California’s massive agriculture industry is China’s top initial target as Beijing responds to the Trump administration’s vow earlier this month to slap tariffs on some $50 billion of Chinese steel and aluminium imports.

In an announcement over the weekend, Chinese trade officials said California’s nuts, fruit and wine were among 128 U.S. imports that would face a new 15 percent tariff upon reaching Chinese shores. The total annual value of the imports is about $3 billion, according to a San Francisco Chronicle report, suggesting that for now Beijing is not eager to escalate its trade dispute with Washington over alleged Chinese steel and aluminum dumping on the international market and theft of U.S. intellectual property.

After Canada and the European Union, China is the third biggest international customer for Golden State agriculture, importing more than $2 billion worth in 2016, according to an official state report. That’s around 10 percent of California’s total of $21 billion in international agricultural exports in 2016. Pistachios, plums, oranges and almonds were the state’s most popular products with Chinese consumers.

Even before the formal Chinese announcement of retaliatory tariffs, many observers were wary of how California could be buffeted by a U.S-China trade war.

“We could be in a really nasty trade spat, and we’ve seen that agriculture is usually a big target. … We are greatly concerned,” a California Farm Bureau Federation official told the Los Angeles Times in a March 2 story. A UC Davis economist interviewed by the Times voiced similar concerns, noting California agriculture is more dependent on international sales than other large agricultural states.

Some farmers welcome fight, cite unfair practices

But in Kern County, according to a Bakersfield Californian report, anxiety was tempered by a sense among some farmers that it was time someone stood up to the unfair trade practices they said they dealt with in the Chinese and South Korean markets.

Dennis Johnston, a partner in Edison-based Johnston Farms, said powerful farming lobbies in the Asian nations had established barriers to California imports that didn’t involve tariffs, such as additional fumigation requirements that cut into California growers’ profits.

It’s nothing new for California agricultural interests to be early targets in trade disputes, including with nominal U.S. trade allies like Canada and Mexico. Because food has a limited shelf life, tariffs can take a relatively quick toll on a targeted nation. Tariffs on familiar consumer products like wine or grapes can also grab headlines in ways that tariffs on machine parts probably can’t. Analysts say that’s why the next target of China after California – at least if Beijing’s trade dispute with the Trump administration escalates – is likely to be pork products from Midwestern states. There would also be a political factor in such a move – these states often swing from party to party and Donald Trump is likely to need some or most to gain re-election in 2020.

But there’s a third view evident in Golden State reaction to China’s tariffs beyond alarm and the belief that some attempt to confront Beijing over its trade practices is necessary. That’s the view that this fight might fizzle out.

In an analysis posted by the Times over the weekend, Richard Matoian, executive director of the California-heavy American Pistachio Growers, said, “From what we’ve seen, the Trump administration can be very unpredictable. … There’s still a month yet before any tariff would take effect, so there’s going to be a lot of political posturing.”

A new government-run retirement program: On Thursday, Gov. Brown signed Senate Bill 1234, which gives legislative approval to the state’s continuing efforts to create a new government-run retirement program for private-sector employees. Once it is up and running, private employers (with five or more employees) will be required to offer this program, whereby 3 percent of each employees’ earnings will be deducted and invested by a state-selected investment group – possibly, the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS).

Employees can opt out. The details are not yet certain, but the goal is to invest the money in a low-risk investment tied to the Treasury bond. Supporters say the law protects taxpayers from incurring more than minimal costs, but critics insist the program could grow and change in ensuing years – and that there’s no way of creating a massive new government program without imposing risks on the state budget.

The idea, which is being pitched in other states too, grew out of union activism. Several years ago, when publicity over unfunded public-pension liabilities began creating pressure for pension reform, union allies wanted to come up with a “positive” rebuttal to all those news stories about six-figure pensions and pension-spiking gimmicks. This idea is designed help private workers.

Putting limits on ‘policing for profit’: One of the most controversial policing strategies in recent years has been “civil asset forfeiture.” Born out of the nation’s drug war in the 1980s, forfeiture was designed to help police agencies crack down on drug kingpins by allowing departments to grab the cash, cars and properties gained through their illegal activities. But like many government programs, asset forfeiture morphed into something its creators never envisioned.

Two of the men who helped create the program in the U.S. Department of Justice, John Yoder and Brad Cates, wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in 2014 pointing to the corruption engendered by this process: “Law enforcement agents and prosecutors began using seized cash and property to fund their operations, supplanting general tax revenue, and this led to the most extreme abuses: law enforcement efforts based upon what cash and property they could seize to fund themselves, rather than on an even-handed effort to enforce the law.”

Basically, police agencies came to depend on the revenue and they distorted their law-enforcement priorities based on the chance to grab more cash. There’s no due process here, given that police agencies file suit against the property itself, alleging it was involved in a drug crime. No conviction is necessary. California had previously passed reforms that mostly required a conviction, but police agencies got around that by partnering with the feds (and operating under looser federal standards) and then splitting the seized property.

