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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | January 15, 2005 | Vol. VI No. 2 | ||
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| Dr. David Marlett, Editor | January 15, 2005 | Vol. VI No. 2 | ||
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"This victory came too late for the farmers who where pushed into bankruptcy and the businesses that were forced to close to protect fish that were never endangered," said Pacific Legal Foundation attorney Russ Brooks. "Our rivers and streams are teeming with salmon, yet the Klamath community was practically destroyed because of environmental politics run amok."
"This ruling should send a message to NOAA Fisheries that they cannot continue to circumvent the ESA to keep salmon listed when the prolific number of hatchery fish means salmon are not endangered. If NOAA does not accept the reality that the ESA does not distinguish between wild and hatchery fish before it issues its new hatchery policy, we will wind up back in court," Brooks said.
The case, Grange v. National Marine Fisheries Service, had been stayed by Judge Hogan pending environmentalists' attempts to appeal PLF's landmark victory in Alsea Valley Alliance v. Evans (2001). In that case, Judge Hogan held that the government had illegally listed coho along the Oregon coast as threatened when it excluded hatchery coho from fish counts. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals rejected the appeal in February, 2004.
In yesterday's ruling, however, Judge Hogan did not set aside the illegal listing, but left it in place while the agency completes the review of 26 west coast salmon listings, which it agreed to undertake as a result of its loss in Alsea. In June, 2004, NOAA proposed a new hatchery policy, but simultaneously announced that it would result in the relisting-not delisting-of west coast salmon and steelhead populations.
However, Judge Hogan also indicated that if a federal agency took a specific enforcement action on behalf of the illegal listing which caused harm, those harmed could go to court and ask to have the federal action stopped.
"In other words, as long as the federal government complies with Judge Hogan's ruling that the listing is illegal, there won't be a problem. But if they try to cut off the water again or take some other similar action, we'll be back in court," Brooks said.
In November, 2004, PLF announced it will file a sweeping lawsuit challenging all 26 listings if NOAA enacts the proposed policy and continues to distinguish between hatchery and naturally spawned fish. The final rule is scheduled to be published in June, 2005.
Founded in 1973, Pacific Legal Foundation is a national leader in the effort to reform the Endangered Species Act and raise awareness of the Act's impact on people. PLF's Pacific Northwest Center is located in Bellevue, Washington. More information on the Foundation can be found at www.pacificlegal.org.
The new Congress has just started warming their seats filled with more pro-gun members, and we're already getting the chance to show our unified support for some great legislation -- starting with a bill that strongly supports our Second Amendment rights.
Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD) has introduced a bill protecting the right of law-abiding Americans to use guns in self-defense.
HR 47, the "Citizens' Self-Defense Act", would specifically protect the right of law-abiding citizens to use handguns, rifles and shotguns in defending themselves, their families or their homes. It would also allow people whose self-defense rights have been violated by any government entity to bring legal action in federal court.
Remember the news stories over the last couple of years, about husbands, wives, fathers and mothers who were arrested after shooting home-invaders, because the "homeowner" possessed a firearm for protecting their family? This bill could put an END to that kind of nonsense.
Let's join together to push through this common-sense gun rights legislation NOW!
TAKE ACTION: Tens of millions of law-abiding, gun-owning Americans voted in November to protect and restore our gun rights.
Now is the time to really sock it to the anti-gun media, entertainment personalities, and the political lapdogs who try to work their wretched will to destroy our Second Amendment."
HR 47 has been referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. We must NOT let it get stuck there -- we need to let Congress know that we want SWIFT consideration of this bill! Call, email and write to your Representative, asking him or her to support HR 47, the "Citizens' Self-Defense Act" today.
You can use the following link http://www.house.gov/writerep/ to find out who your member of Congress is and write or call them.
January 17, 2005
If Senator Edward Kennedy's recently delivered 'Democratic Blueprint for America's Future' is any indicator, the Republican Party should jump for joy.
Kennedy's manifesto, served up in a speech to the National Press Club January 12, could just as rightly be called a 'Blueprint for Continued Republican Electoral Success,' judging by its contents, and GOP strategists should be licking their chops at the prospect of the Democratic Party at large adopting Kennedy's proposals.
Before diving into the contents of Kennedy's proposals, permit me to briefly note the language, for it is the language that betrays the motivation. Kennedy's 4,900 word speech last week did not include a single utterance of the word 'liberal.' Instead, it relied on repeated use of the term 'progressive,' most often in terms of Kennedy's "progressive vision."
'Progressive' is the word liberals hope will fool Americans into thinking that liberal ideas are in their best interest when in reality, progressive policies are the stated bedrock of socialism and communism. That's not my assessment, mind you. It's the assessment of Karl Marx and Frederick Engles, authors of The Communist Manifesto. It's an issue about which I wrote in Sept. 2003 and worth a second read.
