Thursday, August 1, 2024

Election Polling A new round of surveys from GOP pollster Public Opinion Strategies, conducted for the Competitiveness Coalition, finds a tight presidential race in five battleground states:

• Pennsylvania: Kamala Harris at 48%, Donald Trump at 45%
• Wisconsin: Harris 48%, Trump 46%
• Arizona: Trump 48%, Harris 43%
• Nevada: Trump 46%, Harris 45%
• Michigan: Harris 45%, Trump 45%

Some caveats: In this sample, 47% of undecided voters lean Republican, compared to 19% who say they are Democrats. Each state had a sample size of 400 likely voters. The margin of error is ±2.19%. The full results

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Harris Alumni Reap the Change: When Joe Biden tapped Kamala Harris as his running mate in 2020, the first-term senator from California had only a handful of alumni in the lobbying world. Nearly four years and one term in the White House later, the influence industry in Washington is replete with a network of former staffers for Harris from her time in the Senate, White House, and as California attorney general.

The Harris aides who have since landed downtown include Yasmin Nelson, one of Harris’ top aides in the Senate, who now works for Holland & Knight, lobbying for clients like Intel, Mothering Justice, and Urban Mom Collective. Former Harris spokesperson Meaghan Lynch is now a federal affairs lead at Airbnb, and former chief economic adviser Deanne Millison is now a lobbyist at Ford Motor Co.

Longtime Harris adviser Andy Vargas is now a senior vice president at Mercury Public Affairs, and the vice president’s former director of public engagement and intergovernmental affairs, Michael Collins, lobbies for Starbucks. Former Harris Senate aide Robyn Linscott is now director of education and family policy at the advocacy group Arc of the United States. Government affairs shops for blue-chip companies such as T-Mobile, General Mills, and Intuit, and trade groups such as the Motion Picture Association and Interactive Advertising Bureau now include Harris alumni as well.

Global public affairs, communications and consulting firms have snapped up former Harris staffers as well. Her former deputy chief of staff Michael Fuchs now works for the Biden-heavy consultancy WestExec Advisors, and former chief economic adviser Mike Pyle works for Macro Advisory Partners, the former private sector home of Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

Harris advisers Shari Yost Gold and Amanda Bailey now advise clients at the lobbying firm Invariant; former social media director Jeremy Thompson now works on digital campaigns at Edelman Global Advisory; Maria Restrepo is now at Tusk Strategies, and former Senate aide Chris Harris is now a spokesperson at the gun control advocacy group Giffords.

Two other former Harris staffers, Rachel Palermo and Josh Hsu, now work for the government controversies practice at the white shoe law firm Jenner & Block. Several of her former speechwriters are now at the comms firms Fenway and West Wing Writers. Former campaign staffers Samantha Maciel and Chris Keosian are now lobbyists at Townsend Public Affairs and Best Best & Krieger, respectively.

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Judge Halts Unionization Effort at Wonderful Nurseries The Wonderful Company has won an initial victory in court over an attempt by United Farm Workers to unionize its operation in Kern County. A Kern County Superior Court judge issued a preliminary injunction to temporarily halt the hearing between Wonderful and the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB). Story

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Who’s on Second? National labor union leaders are generally amenable to everyone on Vice President Harris’ Democratic shortlist but have yet to coalesce around a favorite publicly. “There are a lot of strong candidates because part of Joe Biden’s legacy is transforming the party into a pro-union party at every level,” said Stuart Appelbaum, the president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union. “Our priority has to be to focus on how we will have the best opportunity to win.” At the same time, local unions are trying to boost their hometown guy and familiarize labor powerbrokers with some contenders who are lesser-known nationally. “A lot of our leaders here are trying to educate their national leadership about what Gov. [Roy] Cooper has done for our state,” North Carolina AFL-CIO President MaryBe McMillan said in an interview. Of course, Cooper later withdrew from consideration.

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Construction job openings decline by 19% According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' latest jobs report, construction job openings fell by 71,000, or about 19%, from May to June. The data measures positions for which employers are currently hiring. The 295,000 available jobs on the last day of June marked a 29% decrease from the same month in 2023. In total, 3.5% of all construction jobs went unfilled in June. Experts continue to ascribe recent drops in job openings to slowdowns in residential construction, saying that high interest rates have dragged down home-building backlogs. In contrast, infrastructure and manufacturing spending continue to anchor commercial work. Story

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True Cost of Transitioning Fleets to Electric May Be More Than CARB Anticipated

By Mike McManus, Director of Engineering Construction & Industry Relations AGC San Diego Chapter

Reprinted with Permission

Ryder recently published a white paper on the cost of electric vehicle conversion for U.S. commercial fleets that was very different than the analysis put forth by the California Air Resources Board (CARB), suggesting that this cost-saving measure proposed by CARB may instead increase consumer costs across the board. This comes as part of CARB's justification for the Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) Regulation. The Ryder analysis factored in the cost of the vehicle, maintenance, and the drivers. In addition, it factored in the range, payload, diesel fuel versus electric and the required electric vehicle charging time. 

Ryder is one of the longest-running fleet owners in North America, with 90 years of experience in truck transportation and nearly 250,000 trucks under management. They obviously are one of the major stakeholders in this proposed transition to battery electric trucks in California.

The white paper analyzed and compared costs of fleet transitioning in California and Georgia. California has much higher fuel costs than Georgia. However, it does not look like good economics in either state. Here are some highlights from the California comparison.

