Badlands Journal

Merced Sun-Star Executive Editor Mike Tharp flew part of the Westside in a private plane with a realtor/Westside rancher named Gail McCullough and came back with revelations. It reminded him of Iraq, where he seems to need to go, whenever the reality of Merced and the San Joaquin Valley overwhelm him, to find refreshment in the Pentagon propaganda mill. You can sugar-coat failure with belief but it is still failure, out there on the imperial frontier or here at home.

He begins by announcing, “We live in a desert,” then extends the sentence to include everyone in California. But, I didn’t imagine dry-farming orchards on the coast for a decade. Tharp must be writing about Los Angeles.

The Merced City Council is to be commended for holding two lengthy public hearings on the WalMart distribution center project including citizens with sharply opposed views on health, human safety and economic growth, who spoke their mind in an orderly, safe process. This begs the lie of Rep. Dennis Cardoza, the Pimlico Kid, that citizens in his district could not meet together in town hall meetings to discuss health care reform. In fact, on another contentious issue, Riverside Motorsports Park, a large number of town hall meetings were held, some by proponents, some by opponents. We observed several moments of tension and name calling in those meetings, held without security, but only feelings were bruised.

"You can buy half the town for $420,000," said Adam Guthrie, chairman of the county Board of Equalization and the only licensed real estate appraiser in Prescott. -- Marcus Stern, ProPublica, Sept. 22, 2009

Rep. Mike Ross, Blue Dog-AR, is the chairman of the Blue Dog Coalition Healthcare Task Force, which also includes two Californians, representatives Mike Thompson and Loretta Sanchez. Ross is also accused of having taken bribes from a drug-store chain as part of the sale of a pharmacy he and his wife owned in his district.

This story is of interest to Merced and the San Joaquin Valley because Valley representatives Dennis Cardoza and Jim Costa are Blue Dogs. Former Rep. Gary Condit, D- Ceres, was a founder of this group of Boll Weavil Democrats, created when the Republicans took over the Congress in 1994 in the rightwing counter-revolution.

Like Ross' Arkansas district, as we know, Cardoza's and Costa's districts are chronically low-income, high- unemployment districts, where, due to the fiscal collapse of the state, public medical services are being cut back daily. They are also districts, again as we have recently seen, whose politicians are bought and paid for by large landowners at home and lobbyists in Washington. Costa has at least taken a position against a public option for healthcare insurance. Cardoza continues to ride the fence, with palms outstretched to both sides for "balance".

The free market in votes by members of Congress is on full display in the debate on healthcare reform.

Have you ever stopped to ask yourself how corporate propaganda is constantly trying to colonize the future? We'd like UC Merced, our own "high-tech, bio-tech engine of growth" right here in Merced CA to assign its best academic minds to explaining to us ordinary citizens what the future actually is so that the public might be in a better position to judge the claims of the endless stream of corporate flak about the future. For example, should the public take out a patent on the future before it is as cluttered with proprietary brands as outer space is cluttered with satellites?

Badlands Journal editorial board

9-22-09

Huffington Post

New Big Ag Push to Fight World Hunger Misses What Organic Ag Is Already Doing
Timothy LaSalle, CEO Rodale Institute
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/timothy-lasalle/new-big-ag-push-to-fight_b_295082.html

The compelling humanitarian goals expressed today at the corporately sponsored Global Harvest Initiative symposium were laudable, as were some of the hunger-relief projects cited. Missing, however, was an honest assessment of the limits of dead-end chemical agriculture to play a leading role in actually feeding people.

In a February letter to President Obama, Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Visalia, claimed, as he did in many other venues: "A simple measure that would save up to 80,000 jobs (in the lower San Joaquin Valley) would be to relax restrictions on pumping facilities in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Rivers Delta that have caused the regulatory drought that my constituents are experiencing."

In January, the state Farm Bureau reported that, "UC Davis agricultural economist Richard Howitt that the drought would cause a lost of "40,000 jobs, and these are job losses for those who can least afford them in the valley's small, rural towns."

