THE MYTH OF A GREAT CALIFORNIA EXODUS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
        “THE MYTH OF A GREAT CALIFORNIA EXODUS"

 

        Rarely has the “big lie” technique been used against an American state as effectively and persistently as with the myth of a great and unique California exodus over the last few years.

 

        The Economist, a London-based magazine whose reportage on California almost always contains errors, reported last fall that California lost population between 2018 and 2019. False. The recently departed president, who detested California for its solid and repeated vote margins against him, tweeted disparagingly about California more than 600 times over his four-year term, most of his “information” false. Even the Los Angeles Times titled a recent story “California in the rearview mirror.”

 

        It’s part of a pattern reminiscent of the “big lie” technique outlined in the 1930s by Nazi German propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, who observed that “The bigger the lie and the louder and more often it is told, the more people will believe it.”

 

 

But lies only survive until facts emerge. And the facts don’t support the myth of a great California exodus. One magazine reported last fall that California lost more than 3 percent of its populace to other states over the last year. Not so. In fact, about 175,000 California residents moved to other states in 2020. That’s about four-tenths of one percent.

 

The departures were more than made up for in new births and legal foreign immigration, which created a 21,200 person population increase from July 1, 2019 to July 1, 2020, reports the state Department of Finance.

 

One reason the population increase wasn’t much: the coronavirus pandemic, which caused job losses pretty much preventing anyone who moved here from finding employment. So in-migration from other states all but stopped and will not fully resume until the plague fully ends, or at least until enough folks are vaccinated to end the deadly threat of the virus.

 

        Then there’s the notion that net out-migration to other states never before matched the numbers of the last decade. Not so. The non-partisan state Legislative Analyst’s office (LAO) issued charts in 2018 showing domestic outmigration in the 1990-’95 period far exceeded anything in the last five years. In 1993 alone, about 600,000 persons left California, while only about 300,00 came here. The difference was vastly exceeded by the foreign immigration tide of that time, giving California substantial net growth.

 

        Take a look at who has been most active in perpetrating the ongoing big lie about California. Business relocation agents were the first to promote it, writing op-ed after op-ed about the “vast advantages” for businesses that move elsewhere. A Texas state agency has also produced numerous commentaries touting that state’s tax breaks for incoming businesses, which famously induced the likes of Oracle Corp. and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (cq) to move headquarters there from Silicon Valley. The last previous move of similar magnitude involved Toyota Motor Corp.’s American headquarters, which in 2014 went from the Los Angeles suburb of Torrance to Plano, Tex., near Dallas.

 

        Then there’s the L.A.Times narrative, which depicted numerous recent California arrivals unable to afford comfortable housing here and leaving for cheaper hunting grounds. That’s partially correct, and is largely because even as rents dropped over the last year in California’s big cities during the pandemic, with white collar employees shifting to working at home, rents and home prices in exurbs of Los Angeles and San Francisco rose steeply.

 

        In fact, statewide average real estate prices gained about 8 percent over the last year, at the same time governments were impelling the creation of thousands of “affordable” apartments, condominiums and single-family homes.

 

        Yes, California has problems, including often-clumsy government (recent example: the slow start of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout) and high income taxes (often made up for by lower-than-average property taxes). But that has not stopped start-up companies from proliferating, nor does it lessen the state’s attraction for higher-income, better educated workers. The LAO charts demonstrated that California has actually gained ground over most other states in those categories in the last decade.

 

        So not to worry too much, Californians. This state has a long history of solving its problems and chances are it will again as new Googles and Facebooks and Hulus and eBays keep arising.

       

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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

BIGGEST CALIFORNIA INVESTOR PUTS MONEY OVER LIVES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2018, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “BIGGEST CALIFORNIA INVESTOR PUTS MONEY OVER LIVES”

          No one at last month’s meeting of the Board of Administrators of the California Public Employees Retirement System ever said money counts for more than lives, but there were serious questions about priorities after that board voted 9-3 to hang onto its stash of stocks in gun retailers.

          Voting about the same time when millions of teenagers and their adult supporters staged massive pro-gun control marches in cities across the state and nation, California’s largest stock investor chose to hang onto those holdings despite pleas from Democratic state Treasurer John Chiang that it divest from companies selling assault rifles.

          The state’s leading retirement board rejected Chiang’s appeal on grounds stated by board member Bill Slaton, an appointee of Gov. Jerry Brown who is also president of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, second-largest municipal utility in the state.

          “We obviously have a significant (assault weapon) problem in this country,” said Slaton. “We have found engagement is a better alternative in order for us to accomplish something in this area.”

          Translation: the pension board believes its prime job is to maximize investment returns rather than attempting tactics that might save lives.

          This is clear from CalPERS’ persistence in owning stock in companies like Walmart, one of its 10 largest holdings. Until three years ago, Walmart sold guns like the AR-15 assault weapon used in the Parkland, Fla., high school massacre which spurred the so-called “March for Our Lives.” That nationwide protest brought a larger turnout than President Trump’s inauguration to the federal Mall in Washington, D.C. The protests also called for raising the age of eligibility for gun purchases of all types. Only after Parkland did Walmart comply and raise that age to 21.

