NOW WE’LL SEE WHAT TRANSPARENCY CAN DO

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 29, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “NOW WE’LL SEE WHAT TRANSPARENCY CAN DO”

          California will be exploring new ground as the impending election year builds to its climax in early November. For the first time ever, big donors to ballot proposition campaigns will not be able to hide behind phony campaign committee names like “Californians for Safe Streets” and the like when they put their money behind causes, many of which can be self-serving.

          It will now be somewhat harder to keep dark money from having at least some light shined upon it.

          But no one can be certain just yet how difficult it will be for real donors to hide and just how exposed they might soon be. That’s partly because of some rather vague language in the state’s new Disclose Act, quietly signed as Assembly Bill 249 by Gov. Jerry Brown, who issued no statement along with his signature, as he often does on important bills.

          Advocates contend the language of the new law “will fundamentally change how campaign financing is disclosed,” as legislative sponsor Kevin Mullin, a Democratic assemblyman from San Mateo, put it.

          And it might do that. The bill requires ads for ballot propositions and independent expenditure ads for and against candidates to identify their top three funders, with none able to hide behind sometimes-misleading committee names. The idea is to identify people and organizations actually trying to exert influence, possibly causing some to downsize their contributions if they don’t want to be listed publicly as leading donors.

          This should let voters know exactly who is trying to influence them. From the “who,” it’s often easy to deduce the “why,” so California ballots could be cast in the most educated manner ever.

          Of course, this measure might have been even better than what has now become law. It could have required that disclosures of donors be made in a print size equal to the largest anywhere else in an ad. But that was amended out of the bill as it progressed through the Legislature. Instead, disclosures must be made “clearly and prominently,” a vague phrase that will no doubt be litigated for years.

          Expect some of the political consultants who conceive, write and approve the ads that will be ubiquitous as 2018 progresses to try to obfuscate matters. Their radio ads may feature the same kind of ultra-speed-reading often heard when pharmaceutical companies list drug side effects near the end of their ads.

          But newspaper and television advertising will have to include printed information on true campaign funders. In the beginning, some campaigns may try to get away with small print, but that almost certainly won’t fly in the long run.

          So while this law does contain some vagueness, it is far better than no law, a clear-cut case of not letting the perfect (identification in letters that match the largest elsewhere in the ad) outweigh the good.

          The law’s other flaw is that it does not demand exposure of the largest direct contributors to candidates, whose donors often launder their contributions through the major political parties at both the state and country levels. But there is nevertheless plenty of improvement over the longstanding ability of big donors to remain almost completely anonymous.

          Trent Lange, president of the California Clean Money Campaign, which pushed the Disclose Act for more than seven years before its final passage on a fairly bipartisan vote (five Republican assembly members from swing districts joined almost all Democrats in supporting it), called the new law “the biggest blow yet against the unlimited secret money unleashed by Citizens United.” That’s the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision declaring that corporations are like people when it comes to political giving.

          The bottom line is that even with some vague parts of the new law likely to be disputed and litigated over the next few years, there will still be more disclosure of campaign finance information than ever before seen anywhere in America.

          But we will all have to wait and see how much real voters care about this and whether it really affects the way votes are cast.

        
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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

TAX ‘REFORMS’ COULD HIT HOUSING, WIDER ECONOMY

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 26, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “TAX ‘REFORMS’ COULD HIT HOUSING, WIDER ECONOMY”

          It’s already well established that the tax “reforms” now being hashed out in secret by a joint committee of Republicans from the Senate and the House of Representatives will likely cost Californians a net sum of well over $110 billion, an average of more than $2,000 a year for every man, woman and child in the state.

          That figure is derived from calculations by the House Budget Committee staff, controlled by the very Republicans designing the changes, so it’s hard to argue.

          It’s also hard to see how this measure can possibly produce more than $2,000 a year in benefits to the Californians who will pay the added taxes, caused by eliminating or slashing several longtime, big-dollar tax writeoffs.

          There is the medical deduction, which is eliminated in the House version of this bill, but retained by the Senate. No one knows how that conflict will be resolved, but if the deduction goes, it will cost the 1.3 million Californians who use that deduction (long limited to amounts exceeding 10 percent of adjusted gross income) an average of more than $9,800 yearly. This added cost will mostly come from people already burdened by the many uninsured costs involved with chronic illnesses and from folks supporting elderly parents or other relatives in nursing homes or assisted living.

          Eliminating this deduction would be purely reverse Robin Hood – taking from the already cash-strapped in order to finance large tax cuts for corporations and the extremely wealthy.

          There’s also the proposed change in deductions for home mortgages, now applying to homes costing up to $1 million. The Senate bill keeps this, but the House would allow it for new mortgages only if they are under $500,000. The House would grandfather in existing mortgages.

