Monthly Archives: July 2005

Mine

You Are Forbidden to Read This

Those citizens! They say the darndest things | TheNewsTribune.com | Tacoma, WA

In Pierce County’s case, speakers who don’t have nice things to say about council members are advised to say nothing at all. Speakers who violate the rule risk being cut off or removed from the room. Councilmembers say the rule is necessary to maintain decorum.

(Ironically, most county residents wouldn’t know whether it was maintaining decorum or not since the council decided 17 months ago to turn off cameras during the public comment period — a decision the council is now reconsidering.)

Yelm is a bit more specific in its ban on public comment. Speakers cannot say “Wal-Mart” or “big-box stores”? or “moratorium.”

The council apparently is fed up with people who criticize the council for not trying to stop a Wal-Mart that could dramatically change the small town. It says to remain objective, it cannot hear citizen concerns.

Here is another word neither the Pierce County or Yelm council will like: thin-skinned.

Elected officials have to expect to take some knocks. If they open their meetings to public comment, they have to expect knocks there.

How does one get elected without a clue about law, tradition, rights? mjh

Theirs

More About the History Around the Monticello Box

http://www.crosswindsweekly.com/cover1.htm
The Red Paint Canyon Battle
Defending a natural and cultural gem
by Sherry Robinson, Crosswindsweekly

Chief Victorio protested, ?This country belongs to my people as it did to my forefathers.?

It was 1875, and the government planned to move Victorio and his Warm Springs Apache people from Ojo Caliente, their homeland in southwestern New Mexico, to the despised San Carlos Reservation in Arizona. It wasn?t the first or last time they would be taken away, and they would return, as they had many times before.

?The Warm Springs Apaches loved that spot,? the late James Kaywaykla said of his people.

Ojo Caliente, like the better known village in northern New Mexico, got its name because of a spring. This Ojo Caliente, 38 miles northwest of Truth or Consequences, feeds Alamosa Creek, which over time has sliced its way through rock to form a picturesque box canyon. The Apaches cherished Ojo Caliente for its water, grassland and defensible location. Attacked from either side, they could flee to the box canyon and take refuge, rolling rocks down on their attackers.

According to Chiricahua Apache oral history, the entire tribe once lived in Ojo. There they received supernatural powers and learned the customs of their people. Afterward the tribe divided into four bands. The Warm Springs band remained and the other three moved south and west.

In 1859 the army established an outpost at Ojo Caliente along the river. At the village of Ca?ada Alamosa, 17 miles down the canyon, Hispanic farmers tilled their fields and maintained friendly relations with the Apaches.

Ojo Caliente had another feature important to the Apaches. Nearby was Red Paint Canyon, a source of pigment the Warm Springs people used to paint their faces. In their own language they?re called Chihenne, or Red Paint People.

Along came a miner

Rancher Kenneth ?Tey? Sullivan, who owns Red Paint Canyon, wants to explore its mining potential and has asked the state for permission to drill. His family has owned land adjoining Ojo Caliente for generations.

It?s Sullivan?s third try. In 2002, he and David Tognoni, a geological engineer, began mining without a permit. Local residents alerted the state Mining and Minerals Division, which promptly shut them down. They returned this year and applied for a minimal?impact exploration permit to drill 30 holes. The state denied the permit in April because of potential impact to streams and habitat.

Next, the two enlisted Great Western Exploration LLC, which on May 11 reapplied for a minimal?impact permit. Their scaled? down plans now call for five holes up to 2,000 feet deep. They?ve moved the proposed drill sites away from the spring and creek and say in the application that disturbance wouldn?t exceed five acres.

Their interest is a deposit of bertrandite, a source of beryllium, which is somewhat scarce. Once used in nuclear weapons, beryllium has found new applications in electronics and golf clubs, but it?s a small, specialized market. In the past, beryllium exposure has been a health issue.

A geologist with the New Mexico Bureau of Mines & Mineral Resources is skeptical about the potential of this deposit. ?Great caution needs to be used in these situations,? he said. ?It could be a new discovery, but it?s somewhat unlikely.?

Little is known of Great Western except that the company incorporated in 2004 in Windsor, Colo. Tognoni is listed as a subcontractor and has apparently been involved in other small projects in the state. They?ve hired AMEC, an environmental consulting firm. The same players are also drilling on two other sites in Sierra County. Sullivan and Great Western have declined to comment; AMEC didn?t return calls.

The prospect of drilling or mining has alarmed residents of Monticello, the former Ca?ada Alamosa. The cottonwood?shaded village of about 50 people is a mix of long? time residents and newcomers.

