STATE SPLIT IDEAS GOING TO NEW LOWS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 28, 2023, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “STATE SPLIT IDEAS GOING TO NEW LOWS”

 

        The idea of splitting California into two states is nothing new. Noplace as large as California, with its almost 170,000 square miles and its largest in the nation population of 39.2 million – even after losing 600,000 residents in the last few years – will ever be immune from people who believe smaller is better, as ex-Gov. Jerry Brown loudly proclaimed in the 1970s.

 

        As early as the 1940s, some in California’s most northern reaches began seeking a divorce from the rest of the state. Their proposal has never earned a legislative or popular vote above the county level.

 

        Since then, other splitting proposals have attempted to carve the state into seven parts, or three, or cut it in two along vertical north-south lines that would separate coastal counties from those a little bit inland.

 

        But until recently, all such plans called for large new states – smaller than California, but nothing like Wyoming or Alaska, whose areas are large, but support populations of 700,000 or less.

 

        Now, though, some folks in two counties that feel neglected want out. Last fall, voters in San Bernardino County – with the largest acreage of any American county – voted by a 50.6 percent majority to study separating from California to form a one-county state. Half a year later, that study has yet to begin in earnest.

 

        More recently, a separatist movement has arisen in El Dorado County, best known for containing part of the gorgeous Lake Tahoe. The El Dorado portion includes what many consider Lake Tahoe’s prettiest area, Emerald Bay, and its rocky Fannette Island, whose permanent population has never exceeded one. That was a sometime 19^th Century English sea captain who built his own tomb and chapel on the peaked islet he considered a paradise.

 

        El Dorado County’s population is somewhat larger than that at 193,000, but South Lake Tahoe remains its biggest city, with 21,350 residents. The county seat of Placerville has half as many folks, while other towns like Grizzly Flats, Pollock Pines and Camino are far smaller.

 

        But that doesn’t matter to some residents of the county, who now support statehood for their large, mostly mountainous and wooded county.

 

        “We all know that our problem is representation,” complained one statehood supporter. “We don’t have a voice. We don’t have on representative in state or federal government that lives in El Dorado County.”

 

        Her sentiment echoed feelings in many Northern California counties, some of whose people have tried for decades to create a new 21-county State of Jefferson, which would putatively include everything from the Oregon state line south to the Sacramento and San Francisco Bay areas. The state capitol would be in Redding, largest city in the area and the Shasta County seat.

 

        Statehood activists in those counties long sought to ally with rural Oregon counties to make a somewhat larger state. But rural Oregon now appears more bent on trying the “Greater Idaho” concept, seeking to move the Idaho state line west to take in virtually all of Oregon east of the Cascade mountain range. Because that, like Jefferson, would probably take a statewide “yes” vote, it’s highly unlikely, but still a fun fantasy for a lot of folks.

 

        That’s also pretty much the situation in both San Bernardino and El Dorado counties, which lack many resources needed to sustain a state.

 

        Such realism, though, never dents enthusiasm for independence. That’s how it is in El Dorado, where statehood supporter Sharon Durst, 84, believes the county could appeal directly to Congress to separate it from California, even though some western parts of the county are effectively rural bedroom suburbs of the state capital of Sacramento.

 

        “We think we have grounds to stand on (with) the fact that El Dorado was actually a county before California was a state,” she wrote in an online essay. “It is impossible to believe that the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence would be of a mind to hold a people hostage of an oppressive state any more than an oppressive king.” 

 

        Much of that could also have been said by Jefferson advocates and those behind all the other 40-odd state splitting plans that have been proposed for California.

 

        So chances are El Dorado and San Bernardino county enthusiasts won’t get any farther than their predecessors. But these days, few things are absolutely certain.

 

        -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 third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com

TIME FOR NEWSOM TO GET TOUGH ON VIRUS SCOFFLAWS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2020, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “TIME FOR NEWSOM TO GET TOUGH ON VIRUS SCOFFLAWS”

          It became plain during the July 4 holiday weekend that Los Angeles County has at least a partially scofflaw sheriff. So do several other California counties. They’re essentially enforcing only laws and rules they like.

          As coronavirus hospital admissions neared capacities just before the nation’s 244^th birthday, doctors readied rationing schemes deciding who would get ventilators in case of a shortage. Then Gov. Gavin Newsom ordered beaches and their parking lots closed in most coastal counties to slow the contagion.

          When similar orders prevailed during the first months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Los Angeles Sheriff Alex Villanueva stationed deputies at regular intervals along his county’s vast strands, their mere presence warding off would-be surfers and others who merely wanted to lounge on the sand. California bent the COVID curve.

