Posted on 07/01/2002 10:41:40 AM PDT by BOBTHENAILER
Washington - James Furnish is hardly the kind of person you'd expect to quit his government job on principle during the Bush administration. A political conservative and an evangelical Christian, he voted for President Bush and plans to do the same in 2004.
As a deputy chief of the U.S. Forest Service, he was eager to give his new bosses the benefit of his more than 30 years of experience in the agency. He realized his conservationist ethic might not always prevail. But he was ready to say his piece and then accept the new administration's direction.
Instead, Furnish reluctantly left the government in the fall, at a substantial financial sacrifice, because he was frustrated by what he called the Bush team's strident pro-development philosophy and unwillingness to listen to his perspective.
That makes him one of a number of senior career officials across several environmental agencies who have quit since the Bush administration took over. They include senior lawyers from the Environmental Protection Agency, a state director for the Bureau of Land Management, scientists with years of experience and top bureaucrats in Washington.
Divergent views
In each case, the decision to leave a well-paid job after years or even decades of service reflected concern over the Bush administration's efforts to make environmental regulations more friendly to businesses and promote energy extraction from federal lands.
The departures also reveal that under the Bush team, divergent views in the top ranks of these agencies have been ignored and key career government officials who were seen to favor protecting natural resources over promoting their use have been removed from power.
Whether the number of departures is unusual is difficult to say. No one chronicles resignations on principle, and a Republican had not taken the White House from a Democrat for 20 years.
Eric Ruff, spokesman for the Interior Department, said staff changes are normal in a new administration. "This is not something that's unique to this administration," Ruff said.
Whether or not the departures are unusually numerous, Paul Light, vice president for governmental studies at the nonpartisan Brookings Institution, said they were very costly.
"A lot of these people came to government in the 1960s and 1970s because they beilieved in the mission," Light said. "It's very furstrating for someone who came into government for the mission to reach the top of their career and be told that doesn't matter, it's all about politics."
Although Furnish, for example, was one of the most senior career officials in the Forest Service, the new administration's political appointees did not invite him to any pivotal policy-making meetings.
Three times he was scheduled to testify before Congress; three times political appointees canceled his testimony at the last minute.
Out of the loop
Furnish did not expect to make policy for the new administration, but he did expect that his senior post would give him the right to express his views and be included in policy discussions. Instead, he was shut out.
In the Clinton administration, he played a key role in shaping the policy of banning road building and logging in almost 60 million acres of national forest land. He also was central to an initiative that would have required forest planners to consider environmental preservation above all other goals when deciding how national forests would be managed.
"I've been disappointed and somewhat embittered with how the (Bush) administration has sought to undo them or not defend them," Furnish said. "But I'm a realist and pragmatist and I understand it's their day now."
Furnish took a financial hit by leaving when he did. His retirement income will be about $10,000 less a year for the rest of his life than if he had waited about a year longer.
Forest Service Chief Dale N. Bosworth said Furnish was experiencing the predictable discomforts of a shift in administration.
"Every time we have a change of administration, we have a job of building trust between us and the new administration," said Bosworth, who is also a career government employee. "Until we build that relationship, there is going to be some uneasiness."
Like Furnish, other top career executives in the environmental agencies complain they were cut out of the loop. Some were abruptly reassigned from jobs they loved.
When the Bush administration took office, Martha Hahn, 47, was one of very few women who had reached the level of state director for the Bureau of Land Management. She was responsible for 12 million acres in Idaho, alomost one-quarter of the state.
In seven years on the job, she said she tried to balance preserving clean water, wilderness and wildlife with allowing multiple uses of the land, such as grazing.
EPA director quits
Soon after the Bush administration took over, things changed. Headquarters started making decisions on her turf without her. Some of her decisions, such as those on grazing plans, were overruled in Washington.
But even before the new BLM chief officially started work, Hahn received a letter from Deputy Interior Secretary Steven Griles telling her that she was being transferred to a previously nonexistent job in New York City. For a land manager who loves the Rocky Mountain West, it was the equivalent of being put out to pasture.
Hahn quit instead. "It's been a shock," she said. "I'm going through mental anguish right now. I felt like I was at the prime of my career. I was really clicking along, and I was tossed out."
The career official who made the most waves when he left was Eric Schaeffer, the former head of the EPA's enforcement office. He quit in March after 12 years at the agency, accusing the new administration of endangering public health by failing to aggressively pursue pending lawsuits against coal-fired power plants.
He and his staff could almost taste the victory from agreements in principle with two utilities to make massive pollution reductions. He said the administration undermined those settlements by waffling on the policy behind the lawsuits.
