Badlands Journal
Social, Economic, and Environmental Justice
To:
Gwen Huff, Merced Alliance/RCD Watershed Coordinator/Merced River Stakeholders Facilitator
Karen Whipp, Merced Alliance/RCD Grant Administrator
From:
Members of the Merced River Stakeholders
Re: Merced River Stakeholders public minutes of East Merced Resource Conservation District meetings
Date: August 22, 2007
Recently accused by a local planning commissioner of being a dishonest journalist, I reviewed my notebooks for moral reassurance. I found notes from an interview I once did with a city planning-department staffer in charge of maps. This Galilean fundamentalist believed that geography was the queen of the sciences and would set us free. I honestly reported this lunacy for the local newspaper.
Letters to the Editor
Fresno Bee
July 27, 2007
Dear Sir or Madam,
Robert Dynes, appointed by the Regents of the University of California as UC president on June 11, 2003, is stepping down. Love is the reason UC flaksters have confected. It being UC, the new bride was immediately appointed an Associate of the President, an honorific promotion from legal counsel at UCSD for which it is unimaginable there was not some nuptual emolument of public funds. The president would have known we the Californians would have settled for nothing less.
California Sportfishing Protection Alliance
“An Advocate for Fisheries, Habitat and Water Quality”
3536 Rainier Avenue, Stockton, CA 95204
Tel: 209-464-5067, Fax: 209-464-1028, E: deltakeep@aol.com
For immediate release:
9 August 2007
For information:
Bill Jennings, CSPA Executive Director, 209-464-5067, 209-938-9053 (cell)
I was recently asked to produce a bibliography of "essential books" on the San Joaquin Valley.
Argh!
A dozen favorites leapt to mind; a few days later a dozen more; and the pleasant task began to turn into a real project destined for certain failure and remorse. It turns out not to be so easy to remember the books of a lifetime and each dive into the Internet provides more that look very useful but I haven't had time to read yet.
For reasons unknown to Patric Hedlund, editor of the Mountain Enterprise, and to the Badlands editorial staff, we received a press release on the Enterprise's recent success garnering three awards for excellence in journlaism from the California Newspaper Publishers Association. What is more remarkable, for an CNPA award, the Enterprise in an independent newspaper serving unincorporated towns near and along the Grapevine and in the Los Padres National Forest.
The National Park Service's top scientist says politics drove the decision...Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Interior Todd Willens was the leader of the U.S. delegation who made the motion to take the Everglades off the list. Until last fall, Willens was a top aide to former Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Calif., a frequent critic of environmental laws and environmental groups. -- St. Petersburg Times, Craig Pittman, July 31, 2007
"We're going to keep an eye on them," said Rep. Dennis Cardoza, D-Merced. "The administration was in a total meltdown over this, and they were putting on a full-court press to be given a second chance."
Returning agricultural border inspectors from Department of Homeland Security to Department of Agriculture jurisdiction seemed like one of the better reforms in this year's Farm Bill, at least for the purposes of crop protection, the supposed mission of agricultural inspectors.
At the financial market level, it is of course assumed that all local land-use authorities would automatically have to approve subdivisions funded by subprime loans, now in default, because, naturally, no local land-use officials could possibly behave with any kind of economic caution or care. In fact, elected officials in this area -- from Rep. Dennis Cardoza, Shrimp Slayer-Merced, down to three county boards of supervisors and many city councils, promoted an orgy of greed that has ended in the northern San Joaquin Valley counties leading the nation in per capita mortgage foreclosures.