Badlands Journal

Blago the Terrible and other stories

“I got this thing, and it’s (bleeping) golden. … You just don’t give it away for nothing,” (Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich) said, according to a criminal complaint filed by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald.

“Then he (Obama) just laid out an economic analysis (for his 2004 US Senate campaign). It becomes about money, because he knew that if people knew his story they would view him as a better candidate than anybody else he thought might be in the field. And so he said, ‘Therefore, if you raise five million dollars, I have a fifty-per-cent chance of winning. If you raise seven million dollars, I have a seventy-per-cent chance of winning. If you raise ten million dollars, I guarantee victory.” (New Yorker, July 21, 2008)

Blagojevich is correct: the bleeping Senate-seat appointment is worth quite a bit more than any of the recorded or suspected offers for it. Even shaving Obama's $10 million down to $9 million, Jesse Jackson Jr.'s alleged offer of $1 million for the last two years of Obama's Senate term is a clear savings to plutocrat investors in politicians of $2 million in the middle of a bad recession. Later, the incumbent advantage might be worth as much as $3 or $4 million more. It just makes sense.

“OUR VOICE…OUR ISSUES…OUR CONGRESSMAN
DENNIS CARDOZA”
(who moved his family to Washington DC, taking a physician from the famously medically underserved Valley with him, leaving a whole rooftop of solar panels behind)

Loose Lips: …Friday, Mar. 14, 2008
Is Cardoza abandoning the Valley?
http://www.mercedsunstar.com/167/story/182480.html
Loose Lips readers, your congressman has left the zip code.
Lips has learned that the long-rumored move of Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-Packing Up) is now a reality. Cardoza announced earlier this week that his family is moving from Atwater to Maryland.
“This was not an easy decision, but many members of Congress with young families move them to Washington,” said Cardoza’s wife, Kathy McLoughlin, in a written statement released Monday. “With Joey and Brittany entering high school in the fall, we believe this is the right time to have the family join Dennis in the Washington area. Even though he travels home each weekend, we miss him during the week and look forward to being together more.”

Badlands is declaring the coming days a Sunshine Week to post a number of documents submitted to Merced County government in the last few months. Some of these documents have been included in the official packets of information for Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings. Others have been suppressed.
This material is best understood by reference to the audio or video archives of supervisors’ and planning commission meetings and we encourage readers seriously interested in understanding their local government to go to the Merced County webpage, http://www.co.merced.ca.us/CountyWeb/, to seek out these hearings, particularly the two board of supervisors meetings on July 1 and July 8.

At the end of Joseph Kanon's The Good German (Picador, 2001), there is an interview with the author. The interviewer asks Kanon, whose novel superbly depicts the labyrith of bureaucracies among Allied Armed Forces in the first weeks of the occupation of Berlin at the end of WWII:

As a writer whose work often centers on shrouded governmental activity, do you consider yourself prone to conspiracy theories?

Kanon. No. Conspiracies exist largely in the world of melodrama. In the real world of government, we're more likely to find the less exciting mix of incompetence, special interests, political expediency, and plain, dumb carelessness.

FOR YOUR ENTERTAINMENT

Item #1

Revolt!

The other day in a federal building in Merced a member of the board of directors of the
East Merced Resource Conservation District, in the middle of a gripping report on the
district's budget, arose from his chair at the end of the meeting table that faced
certain pictures on the opposite wall, walked to the pictures, removed the photograph of
the president from the wall, pulled out a cabinet, put the picture behind it, pushed the
cabinet back, and returned to his seat.

A. J. Gangle got the story third-hand from an informant journalist sitting beside the
cabinet, who was so engrossed in the riveting budget narratives that he did not see the
event, but was told about it by members of the public at the meeting, one of whom said:

"I could have jumped up and kissed him. But I didn't think it would have been
appropriate."

Although jaws around the room dropped to belt level, nobody said anything and the
exhilarating budget song-and-dance continued without a pause, Gangle's informant
scribbling madly so that he would not miss describing even one small shuck or a fragment of jive.

It was only later, in reporting the story to Gangle, that members of the public realized
that Supervisor Deidre Kelsey, a member of John McCain's California campaign committee, appointed the board of the EMRCD. This led to speculations about the motive for this act of revolt too dark to speak. Will punishment stop at dismissal from the board or will the director end up in Gitmo?

Loose Cheeks stands ready to support the director wherever he goes.

Item #2

Elephant in the patio

A.J. Gangle was mighty impressed with last month's column by Merced County Farm Bureau President Peter "Skal!" Koch in the farm bureau's newsletter.

So finally an elected official has come out to say we are facing the real possibility of
water shortages and mandatory rationing this summer--Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Good for him. But what can he do? We have the elephant sitting in our living room and the bigger it gets the louder one would yell or at least so you would think. As we take our daily showers, water the lawn or laze about in the pool, let's look at this water situation from the field view and not from the grandstands. What can we really do?

Gangle thought that the least he could do was get his ultralite out of the shop and take
his annual flight over the Merced River just to check things out and feel like he too was
participating in the fight against drought. Riding the thermals above the
Amsterdam-Hopeton area, Gangle got bumped off course a bit and found himself over ol' Skal! Koch's place. Gangle noticed a deep hole on the estate grounds and wondered if Koch was possibly burying an elephant next to his castle. Circling again, Gangle thought it looked more like President Skal! was building a swimming pool to laze about during the drought.

Item #3

Gangle dreams of a blog, like the bigshot reporters have

A.J. Gangle occasionally asks himself why he can't have a blog like all the reporters in the mainstream press, where he could explore political tidbits like the bigshot reporters do.

