NEW INSURANCE LAW WILL WORK – FOR THE COMPANIES

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 17, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEW INSURANCE LAW WILL WORK – FOR THE COMPANIES”

 

The newspaper headline asked the proper question, but the story that followed missed the point. It read, “California’s plan to stabilize its home insurance market is now law. Will it work?”

The headline writer clearly wondered whether this new law, promulgated by Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara and not by the usual set of state legislators, would work for homeowners, many of whom have seen their insurance policies cancelled over the threat of fires, both wild brush and forest fires and blazes within neighborhoods made up of decades-old wood homes.

 

The insurance industry’s version of the answer was given pretty quickly. The companies believe it will work just fine for them. The new law contains elements they’ve sought for decades, but were consistently denied by California’s 1988 Proposition 103, which specifically forbade basing rates on industry risk forecasting formulae, but rather only on past events in the many locales where California’s homes have been built.

 

Under those rules, the more fires an area has experienced, the higher rates could go in that place and others nearby.

 

Lara intended his new rules to stabilize the state’s property insurance market, affecting not only homes but also other types of structures, from barns to body shops.

 

From now on, the industry will be able to base rates on secret “black box” alogorithms drawing on a wide range of information, including weather patterns, topography and other data, rather than relying mostly on historical losses in particular areas.

 

In exchange, the companies committed to cover more homeowners in wildfire areas. But this commitment is not compulsory in the actual new rules. In short, the companies got the rule change they have wanted since the early 1990s, while making only paper promises in return.

 

The stated commitment from the insurance industry is that companies will cover 85 percent of homes in known wildfire areas. Seeming to demonstrate they mean to keep this commitment, Farmers Insurance quickly announced it plans to write 9,500 new property policies per month here for the foreseeable future, up from the 7,000 it accepted in 2023.

 

But this move is purely voluntary, unforced by any law or regulation and Farmers or any other companies making similar commitments can change their minds anytime.

 

So consumers lose the protection of knowing their rates are based on real events, while getting unenforceable promises in return. That’s basically because Lara gave in to industry blackmail, as the companies virtually ceased writing new policies in California until they got rules they liked.

 

Instead, Lara could have stood up to them by saying something like, “You will sell property insurance in California, or you won’t sell any other type of coverage, including auto or life.” Under that scenario, the companies pretty soon would have had to choose between losing their largest American market or selling new property policies under the old rules.

 

It's almost Biblical, but California’s insurance boss gave away new and much higher rates but didn’t even get a mess of pottage like Esau did when trading his birthright for lentil soup (pottage). 

 

Here’s the new insurance reality, as outlined by analysts for the Consumer Watchdog customer-interest group: Insurance companies won’t have to sell anything more than a bare bones policy similar to those consumers get today if they’re on the state-run FAIR Plan. Rate increases are already starting, but insurance companies won’t have to report on improvements they’ve made to the overall market for two years, at the beginning of 2027. And after those two years, any insurer may put off indefinitely its supposed commitment to sell more policies in high-risk areas, so long as it claims to be making a “reasonable effort.”

 

At the same time, companies are allowed to violate Proposition 103’s requirement for public disclosure of mathematical price-making formulae. Nor must wildfire models used in rate-making be proven reliable and unbiased.

 

It’s essentially a license for the insurance industry to take more money from every property owner in California, and it now appears those insurance consumers will have no legal defense against it, even though the new regulations were never approved by the state’s Office of Administrative Law, which usually reviews all rule changes.

 

Lara calls this a victory, but it’s actually abject surrender.

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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

WILL TRUMP DEPORTATIONS SEE TROOPS IN CALIFORNIA STREETS?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “WILL TRUMP DEPORTATIONS SEE TROOPS IN CALIFORNIA STREETS?”

 

Later this month, the man who promised to be “a dictator on Day 1” will take the presidential oath of office for the second time.

 

He’s likely spent much of his time during the two month-plus transition period since the Nov. 5 election drafting executive orders and other measures to act immediately on that promise.

 

About the least surprising order will likely be one declaring a national state of emergency on immigration. Trump has promised to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, with about one-third of the nation’s 11 million now living in California.

 

What realities might this produce? For one thing, don’t expect open conflicts between federal and local authorities, even though Los Angeles and other cities here have declared themselves “sanctuaries” for immigrants lacking legal status.

 

No, most police won’t cooperate with the Border Patrol and whatever other federal agents Trump may press into service to help enforce a wide-ranging deportation order. He promised he would start by going after criminals who snuck into this country, but that doesn’t mean he won’t target anyone else, including hard-working field hands, restaurant dishwashers, roofers, car wash workers, hotel cleaners and others in jobs most Americans don’t want.

 

Even as he deploys thousands of federal agents, Trump divulged soon after his election, he plans to use the military to roust many immigrants from their quarters.

 

So, yes, there’s a strong possibility of seeing troops and military hardware in city streets or cruising along in freeway convoys.

 

This would be unprecedented since the Civil War, when federal troops occupied almost the entire Confederacy, whose states voted almost unanimously for Trump in 2024 (Virginia was a narrow exception).

 

Will Americans be docile bystanders when individuals and families they have come to know – without realizing some were here illegally – are taken away, many being sent to countries they have never known as sentient adults?  Or will they shelter people who have cleaned their homes and mowed their lawns for decades?

