DISNEY INTIMIDATED AS POLITICAL POWER TRUMPS MONEY

 

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

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

 “DISNEY INTIMIDATED AS POLITICAL POWER TRUMPS MONEY”

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

 

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

MESSAGE ON GAS GOUGING ANOTHER NAIL IN STATE GOP’S COFFIN?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2023 OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

        “MESSAGE ON GAS GOUGING ANOTHER NAIL IN STATE GOP’S COFFIN?”

 

        It’s almost like watching a political party commit suicide. Whatever the situation, this state’s Republican Party seems to deploy responses sure to alienate the vast majority of California voters.

 

        Make no mistake: Right now, that vast majority wants little to do with candidates sporting an R after their names in ballot listings.

 

        It’s true the GOP picked up one congressional seat here last year, but it’s also true that in off-year, mid-term elections like that one, the “out” party usually gains far more than 2 per cent in clout, about the percentage of one House seat in California’s 52-member delegation.

 

        As March ended, state Republicans were at it again.

Just after Gov. Gavin Newsom got the Legislature to OK his plan empowering a new wing of the state Energy Commission to police gasoline prices and penalize oil refiners when they profiteer beyond reasonable levels, the GOP did what it could to turn off most Californians.

 

        Remember, Newsom’s new price-regulating office is designed to keep prices down. It is forbidden from assessing any penalties that could cause price increases.

 

So how did California Republicans headline their statement about it, just after the plan passed on an almost pure party-line vote?

 

        “Newsom, Sacramento Dems Back Higher Gas Prices,” it said. Say what?

 

        For sheer inaccuracy, that title, contradicting the stated purpose of the new office and assuming it will stray beyond its legal bounds, matched the state GOP’s statement after new legislative and congressional district lines were unveiled in late 2021.

 

        “It’s going to be tough running in 2022 with a D behind your name,” the GOP predicted then. “Voters are fed up with California Democrats…”

 

        So fed up they reelected every incumbent Democrat running for Congress and gave Democrats some of their biggest supermajorities ever in the Legislature, rendering the GOP virtually irrelevant in state government despite its loud and happy talk.

 

        Newsom’s response to the never-fully-explained gasoline price hikes of February 2022 and beyond passed the state Senate on a 30-8 vote and the Assembly by 52-19.

 

        It marks the first time any state has tried seriously to keep track of oil company economics and determine whether price increases are justifiable. It also follows at least nine episodes of large and seemingly price-gouging gas price hikes over the last 40 years.

 

        And it follows more than half a billion dollars worth of insider stock sales by refining company executives and directors that followed closely after quarterly financial statements sent oil company stocks booming last spring.

 

        The plan does not set a cap on gasoline prices, meaning oil companies can still raise prices when justified. Before assessing penalties and setting price limits, the new regulators will have to formally find that benefits of such actions outweigh possible costs to consumers and that no move they make will spur price increases.

 

        How does the GOP respond to those protections? “California Democrats are looking for new ways to tax hardworking Californians who are already struggling under the weight of our state’s sky-high prices…Ultimately, greedy Gavin Newsom and California Democrats have…plans to collect (more money) from gas consumers.”

 

        There is simply no evidence for that statement from party chair Jessica Millan Patterson, just as there was nothing to back her post-election statement last fall that “Our candidates (did) better than they have in years.”

 

        The reality is that the state GOP can blather on like this as much as it likes, but it will have no influence so long as its registered voter totals run between 25 percent and 30 percent of all voters, with the vast majority signing up either as Democrats (currently about 47 percent) or with no party preference.

 

        The state GOP could change things by moderating its stances on major social issues like abortion rights and gun controls.

 

        But the minority of Californians signed up with the GOP won’t tolerate easing stances on issues like those. Which means the GOP will keep on making statements like its baseless one on the new gas price regulators, and will also continue having zero influence on any policy decisions.

 

       

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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

PG&E’S UNPRECEDENTED CHUTZPAH PAYS OFF

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 18, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “PG&E’S UNPRECEDENTED CHUTZPAH PAYS OFF”

          At the very moment when California’s largest utility company was being assessed a $14 million fine for failing to report discovery of flawed records on its gas pipelines, that same company in 2014 began asking for well over $1 billion in rate increases to pay for repairs to the very same pipeline system.

          This is Pacific Gas & Electric, the same huge utility company – California’s largest – that in 2016 was criminally convicted in federal court of safety violations and obstruction of justice related to the 2010 San Bruno pipeline explosion that killed eight persons and destroyed dozens of homes. The fine: a paltry $3 million. No PG&E executive went to prison for the deaths and not a single firing was mandated by federal or state authorities.

          Meanwhile, PG&E kept right on pursuing its routine every-three-years-or-so rate increases for natural gas and electric service, asking initially for more than $4.6 billion in additional charges to customers. The company ended up getting about $2.37 billion over three years in the usual “kabuki dance” conducted by the state Public Utilities Commission – this pattern sees the Big Four of PG&E, Southern California Edison, Southern California Gas and San Diego Gas & Electric routinely ask for huge increases, then “settle” for about half their original request, with the PUC then bragging about how much it has saved consumers.

          But PG&E regularly posts profits approaching $1 billion a year. It’s legitimate to ask whether it should be entitled to any rate increase when it has misbehaved as egregiously as it has over the last eight years or more. (PG&E collected more than $60 billion in gas pipeline maintenance funds from customers in the 60 years preceding San Bruno, but there has never been an accounting of where that money went.)