Senate Bill 443 was killed last year after lobbying efforts by police chiefs and other law-enforcement agencies. But a fairly recent amendment – allowing cops to still take large amounts of cash without a conviction, but limiting smaller amounts of cash and property takings – eliminated most opposition from law enforcement. The new law is meaningful, and one of the more substantive compromises to take place in Sacramento this year.

Giving the terminally ill the right to try: One of the more significant “freedom” battles this year was over the so-called “right to try” – i.e., the ability of terminally ill patients to try experimental drug treatments that have yet to gain final approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Similar measures have been approved by 31 other states.

The Goldwater Institute, a Phoenix-based free-market think tank, has been championing these measures across the country. As Goldwater explains: “The FDA … often stands between the patients and the treatments that may alleviate their symptoms or provide a cure. To access these treatments, patients must either go through a lengthy FDA exemption process or wait for the treatments to receive FDA approval, which can take a decade or more and cost hundreds of millions of dollars.”

The California law, Assembly Bill 1668, passed overwhelmingly. According to the official bill analysis, it authorizes drug manufacturers to make investigational treatment available “to a patient with a serious or immediately life-threatening disease, when that patient has considered all other treatment options currently approved by the FDA, has been unable to participate in a relevant clinical trial, and for whom the investigational drug has been recommended by the patient’s primary physician and a consulting physician.”

Allowing felons to vote: One of the more controversial new laws, Assembly Bill 2466 by Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, allows felons who are serving their sentence in county jails to vote. The measure was opposed by law-enforcement groups, but Weber argued it would stop discrimination in voting and make it less likely that prisoners would commit new offenses.

“Civic participation can be a critical component of re-entry and has been linked to reduced recidivism,” Weber said, according to a Los Angeles Times report. “For me, this bill is not about second chances, but about maintaining the integrity of elections,” said Sen. Pat Bates, R-Laguna Niguel, in a statement. “Close elections, especially at the local level, could now turn on a handful of ballots cast by people in jail. This new law is bad for democracy and will further erode trust in government.”

Putting self-driving cars on the road: Autonomous vehicle technology has been advancing rapidly, and California is, not surprisingly, ground zero for the development of this important new technology. Gov. Brown signed a bill Thursday “that for the first time allows testing on public roads of self-driving vehicles with no steering wheels, brake pedals or accelerators,” according to a San Jose Mercury News article. “A human driver as backup is not required, but the vehicles will be limited to speeds of less than 35 mph.”

Assembly Bill 1592 itself is rather modest. It provides two spots for such testing – in a San Ramon business park and at the former Concord Naval Weapons Station. And Friday, the California Department of Motor Vehicles released new regulations that are far friendlier toward self-driving cars than the DMV’s previous regulations. So while the new law itself isn’t particularly significant, the state’s new legislative and regulatory approach certainly is. If that approach continues, we’ll be seeing rapid expansion of autonomous vehicles here.

Greenlighting granny flats: The governor’s signing of Senate Bill 1069 shows increasing bipartisan understanding of the state’s skyrocketing home prices. The bill would relax standards for creating ADUs (accessory dwelling units), better known as granny flats.

“Eliminating barriers to ADU construction is a common-sense, cost-effective approach that will permit homeowners to share empty rooms in their homes and property, add incomes to meet family budgets, and make good use of the property in the Bay Area and across California while easing the housing crisis,” according to the bill analysis’ summary of the author’s arguments. The bill embraces a regulatory approach that could be tried with other types of housing.

Steven Greenhut is Western region director for the R Street Institute. He is based in Sacramento. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Enter San Francisco, where officials often don’t play by the normal economic rules. No metropolitan area is more closely identified with the burgeoning high-tech economy than the Bay Area. Yet in June, three of the city’s 11 supervisors proposed a 1.5-percent payroll tax that would be imposed specifically on technology companies that earn $1 million in gross receipts.

This “tech tax” was designed to raise money to battle the city’s homeless problem. But the economic rationale was epitomized in a statement by the bill’s author, Supervisor Eric Mar: “The rapid tech boom in our city and region threatens our city’s ability to thrive and prosper,” he said, in a Guardian report. “Five years after the boom, it’s time for San Francisco to ask the tech companies to pay their fair share.”

Earlier this month, the measure that would have placed the tax proposal on a citywide ballot was defeated in committee. Enough San Francisco legislators apparently understand an idea that goes back to Aesop’s day: Strangling a golden goose is a quick route to poverty. But this won’t be the last San Franciscans will hear about such a tax increase, nor is it the only example of increasing hostility by city officials and local activists to the tech industry.

