Political Philosophy for Douglas Arthur Tuma

Candidate for
United States Representative; District 5

People have gotten so used to government controlling most aspects of their lives that they have not thought to question if less government could be better. I am a strong advocate of Thomas Jefferson¹s belief "That government is best which governs least, because the people discipline themselves." My concern is that government too often adopts special interest policies and programs and then forces many people to do what they would otherwise not do, like pay more taxes for some unappreciated or even unwanted objective. These programs and policies often interfere with commerce by limiting who can trade what with whom, or unnecessarily interfere with the private lives of citizens.

People¹s personal and economic liberty become limited by government programs that decide, based on majority rule, what is best for people and then force everyone to comply. I believe that people should be free to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with the rights of others to do likewise.

Fraudulent Federal Environmental Protection Hurts Humanity (continued from Position Paper 1)

Civilized: nonviolent

Government is not synonymous with civilization. We don't have to give up civilization to enjoy nature. Based on "Civil Disobedience", I would say Thoreau was very civilized. Avoided government. Nonviolent.

Outrage: injustice: fraud

Violent people run out of reason real quick. They start making demands. When those demands are repeated and shouted I think we should ask ourselves if we want to associate or disassociate with these demands. Are they threatening violence? Is it initial force (e.g., fraud) or justifiable defense against assault?

When I hear someone outraged, I pay attention. When I hear someone depressed, singing the blues, I pay attention. I want to be sure I'm not overlooking injustice. I want to be sure I'm not associating with people causing injustice, causing fraud.

It took me a year to figure out Kesterson was a hoax. I may be slow. But with tortoise like persistence, I've found that I can eventually find essential truth of a problem. Sometimes long before quick-witted hare brained management facilitators. Not that I have anything against making tasks quick and easy. Far from it. I just want tasks to be easy in the long run. I take satisfaction in making future tasks easier by investing in durable infrastructure. Which means finding truth among misperception and deception about available resources.

Silence: complicity: following orders

When I figured out my continued silence made me complicit to government fraud I became concerned that I was not making enough of an effort to distance myself from the hoax. Posterity could look at who could have exposed this fraud and find that I was responsible for letting it continue. I could be found guilty by association with communists, vandals, and thieves in some future inquisition. My silence while San Joaquin Valley farm owners were being robbed was at least morally reprehensible. I was not a good Samaritan.

Certainly I would have difficulty explaining why I did not blow a whistle on this foul play. Blowing a whistle wouldn't look good for the integrity of the federal government, which federal employees are ethically bound to support. But that's a weak argument if the government actually lacks integrity. Integrity can not be based on fraud.

Perhaps I honored my management by letting them have plenty of rope. Management was consistent with political leadership. Political leadership was consistent with voter majority. Voter majority was consistent with EPPAs. So an argument could be made that EPPAs pushed government policy towards wetland subsidies, skipping the details, never minding the facts, trampling the truth.

We were all just following orders. In military or civil service, following orders is the safe ­ not necessarily happy ­ policy for technicians. Technicians provide alternative choices; they don't decide.

Safety and happiness: wetland welfare

Safety and happiness is what our nation's founding fathers wanted from government and fought for independence because they couldn't get that kind of government from Britain. The end of the second sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence makes this claim.

"... that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness."

Let me raise the possibility that not all of us feel safe and happy in wetlands. Wetland adversity might be a minority attitude, but I don't fancy being lunch for a swarm of blood-sucking, disease-spreading, irritant-injecting mosquitoes. I've read that healthy wetlands don't have a mosquito problem. That must mean all the wetlands I ever visited were not healthy. I suppose it's possible I've only noticed wetlands whenever I've been bit. But in the course of my federal civil service career and the time I lived in Louisiana and Florida, I've noticed a lot of wetlands.

If the federal government aims to make all wetlands healthy, how much is that going to cost? How will we know when we have spent enough? Who is going to decide what is healthy? First we hear the president announce "no net loss" as a national quest for wetland protection. What that means is hard to say without agreement on the definition of "wetland". But despite lack of agreement, we've got wetland welfare and a host of government experts "restoring" and "creating" wetlands with no end in sight. The federal government's support of the North American Waterfowl Management Plan looks to me like affirmative action for ducks. Complete with quotas.

Heresy: discrimination

Of course this is heresy and could get me shot in any public school. Even though there are laws that prohibit guns in school. Public schools would probably be the least safe place for me to be heard saying anything bad about wetlands. Lots of children are very certain that their wetland-praising teachers speak the truth. If someone says otherwise then it must be blasphemy.

I've noticed a lot of government effort to teach racial, gender, and cultural tolerance. Which is fine but inconsequential to discrimination and persecution of those with ideas inconsistent with government sanctioned philosophy ­ political correctness (e.g., wetland worship). I think children could learn more tolerance for people with alternative ideas by getting government out of schools.

