Mendocino County Today: Wednesday 5/7/2025

Cloudy | Floodgate Store | Budget Questions | Boonville BBQ | Bragg Plans | Musical Duets | Newsletter Corrections | Firesafe Meeting | Serrated Leaf | Whale Tales | Memorial Service | Gardens Contest | House Painters | Special Needs | FFA Drive-Thru | Gregarious Guys | Comptche History | Redwood Ties | Yesterday's Catch | High Water | Trump 100 | Immigration Questions | Poor Boy | Gimme Something | Bombing Vietnam | Nut Rub | Insurance Re-Underwriting | Hatchery Closing | Library Funding | Average Income | Budget Blueprint | Warriors Win | Giants Win | Bearing Flowers | Mister Distraction | 110 Rounds | Brilliant Lawyers | Lead Stories | Lumpen Lee | Fascism Is | Condo Diplomacy | Tennis Girls

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SLIGHTLY COOLER weather is expected today with temperatures warming again Thursday and Friday. Partial clearing is expected at the coast. The marine layer is expected to remain in place at the coast. A late season rain and cooler temperatures are expected Sunday into early next week. (NWS)

STEPHEN DUNLAP (Fort Bragg): The cooling sure got underway yesterday as the fog came roaring in. A foggy 48F this Humpday morning on the coast. Some clearing & cool today then off & on clouds into the weekend. It's looking like a good chance of rain on Monday, go figure?

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BUDGET QUESTIONS OUTRUN ANSWERS

by Mark Scaramella

On Tuesday, Auditor-Controller-Treasurer Tax Collector Chamise Cubbison told the Board that she needed access and assistance from former Acting Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector Sara Pierce to review changes and activities that occurred during the 17 months she was wrongfully suspended from her elected position. Cubbison was reinstated two months ago when Judge Moorman ruled that the misappropriation charges the DA filed against her were bogus and dismissed the case. Without such assistance Cubbison said she’d be unable to meet upcoming outside auditor filing deadlines. As far as we know, Ms. Pierce, who is now back as a Deputy CEO, has been vindictively ordered by CEO Antle to have no contact with Cubbison, who has a pending civil case against the County. At this point, said Cubbison, “I don’t know what to tell him.”

Response from Board chair John Haschak: “OK, thank you.”

Response from CEO Darcie Antle: Silence.

At least the Board is on notice that their petty refusal to work with their elected Auditor-Controller/Treasurer-Tax Collector on important County financial matters will be the reason that the deadlines are not met.

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Referring to the County’s recently announced attempt to encourage employees to quit to save some salary expenses, retired Ukiah attorney Barry Vogel told the Board that it’s illegal in California to use taxpayer funds to pay people to resign or retire. He suggested County Counsel get an opinion from Attorney General to confirm his view. Vogel volunteered to help the County Counsel’s office if they had any question about pay-to-quit legality. Later in the meeting, Supervisor Haschak said that he thought the pay-to-quit incentive program was legal because it was borrowed from Humboldt County. His colleagues and County Counsel seemed to agree and the program will remain in place unless Vogel or some other attorney files some kind of legal action.

Later in the meeting, Supervisor Madeline Cline asked Haschak if the previous Board had gone too far in giving raises to County employees, especially disproportionately large raises to law enforcement? Obviously missing the irony of his answer in light of the current program to encourage people to quit or retire, Haschak replied that they had to give the big raises because people were quitting and “other counties were poaching our employees.”

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Supervisor Ted Williams wanted to know how staff came up with the dubious [our adjective, not Williams’] projected $8 million savings that they say will close the budget gap when large numbers of employees quit or retire and are not replaced. CEO budget staffers Tony Rakes and Sara Pierce only said what they’ve said before, that somehow a 6% attrition rate magically translates to an $8 million of General Fund savings. As we have noted before, there’s no way that math works, nor is anything like it likely to occur since there’s plenty of wiggle room in the County’s “hiring freeze.” Williams said that the projected $8 million “sounds like wishful thinking.” Then Williams said that he wanted to see the specific calculation of how they arrived at the projected $8 million savings. Ms. Pierce said she’d get back to Williams.

Later in the meeting, Human Resources Director Cherie Johnson explained the calculation citing breaking the $8 million into projections for various department groupings, but noting that $5.7 million of the projected $8 million budget savings will be in “non-General Fund” departments. Yet they are projecting an $8 million General Fund savings. And they are assuming that important departments will somehow be able to continue operating without replacing vacated positions in the already low-staffed General Fund departments.

The entire discussion demonstrates how CEO Darcie Antle’s “creative” assumptions to narrowing the budget gap are mostly imaginary and will leave the County in a deficit that they have yet to face.

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As an additional budget balancing move, Supervisor John Haschak proposed cutting the Board of Supervisors budget by about 6%, including reverting their salaries to the level before the last raise they gave themselves, along with eliminating various travel and education expenses.

Supervisor Mulheren said she works really, really hard and can’t afford to do whatever she’s doing, mostly attending out of county meetings with no visible benefit, if she has to pay travel expenses out of pocket from her current nearly $100k/year salary. After some discussion Haschak agreed to have staff come back at a future date with how much of the travel and education budget has been used in the past before they vote to cut their own budget.

Curiously, nobody mentioned the CEO or her staff in the budget balancing discussion.

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FORT BRAGG CITY COUNCIL OKs BROADBAND PLAN, PARK UPGRADE

by Megan Wutzke

The Fort Bragg City Council has approved several actions to improve infrastructure, financial planning, and cultural awareness.

It authorized $7.8 million in debt for the Middle Mile Broadband Initiative and awarded contracts for the Bainbridge Park Enhancement Project and security upgrades for the police facility. The council also passed a resolution to recognize the Pomo ancestral land. Additionally, it reviewed the city’s annual financial audit, which showed a $4.7 million increase in net position and stable performance in the enterprise fund.

The council approved issuing $7.8 million in debt to help fund the Middle Mile Broadband Initiative (MMBI), which aims to improve high-speed internet access in the area. This funding is in addition to a $10.3 million state grant and involves an agreement with the Fort Bragg Joint Powers Public Financing Authority.

Under this agreement, the Authority will purchase the broadband infrastructure from the city, with financing provided by EverBank. The city will then buy back the project and make semi-annual payments over 20 years.

The city plans for this financing structure to eventually be self-sustaining through revenue from a new Broadband Enterprise Fund, but the General Fund will initially back the debt to meet credit rating requirements. After evaluating various lenders, EverBank was chosen for its reasonable interest rates and terms, including a plan to remove the General Fund’s support once specific benchmarks are met.

The total financing is around $7.86 million, covering project costs, issuance expenses, and interest for the first two years. Payments will start in fiscal year 2028, beginning with $524,653, followed by $669,330 each year until 2045.

The council also passed a resolution recognizing the land as the traditional territory of the Pomo Indigenous peoples. This acknowledgment is the first step in honoring their history and culture. The city plans to regularly consult with the Sherwood Valley Band of Pomo Indians and other tribal communities on relevant issues. Fort Bragg aims to raise awareness about the Native population’s history and presence and work with local Indigenous groups and schools to improve education on Indigenous culture. The council also wants to involve Indigenous leaders in planning and decision-making regarding the environment and local heritage.

The City of Fort Bragg and the Fort Bragg Municipal Improvement District No. 1 had an independent financial audit for the fiscal year 2023—24, conducted by JJACPA, Inc.

The city’s financial position improved by $4.7 million, reaching $110 million by June 30, 2024. The General Fund ended the year with a $2.9 million surplus, bringing the fund balance to $9.1 million. Revenues were mixed: Transient Occupancy Tax dropped by 3% due to a rainy winter, while Property Tax increased by 5%. Miscellaneous revenue exceeded expectations by $982,000, primarily from a one-time correction during a new software system transition. General Fund spending was $450,000 under budget, mainly due to savings on personnel and medical costs.

