Kerry v. Cheney, or, Something is Fishy in the States of California and Oregon
Wow. check this out.
Dems: Investigate Cheney for role in salmon die-off
By MATTHEW DALY
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — West Coast Democrats called for a hearing Wednesday into the role Vice President Dick Cheney may have played in the 2002 die-off of about 70,000 salmon near the California-Oregon border.
An article in The Washington Post on Wednesday said Cheney played a crucial role in developing a 10-year water plan for the Klamath River that courts later called arbitrary and in violation of the Endangered Species Act. Democrats charged that Cheney's action resulted in the largest adult salmon kill in the history of the West.
"The ramifications of that salmon kill are still being felt today as returns to the Klamath River are so low that commercial, sport and tribal fishing seasons have been curtailed for the past three years," Democrats said in a letter calling for the hearing.
Commercial fishing in California and Oregon was cut by more than 90 percent last year — the largest commercial-fishing closure in the history of the country — resulting in more than $60 million in damage to coastal economies, the letter said.
….
The salmon die-off and water usage in the drought-plagued Klamath Basin have long been a source of political controversy. In 2004, the Interior Department's inspector general found no basis for a claim by Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry that White House political advisers interfered in developing water policy in the Klamath.
The inspector general said President Bush's top political adviser, Karl Rove, was not involved in a 2002 decision to divert water from the Klamath River in Oregon to irrigate farms. While Rove mentioned the Klamath in passing during a briefing with senior Interior officials, "we found nothing to tie Karl Rove's comments … to the Klamath decision-making process," Inspector General Earl Devaney said.
Three months after Rove's meeting in early 2002, administration officials increased the water supply to more than 200,000 acres of farmland in California and Oregon — a decision bitterly opposed by environmentalists and commercial fishermen.
In September 2002, tens of thousands of chinook salmon died in the Klamath River in Northern California. The California Department of Fish and Game laid much of the blame on low water flows controlled by the federal government, saying it created conditions that allowed a fatal gill-rot disease to spread through the fish.
A report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said low river flows played a role but said other factors, including a large return of fish, also contributed to the fish kill, the worst in decades.
Oh. Em. Gee.
And what of the position taken by Senator Kerry all those months ago?
Well, according to the National Review's Byron York:
It's not surprising that a lot of accusations are made in a presidential campaign. What is surprising is for the accuser to get his official comeuppance so early in the contest.
In one small case, however, that's exactly what has happened. And the accuser who has gotten his comeuppance is the Democratic candidate for president.
Last year, Sen. John Kerry (D., Mass.) — who at the time was watching his presidential hopes disappear in the face of the Howard Dean juggernaut — sided with environmentalists who were accusing the Bush administration of using political muscle to influence a key environmental decision in the Pacific Northwest.
The decision involved a longstanding dispute between farmers and environmentalists in Oregon's Klamath River Basin. The farmers wanted water diverted from the river to help save crops from drought, while the environmentalists opposed the diversion because it would kill thousands of salmon.
The administration ultimately ruled in favor of the farmers.
….
In the end, "Klamath Salmon-Gate" amounted to nothing at all. Kerry's accusations were flimsy, and the controversy was not a major campaign issue (except in those areas directly affected by the Klamath River decision).
But the episode says something about the dozens — no, hundreds — of accusations Democrats have leveled against the president. And what it says is: Be very skeptical.
Keep that in mind as the campaign goes on.
Ah, yes. Bush-Cheney '04. It worked out great for as many as several hundred particularly wealthy American citizens. So glad the media could be there with gleeful smackdowns of the good senator and his annoying, truth-telling ways.
But sometimes the press has a good day. Today, for example, the WaPo printed what really went down during Salmongate:
Sue Ellen Wooldridge, the 19th-ranking Interior Department official, arrived at her desk in Room 6140 a few months after Inauguration Day 2001. A phone message awaited her.
"This is Dick Cheney," said the man on her voice mail, Wooldridge recalled in an interview. "I understand you are the person handling this Klamath situation. Please call me at — hmm, I guess I don't know my own number. I'm over at the White House."
Wooldridge wrote off the message as a prank. It was not. Cheney had reached far down the chain of command, on so unexpected a point of vice presidential concern, because he had spotted a political threat arriving on Wooldridge's desk.
In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.
Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.
First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.
I guess this was a pretty good news day, if you're one of those people with an inherent sense of justice who believes that the truth will out.
But think of how much better a news day it would have been if more attention were paid to threatened wildlife?
And if the media were more adept at investigating and reporting on these matters, rather than seizing every opportunity to take a smart guy down a peg?
Many thanks to the ladies of the DU-John Kerry group for passing along these news stories.
