Crime in Sacramento, ‘health’ care in the U.S. Senate, and money in California politics
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Jack Ohman says that it’s Time for a new edition of Time. Read the newsweekly cartoon here.
Our take
Editorial
Who is to blame for “aggressive behavior” by homeless people downtown?: Only Sacramento County’s supervisors can get homeless people into housing and care. Otherwise, the city’s comeback is at risk.
Columns
Jack Ohman: Sacramento: Don’t mistake geegaws and slogans for progress. Cities that fall back on geegaws and slogans only further illustrate that they have inferiority complexes.
Elaine Corn: As edible patriotism, hot dogs, burgers, corn on the cob and strawberry shortcake should be nonpartisan traditions on the Fourth of July. Unfortunately, this celebration seems increasingly to conflict those who try to eat healthy and green.
Dan Walters, CalMatters: As Gov. Jerry Brown nears retirement, his two big public works projects remain iffy.
Op-Eds
Tom Steyer: Two of the nation’s richest and most powerful corporate interests – the pharmaceutical and oil industries – are trying to weaken or kill bills that affect their bottom lines. Sadly, they have a good chance of winning.
Tim Molina, Courage Campaign: Two people. Both in a county jail. Both accused of a crime, but not yet convicted. Both deemed a low flight risk, unlikely to harm their communities. Which should get to return home, rejoin their family, live a normal life while awaiting trial?
Take a number: $1.14 million
Lt. Gavin Newsom raised $1.14 million in donations of $1,000 or more in June for his run for governor. Former L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa raised less than half that, $489,600. Treasurer John Chiang raised less than half of that, $239,050, campaign finance reports showed. Of course, one billionaire could enter the race, or dump enough money in to an independent expenditure committee to make all the $29,200 donations irrelevant.
Their take
Denver Post: U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner’s silence – Gardner runs the National Republican Senatorial Committee – on what he’d like to see changed in the Republican health care bill is deafening in a state where a shockingly high percent of voters support a more liberal approach to health care.
Philadelphia Inquirer: You can’t blame Pennsylvanians wondering who U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey represents. He’s a ring leader of the effort to replace the Affordable Care Act with a Republican proposal that would jeopardize the lives and livelihoods of thousands in this state. That suggests Toomey’s allegiance lies elsewhere. Perhaps it’s with the Club for Growth.
Reno Gazette-Journal: U.S. Sen. Dean Heller deserves praise for making the best decision he could for Nevadans in the moment. Whether you want Obamacare to be fixed or repealed entirely, the “Better Care Reconciliation Act” would have hurt Nevada. As Gov. Brian Sandoval said in a letter to Congress earlier this year, Medicaid expansion and the state exchange led to more than 400,000 Nevadans gaining health insurance coverage.
San Francisco Chronicle: Federal wildlife officials gave the first approval last week to Gov. Jerry Brown’s decade-old plan to re-engineer California’s water system by building twin tunnels to ship water around the delta to cities and farms. It’s a regrettable step in a long, costly and politically charged approval process with an uncertain outcome. It doesn’t make sense to spend $17 billion to move water instead of investing in water saving and reuse.
L.A. Times: Gov. Jerry Brown and the California Air Resources Board have been so focused on leading the world on climate change that they’ve neglected pollution in their own backyard. Communities like those represented by Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia still live with unhealthful levels of pollution from industrial sites, diesel trucks and trains.
Raleigh News & Observer: North Carolina House Republicans, who’ll undoubtedly be joined by those in the Senate, are trying to rearrange the state’s judicial districts – those wherein people elect district attorneys and judges – to give themselves a partisan advantage.
Miami Herald: Is civility dead in America? Not yet, but on Thursday President Trump punched it on the nose — again. He did it with a crude, personal attack of two tweets directed at a pair of newscasters.
Syndicates take
Kathleen Parker: It isn’t so much that The Donald always hits back, and harder, as his flacks boast. It’s that he’s so thin-skinned, such a political amateur – and so utterly lacking in the fine art of disregard – that he can’t let anything pass.
Maureen Dowd: Trump was used to media that could be bought, sold and bartered with. He is not built for this hostile environment, and it shows in his deteriorating psychological state.
Gail Collins: Your Fourth of July quiz. Let’s see how much attention you’ve been paying to current presidential events.
Timothy Egan: The toxic Senate bill does nothing to fix a struggling system. But it is bold and quite daring: for this is the broadest attack on working Americans by a governing political party in our lifetime.
Ross Douthat: Republicans are too divided on health care, too incompetently “led” by its president, to do something that’s big and sweeping, and smart and decent.
Paul Krugman: The GOP health care bill amounts to vast suffering imposed on many of our fellow citizens in order to give a handful of wealthy people what amounts to some extra pocket change.
E.J. Dionne Jr.: People sharply at odds over the man in the White House nonetheless cooperate with each other to strengthen their communities, make their schools better, serve their religious congregations, coach teams and build businesses.
Ruben Navarrette: A big chunk of America despises President Donald Trump because we don’t like arrogant and sanctimonious bullies who insult, pick on and marginalize groups of people. And a big chunk of America despises the Media Industrial Complex because, well, pretty much for the same reason.
Leonard Pitts Jr.: I often find myself brooding about secession these days. In my head, I divide up states like a divorced couple splitting up their furniture and DVDs.
David Brooks: There are two kinds of people. Tuners are good at empathy and hungers for deep connection. Spinners are funny, socially adventurous and good at storytelling.
Frank Bruni: New York raises the question of how prepared these ever-denser hubs are. It’s dirtier and smellier than it should be. Its schools struggle. Even its jails are broken.
Nicholas Kristof: The most important historical force in the world today is not President Trump, or terrorists. It’s the stunning gains against extreme poverty, illiteracy and disease.
Mailbag
“The California Nurses Association sees a golden opportunity to make health care a human right. Smart politics say now is the time for SB 562.” – Michael Lighty, California Nurses Association, Oakland
And finally,
Take Two: In our wrap of The Take from the previous week, we noted that the United Food & Commercial Workers and State Building and Construction Trades Council split from the California Nurses Association over its attack on Speaker Anthony Rendon for killing their universal health care bill, and wondered: “Will Sens. Toni Atkins, D-San Diego, and Ricardo Lara, D-Bell Gardens, the authors of the paper moon of a universal health care bill, pay a price? We doubt it.”
By week’s end, we had the answer. The pipes trade council, which is part of the building trades council, had given $7,500 to Atkins, and the building trades council sent $14,600 to Lara, campaign finance reports showed. This was after the trades had sent a press release criticizing the nurses for criticizing Rendon for tubing the Lara-Atkins bill. Lara is running for Insurance Commission, but chairs Senate Appropriations, and Atkins could become Senate president pro tem or San Diego mayor, and definitely has a vote. The building trades are very good at building relations. Can the UFCW be far behind?
This story was originally published July 3, 2017 at 5:31 AM with the headline "Crime in Sacramento, ‘health’ care in the U.S. Senate, and money in California politics."