          Slaton appeared to credit supposed pressure from CalPERS for that Walmart decision, when there’s no evidence of any pressure at all from the retirement system. Walmart did not make any changes until years after earlier school shootings in places like Aurora, Colo., and Sandy Hook, Conn., and CalPERS never moved to divest. Neither Walmart nor CalPERS made changes after the San Bernardino County massacre of 2015, which left 14 dead and 22 other persons seriously wounded.

          In fact, there’s no evidence CalPERS or any other investors ever influenced gun retailers to stop or restrict assault rifle sales.

          So Slaton’s claim looks empty.

          Chiang, running third among Democrats in the current campaign to be California’s next governor, used his anti-gun pitch to the CalPERS board in a campaign mailer, saying he would push the retirement fund and other institutional investors to dump holdings in companies that sell military-style guns.

          In an official statement, he again urged CalPERS and America’s other big institutional investors – outfits like BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Vanguard mutual funds, PIMCO and the Allstate and State Farm insurance companies – to divest from gun dealers.

          There have been no results yet.

          The CalPERS board specifically ignored divestment appeals from relatives of San Bernardino victims. One such plea came from Arlen Vandehyou, whose wife was killed in that onslaught. “Do everything possible to put a dent in gun violence,” he begged. But CalPERS did nothing.

          Chiang heard that appeal, but made no promises to change things at the retirement system if he becomes governor. By contrast, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, running first in the campaign, implied at a March for Our Lives rally in Orange County that he would.

          “We will be the example (for the rest of America),” he said. “Gun control saves lives.”

          Chiang, a CalPERS board member because of his position, was more specific. “If we don’t take action, nobody is going to take us seriously on this,” he said. “Today, California public employees are inextricably tied to the gun trade through their pension accounts. But…we can build the pressure needed for the nation’s largest pension funds and investors to cut ties to companies that sell assault-style weapons.”

          Only after the San Bernardino shootings did Californians pass Proposition 63, which puts mild restrictions on ammunition sales. Maybe Parkland, combined with the killings of three therapists at the Yountville Veterans Home by a former patient using a semi-automatic rifle, can spur tougher action, including stock dumps by both CalPERS and the state’s teachers’ pension system.

          But it won’t happen soon. That was the signal sent by CalPERS in its late March anti-divestment vote.

         

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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

BROWN, GOP GIVE DEMS TOUGH PENSION CHOICES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 27, 2012 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“BROWN, GOP GIVE DEMS TOUGH PENSION CHOICES”

          Do the Democrats who dominate the state Legislature side with a governor of their own party or do they go the way of their colleague Republicans, who fought with party mate Arnold Schwarzenegger most of the seven years he spent as governor?

          Do Democrats try to keep feeding ever bigger chunks of state money to pensions for members of the public employee unions who often fund their campaigns? Or do they opt to use at least some of that money for sustaining or restoring social safety-net programs they have pushed, often the victims of budget axes in the last few years?

          These big questions rest now in the laps of Democratic leaders like state Senate President Darrell Steinberg and Assembly Speaker John Perez, and so far they seem to be choosing their public employee supporters over the programs they profess to cherish.

          Brown first put his party mates in this position last October, when he presented a 12-point plan for changing state pensions to ease the budget burden they’ve lately put on the state. The Brown plan would raise the age when new, non-public safety employees can retire with full pensions from 55 to 67. It would base new pensions on employees’ highest average compensation over a three-year period, rather than the current system that encourages about-to-retire employees to take huge amounts of overtime in their last year.

          Brown also would end the “commit-a-felony, collect-a-pension” system that has so enraged many Californians as they watched some former city employees charged with bilking millions of taxpayer dollars start collecting pensions the moment they were bounced. And he aims to have employees pay much more toward their retirement and health-care benefits than they do now.

          To show he means business, Brown’s current proposed budget would cut the state’s contribution to the California Public Employee Retirement System by $200 million from last year’s levels.

          In the months since Brown’s pension plan announcement and his submitting precise language to a legislative committee, his party’s lawmakers have had little to say about it. That may be in part because they know how cash-strapped state government is, but they’re reluctant to make the kind of choice that now confronts them.

          Republicans, though, have spoken out, acting delighted over the Democrats' dilemma. Perhaps proving that the Brown plan represents something similar to what his 2010 Republican rival Meg Whitman mused about doing, Republicans in both the state Senate and Assembly signed onto it, even if they did so a tad half-heartedly.

          They introduced it verbatim in both legislative houses, promising they all would back it. Said Senate Republican leader Bob Huff of the eastern Los Angeles County suburb of Diamond Bar, “Republicans believe that the governor should have an up-or-down vote on his pension reform plan…We have not changed one comma, one period or one word. This is his plan as he wrote it, and we will stand with him to see it passed.”

          Added his Assembly counterpart, Connie Conway of Tulare, “We are committed to working across party lines to pass the governor’s plan.” She called it “the first step of the changes that must be enacted to get our runaway pension system under control.”

