Badlands Journal

Mayor Stan Thurston, who heard about the report from his aviation business partner, agreed it's difficult to find a job in Merced. He said there are jobs available, but people don't have the right training. As an example, he pointed to the high number of agriculture-based jobs in the county with few people qualified to work them.

Councilwoman Mary-Michal Rawling agreed that education, or a lack of it, is at the heart of the issue. "It's all about education. We need to be sure our residents are getting the education they really need to have good, sustainable careers,"she said.

(Councilman) Murphy said UC Merced will play a big role in turning the situation on its head. "UC Merced will be a key to long-rangesuccess. Integrating the university and its graduates into our local economy, in a way that hasn't quite happened yet, willbe important for the community to move forward." -- "Merced County at top of magazine's 'worst' list," Merced Sun-Star, Jan.24, 2012

The award, which comes with a grant of $473,797 over five years, will pay for the tuition of two of Yang's graduate students as well as research equipment. --

"UC Merced professor earns six-figure payoff
Research project a winner," Merced Sun-Star, Jan. 24, 2012

"I know what you're thinking about," said Tweedledum; "but it isn't so, nohow."

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't.

That's logic." -- Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

 We found it necessary to consult this primary text in logic to attempt to "parse" (even to robustly and proactively parse") the following statement from the desk of our very own White Queen, Dianne Feinstein, senior US Senator for California:

Because California can't store enough water during wet years to compensate for dry years, transferring water is a criticaltool to help provide farmers, businesses and residential areas with a dependable water supply.--US Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Sacramento Bee, Jan. 17, 2012.

Within the primary unexamimed assumption, "Because California can't store enough water during wet years to compensate for dry years," there is another fundamental assumption, "California" itself.

1-11-12

Merced Sun-Star

Dry January raises concern over drought in northern California…Matt Weiser

http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2012/01/11/v-print/2186343/dry-january-raises-concern-over.html

The dreaded D-word – "drought" – is back on the tongues of many Californians now that a dry December has crawled into a dry January.

A dry December is not that unusual. But a dry January – well along into winter and usually the state's wettest month – is another matter.

"What is unusual is that it just hangs on and on and on," said Maury Roos, chief hydrologist at the California Department of Water Resources, noting it will be hard to recover from the missed January storms.

"It's not impossible, but it's quite unlikely we'll make it back to normal before the end of the season," Roos said.

Sacramento has had no rain since Dec. 15, and only a trace on that day: 0.07 inches.

Lake Tahoe – so dependent on snowfall for its winter economy – has fared just as badly. South Lake Tahoe has seen no measurable precipitation since Nov. 20, according to National Weather Service data.

University of California student "occupiers" are calling for the 1% who sit on the UC Board of Regents to pay for the rising costs of UC education.

But, where to begin? How do we fairly apportion the costs among the millionaire regents?

A place to begin would be to seize every dime US Senator Dianne Feinstein ahd her husband, UC Board of Regents Chairman Richard Blum have made from information their privieged positions have allowed them to gather for unfair business advantage.

Badlands Journal editorial board

11-27-11

Sacramento Bee

Anti-Wall Street protests planned at UC meeting…Terence Chea, Associated Press

http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/27/v-print/4082613/anti-wall-street-protests-planned.html

We can hardly wait to see how UC flaks its way out of this one. Prof. Nathan Brown is to be congratulated for writing clear language any Eglish speaker can understand to one of the biggest bullies in this state, the University of California, its campus shock troops and its legions of propagandists.

Badlands Journal editorial board

11-21-11
Change.org
Police Pepper-Spray Peaceful UC Davis Students: Ask Chancellor Katehi to Resign!
http://www.change.org/petitions/police-pepper-spray-peaceful-uc-davis-students-ask-chancellor-katehi-to-resign

Join University of California at Davis Assistant Professor Nathan Brown in calling for the resignation of UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi for her failure to protect UC Davis student's First Amendment right to assemble, or even their physical safety.

