IGNORING THE OMINOUS CLOUDS

Just one day after the Supreme Court officially acknowledged that the 2^nd Amendment meant what it said, the two Presidential nominees agreed that they had always believed the right to bear arms was a right of every individual citizen.  Let us give them the benefit of the doubt and ignore Obama’s prattling about the need to control “gang bangers” in the cities by continuing to impede gun ownership, and forget McCain’s checkered history in protecting this Constitutional right “to keep and bear Arms”.  The truth is that while Obama will be a gun-control President of the first order, McCain will “build bridges” to a Democrat Senate and House by compromising about future gun control matters just as he has done in the past.  If Obama were to have a Republican House or Senate (an admittedly unlikely scenario) he would still strongly advocate gun control laws on behalf of the gun controllers that control the Democrat party along with the unions and teachers and environmentalists and feminists and animal rightists and Planned Parenthood.  If McCain were to be elected with a Republican House or Senate, his past record of throwing in with the Democrats and ignoring Republican policies and proposals means he is unpredictable as to whom he will play ball with and what he will advocate.

The purpose of this piece is not to be political; rather my purpose is to highlight some things that are going on now (in late June of ’08) and to mention their likely outcome.

McCain and Obama are both “environmentalists”.  Neither will “drill” unless forced to: Mc Cain because of “pristine areas” and Obama because of the usual Democrat nonsensical babbling.  It is amusing to listen to them both explain their “environmental” approach to energy and lowering gas prices.  Obama gurgles about windmills and solar power (both unable to lower gas prices): McCain offers rewards for a battery while supporting drilling on the Offshore lands UNDER FEDERAL JURISDICTION (BEYOND THE THREE-MILE LIMIT) “if Governor’s agree”.  NOTE: For the past thirty years the Environmental Protection Agency and the National Marine Fisheries Service and the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Coast Guard have all told the states and their Governor’s that Federal fishing and boating and wildlife laws and regulations are supreme in the offshore waters but suddenly we will only drill 30, 40, 50 miles offshore “if the Governor’s agree”.  Our current federal politicians have all the testosterone of a NOW meeting.

Consider what this conniving Congress is doing as they “do nothing”.  Property rights politicians in the Republican party are adding more Refuges and Parks to an already unmanaged gargantuan federal estate of “royal” lands closed to all management and use by the common folk. That is bad enough; what is really disgusting is that they do it by adding it into other bills and then blocking any recorded vote.  You see, they can then go back to their urban constituents and brag about getting them “more Parks” and preserving our “Heritage” while simultaneously telling rural constituents that they fighting for their “rights” like property rights and hunting and fishing.

Have you heard about the National Landscape Conservation System?  The Democrats have it ready to roll out before the election as legislation that will make all the National Forests and BLM lands and Parks and Refuges into the unused, unmanaged, firepits that the environmentalists from The Wilderness Society and Sierra Club to the Natural Resources Defense Council bought the Democrat party to do.  “Native ecosystems”, “invasive species”, use requirements; it is all there.  The final link to get rid of hunting be it for elk that should feed wolves or pheasants “that don’t belong here” and fishing be it for “non-native” brown trout or marine fisheries whether they be for sport or commercial; is being put in place.

It gets even better.  Unless Congress passes the Clean Boating Act before 30 September; every recreational boater in the country will have to obtain a federal or federally approved state permit to operate their boat.  Penalties of $32,000 per day are authorized.  Everything – deck run-off, bilge water, engine cooling water, etc. - will be subject to federal authority.  NOTE:  Experience teaches us that “federal authority” really means the pleasure of the federal bureaucracy and the bidding of environmental extremists that will go to select courts to expand said authority and focus it on every manner of human endeavor, tradition, and cultural pursuit that they oppose.

Now before you dismiss this federal expansion over boating as an “oversight” with no foul intent; consider what is being done simultaneously by Congress –The Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007.  This rehash of the Clean Water Act of 1972 (who could be against clean water?) expands the federal jurisdiction over waters in the United States from “navigable waters” to “all intrastate waters”.  Environmentalists and animal rights organizations have been trying for years to legitimize federal authority over ALL waters.  “All” means every river, creek, brook, ditch, pond, reservoir, lake, marsh, fen, swamp, you name it if it is wet only periodically or temporarily or even if it is in the ground – federal authority will eventually be established by regulation and lawsuit just like animals and plants are being swept into the federal maw.  If this Act passes and is upheld (by the “swinger” and the 4 Supreme Court Justices that could not read and understand something as straightforward as the 2^nd Amendment?) then the environmentalists and their animal rights friends will start forcing regulation and prohibition of boat traffic like canoes and watercraft and they will be able to prohibit fertilizing lawns near water and they will first study and then prohibit trapping and waterfowl blinds and fishing, etc., etc.  There will be “Sanctuaries” and Water Wilderness and less agriculture and less animal husbandry and less sport and recreation: all based on federal authority, federal regulations, federal bureaucrats, and the no longer hidden agendas of the powerful environmental and animal rights organizations.  The irony is that this is being done while the only real Constitutional federal water responsibility – the maintenance of “navigable waters” – namely Mississippi River levees from Iowa and Missouri to New Orleans are dissolving, poorly maintained, ineffective, and prohibitively expensive to repair; yet the federal politicians are ready to magnify federal water responsibilities many times for what?

Do not overlook what we find nowhere in this mix.  As the federal behemoth: 1. seizes authority over boats,  2. claims jurisdiction over all water-associated matters from agriculture to hunting and fishing, 3. steadily puts more land in the federal estate where it is unused and unmanaged, and 4. establishes what the “National Landscape” is to look like… where are the state governments that are losing all this authority?  Where are the Legislatures and Governors?  Where are “our” state fish and wildlife agencies?  The only purpose they serve anymore is for the Governors to pretend to be scapegoats for Presidential candidates that can’t even use national resources in a national emergency while supporting federal expansions of every stripe.

Add to all this Obama’s latest mindless diatribe about being a President for animals and not allowing horse owners to slaughter their horses or other animal owners to use their animals as they would and the anti-hunting/ anti-animal control inferences that will probably stop necessary things like lethal wolf control and you have a prescription for increasing rural chaos and losses of liberty at an increased pace.

McCain’s record and timidity in the race bodes for little better.  The Republicans in Congress and the Republican Party offer little more than “we’re not quite as bad as them”.  President Bush and McCain and Obama all try to outdo Gore with who can come up with the most Draconian climate “solution” that is nothing more than the latest (remember “desertification” and “overpopulation” and “global cooling”- they all had budget items and offices too) government folly to solve non-existent problems. While there are a few Senator James Inhofe’s left, today’s Republican party is a shell looking for a body to inhabit it.

I do not say these things are more important that Iraq or gas prices or the housing slump but I do say that there are many ominous clouds on the horizon and no blue sky.  Iraq and gas prices and the housing slump are external factors that must be dealt with but the rot that is accumulating from the unconstrained use and manipulation of environmental and animal rights values for the profit of politicians and bureaucrats and academics is like a growing infection in the United States’ society that may already be too far gone to cure.

Jim Beers

27 June 2008

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- Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow.  He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC.  He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands.  He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC.  He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority.  He resides in Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.