          But not this time. A holiday drive along more than 20 miles of beaches revealed shut-down parking lots and plenty of “Closed” signs – but no deputies. As a result, wherever roadside parking was possible along the Pacific Coast Highway, beaches were crowded, surfers clambering down bluffs and cliffs headed for the unusually high waves that prevailed.

          No deputies could be seen trying to hinder them, let alone write citations. If the pandemic revival of late June and early July continues into August, this will likely be part of the reason, just as big, mostly unmasked and un-socially-distanced Memorial Day beach and protest crowds helped cause the state’s second onslaught of COVID-19.

          Newsom, who almost daily issues edicts governing business and personal behavior, did little. Yes, before the holiday, he threatened to take some state funding from counties that wouldn't follow orders on mask use and beach closings. The threats were paper tigers.

          This was also true of his response when Merced County Sheriff Vernon Warnke refused to enforce state orders in May and June, claiming they meant “economic slaughter.” Now cases are surging in Merced County and Warnke is recanting.

          Through all this, the scofflaw sheriffs continue commanding their corps of deputies as if they were tough law enforcement officers. They have not been penalized, making a mockery of state authority.

          It’s not unique to California. Hours after Washington Gov. Jay Inslee ordered his state’s residents to mask up in public, the sheriff of rural Lewis County told a crowd to go barefaced. Carrying a megaphone and wearing his uniform to prove he spoke officially, Sheriff Robert Snaza exhorted constituents, “Don’t be a sheep.”

          This amounted to an endorsement of risking death for themselves and others.

          It’s essentially a rebellion by local sheriffs against governors trying to save lives by using their emergency powers, one of the highest duties of any public official.

          But at least five California sheriffs and a couple of mayors have told constituents Newsom’s orders are “unconstitutional and unenforceable.”

          Given what’s happened around those counties, with caseloads and death tolls rising daily, it’s high time Newsom did more than just talk.

          It is politic to urge citizens to be responsible, as the governor continually does. But the Memorial Day beach scenes, the unmasked protest marches and the actions of countless restaurant and bar customers demonstrate he must do something more dramatic.

          Newsom has dispatched several hundred state inspectors to enforce rules on businesses, but they sometimes work unpredictably and even at odds with his orders. One example: restaurants in Morgan Hill that followed the pre-Fourth of July order to close indoor operations were told to shut down outside tables – not part of the state order. Overall, inspectors issued at least seven citations on their first day out and hundreds since.

          Newsom says he hopes persuasion will be enough to get Californians to follow his orders. It has not worked well enough, leniency most likely costing at least some lives.

          Which makes it high time Newsom put teeth in his orders. Yes, some localities fine face mask recalcitrants hundreds of dollars when they persist after being warned, but no one has punished scofflaw sheriffs and mayors.

          If they won’t uphold rules they’re sworn to enforce, those officials should either be removed from office or see their agencies lose major state funding. The carrot plainly hasn’t worked well enough; it’s time for the stick.

     -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

UNIONS WON’T LIE DOWN AS CLOUT IS THREATENED

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 28, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “UNIONS WON’T LIE DOWN AS CLOUT IS THREATENED”

          There’s a good chance that using union dues for politics will become harder within a year or two and, one thing for sure: big labor will not easily accept that kind of new reality.

Three times in the past 15 years, ballot initiative campaigns led by conservative Republicans tried unsuccessfully to truncate the power and influence of California’s labor unions, both public employee organizations and others.

          “Paycheck protection” was the label applied to those efforts, which sought to prevent unions from using dues money raised via automatic payroll deductions for political purposes. The most recent such effort, in 2012,  looked to force unions to get authorization each year from each member before their dues money could be used for candidate contributions, canvassing for votes or circulating initiative petitions.

          Labor unions pushed back each time, claiming that if paycheck protection ever becomes law, the political playing field will be tilted strongly to the right, with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision allowing almost unlimited contributions from billionaires and businesses, while unions would have one hand tied behind their backs.

          The union arguments prevailed politically, but conservatives did not give up. Rather than appeal to voters, since 2012, they’ve tried to convince judges.

          They came very close to winning this long-running battle last year, when the case of Friedrichs vs. the California Teachers Assn. (CTA), taking the name of Orange County schoolteacher Rebecca Friedrichs, a dues-for-politics opponent, was turned down on a 4-4 U.S. Supreme Court vote soon after the death of conservative Justice Antonin Scalia.

          Now, the high court may be about to take up a similar case from Illinois, and with new Justice Neil Gorsuch expected to join the panel’s four previous conservative judges in backing paycheck protection, the idea might win.

          At least in California, unions are not taking this lying down. One huge public employee union is about to hike the fees it charges members who don’t want to fund its political advocacy.  Local 1000 of the Service Employees International Union, state government’s largest union, is raising the minimum amount of dues it charges those employees by 6 percent, or about $5 per month each. The increase comes under a state law allowing unions to charge employees who are not full members for legal and bargaining expenses run up for the sake of workers.