Enterprise operations were generally stable, with Water and Wastewater revenues remaining unchanged from the previous year, although both saw slight decreases in net position due to depreciation expenses.

The C.V. Starr Center increased its revenue by $100,000 due to higher membership fees and property tax growth, but still reported a net deficit of $581,000 after accounting for depreciation. The city’s total liabilities fell by over $500,000 due to debt payments.

The council awarded a contract for the Bainbridge Park Enhancement Project to A.B.S. Builders, Inc. for up to $1,444,622.65. They had the lowest bid and will do most of the project, including building a multi-use pavilion with a stage, two artificial turf soccer fields, and improvements to the playground and existing facilities. Construction will start in May 2025 and take about 125 days to complete.

This project has been in development since 2016, with design work starting in 2023. In March 2025, the city pre-purchased essential materials to stay on budget. Instead of buying expensive playground benches, the city will collaborate with local artisans. Funding mainly comes from a $2 million Prop 68 State Parks grant covering all expected costs.

The project aims to improve public spaces and address park maintenance issues outlined in the city’s plans. Community involvement has played a key role, including workshops and voting. The enhancements meet environmental guidelines and are exempt under CEQA. During construction, the city will update the public through its website, social media, and press releases.

The council also approved a $129,000 contract with Jess Construction for the Police Department Security Retrofit Project. The project, designed by Calpo Hom & Dong Architects, will enhance security features without expanding the building and is scheduled for completion in March 2025.

(Ukiah Daily Journal)

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CORRECTIONS

The May [AV Village] Newsletter had a couple of things that needed correcting:

The bus for the CV Starr Rec Center will be leaving the Senior Center at 9:30 every Monday. Please sign up in advance.

The Pinot Festival will be donating the proceeds to the Boonville fairgrounds and is looking for volunteers to help on May 15 - 17 in exchange for participating in the event. Contact Donna Pierson-Pugh dpp1130@gmail.com

The Brew Fest is registering the brewers in 3-hour shifts Friday from 10 until 4 in exchange for a ticket for the Beer Fest the next day and this effort will benefit the community park. Contact Donna Pierson-Pugh: dpp1130@gmail.com

Also, the food bank is on the 2nd and the 4th Wednesday of every month.

I hope nobody was inconvenienced

Cheers, Patty Liddy

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MAY FIRE SAFE POINT ARENA MEETING

Wednesday, May 7, 4:45 p.m. Coast Community Library, downtown Point Arena

RADIO CHECK-IN 4:00 pm. on Point Arena repeater channel 1 - look for channel PARP01 on your radio screen

AGENDA

• If we can get a zoom meeting set up with the presenter and if the presenter is still available, we will have the opportunity to learn about CERT training on the south coast. (Our meeting is not going to be on as a Zoom meeting.)
• We will be looking at a map of the area to begin to put together a plan for where to try out the two new repeaters.
• We will also begin to make a plan for how to distribute radios from the "radio library" so that they will be most useful for senior individuals.

(jennifer smallwood)

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WHEN THE WHALES WIN, EVERYONE WINS: A Tale of Humpbacks and Transformation

Thursday, May 8, 2025
Noyo Center Marine Field Station
32430 N. Harbor Dr., Fort Bragg
5:00 Happy Hour
6:00 Presentation Begins

There is no charge for this event, but please let us know you are coming.

Go to Noyo Center website for more information and to register for event.
https://www.noyocenter.org/

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AMERICAN LEGION POST 385 MEMORIAL DAY SERVICE

Evergreen Cemetery, Boonville

At 11 AM

Monday, May 26th, 2025

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HOUSE PAINTER MICHAEL WILSON

Joshua, Michael & Sierra will be available in Anderson Valley to paint your home starting in June. Get a free estimate now to get on the schedule. Painting 707-813-7615

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MENDOCINO COUNTY'S MOST BESET PERSON

Galina Trefil:

I am a special needs mom. I have two special needs children and a baby. One of my children is extremely disabled. It is almost entirely impossible to find childcare as a result.

There are many journalists/reporters that have reached out to me. I did phone interviews with two of them. Others want me to sit in front of a camera and I can't do that if my children's voices might be in the background.

For months, I have asked neighbors for help. I have asked friends for help. I have asked relatives for help. Door after door has been shut in my face, proverbially speaking. As I am going through an unpleasant divorce, this is particularly true. Others that would help can't do it because, hey, they have their own lives and problems too.

People assume that I am non-compliant. No. I am overwhelmed. Like so many other special needs parents, I need help. I'm not getting it.

I AM willing to do interviews. By no means am I being standoffish or non-compliant. I just need my kids to be taken care of so that I can do what needs to be done.

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CHARLIE BELL

In May of 1980 I was passing through Boonville on foot, as part of a long pedestrian lap of the country. Outside a store I met a couple of friendly men, one of whom was, by all accounts, an expert on Boontling. He and his buddy couldn’t have been friendlier to this Brightlighter, and they even let me take a picture of them back in the days before the Internet made random snapshot snapping so common.

Much to my dismay, I didn’t jot down the names of my new friends, though their jovial spirit remains vivid.

With this in mind, I confess a little sheepishly that my daughter and I are now creating a podcast in which I share stories of America during my long-ago travels. In talking about my time in Boonville in our most recent episode (#39), we were moved to look online for more information on Boontling. The clip of Charles Kuralt interviewing Jack June delighted me, as it led me here – where the picture of Jack leads me to think that he himself may have been one of the two gregarious men I met.

Although I can’t share the photo here, it appears in the 3-minute video about my trip on my website, http://www.longrun.us – near the 2:50 mark. I hope that the man on the left is indeed Jack, and I would love to know the identity of his friend on the right. In any case, I thank the folks I met in Boonville for their good humor and kindness to this stranger. In my memory, my brief time there will always be magical, even though on a Sunday afternoon in 1980 there was no place to buy bahl gorms!

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COMPTCHE HISTORY TIDBIT

by Katy Tahja

Today a casual traveler driving east from the Comptche Store would never imagine the busy logging scene along the valley floor that went one 140 years ago. The headwaters of the Albion River in our time look like a creek winding along the road, but way back when…

From the Mendocino Beacon August 13 1881. “Mr. N.E. Hoak, superintendent of the Albion (Lumber Company) informed us about 75 men are working in the woods and running three four-yoke ox teams. Logging is to begin in a fine timbered gulch on the south side of the Albion River and a railroad will be constructed over a half mile in length. Rails are common T-iron and laid 40-feet apart.

Cars consist of two four-wheel trucks with a frame on it to carry logs so constructed as to allow them to make short curves with perfect ease. Only one wheel on each axel is fast to it, while the other is free to revolve around it. This will allow the wheels to revolve independently of each other and saves friction otherwise caused on the curves where the wheels on the outside have a longer road to travel.

(Note: Logging engineers and railroad engineers were always creating newer easier ways to save time, wear and tear, and money.) Two cars each carry a log as much as seven feet in diameter and 16 feet long, or several smaller logs, and are coupled together and drawn by horses and make 12 to 15 trips a day. This is a great savings from the old way of dragging logs on the ground.”

Consider all this was to get the logs to the Albion River next to what is now the Comptche Ukiah Road where they could be floated to the sawmill in Albion, about 12 miles away as the crow flies. Inquiring minds would love to know how long this went on before dirt and debris filled the river bed and turned it into a wandering stream you can easily jump over today at the same location.

Mr. Hoak owned the ranch on the north side of the road that later was owned by the Grimes family, then recently the Oscar Smith family on the eastern edge of the Comptche Valley before a traveler starts up the hill at Philbrick’s. Today it’s all forest again and meadows and with no indication what a busy place it once was long ago.

