GARVEY SCORES RARE GOP RUNOFF SLOT

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2024, OR THEREAFTER

 

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “GARVEY SCORES RARE GOP RUNOFF SLOT”

 

          Now it will be Adam Schiff vs. Steve Garvey in what could turn into a bitter runoff battle for the U.S, Senate seat long held by the late Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a contest sure to evoke many more baseball metaphors than any previous California campaign.

 

          Garvey, the former Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres first baseman and National League most valuable player in 1974, has played the baseball card to the hilt, even passing out autographed horsehides at many campaign stops. On Election Night, he likened his showing to a walk-off home run.

 

          With his solid second-place finish in the spring primary election, he becomes the second Republican to make a Senate runoff election since the ultra-obscure Elizabeth Emken ran against Feinstein in 2012.

 

          Emken didn’t fare so well that November, Feinstein blasting her by a 67-33 margin in the first California Senate race run under the top two primary system, where the two leading vote-getters in the primary go into the runoff, no matter what the gap between them might have been in the first round.

 

          The chasm between Feinstein and Emken was even wider in that year’s primary than in the runoff.

 

          Garvey won his spot on this year’s general election ballot with a phlegmatic style that saw him tuck his chin into his shoulder and duck questions the way he once spit on low and outside sliders on which he didn’t want to waste a swing. It didn’t hurt that Schiff-linked committees promoted him in hopes it would give their man an easy fall matchup.

 

          In the campaign’s three debates, featuring Garvey and three Democratic members of Congress, he ducked away from enough questions to thoroughly earn a dig tossed at him by Irvine Rep. Katie Porter: “Once a Dodger, always a dodger.”

 

          But no Democrat in the primary could come close to matching Garvey’s name identification, so he wasn’t hurt while evading questions on how he might vote on various issues by saying things like “We the people will let me know on that.”

 

          The fact that millions of Californians knew Garvey’s name and what he did in baseball long before he decided to run for office at age 75 allowed him to solidify the approximately one-fourth of California voters who are registered Republican.

 

          With three major candidates splintering the Democratic vote, Garvey eased into the runoff.

 

          His celebrity made him what the state GOP wanted after its long string of feeble candidates or none at all in Senate runoffs. That drought was partly due to the fact that no Republican since Arnold Schwarzenegger has won statewide office here, and it is difficult for minority members of the Legislature to gain the wide recognition needed to be a serious contender for higher office in this huge state.

 

          Celebrities already have that, as Schwarzenegger and now Garvey proved. They need no policy experience, and like Garvey, can get away with saying they will learn on the job.

 

          But by the end of October, as Californians mark the mail-in ballots most now use, Schiff’s name may be at about as recognizable as Garvey’s.

 

          He’s led the fundraising in this campaign from the start, beginning with a fat purse moved over from his congressional campaign account, which he previously used to help other Democrats like Porter because his own Burbank-based seat was so safely Democratic.

 

          Schiff also became nationally known for leading two impeachment efforts against ex-President Donald Trump, who also won in his own California primary, coming near to clinching the GOP nomination for a rematch with President Biden.

         

          All of which means that while Garvey could parley his sports achievements and fame into a slot on the November ballot, that’s likely as far he can go.

 

          He stepped into deep gopher holes at times during the debates, one example coming when he accused Schiff of lying about Russian aid to Trump’s 2016 presidential run. Schiff quickly responded with a laundry list of Russian cooperation with Trump, while Garvey stood mute in response.

 

          The upshot is that while it might be fun to contemplate the first professional ballplayer in the Senate since Kentucky’s (and the Detroit Tigers’) Jim Bunning, it’s not apt to happen here. Schiff is likely a November shoo-in.

           

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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

 

Suggested pullout quote: “Schiff led the fundraising in this campaign from the start.”

 

CASH BAIL DECISION DUE ANY DAY NOW

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “CASH BAIL DECISION DUE ANY DAY NOW”

 

        Within days, or a couple of weeks at the most, Californians will know whether their state Supreme Court will respect their views on a key aspect of criminal justice, or whether their ideas on what is right and just will be ignored.

 

        Only a few months ago, voters opted by almost a 57-43 percent margin to reject Proposition 25 and along with it a law passed in 2019 that would have ended cash bail virtually everywhere in this state.

 

        Instead, judges would have been forced to grant pretrial release for criminal defendants regardless of how serious their offense so long as even one judge deemed them unlikely to flee or commit more violent acts.

 

        Bail bondsmen and crime victims alike breathed a sigh of relief when that so-called reform was tossed. But now comes the state’s highest court, seemingly ready to disregard the voters’ will completely.