          At the same time, the CTA – by far the state’s largest teachers union and a major political factor for decades – got its friends in the Legislature and Gov. Jerry Brown to back two state budget trailer bills requiring school districts, cities, counties and other government agencies to give unions representing their workers regular chances to meet and sign up new members.

          The unions realize that unless they do something, their membership and influence will decline sharply as many conservative-leaning union members – long forced to pay for labor’s political advocacy whether they like it or not – start opting out if paycheck protection becomes federal law. Some estimates put possible union losses between 20 percent and 40 percent of their current political revenues – unless they recruit heavily.

          But school districts and other agencies will have the right to negotiate terms of those union recruiting meetings. This may delay their start indefinitely or cause them to be very brief.

          Union fears were well expressed the other day by Joshua Pechthalt, president of the state’s second-largest teacher union, the California Federation of Teachers, who told a reporter that “Anything to mitigate a loss of membership would be helpful.” He added that if paycheck protection becomes law, “Our world will change dramatically. (So) having time to talk about what we do, who we are…will become doubly important.”

          One group that could opt out en masse of all so-called “agency fees,” the dues charged now to employees who don’t actually belong to unions that bargain for them, is part-time teachers at community colleges and California State University campuses.

          For sure, California has a lot riding on the likely new Supreme Court case. But whatever happens, don’t expect unions to accept it meekly. The new meet-and-greet law is likely only their first move toward retaining and possibly expanding their current powerful role.

     -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 third edition. His email address is tdelias@aol.com 

'ROBBING THE HOOD' RULING SHOWS PUC UNCHANGED BY SCANDAL

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

 FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “'ROBBING THE HOOD' RULING SHOWS PUC UNCHANGED BY SCANDAL”

          It’s time once more to roll out the lyrics of The Who’s classic 1971 song, Won’t Get Fooled Again when examining the California Public Utilities Commission, which nominally exists to make sure monopoly utility companies don’t overcharge their captive-audience customers.

    “Meet the new boss; same as the old boss,” went the words written by Peter Townshend. And with the PUC these days, nothing could be more descriptive.

    Get rid of Michael Peevey, the conventional wisdom went last winter, and the PUC would likely return to its basic mission and stop constantly favoring utility companies over their customers in every decision related to rates.

          And Michael Picker, the former adviser to Gov. Jerry Brown whom the governor named as PUC president after Peevey stepped down amid a still-ongoing investigation of corruption, made pious noises about transparency and openness.

          But the first major decision under his aegis reveals that nothing has changed. The PUC, founded in the early 20^th Century to limit monopolies like Pacific Gas & Electric, Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas & Electric Co., has once again given the utilities just what they want.

          This decision essentially codifies a practice known as “robbing the hood.” Where for decades, the largest California electricity users have paid higher rates for their excesses, now they and small users will soon begin paying roughly equal amounts.

          This was explained by Picker’s PUC (although the idea originated during Peevey’s tenure) as a means of ending the “subsidies” small users living in apartments enjoy at the expense of wealthy folk who use wads of electricity to power their hot tubs and Teslas.

     Although specific new rates were not immediately set when the PUC early this month unanimously voted for the change, it is eventually expected to cost small users about 20 percent more each month, or approximately $10 extra for starters, the tab to rise as power costs go up. So it’s a reverse Robin Hood kind of thing, harming the poor and helping the rich. That’s how it earns the “robbing the hood” sobriquet.

          Of course, the PUC didn’t mention that the really big beneficiaries of the change aren’t residential customers of any kind, not even the wealthiest energy hogs. The largest benefits will go to big businesses like oil refineries and computer chip makers, which use enormous amounts of power.

          This proposal originated with PG&E, the same company indicted for criminal negligence in its fatal mismanagement of natural gas pipelines. The utilities will make billions of dollar more under the new system than they do now; just how much has yet to be determined.

          The sad part of all this is that there appears little hope the PUC will anytime soon diverge from its longtime pattern of favoring big utility companies over their tens of millions of customers.

          This pattern extended to natural gas during the early 2000s, when PG&E and Sempra Energy, parent of both Southern California Gas Co. and San Diego Gas & Electric, got the Peevey-led PUC to push hard to bring liquefied natural gas (LNG) from places like Indonesia and Australia to California at enormous expense.

          This state needed LNG, said both the utilities and the PUC, because a domestic natural gas shortage was impending and the PUC arranged for the state to give up most of its reserved space on two of the three big pipelines bringing natural gas here from Texas, Oklahoma and the Rocky Mountain region.

