Agriculture

"Ironically"

Submitted: Mar 07, 2010
By: 
Badlands Journal editorial board
Fresno County leaders are trying to salvage a farmland protection plan that has drawn resistance from at least one small city and, ironically, from some farmers as well.-- Fresno Bee, 3-6-10
 
 
One reason discriminating newspaper editors don't like references to irony is that they frequently serve to conceal rather than reveal the true story. The story below is a good example. Nor is it "ironic" that the newspaper actually missed the entire story.
No Valley farmer in right mind and body today, particularly if the farm lies near anything remotely resembling a municipal corporation, can fail to hope, and therefore to act on that hope, that the farm's value lies more in its speculative real estate value than in what it produces in the way of agricultural commodities. Given that we are now dealing with a mature agricultural system that includes many family partners and inheritors who do not farm the land, the situation is even more obvious: it is almost always more conducive to family relations to sell the farm and divide up the money than it is to plan for another generation of farmers.
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Why Cardoza represents Westlands Water District

Submitted: Feb 28, 2010
By: 
Badlands Journal editorial board

We were curious why Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, was working so hard for the Westlands Water District in the recent attempt by Sen. Dianne Feinstein to put an amendment on a Senate jobs bill to suspend the Endangered Species Act on the Delta. The amendment was designed specifically to provide more water to Westlands. Cardoza seems to be representing a water district south of his congressional district and possibly to the detriment to the west side district he actually does represent, the Central California Irrigation Districts, also known as the exchange contractors, headquartered in Los Banos.

Part of the explanation may be in a donation to his 2010 campaign of $6,800 by Roll International and $5,000 from California Westside Farmers Inc.

Roll International is a holding company owned by Stewart and Lynda Resnick. Roll International controls Bakersfield-based Paramount Farms and POM Wonderful, the largest citrus, nut and pomegranate operations in the nation. The Resnicks, campaign contributors to Feinstein (in larger amounts than to Cardoza), were widely reported to have persuaded Feinstein to convene a scientific panel to review the two federal resource-agency biological opinions that restrict pumping from the Delta to the west side. They were also reported to have been behind Feinstein's unfortunate proposed amendment, which was not included in the jobs bill.

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Felix Smith's letter to Sen. Feinstein

Submitted: Feb 20, 2010
By: 
Badlands Journal editorial board

Felix Smith, retired US Fish & Wildlife biologist, discovered the deformed and death wildlife at Kesterson Wildlife Refuge in western Merced County that resulted in cessation of west-side drainage of selenium-laced agricultural waste water to that site. Smith is extremely well qualified to address the senator on issues of political interference with embattled federal scientists defending the public trust and environmental law and regulation. He's seen it all.

Badlands Journal editorial board

February 19, 2010

Honorable Dianne Feinstein – Senator

331 Hart Senate Office Building

Washington, D.C. 20510

 

Dear Senator Feinstein: 

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The F in California water policy

Submitted: Feb 18, 2010
By: 
Badlands Journal editorial board

...the first truth is that the liberty of democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism -- ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way to sustain an acceptable standard of living. -- President Frankin Delano Roosevelt, "Recommendations to the Congress to Curb Monopolies and the Concentration of Economic Power" (April 29, 1938), in Empire of Illusion, Chris Hedges, 2009, p.177.

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The Feinstein catastrophe -- she drank the ditch water

Submitted: Feb 12, 2010
By: 
Badlands Journal editorial board

Admittedly, there is an economic catastrophe in the San Joaquin Valley. In fact, it could be said that agribusiness has been an economic catastrophe for its workers for the past century. We would suggest that farm-worker unemployment on the west side is not much higher than normal for this time of the year. The main reason people are still working for western agribusiness today is the even more catastrophic economy of Mexico. Farmworkers on the west side have always faced "complete economic ruin without help." The entire political economy of agribusiness is to blame for that. To hear agribusiness and its political lackeys cry, "Lo, the poor farmworker," is scraping the bottom of the barrel of hypocrisy, credit and unsustainable farming.
Today, west-side towns are not the only places in the valley or in California where people are standing in bread lines.
California is not a breadbasket. It grows specialty fruits, nuts and vegetables. However, at times it has grown a great deal of grain, much of it dry farmed.

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Facts beneath our feet

Submitted: Feb 04, 2010
By: 
Bill Hatch

Last Sunday, I listened to a roundtable of learned talking heads on Meet the Press instantly agree with the assertion one of them made that of course the federal government could not actually create jobs.

Later that afternoon, I went out for a walk in Merced. It is difficult to walk anywhere in my neighborhood without seeing the familiar stamp in the sidewalk that reads either "WPA 1940" or "WPA 1941."

WPA stands for Works Progress Administration, one of the keystones of the New Deal. During the Great Depression the federal government created a great number of jobs. Chances are that if you are of a certain age, you will remember your father talking about his Civilian Conservation Corps or WPA job or work in other government programs. Hundreds of thousands of Americans, from all walks of life, were in fact employed by the federalgovernment to do work they already knew how to do but for which money was lacking due to the collapse of credit.

The Central Valley Soldier Settlement Act gave preferred rights to qualified veterans of WWII to purchase farm land irrigated by the Central Valley Project, funded by the federal government, along with low-interest loans from the government and banks That created much work for many people for years. Today, military expenditure in the US is more than the rest of the world combined. The resource wars are employing many people in the most resource-wasting activity known to man: war. 

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Agribusiness Giant Westlands Moves to Kill Salmon...Dan Bacher

Submitted: Feb 02, 2010
By: 
Badlands Journal editorial board
Indybay
Agribusiness Giant Westlands Moves to Kill Salmon...Dan Bacher...2-1-10  
Westlands Water District, the "Darth Vader of California water politics, is requesting a federal judge to order lifting restrictions on the operation of huge delta water pumps and canals from February through May, according to a news release from the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations and Water4Fish.
The move takes place as Westlands Water District, southern Calfornia water agencies, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the California Legislature are pushing for the construction of a peripheral canal and new dams to export more water from the California Delta. If the peripheral canal is built, it is likely to result in pushing Central Valley salmon, Delta smelt, longfin smelt, green sturgeon and other fish into the abyss of extinction.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/02/01/18636759.php
PRESS RELEASE
Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations
Water4Fish

For Immediate Release: February 1, 2010
Contact:
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Trotter-in-snout disease

Submitted: Jan 23, 2010
By: 
Badlands Journal editorial board

A shadow covers the Valley. It is in the shape of a fat, blue pig with its fronttrotter outstretched to receive cash from the rich to stuff it where the sun never shines.

Historically, the Blue Dogs were the logical outgrowth of the career of former Rep. Tony Coelho, D-Merced, who preceded Gary Condit and, more importantly, who was in the go-go Eighties the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign slush fund for the Party's candidates and incumbents in the House of Representatives. Coelho got nailed for his involvement with Michael Millken, Wall Street's junk-bond king, later convicted for felonies and sent to prison. Coelho resigned rather than face an investigation and went into investment banking. When, in the course of managing Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign, Coelho's "colorful" career was getting more media attention than his candidate's speeches, he resigned. An excellent study of Coelho's political career is Honest Graft, by Brooks Jackson.

The Blue Dogs have never stood for anything but money. They are no more than vultures feeding off the corpse of the Democratic Party. Coelho was at the funeral. Through the years, as the economy has grown steadily more concentrated in fewer hands, Blue Dogs dug deeper into the pockets of finance, insurance and real estate than ever, hiding as best they could from the people.

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A small price to pay

Submitted: Jan 16, 2010
By: 
Badlands Journal editorial board

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

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