Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="gst" data-source="post: 106038" data-attributes="member: 373">trying to find out if indeed this is factual. BLM Forms New Division of Security, Protection and Intelligence (S.P.I.)BY <a href="https://shastalantern.net/author/red-smith/" target="_blank">RED SMITH</a> · JUNE 2, 2016<img src="https://i0.wp.com/shastalantern.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/BLM.jpg?resize=369%2C369&ssl=1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />The Bureau of Land Management has announced the formation of new division of Security, Protection and Intelligence.  The new division is being created months after Ammon Bundy led dozens of armed anti-federal-lands activists in seizing the unoccupied Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon. It’s unclear to what extent the new BLM law enforcement post is connected to the Malheur incident or to the general rise in anti-federal-lands activity in the rural West.This new department will operate independently of the already existing BLM Department of Law Enforcement and Protection under Director Salvatore Lauro, it will also operate independent of the Department of the Interiors (BLM’s mother agency) according to James Gallagher Director of Intelligence for the Department of Interior. In fact it is quite unclear as to who will have oversight over this new department or who authorized it’s creation. In calls to BLM public affairs officers they were unaware of the creation of the new division. Contact with Oregon Representative Greg Walden’s office and Utah Senator Mike Lee’s office led to similar results. We are awaiting comment from individuals in those offices who have promised to contact the Shasta Lantern with further information. Among our questions asked, other than who authorized S.P.I.’s creation are, how many agents will the new department entail, will the department be recruited from existing BLM employees or from other Federal Agencies, will this lead to a budget increase for BLM or will the department operate within current fiscal constraints, what is the overall stated mission of this new department, what form of training will agents receive to carry it out, who will train them, and lastly what intelligence with S.P.I. be collecting, who will they be collecting it on, how will it be collected and how will that intelligence be used?<img src="https://i0.wp.com/shastalantern.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/DanLove.jpg?resize=178%2C237&ssl=1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />What we do know, is that at his own request, BLM Special Agent in Charge of S.P.I. will be none other than Officer Dan Love of Bundy Ranch and Blanding, UT. infamy.  A polarizing figure, Love is both loved and reviled in Nevada and Utah, where he was BLM’s top cop. In Nevada and Utah, Love led some of BLM’s most complicated law enforcement operations. Love was the lead agent in BLM’s two-year undercover investigation with the FBI nearly a decade ago<a href="https://shastalantern.net/2016/02/oregon-special-agent-in-charge-bretzing-linked-to-bundy-ranch-lead-agent-daniel-p-love-and-wrongful-deaths-in-2009-indian-artifact-investigation/" target="_blank"> into illegal Native American artifact trafficking</a> in the Four Corners region that resulted in the arrest of more than two dozen people and the suicide of a well-respected local doctor. In 2008, Love arrested and helped prosecute environmental activist Tim DeChristopher for disrupting a BLM oil and gas lease sale in Salt Lake City that critics said imperiled Arches National Park and the climate. Love was also the lead agent at the Bunkerville Cattle Rustling incident when BLM unlawfully attempted to remove cattle belonging to Cliven Bundy.Love’s appointment to this new role will certainly be viewed as an affront to many BLM detractors who claim BLM has far overeached it’s power and authority and view Love as the poster child for that sentiment.- - - Updated - - -[h=1]Thanks to EPA and Army Corps of Engineers, American farmers are a newly endangered species[/h]By <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/search-results/search?q=jody%20gallaway&sort=latest&ss=all" target="_blank">Jody Gallaway</a> Published June 02, 2016 <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/" target="_blank">FoxNews.com</a><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/06/02/thanks-to-epa-and-army-corps-engineers-american-farmers-are-newly-endangered-species.html#" target="_blank">Facebook</a>1320 <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/06/02/thanks-to-epa-and-army-corps-engineers-american-farmers-are-newly-endangered-species.html#" target="_blank">Twitter</a>304    <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/06/02/thanks-to-epa-and-army-corps-engineers-american-farmers-are-newly-endangered-species.html#" target="_blank">livefyre</a>257 <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/06/02/thanks-to-epa-and-army-corps-engineers-american-farmers-are-newly-endangered-species.html#" target="_blank">Email</a> <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2016/06/02/thanks-to-epa-and-army-corps-engineers-american-farmers-are-newly-endangered-species.html#" target="_blank">Print</a><img src="http://a57.foxnews.com/images.foxnews.com/content/fox-news/opinion/2016/06/02/thanks-to-epa-and-army-corps-engineers-american-farmers-are-newly-endangered-species/_jcr_content/par/featured-media/media-0.img.jpg/876/493/1464879445763.jpg?ve=1&tl=1" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" />FILE (AP)It is getting harder and harder, and in legal terms more dangerous, to be an American farmer these days, thanks to the aggressive behavior of the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.I know, because I’m paid as a consultant to advise farmers in California on how best to comply with federal regulations under the Clean Water Act (CWA).Increasingly, those regulations are changing at the arbitrary say-so of the Corps regulators who implement the EPA’s regulations on the ground, even though most practices followed by American farmers have been exempted from CWA prohibitions since it was written in 1977.In the past few years, those regulators—many of whom admit that they know very little about farming or agricultural practices—are radically reinterpreting the rules to limit what farmers do, even on land where they have done similar things for decades.The eerie thing is that there have been no amendments to the CWA to make these changes in oversight possible.In many places, for example, Corps regulators now send threatening letters to farmers who switch from one crop to another, such as rice to orchards, or perform routine plowing. The Corps says the farmers can be performing a “land-use” change that suddenly puts a farm under Corps  jurisdiction.Corps regulators routinely request nowadays that farmers check with them to decide if their farming activities are exempt from federal jurisdiction.So what has changed?  Only the Corps and EPA’s perceived authority for arbitrary reinterpretation of plainly worded exemptions in the CWA.These changes have also drawn some of their draconian nature from aggressive new federal interpretations of the meaning of the term “waters of the U.S.”—known as WOTUS—that have been viewed skeptically by U.S. courts.For example, senior wetland specialists with the Corps have recently informed our  consulting staff that all plowing, even disking for the purpose of creating firebreaks, results in a  prohibited discharge into WOTUSand needs a permit. .This is in contrast to section 323.4 (a) of the Clean Water Act regulations, which says that  the act of plowing will “never” result in such discharges.  At the local level, Corps regulators are literally a law unto themselves with no accountability.As a scientist with over 20 years of experience it has become challenging if not down-right scary to provide my clients with advice on the nature, location, and extent of jurisdictional features and whether their farming practices are exempt.We have been forced to collect extensive farming histories, evaluations of irrigation practices, and documentation of regional farming practices as part of our consulting services, which is a significant change in how we go about assisting landowners—and a significant extra expense for farmers, and, ultimately, consumers.Several of our agricultural clients engaged in expensive studies on thousands of acres of land to determine the extent of WOTUS so that they could develop agricultural plans to avoid affecting them. This is exactly the intent of the CWA, to avoid affecting WOTUS to the greatest extent practicable.The Corps delayed their responses, changed regulators in the middle of evaluations, made unreasonable data requests inconsistent with protocol, and threatened to pursue landowners for alleged violations for activities that occurred years before the farmers even owned the land.I was encouraged by my employees and clients to testify before Congress in May, and tell our stories of how the CWA is being applied on the ground.  Despite concern that regulators might respond negatively toward my firm, I decided to do so.At the hearing where I testified, a law professor urged Congress not to let “stories influence decision makers regarding their oversight on the CWA and …WOTUS rule.”I could not disagree more.Our stories are not rooted in partisan opinions. Congress needs to understand how regulators can and do use the CWA to thwart, interrupt, and challenge long-established farming operations, which are one of our greatest economic strengths, and a mainstay of the American way of life.The lofty assurances, sound bites, and talking points expressed by the EPA and the Corps about their work are in many ways completely the opposite of reality.</blockquote>

Verification: What is the most common fish caught on this site?

Reply to thread

Recent Posts

Friends of NDA