Americans with Disabilities

Jason Scorse, the director of the new Center for the Blue Economy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies and the author of "What Environmentalists Need to Know About Economics,” has written an interesting opinion piece in the Oakland Tribune discussing the economic value of the coast to the California economy and the need to protect the ocean.

“Consider that the coastal economy in San Mateo County alone is worth more than $58 billion,” said Scorse. “Everyone from the ice cream vendor on the pier, the dive shop owner, the real estate agent, even the tourist window shopping for a new bikini has a stake in keeping the ocean healthy.” (http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/ci_21046606/my-word-must-never-take-coasts-economic-value)

I agree completely with Scorse’s statement, “State officials must avoid cutting corners when it comes to protecting and maintaining the coastal areas that make California so unique. Virtually every dollar supposedly saved by closing state beaches, reducing water-quality monitoring or decreasing beach cleanup and patrols will result in a net loss to the state when the full range of economic benefits of the coastline are taken into account.”

In conjunction with the Delta Levees Standards Conference being held today in Sacramento, Restore the Delta proposed that Delta levees be upgraded as part of any Bay-Delta water solution - and emphasized that they are a much better investment than building a peripheral canal or tunnel.

The conference, sponsored by the Delta Protection Commission and Water Education Foundation, takes place at Woodlake Hotel at 500 Leisure Lane, Sacramento.

“Fat, robust levees protect the Delta," said Barbara Barrigan-Parrilla, Executive Director of Restore the Delta. "An emergency preparedness plan against the greatest threat – flood – is also needed. But floods can be managed."

“We are well-positioned to deal with sea level rise – we can raise levees one to two inches per year," she noted.

A report on the Radio KMJ 580 AM website reveals how Senator Dianne Feinstein vowed her support for the water bond, the raising of Shasta Dam on the Sacramento River and the expansion of Exchequer Dam on the Merced River during two fundraisers at the homes of San Joaquin Valley agribusiness leaders this week.

The station reported first on a lunch on Wednesday at the Sanger home of the president of the Nisei Farmers League where Feinstein said the controversial $11.14 water bond "must appear on the ballot." (http://www.kmjnow.com/pages/landing_localnews_2011?Feinstein-Harvests-Donations-From-Valley=1&blockID=599372&feedID=8257)

"In Sanger - at the home of Manuel Cunha, Jr. - Senator Feinstein told a gathering of 64 specially-selected people that she had their backs when it came to several key issues facing San Joaquin Valley farming," the article stated. "She told the group that she has discussed the state water bond measure with Governor Jerry Brown and insisted that it must appear on the ballot in November. The governor has indicated a preference to move the bond to 2014 so as not to compete with his plan to raise taxes."

The Noyo News Is Back!

by Dan Bacher

The Noyo News, published by independent journalist David Gurney, is again publishing news and commentary about Arnold Schwarzenegger's corrupt Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative, ocean industrialization and other environmental issues.

"We are happy to report that after some effort by web hosters, Google, and yours truly, the malware hack attack on Noyo News is now cleaned up and gone," said Gurney. "You may now once again visit the site with no worries."

"The incident is being reported to proper authorities, who may be able to track the perpetrators by their inevitable electronic trail," emphasized Gurney.

The MLPA "Initiative" creates a "network" of suspect "marine protected areas" that fail to protect the ocean from oil spills and drilling, water pollution, military testing, wave and wind energy projects, corporate aquaculture and all other uses of the ocean other than fishing and gathering. A big oil lobbyist, agribusiness hack, marina developer, real estate executive and other corporate operatives with numerous conflicts of interest oversaw the creation of these so-called "marine protected areas."

Republican Secrets of the Debt

On the same day that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Wall Street rating agencies joined the ever-louder chorus of voices warning Republicans that failure to raise the U.S. debt ceiling would result in "calamity," Speaker John Boehner announced that at least 60 GOP Congressmen "won't vote to raise the debt ceiling under any circumstances." At the same time, his GOP colleagues Michele Bachmann, Steve King and Louie Gohmert accused the Obama administration of lying about the urgent need to raise the debt ceiling. Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell worried that his party's tough-talk and myth-making could "destroy" the GOP brand.

Sadly for McConnell, that is the Republican brand. His lieutenant Jon Kyl (R-AZ) admitted as much in April, when he declared remarks he delivered on the Senate floor were "not intended to be a factual statement." And so it is with the debt ceiling crisis. When they aren't peddling outright lies, Republicans suffer from selective amnesia regarding the inconvenient truths about the GOP record on debt, taxes and the economy.