          So here’s a criminal company demanding ever more from its customers, and the PUC simply hands it over. No one even suggests forcing PG&E to divest any of its holdings to publicly-owned Community Choice Aggregation power suppliers as a consequence of its repeated, frequent bad behavior and what federal authorities called negligence.

          Instead, the company’s customers pay more than ever. The typical monthly bill has risen from about $137 at the end of 2015 to more than $150, an increase of about 9 percent. Even when PG&E was fined by the state last year for violating pipeline safety standards, more than 53 percent of that money -- $850 million – was earmarked for repairs and improvements that customers funded years ago and were supposed to have been made long since.  The company saved another $100 million or so because its entire “fine” was tax deductible.

          And yet, in an interview published this spring, the company’s new chief executive, Geisha Williams, bragged that PG&E’s rates are lower than the national average of about $190 per month. Even she concedes this is not because of efficiency, but due to climate: There are few blizzards in PG&E’s vast service territory except in sparsely-populated mountain areas.

          All of which means that even with a new CEO and even with a new self-described emphasis on safety, PG&E still has not deviated from its longtime goal of forcing customers to put up new cash continually for it to bring its system up to the level of safety it should have had all along.

          As consumers pay their ever-increasing bills – further increases are upcoming, along with shifts in the rate tiers under which bills are figured – no one really knows just how much PG&E actually needs to stay solvent. The same is true for the other big privately-owned utilities.

But we do know that customers of all three major California gas utilities have paid scores of billions of dollars in maintenance money over many years. They have every reason for righteous indignation as they look at the increases on their monthly bills, which add up to well over $100 yearly for the average residential customer.

          But they will get no solace from PG&E, despite the new happy and safety-conscious face it is putting on. Which means the audacity and the chutzpah of PG&E has paid off, bigly.

         

     -30-

      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 second edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

TIME TO FIX A LAW THE COURTS HAVE MUCKED UP

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 18, 2014, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “TIME TO FIX A LAW THE COURTS HAVE MUCKED UP”

          Talk to corporate executives and they’ll often say California is a difficult place to do business, in part because consumers can file class action lawsuits willy-nilly, even when their companies haven’t screwed up.

          But it ain’t necessarily so. Yes, the Consumers Legal Remedies Act, a 44-year-old law, lets customers sue for damages even after a warranty has expired and even when there’s been no risk to health or safety. They’re supposed to be able to do this if the maker of a product knows it has a major defect but does not reveal it to prospective or existing buyers.

          Consumers could sue under those conditions, that is, until a pair of court decisions seriously limited the law and its intentions. For now, state and federal appeals courts have decided, product buyers can only sue manufacturers for post-warranty problems if their health or safety was at risk.

          That’s why consumers might benefit from passage of a new bill being carried in the Legislature by Democratic state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson of Santa Barbara which aims to restore the 1970s-era law to its original broad coverage.

          “Consumers have a right to expect a product to last a reasonable length of time, even after a warranty has expired,” says Kristen Law Sagafi, a partner in the San Francisco law firm Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein. “Without it, we return to a caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) marketplace.”

          Expect restoration of any rights consumers have lost to be contested strongly by industry lobbyists. “Current California law allows suing during the warranty period of a product if a manufacturer won’t fix it,” said Kimberly Stone, president of the Civil Justice Association of California, an industry lobby representing companies ranging from Allstate and Apple to Chevron, Toyota, Intel, Oracle and many more. “The courts have said people can also sue after a warranty over safety and health. Our fear is that if this is expanded, we will see many more class action lawsuits and that plaintiff lawyers will hold manufacturers to unreasonable time standards.”

          In fact, the original law prohibited that. Said Sagafi, who helped craft the Senate proposal, “It would be up to the judge in each case to determine how long is reasonable. You would expect that the time a product can reasonably be expected to last after a warranty expires will be longer for a high-end product that a cheaper one. If someone has defrauded you, your right to sue should not expire with the warranty.”

          Under current law, established by courts and not by elected lawmakers, a company could theoretically design products from computers to cars and dishwashers that would fail deliberately the day after their warranty expires. Unless the failure is dangerous – involving risk of accident, injury or fire – consumers would have no recourse if that happened.

          “The best industry actors make a fix available to customers when a product is defective,” said Sagafi. “But if they hide a defect and fraud is demonstrated, consumers should be able to ask for punitive damages, just as the original law provided” before the courts emasculated it.

          Consumer lawyers still would have a difficult time proving that a company deliberately hid a known defect, unless handed internal documents by a whistleblower. “It’s an incredibly high hurdle,” said Sagafi. “But the only concealed facts we can act on now involve safety, which is not what the law says.”

          All of which raises the question of exactly what disclosure or repair obligation a company has when it gets numerous complaints about a single problem. “We have no answer to that question,” said Stone. “But our organization believes California already has too many class-action lawsuits, and this will just make them easier. We have a bunch of crazy class-action lawyers here. Class actions should exist to right tremendous wrongs. If there’s no fruit in Froot Loops or no raisins in raisin bran, that’s just not a tremendous wrong.”

          That sort of corporate belittling of class actions doesn’t help, as one example, someone whose cellphone becomes just a paperweight soon after its warranty expires.

          Corporations may not like it, but what’s wrong with preventing them from knowingly building products that won’t outlast their warranties?

    -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, go to www.californiafocus.net