SOLANO COUNTY PLAN COULD HAVE CHANGED HOW CALIFORNIA DEVELOPS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“SOLANO COUNTY PLAN COULD HAVE CHANGED HOW CALIFORNIA DEVELOPS”

 

A measure allowing voters in Solano County this fall to approve – or not – a vast new development about 45 miles northeast of San Francisco just might have been the most influential local ballot proposition California has seen in decades. If it had gone forward.

 

This measure would have allowed a brand-new full-scale city to be built by a corps of billionaires as a partial solution to the housing shortage that has wracked the state’s lifestyle and politics for years, threatening both the nature of many neighborhoods and the independence of city governments.

 

But the billionaires pulled their proposition from the ballot at midsummer because they thought it might lose.

 

Instead of piecemeal infill developments and replacement of mini-malls and other relatively small buildings with huge high-rises containing hundreds of apartments and a few stores, this plan could have seen an entire new city plopped down on open space and farmland.

 

Land for this already belonged to an outfit called “California Forever,” which quietly spent years buying up pieces of property south and west of Suisun City, Fairfield and Rio Vista, eventually aggregating 50,000 acres. The billionaires, who did this gradually in order not to drive the price of land to forbidding levels, include LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman, venture capitalist Mark Andreessen, Lauren Powell Jobs, widow of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, and former Goldman Sachs trader Jan Sramek, with Sramek now the project CEO.

 

Their purchases at one point had federal officials suspecting foreign agents might be angling for access to intelligence about the nearby Travis Air Force Base, a key facility for military flights to the Far East.

 

But this was no spy adventure. Rather, it’s a land use gamble, with the investors banking on the 259,000 registered voters of a medium-sized county about midway between San Francisco and Sacramento to okay a gigantic new kind of development. It won't go forward this year; but maybe next time.

 

The proposed new city was to be completely walkable and bikeable and might eventually house as many as 400,000 persons. So large a development by itself could put a sizeable dent in the state’s housing shortage, promoters say. They said they had arranged with a dozen potential employers to provide at least 15,000 jobs for residents in fields from retail sales to robotics.

 

Instead of parks and schools going in gradually while new residents filter into a raw development, all 17,500 acres in this one were to be ready almost simultaneously – stores, homes, apartments, parks, schools and offices all opening about the same time.

 

The billionaires also promised a $500 million fund to help new residents make down payments on homes. They planned a new sports stadium (are you listening, former Oakland A’s, now that Las Vegas shows signs of stadium hesitation?). Public transit would exist from the get-go.

 

It all would be a huge contrast with the way other cities – even master-planned ones like Irvine in Orange County – arose, with their sometimes haphazard placement of buildings, homes, parks, schools and other services.

 

The notion of using currently open land contrasts sharply with the trend of the last 10 years, stressing ever-greater urban density and the remaking of cities under threats of state legal action or funding cutoffs for services like police and sewers.

 

If the Solano County plan eventually happens, some of the vast desert spaces north and east of Los Angeles might also eventually find themselves hosting large new developments.

 

That’s the way much of California was built, long before politicians like Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco successfully campaigned to make urban sprawl political anathema.

 

But voters in Solano County apparently were set to say no to all this. Now no one is quite sure what happens next in a high-stakes story that could eventually affect not only Solano County but the entire state, whose development priorities could stand some major changes.

-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

A SUPREME COURT-ENABLED ATTACK ON CALIFORNIA’S HOMELESS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“A SUPREME COURT-ENABLED ATTACK ON CALIFORNIA’S HOMELESS”

 

It’s been largely obscured by the mainstream media’s justifiable and almost continuous focus on the ongoing presidential election. But the U.S. Supreme Court’s  summertime decision allowing cities and counties to take down and remove encampments erected by homeless persons has expanded into a growing campaign to virtually ban them from public spaces.

 

If the misery index of the homeless, 186,000 strong in California’s last semi-official count, was already nearing intolerable levels, new tactics authorized by local governments around the state seem about to turn the homeless into the hopeless.

 

This applies even in some cities once well known for their steadfast kindness toward and tolerance of the unhoused, including Berkeley and Santa Monica.

 

Just last month, on the same Tuesday evening Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debated in distant Philadelphia, Santa Monica’s city council voted 4-3 to eliminate a section of its anti-camping ordinance that has allowed homeless individuals to use pillows, blankets and bedrolls while sleeping outdoors. This includes sleeping bags, which church and charity volunteers have often distributed free at seasonal homeless shelters.

 

So the ultra-poor homeless populace – once able to get regular meals served on the lawn of the Santa Monica City Hall – now may be compelled to rest their heads on curbs while sleeping uncovered except by cardboard boxes in driving, near freezing January rains. Unless they are simply forced to keep moving along.

 

Local police say the revised law won’t change how they enforce the anti-camping measure, claiming they mostly use it to regulate encampments in public spaces.

 

But no one will likely know the full impact of the change until winter, when rains in recent years have flooded many of the homeless out of what little shelter their tents and tarps could provide.

