Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are thrilled to see the Clinton campaign exposed for carefully choosing, screening and transporting the everyday Americans Hillary just happens to meet in Iowa. They also unload on the government for allowing the gyrocopter to fly to the Capitol unimpeded and on the media for largely ignoring the guy’s liberal motivation. And they debate whether Hillary Clinton should have tipped at the Ohio Chipotle.
Iran Ratchets Up Political Murders
Despite the international persona of a more moderate regime that the U.S. can negotiate with, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is killing political opponents at a faster rate than the previous leader and should not be trusted at all, according to the man who first warned the west about Iran’s current nuclear ambitions.
“Rouhani was supposed to be the more moderate version of the Iranian president. He has killed more people under his watch than was killed under (former President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad during the same period,” said Alireza Jafarzadeh, deputy director of the Washington office of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, which is the Iranian parliament in exile.
“Iran has the highest per capita executions in the world. It’s close to 1,400 people executed under Rouhani since he became president,” said Jafarzadeh.
Rouhani has been president since August 3, 2013. That calculates to more than 2.25 executions per day.
Jafarzadeh says while the United States and some of our allies may be convinced Rouhani is a different type of leader, the people of Iran know better.
“There has been no opening up of the society. All the promises that Rouhani has made have not materialized. All Rouhani has done in the past year and a half since he took office was negotiating on the nuclear issue, trying to get the sanctions lifted. That’s all he’s done,” said Jafarzadeh.
“In order to make up for the weaknesses of the regime and make sure that the population doesn’t stand up and raise their voice, Tehran has increased the level of repression and the killing,” he said.
Can Iran be trusted on any level to honor a nuclear agreement?
“Absolutely not,” said Jafarzadeh. “Look at the way they have handled the negotiations. They say one thing during the talks and when they get to Tehran they say something else. They can never be trusted, not just because of their nuclear behavior, but also in terms of their engagement in terrorism.”
However, he says Iran’s past conduct in misleading the world about it’s nuclear program is also instructive.
“Every single nuclear site of Iran has been exposed by the Iranian resistance, not by the Iranian regime. Tehran has been caught cheating continuously and consistently over the past 10-15 years when the inspections started in 2003, right after the revelation of the nuclear site in Natanz by the main opposition, the National Council of Resistance of Iran,” he said.
Jafarzadeh is also deeply concerned about reports this week revealing that Russia is now willing to sell missile systems to Iran, purportedly for defensive purposes. He says the change in policy not only adds a dangerous dimension to Iran’s military but give Russia more and more incentive to thwart efforts to keep the Iranian ambitions in check.
“The other problem is the more the Russians get invested in Iran, the more difficult it will become for them to vote against the Iranian regime’s violations in the future during the UN Security Council,” said Jafarzadeh.
The Iranian resistance is encouraged by this week’s Senate actions to give Congress a voice in determining whether Iran is actually adhering to any future nuclear deal and giving lawmakers the chance to bring back sanctions or keep them in place if Iran cheats on its commitments
“It was Congress from the beginning that understood the threat of the Iranian regime and the need to curb the threat and passed all the necessary legislation that led to sanctions. It was those sanctions that brought the Iranians to the table,” said Jafarzadeh, who says President Obama could use the legislation to press for greater demands from Tehran.
“If Congress doesn’t get involved, then the administration would be unilaterally in charge of the whole thing in dealing with Iran and knowing the Iranian regime’s track record and history of cheating and their willingness to defy, you always want that additional leverage,” he said.
Jafarzadeh says Obama would be wise to use the bill as a way to press the Iranians for snap inspections of nuclear facilities and other major concessions.
While the Senate Foreign Relations Committee passed the legislation unanimously and it appears likely to become law, some are still frustrated that lawmakers are effectively giving up their right to hold a vote on a treaty that would require a two-thirds majority to approve, whereas this bill would only require Obama to cobble together 34 votes to sustain his veto of any attempt to reinstate sanctions on a cheating Iran.