          Effects of this likely change (and the joint committee is likely to reach some kind of compromise) are still not totally predictable, but it is sure to reduce the inventory of homes for sale in California, where mortgages of more than half a million dollars are commonplace. At the same time, it could take many potential home buyers out of the market because it would suddenly be more expensive for them to sustain mortgages on houses costing not much more than the average price of about $575,000 in many parts of this state.

          It’s also probable this change will cause more present owners to hang onto their homes, a supply reduction that could keep prices up. But if this doesn’t happen, the tax change figures to drive prices down by anywhere from 8 percent to 12 percent, says one estimate from the National Association of Realtors, which strongly opposes the bill.

          But the biggest effect – estimated at about $90 billion by the Budget Committee – will come from eliminating deductions for state and local taxes. This will not only cost at tax time, but also make everyday purchases from patio furniture to televisions and smart phones significantly more expensive.

          This leads to speculation the changes could throw the whole nation into recession, not just California.

          All this comes from a Republican Party that has promised continually since 1988 to levy no new taxes. So much for political promises.

          But it’s the real estate market that figures to be hit harder by these so-called reforms than any other economic sector.

          “The tax incentives to own a home are baked into overall values,” said Elizabeth Mendenhall, president of the national Realtors’ group. “When those incentives are nullified in the way this bill will likely provide, our estimates show home values stand to fall by more than 10 percent, even more in high-cost areas.”

          Affordable housing advocates also predict the projected overhaul will gut efforts to solve California’s large-scale homeless problem. The tax exemptions builders get for constructing low-cost housing rather than more upscale new residences would for the most part disappear.

          It’s possible this might not have many political ramifications for Republicans next fall, because none of it is scheduled to take full effect until 2019. But by 2020, when the new tax bills have festered for more than a year, it’s likely to be look out below for President Trump and other Republicans who naively promise massive new prosperity will trickle down from their plan.

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

TRUMP AND HATE CRIMES: BIG RISE LIKELY ONLY THE START

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  FRIDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

   “TRUMP AND HATE CRIMES: BIG RISE LIKELY ONLY THE START”

          Hate crimes are on the rise in California and there are strong hints the increase stems in part from President Trump’s habit of using racial slurs like the “Pocahontas” tag he likes to apply to Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren and the travel bans he’s imposed on citizens of several Muslim countries.

          There were also Trump’s call for a wall separating this country from Mexico and his claim that vast numbers of Latino illegal immigrants are criminals and rapists.

          The latest FBI hate crime statistics cover only 2016, not even including an apparent rise in white supremacist activity that’s been reported less formally since Trump refused to outright condemn the neo-Nazi-tinged rally that turned fatal last summer in Charlottesville, VA.

          Even the FBI’s numbers are far from complete, as they are based on reporting only from cities and counties that volunteer information. Many don’t bother reporting.

          There is also no proof that Trump’s rhetoric and tweets caused the hate crime spike, but there is a definite correlation of the increases with his remarks.

          Most striking in the California numbers stemming from 733 police and sheriff’s departments in all parts of the state is the rise of almost 100 hate crimes, or 11.7 percent, over the previous year, 2015. Perhaps even more important to anyone looking for a trend was a rise of 9 percent in the month of November 2016, the month of Trump’s election victory.

          The numbers show increases in both race-based crimes and in those targeting gender. The biggest increases were in anti-Latino, anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-LGBT crimes.

          If there’s any parallel here to previous California hate crime spikes, it’s to the period just before and after Proposition 187 passed in 1994, seeking to deprive undocumented immigrants of all government services, from public schooling to emergency room care. The hot political rhetoric of that time also saw an upswing in crimes targeting Latinos, regardless of either their immigration status or of how long their families had been in California.

          Most hate crimes, as usual, occurred in or near large cities, with most hate crimes in San Francisco against gays, while in Los Angeles a wave of incidents targeted Jews, Muslims and African-Americans.

          Reported hate crimes linked to white supremacists in Los Angeles County jumped from 63 in 2015 to 105 last year, about two-thirds more than the previous year’s number. They have been most common in poorer communities like Cudahy, according to an annual survey by that county’s Human Relations commission.

          That commission also found African Americans the most frequently targeted group in Southern California, often the victims of white supremacists. But the danger to transgender individuals also increased sharply, with 39 reported crimes hitting them compared with 22 the year before, a 77 percent increase.

          The increases were just as sharp in Northern California, where hate crimes almost tripled in Santa Clara County, from 14 to 39, with San Jose hit the most. Of that city’s 24 reported hate crimes, 15 were based on race and ethnicity, seven were religious and two involved sexual orientation. San Jose’s total was triple its 2015 number.

          The increases in crimes based on race and ethnicity, from swastikas on synagogues and mosques to physical attacks on gays, are too striking and too ubiquitous in California’s population centers to have been spurred by anything other than the not-quite-hateful, but still race-suggestive rhetoric that suffused television and the Internet at the times when these crimes increased the most.

