Editorial-Opinion February 2017

I know you don’t remember what I wrote a month ago, but I must say… WOW! Last month, noting the rocket ride up the stock market was on, I said the surge was based on anticipation of changes that the new President would make, and its positive impact on the national economy. The promise of those changes is rapidly becoming tangible reality.

Likely the clearest example of that change is the long-delayed approval of the Keystone pipeline permit.

Under the Obama administration, the permit was “studied” forever… to the point that it was effectively killed by State Department rumination, of all things. Now, it is approved. That project is moving. WOW!

Obviously, elections matter.

In related news, there is a hiring freeze and a salary freeze in the federal government, web pages are changing, and reports are that 25 percent of the employees at the CDC are considering resigning.

These changes stand in stark contrast to the last moves of the Obama Administration that, among other things, sent $221 million to the Palestinian Authority less than four hours before power changed hands on Inauguration Day.

Given how far behind facilities upkeep is on our National Parks, they must watch with some discomfort as those tax-payer dollars go to a foreign shore and a terror-linked organization. Imagine what other good could have been done with $221 million—your taxed income—rather than send it to terrorists who hate us.

In a parallel move closer to the hearts of sportsmen, on his last day as Director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service—and the last full day of the Obama administration—Dan Ashe issued a decree banning lead from all lands managed by his agency.

Mr. Ashe wrote: “The purpose of this Order is to establish procedures and a timeline for expanding the use of nontoxic ammunition and fishing tackle on Service lands, waters and facilities and for certain types of hunting and fishing regulated by the Service outside of Service lands, waters, and facilities”… and further he wrote…“Where individual Federal land units administered by other Federal agencies including the National Park Service, the National Forest Service, the Bureau of Land Management, the Department of Defense or other agencies have enacted requirements for the use of nontoxic ammunition or fishing tackle, Regions should adopt such requirements on Service lands, waters and facilities in the same states as those units through amendments to Service hunting and fishing regulations, as appropriate.”

Now, the first deer I ever killed in my life, I took at Piedmont National Wildlife Refuge. Under this order (also known as a regulation) the bullet I used to take that deer would be banned.

The sinkers I used trout fishing in the National Forest in the mountains would be banned. These are but two examples of things done in the twilight of an administration—and the twilight of very dirty politics. And they wonder why we felt it’s been anti-American and anti-sportsmen the past eight years?

Regarding the ban on lead ammo for deer and squirrels and turkey, and the ban on sinkers and weights in lures and flies, I am not concerned about that going forward. The next Director can rescind it just as easily. But my guess is that Director Ashe knew this, too. So why did he bother?

Mr. Ashe was one of many out-going federal policy makers who laid traps for the incoming administration. They have been in power for eight years. The Obama Administration did not write that Order until the last day they held power.

They wrote it to set a trap.

When the incoming administration voids the order, the environmental extremists who oppose the incoming administration will use this “wanton and callous disregard for the protection of our precious natural resources” to tarnish the Trump Administration—for following the same policy the Obama Administration followed for eight years! Director Ashe will be long gone, and the press will cover the claims made by environmentalists, but not the facts. And so the game is played.

On the positive side, I am hopeful that timber management changes can be made to get some light on the forest floor in Georgia when our ex-Governor runs the U.S. Forest Service—it is a part of the Department of Agriculture.

Gov. Perdue really likes to hunt, you know.