Full Biography for Douglas Arthur Tuma

Candidate for
United States Representative; District 5

Campaign Progress:

Reaction to my candidacy appears cautious. Especially from those who knew me in my last position of employment with the federal government.

In mid­January, after a public meeting on the environmental assessment of the Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA), I was greeted by a past acquaintance who shook my hand, asking if I had been consulting since my retirement. I remembered him as a past manager of federal staff who processed water supply contracts for Central Valley Project (CVP) water users. Although I don't recall any specific conversation we may have shared while we worked for the same agency, I'm sure he was in a good position to hear ­ and read ­ comments I provided to his staff and others regarding reallocation of federal water supply.

Comments like "Think of giving CVPIA water allocations to wetlands like giving them an enema. They can only hold so much."

The point of which was to observe that the amount of water reallocated by CVPIA from farms to wetlands was the amount estimated for full wetland supply, and there is limited capacity for wetlands to hold more than a full supply. Thus measurement of the quantity of water delivered by means other than satisfying full demand by duck club operators and refuge managers would have limited utility.

As much as conservation advocates campaign for water meters to carefully measure everybody's water delivery as a means to regulate supply based on user fees, I suspect such general policy to be inappropriate and a waste of effort in some cases. In this case, I understand CVPIA provides wetland water delivery without charge.

Talk about federal water subsidies! Private duck clubs get free federal water! This after getting 55 percent of the market value of their land paid to them by the US Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) for conservation easements. On top of that, I understand they get a property tax break. Additionally, I understand the federal government compensates local governments for tax revenue foregone resulting from federal acquisition of private property.

But the federal government gives less than it takes. All of society is paying for federal wetland expansion. When will there be enough wetlands? Who decides?

If federal subsidies were ranked according to critical provision of safety for our society, I would expect to see national defense and the administration of justice as the highest priorities. And the security of the infrastructure that supports our nation's food supply seems to me to be a critical element in sustaining not just national defense and justice, but all human activity.

Food supply is the foundation of our society. National defense and justice cannot long endure a prolonged famine. To be worth our trust, foundations must be designed to provide more support than current demand. We do not want to be a penny or a slice of bread short in defending our country from foreign invasion. We subsidize our defense industry to be certain we can live in peace. Good defense requires a militia not just well trained and armed, but also well fed. Put farm subsidies in the defense budget, and I won't care.

Peace requires justice. Justice insures our liberty to live our lives free from assault. Besides murder, rape, robbery, kidnapping, and theft, assault includes fraud. In the administration of justice, I would expect government to serve the people by exposing fraud. Instead, it has been my unpleasant realization that the federal government's expansive assumption of decision­making authority over environmental protection has enabled fraudulent programs to do extensive damage to our liberty and prosperity as well as our global environment by confusing our sense of priorities for safety and ignoring global markets.

We are hypnotized by repetitious affirmations of environmental movement political activists preaching the virtues of wetlands.

Wetlands are the most productive ecosystem. Wetlands clean our water supply. Wetlands recharge aquifers. Wetlands protect us from floods. Wetlands must be protected. Only five percent of California's natural wetlands have survived water project development.

Then we are told who to blame.

Greedy capitalists. Huge industrial agribusiness. Subsidized corporate farms.

We are shown pictures of the abused.

Baby birds horribly deformed.

We hear the outrage of those who claim their job is to protect wildlife.

We are told that private property rights is an ideology.

It must give way to the will of the people. And the will of the people is to save wildlife. Save wilderness. Save wetlands. Save eco­systems. Save the planet.

Well, that's all fine and good. Not that any of it fairly represents reality. But it is well and good that people can say what they believe. And a lot of people believe what they hear others say. Or the opinions that others write. And what environmental movement political activists say and write is that we should embark on courses of action with no thought about how we will know when we have arrived at our destination or when we have had enough.

Understandably, they fail to mention that their course of action is the same central planning, government command and control decision­making process fated to collapse in civil war ­ a tragic frustration endemic in all societies which dishonor private property rights. They fail to mention they are asking us to be communists. Individual decisions as to when we have had enough do not exist in a communist society. Only government decisions. Usually made by the most eloquent, and unfortunately, merely eloquent.

