Opinion

California wildfires + Schwarzenegger + census + Stephon Clark

By Foon Rhee

frhee@sacbee.com

March 30, 2018 05:00 AM

Welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter, produced by The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board. Please sign up for it here and tell your friends.

Our take

Editorials

Finally, some common-sense moves on California wildfires. Congress fixed a major flaw in federal funding that took money away from crucial wildfire prevention programs. Pacific Gas & Electric announced last week that it will turn off the electricity during extreme fire conditions such as high winds. Read more.

Jack Ohman goes fishing with Donald Trump’s former attorney John Dowd. See what he catches here.

Columns

Bill Whalen: Former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to remake the state Republican Party, but his choice of Ohio Gov. John Kasich as his sidekick may not work. Read more.

Op-eds

Richard Elliott: Patients and health care workers are trying to qualify a statewide initiative for the November 2018 ballot. The Fair Pricing for Dialysis Act will hold companies accountable and improve patient care. Read more.

California Forum

Chet P. Hewitt: As Stephon Clark’s community mourns him, will Sacramento leaders do right? Read more.

City Councilman Larry Carr: I represent Stephon Clark’s neighborhood in Sacramento. Here’s what I plan to do next. Read more.

Joe Mathews: L.A. needs the Delta tunnels. That talk of water self-sufficiency is a fantasy. Read more.

Hedrick Smith: In refusing to confront Vladimir Putin about Russian meddling in the 2016 election, President Donald Trump has failed to “preserve, protect and defend” the U.S. Constitution as mandated by his oath of office. Isn’t that an impeachable offense? Read more.

Takes on the census citizenship question

Mike Gonzalez, Tribune News Service: Stop hyperventilating – citizenship question on census makes sense. The citizenship question was included in censuses, continuously and without controversy, from 1890-1950, a period which encompassed the years of highest immigration and the highest percentage of foreign-born citizens in American history. Read more.

Ann McFeatters, Tribune News Service: Guess which president, espousing nationalism and anti-immigrant slogans and determined to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico, seized on putting the citizen question back in the census. Yeah, that guy. Read more.

Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post: Why are many on the left up in arms over a question that should be relatively uncontroversial? Answer: Money and power. Democrats are worried that adding a citizenship question will dampen participation in the census by illegal immigrants, reducing the total population count in Democratic-leaning metro areas. Read more.

Los Angeles Times editorial board: When Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross announced Monday that he was adding a question about citizenship to the 2020 census, he offered the dubious explanation that it would somehow make it easier to root out violations of the Voting Rights Act. But immigrant communities – and especially people who are living in the United States illegally – will be less likely to cooperate with the census, for fear that any acknowledgment of non-citizenship status will be used against them or their families. Read more.

Santa Rosa Press Democrat editorial board: After Congress gave the Census Bureau a needed cash infusion, it was starting to look as if America might pull off the 2020 Census successfully – that was until the Trump administration decided to add an unnecessary and divisive question about citizenship. Read more.

We said that adding the citizenship question was the latest attack on immigrants by President Trump and warned that it would cost California in federal funding and representation. Read more.

Their take

San Diego Union-Tribune: The #MeToo movement’s persistence is reassuring. It was only six months ago that exposes of serial harasser Harvey Weinstein led to a series of exposes of powerful men in Hollywood, politics, the media, business and other fields – people who assumed their prominence protected them from being held accountable for repellent behavior. But a closer look at what is happening in Sacramento and Washington suggests a different narrative: the possibility that #MeToo’s momentum is running into brick walls in halls of political power. Read more.

San Jose Mercury News: The $1.3 trillion budget deal passed by Congress and signed by President Trump last week has good news for California – sort of. It sets aside an additional $2 billion per year for 10 years to fight wildfires, ending the nonsensical practice of borrowing from the U.S. Forest Service’s prevention budget when firefighting funds run out. But the budget includes only an extra $500 million for this fiscal year. Read more.

Syndicates’ take

Charles M. Blow, New York Times: Conservatives have twisted themselves into knots trying to excuse Donald Trump’s vulgarities as acceptable and somehow set them apart from the supposed productivity of the man himself, somehow cleaving the sin from the sinner. But, in the end, this just makes a mockery of their own sense of morality. Read more.

Michael Gerson, Washington Post: On issues such as trade, immigration, and the Muslim travel ban, are Republican critics of Donald Trump dramatically out of step with conservatives? Read more.

Paul Krugman, New York Times: Unfortunately, what looks good on TV isn’t necessarily good for America, or the world. For example, the Korea trade deal was hyped as a major victory, but it’s basically a nothingburger in terms of its actual content. Read more.

Ruben Navarrette Jr., Washington Post: Mexican-Americans must stomach the crushing irony that farm labor leader Cesar Chavez’s anti-immigrant nativism and “America First” protectionism were early precursors to much of President Trump’s agenda. Read more.

Andres Oppenheimer, Miami Herald: President Donald Trump directed much more assistance to victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas than to those in the Spanish-speaking U.S. territory of Puerto Rico even though it suffered far greater losses. Read more.

Eugene Robinson, Washington Post: The man President Trump has named to become secretary of veterans affairs, Ronny Jackson, happens to be the president’s personal physician. More to the point, Jackson showered the president with hyperbolic Dear-Leader-style praise during a widely viewed television appearance in January. Read more.

Trudy Rubin, Philadelphia Inquirer: The Kemerovo fire does deserve serious attention here, not only because it is a gripping human story, but because it reveals so much about Russians and about Vladimir Putin – at a time when our two countries are increasingly at odds. Read more.

Bret Stephens, New York Times: Jeremy Corbyn, the leader of Britain’s Labour Party, is facing public protests and scathing criticism again this week after it emerged that in 2012 he had questioned the removal of a London mural by artist Kalen Ockerman that looks like a scene drawn from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Read more.

Mailbag

“Anger is appropriate when law enforcement turns against the citizens. Anger is appropriate when a person dies without reason, in an unjust, cold and brutal manner.” – Teresa Cruz

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