Fudging the facts on oil

Apparently there is nothing the Obama administration won’t do or say to justify the way it does business - including lying. Case in point, an administration report used to justify its six-month ban on new deep-water drilling in the Gulf of Mexico in the wake of the BP oil disaster. Now the Interior Department’s inspector general has confirmed that the White House did indeed alter a report that was supposedly the work of scientists and experts in the field to make it appear they supported the ban. With some deft editing, the White House made it appear the drilling moratorium recommendation was “peer reviewed” when, in fact, the only thing peer-reviewed were new safety measures for offshore drilling. “We believe the report does not justify the moratorium as written and that the moratorium as changed will not contribute measurably to increased safety and will have immediate and long-term economic effects,” the scientists wrote in a letter to Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and the state’s senators earlier this year...more

This Boston Herald editorial concluded by saying:

Still a congressional inquiry into the matter - and White House involvement - when the new House takes its seats next year would not be out of order.

Environmentalists fear Ken Salazar's complacency will drive extinctions

his week the Fish and Wildlife Service released the Candidate Notice of Review (CNOR) on the status of species waiting for ESA protection. The news was somber for animals and plants that have been languishing on the same list for years. The report revealed that 251 species have been stalled on the “candidate” list, although many have been on the same list for decades. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service under the Obama administration has provided Endangered Species Act protection to just 51 plants and animals and most of them were in the state of Hawaii. By comparison, the Clinton administration protected 522 species; the George H.W. Bush administration protected 231. The conservation group WildEarth Guardians has filed 130 lawsuits or petitions to pressure Salazar to utilize the powerful Endangered Species Act for the purpose it was intended; to protect species from extinction. “It’s time for Ken Salazar to realize there’s an extinction crisis unfolding right here in the U.S. The best way to stop it is to bring more imperiled species under the protection of the Endangered Species Act, rather than leaving them out in the cold,” stated Nicole Rosmarino of WildEarth Guardians. In addition, the Center for Biological Diversity has joined other groups in an active lawsuit against the government’s continued delays. The suit focuses on the illegality of not making timely progress on listing threatened species for ESA protection, as required by the law...more

Given this and other recent stories, it is clear the enviros are after Salazar and actively seeking to have him replaced with a Secretary more to their liking.

Pilots association –TSA scans “out of control”

The union representing many American Airlines pilots is working to exempt its membership from the Transportation Security Administration’s imaging body scans, saying the screening process “has spun out of control.” In a Nov. 1 letter to its members provided to Government Security News, Allied Pilots Association president Capt. David Bates recommends that pilots “politely refuse” Advanced Imaging Technology (AIT) scans and request alternate pat-down searches. He said the pat downs are “demeaning,” unnecessary and recommends pilots request it be done in an out-of-view area away from passengers. “It’s long past time that policymakers take the steps necessary to exempt commercial pilots from airport security screening and grant designated pilot access to SIDA [security identification display areas] utilizing either Crew Pass or biometric identification,” he told APA members. The APA represents about 11.000 pilots. Bates made his recommendations because of concerns over the repeated exposure of pilots to radiation from backscatter X-ray exposure used by AIT technology and because pilots should be a trusted part of air travel security...more

Song Of The Day #435

Ranch Radio continues this week of Western Swing with Spade Cooley performing Fiddle Boogie.

You'll find the tune on his 34 track CD Spade Cooley 1941-1947.

Interior Extorts $$ In Interagency Border Battle

The Border Wilderness Interagency Battle

Mitigation or Extortion?

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

     In the drama that passes as national security along the Mexican border, a subplot has found its way into the environmental agenda of federal land management agencies as they interact with Customs and Border Protection (CBP).  It was first revealed to the American public in a letter from Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano in October 2009 when the secretary revealed the contents of a memorandum of agreement for natural and cultural resource mitigation between CBP and the Department of Interior (DOI).

    What the secretary was referring to were the payments being extracted from CBP by the DOI in return for the right to access lands managed by that agency.  The Secretary acknowledge the payments, but also defended her agency when she wrote, “The USBP believes that operations are generally functionally equivalent to mitigation.”  In other words, if the Border Patrol was allowed full and unencumbered access to those federal lands, the flow of illegals could be reduced and that would serve as real mitigation for those natural resources being devastated on the border.

     The Secretary went on to detail some of the so called mitigation payments.  That initial summary of mitigation projects funded by CBP totaled nearly $13 million, but there was a disclosure that a deal had actually been made to transfer $50 million!

     In a closer look, the demand by DOI reveals that, for the right to perform its mission which includes access and or the installation of such things as repeater towers and other high tech surveillance equipment placement, the CBP must pay a schedule of payments.  On the surface, the placement of such equipment must be expected to create a lot of surface damage to the lands in question, but the actual payments are not being used for disturbance.  Rather, the money is going to be used for a wide array of projects not even associated with that disturbance. 

     For example, the initial projects demanded that $4.4 million be paid toward three studies and monitoring activities of jaguars, lesser and Mexican long-nosed bats, and four species of Rio Yaqui fish.  The jaguar study is just part of another $3.1 million schedule to be levied against the CBP for monitoring jaguars in both Arizona and New Mexico.  

"Within the federally designated wilderness areas, the interagency disputes have allowed the human and drug smuggling corridors to expand, and, as a result, the entire nation has been put at risk." 

    In a recent GAO report, the full disclosure of the $50 million interagency deal reveals that the projects range from a $10,000 demand for a New Mexico habitat survey of the Sneed’s pincushion cactus to a $14,100,000 payment to be made for “Quino checkerspot butterfly, gnatcatcher”  in California.  Another $13,236, 672 will be paid for a “Cameron County ocelot and jaguarondi corridor” in Texas. 

     The initial $50 million represented by Secretary Napolitano has actually grown to $52,474,593 in projects spread across Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California in exchange for certain operational and access considerations along and within the designated Wilderness dominated border lands of Arizona.  Of that total, only $1.2 million is going to go to any actual mitigation by CBP activity on the land itself.  All the rest is going to various wildlife projects.  Asked about that issue, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument superintendent, Lee Baiza, remarked, “The $50 million is a small amount compared to the $600 million Congress agreed in August to spend on agents, inspectors, and other law enforcement officials as well as communications equipment and unmanned aerial drones to monitor border activities.”  

     Taxpayers have little idea of the danger that has been created on the Arizona border surrounding the ever expanding environmental agenda, conflicting federal land agency missions, and the actions of bureaucratically entitled managers like Mr. Baiza.  Within the federally designated wilderness areas, the interagency disputes have allowed the human and drug smuggling corridors to expand, and, as a result, the entire nation has been put at risk.

     While the land agencies have battled and thrown administrative and operational obstacles at CBP, the schedule of demands is growing. Discussions have now taken place to expand the demand beyond the initial $50 million.  Funding for non-endangered wildlife, wetland and riverfront acquisitions, soil and cultural resource enhancement, and even the protection of native human remains outside of federal land holdings have been discussed. 

      Meanwhile, the danger of the border lands has increased, and the agencies are even starting to disallow their own personnel from entering certain areas. Such contradiction of actions would lead an objective observer to conclude that the real agenda has nothing to do at all with the degradation of resources stemming from illegal smuggling.  Rather, it is the expansion of the land agency bureaucratic domain along with acceptance of the environmental agenda that is truly driving the interagency chaos.  How else would any federal manager justify the funding of a “peninsular bighorn sheep study” in California for the allowance of a repeater tower to be installed in the CBP Tucson Sector in Arizona? 

      In the private sector, such strong arm tactics for funds would not be termed mitigation.  It would be called extortion . . . and somebody would be going to jail. 

Stephen L. Wilmeth is a rancher from southern New Mexico.  He is an advocate of the value of land stewardship predicated on assumed risk and economic responsibility.  “Risk must be assigned to the manager or peripheral agendas become the guiding force.  History is full of examples where those two forces diverge, and failure results.”   

