An unfortunate "community" column

Catching up on his newspaper reading, one member of the Badlands Journal editorial board noticed this advertisement for the UC/Great Valley Center couched innocuously in the "community columnists'" section of Modesto's McClatchy Chain outlet.11-05-08Modesto BeeBut Suppose for the sake of argument the anti-science rant about the causes of global warming is correct. Let's agree that the consumption of carbon-based fuels has nothing to do with the recent worldwide rise in temperatures.And lest we think...Eric Caine http://www.modbee.com/opinion/community/story/488013.htmlInstant communication, jet-speed transportation and the global economy have shrunk the world in ways unimaginable only a few years ago. Nations are now connected the way counties and states used to be, and counties can no longer be thought of as fiefdoms where planning decisions have only short-range effects. More than 20 years ago a few valley citizens, including Modesto's own Carol Whiteside, began realizing the valley is a region. They acknowledged our eminence in agriculture and also began to recognize the value of our grasslands, rivers, wetlands and riparian forests. Together, they began promoting a vision of the valley that planned for growth while preserving the world's best farmland and protecting our rivers and delta.Knee-jerk reactions to government control of planning ignore our need to face 21st century realities about growth and urban development. Stanislaus County needs to join other valley counties in acknowledging the value of regional planning. The question is no longer whether we need a regional blueprint but rather how to design and follow it. It seemed unusually disturbed, even for the Modesto intellectual set.To begin at the beginning, dissent about the causes of global warming (called "climate change" at UC and the Great Valley Center), is not necessarily anti-science. There is an antique tradition within science -- as opposed to technology -- that stresses skepticism. Aside from this minor point, we cannot figure out how the header relates to the story. If one wants to "go quantitative," empirical evidence strongly suggests that subprime and Alt A mortgages from the north San Joaquin Valley, securitized into bundles and sold globally, are having an impact also called "meltdown."Next we move on to the "fiefdom" theory of county government, which makes no sense at all in contrast to the statement about "knee-jerk reactions to government control of planning," that is, if counties are considered governments, which, in California, they are, and have primary land-use authority for unincorporated land in their jurisdictions.The choice of "short-range effects" to describe county attitudes toward planning may reveal the author's now total-immersion in UC/GVC-Speak, an ever-changing idiom that regardless, never amounts to more than the flak du jour of developer apologists. The proper term is cumulative impacts, but use of it would imply familiarity with the California Environmental Quality Act. Knowledge of CEQA is not likely to get the humble community columnist invited to the right addresses for dinner; however, familiarity with the latest development-design flak guarantees favorOnly a true, dyed-in-the-wool Modesto blowhard could have written of the nameless few (can we add the noble and wise?) Modestans, led by Carol Whiteside, who realized the San Joaquin Valley was a region. Too much Water, Wealth, Contentment and Health has produced a state of idiocy in Modesto, accompanying its idiotic growth, including former Mayor Whiteside's special gifts to Modesto: the Red Lion Inn, the opening of Pelandale Road, and the defunct villages concept. Did Whiteside even serve out her second term as mayor after she got a judgeship for her husband? fRegardless of that forgotten chapter in her political history, she returned from Gov. Pete Wilson's office (Wilson, our father of electric utility deregulation and Prop. 187) years later to orchestrate the development of the Great Valley Center for Economic Development around the Coming of UC Merced.Other contenders for the crown of realizing the valley as a region include by are not limited to the Yokuts, Miwuks, Modocs and other surrounding tribes of Indians, Spanish and Portuguese explorers and ranchers, Father Serra (who avoided it), American mountain men, Henry Miller and other early settlers (who tried to own all of it), Southern Pacific and Santa Fe railroads, John Muir, the Bank of America, the federal Bureau of Reclamation, the State Water Project (not to mention the State of California, which has recognized the valley as a distinct region of itself since about 1850), innumerable colonies of farmers, farm organizations, the Dust Bowlers, Wallace Smith (Garden of the Sun), John Steinbeck (Grapes of Wrath), Carey McWilliams (Factories in the Field), Paul Taylor and Dorothea Lange, countless other writers and journalists through the decades, the McClatchy Co.,  generations of Valley legislators including such greats of pork-dispension as Bernie Sisk (Friant Dam) as well as men who brought good law, like Ralph Brown and John Williamson, giants of agribusiness like the Boswell, Salyer and DiGiorgio families, the water and irrigation districts, and environmentalists involved with the environmental disasters of Kesterson, the San Joaquin River, and UC Merced, among others. All Whiteside and the nameless, noble and wise Modesto few realized was the potential for more urban development in the Valley and the economic opportunity of forming a corporate funded front group to outmaneuver legitimate environmental organizations and co-opt public environmental concerns into large, coercive unity that doesn't reflect deep knowledge of Valley ecology or any real care to protect it. While it is possible that Whiteside and her nameless followers' minds are so addled by developer buzzwords that they are in fact sincere but just misguided, it is more likely they are just cynical exploiters of the opportunity to profitably serve corporate special interests. We do know they would not have survived the real estate bust if they had not been picked up by UC Merced.The 21st century realities about growth and urban development are that the San Joaquin Valley cannot absorb what it already has of this wonderful boon. Trading the "designs" of an extra-governmental regional planning group like the blueprint, dominated by regional developers as is the UC/GVC, for the legal local land-use authority -- however stupefied by its own corruption -- is not going to help the valley environment. Cutting-edge great thinkers about our region are already proposing to scrap the tedious but legal process of planning and replace it with a new concept: henceforth, we will design our blueprint of development without any greenprint at all. Groups like the blueprint have very little if any legal authority. They are formed by memoranda of understanding for the purpose of developing agendas, purporting to represent the consensus of a broad base of stakeholder interests, that can be carried by lobbyists to Sacramento and Washington in support of "public-private, win-win" proposals, in which the taxpayer subsidizes the developer. Blueprints, etc. are excellent advance political strategy by developers because it is likely that at some point in the near future pro-growth local, elected officials will be replaced by people that reflect more clearly the present, unfortunate economic reality as opposed to the latest real estate industry sales pitch.Several years ago, the member of the Badlands Journal editorial board warned the author of this piece of flak not to break bread with the grave diggers of his values. Not heeding the warning (academics are prone to childlike illusions of their own integrity), now we see him supporting the position -- as a "community columnist" no less -- of Stockton developers. It reminds us of the time representatives Richard Pombo and Dennis Cardoza, walking away from a luncheon including the very same developers, counting their loot and talking to the press about a grand, bipartisan coalition of politicians and developers for the glorious economic development of the valley. A few months later, they launched the worst assault on the Endangered Species Act in its history. If it had not been for Sen. Lincoln Chaffee, at the sacrifice of his seat, the bill might well have become law. As it was, both Pombo and Chaffee lost, but Modesto's absentee congressman, Dennis Cardozo of Maryland, remains, a top Blue Dog and Fairy Shrimp slayer, and a good friend of UC/Great Valley Center. Meanwhile, child and elder asthma increases, a new study quantifies the loss of income to the valley from death caused by the environment, and the speculative real estate boom that gave Whiteside and the nameless few their opportunity, continues to crash, damaging all of us who live in the valley and, speaking globally, many others, too.