Smashing Tyranny, Restoring America

Ron Paul’s Restore America Plan is a 12-page budget that cuts $1 trillion in spending the first year and balances the budget by the 3rd year.  Paul proposes eliminating 5 federal executive agencies that include the following departments: Commerce, Education, Energy, Housing and Urban Development and the Interior. The video below explains why it would be a tremendous benefit to get rid of the Department of Interior.

The Department of the Interior has over 70,000 employees and receives more than $12 billion in taxpayer funds.

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Federally Owned Land

The Department of the Interior (DOI) is unconstitutional because control over land, water, resources and wildlife are not mentioned as an enumerated power in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution.  Additionally, the federal government’s ownership of nearly 30% of US land, primarily in the Western states, is an affront to the Equal Footing Doctrine. 

When the federal government exerts power that is not specifically given to the feds in the Constitution, it is a violation of the Tenth Amendment and states’ rights.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) has closed enormous swaths of land to development, resulting in economic devastation because most wealth is created from land.  Under Paul’s plan, the States would regain control over their land. 

Here are a few examples of how the DOI has abused its power over federal land:

•  President Bill Clinton declared Utah’s Grand Escalante Staircase a National Monument (under control of the DOI), limiting almost 2 million acres from economic development.

•  Nevada is over 80% federally owned, so Yucca Mountain has been targeted by the feds as a nuclear dump site for our country’s 77,000 tons of radioactive waste because it is less trouble to cut through federal red tape on federal land. 

The DOI’s sub-agency, the US Geological Survey, appears to have fudged data that favors dumping in Yucca Mountain.

Corrupt Influence Over Oil, Gas & Other Resources in All 50 States

The DOI regulates resources like oil, natural gas, coal, uranium, minerals, metals and other ores.   The DOI makes huge profits, raking in over $20 billion a year from permits and royalties for oil and gas alone.  Meanwhile, the States get stiffed, as they receive compensation of less than 10%, or $1.9 billion. 

Some drillers pay as little as $1.50/per acre.

The DOI prevents drilling on most of the Outer Continental Shelf that could contribute to energy independence in America.  One study shows that Alaska could be the 8th largest oil producer in the world if drilling were allowed on its shelf.

Here are some examples of DOI oil scandals:

•  Current DOI Secretary Ken Salazar and his minion Carol Browner cooked data to support a ban on drilling in 2010.

•  The DOI waived BP Oil’s Environmental Impact Statement just 11 days prior to the devastating Gulf oil spill.

•  The DOI also removed the requirement for expensive acoustic switches that may have averted the BP Oil disaster.

•  The DOI is one of the federal agencies that authorized the use of Corexit in the Gulf.

•  Former DOI Secretary Gale Norton sold lucrative contracts to Shell Oil in 2006, resigned and then went to work for Shell a few months later.  She was investigated for criminal corruption, but the Department of Justice dropped the case.

•  DOI employees, during the Norton reign, engaged in sex and drug parties with oil and gas companies, as well as taking embarrassingly small bribes.

The states and the people have been left to suffer the consequences of bad federal policies, corruption and disregard for safety.

Monsanto Partnership

The DOI’s sub-agency, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), contracts with a company named Tetra Tech that writes its Environmental Impact Statements and Regional Management Plans that set land use policy.  Researcher/journalist Debbie Coffey discovered that Hugh Grant, the CEO of Monsanto, sits on the Board of Directors of Tetra Tech.

It appears that Monsanto wields great influence in writing DOI manuals because Monsanto crops have been planted on wildlife refuges across 28 states.  Ironically, the DOI is supposed to protect nature in the wildlife refuges, instead of actively promoting the contamination of nature.  Monsanto’s presence on wildlife refuges is designed to instill confidence in their dangerous products here in the US and overseas.

The Endangered Species Act Is a Tool of Tyranny

The DOI uses the Endangered Species Act (ESA) as a tool to grab land, water and resources.  The ESA was ushered in through 5 international and UN treaties and it is closely aligned with the United Nations Agenda 21 Sustainable Development program.  The Endangered Species Act is unconstitutional, in fact, control over wildlife is never mentioned in the Constitution.

The DOI’s crackdown on land use that penalizes landowners and taxpayers has resulted in saving exactly ZERO endangered species (all of them have been de-listed for other reasons).

Here is a short list of the DOI’s corrupt use of the Endangered Species Act:

•  The first case of abuse was in 1973 at the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Tellico Dam.  The construction of the dam was halted for years over concern for the tiny snail darter fish.  Years later, more populations of snail darters were discovered and found to be abundant enough to remove from the Endangered Species List.

•  The DOI cut irrigation water to California farmers who provide 50% of America’s fruit, nuts and vegetables, to supposedly protect the small Delta Smelt fish.  The smelt are dying from high ammonium levels in the water due to partially treated sewage flushed into the Delta. Diluting the waste in the Delta is a poor solution, as it would be more effective to fix the sewage problem. 

•  Biologists from the DOI and Washington State engaged in outright fraud by sending hair samples from a captive Canadian lynx and bobcat pelt to a lab for DNA testing, claiming that the cats came from a National Forest in Washington State.   The tainted study could have closed some parts of the National Forest to protect the habitat of the absent cats.  The DOI scientists actually got merit pay raises after the incident!

•  The DOI’s Spotted Owl hoax has crippled the timber industry in the Pacific Northwest.  Countless jobs were lost when forests were made off-limits to loggers to protect the Spotted Owls’ habitat.  But the truth is that the Spotted Owls’ decrease in numbers had nothing to do with their habitat- Spotted Owls are declining because they are being eaten by the larger Barred Owl.

•  Idaho and Montana are currently the subjects of the DOI’s experiments in introducing dangerous wild animals, the grizzly bear and disease-carrying 180-pound Canadian wolves, into areas that threaten humans.

While most of the politically-motivated abuse of the Endangered Species Act occurs in Western States, the DOI is expanding its lust for control in all 50 sates.  You can find out more about what is happening in your state by watching Dr. Michael Coffman’s presentation ‘Taking Liberty’.

Conclusion

Ron Paul’s Restore America Plan that eliminates the Department of the Interior allows for necessary functions to be folded over into other existing agencies and to the States.  The States and the People should have control over their own resources because they are directly affected by how the resources are used.  The States and the People have suffered injury and economic loss under the corrupt practices of the federal Department of the Interior.