Jafarzadeh testified before the Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. He says a full treaty vote would be ideal but he says the mood Tuesday on Capitol Hill suggests even this new legislation could be enough to handcuff Obama.
“What I saw yesterday, both among the Democrats and Republicans, what I saw in terms of the resolve and focus of Congress, I think the president may have a difficult time to even get those 34 votes,” said Jafarzadeh.
Three Martini Lunch 4/15/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review are glad to see Congress will get a vote on any Iran nuclear deal but it’s still a far cry from the power it should have. They also groan as President Obama moves to remove Cuba from the list of terrorism-sponsoring nations. And they slam Hillary Clinton for saying she wants “unaccountable money” out of politics while she’s busy raising a campaign war chest of $2.5 billion and accepted donations from foreign governments at the Clinton Foundation while she was Secretary of State.
Ex-Clinton Official: Obama’s Iran Approach ‘Absurd’
A former Clinton administration official calls the Obama administration approach to Iran “absurd” and believes the American people are being mislead on the framework of a deal, but he insists a Hillary Clinton presidency would chart a much different course on the threat of a nuclear Iran.
In the days since an announced framework for a nuclear deal, Iranian officials have worked nonstop to declare the U.S. appraisal of the deal a lie. Iran has disputed such key issues as when the sanctions would end, how many centrifuges would be allowed to keep spinning and even where enriched uranium would be stored.
Is one side actually telling the truth or are both governments actively spinning the details of the framework to win over their own people?
“I suspect it’s more of the latter. Let’s keep in mind that we’re talking about a framework as opposed to a deal itself. Both sides put off very crucial questions,” said Larry Haas, who served as communications director to then-Vice President Al Gore.
Given all the unresolved issues, Haas is not surprised that the two governments do no appear on the same page.
“I’m not terribly surprised that we are seeing different interpretations by the two sides. I think I am far more disturbed by the kind of rhetoric that’s coming out from the supreme leader of Iran, who at the end of the day will have the final say,” said Haas.
“He is now making demands for a final deal that if the Obama administration were to go along with them it would be akin to simply giving the Iranians a nuclear weapon,” he said.
In addition to the unresolved questions are the critical issues the United States says are no longer on the table: addressing Iranian actions and ambitions to dominate the region and working to free multiple Americans imprisoned there. The Obama administration says those are ancillary issues that do not need to be part of the nuclear discussions.
“That is precisely absurd to think that way,” said Haas, who says a nuclear Iran is a far different animal than a nuclear Great Britain, Israel, France or even Pakistan.
“Those governments are not radical in the way that the regime in Tehran is. It is precisely because Tehran is the leading state sponsor of terrorism in the world, and precisely for the fact that it abuses the human rights of its own people and any other area that it dominates and precisely over the fact that it wants regional dominance that we fear what this regime will do if it has nuclear weapons,” said Haas.
Haas says these issues ought to be at the very heart of any negotiations with Iran. He says Iran’s success in getting them off the table means they’ve already won.
“The fact that we now view them as ancillary are all concessions to the Iranians. When these negotiations began, they were central to the negotiations themselves. We basically said this is part of an overall negotiation having to do with nuclear weapons and other issues that are troubling us, like the Iranian ballistic missile program, and terrorism, and regional dominance and all the rest,” said Haas.
He sums up the U.S. negotiating posture as “appeasing” and “self-defeating.”
Furthermore, Haas says recent American history proves the Obama administration is heading down the wrong road. In a recent piece for U.S. News and World Report, Haas says Obama is following in the misguided footsteps of Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter, who got policy toward the Soviet Union very wrong in the wake of the Vietnam War.
“Like President Obama, President Nixon essentially subscribed to the view that the United States could not be alone as the world’s major power center, that rather than fighting the Cold War, we ought to pursue detente, and a detente that would allow the United States to be perhaps the first among equals, but literally among equals,” said Haas.
Starting with President Reagan, Haas says presidents of both parties reverted back to the notion that a strong America is best for our nation and the world.
