COULD TRUMP DRIVE A SERIOUS CALIFORNIA SECESSION MOVEMENT?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 29, 2025, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“COULD TRUMP DRIVE A SERIOUS CALIFORNIA SECESSION MOVEMENT?"

 

There can be no doubt that the relatively few Californians strongly interested in becoming an independent country have had high hopes that President Trump’s “War on California” would drive many new adherents to their camp.

 

So far, it is not happening at a level that can be taken seriously. That’s the upshot of a new poll taken by the YouGov survey service for the Carlsbad-based Independent California Institute (ICI).

 

Let’s tot up a few things Trump has done to harm California: He’s eliminated the state’s unique ability to make smog rules for the state’s vehicles, once thought securely written into the 1970 Clean Air Act. He’s invented a series of Los Angeles “riots,” which were at most a few incidents of vandalism, and used it to send thousands of soldiers into Southern California. He’s eliminated funding for bringing English-learning schoolchildren and migrant kids into the academic mainstream.

 

These are only a few anti-California measures he’s taken, besides ordering the region to undergo the nation’s most intensive deportation drive ever, claiming to go after seriously criminal illegal immigrants but mostly picking up undocumented workers who broke no other laws.

 

Apparently, all this has not yet had huge negative impact on mainstream Californians. 

 

The new poll does say Californians’ confidence in the federal government has nosedived since Trump took office, with 50 percent of Californians saying they now trust Sacramento more than Washington, D.C. and only 23 percent holding the opposite view. Those numbers are significantly changed from February, when only 34 percent trusted Sacramento more, while 18 percent trusted the feds.

 

But when asked if they’d vote for a peaceful secession ballot initiative, only 44 percent were in favor, with 54 percent against.

 

Is it possible Californians could shift radically to the side of secession in the foreseeable future? Says ICI director Coyote Codornices Marin, “It would probably take something quite direct. For instance, if Trump were to say something like ‘We don’t need California,’ that could seriously drive secession. But I strongly doubt he would ever be stupid enough to say that.”

 

Even without such a seminal event, 71 percent of Californians believe they’d be better off if California somehow gained special autonomous status within the USA, something that seems ever less likely under the Trump administration, which seems bent on allowing California less autonomy, not more.

 

This reality does not faze the 60 percent of Californians who said they want California’s 52-person House delegation in Congress to back autonomy with “hardball tactics” like refusing to vote for federal budgets as long as California receives billions of dollars less in federal spending than it pays in federal taxes.

 

Other significant findings in the poll of 500 Californians included 71 percent wanting a new state law enforcement division focused on violent extremism and hate crimes, rather than leaving such enforcement strictly up to local police and sheriffs. A similar 72 percent want California police to have authority to arrest federal immigration officials who “act maliciously or knowingly exceed their authority under federal law.” And 80 percent want California to control its borders “more like a country,” checking for illegal firearms and other types of contraband, rather than merely seeking out perishable fruit.

 

Said the ICI’s vice chair, Timothy Vollmer, “Californians are ready to govern themselves and are focused on pragmatic solutions.”

 

But that leaves out the Trump factor. The president wants exactly the reverse from California, and seems most compliant with California desires when they are addressed to him with abject obsequiousness.

 

“Yes, our poll numbers for secession are at a record high,” said Marin. But they added the numbers also indicate a steep uphill climb would still be required, especially without special autonomous status as a step in that direction.

 

“Many people just don’t think it’s possible to be sovereign in the immediate future,” said Marin.

 

But that could change were Trump’s steadfast irritation with California to become more active and focused on depriving Californians of basic rights.

 

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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’S GUN LAWS HELP QUELL TRAGEDIES, SHOULD BE COPIED

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2022 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “STATE’S GUN LAWS HELP QUELL TRAGEDIES, SHOULD BE COPIED”

 

        Yes, there have been several examples of completely unprovoked mass gun violence in California. But no, it’s not nearly on the same scale as in the rest of America.

 

        Yet, there is some commonality: Most mass crimes committed with firearms in this state over the last several years were perpetrated by shooters aged 21 and under. Just like recent massacres in Texas, Illinois, Buffalo, NY and many other places.

 

        But gun mortality rates in California are far lower than in other states, especially the big ones we are most often and most appropriately compared with.

 

        In 2020, researchers say, this state’s rate of firearm deaths was one of the lowest in America, at 8.5 per 100,000 residents. That compared with 13.7 per 100,000 nationally and in Florida and 14.2 per 100,000 in Texas, where Republican Gov. Greg Abbott prompted state legislators last year to make open and closed (hidden) carry pretty much a universal right. All this came before the U.S. Supreme Court this summer made open and closed carry essentially a nationwide right for adults.

