That plant is a terrorist, it's on your land so you are an enemy combatant and we're going in!

posted by Editor on 09-15-2004 12:37

A letter to the editor of my local paper:

To the Defensor Chieftain of Socorro County:

That plant is a terrorist! We need to kill it, we’re coming in to your property like it or not. Oppose us and go to jail! Try to stop us and we’ll designate you an enemy combatant and turn your world upside down.

Years ago folks would have thought you were writing the next Disney cartoon or maybe a script for a movie on the Russian Gulag, but a story about America would have never contained a line like that! But it’s not fiction, it is real, and politicians like Steve Pearce are bringing this insanity to your front door. How can they do this? They started out to destroy personal private property rights by taking aim at a humble Tamarisk plant. They demonized it as a ravenous water hungry green leafy monster lurking out there in the Bosque with its co-conspirator the evil Russian Olive tree. Both of these demons had been brought in to the region over a hundred years ago to stabilize the banks of the Rio Grande from erosion. They had since become the established forage and life protecting cover for the white winged dove so plentiful in New Mexico and the Pheasant as well as several other species. But according to the government facilitators these were “invaders”, sucking up water, making salt, and multiplying like crazy. They never mentioned that very lazy landowners that still practice outmoded and wasteful irrigation techniques to grow little more than alfalfa for a government pampered dairy and horse businesses never bothered to undertake a systematic weeding or land maintenance program. They didn’t believe in being good stewards of the land until the banks were hopelessly overgrown. 

Then, as usual, in a poor state occupied by the federal government every body looked to the feds to bail them out. Only one problem, that would violate states rights, private property rights and other levels of Constitutionally prescribed laws. Not for long! Now, thanks to the current administration and its cronies in business there are 14 different invasive species seizure jurisdiction laws before Congress and laws on a state level are being made to get down on their knees before federal and even internationally crafted environmental law aimed at private property rights, easement variances and national sovereignty as well as water law and productive land use. Everything the states have as guarantees and protections for their citizens and their autonomy is being tailored to allow for heavy handed corporate fascism to literally take over our country and its environment. Federal Energy policy and right away has been made mandatory and a matter of National Security so energy right away has unrestrained easements more powerful than Imminent Domain.

When Steve Pearce held hearings for Invasive Species he chose to deny a qualified, experienced Fish and Game Scientist’s testimony Dr. James Beers and chose to listen to an associate political science professor who was little more than a co-facilitator for Steve Pearce. This man gave Congressman Pearce a seven point plan crafted specifically to dupe private property owners into abdicating their own rights to access their own property autonomously and without threat to their security or person or property. He literally engineered a declaration of terrorist war against nature and man like it was just any day in the business of Washington. How dare he take the principles of our Great Constitution and subject it to the attack on civil rights. Private property rights, the rights of entire species to be free of chemical dumping and unfair environmental assault and the rights of future human populations to be able to reproduce normally and have an environment and water supply untainted by pollution is at stake here. Instead he facilitates the dumping of huge amounts of undisclosed toxins and poison all over the Rio Grande and its watershed. All this despite the very own product label of the manufacturer warning not to use it in wetlands, near agricultural crops or any where it might get into water. And now these shameless fascists even want to stifle dissent against this wrongful act against the people by not allowing those against it to get any press coverage.

Look at some of the warnings a real scientist with 30 years experience in fish and game laws has to say in the testimony before Steve Pearce. It’s not like he hasn’t been informed of the blatantly unconstitutional flavor of his legislation:

Mr. Chairman, it is wrong for Congress to consider passage of a law to confer federal jurisdiction over any plant or animal occurring within the United States. Such jurisdiction was assigned to state governments by the Constitution, and can only be taken from the states by a Treaty or an Amendment to the Constitution.

Invasive Species jurisdiction seizure is being attempted with 14 bills before Congress; federal agency proposals for new programs; and United Nations plans for a proposed Treaty to either Control Invasive Species or Restore Native Ecosystems, which is the same thing.

Our Founding Fathers placed the jurisdiction over plants and animals at the state level for, among other reasons, the inherent responsiveness of the lowest level of government to citizen concerns. The Endangered Species Act verifies repeatedly the wisdom of the Fathers in this regard.

That Act has eliminated businesses, communities, and fish and wildlife management programs and their financial support. It has justified taking without compensation, that is specifically prohibited in the Constitution. It has made professors and science responsive to government grants and bureaucratic regulation. It has changed the emphasis of many federal agencies from proactive natural resource managers, to public land locksmiths who reintroduce unwanted and harmful native species on private lands.

