YOUR GOVERNMENT AT WORK

[Soldier4Christ]

Builder sent to jail for flood mitigation
Local officials demanded work, feds claim regulations banned it

An Idaho man is being sent to prison for meeting his local government's demands during a subdivision development to fix a drainage problem that periodically had left the town of Driggs flooded, after federal officials then said their regulations banned such work.

The dire situation for developer Lynn Moses is being publicized by Bryan Fischer, the chief of Idaho Values Alliance, who said the "crime" for which Moses has been sentenced to 18 months in prison was, "Protecting the city of Driggs from flooding."

Moses' lawyer, Blake Atkin of Salt Lake City, confirmed the circumstances of the case, explaining that although the federal government repeatedly has denied having jurisdiction over the work involved, an opinion shared by the U.S. Supreme Court, Moses nevertheless was convicted on charges relating to his work on the streambed of Teton Creek, an intermittent runoff channel that has water in it for about eight weeks out of the year.

"Worse, Mr. Moses has been convicted of 'pollut(ing) a spawning area for Yellowstone cutthroat trout,' despite the fact that there have been no fish in this stream bed for more than 150 years," Fischer wrote. "[A resident] who has lived near the flood channel for 18 years, says he has never seen fish in this stream bed. And it's not even possible for the stream bed to serve as a spawning ground since it only has water two months out of every year in the first place."

Atkin told WND the issue began nearly 30 years ago when Moses started developing a parcel of ground adjacent to the creek.

"The county said, 'You have got to take care of this flooding or we will not let you build. By the way, we want a new road and while you're building this subdivision, build us a drainage channel to make sure the water goes (where we want it),'" Atkins said.

Moses hired an engineer and contacted the federal government to obtain permission the project, and the Corps of Engineers told him there was no federal jurisdiction, since it was an intermittent stream without any regular water flow.

The same conversation took place several times over the years, including in the 1990s when a Corps of Engineers staff member tried to convince a federal prosecutor to bring a case against Moses.

"The U.S. attorney told him to take a hike since the Corps had no jurisdictional authority to initiate legal action," Fischer said. "According to former state legislator Lee Gagner, the Corps 'discussed his process many times with him, but could not show where they had jurisdiction on the seasonal, intermittent stream,' Gagner adds, '[T]o this day they do not have written rules indicating this to be true," Fischer said.

Atkins said that very issue has been raised several times in the course of the case against Moses, but no court ruling ever has addressed it.

Then came a new a decision to pursue the case and the conviction after jurors were told by Judge Lynn Winmill to disregard Moses' attempts to submit the project to the Corps of Engineers and statements about U.S. government determinations regarding the channel in the 1980s and 1990s.

However, on the day Moses was sentenced to 18 months in prison, the U.S. Supreme Court released its Rapanos case, in which Justice Antonin Scalia confirmed the Clean Water Act gives the federal government jurisdiction only over "relatively permanent, standing or continuously flowing bodies of water," not intermittent streams.

Explicitly, he said, "The 'waters of the United States' does not include channels through which water flows intermittently or ephemerally, or channels that periodically provide drainage for rainfall."

Corps of Engineers' rules then were modified to include that provision.

However, Fischer said, the actual determinations and conclusions didn't matter.

"Mr. Moses has been forced to spend almost $400,000 of his own money in a losing effort to defend himself for protecting the city of Driggs from catastrophic flooding," Fischer said.

Now Moses is facing prison, and his daughter, 17, is facing the loss of her sole surviving parent as she approaches her senior year in high school. Moses' wife died of a heart attack about a year and a half ago, and Fischer said friends reported the stress of the 25-year battle with the government probably contributed.

Atkins told WND that under the various government definitions, the location where Moses did work is not wetlands, not a stream or river and on uplands.

He said his latest effort on behalf of Moses is a motion that essentially asks the trial court voluntarily to reverse the conviction, since there are none of the essential elements of a crime to be prosecuted. It was a year ago when Moses lost an appeal to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court recently decided against hearing the case.