 

        While some Californians will die and have died in shootups like the 2019 Poway synagogue incident and a springtime Sacramento mass killing, residents of this state are about 25 percent less likely to die from a bullet wound than other Americans.

 

        That is thanks to a panoply of state laws, some governing ammunition purchase, some dealing with background checks and others with age limits.

 

        These laws are one reason we don’t hear much about “Saturday Night Specials” anymore. Those were cheap handguns with low standards for design and safety, readily available for street-corner purchase. Recent California laws  cut that trade far below its previous levels. Now we hear more about “ghost guns,” often home-built from designs available on the Internet.

 

        One new law pushed and quickly signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom this year will use the principle okayed by the Supreme Court when it ruled a current Texas anti-abortion law constitutional:

 

        The Texas law allows private citizens to sue anyone who promotes or assists an abortion in any way, even if the plaintiff has never met the abortion patient or provider. That law puts anyone who helps a woman get the procedure at risk for major monetary penalties.

 

        Newsom has now put makers, designers, dealers and on-line promoters of ghost guns at similar risk.

 

        There’s also a Newsom effort to make Californians much more aware than they are today about the state’s 2014 “red flag” law, allowing family members and a few others to request court orders forbidding firearm access for persons with mental illness or emotional problems, considering them risks to themselves and others.

 

        This law has been little used, but the gun lobby is now working to stymie proposals for similar rules in other states, alleging they violate the Constitution’s Second Amendment. So far, there are few signs this idea will catch on significantly across the nation. Still, Newsom promised last month to invest $11 million in state education funds to promote it here.

 

        President Biden wants national laws to go much farther than California’s in controlling firearms, asking for a ban on private ownership of assault weapons and high-capacity magazines often used in school shootings and other multi-fatal incidents.

 

        He also wants to eliminate the federal law giving gun makers immunity from financial liability when their products are used to kill dozens, as in Uvalde, Tex., and the 2012 Sandy Hook school shootings in Connecticut.

 

        Even after 15 Republican senators joined Democrats to pass a gun control bill in June, there’s no reason to believe its funding for red flag protections will be used in most states. GOP governors like Abbott often claim mental illness, not guns, causes most mass shootings. If that’s true, why don’t they even try to enforce the new national red flag rules or push similar state laws?

 

        The bottom line: Newsom is right in saying California is safer – even if far from completely safe – because of its gun laws. And if, as is often intoned piously, we’re all in this together, let’s see more states adopt the kind of laws that now protect Californians more than most others.

 

    -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

AUDIT SHOWS WHY PUC REFORM PLAN NOT ENOUGH

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2016, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “AUDIT SHOWS WHY PUC REFORM PLAN NOT ENOUGH”

          Less than a week had passed after Gov. Jerry Brown and several state legislators giddily announced their package of reforms for the scandal-ridden California Public Utilities Commission before an official audit revealed why that plan is simply not good enough.

          The audit by the state’s Department of General Services marked the first time in 20 years that the PUC’s practices had been officially examined, and the commission was found severely wanting.

          But there have been and likely will be no consequences for anyone involved.

          Also, no one has explained why 20 years passed between audits, when General Services reviews are supposed to come every three years. Perhaps it was because California’s last three governors – Brown, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Gray Davis – were all sympathetic to the commission’s steadfast favoritism of the huge companies it regulates over their customers.

          The audit found the commission did not maintain proper paperwork on contracts and other matters. It said PUC employees most likely misused gasoline credit cards. But the most egregious offense noted came when the commission lawyered up in early 2015, just as federal and state agents began investigating some of its members for possible criminal wrongdoing.

          Panic and fear ran rampant in the PUC’s San Francisco headquarters at the time, just after authorities searched the La Canada-Flintridge home of the recently-departed former commission President Michael Peevey. That raid founded evidence Peevey and executives of the Southern California Edison Co. secretly agreed to dun customers $3.3 billion, or about 70 percent of the costs to close the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, shuttered because of an Edison blunder. An almost identical agreement soon became official.

          Commissioners voted to hire an outside criminal law firm to help them through the investigation, awarding a contract that so far has amounted to about $12 million for the law firm SheppardMullin.

          The General Services audit did not question the commission’s authority to do anything it has done, including awarding that contract. But it said the contract was “not…signed by a party who had been delegated signature authority in writing…”

          In short, there was never proper legal authority for the firm – which has so far been most visible in helping the commission stonewall requests for documents and other information – to get all that money.

