AT LAST, A MOVE TO CUT BACK ON H1-B VISAS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2016, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“AT LAST, A MOVE TO CUT BACK ON H1-B VISAS”

Only rarely do Republicans and Democrats in California’s ideologically and politically divided congressional delegation work together on problems, but the often abused H1-B visa program is now the subject of some unusual cooperation.

          The H1-B, created to help grow the economy by providing temporary visas to highly-skilled foreign individuals when employers can’t find suitable hires in the American work force, is one of the most abused of all government programs.

          Not only do high-tech companies constantly work to find loopholes allowing them to bring in more workers than the legal 85,000 H1-B visa limit would allow, but they don’t even want to fully report on workers they do hire.

          Those technology companies not only lobby Congress to up the limits (which used to be 65,000 a year); they’ve also strong-armed presidents. Outgoing President Barak Obama, for example, last year essentially doubled the 85,000 limit via executive action, making spouses of existing H1-B visa holders eligible for visas of their own, each to last as long as their husband’s or wife’s.

          Congress didn’t even complain about this, despite its gripes about other executive actions.

          Now come two ideologically very different congressmen from San Diego County, conservative Republican Darrell Issa and liberal Democrat Scott Peters, with a plan to clamp down on two common kinds of H1-B abuse. They would eliminate two exemptions that have gone unchanged since 1998. These allow companies not to attest that they couldn’t find suitable, comparable American employees, so long as their immigrant workers either make more than $60,000 a year or hold a master’s degree.

          Said Issa in a written statement: “Because master’s degrees are often easily obtained by foreign workers and because the $60,000 salary requirement was never indexed for inflation or updated, these two exemptions have allowed (a few) companies to…take up a disproportionate amount of the visas that would otherwise go to highly skilled (American) individuals…”

          In short, Issa and Peters contend, a few companies take advantage of the longstanding exemptions to hire more than their fair share of H1-B immigrants, thus depriving other companies which need workers with very specialized skills of the chance to get them.

          “We need strong systems…to prevent (this) abuse and protect jobs for American workers,” said Peters.

          He and Issa propose eliminating the master’s degree exemption, because many of those “degrees” turn out to be mail-order phonies or inferior to diplomas from American universities. They would also raise the salary level for the reporting exemption to $100,000 and index it to future inflation.

          That, said Issa, would “make it much harder for firms to bring in workers at a salary that could cut American jobs.”

          So here are two longtime California politicians, normally at odds, who are willing to forego party rhetoric that often sees each party accusing the other of neglecting or even opposing the interests of American workers. That’s a downright refreshing scene in the midst of one of the roughest, most insulting presidential campaigns in modern American history.

          Plus, it’s a first effort at fixing some of what’s wrong with H1-B visas, which long have been a way for companies to save money at the expense of well-trained, expert Americans, some of whom remain unemployed for years because their salary requirements are higher than those of H1-B immigrants.

          The visas also often act as a funnel for illegal immigration, some studies showing the majority of H1-B holders either overstay their six-year limit or simply don’t go home when fired or laid off, as the visas require.

          That’s one reason the Silicon Valley sometimes seems filled with intellectual motel desk clerks, hotel maids and TV repair persons who appear overqualified for their current jobs.

          No matter who becomes president next January, the reality is that the H1-B program suffers from many abuses and needs fixing. It’s definite progress when politicos from opposing camps can at least agree on 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, visit www.californiafocus.net

’BUSINESS DEMOS’ CREATE NEW CALIFORNIA POLITICAL REALITIES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “’BUSINESS DEMOS’ CREATE NEW CALIFORNIA POLITICAL REALITIES”

          Fran Pavley, about to be termed out of her seat in the state Senate, was worried before the June primary election: Would her trusted longtime aide Henry Stern be aced out of the November runoff election to succeed her by a more business-oriented Democrat?

The answer turned out to be no, but it was no sure thing, as Stern managed only a 7 percent margin over Janice Kamenir-Reznik, attorney and longtime activist, president of the California Women’s Law Center and co-founder of anti-genocide organization Jewish World Watch.

This was a classic fight between Democrats whose priorities are only slightly different. Stern has a strong environmentalist record. Kamenir-Reznik was perceived as more business-friendly. So a large share of the $900,000 in primary election spending – mostly money from businesses – in the San Fernando Valley-based 27^th state Senate district went to Kamenir-Reznik, while Stern got some support from labor unions.

