POST-LOCKDOWN REALITIES BEGIN TO EMERGE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 10, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “POST-LOCKDOWN REALITIES BEGIN TO EMERGE”

          Patio seating is more popular than ever at restaurants that reopened when governments relaxed precautions against the spread of COVID-19, one feature of the during- and post-pandemic world. Senior hours at some grocery and big box stores are no longer strictly enforced, with sprinklings of youngsters now appearing among the silver-haired.

          Beaches are crowded, and the supposedly required social distancing there fast became another non-enforced rule. Masks remain almost ubiquitous on the sand and will be at least for many months, but the question of wearing them or not remains political dynamite.

Most white-collar workers sent home to work at kitchen tables or in their bedrooms are still there, many companies saying they can work from home as long as they like. Traffic on California freeways is far lighter than B.P. (before pandemic), but up from levels at the height of the lockdown.

          Gyms, allowed to reopen in most counties in early June, may be where change is most obvious. Some rules there have also been among the silliest.

          While reservations have been commonplace for centuries at fine restaurants, and even at some that are not so fine, they are new to gyms, but now required by some locations in the large 24 Hour Fitness chain.

          Gyms are getting cleaned more often and more thoroughly than most have been since they were built. Weight machines are wiped with germicides at regular intervals. It’s forbidden to stay in some gyms longer than an hour. Basketball and handball courts in many facilities are now homes for treadmills, elliptical machines and other workout staples. In some gyms, these are about 10 feet apart; others create spacing by allowing members to use only one of every two or three machines.

          One seemingly absurd policy governed at many gyms until Gov. Gavin Newsom ended it on June 18 with a wide-ranging order for masking: Users for awhile had to be masked when entering and walking around, but not while exercising, when most persons breathe hardest and spew the most potential contagions.

          Many gym rats wonder why these facilities were ever shuttered, as their changes could have been made very quickly. Meanwhile, academic studies show that in all age groups, people who exercise have stronger immune responses and resist disease better than comparable folks who don’t.

          Said one 78-year-old regular at a 24 Hour Fitness in Los Angeles, “I never understood why they closed the gyms. This place is why I’ve lived so long.” He substituted home weight-lifting and long walks for gym activity, but says it never had the same benefits.

          Gyms are also symbolic of the lockdown’s economic toll. The iconic Gold’s Gym chain filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in early May. 24 Hour Fitness, in expansion mode B.P., soon followed, firing many employees on impersonal phone calls. 24 Hour also eliminated dozens of gyms across California, reopening only the most profitable.

          Amid this turmoil, many longtime gym users remain hesitant to return. Many have doubts about ventilation systems, as federal health officials warn that recirculated air can carry contaminated spit and sweat globules too small to see or feel. Others, like Gold’s Gym devotee and ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, said they wouldn’t return unless masks were required at all times. They should be now.

          In business, group video calls on services like Facebook, Zoom and Google Meet were relatively rare B.P., but swiftly became lifelines for stay-at-home workers. These sessions remain common even as lockdowns fade away. They’re also vital tools for grandparents and their grandkids, whose personal contacts are hindered as many grandparents continue self-quarantining even while life reopens for others.

          While some psychotherapists decry the lack of personal contact in virtual meetings, others say the new services opened their practices beyond previous geographic limits. “Now I’m seeing patients in other states, even other countries,” said one San Francisco psychologist. “It’s true I can’t see their body language as well as I’d like, but the talk therapy is very useful. It’s much better than nothing, what we feared when the lockdown started.”

          All of which makes this already a changed world, with more shifts to come. Some will be improvements, some not. The only certainty: Life will never go back to the old normal.

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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

THIS BILL IS AN ABSOLUTE NO-BRAINER

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2018, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “THIS BILL IS AN ABSOLUTE NO-BRAINER”

          Only occasionally does a proposed California law approach the status of being an absolute no-brainer.

          There’s just one such measure before the Legislature right now, a bill that could possibly restore a modicum of public trust in California government, even if it doesn’t go anywhere near as far as it should.

      With the Capitol under the firm control of a single party, suspicions of corruption and favoritism are common in California today. It’s for sure that Democratic Party domination pretty much assures that anyone Gov. Jerry Brown or his successor appoints to major state jobs will be confirmed with few questions.

          Take the example of Mark Ferron, now in his second three-year term on the state Independent System Operator (ISO) board of governors. This board essentially decides where California utilities buy electricity and then supervises its distribution.

          Ferron, a former Deutsche Bank investment official and later a partner at the Silicon Valley Venture (capital) Fund, contributed the maximum $25,900 to Brown’s 2010 election kitty and got a seat on the powerful rate-setting state Public Utilities Commission soon after.

An illness forced him to leave the PUC, but on his recovery Brown quickly put him on the ISO. Two open questions: Would he have gotten either job without his contribution? Would Brown even know who he is without that money?