“Corporate buses that Google and other tech companies (use) to ferry their workers from the city to Silicon Valley, 30 or 40 miles to the south, are being targeted by an increasingly assertive guerrilla campaign of disruption,” according to a 2014 Guardian article. Protesters have blocked buses. A window was busted on one of them. As the article put it, protesters complain that “the tech sector has pushed up housing prices in the city and made it all but unaffordable for anyone without a six-figure salary.” The Google buses make it easier for tech workers to live in beautiful San Francisco, rather than in the more mundane San Jose area.

Likewise, San Francisco supervisors recently passed a law that legalizes short-term rentals in the city, but imposes restrictions on them. Property owners can only rent out their entire house 90 days a year. It must be their primary residency. They must pay hotel taxes. They must follow the city’s rent-control laws. The most controversial element: Hosting sites, such as Airbnb and HomeAway, would be responsible for making sure hosts – i.e., the people who post their homes for rent on company sites – are registered with the city. Airbnb filed a lawsuit arguing the law violates the First Amendment and Communications Decency Act. The latter is a 1996 federal law that protects websites from being held accountable for what individuals post on them.

Advocates for the short-term rental law use a similar argument as those who defend the “tech tax” proposal. They blame these rentals for depleting the city’s housing stock and driving up the cost of apartments. “It is ultimately about corporate responsibility,” according to Supervisor David Campos, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle. “About an industry that has made and continues to make tens of millions of dollars in this line of work taking responsibility for the negative impact that they are having on the housing stock.”

Once again, many San Francisco officials see thriving tech companies as a problem. They blame their success for driving up housings costs. Apparently, the best way to drive down housing costs is to drive businesses – and residents – out of the city. It’s the kind of zero-sum rationale that’s fashionable in San Francisco. Yes, demand drives up costs if – and it’s a big if – supply remains the same. Thanks to strict building restrictions and growth controls throughout the Bay Area, the supply of housing is largely capped.

Within the city of San Francisco, rent control is a staunch disincentive for property owners to rent out their apartments or to invest in the construction of new ones. In essence, a tenant can stay for many years in apartments at below-market rates. Rent increases are capped. Evictions are difficult, thanks to the city’s notoriously pro-tenant rent laws. Over the years, the city has only built a tiny portion of the units needed to keep up with the population growth. The permit process for building anything is costly and cumbersome. Even some state legislators from the Bay Area recognize the need to build more supply, but most proposals are modest or focus on building more subsidized units.

“(O)ver the long run, setting an artificially low price on a product (in this case, apartments) guarantees that the supply of that product will diminish,” explained Peter Byrne in a prescient 2000 San Francisco Weekly article. “Among other things, when people are unable to move – due to excessively high rents – they tend to stay in one place, that is, to hoard their apartments, effectively removing these units from the market.”

Property owners become afraid to rent out their apartments. It’s one thing to rent out an apartment for market-based rents. You can always raise the rent after the lease is up or give tenants notice and move into the building. But in San Francisco, such reasonable behaviors are restricted. As a result, “thousands of units are simply being kept off the market,” according to a 2014 report by KALW. “Some estimate up to 10,000 of these units exist. Many sit unrented because tenants are proving too risky an investment for some property owners.” Tenants can get free attorneys and even tie up legitimate evictions (for nonpayment) in a costly legal process.

By contrast, in the booming city of Tokyo, home prices have been steady for 20 years, according to a new article by Alex Tabarrok for the Foundation for Economic Education. That’s because the city “has a laissez-faire approach to land use.” In 2014, it issued more than 142,000 building permits – far more than the entire number of permits in all of California that year. Yes, even a densely populated city with virtually no vacant land can build its way out of its housing crunch. Keeping supply up also makes it easier to deal with the homeless issue.

The proposed “tech tax” is counterproductive for any number of reasons. “It’s solving a housing crisis by hurting an economy,” said Mark Pincus, founder of Zynga. As Forbes’ Travis Brown reported, “The same innovative individuals who would be paying this 1.5 percent payroll tax already pay 13.3 percent on their earned income (the highest rate in the nation).” San Francisco is a great city, but there are other great cities competing with it for these jobs.

The tax is dead for now, but the same illogical reasoning – and fundamental problem – is alive and well. Why, yes, it might be possible to at least marginally reduce housing prices by chasing jobs and taxpayers away. But is that a road the city wants to travel? Isn’t it far better to try something sensible and create new incentives to create rental properties?

Steven Greenhut is the Western region director for the R Street Institute. He is the founding editor of CalWatchdog. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

This “solvency” issue gives state commissioners broad authority. In the dozen or so states where insurance commissioners are elected, these officials often have their eyes on higher office. For instance, insurance officials and some Sacramento observers argue California’s ambitious commissioner – Dave Jones, a former Democratic assemblyman who is mulling a race for attorney general – is imposing a politically motivated diktat on companies and dressing it up as a campaign for solvency.

