NO LONGER JUST TRUMP WARRING ON CALIFORNIA

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2025 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“NO LONGER JUST TRUMP WARRING ON CALIFORNIA”

 

No one can doubt anymore that President Trump has carried out a “war” on California in both his presidential terms, harming this state’s reputation, capabilities and privileges in ways no other president ever even tried.

 

Trump is not the only president who failed to win California’s 50-plus electoral votes, he’s merely the one who resented it most. So he’s held up promised disaster aid that was never previously doled out in a partisan manner, holding it hostage to longtime Republican policy priorities like requiring government IDs before voters can cast ballots. His national policies targeting immigrants also have more impact here than elsewhere because California is home to a far larger share of immigrants than its share of national population.

 

Now Trump’s campaign to reduce California’s stature by taking away some of its powers and influence has spread to Congress, narrowly controlled by his Republican Party. It’s a campaign occasionally joined by Democrats from Eastern and Midwestern states. When that happens, it can look like a continuation of the “anywhere but California” sentiment that has sometimes influenced Congress to make epically stupid decisions. One classic was placement for years of the National Earthquake Research Center in Buffalo, NY back in the 1970s. That supposed research center took a complete back seat to other seismic researchers at places like Caltech and Stanford, where earthquakes actually occur from time to time. Unlike Buffalo, where no quake topping a meager 3.8 on the Richter Scale has been felt in more than 40 years, a full share of 4s and 5s routinely occurs around California.

 

But few things rankle Republicans in red states like California’s Clean Air Act waiver, which has given it authority since 1970 to make its own smog laws and regulations. This has resulted in advances from the catalytic converter to hybrid gas/electric cars like the Toyota Prius, many Honda Civics and a wide variety of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids that run about 30 to 40 miles on electric power before reverting to hybrid status.

 

No doubt, California’s rules have made cars cost more. That’s been generally accepted here under the notion that clean air costs something in a state whose biggest urban centers sit in coastal basins where prevailing winds often blow smog inland to areas where it can essentially pile up and thicken against mountains or substantial hills.

 

So far, no California governor has been ousted over the cost of living in more than 50 years of imposing anti-smog rules that make vehicles and some other goods more expensive. Polls show most Californians accept it’s the price of less emphysema, asthma and other smog-related diseases. The state’s powerful, appointive Air Resources Board now regulates not only vehicles, but industrial emissions and many commercial products, banning – for one example – most leaf blowers. Other state agencies here use similar priorities to promote things like solar and wind energy.

 

Meanwhile, other states including large automotive markets like Pennsylvania and New York accept a lot of California’s reasoning. Fully 17 states and the District of Columbia automatically adopt California smog rules some years after they take effect here.

 

Because carmakers want to construct and sell products for use everywhere, they often build to California standards, making vehicles more expensive everywhere and not just here, where clean cars are more often equated with healthy air.

 

This offends many red state politicians, since the automatic adopters mostly include Democratic-leaning states.

 

They appear most rankled by California’s plan to ban sales of new gasoline-only cars and trucks after 2035. “Every state would lose options – whether you live in California or not,” griped Wyoming’s Republican Sen. John Barrasso, whose state is a major oil pumper.

 

So the latest tactic in the war on California has been an attempt to repeal California’s unique smog-fighting authority. Trump tried this in his first term, but was held up by lawsuits. It’s doubtful that will work this time. Chances are, the state’s powers will at least be dented.

 

But it's doubtful Trump and other Republicans will be satisfied with just this, if they manage it. Which means the war on California will likely persist as long as Republicans control either Congress or the White House.

 

 

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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

THE YEAR’S KEY PROPOSED LAW LIMITS SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATING KIDS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2022, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “THE YEAR’S KEY PROPOSED LAW LIMITS SOCIAL MEDIA MANIPULATING KIDS” 

        It may not seem this way on the surface, but there’s a growing awareness that the most important bill California legislators will consider this year is not about housing or homelessness or abortion or wildfires or taxes. Rather, it’s one that might force gigantic electronic firms to lay off our teenage kids and stop trying to addict them for profit. 

        If most adults were not yet aware of the potential mind-changing effects of kids looking at screens for hours, a year or more of watching schoolchildren struggle to learn while working on computers programmed to help them, not exploit them, probably provided some understanding. 

        But even as computer programs and sessions devoted to learning had difficulty holding kids’ attention, there was no reduction in youthful addiction to more glitzy screen programs like Tik-Tok and Instagram, designed not to help them learn, but rather to manipulate them in myriad other ways.

