Endangered Species Regulatory Process: Filled with Secrecy, Speculation, and Contradiction

Marita Noon

History tells us that listing a critter as an endangered species does little for the species and can do a great deal of harm to the local economies—the spotted owl and the delta smelt are two oft-cited cases. But there is not a big body of evidence showing how the listing decisions were made. It was just assumed that the species plight warranted protection. But that was before the listing proposal for the dunes sagebrush lizard threatened a large segment of U.S. domestic oil production and the economies of Southeastern New Mexico and West Texas. Rallies in opposition to the listing have drawn hundreds of irate citizens, hearings on the matter have had overflow crowds, and the public register has pages and pages of public comment. Both ABC and Fox News have done stories on the lizard.

Sand Lizard

Acting on the outrage of his constituents and using his law enforcement background, New Mexico State Representative Dennis Kintigh gathered a group of independent scientists—several from area universities—who have spent the last several months reviewing the science underlying the listing. Their report will be released in a public meeting on Monday, August 15, in Artesia, New Mexico, in a roundtable format with the scientists available for questions.

Combining Kintigh’s FBI skills with the scientists’ expertise, the team is exposing fatal flaws in the proposed rule that should bring every previous listing, and the entire process, into question.

Dennis Kintigh

While the complete report will be available online on Monday, I’ve met with Kintigh and have a draft copy.
One of the biggest concerns is the supposedly independent peer review of the science on which the proposed rule is based. The Federal Register states: “It is the policy of the services to incorporate independent peer review in listing and recovery activities.” To the average citizen, the underlying science may appear to have independent peer review as five different universities are listed as offering review—however, no names of the individuals or their qualifications are provided.

Desert Pupfish

The anonymous peer review process is routine in scientific journals, but in such settings, there is an established and trusted editorial board and reviewers are required to disclose any conflicts of interest. But in Endangered Species Act (ESA) listings, the public should be appalled by the shroud of secrecy. This decision involves public money and has a large potential for direct economic impact on the surrounding communities, and, to a lesser extent, the whole country. At the least, peer review needs to be transparent. Better yet would be a process where advocates from each side can clash openly before independent decision makers. Read rest of column here: News New Mexico

Endangered Species Regulatory Process: Filled with Secrecy, Speculation, and Contradiction

The Week in Review



Jerome Block Jr.

Public Regulatory Commissioner Jerome Block continued to dominate the news pages in New Mexico this week. The string of news stories spelling out all of the dubious behaviors of Block led to a no-confidence vote from his fellow commissioners on Thursday. This followed calls from dozens of people on both sides of the aisle for his resignation. Block is a perfect example of why evaluating candidates carefully is important. Block pockets $90,000 a year from the taxpayers not to mention being reimbursed for untold amounts of “expenses” he believes he deserves. It appears the legislature will consider Block’s impeachment soon. Our stroll through the Sunday morning talk show circuit was revealing within a matter of minutes last week. While reviewing the videos of the talking heads it soon became obvious that the new phrase, “Tea Party Downgrade” would be the Democrat’s pat explanation for why Standard and Poors decided to reduce the U.S. credit rating. Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky quickly responded to the phrase by likening the blaming of the tea parties for the debt downgrade to the idea of pointing the finger at the firemen when they show up at your house to put a fire out. Since our family home burned down ten years ago, and firemen bravely did what they could to keep the terrible night from being a total loss, we made it a point to never blame emergency personnel for providing assistance to us.

On Monday the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged more than three hundred points in early trading. Then President Obama decided he should make a speech to calm the markets before heading off for a vacation at Martha’s Vineyard. After again reassuring the 51% of American households that don’t pay any federal income taxes that he would continue to fight so they won’t have to bear burdens caused by the 49% who do pay taxes (but don’t pay their fair share), the markets plunged another 300 points. The proverbial phrase “enough said” seems to apply here.
Nearly one third of all letters sent to foreign nationals who were issued driver’s licenses in New Mexico were returned with the explanation “address unknown.” It is the strongest indication yet that there has been widespread fraud associated with New Mexico’s policy of providing the appearance of legitimacy to those in the state illegally. One can only wonder how many voted.

