Conservation groups seeking removal of four aging Klamath River dams near the California border welcomed a report Wednesday by the National Research Council confirming studies indicating that salmon and other fish need more water.
This report is a major victory for salmon, commercial fishermen, Native Americans, and everyone else who cares about the health of the Klamath River,” said Steve Pedery, conservation director for Oregon Wild, based in Portland.
{more, and why this sucks for Gordon Smith, below}
[Happy Labor Day weekend; as you can imagine we'll be taking it easy at LoadedO. Of course, that's only true for the front page; you can always keep the content fresh by writing a diary! Interesting diaries always stand a better chance of front-paging when regular traffic is slow...!]
If you haven't bought a Street Roots newspaper from a street seller in Portland lately, you really should pony up a dollar to one of the polite vendors and check them out again. While there was a certain charm to the sometimes-addled poems and honest but less substantive government rants of the past, it always felt more like charity to help a vendor, rather than something of real value that you were buying.
No more. Street Roots has joined the national chain of street papers, allowing it to share content and avail itself of a strong redesign. Even better, the poetry and street culture sections remain alongside hard news, intelligent editorial, and probing letters. Under Director/Editor Israel Bayer's hand, I now buy Street Roots for the paper itself--helping a self-starting vendor with 70% of the proceeds is icing on the cake.
And not only are they covering hard news, they're covering current news, and (OK, I'm biased) IMPORTANT news--like the 2008 elections, and whether Oregon is going to hold Gordon Smith accountable for actions like those leading to the fish kills of 2002.
Man, we're reaching Gary Hart "Prove I'm a cheating sleazebag" territory here. Two more articles (one unfortunately behind the dratted subscriber firewall) have appeared in state media, as outlets continue to ask Gordon Smith (and now Greg Walden) about his actions and responses to the Klamath fish kill story.
The one I can't link to is from the Bend Bulletin, notoriously conservative among state media but covering what has now become serious news. In a piece published yesterday and headlined "Smith reverses course on salmon die-off," he tries to color previous remarks by fibbing further about what he said, while his spokesperson claims he's not reversing at all, and Democratic challenger Steve Novick nails exactly what he's doing. Check it out below the jump...
The problem with Sen. Gordon Smith's defense of the Bush administration's 2002 decision to divert Klamath Lake water for irrigation isn't that the Oregon Republican is wobbly on the facts. It's that he's willing to bend and selectively omit the facts to justify ideologically driven political positions.
Sen. Gordon Smith said Tuesday that he has no regrets about the diversion of water from the Klamath River that was intended to protect fish but instead went to farmers.
The 2002 water diversion - and subsequent die-off of 77,000 salmon and eventual suspension of coastal fishing - was the subject of hearings that began last week in a U.S. House committee.
In 2002, Smith's lobbying for increased irrigation in the Southern Oregon region was a topic he raised during that year's campaign. In a TV ad, farmers praised the Republican lawmaker's efforts on their behalf.
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But with next year's Senate campaign approaching, the issue is more double-edged for Smith. The Democratic Party of Oregon highlighted last week's congressional hearing by calling on Smith to apologize and answer for his role.
In a meeting with The Register-Guard editorial board, the Oregon senator offered his most expansive explanation to date since since the issue's revival in recent weeks. Smith defended his and Cheney's efforts to help Klamath basin farmers salvage their crops during drought.
"I am not here to make any apologies," said Smith, who faces re-election next year. "I am proud to fight for the farmers or any group of Americans whom the federal government says has no standing, no water. I just find that offensive."
Smith downplayed his connection to Cheney in that chapter. He said he did not recall speaking with the vice president, but did lobby President Bush during a flight on Air Force One to allow some of the basin's water dedicated for imperiled sucker fish to be diverted to withering croplands and pastures.
"I was not familiar with all the things the vice president was doing," Smith said, referring to the Washington Post's account.
Yeah, maybe not ALL of them, like when he went to the john on October 3, 2001 or whether he went for an after dinner walk at 5 or 6pm on Tuesday, April 17th, 2002--but he knew the important stuff about what they were going to do in the Klamath situation. Playboy centerfold photos don't get the kind of close airbushing attention that statement must have received, in order to avoid the real issue.
But there's a far more pernicious avoidance of the truth and deceitful defensiveness with which Smith addresses the questions...