Nathan Brown's Open Letter To The Chancellor is below:

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi,

IF you don't read another article on the environment over the holidays, we suggest you might read this terrific piece on Alternet by Tara Lohan about the five most toxic energy companies.

The basic scenario in the "free" market on energy supplies is that huge energy corporations, mining and pumping increasingly scarce raw energy materials, which command escalating market prices producing astronomical profits, have now bought a culture in which it is expected that regulatory agencies, legislators and judges in the highest courts are bought and sold. We have seen how these companies have created something so much larger than the individual acts of corruption that compose it, that we must call it the culture itself -- the plutocracy, a culture in which society, economics and government are all arranged for the primary benefit of the rich, with less and less apology as the plutocracy matures and putrifies, giving off a stench that is the reason for the occupation movement from Wall Street outward across the country. The economy created by the rich stinks so much it cannot even employ the people of the host nations it seeks to suck dry of all wealth.

We urge everyone to read this excellent survey of these energy companies at work on the ground killing their employees and destroying the environment and in the halls of Congress killing laws to protect workers and the environment. The posting here is just the first page.

Badlands Journal editorial board

11-12-11

CBS 60 Minutes

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-250_162-57324034/pelosi-defends-record-after-60-minutes-report/

11-12-11

San Francisco Chronicle

Below are three articles about Iran that, read together, make up a serious, informative debate -- in a time when two parties vie titles in venality and idiocy -- on the issue of whether the US should invade that country or not. While this is not the usual Badlands Journal fare, in general it is everyone's fare.

BadlandsJournal editorial board

10-17-11
Washington Post
The alarm bells behind Iran’s alleged assassination plot
By Richard Cohen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-alarm-bells-behind-irans-alleged-assassination-plot/2011/10/17/gIQAhw5YsL_print.html

A mere moment or two after the Obama administration announced it had discovered and thwarted a plot by Iran to kill Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States by bombing a Washington restaurant, the doubters started to air their doubts. Columnists and experts, even some columnists who were not experts, said the Iranians would never be so sloppy as to commit a virtual act of war by setting off a bomb in the nation’s capital. The alleged plot was crazy, they said. I agree. But so is Iran.

What we like about this article from the Bakersfield Californian is that, with the possible exception of mentions of truck pollution being reduced by the High-speed rail system, there is no undigested propaganda in it. This is probably because for Bakersfield, air pollution is a very serious matter, in fact an “existential threat” to the elderly and to the young. In Merced, which stands to get a rail station out of the deal that would radically increase the value of downtown real estate, the official position in the press is that high-speed rail is the best thing since UC Merced, Mom’s apple pie and sliced bread (because it promises to renovate downtown Merced, which has languished for decades in the hands of greedy, do-nothing landlords.

Badlands Journal editorial board

The history of radiation accidents testifies that governments routinely betray their citizens in deference to their nuclear weapons program and the nuclear industry. No, only one alternative is open to the people of Japan. They must become proactive. They must seize the initiative and wrest control from government and industry of the “perception” of the catastrophe.  -- Paul Zimmerman, Sept. 27, 2011
 

 

9-27-11
Global Ressearch
Fukushima and the Battle for Truth
Large sectors of the Japanese population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination
by Paul Zimmerman
 

Fukushima’s nuclear disaster is a nightmare. Ghostly releases of radioactivity haunt the Japanese countryside. Lives, once safe, are now beset by an ineffable scourge promising vile illness and death.

Large sectors of the population are accumulating significant levels of internal contamination, setting the stage for a public health tragedy.

A subtle increase in the number of miscarriages and fetal deaths will be the first manifestation that something is amiss. An elevated incidence of birth defects will begin in the Fall and continue into the indefinite future. Thyroid diseases, cardiac diseases and elevated rates of infant and childhood leukemia will follow. Over the next decade and beyond, cancer rates will soar.