Section 25 of Article I of the California Constitution, believe it or not, guarantees to the people of this state the right to fish. Seriously, I am NOT making it up. In fact, here is the exact language straight from the source:
The reason that I point this out is that the ongoing efforts of extremists to infringe upon the liberty of Californians, under the auspices of a law passed called the Marine Life Protection Act, are trampling all over the rights of Californians to fish off of our shores — significantly impacting both commercial and recreational fishermen. Specifically, the act calls for (among other things) the establishment of, "…networks of marine protected areas in California waters to protect habitats and preserve ecosystem integrity…"
Using this legislation as its Holy Grail, the State Fish & Game Commission seems intent (despite Article I, Section 25) to put into place prohibitions against fishing in vast, broad swaths of ocean off of California’s coast.
During my tenure as an appointee of Governor Schwarzenegger on the California Boating and Waterways Commission, I had the opportunity to learn a lot about federal encroachments on the reasonable use of the oceans along our coastline for commercial and recreational purposes, as we dealt with addressing regulations being developed for boating access within the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. At that time, a couple of years ago, we heard a lot of testimony about how proposed regulations on boating in the Sanctuary would have a tremendous negative financial impact on California’s coastal communities, and the rights of boaters and fishermen.
The reality is that the agenda of the far-left enviro-nuts here is really to ban the presence of people from vast areas of the ocean, period. Notions such as "balance" or "conservation" (where mankind uses resources in a way that is responsible) are not in their playbook. In fact, if you ask many of them, they will actually tell you that they believe that there is a moral equivalency between a human and… a tuna fish. Seriously. And if you question them on it (I have), you will get attacked for being human-centered, and not understanding that "all life is equal" on planet Earth. I remember once back on a college campus being yelled at by an activist from PETA, who called me an "Anthropocentrist" — huh? I had to figure out that this was freak-speak for someone who believes in the superiority of man over animals — undoubtedly the worst insult that this particular activist could throw my way. They will use any means, at the Federal or State levels, to push their extremist agenda.
March 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am
Is anyone surprised anymore when the left wants to violate the constitution (either the Constitution of the United States or the Constitution of California)?
March 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am
Thank you for bringing this important issue to your readers. It’s a shame we can’t all be stewards for the environment without loosing our ability to think clearly. When will these whacko’s figure out that they’d accomplish more if they learned to use a little common sense?? This chicken little “sky is falling” drama isn’t fooling anyone with half a brain.
March 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am
My goodness Jon, you have not only gone off the rails but plunged into the ocean. Perhaps you should look at a few facts. The section of the Constitution you quote was inserted into the document on November 8, 1910. According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the population of California in 1910 was 2,377,549. The estimated population of California in 2006 is 36,457,549. For you, that is an increase of 1,533.41 percent. So I, for one, think that protecting the flora and fauna of our golden state is important and if that takes making some or some parts of our lakes, rivers and ocean off limits to fishing for a period of time, it’s a small price to pay. This is not a left or right wing political issue; this is an issue of protecting our environment. And from the days of President Teddy Roosevelt to now, protection of our environment is a bedrock Republican value at its best.
March 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am
Bob Evans:
If you think the state Constitution ought to be changed, then feel free to sponsor an initiative to do so.
To ignore an enumerated right just because some people in some obscure agency think that it would be “good for nature,” is a dangerous thing, and should NEVER be tolerated in America
March 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Evans –
I never thought you, the ubiquitous polemic, would buy historical revisionism, but you have. It’s absolutely laughable, in light of all the documentation now available, to suggest that Teddy Roosevelt was trying to protect the environment, or that his policies even had close to that effect. And you mention 1910, which was well after the California Gold Rush and Roosevelt’s Progressive presidency, and in the midst of Hiram Johnson’s Progressive gubernatorial administration. Wouldn’t one expect a consideration for increased population to be expressed in fishing policies enacted at that time?
Further, if protection of our environment is a bedrock Republican value as you assert, human rights as enumerated in our state and nation’s founding documents have always been, are, and will always be magmatic Republican values.
March 21st, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
Here is a brief history for your consideration: Theodore (Teddy) Roosevelt, Jr., also known as T.R., was the twenty-sixth President of the United States, and a leader of the Republican Party and of the Progressive Movement. He became President of the United States at the age of 42. He served as Governor of New York, historian, naturalist, explorer, author, and soldier. He is most famous for his personality: his energy, his vast range of interests and achievements.
