Interior Dept. shutting down mining in 10 states

Posted by ewv 8 years, 6 months ago to Politics
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From the Congressional House Natural Resources Committee. This action by an Obama political appointee, the Secretary of the Interior, shows the importance of which party is in the White House regardless of what you think of the president himself. Democrats since Clinton-I have appointed radical viros to run the government.

According to Mark Levin there are almost 4,000 political appointees assigned by the president and those he appoints to do the radical appointing. That is in addition to those they hire to be entrenched in the protected civil service. It is also in addition to Federal judges, about 40% of which have now been appointed by Obama. Another eight years of this means a nearly complete loss of control over how the Federal government functions for what political purposes, regardless of what Congress does or what new laws are passed making it worse.


USGS Study Reveals Extensive Impacts of Obama Administration’s War on Mineral Development

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 7, 2016
CONTACT: Parish Braden, Elise Daniel or Molly Block (202) 226-9019

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Secretary of the Interior (DOI) Sally Jewell is developing controversial plans to cordon off approximately 10 million acres of federal lands located in Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Wyoming from mineral development. The withdrawals are one plank of the Obama administration's broader regulatory scheme to create a de-facto Endangered Species Act listing for the sage grouse. Earlier this week, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) released an 800-page assessment of mineral potential within each state subject to potential future withdrawals.

House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman Rob Bishop (R-UT) issued the following statement:

“This assessment shows significant negative impacts for western states if these withdrawals proceed. But let’s not miss the forest for the trees. Despite successful species conservation efforts at the state level, and a finding last year that listing the bird under the Endangered Species Act is not warranted, the Obama administration wants total regulatory control and a much more permanent trophy for litigious environmental groups. Along with oppressive land use plans covering parts of 10 states—with restrictions for all types of economic activities—these withdrawals have the potential to be even more punitive and damaging to energy producers and rural economies than an endangered finding. This is a de-facto listing and then some. USGS’s report is small snapshot of the pain to come. This issue will require continued oversight even after the Obama administration is finally gone. Blocking mineral development by another executive fiat is inexcusable, and the Committee will be sure to keep a close eye on it.

“Secretary Salazar told the states they should adopt sage grouse protection plans and they would be accepted. States have spent time and money to create good plans. The current Secretary is now reneging on that promise. The state plans work and the department’s proposal does not. The department’s proposal hurts military preparedness and military ranges in the West, a fact that has never been taken into consideration.”

Background:

At a minimum, the USGS report suggests the withdrawal of such a massive area could have significant negative impacts to nearly 1.3 million acres of moderate to high resource potential. The withdrawal could also affect over 7,000 mining claims across several Western states, including Nevada, Idaho, Utah, Oregon, Wyoming and Montana.
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  • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It's not my raw reality, just a recognition of what is. I didn't ask for it and don't sanction it, only observe the reality of what is imposed on us and what choices are left for both the short and long terms. Someone doesn't like that reality.
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  • -1
    Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No, living in reality is not Pragmatism. One of the two major candidates will be president. There is no other choice in reality. Morality requires making choices that are possible in reality, not fantasizing. Rational voting requires recognizing the choice available, the difference in the consequences, and acting accordingly. That is not an endorsement of either candidate or the system imposed on us. It requires an understanding of the principles and how to apply them to make choices that are possible, not Pragmatism. Morality does not consist in abandoning the reality in front of us and replacing it with fantasy in the name idealism.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • -1
    Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    No one is expecting voting to "improve the two party system" by voting. Stop smearing and misrepresenting people.

    The existence of the two party system is not on the ballot. Voting for or against candidates when it makes a difference is not support for the "two party system". The two party system already exists. The choice in this election is between Trump and Clinton. One of them will be president.

    Ayn Rand saw no significant difference between Carter and Reagan's first campaign. Carter was not Hilary Clinton, and Reagan's speeches pandering to the mixed economy were not the utopian positions now claimed by conservatives. Ayn Rand did say that she would have to vote for Reagan if the Democrats put up a socialist-like candidate. She never said to not vote for candidates from the two parties and in particular she denounced the Libertarian Party and explained why. Invoking Ayn Rand in this PR stunt for the LP is dishonest.

    Some real problems are solved or ameliorated by voting against the worst of the candidates, like Clinton, in the context of the choice available here in reality. Those who have read Ayn Rand and who don't misrepresent her as Libertarian know that throughout her career she advocated the solution to the decline of politics and the culture as spreading the right philosophical ideas and that there are no shortcuts. Those who have been involved in politics today know that Libertarians are inept at impacting even shorter term policy.
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  • -1
    Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Gary Johnson is irrelevant to any reform of the political system. Telling people not to vote is of course relevant. "Hillary's people" are not telling people to vote for her because "one vote does not determine the outcome of the election".

    The socialists became politically more influential because of the spread of collectivist/altruist/statist ideology, as systematically spread in politics by movements like the Fabians.

