by Jim Beers

As the Obama Administration enters its’ final two years, there is a great deal of consternation about what these two years will hold. There are many areas of concern:

- Foreign Affairs, Alliances & Growing Nuclear Weapons’ States
- Confronting Islamic Terror
- Increasing Taxation, Deficit Spending and a Gargantuan National Debt
- Federal Growth in Power, Cost and Intrusion into our Daily Lives
- Increasing Irrelevance of State and Local Governments

Some of you reading this might think that last item, the irrelevance of state and local governments, doesn’t belong on this list because it is only a minor concern. I would suggest that one of the major reasons for the first four concerns on the above list is precisely the continued shriveling presence and relevance of State and Local Governments in the USA in recent decades.

The first two concerns are the primary and exclusive Constitutional responsibility of the federal or central government. For the first 126 years of this Nation (i.e. from the Ratification of the Constitution in 1787 to the passage in 1913 of the 16th Amendment establishing a federal Income Tax and the 17th Amendment that changed US Senators from “chosen by the (sic ‘their’) Legislature thereof” to “elected by the people thereof”) the federal government was limited by not only the Separation of Powers inherent in the Constitution but also by limited available funding AND BY A US SENATE COMPOSED OF TWO SENATORS FROM EACH STATE THAT WERE APPOINTED BY AND ANSWERABLE TO THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE. The 16th Amendment created a practically unlimited cornucopia of available funding, and the 17th Amendment created a US SENATE COMPOSED OF TWO SENATORS FROM EACH STATE ELECTED BY AND ANSWERABLE TO THE COALITION (unions, feminists, gun controllers, mostly urban, etc.) OF VOTERS AND SUPPORTERS THAT ELECTED AND WOULD RE-ELECT THEM.

I submit that the growth of the federal government’s power, budget, and intrusion into the daily lives of the citizenry (i.e. the former Constitutional and original responsibilities of State and Local governments) began with those two 1913 Amendments to the US Constitution. That growth created two serious and unintended results:
- First, federal growth led to a steady increase in federal government spending; which led to an ever-increasing need for more federal taxes; which led to a realization that federal taxation powers were unlimited; which led to the increasing deficit spending and schemes like the Stimulus Funding, federal land acquisition, Wilderness, Endangered Species, Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, etc.; which led to the National Debt. This Debt not only obligates us to foreign, and often hostile, powers; it is increased annually with one new and/or increased spending program after another with no notice of the national legitimacy of the programs or the hidden consequences such as an unfettered federal government and the decline of freedom, opportunity, and rights that both result from and grow from such tyranny.

- Second, of necessity, as federal power has grown and absorbed authorities and responsibilities from State and Local governments, and from individuals and families; the rights, responsibilities and authority of State and Local governments as well as that of individuals and families have declined. This decline is marked by two realities. First, these entities being absorbed by federal growth have either become willing and subsidized allies of federal bureaucracies and federal laws, subcontractors if you will; or they are all but eliminated one at a time by federal bureaucrats. Examples would be Oregon Counties decimated by federal endangered owls that were used to eliminate logging communities and Counties; federal Wilderness Declarations that have destroyed communities by generating enormous fires and closed roads and forbid firefighting over vast areas; and contrived GI (Government Issue) wolf and grizzly bear programs used to eliminate industries like livestock husbandry, hunting, outdoor rural recreation, and even human safety in many rural communities and Counties. Second, those that resist are treated very badly by government and used as examples of severe punishment for any opposition to federal mandates. Examples of this are fathers sent to prison for killing a wolf or a grizzly bear in their yards where children and pets are present; rural landowners resisting federal wetland claims fined thousands per day and threatened with imprisonment; coyote hunters threatened with fines, imprisonment, loss of voting rights, and loss of gun rights for shooting a coyote-like animal that only some geneticist employing government-approved standards can ascertain from examination of a dead carcass after weeks of lab work. These assaults on State and local authorities have also created a government grown so big that those first two vital concerns of federal government listed above have become just two of many tasks and inevitably they suffer from competition for funding and for competent workers thus creating an increasingly inefficient performance of these vital federal tasks.