 

Remember, this is a populace composed in large measure of the mentally ill, drug and alcohol addicts, persons suffering from PTSD and women driven from their homes by domestic violence, few of whom would be involved if they had enough money to avoid the situation.

 

Santa Monica is far from alone. In just over three months since the Supreme Court ruling, at least 17 other California locales -- and counting -- have taken similar actions. The new laws allow police to arrest homeless individuals apparently violating anti-camping laws, which vary only slightly from place to place.

 

They raise major questions: If the unhoused can’t camp on sidewalks or in parks, where are these virtually penniless folks to go? How long can they survive?

 

“Our residents are demanding a solution,” said the mayor of Vista, in northern San Diego County. His city has reactivated a 1968 ordinance banning encampments in the city.

 

In Berkeley, some local merchants don’t care where the homeless go, so long as it’s away from them.

 

A group of businesses filed suit this fall against the city government over homeless encampments near them. They claim financial harm from encampments due to unsanitary conditions, safety issues and “increased criminal activity,” as some encampment denizens threaten or intimidate potential customers.

 

Berkeley officials did not comment on the litigation, but its city council adopted a new policy allowing city officials to take down tent cities even when all indoor shelter beds are occupied if an encampment is a fire or health hazard.

 

No one knows where the tent residents might go if this should be enforced. Businesses and courts offer no solution.

 

Neither does anyone else. The city of Los Angeles this fall issued a report saying it would take ten years and $20 billion to solve its homeless problem. That would involve building 36,000 permanent housing units for homeless persons with chronic health conditions and 25,000 more apartments for very low-income residents.

 

The plan, not yet adopted by city council vote, assumes the city would continue operating shelters with 17,000 beds for several more years while all that is built. No one knows where funding might come from, especially now, with a major homeless housing operator having recently gone broke without accounting for millions of public dollars it received.

 

It’s an almost intractable problem, with few proven villains in sight, but plenty of very visible victims about to see their situation become much more difficult.

       

     -30-       
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

STATE BALLOT PROVIDES PLENTY OF INCENTIVE TO VOTE

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“STATE BALLOT PROVIDES PLENTY OF INCENTIVE TO VOTE”

 

There are occasional elections where voters are not asked to decide very much – as in last March’s primary where the presidential votes were not close and it was hard to find other significant issues.

 

Things are very different this fall.

 

Not only does the California ballot feature a unique presidential choice with a former prosecutor facing off against a convicted felon who's also a former President, but control of the House of Representatives may hinge on several congressional races here and the list of ballot propositions contains some that could create big changes for many people.

 

Voting begins soon, as mail-in ballots will start hitting mailboxes around California within the next two weeks.

 

Plenty has been written here and elsewhere about the congressional choices, where some races involve Republicans who have won repeatedly in districts where Democrats hold registration advantages. This means efforts by both parties to get their voters to actually vote could decide who will control policymaking in Congress for at least the next two years.

 

Polls indicate California’s Senate race between Democrat Adam Schiff and Republican Steve Garvey is no real contest, with Schiff holding leads that average about 20 percent in virtually every poll.

 

But the statewide questions posed by 10 propositions provide fodder aplenty for voters to consider while marking their ballots.

 

For some, the most controversial of these is Proposition 5, placed on the ballot by state legislators who want to make it easier for cities and counties to raise money for affordable housing projects and infrastructure like sewers and bridges.

 

Since 1978, it has taken a two-thirds majority vote of local voters to pass bonds for such projects, other than schools, which for more than 10 years have needed only a 55 percent majority to raise money for buildings and other causes.

 

Prop. 5 would lower the passage threshold to that same 55 percent for many non-school projects, marking a fundamental change in 1978’s tax-limiting Proposition 13. This one is strongly opposed by the tax-fighting Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

 

There’s also Proposition 6, another issue placed on the ballot by legislators. It would end forced labor by convicts in prisons and jails. If it passes, prisons could no longer compel inmates – no matter what crimes they’ve committed – to work. Prisoners could not be penalized for refusing assignments.

 

Of course, inmates could still get credit toward earlier-than-normal release for things like serving on fire-fighting crews, but they would have to be paid much more than the current pennies per hour.

 

That would mark a major change in prison life, giving convicts more choices and the chance at having even more empty time to while away than now.

 

Rent control is also back on the ballot, after voters twice earlier voted down statewide controls. Under Proposition 33, local governments would not need approval from their own voters to enact controls on residential property, not even on relatively new units built since 1995 that are now exempt from most rent control. The concept of vacancy decontrol of rents, allowing them to rise to market rates when tenants move out, would also disappear; local officials could keep controls in effect even when units are vacated.

 

Meanwhile, Proposition 34 goes after the tax-exempt status of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, aiming to strip its non-profit status. It would also allow Medi-Cal to negotiate many drug prescription prices for its clients, just as the federal Medicare system recently did with several drugs used nationwide, including insulin.

 

And Proposition 32 would raise minimum wages statewide to $18 per hour starting Jan. 1, less than two months after Election Day.

