GM BECOMES A CLASSIC BANDWAGON JUMPER

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

        “GM BECOMES A CLASSIC BANDWAGON JUMPER”

 

        Three years ago, General Motors was among the first to jump aboard when then-President Donald Trump and his administration tried to remove California’s authority to regulate its own smog standards, a right supposedly guaranteed in the federal Clean Air Act of 1970.

 

        No one questioned whether this state would or should have that right in perpetuity back when Republican President Richard Nixon, a Californian very familiar with polluted air, signed that law. It was a matter of course.

 

        California’s clean air advances quickly became so accepted that 16 other states eventually agreed to adopt whatever standards this state set, but a couple of years later just in case of complications.

 

        Then came Trump claiming that his executive orders could override the authority Congress and a previous president gave California. He sought a single, far more lax, national automotive smog standard. If he’d been reelected, he might well have succeeded.

 

        Only a lawsuit filed by former state Atty. Gen. Xavier Becerra soon after Trump issued his order held up that edict, one of many designed to penalize California for providing the popular vote margin by which Hillary Clinton defeated Trump in 2016, even though Trump won in the arcane and archaic Electoral College.

 

        But Trump again lost the popular vote last fall, with California providing most of the margin of defeat. This time, he also lost in the Electoral College despite his repeated, false claims of widespread fraud.

 

        GM again acted fast. The giant automaker almost immediately after the vote dropped its role in helping Trump try to deprive California of its key clean air authority. Fellow Trump-supporting automakers like Toyota and Fiat Chrysler followed months later.

 

        GM’s move was clearly taken because new President Joseph Biden made it plain throughout his campaign that he would reverse most if not all Trump measures to loosen environmental regulations.

 

        GM chief executive Mary Barra did not at any point relate her company’s move to any flaws in what Trump sought to do. Her statement left no doubt this was purely bandwagon jumping, GM getting aboard with a new president as soon as possible.

 

        She said she pulled GM from its role as a Trump supporter because she agrees with Biden’s plan to make electric car use far more widespread.

 

        “We believe the ambitious electrification goals of (Biden), California and General Motors are aligned to address climate change by drastically reducing automobile emissions,” she said.

 

        It would have been difficult to be more blatant. For GM was aligned the last three years against California’s longstanding aim to increase EV use, the very plan Barra now endorses.

 

        So this is corporate opportunism at its peak.

 

        GM was long joined by Toyota in standing against California consumers, who strongly back the state’s environmental goals, according to every poll on the subject. Both glossed over their stances for years in consumer advertising.

 

        Meanwhile, other large automakers like Ford, Volkswagen, Honda, BMW and Volvo joined Becerra’s lawsuit to prevent Trump’s anti-environmental move, which he justified with unsubstantiated claims that stricter smog standards lead to job losses.

 

        It is no surprise that GM and Toyota left the Trump train at the first indication it was the losing side, both in this effort and in combating election results.

 

        Both companies have long histories of opposing every advance California has ever made in smog controls. From the earliest smog control devices of the 1960s to catalytic converters to fleet standards that forced companies to build electric cars, GM and Toyota have always been recalcitrant.

 

        They are among the foremost companies in repeatedly claiming standards set by California’s smog-fighting agency, the Air Resources Board, could not physically be met – and then somehow managing to do it after the standards were adopted.

 

        Why expect these companies to change their behavior now? Rather, it was to be expected they would change colors like chameleons at the first indication it was the politically opportune thing to do.

 

        Which means environmentally-minded Californians now know which companies stood for cleaner air when times were tough and which did not, just in case they want to reward such efforts with a car purchase.

       

       

 

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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

TOP 4 SYSTEM COULD REVIVE STATE’S REPUBLICANS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2018, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “TOP 4 SYSTEM COULD REVIVE STATE’S REPUBLICANS”

          Imagine for a moment that California now had a top four primary election system instead of the top two it now uses. In that alternate – for now – world, the four leading vote-getters in this June’s primary election would advance to the November runoff election rather than just the top two.

          With two Democrats – Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa – currently at or near the top of the seven-person field of credible candidates for governor – no one would have to pay much attention to either of them during the leadup to this June’s primary. Instead, attention would be focused on the other five candidates, bunched until days ago in single-digit territory in every poll.

          That’s because the real contest wouldn’t be for the two top slots, but for the other two positions on the fall ballot.

          And if one of the other two Democrats and one of the two current Republican candidates should win those two runoff spots, it would be highly possible that heavily Democratic California could end up with a GOP governor, even though that party now trails Democrats by about 20 percent in voter registration.

          This would happen if the full 25 percent of voters registered as Republicans voted for their party’s surviving candidate, who would likely also pick up some independent no-party-preference voters, while the three Democrats splintered their party’s vote.

          Don’t laugh… something like this actually happened in 2012 in a largely-Democratic San Bernardino County congressional district where Republicans wound up with both November ballot slots because a bunch of Democrats splintered their party’s vote.

          A very improbable scenario, you may say. But it is exactly the kind of situation a currently circulating potential ballot initiative would create.

