NON-CITIZEN JURORS SIMPLY A BAD IDEA

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 12, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “NON-CITIZEN JURORS SIMPLY A BAD IDEA”

          It’s one thing to give undocumented immigrants an opportunity – however limited and lengthy and expensive – to gain American citizenship if they’ve lived and worked in this country for a long time while contributing and without committing any criminal offenses.

          Drivers licenses for the undocumented also make some sense, especially since many law enforcement officials say that could compel those here illegally to obey laws requiring car insurance, thus cutting down the expenses of other drivers who may be involved in accidents with them.

          But one bill that has passed the state Assembly and is now in the Senate simply makes no sense: Called AB 1401, this proposal would allow non-citizens to serve on juries in California’s state courts.

          Never mind the longstanding American tradition of a having a jury of the defendant’s peers determine whether criminal charges are valid. That’s merely a custom, not a constitutional right.

          The Sixth Amendment says only that every American is entitled to an “impartial jury” and that its members should live in the state or district where the crime under consideration took place. Courts have interpreted this to mean jury pools should contain a cross section of the population of the area, in terms of gender, race and national origin.

          No one yet has specified that jurors must be U.S. citizens, perhaps because at the time the Bill of Rights – the Constitution’s first ten amendments – was written in 1789 and finally ratified by the states two years later, it could be difficult to determine who was a U.S. citizen. Birth and immigration record-keeping was far from comprehensive.

          But proving citizenship today is far easier, via birth certificates, passports and naturalization papers. So it’s fair to figure that if the Bill of Rights were being written today, it would specify that all jurors be citizens.

          But the door to non-citizen jurors was left open a crack, and some Democratic state legislators now want to walk through it.

          Juries, Assemblyman Bob Wieckowski of Fremont told a reporter the other day, “should reflect our community and our community is always changing. It’s time for California to be a leader on this.”

          He said jury service for legal residents who are not citizens would also help ensure an adequate pool of jurors and help immigrants integrate into American society.

          But suppose you are suing a used car dealer for selling you a vehicle with faulty brakes that caused an accident. Would you want a juror who’s a citizen of a county where such lawsuits are not possible? If you’ve been raped, would you want your accused assailant judged by a man from a country where women have few rights and are penalized for extramarital sex, even if it was forced on them?

          Wieckowski is correct that immigrants often need time and training to adjust to American life and values. Should the guilt or innocence of any American be determined even in part by persons not completely familiar with this country’s values and customs?

          In fact, customs vary by locale in a state as large as California, and the framers of the Constitution, who also wrote the Bill of Rights, knew that would be inevitable. It’s why they said juries must be local residents, not imports from faraway places.

          There’s also the question of dilution of citizenship. There are already proposals (none has yet become law) to allow non-citizens to vote in some local elections. Non-citizens who have caused no trouble can qualify for easy passage through customs and immigration checkpoints via the federal Trusted Traveler and Global Entry programs.

          If citizenship is no longer required for many of the duties and privileges it once conferred, does it lose some of its value? Is there any advantage to being a citizen over merely carrying a green card?

          And especially, when the fate, freedom and fortune of any American citizen is at stake, why should anyone but another citizen help decide?

          Condemning a person to prison or taking money from either a citizen or a corporation is a serious matter, not something for anyone with limited knowledge of either the English language or American ways to decide.

          The bottom line: Like many other bills proposed in the Legislature and then disposed of, this is a terrible idea and ought to be consigned to the lawmaking trash can, the sooner the better.

         

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

MESSAGE TO PUC: CHARGE EDISON FOR SAN ONOFRE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 9, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “MESSAGE TO PUC: CHARGE EDISON FOR SAN ONOFRE”

          More consumerism from the California Public Utilities Commission – that was a fond hope of at least some of the voters who gave Jerry Brown a rare third term in the governor’s office.

          So far, they’ve been disappointed, even though Brown appointees now make up a majority of the five-member commission that decides what Californians pay for electricity, natural gas and (in some places) water.

          Under Brown's appointees, the commission has encouraged a profusion of huge solar thermal energy projects guaranteed to fatten the coffers of companies like Pacific Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison. It has done little to punish PG&E for the negligence leading to the 2010 San Bruno gas pipeline explosion that killed eight and destroyed many more homes. It has kept secret the costs customers will eventually pay for several new power sources. And more.

          This is California’s most powerful regulatory agency because once they’re appointed, commissioners can’t be removed even by the governor who named them. Now comes a rare opportunity for the PUC to prove it is just as interested in the welfare of state residents and small business as it is in helping giant utility companies.

          That chance sprang up when Ted Craver, chairman of Edison’s parent holding company, announced unexpectedly in early June that his firm will retire the troubled San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station beside the I-5 freeway on the Orange-San Diego county line. The plant is partially owned by San Diego Gas & Electric Co., but majority owner Edison operates it.

