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.

 

 

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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

 

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

WILL UC FORFEIT TAX STATUS, IMPARTIALITY?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2022, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “WILL UC FORFEIT TAX STATUS, IMPARTIALITY?”

 

        Very quietly, the University of California’s faculty has for almost half a year been considering putting at risk the institution’s tax exempt status and its longstanding impeccable credentials as an impartial source of reliable information.

 

        This is not the first time UC has seriously contemplated a harebrained move – and sometimes those moves actually get made. Only last year, for one example, UC decided it would no longer require prospective freshmen to take standardized exams like the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) or those of the American College Testing Program (ACT).

 

        Instead, UC admissions now rely primarily on high school grades, meaning all high schools are considered equal, even though every parent in California knows there are vast differences in quality of curriculum and instruction.

 

 

        Amazingly, the faculty which votes on these sometimes fashionable and politically correct moves is loaded with folks holding Ph.D. degrees from the world’s top universities, with a fair sprinkling of Nobel Prize laureates among them.

 

        This group’s latest senseless proposal, kept mostly quiet until a UC Santa Cruz professor let the cat out of the bag early this month, would allow academic departments to take official stances on political issues of all kinds. This proposal originated last fall in a letter from the head of UC’s Committee on Academic Freedom to the system-wide Academic Senate’s top official.

 

        “Departments should not be precluded from issuing or endorsing statements,” said the letter from UC Berkeley law Prof. Ty Alper to fellow Berkeley Prof. Robert Horwitz. The letter admitted “such statements are sometimes ill-advised and have the potential to chill or intimidate minority views.” But it said that’s OK, so long as minority views are explicitly included as addenda and the names of those voting for the official statement are revealed.

 

        Of course, those very actions do chill minority views and would influence hiring of new faculty, who in UC’s confidential processes could easily be weeded out because of political views.

 

        Officially sanctioning such statements on issues from elections to international affairs to scientific beliefs would essentially make UC departments political institutions. That could quickly cost the university its tax exempt status, which now gives alumni and other donors large and small tax writeoffs for every penny they contribute.

 

        It’s not as if individual faculty members don’t already have complete freedom to express any idea or thought they like. That’s how, for just one example, former UC Prof. Linus Pauling became known as “the father of Vitamin C” and also won a Nobel Peace Prize for his activism in favor of nuclear disarmament.

 

        Similar policies of complete individual license at the California State University system (which would surely imitate any actual UC action on the current proposal) allowed Ku Klux Klan ally Kevin McDonald, long blasted by the Southern Poverty Law Center and others as a “racist” and an “anti-Semite,” to remain a psychology professor at Long Beach State until he retired.

 

        They allow some departments at San Francisco State to be almost completely politicized, too, even if those departments don’t official adopt the ideas preached by some of their more vocal faculty members.

 

        It’s not as if departments don’t already go rogue sometimes, with stances on Israel’s policies, climate change and other issues. Departments may call these positions official, but under a UC policy in effect since 1970, they’re not.

 

        The policy states that “The name, insignia, seal or address of the university or any of its offices or units shall not be used for or in connection with political purposes or activity.” The policy also bans political campaigning on campuses.

 

        That’s the way it should and must be, if UC is to be sure of maintaining both its tax status and its reputation for impartial intellectual honesty.

 

        If anything, the current effort by Alper’s faculty committee ought to serve as a warning to UC’s Board of Regents to be more vigilant in enforcing its longstanding and upstanding policy.

 

        Otherwise, why pretend the university or its

departments are impartial observers or analysts of anything at all, from vaccines to political candidates?

       
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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 

PLASTIC BAG BAN REPEAL: AN IRRELEVANT VOTE?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

 FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “PLASTIC BAG BAN REPEAL: AN IRRELEVANT VOTE?”

          What if California voters repealed a law, but it remained the law anyway?

          That’s a situation the state may soon face if a yet-unnumbered proposition aiming to repeal a 2014 statewide ban on plastic grocery bags should pass in November. The statewide law also requires stores to offer paper bags for at least 10 cents each.

          The bottom line on this referendum measure, which qualified for the ballot within a mere five months of when legislators passed the plastic bag ban, is that it likely won’t matter much.

          In fact, there’s little effect from the fact that the state ban is not in force today, almost two years after it passed. Any law challenged by a referendum gets suspended until the outcome of the vote is official.

          There’s a pretty simple reason why neither the vote nor the law’s suspension matters much: Many local governments have their own bans in place, 146 cities and counties – about one-third of all California communities, containing a large majority of the populace. Repealing the state law would not affect those laws.

          Try to get a supermarket plastic bag in any of California’s largest cities. Can’t do it in Los Angeles. Nor in San Francisco, nor anywhere in Los Angeles County, nor many others.