 

There’s also the ballyhooed Proposition 36, which aims to make felony prosecutions easier to conduct against repeat shoplifters and thieves even if their take from any one episode does not exceed the $950 bottom limit on the value of stolen goods needed for felony processing.

 

At the very least, this all presents a ballot that should be fascinating enough to hold voter interest for the few minutes it takes to mark choices that might affect millions of lives for many years to come.

       

    -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.

 

Suggested pullout quote: “The ballyhooed Proposition 36, aims to make felony prosecutions easier to conduct against repeat shoplifters and thieves.”

POLITICIZING CENSUS: THWARTED TRUMP AIM REAPPEARS IN PROJECT 2025

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 15, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“POLITICIZING CENSUS: THWARTED TRUMP AIM REAPPEARS IN PROJECT 2025”

 

There is no 2024 election phenomenon from which former President Donald Trump has tried harder to distance himself than Project 2025, an inch-plus thick manifesto from the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation written largely by former officials in Trump’s 2017-21 administration.

 

“I haven’t read it. I don’t want to read it, purposefully. I’m not going to read it,” he said during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris.

 

But days later, he said of the Heritage Foundation: “They’re going to lay the groundwork and detail plans for exactly what our movement will do…when the American people give us a colossal mandate to save America.”

 

Every poll shows that when voters hear what’s in Project 2025, the vast majority recoil, reason enough for Trump to deny any link to it.

 

Among other things, the manifesto advocates criminalizing abortion nationwide, increasing some taxes and reducing Social Security and Medicare benefits.

 

But another provision, a direct call to politicize the U.S. Census, will ring bells with many Californians who remember Trump’s effort to do that in 2019, a move that could have cost California many millions of dollars in federal funds.

 

The Constitution says that every 10 years, the Census is to “enumerate” every person in this country, not property owners or voters or citizens or any other category. Just live bodies. The information is then used to divvy up seats in Congress and federal spending in many categories, from grants to police to funding new sewers.

 

Trump was determined during his administration to include a question on citizenship in the Census. Doing that, said opponents, would likely cause many undocumented immigrants who fear deportation to avoid being counted, even if it meant heading out the back door while Census takers knocked on the front one. This threatened to cause a drastic undercount of the undocumented, translating into significantly lower federal support for many programs, from Medi-Cal to assistance for teaching English learners in public schools. It also could have cost California a seat in Congress, because this state hosts more undocumented immigrants than any other, by far, and a severe undercount would show California population as far lower than it is.

 

That would be fine with Project 2025’s authors at the Heritage Foundation. One passage says, “A new (Trump) administration should work to actively engage with conservative groups…to promote response to the decennial Census.”

 

The idea, says Project 2025, would be to ensure that every conservative gets counted. It says nothing about Native Americans, immigrants or low-income communities, groups that reportedly often go undercounted.

 

So Trump’s supporters want to use the next Census to promote their interests, and his. They call themselves conservatives, while seeking to control what young women do with their bodies and the most private of their decisions, the opposite of the small government American conservatism has usually promoted.

 

For California, a positive in all this is that the next Census will not be conducted until 2030, with new congressional district lines effective in 2032. If Trump were elected next month and leaves office as scheduled in January 2029, that would leave plenty of time for a reversal of whatever changes he might attempt in the Census.

 

So this front in Trump’s long campaign to punish Californians for voting against him heavily in 2016, 2020 and maybe in 2024, could at least be delayed and might be avoided altogether despite what the Project 2025 blueprint says.

 

That would not stop him from acting against California on other fronts, like attempting to eliminate the state’s authority to regulate its smog levels and threatening (as recently as this month) to cut emergency services after fires and floods.

 

Should Trump get elected this fall and if his previously attempted plans to change the Census endure until 2030, California could be a big loser, given that the funds at stake cover government nutrition programs, public schools, highways, anti-pollution assistance and much more.

 

That’s just some of what’s at stake in the election that begins very soon.

 

 

    -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

 

Suggested pullout quote: “This is one front in Trump’s long campaign to punish Californians for voting against him heavily in 2016, 2020 and maybe in 2024.”

LARA, NEWSOM APPEAR BENT ON ENRICHING INSURANCE COMPANIES

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

      “LARA, NEWSOM APPEAR BENT ON ENRICHING INSURANCE COMPANIES”

 

        From the way they’re acting, it’s clear Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Insurance Commissioner Ricardo Lara believe they have no choice other than caving in to insurance industry blackmail.

 

        Or maybe it’s extortion. Either way, these two supposedly strong and independent officials have been working steadily this year to enrich insurance companies.

 

        When State Farm announced a 30 percent hike in property insurance rates, neither elected official blinked. The same when Allstate and others announced even larger rate increases.

 

        Newsom, at least, has the grace to gripe about inflation at the same time he’s helping cause it. Lara doesn’t even mention the fact that astronomically higher homeowner and business property insurance premiums create burdens on individual citizens just as much as seemingly unending increases in grocery prices.