?Any holes drilled have great potential for harm not only to our waters but also to the surrounding ecosystem,? says organic farmer Joshua Cravens. ?The surface water we irrigate with comes from the spring. Our well water is from the same aquifer.?

?The massive, deep drilling proposed is likely to penetrate several layers of ground water and thereby risk causing catastrophic damage to the quantity of water flowing down the creek,? writes Dennis O?Toole, who lives in the canyon. And drilling could lead to waste water discharge, which would drain toward the springs and the river.

Residents and neighboring ranchers also worry about the impact of moving heavy equipment around and carving drill pads, which could degrade ground cover and exacerbate erosion and silting.

Ojo Caliente is a warm spring that feeds Alamosa Creek. Considered sacred by the Warm Springs Apache people, it’s at the heart of their homeland.

This unusual water source and riparian area is habitat to creatures on state or federal lists of threatened or endangered species ? the Alamosa springsnail, the ovate vertigo snail and the Chiricahua leopard frog. The environmental issues have drawn the interest of the Sierra Club.

?We?ve received many, many calls and letters from citizens in the area,? says Karen Garcia, bureau chief of the state?s Mine Regulation Bureau.

The regulatory process requires the state Mining and Minerals Division to solicit comments from other agencies before making a decision. In the previous application, the state Surface Water Bureau held out concerns about impacts to surface water; the Game and Fish Department raised the issue of the toxicity of beryllium and noted that the geology in the canyon and groundwater connections aren?t well understood. This led mining regulators to deny minimal?impact status. Federal agencies are not involved because the proposed mine is on private land.

The decision is again before the Mining and Minerals Division. A minimal?impact application doesn?t require a public hearing, but the state was meeting with residents at press time and had not yet made a decision.

Cultural considerations

Regardless of the state?s decision, opponents know the fight isn?t over. ?Ultimately, we want to find somebody to buy the land and conserve it,? says Cravens. …

[read more about the history of the Warm Springs Apache – Cover Story Archives

mjh’s Blog: Help Save A Special Place in New Mexico – the Monticello Box in New Mexico

loco

The Truth About the Value & Costs of Wolves

I was out of town when this article appeared on 6/12. It has some very important FACTS about the reintroduction of wolves to the southwest. mjh

ABQjournal: Ranchers, Environmentalists Agree It’s Time for a Change for Grey Wolf By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer

State and federal biologists who worked on the five-year review said wolves should be allowed to set up territories outside the current program boundaries, something they can’t do today.

As part of an earlier program review in 2001, an independent team of scientists also recommended scrapping the boundary rule. It also recommended that ranchers take some responsibility for cattle carcasses that can attract wolves, and that wolves be released directly into the Gila Wilderness.

Current rules allow only wolves that have been released in Arizona and then been recaptured to be let loose in New Mexico.

The Fish and Wildlife Service has not moved forward on any of the significant changes recommended by the scientists, but it has proposed some restrictions on wolf releases at the request of ranchers. …

Ranchers say slowing down releases would give the program time to get a better handle on the number of wolves in the wild.

Ranchers believe there are 100 or more wolves in the wild, while the program estimates the population at 51-56, plus an unknown number of pups born this spring. …

The Industrial Economics study for the first time compiles numbers on livestock depredations from the government and from the ranchers. The researchers concluded that anywhere from 37 to 245 cattle, sheep, horses and dogs were killed by wolves in New Mexico and Arizona from 1998 to 2004.

Based on those numbers, the economic impact to ranchers was $38,650 to $206,290, including the market value of the animals killed, the costs of injuries from wolf attacks and the value of the 10 hours or so it takes to prepare each claim for compensation, according to the report.

Pay close attention to the figures in the previous two paragraphs. Over a period of 7 years, *all* animals killed by wolves average in a range from just over 5 animals / $5,500 per year to 35 animals / $29,470 per year (somewhere between one animal every other month to 3 per month — these are *all* animals, not just cattle). Below, you will note that (1) up to 34,800 cows have grazed in that time and (2) Defenders of Wildlife has paid ranchers $33,000 in that same period.

The FACTS show the ranchers are greatly misrepresenting the impact of the wolf. mjh

But the conservation group Defenders of Wildlife, which pays the compensation for lost animals, said all ranchers must do is send in a report prepared by the government and sometimes make a call to report the death.

“They have to put an envelope in the mail,” said Craig Miller of Defenders of Wildlife in Tucson.

