Dianne Feinstein’s
Million-Acre Land Grab Falters
by Chriss W. Street 27 Nov 2015Newport Beach, CA
Three months after Breitbart News and others outed Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) 0’s (D-CA) backdoor effort
to freeze development on over one million acres of California
dessert by having President Obama declare the area subject to the Antiquities Act of 1906,
her efforts are going down in flames as Congressional Republicans are moving to
ban the Antiquities designation.
Feinstein’s seven-year quest to convince “ongress to
sequester over 1560 square miles of the Mojave Desert into three new national
monuments under her proposed
‘Desert Conservation and Recreation Act” has gone nowhere. Feinstein has argued
that the area she wants designated as ‘Mojave Trails, Sand to Snow and Castle
Mountains’ is home to mountain lions, the California desert tortoise and
bighorn sheep. But the real effort is to ban off-roaders, hunters and miners.
The Senator had faced opposition from an unusual coalition
of sustainable energy developers, wilderness advocates, off-road vehicle users,
military bases, energy companies and American Indian tribes. By trying to
circumvent Congress through artificially tying up the property with a
phony search for non-existent artifacts, she has incensed Republicans and upset
many Democrats, who worry about future Presidential actions.
U.S.
Rep. Paul Cook (R-CA) 48%, whose district covers
the area Feinstein wants restricted, complained
at a Congressional hearing in September that the Antiquities Act “sets in
motion a Washington-based management plan that can sharply curtail recreational
and economic activities. I’m deeply concerned that outreach efforts to the
public have been hasty and inadequate.”
Cook, a retired U.S. Marine Colonel who won a Bronze Star
and has two Purple Hearts from combat duty in the Vietnam War, has said that
when he heard about Feinstein’s backdoor efforts, his number one goal was to
stop Presidential action.
Cook is a staunch military supporter and sits on the
powerful Armed Services, Veterans,’ and Foreign Services Committees. The
military is a substantial user of the terrain that Feinstein wants walled off.
Because the area contains the remnants of General George Patton’s World War II
training camps, national security interests have been lobbying Cook to lead the
opposition against Feinstein’s Congressional end run.
The California Chamber of Commerce and the California
Taxpayers Association both oppose the Antiquities designation and have given
Cook perfect 100 percent ratings for each year since he was first elected in
2007. They have lobbied the congressman to oppose any executive order by
President Barack Obama regarding the area.
On October 1, 2015, Congressman Cook introduced HR 3668, the
California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation, and
Conservation Act (CMORCA). He described the bill as “a balanced
approach to protecting, managing, and using our desert and forest areas in San
Bernardino and Inyo Counties.” But the bill also bans designating the area
under the Antiquities Act.
Cook’s bill creates would create a National Monument, but
also opens 100,000 acres to mining, and designates
Johnson Valley and five more off-highway vehicle areas as “National OHV
recreation areas.”
The new designation would ban commercial development in
those areas if the Secretary of the Interior determines the development is
incompatible with the purpose of the bill. But the bill sets up the opportunity
for development to be approved in a future Republican administration.
Although Senator Feinstein has continually claimed that
desert residents are “overwhelmingly in favor” of the three monument
designations she is pushing for, the City of Twentynine Palms, the City of
Banning, and the San Gorgonio Pass Regional Water Alliance quickly signed
on as supporters of Rep. Cook’s CMORCA.
Environmentalists have been shocked by the
rising support for the CMORCA bill, which they call part of a a “radical
anti-public-lands agenda” by House Natural Resources Committee Republicans,
representing a “neo-sagebrush rebellion that appears to be emerging in certain
Western states.”
The Rep. Cook’s California Minerals, Off-Road Recreation,
and Conservation Act is expected to have its first House Natural Resources
Committee hearing as early as December 9.
Dianne
Feinstein
Dianne
Feinstein is a U.S. Senate
senator, the chair for the Senate
Interior, Environment and Related Agencies subcommittee, and married to Richard C. Blum.
Note: Richard C. Blum is
married to Senator Dianne Feinstein,
an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and a governing council member for the Wilderness Society.
Foundation
to Promote Open Society was a funder for the Brookings Institution
(think tank), the Climate Reality
Project, the Center for American
Progress, the Urban Institute (think
tank), the New America Foundation
(think tank), and the Economic
Policy Institute (think tank).
George Soros
was the chairman for the Foundation to Promote Open Society,
a supporter for the Center for American
Progress, and is Jonathan Soros’s
father.
Crandall C. Bowles
is a trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), a governing council member for the Wilderness Society, and married to Erskine B. Bowles.
George T.
Frampton Jr. is a governing council member for the Wilderness Society, was an assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of the Interior, the
chairman for the White House Council on
Environmental Quality, and Albert A.
Gore Jr was his attorney.
Bureau
of Land Management is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Bureau
of Safety and Environmental Enforcement is a division of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Bureau
of Indian Affairs is a bureau for the .S.
Department of the Interior.
Nancy
Sutley is the chair for the White
House Council on Environmental Quality, the deputy secretary for the California Environmental Protection Agency,
and a special assistant to the administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Carol M. Browner
was an administrator for the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency, a director at the Climate Reality Project, and is a senior fellow, director at the Center for American Progress.
Albert
A. Gore Jr. is the chairman for the Climate
Reality Project, and was George T.
Frampton Jr’s attorney.
Theodore
Roosevelt IV is a director at the Climate
Reality Project, and a governing council member for the Wilderness Society.
Hansjorg
Wyss is a governing council member for the Wilderness Society, and a director at the Center for American Progress.
Erskine B. Bowles
is married to Crandall C. Bowles, a
trustee at the Urban Institute (think
tank), a director at the Committee
for a Responsible Federal Budget, and a co-chair for the National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform.
Committee
for a Responsible Federal Budget was housed at the New America Foundation (think tank), and is a paid for staff by the
National Commission on Fiscal
Responsibility and Reform.
Jonathan
Soros is a director at the New
America Foundation (think tank), and George
Soros’s son.
Paul
Ryan is a member of the National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and a member & speaker
for the U.S. House of Representatives.
National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform is a paid for staff by the Economic Policy Institute (think tank).
Ann
M. Fudge is a member of the National
Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, and a trustee at the Brookings Institution (think tank).
Richard
C. Blum is an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), a governing council member for the Wilderness Society, and married to
Senator Dianne Feinstein.
Dianne
Feinstein is married to Richard C. Blum,
a U.S. Senate senator, and the chair
for the Senate Interior, Environment and
Related Agencies subcommittee.
Charles W. Duncan
Jr. was an honorary trustee at the Brookings
Institution (think tank), and a secretary for the U.S. Department of Energy.
DOE loan program
is a loan program for the U.S.
Department of Energy, and provided loan guarantee for the Mojave Solar Project.
Feinstein: Don't Spoil Our Desert With Solar Panels
Published March 21, 2009
Feinstein said Friday she intends to push legislation that would
turn the land into a national
monument, which would allow for existing uses
to continue while preventing future development.
No comments:
Post a Comment