 

These are open questions. To preclude some conflicts, Trump adviser Stephen Miller (a Santa Monica High School graduate) sent warning letters to hundreds of state and local officials here warning them of possible prosecution if they don’t keep hands off deportation efforts. These went both to political unknowns and to prominent figures like Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass and state Attorney General Rob Bonta, who pronounced the letters a mere “scare tactic.”

 

It's unquestionable that mass deportations like Trump promises will cost many American jobs. Thousands of businesses sell supplies from lumber to furniture polish for use by businesses employing the undocumented. If those workers disappear, so will the jobs of many who supply them.

 

This happened in previous roundups during the 1920s, 1960s and the years between 2006 and 2009, when the George W. Bush administration conducted numerous raids.

 

Yes, there will be lawsuits from outfits like the American Civil Liberties Union to get Trump’s declaration of emergency cancelled. With the ultimate decision up to the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court, bet on such a Trump order surviving.

 

Plus, Congress has never so much as voted on cancelling a presidential emergency declaration, not even Franklin Roosevelt’s order that started the roundup and imprisonment of almost all Japanese-Americans just after Pearl Harbor.

 

Trump, of course, has deported immigrants before – about 1.5 million during his first four-year term. Right now, about that many immigrants await hearings on asylum cases around the nation, and those persons are not supposed to be touched until and unless their applications are rejected.

 

Then there are the twin facts that there is no registry of immigrant addresses and that no one knows whether federal troops would need search warrants to look in places they may want to check out.

 

Trump’s so-called “immigration czar,” Tom Homan, has said he will first go after anyone here who has been given final removal orders by immigration judges. In 2023, federal agents deported more than 140,000 such persons.

 

Going after others like them could make Trump’s effort seem effective, even if it’s not really removing any more targeted folks than soon-to-be ex-President Biden ever did.

 

Which makes this all far more complex than campaign rhetoric ever implied.

 

    -30-

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

 

EXPECT NEWSOM TO START HIS WISHED-FOR RUN FOR PREZ

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 10, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“EXPECT NEWSOM TO START HIS WISHED-FOR RUN FOR PREZ”

 

Gov. Gavin Newsom has steadfastly denied any interest in becoming president for as long as he’s been in office. But any California governor becomes a presidential possibility from the moment of being elected, like it or not.

 

That’s what an almost automatic 54 electoral votes will do for (or to) you when you’re in the top office of this almost nation-state, one that’s used to making its own policies on energy and the environment, abortion and just about anything else you can mention. Even foreign policy, where California has signed no treaties with other countries and large foreign provinces, but has plenty of “memoranda of understanding.”

 

Now, for the first time in his almost 30 years in politics, Newsom might have a clear path to seek national office without having to contest against a stablemate. That’s what he and outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris have been since both began as proteges of former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, with Newsom usually making way for Harris.

 

But those days are done. The national electorate has told Harris it won’t elect her president, even when her party’s nomination is handed to her without so much as winning a single primary election or caucus.

 

For some, Newsom was already leading the opposition to President-elect Donald Trump many months before Trump assumes office.

 

That was one reason for his calling a special November and December session of the Legislature to push through methods and funding to counter Trump’s outspoken threats against California.

 

These include withholding federal relief funds after wildfires and earthquakes, trying to restrict or countermand California’s abortion availability, mass deportations of undocumented immigrants (without many of whom California’s economy would likely be in shambles due to labor shortages) and countermanding California climate policies that have steadily improved the state’s air quality since the 1970s.

 

Unlike any other potential 2028 presidential contender, Newsom long ago made himself into a bit of a national Democratic spokesman. He campaigned in more states than anyone else for outgoing President Joe Biden, before Biden handed the nomination over to Harris. He debated California-baiting governor of Florida on network television. He set pandemic policies for California that were widely copied elsewhere. No other Democratic prospect today has his prominence.

 

Trump tacitly acknowledges this by making Newsom the only Democratic governor to whom he applies one of his trademark derogatory nicknames: “New-scum.”

 

All this sets up Newsom for a 2028 run of his own, even though that future is a bit cloudy, since Trump during his campaign steadfastly evaded answering when asked if he would cede power peacefully when his second term ends in early 2029. His vigorous efforts to stay on after being voted out in 2000 resulted in a recently abandoned prosecution, and no one knows how the nation would respond to a second effort to stay on beyond his time limit.

 

Had Harris won last fall, Newsom would now face a political dead end, with California’s two Senate seats fully occupied until at least 2028 and no possibility of seeking a third term as governor. The soonest he could have run for president would have been 2032, and even then, it’s doubtful America would elect two consecutive San Francisco liberals.

 

But now Newsom gets to move on while Harris is likely sidelined. Rejected last November, she could not assert any supposed right to insist that Newsom step aside for her.

 

He will never say so, but in a way, all this makes the 2024 election outcome almost ideal for Newsom. He scores points with Democrats nationally every time Trump insults him. He will have the last two years of his term to establish a record of resisting Trump at every turn, successful or not. He will also have an opportunity to address state Democratic Party conventions all over the country, if he likes.

 

Once his term in Sacramento ends, he can campaign for two years without interruption or other duties. It’s almost a perfect script for a would-be president, very similar to what fellow Californian Ronald Reagan experienced between 1976 and 1980, when he was first elected to the top national office.

 

-30-

 

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

ARE PERTUSSIS CASES THE CANARY IN THE COAL MINE?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS5
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“ARE PERTUSSIS CASES THE CANARY IN THE COAL MINE?”