 

        Here’s the nature of the blackmail/extortion these men face: Insurance companies are steadily canceling more and more property insurance policies in known wildfire areas because, they say, the risks of writing or continuing that kind of coverage in those places are simply too high.

 

        Never mind that they have always in the past written such policies, making strictly local price increases when risks and replacement costs rose. If they now won’t write insurance, homeowners are forced to turn to the state Fair Plan, California’s insurer of last resort, where rates are much higher than even the companies charge.

 

        Newsom, who pushed unsuccessfully over the summer for a new law to greatly speed up processing rate increases, lost out when his plan went nowhere in the state Assembly and Senate.

 

        But…not to worry, Gavin. No sooner had that proposal died than Lara proposed virtually the same thing, but as a regulation, not a law. The essence is the same. The consequences for homeowners and businesses would be the same.

 

        Neither Newsom nor Lara needed to react to insurance company blackmail (“We’ll stop writing any policies in California if we don’t get our way.) by simply caving in. They could have told the companies something like this: If you don’t sell property insurance here, then you won’t be selling any car insurance or life insurance or coverage on luxury items, either.

 

        That’s called linkage, and California had it for earthquake insurance until the aftermath of the 1994 Northridge Earthquake. Until then, companies that did not sell quake insurance couldn’t sell other coverage in this state.

 

     But then-Insurance Commissioner Chuck Quackenbush set a precedent for caving in to the companies. Rather than fighting back, he lobbied the Legislature to create the California Earthquake Authority, which has had the good fortune to see its reserves pile up over 30 years in which the state saw no urban quakes of magnitude above 6.0 on the Richter Scale.

 

        The latest in Lara’s series of moves aiming to placate and bring more profit to insurance companies is his attempt to bring Newsom’s rate-hike speedup plan to reality via the back door.

 

        Primarily because of public hearings aimed at letting consumer groups shed light on rate increase requests, it usually takes some months to get a premium increase through. When rate hikes have been forced through faster, with only sketchy hearings, the companies have usually gotten about 97 percent of what they ask. But with full hearings, according to the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group, that percentage has been cut by about 25 percent.

 

        Even though the rate-making process takes about the same time with or without full hearings, Consumer Watchdog claims hearings have cut the prices paid by customers just over $6 billion over the last few years.

 

        The group says the 1988 Proposition 103 – which also made the insurance commissioner an elected post – requires full-scale hearings. Consumer Watchdog’s founder, Harvey Rosenfield, wrote that initiative.

 

        The bottom line: While Lara says “We do not have the luxury of time” in processing rate increases, reality suggests following the full procedures its author says are required by Prop. 103. This saves consumers money while not damaging the companies. Why, then, would Lara be trying to squelch that process if he’s really acting for consumers and not for the companies whose excesses he’s supposed to rein in?

       

 

-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

TRUMP’S ANTI-CALIFORNIA RIFF IGNORES POSITIVES

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “TRUMP’S ANTI-CALIFORNIA RIFF IGNORES POSITIVES”

 

        A bright sun, blue sky and equally blue Pacific Ocean formed the backdrop the other day when ex-President Donald Trump came to his golf course on the Palos Verdes Peninsula near Los Angeles essentially to run down California and blame everything he listed on Vice President Kamala Harris, whom he trailed by slim margins in most polls of that moment.

 

        It was like listening to the ultimate “declinist” diatribe, to borrow a term for this state’s critics coined by former Gov. Jerry Brown.

 

        Yet, for every claim Trump mentioned (true, false or partially correct), another observer might have named a positive, based on several recent independent studies.

 

        For one example, Trump said California has “the highest inflation” in America. Incorrect. This state has seen significant inflation, but nevertheless had only the seventh largest price increases in the nation over most of this year.

 

        Trump didn’t mention the WalletHub.com study indicating Californians had among the highest confidence in their own financial futures, based on personal spending and plans for it. Another sign of optimism: Californians ranked first in the nation, increasing their credit card debt by $4.5 billion in the second quarter of this year. Of course, California has by far the largest population among the states and therefore the most active credit card accounts.

 

        Trump claimed, too, that California has the highest taxes in America. Not true. Yes, this state has the highest sales tax, 7.5 percent. But overall, the tax burden here ranks eighth among the states, largely because of the 1978 Proposition 13, which puts California property taxes in the bottom half nationally despite the state’s ultra-high real estate prices. The Trump golf course benefits directly from this.

 

        But Trump neglected to mention that California ties Washington State as the best in the West for finding jobs, according to CommercialCafe.com rankings. San Francisco ranks in that study as America’s best city for starting a post-college career. Six other California cities ranked in the top ten of that category, including Sacramento, Stockton, Fresno, San Bernardino, Victorville and Menifee. And it had four cities ranked in the top 10 best places for working parents: San Francisco, Fremont, Irvine and Oakland.

 

        Plus, California tops all states in the number of major corporations headquartered here, at 57, outstripping the 52 in New York and 50 in Texas.

