Badlands Journal

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Loose Cheeks: Hot Tips

By Lucas Smithereen
Loose Cheeks Senior Editor

Got a hot tip for Loose Cheeks? Call the Loose Cheeks hot-tip line: (000) CHE-EEKS. We’ll get back to you whenever.

The old gray adam

5-29-12
Common Dreams
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: Quiet Drama in Philadelphia
by Ellen Brown
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/05/20-1
“You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised. . . .
The revolution will be live.”

--From the 1970 hit song by Gil Scott-Heron

Last week, the city of Philadelphia's school system announced that it expects to close 40 public schools next year, and 64 schools by 2017. The school district expects to lose 40% of its current enrollment, and thousands of experienced, qualified teachers.
But corporate media in other cities made no mention of these massive school closings -- nor of those in Chicago, Atlanta, or New York City. Even in the Philadelphia media, the voices of the parents, students and teachers who will suffer were omitted from most accounts.

It’s all about balancing the budgets of cities that have lost revenues from the economic downturn. Supposedly, there is simply no money for the luxury of providing an education for the people.

5-22-12

Merced Sun-Star

McNamara Pool in South Merced to reopen, council assures…AMEERA BUTT

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/05/22/v-print/2355204/mcnamara-pool-in-south-merced.html

A combination of renters, landlords and South Merced residents came out in support of two concerns close to their hearts Monday afternoon: the reopening of McNamara Pool in South Merced and an ordinance protecting renters' rights that was up for repeal.

More than 50 people mingled outside City Hall holding signs that said "Save McNamara Pool" and "Protect Your Rights" before the City Council took up both issues at its regularly scheduled meeting.

There was some good news for the South Merced contingent when it was announced that the pool was on track to reopen next month. As for the renters and landlords, there was no decision at Sun-Star press time Monday on the fate of the renters' rights ordinance.

Mayor Stan Thurston told the audience the council was "quite confident" the pool would reopen June 11, thanks to large, anonymous donations from the community.

In the fall of 2008 as the economy was falling about our ears, Merced County lashed out at what we then called "low hanging fruit" because the group indicted for purloining hundreds of thousands of dollars of federal funds were such obvious crooks, They were fronted by Rudy Buendia of Planada, who had been promoted up the ladder of responsibility and community visibility until he had landed on the county Planning Commission as a tardy, uncomprehending, silent vote for the developers when he turned up at all. The first article, from Badlands files in September 2008, deals with the indictments on financial charges. The article below, from the May 21, 2012 Merrced Sun-Star, deals with the later charges of endangerment of youth who helped tear down asbestos-laden rooms belonging to the Merced County Office of Education, wihtout proper safety gear. The MCOE superintendent at the time, Lee Anderson, testified after receiving a grant of immunity from prosecution because he knew about but did not report the incident.

All water is local

The mafia of finance, insurance and real estate special interests that brought the University of California to Merced created in the process the most devastating economic boom and bust the city and county had experienced since the Great Depression and brought into our midst the second worst blood-sucking beast to an upside down mortgage -- student-loan debt.

Now, in the case of the highly subsidized UC Merced, creating a brand as the "Hispanic" UC campus, i.e. hustling ehtnicity and poverty for public funds, much or most of that debt gets passed off onto taxpayers. We're not quite sure how that works but we are pretty sure that at the end of the transaction banks will be paid principle and interest by the public. How much a part of the current $16-billion state budget deficit is that?

Badlands Journal editorial board

5-16-12

Counterpunch.com

The Student Debt Bomb

Laura Flanders

http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/05/16/the-student-debt-bomb/

However, the contract also states that senior water rights holders, including riparian, exchange and older contract rights, will have their supply demands met BEFORE Westlands gets any water. Thus, the 40 percent figure is all Westlands is entitled to after senior water rights are met. Westlands is getting 100 percent of what the contract states, i.e. whatever is available. Birmingham's "voodoo math" doesn't add up. --Lloyd Carter, Sacramento Bee, May 9, 2012

5-12-12

Sacramento Bee

Westlands uses 'voodoo math' to seek more water…Lloyd G. Carter, Clovis…Letters to the editor

http://www.sacbee.com/2012/05/12/4481366/thomas-birminghamwestlands-op.html

Reading this superbly researched and presented long article on the latest writhings of a monster from the west side, Westlands Water District, we were struck with our great good fortune to have Lloyd Carter, his dedication, hard work and great experience in following this story wherever it leads and telling it clearly. The latest twist is the involvement of the Brownstein law firm of Denver, a story Badlands touched on briefly in connection with the Oboma administration's selection of Ken Salazar (former Colorado state Attorney General and US Senator) over Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-AZ, for secretary of the Department of Interior.  

Colorado and California water law, although it went in different directions, has common origins in gold mining. As water and all natural resources diminish, origins start protruding.

Once again, we are grateful to Carter for his huge and growing contribution to our understanding of our place.

Badlands Journal editorial board

3-29-12
Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood
How the West(lands) Was Won, a two-part series
by Lloyd Carter
http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/120329554_how-westlands-was-won-a-two-part-series

A Modesto Bee article from 1961 said that a North Carolina textile-mill installation engineer, Jack Pirkle, had sold the Dos Palos Chamber of Commerce on the idea of locating a mill in South Dos Palos, to be built in three months, employ 85-100 people and to produce a wekkly payroll of $7,000 (in 1961 money). Presumably something like that was the abandoned mill mentioned in the article below about the desperate poverty of South Dos Palos today and for years in the immediate past.

We wonder why such a sophisticated outfit as California Watch, who underwrote the article, failed to see the most obvious economic fact in that region: globalism -- cotton still grown here in great quantity being shipped to Asia for processing, to be sent to other Asian locations and elsewhere to be made into clothes sold here in the Valley and elsewhere in the US and Europe. What more perfect example of globalism in the raw than the rise and fall of South Dos Palos?

To single out the California dairy industry, as it is so proud to often single iteslf out as the highest earning commodity in the state and tops in the nation, the grand scale on which it is practiced in California has guaranteed pollution of groundwater from manure and air from deisel-truck produced particulate smog.

Tulare is the top dairy producing county in the nation; Merced is second. Given the progrss of the dairy industry, Merced can expect to move up in the ranks of air and groundwater pollution as our noble "stewards of the land" increase their profits at the expense of our health and safety.

Badlands Journal editorial board

5-3-12
Fresno Bee
Valley water agencies look at farming contamination
By Mark Grossi
http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/05/03/2824626/valley-water-agencies-look-at.html

5-2-12
Democracy Now!
http://www.democracynow.org/2012/5/2/obama_touts_wars_end_in_afghanistan

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Good evening from Bagram Air Base. This outpost is more than 7,000 miles from home, but for over a decade it’s been close to our hearts, because here in Afghanistan more than half a million of our sons and daughters have sacrificed to protect our country. Today I signed a historic agreement between the United States and Afghanistan that defines a new kind of relationship between our countries, a future in which Afghans are responsible for the security of their nation and we build an equal partnership between two sovereign states, a future in which war ends and a new chapter begins...

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to go first to Tariq Ali. Can you talk about President Obama’s announcement last night from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan?