OBAMA-PERRY ‘BORDER WAR’ FACTS INDICATE AREA SAFER

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2011 OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“OBAMA-PERRY ‘BORDER WAR’ FACTS INDICATE AREA SAFER”

As they debate at long distance while barnstorming the country to raise both money and their own prospects in next year’s election, no disagreement between President Obama and Texas Gov. Rick Perry is sharper than their dispute over the status of the Mexican border.

Obama made the statement that ignited this rhetorical battle while on a trip to the border city of El Paso, Tex., last summer. “The border is safer than it’s ever been,” he declared.

It was clear Obama referred only to the United States side of the line stretching from Brownsville on the Gulf of Mexico to San Ysidro on the Pacific Ocean just south of San Diego. That’s because no one who’s not either crazy or completely ignorant could make such a statement about the Mexican side of the border, where murders occur slightly more than daily in Juarez, less than two miles from the spot where Obama spoke.

Perry, too, has discussed only the American side of the border as he seeks the Republican nomination to oppose Obama next year, knowing that no U.S. or state official can immediately pacify the drug cartel wars raging in many parts of Mexico.

Obama, Perry said, either “has some of the poorest intel of a president in the history of this country or he was an abject liar to the American people.” He also laments having had to spend about $400 million in state funds for border-related public safety projects over his 11 years as governor.

But the facts, as reported by the FBI, appear to indicate Perry is wrong.

How safe or dangerous are border cities? In California, surprisingly, they have lately been far safer than many places far from the southern border. This holds true both for murders per 1,000 population and for overall crime rates in the FBI's report on 2010.

San Diego, parts of which abut Mexico, had just 29 murders last year, less than one for every 50,000 population and far fewer than the 174 recorded in the much smaller city of New Orleans, nowhere near a border. There were no murders in Calexico, opposite the Baja California capital of Mexicali, which has seen its share of drug war violence. Nor were there any in Nogales, Ariz. – and those are the centers of the three busiest border crossing areas west of El Paso. Meanwhile, there were 62 killings in Nogales, Sonora, Mexico – directly across the border from its American namesake.

When it comes to overall crime, the East Bay city of Richmond – about 450 miles from the border – ranked sixth in the nation. Compton, in Los Angeles County, was eighth, Vallejo 33^rd, San Bernardino 34^th, Stockton 39^th and Salinas 57^th. Per capita, those were the most dangerous places in California. Not one is a border town or at all close to Mexico. Los Angeles, for purposes of comparison, was No.158 in per capita crime, and San Diego ranked No. 221 nationally. Chula Vista, barely north of the border, was No. 246.

It’s the same in Texas, where the Corpus Christi, not far from the border, is No. 142 and the direct border town Laredo ranks No. 144. El Paso, where Obama spoke, had the 275^th highest crime rate out of 350 cities listed. All had far lower crime rates than big Texas cities like Austin, Houston and San Antonio.

So maybe it’s Perry who has poor intelligence. For even as their crime rates dropped, border towns in his state like Laredo and Brownsville saw population growth topping 25 percent over the last 10 years – mostly Mexican immigrants. El Paso grew about 15 percent, but its crime rate also dropped.

When Perry voices false implications about violence spreading to the U.S. side of the border, he infuriates some Latinos, who believe he’s essentially accusing Hispanics of being a violent element, something substantially debunked by the FBI numbers.

Perry sometimes portrays himself as a moderate on immigration issues because of he’s supported in-state tuition for undocumented immigrant students who are working toward legal status.

But Frank Sharry, head of the immigrants’ rights group America’s Voice, says “He is no moderate. He opposes any talk of comprehensive immigration reform until ‘the border is secured first’ – which in current-day Republican speak means ‘comprehensive immigration reform never.’”

Sharry and other Latino leaders were also upset when Perry in Republican debates stressed his support for laws like those in Alabama and Arizona, which require police to demand documents from anyone they suspect might be here illegally.

