Category: Economy

Special interest lobbyists across America have essentially gutted our Republic. They have become so adept at picking through the bones of our public treasury that they behave more like ravenous wolves than Sons of Liberty.

Yesterday’s House budget deal, delivered by the new Speaker Paul Ryan is nothing but a John Boehner organized Republican blessing on all of Obama’s artful designs. This budget deal, like others over the past 20 years will ensure continual federal debt and deficits while driving the federal leviathan toward complete dysfunction.

Butchers at the Meat Mart

Politicians, in both parties, act more like butchers than representatives as they wield their tools. They specialize in separating the tender morsels of meat stock from the remainder of the carcass. Their self-serving promotional pieces and basic handouts look like the sections of a butchered beef cow.

In beef cutting, a phrase like “choice cut” is quite different from a “select” or “prime cut.”  The USDA came up with several confusingly subjective, supposedly precise, designations to make every consumer feel like he or she was going to be a winner at the butcher’s counter.

Yet, certainly there is a difference. They are priced differently; they cook differently; they have different structural components, and one is more tender, more flavorful and easier to swallow.

This example illustrates how bureaucrats and politicians prefer to confuse the public with well-meaning, feel-good phrases instead of tackling issues with honesty and clarity.

There’s one more rump to carve up now that the nation’s economic carcass is almost in the bag.

Our state’s Democrat Senators, Wyden and Merkley, and Republican Representative Walden are all thoroughly enjoying their time at the bipartisan butcher block as they scheme about methods of slicing up taxpayers via the KBRA/KHSA. [For those not living near Southern Oregon or Northern California these two cash cows are the area’s twin step-sisters: Klamath Basin Restoration Agreement (KBRA) and the Klamath Hydroelectric Settlement Agreement (KHSA).]

When Congress sets out to do the Thanksgiving Day carving, our Constitutionally defined Representative Republic and it’s free-market principles are surely on the cutting board.

Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway holding company will be one of the largest winners. Berkshire Hathaway is the parent company for PacifiCorp, the actual owner of the four dams slated for removal. There is no doubt that taxpayers will get turned regularly on the spit of their Representative’s making, while everyone else at the table will get a bone to chew on.

Baskets of Subsidies

The current KBRA/KHSA promises the special interest “stakeholders” a basket of  plentiful goodies:

• PacifiCorp will receive more than $1 billion in funding for their dam removal efforts.
• PacifiCorp will inch its way toward meeting the renewable portfolio standard (RPS) as electric utility users grab at rebates structured to reward lobbying interests.
• PacifiCorp will also receive taxpayer funding for operating their Link River and Keno Dams.
• The KBRA provides $92,500,000 to the Klamath Water and Power Agency (KWAPA). KWAPA is a Joint Powers/Inter-governmental Agency whose members are water agencies within the Klamath Basin Watershed.
• Irrigators will receive Electric Power Subsidies to fund unspecified projects to generate renewable energy and increase energy efficiency to reduce power costs.
• Commercial farming interests in Tule Lake will receive a Pumping Cost Subsidy. This subsidy will transfer costs from a single localized irrigation district to taxpayers across the nation as the USFWS absorbs the cost transfer
• Owners of thousands of acres of irrigated land will need to”voluntarily” retire their water rights so that the water flows can get transferred to other collective interests.
• Tribal interests will receive a direct transfer of 100,000 acres from our Winema National Forest.
• Politicians will receive the benefit of telling us that our government is more concerned about the environment than those of us who actually live and work the land. They will also use this as an opportunity to push their socialist mantra about the benefits of redistributive policies.
• Lastly, environmental fear-mongers will get their entire agenda subsidized via taxpayer funding.

Too Good To Be True

Even in politi-speak these deals sound too good to be true. The new, progressive American way doesn’t bother to mention any potential downsides, costs, or pay any attention to the stark realities facing the Federal government.

Our nation’s deficit is $19.8 trillion dollars. Therefore, any legislation that adds debt to the deficit cannot be seen as a prudent move by our Congress. The issuance of debt by our government to destroy infrastructure in order to boast about temporary economic activity and job creation is a shell game rigged against the future of our children.

The development of green energy production capacity is another fraudulent subsidy to reward special interests with taxpayer funds. Lastly, debt financed destruction of our nation’s clean, low-cost energy capacity will never produce the prosperity our communities need to sustain themselves.