    The a-philosophical Libertarian Party wants to bypass philosophy, expecting to become influential simply by being there on the fringe going through the motions of an election and blaming people who treat their votes seriously and ignore the LP. It is not putting its policies into effect by others being elected. It is anti-intellectual, imitative 'cargo cult science' as described in physicist Richard Feynman's famous Caltech 1974 commencement address entitled "Cargo Cult Science".

    http://calteches.library.caltech.edu/...

    "In the South Seas there is a Cargo Cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they’ve arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas­he’s the controller­and they wait for the airplanes to land. They’re doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn’t work. No airplanes land. So I call these things Cargo Cult Science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they’re missing something essential, because the planes don’t land."
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    LOL! Yeah, more than likely unless there's some huge near-miraculous political upheaval +1..
    Still, I'll keep my four years from now options open, though.
    Some charismatic Libertarian super star may soon reveal him or herself.
    Doubt it.
    The idea of voting for another Bush really turns my stomach, though.
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  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Re: “Moral choices are made in reality among choices that are possible, not fantasyland with PR stunts for fringe candidates of dubious ideology and character that cannot win and who do not represent the principles needed for a free society.” So it’s moral to choose mainstream candidates of dubious ideology and character who do not represent the principles needed for a free society, as long as one of them is likely to win? Sounds rather pragmatic to me.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Fantasy is continuing to support the two-party system with your vote and expecting it to improve.

    Re: “As everyone else knows, the election will decide whether Trump or Clinton will be president. The outcome makes a difference.” The 1980 election decided whether Carter or Reagan would be President. The outcome made a difference. Ayn Rand chose to abstain. Was she wrong to do so?

    Re: “It is mindless, annoying and irrelevant fantasy doing nothing to discuss, let alone solve, real problems.” Okay, how do you propose to solve the “real problem” of two totally corrupt political parties controlling the political process? By continuing to vote for their candidates?
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If Gary Johnson is so irrelevant, why are Hillary’s people out in force to discredit him? The polls, if you bother to look, show several percentage points difference in the results for the top two candidates when Gary is included in the pollsters’ questions (as he should be). The Libertarian Party is becoming effectual in the same way that the Socialist Party was effectual in the early 20th Century. Much of their platform was adopted into law even though none of their presidential candidates were ever elected.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Obama responded by abusing the Antiquities Act to decree two very unpopular and destructive National Monuments in Maine and off the coast of Maine and Massachusetts, one to destroy private property rights in the Maine woods and the other shutting down the fishery in 5,000 square miles. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...

    The National Monument scam, its history, and its purpose need to be better and more widely known and understood before the laws can be changed despite the viro lobby. Obama violated and/or ignored several laws in decreeing the monuments in corrupt collusion between the pressure group activists, the Federal agencies swarming with viros, and his direct political appointees.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • -1
    Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Everyone else knows that the Trump or Clinton will win the election and that is what the battle is. Voting to affect that outcome is not "consent" to anything. It is a vote to determine which of the two of them will take office. The thread is about the Interior Dept shutting down mining because of Obama political appointees. Stop hijacking the thread with repetitive and annoying slogans for a Libertarian Party publicity spree.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    "Agenda 21" is a conspiratorial straw man. The viro preservationist agenda to lock up the land and destroy private property rights and industry is all their own. Obama, like Clinton-Gore, appointed them to run the Interior Department. It has nothing to do with the UN.
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  • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Please pay attention. "We" are not "allowing" the system and its downward trend. That is imposed on us.

    It is not a choice in the election. It is not a result of ignoring the irrelevant Libertarian Party. It is a result of the culture of collectivism and Pragmatism, which the Libertarian Party does not understand and is not dealing with.

    As everyone else knows, the election will decide whether Trump or Clinton will be president. The outcome makes a difference.

    The "Libertarian Party" is not a "real choice" in the election, and the two LP clowns pretending in their PR stunt do not represent civilized, rational individualism and are no spokesmen for it. Stop fantasizing and stop hijacking threads on the forum. It is mindless, annoying and irrelevant fantasy doing nothing to discuss, let alone solve, real problems.

    The LIbertarian Party's predicted history of overwhelming rejection is not a conspiracy, it is a consequence of what it is. Stop blaming this on "evil" people like us who refuse to abandon reality on behalf of mindless and irrelevent publicity seeking.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The Libertarian Party would be just as irrelevant and just as politically futile, as it has been for over 40 years.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    The 1872 mining law is the last remnant of the policy of the Homestead Act for use and settlement of unowned land claimed as private property. The progressives got rid of most of it over a hundred years ago.

    As Flootus5 knows, the anti-private property viro pressure group lobby has tried many times over decades to repeal the mining law allowing private mining claims but failed. That is why they are using the agency 'rule-making' process in conjunction with "endangered species" and other tools of misanthropic tools of nihilism entrenched and growing like a cancer inside government to rewrite the law themselves.