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CATCH OF THE DAY, Tuesday, May 6, 2025

JOSHUA BELL, 43, Fort Bragg. Petty theft with two or more priors, controlled substance, failure to appear, probation violation.

RICHARD CAVINO, 61, Willits. DUI with priors.

THOMAS DAVIS, 69, Willits. DUI, suspended license.

JENNIFER DEGROOT, 53, Ukiah. Failure to appear. (Frequent flyer.)

MICHAEL JOHNSON, 24, Fort Bragg. Domestic abuse, robbery, burglary, conspiracy.

PAL LAUGHINGBROOK, 48, Willits. Under influence, paraphernalia.

JAVIER MEDINA, 53, Willits. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation revocation.

MICHAEL MENDEZ, 32, Ukiah. Misdemeanor hit&run, probation revocation.

SHIELA OWENS, 33, Ukiah. Under influence.

DANIEL RUBIO, 28, Concord/Ukiah. Disorderly conduct-alcohol&drugs, probation revocation.

KIERA SHED, 28, Ukiah. Controlled substance, probation revocation.

ANNE STANDARD, 31, Fort Bragg. Probation revocation.

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TRUMP'S HUNDRED DAYS

Editor:

Is anybody worried yet? So far, the Trump administration has:

Crashed the stock market and destabilized international trade with capricious tariff policies.

Systematically dismantled the institutions upon which a functioning society depends by firing thousands of federal employees at the IRS, Social Security, Veteran’s Affairs, National Institutes of Health, National Weather Service, Federal Aviation Administration and more.

Defied court orders and the Constitution.

Started promoting the return of coal and oil drilling while ignoring measures to combat climate change.

Cozied up to dictators while restricting support for Ukraine and threatening to acquire Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal by force.

Defunded the U.S. Agency for International Development, resulting in increases in tuberculosis and AIDS in Africa.

Chosen advisers by only one criterion, loyalty (no dissent), resulting in a host of incompetent individuals in important roles.

Promoted a policy of revenge toward any person or institution perceived as ever having opposed Trump, including law firms, universities and news agencies, to the point of using federal funds as a blackmail tactic.

Revoked visas of students for exercising their First Amendment rights.

Failed to fulfill the promises of DOGE.

Made policy one day at a time.

Leland Davis

Santa Rosa

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IMMIGRATION QUESTIONS

To the Editor:

While the results of the New York Times/Siena College poll suggest that support for President Trump’s immigration policies is waning somewhat, the article suggests that most Americans still support deportation.

Perhaps the polls should be asking a more nuanced set of questions that would force respondents to address the reality of undocumented workers and the consequences of mass deportation.

Here are some suggestions:

1. If undocumented immigrants are deported, are you personally willing to:

• Do their job milking cows and shoveling manure on a dairy farm?
• Travel from farm to farm picking fruit all year?
• Process chicken in a substandard meatpacking plant?
• Handle toxic waste at a disaster site?

Use a leaf blower all day in 100-degree temperatures?

2. If the answer to any of these questions is no, who do you think should do that work?
3. What should the government do to or for people who do these jobs to support your own lifestyle, health and well-being?Deport them.

• Provide a pathway to citizenship.
• Provide a legal pathway to permanent residency.

Leslie Turpin

Westminster West, Vermont

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WHAT CAN I GET?

Dear Crazy Postmodern America,

I haven’t gotten my SSI money yet…I haven’t gotten senior housing yet…I want to leave Washington, D.C. as soon as possible because I have finished being supportive of the William R. Thomas Memorial Anti-Nuclear Vigil for the sixteenth…and because I want to go somewhere and just enjoy being there! What can I get from you, and how soon can I get it?

Craig Louis Stehr, craiglouisstehr@gmail.com

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WHY THE B-52 FAILED TO DEFEAT THE VIETNAMESE

On the 50th anniversary of the end of the U.S. war in Vietnam.

by David Bacon

On the plane to Hanoi in December of 2015, I opened my morning copy of the New York Times to find an article by Dave Philipps: "After 60 Years, B-52's Still Dominate the U.S. Fleet." The piece stuck with me. For the next two weeks as I traveled through north Vietnam I tried to unravel the U.S. attitudes it reveals towards the people of this country and what they call "the American war."

It ends by quoting a former South Vietnamese Navy officer, Phuoc Luong. "American technology is super," he told Philipps. "It's a great plane. In Vietnam we didn't use it enough. That's why we lost."

If anyone knows the B-52, it's the people of Hanoi. The enormous planes bombed them day and night for twelve days at Christmas in 1972. Today there's a museum dedicated to the bomber, and the wreckage of one still sits in a small lake in the middle of the city.…

https://davidbaconrealitycheck.blogspot.com/2025/05/why-b-52-failed-to-defeat-vietnamese.html

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INSURANCE ‘RE-UNDERWRITING’ IS ON THE RISE IN CALIFORNIA. HERE’S HOW I FOUGHT STATE FARM AND WON

by Katherine Ellison

State Farm, my home insurer for the past 25 years, recently wrote to enumerate several “positive measures that should be taken to reduce the risk for loss.”

That sounded positive enough — until I read that if my husband and I didn’t comply, including installing a new roof (at an average local cost of $16,051), the company would “non-renew” us.

Such threats, known as “re-underwriting,” have panicked many Californians because State Farm and other large insurance firms have abruptly cited reasons to cancel clients who must then scramble for scarce and often costlier policies.

Our State Farm letter said our roof must be replaced “as evidenced by the granular loss and worn shingles.” We were also directed to trim landscaping around the house and trim some overhanging tree limbs.

We figured we could do the landscaping ourselves and hire a tree-trimmer for less than $700.

The roof was another matter.

We had already replaced nearly all of it during the past 10 years. Sara Lopez, president of our contractor, McLeran Roofing in San Rafael, assured us it was in good condition and made with fire-resistant, Class A composition shingles. What’s more, our home in San Anselmo is not in a high-risk zone for fires, according to Cal Fire maps.

So why was State Farm telling us to spend $16,000 that we didn’t have?

I called our longtime insurance agent, expecting support. After all, “like a good neighbor,” he sends us holiday cards every year. While waiting to hear back, like any good Boomer, I took my complaints to Facebook and Nextdoor, where I received lots of comments like: “We are in the same boat. Redoing our roof next month.”

Of course, I support fire safety and doing anything I can to protect the life savings embedded in our home. Yet anecdotal and press reports warned me we could do everything State Farm demanded and still lose coverage.

Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, a consumer advocacy group in San Francisco, suggested a reason for the increasing trend.

“It’s not only that climate change is increasing natural-disaster risk; it’s also that insurers are buying aerial imaging and risk-scoring tools that are making it too easy to put existing customers in the discard file,” she said. “They’re taking away the human look at a property and replacing it with a number.”

Bach and other experts say they believe that increasingly risk-averse insurance companies are targeting older homes like ours (built in 1948) because, on average, they’ll have more — and riskier — old-fashioned plumbing and wiring.

Our agent promised to fight for us but said he couldn’t guarantee that, even if we did everything they asked, we would be reinsured. (Such a promise would give us grounds to claim a breach of contract.) Instead, he asked for copies of our roof-repair invoices and evidence of our roof’s condition.

We paid $350 for an inspection that echoed Lopez’s assessment. Our agent then told us he had aerial photos of moss growing on it.

“You need to remove that moss,” he said.

“You don’t need to remove that moss,” retorted Lopez, who said it wasn’t harmful, whereas power-washing to remove it could actually damage our shingles.

Our agent countered that the Bad Cop underwriters wouldn’t appreciate us challenging their diktat. So, we paid a guy $500 to power wash the roof, even as I worried it would all be for naught.

