As the Times’ Jack Dolan has noted, CIRM, which has a staff of 50, is paying incoming chairman Jonathan Thomas $400,000, roughly twice the salary of the director of the federal National Institutes of Health, which has 17,000 employees. Top-heavy CIRM also has a president, Alan Trounson, who pulls down $490,008, a good deal more than the $173,048 salary of the governor.

CIRM chose Thomas over cardiologist Frank Litvack, who would have accepted a salary of $123,000. The selection of Jonathan Thomas is not the first time CIRM has opted for a higher priced alternative. In 2009, CIRM board member Duane Roth, experienced in biotechnology, offered to serve as vice-chair for no salary. CIRM opted to make Roth co-vice-chair along with former state senator Art Torres, and tripled Torres’ initial salary of $75,000 to $225,000.

CIRM is beating the drum for more public funds but voters have more than salary and oversight issues to consider. The federal government no longer blocks embryonic research so CIRM has no legitimate reason to exist. The state agency is also a bust on its promises.  A ballpark figure for the number of CIRM cures and therapies that have trickled down to patients is zero, as even their own scientists acknowledge.

JULY 8, 2011

By K. LLOYD BILLINGSLEY

The California Institute for Regenerative Medicine (CIRM), the state stem-cell agency, is looking for a new boss. The quest for a new leader, and possibly more public money, has shifted attention from CIRM’s lack of results.

CIRM was created by Proposition 71 in 2004 to fund embryonic stem cell research the Bush administration declined to support. The prime mover of Proposition 71 was Robert Klein II, a wealthy real-estate developer. The promotional campaign featured actors Michael J. Fox and Christopher Reeve and promised miraculous cures for a host of diseases.

CIRM’s own scientists now acknowledge that no CIRM-produced cures have trickled down to California patients.

Unfulfilled Expectations

“The focus on the California stem cell agency centers on whether it has or is fulfilling the promises of the 2004 campaign,” David Jensen, publisher of the California Stem Cell Report, told CalWatchDog.com. “Those expectations on the part of voters were a tad overblown, as often happens during political campaigns. Nonetheless, the voters’ expectations are certainly an important measure in assessing the stem cell agency. At this point, I suspect most voters would not say that their expectations have been fulfilled.”

In a recent article on CIRM governance, John Simpson of Consumer Watchdog’s Stem Cell Project failed to mention the agency’s dearth of results. But other CIRM critics stuck to the theme.

“It goes without saying that it [CIRM] hasn’t found those cures,” wrote Michael Hiltzik of the Los Angeles Times, “though not for want of spending.” CIRM is spending $3 billion in bond funds, “$6 billion if you count the interest,” as Mr. Hiltzik noted.

California’s stem cell agency is practically off limits to oversight from the legislature. It has also become a landing spot for politicians such as former state senator Art Torres, who pulls down a salary of $225,000, which CIRM tripled from the original $75,000. Chairman Robert Klein II, who wrote Prop 71 to give himself that job, did not take a salary until 2008, when he began to draw an annual salary of $150,000.

Now Klein is out, and so is his first choice to replace himself, Canadian medical scientist Alan Bernstein. Controller John Chiang’s first choice to replace Klein was Art Torres. But Chiang now favors former cardiology professor Frank Litvack. Gov. Jerry Brown favors Jonathan Thomas, an investment banker schooled in biology. Thomas would want some $400,000 in salary, while Litvack would reportedly accept $150,000.

Mr. Litvack has also raised the prospect of weaning CIRM off government funds. That was not the view of Klein, who is on record that he would like another bond issue of as much as $5 billion.

New Bond Measure Would Fail

“If CIRM were to go to the ballot today with a $5 billion bond measure to continue its efforts, it would be nearly certain to fail given the state of the California economy and the budget crisis,” said Jensen. “A major change will be necessary to win approval a few years down the road.”

Change could include more transparency, stronger oversight, a wider research focus, and more integration with the rest of California’s medical-scientific establishment. CIRM’s new chairman, yet to be announced at this writing, will have to deal with all that, and the dearth of promised cures and therapies.

