FARMERS AMONG THOSE FEARING IMMIGRATION RAIDS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, APRIL 7, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
      “FARMERS AMONG THOSE FEARING IMMIGRATION RAIDS”

          The specter of peaches and oranges and apricots and artichokes rotting on the ground or on trees hangs over California agriculture this spring, in the wake of a series of immigration raids during the first months of President Trump’s administration.

          If you want to know why it’s not merely undocumented immigrants who fear the prospect of more and larger raids – the first set in February saw federal agents net about 600 persons in this country illegally nationwide and a reported 109 in California – it helps to look back to the early 2000s. There is no accurate count of how many have been rounded up since.

          Illegal immigration, of course, was already a hot political topic 15 years ago, in the wake of the 1997 Proposition 187, which sought to bar the undocumented and their children from public schools and health clinics and almost all other public services in California. Most of 187’s provisions were thrown out by federal judges within a year of its passage, but the memory of the 65 percent “yes” vote on the measure was still vivid.

          So Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, then in her second full term, decided to check on how much of the unemployment problem then and now serious in both California and the entire nation could be chalked up to the undocumented taking jobs away from U.S. citizens who wanted them.

          She arranged for every office of the state Employment Development Department to list menial, farm-related jobs like strawberry picking that were actually available at the time. Absolutely none of the many thousands of citizens then drawing unemployment benefits in California bit on those jobs, even though everyone on unemployment must report job-seeking efforts in order to get a check.

          The reasonable conclusion from this experiment – which has not since been repeated anywhere – was that unemployed U.S. citizens were not interested in the kind of low-paid, seasonal, menial and physically demanding jobs that often attract illegal immigrants to California and other parts of America. That’s one big reason for this estimate from the American Farm Bureau Federation: Between 50 percent and 70 percent of all farm workers in this country are here illegally.

          The fear of farmers in the Central Valley, who turned out in big numbers for Trump’s single fund-raising dinner in California last fall, is that nothing much has changed over the last 15 years in the way American citizens view these jobs, even if the minimum wage is now a lot higher than before.

          California farmers clearly hope immigration raids that so far have targeted some textile workshops, other non-farm businesses and have masqueraded at times as “gang sweeps,” stay far away from their fields.

          Farmers here saw what happened in the weeks between Alabama’s adoption in 2011 of the nation’s harshest-ever anti-illegal immigrant law and when it was largely struck down by courts. That law required police to check the immigration status of all suspects and turn any illegals over to federal authorities. For awhile, school officials had to demand birth certificates from new pupils. The undocumented still cannot conduct business of any kind with state or local government there other than paying state sales and gasoline taxes.

          After the Alabama law passed, many employers reported massive absenteeism, as droves of illegals stayed home from work for fear of immigration raids. Tomato farms reported fewer than half their workers showed up the next week and chicken farmers said many of their workers also flew the coop. The same for plant nurseries, building contractors and more. Prices for tomatoes and other produce rose quickly up and down the East Coast.

          This lasted months before state officials tacitly relented and many workers returned. But U.S. citizens did not apply for the vacant jobs.

          One California farmer fearing Trump-ordered raids told the New York Times that “If you have only legal labor, certain parts of this industry would not exist. If we sent all these people back, it would be a total disaster.”

          It’s not that the undocumented workers are low-paid, either. That same farmer said many of his undocumented employees have worked for him more than a decade and now make upwards of $11 per hour, above the current minimum wage.

          All of which explains why farmers fear stricter immigration enforcement almost as much as their workers.

                  

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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

DEBATE RAGES: DID REFORMS CAUSE COP-KILLING?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, APRIL 4, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “DEBATE RAGES: DID REFORMS CAUSE COP-KILLING?”

          There is little doubt about who killed Whittier Police Officer Keith Boyer in late winter, or how he died: Authorities quickly identified ex-convict Michael Christopher Mejia as the culprit, also suspected of killing his cousin and stealing the cousin’s car.

          But there is plenty of debate over who and/or what is responsible for Boyer’s death. “There’s blood on the hands of Gov. Brown,” trumpeted Republican state Sen. Andy Vidak of Hanford in a press release two days after the incident. He blames Brown and other Democrats for “early-release laws that ended in the…preventable death of Officer Boyer.”

