More heat, little light

We made it clear last week that we think Secretary Salazar got just about everything about the Delta wrong in his remarks at the Commonwealth Club on September 19.  (We didn’t comment about his remarks on the Klamath River settlement or the San Joaquin River Restoration Program except to note that it is funny for him to be stumping for a jobs program to build infrastructure while trying address the bad effects of past infrastructure projects.)

We know better than to expect a measured response to anything from Congressman Nunes, but he outdid himself in reacting to Salazar’s remarks. 

“Under your leadership,” he wrote, “The Department of Interior has systematically attacked the very infrastructure you praise.  Worse, your actions related to the Delta have been exposed as politically motivated and illegal.  This scandal, as outlined by the U. S. District Court’s recent admonition of your agency, is damning and should be the subject of Congressional Oversight Hearings.”

He proceeded to quote Judge Wanger at length, then accused the Obama Administration of pursuing a utopian Green Agenda at the expense of working families.  He concluded by comparing Salazar to brutal dictators such as Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein, “who used water as a weapon against their own populations.”

Nunes will probably never understand the extent to which he has become a pawn for corporations whose real object is not water and jobs for working families but the use of water to create wealth for a few.  He doesn’t even realize what an ally he has in an Interior Department that supports the Bay Delta Conservation Plan and is willing to consider increased water deliveries from the overtaxed Delta system.

As for Salazar, he’ll need eyes in the back of his head to keep track of where all the shots are coming from.

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