Brown’s bullet train, voter rolls, and Shannon Grove’s discovery
Good morning. On behalf of The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter. Please sign up for it here.
Washington state voters go to the polls for their primary today. The Chamber of Commerce attacks cap-and-trade. The California voter registration “surge” is more of a ripple. Day care, mental health care, and Bernie Sanders weigh on our minds. And Assemblywoman Shannon Grove finds a case that doesn’t reflect well on our justice system.
Take that
Jerry Brown seeks to use a fourth of the money generated by cap-and-trade to fund the high-speed rail. The California Chamber of Commerce has other ideas, as detailed in a brief filed Monday with the Court of Appeal in Sacramento.
The chamber challenges California’s $2 billion-plus cap-and-trade fee, saying it’s an illegal tax because it wasn’t approved by a two-thirds vote of the Legislature. Nor will the cap-and-trade revenue serve the purpose of its enabling legislation, Sen. Fran Pavley’s AB 32 of 2006.
Among the chamber’s lines: “The bullet train project will increase GHGs for the next 30 years, so it hardly advances AB 32’s stated goal of emissions reduction to 1990 levels by 2020.” Expect a decision by year’s end.
Take a number: 9,420
Analysts have been saying Bernie Sanders’ and Donald Trump’s candidacies have led to a surge in voter registration. Not quite. It’s more of a rearrangement. As the registration deadline to vote in the June 7 primary closed Monday, the California Target Book, an insiders’ guide to California politics, reported that net registration increased by a mere 9,420 voters in the first four months of the year.
Democrats increased numbers of 98,657. Compare that to the first four months of 2008, when Barack Obama was running for president and registration jumped by 358,896, including 284,257 Democrats. GOP registration continues to tank in California, falling by 14,996 to 27.52 percent of the electorate.
Our take
Editorial: Legislation by Assemblymen Marc Levine, Tony Thurmond and Evan Low would give judges more tools to help mentally ill criminals, and deserves full vetting.
Editorial: Republican Assemblywomen Marie Waldron, Kristin Olsen, Catharine Baker and Ling-Ling Chang join 19 Democratic women legislators in urging more money for child care.
Erika D. Smith: Bernie Sanders needs to stop playing the victim card.
Dan Walters: Jerry Brown’s “nonviolent” parole initiative, headed for the November ballot, would apply to violent crimes.
Daniel Weintraub: Vincent Felitti, a Kaiser Permanente physician, investigates the connection between childhood trauma and health later in life.
Their take
The Santa Rosa Press Democrat endorses Bill Dodd for state Senate and Dan Wolk and Cecilia Aguiar-Curry for the Assembly.
The Orange County Register praises Fresno Republican Assemblyman Jim Peterson for his bill to keep high-speed rail on its time and fiscal track.
The Seattle Times urges Washington state voters to take a stand against Donald Trump.
The Tacoma News Tribune encourages Washingtonians to consider Donald Trump’s towering insights and big heart, and remember them this month during an election that doesn’t matter.
The Raleigh News & Observer observes that there were to be no empty seats for an appearance with the North Carolina Symphony by the great Itzhak Perlman. The violinist backed out of the show because of HB 2 – a law that has been a disaster.
Syndicates’ take
Trudy Rubin: Iraqi novelist Kanan Makiya challenges Iraqis.
Paul Krugman: Lessons learned from the Bill Clinton boom, applied to a potential Hillary Clinton economy.
Michael Gerson: Donald Trump’s train is fueled by conspiracy.
Tweet of the day
Bakersfield Republican Assemblywoman Shannon Grove, @shannongrove: Today, the legislature paid off, at the recommendation of Kamala Harris, $8,506,032.47.
Too long for a tweet: The settlement involved a youth counselor who sexually abused boys at the old Heman G. Stark Correctional Facility in Chino. Attorneys got $7.23 million. Boys got less than $1.1 million.
“This is called justice in the state of California,” Grove writes on her Facebook page.
This story was originally published May 24, 2016 at 5:31 AM with the headline "Brown’s bullet train, voter rolls, and Shannon Grove’s discovery."