Pavley, who wrote landmark state environmental laws like the 2006 limits on greenhouse gases and carried legislation making the reopening of the leaky Southern California Gas Co. Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field more difficult, could breathe easier.

Stern did not lead the field in the primary, but he was the leading Democrat and is favored to best Republican Steve Fazio in the fall.

This race played out differently from others in the new political reality that’s emerged here since the 2010 adoption of the Top Two primary election system. The new system, which sees a one-party U.S. Senate race and more than two-dozen one-party legislative and congressional matchups this fall, has spawned a de facto third significant political party, loosely called the “business Democrats.”

          This grouping, often elected over opposition from labor-backed fellow Democrats, represents fulfillment of the stated purpose of Proposition 14, which created Top Two. Its generally moderate members usually vote with Democrats on social issues like abortion and gun control, but are far less environmentally oriented than the party mainstream. The Republican minority in Democrat-dominated districts often helps elect them.

          They are the big reason business-funded political action committees will spend well over $20 million this year on California legislative and congressional races, even though the 17 state propositions on the November ballot are diverting some business-donated PAC money. Education interests also are splitting money between candidates who favor charter schools (generally business Democrats) and those loyal to teachers’ unions.

          A typical race of this type comes in San Bernardino County, where moderate, business-oriented Democrats have never been rare. That’s where incumbent Assemblywoman Cheryl Brown, backed by realtors and oil companies, benefitted from more than $600,000 in business PAC money during the primary.

          Those interests won’t have to spent as much this fall because Brown’s more environmentally-oriented opponent is Eloise Reyes, who finished 9 percent behind Brown in the primary. Reyes doesn’t figure to pick up many of the 21 percent of voters who went for the sole Republican running in the primary.

          But business PACs might have to spend heavily in the 3^rd Senate district, where longtime incumbent Lois Wolk of Davis is termed out. This race also features two Democrats, the business-oriented Bill Dodd, now an assemblyman, facing Mariko Yamada, a former assembly member. Dodd got more than three times as much financial support in the primary as all other candidates combined, but is still not assured of election unless he gets substantial support from the district’s minority Republicans.

          EdVoice, a so-called “reform” group advocating more rigorous school evaluations, scored a major primary victory in the nearby 4^th Assembly District, covering parts of Napa, Yolo and Sonoma Counties, when Winters Mayor Cecilia Aguiar-Curry drew 28 percent of the vote, thus eliminating Wolk’s son Dan, who scored 25 percent. Republican Charlie Schaupp stunned Democrats in the district by taking 29 percent in the primary, but is viewed as a sure November loser in this heavily Democratic district.

          The bottom line is that there are fewer sure-thing races for Congress and the Legislature in the offing this fall than before Top Two began, and that the minority party in districts heavily dominated by either Democrats or Republicans will decide some close races.

          Smaller parties don’t like this, because they have no runoff election slots, but they can fix that if they draw more votes down the line and, perhaps, raise more money to help them draw those votes.

-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

DESPITE LOWER PRICES, GAS GOUGING SIGNS CONTINUE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “DESPITE LOWER PRICES, GAS GOUGING SIGNS CONTINUE”

          Memo to Loretta Sanchez and Kamala Harris, the two Democrats now vying for the U.S. Senate seat long held by retiring Sen. Barbara Boxer:

          Each of you could get a whole lot of traction and voter support by going after the apparent continuing practice of gasoline price gouging engaged in by California’s major oil refiners. You, especially, Ms. Harris, ought to know about this as you are allegedly investigating the suspected practice right now in your current function as state attorney general.

          Meanwhile, neither Harris nor Sanchez has said much about hydraulic fracturing (fracking), price gouging or anything else oil companies might be interested in since their contest narrowed to two persons after the June primary.

          It might be awkward for an organization Democrat like Harris to do this in light of a late-summer report from the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group which documented that, for example, Chevron Corp. donated $135,000 to the state Democratic Party the same day Democratic legislators exempted some critical fracking methods from SB4, a bill meant to regulate the oil- and gas-drilling practice.

          That same report showed Chevron gave $300,000 to the state party just two weeks before Gov. Jerry Brown came out against a proposed severance tax on oil produced in California. This is the only major oil-producing state without such a tax.

