If Jonah, rather than going to Nineveh to preach repentance, had gone to Stanislaus County CA and set up outside the Gallo Center in Modesto, and the county, like Nineveh, had not been destroyed after his fervent preachings, the Lord might have given him roughly the same excuse:  You expected  me to destroy a half a million people and all those nuts?
 

Whether by intention or incompetence, the variously named plans – Merced Water Supply Plan (all phases), Merced Groundwater Basin Groundwater Management Plan, Merced Irrigation District Groundwater Management Plan, and Regional Groundwater Management Plan – are incomprehensible to the public, alleged beneficiaries of them, even to a public as familiar with such documents as we are.

 But what god would care to come down to the Valley to turn wine into water? -- blj
 
2-15-14
Yahoonews.com
Calif. wine-grape growers celebrate bumper crop

 We are absolutely delighted that the EPA is launching a NEW TOOL “to Estimate Emissions Benefits of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy Policies‏.” We also see it as yet another example that great profit center so frequently touted as a reason for our own “public research university” in Merced – “high-tech/bio-tech engine a’ growth,” as the UC executives put it. In this arena, there seems to be a potent mixture of public funds, regulatory non-enforcement, and university research-for-(economic) growth.

And he did it all without once quoting the dreary professoriate.
George Skelton of the Los Angeles Times is a state treasure. He writes as well about the water wars as he does about the Calderon clan, addicts on the "mother's milk of politics,"  and sponsors of our own Assemblyman Adam Gray, $-Merced. --blj
 
2-19-14
Los Angeles Times
 
CAPITOL JOURNAL
Water war boils down to farmers vs. fishermen
Even when there's not a drought, there isn't enough to go around. And the collapse of a great estuary will endanger far more than the smelt.