Badlands Journal

Conway's no longer just a pretty face in the Merced City administration.

Some question appointment of Merced's Parks and Recreation head…JOSHUA EMERSON SMITH

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/06/30/v-print/2403604/some-question-appointment-of-merceds.html

The city of Merced's Parks and Recreation Department continues to be at the center of controversy.

After the city aggressively slashed the department's funding in its recent budget, residents spoke out, forcing funding to be partially reinstated.

Now the city has appointed Mike Conway, assistant to the city manager, to take over as head of the Parks and Recreation Department while continuing to act in several other capacities.

"I wanted to make sure there's adequate oversight of the office," said City Manager John Bramble, who appointed Conway.

However, the move has some in the community questioning Conway's qualifications for the job.

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6-26-12

The San Francisco Appeal

To SF, From Modesto: Water Supply Plan Up For Vote
by Bay City Newshttp://sfappeal.com/news/2012/06/to-sf-from-modesto-water-supply-plan-up-for-vote.php

A part of San Francisco's future water supply that would be sourced from Modesto County hangs in the balance as water district officials there consider concerns raised by local farmers about selling water to San Francisco.

About The San Francisco Appeal
The San Francisco Appeal Is
Editor and Publisher Eve Batey
Movies Laura Hooper Beck
Culture Alex Bigman
Tenant Troubles Dave Crow
Creative Director Tim Ehhalt
Dance Becca Klarin
Movies Rain Jokinen
Music Hunter Mulich
City Hall Chris Roberts
Food Anna Sarpieri
Staff Writer April Siese

 

Guest Contributors
Culture MiHi Ahn
Lady News Katie Baker
Transit Matt Baume
Columnist Violet Blue
Sex Christine Borden
Graphic Journalist Susie Cagle
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Music Corey Denis
Culture Wendy Hill
Columnist Babe Scanlon
Columnist Beth Spotswood

 

The posting of this 1933 essay by Peter Wessel Zapffe is dedicated to the idiot at UC Merced performing serial neurosurgery on cadaveres Drosophilarum as lovingly extolled in the McClatchy Chain local outlet, the Sun-Star: "Do flies hold clues to alcoholism; US Merced researchers are seeking answers" http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/06/23/2394844/uc-merced-researchers-seek-answers.html

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In one corner are the disciples of unbridled free markets. With their simplistic notions of the profit motive as a driver of growth, their selective disdain for state intervention (abhorrent except when it comes to propping up casino banks), and their dogged refusal to factor in broad consequences for their actions, they have propelled Europe and the US not just to the brink of financial ruin but to social strife.

In the other corner are the myopic advocates of the high-tax, high-subsidy model, based around 20th-century notions of a bloated public sector and unsustainable welfare. In Britain, low productivity remains endemic. In France, a laughably short working week requires industrious employees to take large chunks of time off in order not to get their bosses in trouble. In Spain, over-manning was long seen as a means of guaranteeing employment. -- John Kampfner, The Independent (UK), June 19, 2012

We found this article this morning in the UK Independent, the newspaper that has brought us the best coverage of the Middle East conflict available in the English language, summed up in a very comprehensible way the essence of the European economic crisis, leaving no doubt in anyone's mind that the United States and Europe continue to share one culture, and that culture is besotted with greed and entitlement and no longer has regard for ordinary people except as victims to be fleeced.

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The most reasonable, fundamental principle of ecological awareness is called the "Precautionary Principle," borrwed from medicine: Do no harm. It is one thing to depart from this principle out of ignorance or scofflaw greed; it is another thing to elevate the negation of the Precautionary Principle to the level of federal law.

Badlands Journal editorial board

Wikipedia
Precautionary principle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precautionary_principle
The Precautionary Principle illustrated as a decision matrix[neutrality is disputed]The precautionary principle or precautionary approach states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is harmful, the burden of proof that it is not harmful falls on those taking the action.