          So Harris, solidly supported by Brown and the state Democratic Party apparatus, might not want to say much about oil companies. But Sanchez, never an establishment politician, might feel no such compunctions.

          Meanwhile, motorists may not have been feeling as gouged lately as they did last winter, since late-summer gasoline prices dropped as low as $2.25 per gallon at some non-branded service stations, while the statewide average at the time was about $2.75. This didn’t mean the gouging that’s been apparent for years suddenly stopped.

          Lower crude oil prices have so curtailed refiner expenses that even with cheaper pump prices, their profits are near record levels.

          In late summer, for example, the Texas-based oil refiner Tesoro, which operates plants in Carson, Wilmington and Martinez that process almost 550,000 barrels of crude oil daily, reported profits of $332 million from its California operations, well above longstanding quarterly averages. Tesoro makes 27 percent of California gasoline.

          Fellow Texas-based refiner Valero, meanwhile, reported $141 million in California profits during the second quarter of this year, far more than double its average quarterly profit of $57 million since 2010. Tesoro and Valero are the only oil companies that break out California results from their overall financial reports.

          These huge profits can happen even with crude oil prices low because California refiners are charging a huge margin above their wholesale costs. For instance, during the summer, the wholesale price of gasoline, when sold from one refiner to another, was $1.17. That was 18 cents less than the wholesale price in Chicago, for one example.

          Normally, pump prices in California – even with all its taxes and environmental costs – run about 88 cents above the wholesale level. But drivers lately have paid $1.58 more, with almost all the difference – about 70 cents per gallon – going into the coffers of the refiners, whose profits as a result are near peak levels.

          The refiners did all this with no peep of protest from politicians at any level.

          The only outfit tracking their profits and supplies on a regular basis is Consumer Watchdog, which claims that “Supply and demand is completely out of whack.”

          In short, Consumer Watchdog president Court insists it’s no accident that drivers who see branded stations on the same street intersection will almost always note that prices at the various brands are identical. If one gasoline dealer charges $2.89 per gallon, almost always the competitor across the street asks the same.

          It’s because of price-fixing, the group says. Agrees Tom Steyer, the billionaire investor and America’s biggest donor to liberal political causes, “The gasoline market in California is definitely out of whack.” Steyer admits to mulling a run for governor in 2018 and has been featured in TV commercials from NextGen, an environmental group he founded.

          Meanwhile, the oil industry’s group, Western States Petroleum Assn., repeatedly insists that “market factors are the primary driver of fuel costs in California.”

          Harris has said nothing about her investigation into the gouging claims. If she won’t discuss the subject before the November election, maybe Sanchez will.

         

    -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

BLACKOUT BLACKMAIL EXPOSED AS POWER STAYS ON

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20, 2016, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “BLACKOUT BLACKMAIL EXPOSED AS POWER STAYS ON”

          Watch out, warned three of California’s most powerful – and most ethically shaky – state agencies in late April and again in August. If the notoriously leaky Aliso Canyon natural gas storage field in northern Los Angeles were not reopened quickly, California would face the strong possibility of blackouts during the summer.

          The reasoning of the state report went this way: When electricity use peaks during the heat waves of summer and early autumn, power plants fueled by natural gas might not be able to operate without fuel from Aliso. Not coincidentally, that report was co-authored by the Southern California Gas Co., which has the most to gain from reopening its flawed field above the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.

          Every major public official went for this threat. That included Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and many others.

          But power plants never shut down this summer and there’s virtually no chance they will this fall, either.

          It should have been obvious immediately to all that the threat was a bunch of hooey. For the highest gas use of the last 10 years in the region served by Aliso Canyon came not in any summer, but in the winter of 2008, when demand in Southern California reached 4.9 billion cubic feet per day (bcfd). Even that quantity was well below the 5.7 bcfd available at all times from incoming pipelines and other storage fields in the region.

          Aliso Canyon, then, is not really needed in summer or fall for anything but feeding the bottom line of SoCalGas and its parent company, Sempra Energy.

          Meanwhile, the frequent questionable actions of the April study’s other authors, the state Public Utilities Commission, the California Energy Commission and the state Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources have been thoroughly documented here and elsewhere.