          But the main law in question, the 2014 Proposition 47, wasn’t simply the work of Brown and his Democratic cohorts in the Legislature. Voters are ultimately responsible for its consequences – they passed the measure by a 59-41 percent margin, a landslide by anyone’s definition.

          This law significantly reduced the penalties for many non-violent crimes, reducing all thefts to misdemeanors if they involve $950 or less worth of cash or goods.

          Los Angeles County Sheriff Jim McDonnell was among those blaming 47 and other prison reform and realignment measures, including last year’s Proposition 57, which accelerates releases for convicts with “non-violent” offenses. Because of these measures, he said, “People who were previously in county jail are now out on the streets.”

          But Mejia was anything but a non-violent offender. Most recently, he spent two years in prison for grand theft auto and attempting to steal a vehicle; his latest incarceration was in the infamous Pelican Bay prison near the Oregon state line. Earlier he did three years time for a robbery. The difference in his treatment after the new laws and what it might have been before is that his most recent parole was supervised by county officers rather than the state prison system. State officials said Mejia’s prison time was not shortened by any recent laws.

          “None of the state’s recent criminal justice reforms impacted when this individual was released from state prison,” said a spokesman for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

          That didn’t assuage Boyer’s boss, Whittier Police Chief Jeff Piper. “We need to wake up,” he said. “You’re passing these propositions…It’s not good for your community; it’s not good for our officers.”

          Mejia had been held for brief periods before Boyer’s death for parole violations like a Feb. 2 incident where he ran from police responding to an anonymous 911 call.

          Some critics of the prison system maintain the recent initiatives worsen the aggressiveness of convicts rather than leading them to reform.

          By doing as much time as he would have before the reforms and going through brief revolving-door county jail stints for relatively minor parole violations, Mejia was a fairly typical denizen of the criminal justice system.

          Knowing this, but wishing to assign blame somehow, politicians like Los Angeles County Supervisors Janice Hahn and Kathryn Barger – one a Democrat, the other a Republican – asked both the state and federal attorneys general to assess the case and review the effects of both 47 and 57 on crime. So far, state officials say there is no evidence of any crime increase due to either measure. Which could mean that Mejia’s alleged crime was simply a matter of chance: Some such episodes will occur every year no matter what the laws say.

          This may be correct, but it’s a conclusion that won’t satisfy any crime victims, and especially not anyone who knew the 27-year-old Boyer.

          There are, of course, other ways besides crime statistics to measure the impact of the new prison-emptying laws. For example, Prop. 47 earmarks much of the money it saves prisons and jails for mental health and drug treatment programs, a plan intended to cushion the effects of making most drug possessions into mere minor offenses.

          But enrollment in drug treatment programs has been down across the state since 2014, a sign many addicts no longer feel pressure to escape their habit because they know they’ll never do significant time for using or for most crimes they employ to support their addictions. Mejia, for one, was caught with a small amount of methamphetamine in one of his parole violations.

          So it’s apparent at least some provisions of the new laws are not working. But it remains highly debatable whether that means Boyer’s slaying and other recent cop-killings can be blamed on those measures.

                  
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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

UC HEEDS ITS CRITICS, WILL LIMIT OUT-OF-STATERS

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“UC HEEDS ITS CRITICS, WILL LIMIT OUT-OF-STATERS”

          After more than three years of steadfastly denying that increased enrollment of foreign and out-of-state students could endanger the very California identity of the University of California, it is stunning and encouraging to see the 10-campus system do an about face.

          That’s the upshot of two moves made by the university’s Board of Regents, who voted overwhelmingly last fall to increase in-state enrollment at the elite university by 10,000 in-staters before the 2018-2019 school year. The increase will come in increments of 5,000 next fall and 2,500 students each of the next two academic years, the gradual process needed as new quarters are built for the larger student body.

          Regents took their second step in late winter, setting a 20 percent systemwide cap on students from outside California.

          The two-prong approach is a direct response to political pressure applied by parents of students with stellar grades who nevertheless have had problems getting admitted to UC campuses of their choice.

