[Update: What does the Desert Tortoise Website actually cost?]
If, in November 2012, the incumbent in the Presidential election loses the State of California by one vote, and the course of the nation is thereby altered, I would like to take this opportunity to tell you just why that happened.
Today was the day that the Obama administration lost even my reluctant, slightly-lesser-of-two-evils vote against whatever maroon manages to emerge still functioning from the GOP clown car.
It’s not enough that the Obama Administration guts the Endangered Species Act by having Interior force the production of a BiOp that says killing 1,000 desert tortoises won’t jeopardize the species. It’s not enough that they stack the deck by appointing a BrightSource flack as Commerce Secretary. Now they’re trying to sic the Tea Party on the desert tortoise.
Did you know that the government spends millions to maintain buildings that have sat vacant for years? Or that your tax dollars pay to needlessly ship copies of the Federal Register to thousands of government offices across the country even though the same information is available online?
And I bet you didn’t know that your tax dollars pay for a website dedicated to the Desert Tortoise. I’m sure it’s a wonderful species, but we can’t afford to have a standalone site devoted to every member of the animal kingdom. It’s just one of hundreds of government websites that should be consolidated or eliminated.
It’s a small stupid thing, but it just reinforces the fundamental dishonesty of this administration. This is the website he’s talking about. It’s a low-budget website. The money involved in putting it together has already been spent. The only reason to get rid of it is that it works to promote appreciation for an endangered species that the Administration has decided stands in the way of its policies being enacted.
This is Reagan-style lying. I didn’t vote for Reagan back in the day, and I don’t plan to now. This is the straw that broke the tortoise’s back, for me.
In fact, it occurs to me, now that the website is up and running, “consolidating” it would cost a lot more money than leaving it alone.
“GOP clown car” :)
Obama has let all of us down, Chris. Very seriously down.
Hope? How about “Hope-less” or “Hope Lost”?
More and more I’m becoming convinced that all politics is local.
Amen, brother!
Those little slights mean something, because they show attitude and often, intent.
If I had wanted Bush’s third term, I’d have voted for the repubs. I voted for Obama and still got the third term.
Sometimes it seems like this is a bizarro world, I mean really, environmental groups and others supporting or at least not fighting total all out war against the deserts, cheerleaded on by this so called green president….
The only thing green about this guy and his administration is the donations I suspect coming in from renewable energy firms hand over fist.
Frankly, Obama’s continuation and expansion of Bush’s human rights violations—whether it’s giving aid money to Mexico and turning a blind eye to the torture that much of that money will fund, allowing this country’s torture to continue and refusing to even put up a pretense of investigating those who enacted the torture policies, using the state secrets privilege to deny torture victims recompense for what they suffered, assassinating American citizens without a warrant and invoking state secrets to avoid having to do so much as tell the public what standards of evidence are used to justify these assassinations, or anything else I’ve forgotten about—has seen to it that there is no hope of my voting for his re-election, and as much as I hate to say it, his abuse of the desert and green energy policies seem almost insignificant compared to all of this. Granted, I didn’t vote for him the first time (voted third party) but under better circumstances I would happily take my chances with Obama’s second term rather than letting someone like Palin or Bachmann anywhere near the office. Instead I think I’ll be voting third party again.
That said, I do thank you for exposing the ridiculous dishonesty of the argument they’re making to justify their policies and going into more detail about it in subsequent posts.
On a similar note, I think that someone should print out faux-campaign slogan bumper stickers (or at least an image for use on the web) for the ‘environmentalists’ that think that we must have ‘green energy’ at the expense of wilderness. Someone more clever than I will have to devise it, though. The best I’ve got is ‘Green energy….AT ALL COSTS’ perhaps accompanied by an image of a combat boot stomping Earth, or a tortoise, or some other suitably evocative image.