How can such intolerable abuses exist in the USA today? Well, before 1913, US Senators either blocked such laws OR THE STATE LEGISLATURE EITHER YANKED THEM OUT OF THE SENATE OR FAILED TO RE-APPOINT THEM. Not only the State Legislature would act to protect its prerogatives, Local governments and local citizens would have threatened State Legislators with political oblivion if they appoint such a person or if they fail to send them packing. Today, the US Senator gets donations, media support, volunteers and votes from THE COALITION THAT ELECTED AND WILL RE-ELECT HIM and therefore those to whom they are truly responsible and answerable. Modern US Senators have about as much concern for rural voters in their states as a California Senator has for Delaware fishermen or a vegan has for a hunter.

Getting back to President Obama’s last two years, there is a fear of an unaccountable federal behemoth causing increased harm to Americans that neither voted for him and his programs nor are planning to vote for someone in his Party in the next election. Now I want to examine two very current federal proposed actions.
I ask that you to disregard the following:

- Arizona has been a solidly Republican state for many years.
- Alaska now has a Republican Governor and 2 US Senators, one of whom just beat out a Democrat incumbent and the other a former Republican that ran as an Independent when the Republicans failed to support her and then caucused with the Democrats until this election when the Republicans took control of the Senate and she now has returned to Republican cooperator.
- New Mexico has a great Republican Governor but two Democrat US Senators and a heavily Democrat Congressional team that would like to replace the Governor with one of their own.
- President Obama and his Washington entourage might be vindictive or at least mischievous toward these 3 states, or even the nation in general, since they did not strongly support “my programs” as he called them in the last election.
- President Obama might see a way to somehow help progressives like himself to win the next election by catering to environmentalists, urban voters, and others not negatively affected by his actions.
- President Obama might well make public proposals to simply force Republicans in Washington to embarrass themselves or seem heartless if they oppose them in order to generate public sympathy, diversion or even tolerance for things as remote as returning Guantanamo to Cuba, or granting amnesty to all illegal aliens.
- Your preferences regarding Northern Alaska, energy development, or wolves in The Lower 48 States.

Consider The Endangered Species Act (1969) and The Wilderness Act (1964). Each of these laws, passed by a federal Congress and signed by a President authorizes the federal government, either by Congressional approval or bureaucratic fiat to declare any animal “Endangered” or any particular federal land mass a “Wilderness” in which access, resource management, and any economic pursuits are either forbidden or subject to arbitrary bureaucratic discretion.

One very current Endangered Species proposal that would once upon a time have been laughingly denied as possible by politicians and bureaucrats appears at the end of this article. I have labelled it #1. It concerns the checkered attempts for almost 3 decades to establish small (called “Mexican”) wolves in Arizona and New Mexico. The deserts and high country of those states are wolf-food poor (except for livestock and game animals) habitat. Wolves have killed many dogs and even started hanging around school bus stops (necessitating cages for the kids) as they roam the countryside and scrounge around home sites for food. Local and state opposition to the failing current wolf experiment has grown over the years and new federal plans to put more wolves over practically all of those states (to spread into nearby Texas and Colorado as well). In order to circumvent those pesky rural upstarts and those conservative state governments, the federal bureaucrats have applied to and granted themselves a permit “including but not limited to” “capture”, “propagation”, “release”, “translocation” of “wolves” “within Arizona and New Mexico”. Take that, states! Take that, counties! Take that, all of you local yokels, ranchers, hunters and other rednecks! Thank you all you cowardly US Senators in days of yore that created this Un-Constitutional power for federal bureaucrats to rape your rural precincts and the same to you current creampuff Senators that look the other way as rural pleading falls on your deaf ears as you forage for money and votes in your urban voting precincts.

