The House Natural Resources Committee is pushing back against a claim by Patagonia that President Trump "stole" land from Americans by moving to shrink two national monuments in Utah.
It's no secret that U.S. Rep. Rob Bishop dislikes The Antiquities Act and was thrilled to see President Trump move to dismantle the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments in Utah. So it shouldn't be a great surprise that the House Natural Resources Committee that he chairs has publicly attacked Patagonia, which opposes the president's move.
Last week Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke branded the outdoor wear company as a "liar" for running ads saying President Trump stole land from the American people by issuing a proclamation that cut 2 million acres, combined, from the two monuments. And on Friday the Natural Resources Committee used its Twitter feed to claim that "Patagonia is Lying To You."
"A corporate giant hijacking our public lands debate to sell more products to wealthy elitist urban dwellers from New York to San Francisco," the tweet added.
Perhaps this shouldn't be surprising in the brash, pushback, smack down political world the Trump administration has ushered in, but the tweet has raised more than a few eyebrows.
"When a federal government official publicly calls you a liar on an official social media account, without any due process whatsoever, the first thing you should do is call a lawyer. The second thing you should do is find out the name of the official who posted this tweet," wrote Walter Shaub, who formerly directed the U.S. Office of Government Ethics, in a tweet of his own.
"I don’t know if there’s any legal recourse, but I hope Patagonia has a law firm research the issue," he added. "The federal govt officially and publicly calling a company a liar for political reasons is a bizarre and dangerous departure from civic norms. It’s also decidedly anti-free market."
The matter raises the question about whether it's appropriate for a federal government entity to publicly attack a company. What will be interesting to see is whether it boosts sales for Patagonia, as President Trump's criticism of Nordstrom earlier this year did for that company.
Comments
"What? Where was hunting disallowed? Hunting is allowed in national monuments under BLM and Forest Service management. There are a lot of things that are allowed to continue, and that includes existing grazing and mining permits. However, they're certainly not giving it back for hunters since they was never stopped. And if new mining/grazing claims are allowed then that affects the ability to hunt."
y_p_w - I think you may have misunderstood my comment. I was responding to Kurt's reply (I should have copied hos response). If I understood his and your response correctly, Kurt was implying that opening the land to hunters could be interpreted as stealing the land. I don't see opening land to hunters as stealing land by any stretch of the imagination.
A coyote is wily; a tiger is cunning, but neither are "smart."
http://www.hcn.org/articles/tribal-affairs-trumps-message-for-tribes-let...
Here's a report from the Salt Lake Tribune this morning telling of lobbying by Energy Fuels -- a uranium mining company -- to reduce the size of Bears Ears:
http://www.sltrib.com/news/2017/12/13/uranium-mill-pressed-trump-officia...
"A coyote is wily; a tiger is cunning, but neither are [sic] "smart."
Anonymous, I can't possibly hurt your feelings, because you are "anonymous," but do you ever use a dictionary--let alone a thesaurus? I meant smart in the sense of being clever, and yes, politicians are very "smart." Trump didn't get elected president by being "brilliant." He rather got elected by being "smart," from my thesuarus, "clever, ingenious, resourceful." He knew what would work and put it to work. That's not being cunning; that's being smart.
What so many of his critics fail to understand is how that applies to their criticism. He doesn't care what his critics think. He merely cares how the system operates, and the American people--if not "our" kind of people--are sick and tired of being marginalized. The best writer on the subject last year was Peggy Noonan. It's not being "smart" to tell the American people they are dumb and you are smart.
Now we're paying the price of President Trump appealing to his base. Did anyone think he wouldn't? Is anyone surprised that he has? Was I surprised when Ken Salazar, as Interior Secretary under President Obama, awarded millions of acres of our public lands to renewable energy? No. Nor was I surprised when Mr. Obama established new national monuments as a smokescreen, and so "appeared" to be a preservationist. That's how politicians work to undermine their critics. Don't look behind the curtain; look over here.
They're smart and we're naive. As for brillance, no one would disagree that few such politicians have ever existed.
I was discussing the reality on the ground as it exists. When Bears Ears was established as a national monument, it was clear that hunting would be allowed to continue under existing BLM policy for national monuments under their control. It was allowed before the designation, so it wouldn't be "stealing" under any stretch to allow hunting. If anything, the national monument status of the land would protect the ability to hunt by keeping out mining claims that would effectively privatize the mined areas as well as affect wildlife patterns.
Al - congratulations on keeping it to five paragraphs. I am curious, though. Where did President Obama state that he was establishing monuments as a smokescreen, or was that merely an accusation by his opponents that you happen to agree with?
A fair question, Rick, but the accusation, as you call it, is mine. Better said, it's an observation based on the historical truth of national monuments. In 1933, Horace Albright successfully had them transferred to the National Park Service, only to start "losing" them again in the 1970s to the land management agencies claiming "original" ownership.
In my book, a monument is NOT a monument unless managed by the National Park Service. THAT speaks to preservation; everything else speaks to expedience.
Since you don't like it when I ramble on, why don't you look up Mr. Obama's monuments. As for his gifts to Google, General Electric, and others, they, too, are a matter of public record. As for his attempts to weaken the Endangered Species Act, allowing wind farms a greater "legal take" of Bald and Golden Eagles, that, too, is a matter of public record, in fact, going back to 2009. See, for example, http://www.basinandrangewatch.org/Palen.html
It's all in the record for those who care about parks and wilderness instead of the political party they happen to "like." Conservation, if properly followed, is always an equal opportunity offender. Screw with my land, Mr. President, and you will hear from me. There, Mr. Trump is hardly being "smart" himself. He could have stonewalled Utah and moved on.
Whoops! Five paragraphs again, I see. It's the historian in me, and I apologize. But if you want good government, that means taking the time to do your research. In this case, we are well past the time when the national monuments really meant something. Just changing the name doesn't change a thing.