Wild & Scenic at Pardee and Environmental Observations

On 6/20/14 the Upper Mokelumne River Watershed Authority met at Pardee Center to discuss the Wild & Scenic designation for part of the Mokelumne River. I was in attendance, and heard a designation proponent from Oakland state that the river belongs to all of us and therefore the majority, the Bay Area millions, can rightly decide for all of us. Back in high school, I learned that the basis of our democracy was majority rule with minority rights. Apparently, he does not agree. Some call this point of view the tyranny of majority. Democratic centralism was the term others, such as Joseph Stalin, used.

In my 5/5/14 commentary, “Wild & Scenic With The Law”, I said: “The environmentalists are the robber barons of today.” The Conservation Fund alone has annual revenues of $144.6 million and controls seven million acres. Environmental robber barons appear to be replicating the medieval system, where in only the select few owned the land and serfs worked. These serfs, the literal ancestors of most Americans of European descent, engaged in centuries of bloody uprisings before establishing the rights we are now ceding to the environmental robber barons. Forestland Group, LLC invests only for the sustainable super rich with the blessings of the Forest Stewardship Council through a network of 130 entities. They are also involved with many other organizations, including the Carlyle Group. Forestland Group directly owns 3.6 million acres, mostly in the US, including almost all of West Virginia enabling them to probably function as an unelected government there. They also own almost all of Michigan’s upper peninsula region which contains many strategic minerals.

The Nature Conservancy’s attempted theft of mineral rights in the upper peninsula is currently before the Michigan Supreme Court. Transferring these rights to the environmental robber barons has direct consequences. The SR-71 Blackbird spy plane replaced the ill fated U-2 and served us from 1964 to 1998. It was 92% titanium. We had to buy this titanium from the Soviet Union through various foreign intermediaries. And while global demand for titanium grew by 60% from 2009 until leveling off in 2013, DuPont granted their titanium deposits near the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge, totaling 16,000 acres, to The Conservation Fund. I call this treason.

Many minerals are mined by hand in Africa by children - often AIDS orphans - without any protection against toxics. An academic study, reprinted by our National Institutes of Health, examined the production of ten minerals essential to our economy and military, concluded: “...armed violence plays a critical role in fostering environmental degradation...” Today’s environmental robber barons are raping parts of the world like the 19th century colonial empires but with a far more contemporary, clever and sanctimonious attitude. The only way to seriously protect the health of miners and of the environment is to mine in places like the US with real standards. But what is occurring is the opposite, while organizations like The Conservation Fund and DuPont propagandize us that they are saving the earth.

Unless all those potential titanium miners now have successful careers in the white water rafting industry, the end game is obvious. No jobs or low wage jobs with increased dependence on a debt-financed social welfare system here, while the abuse of people and resources elsewhere continues. As we all sink to the lowest common dominator, those of the Obama ilk celebrate their victory of social justice.

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett

East Bay Bias for Wild & Scenic

On 5/29/14 the East Bay Express, a weekly newspaper, published an editorial disguised as an article about the Wild & Scenic designation for part of the Mokelumne River. It can be found at: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/ebmud-may-block-wild-and-scenic-status-for-the-mokelumne/Content?oid=3933737. Following that article they posted a letter by Katherine Evatt, president of the Foothill Conservancy, which can be found here http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/letters-for-the-week-of-june-11/Content?oid=3950898

They refused to post my letter which was written in the vague hope of appealing to an imagined vestigial populist sentiment among Bay Area liberals. It follows with two slight changes:

The Other Side of the Wild & Scenic Mokelumne Story

Amador County is barely hanging on. The County budget and reserve funds are shrinking as the roads deteriorate, schools are closing, religious congregations have gone under, empty buildings abound, homeowners associations lack enough members to provide essential services, the Forest Service constantly inhibits public use that negatively affects the tourist industry and whole families, a new phenomenon here, are fed by food banks. Now it appears that our benevolent state legislature wants to take way our water rights in five different and significant ways according to a director of the Amador Water Agency. A biomass plant, expanded gold mining and other possible developments that would use water and employ people are now absolutely precluded by the Wild & Scenic designation on parts of the Mokelumne River. Our State Senator, Tom Berryhill, says that local opposition is six to one against this designation.

Yet Robert Gammon, in his “EBMUD May Block Wild and Scenic Status for the Mokelumne” on 5/29/14 dismisses our struggle for survival and presents the local opposition as “...dominated by conservative Republicans who ...tend to oppose all environmental regulations.” His statement regarding Calaveras County’s economic dependence upon river related recreation seems to me, a long term area resident, as utterly preposterous. He further describes protecting “...a section of pristine river” while ignoring the fact that the river’s flows, including the white water rafting opportunities, are completely controlled by scheduled dam releases.

Friends of the River and the Foothill Conservancy (often referred to as the Foothill Conspiracy) have shared over $200,000 in grant money from the Rose and Tides Foundation to push this designation through. Those of us who live here are often overwhelmed by their resources and imported staff. This  has not surprisingly bred resentment.