If I had one, he told Mr. Smithereen, I'd post something like: It appears that the political effect in the recent 4th district supervisor race of the Raptor Center's praise of the incumbent's family for donations to its causes helped the incumbent Kelsey retain her seat. This also insured continuance of the null voice of Planning Commissioner Cindy Lashbrook, a Kelsey appointee. Between Commissioner Tanner making the motions and Lashbrook missing the points, Planning Commissioner Sloan, developers and parcel-splitting agriculturalists are sitting pretty for the foreseeable future in Merced County.

Item #4

Atta Girl to Rochelle Koch

Rochelle Koch, wife of ol' Skal, president of the local Farm Bureau chapter, and a
founder of the famous Valley Land Alliance, is aiming to replace Bryant Owens as the top letter writer to the Sonny Star, the McClatchy Chain's Merced gigolo press outlet.

Judging from the high quality of her commentary on the Felix Torres Camp situation, the
public anticipates some serious land-use activism from the famous Valley Land Alliance.

Item #5

Atta It to Great Valley Center

Gangle attended the graduation of the UC/Great Valley Center's Institute for Development of Emerging Area Leaders Class of 2008 last weekend. The presentation was fine and the star of the show was Maureen McCorry, leader of San Joaquin Valley Et Al, emerging by the day.

Gangle, however, felt sorry for sponsors Paramount, Citi and Bank of America because of the 66 typos in the brochure. Transnational corporations are constantly abused these
days, he thought. Untypically for a cynical journalist, Gangle came up with an idea for
the corporate sponsors of UC/GVC: why not start an Emerging Valley Printers Institute
(EVPI).

While Gangle understands the hardcore Invisible-Middle-Finger-of-the-Market attitude of UC/GVC, he found himself wondering if the quality of the brochure might have been
improved if people who affix union bugs on their productions had been involved in
printing it. However, he doubts a union bug and competence behind it will ever grace any
production of the Great Valley Center now that it has been absorbed by the University of
California. An institution that hires John Yoo to teach law dwells in regions far beyond
competence, skill and knowledge.

Item #6

Ahhhhh, Karma!

Local environmental groups, Gangle reports, having sent out news of a momentary setback, received from a planning commissioner no less, this message: "Ahhhh, Karma!" Presumably, the commissioner wishes that the environmentalists would be reborn as endangered species -- fairy shrimp, kit fox, Orcutt grass, or such.

It is rarely possible for the public to understand the gnomic utterances of this
particular commissioner, either in the midst of her public duties or anywhere else.
However, at a recent silent auction for some worthy cause, the commissioner bid the price of a bus trip to Yosemite well above its stated worth, but ultimately lost the bid to
someone bidding even higher. When asked why she'd bid above the stated price of the item, the commissioner is reported to have said it didn't matter because it wasn't her own
money.

It must have been public funds from one of the grants the commissioner controls. What
price "outreach"? And here we thought the idea with public funds was to try to get the
best price for goods and services.

Gangle was unable to learn if the winning bid was also public funds.

Item #7

"Outside agendas' invade Yolo Co. Environmental Health Department

A successful petitioner in the lawsuit between Merced environmental groups backed by
citizens and Merced County and Riverside Motorsports Park received an irate phone call
Monday morning from one J. Bruce Sarazin, REHS, director fo the Yolo County Environmental Health Department (environmental.health@yolocounty.org). This official was offended that somehow his department had received a copy of a Friday press release announcing the judgment on the RMP case signed by Superior Court judge. In fact, Sarazin seemed a little paranoid about it, accusing "people like you of having agendas," complaining that the release had gone to every member of his staff and that he couldn't get it out of his "system" (his computer system, that is) before his staff read it. "I want to know your agenda," Sarazin insisted. The petitioner advised the director that it was unknown how the press release reached his office. It was suggested that, regardless of how it reached his office, he could erase it and put a block on future emails from the offending address. The director said it was a public office and he couldn't do that and that this was taking away valuable staff time from his office's service to the people of Yolo
County. The petitioner suggested that the director was wasting more valuable time and
money calling twice to discover the "agenda" behind the release but that the suit had
upheld both the California Environmental Quality Act and the laws of public process and
that the director should see that as a public benefit, even in Yolo County.

Petitioners in the suit learned later in the morning that Sarazin had been harassing
at least one attorney on the suit, using the Yolo County's public funds to continue his private investigation into why he had received that press release and trying to root out the
"agendas you people have."

"You can't make this stuff up," thought Gangle;

Item #8

The terrible crush of work down at the supervisors' office

On Fridays, members of the public visit the office the Merced County Board of Supervisors to pick up the board agenda. After examining the agenda, they frequently request copies of the paperwork behind items of interest to them. These packages include things like staff reports and agency comments on the projects.

None of this information is released until the supervisors pick up their packages, and at times, like one Friday this month, the information is not available until after office hours due to one thing or another. On this particular Friday, the information was made available to the public a few minutes after 5 p.m. One member of the public waited until nearly 6 p.m. for the information one Friday last winter.

Usually, board staff is quite accommodating, and copy the requested material for the public members, who often ask for several copies to be distributed to other members of the public, who wish to read it and possibly comment on it during public hearings at the board meetings.

This Friday, however, was a little different. The board clerk told two members of the public that they could not have three copies of the material, that too many members of the public were requesting this information and that the County would have to begin charging for it. Then she produced two copies of the material.

