Global Warming/dc Voting Rights/esa

by Jim Beers

It is enough to make a person want to just stop reading or listening to the news. Three items in today’s news are both depressing and revealing.

They are depressing because they reveal the depth of the division between our government, working on behalf of anti-American interests and agendas, and so much of our population. They are revealing because they reveal how little advocacy and representation we are getting from “our” elected representatives.

First, the Global Warming Hearings featuring former Vice President Gore were a scary look at the commitment of both parties to seriously hobble the economy of the United States for no proven purpose other than to disadvantage the nation to the advantage of all other nations. When one considers the amount of concern and opposition in this country by scholars, business, and informed individuals one is forced to conclude that they have no advocates in their elected representatives save one from Oklahoma in the Minority Party.

Former Vice President Gore was called “Mr. President” (if you think that funny, I am sorry for you) by the Democrat Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee who, between him and his father have represented a Michigan District since Michigan statehood or thereabouts. The former House Speaker, Republican Hastert “praised Mr. Gore and even had a friendly back-and-forth about grandchildren” as he opined “the debate over climate change is over”. All this love fest went on as the Chief Global Warming advocate “sauntered onto the House floor as members voted” with “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi”. The only dissenting voices were a Danish “scientist” (actually one of my heroes, Bjorn Lomborg) who called “Mr. Gore’s assertions wildly exaggerated” and Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma who, when he tried to question the former Vice President was twice interrupted by the Senate Committee Chairman Democrat Barbara Boxer who had to “get control” of the hearing.

Who represents the millions of us that are deeply concerned about the deleterious and unfair negative effects of all these ungratified Kyoto Protocol penalties on the US? The answer, one Dane (Great though he may be) and an Oklahoma (home of Will Rogers) Senator that is ridiculed in the media and used as an example of Cro-Magnon Man by teachers and professors on grants everywhere!

Second, backing this all up is the Republican Secretary of the Interior taking the Endangered Species Act to new heights of abuse by planning to “List” the polar bear under the Act not because they are “in danger” but because polar ice isn’t what it was recently (in spite of many such fluctuations over the centuries that polar bears “weathered” just fine, thank you). The reason for “Listing” (in order to use the “Listing” as a point in court to enforce all the Kyoto Protocols no matter what happens in the House or Senate or who is the next president) is to put in writing the legal rationale for the judges to justify more draconian decisions based on “a reduction of polar ice DUE TO GLOBAL WARMING”.

The only difference between this Republican and some appointee under “Mr. President” Gore would be speed. By now some Gore appointee would have already done this for the polar bear and also “Listed” buffalo (to clear The Great Plains) and 25 selected races of cottontail rabbits (to selectively prevent development and condemn land in the East to make it more like the West vis-à-vis Federal land ownership and control). Not to be concerned though: all of this would have endeared us ever more to the European rulers and UN bureaucrats. Again, who represents us in Washington?

Third, there is that ever-moderate “outreacher” Republican Jack Kemp writing a long article to explain why he and other Republicans join with Democrats to support Voting Rights in the District of Columbia. They condemn the President and his advisers as “rigidly interpreting the Constitution” (would to God, more would). They further introduce absurdity into the argument by claiming opponents of such voting rights “show more compassion for Baghdad and Kabul”. The esteemed Mr. Kemp concludes with “ My question is, does this (p)resident want to continue the legacy of Abraham Lincoln, US Grant, and Dwight Eisenhower, or that of Barry Goldwater in 1964?”

Nowhere does this debate touch on the basic issue. The issue is not racial or discriminatory or even power. The issue is the concept of the Founding Fathers that is as valid today as 200+ years ago. That is, is it best for the nation to be ruled by a Federal government in it’s own enclave uninfluenced by the police, water, politics, etc. of that location or might it not be located in some local or state jurisdiction? I (like the Founding Fathers) vote for a Federal enclave. This vote business, like so much else, is a thinly disguised incremental approach to more sovereignty of DC from Federal control (but not money). Call it a “state” or “city” or whatever, if the status of DC voters is changed to give them eventual Chairmanship of a House Committee or eventual Senators then (whether they [MD or DC] like it or not) the District should be returned to Maryland from whence it came. I vote for “the legacy” of Jefferson, Madison, and Washington, but who represents this position?

These three items from one day’s news are important well beyond how you feel about Global Warming or Republicans or polar bears or a DC Committee Chairman. My point here is the degree of melding going on between the red and the blue, the Republicans and the Democrats. How, on the heels of the last two Presidential elections when it appeared that another Civil War was about to break out between Democrat-machine ruled urban areas and the rest of the country involving some sort of 50.1% v. 49.9% split we got to this sad state of affairs is truly amazing to me. I do not mean to speculate here but only to point out that today when I am asked “who can help get this polar bear ‘Listing’ under control?” or “how can we get all this private property seizure by government stopped?” or “how do we oppose this UN Sustainable Development takeover of America from within?”, etc.: I am at a loss to answer.

No one organized to help reelect politicians in the last election who would and were doing those things but were defeated by organized and wealthy national and international interest groups. When I suggest unity amongst citizens being importuned by these new laws and regulations there are hundreds of reasons given why that is impossible or why I am a jerk. So we have lurched from an electorate at each other’s throats to one that now has two parties that are about as different as the latest Doublemint Gum Twins and guess who seems to have been placed on the toboggan and shoved off toward the ravine? Somewhere in between is where we want to be.

So all I can suggest is what Kings did long ago. During such periods of peace and to avoid conflict in the future, one King would give his daughter to the other King as a wife for his son, thereby “cementing” their “friendship”. Certainly one of these top politicians in each Party must have an unmarried son and/or daughter to donate to the cause. Think of the wedding bells and all that brie and chardonnay. Think of the politicians and movie stars and bureaucrats. Most importantly, think of how we, unlike our peasant forbearers, could watch it all on TV’s instead of from a hut as they rode by. Think of how “happy” we would all be as our rulers and betters shared their happiness with us.

Just like every one of these old “alliances” broke down and often with disastrous consequences, so too will all this one-sided stampede by the Federal government to feather it’s own nest and embrace ever-more-tightly the agendas of radical groups, other nations, and the UN in ways that disadvantage us lead to disaster. The absence of debate and representation cannot long sustain a Republic. The absence of defense of the traditions and rights that made this nation great cannot be justified in order to merge this nation with the traditions our forefathers fled and purposely rejected nor to merge with nations without such guarantees of individual rights and similar one-sided governance.

Group rights, majority votes, and forced-down power by absolute rulers and their supporters will not long supplant individual rights and a government created and controlled by “We the People” once experienced. We need to come together, strengthen and defend state’s rights, and elect politicians to work for us and not themselves. It is a shame this has somehow become a “tall order”.

Jim Beers
22 March 2007
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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 Centreville, Virginia with his wife of many decades.