TRAMPLED RIGHTS, LOST RESPECT: WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 16, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“TRAMPLED RIGHTS, LOST RESPECT: WHERE’S THE OUTRAGE?”

 

America is now a country where lawful residents can be grabbed from streets and sidewalks by black-masked operatives for government agencies acting without warrants and sent to prisons in foreign countries.

 

It’s also where the voter-established California Coastal Commission, despised by the current president, can tell an oil company to cease making changes on ocean-bottom pipelines – and then see the order ignored. This is still playing out near Gaviota in Santa Barbara County, but for sure at least some respect for legal authority has been lost.

 

It’s a country whose president sought impeachment for judges whose decisions he does not like, while his appointees sometimes pick and choose which legal rulings to heed.

 

It’s also where a non-elected “official” heading a quasi-government agency called the Department of Government Efficiency could fire hundreds of workers from the Social Security Administration, making citizen dealings virtually impossible with an agency serving more than 70 million Americans until someone said “Oops” and a partial emergency fix followed.

 

At the same time, decades of formal assurances that tax filings will be confidential were reversed with no notice, to make deportations easier. Never mind that no one will ever trust the IRS in the same way again.

 

Any of these actions might normally draw equally or similarly forceful reactions of some kind under Isaac Newton’s Third Law of Motion. That law, long fundamental in both physics and politics, says “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

 

California saw this in a big way during the Vietnam War, when for every draftee sent off to fight in the jungles of Southeast Asia, at least one and often more persons took to the streets in myriad protests fueled by outrage.

 

There has been no similarly organized anger today, not even when millions of Americans lost trillions of dollars in value from their 401Ks and other investment accounts due to an on-again, off-again tariff war started by a president using powers many lawyers say he does not possess.

 

Several pundits postulate that when 3.5 percent or more of this nation’s citizens protest government actions, members of Congress from both major parties feel sufficiently threatened to begin opposing or at least questioning the policies drawing public ire.

 

That has not come near happening this year. Major cities saw large rallies in both early and late April, including one that stretched 20 blocks through lower Manhattan and another where Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders drew more than 36,000 in Los Angeles.

 

But overall crowds numbered fewer than 2 million each day, according to most unofficial estimates. That was exponentially short of the approximately 13 million that would make up 3.5 percent of Americans.

 

Any rage voiced fell far short of what it took to drive ex-President Lyndon Johnson from office over Vietnam, for one example of impactful public outrage.

 

Some of the most angry now advocate a literal interpretation of Newton’s Third Law of Motion, saying that whenever masked agents capture legal residents on city streets, beefy young men should physically accost those agents.

 

But answering violence with violence never works in this nation; even the wild demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Party convention in Chicago produced no policy change until years of nonviolent protests followed in myriad other locations.

 

To be effective this time, popular protests could be staged outside IRS offices, health clinics and research laboratories shut down by fiat even though their funding was supposedly guaranteed via acts of Congress signed by previous presidents.

 

Even these would not accomplish much unless they were constant and very large, perhaps closing down major streets for days or weeks at a time.

 

President Trump has loudly justified some of his most questionable moves this year as mandated by a significant national majority in the last presidential election. Yet, Trump won election by fewer than 1.6 percent of the total vote, falling short of an overall majority popular vote.

 

Which means that even if there were a mandate, it was given by fewer than half of American voters, scarce justification for the scale of changes now seen in the character of American life and public affairs.

 

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

ABANDONED IRS SECRECY COULD COST U.S., CALIFORNIA BILLIONS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MAY 13, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ABANDONED IRS SECRECY COULD COST U.S., CALIFORNIA BILLIONS”

 

It seemed simple enough the other day when the Internal Revenue Service issued a brief statement saying it will now share addresses and other tax return data with immigration enforcement agencies.

 

This marked the first time the IRS has explicitly broken a promise of confidentiality (except when federal criminal warrants have been issued) for all tax information submitted to it.

 

It might cost the federal treasury billions of dollars, not to mention messing up longstanding sources of Social Security cash and state tax revenue.

 

For one of the dirty little secrets of undocumented immigrants is that millions of them have yearly filed tax returns just like U.S. citizens and other legal residents. They have also contributed billions of dollars over many decades to Social Security accounts they will never be able to access, as payments have never been available to the undocumented.

 

This means whatever they contribute goes toward paying everyone else, one factor that has staved off bankruptcy for the Social Security system many years longer than was predicted by some in the later years of the 20^th Century.

 

It’s not that illegal immigrants have always filed tax returns completely identical to those of citizens. For one thing, most of the undocumented file tax returns using individual taxpayer identification numbers rather than Social Security numbers, as most citizen taxpayers do.

 

California was home to about 1.8 million unauthorized residents in 2022. Those immigrants made up about 7 percent of the state’s work force and accounted for at least half of all farm workers, according to the Pew Research Center.

 

But immigrant rights groups say fear is rampant today among the undocumented – and even among many who hold valid visas. They have seen individuals seized on sidewalks and sent quickly to detention centers thousands of miles away.

 

Now many who have filed and paid both federal and state taxes wonder whether they should keep doing so. No one knows yet the precise number of unauthorized residents who let the April 15 tax deadline go by without responding.