          While on the PUC, Ferron voted consistently for whatever big utility companies wanted, so long as they complied with state laws demanding an ever-greater emphasis on renewable energy, regardless of cost. Never mind consumer concerns over prices. He’s had no significant differences with utilities while on the ISO, either, and his current term runs out Dec. 31, giving Brown just enough time to appoint him to a third term if he likes.

          Because Ferron, with degrees in mathematics and economics, had no prior background in utility regulation, it was hard to see how he qualified for the jobs Brown tossed his way – but then $25,900 has usually been enough to buy California political donors something, whether it’s a job or mere access to high officials. Money talks.

          Now comes Democratic Assemblyman Adam Gray of Merced with a proposal that would ban contributions to state senators by political appointees for up to a year between the time they are nominated to a job by the governor and when the vote on their confirmation comes up in the Senate.

          This wouldn’t keep someone like the seemingly unqualified Ferron off a powerful board like the PUC or ISO, but it’s a start. Even though it leaves open the appearance of appointees buying their nominations, at least it would remove the appearance of appointees buying confirmation.

          Ferron, of course, is far from the only political donor with a political patronage job. Another is Mary Nichols, the longtime chair of the state’s Air Resources Board, which sets smog policy for cars and other pollution sources and is currently battling federal efforts to squash some California anti-smog regulations.

          Not only did she kick in $5,000 to Brown’s campaign before he reappointed her to the job she held both in his earlier administration and under ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, but she also gave $1,000 to a senator’s reelection campaign before her confirmation vote came up. Was there any doubt which way that senator would vote?

          These practices are common not just at the state level, but also in the federal government. So it’s no wonder many believe government is really about keeping the rich that way.

          These kinds of financially greased appointments and confirmations have gone on at other powerful commissions, too, ranging from the state’s Transportation Commission (which hands out highway repair and construction funds) and its Energy Commission to boards regulating everything from chiropractors to solid waste disposal.

          Appointees may or may not be qualified, but there’s a public perception regardless that corruption is deeply embedded in both the state and national capitals.

          The only way to change this is to take at least some money out of the picture. Gray’s bill is a start and an obvious no-brainer. Once it is (hopefully) passed, the next action ought to limit how soon governors can name big donors to powerful jobs for which they may or may not be qualified.

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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

LONG WAIT LOOMS FOR GOP CONGRESS GAINS HERE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 10, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “LONG WAIT LOOMS FOR GOP CONGRESS GAINS HERE”

          Few things gall California Republicans more than realizing they hold just 14 of this state’s 53 seats in Congress. That’s only 26 percent of California’s representatives, while the opposition Democrats, with 14 percent more registered voters, hold 39 seats, or about 74 percent.

          The GOP had a big chance last year to remedy that, targeting vulnerable Democrats who won their offices by narrow margins in President Obama’s 2012 reelection landslide.

          But Republicans failed. Yes, they ran plenty of close races, but in the end lost every one. Now it appears they’ll have to wait at least until 2018 before there’s much possibility Californians might become a significant part of the GOP’s big overall majority in Congress.

          How did Republicans blow the chance to oust vulnerable figures like Scott Peters of San Diego, Julia Brownley of Ventura County, John Garamendi in the Sierra Nevada foothills, Jim Costa in the Fresno area, Ami Bera in the Sacramento suburbs and Jerry McNerney in the Stockton area?

          The missed opportunity was partly because of the candidates they ran and partly because the national party didn’t fully support what candidates it had.

          The survival of Peters in a San Diego district bordering on Mexico was prototypical. He was opposed by Carl DeMaio, a former city councilman and longtime crusader for tightening public employee pensions. Peters’ district was ripe for Republican plucking, having gone for Republican Mayor Kevin Faulconer by an overwhelming 62 percent in his 2013 special election victory.

          But even though DeMaio ran for mayor in 2012 and had plenty of prior public exposure, he was done in when two of his former staff members accused DeMaio of sexual harassment, a claim at least partially debunked months after the election. What could have been, maybe should have been, an easy GOP pickup instead became a 6,000-vote reelection for Peters.

          With the district’s populace growing steadily more Latino and the strong likelihood that turnout in 2016 will be well above the roughly 24 percent of last year – if only because the presidency will at stake – Peters could have a much easier reelection next year.

          It’s much the same for Costa, who was blindsided and almost knocked off by a Republican unknown last year, and for McNerney, who also squeaked by narrowly against a little-known hopeful. If the national party had recruited major figures against them or had simply financed those who did run, those could have been two pickups. But the GOP blew it.

