THE LAST RECALL OF ITS TYPE?

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “THE LAST RECALL OF ITS TYPE?”

 

        Californians would be well advised to remember well this month’s recall election aimed at firing Gov. Gavin Newsom and replacing him with someone who drew far fewer votes than the no side did on the ballot’s other question.

 

        That’s not because this was a particularly memorable campaign. It wasn’t, except for all the errors by target Newsom and the pack of replacement candidates hounding him. These range from a candidate abusing a bear in order to establish himself as “beastly” to the incumbent neglecting to name his political party on the ballot.

 

        But this kind of special election will likely never be repeated on a large scale in the same format because more than 100 years after the Progressives of the early 20^th Century devised it, legal scholars finally realized the current system is unfair and probably unconstitutional on its face.

 

        Nevertheless, expect the several local recall efforts now underway to continue under the old rules.

 

        Yes, the lone lawsuit filed this year trying to stop the recall on legal grounds went nowhere, largely because judges are generally loath to step into strictly political matters.

 

        That alters neither the system’s obvious flaws nor the strong likelihood state legislators will fix them, if only to make life easier for themselves if they should someday be recalled, as happened to one current state senator, Josh Newman of Fullerton, in 2018.

 

        Like Newsom, Sen. Newman was not among candidates folks could vote for at the same time they voted yes or no on the very idea of a recall.

 

        Two years later, Newman came back and whipped Republican Ling Ling Chang, who led the 2018 replacement vote, by about 11,000 votes.

 

        In that recall election, the “no” side on the recall question got more than 66,000 votes, while Chang received a few more than 50,000. By 16,000 votes, the district preferred Newman to Chang, but Chang got the job because, like Newsom, Newman could not be listed among potential candidates.

 

        It was different in the 2003 gubernatorial recall, when then-Gov. Gray Davis got 4.07 million-plus “no” votes on the recall question, but movie muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled more than 4.2 million to lead the replacement field. Unlike Chang, Schwarzenegger won fairly solidly, so the constitutional issue never came up.

 

        It arose this fall, first raised in high profile by Erwin Chemerinsky, dean of the UC Berkeley law school, in a New York Times op-ed. Wrote the dean, “The most basic principles of democracy are that the candidate who gets the most votes is elected and that every voter gets an equal say…” That very nearly did not happen this time.

 

        Until very late in the process, most polls showed the vote nearly even on the recall itself, a “no” essentially a vote for Newsom. No replacement candidate came near Schwarzenegger’s 2003 performance.

 

        If the “yes” side on the recall question had won, while the eventual replacement winner got less votes than the “no” side on that question, that would have meant two things: Newsom essentially would have been desired by more voters than the figure replacing him, and a vote for Newsom counted less than a vote for the replacement winner.

 

        This appears to fly in the face of the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark one-person, one-vote decision and even if defeated on the yes-or-no question, Newsom would appear to have had grounds for a constitutional lawsuit seeking to stay in office.

 

        As unlikely as the high court would be to accept such a case, the message is clear:

 

        This system must change, especially with recall petition campaigns and elections growing more common as time goes by and more voters feeling disgruntled and poorly represented.

 

        All it would take is one small change to the current system and things would be constitutionally hunky-dory: Place the incumbent on the candidate list. Another potential change: Setting up a runoff vote for cases where no replacement candidate wins a majority vote.

 

        There’s every reason to expect state legislators will make at least the change inserting the recall target’s name onto the candidate list, if only to help themselves if and when their own recall moments arrive.

       

        -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

NEWSOM SURVIVES, BUT MAY BE WEAKENED

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “NEWSOM SURVIVES, BUT MAY BE WEAKENED”

 

        The conventional wisdom is that beating back the recall election that targeted him actually strengthened Gov. Gavin Newsom. There is talk of an easy reelection next year, possibly followed by a run for the Senate in 2024 or even a 2024 presidential run.

 

      But this election wasn’t as easy as the final numbers make it seem, and Newsom made myriad mistakes while eventually managing to thwart the attempt to fire him 14 months before the end of the term he won in 2018.

 

        What’s more, while Newsom figures to top the Democratic slate next year, he might face tough opposition in the June primary election.