“I passionately believe,” Robert Klein told reporters last year, “that there will be some remarkable new therapies that will save lives and mitigate suffering substantially.”

Recent medical-scientific advances include the construction of a new windpipe for a Colombian woman, and the near total restoration of sight to a man whose eyes sustained chemical damage in 1948. CIRM played no role in these remarkable cases, the result of adult stem cell research.

MAY 24, 2011

By K. LLOYD BILLINGSLEY

California politicians want to draw 33 percent of the state’s energy needs from “renewable” sources such as wind and solar by 2020, fewer than 10 years away. That plan will be hard to pull off for many reasons, including those outlined by energy expert Merwin Brown, Electric Grid Program Director at the California Institute for Energy and the Environment (CIEE).

“Renewables exhibit behavior for which the grid was not designed, and for which operators are not equipped,” said Brown on Thursday at the University of California’s Sacramento Center, in a lecture on “New Smart Grid Technologies for Renewable Generation Deployment.”

Brown admitted to pulling a “bait and switch” because he wanted to concentrate on “the problems we are trying to solve.” Power outages, he said, were a threat to health and security, and also expensive. He pegged the cost of the 2001 blackouts at $10 billion.

Electrical grids are “the world’s largest machine,” multi-state and even multi-country networks that present “quite a challenge” to renewable sources such as wind, a “variable” source by which he meant “intermittent.”

“Wind is not there when the loads occur,” Brown said. “Wind is abundant when loads are low.”

Such variability calls for backup power measures, but could also result in a situation where “the grid has more electricity than it can sell.” The existing power grid, he said, was not designed for such “back feed,” when generation exceeds load.

Multiple Agencies

Merwin Brown earned a Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Kansas State University and boasts 40 years of experience in energy, including a stint as Solar Energy Commissioner of Arizona. He noted that the wind blows hardest “far from urban centers,” which calls for “expensive” new transmission lines.

“The biggest impact is approval to build from multiple agencies,” which he said might not approve, along with residents who object to new towers and lines on aesthetic grounds. Brown also cited planning and recovery costs, and raised the question, “Who pays?”

Brown returned to his intermittent theme, noting that “solar has the same problem” as wind, and the obvious reality that “at night the sun does not shine.” He showed charts demonstrating that wind and solar power “do not complement each other.” Together they could “make worse” the increasing demand cycle he called “ramping.” And they could also make worse the “instability” of the grid, which was designed on the basis of “inherent inertia.”

At one point an attendee, who did not identify herself, interrupted Brown and charged that his presentation was “biased” against renewables.  Brown paused to note that renewables do not pollute and are “indigenous,” with no need for importation. Then he continued with the problems to the grid, which include electric cars.

Electric Cars

“Electric cars are an unprecedented challenge,” he said. “Each electric car equals one house” in demands for electricity, and “the system was not designed to meet that demand.” Charging of cars at night was also an issue. “Utilities are not convinced it will be easy,” to adapt for electric cars, Brown said.

California Gov. Jerry Brown recently signed SB 2X by state Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto, mandating that 33 percent of the state’s energy come from renewable sources by 2020, an increase of 13 percentage points from the previous mandate of 20 percent.

“It’s about California leading the country,” Gov. Brown told reporters at the signing ceremony. “It’s America potentially leading the world.” At the same event, Simitian said that his new law “will stimulate the economy and improve the environment, while protecting ratepayers from excessive costs.”

Wind and solar power require conventional backup and are also two to four times as costly as conventional power, according to estimates from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Lobbyist Bernadette Del Chiaro of Environment California hailed Simitian’s measure as a huge victory for the environment and said, “California can power itself entirely on clean energy resources like wind, geothermal and solar power.”

Importing Electrons

California has never been able to create enough electricity to meet its needs and now buys 20 to 30 percent of its energy from out-of-state sources.

“Renewable integration adds complexity,” Dr. Brown said Thursday. “Maybe we can build our way out,” but “it will take new technology to make renewable energy less costly and easier.”