The Amador Water Agency, Jackson Valley Irrigation District, Calaveras County Water District,  Calaveras-Amador Mokelumne River Authority, California Farm Bureau and the Amador County Board of Supervisors have all opposed the Wild & Scenic designation. Only the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors, as Mr. Gammon correctly stated, supported Wild & Scenic. This one endorsement seemed sufficient for Loni Hancock to sponsor the bill. And this vote of support was at the insistence of one supervisor, the former Foothill Conservancy executive director.

Some of the other Calaveras supervisors have publically reconsidered their support and some supporters have lost their reelection campaigns. Here in Amador County one candidate supporting Wild & Scenic was defeated and in the other race the two of the three candidates who opposed Wild & Scenic received 65% of the vote.

Also the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors vote was taken without consultation with the Calaveras-Amador Mokelumne River Authority in probable violation of their legal agreement and could even possibly nullify the legitimacy of their vote. But Mr. Gammon trivializes our “stakeholder rights” as merely part of an EBMUD “poison pill” scheme. Those of us who live in Amador and Calaveras Counties still believe that we have rights and that our local democratically elected civic bodies are supposed to get in the way some times. Is it surprising that top down proposals launched from far away are unpopular here?

Mark Bennett, Amador County

Wild & Scenic in Pioneer

(Revised)

When I awoke after the sending this in and an exhausting meeting I realized I had not remembered all I had said. What follows is a more complete version of the prior commentary under the same title.

On 6/9/14 the Upcountry Community Council had a debate and discussion about the Wild & Scenic designation for part of the Mokelumne River. I became so frustrated during the proceeding I seized the floor and under the pretext of a question said the following in a slightly revised form:

Some people spoke of saving the river from dams or other large projects through the Wild & Scenic designation. Even without that designation if such a project was proposed, everyone in this room would be dead by the time the environmental litigation had ended.

The Wild & Scenic proponents produced figures showing how a dam or other large project would be prohibitively expensive. While I don’t question the accuracy of those figures they are not immutable. Things change. When my parents were growing up people washed their clothes in gasoline because it was cheaper than laundry soap. I wonder how much of the quoted cost figures are due to markets restricted by government favoritism and overregulation, lack of skilled labor because young people have not entered the trades, environmental extremism preventing the necessary raw material extraction, the apathy and fear griping America today and myriad other factors.

Preventing future generations from deciding how to best use our resources is simply selfish. Probably we will need water to mine all the gold in the Mother Lode to repay our government debt that the Chinese have purchased. And if we don’t there may not be a United States of America.

The Wild & Scenic designation, along with all the conservation easements and related schemes, are a return to the land tenure system of the Middle Ages. People were very poor then, in part because there was too much regulation, too many taxes and too many governments. So some people started trading goods smuggled through the forests, uniting producers and consumers. These people were criminals in their day, but we remember them as the first capitalists. They are responsible for the great prosperity we all enjoy today.

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett

Neel Kashkari and the Carlyle Group

On Pennsylvania Avenue, midway between the White House and the Capital Building, lies the offices of the Carlyle Group. This private equity firm’s principals include or have included the first George Bush president and his Secretary of State James Baker, former British Prime Minister John Major, former Office of Management and Budget director Richard Darman, former Secretary of Defense and former Deputy Director of the CIA Frank Carlucci, former Federal Communications Commission chair Julius Genachowski and former World Bank treasurer Afsaneh Masheyekhi.

Their investments include Edward Snowden’s former employer Booz, Allen, Hamilton; General Motors spin out Allison Transmission; firms in iris recognition security and related technologies and munitions and other suppliers to the Department of Defense. They are involved in 100’s of companies and almost as many countries including Algeria, Libya, Dubai, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. They even had a six year relationship with Saudi Arabia’s bin Laden family. They also participate in arrangements with various sovereign wealth funds that knit together the world’s ruling elite.

This special style of investment has returned about 34%. Yet for all this hard work the Carlyle Group’s founders received only $93 million each in 2013. But don’t worry, they are really the good guys. They have hired Jackie Roberts, a 17 year veteran of the Environmental Defense Fund, as their Chief Sustainability Officer.

The Carlyle Group is not only the new world order on steroids, it is an inner spoke of the wheel of control that is tightening around us. They are major financers of Neel Kashkari’s campaign for governor. I wouldn’t take their money. Would you?

That leaves us two other candidates. We all know tax and spend Jerry Brown. His record is self evident: businesses leaving California, pandering to public sector unions, political correctness including transgender public school bathrooms and environmental extremism including carbon taxes based on the government’s state religion of pseudo science. His stealth accounting hides our increasing debt and unfunded obligations as we move toward insolvency. Perhaps we need a bullet train to flee the collapse of California?

Whatever you think of Tim Donnelly’s various positions on various issues, he is the only candidate that even remotely resembles the reality of us ordinary people of California. I voted for him and I suggest that you do too.

Copyright 2014, Mark L. Bennett