The issue: Jones is calling for insurance companies to divest “voluntarily” from their investments in thermal-coal companies and in utility companies that make heavy use of coal. He has vowed to publicize – some say “shame” – insurance companies that don’t comply with the request. Given that 1988’s Proposition 103 grants the California commissioner vast powers to prescribe which factors companies use to adjust rates and to approve or deny proposed rate increases, insurance officials wonder about the voluntary nature of the policy.

The “Climate Risk Carbon Initiative” divestment request applies to direct investments in companies that gain more than 30 percent of their revenues from thermal coal. In practice, these are some of the most conservative investments around, including monopoly utilities whose returns are set by regulation. It also requires insurance companies that do business in the state to answer a variety of questions about such investments, even if they are headquartered outside California. The goal is to pressure companies to divest from these holdings.

“The commissioner decided to request voluntary divestment from thermal coal enterprises this year following consideration of recent studies that show coal investments represent significantly higher financial risk than other investments over time,” the California Department of Insurance explains. “Moreover, since 2011, coal prices, cash flows, and company valuations have fallen sharply, thus adversely affecting and bankrupting numerous coal companies.”

“Politics,” the department says, “has nothing to do with the decision to ask insurers to divest from thermal coal.”

That sounds reasonable, but insurers typically make conservative investment decisions. Jones and other advocates for divestment make it seem as if these companies are heavily invested in high-risk stocks. They suggest these companies will be stuck with enormous “stranded assets” as the nation moves away from coal-based energy and toward alternative-energy sources. But insurance companies hold few coal-related stocks and bonds as a percentage of their overall investments. Even if the “stranded asset” argument were correct, it would barely cause a blip in their portfolios.

In a letter to the insurance commissioner last year, leaders of major insurance-company trade associations reminded him: “For regulated utilities, the risk of loss due to stranded assets is remote. Utility companies operate on a cost-plus system. Precedent is in place that supports the recovery of all costs deemed to have been prudently incurred.”

By contrast, some of the investments the insurance commissioner prefers – in “green” energy, for instance – are risky. As my R Street Institute colleague R.J. Lehmann noted in an article last year, “Greentech Media publishes an annual list of solar company failures and has noted that ‘(k)eeping track of failing solar companies in 2011 and 2012 bordered on full-time work.’”

Why hasn’t the insurance commissioner called for divestment from these companies?

The answer seems obvious. California’s government has embraced climate change in a big way. Gov. Jerry Brown has addressed the United Nations and a conference at the Vatican, where he has depicted the issue in stark terms. In his view, the future of human existence is at stake. California has passed a first-in-the-nation cap-and-trade system to roll back industrial emissions to 1990 levels, along with other legislation designed to decrease public use of petroleum products dramatically. It’s a popular cause here, and isn’t lost on any up-and-coming politician.

Whatever one’s view of man-made climate change, it remains an iffy proposition to suggest it is threatening the long-term solvency of major insurance companies. These investments already reflect the risks involved in the energy sector. Every knowledgeable investor knows about the changing regulatory climate. Private investors are better able than government planners to evaluate such matters and make decisions accordingly.

Indeed, as I pointed out in my recent R Street study, one of the nation’s most widely respected investors, Warren Buffett, recently rejected calls by an activist group and investor in his Berkshire Hathaway Corp. to report on climate-change risks. For instance, many activists argue that insurance companies aren’t properly pricing these risks and aren’t being aggressive enough in tackling the potential long-term problems. Buffett believes in climate change but doesn’t see a risk in his company’s insurance holdings.

“As a citizen, you may understandably find climate change keeping you up nights,” Buffett said in his company report. “As a homeowner in a low-lying area, you may wish to consider moving. But when you are thinking only as a shareholder of a major insurer, climate change should not be on your list of worries.” Buffett suggested even an uptick in the frequency or severity of climate-related catastrophes wasn’t much of a problem for the insurance industry, given that rates are set annually. Moreover, as a major provider of reinsurance – that is, insurance for insurance companies – Berkshire might actually benefit from more demand driven by climate change, given that reinsurance prices have been falling for years.

These companies’ futures depend on their ability to evaluate risks and benefits. They all have teams of actuaries and risk-management professionals who have a vested interest in making the most sophisticated guesses about future events. Elected officials, by contrast, are more apt to be swayed by political winds. A previous Republican insurance commissioner and gubernatorial candidate, Steve Poizner, in 2010 tried to force insurers to divest from investments in multinational companies that did business in Iran. This type of thing is nothing new.

“Divestment comes at the expense of meaningful action,” wrote Frank A. Wolak, director of the Stanford University Program on Energy and Sustainable Development. “It will do nothing to reduce global greenhouse emissions. It will not prevent these companies from raising capital.” And indeed, the state government’s push for divestment in non-insurance areas – i.e., forcing the California Public Employees’ Retirement System to take a similar approach – has been met with a similar backlash.