          The measure, sponsored by Orange County accountant Richard Ginnaty, needs 585,407 signatures to qualify as a November ballot proposition. Since this cause appears unlikely to draw hordes of volunteer petition carriers, and since paid carriers often get $5 or more per valid voter signature they gather, it would likely cost upwards of $3 million to qualify the plan. Ginnaty says he doesn’t have that kind of cash, but might get “outside support.”

          For sure, this is the simplest way yet proposed to give Republicans a chance in many California elections, where Democrats rarely show the discipline to get out of each other’s way for the sake of their party. Of course, neither have Republicans, or one of the current GOP hopefuls might have dropped out of the gubernatorial run by now.

          Ginnaty says his measure is not designed specifically to benefit Republicans, even if it ends up accomplishing that. “Republicans have been monumentally ineffective in making their case (in California) and have ignored the initiative process, a good way to bring ideas before the voters,” said the self-described “old Tea Party guy.” “That ticked me off and I want strong new voices that aren’t heard now to have a chance.”

          Meanwhile, the reaction is lukewarm from other election experts who have been fighting the top two for years on grounds that it squelches minor parties by virtually never giving them a November voice.

          Said Richard Winger, the San Francisco-based editor of the Ballot Access News newsletter and blog, “This definitely could lead to situations like what happened in San Bernardino County. But it could also help minor parties in state legislative races, where there aren’t usually many candidates if an incumbent is involved. But for statewide races, it just wouldn’t work.”

          That judgment doesn’t faze Ginnaty, who is out to clean up what he sees as a “Sacramento swamp.” “We have a swamp because we only have one party with power now,” he said. As an example of what a “swamp” can bring, he cites the state’s bullet train project, whose recent cost estimates are more than seven times higher than the bond amounts originally approved by voters.

          “A responsible Legislature would have put that to another vote of the people long ago,” he said. “Especially with self-driving cars coming, it’s an outmoded technology.”

          The bottom line: Top 4 is unlikely to make the ballot, but if it did and it passed, it could radically change today’s political reality in California.

         

              -30-

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

VOTE AGAINST TRANSPARENCY HELPS EXPLAIN GOP PLIGHT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 13, 2012 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“VOTE AGAINST TRANSPARENCY HELPS EXPLAIN GOP PLIGHT”

Despite persistent delusions that it retains plenty of influence, the California Republican Party is in increasing danger of descending into third place among party registration choices of California voters.

That’s clear from the newest voter registration figures released by Secretary of State Debra Bowen, which show a drop in GOP registration juxtaposed with large increases for both Democrats and the “no party preference” category often known as “decline to state” or “independent.”

The obvious reason: California Republicans are out of touch with most voters. Not only do its members of Congress and the state Legislature display little or no independence from the party line, but that party line itself deviates considerably from what every poll shows the majority of the public wants.

The figures first: Democratic Party registration jumped from 6.6 million in January 2008 to 7.4 million this January. At the same time, decline-to-states went from 3.01 million to 3.6 million. Republicans? They dropped from 5.197 million in January 2008 to 5.17 million four years later.

Normally, a major party will experience increases in registration when the White House belongs to the other big party. That’s happened nationally for Republicans, as President Obama draws strong opposition among conservatives and has disappointed many others who voted for him four years ago. But in California, Republicans had a net loss of about 27,000 registrants. While Democrats picked up almost 800,000.

Many analysts see these figures as a sign of disillusion with political parties in general, as decline-to-state voters now make up almost 22 percent of the electorate, up about 10 percent (505,000) from 2008. But the numbers indicate registered voters’ dissatisfaction is concentrated on only one of the major parties – Republicans.

It’s commonplace to hang that phenomenon on the GOP’s strong anti-illegal immigrant stance, which flies in the face of the single biggest concern for the steadily increasing corps of Latino voters, who rank immigration reform that includes some type of possible amnesty as their top political priority. And that’s certainly a big part of it.

But there are also other areas where California Republicans are simply out of touch.

Nowhere was that more obvious than in a late-winter legislative vote on a bill known as the California Disclose Act, a project of the California Clean Money Campaign, whose central tenet is that voters should be informed about who is spending big money to influence government policy, and how much.

The idea took the form of a bill known as AB 1148, which sought to require that ads paid for by independent expenditure groups and ballot measure committees disclose the names of their three leading “identifiable contributors” right in the ads.

Democratic Assemblywoman Julia Brownley of Santa Monica and Ventura County, who carried the bill, originally wanted legislators to put the question before voters, which would only have taken majority votes in both the Assembly and state Senate. But Democrats on the state Assembly Appropriations Committee altered the bill to let legislators themselves make this change in the Fair Political Practices Act, passed as a 1970s-era initiative. This would have required a two-thirds vote. The bill almost made it.

All but one of the 52 Democrats in the Assembly voted to pass it, while all but one of the 28 Republicans there voted against.

How out of touch could they be? While it’s true that Republicans pride themselves on sticking to principles even when those stances are unpopular, the party has never viewed keeping political donor names secret as a matter of principle. Practicality, maybe. But it would be hard to make hiding donors’ identities a basic principle. And yet, Republican Assembly members – with the lone exception of San Diego’s Nathan Fletcher – voted as a bloc to retain today’s secrecy.

