Our take
Editorials
#MeToo is being hijacked to trivialize real sexual harassment. Here’s how to end that: Partisans and cynics are realizing the potential for the #MeToo wave to be hijacked for political ends. There’s a risk that dubious claims and farfetched smears will be lumped in with demonstrably illegal abuses of power. That turn of events threatens to trivialize a real problem and real violations.
Columns
Dan Morain: Jessica Morse, Regina Bateson and the people who packed the house reflect Democrats’ intensity heading into 2018. But even in this time of Donald Trump, Democratic enthusiasm can go only so far. In 2016, voters in seven of California’s congressional districts held by Republicans sided with Hillary Clinton. Tom McClintock’s district, which runs from Roseville east to Tahoe and south to Yosemite, wasn’t among them.
Foon Rhee: Horrified by Trump? Just tell yourself it could be worse. In his first year in office, he has done some stupid and terrible things, but let’s be thankful he hasn’t done more damage. It could be worse, much worse.
Dan Walters, CalMatters: The first thing to understand about San Francisco politics is with just 7.4 percent of its voters registered as Republicans, the city’s main players are self-proclaimed liberals – or “progressives” in the preferred nomenclature. The second thing, however, is that in San Francisco, politics is a blood sport and careers can be made or lost by even tiny conflicts of ideology, sexual orientation, ethnicity or personality.
Jack Ohman shows us Gov. Jerry Brown’s final full year in office. Gaze into the crystal ball here.
Op-eds
Robert F. Sawyer and Jananne Sharpless: When Congress passed the Clean Air Act, it specifically recognized California’s right to protect its citizens with stronger standards on clean cars and trucks than federal ones. Now, that right is being threatened.
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Take a number: $439,000
Yes, Doug Jones’ victory in the Alabama senate race is over. But because of the U.S. Senate’s refusal to require that candidates file their campaign finance reports online, Jones’ full report up to Nov. 22 wasn’t available at fec.gov until votes were being tallied last week.
That report showed Jones raised more than $4.5 million in donations of $200 or more in the 14 days after Nov. 9, the day the Washington Post published its blockbuster about Republican Roy Moore pursuing teenage girls as young as 14 when he was in his 30s. Moore raised $525,097 during that period.
In the 14 days before Nov. 9, Jones raised $1.6 million. Californians did their part to elect Jones, accounting for at least $820,000, including no less than $439,000 between Nov. 9 and Nov. 22.
Among Jones’ $2,700 donors from the Golden State: Laurene Powell Jobs, Netflix founder Reed Hastings and Southern California attorney and philanthropist Molly Munger. Jackson Browne and Grateful Dead alumnus Phil Lesh, great Californians both, also were among Jones’ donors.
Their take
Kansas City Star: This extraordinary editorial is about a hero who got murdered, and how bad state policy in Missouri allows guns to proliferate: After he jumped up and grabbed the wheel as a Metro driver suffered a seizure, they called him a hero on the evening news. “Daryl Singleton picked the right day to take an early bus to work,’’ the story that ran on the Metro front of The Star began, “and 13 other passengers are thankful he was there to aid them.” As Stephanie West said at Thursday’s candlelight vigil for her 57-year-old cousin, “it was a very big deal at the time.” Gun deaths, on the other hand, are not a very big deal at this time, or any other time in recent memory.
LA Times: California has set an ambitious target of reducing greenhouse gases 40 percent below their 1990 level by 2030. The state simply cannot reach that goal without a dramatic cut in emissions from cars and trucks, which are the largest source of greenhouse gases in the state. Increasing the number of electric cars on the road will help, but that alone won’t suffice. California communities have to be redesigned to make it easier for people to walk, bike or take transit. Changing the California Environmental Quality Act is an important step forward.
San Diego Union Tribune: Nine years after California voters narrowly gave their blessing to a $9.95 billion bond to launch a $43 billion statewide bullet-train project, a reckoning is needed. The narrative pushed by the California High-Speed Rail Authority and by Gov. Jerry Brown is of the project making steady advances. The truth is the project not only is seven years behind schedule, but it has also exploded in cost.
Daniel Borenstein, East Bay Times: CalPERS is about to bury taxpayers, cities and counties in more debt. The nation’s largest pension system is expected to adopt a funding plan this week that anticipates shortfalls during the next decade and then banks on exceptional investment returns over the following half century to make up the difference.
Syndicates’ take
Maureen Dowd: Hollywood was a warped society and everyone knew it. Gender stereotypes were enshrined in amber: Women can’t direct because it’s too risky to trust them with big budgets; they get too emotional; they only want to direct movies where people talk or, God forbid, cry; they don’t have the authority to come across as commanding generals. That’s why monsters were allowed to roam.
Ross Douthat: Foreign policy is the place where the risks of electing Donald Trump seemed to me particularly unacceptable, and I’ve tended to focus on narratives that fit that fear, from the risk of regional war in Middle East to the perils in our North Korean brinkmanship. Those fears are still reasonable. But all punditry is provisional, and for now, the Trump administration’s approach to the Middle East has been moderately successful.
E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post: We can stipulate that the tax bill is not illegal. But it is a dishonest power and money grab by – and on behalf of – the already powerful. This is the kind of legislation that proves Washington is, indeed, the “swamp” Trump described during the campaign.
Timothy Egan, New York Times: Americans are a generous people – so it is always said. But our generosity comes with moral judgments: There’s a thin line, in the minds of many, between the poor who deserve help and those who should get off their butts. Similarly with the wealthy.
Michelle Goldberg, New York Times: We’ve all heard a lot about how the calamity of Trump’s election has led women of all races to pour into politics. But it’s not just women; there’s a new political intensity among people of color more broadly.
Megan McArdle, Bloomberg: Now the cascading accusations of sexual misconduct are reaching deep into the heart of the mainstream media. Some of these cases were clearly and inexcusably abusive – the actions egregious and the corroborating accounts damning. Others, however, were less clear.
Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post: It’s surreal watching Democrats in Congress threaten to go to the mattresses for a legislative fix that protects undocumented young people. When Democrats had the chance to get Dreamers out of harm’s way by legalizing them, they were asleep at the switch.
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post: Kentucky state Rep. Dan Johnson shot himself with a .40-caliber handgun after accusations that he had fondled a 17-year-old friend of his daughter during a New Year’s Eve sleepover in 2013. Didn’t Johnson have a right to some sort of dispassionate hearing?
Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer: Vice President Mike Pence, whose visit to Jerusalem this week was supposed to highlight the plight of the Mideast’s Christians, has canceled his planned visit to the Church of the Nativity and has no current plan to visit Jerusalem churches, since church leaders urged Trump not to change the U.S. position on Jerusalem.
Jack’s Take
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