It seems that the University of New Mexico will pay a “consulting” firm to assist in the search for a new president. Many citizens ask why? The answer seems to be, “Because that is what we always do.” Common sense suggests thousands of applicants could be attracted by running a few simple ads. Faculty committees, volunteer community leaders, and regents could go over the applications. Yet somehow consultants can continue to convince university decision-makers only consultants can add the required "value" to the process by inserting a necessary search pacifier. Apparently these consultants will perform their services before “others” make the final call on the new prez. The cost to New Mexico taxpayers for the consulting firm’s debatable contribution to the process is $130,000.

It seems that just about everyone receiving health care in New Mexico makes a co-payment in these transactions. Everyone that is, except those who do not pay for their services at all. In New Mexico people living as far as 235% above the federal poverty level still qualify for Medicaid and do not make a co-pay. And that gap (the one between 100% and 235%) is by definition, the actual dollar value of the disincentive that New Mexico employs to discourage working and/or improving job skills. Until our citizens move far beyond incomes that are 235% of the federal poverty level, the act of "working" to earn more will continue to be punished in this state instead of rewarded. Government has not yet decided that people are not dumb and they can run their calculators. Maybe someday.

Miguel Garcia

Representatives Andy Nunez, Alonzo Baldonado, and Governor Susana Martinez each appeared as our guests on News New Mexico this week. And each chuckled when we played a clip of Rep. Miguel Garcia saying that efforts to reform our driver’s license issuance laws were “divisive." Polls clearly indicate that as many as three out of four New Mexicans favor the reforms promoted by Susana Martinez, John Sanchez, and Dianna Duran (among others). Apparently it is getting very frustrating for Rep. Garcia and most Senate Democrats who find themselves completely unsuccessful in characterizing this particular dispute as a divisive, “Hispanics versus Anglos” show down. After hearing from Nunez, Baldonado, and the Governor this week, we realized Rep. Miguel Garcia only wishes this were a divisive issue.

Bill Richardson

And finally, the remnants of the Richardson legacy are lingering. Current HHS Secretary Sidney Squier was making the rounds in New Mexico gathering input on Medicaid reforms this week. On Wednesday she announced that sloppy accounting in the HHS department including under-reporting and over-billing during the Richardson administration, has revealed an additional $100 million shortfall in the Medicaid budget. Senator John Arthur Smith told the Albuquerque Journal the Medicaid deficit will eat up a substantial portion of the state tax revenues coming in ahead of projections in the spring. When it rains it pours.

The Week in Review

Jamaican Drug Dealers Head to the Valley

From kpho.com -There's a new kind of drug dealer in town. They aren't from around here, but they're showing up in Arizona specifically to pick up marijuana. Police said dealers here are more than happy to help.  They said they're seeing more and more Jamaicans these days and that the drug dealers have one goal in mind - saving money. "It's the entire state. It's the entire region," said Chandler Police Det. Seth Tyler.  More News New Mexico

Jamaican Drug Dealers Head to the Valley

NM GOP's Watkins Calls Out Heinrich

Martin Heinrich

“The question on everyone’s mind is where in the world is Martin Heinrich?,” according to a press release from Republican Party of New Mexico Executive Director Bryan Watkins. The release went on to say, “Heinrich is unwilling to show up and talk with his constituents face-to-face but he has managed to find time to hold face-to-face fundraisers with major donors. Heinrich is already showing the people of New Mexico that he values fundraising dollars more than the voices of his constituents.”

Heinrich who represents New Mexico's first congressional district is seeking to become the next Senator New Mexicans send to Washington when Jeff Bingaman retires early in 2013.

Hector Balderas

Watkins also questioned the motives behind Heinrich's seeming lack on interaction with constituents. "Martin Heinrich recently said he isn’t holding town hall meetings because security is too expensive. By contrast Congressman Steve Pearce has been holding town hall meetings all across his district without any complaint of unbearable expense. Congressman Heinrich’s excuse simply doesn’t hold water."