          This infuriates makers of plastic bags, which have pretty much disappeared from the shoulders of major highways they once littered.

          Grocers at first opposed the plastic bag bans, protesting the inconvenience to themselves and their customers from forcing consumers to bring their own bags or buy paper ones at checkout counters. They’ve been converted and now support the bans.

          “Early polling is that consumers are adapting to no plastic bags,” Ronald Fong, head of the California Grocers Assn., told a reporter. “It’s really unfortunate that out-of-staters are sinking millions of dollars into telling us that we’re wrong here in California.”

          Altogether, more than $4 million has been raised to fight the statewide plastic bag ban, only a small fraction of it raised in California. An industry association, the American Progressive Bag Alliance, which represents the plastic bag industry nationally, raised more than $4 million from its members shortly after the state ban passed. None came from California.

    Contributors were led by South Carolina’s Hilex Poly ($1.9 million), with companies like Superbag (Texas), Advance Polybag (Texas) and Formosa Plastics (New Jersey) also among big donors.

          “We believe California voters share our concerns and will make their voices heard at the ballot box,” the pro-plastic alliance’s director, Lee Califf, said in a statement. The statewide ban, he said, threatens thousands of jobs and will have “no meaningful effect on the environment.”

          While removing the statewide ban would not kill any of the local ones, it could perpetuate some confusion, as the state law was intended to standardize regulations that differ slightly among localities.

          What’s more, say backers – state and local – the bag bans are taking millions of unneeded bags off the street. “When they have to pay, customers avoid buying the bags,” Mark Murray, executive director of the group Californians Against Waste, said recently. He cited figures showing the number of grocery customers buying no bags (usually because they’ve brought their own) has jumped from about 10 percent to more than 35 percent.

          Califf and the pro-plastic group maintain the bag ban and fee have been “a massive, billion-dollar giveaway to grocers under the guise of environmentalism.” The plastics alliance hopes to qualify a second measure for a November vote, earmarking the 10-cent bag fees for environmental causes rather than letting grocers keep them. The state legislative analyst estimates this could provide $10 million or more to such causes, but nowhere near billions.

          The bottom line on this is that aside from any environmental benefits of banning plastic bags, this has devolved into a fight between two well-heeled interest groups: Grocers now love the ban on plastics because it gives them a new revenue source while they no longer must buy plastics. Meanwhile, the plastic bag companies desperately want back into the huge California market, something that’s looking more and more like a pipe dream.

                  

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    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. He has covered esoteric votes in eight national political conventions. 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

STATE SENATE MUST DO MORE TO RESTORE TRUST

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 15, 2014, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “STATE SENATE MUST DO MORE TO RESTORE TRUST”

          Ever since San Francisco’s Leland Yee joined his colleagues Ron Calderon of Montebello and Roderick Wright of Los Angeles on the state Senate’s indicted/convicted list and then all three were suspended, other senators have recognized they must restore the public’s trust.

    That won’t happen if suspensions are all those other senators are willing to mete out against their allegedly crooked brethren. Nothing less than expulsions and quick special elections for replacements can prove the Senate still knows why it exists.

          The proven and alleged crimes of the Senate Three would be enough to justify severe action, just as a state senator indicted for bribery was expelled in 1905.

    Meanwhile, keeping Yee, Calderon and Wright on suspension – with pay, no less – leaves almost one-tenth of Californians unrepresented in their Senate. Remember, all three men purveyed one common message during their many election campaigns: Only they could provide the most effective service available. So much for that.

          Today they provide no service. In sustaining the trio's similar struggles for political survival and personal freedom, other senators appear to have forgotten they were elected not just to collect paychecks and perks, but to represent Californians and further the public good. In each case, the public would be best served by not letting the Senate’s alleged crooks hang on for many months while their cases and appeals play out.

          None of the three has yet shown the slightest willingness to consider stepping down. Calderon, accused of political corruption, and Wright, convicted of using a false address when filing to run for office, are both stonewalling and their mostly Democratic colleagues keep enabling them even though their legal woes reduced the party’s Senate edge below the magic two-thirds majority margin needed to pass some laws.

          With Wright and Calderon first on leave and now suspended while their cases play out, Democrats failed to push through several measures, including a key bill aiming to force revelations of “dark money” contributors to political campaigns. Not one Republican voted for that one, all it would have taken for passage, but if the Democrats still had a two-thirds margin, the predictable GOP solidarity against sunlight would not have mattered.

          Now comes Yee, indicted in late March for both firearms trafficking and political corruption. He may yet resign his post – from which he’ll be termed out by year’s end anyhow. For sure, his candidacy for secretary of state, California’s chief elections officer, ended with his arrest.

