The Democrats Take California's Fratricidal AB5 National

California Democrats are nothing if not persistent in their virtue-signaling nonsense. California's AB5, an existential threat to the gig economy when it passed, was ostensibly aimed at Uber and Lyft, two companies the left has suddenly started hating (except when they use those services). Author Lorena S. Gonzalez has been in explaining-the-benefits-to-people-she-screwed-over mode for a while now, as shown by this exchange back in December:

They shouldn’t fucking have to. And until you or anyone else that wants to bitch about AB5 puts out cognizant policy proposals to curb this chaos, you can keep your criticism anonymous. Good God.

— Lorena (@LorenaSGonzalez) December 19, 2019

Because Gonzalez is smarter than the people who want side hustles and must save them from themselves, or something. This experiment has gone so well that the truckers have managed to get the courts to delay enforcement of AB5 (sadly, only for truckers), but freelance writers continue to get the shaft. (That group includes Vox Media writers, many of whom were just terminated.) Gonzalez is absolutely certain of her moral rectitude though, and doesn't approve of freelance writers, like, at all:

These were never good jobs. No one has ever suggested that, even freelancers. We will continue to work on this next year.

— Lorena (@LorenaSGonzalez) December 12, 2019

One gets the sense, reading such exchanges, that Gonzalez is pretty solidly in somebody's pocket to deflect the daily hectoring implied by the #AB5 hashtag. In fact, you would be right: about half of Gonzalez' war chest came from public employee and trade unions. It really makes you wonder about the calculations that went on behind the scenes:

First Democratic Operative: We really need to do something to reconnect with the working class, do something that really benefits them.

Second Democratic Operative: I know! We'll help private sector unionization! Unions always love the Dems, so it'll be a win-win!

FDO: We'll start with the "gig economy". It keeps people low-paid, and prevents them from becoming real employees with benefits. You know, like Uber and Lyft. <writes AB5>

SDO: Hey, cool, this covers everyone.

FDO: Even freelancers? Cool. Margarita time!

Not content to stop at California's borders, Team Blue is now expanding this disastrous nonsense nationally. Daily Kos has a good story on the matter, which explains that apparently the AFL-CIO wrote AB5 (though the evidence is pretty thin on that subject). At issue is an obsolete test for who should be classified as an employee:

It’s enraging that Democrats are taking this career-killing stance from sea to shining sea, given that Tom Perez himself, the current head of the Democratic National Committee, already showed America’s lawmakers how to attack the worker misclassification problem during his tenure as Labor Secretary under President Obama—and did so without the draconian language that’s in these state and federal bills.

Perez achieved that goal by using the existing Internal Revenue Service test to determine who is, and is not, an independent contractor. That approach worked just fine. If every state adopted the IRS test, too, then the states and federal government would be in alignment. A bad-actor company caught misclassifying workers anywhere would automatically be breaking the rules everywhere, and could be fined everywhere, too, as it should be. At the same time, people like me, who prefer to work as independent contractors, could continue to do so, because we can pass the IRS test.

Instead, what’s happening now is an attempt to eliminate the existence of independent contractors, including those of us who are operating lawfully under the IRS test. At the core of each of these bills is an overly tough test to determine who can, or cannot, legally be defined as an independent contractor. This test is known as the ABC test, and was written back in the 1930s to reflect the workforce of the Great Depression. It is different from the test that the IRS now uses, and it makes it impossible for many lawful, happy, thriving independent contractors to remain that way in the economy of 2020, when the world looks a lot different than it did back when Americans still listened to Jack Benny on the radio for entertainment.

It really appears that H.R. 2474 is suicidal for Democrats, who are more beholden to labor than they should be as a constituency, given that only 14.7 million private sector workers belong to unions. It's hard to see how Uber and Lyft will change this, nor how terminating freelance writers would improve union membership. Gonzalez's stubbornness is understandable given her backing. National Democrats' press to extend this incredible blunder is not.

Update: H.R. 2474 apparently would repeal Taft-Hartley, meaning states could no longer choose to be right-to-work states; all states would have to provide for closed shops.