“We are a country that believes, and we have since World War II, that the world is a better place when the United States more than any other power calls the shots, ensures regional stability and keeps other players in line,” said Haas.
While Haas believes Bill Clinton ended up a strong president on foreign affairs, he believes Clinton dropped the ball in confronting North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. And he doesn’t believe Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have learned anything from that episode.
“I do think we’re heading down the same path, a path of too much trust for regime that I would argue is implacably anti-American, anti-Israeli, anti-western, and that is the regime in Tehran. I do fear that we are making the same mistake,” said Haas.
Regardless of who becomes the next president, Haas expects American foreign policy to look more like it did prior to the Obama years.
“No matter what happens over the next year and a half, I do believe that the next president, whoever he or she is, will not continue this policy and will turn to a more traditional view of America’s role in the world,” said Haas.
Despite Hillary Clinton serving as Obama’s top diplomat for four years, he believes she would chart a far different course on Iran than her former boss although it might be hard to tell based on her campaign rhetoric.
“I think we would see a markedly different approach. She will not be able to say on the campaign trail precisely how much she would differ from President Obama because it would undercut her Democratic support. So it’s going to be very tricky for her,” said Haas.
When it comes to blame for the proposed nuclear deal with Iran, Haas stresses that he sees Hillary’s tenure at the State Department as maintaining a tough posture towards Iran. However, he contends it all unraveled as Kerry took over.
“She really spent much more time beefing up the sanctions against Iran, which was precisely the right policy. It was really President Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry who have pursued this policy of lifting the sanctions temporarily, negotiating a deal and making one concession after the next,” said Haas.
Three Martini Lunch 4/14/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Jim Geraghty of National Review cheer Marco Rubio for framing the 2016 campaign as one between the future and the past. They also fume over Russia agreeing to provide missile defense to Iran. And they try to figure our the point of Hillary Clinton’s road trip.
Defining ‘High Crimes and Misdemeanors’
Saying he and his constituents are tired of presidents violating the Constitution to achieve their political goals, a Florida congressman is bringing forth legislation to define “high crimes and misdemeanors” and what actions ought to trigger impeachment proceedings.
“Every time we go back to the district and even before I ran, people said, ‘The three branches of government are out of balance. When is Congress going to stand up and have some accountability and rein in the power of the executive branch,'” said Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla.
The congressman says the thirst for power in the executive branch is a longstanding problem that’s only getting worse.
“The executive branch has been growing stronger and stronger over the past two or three decades but this administration with President Obama seems to be on steroids,” said Yoho, who says enough is enough.
“I think the last straw was on Nov. 20 with the executive order on amnesty overreach of the president. Over 30 times in a six-year period of time he said he did not have the authority to change the law on immigration, yet he went ahead and did,” said Yoho.
Federal District Court Judge John Hanen placed an injunction on the Obama orders and recently shot down an Obama administration attempt to activate the program while its constitutionality is sorted out elsewhere in the federal system.
Yoho says immigration is just one issue where the executive branch is aggressively challenging its constitutional limits.
“Pretty much every week we’re up here, we hear one of the legislators or the news talk about the constitutional crisis we’re facing. It’s in so many different areas, whether it’s religious freedoms or redefining marriage or trampling on states’ rights,” said Yoho.
“At some point we’ve got to draw that line that says from this point forward, all presidents, I don’t care if they’re Republican, Democrat, from the planet Mars. They’re going to be held to the confines of the Constitution,” he said.
Article II, Section 4 of the Constitution reads, “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other High crimes and Misdemeanors.”
Yoho is now seeking to define high crimes and misdemeanors. His legislation would include “failing to take care that the laws be faithfully executed through signing statements or systematic policies of non-enforcement.” Another would be “substituting executive agreements for treaties.”
In addition, Yoho’s bill would also target presidents who start military action without receiving authorization from Congress, violate appropriations laws to force money towards their political priorities or defy congressional subpoenas for documents or testimony.
Yoho insists this is not designed to kickstart impeachment proceedings against President Obama, but he admits Obama’s actions are in many ways the inspiration for this.