In January, the same month we got that State Farm letter, a San Diego law firm filed a homeowners’ class-action suit against Liberty Mutual, claiming the firm canceled policies after flawed drone inspections falsely reported issues such as algae, mildew or mold.

“People would challenge the reports and Liberty would send an ‘engineering report’ with aerial photos,” said plaintiffs’ attorney Michelle Meyers. “Then people would get their roofs power-washed and Liberty would still maintain the non-renewal.”

What should we do? I asked Meyers.

“You have to challenge the non-renewal and at the same time, unfortunately, keep looking for new insurance,” she said. “You don’t want to get dropped because all the insurance companies talk to each other. … You need to show you’ve taken steps either to comply or show them the evidence that it’s not needed.”

Joel Gumbiner, a San Rafael attorney who helps clients fight insurance firms for coverage, confirmed that insurance companies are legally free to non-renew for almost any reason. They just have to give you 75 days notice and it has to be when your policy is due for renewal.

“The bottom line is we don’t have a law on the books to force companies to insure someone they don’t want to,” Bach said.

Her organization has recently lobbied for legislation to require insurers to notify policyholders of problems, give them time to fix them, and then, if the problems are fixed, renew.

In the meantime, Bach advises policyholders to “be tenacious. Send pictures and documents from third-party experts.” She said at least two insurance firms, Mercury and CSAA, have accepted certificates of fire safety from the Insurance Institute for Home and Business Safety as a basis to renew policies.

If all else fails, Bach says, ask for assistance from the California Department of Insurance, which occasionally works.

Still, with Meyers’ dark scenario in mind, I started checking out our options, should State Farm finally drop us.

They weren’t great.

State Farm, which stopped writing new policies in California in 2023, isn’t the only big insurer trying to wind down. Two Farmers Insurance Group subsidiaries and Amguard are quitting altogether.

A broker recommended we turn to the FAIR plan, California’s fire-risk insurer of last resort, and supplement that limited and pricey plan with one from a small, unaccredited firm called Bamboo. Both providers get terrible reviews. Meanwhile, I heard from friends who said they were now paying as much as $10,000 annually for insurance.

A couple of weeks ago, however, after three months of stress, our agent emailed that our efforts had sufficed — at least for another year or two. In the meantime, State Farm (which paid its CEO a record $24.4 million in 2022) seemed closer to getting an “emergency” 17% rate hike.

I suppose it’s all part of our dreadful new normal.

The escalating fire risks from our world’s increasing negligence about climate change are playing havoc with all our old assumptions, including the one where insurance firms, “like a good neighbor,” competed for customers rather than scheming to drop them. While I’m grateful to our agent for helping us hang on, I fear that from now on, his holiday cards will simply remind me how the vestiges of courtesy that once held us together are going up in flames.

(Katherine Ellison (katherineellison.com) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of 12 nonfiction books.)

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AMID 'COMPLETE DISASTER,' CALIFORNIA PULLS PLUG ON VITAL HATCHERY

by Matt LaFever

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) is closing the Mad River Hatchery, it announced Friday, ending decades of efforts to boost Humboldt County's threatened steelhead trout population. The hatchery releases 150,000 fish into the river annually and will send off its final batch this June. State officials cite mounting federal regulations, crumbling infrastructure and necessary expensive upgrades as reasons for the closure, leaving the Mad River’s steelhead to survive without human intervention for the first time in decades.

The decision has prompted swift backlash. Tyler Blevin, a local fishing guide who started a Change.org petition to save the hatchery, told SFGATE the closure “crazy” and warned that it will “cut off the life support” that steelhead have relied on amidst widespread decline. The petition garnered nearly 2,000 signatures since it was created.

Blevin didn’t hold back: “The loss of the hatchery is going to be horrible,” he told SFGATE. As hatchery fish disappear from Mad River, he believes people will continue to flock to its shores, chasing the dream of landing a steelhead, but “it’ll just be wild fish after that.” And when the only remaining steelhead are protected, Blevin fears some anglers will ignore the rules, putting even more pressure on an already fragile wild population.

California's North Coast is home to a unique steelhead population, thriving in rivers from northern Sonoma to Humboldt County. The Mad River, which flows into the Pacific just north of Arcata, is one of the region’s key arteries. It's one of eight rivers deemed vital by experts from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for sustaining “essential independent populations” of steelhead.

The Mad River Fish Hatchery began operations in 1971, raising salmon, steelhead, and trout to stock North Coast waters, according to CDFW. The facility closed in 2004 due to lack of state funding but reopened in 2005 after a strong push from the community. A CDFW press release issued Friday acknowledged that since its reopening, the hatchery has faced ongoing challenges.

Anglers are drawn to the Mad River in part because regulations make it legal to catch and keep steelhead, largely thanks to decades of hatchery supplementation. Hatchery-raised fish are marked with a clipped adipose fin, making it easy to tell them apart from their wild counterparts, which must be released.

Kenny Priest, a fishing guide with over a decade of experience on the North Coast, told SFGATE that the Mad River watershed is “a big deal with people” because “you could go to the Mad River and catch your dinner.” He described the culture that’s been built around the river, where “the guy who gets off at work at 5:00 and wants to go down there and try to catch a steelhead, you know, he has that opportunity.”

A 2024 NOAA review found that freshwater recreational angling likely has a low impact on steelhead populations in Northern California. However, due to insufficient data, the exact effects are unclear. Other factors like water use, habitat loss and climate change continue to hinder population recovery, keeping steelhead listed by United States Fish and Wildlife and CDFW as a threatened species. Data from CDFW’s Steelhead Dashboard also shows a sharp decline in steelhead catches on the Mad River but offers no reason for the fall off. In the 2014–2015 season, anglers reported catching 3,248 fish. By the 2022–2023 season, that number had fallen to just 133.

So why is CDFW closing a hatchery that supports the population of threatened steelhead?

Peter Tiara, a spokesperson for CDFW, explained that the decision hinges on two major factors. First, the hatchery needs $40 million in repairs to remain “viable,” which Tiara said is unworkable in the face of California’s “budget crisis.” Second, federal regulations limit the hatchery to raising no more than 150,000 steelhead per year — a number he believes doesn’t offer “significant benefit” to the species or anglers anyway.

In a follow-up email, Tiara acknowledged that the hatchery had supplemented the steelhead population but noted it also hurt the overall health of the species. Hatchery-raised fish often suffer from a lack of genetic diversity, which can weaken wild populations. To mitigate this, hatcheries are required to follow genetic management plans. Tiara pointed to these plans as the reason “the hatchery program was so limited in the numbers of fish it could produce under the federal Endangered Species Act.”

NOAA’s 2024 review downplayed the genetic harm caused by hatchery fish, stating that the facility’s management “likely reduced the adverse effects of the hatchery program.”

Blevin, the local fishing guide, is a member of the Mad River Steelhead Stewards, a group of anglers who collaborate with CDFW to catch wild steelhead and return them to the hatchery to breed, boosting genetic diversity. These efforts result in “good genetics, and the fish come back at a much higher rate,” he argued.

In recent years, CDFW has touted its fish restoration efforts, releasing millions of fish statewide and backing projects like the removal of dams on the Klamath River to restore salmon and steelhead runs. Yet while the agency champions its commitment to recovery, it is closing a hatchery that actively supports a threatened species.

For local fishing guide Alan Borges, the closure “boils down to money and politics.” He’s skeptical of CDFW’s broader fish restoration efforts, which he sees as attempts to “appease the public.” Consider CDFW’s considerable salmon population efforts. Despite the agency’s “we need more salmon” message, Borges sees little progress. He points to the Sacramento River, where chronic low salmon numbers are “a complete disaster.”

All three fishing guides emphasized the Mad River Fish Hatchery’s role as a nationally recognized destination and a gathering place for long-time local anglers and their families. “You can see 30–40 people lined up at the hatchery on any given day trying to catch a hatchery fish to take home to their family,” Blevin said.