 

        If the recall demonstrated anything, it was that Newsom has made many enemies since his 2018 election by a near-record 62-38 percent margin over Republican John Cox.

 

        Partly that could be chalked up to the pandemic, in which he made public health-motivated moves like ordering the vast majority of the populace into lockdowns within their homes – if they had homes. He closed businesses and churches, shut down most public transit and generally disabled everyday life in California, all via executive orders enabled by a state of emergency he called without consent or input from the state Legislature.

 

        This brought accusations of dictatorial, one-size-fits-all behavior.

 

        Despite all this, Newsom managed to keep all previously well-known Democrats off the ballot’s replacement governor list.

 

        He may not do so well at disciplining his party next spring. Newsom could face challenges from the likes of former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, his defeated 2018 primary opponent, and he might be challenged by newcomers like Kevin Paffrath of Ventura, the 29-year-old financial blogger who won more votes than any other Democrat among the corps of replacement candidates.

 

        There will surely be plenty of Republican opposition in the June vote, too. That election will run on the “Top Two” system sometimes called the “jungle primary,” where the two leading vote-getters face off again in the November general election even if one of them wins a majority in the primary.

 

      Republicans who might run again next year certainly include talk show host Larry Elder, the leading replacement candidate who opposes virtually all government regulations as he is a GOP figure. In the recall, Elder promised to end all state restrictions on public gatherings and any government vaccination and masking mandates.

 

        He ran, in short, as the anti-Newsom from the day he forced his way onto the ballot over objections from the Newsom-appointed secretary of state, who noted some incomplete portions of tax records he was compelled to make public.

 

        Another Republican likely to show up for the primary is former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, who ran a very conventional campaign this year and must get more imaginative to have a significant chance next spring. Faulconer also could use a charisma transplant.

 

        Cox, too, might take another shot despite his abysmal showing in the recall. The San Diego County businessman faced one humiliating moment during a debate when he was interrupted and served a subpoena in a legal case alleging he owes one firm about $100,000 from bills run up during his losing 2018 run.

 

        There’s also Kevin Kiley, a Republican state assemblyman from the Sacramento suburbs who ran during the recall as essentially the purest of the GOP possibilities. Kiley was given to purveying the occasional disprovable half-truth during his run.

 

        This didn’t get many votes in 2021, but things could be different in June, when the electorate may be far larger than this month’s.

Any of these Republicans could also run for the U.S. Senate against appointed Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla.

 

        Newsom remains the central figure in all this. Just as in 2018, he overcame admitted moral failings in the recall election, but things like his too-large and too-inside birthday dinner for a lobbyist pal may rise up again and strike him down if there are other major Democrats and not just Republicans in the June field.

 

        All of which means that even though we know who will serve as California governor for the next year, things remain unsettled beyond that. For Newsom most likely emerges from the recall somewhat weakened, rather than strengthened like most other politicians who survive recall elections.

 

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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

EXPECT A REBELLION AGAINST KEY HOUSING BILLS

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “EXPECT A REBELLION AGAINST KEY HOUSING BILLS”

 

        Self-congratulations flowed easily the other day among ultra-liberal state legislators after they passed the two most far-reaching housing bills of this year and this century.

 

        These are Senate Bills 9 and 10, whose aim is to end single family zoning in most parts of California and allow far more housing density at the will of property owners, even in most fire zones. About the only limit on this freedom to create urban blight is a floor on the size of affected lots. If your property is smaller than 2,400 square feet, you are not free to subdivide it at will.

 

        For the last four years, this assault on neighborhoods has been a pipe dream of Scott Wiener, the increasingly radical, pro-developer Democratic state senator from San Francisco. The state Senate’s president, Democrat Toni Atkins of San Diego, is almost equally involved.

 

        Before they break their arms while patting themselves on the back, these two lawmakers might want to examine the new realities of California's referendum politics.

 

        Even more than it has been since the initiative era began in the early 1970s, this state is a populist place. When lawmakers pass a widely disliked bill, voters now are likely to rise up and strike it down, just as disgruntled voters also created the recall movement against Gov. Gavin Newsom.

