Posted on 09/06/2001 10:10:09 AM PDT by RonDog
Thursday, September 06, 2001
Meet the West’s Multiple Land Use Sheriffs
By: Hugh Hewitt, TCS Corespondant
California and its neighbors to the north are closing in on the status of ward of the federal government. With every new listing of a species as endangered, and with every administrative ruling of the Army Corps of Engineers as to what is a "jurisdictional water" of the United States, the federal overlay on the West Coast grows larger and thicker. Other agencies have joined the assault on state sovereignty, including the Environmental Protection Agency. Private litigants have figured out how to use the federal courts to add their names to the unelected authorities wielding enormous power over the lands and people of the West.
Some West Coast folk applaud these developments. The city-dwellers are, in large numbers, believers in the danger of "sprawl" and boosters of "open space." Environmental activists long ago recognized the limits to influence with elected officials who must, ultimately, answer to voters. These activists would much rather petition the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to designate "critical habitat" for the San Bernadino Kangaroo Rat or the Quino Checkerspot Butterfly than seek even simple majorities in Sacramento. The zero-growth movement requires like-minded allies within federal bureaucracies. The Clinton-Gore years was the golden age of bureaucratic co-option. At every level, from GS-2 to SES level 6, the feds are full to the brim with ideologues whose claim to expertise is quite simply laughable.
Bureaucratic power does not require expertise because it comes without accountability. The West is full of stories -- real, live dramas -- of landowners ruined because some federal official said, "Make it so." The cost of delay is so huge that landowner after landowner is shaken down without objection. Klamath Basin is just the best known of a long list of land use coups executed in the name of exotic species. Is there anyone who really believes that the sucker fish will perish from the Earth if the farmers are allowed to irrigate their fields? Some no-name biologists speculated that could happen and the bureaucratic bulldozer kicked in. We have seen it before with fairy shrimp and Delhi-sands loving flies. We will see it again. There is no will among Congress to demand change -- no upside to defending property rights.
Nor outside of the Fox News Network does any media outlet seem to care. Fox's William La Jeunesse owns the beat and has scooped all the other networks time and time again on these stories. If he doesn't win an Emmy it will be because of environmentalist criticism of the stories selection but not of the accuracy of the accounts. The other nets just aren't interested, even when the news value of, say, the loss of firefighters' lives to species concerns is obvious.
Here's a big "for example" of an unreported story involving bureaucratic abuse. Under the Clean Water Act the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is supposed to decide when applicants are given permission to work in or around the "navigable waters" of the United States. Set aside the fact that this definition has grown to absurd proportions or that the agency is resisting the clear command of the U.S. Supreme Court that it stop and reverse this appetite for power.
The Corps eventually does get around to issuing some permits, and evidently a different branch of the feds thinks it does so too often. The EPA has a limited authority to intervene in these permit decisions. If the EPA sees a permit on its way to being issued that involves "an aquatic resource of national importance," it may object and so inform the Corps, causing lengthy delays in the permitting process. Not surprisingly, the EPA has abused this authority, and routinely labels even a few hundred feet of dry streambed an "aquatic resource of national importance." The EPA staff then parlays the delay it triggers into more concessions from the applicant. Occasionally, the Corps will stand up for the law and reject an EPA demand for more mitigation. The local EPA staff simply waits until the matter threatens to end up back in D.C. only to fold at the last minute. No harm in trying, right?
Except that it is an abuse of power by individuals unqualified to wield such authority. More and more applicants are finding that bureaucrats are dropping even the pretense of environmental concern. It’s just about the power.
The Bush Administration will find it hard to restore a respect for the rule of law at the lower levels of these agencies. It will need to demand wholesale transfers in order to break up existing rings of regulatory zealots. But there is one thing it can do, and should do. Now. Tomorrow.
Many senior jobs are empty within the agencies. The head job of the powerful Region 9 office of the EPA is and has been vacant for months. Other senior positions can be filled at the other key agencies. The Bush folks have followed a top-down model which makes sense when lower levels of an organization will take cues and guidance from senior management headquartered far away. It makes no sense when the lower levels are daily issuing rulings that, if they were publicized, would be repudiated from the top.
White House personnel needs to get off the dime and begin to staff the senior level of the field bureaucracies. Wise appointments could quickly tame the worst abuses of law and regulation and at the same time could begin the effort to reclaim some key constituencies in the West. The political geography does not favor the President out here. But it is a political dynamic that only gets worse when the Administration does not bother to fix what it could even as it plans longer term relief where its hands are presently tied.
Hugh Hewitt is a syndicated radio talk show host and environmental lawyer. He can be reached at www.hughhewitt.com.
THANK YOU, Hugh!!
all "Articles+Replies" posted "to:klamathbasincrisis"
or
all "Articles+Replies" posted "to:klamath_list."
(The alternative is to search for "Articles Only" which have "klamath" in their title, which may miss some good threads.)
But there is one thing it can do, and should do. Now. Tomorrow... ...White House personnel needs to get off the dime and begin to staff the senior level of the field bureaucracies.
