Men, women and the card up the sleeve.
I have given numerous talks and written several articles lately about the abuses and growing danger to the nation posed by out-of-control bureaucracies destroying rural America by closing the enormous federal landholdings to sustainable management and use of natural resources and the targeted use of the un-Constitutional power of selective Endangered Species actions from wolves to smelt, suckers, and caddis flies. These latter abuses based on the current Endangered Species Act have emerged as perhaps as great a challenge to American liberties and our way-of-life as the
breathtaking expansion of federal power that has occurred in the very dark days of the first 18 months of the Obama Administration.
In the midst of the backlash to the dark days mentioned above, there has emerged a broad and growing political movement to “throw out all the rascals in Washington”, repeal the onerous and thousands-of-pages-long-laws passed
recently by lawmakers that couldn’t even be bothered to read them, much less justify or explain them. It is this national environment of reformation as we approach the mid-term elections that gives some hope of reorienting this nation from its descent into tyranny that has been growing for several decades.
Because of this possibility of electing a committed new crop of politicians I have mentioned the heretofore unlikely chance of repealing the Endangered Species Act or at least amending it. Some such needed changes are:
1. Make Endangered Species Listings contingent on only the worldwide status of a SPECIES (not national status).
2. Eliminate any Listing of Subspecies, Race, or Populations. Only SPECIES could be listed.
3. Reaffirm the 220+ year US Constitutional mandate that the government MUST PAY JUST COMPENSATION for ANY TAKING of private property made in regards Endangered Species from dogs and irrigation water to any and all property rights as broadly construed.
Additionally, I recommended the very important need to:
1. Repeal the 17th Amendment making US Senators appointed by the legislature of the State. This makes them true representatives of the State and not the current flaks for national and international agendas and all the national Non-Government Organizations that they work for now. Senators that do not represent their state too often remain in office due to support from national and international organizations. State legislators that appoint or allow such rogue Senators to remain in office, should be subject to the righteous wrath of justifiably irate voters within the state. This is a major factor in the dramatic loss of State’s Rights in recent decades.
2. Reform the state and federal land-management and natural resource agencies to staff them with knowledgeable persons committed to the sustainable management and use, in the broadest sense, of the natural resources on government lands.
3. Reform state universities and public schools from the propaganda centers they have become to centers of truth and knowledge so important to a Constitutional Republic like ours.
None of these six recommendations are even remotely possible if the incumbents currently warming Congressional seats return for another two (much less six) years. Reform and restoration depend on new faces but the old faces have stacked the deck and have a card up their sleeve. Take McCain, Feingold, and Reid (please) for instance.
Other than running for “their seat” they also share that ace-in-the-hole of many federal politicians with large and politically powerful Native American enclaves and many (something that amazes me) gamblers interested in “more” or “closer” casinos. Thus that secret exemption in the infamous “McCain/Feingold” election law that prohibits you and me and “our” organizations from “giving” more than such and such OR running political ads after 60 days before the election DOES NOT APPLY TO NATIVE AMERICANS. Additionally, a recent Washington state election recount for Governor was decided by votes “discovered” on large Native American reservations where the tribe runs the polling station, voting rules, and counting. This is but one leg of that octopus rightly called “the power of incumbency” that is continuing the national slide into darkness. Thus are the growing abuses of The Endangered Species Act and similar travesties more and more made to appear unchangeable.
I am constantly amazed at the number of people I meet that agree with me but are reluctant to say anything or much less vote for or actively support the changes that are so important to our future. Likewise I am heartened by the large number of people working hard to make reforms possible. For instance,
- Kimberley Strassel writes thoughtful and hopeful editorials in the Wall Street Journal.
- Sharron Angle has made state changes thought impossible as a state legislator and now has a firm hold on discrediting and replacing that disgraceful incumbent Reid in Nevada.
- Sarah Palin, just being Palin, carries a firm grasp of natural resources and the US Constitution, two things you can’t go wrong with.
- Michelle Bachmann, simultaneously an outsider and incumbent, represents the finest traditions as she speaks out bluntly where needed and gives hope to the disparate Americans desperately trying to reverse America’s drift into tyranny.
- Sharon in Oregon fights daily for rural America and ranchers in particular.
- Mona in Montana is devoting her life to saving American freedoms.
- Sylvia in New York spends much of her time fighting growing government oppression of animal owners.
- Gloria and Cindy in Washington state work to maintain state responsiveness to rural citizen’s needs as urban constituencies try to oppress their rural cousins as happens in Illinois, Massachusetts, California, and too many other states.
- Roni and Kimmi in Colorado work ceaselessly to match defensible scientific knowledge with the wild assertions of radicals with hidden agendas from global warming to expanding federal landholdings with the secret collusions of extremist groups and government agencies. Hey, hold it. Would the ladies please leave the room while we men talk?
Thanks.
Guys, how come our “few good men” in this fight (and fight it is) are all women? Too many of us have indeed become what that “California Goldilocks-from-the-gym” once rightly referred to as “girly-men”. If we are going to meet our obligation as fathers and defenders we can’t remain in hiding while these women do our work. Thank God we’ve got ‘em but we have to help and this upcoming election is (to quote something I have heard all my life but never has it held such awesome importance as it does today) the most important one in my lifetime.
OK ladies you can come back in.
Reform is needed now or it may be too late. Reform is impossible (I give you Barney Frank and Chris Dodd honchoing financial reform or Snowe, Collins, Graham, and Brown that never met a compromise they didn’t like) with the current flock of incumbents. Help the challengers and let them know what you want them to do about the things that are important to you. If you don’t or can’t, then it (rural living, hunting, fishing, gun rights, ranching, farming, pets, traditions, and way of life, etc) really isn’t worth fighting for and we will just continue to rob each other under the guise of “redistributing wealth” to create the illusion of “progress” (to where?).
The incumbents have the Billions in casino “lobbying” money (to authorize casinos and to stop authorizing casinos too close, per their owners, to existing casinos) to draw on surreptitiously and the reluctance of voters to support new faces or oppose recent changes. Those would-be challengers that would change abuses like The Endangered Species Act need all the help they can get and all of us need to help put them in office or what has become unimaginably bad will become and remain ever more intolerable with inevitable consequences too awful to contemplate.
Stopping Minnesota felons from voting and putting away dangerous bums brandishing truncheons outside Philadelphia voting booths aren’t the only worries we have. Repeal and amendment of a whole host of bad laws must be done and electing honest and committed representatives is the first step.
Jim Beers
18 July 2010
Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan,
Minnesota with his wife of many decades.
Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting at jimbeers7@comcast.net
