Badlands Journal
Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
4-21-12
Merced Sun-Star
Merced Theatre: Reopening of a crown jewel
Story by AMEERA BUTT
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/04/21/2316698/merced-theatre-reopening-of-a.html
After about five years of careful restoration of light fixtures, the dazzling marquee and castle facade, the Merced Theatre on Main Street will have its opening night Saturday with a gala celebration.
A long submerged voice from Southern California is being heard in the state Capitol on the vital issue of the actual costs and benefits of a peripheral canal. It is refreshing to here from ratepayers in the southern regions asking how much a peripheral canal would cost. It is also refreshing to hear them using the proper word for the project: PERIPHERAL CANAL (just like in 1982, when an initiative to fund the project was defeated).
The CONVEYANCE word has just been offed by the plain-spoken Southern Californians.
is it out of our minds?
Badlands Journal editorial board
4-26-12
Commondreams.org
America's Mad Cow Crisis
by John Stauber
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/04/26-1
We are only as good as our questions. -- Lloyd Carter
4-25-12
Chronicles of the Hydraulic Brotherhood
Cowardice at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Lloyd Carter
http://www.lloydgcarter.com/
Just imagine the possibilithy that the ground water for the entire San Joaquin Valley, or the entire aquifer under where you live, were contaminated by toxic chemicals mixed into minimallyh regulated pesticides (soil fumigants for nematodes) and injected into the soils of farms all around you without, by the way, agents for the chemical companies or state or federal farm "advisors" being able to tell you why it may kill nematodes. In fact, telone wasn't much of a nematicide.
4-17-12
Chronicles of the hydraulic brotherhood
Selenium contributing to honeybee die-off?...Lloyd Carter
http://www.lloydgcarter.com/content/120416556_selenium-contributing-honeybee-die
Like the rest of the people in the Valley who try to stay informed, we've followed the high speed rail story from the beginning. Oujr sense of smell is probably a bit better developed than many due to our familiarity with the UC Merced project and the Great Real Estate Boom and Bust in the north San Joaquin Valley, which left its three county seats vying for top ranking in the national foreclosure sweepstakes.
"Build it and they will go mad" should have been the slogan for construction of the Friant Dam/Lake Millerton/Friant-Kern Canal. The lastest chapter in the drama, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, hereafter known as the Octopus, released flood waters from Lake Millerton -- not to aid restoration of the San Joaquin River under the San Joaquin River Restoration Settlement -- but for Octopos customers on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley, in Westlands Water District. The Friant Water Users Authority has just sued the Octopus.
We were outraged to read in our humorless, self-righteous local McClatchy tabloid that our favorite local politician, the indominable Cindy Lashbrook had fallen afoul of the state Fair Political Practices Commission. Actually, a little investigation reviewed that this was not her first offense. But that's just chicken feathers to us.
The Delta Stewardship Council, not the most democratic or representative of bodies at the best of times, will be, under a proposal by Gov. Jerry Brown, absorbed into the state Resources Agency, where experts will be adequately protected against the protests of people who live on or near the Delta and depend upon it even in its present degraded condition, and therefore will be able to make the correct engineering decision -- to build the canal or tunnel above the Delta and turn the water into another bay on the Pacific coast.
Badlands Journal editorial board