Badlands Journal
Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
The Republican race between Pete McCloskey, R-Lodi, and RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, is worth a great deal more attention than it is getting. When rightwing flaks were babbling on about "progressive Republicans" when they were busy replacing Gray Davis with the Hun, I went on an interesting search one day in the state Capitol.
I was into the County Administration Building today with another active citizen to look into what the County Counsel’s office had produced on a California Public Records Act request.
We were examining the documents and discussing them in a conference room. The conversation with the assistant counsel was going pleasantly, in fact in such a civilized fashion I was beginning to become disoriented and a little dizzy.
Only for a moment, however.
Facing the peril of potential flooding of many new subdivisions built on flood plains, Assemblyman Dave Jones, D-Sacramento, introduced a bill to make it mandatory for homeowners to buy federal flood insurance for homes built where there is an annual one-in-200 chance of flooding. Presently, the state is on the hook for flood damage. Jones' bill required mortgage lenders to make certain homebuyers had flood insurance.
Water's high and the visioning is easy
So cry, l'il baby
Things done gone awry.Anonymous
Locke CA
Our governor, the Hun, and the Democratic leaders of the state Legislature, who recently failed to pass an infrastructure bond to finance the public works projects the state needs to catch up with its speculative real estate mania, hand-in-hand this week, are ennunciating a new California vision on how to combat global warming. They're going to "break from the Sacramento gridlock" and lead the nation.
Lydia Miller, President
San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center
P.O. Box 778
Merced, CA 95341
Steve Burke
Protect Our Water
3105 Yorkshire Lane
Modesto CA 95350
County of Merced
2222 “M” Street
Merced, CA 95340
(209) 385-7654
(209) 726-1710 Fax
Dee Tatum
Chief Administrative Officer
ceo@data.co.merced.ca.us
Robert Lewis
Director of Planning and Economic Development
rlewis@co.merced.ca.us
At their June 13 meeting, supervisors will take a vote on one of five options for how to handle developer-driven growth. Those options range from leaving the system as it is to enforcing a moratorium on any growth that requires changing the general plan. – Chris Collins, Merced Sun-Star, April 12, 2006
Representatives Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, and George Radanovich, Bankrupt Winemaker-Mariposa, are proposing a National Agricultural Science Center for Modesto and have introduced a bill in Congress for funding. They argue that because Modesto has produced more ag politicians since World War II than any other city in the US, Modesto deserves this national center.
We used to have some self-respect and pride in the Valley. We worked hard, weren’t rich, but were deeply involved in our communities, in our agriculture, our economy, and in our environment.
The greatest threat to that self-respect – based on a sense of reality and truth – that we have ever seen is UC Merced-Pomboza. And all that is pathetically distorted about this land scheme masquerading as a university is epitomized in its first “Family-Oriented Fairy Shrimp Festival” to be held on Earth Day, Saturday, April 22.
… but you can’t.
Yes, you’d like to believe a prominent local businessman whose opinions are almost professionally written and with great authority and the appearance of logic and reason.
But, I think it would be unwise to take a recent letter in the Merced Sun-Star, “Keep to linear plan,” (April 12) at face value.
It begins, as we often do begin our analyses in the Valley, with a mythical Golden Age of universal harmony:
Americans too young to remember the Vietnam War or those who have an iron-clad case of amnesia do not know how bad a really rotten war can get on the home front of the invader, passing over the millions of the invaded such wars kill. You are only beginning to get a taste of it. An immeasurable aid to national complacency about the Iraq Disaster is that it is being fought be other peoples’ children, almost exclusively from the nation’s less fashionable, less politically influential neighborhoods.
One of the nation's greatestest Christians, William Sloan Coffin, died a week ago and the eulogies have been coming, one by one, from the great people whose lives he touched. We're thankful for the blogs of conscience -- CommonDreams, Truthout, Counterpunch, and others -- for making them so easily and generally available.
----Gary McMillen
3 April 2006
Central Valley Safe Environment Network
P.O. Box 64
Merced, CA. 95341
cvsen@sbcglobal.net
Senior Officers of The McClatchy Company
PL49-GP Update Polices
May 2, 2006
Merced County Board of Supervisors’ Agenda Item # 55
(Transcribed from Board Agenda for May 2, 2006 – BH, April 29, 2006)
TO: BOARD OF SUPERVISORS
THROUGH: DEMITRIOS O. TATUM, COUNTY EXECUTIVE OFFICER
FROM: ROBERT A. LEWIS, DEVELOPMENT SERVICES DIRECTOR
SUBJECT: General Plan Amendment Policy and Procedures during the General Plan Update
Badlands owes the community an apology. We published a letter to the McClatchy board of directors last week that complained about an article in the Merced Sun-Star some Valley citizens found extremely offensive to Hispanic neighbors, friends, Mexico and Hispanic culture in general.