Badlands Journal

6-24-11
Alternet.org
Do We Eat Better Than We Did 100 Years Ago?
A new exhibit at the National Archives looks at the effects of the government's involvement in our food over the last century ... Kerry Trueman
http://www.alternet.org/story/151411/do_we_eat_better_than_we_did_100_years_ago?akid=7190.259010.02YWMh&rd=1&t=24

Poor Uncle Sam's got a lot on his plate these days: a curdled economy, an overcooked climate, a soured populace. It's enough to give a national icon a capital case of indigestion. Anti-government sentiment is running so high that half the country seems ready to swap his stars and stripes for tar and feathers.

Sure, Uncle Sam's always been kind of a drag, with his stern face and wagging finger. But to "nanny-state" haters, he's a Beltway busybody in drag, democracy's Mrs. Doubtfire, a Maryland Mary Poppins. If you believe that government is always the problem, never the solution, then you have no use for, say, more stringent food safety regulations, or Michelle Obama's "Let's Move!" campaign to combat obesity.

The irresponsibility, the political bulldozing over legal public processes, and outright lying surrounding the the California High Speed Rail Boondoggle appears now to come as a great shock to the media along the proposed route. Yet, until recently, not a skeptical word could be read about this great "Boon" to the citizens of California. Frankly, the speculative bubble is popping under serious criticism of the project that convinces the public, which will be asked to pay a great deal more than is represented at the moment, that this isn't about a railroad, this is being driven by urban real estate speculation under and around the various stations proposed along the imaginary route of the imaginary train to be built so that Californians can keep up with Asians and Europeans even though the collapse of the California real estate market has had more influence on the global financial crisis than any other region in the world. 

It is beyond the business and political leaders of California to envision life here without another speculative real estate con in play.

Badlands Journal editorial board 

Fresno Bee

The US government is spending $10 billion a month, $120 billion a year ... to teach Afghanis how to fight each other.

severity and speed of global warming and also notice that the real political economic powers in the West, the ancient white Bilderbergers are still talking about global economic power and control. Someday they will be meeting in a secret igloo discussing the sizes of their piles of rat pelts.

Badlands Journal editorial board

6-23-11
Al-Jazeera-English
Climate Change: It's Bad and Getting Worse
Severe weather events are wracking the planet, and experts warn of even greater consequences to come.
by Dahr Jamail
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/06/23
The rate of ice loss in two of Greenland's largest glaciers has increased so much in the last 10 years that the amount of melted water would be enough to completely fill Lake Erie, one of the five Great Lakes in North America.

 West Texas is currently undergoing its worst drought since the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, leaving wheat and cotton crops in the state in an extremely dire situation due to lack of soil moisture, as wildfires continue to burn.

Central China recently experienced its worst drought in more than 50 years. Regional authorities have declared more than 1,300 lakes "dead", meaning they are out of use for both irrigation and drinking water supply.

The congressman who represents this district from his home in Maryland, Dennis Cardoza, received $10,000 from the American Bankers Association in the 2009-2010 election cycle, Open Secrets reports.

Badlands Journal editorial board

6-21-11
The ProPublica Blog
Bank Lobby Says ‘Fight Continues’ on Debit Card Fees, Warns of ‘Dire Consequences’
by Marian Wang
http://www.propublica.org/blog/item/bank-lobby-declares-fight-continues-on-debit-card-fees-dire-consequences

The banking industry stands to lose billions in debit card transaction fees after losing one of its biggest lobbying battles this year—but for the banks, that was just Round One.

The industry had for months lobbied lawmakers to kill or delay regulations limiting the fees [1] that banks get from retailers whenever a debit card is used. Earlier this month, a bill to delay the rules [2] failed to pass in the Senate—disappointing the banks and delighting retailers who will save some revenue to either pocket, pass on to consumers in lower prices, or spend on their businesses some other way.

6-16-11
CounterPunch
Fire's Manifest Destiny
The American West in Flames
By CHIP WARD
http://www.counterpunch.com/ward06162011.html
Arizona is burning. Texas, too. New Mexico is next. If you need a grim reminder that an already arid West is burning up and blowing away, here it is. As I write this, more than 700 square miles of Arizona and more than 4,300 square miles of Texas have been swept by monster wildfires. Consider those massive columns of acrid smoke drifting eastward as a kind of smoke signal warning us that a globally warming world is not a matter of some future worst-case scenario. It's happening right here, right now.

