OPINION: Paying Sacramento cops + Hurricane Irma + CA’s presidential primary + Facebook’s failure

Sept. 11--Our take

Editorials

Boosting morale for Sacramento police comes at a price: While the City Council should approve the new contract with the police union on Tuesday, council members should also clearly say that they expect officers to be more open and responsive to the public. That has to be the bargain going forward to rebuild the frayed trust between the department and the community.

Jack Ohman gives a dam about Oroville safety; do the inspectors? Make a close visual inspection here.

Columns

Foon Rhee: Is Sacramento science center special enough for a big taxpayer investment? Boosters want to transform the 1912 PG&E power plant on the Sacramento riverfront into a state-of-the-art science education center. They also want city taxpayers to fork over nearly $20 million.

Leonard Pitts Jr.: Nothing to see here, say climate deniers. Harvey dropped more rain on the continental United States than any storm ever has. At about the size of Texas, Irma is a behemoth, not to mention one of the strongest Atlantic storms ever recorded.

Marcos Breton: When Donald Trump deports immigrants, California's Attorney General Xavier Becerra remembers his mom and dad.

Dan Walters, CalMatters: Access to public records is being eroded, from pending bills to documents on dam safety. In California, accountability depends on transparency, which is under siege.

Op-Eds

David Balto: The law needs to foster growth and innovation while protecting consumers' privacy rights. Unfortunately, the proposed Broadband Internet Privacy Act before the Legislature accomplishes none of this.

Alex Padilla: Senate Bill 568 would move California's presidential primary to the first Tuesday in March, forcing candidates to campaign in the largest and most diverse state in the union and giving voice to California voters.

Mailbag

The Legislature should put the brakes on SB 568 and consult with the Democratic Party's 3,300 delegates and congressional Democrats. -- Bob Mulholland, Chico

On behalf of The Sacramento Bee's editorial board, welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter.

Take a number: 470

In 2014, then Federal Election Commission chair Ann Ravel wrote a brief note announcing she would embark on an inquiry that could have led to some regulation of internet advertising. The commission, she noted, had turned a "blind eye to the internet's growing force in the political arena."

It didn't work out well. As Ravel tweeted last week, "For this, I got death threats courtesy of the Rs on FEC."

I recall it well having written a column: Commissioner Lee Goodman, whose appointment was championed by Senate Mitch McConnell, went on Fox and talk radio with ominous warnings.

"I can't imagine the deterrent effect if the federal government were to begin imposing a disclosure regime every time you want to blog about politics," Goodman said.

"Is this not just basically another shot at censorship on the Net and something of a tremendous overreach?" Ed Berliner asked on Newsmax. It was not to be.

Last week, as detailed in The New York Times and admitted by Facebook, the social network-media giant took $100,000 from what it now believes to be a Russian propaganda organization to place ads between June 2015 and May 2017. Facebook also said it had removed 470 "inauthentic" accounts and pages that were "likely operated out of Russia." The 3,000 ads were aimed at "amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights," Facebook says in its post.

Perhaps now the FEC will revisit the issue. Or not.

Their take

Seattle Times: Seattle and the state of Washington will continue to benefit from Amazon.com's remarkable expansion, despite the company's surprising decision to open a second headquarters elsewhere in North America. Yet there's no mistaking this is a distressing wake-up call. State and local leaders must respond by assuring Amazon, other large employers and entrepreneurs that Greater Seattle still has the capacity, talent and desire to enable their companies' growth.

San Diego Union-Tribune: In the competition for Amazon's second headquarters, the advantages that rival cities like Dallas, Atlanta and Charlotte have over coastal California metro areas are far more affordable, especially for people who hope to start families, a powerful lesson as to why it's so urgent for state leaders to take dramatic steps to reduce the housing crisis.

Miami Herald: It is one of the Editorial Board's most fervent wishes -- but only one -- that in the pre-disaster hunt for plywood, water, gas and hotel rooms, we remain civil, empathetic.

Kansas City Star: The idea that American universities have "gone too far to the other extreme" in policing sexual assault on campus has quickly become conventional wisdom. But that frame, which Education Secretary Betsy DeVos made the official position of the Trump administration, reflects a complete misreading of both the situation on campus and of current protections.

Raleigh News & Observer: Thanks to the amateurish, partisan rancor dividing the current edition of the UNC Board of Governors and the almost childish outbreak of anger evident in a recent meeting, North Carolinians should justifiably worry that the university that belongs to them is in jeopardy.

Orange County Register: The surest way for our federal legislature to fail the American people is for its factions to seek absolute triumph at every turn. The rule of law is not worth sacrificing for such hollow victories. For a real win, leaders in both parties must seize the moment this fall.

L.A. Times: Despite Donald Trump's campaign comments, his administration shows no sign of adopting a more pragmatic approach to marijuana policy. It's up to Congress to show leadership.

San Francisco Chronicle: Arnold Schwarzenegger -- the 70-year-old international celebrity, centrist Republican, and former governor of California -- has chosen an audacious third act. He's at the forefront of a bipartisan national push to change America's hopelessly gerrymandered government..

Syndicates take

E.J. Dionne Jr.: Donald Trump had the opportunity to put Democrats in a tight spot by opening his presidency with a major infrastructure plan. Instead, he has spent his energies since Jan. 20 strengthening the hand of his opponents and weakening his own party.

Nicholas Kristof: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi endured a total of 15 years of house arrest and led a campaign for democracy, was a hero of modern times. Yet today Suu Kyi, as the effective leader of Myanmar, is chief apologist for this ethnic cleansing, as the country oppresses the darker-skinned Rohingya and denounces them as terrorists and illegal immigrants.

Maureen Dowd: Irish PM Leo Varadkar's critics want to see substance on the homeless and housing crises, not sizzle, or the "Cult of Varadkar," as it's dubbed.

Frank Bruni: The gold rush by some of the refugees from Trumplandia has a quickness and crassness all its own. That's fitting. They got no loyalty from Trump.

Timothy Egan: At the dark confluence of hippie and Hitler, you can buy a year's supply of Earth-friendly quinoa. What's sad, and indicative of the wretched Trump era, is how something that started in a wave of hope and optimism migrated to closed-minded, mercenary quarters.

Paul Krugman: President Trump's decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy is, above all else, immoral. But Attorney General Jeff Sessions also used junk economics to try to justify it.

Dana Milbank: As predictably as National Weather Service bulletins, some End-Times pastors and other provocateurs on the right attribute destructive hurricanes to a wrathful God's vengeance on liberals.

Tweet of the day

"Can we have a moratorium on TV reporters talking about their raincoats?" -- Tim Grieve?, @timgrieve

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