“If we had a chief executive that would faithfully execute the laws…this wouldn’t be an issue and we could get on with America’s business,” said Yoho. “But when you have to play like a babysitter and say, ‘No you can’t do that’ over and over and over again, the American people are tired of it.”
“The beauty of this is that this is not attacking this president. It’s attacking this president and all future presidents,” he said.
Much like teams enter a sporting event by acknowledging the rules that guide the game, Yoho says it’s time for all political players to recognize and obey the Constitution as the rule book for our government.
“Unlike football, which is a game, you’re talking about the United States of America and preserving our Constitution so that we don’t have to talk about a constitutional crisis in the future,” he said.
Non-partisan critics may be quick to point out that America’s founders deliberately left “high crimes and misdemeanors” as vague so as not to dictate to all future leaders what constitutes an impeachable offense.
“The founders actually did make it very vague because if they said it’s based on incompetence or it’s based on ignorance; they started to play around with that but what they found is those are very loosely defined. So they allowed congresses to go ahead and define those in the future,” said Yoho.
And that’s what the congressman believes his bill does now. He believes support for his plan ought to be unanimous.
“There’s no reason for any representative of the American people, I don’t care what state or why party, Democrat or Republican, should shy away from this. This holds all presidents accountable,” he said.
Yoho says this warning also applies to any future Republican president who seeks to undo unpopular or unconstitutional actions of Obama through illegitimate means.
“If we got a Republican president in 2016 and they didn’t want to enforce parts of Obamacare…and they wave their pen and their phone and say, ‘Nope, we’re not going to do that.’ We have got to hold them accountable,” said Yoho.
In addition to Obama’s unilateral action on immigration, Yoho is very concerned about the president’s attempts to go it alone on a nuclear deal with Iran.
“Many of the legislators feel (his bill) is needed to resist an executive encroachment on their authority. I think what you’re seeing is a natural reaction to the president’s overreach in many areas and a desire for the Senate to re-assert it’s traditional and constitutional role,” said Yoho.
Yoho stressed once again that the legislation should not make any president nervous but that it gives them a clear guide as to which actions will not be tolerated.
“This is not about impeaching. This is about following the rule of law. This is a notice that says, ‘From this point forward, there will be no impeachment as long as you stay within these parameters,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 4/13/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Andrew Johnson of National Review are eager to see how Florida Sen. Marco Rubio impacts the GOP presidential race. The groan as Hillary Clinton launches her 2016 campaign by pretending to care about the middle class. And they react to Democrats thinking the Rubio campaign begins and ends with his water grab during his State of the Union response.
‘This Is Not the Fall’
A prominent Christian seminary professor says believers need to keep their chins up in the face of a culture that seems increasingly hostile to their beliefs and he urges the faithful to keep fighting for religious freedom while still evangelizing the lost.
Owen Strachan is an assistant professor of Christian theology and church history at Boyce College at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves at the school as chair of gospel and culture and as president of the Council on Biblical Manhood & Womanhood.
Strong religious liberty protections were modified in Indiana to the point where many faith leaders concluded the final law is worse than no bill at all. Legislation was also changed in Arkansas to accommodate political pressure on the governor from activists alleging that a Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, discriminated against gays and lesbians.
In addition to those political fights, the Supreme Court will hear arguments later this month on whether states have right to define marriage for themselves and decide whether to acknowledge same-sex marriages in other states. Many court watchers expect the justices to side with same-sex marriage advocates in those cases.
But while the culture may be be shifting quickly against Christians, Strachan says this is the worst possible time for believers to give up hope or give up fighting.
“This is not the Fall. The fall of Adam and Eve happened thousands of years ago. This is not the one problem the church is facing that it cannot overcome. If you study Christian history, you see so many obstacles faced by Christians in the past,” said Strachan.
“So often, there’s this tendency, ‘Jesus must be coming because things are getting so bad.’ The reason that Christians have jumped to that conclusion is not simply because their theology is a little off. It’s because things have been so bad in their culture and society,” he said.