          Now Costa and McNerney, along with the other Democrats who won only narrowly, figure to get less of a challenge next year for the same reasons Peters will be safer. All will have the advantages of several more years of incumbency to establish ties and loyalties throughout their districts,

          In many ways, the Republican ineptitude in making congressional inroads in California is emblematic of how they’ve mismanaged things in this state for years, their only respite in decades being the Arnold Schwarzenegger years, which were mostly a product of his star power as a movie muscleman.

          The party was proud last year to have prevented Democrats from achieving two-thirds supermajorities in both houses of the state Legislature, a dominance they enjoyed only sporadically in the two years after their big Obama-led wins of 2012. But that’s like a football team rejoicing because it narrowly beat the oddsmakers’ point spread, while still losing by three touchdowns. The GOP is far short of the numbers it will need to have any major impact on state policy in any area, and there’s little chance it will change anything soon.

          The party’s problem is simple: In order to win in most parts of California, it will have to become more tolerant of undocumented immigrants and same-sex marriage, more environmentally conscious and less hardline in opposing changes to the Proposition 13 property tax rules.

          But making any such revisions would also alienate the party from its hard-core backers, and might deprive it of even its recent levels of support.

          So the GOP in California is in a bind, and so far has shown few signs of finding its way out of this long-term jam.

         

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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     

IRONY: ILLEGALS INCREASING GOP POWER – FOR NOW

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 1, 2011, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“IRONY: ILLEGALS INCREASING GOP POWER – FOR NOW”

At almost every chance they get, prominent Republican politicians spew a line of anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric they insist is true, even when most of their claims are unproven.

They excoriate illegals for depriving Americans of jobs. Yet experiments carried out at unemployment offices indicate American citizens refuse even to apply for unskilled farm, hotel, restaurant and car wash jobs that often go to illegals.

They blast illegals for being a burden on state and local budgets, generally refusing even to consider how much illegals pay in taxes on groceries, gasoline, tobacco, liquor, telephone bills, property (through rents), vehicle license fees and many other levies.

And so on.

All this makes it a considerable irony that illegal immigrants are to a large extent responsible for the increased clout and numbers Republicans expect to enjoy for the next 10 years due to results of last year’s U.S. Census.

Republicans salivate openly over the fact that Texas will get two additional seats in Congress next year, while California remains stable. Where California has a non-partisan citizen redistricting commission drawing its new lines, the Texas redistricting will be managed by Republican legislators and GOP Gov. Rick Perry.

The Census shows Texas hosts 1.65 million illegal immigrant residents, enough to account for those new districts. Since they can’t vote, the districts they spurred will probably go to Republicans. (California at the same time hosts 2.55 million illegals and had a net growth of more than 3 million persons overall, but gets no more space in Congress because its share of the national populace remained stable at about 12 percent.)

Republican-dominated Georgia gains one new seat in Congress largely because of 425,000 illegal immigrants who weren’t there 10 years earlier (each new congressional district will have about 800,000 residents). Florida gained a seat, with 825,000 additional illegals. Arizona and Utah each also picked up one seat, with 400,000 more illegals in Arizona (how many of them are still there since passage of two tough anti-illegal immigrant laws is an unknown, but many have left. No matter, it is last year’s count that governs).

In all those states, Republicans control both governor’s offices and Legislatures, so they alone will decide where the new lines are drawn and they will see to it the new seats go to the GOP. The same states will also get new clout in the Electoral College for presidential votes.

Those districts account for the major portion of new seats Republicans hope to hand themselves in this year’s reapportionment, and all are at least in good part the product of illegal immigrant populations.

But these GOP gains may turn out to be very temporary, especially since Latino U.S. citizen numbers are also up considerably in the same states. But in states like Texas and Georgia, Hispanics have never voted in anything like the proportions they do in California, where they have lately accounted for about 18 percent of the total vote. That still doesn’t nearly match their percentage of the populace, but it’s much higher than Latino turnouts in places like Georgia and Texas, which amount to about 6 percent of the total vote.

“There’s a big distinction between people who live somewhere and the representation they often get,” says Orlando Rodriguez, author of the new book “Vote Thieves: Illegal Immigration, Redistricting and Presidential Elections." “Those who vote get excess representation compared with those who don’t.”

That’s why, for example, if Latinos were represented in the California congressional delegation in the same proportion as in the population, there would be 13 California Hispanics in Congress. There are seven.

But just as the anti-illegal Proposition 187 -- passed here in 1994 -- galvanized many previous non-citizen Latino legal immigrants to gain citizenship and begin voting, so the anti-illegal measures passed in Arizona and in the works in some other states may also spur a reaction.

If that happens, some of new districts carved out by GOP mapmakers might not stay solidly Republican.

All of which raises an interesting question: Does the one-man, one-vote decision by the U.S. Supreme Court of the 1960s still make sense today, when so much of the U.S. populace (both legal and illegal immigrants) lacks citizenship? Rodriguez suggests it would be fairer and more sensible to reapportion on the basis of the number of persons eligible to vote in the last election or two.