Heinrich who voted against Cut, Cap, and Balance legislation as well as Paul Ryan's budget plan before finally approving the debt ceiling lift that was passed earlier this month faces primary opposition from New Mexico State Auditor Hector Balderas next year.

NM GOP's Watkins Calls Out Heinrich

Judge Tosses New "Rules" Designed to Slow or Halt Domestic Energy Production

(Newsroom America) -- A federal judge on Friday threw out rules imposed by the Obama administration to put the brakes on expedited environmental review of oil and gas drilling on land belonging to the federal government. U.S. District Judge Nancy Freudenthal ruled in favor of petroleum industry group Western Energy Alliance in federal court in Cheyenne, Wyo., in the group's lawsuit against the Obama administration and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar. The administration had dismissed Bush-era rules that allowed for expedited oil and gas drilling under categorical exclusions provisions on all federal lands, but Freudenthal's ruling reinstated them.

The administration argued that the group had failed to show how the new rules, implemented last year by the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, caused delays and increased drilling costs. "Western Energy has demonstrated through its members recognizable injury," Freudenthal said in rejecting the administration's argument. "Those injuries are supported by the administrative record." The government declined to comment on the ruling, but Kathleen Sgamma, the Denver-based group's director of government and public affairs, said the court made the right decision.

"She completely discounted the government's argument that the harm was speculative," Sgamma said of Freudenthal's ruling, according to The Associated Press. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Judge Tosses New "Rules" Designed to Slow or Halt Domestic Energy Production

Artesia Goes Hollywood

Cast of Roswell FM

Carlsbad Current-Argus - ARTESIA — The Artesia studios of Pecos Valley Broadcasting - home of KSVP AM and KZ93 FM radio — took on a new set of call letters for as it plays a fictional radio station for the filming of "Roswell FM", a comedy/romance being shot on locations in Roswell and Artesia. Set in Roswell at the fictional station KLEN, the movie revolves around an FM radio station that specializes in focusing on the paranormal and the bizarre. Producer Carl Lucas, a Roswell native and former employee of Pecos Valley Broadcasting is now working in California, said PVB general manager Gene Dow. He said Lucas didn't have to look far for a set location. "When Carl got involved with the project and knew they needed a location, he knew this would be the place," said Dow. "The art director and advance team came through and they thought our studios would be perfect," he said. Filming has been underway in Roswell since late July and began in Artesia this week. Dow said his radio staff and the film crew have learned to work around each other. "We are the set, and we're still running our radio station," he said. "They started shooting Tuesday and will be here through Wednesday of next week." Read full story here: News New Mexico

Artesia Goes Hollywood

Chavez: Ingratitude, Insolence, and Entitlement

Linda Chavez

Townhall - The riots that have wracked England in the last week should be a sober warning to the United States: This is what happens when a country breeds a generation of welfare dependents who are happy to bite the hand that feeds them. For days, roaming gangs of young people have engaged in looting, setting fires, intimidating citizens, even killing innocents. Speaking to a special session of Parliament, Prime Minister David Cameron said, "This is not about poverty, it's about culture, a culture that glorifies violence, shows disrespect to authority, and says everything about rights but nothing about responsibilities." He's right.
Liberals in England and the United States have tried to explain the riots by pointing to the Tory government's proposed austerity plans. But it's not the cutbacks in social services that are the problem but the welfare state itself that has taught generations that society owed them a living; that the government -- not parents -- were responsible for raising children; that those who worked hard were either suckers or exploiters; that those who didn't work were entitled to the fruits of other people's labor. Cameron pledged his government would "address our broken society, we will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility -- in every town, in every street and in every estate." But it's a tall order.

In many respects, Britain is in worse moral decline than the United States. About half of all children in the U.K. are born out of wedlock -- a number that has been growing rapidly in recent years. When the Labor Party took control in 1997, the out-of-wedlock birthrate was at 37 percent. It has grown about 1 percent per year ever since and will exceed half of all births in the next couple of years. In the U.S., out-of-wedlock births are now at 41 percent of overall births, but there is tremendous variation in illegitimate births by race. Such births now are the norm in both the black (72 percent) and Latino (53 percent) communities, but less than a third of white births (29 percent) are illegitimate. In England, however, race accounts for less of the difference in births outside of marriage, with whites having higher illegitimacy rates than some immigrant groups, most notably South Asians.