Strachan says it is precisely when the road gets difficult that Christians must stiffen their spines.
“We’re in that kind of moment and we’ve got to recognize that the Lord has placed us here to be gospel witnesses and to push for love of neighbor in the public square, to champion good policy even if we lose in big terms at the Supreme Court. So we’re going to keep on going. The band is not going to stop playing. It’s time to put your head down and keep going,” said Strachan.
While Christians may be seeing the most hostility in modern U.S. history, Strachan says even America’s relatively brief past shows amazing changes can happen.
“If you lived in the 1840s, 50s and 60s you would have thought that slavery would be a part of America forever. it can feel like America is sliding into the abyss and it will never recover, but look what happened. Through a great, fiery cataclysm, slavery was abolished in this country and the slave trade was ended,” said Strachan.
“I have hope. I believe in an awesome God, who does awesome and unexpected things. Even if things do darken in our country, I would tell Christians to stay at their posts, as Chuck Colson used to say, and keep working,” he said.
But with record numbers of Americans denying faith on God and resisting the church, should faithful Christians be focused primarily on evangelizing unbelievers than trying to improve society through public policy.
“I’m very greedy on this. I’m unwilling to choose one or the other and be forced to select only one entree culturally,” said Strachan, who sees no conflict in believers vigorously pursuing earthly and eternal goals.
“There is absolutely no divide between public square witness in policy work and evangelism. We must recognize that the gospel creates both of those instincts. The gospel creates an instinct to share the truth about Jesus Christ with unbelievers, absolutely. But the gospel also creates this love for justice and righteousness and this love for neighbor,” said Strachan.
That combination, he says, played key roles in two of the greatest changes in the American fabric.
“Christians in the 19th century evangelized. They planted churches and preached the gospel. But they also worked at the local, state and national level to advance anti-slavery legislation. And you know what happened? It worked in the end after a great war,” said Strachan, who says we saw a similar strategy play out in the middle of last century.
“The same thing happened in the mid-20th century with the civil rights movement. A lot of Christians who loved the gospel continued to preach the gospel but also fought in different ways and advocated in different ways for full racial equality,” he said.
Strachan is quick to admit the monumental cultural challenge facing the United States. He says we are watching in real time the fracturing of an uneasy truce that lasted for centuries.
“I think what we’ve seen in American history is a marriage of the First Great Awakening and the enlightenment.. So you have Thomas Jefferson at the same table as Jonathan Edwards. They’r effectively working together for common purposes. It appears today that the enlightenment, with it’s call for neutrality and liberty and freedom is triumphing over our religious heritage,” said Strachan.
“What that means today, specifically, is that what is called erotic liberty is beating religious liberty in the public square. Christians, in a pretty unusual way, are being targeted for their views and our religious liberty is very much imperiled in this day,” he said.
Strachan says for America to drift away from its commitment t religious liberty is to forget the basic roots of our great experiment.
“Religious liberty is what America’s founded on. It’s why the pilgrims and the Puritans came here. They were specifically not granted full-fledged religious liberty in the UK so they came to these shores so that they could worship according to their conscience,” said Strachan.
“It’s the freedom that grounds all the others. If you don’t have freedom to practice your religion to be sensitive to your conscience then what do other freedoms matter,” he said.
Because of that common heritage, Strachan says he is encouraged to see robust partnerships among Catholics and Protestants in fighting to preserve and strengthen religious liberties and other bedrock principles. He believes it’s a movement that every faith in America should join, while noting that common cause in policy does not erase foundational differences in the faiths.
“Christians should even be thinking about partnering with Muslims on this cause and Buddhists and others of different religions. It’s not because we don’t believe that our worldview differences are unimportant. We very much believe they are important and even eternally important. But we live here. We live in this country and we recognize that something is imperiled which threatens all of us,” said Strachan.
There have been countless religious freedom debates over the years and endless cultural debates as well. Why is the debate over homosexuality the pivot point for a confrontation over religious liberty?
Strachan says he has a strongly educated guess for why this appears to be coming to a head now.