         In his landmark 2015 book The Wired Child: Reclaiming Childhood in a Digital Age, the Harvard-trained, Walnut Creek-based Ph.D. psychologist Richard Freed asserted that “We need to stop accepting on faith the gadget-dominated life thrust upon our kids…The push to give our kids so many playtime devices is based on inaccurate notions…”

        Widespread emphasis on “STEM” education (science, technology, engineering and math) rather than subjects like history or English composition contributes to parental acceptance of myriad screens in their children’s lives. That has made social media a vital part of many – maybe most -- childhoods. 

        But big technology companies led by Facebook, owner of Instagram, use algorithms to mine information about users, selling that information to advertisers who then send out personalized content and ads. 

        Enter the current Assembly Bill 2408, sponsored by Assembly members Jordan Cunningham, a San Luis Obispo Republican, and Democrat Buffy Wicks of Oakland. 

        The bill’s preamble cites internal Facebook research showing the company is aware that “severe harm is happening to children,” who are decreasingly connected to family and school the more addicted they become to Instagram and similar media. 

        This is done via targeted videos and notifications that pop up 24 hours a day and never-ending scrolling designed to keep users on a particular site.

         The preamble adds that girls have a higher prevalence of screen addiction than boys and that girls admitting to excessive social media use are two to three times more likely than boys to be depressed, a condition that can lead to suicide. And it says an internal Facebook message board reported that 66 percent of teen girls on Instagram experience “negative social comparison,” often leading to low self-esteem, which can precede depression. 

        The bill’s solution is to prohibit social media platforms with parent companies whose annual revenues exceed $100 million from addicting any child user via use or sale of personal data. It would allow parents and guardians to sue for up to $25,000 per violation, with no ceiling on total liability. 

        Lawmakers are usually loath to create new grounds for lawsuits aimed at California companies, but this bill passed the Assembly on a 51-0 vote, with no explanation why that house’s other 29 members did not vote. 

        Psychologist Freed, who testified in favor of the bill in a committee hearing, said it could reduce what he called “an epidemic of depression and suicidality in girls.” That’s because, as the bill preamble notes, “Numerous studies show that reducing social media use (has great) mental health benefits.” 

        The state Senate will now get its shot at making a contribution to mental health in California by following the Assembly and approving the bill, with Gov. Gavin Newsom – parent of four pre-teen children -- likely to sign it without hesitation. 

        And if California passes this, expect other states to follow, as they often have on unrelated measures like the Proposition 13 property tax cuts and this state’s smog rules.               

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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

ANOTHER MANSON FAMILY PAROLE THAT BROWN MUST HALT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “ANOTHER MANSON PAROLE THAT BROWN MUST HALT”

          It seemed like déjà vu last month when a panel of the California Board of Prison Terms recommended parole for onetime Charles Manson “Family” member Leslie Van Houten.

          Other parole board teams have recommended release several times for less well-known former Manson murder participants like Bruce Davis and Charles (Tex) Watson and none has yet been freed.

          But some parole panelists believe Van Houten should be different. Denied parole 19 other times during 46 years in prison, she has been an exemplary inmate, organizing women’s support groups and earning college degrees.

          Parole Commissioner Ali Zarrinnam told Van Houten during a five-hour hearing in Corona earlier this year that her “behavior in prison speaks for itself … 46 years and not a single serious rule violation.”

          Gov. Jerry Brown should pay little or no heed to that kind of sentimental talk as he considers whether to accept or veto the parole recommendation. And most likely, he won’t. When parole officials recommended freedom for fellow Manson Family killer Davis last year, Brown wrote a six-page reversal making this salient point: “In rare circumstances, a murder is so heinous that it provides evidence of current dangerousness by itself. This is such a case.”

          It’s rather doubtful that Van Houten, once a rich family’s daughter and now a gray-haired 66-year-old, would do much damage to society – the usual standard followed in allowing or denying parole – except in this case for its effect on the societal psyche.

          For if murderers can eventually go free after behaving as brutally as Van Houten did in 1969, first holding down victim Rosemary La Bianca in her Hollywood Hills home while fellow killers Watson and Patricia Krenwinkel repeatedly stabbed her, and then adding 14 stabs of her own just for emphasis (later, she said she inflicted ‘about 16 stabs’), what value has society placed on human life? And what effect might that have on others considering brutal killings of their own?

          There was also the matter of Van Houten’s scrawling racist slogans in Mrs. LaBianca’s blood on several interior walls of her home. And there was her carving the word WAR into the stomach of Mrs. LaBianca’s husband Leno, murdered with her.

           

          And yet, there are plenty of lawyers and prison psychiatrists to whom this is largely irrelevant because Van Houten has been a model prisoner, just as was her pal, Susan (Sadie) Atkins, who helped kill actress Sharon Tate and others and died of cancer in prison, where some chaplains bemoaned her incarceration because she was such a “deep and noble” person. None of those Atkins admirers, nor any of the psychiatrists who have evaluated Van Houten, set foot in the crime scene the next day, as this columnist did.