          There are other questions about the propriety of commissioners under criminal investigation using state money to hire defense attorneys. The only PUC response to those questions was to cite government code section 995.8, which says a public entity can only hire criminal lawyers to defend present or former officials if “The public entity determines that such defense would be in the best interest of the public entity…” The PUC would have to hold hearings to make such a circular determination, but it never even did that.

          The audit, then, makes it clear the commission lawyered up illegally in two ways, both by failing to hold hearings on whether it should hire SheppardMullin and by letting an unauthorized person sign the contract.

          Yet there are no consequences. Brown has said nothing about any of this. PUC President Michael Picker, who repeatedly says his agency’s “culture” needs big changes, steadfastly refused to answer questions about the dicey contract.

          That means the PUC, whose members cannot be fired during their six-year terms, is almost completely unaccountable for its actions. It acts illegally with impunity and no one touches its top officials.

          That won’t change under the reform package, which includes several positives including provisions calling for a new ethics ombudsman and a deputy director in charge of the safety of natural gas and electricity transmission lines.

          Those are positive changes, negotiated largely between Brown and Democratic Assemblyman Mike Gatto of Los Angeles, whose bill to break up the PUC and divide its tasks among several other state agencies easily passed the Assembly before Brown paid it any heed. But their deal, if passed by the Legislature as expected, leaves commissioners as unaccountable as ever.

          And that makes the reforms too little and far too late to help consumers very much.  

         
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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

RED LIGHT CAMERA FATE NOW UNCERTAIN IN STATE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JULY 29, 2014, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “RED LIGHT CAMERA FATE NOW UNCERTAIN IN STATE”

          There are few worse feelings for a driver than receiving a letter purporting to show that person in the act of running a red light.

          But not many legal items are less enforceable or reliable, despite what the California Supreme Court said in an early summer ruling which held red light camera photos and videos have “a presumption of authenticity.”

          There’s a reason traffic cops routinely demand that drivers sign the bottom of every ticket they write: That signature constitutes a promise either to pay a fine or appear in court on a specified date. Drivers make no such promise on red light tickets, which normally carry fines of about $480.

          That was one reason the city of Los Angeles abandoned red light cameras in 2012. The decision came about a year after that city’s police chief, Charlie Beck, candidly admitted that no actions were being taken against drivers who simply ignored red light camera violation notices. Because they’re not routinely sent as certified or registered mail (too costly), prosecutors cannot prove drivers are lying if they say they never got the mailed tickets.

          This in effect creates two classes of citizens, in apparent violation of the equal protection clause of the Constitution’s 14^th Amendment: drivers who dutifully pay up the almost $500 fines on demand and scofflaws who don’t, and pay nothing. There could hardly be more unequal treatment.

          There’s also the issue of red light camera reliability. The nub of the case against cited drivers is usually a videotape which drivers can often see via an Internet link provided in the mailed violation notice.

          Since the vast bulk of red light camera tickets involve drivers making rolling stops rather than full stops before right turns, the accuracy of videos is critical. A still photo may place a driver in the middle of a turn during a red light, but doesn’t establish that he or she didn’t stop before proceeding with the turn.

          If the video camera doesn't run precisely at life-speed, but is a little faster, a vehicle can appear to be rolling through the stop, when it fact it made a full stop. In several cases where police have been cross-examined about how often their video cameras are calibrated, they testified they didn’t know, that it was up to the camera operator – usually Redflex Traffic Systems or American Traffic Solutions, both based in Arizona. But those firms are never available for cross-examination in court and the Supreme Court said they don't have to be.

          So while drivers contesting red light camera tickets can usually question a cop, they can’t cross-examine the ultimate witness against them, an egregious violation of a basic constitutional right, no matter what the state justices may say.

          But legal reasons are not the main cause for removal of red light cameras in Poway, Oakland and most other cities that have gotten rid of them: finances are. Because more than half the take from each $480 fine goes to the state or the operating companies, cities often don’t make much profit from the cameras, while annoying thousands of their citizens and visitors.

          There’s disagreement in Oakland, for one example, over how much the city made last year from the 11 red light cameras it then had operating: The city says it netted just $280,000, while Redflex said the city share came to about $1.1 million. Oakland police are now auditing paid fines to see which figure is closest to correct.

          In Poway, near San Diego, cameras at three intersections netted between $100,000 and $218,000 per year. Apparently, those smallish receipts were not enough for either city to put up with complaints about cameras violating privacy and the exorbitantly high fines for rolling stops before right turns.