Here, then, are the ten Republican Secrets of the Debt:

1. Republican Leaders Agree U.S. Default Would Be a "Financial Disaster"
2. Ronald Reagan Tripled the National Debt
3. George W. Bush Doubled the National Debt
4. Republicans Voted Seven Times to Raise Debt Ceiling for President Bush

The video is Olbermann's Special Comment from last week -- I think it's appropriate here. The press release below is by Dean Baker

Statement on the Gang of Six Plan

Tax cuts for the wealthy, and Social Security cuts for ordinary workers

I've been saving this link for over a year to use at the right time. And the reason I didn't hit submit is because I know there are a lot of true believers out there who still think that he, and the rest of the Washington Democrats, are on their side. The Democratic Party of FDR and JFK will be destroyed if they get away with this. Click the link below to go to the source to watch the youtubes

Obama and Social Security: NewDealDemocrat Tees Off

by NewDealDemocrat

Last week President Obama said that he will be "agnostic" as to any changes, including Social Security benefit cuts, that his debt reduction commission recommends. This is a far cry from his constant campaign rhetoric in which he promised to listen to all recommendations, but his plan was to raise the payroll cap on contributions.

This is a sad but necessary piece in which I lay out the evidence, which I believe is compelling, that Barack Obama's own words and deeds reveal that his real agenda all along has been to use a commission or summit to cut Social Security benefits, and that the campaign rhetoric was just a sop to anesthetize opposition. This for a program that, at worst, faces a shortfall 30 years from now, and that Obama himself called the cornerstone of the American social compact.

Blue Ribbon Task Force Meetings Are Elaborated Staged Farces

by Dan Bacher

George Osborn, spokesman for the Partnership for Sustainable Oceans (PSO), presented a 25 page document documenting illegal private, non-public meetings of Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative officials to the California Fish and Game Commission during its meeting on February 2 in Sacramento.

The PSO, a coalition of national and regional fishing organization including the Coastside Fishing Club and United Anglers of Southern California, filed suit in San Diego Superior Court in late January, seeking to overturn South Coast and North Central Coast MLPA closures, alleging violations of the State Administrative Procedure Act.

During his brief public testimony, Osborn exposed the corruption and violations of law by the MLPA's Blue Ribbon Task Force (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7_04BC1acA).

“After reviewing the documents turned over to us, which previously the BRTF had improperly withheld from the public, we now have evidence, indicating that the public meetings of the BRTF have been an elaborately staged Kabuki performance, choreographed and rehearsed down to the last detail, even to the crafting of motions, in scheduled private meetings held before the so-called public meetings of the BRTF," said Osborn. "Clearly, this has not been the most open and transparent process, as it has so often been described.”

California Court Okays Discrimination Against Section 8 Tenants

Remember Donald Sterling, the NBA team owner and Los Angeles mega-landlord who has been sued multiple times for outrageous housing discrimination, most recently by the U.S. Department of Justice? Sterling is back in the news this week, again for discrimination in his role as landlord. This time, however, Sterling convinced a California Court of Appeal that it was just fine for him to discriminate against a Section 8 tenant. At this point, anyone who still believes in the myth that judges are “liberal activists” needs to have his or her head examined.

North Coast Tribes Pressure MLPA Officials to Address Tribal Use Policy

by Dan Bacher

The issue of tribal rights and uses of ocean resources is now coming to a head in Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's fast track Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) process.

The MLPA initiative, after being suspended for lack of funding, was reinitated with private funding by the Resource Legacy Fund Foundation in 2004. MLPA officials until recently refused to address and respect traditional cultural subsistence, ceremonial and other customary uses of marine resources by California Indian Tribes.

The Schwarzenegger administration has already imposed no-take reserves in the North Central Coast and Central Coast regions without proper consultation with Indian Tribes living in both regions. For example, the California Fish and Game Commission on August 5, 2009 voted for a marine reserve package that will ban the Kashia Pomo Tribe and others from harvesting abalone, mussels and seaweed off Stewarts Point as they have done for centuries.

Related: Healthcare by the numbers

Leno’s single payer “Medicare for All” health bill passes Senate

I am disgusted that Senator Dianne Feinstein, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and the Obama administration have agreed to conduct a political farce under the guise of "science." The irony is that the biological opinion that is being "reviewed" by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a plan that a federal judge ordered rewritten under the Bush administration. Now the Obama administration, under pressure from big water interests, is doing a review of a court-ordered biological opinion that was begun under the Bush administration!

Doesn't that put the Obama administration to the environmental right of the Bush administration, since it was the re-written biological opinion begun under the Bush administration that "limousine liberal" Stewart Resnick and southern California water interests are challenging because it is "too protective" of salmon, smelt and other fish?

Big Water Interests Hijack Obama Delta Science Team

Yay!

Maybe that's a bit of a stretch and she would have gone after them anyway, but it seems awful coincidental when she was the only DA in the room for Ahnold's grandstanding of this issue last Summer.

I'll skip to the relevant section in this report

IHSS fraud in Sacramento County was highlighted in a critical grand jury report in May. Problems statewide led to legislation this year that requires background checks of providers and unannounced visits.

[...]

On to this report in the Bee from July

[...]

At a news conference Monday with district attorneys who support his IHSS changes, the governor repeated again that "some people say that there is 25 percent fraud. That would be over a billion dollars right there."

Who exactly are some people? We'll find out