Sounding Board
Monday, October 21, 2002
RMN at it again
Lest anyone mistake the previous [see last post] trumped up story about the Green candidate in the CO 7th race for the lone action of a bored reporter, the RMN is again trying to peddle the same line. This time the article attempts to pull the same maneuver on the Democratic candidate for Attorney General, Ken Salazar. It would be funny enough if they kept trying to use the same faulty premise as the last time [see below], but this time the Green Party candidate is not even a local officer but merely a member of the Club. That's right, apparently the RMN thinks it is important news that the Sierra Club will no longer be receiving Ms. Maynard's yearly dues of $39 since they declined to endorse her 3rd party candidacy. Seeing as how the Sierra Club has roughly 700,000 members, I'm willing to bet a good number of candidates this year have been similarly "snubbed."
Naturally, the article goes on to flog the examples from the first article again. Since everything I said about the previous article still stands (and then some) for this one, I won't belabor the point further.
Friday, October 18, 2002
Rhymes with "why us?"
It is not exactly news to anyone in Colorado but the campaigns there have become quite nasty. Democrats in several races are widely thought to have a shot, in dramatic contrast to recent elections. Luckily for the Republicans there, they can always count on help from the reporters at the Rocky Mountain News.
In case you haven't been following the races there, there are competitive (Federal) races in the Senate, the newly created 7th district, the 4th (depends on what polls you believe), and, some would argue, the 2nd (seems much less likely). For various reasons, including the balance of power in the US Senate and the woeful environmental record of the incumbent in the Senate and consistent anti-environment members from the 4th, the Sierra Club has included CO in one of its 10 targeted states for this election. Interestingly, this has prompted Senator Allard to embark on what has to be the most brazen greenwashing campaign of this election cycle. Allard's claim that he "has the strongest record of protecting Colorado's environment of any Senator in Colorado's history" has caused outrage in the environmental community and has almost certainly led to raising the profile of the race among enviros. Not to unduly belabor the point but Allard's quote that he "has the strongest record of protecting Colorado's environment of any Senator in Colorado's history" must be fairly galling to former Senator Tim Wirth, and environmental protection pioneer, and, well, every other Senator from Colorado. I'm pretty sure that I can empirically justify the statement that a ham sandwich would have been better for the environment as Senator from Colorado than has been Mr. Allard.
What has recently caught my attention though, is an article in the Rocky Mountain News alleging that the Rocky Mountain Chapter of the Sierra Club threatened a local chapter officer, and Green Party candidate in the 7th district, Dave Chandler, for complaining to the media that the Club endorsed the Democratic candidate instead of him.
As far as the actual substance of the conflict between the RM Chapter and Mr. Chandler, the article subsequently reveals (in the 17th paragraph, natch) there isn't much there. The "threat" consisted of options to either sign a statement that Mr. Chandler violated club policy by going to the media and state he'll never do it again, or to step down from his position until after the election. Mr. Chandler maintains the alternative was reprimand and removal from his position. Mr. Casini, the Chapter Director who supposedly delivered the threat, denies there was any threat and says there will be no attempt to oust Mr. Chandler. A quick search of the Sierra Club policies reveals this statement; "Sierra Club is one corporation. Unlike many other environmental organizations, our Chapters and Groups are not independent. Chapters, Groups and "National" do not take contradictory public positions on issues." (If you want to see more, look here) So, Mr. Chandler has unambiguously violated the rules and was apparently informed of this by the Chapter Director. Where's the story? Does anyone really care about the insider machinations of the RM Region of the Sierra Club? No, the story the reporter wants out of this is revealed in the lead-in; "a member of the Sierra Club is wondering if those who say the club is simply a shill for the Democrats are right."
And the reporter certainly got a fabulous quote from Mr. Chandler, one that could have been written by the Republican National Committee (they've been trying to sell this message for years); "Is the club even more aligned with the Democrats than I suspected? ... This seems bigger than me. What's going on with the Sierra Club?"
