CENSUS BALL NOW IN CALIFORNIA’S COURT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “CENSUS BALL NOW IN CALIFORNIA’S COURT”

          Because the U.S. Supreme Court essentially laughed President Trump’s arguments for a citizenship question out of its courtroom last summer, the start of America’s once-a-decade official head count at the beginning of next month will be far from an April Fool’s joke.

          Once the Census Bureau begins mailing out questionnaires, sending operatives to knock on doors and puts its forms on the Internet, much of California’s fate will be in the hands of its people, residents of every size, shape, color, belief and ethnicity.

          If we want our schools fully funded, if we want our roads and infrastructure properly maintained and rebuilt, if we want the significant voice we deserve in both public policy and the Electoral College, it will be up to us to make sure we get counted.

          For awhile, it appeared that Trump’s administration might insert a citizenship question among the standard queries to be answered by almost everyone who gets counted. But Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, a Republican appointee of ex-President George W. Bush, became disgusted last July with lies told by Trump’s Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, as he tried to explain why a citizenship question should be used for the first time in 70 years.

          Ross said the question was needed to fully enforce the Voting Rights Act of 1965, an absurd claim since that law has never been enforced under Trump. Roberts wrote that this falsehood demanded he cast a rare vote with the high court’s four-member liberal minority and that deep-sixed the question.

          This was a vital issue for California and other states with large numbers of undocumented persons because long experience and every Census expert indicated that including the question would encourage many unauthorized residents to evade getting counted at all costs.

          Now they have no reason to avoid answering questions, since it will be impossible to identify non-citizens if immigration authorities somehow get hold of Census forms despite laws forbidding it.

          Such compartmentalizing is needed to assure that the constitutional purpose of the Census is carried out: counting every human being in the country, citizen or not.

          Representation in Congress and the Electoral College hinges on that count. So does distribution of myriad types of federal grants and other funding.

          This still does not assure it will be easy to count everyone. For example, there is California’s homeless populace of at least 150,000 persons, counted in an unofficial canvass every January. There are also under-the-radar undocumented immigrants who often share motel rooms and other transient quarters.

          Altogether, the Seattle-based Marguerite Casey Foundation estimates California has more than 15 million persons classed as hard to count. To see that its interests are properly served, the state in 2018 budgeted $187 million to get everyone here tallied.

          Some of that money went to private organizations now reaching out to folks they serve.

          “Our goal is to reach 2.7 million people (in the Los Angeles area),” said Esperanza Guevara, coordinator of the Census campaign about to start from the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, which also tries to get health care and other services for the undocumented.

          “We’ve developed a comprehensive campaign in our Latino, refugee and limited English communities to (give them) the support and resources to understand these forms,” she added.

          And Thomas Saenz, president of the activist Mexican-American Legal Defense and Education Fund, told his group’s affiliates that “Information about immigration status will not be asked of anyone… In fact, the easiest way to avoid further contact from the Census Bureau is to fill out the form completely at the start of the process.”

          One message many such outfits will be circulating widely: It is illegal to use information on Census forms in immigration enforcement. Violating this confidentiality carries criminal penalties up to $250,000 and five years in jail per incident.

          It’s still unknown whether all this will be enough to ensure the full count California needs in order to get its fair share of money and representation.

          But for sure, the Trump administration’s initial efforts to skew the count have been thwarted, leaving much of this state’s fate in the hands of its residents. All of 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

GAS TAX BOOST KEY TO TRUMP INFRASTRUCTURE CASH

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2018, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
   “GAS TAX BOOST KEY TO TRUMP INFRASTRUCTURE CASH”

          Strong ironies are playing out today as California’s 14 Republican members of Congress support President Trump’s announced $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan at the same time they all back a planned ballot initiative to repeal the state’s new gasoline and diesel fuel tax increase.

          For without the higher gas tax, California may see little or none of Trump’s announced cash.

          No state needs more work on its infrastructure than this one, where more than 1,300 bridges of various sizes and shapes require seismic retrofitting and potholes are common on every type of road from country lanes to major urban freeways.

          But if the gas and diesel tax increase disappears, California will have little chance of getting even close to its fair share of the purported new money.

          That’s because Trump’s announced $1.5 trillion actually amounts to less than 20 percent of that amount, about $200 billion in federal matching money to be allocated over 10 years after Congress passes the plan, if it ever does. The other 86 percent would come from state and local coffers. Because of high public employee pension requirements and other higher-priority spending, not much cash is likely to be on hand here when needed to match and catch the federal dollars.

          This reality doesn’t faze Republicans trying to reverse the fuel tax increase, amounting to 12 cents per gallon of gasoline and 20 cents for diesel. It also raises vehicle license fees on virtually every car and truck in the state. Those tax increases barely got through the Legislature last year and are the reason for the current recall effort against Democratic state Sen. Josh Newman of Fullerton, without whose vote the hikes would have failed.