What is not good is an apparent ignorance that we can be easily fooled by those who withhold relevant information. By excluding the natural mortality context of hatchlings, employing faulty reasoning that selenium toxicosis in a waste water pond is a violation of the sanctity of a "National Wildlife Refuge", and relying on unverifiable claims about the loss of wetlands due to the development of the Central Valley Project, arguments for federal water reallocation are effectively fraudulent.

Who decides what to do? To what extent do we individually decide how we spend our own resources on saving the environment of our choice? And to what extent do we leave the decision­making to Al Gore's elite corps of environmental experts? By trying to raise much of the current environmental cataclysmic hearsay to the level of gospel truth in his book "Earth in the Balance", Gore is either as easily deceived as the most naive among us or is a sleaze ball peddler of fascist populism. I first thought the former. Now that I've seen and read more of his antics, I think the latter.

Gore proposed a new central organizing principle for world civilization. A "struggle" by "those who refuse to be silent partners in the destruction" against "those who refuse to consider the consequences of civilization's relentless advance" ("invading ourselves and attacking the ecological system of which we are a part"). On page 294 Gore wrote:

"As a result, we now face the prospect of a kind of global civil war."

It's not just a prospect of war. The war waged by groups resisting technological advance has probably flowed and ebbed in all societies since the dawn of civilization. Scott Adams in his dissertation on management stupidity, "The Dilbert Principle", speculated there was once a Luddite group that protested the use of spears. The "Just say no to spears" crowd. Adams guessed they eventually got the point, figuratively if not literaly. But the idea of stopping technical advance flows and ebbs in popular support, appealing to those who rather live in fear and enforce prohibition than investigate the truth.

Gore would help us live in fear. Devote our lives to save the environment ­ to save the planet. Marshal all of our efforts in a global government program. I suppose he wouldn't mind leading the latter. The former is not really relevant. After all, whatever government decides is "needed" (a Marxist criteria for wealth redistribution) to save the planet will forever be a programmatic discovery. And Gore is willing to accept majority opinion as the discovery of scientific truth upon which to base those government decisions.

How is majority opinion expected to vote? The very last part of the last chapter titled "V. A NEW GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CONSENSUS" revealed Gore's vision for global mind control.

"The fifth major goal of the Global Marshall Plan should be to seek fundamental changes in how we gather information about what is happening to the environment and to organize a worldwide education program to promote a more complete understanding of the crisis. In the process, we should actively search for ways to promote a new way of thinking about the current relationship between human civilization and the earth."

"The virtue of involving children from all over the world in a truly global Mission to Planet Earth is, then, threefold. First, the information is greatly needed (and the quality of the data could be assured by regular sampling). Second, the goals of environmental education could hardly be better served than by actually involving students in the process of collecting the data. And, third, the program might build a commitment to rescue the global environment among the young people involved."

The most dangerous man in American politics? I think the late Julian Simon's reaction after reading Gore's "Earth in the Balance" was like mine. It's another Mein Kampf.

"The great masses of the people ... will more easily fall victims to a great lie than to a small one."

Safety and happiness have been cited as the reasons why we form a government. A government that grows out of control is not safe. A government that subsidizes sport hunting of wildlife by generally affluent members of private duck clubs is a government that has grown much too large for our safety. A government that aims to program children throughout the world to be eco­fascist soldiers in a holy war against civilization is an evil government.

At the end of May, I met a Service retiree during a meeting on the current use of the San Luis Drain, the CVP facility for which Kesterson Reservoir was built to provide storage to hold waste water until it could be discharged into the Delta outflow with minimal adverse impacts. The drain's completion to the Delta outflow had been delayed by the political maneuverings of Rep. George Miller, D­Contra Costa County. After almost a decade of waiting for the completion of field drains in the new San Luis Unit of the CVP ­ during which time the Service supplied fresh water to the idle Kesterson ponds ­ drainage water began flowing down the San Luis Drain to its terminus at Kesterson.

As the drainage water filled the ponds (maximum depth was four feet), the pond flora and fauna in the aquatic food chain adapted to water with about fifteen times more mineral content but still only a quarter of sea water salinity. As the concentration of dissolved minerals increased, less tolerant species could no longer be fully sustained by the reservoir's shortening aquatic food chain. As more salt tolerant species replaced less tolerant species, the stress on those unable to survive the transition was fully anticipated by all parties concerned. The ultimate lack of wildlife value at Kesterson was predicted in a 1977 Service publication.