 

No major health crisis afflicts California today, but elections have consequences (as ex-President Barack Obama once said) and such a crisis now stands a good chance to become one of them.

 

That is one potential implication of the upswing in California cases of pertussis (aka whooping cough) over the last year. As of Dec. 1, 2024, cases of this dangerous and highly contagious ailment were up by a factor of six over 2023, rising from below 300 cases to 1,744.

 

A vaccine is the main thing preventing pertussis from becoming an epidemic. Both public and private schools require it before students can enroll. That’s because anyone encountering a person infected with the bacterial disease will be at significant risk.

 

It's especially dangerous for very young children; most deaths it causes come before age 1. 

 

The number of 2024 cases was not truly exceptional, as this disease appears to run in five-year cycles, with the last previous large California outbreak in 2019. But epidemics may ensue if schools’ vaccine requirements for this and other diseases long seen mostly in society’s rear view mirror should be loosened beyond today’s exemption for only children with proven medical problems in taking vaccines.

 

Yet, looser rules are what President-elect Trump’s nominee to head the national health system has pushed for decades.

 

The Children’s Health Defense group founded by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long advocated an end of school vaccination requirements because of solidly disproven claims that vaccines cause things like autism and bowel diseases. Kennedy has also claimed vaccines for Covid 19 do more harm than good. Meanwhile, establishment medicine calls the claims bunk, and has produced what it describes as convincing evidence that every claim Kennedy ever made about vaccines was false.

 

This never dims the fervor of anti-vaccine activists, one of whom in 2019 attacked and beat beat a California state senator who sponsored a bill toughening vaccination requirements. The perpetrator live-streamed his ambush.

 

Kennedy refused to condemn such violence. Now he is nominated as the next secretary of Health and Human Services. If confirmed, he will supervise both the Food and Drug Administration, which must approve all new vaccines before they can be used, and the Centers for Disease Control, which sets national standards for vaccine use.

 

Trump promised Kennedy his putative new job last August, shortly after Kennedy abandoned an independent presidential run that threatened Trump’s chances. Trump has said he has no problems with Kennedy trying to impose his anti-vaxx approach on the nation (and yes, despite all his past statements and writings, Kennedy persistently denies being an anti-vaxxer).

 

How could Kennedy affect public health? One example occurred in 2019, when he gave an anti-vaxx speech on the island of Samoa. Shortly after, the island saw a measles outbreak infecting more than 5,700 people and killing 83, including many children. 

 

The measles, mumps and rubella shot required for California schoolchildren at various intervals was a prime target in that speech and other Kennedy statements.

 

His seeming effect on Samoa makes clear that if Kennedy keeps up his prior rhetoric in his new job, there could be many deaths from previously defeated diseases. California is a longtime hotbed of Kennedy-inspired anti-vaxx activity, with thousands of children now held out of school because parents oppose state vaccine policies.

 

The latest pertussis outbreak seems most severe in Marin County, where 2024 saw 129 cases per 100,000 population. By contrast, Los Angeles County had just four cases per 100,000 population.

 

Those numbers are likely the result of Marin having long been a hotbed of anti-vaxx feeling.

 

The historical fact is that diseases like measles, mumps and polio all but disappeared once vaccines for them reached common use. Kennedy says he's fine with the polio vaccine, which eliminated a major childhood scourge. But he is using lawyer Aaron Simi to help vet future health officials. Simi in 2022 petitioned the FDA to revoke its approval of the polio vaccine and has sought to end distribution of 13 others. 

 

The bottom line: if Kennedy continues his anti-vaxx activity in his potential new office, we may look back on today’s relatively mild whooping cough outbreak as the proverbial canary in the coal mine, a harbinger of much worse things to come.

 

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

STATE'S BIGGEST POWER COMPANIES AGAIN DEMONSTRATE CLOUT

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JANUARY 3, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

“STATE’S BIGGEST POWER COMPANIES AGAIN DEMONSTRATE CLOUT”

 

Anyone who believes the last few years’ spate of ultra-destructive wildfires has diminished the clout of California’s biggest privately-owned electric companies will now have to accept reality: they are as powerful as ever, if not more so.

 

Consider the latest achievements of Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the nation’s largest power provider and always a pace-setter for other companies like Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric.

 

Within the space of 14 days last fall, PG&E, with a little help from its colleague utilities, killed a legislative bill designed to provide oversight of its spending on wildfire mitigation, and then won a $944 million rate increase from the state’s Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to “reimburse” it for storm damage expenses and its work to lessen the chances of starting more fires. 

 

That’s right, no one really knows exactly what PG&E or the other big monopoly utilities are doing to prevent more fires like the ones that almost pushed them into bankruptcy three years ago. But PG&E still will get almost $1 billion from its customers for whatever it is doing, or almost $6 per month from all of its more than 5.6 million customers, both residential and commercial.

 

More increases are coming, too. The latest PG&E increase comes atop three earlier ones this year. The other big generating firms have not gotten as many recent increases, but the precedent has now been set.

Meanwhile, by law, no utility is supposed to get a nickel from the PUC without strong evidence of how it will be spent, what the split will be between profits and funding of needed operations.

 

The Legislature’s killing the accountability bill, known as SB 1003, on the last day of its regular 2024 session assures that PG&E and its cousins will be back for more “reimbursements” for expenses they have not detailed, at least until something like SB 1003 finally gets passed.

