PLANNED INSURANCE RULE MAKES CONSUMER REVIEWS MEANINGLESS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2024 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

      “PLANNED INSURANCE RULE MAKES CONSUMER REVIEWS MEANINGLESS”

 

 

        In the insurance business, there are different kinds of black boxes. One is literally a small black box usually inserted in a car’s cigarette lighter socket that records exactly how a driver behaves and handles the car and then sets insurance prices based on that information. Only the insurance company sees what the box contains.

 

 

        Then there’s the other kind of black box, this one figurative, where computer models of possible future catastrophes are hidden away from public sight, but also used to set insurance rates – in this case based not on facts, but rather on estimates of future weather and other variables.

 

 

        One kind of black box contains definite, solid information; the other pure speculation based guesswork by climate scientists and insurance actuaries.

 

 

 

        It is this second type of black box that California Insurance Commissioner Richard Lara seeks now to impose on all California property owners. The computer modeling in this kind of black box amounts to sheer theory, and almost certainly would force millions of California homeowners and businesses to pay billions more dollars to insurers. Yes, there would still be public comment on the process, but it would be meaningless so long as the black box models and the data that is their supposed basis are secret.

 

 

        Lara calls this a compromise. Others call it capitulation. The uncontested fact is that since Proposition 103 with its public insurance rate reviews passed in 1988, California consumers have paid $13 billion less in insurance premiums than if they’d lived in other states. The companies saw their payout crisis of the late 2010s and early ‘20s as an opportunity to force California to gut its money-saving ballot initiative. As a result, many began to pull out of the state’s insurance market in a case of obvious industry collusion and blackmail.

 

 

        They essentially told Lara to give them a new rate-making formula including black box climate change predictions, or they were gone. Democrat Lara, like his Republican predecessor Chuck Quackenbush after the 1990s payout crisis caused by the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, surrendered.

 

 

        Rather than telling insurers they would not be able to sell any car coverage or do other business in California if they did not sell quake insurance, too, Quackenbush got the Legislature to create the California Earthquake Authority, which charges more for quake insurance than the companies did before and provides less coverage in standard policies.

 

 

        Now Lara proposes letting this industry use black boxes here as they do in many other states where regulators decline to fight back. “We can no longer look to the past as a guide to the future,” Lara said. “My strategy (secret black boxes) will modernize our marketplace.”

 

 

        This, he said, would bring insurance companies back to California. But instead, so far, the promise of black boxes has done little, as State Farm and other big insurers cancel ever more policies in what they call “high risk” areas, not even giving much help to homeowners who have hardened their properties with fireproof siding and roofing, plus fireproof vents.

 

 

        The current effort by Gov. Gavin Newsom to speed up insurance rate hikes would only add to the negatives of Lara’s plan.

 

 

Meanwhile, the industry has also begun clamping down on urban, non-wildfire area neighborhoods they consider too dense for their fiscal safety.

 

 

        Responded Consumer Watchdog, whose founder Harvey Rosenfield authored Proposition 103, “(Lara’s proposed) rule fails to spell out whether or how the Department of Insurance would assess a model’s bias, accuracy or scientific validity. (It) proposes use of non-disclosure agreements to meet the confidentiality demands of black box modelers” who work for insurance companies.

 

 

        In short, if California insurance prices rise 30 percent soon, bringing rates here into the ranges now common in most other states, the insurance companies will soon recoup the $13 billion they have not gotten because of Proposition 103.

 

 

        If that happens, a ballot initiative that passed by a handy margin might as well not be law any more. The next question would be which other ballot initiatives could then be administratively reduced or hogtied and how much money that might cost Californians, who already pay continental America’s highest cost of living.

 

    -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

WILL RECALL FORCE DEMS TO MORE MODERATE STANCES?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “WILL RECALL FORCE DEMS TO MORE MODERATE STANCES?”

 

        For the last 11 years, Democrats have controlled every statewide office in California, while gradually building their majorities in both houses of the state Legislature to levels significantly above the two-thirds needed to make Republicans irrelevant.

 

        But the instant the recall election against Gov. Gavin Newsom qualified for a vote this fall, things changed for the state’s Democrats.

 

        Virtually unopposed and uncontrolled for years, they have passed one extreme liberal measure after another, from a ban on cash bail that was later canceled by the voters to massive spending on housing for the homeless, many of whom are not interested in moving there, and much more.

 

        They have overridden some local zoning authority and some lawmakers are now trying to pass measures that would all but end single family zoning in the state, an effort to eliminate what they deride as “urban sprawl,” a phenomenon many homeowners call breathing room.