He was a professional historian, a lawyer, a naturalist and explorer of the Amazon Basin; his 35 books include works on outdoor life, natural history, the American frontier, political history, naval history, and his autobiography.
In 1901, as Vice President, the 42 year-old Roosevelt succeeded President William McKinley after McKinley’s assassination by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. He is the youngest person to become President. He was a Progressive reformer who sought to move the dominant Republican Party into the Progressive camp. He dissolved forty monopolistic corporations as a “trust buster.” He was clear, however, to show he did not disagree with capitalism in principle but was only against corrupt, illegal practices. His “Square Deal” promised fairness for both average citizens (through regulation of railroad rates and pure food and drugs) and businessmen. He was the first U.S. president to call for universal health care and national health insurance. As an outdoors-man, he promoted the conservation movement, emphasizing efficient use of natural resources.
Roosevelt was the first American president to consider the long-term needs for efficient conservation of national resources, winning the support of fellow hunters and fishermen. Roosevelt was the last trained observer to ever see a passenger pigeon, and on March 14, 1903, Roosevelt created the first National Bird Preserve, (the beginning of the Wildlife Refuge system) on Pelican Island, Florida. He recognized the imminent extinction of the American Bison and co-founded the American Bison Society (with William Temple Hornaday) in 1905. Roosevelt worked with the major figures of the conservation movement, especially his chief adviser on the matter, Gifford Pinchot. Roosevelt urged Congress to establish the United States Forest Service (1905), to manage government forest lands, and he appointed Gifford Pinchot to head the service. Roosevelt set aside more land for national parks and nature preserves than all of his predecessors combined, 194 million acres. In all, by 1909, the Roosevelt administration had created an unprecedented 42 million acres of national forests, 53 national wildlife refuges and 18 areas of “special interest”, including the Grand Canyon. The Theodore Roosevelt National Park in the Badlands commemorates his conservationist philosophy.
In 1903, Roosevelt toured the Yosemite Valley with John Muir, founder of the Sierra Club, but Roosevelt believed in the more efficient use of natural resources by corporations like lumber companies unlike Muir. In 1907, with Congress about to block him, Roosevelt hurried to designate 16 million acres of new national forests. In May 1908, he sponsored the Conference of Governors held in the White House, with a focus on the most efficient planning, analysis and use of water, forests and other natural resources. Roosevelt explained, “There is an intimate relation between our streams and the development and conservation of all the other great permanent sources of wealth.” During his presidency, Roosevelt promoted the conservationist movement in essays for Outdoor Life magazine. To Roosevelt, conservation meant more and better usage and less waste, and a long-term perspective.
Roosevelt’s conservationist leanings also impelled him to preserve national sites of scientific, particularly archaeological, interest. The 1906 passage of the Antiquities Act gave him a tool for creating national monuments by presidential proclamation, without requiring Congressional approval for each monument on an item-by-item basis. The language of the Antiquities Act specifically called for the preservation of “historic landmarks, historic and prehistoric structures, and other objects of historic or scientific interest,” and was primarily construed by its creator, Congressman James F. Lacey (assisted by the prominent archaeologist Edgar Lee Hewett), as targeting the prehistoric ruins of the American Southwest. Roosevelt applied the Act, and the first national monument he proclaimed, Devils Tower National Monument in Wyoming, was preserved.
I think Teddy Roosevelt stands as one of the greatest Presidents in our history and I believe that conservation of our wonderful state is a bedrock Republican value.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Evans –
I must commend you for your skillful ability with copying and pasting text from Wikipedia. Really, you’ve done a spectacular job. The problem is: anyone can write whatever they want on that website and little of it is subject to the weighty load of professional cynicism.
First, I offer you a challenge. I challenge you to name me one firm that Theodore Roosevelt “trust busted.” Name me one natural monopoly during Roosevelt’s presidency. Then explain to me how he “busted” it. I bet you can’t, because there wasn’t one.
Second, the activities of the Roosevelt-founded U.S. Reclamation Service (renamed the Bureau of Reclamation) alone should be enough to embarass you into never ever asserting the twenty-sixth president’s conservationist bona fides. Roosevelt squandered untold amounts of Eastern taxpayer dollars on this state-run irrigation monopoly to subsidize Western homesteaders’ horribly inefficient desert farming practices, destroying thousands upon thousands of acres of desert ecosystems. It also started some of the political warfare over water in this state. You should talk with Owens Valley residents about that.