          It would be the height of naiveté to gloss over this reality. California learned in 1994 and 1995 that hateful political advertising coincided with a sharp rise in hate and hate crimes against the same or similar groups to those referenced in the ads.

          The 2016 numbers – more dramatically increased than in any one year since the 1990s – appear to demonstrate that this type of politics is no more benign today than 20 years ago.

          And until the numbers for 2017 come in sometime near the end of next year, no one will know the exact effect the Trump presidency has had on them. But it’s a safe bet we will see even more dramatic increases than last year’s.

                            

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

WILL TOP TWO ‘JUNGLE PRIMARY’ AID FEINSTEIN?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “WILL TOP TWO ‘JUNGLE PRIMARY’ AID FEINSTEIN?”

          Strong irony is in the air as California heads into the hot political year of 2018, with an initiative to end the state’s “top two” primary election system in play just as top two, also known as the “jungle primary,” may be about to accomplish its central purpose.

That aim was to allow voters in the minority party to influence elections and elect more moderate members of the larger party when their own party either has no candidate in a race or fields a sure loser.

So it is today as moderate Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein bids for another six years in Washington, D.C. amid opposition from state Senate President Kevin de Leon and possibly others from the Democrats’ left wing.

So far, no Republican has entered the race, and in past reelection efforts, Feinstein has trampled GOP opponents anyhow. This leads to two key questions to be answered in the next 11 months: Will the ‘jungle primary’ system so detested by Republicans and fringe party members help save Feinstein’s long career? And will she be the last to benefit from that system, which pits the top two primary election vote-getters for any office below the presidency against each other in the November runoff, regardless of party?

          Mostly likely, Feinstein next fall will share the ballot with the initiative seeking to return California to its previous primary system based on parties, with each party participating in the primary entitled to have a candidate in the runoff. Candidates and parties now must earn runoff slots with strong primary election performances.

          If top two is even partly responsible for a Feinstein win, she would be the most prominent case of that system fulfilling its aim.

          The Democratic left, which came within a hair of taking over the party’s state apparatus last fall, excoriates Feinstein because she once urged patience with President Trump, because she’s had Wall Street ties and has not been as shrill in opposing Trump as some younger senators, including California’s other senator, fellow Democrat Kamala Harris. (Harris endorsed Feinstein the day she announced for reelection.)

          No one yet knows how wide the appeal of a so-called progressive candidate like de Leon or activist billionaire Tom Steyer might be among baseline Democratic voters, so it’s impossible yet to determine whether Feinstein might need Republican votes to win reelection. But that is a definite possibility, and if it happens, it would fulfill the purpose of the jungle primary, backed when it began by former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and ex-Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado, both moderate Republicans. They wanted their sort of candidates to have a chance to win and their sort of voters to be able to influence election outcomes in places where they previously could not.

          Now comes Feinstein, who could be the rare California incumbent getting less than half her own party’s primary election vote. Republicans, with barely over a quarter of California’s total voter registration, would be unlikely to place a candidate on the ballot this year, just as they failed in the 2016 Senate contest.

          But if they vote in decent numbers, they are more than sufficient to combine with moderate Democrats to keep a far-leftist candidate from winning. That only works if Republicans actually vote for Feinstein, even if they would much prefer voting for a fellow Republican.

          Returns from 2016 show that almost exactly 1 million fewer Californians voted for a U.S. Senate candidate than for president, indicating  many Republicans didn’t bother to vote in a race between two liberal Democratic women, Harris and then-Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez.

          If most of those in the vote dropoff were Republicans and there is less dropoff this fall, they could assure that California gets the moderate Feinstein and not someone substantially to her left and less patient or willing to compromise.

          Such an outcome would represent the explicit purpose of top two, and it’s just possible that it might also be the last gasp of that system. For if voters opt to go back to party-driven primaries, the extreme wings of both major parties will once again provide almost all candidates.

          This would assure plenty of November choices, but would essentially disenfranchise Democrats in Republican-dominated legislative districts and Republicans statewide, as well as those living in the many Democratic-dominated districts.

                   

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

CSU GRADUATES MORE, HOPES TO MAINTAIN DEGREES’ VALUE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 15, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “CSU GRADUATES MORE, HOPES TO MAINTAIN DEGREES’ VALUE”

          Every economic forecast shows California needs more college graduates. About 35 percent more than today’s total by 2030, on pain of losing hundreds of thousands of high-paying jobs to other states and countries.

          The state’s largest producer of college grads has gotten the message: The Cal State system last spring graduated 23 percent of all students who enrolled four years earlier, its highest proportion of four-year graduations ever. At the same time, the more than 98,700 undergraduate degrees handed out were the most since the CSU system began in 1857 at San Jose State University.

          But almost everyone at the 23 Cal State campuses knows it’s not enough. The state needs more CSU products, not merely to replace the host of schoolteachers due to retire in the next few years, but also to fuel new Googles and Hulus and Facebooks that are almost certain to create thousands of jobs over the next few decades.

