[Sosfbay-discuss] Pombo yet again...even the Murky News gets it.

[Wes Rolley]

Just in case any of you have any doubts at all about Richard Pombo and think
that I am one of the biased extremist radial environmentalists he talks about,
consider the following from the Murky News Editorial pages yesterday.

--
Earth needs protection from Pombo

Richard Pombo, the rancher and member of Congress from Tracy, has been on a
roll. He's been rolling over the Endangered Species Act. He's been rolling over
the moratorium on offshore oil and gas drilling. He's been rolling over the
notion that public lands ought to be managed for the public good.

In general, Pombo has been using his position as chairman of the House Natural
Resources committee to flatten the laws that protect the natural wonders of his
home state and the rest of the states as well.

Pombo can't do this by himself, of course. His fellow Republicans (and some
Democrats) in the House have been all too willing to go along with the notion
that environmental rules are oppressing property owners and strangling the
nation's energy supply.

At the end of September, the House voted 229-193 to approve a Pombo rewrite of
the Endangered Species Act, which he has campaigned to eviscerate since he was
elected to Congress 13 years ago.

Pombo claims that the act is ineffective, despite studies that show it has
arrested the decline of half the species protected under it.

What Pombo really wants the act to protect is his excessive notion of
property-owner rights. The rewritten act would require the government to
compensate property owners who say an endangered species thwarts their
development plans. It's an open invitation to dream up developments and get
bought out of them at exorbitant prices by taxpayers.

Last week, Pombo persuaded the House Resources Committee to approve language for
the budget act that erodes the national moratorium on offshore oil and gas
leasing in federal waters by offering states who agree to drilling a bigger
share of the royalties.

The budget language also would revive a dormant practice of selling public lands
to companies that have mining permits on them. And -- this can hardly be a
surprise -- it endorses drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

This environmental destruction is written into the budget act as a way -- a
shortsighted way -- of raising revenues.

Environmental blindness is a Pombo specialty. He's pushing for a highway from
the Central Valley over Mount Hamilton into East San Jose.

There's only one reason to build it. A river of concrete through an unspoiled
landscape would be a symbol of the swath of destruction Pombo is cutting through
environmental protections.

Talk back

Tell Rep. Richard Pombo what you think:

E-mail him by clicking on the ``Contact me'' link at his home page:
www.house.gov/pombo.

Write him at his Stockton office, 2495 W. March Lane, Suite 104, Stockton,
Calif. 95207.

Phone him at (209) 951-3091.

-- 
"I find I have a great lot to learn – or unlearn. I seem to know far too much
and this knowledge obscures the really significant facts, but I am getting on."
-- Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Wesley C. Rolley
17211 Quail Court
Morgan Hill, CA 95037
(408)778-3024
http://www.refpub.com/