          

             

      

    

           

Desperate Days For Global Warmers

The United Nations wants $100 billion a year in taxes to deal with climate change. Two groups of researchers plan to go on the offensive against global warming "denialists." When will the madness end? The U.N.'s craving for money it hasn't earned is insatiable. So it's no surprise that one of its panels has proposed to raise $100 billion a year from taxes on carbon dioxide emissions and international transportation, and possibly on financial transactions as well, to mitigate the effects of climate change. At roughly the same time the U.N. announced this plan to dig deeper into our pockets, a group of researchers led by John Abraham of St. Thomas University in Minnesota said it was mobilizing a "climate rapid-response team" that would also mount a media campaign to defend its position. The researchers, the Tribune News Service reports, are even willing to appear before "potentially hostile audiences on conservative talk radio and television shows." According to Scott Mandia, a professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community College in New York, this team will "not only communicate science," but also "aggressively engage the denialists and politicians who attack climate science and its scientists." It seems they're afraid that with the GOP in control of the House, political funding for their climate change research will dry up. Having virtually invested their lives in the needless spread of fear, they must feel that they've been thrown into a struggle for relevance...more

Is The Western Climate Establishment Corrupt? Asks SPPI

The Science and Public Policy Institute (SPPI) continues raising serious concerns for policy makers and the public as to whether the “adjustments” that government-funded employees continue making to raw surface and ocean temperature data sets can be trusted. In a new collaborative paper, Is The Western Climate Establishment Corrupt?, Dr. Dave Evans has gathered substantial evidence that corruption has become endemic within government-sponsored climate units. Key findings of the paper include: * Official thermometers are overwhelmingly in warm localities such as near air conditioner exhaust vents, buildings, concrete, tarmac, asphalt, and even fermenting vats of warm sludge. * Officials hide the modern ARGO data which shows the world’s oceans are cooling. * They ignore hundreds of thousands of weather balloon results that show the climate models overestimate future warming by at least 300%. * Officials frequently point to the last 130 years of global warming. But almost never mention the full story: that the planet started the current global warming trend before 1700, over a century before humans started pumping out meaningful amounts of CO2...more

The Crash Of The Climate Exchange

As the case for global warming and cap-and-trade has collapsed, so too has the market that was to exploit this manufactured crisis for fun and profit. The climate-change bubble has burst. Lost in the hubbub leading up to the Republican and Tea Party tsunami on Nov. 2 was the collapse of the Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX). But its implications for the future of the American economy and the business climate are staggering: It is an acknowledgment that both the case for climate trade and cap-and-tax legislation has also collapsed. On Oct. 21 the exchange announced it was ending carbon trading, which, as Pajamas Media's Steve Milloy points out, was "the only purpose for which it was founded." Launched as a "voluntary" method of trading "carbon credits," CCX rested on the hope that cap-and-tax legislation would make such trading mandatory — and profitable. CCX billed itself as "North America's only cap-and-trade system for all six greenhouse gases, with global affiliates and projects worldwide." Barack Obama served on the board of the Joyce Foundation from 1994 to 2002, when it issued CCX start-up grants. Presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett also once sat on the Joyce board...more

There's that damned old market again. No wonder the DC Deep Thinkers hate it so.

All Hopped Up: Town Unites For Toad Revival

A small environmental miracle has occurred in Beatty, Nev., a former mining town that sits on the eastern edge of Death Valley between Jackass Flats and Sober Up Gulch. The people of Beatty have helped revive the Amargosa toad, a warty, speckled, palm-sized creature that's unique to the area and, just a few years ago, seemed headed for extinction. But this is not your typical story of environmental action — the toad owes its comeback to an unlikely coalition that includes ranchers, miners, off-road racers, opponents of big government and the local brothel...more

I knew it - even whores are better at saving a species than the USFWS.

Food versus fuel

One of the most politically charged decisions the lame-duck Congress will face when it reconvenes is deciding whether to extend subsidies for corn-based ethanol. As rising prices for grain set off alarms among ranchers, consumers and environmentalists, ethanol lobbyists are counting on their generous contributions to key legislators to protect their reserved seats at the governmental feed trough. Several key subsidies — including high tariffs on imports of foreign ethanol and tax credits for ethanol blended into gasoline — are set to expire at the end of December. Congress must decide whether to continue down a track of underwriting food for fuel that resulted in the conversion of 25 percent of the U.S. corn harvest in 2007 to ethanol, a share that experts say will steadily rise in the coming decade along with oil prices. The competing demands on corn inventories — to feed fowl and livestock, fill boxes of packaged cereals on store shelves, and as feedstock for ethanol — have contributed to jumps of 70 percent in the value of corn futures over the past few months. The Environmental Protection Agency's recent decision to raise the maximum allowable ethanol in blended gasoline from 10 percent to 15 percent has prompted warnings of coming meat price increases. J. Patrick Boyle, CEO of the American Meat Institute, told the San Antonio Express-News that American consumers will pay for ethanol in higher price tags on holiday turkeys, hams and other meat products...more

