Badlands Journal

The great bubble brains among us are buying signatures this spring for a November initiative that would suspend AB 32, California's global warming law, until the state's unemployment rate dropped below 5.5 percent. The unemployment rate, now at 12.4 percent, has not dipped below 5.5 percent since September 2007, when the speculative real estate bubble was popping, with a sound heard round the world.
The game is to blame environmental law and regulation for popping the real estate bubble. The game is to blame environmental law and regulation for what finance, insurance and real estate special interests did to the entire global economy.
Many subdivisions in this state were built by wholesale corruption of the enforcement of environmental law and regulation. Environmental law and regulation aren't foreclosing on peoples' homes.
The plutocrats who pillaged this economy are afraid that economic pain is waking people up to the massive political fraud that was the handmaiden every step of the way down. So, they hope to start a big fight among the citizens and watch the circus from their box seats as the people fight over imaginary bread.

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: 

...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.

After this US Supreme Court decision, maybe the corporations will buy Sarah Palin the White House just because they can.-- eds.

1-21-10
Leagle.com
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: The Stevens Dissent
Opinion of STEVENS, J.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 08–205
CITIZENS UNITED, APPELLANT v. FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSION
ON APPEAL FROM THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
January 21, 2010

Citizens United v. FEC, January 16, 2008
http://www.leagle.com/unsecure/page.htm?shortname=citizens_united_v_fec_stevens

JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG, JUSTICE BREYER, and JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR join, concurring in part and dissenting in part.

1-15-10

CounterPunch Newsleter

1-15-10
Stockton Record
Look out below...Alex Breitler
http://blogs.esanjoaquin.com/san-joaquin-river-delta/2010/01/14/look-out-below/
Golfer Kyle Bowers of Stockton got a birdie Thursday. But not the kind he wanted.
Bowers had just arrived at the sixth hole of The Reserve at Spanos Park early Thursday afternoon when he ducked into the bathroom, a Porta Potty-like facility with a tank.
He lifted the toilet seat and was about to do his guy thing when he saw a face staring back at him.
The ghost-like face of a terrified barn owl.
“Oh my gosh… what is that?” he thought.
It was pretty dark in there, but Bowers could see the owl bobbing its head around. He quickly guessed that the owl had gone down an unscreened vent from the roof to the tank, and couldn’t find its way back out.
For some reason, nature was no longer calling. So Bowers started calling for help.
Just reach in there and grab the bird from the back, someone told him. No way, he said, fearing the owl would whip its head around and gash his hands with its beak.
He told the cart lady who sells drinks. She didn’t know what to do. The front desk wasn’t much more help.
“I’ll be honest, the golf course didn’t want to do anything,” Bowers said.

ProPublica's Unemployment Insurance Tracker reveals that California is the largest among 25 states in the category of bankrupt unemployment insurance funds. Currently, according to ProPublica, the state has borrowed $6.5 billion from the federal government, has $113.8 million in the trust fund now and ProPublica predicts the state will be insolvent in six months. No other borrowing state has borrowed more than $1.5 billion (Indiana).

These numbers are a gauge of several factors: the price California pays for being the largest state; the over-concentration on one industry which, having been manipulated by the'big banksters, has laid off huge numbers of people -- from framers to tellers in formercommunity  banks -- a catastrophy that has devastated the entire economy, down to what you choose to buy your grandchild at WalMart, who goes to the farmers market these days, and everything in between. The economy has been contracting since before Obama took office.

As pressure builds on the unemployment insurance fund, as debt on the borrowing comes due, what will be the impact on benefits and the impact -- given the state's other billions in debt -- on the state's ability to remain a solvent government?

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

Everything about state Sen. Lois Wolk's career, from teaching high school, Davis City councilwoman and mayor, Yolo County supervisor, and assemblywoman before becoming senator expresses one overwhelming focu -- care; care for disadvantaged people, the sick, and the human and natural communities connected to the San Joaquin Delta. Even when under enormous, unfair and shameful attack from fellow politicians like our governor, the Hun, and state Sen. Darrell Steinberg, Twerp-Sacramento, she has responded with measured critique and a completely classy defense -- not of herself, but the communities and natural resources she represents.

Cal Poly Professor Robert Rutherford and UC Berkeley Journalism Professor Michael Pollan are critics of agribusiness.

When Sen. Wolk discovered that a backroom deal between the Hun, Steinberg, Westlands Water District and Metropolitan had rewritten a bill to create a Delta Conservancy she had authored, she withdrew her name from it.

When Harris Ranch, one of Westlands largest landholders, discovered that Pollan would speak at Cal Poly and that Rutherford was teaching a course called "Issues in Animal Agriculture and -- even worse -- offended a Harris corporate suit by "unsolicited" comments that he thought water should be withdrawn from Westlands, Harris has threatened not to contribute $500 million to Cal Poly.