{more}
Gordon Smith played politics by subverting conservation laws and destroying endangered salmon simply to win re-election. In order to secure rural southern-Oregon votes in the last election cycle, Smith and the Bush administration over-rode water level policies and violated the law, specifically the Endangered Species Act, in order to appease agricultural interests in southern-Oregon.
Forgoing proposed plans which could and should have avoided the crisis by creating a permanent solution such as buying out farmers willing to sell and subsidizing area farms impacted by the drought in order to save salmon runs and the fishing industry, Karl Rove and Gordon Smith instead looked to polls and overturned the science. The result...?
Add NOAA to the list of federal agencies corrupted by the Bush Administration. .
Many of you may recall that in the lead-up to the 2004 election, some GOPers errantly sent their campaign-related emails to georgewbush.org addresses instead of georgewbush.gov. This is where many of the vote-caging emails were discovered.
This cache of emails, referred to by the proprietor of the mailbox and related White House parody website that received the wrongly-directed messages as the "Dead Letter Office", also contains this email:
Can I say for the 10th time that the Democratic Party of Oregon has become an aggressive, rapid response MACHINE since Meredith and Marc took over? They are taking charge of the task to define and explain Gordon Smith's real work in the Senate, and folks are starting to listen:
Two days after DPO Chair Meredith Wood Smith called on U.S. Senator Gordon Smith (R-OR) to apologize for coordinating with Karl Rove, Vice President Cheney and President Bush to earn votes by endangering Oregon’s fishing industries and salmon population, Smith is still silent on the issue.
But the media is raising more and more questions for Smith about his coordination with Cheney and other White House leaders to choose politics over science to earn him votes.
“Gordon Smith should not stay silent on his political abuse of the Klamath River,” DPO Chair Meredith Wood Smith said. “In 2002, Gordon Smith couldn’t stop running television ads and boasting to Oregonians about turning on the water. Now that 70,000 salmon are dead, countless fishermen have lost their livelihood and the U.S. House is looking into his actions, he’s suddenly media shy. Gordon Smith should take responsibility for his actions. Gordon Smith should explain when he first contacted Dick Cheney and the White House, what he asked of Dick Cheney, and why Dick Cheney made personal calls on his behalf to divert the water to earn Smith re-election.”
“As the committee meets tomorrow to investigate Vice President Dick Cheney’s move to open the Klamath River irrigation system to earn Gordon Smith votes, Smith can finally apologize to Oregonians for abusing an environmental and commercial resource for political gain,” [DPO Chair Meredith] Wood Smith said. “In 2002, Gordon Smith couldn’t stop boasting about turning on the water. Now that 70,000 salmon are dead, countless fishermen have lost their livelihood and the U.S. House is looking into his actions, he’s suddenly media shy. Gordon Smith should take responsibility for his actions. If Gordon Smith can open an irrigation system to release thousands of gallons of water, surely he can open his mouth and apologize to Oregonians.”
As House Democrats investigate whether political interference may have led to the die-off of about 70,000 salmon on the Klamath River, local observers worry fragile negotiations aimed at ending long-simmering fights over water in Southern Oregon could be derailed.
Specifically, the U.S. House of Representatives is investigating whether Vice President Dick Cheney secretly intervened in the development of a 10-year water plan for the naturally arid Klamath Basin.
John DeVoe, executive director of WaterWatch of Oregon, said the Bush administration has a long history of "meddling with sensitive scientific judgment," and not just in the Klamath Basin.
"Interfering with the judgment of scientists for political purposes is a subject that legitimately should be looked at," DeVoe said, adding that the continuing negotiations are a separate issue.
Glen Spain, a spokesman for the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen's Associations in Eugene, questions whether much good can come from the congressional probe.
"Congress deserves to know what happened: Policy needs to be driven by science, not politics," Spain said, adding that his concern is that months of talks could be jeopardized if the water issue becomes politicized once again.
"We cannot be lurching from crisis to crisis," Spain said. "There is only so much water, and all the politics in the world will not make more rain," adding that a settlement is the best path forward for fishermen and farmers.
Greg Addington, executive director of the Klamath Water Users Association, said he too is worried that the hearings could have an impact on negotiations by opening old wounds.
"This cannot help but end in finger-pointing," Addington said. "And nothing good comes out of that."
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