 

        The ex-President blasted this state for its homeless problems, saying that “After Kamala Harris and Gavin Newscum (sic) took charge of San Francisco, homelessness increased by 200 percent.” Yes, homelessness has risen in California, standing at 186,000 unhoused statewide in the most recent surveys, but in San Francisco, it was at its lowest level since 2015 when surveyed early this year.

 

        At the same time, Trump never mentioned that California ranks in the top ten states for teachers' wellbeing, according to another new analysis, this from the WalletHub website. California has the seventh highest teacher salaries, when adjusted for the cost of living. It ranks first in digital learning for schoolchildren, and fifth in the pace of teacher pay increases. 

 

        For Trump to have cited any of California’s many positives (none cited here are related to the state’s best-in-the-nation weather), would not have benefited him politically.

 

        Instead, he compared California’s forest maintenance with Finland, ignoring that country’s location in far more northerly Scandinavia, where forest fires are scarce. Thickly wooded forests with dense underbrush that Trump believes should be cleaned out also are uncommon in the far north. Trump, aware he has no more chance than ever of winning California’s 54 electoral votes this year, also threatened to withhold federal firefighting assistance if the state sticks with recently adopted clean water standards.

 

        Trump’s anti-California riff was plainly designed for use in campaign commercials airing in other states where the positives of California life get short shrift on newscasts that often feature lurid video of wildfires and the mudslides that often follow. Not to mention car chases.

 

        But Californians would be wise to remember that news coverage generally features negatives more than positives, which means that declinist visions of California will always get more exposure than the positives, no matter what or when.

       

   -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

WHY WE NEED NEWSOM’S SPECIAL SESSION ON GAS PROFITS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
      “WHY WE NEED NEWSOM’S SPECIAL SESSION ON GAS PROFITS”

 

        The gasoline price gouging that has plagued Californians sporadically for decades appears no longer to be merely occasional. Rather, it’s become pretty steady.

 

        Oil companies and refiners have so conditioned millions of California drivers that today’s prices, still well above national averages, now draw few complaints because they are about a buck lower than a few months ago.

 

        But the facts remain: Every time refiners allow their stocks to dwindle while blaming either in-plant accidents or routine maintenance, pump prices skyrocket and profits of the oil companies that own California’s Big 5 refineries rise to record or near-record levels.

 

        This means any slight disruption in supplies, intentional or not, resulting from collusion between the companies or not, produces huge margins for the companies. They include Chevron, Marathon, PBF, Phillips 66 and Valero, which together produce the vast bulk of gasoline consumed here.

 

        They also supply neighboring states like Nevada and Arizona, but consistently refuse to cut back out-of-state shipments when those shortages occur, putting virtually all the high-price burden on Californians.

 

        When state legislators refused to confront these realities during their regular session ending as September began, Gov. Gavin Newsom called them back into special session.

 

        The session was to start immediately, but the state Senate leadership refused to heed Newsom’s order and its members headed home for what was scheduled as a three-month break.

 

        Senators later relented, saying they would return to work if the state Assembly passes a steady-supply bill. Most senators are Democrats who campaigned in part as consumer advocates. Did Newsom get them to partially relent by hinting he might cut back some of their perks and staffing funds, or maybe some of their expense accounts, at next summer’s budget time?

 

        Said Newsom in calling the session, “It should be common sense for gas refineries to plan ahead and backfill supplies before they go down for maintenance, in order to avoid price spikes. But the price spikes are actually profit spikes for Big Oil, and they’re using the same old scare tactics to maintain the status quo.”

 

        Among the scare tactics: Some refiners threaten to reduce operations or even shut down parts of their facilities if the state imposes new rules requiring consistent on-hand reserves.

 

        For sure, special legislative sessions focused on just one subject can generate powerful momentum for change.

 

        It took a special session in early 2023 to get the Legislature to create a new Oversight Division in the state Energy Commission and force refiners to file monthly supply and profit margin information with it. The division has the power to set price limits, but has never exercised it.

 

        This may be one sign of the clout Big Oil still has in California politics, even though all the state’s big refineries are owned by out-of-state companies, now that Chevron is moving its head office to Texas.

 

        Newsom ordered this fall’s supposed special session, the first in modern history to be rejected by any part of the Legislature, after lawmakers refused to act on his proposal to require that refiners maintain stable gasoline inventories at all times. This is opposed by the governors of Arizona and Nevada, which get their gasoline from California and worry a high inventory here will make their supplies less certain.

 

        But it would be one step toward preventing sudden spikes like the $2 per gallon hike that hit California consumers suddenly in February 2023, but barely touched Nevada and Arizona.

 

        Another step could be having the new Energy Commission division use its authority to set a limit on profits. Some consumer advocates suggested a limit of 70 cents margin per gallon of gas, far below their take when price spikes occur.

 

        No one knows how long Newsom’s special session order will stay in effect; it might thrust legislators into a special session running concurrently with regular business once the lawmakers return to Sacramento in December.