          That plan was nixed when the state Lands Commission, then led by ex-Lt. Gov. John Garamendi and current state Treasurer John Chiang, refused to allow construction of pipelines across state-owned tidelands in Ventura County. Since then, hydraulic fracking has produced a surplus of domestic natural gas, putting the lie to all the PUC and utility company claims of impending shortage and consumers have saved billions compared to what they’d be paying if the companies were buying LNG.

          Still, almost no one heeded the PUC’s constant favoring the utility companies over consumers. Similarly, there were no large-scale protests when the PUC this month changed the electric pricing system, to the great detriment of most customers.

          Apparently, not even a criminal investigation can get reporters and the public they serve to see through the subterfuges used by PUC members and their utility company cronies.

          Which brings to mind the classic observation of Thomas Jefferson: “In a democracy, the people get precisely the government they deserve.”

         

              -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

KEEPING EXIT EXAM OFFERS STATE MULTIPLE BENEFITS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 28, 2009, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
"KEEPING EXIT EXAM OFFERS STATE MULTIPLE BENEFITS"

For many months, Americans have heard politicians from President Obama to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and many lesser figures repeat the cliché that "every crisis offers an opportunity."

They generally mean that crises cause reevaluations of past practices, with the aim of fixing whatever caused the crisis.

But crises also offer plenty of chances for self-destructive flailing about, something California has seen in copious amounts as the state budget crisis unfolded this spring and summer.

First Schwarzenegger wants to save money by closing more than 200 state parks and beaches; then we learn the parks contribute far more to nearby local economies and tax coffers than they cost to maintain. He wants to release tens of thousands of prison inmates to save big bucks, but has no idea how much those releases might cost in terms of new crimes. And more.

Some moves he's proposed are things he tried - and failed - to get voters and lawmakers to approve in years past. A crisis, he obviously believes, gives him one last chance at pushing through some of his original agenda.

Legislators are no better. They also pursue old agendas with new urgency at a time of crisis.

So it is with the attempt by some liberal Sacramento Democrats to do away (temporarily, they say) with the state's high school exit exam. This verbal and math test offers employers the certainty that young people they hire will possess a certain set of knowledge and skills. Without it, high school diplomas would lose a great deal of their meaning.

The proposal comes in the twin names of saving money and increasing fairness. It would do neither.

For the Democrats don't really want to end the exit exam; they just want it not to count. Yep, their plan would have schools keep on giving the test to all 10th graders (and pupils beyond that level who previously failed to pass). But students who fail would now be allowed to graduate anyway, with precisely the same diplomas as those who pass.

There's little or no savings here, despite the fact that the six-person Democratic majority in control of a joint legislative budget conference committee listed that as the reason for a change. If schools keep giving the exam, they're spending the same amounts on proctoring and other arrangements as they would if the test counted.

What's really at work here, then, is that some ultra-liberal Democrats, led by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, have long opposed the entire concept of the exam. They've argued for most of the last decade that the exam favors children of the wealthy, who often have educational advantages over poorer kids and children of immigrants. They also contend that poor test-takers are at a disadvantage, even if they've proved their skills and knowledge in ordinary course-work.

Trying to make up for the socio-economic factors, schools now run copious test-preparation classes, both during school hours and after school. But the exam's longtime opponents are not satisfied.

They say that as schools chop their budgets in response to state cuts, they'll offer less test-prep. "Why would you hold kids accountable to a standard that we're not providing the resources for them to meet?" Bass told a reporter.

Of course, myriad high schools long ago adjusted their normal curricula for "teaching to the test," meaning coursework is designed to prepare students for this test more than to give them general knowledge. Which should make the test-prep work of the exam's early years less necessary.

The attempt to suspend or kill the exam also ignores the simple fairness issue: If students who have already graduated under the exam system have diplomas with true meaning, why deprive future grads, including next year's, of the chance to get the same certification of achievement?

The fact is the exit exam has accomplished what it set out to do: force schools to improve instruction and compel students to take their work seriously for fear they won't get that all-important sheepskin. When kids fail the test, their parents also are put on notice to do something if they are concerned about their children's future.

Interestingly, test critics have mostly ignored suggestions for differential diplomas, where students who fail could still get a certificate, but a different one from that given pupils who pass exam. Their action says they'd rather try to get rid of the exam entirely than work to help poor test-takers and others find ways to compensate for failing.

The good thing is that Democrats are not united in the dump-the-exam camp, even if all six on the budget committee voted that way. State schools Supt. Jack O'Connell is one Democrat very much behind the exam.

"We do a grave injustice to our students if we don't ensure they have the minimal skills needed in the increasingly competitive global economy," he said.

He's outlined the bottom-line fact here: The exit exam boosts educational quality and therefore is important to this state's future. Using a budget battle as an pretext for dumping it would not only be deceptive, but destructive.

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net