Earmarks were banned for a decade. Their return means money for projects across California
JENNIFER HABERKORN, LA Times: “After a decadelong prohibition, congressional earmarks make their return this week, sending more than $760 million in transportation, military, healthcare and other projects to California.
President Biden signed into law a $1.5-trillion government spending bill on Tuesday that includes financing for initiatives specifically written by lawmakers seeking to boost their local universities, roadways or parks with federal dollars. Nearly 500 of the projects will be in California.
The biggest projects in the state’s $766-million pot involve military construction at naval bases in Coronado and Ventura County requested by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Other undertakings include $15 million to dredge Channel Islands Harbor in Oxnard, written by Rep. Julia Brownley (D-Westlake Village); $15 million to replenish beaches from Anaheim Bay to Newport Bay, pushed by Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Seal Beach); and $10 million to stabilize the Coaster commuter rail along the Del Mar Bluffs, led by Feinstein.”The ex-Hollywood filmmaker bankrolling a far-right political revolt in rural California
JESSICA GARRISON, LAT: “Reverge Anselmo, a former U.S. Marine, former novelist, ex-filmmaker, former vintner and guardian of a vast fortune, abandoned his stunning Shasta County estate in 2014 in a huff. He’d been battling the county over, among other things, his decision to construct a Catholic chapel without full permits on his vineyard, and after a legal setback decided to pack it in.“It was time to go,” Anselmo said, furious that officials were in his view wrongly interfering with his land-use rights. “Who fights their way into Shasta County? Who does that?”Then, in 2021, Anselmo learned that far-right activists were making a documentary about efforts to recall Shasta County elected officials. He summoned the film crew to his family home in Greenwich, Conn. — the one he calls “Marie Antoinette’s house” because it is modeled after the Palace of Versailles — and began contributing to their efforts.Residents were scammed out thousands in Placer County, officials say. One lost nearly $500K
NOOR ADATIA, SacBee: “A Placer County resident recently lost nearly half a million dollars to a scammer who impersonated a member of the Sheriff’s Office. In total, seven victims have lost around $600,000 total to the phone scammers since the beginning of the year, according to Placer County Sheriff’s Office. Phone calls involved victims sending money to scammers who convinced them they were going to drop arrest warrants, keep their electricity on or even fix their computers infected by a “virus” in exchange. One person, who was led to believe their computer had a virus, was scammed out of $475,000, authorities said in a Facebook post.Capitol riot suspect from California says he can’t get fair trial because of Biden voters
SAM STANTON, SacBee: “The Sacramento-area man facing the most serious charges in the Jan. 6 Capitol Riot case continues to signal that he intends to go to trial, with his lawyers asking a federal judge to move his case out of Washington, D.C. Lawyers for Sean Michael McHugh, an Auburn construction worker who is being held in jail in Washington as a danger to the community, asked a judge Tuesday to move proceedings in his case to Michigan because they argue media coverage of the attack has tainted the jury pool in Washington. The motion for a change of venue argues that the District of Columbia’s population is only about 690,000 and that many of its residents work for the federal government and may have strong opinions about the events of Jan. 6.
D.A. Chesa Boudin recall: New poll of S.F. voters suggests he might be in trouble
HEATHER KNIGHT, Chronicle: “San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin has just 12 weeks left to make perhaps the biggest case of his career: convincing the city’s frustrated voters that he should keep his job.
But a new poll, commissioned by the campaign seeking to recall Boudin, suggests that might be a daunting task. Of 800 voters likely to participate in the June 7 election, 68% said they would vote yes on recalling Boudin. Seventy-four percent said they have an unfavorable opinion of him, and 78% rated his job performance as “only fair” or “poor.”
The poll, conducted Feb. 17-21 via landlines, cell phones, email and texts, has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percentage points, which means the pollsters are 95% confident that support for recalling Boudin is no more than 4.4 percentage points off from 68%.”
Mask or no mask? California schools leave the choice up to students, teachers as mandate ends
SAWSAN MORAR, SacBee: “California students no longer have to wear masks in school as of this week, but many are choosing to keep them on as they and their families weigh the ongoing risks of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The California Department of Public Health allowed students and school staff to choose whether or not they wanted to wear a mask on campus starting March 12, making this the first week of in-person learning without state-mandated face coverings in two years.
School districts are not tracking mask-wearing at schools, although some reported general trends.
With composting, Californians can take climate change into their own hands
JAIMES RAINEY, LA Times:"Teresa Leong had known for years that her kitchen scraps weren’t really trash. But at first, she wasn’t sure what to do with them.
Sometimes she’d just toss a bell pepper into the bushes, figuring it would decompose and feed the greenery. But that wasn’t a comprehensive solution. Then she tried washing unused veggies down the drain, knowing they’d be converted to reusable gas at the city’s sewage treatment plant. But massive downloads of greens, even ground up in a blender, clogged the drain in her Studio City apartment.
Another round of “aggressive Googling” led Leong to a group called L.A. Compost and the start of a life-changing conversion that began — naturally enough — with broccoli stems, coffee grounds and banana peels. In the summer of 2019, this millennial with a mind for climate science and a heart for humanity delivered those leftovers to the nonprofit’s booth at the Atwater Village Farmers Market."
OPINION: A fruitless hunt for wisdom in our current energy policies (OP-ED)
Capitol Weekly, Zack Scrivner: "As Gov. Newsom addressed California residents in the annual State of the State, he seemed to skirt some big issues plaguing the state, but he didn’t miss the opportunity to double down on his recent and harmful energy policies restricting California energy production.