When supervisors' staff or planning staff talk about charging, it's 50 cents a page accompanied by a lecture on the number of trees sacrificed to produce the paper. Then, typically, at the public hearings on the items, supervisors lecture the public on the tardiness of their comments, which frequently come in the day of the hearing. In the County Mind, public comments should be made in ignorance of staff reports, preferably hand-written in pencil, because in that way the supervisors can say the staff reports covered all the questions raised by the ignorant public.

About the best that can happen in these circumstances is that the board or the planning commission, upon advise from County Counsel that they may be entering the realm of “significant exposure to possible litigation,” takes a collective break during which the county’s lawyers explain the dangers.

Active members of the public assure Gangle that they aren’t actually criticizing supervisors, who receive board packets that can run a foot high, from which the public may choose one or two projects, rarely more, on which to comment. But the public has read the staff report on the project, while the supervisors may for good public policy reasons be more concerned with the mental health department or a police and fire matter that Tuesday than another development, sand mine or parcel split. For these excellent reasons, supervisors generally accept planning staff’s recommendations, almost invariably to approve the project.

This, the public members assure Gangle, is not always a good idea. It puts staff in a policy position by sole virtue of the weight of the paperwork. Rather than welcome the volunteer energy of the public in reviewing the documents behind these projects, the supervisors get grumpy when the public comments on them.

Go figure.

Just to advocate on behalf of the Merced public for a moment: for the $90,000 plus $100,000 in discretionary funds plus expenses and perks the public pays its county supervisors, the public could expect its supervisors to read and understand the issues and the laws of process that govern the public's business.

But, no. Down in Merced County, if misfeasance or malfeasance don't git the job done, nonfeasance will.

MERCED, CA (June 20, 2008) --Superior Court Judge Elizabeth Humphreys signed this week the judgment for the lawsuit between San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center, Protect Our Water, Citizens for the Protection of Merced County Resources (petitioners), against the County of Merced and real party of interest Riverside Motorsports Park (respondents).

Judge Humphreys ordered in favor of petitioners that the following approvals of the Merced County Board of Supervisors on the RMP project be voided and vacated:

Resolution No. 2006-219;
Ordinance No. 1800;
Zone Change No. 03-007;
General Plan Amendment No. 03-005
Removal of project site from the Williamson Act Agricultural Preserve;
Amendment to the Merced County General Plan to redesignate the project site from "Agricultural" to "Castle Specific Urban Development Plan Industrial";
Rezone of the project from "A-1" and "A-2" to "Planned Development";
Approval of the project master plan;
Text Amendment to Merced County General Plan to modify policies in the Circulation Chapter that would exempt the project from traffic Level of Service standards for feature and major events.

The Court also ordered the County of Merced to refrain from further approvals on this project until the County and RMP undertakes further environmental review "to correct the deficiencies in the EIR and as otherwise required under the California Environmental Quality Act."

"We have nothing but the highest praise for our legal team," said San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center President Lydia Miller. "Gregory Maxim, Julie Garcia, Marsha Burch and their law firms, Sproul Trost LLP of Roseville and the Law Offices of Don B. Mooney in Davis."

"This judgment is a tremendous victory for the citizens of Merced County," said Gregory Maxim. "This lawsuit was brought for the purpose of ensuring that the citizens were provided with a full and fair opportunity to review and comment on all project impacts. This judgment, and the voiding of nine of the project's prior approvals, will provide the citizens with this opportunity."

"We are overjoyed at this positive outcome for the Raptor Center and Protect Our Water," Miller continued. "But we were particularly pleased with the strong support we received throughout the process of this lawsuit from the Citizens for the Protection of Merced County Resources, led by Suzy Hultgren, Paul van Warmerdam and Stacey Machado."

For further information contact:

Lydia Miller GREGORY L. MAXIM
San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center Attorney at Law
Protect Our Water Sproul Trost LLP
(209) 723-9283, ph. (916) 783-6262 tel

Citizens for the Protection of Merced County Resources

Suzy Hultgren-(209) 358-2339 ph, (cell) 209-769-8583
Paul van Wamerdam- (209) 678-2251 ph,(cell) 209-678-2251
Stacey Machado-(209) 564-8361 ph,

You just can't make our Bud
By T-bone Gristle, Oakdale CA

In honor of Utah Phillips and the InBev bid to buy Anheuser-Busch

You can take our lathes and drills
and tractor factories
You can take our flour mills
and auto factories

You just can't make our Bud

You can make our blue jeans
You can make our toys and dolls
and all our I-beams
Until every working family falls

You just can't make our Bud

You can grow our avocados
and send us mad cows
You can grow our red tomatoes
Buy all the bellies of our sows

You just can't make our Bud

Foreclose on all our real estate
Take all our timber, too
Take every buck that's here to make
And leave us with the blues

You just can't make our Bud

You can have our whole damn future
and all derivatives
We don't care to be mature
You can have our heritage

You just can't make our Bud

You can make our bombs and missiles
We'll pay you for your oil
Take all our bells and whistles
Buy up our sacred soil

You just can't make our Bud.

A letter to the editor of Loose Cheeks

Chairman of the Merced County Planning Commission Steve Sloan, at the last Commission meeting on May 28, took time to commend his fellow commissioners on their teamwork in approving four land-use projects. Surprising? It shouldn’t be.

As many of you are aware, Commissioner Sloan is very clear on where his interests lie – his votes have been consistently at odds with organizations committed to protecting the environment – whether air, land, habitat/species, or water. This consistency has also made an enemy of our local Farm Bureau, which doesn’t view the Chair as a friend of agriculture. So, one might wonder, how did Commissioner Lashbrook drift so far afield from her role as sage of the watershed, sage of the river, and sage of all things organic, green and agricultural?