          Nor did any of them see Atkins and Van Houten, with a few other Manson followers, repeatedly enter courtrooms with X’s carved into their foreheads to mark the degree of their support for their guru and each other – and what they had perpetrated.

          Sure, they – like Davis and Watson – have been exemplary convicts. But that did not help Cory LaBianca last year, when her six-year-old granddaughter asked what happened to her great-grandparents.

          Two new factors are at play in this latest parole case. For one thing, Brown has only 30 more months in office and will likely be the last California governor with personal memories of the Tate-LaBianca murders. He lived nearby in the Hollywood Hills at the time and was an elected Los Angeles community college trustee. Will future governors who did not live in the area (no one in the current list of prospects to succeed Brown was either an adult or lived in the vicinity at the time) be more sympathetic to the now-elderly killers?

          Another possible factor is Brown’s push for a fall ballot initiative that would ease paroles of state convicts – possibly including Davis and Van Houten.

          Would he view it as hypocritical to simultaneously push this measure and deny parole to Van Houten, classed as an ideal candidate for freedom by every prison system expert (none of whom was directly exposed to her crimes)?

          One thing for sure: If Brown okays this parole, it will most likely taint his legacy, perhaps even more than the several forms of corruption that now afflict his administration.

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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

KASHKARI NOMINATION BRINGS GOP BACK FROM BRINK

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 17, 2014, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “KASHKARI NOMINATION BRINGS GOP BACK FROM BRINK”

    No candidate campaigned harder this spring that Neel Kashkari, the former federal Treasury Department official and ex-Goldman Sachs executive who just become the first Asian-American ever nominated to for governor of California.

          He was someplace every day. His campaign issued a seemingly non-stop barrage of press releases. He willingly met with political reporters, who took him seriously even when he was at 2 percent in the polls.

          Kashkari also won the endorsements of every prominent Republican who took sides in this month’s primary election. These included ex-Gov. Pete Wilson, former presidential nominee Mitt Romney (now a La Jolla resident), possible GOP presidential candidate Jeb Bush and Rep. Darrell Issa of northern San Diego County, chairman of the House Governmental Oversight Committee. Ex-President George W. Bush made fund-raising calls for him. There are no bigger GOP guns.            

          But Kashkari’s campaign was so cash-starved that during the month before the vote, the candidate who once said he couldn’t fund his own campaign because his net worth was “only” about $5 million felt he had to put up $2 million of his own cash (by his reckoning, about 40 percent of all his resources).

          This was still barely enough to put Kashkari into the November runoff election, beating out primary opponent Tim Donnelly, an assemblyman from the High Desert town of Twin Peaks best known for attempting to carry a handgun onto a Southwest Airlines flight at Ontario International Airport two years ago. Before that, the Tea Party favorite’s main claim to fame was being a co-founder of the Minutemen group battling illegal immigration. Imagine what that might have done to the Latino vote.

          Donnelly’s campaign manager, Jennifer Kerns, quit in mid-March, amid reports the candidate consistently refused to take her advice. He compared President Obama to Adolf Hitler and groundlessly accused Kashkari of promoting Islamic Sharia law. Yet, somehow, Donnelly almost managed to make the runoff, primarily because much of the Republican Party’s California base believed he was the only purely anti-government candidate available.

          Kashkari’s win meant that the Republican establishment beat back the grass roots GOP right this spring. In a contest that drew very few Democratic voters, Kashkari’s last-minute spending inspired just enough moderate Republican voters to back him. Many apparently feared having Donnelly top their ticket would drag down dozens of other Republicans in swing districts, while Kashkari might be a neutral factor.

          As of early May, just over two weeks before the first absentee ballots went to voters, Kashkari had barely run any commercials. So he was undefined to most voters before his last-week ad campaign, even as Donnelly tried to tag him a purely establishment hack.

          But at least Kashkari is a real candidate. While Donnelly railed vaguely against big government, Kashkari issued detailed position papers on job creation and education.

          Kashkari’s primary win over Donnelly at least indicates the GOP does not have a total death wish, as it avoided nominating a candidate who could alienate even more voters than the California GOP already has. But in a very lightly-voted election, with Democrats having little at stake in most places, Brown still managed to win a large majority over both Republicans combined.

          It’s possible Kashkari will make inroads into that cushion by the fall, for he’s promised that if elected, he will frequently compromise with Democrats who dominate the Legislature.

          The vote also might indicate GOP feelings against illegal immigration have eased a bit, as the party nominated the son of immigrants while rejecting a leader of the vigilante-like Minutemen.