          The second step is more of a reassurance to parents and students than an actual reduction, since UC as this term began – at an all-time peak in out-of-state enrollment – had 34,673 out-of-staters on campus out of 210,170 undergraduates, or 16.5 percent of the student body. A state audit last year showed non-resident enrollment was up 432 percent over the last 10 years, while in-state enrollment had risen just 10 percent.

          But the out-of-state load often seems much higher than that because those students – especially foreign students – are concentrated on UC’s most desired and prestigious campuses at Berkeley, Los Angeles and San Diego, all of which enroll more than 20 percent from outside the state.

          How effective was parental and student political pressure? Put simply, money eventually talked to UC officials. The university system conceded for years that one reason it takes so many out-of-staters is that they pay far more tuition than in-staters: about $27,000 a year more, a total of about $550 million in the last academic year.

          This money helped the university to some extent in compensating for a series of budget cuts inflicted during the years of Govs. Gray Davis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, both of whom claimed to support education, but consistently tightened UC’s purse-strings. This meant less construction of everything from laboratories to dormitories and sometimes interfered with recruiting of elite faculty, who could get higher salary offers elsewhere.

          But in recent months, state legislators have pressured the university to favor California admissions more, or pay a price. They offered $18.5 million in financial incentives if UC allowed in more Californians and capped its non-resident enrollment. That’s just what the Regents have now done, and they should soon reap the benefits.

          All this will not reduce the quality of competition for spots at UC, especially its best-known campuses. UCLA, for example, last spring became the first American university receiving more than 100,000 applications for spots in its fall class. The campus added 1,000 Californians this year, but still has three times as many non-resident students as it had just nine years ago. The 1,000-student in-state increase helped rectify a 4 percent drop of in-state students over the last nine years.

          But overall, the gains of out-of-staters will not be reversed anytime soon, even while the needs of many more solid California high school graduates are met. UC might need somehow to convince more foreign students and students from Eastern states to enroll at campuses like Riverside and Merced and Santa Cruz, which now have relatively few out-of-staters. But their overall number will not drop, nor will their financial support, which officials say was critical as the university system maintained most of its high standards while state funding dropped during the Great Recession.

          The upshot of all this is that the outrage of California parents who watched for years while their children met every requirement for UC admission – and still didn’t get in – has produced results.

          It’s one of the rare times in recent memory that legislators and other top state officials actually heeded their constituents. There’s always hope this might lead to more responsiveness by those same officials in other areas ranging from utility regulation to highway maintenance and more.

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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 

TIME FOR A SANE SANCTUARY CITY COMPROMISE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  TUESDAY, MARCH 28, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“TIME FOR A SANE SANCTUARY CITY COMPROMISE”

          Despite heavy pressure and some almost casual financial threats from President Trump, there is no need as yet for abandonment of the humane aspects in immigration “sanctuary” laws now on the books in 276 American cities, counties and states. But almost two years after the seemingly random killing of a 32-year-old woman on San Francisco’s touristy Pier 14, not far from the landmark Ferry Building, there is surely a need for some compromise.

          While it’s true there has been no similar slaying since then by an undocumented immigrant protected by sanctuary regulations, it is entirely possible that other seven-time felons like Juan Francisco Lopez-Sanchez lurk in some sanctuary locales, ready to kill another innocent like Kathryn Steinle, who died when a bullet from a stolen gun ricocheted off concrete pavement.

          But this is an unproven assumption, not evidence enough by itself to change everything humane about sanctuary city policing.

          Just now, Trump has officials of almost every sanctuary city, campus and other place stiff-backed, ready to resist all change.

          And yet, today’s policies are far from perfect. In fact, a letter written by Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein just after the Steinle killing ought to be getting attention today. Feinstein, as mayor of San Francisco for most of the 1980s, accepted her city’s charitably-intended sanctuary law. Now she seems to be, as she often has been, one of the very few adults in the room.

          Her letter reminded that the intent of sanctuary laws is not to protect repeat criminals like Lopez-Sanchez, but to prevent splitting families via deportations and to allow otherwise law-abiding undocumented immigrants to live without much fear.