Fischer said the longtime problem in the location was that city property several times had been flooded by high water flows triggered by the buildup of gravel bars and downed trees.

"Teton County required him to implement an engineer's plan to modify the Teton Creek stream bed to prevent the flooding of subdivision property, caused by the buildup of gravel bars and downed trees, during high water flows in the spring," Fischer said. Federal officials concluded they had no jurisdiction over intermittent streams.

"For years he has walked the entire length of the creek to evaluate conditions and then remove gravel bars, sand, logs and debris as necessary to keep the channel clear and satisfy the subdivision's obligation to the county," Fischer said.

"When Driggs flooded in the spring of 1981 – due to a clogged culvert under a county road – the county approached the Corps a second time, asking for funding and help to replace the culvert with a bridge to prevent future flooding. Once again, the Corps said, Nope, not our problem, not our fault, not our responsibility to fix, we don't have jurisdiction," Fischer said.

In fact, in 1984 the U.S. Forest Service needed to build a road and took about 5,000 cubic yards of gravel from the streambed.

"Although the director of the EPA in Idaho, Jim Wernitz, asserts that Mr. Moses had damaged 'wetlands' associated with the stream, there are no wetlands there! The very word requires that land be, well, wet, but the stream bed is bone dry for at least 10 months out of every year," Fischer wrote.

"His attorney calls the whole thing 'a travesty,' which is just about the mildest thing that can be said about this unconscionable miscarriage of justice," Fischer wrote.

[Soldier4Christ]

White House strongly denies forged-letter claim
Author contends administration concocted evidence of Saddam link to al-Qaida

California Democrat Nancy Pelosi may be trying to save the planet — but the rank and file in her party increasingly are just trying to save their political hides when it comes to gas prices as Republicans apply more and more rhetorical muscle.

But what looks like intraparty tension on the surface is part of an intentional strategy in which Pelosi takes the heat on energy policy, while behind the scenes she’s encouraging vulnerable Democrats to express their independence if it helps them politically, according to Democratic aides on and off Capitol Hill.

Pelosi’s gambit rests on one big assumption: that Democrats will own Washington after the election and will be able to craft a sweeping energy policy that is heavy on conservation and fuel alternatives while allowing for some new oil drilling. Democrats see no need to make major concessions on energy policy with a party poised to lose seats in both chambers in just three months — even if recess-averse Republicans continue to pound away on the issue.

“The reality is we will have a new president in three months, and what Bush and the Republicans are trying to do amounts to a land grab for the oil companies,” said one senior House Democratic aide involved with party strategy. “I don’t think we have to give in at all pre-election — we have many more options postelection.”

It’s a reality that Rep. Nick J. Rahall (D-W.Va.) personally delivered to President Bush recently.

Rahall spent more than an hour last week talking to the president about energy. Bush spent the entire flight aboard Air Force One, and much of a subsequent limousine ride, grilling the West Virginia Democrat about legislative solutions to the high price of gasoline, Rahall said last week.

So, does the president think Congress can get anything done this year?

“No,” Rahall replied in a short interview with Politico. “He’s realistic about it.”

Asked if Congress will produce a comprehensive energy bill in September before Congress adjourns again for elections, Rahall replied, “This year? No.”

Instead, the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources believes Democrats are all about 2009.

“We’ve laid the groundwork this year,” Rahall said.

Democratic House aides say the energy agenda has been carefully gamed out in strategy sessions, and Pelosi always intended to take heat on gas prices while tacitly encouraging more vulnerable Democrats to publicly disagree with her and show their independence.

Freshman Democrats like Jason Altmire of Pennsylvania and Don Cazayoux of Louisiana have taken her up on the offer.

Altmire has said a drilling vote “will happen,” while Cazayoux, hoping to hang on to his seat in a conservative Baton Rouge-area district, on Friday sent a letter to Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) demanding a vote on more domestic oil exploration.

“There will be a vote,” said Altmire, who faces a rematch with former GOP Rep. Melissa Hart this fall in the Pittsburgh suburbs.