The UC announcement for Brown’s lecture also used the future tense for such technologies. “New grid technologies will be needed” it said, “to make renewable generation deployment easier and less costly, especially technologies that make the grid smarter.”

By K. Lloyd Billingsley

The surfer, posed by what appears to be the Pacific Ocean, wears star-spangled trunks and his surfboard bears a peace sign, a highway placard bearing the number 13 and a banner reading “Direct Democracy.” The section of his board emblazoned “California” is bent, like a failed design for a boomerang, and pointing downward. In case you Don’t Get the Imagery, the headline of The Economist magazine (April 23-29 issue) explains: “Where it all went wrong: A special report on California’s dysfunctional democracy.”

This is indeed one whopper of a cover story, but not exactly in the way The Economist intends. They even promote it in a “leader” (editorial) headlined “The perils of extreme democracy: California offers a warning to voters all over the world.” This charts some California woes such as the worst credit rating among the 50 states, and wonders how a state with so much going for it can be so poorly governed.

“It is tempting to accuse those doing the governing,” the editorial says. California legislators are “a pretty rum bunch,” and second-chance governor Jerry Brown has “struggled to make the executive branch work.”  But “the main culprit has been direct democracy,” as the special section, “Democracy in California: The People’s Will,” argues. That claim also requires some investigation, even though direct democracy does get a workout.

The special report provides background on the Greeks, ancient Athens and the founders of the United States. Direct democracy in California, however, is not quite the same. It was to counter the mighty Southern Pacific Railroad, which bestrode the state like a colossus.  “Direct democracy in California is thus an aberration…. Instead it encourages special interests to wage war by ballot measure until one lobby prevails and imposes its will on all.” But not so fast.

To correct gerrymandering “the initiative process, in this case, may prove to have done some good.” So direct democracy can be beneficial after all. The report might have mentioned Proposition 209 (1996), which curbed institutional discrimination by eliminating race, ethnic and gender preferences in state employment, education and contracting. Or Proposition 227 (1998), which dumped failed bilingual education programs.

The report contends that James Madison, et al., would not recognize California-style democracy, lacking in checks and balances. This ignores the courts. Whatever one thinks of Proposition 187 (1994), which eliminated many benefits for undocumented persons, voters passed it handily but the courts nixed virtually all of it. Proposition 63 (1986) declared English the official language of California and 73.2 percent of voters, including many of Iberian descent, passed it. The Ninth Circuit declared the vote “largely symbolic” and the U.S. Supreme Court reversed that ruling.

Attacking Prop. 13

So checks and balances exist, and initiatives can do some good. The villain of this special report is not direct democracy but an “unprecedented initiative that shapes the state to this day: Proposition 13.”  The report notes that Prop. 13 cut the property tax rate from an average of 2.6 percent of a property’s value to 1 percent, and required a two-thirds supermajority in the Legislature for any tax hike. The report does not note that, prior to Prop. 13, some Californians were literally taxed out of their homes while the state was running a surplus.

Gov. Jerry Brown opposed Prop. 13 with an apocalyptic zeal that would have put Al Gore to shame. The report says Brown “tried to make a cerebral case for an alternate initiative,” implying that Prop. 13 was visceral and stupid.  Then Brown “made a stunning U-turn” to endorse the initiative. He does not note that Brown declared himself a “born-again tax cutter” and, as a presidential candidate, even promoted a flat tax.

The special report charges that Prop. 13 launched an orgy of initiatives “from environmentalists and potheads to evangelical Christians and Indian tribes, from insurers to oil and tobacco companies.” It did cut property taxes for homeowners and put some restraints on the Legislature, but the report neglects to outline what this supposedly all-powerful initiative did not do.

Political activist Lenny Goldberg told The Economist that Prop. 13 centralizes “virtually all finance in Sacramento,” but that is debatable. The measure had nothing to say about state distribution of money. More important, Prop. 13 did not mandate any state spending and certainly no spending beyond state revenues.

