Is the Obama administration sacrificing America's ecosystem for two Congressional votes?

Something's fishy in the state of California, and it stinks of political corruption most foul.  The water supply to the San Joaquin valley was shut off on December 2008 and remains off today, destroying thousands of lives and livelihoods of the farmers, small business owners and their employees who live and work in the valley.  Additionally, it has crippled our domestic crop production, of which about 12% was grown in this area.

This tremendous sacrifice was absolutely necessary, at least according to the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the Obama administration.  A valuable endangered species, the Delta Smelt, was being threatened by the diversion of water into the valley.  Local salmon and steelhead were threatened, as well. 

The overwhelming menace to the Pacific ecosystem was so extreme that no amount of pleading from California politicians such as Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger or Senator Dianne Feinstein could persuade Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, or President Obama to turn the water back on.  On this, they had to take a principled stand.  What courage these brave men possessed to steadfastly defend such a sensitive moral and ethical issue.  Our natural resources and environmental sanctity must rightly outweigh the lives of 40,000 citizens and 12% of the nation's food supply.

Uh well, not quite.  Apparently, the Obama administration values something even more than all the endangered species, American lives, and food shortages combined.  That would be the two ObamaCare "yes" votes miraculously garnered from two previously undecided Democrat congressmen, Reps. Costa and Cardoza, whose districts are coincidentally affected by the government-imposed drought. This announcement on March 16 coincided (again, coincidentally) with the US Department of Interior's announcement that they have had a change of heart, and now will turn the water back on.

I guess the environment is not that important an issue in Obama's agenda, after all.  Not today, anyway.  At least not until there is a need to use it as a weapon to forcibly extract more of our freedoms.  Maybe tomorrow.

Andrew Thomas
darkangelpolitics.com