RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN GAS PRICES AND REFINERY CLOSURES

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 4, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“RESOLVING THE CONTRADICTION BETWEEN GAS PRICES AND REFINERY CLOSURES”

 

It’s an apparent contradiction: on one hand, state regulators reported in May that California gasoline pump prices since 2015 average 41 cents per gallon higher than in other states, after accounting for taxes, fees and environmental costs.

 

On the other hand, two of California’s large refineries now plan to close soon, one by the end of this year and the other within the first half of 2026. They say they can’t afford to stay open, even though together they make 17 percent of the state’s gasoline.

 

How can gasoline refiners be making the highest profits in the lower 48 states, but still not enough to keep their plants open?

 

To understand this, it’s important to know the average net profit for oil companies varies, with the biggest refiners – the ones supplying branded stations like Chevron and Shell – making more money because of their retail marketing networks, while smaller refiners often supply lower-priced independent brands that pay (and charge) less.

 

State regulation of gas refining is a pretty new thing, dating from a 2023 law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom that allows a wing of the state Energy Commission to order that refiners keep higher stocks on hand than previously at times when they’ve recently been caught at price gouging. One such time came in February 2022, when pump prices jumped more than $2.50 per gallon within two days of an outage at one refinery near Los Angeles.

 

When Newsom signed the law allowing this kind of regulation, he accused oil companies of “gouging” and “screwing Californians.”

 

In fact, the state reported this spring that per-gallon excess profits by the oil companies peaked at $2.36 during a fall 2022 price spike.

 

There have been no similar-sized spikes since the new law took effect.

 

So how to explain the scheduled closures of a Phillips 66 refinery near Los Angeles and a Valero plant in Benicia?

 

Even with these refineries charging prices and posting profits consistently well above national averages – but without sudden windfall profits due to occasional outages for maintenance and mechanical problems – that’s what they plan.

 

Says one expert, “The two refineries are closing because they are old and expensive to run and the state’s planned transition to electric vehicles promised a drop in demand.”

 

Also, these refineries serve more unbranded gas stations than the biggest-in-California Marathon refinery near Los Angeles and the two big Chevron facilities at Richmond and El Segundo. So they make less profit than their competitors that supply large networks of branded stations. Maybe they needed to gouge customers once in awhile just to stay open.

 

Pollution also plays a role. Valero Benicia last October was forced to pay an $82 million fine. The state Air Resources Board and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) imposed the penalty for violations involving unreported emissions of harmful organic compounds, including benzene. An investigation showed the violations had been occurring for about 20 years.

 

To fix up both the refineries aiming to shut down would cost in the hundreds of millions of dollars, an amount they believed they were unlikely to make up soon in the new no-price-spikes era. This situation is not unique: Several refineries in Texas are also closing in response to competition from new foreign “super refineries,” mostly in the Middle East.

 

The closing California plants will likely replace their production with gasoline shipped in from those and other foreign sources, including Indonesia. Chances are, there will be no major shortages, but there may be price increases, which could provide drivers with new reasons to buy EVs.

 

Of course, now that President Trump has eliminated federal EV price incentives and tax refunds, one or both of the outfits that have resolved to shut down may reconsider, as their potential economic futures look better than they did a few months ago.

 

Meanwhile, the remaining large refineries, which may soon be producing as much as 98 percent of California fuel, have no reason to stage a similar shutdown, which promises a long period of stability in this industry after the inevitable adjustment period that would accompany the two scheduled closures.

 

-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 REVITALIZES A NEWSOM PRESIDENTIAL RUN

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 1, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“TRUMP REVITALIZES A NEWSOM PRESIDENTIAL RUN”

 

If President Trump wanted to set up Gov. Gavin Newsom for a strong 2028  run against fellow Democrats and then Trump's chosen Republican successor, he could scarcely have done better than in the last month.

 

First came the president's threat to withhold virtually all federal grant money from California, affecting everything from medical research to sewer building and more.

 

That spurred Newsom to one of his most creative and energetic responses in months, even though his idea of withholding California’s federal taxes won’t work. At least it allowed the governor to say no one can attack California without learning how important it is to the rest of America.

 

Days later, Trump made the possibly unconstitutional move of calling out the California National Guard over Newsom’s objection, supposedly to quell rioting over immigration and deportation raids in Southern California. Then he sent 700 U.S. Marines into Los Angeles, saying they would protect federal personnel and facilities from rioters. All along, local police said they had matters well in hand. But Trump insists he saved the city from “incinerating.”

 

Newsom followed with a national speech denouncing authoritarian behavior and government overreach. Said Newsom, “This brazen abuse of power...inflamed a combustible situation, putting at risk our people, our officers and the National Guard.”

 

Only after that did Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem inadvertently reveal the purely political thought behind Trump’s moves: After her agents tackled and handcuffed Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla when he tried to question her, she got off perhaps the key statement in a week of dramatic talk: “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialist and burdensome government that this governor and this mayor have placed on this country and this city.”

 

Which means a president who pardoned hundreds of convicted January 6 insurrectionists now wants to dictate who Californians elect to lead them.

 

This is pure Trumpian overreach. It validated what Newsom said days earlier in his nationally broadcast speech: “This is about all of us,” he warned. “California may be first, but it clearly will not end here. Democracy is under assault before our eyes.”