          The first acid test for their threat came during an unusually warm June in Southern California. On June 20, the temperature in the Los Angeles Basin hit 101 degrees, 22 degrees above normal for the date, reports the AccuWeather service. Aliso Canyon was not in operation, but there were nevertheless no gas service curtailments. No backup fuel was used by either Southern California Edison Co. or the Los Angeles Department of Water & Power, despite record-level electricity demand.

          The same for the heat wave of late July and early August, when deliveries by SoCalGas, reported on its website, never reached even 4 bcfd, far below the company’s capacity without Aliso. (For actual figures, see https://scgenvoy.sempra.com/index.html#nav=/Public/ViewExternalDailyOperations.getDailyOperation%3FFileName%3D%26Class%3D%26estimateDate%3D07%252F30%252F2016%26hiddenEstimateDate%3D08%252F03%252F2016%26rand%3D149).

          Edison had its second-highest one-hour peak load ever between 3 p.m. and 4 p.m. June 20 at 23,564 megawatts, while DWP hit 6,080 megawatts, the highest DWP demand ever in June, and just under its all-time record.

          But there were no blackouts and no media even bothered to report on the ultra-high electricity use, which itself was no oddity on a hot day.

          “I do not expect we will see higher demand anytime this fall than what was registered on June 20, and there were no problems then,” said William Powers, whose Powers Engineering firm has been instrumental in defending consumer interests, including offering testimony that was a key factor in preventing California from becoming dependent on hyper-expensive imports of liquefied natural gas.

          There was, then, never a real possibility of a blackout. This makes the threatening state report little more than bald blackmail, designed to panic consumers so they would acquiesce in reopening Aliso Canyon. Only after it is reopened can SoCalGas begin to dun its customers for an expansion of that field which was routinely approved by the PUC before Aliso’s months-long leak began last fall.

          The sad part of all this is not merely that the Brown Administration has been caught in a lie and a new instance of favoring large utility companies over their customers.

          What’s truly unfortunate is the loss of trust for both government and those large, vitally needed and important investor-owned utilities that comes when a threat like this turns out to be bogus. For now that it’s clear this warning was worth less than the paper it was printed on, who would believe any other threat issued by the same agencies, even if the next one should be genuine?

         

    -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

THE SELF-SERVING PLASTIC BAG PROPS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2016, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “THE SELF-SERVING PLASTIC BAG PROPS”

          Every few years, an industry for self-serving reasons tries to exploit California’s loose rules for putting propositions on its ballot. This doesn’t usually work, even though industries that have tried this tactic when all else political had failed them generally outspent opponents by factors of at least 50-1.

          So it was about 20 years ago, when the tobacco industry fielded an initiative aiming to remove all local smoking restrictions and substitute a much looser statewide standard allowing tobacco use almost anywhere. That effort lost badly and remains a classic in the annals of misleading names for campaign committees. Big Tobacco’s campaign moniker: Californians for Statewide Smoking Restrictions.

          So it is again this fall with Propositions 65 and 67, as the plastic bag industry tries to reverse an almost total ban of its products from California grocery stores that passed the Legislature in 2014 and was quickly signed by Gov. Jerry Brown. The bag makers’ committee name isn’t quite as misleading as Big Tobacco’s, but the tag (the same as that of an industry-wide trade group) still obscures its purpose: American Progressive Bag Alliance. What’s a “progressive” bag?

          Even with many local bans in place and applying to most of the state’s biggest cities and almost half its population, Californians still dump a reported 11 billion plastic bags into landfills yearly. Countless others still “decorate” highways. These do not disintegrate or decay in water, like paper products, so they could be around for centuries. Plastic bags also are made from petroleum; their use contributed to America’s energy dependence on foreign sources, some of them unsavory.

          Altogether the bag makers raised well over $4 million before the fall campaign, compared with barely a quarter-million for supporters of the bag ban. Most cash backing the ban has come from grocery chains like Albertsons Safeway (including Vons), Ralphs and Raley’s.

          That caused a bag industry attempt to penalize grocers – who originally opposed banning plastic bags – for switching sides and helping cost the bag makers hundreds of millions of dollars yearly. Eastern and Southern companies like Superbag, Hilex Poly, Formosa Plastics and Advance Polybag lashed out by placing Proposition 65 on the ballot in an attempt to deprive grocers of even breaking even on the paper bags they sell for 10 cents each under the state’s 146 local bans on plastic bags.

