Posted on 09/17/2009 8:26:34 PM PDT by Jeff Head
Here we go again.
I was watching Sean Hannity tonight (9/17/2009), and have been following loosely the situation in the San Joaquin Valley of California with their water crisis over the small Delta Smelt minnow and its endangered species listing.
The Farmers have water rights to that water. There is no legal water rights for that water for a minnow over the farmers. There is only a manufactured judicial legal decision by liberal judges based on junk science and the whims of administrators and bureaucrats that create these incidents based on the Endangered Species Act and a rabid environmental policy.
This is an illegal "taking", and it is unconstitutional on its face. And it simply cannot stand.
This sounds more and more like what happened in the Klamath Basin Water Crisis to farmers of Oregon and northern California in 2001. At that time, the magical fish was the sucker fish...and every farmer in that basin knew that the sucker fish was not endagered and that they did not need a "full" lake to survive. It was junk science being used to push an anti-American environmental agenda then...plain and simple...and it is the same today.
Here is my suggestion to the Farmers and their allies in the San Joaquin Valley.
You have the numbers...many more people actively engaged in the fight than we had in Klamath. In Klamath, there were many meetings with politicians...followed by meetings with "officials" of government agencies. In the end, the result was the same...the water stayed off.
It was not until a few farmers and their allies took control of the headgates and turned the water back on that things began to happen. In that case, only a dozen farmers and their allies were at the gates the next morning when 50-70 armed law enforcement officers came and took the head gates back and again turned off the water.
If we had had 1000 farmers and their allies there that morning, they would not have been able to do so.
As it was, we did not, and so those officers, who had reconnoitered our position through the night, turned the water back off...temporarily.
But that was the spark and by the next afternoon, the farmers and their allies gathered en masse and surrounded the law enforcement officers (most of whom absolutely did not want to be there) and made their life miserable over the course of many weeks.
Ultimately, after the farmers pumped the water in small quanitities, and then siphoned it in larger quantities around the headgates, at a later rally where many hundreds were present, the farmers crossed the line again and penned the government officers in.
Soon thereafter, legal decisions began to change and the crisis was ultimately resolved and returned to the status quo and the farmers got their water.
To this day the Klamath Basin has continued getting enough water to farm.
Now the fight has moved to the much larger and larger producing San Joaquin Valley.
In the end, my advise is simple.
STOP BEING GLAD HANDED BY POLITIICANS AND OFFICIALS.
FIND A WAY TO TURN YOUR WATER ON THEN STAND VIGIL BY THE THOUSANDS AND KEEP IT ON.
Your livelihood, your way of life...YOUR LIBERTY is worth the effort and the risk. And make no mistake, that is exactly what is at stake here.
And make no mistake the rest of America...YOUR livelihood, your way of life, and your liberty by extension is also at stake. For if they can do this to your neighbors there in California and get away with it...they can do it to you.
Once those lines are drawn, and you engage in civil disobedience in this fashion, people will flock to you by the tens of thousands and the administration will be forced to turn things around and magically find, as the Bush administration did before them, the "new science" to support a reversal of their current policy.
God bless you farmers there. God bless all who support you.
In the end, it is your decision. This advise is simply given from one who witnessed the same type of governmental infringement, the same unconstitutional and illegal takings, the same judicial and environmental tyranny that you are experiencing now...and stood with those who did something about it.
I’m looking for a website for the farmers. If I find one I’ll post the link here in the hopes that we can open up the communication channels and pass along your good advice and recommendations and suggestions and hopefully be able to help these folks.
Nope...not imagined at all.
Good one. Very good one. Civil disobedience is another of their tactics we haven’t used. March up, with a HUGE crowd, take the station and start the water. Make them use force of state to keep it off. Great attention grabber,,,farmer wants water,,,evil G-man standing in the way. It’s like Wallace standing in the door of Little Rock high. They will always come out evil.
The aqueduct is not dry. There are irrigation pumping stations and gates for the irrigation along the aqueduct, spreading the water out into the valley. Large parts of that delivery system has been locked down.
Freep-mail me to get on or off my pro-life and Catholic List:
Please ping me to note-worthy Pro-Life or Catholic threads, or other threads of interest.
Obama Says A Baby Is A Punishment
Obama: “If they make a mistake, I don’t want them punished with a baby.”
The largest percentage of the farmeres in the valley are democrats, I wouldn’t clasify them as liberals.
If I was governor shwarzenegger, I would order that water turned on, and I would inform ANY FEDERAL AGENT that would respond that he/ she would be arrested if interference was attempted.
Read about it HERE.
When you consider the food shortages that will occur as a result of this latest leftist bs, not to mention all the people now in food lines and out of work permanently, it’s a helluva lot more than thousands it will affect. More like hundreds of thousands or millions.
This is nothing short of our “new pro-commie government” trying to force us to get our food from China. And we all know how that will probably turn out! Can you say...death by Yummy Chow Gluten?
Time to get serious about displaying our displeasure. Time to show them the point of our forks, since they refuse to see the point of our protests.
Exactly Jeff. Please see my post #61. I’ll ping you.
It’s real simple. We, the people, tell the governator that if he does NOT act in their behalf and do the right thing, his days in politics are numbered. And that goes for any OTHER politicians that stand against the farmers.
I daresay the next election will be about food, not about money. They damned well better listen.
Thanks for the ping!
Aside from that, every year during the rainy season millions of gallons of water run down the Santa Ana River (and other rivers in this area) from the San Bernardino mountains and dump into the sea. Building a few extra dams would be a tremendous idea for making the southern part of the state more self-reliant. The Prado Dam is a joke, but there are plenty of other places where fresh water could be captured and stored.
And your idea about going nuke for electricity and de-sal water is just what we need, but somehow I don’t think the lefties in this state (or in the current federal administration) would ever allow it.
The purpose of those water projects was clear. There are intricacies to Western water laws I don't completely understand, but they were put in place as a sort of promise to folks that, should they choose to go out West, there would reliable sources of water to use in strategically important pursuits.
12% of our country's produce output is strategically important. A small run of an unremarkable species of fish is not.
I used to live in SoCal. Have they shut down water flowing into LA via the aqueduct yet or only the irrigation part to the farmers? Seems to me if there is a problem with the fish it should affect Los Angeles as well. Why pick on the farmers? That would be one way to get a whole area in a uproar at the feds.
There were problems when we lived there about irrigation in the orange groves that wasted so much water instead of being recycled. Lived in San Bernardino County and for the five years we were there, there were water rights problems. Sounds like some things don’t change. They also had problems with the water used for growing alfalfa.
Would have thought after all these years someone would have solved the irrigation problem for the farmers and orange growers but it doesn’t sound any different then before.
I agree, but I’d go further...
Understand, I haven’t killed anyone since the VietNam war.
Thomas Jefferson said “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from
time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
I would say if your too chicken-shit to stand up for your rights and your kids rights and grandkids rights, then you deserve none...
These lib’s are cowards and will back down when bullets start to fly... If they are threatening your way of life, make sure their are personal consequences for them that are 10X worse and it will go away. (Yes I’m talking about bloodshed)
Just as the government cant and won’t protect you, it won’t protect them either..
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.