July 2006

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;

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.

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
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Attachment:

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
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The obstruction of an initiative to stop residential growth in unincorporated Stanislaus County appears to mean that the power of developers and rural landowners trumps the legitimate initiative process. Letters from the Modesto Chamber of Commerce (the developers) and the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau (landowners), which represent a small fraction of the number of the 16,000 people who signed petitions to support the initiative, were enough to send the county Board of Supervisors down devious legalistic paths to frustrate the public voice.

Last week the Merced County Association of Governments decided to put Measure A, the transportation sales tax defeated in June, back on the ballot in November, despite a poll that indicated it might not do any better then than it did either in June or in 2002. The MCAG, composed of all five supervisors and one elected official for each of the six incorporated cities in the county, in their judgment overrode the poll results, declaring that the November election will draw more voters than the primary did. The Merced Sun-Star opined without attribution that:

Richard Byrd, who in 2004 sold a piece of property to the sheriff who was incarcerating him and the district attorney who was prosecuting him, recently filed a federal suit against the Atwater policeman who arrested and charged him, the sheriff, the DA, their real estate partners (which included Greg Hostetler, owner of Ranchwood Homes), his former attorney and Salvadori Realty for damages arising from violations of the federal civil rights and labor codes.