Editorial

Response to “The Start of the Second American Revolution?” by Paul Joseph Watson Issue 3 August 2009 The Sovereign – Hey “Tea Bagger” Twisted Dupes to the Plutocracy – Our Forefathers Are Not With You Nor Are “We” the People!
by Andrew H. Dral

We have it in our power to begin the world over again. Thomas Paine

A version of this article was published in Issue 17 January 2010 of The Sovereign -- a small New York monthly. It was written in response to an article written by "Tea Bagger" Paul Joseph Watson Issue 3 August 2009 of The Sovereign. You might find this updated version of interest.

I found Mr. Watson’s diatribe in the August edition of you paper completely misdirected and without merit. He ruthlessly attacked the U.S. government and President Obama, but what about the true enemy of working class America -- corporate America’s plutonomy -- the corporate aristocracy. Mr. Watson has been duped. He has been made a willing fool and a tool of the corporatists, along with those that would follow the will and policies that benefit the corporations and the plutocrats. Had Mr. Watson and his “tea-baggers” been around during our Revolutionary War times they would have sided with the British loyalists, the Tories.

by Dan Bacher

Every time that you think that corporate agribusiness can't stoop any lower than they have already in their campaign to destroy imperiled fish populations and fishing jobs, they always manage to reach a new low in their race to the bottom.

In the latest surrealistic episode in the California water wars, Westlands Water District, the "Darth Vader" of California water politics, is now seeking a permit to pollute the drinking water supply for millions of Californians, according to a coalition of environmental, fishing and tribal groups.

Dianne "Big Ag" Feinstein Excludes Delta Residents, Fishermen From Water Talks

by Dan Bacher

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat who continually does the bidding of corporate agribusiness, refused to meet with California Delta residents and spurned requests by fishing groups for a copy of her amendment language calling for increased water exports from the California Delta. 

After the state and federal governments announced that Central Valley irrigators would receive more water from the Delta this year because of the recent rain and snow, Feinstein withdrew her threat, at least for time being, to bypass Endangered Species Act protections for fish.

Winnemem Wintu Tribe Urges Feinstein to Withdraw Salmon Killer Legislation

by Dan Bacher

The Winnemem Wintu (McCloud River) Tribe of northern California today joined environmental organizations and fishing groups in strongly opposing legislation sponsored by Senator Dianne Feinstein to waive Endangered Species Act (ESA) protections for imperiled Central Valley Chinook salmon.

Feinstein has attached an amendment to a jobs stimulus bill that would increase pumping to subsidized corporate agribusiness in the San Joaquin Valley. The amendment would convert the “jobs bill” into a “job killer bill” that would result in the destruction of California and Oregon’s once vibrant salmon fishing industry.

The Resnicks Manipulate Water Policy with Big Campaign Contributions

by Dan Bacher

Stewart Resnick, the Beverly Hills agribusiness tycoon who owns 115,000 acres of farmland in Kern County, appears to be putting his bets on Jerry Brown as the winner of the gubernatorial race in the November election - even though Brown hasn't officially declared himself as a candidate.

On November 11, 2009, Resnick and his wife, Lynda, the co-owner of the giant Paramount Farms and Roll Corporation, wrote four checks totalling $50,000 for the Brown campaign.

The donations that the Resnicks made to Brown to date exemplify the enormous political influence of Resnick and other water barons exert over California water politics. The Resnicks are the largest tree fruit growers in the world.

by Dan Bacher

Dan Hamburg, a North Coast Democratic Congressman from 1992-94 and Green Party candidate for Governor in 1998, recently blasted Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s fast-track Marine Life Protection (MLPA) process for its many conflicts of interests, private funding and other problems in a great letter to the editor he wrote to the Anderson Valley Advertiser in Boonville.

Krugman

President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein ...

"My warden colleagues have a different meaning for 'MPA' – we call them Marine Poaching Areas," said Jerry Karnow, Legislative Liason for the California Fish and Game Wardens Association

Jerry Karnow Exposes The Insanity Behind Schwarzenegger's MLPA

Are MPAs "Marine Poaching Areas?"

by Dan Bacher

In a superb opinion piece in the Sacramento Bee on January 31, Jerry Karnow, Legislative Liason for the California Fish and Game Wardens Association, exposes the insanity behind Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's fast-track Marine Life Protection (MLPA) process.