As we mature, many of us reach a plateau in our awareness and ease through the rest of our life on what skills and knowledge we have acquired without seeking much more. The rate of return on acquiring more skills and knowledge doesn't look worth the effort. We recognize a diminishing rate of return. We use it to decide when we have worked enough in pursuit of any objective. If we don't get brain washed into following government command and control.

Diminishing rate of return: fish and duck shortage hoax

I wish I could see a diminishing rate of return on wetland development. I've been looking for it for a long time. All I see are reports of burning tropical rain forest.

Where is the diminishing rate of return on efforts to put more salmon in California rivers? Do we have a salmon shortage? Has the commercial and sport fishing stopped yet? No. The 1997 commercial California harvest was 698,000 chinook, up from 365,300 in 1996. It was 679,300 in 1995. The all time record catch through the same time period ‹ through October 31 ‹ was 1,300,000 in 1988. It looks highly variable to me, and capable of quick recovery following reduced harvest.

Which does more harm to the salmon population? Catches of fertile adults or diversions of fry and smolts? Each fertile female carries 2,000 to 5,000 eggs. Natural attrition of hatched alevins leaves only about 100 per thousand as fry and less than two per thousand as mature salmon. With this kind of natural mortality rate, efforts to save one or two percent fry have little chance of producing a measurable increase in surviving adults. And more adult salmon are caught by a growing population of government protected marine mammals.

How can a diminishing rate of return be figured on more fish screens to keep smolts out of river diversions while adult fish continue to be harvested by both man and beast? We won't know the efficacy of fish screens, temperature control devices, reservoir releases, Delta export constraints, or drainage regulation while other factors that affect the outcome remain variable. And there are two other major variable factors beyond government control: climate change, and new competing and predator species continuously introduced to the salmon habitat ­ rivers, bays, and ocean.

Where is the diminishing rate of return on efforts to put more ducks in California wetlands? Do we have a duck shortage? The most populous species of California wintering waterfowl ­ Northern pintail ­ ranged from 2.7 to 3.7 million ducks from 1971 to 1980. During the same time the total population of all the other waterfowl species combined ranged from 2.4 to 3.5 million. The Northern pintail population ranged from 0.6 to 2.3 million over the next ten years. Total other species, 1.8 to 3.6 million. Although the Northern pintail population fell to a half of its former size, it remained greater than any other waterfowl species. A tragedy? Not for the other species. Their populations remained relatively stable. But lump them in with the pintails and then the US Fish and Wildlife Service (Service) could say there was a major waterfowl decline. And we know the Service wouldn't lie. So we say yes; we have a shortage of ducks.

No; we have a hoax. A decline in the most populous species that still leaves it the most populous species among related species does not merit alarm. Especially if the prior record during the 1960s ­ unmentioned by the Service ­ shows a rise in that same pintail species population equivalent to the decline in the 1980s displayed as evidence of a shortage. We have been deceived. Deliberately.

Belief: denial

Anybody who still believes the Service would not lie should consider the possibility of denial. We might want to believe and trust the Service so much we can't imagine it would ever lie. But lies are the weapons of war. And the Service is at war. It is at war to save endangered species from sprawling civil infrastructure. It will do whatever is necessary, unabashedly engaging in chronic deceit, to expand its imperial conquest of critical habitat. And to be sure it doesn't miss anything, it grabs not so critical habitat whenever possible. Given the chance, it will slap a "National Wildlife Refuge" label on anything it touches, no matter what it is.

Denial of unwanted evidence is a psychological aberration in our perception of reality. Gore wrote that we are in denial about consumption. I think he is in denial that safety and happiness requires some amount of consumption and how we agree upon who decides how much is required is a far graver issue than what is decided. A lot of us are in denial about Gore.

Civil tolerance gives people the benefit of the doubt. But after a while a profile of character can be noticed. And sometimes it isn't what we first thought it would be. A marriage partner. An employer. A religion. An environmental movement. A political party. A politician. They all can surprise us in ways we never anticipated. Are we obliged to stick with some ideology we don't believe in? Libertarians say no. We are free to leave. We have a right to associate or disassociate with whomever we wish. Even a sociopath.

Sociopath: Gore

Let us be sure that we are not in denial about Gore being a sociopath. A sociopath will tell us anything he thinks we want to hear. If he thinks he can get our sympathy for cute and cuddly creatures to support him as environmental ruler of the world, what's to stop him? Not his conscience about what is good for us or the environment.