Indeed, Congress must vote before Sept. 30 to renew the annual moratorium; otherwise, it will lapse on its own, giving states the right to decide whether private companies can search for potential drilling sites three miles offshore. .

“My view is that if we have a vote, let’s make it a rational policy,” said Altmire, whose district includes viable coal and nuclear industries. “We can’t let Republicans hold this issue hostage because of one vote.”

Cazayoux, in his letter, says “the current debate seems to be bogged down in partisan one-upmanship.”

To some extent, House Republicans seem to be playing right along with the strategy, taking Pelosi’s name in vain dozens of times during their rebel House sessions over the past few days and making her the villain who won’t allow oil drilling votes.

“It’s grossly unfair to the Democrats who want a vote,” said Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas). “[Pelosi] needs to cut that out.”

The Senate has also gone with a run-out-the-clock strategy, with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) calling for a bipartisan energy summit but promising no major energy votes. Reid embraced the drilling and conservation proposals of the bipartisan Senate “Gang of 10” last week, but he made further commitment on the energy debate.

Reid, like Pelosi, is expecting to have a much stronger governing majority in the Senate next year, so he has little incentive to give in to Republicans on energy policy as long as he thinks it won’t hurt Democrats.

Even as they face heat from constituents during the August break, Democrats say they aren’t going to cave in to popular pressure.

“We feel pretty comfortable with where we are,” said Rep. Michael E. Capuano (D-Mass.), who is close to the Democratic leadership. “This is a not a new issue. This just didn’t happen today. We’ve been working on this for months.”

Democratic insiders said that Pelosi and other party leaders were “not rattled” by the GOP floor rebellion, and at this point, it’s not clear if the Democrats will even pay a price on energy. State-level polling conducted by Democrats suggests that voters still view President Bush and the GOP as the incumbent power in Washington, and Democratic strategists believe any anti-incumbent wave would hurt Republicans more than Democrats.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling of Texas, one of the leaders of the rogue GOP House session, said he realizes that Democrats are “in a four-corners stall right now,” and admits that “it gets more challenging” for Republicans if they lose more seats in Congress.

Democrats are also comforted somewhat by the fact that crude oil prices have gone down more than 10 percent from their summer highs, and if the U.S. economy enters a recession, prices may fall further due to slackening demand.

“There is no crisis on our side of the aisle,” a top House Democratic leadership aide said. “We have a plan, and we will stick to it.”

[Barbara]

Not sure if this was posted already, or if this is the right place to post it:

States face increasingly tough choices as budget crises deepen nationwide

Juliet Williams
Associated Press

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is laying off as many as 22,000 state employees. New York's raising the possibility of selling - or more accurately, leasing - the Brooklyn Bridge. Nevada is burning through its rainy-day fund like a gambler on a losing streak. And Maryland is pinning its hopes on slot machines.

With the economy in a slide and the housing market crisis, states are rolling up tens of billions of dollars in budget deficits in one of the worst financial crunches in the U.S. since the 1970s.

The startlingly rapid drop-off in tax revenue is forcing many states to make some hard decisions: Raise taxes? Cut programs and jobs? Dip into reserves? Borrow money? Lease or sell state assets?

"They're all terrible choices," Nevada Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley said of the cuts her state made in a special session last month. "I believe we should never have to make these kinds of choices ever again."

Worse, economists say the red ink is only going to get deeper later in the fiscal year when 2008 tax returns start coming in.

"The big question is when will states hit the bottom? We don't know," said Arturo Perez, a fiscal analyst with the National Conference of State Legislatures in Colorado.

As of June, more than 30 states faced deficits totalling a projected $40 billion, or more than triple the gap of the previous year, according to the NCSL.

California, which still does not have a budget for the fiscal year that began July 1, is looking at a 15.2 billion dollar deficit, an amount that dwarfs that of all other states.

The next highest at the start of the fiscal year was New York's, at $5.2 billion.