 

        But the bottom line is clear: If California ever is to stop the constant cycle of sudden gasoline price spikes followed by record profits and then by a gradual lowering of prices – but never down to prior levels – there has to be action sometime. As the old saying goes, if not now, when? 

-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

WILL DEBATING SKILLS KEY ANOTHER HARRIS WIN?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

        “WILL DEBATING SKILLS KEY ANOTHER HARRIS WIN?”

 

        All through Kamala Harris’ political career, success in debates has keyed her victories in very tight elections. Her tactic of letting opponents beat themselves may have provided winning margins in two of her four major triumphs, including the one that propelled her into major league politics.

 

        That was her 2010 exchange in a so-far unique contest for what is California’s de facto No. 2 elective job, attorney general. It was the only time in state history that the state’s two most prominent district attorneys, the chief prosecutors of San Francisco and Los Angeles counties, have faced off.

 

        Befitting a once-time-only contest, that campaign was exceptionally close, pitting San Francisco Democrat Harris against Republican Steve Cooley of Los Angeles in a race decided by a margin of less than 1 percent, or 74,000 votes out of 9.7 million cast.

 

        There was only one debate in that contest, staged on Oct. 10, 2010 in a mock courtroom at the UC Davis School of Law.

       

        That’s where Harris first showed her ability to calmly let an opponent self-destruct. The significant moment came when a moderator asked Cooley, faced with being paid less as attorney general than he was as district attorney, whether he would use his county pension to make up the salary difference.

 

        Responded Cooley, “I definitely earned whatever pension rights I have, and I will certainly use that to supplement the very low, incredibly low salary that’s paid to the attorney general.” At the time, that official was paid $150,000 per year, while the average household income in California was $54,280.

 

        Harris, meanwhile, stood by silently, much as she merely chuckled over some of the falsehoods ex-President Donald Trump told in their Sept. 10 debate, including his calling her a Marxist and contending that illegal immigrants from Haiti are eating the pets of Americans.

 

        Cooley later conceded he erred in being so frank, but not before the Harris campaign featured his admission in campaign fliers. No one knows for sure, but there’s a strong likelihood his admission cost Cooley enough votes to win an election not decided until the very last day of vote-counting.

 

        Harris performed similarly in her other squeaker election victory, the one she shared with President Biden in narrowly beating Trump and then-Vice President Mike Pence in 2020, an outcome Trump still refuses to concede.

 

The closest he’s come to that was his offhand remark during the Sept. 10 debate, when he said “I’m not President right now.”

 

        In the Pence-Harris encounter, Pence tried to ape Trump’s often-used debating style of interrupting his opponents, who usually have been overwhelmed by Trump’s energy and not protested. But Harris broke in, reminding Pence that “I’m speaking!” Pence stopped talking.

 

        Polls showed that moment gained Harris and Biden significant support among undecided women voters.

 

        Which demonstrates that Harris has a gift for not beating herself while letting her opponents do just that to themselves.

 

        The key question all this raises, in light of many polls indicating a large majority of voters – including many Trump supporters who said their votes would not change – thought Harris won their debate:

 

        Will that debate be a new difference-maker for Harris in what figures to be another ultra-close election?

 

        Another key question: Should Trump agree to a second debate on another television network, as Harris now suggests, in an effort to reverse the apparent outcome of the September encounter? Trump says he won’t, but candidates often change their minds about debating or not.

 

        If he does that, Trump will figure he is capable of restraint when Harris tries to bait him into wandering far off his intended themes, as she did by questioning the Trump campaign’s tally of crowd sizes and reactions at Trump rallies.

 

        He has yet to demonstrate that capability, while Harris has, possibly thanks to her experience in courtroom exchanges that come about as close as real life gets to an election debate.

 

        It’s a key strategic decision for Trump, who has been reluctant to admit there’s anything he cannot do.

       

    -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.

 

POSSIBLE NEW A.I. LAW IS NOWHERE NEAR ADEQUATE

 

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

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “POSSIBLE NEW A.I. LAW IS NOWHERE NEAR ADEQUATE”

 

Scott Wiener will be all smiles if Gov. Gavin Newsom signs his supposedly landmark bill to govern development of new artificial intelligence devices and programs in California.

Newsom will decide whether to sign or veto the measure, also known as SB 1047, this month.

 

This bill originally was also intended as a model for other states to follow, but it now falls far short of that. Instead, it was so watered down in the legislative process, so dumbed down for the sake of political convenience that it might as well contain no new rules.

 

Yes, Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco, sported a big grin when his bill passed, despite being cut to pieces in the state Assembly. That might have been because pioneering A.I. startups Open AI and Anthropic are in his San Francisco district. Helping out big-potential hometown businesses by accepting a weaker measure can’t hurt him as he continues his not exactly secret quest to take the seat Nancy Pelosi has occupied for decades in Congress whenever she retires.

 

Open AI is the developer of the widely-used A.I. tool Chat GPT, which has often been wrong about a host of things.