One can never know the motives of insurance commissioners, past or present. But it’s a safe bet that private investors making their own decisions with their own money are almost certainly more trustworthy than politicians making investment decisions based on the latest political winds. By all means, commissioners should work to assure that insurers can fulfill whatever claims are made in the future – but they shouldn’t bootstrap that legitimate authority into a politically motivated crusade.

Steven Greenhut is the founding editor of CalWatchdog. He is Western region director of the R Street Institute and a Sacramento-based columnist. Write to him at sgreenhut@rstreet.org.

Last June, I wrote a column forecasting which tax increase measures might be on the Nov. 2016 ballot given the conversations going on then.

Time for an update.

As is nearly always the case in the political world, situations and strategies change. What’s being discussed most heavily today is not necessarily what will be pushed to the ballot for voters to decide in 2016.

By measuring fact, rumor and innuendo, I’ll offer my reading of the top five tax possibilities for the Nov. 2016 ballot.

First, a word about those that did not make the list this time. Previously, a soda tax was on the list, but that possibility seems to have faded for the moment.  Instead, advocates are considering labeling sodas with more information about the sugar content.

There is a constant buzz about restructuring the entire tax system and that has been heightened by the introduction of Senate Bill 8, by state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, D-Van Nuys. The bill would re-do the tax system, cut some tax rates and introduce a service tax.

Hertzberg hasn’t developed the plan in full as yet. Both the Left and the Right have attacked the idea. However, he also is working closely with the Think Long Committee for California, which has the resources to qualify a measure for the ballot. As of now, the idea is not ready for consideration.

To the list, then:

5. OIL SEVERANCE TAX. Previous Ranking #3.

Whether the oil severance tax initiative moves forward depends on one man – hedge fund billionaire Tom Steyer. He said he would rather work through the legislative process, but the bill would be unlikely to pass the Legislature.

Steyer also is said to be interested in promoting an initiative that would require a two-thirds vote in local communities to approve fracking for oil. While he has the resources to do more than one measure, the odds are he would focus on just one, if any.

4. SURPLUS! NO NEW TAXES. Previous ranking: Unranked

Okay, this is obviously not a tax-increase measure. However, with the recent announcement of an unexpected $1 billion in the state treasury many experts predict the state budget will have a surplus of $2 billion dollars or more. Under such conditions, some observers suggest new taxes won’t fly with the voters, so why try?

A lot will depend on the fiscal situation heading into next year’s budget. But even if the economy holds steady and the budget is in good shape, it is hard to imagine there won’t be at least one tax-increase measure on next year’s ballot. Still, the chances are more likely today than they were a year ago that a surplus could stall the tax-increase movement.

3. SPLIT ROLL. Previous ranking: #2

There still is an ongoing grassroots effort to promote a split-roll property tax requiring business property to be taxed on a different basis than residential property. While that’s going on, big players have yet to commit to funding such an initiative.

Certainly, there would be big money spent to oppose such a measure. So both sides are considering the issue carefully. The school establishment would have to step up to support a split roll and consider how a property tax on the same ballot with an extension of the Proposition 30 taxes would play.

Also, a state school bond measure may be on the ballot, attracting attention from the school folks. A couple of sources tell me a little air has come out of the split-roll effort. So while it certainly hasn’t gone away, it drops to #3.

2. CIGARETTE TAX: Previous ranking: #4

The possibility of a cigarette tax on the ballot has moved up simply because some of the items in front of it moved down in the rankings. There really hasn’t been a change in the emphasis of a cigarette tax by proponents.

They will try the legislative route, but if unsuccessful will consider going to the ballot, where they were very close to passing a measure the last time they tried. In 2012, Proposition 29 failed, but by a narrow margin of 50.3 percent to 49.7 percent.

1. EXTENSION OF PROPOSITION 30. Previous ranking: #1

No change here. Many insiders believe Proposition 30, the $7 billion tax voters passed in 2012, would be the easiest tax to pass since it is already levied. Especially if the sales tax piece is removed, many voters would not directly feel the tax’s pinch. That would leave only the tax increases on high-incomes, including the 13.3 percent top tax on millionaires.

All the spending interests may not be happy, since schools get most of the money. But extending Prop. 30 still stands as the most likely tax measure to be on the ballot. The biggest question: What will Gov. Jerry Brown say about continuing the “temporary tax”?

Follow Joel Fox on Twitter @1JoelFox1

“This is very good news for the people of Southern California.” So said Erich Pica, president of the outspoken environmental group Friends of the Earth, celebrating in June 2013 the announced closure of San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station.

A year and a half later, the people of Southern California are to be forgiven for thinking the decommissioning of San Onofre anything but very good news. That’s because it will cost them $3.3 billion in higher electricity rates under a settlement approved recently by the California Public Utilities Commission.