“Our current method of apportionment creates an incentive to encourage illegal immigration (even when publicly railing against it) and polarizes our political system,” Rodriguez said.

The upshot: Republicans may be sitting pretty today, but they could be discomfited considerably by an increase in Latino voter participation. That’s because the GOP has seen what happened when many California Latinos suddenly became interested: This state switched from a tossup that usually leaned Republican to solidly Democratic. It could also happen elsewhere, even in current Republican strongholds like Texas and Georgia and Arizona.

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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

SOME RESPONSE, BUT NOT MUCH, TO PRISON WASTE REVELATIONS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 10, 2009, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
"SOME RESPONSE, BUT NOT MUCH, TO PRISON WASTE REVELATIONS"

What happens when ordinary citizens use a newspaper column to expose at least $100 million, and possibly much more, in government waste at a time when critical state services are being cut because of the most serious cash crunch in generations?

Not very much, at least not yet.

Almost precisely six months ago, readers through this column alerted the court-appointed receiver who runs California's prison health care system to several areas where big money was being wasted in his bailiwick.

"We paid attention, we knew you'd follow up," said the receiver, University of Pacific law Prof. Clark Kelso. "We've made some changes and we're going to make others. But we've also had some problems."

Among those difficulties:

-- Community hospitals near state prisons have been reluctant to negotiate rate agreements with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) similar to deals they have with myriad insurance companies. As it stands, prisons pay far higher prices for hospital services than ordinary citizens with health insurance.

"We're paying at least $100 million more - maybe much more than that - than we should be," Kelso said. "Since this was pointed out, we've contracted with a major consulting firm that negotiates with hospitals, but they've had only modest success. There's not a lot of medical competition in the rural areas where most prisons are. Plus, we as a department tend to pay late. So the hospitals are reluctant to negotiate with us."

-- A 30-year-old information system with few electronic files and large stacks of paperwork which can make it take months for Kelso to find out things like how often the state is double-billed by hospitals and doctors. "This is very frustrating," Kelso said.

There has been substantial progress, though, in one kind of waste readers revealed. That was in physician referrals for outside hospitalization and major tests like MRIs and CT scans.

In February, a prison nurse told this column that CDCR doctors fearful of prisoner lawsuits order excessive hospitalizations, blood tests and diagnostic scans. Dr. Terry Hill, then chief medical officer of California Prison Health Care, confirmed this and added that "We have some physicians who have been sued by inmates 100 times or more. One doctor even got sued because he didn't give an inmate long underwear. So the doctors are very defensive." Hill estimated excessive tests and referrals were costing the state $10 million per year or more.

That's on the way to being fixed, Kelso reports. "We now have a utilization management plan similar to what many health maintenance organizations use," he said. "Before a doctor can send an inmate out for treatment, he must now use a standard protocol." This system offers doctors protection from lawsuits, but also limits their options.

"Doctors initially resist the system," Kelso says. "But we're being aggressive in pursuing it. We don't yet know how much we're saving, because we have a three-month delay getting information because of that antiquated data system."

Similarly, Kelso doesn't know how much benefit has resulted from a recent contract with Correct Care - Integrated Health Inc., a major medical bill-processing company, to audit all prisoner care invoices from outside hospitals and doctors to make sure the state is neither billed more than once for the same service nor charged excessive amounts. "We also will work to bundle charges for each patient, rather than having separate bills for every service and item they use," he said. "That should reduce costs."

But Kelso says he cannot do much about wasteful prison rules requiring two guards to remain with every hospitalized prisoner whose crime requires the state to consider him or her a risk to public safety. That rule applies no matter how old or crippled or feeble the inmate might have become, even to those who are paraplegic or brain dead. Kelso and Hill earlier confirmed a report from a community hospital nurse exposing the fact that multiple guards often while away days and weeks sitting near such incapacitated prisoners, costing the state more millions of dollars.

"That's required by state law," Kelso says. Legislators, are you reading? If you want money to keep other programs going, you can find some here. All you need do is rewrite a few regulations that don't just enable boondoggles, but require them.

The bottom line: Kelso is plainly trying to save money, as evidenced by his reducing the projected cost of prison hospital improvements demanded by the judge who put him in place from $8 billion to about $3.2 billion. That will mostly be done by converting existing prison structures into hospitals rather than building new ones. Only $1.9 billion of the cost will come from the state's strapped general fund over the next 10 years, with the rest provided by prison bonds approved years ago by the voters.

Movement toward stopping waste in the prisons is surely slower than would be ideal, but at least there are signs of some effort to cut unneeded costs. Readers who know of other significant waste in state government are encouraged to email tdelias@aol.com.

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Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net