The TSA isn't the only one with grabby hands.
I've been reporting on the stealth Obama land and ocean grabs for the past several months now and there is another new, under-the-radar-screen development that deserves your attention.
Quick review:
1) In August, I told you about the Great Outdoors Initiative to lock up more open spaces through executive order.
2) This came on top on top of a separate, property-usurping initiative exposed by GOP Rep. Robert Bishop and Sen. Jim DeMint earlier this spring. According to an internal, 21-page Obama administration memo, 17 energy-rich areas in 11 states have been targeted as potential federal monuments. The Obama War on the West is a War on Jobs that extends from land to sea based on politicized junk science by executive fiat and czar evasion.
3) The latest power grab comes via Interior Secretary Ken Salazar the unchecked, unaccountable data doctor and loathsome cowboy who has just unilaterally elevated a government landscape conservation system to directorate status with no congressional debate, no witnesses, no testimony, no public input.
From the announcement:
Salazar's disingenuous pro-jobs spin belies the anti-growth, anti-prosperity, anti-jobs agenda of the green groups who are over the moon about the new maneuver:
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar gave the National Landscape Conservation System a boost this week, elevating its status within the Interior Department and setting conservation as a top priority for the vast federal lands.
In a secretarial order issued Monday, Salazar granted the office that oversees the relatively new system the level of directorate within the Bureau of Land Management. He also called for the agency to manage the lands to protect the values for which they were designated and specified that science should be involved in all management decisions.
The NLCS is a collage of more than 27 million acres of wilderness, conservation areas, rivers and monuments managed and protected by BLM. It was established administratively by President Clinton nearly a decade ago and put into law in March when President Obama signed the public lands omnibus bill.
The system is intended to protect open spaces in the West that are a unique part of America's heritage, according to the agency.
BLM manages the system for multiple uses, but the order gives more direction to its management. The agency can allow grazing, energy development and tourism, but the order specifies that biodiversity and ecological connectivity are supposed to be tantamount. The lands are also supposed to help create resilience in the face of climate change, according to the order.
Conservation groups, including the Wilderness Society and Conservation Lands Foundation, praised the landmark order.
The NCLS has been singled out by the federal Interior Department inspector general for illegal lobbying and coordination with environmental groups who oppose any human use of these public lands. Via J.P. Freire last October:
Looks like the Department of Interior has a problem with a section responsible for 26 million acres of federal lands. According to an investigation conducted by the Interior inspector general regarding the department's National Landscape Conservation System (NCLS), employees and environmental advocacy organizations frequently violated federal anti-lobbying policies.
A redacted report from the investigation includes this zinger:
In fact, in one instance, Jeff Jarvis, who is an employee of the Bureau of Land Management, requested that a representative of the National Wildlife Federation change legislation affecting NCLS. As the inspector reports, this was potentially problematic because BLM employees were prohibited from influencing the legislation.
I just got off the phone with Congressman Bishop, who had this to say: This shows an inappropriate and unhealthy relationship between some in the executive branch and some lobbyist groups. This illustrates a legitimacy to our request for more information. While others claimed that this request about the NLCS was a meaningless red herring, we saw smoke and now we see a fire.
If transparency was supposed to be a part of the new administration, it hasn't hit the Department of Interior yet. We feel like footdragging and obstruction are more appropriate words. We got the documents late, eventually, and they illustrated there was a problem. It's time for the Department of Interior to do some housecleaning.
Remember: The federal government already owns roughly one of every three acres in the United States. This vast amount of property is now in the control of power-hungry bureaucrats who have lied to the public, distorted science, and abused their government positions to conspire with job-killing eco-extremist groups.
If only there were as much public outrage over the Obama enviro-grope-and-grab policies as there is over the Obama airport gropes and grabs.
By Michelle Malkin
http://michellemalkin.com/2010/11/22/an … -the-ncls/
Transparent? This is the least transparent administration ever. I'd go so far as to say outright mean and sneaky. The hide over a hundred billion dollars in appropriations in a bill which the former speaker said they'd have to pass to "find out what's in it." They move to take over 10 million acres of land in the west. They move to illegally lock up our resources. This administration is criminal not only in incompetence but criminal in intent.
