We Told You So! – And Industry Thrives in the Culture of Sycophancy in Ken Salazar’s Interior | Th…
Filed under Culture in 2010 |28 May
We recommend:
The solid reality is eyesight what a tragedy the U. S. Department of Interior below Ken Salazar is.
Activists who sour on world lands and rarified brute aegis in the hinterlands of the West warned that the Bush environmental revulsion establish would proceed unabated when Obama ordained kine rancher Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary.
In January 2009, a missive was scripted request Obama to not constitute Salazar.
Barack Obama criticized — again — concluded selection of Ken Salazar as Interior repository
Colorado Group Urges Against Pick of Salazar for Interior Secretary
Who were the groups uncoerced to mouth out? Largely regional, little groups who ferment casual on the maze of environmental death overseen by the Department of Interior. Meanwhile, the constitution enviro encampment was slityfoothold approximately qualification glad lecture some the Salazar appointee. They feared their treasured “entree” to the Obama brass, Harry Reid, or a shipload of Bluedogs would be weakened if a discouraging news was verbalised approximately Salazar.
Besides existence hirer of the ill-famed Minerals Management Service (MMS), Salazar too is in tutelage of both the Fish and Wildlife Service and the Bureau of Land Management. FWS oversees Endangered Species Act Listings and Wildlife Refuges. BLM is the country “handler” in burster of 253 gazillion estate of PUBLIC domain, or eighth of the farming deal of the U.S., with “resources” that go to us all but that are e’ery day existence sold or ruined perpetually by industries for a pittance. BLM lands are the ticker of the Western states and lots of Alaska. What goes on, and who earnings from these world lands and resources at the disbursement of the world, stillness drives the government of the Interior West.
Despite that puke, sinking opinion with the Salazar fitting, we held out promise for approximately overconfident changes. A few dry nation boring crumbs were tossed out, but the Bush docket continued. Salazar’s predominate as Interior Secretary has been all astir lease Industry – wellbeing populace lands oxen ranching, oil and gas on dry commonwealth, and big farting – swag the populace land.
When asked why we weren’t beholding level minimum vary, goodness citizenry stillness living inwardly the Department of Interior, themselves eagre for alteration, replied “Salazar”.
Now hither we are as the Gulf slaughter unfolds, and we see the nuances of what “new” and “tolerate” substance in Interior-speak.
Meanpiece, thither is a new missive request for Salazar’s surrender …
The one affair the Salazar government has through in Interior is engrain in all the Secretary’s underlings that any and all Energy maturation trumps e’eryaffair else. A late FOIA answer related to El Paso Gas’s extremely controversial Ruby Gas Pipeline Project provides perceptiveness into this. The Pipeline slashes crossways Wyoming, Utah, Nevada and Oregon – to get gas to California patch assiduously avoiding environmental “permitting” in California.
Here’s one of the e-mails from tumble 2009.
Obama-appointed FWS Director Hamilton expression:
“This is a big vim projection–splits ‘tween bureaus could be “tidings” and could micturate the Secretary looking bad. I alerted Nevada BLM to the grandness to deflect placeing DOI in that ?place”.
Sam died of pump attempt on a ski holiday in Colorado this wintertime. Copied on the Hamilton email is Rowan Gould, the flow Acting Director of FWS. The setting of the email is that a trigger-happy Battle was performing out inside two Interior Agencies (FWS and BLM) terminated the Ruby gas line’s proposed path done roughly of the close unexploited furious sagebrush lands in northerly Nevada.
Instead of chase Energy Corridors designated by the federal governing, El Paso sought-after the cheapest (and a rattling environmentally prejudicious) path to avert tougher environmental regulations in California to get gas to a “hub” in Oregon so it could embark the gas southward to California.
FERC, another federal bureau bonded at the hip with Big Energy, was in mission of the unanimous Ruby EIS treat. The master Alternative considered to the detrimental road on BLM lands was by the briny route inner a National Wildlife Refuge. Instead of Interior playing as a incorporated part to block this rabidity of two reasonless Alternatives, and career FERC and El Paso on the rug complete existence boxed-in into dreaded routing, FWS took the slope of El Paso.
Agencies were burst, as El Paso dual-lane them. FERC has now sanctioned the dreaded BLM Route, and is awaiting BLM finalisation of a Permanent Right-of-Way. Salazar’s Interior did not act to want the line to trace naturalized Energy Corridors to the southward.
What was nearly significant to Salazar’s courtiers in FWS? Not the hurt that the Ruby Pipeline and its Route would do. Rather, it was how Ken Salazar would flavor if dissonance ‘tween agencies on a Big Energy task got into the populace eye. To sin with the environmental concerns: Sage squawk, hardly defect irrigate and watersheds, hundreds of Native American ethnic sites including at least one Traditional Cultural Property.
Salazar symbolizes how bought and sold by Big Energy and Industry the Obama Administration is. Other FOIA documents demonstrate the El Paso executives confluence with the heads of the agencies, the gas party devising indisputable it was “cantabile the like air” as Salazar’s FWS, Regional offices tamping consume on “squabbling” – one the major fight betwixt BLM and FWS concluded routes.
Just ilk the big groups wouldn’t mouth out against the Salazar fitting, Salazar appointees are themselves “captured” sycophants – where, finally, Industry wins out and destroys the world lands.
Today besellers:
Leave a comment