 

If Newsom sought a campaign theme, Trump provided it. The governor can now say he stands for America remaining a free country, with no dictator.

 

That speech and other resistance was the reason many protesters at mid-June “No Kings” rallies around California carried signs saying “Resist Trump: Thank you Gov. Newsom.”

 

Trump had never stinted in his enmity for California. But now Newsom’s gloves are also off, and he is active in lawsuits galore against Trump and his tactics. That’s one reason Trump suggested, “I would not hesitate to arrest him.” Newsom dared him to, saying “Come and get me. He knows where I am.”

 

Trump also observed that Newsom loves the publicity all this gives him. That appears accurate.

 

How did Newsom win his newfound popularity as an anti-Trump champion? He first projected strength by refusing to take Trump’s bait and get himself arrested in the act of interfering with immigration officers.

 

“Don’t give him a spectacle,” Newsom urged. “Never use violence.”

 

Just as unique was his response to Trump’s unprecedented threat to cut off federal funds for California. Newsom essentially said “If you take our money, we may cut off yours.”

  

He could say that because California is by far the biggest taxpaying state in the Union, also the biggest “donor” state. This state in 2022, the last year for which full figures are available, paid more than $692 billion in federal taxes, $83.1 billion more than it got back in federal funds. That’s nearly three times the “donation” of the next biggest “donor” state.

 

What if California withheld its billions, as Newsom threatened, and raised the national debt almost $1 trillion? It won’t happen.

 

This would be almost impossible to pull off because typical federal tax payments go straight to the Internal Revenue Service, with no state involvement.

 

Keeping those payments from the IRS would need cooperation from millions of individual taxpayers, thousands of tax preparers and many, many corporate officials.

 

That would require a huge campaign, which will not occur. Still, reminding Trump how important California really is can’t be all bad.

-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

WE’RE NO. 4! WE’RE NO. 4! WHAT DOES THIS RANKING MEAN?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 27, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WE’RE NO. 4! WE’RE NO. 4! WHAT DOES THIS RANKING MEAN?”

 

There were large headlines around California (but not in many Republican-led “red” states) in late spring, when the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis simultaneously found that this state’s economy had surpassed Japan’s to become the world’s fourth-largest, with a gross state product exceeding $4.1 trillion, about $800 billion better than Japan.

 

This had different meanings for different folks. For Gov. Gavin Newsom, it meant new ammunition for his putative 2028 presidential campaign, where he has been challenged lately by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker. Pritzker has taken a page from Newsom’s 2024 manual, when the California governor blasted his Democratic Party mates for being too passive, before lapsing into months of his own political passivity after ex-President Biden handed the party’s 2024 nomination to Kamala Harris and not him.

 

But Newsom is going again on his effort to extend his political life beyond the early 2027 term-out he faces after eight years in office. His first new move was to become a named plaintiff on California’s lawsuit challenging President Trump’s unilaterally imposed tariffs, which vary greatly by country.

 

Now two big economic arbiters have given him some more juice. For sure, Pritzker cannot claim Illinois is even among the world’s top ten economies, let alone No. 4, behind only the rest of the USA, China and Germany.

 

It’s true that the IMF speculates India’s economy might ramp up enough to pass California sometime late next year, but that seems unlikely when California had the world’s highest economic growth rate last year at 6 percent, well above India’s.

 

It all means that Californians are not only more productive than residents of the United Kingdom or any other American state, but also that no matter what opposing politicians might say, Newsom has not mismanaged the economy. Yes, some businesses moved headquarters out of California, like Chevron, Toyota USA and Tesla, but other companies arose to eclipse the effect of those departures. One example might be Open AI, a leader in artificial intelligence and maker of ChatGPT.

 

Bragged Newsom, “California isn’t just keeping pace with the world – we’re setting the pace. Our economy is thriving because we invest in people, prioritize sustainability and believe in the power of innovation.”

 

Not even California’s relatively high sales and income taxes could stymie the state’s economic growth, as California seems to spawn one pioneering new industry after another.

 

But Newsom warned both in his lawsuit and otherwise that Trump’s tariffs could throw a monkey wrench into what California achieves.

 

“While we celebrate this success,” he said, “we recognize that our progress is threatened by the reckless tariff policies of the current federal administration.”

 

In short, California’s more than $675 billion in two-way trade with other countries last year could be brought up very short this year, allowing countries like India, France and Italy to surpass this state in a seesaw race for high ranking, prestige and bragging rights.

 

For the state’s high economic ranking, which far surpasses other states’ performances along with those of prosperous foreign provinces like Canada’s Ontario and the UK’s Wales and Scotland, is not static or guaranteed. It depends on trade and cooperation with other nations, states and provinces.

 

And it depends on California’s own responses to its admitted problems, things like high taxes, a sometimes questionable business climate, earthquakes, wildfires, expensive insurance and much more.

 

But those things can bring advantages, too. An example is residential construction, which will be a huge element in California’s gross state product once reconstruction from last January’s Los Angeles County firestorms ramps up.

 

All of which means the new No. 4 ranking confers little upon California except very ephemeral bragging rights, which can disappear quickly if economic conditions change a lot, something Trump appears determined to make happen.

 

So Newsom and anyone backing him would be wise not to become too smug – for today’s super-high rating is not necessarily a promise of things 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

WILL CONSUMERS PAY UTILITY’S BIG FIRE FINE?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 24, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WILL CONSUMERS PAY UTILITY’S BIG FIRE FINE?”