 

If they all stopped filing, California would lose an estimated $8.5 billion in state income tax money that’s usually paid in simultaneously with federal taxes that go to the IRS. Losing another $8-plus billion from a budget that has been strapped for several years, as state general fund has gotten by partly with gimmicks and borrowing from funds earmarked for specific purposes, would likely cause major cuts to state programs from parks to public hospitals and schools.

 

“This will be detrimental not just to California, but in many other states,” said one pro-immigrant activist.

 

California’s senior U.S. senator, Alex Padilla, called the retreat from secrecy “a complete betrayal of the federal government’s decades-long commitment to never weaponize taxpayer information for political purposes…(It) could cost billions in lost tax revenue for states and the federal government.”

 

But some who considered not paying taxes this year out of fear soon realized that any information they suddenly withheld would not offer them much protection. That’s because the IRS has years of older returns on hand, most containing similar information.

 

Immigrant advocates say this led a healthy percentage of undocumented taxpayers to go ahead and file anyway, figuring they might use the filing in later immigration court hearings as proof of voluntary positive contributions to this country. Such an argument does not figure to spare deportation for those nabbed by federal immigration agents.

 

Then there’s the cost of the deportations themselves. The Washington, D.C.-based American Immigration Council said in a springtime report that the cost of a comprehensive mass deportation operation of 13 million of the undocumented would cost the federal government at least $315 billion. If deportations were conducted at 1 million a year, the group said costs would come to at least $88 billion per year.

 

Those costs are unrelated to lost income tax revenues, which may already be felt at the IRS itself, where about 5,000 agents have resigned or retired this year, while 7,000 probationary employees were laid off.

 

Nor does anyone know how many “mixed” families featuring both legal residents and the undocumented have opted out of paying taxes.

 

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

WINTER FIRESTORMS CAN GIVE HOUSING BILLS A FRESH START

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“WINTER FIRESTORMS CAN GIVE HOUSING BILLS A FRESH START”

 

By almost any measure, the spate of housing bills adopted by California lawmakers over the last five years has failed.

 

But the January firestorm that swept through large parts of Los Angeles County may give them new life. Those fires, ranging across portions of a 40-mile stretch on the south slope of the Santa Monica and San Gabriel mountains, destroyed more homes and apartments than any fire California had seen before.

 

The preeminent goal of the new laws is to make housing in this state more dense. They have not done that on a large scale. But the fires essentially created large new blank canvasses where the aims of the new housing laws may receive a definitive test. If the sudden appearance of thousands of acres of eminently buildable land doesn’t create denser housing than ever before, it’s hard to see what might.

 

Taken together, the destruction of at least 10,000 homes and apartments across the heart of California’s largest urban area thus represents an ultimate test for the social engineering attempted since 2020. If the area isn’t densified now, proponents of that kind of housing will probably have to change their tactics.

 

Their aim has long been, as Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco puts it, to “end single-family zoning as we’ve known it.”

 

Noplace in California and possibly the nation was more devoted to sprawling single-family homes than the pre-January Pacific Palisades district of Los Angeles city. The new state laws barely touched it.

 

No large new apartment buildings or condominiums ever rose along the area’s main street, the storied Sunset Boulevard. The largest apartment buildings there had two floors, with a few higher-rise condos slotted in spots invisible from that street. Almost no new multi-family buildings went up in the Palisades, no matter what requirements might have been imposed by new laws.

 

Here's the record to date of some of two such laws: The 2021 SB 9 allows homeowners to split their lots and build at least four units where formerly there was one. By mid-2024, the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley found that fewer than 500 homeowners had successfully applied for such lot splits. ​

 

The 2022 AB 2011 was supposed to let developers easily convert empty office parks and unused parking lots into housing, but by the end of 2024, very few such projects had been approved.

 

Similarly, the 2021 SB 10, allowing for multi-unit development near rapid transit stops had produced very little. 

 

So it looked as if Californians are not eager to densify, even if that’s what some Democrats who dominate in Sacramento want.

 

Now an entirely new urban opportunity exists. Yes, the majority of single-family homeowners will rebuild. But many homes in both Pacific Palisades and Altadena, the other January fire focus, had been owned by folks who purchased their properties in the 1960s and 1970s. Many are now well past 70 years old with little desire to rebuild, as most of their younger neighbors plan.

 

Significant numbers of former single-family properties are available to new buyers, including developers. Some fire-vacated lots have already been sold. They are eligible for at least four units each under SB 9.

 

Some two-floor apartment buildings in Pacific Palisades also burned. Many fronted on Sunset, where transit stops abound, so those properties could see multi-story development, despite an SB 10 provision letting local officials decide whether or not to upzone fire areas.

 

 

If such development does not happen there, it may never happen anywhere, as huge profits seem likely for opportunistic developers. If the January fires were truly 100-year firestorms, no similarly sized fire is likely there for many years.

 

This sets up a litmus test for major housing laws Sacramento has pushed on the rest of California, complete with demands for dense new building in every city as part of an attempt to meet the state’s housing shortage.

 

If it doesn’t happen in the January fire zones, lawmakers should change their priorities and begin paying attention to more rural vacant areas in deserts and other areas where land is cheaper even if it means commutes would be longer.

 

-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

CAN NEWSOM’S TARIFF RESISTANCE REBOOT HIS CAMPAIGN?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MAY 6, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“CAN NEWSOM’S TARIFF RESISTANCE REBOOT HIS CAMPAIGN?”