An also current (today’s paper) federal Wilderness Declaration proposal to close 123.3 Million acres of Alaska has just been sent to Congress. It is identified as #2. Energy development of this un-inventoried (we don’t even know what we are closing in this age of energy prices and energy dependence on hostile Moslem states) resource area would be prohibited as our national debt mounts and energy radicals work to force a primitive and poorer lifestyle on the nation by restricting energy in all forms. Additionally there is the restriction of travel and access for everything from economic developments for communities to access to villages and hunting or even simple movements for a whole host of reasons associated with living in those remote environs. As with the wolves in Arizona and New Mexico; take that you out-of-step (bumpkins, political opponents, Constitutionalists, conservatives, Tea Partiers?) whatevers. Who’s really in charge now?

Now if you celebrate either of these 2 federal moves (#1 full federal authority to put and protect wolves wherever and whenever desired by federal bureaucrats and #2 full federal discretion for federal bureaucrats to have a President ask a Congress paid and voted for by urban factions to close millions of acres of land that the local communities, the local governments and the states literally need to exist – ALL WITHOUT ANY STATE APPROVAL, WITHOUT ANY LOCAL INPUT OR CONCERN, AND IN COMPLETE OPPOSITION TO THE NEEDS AND DESIRES OF THOSE BEING FORCED TO LIVE WITH AND HOST THE WOLVES OR EVEN HAVE A REMOTE CHANCE OF LIVING IN OR NEAR WILDERNESS ) then you are one of those citizens Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he was quoted as saying:

“A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.”

“When we get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, we shall become as corrupt as Europe.”

“The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not.”

“It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world.”

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government."

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

"To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical."

Jim Beers
26 January 2015

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Jim Beers is a retired US Fish & Wildlife Service Wildlife Biologist, Special Agent, Refuge Manager, Wetlands Biologist, and Congressional Fellow. He was stationed in North Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York City, and Washington DC. He also served as a US Navy Line Officer in the western Pacific and on Adak, Alaska in the Aleutian Islands. He has worked for the Utah Fish & Game, Minneapolis Police Department, and as a Security Supervisor in Washington, DC. He testified three times before Congress; twice regarding the theft by the US Fish & Wildlife Service of $45 to 60 Million from State fish and wildlife funds and once in opposition to expanding Federal Invasive Species authority. He resides in Eagan, Minnesota with his wife of many decades.

Jim Beers is available to speak or for consulting. You can receive future articles by sending a request with your e-mail address to: jimbeers7@comcast.net

#1.
Note - Interesting federal maneuver, using a backdoor approach (issuing itself a permit to avoid analysis, public commentary, debate and any boundaries about what they can or will do in the future with wolves in Arizona and New Mexico). I (Jim) underlined the following relevant wording:

Permit TE–091551
Applicant: U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service—Mexican Wolf Recovery
Program, Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Applicant requests a renewal to a
current permit for research and recovery
purposes to conduct the following
activities for Mexican gray wolf (Canis
lupis baileyi) within Arizona and New
Mexico: Capture, including, but not
limited to, leg-hold traps, helicopter or
ground darting and net-gunning, and
captive capture methods; handle;
possession; administration of health
care; propagation; radio collar or other
marking techniques; release; obtain and
preserve blood, tissue, semen, ova, and
other samples that are considered parts
of wolves (scat is not considered a part
of a wolf and can be collected without
a permit); translocate; transport between
approved Mexican wolf captive
management facilities in the United
States and Mexico, to approved release
sites, and to and from the Vermejo Park
Ranch; purposeful lethal take (lethal
control is limited to Mexican wolves
within the MWEPA in Arizona and New
Mexico); hazing via less-than-lethal
projectiles; injurious harassment;
research; and any other USFWS approved
husbandry practice or
management action for Mexican wolves.

National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA)

In compliance with NEPA (42 U.S.C.
4321 et seq.), we have made an initial
determination that the proposed
activities in these permits are
categorically excluded from the
requirement to prepare an
environmental assessment or
environmental impact statement (516
DM 6 Appendix 1, 1.4C(1)).

#2.
Obama seeks bigger wilderness designation in Alaska refuge
By Becky Bohrer And Jim Kuhnhenn Associated Press

POSTED: 01/25/2015 11:28:15 AM CST | UPDATED: ABOUT 16 HOURS AGO

JUNEAU, Alaska (AP) — President Barack Obama is proposing to designate the vast majority of Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as a wilderness area, including its potentially oil-rich coastal plain, drawing an angry response from top state elected officials who see it as a land grab by the federal government.