Air tankers have been dropping fire retardant on what is being called the Wallow fire in Arizona and firefighting crews have been mobilized from across the West, but the fire remained "zero contained" for most of last week and only 18% so early in the new week, too big to touch with mere human tools like hoses, shovels, saws, and bulldozers. Walls of flame 100 feet high rolled over the land like a tsunami from Hades. The heat from such a fire is so intense and immense that it can create small tornadoes of red embers that cannot be knocked down and smothered by water or chemicals. These are not your grandfather's forest fires.

6-13-11
A;lternet  
Death by Budget Cut: Why Conservatives and Some Dems Have Blood on Their Hands
There is no room for compromise when dealing with budget cuts that will surely cost innocent lives.
Rania Kjalek
http://www.alternet.org/story/151275/death_by_budget_cut%3A_why_conservatives_and_some_dems_have_blood_on_their_hands?akid=7108.259010.hyjM2D&rd=1&t=2
Politicians, the media and the power elite tell us that state and local government budget shortfalls are the result of lavish compensation packages paid to teachers, police officers and firefighters along with "entitlements" such as Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare. The truth is that the economic crisis, sparked by decades of deregulation and greedy financial firms, caused high levels of unemployment that dramatically reduced state and local tax revenues. Add to that years of tax cuts for the wealthy and decades of corporate tax-dodging, and you've got yourself a budget crisis.

Better Late Than Never? Gov’t Finally Penalizes Major Banks for Mortgage Mod Failures
by Paul Kiel
ProPublica, June 10, 2011
http://www.propublica.org/article/govt-finally-penalizes-major-banks-for-mortgage-mod-
The Obama administration’s mortgage modification program is more than two years old. From the beginning, it’s been apparent that the participating banks and mortgage servicers were breaking the program’s rules [1]. The administration has long argued it has little power to do anything about it. But now, after millions of homeowners have been rejected [2], the government has decided it’s finally time to crack down.

On Thursday, the Treasury Department announced [3] it would be withholding government subsidies to the country’s three largest mortgage servicers, which are also among the U.S.’s largest banks: Bank of America [4], Wells Fargo [5], and JPMorgan Chase [6]. The banks won’t be getting more money until they show “substantial improvement.”

“It’s important that the Treasury is acknowledging servicer noncompliance,” said Alys Cohen of the National Consumer Law Center, “but that’s been a problem for two years.” The action, while “better than nothing,” underscored the fact that many homeowners had been hurt during that time, she said.

6-7-11
Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood
Fishing and Conservation Groups Intend To Sue Feds and Westside Irrigators to Enforce Water Pollution Control Laws
by Lloyd Carter
http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/110607486_fishing-and-conservation-groups-intend-to-sue-feds-and-westside-irrigators-enforce
San Francisco -- Fishing and conservation groups served notice today (Tuesday, June 7) under the Clean Water Act that they are going to federal court to get water pollution control standards enforced to halt this unlawful pollution and to restore the ecological health of the San Joaquin River and Bay-Delta Estuary. For more than two decades western San Joaquin Valley irrigators have been allowed to pollute the San Joaquin River and San Francisco Bay-Delta Estuary with toxic discharges.

In the generation of Californians alive at the turn of the 20th century, three names have stood out and have far outlived their times: Jack London, John Muir and Lincoln Steffens. London, the great writer of fiction, journalism and socialist tracts; Muir, the father of the world conservation movement; Steffens, the great muckraker.

New York Times columnist Timothy Egan describes below what the frat boys and sorority sisters up at the state Capitol are doing to one historical monument to of the figures, Jack London. Those of us of a certain age, with roots in Sonoma County, remember the time before London's Beauty Ranch in the Valley of the Moon was made into a state historical park. Governor Pat Brown, father of the present governor, was in office then and lived with his family on H Street in downtown Sacramento in a Victorian mansion built in the 1870s. Parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles lamented the rundown condition of London's beautiful ranch and pilgrimages to the ruins of Wolf House were important educational outings, followed by readings of London's short stories to the young. My father gave me a collection published by Hanover House, "Jack London's Tales of Adventure," when I was 13. "There will always be London," he inscribed. It is one of the few books I have carried around for 55 years, wherever I've gone.