Karnow emphasizes that the MLPA process is proceeding forward at a time when California has the "lowest ratio of wardens to population of any state or province in North America (http://www.sacbee.com/opinion/story/2500939.html).

The lack of wardens has made California into a virtual paradise for poachers of fish and wildlife, as revealed in James Swan's ground breaking documentary, Endangered Species: California Fish and Game Wardens (2009). The movie is an expose of the extreme shortage of game wardens in California and its impact on fish, wildlife and wild lands.

Cornel West's note to Obama, BBC News, January 20, 2010.

This is an updated version of an article regarding Big Oil's undue influence over "marine protection" in California published on the counterpunch website: http://www.counterpunch.org/bacher11132009.html.

Meet Cathy Reheis-Boyd

Big Oil Takes Over Marine "Protection" in California

by Dan Bacher

Corporate greenwashing in California under Arnold Schwarzenegger, the "green governor," has become so bizarre and egregious that no political satirist, comedian or novelist could concoct fictional schemes that rival the reality of current politics in the state.

Only in Schwarzenegger's California would a governor appoint an oil industry lobbyist to a key administration position supposedly promoting "marine protection" at a time when oil companies are seeking to expand drilling operations off the California coast. Schwarzenegger strongly supports linking $140 million in annual funding for State Parks to approval of the Tranquillon Ridge oil-drilling project off the coast of Santa Barbara (http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2010/jan/22/oil-parks-plan-derided-bl...).

With this in mind, it is not surprising that Secretary of Resources Mike Chrisman in August 2009 announced the Governor's appointment of Cathy Reheis-Boyd, the Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of the Western States Petroleum Association, as chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Blue Ribbon Task Force for the remainder of the MLPA South Project.

Salmon Water Now Exposes Big Ag's Manipulation of Delta Water Policy

by Dan Bacher

Salmon Water Now, a collaboration between fishermen and media professionals, has released a superb new video, “The Water Pirates,” describing how agribusiness maintains a dangerous stranglehold on water management policy in California, according to Larry Collins, commercial salmon fisherman. Anybody who is interested in seeing how Democratic and Republican Party politicians have both manipulated California water politics to benefit big agriculture's corporate welfare recipients should watch this video, produced by Bruce Tokars, and urge their friends and co-workers to do so also.

You can watch the Video at: YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jwqVc8Hbmqk&fmt=18 or Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/8521134.

"The video focuses on the controversial California water bond as well as U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) continued efforts to benefit her friend, campaign contributor, and agribusiness billionaire Stuart Resnick by attempting to expand the practice of private interests selling subsidized public water for huge profits to non-farm users - all while undermining efforts to restore vital Sacramento River salmon runs,"

I am disgusted that Senator Dianne Feinstein, Secretary of Interior Ken Salazar and the Obama administration have agreed to conduct a political farce under the guise of "science." The irony is that the biological opinion that is being "reviewed" by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a plan that a federal judge ordered rewritten under the Bush administration. Now the Obama administration, under pressure from big water interests, is doing a review of a court-ordered biological opinion that was begun under the Bush administration!

Doesn't that put the Obama administration to the environmental right of the Bush administration, since it was the re-written biological opinion begun under the Bush administration that "limousine liberal" Stewart Resnick and southern California water interests are challenging because it is "too protective" of salmon, smelt and other fish?

Big Water Interests Hijack Obama Delta Science Team

I'm glad that Schwarzenegger is directing state agencies to prepare for possible flooding this week. However, you can bet that if the next couple of months result in the filling of the state's reservoirs and some regional flooding, Schwarzenegger, just as he used the "drought" to campaign for the legislative path to a peripheral canal and more dams that passed through the legislature in November, will use the threat of catastrophic flooding of Biblical proportions to promote the $11.1 water bond on the November ballot.

Is Schwarzenegger's Big Drought Over?

Governor Directs State Agencies to Prepare for Winter Storms