Salazar Resigning?

Ken Salazar resigning from the Secretary of the Interior to run for governor of Colorado would be ideal. Not only would Salazar give the Democrats a good chance to hold the seat, but he was one of Obama's poorest cabinet choices, being significantly less progressive than other suggested choices.

If Salazar resigns, Arizona congressman Raul Grijalva should be the new choice at Interior. A Latino and great on environmental issues.

Obama's Interior Policies Suck

Ralph Maughan's Wildlife News carefully follows federal government decisions regarding animals, public lands, and nature in general. After 3 1/2 months of the Obama Administration, he states:

In my view Obama’s public land policies are turning out to be no better than George W. Bush’s. What a disappointment!

I pretty much concur. Certainly it's been disappointing, beginning with the appointment of Ken Salazar to Interior. Is it as bad as Bush? No, I don't suppose so. The government isn't vocally in favor of mountaintop removal coal mining for instance.

But poor decisions still abound. The last straw for Maugham was the BLM authorizing uranium exploration near the Grand Canyon. This is a Bushian decision to be sure; undermining our national sacred spaces for energy development. Obama has also named a minor bureaucrat named Homer Lee Wilkes to be the undersecretary in the Agriculture Department for the United States Forest Service. While I can't speak to Wilkes' qualifications (though there is much more information here), as Maughan rightfully points out, it suggests that Obama is not prioritzing land issues.

In fact, there seems to be quite the disconnect in the Obama administration concering the environment. On climate, Obama and his team are putting in quite a bit of energy. How can you not love the Steven Chu appointment as Secretary of Energy! Although conservative Democrats in Congress don't want a climate package, I think we'll see something this year. But on land policy, Obama either doesn't care very much or is outright hostile to environmentalists' concerns. I suspect the former; one doesn't get the sense that this is a man who has spent much time in the forests or deserts. And obviously, Obama is overburdened with major problems. But even if land management is not at the top of his list, he could appoint satisfactory people to these positions.

In the end, I suspect that above all this might be a political calculation. The Democrats are building their party in the West and don't want to adopt environmentalist policies that might alienate potential voters. But I wonder if this isn't a misreading of local politics. In places like Colorado, Oregon, and Montana, you have Democrats who are often well to the left of center and conservatives who are often quite far to the right. There are really polarized states without the same kind of moderate middle ground you might see in Ohio or Florida. Much of the change in voting patterns in the West hasn't come from locals changing their minds, it's come from new residents--Latinos, young outdoorsy people, etc. For the most part, these are not consitutencies interested in continuing Bush era land policies. I hope Obama reads this political map better and realizes what he can do to protect the land while not undermining his electoral prospects in the West.

Ken Salazar--A Bad Choice

I was chagrined when Obama named Ken Salazar as his Secretary of the Interior. With clearly superior choices like Raul Grijalva floating around out there, picking a conservative Democrat seemed unnecessary. I figured it would result in bad environmental policies. And so it has.

Salazar is upholding the Bush Administration's decision to delist wolves from the endangered species list in the northern Rockies and Great Lakes region. This allows the states to adopt hunting plans that I have little doubt will send wolf populations plummeting and force their relisting in the next 10 years. Hatred of wolves among the ranchers who still dominate political life in the Rocky Mountain states is rabid. They opposed reintroduction and continue to oppose the existence of wolves. Delisting becomes an open season on wolves. In New Mexico and Arizona, wolf poaching has not allowed the species to recover; the more isolated lands of the northern Rockies, with significant wilderness areas and national parks, has given wolves a great chance there. Wolves are beginning to expand into their old range, extending as far as Oregon and Colorado.

From a game management perspective, wolves are hated because they kill deer and elk--i.e., animals that hunters like. Much of the West suffers from deer and elk overpopulation. Occasionally, mass starvation of deer takes place because of a combination of drought and eating everything in sight. Wolves play a key role in ecosystem health. But state wildlife departments rarely take such crazy ideas as ecology into consideration. For them, it's all about increasing the size of trophy animal herds to bring in money from hunting licenses.

Obama's Poor Choices

Quite a couple of days of bad choices for Obama.

I talked yesterday about Ken Salazar, who I still think is a bad choice for Interior that has many environmental groups upset. I am somewhat annoyed, though not surprised, with Tom Vilsack at Agriculture. Vilsack is a friend to agribusiness and big supporter of ethanol, which as I have said many times here, is a really bad idea. Certainly he doesn't bring any kind of forward-thinking leadership on food issues to the table.

Ray LaHood at Transportation is very disappointing. I suppose a second Republican cabinet secretary is not surprising and I'm not sure where else I would rather see one, but it's unlikely LaHood is really going to go gangbusters over alternative transportation technologies.

Finally, what in the living hell is Obama thinking having Rick Warren say a prayer at the inauguration. I know that this is the least meaningful of these selections, but Warren supported Prop. 8 in California and is hostile to gay issues. The GLBT community may rightfully see this as a slap in the face.

I was hoping that after naming centrists to the big cabinet posts that Obama would promote progressives in some of the lesser positions. I was wrong. I can't think of one true progressive in any cabinet post. Some of the picks are pretty good (Napolitano, Shinseki, Chu), but from a progressive point of view, it's a pretty disappointing group so far. With the selections for Interior, Agriculture, and Transportation, 3 departments that progressives tend to care a great deal about, all going to center to center-right figures, my hopes for the Obama administration have taken a hit. With the Warren prayer, I am disgusted with Obama for the first time.

Ken Salazar?

Color me unimpressed with Obama picking Ken Salazar as Interior Secretary. Salazar is a pretty conservative Democrat and I have trouble seeing him really taking on the oil and gas lobby or being as aggressive as environmentalists hoped the Interior Secretary would be in overturning the Bush legacy.

For me, this is one of the two cabinet level positions I am looking at to get a sense of how progressive Obama is really going to be. Along with Labor, Interior is a vitally important post that doesn't quite get the scrutiny of the top level positions. I can deal with Bob Gates at Defense, but I was hoping he would show more progressive leanings with these positions.

I was really hoping for either Raul Grijalva of Arizona or John Kitzhaber of Oregon in the post. Grijalva would have filled the need for more Latinos in top level positions, brought a really progressive agenda to the position, and have gained significant public recognition, at least in comparison to the House seat he holds now. Kitzhaber, the former governor of Oregon, is a lover of the outdoors, has significant and very successful executive experience, and is much beloved in his home state.

Meanwhile, Salazar is probably the worst western Democratic Senator (though Max Baucus might have something to say about that). At least Colorado has a Democratic governor, so Salazar's position will stay in the party. His brother John is a likely replacement, though he isn't much better than his brother. That's fine for a senator from a relatively conservative state, but for the most important cabinet position on environmental issues, it's not so great.