          Claiming the grocers only switched sides because they discovered the small bag fees add up to a big new source of revenue, the bag alliance wrote an initiative earmarking all money spent on bags for environmental projects supervised by the state Wildlife Conservation Board.

          Trouble is, many supermarkets say they actually lose money on paper bags. One board member of the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op reports “Our paper bags cost us 14 to 15 cents each. It’s inaccurate to suggest it’s a revenue stream when it is still a major expense.”

          Meanwhile, large grocery chains say they’ve converted to the anti-plastic side in large part because that’s what their customers want. “Early polling is that consumers are adapting to no plastic bags,” Ronald Fong, head of the California Grocers Association (contributor of about $210,000 to the pro-ban side), told a reporter. “It’s really unfortunate that out-of-staters are sinking millions of dollars into telling us we’re wrong here in California.”

          But the bag association predicts it will win and overturn the statewide bag ban. “We believe voters…will make their voices heard at the ballot box,” the group’s president, Lee Califf, said in a statement. The statewide ban, he added, threatens thousands of jobs and will have “no meaningful effect on the environment.”

          If jobs are threatened, of course, not many are in California. Big plastic bag makers don’t manufacture much here.

          Any jobs threatened by a statewide ban are shaky anyhow. That’s because the existing local bans covering Los Angeles, San Francisco and 144 other locales would not change if the No-on-67 side wins and overturns the statewide ban.

          No matter how obviously self-serving their two propositions may be, this is still likely a lose-lose proposition for the bag makers. The bottom line for them is that they stand no chance of restoring California to its former status as their largest market.

-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

SANCHEZ STILL CAN GRAB GOP VOTES

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2016, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “SANCHEZ STILL CAN GRAB GOP VOTES”

          The scene looked a bit peculiar as former Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan, a Republican, enthusiastically endorsed Democrat Loretta Sanchez for the U.S. Senate seat about to be vacated by the retiring Barbara Boxer.

          “She is tough and not afraid to take a stand on important issues,” intoned Riordan, with Sanchez beaming nearby. Riordan, often given credit for his city’s quick recovery from the race riots of 1992, had not endorsed a Democrat in years, but has nowhere else to go this fall.

          That’s because Sanchez faces state Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris, another Democrat, this November in California’s first one-party race for a statewide office in the modern era. None of the 11 Republicans in the June primary election even came close to making the runoff.

          Sanchez’ opportunity for an upset became even more clear at mid-summer, when polls began showing she had made a bit of progress since that primary, while Harris may actually have lost a little ground. The California Field Poll, for example, found Harris with 39 percent support to 24 percent for Sanchez. Harris actually pulled 40 percent of the June vote to about 19 percent for Sanchez.

          So Harris hasn’t been dazzling many voters since topping the primary election. It’s unclear just where the new Sanchez support came from. But the way things are going seems quite reminiscent of what happened in the primary, where Harris began with about 27 percent support when she declared her candidacy, while Sanchez never drew much more than 14 percent in any survey. But about 40 percent of the electorate was undecided until the final days before the primary, just as about 35 percent are similarly perplexed, undecided, uninterested or turned off today. One poll showed 28 percent of voters don’t plan to cast any ballot in this race.

          Many in the uncertain column are probably Republicans who would have to hold their nose to vote for either candidate.

          But in Harris, they’d get a senator with no foreign policy experience and a strong gun-control stance. Sanchez, meanwhile, is a longtime House Foreign Affairs Committee member with a firmly pro-Israel record and a far iffier record on gun-control than Harris. She does not stint, however, in supporting key Democratic stances like easing college student debt, expanding Pell Grants to students and abortion rights.

          Given the choice (and it’s the only senatorial one they’ll have this fall), many Republicans might prefer Sanchez to Harris. Some might prefer not to vote for either as a kind of protest, but the 17 statewide ballot propositions covering things from taxes to marijuana and pornography could make it difficult for them to resist casting ballots. Once they start with that, who knows what else they might do?

          For Sanchez, the current task is unprecedented. Normally, a candidate can win by breaking a few voters away from their usual home party, as a first step. The second, often easier, need is to get them to move from undecided into the candidate’s column. Republicans already are cut loose from their party in this contest, so Sanchez really has only half the task others usually face.

          She’s been able to do it with some, like syndicated talk show host Hugh Hewitt. The conservative Hewitt was not expected to back her even though he invited her onto his program. But once he listened to her for an hour or so, Hewitt tweeted his surprise endorsement of Sanchez to more than 100,000 followers. Which means Sanchez can attract some Republicans.

