Jack Ohman looks at the American River Parkway backyard denizens. Peek over the hedge here.
Our take
Editorials
The parkway is already a sewer. This dumb decision by Sacramento County would keep it that way: Instead of spending $5 million on a futile plan to stop illegal camping on the American River Parkway, try homeless shelters.
Columns
Andrew Malcolm, McClatchyDC: Most of Donald Trump’s achievements – pulling out of TPP and the Paris Accord, for example – could be done unilaterally by him. As have some negative things like staff turmoil. Things that require teamwork come harder. Take the prolonged disaster that was Obamacare repeal, please.
Dan Walters, CalMatters: Law enforcement officials and prosecutors generally opposed the new leniency, warning that putting fewer miscreants behind bars would inevitably increase crime. And the latest state crime report may point in that direction.
Op-Eds
Sue Frost: By chasing the homeless off the American River Parkway, we will be pushing the problem into areas closer to schools and housing, and even further from the services and shelters they need.
Don Ulrich and Lisa Gonzales: Voters approved Proposition 51 last November, authorizing the state to sell $9 billion in school construction bonds. However, the state has only authorized a bond sale for about $400 million in 2017. School officials will rally Wednesday at the state Capitol to say that is woefully inadequate and unfair to communities that have raised funds through local bonds.
California Forum
Erwin Chemerinsky: The revenue is negligible, the harm is extensive and the practice of charging families for the costs associated with having a child in detention disproportionately hurts African-Americans and Latinos. Gouging families with kids in juvenile hall serves no one. California should pass SB 190 and make it stop.
Robert Greenwald: The director and producer of “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism” calls on California’s governor to put up or shut up on immigrant protections such as the “sanctuary state” bill and curbs on for-profit prisons. Gov. Jerry Brown, he says, should stop talking about ending deportations and start signing bills.
On behalf of The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter. Please sign up for it here and tell a friend.
Take a number: $4,360
Using the medium best understood by the Trump administration, Nancy McFadden, Gov. Jerry Brown’s chief aide, tweeted: “If @realDonaldTrump opens our Nat’l Monuments to drilling/mining/timber harvesting, CA & @JerryBrownGov will respond with swift legal action.” This comes as Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke prepares to deliver final recommendations by Thursday to Trump on the fate of 21 national monuments in the West, including Berryessa Snow Mountain. Our McClatchyDC colleague Stuart Leavenworth reports that several congressional Republicans, including Reps Doug LaMalfa of Richvale and Tom McClintock of Elk Grove, called on Zinke to reverse the Berryessa decision. That’s a terrible idea, one that would run counter to the wishes of elected officials led by Assemblywoman Cecilia Aguiar-Curry, D-Winters, who actually represent Berryessa. As we have said, Californians want these spectacular natural areas protected, not opened up to drilling, logging and mining. U.S. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, issued papers promoting the economic benefits of the monuments, saying that per person income is $4,360 a year higher in counties with protected public lands than those without. – Foon Rhee, @foonrhee
Their take
Arizona Republic: Pardoning former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio would permanently stain this presidency. It would define Donald Trump as a president who has little regard for the judicial system and less respect for the need to hold law enforcement accountable for violations of minorities’ rights.
Kansas City Star: Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens did the right thing Tuesday when he stayed the execution of Marcellus Williams and appointed a board of inquiry to review Williams’ request for clemency. It was a remarkable and merciful decision.
Orange County Register: There are some indications that Clifford Rechtschaffen, one of Gov. Jerry Brown’s two latest appointments to the state Public Utilities Commission, would be more of an advocate for utilities than for consumers. That’s why the Senate Rules Committee needs to ask tough questions of Rechtschaffen in his confirmation hearing this week.
San Diego Union-Tribune: Many things fed the populist rage that consumed both parties and helped Donald Trump get elected during the 2016 presidential election. Given this backdrop, it is troubling and disturbing that the Trump administration appears to be pulling back from oversight of the financial industry.
Charlotte Observer: The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution means nothing if its highest ideals are not staunchly protected during times of unrest. It means nothing if we reconsider – or undermine – the principles embedded in those words when public hate is on the rise and the purveyors of that hatred turn it into a weapon.
Chicago Tribune: There are places in the world so potentially volatile that the U.S. cannot leave them to the ebb and flow of geopolitics. The Korean Peninsula and the Middle East come immediately to mind. Afghanistan also belongs on that list – something President Donald Trump has finally come to realize, seven months after taking office.
Syndicates’ take
David Brooks: For some, it’s President Trump’s warrior mentality itself that must be replaced. Warriors on one side inevitably call forth warriors on the other, and that just means more culture war, more barbarism, more dishonesty and more dysfunction.
Thomas L. Friedman: President Trump’s speech on Afghanistan was so full of bombast and clichés, so lacking in details and, most of all, so lacking in humility in confronting a problem and a region that has vexed better men for ages that I still don’t know where he’s going – only that he is going there very definitively.
Nicholas Kristof: There was no controversy about the arrival of this eclipse; we all accepted the scientific consensus about its timing and swarmed to the best viewpoints. So why is there such resistance to the similar scientific consensus about other foretold events – such as climate change?
Ruben Navarrette: The same people who, a decade ago, might have scoffed at the idea that others were being victimized by societal norms, generational poverty and institutional racism have now themselves joined the pity party and donned the cloak of victimhood.
Kathleen Parker: It is good to get away and to be reminded that, in the main, what most people care about are human stories, the meaning of things, the purposes to which we attach ourselves. Yet, increasingly, we spend too much time obsessing over news nuggets, much of it generated by a nameless, soul-less, buzz-fed entity.
Leonard Pitts Jr.: In response to that pathetic performance in the wake of the tragedy in Charlottesville, when he suggested moral equivalence between white supremacists and those who protest them, America – a pretty broad swath of it, at least – has condemned him.
Trudy Rubin: The American public is understandably tired of America’s longest war that has dragged on for nearly 16 years. There are no good military options in sight. But Trump’s new Afghanistan policy contained several shifts in direction that could make a difference on the ground.
Mailbag
“We were awe-struck, a community without our usual divisions of politics and prejudices.” Sue Kahler, Lincoln
This story was originally published August 23, 2017 5:31 AM.