Seriously, if you put a Harris/Waltz 2024 bumper sticker on your car, you aren't really trying to keep your politics a secret...

Mark Twain once quipped:

Tremendous, now, after spending billions of dollars, CA finally has a power grid that can stay online year-round without forced "rolling blackouts".

We're all very proud of you finally building a grid that can handle your needs.

Exactly. It's a field they are told to fill in, but don't care.

Don't be so stupid. Don't confuse what officers put in an unrequited field on a form with actual, legal reason.

The field, based on the summery was not required to be filled-in since many users left the field blank and still their search happened.

No one is contending that the "reason" an officer performed a search was because "haha", the officer (obviously) didn't care to type anything meaningful in the (unrequired) field. If your complaint is that nonsense was entered into an unrequired, unverified field on a form, it's a very weak argument/small problem.

NYC only has so many taxis, and the easiest place to pickup rides and keep busy is to operate in Manhattan, not in the Bronx or Queens...

A city may or may not have actual, high-value medallions, but I bet most cities of any significant size has a taxi commission and a means to keep private citizens from starting their own personal taxi service/ride share company...

Typo, should read:

My point was, simply, if the costs get too high, there's nothing keeping them in CA. They don't have employees, they don't own cars, they don't have maint. Facilities, etc - they just have an agreement to skim a certain amount of money off the top of every drive. If the amount they skim gets too low, "the juice might not be worth the squeeze"...

Ride share companies can stop operating in a city, state, etc for any period of time, from hours to days, with nothing more than a simple programming change.

It is possible for CA to regulate the ride shares out of the state - and if that happens, that leaves a whole lot of "gig workers" scrambling to find work. I'm not saying it's likely, I'm saying there's very little keeping them there if the regulations get to onerous.

You lack imagination - the drivers have no leverage - Lyft, Uber, etc can choose to leave a state and make it happen within a few hours, and, as the drivers aren't really full-time employees of the ride share companies they 'gig' for, they really have no advance warning protection that I can see.

If drivers demand excessive compensation and ride share companies can't make a profit, the companies will just close up shop.

What will stop them?

He'll run. The political consultants are salivating at the donations this guy can attract, and the consultants are paid a percentage of the as buys they make on behalf of a campaign.

There is absolutely no way Newsom won't be in the 2028 Primaries. He may not make it to the General election, but there's no way he'll sit out the election - just ask yourself why he's traveling to all these random states for the mid-terms?

Taxis were artificially constrained to keep taxi medallions expensive.

Ride share has a dynamic model that can (virtually) bring on as many drivers as needed, then reduce availability to keep rates high.

You don't understand.

They may be "regular" employees, but the employers have nothing really holding them in state - no investment in dispatchers, vehicles, mechanics, etc. I can easily see the ride share operators having much, much more leverage over the drivers than the drivers will likely have over their employers.

Steel workers have leverage over the steel mills because they cant just relocate the steel mills, but these virtual, zero infrastructure employers can just shutdown once the workers get appropriate notice.

A huge appeal for ride share over taxis is that the cars showed up quickly when summoned because there were so many "drivers" just waiting for a ride...

Good luck with that - the ride-share operators have zero investment in California, so if they cant negotiate a contract the operators are happy with they can just leave the state.

I wonder what protections the gig workers have if a Lyft or an Uber decides to leave the CA market, do they have to give certain notice?

I don't think this is really going to turn into the victory the drivers think this is...