 

It's a further example of the power of electric companies in Sacramento, as their lobbyists continue beating back any effort to rein in utility clout. Other examples in recent years include creation of the $13 billion “Wildfire Mitigation Fund,” designed to reimburse the companies for damages assessed to them after fires they cause, and PG&E’s escape from the threat of a breakup in the wake of several multi-billion fires it caused over the last seven years.

 

Said The Utility Reform Network, a group that sometimes has had success in cutting down utility rate increases, “Voters have a right to be upset that elected officials put the record-breaking profits of PG&E shareholders over millions of residents struggling to pay their record-breaking utility bills. It’s unacceptable.”

 

Meanwhile, PG&E continues trying to justify selling off a stake in its power-generating business to the global investment firm KKR, part of the company’s plan to transfer its non-nuclear power generating functions to a new subsidiary called Pacific Generation. That new outfit – merely PG&E operating under a different name – is supposed to have a better credit rating than the parent company, which could save consumers $100 million over the next 20 years – or about a trivial 6 cents per month per customer.

 

If the PUC greenlights this shift, PG&E would have even more bureaucracy standing between customers and its power sources from dams to windmills to solar farms and old-fashioned power plants. That could enable it to obfuscate when it causes fires and consumer groups attempt to assess responsibility for them.

 

If PG&E gets away with this kind of machination, be certain other utilities will follow.

 

It’s just another example of how they and the PUC tout even the tiniest cost reduction to customers, but then regularly slam them with multiple rate increases amounting to far more.

 

This pattern will not end until there is some sort of accountability for the utilities and the PUC, which have acted with impunity in recent months, while their customers were distracted by the presidential election, campus unrest and international conflicts.

-30-
    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

THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS COLLEGES SEE THE MOST ANTISEMITISM

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“THE MOST PRESTIGIOUS COLLEGES SEE THE MOST ANTISEMITISM”

 

For parents wondering where to turn to find higher education with the least exposure to antisemitism and protests favoring the terrorist group Hamas, a new study should provide strong information about where to turn.

 

One thing the report shows: the more traditionally prestigious a university, the more likely it appears to be affected by those two factors.

 

The Santa Cruz-based AMCHA Initiative, which has tracked campus anti-Jewish bigotry on hundreds of campuses for almost 20 years, used four factors in its rankings. These include the number of faculty who have publicly supported an academic boycott of all things Israel, whether and how many academic departments have issued anti-Zionist statements, whether a school has a chapter of the group Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), often funded by Hamas related non-profits and the state of Qatar, plus the number of on-campus FJP statements and events at each school.

 

Besides prestige, which probably draws FJP organizers to some schools, one other major pattern emerged that might surprise some: Christian church-affiliated colleges as large as Notre Dame and as small as California Lutheran almost without exception ranked very low in both anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

 

AMCHA often notes that while most faculty statements avoid outspokenly direct anti-Jewish statements, protests organized and promoted by anti-Israel professors frequently devolve into blatant antisemitism, with shouts like “Gas the Jews” commonplace at rallies. That's why it 's sensible to conflate anti-Zionism and antisemitism on campuses where some professors try to disguise anti-Jewish bias. 

 

Many schools listed with AMCHA’s worst ratings have also seen reports of anti-Jewish discrimination and rhetoric in classrooms and other private on-campus encounters between students. At some schools, students and outsiders have attempted to deny building access to classmates and others they believed to be Jews. See complete rankings at https://amchainitiative.org/azf-barometer.

 

Among the schools with the worst ratings in the study are some with the most selective admission policies in California and the nation.

 

Besides Ivy League colleges like Columbia, Yale and the University of Pennsylvania and other top-rated schools like New York University, Duke and the University of Chicago, myriad high-prestige, high-tuition California campuses also drew the most adverse rating.

 

These included Stanford University, Scripps and Harvey Mudd colleges and the Claremont Graduate University, plus University of California campuses at Los Angeles, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Irvine, Santa Barbara, Davis and San Diego. Other California schools like UC Riverside, Pomona College, USC and Cal State campuses in San Diego, Sacramento, Long Beach and Sonoma fell into the second-worst category.

 

Many of these colleges set up strong policies last summer to reverse damage to their reputations inflicted by seemingly unrestrained anti-Israel, pro-Hamas and anti-Jewish protests and actions during the 2023-24 school year.  A host of campuses reeled out of control within less than two days of the Hamas massacres and kidnappings of more than 1,400 Israelis on Oct. 7, 2023.

 

The instant startup of those protests against victims of murder, rape and hostage-taking often made it appear that the campus events might be in deliberate cadence with the violence half a world away. “Gas the Jews” shouts were heard on many American campuses days before Israel began its reactive war in Gaza.

 

Previous AMCHA reports have linked the presence and prominence of FJP campus chapters to the strength and violence of those protests and to expressly anti-Jewish incidents at schools with the chapters.

 

Said the new report, “Many FJP chapters not only host virulently anti-Israel events and author anti-Zionist statements, they often collaborate with anti-Zionist student groups and academic departments."

 

No one yet knows whether the incoming Donald Trump administration’s statements opposing federal funding for colleges that allow such activity will have any effect.

 

But moves last summer by administrators at schools like Stanford and UC’s central president’s office seem to be scaling back both the frequency and intensity of the protests.