 

When California’s second-largest electric utility settled a U.S. Forest Service claim for starting a huge fire that covered 114,577 acres in 2020, officials of that power company could not or would not say whether they will try to get their customers to pay the freight.

 

At stake here is $82.5 million which Southern California Edison Co. agreed to pay the Forest Service, which is supposed to use the money to restore or replace more than 100 buildings, many trails and at least 178 vehicles, among other items destroyed in the Bobcat Fire that started Sept. 6, 2020 in the Angeles National Forest northeast of Los Angeles.

 

But the answer to the question of whether consumers will be dunned is already known, even if Edison officials had no immediate response: Of course, the customers will pay. The problem is that the payment, probably averaging more than $5 for each of Edison’s 15 million customers, will never officially be called a reimbursement for the settlement, even though that’s what it will be.

 

This is common practice with the California Public Utilities Commission, which has a long record of restoring fines it charges big utilities like Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric for their many misdeeds via their next routine rate increase request.

 

Edison, like its fellow privately owned utilities, almost always has a rate increase case going before the CPUC. One is happening right now.

 

This rate case sees Edison asking a 23 percent increase in its rates over the years 2026 to 2028, with a decision in that case possible as early as this summer. If it got the full requested increase, customers’ monthly bills would rise by about $17.49 in the first year, adding to California’s status as having the second-highest electricity bills in the USA, trailing only isolated Hawaii.

 

Edison says it needs the extra money for wildfire mitigation, which was found deficient when its equipment helped start the Bobcat fire. Edison equipment also is suspected to have caused the far more destructive Eaton fire that destroyed much of Altadena last January, with executives not even denying those accusations.

 

The new Donald Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the Los Angeles area, former Republican state Assemblyman Bill Essayli of Corona, said the “record settlement against…Edison provides meaningful compensation to taxpayers for the extensive costs of fighting the Bobcat fire and for the widespread damage to public lands.”

 

It may, but the effect on Edison, which continued handing out executive bonuses over the last several years while its equipment helped cause many fires, will be nil.

 

While Edison won’t get the full amount its rate case requests, history suggests it will get most. The more than $80 million in this settlement will be dwarfed by the rate increase and consumers will be lucky if Edison’s bosses so much as blink when they pay up on the settlement.

 

It's all part of the PUC’s decades-long “kabuki dance” with the companies it regulates, where the firms ask for significantly higher rate increases than they know they will get, realizing all along they will get more than they really need and knowing that all fines will essentially be repaid by consumers via the new and higher prices. (In Japanese kabuki dances, elaborate plots often play out, with everyone knowing all along how they will turn out, exactly what happens in rate cases before the CPUC.)

 

So, no, don’t feel the slightest bit sorry for Edison or PG&E the next time you hear they are being fined many millions of dollars for their equipment failures and poor vegetation clearance, even as customers pay them huge sums to maintain and improve that very equipment and vegetation control.

 

Instead, understand this is what happened when utility customers were assessed $13 billion to create the state Wildfire Fund, used to pay for damages caused by utility equipment in fires since the fund was created in 2019 after PG&E suffered a fire-related bankruptcy.

 

Customers will keep paying so long as California governors appoint PUC members willing to let the big utilities off the hook for their misdeeds or negligence. Sadly, there is no end in sight for this.

 

-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

IS NEWSOM’S PUTATIVE CAMPAIGN IN A BUMBLING PHASE?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 20, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“IS NEWSOM’S PUTATIVE CAMPAIGN IN A BUMBLING PHASE?”

 

As California Gov. Gavin Newsom pursues the early phases of what looks like a 2028 presidential campaign, he’s running afoul of two realities about his present office:

 

One is that no California governor can hide for long from any issue affecting the state. It’s too big for that and governors – unlike U.S. senators – don’t get to pick and choose which issues they want to deal with. Everything eventually lands on the governor’s plate, from welfare to water, from budgets to the survival of bees.

 

The other unchanging reality is that Eastern pundits love analyzing the performance of California governors, since the sheer size of this state automatically propels whoever is governor into the status of a presidential possibility. So even though Newsom is mostly staying home, he gets as much national attention as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who are campaigning widely.

 

Newsom can’t escape these realities of his office any more than Jerry Brown or Pete Wilson could. No matter what he does in the waning months of his second term in American’s most prominent state job, it will be analyzed in terms of his presidential chances.

 

That put Newsom’s every move during the January Los Angeles County firestorms under the microscope. So too his podcast and his budget manipulations.

 

Right now, all this does not look great for him. For one thing, the 2024 Joe Biden surrogate who loved to roast candidate Donald Trump has toned down his criticism in the face of threats to the funding of everything in this state from the Coastal Commission to the University of California. Why the Coastal Commission? Trump’s golf course on Southern California’s Palos Verdes Peninsula has had disputes with the Coastal Commission, from beach access to placement of a 70-foot flagpole that exceeded height limits.

 

Few California features are valued more by state residents than public access to beaches fronting on private property. While Newsom likes to say he stands up for California values, he’s had little to say about that one as Trump’s administration threatens to hold up wildfire recovery funds so long as the Coastal Commission exists.