 

At this peculiar lame duck period in the political career of Gov. Gavin Newsom, almost anything he does – even if it’s merely pursuing a routine duty of his current office – will be evaluated in terms of his obvious yet still unstated desire to become president.

 

But from the moment last summer when former President Biden exited last year’s race until this month, there was only one word to accurately describe Newsom’s putative campaign – supine.

 

Prior to Biden’s exit, Newsom was probably America’s second most prominent Democrat, the leading Biden surrogate and one who traveled the country trying to impress other national Democrats with both himself and Biden.

 

But once Biden handed off the Democratic nomination to Newsom’s longtime friend, fellow Willie Brown protégé and political stablemate Kamala Harris, the California governor seemed to disappear into a long sulk. He played virtually no part in the fall campaign, and for months did not lead any form of resistance to the sometimes dictatorial presidency of Republican Donald Trump, who cannot run for president a third time in 2028 but nevertheless suggests there may be ways for him to get another term.

 

Rather than oppose Trump, Newsom blasted his own party’s “toxic” attitudes – not necessarily inaccurate as national Democrats until lately had mostly sat by and watched Trump’s many moves.

 

Now Newsom may have a mechanism to re-launch himself into the national picture for 2028 while becoming possibly the prime Democratic spokesman for the remaining three years-plus of Trump’s current term.

 

It came via the mid-April announcement of a California lawsuit challenging the legality of Trump’s on-again, off-again, partially on-again tariffs, which could potentially cost California farmers, merchants and manufacturers tens of billions of dollars in sales.

 

Loss of that much income and the state taxes it produces would heavily impact future state budgets, cutting into virtually all programs from Medi-Cal to policing and fire protection, regardless of budgetary gimmicks.

 

Trump’s tariff actions, taken under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, set 10 percent baseline import taxes on virtually anything originating abroad, with higher levies on goods from China, Canada and Mexico. There are also specifically higher taxes on certain products like autos and aluminum.

 

Newsom’s lawsuit – the first of the 15 legal actions the state has taken against the new Trump administration that names him as lead individual plaintiff – claims the law Trump cites does not give him unilateral power to set up tariffs or take them down. That power, many legal scholars believe, belongs to Congress, which has shown even less fight than Newsom’s early campaign.

 

“No state is poised to lose more than California,” Newsom said. That’s not counting stock market losses resulting from Trump’s moves. “That’s why we are asserting ourselves..,” he added.

 

Newsom’s action made California the first state to formally challenge Trump’s tariffs, although other states have joined in on most other California lawsuits against Trump this year.

 

When Trump lawyers quickly petitioned to have the tariff case moved from California to an East Coast courtroom, Newsom immediately riposted “You scared?”

 

“We’re the first mover,” Newsom said. “That’s what California does.”

 

Official descriptions of the law Trump uses as his authority note that no other president has tried to claim it gives them such power. But Trump seems to operate on the theory that powers seized and not firmly resisted somehow become legitimized.

 

If Newsom’s lawsuit wins, it would very likely force a congressional vote to either adopt and legalize Trump’s tariffs or dump them. Either way, Newsom aims to put every member of Congress on the record about tariffs, rather than letting politicians of both parties moan about how powerless they’ve been.

 

Forcing such a vote would give Newsom a claim on being politically savvy and powerful enough to force changes in Washington, D.C. even as a lame duck.

 

It’s precisely the kind of political ammunition Newsom has sought as he blasted party mates while conducting dialogs with Trump supporters on his own podcasts. 

 

His clear hope is that this and subsequent moves to resist Trump will give him the staying power to remain prominent through nearly two years of political exile between the end of his term in early 2027 and the 2028 election.

 

-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

OFFICE-TO-HOUSING CONVERSIONS NOW TAKING OFF

 

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 2, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“OFFICE-TO-HOUSING CONVERSIONS NOW TAKING OFF”

 

Conversions of billions of square feet of unused office space to dwelling units are starting to take off all around California. Except, that is, in the state’s densest city, San Francisco.

 

But that is likely to change soon, with Wells Fargo Bank’s longtime headquarters tower now for sale, along with two largely-unused office towers the federal government seeks to dispose of.

 

All three skyscrapers are among obvious candidates for repurposing in a local office market where more than one-third of existing space is currently unused. That’s in spite of moves by some high-tech firms to force workers back into offices fully five years after they were told to begin working from home during the depth of the Covid-19 pandemic.

 

Moves to compel highly skilled white collar workers back into offices fulltime have not worked well because many workers found they like home offices better than cubicle-filled spaces that lack soul. Also contributing to resistance: the fact that a healthy share of workers took advantage of work-at-home edicts to move their homes to less expensive locations with more open space than Silicon Valley can offer. The net result has been a rash of resignations sending a message to executives, who backed off a bit, now usually only asking workers to come in at least one or two days per week, not fulltime.

 

Meanwhile, the office space conversion bandwagon appears to be gaining speed in many markets. Nationally, the number of apartments and condominiums converted from office space reached a record high of 70,700 units last year, up from about 20,000 the previous year. The newer figure was developed by the RentCafe website, which has tracked this phenomenon from its start.

 

Across California, 5,892 apartments of varying sizes were in the conversion pipeline as of March 1, this coming after about 4,000 converted units went on the market last year.

