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

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

 

Flak, propaganda, public relations, political campaign messaging -- there are a hundred names for what millions of dollars of broadcasted lies can do to public memory. We are going to get another dose of it this spring in the Proposition 16 campaign, the purpose of which is to make it practically impossible for any local government to establish a public power utility.

If, however, the public can manage to hold onto enough sanity to remember that distant time nine years ago, known as the Energy Crisis of 2001, people might recall noticing that the localities served by municipal power utilities did not experience nearly as much disruption of electricity services as did the areas served by Pacific Gas & Electric Co.,Southern California Edison and San Diego Gas and Electric. To keep energy flowing that year, the state spent down its $12 billion surplus to a multi-billion deficit buying long-term energy contracts and has been in debt ever since. Now the creators of the deregulation of utilities in California want the icing on the cake -- no possibility of any future competition from municipal power.

Prop. 16 stinks.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

1-15-10

CounterPunch Newsleter

In the Democratic Party primary race for governor of Oregon, former Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury is proposing a state bank modeled on the Bank of North Dakota. Historically, Oregon has provided good ideas to its sluggish southern neighbor, for example recall, initiative and referendum.

Badlands JOurnal editorial board

1-20-10

KATU.com

Bill Bradbury dreams of a Bank of Oregon
http://www.katu.com/news/local/82197232.html
This challenger for the 2010 Oregon Governor race on Wednesday calls for the creation of a Bank of Oregon "to keep Oregon money in Oregon and grow Oregon-based businesses."
PORTLAND, Ore. – At a presentation Wednesday in downtown Portland, a challenger for the 2010 Oregon Governor race called for the creation of a Bank of Oregon "to keep Oregon money in Oregon and grow Oregon-based businesses."

“It is time to declare economic sovereignty from the multi-national banks that are responsible for much of our current economic crisis," declared Democrat Bill Bradbury. "It is time to keep Oregon money here in Oregon working for Oregonians.”