          Before that announcement, most effects of San Onofre’s troubles were in the hands of the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which waffled for many months over whether to let the plant restart. It has produced no electricity since early 2012, when a leaking generator tube released a small amount of radioactive steam into the atmosphere.

          That quickly raised fears of a rerun of Japan’s Fukushima power plant disaster, in the long term the most frightening aspect of the monster tsunami that struck northeast of Tokyo in 2011.

          Ironically, it was a Japanese firm – Mitsubishi Heavy Industries – which built the generator that failed. Edison and Mitsubishi are currently battling over how much that company should pay as a consequence of all the problems caused by failure of its $700 million component.

          Edison has said the San Onofre problems came as a surprise, but a 2004 letter from a company executive shows the firm may have known years earlier there could be design flaws in replacement steam generators. Yet Edison still certified the new generator as a like-for-like replacement. The letter was released in May by Democratic U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer, who pushed for extensive federal hearings while Edison was still trying to get the plant at least partially reopened.

          The issue for the PUC now is how much consumers should pay for the complex, lengthy process of taking down the plant and storing its high-level waste on site.

          News stories on financial aspects of the shutdown sometimes mention that San Onofre’s owners over decades have paid more than $2.7 billion into a plant-retirement fund. But that’s not really company money; it all came from customers, built into electricity rates just as retirement expenses are for every nuclear power plant in America.

          Now it turns out that amount is not enough; there may be another $1 billion or so in costs. The PUC will decide whether consumers or company shareholders pick up that expense.

          The answer is obvious: the company should pay. Yes, many of its shareholders are senior citizens on fixed incomes who depend on steady dividends. But shareholders put in place the executives who let the generator tube problem fester for years while they hoped it would just go away.

          Like most corporate shareholders, they periodically elect the directors who hire management. So if management failed, that is ultimately their responsibility. So shareholders should now pay all expenses beyond the billions consumers have already kicked in.

          If the PUC doesn’t decide the issue in just that way, it will be continuing the consistent pro-corporate, anti-consumer stance it has adopted throughout PG&E’s San Bruno penalty process and many other questions for most of the last 40 years. By contrast, making Edison pay would be a signal things may be changing.

         

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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most'

Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

CENTRAL VALLEY REMATCH A POLITICAL WEATHERVANE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 5, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “CENTRAL VALLEY REMATCH A POLITICAL WEATHERVANE”

          Jim Costa had to wait more than a year for the rematch that ignited his political career. Letitia Perez will only have to wait about two months.

    Now a veteran Democratic moderate congressman from the Fresno-Madera area, Costa lost to Hanford Republican Phil Wyman in a special election in the 16^th state Senate district in 1993, but came back a year later to win the seat and hold it until he was termed out in 2002.

          Perez lost the same seat to a Republican in a May special election – or so it seemed until all votes were finally counted. Perez conceded after the May vote, saying in a written statement that “I want to congratulate (Republican) Andy Vidak on winning this hard-fought race.”

          The Wall Street Journal hailed Vidak’s “victory” as a “farmers’ rebellion.” The state Republican Party looked on Vidak’s “win” as a sign it could succeed even in districts where Democrats have large registration advantages (17 percent in this case).

          But not so fast. Turns out it was no win for Vidak at all. Even though his share of the vote hovered above 51 percent all through Election Night and into the next day, when provisional ballots and late absentee votes were counted, he fell to 49.8 percent, while Perez’ total eventually crept near 44 percent, and the two headed for a July runoff.

          The questions for Perez, a rookie Kern County supervisor: Can she win the 5.6 percent of votes that went to the other Democrats in the race, both Latino like her? Can she get the 471 votes cast for a Peace and Freedom Party candidate?

          For sure, Democrats in May didn’t vote in the numbers expected in the populous Kern and Fresno county portions of the district. Meanwhile, Vidak, a Kings County cherry farmer who lost a previous race for congress to Costa, dominated in Kings and Tulare counties, while Perez didn’t win her key areas by the margins expected.

          As far as party control of the state Senate right now, this race means little. Democrats already hold 28 of the 40 seats there, while Republicans have only 11. That gives Democrats a veto-proof two-thirds majority, no matter who wins in the 16^th, even though they will lose one seat temporarily when Curren Price takes his newly-won seat on the Los Angeles City Council.

          But if Perez wins, she could hold the seat for as long as 13 years, since legislators can now serve up to 12 years worth of regular terms in the same house before having to leave. The 18 months remaining in the current term would not keep her from serving three more full terms if she can win enough elections.

    Republicans initially saw this contest as a very hopeful sign. Yes, they generally do better in special elections than in general elections when votes are also cast for president, governor and the U.S. Senate. Yes, this district (or parts of it, since it was reconfigured in 2012) has been represented by Republicans in recent years.

