California Editorial Rdp

June 20

Los Angeles Times on not letting trophy heads and skins into California:

A bill in the California Senate would prohibit the possession of trophies - including heads, parts or skin - of some of the most captivating and exotic animals in Africa. The bill, SB 1487, would cover the possession of 11 species considered endangered, threatened or vulnerable.

The state of California can’t stop a misguided African government from allowing the hunting of endangered animals in its country. Nor can it stop the U.S. government from permitting the importation of these trophies. But it can discourage such hunting by barring hunters from bringing new trophies to California and keeping them in their homes or elsewhere. This bill would mean no new elephant heads mounted on walls should it be approved.

Sponsored by Social Compassion in Legislation and introduced by Sen. Henry Stern (D-Canoga Park), the bill affects trophies of African elephants, lions, leopards and giraffes, as well as the black rhinoceros and the white rhinoceros, among other species. Most of those are listed as endangered or threatened under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. The status of the giraffe is under review by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

U.S. laws already in place govern the sale of the trophies from various animals; this bill is only about possession.

The measure would allow anyone in possession of such trophies before Jan. 1, 2019, to keep them. It would also allow trophies to pass through California, as long as they aren’t here longer than 30 days. A passel of hunting organizations has opposed the bill.

Of course, there are laws and treaties in effect worldwide that seek - with mixed results - to preserve species facing threats. Some African countries, for instance, ban the hunting of certain species.

But enough hunting takes place to make conservationists and animal welfare advocates worry for the future survival of these animals. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service regulates the importation of animal trophies, imposing various conditions on permits, in order to conserve species. But conservationists and advocates disagree strongly with some of the agency’s decisions. Last year, the agency stirred an outcry - even from President Trump - when it said it would lift a ban on the importation of elephant and lion trophies from Zimbabwe and Zambia. Since then, the agency has decided to allow imports on a case-by-case basis. That’s troubling to many conservationists.

Hunters also argue that the huge fees they pay to hunt in these African countries go toward conservation efforts - and therefore they are actually helping preserve species. That assertion has fallen under attack by various conservation groups, which contend that hunting groups have overestimated the amount contributed to African government conservation funds.

This bill allows California to play its part in trying to protect these vulnerable animals from extinction.

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June 19

Chico Enterprise-Record on Proposition 47 not working:

The release of the latest study about “sentencing reform” and Proposition 47 provided yet another interesting case study that you can take solid information and spin it in any direction you wish.

Supporters of sentencing reform said the study by the Public Policy Institute of California proved that Proposition 47 is working. Opponents of the proposition say same study demonstrates that California is less safe because of Proposition 47.

Proposition 47, approved by voters four years ago, took crimes that formerly would land a person in jail, like petty theft or drug possession, and instead made them infractions punishable by a ticket, not jail. So of course it stands to reason that petty theft would rise. Two-bit thieves stepped up their game, knowing there was little in the way of consequences.

Sure enough, the PPIC study showed theft has risen since Proposition 47 passed. The crime increase comes despite the fact that employment and the economy is booming. Historically speaking, crime is worse when the economy is bad.

You don’t have to look any farther than Chico to see that drug addiction is more rampant than ever, too. And shoplifting. And receiving stolen property. And all the other crimes that were reclassified as lesser offenses.

The study shows that to be true.

So why was Assemblyman James Gallagher, R-Yuba City, among the many Republicans blasting the PPIC study, calling it “misleading”?

Gallagher was reacting to the PPIC’s summary. The headline on the PPIC study said, “Proposition 47 Linked to Increase in Some Property Crimes, But Not Violent Crime.”

“The title and summary of this report are extremely misleading,” Gallagher said in a press release the day the report was released. “Read the full report and it tells you everything you need to know about Prop. 47 - and it’s not good.”

Fortunately, the reporter for The Associated Press did read the full report. That resulted in a headline that said, “Study: Proposition 47 contributed to more theft,” and a story that began, “California voters’ decision to reduce penalties for drug and property crimes in 2014 contributed to a jump in car burglaries, shoplifting and other theft, researchers reported Tuesday.”

Proposition 47 supporters seized on the fact that recidivism has decreased. But the fact is, the two-year recidivism rate is barely down (1.8 percent) and still extremely high (71 percent). Further, it’s natural for police to focus on major crimes, the ones that will send a person to jail, not ones that will result in a ticket.

The proposition hasn’t lived up to its promise. Prison spending in the state continues to increase even though there are fewer prisoners. That leaves no money to redirect into treatment programs, and Proposition 47 de-emphasized treatment anyway.

