August 2012

The Stockton conturbation

Stockton CA is making news ever since it declared it wouls seek bankruptcy protection a few weeks ago. Assured Guaranty, the  Burmuda based insurance company that insures Stockton's bonds against default is livid because the city is "stiffing bondholders to give preferential treatment to employees and CalPERS.
The company called that 'a contortion of the bankruptcy rocess.'" Sacramento Bee, Aug. 3, 2010.

Boondoggle, thy name is high speed rail

The drooling lunacy of high speed rail "planning" goes on. Would it be possible to find anywhere along even the allegedly rural route of the San Joaquin Valley, where more disruption and possibly more heavy equipment could be employed than in changing the vast underpass of Highwy 99 through the center of one of the valley's moe substantial burgs, Fresno (population 943,000)?
One of America's favorite old expressions, culled from bitter experience with the 19th century barony of finance, insurance and real estate, is, "This is no way to build a railroad."

One question for the Adam family and the DA

Since Candace Adam-Medefind took control of Healthy House, how much public funding for the non-profit has ended up in the campaign coffers of Adam Gray, son of Ms. Adam-Medefind and the Democratic Party candidate for state Assembly in the 21st district? The employees claim she is paying her husband, former Chairman of the Merced County Democratic Central Committee Mark Medefind for janitorial and PR services to Healthy House. Medefind claims he has donated his time to the non-profit. Is she diverting funds from Healthy House to him to work on his stepson's campaign?

It's been hot back East

Tt was not so long ago when Carol Tomlinson-Keasey, the Cowgirl Chancellor of UC Merced, in deference to finance, insurance and real estate profiteers using the campus as the anchor tenant for the absurdly destructive building boom, said she refused to use the term "global warming," and, induer administration orders and using the "best science," called it "climate change" instead.

Cardoza resigns: Good riddance

We don't know how you fell but we loathe people who blame their children in front of others for their own failures, and we despise Dennis Cardoza for blaming his children in front of the entire national media (or whoever would be interested in anything this fat, little slimebag did) for quitting his congressional seat before his term expired to take a job with the Manatt firm of bottom-feeding lobbyists for more money, The job was no doubt arranged for Cardoza by Tony "Honest Graft" Coelho, an old friend of the firm dating back to the days when Ol' Honest ran the Democratic Congressional Ca

Public Trust is missing on water

In the lengthy compilation below you will find much fine insight, invective, wit, humor and history on water in California, as fascinating and horrifying to us Californians as the drug trade. The whole story is like a dark novel in which we are living and no one doubts that it will all end worse than we can imagine.
Jerry wants to get shit done. But, as one homeowner activist from LA put it, what would you say to a contractor who proposed building you a new house but didn't have either a blueprint or a budget?

Biological whores caught with their knickers down

Restore The Delta
Finding faults…RTDJess
http://www.restorethedelta.org/cant-find-my-way-home/
Most recent discussion of earthquake risk in the Delta have been based on the Delta Risk Management Strategy (DRMS). DRMS was prepared by consultants (URS Corporation) for the Department of Water Resources.
Experts disagree about many of the findings in DRMS, which assumes five Delta fault systems.

Wayang* on the Delta

* Javanese shadow-puppet theatre

"It's just money," people say. But reading this article, one recalls that money talks.

Multi-layered escape from responsibility

Somewhere in an arid state to the east someone is figuring out the odds on a levee break in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. And the latest move by the US Army Corps of Engineers reported below may alter the morning line on the Great Delta Collapse.

As water pressure falls in the City of Merced ...

While we are deeply moved by UC Merced's trendy research in the Sierra, we would be happier if it would get its water and sewage serv ice somewhere other then the City of Merced because, noticeably  after the return of the Little Darlings for more instruction on campus, the water pressure took another dive in town.
And, to ask again: Has UC Merced ever paid for the pipes and hook up outside the city limits provided by the City  Council?
 
Badlands Journal editorial board
 
8-29-12
Merced Sun-Star