 

        Few bills in recent years have been more widely unpopular than SB 9 and 10 among dedicated voters who participate without fail in every election.

 

        More than three dozen city and county governments in all parts of California took official stances against the two bills. Not only do they promise to blight existing neighborhoods, scores of elected city council and county board members said, but the two bills ignore the obvious and far less intrusive solution to California’s housing shortage: make housing from the billions of vacant square feet now languishing without renters in office buildings.

 

        This would create more units much faster than the haphazard new construction called for in SB 9 and 10, without expanding existing footprints or destroying anyone’s home environment.

 

        Meanwhile, the two bills figure to be precisely that destructive to many folks who have invested their life savings in homes they love.

 

        SB 9, for example, allows any lot currently zoned R1 for a single home to be split in two, with two duplexes on each half. Add to each half a “granny” unit previously authorized by the state and you could have six units where there is now one. All without any affordability requirements.

 

        Developers would get even richer. Building trades unions love this, too, for the jobs it would create. Both special interests lobbied for this bill and will exploit it to the hilt. Picture developers with fat bankrolls prowling through neighborhoods while flashing their wads. Or Wall Street expanding its current expansive housing purchases.

 

        Then there’s SB 10, allowing up to 10 units on any lot or parcel if a city council OKs it, regardless of any land-use plan voters may have passed. Once this bill is signed, city and county officials whose campaigns are often funded by developers and construction unions can override any local initiative that limits building, no matter how large its vote margin may have been.

 

        One real aim of this, speculated Palo Alto Councilman Eric Filseth, a former mayor, might be to discourage local land-use initiatives altogether. “Who’s going to mount the time and expense of a voter initiative if they know some government branch might simply set it aside?” he said in an email.

 

        But wait: Homeowners can do the same thing to these two bills that bail bondsmen did last November to a bill that passed handily with the aim of ending cash bail in California: They can run a referendum to kill it, and such an effort has already begun.

 

 For sure, any measures that draw as much civic opposition as SB 9 and 10 are guaranteed to be challenged. Once a referendum against any bill qualifies for a vote, that new law can’t be applied until after the vote on the referendum.

 

        Which means it’s not yet panic time for homeowners who want to preserve their neighborhoods.

       

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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

UC BECOMING MORE CALIFORNIAN

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “UC BECOMING MORE CALIFORNIAN”

       

        Up until this summer, it has been very sensible for the last decade to ask who the University of California really belongs to.

 

        But as students return to UC’s 10 campuses after the last year’s pandemic absences and remote classes, they and future applicants for slots at the system’s most desired locations can be assured that UC belongs more now to Californians than it has for quite a while.

 

        This is one result of the surprising flood of money that arrived in state coffers as the coronavirus pandemic began to ease last spring.

 

        The question of who UC really belonged to arose during the Great Recession that began about 13 years ago, as the university system started admitting more and more out-of-state and foreign students to help make up funding cuts inflicted by then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and state legislators of the time.

 

        Over the first 12 years of this boom, foreign and out-of-state enrollment boom at UC – some of whose campuses are regularly listed among the top five public universities in America and the world – rose from 5 percent to more than 21 percent. UC administrators led by former President Janet Napolitano conceded the $26,000+ in extra tuition paid by each child of an Arab oil sheik or a Chinese multi-millionaire or government-subsidized student from any of myriad other places had a lot to do with their vastly increased numbers on campuses like Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego.

 

        Meanwhile, the proportion of highly-eligible California high school graduates who actually went to UC fell despite supposed guarantees of a slot somewhere in the university.

 

        Around the beginning of 2015, administrators began to take heat over this. One result: they upped in-state admissions by about 5,000 annually for a couple of years.

 

        But now comes the unexpected post-pandemic windfall, fueled in part by federal coronavirus recovery funds. In the budget bill passed last June, legislators earmarked some of this newly-found cash to make UC still more Californian.

 

        In a year with record numbers of applications, especially to Berkeley, UCLA and San Diego, legislators decided to let UC admit more than 6,000 more California kids than usual, essentially bumping the same number of out-of-state and foreign applicants for the 2022-23 academic year. The university will get $1.3 billion each of the next few years to substitute for what it otherwise would have pocketed from non-resident tuition.