“It’s because homosexuality is so closely tied to the body. Our identity is so derived from our body. I think that’s some of what is coming into play. People want to be able to do with their bodies as they see fit. So when others who are religious resist the full approval of same-sex marriage and transgender identity, we’ve recognized that this isn’t going to be a gentlemanly dispute,” said Strachan.
Later this month, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments on the marriage cases, meaning the court may impose same-sex marriage on all 50 states in just over two months. Strachan says the impact of that on our culture would be enormous.
“It’s going to very much change the nature of this country. We’ve just got to be honest about that. We’ve got to look it full in the face and say America is going to change. It’s going to mean that sexual immorality as defined by the Bible and as we would understand from natural design is going to be enshrined in law,” said Strachan.
“That’s going to mean that people are going to be shaped by these laws. Politics is going to influence culture as it always does. This is going to have very deleterious effects for American culture and society in general,” he said.
But as difficult as that cultural avalanche would be to faithful Christians, Strachan says it’s more important than ever to fight for what they know to be right.
“There’s a ton of ground left to be claimed in this cultural divide. We want to be very much plugged into upcoming elections. There’s all kinds of good measures that have taken hold in the pro-life realm and the marriage realm at the state level,” said Strachan.
“We don’t just want to look at one verdict from the Supreme Court, which will be huge. We don’t want to assume that that’s the only decision that has import for American public life. That’s frankly not the case,” he said.
Three Martini Lunch 4/10/15
Greg Corombos of Radio America and Ian Tuttle of National Review discuss how Iran’s characterizing the Obama administration as “lying” and “devilish” could make a nuclear agreement more difficult. They also groan as Hillary Clinton’s 2016 announcement looks to be another safe, crafted message that keep real people and real questions far away. And they shake their heads as progressives serve as cheerleaders for every alternative lifestyle but seek to prevent anyone looking to leave that identity.
‘The Very Definition of Lunacy’
Rep. Tom McClintock is working feverishly to reverse federal and state policies that give fish and rivers priority over people in the distribution of water during the worst drought in the state’s history.
California is now in the fourth year of the drought and water reserves are running frighteningly low. McClintock says it’s a result of stunningly stupid policies dating back to the last time Gov. Jerry Brown was in office.
“We haven’t built a major dam in this state since 1979. Meanwhile, the population has nearly doubled. We aren’t going to solve out water problems until we begin building more dams. We can’t build more dams as long as the radical environmental laws make their construction impossible,” said McClintock.
Brown chalks up the shortage to climate change, saying higher temperatures mean less snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and less water come Spring.
“If you happen to worship at the church of global warming, you should be pressing very hard to build more dams. It means with a warmer climate we will not be able to store as much water in the mountains as snow. Therefore, we need to store that water behind dams. Yet, Gov. Brown has been one of the leading opponents to new dam construction,” said McClintock.
If those rules seem hard to believe, McClintock doesn’t blame you.
“A year ago, I was beating the drums to sound warnings on these policies and nobody paid any attention. It began to occur to me, the reason they’re not paying attention is because they don’t believe me. They don’t believe that our policy could be so breathtakingly stupid as to dump millions of gallons of precious water in the middle of a drought to adjust river water temperatures,” said McClintock.
“But those are the policies. They are being carried out. As our reservoirs now near empty, people are beginning to focus on that finally. Hopefully, it is going to cause a major re-evaluation of the many leftist environmental laws that have built up in our system over the past 20 years or so that are the very definition of lunacy,” said McClintock.
Last week, Gov. Brown imposed water restrictions on many California residents, demanding they reduce consumption by 25 percent and face fines up to $500 if they fail to comply.
McClintock says the restrictions are not coming because reserves are tapped out but because humans are not the government’s first priority.
“We’re now in the fourth year of the worst drought in the history of California. Yet, Brown and the environmental left continue to release what little water remains behind our dams, not for essential human consumption but rather to adjust the water temperatures in the rivers so the fish are happy,” said McClintock.