 

These units provide ongoing income vital to the bottom lines of real estate investment trusts that long concentrated on high-rise commercial properties. It’s vital because most REITs saw their share values drop precipitously during the pandemic and have not since come close to recovering from the lost or reduced leases they suffered during the main Covid years.

 

Now Los Angeles, which saw about 12,000 units converted in the first few years of this trend, has 4,388 apartments in the development pipeline, enough space for about 13,000 residents, given California’s average household size of 2.86 persons.

 

Smaller cities have also become active in conversions since state legislators passed a couple of laws in 2023 making it easier for such projects to get building permits.

 

Long Beach currently has 420 units permitted, double the number in San Francisco, where demand for apartments dropped when the city lost populace as sent-home workers moved to cheaper digs in distant suburbs like Tracy and Petaluma. But the soon-to-be-available office towers seemingly begging for conversion might spark interest from young professionals who fancy living in the city’s downtown.

 

Goleta, near Santa Barbara, now has hundreds of conversion apartments in its pipeline, outpacing San Diego, where the idea has not yet caught on.

 

It’s clear some major markets have not yet adjusted to the new state-mandated permitting processes, but when that inevitably happens in places like San Jose and Fresno, living in converted office space promises to become a Generation Z fad.

 

That’s because units converted from office space are far cheaper to develop than new construction, while also leaving the character of neighborhoods intact and traffic flowing at previous levels, rather than causing new crowding.

 

The number of units now completed or underway debunks naysayers who claimed when the idea first arose that conversions would be more difficult to get permitted than new buildings.

 

That was never true, but is especially false since passage of a 2023 state law making permits administrative, with almost automatic approvals.

 

The bottom line: Office conversions, first recommended by this column in April 2020, are now the wave of the present and future in California and many other places. They can also be a boon to first-time home buyers, renters and current building owners.

 

 

 

   -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.

WHO COULD SOLIDIFY REEP VOTES IF RUN FOR GUV BECOMES A 2024 REPLAY?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 29, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“WHO COULD SOLIDIFY REEP VOTES IF RUN FOR GUV BECOMES A 2024 REPLAY?”

 

Almost a year and a half before the June 2026 primary election, California’s ongoing campaign for governor has begun taking on some overtones of last year’s Senate race.

 

Remember the early days of that one, when frequent candidate Eric Early, a Los Angeles lawyer and failed congressional hopeful, was the only Republican in a race involving three Democratic members of Congress? Those included eventual winner Adam Schiff, Orange County’s Katie Porter and Barbara Lee of Oakland.

 

The three Democrats assumed they were contesting for two slots on the November runoff election ballot, but were frustrated when former baseball great Steve Garvey entered as a Republican. Early, despite his quick entry, never had a shot at galvanizing virtually all Republican primary voters behind him. Star quality meant Garvey did, frustrating Porter and Lee, who gave up their congressional seats to run. Both now cool their heels in California while Congress votes on vital issues.

 

Similarly, the large corps of Democratic candidates for governor clearly now believes they are contesting for two runoff slots. They include the indecisive (but poll-leading) former Vice President Kamala Harris, former state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, ex-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, ex-state Senate President Toni Atkins, state Schools Supt. Tony Thurmond, Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, plus Porter.

 

Their common presumption is that Democrats will finish first and second in the primary. But the entry of Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco could toss one 2024-style monkey wrench into their vision of the primary. Bianco lacks the name recognition Garvey used to beat out Porter as the No. 2 Senate primary finisher, but he starts with plenty of public awareness among voters likely to support him.

 

It almost seems like Bianco seeks trouble for its own sake. In 2014, he briefly joined the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia group. He later disavowed the group's violent actions, particularly those related to the January 6 Capitol riot.

 

During the pandemic, Bianco refused both to enforce state health mandates in his county and to get vaccinated, drawing criticism for undermining public health efforts.

 

Plus, under his leadership, Riverside County jails experienced a spike in inmate deaths, leading to civil lawsuits and investigations of alleged unconstitutional policing practices. And, Bianco has said the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests “always turned to riots” — while one study found 93% were peaceful.

​

In some ways, that background makes him almost the perfect GOP primary candidate. Rebellious GOP voters faced with having to choose a Democrat or almost no one might love voting for such an outspoken rebel.

 

If he ended up the only Republican on the ballot and performed credibly in debates during Spring 2026, there’s a chance he could pull a Garvey and win enough GOP support to beat out almost all Democrats running.

 

Loose cannon Bianco might turn into the “bad boy” of the spring 2026 debates, saying things no Democrat would dare and thus becoming a darling of Donald Trump voting devotees.

 

A potential GOP rival is Ric Grenell of San Diego, a Donald Trump favorite just different enough to appeal to many Trump backers during the primary.

 

Grenell briefly served as acting Director of National Intelligence in Trump’s first administration, becoming the first openly gay person to hold a U.S. Cabinet-level position.​

 

Trump also named him interim head of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., despite a lack of obvious qualifications.  And he carries out diplomatic missions for Trump as a special envoy. His Trump connection just might make him more formidable than Bianco at consolidating the GOP primary vote.

 

Grenell lacks major political experience in California. But both Schwarzenegger and Garvey clearly showed that experience is not a requirement to run for high office in this state.

 

This might be especially true if California Republicans are tired of seeing no one but establishment Democrats running their state.