 

Another so-called “California value” is giving Medi-Cal health coverage to undocumented immigrants. Newsom bragged for the last couple of years that California was the first state to provide government health care to all low-income people, regardless of immigration status. But the start of this year’s budget process revealed the program (the state’s version of Medicaid) was $6.2 billion (now $12 billion) in the red because of high drug costs and unexpectedly high Medi-Cal enrollments, among other factors.

 

So Newsom was forced to cut back one of his pride-and-joy programs considerably and national news outlets covered the process closely. At the same time, the governor had to admit he was spending more than $8 billion tax dollars a year to assist illegal immigrants. Other states like New York, Illinois and Oregon also provide some Medicaid coverage for the undocumented, but it’s generally reserved for the pregnant or the very young.

 

Then there’s Newsom’s podcast, where he has featured Trump loyalists like Joe Rogan and Steve Bannon. That’s also where he chose to reveal he opposes allowing transgender girls and women to compete in major sports. 

 

Some called this new stance a major move to the political center for Newsom, whose softer line toward Trump and his demands about some California institutions like the Coastal Commission – created via ballot initiative by a large majority of state voters – also was a move to the middle.

 

Here’s an open question: As Democrats’ anger simmers over some of Trump’s power-grabbing moves, how useful is a move toward the political center in a 2028 presidential campaign?

 

Candidates seeking that year’s nomination will surely need to create major contrasts with Trump and his potential successors like Vice President JD Vance rather than somehow blending in with them. So why make nice to the likes of Bannon, Rogan and conservative activist Charlie Kirk if Newsom wants to lead the opposition to them?

 

For sure, Newsom’s is a unique strategy, unless he’s merely bumbling along with hopes of becoming the de facto leader of the Trump opposition and the Democrats’ 2028 candidate.

-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

NO LONGER JUST TRUMP WARRING ON CALIFORNIA

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NO LONGER JUST TRUMP WARRING ON CALIFORNIA”

 

No one can doubt anymore that President Trump has carried out a “war” on California in both his presidential terms, harming this state’s reputation, capabilities and privileges in ways no other president ever even tried.

 

Trump is not the only president who failed to win California’s 50-plus electoral votes, he’s merely the one who resented it most. So he’s held up promised disaster aid that was never previously doled out in a partisan manner, holding it hostage to longtime Republican policy priorities like requiring government IDs before voters can cast ballots. His national policies targeting immigrants also have more impact here than elsewhere because California is home to a far larger share of immigrants than its share of national population.

 

Now Trump’s campaign to reduce California’s stature by taking away some of its powers and influence has spread to Congress, narrowly controlled by his Republican Party. It’s a campaign occasionally joined by Democrats from Eastern and Midwestern states. When that happens, it can look like a continuation of the “anywhere but California” sentiment that has sometimes influenced Congress to make epically stupid decisions. One classic was placement for years of the National Earthquake Research Center in Buffalo, NY back in the 1970s. That supposed research center took a complete back seat to other seismic researchers at places like Caltech and Stanford, where earthquakes actually occur from time to time. Unlike Buffalo, where no quake topping a meager 3.8 on the Richter Scale has been felt in more than 40 years, a full share of 4s and 5s routinely occurs around California.

 

But few things rankle Republicans in red states like California’s Clean Air Act waiver, which has given it authority since 1970 to make its own smog laws and regulations. This has resulted in advances from the catalytic converter to hybrid gas/electric cars like the Toyota Prius, many Honda Civics and a wide variety of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that run about 30 to 40 miles on electric power before reverting to hybrid status.

 

No doubt, California’s rules have made cars cost more. That’s been generally accepted here under the notion that clean air costs something in a state whose biggest urban centers sit in coastal basins where prevailing winds often blow smog inland to areas where it can essentially pile up and thicken against mountains or substantial hills.

 

So far, no California governor has been ousted over the cost of living in more than 50 years of imposing anti-smog rules that make vehicles and some other goods more expensive. Polls show most Californians accept it’s the price of less emphysema, asthma and other smog-related diseases. The state’s powerful, appointive Air Resources Board now regulates not only vehicles, but industrial emissions and many commercial products, banning – for one example – most leaf blowers. Other state agencies here use similar priorities to promote things like solar and wind energy.

 

Meanwhile, other states including large automotive markets like Pennsylvania and New York accept a lot of California’s reasoning. Fully 17 states and the District of Columbia automatically adopt California smog rules some years after they take effect here.

 

Because carmakers want to construct and sell products for use everywhere, they often build to California standards, making vehicles more expensive everywhere and not just here, where clean cars are more often equated with healthy air.

 

This offends many red state politicians, since the automatic adopters mostly include Democratic-leaning states.

 

They appear most rankled by California’s plan to ban sales of new gasoline-only cars and trucks after 2035. “Every state would lose options – whether you live in California or not,” griped Wyoming’s Republican Sen. John Barrasso, whose state is a major oil pumper.

 

So the latest tactic in the war on California has been an attempt to repeal California’s unique smog-fighting authority. Trump tried this in his first term, but was held up by lawsuits. It’s doubtful that will work this time. Chances are, the state’s powers will at least be dented.

 

But it's doubtful Trump and other Republicans will be satisfied with just this, if they manage it. Which means the war on California will likely persist as long as Republicans control either Congress or the White House.

 

 

-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

PROMISES, PROMISES: FEDS FAILING VICTIMS OF WINTER FIRESTORMS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 13, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“PROMISES, PROMISES: FEDS FAILING VICTIMS OF WINTER FIRESTORMS”

 

So far, the federal government is in large part failing the victims of the firestorms that swept through the Pacific Palisades and Altadena areas of Los Angeles County last January.

