Badlands Journal

Three of the most interesting articles we've read on the economy this week have come from divergent sources: Paul Craig Roberts, former assistant US Treasurer and Wall Street Journal editor, and a theorist of supply-side economics; Mike Davis, on the editorial board of New Left Review and author of City of Quartz and Planet of Slums among other books; Dean Baker, editor at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, who has been warning the nation since 2002 about the danger of the speculative housing bubble. All three  appear regularly on websites offering the best political economic journalism in the country.

Through the years of the Bush administration, we have read their prophetic analyses, which have helped us understand what is going on locally as well as nationally and internationally. At this point, when the nation is about as far away from "the end of history" as it can get and the government is rummaging around in the archives for a tattered copy of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), by John Maynard Keynes, looking for some ideas that worked in the Great Depression, Roberts, Davis and Baker offer useful insights and policy directions that might actually reduce some present and future suffering.

Badlands Journal editorial board

A woman who works in a processing plant developed persistent pain in her knee. She kept working as long as she could but finally had to go to management and explain that she did not want to quit but that she had too much pain to do the work she was doing. A manager brought her into his office and told her to sign a form before going to the company doctor. She told the manager that she would need to take the form home and have a family member whose English was better read it. The manager told her to sign it then and there or be fired. The woman, already irritated by the constant pain she had endured for several weeks, did not think this was fair. She explained that she would bring the form back in the morning but that she needed to have a family member read it and explain it to her. The angry manager verbally abused her and  fired her in the office and she left the plant.

However, she still had an appointment with the company doctor and so she went to it. The doctor agreed that she seemed to have pain in her knee, took an x-ray, had a few tests done, gave her some pain pills, and made another appointment for her. At the next appointment, the company doctor asked if she was any better and she said she wasn’t. He explained to her that she had pain in her knee and gave her some more pills.

The woman, who neither drinks, smokes or takes drugs, did not like the effects of the pills and quit using them.

A woman who works in a processing plant developed persistent pain in her knee. She kept working as long as she could but finally had to go to management and explain that she did not want to quit but that she had too much pain to do the work she was doing. A manager brought her into his office and told her to sign a form before going to the company doctor. She told the manager that she would need to take the form home and have a family member whose English was better read it. The manager told her to sign it then and there or be fired. The woman, already irritated by the constant pain she had endured for several weeks, did not think this was fair. She explained that she would bring the form back in the morning but that she needed to have a family member read it and explain it to her. The angry manager verbally abused her and  fired her in the office and she left the plant.

However, she still had an appointment with the company doctor and so she went to it. The doctor agreed that she seemed to have pain in her knee, took an x-ray, had a few tests done, gave her some pain pills, and made another appointment for her. At the next appointment, the company doctor asked if she was any better and she said she wasn’t. He explained to her that she had pain in her knee and gave her some more pills.

The woman, who neither drinks, smokes or takes drugs, did not like the effects of the pills and quit using them.

Catching up on his newspaper reading, one member of the Badlands Journal editorial board noticed this advertisement for the UC/Great Valley Center couched innocuously in the "community columnists'" section of Modesto's McClatchy Chain outlet.

11-05-08
Modesto Bee

But Suppose for the sake of argument the anti-science rant about the causes of global warming is correct. Let's agree that the consumption of carbon-based fuels has nothing to do with the recent worldwide rise in temperatures.
And lest we think...Eric Caine

http://www.modbee.com/opinion/community/story/488013.html

Instant communication, jet-speed transportation and the global economy have shrunk the world in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. Nations are now connected the way counties and states used to be, and counties can no longer be thought of as fiefdoms where planning decisions have only short-range effects.

More than 20 years ago a few valley citizens, including Modesto's own Carol Whiteside, began realizing the valley is a region. They acknowledged our eminence in agriculture and also began to recognize the value of our grasslands, rivers, wetlands and riparian forests. Together, they began promoting a vision of the valley that planned for growth while preserving the world's best farmland and protecting our rivers and delta.

Here in Merced, the Obama campaign was as invisible to the general public as the on-going immigration raids. Obama-Biden lawn signs were greatly outnumbered by For Sale and For Rent signs in this national foreclosure-rate capital. Our local Democratic Party is dominated by a Blue Dog congressman and his plutocrat paymasters and has no community
credibility. We did however notice frequent email invitations to local phone-bank events, where people here would call to help get the vote out in the battleground states.

In any event, Obama wasn’t paying much attention to Merced. California is a very blue state, it performed as expected, and Obama was taking care of business where he needed to be to win his campaign.

Yet his campaign achieved something unimaginable: it elected an African-American to the presidency of the United States of America. Its coalition of youth, people of color, progressives, the anti-war movement, low-income Americans and others, won  the election. It was able to take advantage of the economic disaster. It found another political center, in fact it had to find and empower that new center to win.

Comparison of Ownership vs. Rental Costs Points to Negative Equity Accruals in Many Markets Over the Next 4 Years

Policy makers should exercise extreme caution in intervening in housing market as prices continue to fall to trend levels.

10-28-08
Fresno Bee
Fish policies upheld in court ruling
Judge says feds have steelhead discretion...John Ellis
http://www.fresnobee.com/local/v-printerfriendly/story/967296.html
A federal judge in Fresno ruled Monday that the U.S. government has discretion to recognize differences in steelhead fish populations when determining whether they are eligible for listing under the Endangered Species Act.
U.S. District Judge Oliver W. Wanger issued a 168-page ruling on two challenges to how the National Marine Fisheries Service viewed California's steelhead populations.
One case challenged the government's practice of counting hatchery steelhead populations separately from wild populations.
The Pacific Legal Foundation had argued that Endangered Species Act listing decisions could be based on the numbers of hatchery steelhead produced each year. Based on that, the foundation had asked the court to remove five separate populations of steelhead from the list of endangered species.
In his decision, Wanger wrote that the "best science available" used by the NMFS "strongly indicated that naturally-spawned and hatchery-born [steelhead] are different."

In the late 1990s, an entrepreneurial mechanic with a wife and one child bought a house for $65,000 with a down payment of $1,500 and took a fixed-rate FHA mortgage. His wife, a beautician, got a job as a clerk at a discount store. In the midst of the speculative real estate boom in Merced six years later, with three children now and a warehouse job, he took out an equity loan for $126,000, did some remodeling on the exterior (new stucco, paint, new lawn turf, foam sculpture), bought furniture, a big-screen TV and a nearly new Cadillac Escalade. It is estimated that about $35,000 went for the home improvements and goods. Where did the other $91,000 go? It didn’t go into the property. Why wasn’t the equity loan monitored for home improvements? 

We wish to congratulate the law firm of Donald B. Mooney and Associates, Donald B. Mooney and Marsha A. Burch, representing Sheryl Gray et al., for successfully arguing against the Madera Ranch Quarry, Inc. (Jaxon Baker) environmental impact report for an aggregate mine in Madera County. The state Fifth Appellate District Court decided for the neighbors of the proposed project, against Baker and published the decision, which can be used as case law in CEQA cases, particularly those involving aggregate mines.