As some of you may be aware, Commissioner Lashbrook often complains that one vote lacks power. With two commissioners absent on May 28th, the stars were in alignment: one vote could wield real power. In essence, a unanimous vote was required to take action on any item on the agenda. If any one of the three commissioners present had voted against any one of these projects, that project would have been denied.

Accordingly, students of the ways and means of the Merced County Planning Commission hearings can certainly appreciate Mr. Sloan’s need to shower Ms. Lashbrook with praise for how she handled herself throughout this hearing (in stark contrast to her role on May 14, 2008 – see in particular minutes 30:00-37:00 from the audio/video tape).

On May 28th, Commissioner Lashbrook’s performance was bold and decisive. In considering the Jaxon Enterprise Mining project in eastern Merced County, she declared in a loud and confident voice, “I like this project.” According to Ms. Lashbrook: “This was in the right place for a mine.” Seemingly, for Lashbrook, this was “somewhere out there.”

Her reasoning seemed to go something like this:

This was not on the river, ergo, this was not a pristine location, ergo, this is grazing land, ergo – this is perfect for a mining project. According to Commissioner Lashbrook’s logic, this was certainly not in an area that supported habitat –“like the [Merced] river bed.”

Evidently, to Ms. Lashbrook’s thinking, Eastern Merced County is a barren, worthless landscape. As members of Et Al, listened, they were astounded. Was this dismissal all they could count on from a self –professed agrarian progressive? The answer was becoming painfully obvious: Yes, this was all. With the public hearing safely over, the public simply had to endure the insult embedded in the assumptions Ms. Lashbrook eschewed and the ultimate hypocrisy being practiced in her other life – “outreach and education” in the name of our watershed.

Had Commissioner Lashbrook forgotten her fellow Mariposans and fellow Merced River Allies – some of whom are within just a few miles of this “great project” – or simply sold them down the river? One might have thought that she did not understand the “Watershed model” and “Groundwater model” she fashioned out of a munificent public grant to educate 5th graders.

Yet, Ms. Lashbrook, in her capacity as staff for the EMRCD, was all too willing to take credit for the event by piling brochures on a table at the Cattlemen’s Spring Tour in April, 2008. This event featured experts on the value of grazing land – just minutes away from the Jaxon site. In her rush to judge those in attendance, she may have forgotten to listen to the ranchers and members of the California Rangeland Conservation Coalition, who succinctly explained why this very same (pristine) land is valuable for livestock, habitat, and as recharge for our water supply. Some locals had even advised Merced County elected officials to drive out on White Rock Road so that they could truly appreciate the impacts of the mine.

Or, maybe she simply forgot what MID staff, hydrologist consultants, and local farmers on the east side of the county have been stating emphatically in front of Lashbrook at every recent MAGPI meeting -- the aquifer in this region of the county was/is in overdraft. However, there was nary a representative from Farm Bureau, Sierra Club, MARG, CWA, or Valley Land Alliance to jog Ms. Lashbrook’s memory on the lack of water in this region – just Et Al and one local farming family.

But fear not, this was not the only contradiction in this “affairs of the mine.”
May 14th, 2008, provided a substantial audience for Ms. Lashbrook’s fishing for a position to take. In front of a full house of investors, all in town to advance their project, Ms. Lashbrook showed her stuff.

She began with a correction to a letter she had not read. She was wrong.
She asked great questions; then retreated. Ms. Lashbook then came up with a new possibility. Then she retreated again. Then after all of this time, she went ahead and voted for this mining project – on the river.

“I do live down river of this and have not noticed any effect of it – even in its illegal state – and I CARE A LOT ABOUT HABITAT. I am not sure what is happening here, but I certainly have not noticed any changes over the last few years”…. and then… moments later.

“Would it be possible to continue this? --to get a site visit?”

“The Taco Truck” precedent was raised as a model by Deputy County Counsel Robert Gabriele. Out-of-town investors snickered, wondering if this suggestion was for real. It was: The Taco Truck merited enough concern to be continued at the November 5, 2007, hearing.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the Thoreson mining operation should be continued. Commissioner Sloan asked her directly if she wished to make a motion to continue. Commissioner Lashbrook, demurred or perhaps, deferred – one can never quite tell.

Commissioner Sloan asked again. Would you like to make a motion? Lashbrook came up with new idea. Could we hold a public hearing on the site?

To the Rescue: Deputy Counsel – more legal advice… and “help” offered by the Applicant.

Ms. Lashbrook deftly deflected attention away from Mr. Sloan’s question and encouraged Des Johnston to approach the podium – ostensibly to advise if the applicants would permit a site visit.

Consultant and a former member of both the Merced County and City of Gustine planning staff, Des Johnston changed the subject: This is not a CVC issue…. We have a good negative dec here…. And then …

A motion was made – not from Ms. Lashbrook, but Commissioner Tanner -- to approve the project. Head down, muffled voice, Ms. Lashbrook allowed an almost inaudible “ohhhhh kay.” The audience let out a collective gasp of stale air. Someone asked: Did she just vote to approve? Yes. UHHHHG. The audience was rendered speechless in pondering the affairs of the mine.

Postscript: This was a River Project and this was a “yes” vote by Ms. Lashbrook. Along with the Schmidt Mining Project this made the third yes vote for aggregate by Ms. Lashbrook – with two of these three projects on the Merced River. Ms. Lashbrook may want to study the audio tapes of previous hearings before proceeding to her next vote.

Finally, don’t take our word, we encourage you to enjoy the show(s) – tune in and watch the Planning Commission video or listen to the audio – at press time it was not yet posted on the County website, but stay tuned.