          “I strongly believe that an undocumented individual convicted of multiple felonies and with a detainer request from ICE (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement) should not have been released,” Feinstein wrote to Mayor Ed Lee, her successor four times removed. “The tragic death…could have been avoided if the Sheriff’s Department had notified ICE prior to the release of (Lopez-Sanchez), which would have allowed ICE to remove him from the country.”

          Had that happened, of course, there is every likelihood Lopez-Sanchez would have returned to this country, and quickly. He did that after five prior deportations. Even so, Steinle would be alive today.

          Feinstein’s eminently sane solution: San Francisco, Los Angeles, Santa Ana and other sanctuary cities like Miami; Austin, Tex.; New York City; Boston and Baltimore should join the Department of Homeland Security’s Priority Enforcement Program, set up in 2014 via an executive order from then-President Barack Obama, an action Trump shows little inclination to reverse.

          Doing that, Feinstein said, would have sanctuary cities notify ICE before releasing illegals with long criminal records. She noted that Los Angeles County supervisors in 2015 asked their sheriff to join that program.

          This makes eminent sense. For in all the arguments at the time cities passed their sanctuary laws, no one seriously contended foreign felons should be allowed the freedom of American streets.

          But San Francisco and other cities have been slow to join. It’s really up to politicians like city councilmen, country supervisors and mayors to instruct their top cops to act.

          They often don’t make this move because of a naïve belief that doing so would in effect make them immigration agents. They don’t want ordinary cops questioning mine-run suspects on their immigration status.

          But Lopez-Sanchez was not a mere suspect. His prior crimes were known; he still has not performed a discernible constructive act in this country. The sane thing is for jailers to contact federal officials when folks like him are nearly ready for release so immigration officers can take them beyond the border.

          Would that be inhumane? Or have repeat felons given up any right to stay in this country?

          So the sane move now is for sanctuary jurisdictions still doing it to stop refusing ICE detainers.

          Keep up that practice and there may be more murders like Steinle’s, which would not only be senseless, but also provide an excuse for Trump to intensify pressure on sanctuary jurisdictions.

                  

                  

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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

CONGRESS HIT LISTS WON’T CHANGE MUCH

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 24, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“CONGRESS HIT LISTS WON’T CHANGE MUCH”

The semi-annual hit lists are now out from both the Democratic and Republican parties as they joust over future control of the House of Representatives, which just might be up for grabs in 2018 because of the record-level unpopularity of President Trump in some polls.

          Trump, of course, likes to call the polls “fake news,” but for the most part they were right on the mark last fall. On Election Eve, polls showed Trump behind by about 2.8 percent in the popular vote, very close to the actual margin by which he lost in that category. Many of those polls, however, ignored state-by-state standings that turned out to be keys to the election outcome.

          Democrats fervently hope Trump’s unpopularity with almost every group except his hardline base will translate into huge gains for them. They’ve declared fully half California’s 14 Republican House members vulnerable, introducing a hit list heavy on the Central Valley and Southern California.

          Meanwhile, Republicans placed only four of California’s 39 Democratic members of Congress on their own hit list. These lists can be factors in attracting challengers to take on incumbents because they decide where the Democratic and Republican congressional campaign committees will spent millions of donated dollars, especially early in the election season.

          But don’t expect much change in California’s representation next year merely because operatives of the opposing parties finger certain people. Most of those on these two lists won office last year by margins of at least 5 percent or 6 percent, a tough obstacle for challengers to overcome.

          Typical is Orange County Republican Dana Rohrabacher, who has never been conventional, even in his youthful days as a radio reporter running from one press conference to another in Los Angeles gathering voice actualities for radio stations.

          Rohrabacher has lately behaved in ways that might harm an incumbent less firmly entrenched than he is in his coastal district. He was, for instance, an ardent defender of the former national security advisor Michael Flynn, fired by Trump for lying about contacts with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. He also stopped by on a European trip for a friendly visit with Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s most extreme right-wing party, one that has often been compared with Nazis for some of its stances on national ethnic purity.

          But none of that will likely impact Rohrabacher next year. He won by a 58-42 percent margin in 2016 and it would take a political earthquake to wipe out that edge.