The proposed Invasive Species program will be worse. It will start, like Endangered Species, with a modest list of a few noxious plants like leafy spurge and yellow star thistle. Then bureaucrats and courts will add species, subspecies, populations, etc. to the List. Soon a Court will affirm a lawsuit that claims elimination of "Invasive Species" is a federal responsibility, so its natural goal is the restoration of "Native" ecosystems.

Mr. Chairman, that goal is neither desirable nor attainable. The only beneficiaries of such a policy will be federal agency budgets, University Grant offices, and non-governmental organizations bent on restricting property rights and human uses of natural resources. Our ecosystem should be managed to reflect our needs, and our Constitution, not the socialist intentions of environmental philosophies.

As a Congressional Candidate in the last election I reserve a clear right to be heard even though for reasons of my own I have decided to not muddy the current race, albeit I don’t agree with the current muddy middle and its pathetic centrist quandary. My comments will speak to the corrupted value system they are both clinging two as they push their two-party deadlock on the rest of us. Nothing gets done for the people and the little guy sees the evil vine of corporately facilitated lawmaking growing slowly around the citizen’s feet and eventually engulfing him in the crossfire. Now I have faced yet another assault on my civil rights by men in the shadows. In the last election I was written out of the news in Valencia County by the local paper who at the last minute in the Final Candidates Forum failed to publish anything about me. Yet I was the only Congressional Candidate that showed up at the Belen School Debate and a Public Debate at the Valencia County Campus of the University of New Mexico . The Defensor Chieftain kept it low key, but did run me in the candidate’s forum. I was the only candidate in New Mexico to answer Project Vote Smarts Questionnaire on the Issues. 

I debated Gloria Tristani quite effectively on Public Access TV which my Congressional District is denied access to.  I was on the Patty Gladstone interview hour and I was a guest on Hemp TV as I was speaking on the issue of drug reform. Yet a major newspaper chose to write me out of the race.  The Albuquerque Journal made like I didn’t exist even though I was the only candidate to appear before the Medical Board of Doctors for Medicare Reimbursement Meeting and sat next to 3 Journal reporters whom I even spoke to at length. NPR didn’t mention me, KKOB blackballed my candidacy.  A month ago I went to a major meeting on Water Pollution in Socorro County in my home town of Veguita attended by about 50 people mostly business men, state employees, politicians and only 2 citizens from the community. It was covered in the Defensor Chieftain and the Valencia Bulletin (both owned by the Albuquerque Journal) It was on a Thursday at 1 PM at the School when most concerned citizens would not be able to attend. They presented the same non-action plan as they had in the last ten years and so I stood up and challenged their data, their conclusions and their pitiful plan to do nothing. The newspaper article contained no mention of dissent, no body was on record complaining and my name was once again written out of the press.

Bear in mind, I am a properly registered Green Party Member.  I am 58 years of age, bicultural, bilingual and fluent at that, and college educated. I have worked for government contractors, I have been the chief shop steward of a 2,000 man shipyard, a member of the Engineers and Architects Association of San Diego CA, a member of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Boatwrights and Shipwrights. Although my income is modest and fixed I spend every nickel trying to get the truth out because I passionately love my country and believe that the truth must be our only guide in good governance.  And yet just last week as I finally felt others might get to hear of my efforts and my e-magazine of integral and sustainable politics called LibertySteward.com something really crummy took place that struck fear into the hearts of several people I know.  I felt finally my attempts to protect the people of New Mexico from being lied to and slicked into agro-chemical dumping would get noticed and enjoy the attention it deserves and yet I sustained a terrible blow delivered at my first amendment rights once again at the hands of the PRESS.

A young man had contacted me from a local New Mexican Newspaper. He was doing research on Salt Cedar and was in the beginning skeptical of some of what I was writing. He did the research and was calling to tell me he wanted to write about my efforts, he wanted to break the story statewide and granted me an interview. Apparently there were others out there not being heard and also being misaligned because they took a stand on the issue. But NO, NEW MEXICO, you are not allowed to know the truth so when he turned in the story he was immediately fired. How many acts against my civil rights must I endure before someone in my community decides it matters?  Now my efforts to bring the truth to my fellow citizens has been dashed again at the expense of a man’s livelihood. Is it really necessary to humble a man’s intellect and his fair and honest efforts to participate in the public forum and crush them with partisanship to show loyalty to political agendas?  What happened to truth, justice and the American Way?  Mr. Pearce I call you to the carpet publicly.  You are not above the American People.  I call on you to publicly debate the merits of this program you have crafted with myself and Dr. James Beers and others.  I publicly accuse you of stifling dissent on this issue by relying on mean spirited partisanship and an assault on civil rights to carry out your corporate imperatives to assist the chemical companies in illegal dumping of toxic waste into the heartland of New Mexico.  How Dare You?!

George-Luis Dewey
Publisher and Editor of Libertysteward.com