California lawmakers are at odds over how to deal with the problem. The Democrats are proposing a combination of spending cuts and $8.2 billion in higher taxes. The Republicans oppose any new taxes but haven't come up with the spending cuts to close the gap.

In addition to eliminating up to 22,000 part-time and temporary jobs Thursday, Schwarzenegger imposed a hiring freeze and ordered that as many as 200,000 state workers receive the federal minimum wage of $6.55 an hour until a budget is passed - a move that is certain to be challenged in court, even though the employees will get their back pay eventually.

"I will not be able to pay my rent, buy food or put gas in my car to transport my children," said Roz Myers, a receptionist for a state agency who protested in front of the Capitol this week over the plan.

Among those facing the loss of their jobs are retired state employees who work under contract, temporary and part-time workers such as those who fill in at the Department of Motor Vehicles, seasonal employees and student assistants.

[Soldier4Christ]

It's as fine a place to post it as any and it doesn't matter if it was already posted. Brother Bob and I both end up posting the exact thing in different places all the time because we didn't see that the other one had already done it.

Yes, this economy is starting to hurt everyone even the government offices. Some want to raise taxes because of it. That will only hurt the economy that much more. I can understand Gov Schwarzenegger taking the action that he is. Yes, it will also hurt people and the economy will also suffer but not as much so as raising taxes will.

[nChrist]

I just want to know if more choices would be available if BIG BUCKS were stopped for illegal aliens! SO, they're going to lower the wages of lawful workers or fire them AND still spend the BIG BUCKS for all kinds of services for people who are committing a crime just to be here. Just health care and schooling costs are massive, and this doesn't address a big list of other expenses that SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! NOW they want LEGAL taxpayers to foot the bill in more than one way. What is it going to take to wake people up in California? In fact, what will it take to wake the entire nation up? CUT THE LEGAL WORKERS FIRST - WHAT'S THIS?!

[Soldier4Christ]

I just want to know if more choices would be available if BIG BUCKS were stopped for illegal aliens! SO, they're going to lower the wages of lawful workers or fire them AND still spend the BIG BUCKS for all kinds of services for people who are committing a crime just to be here. Just health care and schooling costs are massive, and this doesn't address a big list of other expenses that SHOULD BE ILLEGAL! NOW they want LEGAL taxpayers to foot the bill in more than one way. What is it going to take to wake people up in California? In fact, what will it take to wake the entire nation up? CUT THE LEGAL WORKERS FIRST - WHAT'S THIS?!

That is an excellent point and one that I should have thought about myself. I'll just chalk it up to old age and stick to that story. 

You are right though. The liberal government in much of our government is doing just that ... putting illegal aliens and non-residents ahead of their own constituents.

[nChrist]

That is an excellent point and one that I should have thought about myself. I'll just chalk it up to old age and stick to that story. 

       I need to use that same story pretty often. HOWEVER, I must point out that many younger people miss the point completely, and they don't have any excuse! Budgets are breaking in many places, AND MONEY IS STILL BEING SPENT IN INSANE WAYS! Our public servants might as well be serving from mental institutions. After all, they're too dangerous to be turned loose unsupervised. It appears that the most dangerous people in our society right now are our own elected public servants.

[HisDaughter]

  Our public servants might as well be serving from mental institutions.

If the senator that is sueing God is any indication....they are!!

[Soldier4Christ]

Our public servants might as well be serving from mental institutions.

If the senator that is sueing God is any indication....they are!!

Yeah. I thought that Congress was transferred into a mental institution, especially the House.

[HisDaughter]

Yeah. I thought that Congress was transferred into a mental institution, especially the House.

Is that why it's called the "White House"?  Men in white coats?

 

[Soldier4Christ]

Is that why it's called the "White House"?  Men in white coats?

 

Could beeeee ...

[Barbara]

     I must point out that many younger people miss the point completely, and they don't have any excuse! Budgets are breaking in many places, AND MONEY IS STILL BEING SPENT IN INSANE WAYS! Our public servants might as well be serving from mental institutions. After all, they're too dangerous to be turned loose unsupervised. It appears that the most dangerous people in our society right now are our own elected public servants.