 

All this gives the current muddled run for governor the potential for pulling a 2024 and turning into a simple Republican vs. Democrat matchup in November 2026. But so far, neither Bianco nor Grenell has emerged as a GOP solidifier. Of course, that didn’t happen for Garvey, either, until last year’s primary was almost upon him.

 

   -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

BERKELEY INNOVATES WITH PREVIOUSLY UNPERMITTED HOUSING

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 25, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“BERKELEY INNOVATES WITH PREVIOUSLY UNPERMITTED HOUSING”

 

Progress in solving California’s unquestioned housing shortage can often be measured by the number of permits issued for new construction or conversions of existing office towers.

 

But Berkeley, a college town that rarely fears trying approaches different from most other cities, now has a new wrinkle that might add as many as 4,000 new units to its housing stock: providing ways for owners of unpermitted secondary housing units to get them certified for the rental or sales market.

 

Many of these units were built to house adult children and other family members with a bit of separation from the property-owning families. Some have previously been rented out, but owners felt they were “burned” by irresponsible tenants. Many of these units have not been rented recently, some for many years.

 

Similar units exist in varying numbers in most California cities, which may watch Berkeley closely to see if its planned amnesty for owners will work. Essentially, many of these are “granny flats” dating to before California began easing construction of ADU’s (accessory dwelling units) with a series of laws passed starting in 2016.

 

Since then, about 80,000 permits have been issued for building ADUs behind or beside existing homes. Many newly-built homes come with ADUs, which owners can rent out to raise money for use toward mortgage payments.

 

A law passed last year will also allow ADU owners to sell them off, essentially subdividing their property even where local laws previously forbade it. The law was passed to provide a way for first-time buyers to begin gathering equity from their homes, even if they are small.

 

 

In many cases, owners have long felt they might be assessed heavy fines for building without permits or renting units not formally certified as up to current building standards.

 

Now Berkeley has activated an amnesty program due to last about four years, until early 2029. Owners will be encouraged to contact city planners and building inspectors to get their units legalized, if they meet today’s standards, or to learn what they might have to do to get them to that point and how much it might cost.

 

Berkeley will offer both certificates of occupancy, which tell renters or buyers that a unit is up to code, and certificates of compliance, which establish that a unit meets minimum fire and other life safety standards, even if it might not have sufficient insulation, central heating or other features required in new housing.

 

City officials, who sorely want more affordable housing both for students at UC Berkeley and others, insist their new program will not allow unsafe housing. So expect that some owners will have to eliminate exposed electric wiring and other fire hazards before they can legally rent their extra units.

 

But those expenses would almost always be made up for by rents received in the first few months of occupancy. So this is a way for longtime homeowners to gain income after getting little or nothing from extra units while keeping them off the rental market.

 

It's also a way for Berkeley and maybe other cities to help meet their state-mandated obligations to allow more affordable housing.

 

Knowing some longtime owners will be hesitant to come forward for fear of incurring large new expenses, Berkeley says it will aim to “make it easy” for them by having a staff of building officials available to work with anyone who who applies to get a unit legalized.

 

If the city lives up to its stated aims and other follow up, too, this could be a way to add thousands of units to a housing market that desperately needs them. It’s also a way to create housing without disrupting anyone’s environment or the character of any locale. The only real surprise here is that cities did not long ago jump to do something like 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

INCOMPETENT GOVERNANCE NOW KNOWS FEW BOUNDS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 22, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“INCOMPETENT GOVERNANCE NOW KNOWS FEW BOUNDS”

 

It’s easy to blame the Trump administration for much of the incompetence that’s so readily visible in Washington, D.C. these days.

 

Certainly, some of the officials he worked hardest to get confirmed to his administration have exhibited among the highest levels of ineptitude. Those included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, national security advisor Mike Waltz and super diplomat Steve Witkoff, all of whom were on the Signal app dealing with top secret schedules for an air attack on Yemen’s Houthi militants, who have disrupted sea lanes in the Middle East.

 

Somehow, the communication also went to the editor of the Atlantic magazine, who promptly revealed the security breach. Meanwhile, Russian hackers were trying also to breach the app. Later, it was disclosed Waltz and others in the Signal group also conducted other official business on insecure gmail accounts.

 

Just a “glitch,” Trump claimed of the security breach involving his top defense aides. That’s the same Trump who demanded onetime Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s imprisonment for using a non-government communication channel. Trump appeared to be using a very plain double standard.

 

Republicans in Congress also had no good excuses for their own incompetence, which has affected some of California most Trump-favoring counties. For more than 100 years, Congress awarded extra money – but never much, by federal budget standards – to counties whose land is largely owned by federal agencies like the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.

 

This year, that was to be just over $250 million, a pittance in a budget totaling more than $6 trillion. The money is supposed to help rural counties compensate for the fact that must of their territory can never be taxed, very different from urban counties where huge swaths of land are privately owned.

 

California’s share of the pot this year was to be about $33 million,  reported Calmatters, the money going to small-population counties like Alpine, where 96 percent of land is federally owned, and Trinity (73 percent).

 

Because they can’t tax that land, the counties need a supplement to the property taxes they can assess to help pay for things like schools, road repairs and law enforcement.

 

Like most similar counties nationally, rural ones  in California consistently vote Republican, but Democrats have never cut off their funds. This year, the Republicans did, the putative appropriation hitting the cutting room floor along with other seemingly random slashes.