          But the “farmers’ rebellion” (presumably against environmental rules mostly promulgated by Democrats) wasn’t all the Wall Street Journal thought it was, despite the state GOP investing more than $200,000 in the race. The runoff might determine whether there really is a farmers’ rebellion of any significance.

          Now the main question is whether Perez can draw Democratic voters who stayed home in May. She won’t have to produce very many of them. And if she can win in an area whose elected offices often are decided by small margins, it will be a sign that the Democratic registration advantages so common all over California mean a lot.

          There’s also the question of whether Democrats can turn out voters better in July in Republican-leaning Kings and Tulare counties, which are dominated by farm interests to a greater extent than Kern and Fresno counties, both of which contain large cities – Bakersfield and Fresno.

          Democrats pointed at heavily Latino towns like Lindsay, Woodlake and Dinuba as places where they can get more votes next month.

     It’s a quick turnaround, amounting to a rematch between Vidak and Perez, who were the clear frontrunners from the day the special election was scheduled.

          This runoff will also be more of a pure harbinger than the first go-‘round, if only because the less popular candidates are gone.

          The bottom line: If a moderate Republican like Vidak can’t win in an agricultural district like the 16^th, the GOP will once again have to wonder about its prospects anywhere outside its base areas of Orange and northern San Diego counties.

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     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

ZUCKERBERG PAC: PATRIOTIC TALK, BUT SAME AIM AS THE OTHERS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 2, 2013 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “ZUCKERBERG PAC: PATRIOTIC TALK, BUT SAME AIM AS THE OTHERS”

    Now it’s official: Despite happy talk about doing what’s best for America, Facebook billionaire Mark Zuckerberg and the cadre of other Silicon Valley titans helping with his new lobbying organization FWD.us are looking out for their own self-interest, just like every previous political action committee or billionaires’ club.

          Zuckerberg tried to explain himself the other day in the Washington Post, writing that U.S. immigration policy today is “unfit for today’s world…To lead the world in this new economy, we need the most talented and hardest-working people. We need to train and attract the best.”

          What that means is that Zuckerberg and allies from companies like Google, Netflix, Microsoft, Yahoo, Yelp and LinkedIn, along with some of the venture capitalists who bankroll many Silicon Valley high-tech start-ups, want to bring in more workers on H-1B visas.

          They argue there aren’t enough American-born math and science majors to fill all job openings, leaving many companies starving for qualified workers.

          But critics call that claim exaggerated, suggesting the real motive is to bring in workers at wages far below those the companies would have to pay equally qualified American citizens. They say the H-1B program, which lets companies bring in 65,000 workers annually for six-year sojourns, trains foreign workers who often continue in similar jobs for the same companies in their home countries after the visas expire. So the H-1B program, they say, is essentially an outsourcing system designed to save companies money and ship American jobs overseas.

          One critic is Ron Hira, a professor of public policy at the Rochester, N.Y., Institute of Technology.

          He told National Public Radio the other day that “What these firms do is exploit the loopholes in the H-1B program to bring in on-site workers to learn the jobs of Americans to then ship (jobs) offshore. And also to bring in on-site workers who are cheaper (to) undercut American workers’ rights here.”

          Stunningly, three of the four largest users of H-1B visas  – aimed at bringing in skilled workers to fill jobs for which no Americans qualify – last year were Infosys, Wipro and Tata, all India-based high-tech firms with facilities in the U.S. H-1B workers are often paid 70 percent or less of what U.S. citizens make for the same work.

          The biggest H-1B users did not answer queries about their use of the visas and the salaries they pay, but current immigration law requires that the workers get “prevailing wages.” However, the federal Government Accountability Office has found that supervision is “cursory” at best, which means companies can get away with paying far lower wages to immigrants than to citizens, because the immigrants are so happy to be here, even temporarily, and what they get is still much more than they can earn at home.

          So it’s easy to see why Zuckerberg and friends want more H-1Bs, despite any high-sounding talk. As with most things political, follow the money to get a better understanding.

    But the high-tech tycoons know they’ll need politicians of all stripes behind them in order to get a big H-1B increase into whatever immigration bill Congress eventually passes this year. The latest version would raise the number to 110,000.

          So to please conservatives, they’ve aired TV commercials in "red" states backing the Keystone XL pipeline, criticizing President Obama and his health care reform plan and touting the work of Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham of South Carolina, who has come under fire from fellow GOPers for helping craft an immigration compromise.

          They’ve also aired an aid praising Democratic Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska for supporting oil drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

          To please liberals, they’ve paid for other ads praising more pro-environmental stands.

 

          As the Business Insider blogger Henry Blodget put it, the idea of all these ads is “to grease senators on both sides of the aisle,” even if Zuckerberg and some of his friends who normally plug liberal causes might be appalled by some of the messages they are sending.

          Which means that while Zuckerberg may be a newfangled social network trailblazer, he’s following the old-fashioned political path of doing and saying and spending whatever it takes to get the votes he wants.

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net.