disturbing the comfortable

Six years ago, the Klamath River became a(nother) National Sacrifice Area. The Republicans wanted to sew up as many votes as possible. They didn’t just want the moderate Republicans: they wanted everybody to the right of the Democrats. Militia-types, survivalists, pseudo-patriots, white supremacists—name it, the Republicans had and still have a very big white tent.

The Republicans sniffed votes down in the Klamath Basin, a huge subsidized reclamation project, and also a chance to suck up to their donors in the extractive industries. For years, the Endangered Species Act had been blocking mining and timber interests in their eternal quest to cut it down and strip mine it—all of it. They’d go after Crater Lake if they thought they could get away with it. Klamath River salmon became the shock troops in the Republican advance. De-list them from the ESA, or at least coerce some “scientists” into saying the salmon were fine and really didn’t need all that much water, anyhow. They're still trying to do away with the ESA, just like they've done with civil rights, the right to dissent, and a few other hinderances to their imagined virility.

Guess who was right in the middle of that? Well, yeah, Karl Rove and Greg Walden and Gordon Smith, but also the Veep. Dick Cheney was in the shit up over his knees. The shit smells like rotting fish. Did anyone know that rotting ethics smelled like rotting salmon?

Votes. The administration cares about as much about small farmers as it does about Venusian space-ships—just the votes, ma’am.

Go here:
sacbee.com - The online division of The Sacramento Bee
http://www.sacbee.com/111/v-print/story/302399.html
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Feds unaware of Cheney role
By David Whitney - Bee Washington Bureau
Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, August 1, 2007

The Interior Department's deputy inspector general said Tuesday that her office was unaware of Vice President Dick Cheney's involvement in decisions affecting the Klamath River when it concluded in a report three years ago that there was no evidence of political interference in the heated 2001-2002 endangered species battle.