 

This does not mean there has been a decrease in classroom discrimination against Jewish students or in discrimination against Jewish students by others on campus, where Jews elected as student officers have sometimes been hounded to the point where they’ve left their longtime academic homes.    

 

-30-
    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

NEWSOM HAS NOT LET CALIFORNIA GET BULLIED

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 27, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“NEWSOM HAS NOT LET CALIFORNIA GET

BULLIED”

 

California has far more population than any of the other six states with whom it shares the Colorado River, a major water lifeline for the entire American Southwest.

 

This state also has 12 more electoral college votes when it comes to picking presidents than the other six combined. But taken together, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Wyoming possess 12 U.S. Senate seats to just two for California.

 

So in the very recent time of severe drought and bottomed-out reservoirs along the Colorado, there was a serious threat that California could suffer from water-related bullying, especially since President Biden counted on at least some of those Southwestern senators for support on Capitol Hill, from budgets to building bridges and confirming federal judges.

 

The Interior Department he still controls also gets the final say on any new water arrangements along the Colorado.

 

So it's been up to Gov. Gavin Newsom to make sure California wasn’t bullied into losing much of this critical resource. He needed to see that California farmers and other residents would not suffer more severe water rationing than folks in the other river basin states, who initially wanted to penalize this state for being large. At least for now, that has been staved off.

 

Newsom, of course, has been criticized – often justifiably – for many moves, but never has taken kindly to bullying of himself or California. One example: When Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis claimed his state is more successful in business and at fighting off diseases than California, Newsom shot right back.

 

He used epithets like “Gov. DeathSantis” and aired television ads in Florida touting both greater success against the coronavirus pandemic and more freedoms in general in California than under DeSantis in Florida, where women can’t decide for themselves whether or not to bear children. Teachers there also may not discuss gay or transgender life in most public school classrooms. Newsom also notes DeSantis has spurred schoolhouse bans on books he dislikes, including prize-winning best-sellers like Toni Morrison’s “Beloved,” and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

 

Newsom rejected changes in history textbooks demanded by DeSantis before letting Florida schools buy them. The result: Publishers did not kowtow to DeSantis, maintaining their sales to California, where textbook purchases are far larger.

 

So it was never likely Newsom would cave in to the attempt by other Colorado River basin states to force California to give up a far greater percentage of its water use due to drought than any of them would.

 

Newsom didn’t conduct the direct negotiating. His appointees did that, getting tough because they knew Newsom would reject any deal that trampled California.

 

The governor gets both praise and criticism for pushing changes to the California Environmental Quality Act that would give citizens less say than now over building projects that could seriously affect them. He is blasted fairly for doing the bidding of developers and utilities who help fund his campaigns. He admits to mistakes during the coronavirus pandemic.

 

But he lets neither critics nor supporters bully him.

 

As a result, California will probably lose only a fair share of its Colorado River water take, and federal funds will likely compensate farmers and others for losses that may create.

 

Farms in the Imperial Valley in the state’s southeast corner are now the biggest users, per capita, of Colorado River water. They will voluntarily cut use by about 10 percent, getting about $250 million for reducing crops.

 

Two years from now, after the 2023-24 winter’s bonanza of rain and snow is likely drained out, for the most part, there figures to be more wrangling over the river.

 

Those talks may drag on into 2027, so it could be up to California’s next governor – identity currently unknown – to carry on Newsom’s refusal to be bullied.

 

But for the moment, Newsom’s “Don’t tread on me” attitude has won the day, so long as the Interior Department under new President Donald Trump sticks with the latest arrangement, as expected.

 

That successful negotiation figures to prove more important in the long run for both California’s environment and economy than any Newsom mistakes on other issues.

 

    -30-

    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

EARLY TRUMP IMMIGRATION RAIDS LIKELY WON’T HARM CA ECONOMY

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 24, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“EARLY TRUMP IMMIGRATION RAIDS LIKELY WON’T HARM CA ECONOMY”

 

There seems to be no question that President-elect Trump will follow through on his campaign commitment to conduct the largest-ever series of raids aiming to deport undocumented immigrants, whom he prefers to call “illegals.”

 

If and when this goes forward, much of the effect will hinge on whom the raids target. Trump speaks in general terms about going after all the undocumented, but he has said he will first seek out criminal aliens and those with amnesty cases already rejected by judges, but who remain in this country anyway. More than 1 million persons fall in those categories.

 

If his effort first targets the criminal element among the undocumented (federal statistics indicate their crime rates are lower than among U.S. citizens and green card holders), the effects on California’s economy and its psyche will be far less than if he goes after everyone here without government authorization.

 

Trump’s designated “border czar” Tom Homan, head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the previous Trump administration, has said he prefers targeting criminals first, especially those already in U.S. jails for crimes other than unauthorized border crossings.

 

If Homan is frustrated there, he might send a combination of Border Patrol, Drug Enforcement Agency and FBI agents to California’s many farms, to roofing projects, hotels and restaurants, all places where immigration raids were conducted on Trump’s previous watch.

 

This might provide easier pickings for Trump’s “biggest deportation ever,” since California officials say they won’t cooperate in ridding their jails of the undocumented.

 

Most recently, California’s senior U.S senator Alex Padilla (an MIT graduate who is himself the son of Latino immigrants) told CBS’ Face the Nation that California will not "utilize state and local resources to do the federal government's job for them." 

