California Editorial Rdp

Sept. 6

The San Diego Union-Tribune on Democrats being wrong to pillory Feinstein’s Trump comments

The pillorying of Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein for suggesting last week that Donald Trump could “learn and change” and become “a good president” shows how invested many in the left are in the politics of outrage and umbrage. Trump may embody qualities that many progressives hate, but - as Feinstein said - he’s likely to remain president until 2021. That means he’s a force to be reckoned with - not shunned - if this nation is to have much hope of fixing health care and infrastructure, reforming the tax code and immigration laws, and addressing other causes that demand attention.

If it’s more important for elected Democrats to spend their energy perpetually ratcheting up their Trump loathing instead of accepting the necessity of working with him, how does that advance their agenda or help average Americans? How does it help the U.S. deal with its epic domestic crisis in Houston or its daunting foreign crisis with North Korea?

The San Diego Union-Tribune Editorial Board has criticized Trump over and over and over and will no doubt do so again. But we’ve never lost sight of the fact that he’s president and that opposition for opposition’s sake is not good for Trump’s most persistent critics or for the country at large.

For California’s senior senator to point this out deserves praise - not scathing criticism.

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Sept. 6

Chico Enterprise-Record on Chico State University being wise to try market-based solution to classes

There are many regrettable aspects to the last-minute cancellation of several sections of foreign language and other humanities classes at Chico State University, which left both teachers and students scrambling.

But there’s also one promising development - the university is making a wise business decision. That certainly isn’t always the case in an environment where some people think an institution of higher learning should be run like a charity or nonprofit, giving students what administrators think they need rather than what the students want.

The university canceled 44 sections of courses about a week before the start of the semester and 68 in all in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts. Many were foreign language courses, like German, French, Italian and Hebrew.

The university is still teaching those languages. It’s just that some sections were eliminated, giving students fewer options for specific classes.

The dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts said the university waited until the last minute to cut the classes in hopes that more students would enroll. When that didn’t happen, the university canceled the classes.

The people most upset about the late cancellations are the instructors. That’s understandable. Students are accustomed to seeing obstacles thrown their way. Instructors are not. Many of them are part-time lecturers. When a class is cut, so is their pay. Their livelihoods are affected and it was unwise of the university to let employees twist in the wind.

But some of the arguments we’ve heard after the late cancellations ignore the big picture.

One complaint is that the cancellations prove the university doesn’t value foreign language courses. No, it shows that the students don’t value the courses. Big difference.

Another complaint is that the classes were canceled because they were too expensive. Not true. They were canceled because there weren’t enough students. The university has limited resources and must use its funding wisely - to teach what students want to learn. There should be a constant reassessment of offerings.

New classes and new majors are being created all the time in response to that. It takes a nimble university to add majors in areas like computer game development and mechatronic engineering. But being nimble also means culling classes that aren’t as popular.

For example, many at universities bristle over the idea of getting rid of general education requirements, saying a well-rounded university experience requires students to take classes they might not like. There has to be a limit, however. Students are paying for this education. It can’t be force-fed to them. At some point, students make decisions with their enrollment choices and universities have to adjust or wither.

Robert Knight, the dean of the College of Humanities and Fine Arts, regrets one thing about the decision. He said the cancellation of classes should have happened in May rather than August, so workers weren’t left hanging. We agree with that. But the university is absolutely correct in trying to ensure that all classes have an adequate number of students.

The classes are for the students, after all - not the lecturers.

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Sept. 5

Marysville Appeal-Democrat on progress being made on homelessness issue

Whether you feel any sort of sympathy or empathy for the homeless, it’s to everyone’s benefit if the whole homelessness issue is dealt with in a proactive manner. And that doesn’t mean chasing campers from one side of the river to the other, back and forth. It means doing a variety of things to get people off the streets and out of the river bottoms and into long-term shelter.

Yuba County authorities confronted the issue a year or so ago as conditions at a few large encampments warranted attention. Instead of merely forcing homeless campers to move around, they took on the issue of how to cure homelessness through housing and help.