Borges says fishing the steelhead season on the Mad River is a major opportunity for local youth. “These kids need something to do that’s productive,” he said. With a rod and reel, they learn about nature, enjoy the outdoors, and even “provide a meal for yourself.” Now, with the hatchery set to close, that experience will disappear, Borges said.

Priest described the Mad River fishery as “a huge deal for the local economy,” stocking the sought-after fishing destination with steelhead.. However, with the hatchery closing, he predicts that within three years, the last hatchery steelhead will be caught. From there, only wild fish will remain, and catch-and-release will become the law of the land.

Tiara told SFGATE that CDFW does not know how the steelhead population will respond to the removal of the hatchery program, but it is likely that the change will “both help and hinder abundance in different ways.” He did not elaborate on what those outcomes could look like. When asked if CDFW would track the impacts of the hatchery’s closure on steelhead, Tiara was non-committal, saying the agency “may continue monitoring the population in the Mad River to assess how the system responds to a lack of hatchery production.”

Tiara also noted that while the hatchery will remain open for public access to the river, CDFW staff will repurpose the facility’s buildings for office space, but the hatchery operations will be discontinued.

Priest, well acquainted with the importance Mad River has in Humboldt County's fishing destinations, summed up a future without the fishery: "It's a bummer."

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LIBRARIES SHINING AMID LOW FUNDING

Region’s facilities find ways to thrive despite being least-aided in Bay Area

by Katie Lauer

Martinez — Library cards, book checkouts and adult literacy programs have surged across Contra Costa County, breaking numerous department records, despite being provided free of charge, by the lowest-funded Bay Area library system of its kind.

The library’s proposed $45.6 million budget is one of the smallest pots within the $7.1billion that will be allocated countywide in the next fiscal year, and its services come at virtually no cost. This funding is divvied up to all 26 branches, which are located in 18 cities, five unincorporated communities and one juvenile hall, as well as a slew of online and community resources.

While the department’s budget is fully balanced and doesn’t operate at a deficit, county officials said its small staff and lack of funding is hampering ongoing efforts to make improvements and expand resources, such as restoring Sunday hours.

Alison McKee, who took the helm as county librarian in 2021, said Contra Costa lags behind the four other county-run library departments in the Bay Area when measuring local income per capita, which divides total government funding by service area population.

Since 1992, county voters have rejected four separate ballot measures for additional library funding, which require a supermajority to pass. One proposal to hike taxes by less than a dime lost by fewer than 1,000 votes.

Currently, library operations are funded almost entirely by local property taxes — revenue that is capped at 1% of a property’s full assessed value, otherwise known as the “ad valorem” rate. Contra Costa County then allocates 1.5% of that sliver to the library department.

McKee didn’t bring up this history to ask for more money As county executives reviewed department-level budget proposals for the upcoming fiscal year, McKee pointed to library staff’s track record of making ends meet with modest amounts of cash.

“This is our reputation in libraries in the Bay Area — we do a lot with very little,” McKee told the Board of Supervisors. She said one “silver lining” has been the partnerships that have grown with other local governments and charitable organizations, divvying up responsibility for things like building maintenance and extended hours of operation beyond the county’s 40-hour weekly baseline.

Contra Costa’s library system has never overspent its allotted funds. Since the department is never 100% fully staffed, any budgeted but unspent dollars go into a dedicated library fund, which can be used to acquire new collections, as well as fund facility projects and other one-time expenditures.

McKee said that flexible fund balance is critical to afford all other non-staffing costs, especially as salaries and benefits for the department’s roughly 250 full-time county staff positions account for nearly 80% of the department’s expenditures. Specifically, the leftover cash has helped fuel the $22.5 million plan to build a new, 21,000-square-foot library as part of the transit-oriented development planned for the Pittsburg-Bay Point BART station —located in the largest unincorporated community in Contra Costa County that lacks easy library access.

However, cost savings doesn’t make up for the fact that staff is still spread too thin, McKee said, which has hindered efforts to restore Sunday hours beyond the self-service pilot program that was rolled out at the Concord branch in December.

McKee reported last week that 28% of all households in Contra Costa County use a library card at least once a year, which is the highest rate of market reach since the metric was established in 2017.

Digital checkouts are also up 239% compared to rates before the pandemic — an increase that McKee said has helped compensate for the ongoing lag in physical visits to libraries in recent years.

However, library patrons continue to devour non-digital media. The department reported that the number of physical checkouts was more than double the rate of e-books. Participation in the county’s adult literacy program, Project Second Chance, also surged 25% this year, which McKee said is the highest rate on record.

In addition to ongoing tech upgrades at all branch locations, accessibility improvements and tweaks to streamline online renewals, she also pointed to the first anniversary of the Rolling Reader, which celebrated its first year on the road in November of 2023. As opposed to a bookmobile, Contra Costa’s library department receives roughly $215,000 in Measure X dollars each year to drive this early literacy outreach van to low-income communities. By delivering children’s books, early literacy tools and STEM activities, McKee said the goal is to help families expand their own home libraries.

California is the largest benefactor of the “grants to states” IMLS program, which distributes roughly $60 million annually. Part of that money provides free online subscriptions to the New York Times through all public libraries in the state.

While the department is anticipating that this subsidized access may fizzle by July, libraries in Contra Costa County plan to use money in its dedicated fund balance to foot the bill.

As state and federal funding levels for all library programs remain uncertain, staff lauded the numerous partnerships across its 26 branches, where a range of wellness teams, social workers, veteran services, mobile health clinics and other public services operate at library locations.

Supervisor John Gioia echoed that praise.

“The big issue we always face is, how do we try to obtain more funding for libraries across the county?” Gioia said. “That’s always been a challenge.”

(Bay Area News Group)

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‘MILLIONS OUT ON THE STREET VIRTUALLY OVERNIGHT’: HOW TRUMP’S BUDGET PROPOSAL COULD AFFECT CALIFORNIA

by Ben Christopher & Marisa Kendall

On Friday President Trump released a budget blueprint for the next fiscal year that would take a chainsaw to social, environmental and education programs. Some of the sharpest cuts are directed at housing programs that are meant to serve the poor, housing insecure and unhoused.

In California, millions are served by these funds and state and local governments depend on them to operate affordable housing, rental assistance, homeless service, planning and legal programs.

In a letter to the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee, the president’s budget director, Russel Vought, laid out $163 billion in annual spending cuts coupled with “unprecedented increases” in military and border security spending. The cuts, Vought wrote, are directed at areas of spending that the administration found to be “contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.”

That includes $33.5 billion in proposed cuts to the Housing and Urban Development department, a 44% reduction from current levels.

Presidential budget requests rarely reflect what Congress ultimately passes into law but are instead often viewed as something between an opening negotiating bid and a political vision board.

Even so, the budget document makes for quite a vision — one that, if realized, would upend decades of federal housing policy and affect millions of lives.

The sheer breadth of the cuts provides an odd kind of solace to some affordable housing advocates.

“By following through on such a huge level with so many proposals that are going to gut assistance to low-income people across the country, including his own party’s states, he’s putting his own members of Congress in a very difficult place,” said Matt Schwartz, president of the California Housing Partnership, a nonprofit that advocates for more affordable housing. “The level of carnage that would be involved in doing these things is probably going to send some Republican senators running for the exits.”

A handful of powerful GOP senators have, indeed, already pushed back on the president’s proposal, though much of their ire was directed at what they saw as a lack of sufficient military spending.

The largest single cut in federal housing policy would target the Housing Choice Voucher program. Better known as Section 8, it’s currently administered by the federal government and helps low-income tenants with their rental payments. The White House is proposing shifting responsibility for the administration of that program, which it calls “dysfunctional,” to states, while cutting its funding in half.

