It's a wonder UC Merced didn't also take credit for helping invent some of the grimmest real estate statistics in the country. It certainly has a right to that "honor" along with all the awards and recognitions it's claimed in recent Golden Bobcatflak.
Too humble, evidently.
Badlands Journal editorial board
Read More »12-31-09
Merced Sun-Star
Merced County's economic woes hit hard in 2009...DANIELLE E. GAINES. Reporters Jonah Owen Lamb and Corinne Reilly contributed to this story.
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/v-print/story/1254070.html
The California High Speed Rail Authority held a technical advisory council meeting on Monday, Dec. 7, at a public meeting hall called the Sam Pipes Room, in the Merced City Hall. Two members of the Merced public, representing the San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center and Protect Our Water (POW), wished to attend. The regional director of the San Joaquin Valley unit of the rail authority had told the members of the public that a meeting would take place on Monday at a different location. The members of the public wrote to the regional director twice last week inquiring if they would be permitted to attend the meeting and asked her by phone. She replied that she had received the request and would talk to rail authority legal counsel. The members of the public requested that if they were not permitted to attend, that rail authority counsel provide written legal justification, considering that the authority was consulting with special interests like water districts, the farm bureau, insurance companies, etc. Not hearing back from the regional director at the end of last week or Monday morning, the members of the public called the rail authority headquarters in Sacramento and were informed of the time and different location of the meeting and that there should be no problem with public attendance of the meeting.
Read More »As Merced goes into the holiday shopping season starting next Friday, all economic indicators are thumbs down.
Official unemployment crept up a point from last month to 16.4 percent, with an increase expected for November. This means that actual unemployment is over 20 percent now and will rise toward 30 percent as the winter wears on.
In October 361 Merced homes received notices of default, down 33 from September; there were 459 trustee sales, up 61 from September; 273 homes went back to banks, 36 more than in September; and 50 homes were sold to third persons, up slightly from September and greatly from October 2008, when only nine homes were sold to third parties.
Citing unemployment as the driving force, the Los Angeles Times reported last week: "One in seven U.S. home loans was past due or in foreclosure as of Sept. 30, putting that quarterly delinquency measure at its highest level since 1972, when the Mortgage Bankers Assn. began reporting it. At the beginning of this year, 1 in 10 loans was past due or in foreclosure."
Read More »Merced Alliance for Responsible Growth (MARG), Tom Grave, Kyle Stockard and Joel Knox filed suit against the Merced City Council and Real Parties of Interest Wal-Mart Stores East, L.P., Wal-Mart Stores East, Inc., and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. on October 28, 2009 in Merced Superior Court, according to the court’s register of actions.
The case number is CV000593.
The case will be heard by President Judge of Merced Superior Court John D. Kirihara.
The law firm of Lippe Gaffney Wagner LLP represent plaintiffs MARG, Grave, Stockard and Knox.
He was the acknowledged national dean of education journalists, a reporter who had covered the
The price of dirt – Part 4, the Williamson Act.
To give readers a larger view of relations between
Denny, the musician, speaks:
Modesto Blue Dog Democrat Dennis Cardoza, who was leaving Pelosi's office as liberals were streaming in, has more uninsured citizens in his district than any district in the nation. Cardoza, who wasn't among the four Blue Dogs who negotiated the deal but supports it, said the legislation will be "like an accordion for a long time, where members become concerned and then they get comfortable and then they become concerned. Everybody who has ever gone to the doctor has an opinion on what should be in this bill."—
In May, Merced County official unemployment rate fell to 17.3 percent. -- Badlands
Read More »As the inveterate, hairy-chested managing editor of the Sun-Star heads off to embeddedment in Iraq again (because a female reporter went twice!), Tom Frazier asks real questions about a local issue: Who is paying for the Michelle Obama event? While the Imperial Tharp is Inshalla-ing to a fair-the-well about his upcoming war junket, Frazier is calling out the imaginary “feral dogs” of the press to find out what happened. Yo, Frazier, there are no feral dogs of the local press. They all been bought by UC Merced so long ago few still remember the UC inserts that once a month paid the bills back in the late 1990s. And the tame dogs of the local press are all bouncing their heads off the pavement and crying “Inshalla.” We would believe in Tharp’s conversion to Islam if he were going to what Genl. Petraeus even calls “the graveyard of empires,” Afghanistan.
But who cares where Tharp goes at all? Presumably McClatchy and the University of California – just as long as the Sun-Star doesn’t provide the answers to the embarrassing questions Frazier is asking.