          The bald-faced fact is that Brown’s plan won’t change very much very soon, as most of its significant changes apply only to new employees. The portion with the most immediate effect plainly is his proposed requirement that all employees pay about half the costs of their retirement and health benefits. Most of those costs are now picked up by whichever government they work for.

          If this plan had been introduced by a Republican governor, it would have been dead on arrival. But because Brown is a Democrat elected with strong support from public employee unions and has never indicated any reluctance to run for a fourth term (second in this go-‘round), his party mates have not been able to dismiss it as the product of an anti-union grudge. What’s more, unions have opposed it vocally.

          Democrats plainly were not thrilled with the GOP move, but the counter-proposals they offered after months of considering the Brown plan would not provide as significant budget relief as Brown’s plan, either immediately or in years to come.

          Which means that when legislators look for the two-thirds vote they’ll need to place a pension-reform proposition before voters this fall, Republicans will be using the plan of a Democratic governor as their base, keeping Democratic lawmakers in a very unusual, awkward spot.

          How it plays out will say a lot about the extent of Brown’s clout as he nears the mid-point of his third term.

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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

ANTHEM RATE HIKES VIOLATE SPIRIT OF MERGER PACT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 27, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ANTHEM RATE HIKES VIOLATE SPIRIT OF MERGER PACT”

Nobody at Anthem Blue Cross, the firm that’s now a poster boy for out-of-control health insurance premiums, likes remembering the company’s days of high anxiety back in 2004, when California’s then-Insurance Commissioner John Garamendi was holding up its $18 billion deal to take over Thousand Oaks-based WellPoint and its California Blue Cross subsidiary.

But those not-so-good old corporate days are again extremely pertinent for Blue Cross customers, as the firm considers raising rates by about 39 percent as soon as next month for 800,000 individual policies and by almost as much for groups.

Garamendi, who went on to become lieutenant governor and now is a Democratic congressman from an East Bay district near San Francisco, managed to delay this takeover almost a year while he haggled with Anthem, headquartered in Indianapolis.

This wasn’t about the shift of yet another corporate headquarters away from California. It was all about money.

Garamendi knew there was nothing he could do about the loss of hundreds of California jobs that was sure to follow the takeover (it did), as Anthem cut out “redundant” workers at all levels in its newly combined operation. A frequent resister of insurance rate increases, he at least wanted at least to make sure Anthem didn’t pass along the inflated price it paid for WellPoint to Blue Cross customers.

So he refused for months to sign off on the merger, a form of passive resistance that threatened to hold up the entire deal, which also involved WellPoint insurance subsidiaries in other states.

Anthem eventually sued, questioning Garamendi’s right to hold up the deal. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger applied pressure for the deal and the job losses to go through and Garamendi eventually backed off somewhat. But in the process, he achieved some things for California consumers: Anthem formally agreed to forego any rate increases for Blue Cross customers to cover its merger expenses, which increased more than $2 billion during the delay as WellPoint shares rose from $91 to $113 between the day the deal was announced and the day it went through.

The company also promised to invest $200 million over 10 years in under-served communities through California’s Healthy Families program, plus another $15 million on children’s insurance programs and $50 million for training nurses and operating clinics in California.

It wasn’t as good as keeping California Blue Cross a California company, but at least it was something.

“Was” appears likely now to be the operative word. For there is no way the cost of medical tests, doctor and hospital fees and medical supplies has risen 39 percent in one year, a claim made by Anthem executives while testifying before Congress and state legislative committees.

Nope, it’s now clear that even if Anthem doesn’t admit it, a good part of its rate increase would go to replenish corporate cash spent on the WellPoint takeover.

It’s been just over five years since that deal was completed, with Anthem adopting the WellPoint name for its parent company, much as North Carolina-based NationsBank renamed itself Bank of America after taking over the B of A. The Anthem tag was then hung on California Blue Cross.

That’s enough time so the corporation can conveniently maintain it has lived up to its written commitment not to make customers pay for its high-priced acquisition – while in reality making them do that.

For certain, the huge price increases Anthem may now assess violate the spirit of its agreement with Garamendi, even if they might not violate the letter of that deal.

Anyone who takes Anthem at its word in this is naïve, for this is the same company that committed more than 700 violations of state rules between 2006 and 2009, according to Garamendi’s Republican successor, Steve Poizner, now running a conservative campaign for his party’s nomination for governor.

The alleged violations, Poizner said, ranged from misleading consumers and failing to pay claims on time to lowballing claim payments and ignoring inquiries from state regulators. He called Blue Cross “belligerent” and “uncooperative.”

The overall picture is of a company that even a business-friendly Republican candidate and official like Poizner feels he can’t trust.

One quick result is a demand from U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius that all health insurance firms planning rate increases list on their websites the specific medical expenses that allegedly justify those hikes.

Anthem is also in court defending itself from a consumer lawsuit claiming Blue Cross illegally closed certain types of policies to new members and offered existing customers fewer benefits at higher prices.

All this is not the picture Anthem painted in late 2004, when its spokesman claimed the WellPoint acquisition would have “many benefits for Californians and policyholders.”

At the very least, the latest actions of the new WellPoint/old Anthem violate the spirit of the deal it made in 2004. At worst, courts will find some of those actions strikingly illegal.

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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