Defenders of Wildlife has paid Southwest ranchers more than $33,000 in compensation since 1998.

Even using the high estimate of losses provided by ranchers, wolves killed only about a quarter of 1 percent of the 34,800 cattle in the area in 2002? the year with the most depredations.

But Schneberger said there are a lot fewer than 34,800 cattle in the area now, so the percentage killed by wolves is larger.

An average of 4 percent of the cattle in the area died from causes other than slaughter in 1997, the year before the wolf program began, according to the report. …

Defenders of Wildlife helps ranchers pay for extra riders, fencing and other measures. …

The fund has helped pay for six projects this year. … Still, Miller said the fund is underused. …

The wolf program also has benefits, researchers say. There is a public “non-use value” or intrinsic value in preserving the Mexican wolf that is hard to measure, according to the socioeconomic study.

Federal and state government spending on the wolf program totals about $1.5 million a year, with a benefit of 31 jobs, according to the study. Although not all that money nor all the jobs are in the recovery area itself, there is spending and staff based among the wolves.

The chance to see wolves has attracted some tourists to the area, a trend that is expected to increase as the wolf population grows.

There also are ecological benefits, as demonstrated by wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone National Park. Wolves there reduced elk populations that had been overgrazing riparian vegetation. That change, in turn, benefited beavers, bears, foxes and birds.

No similar ecological research has been done in the Southwest, but Robinson said it’s reasonable to assume wolves have started “sharpening the wits of prey species.”

ABQjournal: Mexican Gray’s Presence in Wild Challenged By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer

Mexican gray wolf reintroduction in the Southwest is required by the federal Endangered Species Act.

There are close to 300 of the endangered wolves at 47 captive facilities in the United States and Mexico. But the only Mexican gray wolves in the wild in the United States are part of the Southwestern reintroduction effort. [mjh: about 55 in the wild]

Dump Duhbya

Supreme Court Cockfight

The conservative case against Alberto Gonzales by Ken Herman, Cox News Service

The conservative case against Gonzales is based on his Texas Supreme Court record and comments he has made. The topics include a menu of conservative hot-button issues, including abortion, property rights, judicial activism and affirmative action.

On those topics, Gonzales has cast votes and said things that are cause for concern among some conservatives who have long waited for the day when one of their own could replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, the court’s most pivotal swing vote in many cases. …

In addition to Gonzales’ decisions while a Bush appointee on the Texas Supreme Court, Weyrich is troubled by something he heard from Gonzales at a meeting of conservatives.

A questioner asked Gonzales to choose between two legal concepts: “stare decisis” and original intent.

Stare decisis means “to stand by things decided,” and, to some, is a code word for judicial activism. In the legal world, “original intent” means looking to the framers’ original intent as the basis for rulings. It can be a code word similar to “strict constructionist.”

Weyrich said Gonzales came down on the side of stare decisis, fighting words for good conservatives.

“That’s very troubling to somebody who feels as I do that the Supreme Court has bent the Constitution way out of whack,” Weyrich said.

Some conservatives also find cause for concern in Gonzales’ handling of cases while on the Texas Supreme Court and his comment that he benefited from affirmative action.

Conservative concern about Gonzales’ feelings on abortion arise from a February 2000 Texas Supreme Court case in which Gonzales sided with a majority in granting latitude for a teen seeking judicial approval to bypass a state law, signed by then-Gov. Bush, requiring parental notification prior to an abortion. …

Opinions followed in June 2000, evidencing a nasty 6-3 split, with the majority – including Gonzales – ruling that the legislature meant for it to be fairly easy for a teen to get judicial approval for an abortion without parental notification.

Gonzales, in a concurring opinion, said narrow interpretation of the bypass provision “would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism.”

“While the ramifications of such a law and the results of the court’s decision here may be personally troubling to me as a parent, it is my obligation as a judge to impartially apply the laws of this state without imposing my moral view on the decisions of the legislature,” Gonzales wrote.

Then-Justice Priscilla Owen, now a Bush appointee on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, wrote that the majority “manufactured reasons to justify its action.”

In 2001, as Gonzales was floated as a possible Supreme Court justice, Terence P. Jeffrey, editor of the conservative publication Human Events and former presidential campaign manager for Pat Buchanan, blasted Gonzales’ role in the abortion case.

“In the process of approving Baby Doe’s abortion, Gonzales demonstrated that he is a judicial activist of the worst sort,” Jeffrey wrote, adding that putting Gonzales on the Supreme Court “would be an uncharacteristic blunder [mjh: snicker] for Bush, and could permanently mar his presidency.”

