What will "K.O." America?

 

 

 

 

October 8, 2005

 

 

By Julie Kay Smithson propertyrights@earthlink.net

 

PropertyRightsResearch.org

 

661 words

 

[For the widest possible distribution if left intact and whole with no changes.]

 

 

 

The knockout -- K.O. -- is the bane of all fighters. What will K.O. America? A tsunami? A Category 5 hurricane? An F-5 tornado?

 

 

Round One

 

 

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) has been --  and is -- the tsunami of the American Resource Provider and the American Consumer.

 

The ESA is a Category 5 disaster that has reduced our country to almost total consumer status and almost zero producer status. It has "saved" virtually nothing and given land baron "non-profits" control of vast resources. Through such traps as "conservation easements" and "protecting" and "restoring" "habitat," many people have stopped their heirs from most uses of private property. What about our habitat and what we need? We have worked hard for, and been peerless stewards of, the very resources that now some entity -- government or non-governmental organization -- now says it can do better than us.

 

2005 is the second worst fire year in recorded history and may yet become the worst before the "season" is over.

 

One need look no further than the conflagration of millions of acres to massive fires each year -- which includes the death and destruction of human habitat as well as the incinerating of countless species -- to see that the slick sales pitch was made merely to sell us lemons.

 

It has devastated America's ability to feed, clothe and shelter itself. Rather than create the mythical "biodiversity," it has instead crafted a monoculture in which we are denigrated to the level of the lowest of the "prey species." As large predators are raised and released in our midst and are eating and sport-killing their way to a town near you, we wonder why species other than the predators are not being "protected."

 

The weapons of Language Deception (L.D.) surround us, but few perceive threat or see the Red Flags flying.

 

Current legislation, carefully worded, has passed the House in the form of H.R. 3824 (The Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act of 2005, aka TESRA). Designed to make the reader think that this is an improvement over the original ESA, it is only an improvement if one believes in the Tooth Fairy. New phrases like "candidate species," "monitor species," etc., are included without definition. Takings -- and what constitutes a taking of private property or the use of therein -- are conspicuous by their absence. The Secretary of Interior is, through this legislation, given even more power -- and this is an appointed, not an elected, position.

 

Gale Norton's innocuous-sounding "4 C's" are not synonyms for coercion, ceding, complaisance, and capitulation, though they may as well be, from the standpoint of anything less than total Repeal of the ESA.

 

 

Round Two

 

 

"Invasive species" wording is Round Two. There is already sufficient legislation on the books to handle "Noxious Species." This year's Congressional session has seen dozens of pieces of legislation introduced that would introduce this phrase into law. Is it needful, we understandably ask? The answer may surprise you.

 

To define as "invasive" any species that is determined to be whatever "non-native" -- using a pre-determined magical year like 1492 -- is to wonder why the kid gets sick when allowed to run amok in the candy store. There is no need to introduce this stalking horse and codify it. It is a nebulous phrase that -- like "endangered species" -- can mean anything its compliance officers say it means. 

 

Many "native" plants or species are "invasive" throughout part of their range. Poison ivy is "native." Should we be growing it in our gardens and yards, merely because it is "native"?

 

Many "non-native" plants are aesthetically pleasing and beneficial to the places where they grow. Washington, D.C.'s cherry trees, the ivy climbing the buildings of "Ivy League" colleges and the various lilies and other sensory delights to humans and other species, come readily to mind.

 

 

K.O. the L.D.

 

 

We can stop the K.O.-ing of America. It's about education and truth. We have both. We are charged with using both, to the best of our abilities.