Signed:
Suzzy Q. Buckheart

Loose Cheeks, May 17, 2008

Loose Cheeks: Hot Tips
By Lucas Smithereen
Loose Cheeks Senior Editor

Got a hot tip for Loose Cheeks? Call the Loose Cheeks hot-tip line: (000) CHE-EEKS. We’ll get back to you whenever.

Item #1

Dust-up in corral behind the Slacker-Raptor Barn Dance:

Loose Cheeks’ intrepid reporter, A.J. Gangle, stepped out of the barn during the recent California Rangeland Coalition luncheon in Le Grand and noticed a huge cloud of dust rising from the corral. Through this dust cloud Gangle could hear the angry voices of Merced County Farm Bureau President Peter Koch and Executive Director Diana Westmoreland Pedrozo disputing a political matter. As the executive director and “her” president clawed and scratched each other on the ground (or was it the president and “his” executive director – one is never sure with the Farm Bureau), Gangle thought he made out yet another form, lurking over them, and another voice, saying: “How did they get here? Who invited them? Why is SHE here at all?”

Gangle, it should be noted, is a veteran on Merced County Agriculture’s perpetual auto-celebration circuit, in which the same heirs and heiresses congratulate each other in the same tedious round of events in honor of each other, in the name of something called “Agriculture,” infinitely less important than who owns the land. Gangle, a veteran of these witless events for many years, long ago concluded they had nothing to do with farming and everything to do with how much dirt you inherited. So, his ears perked up. It sounded like someone had been included in the Rangeland Coalition feed that didn’t own enough to qualify. He began connecting dots.

He’d noticed that the reception to the president of the San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center had been real chilly at the sign-up table by the barn door. He noticed also that the cowboy president of the Rangeland Coalition had not acknowledged that the Raptor Center and the San Joaquin Valley Conservancy in his speech about the Coalition. Members of Raptor and the Conservancy helped draft the Resolution and are founding members of the Coalition of ranchers and environmentalists being celebrated that day. But no environmentalists from Merced County were celebrated because that would be an acknowledgement of a reality beyond the ownership of dirt.

Gangle also noticed that the Raptor president sat next to Claudine Sherron, running for supervisor against Deidre Kelsey, the Farm Bureau’s “champion of agriculture,” and one of Diana Westmoreland Pedrozo’s “best friends.”

(In the interest of full disclosure, Gangle owns no dirt and is not the wife of either a dope-growing aggregate miner or a new-town-developing dairyman; therefore Gangle is not one of the executive director’s “best friends.”)

At length, the Farm Bureau President Koch emerged from the dust cloud, “skalling” darkly and reentered the barn in silence. President Skal Koch, however, always the European gentlemen (north of the Beer/Wine Line, of course), in public thanked the president of the Raptor Center for attending the event.

Against one barn wall stood incumbent supervisor Deidre Kelsey, seething at the social affront of a genuine Merced County Agriculture event with her opponent in the same room. Gangle barely escaped a whistling dagger from the supe’s eyeballs that buried itself three inches above the head of a cook in the opposite wall. When the event broke up, there were burn scars on the wall where Kelsey had been leaning.

If Kelsey’s energetic denial of reality wasn’t enough, there were two slackers (deadbeats) in the room, one Farm Bureau director and one Merced Irrigation District director, who owe the despised and socially inappropriate Raptor Center a lot of money for a project. The two slackers were also busy denying reality: Raptor’s presence and their own legal debts.

All things considered, Gangle thought it was another perfect auto-celebration of the Merced County Agriculture Society of Rich Landowners, a group so incredibly impressed with themselves that they cannot acknowledge that others might oppose their political “champion” and want some of them to pay their debts. The view the Society has of its local environmentalists reminded Gangle of a story he once heard from a Polish landowner, whose property had been expropriated after WWII. “The Jewish tailors made our suits but we never paid for them until we had worn them for a year or more. That’s the only proper way to treat tailors.”

Item #2

A vote for Sanders is a vote for Pollard.

Loose Cheeks was edified by reading this morning’s local McClatchy Chain outlet, when it learned that if Merced City Councilman Jim Sanders, the born-again Mussolini freak, is elected to the County Board of Supervisors, Carl Pollard will be reappointed to the City Council because he received the second-highest number of votes while losing in the last election. As a result, Pollard, a political accident that had happened even before his first arrival on the City Council, could happen again.

Item #3

The Et Al situation.

Gangle has known for months about the rise of a powerful new social and political group in Merced, called Et Al. However, the rumors have been elusive, particularly about a mysterious flak whiz known only as “Tiko,” variously described as a Tijuana taxi driver, a Sacramento public relations ace or as a dog of great genius and eloquence in English, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese and Basque. In short, Gangle didn’t have much to go on and therefore and none of it made sense.

However, at the most recent Merced County Planning Commission meeting (the one where Commissioner Cindy Lashbrook described the California Environmental Quality Act as a “moving target” while justifying her vote for another aggregate project), a member of the public mentioned Et Al and defined it as a group composed of “all the people who work for a living and don’t have time to attend morning meetings of the planning commission.”

Still, Gangle would have regarded Et Al as a mere rhetorical trope of the public had it not been for County Assistant Counsel Bob Gabriele, who targeted the group for special scrutiny. “You mention Et Al,” he said, addressing a member of the public. Who is Et Al? the county lawyer wanted to know.