Third, the National Forests were largely set up by Roosevelt to stave off the “timber famine” doomsayers, like Gifford Pinchot, were saying would afflict the country at the time. And they weren’t worried about the aesthetic qualities of an untouched wilderness experience or endangered habitats, they wanted to insure there would be enough wood for houses, furniture, paper, etc. This was the rationale for the conservationist movement, and it was a poor rationale (for the simple reason that there never was a timber famine, not even close, and for other reasons I will explain). Timber prices had been declining since the Civil War, because railroads (that consumed between one-fifth and one-quarter of annual U.S. timber production) were transitioning from wood-burning engines to coal-burning engines and because improved farming practices were allowing fewer people, cultivating less land, to grow more food. Lower prices, simple economics tells us, indicates an increase in supply (i.e. more wood due to more forestland). And the national forest lands set aside by Roosevelt, like all common properties, were extensively damaged by congestion, overgrazing, consumption careless of maintenance. So, Roosevelt didn’t understand a thing about how markets function (unsurprising, given the fact that he was in government virtually his entire life and a very poor businessman).
Fourth, National Parks have deteriorated under government control. This is because when Roosevelt set the land aside, he did so without prudential budget practices. As a result, the parks are billions and billions of dollars in deferred maintenance debt due to damage by visitors who don’t pay a market rate for their enjoyment. The little revenues generated by the parks aren’t even retained by the parks. And because the National Park Service doesn’t control its revenues, as a private park company would, it lacks the incentives to control costs. It has been estimated that roughly one-third of National Park Service construction costs go for overhead and overruns. National Park Service projects cost three times more per square foot than standard office construction. Contrary to what Roosevelt suggested, politicians and bureaucrats have not been good keepers of the environment or the park system. Our country’s natural treasures would have been better protected as deed-restricted properties whose owners were free from Washington politics.
Roosevelt’s gotten a huge pass by left-leaning historians who have seen an opportunity to develop their own little American myth. However, when the myth is exposed to just the slightest sunlight, it wilts away quite pathetically. I think you have a little more reading to do. And please do try to read beyond Wikipedia.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
You are kidding, I hope. Anyhow, here is some information you might consider. President Roosevelt wrote: “Every believer in manliness and therefore in manly sport…should strike hands with the farsighted men who wish to preserve our material resources, in the effort to keep our forest and game beasts.” You also might take a look at the Northern Securities Company case.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
If you find anything in the bio of President Roosevelt on the Wikipedia web site, I suggest you submit your edits to that web site.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Evans –
Roosevelt was a great politician. I won’t argue that, since obviously he’s managed to dupe you a hundred years after his presidency. Like any politician, it doesn’t matter what he said or wrote, it matters what effect his policies had on matters of public concern. And, for the most part, Roosevelt’s policies have had a bad effect.
Yes, let’s look at the Northern Securities case, because Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan’s opinion was unrelated to facts of the market. Because of the substantial expansion of railroad track miles, more markets had more railroad connections, which meant increased competition among railroad companies and railroad companies with water transportation (steamboats and barges). Railroad rates were declining at the time of the Northern Securities holding company decision, signalling to me that attempted cartelization and gentlemen’s agreements between railroad firms were, in fact, failing. The Northern Pacific railroad had gone bankrupt twice already. Profits for Northern Securities investors would have come after an overhaul of the Northern Pacific post-acquisition. Now, do you want to suggest that Northern homesteaders, Northern Pacific’s target customers, were better served by a poorly-run railroad than a new management team that had a proven track record of superior railroad management?!
In his dissent, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes explains that “restraint of trade” appearing in common law as well as the Sherman Anti-Trust Act meant barriers to entry preventing firms from entering a market. “Restraint of trade” was not supposed to apply to a merger involving firms already servicing a market. Holmes wrote, “According to popular speech, every concern monopolizes whatever business it does, and if that business is trade between two states it monopolizes a part of the trade among the states. Of course, the statute does not forbid that. It does not mean that all business must cease. A single railroad down a narrow valley or through a mountain gorge monopolizes all the railroad transportation through that valley or gorge. Indeed, every railroad monopolizes, in a popular sense, the trade of some area. Yet I suppose no one would say that the statute forbids a combination of men into a corporation to build and run such a railroard between the states. The act of Congress will not be construed to mean the universal disintegration of society into single men, each at war with all the rest, or even the prevention of all further combinations for a common end.”