Regarding the contents of Kennedy's blueprint, it is indeed a progressive model of which Marx and Engles would probably approve, based on the free stuff the senator wants to give away. Specifically, Kennedy's progressive vision for the country includes free college and free health care.
In a speech resplendent with soaring pifflery, Kennedy told the National Press Club, "I propose that every child in America, upon reaching eighth grade, be offered a contract. Let students sign it, along with their parents and Uncle Sam. The contract will state that if you work hard, if you finish high school and are admitted to college, we will guarantee you the cost of earning a degree."
Kennedy goes on to propose that "we should make undergraduate tuition free for any young person willing to serve as a math or science teacher in a public school for at least four years."
It's interesting to note that Kennedy singles out a free college education for people studying math and science if they agree to teach school - an almost universally unionized profession - but not if they chose to work in engineering or research and development or any of a couple hundred other professions rarely associated with collective bargaining.
Also interesting is that the carrot-and-stick approach to math and science rather contradicts his earlier promise of free college for any kid who wants it, regardless of what they study. Given American liberalism's traditional absence of intellectual coherence, this isn't surprising, just something worth pointing out.
Then there's free health care for everyone, from cradle to grave. Actually, Kennedy did not use the term 'cradle to grave.' Kennedy's exact quote, in proposing an answer to the question of health care, was, "The answer is Medicare, whose 40th birthday we will celebrate in July. I propose that as a 40th birthday gift to the American people, we expand Medicare over the next decade to cover every citizen - from birth to the end of life."
This proposal shows that Kennedy and others in the Democratic Party are wising up regarding health care. The goal for years has been 'universal health care,' a nice way of saying 'socialized medicine.' By expanding the demographics of Medicare to everyone from birth to death, Kennedy has made a good effort at putting lipstick on the pig that socialized medicine is.
Some of Ted Kennedy's other progressive ideas include having government force employers to pay their entry level employees more money and forcing them to offer more sick leave - no fewer than seven paid sick days each year.
Inasmuch as the concept of progressive policies, as elucidated by Marx and Engles, is, "to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeois, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state," these two particular ideas certainly move that ball down field.
This is Ted Kennedy's blueprint for reinvigorating his moribund party, all of it designed to redistribute wealth and assets via the state, and further impede the free market. After all, we'd be so much better off if it weren't for those pesky bourgeois who were able to make something of themselves despite the absence of free college, free health care, government-mandated wage hikes and extra sick leave.
You can make book these ideals will be packaged in slick and soaring rhetoric framed by vicious attacks on opponents. A lot of folks will buy into this, but Americans by and large are too independent and determined to agree to this dole.
Free college for the kids and free health care for life is tempting indeed, but once people realize this free stuff will be bought and paid for with personal liberty, these and similarly 'progressive' ideals will be rejected.
** Scott Hogenson is executive editor of Cybercast News Service
I want to state from the outset that this has been a terrible disaster. Any event that claims as many lives as this one has claimed cannot be played down, but…
While world governments make a game of seeing who can be counted the most compassionate by wreaking another devastation on their national budgets, it must be noted that in most areas other than Aceh the damage is limited to one mile or less from the coast. Aceh suffered a great deal of earthquake damage as well as damage by the resultant tidal wave, but the rest of the region was only attacked by the wave whose effects were limited to the coastal areas, the distance inland being limited by the terrain.
I question the logic in spending thousands of dollars to send water purification equipment half way around the world to service an area with abundant fresh water supplies only one mile inland. The truth holds for food, clothing, building materials and security personnel. It is all there. Why ship it in from all around the globe? The answer is simple… Politics.. And not just politics, but the most idiotic brand of politics, global politics.
The UN needs to salvage some purpose for its existence after the world got a glimpse of its true nature in the "Oil for Food" program scandal. At the same time all they are showing is that they have no idea how to organize and administer any kind of effort. There simply is NO justification for there continued drain on world economies.
The US wants to try to show the most populace Islamic nations that the War on Terrorism isn't really a war on Islam by looking generous and compassionate toward their plight It is no wonder that local governments are limiting travel and asking us to prepare to leave. We aren't needed and we certainly aren't wanted. There is nothing that we are doing at this point can't be done by locals. We are providing nothing except US dollars that can't be provided by locals. (A professional journalist might check trade deficit numbers here to make sure that they don't have more US dollars than we do already, but there are some things that I really don't want to know!) We should be packing up and moving out!
As for the rest of the world, they are in the mix so that they can say they are in the mix. Europe is trying to establish a position in the new world. After a couple of generations of decline in world politics Europe as the European Union is struggling to regain some identity in global politics. It sees its best chance of doing that in winning, or at least equaling, in some competition, ANY competition, with the US.
In the last few weeks world governments have pledged to send monies into the southeast Asian regions equal to several times the GDP of the region while only one of the regions income sources, tourism, has suffered any degree of damage. This is nothing but redistribution of wealth, global socialism. Marx, even in the flames, just managed a smile.
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