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Ken Salazar’s war on Drakes Bay Oyster Company, Science.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  November 30th, 2012 at 06:30 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Executive summary: a bunch of people in Marin County, California made a serious mistake, forty years ago. To wit, they trusted the federal government to honor an agreement by which the Drakes Bay Oyster Company transferred ownership of their land (in order to protect the wetlands from development) in exchange for 40 year leases on that land in perpetuity. Several years ago, the folks who later bought Drakes Bay discovered that Interior Secretary Ken Salazar didn’t particularly care about that:

http://player.vimeo.com/video/52331881?color=01AAEA

Essentially, the Drakes Bay Oyster Company people discovered that they had wasted a lot of time trying to argue that the ‘science’ used to defend the National Parks Service’s decision to not renew their lease was bad. What they should have been doing was pumping enough money into Obama for America’s campaign coffers to make Ken Salazar decide in their favor, and not in Big Green’s*. So: company out of business, local economy suffers, and one more data point supporting the thesis Never trust the federal government on anything. Well done, Obama administration. Well done.

On the bright side? While this ruling will have a subtle yet noticeable degrading effect on people’s quality of life, the fact that this is happening in Marin County, California means that it will disproportionately affect Democrats. This is what you voted for, folks. This is precisely what you voted for. By a three to one margin, in fact.

Bon appetit.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*Needless to say, there’s a big… dear God. Big Green wants to develop the area into a theme park (excuse me: “America’s only West Coast marine wilderness park”), and they’re having Ken Salazar shut down all those pesky plucky independent owner-operators like Drakes Bay Oyster. I guess that the Greenies stared into the Abyss for just a little too long…

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COMMENTS

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  • gnelson

    It’s unfortunate that people lost their jobs just before Christmas. However, they DID vote for Obama, so I guess that “their chickens have come home to roost!!”

  • evilbloggerlady
  • evilbloggerlady

    Elections have consequences.

  • Vannek

    What about the push for locally-grown sustainable foods? Now all the foodies in Marin will have to eat oysters brought in by trucks belching nasty emissions.

  • romeg

    Those oysters were tainted anyway.

  • greyeagle

    I feel sorry for the people who lost their jobs. Elections have consequences, and another lesson, NEVER trust the government.

  • 308winchester

    I live here in Marin Co and can tell you with complete honesty that this is a tragedy. The Oyster Co was a good protector of the estro and it’s hard to believe it had any impact on this body of water ( It’s huge ). The democrat types who infest this once beautiful county drive BMW’s, Audi’s, Mercedes and all shop at the 3 Whole Foods Stores in the county. Just go into the parking lot of Whole Foods and you will see expensive foreign made cars covered bumper to bumper with BHO re-election stickers and, anti republican stickers and pro Enviro / Animal rights stickers. They are just plain hard core wealthy Marxists and constantly vote more taxes for the county government, school parcels taxes and any proposition in the county for more park land. In fact, about 70% of the county is off limits to development and is open space. That makes the property expensive here despite it being beautiful, it is a snap shot of Marxism in progress. The Drakes Bay Oyster Co provided about 40% of the oysters for market in California and were sold through out the United States. It was always a journey to get there and it is way out in the middle of nowhere, even for park land. As the article says, they were duped in 1972 into turning over the property to the Feds and over the years, the benevolent US Park Service was caught rigging environmental reports in favor of shutting it down. I believe even Di Fi got involved at one point to make the Park reconsider the reports. Now, all the small businesses that benefited from the Drakes Bay Oyster company and who I have no doubt voted overwhelmingly for Obama, can write BHO and Salazer and beg for some stimulus money to keep their jobs and businesses from going under. This county will be the last place to feel the economic downsizing as a direct result of Jerry Brown and BHO’s horrible economic decisions. You will be seeing this happening everywhere over the next four years. Just remember that the pendulum always swings back the other way over time. But alas, it will be to late for the Drakes Bay Oyster company

  • jerseygalnny

    Great post. Well said. The owners evidently didn’t grease the palms of the Democrats! Now if they were canning ‘green energy’ rather than oysters, maybe they would have gotten a bonus instead of the boot. I first saw a post about this on FR http://fundamentalrefounding.ning.com/forum/topics/another-small-business-destroyed-by-obama-government and I must say, Moe Lane’s is great (as usual). I’m linking to this one! God bless, Patriots!

  • Tbone

    Marin County is full of rich, white liberals that feel guilty about their money so they can afford to be green and to send $1.35 a month to a poor African kid and $20.00 a month to stray dogs and cats scams but drink $40.00 buck a bottle wine. When the next big earthquake hits I hope the folks from Oakland show up looking for some “help”.

  • classicalconservatism

    Where is the documentation of the “understanding” about any (much less perpetual) lease renewals? Specifics or it didn’t happen! Conservatives believe in the sanctity of contracts, right? But if there was no contract then the purchasor of the (10 years left) lease was just speculating – like buying a restaurant in a prime location with only a few years left on the lease. If it’s a commitment then you get it in writing with the landlord (in this case it happens to be the government but that doesn’t change the fundamentals of the situation). If not then you have no real grounds to complain if you don’t get renewed. Also the SJ Merc News article implies that when the original lease was signed that the expectation was that after the lease term it would revert to wilderness status. Which seems to make more sense than some vague undertanding about perpetual renewals since it’s within a wilderness designated area.

  • infomarin

    FYI: DBOC’s years of self-serving claims have devolved to this legally absurd and incoherent litigation: CaseNo. 4:12-cv-06134-YGR DBOC, et al. Plaintiffs v. Kennth L. Salazar, in his official capacity as Secretary, U.S.Department of the Interior, et al., Defendants.

    The filings lay out conclusive rebuttals to the barrage of misinformation spread by DBOC’s (sometimes unwitting) allies. After eight years of non-stop allegations rejecting law, science, and historic reality, the sham wilts into a pitiful whine about some unspecified procedural technicality. Can anyone spell BOGUS? Despite (or because) of the sizzling failure of this classic manufactroversy, this made-for-internet astroturf melodrama is increasingly being ‘syndicated’ on the fringe conspiricist aftermarket.

    Commenter TBone fails to to note that those justifiable objects of ire are the ones who overwhelmingly clamor to defend DBOC, without benefit or interest in credible information. 308winchester sounds like a prime example. Parroting fact-free PR spin may feel good, but it fails to redefine reality outside the ‘cult’. A major problem in West Marin is intellectual retrovirus – my term to describe the ‘anti-information’ deployed by a cozy cadre of semi-professional hacks, shills, sycophants and cowards to sabotage thought outside their group-think, forced consensus.

    Commenter classicalconservatism offers the only cogent critique here. Good luck with the common sense in this environment.