In the following letter, Merced County Counsel Ruben E. Castillo provides City of Livingston Attorney Thomas Hallinan, Jr. thoughtful instruction on the various laws the city may have broken in approving Ranchwood Home's construction of a sewer trunk pipeline from the city waste water treatment plant in a southerly direction on county land through Gallo and other ranches across several county roads and an irrigation canal toward a 300-acre Ranchwood Homes development in a "conceptual" stage of planning.

The two articles below offer warfare strategies so disparate they could only come from imperial America at a moment when its regime is busy selling the store to military contractors, including, first of all, the University of California-managed national laboratories at Los Alamos and Livermore and to Bechtel, their win-win, private partner.

The two labs “are in a head-to-head competition to offer designs for the first of the new thermonuclear explosives …” Oh boy, ain’t we safer now!

February 13, 2006

Merced County Board of Supervisors
2222 M Street
Merced, CA 95340

Honorable Chair Nelson and Members Crookham, Kelsey, O'Banion and Pedrozo,

I am writing on behalf of the Central Valley Food and Farmland Coalition to express our concerns of the commulative effect of the rapid growth in Merced County. We urge you to state a moratorium on all General Plan amendment applications and conduct a study of our water resources before any amendment applications are accepted.

Elections and debate on a new five-year Farm Bill are upon us. The Bee reported last week that members of the House Agriculture Committee will be visiting Stockton in the first week of March to hold hearings on the Bush administration's proposals.

These proposals include taxing dairymen 3 cents per hundredweight, cutting cotton and rice subsidies and a $200-million annual subsidy to promote American agricultural exports. Recent recipients include Blue Diamond Growers, the California Table Grape Commission and Sunkist Growers, the Bee reported. (1)