Based on Gore's book "Earth in the Balance", I say he has got no more of a handle on how the world works than any one of us. Which is not good for someone who claims enlightened leadership. His claim of moral superiority over us unworthy consumers leads me to believe he's in it for the personal glory. He's just playing politics. It's his idea of a good time.

But why should we let him have a good time at our expense? Can we quit treating him as if he were the pope of environmental protection religion? As long as we do, I think we are in denial. Try thinking of him as a sleaze ball manipulator of our simple minds. Our simple minds that vote to keep him in political power because we deny the evidence of environmental lies.

Faith: religion: government

We can't figure a diminishing rate of return on any environmental protection effort as long as EPPAs lie about the environment. If we follow the environmental movement, we do so out of faith. It is our religion. We do what we are told because we are told it is good for us. When we do it voluntarily we feel good. When we are forced to do it by a government acting in behalf of a religion, we don't feel so good.

When I was a kid in public school I remember that I wasn't impressed that I was learning anything I didn't already know at age five until I reached fifth grade. Then, as I recall, there were questions raised I had not previously considered. Like the merits of public schooling. And nationalism. I don't recall specific instructions. But I remember teacher reactions to my responses.

Like a fool who doesn't know anything but what he has experienced, I argued in support of public schools ­ a common education among people should enhance agreement and diminish strife over many issues. Good reaction. Good thing to say in a public school.

I argued in support of fostering a strong national allegiance ­ it raises individual pride to be part of a strong group that voluntarily works together. Dubious reaction. I knew it sounded too much like fascism. But I was not going to deny my national identity.

And about that time I got the idea that separation of church and state was good, and maybe my public school teachers pushed that idea the way teachers now push wetland welfare. The First Amendment of the federal government's constitution states:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..."

The Congregational Church was the established religion of the New England states. Congress can not, without violating its constitution, make laws to support the Congregational Church. No matter how good a church it may be. It should not be surprising if the environmental movement avoids referring to itself as a religion. All those statutes congress made to support environmental protection would be unconstitutional. No matter how good environmental protection may be.

But without knowing diminishing rate of returns and comparative values on different environmental efforts, we can not know if federal taxes and regulations to support any specific environmental protection actually helps or hinders. We don't know if we should make more effort on one project than on another. As taxpayers, as victims of government confiscation of our private property, we are slaves to laws based on environmental faith that the laws are good.

Faith is religion. I like faith. I like religion, when it isn't supported by government. I have faith that a society of people free to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as they do not forcibly interfere with rights of others to do likewise, will be better than a society ruled by unconstrained government decision-making. I have faith that this is the central organizing principle for civilization. It is a Libertarian principle. Some might call it religion. I won't mind. It is a private ethic, not dependent on decisions by others, including government. It endures with or without government.

Gore has a different faith.

"I have come to believe that we must take bold and unequivocal action: we must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization. Whether we realize it or not, we are now engaged in an epic battle to right the balance of our earth, and the tide of this battle will turn only when a majority of people in the world become sufficiently aroused by a shared sense of urgent danger to join an all-out effort."

This is his belief. It is his ambition to scare up a majority vote of the world (a new world order, a one world government, the ultimate glory for aspiring dictators) to organize civilization ­ everybody ­ into his battle to rescue the environment, using his choice of environmentally appropriate technology. This should keep us stupid consumers occupied for a couple millennia. And condemn us to tragic wars for government power and common resources, consuming as much as can be grabbed as fast as possible. And pin us down with our noses in dirty government conflicts, waiting to follow all the other planet bound species that went before us into extinction. Gore's faith in government is bad religion.

Environmental faith in the federal government and federal government faith in the environmental movement is a marriage of religion and state.

When I was a kid, I was led to believe I would be safe from a marriage of religion and state here in America. I feel cheated.

Turning the herd: journey into darkness

My problem was that I thought my case for persuading people that Kesterson was a hoax was not very persuasive in the face of overwhelming acceptance of its "environmental disaster" epitaph. Expedience inclined bureaucrats, terrified by hysterical environmentalists and eager to see Kesterson buried from media attention, could care less about the inscription on its gravestone. Consensus had been reached on the inscription, and nobody wanted to disturb that grave.

When most people believe one way they form a herd mentality that is difficult to turn. They keep heading in the same direction because every body else is going the same way too. If I stood in front of the leaders of the herd and told them the truth is in the opposite direction, I'd have as much credibility as a prairie dog standing in front of stampeding buffalo.

But standing off to the side, retired, engaged in some apparently peripheral political activity, I can show a little truth to those who choose to listen and read. So my political activity is not really peripheral. It is a journey into the dark heart of democracy. Where public officials, both voting citizens and representatives, trade bribes for votes. The bribes are not just government projects, cash, and favors paid by taxes. They include lies. They are the hoaxes that fool people to vote for the candidate that will save them from disaster. They are the hoaxes that fool the representatives to vote for a government solution.