 

"That's just the California way,” Padilla said. “We embrace our diversity, our diversity that's made our communities thrive and our economy thrive, and so we will assist families against the threats of the Trump administration.”

 

That’s what the current special legislative session concentrating on funding legal efforts to resist some expected Trump moves is mostly about. Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers know well that this state hosts about one-third of the estimated 11 million undocumented migrants now in this country.

 

Businesses and farms that employ many of them have been largely silent about Trump’s threats, not wanting to provoke him any more than his November loss of California by more than 3.1 million votes already has.

 

Some California farmers also are keeping quiet about immigration

issues in part because they would presumably get far more

 irrigation water under Trump’s proposed policies than they have

under President Biden. Many have complained loudly (and on

signs beside highways) that too much potential California farm

water is “dumped into the ocean.”

 

Nevertheless, a recent UC Merced study concluded that at least

half California’s estimated 162,000 farm workers are

undocumented, making the Central Valley – America’s richest

agricultural area – extra vulnerable to effects of major

immigration raids.

 

Of course, raids that cause shortages of products from pears to

pistachios, from almonds to apricots, could also lead to food

shortages and even worse grocery inflation than America saw

last year in a time of supply chain problems.

 

Hotel prices would also rise if their corps of room cleaners were

depleted by immigration raids, and the already problematic price

of housing could spike further if they decimate the high

percentage of construction workers who are undocumented.

 

But there would be no such effects if Homan sent federal agents

or even federal troops into jails and prisons to roust

undocumented criminals from their cells, and that appears the

likeliest first move. Yes, their families might be affected or even

self-deport under that circumstance, but there would be few

economic effects. And Gov. Gavin Newsom has said he would not

resist such an effort.

 

Meanwhile, public schools and even county governments are

bracing for widespread raids, with specific targets currently

unknown. Los Angeles County supervisors, for one prominent

example, passed a motion early this month to expand funding of

legal services for immigrants by $5.5 million.

 

All of which leaves California and other centers of illegal

immigration in a waiting mode, not knowing for sure where

the new Trump administration will strike first against the

undocumented.

 

 

-30-

 

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

THE LESSON OF ULTRA-HIGH COASTAL REAL ESTATE PRICES: LOOK INLAND

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 20, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“THE LESSON OF ULTRA-HIGH COASTAL REAL ESTATE PRICES: LOOK INLAND”

 

Not many places could take a 5 percent drop in their median home price and still remain the most expensive Zip code in America for real estate. But Atherton did that this year, taking a $400,000 median price dip, but still maintaining a median of $7.9 million per property sold.

 

This brought Atherton’s 94027 Zip code, in San Mateo County slightly north of Stanford University its eighth consecutive title as the priciest place in America.

 

But Newport Beach is not far behind. The seaside Orange County city has three Zip codes with median prices topping $4.6 million, all up a few hundred thousand from last year.

 

It’s rather eye-popping, but of the 10 priciest Zips in the nation, seven are in California. The median is the price level where half of all sales are for higher amounts and half for lower. For both Atherton and Newport Beach, this means in practical terms that sales prices topping $10 million have lately been pretty common.

 

Only Atherton among the highest-price California Zips has no waterfront. But not to worry, it is within a couple of miles of several marinas fronting on the San Francisco Bay, where homeowners can also park their boats – even if they can’t dock outside their back doors, like at some properties in Newport Beach.

 

There’s a lesson here for young families wanting to live in California, but unable to afford the ultra-high prices of the most expensive ZIPs: Look inland.

 

Areas like Glendale, Pasadena, Rancho Bernardo, Tracy and Elk Grove sport plenty of extremely livable homes and condominiums at prices far beneath what similar properties draw in coastal communities. This explains why California’s inland areas are growing far faster than coastal locales.

 

In fact, coastal areas in other areas of the country also boast prices soaring above what almost any first-time buyer can afford. The three non-California Zips on the national top-ten list include one in Miami Beach, Fla., and two on Long Island, NY.

 

High prices that are nevertheless still rising were common not just in California and the other top ten Zips, but also nationally, creating a crisis that presidential candidates last fall promised to fix by spurring the building of millions of new homes. These would rise in many areas, with inland California boasting prime areas for development. The prospect of new communities in some currently vacant desert areas has also been touted by some housing officials as a solution not only to the affordability crisis, but also to homelessness.

 

After real estate prices slipped a little overall in 2022 and 2023, says the Property Shark real estate research firm which generated the latest top ten rankings, they rose again this year in most places.

 

The firm reports that two-thirds of the nation’s 100 priciest Zip codes saw sale prices increase in 2024, compared with just 29 percent in 2023. One result was that a record 15 Zip codes saw median sale prices of $4 million or more.

 

Plus, prices in large cities pretty much mirrored the top rankings of Zip codes. New York, which took over last year for Los Angeles as America’s high-price leader among sizable cities, retained that ranking, even as its toniest Zip, which includes Tribeca, was only No. 23 nationally. L.A. remained No. 2, with Palo Alto trailing not far behind at No. 4.

 

A key finding is that about two-thirds of America’s priciest Zips are clustered in Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Mateo and Orange counties, contributing to the home price crisis that has driven many young professionals to live in other states while telecommuting to jobs in California, putting in only occasional appearances at their nominal offices.