 

        Now comes the recall, and suddenly the Democrats who dominate in Sacramento are being forcibly reminded that California voters on the whole are not super-lefties who want to deprive people of their vision of the mythical California Dream.

 

        For even if its success is rendered unlikely by the sheer dominance of the Democratic Party in voter registrations, the recall raises the possibility that Californians could elect a Republican governor, with veto powers over many liberal proposals for at least a year. That power could last longer if such a Republican should be reelected next year, the way movie muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger was in 2006, three years after becoming governor via the recall of ex-Gov. Gray Davis.

 

        This looming possibility might have legislative Democrats thinking seriously about some of their proposals, things like forcing the University of California to give up its hospitals’ links to Dignity Health facilities around the state or compelling cities and counties to allow apartment buildings of up to eight units on every piece of land, regardless of what local citizens or officials might want for their communities.

 

        In short, if Democrats are smart, they will moderate their views and their aims during the runup to the recall vote.

        This will be especially true if polls begin to show some lessening of the current approximate 10 percent edge no votes on the recall have among likely voters over yes votes.

 

        It is certainly true there is no recall candidate in the wings who can match the appeal the 2003 Schwarzenegger had to young and old because of his movie persona. But if the yes side gains traction among even a few Democrats, all bets will be off.

 

        All it would take for that to happen would be another hypocritical Newsom gaffe like his oversized, indoor dinner at the ultra-expensive and exclusive Michelin-rated French Laundry restaurant in Napa County last fall, where he was joined by influential lobbyist pals. At the time, state rules promulgated by Newsom prohibited gatherings of the size and configuration of his.

 

        That one incident did more to bring about the recall than any other single Newsom action or position. Imagine the impact if the governor commits a similar indiscretion now.

 

        With Newsom, in part because his buddies include some of San Francisco’s super-wealthy elite, this is a possibility.

 

        If there’s one thing the ultra-liberal Democrats who now control Sacramento could not stand, it would be having a Republican governor willing to veto their pet social-engineering proposals. So any day now, expect them to wake up and realize they must curb some of their enthusiasm for awhile for fear of forcing Newsom to choose between vetoing their bills or weakening his own chances of beating back the recall.

 

        There’s also the possibility the recall itself may lose, but a couple of those on the list of candidates for replacement governor perform well enough to become a credible threat to Newsom’s reelection a year later.

 

        That would be unprecedented, but with a recall, precedents don’t appear to matter very much.

-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

NO TO SB50 NOT ENOUGH: THERE ARE OTHER SOLUTIONS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2019, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “NO TO SB50 NOT ENOUGH: THERE ARE OTHER SOLUTIONS”

          Listening to the pro-housing passion of Scott Wiener, the Democratic state senator from San Francisco sponsoring what was arguably the most important bill before the state Legislature this year, you become more convinced than ever of the reality of California’s housing problem.

          “One of every 20 of our schoolchildren is homeless today because of high rents,” he cries. “People are moving out of state because they can’t afford either to buy or rent anywhere near their jobs. These are among the many human costs of our lack of enough housing.”

          He’s right. There is a crisis when the average California family can’t come close to affording to buy a house and vast numbers can’t afford to rent near their jobs.

          Wiener uses numbers to illustrate the problem: “When California had 15 million people in the 1950s, we built 250,000 housing units every year. Now we are almost three times as big, but last year we built just 77,000 new units.” That just won’t cut it, he says.

One political consequence: California will almost certainly lose at least one, maybe two congressional seats and electoral votes after the 2020 Census, even if all undocumented immigrants get counted. Housing costs and unavailability are keeping population growth so low this is assured.

          Sadly, though Wiener clearly understands the problem well, the solution he offered via his stalled SB 50 zoning nullification bill is the wrong answer. That’s partly because as much as Wiener wants to solve the housing shortage, he wants to end most single-family residential zoning just as badly.

          SB50, which cleared two state Senate committees with ease before its delay, would do that. “We have to legalize apartment buildings, condominiums and affordable housing everywhere, not have 80 percent of all our buildable land zoned for only single family housing,” he said the other day.

          SB 50 would do that if it returns in its latest form. It allows high-rise building within half a mile of light rail stations and within a quarter mile of frequently-used bus routes. That could make virtually all of Fresno, Clovis, Los Angeles, Orange County and San Diego County look a lot like the Castro District of San Francisco, where Wiener has lived more than 20 years, filled with three-, four- and five-story walkups.

          Trouble is, many millions of Californians have invested their life savings in single family homes, which lose much of their value when high rises overlook their backyards, as Wiener’s bill would mandate. Even if an area is not now classed as near a frequent bus route, political pressure on transit executives could add one or two new busses per hour to unqualifying routes, enough to make them eligible for unlimited dense development.