          If she’s able to draw a good share of the 27 percent of California voters who are registered to the GOP, there’s a possibility she could be elected by an unprecedented coalition of Latino Democrats and conservative Republicans.

          Yes, Democrat Dianne Feinstein has survived well over three terms in the Senate with a combination of liberal Democratic and moderate Republican support. No one knows for sure whether Sanchez can achieve something similar, even as Harris gets most of the conventional liberal Democratic vote.

          But Sanchez has pulled upsets before, most notably ousting the well-entrenched conservative Republican Rep. Robert Dornan from his Orange County-based House seat in 1996.

          So while Harris enters the fall with what looks like a substantial lead, movement among Republican voters could change things.

    -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

WHO WILL PAY FOR UTILITY’S CRIMES?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2016 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

          “WHO WILL PAY FOR UTILITY’S CRIMES?”

          The U.S. Supreme Court in its famous Citizens United decision tells us corporations are just like people.

          But we saw the opposite in the multiple convictions of Pacific Gas & Electric Co. the other day for obstruction of justice and breaking safety laws in the 2010 San Bruno natural gas pipeline explosion that killed eight persons and destroyed many homes.

          No, the PG&E case says, corporations are not like people. When juries convict real people of felonies, they do jail time, serve probation and/or pay fines that hurt. They often have trouble getting jobs for the rest of their lives and carry serious stigma wherever they go.

          None of that will happen to PG&E, where no one appears likely to pay much of a price for the company’s wrongdoing before and after the big blast.

          The big utility cannot do jail time; it’s impossible. No one has put it on probation, even if a few small communities are opting out of its services to join the state’s budding publicly-owned Community Choice Aggregation power suppliers. And PG&E was fined just $6 million dollars for its offenses, a bare pittance for a company that was in June awarded more than $600 million in rate increases for safety work on its gas pipelines.

          The most important thing here is that not a single person was convicted. No one will pay any significant price for the tragic havoc PG&E wreaked. Even so, PG&E now wants its convictions overturned.

          Why this company needs $600 million yearly in extra pipeline safety money is anyone’s guess. After all, PG&E and other California gas utilities have collected billions of dollars from their customers over the last 65 years for pipeline maintenance, even if no one ever tracked how they spent it.

          What’s more, when the state Public Utilities Commission fined PG&E $1.6 billion last year for violating state and federal gas pipeline safety standards, more than 53 percent of the money – $850 million – was earmarked for pipeline repairs and improvements. That meant PG&E’s big fine, cited by federal authorities as one reason for the paltry amount assessed as a criminal penalty this summer, was less than half as big as billed. It is surely no fine when a company is forced to make updates it was paid to perform over the previous six decades.

          But the really big question in the PG&E case was clear from the day charges were filed: Why did no persons face charges?

          Plenty of individuals were involved, and the federal Justice Department surely knew it. One example: His own testimony in the months-long PG&E trial showed that the company’s former vice president of gas maintenance and construction may have been at the very least incompetent. One example he admitted to: He signed a letter instrumental in PG&E being charged with obstructing the federal investigation of San Bruno by trying to conceal some flawed company policies.

          The executive said he didn’t write or edit the letter and signed it without understanding its technical language. He said that he often did that with documents he was asked to approve.

          “I would read what I could and what I could understand,” he testified. “Most of it was technical information. It didn’t do much good for me to read it. I pretty much had to trust what the team had gotten me.”

          No one explained why this man was not charged with criminal negligence for signing such letters and documents without bothering to get them deciphered.

          Other testimony saw PG&E engineers say cutbacks in spending on safety were “the fault” of the company’s top brass. But no executive, active or retired, has been charged. No one paid any significant price for what probably amounted to multiple manslaughters, at a minimum.

          By contrast, when a low-level employee of a baseball team this season played inappropriate music during the introduction of a pitcher previously implicated in a domestic violence case, that employee was summarily fired. Yet, no one was harmed by the music.

          Meanwhile, PG&E suffers no reduction in employability after its crimes. Its service area is not reduced. Its rates are rising. Its executives still are paid well into six and seven figures.

          So no, corporations are not like people. At least not when they commit major crimes. Not in real life.

 

    -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