Supposedly unknown mortgage brokers duped strawberry pickers and day laborers near Watsonville, California into thinking they could afford homes, and have since left town.

Concerned about dozens of foreclosures and families on the street?

The Watsonville City Council were considering drafting an ordinance that would require the banks and lenders fiscally responsible for the dozens of homes that have been abandoned to register with the city when they file a notice of default and maintain the houses.

“We need to be proactive,” said John Doughty, director of community planning for the city. “This is just another tool in the tool box.”

Doughty told the council that at the very least the ordinance should address the boarded-up houses that have boards that do not match the exterior paint to the house. [story]

John McCain campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns opposes equal pay for women but arranges favors for cronies.

McCain’s assistance came to light in a New York Times front-page story Tuesday, thrusting Seaside’s real estate machinations with Fort Ord into the national campaign spotlight.

Diamond, 80, stated in Monterey County court records that on several occasions he asked McCain to intercede in Seaside water and real estate affairs, and local officials say he boasted of his close friendship with the senator. According to McCain’s campaign Web site, Diamond has raised more than $250,000 for the senator’s presidential bid.

“Keep in mind there is another $100 million opportunity just across the road if we are in a position to influence ownership of water …” Diamond’s associate Donald Pitt wrote in a memo.

In a 1998 memo to Pitt, Diamond wrote, “I also heard that there is additional land that Seaside is getting from the Army and that could make this an even bigger play than we thought.”

They set their sights on the opulent Bayonet and Black Horse golf course developments, and Diamond again asked McCain for support in a deal Diamond described in the court records as a “love fest.” Also known as The Fairmont, the development project now includes the renovation of the golf courses, a 330-room hotel, 125 homes and 170 timeshare units.

Diamond’s partnership, Seaside Resort Development, submitted a thick packet to Seaside officials in response to the city’s solicitation of golf course resort developers. The packet included a hearty letter of endorsement for Diamond on McCain’s senate letterhead and signed by McCain, along with letters from a couple of other Arizona politicians.

Don Jordan, a Seaside councilman who was mayor from 1994 to 1998, said he never saw McCain’s letter.

Letters of support

McCain’s letter was among appoximately a dozen from politicians, businesses and local officials in support of Diamond. U.S. Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., and a congressman at the time, Rep. Jim Kolbe, R-Ariz., also sent letters of support.

In his letter, McCain called Diamond “an uncommonly dedicated public citizen … and a close personal friend.”

“You get letters from people for their development all the time,” Jordan said.

Jordan said he seldom talked to Diamond because most of the negotiations about the project were handled by city administrators and the operators of the golf courses.

It wasn’t until after Jordan was defeated for re-election in 1998 and left the council that Seaside finalized the golf deal with Diamond. He said he hadn’t heard any mention of McCain in connection with Diamond until this week’s news reports.

Daniel Keen, the city manager of Seaside from 2000 to 2004, said the deal over the Seaside golf course and resorts mostly was completed by the time he started with the city.

But Keen, who is manager of the city of Novato, said he recalls discussions with Diamond and his partner Donald Pitt about the project in which “references to McCain were inserted in a lot of conversations.”

Dropping names

Keen said at times Diamond raised McCain’s name “just in passing.”

“If you got to know Diamond, he was very gregarious, very wealthy and he liked to talk about his wealth,” Keen said. “McCain’s name came up from time to time. They were involved in Arizona. That’s how I know he had some kind of relationship.”

In 2002, McCain’s help was again requested when there was a plan for a land swap on Fort Ord to address water issues, Keen said.

Keen said Diamond brought up McCain as a possible means of getting “the Army coaxed along to do the swap.”

McCain steps away

In May of that year, according to court records, Keen wrote in a letter to Diamond: “Once again, on behalf of the City of Seaside, we appreciate any assistance you can provide in helping us ‘revive’ the swap proposal.”

Diamond sent a letter to McCain that included two Herald articles about water shortages on the Peninsula and in North Monterey County, writing “I would appreciate it if you would follow up and drop a line to the city manager of Seaside.”

But Diamond said something was going on with McCain’s chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee at the time, “and John said that he would rather not get involved, he didn’t think it was right. And I said, ‘Okay, thank you.’”

In a 2003 deposition, Diamond was unapologetic about asking McCain for help with his projects. A message left by The Herald at Diamond’s business office in Tucson was not returned Tuesday.

Diamond said he knew “a lot of the senators and congressmen,” because he was a lobbyist for the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee. But his friendship with McCain, he said, went back to the times “he got out of the concentration camp,” referring to McCain’s days as a prisoner of war.

[story]

The end of cheap clothes is near

In the US, ever more cotton farmers are switching to more lucrative crops – soybeans, corn, and wheat – whose market prices are rising even faster.

The prices of these crops have been pushed higher by a mixture of subsidies, growing demand from biofuel producers and market speculation.

End food-to-fuel diversion: The world is getting hungry. And cold!

Plastic in the ocean may be one of the most alarming of today’s environmental stories.

Studies indicate less than 5% of plastic ever gets recycled…

“Synthetic Sea” shows how many marine birds and fishes ingest plastic, because it mimics the food they eat. The program reveals scientific research, indicating how plastic pieces can attract and hold hydrophobic elements like PCB and DDT up to one million times background levels. As a result, floating plastic is like a poison pill.