In reaction to numerous public bipartisan calls from state legislators and members of Congress urging the governor to increase domestic oil production as tensions overseas push gas prices to record highs, Newsom said, “Our approach is to be neither indifferent to the realities of the present day, nor revert to heavy-handed policies that have marked the failures of the past.”
Unfortunately, the state’s policies do exactly what the governor says he is trying to avoid."
Mayor Breed’s Tenderloin drug emergency is ending. Does data show she met her goals?
MALLORIE MOENCH and SUSIE NELSON, Chronicle: “Mayor London Breed grabbed national headlines at the end of last year with her pronouncement that San Francisco needed to be “less tolerant of all the bulls— that has destroyed our city” — referring to crime citywide, but especially in the Tenderloin. She declared a state of emergency in the neighborhood and vowed to reduce overdose deaths, crack down on drug use and dealing and get people on the streets into treatment and housing.
On Thursday, her 90-day state of emergency will end. Daily operations including street cleaning and outreach to get people off the streets and into services will continue through the end of June. The city wants to keep operating through December a linkage center opened at U.N. Plaza where people can drop in to get basic services such as food and try to get connected to longer-term help.
The emergency led to noticeable changes: The speedy opening of the linkage center and the hiring of more than 160 behavioral health workers. But while some Tenderloin streets are cleaner and easier to navigate, more people have been arrested for drug crimes and others have moved into housing and treatment, many residents, advocates and supervisors said the situation hasn’t changed meaningfully — and data does not clearly show that neighborhood conditions have improved significantly."
Oakland’s Hail Mary: City asks Supreme Court to revive its suit over Raiders’ move to Las Vegas
BOB EGELKO, Chronicle: “Okland has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to revive its antitrust damage suit against the National Football League over the Raiders’ move to Las Vegas, describing the league as a “cartel” whose rules profited its teams while draining the city’s coffers.
The suit was filed in 2018, a year after NFL teams voted 31-1 to approve the team’s relocation to Las Vegas. Oakland did not challenge the move, which took place before the 2021-21 season, but claimed damages of more than $240 million, plus loss of tax revenue and reductions in the property value of the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.
A federal appeals court ruled last December that the city had failed to show it was harmed by the league’s refusal to add more teams or other allegedly anti-competitive practices, upholding a federal magistrate’s dismissal of the suit. But lawyers for Oakland told the Supreme Court the NFL and its teams were violating antitrust laws by limiting competition for their own benefit."
A new law saved UC Berkeley admissions. But the university still has an expansion problem
NANETTE ASIMOV, Chronicle: "Swift work by California lawmakers this week rescued the academic hopes of thousands of applicants to UC Berkeley who would have been barred because of a legal interpretation that limited next fall’s student enrollment.
But the new law that nullifies the enrollment cap doesn’t let UC Berkeley off the hook for addressing the environmental impacts of its growing presence in the city of Berkeley. If certain legal puzzle pieces fall into place, the campus could find itself having to halt growth all over again or find other ways to mitigate any ill effects its expansion has on the community.”
The new law “is just a kick-the-can-down-the-road partial remedy, a fig leaf,” said Jennifer Hernandez, an environmental lawyer in San Francisco and Los Angeles, of the new SB118, which state lawmakers unanimously approved Monday and which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law that evening. The university “will have to do another environmental study and can be sued all over again.”
‘We’re screwed’: L.A. County empties troubled juvenile hall ahead of state board’s inspection
JAMES QUEALLY, LAT: "The L.A. County Probation Department hastily moved out all children housed in its troubled Central Juvenile Hall over the weekend, ahead of an inspection from state regulators, officials said.
In interviews with The Times, Probation Department employees described the transfer of approximately 140 children, some with mental health and serious behavior issues, as disorganized and dangerous.
Probation officials gave employees little to no warning of the move and had insufficient staff on hand to conduct the transfers safely, according to an email reviewed by The Times and two employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media."
They’ve endured anti-Asian bigotry. They’re confronting it in different ways
DEEPA FERNANDES, Chronicle: "When a white gunman opened fire inside three Atlanta-area spas on March 16, 2021, killing six women of Asian ethnicity and eight people total, the act of mass violence became a nightmare example of the anti-Asian xenophobia roiling the U.S.
Closer to home, the Bay Area has been a flash point for anti-Asian incidents, ranging from verbal harassment to deadly violence. According to reports made to Stop AAPI Hate, a crowdsourced database, Asian women bore the brunt of the animosity as the total number of hate incidents reported in the U.S. climbed 35% last year, to 6,273 in 2021
One year after the spa attacks, four Bay Area women of Asian descent spoke with The Chronicle about their experiences with bigotry here and the various paths they’ve followed to fight it. Here are their stories, in their own words, edited for length and clarity."
Zelensky prods Biden to pledge more Ukraine aid in emotional, end-run speech to Congress
JENNIFER HABERKORN, LAT: "Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appealed directly to U.S. lawmakers Wednesday with an emotional request for additional financial support, weaponry and a no-fly zone to help his country fend off the Russian invasion, a remarkably rare speech that effectively circumvented the White House and went directly to the American people.
“Friends, Ukraine is grateful to the United States for its overwhelming support for everything that your government and your people have done for us,” Zelensky said, speaking mostly through a translator. “I call on you to do more.”
The first virtual address by a foreign leader to Congress — and certainly the first delivered by a T-shirt clad leader in a war-torn foreign capital — landed powerfully with lawmakers who almost universally said more needs to be done to help the Ukrainian people."