Voters created this mess. Voters eventually will see their mistake and another proposition will correct some of the problems. It can’t happen too quickly.

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June 19

Sacramento Bee on what California did to Stephen Miller:

What in the world did California do to Stephen Miller? Did some MS-13 gangbanger beat him up in the bathroom at Santa Monica High School? Did the pretty Latina in AP calculus ditch him at the prom?

Like some high school reunion nightmare, Miller, who grew up rich and then poorer in one of Los Angeles’ wealthiest suburbs in the 1990s, has made it his business as a senior policy adviser to President Donald Trump to haunt, hurt and debase the liberal West Coast culture that spawned him.

First there was the Muslim ban, authored with the now-exiled Steve Bannon and ordered by Trump, which ignited national mass protests. Now comes his “zero tolerance” immigration policy - “a simple decision” announced by Attorney General Jeff Sessions and defended by Trump, he told The New York Times, that has led to thousands of traumatized migrant children being torn from their parents and stuffed into holding facilities along the Mexican border.

In interviews, Miller paints himself as a master strategist with a plan that he believes will satiate the silent majority of Americans who want to torture foreign-born toddlers, or leverage them to build a Great Wall on the border, or something. And indeed, 28 percent of Americans do, if the latest opinion polls are to be believed.

But let’s be clear: This “strategy,” or whatever it is, is state-sponsored child abuse and a moral abomination by any sane party’s standards. Why is anyone in Washington - and, in particular, anyone purporting to represent California in Congress - enabling it?

“Cruel” is what former Republican First Lady Laura Bush called it. “Wicked,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., termed it. “This must stop,” wrote Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Even the Central Valley Trump stalwart Rep. David Valadao, R-Hanford, released a statement Tuesday decrying the internment of migrant children as “a humanitarian and national security crisis” that is “unacceptable.”

Not so unacceptable, though, that Valadao and House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, are above using the situation as leverage to ram through a bill that, while making a halfhearted attempt to stop the Trump administration from separating families, would also force the president’s wall down U.S. taxpayers’ throats and dramatically curtail even legal immigration. And that’s the less Draconian version of two “comprehensive” immigration bills under consideration.

Never mind that what House Republicans want has no chance of passage in the Senate. In a closed fundraising appearance in Fresno on Monday, The Fresno Bee’s Rory Appleton reported, McCarthy said he plans to bring an immigration measure to a vote later this week, after Trump weighs in on the various proposals. He declined to discuss the border separations directly, saying only, according to donors who were there, that the situation was “a legacy issue that’s been around for 20 years.”

Actually, it isn’t. Imprisoning babies and tearing apart families, and using them as a bargaining chip with Congress, is a sick, new non-solution to a basic policy question on immigration. And it’s a callous and unnecessary distraction from the real issues facing California.

Farmers are staring down the barrel of a labor shortage in an economy with nearly full employment, and immigrant families are cowering in terror of being deported. And that’s just here in the Central Valley.

There’s a happy medium and it could be reached if that’s what this president wanted - or if the Republican congressional majority could muster the backbone to stand up to hardliners within their caucus and crazed ideologues such as Trump’s house troll, Miller.

Oh, Santa Monica. Look what you’ve done.

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June 16

Santa Cruz Sentinel on everything not being balanced in 2018-19 California budget:

First, the good news on the 2018-19 state budget adopted earlier this month.

The $200 billion budget, which added about $1 billion to the early version proposed by Gov. Jerry Brown, addresses several key priorities for California:

. The budget doubles to $500 million the emergency aid for cities dealing with the homelessness crisis and should help fund solutions to help people get off the streets.

. It includes a significant boost for the state’s public universities. In his May proposal, Brown offered $92 million each to the California State University and University of California, with no room for enrollment growth. Under this deal, the CSU system will get another $105 million in ongoing funding, plus $167 million for one-time expenses, while the UC gets another $177 million for one-time spending.

. It increases funding by $360 million for CalWORKS, the state’s welfare program.

. It includes some money to tackle the backlog of untested rape kits that has likely let criminals escape prosecution. There’s $6.5 million to fund a bill requiring the testing of all evidence kits going forward and $1 million for a bill mandating the first statewide count of untested kits.

. And the budget includes $90 million for outreach and education leading up to the 2020 Census. An accurate Census account will be critical to getting the state’s fair share of federal funding and representation in Congress.

. Lastly, the budget maxes out the state’s Rainy Day fund intended to soften the blows of the inevitable next recession. The fund stands at about $14 billion and includes an additional $2.2 billion set aside for natural disasters and other contingencies.