It also proposes a two-year limit on how long a single person can receive help. That change is “completely out of touch with what people are facing in the housing market,” said Alex Visotzky, senior California policy fellow at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. With soaring rents outpacing people’s incomes, low-income tenants aren’t going to be able to magically earn enough money to start paying rent in two years, he said.

Additional cuts to four other housing voucher programs are meant to save $27 billion annually.

“You’d be looking at millions of people out on the street virtually overnight,” said Schwartz. “There’s no way states could maintain the same level of assistance.”

The administration proposes to save nearly $5 billion more by eliminating funds for local economic development grants, affordable housing developments and local initiatives to reduce regulatory barriers to new housing.

That latter program, a Biden-era initiative known as Pathways to Removing Obstacle Housing, was denounced in the administration’s budget write-up as a “woke” program that has pursued “radical racial, gender, and climate goals.”

The White House pointed specifically to a $6.7 million grant made to Los Angeles County to fund infrastructure planning, public transit-oriented housing and, as described in the county’s funding proposal, rezoning that would reverse the region’s “legacy of past systemic racism.”

Radical Reshuffle Of Homelessness Policy

The budget would slash federal homelessness funding by $532 million, while also radically changing the way those funds are distributed. The Continuum of Care program – the main way the federal government distributes funds to fight homelessness – would effectively end. It would be replaced by an Emergency Solutions Grant program.

The continuum program funds long-term solutions to homelessness, including permanent supportive housing, which is housing that comes with case management, counseling and other services for people with disabilities, mental illnesses, addictions or other struggles that mean they require extra help. Emergency Solutions Grants, on the other hand, fund more short-term solutions, such as homeless shelters, or short-term rental assistance for people who don’t need extra services.

That shift in funding would mean thousands of people would lose their supportive housing and end up back on the street, said Visotzky from the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

“This would be a significant shift away from the solution to homelessness, which is housing, towards shelter,” he said. “This budget is going to take away all the pathways to get out of shelter and into housing.”

Homeless veterans fared better. The budget proposes a $1.1 billion increase “for the President’s commitment to ending veterans’ homelessness.” Those funds would go to Veterans Affairs for rental assistance, case management and support services.

The budget also calls for the elimination of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, an agency tasked with coordinating homeless policy at the federal level, which the administration had already gutted.

End of “Fair Housing” Enforcement As We Know It

The White House also proposes zeroing out a grant program that funds nonprofit legal aid organizations that enforce national fair housing laws. According to the explanatory summary of the cuts published by the administration, these organizations advocate “against single family neighborhoods and promote radical equity policies.”

That characterization is strongly disputed by Caroline Peattie, executive director of the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. Federally recognized nonprofit fair housing groups processed 74% of all fair housing complaints submitted across the country in 2023, according to data compiled by the National Fair Housing Alliance. The remainder go to federal and state housing regulators.

A recent example: In 2022, Peattie’s organization received a complaint that a Nevada-based appraisal company was systematically undervaluing homes owned by Black and Latino Californians. The nonprofit investigated and submitted a complaint to the state. The California Civil Rights Department reached a settlement with the appraisal company in mid-April.

If all the cuts go into effect as proposed, Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California would lose roughly 75% of its funding, said Peattie.

“It’s just appalling,” she said. “When the fair housing organizations go away, then what?”

The across-the-board cuts come after months of legal battle between fair housing organizations and the administration. In February the Department of Government Efficiency, helmed by Elon Musk, abruptly terminated a key source of congressionally authorized funding for dozens of private fair housing organizations, including Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California. The groups sued. With that lawsuit pending, the funds, appropriated for fiscal year 2024, “are still in the ether,” said Peattie.

Last month, Congress passed a bill to keep government spending at current levels from the prior year, meaning that fiscal year 2025 spending is in a holding pattern for now.

“But as for fiscal year 2026, all bets are off,” said Peattie.

(CalMatters.org)

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WARRIORS TOPPLE TIMBERWOLVES sans Curry, win Game 1 behind Hield, Green, Butler, defense and depth

by Sam Gordon

MINNEAPOLIS — Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr needn’t say a word about Stephen Curry’s strained left hamstring Tuesday during halftime of a 99-88 win over the Minnesota Timberwolves at Target Center.

Curry was applying an ice bag to it when the Warriors gathered in their locker room and the “guys already knew (he was out)” Kerr said. “We talked about the plan for the second half.”

Secure a 1-0 lead in the Western Conference semifinals.

Absent Curry (13 points on 5-of-9 shooting in 13 minutes) for two-plus quarters in Game 1 of the best-of-seven series, the Warriors tempered the Timberwolves to silence a sellout crowd cloaked in white.

Swarming, cohesive, connective defense held Minnesota to 39.5% shooting as it missed its first 16 attempts from 3-point range — finishing 5 of 29. Buddy Hield led Golden State with 24 points and five 3-pointers while Jimmy Butler played the point en route to 20 points, 11 rebounds and eight assists.

Draymond Green added 18 points, eight rebounds and six assists for the Warriors, who outrebounded the bigger Timberwolves by 10 and scored 13 points via 18 offensive rebounds.

Minnesota star guard Anthony Edwards missed his first 10 field-goal attempts and finished 9 of 22 for 23 points and 14 rebounds. The Timberwolves in their last two games — including their first-round closeout victory over the Los Angeles Lakers — are 12 of 76 from beyond the 3-point arc.

Game 2 is Thursday at Target Center.

“Little deflating,” Green affirmed about Curry’s game-ending injury, “but he did a great job of helping us build a comfortable enough lead. And Robin (Butler) turned into Batman and (our teammates) filled in, so it was beautiful to see. Everybody played great minutes.”

Two days after a first-round Game 7 win over the Houston Rockets, Curry was cooking the Timberwolves again — he averaged 28.8 points and 7.5 assists in four-regular season matchups — when he started limping in the second quarter. A possession or two later, he assisted Green for a left-wing triple before walking into the tunnel adjacent to his bench at the next dead ball.

Butler said Curry, long the fulcrum for Golden State’s offense and organization, is “one of the greatest to ever do it. He wants to be out there. I think he knows, and we know, how much easier the game for us whenever he’s hooping at a high level. I think we’re all prepared to compete and win without him. We don’t want to, but we’re all prepared. We may have to, so we’ll see what it all means.”

Curry is set to undergo an MRI on Wednesday morning, but in the meantime, the Warriors proved they can muscle their way to a victory without him. Driving lanes for Edwards were muddied and clogged by well-timed help when he punctured the paint as Golden State’s zone defensive looks halted Minnesota’s ball and player movement.

Without Curry, Kerr adjusted and scrapped the rotation he planned to play — turning instead to seven reserves instead of the typical three or four. Gary Payton II (eight points, five rebounds, four assists) played 26 minutes of pestering defense and measured offense as Kevon Looney (two points, two steals, six rebounds, one block) played 14 minutes of with bruising two-way effort and force.

Jonathan Kuminga (seven points) manned the wing and guarded the ball for 13 minutes while Pat Spencer (four points, two rebounds, two steals) provided 11 minutes of pace and physicality at the point. Moses Moody (eight minutes), Quinten Post (six minutes) and Gui Santos (four minutes) offered energetic spot minutes.

“I never really look at the stats after a playoff game,” Kerr said. “I just think about how guys competed. I thought every guy who came off the bench” competed with force. Santos cited the Game 7 win Sunday night and noted the momentum it gave the Warriors: “It looked like it was Game 7 here tonight.”

The Timberwolves twice would pull within nine with time to finish a fourth-quarter rally, but Butler ensured the Warriors wouldn’t lose — scoring or assisting all Golden State’s fourth-quarter points. Their game-high lead of 23 — they led 44-31 at halftime, too — was built with passing (26 assists for 34 field goals), patience and poise and maintained by sublime situational execution.