          Of course, just such a shock nearly happened last fall to San Diego County’s Republican Rep. Darrell Issa, who used to win reelection by margins of 15 and 20 percent, but was reelected last year by barely half a percent (about 1,600 votes) over a retired Marine colonel.

          Meanwhile, Sacramento area Democratic Rep. Ami Bera managed reelection by about 2 percent last year over a popular former county sheriff despite his father’s conviction for secretly funneling excessive campaign contributions to Rep. Bera’s campaign, a scandal that received copious news coverage in the district. How much chance would a Republican have this year if that wasn’t enough to beat Bera last time? The scandal will be old news by 2018.

          But the parties need targets. So the Republicans regularly name Palm Springs area Democrat Raul Ruiz and San Diego Democrat Scott Peters as targets, even though they won by 24 percent and 14 percent, respectively, last fall over significant opponents. And Democrats believe, as ever, that Central Valley Republicans Jeff Denham and David Valadao are vulnerable despite their handy wins last time and the fact that nothing much has changed for them except that Trump became President.

          Democrats also think their voter registration gains in Orange County may help unseat the likes of Reps. Ed Royce and Mimi Walters, each of whom had margins of more than 14 percent in 2016. They note that Democrat Hillary Clinton won the presidential vote in Walters’ district.

          The upshot of all this is that not much change is likely in California’s congressional delegation next year, no matter how optimistic the talk from both parties as they flog their targets.

          Which means that as Democrats try to take back control of the House next year, they’re not likely to get much help here.

                   

         

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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

DESAL LOSES URGENCY IN HYPER-WET WINTER

CALIFORNIA FOCUS

FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 2017, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
      “DESAL LOSES URGENCY IN HYPER-WET WINTER”

          Here’s a  cold, wet reality: the more water in California’s reservoirs, the less urgency there is to build new ocean-water desalination plants that became a major talking point during the state’s long, parched years of drought, an ultra-dry period some folks insist has still not ended despite months of heavy rains.

Those record or near-record rains have replenished everything reservoirs lost over the last few years of drought, and sometimes more.

          Desalination is always tantalizing here because – like Samuel Coleridge’s ancient mariner, who complained of “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” – Californians can see billions of acre feet of water every day in the form of the Pacific Ocean, complete with all its bays and estuaries.

          But that’s briny salt water, containing an array of minerals that make it almost as inaccessible today as it was to the parched, fictitious sailor of 187 years ago.

          It won’t necessarily stay that way. Whenever the price of other water goes up, desalinating Pacific waters becomes more enticing. It will become more so if the price of filtering minerals out of salt water drops.

          But if the price and availability of fresh water remains reasonable, as it surely will be this year, desal stays in the back seat.

          Yes, Boston-based Poseidon Water since late 2015 has operated the largest desalination plant in America on the coast at Carlsbad, just north of San Diego. The facility supplies almost 10 percent of the San Diego area’s water needs. That’s a region which has long wanted to be as independent as possible from the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (often called the Met), through which it gets supplies from the State Water Project and the Colorado River Aqueduct. Expensive as Carlsbad water may be at about $2,200 per acre foot, it improves the San Diego County Water Authority’s negotiating position with the Met.

          During the drought, that water agency signed a contract with the plant operator to purchase at least 48,000 acre-feet per year of water, but it can also demand up to 56,000 acre-feet in any year it feels the need. An acre-foot of water contains about 330,000 gallons, about the amount a typical family uses in a year. That water costs more than $100 per acre-foot above the price of recycled water and about $1,000 more than reservoir water or supplies from the Met, approximately doubling water cost. The San Diego authority claims that its take from the Met has been overpriced for years, and now pays more than $300 per acre foot for Colorado River water bought from the Imperial Valley’s irrigation district, which reaches San Diego County via the Met’s aqueduct.


          At the depth of the drought, the Met paid some farmers in the Sacramento Valley an average of $694 per acre foot for parts of their supply. So even at drought-inflated prices, fresh surface water remained much cheaper than desalinated supplies.


          These numbers all establish that desalinated water is now by far the most expensive alternative California water districts can pursue. This is one reason a proposed desal plant at Huntington Beach in Orange County has run into resistance. Environmental problems are another: The Carlsbad plant was cited several times for environmental violations during its first few months of operation.