As things stand, the CPC -- not the unreliable and unfocused Blue Dogs and certainly not the Democratic Leadership Council-aligned "New Democrats," who come with more corporate strings attached than many Republicans -- are the best strategic and practical allies that the president has. By adopting the CPC line with regard to the public option, Obama could energize the base that elected him and turn this into a real fight, bringing savvy inside-outside political operations like that of Progressive Democrats of America into the thick of the struggle and activating the crowds that turned out in cities across the country last week for the "Mad As Hell Doctors" tour on behalf of "Medicare for All." --

John Nichols, The Nation, 9-21-09

He was the acknowledged national dean of education journalists, a reporter who had covered the University of California from the time of Mario Savio and Clark Kerr to UC Merced.

The federal Justice Department is looking into the alleged corruption of former Interior Secretary Gale Norton. Under Norton, Interior’s corruption reached baroque proportions, particularly in issues involving California, as stories beneath indicate. For underlying documentation, readers are urged to consult Interior’s Office of Inspector General’s special reports at http://www.doioig.gov/index.php?menuid=2&viewid=-1&viewtype=REPORT&pgid=598&rpttype=special

Badlands Journal editorial board

Item 22: Health, Reconvening the Beilenson Hearing of Medical Assistance Program

Chairwoman Deidre Kelsey: We will reconvene the Beilenson hearing and I’ll have Mr. Volanti get us back on track.

The price of dirt – Part 4, the Williamson Act.

To give readers a larger view of relations between Merced County and the state’s Agriculture Preserve and Williamson Act laws, we offer a case study from a 2005 paper by UC Davis researcher, Christoper Butcher, since 2007 an associate in the prestigious Sacramento law first of Remy Thomas Moose & Manley. It serves as a preface for Part 4 of “The Price of dirt.” We will say in advance, that we think it is highly unlikely that anyone taking part in the budget hearing on the Williamson Act in Merced County this year has ever read this paper, and its concluding case study on how Merced County essentially corrupted the entire purpose of the Act and the underlying law concerning the Agricultural Preserve.

In a July 30 letter to state Assemblyman Juan Arambula, the Legislative Analyst’s Office wrote:

While certain liabilities are difficult to quantify precisely, it appears the state has over $200 billion of short-term, longer-term, and retirement-related liabilities to retire in future years. These liabilities will continue to put pressure on the state’s finances for years to come.

The Merced County Board of Supervisors next considered county-staff recommendations for cuts to the Human Services Agency.

Ana Pagan HSA, close to tears, addressed the recommendations. It is the second round of reductions for HSA.  We balanced our budget after the first round of cuts and then the governor came in with his veto and essentially decimated the agency, she said.  “He (the governor) cut Child Welfare, MediCal, CalWorks, totally eliminated some senior programs …we will be reorganizing and restructuring to see what we can salvage, she said.

Next the supervisors took up state cuts to funds provided through Proposition 1A (2006, Legislature’s ability to divert gas tax funds for other uses, treating the diversion as a termed loan). Assistant CEO Brown told the supervisors that the state has taken $6.1 million in county funds. It’s a loan the state has to pay back by June 2013. However, the supervisors could choose to securitize the loan and get the county’s money back this year in the market, Brown suggested. The caveat is that because of the creditworthiness of the state, the security instrument may be discounted so deeply in the market that it may be a significant hit. At this point, the CEO’s office was asking authorization to explore securitization.

Securitization would mean that the loan, presumably a cash-flow producing asset, would be packaged into a security instrument and sold to investors.

Part 1.

“Put your faith in the people who have been here from the beginning and have always paid their taxes while others come and go and cost us all money.” – Diana Westmoreland Pedrozo, executive director, Merced County Farm Bureau

Judge Arthur M. Schack of Brooklyn appears to be a public official who actually reads documents. If only it were catching.