Does the amount of plastic debris outweigh the amounts of plankton? How might this be affecting the marine creatures that feed on plankton?

VBS.tv has launched a 12 part video series about ‘the Pacific Ocean’s mythical floating trash heap‘.

At a recent air show in Russia, reports Pravda, Alexander Begak has shown a new vehicle called ‘Evolution’ which travels on land, water and air.

Evolution can fly at the height of 4,000 meters above the ground [2.5 miles high] and cover the distance of up to 400 kilometers [250 miles] without refueling.

“Let’s get started.”

I want tomorrow.

Ingenuity is lifted only with love.

Yes, there are poor ideas, even Jefferson warned: None of us are enough unless we trust prospects, make rewards, and respect each other; the genius of breathing is the oxygen of tomorrow.

We are more than mere accommodating, salute to Blood, any Chavez, all King, every Pope and tabletop Victory, we are inhaling hope.

So today?

Exhale agony.
Breathe good.

The only is us.

Yes. I’m using challenge terms but not hurting words, merely lifting heart to truth, so do not worry that I’m simply male and hurting you: Oh no, Jesus, me, are better things.

O’ so water more…!

Thus your sweet strength isn’t taunted nor taken nor teased, but honored please, if believing can be better than knowing.

Keep us together awhile.

We’re not worth throwing away if what’s humble is every pride.

If not love,
victory fails.

Without naming countries, who has urged states to protect their people from “grave and sustained” human rights abuses or face outside intervention?

Hungry people do not wait to tell their government. We listen to the news say, “Legacy risk assets are taking write downs.” Are you are not in the street?

Nuf sed.

Doesn’t this just put a fire under your butt?

Norway may halt salmon fishing season
Norwegian wildlife management officials said stocks of wild salmon have dropped so low they may have to halt the salmon fishing season.

California and Oregon recently canceled 2008 salmon fishing. The emergency policy will likely spread into Canada and Alaska.

Frankly, I think the next 50 years are going to be exciting and will bring great social and ecological benefits. The errors of sysssstem and gov’t. that led us here are undeniably on the table now. The “upcoming generations” have a clear path that I think will prevail in many forms. For us, we might have to endure at least another decade of reactionary junk, some of it perhaps more mean-hearted than lately….

Robert Paterson in Prince Edward Island says,

“The choice is clear – Hope or Fear. The chance of healing or maybe a catastrophe.”

He’s exploring changes in our social fabric while asking what set of values fits into Election 2008 and beyond and whether there’s a new social movement characterized in the Web 2.0 world.

Are we moving toward a participatory world?
Are we maturing and ready to say “I must participate”?

Robert says, “This is the new media world… Here the self acts and initiates creatively, independently and with conscience. Here the leadership vision is collaborative.”

We’ve all heard warnings that trees fall while books sell, but few of us think that public domain data on the web is being re-packaged into books selling from $25 to $500.

Philip Parker has generated more than 200,000 books, as an advanced search on Amazon.com under his publishing company shows, making him, in his own words, “the most published author in the history of the planet.” And he makes money doing it.

Among the books published under his name are “The Official Patient’s Sourcebook on Acne Rosacea” ($24.95 and 168 pages long); “Stickler Syndrome: A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients and Genome Researchers” ($28.95 for 126 pages); and “The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India” ($495 for 144 pages).

But these are not conventional books, and it is perhaps more accurate to call Parker a compiler than an author. Parker, who is also the chaired professor of management science at Insead (a business school with campuses in Fontainebleau, France, and Singapore), has developed computer algorithms that collect publicly available information on a subject — broad or obscure — and, aided by his 60 to 70 computers and six or seven programmers, he turns the results into books in a range of genres, many of them in the range of 150 pages and printed only when a customer buys one.

IHT Story: How to Write 200,000 Books

????

“The 2007-2012 Outlook for Tufted Washable Scatter Rugs, Bathmats and Sets That Measure 6-Feet by 9-Feet or Smaller in India”

$495 for 144 pages

????

From Toronto’s Globe and Mail: The curious absence of class struggle.

Statistics Canada reported recently that the earned income of the “average” Canadian — the so-called median income — was the same in 2004 as in 1982.

After we subtract inflation to keep the purchasing power of a dollar roughly constant, it turns out that median income, before taxes, did not rise at all over those 22 years. Yet during that same time the Canadian economy grew, in real per capita terms, by more than half.

But only the very well-paid — those above the 90th percentile of the income distribution — saw any significant increase in earned income; and the higher up the earnings ladder, the greater the growth. What has been going on?

Excerpt found at Bridging the Income Gap, Why Inequality is Hazardous to Your Health

Emphasis added:

SAN ANGELO, Texas (AP) – A court hearing to decide the fates of hundreds of children seized from a polygamist retreat ground to a halt almost as soon as it began Thursday as hundreds of lawyers demanded to study the first piece of evidence before it could be introduced.

From social and economic policy based on bad science and superstition, the paranoids running things are now entering a period of molecular eugenics:

“The AP is reporting that the US will soon be collecting the DNA of anyone who is arrested by a federal law enforcement agency and any foreigner who is detained, whether or not charges are eventually brought. Trying to collect DNA of ‘potential criminals’ as young as five, DHS spokesman Russ Knocke stated that ‘DNA is a proven law-enforcement tool.’”

from Slashdot, Collecting DNA