          All of which means red light cameras are at a different kind of crossroad: The state’s highest court says drivers don’t have the right to cross-examine camera operations because of the presumption of accuracy in their findings, while some of the state’s largest cities have shut their cameras down.

          The upshot is that unfair as the cameras may be if they’re not properly calibrated, their fate in many places will hang not on traffic safety, but on the city budget dollars they produce, regardless of anyone's constitutional rights.

    -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

BROWNEST OF THE BROWN BUDGET CUTS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JULY 29, 2011, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“BROWNEST OF THE BROWN BUDGET CUTS”

There are plenty of draconian cuts in the state budget Gov. Jerry Brown signed last month, items that promise to affect hundreds of thousands of Californians.

The slashes will shutter libraries, shorten school years, close state parks, send some prison inmates to county jails and may limit the neediest and sickest Medi-Cal patients to 10 doctor visits per year, just under one per month.

But the one cut that promises to provide the largest bang for Brown’s buck – doing the most damage with the least savings – is elimination of state subsidies for the 46-year-old Williamson Act, otherwise known as the state Land Conservation Act.

This law gives farmers reduced property taxes in exchange for signing contracts promising to keep their land in agriculture for 20 years. The contracts “roll over,” so that any farmer taking the benefit this year must promise not to develop his or her land for two decades. And the same for all who take the benefit next year.

At its peak, the Williamson Act was costing the state less than $30 million, while keeping bulldozers off 16.5 million acres of open space. The law passed in the 1960s, long before anyone knew of climate change or greenhouse gases, but it has been the most effective anti-climate change measure anywhere in the world.

That hasn’t spared this law from the chopping block in the recent past, when ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger targeted it year after year in his proposed budgets. Schwarzenegger had an excuse, at first. He honestly didn’t know that a 2003 study by Purdue University agronomists found that each acre of farmland in that university’s state of Indiana pulls about 0.107 tons of carbon dioxide from the air every year. That’s for all types of agricultural land, including pastures, vineyards, cornfields, orchards and more.

Yes, farming also produces some greenhouse gases, among which CO2 is the leading villain in climate change – and climate change does continue despite unusually snowy winters in some places. One theory for why this happens is that the ever-quickening melting of glaciers near the poles puts more moisture into the atmosphere, and it can emerge elsewhere as snow.

But even taking account of pollution from farming, the Purdue figures mean California land protected by the Williamson Act absorbs a minimum of 1.754 million tons of carbon yearly. That’s equivalent to the weight of 18 cruise ships the size of the 3,600-passenger Emerald Princess, one of the largest current luxury liners.

After Schwarzenegger heard of these findings in a 2007 press conference, he allowed restoration of Williamson Act funding in the final version of that year’s budget and the next two. But it disappeared last summer, with $10 million worth of funding somehow reappearing in the fall along with a provision allowing some farmers to sign contracts with 10-year terms.

At the same time, some counties took on the entire funding burden of the pacts, while others refused – which means that the clock is ticking right now on hundreds of thousands of open acres that now figure to become ex-urban sprawl in little more than a decade. A bill allowing the local options to continue passed the Legislature this month.

But now even last autumn’s partial restoration of state funding is gone, which will eventually lead to development of millions of farm acres because most farmers cannot afford to pay taxes based on the market value of their developable land.

It’s possible Brown wasn’t aware of the Purdue study or a similar 2009 one that backed the earlier findings. No doubt he sought every nickel or dime of relatively harmless cuts he could find. Nickels and dimes are what $10 million amounts to in the multi-billion dollar universe of state government.

Brown warned early on his budget would bring extreme pain, but also said he would lead the state to quit fobbing problems off onto future generations.

Yet, that’s precisely what ending state money for the Williamson Act does. It will be more than 10 years before the act’s disappearance (likely if some money doesn’t somehow reappear) is widely felt. It will be 20 before much significant development occurs on land that’s now protected.

But if geologists and other climate change scientists are correct, that’s about when the kinds of weird weather California has seen this winter (record lows followed just days later by record high temperatures for their respective dates) will become dangerously extreme.

It’s also just when the current generation of kids aged 10 or younger will be taking on more and more responsibility for their world.

The bottom line: Not one of this year’s budget cuts promises to do more long-term harm per dollar saved than chopping the Williamson Act.

It’s not too late for Brown and the Legislature to reverse this poor choice, and if they’re wise, they’ll do just that.

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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