His departure was covered widely by the news media, and he testified about his complaints before Congress.
New blood leaves
Younger government employees who became government servants to help protect the environment also have quit.
After just three years as an EPA staff attorney, Michele Merkel, 34, was convinced of the essential role that lawsuits and fines lay in forcing companies to abide by environmental regulations.
She was discouraged when Christie Whitman, the EPA's new administrator, told her unit she wanted to play down enforcement and instead lure companies to stop polluting voluntarily.
She was further disappointed when Whitman proposed cutting the enforcement budget and reducing the enforcement staff through attrition.
"Ultimately what drove me out of the agency was the anti-enforcement philosophy of the current administration," Merkel said.
Merkel and the other officials who quit said they left many disgruntled colleagues behind.
Jeff Rook, executive director of Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, said his agency has talked with at least 20 Interior employees weighing quitting.
"They find themselves increasingly despairing; they're being asked to undo the work they've spent the bulk of their careers doing," Rook said.
I posted this on another thread earlier and it points out in graphic detail, your road thoughts.
Just a little math to ponder: 60' (timber fire break) times 5280' (mile) times 100 miles, divided by 43560 (sq ft in acre) equals 727.27 acres cleared. At close to 500,000 acres burned to the ground, cleared, wasted and wiped out for at least 10-20years, I would call the trade-off quite good. Bear in mind that 100 miles of a sixty foot timber break is only my guess as to what would be sufficient for a safety margin. Even if it's double or triple that, the tradeoff is more than good. Then again, common sense does not exist with Enviro/nazi's!!!
Genesis 1:28 "And God blessed them, and God said to them, 'Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every livng thing that moves upon the earth.'"
Our President knows these words, I'm sure ...
Very nice. Most enviros probably haven't got that far in the bible.
ROFL!! ;-)
http://moxnix2.homestead.com/global2.html
GLOBAL GOVERNANCE (Part 4 of 9)By Henry LambTHE ENVIRONMENTAL MOVEMENT (1970s)Not a single vote was cast against the Wilderness Act of 1964 when itfinally reached the Senate. Congress thought it was setting aside ninemillion acres of wilderness so posterity could see a sample of what theirforefathers had to conquer in order to create America. The new law was thecrowning achievement of the Wilderness Society, to which its Director,Howard Zahniser had devoted five years of constant lobbying. Thoughunnoticed at the time, the new law signaled an end to the traditional"conservation" movement and the beginning of a new environmental"preservation" movement. The conservation movement might be characterizedby the idea that private land owners should voluntarily conserve naturalresources; the environmental preservation movement is characterized by thenotion that the government should enforce conservation measures throughextensive regulations. By this distinction, the Wilderness Society broughtthe environmental movement to Congress. Robert Marshall, Benton MacKaye,and Aldo Leopold -- all avowed socialists -- organized the Society in theearly 1930s and proclaimed their socialist ideas loudly. Marshall's 1933book, The People's Forests, says:"Public ownership is the only basis on which we can hope to protect theincalculable values of the forests for wood resources, for soil and waterconservation, and for recreation . . . . Regardless of whether it might bedesirable, it is impossible under our existing form of government toconfiscate the private forests into public ownership. We cannot afford todelay their nationalization until the form of government changes."37This significant event failed to register a blip on the radar screen ofpublic awareness. Instead, public attention focused on the racial strife,the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago, and the Viet Nam War which toreapart the convention, the party, and the nation. The First "Earth Day" in1970, which perhaps coincidentally was celebrated on Lenin's birthday,April 22, was viewed as little more than a festival for flower children.The anti-war fervor, again, brought a quarter-million protesters to theMall, and Watergate brought down the Nixon Presidency. The Clean Water Actof 1972 and the Endangered Species Act of 1973 served as beacons to attractthe energies and idealism of a generation of young people who hadsuccessfully forced the world's most powerful government to abandon a warthey saw to be unjust. The 1970s witnessed an unprecedented explosion inthe number of environmental organizations and in the number of people whojoined and supported these organizations.
By the time he's through, if we can get the senate in Nov., your scorecard may be a lot better than a tie.
Very well said.
I can't even imagine the out cry from the media if Bush would have returned the favor. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks, Bob, I needed that. Remember the Detroit News and WJR, Paul Harvey?
The press crossed the line some time back, but especially in the last few months (the "what did he know" nonsense during wartime). Getting the townspeople outraged enough to storm the local newspaper with tar and feathers may be impossible, but at least we have each other...we band of few. (^:
So did the last one; it's just that HE thought it meant that he got all the Monica's he could stand.
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