WILL COVID-19 UP CHANCES OF CALEXIT?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2020, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “WILL COVID-19 UP CHANCES OF CALEXIT?”

          Gov. Gavin Newsom repeatedly calls California a “nation state,” employing a phrase not used by any other governor in memory.

President Trump mocks the federal system, first saying emergency responses are up to individual state governors, not the central government, and then saying the opposite, that he has “total authority.” He first suggests that medical suppliers ignore orders from states whose governors “don’t treat us right” and then claims he’s taking care of everyone.

These are new things in America. They could enlarge the existing, very small movement for a “Calexit,” secession from the union by California, progenitor of the world’s fifth-largest economy.

For sure, pandemics don’t happen often, but when they become devastatingly large, they can dramatically change the course of human history. So it was when the Antonine Plague of 165 AD killed over 5 million persons and decimated the Roman army, leading to the first barbarian victories over that empire’s vaunted legions.

          It happened again with the Bubonic Plague of 1347 to 1353, which many historians say delayed the Renaissance a century by killing off many young artists and politicians whose work hinted at what actually came about 100 years later. Smallpox killed off most American Indians, making it far easier for white Europeans to spread across this continent.

          No one can be sure today’s coronavirus pandemic will have similarly historic effects. But so far, it has killed more than 35,000 Americans, the number growing from moment to moment.

          Speculation abounds on how the pandemic might change this country. For example, the ApartmentList website, closely tracking national housing trends, predicts rents will fall and the long pattern of urbanization will pause.

          There’s also a possibility coupling the virus and President Trump’s style of leadership as it rages might even alter America’s continental borders, static since the Civil War.

The Yes, California! organization tried and failed to put a preliminary secession ballot initiative on the 2018 midterm election ballot. Had it gotten a vote, and won, it might have led to an actual vote on this state going its own way.

          Now that movement’s current prime organizer, Marcus Ruiz Evans of Fresno, reports that his and other blogs are seeing unusual numbers of pro-secession posts from individuals not linked to the movement.

          Ruiz says often Trump gives his movement impetus, even though he tends to walk back many of his pronouncements within hours or days.

          “Trump has already talked about cutting off travel to and from California,” Ruiz said. “Then he threatened to cut off parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut with a strictly-enforced quarantine letting nothing and nobody move in or out of that area for two weeks.”

          He backed off the Tri-State quarantine after Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said it would be “a declaration of war” on his state.

          Gavin Newsom hasn’t used words as strong as those, but took this state on a path starkly different than any Trump previously recommended.

          And when Trump suggested that businesses, churches and individuals return to normal life by April 12, Easter Sunday, one normally conservative California columnist suggested California should instantly declare independence if Trump did that. Trump backed off that idea, too.

          For sure, Trump’s inconsistent, ego-driven leadership style in this crisis promoted a rift between states and the federal government, one that secessionist Ruiz may try to exploit.

          “Everyone in the Calexit movement would agree that the only way to guarantee the ‘proper’ government reaction to this crisis would be for California to have full control over its resources and borders,” he said. “We think Californians know that already, but just won’t say it publicly. We think the governor is already aware that his people think that way. He just won’t say it blatantly.”

          In fact, when asked about Calexit during an interview while he was a candidate in 2018, Newsom adamantly opposed secession.

          But, says Ruiz, “we’ve seen the pickup in people talking about secession (on social media) and then thousands of other Californians ‘liking’ their posts.”

          Plainly, it may be years before the full after-effects of the coronavirus are known. One of those just might be a California future vastly different from its past and present.


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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

HOUSING ANSWER MUST HELP MANY, LEAVE OTHERS UNHARMED

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2018, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “HOUSING ANSWER MUST HELP MANY, LEAVE OTHERS UNHARMED”

          Scott Wiener, the ultra-liberal Democratic state senator from San Francisco appeared surprised the other day to learn the truth of the old saying that no matter how much lipstick you paint on the face of a pig, it remains a swine.

          Wiener was stunned when a sweeping proposed law he touted as the solution to California’s serious problems of housing affordability and homelessness was killed – for this year – by the Senate’s Transportation and Housing Committee on a lopsided vote.

          “I absolutely did not see that coming,” he told the New York Times.

          Wiener planned to nullify much of the zoning that keeps California cities pleasant places where folks who own, rent or buy single-family homes can pretty much figure no one will soon build skyscrapers or big box stores near them.

          A host of building trades unions and high tech executives seeking cheaper housing for prospective employees backed his bills taking that assurance away from homeowners living near rapid transit stations or frequently used bus stops, no matter what the carefully crafted plans of their cities might say.

          Without doubt the problems Wiener targeted are serious. More than 50,000 persons now live on the streets of Los Angeles County alone, at least 115,000 statewide.

          These numbers demonstrate an urgent need for low-cost housing across California. So does the median price of homes in the state, now topping $460,000, more than 30 percent above the levels of just three years ago.