Another Texas Supreme Court case has left some conservatives concerned about Gonzales’ loyalty to the concept of private property, a key tenet of modern conservatism in its battle against big government. …

In another 2000 case, Gonzales also was in the majority in siding with a governmental entity in a battle with private citizens. …

Overall, according to a report by Austin-based Texas Watch, a non-profit watchdog group, Gonzales’ votes on the state Supreme Court “positioned himself in the middle of the court and as a swing voter in an overall conservative court.”
=====
High court politics split right, Latinos By Dan Balz, Washington Post

[A] fierce battle has erupted over Gonzales, the former White House counsel and Texas Supreme Court justice. It pits the ideological priorities of social and religious conservatives, who think Gonzales is insufficiently opposed to abortion, against the aspiration of the Latino community to see the first Hispanic named to the high court.

Bush has skillfully balanced his appeals to both groups throughout his career as an elected official, but he faces the prospect of disappointing one side, with potentially serious repercussions for his party.

Nothing prevents Bush from trying to skirt the conflict by naming another Latino who would be more acceptable to the right than Gonzales, such as Emilio Garza, a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. But the uproar over Gonzales, longtime friend and confidant of the president, has heightened the political stakes of Bush’s decision and has alarmed some senior GOP strategists. …

Republicans offered differing views about what Bush’s choice may do to his coalition. Sean Rushton, executive director of the Committee for Justice, a group formed to support Bush judicial nominations, questioned whether a conservative nominee would alienate moderates. “That’s nonsense,” he said. “The worst thing the president could do for his party’s 2006 election hopes — and especially for Rick Santorum in Pennsylvania — is to go with a nominee who is seen as less principled by conservatives. That would completely dry up the funding. That would completely dry up the enthusiasm.”
=====

Texas Hispanics drawing support for court seat
Factions line up for two Texas Hispanics
By MICHAEL HEDGES
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle Washington Bureau

[Federal appeals Judge Emilio] Garza, of San Antonio, tops the list of acceptable Hispanic nominees for right-wing activists in part because of what they view as his like-minded approach to legal issues involving religion and abortion. …

[L]egal experts have already combed through the written opinions and public statements of Gonzales and Garza. The consensus: Garza comes across as a hard-line conservative on issues like abortion and the intersection of government and religion. Gonzales appears more flexible on those issues, though still firmly in the conservative camp.

loco

Getting the FACTS on Wolves

ABQjournal: Wolves Aren’t So Big Or Bad By Tania Soussan, Journal Staff Writer

In the past 100 years, there have been fewer than 30 documented attacks by wild wolves on humans in North America. Only two people died? Inuits in Alaska who contracted rabies from wolf bites in the 1940s, according to reports compiled by scientists.

By comparison, domestic dogs bite 1 million people and kill 16 to 18 people every year in the United States.

Other wild animals pose a greater danger than wolves. There are an estimated 25 black bear attacks a year in North America, with one fatal attack every three years. Between 1981 and 2000, there were 43 attacks by mountain lions, eight of them fatal. Venomous snakes bite 8,000 Americans a year.

Those numbers come from “The fear of wolves: A review of wolf attacks on humans,” a 2002 scientific report published by the Large Carnivore Initiative for Europe, a network of groups and experts working toward wild carnivore populations that coexist with people.

“It is now widely accepted by biologists that healthy, wild wolves present little threat to people,” Mark McNay wrote in his 2002 report, “A Case History of Wolf-Human Encounters in Alaska and Canada.” …

There are approximately 50 wild wolves in southwest New Mexico and southeast Arizona as part of a government reintroduction program to restore the endangered Mexican gray wolf.

Minnesota has 3,000 wild wolves, half of them in areas where people live but has had only two wolf attacks in memory or documented, said L. David Mech, a noted wolf biologist and founder of the International Wolf Center in Minnesota.

Neither of those people was injured, and there were extenuating circumstances in each case? in one, a hunter was wearing a jacket covered in buck scent in 1982 and in the other, a wolf jumped at a dog that was held in a logger’s arms in 1970. …

In the seven years since they were released in the Southwest, no Mexican gray wolves have attacked people, Morgart added.

“It’s just a matter of time,” said Fred Galley, an Albuquerque resident who owns the Rainy Mesa Ranch east of Reserve. …

Craig Miller of Defenders of Wildlife, which compensates ranchers for losses and works with them to minimize wolf-livestock conflicts, said the recent animosity is inhibiting the potential for cooperation.