          Cal State thinks it knows where to find those new graduates: among the many freshmen who arrive on campus needing remedial education in English and math. University officials report about 40 percent of students now take remedial courses because they’re not fully college-ready. Those courses have not previously offered credit toward graduation, so remedial students drop out or graduate late in larger numbers than their classmates.

          The CSU, under orders from system Chancellor Timothy P. White, thinks it has a way around that problem, one that will give students college credit even for classes covering what they should have learned in high school.

          It’s called “corequisite remediation.” The concept allows students to take regular college classes even as they’re struggling to catch up to where they should have been before ever enrolling.

          “These classes will be different from campus to campus,” said CSU spokesman Mike Uhlenkamp. “Each campus serves a different population. We know the current remedial classes have helped, but they’re not doing enough for the students. So there will be a radical sea change.” This will start next fall, except on two campuses (Monterey Bay and Sonoma State) where there’s a one-year delay.

          Some professors complain the new classes are being imposed from outside, although they are actually being designed by faculty at each campus.

          They’ll all be based in part on the experience of the City University of New York and Tennessee’s 13 junior colleges.

          In the new system, students might spend the first seven weeks of a statistics class learning algebra and probability, and the last seven in a 14-week semester completing the coursework of a normal class. An alternate plan could see students study both algebra and statistics simultaneously, even though algebra is needed to understand much of statistics.

          It may be hard to see how this can work without confusing students, but the CSU insists it can and will work. A study published by Columbia University says it has worked in Tennessee. “Based on the Tennessee data, the success rates from corequisite remediation indicate a more efficient instructional system for students who enter college academically underprepared,” concluded that study.

          The CUNY experience is similar, according to a 2016 report finding that “policies allowing students to take college-level instead of remedial…courses can increase student success.”

          No one knows what employers will think of this or whether it will eventually devalue all Cal State degrees. Until now, employers have had a good idea of what students with each type of degree should know; at least for a while to come, they may not be so sure. That could harm students who need no remedial work after entering college.

          Said Uhlenkamp, “Our overarching goal is to strengthen the quality of a Cal State education and we are confident our faculty will design courses that do this.”

          But some Cal State professors and students demur. “The faculty are justifiably suspicious,” Katherine Stevenson, who heads the developmental math program at Cal State Northridge, told the system’s board of trustees the other day. The CSU Academic Senate warned of “rushed and poorly designed implementation.”

          That doesn’t faze Cal State’s bosses, who insist everything will be OK. No one knows how it will all work out, but answers should start coming next fall.

         

         
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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com 

NO PUNISHMENT FOR CORRUPTION UNDER BROWN

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 12, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “NO PUNISHMENT FOR CORRUPTION UNDER BROWN”

          On the day Gov. Jerry Brown returned to his office after 12 days wandering around Europe preaching the ills of climate change and the current United States response to it, a Los Angeles judge unsealed the latest evidence of corruption among his appointees here at home.

          The key revelation in documents made public after more than a year of secrecy once again spotlights the California Public Utilities Commission – made up primarily of trusted former Brown aides. Other problem areas also festered during Brown’s absence.

The documents show the PUC asked the Legislature for $6.045 million in early 2016 to pay private lawyers for allegedly helping it comply with subpoenas and search warrants in the state attorney general’s ongoing criminal investigation of a highly questionable settlement that now sees consumers paying about 70 percent of the cost for shutting down the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station. The new money comes atop $5.2 million in public money the commissioners paid their lawyers since 2015.

          That essence of the San Onofre settlement was reached during a secret meeting between leaders of the PUC and the Southern California Edison Co. in a luxury hotel in Warsaw, Poland almost half a decade ago.

          Under pressure, the PUC has reopened its decision on that agreement, which precluded public hearings that might have spotlighted Edison’s key role in causing the plant’s shutdown.

          The documents demonstrate that once the PUC got its new funds, the private law firm it hired fought the investigation, rather than cooperating with it, as the PUC had promised. Among other things, those private lawyers questioned the validity of a key search warrant and tried to assert the Warsaw meeting was legal – even though the commission had already fined Edison for not formally reporting it.

 (Irony: The commission was in on the meeting, but fined other participants for not reporting. Meanwhile commissioners neither reported the meeting to the public nor fined their own participant.)

Said San Diego consumer lawyer Maria Severson, one of two attorneys who won release of the long-hidden documents, “There were sufficient facts in the (subpoenas) to lead to a strong suspicion of guilt,…nonfeasance and even malfeasance (and) probable cause (to believe) that they conspired to obstruct justice or the administration of the laws.”

Brown said nothing about the released documents, and has refused comment repeatedly about dubious PUC moves. He has yet to criticize any of his commission appointees, while they refuse repeated requests to furnish a legal justification for use of public funds to defend commissioners in a criminal investigation.

