state property taxes on residential and commercial properties to be based on their purchase price rather than their market value and prevents the assessed value of the property from increasing by more than 2% per year, unless there is a change of ownership or completion of new construction.

Read More [[link removed]] New California Law Makes It Harder For Investors To Buy Foreclosed Homes

A new law aimed at curbing corporate ownership of foreclosed properties is set to take effect on January 1, 2021.

SB 1079, known as Homes for Homeowners, Not Corporations, was authored by Senator Nancy Skinner, D-Berkeley. It passed through the California Legislature in late August and was signed into law by Governor Gavin Newsom the following month.

Under the new law, if an investor wins a foreclosure auction for a residential property with one to four units, owner-occupants, tenants, local governments and housing nonprofits will have 45 days to make a competing offer.

Current tenants would need to match the offer, while other non-corporate entities would have to outbid it. To make this information publicly available, the auctioneer would be required to maintain a website and a telephone number advertising the property in question and its bid price. Bundled auction sales, in which multiple properties are sold to a single buyer, would also be prohibited.

Read More [[link removed]] Reimagining California’s Housing Policy With An Equity Lens

“How do you start changing the systematic racism found in housing policies, when the systems you’ve put in place are not working? You repeal the laws. Take them off the books.”

This is the question and answer Tia Boatman Patterson, executive director of the California Housing Finance Agency (CalHFA), gave as she reflected on how to effectively address social inequities that have been perpetuated in the state’s housing policies.

Boatman Patterson experienced homelessness, public housing, and homeownership before she completed junior high school. “That was probably the foundation of my understanding of a sense of community and a sense of housing and [the value] of what stable housing provides in your life,” she recalled.

Her family became homeless overnight after the house her great-grandfather built burned to the ground. A scene she remembers vividly although she was only in kindergarten. From there, she and her family stayed with relatives and later went into the public housing system. Her mother was able to move her family out of public housing as a result of Federal legislation that passed in 1974 and 1975 that struck down sex discrimination in lending.

Read More [[link removed]] Biden Is Good News For High-Speed Rail

“Amtrak-Joe” Biden, arguably the U.S. Government’s biggest supporter of rail, will be the 46th President. Supporters of California’s High-Speed Rail project and rail transportation have reason to celebrate.

When he was vice-president, Biden masterminded the HSR component of the 2009 stimulus package, which ended up channeling $3.5 billion to California’s project to connect San Francisco and Los Angeles. Coupled with matching funds from the state, and that’s why there’s now over 100 miles of track under construction, plus improvements to related rail projects all over the state.

“Clearly, having Biden in the White House is highly beneficial for rail,” said Andy Kunz, President & CEO of the U.S. High Speed Rail Association.

However, there was no new funding for HSR from D.C. after 2011, when a new Republican congress cut it off. Then the Trump Administration worked to sabotage California’s HSR construction through multiple means including lawsuits and attempted clawbacks of previously committed federal funds. Trump, working with congressional Republicans–some from California–even tried to hold up funds for Caltrain’s electrification project, simply because HSR would eventually use the same tracks.

Read More [[link removed]] Editorial and Opinion Joe Biden’s Lockdown Lobby

Did you enjoy the days at home from mid-March to May? The 22 million lost jobs, the shuttered storefronts, the neighborhood shops out of business, the kids unable to attend school, and the near economic depression? Well, congratulations, a reprise may be coming your way if Joe Biden heeds his Covid-19 advisory team.

We’ve told you about Ezekiel Emanuel, the advisory committee member who wanted new lockdowns during the summer flare-up in the Sunbelt states. Lucky for the country that his only power then was appearing on MSNBC.

Then there’s Michael Osterholm, also a member of the Biden Covid committee, who now wants a new nationwide lockdown for as many as six weeks. Dr. Osterholm is director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. CNBC quoted him as suggesting that we are about to enter “Covid hell” and the government should lock everyone up as we await a vaccine.

“We could pay for a package right now to cover all of the wages, lost wages for individual workers for losses to small companies to medium-sized companies or city, state, county governments. We could do all of that,” Dr. Osterholm said, according to Yahoo Finance. “If we did that, then we could lock down for four to six weeks.”

Read More [[link removed]] Voters Say No Thanks To Progressive Ballot Measures

By denying Democrats a Senate majority, Americans on Nov. 3 repulsed progressive ambitions to increase the size of the Supreme Court and add new states to the union. In several states, voters also resoundingly rejected radical reforms to restructure their political systems in ways that would have boosted Democrats at the ballot box.

Start in Missouri, where voters narrowly overturned a constitutional amendment they had approved two years earlier by a nearly 2-to-1 margin. The 2018 initiative had empowered a putatively nonpartisan demographer to draw new state legislative maps that achieved “partisan fairness” based on a complicated “efficiency gap” formula that would have helped Democrats. Liberal groups claimed the technocratic approach would make elections more competitive, though their apparent goal was to diminish GOP majorities.

Republicans in Jefferson City used their legislative supermajority to place a referendum on this year’s ballot to return mapmaking to a bipartisan commission. They pointed out that Democrats had duped voters into passing an amendment that would produce districts gerrymandered in the party’s favor by stuffing the measure with popular ideas like limiting lobbyist gifts to lawmakers. The repeal passed last week, 51% to 49%.

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