Over the course of the last two years there has been an increasingly louder din coming from the conservative movement about how President Obama and his inner circle of czars are increasing their power base through unilateral actions that have a significant impact on everyone. There have been warning early on from bloggers and conservative writers about how these power grabs would all play out. Over the next couple of days I will highlight some of these actions. I would like to say that I would provide a direction or contacts to reach out to stop all of this, but considering the Obama Administration has pretty much tuned out the American people the only advice that I think would work is to throws the bums out come election time. 2010 was a good start, keep it up in 2012.
Ken Salazar, Pres Obama, and the Department of the Interior (et al): I have already posted once about my feelings towards this unprecedented land grab by the Department of the interior. But this goes considerably deeper once you really get to connecting all the dots. There are many moving parts, a lot of them interrelated to each other, that will further restrict the average American from using lands, whether for recreation or resource development.
One large item on the lefty agenda is a program initiated by Obama called “America’s Great Outdoor Initiative”. As I read the Presidential Memo that got this whole thing kicked off, it is quite clear that we are dealing with a President and staff that know how to tug at the heartstrings of Americans. With lines like, “Children, especially, are spending less time outside running and playing, fishing and hunting, and connecting to the outdoors just down the street”. (emphasis mine). I find it amusing that an administration supported deeply by the anti-hunter, -fishing, -gun crowd would put this in the memo. I’m sure the lefties reading probably needed a shot of 100 proof just to get their heart restarted. That was put in there for one reason and that was to attract the knuckle-dragging redneck groups without whom this whole initiative would probably fall apart. With other programs in the works that would restrict fishing in many locations, hunting bans that would happen under THIS initiative, I think that support will most likely dry up in a hurry once folks dig into the actual goals of this initiative, which is to essentially ban activities in America’s lands that a lot of people enjoy such as ATV use, horseback riding, and other activities deemed by the greenies as not nice to the environment.
The Great Outdoor Initiative also appears to be another attempt by Obama to kick-start the economy with green jobs and all that crud. “Advancing job and volunteer opportunities related to conservation and outdoor recreation…” When will these guy ever learn, the green crap just isn’t going to work. The cash for clunkers was a failure (cost the taxpayer nearly 3x the original amount, used car prices up an average of $1800.00), the home winterizing has been a failure (no where near the 87,000 jobs promised have been realized) , the ban on incandescent light bulbs has sent jobs overseas (the last US bulb plant is no closed, most of the new-fangled bulbs will be built, where else, China), and wind generating equipment will be built in China (China has a near monopoly on the rare-earth minerals needed to build the solar panels and wind turbines are already built there). So far, the Obama Administrations track record on green job development has pretty much been a bust.
Last spring, a secret White House memo was unearthed that revealed 14 different sites in the western US that Obama has under consideration for designation as National Monuments, which he can do through the 1906 Antiquities Act. Sen Jim DeMint (R-SC) wrote an Op-Ed piece for the Washington Times that states:
“The document list 14 properties that, according to the document, ‘might be good candidates’ for Mr. Obama to nab through presidential proclamation. Apparently, Washington bureaucrats believe it’s more important to preserve grass and rocks for birdwatchers and backpackers than to keep these local economies thriving.”
The piece goes on further to outline some of the areas that could be locked up and the reason to do so:
“This includes a 58,000 acre area in New Mexico. The memo said this should be done so the lesser prairie chicken and the sand dune lizard will be better protected. Are these animals going extinct? No. The bureaucrats wrote that the land should be locked up to ‘avoid the necessity of listing either of these species as threatened or endangered.’”
While I am not much for the UN takeover of the world conspiracy theories, Alex Jones at Infowars.com has a nice summation of the some of the programs being used by the Obama administration to increase the amount of land under federal control. Read it here.
So now the lefties and greenies are resorting to “well, it might happen” or “let’s just play it safe, dang to torpedoes (actually, the jobs)”. What’s next, draconian rules and laws to regulate how we drive and so forth to save the planet from climate change? Oh wait, that is already happening (covered later).
Some will ask “just how does this impact my freedoms”. Based on all the information I have gathered (much not included here, do your research), the loss of freedoms will be both direct and indirect. Directly, a good portion of the land in the secret Obama memo is privately owned. The feds will just basically steal the land from the owners, either through eminent-domain or forcing them off by making it nearly impossible/expensive (using taxation and environmental regulations) for the land owner to continue to own and work the land. While this particular scenario probably doesn’t impact you at all, imagine what it does to the land owner. Also directly will be the decreased use of the federal lands. Under National Monument designation, ATV use, hunting, unlimited sightseeing, and other activities will be severely restricted or out-right banned.
Indirectly this impacts you through the increased cost of just about everything. Many rare earth mineral mines were closed down under the Carter and Clinton administrations. Now we have to purchase this from a government not particularly fond of the good old USofA. With the shove by the Obama Administration to Green Energy production, rare earth minerals are very important. We have that stuff, but it is locked up under previous land grabs. And we continue to import our oil from many countries that are either overtly hostile to us or we just barely get along with them. Could we replace the import with our own domestic production? Not likely. But we sure could put a dent in it. A few years back, when Clinton designated a portion of central Utah as a National Monument, 65,000 barrels of oil production was shut down. It is a drop in the bucket. But ANWR isn’t a drop, and neither are the shale-oil reserves in the western states. But ANWR was locked up by Carter and shale-oil is severely restricted, first by Clinton and further by Obama.
No comments:
Post a Comment