Our take
Editorials
Tesla employs 10,000 Californians, so why get into the middle of their labor dispute if California doesn’t have to? Legislators wouldn’t penalize Tesla for operating in California. Would they?
Jack Ohman gets in line at the Hillary Rodham Clinton book signing. Get her autograph here.
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Columns
Foon Rhee: The deck is stacked against Sacramento in Amazon sweepstakes. The $5 billion second headquarters would be a game changer for the region. But just take an impartial look at the criteria Amazon put out Thursday when it dangled 50,000 jobs with average six-figure salaries. Analysts crunched the numbers and Sacramento isn’t on their short lists.
Leonard Pitts Jr.: Before the first raindrop fell, the first palm tree bowed, or the first transformer blew, they came out to tell us what He meant by pointing a monster hurricane at Florida.
Dan Walters, CalMatters: Senate Bill 769 was just one of dozens of measures that were effectively killed by legislative appropriations committees this month without formal votes or explanations why. All of the sidetracked bills were important to their sponsors and legislative authors, of course, but few had the potential socioeconomic impact of SB 769, which would have extended a pilot program allowing community colleges to offer four-year baccalaureate degrees in a few technical fields.
Karin Klein: One lesson from Harvey and Irma: Better evacuations. The problem is that all this black-and-white thinking – evacuate everybody or don’t evacuate anyone – isn’t helping anyone. A better approach is needed as climate change ramps up the number of weather-related disasters.
Andrew Malcolm, McClatchy: No one should be surprised that President Trump, the upstart New York wheeler-dealer who chose the GOP as a flag of political convenience and overrode 16 other competitors and its establishment’s concerted opposition, is a pragmatist and not really conservative.
Good morning. On behalf of The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter.
Op-Eds
Kathryn Phillips: The need for fossil-fuel-free energy and climate leadership couldn’t be higher. Any day, the state Assembly will consider Senate Bill 100, which would commit us to 100 percent clean energy by 2045. We will be the largest economy in the world to set this goal.
Hal Harvey and Rob Bonta: A “carbon loophole” rewards firms that haven’t invested in reducing their emissions, while unfairly penalizing those that have. Assembly Bill 262 would use the state government’s tremendous buying power to close this loophole by setting a new, low-carbon standard for certain industrial products.
California Forum
George Runner: If Trump wants to know how not to reform a tax code, he should just look to California.
Matt Vespa and Carmen Ramirez: Texas and Florida are crippled by flooding, yet the California Energy Commission is considering a Central Coast power plant. After Harvey and Irma, why put a power plant on the California coast?
Take a number: 7.3 percent
California recorded the biggest drop of any state in its rate of residents without health insurance between 2013 and 2016, thanks to aggressive expansion under Obamacare. The number of uninsured plummeted from 6.5 million to 2.8 million, or 7.3 percent of Californians, according to the Census numbers released Tuesday. Health Access California, an advocacy group, highlighted the numbers to point out that Republican proposals to repeal the Affordable Care Act, though on the back burner after the defeat in Congress, would threaten that progress. Even as state leaders fight the Trump administration on behalf of Dreamers, they also need to keep their guard up to protect health care for millions of Californians.
Their take
Miami Herald: We don’t want to hear criticism that the National Hurricane Center and TV meteorologists sent us into hysterics over Irma unnecessarily. That they cried wolf to send us into a buying, fleeing frenzy. That’s baloney. These folks are pros, and in many ways, heroes.
Raleigh News & Observer: Tight-fisted policies at the state and federal level combined with doubts about climate change and hostility toward environmental regulations are weakening North Carolina’s preparedness for giant storms and its ability to recover from them. Harvey and Irma may have started to move those obstacles and that can’t happen soon enough. North Carolina escaped Irma, but in these times the state should be urgently preparing for the hurricanes that will come.
San Francisco Chronicle: California legislators rushed through an energy deregulation bill (AB1890) with insufficient vetting in 1996, swayed by promises that deregulation would lower prices and boost the economy. Lawmakers need to heed that lesson as they consider the sudden introduction of a scheme that would extend California’s power grid to five other states. It’s being advertised as a way to both lower costs and to help the state meet its ambitious clean-energy goals. Sound familiar?
Los Angeles Times: California has $1.5 billion available this year to fight climate change, and many billions of dollars more coming in the years ahead, now that lawmakers have extended the state’s cap-and-trade program through 2030. Needless to say, there are plenty of people, groups, businesses and governments that would love to get a piece of the pie.
Mercury News: California lawmakers are going to move the state’s 2020 presidential primary to the first Tuesday in March, following only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. The hope is that this will make California a player in choosing the nominees, not just an ATM for presidential candidates. Don’t bank on it.
Orange County Register: On paper, California has done well during the economic recovery, but the high cost of living still makes it a difficult place in which to live and work. The Golden State’s economy is poised to surpass the United Kingdom’s as the fifth-largest in the world, but that prosperity is tenuous and rather unevenly distributed.
Syndicates’ take
David Brooks: People are still good at acting individually to tackle problems. Look at how many Houstonians leapt forth to care for their neighbors. But we have trouble with collective action, with building new institutions, or reviving old ones, that are big enough to deal with the biggest challenges.
David Leonhardt: About 40 years ago, the earth’s surface temperatures began to break out of their recent historical range and just kept climbing. Not coincidentally, the number of storms with extreme rainfall began to increase around the same time.
Dana Milbank: The NRA’s idea of recreation: Assault rifles, armor-piercing bullets and silencers. If you do not immediately recognize this pastime as part of America’s heritage, then you are sadly out of step with the current Republican majority in Congress. On Tuesday, a House panel takes up the “Sportsmen’s Heritage and Recreational Enhancement Act of 2017.”
Ruben Navarrette: Now the immigration lies have seeped into the public debate over the government program known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. You’ll find plenty surrounding President Donald Trump’s decision to rescind DACA in the first place.
Mailbag
“In broad daylight, while walking to work, I was pursued and then assaulted for no reason by a man who seemed both transient and mentally ill.” – Jeffrey Callison, Lincoln
Tweets of the day
“Will #caleg “get serious” about promoting EV manufacturing like @TeslaMotors in CA?” – Steven Maviglio @stevenmaviglio
“I don’t want my taxpayer $$ going to subsidize companies that treat workers poorly. Guessing there are lots of folks who would agree.” – Steve Smith @ssmith_calabor
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