Paying for Rampant Evil in High Office

The damage is mounting, and the last months of this cabal may be hard to recover from. Recent destruction of the environment has been beneath any concept we had previously of high officials acting against the public interest. Some of the destruction is a serious hazard to this country’s future.

I think in addition to trying to prevent the damage, we need to confiscate fortunes made from war profiteering, to pay for the damage.

As Americans we expect our government to make decisions about the survival of fish and wildlife based on science. But in the drought-plagued Klamath Basin, science has long taken a back seat to sweetheart deals and political favoritism.

Under the Bush administration, fish and wildlife ended up high and dry, while powerful special interest groups ended up with the water.

Those days may be coming to an end. This week, U.S. Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, announced he would hold hearings to investigate charges that Vice President Dick Cheney personally intervened to overturn fish restoration efforts in the Klamath, sending scarce water to irrigation interests instead of fish, despite objections from scientists.

That action led to 2002's massive adult fish kill that claimed over 70,000 Klamath River salmon.
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Today, the Klamath Basin stands at a crossroads. This latest scandal and the coming investigations into Cheney's actions are yet another example of why Congress needs to act to resolve the environmental crisis facing the Klamath Basin. Continuing to leave the Klamath's fish and wildlife at the mercy of the Bush administration is a recipe for disaster.

It is appalling that the vice president used his influence to recklessly overturn science-based decisions and set off the largest fish kill in Northwest history. But it is even more appalling that five years after the fish kill, little has been done to prevent a repeat.

The opposition of the criminals in high office to anything that might interfere with turning a profit, and their total corruption, is unprecedented in this country's history. It has to end quickly, before more destruction ensues. We need to look at impounding the individual fortunes that are being made from the political corruption of the criminals acting with powers they should never had been granted.