 

Things are not the way President Trump said things would be. “We’re going to have you go very quickly,” he promised the fire victims at a press conference staged with Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass while the ashes of the Palisades fire still smoked nearby.

 

That’s in part because Trump and other Republicans have linked any substantial aid package to political preconditions, an unprecedented attempt to leverage a major disaster against ideological opponents. Among those goals, thus far resisted by state officials, are changes in water management policies to disregard most endangered species and adopting voter ID laws, a longtime Republican goal.

 

So much for the American tradition of non-partisan disaster relief.

 

There’s also Trump’s concerted attempt to downsize and virtually eliminate FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which has taken charge of disaster aftermath measures in virtually all wildfire or hurricane disasters of the last several decades.

 

Trump wants to farm out FEMA’s work to the states and provide far less disaster relief funding than in previous episodes.

 

That’s not the spoken reason FEMA refuses to perform analyses of toxic substances in the topsoil remaining on burned-out lots in both the Palisades and Eaton fire footprints, saying only that the scraping of top layers of each lot by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers gives sufficient protection from toxics. Recent soil testing by Los Angeles County officials found elevated lead and arsenic levels at destroyed homes already cleared by Army crews in Altadena, but FEMA officials maintain removing wildfire debris and up to six inches of topsoil is good enough to eliminate immediate public health risks.

 

But what about burned-out homeowners, virtually none of whom is getting toxics-testing funding as part of their homeowner insurance settlements? They have little or no money for testing, one reason only about 200 rebuilding permits had been taken out in the Palisades fire area as of late May.

 

The most common suggestion among researchers and fire victims is for the state to step in where FEMA refuses. But Newsom faces a $12 billion state budget deficit. Every dollar spent on toxics testing for homeowners could be a dollar taken from everything from public schools to state parks to sewer and highway maintenance. So state aid is not likely, especially since the Palisades fire area was previously among the state’s wealthiest enclaves, with an abundance of $3 million-plus home valuations.

 

And yet, who’s going to pull a building permit and stand by while framing of their future home rises from the ashes if they have reason to believe those ashes might somehow poison them?

 

Andrew Whelton, a Purdue University professor and researcher on post-wildfire contamination, told a reporter that comprehensive soil testing is critical for the affected areas’ future health and safety.

 

Newsom at one point asked FEMA to perform detailed tests, but said his request was nixed less than a day after it was posed.

 

It’s been similar for him on Capitol Hill forays to seek $40 billion in general disaster relief for the winter fires. So far, not a penny has cleared the Republican-led Congress.

 

Los Angeles County, meanwhile, did step up in unincorporated Altadena, providing $3 million for soil testing for homeowners downwind of the Eaton fire. But Whelton said that effort – with homeowners submitting one sample to a commercial lab and then having to interpret data on their own – will not provide reliable risk analysis even for people wanting to return to homes that did not burn.

 

Even that effort has not been matched by the city of Los Angeles, of which Pacific Palisades is part. The city now is battling a billion-dollar-plus budget deficit of its own.

 

It adds up to colossal disappointment for all but the wealthiest, who can fund their own testing and analysis, and suggests recovery from the winter fires might not only be far slower than Trump promised, but also slower than after previous major California wildfires, with even worse performances likely after fires yet 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

 

 

THE KEY QUESTION FOR KAMALA HARRIS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 10, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“THE KEY QUESTION FOR KAMALA HARRIS”

 

The polls show Kamala Harris holds the approval of about 50 percent of California voters as she heads into a self-assigned summer of decision making about her political future.

 

Does the former vice president who lost last year’s election by just 1.6 percent of the popular vote want to give up on the possibility of succeeding Donald Trump as president? Is she ready to deal with all the detailed and complex issues that constantly confront any California governor? Can she raise the $100 million or so minimum needed to be a credible candidate for governor?

 

These are just some of the items on Harris’ mind as she disapprovingly watches Trump run the government in a confrontational manner completely foreign to her.

 

But she knows that if she does not run for president in 2028, she will forfeit any advantage she would possess as a barely beaten candidate last time out, one whose defeat now has many 2024 Trump voters feeling a bit of buyer’s remorse.

 

She also knows that if she goes for governor, she will have to promise to serve out a full term in that office should she win. Reneging on that pledge would likely doom her in any presidential primary election, tagging her as a non-promise keeper. But keeping such a pledge also takes her out of the 2028 presidential running.

 

It's a rare quandary no previous California Democrat has faced. The huge question for Harris: Does she care enough about the details of California issues from electric vehicle mandates to Medi-Cal for the undocumented to give up on her national ambitions, at least for most of her 60s? (Harris will be 63 on Election Day 2026.)

 

For sure, Harris bears the image of a surfacy politician. Rivals also blame her for failing to disclose just how disabled ex-President Joe Biden became. Few can name salient achievements of either her six years as state attorney general or her four years as Biden’s No. 2.

 

Some of those are substantial: During the fiscal crisis of 2009-2012, when many thousands of mortgages were threatened with foreclosure, she leveraged California’s sheer size to jump the state’s share of a 2012 national mortgage settlement up from an initial top offer of $4 billion to $18 billion, helping an unknown but large number of Californians evade foreclosure.