 

        It amounts to a reduction in the non-resident student population at the three big campuses from 22 to 18 percent, still enough to give each campus geographic variety, but enabling thousands of Californians to stay closer to home. Many students qualified for UC but not admitted over the last few years have ended up at private colleges or in other states.

 

        It will end up seeing about 4,500 more California students getting the education they need and desire, and might contribute to stemming the outflow of recent college graduates that contributed to California’s first-ever population loss last year.

 

        California State University campuses were not left out. They will get enough funds from the windfall to expand enrollment by about 9,400 in a year when numbers at community colleges have dropped somewhat.

 

        One legislative sponsor of the expanded higher education budget called the new money “transformational.” Said Democratic Assemblyman Kevin McCarty of
Sacramento, “We will be funding the largest expansion of higher education access in a generation.”

 

        Gov. Gavin Newsom loved the move, which

mollified one set of disgruntled Californians who might have taken their resentment out on him – parents and other relatives of rejected UC applicants.

 

        There is also money for new classroom buildings and new student housing, those funds to be split among UC’s nine undergraduate campuses.

 

        Extra money headed to the Cal State system will allow Humboldt State in Arcata to become a polytechnic college, focusing on science, technology and math and let Cal State Northridge create a center to guarantee racial and ethnic equity in the same STEM areas.

 

        This is a move that’s difficult to criticize because it can’t help making California’s universities more useful to the Californians who fund them.

       

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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

    

WHAT CALIFORNIA WOULD GET WITH LARRY ELDER

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
   “WHAT CALIFORNIA WOULD GET WITH LARRY ELDER”

 

        Election results matter. This would become ever more clear if, despite some constitutional objections to the recall rules, far-right talk show host Larry Elder becomes governor of the nation’s largest state with 20 or 30 percent of the vote, or even less. If this happens, California would surely see big changes over the next year.

 

        Whether they’d last longer would depend on whether Elder could hang onto the office he might soon win.

 

        For sure, if he wins, Elder, the current poll leader among replacement candidates, will face a strong Democrat next fall – if he’s even one of the two top vote-getters in a June primary election to be run on a completely different system than the recall vote.

 

        Elder says he’ll be in the primary win or lose this month. He could face the infuriated possible ex-Gov. Gavin Newsom in that primary. All polls and analysts this summer provided the expectation that Newsom would win far more “no” votes on the recall – essentially votes for him – than Elder or any other hopeful on the replacement list could draw, so Elder would have plenty to overcome next year.

 

        Elder and Newsom would also get opposition from within their parties. Democratic Party leaders helped Newsom keep all their significant party mates out of the recall race, but that prohibition would not carry into the primary.

 

        If he wins the recall, expect Elder to vie not just with Newsom again, but also at least one or two other major Democrats. Leading replacement Democrat Kevin Paffrath says he’ll run. Former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, overshadowed in the recall by Elder’s following as a celebrity, is almost sure to run. San Diego County businessman John Cox, who lost to Newsom by 24 percent in 2018, could make a third run.

 

        But even if Elder didn’t make the primary’s top two, he would still have 14 months as governor and could do a lot.

 

Foremost, Elder pledged to cancel all state vaccination requirements, but said he would leave some local masking mandates up to local authorities and school districts, unlike the universal cancellations Republican Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas imposed on their Covid-plagued states.

 

Then, if anything happens to 88-year-old U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein in the next year, he would appoint a Republican successor, costing Democrats control of the Senate.

 

Elder also could remove all the members of every major state board except the Public Utilities Commission and the boards that run the state’s colleges and universities. He might replace the full membership of the Air Resources Board with folks wanting to let car companies produce as much smog as they like.

 

        He says he does not deny climate change, but could appoint Energy Commission members opposed to the current emphasis on renewable power. He figures to attempt giving farmers a free hand dealing with migrant workers.

 

        That would be in the name of free enterprise and freedom from regulation, even if Elder has spoken mostly in generalities while campaigning.

