Our take
Editorials
#MeToo Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia demanded male gropers step down. #HerToo: Daniel Fierro understands he is not the familiar face of the #MeToo or #WeSaidEnough movements. Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia, D-Bell Gardens, was. Fierro recalled being groped by Garcia in 2014 after the annual legislative softball game at Raley Field, as first reported by Carla Marinucci in Politico. Read more.
Columns & op-eds
Marcos Breton: Whatever happened to Sacramento’s baddest bounty hunter? It’s quite a story.
Joe Mathews, Zócalo Public Square: Here’s the good news in Sacramento: “Lady Bird,” set in Sacramento and written and directed by the California capital’s own Greta Gerwig, is nominated for five Academy Awards. Here’s the better news: “I would like to make a quartet of films in Sacramento,” Gerwig told The Sacramento Bee. “I have three more before the quartet is done.” What will they be about? Perhaps not even Gerwig herself knows. But “Lady Bird” is grounded in her hometown’s real experiences, places, and challenges. So it’s possible that Gerwig might do for 21st-century Sacramento what Woody Allen and Spike Lee did for 20th-century New York: Give it defining narratives. Read more.
Dan Walters, CALMatters: Suing oil companies for causing climate change has become a popular exercise in California’s coastal communities. Officials in five cities and three counties have filed suits, alleging that the companies knowingly emitted greenhouse gases that will damage those communities as oceans rise, and should pay for it. It’s easy to file a lawsuit that pleases “progressive” local voters. However, winning in court is another matter, and by just filing the actions, California governments may be risking their ability to borrow money at low rates. Read more.
Leonard Pitts Jr., Miami Herald: For almost 50 years, Americans have fretted over the erosion of trust in our government. Well, erosion has now become destruction. Read more.
Sen. Toni Atkins and Bob Annibale: The federal and state tax earned income tax credits provide the largest cash payment many families will receive in a year, but California residents leave approximately $2 billion on the table each year. Read more.
Assemblywoman Laura Friedman: The drought is back. Here’s how California needs to start saving water now. Read more.
Jack Ohman carries the torch for the California Winter Olympics. See more scores.
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Their take
L.A. Times: The $17-billion proposal to build twin tunnels stalled again last year when several large water agencies withheld their financial support. Now the state Department of Water Resources is proposing to build the project in stages, starting with just a single tunnel at a cost of $10.7 billion. Half the size, half the cost, half the trouble? If only. Read more.
San Francisco Chronicle: The Brown administration has pulled the plug on the 5-year-old plan to build twin 35-mile tunnels to move water from the north end of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta to points farther south — sort of. The announcement also comes as the State Water Resources Control Board is working to revise water quality standards for the San Joaquin River and, eventually, the San Francisco Bay-Delta. New standards may require water agencies to draw less water. The state should set new standards first, and tackle tunnel specifications second. Read more.
East Bay Times: It’s been more than 16 months since Gov. Jerry Brown signed legislation mandating that physicians check a statewide database before prescribing addictive medications. The goal is to stop patients from “doctor shopping,” seeking potentially dangerous drugs, like OxyContin, Vicodin and Demerol, from multiple physicians to feed a habit or sell the pills on the street. But it’s up to Attorney General Xavier Becerra to implement the law. As we learned Tuesday, that probably won’t happen until next year. The delay of more than two years is inexcusable. Read more.
Orange County Register: the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office had projected surpluses of as much as $5-6 billion a year through 2021-22 back in November. While it is a significant amount of money, California lawmakers have proven more than capable of blowing through large wads of cash. We suggest lawmakers, however unusually, resist the urge to blow through billions more than the state can afford and give taxpayers back some of their own money. Read more.
San Diego Union-Tribune: Southern California Edison has begun transferring the last of its nuclear waste from steel-lined pools at the shuttered San Onofre nuclear plant that it has long managed to a new storage facility on the site along the north San Diego County coast. Upset residents should write to members of Congress and exhort them to revive the plan for a federal nuclear depository at Yucca Mountain in a remote part of Nevada. Read more.
Syndicates’ take
Ross Douthat, New York Times: Porn presents an opportunity to reconsider the tendency to just drift along with technological immersion, a chance where the moral stakes are sharpened to prove we don’t have to accept enslavement to our screens. Feminists should take it. We should all take it. Read more.
Frank Bruni, New York Times: We’re keenly suspicious of big corporations – just look at how many voters thrilled to Bernie Sanders’ jeremiads about a corrupt oligarchy, or at polls that show a growing antipathy to capitalism – and yet we’re ever more reliant on them. They’re in turn bolder, egged on by the ineptness and inertia of Washington. “When there’s a vacuum, there are going to be entities that step into it,” Chris Lehane told me. Read more.
E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post: Politicians and activists committed to defending both liberal democracy and a practical, socially generous approach to government find themselves constantly torn between short-term imperatives and long-term hopes. Read more.
Dana Milbank, Washington Post: On the night of Nov. 18, Border Patrol Agent Rogelio Martinez was found dying on the side of an interstate in West Texas. President Donald Trump and his allies saw an opportunity to whip up anti-immigrant fervor. Read more.
Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post: The Rep. Devin Nunes memo – and the frenzied reaction to it by all sides – provides a chance to reflect on how broken our public discourse has become and how the media helped break it. Read more.
Kathleen Parker, Washington Post: You don’t keep people in the White House who’ve been credibly accused of domestic abuse. But Rob Porter was one of only a few people at the White House who knew how to do anything. Read more.
Mailbag
Former Assemblyman Thomas J. Umberg, who unlike our president did not complain of bone spurs and is a veteran, wrote a stinging piece detailing his view of Donald Trump’s notion of holding a military parade. Our readers were similarly appalled. Read responses here, here and here. We would have run letters supporting the notion, if we received any.
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