In the end, the butchers of our great nation will be tussling over the maggot infested bones of our once  vibrant Republic while the local community will be left holding their hand painted signs promising, “KBRA=Jobs.”

You’ll have to admit, its got a nice ring; it makes an easy #hashtag for Twitter users, its under 140 characters and it certainly looks triumphant on taxpayer funded government license plates.

My article, KBRA – The Trap is Set, caught (pun intended) some heat and lots of comments, too.

Please know that I chose my words carefully and I never accused anyone of being “a rat” but I did set up an illustration to point out that the federal government treats most of us like rats.

Apparently, the big boys in their white, lab-coats like having us run in our cages. They want to control every aspect of our lives:

• How much we eat and drink,
• What we eat and drink,
• How much energy we consume,
• What types of energy we consume
• How much grass our cows consume,
• How much water we use when we flush our toilets, etc., etc.

The elites in science have made puppets out of our legislators and are fast becoming the new ruling class.

Legendary Oxford scholar, Christian apologist and author C.S. Lewis warned, “The new oligarchy must increasingly rely on the advice of scientists until in the end the politicians become merely the scientists’ puppets.” Lewis’ warning realizes that science (a good thing) could be systematically perverted to attack religious traditions, subvert  law and destroy human freedom. Lewis’ predictions are essential for us today because science is being used to extract money and power from the tax-paying public.

Consider science claims that once occupied the thrones of power and have since been debunked:

• The American public was told that coffee, eggs and bacon were killers. We were told to drastically reduce our consumption or our health would pay the price. Now, a few years later, the folks in the white lab-coats have new science that says, “Oops…  coffee, eggs and bacon actually contribute to healthy diets.”
• In another example, paper grocery sacks were once common place, but plastic bag manufacturers developed a winning marketing strategy. They re-defined paper products  as “non-renewable” because they come from our forest lands. Yet, everyone knows forest products are a naturally plentiful, renewable and bio-degradable. This was scare-mongering at its worse because the politically motivated marketing strategy actually prevailed over common-sense.

Legislators were caught, in a trap of their own making. They forgot their duty to the US Constitution – they wanted power, control and money.

The plastics industry consortium had set a perfect trap. They pushed an alternative backed by so-called science. It even looked reasonable, particularly after they sold the claim that worldwide destruction of forests would be imminent without immediate action.

Politicians saw their re-election campaign coffers filling with special interest money and they were trapped – like rats!

The same tactic is being used today against clean, affordable, renewable hydro-electric dam facilities. In Oregon, hydro-electric generation facilities constructed before 1995 have been deemed non-renewable by the legislature. This doesn’t make sense except that Oregon’s legislature has also been snagged by the false promises coming from the federal government.

The State of Oregon would be one of the nation’s top renewable energy producers if their  hydro-electric definition followed common-sense.  Unfortunately, as a top renewable producer, Oregon would no longer have access to fistfuls of money flowing from the federal largess.

In these cases, politics and science can be viewed as evil step-sisters. When left to their independent realms they can serve the public well, but when combined they are often misused.

Today, in the plastic bag arena, it’s happening in reverse.  Estimates suggest over 1 trillion disposable plastic bags are used worldwide every year. Americans use and throw away 100 billion of these bags.

What solutions are being shoveled at the public? Government regulation, of course. Science again will be used to funnel your tax-dollars into the political winner’s circle.

This is not a solution, it is only regulation. It only serves those winners the government chooses, through legislative mandate. Remember, government has no power except coercive power – the power of forcing compliance through regulatory agencies.

Only free markets can accomplish solutions. Free markets do not need political aide to survive. This is why the KBRA/KHSA issue is so divisive. It promotes government regulation of water flows over common-sense solutions for solving water scarcity. Why not add water to our watershed? Why were water storage reservoirs omitted from this comprehensive 50 year agreement? Who’s in charge here? Who’s your master? (How many gallons of water can we use with each flush?)

Seeking political solutions to our societies problems of supply and demand would be like pouring clean, golden brown motor oil on your hot-cakes – it might serve as an appealing photo-op but it is a deadly combination.

Nearly 185 years ago, Alexis de Tocqueville noticed the potential for despotism in America. He observed men, “incessantly endeavoring to procure the petty and paltry pleasures with which they glut their lives.” Over these citizens would reign, “an immense and tutelary power, which takes upon itself alone to secure their gratifications.”