 

        If the justices opt to get rid of cash bail in almost all cases, they’ll be following the example of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who used pandemic-enabled emergency power to suspend most cash bail last spring ostensibly to cut down crowding in county jails and help prevent more spread of disease.

 

        The case the justices are using as justification for their likely ruling against the established bail system involves a San Francisco man who spent a year in jail on a robbery charge, unable to make $350,000 bail. When they took up the case about two months ago, the justices appeared to believe the accused was being discriminated against because he could not come up with one-tenth of his nominal bail, the amount most bondsmen require before putting up the balance of the bail as a kind of loan.

 

        What had the 66-year-old suspect done? He allegedly broke into the apartment of a 79-year-old man in 2017, threatening to put a pillowcase over the victim’s head while stealing $5 and some scented water.

 

        The theft was trivial, but the alleged break-in, the threat and the alarm it caused should not happen to anyone. His lawyer argued it was unjust to keep the accused intruder in jail awaiting trial just because he was broke.

 

        Most legal officials involved in the case appear to agree. An appeals court ruled in August that it’s unjust to keep a defendant in custody when the bail set is far beyond his or her capacity to pay it.

 

        The Supreme Court followed by telling all California judges to set bail only in amounts a defendant can afford to pay, at least until the San Francisco case is decided – which will be soon.

 

        Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuellar, in a later hearing, cited a Nevada Supreme Court ruling holding no judge can set bail higher than a defendant can afford unless that is the only way to assure the suspect will show up for trial. California now has no such limits, but Cuellar argued that California’s state constitution can be interpreted in the same way as Nevada’s.

 

        Other justices backed “taking each case individually, trying to figure out the dangerousness and how much bail must be set to amount to detention,” with a defendant’s finances part of that calculation.

 

        There is a naïve quality to all this. For one thing, it assumes police or other court personnel can investigate the finances of thousands of accused criminals. One deputy attorney general, with backing from the sitting state Attorney General Xavier Becerra, argued that most cash bail is unfair because it “treats equally dangerous defendants differently based on their wealth.”

 

        All this, of course, runs counter to both the voters’ recently expressed will, besides essentially ignoring the 2008 Proposition 6, which denied any bail to undocumented immigrants accused of felonies, while allowing judges to set bail according to the seriousness of the crime, the defendant’s prior record and the risk to the victim.

 

        There is currently no law in California making a suspect’s financial condition part of any bail calculation.

 

        Which may not make any difference to the state’s top court. It seems to be heading straight into defiance of the voters’ will and does not seem to care about that.

 

        -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

CAN NEWSOM HOUSING CAMPAIGN SUCCEED?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2019, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “CAN NEWSOM HOUSING CAMPAIGN SUCCEED?”

          It turns out Gov. Gavin Newsom was deadly serious when he insisted as a candidate last year that California needs to build 3.5 million new housing units each year for the next ten in order to solve its affordable housing crisis. That’s a total of 3.5 million, more than double what builders around the state have put up in any of the last few decades.

          Newsome resent that message a few weeks into his new job, when he successfully urged Attorney General Xavier Becerra to sue the Orange County city of Huntington Beach for allegedly failing to allow enough new housing to handle its population growth.

          With about 202,000 residents, the median home value in “Surf City” tops $830,000, according to the website Zillow.com. Typical one-bedroom apartments there rent for between $1,500 and $2,700 per month. For those rents to eat up less than 30 percent of a tenant’s income, the renter must earn more than $60,000 per year, making many tenants “rent-burdened” by federal standards.

          The state lawsuit charges Huntington Beach has for years ignored a state law requiring cities to zone land for new housing construction. Meanwhile, many city residents feel Huntington Beach is growing too fast.

          So the Newsom/Becerra lawsuit is likely just the first salvo in a state vs. local conflict over the governor’s preferred way of solving the housing problem.

          But even if cities like Huntington Beach can be forced to allow the millions of “affordable” units Newsom and some activist state legislators want, it’s highly questionable they can solve the most visible part of California’s housing crunch – homelessness.

          Yes, cities have built thousands of transitional housing units (generally small apartments) for formerly homeless persons, who pay low, federally subsidized rent. But that hasn’t reduced homelessness.

          “Every time we build new units and move people in, at least the same number of homeless people move into whatever cities do the building,” said the city manager of a city of more than 100,000, who previously was the top administrator of two other cities. “With our climate and our policies, we are attracting homeless people from all over America.”

          Then there’s the question of affordability. Anyone who’s visited a homeless shelter like those in gymnasiums and National Guard armories on cold winter nights will know that not many of their occupants could afford even low rent.