I suggested to this former Service environmental analyst that he left his office in Sacramento to join a field survey by Service researchers to look for evidence of biotic stress at Kesterson in 1983 with the intent to sensationalize the findings. He asked me to repeat my accusation. "You went down there to sensationalize."

"Oh, shove it up your ass!" he barked and abruptly left.

Which is, of course, what one does when giving an enema.

A couple of hours before that encounter, another past acquaintance blanched when I told him I was running for congress because it gave me a forum to talk about the issues related to Kesterson. When I told him the issues were about property rights, he withdrew like he suddenly got a call of nature.

This is the kind of reaction that surprises me when I see it. It confirms my sense that people are really scared to confront these issues. It confirms my sense that I threaten to expose grand fraud. It confirms my sense that I have a duty to deny complicit silence. I have a duty to do what ever it takes to expose the fraud I suspect I've witnessed.

Running for congress is an easy way to muster an audience. Yet I am surprised when people's reactions to my running confirm my suspicions. As if I wish my suspicions were not true.

We must confront the environmental movement's assault on property rights if we are to live free from communist aggression. I'm willing to help negotiate peace with those who want to put these issues, conflicts, and wars behind us.

When I told the federal manager who asked if I was consulting "I'm running for representative of the 5th congressional district," he froze. We studied each other in expressionless silence, each waiting for the next unprompted disclosure. This is not how old friends greet each other. I broke the silence, grinned, and said "It's easy when you run on the Libertarian ticket."

Running for congress is my way of letting people know I'm ready to testify, talk, and ­ to anyone who is interested ­ explain how I see us reasoning and retiring the federal government's environmental program fraud into the annals of human stupidity. Then we can look back as we do upon all other abandoned crusades and be grateful that humanity has not lost its unique gift of reason to find its way from slavery to liberty.

Fraudulent Federal Environmental Protection Hurts Humanity (continued from Political Philosophy)

Rant: not trade

The ranting man's Delta is not for sale. He doesn't seem to appreciate the potential social peace that comes from willing sellers and buyers engaged in free trade. Maybe he likes to be without peace.

In fact, I don't know what he likes to do. Unlike Dennis Miller, he doesn't seem to have much fun with his rants. So why he does it at every public meeting I've seen him attend is a mystery to me. I suspect he is suffering from a pharmacological imbalance that could be readily alleviated by sun-setting the federal Drug Enforcement Agency.

Maybe if he were feeling better, he would check out what he could get in return for his share of the Delta. He would learn how much others thought it was worth. That could be a kind of reality check. Without checking in with reality occasionally, we live fantasies that might be no more real than drug-induced hallucinations.

No one but the government can force him to sell. If others are not willing to pay as much as he is willing to accept to relinquish his share, his management authority, then they just do not value it as much as he does. He would have the satisfaction that, as long as others do not value his share as much as he, it is being used for its highest value.

But mortal ownership does not last forever. Shares do get passed on to new owners. Everybody has a different value rating system. New owners might find a value they appreciate that the former owner did not. They might sell to someone else who has an even higher appreciation of the property than they have. Both buyer and seller profit from the trade. In the long run a free market will let the most valuable uses of resources be discovered and utilized, no matter who owns what property.

In the long run, people are happy in a free market because they traded voluntarily. They were not forced to give up anything. Like taxes. Like their choice about when and how much of their own effort they want to invest in which environment.

As it is, the ranting man is not interested in selling. He doesn't want to know how much others value his share. And he is not happy. His government doesn't seem to be doing what he wants it to do for him. His government isn't working for him. He seems as disgusted with government as any Libertarian.

The ranting man apparently hasn't figured out how to deal without government. How to get what he wants without the force of government. How to trade.

No receipt: no ownership

Possibly he knows he can't trade what he doesn't own. And if others think his Delta ownership claim is not worth anything they are not going to buy it. So I think he might have an ownership credibility problem. He fears his ownership of the Delta lacks credibility. So he demands acknowledgment by repeatedly yelling his claim.