Minnesota’s makeshift runs were answered by triples from Hield and Payton assisted by Butler, who said “any team with me on it I think has a chance and I know that any team with Steph on it does have a chance and my guys believe it, too. They work so hard at their craft every single day. They don’t shy away from any moment, from any matchup. They do whatever you ask them to do to make sure we have a chance of winning. And we’re going to need all hands on deck if 30 isn’t ready to go.”

All hands on deck were available Tuesday — and so was a playoff win down Curry.

“Did what we needed to do,” Payton said. “Limit their shots and we got on the glass and rebounded.”

(sfchronicle.com)

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GIANTS ERUPT FOR 9 in 11th to beat Cubs, but Verlander denied the win

by Susan Slusser

CHICAGO — Justin Verlander’s zero wins weighed on his San Francisco Giants teammates. The future Hall of Famer is 38 away from 300, and he’d done more than enough to pocket Ws in each of his previous three starts.

Tuesday at Wrigley Field, gosh darn it, even if Verlander wasn’t going to get the win, the Giants were dead set on at least getting the team a victory.

After the bullpen bumbled away the W for Verlander for the third time in four starts, the Giants scored nine times against Ryan Pressly in the 11th — a franchise record for most runs in an extra inning — to thump the NL Central-leading Cubs 14-5.

“Crazy,” manager Bob Melvin said, “especially against a quality pitcher like that.”

Verlander, 42, is winless in his first eight starts for the first time in his 20 big-league seasons.

“I literally apologized to him,” said closer Ryan Walker, who blew the save. “I said, ‘Dude, I’m sorry I’ve ruined this twice for you already. It’s a slow start right now, I’m going to get there, I have no doubt about that.’ But he’s great, he understands we’re all trying our best out here.”

“Obviously you want some wins, but I’ve also been somebody who never really expects a lot of wins when I only go five innings,” Verlander said. “So I don’t really feel like I did my job as well as I should have today, although I thought it was pretty positive stuff-wise.”

The outburst in the 11th included two doubles by Heliot Ramos, RBI singles by Patrick Bailey, Jung Hoo Lee and Wilmer Flores, a two-run hit by Matt Chapman and Brett Wisely’s second safety squeeze bunt of the night. It was the most runs in an extra inning in Wrigley Field's 111-year history; the placed runner in extra innings was instituted in 2020.

Just to underscore how nutty things turned in the 11th, former starter Kyle Harrison, recalled Monday to pitch in the bullpen, was the last reliever available and made his first-ever relief appearance. He had a 1-2-3 inning and topped out at 97 mph.

“All I was thinking was ‘Pound the zone, get outs as quick as I can,’” Harrison said. “The boys helped me out and got me some padding, so I really appreciated that. It was a fun experience.”

A lot was going in the late innings. Walker, who’d also blown the save in a strong Verlander start at Anaheim on April 20, reprised that wobble Tuesday, and got lifted with two outs and one run in, and looked none too pleased about it.

“I mean, I was definitely upset,” Walker said. “Obviously, things were a little shaky, but I felt like I got a second wind, like, ‘OK, I’ve got this, let’s finish it out.’”

“I already talked to him about it,” said Melvin, who said the plan all along was to have lefty Erik Miller come in to face Kyle Tucker if that spot in the lineup came around. “I don’t want him to want to come out of that game, but I told him I’d probably do that one out of 10 times.”

Miller gave up a game-tying single, just the third hit by a lefty in 15 at-bats against Miller this year. Then Miller got the task of coming back out and pitching the 10th after the Giants failed to score. With Seiya Suzuki the placed runner at second in the 10th, Miller walked Michael Busch and Nico Hoerner’s flyball sent Suzuki to third, but he struck out Pete Crow-Armstrong and got Dansby Swanston to line out to third, earning Miller plaudits from every corner.

“It’s definitely pretty nerve-wracking,” Miller said. “I’m not going to lie and say I wasn’t pretty nervous. I think every reliever knows that’s probably the most stressful thing, if your team doesn’t score and you go back out the next inning.”

“He comes in in a really tough spot and gives us a chance,” Verlander said. “Erik did an incredible job to wriggle out of the 10th, and then we went off.”

We must note here because it will go a little overlooked with all the later drama: Tyler Rogers, who blew the save Verlander’s last time out, was one of the relievers to shine Tuesday, with a 1-2-3, nine-pitch eighth inning.

The offense is often the issue when Verlander is on the mound, but not so Tuesday. Lee hit a two-run homer, Bailey a sacrifice fly (moments after failing to get down a bunt) and Wisely somehow bludgeoned a safety-squeeze bunt over first baseman Busch in the fourth.

The Cubs helped things along too, with Chapman scooting home on an error by third baseman John Berti, who nearly threw home, thought better of it, then was too late to get Ramos at first.

Verlander allowed four runs, total, over those past three starts and 18 ⅓ innings. Tuesday, Miguel Amaya banged a two-run homer in the third and the Cubs added their third run in the fifth when Swanson singled, went to second on a groundout and third when Wisely, at second, missed a pickoff attempt from Verlander. Berti sent Swanson in with a grounder up the middle that Wisely could only smother.

Verlander went winless through his first seven starts only once before, in 2015 with the Tigers.

“It’s been tough, it feels like he’s the unluckiest guy on the team,” shortstop Willy Adames said of Verlander before the game. “He’s been pitching great, but sometimes we don’t hit, but last game he pitched, (the bullpen) blew it up. It’s like, ‘Man, what are we going to do to get him his first win?’ We’ll keep working and continue to expect him to continue to be great like he’s been doing and hopefully we can put enough runs for him to win the game, his first one here as a Giant.”

“I’m somebody who really tries to focus on the big picture and I try to keep pitching well and giving us a chance to win, and that’s doing my job,” Verlander said. “Wins can come in bunches and it’s a team sport, not everything’s in your control as a starter.

“I need to go a little deeper in the game, but I’ve been kind of working my way towards, I think, being better and better, just kind of stay the course and see what happens. I’ve still got a lot of starts left, it’s really early. I could win five in a row and look up in a month and go, ‘Wow, that was a great run.’”

(sfchronicle.com)

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TRUMP’S ALCATRAZ WHIM IS ‘OUTLANDISH,’ BUT REALISM ISN’T THE POINT.

by Sophia Bollag

President Donald Trump’s announcement that he plans to reopen Alcatraz, the infamous island prison in San Francisco Bay that federal officials closed in the 1960s because it was too expensive, has been called “absurd,” “impractical” and “not humane.”

But Trump’s Sunday evening social media post about the idea follows a well-honed strategy that the president has been deploying for years. He makes outlandish claims and goads the media into writing stories debunking or criticizing them, which focuses the national conversation around his preferred topics.

Centering the news cycle around the idea that he wants to crack down on crime could keep Americans’ focus on an issue that’s politically advantageous to him, experts say.

“He picks outlandish topics that he thinks will be popular with the general public, but unpopular with Democrats and maybe the educated Democratic elites, in the hopes that they criticize it,” said Gabriel Lenz, a political science professor at UC Berkeley. “That keeps an idea, an issue, a topic where he thinks he has an advantage in the news.”

Crime is a good example, Lenz said, pointing to polling that has shown public support growing for “tough on crime” policies.

Locking people in the prison that once housed notorious mob boss Al Capone certainly sounds tough, even if the actual work and expense needed to make that idea a reality is far-fetched.

It’s similar to Trump’s false story that Haitian immigrants were eating people’s pets. The story was quickly easily debunked, but Lenz noted that it didn’t matter — the story didn’t hurt Trump in the polls and kept immigration in the news.

Longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon calls this strategy “flood the zone.” It’s how Trump grows his popularity among everyday Americans, Bannon says.