Now this Gabriele is a wise and cunning jurist, who has the Merced County public’s interest always at heart. It was clear from his incipient interrogation that, like former Supervisor Gloria Cortez-Keene and that lion of liberty, former County Counsel Ruben Castillo, that Gabriele sensed a Homeland Security issue behind the detailed comments made by the member of the public on the environmental destruction that would be caused by the proposed expansion of the Jaxon Enterprises mining project on Mariposa Creek and the deficiencies of the environmental impact report, jointly prepared by the miner’s consultants and our own blameless and expert planning department.

Gangle had learned from other established environmental groups in Merced County that they fear the arrival of Et Al, and the mysterious “Tiko” in the region.

“We don’t know anything about them,” one local environmentalist, who wished to remain anonymous, said. “But they scare us. This Tiko is a disruptive influence. Here today, gone tomorrow. Can’t get a handle on him.”

If you personally know anything about Et Al or Tiko, please give Gangle a jingle.

Item #4

Dalhart Texas voters perplexed:

It is rumored that outside the construction site of the new Hilmar Cheese Co. (“Largest Cheese Factory in the World”) plant in Dalhart TX, there are a number of political signs urging citizens to vote for Deidre Kelsey for Supervisor. The Dalhart public is confused.

First, they don’t know what a supervisor is, at least not one to vote for, in Texas, where counties have commissioners, not supervisors, and department heads are called supervisors but you don’t get to vote for them.

But, being Texans, they have a nose for political chicanery.

“It’s some Karl Rove deal,” said a Dalhart citizen somewhere between 25 and 70 years of age, who refused to give his/her name. “This Deidre Kelsey shows up on the Internet as a member of the state Leadership Team for John McCain in California. And if that ain’t enough, they got that Merced County sheriff in it, too. What’s that about?” the Dalhart citizen asked Gangle. ‘Two out of 12 leaders from one cow county in a real estate bust?”

“I haven’t a clue,” Gangle replied.

“’Course, you ain’t going to be a cow county after we get the Largest Cheese Factory in the World built here in Dalhart,” the Dalhartian said. “What are you going to do, grow pot?”

“I haven’t a clue on that either,” Gangle replied. “Maybe the sheriff would know.”

“Well, thank the Lord we got Et Al down here is all I can say,” said the ageless and genderless Dalhartian.

“You got Et Al down there, too?” Gangle asked.

“Sure we do. You think we were all born in a barn?”

“Have you ever heard of a person named Tiko?”

“I disremember the name and don’t know a thing about him, but he’s a genius,” the citizen said, hanging up on Gangle.

Item # 5

Our intrepid reporter reported he was absolutely delighted to find the Merced County Farm Bureau was again posting its comic newsletter on its website.

Former President Louie “Long-nose” Bandoni is featured in a photo on the front page of the April edition, holding a cake shaped like the head of Pinocchio. Considering the heaps of well-known substances Bandoni and Diana Westmoreland Pedrozo shoveled the afternoon two members of a family in the Farm Bureau for more than 50 years inquired about the Farm Bureau endorsement process for Deidre Kelsey, the cake’s nose would have probably grown several inches since the picture was taken had it not been devoured by the disciples of that simple creed: “We farm. You eat.”

And how about that May edition with the big headline “Farm Bureau Board of Directors Unanimously Support Longtime Champion of Agriculture”?

Mr. Smithereen said he thought “supports” would be more grammatically correct, but understood that the agricultural heritage and the way of life of the Merced County Farm Bureau placed its editors well above mere grammar.

The editorial stated that the “Farm Bureau determined that Kelsey’s experience and commitment to agriculture is well documented” and that “Her vision, proven experience and commitment to farmers and ranchers has been proven…”

“What are they trying to prove?” Smithereen asked. “And how would the Farm Bureau know it was well documented? Nobody at the Farm Bureau reads documents. All they know is what they hear from Deidre. So, if Deidre told them her experience and commitment to agriculture was well documented and proven, they’d believe it, I guess.”

“They are trying to prove that she doesn’t have an opponent,” Gangle said. “But she does. Her name is Claudine Sherron, she has real campaign signs all over the 4th district, and walks real precincts despite the fact Kelsey and the Farm Bureau deny her existence.

“Well now,” Smithereen replied. “I think they want to prove some other things, too.

“The Merced County Farm Bureau wants to prove that the Kelsey family never contributed a dime to the San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center for projects against Kelsey competitors in the aggregate business. Of course the Farm Bureau also wants to prove it didn’t contribute to any Raptor Center projects either.

“And what they really, really want to prove is that Kelsey wasn’t on both sides in the backroom on those projects, one foot in the petitioners’ camp, the other foot in the respondent County’s camp, playing both ends against the middle, ‘cause that sounds like the statutory definition of ‘conflict of interest.’ And what information she didn’t get herself, the Farm Bureau leaked to her.

“The Farm Bureau wants to prove that their blameless ‘champion of agriculture’ is a non-partisan county supervisor and not a high-ranking official in the state Republican Party, who is a member of the John McCain campaign leadership committee.

“The Farm Bureau wants to prove that the people that live along the river from the Crocker-Huffman Dam to the confluence (including Stevinson) don’t deserve political representation on any board that makes land-use decisions.

“The Farm Bureau wants to prove that Kelsey’s husband wasn’t one of the seven board members who unanimously endorsed her and that another member of the endorsement team was the husband of her appointee to the Planning Commission.

“But, you’re right, too,” he continued. “They want to prove Claudine Sherron doesn’t exist by not publishing her response to their questions in their comic book – I mean newsletter. They want to prove that Kelsey wasn’t originally in favor of the Riverside Motorsports Park project, either.

“The Farm Bureau also wants to prove that Kelsey does not receive contributions for her campaigns from developers in Carmel, Monterey, Danville, Del Mar, Fresno, Sacramento and Pleasanton, while she’s doing all this fine work to maintain agriculture in Merced County.