          But that doesn’t dictate the kind of wholesale changes Wiener proposed, changes that could have altered the way of life of many millions of Californians. His bill failed because a solution to the problems of hundreds of thousands should not create new problems for many millions of other people. That’s why the plan was opposed by environmental groups and every city that took a position.

          As originally proposed, Wiener’s SB 827 called for cancellation of existing single-family zoning within half a mile of light rail stations and within a quarter mile of frequently traveled bus routes. Approval for new buildings of five to eight stories would have been mandated in those areas, covering up to 95 percent of some cities. Existing requirements for parking space would also have been greatly reduced.

          The reasoning for this was that planners believe virtually all residents of new transit-adjacent projects will ride the nearby buses and trains, while very few will drive cars. That presumption is flatly wrong. Reports over the last year show public transit ridership has not risen significantly since 2014, even though several new rail lines and extensions opened in that time. Yes, rail ridership is up, but there are fewer bus riders, suggesting some folks likely switched from buses to the much faster trains.

          Plus, many homes and low-rise apartment buildings would have had to be razed to make way for the denser housing Wiener wanted to prescribe, displacing many thousands of Californians to make room for more thousands of others.

          Before the first legislative hearing on his bills, Wiener softened them a bit, lowering the height limit on new buildings from eight to five floors and applying his new zoning only to areas around bus stops that are busy all day, rather than just during rush hours. He also added some protections against evicting existing tenants.

          This still would have betrayed homeowners who invested their life savings in the belief that existing zoning assured they would have no high-rise residents peering into their back yards.

          Wiener’s revisions, then, were mere lipstick on a pig, not changing the essence of his plan, and opponents easily saw that.

          Far better would be to promote local solutions to homeless dilemmas, like a new program letting homeless veterans park overnight on the grounds of some Veterans Administration centers. In Los Angeles, Mayor Eric Garcetti proposes rewards for neighborhoods that support building local homeless shelters, to include more city services like road repairs and cleanups.

          And Republican Travis Allen, running for governor, suggests more homes in outlying areas around big cities.

          Overall, it’s a positive that homelessness and affordability at last are getting major attention. But solutions must be designed not to harm other Californians.

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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

CAN AUTOMATIC REGISTRATION INCREASE VOTER TURNOUT?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MAY 8, 2015, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

    “CAN AUTOMATIC REGISTRATION INCREASE VOTER TURNOUT?”

          No sooner had Oregon’s Democratic Gov. Kate Brown signed a new law automatically making a registered voter of every person who applies for or renews a drivers license in her state than California’s top elections official jumped on the idea.

          Alex Padilla, the MIT engineering graduate who once was the Los Angeles city council’s youngest president ever, was up-front about copying Oregon. “While many states are making it more difficult for citizens to vote, our neighbor to the north offers a better path,” Padilla, the California secretary of state, said in a press release days after the Oregon law was signed. “I believe the Oregon model makes sense for California.”

          The Oregon law is a significant new twist on the federal “Motor Voter” law in use since 1993. The national law requires all states to offer voter registration opportunities at all Department of Motor Vehicles offices, plus every welfare office and those that deal with the disabled.

          But the law is not usually enforced. Example: Most California DMV offices may offer voter registration on request, but they don’t normally inform everyone they serve of this, nor are voter registration materials included in most DMV renewal mailings.

          This would be rectified in a California version of the Oregon law, which now takes the form of a bill by Democratic Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez of San Diego.

          The Oregon measure will not merely consider every U.S. citizen over 18 who contacts that state’s DMV a registered voter, but will automatically send ballots to all of them in every election.

          That’s not precisely the model to be followed here. For one thing, Oregon in recent years has conducted many of its elections purely by mail, while only about half California's voters participate by mail.

          So all the California law would do is add eligible new voters to the rolls. This would see them receiving by mail all voter guides on initiatives and candidates, but no absentee ballots unless they’re requested.

          The motives for this change are clear, as are some problems. The California move is spurred in part by pathetic turnouts in municipal elections across the state early this spring. In Los Angeles, for example, less than 10 percent of eligible voters participated. Some city council members, then, were elected by just 4 percent or 5 percent of eligible voters in their districts. So increased voter participation is one motive for this change.

          There’s also the fact that everyone involved with this proposed change is a Democrat, and increased turnout historically tends to favor Democrats. New voters, minority group members and youths tend to turn out less than Anglos over 50, who historically are more likely to support Republicans. So there’s a political motive in addition to the good-government one.

          Then there are the potential problems: It’s still illegal for non-citizens to vote in California elections, whether they involve local, state or federal offices and issues. Yes, there have been proposals to allow non-citizens to participate in local elections affecting their interests. But that idea has never taken hold, and there’s little likelihood it will anytime soon.