If he was like other private property owners, he could trace the passage of his Delta ownership back through a succession of previous owners. A lot of buyers and sellers keep records of their property sales. My guess is that he doesn't have a receipt that shows what he paid for his Delta. I know I sometimes get upset because I can't find a receipt for some thing I bought and want to return. If I wanted to prove I owned something, I'd just show my receipt. I think he can't sell his Delta because he knows he doesn't have a receipt.

False claims: fools: slaves

Since he is not forthcoming with a receipt how can anyone be sure that his claim is true? Why would anybody but a fool buy a false claim?

There are a lot of fools. When I was kid people laughed at the idea of buying the Brooklyn Bridge. My grand parents thought they bought land from the guy who took their money, only to discover after he was gone that the land belonged to the railroad. A couple years ago Alan Greenspan warned us of irrational exuberance. I had no idea mine was 40 percent.

When we buy things because the demand for them is increasing, we take a risk that the demand will fall. When the demand is voluntary, I don't mind chalking my loss up to my own irrational exuberance. But if the demand falls because government took away the value of the investment, I mind. I mind being taken for a fool.

Most of us taxpayers are paying for environmental improvements without checking what the government bought. Most of us, including many government decision-makers, trust the judgment of ecology experts. If we are not sure who is an ecology expert, we can find out in bookstores. Anyone who authors and sells a nature book must be an ecology expert.

There are a lot of nature books. There are so many I've got the impression ecology experts are not uncommon. A lot of what is written is common sense. And much of common sense is nonsense. What passes for common sense among ecology experts is full of political philosophy about how the government can fix ecological problems. My experience tells me otherwise.

I think the claims most ecology experts make are generally unverifiable. I am sure many have excluded relevant natural context from public consideration, if not their own. And their reasoning is so immersed in emotional appeal, I presume it is faulty. I mind being forced to pay taxes to pay for something I believe is ill-advised and counter-productive ­ based on false claims. The government may think I'm a fool because it presumes I don't know I'm paying for false claims. But it would be wrong.

I know I've got choices.

I can leave this country and pay taxes to some other government for programs that are probably also based on false claims. The fact that a lot of people immigrate from other countries to this country is a pretty good indicator that governments are worse elsewhere.

I can stay in this country and continue paying taxes to support environmental programs I know to be based on false claims.

I can do nothing and complain about the government treating me like a fool. But since I know I'm being forced to pay for false claims I don't want, and my option of leaving this country appears to be no better than staying, I must be a tax slave.

I can try to persuade voters to repeal government programs based on false claims by appealing to our society's general aversion to slavery.

Credibility: inversely proportional to volume and repetition

I think the credibility of the ranting man's claim is inversely proportional to the volume of his voice and the number of times he repeats himself. I think he is trying to get people to respect his claim by force. By fear of his potential violence. By coercion.

So when I hear petulant and strident claims of "environmental disaster" repeated, when I hear "National Wildlife Refuge" repeated at every opportunity, I suspect these claims are not true.

Kings: state of nature: false government

How does bellicose bellowing of ownership claims differ from the demands of a king? A king who claims ownership that can only be defended by force, because no one would otherwise honor his claim. Because he can't show a receipt, he claims divine right.

This nation was founded by people who wanted to be free from the tyranny of kings. That's why a lot of them came to this land. That's why a lot of them gave their lives fighting to keep this land free from kings. When we see a person ranting like a king, refusing to sell his property, we should probably keep our distance.

Which is why I was jubilant when I found out in March 1994 I could retire within a few weeks, six long years sooner than the normal minimum 30-year service retirement eligibility. I could distance myself from would-be kings. Kings that fought each other over property because none of them honored anyone else's property rights. They didn't care if a person had a receipt, had a signed contract. Everything was up for grabs. It was a free-for-all communist tragedy. It was the federal government.

It was a state of nature, according to John Locke.

"For all being kings as much as he, every man his equal, and the greater part no strict observers of equity and justice, the enjoyment of the property he has in this state is very unsafe, very insecure. This makes him willing to quit this condition, which however free, is full of fears and continual dangers: and 'tis not without reason, that he seeks out, and is willing to join in society with others who are already united, or have a mind to unite for the mutual preservation of their lives, liberties and estates, which I call by the general name, property."

