1 Boring Old Man

Leaving No Tracks

In Oregon, a battleground state that the Bush-Cheney ticket had lost by less than half of 1 percent, drought-stricken farmers and ranchers were about to be cut off from the irrigation water that kept their cropland and pastures green. Federal biologists said the Endangered Species Act left the government no choice: The survival of two imperiled species of fish was at stake.

Law and science seemed to be on the side of the fish. Then the vice president stepped in.

First Cheney looked for a way around the law, aides said. Next he set in motion a process to challenge the science protecting the fish, according to a former Oregon congressman who lobbied for the farmers.

Because of Cheney’s intervention, the government reversed itself and let the water flow in time to save the 2002 growing season, declaring that there was no threat to the fish. What followed was the largest fish kill the West had ever seen, with tens of thousands of salmon rotting on the banks of the Klamath River.

When the vice president got wind of a petition to list the cutthroat trout in Yellowstone National Park as a protected species, his office turned to one of his former congressional aides.

The aide, Paul Hoffman, landed his job as deputy assistant interior secretary for fish and wildlife after Cheney recommended him. In an interview, Hoffman said the vice president knew that listing the cutthroat trout would harm the recreational fishing industry in his home state of Wyoming and that he "followed the issue closely." In 2001 and again in 2006, Hoffman’s agency declined to list the trout as threatened.

Hoffman also was well positioned to help his former boss with what Cheney aides said was one of the vice president’s pet peeves: the Clinton-era ban on snowmobiling in national parks. "He impressed upon us that so many people enjoyed snowmobiling in the Tetons," former Cheney aide Ron Christie said.

With Cheney’s encouragement, the administration lifted the ban in 2002, and Hoffman followed up in 2005 by writing a proposal to fundamentally change the way national parks are managed. That plan, which would have emphasized recreational use over conservation, attracted so much opposition from park managers and the public that the Interior Department withdrew it. Still, the Bush administration continues to press for expanded snowmobile access, despite numerous studies showing that the vehicles harm the Parks’ environment and polls showing majority support for the ban.

Hoffman, now in another job at the Interior Department, said Cheney never told him what to do on either issue — he didn’t have to.

"His genius," Hoffman said, is that "he builds networks and puts the right people in the right places, and then trusts them to make well-informed decisions that comport with his overall vision."

Last summer, the federal government declared a "commercial fishery failure" on the West Coast after several years of poor chinook returns virtually shut down the industry, opening the way for Congress to approve more than $60 million in disaster aid to help fishermen recover their losses. That came on top of the $15 million that the government has paid Klamath farmers since 2002 not to farm, in order to reduce demand.

The articles make clear three things. Dick Cheney has an incredible ability to make things happen. Dick Cheney’s motives are to help special interests that further the goals of the constituency of the Republican Party.  Dick Cheney is a deeply immoral and contemptuous person. As the quote in this post’s title says, "What does the law say? Isn’t there some way around it?" is his standard operating procedure. He started off filling the ranks of government with people who were loyal to him, many beholding to him. So when something comes up, he calls in his chips. The absurd argument that the Vice President isn’t in the Executive Branch that we’re all laughing about isn’t so funny when you realize that it’s what he’s done full time for his tenure – found ways not to uphold our laws without incurring criminal charges. It’s little wonder that the person going off to jail is his former Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby. Abandoning the Geneva Conventions, torture, invading Iraq on false Intelligence in search of oil, chasing off principled government officials, raping our environment, treating science as fiction, retaliating against political enemies, exposing a C.I.A. Agent’s secret identity – he has consistently mobilized the political power of the Presidency to rule irresponsibly, not to govern as he was elected.