More than a decade ago, the social scientist Charles Murray warned that the U.K. was fast developing an underclass similar to the one that plagued the U.S. in the 1960s and '70s. In the Sunday Times in 1996, Murray wrote, "Britain has a growing population of working-aged, healthy people who live in a different world from other Britons, who are raising their children to live in it, and whose values are now contaminating the life of entire neighborhoods -- which is one of the most insidious aspects of the phenomenon, for neighbors who don't share those values cannot isolate themselves."

Proof of the validity of Murray's thesis was evident on the streets of Tottenham, Manchester, Birmingham and other neighborhoods and cities this week. Thankfully, the U.S. has not yet succumbed totally to the lure of the welfare state. But the class-warfare rhetoric coming from the White House and liberals in Congress encourages the same kind of entitlement mentality that has infected the U.K. Read full column here: News New Mexico

Chavez: Ingratitude, Insolence, and Entitlement

Another Secret Tunnel Under the Border

Breitbart - Mexican troops have discovered an unfinished 300-meter (980-foot) tunnel beneath the US border that would likely have been used to smuggle drugs and people, officials said Friday. Mexican General Alfonso Duarte announced the find, saying the entrance to the tunnel was inside a house in the border town of Tijuana that was made to appear as though it was under construction. He added that 10 people were detained in the operation, including a woman who had been helping to dig the tunnel for nearly a year. The tunnel was around 1.8 meters (six feet) high and a meter (three feet) wide, and had a lighting and ventilation system, officials said. US officials said in June that more than 150 secret tunnels for smuggling people and drugs into the United States have been found since 1990. Read full story here: News New Mexico

Another Secret Tunnel Under the Border

Rick Perry to Announce Today

Rick Perry

James Richard "Rick" Perry (born March 4, 1950) the 47th and current Governor of Texas will announce his candidacy for the U.S. presidency today. Perry was elected Lieutenant Governor of Texas in 1998 and assumed the governorship in December 2000 when George W. Bush resigned as governor to become President of the United States. Perry has been elected to full gubernatorial terms in 2002, 2006 and 2010 all victories by healthy margins. Perry is the longest-serving governor in Texas state history. Perry is also the only governor in modern Texas history to have appointed at least one person to every eligible state office, board, or commission position (as well as to several elected offices to which the governor can appoint someone to fill an unexpired term.

Perry won the Texas 2010 Republican gubernatorial primary election, defeating U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison and former Wharton County Republican Party Chairwoman and businesswoman Debra Medina. It was a bruising competition. In the 2010 Texas gubernatorial election, Perry won a third term by defeating former Houston mayor Bill White and Kathie Glass. Perry's entry into the crowded GOP field will likely shake up the balance of polling power, chase away some of the potential entrants, and inject a major dose of executive experience. White House advisor David Axelrod wasted no time attacking Perry's record on national television yesterday suggesting education and health care have been decimated in Texas.

Rick Perry to Announce Today

Consumer Confidence Craters in August

Bloomberg - Confidence among U.S. consumers plunged in August to the lowest level since May 1980, adding to concern that weak employment gains and volatility in the stock market will prompt households to retrench. The Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan preliminary index of consumer sentiment slumped to 54.9 from 63.7 the prior month. The gauge was projected to decline to 62, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey.

The biggest one-week slump in stocks since 2008 and the threat of default on the nation’s debt may have exacerbated consumers’ concerns as unemployment hovers above 9 percent and companies are hesitant to hire. Rising pessimism poses a risk household spending will cool further, hindering a recovery that Federal Reserve policy makers said this week was already advancing “considerably slower” than projected. “The mood is very depressed,” said Chris Christopher, an economist at IHS Global Insight Inc. in Lexington, Massachusetts. “Consumers are very fatigued and very uncertain. In the short term, people are going to pull back on spending.” Read full story here: News New Mexico

Consumer Confidence Craters in August