 

That’s was pure incompetence by the Republicans controlling Congress, apparently ignorant of where the money involved was to go.

 

Further federal incompetence has now reached levels and areas of expertise including public health and scientific research, with seemingly random cuts to the National Weather Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other grant-giving agencies like the National Institutes for Health.

 

This alarms some of the Democrats who control California government sufficiently to get them to make new commitments to fund research in California with state money, if the feds won’t do their share.

 

It’s worth noting California is already the nation’s leading ‘donor’ state, paying far more in federal taxes than the federal government spends here. In 2024, Californians paid $692.2 billion in federal taxes, while the state received $609.1 billion in federal funds, including Social Security payments, military pensions and all other forms of spending. (That amounted to a “donation” of more than $2,000 per Californian to folks in “recipient” states like Mississippi and West Virginia.)  

 

Said Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco, “Scientific research and innovation is the engine of California’s prosperity. It undergirds the University of California and other universities here…This foundation of the state’s success is threatened by Elon Musk and President Trump’s efforts to bulldoze…our most esteemed scientific institutions.”

 

So he’s asking fellow legislators to set up a new state Institute for Scientific Research, which among other things would try to make sure Californians have access to the most modern vaccine updates even as Trump’s Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. tries to discredit some vaccination requirements for schoolchildren.

 

This all forms a picture of gross incompetence at the highest levels of the federal government, some of which might have to be made up for by state and local governments.

  

 

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

DISNEY INTIMIDATED AS POLITICAL POWER TRUMPS MONEY

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “DISNEY INTIMIDATED AS POLITICAL POWER TRUMPS MONEY”

 

For many generations, an American proverb stated that “Money talks, (other stuff) walks.”

 

But maybe that old saying needs revision, as the sixth largest publicly traded corporation in California right now has plenty of money, but appears intimidated by raw political power.

 

Of course, the Walt Disney Co. has been through a lot in recent years. Much of it was because the firm – whose Disney World resort near Orlando makes it the largest employer in Florida – tried to take a principled stand against a Florida law forbidding teachers from mentioning homosexuality or gay lifestyles in classrooms below grade 3 and in many others at higher levels. That law has been nicknamed “Don’t say gay.”

 

Anyone believing most Floridians object to this censorship might want to consult election returns subsequent to that law’s passage. Republicans have dominated elections in once-purple Florida during that time span like never before. GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis likes to say his state is “where ‘wokism’ goes to die.”

 

DeSantis took revenge on Disney quickly after the firm opposed his pet policy. He altered the nature and makeup of a local board governing development around Disney World, replacing company appointees with his own.

 

That substantially contradicted the terms under which Disney created its vast Florida amusement park, sports and hotel complex – but no one outside Disney seemed to mind. The company could not stop the change despite its more than $91 billion in annual revenue.

 

Now Disney, whose animated film “Strange World” featured the company’s first biracial gay teenage hero, appears done with principle.

 

For Disney wants to be beloved by all, as it was in the heyday of Mickey Mouse, Goofy, the little mermaid and others among its cartoon characters. But one poll of Florida voters last year showed only 27 percent of Republicans in the state had a positive view of Disney, compared with 76 percent of Democrats. Altogether, only a bare majority liked Disney. Previous surveys had showed almost universal love of most things Disney.

 

The company can’t tolerate such limited positivity from potential fans and customers when corporate profits and executive survival require across-the-board approval, maybe even love.

 

Disney is now aware that its image can be affected negatively by aggressive politicians, and it knows no politician is more aggressive than the recently-restored President Trump.

 

So Disney will now bend over backward not to offend. That’s why its wholly-owned subsidiary the ABC television network paid a $15 million libel settlement to Trump’s presidential library fund rather than fight in court against his libel lawsuit, which looked to most legal experts like a sure loser,

 

It's also why company CEO Robert Iger, who once tweeted that “don’t say gay” “will put vulnerable young LGBTQ people in jeopardy,” changed his tune. He subsequently told an investors’ meeting he would discourage overt Disney political stances.

 

“The stories you tell have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach, but that audience, because they are so diverse…can be turned off by certain things,” he said. So, he said, Disney will avoid politics.

 

“Our primary mission needs to be to entertain,” he said. “It should not be agenda driven.”

 

Of course, movies have often driven public opinion without direct preaching. That was the case with classic films like Columbia Pictures’ “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner” and “To Kill a Mockingbird,” distributed by Universal-International Films. And during a hiatus in Iger’s tenure as Disney chief, the company did release some films with racial content, like “Black Panther” and “Coco.”

 

Those movies were unusual for Disney, most of whose films previously avoided edgy content, instead featuring characters like Bambi, Pinocchio and Donald Duck.

 

So expect Disney’s movie fare and its conduct around other corporate assets to revert to the kind of tame content for which the company was long known.

 

As one pop culture professor told a reporter the other day, “You don’t want to get in a fight with the head of a government. Politics is not good business.”

 

At least not for Disney, which gave it a brief try and has now meekly implied that for it, profits come before principles.

 

 

    -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 pull-out quote: “Expect Disney’s movie fare and its conduct around other corporate assets to revert to tameness.”

IF MEASLES OUTBREAK WORSENS, LOOK TO VIEWS SPREAD BY RFK JR

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “IF MEASLES OUTBREAK WORSENS, LOOK TO VIEWS SPREAD BY RFK JR.”

