Welcome To Badlands Journal

The other revelation is that being highly educated was no guarantee of sharing in the benefits of economic growth. There’s a persistent myth, perpetuated by economists who should know better — like Edward Lazear, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers — that rising inequality in the United States is mainly a matter of a rising gap between those with a lot of education and those without. But census data show that the real earnings of the typical college graduate actually fell in 2004. – Paul Krugman, July 14, 2006
-----------------------

The land speculation that has set in on Merced County has turned men into pigs. It seems that one of the parallel phenomena to real estate speculation in the county was a renewed focus on "leadership." Suddenly, everybody was talking about "leadership." "Leadership" got as popular as huge, oversized, flipping real estate investment, stacking water allotments on the west side, and gutting the federal Endangered Species Act.

Lord save us from "leadership" like this.

Bill Hatch
-------------------------------------------------
Attachment:

This is an excellent review of a book on a very important topic. How government resource agency biologists choose to look at their work -- as conservation vocation or as agency career -- does determine, daily, how the war to conserve and protect the environment and the laws enacted to conserve and protect it is conducted.

Throughout the borders of the Central Valley where cattle graze, although the great fields of vernal pools in pasturelands are being illegally taken, individuals and groups are finding positive ways to work together to try to stop the destruction of this unique ecology, home to a number of endangered and threatened species, essential for groundwater storage, open space that does not contribute to air pollution, and productive cattle land.

We include a several pieces:

"Easy on the land," by Glen Martin, San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 2006;