Badlands Journal

"We were giving people false hope," Cardoza said. -- Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Pimlico Kid-Merced/Annapolis

Nobody was a more vocal booster for those false hopes out front and more engaged in backroom deals to benefit the real estate boom in the north San Joaquin Valley than Dennis Cardoza. He was of the little yapping Senorcito UC Merceds in the state Legislature and in Congress the author of three unsuccessful bills to gut the Endangered Species Act for the benefit of a handful of finance, insurance and real estate special interests in his district during the speculative real estate boom that has busted, catching tens of thousands of people in his district, who are now upside-down on their mortgages. Cardoza, his family and his social circle all benefitted from the speculation.

Since the real estate boom collapsed, Cardoza's public utterances have grown increasingly absurd. His attack on Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan is just one more example of his continual attempts to avoid the consequences of using his office to line his and his cronies' pockets.

Cardoza seems to think that HUD should be renamed HSD, Housing and Slurb Development.

Badlands Journal editorial board

"Stanislaus County is further through the process than the rest of California," said Sean O'Toole, whose company ForeclosureRadar tracks homes in mortgage default throughout the state. "We are going to continue to see a general decline in foreclosure activity there."

Americans have been jerked around by the rapid serial montages of the "news cycle" to the point where even Rep. Dennis Cardoza, the Pimlico Kid-Annapolis MD, believes he can foist the rhythm on us, mere constituents of His Greatness, with impunity.

So, the Great Pimlico Kid Himself, makes marks on the administration like the all-powerful legislative lion, which he isn't,  by introducing a bill to cut the travel budget of the secretary of HUD, like it makes a difference.

This would have been a far more useful story if the reporter had bothered to ask and record the answers to these simple questions: did the California Environmental Protection Agency investigate the allegations against Merced Irrigation District? What did it find? What enforcement action was or might be taken? A quote "cannot comment because of an ongoing investigation" from CEPA would have added a nice symetry to the story.

As it is, what we have is a brief report of a legal brief filed on behalf of an aggrieved employee of MID and a whole lot of reporter dodging by an agency that finds it extremely difficult to comply with a California Public Records Act request.

MID's latest managing director is a member of the family of an MID board member who doesn't pay her bills. Director Suzy Hulgren parlayed a few public rants against Riverside Motorsports Park promoter, John Condren, lies and financial double-dealing into a seat on the board, with the help of the Merced County Farm Bureau and California Women for Agriculture. She was, however, unsuccessful as the frontwoman for the farm bureau and CWA in the attempt to bankrupt her partners in the RMP lawsuit, San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center and Protect Our Water, or to financially damage two law firms, Don E. Mooney and Associates and Sproul and Troost, who represented the petitioners against the race track project.

Those vaguely worded ballot measures can come back to haunt you.

We've noticed, driving around Merced and Stanislaus counties these days, that everything seems to be owned or controlled by bankers somewhere else. We wish we had a prize -- an award for real and sustained public service -- to offer J.N. Sbranti of the Modesto Bee, whose great coverage of complex financial issues in this area that has been shining a strong light since the speculative real estate boom began to go soft. We've appended a brief history of the Orrick law firm (from its website) below because the name Orrick has been associated with public bonds in California for a very long time.

Badlands Journal editorial board

We received the following comment the other day about our posting on Sheldon Wolin's Democracy Inc.:

It's never been nor will it ever be a democracy.
"If voting made a difference it would be illegal." --Emma Goldman

Considering the source, we found the comment curious. The writer is listed as a supporter of the Merced County Citizen's right to vote on expansion of residential areas initiative, which, on its face and in its propaganda, appears to express the deepest faith in democracy.

The initiative was peddled in a petition drive in front of Merced County supermarkets as "The Initiative to Amend the General Plan of Merced County to Save Farmland and Open Spaces." Petition gatherers were provided a slick "summary" of the initiative that said it would save Merced County farmland and open space. In other written propaganda and public appearances, the paid and unpaid flacks for the initiative have stressed how "simple" the initiative is and how it will save farmland.

Porky Stables

On June 17, residents of the 18th congressional district of California were informed by McClatchy Chain local outlets that a new star was rising in the world of horse racing, Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Pimlico Kid-Merced.

"I think it's actually a brilliant opinion in that it finally says we have to look at the big picture here, and not that endangered species trump everything," said Roger Marzulla, a Washington, D.C., lawyer who frequently sues the federal government over endangered species rules. "Don't we have to take some other things into consideration here?"
Others question the logic of requiring scrutiny of species protection rules under a second environmental law.

"It doesn't make any sense to do environmental analysis on the back end when you're trying to help the environment," said Holly Doremus, a professor at UC Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law. "What he's (Federal Court Justice Oliver Wanger) saying is the agencies have to find absolutely the least burdensome way to save the species." -- Contra Costa Times, 6-14-10

We have taken "the big picture" for, in Bob Marley's words, "four hundred years," during which the species were offered absolutely no way to avoid massive destruction at the hands of an economic (and legal system) that was "absolutely" into "absolute" exploitation of natural resources, species, and anything else on which a profit could be made.

This article, written two days before the Primary Elections, suggests something that only campaign finance reports not yet published can verify. It might explain how two candidates went into the last weekend of the campaign for the 19th Congressional District essentially even, and one of them won by 10 points the following Tuesday. The thesis is that the candidate to whom one Indian casino donated heavily defeated two candidates who expressed the view that another tribe in the vicinity ought to have a "fair hearing" on its application to build an "off-reservation" casino on Highway 99, a site more advantageous than the casino that funded the winner. This logic in turn rests on at least two other assumptions. First, it assumes the sprawling district, which includes the central Sierra and parts of three Valley counties, is in any sense politically coherent other than its dominant Republican registration. It assumes the Republican electorate of the district can be swayed by the largest quantity of political propaganda. And it assumes that slot-machine players from metropolitan areas in Central California have become major players an election regardless of how far out of their thoughts that campaign was at the time they dropped the money in the casino.

Badlands Journal editorial board

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Our Hun, a man of action tragically restrained by mere government throughout his political career, has decided to build a "demonstration"

high speed rail link between LA and San Diego.

"...Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn't want to wait that long to give the state a taste of the European-style system..."

Baloney. Our Hun just wants to put his hand on the transformer and run a great big electric train somewhere in California before he retires.

Boosters for a high speed railroad from Los Angeles to San Francisco have been hustling federal funds for this train, claiming that it will be the longest, fastest high speed railroad in the nation and will produce hundreds of thousands of new jobs all along its route. We aren't quite clear on how permanent these jobs will be, but if this boon to employment were to arrive, it would no doubt draw even more people into the state and probably go some way to reinflating the speculative real estate bubble. In part the high speed rail would be a great benefit for commuters to the Bay Area from the Valley, which is why it has such ardent supporters among Valley cities with abundant empty homes for sale, cheap, and official unemployment rates around 20 percent.

There is contention over parts of the route and as usual with recent schemes like new University of California campuses and railroad boondoggles, Merced, which already has two major track systems running through it, is at the center of it.