 

But here’s the real question for Wiener and the governor who may sign his bill into law: Why set up a complicated, often obfuscated so-called protection against harmful robots and mechanical minds when simple rules that could protect against all kind of problems were laid out about 82 years ago by a leading scholar and science fiction author?

 

In his 1942 short story “Runaround,” Isaac Asimov first put forward his three laws of robotics, which would become staples in his myriad later works, including the famed “Foundation” series.

 

“The first law is that a robot shall not harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm. The second law,” Asimov wrote, “is that a robot shall obey any instruction given to it by a human, and the third law is that a robot shall avoid actions or situations that could cause harm to itself.”

 

Rather than offering this kind of wide but simple protection, politics interferes. Some opponents questioned even the softened Wiener bill that eliminated a previously proposed state department specializing in safety measures for A.I. devices in all forms. Instead, they would be submitted for approval to the attorney general’s office, never known for its cybernetic genius.

 

The attorney general, nominally California’s top law enforcement officer, could penalize companies posing imminent threat or harm. But there is no solid definition of what that means.

 

Backers of the Wiener measure claimed it creates guardrails to prevent A.I. programs from shutting down the power grid and causing other sudden disasters. It’s clear some kind of controls are needed because A.I. is developing fast and in many forms, from taking over most mathematical functions at banks to writing automated news stories.

 

Then there’s the state’s legitimate concern that it not set up rules so tough they threaten to drive out the newest potential high tech economic engine, one that’s already picking up some of the slack for companies like Tesla and Toyota, which moved headquarters to other states.

 

Then there are those who claim this would be head-in-the-clouds regulation does not halt everyday real-world concerns like privacy and misinformation. For sure, A.I. produces plenty of misinformation, often mangling basics like birth dates and birthplaces, thus complicating some people’s lives. Wiener’s bill offers no recompense for these ills.

 

Why not instead merely adopt Asimov’s rules? They’re simple and his vivid imagination used them as central features of many novels and stories involving robots with disparate personalities and functions.

 

The advantage to starting with simple rules to govern an industry that has previously had few is that it allows for designing new rules as need for them is demonstrated, and leaving people and companies alone to develop new A.I. functions and wrinkles with little interference from government agencies unless circumstances demand they step in.

 

There’s an old principle that says “Start simply,” and if there’s ever been a situation demanding this, it is the potentially limitless field of artificial intelligence. Just another big decision for the lame duck Gov. Newsom.

 

    -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

IF HARRIS WINS, WHITHER NEWSOM?

 

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

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “IF HARRIS WINS, WHITHER NEWSOM?”

 

There is no love lost between ex-President Donald Trump and California Gov. Gavin Newsom. You could see this as early as 2017, when the two joined then-Gov. Jerry Brown to visit areas suffering wildfire damage in and near national forests.

 

The obvious distaste between Newsom, then the lieutenant governor, and then-President Trump was clear from their facial expressions each time they glanced at one another.

 

But irony occurs. And so, for Newsom to have much of a political future, he needs Trump to retake the presidency this fall and then leave peacefully at the end of what would be his second term.

 

Right now, there is no guarantee of either. As a result, there is no certainty today that Newsom has much of a long-term future in politics.

 

Here is the basic reality: Vice President Kamala Harris currently holds a narrow lead over Trump both in most national polls and surveys of likely voters in the swing states that figure to decide their autumn race.

 

Which raises the question: If Harris wins, whither Newsom?

 

He can’t run for governor again, ever, because of term limits, even though the current crop of 2026 candidates for Newsom’s current job can sometimes seem like pygmies beside him. Newsom has sat astride California politics almost all-powerfully most of the last six years. Whatever he’s wanted, he’s gotten. What he hasn’t wanted, has not happened.

 

        Of course, that’s the power of his office at work. Newsom was not such a prepossessing figure in his previous job as lieutenant governor, just as current Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis has not seemed much of a presence – yet.

 

        If Trump were to beat Harris this fall, Newsom would have two full years after the end of his term in Sacramento to travel the country running for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination. But if Harris wins and then runs for reelection in 2028, Newsom would have to wait for 2032.

 

        At 56, he’s young enough to wait that long, as he’ll be 64 by then, a fairly typical age for presidential candidates.

 

        The last California politician to spend six years running for President while out of office was Ronald Reagan, who labored so long in part because he lost in his bid for the 1976 GOP nomination. It eventually worked for him, as he spent most of those years campaigning for fellow Republicans in more than three dozen states, picking up chits for future favors. He easily beat out George H.W. Bush for the 1980 GOP nomination, then took Bush as his running mate.

 

        Prior to President Biden’s sudden dropout from the current campaign, Newsom looked like a very strong candidate for his party’s 2028 nomination for what would be an empty seat if Trump left office peacefully.

 

        But things have changed. Just by making Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz her vice presidential choice, Harris handed Newsom a major potential 2028 or 2032 competitor not previously on anyone’s radar. Her vetting process also gave new prominence to governors like Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Roy Cooper of North Carolina. All could be future competitors for Newsom, as could Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

 

        One way for Newsom to remain nationally prominent would be to get a job in a Harris cabinet, if she wins this fall.