Campaigns: fear: lies

Democrats campaign to save the people from deformed hatchlings and any other alleged environmental abuse. Republicans are afraid to do anything less for fear of losing office. Libertarians don't have that fear. Libertarians focus on individual freedom. Freedom is dependent on truth. Libertarians do not fear to challenge apparent EPPA lies.

Property ownership: fear: rant

At the end of last May I sat through a public presentation on the current use of the San Luis Drain. Sitting next to me was a man I knew from his complaints in previous public hearings and his opinions published in the Bee. He was seriously opposed to any use of the San Luis Drain. Towards the end of the meeting when the audience offered comments, he began his objections to government failure to shut down farms with point after point. After a while the string of accusations became a pointless rant. If you like rants, you have to acknowledge this man's skill. But this time his rant got stuck like a needle on a broken record. "It's my Delta! It's my Delta! It's my Delta!"

I wasn't too sure what all he had been ranting about before hand. He was going too fast for me. Remember, I'm slow. But I associate the word "my" with ownership. And private property ownership is something I've been studying recently in the literature and audio tapes sent me by the Cato Institute. So I asked him "Can I buy your share?"

He thought for about three seconds and said "It's not for sale."

What kind of person demands his claim of ownership in a public rant? I suppose somebody who feels threatened that others might take what he thinks is his. That's a valid fear. I think I know some other people who feel that way. They own farms. Is this guy a farmer? Based on his complaint that not a single farm in the San Joaquin Valley has yet been put out of business, I doubt it.

Why must the government put anyone out of business? Isn't it bad enough to force some one to do less business? Cut off a farmer's water supply, and he quits being a farmer. Reduce a farmer's water supply, and he is less of a farmer. If he is forced to be less of a farmer, who is forcing him and why?

Water supply: environmental takings: greed

In this case, congress has cut farm water supplies in the San Joaquin Valley with legislation: The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), The Endangered Species Act, and The Central Valley Project Improvement Act (CVPIA). The government forced farmers to either idle their fields or pump ground water. Apparently, a lot of farmers chose the latter.

But the depletion of ground-water aquifers for lack of surface water supply is ominous. As the ground water falls, pumping costs rise. And eventually, the ground-water aquifer becomes economically depleted. In effect, congressional legislation has caused the mining of California's ground­water storage, a buffer against future droughts, to give fish and wildlife full water supplies now.

Native fish and wildlife in California's Central Valley have evolved in response to recurring prolonged droughts. Some lasting decades. Prior to water project development, firm water supply did not exist. Firm, full water supplies for fish and wildlife in the Central Valley is unprecedented. EPPAs are robbing water supplies developed to support human habitat to form unnatural wildlife habitat.

Who benefits? I think not the native species, which could out-compete other species more dependent on reliable water supply. I think more likely a growing population of affluent and politically influential outdoor enthusiasts. Idle rich. Sport fishermen. Duck hunters. Bird watchers. In my book, this water grab is just plain uncivilized violent greed.

Water drainage: environmental takings: scam

As farm irrigation well pumps draw the water table down, less deep percolation below the root zone is collected in subsurface field drain pipes. And drain water disposal requirements diminish. Saving the cost of drain water disposal is a temporary reprieve in a time of increasing government regulation.

In this case, congress has cut farm drainage relief in the San Joaquin Valley with legislation: The Clean Water Act. Desert rivers that once were often naturally dry are now so protected by water quality standards (safeguarding waterfowl reproduction) they can no longer be used to adequately drain upgradient farm land. The natural drainage relief provided by the slope of the valley was taken by government statute. Without providing an alternative drainage outlet, the government took natural drainage rights from valley land owners without just compensation. A violation of the Fifth Amendment of the federal government's constitution.

Without a drainage outlet, the ultimate fate of the San Joaquin Valley's west-side farms faces a steady accumulation of crop killing salt.

So the net effect of these environmental protection regulations is more rapid depletion of ground-water supplies. And since ground-water supplies are not privately owned you can bet each pumper will race the others to the bottom of the aquifer to get as much as possible as soon as possible. Then what are those farms going to do?

That's when our generation's children will look at those full wetlands and those dry fields and wonder what we were thinking about. The former yields fond memories for the idle rich. The latter, food on our tables and clothes on our backs. We traded food and fiber for everyone for fond memories for the elite? I bet it will look like a scam to them.

If the ranting man was urging government to put farmers out of business based on a scam to save recreation from bogus risks, is he not initiating force? Initiating force against others to promote a political or social agenda is something Libertarians are loath to do. In fact, they limit their party's voting membership to those who pledge not to use initial force.

(continued after Biography)