Wednesday Links

• Leading off with the fantastic news that bioethicist Alice Dreger has resigned from Northwestern under charges that the university refuses to grant her the academic freedom they supposedly support. Her resignation letter (PDF) details the complaint that dean Eric Neilsen demanded editorial control of her work on Atrium, and even formed a "censorship committee" to oversee future issues:
  

  The plain and simple fact is that Dean Neilson acted impulsively and wrongly in this situation. We all make mistakes, but this was a profound mistake that cut to the very heart of academic freedom. It should have been acknowledged and corrected immediately. That is most definitely not what happened. Instead, what happened was denial, avoidance, blame -­‐ shifting, and evasion. To this day, the university has not admitted its mistake, and it has not affirmed its commitment to academic freedom in a way that makes clear that similar incidents will not occur in the future. This failure should be embarrassing to an otherwise great university.

  Also, a high five for her exit tweet:

  I will not miss being asked to teach medical ethics in a room named after the drug company that paid for it.

  — Alice Dreger (@AliceDreger) August 25, 2015

• LAist recently ran a story on driving for Uber or Lyft as a woman. Surprise! It's actually mostly pretty good:
  

  [Ashley] Moon said, "I've only had one awkward situation with a man I picked up in Culver City while driving for Lyft. He was making really sexual and inappropriate comments about my body, his body, and his girlfriend's body who we were on our way to pick up. But I didn't feel like I was in danger, mostly because he was SO drunk that he was completely slumped over in my front seat and heavily slurring his words. I thought he might have alcohol poisoning."

  One anonymous driver reported "Truthfully, I dealt with more inappropriate behavior when I was a bartender." Lyft in particular allows drivers to drop passengers before their destination if the driver feels endangered (something Uber doesn't), so they're a little better. But it's interesting to read these anecdotes, which include drivers giving relationship advice, picking up weird passengers, and more.
• Remember Laurie Penny? I guess she's still out flogging her rage-tome, Unspeakable Things, which, according to those not part of her hallelujah chorus, draws from her Guardian (UK) and other online columns so much it's indistinguishable from them. Well, good news, fellas: feminism needs to find room for men!

  As Penny herself says, "women are only allowed to be experts on gendered things and nothing else, whereas that's the one thing men aren't supposed to talk about.

  Of course, men aren't allowed to have any actual differing opinions about intersex relations, because
  

  Men are our fifth column in all male spaces. Particularly when so many boardrooms and political meetings are all-male spaces, men can be very useful fighting in that arena.

  So nice to know men's only purpose as far as Penny's concerned is to shut up and parrot the party line! Also, reeducating your fellow knuckle-dragging males! Thank you, I'm here all night.
  
• Lesbian tendencies appear to go hand-in-hand with masculinization, which apparently means changes to facial features can also predict sexual orientation, which sounds awfully like phrenology. This gives rise to the theory that female sexuality conforms to opportunity to some extent. (H/t @facerealitynow.)

Uber, Lyft, And The False Spring At LAX

So we have been here before:

• July 16: LA City Council votes to allow Uber and Lyft to pick up passengers at LAX.
• August 5: Bowing to pressure from taxicab companies, the City Council then votes 11-2 to postpone the matter. Taxicab operators demand fingerprint scans and background checks, the same as for taxi drivers. (Later: prosecutors find 25 Uber drivers with criminal records.)
• Today: The City Council votes 9-6 to permit Uber and Lyft to operate at LAX provided they can hand off data about the number of drivers at the airport at any given time, something that should be childishly simple.

But you can pardon me some skepticism that this is the end. Between state demands to classify drivers for such shared car services are in fact employees and not contractors and changes to state insurance law (at least in California) that will almost certainly raise rates for anyone electing to use their personal vehicle for such commercial purposes (that is, if the insurers get hold of their Uber driving habits, which seems inevitable), the car services have a lot of people gunning for them. They have big enemies, and thus far, the Silicon Valley upstart does not seem inclined to spend lobbying money accordingly.