 

One side effect has been that neighboring states like Nevada and Arizona are now more politically centrist than their long history as Republican bastions might indicate. Ex-Californians have also driven up prices markedly in those states, as well as Idaho, Texas and Oregon, where many new residents arriving from California report being ostracized by longer-term residents.

 

The bottom line: The priciest California areas show no signs of major pricing retreats, which leaves few coastal options for young families seeking to buy first homes. That makes looking inland -- even to deserts -- a must for many.

-30- 

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

HOW CALIFORNIA RANKS AS THE MOST ACTIVE POLITICAL STATE

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE:TUESDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“HOW CALIFORNIA RANKS AS THE MOST ACTIVE POLITICAL STATE”

 

California has not been a swing state in presidential politics since 1992, when it switched from Republican red to Democratic blue while its electoral votes made Bill Clinton the president.

 

But this vast state, far larger in population than No. 2 Texas and almost as large geographically as virtually empty Alaska, turns out to be the nation’s most politically active state.

 

That will play out strongly at home for the next two years, as a field featuring many Democrats and very possibly Republican Chad Bianco, the often vocal sheriff of Riverside County, joust for position while running to replace Democrat Gavin Newsom in the governor’s office.

 

It's unlikely a GOP hopeful like Bianco can win the office in a state where registered Democratic voters hugely outnumber Republicans, a state which has not put a Republican in statewide office since muscleman actor Arnold Schwarzenegger won reelection in 2006

 

 But as former baseball great Steve Garvey did in this year's Senate race, a candidate like Bianco could make the 2026 runoff election if he were the sole Republican running in that year’s June primary election. Also like Garvey, Bianco or any other Republican in such a race would almost certainly be little more than a sacrificial lamb.

 

How, then, does California rank as American’s most politically active state, especially when it numbers just 29^th in the percentage of eligible voters who actually submit ballots?

 

Turns out money and activism togethere pushed this state to the top of the political activity list in a new study from the WalletHub website, which specializes in demographic trends.

 

Californians were 14th in the percentage of registered voters (as opposed to folks who are eligible) who actually turned out in 2020 and about the same last month, when they decided the fate of 10 statewide ballot propositions and hundreds of local measures. California ranked eighth in total political contributions per voting age citizen, much of the money going to presidential candidates or people running for the House and Senate in other states. Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar got more money from California than any two other states aside from her own. The same for both Democrat Collin Allred and incumbent Republican Ted Cruz in Texas. And so on.

 

Plenty of bucks also went to candidates in the six most hotly contested congressional races in this state, where Republicans won just enough seats to control the House of Representatives for the next two years.

 

But the big propulsion to the top spot in political activity was where Californians ranked in civic engagement. One measure: Among Democrats, more than 12,000 volunteers ponied up their own postage money and their time to write and send anywhere from 100 to 1,000 handwritten postcards apiece to potential voters in swing states where just a few hundred or a few thousand votes had the potential to decide who would be the next president.

 

Add in the top ranking in voter accessibility policies, like sending a mail-in ballot to every registered voter and placing drop boxes in convenient locations in every part of the state.

 

Merely being a swing state because party preference is fairly evenly split was not enough to propel any other state to the top in political engagement.

 

WalletHub found only two of the seven major swing states (Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina) were among the most politically engaged. States like Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia and New Jersey were among the top tier in political engagement despite being solidly in the camp of one party or the other.

 

Turnout was affected in a major way this fall by where states ranked in political engagement. The more engaged,  the higher the percentage of registered voters actually casting ballots.

 

The exception to this was California, where political engagement and availability of ballots and ballot boxes was high, but turnout overall was nevertheless only about two-thirds, pretty much the same as in 2020, when this state went heavily for Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

 

The bottom line: California’s size did not prevent it from being the most politically engaged state in America. And California voters – with their interstate activism and cash donations, probably did influence some races far beyond this state’s borders.

 

            -30-

    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

UTILITIES KEEP TRYING TO LOOK MAGNANIMOUS WHEN THEY'RE NOT

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

"UTILITIES KEEP TRYING TO LOOK MAGNANIMOUS WHEN THEY'RE NOT”

 

Twice every year, California’s privately-owned utility companies make a big effort to appear generous, when they’re actually being the opposite.

 

It happened most recently late last fall, when all three of the big privately owned electric providers, Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric, included messages in their monthly invoices informing customers they’d be getting a credit soon.

 

This was the state’s climate credit, part of a decade-old program requiring power plants, natural gas distributors and other greenhouse gas emitters to buy carbon pollution permits. The state – not the companies – redistributes much of the money to consumers through their utility bills, with electricity credits coming every April and October and one natural gas credit each April.

 

But the utilities often make their notices read as if the money came from them as some sort of rebate.

 

Rather than being generous, the companies, aided by their steadfast accomplices at the state Public Utilities Commission in making things ever harder on customers, actually seem to apply continually for permission from their so-called regulators to increase rates.

 

Each utility is normally entitled to apply every couple of years for rate increases or decreases (can anyone remember the last decrease?), but often apply in between for increases to pay for things like cutting back undergrowth near power lines to prevent wildfires and updating transmission lines for the same reason.

 

The companies are also about to start a new billing system including a flat monthly rate for infrastructure on all residential bills and some small businesses. The new structure takes effect in late 2025 and early 2026, with a flat rate of $24.15 per month for most customers and discounted rates of $6 or $12 for low-income persons and those living in deed-restricted affordable housing. The flat rate will allegedly also result in lower prices per kilowatt used.