Meanwhile, the PUC issued a written statement insisting it “has cooperated with the attorney general’s office though every step of the investigation.” That’s not what the judge, William C. Ryan, concluded when he wrote that “The PUC has withheld hundreds of documents, claiming…privilege.”

State Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, whose house okayed the funding, added in an email that “I believe the PUC can expect vigorous examination (from lawmakers).”

As this went on, Brown also was mute about admitted interference by aides to University of California President Janet Napolitano with an audit of UC. While state auditor Elaine Howell asked UC regents to consider disciplining those who interfered with the audit, Brown said nothing, even though he has been an ex-officio regent for many years.

It’s hard to believe Napolitano didn’t know what her aides were up to. When football or basketball coaches’ assistants break rules, the head coach is usually fired. Why not Napolitano?

Nor did Brown punish Energy Commission members for handing out tens of millions of gasoline tax dollars to a company headed by a former academic who advised that commission’s staff on how to evaluate grant applications for hydrogen highway funds, then quit his university job and three months later filed a multimillion-dollar grant application that was accepted.

          Instead of firing or disciplining the commission chairman who enabled this obvious conflict of interest, Brown reappointed him.

          The time is long gone when Brown could plausibly deny knowing of the corruption among his appointees or others in whose choice he had a hand, like Napolitano.

          It’s all part of a pattern of not merely corruption, but complete unaccountability in Brown’s administration, where top appointees usually continue in prestigious, powerful jobs no matter what misdeeds they do or okay.

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

THE HYPOCRISY IN CALIFORNIA GOP TAX ‘REFORM’ VOTES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “THE HYPOCRISY IN CALIFORNIA GOP TAX ‘REFORM’ VOTES”

          Hypocrisy is nothing new in politics – or anywhere else in human activity, for that matter. But it’s become a lot more visible lately as women expose more and more sexual harassment episodes in the pasts of prominent men.

          There’s Democratic U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, now exposed as a groper and a purveyor of unfunny innuendo in his former career as a comedian, who’s also been a champion of women’s rights and a prominent accuser of Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore,

          There’s President Trump blasting Franken, despite bragging about serial groping in a video released during his 2016 campaign and despite at least a dozen harassment accusations. There’s also his daughter and adviser Ivanka, who insisted “there’s a special place in hell” for men like Moore, who reportedly often got involved with high school girls in past decades. Ms. Trump, of course, said nothing about her daddy’s alleged past.

          But sex and sexual imbroglios are far from the only subjects for hypocrisy in politics today. There are also taxes.

Among the great majority of California Republican congressmen, inconsistent words and behavior can be less obvious than in the current wave of newly exposed sexual predators.

          Eleven of the 14 Republicans in California’s House delegation just voted for the GOP’s tax “reform” bill (one person’s reform can often be disastrous for others). Add the fact that every prominent California Republican now inveighs against the state’s new 12-cent-per-gallon gasoline tax, which the GOP holds responsible for pump price increases averaging almost 30 cents per gallon over the last month. Republicans have yet to address the other 18 cents, the majority of the price rise, but consumer advocates maintain it’s from oil company price gouging timed to coincide with the tax increase.

          Very soon, every Republican member of Congress from California will have endorsed a proposed proposition (now in the signature-gathering stage) to overturn the gas tax increase. GOP Assemblyman Travis Allen of Orange County makes that planned measure the centerpiece of his run for governor.

          The state GOP organization sends out fund-raising pitches asking voters to “condemn the Democrats for their massive gas tax increase!” “We need to hold Democrats responsible,” the emails add, never mentioning that the tax could not have passed without votes from a few Republican legislators.

          While they and their party blast the gas tax, though, the vast majority of California Republicans in Congress voted for the GOP tax bill that, if it becomes law, will trigger an annual tax hike of about $114 billion on Californians – compared with a yearly tab of about $5.2 billion for the gas tax hike. The exceptions in this vote were Placer County’s Tom McClintock, Orange County’s Dana Rohrabacher and Darrell Issa, whose district covers parts of both San Diego Orange counties. Rohrabacher and Issa are both among national Democrats’ top 2018 targets.

          Had the other 11 California Republicans voted to nix the tax bill, which passed by a 227-206 margin, it could have been defeated by one vote, 217-216.

          The proposed measure would cost 6 million Californians who deduct from their federal taxes what they pay in state and local levies at least $101 billion yearly, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That deduction would disappear. So would deductions for property taxes over $10,000 and writeoffs for mortgage interest, which together now save Californians about $2 billion. Student loan interest would also no longer be deductible, adding about $1.1 billion to the tab, and the medical expense deduction would disappear too, the average beneficiary now writing off $9,951, or about $10 billion total.

          Not even a higher standard deduction and tweaked tax brackets can approach making up for these huge losses.

          In short California’s 11 GOP yes voters vehemently oppose a $5.2 billion gasoline tax for long-overdue road and bridge repairs, but back a “reform” that would cost Californians 22 times as much.