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Indybay

Kearns and West: Corporate Criminals…David Gurney
                   According to a June 2010 press release, "Kearns and West has been known to gather scientific experts and build a movement of common interest stakeholders” to crush public outcry and true environmentalism."

see: http://noyonews.net/?p=6231

by David Gurney
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/06/10/18715106.php

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It cannot be a good sign when the behavior of a government can be as easily predicted as the behavior of this government has been. It gives us a sense of an historical vortex of increasing velocity going down, rather than a spiral of achievement and beneficence rising. The congressional war against whistleblowers that so perfectly apes the behavior of private corporations, is not so much a symptom of political illness as it is a necrotic result, like Obama's failure to reverse suspension of Habeas Corpus. What was seem by liberals as extraordinarily violent and arbitrary behavior by the Bush Regime has been accepted by their leader, Obama. In any event, when we saw this bad news about anti-whistleblower legislation, we thought of a Badlands piece from two years ago. Both are posted below.

Badlands Journal editoral board

 

   

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Not quite. It's worse than that. Yes, the department at UC Berekeley from which the propaganda issues is a willing shill for any corporate grant, but emphasis should be placed on the "willing." This crap is coming out of the department of ag economics, A.P. Giannini Hall, the kitchen in which all the finest dishes of agribusiness ideology and propaganda are prepared and have been since the founder of Bank of America endowed the building, back in the day when BofA depended on agribusiness and vice versa. But these hacks don't even do the science, the gene-splitting, anymore than they do the science of economics. "Growth through more UC-sponsored science and technology" is the alpha and omega of their belief system. And it pays. It has paid UC so well that it has rotted the core of academic and intellectual respectability, even in Berkeley of all places.

But it is the unreflective BELIEF in any and all technology that the redoubtable Thomas nails, pointing out in passing something familiar to anyone who has ever trod the halls of Giannini -- that the professors that hang their bicycles on their walls in that building have at last become -- due to the steady erosion of the quality of the environment in which agribusiness does its business and the erosion of food quality -- a direct threat to public health. 

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Merced College President Ben Duran and county Supervisor John Pedrozo, two local hogs who have fed too long at the public trough. Skinny cowboy caught in the middle.-- Photo: Marci Stenberg, Merced Sun-Star, June 6, 2012

 

 

6-6-12

Merced Sun-Star

Merced County supervisor race may need runoff

Walsh re-elected; Pedrozo, Pacheco could meet again…MIKE NORTH

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/06/06/v-print/2373136/merced-county-supervisor-race.html

Two incumbents in the Merced County Board of Supervisors races both led their elections, but one of them, John Pedrozo, could face a runoff if Tuesday's unofficial election results don't change.

Though some absentee votes still need to be counted, numbers have District 1 Supervisor Pedrozo leading his race with 49.2 percent of the vote, and District 2 incumbent Supervisor Hub Walsh beating his challenger, Casey Steed, with 61.2 percent of the vote.

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According to the Modesto Bee last week, carpetbaggers from both the major parties are raising bundles in the primary to win one of the two top slots in the 10th Congressional District in California (Stanislaus County, Tracy, Manteca, Escalon and Copperopolis). Meanwhile, a candidate who was actually born in the district with a leaflet for his daddy in his hand, is burning up the peapatch on a fraction of the dough.

The way it breaks down so far is Republican Rep. Jeff Denham, $1,332,000; Democrat Jose Hernandez, $600,000; and Independent "Hangin'" Chad Condit, son of the Blue Dog Himself, Gary Condit, $45,000 with a boost of $51,000 from a superpack called icPurple, pushing independent candidates.

Smart Valley pols are calling this race the most interesting and myserious of the year. Denham makes people's noses crinkcle around here. Big, tinted blond, and a brain-dead, beliigerent ideologue with no manners but a lot of political luck, at least up until now, moreorless sums up how people see him unless they rent, lease or own a piece of him. Hernandez, the retired astronaut returned to his hometown, Stockton, to lead his people out of the desert, looks good enough on paper compared with Denham that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, chaired by Rep. Steve Isreal of New York, is plunging for him.

But "Hangin'" Chad has what none of the rest of them can buy, if he can put it together: the old Gary Condit ground operation.

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