          Virtually all California cities outside counties with 600,000 or fewer residents (exempted from SB50 because Wiener needed committee votes from some of their state senators) opposed this measure. Meanwhile, it’s clear why building trades unions, the state chamber of commerce and developers dearly love the proposal. It’s all about the bucks for both sides of this issue, homeowners and cities want to preserve their investments, the others seek to create thousands of high-paying new jobs and high-rent apartments.

          As destructive as SB 50 would be to the sprawling single-family neighborhoods that attracted vast numbers of today’s Californians to the state, something still needs to be done about the housing shortage.

          It turns out other solutions would not be nearly as disruptive:

n  Build out the high speed rail project, thus reducing commute times from remote locations where housing is much cheaper than in job centers along the coast.

n  Infill building, where dense housing could be permitted on empty land within urban areas.

  

n  Compel developers of currently-planned high rise buildings to include more below-market-rate affordable units, both apartment rentals and condos.

n  Offer incentives to companies that move jobs now located in the hyper-expensive Silicon Valley and other coastal counties inland, where land and homes are relatively cheap.

      Other creative ideas also exist. Wiener and SB 50 have no monopoly on ideas. Give the measure credit for spurring needed movement and creativity, but making it law would be a whole different, destructive thing.

         

    -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, go to www.californiafocus.net 

'DISCLOSE ACT’ IS YEAR’S MOST IMPORTANT STATE BILL

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, JUNE 18, 2013, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

"'DISCLOSE ACT’ IS YEAR’S MOST IMPORTANT STATE BILL"

If there’s one dominant reason for the distrust many Californians feel for governments at all levels, it’s the sense that special interests regularly pour millions of dollars into federal, state and local election campaigns while contriving to hide their identities.

That reality makes SB52, the so-called DISCLOSE Act sponsored by Democratic state Sens. Mark Leno of San Francisco and Jerry Hill of San Mateo County, the single most important measure state lawmakers will consider this year.

Yes, they’ll face other big and contentious issues. Gov. Jerry Brown’s budget bills will get plenty of attention from the public and the Legislature before this month is out. So will plans for two massive tunnels to carry Sacramento River water south. No one will ignore the debate about how to divvy up new tax money from last year’s Proposition 30 among public school districts.

          Each of these deserves all the attention it can get. But none will deal with the most basic issue standing between citizens and the politicians they elect, the same issue that makes voters distrust many ballot proposition campaigns.

          The problem is money, which the most formidable state Assembly speaker ever, Jesse Unruh, famously called “the mother’s milk of politics.”

          Money has poured into politics in unprecedented quantities since the U.S. Supreme Court’s notorious Citizens United decision, the one declaring corporations the equivalent of human beings, giving them the right to donate limitless amounts to political campaigns so long as those campaigns are not controlled directly by candidates.

This led to so-called independent expenditure committees, which run ads that at the very least, often dovetail with those of the candidates they back and hide the identities of outfits that actually put up the money.

          There is no federal initiative process, so Citizens United can’t be reversed by the people. It would take years to pass a constitutional amendment overturning this, and there is no serious move afoot now for such an amendment.

          Which means anyone worried about honesty in elections, anyone interested in knowing which candidates are beholden to whom or what persons or companies are behind any particular ballot proposition, needs an antidote of a different kind.

          The most effective vaccine against political lies and obfuscation is knowledge of who’s paying the piper, because that person or company will usually also call the tunes to which candidates dance.

          Enter the DISCLOSE Act. Sponsored last year by former Democratic Assemblywoman Julia Brownley of Ventura County, now in Congress, this measure would force every political TV commercial in California to disclose its three largest funders prominently for six seconds at the start of the ads, rather than using small print at the end. Similar rules would apply to print ads, radio spots, mass mailers, billboards and websites. Ads would also have to list a website that shows their 10 largest donors and links to all contributors of $10,000 or more.

          Doing this could end many subterfuges in politics, including items like last year’s last-minute dumping of millions of dollars into California ballot proposition campaigns by out-of-state groups with vague names and anonymous donors. There would be no more point for tobacco companies opposed to local anti-smoking regulations, for one example, to call their committee “Californians for Statewide Smoking Regulations,” when it's really out to kill such laws. For the companies themselves would be named in white-on-black lettering in good-sized fonts.

This measure passed the Assembly last year, but time ran out before the Senate considered it. So it’s back for another try, and because it would revise and enhance the 1974 Political Reform Act, passed by voters as an initiative, it needs two-thirds majorities in both the Assembly and state Senate.

