California is Occasionally Great Again.

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Promoted from the diaries by streiff. Promotion does not imply endorsement.
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Anyone who has paid attention in the last two decades has been able to observe the cultural and political struggles of the state that gave us Ronald Reagan. It’s hard to say if the clear thinking people that twice voted for Reagan as governor and later as President moved out, changed politics or simply died off. Regardless every once and a while an old dog can find a bone – and occasionally even the former Republic of California has the opportunity to be great again.

To the keyboard pounding chagrin of tech companies the California Consumer Privacy Act is days away from being placed on ballot this November. The CCPA will create the nations most restrictive and far reaching privacy protections in a state where selling free data gleaned from consumers has funded years of the liberal dream. Lee Fang at the Intercept summarizes the the initiative this way:

The initiative allows consumers to opt out of the sale and collection of their personal data, and vastly expands the definition of personal information to include geolocation, biometrics and browsing data. The initiative also allows consumers to pursue legal action for violations of the law.

In addition and this is the kicker. According to Attorney Lily Li also quoted in the Intercept article.

The CCPA prohibits businesses from denying services, charging different rates for the same services, or providing different levels or quality of services, in response to a consumer request that they stop selling data.

Under normal conditions, requiring a business to provide certain services for set pricing would be considered anything but conservative, however certain of the tech companies have increasingly become more like utilities than simply corporate actors.  In the balance between individuals and an dominant monopolistic market I feel comfortable that the founders meant for the “blessings of Liberty” to fall first on the individual..

As you can imagine Google, Facebook, AT&T, Verizon, Amazon, Microsoft and a variety of other tech companies are freaking out behind the scenes. Working feverishly to get the initiative withdrawn so that it will not be included on the November ballot. They hope to see the CFPA replaced with AB375, a watered down consumer privacy bill in the California legislature.

The ironic part of this is the increasing indication that the leftist movement in America, which is commonly funded, affirmed and supported by big tech is in the process of chewing on the hand that feeds them.

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