"They've decided that today was the day that they were going to declare war on Alaska. Well, we are ready to engage," said U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and chair of the Senate energy committee.

The designation would set aside an additional nearly 12.3 million acres as wilderness, including the coastal plain near Alaska's northeast corner, giving it the highest degree of federal protection available to public lands. More than 7 million acres of the refuge currently are managed as wilderness.

The refuge's coastal plain has long been at the center of the struggle between conservationists and advocates of greater energy exploration in the U.S. Political leaders in Alaska have supported allowing for exploration and production within the coastal plain. They have opposed attempts to further restrict development on federal lands, which comprise about two-thirds of the state, including within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

A resolution passed the state Legislature with bipartisan support last year urging Congress to allow for exploration and development on the coastal plain. A federal lawsuit brought by the state over the Interior Department's refusal to consider a proposed exploration plan for the refuge's coastal plain is pending. The state in 2013 proposed an exploration plan that it said was aimed at determining the true oil and gas potential in the refuge.

The Republican congressional delegation, along with Alaska's new governor, Bill Walker, sent out a joint news release Sunday morning calling the action "an unprecedented assault on Alaska." Walker changed his GOP affiliation to undeclared in running for office last year.

Walker told reporters in Anchorage that while he is not leaning toward litigation, the state is reviewing its options. He said this is one more example of a restriction that the federal government wants to put on Alaska. He wants to reach out to other governors in hopes of banding together to fight the proposal, Walker said.

The federal government is taking Alaska's economy away from it piece by piece, he said.

In a White House video released Sunday, Obama said he is seeking the designation "so that we can make sure thatthis amazing wonder is preserved for future generations."

The Interior Department issued a comprehensive plan Sunday that for the first time recommended the additional protections. If Congress agrees, it would be the largest wilderness designation since passage of the Wilderness Act in the 1960s, the agency said.

However, the proposal is likely to face stiff resistance in the Republican-controlled Congress. Murkowski said in an interview that Obama is going after something "that is not possible in this Congress." She said she sees it as an attempt by the administration to "score some environmental points" and to rile passions ahead of another announcement by Interior in the coming days that Murkowski said she was told would propose putting off-limits to development certain areas of the offshore Arctic.

Murkowski said she spoke with Interior Secretary Sally Jewell and Jewell's chief of staff in the last few days.
Interior Department spokeswoman Jessica Kershaw, responding by email Sunday, did not offer details, but she said a proposed five-year offshore drilling plan is forthcoming and that environmental reviews of lease areas in the Arctic waters off Alaska's shores are underway.

The department pegged the timing of Obama's announcement in part to recent legislation proposed in Congress and talks involving potentially opening the refuge to development. Earlier this month, U.S. Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, introduced a bill that would allow for development on the coastal plain. On Wednesday, in his first State of the State speech, Walker talked about working with the congressional delegation to tap oil within the refuge. Murkowski referenced the refuge — and the economic benefits that she said could come from unlocking a part of it — in an energy-focused Republican weekly address on Saturday.

Murkowski, who chairs the Interior appropriations subcommittee, said Sunday that the days of Obama administration officials knowing they can call her and get a call back are done.

Young, in a statement, called the proposed wilderness delegation a violation of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. "Simply put, this wholesale land grab, this widespread attack on our people and our way of life, is disgusting," he said.

Conservation groups hailed Obama's announcement.

David Houghton, president of the National Wildlife Refuge Association, said in a statement released by conservation and some Native organizations that the refuge's coastal plain "is one of the last places on earth that has been undisturbed by humans, and we owe it to our children and their children to permanently protect this invaluable resource."

Robert Thompson, who lives within the refuge's borders at Kaktovik and is chairman of the group Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands, worries that oil and gas development would displace Native subsistence activities. He said he was pleased with Obama's action, even if it is symbolic.