The bottom line on this verbal clash between Obama and Perry: It might help Perry a little in primary elections dominated by the far right and the Tea Party, but if he manages to become the Republican nominee next year, this will hurt him against Obama.

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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

BARKING UP THE WRONG TECHNOLOGY TREES?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 2011, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“ BARKING UP THE WRONG TECHNOLOGY TREES?”

While many of its roads and bridges and hospitals remain potholed or potential hazards whenever the next major earthquake strikes, California and its enablers in the federal government nevertheless remain determined to pour billions of dollars into two types of large infrastructure projects: high speed rail and large-scale solar thermal farms.

Voters approved one of these large investments (high speed rail), while state legislators and two governors have pushed the other (big solar).

But there are many who claim both efforts aim to use outmoded and needlessly expensive technology.

The most obvious problems lie with high speed rail, where even review committees created by the state’s High Speed Rail Commission have concluded that spending estimates in the 2008 ballot proposition that authorized the project were far too low, while ridership and revenue estimates were much too high.

Some in the rail industry say all that could be mitigated with a combination of different technology and a route change that would take the planned bullet trains up the Interstate 5 corridor en route from Los Angeles to San Francisco rather than roughly paralleling State Route 99 through Bakersfield, Fresno and Merced before heading into the San Francisco Bay area.

Rather than building traditional tracks, these people suggest using magnetic levitation (maglev) trains running on elevated viaducts that allow cross traffic to move easily beneath them and never run the risk of hitting pedestrians.

“Bullet trains are obsolete, at the end phase of their development,” says Rick Canine, an executive of Federal Maglev Inc., which claims it could build the California system for about $14 million per mile, rather than the $56 million per mile estimated in the state’s most recent plan.

Canine claims maglev trains would have a top speed of 300 miles per hour in long runs through rural country, while the high speed rail proposition promised a maximum speed of 220 mph, but would actually almost never exceed 190. Maglev trains, he says, could safely go 150 mph in urban and suburban areas, while bullet trains would never exceed 110 in those places.

Yes, Canine has a financial interest in maglev. But that doesn’t make him wrong. Especially since the reality is that maglev trains in Japan have actually run at 360 mph and could go 400. They don’t, though, mostly because the faster a maglev train runs, the more electricity it consumes.

Rather than rails, maglev trains run on concrete beds with embedded magnets that repulse other magnets on skis beneath lightweight aluminum passenger cars. Lack of steel rails is one reason for the lower construction costs.

Then there are the lower maintenance costs of maglev. A 19-mile maglev line in Shanghai, China, for example, used just two weeks of labor in its first eight years of operation, according to a report presented at a 2010 international symposium on maglev. Rails require far more maintenance.

Which makes this is a technology deserving of a far stronger and longer look than the California commission has given it.

Then there’s solar thermal electricity production, being pushed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the state Energy Commission and the big Southern California Edison utility as part of meeting the state’s newly adopted requirement that one-third of California’s power come from renewable sources by 2020.

Not only will the huge complexes of solar panels now being placed in the Mojave Desert near Barstow and Blythe consume many thousands of acres, they also require construction of hundreds of miles of new power lines, and that guarantees higher rates for utility users than if the solar power were produced closer to where consumers live.

Building those lines will cost billions of dollars, all added to utility company rate bases. A major component of electricity pricing is the “rate of return” (yearly profit percentage) utility companies get on their rate base, the total they’ve spent over the last 20 years on facilities and equipment. The current estimate for building just one of those lines is $750 million and there could eventually be as many as five of them.

It’s true Brown has also pushed for large-scale new installations of rooftop photovoltaic solar panels in Los Angeles, San Diego and other places as another renewable energy source. Expanding that initiative would likely prove far cheaper and more efficient than building the solar farms, even though the federal government has pledged about $6 billion in loan guarantees for the bigger projects.