And here’s what most business and residential customers of Southern California Edison, San Onofre’s majority owner, and San Diego Gas & Electric, the nuclear plant’s minority owner, don’t know. Friends of the Earth in April this year joined the settlement with Edison and SDG&E that will saddle the utilities’ ratepayers with 75 percent of the total $4.4 billion cost of mothballing San Onofre, with Edison and SDGE shareholders footing the other 25 percent.

That’s not the result Friends of the Earth suggested to Edison and SDG&E ratepayers when they began their campaign in 2012 to Mau-Mau the utilities into decommissioning the nuclear plant.

Indeed, in Jan. 2012, a small radiation leak in one of San Onofre’s twin reactors prompted a temporary shutdown of the plant, during which it was discovered there had been certain wear and tear on tubing within the newly installed steam generators made by Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.

Alarmist

Edison eventually repaired the problems and sought the permission of federal regulators to restart the nuclear plant. But Friends of the Earth insisted San Onofre was inherently unsafe, that it posed “a unique threat to 8 million Californians living within 50 miles” of the nuclear plant just south of San Clemente, and that it should be permanently shut down.

Friends of the Earth’s alarmist campaign ultimately succeeded. San Onofre sat idle for 16 month, costing Edison more than $550 million in repairs and loss of plant revenue.

In October 2012, the anti-nuke activist group argued that “continued operation of San Onofre is not cost effective.”

Edison agreed, with continued uncertainty as to if and when federal regulators would allow San Onofre to start producing electricity again, the utility decided to decommission the plant.

‘Victory!’

Friends of the Earth declared “Victory!” on its Facebook page, hailing Edison’s capitulation.

FOE suggested that the 2,200 megawatts San Onofre generated when fully operational – which accounted for roughly 20 percent of Edison’s total electricity production – could easily be replaced by a solar power and wind energy. It linked to a statement from Pica:

“We have long said that these reactors are too dangerous to operate and now Edison has agreed. The people of California now have the opportunity to move away from the failed promise of dirty and dangerous nuclear power and replace it with the safe and clean energy provided by the sun and the wind.”

But that hasn’t happened yet.

More, as CalWatchdog.com has reported, there often is a delay between when daytime solar power ramps down and evening wind power ramps up. That delay forces the electricity companies to buy costly natural-gas generated electricity on the spot market – another shock to ratepayers. That problem didn’t occur with San Onofre’s electricity because generation was continuous.

FOE also suggested the cost of San Onofre’s permanent shutdown wouldn’t be felt by customers of Edison and SDG&E.

The people of Southern California now know the shocking truth: They were misled to the tune of $3.3 billion in higher electricity rates, plus higher rates during the solar-wind power transition.

“Here we go again with the same nightmare as a year ago. [I’m] truly fed up with Covered California’s technical incompetency.” So complained Igal Koiman, a health insurance broker, in remarks published this week in the Sacramento Business Journal.

His frustrations echo those of many other brokers throughout the state who fear the Covered California website will be no less glitch-ridden on Nov. 15, when open enrollment begins this year, than it was 19 months ago, when the state’s online Obamacare health exchange stumbled out of the starting gate.

Koiman related that, for the past two weeks, he has been unable to update plans for his established clients. When he contacted Covered California for help, he received an email reply informing him, “We do not currently have an ETA as to when this enrollment error will be corrected.”

These are the kind of system failures that have persistently plagued CoveredCA.com since its rollout. Indeed, the website has crashed numerous times, not just for hours, but for several days.

The Covered California website was developed by the consulting firm Accenture, which in 2012 received a $359 million state contract to not only build the site, but to operate it during its first three-and-a-half years. Meanwhile, Accenture brought on CGI Federal as a subcontractor for CoveredCA.com.

Both firms have recent troubling track records.

Accenture in 2011 paid $63.6 million to settle a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit charging the firm received kickbacks for its recommendations of specific hardware and software to the federal government, fraudulently inflated prices and rigged bids on federal IT contracts.

Tony West, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Division, said of the lawsuit:

“Kickbacks and bid rigging undermine the integrity of the federal procurement process. At a time when we’re looking for ways to reduce our public spending, it is especially important to ensure that government contractors play by the rules and don’t waste precious taxpayer dollars.”

And Christopher R. Thyer, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, said:

“We strive each and every day to bring justice to the citizens of the Eastern District of Arkansas. … Fraudulent business practices that steal hard earned and much needed tax dollars from appropriate use will not be tolerated. The United States Attorney’s Office is committed to pursuing these cases to the full extent of the law.”

Subsidiary

CGI Federal is a subsidiary of the Montreal-based CGI Group, which in 2012 was fired by the provincial government in Ontario after the IT firm failed to fulfill its contract to build an online medical registry for the province’s diabetes patients.