The congressman is working feverishly to pass House Resolution 1668, the Save Our Water Act. The bill would put an end to releasing massive amounts of water during a time of drought. Time is of the essence. Another major water release into the rivers is already scheduled.
“The Federal Bureau of Reclamation has ordered another pulse flow. These are massive releases of water, billions of gallons of water. If this order is allowed to stand, they will drain several of our major reservoirs before the end of the summer for the fish, which means there will be no water left for the human population,” said McClintock.
But the issue gets even more maddening for McClintock. He says the biggest problem for the fish is not the drought but another government policy.
“Mainly we’re talking about a three-inch minnow called the delta smelt. In the case of the new orders, it involves steelhead trout. In most of these cases, the principal cause for the decline in the populations has nothing to do with our water projects. It has to do with non-native predator fish that were introduced into our streams and rivers by the government years ago,” said McClintock.
According to Reason magazine Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey, 50 percent of water in the reservoirs goes to the rivers and streams. And he says the vast majority of the remaining water goes to the farmers. Yet, he says the restrictions are all aimed at the people using 10 percent of the resources. He also says enforcing the restrictions requires a nanny state nightmare.
“What will happen is that they’re going to have to have a whole elaborate enforcement procedure, with people spying on their neighbors and reporting and so forth. It’s a clunky, stupid system to do it,” said Bailey.
McClintock thinks Brown has a lot of nerve imposing the restrictions.
“It’s going to be very hard for him to summon any kind of moral authority to fine people $500 if they waste a gallon of water on their lawn or sidewalk and yet have no problems wasting millions of gallons of water in the pursuit of making the fish perfectly happy,” he said.
The congressman stresses this mess is a result of federal and state policies. He says the House of Representatives is trying to restore sanity to the law but it is racing against the clock.
“I’m very confident that we will pass that bill out of the House this year but it will not be in time to prevent the releases that could literally drain to empty reservoirs that are now in California before we even get to the next rainy season,” said McClintock.
Within six months, McClintock says misguided government policies could mean the end of some towns in his state.
“Copperopolis, a community of about 10,000 in the Sierra Nevada, will simply be without water because the water we had been storing behind our dams had been released during this period for the fish. It means that when people turn on their water faucets, no water comes out. It means entire communities dry up and blow away. These are communities of a long-neglected species, called homo sapien,” said McClintock.
In addition to putting a halt on pulse flows, McClintock says the federal government needs to make other obvious changes to the laws.
“The House has acted several times now to modify those laws, to assure that there’s an equitable distribution of water and that we approach the Endangered Species Act (ESA) requirements with a little more common sense,” said McClintock.
“For example, why shouldn’t we be meeting these requirements (on fish numbers) by building fish hatcheries. Right now the hatchery fish are not allowed to be included in the population counts,” he said.
But could the free market solve the problem more efficiently than changing federal laws?
Bailey thinks so.
“Giving secure property rights to water to people would be the first step toward implementing markets,” said Bailey, who believes water is badly under-priced in California and giving farmers more options for their water could benefit everyone.
“What I would do is give free and clear title to the water to the farmers. Then they can decide if they want to farm or if they want to sell the water. My bet is that the price would be sufficiently high that a whole bunch of farmers will say, ‘You know what? I don’t need to raise any rice this year. I’m going to sell my water to San Francisco or Los Angeles,” said Bailey.
McClintock says that approach fails to take the dire situation of farmers into consideration.
“The problem with that is we’ve already lost about a half a million acres of the most fertile farmland in America because of these regulations, compounded by the drought. When you turn off the water to an almond orchard, for example, that’s not a one-year deal. Those trees die and it takes many, many years to regrow them so they’re once again bearings nuts and fruit,” said McClintock.
While California’s water crisis is a perfect storm of a major drought and what he considers extreme California environmental policies, he says the U.S. government is a major player in this and that means the rest of America is not immune.
“This can come to any community in America at some time in the near future. If there’s an ESA biological opinion requiring the release of this water, what that means is fish come first and people can fend for themselves,” said McClintock.