 

 

So far, the ongoing measles outbreak across this country and this state has not reached epidemic status. If it ever does, and if large numbers of unvaccinated children die, blame will be easy to assess.

 

Some, of course, will accrue to President Trump, who last year bought out the presidential campaign of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with a promise to make the nation’s leading anti-vaccine crusader his secretary of Health and Human Services.

 

It's too soon to attribute the current spate of measles cases strictly to RFK Jr.’s position, although he has used his new bully pulpit to make spurious claims about the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine that until recently had seemed to relegate those diseases to what Ronald Reagan called the “dustbin of history.”

 

In one Fox News interview, Kennedy, who because of his lineage has always carried a metaphorical megaphone, made a show of encouraging MMR vaccinations, but simultaneously suggested natural immunity acquired though infection could be more protective than vaccine-produced immunity – and never mind risks from the diseases themselves – including death. Kennedy’s stance contradicts long established medical evidence, but that is nothing new for him.

 

RFK Jr. next threatened to fire all the government's top experts on infectious diseases and their spread. 

 

Kennedy long claimed routine childhood vaccinations are responsible for large increases in diagnoses of autism, a claim refuted in numerous medical journals. Another reason for questioning Kennedy’s autism claims: childhood vaccinations have been in mass use since the 1950s, complete with state laws requiring vaccinations prior to public school attendance. Increases in autism incidence are far more recent.

 

This year has seen measles cases turn up in many states, Texas leading with 400 cases as of March 28. Texas also saw one of the two measles deaths in America this year, those two deaths marking the first in this nation since 2015. It’s valid to wonder how the parents of those two children feel about Kennedy’s claims of natural immunity being superior to vaccine effects, which offer individuals a 97 percent protection rate even where there is no “herd immunity.”

 

It's also valid to note Texas has among the loosest state laws on childhood vaccinations, granting exemptions to any child whose parent claims to have a personal or religious objection. No proof of prior belief is required.

 

California’s rules have been tighter since 2015, religious objections no longer accepted. But medical exemptions can be granted here when a doctor certifies a child has medical problems with vaccines.

 

This rule has been exploited by a few doctors who oppose vaccination, some signing forms after only cursory exams and often with little knowledge of a child’s background.

 

Now some counties no longer boast what is termed “herd immunity,” a vaccination rate assuring virtually no cases of a targeted disease will occur. This is usually achieved with vaccination rates topping 95 percent for some diseases and needing to be even higher with others. For the MMR vaccine, even though the statewide rate for full vaccination among schoolchildren (two doses each) stood at 96.2 percent last winter, 16 counties did not achieve herd immunity during the current school year.

 

Subsequently, cases of measles have been reported over the last year in large counties like Alameda, Orange and Los Angeles, and in smaller ones like Tuolumne and Sutter.

 

Among the fully vaccinated, 97 percent will not experience the high fevers and rashes of measles. But where levels fall below herd immunity, death rates can reach one to three persons for every 1,000 infected, reports the University of Chicago. Measles also can cause encephalitis, with associated pneumonia, long-term neurological problems, hearing loss and even brain damage.

 

Local health officials say much of the drop in vaccination rates in counties like Santa Cruz (down from 94.1 percent to 91.8 percent over the last two years) stems from misinformation, much coming from the Children’s Health Defense group long headed by Kennedy.

 

He left that group before Trump named him America’s top health official, but there is no evidence his beliefs have changed.

 

The bottom line: If the measles outbreak worsens, much responsibility will accrue to Trump and Kennedy.

 

 

    -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 pull-out quote: “Local health officials say much of the drop in vaccination rates in (some) counties can be ascribed to misinformation.”

CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION? WHY OPEN PANDORA’S BOX?

 CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 11, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION? WHY OPEN PANDORA’S BOX?”

 

Two of California’s last three governors have wanted to help organize and promote constitutional conventions, either on the state or federal level. They’ve both been dangerously wrong about this.

 

Former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted only a state convention, aiming to take some of the clumsiness out of California’s governing documents, which changes as often as every two years if voters pass ballot initiatives.

 

But current Gov. Gavin Newsom is more ambitious, seeking the first national constitutional convention since 1787, even before George Washington was elected president.

 

Newsom thinks he can confine such a convention to one issue: gun control.

 

Ironically, these seemingly simple calls from a moderate Republican and a liberal Democrat put them both in the camp of the far-right Republicans of the Convention of States organization, which has been seeking a national constitutional revision meeting for years. So far, the COS effort has garnered support from more than half the 34 states needed to call a convention. 

 

Like Newsom and Schwarzenegger, COS claims its convention could be confined to its narrow goals, which include imposition of severe spending restraints on Congress, along with term limits for senators and Congress members and a few other officials. (Presidents are already limited to two terms by the existing Constitution’s 22nd Amendment.)

 

And there’s the problem: Because there’s never been a second constitutional convention, no one knows if such a gathering’s activity can be confined to one or two subjects, or whether everything would become fair game. The First Amendment, guaranteeing free speech and freedom of religion, might disappear. So might the Second Amendment’s guarantees of gun rights. Or the 14^th Amendment guarantees of due process in all criminal proceedings. And on and on.