According to the Washington Examiner:

“In Canada, eHealth, the Ontario provincial agency, scrapped its high-profile online medical registry for diabetes sufferers and treatment providers, and canceled CGI Group’s $46.2 million contract, on Sept. 5, 2012. The company was 14 months behind schedule when it was given notice of termination by the Ontario government agency.

“In the meantime, a group of other Ontario IT companies successfully replicated the registry, rendering CGI’s project obsolete.

“Because the contract terms stipulated payment only upon delivery of a satisfactory final product, the province has refused to pay CGI.

“CGI has not publicly discussed the eHealth failure, but has taken legal action, including filing a defamation suit against eHealth and the Toronto Star newspaper.

“CGI has received bipartisan condemnation from Ontario government officials for its failure on the registry.

“’They did not meet the requirements of their contract which was faced with many layers of delays, which caused great angst among the health care providers who are trying to do their best,’ Frances Gélinas, a member of Ontario’s provincial parliament, told the Washington Examiner.

“’They basically said, “This is not working.” CGI is not delivering what we need,’ Gélinas said. Gélinas also serves as a health policy spokeswoman for the NDP, an opposition Canadian political party.”

Tterminated

In January, CGI’s U.S. contract to build and maintain HealthCare.gov, the federal Obamacare website, was terminated in the wake of the site’s disastrous rollout. The firm the Obama administration chose to pick up where CGI Federal left off was none other than Accenture.

The partnership of Accenture and CGI Federal on the Covered California website does not inspire confidence that the online portal will be good to go a mere two weeks from now.

The more likely scenario is that the persistent glitches that afflicted CoveredCA.com during its first year of operation, that caused repeated shutdowns of the state-run Obamacare exchange, will continue apace in year two.

The franchise market in California, a keystone of small business in the state, soon could change radically.

The California Legislature last Thursday sent a bill to Gov. Jerry Brown’s desk that would effectively supersede the contractual agreements between California-based franchises and such national franchisors as Subway, Supercuts, 7-Eleven, Jiffy Lube, RE/MAX, H&R Block, Holiday Inn and The UPS Store.

The measure, Senate Bill 610, was carried by Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara. It barely advanced beyond on the Assembly floor early last week before winning passage on the state Senate floor, when putative moderate Democrats backed the so-called California Franchise Relations Act after initially withholding their support.

Jackson maintained her bill will “level the playing field” between the state’s more than 80,000 “small-business” franchisees and the “giant, often out-of-state corporations” that oversee them.

“Current law allows these corporations to put these small franchisees out of business for even the most minor and arbitrary violations,” said Jackson. “This bill would put these small business owners on a more equal legal footing and protect them from unfair actions that take away their livelihood.”

The International Franchise Association suggested that the Santa Barbara lawmaker has ulterior motives; that she has not suddenly become a champion of California’s small business owners “working hard to live the American dream,” as she put it.

IFA President and CEO Steve Caldeira accused Jackson of doing the bidding of organized labor; in particular, the Service Employees International Union, which, he said, has waged “a blatant misinformation campaign against our industry.”

Indeed, the SEIU has not previously stood in solidarity with the American Association of Franchisees and Dealers, based in Palm Desert, which represents small business franchise owners, almost none of which are unionized. Yet the two natural adversaries joined together in support of the Franchise Relations Act.

Franchisees

That’s because AAFD represents disgruntled franchisees who don’t like the terms of the contracts they signed with Subway, Supercuts, 7-Eleven, Jiffy Lube, RE/MAX, H&R Block, Holiday Inn, The UPS Store or other such corporate franchisors.

And SEIU is hoping that its support for SB610 will engender such goodwill with small business franchisees – particularly in the fast food industry – they will happily allow SEIU to unionize their employees.

IFA CEO Caleira warned that, if Brown signs the FRA into law, it will be but a Pyrrhic victory for the AAFD and California’s small business franchisees.

“Without question,” he said, it will “shift franchise brands to more company-owned stores, thereby taking away ownership opportunities for both existing and prospective entrepreneurs in the state and would severely hinder franchise small business growth throughout California.”

The parent corporations cannot be forced to give out franchises. And if regulations become too onerous, it’s possible the corporations will just run things themselves, or simply shut down operations in some areas.

For example, according to Entrepreneur magazine, in 2014 7-Eleven has 44,400 franchises globally, of which 489 are company-owned. Each franchise is for 10 years. So if the franchise situation in California changes in favor of direct ownership by the corporation, the parent firm, although unlikely to do so, potentially could take over all franchises within a decade. Or it even could shutter them, pulling out of the state entirely.

Douglas Coe, an engineer under the employ of the California Department of Transportation, spent years working on the retrofit of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge between Oakland and San Francisco.