The reporter then goes on to try and back up this statement with a couple examples. 1) The club has endorsed Rep. Mark Udall (D) over Sandy Hume (R) though Mr. Hume is an officer in the Boulder County Sierra Club, and; 2) the Club "refused to take a stand" in a CO State House race where a Green Party candidate and local group officer is challenging a Republican. All in support of the painfully disingenous premise that if one is a locally elected officer of a local chapter, the Sierra Club must somehow justify any endorsment of another candidate.
Not that there aren't logical reasons for these examples. In the case of the State House race, for example, there are 65 State House races, Sierra Club has endorsed 17 candidates. So that makes this one of 48 State House races where the Sierra Club is simply choosing not to weigh in, including many where Democrats are on the ballot. It does not exactly strike me as a damning indictment of the Club's political committee that they are not paying much attention to a race pitting a minor party candidate against an incumbent in a district so heavily Republican that the Democrats can't even field a candidate.
The Udall v. Hume case is even more ridiculous. Hume might be an officer (I can't find anything on Sierra Club's website, or anywhere else, to verify it) in the Sierra Club but there is little else available to give one the impression that environmental protection is much of a priority for him. There is almost nothing on his website about the environment, and he simply has not made an issue of it in his campaign. And with good reason; if the primary voter concern is environmental policy, Udall will kill him. Beginning with his family legacy as the son of environmental champion Morris Udall, continuing through his years in charge of Colorado Outward Bound, and his two terms on the US House Resources Committee, Udall has compiled a record of environmental protection that ranks among the top in the House. This has led to a 100% lifetime score from the League of Conservation Voters, and 2002 endorsements from LCV, Friends of the Earth, WildPac (dedicated to pro-wilderness candidates), and, as mentioned above, Sierra Club. I don't really know how strongly Mr. Hume feels about environmental issues, but the only vote I can be sure that he will cast, if elected, would offset any 10 pro-environment votes he may cast after. He will vote to retain Rep. Hastert as Speaker of the House, and the rest of what is almost certainly the most anti-environmental leadership group to run the House in the last 40 years.
So there's some evidence that there may be other reasons besides being a "shill for the Democrats" for the Sierra Club to choose candidates other than Sierra Club members. But do they endorse any Republicans? You wouldn't know from the article, but it turns out the answer is yes. Admittedly not many, but I'll argue (another time, perhaps) that it has a lot more to do with who's leading the Republican Party than any pre-disposition towards Democrats. Heck, they endorse Connie Morella (who is certainly a committed enviro) despite the fact that she is facing a Democrat who professes to be equally environmentally committed. Does Sierra Club endorse any Green Party candidates? None I can find. Could this be the source of Chandler's "snubbing?" Carl Pope, the Executive Director of the Sierra Club, has eloquently stated on several occasions that third-party candidicies are self-defeating for enviros. In 2000, he produced a long piece on this issue which includes this snipett, "If voting is viewed strictly as a mirror of personal preference, then third parties-and fourth, fifth, and twenty-seventh parties-are well and good. But voting is also about selecting a government that will make a practical difference in the world, and the reality of third-party candidates in national winner-take-all systems like those in the United States or Britain is that they strengthen their enemies at the expense of their friends."
Whether or not you agree with Mr. Pope about the consequences of third-party candidacies in the US (I do, but more on that another time), it certainly seems like a likely explanation for the Sierra Club's endorsement in this case. But you'd never know that from the RMN article. Instead, amazingly, you get the spin from the Wayne Allard camp that this should be a "wake-up call for the rank-and-file membership." Which leads me to an important question. Why on earth would there be a quote from the Senate Candidate who is being targeted by the Sierra Club in this article (in case you are curious, there are no quotes from any Democratic candidates in the article)? Allard's spokesman adds absolutely no insight on the situation and their sole interest in this whole affair is to try to undermine the legitimacy of the Sierra Club's endorsement of Allard's opponent. And that, it would appear to me, is the entire point of this article.
So I have two questions.
1) Doesn't Mr. Chandler's quote indicate he is more interested in hurting the Democrat in his race than in talking about environmental issues? After all, attacking the Sierra Club doesn't exactly help his candidacy.
2) Any theories on where the reporter might have gotten this story in the first place?