With dramatic insight, Tocqueville notes, “It would be like the authority of a parent if…  its object was to prepare men for manhood; but it seeks… to keep them in perpetual childhood…”

Tocqueville realized the threat of lost liberty. He notes, it will happen when the government, “chooses to be the sole agent” of our happiness, security and pleasures.

His most poignant insight is the question, “What remains, but to spare them all the care of thinking and all the trouble of living?”

Tocqueville was a far better word smith than I and he avoided the “rat” analogy by using the more common language of his era which described a horse in harness: “Every man allows himself to be put in leading-strings, because he sees that it is not a person or a class of persons, but the people at large, who hold the end of his chain.”

In closing:

“Be not intimidated … nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.” – John Adams (1765)

Last Friday, I was on Bill Meyer’s Radio Show discussing the KBRA/KHSA agreements. Bill asked Klamath County Commissioner Tom Mallams, former Shasta Nation Vice Chairman Gary Lake, and myself to provide insight to the apparent support for dam removal from Oregon’s only Republican House member Greg Walden.

Unfortunately for Rep. Walden, he can’t have it both ways. He can’t pretend to work for rural American values while flushing our property rights and precious fresh-water resources into the Salty Pacific.

Not only does the KBRA and KHSA take water resources from Klamath and Siskiyou counties and the Rogue Valley, but it sets precedence throughout the United States. These measures, if successful, will instruct others on how to successfully use political power to transfer private wealth into collective interests’ pockets. The KBRA/KHSA represents the classic “Divide and Conquer” paradigm: tribes against agriculture, project irrigators against non-project irrigators, wind and solar interests against ratepayers, business cronyism against taxpayers, and finally, the Endangered Species Act against the rest of us.

These agreements are bad for property owners, ratepayers, and taxpayers. They may result in a tidal wave of dam removal efforts across the US, because they ignore facts and propose feel-good measures that can’t possibly achieve their utopian goals.

20 Reasons Why the KBRA/KHSA Does Not Work

1. Ratepayers will pay in excess of $1 billion to remove the private assets of PacifiCorp, a subsidiary of Warren Buffet’s Berkshire Hathaway investment empire.
2. Ratepayers will pay unknown costs for replacing the 155 megawatts of cheap, clean, renewable hydro-power electricity with other more expensive forms of energy.
3. The Department of the Interior has recently offered to transfer nearly 100,000 acres (156 mi.2) of the Fremont-Winema National Forest back to tribal ownership. The Fremont-Winema National Forest was originally created following the termination of federal recognition of and government services to the Klamath Tribes. The 1954 Klamath Termination Act also paid $41,000 to each of the 1,659 enrolled tribal members (68 Stat. 718). In current dollar terms this would equate to $362,667.10 for each of those tribal members. This would be the equivalent of transferring more than $601 million (current dollars) for the creation of the Fremont-Winema forest.
4. The dams are at an elevation which is 2,500 feet lower than Klamath’s agricultural basin. The dams are also between 50 and 60 miles downstream from the Klamath agricultural community’s interests. Because of these two facts, anyone can see that Klamath Basin Agriculture has no explicit need for the dams, in or out. The farmers in the Klamath Basin have signed on to this agreement in an effort to preserve their established water-rights which were diminished through the preposterous twisting of administrative water regulation by the State of Oregon.
5. The agreements do not re-establish agricultural water rights for farmers. The agreements only propose that tribes will not fully exercise their new-found water rights. This is the meaning of the phrase, “water-certainty,” within the agreements. No guarantees of water delivery are explicitly identified.
6. The water delivery schedule still has a descending priority. First, to fish, second to the  environment, and lastly, to agriculture. Water deliveries are still subject to tribal calls on the water, new endangered species mitigation, new biological opinions regarding current mitigation, and revised regulatory decisions about allocations to existing uses.
7. The Biological Opinions used for determining water requirements for endangered or threatened species run contrary to scientific evidence. The complex eco-system for maintaining flows and lake levels can be better accomplished with dams left in place. Otherwise, we risk creating a fishy version of the Barred Owl against the Spotted Owl, or the Pacific salmon verses the Harbor Seal in the Northwest. Which of these identified species will win the crown: Lost River Suckers, Shortnose Suckers, Redband Trout, Steelhead, Chinook or Coho salmon? Destroying the dams can’t possibly resolve the conflicting priorities across competing species.
8. Economic viability of agricultural enterprises will be continually undermined in favor of land idling (using tax-dollars to buy idleness from farmers), out-right bankruptcies, fire sales to environmental or land conservation groups, while leaving the land to its original non-irrigated, pre-historic, high-dessert uses.
9. Recent year salmon fish counts far exceed (by 100%) any recorded salmon counts from pre-dam construction years.
10. Cool, voluminous water flows are good for fish and wildlife habitat. Non-seasonal water leveling and flow management can only be provided with dam infrastructure in place.
11. The dams act as giant settling ponds, removing algae and tons of deadly toxins and other sedimentation which would otherwise foul the river system.
12. Without the dams in place the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) will be stripped of necessary tools (i.e., river pulsing and flushing) for managing water quality and fish disease outbreaks.
13. Destroying the dam infrastructures clearly violates the Clean Water Act. Does the problem disappear because there is an “exceptional discharge exemption?” No. It just becomes legal. Using this logic, regulating agencies could argue that a waiver was the only thing needed to appease the people living in the Animus River basin, where the EPA recently dumped 3 million gallons of toxic chemical waste.
14. The “exceptional discharge exemption” focuses only on calculations for tons of concrete and rebar debris. However, there is no plan for managing the estimated 22.6 million tons of toxic sediment that is currently stored behind the existing dams. This volume is 1000 times more than the toxic Animus river discharge.
15. Allowing federal contractors to poison downstream aquatic life and salmon spawning beds will create harmful conditions that may take decades to resolve.
16. Before any studies were completed, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stated that there was nothing PacifiCorp could do to get the dams re-licensed. This is the type of agenda-driven overreach that mimics the EPA’s predetermined rejection of the Pebble Basin Mine in Alaska.
17. The “stakeholder” group was created through political, agenda-driven motives by Oregon’s disgraced former Gov. John Kitzhaber. Environmental special interest groups were deemed “stakeholders” with standing, exceeding the rights of private property owners and water right holders.
18. Private property rights, in the form of water right holdings, become uncompensated “takings” under the agreements.
19. The destruction of water and river front property value is a clear, unjustified and uncompensated  “taking” of private property.
20. Public disclosures regarding the total costs to ratepayers and taxpayers is incomplete and disingenuous.