          Good as SB52 sounds, it’s not quite a match for a failed measure put forward almost 10 years ago that would have required much the same information, but would also have demanded that it be displayed in type matching the largest size anywhere else in the ad.

          Other open-government bills are making their way through the Legislature this year, but if this one passes, California voters could quickly become the best informed in the nation. And, like many other trends from medical marijuana to lower property taxes, if it happens in California, you can count on it happening in other states soon.

          But only if it gets two-thirds votes in both houses of the Legislature, no sure thing when many members themselves depend on obfuscated, big donors.

         

          -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

AT LONG LAST, A SENSIBLE WAY TO CUT PRISON COSTS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, JUNE 18, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“AT LONG LAST, A SENSIBLE WAY TO CUT PRISON COSTS”

Most Californians, all polls show, want to cut the costs of running America’s largest state prison system, where the care and feeding of an average inmate runs to about $47,000 per year.

But those same polls also show most Californians want dangerous criminals kept behind bars at least as long as they remain a public menace.

This seeming contradiction is reflected in the electoral arena, where – for example – Republican Meg Whitman has campaigned to build more prisons in order to end overcrowding, but also wants to cut the prison budget. How she could manage both is anyone’s guess. It’s equally a mystery where anyone might find money to build more prisons without issuing more bonds of the same type whose repayment currently weighs so heavily on the state budget. That's one reason why Gov. Schwarzenegger's current budget proposal would fob some state prisoners back onto county jails.

Meanwhile, Democratic candidate Jerry Brown just wants to cut the prison budget, but offers no details, promising only – as he does with many budget issues – that he will begin intense meetings with all legislators regardless of party almost immediately after the November election.

This all made it refreshing when J. Clark Kelso, the controversial court-appointed prison health czar who once proposed expanding inmate health facilities to the tune of about $8 billion, stepped up with a very logical cut:

Parole a handful of longtime inmates who are physically incapable of doing anyone harm and save upwards of $40 million per year. The full amount he listed was $213 million over five years.

Good idea, Clark, but it doesn’t go nearly far enough. Kelso was talking about the cost savings of releasing just 32 prisoners who are identified as severely incapacitated. They’re all in such bad shape they can’t hurt a flea.

Kelso’s small group included 21 longtime convicts languishing in civilian nursing facilities or hospitals where laws and regulations require round-the-clock supervision by prison guards. No matter how incapacitated they are, the guards stay with them, often drawing overtime pay. Cost for each of them runs more than $1.9 million a year, which tends to raise the system-wide average cost of holding a prisoner.

It’s true that if released, some of these criminals might end up on Medi-Cal, also getting government to cover their medical expenses on the outside. But Medi-Cal is largely federally funded, taking much of the onus off the state. And there would be no guards for them anymore, saving millions per year. The guards they have now supposedly serve more to protect these prisoners from any revenge-minded former associates than to protect the public from them.

The other 11 on the Kelso list sit in prison facilities and cost the state “only” $114,000 per year each. A classic example of an inmate like this was Susan Denise Atkins, who died of cancer last year in the California Institution for Women at Chino. Atkins, a onetime follower of the malignantly murderous cult leader Charles Manson who inflicted multiple stabbings upon Leno and Rosemary LaBianca in 1969, had become a model prisoner before she became terminal.

Unload those prisoners and you make a start at cutting some of the least logical of prison expenses.

But that should only be a start. For California now runs the world’s largest geriatric care system, mandated by the 1990s-era three-strikes-and-you’re-out law that can make lifers out of shoplifters and car thieves. The fact is that most violent criminals are young men; few murderers and rapists are over 35.

But once you’re a lifer in a California prison, you also get health care for life. As Kelso says, “When you take away someone’s freedom, whatever the reason, you take on responsibility for them.”

So why not parole all inmates over age 65 who have served more than 25 years and whose behavior and evaluation by prison psychiatrists determines them not to be physically dangerous?

Give them electronic ankle bracelets. Track them carefully. Maybe even give them food stamps so they can survive in an outside world that’s no longer familiar.

But get them out of the prison system where holding them now does the state far more harm than good.

Doing this, of course, would require a major revision of three-strikes, and voters have been unwilling to do this when modifications were proposed to them via ballot initiatives.

But times were better then, the last attempt at change coming via the 2004 Proposition 66. With the economics of both the state and its prisons substantially worsened, perhaps a moderate, sensible loosening of three-strikes’ rigid requirements could now pass.

It’s the sensible way to cut prison spending and provide state budget relief with only a minuscule risk of harm to the public. And it will be interesting to see whether any significant candidate for governor has the courage to get behind a plan like this.

-30-
Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net