 

Between 2013 and 2015, her office recouped more than $1 billion for the state’s major public employee retirement funds after banks and rating agencies lied to greatly overvalue mortgage-backed securities.

 

She also secured a 2012 agreement with Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and HP to require all apps they sell to display clear new privacy policies – and then she created a state privacy enforcement unit to seal that deal.

 

Her record was less noteworthy as vice president, partly because Biden assigned her impossible tasks, like fixing conditions in Latin America that encourage illegal immigration. That assignment did not come with the power to make any improvements.

 

So the Harris image as a lightweight, promoted in part by her cackling responses in some interviews, can be misleading and other candidates for governor would be wise not to underestimate her.

 

But there remains that key question: How interested is Harris in pursuing the state’s problems all the way to solutions, from the fate of the partially-built bullet train to the pesky and expensive issue of caring for indigent immigrants?

 

No one really knows, perhaps not even Harris. That’s what makes this question so vital in a campaign where other candidates like former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and former state Atty. Gen. and federal Health Secretary Xavier Becerra are known for their strong interest in taking on major issues. Candidates like former state Senate President Toni Atkins and former state Controller Betty Yee are similarly known for strong focus.

 

If Harris runs and debates them all, plus Republicans Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco, they will surely be trying to paint her as the lightweight of her reputation and not the accomplished politician of her reality.

 

Which makes running a big risk for Harris, who could lose out as a major national player if she enters this race, regardless of whether she wins or loses.

 

  

-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

ETHICAL ISSUE DOGS ‘$8 PER GALLON’ GASOLINE STUDY

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 6, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ETHICAL ISSUE DOGS ‘$8 PER GALLON’ GASOLINE STUDY”

 

Academics have known for many years the potential for conflicts of interest when they conduct studies or write reports on products or companies for which they have consulted. That’s why they almost always disclose conflicts.

 

There is also no doubt of the strong link between the Saudi Aramco oil company and California’s biggest oil refiner, Chevron, known as Standard Oil of California when it co-founded (with Texaco and two others) just plain Aramco, the Saudi Arabian company’s name when the Americans got it going in the 1930s.

 

Fast forward to mid-April, when television networks like ABC, CBS and Fox, plus Forbes magazine covered a study by Michael Mische, an associate professor at USC’s Marshall School of Business, that predicted $8 per gallon gasoline in this state very soon.

 

There is no such thing as gas price gouging in California, Mische contended. As the New Jersey-based Forbes reported, “the average price of a gallon of regular unleaded (gasoline) in California was $4.67 – more than 55 percent above the national average.”

 

Forbes quoted from Mische’s report, titled “Ensuring California’s Gasoline Security for the 21^st Century.” It “lays out a clear and compelling case for why California fuel costs are so high,” the reasons being structural, state policy driven and “deeply embedded in how the state regulates, produces and distributes gasoline.” It doesn’t help that California refineries ship large amounts to neighbor states.

 

Mische blamed environmental regulations, the state’s cap-and-trade program and seasonal gas blends as big causes of California prices, along with high taxes and fees, frequent refinery closures, declining in-state oil production and the fact there are no pipelines bringing gas here from other states. Other studies have indicated such factors account for about one-third of the price differential.

 

Mische denies oil companies collude to raise prices, despite phenomena like the huge price hikes of February 2023, when a single refinery outage shot pump prices up about $2.50 per gallon overnight – not just for the refiner with the outage, but for every brand of gas.

 

The state then passed new laws aiming to punish such gouging and there have been no new incidents since.

 

Forbes said Mische included a disclaimer saying he “has not received any special compensation and has no promise or anticipation of future compensation for the work presented...” That was vague about the recent past.

 

The upshot of Mische’s report is the new state laws are pointless because there is no gouging. This may surprise the more than 1 million Californians who received $21.65 apiece from the state in mid-May after a settlement reached by state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta with three gasoline trading firms that allegedly manipulated gas prices in 2016, during another refinery outage.

 

Now comes Jamie Court, president of the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group, which has documented how oil company profits set records whenever California gas prices spike.

 

Court obtained a copy of Mische’s resume and discovered the professor’s private consulting firm listed Saudi Aramco as a major client. That company and Chevron still have strong ties even though the Saudi government took ownership of Aramco decades ago.

 

The two companies also partner on advanced refinery technology. So there’s a direct link between California’s largest oil refiner and a major Mische client.

 

This, of course, debunks Mische’s disclaimer about impartiality. Wrote Court in a letter to USC officials, “There is no question that the policies Mische advocates (to the Legislature) will…benefit his client.”

 

Mische responded to an emailed query asking why he failed to disclose his tie to Saudi Aramco in the recent paper, saying he would shortly provide answers to the emailed questions. The answers did not arrive.

 

Policies he recommends include tax subsidies and other giveaways to both oil refiners and drillers. Said Court, “Sacramento lawmakers (were) unaware of Mische’s ties because of his failure to disclose them.

 

“There is no question Mische’s work would be looked at differently if people knew… In failing to (disclose), he dishonors USC and its tradition of ethics.”

 

The bottom line: The decades-long pattern of industry-wide price hikes when only one refinery has an outage makes it clear some kind of collusion and price gouging has long been at work.