The first comparison was made with short-haul delivery vans. The assumed operation was 80 miles, via two trips, daily, with an average payload of 2,500 pounds per day. The comparison was annualized into a total cost to transport the payload for a year. For short haul vans the total cost per year was pretty close with $170,000 for internal combustion engines (ICE) and $176,000 for electric (EV), about a 3% difference in cost. Again, that includes the costs for labor, fuel, electricity and maintenance.

The next comparison was of Class 6 trucks, mid-size trucks assuming hauls of 100 to 200 miles and an average payload of 11,000 pounds. The annual cost of transport was $221,000 for ICE trucks, while for EV trucks, it was estimated to be $268,000 per year. This makes it 22% more expensive to transport goods with EV trucks.

For big rig trucks, the cost to transport goods per year was not close at all. For ICE trucks the cost of moving a payload of 29,000 pounds a day for a year was estimated at $334,000. For EV trucks, because of the weight of the batteries, they could only move a payload of 22,000 pounds. The analysis also concluded that because of charging time, it would take two EV trucks to move the same cargo as one ICE truck. For an EV big rig, the annual cost of moving the same payload as the ICE truck, described above, was estimated to be $649,000. A 94% increase would be passed onto the customer and the consumers in this instance.

For mixed fleets with a combination of small, medium and heavy-duty big rigs transporting goods, the cost of transitioning from ICE trucks to EV trucks would result in a 56% increase. This would be passed on to the consumers and customers of fleet owners. This would be a massive economic burden on California taxpayers. The Ryder white paper did not consider the cost of bringing power to truck terminals or the societal costs of expanding the electric grid, so it would seem to be a low-side estimate. What was CARB’s “big picture” analysis of the cost to California consumers?

CARB says it will save the consumers money to transition to all electric fleets. According to the ACF analysis published by CARB, the transitioning to EV trucks will save California $48 billion from 2024 to 2050. The analysis by CARB says that the savings in fuel costs and maintenance costs will far outweigh the additional costs for infrastructure and additional purchase costs for EV trucks versus ICE trucks.

CARB’s ACF regulatory scheme is being challenged in state court in California and in federal court in the D.C. Circuit. Will CARB’s economic claims stand up to that scrutiny? Click here to read Ryder's white paper.

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The National Debt Is Now More Than $35 Trillion. What Does That Mean? The gross federal debt of the United States has surpassed $35,000,000,000,000. Although the debt affects each of us, it may be difficult to put such a large number into perspective and fully understand its implications. The infographic below offers different ways of looking at the debt and its relationship to the economy, the budget, and American families.

The $35 trillion gross federal debt includes debt held by the public as well as debt held by federal trust funds and other government accounts. In very basic terms, this can be thought of as debt that the government owes to others plus debt that it owes to itself.

America’s high and rising debt matters because it threatens our economic future. The coronavirus pandemic rapidly accelerated our fiscal challenges, but we were already on an unsustainable path, with structural drivers that existed long before the pandemic. Putting our nation on a better fiscal path will help ensure a stronger and more resilient economy for the future. Story

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As the PBGC Gives $5.7 Billion In Taxpayer Funds to A Failed Teamster Pension Plan, The White House Boasts About It The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC) announced that the New England Teamsters Pension Plan (New England Teamsters Plan), based in Burlington, Massachusetts, and covering 72,141 participants in the transportation industry, would receive a $5.7 billion taxpayer-funded bailout. As of July 29, 2024, PBGC has announced approval of about $67.7 billion in SFA to plans that cover about 1,148,000 workers, retirees, and beneficiaries. Upon the announcement, and despite the U.S. being $35 trillion in debt, the White House issued a statement reminding Americans that the Biden Administration had protected "600,000 Teamster Pensions" through the taxpayer-funded bailout. Story

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Brace Yourselves; Rules and Penalties are Coming for “Enterprise-wide and Egregious” Violations You may remember back to 2021 when California Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 606 into law. The bill created new categories of Cal/OSHA violations: “enterprise-wide” and “egregious,” which were incorporated into the Labor Code Sections 6317 and 6317.8. Attorneys blogged about it here. The rulemaking is necessary to incorporate these classifications into the existing regulatory framework for citation classification and penalty calculation and to provide related definitions and procedures. Notably, these proposed changes are similar to Federal OSHA’s. Cal/OSHA believes enforcing enterprise-wide and egregious violations is necessary to ensure California’s enforcement program remains “at least as effective” as the federal program. Story

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Redemption Some readers may recall Laura Richardson. She served on the Long Beach City Council for two terms, was elected to the State Assembly in 2006, and was elected to Congress in an August 2007 Special election.

After her election to the California Assembly, Richardson purchased a home in Sacramento with no money down and a subprime mortgage. According to county records, Richardson received a default notice and Notice of Trustee's Sale in late 2007. In December 2007, Richardson was behind in payments by more than $18,000. According to the couple that sold the home to Richardson, Richardson was not maintaining the home.

The real estate broker who bought Richardson's Sacramento house at the foreclosure sale accused her of receiving preferential treatment because her lender had issued a notice to rescind the sale. James York, owner of Red Rock Mortgage, filed a lawsuit against Richardson and her lender, Washington Mutual, but settled out of court with the terms not disclosed. Richardson had not been making payments on the property for nearly a year and defaulted on her two other houses in Long Beach and San Pedro. Representative Richardson (D-Long Beach) said that the auction should never have been held because she had worked out a loan modification agreement with her lender. Besides, she was a member of Congress and did the people’s work. 

Richardson left Congress after being re-districted, losing her seat to Janice Hahn, now on the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors.

Richardson could now win the election to the State Senate, where she can serve for the next 12 years. In March, she came in first by 3,246 votes in this D+48 district that goes from Inglewood to San Pedro.