Brown, in his final year in office, took a victory lap over his record of delivering an on-time, balanced budget with a healthy surplus and contingency fund - and reminded reporters that he inherited a $27 billion deficit in 2011.

But what the governor and key Democratic legislators did not mention was that general fund spending has grown from $86 billion in 2011-12 to nearly $140 billion in the upcoming fiscal year.

And for all that increased spending (which, by the way, will probably continue to grow under Brown’s presumptive successor, Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom), the state continues to suffer high rates of poverty and homelessness. And for all the money that goes toward education, California’s public-school students continue to rank near the bottom on national tests, with a majority unable to meet English and math standards.

Nor did the deal add money to track and seize guns from felons and the mentally ill.

Then there’s the pension mess. While state contributions to pension funds CalPERS and CalSTRS were just $1.6 billion in 2002-03, they are expected to reach $19.5 billion by 2029-30. And that’s just at the state level; the problem may be worse for counties, cities and school districts. The pension obligations mean fewer resources for actual services and greater pressure for even more tax increases.

A proposed tax on drinking water that would have raised $140 million a year to clean up contaminated water for thousands of Californians did not make it into the final budget deal, but one onerous bill did sneak in alongside the new budget. Since voters decreed a few years ago that the state budget no longer needed a two-thirds legislative vote to be approved, this same easier standard applied to trailer bills written to implement the budget’s appropriations.

One such bill was Senate Bill 863, which suspends for two years legislation passed in 2017 requiring local government and school bond measures to give voters some straightforward information about their financial effects, including how long tax hikes would be in effect and how much money they would raise.

Local officials complained the new rules were too difficult to implement. More likely the real motive is a fear voters would reject bonds if their full costs are revealed.

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June 15

The San Diego Union-Tribune on good weather not being cause of California’s surge in homelessness:

California’s emergence as the national epicenter of America’s homeless problem has made headlines for years. A December story in The New York Times noted that, while there had only been a 1 percent increase in total U.S. homelessness over the previous 12 months, there had been a “dramatic surge in West Coast cities,” especially in California. With about 114,000 homeless individuals, the Golden State had more than one-quarter of the nation’s total, the Times reported.

On the record, state politicians generally say the right things about this problem, and they often follow through with constructive action. No hard statistics are available, but it’s a safe bet that local and state spending meant to help the homeless is at an all-time high. Yet when the microphones are off, some of these same politicians depict homelessness in some crucial ways as beyond their control - California’s great weather, you see, serves as a magnet to the mentally ill and/or drug addicts of the world.

This week, however, a new study conducted as part of UCLA’s Anderson Forecast on economic trends made this argument seem like a lame excuse by politicians who don’t want to admit to their utter failure of leadership in addressing California’s severe housing crisis. UCLA economist William Yu found no evidence in the United States of a direct correlation between the quality of the weather and rates of homelessness. Instead, homelessness in America correlated strongly with housing costs. Yes, California and Hawaii are on the short list of the areas with the highest percentage of homeless people - but so are Washington, D.C., and New York.

The data Yu cited certainly show that individuals’ personal circumstances play a role in whether they are homeless; about a quarter of homeless individuals in the Golden State are severely mentally ill, and nearly one-fifth are chronic drug users. But most don’t fall into these categories. Instead, they simply can’t afford rent, much less a mortgage.

A Los Angeles Times report on Yu’s findings offered further evidence that assumptions about good weather attracting the homeless to California were questionable. It noted that homeless authorities had found that three-quarters of the unsheltered homeless in Los Angeles County had homes before losing them and that nearly two-thirds had lived in the county for more than 20 years.

It’s obvious that California’s housing crisis and the homelessness crisis are deeply interrelated. This means the most effective way to reduce homelessness in the Golden State is also the most effective way to reduce poverty and human misery here: adding housing stock to push down prices.

Against this backdrop, the myopia of everyone who has contributed to the state’s housing shortage seems even worse. The local officials who for decades have ducked their obligations under state laws to build new housing to accommodate population growth. The unions, environmentalists and trial lawyers who have used state laws to extract concessions from developers that drive prices far higher. The local homeowners whose satisfaction with their own lives leads them to go full NIMBY when new housing projects are proposed for their communities.

They’re all responsible for millions of California families spending so much on housing they have little left for other needs - and for homelessness reaching new extremes. And unless they can be overcome, these problems aren’t going to get fixed. The same UCLA report that addressed the homeless-housing cost nexus found no evidence that housing prices would come down anytime soon.