          So while affordable housing in most cities is set up to remain relatively low-priced a long as it stands, well below market rates, the rents or costs to buy are still above what most homeless folks can pay. Especially the large component of the homeless who are mentally ill, but not institutionalized, largely because of policies that began almost 50 years ago, when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan spurred the shutdown of several public mental hospitals, intending to replace them with community-based housing.

          Such housing never materialized in significant quantities, and mentally ill homeless became a California staple.

          Meanwhile, rents on affordable apartments generally run about 30 percent of the median income in any region. Under those terms, an affordable unit in the Los Angeles region would rent for about $1,350 per month, more in the San Francisco Bay area.

          Not exactly affordable if you’re unemployed, mentally ill and living on the streets.

          So it’s naïve to believe affordable housing or the governor’s new initiative can solve the homeless problem.

          And there’s still the problem of housing being too expensive for even middle-class workers to buy. So the percentage of renters in California continues to rise, meaning that ever fewer residents feel rooted in the state, with a stake in its future.

          All this makes some wonder if it’s sensible to invest heavily in affordable housing. In 2017, the average affordable unit in the state cost $425,000 to build if it was part of a project of 100 units or more. The cost was higher when fewer units were involved.

          This picture leaves many questions to be answered before the state goes full blast on a government-funded or government-mandated home building spree. But don’t expect anything to dampen Newsom’s deeply felt drive to solve the housing issue, and quickly.

     -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

GASOLINE PRICE GOING UP; ARCO SALE COULD LIFT IT MORE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 19, 2013 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “GASOLINE PRICE GOING UP; ARCO SALE COULD LIFT IT MORE”

          Are you ready for $6-per-gallon gasoline? Then $7 a little later?

          Premium grades of gasoline already go for more than $5 per gallon in some parts of California; regular has been above $4.50 for a month at hundreds of service stations.

          There is no promise these near-record price levels will drop anytime soon, especially with summer approaching and refiners making more expensive California-specific blends for the next few months.

          But consumer advocates warn that a proposed purchase of BP’s Arco gasoline refinery and its company-owned stations by Texas-based Tesoro Corp. may cause prices to rise much more in the not-so-distant future.

          As February ended, the state’s tax-regulating Board of Equalization took the first step toward raising gas prices above even today’s levels, voting 3-2 to up gasoline excise taxes 3.5 cents, from 36 cents to 39.5 cents per gallon. This assures that even if prices come down in the near term, they will not drop to where they were before the latest big bump took regular over an average of $4.30, even at “cheap” non-branded stations. The vote was strictly party-line, with the board’s two Republicans voting no and three Democrats saying yes.

          The bump was the result of a 2010 law signed by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (who promised, among other things, never to raise taxes), which cut the sales tax on gas from 8.25 percent to 2.25 percent, while more than doubling the excise tax to 35.3 cents (raised to 36 cents a year ago). The total tax on each gallon of gas bought here will now average just over 70 cents.

      That 2010 change allowed some gas tax money to flow to the state’s general fund, easing a budget crunch. But – combined with reduced gasoline sales due to the increasing efficiency of many new cars – it also caused a $157 million shortfall in road-maintenance money. Hence the latest excise tax increase.

          But the impending purchase of Arco from the former British Petroleum by refining giant Tesoro could pose a far larger potential threat to drivers’ pocketbooks.

          Tesoro proposes to pay $1.175 billion for Arco’s refinery, stations, pipelines and other equipment, with payment for Arco’s inventory of gasoline, diesel and other items (like the merchandise in its AM-PM convenience stores in California, Oregon and Washington) probably lifting the full payment to well over $2.5 billion at current gasoline price levels. It would leave the Arco name on most stations that now carry it.

          BP is not explaining the sale this way, but it would net a couple of billion dollars or more, likely to be used for lawsuit settlements from the huge 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

          The sale poses a threat to California prices, consumer groups contend, because it would leave Tesoro in a commanding position in the California market, even if Tesoro were to sell off its current refinery in Carson, smaller than and adjacent to the Arco facility, to appease anti-trust regulators.

          Tesoro, on the other hand, said in its press release announcing the purchase agreement that the move will have “competitive advantages” for California drivers. A company spokeswoman refused to say what those advantages might be, saying the firm can’t comment until the deal goes through.

          Tesoro currently sells in California under the USA Gasoline and Shell labels, as well as supplying hundreds of unbranded stations. The company now owns the former Ultramar/Beacon refinery in Martinez, the former Shell refinery in Carson and others in Hawaii, Washington and Texas. If this deal goes through, Tesoro and Chevron together would produce well over 50 percent of all California gasoline.

          “Who would want two companies to control more than half California’s gasoline market?” asks Jamie Court, president of the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group, which has asked both the Federal Trade Commission and state Attorney General Kamala Harris to nix the deal.