    They can do it because they were appointed by Obama to run the Interior Department, where under mostly Democrat administrations, rule-making in the Code of Federal Regulations (now more properly called the CFP --Code of Federal Pens) has taken over legislative authority from Congress.

    This is one example of why it is so important to keep Clinton out of the White House. Republicans will not abolish the Interior Dept or re-instate private settlement of Federal land or significantly reverse the "rule-making" legislative system, but they do hold back the radical progressive agenda to wipe out what is left of private property and to destroy industry for their eco-fascist utopia.

    Flootus5 knows more than anyone else here what this means -- and exactly how and why -- for the survival of specific people personally targeted and the consequences for all of us in an industrial economy and for national security.

    It is an example of how the election and stopping Clinton and the Democrats is so important even while we have for months denounced Trump as well as Clinton for good reason. There are degrees of statism, such as the difference between a Pragmatist businessman with 1960s implicit 'liberal' premises versus a thoroughly corrupt and dedicated ideological neo-Marxist tyrant. The difference is a matter of survival.
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  • Posted by $ CBJ 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    If we allow two clearly corrupt parties to dictate our chocies, eventually the "moral choice" both parties will give us will be between a Hitler and a Stalin. By that time third parties will be outlawed. (They already nearly are, with so many roadblocks thrown up by the two "major" parties.) I would rather vote my real choice while I still can.
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  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Someone didn't like your raw reality..
    Else-wise you'd be looking at a 2 from the time of my post. .
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Please stop misrepresenting people and stop hijacking the thread with repetitive, annoying slogans ignoring everything that is said to you. A system of freedom replacing statism is not on the ballot and not a choice in the election. That is not what the election or this discussion is about. Trump or Clinton will be president as a result of the election. Has-been "liberal" Republicans in the name of the Libertarian Party would not know what to do and could not change the course of this country even if they were elected. Your flawed fringe candidate and anti-intellectual fringe party are irrelevant to the election and to the topic of discussion.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ allosaur 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Just fixed a couple of 0's after looking back from watching Alabama beat Tennessee 49-10. Roll Tide!
    Never thought I'd chase bandits off ewv's 6 o'clock but here I am.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • -2
    Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    None of us is "voting for evil" and neither will this election determine anything but whether Trump or Clinton is president. It makes a difference which one. Throwing away votes on the Libertarian Pary will not make any difference to "things going wrong". Your strident "warnings" are nonsense: The Libertarian Party as a fringe on the ballot is irrelevant. Stop ignoring everything that is said to you and stop hijacking this thread. You are not contributing to the discussion.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • -1
    Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Gary Johnson is irrelevant to this discussion. Talking, even in a non-hijacked thread, about Johnson "leading Congress by the nose" is nonsensical. The election is not about him, nor does he know what to do to influence Congress into a complete reversal, let alone "by the nose", nor could anyone do that. "Libertarians" know nothing about what it takes to fundamentally change the course of this country or how impact specific policies where it can done now.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    There are many specific policies that Congress can either not authorize or de-authorize. Sometime it does when people pay attention, usually by the extraordinary efforts of a small number of people, more often than not Republicans. These are policies that can be affected and changed, making a significant difference, even within the current statist mess.

    But Congress will not defund the entire Interior Department, and the overall downward trend will continue without longer term change in the philosophy driving all of it. Clinton means much worse much faster, but Trump is not a solution, only providing the possibility of affecting specific policy for those who want to continue living here in reality, buying more time.

    The agenda of the Interior Dept. and EPA is being run by the viro pressure group lobby, which is getting away with murder because most people don't know what it is doing and what it is after. When Democrats control the Executive branch they appoint the worst of them to run the government, as they are now.
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  • -1
    Posted by 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    My choice is not against my principles. The context we are stuck in is against my principles. That does not change the existence of choice where it can make a difference. My principles say not to abandon reality.

    The sales pitch on behalf of the a-philosophical Libertarian Party telling us not to vote is not going to change the system we are in or the fact that one of Trump or Clinton will be power and that which one makes a difference to our lives and our future. Voting to make a difference is not an endorsement of the political system and is not "wanting four more years of unconstitutional statist expansion". "Voting" for the Libertarian Party fantasy will not stop it, and if Clinton wins it will become much worse faster. The rampant subjectivism of the Libertarian Party idolatry that hijacked this thread with its repetitive banging its spoon on the highchair while denouncing everyone else is astounding.
    Reply | Permalink  
  • Posted by $ Suzanne43 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    Yes,he is flawed, but the Hilldebeast will appoint more liberal judges to the Supreme Court. She is open to blackmail and has sold us out to every dictator that has contributed to her foundation. Besides that she hates, make that loathes, people like us who are in The Gulch.
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  • Posted by Ed75 8 years, 6 months ago in reply to this comment.
    It is clearly time to invoke the 10th amendment of the Constitution. Each state needs to stand up and be counted since the Congress is useless, and national elections do not have much affect on the party in DC. The ownership of the land belongs with the states. The government has no deed, they just took it.
    Reply | Permalink  

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