Thursday, October 17, 2002
Reserved Water Rights
Getting back to my intended subject matter for this blog, I commend to readers' attention the article in Sunday's NYT titled "US Eases Way for West to Control Big Volumes of Water". It's a decent article involving an issue that generally takes a great deal of background to understand. In a nutshell, in an ongoing water rights case that allocates the rights to water in the Gunnison river, the US has already been granted a right to sufficient water to protect the values of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. However, the Court has not yet quantified how much water is necessary to protect those values. The Park Service produced a study specifying the amounts necessary and the US, under the previous adminstration, sought to quantify the water rights consistent with the study. Now, apparently, the Bush administration is looking to settle with the other water users for significantly less water for the park. According to the article, "Mr. Comer said that based on a reassessment the total might fall short of what park officials identified last year as necessary. He also said that in contrast to the Clinton administration the Bush administration would claim a right significantly less that the park's needs. As part of any accord, he said, the government would seek to make up the difference by acquiring water from other sources ...". In essence, the new administration wants to undo the legal claims of the last administration.
This will sound familiar to those who were following the fates of the Roadless Rule and the arsenic standard for drinking water promulgated by the Clinton administration. And I would certainly argue that all these actions stem from the same "everything Clinton did was wrong" mentality, but I think there are a number of implications in this case that we should devote some more thought to.
Science vs. Policy -- It's becoming a bit of a tired refrain but, like the arsenic standards, it appears that a change of heart among political appointees is being allowed to trump the empirical scientific conclusions. However, it is a bigger problem here because the result will be a court decree. There will be no revisiting of this issue by a future administration and no opportunity for the public to speak through elections. The only way to get any of this water back will be to buy it back.
Of course that is exactly the situation the Bush administration is looking for. In fact, Mr. Comer (the political appointee within the DOI Solicitor's office in charge of Bureau of Reclamation water rights) admits as much in the interview with the times saying they will have to acquire the necessary water from other sources. Which leads me to :
Fiscal Responsibility -- "Acquiring water from other sources" means buying water from others that the US already had a legitimate claim to but refused to exercise. But it gets worse. The nature of federally reserved water rights is that they date back to the time of the federal designation; in this case 1933, the time the park was first designated a monument. Thus, all water users who began using their water after that time will have to yield to the park. If, instead, DOI decides to try and purchase water on the open market, not only will they pay money for water they had for free, it will almost certainly be far more "junior" in priority. As a result, the purchased water may never even be available when needed. Which leads me to the final, and most important issue:
Constitutional Responsibility -- What makes the Bush administration think they get to decide how much of a right to assert in the litigation? Federally reserved water rights begin with the 1908 Supreme Court case Winters v. US and have been further refined by several Supreme Court cases since. In short, these cases stand for the proposition that when the US sets aside land for some particular purpose like an Indian Reservation or National Park, Congress impliedly sets aside the concommitant water rights necessary to fulfill the particular purposes of the reservation. There are modifications to this principle depending on the kind of reservation we are talking about but they are not terribly relevant here; parks and monuments are pretty clear. In this case, since you have a monument/park that is actually a river, the need for water rights to carry out Congress' intent in the designation is clear cut. It seems to me awfully difficult to maintain the Executive is faithfully executing the law if they simply pass on exercising the legal rights necessary to support the designation. Federally reserved water rights were a fixture in the law when this monument was designated, any political calculations related to the water rights created by the designation were undertaken then. I don't see how this administration has any right, morally or legally, to second guess that decision. Their responsibility is to carry out the law.
Of course enforcing this responsibility on this administration is a different question. Maybe I'll visit that another time.
Sunday, October 13, 2002
First Post
Actually, this is my second attempt to post. My first attempt at this (a fairly lengthy discourse on how I have found it difficult to focus on my chosen topic of environmental law of late due to the President's obsession with pushing the US into an unprovoked attack on Iraq) was eaten by Windows. For the time being I will satisfy myself a few shorter comments, a reproduction of a truly courageous speech by Congressman Pete Stark, and giving fair notice that my outrage may again override my focus in the future.