“That’s what the Merced County Farm Bureau wants to prove she didn’t do,” Smithereen summarized. “The documents say otherwise, but, like I say, the Farm Bureau wouldn’t know a document from a Narwhal. All they know is what Kelsey tells them. It’s an itsy-bitsy, teeny-weeny information loop.

“The other thing is,” Smithereen concluded, “Deidre Kelsey doesn’t have an original idea in her head. Sherron’s whole campaign is built on the promise of being a voice representing everyone in her district, so Kelsey steals the line for her glossy mailer. For 10 years, Kelsey has denied overwhelming evidence of backroom deals, the so-called ‘public process’ is anything but transparent, and documents are constantly suppressed. All she represents is a few large landowners and some developers. The people of Hopeton/Amsterdam and Stevinson have been asking for municipal advisory councils for seven years. Kelsey has refused to help them. Everyone knows this and she even said it in the radio debate: ‘Merced County is not for everybody.’ She thinks the County is for her and the tiny elite around her – people in such an advanced state of denial of reality they think the sky is blue and the water is clean.”

Loose Cheeks moved on to “Skal!” the column of President Peter Koch. Koch, photographed with a very trendy “Boyish Campesino” look, announced that the Merced County Farm Bureau was going to make “Water” its top issue this summer.

“Oh boy, oh boy!” gasped Gangle. “I can hardly wait! The mind staggers at the possibilities of Merced County Farm Bureau meditations on water. How much more blame can environmental law and regulations and state and federal resource agencies take, with the Merced County Farm Bureau adding its voice to those in the state making the hard, right decisions: the governor, Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, Westlands Water District, Congressman Devin Nunes, the Blue Ribbon Peripheral Canal Campaign Committee, Sen. Diane Feinstein and the others? Already in the president’s rhetoric, the word ‘balance’ has made its dark appearance, yet another moving target of the ambitious nouveau agricultural elite. Your heirs and heiresses don’t talk about balance much. They tend to speak with long noses about parcel splits.”

About a hundred people, many of them from Merced, got an education in UC intellectual bankruptcy this week at the old Merced Theatre during a forum on "Green Jobs." The event was organized by Kenny, the Monster UC Merced Faculty Spouse, and it featured a trio of top Bay Area speakers on everything green. After the Monster got the computers started (computer inadequacy is a hallmark of Monster Shows), we entered the world of "Framing and Reframing," a rhetorical confection created by UC Berkeley's Chomsky-Lite, Prof. George Lakoff.

The Monster framed it like this: the environmental debate is always framed as an environmental protection argument, yet we need thousands of new jobs but if the environment collapses, human health and safety also collapses; ergo, we need "green jobs." QED, it's a "no brainer" for Merced to seek these "green" industries and jobs.This "framing" of the question unleashed the speakers to bay after the elusive "green job."

Merced City Councilman John Carlisle, the only member of the panel that did not indulge in "framing" lingo, described the situation in Merced in dire terms -- gangs, bad air quality, teen pregnancy, etc. -- all the products of poverty in this weird county, which has among the nation's least affordable housing, its highest foreclosure rate and is among the five poorest counties in the state. For "a community already in need of help,"

Carlisle wants "green jobs." In his definition of "green jobs," however, the audience got its first intimation that it was going to get had that evening. "Green jobs," according to Carlisle and others on the stage have good employers, good benefits, upward mobility, and meaningful work -- for starters. Carlisle's election apparently owed quite a bit to the work of the sponsors of the Green Job event. In this context, we can understand his utopian affection. Otherwise, he seems to be a pretty level-headed retired probation
officer.

Nwamaka Agbo, from the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center, made an excellent presentation on the Center's efforts to get more "green-collar jobs" in Oakland, Berkeley, Emeryville and Richmond, pointing out that poor communities of color also care about the environment but have more immediate worries. She defined "eco-apartheid" in West Oakland near the port, presenting the dichotomy of "organic food v. no food at all." "Eco-equity" means the incorporation of everyone into the environmental movement. We thought Agbo's presentation would have been equally interesting and relevant to Merced if she had been talking about Brooklyn or Compton, but we now live in the home of UC Merced, so we must gratefully
accept its total framing of our lives as we so gratefully accepted the finance, insurance and real estate framing of our economy in recent years.

"The environmental conversation lacks racial analysis," Agbo bravely asserted against the entire history of the environmental justice movement in an evening definitely not devoted to discussion of CEQA suits in Planada. (One of the event sponsors later tried to “reframe” what Agbo said, but Loose Cheeks, “framing-deficient," didn't get it.)

Marc Stout represented the Bigshot Entrepreneur wing of "green jobs," a flak for Cleantech, "a utility-scale power-plant project developer." He said construction and maintenance of future solar farms will require thousands of workers. He mentioned figures. He described a 40-acre facility near Mendota (unfinished) and a 640-acre solar farm his company is planning for the San Joaquin Valley.

The only interesting thing he said was that Germany, a cold, northern European country, employs a half a million of its citizens in the solar business. Siemens, the German global conglomerate, is the largest player in this market, according to other sources, but Germany is probably absorbing most of what it produces. Japanese solar technology dominates the US market at the moment, but Siemens’ India-made panels sold here reportedly have quality problems. It is interesting to note that in the cornucopia of “green jobs” Stout touted, manufacturing solar panels or any other "green" technology was absent. The entire industry seems to be gearing up for its Conquest of America on off-shored manufacturing.

