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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.

The desperation of MCAG

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tuesday, 25 July 2006

Last week the Merced County Association of Governments decided to put Measure A, the transportation sales tax defeated in June, back on the ballot in November, despite a poll that indicated it might not do any better then than it did either in June or in 2002. The MCAG, composed of all five supervisors and one elected official for each of the six incorporated cities in the county, in their judgment overrode the poll results, declaring that the November election will draw more voters than the primary did. The Merced Sun-Star opined without attribution that:

Mirage

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sunday, 23 July 2006

It’s fitting to speak of mirages when the Valley gets this hot.

The political mirage of the week, in the wake of former Merced County DA Gordon Spenser’s spectacular fall that ended in Bear Creek a week (just before a mysterious fire in the DA department’s offices), was the set-to between developer Greg Hostetler (Ranchwood Homes) and Supervisor Deirdre Kelsey at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisor’s meeting, exhaustively detailed below by the local press.

Sixteen thousand signatures is a good beginning

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Saturday, 22 July 2006

The obstruction of an initiative to stop residential growth in unincorporated Stanislaus County appears to mean that the power of developers and rural landowners trumps the legitimate initiative process. Letters from the Modesto Chamber of Commerce (the developers) and the Stanislaus County Farm Bureau (landowners), which represent a small fraction of the number of the 16,000 people who signed petitions to support the initiative, were enough to send the county Board of Supervisors down devious legalistic paths to frustrate the public voice.

The Empty Cowboy Hat rides again

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Monday, 17 July 2006

Rep. RichPAC Pombo, Buffalo Slayer-Tracy, is grabbing headlines again after former Rep. Pete McCloskey knocked a few of his teeth out in the primary. If he can keep his fight up to gut the Endangered Species Act until November, the public may never know a Democrat named McNerney is running against him.

That's the first thing: show them how powerful you are. Opposition? What opposition? Even if the Senate is skeptical about the wisdom of gutting the ESA, you go, cowboy, you are Tracy's one and only Buffalo Slayer.

Happy Bastille Day

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Friday, 14 July 2006

The other revelation is that being highly educated was no guarantee of sharing in the benefits of economic growth. There’s a persistent myth, perpetuated by economists who should know better — like Edward Lazear, the chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers — that rising inequality in the United States is mainly a matter of a rising gap between those with a lot of education and those without. But census data show that the real earnings of the typical college graduate actually fell in 2004. – Paul Krugman, July 14, 2006
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Sierra snowpack problem

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wednesday, 12 July 2006

Viewing Al “the former next president” Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” at the State Theater in Modesto the other night reminded me of the political disaster of the last six years and taught me that the velocity of climate change is faster than I had imagined. The installation of the Bush regime by the US Supreme Court in 2001 inaugurated a period of pure destruction in the US, a rampage of injustice, imperialism and greed, an orgy of lawless aggression by the wealthy against the rest of us few if any living Americans have ever seen.

Just one more day in Corruptionville

Posted by Anonymous (not verified) on Monday, 10 July 2006

The land speculation that has set in on Merced County has turned men into pigs. It seems that one of the parallel phenomena to real estate speculation in the county was a renewed focus on "leadership." Suddenly, everybody was talking about "leadership." "Leadership" got as popular as huge, oversized, flipping real estate investment, stacking water allotments on the west side, and gutting the federal Endangered Species Act.

Lord save us from "leadership" like this.

Bill Hatch
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