 

The new system is supposed to lower rates statewide, the PUC claiming this will make electric cars and home appliances more attractive to potential buyers. 

 

Consumer groups have long been skeptical the new flat fee will actually create any overall savings, nor does anyone know how customers will prove their incomes are low enough to get discount rates. That was one problem with the flat rate system from the moment it was conceived, but the PUC pressed ahead anyway. Because tax returns, Census questionnaires and much other financial data is supposed to be private, it’s difficult to say how the utilities will get accurate income information.

 

But this won’t deter them. The plan will proceed, even if some pricing has to be based purely on guesswork.

 

Meanwhile, the utilities, the PUC and Gov. Gavin Newsom were also taking further action to discourage rooftop solar, the single most efficient way homeowners and public schools can economize on electricity costs.

 

That came when Newsom vetoed a bill that could have made it cheaper for schools and renters to install new rooftop solar panels and storage batteries.

 

The vetoed bill would have seen rooftop solar lower the amount of electricity homeowners and renters now buy from utilities. By vetoing it, Newsom assured that renters and schools must keep selling virtually all their solar output to the utilities for three cents per kilowatt hour and then buy it back for much higher rates. Not many individuals or school boards will invest in rooftop solar under those conditions, which will leave rooftop solar now largely for homeowners, who at least can use their own power, even after the PUC last year reduced the price utilities must pay for any excess power homeowners sell off.

 

Newsom used a false utility claim – that the former prices (still current for homeowners with pre-existing long-term contracts) paid by utilities for rooftop solar were causing higher power rates for others – to justify his veto.

 

These actions and many others put the lie to any notion that California’s big private utilities are the least bit generous or magnanimous. Rather, these companies strive always to up their profits, with the state’s highest officials as willing accomplices.

 

 

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

 

NEWS FOR CALIFORNIA'S CRITICS; IT’S CARRYING THE NATION

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NEWS FOR CALIFORNIA'S CRITICS; IT’S CARRYING THE NATION”

 

California, we often hear, is a lousy place to do business. It’s riddled with needless regulations that make it hard for businesses to survive.

 

Those are the words of this state’s detractors, who delight in noting that before this year, California had slight population declines for awhile. Some of that was spurred by the movement of white collar workers toward operating from home, which began during the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Plus, corporate headquarters have departed in droves.

 

But if all that’s true, why is California still carrying the national economy? This may come as a surprise, but it's true. With a gross domestic product (GDP) of $4.08 trillion, California far outpaces No. 2 Texas, which comes in with a $2.69 trillion GDP – a difference just about proportional to the populations of both states. (GDP is the total value of all goods and services produced within a state or country.)

 

California’s GDP accounts for more than 17 percent of America’s and makes this the No. 5 economy in the world, behind only the entire USA, China, Japan and Germany. California’s share of national GDP stands far above its 12 percent share of America’s populace.

 

Here's a little-publicized secret behind the ballyhooed corporate defections: Companies like Tesla and Toyota and Chevron, with headquarters now elsewhere, still conduct huge parts of their operations here. For Tesla and Toyota, it’s far more than in any other state including Texas, now home to their head offices.

 

Here's another surprise for the many folks who love to denigrate this state, suggesting it only survives economically because of its salubrious climate:

 

Of the 15 states with the largest GDPs, five are governed by the GOP, while 10 have Democratic governors. Those include New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina, Washington, Massachusetts, Michigan and Colorado. Together, the top 15 states account for about 90 percent of America’s economy.

 

These figures all come from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA).

 

The upshot is that much of what Donald Trump said to denigrate California and other “blue” states during his highly vocal 2024 campaign was false.

 

It turns out that when a major business moves its headquarters elsewhere, that makes only a small dent in California’s huge economy.

 

In fact, when America does well, it’s largely because California does far better than most of the world. Never mind that real estate and energy cost more here than almost anywhere else (energy costs are higher in Alaska and Hawaii while real estate costs are higher only in Hawaii).

 

California still produces far more than its fair share of goods and services and is therefore hugely responsible for keeping the U.S. economy the world’s strongest.

 

And all that ignores the fact that most major industrial innovations of the last 50 years originated in California, from electric cars and smart phones to artificial intelligence.

 

There's evidence for all this in county GDP ratings, too. For example, two of the five most productive counties in America are in California, Together, Los Angeles and Santa Clara counties produce more than one-fifth of the economic activity in the nation's 23 wealthiest counties.

 

Meanwhile, only seven of those 23 most productive counties are in states Trump carried in any last three elections. Of those seven, two Texas counties – Harris (Houston) and Travis (Austin) have long been Democratic islands in the Texas Republican red sea.

 

Los Angeles County, for one example, produced more this year than the combined total of Dallas County, TX; Maricopa County, AZ (Phoenix), Fulton County, GA (Atlanta) and Philadelphia County, PA.

 

Equally significant are the BEA comparisons of California county GDPs with other nations. Los Angeles County productivity tops Switzerland. Santa Clara County, home of Silicon Valley, produces more than Pakistan, with about 100 times as many residents.

 

We are talking here about companies like Google and Sony Studios, Snapchat and Hewlett Packard, Netflix and Hulu, all spinning off huge amounts of economic activity.

 

None of this will stop Trump from denigrating California. But he nevertheless must depend on this state if he wants to achieve any kind of economic success in his new term.

 
-30-

    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