          But the price tag is the biggest problem. The Carlsbad plant cost $1 billion to build, with about $50 million in yearly operating costs. When treating wastewater or catching more storm runoff can keep supplies at acceptable levels, there’s no need to pay so much for desalination.


          But if new methods to purify sea water beyond the standard technique of reverse osmosis ever become workable, all bets will be off.


          Despite claims by some companies that they can desalinate water for less than $700 per acre foot, none has yet demonstrated it can do the job on the extremely large scale needed to assure California water supplies.


          Which means that more it rains, the more the prospects for new desalinated water supplies fall. But they will surely resurface the moment a new drought arrives.

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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

CHIANG A DIFFERENT KIND OF CANDIDATE FOR GUV

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, MARCH 17, 2017, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “CHIANG A DIFFERENT KIND OF CANDIDATE FOR GUV”

          If there’s one quality shared by several of the leading candidates to succeed Jerry Brown as governor, it’s flamboyance. No one ever accused Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the former mayor of San Francisco, or ex-Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of being boring.

          The same for financier Tom Steyer, who has spent many millions pushing green, environmental causes, often centering  cause-oriented commercials around himself.

          So it’s no wonder these three and San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, the most prominent Republican prospect for governor next year, are the early leaders in the polls, even though no one yet approaches even 30 per cent support in any respectable poll.

          But the other major office-holding Democrat in this race, state Treasurer John Chiang, brings a different approach. He’s not about bling, but concentrates on policy. He’s also shown he can be tough on his fellow politicos, regardless of party.

          He proved this in 2011, after voters passed Proposition 25, which requires legislators to pass a balanced state budget by each June 15, or see their salaries and expense account checks abruptly halted. No legislator thought this would ever actually happen, because the state controller is one of them, an elected politician.

          But Chiang, then the controller, announced on that June 22, with lawmakers a week past the deadline, that he would dock their pay. He did, the average legislator impacted to the tune of about $400 per day. A balanced budget quickly followed and the lawmakers have been on time ever since, after almost a decade of consistently late budgets.

          So it’s not very surprising that Chiang, who trailed badly in the early polls, is not approaching California’s many conflicts with President Trump in the same way as his fellow candidates, who have loudly decried many of the new federal administration’s moves but so far done little about them.

          Knowing that Trump and his Secretary of Energy, former Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry, deny the science behind global warming and the many measures California has adopted to combat it, Chiang realizes the federal loan guarantees that have enabled most solar and wind energy projects are bound to dry up soon.

          So he’s pushing “green bonds” as a substitute. By that, he means bonds issued by corporations, cities or states to finance climate-friendly projects. Rather than lending money easily because of a federal loan guarantee in case a planned project goes belly up, lenders, borrowing companies and local agencies will have to vet proposals very carefully.

          “Because of California’s record in making these projects succeed, and the state’s mandate for producing more and more renewable energy, the market for this kind of bond will accelerate,” says Chiang, whose current job sees him promote California state bonds to the world’s leading financiers. “We will have big investments from Europe and China in this; we’re not looking just at the pool of investors in the U.S., but the world.”

          Chiang maintains bond money going to green projects with solid profit prospects “will eventually grow to more money than has been enabled by federal loan guarantees. There is a huge interest around the world in American projects, and people are looking to California for leadership. There are many billions of dollars out there.” For sure, this kind of leadership will not emanate from Washington, D.C. for at least the next few years.

          Chiang has quietly done this kind of thing for the last decade, as controller and then treasurer. He’s aware that if voters think of him at all, it is as a technocrat.

          “We have to communicate more,” he said. And he had more than $7 million on hand in February to help him start doing that. “I will offer solutions to the state’s other problems just like I am now with the green bonds, as ways to move forward with or without support from President Trump.”

          Chiang also thinks California should pick its fights carefully, and should shun the idea of California independence. “California needs to be doing things to produce prosperity for us all. Pursue independence and things like water, pension debt and other problems would not get solved.”

          This kind of practicality could make Chiang effective as governor. But first, he’ll have to get past the technocrat image which his solid ideas ironically tend to reinforce. 

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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