It all suggests a lack of thorough thought and analysis of the most modern and effective technologies that are now available to California and raises doubts over whether the state and its taxpayers and consumers really should spend more than $60 billion over the next 30 years on technologies already look outmoded.

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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

RANKED-CHOICE VOTING GETS ANOTHER TEST IN SF

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
“RANKED-CHOICE VOTING GETS ANOTHER TEST IN SF”

From the moment election results were finalized in Oakland last fall, there was whining from the losers. There’s no other word for it.

Just as every candidate in next month’s election for mayor of San Francisco knows the voting will involve a “ranked-choice” system, everyone on the Oakland ballot knew that city would use the same system for the first time in its history.

This meant voters there didn’t cast ballots just for a favorite mayoral candidate, but also made second and third choices. They ranked their choices, thus indicating who they thought they’d pick if there had been a runoff election later.

That’s why ranked-choice is often also called “instant runoff” voting. If no one candidate gets 50 percent or more of the first-place votes, ballots cast for the last-place candidate are re-examined and their second choices registered instead. If there’s still no majority after the bottom finisher’s votes are reallocated, then the same happens to the next candidate up the list, until someone finally gets a majority.

It’s unlikely and unusual for the original leader to be displaced this way, but the unlikely happened in Oakland last fall, just as it has two other times in elections for city-county supervisor in San Francisco, and the whining took months to stop.

The Oakland “victim” was Don Perata, who represented that city or parts of it for more than 20 years as a county supervisor, state assemblyman and state senator, including a few years as president of the state Senate. Perata is a Democrat, like almost everyone elected in Oakland and San Francisco over the last quarter century. He was the object of a corruption investigation that left him legally unscathed but with a diminished standing among many voters. He’s a polarizing figure, and that cost him dearly in his latest campaign.

Perata won 35 percent of the vote on Nov. 2 to just 25 percent for city Councilwoman Jean Quan. But Quan won the election because so few of those who voted for the other eight candidates listed Perata among their top three picks. In short, some voters chose to express an “anyone but Perata” sentiment – and they got someone else.

Complained Perata, “I defeated Jean Quan in 78 percent of the precincts. If this had been a normal election, I’d have been the landslide winner. I didn’t understand it enough. I ran the way I normally would.” San Francisco candidates take note.

Perata lost essentially because Quan encouraged supporters of her friend and fellow Councilwoman Rebecca Kaplan, the third-place finisher, to list her second and never mention Perata.

Quan won because 75 percent of Kaplan’s backers listed her second or third, and Quan eventually got all those votes.

“I think people were confused,” Perata told a reporter afterward. “Most of us go in to vote for one person, for one office. Now there are shades and degrees of who should be first, second and third. It’s just very different from what we’re accustomed to.”

But voters apparently understood quite well. They voted in the system in 2006, as a way to save the money spent on special elections and also to shorten the process. It was used in 2008 elections for city council.

Non-Perata voters questioned in an informal poll afterward all said they couldn’t stomach him being their mayor. They claimed that if there had been a Perata-Quan runoff, they would never have backed the longtime pol. In the end, Quan was listed on 51 percent of ballots, Perata on 49 percent. Of course, if some additional weight were given to first-place votes, Perata might have won. But that’s not how the system is designed.

Given the close margin, Perata’s campaign manager might have been right when he complained that his side assiduously avoided negative advertising, while Quan urged voters to snub Perata entirely.

Said campaign chief John Whitehurst to another reporter, “I think less than 5 percent of the people understand ranked-choice voting…choosing a leader is not about a game of ‘Survivor’ on TV. It’s just not.”

But it apparently is in the half-dozen places where voters have opted for this system. And even if you believe voters don’t understand the system they’ve chosen for themselves, it’s still your obligation as a candidate to understand it yourself and act accordingly.

Perata did not do that; Quan did and she won. All of which made the whining that followed completely unjustified. If something similar happens in San Francisco next month, any whining will also be uncalled for.

