Badlands Journal

June 8, 2010
Reflections on Small Town America
by Victor Davis Hanson
Pajamas Media
http://www.victorhanson.com/articles/hanson060810B.html

Kingsburg, California, is a sort of small town that modernism forgot, at least by the measure of the usual landscapes of the Central Valley. Its broad streets, Swedish building façades, good schools, neat homes, and downtown preservation don’t quite reflect the surrounding region’s 18% unemployment, brain drain to the coastal universities, ground-zero illegal immigration, tree-fruit and raisin depression, water cut-offs, general bankruptcy of California, and endemic gangs and their sometimes vicious crimes. I was the town’s grand marshal a few Saturdays ago at the annual Swedish festival and had time to reflect on Kingsburg’s near century-and-a-half of existence — and its present status as a sort of oasis on the 99 freeway.

Porky Stables

On June 17, residents of the 18th congressional district of California were informed by McClatchy Chain local outlets that a new star was rising in the world of horse racing, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Pimlico Kid-Merced.

"I think it's actually a brilliant opinion in that it finally says we have to look at the big picture here, and not that endangered species trump everything," said Roger Marzulla, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who frequently sues the federal government over endangered species rules. "Don't we have to take some other things into consideration here?"
Others question the logic of requiring scrutiny of species protection rules under a second environmental law.

"It doesn't make any sense to do environmental analysis on the back end when you're trying to help the environment," said Holly Doremus, a professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. "What he's (Federal Court Justice Oliver Wanger) saying is the agencies have to find absolutely the least burdensome way to save the species." -- Contra Costa Times, 6-14-10

We have taken "the big picture" for, in Bob Marley's words, "four hundred years," during which the species were offered absolutely no way to avoid massive destruction at the hands of an economic (and legal system) that was "absolutely" into "absolute" exploitation of natural resources, species, and anything else on which a profit could be made.

This article, written two days before the Primary Elections, suggests something that only campaign finance reports not yet published can verify. It might explain how two candidates went into the last weekend of the campaign for the 19th Congressional District essentially even, and one of them won by 10 points the following Tuesday. The thesis is that the candidate to whom one Indian casino donated heavily defeated two candidates who expressed the view that another tribe in the vicinity ought to have a "fair hearing" on its application to build an "off-reservation" casino on Highway 99, a site more advantageous than the casino that funded the winner. This logic in turn rests on at least two other assumptions. First, it assumes the sprawling district, which includes the central Sierra and parts of three Valley counties, is in any sense politically coherent other than its dominant Republican registration. It assumes the Republican electorate of the district can be swayed by the largest quantity of political propaganda. And it assumes that slot-machine players from metropolitan areas in Central California have become major players an election regardless of how far out of their thoughts that campaign was at the time they dropped the money in the casino.

Badlands Journal editorial board

Boondoggle -- a trivial, useless or wasteful expenditure, usually of public funds.

In the current economic climate, critics have suggested that high-speed rail is a boondoggle. They couldn't be more wrong. The lack of funding may slow down the project, but it will eventually become a reality.
Projects of this magnitude must not be stopped by economic cycles. Our economy will rebound and one day high-speed rail will be an important part of California's transportation mix.

At first we were reassured by these wise, confident words from the McClatchy Co.'s Fresno outlet. We also dismissed the cynical comment that Fresno won't call this project a boondoggle right up to the time some other Valley city is chosen for the site of the heavy maintenance yard. Virtually every city along the proposed routes are bidding for that yard because it would appear to be the most tangible benefit in the whole project.

Why, in fact, "high-speed rail will be an important part of California's transportation mix." Who or what power would ordain it to come into existence? Who is it that even wants it? Isn't it the same small group of leaders that believed to fervently against reality that the speculative housing boom would never bust? Isn't it the same group of brainwashed leaders who always say the same thing at the same time and hope to hoodwink the citizens into believing unison means truth?

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Our Hun, a man of action tragically restrained by mere government throughout his political career, has decided to build a "demonstration"

high speed rail link between LA and San Diego.

"...Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't want to wait that long to give the state a taste of the European-style system..."

Baloney. Our Hun just wants to put his hand on the transformer and run a great big electric train somewhere in California before he retires.

Boosters for a high speed railroad from Los Angeles to San Francisco have been hustling federal funds for this train, claiming that it will be the longest, fastest high speed railroad in the nation and will produce hundreds of thousands of new jobs all along its route. We aren't quite clear on how permanent these jobs will be, but if this boon to employment were to arrive, it would no doubt draw even more people into the state and probably go some way to reinflating the speculative real estate bubble. In part the high speed rail would be a great benefit for commuters to the Bay Area from the Valley, which is why it has such ardent supporters among Valley cities with abundant empty homes for sale, cheap, and official unemployment rates around 20 percent.

There is contention over parts of the route and as usual with recent schemes like new University of California campuses and railroad boondoggles, Merced, which already has two major track systems running through it, is at the center of it.

Did Merced get a high-tech, bio-tech "engine of growth" when it became the home of UC Merced. Rep. Dennis Cardoza, the Pimlico Kid, may be the only "local" leader so out of touch he still uses the phrase. Or did Merced get a baby dinosaur?

Badlands Journal editorial board

6-6-10
Washingtonexaminer.com
Higher education's bubble is about to burst...Glenn Harlan Reynolds
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Sunday_Reflections/Higher-education_s-bubble-is-about-to-burst-95639354.html

It's a story of an industry that may sound familiar.

The buyers think what they're buying will appreciate in value, making them rich in the future. The product grows more and more elaborate, and more and more expensive, but the expense is offset by cheap credit provided by sellers eager to encourage buyers to buy.

Buyers see that everyone else is taking on mounds of debt, and so are more comfortable when they do so themselves; besides, for a generation, the value of what they're buying has gone up steadily. What could go wrong? Everything continues smoothly until, at some point, it doesn't.

Ratepayers, Farmers, & Conservationists File Suit to

Calif.– Today groups are seeking to block a secret backroom deal signed by five water contractors along with the Department of Water Resources [DWR] toundo water contracts underlying voter approved bonds four decades earlier. Absent courtaction, contract changes that largely benefit southern central valley corporate irrigators atthe expense of urban ratepayers will trade away ratepayer funded projects and allowmassive diversions of water from the Delta charging only pumping costs. [C-WIN], one of the groups seeking decades of urban ratepayer protections for the benefit of a few agribusiness corporations and real estate developments at the expense of ratepayers

The back room deal, known as the ―M

Here are three articles written in the last two days on the Israeli military act of piracy against the flotilla of people and supplies headed for the Gaza Strip. Each has valuable insights from experienced, different angles. We think, however, that the most immediate lesson for us may be Patrick Cockburn's theory of why Israel leaders are so stupid: "The problem is that nobody believes Israeli propaganda as much as Israelis." The same phenomenon explains the idiocy of our own leaders here in the Valley.

Maybe they all go to the same leadership training classes.

6-2-10
CounterPunch.com
Mad-Dog of the Planet
Notch Up Another Disaster for Israel's Well-Oiled Propaganda Machine
By PATRICK COCKBURN