And Now: The Stealth Obama Ocean Grab

It's not enough that the White House is moving to lock up hundreds of millions of acres of land in the name of environmental protection. The Obama administration's neon green radicals are also training their sights on the deep blue seas. The president's grabby-handed bureaucrats have been empowered through executive order to seize unprecedented control from states and localities over "conservation, economic activity, user conflict and sustainable use of the ocean, our coasts and the Great Lakes."_

Democrats have tried and failed to pass "comprehensive" federal oceans management legislation five years in a row. The so-called "Oceans 21" bill, sponsored by Democratic Rep. Sam Farr of California, went nowhere fast. Among the top reasons: bipartisan concerns about the economic impact of closing off widespread access to recreational fishing. The bill also would have handed environmentalists another punitive litigation weapon under the guise of "ecosystem management." Instead of accepting defeat, the green lobby simply circumvented the legislative process altogether.

In late July, President Obama established a behemoth 27-member "National Ocean Council" with the stroke of a pen. Farr gloated: "We already have a Clean Air Act and a Clean Water Act. With today's executive order, President Obama in effect creates a Clean Ocean Act." And not a single hearing needed to be held. Not a single amendment considered. Not a single vote cast. Who gives a flying fish about transparency and the deliberative process? The oceans are dying!

The panel will have the power to implement "coastal and marine spatial plans" and to ensure that all executive agencies, departments and offices abide by their determinations. The panel has also been granted authority to establish regional advisory committees that overlap with existing regional and local authorities governing marine and coastal planning.

No wonder the anti-growth, anti-development, anti-jobs zealots are cheering. The National Ocean Council is co-chaired by wackadoodle science czar John Holdren (notorious for his cheerful musings about eugenics, mass sterilization and forced abortions to protect Mother Earth and for hyping weather catastrophes and demographic disasters in the 1970s with his population control freak pals Paul and Anne Ehrlich) and White House Council on Environmental Quality head Nancy Sutley (best known as the immediate boss of disgraced green jobs czar/self-avowed communist Van Jones).

-- Socialista and energy/climate change czar Carol Browner, last seen bullying auto company execs to "put nothing in writing, ever" and threatening to push massive cap-and-trade tax hikes during the upcoming congressional lame duck session.

-- Dr. Jane Lubchenco, head of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a former high-ranking official at the left-wing Environmental Defense Fund, which has long championed drastic reductions of commercial fishing fleets and recreational fishing activity in favor of centralized control.

-- Attorney General Eric Holder, who will no doubt use his stonewalling expertise to shield the ocean council's inner workings from public scrutiny.

-- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who apparently doesn't have enough to do destroying jobs through his offshore drilling moratorium, blocking onshore development and wreaking havoc on the energy industry.

Given Salazar's fraudulent book-cooking in support of the administration's offshore drilling moratorium (Remember: Obama's own appointed scientists blasted the Interior Secretary for unilaterally contradicting and misrepresenting their conclusions.), his comments on the new ocean grab are more threat than promise: "With two billion acres we help oversee on the Outer Continental Shelf, Interior is a proud partner in this initiative, and we look forward to helping coordinate the science, policies and management of how we use, conserve and protect these public treasures."

"Helping coordinate the science," as interpreted by Obama's Chicago-on-the-Potomac heavies, means doctoring, massaging and ramming through whatever eco-data is necessary "to reduce conflicts among uses, reduce environmental impacts, facilitate compatible uses, and preserve critical ecosystem services to meet economic, environmental, security and social objectives." Translation: drastically limiting human activity from coastal areas to seabeds to achieve the "social objective" of appeasing the enviros and their deep-pocketed philanthropic funders.

Even New York Sen. Charles Schumer slammed the administration's junk science-based fishing limits at a meeting this week between NOAA's Lubchenco and Long Island recreational fishermen. Draconian regulations, he said, according to the New York Post, "put the industry on death's door." Now, the same forces behind such job destroyers will have free reign over a national ocean policy established by administrative fiat. Viva la Summer of Wreckovery.

We now have an largely democrat controlled administration that has declared war on the American people and is picking the pockets of all citizens who work and companies that produce jobs for people to work and feed themselves and their wives and children.
Make no mistake, this democrat administration is at war with Americans citizens and is bringing in government control of the people and will end in tyranny of Americans citizens.
Being a Christian who has read the Holy Bible, I know that Bible prophecy is being fulfilled and that the violence and bloodshed world wide will increase as the Lord Jesus Christ foretold and that it will be as violent and corrupt on the earth as it was in the days of Noah. The only answer to the great evil of corrupt and unjust secular tyranny is in the Lord Jesus who will return to the earth after the antichrist and the false prophet have their part in the 7 year tribulation, the last day being the day the Lords Word teaches that the armies of the antichrist will be destroyed on the mountains of Israel and the man antichrist and the false prophet will be cast into the Lake of Fire where all unbelieving peoples will be delivered to at the second resurrection, that is the white throne Judgment when unsaved mankind will be judged by Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. We who believe how that Jesus Christ died for our sins and rose again the third day for our salvation are forgiven by faith in His shed blood and His resurrection on the third day. All others ,religionists and secular humanists are not forgiven their sins and will stand and be judged and cast into the lake of fire for their unbelief. The Lord Jesus is the judge.
Save yourselves from this evil and untoward generation.

1 Corinthians 15 (King James Version)

1 Corinthians 15
1Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand;

2By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

3For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures;

4And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures:

5And that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve:

6After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

7After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles.