Any ideas on WHO Dubya should appoint for these positions?
White House personnel needs to get off the dime and begin to staff the senior level of the field bureaucracies. Wise appointments could quickly tame the worst abuses of law and regulation and at the same time could begin the effort to reclaim some key constituencies in the West. The political geography does not favor the President out here. But it is a political dynamic that only gets worse when the Administration does not bother to fix what it could even as it plans longer term relief where its hands are presently tied.
You know as well as I do what really needs to happen here. Take a meat cleaver to these agencies. Don't buy into the federal bureaucracy. Chop em up and dissolve them. As long as a massive federal government and government financed NGOs exist, we are going to continue to have problem. Sure we can man the federal bureaucracy with our boys, but that only works until the next hick from Arkansas comes along who's content to frolic in the collective cesspool.
Gut the federal agencies today. Defund the NGOs immedidately. Nationalize all lands purchased with federal grants and return them to the states. Issue an EO striking down the Heritage River's act. If I'm not mistake it was a Clinton EO that created that devils brew in the first place. It was a flawed concept from the start.
Hi, DO - I am no golfer, but I assume that this is a bad thing. ;)
(Sorry I forgot to flag you! Do you listen to Hugh?)
Not for those positions, RonD; but here's his *choice(s)* for protecting us at Justice.
Be sure to read carefully so maybe you'll understand Dubya's reasoning.
Lord knows, I sure in the hell can't make any sense of it.
< http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b9647c213aa.htm >
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3b9647c213aa.htm
Corporate lawyer gets nod as U.S. attorney
Posted on 09/05/2001 08:41:54 PDT by Donald Stone
A corporate defense attorney with an academic bent and few political connections, Thomas M. DiBiagio didn't expect to return when he left the U.S. attorney's office in Baltimore last year after a nine-year run prosecuting violent street gangs, deadly carjackings and brazen bank robberies.
But in DiBiagio, colleagues say, a mild-mannered demeanor masks the gut instincts of a seasoned prosecutor. First approached this winter about serving as Maryland's U.S. attorney, he couldn't refuse the chance, in his words, to try to make the office a "first-rate, independent and aggressive law firm."
The White House announced yesterday that President Bush will nominate DiBiagio, 41, of Parkton, to be the state's top federal prosecutor. His name is expected to go today to the Senate, which must confirm the appointment. But the nomination is not considered controversial, and DiBiagio could begin the job in an interim role within weeks.
From "FOX News Bios":
William La Jeunesse joined FOX News Channel’s (FNC) Los Angeles bureau as a reporter in March of 1998, where he also contributes reports for FOX News Edge, the network’s affiliate news service.
Prior to joining FNC, La Jeunesse spent three years as an investigative reporter for KTVK-TV (IND) in Phoenix, Arizona and before that served in the same capacity at KNSD-TV (NBC) in San Diego, where he won two Golden Microphone Awards and an EMMY Award, and KTSP-TV in Phoenix, where he received five local EMMY Awards.
A graduate of Syracuse University, La Jeunesse began his journalism career at the Arizona Republic, where he spent five years writing investigative pieces for the daily. He was named the Arizona Press Club Journalist of the Year in 1989 and the UPI Western Region Journalist of the Year in 1987 and 1989.
I rarely watch TV (even FOX!) - so I do not know this guy. Is anybody out there familiar with his work?
When a golfer tees off on moderate to long fairways, he hits that shot and possibly another before he can expect to hit one to the green. The shot that should hit the green becomes the approach shot. Hugh hit a great shot or two for good position just off the green. But when it came time to put it close to the hole, he blew the shot IMO.
Don't fix government, simple downsize it. Eliminating the departments who are abusing the power is the best way to make sure it doesn't happen again.
Looks good to me. I use Internet Explorer. Are you using Netscape? (Sometimes that makes a difference.)
Thanks for the golf info! I understand.
We should also lobby Congress to take back the power from unelected officials. Rep. JD Hayworth from AZ tried to introduce a bill to do this, but the party leadership never gave it a hearing.
From ENDANGERED SPECIES ACT may be RESPONSIBLE FOR THE DEATHS OF FOUR FIRE FIGHTERS
Source: Fox News on Britt Hume & Shepard Smith's program
Published: July 31, 2001 Author: Reported by William La Jeunesse
Posted on 07/31/2001 19:26:06 PDT by Spunky
William La Jeunesse asks; "What really happened at the 30 mile fire?
Well, investigators from two federal agencies are trying to find out
One of the questions they're asking is this. Did a policy to protect fish endanger firemen?
District Ranger John Newcom says, "We have Chinook Salmon, we have Steelhead, we have Bull trout, um all three of those species are in the Chewuch and they all are a consideration as we fight fire.
William La Jeuness: "A consideration but not an obstacle insists Ranger John Newcomb. But two veteran fighfighters with intimate knowledge of this fire and the river that ran through it tell a different story...
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.