 

-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

REPARATIONS UNLIKELY TO ADVANCE FAR THIS YEAR

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 3, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“REPARATIONS UNLIKELY TO ADVANCE FAR THIS YEAR”

 

As this year’s budget negotiations approached their crunch time in late May and early June, it was fast becoming clear that little would get done toward giving reparations to the unknown number of Californians who are descended from slaves.

 

The number is unknown, for one thing, because California was never a formal slave state and no one knows exactly how many of the enslaved were brought here from the Deep South in the years leading up to, during and immediately after the Civil War.

 

For sure, some towns, especially in the Central Valley, saw former Confederate soldiers play prominent roles in the late 1860s and through the 1870s. But how many of their onetime slaves did they bring along to help in their new endeavors? And should we count descendants of a difficult-to-document number of Native Americans killed or enslaved by white Californians during that same period and through the 1880s when totting up the number of persons whose futures were blighted by an ancestry filled with slavery and persecution?

 

Some other states have been inventive in trying to get around these questions. With a racial history not extremely different from California’s, Washington state, for one, has not yet tried to quantify just how many descendants of slaves are among its 7.95 million residents.

 

Rather, Washington officials have tried to take quick action, realizing that slavery and subsequent racism and restrictive real estate covenants did huge harm to families that would have liked to establish generational wealth. In the last year, that state lent $16 million to help with down payments on real estate by people of color whose families were prevented from buying homes by now-outlawed restrictive covenant laws.

 

But Washington state has not recently encountered nearly as severe a state budget shortfall as the last two years have seen in California.

 

Those deficits, papered over in part with stopgap methods that some believe may not be legal, were one reason for last year’s frustrations among the Black Caucus in California’s Legislature.

 

With difficulty finding the funds to cover even required spending, who was going to get serious about setting up the permanently staffed reparations agency called for by a nine-member reparations task force set up under an earlier state law? Not the legislative Black Caucus, which last year killed some reparations proposals before they came to a vote.

 

That engendered substantial bad feeling among Black voters – who pushed for cash payments to all slavery descendants  while legislators were considering whether to set up that task force.

 

This year, a Black Caucus bill seeks to create a permanent Bureau for the Descendants of American Slavery. It may get some impetus from the fact that state legislators seem bent on setting up several unrelated state agencies to take on at least some tasks previously done by the many federal workers and scientists fired by President Trump and his appointees.

 

The new bureau, should it become reality, would try to create a list of descendants of the enslaved. But as with membership in Native American tribes, disputes appear inevitable over how high a percentage of a person’s bloodline would have to stem from the enslaved in order for them to qualify for possible benefits like eased college admissions.

 

Another bill would give California State University $6 million to develop ways to verify genealogy. It’s unclear how that funding might be divided among the 23 Cal State campuses.

 

All of which leaves the reparations question in a state of confusion and disappointment with some Black voters dissatisfied their demands for cash payments have never gotten serious consideration.

 

With weeks of budget compromises and slashes seeming inevitable in the next month, it’s hard to see how the reparations cause can fare much better than it did last year. Which puts it in obvious danger of becoming passe if its various provisions and possibilities fail repeatedly without ever being taken seriously.

 -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

ANTI-SEMITISM SPREADING EVEN IN SMALL CORNERS OF CALIFORNIA

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 30, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ANTI-SEMITISM SPREADING EVEN IN SMALL CORNERS OF CALIFORNIA”

 

As a group, Californians have never been known as a significantly bigoted bunch. But world events may be changing that.

 

Yes, openly expressed prejudice against blacks, Latinos and most other minority groups is not tolerated on any public school or university campus in the state.

 

Without prompting, administrators clamp down on such incidents, whenever and wherever they pop up.

 

Few attending classes on any public campus would dare openly employ the N-word against black fellow students or use other derogatory terms like “wetbacks” or “gooks.” At the very least, suspensions would result.

 

But things have been very different with open anti-Semitism, or Jew hatred, the world’s oldest form of racist discrimination.

 

Elite public campuses with top admission standards from UC Irvine to Berkeley, UCLA and Davis have seen incidents where Nazi symbology like swastikas were openly painted on walls, with few or no consequences. Top private colleges, too, including Stanford University, have seen similar incidents. Until the current academic year and a concerted Trump administration campaign against it, little or nothing was done to fight such open displays of racial/religious hatred.

 

Now, however, the Justice Department has a task force examining whether some new anti-bias rules are effective. The approximately $400 million in federal funding withdrawn this spring from New York’s Columbia University served as a stern first warning to officials of other schools.

 

Legal actions by the Washington, D.C.-based Louis Brandeis Center first called federal attention to unsafe conditions for Jewish students on some large California campuses.

 

Now the newest filings from the Brandeis center and a few associated groups indicate anti-Semitism in California extends to even some obscure corners of the state.

 

Dramatic stories of harassment, insults and threats from some little-watched locales show this is far from isolated on large campuses, as it often is portrayed.

 

No one blinked very hard when allegedly anti-Semitic behavior and lack of significant administrative responses to it were charged at Berkeley’s public schools in a Brandeis center complaint, down to the junior high level.

 

That was Berkeley, after all, long celebrated for extreme behavior. What, then, about the Etiwanda school district in a corner of San Bernardino County including parts of Rancho Cucamonga?

