Month: September 2015

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KBRA – The Trap is Set

The KBRA media blitz gets a second wind

Currently, a grossly misguided dam removal agenda is sweeping across the US. In my backyard, Klamath County, Oregon we have a classic example. So-called stakeholders want politicians to give agriculture subsidized energy, give tribal interests 100,000 acres of US forest land while detonating 4 hydroelectric dams and giving the bill to taxpayers and utility rate payers.  The dams are located in Southern Oregon and Northern California and the agreements forged by this cabal are known as the Klamath Basin Restoration Agreements (KBRA).

The KBRA proponent’s siren song for “water certainty” has reached a fevered pitch. The legislative clock is running out of time and the special interest stakeholders are desperate to sway public opinion in favor of destroying four hydroelectric dams on the Klamath River.

The KBRA is really no different than the false promises of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign. Bernie offers Utopia – free college, food-stamps, housing, even the kitchen-sink. This type of despotic lie has plagued democracies throughout history. It is not new.

We, as hard-working, tax-paying citizens need to evaluate the real consequences of promises championed by self-serving special interest groups. We must decide whether they are true or false, cost-effective or wasteful, realistic or appropriate.

While reviewing the KBRA specifics we should also consider Thomas Paine’s timeless question, “Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?”

Bait the trap and rats will come

Where I live pack-rats abound. The vermin are always trying to nest in the engine compartment of my back-hoe, my wood pile or under our patio decking. The best solution that I’ve found is trapping them. Once rats are present, the only way to catch them is with something very attractive or palatable. I use peanut butter, raisins, cheese or whatever is at hand. It works pretty well and I continually upset the rats’ dreams for a worry-free and blissful existence.

Why do we allow ourselves to be baited, like rats, with schemes that we know are too good to be true?

Ask yourselves, which of Oregon’s legislators could resist the bait, from Obama, to spend $310,000,000 to create the fiasco known as Cover Oregon? Where did that money come from and what did we get for it?

Or, let’s look at Obama-Care. It promises “affordable health care” for everyone. Yet, its projected costs will exceed  $2,000,000,000,000 in less than ten years. Are we, as taxpayers, really hoping to snag great healthcare out of this deal?

KBRA Promises

The KBRA promises “water certainty” without addressing reservoirs or water storage needs.  Agricultural, metropolitan and environmental water demands can only be met by plentiful access to precious sources.

If water storage in our upper elevation snowpack remains below normal then it would behoove us to store water elsewhere rather than allowing bureaucrats to drain it into the salty Pacific.

Conservation mandates are not the answer. Mandates from bureaucracies cannot account for the wide variety of current circumstances, production value or efficiency measures that are in use by farmers and ranchers across the west.

Government dictates imply that marble-halled bureaucrats have the wisdom to efficiently allocate scarce resources. Yet, you and I know, governments are not efficient. The private sector, however, is the seedbed of innovation and efficiency.

Innovative technology can do the unimaginable – think computers, cars and cameras. Which governmental agency foresaw smart-phone technology 10 years ago?  Yet, the next 50 years of “water certainty” is supposedly accomplished by destroying four dams today – Go figure.

Future Needs

Also, the KBRA promises “certainty” without accounting for future fresh-water needs. Over the next 10 years, global population increases alone will demand 18% more fresh-water from developed countries and 50% more from under-developed countries.

The KBRA also promises plentiful Salmon, 1) without fisheries, and 2) without addressing the release of over 20,000,000 cubic yards of toxic sediment into the Klamath River.

This toxic volume would be 1,000 times greater than the tragic spill which the bumbling EPA dumped into the Animas River of Colorado this summer.

The trap is set; the spring is loaded; the stories are flooding through the media. Will any of us be clever enough to get some stale peanut butter, or moldy cheese without the trap snapping shut?

The KBRA is a “grand bargain” from a minority of stakeholders claiming to act on behalf of the majority. They are calling on us to surrender our wallets, our land, and our posterity’s future for false assurances of a Utopian dream that can never be realized.

Prosperity for America

Our goal ought to be for a prosperous America – an America that is capable of feeding the world. We have the natural resources. We have the men, women and families who are skilled in the technologies needed for global competition. We have cheap, abundant, renewable hydroelectric resources. We have untold varieties of salmon, beef, pork, poultry and dairy products in every grocery store. We provide fruits, vegetables, grains and livestock across the globe and we can provide more.

But this goal will not be achieved by driving families, ranchers, and farmers off the land. That is not be the sort of “certainty” that the Klamath Basin, or America, needs.

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EPA – a Rogue Agency

The EPA’s recent actions prove beyond any doubt that the organization is a rogue agency operating in a capricious and unlawful manner and it ought to be defunded.

Last month’s 3 million gallon spill of toxic mine waste into the Animas River is a perfect example of the EPA’s gross negligence and derogation of the rule of law. The Aug. 5 mine breach, sent millions of gallons of bright yellow, heavy-metal-contaminated water and sediment gushing into the Animas River.

That waste then flowed into the San Juan River, and eventually flowed into New Mexico and poured into Utah’s Lake Powell.

NOT above the Law

The Clean Water Act (CWA) provides that “the discharge of any pollutant by any person shall be unlawful.”

The act also specifies how pollutants can be legally managed via the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NDPES) permitting process. It also defines liability in the strictest sense and there is no requirement to prove intent or causation.

