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Point/Counterpoint: Water and Politics Are An Explosive Mix Mar 09, 2010 Costa is toast over water policy
Visalia Times-Delta
The fuse is lit on the powder-keg that resides under incumbent congressional Democrats. Their ongoing shenanigans over "Obamacare" and the potential use of a "nuclear option" to pass the wildly unpopular bill will likely blast congressional Democrats out of their elected seats from coast to coast.
One local Democrat congressman likely to be booted is Jim Costa. Costa is hardcore, with a 96 percent party-line voting record. And while a lot of Costa's votes are small potatoes, his vote to support health-care reform will likely be his undoing. Even in a so-called "safe" district like Costa's, a vote for the health-care reform bill might well be the final nail in an incumbent congressional Democrat's political coffin.
But Costa has made things even worse for himself by praising Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for making a "good-faith effort" to deliver federal water to farmers in his district. This on the heels of Salazar's announced 50 percent reduction in this year's federal allotment.
One wonders what Jim Costa considers bad faith? Farmers are now down to 5 percent of their normal allotment. And while Salazar did add that the 50 percent number could move higher, in reality, the federal guarantee is only half of 10 percent delivered to farmers last year.
Productive California farms are drying up because the federal government has reduced water deliveries in an attempt to protect an endangered fish. As a result, unemployment has skyrocketed to more than 40 percent in some parts of Costa's district.
Barack Obama's mantra of "jobs, jobs, jobs" seems to have been lost in translation. Does putting more than 45,000 people out of work really equate to a "good faith" effort to save jobs?
By some estimates, 12.5 percent of the United States' agricultural production comes from California. Most of that production comes from right here in the San Joaquin Valley. The same San Joaquin Valley Democrats are working to dry up.
A recent BBC estimate stated that 1 billion people worldwide suffer from hunger. The United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization has said this figure is at an all-time high. But do Mr. Obama and the Democrats in Congress care? Apparently not. If they did, they would not undermine food production in one of the richest agricultural areas in the world by purposely keeping 500,000 fertile acres arid and barren. Allowing 1 billion people to starve while 45,000 people here who might work to feed them are idled by Democrats is a sin. A pox on all who promote or defend this inhumane nonsense.
Jim Costa is an incumbent congressional Democrat. It was Costa's own party that visited this misery upon his constituents. And while Costa would argue otherwise, at the end of the day, Jim Costa is a big part of the problem. How appropriate that the actual endangered species in Costa's congressional district is Jim Costa himself.
- Tom Fife is an investment broker who writes from a conservative perspective. E-mail him at Tom.Fife@Comcast.net.
Blame on Dems is misplaced
It's a shame that when Tom writes about important issues like water, he resorts to political gamesmanship and inflammatory rhetoric.
Before he even gets to his point about water, he throws in the obligatory name-calling and bad-mouthing that have become his hallmark. He says, "The fuse is lit on the powder keg." Nice explosive imagery there, huh? He continues on with the phrases "nuclear option" and "¶will likely blast congressional Democrats out of their seats¶"
Tom never acknowledges that Democrats have ever had a good or decent idea. Never mind that the president has spent a year trying to talk with Republicans, literally begging them to incorporate their ideas into the health-care debate, only to meet with "no" at every turn. Tom ignores the fact that after trying to forge a bipartisan health-reform bill, the president finally took the four major Republican ideas and put them in the bill over the Republicans' objections. First they were for it, but when Obama likes it, they are against it. Go figure.
Ever the loyal foot soldier, Tom turns on Jim Costa, who has forgotten more about California water issues than Tom Fife ever knew existed. In one of his most ludicrous charges to date, Tom blames Jim Costa and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar for all of California's water woes. Why does he single them out? Here's a hint: They're Democrats.
Never mind that California has been experiencing water problems and battles since the early 1900s. Never mind that it is a complex problem; Tom can simplify anything.
Never mind that Tom misunderstands that the Friant Canal has two distinct classes of water rights that bring arguments from differing groups.
And never mind that the issues involving the Bay Delta Conservation Group and Delta water rights really address a different set of problems. And never mind, too, that Costa, Sen. Dianne Feinstein and Rep. George Radanovich have all worked together to resolve these concerns in an intelligent way.
Most importantly, never mind that from 2000 to 2008 Tom's Republicans were in charge of things, so let's ask: Why weren't these problems solved long ago when the farm-friendly Republicans had their way? Maybe Tom yells so much about the Endangered Species Act because he has forgotten, or never knew, that one of the co-sponsors of the ESA when it was last reauthorized was none other than then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Was Tom shrieking foul back then?
And finally, where was our congressman — friend of agriculture — Devin Nunes while his party was in charge? Where is all the pro-water legislation that he could have spearheaded? Where is all his imaginary clout? Were those eight years wasted? Was Devin asleep at the switch? And where was Tom Fife all those years? Where was his outrage?
I'll tell you where: Nowhere. Because you have to wait until your party is out of power to call names.
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