IOW, it's about waterfowl, and to hell with the human food supply.
Flooding devastated riverside towns in the U.S. Midwest in 2008. [Don Becker, U.S. Geological Survey]
Posted on 03/20/2018 5:21:55 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
A federal judge ruled last week that a federal agency's actions to improve habitats for endangered species along the Missouri River exacerbated floods, causing damage to local farmers whose land was temporarily inundated. Although this was only the first part of a multiphase case, if the ruling is upheld it could undermine future river restoration efforts nationwide and stymie enforcement of the Endangered Species Act (ESA) by forcing the government to pay damages to any landowner affected by environmental restoration activities.
Historically, the Missouri River, known as "the Big Muddy," followed a meandering, braided path and flooded annually, says Robert Criss, a hydrologist at Washington University in St. Louis. Beginning in the 1930s, engineers constructed a series of six dams and reservoirs. They also narrowed and straightened the river to allow barge navigation, and constructed hundreds of miles of levees along its banks. The changes destroyed nearly all of the shallow water marshes critical for fish and wildlife, Walker says.
(Excerpt) Read more at sciencemag.org ...
IOW, it's about waterfowl, and to hell with the human food supply.
Flooding devastated riverside towns in the U.S. Midwest in 2008. [Don Becker, U.S. Geological Survey]
Reining in government overreach that has devastated farmers’ livelihoods.
Its long overdue.
Good. I like animals and all, but I like people more.
The title is deliberately misleading.
This is not a blow to conservation. It is a blow to follow the rule of law.
There is no exception to the “Takings” clause of the Constitution for radical enviromentalism.
So when will Trump pardon Oregon ranchers Dwight and Steve Hammond who have been so wrongfully incarcerated ( TWICE) by the Obama administration - BLM ?
Especially now that courts have ruled EPA and Interior Dept. overstepping their authority.
I am going nuts trying to find a place to sign a petition on their behalf. Sure can’t find it on WhiteHouse.gov.
Exactly.
So, since I studied constitutional and administrative law we may be revisiting what constitutes a regulatory taking.
That sounds good to me. Especially since last I heard, fully 40% of the species on the endangered list are there based on bogus science.
GOOD! That is absolutely how it should be... These actions form a kind of uncompensated "taking' from landowners - either by restriction of their land use, or by direct damage done by the actions taken by the government.
While I agree with the mission of the ESA in principle, it remains that the states have never expressly constitutionally delegated to the feds the specific power to define, regulate, tax and spend in the name of protecting such species.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
”From the accepted doctrine that the United States is a government of delegated powers, it follows that those not expressly granted, or reasonably to be implied from such as are conferred, are reserved to the states, or to the people. To forestall any suggestion to the contrary, the Tenth Amendment was adopted. The same proposition, otherwise stated, is that powers not granted are prohibited [emphasis added].” —United States v. Butler, 1936.
So it's uniquely up to the individual states to define and protect endangered species until the states decide to appropriately amend the Constitution to give the feds such powers.
Corrections, insights welcome.
I believe there are sites where you can start your own petition.
GOOD! That is absolutely how it should be... These actions form a kind of uncompensated “taking’ from landowners - either by restriction of their land use, or by direct damage done by the actions taken by the government.
If it is in the “public good” then the public should pay for it, through taxes!
With a Hillary court it surely would. Hoping for a tilt back to the center and a finding of a regulatory taking requiring compensation. We shall see.
The legal problem with the Environmental Species Act was that Congress ceded its rule-making authority to the executive branch. If Congress were to instead, for instance, vote to include various species under the Act, and on reasonable means of protection, that would be totally legitimate.
The problem with the Commerce clause is that now that the feds control most everything, most everything DOES relate to interstate commerce; It’s purpose has been utterly thwarted. But it did have a legitimate purpose: There are some matters which states CANNOT adequately address. But instead of relying on federal powers when states cannot adequately address something, we’ve relied on it for anything that the federal government provides a theory for how it COULD address it.
So here’s how you do the ESA the right way: It’s within the national interest to protect the Bald Eagle. The Bald Eagle’s habitat does not follow state lines. Therefore, these following regulations are implemented for any property involved with interstate commerce...
Famer Joe has a family farm. He borrows money from a local bank. He sells vegetables at the local farmer’s market; he sells wheat to the local bakery; etc. His property is exempt from these regulations.
Farmer McKenzie hires workers on agricultural visas. He borrows money from a national corporation which protects its investment with futures traded in New York. He sells his wheat to Pillsbury. His property is not exempt from these regulations.
Maybe Congress might even decide that the futures trading involving McKenzie’s wheat is valuable to the national economy, and write regulations involving futures trading that permit McKenzie to remain exempt from legislating citing the commerce clause.
Note that the Founding States made the first numbered clauses in the Constitution, Sections 1-3 of Article I, evidently a good place to hide these clauses from Congress (sarc), to clarify that all federal legislative powers are vested in the elected members of Congress, not in the executive or judicial branches.
But not only is Congress wrongly letting the executive branch get away with stealing and exercising legislative powers, but in the example of the Environmental Species Act, this act is actually based on unique, 10th Amendment-protected state powers that the feds have stolen from the states.
By letting the executive branch steal and exercise stolen state powers, corrupt lawmakers are letting the executive branch do Congress’s unconstitutional, dirty work for it so that lawmakers can keep their voting records clean.
And by keeping their voting records clean, career lawmakers are able to fool low-information patriots, patriots who have probably never been taught about the fed’s constitutionally limited powers, into reelecting them.
Are we having fun yet? 8^P
"The problem with the Commerce clause is that now that the feds control most everything, most everything DOES relate to interstate commerce; It’s purpose has been utterly thwarted."
Note that regardless what FDR’s state sovereignty-ignoring activist justices wanted everybody to think about the scope of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers (1.8.3) when it wrongly decided Wickard v. Filburn in Congress’s favor imo, FDR’s justices wrongly ignored the following. They ignored that a previous generation of state sovereignty-respecting justices had clarified the following limits of Congress’s Commerce Clause powers based on applying basic reading skills to that relatively simple clause.
"Article I, Section 8, Clause 3: To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
"State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added]." -Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
"Therefore, these following regulations are implemented for any property involved with interstate commerce..."
Thomas Jefferson had recommended that the fed's constitutionally limited powers be interpreted narrowly, evidenced by the excerpt from Gibbons v. Ogden above, the states amending the Constitution to delegate new powers to the feds as a last resort.
"In every event, I would rather construe so narrowly as to oblige the nation to amend, and thus declare what powers they would agree to yield, than too broadly, and indeed, so broadly as to enable the executive and the Senate to do things which the Constitution forbids." —Thomas Jefferson: The Anas, 1793.
But until the states decide to amend the Constitution, it's up to the individual states to define and protect endangered species.
"The States should be left to do whatever acts they can do as well as the General Government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Harvie, 1790.
But should the states decide that they aren't up to the job for some reason, then there's nothing stopping them from amending the Constitution to give the job to the feds.
Finally, the best remedy to stop federal government overreach into the affairs of the sovereign states is to repeal the ill-conceived 17th Amendment imo.
The 16th Amendment can disappear too.
Thank you. I did sign a petition and make a contribution at Change.org but I am not getting any feedback as to petition results there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