Congressman Stark's speech:
"Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution (authorizing military force against Iraq). I am deeply troubled that lives may be lost without a meaningful attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with U.N. resolutions through careful and cautious diplomacy.
"The bottom line is I don't trust this president and his advisors.
"Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to the president, who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history. It sets a precedent for our nation -- or any nation -- to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus.
"Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a president who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence.
"You know, three years ago in December, Molly Ivins, an observer of Texas politics, wrote: 'For an upper-class white boy, Bush comes on way too hard. At a guess, to make up for being an upper-class white boy.'
"'Somebody,' she said, 'should be worrying about how all this could affect his handling of future encounters with some Saddam Hussein.' How prophetic, Ms. Ivins.
"Let us not forget that our president -- our commander in chief -- has no experience with, or knowledge of, war. In fact, he admits that he was at best ambivalent about the Vietnam War. He skirted his own military service and then failed to serve out his time in the National Guard. And, he reported years later that at the height of that conflict in 1968 he didn't notice 'any heavy stuff going on.'"
"So we have a president who thinks foreign territory is the opponent's dugout and Kashmir is a sweater.
"What is most unconscionable is that there is not a shred of evidence to justify the certain loss of life. Do the generalized threats and half-truths of this administration give any one of us in Congress the confidence to tell a mother or father or family that the loss of their child or loved one was in the name of a just cause?
"Is the president's need for revenge for the threat once posed to his father enough to justify the death of any American?
"I submit the answer to these questions is no.
"Aside from the wisdom of going to war as Bush wants, I am troubled by who pays for his capricious adventure into world domination. The administration admits to a cost of around $200 billion!
"Now, wealthy individuals won't pay. They've got big tax cuts already. Corporations won't pay. They'll cook the books and move overseas and then send their contributions to the Republicans. Rich kids won't pay. Their daddies will get them deferments as Big George did for George W.
"Well then, who will pay?
"School kids will pay. There'll be no money to keep them from being left behind -- way behind. Seniors will pay. They'll pay big time as the Republicans privatize Social Security and rob the Trust Fund to pay for the capricious war. Medicare will be curtailed and drugs will be more unaffordable. And there won't be any money for a drug benefit because Bush will spend it all on the war.
"Working folks will pay through loss of job security and bargaining rights. Our grandchildren will pay through the degradation of our air and water quality. And the entire nation will pay as Bush continues to destroy civil rights, women's rights and religious freedom in a rush to phony patriotism and to courting the messianic Pharisees of the religious right.
"The questions before the members of this House and to all Americans are immense, but there are clear answers. America is not currently confronted by a genuine, proven, imminent threat from Iraq. The call for war is wrong.
"And what greatly saddens me at this point in our history is my fear that this entire spectacle has not been planned for the well-being of the world, but for the short-term political interest of our president.
"Now, I am also greatly disturbed that many Democratic leaders have also put political calculation ahead of the president's accountability to truth and reason by supporting this resolution. But, I conclude that the only answer is to vote no on the resolution before us."
Amazingly, Rep. Stark doesn't even cite to Andrew Card's quote explaining the timing of the push towards war; "From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.” It has always seemed to me that the relevant question is, "why now?" After all, Iraq has been without inspectors for roughly 5 years now and the threat of massive retaliation seems to have kept Hussein from mounting any attacks. At what point will he cease to be afraid for his life? Obviously, it will be scary when he possesses a nuclear weapon (it's already pretty scary that Pakistan and India have them), but why has absolutely no-one among the crowd that now beats the drums of war ever advocated for invasion over the past few years? The only answer appears to be that this is their first opportunity to use it for their political advantage. If they really believed in getting this done, in a bi-partisan way, so that the US truly spoke with "one voice," the Administration would have waited until after the elections, when there would be no political heat to contend with. I think I'll stop now.
Well, one more thing. Yes, I agree with many who would argue that the Democrats in Congress should have showed more courage in questioning the motives of the Administration, but lets not forget how little power they really had to shape the debate. It was the Congressional Republicans who, nearly to a man, were unable to see past their own election self-interests and rammed through the authorization for war. A majority of Congressional Democrats voted against the resolution.