If Perata supporters had stayed unhappy, they could have tried to change the system back. But they didn’t and the bet here is that this system will eventually come to many more places because it saves money and lets people who really despise a particular candidate make their feelings mean something.

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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

NO NEW TAXES TRANSLATED: DO IT YOURSELF

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2011, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS

“‘NO NEW TAXES TRANSLATED: DO IT YOURSELF”

No slogan is more popular among conservative politicians in California, nationally and internationally than “no new taxes.” Almost no Republican gets anywhere without signing a pledge never to approve new levies of any kind for any reason. Violating the pledge is political death.

So GOP state legislators this year repeatedly refused compromises offered by Gov. Jerry Brown that could have created a bit of new revenue for the state in exchange for some breaks that business lobbies long have sought.

But until last month, no one had pierced to the core of what politicos really mean when they say “no new taxes.” Then Republican state Sen. Sharon Runner of Lancaster issued a press release telling Californians how to respond to the state’s budget crisis:

“Now is the time to get a dog, buy a gun and install an alarm system,” she instructed. “The state of California is no longer going to protect you.” (On her Web site at http://cssrc.us/web/17/news.aspx?id=11317)

Specifically, Runner referred to the state’s plan – due to start this month – for remanding thousands of “low-level” convicts from state prisons back to county jails, which are already so cash-strapped they often hold misdemeanor offenders for only a fraction of their sentences.

Why did Brown spur legislation to allow this? Mainly because the state, as Runner said in the same press release, “is out of money.”

Runner did not go further than addressing some public safety aspects of the latest cutbacks and the further reductions likely to come in January. But she could apply the same self-sufficiency message much more widely.

Chop the public school budget any more than it already has been and maybe she’ll tell all parents to home-school their kids, or at least buy their own shoulder pads and kicking tees if they want them to play football. Never mind if they don't have the money. Or she could tell parents without health insurance of their own to make sure they have good coverage for their kids, because not many school nurses are left.

Cut millions from state parks and close 70 of them, as is already happening, and maybe she’ll tell Californians to make sure they have big back yards to camp in, because the state won’t be providing anywhere near as many campgrounds as before. Get a fire extinguisher or a swimming pool full of water and a good hose and pump, because there will be far fewer firefighters.

These messages could be almost straight from the rhetoric of Ron Paul, the longtime Texas congressman and Libertarian favorite who not coincidentally won the presidential straw poll at the California Republican Party’s fall convention.

Paul’s basic message is that government should not be doing most of the things it has long done nationally and in this state. He draws the line at the military, but almost everything else is fair game. With him as the California party’s most popular figure and his ideas its favorites, who can be surprised when Republicans cast votes to decimate all manner of public services?

That’s one reason Brown was correct when he observed in a recent interview with a blogger that Republicans are “embedded in a deep belief system that does not permit any association with something that could be called a tax increase.”

If Republicans cast votes aiming to cut government programs, they don’t mind because they don’t really believe there ought to be many government programs at all – even if private solutions to the problems that might occur would be both chaotic and would cost individuals and families far more than any recently-proposed tax increase.

Because the same principles prevail among national Republicans – Paul won the GOP’s straw vote in Iowa and former pizza executive Herman Cain, with a similar message, won another in Florida – it wasn’t so far-fetched when President Obama told a $35,000-a-plate San Francisco lunch the other day that the GOP vision of government (or non-government) would “fundamentally cripple America.”

And so Republicans say they would oppose any further bailouts of banks, no matter what the consequence for the nation. They opposed funding disaster aid without cuts to other programs, including public health.

It all stems from a conviction that individuals should do almost everything for themselves, with little or no government intervention or help. If that translates to getting a dog, a gun and an alarm system (how many Californians right now have the money to follow that advice, when alarm systems can cost thousands of dollars?) because prisons are being cut and more convicts will be on the streets, so be it.

Thanks to Sharon Runner’s frank, unsolicited and unprecedented translation of the real meaning of her votes and others’, their purpose, intent and potential consequence is now clearer than ever.

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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