“There is a coordinated exaggeration to try to capture the political attention because some of the cowboys think they’ll be able to kill the program,” Miller added.

If that’s the case, it’s working. Gov. Bill Richardson has appointed a task force to look into several concerns rural residents have about wolves, including public safety. It will meet for the first time Wednesday in Reserve. …

“The danger has to be put in perspective,” added Michael Robinson, a resident of Pinos Altos and representative of the Center for Biological Diversity. “There’s no reason to be more paranoid about wolves than any other wild animals.”

The abqjournal published 12 letters today, 6 for and 6 against wolves. I hope you noted that 4 of the 6 opposed came from outside New Mexico, while all 6 “pro” came from inside the state. mjh

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

Why is it that public land ranchers — who only exist because of the welfare prices we charge them to use our lands — don’t have to get insurance like any other business to cover such losses? Should it really be up to the taxpayers to make our public lands safe for their profits? They are even being paid for their losses, but that is not enough. They want every last wolf dead and at our expense. Shame on the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for using public money to kill public wildlife for them.
MICHAEL SAUBER
Silver City

THERE ARE RANCHERS with a predilection for exaggeration, making it difficult to separate fact from fiction. One recently remarked she thought there could be as many as 100 wolves in the wild. That defies common sense considering the number of alpha wolves that have been killed and the number of litters that did not survive due to stressed-out parents.

Others have accused wolves of “stalking.” There is no evidence of malicious intent on the part of the wolves, like domestic canines they are intelligent and curious.

Cattle were designed for grasslands not for navigating rocky, mountainous environs. At least 96 percent of deaths are due to natural causes, not predators. Cattle die of inclement weather, lightning strikes, birthing complications, falls and toxic plants.

It is the wolves that are disadvantaged when ranchers leave carcasses to bait them so they can then cry “wolf!” It is difficult to remain tolerant and respectful of an industry that has been so coddled, that has enjoyed the privilege of grazing non-native animals on public land, often to its detriment. …
SHARON MORGAN
Silver City

The last wolves in this area were killed in the 1880s. When the wolf comes again, it will hit the cattlemen. The wolf is simply another tool used by the eco-preservationists to drive people off their land, into the arms of the Nature Conservancy and other willing buyers actively courting the willing sellers. …

If wolf supporters and others of their philosophical bent have their way, private property will be an anachronism and we will all be living on the globalist eco-plantation. Everything we had or have in America has been or is being “outsourced” to Red China including the philosophy of those who rule.
L.M. SCHWARTZ
McDowell, Va.

The wolf is the species of choice to foster the expansion of wilderness and the Wildlands Project which is counter-productive to a healthy America that must clothe and feed itself as well as many other counties of the world.

The project is dependent on programs? such as the Mexican wolf reintroduction? that operate under the radar screen from the American public. This agenda is further shielded by the liberal media. It’s time to expose the stupidity of these wasteful and extreme environmentalist dreams and put them to rest.
JIM ARBOGAST
Anaheim, Calif.

Dump Duhbya

QOTD

The Right’s Moment, Years in the Making

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and an adviser to Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political strategist, said that starting with the election of 1968, “the left discovered it could no longer hold the presidency, so it turned to Congress for protection.” After Democrats lost control of Congress in 1994, “the left turned to the courts. This is all they have left.”

Possible Nominees to the Supreme Court
The Washington Post
Friday, July 1, 2005; 11:12 AM

Here is a list of potential nominees for the Supreme Court.

Dump Duhbya

Let Freedom sing

More Files Being Classified; Fewer Pages Being Declassified
From Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Mostly because of military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the federal government reports, the number of documents being classified in the U.S. jumped 10% last year, to 15.6 million.

The Information Security Oversight Office included the numbers in its latest annual report to the president.

Meanwhile, the number of pages that the government declassified continued to drop. Last year, 28.4 million pages were declassified.

That was a drop of 34% from the previous year.

The increase in the number of documents being classified has raised concerns that the government is being too secretive.

The report notes that over-classification of documents has been an issue for decades.

“It cannot be said conclusively from this report’s data that recent increases in the number of classification decisions were due substantially to the phenomenon of over-classification,” the Information Security Oversight Office report says.

Before anyone says something about the world changing on 9-11, please note that one of the first executive orders Bush made sealed presidential papers for years longer than before. One of the first meetings held in the White House was on energy policy. The White House went to court to keep the list of attendees secret. These guys are not secretive for patriotic reasons. They learned a lot from Dick Nixon and Ronnie Raygun. mjh