          Republicans, especially current GOP California House members desperately clinging to their seats, believe they need the fuel tax reversal measure to survive. That’s because it now looks like they may not have a candidate on the November ballot for either governor or the U.S. Senate, which could badly depress Republican turnout just when at least seven GOP seats seem seriously threatened by strong anti-Trump sentiment.

          So Bakersfield’s Kevin McCarthy, the House majority leader, put $100,000 of his campaign funds into the drive to qualify the gas tax repeal for that same November ballot. Devin Nunes of Tulare, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, kicked $50,000 into the campaign. Reps. Mimi Walters of Irvine and Ken Calvert of Corona are in for $25,000 each, so far.

          None of them, meanwhile, opposes Trump’s plan, which likely wouldn’t do much for California unless the gas tax stands.

          Trump, meanwhile, downplays the requirement for state and local taxpayers to provide the vast majority of his infrastructure funding. “For too long,” he said, “lawmakers have invested in infrastructure inefficiently, ignored critical needs and allowed it to deteriorate.” His plan would change that, he claimed.

          Responded state Treasurer John Chiang, currently running third in every poll in the race for governor, “This is a sham of a proposal that offers too little and asks too much…Given the fact that California has at least $850 billion in public works that must be built or repaired, the President’s $200 billion national investment is no better than spit in the ocean.”

          It’s even worse than that if the new gas, diesel and vehicle license tax hikes disappear. The 65 percent of those levies earmarked for highways alone will amount to more than $3 billion per year. That’s not much compared to California’s current needs, but it probably is enough to fix the state’s most urgent problems, when combined with previous gas tax money and especially if it’s increased by 20 percent ($600 million yearly) with some of the Trump money.

          So the Republican House members pushing and helping fund the gas tax repeal effort are essentially working against the interests of their constituents even as they seek to motivate them to vote. This is nothing new for many of them: Most backed Trump’s tax changes last fall even though some acknowledged those so-called reforms would harm the majority of their constituents.

          Knowingly casting votes counter to the interests of their own districts, then, is nothing new for these folks. The only real question is when they might do it again if they’re reelected.

                  

         
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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

RICE’S POLL STANDING: STAR POWER STILL A POLITICAL FACTOR

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “RICE’S POLL STANDING: STAR POWER STILL A POLITICAL FACTOR”

          Condoleeza Rice, the former secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration and now a Stanford University professor, has stated very clearly she would rather attend college basketball games and help choose the college football playoff teams than be a U.S. senator.

          At 61, she says she prefers a secure job in academe, playing the piano in her spare time, mentoring students and then considering  an executive-level job if the Republicans take back the White House. She probably would also rather not face the inevitable questions a campaign would bring about her role in government deceptions that led to this country’s long and costly war in Iraq.

          “A campaign for the Senate is out of the question,” Rice has said. She’s done nothing counter to that statement, not raising money, not speechifying or anything else, keeping a low profile in general even as others visibly line up to run for the seat Democrat Barbara Boxer will vacate next year.

    And yet, the latest Field Poll shows Rice leading the senatorial field, including Democrats and Republicans, Latinos and Anglos and African-Americans.

          This is remarkable in California, a state that hasn’t voted Republican in a presidential or Senate election since 1988 and one where Democratic voter registration runs 15 percent ahead of the GOP’s.

          What does it mean? Maybe that voters are not yet paying much attention, despite the highly publicized machinations of figures like state Attorney General Kamala Harris, former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and numerous members of Congress from Orange County’s Loretta Sanchez to John Garamendi of Mokelumne Hill in Calaveras County.

          Some survey respondents told Field Poll director Mark DiCamillo they’re not yet ready for political action. “It’s just too far away,” said one. “I am waiting for more information to come out.”

          But Rice’s standing three points ahead of current Democratic front-runner Harris probably also indicates the same thing that Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated 12 years ago when he dominated the recall election that ousted then-Gov. Gray Davis: Politics in California has never been only about party. It’s always also been governed by personalities, and stars from other fields can translate that into political success.

          Republican Schwarzenegger won the recall and later was easily reelected not because he’s a distinguished politician or statesman, but because of his repute as a muscleman actor.

          Similarly, when the great semanticist S.I. Hayakawa won election to the Senate, it was because of the television exposure he got while countering massive student protests as president of San Francisco State University. Onetime soft-shoe dancer and actor George Murphy, also won a Senate seat as a Republican because of his prior reputation. And John Tunney later won that same seat mostly because his father was a heavyweight boxing champion.

          A quick look at how the only Republicans avowedly considering a run for Boxer’s seat fare in the Field survey also demonstrates that a lack of star power can be fatal when your party is in the minority.

          San Diego County Assemblyman Rocky Chavez, given to aphorisms about how his family has lived the American Dream, draws just a 20 percent level of voters “inclined to support” him. Fresno Mayor Ashley Swearengin, who ran unsuccessfully for state controller last year, and former state GOP chairmen Tom del Beccarro and Duf Sundheim have similar levels of support.