Holmes was making the point that the true meaning of a monopoly (I’ll use Wikipedia, since you seem to love it so much: exists when a specific individual or enterprise has sufficient control over a particular product or service to determine significantly the terms on which other individuals shall have access to it) was being completely distorted by the administration and popular culture, manipulating the Court. What did farmers do before the invention of railroads to get their food to market? Oh, that’s right, they used carts, buggies, wagon trains. Some used boats. Northern Securities wasn’t making acquisitions in either of those methods of transport. Trains were just one form of transportation. Holmes was right, Harlan was wrong. Unfortunately, Holmes was outnumbered by Court colleagues who had little to no understanding of basic economics.
I think you have a little more reading to do. I reiterate what I challenged you to do before: Name me one natural monopoly during Roosevelt’s presidency. Then explain to me how he “busted” it. You recklessly threw out the Northern Securities case without even explaining how Roosevelt “busted” the company, but I’ve acknowledged. Next time do a little more homework.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
I hope you are kidding.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Evans –
I’m failing to see how your misspent incredulousness is an argument.
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
I’m failing to see how you, a professed Conservative Republican, cannot see the facts before your face. From Lincoln right on through to GW, the Republicans have an outstanding record of conservation. However, after your face is carved on Mt. Rushmore, I will take your word that President Theodor Roosevelt was not a conservationist and not a “trust buster” and whatever else you think of his record while in office. And I still have hope that you are kidding.
PS: how come when I click on your name, up comes Jon Fleischman’s bio?
March 23rd, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Evans –
Unfortunately, at some point hope must capitulate to fact. Roosevelt’s visage carved into the side of a rock (more “conservationism”) fails as an argument. You’re welcome to keep your blind faith in the twenty-sixth president, but please refrain from presenting it here as something more.
I don’t know how you could be clicking on my name other than through my comments here, which would prompt your email service to open up an outgoing email correspondence to my FlashReport email address. In the past, one was able to click on my name and see my biography as I was the Managing Editor of this fine website. My biography has, however, been removed.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
Blind faith? Nope. Great respect, yes, for a great President who is an acknowledged expert in several fields. I suggest you read some of his many books, especially his autobiography.
March 24th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Evans –
Again, those pesky facts are getting in your way. I have read at least three full-length biographies specifically on Roosevelt and one book, “The Rough Riders,” by Roosevelt. The latter, I’ll remind you, was about Roosevelt’s ONLY wartime experience in the short-lived Battle of San Juan Hill in the somewhat-imperialistic Spanish-American War. I’ve also read innumerable articles on the twenty-sixth president, his administration and record, and I think that’s been evinced by my comments to you above.
Roosevelt was certainly a self-annointed expert of his time in several fields, but he comes off more like a privileged, jingoistic, hyperactive, two-faced fraud today. Really he was nothing more than a model politician, which makes reading his own literary works a bit tricky if one’s seeking to acquire facts.
March 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
Wow. I’m stunned – to learn you have read 3 books.
March 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Evans –
Wow. I’m stunned you’re unable to perform basic arithmetic (THREE full-length biographies PLUS ONE primary source document EQUALS FOUR books, not three). Those are books exclusively on Roosevelt. I’m enchanted by history, so I’ve read many more about the time period in which he lived. And, like I said before, that’s in addition to innumerable articles about the president.
But I really don’t feel I need to justify myself to you. You’ve yet to answer my challenge or rebut a single one of my points, indicating perhaps your unfamiliarity with the facts about Teddy Roosevelt. I’d be stunned if you’ve read anything about him beyond what you read on Wikipedia and in grade school.
March 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
Double WOW. I’m further stunned – to learn you have read 4 books.
And, since you’re the expert on President Theodore Roosevelt, perhaps you should edit the information on Wikipedia. But please try to be sure that you’re not mistaking Franklin for Theodore.
March 25th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Evans –
I resent your request that I spend my time editing Wikipedia. It’s less a request and more a condemnation to a Sisyphean task for your convenience. I shouldn’t have to write something on Wikipedia to get you to read it.
Further, I resent your assertion that I’ve mistaken the Roosevelts. I assure you I know precisely which one is which. Do you?
As an aside, you have to be the most pro-government “Republican” I’ve ever encountered. If for no other reason than to assuage cognitive dissonance and establish some ideological consistency, have you ever considered registering with either the Democrat or Green parties?
March 29th, 2008 at 12:00 am
Mr. Romero
To assuage your resentments, I suggest you seek professional help.
March 29th, 2008 at 12:00 am
… says the man so desperate to guard false beliefs he has resorted to ad hominem attacks.
Please stop Mr. Evans before you embarass yourself further.