“They love this kind of days of thunder, every day flood the zone,” Bannon told Gov. Gavin Newsom in March on an episode of Newsom’s podcast. “He has a visceral connection with working-class people that people in politics haven’t had in generations.”

Right now, keeping the focus on Alcatraz could help Trump by distracting from rising prices and falling economic indicators in the wake of his decision to impose massive tariffs on most other countries.

“Elites will criticize him, keep that in the news, and all the signs of recession will fall out of the news for a few days,” Lenz said. “That’s been a well-honed Trump strategy Democrats keep falling for.”

Cathy Abernathy, a Republican strategist based in Bakersfield, said she thinks Americans agree with Trump’s tough-on-crime rhetoric. She said she views Trump’s post on Alcatraz as just a suggestion at this point.

“I don’t know that we need to get caught up on what other people think it would cost,” she said of some of the criticism. “It seems premature to shoot it down.”

Mike Madrid, a California-based Republican strategist and longtime Trump critic, said the goal of the Alcatraz announcement is less grounded in practicality and more on the symbolism of appearing tough on crime and embracing a “strongman” style of governance.

“The goal here is to harken back to a time of more barbaric practices for criminals,” Madrid said. “It’s law-and-order imagery.”

The episode is also indicative of Trump’s erratic, shoot-from-the-hip style, Madrid said. He pushed back on the idea that the Alcatraz announcement is part of a disciplined messaging strategy.

“That’s giving him far far too much credit,” Madrid said.

Newsom has said he is trying to avoid being distracted by Trump’s constant outlandish announcements and instead focusing on what actually matters. The difference between an important issue and a distraction is often subjective, however, and Newsom recently sparked intense criticism from other Democrats for suggesting that Trump’s efforts to deport people to El Salvador without due process were a “distraction.”

On Monday, Newsom’s office declined to take the bait on Alcatraz. When asked for comment, Newsom spokesperson Diana Crofts-Pelayo responded with a single sentence.

“Looks like it’s distraction day again in Washington, D.C.”

(SF Chronicle)

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This is what the two boxers looked like when they fought 110 rounds! Yes, you read that right, 110 rounds of 3 minutes (7 hours and 19 minutes of fighting!)

It was April 6, 1893, Andy Browen and Jack Burke The fight ended in a No-Contest because when the 111th round was called, the two exhausted and swollen boxers were unable to get up from the stool to continue the fight

It is of course the longest boxing fight in history.

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ON-LINE COMMENT OF THE DAY

On Jan. 20, 2025, Donald Trump swore an oath to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. So help me God.”

On May 2, 2025, when asked whether he needed to “uphold the Constitution of the United States,” the president answered, “I don’t know,” and referred to his “brilliant lawyers.”

If the president needs a lawyer to know that the oath he took requires him to uphold the Constitution, God help us all.

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ELIZABETH HARDWICK:

There is every evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was incapable of systematic, careful reading, about Communism or anything else. When he applied for admission to the Albert Schweitzer School in Switzerland he gave as his favorite authors, Jack London, Charles Darwin, and Norman Vincent Peale. The incongruity of the list points to his ignorance of all three. Yet it is pretension, the projection of his ambitions and hopes in ideological terms that stay in one’s mind as a puzzle. He seems a good deal like those lumpen intellectuals of the early Thirties in Germany and Austria, empty, ignorant, rootless men, without any gifts or skills but still with a certain conceit that made them want to make from the negative of their personalities some sort of programmatic certainty.

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CONDO DIPLOMACY

by Tom Stevenson

The Trump court is a royal progress that moves between Palm Beach and the White House, for the most part in private planes. But the interests of the US government require that at least some of its members be willing to travel farther afield than Florida. Trump talks of putting the US economy behind a great tariff wall, but he also wants deals, which means he needs dealers.

America’s official chief diplomat is the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, but so far his activities have been fairly limited. Instead, the role of principal US emissary is currently filled by the unlikely figure of the property developer Steve Witkoff.

Witkoff first met Trump in a deli in New York in the 1980s, where he paid for Trump’s sandwich. He got his start in property by driving around Harlem and Washington Heights in a ‘beat-up Buick’ looking for apartment buildings to buy. He later moved on to downtown office buildings, often borrowing money from Lehman Brothers to pay for them. One of his business partners was Mark Walsh, described by the New York Times as “one of Lehman’s biggest profit producers,” “skilled at making all that debt vanish” — until the bank collapsed in 2008.

The appointment of “the king of condo financing” as the president’s special envoy might have been taken as a sign of American disengagement from world affairs. But Witkoff has been busy. In January he was tasked with pressuring Israel to pull its forces back from Gaza and declare a ceasefire (and, in the process, with reminding Netanyahu who’s boss). Witkoff demonstrated that word from Washington was enough to force Israel to accept terms that had been on the table all along. But it was hardly a diplomatic achievement. Trump’s attention has since wavered and Israel has renewed its assault, declaring its intention to occupy the whole of Gaza indefinitely.

Yet his special envoy’s work was good enough for Trump, who cares more about being able to proclaim that a deal has been cut than on its concrete effects. Witkoff was charged with taking over negotiations with Russia, suspended since late 2021. He has met Putin four times as well as sitting down with his foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov. Some of the criticism of Witkoff has come people who believe the US shouldn’t be negotiating with Russia at all. But the accusation that the US team is out of its depth has obvious merit.

According to Trump, Witkoff is “a natural born winner” with plenty of common sense. He’s certainly an experienced gladhander with some useful friends (including the prime minister of Qatar, Muhammad bin Abdulrahman al-Thani). In negotiations between the US and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program, Witkoff sat across from Abbas Arraghchi, a 30-year veteran of Iran’s foreign ministry, who has been posted everywhere from Japan to Jedda and Helsinki.

Trump appears to see Witkoff’s inexperience as a positive attribute. Rubio is involved in the talks with Iran, and the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has also been speaking with Russia’s intelligence chief, Sergei Naryshkin. But channels that were previously run by one of the most experienced American diplomats and securocrats, Bill Burns, are now run by a New York landlord who says he “suffers from wanting to be well liked.”

Witkoff’s current position most closely resembles the role played by Jared Kushner (with whom he is friendly) in Trump’s first term. Except Kushner never took on the entire international file. A succession of secretaries of state and CIA directors, along with the US trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, shared the load.

Witkoff says that his personal relationship with the boss is what matters. He never misses an opportunity to compliment Trump, whom he refers to as “the master,” casting himself as a mere protégé. Still, he has ventured some comments on American strategy: Russia should be accommodated; Iran having a nuclear weapon would give it “outsized influence” in the Gulf, and the US can’t allow that. “This whole peace through strength thing is not just a slogan,” he says. “It actually works.” Witkoff claims that American diplomacy has entered a new golden age: the US is “curing and solving conflicts all around the world.”

The US has had ambassadors without portfolio before, and close associates of sitting presidents have been made diplomats. Biden made Rahm Emanuel his ambassador to Tokyo, a sign that Japan could have direct access to the president if need be. But it’s difficult to see Witkoff’s rise as anything other than a debasement of the diplomatic métier. Substantial tasks lie ahead for the US. There will need to be real diplomacy with China. Shouldn’t the imperial envoy be a cold sophisticate, rather than one of the president’s golf partners, a cigar and steakhouse poser?

Perhaps Witkoff merely reflects Trump’s propensity to value loyalty over competence and schmoozing over government. The emperor’s personal envoy need not be a Metternich or Hardenberg. The imperial family needs hotels in Dubai, golf clubs in Qatar and cryptocurrency deals in Abu Dhabi (the latter organized by Witkoff’s son). If you see the world as a collection of properties, what you really need is a real estate agent.

(London Review of Books)

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