Bee Opinionated: Siebel Newsom unshackled + Drought tolerance + Keeping up with the Bontas
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Hello again, it’s Robin Epley here with The Sacramento Bee Editorial Board.
“Victims of sexual violence have one hell of an ally in the newly unshackled Jennifer Siebel Newsom, feminist documentary filmmaker and wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom. And in one way, I’m sorry about that,” wrote The Bee’s Metro columnist Melinda Henneberger last week.
“Because, as she says in the extremely raw video she released on Thursday, after the man she has accused of raping her, the predatory former king of Hollywood Harvey Weinstein, was sentenced to 16 more years in prison, ‘I never asked to join this club. No one did.’”
Why this is so extraordinary, Henneberger wrote, is not necessarily because all of this happened to Siebel Newsom or that it involves such a high profile predator — many if not most women have similar stories to this — “it’s that someone in her position is saying it, out loud and on such a big platform, that makes it a departure.”
“When I told my own mother that I’d been raped, decades after the fact, she at first insisted that that couldn’t be the case,” Henneberger wrote. “A prosecutor I know once pointed out that when someone’s house has been broken into more than once, we never ask, ‘Wow, what’s wrong with your house that it keeps getting burglarized?’ Yet even now, we do blame the victims of sex crimes for what’s happened to them.”
When It Rains, It Pours
I am so tired of seeing otherwise intelligent Californians point toward the torrential rain we’ve been having lately and claim the drought must be over. So I decided to talk to some scientists about it, and was unsurprised to find out that the drought is, in fact, not over.
“This is, of course, the havoc of climate change at its most obvious: The wets are getting wetter and the drys are getting drier. We, the people, get soaked and scorched every time the pendulum swings.”
Pacific Institute co-founder Peter Gleick told me that “it’s absolutely too soon to say the drought is over.”
“Even if it were really wet, it would be too soon to say our water problems are over. It would take an abnormally wet year just to refill the reservoirs and the soil moisture.”
Never has climate change and the fight for water been more evident than in the San Joaquin Valley, which was historically home to a large-but-shallow, seasonal lake. The Tulare Lake Basin (which disappeared in the early 20th century thanks to interventions such as nearby dams) naturally replenished the underground aquifers and created the rich, nutrient-laden farm land that California has relied upon for nearly a century. But we’ve since interfered with that natural process, and are now paying the consequences of our hubris.
An estimated one million people in California are served by water systems that are vulnerable to groundwater thresholds, reported the Pacific Institute. Declining groundwater levels will affect nearly 70% of the state’s water systems.
“The simplest way to think about drought is when there’s not enough water to do the things we want to do,” Gleick said, “and by that definition, California has been in a drought forever.”
Bonta Watch 2023
Just a quick update to last week’s installment on the ongoing Bonta saga:
If you need a refresher, California Assemblymember Mia Bonta was recently appointed by Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon to chair a budget subcommittee that has responsibility for public safety agencies. Included in that mix is the California Attorney General’s Office — headed by Rob Bonta, Mia’s husband.
So, after weeks of increasing public concern, Assemblymember Bonta announced on Feb. 19 that she would recuse herself from any committee discussions that involved her husband’s department.
Then, on Feb. 22, Assembly Budget Committee Chairman Phil Ting announced that, effective immediately, the Department of Justice has been moved out of Assemblymember Bonta’s purview in budget subcommittee 5, and moved to budget subcommittee 4, which deals with matters of state administration. Speaker Rendon has said he supports the decision.
Confused? You’re not alone. But I will say that this situation doesn’t feel quite over yet. Stay tuned.
Opinion of the Week
“I would really like to see an Adam Schiff sponge.” — Bee cartoonist and columnist Jack Ohman on the merchandising efforts of the many candidates lining up to run for Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s seat.
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Over and out,
Robin Epley