          That’s the very definition of hypocrisy, especially coming from folks subscribing to the GOP’s “no new taxes” mantra. Some of the yes voters tried to excuse themselves by saying the bill will change before it passes. That’s a little like sexual predators saying they never meant to harm anyone.

          The joke here is on anyone who continues to believe these are principled politicians.

-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. Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com.

MANSON DEAD; HIS ‘FAMILY’ AND ITS LIKE SHOULD NEVER BE FREED

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
      “MANSON DEAD; HIS ‘FAMILY’ AND ITS LIKE SHOULD NEVER BE FREED”

          Charles Manson is dead and the timing is definitely appropriate. The most notorious inmate in the California prison system died this week at 83 of natural causes in a Bakersfield hospital where he had been taken from Corcoran State Prison. Death came not long after an abdominal condition from which he suffered had been found inoperable this fall.

          The timing of Manson’s death was right if only because Jerry Brown, the last California governor with any chance of remembering the terror Manson and his murderous gang spread around Southern California, has barely a year left in his term.

          Once Brown leaves office other members of the gang, better known as the Manson Family, may find it much easier win parole. But at least Californians can be certain that the mesmerizing, unrepentant Manson himself will never be loosed to encourage more gruesome killings by either new or old followers.

          Most of the Manson gang members now in prison have been model inmates, encouraging some who don’t personally remember their uniquely cruel and vicious quality to plump for their paroles.

          Even as Manson’s body was prepped for a funeral or other disposition, follower Leslie Van Houten was up for release, her freedom recommended by a state Parole Board panel. Brown is in the midst of a 120-day period before he has to veto that ruling or let it stand.

          Brown, who lived in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angles during the 1969 Manson murder spree, was only two canyons east of the most notorious Manson family operation. That was the carefully-planned murders of actress Sharon Tate, the wife of director Roman Polanski, and four others in a sprawling Benedict Canyon mansion above Beverly Hills. The nighttime assault saw Manson’s followers carefully cut all phone and electric lines to the isolated house in a time before cell phones rendered the tactic obsolete.

          The victims of Manson followers Charles (Tex) Watson, Linda Kasabian, Susan Atkins and Patricia Krenwinkel could not call for help.

          Trial testimony showed Manson, who had ordered the four to commit those killings and told the women to follow Watson’s instructions in the process, felt the operation was a bit sloppy. So he went along the next day, when he decided to kill more people, this time in the Los Feliz area near Hollywood, and invaded the home of grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary.

          There, he carefully instructed followers including Watson and Leslie Van Houten in what to do, before leaving the scene. First Van Houten and another woman held down Rosemary LaBianca while Watson stabbed her husband to death. Watson next bayoneted Rosemary LaBiana, then gave Van Houten a knife, which she used to stab her victim 14 times. The blood of the LaBiancas was used to scrawl macabre messages from the Mansons on walls and other surfaces.

          Now Van Houten is described by her lawyer as a victim, despite the key role she played. She was only 19 at the time, they claim, and addled by LSD.

          Van Houten has been a model prisoner since her 1978 sentence of seven years to life imprisonment. She’s earned two college degrees in prison and has led self-help groups for other inmates.

          But Brown should not let her go, any more than he’s released other Manson followers. In refusing parole to them, he has speculated that some killers can “change their thinking,” but never put the Manson group in that category.

          Nor should he or any future governor concede anything like that about the worst of California’s other imprisoned killers, including Juan Corona, who killed 25 farm workers before his skein ended; or  Edmund Kemper, the Santa Cruz area’s 1970s-era “Coed Killer,” or Lawrence Bittaker and Roy Norris, who raped, kidnapped, tortured and murdered five young women in 1979 in Southern California.

          While most elderly prisoners pose little risk on parole, putting this kind of person on the streets would justifiably cause many to look over their shoulders while walking down streets or even sitting at home.

          If Manson’s death does nothing else, it should renew the sense of horror at the crimes he ordered and committed and add pressure to keep his remaining followers where they can do no further harm.

         
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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net.

BROWN STILL HELPING DEVELOPERS EVADE CEQA

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
      “BROWN STILL HELPING DEVELOPERS EVADE CEQA”

          “I’ve never seen a CEQA exemption I don’t like.” – Gov. Jerry Brown.

          Brown made that observation shortly after starting his second go-‘round as California’s chief executive in early 2011, reacting wryly to his 1990s experience as mayor of Oakland, where the California Environmental Quality Act often forced him to battle for pet housing and school projects, including a military academy he still cherishes.

          So ever since Brown resumed the governor’s office he previously held for eight years in the 1970s and ‘80s, he’s okayed one exemption after another to CEQA, passed in 1970, signed by then-Gov. Ronald Reagan and still the state’s key environmental law.

          He’s gone along with the developer- and union-influenced Legislature time after time, especially on sports-related projects. These include the Sacramento Kings’ new arena, another arena in the works for the Golden State Warriors in the Mission Bay section of San Francisco, the abortive Farmers Field professional football stadium once proposed for downtown Los Angeles and another failed football venue in Carson.