8And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.

9For I am the least of the apostles, that am not meet to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

10But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2010/07/19/meet-national-ocean-council

Meet the National Ocean Council
Posted by NOC Team on July 19, 2010 at 03:23 PM EDT

Find out who represents your new National Ocean Council.
Co-Chairs

White House Council on Environmental Quality
Nancy Sutley, Chair

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Dr. John P. Holdren, Director
NOC Members

Department of Agriculture
Tom Vilsack
Secretary

Department of Commerce
Gary Locke
Secretary

Dr. Jane Lubchenco
Undersecretary for Oceans and Atmosphere
NOAA Administrator

Department of Defense
Robert M. Gates
Secretary

Environmental Protection Agency
Lisa P. Jackson
Administrator

Department of Energy
Dr. Steven Chu
Secretary

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (invitation pending)
Jon Wellinghoff
Chairman

Department of Health and Human Services
Kathleen Sebelius
Secretary

Department of Homeland Security
Janet Napolitano
Secretary

Department of the Interior
Ken Salazar
Secretary

Joint Chiefs of Staff
Adm. Mike Mullen
Chairman

Department of Justice
Eric Holder
Attorney General

Department of Labor
Hilda L. Solis
Secretary

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Charles F. Bolden, Jr.
Administrator

National Science Foundation
Dr. Cora Marrett
Acting Director

Department of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary

Department of Transportation
Ray LaHood
Secretary

Office of the Vice President
TBD

Director of National Intelligence
TBD

White House Office of Management and Budget
Peter Orszag
Director

Assistant to the President for National Security
General James Jones (Ret.)

Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism
John Brennan

Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy
Melody Barnes

Assistant to the President for Economic Policy
Lawrence Summers

Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Policy
Carol Browner
Director

Obama closes curtain on transparency (like his other reformer rhetoric, his transparency is mostly smoke and mirrors.
Timothy P. Carney, Examiner Columnist, August 12, 2010

Obama has abolished the position in his White House dedicated to transparency and shunted those duties into the portfolio of a partisan ex-lobbyist who is openly antagonistic to the notion of disclosure by government and politicians. Obama transferred "ethics czar" Norm Eisen to the Czech Republic to serve as U.S. ambassador. Some of Eisen's duties will be handed to Domestic Policy Council member Steven Croley, but most of them, it appears, will shift over to the already-full docket of White House Counsel Bob Bauer.

Bob Bauer (Anita "Mao" Dunn's spouse) is renowned as a "lawyer's lawyer" and a legal expert. His resume, however, reads more "partisan advocate" than "good-government crusader." Bauer came to the White House from the law firm Perkins Coie, where he represented John Kerry in 2004 and Obama during his campaign. Bauer has served as the top lawyer for the Democratic National Committee, which is the most prolific fundraising entity in the country.

Then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., the caricature of a cutthroat Chicago political fixer, hired Bauer to represent the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. In the White House, Bauer is tight with Emanuel, having defended Emanuel's offer of a job to Rep. Joe Sestak, D-Pa., whom Emanuel wanted out of the Senate race.

Another Bauer client was New Jersey Sen. Robert "Torch" Torricelli back in 2001. When one Torricelli donor admitted he had reimbursed employees for their contributions to the Torch -- thus circumventing contribution limits -- Bauer explained, "All candidates ask their supporters to help raise money from friends, family members and professional associates."

Bauer's own words -- gathered by the diligent folks at the Sunlight Foundation -- show disdain for openness and far greater belief in the good intentions of those in power than of those trying to check the powerful. In December 2006, when the Federal Election Commission proposed more precise disclosure requirements for parties, Bauer took aim at the practice of muckraking enabled by such disclosure.

On his blog, Bauer derided the notion "that politicians and parties are pictured as forever trying to get away with something," saying this was an idea for which "there is a market, its product cheaply manufactured and cheaply sold." In other words -- we keep too close an eye on our leaders.

In August 2006 Bauer blogged, "disclosure is a mostly unquestioned virtue deserving to be questioned." This is the man the White House has put in charge of making this the most open White House ever.

Most telling might have been Bauer's statements about proposed regulations of 527 organizations: "If it's not done with 527 activity as we have seen, it will be done in other ways," he told the Senate rules committee. "There are other directions, to be sure, that people are actively considering as we speak. Without tipping my hand or those of others who are professionally creative, the money will find an outlet."

This perfectly captures the Obama White House's attitude toward disclosure. Sure, the administration publish the names of all White House visitors, but, as the New York Times reported a few weeks back, White House folks just meet their lobbyists at Caribou Coffee across the street. Sure, they restrict the work of ex-lobbyists in the administration, but lobbyists who de-list aren't questioned.

Did I mention Bauer was a lobbyist? At Perkins Coie, Bauer lobbied on behalf of America Votes Inc., a Democratic 527 funded by the likes of the AFL-CIO and ACORN. The Sunlight Foundation is also concerned about the fact the White House no longer has anyone whose job is transparency, as Eisen's job was.

John Wonderlich, at SunglightFoundation.com, lists a few transparency promises on which the president hasn't followed through, including earmark transparency, a single Web site (Ethics.gov) with all ethics and accountability information, and better lobbying disclosure, among others.

Timothy P. Carney is The Washington Examiner's lobbying editor. His K Street column appears on Wednesdays. Click here to follow him on Facebook http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columns/Obama-closes-curtain-on-transparency-468557-100595914.html

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