          Almost every Democrat in the potential field does much better, with Sanchez and fellow Congress members Garamendi, Jackie Speier, Xavier Becerra and Adam Schiff all drawing support in the 29 to 39 percent range, well above the mine-run Republicans but far behind Rice.

          It all goes to show that while the Republican label has been thoroughly tarnished in California and the GOP has done little to shake off the anti-Latino reputation it got from Gov. Pete Wilson’s all-out support for the ill-fated anti-illegal immigrant 1994 Proposition 187, individual Republicans can still do well.

          Which means there’s still potential for a healthy two-party system in this state. To make that real, though, the GOP must recruit charismatic candidates with star power – like Condoleeza Rice.

         

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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

HEALTH PLAN RATE HIKES SPOTLIGHT BAD BLOOD ON THE LEFT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 13, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“HEALTH PLAN RATE HIKES SPOTLIGHT BAD BLOOD ON THE LEFT”

A loud hissing contest on California’s left political flank began weeks before the state’s largest health insurance companies announced the other day they plan to raise average rates by 8 percent to 14 percent for thousands of consumers with individual policies – well over twice the 3.6 percent increase in their annual costs.

The fact no one in government can stop those increases spotlights the tiff between two longtime major figures – both of whom call themselves “progressives” – in a war of words that shows, for one thing, how different Democrats are from Republicans. The names are Harvey Rosenfield and Steve Maviglio.

The roots of this grudge go back to at least 2008. Longtime consumer activist Rosenfield and his Consumer Watchdog organization back then opposed a $14 billion measure requiring uninsured Californians to get health coverage, with many policies to be state-subsidized. Universal insurance is a longtime Rosenfield goal, but he says he fought this bill – sponsored by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and then-Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez – because it did not allow for price regulation.

Maviglio, who came to California as press secretary for ex-Gov. Gray Davis and later had similar jobs with Nunez and his successor as speaker, Karen Bass, worked hard for the bill. He claimed Rosenfield, best known for writing 1987’s Proposition 103, which mandates strict rate regulation for almost every kind of insurance except health, opposed the bill solely because it did not include “intervenor fees,” money paid to those who help reduce or thwart rate hikes. The fees exist so rate increase opponents can hire comparable legal and consulting talent to what insurance companies ordinarily deploy.

Last fall, three years later, Rosenfield and Consumer Watchdog pushed legislation to put health insurance under the same rate regulations as other coverage, and Maviglio opposed it. That bill won only 14 votes in the state Senate, nowhere near enough for passage. Consumer Watchdog then began an initiative campaign.

Enter Maviglio. He launched a website called consumerwatchdogwatch.com, which now turns up ahead of Consumer Watchdog’s own website on the Google search engine. He insists he’s been paid nothing for opposing the Santa Monica-based Consumer Watchdog and personally foots all bills for advantageous treatment on Google.

“Simply put, Consumer Watchdog is an affront to legitimate consumer organizations,” said Maviglio, who now runs his own political consulting firm, Sacramento-based Forza Communications, and refused to disclose either his client list or his earnings. “It’s a group that is all about its own self-interest…”

Meanwhile, other consumer groups have not complained about Consumer Watchdog (formerly the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights). By itself, Proposition 103 has saved consumers an estimated $2 billion since 2000 in proposed insurance rate hikes that didn’t happen. Consumer Watchdog, meanwhile, got about $2 million in intervenor fees for helping hold premiums down. That’s about 25 cents for every $100 the group has saved California drivers, homeowners and businesses, the group calculates. Consumer Watchdog has pulled in far more from contingency fees earned while opposing allegedly illegal practices of major corporations in court.

But that doesn’t stop Maviglio from excoriating Rosenfield, who formally left Consumer Watchdog eight years ago and now is its main outside lawyer. Rosenfield at the time said he made the move because he needed more income as his children were about to enter college. He was succeeded by Consumer Watchdog’s current president, Jamie Court, whose wife is a newly-appointed Los Angeles Superior Court judge.

Maviglio says the more than $450,000 income earned last year by Rosenfield from fighting the likes of Anthem Blue Cross, Mercury Insurance and Farmers Group is “unseemly” for a consumer advocate. So, Maviglio says, is the fact he lives in a house valued at $1.4 million by the real estate website Zillow.com.

“I don’t think most people expect someone running a consumer organization to live in a house like that and make about $500,000,” he said. He would not, however, say where he thinks Rosenfield should live or what income would be proper. In fact, salaries paid by Consumer Watchdog to its staff are largely in line with those at other California consumer groups of similar size and scope.

Can anyone imagine name-calling like this on California's much more unified right wing?

Each side here charges the other is motivated purely by greed. While Maviglio maintains Consumer Watchdog does nothing that won’t earn it money, Court says, “We fight insurance companies and the politicians and consultants who work for them and you make enemies along the way.”

All of which underlines the deep gulf between the establishment side of California’s left wing, which gets copious corporate support, and its populist side, which often battles big corporations.

It’s a division that took decades to develop and won’t heal soon.

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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