          The largest project to circumvent CEQA so far is the under-construction 70,000-seat football stadium and commercial development on the Inglewood site of the former Hollywood Park racetrack that will house both the Los Angeles Rams and Chargers starting in 2020 or 2021.

          That stadium evaded most CEQA issues via a local ballot initiative in sports-mad Inglewood, the former longtime home of basketball’s Los Angeles Lakers. The measure took advantage of an earlier CEQA change which allows developers to qualify local initiatives okaying the projects for a local ballot and then lets city councils adopt those initiatives with no public vote or debate. There’s also no prohibition on voting by city council members who have taken campaign donations from developers involved. Only existing laws banning direct and provable quid-pro-quos apply here.

          The emphasis has been on sports projects when it comes to CEQA speedups and exemptions under Brown, but it also includes heavy pushes for items like the so-called Crossroads of the World development near the already jammed intersection of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue in Los Angeles.

          Now Brown has approved yet another major CEQA exemption, this one carried in the Legislature by Democratic Assemblyman Miguel Santiago of Los Angeles. The new measure would allow speedups in the approval process for both a planned expansion of Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park and twin skyscrapers near the existing landmark round Capital Records building in Hollywood.

          Santiago’s measure entitles any project that costs more than $100 million and meets union-level wage standards, plus standards for greenhouse gas controls, to get final resolution of any CEQA-related lawsuit within nine months. Objectors to many proposed projects attempt to use CEQA strictures in filing lawsuits aiming to stop developments, big and small.

          But after local citizen groups objected, legislators did not send Brown another measure that would have largely exempted from CEQA a new Inglewood arena for the Los Angeles Clippers basketball team.

          It’s also a truism in modern California that the more transit projects like light rail are built, the more apartment buildings will quickly go up near it, including both affordable and market-rate housing.

          Brown, who styles himself a worldwide environmental leader because of his strong backing for renewable energy and his constant battles to stem climate change, had no problem with any of these exemptions. Essentially, he has facilitated some of the most significant building projects in recent California history with little environmental review.

          But Brown’s past frustrations with delays in Oakland are no justification for depriving citizens of their right to input on big developments near their homes and businesses, as Brown has now done repeatedly.

          It’s almost as if Brown has a severe case of amnesia, forgetting his 2010 campaign promise to devolve more government authority to local citizens and away from state government.

          All this is sure to go down in state history as one of the least green and least positive legacies of his long political career.

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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com. For More Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

HOW ABOUT INCENTIVES IN BULLET TRAIN CONTRACTS?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

   “HOW ABOUT INCENTIVES IN BULLET TRAIN CONTRACTS?”

          Reports rise almost weekly about missed construction deadlines and other time problems for California’s embattled bullet train project, which hopes to see passengers move between Los Angeles and San Francisco in well under three hours sometime around 2030.

          But the state’s High Speed Rail Authority, charged with spending almost $10 billion in state bond money approved by voters nine years ago, along with federal grant money and other funds from state sources like the cap-and-trade program, denies it has missed a single deadline.

          “We have not missed any completion dates,” insists project spokeswoman Lisa Marie Alley. The authority even issued a press release announcing it met all federal timing requirements for more than $2.55 billion in 2009 grant money, while generating $4 billion in economic activity in the state.

          And yet, no portion of the project, which will eventually also see terminals in Anaheim and Sacramento is anywhere near completion. It’s possible none will be completed if the myriad lawsuits against the project ever succeed.    

          That’s one reason a report on the Breitbart News California website looked credible at first glance the other day, when it said the authority had extended a deadline for prime contract work by the Tutor-Perini/Zachry/Parsons (TPZP) consortium on the 32-mile first stretch between Madera and south Fresno. Breitbart also said the consortium got an 18 percent raise amounting to almost $8 million for that stretch.

          Well… not exactly. The HSR directors actually increased the contingency fund for work on their first segment by $35 million; none earmarked for the TPZP group. The money, said the directors, will “address short-term needs and avoid delaying…critical activities through November.” As of early November, Alley said, the contractors had received none of that money. Nor were any deadlines extended.

          So much for the accuracy of “fake news” critic Stephen Bannon, the former top adviser to President Trump who heads Breitbart.

          All this, however, begs the question of whether the project can really be on time, as officials claim, when not even one short segment is finished more than two years after construction began.

          Which leads to a simple question: Why not put time incentives into bullet train contracts? This is perfectly legal (“We could opt to do that, but… have not done so,” said Alley) and has been effective when the state did use it.

          The best examples of incentives speeding work without increasing costs, while boosting local economies far more than the expenses involved, came immediately after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and the 1994 Northridge shock.