Prop. 13 did not create any new government agencies. Curiously, Proposition 71, the 2004 state stem cell bond initiative, did precisely that, creating the California Institute of Regenerative Medicine, funded with more than $3 billion in state money but providing none of the promised medical cures and therapies. The Economist’s report does not mention Prop. 71, nor Proposition 20, which created the California Coastal Commission, an unelected body with vast powers and staffed by zealots.

Collective Bargaining

Prop. 13 did not authorized government employee unions for California, nor collective bargaining with the state. Jerry Brown did that in his first stint as governor by signing the Dills Act. Prop. 13 did not impose any onerous regulations based on bad science, such as AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006. The proposition did not mandate any new state hires and did not approve pay raises for California legislators.

Prop. 13 did not authorize state employees to retire in their 50s with most of their salary for life, nor did it spike any pensions. Prop. 13 did not approve welfare cards that can be redeemed at casinos and on cruise ships. Prop. 13 did not attempt to tax editorial cartoons as though they were works of art purchased in an art gallery, as in the 1996 “laugh tax” that made California a national joke. All that came through legislators and unelected bureaucrats.

Prop. 13 did not mandate that California bulk up the state to consume more than 20 percent of the state economy, about twice the amount that best facilitates economic growth. Prop. 13 did not set a top income-tax rate of 10.55 percent, one of the highest in the country, and a second-highest rate of 9.55 that kicks in at $47,055. “Those doing the governing” did that –legislators. The report acknowledges that the tax system is volatile, but reserves its wrath for Prop. 13, which did not mandate term limits either.

The Economist believes Prop. 13 wrecked California education. The figures cited understate education spending and the special report does not note that, in California’s government monopoly K-12 system, such spending must trickle down through four layers of bureaucratic sediment. Long before Prop. 13, the system was a vast collective farm of ignorance and mediocrity.

The special report’s main source on this theme is John Mockler, billed as an “expert in California education,” ergo, an outside, objective observer. This is like describing former Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez as an “expert in California government.” Mockler is an insider’s insider and strident apologist for the system, from which he has drawn considerable profit.

Mockler  served as a consultant to the Assembly Education Committee in 1965 and went on to advise Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and to work for former state Superintendent of Public Instruction Wilson Riles. As president of the lobbying firm Strategic Education Services in Sacramento, Mockler did a fine job channeling countless millions in state funds to the clients he represented. These include the Association of American Publishers, who lobby furiously to sell their overpriced and often deficient textbooks.

A lucrative lobbyist career did not prevent Gov. Gray Davis from hiring Mockler as executive director of the State Board of Education. This was after, as the report notes, the California Teachers Association, “the largest spender in California politics,” hired Mockler to write Proposition 98, which unlike Proposition 13, does indeed mandate spending.

California Crackup

Another major source for the special report is “California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It,”  by Joe Mathews and Mark Paul, a classic of anti-Prop 13 demonology. The authors want to restrict the initiative system but add more legislators. In similar style, the report wants California to “re-invest the legislature with the credibility it once had.” The report wants a bigger Legislature, and a unicameral model, like Nebraska’s.

In the end, The Economist seems to understand that propositions, like laws, are a mixed bag. “The problem is not direct democracy as such but the details of its California variant. It needs to be fixed, not eliminated.”  Further, California might see the “liveliest debate about freedom and governance since the Federalists and anti-Federalists,” with “lessons for everyone.”

Unlike most pieces in The Economist, a publication of high reputation whose authors mostly are anonymous, at least readers know who wrote this piece on California. The author is Andreas Kluth, who writes their other California pieces, and who speaks three languages. He’s obviously a smart fellow, but as Saul Bellow wrote, “a great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep.”

Kluth’s special report is indeed a cover story, ignoring California’s main problems, and maintaining the illusion that Prop. 13 is to blame. As long as that illusion prevails, the prospects for meaningful reform remain dim.  Californians would be better off following The Economist’s editorial. The Golden State has a lot going for it but remains “so poorly governed.” Better, then, to accuse those doing the governing. As the The Economist says, they’re a “pretty rum bunch.”