          Another potential problem is how the DMV can know whether a drivers license applicant is a citizen. Critics of Motor Voter have long complained that it can let non-citizens onto the voters’ rolls. But the agency will take only birth certificates, passports, drivers licenses from other states and similar official documents as its required proof of identity. So unless an applicant obtains a highly credible forgery, the DMV will be able to screen non-citizens out of voter registration.

    Another problem is that some eligible voters never register because they don’t want their addresses, birth dates or party affiliations made available to the public. Others don’t want to be called for jury duty, for which voter registration records are used.

          That’s a tougher problem, yet could be resolved by changing some rules about disclosure of personal information on registered voters.

          But the bottom line will likely be that this bill, or a modified version, will pass because something has to be done to increase voter turnouts. If this can’t do that, it’s hard to see what might.

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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.

TUBE WEAR, RADIOACTIVE KELP ADD TO QUESTIONS ON NUCLEAR RENEWALS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MAY 8, 2012, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “TUBE WEAR, RADIOACTIVE KELP ADD TO QUESTIONS ON NUCLEAR RENEWALS”

          Anyone looking for the most under-reported story of the spring in California need seek no further than the tall stalks of kelp swaying back and forth just beneath the ocean surface along much of the California coast.

          Fish eat kelp; so do small crustaceans near the bottom of the food chain which themselves are later consumed by larger fish that sometimes become food for humans. The largely-neglected news story is that it’s been somewhat radioactive off-and-on for months and it concentrates Iodine 131 isotopes at levels 10,000 times higher than what’s in the surrounding water.

          At the same time, steam generator problems have kept the San Onofre nuclear generating station near the Orange-San Diego county line closed for three months, with no reopening in sight as California heads into the summer season of peak electricity consumption. This combination of events ought to have California authorities deeply questioning the state’s heavy reliance on power from both San Onofre and the Diablo Canyon atomic plant on the Central Coast.

          The facilities aren’t due for relicensing until the early 2020s, but the utilities that own and operate them began preparing last year for license renewal proceedings.

Despite absorbing radioactive iodine isotopes, the California kelp is still not “hot” enough to endanger diners – at least so far as is now known. But lobsters and some species of fish like mullet concentrate and retain radioactivity, which would increase with any newly “hot” seawater.

          Just 15 months ago, none of this was a worry. San Onofre was running smoothly. The kelp was fine. Even at Diablo Canyon, where skeptical state legislators wondered whether an earthquake fault discovered after the plant was built might produce temblors larger than the 7.5 level it was made to withstand, things were copacetic.

       But then came a great Japanese earthquake and tsunami, followed by meltdown and significant leakage of radioactivity from that country’s Fukushima Daiichi generating station.

          Contaminated iodine and cesium rose into clouds that crossed the Pacific and dumped heavy rain along the California coast about one month later. Shortly thereafter, two scientists from Cal State Long Beach tested kelp from various parts of the Pacific Coast, finding no radioactivity off Alaska, but plenty of iodine and cesium isotopes off California.

          The fallout from the Japanese disaster was sufficient to force evacuation of large swaths of that nation’s east coast. And while Iodine 131 has a half life of about a month – meaning it wasn’t a threat for long unless fish or crustaceans concentrated it much more heavily than was found in the kelp they ate, the cesium (detected only in lower concentrations so far) lasts much longer, and will likely remain in sea life for more than 30 years.

          At the same time, the problems at San Onofre – operated by Southern California Edison Co. – remain unexplained and the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission says it won’t allow a restart until the pattern of premature wear in steam generator tubes is explained and corrected. The agency is normally the nuclear industry’s best friend and enabler in government.

          Off Diablo Canyon, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. is spending $64 million to make the first precise map of seismic faults offshore from that generating station. But even that survey probably will not produce full answers to questions about how much danger may exist, because PG&E will measure neither the pace of possible tectonic plate slippage nor the frequency of past quakes in the immediate area. Instead, the utility says it will depend on calculations of assumed slip rates.

          That kind of incomplete data might have been one enabling factor in the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, which demonstrated that even a partial meltdown many thousands of miles away can produce measurable radiation increases here.

          No one knows how much more contamination a Fukushima-like quake and tsunami near either San Onofre or Diablo Canyon could cause. Nor does anyone yet know how bad the problems may be at San Onofre.

          If these questions don’t reinforce the need for meticulous analysis in considering relicensing the two California nuclear stations, it’s hard to see what could.

          For sure, no one looks more prescient today than the 10 legislators who wrote the NRC weeks before Fukushima begging for public hearings in California before the renewal proceedings go very far. The point was not necessarily to deny renewals, but to take them slowly and with a maximum of public information.

          What happened afterward in Japan and at San Onofre makes hearings all the more imperative, while also highlighting the need for very careful analysis of all potential hazards and the reliability of all safety and mitigation measures.

         

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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