Opinion

PG&E has no equal when it comes to chutzpah.This is a utility that is in bankruptcy proceedings after causing 111 deaths and destroying more than 20,000 structures in the last decade. This is a utility that admitted to a federal judge that it did not meet its 2019 wildfire safety plan risk-reduction targets.But that didn’t keep PG&E attorneys last week from asking the bankruptcy court to approve more than $450 million in bonuses for its employees and executives. That’s right. The utility that has become synonymous with failure wants to hand out rewards for its shortcomings last year.We’re not ...

While world leaders focused this week on coping with the coronavirus, Vladimir Putin’s attention was elsewhere.The Russian president was busy setting himself up as president for life.After 20 years as president or prime minister, the 67-year-old former KGB spy organized a brazen end run around Russia’s presidential term limits that will permit him to serve two more six-year terms after his current mandate expires in 2024.This internal coup frees Putin to pursue his bitter vendetta against the West, which he blames for all Russia’s troubles. Indeed, he justified his power grab by arguing that R...

On Monday there was a lot of buzz about a piece on the clickbait-ish, Beltway-access-lapdog website Axios which looked at possible cabinet picks in a Joe Biden administration in 2021, and which was truly remarkable in two ways.First, of course, were the names themselves — a weird hodgepodge of high-profile picks that seemed guaranteed to anger every voter in one way or another, from clueless $500-million-burning billionaire Mike Bloomberg to run the World Bank to the idea that a Biden secretary of the Treasury would either be the ultimate Wall Street insider, JP Morgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, o...

One thing that’s been really striking about the long-running (too-long-running?) series of Democratic presidential debates is how many hours have been spent jawboning about universal health care plans like “Medicare for All” and how little time has been spent debating something else that could save tens of thousands of American lives.That thing is universal higher education, which — unfortunately — is often simplified by friend and foe alike into “free college.”OK, so most people agree that it should be easier and less expensive to attend college, in an economy where a diploma is frequently de...

Working quiet emotional miracles, Zoe Kazan is the simmering kettle in the middle of an inferno in “The Plot Against America,” and she deserves every available award for her work in this fine, eerily evocative HBO adaptation.She’s not top-billed: Winona Ryder is, and Ryder’s good, in a flamboyant, outsized way. Kazan works differently, befitting her domestic anchor of a character. There is nothing extraneous in her performance. There is, however, a world of heartache behind her eyes and a supernatural ability to judge the proper tone and rhythm of a scene.Premiering Monday, HBO’s six-part mini...

Back in fall 2018, one particular Game of Thronesfan theorywas all the rage. Based on set leaks and evidence from a credible leaker who'd accurately predicted many of the twists and turns of Season 7,it claimed we would see a beloved character make a dramatic heel turn. However, that character wasn't Daenerys Targaryen, it was Tyrion Lannister.While Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin previously revealed that he gave Game of Thronesshowrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss some rough "bullet points" for the conclusion of his saga, he's got to be thinking twice about incorporating tha...

If this week could be summed up in one image, it would be the photo of Jill Biden shoving a vegan protester off her husband’s stage.The photo, shot on Super Tuesday, was celebrated as #Fierce and #JillBidenMVP and #FightLikeAGirl. But all I see is a metaphor for the full-scale, tireless, sometimes ugly struggle that women undertake over and over and over, only to watch all the biggest platforms remain occupied by men.The end of Elizabeth Warren’s candidacy, fewer than 48 hours after that moment was captured, felt like a personal loss. To me, and to a lot of women.“If you say, ‘Yeah, there was ...

The day before Super Tuesday, all the nation’s top security agencies issued a joint statement warning that “foreign actors continue to try to … cause confusion and create doubt in our system.”This should hardly have been surprising since intelligence officials and the FBI have been publicly warning that Russia is waging “information warfare” to fan U.S. political divisions and undermine trust in the 2020 elections.Yet, on Super Tuesday, President Donald Trump was tweeting about the “phony Russia Witch Hunt” and the “Mueller Scam,” Robert Mueller’s investigation that detailed the Kremlin electi...

The alliance between the United States and Europe is broken. That much became clear over three days of intensive discussions in Munich last month. To be sure, it can be fixed. But that will take a fundamental readjustment in policy and direction on both sides of the Atlantic.Every year, top U.S. and European officials gather in February at the Munich Security Conference to assess the state of their alliance. The tone was set by conference organizers, who coined the phrase “Westlessness” as the theme for the conference. Both the world and the West itself, they suggested, were becoming less west...

The email from Mr. B did not particularly stand out. Like many, he took issue with a column I had written explaining why African Americans would vote for Mike Bloomberg over Donald Trump in a presidential matchup.“Im glad your the voice for all of the American colored population. #TRUMP2020,” he wrote, exactly how it is printed.After reading it, I did what I always do when I receive emails containing racial epithets or other hateful remarks.“Don’t bother emailing me again,” I fired back. “The use of ‘colored’ crossed the line. You’re blocked.”But Mr. B’s response was different from the combati...

Joe Maguire, a Manhattan College alum whose life and career we admire, is out as President Trump’s acting director of national intelligence for committing an unpardonable sin. He told the unvarnished truth.A president needs confidence in his appointees. Trump apparently has more trust in Maguire’s replacement, U.S. Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell, despite the fact that he lacks a background in intelligence.But watch that trust evaporate if and when Grenell dares deliver facts the president really doesn’t want to hear.A week ago, a Maguire aide briefed the House Intelligence Committee on a bi...

Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse When you ain't got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal “Like a Rolling Stone” – Bob DylanWe’ve all heard about the tragedies of Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix’s conversations, Lou Reed’s affairs, Mick Jagger’s antics; even we can talk aboutPaul McCartney’s favorite films. But what do we know about Bob Dylan?The man is a mystery. After 1964, only three years into his career, he stopped giving explanations to the press and became a dark figure. His genius is impenetrable. He never allowed his music to f...

Rep. Devin Nunes’ war against the free press reached a new low on Tuesday when he barred The Fresno Bee from covering a major water forum in Tulare, Calif.The forum covered matters of crucial public interest. The chief executive officer of Friant Water Authority, a public agency, moderated the event. David Bernhardt, secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior, also attended. Yet despite the fact that the McClatchy reporters had reserved tickets, Nunes’ staff banned them.“The Fresno Bee learned at 10 a.m. Tuesday that its reporters would not be allowed to cover the event, after receiving ...