The KBRA and the KHSA agreements would be enormously expensive.  There is no budget for this money, so it must be borrowed from our children’s futures. Will these untapped natural river resources provide our posterity with the means for servicing this debt? Do these expenses solve the real problems? Can these costs be justified?

Oregon’s only Republican House member, Rep. Walden ought to listen to his conservative peers, like  Rep. Tom McClintock (R-CA) instead of following in the footsteps of our states far-left, progressive liberals, Sen. Wyden (D-OR), Sen. Merkley (D-OR), Rep. DeFazio (D), et al.

In November of 2011, Rep. McClintock, gave his summary of the poorly engineered KBRA/KHSA agreements:

“Amidst spiraling electricity prices and chronic electricity shortages the effort to tear down four perfectly good hydroelectric dams at enormous cost to ratepayers and taxpayers is insane. These dams produce up to 155 megawatts of the cleanest and cheapest electricity on the planet – enough for 155,000 homes.

“Proponents say it is necessary to tear down the dams to help increase the salmon population, and yet we did that a long time ago by building fish hatcheries. The problem is that hatchery fish are not included in the population count. And to add insult to insanity, if the Iron Gate Dam is torn out, the result will be loss of water needed to operate the Iron Gate Fish Hatchery, which produces five million salmon smolts every year.

“Fortunately, congressional approval is necessary to move forward. The full House voted earlier this year against proceeding with the Klamath dam removal. That [2011] precedent, and a $13 trillion national debt {now, $20 trillion] speak volumes on the chances of this legislation passing in the House over the next year.”

What was true then, is true today. That’s the nature of truth, it doesn’t change with the tide.

     “The American farmer is in a situation today that can be solved. The solution is not one of governmental policies that create short-term “fixes” for the farmer. The best method to let the farmer prosper is the same solution that would let the other parts of the economy prosper. Government must remove the burdens placed upon the individual. The individual must be allowed to compete on an equal basis to become competitive with his peers.”

—Edgar Terry, a fourth-generation farmer in Ventura, California

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.

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.