 

        The state would also learn about government by veto override. Elder promises to nix many bills legislators routinely pass. Compromise is not often in his rhetoric,

 

        But Democrats hold majorities in both the state Assembly and Senate well above the two-thirds needed to override vetoes – and they’d surely use that ability if Elder tries to thwart them.

 

        Then there would be judges. Elder could not change much at California’s Supreme Court and the various Courts of Appeal, as they won’t have many openings within the next year.

 

        But in local Superior Courts, where many issues are first decided and where timely decisions can decide matters before appeals run their course, Elder could place scores of like-minded folks to exert a libertarian influence.

 

        For sure, women’s rights would not advance, since Elder has said that women would often be wise not to object to sexual harassment.

 

        It all could produce an approach to governing California has not seen in the modern era, with property rights taking precedence over human rights for the first time in decades and any fight against racial bias at least on hiatus until 2023. For sure, Californians would learn once more why elections matter.

 

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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

WHO WILL VOTE? TURNOUT (OR MAIL-IN) THE KEY TO NEWSOM SURVIVAL

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14, 2021, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
        “WHO WILL VOTE? TURNOUT (OR MAIL-IN) THE KEY TO NEWSOM SURVIVAL”

 

        All it will take for Gavin Newsom to survive and serve the remaining year of his term as governor is for most people who have voted for him before either to go to California’s relatively few remaining polling places today (editors: if using this column before Sept. 14, say either “Tuesday” or “Sept. 14,” here as you deem appropriate) or mark their ballots and stick them in a mailbox.

 

        That’s a simple formula, but it’s far from certain Democrat Newsom can pull it off.

 

        Some reports on polling have stated that Newsom has lost significant ground among likely voters over the last several months. That’s not exactly what the polls themselves show. An often-cited Emerson College survey out in late July showed that among likely voters over the previous two months, support for the “no” side on the recall question went from 42-37 percent to 48-43 percent. That means previously undecided likely voters who made up their minds during those months broke about evenly between yes and no.

 

        But among all registered voters – where Democrats have almost a 2-1 margin – the no side retained the same 16-point lead it held even before the recall was certified for a special election vote.

 

        Newsom’s challenge has been twofold as the recall voting deadline approaches: He needs to retain all the likely voters who sided with keeping him in office, while motivating many registered voters who don’t always actually cast ballots to mark and mail the ones sent to them.

 

        All the evidence says he has not approached this in a convincing enough manner. Until very recently, Newsom’s main way of communicating with voters was via television commercials and frequent bill-signings and emergency proclamations conducted at points all around the state.

 

        He’s spent a considerable portion of the $50 million-plus raised for his defense on TV spots trying to label the vote a “Republican Recall,” using as evidence the fact that no major Democrats entered the replacement candidate field.

 

        There’s no question the recall was led by far-right Republicans from the beginning, but Newsom’s outright hypocrisy in last fall’s French Laundry restaurant incident and the way he’s been painted – falsely – as hypocritical in the more recent day camp incident where his son was photographed without a mask also have contributed.

 

        The day camp episode, where his son was verified to have removed a mask just before a photo was taken, and then put it back on afterward, may have been misreported, but it’s hurt Newsom, anti-maskers asking why Newsom’s kid was mask-free while their own children must cover up. Never mind that the boy was only mask free for moments.

 

        The hypocrisy and the series of lockdowns and seemingly endless changes in COVID-19 and Delta variant rules imposed by Newsom’s administration took their toll among Democrats and no-party-preference voters, not just Republicans. Otherwise, the recall could not be running well ahead of Republican voter registration.

 

Newsom’s best bet in defending himself was always to exploit the massive California unpopularity of ex-President Donald Trump and play up his links to leading GOP replacement candidates. There are plenty of photos, for example, of ex-San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer with Trump, plenty of documents showing Trump’s enthusiastic 2018 endorsement of San Diego area businessman John Cox and plenty of evidence linking talk show host Larry Elder with several former top aides to Trump.

 

But Newsom’s campaign did not stress any of that until very recently, after many voters had made up their minds, some already having cast their ballots. In short, Newsom hasn’t exploited the major weaknesses of the recall and its backers, insufficiently playing up both replacement candidates’ links to Trump and the longtime extremist, anti-vaccination (of all types) records of many recall originators and early leaders.