“The discharge of a pollutant” is defined broadly to include “any addition of any pollutant to navigable waters from any point source.” A “pollutant” is defined broadly to include “dredged spoil, solid waste, incinerator residue, sewage, garbage, sewage sludge, munitions, chemical wastes, biological materials, radioactive materials, heat, wrecked or discarded equipment, rock, sand, cellar dirt and industrial, municipal and agricultural waste discharged into water . . .”.

Section 1342(a) authorizes the Administrator of the EPA to “issue a permit for the discharge of any pollutant.”  This requires “planning, public notices, filings, and formal approval before activities can be legally pursued.”

If those are the rules, Did the EPA:

  • thoroughly document their plans and processes? – NO;
  • issue public notices for hearings? – NO;
  • complete the proper permit filings? – NO;
  • receive formal approval before legally pursuing their activities? – NO.

Investigation Started

Senior Policy Analyst, Paul Driessen, writes, “The evidence strongly suggests that EPA never studied or calculated anything, had no operations plan vetted and approved by state officials or mining experts, was not trying to install a pipe – and was grossly careless and negligent.”  The full extent of the EPA’s illegal activities will require a thorough investigation.

To that end, two US House members, Rob Bishop and Jason Chaffetz submitted requests for all documents related to the EPA’s work at the Gold King Mine, including all photographs and videos of the work at the mine, the spill and damaged areas.

However, “asking for” and actually “getting” all of the documents are two very different things. The public has seen this many times before. What are the possible responses?

  • Another server crash or hard-drive failure.
  • Missing data due to illegal and unknown private email accounts. If Congress doesn’t know what they are looking for, how will they know when its not included?
  • Straight-out refusal or simple non-compliance is the easiest response to imagine.

The power hungry bureaucrats at the EPA already have tremendous power and yet they crave even more. Those who have made it to the top of the EPA food chain have more than just big offices and leather chairs. They know the funding games and they use new regulatory schemes and political hypocrisy to fill their marbled hallways with costly reasons to exist.

Why does the EPA exist?

All 50 states and all US Territories have their own agencies dedicated to environmental protection within their jurisdictional boundaries. State governments are the proper home for this authority.  After all, the 10th Amendment says “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Our natural environment is a regional phenomena at best. Rivers have local origins and flow through natural watersheds. Even large river systems like the Colorado or Mississippi span only a handful of the contiguous states. The forests here in Eastern Oregon are different from those in Oregon’s coastal ranges. Alabama’s hardwood forests don’t have spotted owls, barred owls, or marbled murrelets and the Oregon coast has never been a home for the Florida manatee.

Let me ask the question again, why does the EPA exist?
Answer: Control

Control – pure and simple.

Control over money, power and people. Control over every business, and entity within the reach of federal authority. Control over everything, literally everything. Every carrot, every raisin, every electronic part, every tree, every drop of water. It also includes all land use, water use, banking, science, international trade, technology, education, healthcare, and every product used in each of these broad categories.

The EPA’s control always masquerades under the banner of “protecting communities” and “keeping the region’s air, land, and water healthy.” These semantically pleasant appeals hide the fact that the EPA uses massive public relations efforts staffed with thousands of federal workers to leverage and push public sentiment toward their false, yet appealing, goals. The net result is government creating winners and losers (solar v. coal), awarding subsidies or sanctions (wind v. oil) and granting permits or denying allotments (fish v. farms).

All of these efforts force individuals and businesses to either abide or face fines and retribution. The end result is the wholesale  loss of individual liberty and the ultimate surrender of one’s freedoms in exchange for a meager state of permanent dependence. Clarence B. Carson summarizes the entrenched preoccupation that government has in promoting itself:

“Politicians have acquired a vested interest in moving the United States toward socialism, Not only does it provide them with prestige and power, but it helps them get elected to office. Politicians run for office on the basis of benefits, favors, subsidies, exemptions, grants;” and so forth which they will provide for the electorate. Notice how this impels us toward more and more governmental activity, for the man who would continue to be elected should promise ever greater benefits to his constituency.”

The government is that instrument which the people have delegated certain enumerated powers with an implied authority to use force. The underlying reality is the handful of men who are in control are the ones who have the force.

It turns out, it is not our Congress. It is the bureaucrat.

Is Congress Powerless?

No, Congress is not powerless, but they do lack courage.

Our current Republican Congress is providing full funding for the new rulers, the statists – those who promote the power and authority of government over and above the rights of the individual.

This is rule by bureaucrats, not representative government. The population now serves the bureaucracy. We are todays servants. The bureaucrats are not public servants, we are, and we serve at their whim.

This new oligarchy is visible in the sheer increase in numbers and obvious power of bureaucrats. They are the ones who assert their wills over us, by way of vaguely worded laws, “executive power,” disparate interpretations and by turning the police and courts into instruments of their will.

It’s time to get back to basics. It means throwing Republicans out of office if they talk tough but act like wandering school boys when the time for firmness arises. It means throwing Democrats out of office if they continually promote Socialism and the destruction of the American traditions – free-enterprise, individual liberty and personal responsibility.

We need to focus on our Constitutional government, complete with its limits, its freedoms, and our ability to regain our national birthright – Life, Liberty, property and our own individual pursuits.

Otherwise these rogue agencies will turn our nation into a kaleidoscopic mess of bad policies, poisoned rivers, burnt watersheds and incredibly harmful economic and environmental results.