July 2008

Governmental activity

At the end of Joseph Kanon's The Good German (Picador, 2001), there is an interview with the author. The interviewer asks Kanon, whose novel superbly depicts the labyrith of bureaucracies among Allied Armed Forces in the first weeks of the occupation of Berlin at the end of WWII:

As a writer whose work often centers on shrouded governmental activity, do you consider yourself prone to conspiracy theories?

"Chinatown" and "Day of the Locust"-level flak

The drama! The panic! The fear! Visions of people dying of thirst in yet-unnamed Southern California suburbs. Millions of acres of farm crops disked under.

DROUGHT!

At the Monday meeting in Los Banos with farmers, Bureau of Reclamation staff and Rep. Jim Costa is reported to have said that California has a perfectly good water system for 20 million people, the problem being that we have now around 38 million people and rising.

Vote No on Measure A Tax Flyer 2

URGENT URGENT URGENT URGENT URGENT URGENT URGENT

A flyer against the Merced County Transportation Tax Measure A appeared in the Merced Sun-Star Monday morning. We have included it below and attached it to this message.

We urge you to read and share these flyers with Merced County residents before the Primary Election on Tuesday, June 6.

Cardoza and bees

What if bees were declared an endangered species?

Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture
Dennis A. Cardoza, (D-CA) Chairman
Jurisdiction: fruits and vegetables; honey and bees; marketing and promotion orders; plant pesticides, quarantine, adulteration of seeds, and insect pests; and organic agriculture.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Thursday, March 29, 2007 Media Contact:
April Demert Slayton (202) 225-6872
april.slayton@mail.house.gov

Sunshine on RMP

Badlands is declaring the coming days a Sunshine Week to post a number of documents submitted to Merced County government in the last few months. Some of these documents have been included in the official packets of information for Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings. Others have been suppressed.

Hey, Sunshine, Have a glorious day!

Badlands is declaring the coming days a Sunshine Week to post a number of documents submitted to Merced County government in the last few months. Some of these documents have been included in the official packets of information for Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings. Others have been suppressed.

Badlands declares Sunshine Week

Badlands is declaring the coming days a Sunshine Week to post a number of documents submitted to Merced County government in the last few months. Some of these documents have been included in the official packets of information for Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings. Others have been suppressed.

Opposition letter to Merced Board of Supervisors re: Proposed Minor Subdivision Application/Parcel Map Waiver No. MS07-058 (Chri

Badlands is declaring the coming days a Sunshine Week to post a number of documents submitted to Merced County government in the last few months. Some of these documents have been included in the official packets of information for Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings. Others have been suppressed.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service comments on Minor Subdivision Application Number MS07-058 [Parcel Map Waiver] – Chris Robinson; r

Badlands is declaring the coming days a Sunshine Week to post a number of documents submitted to Merced County government in the last few months. Some of these documents have been included in the official packets of information for Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings. Others have been suppressed.

Applicant attorneys' unofficial reply to Raptor/POW letter

Badlands is declaring the coming days a Sunshine Week to post a number of documents submitted to Merced County government in the last few months. Some of these documents have been included in the official packets of information for Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission meetings. Others have been suppressed.

For lack of a titled nobility

For lack of a titled nobility

We just have no noble titles available for global liars who slaughter other peoples’ children; our deteriorated democracy has no proper social reward for the size of their whoppers, spouting geysers of innocent blood.

Bill Hatch
Oct. 31, 2005

God, law and politics in Merced

I didn’t like this lead in an Oct. 20 story in the Merced Sun-Star.

Two former Merced County lawmen took center stage Wednesday at a state law enforcement change of command ceremony held at the Christian Life Center.

I assumed it was factual and that the event actually took place. It is only in the ninth graph in the story that state Attorney General Bill Lockyer sneaked in, as if from the basement:

Following a traditional Division of Law Enforcement saber change, Oules was administered the oath of office by the attorney general.

The ownership political economy

Karl Rove, “Bush’s brain,” wanted to send the American economy back to his personal golden age, the McKinley administration, when Cleveland businessman Marcus Hannah played the role of “McKinley’s brain,” encouraging the obscene enrichment of big business trusts as Rove, Bush and Cheney have done for corporations like Halliburton, Bechtel, Enron, etc. McKinley started the Spanish-American, our first major, extra-territorial imperial war. In retrospect, it makes sense they were talking about invading Iraq long before 9/11.

Mood swings

Planning in Merced, since the University of California first cast its greedy eyes on a large donation of seasonal pastureland north of the county seat, has been dominated by one agenda: the transfer of large rural properties to developer ownership. This is not to say that a number of other things haven’t happened, but the dominant agenda has been this phenomenon: the willing sale of ranch and farmland to developers.

Wall Street and the GMOs

This is the best article on the GMO situation in months, from the Wall Street Journal. Wall Street may be asking some pointed questions about agricultural biotechnology at the moment, as market resistance shows no signs of fading and billions in investment go to pay biotech corporate lawyers, lobbyists and propagandists.

Hearst v. UC

In California, you still don’t want to get the Hearsts too angry with you. The arrogance and often ludicrous propaganda of the University of California has been for years more than a match for state Legislature committees and Congress, but apparently it has finally managed to irritate the Hearsts. There are rules, after all, and at least some newspapers will eventually get fed up with a diet of pure flak from a university.

McClatchy salsa

Salsa McClatchy Badlands Journal replies to Sacramento Bee editorial on Pombo Bill Hatch -- Nov. 2, 2005 The Sacramento Bee editorial, Pombo mambo, actually looks like the McClatchy Co. going after a bad actor in Congress, one of DeLay’s wretched little henchmen, while the Hammer is back in Texas under indictment for illegal campaign funding. Although green is not really McClatchy’s color, like any good editorial, Pombo mambo provokes thought. For example, how can Sacramento Bee editorialists mention Pombo’s Gut-the-ESA bill without mentioning its co-author, Rep.

Are mergers and acquisitions the best path to public health in California?

Are mergers and acquisitions the best path to public health in California?
Novartis never left

Bill Hatch – Nov. 5, 2005

At a county health clinic in Merced last week, hundreds of people, mostly elderly, waited for about an hour, in and out of doors, for their flu shots, made available for $2 due to a law authored by Valley Assemblyman John Thurman, D-Modesto, years ago. We quipped in the line that no one not old enough to remember John belonged in the line.

We were lucky, according to the Sacramento Bee Nov. 5 story, Flu-shot supplies lagging for US:

UC prestige and opulence

“UC gets $8 million to study San Joaquin Valley's bad air...” (1) trumpets this morning’s Fresno Bee. Variously called “the most” or “one of the most” polluted air basins in the nation, depending on the month or the intent of the writer, San Joaquin Valley air is bad, Fresno’s childhood asthma rate is four times the national average, and things aren’t getting any better.

Badlands predicted several years ago that UC Merced would be picking up grants to study this public health issue, which is also becoming an agricultural productivity issue – because it was perfectly predictable.

Border canal seepage

The US/Mexican border is a place generally despised by the interiors of both nations. The general idea is that the border is to be exploited for whatever you can get out of it.