Welcome To Badlands Journal

Peltier, water, and the cold hard cash

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Friday, 18 August 2006

by Chico del los Pozos

I have concluded over the years that when writing about the complexities of California’s byzantine water world, it is easiest to write about water in terms of cold hard cash. A flowing, living river has aesthetic value to environmentalists and preservationists while a river of dollar bills appeals to a different set of values that even the most apathetic taxpayer can understand.

COME ON DOWN TO POMBOZASTAN!

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Monday, 14 August 2006

Members of the San Joaquin Valley public would like to invite you to the first annual UC Pombozastan Pot Luck.

We’ve got the barrel; you bring the pork.

Public/private partnerships get preferential picnic tables behind gated, straw-bale walls, just like they did it at the old-time Condit Country extravaganzas.

What were they thinking?

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, 8 August 2006

Reading this morning’s Merced Sun-Star article, “Freeway work has chopped up roads,” we couldn’t help asking the obvious question: What were our leaders – local, state and federal elected officials, their staffs, the staffs of the city and county of Merced, business and financial leaders, large land owners and the newspaper – thinking?

So, we return to the elemental parental question, when the child returns injured or having damaged his family’s or someone else’s property: “What were you thinking?”

Greek Orthodox Archbishop Chrisodoulos warns Israel

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, 1 August 2006

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/741764.html

Last update - 23:50 23/07/2006

U.K. minister warns Israel of consequences of IDF assault

By The Associated Press

... Greek Orthodox Church warns Israel: 'Fear God's wrath'

The leader of Greece's Orthodox Church, Archbishop Christodoulos, accused Israel on Sunday of "sacrificing innocent civilians" in its bombardment of Lebanon.

War and the environment on the coast of Lebanon

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, 1 August 2006

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/87455845-BD62-4D4B-9F16-559AF4BCF...

Lebanon oil spill crisis

Saturday 29 July 2006, 0:43 Makka Time, 21:43 GMT

The Lebanese coastline has been badly affected

The Lebanese government has appealed for help to clean up a huge oil spill along its coastline created after Israel bombed a power plant.

The unthinkable future: an economy without a real estate bubble

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, 1 August 2006

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/07/31/the_coming_housing_crash.php

The Coming Housing Crash

Dean Baker July 31, 2006

Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer.

State Supreme Court decides for City of Marina against CSU

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, 1 August 2006

The California Supreme Court yesterday decided the Marina, City of v. Board of Trustees (CSU) case in favor of Marina. The state high court found that the argument of California State University, Monterey Bay that state agencies have no obligation to pay for off-site mitigation, defined in environmental impact reports arising from their construction or expansion, was without merit.

Let them play Monopoly behind gates we lock

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Monday, 31 July 2006

In 1950, it has been repeated ad nausea; Los Angeles County produced more agricultural commodities than any county in the state. By the mid-1970s, it began to lead the nation as the most polluted air basin, despite its sea breezes. Today, in this grim "metric," it appears to have fallen behind both the San Joaquin Valley and Riverside/San Bernardino counties.

The San Joaquin Valley is the richest farmland in the western US. Today, Los Angeles is an asphalt jungle and its eastern neighboring counties are developing along the same dismal pattern.

Byrd sues on civil rights violations

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Friday, 28 July 2006

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.

Denial

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thursday, 27 July 2006

Only a fool or worse ignores moral values - in the end, they always take revenge. Uri Avnery, Is Beirut Burning? Counterpunch.com, July 26, 2006
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First, a word of appreciation for Wallace Mainplace Stadium Cinemas in Merced for showing Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" last week. Thanks, Mainplace, for showing the ecological awareness worthy of the city that boasts it is the "Gateway to Yosemite," where so much of the world conservation movement began.

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