Amen!!!! But I don't think we can use the words 'public servants' anymore. They do their own thing without any regard for the public and what we've already let them know WE DON'T WANT - and that is illegal immigration. We want them to CLOSE THE BORDERS!!

But I don't think they have ears to hear or eyes to see. They're heading down a slippery slope and serving a god that we don't, and leading much of the American public by the nose down that same slope - THE BLIND LEADINGTHE BLIND.

[HisDaughter]

Amen!!!! But I don't think we can use the words 'public servants' anymore. They do their own thing without any regard for the public and what we've already let them know WE DON'T WANT - and that is illegal immigration. We want them to CLOSE THE BORDERS!!

But I don't think they have ears to hear or eyes to see. They're heading down a slippery slope and serving a god that we don't, and leading much of the American public by the nose down that same slope - THE BLIND LEADINGTHE BLIND.

You have earned my "Hit the Nail on the Head" award!

[Soldier4Christ]

Amen!!!! But I don't think we can use the words 'public servants' anymore. They do their own thing without any regard for the public and what we've already let them know WE DON'T WANT - and that is illegal immigration. We want them to CLOSE THE BORDERS!!

But I don't think they have ears to hear or eyes to see. They're heading down a slippery slope and serving a god that we don't, and leading much of the American public by the nose down that same slope - THE BLIND LEADINGTHE BLIND.

You are totally correct and it is up to The People to either take this country back or to let it continue down that slippery slope. I'm afraid that it will be the latter one as their are too many that are becoming either lukewarm or totally cold.

[Soldier4Christ]

San Francisco fest features public sex with no arrests (AGAIN!)
'This is what the gay agenda is all about'

I'm only posting a portion of this article because I feel that even the modified somewhat version given it are still too sickening and immoral a thing to post here.

The article explains in simple terms the depravity that was allowed by the San Francisco mayor and the fact the police officers were prevented by the mayor to act on laws that prevented these acts. Not only were there live acts of homosexuality there was also allowed vivid acts of sexual slavery and personal violence against others during aberrant sex all in the name of "civil rights" and "freedom of expression".

As one reader of the article commented it is "vomit inducing".

A report from one of the organizations reporting on this said, "It is telling to us that the same city whose mayor, Gavin Newsom (D), ignited the 'same-sex marriage' crusade in California by illegally issuing 'gay marriage' licenses – openly tolerates and celebrates gross perversions, nudity and sexual lawlessness on its streets.

These photos do not fit in with the slick, national 'gay' marketing plan, to be sure. Nevertheless, the pathetic and debased spectacle is as much an offspring of the 'GLBT' movement as the current quest for homosexual 'marriage.' The latter radically redefines and corrupts an ancient institution created by God to order relations between man and woman as the basis for family life. Perverse events like 'Up Your Alley' … mock any notion of right and wrong – as the reckless pursuit of anything-goes 'tolerance' leads governmental authorities to enable and promote evil, turning freedom into sexual anarchy while causing a breakdown in law and order.

They don't want Americans to see this side of their agenda … But we must face reality and come to grips with the truth that 'rights' based on aberrant sex are not genuine civil rights.

Like the pantless perverts wandering around in sneakers-only at 'Up Your Alley,' the liberals' pro-homosexual 'tolerance and diversity' program is now fully exposed as a soulless and bankrupt ideology. According to its precepts, nothing can be judged as wrong (sexually-speaking) – except, of course, normal, historic Judeo-Christian mores."

World Net Daily reports:

"WND made multiple attempts to reach officials in San Francisco for a comment on the apparent lack of obscenity and indecency regulation enforcement during the festival.

Officials with the San Francisco police department's media relations office declined to return a message left by telephone. Also declining to return a message requesting a comment was the office of Newsom. Officials in the media office for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents the district, also declined to comment at all on the XXX-rated festival."