After all, you’re not going to solve homelessness if there are no homes that they can afford to move into. So 14Forward was created - an area in Marysville where a couple dozen sheds from Home Depot were located and modified to serve as temporary living quarters. Those who participate can get some help getting back into the mainstream - whether that involves arranging military or Social Security benefits, getting some training on how to get and keep a job, or just saving up some money for a deposit and first-month’s rent.

More has been undertaken on both sides of the river since then.

Keep in mind that the most recent “point-in-time” count of homeless individuals, undertaken by the Sutter Yuba Homeless Consortium back in January, put the number at 760. That means there’s a lot of work to do.

Perhaps the main thing we can do to address homelessness is to confront our stereotypes. One that we use too regularly has it that all homeless people are bumming around and camping down by the river because they enjoy the lifestyle.

Sutter County Administrator Scott Mitnick said in a recent article that the overwhelming majority of homeless individuals want to be in permanent housing. We think he’s right.

Of course there are those who just don’t have a choice. When borrowing a couch or a porch or sleeping in a car are no longer options, what else can they do?

Marysville officials created two “respite sites,” where homeless folks can camp for only a day and then must move on. It’s a way of controlling the encampments while still giving people somewhere that they can stay and rest temporarily. Some sort of short-term, transitional housing is being looked for on the Sutter County side, too.

But there is more going on: The “Ric Teagarden Life Building Center” is a project undertaken by Habitat for Humanity in Marysville and will provide a place where homeless people have access to a variety of services. And on the Sutter County side, a plan is in the works for an apartment complex for homeless and mentally disabled individuals. The 40-unit building - the Richland Permanent Supportive Housing Project - would also offer onsite case management offices.

And there are personnel now, on both sides, tasked with helping organize and deliver services.

At times, especially, it seems, this past winter, many of us felt the homeless situation was getting way out of hand. Lately, it seems local governments are doing more to actually deal with the problem; it seems that there is a greater willingness to cooperate; and they’re getting some important assistance from charitable organizations such as Habitat for Humanity.

That’s all to the good, and here’s hoping it all continues as another rainy season looms just a couple months away.

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Sept. 5

Los Angeles Times on ending DACA being an act of pure cruelty by Trump

On the campaign trail, as part of his cynical campaign to exploit fear of immigrants, Donald Trump repeatedly attacked an Obama administration policy that offered protection to people who had been living illegally in the United States since they were children. “A horrible order,” he called it, promising it would be “ended immediately.” Then, after the election - perhaps worrying that such a mean-spirited move might backfire politically - Trump softened, saying he was “gonna deal with” those receiving deferrals “with heart.” For some months, it was unclear what he would do.

But on Tuesday morning, he made the decision he so often does: the wrong one. In a brief written statement, Trump killed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, an act of pure cruelty that threatens the well-being of nearly 800,000 people who live in the country illegally through no fault of their own but as a result of decisions made by their parents.

The president apparently lacked the courage himself to stand before the cameras and publicly dash the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people, so Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions made the announcement in a speech that was low in details and high in praise of his boss.

The best that can be said for it is that those who have already been granted what is known as “deferred status” will not be immediately or suddenly cut off. Instead, the administration will give Congress six months to decide whether to renew the protections legislatively before ending them.

Unfortunately, the chances of Congress rising to the challenge are aggravatingly slim, given the discord among Republicans over pretty much every major issue facing the nation. So a “wind down,” as Sessions called it, offers little comfort to hundreds of thousands of people raised as Americans; what consolation is it to know that as of a certain date, they will no longer be able to live and work legally in the country where they were raised and educated and where many now lead productive lives?

There are many aspects of the immigration system and immigration enforcement that need vigorous debate, but it’s beyond the pale that the government thinks it’s wise policy to not offer relief to people who were grew up here but don’t have legal status because of decisions made by their parents. From a cost-benefit standpoint, American school districts have invested in these children just as they have in U.S. citizens, but now the Trump administration has set the stage to kick them out of the country.