 

In short, a constitutional convention would be a Pandora’s Box and no one knows what institution might supervise or limit its scope. For just one example, since the Constitution sets up the Supreme Court as one of today’s major authorities, why would anyone believe that court’s justices might have jurisdiction over the doings of a constitutional revision convention that might potentially change or eliminate the court itself?

 

That’s why San Francisco’s ultra-leftist Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener wants the Legislature this year to revoke its approval of a resolution calling for a convention to deal with gun control. Wiener, who has been wrong about many things including reshaping California housing to make it far more dense than before, is right about this. There’s even the possibility that California’s call for a gun control confab could be added to the COS efforts for a convention dealing with vastly different issues. No one knows.

 

Said Wiener, “There is no way I want California to accidentally help these extremists trigger a constitutional convention where they (might) rewrite the Constitution to restrict voting rights, to eliminate reproductive health access and so forth.”

 

Wiener’s fears are becoming more common, as states like Illinois and New Jersey, which previously had open calls for a constitutional convention, have rescinded their prior actions. Any that are not rescinded remain valid indefinitely and could be used by COS or anyone else wanting to call a convention, whatever their motives.

 

No doubt a constitutional convention, whether at the state or federal level, would be a delight for people who like to tinker with or brainstorm about government structure. But it also could turn into a nightmare for those who treasure civil liberties and protection against the tyranny of the majority when it comes to things like taxation.

 

The fact is, no one even knows how delegates to such a convention might be chosen, or who would be eligible to serve. The current state and federal constitutions indicate only they must represent different areas and states in proportion to their population. Whether they would be elected or appointed by current officeholders is an open question. For sure, there are no guarantees of which groups would be represented and which might not.

 

The bottom line: It’s best not to confront questions like this at all, since the lack of existing rules could mean that decisions would be made by the loudest among us, rather than the wisest. So why open this Pandora’s box at all?

 

 

 

    -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

“EVERYONE ELSE ABOUT TO START SUBSIDIZING MANSION PAYOUTS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 8, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“EVERYONE ELSE ABOUT TO START SUBSIDIZING MANSION PAYOUTS”

 

Here’s the likely outcome of the April 8 hearing set to follow the California insurance commissioner’s tentative mid-March approval of a 22 percent average rate increase for customers of State Farm General Insurance Co., this state’s largest carrier of home insurance policies:

 

All other Californians will soon be subsidizing the rebuilding of myriad mansions burned down in the January firestorm that ravaged much of Los Angeles County. Plus a good number of less luxurious homes, too.

 

Commissioner Ricardo Lara tentatively approved the average 22 percent rate hike for State Farm customers, with similar increases sure to come also for customers of other insurance companies like Mercury, Safeco, Travelers, Allstate and more.

 

These increases will hit virtually everyone: They include a 38 percent hike for rental properties, with a 15 percent raise for renters’ insurance on contents and for condominium owners.

 

The hearing will see opposition from several consumer groups, most prominently the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group. The eventual outcome may end with some increases dropping a percentage point or two. As it stands, what Lara tentatively approved amounts to an average of about $600 per year for every policyholder in the state.

 

Make no mistake, this is a pure subsidy for State Farm and the folks it insures. Perhaps the archetype claim from the January fires was for a destroyed home on two contiguous ocean-front lots in Malibu that sold three years ago for $85 million.

 

Trying to put up a show of looking after customers’ interests, Lara said he will expect State Farm to stop canceling homeowner policies, a practice that led to intense distress for some victims of the latest crop of large wildfires because many were forced after cancellations to turn to the state’s expensive and not very comprehensive last-resort insurer, the California Fair Plan.

 

Lara also said he will expect State Farm General’s parent company, Illinois-based State Farm Mutual, to contribute hundreds of millions, perhaps as much as $500 million, from reserves long held by the parent company. That would be a tiny fraction of the company’s actual reserves, which in January stood at a minimum of $134 billion, with some estimates as high as $192 billion.

 

So people who live in areas that have never seen a wildfire and are not likely ever to experience one will soon contribute to payouts for owners of large homes in Malibu and Pacific Palisades.

 

What’s more, State Farm and other insurance companies stand to get much of their money back via the current spate of lawsuits blaming Southern California Edison Co. transmission lines for sparking the Eaton fire that incinerated much of Altadena, about 40 miles east of Pacific Palisades. Once insurance companies pay their policyholders off in that area, they will inherit any customer claims against the big utility.

 

Then there’s re-insurance, routinely bought by insurance companies to insure themselves against big losses. That will cover more billions of dollars for them.

 

None of that will much mitigate what Lara likely will allow the insurance companies to add to customer premiums starting in May. These other factors making life easier for the insurance industry have played little or no role in price increases assessed after previous wildfires hit other parts of California through the last eight years.

 

Meanwhile, the closest customers have heard to the truth about all this came from a since-fired State Farm executive who was secretly recorded saying his company uses policy cancellations as a ploy to drive prices up in California and other disaster-prone states.

 

Haden Kirkpatrick, until recently State Farm’s vice president for innovation and venture capital, was fired immediately after he became the first completely truthful insurance executive this nation had seen in decades.

 

But Lara showed no sign of paying the slightest heed to anything Kirkpatrick admitted. Which should come as no surprise from a state official who promised never to accept campaign donations from the companies he regulates and then took large sums, only to be shamed into returning the money later.

 

The entire exercise is shameful and demonstrates why, when Lara leaves office after next year, his replacement must be far more consumer friendly.

 

-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