When the 25-year Caltrans veteran told his supervisors there were cracks in thousands of welds made at a Shanghai factory, and the quality-control firm that was supposed to have conducted inspections of the factory had not properly done so, he was taken off the Bay Bridge project.

In an appearance last week before the state Senate Transportation and Housing Committee, the Caltrans official who dismissed Coe told lawmakers that he decided the engineer could “no longer operate as a member of the team.”

But there was no attempt to squelch Coe’s warnings about the defective welds and related issues concerning the Bay Bridge project, insisted Tony Anziano. Anziano was the project manager for the eastern span retrofit who kicked Coe off the team, reassigning the engineer to a bridge project in the Contra Costa County city of Antioch.

Meanwhile, Brian Kelly, secretary of the California State Transportation Agency, told committee members that accusations against Caltrans officials overseeing the bridge date back six years – three years before he assumed the agency’s top job.

Yet, not until recently, Kelly confirmed, has he gotten around to ordering an investigation to ascertain whether Anziano and other Caltrans officials retaliated against Coe and other engineers who blew the whistle on shoddy work on the $6.4 billion bridge retrofit.

Aside from being well overdue, the investigation initiated by Kelly is problematic because the CalSTA secretary delegated it to the California Highway Patrol, which is a branch of CalSTA, along with Caltrans.

Conflict of interest

Kelly apparently does not see a conflict of interest in having CHP investigate Anziano and other Caltrans officials that oversaw the Bay Bridge. But the conflict is obvious from Kelly’s decision at the investigation’s outset that it would be administrative, rather than criminal.

If an investigatory body independent of Caltrans were tasked with looking into charges of retaliation against Coe and other whistleblowers on the Bay Bridge project, it almost certainly wouldn’t rule out criminal charges before it had even interviewed the first witness.

Especially when there are allegations that Caltrans officials overseeing the retrofit of the Bay Bridge’s eastern span violated California’s Public Records Act by covering up evidence of shoddy work.

Indeed, Coe told an investigator retained by the transportation and housing committee that Anziano told him “not to record his concerns in writing, either on paper or email, but rather to communicate orally” so the concerns would not be found out under a public records request.

The investigator concluded that as many as nine engineers, including Coe, were either fired, demoted or reassigned (as Coe was) to quiet their criticism of the Bay Bridge Project.

Following last week’s hearing, Caltrans Director Malcolm Dougherty told reporters he had seen no evidence of “criminal activity.”

Nevertheless, Senate Transportation and Housing Committee Chairman Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, said he will turn over the committee’s findings to state and federal prosecutors and let them determine if there has been an criminal wrongdoing by Caltrans managers or officials.

Eduardo Benard, a custodian at San Francisco’s Leonard R. Flynn Elementary School, received $107,912.31 in pay and benefits in 2013.

He was one of 31 custodians employed by California public schools that boasted more than $100,000 in compensation last year, according to just-release figures revealed on Transparent California, a database maintained by the nonpartisan California Policy Center.

The handsome compensation packages enjoyed by Benard and the other six-figure custodians almost certainly aren’t what California voters had in mind when they approved Proposition 30 two years ago.

The measure, championed by Gov. Jerry Brown and the Democratic-controlled Legislature, and bankrolled by such special interests as the California Teachers Association and SEIU/California State Council of Service Employees, imposed $7 billion in new taxes for seven years, 89 percent of which was supposed to reach the state’s K-12 classrooms.

But Prop. 30 has proven a bait-and-switch. Indeed, 80 percent of the Prop. 30 money the state has collected has gone to salaries and benefits of public school employees, according to the state Controller’s Office.

$763,000 compensation

That includes Jose Fernandez, who left his post this month as superintendent of the Centinela Valley School District after revelations by the Daily Breeze in Torrance that he received more than $763,000 in total compensation last year.

And if that was not excessive enough for the superintendent of one of the state’s smaller school districts, Fernandez’s contract with the school district entitled him to a 9 percent annual raise. It also allowed him to secure a $910,000 low-interest loan from the district to purchase a home in Ladera Heights.

While none of California’s other public school superintendents was as extremely well compensated as Fernandez, they haven’t exactly been shortchanged by their school districts. Indeed, at least 100 superintendents received more than $250,000 in compensation last year.

Then there are the state’s unionized public teachers, who were portrayed during the Prop. 30 campaign as grossly underpaid.

The reality is that the average full-time teacher received nearly $85,000 in pay and benefits in 2013, according to Transparent California. And nearly 35,000 teachers received more than $100,000 in compensation.

Among the well-compensated unionized teachers are more than 1,000 “retired” instructors, the Los Angeles Times reported, who have taken advantage of a loophole that allows them to keep on teaching (and receiving a salary for doing so), while receiving their taxpayer-funded pensions at the same time.

These are the kind of abuses opponents of Prop. 30 foresaw in 2012. And in 2014 their fears have been realized.