Lloyd Carter's blog
Prominent Westlands Water District Grower Mark Borba calls President Obama "Blackie" and also slams Sen. Dianne Feinstein
Submitted by Lloyd Carter on Tue, 04/09/2013 - 13:08.The Fresno Bee reported today (April 9, 2013) that prominent Westlands Water District grower Mark Borba was removed as chairman of the board of directors of Community Medical Centers because of his use of a racial slur about President Barack Obama in an email exchange with Westlands general manager Thomas Birmingham. The Bee reported Borba called President Obama "Blackie" in an obscenity-laced email (The Bee called it a "rant") about Westlands' water supply problems. The Bee story can be read at http://www.fresnobee.com/2013/04/08/3249151/community-medical-centers-board.html.
Borba, who declined to be interviewed by the Bee, recently sent an email to the original email recipients and hospital board members and officers, expressing regrets for his slur of President Obama and his use of obscenities. Birmingham was not quoted in the Bee article.
"The language I used was hurtful to many people and it embarrassed my friends and colleagues. My language was inexcusable and I am greatly embarrassed by it myself," Borba wrote in the email, according to the Bee. However, hospital officials concluded he could not stay on the board. READ MORE »
Kesterson Whistleblower Felix Smith's letter to the director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service goes unanswered
Submitted by Lloyd Carter on Mon, 04/08/2013 - 19:33.Editor's Note: Felix Smith, who suffered political harassment from his superiors during his 34-year federal career, was the federal biologist who in 1983 leaked to the news media that deformities in birds nesting at the Kesterson National Refuge had been poisoned by selenium-tainted, toxic drainwater from the Westlands Water District.
The U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, for several months, kept secret the Kesterson bird deformities until Smith leaked the story to Fresno Bee reporter Deborah Blum. Smith took early retirement in 1990, tired of the harassment.
Smith wrote the following letter to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Director Dan Ashe four months ago. Ashe has not answered Smith. USA Today environmental columnist Dan Vergano wrote an article on April 6, 2013, which indicated federal biologists continue to be intimidated by their superiors in speaking out about selenium pollution from phosphate and coal mines in several states.
December 17, 2012 READ MORE »
USA Today environmental columnist Dan Vergano writes about selenium problems and muzzling of government scientists
Submitted by Lloyd Carter on Sun, 04/07/2013 - 20:19.USA Today environmental columnist Dan Vergano ran an article in the nationwide newspaper on Saturday (2013/04/06) about the harassment of federal biologist Joe Skorupa who wrote a critical report about selenium impacts at an Idaho phosphate mine, including two-headed fish. He mentioned my website and the previous coverage I did of the harassment of Skorupa, who, in the late 1980s, confirmed selenium impacts on wildlife using farm wasterwater evaporation ponds in the Tulare Basin of the Southern San Joaquin Valley. Vergano's article can be read here:
The Sacramento Bee plays dumb on real Delta issues
Submitted by Lloyd Carter on Mon, 04/01/2013 - 09:29.
|