Badlands Journal
Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
Knuckleheads at the wheel
Only the geniuses at the Public Policy Institute of California could issue a "monumental report" (at somebody's expense) recommending that the state model future water policy after its deregulation of electric power, creating an independent systems operator for water.
A tale of two predatory species
on a weekend during which "Meet the Press" would manage to introduce William E. Daley, the president's new chief of staff, who replaces Rahm Emanuel, just elected mayor of Chicago, without mentioning that both Daley's father and brother were former mayors of Chicago, or mentioning that Daley was President Clinton's chief lobbyist for NAFTA, up the road in Madison WI Michael Moore was not speaking for the plutocrat media but to an audience of demonstrators at the Wisconsin state Capitol that has ignited a prairie fire ...
Badlands Journal editorial board
3-5-11
Global experts on water (for example Steven Solomon in Water: The Epic Struggle for Weatlth, Power and Civilization) consider that California has built the most advanced water-delivery systems in the world. Yet the United Nations "independent investigator for the U.N.'s safe water and sanitation campaign" has decided to study two places in California, a tiny village in Tulare County and the City of Redding.
Two recent strong criticisms of the current state of state water politics reminded us of our prophetic article of February 19, 2007, when former Gov. Schwarzenegger (aka "Our Hun") experienced his "Delta Vision" -- "Hun appoints next peripheral canal campaign committee."
-- Badlands Journal editorial board
Jeffrey St. Clair is the author of Been Brown So Long It Looked Like Green to Me: the Politics of Nature and Grand Theft Pentagon. His newest book, Born Under a Bad Sky, is published by AK Press / CounterPunch books. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net. This essay is excerpted from the forthcoming book GreenScare: the New War on Environmentalism by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank.
2-18/19-2011
Counterpunch.com
We found this editorial was more in the nature of fore-fantasy than forethought.
"If" rather than "when the economy and the housing market finally turn around," might be a firmer economic argument on which the base what follows. The finance, insurance and real estate special interests who control corporate media like McClatchy certainly weren't saying "when the speculative housing bubble bursts" a few years ago. In fact, they publicly doubted "if" the speculative bubble would ever burst.
The attack on public employee unions, including teachers, is a brilliant tactic by Republicans against the Democratic Party. President Obama chose a national leader of charter schools, the privatization of public education, his secretary of education. Public school-teacher unions are among the most powerful of all the public employee unions now under such serious attack by several Republican governors. Republicans understand that public employee unions have been an essential part of the Democratic Party for several decades.
Rep. Dennis Cardoza is making a lot of noise lately about something (see links below). It has something to do with the foreclosure rate -- highest in the country -- in his congressional district. He's also denouncing the President Obama and Nancy Pelosi because they don't care about the Valley. Cardoza also doesn't like Obama because the White House wrote a paper about how to reform the mortgage credit system. Cardoza has his own solution to the foreclosure problem and has put into a bill. But you don't hear Obama and Pelosi denouncing Cardoza.
It would seem -- although the question was not asked -- that if the river is delivering more water to the westside and some of that water is seeping into the ground, that in drier years the westside farmers would have more groundwater available. The reason was question wasn't asked probably has to do with the influence of Fresno boosters for the Temperance Flats dam, above the Friant Dam. The group Revive the San Joaquin, probably not boosters for the Temperance Flats project, appears to be raising the question of the necessity of another dam on the river.