          The bottom line is that after flirting with a potentially deep electoral disaster, just enough GOP voters realized that their party would be a dead duck on many levels if it sent Donnelly against Brown, whose job approval ratings in polls this spring were well over 50 percent.

          All of which probably means Brown, sitting on a campaign war chest of more than $21 million, will still have a clear path this fall, but the GOP likely will at least avoid a Democratic clean sweep of every competitive race in the state, which Donnelly could have made a distinct possibility.

   
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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

ACCOUNTABILITY AN UNKNOWN CONCEPT TO POLS, CELEBS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 17, 2011, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ACCOUNTABILITY AN UNKNOWN CONCEPT TO POLS, CELEBS”

“It is nice to hear,” writes a reader of one of California’s largest newspapers, “that Arnold Schwarzenegger is sorry for his actions and takes full responsibility. But I just don’t quite understand what it means when a powerful person does wrong, tells the media that he takes full responsibility…and then the public sees no accountability or punishment for those actions.”

That reader is not alone in an era when American politicians who resign their offices as a consequence of wrongdoing are as rare as hen’s teeth. Eliot Spitzer, the onetime New York governor caught patronizing a call-girl ring, is the rare exception to this rule. But even he quickly got a high-paying gig doing a national TV talk show. Does anyone doubt he will someday seek another office? Sen. Spitzer, anyone?

That's howit is, too, with Schwarzenegger, the ex-governor who conveniently waited until his term expired to admit fathering a 13-year-old child with one of his household servants, conception occurring right in his Mandeville Canyon mansion in the Brentwood district of Los Angeles. There is even speculation the ex-governator used state security details to facilitate his escapades in Sacramento.

Then there's retired boxer Oscar de la Hoya of Los Angeles, who gets nothing but sympathy on sports talk radio after entering rehab for what he called his “flaws.” Reports say those defects include substance abuse. It’s the same with actor Charlie Sheen, whose live shows usually sell out despite his boorish behavior, mistreating women and drunken rants.

If de la Hoya had been knocked out in the ring or Sheen flubbed some lines on his Two and a Half Men sitcom, neither would have gotten nearly the same public sympathy.

But the public has less right to be concerned with the likes of de la Hoya or Sheen than with people like Spitzer or Schwarzenegger. So far, there is no evidence Spitzer’s betrayal of his wife had any public implications. But there is plenty of evidence that Schwarzenegger’s dishonesty was reflected repeatedly in public policy decisions while he was governor.

There was, for instance, his infamous commuting of the voluntary manslaughter prison sentence of Esteban Nunez, son of onetime Democratic Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, from 16 years down to seven, which might allow the younger Nunez to seek parole as soon as three years from now. All the younger Nunez did, Schwarzenegger said when he acted, was hold the victim down while he was stabbed to death.

At the time, Schwarzenegger said the commutation came because of a review of the case. Later, though, he admitted it was “what you do for a friend,” marking his first statement as essentially untrue.

Then there was his promise after the 2003 exposure of his serial that he would hire a private investigator to look into his personal behavior. No investigator ever turned up, and now the world has some idea why.

There was also his promise on the day he announced for office that he would never take money from special interests because it always comes with string attached.

He was right about the strings, but he began taking special interest money the very next day, claiming no person or company giving to him could be a special interest. His donors included oil companies, car dealers, developers, casino Indian tribes – all major special interests.

It wasn’t long before they were pulling the strings of their new Arnold puppet – car dealers getting a reduction in the vehicle license fee, oil companies getting Schwarzenegger’s opposition to a state severance tax on oil drilled in California and casino tribes winning new agreements allowing them many thousands more slot machines. Schwarzenegger all the while denied those actions had anything to do with campaign donations.

The quid pro quos went on throughout Schwarzenegger’s seven years-plus in office, duly reported here and elsewhere, but Schwarzenegger paid no political or legal price whatsoever for what were in essence bribes.

That’s why it’s hard to imagine any long-lasting consequences from Schwarzenegger’s admission that he betrayed his wife at least once with one of their joint employees. Will Maria Shriver remain away from the family manse? Maybe, but she knew of his womanizing habits for years before his election, yet stuck around.

Will his acting career suffer? Probably not. His movie contracts for more “Terminator” films and one called “Cry Macho” were unaffected when he declared his Hollywood comeback on hold.

It’s just another case of a politician suffering little or no consequence for his behavior, just as state legislators now expect financial consequences if they don’t pass a balanced budget by mid-June, despite last year’s ballot initiative demanding they be docked all their pay for whatever time such a budget is late.

And whose fault is all this? The old comic strip character Pogo famously said it best: “We have met the enemy and it is us.”

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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