 

Here’s what a federally filed claim from the Brandeis center says happened there to a 12-year-old girl subjected to repeated anti-Semitic bullying and harassment who allegedly got no help from her school leaders and teachers. “Outdoors on school grounds,” says the document filed with the Department of Education, “a student struck her repeatedly with a stick and then with bare hands.” When the victim called out for help, she was allegedly told to “shut her stupid Jewish ass up.” Then she was pinned against an outdoor table and choked until she escaped, red-faced and coughing. 

 

The same girl later allegedly endured more insults in her classroom based on her Jewish identity. Bullying by other students, says the complaint, lasted weeks and one student told the Jewish girl “This wouldn’t be an issue if you weren’t Jewish.”

 

This stuff had nothing to do with Israel or Zionism, two causes often reviled on many campuses. It was pure Jew hatred.

 

The Brandeis complaints also take up anti-Jewish harassment at Cal Poly Humboldt, the former Humboldt State University outside Eureka. Instead of addressing openly anti-Semitic talk and behavior there, the document charges, administrators encouraged Jewish students to hide their Jewish identity to avoid being targeted.

 

Brandeis also details anti-Semitic activity at the private Scripps College, part of the Claremont College consortium near Pomona.

 

There, the complaint says, Pomona College, another consortium member, banned Scripps students who had vandalized buildings and disrupted classes during a demonstration idealizing the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas massacres, but “Scripps bent over backward to ensure Pomona’s bans would have as limited an impact on (those students) as possible.”

 

The complaint also notes that a student-run coffee house on campus closed for a day "in memory of a Hezbollah terrorist.” It adds that the coffee house refuses to hire "Zionist" students and refuses to let Jewish groups hold meetings there. Meanwhile, pro-Hamas groups are reported to meet there weekly.

 

All these events occurred in relatively less prominent academic environments than those recounted in previous complaints. Taken separately, they would be isolated events, but together they suggest that anti-Semitism has somehow embedded itself in many parts of California.

 

-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

MANY CALIFORNIA COLLEGES WELL SET TO RESIST TRUMP’S PUSH

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MAY 27, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“MANY CALIFORNIA COLLEGES WELL SET TO RESIST TRUMP’S PUSH”

 

Harvard made itself the unquestioned leader among American colleges and universities when its president announced it would not knuckle under to President Trump’s attempts to dictate what can and cannot happen or be discussed on its campus.

 

The Crimson risked an immediate $2.2 billion in federal grants for everything from research on dementia to development of new forms of artificial intelligence.

 

Harvard then followed up with a lawsuit aimed at clawing back those previously authorized and awarded grants, plus another $7 billion or so in other research funds Trump’s appointees have threatened to cut off.

 

Never mind the legalities of what the government can cancel and when. When Harvard acted, other colleges that at first bent the knee (Columbia University is Example A of this) suddenly became braver and changed their minds, saying no to many Trump demands. 

 

So far, the action has not centered on California. But it has before, and it might again at any moment. After all, the move against Harvard came via a letter that was sent out before it was fully authorized, but Trump stuck by it despite the error in timing.

 

In an effort to stave off some Trump ire, several California universities had already made moves. The University of California, for example, set new rules virtually banning encampments like those that took hold during the winter of 2023-24, in the wake of the Hamas terror group’s attack on Israel, which saw about 1,450 persons killed or kidnapped into hostage status. Another move by UC banned campus chapters of the group Students for Justice in Palestine.

 

No one doubts it was Harvard’s $53 billion endowment (think of this as a savings account or ‘rainy day fund” that can be deployed in emergencies) that enabled its President Alan Garber’s defiance and his stand for protection of academic independence and freedom of expression in classrooms.

 

But what would happen if California colleges were suddenly targeted seriously? UC Berkeley, for one example, gets just over $1 billion in federal grants for research on subjects from wildfires to public health. It gets another $1.5 billion each year to operate the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory elsewhere in the East Bay. UCLA gets $1.1 billion in federal research money.

 

Amounts flowing to California State University campuses are far smaller. And none of the state universities has an endowment that could let it carry on much research or many other activities without federal funds.

 

But there are several California schools that could carry on quite well. That list is led by Stanford University’s $36.49 billion or $38 billion endowment, which ranks in the top four of American universities. (Its exact value carries varying estimates.)

 

Given that Stanford gets only about 12 percent of its operating revenue from federal funds and grants, that means The Farm could run just fine for years without help from the feds. Inconvenient, yes. Fatal, no. Especially since wealthy alumni would likely step up to contribute if Stanford felt threatened.

 

The last time Stanford previously flashed its bankroll was when it accepted reduced TV revenues for awhile when joining the Atlantic Coast Conference after the old Pac-12 folded.

 

A surprising number of other California schools could also do just fine. Pomona College, with an endowment of about $2.8 billion, according to Forbes Magazine, uses federal funds for a mere 1.4 percent of its operations. At CalTech, with an endowment Forbes places at $3.8 billion, about 9 percent of operating revenue is federal dollars. But that’s because CalTech runs the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and all its space exploration programs for NASA. Trump is not likely to interfere with that and risk becoming “the man who lost the moon.”

 

Other California colleges that might do just fine include Claremont McKenna College and Santa Clara University.

 

Yes, much of the endowment money held by all those schools was donated for specific purposes. But if any of them felt threatened, they would likely appeal to donors or their heirs to loosen those conditions.

 

So no, other than the big public universities, Trump probably can't threaten the independence of California colleges. And that will come as a relief to some.

 

-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