Although Brownley has submitted a new, slightly stronger, Disclose Act with different number, this probably means that for at least the next two elections, coming up in June and November, voters will not know who’s really behind many ads they see for both candidates and ballot propositions.

Rather, they will once again see notations citing misleading names like “Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions” (a big tobacco-funded group that tried to end local anti-smoking ordinances) or the “California Alliance” (a trial lawyers’ group) or “Californians for Economic and Environmental Balance” (oil, chemical and utility companies) as the tag-lines for radio, television and newspaper ads.

Essentially, Republicans preserved electoral secrecy for awhile, just as they have kept a lid on all new taxes, for now. Yet, Republicans see the same public opinion polls as Democrats, so they had to know that openness is favored by 84 percent of Californians, according to the latest survey by the non-partisan Public Policy Institute.

So the campaign donor secrecy vote was a clear example of Republicans voting against a cause the public favors by large margins. The GOP also opposes popular causes like gun control and almost all environmental regulations. Is it any wonder this party steadily loses public support?

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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

ARNOLD’S INSURANCE “FEE” ACTS LIKE A NEW TAX

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 13, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ARNOLD’S INSURANCE “FEE” ACTS LIKE A NEW TAX”

Fee: a payment asked or given for professional services, admissions, licenses, tuition….
Tax: a compulsory payment.—Webster’s New 21st Century Dictionary

More than any governor in California history, Arnold Schwarzenegger has been adamant about his pledge never to raise taxes.

“I refuse to raise taxes,” he said at his mid-winter budget presentation, “because there are so many other areas where Sacramento can be smarter, more efficient and save precious taxpayer dollars.”

Yet, Schwarzenegger has never hesitated to raise fees, whether the increases involved state park admissions, college and university tuition or the cost of a driver’s license.

Those, of course, are all optional activities, in a sense. While it’s true that young people who attend universities generally increase their future potential in many ways, including earning power, no one forces them to attend college, so by Webster’s definition, tuition is a fee even if students feel the payment is compulsory. Visiting state parks and driving also are optional.

But buy a home and there’s no choice about obtaining fire and liability insurance: every bank, credit union or other lender requires this. Paying for insurance is compulsory.

That’s why the 4.8 percent surcharge on all residential and commercial property insurance Schwarzenegger’s budget proposes to charge looks more like a tax than the fee he claims it is.

Even the governor hedged a tad when he proposed it. “We consider it a fee,” he said. “I let some people debate over that – what’s a fee and what’s a tax. But I call it a fee.”

California’s nonpartisan legislative analyst, Mac Taylor, disagrees. “We’ve always felt it was a tax,” he told a reporter.

Plainly, even Schwarzenegger realizes he’s playing games with semantics here. For essentially this is a sales tax on every property insurance policy sold in California, one that will cost the average policyholder $48 per year, a total of about $200 million. Money produced by this “fee” would be earmarked for the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, better known as CalFire.

That makes this plan particularly unfair to everyone who doesn’t live in an area prone to wildfires. If you live in San Francisco or the Oakland flats or Fresno or the cities of Madera or Bakerfield or San Bernardino, chances are you will never need a CalFire crew to help you out. City or county fire departments handle home and building fires in those places.

But it’s different for property owners in the highly-populated, high priced suburban hills and many lower-priced rural areas, plus some leafy hillside areas in big cities like Los Angeles and Oakland. Their mortgage lenders also demand they buy fire insurance and because of their locations, they often must pay far higher than average prices to get it. In fire seasons, they will see plenty of CalFire personnel and a lot of others, too.

But their decision to live in those areas is a conscious choice. No one forces home buyers to choose Malibu or the Berkeley hills or the Hollywood hills, where hugely expensive wildfires occur so regularly that their former Native American denizens were staging controlled burns centuries before Europeans arrived.

Why should a resident of the Berkeley flats or San Francisco’s Marina district or Huntington Park or San Leandro pay a “fee” for their protection? Why should the owners of the Serramonte shopping mall south of San Francisco pay this fee, or the owner of the huge Gilroy factory outlet mall or the operator of the Westside Pavilion shopping center in Los Angeles? It makes no sense.

Decades ago, telephone companies began breaking toll calls and other specialized services off from the price of a basic land line, billing only the users of those functions for them. It was called “usage sensitive pricing” and it made sense. Spreading the costs run up by heavy phone users among everyone, including those who used their phones least, made no sense; the practice stopped.

Now Schwarzenegger wants to bring it back, asking homeowners sensible enough not to buy in wildfire risk areas to subsidize those who do, even though most property owners in those areas boast incomes far above the statewide average.

The bottom line: If the state needs to raise $200 million to fund fire protection for homeowners who put themselves and their possessions at risk, charge them and not everyone else. Sure, that would raise their fees well above the average now contemplated. But that was part of the risk they took by willingly moving to a danger area, just like students who enroll at a university by their own choice run the risk of hiked tuitions.

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