          After Loma Prieta, incentives were written into a contract with the C.C. Myers construction firm of Rancho Cordova, which rebuilt two bridges on California 1 near Watsonville in 55 days – 45 days less than what was allotted for the job. Myers got an incentive bonus of $30,000 for each day it was early.

          It was the same five years later, when two key bridges collapsed along  the world’s busiest road, the I-10 Santa Monica Freeway in Los Angeles. Exactly 66 days later and 74 days ahead of deadline, that freeway reopened and commuters stopped using detours that cost them about 30 minutes in each direction they drove. That ended daily costs to the local economy estimated at well over $1 million per day for delays to goods and services. Myers again did the work, pocketing about $14 million in incentive bonuses, part of which it spent on extra workers and overtime.

          The outcome was similar on five other incentive contracts to rebuild earthquake-damaged bridges.

          Despite the proven effectiveness of incentives, Caltrans and other state agencies let the practice lapse. The bullet train has no plans to use them, either. “We have and plan to continue to use design-build and or design-bid-build (contracts) that do not include an incentive,” the authority said.

          The HSR authority gave no reason for such rigidity, and perhaps it will change its mind and do the logical thing if it ever falls behind a legally-mandated deadline.

          But history shows incentives get work done more quickly and create more jobs, even if they are temporary like most construction work. If California’s next governor is smart, he or she will insist on this tactic as a condition of appointment to the authority’s board, whenever vacancies come up.

                  

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

PROP. 54: A BALLOT INITIATIVE THAT WORKED

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “PROP. 54: A BALLOT INITIATIVE THAT WORKED”

          There’s nothing politicians and lobbyists in this state hate more than the ballot initiative process to which they all pay hypocritical verbal homage every chance they get.

          It’s easy to see why they don’t like lawmaking by the public, the essence of initiatives: The process takes important issues out of their hands. It can alter their working conditions in ways they don’t like.

          Sure, politicians will occasionally make use of initiatives, as Republican businessman John Cox and Orange County GOP Assemblyman Travis Allen are doing now in making pet initiatives the centerpieces of their underdog campaigns for governor. Cox is pushing a measure to multiply by 1,000 the number of state legislators, while Allen has virtually appropriated the effort to repeal the state’s new gas tax increase.

          Similarly, ex-Gov. Pete Wilson used the anti-illegal immigrant Proposition 187 to prop up his reelection campaign in 1994 and current Gov. Jerry Brown used the 2012 Proposition 30 tax increases to balance his budgets.

          But politicians generally hate ballot initiatives unless they’re making such use of them. Brown, for example, opposed the landmark 1978 Proposition 13 property tax cuts because they interfered with his own efforts at tax reform. Most legislators fought tooth and nail against Proposition 20, which created the Coastal Commission and has limited development near beaches and view areas.

          But it’s hard to find an initiative that has affected legislators more than Proposition 54, which passed just over one year ago and requires that proposed laws cannot be passed unless they’ve been available in print or via the Internet for at least 72 hours before passage.

          Because of Prop. 54, voters could see the final form of Brown’s proposal for California to join a Western regional electricity grid before it actually passed, rather than having to react after the fact as has happened with many last-minute bills in recent years. Because of that notice and the possibility this plan might cause a new energy crunch, opponents could organize loud protests and the proposition died – for now.

          Similarly, a plan to exempt a new Inglewood arena for the Los Angeles Clippers from provisions of the California Environmental Quality Act also was shelved because it became obvious when the plan was exposed to a little daylight that it could set a bad precedent, despite Brown’s distaste for CEQA. His signature was a virtual certainty if this one had passed, like several prior stadium and arena exemptions favoring developers and big business.

          No one can be sure just how many lousy measures Prop. 54 spared Californians, because the notorious gut-and-amend proposals that have been common in recent decades were drastically lessened this fall. In that process, legislative proposals which already have a name and number have often been totally changed to cover subjects unrelated to those affected by the original bill. When that’s done at the last moment, the public has no chance for any input.

          By forcing legislators to make such changes at least three days before final votes are taken, Prop. 54 moved up the amendment process, often by months. The result ought to be better legislation, although only time will tell how that will pan out.

          All this does not mean California’s lawmaking process is now perfect. With legislators voting on hundreds of bills during the final week of their session, it’s impossible for them to cast informed votes on most items. One result is that party-line votes become more common, with members of the Assembly and state Senate taking their cues from their leadership.

          It’s a problem very similar to what went on with health care this fall in Washington, D.C., where Congress members and senators were forced to vote on Republican proposals to repeal and replace Obamacare – the Affordable Care Act – without knowing how many Americans they would deprive of health insurance.

          Here’s a suggestion for a future initiative to further improve state lawmaking: Stagger the deadline for bill passage, with firm limits on the number of bills legislators can consider during any one week. Yes, this might cut down the number of bills proposed in any one session, but does anyone really believe we need all the proposed laws now being put forward each year?

         
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Elias is author of the current book “The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government's Campaign to Squelch It,” now available in an updated third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com