Who are the people currently holding deferments? They are young men and women like Antonio Cisnero, born in Acapulco and now living in Pomona, who is studying at Cal State L.A. (while working full time to pay for his education) for a career in biomedical engineering. Maria Lizeth Ruiz was born in Mexico City and now lives in Costa Mesa; she wants to become a court interpreter. Eunsoo Jeong, who came from South Korea to California as a 13-year-old, used DACA status to graduate from college and get a job in a Burbank animation lab. Jesus Contreras arrived in the U.S. from Mexico when he was 6, and he spent the last week doing his job in Houston - as a paramedic helping save people from flooding associated with Hurricane Harvey.

What public good is achieved by yanking such people from their homes, families and communities and sending them to countries where they are strangers and often don’t even speak the language? Sessions argued that Obama’s initial executive actions were illegal and unconstitutional - an assertion that seems based on a willful misreading of law and precedent. And he said the orders must be overturned because the U.S. is a nation of laws, a laughable statement from an administration that recently pardoned former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio on his conviction for flouting court orders.

There is a fix for this. Congress can and should resurrect the DREAM Act and make it national policy to offer these people a path to legalization. Under the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act (just as under DACA), participants can’t have had a serious criminal past and must be in school, or have graduated or serve in the military. They can’t pose a threat to public safety or national security. American society and institutions have molded these young men and women; many of them already are productive members of society.

Several versions of the DREAM Act have been introduced by both Democrats and Republicans. In fact, polls show that even a majority of Republican voters believe the so-called Dreamers deserve help and protection, and many Republican members of Congress agree.

So here’s an idea: How about members of Congress set aside their tribal differences and actually do something that the American people say they want?

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Sept. 3

The Press Democrat on breaking down barriers to providing good mental health care

Among the many unsettling truths to emerge from the “Crisis care” investigative report by Staff Writer Martin Espinoza over the past several Sundays, one of the most heart-rending is this: Victoria Mataragas is not alone. What family members of those battling mental illness want more than anything is a clear path forward.

But in today’s health care environment that may be hard to find, especially for those unfamiliar with the complex terrain and terminology. The existing system in Sonoma County for addressing mental health concerns is labyrinthine, filled with traps and dead-ends. Worse, it has a waiting list of people wanting and needing access.

It’s a list that has only grown since two psychiatric hospitals in Santa Rosa closed their doors 10 years ago for financial reasons. That was the latest setback in a faltering effort to provide community-based mental health care since the state made the commitment a half-century ago to do away with the old model of treating mental illness through in-patient psychiatric institutions. The goal of closing those lifeless facilities and replacing them with community-based treatment centers was laudable. But the execution was lamentable.

It was as if California knew what it didn’t want but wasn’t willing to commit to supplying what it did want. As a result, this county, as with many, is addressing a significant portion of its severely mentally ill by once again institutionalizing them - this time in jail.

As Espinoza noted, nearly 40 percent of the 1,100 inmates held at the county’s main jail and its lower-security North County Detention Facility near the Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport have some form of mental health issue, ranging from mild depression to bipolar schizoaffective disorder.

As a result, the county is in the process of building a $48 million wing at the county jail just for inmates with mental illness. It’s a good news/bad news story. Having those dealing with mental illness separated from the regular jail house population and receiving specialized care is certainly a positive. At the same time, it raises important questions, such as how many more mental health services could the county provide for $48 million and how many of those now in jail might have avoided being behind bars had they benefited from such programs?

The answers may never be known. Nonetheless, this new wing, which is scheduled to be completed in about two years, reflects the growing recognition that is occurring across the nation about the seriousness of mental illness.

As the series noted, nearly 1 in 5 people in the United States have some type of mental illness - and nearly 1 in 25 has a serious mental illness. Based on those federal statistics, that means it’s an illness that’s touching the lives of more than 20,000 people - and their families and friends - in Sonoma County alone.

Many struggle in private because, while mental illness should be treated like any other illness, it’s not. It comes with more than its fair share of obstacles such as stigmatization, ignorance and, worst of all, indifference. Stories like these, we hope, will help to bring down some of those barriers and give these individuals and their loved ones what they desire most - a fighting chance.