A state of nature ­ so peaceful to Thoreau ­ loses its charm when filled with kings. Kings make decisions for all others in their kingdoms. Communists make decisions for the proletariat in their state. The former claims sole ownership; the latter claims no ownership. Not much difference to me. The rest of us slave away our lives to support the decisions of someone else.

If the federal government was really a state of nature ­ unsafe, insecure, full of fears and continual dangers ­ then its claim to be a government must be false.

Retirement: new government

I had been willing to be fired since September 30, 1992, the day I handed a memorandum critical of a draft environmental impact statement on the renewal of CVP water supply contracts to a suspected communist king and refused to shake his hand. Retirement is better than being fired. Now that I don't have to work for a living I can dedicate more time to retiring the federal government and replacing it with a true government that protects property.

I've joined with others who have a mind to unite for the mutual preservation of property. We are easy to find. We call ourselves Libertarians. We honor contracts and property rights.

Contracts: authorization: mitigation

Did San Luis Unit water districts sign contracts to borrow money to buy a "National Wildlife Refuge"? I doubt it. Not even as mitigation. Those contracts had to be signed before San Luis Unit construction could begin. That was years before passage of the 1969 NEPA, which requires assessments of potential adverse environmental impacts from federal projects. No assessment. No mitigation.

Congress could and always can provide mitigation whenever it wants. It did so in 1954 with the Grasslands Development Act (Public Law 83-674). It did so again in 1992 with CVPIA (Public Law 102-575, Title 34).

The former act authorized sale of 50,000 acre feet of year to Grassland Water District for waterfowl purposes and the development of 40,000 acre feet per year of ground water for refuges. After a Sacramento legal opinion of a Washington DC legal opinion of the 40,000 acre feet authorization, the "ground water" constraint disappeared, changing the interpretation of the 1954 Act as authority for another 40,000 acre feet per year of surface water from the Delta-Mendota Canal. Ignoring the federal funds spent decades earlier in development of 40,000 acre of ground water per year.

Since the Delta­Mendota Canal was already at full capacity to make farm deliveries, this executive interpretation of congressional authorization effectively stole 40,000 acre feet per year from farm water supplies. But like a tree falling unheard in the forest, this crime had no audience. Just a refuge manager who demanded his 40,000 acre feet too loudly and too often for a legitimate claim.

Reclamation has cited "the Reclamation Act of 1902; the Central Valley Project Reauthorization Act of 1954, as amended; the San Luis Unit Act of 1960; the Federal Water Project Recreation Act of 1965, as amended; the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1958, as amended; the Endangered Species Act of 1973, as amended; Executive Order 11990 of 1977, and others" as "authority to participate in and promote measures for the protection and enhancement of fish and wildlife resources in connection with water resource development projects."

So mitigation could have been optional, but it was not ignored. Reclamation's Regional Director wrote the following in a May 24, 1968 letter to the Service's Regional Director.

"We believe the entire question of long-range evaluation and mitigation requirements could be better examined after our current research is completed, after we have had a little experience with the rate at which the drain flows are going to develop, and after we have had a year or two of experience in actually operating an outlet near Antioch. Meanwhile, your agency and ours should make sure that whatever is constructed will be useful in the long run for waterfowl purposes and that opportunities for temporary or interim wildfowl use are not missed."

Water drainage: purpose: long run

The Kesterson land was bought for the purpose of regulating the flow of water in an adjacent concrete lined channel named the San Luis Drain. The San Luis Drain collected water from new field drain pipes buried about seven feet below the surface of some San Luis Unit farms. These field drains, commonly called "tile drains" for the clay tile pipes used before the advent of PVC, kept the crop roots from being drowned by a high water table.

The water that seeped into those field drains carried all the salt that was brought to the fields with the irrigation water plus salts and soluble minerals that had accumulated in the soil in recent geologic history. As with any other desert land first relieved of its accumulation of native salt, the rate of native salt removal could have been expected to diminish as the inventory depleted.

In the long run, the native salt and soluble trace minerals, including selenium, would have been drained. How long? As I recall, the salt concentration for the drainage of an irrigation district near Yuma AZ diminished by a quarter in 20 years. Suppose it took a hundred years for the amount of native minerals to deplete enough to not interfere with waterfowl breeding at Kesterson. In the context of the projected future of mankind is that too long a time to wait?

(continued after Additional Endorsements)