 

        Serving as secretary of state certainly helped Hillary Clinton to the Democratic nomination in 2016.

 

        But does Harris want Newsom around? The two maintained a wary alliance through much of their twin careers, both starting as proteges of former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown and often sharing campaign managers, never competing for the same jobs.

 

        But Harris kept Newsom off the stage at the summer Democratic National Convention, his only televised speech coming as he gave California delegate votes to Harris, thus making her nomination official.

 

        Where his future potential rivals all had podium speaking slots, Newsom did not. This bodes poorly for a high-profile cabinet job like secretary of state or treasury.

 

        So there’s a definite possibility Newsom could be left in the wilderness, much as Reagan was after Jerry Brown took over the governor’s office in 1974. 

 

        Right now, no one knows whether an out-of-office Newsom would have Reagan-style staying power, even if his hair is somewhat similarly thick and slick.

 

    -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

 

NEWSOM SHOULD GO SLOW ON OFFSHORE WIND POWER

 

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

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS 

     “NEWSOM SHOULD GO SLOW ON OFFSHORE WIND POWER”

 

 

        There weren’t many causes Gov. Gavin Newsom pushed harder during the just-concluded state legislative session than offshore wind power, something that has been tried in only a few places around America.

 

 

        For some in the Legislature, including Senate President Mike McGuire of Sonoma County, this seems an easy way to modernize the state’s electric grid without risking much pollution, taking advantage of an inexhaustible natural resource – winds that often gust at 40 mph or more.

 

 

        But now it’s time for Newsom to go slow before committing California electric customers (who always pay for new generating facilities via their monthly bills) to fund this largely untried renewable energy source.

 

 

        If adopted, a plan to build enough offshore windmills to fill about 6 percent of California’s electric needs would be America’s largest commitment to offshore wind power.

 

 

        There is not yet any offshore wind power along the Pacific Coast, but yes, there is offshore wind power on the Atlantic Coast. There’s a small (five-turbine) project off Block Island, R.I. Also a few windmills off Virginia and others off Nantucket Island in Massachusetts.

 

 

        Many of those turbines are anchored to the ocean floor in locations where water is shallow even miles offshore.

 

 

        Off California, where federal authorities have identified three potential wind power areas (off Morro Bay and Diablo Canyon on the Central Coast and near Eureka on the North Coast), waters are so deep that windmills will have to float, anchored by cables.

 

 

        The wind turbine industry is already rejoicing over the California possibilities. Said an announcement from Turn Forward, an organization promoting offshore windmills, “Offshore wind is California’s golden opportunity to generate high-power jobs, spark investments in local communities and provide clean, domestic and reliable power to millions of homes and businesses while helping stabilize electricity prices.”

 

 

        That’s not quite the way some other folks see it. Take the county board of commissioners in Cape May County, NJ, where a Danish company proposes a development called Ocean Wind One. “What’s happening in Nantucket shows we were right to oppose offshore wind power (Cape May County’s stance since 2021),” said a statement from county executive Len Desiderio. He called events at Nantucket, near Martha’s Vineyard, an “offshore wind environmental catastrophe.”

 

 

        Some 15 miles off the celebrated beaches of Nantucket, renowned as a summer resort, a development called Vineyard Wind this summer saw one-third of a turbine blade snap off. Industrial fiberglass, paint, foam, adhesive and other objects soon washed up on Nantucket beaches and later onto Cape Cod.

 

 

        The Cape May commission, working to stave off a larger development near its coast, called this “an environmental catastrophe akin to an oil spill. Vacationers are leaving the beaches or cancelling trips. Tourism on Nantucket has taken a devastating hit.”

 

 

        Cape May doesn’t want those risks. A new question is whether California should invite new problems of its own.

 

 

        Meanwhile, the nation’s largest investor in wind power, entrepreneur Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, also raises questions about wind power, whether offshore or on dry land.

 

 

        Yahoo Finance reported in 2023 that “Buffett’s energy division has reported a negative income tax rate for five straight years thanks to billions of dollars worth of tax credits…for producing clean power.”

 

 

        The firm during the years from 2019 to 2022 took tax credits of $6.1 billion from the federal government, far above its profit levels, thus slashing all its other tax burdens. In one quarter last year, Berkshire Hathaway’s wind power fields collected tax credits of $363 million, far more than its $223 million in actual profits. That made wind farming worth almost $600 million to the company in just one three-month period.

 

 

        Said Buffett, “On wind energy, we get a tax credit if we build…wind farms. That’s the only reason to build them. They don’t make sense without the tax credit.” What about all those turbines in places like the Altamont Pass near Livermore and the San Gorgonio Pass northwest of Palm Springs? They are basically tax credit farms for their owners.

 

 

        California might or might not avoid environmental disasters from wind turbines. That’s unknown. But some risks are now known and Newsom should be very careful before approving anything more than small, experimental developments.

 

 

        -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