          Yee’s absence puts the Democrats another vote shy of the supermajority they reveled in for about a year after the 2012 elections. If the three troubled senators left or were booted, voter registration numbers in their districts assure those seats would remain Democratic. Their stubborn attempts to continue political life make it clear they care less about public policy than personal interest. One thing each retains (besides their salaries) even while suspended is a possible plea bargain negotiating chip: At some point, prosecutors may offer the option of resigning in exchange for lighter treatment.

          Said Yee’s fellow San Francisco state Sen. Mark Leno, “Every indictment, every arrest, every arraignment, even every suspicion or allegation, reflects very poorly on each of us and all of us (in the Senate).”

          Mere words like those are not enough. Until the Senate is willing to expel and not just suspend members when they fall into disgrace, voters will be justified in figuring most senators care more about their own skins and pocketbooks than the policies to which they claim devotion.

          Yee’s case is classic for this. If convicted of the firearms charges against him, the longtime gun-control advocate will be exposed as one of the greatest hypocrites in California history.

          It all raises the question of why other state senators have been so reluctant to throw out their disgraced or convicted colleagues. One possible answer to that question might be that many have skeletons in their own closets or fear they might someday.

          There is, of course, no proof of this, but who could blame voters for believing it?

          The bottom line: If politicians were more concerned about policy than their own skins, they’d be gone the moment they can no longer represent their constituents and further policies they claim to love.

                   

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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

STATE GOP SHOOTS SELF IN FOOT AGAIN

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 15, 2011 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“STATE GOP SHOOTS SELF IN FOOT AGAIN”

For the umpteenth time in the last 20 years, the extreme conservative activists who run California’s Republican Party have shot themselves in the foot. They have, that is, if they’re more interested in winning elections than merely retaining control of their own dwindling party’s apparatus.

The latest self-destructive move came at the party’s late-winter state convention, where activist delegates voted to stage an end-run around the “top-two” open primary election system that now allows all voters to cast ballots for any candidates they like, regardless of party. That system gets its first large scale test in the statewide primary set for next spring.

Here’s what the delegates decided: The GOP will send mail ballots to all the party’s registered voters starting in April or May of 2014, asking them to decide which candidates the party should endorse in the primary that June. The party – which has never previously endorsed in its primaries – can then throw support and money to those candidates.

Here’s the big problem (assuming this scheme ever comes off): Casual voters are less likely than die-hard conservatives to return those mail ballots, which means the party’s right wing figures to continue to dominate party choices, as it has in virtually all GOP primaries of the last 20 years. This has produced almost nothing but Republican defeats.

The difference between die-hard voters and the general electorate has been clear in every special election of the modern era – many fewer voters turn out in those elections and the outcomes have tended to favor conservatives and their causes more than general election results, where casually-interested voters are more likely to express their preferences.

All-mail balloting where voters must supply their own postage will tilt even further to the right than special elections or the Republican primaries of the past.

So virtually all candidates the party endorses from 2014 onward will most likely be extreme conservatives of the sort that are unlikely to win election in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans by almost a 3-2 margin (44.6 to 30.1 percent in the latest count).

If that were all there was to it, this would mark no change at all for the GOP. It would be backing essentially the same kind of candidates who have lost every top-of-ticket race – except those involving Arnold Schwarzenegger – since 1994, and most lesser contests as well. Meanwhile, the party honchos expect to keep control of what little is left of their party these days.

But there may be more to it. For when primary election day (or absentee ballot-marking time) comes around, it won’t just be Republicans voting for Republicans anymore. Democrats will be able to vote for Republicans if they choose.

In districts where Republicans hold sizeable majorities – under the upcoming new redistricting plan, there will surely be some of those in places like Orange and San Diego counties and the largely un-urban counties of north-central California – at least some of the Democrats present will choose to vote for a moderate Republican in the primary if they believe such a candidate has a chance to make a runoff between the top two primary election vote-getters.

So the mere fact that the party’s most conservative elements back one candidate and award him or her the party endorsement might not scare off others. If other Republican candidates stay in, Democrats might become more likely to vote for a Republican bucking the party establishment than they would for many others.

When an upstart candidate like that manages to build a coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats, the endorsed Republican just might lose an all-GOP top-two runoff. That, of course, is just what the open primary is designed to do – create more opportunities for moderates in both parties to form coalitions across party lines.

If and when that happens, that winner will automatically become a Republican state convention delegate with the power to appoint or influence the selection of others.

So the conservative Republican establishment may have set up a chain of circumstances that could eventually turn their party more moderate and get rid of the conservative clique that’s dominated it for many years.

Which would surely be a classic example of self-interested politicians shooting themselves in the foot.

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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