Endangered Species Act – Government Fraud Extraordinaire
Every social, environmental, financial, and bureaucratic initiative of the Global Elite and their American progressive allies promises to cure some dire problem for the benefit of all. The proposed solution, however, is never intended to actually cure the problem. The goal is always to achieve some part of their overall plan. Their desire is to rule the world to satisfy their greed and lust for power. And they will use any deception or charade to achieve their goal. In their hands, words and phrases are tools to conceal their true objectives and confuse the ignorant.
Welfare Programs like Johnson’s Great Society promised an end to poverty and illness but were designed to create large groups of people dependent on the government for basic life necessities like food, housing, and medical care. Climate change hysteria is the biggest hoax since the Cardiff Giant. Anyone who was awake in third grade science class knows that carbon dioxide is not a poison gas and is necessary for all life on earth. It’s all about creating fear of future catastrophe to steal our money and freedom now.
Net Zero policies risk starvation, malnutrition, illness, and will reduce lifestyles to stone age levels for the average person. Scientists, who are not on the government payroll, confirm that manipulated data is being entered into biased computer programs to predict a future that fits the prescribed agenda rather than the truth. Climate Change lies, of course, don’t prevent the wealthy elite from making millions with the ruse of carbon credits.
The government can steal your land using eminent domain or by enacting rules and regulations that prevent you from using the land you own. The environmental movement is the most effective deception yet devised to steal land from its rightful owners using the unconstitutional and illegitimate force of the complicit federal government.
We should not be surprised that the natural existence – extinction cycle has become the primary tool in the progressive movement’s agenda of private land theft for self-enrichment, power, and control. And the Endangered Species Act (ESA) is the crown jewel.
Over the two billion year history of our planet, millions of plant and animal species have come into existence and become extinct. It is part of the natural process of responding to advantageous environments and then being either able or unable to adapt when those conditions change.
The ESA gives government bureaucrats the ability to stir the emotions of every caring person to save the existence of any living organism – from the smallest insect to the largest tree, animals that are so cute you’d kill to keep them alive to predators that will gladly devour you if you let them live.
The ESA protects their habitats, their migration corridors, and new habitats if they move by prohibiting any human activity that could in any way interfere with the health and welfare of the protected species. This prevents land use for health, living, food supply, safety, recreation, and the financial benefit of human beings.
And the cost to individuals and taxpayers is astronomical.
In August, 2018, Robert Gordon wrote a well-documented expose of the ESA for the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s newsletter, “Whatever the Cost” of the Endangered Species Act, It’s Huge.” Expenses include bureaucratic process costs, annual expenditures, recovery costs, consultation and critical habitat costs. Most of the economic impact, however, falls on private individuals and corporations:
. . . in the form of regulatory costs imposed through the ESA’s two primary regulatory mechanisms––the prohibition against “take” and the requirement for consultation. There is no reliable tracking of these costs.
The general prohibition against “taking” an endangered animal prohibits activities like catching, trapping, killing, or harming the listed animal. However, contrary to the law’s design, the agencies have applied the “take” prohibition to all threatened species with a single “blanket” rule and thereby erased much of the distinction between endangered and threatened. More importantly, the agencies have interpreted the term “harm” broadly to include activities that modify a species’ habitat in a manner that somehow harms the species.
Some actual ESA direct costs and economic impact on individuals from Gordon’s article includes:
• Arkansas Shiner (fish) – $17 to $36 million annually
• Dusky Gopher Frog – $34 million
• Gila Chub (fish) – $28.1 million over 28 years
• Pacific Salmon and Steelhead – $81.6 million
Saving protected plants and animals, however, is not the true goal of the Endangered Species Act. It is just another tool used by the global elite and their government cronies to steal land and wealth from the American people. It’s all about self-enrichment, control, and power at our expense.
Even worse, if one can imagine, is the fact that Gordon has documented outright agency fraud in claiming protection for species that are not at all endangered. In 1973, construction on a TVA Tennessee River dam was halted because of a 2-to-3-inch-long fish, the Snail Darter, that was not at all endangered. The ESA agency once listed a nocturnal lizard as endangered because they counted animals in the habitat during the daytime.
Recently, the “Ute Ladies’ Tresses” orchid was proudly promoted as a “save” by the ESA. In truth, the plant was severely undercounted originally. When the agency discovered that, they attempted to cover up the error by claiming recovery.
Resist Tyranny and Trust in Freedom
Dr. Dan’s guest on Freedom Forum Radio this wekeend is investigative reporter Robert Gordon. Gordon is the author of numerous articles, op-eds and papers in publications such as Congressional Quarterly, National Review, the Daily Signal, Policy Review, and Environment International. Gordon is also an expert on conservation and environmental policies with a focus on wildlife and habitat, particularly endangered species.
Godon has been the author of large congressional reports and has testified before Congress on ten occasions. He has regularly spoken and given keynotes to a wide range of audiences across the country as well as lectured and debated at universities around the country. He has frequently given interviews to and been a source of comment for a wide variety of TV, radio and print media such as the Wall Street Journal. Mr. Gordon has crafted in part or in whole legislation, federal policies, executive orders, litigation, regulatory and administrative proceedings and overseen congressional hearings. His work has spanned from expediting the permitting of volcano early warning systems and conducting investigations of a mine blowout to in-depth analysis of data deficiencies in federal conservation programs and work with whistle blowers.
He served as the Senior Advisor to the Director of the USGS and as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Policy and Environmental Management at Interior. Rob directed regulatory reform efforts and DOI and EPA personnel for the first Trump Transition. Rob served as Staff Director of the Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigations and Senior Advisor on Endangered Species for the House Natural Resources Committee for the 114th Congress. In a prior Congress he served as Professional Staff for the Committee when his primary role was crafting major provisions of H.R.3824, the Threatened and Endangered Species Recovery Act that passed the House with substantial bipartisan support. Rob has been an Adjunct Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, served as a Senior Research Fellow and as Senior Advisor for Strategic Outreach at The Heritage Foundation; and founded and served as Executive Director of the National Wilderness Institute. He served for two terms as a Board Member of the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Board of Conservation and Recreation.
Gordon is a graduate of Vanderbilt University and attended management training at Wharton. He has traveled extensively including to national parks and forests, ranches, farms and offshore oil rigs, the summits of Mount Rainier and Cotopaxi, Amazonian headwaters in Ecuador and Peru and the North Slope of Alaska. He enjoys hiking, turtles and insects, gardening and history. Rob and his wife Susie have three daughters and live in Virginia.
Episode one of this four-part series begins this weekend, Saturday and Sunday, April 26-27, on WJRB 95.1 FM and streamed live over the Internet.
Episode #2: Saturday-Sunday May 3-4
Episode #3: Saturday-Sunday May 10-11
Episode #4: Saturday-Sunday May 17-18
Air times are:
Saturday 8:00 AM and 9:30 AM
Sunday 2:30 PM and 7:00 PM
All programs are available by podcast following air time here.