Although, according to Stout, hundreds of thousands of jobs will be available soon for construction and maintenance of solar farms, about twice as many jobs will be available off-shore plants to make solar panels. Stout did not indicate if all this solar power injected onto the grid will in any way lower utility rates and not just make money for the utility companies and solar entrepreneurs like himself (and, of course,
those thousands of construction and maintenance personnel, who will all be US citizens and working for Bay Area-level wages and protected by strong unions.)

It was with the presentation by Cheryl Brown of the UC Berkeley Labor Center that we entered into the full vedanta of what it means to be "green."

"Green jobs are quality jobs," she said. And, although that was about as far as she went to defining green in mere layperson's language, she said she thought that some concept of "sustainability" should be included and that a quality job meant one that might last.

That would knock out solar farm construction work. Stout never broke down the figures on numbers of jobs between construction and maintenance. Asians will manufacture the panels.

While we have heard and largely approved of the new verb, "to greenwash," to describe what corporations are doing to claim to be environmentally friendly, it was Brown who brought back to our hick consciousness the verb, "to green," languishing in the shadows since the 1970's gerund, The Greening of America.

Brown's "framing" was dead on arrival, but it twitched along obliviously anyway. Quality jobs apparently mean that we must "unionize in the market-driven green solution." Well, we dunno. But, to use an older Berkeley term, we had a " flashback." We don't think Cesar Chavez' dying words in Yuma were, "Unionize in the market-driven green solution!"

Brown cavorted around the various bills in Congress and the state Capitol and the innumerable institutions out there doing something "to green" industry and jobs, claiming that the East Bay is to become the "Silicon Valley of green stuff."

Loose Cheeks left before all the questions from the audience were finished because they weren't questions. They were living ads for various "green" and "greenwashed" groups and public institutions.

However, in the hoopla before the event and during the event, we noted only two references to agriculture. In the Merced Sun-Star's editorial boosting the event, editors referred to "stagnant agriculture." At the "green jobs" forum, agriculture was treated solely as land available for the placement of large numbers of solar panels and as a very minor source of air pollution (less than 10 percent, versus construction, the worst polluter at 40 percent).

One of the sponsors of the event, the carpet-bagger professional opponents of the WalMart distribution center project, once again increased the threat to their cause and our environment. Having done very little but kiss the posteriors of politicians and the press since they arrived, the City of Merced has totally suckered the WalMart Action Team into making "positive contributions" instead of simply and coherently opposing the project.

They were overjoyed that the City's economic development director was in the audience. They don't like Quintero much because they feel he doesn't always listen to them. That could be because Quintero actually knows something about the employment situation in Merced. He made more sense than anyone on the panel when he said Merced contains many "line workers" who need a job tomorrow and certainly cannot afford to go through lengthy "green job" training programs, assuming government funds are made available for them. All the panelists and some of the "questioners" mentioned the sainted state Sen. Darryl
Steinberg's bill to provide $3 billion for "green job" training. Clue: Steinberg has made an entire career out of haphazard, ill-timed defenses of politically correct causes.

Thoroughly engrossed in the process of allowing UC to completely “reframe” their reality, Kenny the Monster and his sponsors never thought to include anyone on the panel who actually knew anything about the San Joaquin Valley environment or its labor history. For this act of appeasement, they were rewarded: the Sun-Star didn’t even send a reporter to cover the event.

Loose Cheeks left the performance at the old theatre in a disordered state. How is it that you come to "green" Merced without talking about its natural resources? How does that work? Presumably, UC Merced and Kenny Monster will reframe it for us us all in the finest Goodbar/Valley Hopefuls style.

Loose Cheeks learned the next day that Merced County Planning Commissioner Etc. Cindy Lashbrook said something about not wanting all the farmland filled with solar panels. This is reported to have made the posterior-kissing crowd nervous, for which we applaud the Commissioner of Many Hats.

Meanwhile, to respond to Quintero's excellent question: house the homeless in foreclosed, empty homes and hire the unemployed to mow those lawns and maintain those gardens. That would provide permanent housing for the homeless and work for those gardeners for the rest of their lives. With water, the grass and the gardens would once again be "green."

As for the Walmart "opponents," the asthma coalition and the local Sierra Clubbers who sponsored the event, Loose Cheeks wanted to remind them and their Florida-based employers, knucklehead labor goons, that you don't stop environmentally destructive development by sucking up to the land-use officials that approve the projects, and the job of opponents does not include providing "positive" solutions. That’s the business of the government and its good friends in private enterprise.

--------------
RE: [WMAT_Leadership] MSS: Forum to tout green growth‏
From: wmat_leadership@yahoogroups.com on behalf of Diana Westmoreland Pedrozo
(mcfb@pacbell.net)
Sent: Thu 5/15/08 4:26 PM
To: 'Kenny Mostern' (kenny@kennymostern.net); wmat_leadership@yahoogroups.com;
cvaq@yahoogroups.com; cvhopefuls@yahoogroups.com; ccvj4j@yahoogroups.com; 'Nick Robinson'
(ndrobinson@gmail.com)
Just wanted to let you know that I will not be able to attend tonight. Thank you for bringing this issue to the forefront. If I can be of assistance in any future endeavors please let me know. I am sitting on the board of the San Joaquin Valley Clean Energy Organization formed last year through the Housing, Land Use and AG Committee of the San Joaquin Valley Partnership and green jobs is an important component of addressing energy and air quality issues here in the Valley.
Good Luck!
Diana Westmoreland Pedrozo
(Executive Director Merced County Farm Bureau, President California Women for Agriculture, Top Henchette Supervisor Deidre Kelsey reelection campaign, Etc.--ed.)

--A.J. Gangle