The Dude Ranchers Association Turns 85

The DRA will be marking this milestone with a new logo, launching an updated website, and at the 85th Annual Convention held in Arizona January 19-23, 2011 at member ranch Tanque Verde. Created in 1926 the Dude Ranchers Association, or DRA, is now the governing body of the West's Dude Ranch industry. Over 100 ranches have passed the rigorous two year inspection and approval process and are current members of the DRA. The first official DRA meeting was held in late September 1926 and attended by many ranchers, railroad officials, and even national park officials. Initial objectives included standardizing practices, and discussing transportation and proper care of guests. Over the years public vacation expectations have shifted and the DRA and its members have evolved their experiences to fit with changing times...more

Is Dudley going?

Song Of The Day #434

Here is more Western Swing. This time it's the Light Crust Doughboys performing their version of Avalon from the 1930s.

Madeleine Pickens named "Horsewoman of the Year" (I know, I know)

Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States stated, "Madeleine Pickens is one of those rare individuals who puts her passion, time and money where her heart is," as she was named "Horsewoman of the Year" at the annual Sound Horse Conference in Louisville, Kentucky. Pickens was a key note speaker on Friday and was introduced by Senator Joe Tydings, "The father of the Horse Protection Act of 1970" which aims to end horse soring, the illegal and inhumane practice of using painful chemicals and mechanical methods that create intense pain in the front feet of gaited show horses to create exaggerated high steps. Wife of billionaire T. Boone Pickens, Madeleine purchased a 14,000 acre ranch in northeast Nevada to house wild horses that have been removed by the Bureau of Land Management. Naming the ranch Mustang Monument, Pickens plans to initially bring in 1000 non-breeding mustangs and turn the area into a vacation destination filled with camping opportunities, covered wagons, campfires and natural ecological opportunities for Americans to enjoy across the nation. Pickens adds "there is romance and glamour" and that "Americans don't often see this way of life."...more

Her being "horsewoman" of the year is like Tiger Woods being "husband" of the year.

Both fall a little short of the mark.

BLM removes nearly 2,000 wild horses in Wyoming

Federal wranglers have gathered 1,926 wild horses in a massive roundup that began Oct. 10 in southwest Wyoming. Bureau of Land Management cowboys have returned 270 of the captured animals to the range. Seven horses have died during the ongoing roundup operations in the Adobe Town and Salt Wells Creek herd management areas in Sweetwater and Carbon counties. Last week, the agency expanded its roundup plans and now expects to remove about 2,107 wild horses from overpopulated rangelands in the herd units. The roundup aims to bring down the population level to around 860 wild horses -- the low end of the BLM's appropriate management level. BLM helicopters have been working south of Interstate 80 between highways 191 and 789 and the state line. The aircraft fly below 500 feet to herd the horses into traps. Captured horses are taken to the agency's Rock Springs holding facility...more

Only Nixon could go to China, and apparently only Obama can cull these critters.

Environmentalists: Tortoise population may decline due to project

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar were on hand last week to commemorate the ground-breaking of BrightSource Energy’s new Ivanpah Solar Electrical Generating Site California’s Ivanpah Valley. Upon completion, the site will double the generation of commercial thermal solar electricity in the U.S. But not everyone is happy about it. The site has been met with protest from environmental groups such as the Basin and Range Watch, however, over the number of threatened desert tortoises that call the Ivanpah Valley home. Initial Bureau of Land Management estimates of the tortoise population were found to be underestimates. Tortoises are being relocated from the project site, but the fear is that some may be missed and others may fail to adapt to a new habitat. “The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Game say that on translocation projects, such as Ivanpah, 50 percent of relocated tortoises will die, mostly due to predation,” said Laura Cunningham, tortoise biologist with Basin Range and Watch. “Also, 50 percent of tortoises in the host site are estimated to die due to competition, and 85 percent of juvenile tortoises will die because they are hard to find.”...more

It's clear the enviro's want to use the tortoises for land use purposes. What they are really saying is "no" to the solar energy project

Feds to drillers: Sign on the dotted line

When it comes to following the new rules for offshore drilling, federal regulators want to be sure companies are willing to put their names behind their actions. In a Notice to Lessees issued Monday (see below), the government said drilling permit applicants must have a statement signed by a company official “stating that the operator will conduct all authorized activities in compliance with all applicable regulations…” Officials have said in the past they would require some type personal promise from individuals at companies that the rules were being followed, but the NTL is the formal announcement of that requirement. The announcement Monday also gave some guidance to operators for the kind of issues the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement will be looking for when reviewing oil spill response plans...more

What we really need is a NTL, or perhaps NTP, with our elected officials.

