October 2012

The pussyfooter and the prostitute

What Eric Caine, the Pussyfooting Modesto-based Merced College prof, either forgets or never knew was that Mike Wade, the prostitute, back when he had a real job as executive director of the Merced County Farm Bureau, through letters and testimony before the UC Regents, falsely claimed that there was adequate water for the UC Merced campus on site beneath the seasonal pastures.

It's DEBT, stupid!

Mike Whitney, as he has done so many times before, asks the right question and provides a detailed answer. Finance, Insurance and Real Estate (FIRE) and their paid minions in Congress are busy setting up the new scam with the idea of wringing out whatever wealth they left in the people's hands from their last attack.

Milking the boondoggle

The UC Boondoggle keeps laying tax-paid eggs, including the untold millions committed to BobcatFlak, UC Merced's finest product. BobcatFlak (BCF) is a form of propaganda so toxic that even the keen minds on the McClatchy Chain's local outlet cannot seem to figure out that UC Merced is not generating the largest part of the figures being tossed out of BCF Central. It comes from the state; it comes from you. Fine, you get some of your taxes back, but a boondoggle is a boondoggle, not a milk cow or a golden goose.


The reason about $3 million may be spent on state legislative campaigns in Modesto -- Adam Gray, Kathleen Galgiani, Bill Berryhill -- is because the Democrats are two seats away from two-thirds majorities in both houses of the Legislature.

Mobley-Gray by the numbers

We welcome all who have the stomach for looking directly at how our local elections are bought and sold to example the list of contributors for the Republican and Democrtic party candidates for our 21st state Assembly district.
We will let you form your own opinion other than to say that it appears to us that the Democrats are not set to spend a million dollars on this campaign because their candidate is attractive, charming or brilliant.

Management of water in a severely overdrafted region of the Valley

To us, this story of an adjudicated water settlement between Consolidated Irrigation District and the City of Selma was the most important of the day in the Valley news. Perhaps this is because it represents our near future here in Merced County, which still has a relatively decent water table.

The officer and the mushroom

Sometimes you take your eyes off the political scene for a moment, look up at the sky, take a breath of fresh air and look down again, seeing with refreshed eyes how sordid it all is. This year there are essential political issues from the city councils to Washington – 11 years of war and the dire effects of deregulated chronic economic recession. Yet it is the genius of the political rule of the super-rich that people are forced into a moral wasteland between idiocy and cynicism.

Ten years: how UC Merced changed the landscape

There's more to come -- much more. The promise of bringing the university here was that it would forever alter the landscape of the region in a fundamental way: academically, economically, culturally and more. But those expectations are a blessing and a curse, especially in tough economic times.-- Merced Sun-Star, Oct. 27, 2012

Apres la lune

The effects of converting 20 percent of the state's rangeland, most of it to almonds and grapes irrigated by large pumps, will be to accelerate the overdraft of groundwater while worsening the quality of the goundwater. It will also reduce roughly 20 percent of the habitat for many of the endangered species associated with rangeland. Nor will most of these "ag-to-ag" conversions be discovered by state and federal agencies supposed to be charged with enforcing environmental laws and regulations.