          Since 1980, the number of gasoline refineries in California has shrunk from 27 to 14. Meanwhile, California gas prices (even before the nation’s highest gas taxes) have consistently remained 10 to 20 cents above those in the rest of America.

          “Our market is geared to shortages and scarcity,” said Court, noting that a fire or other outage in a single refinery can make prices skyrocket.

          Historically, when price spikes occur, they later come down, but almost never back to previous levels. So the next spike begins at a higher level than the last one, driving prices ever upward. If that pattern continues, it has to lead to $6-per-gallon gasoline prices and higher.

          All of which means that if BP sells Arco, the FTC or Harris should insist that Tesoro not be the buyer. Maybe Exxon-Mobil, Valero or Pilot Flying J, all of which also have refineries here. But concentrating production of vital necessities in just a few hands is rarely a recipe for competitive pricing and it doesn’t figure to be this time, either.

      

     

          -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

IMMIGRANT AMNESTY: LITTLE CHANCE THIS YEAR

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 19, 2010, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“IMMIGRANT AMNESTY: LITTLE CHANCE THIS YEAR”

Every poll shows there are few things California’s burgeoning Latino community wants more from government this year than immigration reform that includes a path to citizenship for persons now in this country illegally, also known as amnesty.

But despite happy talk from President Obama and some other leading Democrats, chances of this happening are very slim.

For Democrats who now possess large but shaky majorities in both the U.S. Senate and House are not nearly as united on this cause as they are on health care – and their brand of unity on that cause has produced nothing close to what Obama promised as a candidate in 2008. There is no publicly-run health insurance option on the table. The proposed requirement that all citizens must have health insurance has all but disappeared, and more.

If Democrats who once appeared united on health care reform can’t even pass a truncated version of that, there’s not much chance they will produce an immigration amnesty no matter what their leaders might say. For there’s nothing even approaching unity on immigration reform. That’s because politicians of all stripes well know that no matter how many requirements and fines they might impose on illegal immigrants seeking permanent legal status, there will be strong opposition back home.

Why would Democrats bother keeping on talking about various combinations of immigration amnesty and tougher border and employment enforcement when they know it won't pass?

Chances are it’s because they’ve been promising reform (amnesty) to Hispanic voters so long and have reaped so many Latino votes in the process that any verbal backing off risks alienating much of this increasingly important voter bloc.

Some call it pandering, but Democrats lack the votes to prevent a Senate filibuster on any immigration reform plan that involves amnesty, even with a different name.

So we see House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco carefully saying her chamber will likely wait until after the Senate acts on immigration before making any moves of its own. The odds of the Senate acting first are somewhere between slim and none; all the prominent immigration proposals of the past few months have emanated from the House.

Meanwhile, many first-term House Democrats elected in the 2008 Obama sweep fear a strong voter backlash if they OK amnesty. They and their frequent Republican jousting partners are alike in one important way: Most care more about their own reelection chances than virtually any other cause.

That why Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, quickly okayed Pelosi’s plan to let the Senate act first and prove it can “get something done.”

Don’t expect Obama to push Congress on this even as hard as he did on health care, where he’s often criticized from the left for not being strong enough. Obama’s top aide, former Illinois Congressman Rahn Emanuel, once called immigration “the third rail of American politics.” So the White House knows this is a toxic issue and will understand when Democrats run from it in an election year.

And they will. Not just members of the House. Senators like Colorado’s appointed Michael Bennet, who faces his first election campaign this year, will be understandably leery of the issue that made Tom Tancredo, a longtime Colorado congressman, into a national figure and a presidential candidate.

Obama, meanwhile, nominally backs a plan written by Illinois Rep. Luis Gutierrez, the House Hispanic caucus chairman who knows the President well from their days in Chicago politics. This one calls for much tougher enforcement efforts, criminal background checks for current illegals wanting to stay, a six-year wait for permanent legal status. It’s similar to the plan pursued unsuccessfully several times by Arizona Sen. John McCain, the 2008 Republican nominee for president.

Noting that 10 million Hispanic voters turned out in 2008, the vast majority going for Obama, amnesty advocate Frank Sharry, head of a group called America’s Voice, threatens that “a lot of those voters won’t turn out in the midterm elections,” in swing states like Colorado, Nevada and Florida unless there is an amnesty of some kind.

That vague threat carries less clout with most members of Congress than the letters they get from angry constituents – and two polls late last year found that about 60 percent of U.S. citizens oppose any form of legalization for illegal immigrants.

All of which means Gutierrez and others who insist there will be immigration reform this year are whistling past the graveyard. It won’t happen.

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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