Death on the beach: thousands of sea lions washed up along West Coast beaches

The noise stretched like a tight wire through the air as dozens of sea lions gasped for their last breath along central Oregon coast beaches near Florence yesterday. Thus far, scientists estimated that “thousands of sea lions” have washed up at various West coast beach locations due to a bacterial infection that also threatens people and animals. Dead sea lions were found near the world famous “Sea Lion Caves” still featured the usual group of 1,000 or so sea lions sitting on rocks as great waves of the Pacific Ocean created a storm of applause. According to marine biologists -- at the nearby Hatfield Marine Science Center in Newport -- the deceased sea lions and various other marine life, to include thousands of dead starfish, “have tested positive” for leptospirosis...more

That's what they get for eatin' all those endangered salmon.

Cost of Green Power Makes Projects Tougher Sell

Michael Polsky’s wind farm company was doing so well in 2008 that banks were happy to lend millions for his effort to light up America with clean electricity. But two years later, Mr. Polsky has a product he is hard-pressed to sell. His company, Invenergy, had a contract to sell power to a utility in Virginia, but state regulators rejected the deal, citing the recession and the lower prices of natural gas and other fossil fuels. Deals to buy renewable power have been scuttled or slowed in states including Florida, Idaho and Kentucky as well as Virginia. By the end of the third quarter, year-to-date installations of new wind power dropped 72 percent from 2009 levels, according to the American Wind Energy Association, a trade group. Electricity generated from wind or sun still generally costs more — and sometimes a lot more — than the power squeezed from coal or natural gas. Prices for fossil fuels have dropped in part because the recession has reduced demand. In the case of natural gas, newer drilling techniques have opened the possibility of vast new supplies for years to come...more

That damned old market...how dare it ignore the plans of the DC Deep Thinkers.

Explosives brought in to topple NC's dead hemlocks

A years-long battle to save hemlocks in the Appalachian Mountains from a tree-killing pest has some new weapons: duct tape, a helicopter, explosives and a fresh arsenal of chemicals. U.S. Forest Service personnel are working this week in the Joyce Kilmer Memorial Forest to eliminate some of the casualties of the struggle with an invasive insect called the woolly adelgid. About 150 dead hemlocks - some of them centuries old - threaten to tumble onto a popular trail frequented by about 35,000 visitors each year. Steve Lohr, the district ranger who oversees hundreds of thousands of acres of national forest in the region, said duct-taping explosives to the trees appears to be the safest way to knock them over. It's an uncommon technique but carries the added benefit of leaving a jagged stump as opposed to a clean cut. "Since it's in wilderness, we want it to look as natural as possible," Lohr said. Meanwhile, officials are redoubling their efforts to save what's left of the decimated hemlock population. For years, massive numbers of hemlocks have been killed off by the speck-sized adelgid, a bug thought to have come from Asia a century ago that seeks nutrients inside the trees...more

Helicopters and explosives in a Wilderness? Something ain't right here. I'll check it out and let you know.

Decision on Idaho wolf killing petition delayed

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service won't be able to respond to Idaho's petition to kill wolves in the upper Clearwater River Basin in northern Idaho as soon as hoped, an agency official says. Brian Kelly, director of the federal agency's office in Boise, said he recently learned the agency has to conduct a National Environmental Policy Act review of the petition before making a decision. "We are working as expeditiously as possible," Kelly told the Lewiston Tribune. "The intent is to make a decision so the state can do it at a time of year it is more effective to do it." Idaho officials submitted the petition in August to kill up to 50 wolves in the Lolo Zone in northern Idaho with the goal of boosting elk populations. States are allowed to remove wolves if they are harming deer or elk herds. But the state must prove the action is warranted and win approval from the federal government...more