Badlands Journal

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

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.

The essence of the refreshment we in the North experience when we see our sourthern neighbors demanding some accountability for the hundreds of millions required to build the thing (not including the devastation it will cause to the existing Delta economy) is that this is the voice of actual residents of Southern California, rather than the usual developer flak about people who live elsewhere and don\'t even know that one day they may move to Southern California just as long as those developers can go on bribing whatever officials it is necessary to bribe to continue the flow of Northern California water down the San Joaquin Valley (where 75 percent of it is captured by agribusiness) and over the hill to irrigate new fields of subprime mortgages.

Badlands Journal editorial board

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. But there was always something stinky about the HSRR deal in our view because it was the same developers and the public officials that sold their public responsibility making all the noise, although the South African CEO of the operation until recently was a curiously fascist twist. He worked well with the former chairman of the board, an ex-state legislator, now a lobbyist busy fighting a bill to clean up water pollution in Southern California. Their staff, at least the people we met who were "handling" the Valley were primitive throwbacks to a time when the Railroad owned California and there was no such thing as public meeting and records law.

4-6/8-12

Counterpunch.com
The Housing Doldrums
The Bottomless Pit
by MIKE WHITNEY
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/04/06/the-bottomless-pit/

“There are many good reasons to believe that the 5.5 million foreclosures we have seen are barely halfway through their full course. The United States may end up with a total of 8-10 million foreclosures before we are finished.”

– Barry Ritholtz, The Big Picture

It all gets down to supply and demand. The banks have been keeping millions of homes off the market until a settlement was reached in the $25 billion robosigning scandal. Now that the 49-state deal has been finalized, the banks are preparing to put more of their of distressed homes up for sale. That will lead to lower prices and the next leg down in the 6-year long housing crisis.

According to Reuters, new foreclosures “begun by Deutsche Bank were up 47 percent from 2011. Those of Wells Fargo’s rose 68 percent and Bank of America’s, including BAC Home Loans Servicing, jumped nearly seven-fold — 251 starts versus 37 in the same period in 2011.”

The bleak figures, however, need not be a harbinger of gloom, said Michael Dozier, executive director of the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley, an organization of public officials and business leaders that aims to address the region's economic, environmental and social problems.

"When studies like these come out, it's not like they're telling us anything new," he said. "What they do is show us how much better things could be with all the resources we have. … We should laugh at it and say, 'It just gives us that much more room to improve.' " -- Modesto Bee, April 2, 2012

 

We suspect that regardless of the possible merits of high speed rail, the reason people in the Valley distrust it is that it is a huge project involving a great amount of public debt, and the people who live at the epicenter of the greatest credit fraud in world history know -- not that debt can be manipulated to the benefit of the plutocracy and the detriment of ordinary citizens -- but that it will be manipulated that way.

To make a handful of landowners and local speculators richer; to put this county at the epicenter of the Great Recession; to further inflate the egos of a few political "leaders;" and to feed the edifice complex of an out-of-control and unaccountable public university system running off the rails -- UC Merced was built and opened and is now blithely expanding as our streets grow rapidly more dangerous for us who have shelter and for the growing population among us who do not have shelter. Beggars accost us in what was once the center of town while homes in the north stand empty, foreclosed upon and potential shelter for the homeless.

There's no work and a thousand scams. People will get the money they need one way or another. It isn't so much the reduced police force as it is the increased demand for any money at all.

The lies that were told and the good environmental and public process laws and regulations that were broken to build this illegal campus, approved by political decisions in superior and appellate courts, will haunt this town for decades, built into the damage done.

Badlands Journal editorial board

3-23/25
Counterpunch

Last year, Cardoza told The Record's editorial board that his decision not to seek re-election to the House of Representatives was based in part on the grip of partisanship. He lamented the lack of compromise in policymaking in Sacramento and in Washington, D.C. -- Stockton Record, March 19, 2012

Greg Smith is resigning today as a Goldman Sachs executive director and head of the firm’s United States equity derivatives business in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. -- NYTs. 3-14-12

This fine young South African, finalist in the Jewish Olympics (in ping pong), and Stanford graduate and Rhodes Scholar finalist, had been pushing little bundles of derivative joy originating in the US -- and who knows? some securitized mortgages perhaps right here in Merced -- all over Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Then, for some reason, he quit and wrote this letter that is presently costing Goldman Sachs, his former employee, billions. He says the culture of his former investment banking firm is "toxic and destructive." We wonder, given his background and advantages in life, how he came to this remarkable conclusion. Could it be that one or a number of his clients became disgruntled with the securities he was selling them when homeowners began successfully challenging banks in court to produce proof of who owned the mortgages swaddled up in the sweet smelling derivatives.

Badlands Journal editorial board

3-14-12
New York Times
Op-Ed Contributor
Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs
By GREG SMITH
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/14/opinion/why-i-am-leaving-goldman-sachs.html?_r=4&pagewanted=all

 Ordinarily, the Great Shield against such southerly missiles would be Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-CA. But 78-year-old DiDi is running for reelection again this year and one of the largest supporters of HR 1937, the Shah of the Land of Fruits and Nuts, Stewart Resnick and his Queen Consort, Lynda, just did a big fundraiser for the senator. Resnick’s Roll International owns the largest citrus, almond and pomegranate orchards in the nation, two San Joaquin Valley water banks, Fiji Water, Pom Wonderful and much else besides. Old Valley hands wonder if Feinstein will “pull a Cranston,” a reference to former Sen. Alan Cranston, who sold his vote to the largest cotton farmers in the nation with an amendment exempting them on a key provision in the federal Reclamation Reform Act of 1982. -- "Downstream Vengeance in California," Badlandsjournal.com, March 12, 2012

3-9-12
Fresno Bee
Denham, Feinstein seek deal on Calif. water bill
Michael Doyle
http://www.fresnobee.com/2012/03/09/v-print/2753980/house-senate-search-out-agreement.html

WASHINGTON -- Lawmakers have quietly begun laying groundwork for a California water bill that could pass the Senate and become law.