 

So, as noted by Mark DiCamillo, co-director of the

UC-Berkeley IGS poll, this election, like all others, will be decided by those motivated to vote, not those who merely register. We will very soon know whether Newsom has done enough to motoivate voters deemed by pollsters as unlikely to cast ballots, but the early signs are this will be a close call at best for the sitting governor.

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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 

HIGH TIME TO TAX THE UNVAXXED

 

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2021 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

     “HIGH TIME TO TAX THE UNVAXXED”

 

        California has tried paying people to get vaccinated against the coronavirus plague. That only helped a little. Some counties are trying out banning the unvaccinated from gyms, restaurants and public gatherings. That also is making only a small dent in the corps of uninoculated.

 

        Many of the unvaccinated still cling to false beliefs and shibboleths long pushed by anti-vaccination lobbyists even in the halcyon days before COVID-19 caused lockdowns, showdowns and myriad business failures.

 

        There’s the myth that vaccines can create zombies, a distortion of a 1990s film. There’s the false belief that minuscule tracking devices are injected into the arms of millions right along with vaccines. There’s the conviction once pushed on the internet that getting jabbed will somehow make you a clone of billionaire Bill Gates – minus the bank account. There’s also the belief that God will somehow protect the unvaccinated.

 

        Even that last has proven invalid, as some of the most moral, observantly religious folks in America have been infected and died.

 

        As non-vaccinated element clings to such beliefs, pushed on some social media outlets, the vaccinated are paying for their fellow citizens’ stubbornness in inconvenience and out-of-pocket dollars.

 

        Not only must the vaccinated now carry proof of that status, either electronic or on small white cards handed out along with Covid shots, but they’re also back to masking, once again waiting for elective surgeries in some hospitals because of Covid case crowding and suffering occasional “breakthrough” infections of their own, even if those are mild compared to what’s hitting the unvaccinated.

 

        Health insurance premiums are going up again in part because of emergency room and intensive care unit costs rung up by the unvaccinated. Schools and stores must disinfect almost everything in sight, and frequently. Airlines and other public transit must keep sanitizing.

 

        All this because of the persistently unvaccinated among us, who insist their unfounded fears trump the rights of the majority, who have gotten vaxxed in order to be safer and more free.

 

        It’s time to make them pay. Why should responsible citizens pay for the stupidity of the willingly unvaccinated, folks who are eligible and medically able to be inoculated, but refuse nevertheless?

 

        So let’s tax them. If travelers want to ride trains or airplanes without vaccinations, let them, so long as they can show a very recent negative test for the virus. But make them pay extra for the privilege, just as most airlines now charge for checked baggage.

 

        Even athletic leagues are beginning to “tax” their members if significant numbers of players refuse to get vaccinated, and with no protests from any team.  The Pac 12 conference, for example, declared the other day its schools will forfeit games when they have to be cancelled and one side is “at fault.” Same with the Big 12. No one explained what “at fault” means, but the clear implication was that if significant numbers are not vaccinated on a team that cannot play because of a Covid outbreak, that club will forfeit and the other side will get a win in the standings.

 

        More and more employers are also getting savvy, setting deadlines by which their workers must be vaccinated or be gone. That’s a very effective way to tax the unvaccinated, and might motivate enough people to help bring California to the herd immunity needed for unmasking and more freedoms.

 

        Cruise lines are doing the same, some refusing to carry the unvaccinated and others charging those who refuse inoculations extra to cover the expense of regular COVID-19 tests.

 

        Yet, the unvaccinated continue to insist they are within their rights. Yes, they do have the right to be unvaccinated, but no, they do not have the right to impose inconvenience, contagion or expenses on others.

 

        This may be one time when movie muscleman and ex-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said it best. “Screw your freedom!” he said on CNN. “With freedom come obligations and responsibilities; you cannot just say, ‘I have the right to do X,Y or Z. When you affect other people, that’s when it gets serious.”

 

        The pandemic is once again serious today, which makes it high time to give the stubbornly unvaccinated a big push. If that means taxation in various forms, so be it.

       

 
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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