Three Ex-Governors Sound the Alarm

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It takes a special week to bury a meth-lab spider monkey below the fold, but California keeps outdoing itself. Insurance rates are exploding post-fire, the Governor is trying out a tent-clearing carrot-and-stick routine, and some in the “harm reduction” crowd are sobering up to the fact that drug-free housing might actually be important for people trying to kick the habit. Also inside: Shasta Dam’s growth spurt dreams resurface, an etymologist explains your LA neighborhood’s name, and a podcast dares to question your precious dinosaur knowledge. Welcome to Bear Essentials — where governing dysfunction meets data, and we’re all just trying to stay insured.

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Let’s get our hands dirty…

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IS THE CALIFORNIA DREAM A MIRAGE?

California might be the world’s fourth-largest economy — but don’t cue the victory parade just yet. The state is facing a perfect storm of catastrophic wildfires, hair-curling budget shortfalls, a spiraling housing crisis, and a newly hostile federal government. Earlier this week, the New York Times, which should win an award for its sheer volume of “California is reeling!” stories, spoke with three former governors — Gray Davis, Jerry Brown, and Pete Wilson — who warn this may be the state’s toughest stretch yet. While plenty of residents still believe in California’s “good bones,” the exodus of youth, fading industries, and political dysfunction suggest the Golden State’s shine is getting harder to polish. Which is, of course, why we’re here.

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🤫 Everything you should know

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🔥 💰 📈  - FIRES IGNITE INSURANCE MARKET — In a distressing sign of things to come, insurance premiums are set to jump for thousands of California residents thanks to an unprecedented emergency rate hike. The move comes just months after the January fires that tore through Los Angeles and unleashed $7B in fire claims. Following a three-day public hearing last month to consider State Farm’s emergency rate hike request, an administrative law judge allowed the move, saying “it represents a fundamentally fair, adequate, and necessary measure.” Starting June 1, California’s largest insurer can boost homeowner rates by 17%, and 38% for rental dwellings. Critics say the company flubbed fire payouts and doesn’t deserve a raise. The state says it’s either this or risk losing coverage for more than a million residents. It’s an argument without an easy resolution, but the subtext — who should shoulder the ballooning cost of climate disasters — is drawing closer to the foreground. – LAist

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🙅 🏕️  📃  -  TENT TAKEDOWN TEMPLATE — The Governor’s latest move in California’s homelessness standoff is to dangle $3.3B in one hand while waving a camping-ban blueprint in the other. He can’t force cities to evict encampments, but he’s clearly nudging with a velvet-covered brick. Critics say it’s optics over solutions — clearing tents won’t fix housing shortages or mental health gaps. Homeless advocates call it cruel (although, apparently, allowing people to live in squalor on the street is somehow humane?) fed up conservatives say it’s not harsh enough, and California mayors are stuck trying to decode how to shuffle people without just shuffling the problem. It is, as our British friends might say, a sticky wicket. — KQED

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🍸 🚫 🏠  - TIME TO SOBER UP? — Thea Golden runs a small, sober living recovery home in L.A.—helping women get clean, stable, and housed. But because California's "housing first" policy forbids funding abstinence-based programs, she’s shut out of public money. A new bill from Assemblyman Matt Haney aims to fix that, allowing up to 25% of state homelessness funds to go to sober housing. Formerly hardline supporters of “harm reduction” are reconsidering, acknowledging that for many recovering addicts, drug-tolerant housing isn’t just unhelpful — it’s dangerous. "When we passed our 'housing first' law we were so intent on reducing barriers to addicts that we inadvertently created new barriers to addicts who wanted to get sober," said Adrian Covert, senior vice president of policy at the Bay Area Council. — LA Times

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🎧 🔊 🎧 ON THE POD: BERKELEY VOICES

Groundbreaking brain-computer interfaces, stunning art forgeries, the evolution of American friendship and our fascination with cults are just a handful of the interesting topics on tap via Berkeley Voices, a podcast about the people who make UC Berkeley the world-changing place it is. Feel confident about your dinosaur knowledge? There’s an episode to dispel your hubris. Think your squirrely neighbor might be a secret psychopath? You might not be wrong! — Berkeley Voices

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🤔 🧐 🙂 - WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Place names can be funny, inscrutable or just plain mystifying. Los Angeles, with more than 100 communities and distinct neighborhoods, offers a bounty of interesting names, some of which wear their provenance on their sleeves, others less so. We were delighted to find the map above, produced by Instagram user Adam Aleksic @etymologynerd and reposted by Water and Power Associates, which also provides a fascinating catalog of early Los Angeles photography on its site.

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👀 DID YOUR CITY GROW OR SHRINK LAST YEAR?

The Washington Post compiled new data from the U.S. Census Bureau to show how American cities have gained or lost residents over the past four years. While the downward trend has stabilized for most California cities, six of the top 10 biggest gainers were in Texas. It’s a fun spin through the numbers.  Washington Post

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🏃‍♂️ 💨 ✋ FAST FIVE

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1. 🔚 Is the age of California progressivism drawing to a close? NY Magazine
2. 💧 Trump pumps up Shasta Dam plan. CalMatters
3. 🫡 Tennessee teen foils NorCal school bombing plot. SFChronicle
4. 🐒 Baby spider monkey discovered during Vallejo meth bust. ABC7 News‍
5. 🛠️ Governor throws support behind major housing reform bills. CA Gov